A Tiny Homestead

Bright Acres Homestead

Today I'm talking with Jenn at Bright Acres Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well.
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Jen at Bright Acres Homestead in Florida. Good morning, Jen. How are you? Good morning, Mary. Well, thanks. How about yourself? Well, I'm good.  I have a runny nose that's been driving me crazy. Oh, yes. And so if I'm sniffly, that's why. ahh How is the weather in Florida this morning?
00:29It is doing all right. We've had some really nice cooler mornings lately, but  by midday it's back in the  90s.  It's crazy. The swings are crazy.  Yeah. Where are you in Florida? We are just south of Tallahassee,  right on the Gulf.  Okay. Yep. So you get the ocean breezes.
00:49I kind of feel like the Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America, whatever you want to call it these days, is like a dust bowl  for allergies. Okay. Yeah.  It's kind of wild. It's different than living on the East Coast for sure.  Yeah.  My parents still live in Maine. I grew up in Maine and my dad is always talking about how the winters are so much warmer now  because of number one, global warming. But number two, because of global warming, the oceans are staying warmer so they get the
01:20the insulation of the warmth of the ocean in the wintertime. And every time he explains this to me, I'm like, you've told me this a thousand times. And he's like, yes. And I'm like, I still don't quite understand how it works.  And he said, does anybody really understand how nature works? And I'm like, no, if we did, I would be much richer.
01:39Um,  is, it is overcast in Minnesota again this morning and we were fog locked for the second day this morning. could not see more than eighth of a mile down the road and my husband had to go to work and I was like, please be careful. Please. Yes. Yes. Completely understandable. Do not want to lose that man. And, and, and every time it gets foggy like this, I'm like, please don't let somebody hit him or please don't let him hit somebody. Oh, I totally understand the fog.
02:08It happens here too, especially like down the road from us, because there's such a change between we're right near  what we the Springs. And so like the Springs are, you know, the river runs through town and  it's much cooler. And then you have like the Gulf, which is very warm. And so it creates like this, I don't know what you want to call it, but like this tunnel where the two collide and the fog is crazy. um So it's kind of wild.
02:35Yeah, I don't like it. I really don't. I like to be able to see a mile away. It makes me happy. I want to take a moment before we dive in to thank you and all my other guests that have been on the show and my listeners because this podcast is one of my favorite things I've ever done and I appreciate everyone's time so much. I love that. Happy to be here. Good. I'm happy to have you. So tell me a little bit about yourself and Bright Acres Homestead and I love the name.
03:05Oh, thank you. um So we  see my husband and I, guess way back before we even knew each other, always both really loved farms.  I remember my parents used to tease me at some point I'd live on a farm and I'd have all the things. um And my husband also felt the same way.  His family kind of grew up that way.  A lot of canning and  they've lived in Florida before it was even a state  way back in the day.  so
03:33There's a lot of tradition there. And so between the two of us, after we met, we always had this dream of, let's do it. And so we're kind of living that dream. We both have real jobs on the side, of course. And so I should say real jobs for most of the time. This is the on the side deal, but it's been pretty incredible. We have 27 acres and we have 11 cows and five.
04:00pigs  and we garden pretty much year round in Florida as possible. so, um you know, having three to four gardens a year, depending on the season um and just really enjoying,  you know, living off the land and all the things that come with it. um It's been pretty awesome, especially for our kids,  for them being able to have responsibilities outside and see that, you know, working hard is, has fruits of labor, right? um
04:28with all the things that we put on our plates at dinner and that we're able to offer up as gifts or  just started selling in our shop, which is pretty cool. Okay. Thank you.  I have a very specific question. even wrote it down on a notebook so I wouldn't forget.  planted Roselle plants? Oh yeah.  What are they? What is that? So Roselle, it's a Roselle hibiscus. It's a type of  flowering plant.
04:57And after it flowers,  it produces ah what's called a calyx,  which is fruit.  And inside the fruit is a seed pod,  but the fruit itself is edible. uh It makes  tea, really good tea. um A lot of the tea blends that you find out there, if they say hibiscus, it's made from roselle.  It's in one of my personal favorites, uh the lemon zinger tea. ah
05:25from celestial seasonings. Roselle is actually in that mix as well. So it's kind of neat. had no idea. And this is the other reason I love my podcast because pretty much every episode I record, learned something new, but I didn't know the hibiscus produced a fruit. had no idea. I thought that the hibiscus tea came from the petals, but I guess not.
05:50No, yeah, it's actually really interesting. And there's many different types of hibiscus, right? Like you have like your tropical hibiscus, which are,  you know, the big yellow and pink and purple flowers, and they don't do the same thing.  It's a different variation as the roselle hibiscus. Okay. Well, thank you very much.  I had no idea and I love it when I learn new things.  I have got to know itis. That's what my dad calls  it. I love that.
06:18or otherwise known as perpetual curiosity. fantastic. All right. So I have, I have other questions.  How do your animals do with the high heat in Florida? Yeah, they actually do pretty decent. They all have shade  and there's plenty of tree hammocks out there. And,  um, we,  um, we had for a while until some of the trees got larger. um
06:43You know, those sun sails.  so they just really enjoyed hanging out under there. They,  it's amazing how much water  they can go through in a single day,  trying to keep themselves hydrated and whatnot, but  they actually do all right. It was kind of funny too. It snowed in January here in Florida. And so they had like the polar opposite  in terms of temperature. And they actually did really well in that too. So I think, you know, the breeds that we have are pretty hardy.
07:11Um,  especially for heat and drought. Um, but yeah, they, tend to make it work for themselves.  What breed of cows do you have? So we have,  um, two Sharlea.  Um,  we have one, she is  a,  um,  Thailand black Angus mix. Um, she's my pet. Her name is Flora. She, she is a bottle baby. Um, and then we have,  um, red limousine.
07:41And our bull Bruno, he is a Brahma, Brahma tiger stripe mix. He's an F, he's an F1. He's like first generation and he's pretty handsome. bet. Yeah, he's striped. He's got like zebra stripes. Like he's really cool looking. Okay. So do you have the cows for milk? Do you have them for meat? Do you have them for both? Yeah, they're mainly for meat and
08:10Uh, we're selling babies,  um, once they're weaned.  Um, we haven't actually had to bottle feed any of our babies.  Um,  when I bought Flora, um, she was a bottle baby when we got her.  Um, but all of our mothers have been producing well. And so, um, all the babies are growing up big and strong and, um, taking care of themselves. So yeah, they're for market and, and for meat consumption. oh Do you use any of the milk from the mama's for yourself?
08:40No.  Okay.  Cool. um The Brahma  breed. That's the one that looks like it's naked. It looks like it doesn't have any hair, right? Well, I guess. mean, Bruno looks like he has hair because he has stripes. ah But I do know what you're talking about. They have the longer ears. Yes. Ears that kind of hang down. um And a lot of them have a hump. Yep. That's the other thing I was going to mention. Yeah. Yeah. They're from
09:10Is it  Africa? India? India. Yeah. So I thought okay.  Yeah. And I hear that they're really docile. But is that not true? Oh, no, it's true. He is he doesn't realize how big he is. And honestly, it's kind of scary because, you know, he loves to like lean against the fence and he loves headpats and whatever, but he's huge.  So,  you know, it can be em it can be a little concerning  when he decides he wants to be lovey.
09:38Um, cause, cause of his size. He's aggressively affectionate. He's aggressively affectionate. Yeah. And yes, very loving. We had a barn cat for a couple of years, female, and she showed up here as a six month old stray and she fell in love with my son who still lives with us. And she was aggressively friendly from the very start. Like she would sit on his shoulder and lick his ears. I love it. Yep. So I am very familiar.
10:08with aggressively affectionate. Yes. And I think like the pets that find you  are just a different breed. Like they really are. Like  we, I've had multiple cats um that have found me  and Lucky, our current barn cat, she, found her in the middle of a road.  Some truck almost ran me off the road trying to avoid her. And so I stopped and I picked her up and I took her home and she's still here.  And she is that way. Like she doesn't have all the good manners.
10:37that they typically learn from mom. But she is affectionate and she loves to chew on your finger, oddly enough. Yeah, we're so sad because the one I was mentioning, she disappeared. We don't know if she got hit by a car or she went to a neighboring farm or where she went. But she had three litters in the two years that she was here and she was such a good mama. And I really miss this cat. I mean, she's a barn cat, but I miss her. She was so pretty. was a long
11:06very long-haired calico cat.  Oh, how pretty.  and she was my son's best friend for a while. he was like, I said, are you sad that she's gone? And he was like,  well, we still have the black cat that the Humane Society said we would never be able to pet. And he's pretty friendly. So I'm OK. I was like, OK.  That counts for something. Yeah, for sure. Yes,  it's so funny. We adopted him, um God, four years ago now. And they swore up and down.
11:36that we would never be able to pet this cat.  They swore he was aggressively feral.  They had a hard time vetting him, trying to give him his shots and check out his health and get him neutered. He scratched the hell out of people. oh They warned us when we got him to wear gloves when we let him out of the kennel the second day when you're supposed to. m
12:02And  that cat has been nothing but nice and friendly since about a month after he got here. Yeah. So he took him a little time to adapt and then he realized you guys are friends. And he was like, okay, I guess I'm It's all right. Yeah. And he loves our dog. So  it all worked out, but  they were so worried that he was going to hurt us. And I was just like,  I think we got it covered. think it'll be okay. oh
12:31All right, so I saw that you make jellies and they're gorgeous. Tell me about your jellies. Thank you. um Dan's family has always made jellies and Dan and I picked that up years ago. um And we used to just make them for ourselves and we give them as gifts. And then  people were like, you should start selling them. So we've started selling them. um But I love different flavors. I don't like  just the regular apple or, know,
12:59grape, even though I make a mustard and grape, uh pretty much you can make jelly out of anything, right? So I have a lot of plant based jellies. have like rose petal and camellias, which are flowers and ah dandelion, which is one of my personal favorites. It's a bright yellow, just like all those bright yellow flowers you see on the side of the road. And it tastes like honey. It's truly like sunshine in a jar. Like it's delicious. uh And then  we grow a lot of things in the garden that we use. So
13:29have a bunch of different jalapeno varieties. um Jalapeno pineapple is probably my favorite out of all of them.  It's delicious with like a pork chop or um chicken. It just gives it a  nice flavor. um But yeah, all the different berries, we grow our own fruit. So we have close to 80 fruit trees.  Yeah.  And so whatever is coming in season, we're using for um
13:59for whatever we're making, which is pretty great.  What kind of fruit trees do you have? Oh, we have so many pears and those just finished producing for this year. So that was pretty exciting.  So pears and plums, peaches, um apple,  persimmons,  fig,  pomegranate, which those are so sad.
14:24So my pomegranates, just they produce pomegranates, but the fruit just never makes it to maturity. So  I don't know, I'm going to have to do a little bit more research on how best to feed them,  because I think they need a little extra something.  But a whole bunch of different things, for sure.  Nice. I had to look up the definition of an orchard the other day. I have an article coming out in  Homestead Living Magazine.
14:53They're going to every, they were every month and now they're going to be every two months. And so it's either November or December, I don't know how they've got it set up. And  my editor said to me, she said, so you said you have fruit trees, do you have an orchard? And I had to look it up because I thought an orchard was like hundreds of trees.  It is not. If you have five fruit trees, you have an orchard. Oh, well, there you go.
15:20We have 20, so we have an orchard. We have a small orchard, I love it. I  love it.  And then my husband, I was telling him this, said, did you know we have a small orchard? And he said, no, we don't. And I said, by definition, we do. And I read it to him and he was like,  oh, he said, not only do we have an apple orchard, he said, we have a fruit orchard. And I said, we do. And he said, yeah, we have wild plum, we have um alderman plum.
15:49We have  two peach trees,  we have  wild black raspberries.  He said, we have an actual orchard. That's amazing. I love that. We both just laughed because we had no idea that we were by definition growing an orchard. I think my husband always said we had an orchard and I was like, I don't know, babe. I don't think we have enough.  You do. You absolutely do.  So for sure, that's awesome.
16:17And the other reason it's so funny to us is because our acreage is 3.1 acres and we have a small orchard on 3.1 acres. I love it. That's so cool though. Just laughed ourselves stupid. It's the best laugh we've had in probably a year. I was like, wow, that felt good. So it's exciting. I don't know about you, but I absolutely love everything we do on our property. The garden, the fruit trees, the berries.
16:47the cats, the dog, the chickens. I mean, there are days where I'm like, man,  did we do the right thing? But every morning when I get up and get my coffee  and sit on the porch and watch the world wake up and listen to the chickens start  making noises, we don't have a rooster, so we don't have a crow,  but we hear them  clucking to each other. And I just,  have this  amazing sense of peace in the morning.
17:16So what about you? How do you feel about it? Yeah,  I think it  is very rewarding. It's very peaceful. It's kind of like our own slice of paradise, I guess, right? Like just all the things that we enjoy.  it is. It's a lot of work. But I feel grateful um that we're able to  be so self-sustaining, um you know, and to be able to share that  with people.
17:46in so many different ways. um I just think that is  one of the coolest parts of it.  And I love it for my kids, like for them to have autonomy, right? To be able to go outside and to have independence  and um to go over and pet the animals and, you know, to go over and pick whatever they want and eat it off the tree. Like, I just think that is  super special and such a tribute, right, to um so many generations before us.
18:15Yeah, and your kids know where their food comes from. Yes. And it's so important. I,  every time I hear a little kid say that milk and eggs come from the grocery store,  I have to bite my tongue. I have to think before I speak. And I have to look at the parents and say, can I share something with your child?
18:44And I say it really nicely and with as genuine a smile as I can. And they say about, and I say about where milk and eggs come from. And they go, sure. And  I explained to them that I grew up in the state of Maine and my  grandpa's friends down the road  had a dairy farm  and milk actually comes from cows.  And I explained that we have chickens and that eggs actually come from chickens.  And  kids look at me like I'm crazy.
19:14And then they start asking questions and that's my favorite part so I can like educate them  about how that works.  And I have never had a parent get mad at me for explaining it ever. Yeah, I can see. I mean, it  makes you wonder if parents even understand truly the cycle of that part of it, right? Like,  you know, that there are large, large farms, right, that are producing and they're sending it to the store, but it goes through all this process before it makes it there, right? What is it like?
19:43just for it to be next door. Yeah. think there's a lot of that missing. Yep. I can remember drinking milk at my grandpa's friend's house the first time. I think I was probably six. I don't remember much before I was six years old.  And um B,  I used to call her Aunt B. She wasn't actually related to us in any way, but she was so close to the family that that was what I called her.  Loved this woman. Like every time I think about her, my heart gets big.
20:10And she asked me if I wanted some milk with the cookies she made. And I was like, sure. And she poured me milk from a pitcher, you know, as last pitcher from the refrigerator. And I remember taking a bite of cookie, swallowing the cookie and taking a sip of that milk and saying, what is this? Yes, it's so different. It's so good. She said, Mary Evelyn, it's milk. And I said, um, it is. And she said, yeah.
20:38And I said, where did you get it? And she said, from the cows in the barn that you met last year. And I'm like, oh, from the babies? And she's like, well, not babies anymore, but yes. And  I said, um why does it taste so different from the milk in the fridge at home? And she said, because it's right from the cow. And she very carefully explained to me about pasteurization and how they pull the cream  off and blah, blah, blah.  I was six.
21:08And I said, oh, I said, can you send some of this milk home with my mom and dad? And she was like, of course, sweetie, I can.  And so we had fresh cow milk for about three days because the other two siblings wanted it too. I was so bummed. I'm sure.  It's like that was mine. So to this day, when I can get my hands on fresh milk, I am all over it. It's so  good. It is so good. And it's so different. I  don't know,  even cooking with it just completely changes the taste.
21:38Yeah, and wouldn't you wouldn't think that it would be that huge a difference, but it really truly is.  Um, so you were saying that when you started making your jellies that friends were like, you should sell these. I have, I have some thoughts on that whole thing.  Making, making and selling a product is completely different than putting your heart and soul into a small batch and giving it as gifts. It's expensive to produce for sale.
22:08And we did it for a year and we do a little bit of it now, but we do not sell  handmade goods as much as we used to because it is so expensive to source the ingredients. Yeah. I think,  um,  there isn't much that we have to buy, right? Like we have to buy the jar  and  you know, we'll buy pectin, but sometimes we don't need it because we will have had some from whatever it was that we picked.
22:37Right. Like some things have natural pectin, so there's no need for anything there.  Um, you know, and then there's the sugar and, know, lemon juice is easy to come by,  um, just from our own personal trees.  Um, so, I mean,  I, think it came out to like,
22:57$25, $50 to  craft a jar  of jelly. If you sell them for  $8 at  a local market, that's not bad.  Selling online, you have to add in shipping and whatever the fees are. The margin is not, we're not going to get rich, but  it's a really good retirement plan.
23:26at some point in the future. um And I just,  I enjoy it, I think really, like, there's so much more to it than just, hey, I'm gonna make this and I'm gonna sell it. It's what can I craft out of this that's different that someone might enjoy? Right? Like, I feel like that's more of what where it is like where we're at. um I don't know, I just I
23:52My husband and I both, he's like the pickle master. That is like his all time favorite thing to produce. um And they're not really that hard to do. m
24:06I mean, yeah, we're not  we can't quit our day jobs, right? em But I find that there is
24:14It's a very self-rewarding task. It's a selfish act that becomes a selfless act. You are self-rewarding in the fact that you enjoy it, but you are being selfless in getting it out to other people. Yeah. That's a good way to think about it. Yeah. There are so many times where I feel so selfish about the things that I get to do and that I want to do.
24:43And then when I share it with people, like, but it's not selfish because I'm sharing it with other people. Yes. And so it takes some of staying out of that immediate thought of this is selfish. I should be spending my time doing something else.  So yeah, it's, it's a weird dichotomy when it comes to that. But the reason, the reason I said that it can be expensive to produce to sell is  if you have all of the things available to you that you already own,
25:11to produce the thing you're producing, then  it's probably way less expensive because you already got it. But in our case, we had friends,  we started making homemade soap years ago because store-bought soap made my skin itch.  And I had bought a  bar of um cold-processed lye soap at a Renaissance festival, and it was handcrafted, and after I used it, my skin didn't itch.
25:37And I was like, can we try making soap? And my husband was like, yes, let's do it. And so we made some and we gave soap for Christmas presents. And people were like, can we, can you make more? Can we buy it from you? And that's all well and good, except that the stuff to make it doesn't exactly grow, you know, here. And so we ended up having to sell bars of soap at the time for $5 a bar. And that was on the low end. And.
26:06Now we're selling them for seven, I think, when we make them. And that is way less than what it costs us to make them, but no one's going to pay $20 a bar for a bar. they're just not going to. the reason I bring this up is because most everyday Americans don't know what it costs someone who is hand making a product. They have no idea what it costs that person to do that.
26:36the money and the time  and  the oopses that happen.  We've tossed batches of soap in the trash because we something wrong.  so it is all well and good to be passionate about something and enjoy doing it. And if it makes sense for you, then yeah, produce it and sell it and make people happy. But you don't have to sell the thing that you love to make. Very true. No, that's very true.
27:06So it's been,  it's been pretty awesome to be able to share very Florida esque things  with people across the country. Right. Like  my Etsy shop, I do shipping for my Etsy shop. And it's been incredible to share with people things that grow here, right. That maybe don't grow there.  Yeah.  I've had a lot of people reach out that it was very interesting earlier this year, someone there was an article or news.
27:35news, something in the news about Redbud Jelly in Ohio.  And within three days of that, like I was out of Redbud Jelly because everybody from Ohio bought it because they were interested in what it was because of some news segment, you know, so  it's just been interesting to me to, to be able to share it. it's, I don't know, it's just, it's, it's a different, it's a different thing, right? I mean, we've always done it for ourselves. So I guess
28:05You know, we have everything to be able to produce it.  Um, that is just making a little extra, right? To be able to pass it on. Yes. I think I'm going to learn another new thing from you. What is redbud jelly? I don't even know what it is. Oh, red buds,  um, flowers.  Um, they're spring flowers on a redbud tree. Okay. Um, and you pick the flowers and then you pretty much process them like any other  flower. Like you make a tea.
28:33out of them and then you use the tea um to make jelly. Okay, cool. What does it taste like?
28:43I don't know, it's different. um
28:47It's florally. It's got a little bit of lime, I think, to it. I don't know, it's red. It's a very pretty red color,  like a dark pinkish red. um I don't know.  They all taste different. It's hard to explain.  Well, that's fine. I'll just have to find a jar sometime and try it. for sure. A friend of mine, years ago, she was visiting my house where we used to live.
29:15And my neighbor right next door had these hostas that bloomed pure white, not purple, white. And she was like, can I take some of those hosta buds home? Do you think your neighbor would share? And I was like, let me check. And my neighbor was, is generous to a fault. And she was like, yeah, how many do you need? And my friend said, she said, can I get like a gallon size Ziploc bag of them?
29:44And my friend had a whole buttload of these plants.  She said, grab a bag  from Lynn, my nickname is Lynn.  she said, come over and pick what you want.  And so my friend went home and she made Hosta flour jelly.  And she actually mailed me a jar because she wasn't going to be down to visit for a while.  And it mostly tasted like lemon and honey because that was part of the recipe.  But there was definitely this beautiful um
30:14floral note to it. And I know that people make jasmine jelly. Yes. And it was as close to jasmine jelly as I think I've ever tasted. It was really nice. So it's kind of amazing the things that you don't think of as food that actually are food. Yes. Oh, 100%. I think that's the most fascinating part of it, right? Like just what can you eat that you don't normally think of eating or ingesting?
30:41And honestly, like the benefits of a lot of those things are pretty amazing. Like  most flowers have a very high content vitamin C and  D. even when you cook them down,  know, there's some of that is still there. So it's, it's kind of a really cool, really cool thing. Yeah. There are just, there's so many things. And when I started the podcast, my husband said,  aren't you going to run out of things to talk about? Aren't you going to get bored? And I just giggled.  I said,
31:10I said Google homesteading and he pulled out his phone and he did. And I said, how many results does it say? And he's like millions. I said, yeah, we're going to get tired talking about this ever. And thank God I get to talk to people who like you who teach me about things like Roselle hibiscus plant and red bud jelly because I didn't know about either of those when I woke up this morning. have something else I can share with you that I think you'll be like, what is that? So tell me.
31:40One of the other things that I really enjoy making are different vinegars.  So like vinegar is acidic, but it's an awesome probiotic. And so I have so many of those  in  different states, right? Of,  of fermenting.  Um, one of my favorites and one of my  best sellers is fig vinegar. Oh, Made from the fig leaves. So it has like this coconutty vanilla taste to it. It's incredible.
32:10It is so good. Like a Greek salad with a little bit of feta cheese and some tomatoes and mix it with a little bit of olive oil. Oh man, it is delicious. Do you sell it? Yes. My husband's gonna kill me because I'm gonna have to look and maybe try to convince him to buy some. He's the one with the jobby job. So anything that I want to buy, always kind of run it by.
32:41Because I respect him. works his ass off to keep us fed and housed. think that I need to ask before I buy things.  And hopefully someday the podcast will make me money and I can be like, um, I spent $20 of my money on vinegar and he'll laugh.  All right. I try to keep these to half an hour. We are past that by two minutes, almost three.  So where can people find you?  Um, you can find us on Etsy. We are bright acres homestead.
33:11And we also have a website, brightacreshomestead.com.  And your Bright Acres Homestead on Facebook. you on Instagram too? We  are. Yes. Although my husband is our social media man. And so he pretty much mans the Facebook and he's in charge of posts.  But yeah, find us out there. We just hit 3000 um followers this week. So that was super exciting. um And I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.  sure.
33:40Congratulations on 3,000. I think I have maybe 800 followers on my Facebook page. Maybe you'll get some traction with this.  I am always looking for traction with the podcast every day, every waking moment, and sometimes sleeping moments too. Sometimes I dream about the podcast. ah I had a question.  Oh, do you guys have a YouTube channel?  No.
34:04But I'm thinking maybe that's something we'll do in the future. We have definitely kicked around  the idea of doing classes um for like lot of our local folks um and probably videoing them and putting them up on a YouTube channel.  So I think that is definitely the next phase um of something that we want to be able to do. That would be so much fun and so good for people to learn. um
34:33As always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com and  go check out my Patreon, P-A-T-R-I can't talk,  PATREON.com slash Atiny Homestead. um Jen, thank you for sharing your information with me. Thank you for teaching me two brand new things. I'm always amazed when I find out new things. It makes me so happy.  And I hope that you have a wonderful day. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. All right. Bye.
 

Hairy Farmpit Girls

Today I'm talking with Swan at Hairy Farmpit Girls. You can follow on Facebook as well.
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Talking with Swan at Harry Farm Pit Girls. And if you laugh, that's okay. So did I.  And I know she's in the South somewhere. Where are you, Swan?  I am in Bowman, Georgia, which is just kind of,  um, East, uh, Athens, Georgia. Okay. Cool.  So it's the northeast corner of Georgia.  All right.
00:29That makes a lot of sense. That helps. How's the weather there this morning? I think that we're going to get into the mid 80s. So, you know, it's a little warm. It hasn't actually been too bad. I think it's probably about 70 something right now. So it's the delightful time of day. Give it about another hour and we'll be scorched again. Well, how cool do you guys get in January? Well, we have a little pond on our property and in January and
00:58February in the summer upon freezes all the way over. Um, I'm not willing to walk out to the middle of it, but I can stand on the sides.  Um, so it gets to, I think about we've only been here for about four and a half years, but it gets to the twenties and the teens a little bit.  Um,  just a few times, but for the most part, we, during the day, we typically stay at the coldest above snowing temperature. Okay. Awesome. I just, I've never been further south than, uh,
01:29I think Maryland. So I have no idea what it's like in the south in the wintertime. I don't think anybody's ever considered Maryland south.  it's not, but that's as far south as I've ever gotten, you know, in the United States. So the weather here in Minnesota this morning  is cool and overcast to the point that we are actually fog locked on my property. can't see an eighth of a mile away.  Oh, wow. Wow. That's incredible.
01:58Yep, my son calls it uncanny valley when this happens because it makes you feel like you're the only person on earth.
02:07My son, whenever we have a foggy morning, which we don't really have right now in this time of year, but he calls it, he's five. So he says it's froggy outside and we have always uh decided to never correct him from saying, from calling fog frog. So he says it's froggy or he can't see through the frog outside. So.  Oh yeah. We call it froggy. We also call, we also call humidity humdidity.
02:35We call it a humidititty. It's the South. Yup. And there's one other I was thinking of when you brought that up. And of course it's gone because I have over 50 brain and I think of things that are funny and then by the time I get to say them out of my mouth, they're out of my brain and I can't find them again. I'll do that exact same thing and I have under 50 things. So. Yeah. It's just, I think it's just the way that we live now.
03:02Yeah, there's just too much information and your brain can't possibly sort it as fast as say AI can. Ugh. So  anyway, uh we've tried to do a podcast twice before and had terrible technical difficulties. So Swan is back for the third time, hopefully the charm,  so that we can actually talk with Swan about what she and her wife do in Georgia. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do Swan.
03:29All right, well, we have  a little 12 acre farm out here. um We are called the Harry Farfit Girls. And we started off just as we started off at a different farm  down in South Georgia.  Whenever we started building that farm, we had come from the city and we started building that farm.  I just started writing about it on social media, particularly on Facebook. um
03:53So just watch, letting people like kind of watch our journey. Cause I know that not everybody could do what we were doing. And so just wanted to share it and I didn't want to bog all of my other friends down with like 4,000 photos of chickens. So I figured out if the internet wanted to see 4,000 photos of chickens, they could come and see them all the time with a social media page. So at first I just started writing about it and then we got pretty popular cause I have a little bit of a sense of humor.
04:22So we added a product. started  raising goats and making goat milk soap and lotion and do with farmers markets and little shops around South Georgia. um And then we got more and more popular and we were able to buy a second farm up in North Georgia  and move all of our stuff to online.  So now we make soaps. m We make soap, goat milk soap still. But also um I've got a lot of people that just have gotten
04:49have fallen in love with our animals over the past decade. We've been sharing for a little over 10 years. Oh, it's actually going be 11 years in January. We've been sharing this journey for 11 years now. And so now we have patrons that support us every month, usually from three to 20 bucks a month. They pledge and my dog's a barking, but they pledge some money. And so we're able to our goats and take care of our animals.
05:16that support and this money that we make off of social media and just sharing about everything. So  everything that I post gets a couple bucks here and there  and we still sell  our solutions every day.  Nice. have learned recently that  the  system that you are doing where you make money from doing things online  and people get to enjoy the things that you're doing  is called value for value.
05:46I didn't know that term until like three weeks ago.  I knew what it meant. I just hadn't heard it put that way before. Yeah, there's a part that, I mean, people have gotten to feel like they know us over the past decade.  And I mean, I definitely feel like we know some of our fans, I guess you would call them as well.  But  it is a value for value system. like things like one of the things that I'm very into these days is crocheting and doing all sorts of things with.
06:15yarn and fibers and,  um, and I, it's crochet, if you're familiar with it, it's pretty hard to sell for as much work as you put into it. oh I am familiar. Yes. But my accountant, because I make money off of social media and just sharing things makes people happy. My accountant lets me write off all my yarn purchases and all of anything that I do that's fun that I talk about.  Um, I get to, you know, how our business.
06:43cover those expenses and  so what, while I might not be sharing or selling the sweater that I'm making, I get to um still make it and make it for that value that other people are seeing and sharing it. And one of the things that I've done over the past year or two is kind of move our page a little bit more towards the art side of things.  So where I encourage everybody to share their art and everybody to have their community around um our farm, but then also like our
07:12their own outside community. So I've built little places for eerie, far-fit girl followers to talk, interact with one another all over the place.  Nice.  Awesome.  So you've built an actual real community out of this and  I think that's what everybody's trying to do who's in this space. So one of the ways that I've done that is we have a Patreon. Are you familiar with Patreon?  Yes. I finally got mine set up after talking to you two years ago.  Excellent.
07:42So we have a patreon and that is a wonderful thing and one thing that we do um So we have just people that want to support us. So they pledge three dollars a month. I think that's our beginning  um Our beginning tier but once you go up to six dollars a month you get access to me almost all the time Um, so we have tuesday wednesday and thursday. We have patreon calls and we do a big zoom meeting  and I think this one or
08:09100 % tight that some of the people in our Patreon calls have become some of my best friends and closest friends.  So we talk face to face for two hours to sometimes five or six hours, three minutes a week. have text message chains. I've met a lot of them face to face. um And they've become like family. So, and then building that family and that kind of community, you know, where I have,  I have one group.
08:36Uh, that's like 3,500 people full that people can all interact with one another. While I might not always be able to be there, I've got moderators and it's a like little happy place on the internet. And so whether you want to be a small group or a little group, just Harry Farfitt girls, kind of know, you know, people aren't really going to find us that don't share some of the same values. So it's kind of a nice little fun place where you have a sense of humor. You're crafty, you're a little bit feral and you just.
09:06play around and you came together probably because of a story about a goat.  Yes. um You've told me the story twice already, but because the podcast episodes went into the ether,  I didn't get to put it out. So tell me about the goat, because you have a story about the first goat. um Oh, about Vincent being goat? Yes. Okay. So Vincent being goat.  And I know that you have a lot of people that kind of do home setting stuff that listen to you.
09:35So lot of them might know about buck goat behaviors. Um, Benson being goat was our very first intact buck goat. Got him as a baby, but he was going to be used for getting our other goats pregnant.  Benson has some proclivities that other buck goats share, but he also  is not, he's also extremely, extremely sweet and friendly. um, Vincent is a very limber goat.
10:04who has at times failed to get any of our other goats pregnant because he um likes himself as much as he likes female goats. So one of the ways, the first ways that I got popular was,  are you familiar with the goat mating call?  Sort of, kind of. uh I'm going to embarrass myself here and I don't know how it's going to come off on the podcast, but a goat mating call. Basically you stick out your tongue and you just go,  yes, yes. And it's really, really loud.
10:34So Vincent van Gogh lived with one of our donkeys named David Asselhoff and they began a romantic relationship and Vincent's face, Lynn, goes right up to David's. So I'm going to say it because I use this word all the time, his butt hole. So we started marketing something with Vincent Vingo called Screaming into Butt Holes.
10:58Um, because everything that he was doing rather than focusing on the girl groups, he was focusing on streaming into David's butthole  as well as some of his own limber issues. don't mean, I don't know what I can say on this podcast. Can I go all the way? No, no. I'm  just saying I'm going to, I'm going to self, uh, my fans will know what I'm talking about.  Um, and your fans can, you know, know about that.
11:26He was enamored with his own body parts. He was very enamored with his own body parts. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. To the point that because we make goat milk soap and to have goat milk soap, we have to have milk and to have milk, we have to have baby goats. Vincent was so enamored with himself and with a rototiller and they would ask a lot that he failed to get anybody pregnant or only one goat pregnant one year.
11:54So then we had to get another goat named Jack Goatbloom. um that's Vincent and his proclivities and his sweet face. is, most buck goats are not cute. Vincent is cute. Most buck goats are not sweet and personable. Vincent is so personable. He wants to be loved. He smells like an ammonia factory, but he loves love. um So he's kind of stolen the heart of everybody and kind of.
12:22launched us into that popular, over that hump of, you know, online farms being a mega popular online farm  that people follow and have just.
12:35watched this adventure go for so many years. So that's my story  of Vincent a little bit. a circuitous route to become famous. Yeah, there was also a vulture in my chimney involved and a little peacock. So  there have been quite a few times that I've gotten a little famous from some things. We've just, you having you're sitting at you're sitting on a farm.  These animals become your family  and just being able to use my
13:04I'm a writer, so just being able to put the things that I see into a fun and unique perspective has kind of helped everything move along and support us for the past, you know, 11 years that this is what we do. And that's pretty incredible. We don't sell anything other than goat milk soap and lip balm and stickers and stuff like that. But our online stuff, it's paper.
13:34for all of our stuff for that long.  Awesome. You mentioned lip balms and soaps. We make our own for us and we sell them at the farmers market.  the thing that I love about making lip balms and soaps is that we are never without lip balms and soaps. You know, you can say that.  I own a company that makes lip balms. We make lip balms by the hundreds and thousands sometimes.
14:02whatever we make some matches of lip balms,  I still can go into rooms of my house and  I'll be like, I don't have any lip balm anywhere. that's one thing. I know I'm never without soap, but I still manage to lose lip balm even though there's a good hundred tubes probably in this house and then in our studio, there's thousands. just try to find  that.
14:31I think the only room that doesn't have lip balm in it right now is my kitchen. I know there's lip balms in the bathroom drawers. I can see lip balms on my dresser in my bedroom, which is where I record. I know my son has three on his bedside table in his room. And I know there's like three bags of lip balms in our living room right now. It's very convenient. I imagine that north where you are, you definitely need an extra there.
14:59Oh yeah, we go through a lip balm like people go through uh chewing gum, guess. We'll use that as an analogy. um And the other thing about our lip balms, as long as they're not flavored or scented, you can use them as like for your dry elbows or your dry feet. Just make sure you know which ones you're using for that.
15:21Just one second. Is my dog barking bothering you? That's Sarah Jessica Barker and she has one volume. I can go move her if you'd like me to. didn't know if you can hear me or not. I can hear her and if you'd like to move her that would be fine. Okay, I'll be back in one minute. Let me just go toss her somewhere.
15:40Bye bye.
15:46Ready? back.  Sorry. Is she a big dog? Oh my goodness. I have so many dogs right now. So Sarah Jessica Barker  is a 70 pound lab mix. She's, I think she just turned, she just turned 10. We have five dogs right now. We also have a 13 year old terrier who's always itchy. And he's very stuck in his ways and it's the quietest one out here.  And his name is Lionel Itchy.  It's here. We got.
16:16puppies. So we decided, we have been discussing, we have a lot of coyotes out here. We've been discussing getting livestock dogs for a while  and Jen finally caved and was like, okay, let's do it. So we got a pair of Pyrenees mixes as puppies. Like we, we knew what they were  because they had been conceived. They were a combination of two of my different neighbors' And so we knew their parents and their grandparents and they were conceived right in front of our trash can.
16:46Nice.  So this was  a year and a half ago. So we were able to find  their mom dog. We were able to find her a better home and get her fixed and everything like that later on. But whenever we found her the better home,  she moved, they had moved up to Ohio and they contacted like us and they were like, hey, is there a chance that this dog is pregnant? And I was like, you know what, there is a chance. And if so, I am so sorry. uh also like, because I said, this was a
17:15neighbor's dog that came over to our house and, came over to another neighbor's house. And it was just kind of a community dog that one neighbor wasn't, was no longer interested in her.  So  I said, you know, if, if she is pregnant and if she has puppies, I'll actually take two of them because I would like to start livestock dogs from the start. And I knew that they were going to be Pyrenees Nixies. So they drove to that, at the pick of the letter, they drove these two dogs down from Ohio back to Georgia.
17:45Um, and so now I have two livestock dogs that decided that they are more comfortable in the house than on the couch. Um, eating shoes and couches and everything. Um, so now I have 120 pounds, um, male dog and about a 90 pound dog, uh, female dog, Marfa and Wolfess, um, that live in our house and Marfa.
18:11just chase a tractor down the street. So she's gone to make sure that that doesn't come to our property, I guess. um And then we have  back in April, we were driving to town and there were three little tiny black puppies that had been, they're about six months old, that had been dropped off in the middle of the road. And  I can't leave anything, so I scooped them all  up. By that weekend, um we were going to visit Jen's family who live up in uh
18:39Kokomo, Indiana. So we had to bring all three of these little puppies with us and a little pack and play like, you know, like we're baby sleeping. We brought that to her mom's house. m And I had somebody come over from Massachusetts and adopt one. It was one of my Harry Farbitt girl followers online.  Shout out to Erin and Lisa. Hey.  And then I had somebody come down from Minnesota.
19:08Um, as well and came down here. She drove down a couple of months ago  and adopted another one. And we still have one left. Her name is Donna. And we decided that we're going to keep her unless we could find her a perfect home. She doesn't, um, she doesn't necessarily do the best on a farm. She's the sweetest dog, but she kind of gets bullied around by the other bigger dogs and she's scared of them.  Um,  and she also wants to chase chickens and goats and stuff like that. Yeah.
19:37But we love her and we'll take care of her forever. And if anybody is interested, all they have to do is just reach out to Harry Farpett Girls on social media and  we can hook you up with the world's sweetest little puppy. we have her. So we have five dogs.  And her name is uh Donatella Versace.  I love all the names you come up with.  Thanks. Everybody's a pun out here.
20:02Yeah, we have a dog and her name is Maggie. It's not anything funny.  just, well, maybe it is.  I lied. um I have this thing where I am not the most Christian girl ever, but I really like names from the Bible. Okay.  And  I don't know why, but I was thinking of Mary of Magdalene when we decided we were going to get a puppy and if we got a female.
20:28I wanted a name or Maggie because of Mary of Magdalene and I'm like, I'm Mary Magdalene. Whatever you say. And my husband was like, what is your obsession with, with biblical names? He said, you're not even, you don't even go to church. And I was like, I don't know. There's just really neat names in the Bible.  You know, sometimes you just get a theme and you just kind of go with it. Like I have some friends that name all of their animals, like just really blunt human names, like Ligery and stuff like that. Yeah. And for me, I do most things.
20:58based on celebrities or politicians or somewhere along there. I have just, everybody gets a pun and musicians and everything like that. So I have the puns, but go with your theme. If you like all the biblical names, go with it. I have a chicken out in the yard, a rooster, who, whenever he was a little, I hatched him from my own eggs. Whenever he was a little chick, he used to always stand in the water bowl. So I would say he walks in water. So of course, you know.
21:27I had to name a one thing, but then I decided just to put a little bit of a spin on it. So that way I wasn't going around calling him Jesus all the time. So his name is Jesus.  He is about nine, nine years old now, I think. And he's still doing this thing and rocking it, but he's got the best little rooster or huge rooster. Um, so yeah, I get it. So, so I have my own biblical name.
21:51The thing that really got me is that my son, my youngest still lives with us. He's 23. He'll be 24 in December.  And we got barn cats from the Humane Society.  And  one of them was a two to four year old black cat, male, fixed.  And they told us that no one would ever be able to pet him. He was completely feral. They had a hard time vetting him and getting him his shots and stuff.  And so my son decided to name him Satan.
22:21And I looked at this kid and I was like, oh, so I'm the one who's weird because I like biblical names, but you named the cat Satan. I love it. mean, not like that, but I think it's hilarious.  And turns out, turns out that Satan actually is a lovely cat. My son is a cat whisperer  and Satan and my son are the best of friends. That cat comes up to him and licks his feet. If he's barefoot outside,  he wants pets, he purrs. He's fine.
22:50So  Satan isn't necessarily a good moniker for this cat anymore, but that's his name.  I have some, we have a five year old  and  one thing that I love doing is he is  very creative and he has very different naming protocols than I do.  And I think his is just based on obscurity or whatever he's thinking at the moment. And so I let him name random things. um
23:18Right now he is named,  we have a chicken that he named Rocks Flat.  This was whenever he was four. So he named her Rocks Flat. And then we have Dale, who actually stands for Drink A Lot Energy.  We had Treia, which was Tummy Rumble Eat A Lot. So a lot of times I'm kind of trying to reach for  the  acronym to try to give them a normal name as opposed to giving a, here Tummy Rumble Eat A Lot, come here Drink A Lot Energy. uh
23:48We have a fish named lightning fast  and we had to compromise.  have a new kitten. We had to compromise on naming her. So I wanted to name her Tabitha Christie and he wanted to name her fluffy. So we compromised on fluffy Tabitha, mighty super cloud Christie. So I'm sure you can figure out who gave her the middle name of mighty super cloud.  is a, that is a huge name for a little cat. mean,  it's, it's.
24:14Naming is very important. So that's her Christian name. That's her baptism name, I guess. Uh-huh. That's very funny. Yeah. Your son is adorable. The pictures that you share of him, he's beautiful. Thank you. I'm sitting here as we talk, as we do this podcast, I'm actually sitting here. Did you see my new project about crocheting the whole class cardigans? Yes. So I'm, oops, are you still there? Yeah. Okay. Sorry, my computer just went black and so I think it just went to sleep. So
24:43m Currently, if any of your listeners are there, I make hexicardies, which are just making a hexagon, two hexagons and folding them together and turning them into a cardigan. And I let our son design all of his own. um So he has very opinionated color taste and style choices. And he's always going to school dressed in just brightly colored, amazing little cardigans.
25:11Because we're rural, we live in a very small community and we have a Title I school. One of his teachers reached out to me last week or on Friday. I was like, Hey, did you ever sell any of the sweaters that you make  your son? We call them little carpet just for his own privacy. um said, you have any of those, do you ever sell those sweaters that you make your son and preferably in adult sizes? And I said, I don't sell them. You know, with crochet, too much effort to sell and make anything back. And so you just do it because you love somebody.
25:41Um, I said, don't tell them, but you know, have it under good authority that you'll probably be getting something handcrafted very soon. And so if you just want to tell me your favorite colors, let me know. So this teacher told me her favorite colors and the other teacher's favorite colors.  And, um, and I started thinking about it  and the kids, you know, it's starting to come up on fall and winter and the kids go to school and you know, it gets chilly and sometimes it's chilly in classrooms.  Um,
26:11It gets chilly and putting on your winter coat or whatever is not always the most cozy thing to do while you're sitting there and trying to learn. So I decided to make, I want to make every kid in his class, a little cardigan all in bright colors. And so little farm pit is actually designing all the cardigans for his class. went online and we registered for yarn. We put up a, like a little crowdsourcing idea of, Hey, if you may wants to send yarn to us, you can mail it.
26:40here, you know, bright and colorful acrylic, so it's easily washable.  Um, and so  I, this week is going to be,  um, a test and seeing how much I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of yarn that shows up at my house and at my, I use a, my favorite local yarn shop, LCD originals in Hartwell as a public mailing address.  Um, so I have a feeling we're going to get a lot of stuff and I cannot wait to see.
27:08how these kids look and how they react to these cozy little cardigans that I'm calling classroom cardigans that they can leave there, they can take home with them. And then that way they can have something nice and warm that the teacher wants to take them home on Friday and wash them and dry them and bring them back to class. can't.  So, but nobody knows about it. Like I don't, imagine that nobody really knows who we are in this town because we're rather new here. um I haven't recognized a little bit in this town, but not.
27:38much more so because I was MTV for cicadas in my yard.  Um, but I'm really excited about seeing how this little cardigan project goes and all the yarn that comes from crowdsourcing to our awesome followers online. So it's going to be super  cute. I have two things on this whole train of thought.  Number one, how generous of you to take the time to do that. think that is so sweet.
28:06Oh, love it. Number two, I really hope that little farm pit keeps his, I don't know, freedom of expression. Oh, me too. That's one thing that I try to protect in him so much. Like he wanted all of his fingernails painted a different color yesterday. And a little part of me is like, Oh, I hope that he doesn't get picked on a skull. like, but he's not going to. Kindergarteners are cute and they're going to be envious of his gold and green and purple and blue fingernails, you know? So.
28:36I hope so too. This, um, sat this Friday is hat day at school, like where you can pay a dollar and it goes to the PTA or something like that. And you can wear a hat to school. And most people just wear a baseball cap. Little farm cat wore a hard hat that he put, uh, metallic cat stickers all over for his first hat day. And so last night, whenever we were doing story time, said, Hey, you know, you have another hat day coming up. Do you want to design another hat?
29:04And he said he did, and he was very particular, said he wanted it to be pink and yellow and purple and maybe a brown stripe with grapes all over it. So,  um, it's a little farm. I am currently designing a little farm that's pink and yellow and purple hat,  um, for Friday's activity. And I'm trying to figure out how to put grapes all over it, um, for that. So while every other kid is wearing baseball hats and stuff like that.
29:30He's going to, you know, be representing his own style. And I'm trying to keep that as long as he can keep that because he's just, he's magical.  I love his vision of the world.  Well, is such a great age too. mean, as long as no one stomps on him for expressing himself,  he has, he has so much potential to just have the best life ever. He is, I hope so. He is, and I will, like I said, I will protect that.
30:01Love it. So I love it for him and I will do everything to make that little kiddo have all of his little colorful dreams come true. Cause you know, I'm be able to wear ridiculous hats and sweaters. I mean, all over the place, whatever you want. And I hope that he does. I hope he's able to for his entire life, but you know, just letting him have that little bit of autonomy and pride of designing, you know? So.  love it.
30:30I love that you support him in that. That's so great.  My daughter used to get clothes at the thrift shops and at Goodwill because she loved thrifting.  She would rip clothes apart and redesign them the way she wanted them and they looked better than when she bought them.  That's awesome.  Yeah. I don't know if she still does it. I think she does like  little projects now, but she used to just revamp her entire wardrobe. It was very fun to watch.
30:59I've been embracing my, for the longest time, always just kind of, didn't really care about clothes that much. just, I think everything in my closet was black or brown or dark green. uh But now in my kind of, I don't really, you know, I don't care too much what people think anymore. I'm just embracing the eclectic art teacher vibe. And so I've been wearing brightly colored mu-mus and comfortable shoes and
31:27bright sweaters that I make all the time. And I am so happy. I get so many comments from other people out just like, Oh, I love this. I love that. And I'll find other fiber artists that'll automatically like see something I'm wearing and they'll know like, Oh, I know you made that.  I love just the show it off, know, be like kind of peacocking a little bit with our clothes and with our coziness and just enjoying what you're putting out there.
31:57Mm-hmm.  Yeah neutral colors  Yes, exactly  Um, so I feel like we haven't even talked about your animals. I want to do that real quick  You have you have chickens and I know you have silky chickens, right?  Okay, so I have I think 30 something goats  I know it's I don't count That often maybe I have in the upper  20s, but I have a bunch of goats um
32:24I have Nigerian dwarf  and  that's how I started off with Nigerian dwarf. I think that was a good starter goat.  Now I believe I would rather have a small herd of some bigger goats, but  Nigerian dwarf goats are all getting older. ah So I think my, you know, my, I'll get some good corner store stone, big goats on my next go round. uh
32:47But I've been breeding Nigerian Dwarf goats to La Manchas for five generations now. And so one of my things that I've been doing is trying to make a more efficient milk goat. So a goat that eats a smaller amount of feed like a Nigerian Dwarf that produces a large amount of milk like a La Mancha. So I've been breeding, I've got down to, I think F5s are my smallest La Manchas right now, which is...
33:14Are you familiar with like the F5, F3, whatever? I am not. So tell me in poundage, how big is the  goat that you're going for? Oh, the one that I have right now,  my smallest mini La Mancha is about 50 pounds. less uh than the La Mancha, but she melts really, really well. um But the  F categorizing is just like the generations. So an F1 would be a Nigerian dwarf and a...
33:43straight limaunch and mixed together. And F2 would be the next generation down, know, bringing the Nigerian Dwarf to that goat. F3 will be the next generation down. And so you're getting the smaller and smaller and getting further away from the pure genetics of the others. So you're kind of making a nice little combat. I also have four miniature donkeys named David. Everybody loves my donkey's names. David Hasselhoff, who I already mentioned.
34:13And then Jacqueline Oasis, Butch Acety and Mama Ass. uh You know about my silky chickens,  but I also have uh regular chickens of all sorts and types at a big barn.  I have chickens and guineas out there. And  recently I've been campaigning for the past two years to get emus. I don't know why I want emus, but I do.  And  it's like an obsession. So Jen has, my wife has finally given me a
34:42go ahead for the emu and um for emus and so in march  i will be getting um i found somebody local who hatches emus and has them and has agreed to sell me a couple so come march i will be getting baby emus  whenever they hatch and i'm so excited because i love ridiculous animals and the only reason why i want emus is just for the ridiculous dancing and i like to laugh
35:11And I have two miniature pigs.  Okay. All right. So you, definitely have a farm going on there.  We have 12 acres out here.  Um, since we talked last, I just finished a big,  uh, five and a half acre pasture for all my critters to move over to. So, or, or at least all  the, the critters that don't have parts and won't get each other pregnant to move over to. Yep. We have, um, they have all sorts of stuff going.
35:39It sounds so fun and it sounds so messy and I think fun and messy are supposed to go together. Oh yeah, no, my wife will definitely tell you I am an absolute mess and there's no Joey and I games in here.  We're not painting everything white and keeping things nice and clean. Like there is a mess every two seconds  and we painted our, you know,
36:04Do you have T-post at all in your property? keeping your animals in? Yes, we have T-posts in the garden. With my little beautiful rainbow child, we got six different colors of spray paint and went out and painted every post uh in rainbow.  So like one post will be purple and the next one will be blue and the next one will be green. And so for five acres, you have a rainbow fence going all the way around. So oh we let him play like.
36:33pretend video games out there. Like we'll go and we'll put things along the fence post and give him clues and he'll go and just be Oh, I have to find the yellow fence post and I'll find a star there and do this. um, so we've just, we just let ourselves do what we want to do because why not?  You know, have some fun.  Yeah. Any dignitaries out here?  No, absolutely. And  I would love to see a photo of your rainbow fence if you have one.
37:03Uh, there is one on, uh, on Facebook right now. Okay. And so if you want to, I will, I know that we have communicated on Facebook, so I will hunt that one down and send it over to you. So if you want to put it in your show notes or anything that you do. Well, I don't, I don't put pictures in the show notes. It's a total pain in the butt to do, but I will, but when I share the link for the podcast, when it's live, I'll, link to that picture on my Facebook high episode today is blah, blah. So.
37:32Excellent. All right. So where can people find you, Swann? Predominantly on Facebook because I write. I'm very, it's the only place that I can really do long form on social media. And I've realized that I make, I can reach more people on social media than I can just do my own private webpage. But now I do have a website, which is HarryFarmpitGirls if you want advice. So just harryfarpitgirls.com. I'm on Facebook and Instagram somewhat.
38:02I don't really care for videos, so I don't do the big video sites, but also I am on Patreon. So if you want to, our biggest support comes through Patreon. So if you do feel like supporting a small farm, you can do it. You can pledge $3 a month. And it comes out if you want to have weekly and regular access to talking to us and just kind of hanging out. We meet on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. If you sign up for our Fiber Fanatics for up.
38:31level, which is a month and you'll get a little zoom link and you can just come and hang out. Sometimes it's like,  sometimes there's only three of us. Sometimes there's, there's more. So,  um, you can come and hang out and just chill. We call it stitch and bitch and you can sit or you can, you know, talk about your day.  So, um, and you don't have to do anything. You can also just sit there.  So is that, is that patreon.com slash Harry farm pit girls or is it?  Okay.
39:01uh And there is also one more thing. There is a private group online, but you can find it through our Facebook  and you can send a request and join it. It's called Harry Farmer Girls, a Safe Pastor. And what that is,  is it's a group that you have to be a member of, but it's a page. So it's a group so that way you can make your own posts, you can comment, you can talk to other people that happen to have found this little nook on the internet.
39:31And like said, we build community all over. I've tried to build community all over while I can't necessarily always be there through every single thing because I'm  but one human. ah You can still interact with, we find a lot of our people are very similar, have similar loving, empathetic values  and  just, and great sense of humor. So if you want to,  join Carrie Farmer for Girls of Safe Posture on Facebook and
39:59I think there's 3,500 members right now and it's a very active group. Wow. Okay. Awesome. Thank you for giving me all of that because I think after people listen to this podcast, they're be like, I want to go be part of that. sounds fun. And  as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com  and I have a Patreon now too. It's patreon.com slash  atinyhomestead.  So Swan, hopefully this one worked.  I hope so.
40:29It's always a joy to chat with you. had a great time talking with you too, Mary. So I'll stay online.  Maybe we'll do this again, but hopefully this one will work.  All  right. You have a great day. Thank you. You too.  Bye.
 

Vinestops

Today I'm talking with Jim at Vinestops. You can follow on Facebook as well.
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.
00:11Today I'm talking with Jim at Vine Stops in New York. How are you, Jim? I'm good, how are you? I'm good.  How was the weather in New York? It's beautiful today.  We're in that part of the season where  one day it's beautiful and the next day it's starting to turn super cold.  So it's going into flu season, I guess.  Yay, that's exciting.
00:37I am actually, my bedroom is where I record  at my desk in my room.  And uh my bedroom, it feels like a refrigerator this morning because when I went to bed last night, I had to have the AC on  and uh my husband didn't turn it off when he came downstairs this morning and shut the door. So  I am almost shivering talking to you in my room.  Yeah, we do that all the time.  We love it. We like the cold, so we're okay with that.
01:05For sleeping, it's great, but for sitting at a desk with my hands needed to move the mouse and stuff, it's not awesome. Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you have going here. So obviously, my name is Jim. We bought this farm during COVID and it kind of changed our lives significantly. was
01:31in the corporate world and  also in the film industry and some law enforcement experience. so that was kind of  everything I did, you know, seven days a week was somewhere in that realm. And then  COVID hit, obviously all of our lives had changed, but we had the opportunity to buy this small  1800s gentleman's horse farm, about 10 acres. uh And it was where I grew up.  And so I wanted to come back closer to my mom anyway, because she was getting sick.
02:02Yeah. So he said, you know what, let's do it and rehab it.  Because my wife grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, so she always had horses  and she always wanted to get them again.  So we decided to do it. And  very quickly, we went from  that fast paced or I did anyway, that fast paced life to kind of country life. You know, we bought chickens and then I started like, you know, I put a little stand on the side of the road and we started  selling our extra eggs and then
02:29You the whole chicken math thing happened. You start with six, you go to 10, 20, then you're fluctuating back and forth. And next thing you know, have 150 plus chickens in our yard. And, uh, and then, you know, towards the last year of COVID, uh, which was the, this is the year that we purchased it. Um, we put it, when we bought it, we put in about, I don't know, 50 fruit trees. And we, just wanted to start kind of a hobby farm. You know, I didn't do the whole homesteading thing yet.
02:58and I just wanted to kind of grow extra.  So we had some fresh food because I was frustrated with what we were getting in the supermarkets. know, if like when the egg crisis happened,  you couldn't find eggs anywhere. And when you can find them, they were like $10, $15, you know,  a dozen. was just ridiculous. And so  I eventually, I just started changing. I started eating so much more from my garden and from my trees.
03:23spending less and not going to the supermarket and all my health numbers, my doctor's office, they all started getting better. And I like really realized like, holy cow, know, that all that fast food and that crap put into my body, it really does make a difference. And so kind of the homesteading was born, you know, of having the passion of, you know, growing my own stuff and then, you know, running a farm stand on the the on the front of the driveway. So, you know, after
03:53after that was kind of successful the first year. The next year I doubled everything, the size of everything, added more fruit trees, bought more chickens. And then my farm stand that I made kind of fell apart. And it was funny. So I was like, all right, I got to buy a farm stand because like, I need something that's gonna last. And
04:18I went to go look for one and I couldn't find anybody that sells farmsteads like Home Depot, Lowe's, Tractor Supply, even on Amazon. know, when I was  like, you know, where can I buy a farm stand or, you know, farm stands and  nothing came up. And I was like, huh. So I took some time and uh I refined the farmstead I had and  I was doing a lot of research what people were doing, like farmstead groups and uh social media groups and whatnot.  And I just.
04:47developed my own and started testing it out to see what the pros and cons of it were. And I ended up getting into designer and I said, hey, can you build me this on paper that would be structurally sound and good quality? And so we did that and that's how my farm stand was born. Nice. Okay. I have a question that doesn't really have anything to do with farm stands, but I'm curious.
05:17um You're in New York, so you have the same growing season we have in Minnesota. It's basically May through  end of August, end of September. Yep.  Yeah. So when you get your first thing that you've grown fresh in the spring, what's the first thing you are picking and eating? um I would say it's a mix between sun-gold cherry tomatoes and strawberries.
05:46Okay, for us, it's rhubarb, because we have rhubarb here. Gotcha. Yeah, I didn't know what rhubarb was and what  mistakenly,  I tore it all out. no.  Yeah, because it was a very overgrown property,  because it was kind of let go.  And so I was just cleaning out all the beds, all the weeds.  And  the lady that I bought it from  showed her pictures. She's like, Oh my God.
06:14Did you clear out that whole section? I like, She goes, I had all  rhubarb in there. I was like,  oh, sorry.  I didn't know. I didn't know what it looked like. didn't, you know, I knew nothing about it. So, oops.  Yeah.  Well, it's our favorite thing because it means that spring is officially here because rhubarb isn't ready to pick and eat  until spring has been established.  And so every spring we may, buy strawberries cause we don't get strawberries the same time we get rhubarb here.
06:44We buy strawberries and we make a strawberry rhubarb compote and we put it over French vanilla ice cream.  Wow. That is our welcome to spring. That sounds delicious. See, I cheat a little. don't cheat, but  I, uh, I start my seeds in January inside my house.  Yeah. And then I have a greenhouse attached to the house with a door that goes from the basement into the greenhouse.  So I'm able to kind of get way ahead. So by the time I'm putting plants in the ground,
07:11some of them have little cherry tomatoes already on them, you know, so. Yeah, a heated greenhouse is one of the biggest blessings on a homestead. We have what I am affectionately calling now an almost heated greenhouse. We, it gets us a couple more months of growing season instead of everything ending in September. It's kind of done in November, but we're working on.
07:37ideas on how to get it just a little bit warmer so we can grow things in January and February too.  Yeah. So I get it. A heated greenhouse is an absolute blessing.  Okay, so back to the farm stand thing. Sure. um I'm not surprised that you couldn't find an already built farm stand or the components and  the plans together to buy it and put it together yourself back then.
08:05because  most people  tend to just take a shed they already have and  retrofit it for the farm stand  or they get like a, don't know what they're called, just  the bottom part of a trailer, the metal part, the frame. And then they lay wood over it and then they put, you know, boards  up.  What's the word I want?  Sides, corners, corners, open. It's an open farm stand idea.
08:35And they put  the two by fours up on the four corners and then they put a roof on it  and that's how they started. And then they put the siding on it and then it becomes a farm stand. Yep. And I don't think people were looking for quote unquote ready-made farm stands back then. Yeah, no, they, uh, you know, at least, uh,  I started to,  but  it's certainly something that
09:02It's like a niche person at that time.  Like these are like, you you're talking about rural areas, people that already,  you know, have green thumbs farm, you know,  like a normal person with an acre probably during COVID time,  wasn't really looking to try to figure out how to grow fresh food.  That whole movement really picked up in the last couple of years, you know?  And so there are a lot of people, you know, as I've kind of developed VineStops  and started talking with people and they're...
09:30We found there's a lot of people like me that don't have the tools or the knowledge to build a farm stand  and would love to get one. It's just, there's really nothing out there to buy. So you jumped on this and you're now selling farm stands, right? Well, yeah. And we're not technically live yet as a company. So we have not put it out there to sell, but I've built a couple to, you know, people that contact me and say, Hey, you know, I'd like a farm stand and I build it.
09:59drive it out to their house. There's a couple out there, but we're trying to get everything launched for the next growing season or next year. Yeah. Tell me the size of the ones that you're building. Well, it's just, if you look at the website, it's that one size. It's about, it's I think 40 to 50 inches deep and wide 40 inches. There's two 18 inch doors. So
10:26And the height, 83 inches. whatever that turns out to be. Okay. So it's not big, but it's not tiny either. No, it's not. It's heavy. It's definitely a couple of hundred pounds. You know, this initial concept was designed to be like a standing structure. You know, we've since retrofitted one to have wheels on it. So it's movable.
10:53Oh, nice. And then we also developed a one that has,  you can add components to the sides now to like, you it would, uh you would have your farm stand,  like the core.  And then if you wanted to put like a four foot box to the side of it, it would like slip onto the farm stand, like an accessory almost. So you can expand out your farm stand.  So, but again, you know, that's  some of the stuff still in test and we're hoping to have everything done for  next year.
11:23Awesome.  Um,  I was telling you when we talked on the phone to get this scheduled that we have our farm stand, obviously.  Yeah. And it's basically a, a shed from, um, tough shed, the company tough. Yep. Yep. I'm familiar. And it's a barn red and white shed. And it's got the little X on the door, you know, it's a red door with the accent and the bottom part.  looks like a little barn  and, uh
11:50We love our farm stand. mean, I look at that thing every morning when I go out on the porch, drink my coffee and make sure the barn cats are still hanging around because you know what happens with barn cats, they disappear for no reason. uh every time I look at that farm stand, I just smile because it's adorable. And I smile because we're helping our community by providing good food for them. Yeah, that's the biggest thing too is, you know, getting back to
12:16really  having more options, more local fresh options for  the community. Everything the government is doing, and I'm not totally anti-government, I understand there's a purpose of it,  but uh the regulations and  just the costs for these big farms to operate are...
12:37are out of control. And  I know in New York here, we are seeing a significant, I can't remember the percentage, there's a significant decline in  farming and farms in New York.  Because what happened here was New York State started pushing this solar big time.  farmers were getting offers from solar companies to basically  lease out their land to them.  And so now they're just taking, they're closing down century old farms and  you're just getting like, just
13:06acres and acres of solar panels everywhere.  For the farmer,  it's come to a point, what happens is they're like, well, listen, I can either struggle  and have to deal with the government and deal with New York state and all these regulations and all these inspections and barely make anything, or I can sit back and relax and retire and collect money from this lease.  What are they going to do?  A lot of people are at the age where it's just time. It's  like they're seeing the end of it now  and it's disappointing.
13:35So I think really the next revolution is going to be, my perspective is going to be everybody that has a couple acres or an acre trying to figure out how to grow a little extra on what they have and then offer some of that extra out. Right? So there's more smaller farms and smaller homesteads and even just regular people with bigger backyards putting fresh food out there rather than everybody relying on these big farms that are starting to close down. Yeah. m
14:05I,  it is so  frustrating that that's happening. And I was actually watching a news show and they were talking about the solar farms and somebody who was a farmer had gotten the solar panel things put in, but he had sheep. And what happens with the solar panel things is it's really hard to keep the weeds and the grass down under them.  And so he  kept his sheep and he used his sheep.
14:35to keep the field where the solar panels are  raised and it was food for the sheep and then he still had a farming business. Yeah. And there's definitely ways to go around it.  It's, you know, to utilize your farm.  But again, it goes back  to,  it worth the aggravation and the time or is it time to retire and  just move on, you know?
14:59Yep, exactly. And so few of the younger generations, like under 30,  want to go into farming because they've seen how much work it is. No, yeah. mean,  the kids of these farmers  are growing up now in a different world.  It's not about farming, it's about technology.  And most of them realize the money is in tech  and they don't want to work seven days a week,  you know, waking up and doing all this stuff. uh
15:28that you have to do on a farm, they  want to be at a Starbucks and  work in an office or work out of their bedroom.  It's just different.  It's  kind of like the trade industry, construction, electricians, plumbers, they're all disappearing because the kids don't want to do it. And it's a really big problem.  It really is. it's kind of scary because if things keep going and following this trend,
15:57Who, number one, where are we gonna get our food?  And number two, who's gonna fix the tractors that we use to help grow our food?  Who's gonna fix our well?  It's stuff like that  that is really kind of frightening.  And the thing is, the people that do do it,  there's so much demand, at least around here. They can  name their price  and  it could be absolutely ridiculous. And they'll say, okay, walk away and there's 10 other people waiting for them.
16:25And if you do decide to say, all right, you know what? I'll pay it. I know I'm overpaying for this, but I have to get it done and there's no one else to do it. They're gonna be like, okay, I'll be back in a month because I have five other jobs before you that I have to finish. So it's really frustrating to get work done on the house. I do as much as I can, but my daughter, I put her in welding, believe it or not. She's 17, she goes to trade.
16:52Bocey's trade school and she's been doing welding for two years now. I told her, I was like, don't care what you do. If you want to do your TikToks and all that stuff, fine. But you pick a trade here and go study it. And she picked welding and she loves it. I think that's almost be in every school district there should have, they should have trade classes. And instead having these ridiculous classes that these kids are taking, that, you know, or two study halls, they should have, it should be mandatory.
17:21that it's an electric shop or a  plumbing shop or a class, I mean, you know,  some type of trade class. Yeah, where kids can learn how to do actual things with their hands and their brains.  Mm hmm. I agree.  And that's how it used to be. I'm 55 and we had shop class in my high school.  I did not take it because I was a girl and that was frowned upon back then. Yeah, but not now.
17:49Yeah, I think there was maybe one or two girls in my graduating class who took shop and my graduating class was like 450 people.  Well, think, uh, I don't know. It's so hard to see what's going to happen in 10 years, but it's, it's, I'm, I'm already scared to be honest with you.  You are not alone in that gym. I promise you. It's not just me. That's agreeing with you. think there are other people who are very concerned about what the future looks like for our kids and our grandkids.
18:19So yeah, it's an interesting world. It's actually why with VineStops, as we're developing this company, I work at Starbucks, is a very socially responsible company. You know it's a corporate giant, But the years I worked there at least is 2000 to 2009. They were very, very involved in the communities. They've ran a lot of community events and like,
18:48like Earth days and  just local things.  They just did a lot.  And I learned a lot of the social responsibility portion of my life from  Starbucks. I'll give them that. uh So for Vine Stops, it's the same thing.  When I started putting the company together,  I had already started thinking about the social responsibility part of the company,  being involved in Earth days,  identifying schools that have uh garden programs.
19:17and then getting them a farm stand to put in front of their school. So the kids don't  not just learn about how to grow gardens, but they're going to also learn some entrepreneurship behind it of taking that stuff they're growing,  putting it at their school farm stand where the teachers and the parents can buy it.  And then they're making money to put towards their class trips or supplies or something like that.  And so as I develop out this company,  most startups or  entrepreneurs aren't
19:47thinking about that type of stuff in the early stages  where I want to make sure we have that roadmap out there so that when we are successful at building this, that we can implement that  community focused  part of the company and get these kids involved more.  love that because  you're going to plant the seeds of how much fun it is to grow food and sell it and maybe they'll become farmers. Yeah, or go into agricultural and some
20:17wave shape or form, you know?  exactly. So  I know that you're just developing the company  and I know that there are certain things that you can't share, but what can you tell me about Vines Stop and what's in the works? um So  what we found with Vines Stop was that  there's a brand out there oh or several brands like in a lot of the industries and categories. like you look at Uber or Grubhub, DoorDash, right?
20:47When you're thinking,  let me  find some food. You go on Grubhub or DoorDash, right? Cause that's where all the food is that you, know, if you want to get something delivered,  but there's nothing out there that says, Hey, check Vine Stops or, you know, check for the, what's down at the farm stand down the road. Right. So  now I say this brand by brand, mean like, you know, something that  immediately comes to your head, whether in you're in New York or in California, there are a lot of.
21:17Uh, little apps  and little groups and,  uh, platforms out there that, uh, do a piece of  what we want to accomplish. But again, it's not something that rolls off somebody's tongue. Like it's just, it's,  it's world known or, or, or known throughout the U S right. Not a household name yet. Yeah. Not a household name yet. Exactly. And so, uh, what we want to accomplish is for Vine stops to be a household name to where.
21:47If you're at your house and you're pulling up vine stops and you want to have a fresh salad with your dinner, that you can go to the app and search, hey, I'm looking for this, this, and this. And it's going to locate all of the farm stands in your area and show you the availability of all the ingredients that you're looking for. That way you can find the best one and then go ahead and communicate with that person and order it. And in the future,
22:16Other things might happen. I can't get  into that yet,  but ah it's  it's  it'll be a really cool journey. And  then also now you're visiting  friends in Florida and that and that app and process is the same down there because  it's it's now it's now known, right? It's a known brand. And so um that's part of it is the access  where we want to get people like me.
22:43to start growing extra and teach them to do it. oh Having some partnerships with some social media influencers that  deal around farm stands, homesteads, things like that, to actually  have some of their content available for  people to learn what to do.  It's really, just wanna, we wanna build that network. We wanna make a second distribution system  of fresh food outside of our current supermarket.
23:12distribution system that if that fails,  we have plenty of options available and known where they are uh for for people to go. The marketing and visibility  of people with homestead or farm stands, things like that, is some of the some of the biggest things that people I talk to struggle with. They keep on saying I need to get people to my door. don't, you know,  but  when when we're talking about people that are
23:40not low income, but they just don't have the money to put towards like creating a website,  you know,  paying for all, know,  all like advertising and this and that. Like they just, need to get people to the door so they buy stuff so they have some extra money.  And so  we're gonna, we're gonna do that for them. And that's the whole goal is to  kind of let everybody have a platform for themselves where they may not have the knowledge or the skills to create on their own.
24:09and then bring it all together.  And so  that's like the big thing with VineStops is really just creating a community from all of us. It's not about competition. It's about availability and having healthy food for the people that live around us.  Yes, a rising tide raises all ships. Mm-hmm. Yes.  I talked to a girl, because we're putting together a test group, which you're familiar with, uh
24:38the stories that I'm hearing from people like me are  really cool.  And she's like, oh yeah, I started a farm stand and then across town, this other girl started a farm stand. Now I got competition. I'm like, yeah, but you know, don't think of it that way because  you're going to have stuff and she's going to have stuff. if,  she's a couple of doors down from you, there are plenty of people out there that would buy from your farm stand as long as,  as long as she's running it properly, obviously, right.  But think of her as a
25:08partner in a way. I mean, you might not grow potatoes and she might not grow tomatoes.  So maybe you swap so you both have potatoes and tomatoes or maybe you know, you're not growing potatoes, but you guys eat them a lot and you say, hey, I want to trade I'll trade you, you know, all these tomatoes for some of your potatoes. This is what they did back then, right?  Back in the back in the, you know, 1800s, they traded for things.  And so it's kind of like that just think of her as another option for your family to have other things available for fresh food.
25:37And that's the thinking we all have to do, I think.  Yeah, absolutely. um We're selling friends of ours duck eggs in our farm stand because  they're not, they have acreage, but it's a lot of it is a ravine.  And so they don't really have a good spot for a farm stand. And she  messaged me this spring and said, could we sell our duck eggs in your farm stand this summer?
26:04And I was like,  yes, yes, you can. And I didn't even know if it was okay.  I still don't know technically if it's okay for us to do that in Minnesota. We've been doing it all summer.  And what's been terribly interesting about it is that I was mildly like a little tiny bit concerned that people would buy the duck eggs over our chicken eggs.  And  no, people buy duck eggs and chicken eggs at the same time.  Yeah.
26:33Duck eggs are I guess popular baking. never knew that.  I didn't either and I still haven't done it. I keep saying to my husband I need him to bring me in a half dozen  from the farm stand so I can use them to make cookies and see if it makes any difference. And  my husband has ADD real bad and I can say, Hey, I need duck eggs.  And he'll say, yep, I'll get them in a bit. And they never come in the house. So  I need to remember to say, Hey, I need duck eggs  now. Could you go get them  now? And then he'll go get them for me. Yeah.
27:03I live this world, Yup, yup. is one of the biggest, I don't know, struggles for us because I don't have ABD and I do not ever want to the inside of how his mind works because I think that I would have a heart attack. He tells me stuff and I have to go, okay, back up.
27:28Tell me specifically about this thing you mentioned five minutes ago and can we go from there? So yeah,  it makes communication really hard sometimes, but  I love him and we've learned how to  slow down  and maybe clear up confusion sooner than later. So doesn't lead to arguments.  Yep. So ah I have one more question for you. When  do you think?  Cause this is a  work in progress for you.
27:58When do you think that this will all be ready to go?  I think we're looking to  get the platform out there within 60 to 90 days.  Oh, nice. For people to actually start utilizing it. um And then  we hope that everything's kind of buttoned up  by the  start of the growing season next year, like April.
28:24And we hope again, even in April, May, you'd be able to see uh availability in some stores to purchase farm stands. So  that's the goal right now.  That's fabulous. I can't wait. And I want you to come back. We need to stay in touch. And when you're getting ready to launch it and when you can say more about what it is and how it works, I want you to come back before it launches. And that way we can get the word out to people. Yeah, we're going to start starting this first test group  very shortly.
28:54and  we're gonna put another second test group together. um So, if  there's anybody listening that's interested in kind of testing out our platform  before we really go live with it  and giving us some feedback,  they can contact me through social media, Find Stops, um on Instagram or any Facebook or Meadow, whatever they call it  Or they can go through you also and you can  send them  to me.
29:23Yeah. And your website is? So, Vinestops.com is live. Okay. And it's kind of, again, it's a test site. So there's some quirky things on there that may not make sense. It's not going to look like this. This was more put together for some investors to look at. Oh, okay. And for job applicants, we've been building our team. But we left it up because we are seeing kind of organic visits. And so it's good to actually see where people are.
29:53you know, visiting the site from and whatnot. So we just leave it up to, you know, let people explore it. Awesome. Fantastic.  All right. As always, people can find me at a tiny homestead podcast.com  and please go check out my Patreon because I just got it set up and I'm adding things to it every day. It's Patreon. Well, it's www.patreon.com slash a tiny homestead.  Jim, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Oh, pleasure. Thank you.  Nice to meet you.
30:23Have a great day. Talk to you later.
 

Homesteading In The City with Elizabeth Ries

Today I'm talking with Elizabeth Ries at Home To Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well.
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Elizabeth Ries at um three different places, I guess. Well, four actually. You've got Twin Cities Live, you've got My Talk 107.1, you've got...
00:22HomeToHomeStead.com and you've got bestofthenest.com and Elizabeth is in Minneapolis. So good morning, Elizabeth. How are you? Good morning, Mary. It's nice to be back with you today. Thanks for asking me. You're so welcome. I loved our chat back in March of 2024. That's how long it's been. It's been a while. Yup. And I was really nervous because I'd only been broadcasting for like six months at that point. And I still had no idea what I was doing. And I listened back to it I was like, God, I'm so glad I'm more comfortable now.
00:50It is, a lot of it is just getting the reps in.  I think that that is a huge thing with broadcasting or interviewing or asking questions. It's just the more you do, it's just like anything.  It's a skill  and the more you do it, the better you get at it. And I hope you look back on those early days fondly and think about how far you've come because I thought you did a great job that time. So I can imagine it's only going to be better today.
01:15Thank you, and I do look back. I went back and listened to the very first episode of, I can't think, a Tiny Homestead podcast. And it wasn't awful. Like when I listened to it back the first time, I was like, ugh. And I listened to it back about six months ago, and I was like, you know, it really wasn't that bad. People learned things, it was a fun chat, I'm okay. So, I don't want to get too far into...
01:42what you do because  you did a huge intro on the episode that we did before.  And if people want to know all about Elizabeth's professional life, you can go listen to the original episode. The OG.  Yeah, exactly. The OG Elizabeth Ries  But you are the co-host for Twin Cities Live.  You and Marjorie Punnett do a show together  on  what station is it? Well, we had a radio show together on MyTalk107.1. uh
02:11for a couple of years. And then um we both ended that because we moved on to different things. Oh, you're not doing that anymore. Right. And then the podcast is called Best to the Nest. So Marjorie and I teamed up for the podcast and we kind of joke that it's like the show within the show. It's the conversations that we were having during the commercial breaks about  life and home and family and relationships and all those things that then we brought into the podcast. But I do still get to fill in over at MyTalk.
02:40pretty regularly and it's always fun to show up. They just got new studios, so now I really like going over there. uh It's all bright and shiny in there. It's nice. Okay, so I want to, I got questions about your homesteading stuff in your city  home, because you don't have a homestead. You live on a city lot, right? Yes. Yes, I do. I am on a city lot. on about  about a third of an acre in the city of Minneapolis.
03:07Prior to living in this house, we've been in this house for six years. Prior to that, we were on 0.13 of an acre in the city of Minneapolis and really did a lot of the same things  that we do  here. Yeah. So did you do a garden this year? I did a garden. I have the garden going.  And um I have four raised beds in the backyard. Two of them are like four feet wide by, um I think they're 10 or 12 feet long.
03:37however long my husband made them.  And those are wooden raised beds. This year I added an arched,  a cattle panel arch trellis between the two of them, which has been really, really fun. And I'd wanted to do it for a long time. And then finally, you know, spent the $75 and has sent my dad to tractor supply with his pickup so that he could make himself useful during retirement and bring me the cattle panels.  then- That's what dads are for. That's what dads are for. That's why dads get pickup trucks. That's exactly it. And then um
04:05I have two of the, like they're those Veggo garden raised beds. They're that metal and I've really liked those too. Those are really easy to put together. And then I do a lot of trellising. So I have trellises kind of growing up everywhere so that I can maximize my space. So it's definitely not huge. It's not overwhelming, but it's amazing how much food you can get out of a small garden.
04:35Sure. And growing up instead of out is so efficient on a small piece of property. Yes. And it's just easier and it's pretty. That's the other thing I like about it. It's just,  you know, I don't have a picture perfect manicured garden. um But when you grow up and you have things kind of, you know, I don't know, climbing up to the sky, there's something really magical about that. So I really encourage,  even if you have little pots to
04:59put some kind of little trellis in it so you know, your mint in a pot can grow up. I just think it looks really lovely. Yeah, and it supports the plants. I mean, pretty and supportive is always good. Yes. Yes. Do you still have chickens? We do have chickens. Yes, we have chickens in the backyard. We've had chickens. I think I've had chickens for almost 15 years. So I have been a crazy chicken lady for a long time and we have a little coop in the backyard.
05:30that is currently overrun by squash vines. I maybe overplanted the squash situation and it's taking over everything, but it's very fun. No such thing as overplanting squash.  They're everywhere. They're escaping into the alley even, which  my neighbors are finding to be quite entertaining  as they walk back there. But yeah, we have the chickens um and the chicken coop is located close to the garden too. So I do kind of have to shoo the chickens out of there. um
05:59And because I can't bear to keep them in the coop all the time, I let them loose. So I have to use different,  you know, little things to keep them out. Chicken wire and,  you know, all sorts of stuff. But it's an adventure and it's definitely my happy place. I have a little table and chairs out in the garden too. And I love to just bring coffee out there, sit out there. Sometimes, you know, if I'm on calls for Twin Cities Live or whatever, I like to just do that from the garden. It's definitely my happy place.
06:27Yeah. And being outside is so good for everybody. get the vitamin D from the sun. You ground your feet in the grass or in the dirt. It's just good for you.  And, uh, I love that you don't like to keep your chickens in the coop. We actually just let our 20 chickens have full run of the property for first time since spring because the garden is pretty much done. We don't want them in the garden, so we don't let them free range all summer. They have a run, you know, we don't keep them in a box, but they,
06:57They now have full run of the property.  And my husband stepped outside on the cement pad in front of our house this morning  and there were two chickens over by the useless garage.  The useless garage does not get used for anything. It is ready to fall down and we just haven't.
07:13pulled the trigger on taking it down. just pushed it, you've pushed it over yet. No,  we can't actually push it over, it's not that bad, but I would not want to try to park anything in there.  But there were two chickens over by the garage, digging in the dirt right around the edge of the foundation. And then two more over by my peony bushes. And they all decided to come gather around my husband's feet. And then the barn cat, the youngest one, came over and was trying to get pets. And I was just watching and I'm like, oh my God, this is why we live here.
07:42Yeah. I think that is so fun. I I know there's different schools of thought with chickens and I definitely understand keeping them safe from predators. uh We live right by the Mississippi River, so we have quite a few birds of prey around. So I've got fake owls strategically placed all over my yard. how  I really look at it is I know how chickens want to live. Chickens want to be outside scratching and pecking. I know you've talked with Joel Salatin and
08:10you know, again, letting a chicken express the chickenness of the chicken or the pigness of the pig. You know, that is such an important tenet  of his animal husbandry philosophy. And that is something that I really take into consideration too. I mean, we have a fenced in yard. We have this understanding that at some point, and it has happened before, we've lost a chicken to a hawk or to an eagle or to an owl. But, you know, I say to my kids,
08:38we want to provide them with the best life possible and however long that life is then. And of course we  lock them up at night. So we're protective in terms of like, we're not just letting a raccoon get in there at night or things like that, you know, and the coop is secure.  But as far as being out in the day, I just want them to be out living their best life for as long as that life is.  And  you know, chickens, I mean, they're fragile. one  can...
09:05you can look at it wrong and one of them could keel over.  you got like,  you just have to understand that you're giving them the best life possible. You're so grateful for what they give to you in return. And then, um and then just understand that that's how nature works.  Absolutely. And honestly, if you put a human in a cage for no good reason,  they would not live very long either. So,  um, so I've said this on the podcast quite a few times since spring, but we got 26 chickens back.
09:35last spring, you know, this year.  And we lost four to, um, raccoons,  raccoon family,  mama and three babies show up.  I mean, trash pandas, but boy, are they cute, cute little faces on those guys. Holy  man. The babies. Oh my God. So sweet, but so bad.  And so we lost four, we lost five, but
10:00But we don't know if the first one was taken by those raccoons, but we're pretty sure the other four were taken by the raccoons.  And then apparently we lost another one because I asked my husband the other day, said, do we still have 21 chickens? And he said, no, we have 20. And I didn't even bother to ask. I'm like, okay, that's good.  But we have barely been able to keep eggs for us because we purposely bought a bunch of chickens to be able to sell eggs in our farm stand this summer because eggs were so expensive back
10:29this spring. And people have just been buying them. We put two dozen out in the farm stand a day and they're gone by three o'clock in the afternoon. And it makes me so happy that we're helping because our eggs are $5 a dozen. And I feel like that's a little expensive, but it's really not. Oh, listen, I think you should up it to seven today. Nah, nope, I'm not doing it. Oh, gosh. know, but you know what?
10:58people are, if you go to the grocery store to buy past your raised eggs, that's how much they're $9 a dozen. That's what they are. And so know, I don't want to, I want to stay at five. And I had talked to my husband about upping it by a dollar and he was like, no. And when he says that I go, okay, I agree. But why? And he said, because we're trying to help our neighbors.
11:26He said, if we need more money, we will up it, but we don't desperately need that extra dollar. He said, I want to keep it at $5 a dozen. All right. also selling duck eggs from a friend of ours that has ducks. And that's been fabulous because we, I posted on Facebook and I said, we now have duck eggs from our friends at O'Connor Family Acres, or I think that's what their name is. And we're selling them in the farm stand. So if you want duck eggs instead of chicken eggs, come on by.
11:54And it's so funny, people will come and buy two dozen duck eggs and two dozen chicken eggs at the same time.  So we really tried to set ourselves up to have eggs that were good for us. And  we maybe have French toast once a month. So I'm like, hey, can you hold back 12 eggs, please, for me so I can make French toast?
12:15And my husband's like, yep, I'll bring you in a dozen. I'm like, thank you. Oh my gosh. And I've got  my 23 year old son convinced to help me make baked goods so we can keep the farm stand open through December. And we're going to  use some of the eggs that we're going to keep back to make baked goods so that people have cookies for Thanksgiving and Christmas. That's great.
12:37Because I don't know if you've noticed, but in the last three years, a lot of stores are no longer doing the  assorted varieties of Christmas cookie trays. They're just selling cookies.  And I miss those assorted trays really bad. That's so fun. So I've got my kid convinced that he will help me make, know, I don't know, five days a week in the morning, we'll get some recipes and make  a batch of
13:03five different kinds and put together cookie trays and put them out in the farm stand for people.  They're going to sell like hotcakes. Absolutely. That would be really fun. That's so fun. I love seeing the success of these farm stands.  And um I just love seeing  the hunger for real food that is really happening. That has definitely been, um you know, I've been focused on really the quality of what I eat since I was about 20.
13:33you know, that's 20, almost 25 years now.  And  I just really,  remember feeling like I was very alone and nobody really cared like I cared. And I think the progression of seeing people really start to realize, oh man, you know, I feel better when I eat better. I feel like I can tell the difference. I can tell the difference in  eggs that were raised.
14:01from happy chickens, the flavor. My kids are so funny because they've been raised on um pasture raised eggs from our yard. then usually I have to,  I've got a lot of people in the family. So sometimes I'm supplementally buying eggs,  but I always buy pasture raised eggs from a local farm. um if we go to like a restaurant or like a hotel and they have just like generic eggs, they go, mom.
14:29this doesn't even taste like egg. Like, what is this? This doesn't taste like egg. And I  love that so much because,  you know, everything that we eat should taste like what it is. That should be like the very basic, um you know, and when food is well raised, you can absolutely tell a difference.  Yeah. When we got our chickens this past spring, we hadn't had our own chickens for like five months because we called the older ones to
14:59two falls ago, so a year ago. And I was avoiding eating eggs from the store because I knew they weren't great. And my husband bought some eggs from the store for something and I scrambled a couple because I wanted scrambled eggs. I hadn't had scrambled eggs in months. And I bit into this and I was like, this doesn't even taste like egg and it's rubbery. I don't like this. I'm not eating this. And I dumped them in the trash. That's how gross they were. Isn't that sad? And then we got our first eggs from our chickens, the ones we bought.
15:28And I was like, okay, I really could go for some scrambled eggs.  And I scrambled up a couple eggs and I sat down to eat them and they were silky. I never realized that good eggs are like silky on your tongue. That's great. And I must have made a yummy noise as my dad says, make a yummy noise because it tastes good. And my husband looked at me, he said, what? And I said, these are really great eggs. And he said, they're eggs. And I'm like, no, you don't understand. Yeah.
15:56And I explained the same to him that I just told you. And he was like, oh yeah, he said they are, they're silky. They're very smooth on your tongue. And he said, I hadn't even thought about it until you mentioned it. And I was like, uh-huh. Yeah. It makes such a huge difference. People ask a lot, know, okay, what's the difference between an egg you raise at home and an egg you buy at the store? And I'm like, okay, imagine the difference between a strawberry that's been shipped in from Mexico in the middle of January compared to a strawberry that you pick.
16:25fresh off of the plant in season in Minnesota. And they just get it. And they're like, oh, or a tomato  that's been shipped in from halfway across the world um in the middle of winter or a tomato that you pull off the vine and eat. It's just,  it's the essence of what it is, is absolutely tasted when you eat it.  Yeah,  absolutely.  I agree completely. oh
16:53I had one of those over 50 moments this morning. was grabbing some frozen ground beef out of my big freezer in my kitchen and I opened the freezer and I saw something that looked like strawberries in my freezer and we have no strawberries in the freezer. I know this. And I was like, oh man, we have strawberries. And I was like, no, we don't. have tomatoes that are cut up to can in October because it looked exactly the same in the plastic bag.
17:20I had that moment of,  number one, my brain is not working.  And number two, boy, I wish those were strawberries.  I think, yeah, that idea of  buying fruit in season  and  then just freezing it is  such a hack. The deep freezer is like the greatest invention. The next thing that I upgrade in our house, though, is going to be uh
17:44a stand up deep freeze in the basement that I open with the handle and has shelves versus like the chest freezer because we have a hand-me-down chest freezer from my parents from years ago, which  is super useful and great, but I like lose things. Like we moved to this house and I finally cleaned out the deep freezer and found zucchini that I'd frozen shredded in bags in the bottom from 2015 from the garden. I mean, it's pretty easy to lose things down there. So  that'll be
18:13be the next one. But I'll try to buy. I do um a big order  through my local farmer  of  Colorado peaches. And then  I just slice them up. I don't even take the skin off. I just slice them up. I lay them on sheet trays on parchment paper and then um freeze them and then pop them off and put them in um freezer bags. And then we've got
18:39frozen peaches for smoothies all year round or for whatever kind of baked thing or making jam or whatever.  And I'm trying to get better about doing that with as many fruits as possible because even just avoiding recalls of when it's like, okay, this bag of whatever from Costco is being recalled. It's like, oh gosh, you can avoid that if you're the one really processing your own food. Yep, for sure.
19:04I love talking to you because you have all these things that I do or used to do. um Now that we only have the one kid at home, we don't stock up quite as heavy as we did when we had four kids at home.  But this actually helps me out a lot because I finally got my Patreon started. Do know what Patreon is? Yeah, I've heard of this. don't use it.  I finally got it started and I have been adding  PDFs of hints.
19:33of things that you can do to get started on the gardening or homesteading or cooking. I know you're a bone broth girly, right? All the time. Listen, I'm big on broth. We eat a lot of soup in our house. I'm lucky to be married to a man who believes that soup is a meal. Some men don't believe this, Mary. Some men are like, I don't want soup as a meal. But if you make them like I do, I think they're very hearty.
19:57As long as we've got some sourdough on the side and some good butter, then soup is absolutely a meal. So I  make broth all the time.  I think if you can, that is like a fundamental thing. If you can get into the groove of making your own broth, particularly if you can make your own chicken bone broth,  beef bone broth is really easy to make too. But I do a lot of chicken bone broth and  it takes your cooking to an entirely new level.
20:26There  are a lot of store-bought broths that I think do a good job. There are none that do a great job. It cannot compare to what you make at home.  Absolutely. I used to roast two chickens, whole chickens,  in my big  turkey roaster thing. You plug into the wall. Yes, the electric roaster.  My parents have one of those. love it. Used to do two of those at a time. And with six people eating, one chicken would be demolished, of course.
20:54And then we would rip up the other chicken, freeze the meat. And I would take the stock from the pan, you know, the roaster. And then I would also put the rest of the chicken into another pan and make more bone broth. making a soup with that chicken stock was  unbelievably yummy  and  rich and deep and layered. And  I keep telling people,
21:20all the time, whether it's on podcasts or people I know or people I talk to on the phone or in messages, learn to cook. It is the most important skill you can have. I totally agree. Yeah, I completely agree. think, you know, the nice thing too is when you are investing in really good food, you know, we in the United States, we spend a lower percentage of our income on food than many other nations. And
21:49It shows because the quality of our food is not great. We are accustomed to cheap ultra-processed food.  you know, I always make the argument that cheap food does not come without a cost. We're paying for it somehow.  There are myriad ways that we're paying for it in terms of, you know, exploitation of farm workers, in terms of, um you know, just  raising crops that are nutritionally void  and um
22:16and then also the healthcare costs that are attributed to our lifestyle and our diet. But when it comes to investing in real food and great food,  you're going to want to maximize what you  buy because it's expensive. And so when I buy a whole chicken from the farm,
22:36um I'll also buy an eight-piece cut up chicken, which I do like to do because it's really easy. It's a little easier to roast on a weeknight. um I can just put the pieces on a sheet pan if I'm busy working. That's a nice little shortcut. But I save all of the bones  from everything that we eat. I throw it in a freezer bag. I do the same with the ends of onions, the ends of carrots. And so I've got kind of like a veggie bag going, the ends of celery, things like that.
23:05So I a veggie bag going and a chicken bag going. And then once they're full, I take my giant pot  and I put the chicken carcass, then the veggie scraps, and then I'll add some peppercorns, um a bay leaf. I'll add um usually some other sprigs of herbs from the garden. If it's in the winter, then I just add some dried herbs and then uh some salt, a little splash of apple cider vinegar or a squeeze of lemon.
23:32then I just simmer it for 24 hours. I put it on low on my stove and let it simmer for 24 hours and then I strain it and put it in wide mouth glass jars and freeze it. The hands-on time is 20 minutes because even to package it up at the end is very, very easy. Then you end up with this amazing broth. When you're looking at buying organic pasture-raised bone broth at the store,
24:00know,  it can be 12 bucks a quart, easy.  so when you're buying a chicken that is going to cost significantly more than a Costco rotisserie chicken, you want to make sure that you're getting every ounce out of that food. And so that's a real example of, I think, being thoughtful about what you're purchasing, making the most out of what you're purchasing and showing respect for the life that was taken in order to sustain yours. And that respect is important.
24:29Yes, it is. um The other thing I would not suggest is that people try to do this with Costco rotisserie chicken. Do not do it. Thank you, Mary. Thank you. Too much fat in them and it will ruin it. And it's not good for you anyway. Yeah. And the bones are really brittle. And I mean, that's the thing. want to be, you really want to be thoughtful m about  what you're eating. And I have found,  you know,  really through this
24:56a sort of evolution over time though, that  when you're eating this way, and by this way I mean nutrient dense with a focus on regeneratively raised products where you're looking at traditionally prepared grains, all of those types of things when you're eliminating ultra processed foods. think when you're eating this way, um
25:22Sometimes people get overwhelmed by going, oh my gosh, how do know if I'm choosing the right thing or whatever? What I have found is that it's actually incredibly liberating  because when you're shopping, it cuts out 90 % of the options. You know what I mean? When I'm going to go buy pasta, pasta is always a great example. I am only going to buy pasta that is non-GMO, organic, that is slow dried and bronze cut.
25:51That means that when I'm at a store, if I'm at like a regular grocery store, there's two brands that I'm picking from. And then that's it. I'm picking from those two brands versus when you go into a mainstream American grocery store, there could be 18 brands of pasta sitting right there that you're choosing.  when you eliminate some options, it's actually very freeing. I think we have this idea that having unlimited options is good for us when I think it's often
26:20it's brain paralyzing, you can't make a decision, and it's all kind of the same junk where what you're really looking for is the ultimate quality, nutrient-dense, amazing product that you're going to love. Yes. And in Minnesota, we're really lucky because there are so many people who are growing their own food, whether it's animals or produce or fruit.  And food is produced, but same diff.
26:48that you could literally spend a weekend shopping at farms instead of the grocery store  and come home with everything you needed for the week  for food. Yes. Oh, absolutely.  I think, you know, and I always, think grocery stores are important. They play an important role. I'm, you know, I shop at my local co-op. There are a lot of, there are local grocery store chains that really do uh a good job focusing on local.  And, um but at the same time,
27:17in order to really financially support farmers, we have to find ways to directly buy from them.  And that because it just takes out the middleman.  And if you can, if you can  do that, it really makes a huge difference. So I have a couple different farm. I mean, I live in the city and I have farm delivery services that deliver to me that I buy directly from the farm  and they drop them off, which is amazing because I'm able to buy direct from them.
27:47And I think thinking about those types of like even your farm stand or other small farm stands, if you're going and you can go, I'm going to get my few things from there, adding in that extra stop to go directly to a farmer makes a huge difference. And of course, one of the easiest ways to do it is to get yourself a giant freezer and then buy, you know, a half a hog, buy a quarter of a cow, you know, finding farmers who will do that where you're really
28:14maximizing the transaction for them because every transaction also requires the effort from the farmer. So if you can say, all right, I'm going to spend a thousand bucks  on um a ton of meat, beef for the year and I'm going to go do one transaction, give them a huge chunk of money and then I'm going to have it in the deep freeze and I'm going have it ready for the year, that's a really  great way to maximize everybody's time.
28:38Yes. And the other thing that's interesting about buying a quarter or a half or a whole beef, depending on how much room you have,  is that you're paying a certain amount per pound for  all the meat. It's not, it's not the same as when you go to the grocery store and they want $25 a pound for filet mignon  and they want $10 a pound for burger. Right. And I love that. We just haven't been in a position to buy a half lately. So.
29:08It's so hard right now. I was listening to uh a podcast from another friend of mine yesterday and I literally was incensed and  sad at the same time because her guest said that on average in America right now, if you are a couple with four children and you are making at least $85,000 a year,  it's still not enough. Yeah. Yeah. And I just wanted to cry and scream at the same time because this is not okay. No.
29:39So if there are ways to bring down your costs of living and costs of eating and help out your local producer and make that food go further, I say do it. Yeah, I think you're right. I also think we are living in a world where we just
30:05we waste a lot of money on a lot of stupid stuff.  I say this a lot um and everyone's financial situation is different and my financial situation has certainly been different in different times of my life. um But if  you're getting your nails done, you have money for grass-fed beef.  This is what I said. It's expensive. It's a lot to go and do those types of things. think even like
30:33subscription services to uh different TV things. And I work in TV. I love TV, but you can also get over the air free TV, which is where Twinsities Live airs.  So there are real opportunities.  think sacrificing food should be the last resort because food is so important when it comes to everybody has to make priorities. Everyone has to shift their priorities, but sacrificing the quality of the food that you eat at home
31:03ah I would hope would be the last resort for most people. And then there, you know, there's of course different levels.  we're talking about  poverty or homelessness, we're talking about a completely different situation. I'm talking about for the  average American.  absolutely.  And  I am so concerned for the people who are under 25 right now, who are just, just starting out their adult lives in this, I don't know, climate, this
31:31economic craziness that's going on and how in the heck they're going to make it, you know? Yeah, it's an interesting time and an interesting shift. think it feels to me like  there's maybe a realignment on the horizon.  I'm hopeful about that. um I think as a  nation, we've been living beyond our means for a long time  and it's not sustainable.
32:00and it never has been sustainable. And now we're sort of seeing that and the consequences of that long time lifestyle really come to fruition. I think what a lot of us look back at maybe, you know, how people came together during World War II and grew victory gardens and how, you know, a more modest life was appropriate. Now it's, mean, so many people are swimming in debt.
32:27There has been this pressure to kind of keep up appearances no matter what  and there's been plenty of credit card companies willing to let you  just create a giant balance and not really pay the price for that except for in stress.  And I think  both ways, we need a systemic review and then we also need on an individual basis, a review of what's important. How can we understand that?
32:55cutting back, that not needing  a new car every three years.  This kind of  new and constant  is not sustainable. It's not, and it's going to kill us all. It's just a bad plan. Yeah. Okay. So I appreciate everything you said about your growing things and your  take on how to  help out the local farmers and help out yourself in doing so.
33:24But I have to tell you, I have been listening to best the nest. Basically since I talked to you in March of 2024, because I didn't even know it existed until then. And I love what you and Marjorie are doing with that. It is so beautiful and so helpful and so fun and sometimes so sad. Yeah. But everybody has so many different emotions that it's all going to come up. Thank you.
33:53It's  probably my favorite project that I do out of everything that I work on. The podcast is, we call it the podcast that brings you home. And it really is focused on  making a daily practice  of creating a home that you don't need a vacation from, creating a home that reflects you, creating a home that reflects your values and that is a sanctuary and is a place where you can be your best. And then you go out into the world with that.
34:23safe place to land. And so we always say it's a journey. It's not like either of us have arrived at that. And part of life  is grief. And a big part of  the sadness that you're referring to uh is my co-host Marjorie Punnett lost her husband uh almost two years ago now. And it was very unexpected. And he uh declined from a quick illness. he,  was very close to me and my family. We're very close with Ian and Marjorie. And so uh
34:52walking through that grief has been  difficult and kind of figuring out em where Marjorie goes from here and  how  this is a universal experience though. It's a universal human,  part of the human experience to love and then to experience loss. And so those conversations have  been really great. And we integrate a lot of conversations about
35:17um food, because food is so much at the heart of the home. So we talk a lot about food, we talk a lot about being intentional about the things that you're bringing into your home. um We talk about that with regards to textiles, with regards to, you know, all sorts of different products. And so it's, um they're, they're really fun conversations. Yeah,  it is. It's really fun to listen to. And I love it because I will pull it up on Monday.
35:42when I know it's there. And I will listen to it while I'm doing dishes because I always have dishes to do. My hands are always in hot water. Isn't that strange?  You would think after getting three of the four kids out of my house, I wouldn't have as many dishes to do. But no, there's always dishes.  Or I listen to it when I'm folding laundry, which I think is funny because it's called best to the nest. And where do you do laundry and dishes? In your nest.  I get so much done when I'm podcasting. Audiobooks like save me with laundry. They make laundry.
36:10It's like meditative. don't have to think, but I'm still accomplishing something while I'm listening.  Thank God for earbuds. Yeah.  I could not do it without the earbuds because I can't have uh a cord attached to headphones to my phone to listen. It just doesn't work. ah But I was very excited and very pleased when I listened to your episode yesterday. I think I listened to it yesterday  that Marjorie can talk about Ian without crying now. That is growth. Yeah.
36:39She's, so proud of her and she's really, I think she's really known that the only way is through.  You can't get around, you can't go above it, you can't go below it. I mean, the only way is through and that um life looks different now, um but the only way is through.
37:04And she's doing a really beautiful job navigating that while experiencing all the feelings that come along with it.  Absolutely. It's so hard and it's so,  it's one of the worst growth periods of your life when you lose someone that you love.  And I've said this before and I will die on this hill  when people that you care about  die. It's not that you're grieving the past. It's that you're grieving the future that could have been. You're right.
37:33It's so frustrating. hate that part. ah But I love you guys and I am so tickled that you do this together because you guys have such a loving friendship and  I think people need to hear and see that. Oh, thank you. Thank you. We'll just keep on going. We keep on recording episodes.  Please do that. And  I always have to laugh when you say  our podcast is the best podcast in the world because I'm like, excuse me over here. Hi. uh
38:01I'm a good one too. A little bit of shameless self-promotion never hurt anybody. You know what?  If you're not going to pump your own tires, who's going to?  Every time you do it, I just laugh out loud. My son looks at me he's like, what? And I'm like, you would not understand. Just let me laugh. It's fine. um So I'm going to go back to the Patreon thing for a second because I'm obsessed with it. I have been trying really hard to put something together for a couple of years now that isn't just a podcast because the podcast is like
38:29the tip of the iceberg with hints and tips and tricks and what people are doing in this. And I was like, where can I put stuff where maybe I could make just a tiny smidge of money and give people value that actually matters. someone said to the other day, why don't you just set up a Patreon because people can subscribe and then you are going to save them at least double what they pay to subscribe to it.
38:56by all the things that you teach them to do. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm so dumb sometimes. Why have I not done this?  And so today I'm going to be adding the  whole, how do you, how can you completely use a whole chicken?  Like break down the chicken, cook the chicken,  put the, whatever you don't eat. Once you've done all that stuff, that's food, put that in compost. Cause then that goes back into the ground and you have more dirt  to make more bugs  and plants feed your new chickens.
39:26the whole cycle and things like that. And I just want people to know that this is here because half an hour is not long enough to really give people the nitty gritty of how they could be helping themselves. It's just kind of like a teaser. That's so smart. And I think there's such an appetite for that type of information. And when you find community, it makes you feel less alone. So when you're understanding that people are doing
39:55people are integrating these principles of homesteading in all sorts of different ways.  I always say that you're a gardener if you're growing a plant in a pot. It doesn't matter.  People are growing things at different scales. You could always look at some Instagram influencers, beautiful, massive homestead with picturesque goats and 50 acres in the middle of nowhere and think, oh my gosh, I'm not even making a dent in it. But the whole point
40:25of even what I share on my little decidedly non-fancy blog called Home to Homestead is about homesteading principles. Now, the principles of homesteading can be applied to any home that you're living in. mean, I would grow
40:41herbs and tomatoes on a balcony of my apartment in Green Bay when I was 25, you know, and working early in news and I bought cheap pots at Target and some soil and a couple of tomato plants and I was able to grow tomatoes and it was really fantastic. And so that, I think that feeling and that, that sense of pride and accomplishment that you get when you grow something, when you produce something is just, we've become so detached from that.
41:10And I think it's a cultural crisis because our bodies and our minds and our hearts and souls were designed to work along with nature, to be part of nature  and to not feel separate. And I think that separation from nature that we found ourselves in and even, you know,  the that idea of we have to save the environment, I think was like a misguided  way to have that conversation because
41:40We are the environment. We have to save ourselves. We have to be  respectful of  our bodies, of human life,  of  the creation that we're in. And when we lose that connection and that respect, we find ourselves just  untethered  and  unable to make the right decisions because we're not connected to the thing that's the most important.
42:07Yeah, I thought on mord, but untethered is the same thing. We find ourselves on mord. We're not, we have nothing to hold on to. You're right. You're right. Yeah. And I think we're seeing that a lot. You know, I mean, the news has obviously been very heavy lately, but as I sort of critically look at the mental health crisis that we're in, the sort of identity crisis that we're in, um the like frantically searching for some sort of tribe to belong to that we're in.
42:37I think that those are reactions to a collective disconnection from our environment and our faith in something bigger. Yes, the news lately has been incredibly heavy and I don't even want to talk about it because it's been just so  hard to try to find words for everything. And I don't even know if it's worth words right now.  I think it's worth
43:04thinking about what  we ourselves are doing in our little part of the world and trying to do something good to counteract the bad as often as we can.  And so  I keep telling people just do something nice for somebody. Just once a day, find  something nice that you could do and do it because positive energy does counteract  negative energy. And if we all do something good,
43:32It may not change the bad, it might improve things later. Yeah, I think you're right. was thinking about this a little bit last night. I was actually running to the co-op in my neighborhood to get uh a couple of ingredients for a segment this morning. And this  gentleman was walking towards me, and I was walking towards him because he was walking out of the store and I was walking in. And then we sort of did that funny dance where like,  tried to get out of his way, but I went left and I should have gone right. And then he went.
44:00the same way. And then we were like, and then we just both started laughing. Like we were just laughing because it was just such a funny, awkward interaction. And we'd both been kind of had sort of like serious faces on because I was thinking, okay, I've got just like 15 minutes. I got to run in here. I got to get this stuff. I got to get home to the boys and make dinner and blah, blah, blah, you know.  And I'm sure he had things on his mind, but we just like we had did this awkward dance in the parking lot and then just started laughing. And I thought  I just was thinking about that as being such a sweet, funny interaction.
44:30that if  we took  some of these awkward moments and just made them funny,  how much lighter the world could be. Because then I went into the co-op feeling just like a little bit lighter because I just laughed with this person. It was very interesting.  I love that. Yeah, I call that the zigzag dance at the grocery store.
44:51We were in the parking lot. I was like, oh, what's happening here? And then we were just both, we were both just cracking up. And it turned out he had a big, great smile. And, you know, I got to see it because we had that awkward interaction and we decided to laugh about it.  Yeah. And that's, that's the other thing. When I moved here,  God, a long time ago  from New England,  Minnesotans back when were very to themselves. That was the take I had.  I went out of my way.
45:19when people made eye contact with me to smile. Yeah. If not say hello. Yeah. Because I just, it was so weird for me because back home in Maine and New Hampshire and Massachusetts and Vermont,  the four New England states I've been in,  people talk like they get in line behind you or you're in line behind them and people just start out these, start up these random conversations about whatever.  And Minnesotans don't really do that. I know, I know. And I got
45:48I got very strange looks at first. And I just made it my mission that I would have uh a positive interaction with someone when I went out in public because I had to do it. Yeah.  And I've noticed since COVID people are a lot more willing to start up conversations because they had, you know, a year and a half of not really being around anybody. Yeah, they realize you realize what you miss out on when it comes to social interaction and connection with people. And, you know, I think it's also just a reminder that
46:17It's very easy to get in  when you're looking at social media or you're looking at the media in general and you're kind of seeing the extremes of different sides  of, you know, the ways of looking at the world that  it's easy to think like, oh, everybody is against this or for this. And the reality is, is that most people are really in the middle and most people, if you have a nuanced conversation with them, um you can find out that most of us want the same things and
46:47value the same things and uh might just not know how to get there.  Yeah, I think every human being wants shelter and food and water  and rest. And if they can get that in some way that keeps them healthy and strong, it makes them better people. Therefore, they can go out and spread good in the world.  The problem we have is that not everyone has enough  of the things that they actually need to be a good human.
47:16Yeah. And beyond those basics though, I think so many people are just searching for something on the outside to fill them up and not looking for what's inside because the reality is that having those basic needs met  is very important. The vast majority of people have those basic needs met. There certainly are people who don't and that's an important problem to solve. But the vast majority of people have those needs met and it's just there are
47:45There are holes in people's hearts that make them feel like,  if  I get this, if I'm just this, if  I have that, that then I'll be happy. And that is never going to work.  It's just  never gonna work. You're never gonna find something on the outside of yourself  that you have accomplished or obtained or achieved that will bring you happiness.
48:12It is a completely different process that fulfillment and confidence and enjoyment of life has to come from within and has to come from a creative expression of who you are. And that's what I'm saying also by being unsustainable. mean, we're looking at now, I don't know, really since like, I would maybe say the 1950s of just like this
48:40The, m I think advertising has changed now, which is good, but you look at like  so much of the early advertising was really about your life isn't great. If you have this, it will make it better. And we've internalized that message. And I think that message is problematic. Yep. I agree. But I also think that the three or four things I mentioned, that's a good start. Great start. So that you can look inside yourself because you are
49:08you are healthy and you are rested and healthy and rested are two of the key cornerstones of having the room to dig inside yourself and figure out what it is that you need or you want or how you can help.  Yeah. And what it is that your gifts are. What are your gifts? What are your unique talents? What are the things that you are able to bring to the world because everybody has them  and, um you know, not subscribing to this idea that success has to look a certain way. Success
49:38is,  I think, when you're able to fully express who you are. It's funny because now we kind go back to the beginning  of the conversation where we're talking about the chickens expressing the chickenness of the chicken.  Humans, I think, are a little bit more complex in terms of we have many ways to express our humanness, but it's because we are such a diverse species. But how
50:04could you look at how do I express the Elizabeth-ness of the Elizabeth?  How does Mary express the Mary-ness of the Mary?  And thinking about what are your instincts, what are your gifts, what are your talents, what are the things that you gravitate towards, what are the things that really light you up in finding a way to express that on a daily basis, um I think can help us on that path to finding joy and fulfillment.
50:31Absolutely. I've said absolutely a lot this morning. That's good. That must mean we're on the right track. I think so. I hope so.  All right. Where can people find you, Elizabeth?  Oh gosh, all sorts of places. You can watch Twin Cities Live. um I have been on Twin Cities Live now for over 17 years. um And  we like to think of it as your bright spot in the afternoons. If you're in the Twin Cities, it's on from 3 4.30 on um the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis. Also,
50:59on WDIO in Duluth and ABC6 in Rochester. And then you can stream us on TwinCitiesLive.com.  And  I co-host that with my friend Ben Lieber, who is a former NFL linebacker. If you're a Vikings fan, you probably know him and love him. played for the Vikings for many years.  And then uh the podcast, Best to the Nest, is available wherever you get your podcasts,  Spotify,  Amazon, all the things. And then uh
51:27The blog is called Home to Homestead. I always warn people it's a non-fancy blog. You're not going to find like,  you know, 85 stunning pictures, but it's really just a little bit of a recipe journal. I talk about, you know, the garden and the chickens, and hopefully it inspires you to just, as Mary said, get cooking because it is really, I think, one of the most valuable skills. And I think it's something that you learn to love the better you get at it. So I challenge people who say like, oh, I hate to cook or I'm not a good cook.
51:57um I think you are. I think you can be. think it's in your bones. you just have to  start small.  Start by learning a couple of things. I started with soups.  mean,  when I got my first apartment um in college my senior year, I got a slow cooker and I started making soups in the slow cooker. And like my roommates  would love it.
52:26The guys who lived down the hall loved it. They would come up, know, everyone who would come and grab some soup. And um I remember finding that so rewarding and thinking like, okay, I can do this. And soups are very forgiving. They're also  very adjustable in terms of, um you know, ingredients that you like or maybe don't like.  And  they really, I think, help somebody build confidence in the kitchen, which is super important.  And you're Elizabeth Reese on Facebook, right?
52:54Elizabeth Reese on Facebook and Elis Reese are IES um on Instagram. And Instagram is another fun place if you want to see, you know, my chicken propaganda. You know,  I'm trying to get everybody to get a chicken coop.  When I run for president, when I'm school president, student council president, everyone will have a chicken coop  and everyone will have a sauna. It'll come with your house.  Nice.  It's a free gift with purchase. do think um
53:23It, that  those investments have been really great. The practice of chicken keeping is just  good for my soul.  Um, even though it does sometimes drive me crazy that they poop on the sidewalk, Mary, like then I got to dodge the chicken poop on the sidewalk, but it's a small price to pay. Well, it's kind of like when we have our, we have our dog and she goes potty in the yard. Cause that's where her run is.
53:48husband stepped out this morning and tried to get her to come in because she was being a brat and didn't want to come in. He was in bare feet and I was like, be careful of the uh deposits. His  hands were like, eh, it washes off. know, but it's a gross feeling to step in it.  mud is better than  that. That is absolutely true.  think, and getting outside and  getting those bare feet in the ground, um those things are life-giving.
54:18then you just can't, I don't think you can overestimate the power of just the small choices  that you're making and the little inputs um in your life. But I love that tip too of roasting a couple of chickens. I think doing that once a week or once every couple of weeks is a genius idea.  It helps, especially when you're raising four kids on one income, which is why I did it back then.
54:43This winter, I'm hoping to get back to that because some chicken soup and some chicken salad sounds really good. Just always so good. You know the other thing too, I've been brining my chicken. Do you brine your chicken  before you roast it? I usually melt like half a stick of butter and pour it over it. That's a great idea. And then I just, what is it when you stick the ladle in the broth and pour it over the chicken? Oh yeah, like a basting. Thank you, yes, basting. Yeah, so I have been making a really simple brine.
55:12with some sugar, some salt and some seasonings and then you dissolve that in water and then you put the chicken pieces or the whole chicken in it and let it sit all day in the fridge brining and then pull it out. And then I do like a compound butter with some garlic, some herbs, some lemon zest, stuff like that and rub it on the inside between the skin and the chicken meat and then on top and then roasting it. I think
55:38Especially if you're making the transition into pasture raised chicken, which pasture raised chicken can be, ah because they're just not bred the same  as conventional chickens.  Some people can think that it's like a little bit tougher or a little bit drier, but it's really about  how you treat the bird. And I think brining has made a big difference for me. So if you've ever struggled with a pasture raised chicken, that has been a great solution.
56:04Listen to Elizabeth. She knows what she's talking about because I've never brined a chicken in my whole life.  have brined a turkey. So I'm it's the same. And this is why I thought of it, Mary, because I'm like,  so you do that for a turkey.  Why couldn't you do it for a chicken?  And a lot of times when you have really great chicken at restaurants, they're brining it. And I think  that can be a key to making it better. We have a lot of chefs on Twin Cities Live, so I get lucky. I get to pick up some good tips and tricks from them. It must be so fun. uh
56:34So thank you so much for your time, Elizabeth. I really have, I really love talking with you. You're so fun. I agree. The feeling is mutual. Thanks for having me. It's a joy to get to chat about all my favorite topics. You're welcome. I really enjoyed it.  Um, so as always, people can find me at a tiny homestead podcast.com  and go check out my Patreon. It's patreon.com slash a tiny homestead. Cause you will find all kinds of hints like what we talked about today.
57:03Thank you, Elizabeth. You're so welcome. Bye.
 

Southern Charm Up North: Tales of a Maine Magnolia

Today I'm talking with Gentry at Southern Charm Up North: Tales of a Maine Magnolia.
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Gentry at Southern Charm Up North, Tales of a Maine Magnolia  in Maine. How are you,  Gentry? I'm great, Mary. Thanks for having me.  You're welcome. I saw the name of your page on Facebook and I was like, oh, she sounds like a fun one to chat with.  I hope so.
00:30So how's the weather in Maine this morning or this afternoon? Well, actually, I'm in Mississippi today. How are you? Okay. I am. But I think the weather's probably better in Maine.  Okay. Well, how was it in Mississippi? It's  hot. We had a rainstorm this morning, which we desperately needed, and I know we did. So can't complain about that. But now it's muggy. It's that typical Mississippi humidity.
00:59We're experiencing the same thing in Minnesota this morning. I'm sorry, this afternoon. I keep thinking it's 10 o'clock in the morning. It's 1 o'clock in the afternoon. It is supposed to hit 95, I think, today here. And the dew point is above 60. So needless to say, the dog and I are hanging out with the freestanding air conditioners in the house today. Do not blame me about that.
01:23Yep. And if she barks, it's because somebody pulled up to our farm stand because we have eggs out there that people want to buy. So. Oh, I love fresh eggs. I wish I was there. Yeah. Yeah. Our chickens have done really well this summer and we have not been able to keep eggs in the farm stand for any more than 24 hours. Once they go out there. It's been really funny. Wow. So tell me a little bit about yourself and about what you do. Well, I am living between
01:53two states, two worlds really. We live in Mississippi. I was actually born and raised in North Carolina and I've lived different places, but primarily the South. I've lived in Mississippi for, I guess, 27 years now. And about two and a half, three years ago, I was getting remarried, lots of life changes. And I told my fiance, I said, I'm going to live in Maine.
02:21He just kind of looked at me and said, oh, okay. And so we went up and he asked me, he said, have you ever been? And I said, no. And he said, don't you think we should go check it out first? And so we went up there. I had a broken ankle at the time. So was on a knee scooter, couldn't do anything, but just sit and look while he got to go explore and do all the fun stuff. And we went back about six months later, maybe, and made the offer on the house.
02:50and bought the house. So my heart is always there even when I'm here in Mississippi. um And I started my blog in the Maine Magnolia just as a way of kind of interweaving those two worlds  and  sharing with my friends there and my friends here um and just people that I've met all over, you know, what it's like to transition between
03:19dramatically different states um but still find the similarities and the things that you can call home in both.  Well yeah and people are people and food is food and home is a home and you know I don't know that it matters exactly where you live as long as you actually live where you live. Exactly. So. Just did a blog post this morning about the importance of being present  and
03:46That's being present wherever you are and whatever the circumstances are at that given moment, but finding your why, your reason, your joy in whatever situation you're in.  Yeah. Otherwise, why are you here?  know? Right. Exactly. Hang on one second.
04:09I had a tickle in my throat and I didn't want to cough in your ear. uh So  having moved from Maine to Minnesota when I was 22 and I'm  50, almost 56 now,  and you moving from Mississippi to Maine, how was that for you? Because growing up in Maine, I have a very special place in my heart for that state.  But I also know that Mainers are very, very direct people  and  they communicate.
04:38very clearly and a lot. So how was it for you? They do. It's different.  know, they, I think we're first not  quite sure how to take me  and because I'm, I'm just me. I show up and I'm how y'all,  what are you doing? And,  um,  but  I think the biggest concern because Mainers are very protective of their world, you know, in their peace.  And,  um,
05:08They're very independent, ah very self-sufficient.  I  think their biggest fear with tourism is that people are coming in to change what they love about their home.  I think when they realized that  there was nothing I wanted to change,  it was those very things that drew me there, then they quickly accepted me. mean, they love to laugh at some of
05:35my sayings or the way I talk sometimes,  or my shoes.  I do like a little bling and the bling is not normally, you know, acceptable in Maine. Not unless you live in the middle of one of the bigger cities. have some sparkly silver shoes, boots that they all get a big chuckle out of anytime I have them on.  Well, for the record, I would have befriended you immediately just for your accent. would have been like, oh,
06:05She doesn't sound like me. This is gonna be fun.  I definitely do not. My husband's far worse. He's much more country sounding than I am. So they really get tickled with him.  Yeah, I've said this on the podcast before, but I will say it again.  When I go home and see my folks, because they still live in Maine, my dad has to get in some ribbing about the fact that I have lost my main accent completely.
06:30I don't think I have much of a Minnesota accent because I go out of my way to not have one. Right. But he's very audially inclined. So if I say anything remotely sounding like I live in Minnesota now, he's like, oh, there it is. There's the Minnesota. Oh, and he just teases me. So yeah, I go through it too. And honestly, it's really fun. We stopped at a little store down the road from them and
06:59one of the women that worked there grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, I think she said. And I opened my mouth to ask her a question and she said, she said, where are you from?  And I said, oh, did my Minnesota uh transplant sounding voice come out? And she said,  not quite. She said, but I recognize even the little tiny bits because  I spent time in Minnesota. She said, but where are you from?  And I said,  oh, Maine.
07:28And she said,  weird. She said, I can't believe it. was like, yeah, we had a 10 minute conversation about the way we all talk. was very fun. Well, yeah. So to tie this into  the homesteading and  food  and making things part of the podcast, you love to cook, said. So what, how have you blended your two worlds  in the realm of food? That's been the most fun of all.
07:56At one point here in Mississippi, I owned a farm called Nowhere Farm and we had a great garden. As a matter of fact, we had a tractor. I'd never driven a tractor before. I thought I was out backhoeing one day. I was so proud of myself and my husband quickly looked at me and said, Gentry, honey, you are not backhoeing. You're bush hogging. So I had a lot to learn, but I raised chickens.
08:24And my chickens had a wonderful,  they had a mansion really.  And it was called Meet the Flockers. And that was really  my intro into the farm world. And I loved it, everything about it. um So when I started going to Maine,  you know, just the farm stands and  it's everybody, their house, they just stick a little hut outside their  driveway and you go and  you buy local.
08:54all year round. Yeah, sure do.  It's just amazing.  The meats are locally sourced and raised and  you go out and  I'm playing with these cows and I try not to think that I may be eating them later, but it's just, it's amazing because you know the life that they've had and it's such a difference and I love that. In Mississippi,
09:18You know, certainly you can find farm stands and that sort of thing, but I'm in a rural part of Mississippi and so that's much harder. It's mainly grocery stores and fast food here. So you know, just my love of cooking. I hosted my first dinner party when I was eight years old. I even picked out the wine to serve and it was for the head chef of IBM. Oh my. So.
09:46It's been a lifelong passion of mine. I've taken courses from Michelin star chefs in Thailand and Italy and different places. So getting to Maine and being able to source all of these  wonderful foods that I can't find down here has just been  just a blessing.  tell me what you can't source in Mississippi that you can in Maine.  I would not choose seafood here.
10:16Maybe if you were down closer to the coast, but it's still a different,  you know, there's certainly not fresh lobsters and that sort of thing.  A lot of the foraging that takes place in Maine we don't have here, um probably  in some of the bigger cities around Mississippi, but certainly not near me. I love to go foraging for  fresh mushrooms and just different
10:45things that  you can't buy, herbs and grasses and different things that you can use to accent your foods.  And blueberries, I'm pretty sure blueberries are in Mississippi. Blueberries are fabulous. The first time I was in Maine, I have to share with you, it was  fall  and we were driving and all of a sudden I looked over and there was this whole field and it was just brilliantly red.
11:11And I thought, well, what in the world is that? And then we saw another one a little ways down the road and I started to see more and more of them. And I found out that they're the blueberry fields. Oh yeah. And turn that beautiful red  in the fall. And  I mean, of course it  just stole my whole heart.  was everything. You just felt like you were living in a painting. It was so pretty.  Yeah. I don't even know how to describe that red. It's almost a purple.
11:40but it's more red than purple. Yeah,  they're really pretty. We put in some blueberry plants at our old house. They did not do well,  but  they didn't really produce berries, but they produce leaves and they turn that color in the fall. And I haven't bothered to put blueberries in at our new place now because they're not going to grow. We don't have the right conditions for them. They need acidic um dirt soil and we don't have that here. We have really rich.
12:09non acidic soil and we've tried and they just don't grow. So. Well, and you know,  it makes sense, but they talk about when you try to source locally and live locally, it is important to know what  you can grow and what works  where you are. Um, because as much as I want certain things,  um,  you know, it's just not going to grow in red clay in Mississippi. There's no way.
12:38No, no, it's not. And it's so funny because my mom grew up in Illinois and then married my dad, moved to Maine. And in Illinois, black raspberries grow. And here in Minnesota, black raspberries grow. But black raspberries do not grow natively in Maine. And so the last time we were home for a visit, I brought her some frozen black raspberries from our place so she could have some because she hadn't had black raspberries in years. Oh, nice. Yeah.
13:06So  you just, think that there are very specific things that grow in very specific regions. And  if you want them, you're going to have to order them if you don't live there. Right. So,  and that's fine. I mean,  I was gifted some pecans and I can't remember what it was, Georgia or Alabama. I think it was Georgia. I was gifted some, some pecans from Georgia and fresh pecans. Oh yeah.
13:34I had never had fresh pecans in my life. I want to buy more and they're so expensive. I can't afford to do it right now. They are expensive. We've got  pecans down in the lower part of the uh state of Mississippi and down in the Delta. So whenever I'm down there, I do try and stock up on some of those. Yeah, I thought I hated pecans until I was gifted these and I was like, oh my God, now I know I love them and I want them and I can't get them.
14:04Because what happens is when we get them the store here in Minnesota, they've been in a bag on a shelf for God only knows how long and they've gone rancid. don't taste good. They're bitter. And there's nothing worse than. Yeah, they're not supposed to be bitter. They're supposed to be bright and salty and nutty and  delicious. And  now that I have been made aware,  I almost wish that I didn't know because then I wouldn't care. Does that make sense? It does make sense.
14:34So have you perfected the most wonderful lobster roll in Maine yet, or are you still working on that?  I'm still working on that.  I  have not been able to bring myself to put one in a pot of boiling water yet. m My husband certainly can, and I know lots of people that do that  handle that part for me. But it's been fun to kind of experiment with the lobster rolls. And  it's one of the things I do whenever I'm out exploring, and I do that.
15:03literally almost daily because I'm still so new to Maine and all the different places to see. But finding the best lobster roll in each little village and town has been  a lot of fun. um That's an amazing endeavor. It really is.  I don't think it's one I'll ever tire of.  Yeah, and the best lobster roll I've ever had in my whole life.
15:29was at the lobster shack. think it was, it's in Cape Elizabeth and it's right on the ocean. It's not the beach. It's like  above the rocks that go down to the ocean. And it was basically a really soft roll with a whole lot of lobster, which I don't know if they still do that because you know, shrink flation and all that.  But it had a whole bunch of lobster pieces and it had a little bit of mayo.
15:56and had a little bit of salt and pepper and it had some shredded lettuce just a little bit on top. sounds perfect. That was the best lobster roll of my entire life and it was like 20 years ago. I love that. I took my family, the first time they came up, my aunt and my parents and I took them out to Thomaston, another similar place, you know, just a little shack out on the beach and
16:24It was wonderful. My aunt decided though that she wanted the whole lobster.  And when she cracked it, it had the green.  Yep. And I can't remember what they call it now, but  the look on her face was priceless.  She thought she had something bad and that's  literally a luxury to anybody who really knows lobster and eats lobster. Yeah. I can't think of what it's called either because I never ate it.  Yeah. It's not appealing looking at all.
16:54No. But they say it's fabulous to taste. Yeah, no, I'm going to not find that out ever. don't want to.  The best way to eat lobster, and I'm going to tell you right now, is that  you don't want to kill the lobster? Is that why you can't put it in the boiling water? It does. I read a story one time and it was talking about the lobster's brain exploding or something and I was like, okay, I'm done.
17:19Yeah, don't don't do that. Don't read that stuff. I just need not to read exactly. Um, the, the scream and then they talk about, you know how they say it? They don't, it's the air inside the shell. It is escaping. are not. makes me feel better.  And honestly, that is far less, um,  gory and disgusting than how beef is killed to  make our stakes. So. Absolutely.
17:47Absolutely. So don't feel bad. And if you really love lobster, just stick it in the pot. It's fine. Well,  I've made it my mission. I've bought all my supplies and  that's my next goal is to perfect my lobster cooking skills next time I'm up. Yeah. The best way to eat lobster in my opinion is to get that thing in the water, get that shell red, pull it out, let it cool down a little bit.
18:14while you're waiting, clarify some butter, use the microwave if you want, and just have a bowl of warm butter and that lobster and just make the biggest mess you can while you eat because it all cleans up later. Yes, it does. And that's the fun part. I've got the little lobster bibs. I've got all the cheesy tourist things um and still enjoy it. That's the other thing that gives me away when they know that I'm not really from Maine when they see that.  Well,  I think that's cute. And of course,
18:43I have lived away long enough to not be the typical Mainer. And  I really want to say that the New England people, not just Mainers, but New England people,  once they have decided that you are okay, they adopt you. You become part of their family. Oh, absolutely. uh Some of the closest friends that I would say I have right now are my newest friends from Maine. And  they're just...
19:12You know, it's,  um, they're private in a way  and they mind their own business, but they mind their business in a way that isn't,  it's not that I'm concerned with you or for you. It's that I'm going to let you be you and I'm going to be me and we'll just be great friends  in the meantime. Yeah. I call that live and the let live. And that's what I do with everybody. It's the best way to live. It really is.
19:40Yeah, if I don't like what you're doing, as long as I don't have to be pulled into it, I'm all good. And if I love what you're doing, I'm going to want to be part of it. Exactly.  Okay. So if you're from Mississippi, do they do gumbo in Mississippi? They do, but not  as much.  you know,  Mississippi is such a hodgepodge. We're so close to Tennessee and to Alabama.
20:09And you get down into the Delta and  really to me that's the heart of Mississippi is in the Delta and you would find gumbo more down there  along with just lots of good soul cooking, I guess would be the best way to describe it. um But there's a lot of heart that goes into  the food and just the whole culture of the Delta is  pretty amazing.
20:36Yeah, I have not traveled a lot and so I haven't really gotten any further than Maryland and I haven't gotten any further west than I think South Dakota. oh And I've driven through most of the northern tier states because I used to drive from Maine to Minnesota and Minnesota to Maine.  So, you you're going to stop and eat somewhere  on that trip. Right.
21:02But a lot of the Southern stuff I really haven't gotten into because I haven't been exposed to it. um I was telling somebody the other day, because she's from Minnesota, I was talking to her on the podcast, that I learned how to make  turkey wild rice soup when I moved here, because that's a thing here in Minnesota, turkey wild rice soup.  And uh had friends over and they tasted it and they were like,  woman from Maine should be able to make turkey wild rice soup. And I was like, I have arrived.
21:31I have made the best super wild rice soup ever. That's the greatest reward,  greatest compliment they can give you.  Yeah, and I'm actually going to make some next week because we didn't have any last winter. I don't remember why we didn't make any. So next week, you'll have to send me that recipe. Oh, it's super easy. And if you love to cook, you will love it. All it is a roux. You know, know what a roux is, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, a roux and some milk and  some more butter and some um bacon grease.
22:00and some chopped up turkey and some chopped up onion and celery and a little bit of carrot  and some wild rice, whether you buy it raw and cook it or whether you buy it in a can and dump it.  That's pretty much it. is so good. And do not skip the bacon grease because it really does add that depth and that richness to it. Well, and that's  one of the two things about being a Southerner. You have your bacon grease right there in your little safe pot at all times.
22:28Yeah, I don't have any right now. For the longest time, I had a little jar of it in the refrigerator because it stays good forever. Yes,  it does. And I used the last of it last time I made this soup and I haven't replenished it and I don't know what's wrong with me. Why did I not save any?  These are the little tips and tricks that you get on my podcast, Bacon grease is amazing for everything.
22:56I don't recommend sitting down and eating it out of the jar because it's really bad for you in that amount.  But for flavoring things, it's really nice. Oh, and pancakes, cooking pancakes with a little bit of that bacon grease is fabulous. And French toast. Oh, yes. Yeah, my husband cooked up like two pounds of bacon so he could freeze some. And he had all that grease in the bottom of the pan. And I was like,  um.
23:23pour a little bit of off into a bowl for me and he was like, why? And I says, we're cooking our French toast in that. And he was like,  we don't do that. I said, we do now. uh I love that. Yep. Fabulous. And I mean, butter for your French toast is fine, but a little bit of bacon grease now and then won't kill you. Just adds that little extra bit of something. m Yeah. I don't know what it is, but it's just really, really good.
23:49And the other thing that's really good if you use just a little bit of bacon grease in your pan is scrambled eggs. Oh, no, I haven't tried that, but I would think that would be wonderful. It works great. And then you don't have to have bacon if you don't want it because it tastes like bacon. That's perfect. Yeah, I love my tricks. They make me so happy. Speaking of tricks, that leads me into a thing I wanted to talk about today to share with my listeners and with you. I finally got my Patreon account started. Finally.
24:19There's gonna be recipes posted on there. So if anyone wants to Join my patreon account or however you say it it's patreon.com slash a tiny homestead all small letters and it's it's gonna have ebooks and PDFs of Like instructions on how to get started on a podcast not podcast. Sorry a homestead Cooking tips growing plant tips making compost
24:49Worm, I don't know what it's called, vermiculture, where you raise worms so you get their castings for composting. Yes. All that stuff, all those kinds of things are going to be on my Patreon account. Oh, how fun. I haven't been on that. That's something new for me to go check out. I will do that today. Awesome. just want people to come and learn because I understand that I do a podcast and I try to get people to tell me stuff about how they do stuff.
25:19But I realized that I know things too that I could be sharing with people that would maybe give them a chance.  It's amazing what just that little bit of knowledge that you can share does.  I have more e-books than I can count because I'm fascinated by the things that other people do and the foods that they fix and  their traditions and all of those things. And it's so fun. I have a cookbook library that rivals
25:48any city library of all their books. It's ridiculous. Like my husband says, you've got a problem.  I don't have space for cookbooks anymore. So I just, I just find my recipes on Google.  Oh, well, and that too, I've got them saved forever. The cookbooks though, I love to read the stories. Like my favorite ones to find are the ones that people have scribbled their notes beside the recipes. And,  you know, this was Janie's favorite or,
26:17don't serve this or this is five. I love that.  That sounds like church cookbooks to me. Yeah, exactly.  They're the best. Yep. I have one,  one little paper one from a church that my grandparents went to. And I have, I have one that I bought at an antique shop and it actually is, is two pieces of wood that have holes cut in it on the side. binding has, has, um,
26:45It could be sinew from an animal that ties it together. I don't know. Oh, wow. And then it's got the  old, old, old rough edge paper in it. And it's got to be a hundred years old. That's awesome. Yeah. I have that one. I'm not giving that one up. I thought it was so cute. I just wanted it, you know, just because it was adorable and it would look cute on a shelf. I get tickled too when you're in the really old ones like that. Some of the ingredients that you just can't find anymore that
27:13they don't make or maybe they're made under a different name and  you know it's fun to go back and try and figure out exactly what it was and what you can substitute today with to still make it.  Yeah I love it when there's measurements that I've never heard of before.  Yep. I'm like I don't know what that means I'm going to have to go dig and find out what that actually amounts to. Well it's  you know  one of the things that I try and do is  spend time with
27:41my grandkids and nieces and nephews and cooking because I know a lot of my great grandmothers and my grandmother's recipes  were just a pinch of this and a little sprinkle of that and a dab of this.  You know, they didn't have recipes and they just knew how to make it. And I think it's something that if we don't pass those down, it's something that's lost and you can never get it back. So,  you know, the stories and the time that you spend are just
28:10You know, irreplaceable. Yeah, it's amazing how much is wrapped around cooking. I mean, I've talked to a lot of people about cooking on this podcast and  the stories and the memories and the emotions and everything that's wrapped around cooking is just  gigantic.  It is. It really is.  You were talking about the lobster thing and
28:37The last time, no, a couple times ago, because my kid is an adult now and he was only like 12 when this happened. He might have been 10.  We went on to visit my folks and they did  a backyard barbecue. And my dad had burgers and he had  boiled lobster. And my youngest had never had lobster before. And God loved this child. He tried it.  I thought he liked lobster. That's how good he was.
29:04And  he took a bite and he smiled and he said, that's really good, Grampy. Thank you. And I was like, yes,  it's my boy.  And then my dad noticed that he hadn't eaten anymore. And he said, em do you want more of your lobster? And he said, no, thank you. And my dad said, would you like a hamburger? And my son was like,  yes, please.  And I will remember that to my dying day because this kid  acted  so well.
29:34As if he loved the lobster that I was fooled. I was like, wow, I'm raising a good kid. I love that. Yup. And my older one, he, he saw the live lobsters in the tank when we were at that lobster shack place when he was about six. Uh-huh. And  he said, what are those? And I said, that's, that's lobster. And he said, I ain't eaten no big red bugs.  I love, you know, one of my grandkids when she was about
30:04four, I guess, we still had the farm here in Mississippi and she wanted to go out and get the eggs with me. And it just so happened that one of the chickens was laying an egg right as we walked out and she saw it and she just,  mean, this look of horror on her face and  she looked at me, she goes, Gigi, it came out its butt. She  was  horrified. And I don't think the child ate eggs for another three or four years.
30:33She learned early where her food comes from. uh I  love it.  All right, Gentry, I try to give you half an hour. We're there. Where can people find you?  I'm on Facebook and Instagram under  Southern Tales up north, Tales of the Maine Magnolia.  And  I am in the process of working on my website right now. But Facebook is generally  where you'll see most of my
31:03post and blog.  cannot wait for you to get your website up because I know you're going to have pictures and I can live vicariously through you.  Absolutely and anytime you can come to Mississippi or Maine just come on you're welcome to be my guest.  Well thank you very much but I live on a homestead with a dog, two barn cats and a bunch of chickens. I don't think I'm traveling anywhere very far for anytime soon.  I love it.
31:28All right. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Gentry, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mary. Have a great day. You too.  Bye bye.
 

Appalachian Highlands Farmers Magazine

Today I'm talking with Aaron at Appalachian Highlands Farmers Magazine. You can follow on Facebook as well.
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Aaron at Appalachian Highlands Farmers Magazine, and you are where? I'm in Bristol, Virginia. Okay. Welcome, Aaron. Thank you for being here. Thank you. I appreciate being here. So how's the weather there? It is...
00:29study in a little bit chilly.  You're lucky. It is very muggy in Minnesota. That's where I am. This is about as this is the first  couple of days we haven't had rain since I've been here. uh Oh, okay. So are you new to there or  what's up with that? I've been here about two years.  Um, I'm a transplant from Southern California,  um,  and still moved out here just to retire. And then I figured out I can't retire.
00:59So I started getting busy again. Yeah, my husband and I are both in our mid fifties and anytime retirement comes up in conversation, we just do that very sardonic laugh and go, we're never retiring because it's not going to do us any good to retire. Yeah. And it's also not good for your brain to sit off that much, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. My dad retired over 10 years ago. He is now 80.
01:28I think  and He acts like he's 50. He lives like he's 50. You would never know. He was 83 years old. So I'm very proud of  All right, so tell me a little bit about yourself and about your magazine Okay, well I was gonna mention that I'm planning out here from Southern California in the mountains of Southern California About 5,000 so I come from a kind of a rural
01:58not rural really, it's urban forest I guess you could call it, it's a little town called Crestline, California. um I  spent most of my career in  the printing business and when I say print I mean magazines, newspapers, that type of thing. um My education is actually graphic communication, kind dawned into the print business and ended up consulting with authors.
02:25These are the things that I like the San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego New New York Review, and people like that. About, you know, how they used to go out and do their layout design. So, later on in the managing, I my little hometown newspaper at the time. It was called the Alpenhorn Nude. It addressed my town. And I worked there.
02:54for a while and I just wanted to  it. was  definitely going to buy it from after that fence fell through and I moved away to Montana for five years and I came back and it turns out somebody had bought it from the old owner and he was not doing well with it and so I was joking, strictly a joke. I wrote up the contracts for me purchasing it  and was supposed to just be something funny.
03:24And I said, no, I'll buy it for $295.
03:29And that was how much they that's how much money they were in the black for the year.  Uh  huh. So he's he he's didn't even look at it. He just said, you know what, where's this? Where do I  Wow.  Right. And I ended up publishing that newspaper and upgrading the branding on it. It had already been changed to to a new name, which was the  Alpine Mountain here in this case.
03:58It was just a typical little newspaper, a real small town newspaper. Nothing's honestly known, no stories or anything like that. No politics. So then I retired, moved out here, got calls from a son of mine back in California who owns stable farmer's markets, some private farmer's markets. And he said, you know what, I want you to do my marketing for me.
04:26So what I want to do is create a farmer's market newspaper. Okay. And I said, sir, I'll do that. I put one together, you know, a mock up of one and pricing, I'll be distribute distributing that. And when he thought it was going to cost him 20 grams, was looking for alternatives. So I said, well, why don't you do an online news? You know, the money. And so that was the
04:56impetus for creating something called the California, well, it's called the farmer market times. And it's at ca farmers market.com. And it's just mainly just really a marketing tool to promote each farm. But it's best media, news and stuff. And so I thought, you know, I live out here in the middle of the last year where everyone's farming, farming culture.
05:26I was eating on a call. I buy my meat from a place around the corner. It just occurred to me. that's kind of what I do. it turns out, there should be some kind of a really neat thing. I haven't made any money on it. But the whole idea is that once it's mastered, I can duplicate that anywhere in the country if I want to.
05:56All I got to have is somebody that wants to do the reporting or get any storage. Um, and I can create like a franchise out of it. And like I said, I haven't made any money. So, um, I don't know if I ever will, but doesn't matter. move to keep playing from beach. So it just turned out to be this really neat thing and it has a side. I think I'm already well aware.
06:42to have the lecture, gonna be, people are be a little bit cautious about you and I'm well aware. But this is a way, this has turned out to be a really great way of me acclimating to the culture here, which is quite different  and doing it in a very respectful way that respects the culture of this region.  I met a lot of nice people that I probably would have never met before  and
07:11It's on a level that connects with them in a way. Don't think that could have done that. Yeah. you're not into gardening or growing your own meat, then you probably wouldn't have had a connection. Is the lifestyle there slower? Is it, I don't know, more peaceful or is it not? It is. Yes, I think so. Now I come from a little tiny town in California. True. Yeah.
07:41You know, it was not a fast paced place anyway, but there was a lot of community involved there. You know, was just on the map board and this could be the way it is. And to be honest, slowing down a little bit didn't hurt my feelings. So it is a slower paced environment. Your people are not as rushed. They're not as stressed, I think. And also the population out here is considerably older too, in general. So
08:11There's that.  Sure.  OK, so I was looking at your website and you cover  what areas? Well, that's interesting. Bring that up. It started off where I was going to cover from  Johnson City, Tennessee and north up into Virginia to about I was thinking, though. Like.  Damascus, Virginia, so not a big, I mean, that's easy to.
08:40That's a real easy drive. And then somebody informed me  that if I'm going to call it Appalachian Highlands,  then I got to expand my horizons a little bit and go at least from Asheville, North Carolina, up to Whistler, Virginia.  So the reason they said Asheville is because the whole farming market scene, the marine experience here in Virginia,  that all changed.
09:11That area has  what? One, two, it has six farmers markets that I'm aware of  operating in the Asheville area. And they're the ones that started using this going on, but the else has copied it. So  I said, all right, I'll agree to that. m then, you know, West Virginia, some parts of West Virginia also are including in this too. So.  So it's like three states. Yes.
09:40It's actually Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia  and Virginia. Okay, so four states.  Okay, cool.  And how do you go about finding your story ideas? Because  I, as a podcaster, I just go find people who post on social media and like I found you and message them and say, hey, can you come talk to me? And people typically say yes if they have time. But is it that easy for you?
10:10It's a little bit more involved for me because I'm physically going to them. em And the way I find them is a number of different ways. But so when we came here, I made friends with my neighbors who own, they're very well known people, the Sleanor family over here and they own a farm. um And they are very present on Facebook.  So when I say young couple, they're, when I say young compared to me, I think they're in there.
10:39probably in their 30s, maybe early 40s.  They are very active on Facebook, so I ran into them there. And then once I got to know them and meet them at their farm, they have a farm that has, where they do a lot of agritourism, know, they have even rides that they created out there. And they look like these and they pull it behind the track into the cubes and have a farm made. Fun! Yeah, super fun.
11:09They have weddings, it's pretty neat. And so once I got to meet them, it turns out they also own the local meat packing plant, which is called Washington County Meat Packing. So now I can buy meat from them that they raised. Well, not necessarily, but most of the time it's that they raise because they also do packing for other farmers. But sure. And then.
11:38They have had a number of charitable events that I've covered. And at those I meet people and then I go to all the farm so that I can go to and then I always meet people there and that is a spin-off. There's always spin-off stories. So a great one is I went to the Johnson City Farmers Market, City, Tennessee, and I'm I'm going to around with every vendor. You know, it's just for a minute, find out what's it doing, how I'm doing it.
12:08all that kind of stuff. I met this artist down there and I wrote about him as a separate story because he was just so interesting. And so I picked up an extra story there or I'll meet another farmer, someone that's about to go out. Someone named Damascus Wazina who's doing this. It's actually the Damascus farmer's work, Sweden, that does topical culture and just all kinds of neat mottling.
12:38science-y things.  then they introduced me to other people and  I just keep aware of events and just mix around there. Last week we had Pepperfest in Bristol, Tennessee. um It's all about
13:06fun, fun, fun, fun. love it. Um,  uh, there's an old saying regarding people and it said something about if you can,  if you can do the thing, do the thing. But if you can't do the thing, teach the thing.  And,  and I feel like what you do and what I do  is we're trying to get the information out about what people are doing to improve their communities or the world or however you want to say it.
13:36And  I love people like you because you aren't necessarily growing a hundred foot by 150 foot farmer market garden to sell stuff out of.  You are promoting the people who are doing that kind of thing. Yeah, that's exactly right.  And it originally started out that it's  kind of interesting really about that. The original intent, I created the farmer market times in California was to promote
14:05to promote to farmers that those farmers want. It turns out that the owner of that, that hired me to do it, doesn't want to do that. And the reason he doesn't, he doesn't want any competitors getting his vendors. So I'm trying real hard to talk him into, wait a minute, is everybody going to be loyal to you? If you promote them, if you don't, then there's no loyalty to you. So it worked out that way.
14:34Here's the thing, I'm trying to learn as much as I can about this area. So farming is a big deal. mean, everybody's either a farmer or, know, a farm to table is a huge thing here too. And I cover that kind of stuff. But I'm also kind of expanding into some more.
14:55I think interesting things that aren't necessarily farm related, they are kind of like,  I give a story about the radio station that was in Exilist  at  the first place of  Country Music Museum in Bristol.  It's a radio station, it's an operating radio station that is playing  all kinds of music, but it's country.
15:26and the city. But he said, here's a living exhibit at the museum.  So they put on shows all the time. So I had an opportunity to cover them. So I'm actually expanding a little bit of what I'm There's a little store in Virginia that has studies  a gallery store for  artists in the region.  all the art that they have displays artists that they can fill that. I'm going to start.
15:55And the good thing about that is that I get to do some focus on those artists at some point. So if I do a big picture story about something like a farmer's market, I'll always find people in there that will give me some side stories. And it's just that now I have people calling me and going, yeah, I need to do a story about this. sure. Awesome. It's like the tagline for my podcast is the podcast.
16:25comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  And then I have a hyphen and then I say, and topics adjacent, because  I can only find so many people to talk to until it does become adjacent. I talked to a guy a year ago about green burials because green burials are about kind of protecting and preserving the earth. And as someone who really enjoys my garden, I would like the earth to be doing what it needs to do.
16:55And he was fabulous. He's going to come back and talk to me once we can get our technical difficulties worked out. He was supposed to talk to me the other day and he couldn't get logged into the recording room. So we have to figure that out. But  there are so many things that are adjacent and everything  goes hand in hand. I mean, the radio station. Appalachia  is very  big into music. That's where a lot of our
17:23country music started. and  music is really important to farmers because they play the radio in the barn for the cows.  It's a part of the culture and the culture.  The culture is not one thing. It's a whole bunch of things.  And all of those things play off each other. So that's absolutely correct. Yeah, it's all one big web. It's craziness. Also that particular web, particular radio station does things like
17:53them to local farmers and they do a crop report  stuff too. So it all ties in somehow  and even if doesn't, I don't care if I'm off track sometimes, no one's spamming me.  So  I can get off track if I want to. Sure. It's your thing. Just like this podcast is mine. And if I want to interview a guy who's really nice about green burials, I can do it.
18:21The  other thing that I think that we forget, because  not all of us are older than dirt, is that  radio  and newspapers were the way people used to get their news. That was it.  And so, of course, radio had crop information and  the price of pork bellies or whatever back when.  And  newspapers used to report  news. Yes.
18:50Yeah, it's not crazy these days. It's almost depressing really. Yeah. Well, I do it's depressing. don't think you say almost. It is actually quite depressing. Because even the amount of information that's thrown at people and then you have to sit and parse that to get to the part that's really right and or through or know, speckled with somebody's opinion or whatever, know, used to be this way of doing it to your board. Yeah.
19:18Yeah, the only news I trust is the notification that I get on my phone from the AP website because I still trust the AP. But anything else, I'm like, hmm, let me go check AP before I say anything. That's exactly right. I feel kind of the same way. Or I'll listen to somebody, but then I'm going to have to listen to people. You know what I mean? Or sometimes it may be true.
19:47something that may be true, but it's based on a kernel of truth. It isn't really the whole thing. You you've to get the whole story. You know, so and, you know, I know they still have radio. I listen to it in my car, mostly. But I think that's even gotten a little bit crazy. you know, and people have said for a long time that newspapers were dying. And I would argue that they're not.
20:17they are changing, they need to change. I think people still like to look at a newspaper physically. It's just that sometimes the stories are not relevant to younger people. don't understand any, I'm saying newspaper, so newspaper business has to examine their business models all the time and continually improve and continually update. But I think you'll get younger people
20:46reading these great pieces of material as well.  Oh, sure. Of course. And the other thing is that  I heard a statistic the other day and I'm a big, big word nerd. I love books. I love to read. I'm actually in middle of writing an article right now  for Homestead Living Magazine  and  I freaking love words.  And I heard a terrible statistic the other day that
21:13reading is just not happening anymore with our younger generation.  And I'm
21:21That's okay.  Reading is not something the younger generation is doing now. And it makes me  so incredibly sad. Yeah, it's going to have some consequences at some point, think.  At some point you can only, you know,  dump things down as bad as you out. think I'll say that.  can only  make things simple for so long before the simplicity makes things bright.
21:49I think that's common soon.  Yes,  and I don't  want to get too deep on this, but reading  is one of those things that teaches people critical thinking. And critical thinking is not as  common as it used to be either.  And so  I don't want reading to go away. I raised four kids, they all  love to read. And  one of them has a child.
22:18The other three do not have kids and she loves to read and I hope that that gets passed down from from me to him to her. Yeah, I hope so too. have, I have a bunch of, I have four daughters and um, um, they all love to read, which is great. really happy. Like one of them, the youngest one, when she was a kid, did not want to watch TV or anything like that. She said, give me a book.
22:48and then all what happened is she'd get a book  and like kind of dumb stuff like, know,  these are empire novels. She also likes Shakespeare, things like that, too. But  her problem was she would read a book and then she watched the movie. And she say, that's not how it happened.  And by the way, that guy doesn't look anything like that. You know, mean, stuff like that. oh
23:14She preferred the book because she could put her own imagination in there and make those characters do what she thought they should  or the way they were doing things  he thought it ought to be done.  And the way they looked was the way she imagined it looked. And that's the advantage that reading has because if you have someone telling you a story. And, you know, like on a movie, they tell you what it looks like, they show you what it looks like. um
23:41you don't get the imagination, you don't get the exercise, your imagination as much as you should. You know? I'm happy about the fact that your food reads and my form reads, maybe that's good sign. Maybe there's hope for the world, I also don't want to go too deep on this, but it's relevant to the conversation about how newspapers used to report the news. I was
24:09scrolling through my phone this morning looking for more people to talk to because that's what I do. And I had the news on in the background and our president announced that they caught the person they think shot Charlie Kirk yesterday. And no news, nobody. AP hadn't come out with it, nothing yet. And I looked at the TV and said, what the F? And I actually said the word because our president is not supposed to deliver that kind of news.
24:37That's not his job. And it's for the first time in a long time, something really truly surprised me. I was like, why? Why is he the one telling us? Well, yeah. and again, of course, don't want to get political sauce. I'll keep this in a generics. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. The danger I feel, because it's not the only comment he's made about it.
25:07you know, he's been clear about it. It's feelings about the whole incident and all that kind of stuff. But the problem with that is that when this guy goes to trial, he's going to be able to say, hey, it's from the bat. The president was spreading the word that I did this. that means he's not going to get a fair trial. And that means that could end in a mistrial because or even a strong adopt because he can't get trial because everybody's already forced.
25:35And that's the problem with presidents. And that's why presidents have always traditionally kept quiet about criminal cases. Right. Exactly. Because in this country, we're supposed to have rules and laws and channels of how information gets disseminated.  That's why we call it  news. So, yeah, I was just dumbfounded. I could not  wrap my head around it for about 10 minutes. And then I was like,
26:02It's just another thing that's going on right now that makes no sense. I'm just going to let it go. I were that guy's attorney, I'd already be all over that. I'd be playing in that. Right down the line, that would be my plan, my defense plan. It's like, yeah, you know what? It doesn't matter in the case because he's talking to his friends. So, you know. Yeah. And the other thing that I thought about when that came out and who they've got arrested for is that my youngest son is actually a year older.
26:32than the person they've arrested. And I'm just like, holy crap, what is our world coming to? 22 years old. Yeah, don't, I certainly don't know what motives were at Meanwhile, they, meanwhile, they been putting it out there, there are still plenty of people.
26:59that  are spreading entirely false information about  it. That's just kind of  an additional problem with news. People get news, they think it's news, it's not news. But they get information from people who aren't reliable to give it.  And  then it spirals, it just keeps going.  Yeah, it's a problem. And considering that you are in the  actual magazine world and I am in the podcasting world,
27:29This is very, very relevant to both of us because  no one should die for expressing their opinion in a reasonable manner and  inviting open discourse to  talk about what is going on  and come to some kind of resolution. And I really wanted to say that today because  I didn't even know who Charlie Kirk was until two days ago because it's not on my radar. But I'm not necessarily a fan.
27:57of his opinions, but I am a fan of the fact that it's another person in the world trying to invite conversation to solve things. Right. I'm going to say this all day long, that I'm absolutely a believer in three-states. And I think when that three-states is missed in a way that's, know, insolent or whatever.
28:26The best way to counter that is with rational speech. Speech against speech is the best way to debate, open debate um is the best way to handle things.  Violence tends,  well, in my  observation of history, political violence does nothing except silence, free speech, but it also creates martyrs. And martyrs create
28:56more violence and that's nice to get out of control after a while. So I mean, at some point that just becomes a big problem. becomes, you know, it becomes untenable. You're going to end up with war or something like that. I don't want to go down that road, but you know, you get one guy and it does this and then another guy got to get revenge and another guy's getting revenge. I say, solve it with, with words. Yep.
29:25Absolutely. And  I don't really talk politics on the podcast, but this one kind of shook me a little bit. And as someone who is very, um I don't know, I'm very careful with my privacy as far as I can be, even though I do a podcast, I was like, you know, this is not okay. You can't have people killing people because they're talking with other people  and trying to come to some kind of consensus on opinion. And I don't like it.
29:55So I want to do a strongly that the mental. Uh huh. you believe that the Americans in general do not see this as an approach? Everything's appropriate. I have the least I hope. so too. It's not good. And of course, and of course yesterday was the anniversary of 9 11. And so you had.
30:21Wednesday's crap and then you had all the nostalgia and reminiscing and  and sadness for 9-eleven and I was just like, okay on my podcast the next time I talk on my podcast I'm just gonna tell everybody you gotta live while you're here. You gotta try to do something good and when you're dead, it's suddenly not your problem anymore, but don't leave problems for everybody else. Yeah, I think that's a really good philosophy.  Um,  I don't know.
30:51What was it? Don't remember what that dumb movie was.  With Bill and Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, then they have a little saying at the end of something whenever they said something like be awesome to each other or something like every other. Exactly. Something like that. Like be kind to each other. eh OK, the excellent to each other, I think is what it was. Excellent to exactly. And you know what the thing about the news with Americans, we have a lot in this country to be proud of.
31:20In terms of universally as Americans, we so many things that we can celebrate about being Americans.  honestly think,  we can just learn to treat each other nicely and  celebrate those things that we have in common that aren't American, quintessentially American things. You know what? We'll be just fine.  And everyone will live a happier life that way if we could just all focus on those things.
31:50Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And part of the reason that I love this community that I've built with the podcast is because everybody in this community of home studying and cottage food producing and crafting  and topics adjacent like you  are all really kind and giving and doing something to leave a positive mark on the world. And the more people we have like that, the better it's going to be. I feel like part of that comes from the fact that you're doing something that's tangible and real. Yeah.
32:19You know what mean? Like I think if you spend too much time focused on, you know, you know, we just, you know, I'm one of the  important the computer most of the time because I'm producing something that I think is, that is real.  And, you know, but there's people who are living fantasy life inside their computers and inside their TVs and stuff like that.  They're just immersed in the,  all of the fantasy that's available to them. And I think that's dangerous.
32:48So when you have homesteaders, farmers, people who do podcasts, people who do  magazines, they're creating something.  And uh I think that's, it's not all input, it's some of its output. So that's the beautiful thing about it. I think when someone spends all their time  inputting information from all these different crazy sources, that's damaging to the soul.
33:18things into balancing some public of something good,  know,  poetry writing, farming,  eating vegetables, creating, you know, food and things like that. I think you become a better human being. I think you become a more calm human being doing those things. I don't think that you can give to the world and  not be a good person. It's when you take from the world constantly that it's hard to remain being a good person.
33:47ah I tried to keep these to half an hour, Aaron, and we got a little deeper than I meant to on stuff that isn't really what I wanted to talk about, but I feel like it was really important.  And again, I'm going to stick to it. Everybody try to do something nice at least once a day for somebody or for another living creature,  or I don't know, talk to a plant, tell it it's pretty,  something  nice, and you will be a better person for it. Agreed.  Where can people find you?
34:16So it's real easy, ahfmagazine.com. Okay, awesome. And what are you on Facebook? Anything to ask? Oh, wait a minute. I got to look, hold on. I think it's under Appalachian Islands Farmers Magazine. Yep, sounds right. Are you on Instagram at all?
34:44Uh, have an account, but I haven't populated it much. I've only been doing this for a few months. So I don't really have a chance to get involved in too much more than what I've been doing. So, right. I think I've been doing it. Well, maybe it's longer than I thought. It's a time is time is getting past me here on some of this stuff. Um, yeah. So I don't know if I'm going to end up going that dress. I might. Okay. At some point it becomes a job.
35:14Yeah, and when it becomes a job, it's not a passion anymore. And then you're like, do I really want to do this? Okay, as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And Aaron, thank you for going out in the world and finding good stories and promoting good people. I appreciate it. And thank you. Thank you for what you do. I appreciate that as well. All right. Have a great day. You too.
 

Groovy Grazers - Autumn update

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Groovy Grazers for an Autumn update. You can follow on Facebook as well.
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Morgan at Groovy Grazers in Montana. Good morning, friend. How are you? Good morning, good morning. It's starting to feel like fall here, which is always exciting after a hot summer. So I'm super excited to be here today.  Oh, honey, tell me it's starting to feel like fall.
00:28Our heat is not working and it was 63 degrees in the house Saturday and Sunday. Oh my goodness.  Afternoon. And  our furnace is broken. We found out because we turned it on and it didn't work. So it was rather nippy this past weekend and I actually made granola to heat up the kitchen and blow some warm air to the living room.
00:55and made apple crisp with our own apples. Ooh,  apple crisp is my favorite. We're gluten free, so there's a lot of  fall treats that I miss. And I'm going to try and recreate. I'm going to get a little more adventurous. Last time we talked, we talked about sourdough  and making various things with that. So I'm kind of excited for this fall because I think I can be included in the pumpkin spice treats that we all love.
01:22Yeah, I am not a pumpkin spice fan. I like pumpkin pie and I like pumpkin bread,  but the whole pumpkin spice thing, I'm not into it. I don't know why. I'm not really, I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin spice per se, except for like a few drinks, but like,  I'm not even an eggnog person. I don't know. I'm just not a normal person, I guess, when it comes to like the drinks. I like a Thai latte over pumpkin spice. I mean, any day.
01:51Yeah, I actually freaking love eggnog. So we're kind of opposite on this, but that's fine.  But the important part of my statement regarding the apple crisp is that it was made with our apples from our trees.  Honey gold, our honey gold tree actually produced at least 150 apples this year. Wow. I remember you were excited to see the numbers that it was going to bring and you were slightly worried it was not going to bring a bunch of apples. So that's a
02:20That's a lot of apples, a hundred apples over, you Yeah,  over 150. Wow, that's a good producing tree. And I think that's really important with what we're going to talk about today. Did you buy the home with that tree?  No, they were actually given to us as a housewarming present from an orchard guy that we know. That's even better because  that's first year producing over a hundred. That's big amount. I took a
02:47Master Gardening since we last spoke. I just did the course to kind of like freshen up and learn about Montana because I am not a Montana native. Yeah. And it's really hard when you go, especially here to plant trees. So we've planted two trees now. We planted a Liberty Apple tree and we planted some type of pear and neither took, but we have really bad alkaline soil and I've learned more history about our soil.
03:15And so to even put a tree, think we'd have to do some major soil reworking and pulling out material and putting it back in. Yeah. I've kind of given up slightly on the tree idea for a minute, just until we have a better location. Yeah. And  it's,  it's hard because you never know what's going to grow where until you try it. And,  and just as a caveat, took five years from putting in those apple saplings to get the apples.
03:45Five years, wow. Okay, so I mean, that's still not bad though for a five-year-old tree when you look at production. mean,  the amount of apples that I'm sure you're gonna get to put away, you'll get to make many apple crisps, I'm sure all the way through  the winter. So did you can any of it?  No, we're actually selling some of them to the community at the farmers market.  You've been doing the farmers market.  How's that going?
04:14Um, it's been really good. We live in a fairly small town. think our town has like 6,000 people, maybe 10,000. And so it's hit or miss and it depends on what other festivals or the state fair or the Renaissance festival are going on. If there's other things going on, the farmer's market is slower. But the beginning of the summer is always really good because there's nothing really going on in June and the first part of July.
04:44Yeah, that's kind of the same here. I mean, our seasons are a little different, obviously, but like the beginning of farmer market season, everyone's so excited to get out of the house. And I live not rural Montana, like kind of rural, but not really for now. We are looking at moving  and going more rural. And that's something that we've had to consider is like, what does our profits look like if we move farther away from the town that most people congregate?
05:13I can't speak today. know, common meeting is billings and we live on the outskirts of it. So that's something to like to think about um is the more rural we go, is a farmer market going to be as profitable as it is now?  Yep.  You can always put up a farm stand. Yeah.  I think that's something that we'll definitely do after we sell potentially and move. um We still have to figure out details on that.
05:43But I think it's coming together after hay prices this year. I don't know if you have to buy hay. I don't think you do. don't have any. No. Okay. Well, hay, let me tell you, was $4,000 this year. Yeah. And that's only six months. So I've now been doing this with my husband for about two years. We've talked quite a bit through it. Um, and all the trials and tribulations that we've hit, but, um,
06:12we have learned that our ground is over exhausted, kind like I was talking about. So I met some people that have lived here for a long time and they said this used to be a hay field, which in Montana, once you hit hay, because it's kind of a wheat, they're more of like a, they're not a hay, it's not a hay country out here, it's like wheat country, it's kind of different. So it's grain growing out here. So once you hit hay,
06:39then you're kind of at the exhausted point of your field. And then they put sweet clover in here, which is a cover crop. And it's one of the worst things you can do. It's great for baling it up and feeding it to cow, but it will found her a horse. And that's kind of why we got the goats, right? Was to kind of help clean up the field and try and get it to a better grazing status. And since learning all of this, we've learned that our field is just so exhausted that
07:07to try and do the right thing and not till it up  and replant it and go through all this,  you know, really expensive steps to get grazing. It'll take years. Years, yeah, you're talking years, right? And it's alkaline out here. I learned in Master Gardening, that's kind of why I went, was to learn more about the land so I could treat it better and figure out what nutrition to put back into it. They said alkaline is soil.
07:37you might as well just go buy new soil. You know, you can't put anything in it. There's no fixing it once it's alkalined out. And so that was kind of a bummer to hear because that's what we're on. And our name is Groovy Grazers, right? And there's no grazing at the home. It's one of those things where we're gonna have to feed hay. So it was about, I found good pricing, but it's about 130 a ton.
08:05And that's pretty high.  you know, that's about one round bale and a half typically. ah And that goes quickly. So I found a lot out about our land after moving here. So you talk about trials. Yes. Of just putting things. And we've learned that the whole ground, you've got to just scrap it and start all over. um And so that was pretty  earth breaking, I would say for a farm.
08:32to find out that our cost of hay has doubled. I mean, 8,000 a year, that's  really expensive for  one horse, a miniature pony, who by the way is being bred right now. She's at the stallion's home. you know, less than 20 goats, you've got five full-sized goats and most are dwarfs. So  it's not a huge demand of hay, but it's a lot. um
08:59And so that kind of leads me into like, might be moving. You hit  these- And you are very excited about this.  I am because I want water, right? So let me tell you about rural Montana. You don't have trash. You don't have water in most places.  And it's really not cheap to have water hauled in and there's a lot of fires. So that's why I sound kind of raspy and you'll hear me coughing. We've had a lot of fires and this is year two.
09:28of having a fire right around the corner from our home. And without water, I just don't like that. You know, that makes me feel really uncomfortable because most of the time it's me at home with my son homeschooling and to have to move, as I had mentioned, all those heads of animals by ourselves, it's almost near impossible with how fast these fires can roll in. Makes it hard to sleep at night.
09:55Correct. And if you don't have water and you're hauling in water and you want to be self-sufficient, it kind of is like shooting yourself in the foot for like long-term. And my husband has tried for a while. Now, granted, they only went 250 feet, but you know, that was a few thousand back then. And now to go the full length that we need to go, we've had neighbors that have gotten 30,000 plus dollar quotes for a while.
10:23And then the water's not drinkable because it's alkaline-y. So because the water has such a high alkaline content, even if you did an RO system, it would cost you more to pump the water, clean it out with the RO, than you'd actually get to drink. Yeah, so do you want to stay in Montana? Yeah, so I think the goal is to stay in Montana. And we kind of talked about that, right? So land pricing,  oh my goodness.
10:51I mean, the housing market in general right now is just chaos, right? It's so unstable. So to try and say like, yes, we're going to move was big. Now, granted, we have other like lawsuit things going on in the background with, you know, family and trying to get that sorted out. Part of getting that resolved would be selling because it's the most direct way to get everyone paid out as need be.  then
11:17we know that our land isn't good. So if you would have asked me, were we going to move last time we were on the podcast, I think I even said we're not going anywhere for a long time. Yeah, you were on in May. So yeah. So you're talking just a few months. I've, I've changed my mind because we're paying to live on 20 acres and the eight acres that we can graze isn't even grazeable. So you're talking no water, no grazing.  Um,
11:47and fires. It's not sustainable. No, but how do you decide in a housing market to play your cards and say, I'm going to sell? Well, you just got to do the damn thing. You know, that's my favorite thing to say. Yes. So long-term, we're not going to get 20 acres. Let's be real. We're never going to get 20 acres again for less than a hundred thousand dollars. Like my husband bought. This was before we met. It's just not going to happen. It was in 2019. You're not going to see that again. No, but
12:17Can I find in Montana 10 acres or even more, right? But 10 acres with a home. We live in a tiny home. So it's not even, it's like a tiny home in a pole barn garage with,  you know, there's a six car garage next to it that we kind of spill over living, but we don't even live in a traditional home. So for us an upgrade to get water, which long-term, even if it's from a well, I'm okay. But even ditch rights would be nice.
12:45some actual grazing land. So I only have to buy hay, like, you know, normal people in the winter time, not 24 seven.  And we would have hopefully a better place to do what the Groovy Grazers does, which if you haven't heard us before, do  goat petting zoo parties. And we're adding a horse into it, but this started out as a traveling petting zoo just to educate people about farming. And so,
13:14would we have a better chance of doing that? I think we would. So to play my cards, it's selling because long-term it's not sustainable.  you said.  Absolutely. So let me jump in here.  Everybody who's listening to this episode send good juju, positive thoughts, prayers, whatever that Oregon and her husband and her son find a new place that has  good water,  the land and not near all the wildfires. Yeah.
13:44Yeah, like  in that it sounds like a tall list and it is in Montana because of the fires, but the water and stuff, not so much. So we're looking at  moving more rural, like you're talking about rural, small town, you know, kind of depends on the market. And that's something that our realtors have talked about to us. like, well, if you leave Billings greater area.
14:08Groovy grazers may not be a thing. So that even changes the  whole direction of the farm. are we gonna keep being a petting zoo company that is in the Billings Greater area?  Or are we going to branch out, go a lot rural, like more rural Montana, get more land, because that is the potential. The farther out we go, the more land we can get, but there's nothing out there.  And...
14:37have to change our direction of our farm. That's a really big  why to be at as a farmer, especially with the crisis that's going on right now. So we've been helping out a hay farmer. um His name is David. He's been doing this a long time. He does dry land alfalfa. So we're dry land. That's where our property is considered. So if we were to do anything, it'd have to be a dry land mix.
15:03And he keeps telling us that one, we're crazy for trying to get into farming right now. Two, nobody can afford to do this anymore  on a large scale. You just can't. You can't afford the equipment. You can't afford all the overhead.  You have to be a generational farmer to do this. So most of your listeners are going to be in our shoes. We're probably just trying to start out.
15:28We maybe didn't get a bunch of land inheritance. We didn't get all the tractors and the tools and the fancy stuff. And here I have this big time hay farmer that works hundreds of acres, by the way, hundreds. And he's saying, stay small, stay small. The tractors are cheaper. The equipment is cheaper. Everything is cheaper.  And you have a better buyer. I thought that was crazy.
15:55I'm going to disagree. I think that you need to start small and work your way up. my son lives in Nebraska and he just picked up a really nice pickup truck with all the bells and whistles for think he said 15 or $17,000. And it's a fairly new pickup truck. He picked it up at auction.
16:22So if you're starting out, know, smaller options,  auctions are really good because a lot of people are getting out of this right now. is true.  And the Montana and Montana may be a different climate than a lot of the other states too. This is like David Montana farmer saying Montana is not how it used to be. And the land is over exhausted here. Now it'll make you.
16:50cringe, we spent over 45K on a brand new F-150 STX. that's why, I mean, we couldn't find anything at auctions. Auctions are a huge thing here. Things get scooped up. Now it's cheaper than buying a brand new, but you're not going to find like a truck that cheap. That's maybe Montana isn't the place to be to farm. Sometimes I question that even because of our climate here.
17:20I don't know, honey, but I'm rooting for you.  think we're going to end up where we need to end up. And what's going to happen is going to happen. I've been saying that since we started this, when we first spoke to you, we were a grazing company.  I would have  never thought we were going to be what we are today, a petting zoo company. I would like to be more established in the milk and dairy side of this than we currently are right now. But.
17:49I know that what is paying the bills, the hay bill, um is the goats are going and doing events. And so to hear that in other states you can get old farming equipment and nobody is like jumping on it, that's interesting. You know, I think the climate is going to be different where we look. Now is Montana forever?  I don't know  because  I'll say that I never thought I was going to live north. um
18:16My body does better. I'm 100 % disabled. I'm a veteran. that's how we kind of fund what we do is that my VA income helps keep us self sustainable and kind of off of having to live a nine to five. So we're really like blessed, I guess you could say in that sense, where a lot of farmers or cottage farmers are having to work a job.
18:43to get their field going. We have a friend that they just bought 100 acres of dry land, not far from us actually even.  And she does uh beamer blankets, which is a magnetic blanket that helps heal.  And uh I met her because she was doing treatments on my horse.  Well, we've been going out there helping them doing some barter trade work, welding for uh horse body work,  the beamer blankets. And I've learned quite a bit from them. They came from  Alabama, I believe.
19:13And they've done hay farming, but hay farming, said, is different out here.  And the costs are a little different. You know, some of the pricing they were giving us on 100 acres to reseed was really interesting. Because as you go to buy, I don't think as a first time cottage farmer or even like a farmer, I would think of some of the things that I'm going to ask about now and even spend money on like water testing. That's something that's really big out here. um
19:42is going and having your water tested. So  if there's a well, testing it to make sure that there's not forever chemicals in it that have leaked from all these farmlands.  I didn't know that. I wouldn't have known that 10 years ago when I was first purchasing my homes, but now I do. And so I think it's really interesting as you do this, the more you learn. And I'm on the same page as you. I want to start small.
20:09I want to try and just grab some acreage that really fits what we need as a home base. And then I would love to go and purchase, you know, at a time, 50 acres or a hundred acres of just complete dry land, land that is barren, right? No water, no electricity, nothing on it. Just land that you could potentially graze something on, work later, build on,  have a, excuse me,  my throat really hurts. Just trying to have it be,
20:38better because you don't know what's going to work. We could go buy a farm and the reality is, is that there could be fires or hail. That the roads could be darn near impossible to get through. During winter here, the plows sometimes aren't able to keep up with the rural areas as much as they can, like the city areas. I understand we went through that last winter here in Minnesota. How many times did you guys get snowed in where you couldn't leave?
21:08We were stuck once for a weekend this past winter  and it really wasn't that bad because we're always thinking ahead because we're homesteaders. So we were good. But, but the thing that scares me is our climate has been changing too.  And it's been, it's been warmer in the winters than it really has been in the last 20 years. ah And the thing that scares me is ice storms more than snow.
21:36Yeah, I don't like when it gets warm here and that's something we experienced a lot of. So you talk about climate change. That's also something I've been taking account of  because it's become more dry land, but humid up here, almost like, I don't know, we all joke that this is going to be the next banana belt up here. Yeah. Um, because it's becoming more humid and I left the humidity. left Louisiana and Texas like, but it's more humid here and it's hotter, but then it like switched like,
22:07It was just summer a week ago and now we're in the fall, temperature's already starting. So it's more erratic and that's what worries me with not having water is that if it's drier and it's hotter longer or we have these, we've had awful lightning storms. Like we've never had them before up here. And that's what causes fires typically out here. It's hay, old hay that's been sitting around, which there's a lot of. And then you have the random lightning strikes.
22:37So  the climate change, think is something that's even hard to predict because nobody can predict it at this point. But I've been thinking about that too, because if you have those ice storms where we heat up above freezing, we'll hit like 36.  And then at the night it drops to like, I don't know, but in the teens, well, everything refreezes and that ice is crazy.  Yep.
23:04And that's the kind of stuff I worry about here because if  it does that, my husband has a full-time job  half an hour away and he can work from home. He always has training classes to get to. But  when we hit October, the grocery shopping thing changes for us because  we could be stuck for a week. so.
23:29We are always planning ahead for, okay, we need to make sure that we have enough to be stuck for a week. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, I, as we've been preparing to like move and have a realtor come through and start helping us get numbers and even look at whatever all of this is going to shake out and look like we may not sell. never know. Like, you never know. You have to look at the numbers and the reality of it with a lender. Um, I realized.
24:00that I have so much food here. I've never  had two different pantry areas.  My fridge has never been full to the brim  all the time because we live in such a rural area. And we only have one in and one out. That's another reason why I wanna move. If there's a fire, there's literally only one entrance in and one exit here. And it's the same road.  I don't like that. It's really sketchy. um
24:29in the sense of a fire because the fire could jump the road and you can't leave.  Right. So I  plan to always have a bunch of food and we are on a cistern because we haul our water and we try to like have our cistern three fourths full if not almost topped off pretty often. We don't really get below the halfway mark just because what if the water goes bad and that happens here the plant goes out.
24:54You know, the plant will, you'll be on a boiled advisory. Well, I can't boil, I'd have to boil through 2,200 gallons. Yeah. You know, that's, puts you in a different mindset when you start looking at like sustainable living and off the grid and how to prepare for these, you know, these disasters. We always joke that I have a huge tin foil hat.
25:22And my tin foil budget must be astronomical because of how much I wear. But I'm one of those where if you can be as self sustainable as possible and prepared, it's better. So that's why like for us, even looking at housing, it's something we have to consider like, what is the road in and out look like? If you have to haul water, where's the water station? We're really lucky the water station is 11 minutes away from us here. Some people have to drive 45 minutes.
25:51I have a question about that. Do you have to pay for that water?  Yeah. So guess what? Water just went up. So when the city hiked it 11%, we felt it as water haulers.  one full cistern,  think there's only, by the way, because it's one in, one out, there's only one water guy that will deliver to our area.  So that makes it really inconvenient because he like, if his truck goes down.
26:18But he charges way more than what you pay. If you're getting like a tote, which we have a cube, it's something like 375, 350 gallons, I think. um Could be wrong on that. But it used to be eight quarters,  and now it's like 11 or 12.  And  sometimes it's really convenient to haul water because my husband can go to work, because he works a little bit still, get a load of water on the way home.
26:45Other days will go and if there's like the water haul guy who has a 3000 gallon truck and everyone else is there, you know, five cars that could add up to an hour of waiting. Yeah. So it's a lot of time to haul on top of pain. So you can only pay with quarters, which is another inconvenience. Wow. Yeah. And you have to have the truck to haul it. Like we have an old F 250. If our water truck goes down,
27:15we can't haul water. It's really hard to get on the guy's list that hauls water out here too, because he's pretty busy.  you have like a schedule where like, okay, you're only getting water at this time, and he's only going to fill up. So let's say you run your sister and dry, we've had to help out neighbors by giving them a load or two of water to get them through until the water guy gets there. So yeah, there's a lot of like invisible costs involved too. So yes, you do pay for the water, but there's
27:44There's a lot that goes into hauling.  Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot that goes into everything about farming and homesteading. And I'm so glad that you're talking about this.  So,  um, when you were talking about, you're not quite sure how this is going to go and where you're going to land and whether you're still going to be the, the part, the goat party people or something else.  Pivot pivot is a word that's up a lot lately with people I'm talking with in real life.
28:12with people I'm talking with on the podcast. Everyone, it feels like everyone made this jump to this lifestyle five years ago during COVID. And now they're like, okay, so we did the thing, but the thing isn't quite working out the way we thought it would. So what's the next thing? And we're going through it here too, because the last two summers have been  really wet. And last year was rough, last two summers ago.
28:40because it was so wet, had to replant three times  on tomatoes, which is what everybody wants in August. And we didn't have very many. It was not a good year two summers ago.  This year,  we've had tomatoes. We've actually got 13 gallon size ziplocks of cut up tomatoes in our freezer right now to make sauce for us.  And we've sold a bunch of flats of tomatoes. I think we've sold eight so far. And our tomato plants are almost done. Now,
29:09I've talked about this a lot this summer on the podcast. My husband planted over 250 tomato plants. We should have had bins stacked full of tomatoes by now for sale and that did not happen. So my husband and I have a business meeting planned for a Sunday in October once everything's settled from the garden to figure out what we're going to do next year because one year's a fluke.
29:37two years is a hint and three years is a pattern. No, for sure. And that's the hard part, pivoting. It's like,  are you pivoting too soon? Are you pivoting too late? That was something that David, the hay farmer was talking about, because he went from hay to wheat to hay again with cows to no cows and hay now. Yep.  And he talked about that.
30:02pivoting, you've got to just be fluid with it. Like if you get too hung up on one portion of what your farm could be, then you're really kind of putting all of your eggs in one basket. And I know I've talked about on the podcast, all streams of income, any direction. We do milk, we do goat petting parties, and you know, we do selling of the goat babies. And I help broker goats where I call it gokering, but I help broker goats for my friends that have a harder time marketing. um
30:32And that, and that's been the biggest thing is just pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot. Now your tomato plants not producing like that. love that you call it like a business meaning, cause it is being a farm and in any capacity selling some type of produce  is  a business and it should be treated as such because hobbies can become so expensive that they, you know, kind of cost you and you want to do it as a business, a hobby. So that even adds more kind of the.
31:02to the stakes and looking at,  know, okay, what did we plant this year? What didn't work? Where did we plant it? What did we use different this year? Sometimes you can find kind of where the crux is because my husband works at a hydroponics store here in town. So that's what he does all day long is kind of troubleshooting plants  and  what went wrong? Because if you just change one thing sometimes,
31:31it can cause a lot of issues. Yeah, absolutely. And we know, we know for sure that it's been the weather because  last two summers ago, so not, keep saying last year, but we're almost done, almost done with this second year. So two summers ago, it was  really, really  wet until the end of June. And then it was a drought. And so basically everything was wet feet.
32:00Then it was too dry. And so we know it was weather related that year this year  It's been so weird. We've had like three or four days of rain off and on not not yeah But just off and on showers and then it would be hot and dry and sunny for three days You would think that would be perfect. It's not No, because tomatoes end up getting blight in those situations. They do so we know what caused it and
32:27The only way to fix it is to put in raised beds. Well, the money isn't there for raised beds. No,  it's expensive. So  I have ideas and I will tell anybody who wants to go into any kind of business with a spouse, you have got to be patient. You've got  to be able to listen to their ideas. You've got to be able to float yours without being aggressive about it. There's a whole art form.
32:57to being in business with a spouse or a partner. Doesn't even have to be married to the person. It could just be somebody you love very much who you share a bed with. Yeah. It's an art form and it is tricky. And if your spouse happens to be stubborn, it makes it even trickier. Oh, I get it. Yeah. So I have ideas. We have the Heated Greenhouse that I mentioned last podcast in the talk. And I keep
33:25trying to float the idea of microgreens because microgreens are a 10 day turnaround. They sell well. I have friends. Yeah. And my husband is not into this and we've made a little money this summer, but not nearly what we thought we were going to.  Yeah. And I'm not going to lie to you.  Money is getting really, really squeaky. The squeaky wheel is screaming. And so
33:52I'm going to be pushing him on the microgreens because it's fairly  inexpensive to do.  The turnaround is 10 days and people like them for smoothies. So I'm going to try that.  should just do a few trays, just a few, just start with it.  I know people that have turned a huge profit with microgreens. Like we even talked about doing microgreens for a little bit, but
34:18there was a huge rush of people doing it. So there was like 10 micro green people and then a small buildings is big, but it's not big enough for that. So we didn't do it. Now all the companies have kind of died out because they just for whatever reason it's you got to market to the restaurant and you have to carry a commercial.
34:43here that, oh, I don't know if cut out. You're fine. going.  Um, you know, there's certain things here that you have to kind of take into account. I think that they've been smothered out because of the cottage laws that we carry. Yeah. And so that's something we kind of looked at too as microgreens. And then I want to add one in for you to think about fancy mushrooms, blue oysters,  oysters in general,  lion's mane.
35:12All of those you can grow at home. There's bag systems you can do, but people will buy fancy mushrooms. That was something that I haven't, they kind of are starting to pick up on it here, because my husband's job sells the syringes and spores for it. And I'm not talking filo-sibans, nothing like that. I'm talking literally edible gourmet mushrooms. And it's a huge market. I saw somebody make a killing selling them here.
35:41And then I follow in Arizona, a group that is selling them and  she has grown to the point that she has a 18 wheel trailer. You can buy them, they're like turnkey $100,000 plus, but you can have fancy gourmet mushrooms in there. And it's set up with everything you need. So we've kind of looked at microgreens before to get us through the winter time in fancy mushrooms. Because I'm not gonna lie, our winter here,
36:10there is no work to be found. So if you don't have like a typical  W2 job,  you're not working in the wintertime here. It's normally your off time.  Absolutely.  We just, we're going to have to pivot. We're going to have to add some new things in because  the things that we're doing in the summer are not working quite as well as we thought that they would. And that doesn't mean that we won't have a smaller garden next year because my husband loves to garden.
36:39We just won't be planting 250 tomato plants to get, you know, a few tomatoes. Yeah. And that is, that is the hard part is when you put, when you put so much into just one crop and it doesn't produce, but then if you do a bunch of different things, we've been told here that it doesn't all sell. Like only one or two things that you grow are really phenomenal and people will buy that from you.
37:07Yep. So we deal with a lot of Amish and who'd right. So they come and it will be like one Amish community, but they'll have five different booths.  And so they kind of like, I mean, it's great. I'm glad they're there, but they kind of like suffocate out the really small cottage farmer that isn't in a whole community that's growing, you know? Yeah. It over saturates the market. Correct. It's an over saturation and like,
37:36their prices can be half of what you and I can be.  You know? And so  it's hard sometimes even when you're growing the same things that they grow, you almost have to grow something different or unique out here because we're the hub here. So I think even like if we were more rural, what I would grow if I was in your situation would be different than if I was near a hub like we are now.  Oh yeah.
38:02I don't know. It sounds like your apple trees are producing pretty well. You should maybe look at like figuring out how to can up some pie filling or can up apples. have apple sauce. People would probably buy that from you guys too. Yeah. There's not enough apples to make that work this year. Okay. That makes sense. But as long as the blooms don't get blown off the trees next spring, we should be in a good situation to do that. And that is the plan. Cause
38:30I like apples. I don't want to eat applesauce every day, so I would be happy to make applesauce and sell it.  That would be great.  And apple pie filling is really weird. We made some a couple of balls ago out of other people's apples. We didn't have any then. Yeah. We made it the way that my mom made it with cornstarch. And  that is not an acceptable practice anymore.
38:56There is a thing that you put in your apple pie filling that is not cornstarch because apparently the cornstarch goes bad in the canning sitting around in the jars for some reason. I didn't know this. I haven't said anything to my mom because she's going to make it the way she makes it. But yeah, there's some things we have to look into for that. And that's the other thing with this particular lifestyle choice is
39:23Every single state has different regulations about what you can make, where you can make it, how you make it, and whether you can sell it. So don't anybody assume who's listening that it's just make it and sell it. You really do have to check with your Ag Department or your Department of Health or whatever in your state. Well, there's normally like a cottage farmer. So ours is SB 199 and it's the Montana Freedom Food Act. I
39:53where I could probably recite that at this point until my face goes blue because I've had to read it because we've had neighbors that have questioned if we're in compliance.  I mean, and all it takes is just one person questioning if you're in compliance or not.  And you you just got to know. I know that I can have up to 10 milking does uh and that's goats. If they're cows, it's half that, it's five.
40:21ah But you know, I look at other states and it doesn't matter about how many goats you're milking. It's the volume of production that you have. um And that's not, it's not  that strict here. And it's really interesting. We just can't sell things with meat in it. So like even jellies and jams, there's not even  rules on it. And like you said, cornstarch. Your mom did it with cornstarch. Now we've learned that it goes bad.
40:51I'm on Facebook, there's this rogue canning group where they can me and all these things that people say you shouldn't can. And it's crazy to think that some of the things we did even 40 years ago, now, you can't do. uh
41:09That's why I use the word the term acceptable practice because yes, my mom's apple pie filling was fine and still is there's nothing  wrong with it because she knows what the hell she's doing when she makes it correct, but acceptable practices and that's what the states are basically saying are acceptable practices to be able to sell what you make  our ABCD. So.
41:34Yeah, it is really interesting. And that's something too, like if we were to look at moving out of state, I'd have to do all this research on whatever state we're looking at. And I think that's why I've kind of just decided to stay in Montana. I also really just love Montana for Montana. um I'm glad that you do because  honey, I grew up in Maine. I loved that state more than life itself. And then I moved to Minnesota when I was like 22.  I
42:03love Minnesota now and I didn't think I ever would. So I get it. I completely get it. Yeah. You just hit a point where you're like,  ah, I could live here. Now I want to move more up towards the highline  or like the border.  I like the cold.  So I didn't think I was going to like the cold. came from Arizona before. I don't know if I've told you that, but I came from Arizona before I moved here. And so the cold is like something new, but it's
42:32So  I like it, my body likes it. And seeing that's the thing with having chronic illness, everyone's body is so different. ah Do you kind of have to find where your body likes and then also where you can do the things that you like to do. So  if I live out in the cold, I can do  more  farming things. Part of also too the dynamic change with the farmers, like you talked about pivoting.
43:01Because my body is feeling better, I haven't been spending as much time with the goats or doing, I guess you could say, much preparation with them because I'm downsizing since we're moving and cutting back and making the program more cutthroat. But I also got a horse and I don't think, I might have just bought the horse in May when we talked. I can't remember actually when I bought him. I don't know, I don't remember.
43:26Yeah, I don't think we talked about a horse. think I bought him shortly after it was like a hair.  Yeah. Kind of like one of those like, I'm just going to do it type deals. Uh, so I have a horse now too, that I need to get up and writing. And you've been working with him, right? Yeah, I've been working with him quite, quite a bit. He had an injury and now he has ulcers. And so having to learn about husbandry with horses, I've been writing since I was a young child.
43:54But owning a horse is very different than leasing, exercise, riding, doing lessons. uh It's a lot to learn and they're not as hardy as one would think.  No, horses.  I love horses, Morgan. I do. I absolutely think they're beautiful. I think that they are lovely when they're well behaved.
44:20I'm scared to death of them. I get really nervous around them, but I think that they are beautiful. But you're right. They are actually far more fragile than anyone would guess. Yeah, like you can't have dust in their hay. That was something else. So David, the hay farmer that I've kind of brought up, he's kind of taken us under his wing. Andy bailed hay with him and we've just been kind of learning, you know, about hay through David and he was explaining dust and
44:50round bales versus the small square bales and all these different things. And I was just shocked at the level  of high maintenance that you could say a horse was.  Um, and my horse, course, because this is how it works, has to be one of those that just will make a hole for his nose to be in the hay piles and they have huge nostrils and they just suck all that dust up with it.  Oh yeah. then they cough and then you can't
45:19exercise them because then they start coughing and it hurts their lungs and the smoke up here that also like hurts their lungs like there's just so many things that go into horsemanship and the care of them. Now I wouldn't trade it at all like it's a built-in therapy tool especially there's something about veterans and horses that just go really well together so I absolutely adore having him and all the challenges that he's brought with like
45:46His background, I paid a thousand for him. Anyone that knows horses knows that's very cheap. Oh yeah. He was on sale, not for sale. So that should tell you a lot too. I love him to death. He has a great brain. just is, uh he needs a lot of correction, which is fine.  He's coming around well, but I have a miniature pony  and her name is Bugsy. And she's, like I said, she's with the studs. She's being bred.
46:13because eventually we want to do mini pack mules. So  there's like so many different things that we could pivot to. Like you were saying,  we, our motto is not keeping our eggs in one basket with the farm. Cause like you said, if something, one thing doesn't work out that year, I don't want it to make or break our program because we don't.
46:36essentially really have a program if that makes sense. We're not established in any one area to know what actually is going to work or not work because we're just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks at this point.  As are a lot of people right now. You're not alone.  Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. And the economy's changed. Like cows are up  at a market. You know, the market for cows is record breaking right now. Yeah. But trying to get into it is unbelievably expensive.
47:05It is. And that's where Dave, you know, talks about being a generational farmer, that that's really the only way to make it right now. He's not saying that that's only way to do it. He's just saying  the only way to get to have the tractor not broken, the trucks working just fine and the bills paid with what he calls one in the basket, which is one like you should be one crop ahead if you're doing some type of crop like that.
47:32ah And he's like, it's just not possible. This is the first year in a long time that he's been without one crop in the basket, as he would say.  that's a generational farmer. Now, not generational beyond him though. So he's been doing it for a long time, which  people would think generationally, but he has no kids that he's passed this on to. So he is a first generation farmer also, like a lot of us are, but he's just been doing it the long haul way.
48:02And he said like tractors are very expensive. So auction, auction, auction. I agree with you. We should all be looking to find the best deal that we can. Buying new is not sustainable if you want to be a farmer. Yeah. And I  don't quote me because I can't remember, but I think when I interviewed Joel Salatin, he said, if you want to be a rich farmer, start out rich. Yeah. I could be wrong. I heard it somewhere else, but I think that's what he said.
48:29That's like honestly the truth. We are not rich by any means. We are all about sustainable. So when you look us up, like we are definitely your penny pinching farmers. But the biggest thing is, is we're doing the damn thing. We're doing the thing that matters. When farming is falling apart, it's a dying art. Nobody wants to learn it. We're gonna be there to say, actually we do wanna learn it. So give us your information that you wanna share because
48:58They want to share it. Those farmers do. um And learning it, because guess what? AI is not going to replace me. I always say that now. That's my new saying. AI is not going to replace my job.  AI is not going to replace a lot of jobs. It's not. The one thing I am concerned about  is  writers. Yes. AI does a really good job of generating words because what AI is is a large language model.
49:27That's what it is. Correct. Yeah, correct. It's going to kill all the fun jobs, the art jobs, the writer jobs, the like compassionate jobs. That's why I tell people like it's not going to take the jobs that we all think it's going to take like probably some computer programming jobs where the rules are really like black and white. My mom does cobalt coding. That's a whole different language. Like that's it's not taking her job. It's going to take all the fun jobs is what I would say.
49:57Uh huh. Yeah. The rewarding jobs, the rewarding where you have to be, you have to have an imagination. You have to be able to think you like art is off. I hate AI generated images. I won't use them.  They creep me out. And  the thing is the thing I keep hearing from people about AI who are the people, they actually human beings who are sort of self aware. some of them, the experts are saying just
50:26be human. Like if you have a business, be yourself, be human, be vulnerable because a lot of people are  not trusting what they're seeing online. Yeah, that's one of the biggest things I've done throughout Groovy Grazers is I sold the accounting software. I've been in the top 10 % of big companies and sold things. I've just been myself.
50:52And selling yourself is the best thing you can do just be who you are like there are low days that I post about where I just Hate farming and I want to throw the towel and I'm just gonna go live in the city Which I would never do but there are days we hit that point  or I don't know why the heck this isn't working Does anyone else know or like you know just the simple things be who you are?  Everyone can read what?
51:18is written by AI at this point. I've even stopped doing hashtags. I have found that there's more interactions when it's just an authentic, normal looking post, like we all would have done 10 years ago. And then just being who you are. Like they don't want to read that everything's great and fine and dandy. Like everyone right now is experiencing some type of crisis with the economy or their job or their home or
51:47family or whatever has it, like they just want to connect. And I think that's something we're seeing is that people are wanting to gather and connect again, which is really cool because it's going to make things like farmer's market  or, you know, a goat party or something like that, you know, be more fruitful. And I think that that is the biggest thing. Just if you want to be a rich farmer, then you got to start out rich and just be yourself like.
52:14Don't oversell yourself, be who you need to be because your community is going to tell you what they need from you. And that's what I did. I just listened into my community. There was nothing to do really beyond a jump park for kids' parties. And when it was thrown out there, why don't you do kids' parties? I said, well, why the heck not? Let's try it. And then here we are two years later. Yeah. You know how I said that I hear a lot of the word pivot. I hear a lot of why not and a lot of what if.
52:44when I talk to people. Yes. Yeah. that's just the reality of farming. Like, yes, farming is dying in a sense. I think commercial farming,  I don't even like to say that farming  is dying. It's the art of farming is dying. So like the tradition of passing farming down is dying.  And then in another sense, it's growing though, the cottage farmer is coming back and like,
53:11To be honest, cottage farmers during the world wars is what fed the American people. So it's a really noble thing to be a cottage farmer, I feel like in America.  It is, it's a noble calling. And I think that's the part that's important is the calling part.  Because when you are called,  when you feel called to do something,  it means that your heart and your soul and your mind are aligned to work at that thing to make it good.
53:41And I feel like this podcast that I started two years ago is a calling because Morgan, the only time I feel like I take deep breaths is when I'm listening to you guys tell me about your lives. That's how anxious I am about the world. I look so forward to recording podcast episodes because I get to hear really brilliant, giving healthy people tell me their ideas. I can go, okay, all is not lost.
54:11Yeah, I found just getting off the news and just focusing on my community. Like I can't even do anything for the greater state of Montana, but I can do something for Billings, Montana. And that is what I'm doing because I like you.  I loaded,  I loaded missiles for the military in Okinawa, Japan. If you want to talk about a tinfoil hat, I wear one. I don't trust anyone. I don't trust a single government entity. There's I'm, I'm not one way.
54:40I am anti-government is what I tell people when they want to start talking to me and they want to get into this, that. I'm like, no, no, no. I'm anti-government guys. I just don't trust anyone. We need to all be self-sustainable. And so that's the thing. This was a huge calling for me to teach other people to be self-sustainable and to learn from my mistakes because I'm not scared of people laughing at me or making fun of me or saying, you know, I'm an idiot for doing this. I don't care what other people think. It's just that
55:09I feel that cottage farming is a noble thing to do in America. And I honestly raised my right hand to serve for this community, like serve for the US because it was a noble calling. Instead of just going and working up  a like small wage job because I didn't want to go to college and being a bum in my hometown. was like, well, I guess I'm going to go serve for the military. I can, so I should. um And it was just one of those things of why not?
55:39I think my dad, he was a Marine, he told me that. said, well, why don't you do that? I said, well, why not? Like, well, what's the worst thing that's gonna happen? And I mean, I ended up in Japan and I ended up being a mama. know, like  life is full of  what ifs and why nots and pivoting and just doing the damn thing.  And if I can do that for my community and just keep being noble in all of the ways that I act, which to me means acting with the most
56:08integrity that you can, then it makes for a better community. And then all these things that we're having anxiety about, they go away, you know? And so for me, it's serving my community. Yours or podcast, mine is serving my community because that's where I get to hear, just like you do, the real stories from people, you know, and what they're going through and their trials and tribulations. then, and then we all feel a little bit more human, I think, when we hear that other people.
56:35are struggling, that we want other people to struggle, but we're like, oh, okay, it's not just us, or oh, okay, we're not the only ones that are having extreme anxiety about this. And I think that's the hardest thing too, is when you're a cottage farmer, it's really easy to become anxious about the world because of the farming that you're doing, you understand how important it is that you're producing food, and other people don't understand it at the level we do.
57:01Yes. And when you're doing it yourself, you also realize how fragile the system actually is. And that's the part that I'm trying to get people aware of. So, All right, Morgan, I usually keep these to half an hour, but I really wanted to talk to you for a long time. So we're almost at an hour. Where can people find you? So you can find us at our domain is www.groovygrazers.com.
57:27You can find us on Facebook. There are two pages. There's one with an empty and one without. Okay.  Um,  and you can also  find us  on Instagram and tick tock. We're kind of all over  the page.  Uh, that you can most interact with us is going to be our website. Please reach out. There's a form. If you just have questions or you just want to talk to us, or if you even have,  um,
57:57You know, I'm running into this with my goats. Have you ran into this before? I think the biggest thing for me is just communities. So please reach out, ask some questions, or if you're doing something cool with a farm,  then just let me know. So.  Awesome. Thank you so much. As always,  people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Morgan, thank you again for your time. I hope you have a great day.
58:23Thank you so much. It was good talking to you. I'm sure I'll talk to you next spring. Have a good one. You too.
 

Family Farm Beef Box

Today I'm talking with Glade at Family Farm Beef Box. You can follow on Facebook as well.
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Glade at Family Farm Beef Box in Nebraska. Good morning, Glade. How are you? Well, hello, Mary. I'm doing quite well. Thank you.  How is the weather in Nebraska this morning? You know, we are just starting to feel a little bit of that chill, like it's getting towards fall and...
00:29I'm excited about a couple things  such as harvest  and football and a freeze that's gonna kill all these flies.
00:39Yeah, us too here in Minnesota. was 41 degrees when I looked at 5 a.m. today. So it's definitely winding down on the heat and I'm so glad because it's been a hot, hot summer here in Minnesota. I don't know what Nebraska was like, but Minnesota was kind of not a fun summer.  Yeah,  we were pretty blessed in Nebraska.  It really was fairly nice and fairly,  we got some rains when we needed it.
01:08So I can't complain too much  that much, I sure don't have any problem enjoying fall weather. Yeah. Fall is my favorite season, followed by spring, followed by winter, followed by summer, because I do not love high summer.  I hate it.  So,  okay. Tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do.  My name is Glade Smith.  I'm a husband of  one wife. I'm a father of
01:38seven children.  I am a multi-generational cattle producer  and I am a  leading marketer of breeding stock for right livestock and the owner and  founder of Family Farm Beef Box. Okay, awesome. How many generations back on  the cattle?  So my my grand, it'd be my grandfather three generations ago.
02:06He moved to  this area just down the road from where I'm sitting. uh He was born in 1896 and moved to this area.  It seems interesting to be able to say he moved here with wagons pulled by mules  over to where our general area. My wife's family, uh her roots go a little bit deeper. She'd be the ninth generation farming on the same general.
02:34close to the same area where she's from. I've got a ways to go to keep up with my wife. Okay. Tell me about the beef box. Very good. No problem. Yeah. A family farm beef box is a conveniently sized share of an entire beef. It's been dry aged and hand cut and raised right here in central Nebraska. Think of it as just a smaller version of a half a beef. It works well for, for say a couple that
03:01used to buy a half a beef, but now their kids are grown and they just don't need that much anymore. So you get a nice sampling  of some steaks and ground beef  and roast, but still the dry age quality that you grew to love when you purchased a half a beef. And we do ship that beef across the country  every Monday and work with those customers as far  as allowing them to subscribe  and get a  box every one, two or three months,  or we let them try just a single box.
03:31And we do offer a little options as far as a smaller package or a more bulk option.  So  that's  what we  strive for with our little beef business  and try to focus on getting to know the people that we're actually sending the beef to. That's  something that's important to us is trying to build relationships with these people. And a cute little story that  from when I started Family Farm Beef Box,
04:00It's been about eight years ago now.  And honestly, goodness, what  spurred it was  I'd been  farming and ranching  and  we'd grown enough to be able to grow the balance sheet, to be able to borrow some more money, to grow the business, to borrow some more money.  I got  to be fortunate enough that I had quite a bit of money borrowed  and several bad things happened in the farming world.  And I couldn't pay the bank back and I was underwater and the bank told me.
04:27I say I was fortunate enough because it forced me to grow and learn and be creative in other ways. The bank told me that all the money I made was going to go towards debt.  And so what I did was I told my banker, said, well, I know what better beef tastes like.  And I know how to make friends with people in real life. And if I could use this social media thing to figure out how to make friends with other people.
04:56I could share some beef with them and if I could get a price that was similar to an ice grocery store, I'd be able to make a little money.  And so that was, that was my whole plan.  And I went from there and I,  didn't even use  social media. I had no use for it, but my wife did. And I knew there was other people on it who used it a lot. And so I thought, well, that's where the people is location, location, location. That's, that's the location that matters now. And so.
05:26I got online with my wife's social media, her Facebook account, and she let me send out a survey to her thousand friends, which was pretty well received. I got a pretty good sampling. I asked questions like, you could buy source food from a farm for a price that was competitive with the grocery store, would you be interested? Well, shucks, 97 some percent of the people said yes. I also asked questions such as...
05:55based on your monthly food budget, how  much could you pay for a bulk food purchase?  And at the time, eight years ago,  was 7 % of respondents said they could afford $600 or more. Now, of course, beef prices have gone up a lot, but even back then, $600 was barely, not even really a quarter beef. Right. And so that meant that there was some people out there that could do it, but not very many.  that's especially at the time,
06:24That's the way anybody selling freezer beef, that's how you did it. You buy half a beef, a whole beef, or quarter beef. That was  just kind of the way you did it, and it still kind of is now.
06:36But if I drop that number down to two to 300 bucks, I think the response is close to 70 % could afford two to 300 bucks for a bulk food purchase. I thought, aha, well, I got to figure out how to divide this beef up small enough that people could afford a share, but it didn't cost more than two or 300 bucks. So that's what we did. And we called it a family farm beef box. And where I live right here in central Nebraska,
07:03Custer County, there's literally 30 times more cattle than people. the whole buy local thing does not work very well for the guys raised in beef in my County.  Um, but I knew if I go from where I live to Omaha, Nebraska, and I drive down the interstate, there's a million people in Nebraska from here to Omaha. Sure. And I could, I could meet people along the way and offer this, offer them this beef box. And so, so there I was.
07:32Underwater with the bank no money left my wife reached into her sock drawer and she at the time she made little baby blankets and baby bow ties and had some little sewing things that she made and sold  She she saved money that she made from those  those little sales and she had a thousand dollars. Mm-hmm. And that was our last money and She loaned me her thousand dollars so I could butcher a beef  and I got on this Facebook thing
08:01And I had a buddy help me design a website and  I built the website and he helped me make the logo.  And, uh, and I got on there and I tried to make friends with people and, I made my first Facebook post and it was a picture of my wife pulling a couple, like my little kids in a wagon. And I don't remember exactly what it said, but something cute along the lines of, who wants to go for a ride? You know,  we're going to be  running through, you know, like some beef, da da da.
08:31real generic and my buddy that was helping me who was a, you know, some sort of business web guru fella from Lexington, Kentucky. He told me, he said, you can't post that. I said, why not? He said, well, that doesn't even look like an ad. I thought, brilliant. It doesn't look like an ad. I said, man, I ignore ads. Be honest, you ignore ads too. And so that...
09:00From that moment, that became my marketing strategy was to create content that was  cute enough or engaging enough that people actually wanted to look at it. So I didn't have to pay them to try to convince them to look at an advertisement, which none of us want to do.  I can't compete with Omaha Stakes. They might spend millions of dollars a year on advertising.  I don't have any money.  So I got to create something that people want to look at.
09:28So that's what I did. so  we butchered that beef. I spent my wife's money.  And I thought, you know, what could happen is I might have to drive to Omaha, 250 miles one way from my house, and deliver one of these boxes of beef.  Okay, well, let's go for it. Worst case scenario, I sell one box. I have a sister who lives in Omaha. I'll go visit my sister, say hi.
09:56deliver the one box and then we eat the beef.  And that would be the end of my beef business. ah But that's not how it went.  No, it turned out I sold that whole beef that first try  and I went and I got it delivered. And once you know it, the very first order I ever got on our new website was Mrs. Conkey from Omaha, Nebraska.
10:24today, eight years later, Mrs. Conkey still buys beef from me. Awesome. And some of those people, those first couple weeks and months, there's multiple of them that still are with me today, eight years later. And so that's the model that I went with. I call it relationship-based marketing. Let's get to know people and then let's serve them.
10:49you let's do a good job. They've got a need. Let's, let's offer to serve them that need. People like to eat. People like to eat good food. Hey, I know how do that. You know, let's get together. So that, that was our, our start of family farm beef box and kind of,  and, what we, what we offer. then COVID happened. I had dabbled just a little bit with shipping beef prior to COVID.  actually,
11:16had a guy from a British guy who lived in South Carolina.  And we ended up talking on the phone because we  just connect with people and stuff. And he was asking about this beef. I remember him saying, um you've been telling me all about this beef here and I've got to try some of this. You've got to figure out a way to send it to me. I said, I don't know. You're in South Carolina.  It's July.  But  I knew people did it.  I knew Omaha Steaks did it.
11:46But at the time it wasn't a thing. There's different places that do it now, but this is before HelloFresh and ButcherBox and you know, like, and maybe ButcherBox was just getting rolling, you know?  But people didn't ship food. They didn't ship beef. And so I got online, how do you ship frozen beef? And I'm not kidding. It was like the one thing on Google that you couldn't find out how to do. oh UPS and FedEx was the only thing that would come up and I searched a lot and it was, you know,
12:14Well, you do this, some cooler packs, a styrofoam cooler, and then you next day air it or two day air it. of course, UPS tells you to next day air it because if you put $300 worth of beef in the box, then they want $350 just to ship it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I would tell you to do that too if I was owning the shipping company. But I just knew Omaha Steaks didn't pay that much. And so I...
12:37you know, what do use for packaging? And I started hunting around. I was looking at Omaha Steaks website and there's this picture of beef and in the background there was this cooler. I was looking at this company that made these coolers and I'm looking at their cooler and I go, uh-huh, huh? And I called up the company. said, do you make coolers from all steaks?  I said, yes, we do.  I said, want some.  Turned out there wasn't anything special about them.
13:06And, uh, and I told that boy in South Carolina, I said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to send you this beef and if it's good, when it lands, you send me a check. I had no idea if it'd be good or not. Yeah. And so I sent it to him five days to South Carolina in July. And I thought, well, I don't think it's going to work, but if it works, I can ship beef anywhere. Yep. It doesn't get worse than that.
13:35five days in July to South Carolina. And it worked. And it was still good. And the guy sent me a check and he bought several more beef boxes over the years. uh And so  I had started dabbling with that a little bit and then COVID happened and nobody wanted to go anywhere. so the whole,  I had drop sites, I'd meet people and hand them out, but I was like, well, that's kind of off the table now. And so I just went to shipping everything  and uh it turned out it took.
14:03It took away a little bit of the enjoyment of shaking people's hands and visiting and everything, but it also made it, I was taking two trips a month to go deliver this beef  and,  but it also limited me to Nebraska. Well, now I ship beef all over the country every Monday.  And, um, and so that, that was a little bit of a game changer as well. Yeah. That leads me to another question.  What kind of regulations are you?
14:30having to deal with to ship your beef.  So there's a couple uh steps. um The main regulation falls on the butcher shop,  not the farmer.  so we do use a USDA inspected butcher shop. And then once it comes  from leaves the butcher shop to my place, it's all wrapped. I mean, I'm not cooking it. So
14:59I do have a license from the state of Nebraska and I  put it on my wall  and it's not very complicated. If I remember right, it's called an itinerant food vendors license. uh I believe that's the name and  whichever state you're in, it might be a little different,  but they came out. They're supposed to come out once year. I don't think they even come out every year, but they come out on occasion  and they look at my freezers and
15:29I mean, it's, it's,  I tell people come over to my, my place and prepare to be underwhelmed. You know, it's, it's not fancy,  but, uh, you know, it's, fine. And so we were approved. then once,  once in my history,  somebody from the federal USDA showed up a year ago, I think something like that. And, and I, it's not something that I asked for. He just saw me online and was.
15:59If you're  kind of bio food terrorism, I don't know, but they,  they came out and turned out I'm supposed to be signed up with the federal government. I mean, there was no penalty for not being like, just said, well, here, let's fill out this form.  And I told them kind of what I did and stuff like that. asked a few questions and there wasn't even any cost to it. but they, so I have, I'm, I'm FDA  approved on some level.
16:27you know, for, what we're doing.  So it wasn't a whole lot of, um, bells and whistles and hoops to jump through. Good. No, no, no. If you want to have a butcher shop, that's a different story. If you want to cut the meat, that's a different story.  Uh, if you want to take the meat from the, from the processing plant that has,  um, their ducks in a row, you know, then you're talking about following qualifications. Like you don't have.
16:56chemicals  and stuff where you're storing the beef  and  like, okay,  that's all right.  And uh they wanted a thermometer in all the freezers, which wasn't something that I necessarily had. Yeah. But they're like, yeah, get a thermometer to make sure it's frozen. like, well, look in there, there's ice, you know,  okay.  But
17:21You know, it's, it's, was, that was something they wanted, but yeah, nothing, nothing at all crazy. You know, didn't have to go build on stainless steel cupboards or anything  to qualify.  Awesome. I'm so glad that it was a fairly easy, simple  solution for you because  there's a lot of states where it's not an easy, simple solution a lot of the time.  I did, I did have my ducks in a row to begin with. When I started, I called
17:51the state office, and this is an interesting little story. I hadn't thought about this in a while. Eight years ago, I called the state office and I told them exactly what I wanted to do. And I talked to the enforcer fellow for the state health and wellness department, whatever they were called, health department, the guy I would get in trouble with if I violated something. Like this would be the guy that would get me in trouble. This is what I want to do. So I made it very clear.
18:21what the plan was, I want to take a beef, I'm going to pay for the processing, I'm going to bring it home, I'm going to divide it up, I'm going to send it out in boxes. And I think I told him, like, I didn't know how to ship then, but you know, I asked, know, could we could have the potential to ship across the country, you know, just because like, well, it's a possibility. And so he went through everything we were doing. And he told me, you know, need to follow this guideline.
18:52Uh, as long as it's packed there,  um, you know, it's, it's okay if you do this, it's okay if you do that. It's okay if you do this. Okay. Very good. And I was golden.  And  I think for the most part, the way somebody gets in trouble with any of these regulations  is  if you make somebody upset  and they turn you in. so I had, there's actually a friend of mine who also sold beef.
19:21who has come and gone since then, ah who was upset at me because I was selling beef.
19:29And  I talked to him, I'm like, man, look how many people are in the world. Like you and I don't have enough beef for everybody. We're on the same team. We're not competing against each other.  There's way more beef eaters than we have beef.  But he didn't see it that way, which can happen. And so he was upset that I was also selling beef down the road from him. And so he turned me in.  so,  but I'd already had my ducks in a row. And so the people that I would have gotten in trouble with,
20:00already knew those guys. And so I had a conversation with them. They talked to me. They literally asked me, Glade, are you doing anything different than what we talked about? No, this is the plan. That's exactly what I'm doing. I told him, you know, that person, he lives down the road from me. He also sells beef. And you know what they told me? And he's mad, yes. Yeah, I said, you know what they told me? They said, well,
20:30I'm sorry you have neighbors like that. You won't be hearing from us again. Nice. But that only happened because  I made an effort to be transparent and talk to the people I needed to talk to and knew  what rules I had to abide by. And I was willing to do that.  Okay, cool. um So I have other questions and we've been talking for probably a little over 15 minutes. So  we have 15 minutes left.
21:00When you're talking about your cattle, I don't want to know exactly how many cattle you have, but do you have a big herd or a small herd? Well, can tell you.  part of our  thought process of We Are Family Farm Beef Box  is  we wanted to make  beef available every week. And to do that with a cow herd  is pretty daunting task because usually you have one or two harvest per year. Right.
21:29And so I knew from the get go, uh this wasn't going to work if I was going to do it on my own. I was going to have to have some help. And so I network with some basically some neighbors to be able to supply the butcher shop to keep  our goal is basically a thousand pounds a week, approximately is our, is our goal, which is basically two steers. So we're not a huge deal. ah You know, a hundred, a hundred ish.
21:58head of cattle per year is kind of where we're at currently. Okay. And so that's, uh, now I've got about a hundred head of cows, but they, they, dynamics don't work to be able to, to have them ready to harvest every other way, you every week.  yeah. Yeah. And I'm assuming if you're just doing one or two at a time, it's more expensive than, than the big culling at the time of year when most people do it. uh
22:27As far as processing charges or... Yeah. The processing charges are stable. Okay. As far as that goes. Yeah. So, know, in our little butcher shop, I think they'd be a normal size butcher shop. So they handle 15 to 20 head of cattle per week. So if we're at two, you know, we're a chunk of what they do. You know, they're a small business too. You know. Yeah, absolutely.
22:57The one thing that I can vouch for or attest to here is if you find a good butcher shop,  support them because butchering is an art form. There are so many butcher shops that  are not as good as other butcher shops. That's the nicest way I can put it. If you find one that you like, stick with them and support them.  And  it's hard work  and  nobody gets rich being a butcher.  No.
23:27I've been approached before like you should start your own, you should start your own butcher shop. You know, right now I,  so I'm paying this year in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars a year for butchering fees  for processing. And so if we would grow a little bit,  three or four head, you know, kind of trend the way we have been. Sure. Could, could at some point, could I look at running a butcher shop? Oh, if I wanted to,  you got to really.
23:57want to cut stakes. know, that's it's a lot of work. And then, know, and then you have headaches of trying to keep help. And, and it just you got to love butchering is what it amounts to. And it's, it's really hard on your body too. I mean, just the, the knife work alone, your hands would hurt so much, you know? Yup. Yeah. I, I, I said, I don't particularly want to cut stakes.
24:26You know, I'm happy to pay these guys $100,000 a year to cut my stakes and they do a good job.  Absolutely.  So,  um,  is, so do you, do you breed your cattle? Do you have baby cows on the ground? Yeah, we have, uh, we, we have a couple different times,  but, uh, we'll, we'll have some calves dropping here pretty soon. What they  is typically considered a fall calving herd.  So.
25:01You know, as, for the most part, I've looked at family farm beef box, really, uh, you know, I started it as a way to buy groceries. Sure. And then I took what I learned over a couple of few years and, and you have to just have a lot of ambition and desire. And if your kids are hungry, that gives you ambition and desire. So I, I learned, I had, forced to learn things and how to, how to market the beef and how to get things sold. And basically I took that knowledge and.
25:31And then  rolled it into,  I work for  a fella now that I market breeding stock of cattle. So we specialize in mama cows basically. And so I took that first year of business without any budget. You know, I guess I think it's an inspirational story for somebody just starting out. If you're hungry enough, this is what you can do.  We hit right at 200,000 hours worth of sales that first year.
26:00Wow, okay is what we did  Which isn't doesn't doesn't make you a millionaire that was gross sales of all that beef and you know  Ten percent of that is 20 grand, you know, so if you've got some kids  You know, we I  I scratched around underneath the poverty level for quite a while You know trying to farm and do things and I'm not against that and I and I was I really enjoyed that time of life honestly uh As we learned and we built
26:29Um, and we struggled and we didn't have any money and I never took a food stamp. You know, we just, we just did without, uh, I like to tell the story. One year it was  my, daughter's birthday. She was five or so six and I didn't have any money. so,  just cause you don't have money doesn't mean you can't do things. It means you have to be more creative. I did have some old boards and if I drove down the road, just a few miles, there's a gravel pit where they work on roads and everything and they'll give you sand for free.
26:58And so I built her a sandbox, which was a pretty good gift. It didn't cost me anything,  but it had to be more creative.  so that really  helped develop our family life and structure and being grateful for things, which I think is so important. We're not grateful for things in this country.  Everything is expected and anticipated and I got to have it now and I deserve it now.  Well, we went through that and then I took that and we sell.
27:26you know, 10 or 15 or more million dollars worth of breeding stock with right livestock across the country from, send cows up to your country, up to Minnesota and Michigan, and we deal in semi loads of cows. And so that's, that's my, that's what pays the bills now is cattle marketing. And so then I could start doing family farm beef box just, just for fun, because I like it. good. And then as I've found is you can, if you can do things,
27:54run a business for fun and you don't have to have the money. know, boy, the story is about trying to, because I would have to coordinate with buddies that had cattle that were ready to slaughter to be able to get my next beef ready. You know, I would, I'd have a hundred bucks in my bank account and I would send two beef to the butcher shop. At one point I'd been going a little while there. sent four beef to the butcher shop. And so
28:20And the way  they had it worked out at the butcher shop is when you picked up the beef, they  would  collect the money that actually went to my buddy, the farmer,  and you paid for the processing all at the same time. You couldn't pick up your beef until you paid for the beef and the processing. that way, had, you know, the guy who had the beef was my buddy,  he got paid before I got the beef. Yes. And so  I would pick up that beef  and that for beef was like $12,000.
28:50$14,000. can't remember right now. $14,000. I got a hundred bucks in my bank account, but I pick it up on a Friday and I write the check every, every time I did it every other week. I'd write a check. got a hundred bucks in my bank account, but I had two weeks, you know, that, that beef hangs in that cooler for two weeks. I know I got to pick it up. I got to get it sold. And so I got to find customers. You can't just put up a sign and wait. You've got to find customers. I got to go get it delivered. So I would pick it up on Friday.
29:20bring it home, pack it up the next morning.  I would go to Omaha on Saturday. I'd get it sold. I'm hustling on the way down because people wouldn't show up. And I'm making phone calls trying to like find what can I do with these two people didn't show up. That's that's $400. It's $500. Okay,  I got it. I got to sell those ones. And so then I get back on a Monday morning, I go back to the bank and I deposit money. And I deposit $12,600.
29:47I needed $12,500 and I covered the check. never bounced a check. But then I got $100 in the bank account. haven't bought any groceries yet. I still got $400 worth of beef in the freezer. So got to hurry up and sell that beef because you can't pay your light bill with beef. I got to sell that beef so I can pay the light bill and buy a few groceries. I get the beef sold. There's four or 500 bucks. So I buy some groceries and I pay the light bill.
30:15and I got $100 again, I gotta go pick up more beef. So we did that for a couple of years. uh that was just, it was a fun and exhausting period of life. That is defined as hustle, Glade. That is some hustle, man. Yeah, and I was telling that story to somebody the other day and  the kid said, well, that's just like what  you did, wasn't it, Mom? And said, well, no, we would have never wrote a check that we couldn't cover.
30:43Like we survived being poor  and we were grateful and we were happy, but I never would have wrote a check that I couldn't cover. I said, and I'm looking back, said, yeah, I can't say that I would advise it,  but  you know, there's a lot of prayer involved. There's no way this could have happened if  God hadn't have blessed what we were trying to do. I just, I'm not that good.  Every  week  I would be within a few dozen dollars. Like you kidding me?
31:13I didn't, I'm not that talented. I can't find the exact number of customers  to get that covered. ah Exactly. I'm not oversell.  I mean, I didn't oversell and I didn't undersell. It wasn't like I had 20 boxes of beef that I could sell and I didn't get 50 orders. I wish I did, but  I get 20 orders. Yep. And so that's what we did.  This is why I  love my podcast so much, Glade.
31:42stories like that because you were busting your ever-loving ass to make this happen  and you still love it and you are helping people. So I have one last question.  I looked at your website and your beef is definitely reasonably priced. I'm going to actually talk to my husband about the next time we want to get some.  We might have to order some from you,  but uh what's the shipping cost like? Like if we were going to do that every other month.
32:10subscription. 10-15 bucks or something. Most of the shipping costs is padded into that price. Okay. There's, depending on where you're at,  it'll add 5, 10, 15 bucks,  something like that.  It's pretty close to that price.  Oh, okay. That's fabulous. Great. Good to know.  And where can people find you? Tell me your website. Familyfarmbeefbox.com. Okay. Fantastic.
32:36Thank you so much for your time.  always, people can find me at atinihomesteadpodcast.com.  Glade, I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you so much. Well, thank you kindly. All right. Bye.
 

Bad Baxter Farm

Today I'm talking with Blaze at Bad Baxter Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Blaise at Bad Baxter Farm in Oklahoma. Good morning, Blaise. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Oklahoma this morning?  It's cooling off. So I think I'm the only one that's  not happy about it, to be honest.
00:26I am so thrilled that it is cooling down in Minnesota this week. I cannot tell you, I am giddy. I'm going to make sourdough bread on Wednesday or Thursday because the  high is only supposed to be like 62.  And  I heard on one of your other podcasts that you have a mass amount of tomatoes to process. um Well,  we thought we did until the blight decided that it was going to arrive and  stop the plant.
00:56We still have tomatoes coming in, but we are not going to have as many as we really thought we were.  just pray for me the next summer is better because last year sucked. This year has been half better than that. So maybe next year it'll be good again. Yeah, I'm harvesting or I'm actually processing some enchilada sauce this morning. And I think we're pulling ours early just because of the cool down and they've kind of slowed.
01:22slowed their roll a bit, but my husband was talking about it. We felt like we grew plenty this year and I just don't think you can ever grow enough tomatoes.  We grew over 250 plants. We should be literally stacking crates of tomatoes right now and that is not happening. And I have  so many bad words in my head about it, but I will not utter any of them on the podcast because they don't do that. So I am very disappointed. I'm very sad about the whole thing, but it'll be fine.
01:51We have probably five or six gallon size ziplocks of  frozen cut up tomatoes to can  in October when it's actually cold out so we can open the windows. Yeah.  So we will have some pasta sauce this winter, but we definitely haven't been able to provide for our community the way we're hoping to.  Yeah. So I could go on and on. I don't want to, or I will just cry.  I might anyway.  It's always a learning experience.
02:22Yeah,  it's been rough.  I  didn't realize how sad I am about it. Wow.  Okay, so here we go again.  Mary cries on the podcast again.  I'm sorry, I brought up your tomatoes. It's okay. The ones we got were beautiful and they taste great. So at least we have some that is the upside this year.  So I have two questions about your name and the name of your place.  Is Blaze a nickname?
02:52Um, it's been my lifelong nickname. actually, uh,  when I lived in California way back in the day, I was a hair salon owner and that was the color of my hair color. So when I was in beauty college, everybody started calling me plays. Okay. it's back.  All right.  And then why is it bad Baxter farm? Oh my gosh. I have so many different feelings about our farm name, but, um,  when we moved to Oklahoma, I just.
03:20I thought, I guess I really regret using the word farm to be honest, now that I know more,  know what I know. But,  um, at the time we had  decided to move from California to Oklahoma. Part of it was health related and,  um, I first.
03:37I got certified as a nutrition coach through the National Academy of Sports Medicine and decided that down that rabbit hole, I wanted to grow and be responsible for all of my own food as much as possible. um so I kind of just named it Bad Baxter Farm just because I felt like we were going to be learning everything the hard way.  And I just felt like there was so much misinformation and bad information out there that...
04:03We were making a lot of mistakes. And so when we decided to like kind of start documenting our journey, I just figured I would call it bad Baxter farm because we were making a lot of bad choices and I didn't want everybody to have to do the same thing.  Well, it's attention grabbing. that's, that's helpful.  Thank you.  I guess we should have called ourselves homestead. I have a lot of friends that I mentor now and I'm constantly like, don't use the word farm, like come up with, know, and I have a friend that she just recently, um,
04:31built a home and got some acreage and she named hers um Anchored Acres. And so I'm always like, gosh, I really wish I would have chose something a little bit different than farm because I don't feel like that highlights us as much as  homestead or  farmstead or something else would have. But  I think we're pretty stuck with it at this point.  Yeah. And you're not alone in wanting to rename your place because  we named ours a tiny homestead before we even saw the place. We had a little tiny
05:02City lot back five years ago and we had been offered the chance to garden at a friend's house and so I was like we need a name and  My husband said well since we don't actually own the property were we're farming Why we just pick a generic name like a tiny homestead because it's just a little small garden and I was like I was like cool He said and he said we grow at our place in our backyard. So, you know City lot a tiny homestead. I was like,  and Since we moved in here um
05:33I really wish we had named it last resort homestead or last resort acres or something because this is it. This is where we're going to live and die. We're 55. My  husband just turned 56. I'll be 56 in November. And we  purposely sought out a place that we could love for the rest of our lives. And  I keep wanting to rebrand, but we've been a tiny homestead for over seven years. think it's too late.
06:03We always grow, but I guess it's good sometimes to just hold on to what we made ourselves from too. So that's kind of how I look at it. I guess I never realized there's a lot of sensitivity when it comes to even using the word homestead. means a lot of different things for different people. And I don't resonate a lot um as closely with farmers as I thought I would. always really thought that health and wellness and farming went hand in hand and it's not necessarily always true. So
06:30I guess I just like to explain and share my story on how I came about that, but it would have been so much easier for me to just stay in the nutrition genre.  But I had to do it all for myself. And so  it's funny because I feel like I'm angering people on all realms on some days.  Yeah. Well, you can't please everybody all the time. It's not possible. And  for me, Homestead, ranch, farm, acreage, whatever, they all kind of fall under the same umbrella for me. So I just.
07:00Until I am proven otherwise, I just assume that the people who are doing whatever they're doing under whatever the name is,  is in the name of good. And if it turns out that it's not good, then I just ignore it because I can't change them. So, yeah.  Okay. So what do you do at that Baxter farm?  We've evolved when we first, oh we actually, when we moved to Oklahoma, we were on a smaller property.
07:26And um I had fallen into meeting up with a woman that had some  local grants to process poultry for the local community and I started working under her wing. So for some time, we actually processed birds under our thousand bird exemption  for the smaller communities that couldn't afford to take 200 to 300 birds to a big facility. And that's kind of how we got our start. A  couple of local facilities had opened up and kind of
07:56started having fits about us doing that. And so it was a lot of work and we were fine with being done with that first stream of revenue for ourselves. so we had switched over after talking to Oklahoma Department of Ag.  It was like, you guys don't want us butchering birds for people anymore under this exemption. What if I were to teach classes?  And that turned out to be a much more lucrative
08:21deal  and much more fun because I feel like it's making a much larger difference in the community.  now we teach quite a few different homesteading classes.  My farm is pretty much mainly animal based just because meat is expensive and I feel like raising your own meat gives you more bang for your buck. And so we actually teach people how to process chickens, pigs,  small ruminants like sheep and goats.  I don't really do
08:49cows, although I do have a mobile processing friend. Her title is backyard butchery and she has done some on-farm beef butchering classes here for us. But  I do do canning classes and stuff like that, all about preserving the harvest, but mostly health-based. There's a lot of people out there teaching how to make jams and jellies and sorry, sourdough bread, but we really, really try to focus more on
09:17preserve, spending your time preserving nourishment that's going to sustain your longevity versus um diabetes in a jar. So that's kind of what we've switched over to doing. um I have actually just announced that this is going to be our last year of hands-on in-person classes just because there's a lot of people now, we've  kind of taught the whole state at this point and we don't have a problem booking classes, but a lot of people are
09:46asking for more online content and step by step and um like I said before, there's a lot of bad information out there and I don't want to  be the YouTuber that spends  more time on editing than  quality content. So I'm just trying to make more time to figure that out. And I feel like people like my writing. um So I'm probably going to turn it over more into blog posts of instructional step by step with pictures and videos type um things. So
10:16Hopefully that'll be a it'll be an interesting transition for me.  We've kind of stepped back  my  We've been through a lot. Actually, we lost our home a year after we are less than a year after we moved to Oklahoma  to a tornado and then my My daughter was actually paralyzed four years ago now and so luckily we've kind of stuck to the mantra grow so small we cannot fail  and that has allowed us to
10:44still be farming to this day because everything's paid for bought and paid for by cash, but I can still stay home and take care of my daughter as a full-time caretaker too. So we didn't know if we would still be doing this  and  the community has really rallied behind helping us get to a place where we can still do this. So I'm just kind of trying to like look forward to the future and be like, okay, what can we do different and modify so we can make all this work long-term. Yeah.
11:14Awesome. I think that your idea for the blog thing instead of doing a whole bunch of YouTube videos that you have to edit is a really good idea.  Only because when I try to watch a YouTube video that is instructional, I don't want to have to stop the video to do the thing and then go back and start the video again. Right. And with a blog post, you could literally print it out if you need to so it's right there in front of you. I agree and I'm a real
11:43big lover of books still. I like to read, I like to collect  knowledge. And I just think that it's so hard in that genre that there's, like I said, there's some great stuff out there, but there's also some really terrible stuff. And it's just sugarcoated with fancy titles.  I just think like there's so much more to  not, you know, the doom scrolling and the five second reads and the three second videos is just not my jam. so I end.
12:13You know, social media wise, Facebook tells me that it's my long winded posts that do the best. And so  I guess I just need to make more time for blazes.  Blazes. Yes. Yes. I love that.  While we're talking about videos,  I have had this thing kicking me in the back of the head for about a month now because  I'm always saying on the podcast, learn to cook, learn to cook, learn to cook, because it's going to save you money in the long run, because you can buy stuff in bulk and actually use ingredients to make your dinner.
12:43It's going to cost less. And I have to sit down and talk with my husband about this because it just keeps sitting in the back of my head going, hey, you're to do this. Hey, you're going to do this. And so I'm debating doing some videos where I don't necessarily have to have my face on  camera.  But like, I never quite understood what the difference was between a rolling boil and a simmer when you're heating water until I actually did it. And it's a visual thing. It's not.
13:13You can't explain it to someone in words. You need to show them what it looks like. And I have a stove. I have a pan. I have water. I could take a video and explain that this that you're seeing is a rolling boil and this that you're seeing is a simmer. And the other thing that I would say is if you want to learn to cook, start with learning how to boil water and how to get it down to a simmer by turning the heat down enough.
13:36and scramble eggs because you can scramble an egg, you can figure out the rest. So you're not wrong. I was like, I could also just take a picture of me scrambling eggs and what it should look like from when the egg hits the pan to when it's actually done and ready to eat, you know, little tiny things like that. people can, are a lot of faceless pages out there that do amazing. Like you don't, you don't have to have, I feel the same as you. And especially with privacy, when it comes to my daughter, I try to be very
14:03careful a lot of the times because there's a lot of hateful people out there too. So there's nothing wrong with doing faceless posts. And I think it's smart moving forward too.  We kind of focus on that with...  I find that the boiling water and scrambled eggs thing very, very relevant when it comes to our cheese making class because people are so intimidated by making cheese and cheese is so expensive at the grocery store and so simple to make, but it's just a mental block for some people to just...
14:30need to see those step-by-step breakdowns of the process to make it as easy as it actually is.  Yeah, my son, my 23-year-old son made venison stew  on what is today's Monday. He made it Saturday.  And  I said to him, said, venison is a pretty tough meat unless you do certain things to make it tender. And he's like, I know.  He said, I'm going to cut it in small pieces and I'm going to beat the hell out of it with the tenderizer.
15:00And then I said, okay. And he said, mom, he said, I've seen you makes do a billion times. He said, I can do it. He said, if I have questions, we answer them. I was like, yes, of course.  And so he made it and it turned out amazing.  And he was very proud of himself. And I'm really proud of him for making it. And he said, it was really easy. And I said, honey, I said, cooking is about time and intent.  You have to have the intent to make something and you have to make the time to do it.
15:29He looked at me like I was the dumbest person on earth and went, no kidding.  I love to cook, but I totally agree. You  need to have the time to make it amazing.  Anytime we're in a rush, we never do nearly as well and it never turns out as well. I have uh my middle daughter, she loves to cook too. And she recently got to come home and visit.  My two oldest are animal care specialists in the military. And so she came home a few weeks ago and...
15:57cooked all kinds of stuff for us and I even learned some things.  Don't you love it when the kids make dinner? I love it when the kids make dinner. It is so amazing to me.  Number one, I love to cook. So I tried really hard  to teach them to cook and invite them into the kitchen and let them help. And so when they make dinner for me, it's like,  number one, I did my job. And number two, I didn't have to cook tonight. This is great.  So true.
16:27Adult children are wonderful to have around when they're around because  they get to help and they get to be around and visit and catch you up and then they go home to their own homes and then you relax again. Yes, yes. Yeah, I raised three strong girls and they're all so different, but  I still learn from them daily.  Yeah, it's crazy. It is crazy to me that they start out as these completely dependent, tiny humans.
16:54And then they turn into these people who learn things that you don't know anything about and share it with you. So true. I think it was my youngest daughter that actually got us on um board with doing  recipe bundles. We sell recipe bundles online for, because everybody kept asking me to do a cookbook and I'm like, I cannot even see.
17:16My thing with homesteading is, like all  of these people who are spending so much time editing, are they really homesteading? Because I don't have time for this. And I would love, I would absolutely love to write a cookbook, but I am such a perfectionist. I don't think that I would ever get it done, but the recipe bundle cards didn't sound that difficult. And my daughter helped me set it up digitally. And so anytime we have.
17:37a class, whether it's cheese making or canning or pig butchering, we just put a little recipe bundle together of five or six recipes that we discussed or utilized or taste tested in class. And we offer it free to the class goers and then anybody else who didn't go to the class can just download them for five to $10, depending on how big they are. And so that's been a nice revenue stream that once we set it up, it's just consistent whenever somebody happens to purchase it.
18:05uh I believe she ended up helping me with my  fodder and food foresting ebook as well. So I just would like to find more time for stuff like that just because I don't find it as overwhelming as a novel,  writing a novel or  editing reels on a constant basis.  Yeah, editing is such a pain in the butt and I don't want to discourage people from  doing video.
18:32I really don't. that's your jam and you want to play with it, go for it. But the reason that I love the way I do my podcast is because it's just conversations. Unless  someone says something  really inflammatory or uses one of the big bad swear words,  I have very little editing time at I'm trying not to, by the way. Yeah, me too. I swear like a pirate in real life.  And I try really hard to not.
19:02I mean, yes, I will say bullshit here and there,  but the big ones I'm not going to say because I don't want to have to edit it out and I don't want to come across that way.  In my real life. don't watch a lot of TV or spend time watching a lot of YouTube unless it's just me trying to fall asleep at night. But I'm always walking around trying to do things with my phone in my pocket and I want to learn something. So I'm constantly listening to podcasts while I'm working in the garden or.
19:31doing my farm chores. just think that it's a little bit  easier to make time for something like that. And you can feel like you're learning while you're working.  The weirdest thing about podcasts for me is that when my kids were younger, I didn't listen to podcasts, not because they didn't exist. mean, you know, their youngest is 23. So it wasn't all that long ago. They were still underfoot. It was because the way that I would gauge what was going on around me was through sound. And if I had earbuds in,
20:01I couldn't hear the kids in the background upstairs or outside. And so I didn't listen to podcasts. And now if I don't listen to at least one podcast a day, I feel like I forgot something. Yes. Yeah. I really enjoy it. It's connected me to a lot of really great people too.  I had read a book,  I think I had had surgery and I was bedridden for a minute. And so I had read a book.  Um, actually I remember the name of it. It was called farm to fork meat riot by Nidhi Bali. And
20:30It  talked about our food system and how pretty much anything in the grocery store is basically graded at a D minus at the best.  And so  it really opened up my eyes to  just wanting to have full control over my food. And nobody around me was doing it or was still really into subsidized  feeds and not trying to do better for ourselves as far as like, once you know things, you can do better.  so I had read her book and found a bunch of farmers names and I
21:00like such a geek, but I reached out to several of them and there are some of them that are still some of my, what I would say my best friends and I've never even met them, but it  really um actually opens up your world to people that you may not have access to otherwise. So  I think it's pretty cool.  And  I almost forgot because I was sad about my tomatoes in the beginning of the podcast. ah
21:24I have mentioned on the podcast a couple of times a place in Minnesota that grows tomatoes all year round.  They were called Bushel Boy Tomatoes,  the company.  And that's where we would get our tomatoes in the wintertime if we wanted fresh tomatoes from the store.  This goes back to your D minus thing. ah They actually did a really fantastic job of producing delicious nutritional food in their greenhouses in the wintertime.
21:52And I just found out a month ago that they have sold to a different company.  I am  so sad that they sold it and it sounds like the new company is going to continue growing tomatoes. So hopefully they'll do as good a job as Bushel Boy did. But you're right, a lot of the stuff in the store, I won't say all of it because like I said, this place did a really good job and they're local to us. But a lot of the stuff that gets shipped in,
22:22is God only knows how old it does. It's like anything and the nutritional content can't be that great if it doesn't taste like anything. Well, and the sad, sad reality is, they, your, your source probably sold out because they weren't feeling enough support. And I constantly, constantly preach that as much as I say it's, you know, I'm kind of the anti-farmer at some point. I have a uh local group called Oklahoma farm to table that's eight years strong and  it's all about connecting.
22:50community and consumers to their local farmers so that we can support local farmers because the more we ask and demand for better,  the more they'll provide for us. But when you're hearing these farmers saying that all through COVID, you know, people were supporting local and buying the eggs and buying the meat and then it just stopped because fast food and, you know, online shopping is just more convenient. It's just so sad and frustrating because we need our farmers to stay around.
23:19and they need incentive to stay around. So if we can't grow it ourselves like I'm doing, then we need to be buying it as locally as possible. Absolutely. um A friend of mine asked if she could sell her duck eggs at our farm stand. She asked this spring and I was like, of course you can.  We can't keep her duck eggs in stock. People have been buying duck eggs right alongside our chicken eggs, ours. And I was a little concerned that
23:47people wouldn't want the duck eggs or they would want the duck eggs instead of our chicken eggs and I was like we'll try it and see what happens.  There have been people who have bought two dozen chicken eggs from our chickens and a dozen duck eggs from her ducks on the same day in the same purchase.  Absolutely. I'm all in on duck eggs by the way but I
24:07I totally think that the more,  you know, all these little home farm stands are  popping up all over the place. And I just think they're fantastic because then you're literally just supporting your neighbor. And I think the more variety you have, the better because it makes people more enticed to stop. And when she asked me about it,  I thought about it for about 30 seconds, you know, because she texted me about it.  And I was like, I don't think that Minnesota has a problem with that. You know, the Ag Department, I think that's fine.
24:35Even though it's not a product of our farm, I don't think they care that our friend is going to sell her duck eggs in our farm stand. I think it's fine.  And it'll bring new people in because we haven't had duck eggs at the farm stand the last three summers.  we're here. And it's been so great. mean, I don't think, I think there's been maybe a handful of days since we opened back in April, I think it was April, that we haven't had somebody stop by for something. And it's been so much fun.
25:05to have people text me and say,  I picked up a flat of tomatoes today and I Venmo'd you, because we have the Venmo QR code on the board. And I'm telling you, Blaze, there is nothing better than the email noise happening and you look and it's like 25 bucks for tomatoes that we sold.  Like nine.  Oh, good. Somebody took them. Somebody's going to enjoy them. And that money is going right back into the business.
25:30we're  going to try and do something like that out here. We're pretty rural though, so it'll be interesting. But we recently just found out one of our streets is going to be opened up all the way to the highway. And nobody in the neighborhood was super excited about it. ah I have a, my best friend lives down the street and they're going to be right on the corner of that road. And so we were just kind of like, you know, we, I have the pool as far as following goes.
25:56I think that we can do a farm stand on that corner and have it do pretty well. And I love that idea because it keeps me closer to my daughter. And that's been my thing is I can't go out and do farmers markets instead of booths for hours and hours because I have to be here for her. But we're discussing when that road opens up doing something small like that too. So  I'm excited to work with them. I think it would be really cool. Yeah. And the best thing about a farm stand is you don't need it to be huge. Our farm stand is like eight by 10, eight feet by 10 feet, I think.
26:27Yeah, that's perfect. Because really,  know, seasonally, you're not going to have stuff all the time. But I think that's the benefit of those is you don't have to have set, I mean, I guess set hours per se, but even, you know, just a few days a week or whatever works for you. But I think going in with my neighbors makes it even more convenient because we can just split it up if we needed to  not have to man it all the time.  And the one thing that I would suggest is if you're trying to do it on
26:55on the cheap but still have it look nice  is there are people who are selling the little sheds all the time on Facebook Marketplace or  Craigslist or eBay or whatever, know, used sheds.  You can get one of those if you have friends who can move it for you. I don't know if you do, but if you do,  you can get one of those and move it and you can you can revamp it. You can repaint it. You can shore it up. You can make it what you want it to be. I love that.
27:23Yeah, something simple like that sounds perfect. Simple and close to home. That's what I need.  Yeah. actually bought a shed from a place from Tough Shed, T-U-F-F Shed, um because we just didn't have the time to mess around with it. And we happened to have the funds to do it. And it really wasn't that expensive anyway, because it was back  four years ago. um
27:49but it's red.  looks like a little barn shed. It's really cute. So we're kind of in love with it. That would match my house.  But it has been such a godsend because we have a big driveway. It's not long, but it's a good size driveway and it has a turnaround. So people pull in and  they cut to the right, they go around the circle and they end up right in front of the little shed. So even if three people stop in, we have room for people to park, which has been amazing.
28:19um But there are so many things that you can do  if you're willing to put in the blood, sweat and tears to do it. And it sounds like you are. And um I love that you're going to do online classes. I was just interviewing somebody last week um for the Homestead English Conference. It's their second year and I think they're in West Virginia.  And I said, so are you going to have any of the
28:47the breakout sessions or the whatever's  online. And she said, not this year. She said, well, we're going to try next year because right now they don't have the  equipment or people to do videos of each class time.  And she said, and plus she said, when people get together, amazing things happen. So we've wanted to keep it kind of in person. said, we've had a lot of requests for it to be online too. And so there's some real benefits to it being
29:16virtual, but there are also benefits to things being in person. So I guess it's the best of both worlds thing. You've already done all the in-person stuff for people and now people want it online too. Yeah. And I totally agree. Going to some of those conventions can really  rev up your engine when you've been feeling burned out for sure. My husband and I use a lot of those  out of state conferences for little mini vacations and we'll go. m Matter of fact, think I...
29:44Mother Earth News Festival used to have a great little convention.  We've gone to a couple in a couple of different states and we would go have a good time and come back like ready to rock with new ideas and new friends and new energy. So I definitely agree. There's like benefits to both of them. I just think it's so hard to sort through, you know, because there are so many people trying to do all of it and there's so many new things popping up all the time that trying to  manage your time with
30:13commitments and what's going to be valuable to you or what's going to be a waste of time.  guess  my perfectionism is I don't ever want to be somebody's waste of time or waste of money.  I'm very much  my own worst enemy when it comes to getting stuff. But I think I've even posted a quote myself, sometimes done is better than perfect.  that's true when you're doing the dishes. m
30:38but it's not necessarily true when you're trying to sell somebody an ebook or you want to present a recipe in its best light. oh So there's got to be a balance in there somewhere. Yeah, you cannot half ass a recipe because the people who use that recipe will be very angry when they're done. Right, right.  And I'm such uh a pinch of this and a dash of that. And it's so funny because my daughter, I was saying when she came to visit, she
31:03She made some Bria taco meat and I loved it. And I was in my brain started spinning because I'm like, there's gotta be a way to safely can this. So  I was trying to have her write the recipe down and I just cracked up laughing when she finally did it because it was definitely like a pinch of this and a dash of this. So  we shall see what will come of that.  And you'll end up changing it as you make it because that's what we do as cooks. We try stuff. We try stuff the first time  the way we're told and we try it and we taste it and we go,
31:33That's okay, but if I did this, it would be better. Absolutely. Yeah. And people are constantly asking for recipes of something that I'll share a picture of. I'm like, I just didn't even write it down.  I just did it. Yeah. And, I'm going back to bruschetta again, because it's what I make a lot in the summertime because of the tomatoes we get from the garden. My podcast is completely centered around tomatoes. Let's just admit it. uh
32:02When I used to make it, I found a recipe for it because I had it as an appetizer at a restaurant and I was like, what is this called? And they said bruschetta and I said, okay.  Went home, looked at bruschetta recipes and went, oh, this is super easy. I can do this. And I made it exactly the way the recipe said the first time. Now when I make it, I cut up oh four or eight tomatoes that I think look about the right size and I  cut up a handful of fresh basil that I think looks to be about right.  And I throw in
32:31But ton of garlic because we love garlic and we put in as much mozzarella cheese as we want because You can't measure mozzarella cheese any different than garlic got to be measured with the heart,  right? And I throw all that in the bowl and it's all chopped up and it looks beautiful and it smells good  and then I put a little bit of uh Mrs. Dash is the brand name because we use garlic and herb seasoning  and Then I pour olive oil into the mix
33:01to where I think it looks right. And then I pour  balsamic vinegar in to where I think it looks right and I stir it up and I eat it. And it tastes amazing. Now to tell someone the actual measurements, I have no idea. I don't even know what the original  recipe was. Don't know where I found it.  once,  this is the best thing about cooking and I wish I could get everybody to embrace it.  Once you learn the basics,
33:29It is art. You can do whatever you want to do with it.  Absolutely. I totally agree. I actually say that a lot of  our classes is  the art is in the details and it changes every single time and season and with the flavor of  the, I was going to say breed because I'm used to talking about animals.
33:47So the variety of the tomato, and I will say, that actually sounds very similar to a gazpacho that I make. And even though we're really highly animal-based here, but I can never grow enough tomatoes or peppers or garlic.  I think, would you say a butt ton of garlic? Like that's an actual accurate measurement for sure.  Yes, and when I say butt ton, I am not being um sacrilegious or swarish or anything.
34:15If you look up butt ton, it was actually a measurement used in shipping.  Okay.  The old shipping across the ocean, it was a measurement  for the weight of things. Oh, that's very cool. I learned something new today. Yeah, I didn't even  know that until a couple years ago. My kids would say butt ton. I'm like, I think that's not nice to say. And my son said, look it up. And I went,
34:43He said, you how you used to tell us, look it up? And he said, look it up. And I said,  B-U-T-T-T-O-N. And he said, yeah. And I looked it up and I was like, oh, okay. Have at it, say butt-ton all you want. I'm good with that.  I'm surprised I didn't know that because I'm very much into the history of food and um books that teach our ancestral  change into agriculture and stuff like that. So I'm surprised I didn't already know that.  I learned something new today. Good.
35:12Good. Everybody needs to learn something, at least one new thing a day.  All right, Blaze, try to keep these to half an hour. I feel like you and I could talk all day, but I know you don't have time and I know I don't have time, but I would love to.  Where can people find you? um Bad Baxter Farm on most social media platforms. I'm most active on Facebook. That's where our biggest following is. And then, like I said, locally, we have a group on there as well called Oklahoma Farm to Table. um
35:39My ebook and my recipe bundles are available on Buy Me a Coffee, Bad Baxter Farm,  and I hope to get my sub stack blog post going a little bit better, but that is where we're gaining emails for our future blog posts and instructionals.  Awesome. And keep doing what you're doing, but give yourself some grace. You cannot do it all in one day. promise you.  Thank you. That was a nice chat. It was. as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.
36:09Blaze, I hope you have a wonderful week. Thank you. You too. And good luck with your tomatoes next season. Oh, thank you. I hope so.
 

Homesteading-ish 2025

Today I'm talking with Dawn at Homesteading-ish. You can follow on Facebook as well.
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.
00:11Today I'm talking with Dawn at Homesteading-ish  in West Virginia. Good afternoon, Dawn. How are you?  Great. It's nice to be here.  Oh, thank you for being here. I appreciate it. So  you are  not  the, I don't know, founder of Homesteading-ish. You are part of Homesteading-ish. So tell me what Homesteading-ish is. uh
00:39um So I'm actually one of the organizers for the event.  There are a couple of us that got together and decided that we wanted to bring something different to our community and trying to help people establish a homestead, know what to do, kind of help them build those foundational skills that they need in order to live off the land or be more sustainable, to  work on things that  they would like to do to help support their family,  providing
01:08food or um whatever other things they might need in order to make their homestead work. So we put our heads together and kind of decided that we would go this route by bringing some non-traditional resources to the table and bringing people from not just the talking head and university world but from real life experience to the table that  could have an influence over how people view homesteading and small farm life. um So
01:37That's how it was kind of born. uh it last year was our first year. It was a fantastic event. We had a great turnout. And  one of the things we love the most is that we really wanted to bring a more intimate environment. Um, we were able to really bring people together,  let them  talk with one another, meet one-on-one, actually have real life conversations in real time with people that are living a lifestyle that they are seeking to  be better at. So we were able to do that.
02:08oh This year, I hope we're going to be able to bring that same kind of intimate atmosphere, the same kind of energy, the same kind of feeling to the table where people are really going to get to get into the bones  of what they're doing and why they want to do it and how they can  accomplish all of their goals.  Awesome. And when you're referring to last year, last year was the inaugural conference for Homosteading-ish.
02:33It was, it was our very first one. So we were excited that it was so well received to be able to bring it back again a second year. Okay. So when I, when I interviewed Troy last year, cause Troy is the one that, that kind of kicked this all off from what I've been told.  He was just getting ready for the first conference and he was very, very, very excited  and a little bit nervous. I am not sure that.
03:01I'm not sure that he really knew what he got himself into, number one, and how it was going to go, number two. That's kind of what was coming through.  And so how did last year go?  it, was it well received? Were there a lot of attendees, that kind of thing? So we were all a little bit nervous last year, not really knowing what we were going to get ourselves into and what people were going to think or how the event was going to go. But honestly, um there was
03:31It almost was, I hate to even say it, but it was almost flawless. It went so well.  We had a lot of people that came from all across the country, people from as far away as  California down to Florida. um I think at one point we had at least a dozen states that were represented at the conference.  A lot of people were really hungry to receive the information that we were trying to invest in them.
03:57people came and they loved it. They were screaming to come back and hoped that we would do it a second time. Again, it goes back to that  kind of we brought people to a place where it felt like home, where they were comfortable and they could ask the hard questions and get the hard answers and dig a little deeper into topics that they were interested in and actually get to speak with our presenters one-on-one. In some instances, we had a lot of opportunity for them to be able to mingle with each other and really
04:26You know, talk to people that were like minded be able to just make connections with people around here. The chairman of our board says that more gets done before and after the meeting than during the actual meeting. And so people were able to make meaningful connections with one another and then have those conversations even before or after the conference in order to follow up on topics that they were interested in or get more.
04:53connected with someone that knew more than they did about something that they were working on. So was really, really great.  We had a great turnout.  People were really very interested  in hearing  from a different perspective. uh One of the things that we tried to do was to bridge some gaps in between, you know, the  local community and then finding resources of help for them. So if you
05:23catch the ish part of our home setting ish.  That's the in search of help part where we're saying we want to help you because this is like,  you're working on the home setting part. We're kind of in the ish part where we're here to assist you and help you. And so we wanted to be able to provide those services and bridge gaps between  maybe some.
05:44federal or state level government or whether it's a local partner or connection or another community partner or even just people in the communities that wanted to connect with one another to find better resources to help  be more sustainable with their funding or with their product or just know more about what it was they needed to do next on their homestead.  Everything from
06:07how do you even locate the property that you want all the way through to, know, now that I have my property, I want to have a high tunnel or I want to have  a, you know, work on getting things to farmers market, or  I want to find finances and funding for my farm, or, you know, I want to raise livestock.  Just  a lot of, a lot of things that were able to be  talked about and discussed and brought to light.  Resources and opportunities available  on all sides.
06:36Okay, so I know that you have the second one coming up, the second year conference. And before we get into what's going to be new at that one, I have a question for you. During the year when you aren't doing the conferences, can people still reach out to you guys for information? Yeah, so one of the things that we're building for this year is just a network of community people where we can actually
07:04um address some questions and kind of they can reach out to us and find us and we can help with resources. um For me personally,  I work  directly for the Conservation District here in our local area. So we are always available.  know,  every day we're here in the office working with people in our local community, with NRCS and with the Conservation Districts and opportunities for them to get technical assistance
07:34to help fund financial assistance. um So we're always available and that's one of the great things about bridging some of these gaps is helping people understand what resources are available to them. We provide services for free to the public and to the community. We also provide financial assistance um in a form of  reimbursement grants. So there's a lot of resources that are available and people can reach out to us. uh
08:01anytime that they  have questions and we'll try to hook them up with the correct resources. Fabulous.  Minnesota's Department of Agriculture is  really, really good. I'm in Minnesota.  I don't know if you know that, but I'm in Minnesota.  Minnesota's Department of Agriculture is super helpful. Every time I've had a question,  I try to email people first because they can get back to me on their own time instead of having to answer questions on the phone.
08:30And every time I've had a question, I have just emailed whoever is in charge of who would handle my question. And they get back to me within 24 hours usually. And it's so amazing to me that these state departments are so quickly helpful. Yeah. I mean, we have the same thing here. Our department of Ag is great to work with. They have, you know, a wealth of resources.
08:55We also work with two local universities. So we work with WVU extension and we work with WVSU, which is Western U State University extension.  they have extension agents there that were also working  as partners along with our federal and state level partners that can answer  questions or  get into topics. And  all of our presenters are very approachable as well. So if you are interested in a specific topic or you have a specific presenter or someone that you met,
09:24They're all very, very approachable and very willing to answer any questions you have and get back to you just as quickly as they can, which is a great networking tool for all of the things involved. Yeah. One of the things that's wonderful about people who are in ag or in homesteading or farming or whatever, they all tend to be very helpful and very giving souls. And it's part of the reason I love my podcast so much because I reach out to people. I'm like,
09:51I do this thing, would you come talk to me?" And they're like, of course.  And  I just love it because everyone is so willing to share what they know  or dig into it and try to find answers for me if I don't know. Yeah, I mean, we're always happy to assist. em I think sometimes it's  just important to us as it is to the other person that's asking because sometimes we want to know too.  you know, one of the reasons why we...
10:19get into the lines of work that we get into is because we do want to assist people. We do want to  be available to help them, to make them, um you know, have the resources that they need so that they can  move forward on their projects,  whatever that might be. Yes,  and you don't, okay, I was always afraid to reach out and ask a question because I wasn't ready to do the thing. I was doing research.
10:43And I felt like I might be wasting someone's time if I asked a question, got the answer and then was like, no, I'm not doing that.  That's what you guys are there for, right? You're there to help us figure out what the next step is. Absolutely. Yeah. mean that we, found that a lot of people have an idea, right? Just like you said, they have an idea there. They might be interested, but they don't really know what to do yet.
11:07And then sometimes they get into it and they get in over their head or, you know, that's more than they thought it would be, or maybe they just don't have enough resources. And so we kind of want to be able to help assist them through those processes  in order to  not be overwhelmed and not just throw them the towel and decide they're going to quit, right? We want you to be successful.  We want you to be able to do what you've set out to accomplish. And so we want to provide  all the right tools  to help, to assist you in that.
11:36Well, let me say thank you because it's people like you that make things go, you know,  we need that. mean, yeah, absolutely. For sure. We need people to start growing their own food or their own livestock or  whatever right now. It's so important. And if you have the room, start something growing. mean,  if you live in a Northern tier state right now,  it's getting late in the season and  you know, you could do cold weather crops, but
12:05What I'm saying is if you have the means to start something growing that you can eat,  probably ought to look into it.  I think that's what I'm going to say for today.  We just had that conversation actually. em And we had a committee meeting this morning  for the upcoming conference and we just had that same conversation.  Everybody can do something no matter how big or how small, like  everyone can start somewhere. And I think that's the important part. oh
12:30You may not be ready to tackle the big things, but you can certainly tackle the small things. Have a small  backyard garden, maybe just a few herbs, or maybe you want to start with a couple of chickens, or maybe you want to start with something small and you can build your way up.  I think that's the great part about the community  of homesteaders and small farm operators is that we're always willing to help one another and we learn from each other. mean, we learn new things every single day.
12:56I think helping people to understand what the expectations are, helping them to manage their expectations and understand what the balance is between where you start and  where you see people are when they've been doing it for five or six or 10 years.  There's a big difference in getting those  resources available to fill in the gaps, I think is really important, but everyone can certainly start somewhere em and do something in order to make their  journey better, right?  Yeah.
13:26I always tell people that when you start growing produce or you start raising animals,  not only are you growing produce or animals, you're growing yourself. For sure.  Absolutely. We learn something new every single day. um It's an amazing opportunity to really just get back to the way nature has intended things to be. um Growing your own food and providing for your family.
13:55There's something special that happens in that circle um that doesn't come from the grocery store and that doesn't come from, you know, other places. comes  directly from you and your connection to nature or  you and your connection to the community folks around you that are doing those things. And I think there's something really special about that. is really special. And  I have, I have such a hard time with the word special because people have overused it so much that they become
14:24It's become trite, but  in the truest sense of the word special, it is special when you grow your own food. um So I wanna, we've got 15 minutes and I wanna know, I have questions about last year's conference so that we can compare it to what's coming up for this year's conference. So  how many um presenters did you guys end up having last year? So last year we had a little under 30, I think we had about
14:5327. This year we actually have 31 total presenters. We have 36 different sessions that people can choose from to attend and that's over six different tracks. So you kind of have six different subjects and you can pick one of those subjects and stay with that whole track for the full two days or you can bounce around and pick and choose whatever session you feel like is going to best suit like your need or your information or your lifestyle or whatever.
15:23it is that you'd like. So em I'm really excited about the lineup for this year.  The schedule is fuller this year than it was last year.  And there's really a lot of great information and really amazing presenters that are coming to the table. em I really think this year's going to be better than last year. And last year was going to be hard to top.  I was going to say it's always better the second year because you guys were just getting your feet wet last year. Yeah, for sure.
15:51For sure.  You you learn  from the first one.  You figure out how to make it better. And so I think hopefully that's what we've done. We've um added some things this year,  but we've also continued to keep that same kind of  feeling of intimacy and that same kind of feeling of community that we wanted to continue to bring to the table. Okay. So  I'm trying to,  I'm trying to do a comparison thing here, but I'm failing at it.  Last year.
16:21Last year, what were the tracks that you guys kind of had in place for people? So  last year, what we had on the table,  we talked about  land preparations and management.  We had a homesteading uh Appalachian skills track where you could learn about different types of Appalachian skills. We had an Appalachian specific track. So things that were only specific to the  Appalachian region,  we had
16:50talked about financial food and security or how about security like financially and like food security. We kind of put those together. We had a track on organic and then we talked about having an urban homestead. so this year, do you want me to talk about this year? Yes. So this year we kind of changed that up a little bit and I think we
17:15Took all the things that people had from last year that they loved and then the things that they wanted to learn about. And we came up with six  new tracks. So,  um, we're going to have a farm and land management. Nice. Um, we're going to have an Appalachian homestead skills.  So again, we're going to be bringing some skill to the table. Um, growing on farmstead. So are we talking about,  uh, growing your gardens and maybe growing a market, um, those kinds of things.
17:44And then we have a whole series on small livestock and remnants. So we're gonna be talking lot about small livestock. We're gonna be talking a lot about  animals and their care and their maintenance on your homestead  or small farm. We're gonna talk about building sustainability on your farms. That's gonna bring a lot of different topics to the table as well. um Funding and opportunities to  find support. How do we make our farms sustainable? How do we continue to do this year after year?
18:12And then we're going to talk about adding value to your homestead. So what are the things that you can do that  are going to add additional value to your homestead or to your small farm? Whether that's through a value-added product, whether that's through an agritourism tract,  or just things that you want to  add that give your property value. So I think there's going to be a lot of really interesting things that we're going to cover on these new tracts.  Awesome. I have a question about the small animal tract.
18:40I'm assuming in that small animal track, you're talking about chickens, quail, goats, sheep, that kind of thing.  Yeah. So we actually have a couple of tracks on sheep, a couple of tracks on quail, chickens, goats, pigs, all of them. We're going to cover all of them. Are rabbits included in there? So we did not include rabbits this year. It was  on the um discussion table, but  ultimately we need to find  someone who can really speak.
19:10clearly to that community. with  all of the other ones that we already had on the table, there just wasn't enough room to add that. But it is something we hope to add next year.  OK, cool. So I have a big question for you and it's something I don't know if you guys have floated it yet or not.  next, like the third time you guys do this,  any chance you would be willing to do an online version of it while it's going on?
19:36Well,  so we've kind of discussed that even last year, even as the first year  into this year.  Right now we don't have capacity to be able to stream or to be able to  video record all of our sessions.  But  it is something that we're hopeful that we'll be able to do maybe going into next year or into the future if we can um secure funding that would support uh live streaming or that would support the opportunity for oh
20:06You  know people to view our sessions afterwards the  the the caveat to all that really is that we're trying to build this community and when you do things online you don't necessarily get the same sense of community that happens  when you're there in person and meeting people and having conversations with people and  you know we have opportunity in between each of our sessions for people to you know get a little deeper in conversation  so you miss out on a lot of that when you start going to the lot.
20:35or to the live or an online platform. However, that being said, our real goal here  is to make sure that we're bringing quality education to the community wherever that is. And so if we have an opportunity  to do that and we can still provide educational resources and  opportunities for people to learn things that are important to them, learn new skill sets and so on, we want to still be able to do that. So we're looking at that.
21:00trying to figure out if that's an option that we can do for next year because I know that not everyone can travel to West Virginia, not everyone  that might be interested in hearing what is being said has the opportunity to be available. So um I really wish that we had had the opportunity to record all of our sessions from last year and then to record them all again from this year because there was so much valuable information.
21:24And if you weren't present, we hate that we missed it, you know, we hate that you missed it. So  that is something we hope to be able to do.  Cause  I am not coming to West Virginia.  I can't.  I would love to, but I just, I don't have the fundage right now to do that.  But I absolutely would sit down and listen to a presentation from
21:53home setting issues conference. Well, that was a really weird way to say  that. We do hope to provide that. I can't confirm anything just yet, but there are a couple of sessions from this  year that I'm hoping we will be able to record and then those hopefully will be available um after the conference. So we're working on uh a  small portion that may be available for the public to see if that's something that people will be more interested in. think there's what we've selected would be
22:23Um, really great opportunity, um, for people to hear from more than one person, um, on the topics that matter most.  Super awesome. hope that works out.  Um, okay. So it's  two questions. One is about price  and days for this thing.  And the other question is about, mentioned Appalachian skills, Appalachian skills,  Apple Appalachia. What exactly is the region for that?
22:52So um we live right in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains and the Appalachian region. So it stretches all over the East Coast. uh It actually starts in the southern part of the United States and Georgia  and Alabama and reaches all the way up through  way beyond us into the Northeastern states.  So it's just the mountain trail. And a lot of people know it as the
23:18you know, from the actual trail, the avalachian trail that runs, you know, over 2000 miles up and down our coast. And so um we really wanted to focus on the things that are important to this region and this area because it is so different from other areas of our country.  If you are here in West Virginia, you're pretty much probably living on a mountainside or a hillside somewhere. And so you don't have a lot of flat land like you would in Minnesota  to be able to
23:46really have wide open spaces and wide open farms. So last year, know, for example, we had a track that Troy did that was pigs on slope. Like how are you going to raise pigs on a slope? Like what does that look like in our area as compared to someone who has a flat river bottom somewhere or somewhere where they would be able to be more expansive. So we really tried to bring some things that are specific to what happens in our mountainous region.
24:14em in order to make it applicable em for the people that live here. I hope that makes sense.  does, but I didn't know  how far south the Appalachian Trail went because I grew up in Maine. read about the Appalachian Trail a lot, but I wasn't sure how far south it went, but I guess it's Georgia.
24:40It does. Yeah, it goes all the way south to Georgia and Alabama is like the trailhead. And then of course it runs all the way up through the northeastern states. And so, I mean, it's a wide, broad range of area, but we're kind of right in the heart of it all. And so that's kind of where we wanted to start with that. And as far as the skill part of it, you know, it goes back to, you know, what I mentioned about the types of the terrain. And then there's things that are just kind of specific to
25:09Um,  you know, our culture that's here, um, you know, the Appalachian people have, um, sometimes have specific cultures in various different areas. And so  I remember not too long ago having a workshop on heritage seeds. so  there was a family there that was trying to figure out about a particular seed that  that had been passed down through their family. And so there's a lot of things that happen and seeds  that, you know, kind of.
25:38become  part of a culture. And so we were trying to help them  trace like that  seed back to where it came from. And it was an interesting path because it wasn't quite as straight and narrow as you would have thought. It was a little windy because,  you know, grandma had grandma's beans and she called it one thing, but it's really part of this other bean family. That's like kind of a broader range. And so we just want to bring some,  um, something.
26:04to our culture and something to our people, something to the region that would be powerful and meaningful to them specifically. That is so fabulous. I love that. That's great. uh So what are the dates for this year's conference? So  we are going to stick with  until further notice, it will always be the second weekend in September. So this year it's going to be September 12th  and 13th, which is Friday and Saturday. It'll be right uh
26:33Just outside of the Charleston, West Virginia area,  it'll be at the same location we were at last year, which is a beautiful location at Bible Center Church.  It's like being in a  camp cabin somewhere. It's just a gorgeous facility. And so  it brings a lot to  the culture or the atmosphere that we're trying to culture.  Awesome.  And how much does it cost for tickets?
26:58So tickets right now, if you get your tickets early next year, tickets are $55. Tickets right now are $75. But because I kind of like you, I'll share my code. We do have a code right now that you can get, buy one, get one on tickets. So buy one ticket, get a ticket for a friend at half price. And so you can use code B-O-G-O-BOGO50. So B-O-G-O-5-0.
27:25And that'll get you a one and a half tickets um for the conference. So that's a, that's a great deal, especially this late into the season. Is the B O G O all capital letters?  Yeah. B O G O five zero. Okay. Cool. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. I like you too, Dawn.  Thank you.  Yeah. I mean, we're having a really good time. had a great meeting this morning, trying to wrap up all of our details and we're super excited.
27:53Little nervous again, because I think there's always, you know, that the nerve not knowing what to expect. But I mean, we have a full slate with 36 different sessions. And one thing I'm really excited about this time that we did not have last year is we have each day we have two things that are going to kind of be a little different. One is a demonstration. So we're going have demonstrations live on the grounds. And then we're going to have a roundtable discussion both days also. So two days worth of
28:22classes and two days worth of demonstrations and two days with uh really great roundtable discussions  on topics that are going to be super important and valuable, I think, going forward.  What are the hours each day? So on Friday,  registration opens at 10 a.m. We start at noon and we'll end around 7 after the  evening roundtable discussion and then on
28:47Saturday morning registration will open at 730. We'll start at 8 and we'll end about 415 on Saturday afternoon.  Okay, awesome.  And where can people buy tickets? Can you buy them online? So you can find us on Facebook and Instagram and at our website. So the website is homesteading-ishish.com um and you can get your tickets there. Okay, cool. uh
29:16want people who are in your area who can afford to go to go to the home studying is conference for 2025. But  what I also want people to know is that there are conferences like this all over the United States  all year long.  So if you can't get to the one in West Virginia that Dawn is part of, find one in your area that you can go to because she's right. Dawn is absolutely right.  The community that you find at these conferences.
29:44where you can talk with people who are in the same place as you are with your journey  or talking with the presenters or talking with people who are a little bit ahead of you  can only benefit you.  Absolutely. I agree.  100%. So,  all right, Dawn, thank you so much. As always, people can find me at tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Thank you so much, Mary. It was great to be here with you. All right. Thank you.