A Tiny Homestead

REKO- Local Food Community

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

Idaho Falls Community Garden Association

Today I'm talking with Kristi at Idaho Falls Community Garden Association. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Kristi at Idaho Falls Community Garden Association. Wow, that's a mouthful. Good morning, Kristi. How are you? Good morning. Hi. Doing good? Good.
00:30I have a goal to talk to as many community garden places as I can in 2025, and I think you're the first one, Christy, so tell me about yourself. Lived in Idaho for almost 50 years now, came from Colorado. Got involved with community gardens when my kids were teenagers and growing more independent by the moment.
00:59and we were all looking for something to put some energy into. And I came to the idea of getting a community garden started here in our small town. Oh, so it's your baby. Well, myself and, you know, three or four other people were part of the original group who started it. I have.
01:29maintain my connection with it since we started it in 1995. So, yeah. That's amazing. Congratulations. I love that. Oh, thank you. Well, tell me about the community garden. How does it work? Well, we have now three community gardens. Our town is roughly 60,000 people, so it's not huge. We started with a single garden of about a quarter acre.
01:58And within a couple of years, we started a second one in another part of town that's about a half an acre. And then five years after that, we started a third one that is a full acre. That was in 2003. And the gardens are open to the public.
02:24Anybody can garden there. We have a formal registration every year where people sign up and get a plot assigned. Then they have their own garden space, including access to water. They bring their own tools and hoses and all that kind of stuff. They're free to grow whatever they want as long as it's legal and doesn't intrude into the spaces of a garden.
02:54nearby gardeners. There's an annual cost, which up until this year was $40 for new gardeners. And then if you are a gardener in good standing, which means you've participated for one full summer and met all the membership requirements, which primarily
03:19involve taking care of your own plot and then contributing to the community areas of the garden with eight hours of effort over the course of the whole season. So if you've done that, then your fee for the following years, as long as you maintain that standing, is half the original cost.
03:47We have garden coordinators at each garden who are gardeners there and it's their challenge and Responsibility to keep the gardeners engaged to be sure that there's nobody causing problems in the garden to help people who are Maybe beginning gardeners pair them up with other gardeners who have more experience or help them themselves if they have time
04:17And they participate in our board meetings so that they can give us feedback and tell us what they need and how things are going. And that's been the evolution over these now 30 years.
04:36Some things have changed, but the basic premise and process is similar to when we started. Wow, that is super cool. So I feel like not only are you growing plants, you're growing friendships with this community. Well, that was a large part of the motivation in the beginning was to build a place.
05:04where people in the community could gather to share a common interest in gardening and growing stuff and exploring new varieties and learning how to do things in new ways with people that they may or may not have a lot in common with otherwise. And it's a really good way to build a sense of community that is not founded on religious beliefs or political beliefs, but on a common interest in
05:34seeing delicious, beautiful things growing. That's a wonderful premise, Kristy. I'm so glad you started a community garden. That's amazing. So how big is the smallest plot that someone can get? Well, you know, that's pretty negotiable. Our smallest formal plot is about 10 by 10, so 100 square feet.
06:04But if a gardener comes and they're new or they know their time constraints are forbidding or they just want less space, we're happy to divide a plot and give them half a 10 by 10. Typically people want larger plots rather than smaller plots, but we have had it happen that somebody says, well that's just too much for me. And the garden coordinators, it's
06:33at their discretion, they can just divide the plot and say, okay, here's what you need, use this. So that's how, and the largest plot is probably 20 by 30, which is a lot. And that takes an experienced gardener to really keep control of that. One of the things that we learned over the years is that when a new gardener comes in,
07:02who is also a beginning gardener, we give them a small plot to start with. And as their expertise and experience and their understanding of what kind of time and energy it takes grows, then they can scale up to a larger plot if they wish. Well, that makes a lot of sense because I feel like when you're a beginning gardener, your eyes are bigger than your stomach when it comes to the space.
07:31It's funny you say that because we just had a gardening class. We do a series of free gardening classes in the winter, and our last one was on garden planning. And one of the people commented that as an experienced gardener, they still do that. You know, they plant more than they can use or plant more than they can take care of. And it's one of the challenges for both the gardens, the garden coordinator,
08:00and the new gardener is to be sure that they have a plot that won't lead them to be discouraged by mid-summer and give up. A small plot is one that a new gardener can maintain and keep adequate control of so that they make it through the whole season and they get to the bonus at the end, which is the harvest.
08:28If they start out with too large a plot, it is not uncommon for them to be overwhelmed by the middle of July and they just disappear, which is what led us to start saying, okay, let's start our new gardeners out in a smaller plot so they can have success.
08:48I love that you care about the people who are trying to do this. That's what that means. Yes. We want people to find the same joy and satisfaction in growing stuff that those of us with lots of experience know is part of the process. If you just hang in there. Mm-hmm. Yep. It...
09:12It never occurs to me how big our farm to market garden is on our property until I talk to somebody about actual plot sizes because you said 10 by 10 and I was like, oh yeah, it's 100 feet. Our farm to market garden is 100 feet by 150 feet. And I never really think about how much of a garden that is until I think about what that comes out to when you multiply it. When you do the square footage, yeah, that's a lot of space to take care of.
09:42Yes, and when it produces, it's great. We have enough for us, we have enough for family and friends, we have enough for the farmers market. Unfortunately, last summer we had barely enough for the farmers market because our growing season was terrible for 2024. No water? No, too much water at the beginning of the spring. Oh.
10:07Six weeks of rain, I swear to you. I told my husband, I said, you're going to have to build an ark here soon. Yeah, that is such a challenge. We don't face that in Idaho, except very irregularly. But we have, for instance, last summer, we had a frost on the 20th or 23rd of June. And you know, that's another set of challenges that...
10:37Make being part of a community garden a benefit because you're there with people who have been growing in this particular environment for, in some cases, 20 years. And they can give you a heads up. You know, it might frost in June, so pay attention to the weather reports and have something ready to cover your tender plants if they're in the ground. And a beginning gardener at home doesn't necessarily have that.
11:07expertise at hand. No, we have Google. We have Google for beginner gardeners and Google is great and YouTube is great and friends who have grown gardens for a few years are great. But when it's going to rain for six weeks straight, there's not a whole lot you can do. Nobody can help you out of that one. Oh, it was so sad, Christy. My husband and I were just looking each other after the fourth week like, wow, this year's gonna suck.
11:36And I said to my husband, I said, are you going to be really mad if we don't produce anything this summer? And he was like, nope. He said, there's always next year. That's right. That's another beauty of gardening is that if it fails this year, there's another opportunity to try it next year. Yeah. I told him I was very proud of him that his thinking was very progressive and that I loved him for it. So I understand that.
12:03people or couples or whatever are renting out the space to grow gardens. Do you have like a section for you and your helpers to grow too? And do you donate any of that food to the community or how does that work? Is that a thing? Each garden has its own garden coordinator. I do not personally garden in any of the gardens. I have space at my house where I can grow.
12:32But I've been involved with our children's gardening program that lasted about, we just ended it two or three years ago. And it had been going on for 20 plus years. So I have experience in the gardens.
12:51with the kids, but I haven't personally grown a garden there. The garden coordinators and the gardeners in their garden have garden meetings where they decide, you know, we have three extra plots. What are we going to do with those? And very often, those are put into production for donation. It's not required. It's up to the individual gardens. But.
13:19I would say all of our gardens are donating a nice to significant amount of produce to our local food banks or soup kitchens each summer. And occasionally we have a gardener who is really gung-ho about that. One year one of our gardens donated over a thousand pounds of vegetables because they were very organized.
13:49had excess produce to contribute it instead of just letting it go to waste. And that's a big task, but they did a really nice job of getting all of that in hand. Phenomenal. I'm so glad that that's happening because there's so much food waste in our country, you know? And if someone has put their blood, sweat, and tears into growing produce,
14:17and they can't use all of it, why not donate it to someone who needs it? Yeah. It just makes me sad to see a tomato rotting on the ground when it could be in the hands of somebody who would really enjoy it. Yeah, I'm going to call him a friend. The president of the food shelf in the town that I live in is a friend. We just met him like four years ago, but he's become a friend. He and his wife are great people. And two summers ago,
14:46We asked him if they could use garden ripe tomatoes. And he said, we will take every tomato you want to give us. And so for like a month and a half, he would come by every couple of weekends and just take boxes of tomatoes to the food shelf. And it saved us because we weren't gonna be able to deal with them. And I feel like we actually contributed something to our community and we live outside of town. So we're rarely ever in town.
15:15So we at least felt like we gave back, even though we don't really know a lot of people in our community, if that makes any sense at all. Oh, yeah. I think the idea of avoiding waste and at the same time doing something that benefits other people is a win-win. And we really encourage our gardeners to get, our garden coordinators to get.
15:43something organized in their gardens so that they can harvest all that extra stuff and put it to good use.
15:55Absolutely. Did I see on your Facebook page or your website that you guys do classes as well? Yes. Tell me about the classes. Well, it's part of our organization mission to provide educational opportunities about organic gardening to the community. So almost continuously since the beginning, we've had
16:23at least some classes. Initially, we tried to do them in the summer, but in Idaho, nobody wants to be inside doing a class in the middle of summer. So over time, that morphed into doing them in the winter, January and February, which is a great time here because we're inside, it's cold and not any...
16:50opportunity for gardening activities outside, so people are much more willing to come to classes. They are all taught from the framework of organic gardening. They are free and open to the public, not just to our community gardeners. We have a team of people on our board who are our education committee.
17:17They put together a list of classes for a given season, find instructors for them. Very often that comes from our board or our garden coordinators or experienced gardeners. And then we publish the schedule and we have a facility. We've had to upgrade our facilities multiple times because when we first started, there'd be maybe a dozen people. And...
17:47For our last initial class, this session, for the first one, is what I mean to say, of this session, we had 86 people attend. And so we have had to change venues several times. But we're pretty stable now. We've been in these classrooms at the university nearby. And we provide probably six, no, I would say eight or nine classes.
18:17once a week through part of January into the beginning of March. People are free to donate if they wish, but they can come to the class without any obligation because we really just want to teach people that despite what we were told the first season, we started a garden in Idaho Falls by a
18:46by a local farmer that we'd never be able to grow anything organically here. We have beautiful organic gardens and we want people to know how to do that, how to build their soil and take care of their space so that not only do they benefit from the harvest of it, but they leave it as good or better than it was for whoever's coming after them. Well, sure. Of course.
19:16And who, there's a story here, I know there is. Who told you you couldn't grow organic produce? Well, this was in 1995. And we were looking for help to prep the area of our first garden. And I contacted a local farmer who was kind of a big time farmer, had some big equipment because we needed a bulldozer or a plow or something.
19:45And I told him what we were doing and what kind of help we needed. And his comment was, oh, I drive by that place every day on my way to work. You'll never be able to grow anything organically here. You know, it was 30 years ago and people had a very black and white picture of organic gardening and in Idaho in particular, where we have a pretty
20:16divided world view among some people. Organic gardening just seemed like some la la idea that, you know, floated out of California and was never going to be possible in Idaho. And a few years later, it was probably about 10 years later, we had one of our sprouts kids grew
20:43a six pound broccoli in her organic garden. And we put a picture of it up somewhere. And I remember thinking, I hope that guy sees this and gets to reconsider his position that this was impossible, because of course it wasn't. The best revenge is living well, Kristy, I swear to you. Okay, I was very confused because as far as I know,
21:13You can grow organic produce pretty much anywhere as long as you have a space and you can make a raised bed. Well, I think part of the mindset back then was that our soil was not suitable for growing things. It had to have chemical fertilizers. It had to have pest control. It had to have weed control in order to make it possible.
21:43which was a common view then. And I think in the intervening 30 years, there's been an enormous shift and people have come to appreciate that if you take care of your soil, if you focus on building your soil rather than throwing Twinkies on your vegetables, which is how I look at chemical fertilizers, that you...
22:11you can have a beautiful garden without all of those chemical additions. But, you know, people had to learn that. They had to see it in practice. One of our local horticulturalists, who was a professor at a local university, was not an organic proponent at all. And over the years, between
22:40the mid-90s and maybe 10 years ago, his whole perspective shifted and he started advocating not that you could only do it that way, but that this was perfectly doable and a good choice. And so I think that was emblematic of the kinds of shifts and thinking that happened in those initial years of our community garden. Thank goodness.
23:09Uh-huh. You were saying that the first class that you did, you only had like 12 or 20 people show up in this first class of this session. You had 80-something people show up? Yeah. I'm glad to hear that people are hungry for gardening information. It is really rewarding. And another really positive change that we've seen prior to about...
23:35three or four years ago, we were doing our classes on Saturday. And our audience was primarily older people. There were a few young people, but primarily older people. And for other reasons, this, a few years ago, we switched to a midweek class in the evening, as opposed to a Saturday morning class. And the most
24:05The positive result of that is that the number of young people attending our classes has skyrocketed. And I would say we now have a greater proportion of, you know, 20s, 30s, 40s people in our classes than people older than that, which is something that we are really pleased to see because it bodes well for the future.
24:34Yes, do you have couples come as a date night thing during the week? Or why is it younger people coming?
24:45No, I mean, we do have couples come in every age range. We've had some very elderly folks show up. We've had clearly, you know, teenagers. But I think...
25:00It's more just individuals coming sometimes with friends, a lot of times on their own, because they're interested. They wanna know, you know, what is, I want, especially young people, I think are much more attuned to the value of organic gardening. And so since we're offering them an opportunity to learn what that's about and how to do it.
25:30They're just interested. I'm just wondering why the big shift between having it on Saturday and having it in the evening on a weeknight. Oh, our theory about that is that they've got stuff to do on Saturday, man. They don't wanna be sitting around a classroom. And on a weeknight, they're already committed, whether it's work or school, their week is pretty much lined out.
25:55and adding an evening event is more doable than taking up their Saturday morning. Yeah, that's what I was thinking because I know our weekends are packed full with Aaron running and stuff, so that would make sense. Okay, so you said that the community garden has been going for 30 years, is that right? Yeah, 30 years this year. Okay, so is it going to be going for another 30 years, do you hope, or more?
26:24Well, you know, everything has a lifetime. And so I would hesitate to extrapolate too far out into the future. But one of the things that we have done is tried to move the membership of our board also to a younger demographic so that when us oldies but goodies are ready to stop, there are.
26:55younger people who are engaged and committed who will move things forward. We have really wonderful support from our city. They have been behind us from the beginning, even though we are not directly affiliated with the city. So that bodes well for the future. They have a... They are in fact... It was our city...
27:24and my contact with one of our city personnel that very first year, and I cold called him and said, here's what we wanna do, is there any way that you can help us? And his response was to say, well, is Thursday soon enough? And it's been like that from the beginning. It's gotten more complicated
27:55The world has gotten more complicated and we now lease our our places from the city but The general supportive nature of the relationship with our city is really good and so that bodes well as I said for continuing into You know as many years as there are people who need a place to grow Well
28:22There are a couple of really encouraging things that you just said. Number one, the city is happy to work with you, which is really amazing because sometimes cities are like, eh, we're not really interested in that. And the second part is that you have young people really interested in this. And you're right. The young people are the ones who are still going to be here when we're gone. And they're going to be our age at some point, and they're going to need to hand it off to their young people. So
28:50I'm excited that there are young people who are interested in doing this because I really feel like 30 years ago when I was 25, there weren't as many young people interested in this. And I feel like COVID might've had a hand in swinging how people see where their food comes from. I think that's definitely the case.
29:21all three of our gardens over the COVID period. And some of those were very ephemeral, you know, they were there for a summer or part of a summer and then disappeared. But others, and this has always been the case in the community gardens, others have really embraced it and gotten very involved and obviously love it. And I think one of the lessons we learned
29:52in the beginning was that don't expect every person who puts their toe in this water to want to dive in. You know, there are a lot of people who think it's a great idea, oh yeah, I want to do that. And then they find out that it requires more time and effort and energy than they're willing to commit and they move on. And at first that was a very disconcerting. Now we've learned that that's okay. Those people are going a different direction.
30:22We love the ones who do stick around and who do want to be involved and who get engaged because they're the ones that secure the future of the gardens for the next bunch. Absolutely. And I actually just had a thought pop into my head about what you're doing. You know how church is full of people from different backgrounds and different ages and obviously different genders?
30:49and it's a big melting pot of all types of people. I feel like the community garden is like that too. And so if you have older people who are gardening and younger people who are gardening, you know they're gonna chat. Sure. So it's like a church, but it's wrapped around gardening, not around the Bible. So that's kind of cool. So Christy, I try to keep these to half an hour, and we're at 31 minutes and 12 seconds, so I'm gonna let you go.
31:17Thank you so much for your time today. And if people want to get involved in community gardens, if they're in your area, I will have the link to your website in the show notes. But for the listeners out there, there are community gardens everywhere in the United States. So if you wanna look into finding one, I bet if you just typed in your general area, community garden, wherever you live, you could probably find one. I think you're right.
31:43And thank you so much for the conversation. It's been enjoyable. Yeah, I loved it. Thank you, Kristy. Have a great day. You too. Bye bye.
 

Sunny Acres Farms

Today I'm talking with Brian at Sunny Acres Farms. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Brian at Sunny Acres Farms. Good morning, Brian. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing good. How are you? I'm good. You're in Arkansas. I know we already established that before I hit record, but I like people to know where I'm talking to people.
00:28So you're in Arkansas and you said it's kind of chilly there this morning. It is. Yeah. We're experiencing some single digits. It's been, this is day five, uh, uh, that will not get above freezing, which is pretty unusual for this area, but it's becoming more usual as we have these extreme weather fluctuations, but, uh, yeah, that's pretty chilly today. Yeah. Today at noon, we're supposed to be out of our, um, frigid air.
00:58warning. So we've been really cold for at least four days now. So I'm very much looking forward to not having it be so cold. Yeah. Yeah, we have a little bit of livestock too. And when it's this cold, it's always an added chores to keep the ice broken up on the water and keep them in a good situation when it's this cold.
01:25Yeah, and they're not used to it. I feel so bad for the animals that aren't used to it being so cold because they don't know what to do. Right, yeah. They're like, what is this? This is not right. Okay, so tell me about what you do, Brian. All right, so my partner Becca and I started Sunny Acres Farms. We just completed our third season, so we're going into season number four.
01:54started with backyard gardening that just kept getting larger and larger until we had a 1,500 square foot garden in our backyard, which was able to produce way more food than we could ever eat. So we just started selling some and creating pickles and canned goods and giving it away or selling some to our friends and family and things like that. When the COVID pandemic hit, we were both...
02:23had careers in restaurants. We were in restaurant management and bar management and things like that. But that shut everything down for quite a while. And that kind of really made us reevaluate both of our careers. And we had an opportunity to – well, I went to a trade school basically. It's called CAF, the Center for Arkansas Farms and Foods, during the 2021 or 2020 year.
02:50and it's basically 11 month long trade school for farming. It was super interesting because I grew up gardening with my grandparents on both sides, had a big garden that fed the family and everything. But farming was something that was definitely a lot different, a lot more different than I thought it was gonna be. I kind of went into it thinking like, oh, I know how to grow food. Like I'm a pretty good gardener. And you get into the actual farming techniques and what it takes to maintain a farm, or to keep a farm producing.
03:19week after week throughout the entire year is much different than a home garden. So, yeah, so 2020 was kind of when we really decided to shift our focus from kind of hobby gardening for ourselves and pursuing other careers to really turning growing food into our passion. You know, it was already a passion of ours, but like turning our passion into something that could also make us money. And so that's kind of been the start of our journey starting there.
03:49Completing year three so a lot of people that have a story like yours and trust me I've heard it over the last year on this podcast, but everybody's story is different. Did you ever think you'd be doing this? No, man If you would have asked me five even just five years ago like before like right before the pandemic if you would have asked me this I would have not guessed this or
04:14I might have believed you because I was into gardening but it would have been like, really? That's where I'm going to be in five years? I would have never guessed that. That wasn't really ever the plan. I've always enjoyed growing food. When I was in college, my very first apartment, I got a lot of my neighbors to get involved and we in the courtyard just created a raised bed garden so we could all kind of grow our own little bit of a…
04:41of our own food there. And it's always just been fun for me. So I've always enjoyed the aspect of growing food and enjoyed the quality of food you get from homegrown food. So yeah, I mean, I wouldn't have guessed it, but it was kind of the next logical step if restaurants weren't going to be my career. I love that you enlisted your neighbors in the apartment building. That's amazing.
05:08Yeah, and so I went back to that apartment building in years past and there's still that little raised bed garden area that's being utilized by the tenants there. So that made me happy. That's fabulous. You started a trend that has continued without you. That's great. Yeah. But yeah, so we are kind of the main goal of our farm. We're focused on regenerative ag techniques.
05:34We just last year got our certified naturally grown, our CNG, so we don't use any synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. We follow no-till practices. We do initial tillage to create our bed areas and to shape and form our beds. But then typically after year one, those beds, unless there's some issue that arises, those beds won't see tillage again.
06:02We use hand tools and implements like the broad fork and the tilter to incorporate amendments and compost that we add on top of our soils. And then we use the broad fork to aerate the soils and kind of fluff them up. And our main focus is we grow about 45 different varieties of produce.
06:29At this time, we don't have any fruit in production, so we are just vegetables. But we grow everything you possibly can in season, which that's what we kind of like being here in zone seven. We have a pretty long growing, decently long growing season. It's not like a Florida or a Texas, but we do experience wintertime here. But we can grow food year round here in tunnels. Obviously, we're not growing tomatoes and green beans right now.
06:56We have all kinds of root vegetables in the ground that are growing and that we're harvesting off every week to take to market like beets, carrots, radishes, turnips, storage radishes, we have all types of greens. We have spinach, arugula, Asian greens, lettuce mix, kale, collard greens, chard. So there's still quite a bit growing on the farm right now. There's not much of us, not as big of a variety as peak season.
07:25But yeah, that's kind of just the general basis of what we kind of are shooting for and what we do. Very nice. I'm gonna talk my husband into moving to Oklahoma so we can grow stuff in the wintertime. Yeah. This not being able to grow things in the winter is the most frustrating part of having a small hobby farm because I love veggies. Like I would eat a salad every day if we had it in the garden all year round. Yeah.
07:53Yeah, no. And so one of the, I mean, I try to tell people this every time when they come by our booth, like, because a lot of people aren't familiar with buying produce in the vegetable, like locally grown produce in the off season, like winter, but it's really a treat to like brassicas, like, like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, all like in the wintertime, like when it gets below freezing, all of the starches in those things turn to sugars.
08:20Not all of them, but they start to turn to sugar, so they're very sweet. Like, you can just bite into a leaf of our collard greens and eat it like spinach. It's so tender and it's just sweet. There's no bitterness at all. It's so tasty. It's delicious. So, wintertime vegetables, not only do you get fresh vegetables in the cold season, but it's like they're so tasty. They're delicious. Yeah. I feel like I repeat myself a lot on these episodes while I'm going to say it again.
08:49We just put in a hard-sided greenhouse in May and my husband just went out on Sunday and planted radishes and some lettuce and some spinach, I think, in the raised beds out there because it's warm enough in the greenhouse that they will survive. So I should have radishes in a month or so. Yeah, very cool. Yes. So it's doable, but it is not doable just outside in the ground right now.
09:19Right, yeah. Yeah, we have so right now we have two working tunnels and we're built, we're working on building another one. So we have a 60 foot by 20 foot and a 60 foot by 30 foot tunnel that we produce in during the winter time. But yeah, just the fact that the tunnel holds the heat in during the day and heats the soil up keeps the soil warm is really the main thing because
09:47That was one of the most interesting things I learned going through that vocational farming program. We learned that in a handful of healthy soil, there are more microorganisms than there have ever been people to walk the planet Earth. I just thought that astonished me. I was like, that is wild to think about. We're just now cracking into that iceberg of understanding the dynamics that go on between those microorganisms, the roots of our plants.
10:16There's like a whole chemical economy going on down there exchanging, you know, oxygen or CO2 for oxygen or for different elements down in the ground that these microorganisms essentially mine from deeper in the soil and bring up to the roots. Like, it's crazy. So keeping that soil alive during the wintertime under the greenhouse is like the really the key component to it, I think, is keeping those little microorganisms from freezing during the wintertime.
10:43What you're talking about is some of the most fascinating science ever discovered. It reminds me of the Horton, here's a who, Dr. Seuss story. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. No, and it's funny you kind of mentioned that too. I remember I read a study over this last year that they've now found that when plants are not healthy, like when the soil is not healthy.
11:10plants actually put off this chemical signal that pests pick up on. Pests are just an indicator that there's something wrong with your soil. Our main focus in regenerative ag techniques and in the whole point of not tilling and using cover crops is protecting your soil and protecting that microorganism life in the soil because that's what's doing all of your work. That's what's doing the work of
11:39creating these healthy vegetables, bringing all the nutrients from the soil that the plants need. And if your soil is not healthy, you know, you're gonna eventually have a not healthy plant. And there was a study that came out, I was reading over the summer that like, there's now like, we can detect this chem, like a trace chemical signature being put off by this plant that certain pests can pick up on. And so it's, you know, just like throughout all of nature, you know, the, you typically predators will go after the weakest of the herd.
12:07Well, the same thing for plants. The pred- those bugs are going to go after the weakest plant. The strong, robust, healthy plant, that's not going to be the first one hit. They're going to go for the ones sending off those distress signals. That's what's going to get hit first. So, we've been really trying. I didn't know about that. Yeah. I wish I had that link available right now, but it was just something I'd-
12:35popped up in my email over the course of the summer. I was reading about it and it was just super cool. I was like, wow, it makes sense. That's why you get pests. Pests are really kind of nature's indicator of, hey, you've got something wrong in your soil. You need to have healthier soil because this plant's not healthy. And that's kind of the whole adopted principle of regenerative ag is you're feeding the soil, not the plant. Essentially, all the amendments we add are to oyster the life
13:05that's there, that microorganism life, it's not necessarily to directly fertilize the plants. We're trying to amp up the life that's already there that's going to bring more nutrients that the plants need anyways. I mean, not to say like – I mean, we are adding nitrogen to the soil, obviously, like feather mill, bone mill, things like that, that the plant does immediately uptake. But really, the whole overall longevity goal of regenerative ag is to protect and build that life that's in the soil.
13:38Right. You're feeding the soil so the soil feeds the plants so the plants can feed you. Right. Exactly. Exactly. It's actually a really simple concept, but people who don't know, don't know. They don't. They've never thought to ask the question in the first place. It is wild to me. That was kind of one of my biggest inspirations in getting back into farming. Just seeing the disconnect.
14:06that just a few generations have from where food comes from. It's like not that long ago, like three, maybe four generations in some families, people were literally mostly surviving off the land, like having their own homesteads or growing their own food to some degree. There were still grocery stores where people bought flour and salt, and I'm sure there were other things, but.
14:31Just very quickly, it happened that people just don't even understand where food comes from. Like the amount of people that come by my booth and will make a comment about, you know, so one of our niches too is we like to grow kind of unique food. So we grow all the staples, but we grow different varieties. Like we like to grow colorful. Like we just harvested a bunch of purple cauliflower. We grow the purple, we grow the yellow cauliflower. We do grow white as well.
15:01But just like the people don't even realize like there's more than just one carrot You know, there's thousands of carrots that some are sweeter. Some are better for storage Some are bigger some are smaller like and so, you know the amount of people coming by our booth They're like, oh my god, we didn't even know that that you know, this was a thing like, you know Yeah, there's just this huge disconnect and that's what I thought was so cool about gardening That's what kind of even when I was in college Like I like to grow unique stuff because I was like you can't find this stuff at the grocery store
15:31I can't go to the grocery store and get an orange beet or a white beet or at least in my rural town area that I kind of grew up in. If you wanted stuff like that, you had to grow it. There wasn't these great options at the grocery store. We do have a great local co-op, but still, your options are very limited as far as—
15:52different varieties of things because there's a reason large scale growers grow all these varieties you see in the store because they have great shelf life. Maybe they have good holding value or whatever it is, but that doesn't always mean it's the best tasting and it doesn't always mean it's the best product you could possibly have. It just means it's able to sit on that shelf for longer and look prettier.
16:18Don't even get me started on grocery store tomatoes. But yeah, that's like a whole different thing. I am right there with you. I swear to you, I've talked about tomatoes so many times in the last year of people who grow tomatoes in gardens. And it's true, homegrown tomatoes taste better than grocery store tomatoes. But there is a place in Minnesota that grows tomatoes in their company. And I can't.
16:46I keep meaning to write this down because I know it's going to come up at least every other episode, but I think it's Bushel Boy is the name of the company. I could be wrong. Okay. And their tomatoes in the wintertime are fabulous. And they are a company. They're not just a small farm. They are a big tomato producing place. And I am so thankful for them because by February, all I want is one of my...
17:12tomatoes from my garden, but that's not happening until July at least. So I'm really thankful for this one company in Minnesota that grows tomatoes. And they grow them there? Yeah. Like in the heated greenhouses probably? I think so, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. I know there's several places like that in Canada too. Really, you know, and in operations like that, it's great, like, cause you know, you can have good tomatoes and even in the off season, if you have the right operation, the problem with a lot of the stuff we get.
17:42is that it's being picked before it's ripe and then put in a big shipping container and then gassed with ethanol to ripen it up. And so it's like it's not necessarily getting a bad product. It's just it was picked before it was fully ripe. You're forcing it to turn red, but it hasn't had time to absorb the flavor and the nutrients from the plant. Right. Yep. Exactly. I think it's interesting that you were talking about the different varieties because many moons ago.
18:10We grew a purple kohlrabi. I assume you know what kohlrabi is. Oh yeah, we grow a lot of that. Okay, all we'd ever grown before was the green kind. And we found this purple variety and I was like, let's grow purple ones, that'll be fun. And we did and my neighbor who would literally let the cucumber vines grow through the fence so that she could pick cucumbers that she said were hers. She was like 12 at the time. She...
18:39We grew the purple kohlrabis for her because she thought that brightly colored veggies were better. They were magic. And so we grew these purple kohlrabis and my husband gave her a couple. And my neighbor, her mom, was like, what do I do with a purple kohlrabi? I said, same thing you do with a green one. You slice it up and eat it. And she sliced it up for a little girl. And her little girl came over later and she was like, it tasted like unicorns. I was like,
19:08Okay, good to know. Right? And she was 12, so you know. Right? Yeah, no, we've had similar kind of responses from parents bringing their kids and getting our rainbow carrot bunches. Because they're like, they just love the rainbow carrots way more than, you know, because they do say you eat with your eyes before you eat with your mouth, like even for adults.
19:36Something that's visually appealing is, you know, we make it taste better in our brain. Absolutely. If you hand me a cupcake that has gray frosting on it, and you hand me a cupcake that has bright pink frosting on it, I'm probably going to pick the bright pink one, even though the gray frosting is exactly the same taste. Exactly. Right. Exactly. So it's absolutely true.
20:03Okay, so what's your, we've got like 10 more minutes. I figure your answer will take at least five. What's your plan for your place? So we're just focusing on kind of fine tuning our techniques right now and establishing systems. We currently sell at the local Fayetteville farmers market and
20:30We also have a CSA subscription box program that we are building. Right now we're sitting at about 20 subscribers. We would like to build that over the, slowly build that up. We're trying to shoot for 50 to get more people onto our subscription program. And yeah, I mean, so.
20:56The goal right now is to just, yeah, to kind of just build out the business. My partner, Becca, during the winter months works an off-farm job. I'm currently full-time farming, but the goal is to have this be both of our careers where we can just full-time work on the farm and sell produce. Nice. Okay, so we did a CSA for two summers in a row.
21:24And we never got anywhere near 20 subscribers. I think the most we had was like nine. And it is a lot of work to do that, to get it together and have the containers that you put the stuff in, go with the people. And we ended up buying the plastic milk crates because we got different color ones and they all get a certain color for the season and they will bring them back. And that way we weren't.
21:49We weren't trying to buy new boxes every year because that gets really expensive. Uh-huh. How are you going to keep up with 50 subscribers? Because that's a lot of packing stuff. Yeah, so we try to go, we do very minimal packing as far as like, so basically we treat like one day a week, we treat like as our CSA day, where we spend the day harvesting, packing.
22:19delivering to the drop-off point. We don't deliver to each person individually, but we deliver to a drop-off point where they then come and pick up their bags. So when I say subscription box, we actually just do like some paper bags with our stamped logo on it and then compostable plastic bags. And so in any given CSA, you might actually have two or three bags to pick up depending on what all was in the bag that week.
22:48But yeah, that's how we do it. We just treat it as a whole day. One of the days out of the week is our CSA day and we typically will – we have it – we just started at the end of the season last year bringing in help. We haven't had it full time but this year we're hoping to have a full time extra set of hands on board. That can help us on days like that when there's kind of just like a lot to process. Okay. That makes sense. I get it.
23:18But yeah, like for, you know, it's not much different than harvesting for a market day for us because, you know, on any given market day, that's about, you know, 50 portions of each item that we have is about what we would be harvesting anyways. So we just have a harvest day for CSAs and a harvest day for like our market and stuff like that. So cool. And then did I see something on your website that you're, you have partners that, that you can sell meat and stuff?
23:46Yes, yeah, our neighbors literally our neighbors right across this. Yeah, so we've we've from the beginning wanted to do that and we've had two partners from day one that have offered our Customers things like we have a farmer brown chicken brown sow a buddy of mine About 20 miles away grows pork and so he offers all his pork products
24:16with the tallow, I guess, or the lye. And so he makes his own soap and stuff like that that is offered. And then our neighbors right across the street, they actually have beef, lamb, and pork. So they offer those products as well. And then they also have honeybees. So basically what we do is with each CSA, you get a newsletter.
24:42and we include a couple recipes with the items that we picked out for the week. We'll have a couple recipes that include those items to help give people ideas so you're not just like, hey, here's something you might have never heard of before. Good luck. We like to give them a couple recipe ideas. And then they'll also receive a list of the items that will be available to order the following week. And so we get that, like if they wanted to order like say,
25:10a pound of bacon and a shoulder roast and a dozen eggs and a jar of honey, they would just text us that order. We also have a platform online where they can just go and order online, which that's actually what we're trying to push people towards because then they can pay our partners directly. Then our partners will bring the product to us when we are going to make our CSA delivery and we will just bag it up with their items and take it to the drop-off point.
25:39But that way, we don't have to do any middleman shuffling of money. Our partners are just paid directly. But we can do it either way because there are some customers that just prefer to text us an order and then we do the legwork for them of letting our partners know and then accepting the payment and then giving it to our partners. So we do a little bit of legwork, but that's not the majority of our customers. But yeah, it is something we felt like added some value to our program.
26:07something we just wanted to help people out with because that's one of the biggest conveniences of going to a grocery store is that you can get a lot of the groceries that you need in one place, hopefully all of them. But we kind of wanted to add more of that opportunity to kind of make it more appealing. Like, okay, well, you can get your meat and your veggies from this one spot this week. But yeah.
26:36We weren't that fancy at all here. We were not doing the CSI anymore. My husband has a full-time job and the garden is his baby. And so we just sell at the farmer's market because he decided that that was good enough for him. And I'm not gonna say anything because it's his baby. He can sell his veggies however he wants to sell his veggies. I am all good with it. So do you guys have any critters at your place or is it just produce?
27:05egg laying chickens and we have sheep as well. Okay and the sheep are for what? The sheep are for meat they're not wool sheep so it was the sheep we just moved on to this this property this new property we're on last year so we've been here just over a year now we had started off on a leased property that was just a quarter of an acre which was right down the road from where we're at.
27:35But then we were able to get this property, which we've now moved onto, and are getting things set up here. But when we came onto this property, it already had, there were sheep here, and so we could have sold them all or got rid of them, but we decided to keep them and kind of see if we wanted to work them into kind of our rotation of how we do our regenerative ag things. So.
28:01It's kind of in a trial basis right now. We are seeing if it works for us, if we have what it takes to take care of the animals while maintaining the vegetable side of the operation as well. So we'll see how it goes. It's very new to us. Livestock wasn't in our plan necessarily, especially this early. It was kind of down the road possibly, but.
28:26So right now it's in a very much a trial basis. We're kind of seeing how it goes, see how they play into our system and things like that. But the new property we moved onto is 68 acres with I would say probably about 65, 70% of that being cleared pasture land. So it kind of made sense that the pasture's already there, the sheep were already there. We had to build some fence to kind of divide up the pasture and we're doing like a rotational grazing routine with them.
28:56But yeah, so that's what we're working. Yeah, it's kind of a new thing that we're trying out. We'll see how it goes. Okay, will you have lambs this spring? Yeah, so they've already started lambing. We've got, I think, about 15 out there right now. Nice. Last year we had 27 babies. And do you enjoy the baby season or is it just a means to an end to get more sheep? Yeah, I mean, they're cute. They're pretty cute, yeah.
29:25But it is, we have to keep our eye out a lot more during that time, because you never know when they're gonna come out. And a lot of times with sheep, you'll get sheep that are rejected by their mothers because in sheep, twinning is very common. And then sometimes they will just reject one of the babies. So that's kind of heartbreaking. And then so you either have to intervene, go save the sheep, bring it inside, which then you're bottle feeding it for a long time, which is another added chore.
29:54and stuff like that. So it's an interesting dynamic and nature is very brutal at times. But it's... Yes. Yes. That's another thing I've talked with people on this podcast about a lot. It is... It's heartbreaking when babies die and it's heartbreaking when these animals that you've been raising for years die. But I keep saying that...
30:20that the joy of this outweighs that or at least balances that sadness out? Is that kind of how you feel too? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And you know, it's neat to see like when the animals appreciate you taking care of them, you know, like you can see it, like they'll look at you and they, you know, when we are out in the field, the sheep follow us around and you know, it's a cool little relationship you get to build with your animals and like even our down to our chickens, you know, they
30:50their little personalities and you know we have some that will walk right up to us and you know balk at us and you know they're just super interested in what we're doing and following us around and you know so yeah it's pretty fun like and we get to see them running around chickens are funny to watch they're just crazy they'll just run around the yard all day and chase after each other and just be crazy and stuff it's so yeah there are all kinds of you know joyous kind of rewards that come with the territory you know for sure.
31:20Yeah, we don't have any chickens right now, but we're going to get more in the spring. We have had chickens for the last four years. And you're right, it's really fun to watch them. And I call them the crazy cluckers. Yeah. Because they just, they do that craziest things. And the one thing that's really fun with the chickens is we get a watermelon at least three times the summer, like a really nice big watermelon. And we will give them the shells after we've eaten what we want out of them.
31:50They love watermelon and they will put the shell out there and they have destroyed it within an hour. They're like, free food. I'm all, I'm all. Let's do it. It's really fun having chickens. Okay, so Brian, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're at 30, well, almost 32 minutes. So I'm going to let you go. Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the talk.
32:18For sure, thank you. Have a great day. Alright, you as well. Alright.
 

Morning Song Orchard

Today I'm talking with Roy at Morning Song Orchard. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Roy at Morning Song Orchard. Good afternoon, Roy. How are you? Good afternoon. How are you? I'm good. You're in Oklahoma? Yes, ma'am, I am. I'm in Minnesota. It is very, very cold here today. How is it where you are?
00:28I woke up this morning fed the chickens at two degrees. Oh, well, I've got you beat. I think it's probably still minus 10 here. Well, you can keep it. Yeah, yeah, we're going to keep it for another couple of months. And then as we say in Minnesota, we live in Minnesota and put up with the winter because spring, summer and fall are so beautiful. So let me ask you a question. We just got done watching.
00:56Fargo wasn't that supposedly filmed up in that area? Yes, supposedly yes. And yes, that's what Minnesotans sound like I'm not from I'm not from Minnesota originally. So I you probably won't hear it from me. Oh, okay. I I've tried really hard to dump the main accent that I had
01:21grown up with and not adopt the Minnesota accent. I try really hard not to have any accent. Yeah, similarly, that's the same as myself. I'm actually from New York originally. So I've been around Southerners all my life. Yeah, and honestly, the Southern accents are so lovely and so sweet that if you talk with a Southerner, all people are going to be thrilled to listen to you.
01:50the New England and the Northeast states, not as much. I don't know what it is, but maybe we just sound rude if we live there, I don't know. No, there is an allure with the Southern accent, I have to admit. It's very, very sweet. It's like sweet tea and lemons, it's good. Okay, so tell me about what you do at the orchards. What do you grow?
02:18Well, we actually started out here growing chestnut trees. And there was a reason behind that. I stopped working in my construction company when we built our house. And I was like, you know, we should actually start doing something here that's totally different than what the mainstream is used to in Oklahoma.
02:48Excuse me, the nut industry out here is pecans. And I was like, well, why don't we introduce chestnuts and hazelnuts? I did the research. My background is in horticulture academically. And I was like, well, I think we can do it in this particular zone. So we tried it. And we wanted to bring an old culture.
03:16to an area that's never seen it before because America grew up on this, especially on the East Coast, right, with chestnuts until the blight hit and wiped out the American chestnut. So long story short, we started getting into those. We planted 3000 blackberry plants. So we started getting into that. Just got our hands into a lot of things.
03:44Now we're doing blackberries, elderberries, chestnuts, hazelnuts, and some grapes. Nice. That's a very eclectic group of things to grow. It is. Yeah, that's great. So do the hazelnuts and the chestnuts do really well? They do excellent down here. Now these are hybrids because...
04:12We can't grow American chestnuts to this day. Nobody can, not even the American Chestnut Foundation. Okay. We're trying, so we have hybrids, and the ones that I grow on my property are trademarked under the name Dunstan, D-U-N-S-T-A-N, and they do really well, exceptionally well out here. We get some really large nuts,
04:42Interestingly enough, the deer have never seen a chestnut out here. And chestnuts are probably the healthiest nut for humans and animals that, that there is other than macadamia. Okay.
04:59Okay, so what other than chestnuts roasting on an open fire from the Christmas song, what are chestnuts used for?
05:10Good question. I've not really had that question before. The chestnut tree used to be used for lots of things. And, and because it's been out of use for well over a hundred years, um, it's kind of gotten, gotten away and going more towards oak trees. So the, the use.
05:37of chestnut seeds from an industrial standpoint, I would say there's absolutely nothing unlike hazelnuts where you get Nutella from hazelnuts. But chestnuts are, they're so high in carbohydrates that if it were to become a market again, they'd be excellent crops for feed for pigs, for instance.
06:05Because the high carbohydrates, they can keep animals warm for the wintertime. The wood itself from the tree is beautiful. If you look at any antique furniture made out of chestnut. But other than that, I really don't think there's a market for the chestnut itself at this point.
06:29Okay. I was just looking at Google while you were talking and, uh, basically. They'd roasted chestnuts on open fire really for the nuts themselves. That's what I'm saying. And I guess they can be milled into flour. Yes.
06:49They can be eaten candied, boiled, steamed, deep-fried, grilled, or roasted in sweet or savory recipes. They can be used to stuff vegetables, poultry, fowl, and other edibles. They're available fresh, dried, ground, or canned. So there you go. There's your answer. Well, thank you. Yeah. I love Google. Google makes me so happy. Google knows everything I don't know and everything no one else knows. So we now know what it can be used for. You know what? I've actually been getting into chat GPT.
07:18Uh-huh. That is interesting. Yeah, I don't trust it yet. I need a little more time. Chat GPT is like the older brother of Google. Okay. Well, I got to try it out some more and see if I like it. Okay, so we've talked about chestnuts and I love hazelnuts. Hazelnuts are one of my favorite, favorite things to snack on.
07:49They're spendy, but they're worth it. Yeah, yeah. The American hazelnuts are a lot smaller than the ones that you see out in retail or in the market. The ones you see out there are like Barcelona's. They're probably twice the size of American hazelnuts. OK. We tried planting a couple hazelnut trees here. And
08:15I think it was three summers ago or three falls ago and they have done nothing. So I don't think they're ever going to grow. And I don't know what we're doing wrong. It may just be that our soil isn't correct or our temperatures or our water levels or whatever but they're just not doing anything. What variety do you remember? I have no idea. I do not know.
08:42Yeah, I've had some challenges with them. They don't like wet feet at all. So they have to be planted somewhere a little bit higher than they seem to be. They grow better if they're on like a hill of some sort with some slight decline, sandy loamy soil. That might be the problem considering that our lot is flat and we have very dense, clay-ish.
09:10soil so that might be why they're not happy. Yes, they do not like that. Okay, well maybe we don't try to grow hazelnut trees here then because I don't really want to try to put a hill in where it's all flat. We live in flatlands right now. We live in the land with corn fields and soybeans. So there you go. So if we want to grow corn or soybeans we're good but everyone has that covered around here so we're just going to keep growing our our farm-to-market garden and call it good.
09:40How many acres of blackberries do you grow? Three acres. That's a lot of blackberries. It is. It's an awful lot of blackberries. And these are thornless blackberries. So it makes it easier. Nice. Do you sell them to stores? Do you sell them to people in the area? How do you move them? So I think we're going to get into a part of the conversation that
10:09Um, you're probably unaware of, or maybe you are. When we started doing blackberries was when, um, I, I lost both of my sisters to cancer, um, within the last five years. And my first sister, Lynette, who passed away, that's when we started planting the blackberries and we were doing farmers markets out here.
10:33And we would take our plants, we would take the berries, and we would do farmers markets and all that. But in the interim, as my other sister became more ill, she was diagnosed with multiple cancers. We started to transition a little bit and I started to sell herbal teas at the farmers market.
11:03Um, we were doing so well with our herbal teas that Morning Song Orchard and Nursery, uh, we retained the same name and transitioned, uh, into an herbal store. Oh, neat. Okay. Yeah. So we sell now, um, we still sell these products, the, the farm products we sell at our store, we're just bringing, uh, sourdough bread into the store. We sell the eggs, that type thing.
11:33Um, but our herbal products do the pet do the best. So we sell about 200 different herbal products. Um, I blend about 85 teas. Wow. Yeah, it's, it's quite amazing. And it's, it's just such a cool journey because, um, I've met a lot of neat people that, um, unfortunately a lot of them are ill and, um,
12:01like stage four prostate cancer or something of that nature. And it's just, it's a really great feeling for instance, having somebody come in and give you a testimonial of how they've are no longer diabetic because they used the Jimnema Silvestri and they've lost 15 pounds and they feel happier and you can just see the smile on their face. So anyway.
12:28We have morphed since the blackberries. I don't know if you were aware of that or not. I didn't know if you were doing both. Yes, yes, we are doing both. If I were to break it down into a percentage, I would say that my herbal business is probably 85% of our business now. Okay, so did you always want to get into doing what you're doing or was this just a pivot?
12:58It was a, it was a come to Jesus pivot, if you will, because I put both my sisters into hospice and I got to see a side of the medical industry that I hadn't seen before. And when you're real up close and personal with it, you can see that there is some deception in there and it just really started to make me
13:28reflect on how things are and look at the reality of our pharmaceutical system. So I just went head first into herbals and that's where we're at now. In fact, this Saturday I'm teaching a class at Indian Capital Technology Center on how to make tinctures. That's fantastic. You took two very sad tragedy moments.
13:57and turned it into inspiration. Yeah, yeah. Good job, Roy. Good job, because that had to have been really, really hard. And I'm sorry you lost your sisters. Well, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. You're welcome. I haven't lost any siblings. They are still around, but I can't imagine how that went. And the pain that comes from losing people either puts you into a hole of depression or
14:24it wakes you up to the fact that life is short and you should probably do something with your own. Yeah, and I experienced both and the latter was the more get up and fight situation, you know.
14:42Well, I'm glad. I'm glad it went that way because you are helping so many people now. That's my goal. Awesome. So do you do like regular basic herbal teas like raspberry leaf or anything like that? Or are they all very, um, I don't know what the word is. Not simple. Yeah, yeah. So I do have simple, simple teas.
15:08Um, I call them our, our fun teas. Those are, um, the ones that are, you know, one, two ingredient type things that are great hot or cold. Um, but most of my teas are medicinally based. So the focus on doing blends is to assist in, uh, an ailment, whether it's cholesterol, bone pain.
15:35PCOS, we do a lot of women's health teas here that are very popular. And the whole, the whole premise of this is so people can take a homeopathic approach to their healthcare. Yes. There are so many people out there that have been, I don't know, for lack of better words, disillusioned since, since the COVID epidemic, they've
16:05have a broader knowledge of the way that our healthcare system is. I'll put it that way. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, it's, it's, I understand what you're saying and I'm sure the listeners understand what you're saying and you're being very good about not being a jerk about what you're saying. So let me ask you a question. How, I don't know how to ask this correctly.
16:31How are you marketing this? Because here in Minnesota, we're not really allowed to say, like if I decided to make an herb blend tea that helped with, I don't know, joint pain, we would not be allowed to put that on the label. Because- Yeah, absolutely. You can't say that. So how do you get around that? Right, so you are allowed to say,
17:00that it may aid in the assistance of, you know, those type of words. You can't, like you said, you can't sit there and say, this will help with this or that type thing. Because then, yes, you will find yourself in a liable issue, but more so with the FDA because there are guidelines associated with it. So...
17:28But you can market your product as a tea that may assist in doing this type of function. So that's totally legal. Okay. So there are very specific ways to word it so that you don't have the FDA come down on you. Correct. Okay, good. I make essential oil blends. Like I do a...
17:57lemon grass, lavender, peppermint in sweet almond oil. And I use it from my migraines because those three herbs really, really help. If you can smell that blend, it takes the edge off of a migraine. Absolutely. And we sell it at the farmer's market and we cannot say anything about what it does.
18:24Unless somebody asks us and we have to tell them verbally because I can't I Cannot figure out a way to word it without it getting me in trouble Even though even though I know damn well that it really does help So it's very frustrating to me that that a doctor would be like take two Tylenol and take a nap But I'm not allowed to say lavender peppermint and lemon actually do
18:50kick things in the way that your brain works and makes your headache less painful. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. We've recently formulated a powder that can potentially help people that have ADD, ADHD. But I cannot say that on the product label.
19:20You know, I can say those type of actions with it, but I can't be specific. But yeah, I totally empathize with you in regards to that. Um, we just started getting into, um, essential oils. I bought a still last summer, um, that we're going to start doing. One of my employees is currently going through classes. She's going to be our essential oils guru.
19:50much fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah it really is. That's awesome. How do you keep all this straight, Roy? You've got a lot going on there. I do and honest to God, I told my wife two days ago that I think I'm going into information overload. Uh-huh. You know and I don't know there's a respiratory virus going around and
20:18I don't know if that was part of it. I did get it. However, I decided to take a homeopathic approach to combating it. No, you? You chose that? Right? So, I had to try my own tinctures and all that. And they were very successful. But I think with that particular ailment, I didn't know if I had...
20:45receive COVID again or what it was. The symptoms I had were very similar to COVID back in 2020. But anyway, so I don't know if my sensory overload, my memory overload is because of that illness or if it's just because of all the information. We do, we carry almost 500 inventory items. Wow.
21:16Wow, and do you have them all stored in like a warehouse or how does that work? They're here at the store. Wow. Um, so it gets exceptionally difficult when, uh, for instance, we have a show coming up in March in prior Oklahoma and that's going to be an extremely populated event, so we have to get all of our product ready at the same time, having enough product for.
21:46our web sales as well as our store sales. So it's just such a, it's like today, today's my day off. I'm here at work. So, you know, it is what it is. At least I'm giving you in half an hour to just talk about what you do. No, this is great. Yep.
22:08Okay, like I have been saying in the last three episodes I've recorded because I get to 20 minutes and my brain goes flat because I've been sick the last two weeks too. Sorry about that. No problem. What? Is this what you're going to be doing for the next 20 years? Do you love this enough to keep it going? So 20 years, I don't know because that would put me well into my 80s. Okay.
22:35I'm considerably older than my wife, so I'm waiting on her to retire. So I guess this is like our retirement gig. And when she's ready to give up the corporate lifestyle, then we'll both do this. And hopefully sales will be good enough that we can go and spend our summers in Maine and our winters in Florida. That's a great plan.
23:04Yeah, summers in Maine are beautiful. And I don't know about Florida. I haven't been to Florida. So I can't, I can't attest to Florida, but I can attest to summers in Maine. They're beautiful. Yeah, Maine is fantastic. Yeah. If I hadn't, uh, married somebody who wanted to move to Minnesota a long time ago, I would probably still be in Maine, but instead I'm still in Minnesota with a third husband who I actually loved to pieces and he doesn't want to leave Minnesota, so we're staying in Minnesota. There you go.
23:33I've only been to Minnesota once for a meeting and it was in the dead of January and it happened to be extremely cold. It must have been around the year 2000. And everyone's like, let's go to the Mall of America. Is that even still open? Yep. Isn't it really? Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was cold and icy. That's what I remember. Have you been to Maine though, in the summer? Yes.
24:02Okay, Minnesota is not a whole lot different than Maine when it comes to weather. It's just that Maine has the ocean and the mountains and Minnesota does not have the ocean and mountains. Oh, really? So, so Minnesota is flatland. Yeah, it kind of depends on where you are, but, but there are no mountains in Minnesota. There are hills and there's no glacial at one time. Yes. And there's no ocean, but there's tons of rivers.
24:31and lakes. So we have lots of water. There's not oceans. Sure. Yeah. It's really pretty. And it makes it easier for me to live here instead of where I grew up. So you're not old. Oklahoma is very similar in the sense that in Oklahoma City where we used to live, it was very flat. The dirt is red. Um, and it's just, yeah, summer is well into the hundreds. Uh, but where we're at now.
25:01is considered green country. So we're in the foothills of the Ozarks. So we have the rolling hills, we have the weather and precipitation differential, and it's just night and day compared to central Oklahoma. It's beautiful. Wow. Okay. Actually, I have a better answer for your question about whether it's flat or not. If you're toward the river valley of any
25:30It's rolling hills down River Valley. Once you get out of the River Valley, it's kind of flat. So does that help? Yeah, absolutely. It's really beautiful. More, more farmland, like, uh, like you were saying previously with the, uh, uh, cornfields. Yes. Yeah. We literally are surrounded by cornfields, um, for the last two summers, our property.
25:59And it's a great privacy fence, but if you have allergies to corn pollen, it is terrible for about three weeks. I bet it is. But it's lovely. But I think that summers in Maine and winters in Florida sounds like an excellent way to retire. I think that would be lovely. But don't retire too soon because you're helping so many people. We want you to keep doing that for a while. Well, thank you. I want to keep doing it for a while as well. Every day is a learning experience.
26:29And people can order stuff from you on your website, is that right? Yes, yes. It's www. Okay. And why did you name it Morning Song? Because my wife wanted to. Oh, okay. Do you know what her story is about that? She grew up on the property where we currently are at. And it was just...
26:58something she remembers so distinctly, the cardinals that were out there every morning, especially the male cardinals. That's why the male cardinal is on our logo. And she would just hear the birds out there singing. So I figured it might be something like that. Did you know that the birds sing in the morning for no other reason than to say I'm here? Oh, really?
27:25That's what scientists have discovered supposedly. They sing in the morning because they wake up and they're like, oh, I'm here. And they all do some variation of call that says, I'm here. Well, you know, it's interesting because we have bluebirds. And I think it's the bluebirds that mimic other birds. I'm not sure. Somebody out there listening could probably correct me. But the.
27:53The bluebirds that we have now have imitated a hawk and all of our chickens are free range. Oh no. Yeah, so they scare the garbage out of the chickens and they all run for cover every time these bluebirds are out there doing this hawk interpretation or imitation. Oh, that's so funny. Huh.
28:19I didn't know bluebirds did that. We have bluebirds in Minnesota, but I don't see them very often. Yeah, it's quite interesting. Yeah, I know we have a cow bird or a cat bird here that will mimic other birds calls, and it will mimic other people's noises. My son does a whistle to get the dog to come in, and there's a bird that has learned his whistle. Ha ha ha ha. Oh, the poor dog.
28:49And she doesn't care. She doesn't listen anyway. That's awesome. But my son was outside last summer and he heard that whistle. And my son's dad, my husband does that too. Does the same whistle and he was like, did dad just whistle? And I said, dad's in the house. He's like, I heard the whistle. And we listened and we heard it again. And I said, that's that stupid bird that mimics everything. He's like, a bird copied my whistle. Apparently. Oh Lord.
29:19So yeah, there are birds that copy whistles and clearly parrots repeat what people say and I think macaws do and I think there's another one I can't think of it right now. So birds are very capable of reiterating sounds. Very intelligent. Yep, it's kind of great. All right, Roy. Well, it's been really interesting talking with you and I appreciate your time and we're almost a half an hour so I am going to let you go.
29:47All right. Well, thank you so much for having us on there. Sorry Rachel couldn't make it, but she was just promoted and she had a Monday morning call. That's fine. It was lovely talking with you Roy and if you Rachel want to come talk again, let me know. All right. Well, thank you so much. All right. You have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

Go Green With Alexa

Today I'm talking with Alexa at Go Green With Alexa.
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https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Alexa at Go Green with Alexa. Good morning, how are you? Good morning, I'm well, how are you? I'm good, you're in Florida? Yes, I am. I know it's a little colder than it should be there, but I bet you're not as cold as Minnesota this morning. Yeah, I bet I'm not.
00:30It's, I think it's minus 13 and I think the real feel or the wind chill or whatever they're calling it now is minus 32. Oh, wow, quite the difference. Yeah, it's 65 here and it's raining, but otherwise can't complain. Okay, what's the nearest city to you? I would say Fort Lauderdale, about 20 minutes away, north. Okay, all right. My daughter's in St. Petersburg. Yeah.
00:57So she's been like, it's kind of cold here. And I'm like, I don't want to hear it, kid. I was just there last week and it was freezing. Yeah. My definition of freezing. Yeah, I said, you grew up in Minnesota. You know what real freezing feels like. I don't want to hear it. Just stop. She's laughed. She's like, OK, fine. So tell me about yourself and what you do, ma'am. Yes. So I am a sustainability copywriter by trade.
01:26And I also create sustainability content on my own for the world to see and really just to show people how fun and exciting and how you can get creative with sustainability in your daily life. Awesome. I'm going to pull a page out of my other podcaster friends. Podcast she actually does a podcast about sustainability. And then one question she asks on every episode is,
01:54What does sustainability mean to you? So what does sustainability mean to you, Alexa? Yeah. So sustainability means to me is what it means is making the least amount of impact on the planet. And that means by, by, by the means of reducing our waste, reducing our purchases, reducing, or not even just reducing the purchases, but being more mindful of the purchase.
02:23where we're purchasing from and what it's supporting. And really just thinking about the end of life of everything before we make that purchase. It's just being a conscious consumer and also an advocate for the environment. That is an excellent answer. I love that. Thank you. So how did you get into this, the copywriting and sustainability? Yeah, so for copywriting, basically it was a, out of,
02:522020 out of the pandemic. I just realized that I didn't want to do what I was doing. I was, I went to school to be, I was pre-med in school to eventually hopefully be a doctor. I decided at the end of my college career that I did not want to do that anymore. I had degrees in biomedical science and public health. And while those might seem
03:19unrelated to sustainability, I would say that at least the biomedical science gave me a great foundation into science and the overall world of the chemical processes and biological processes of the natural world. And then also on the flip side, the public health degree gave me that foundation of understanding how our systems are currently in place and how they actually all work together.
03:47health, it's also about community, it's also about the way we live our lives. And the environmental aspect is also a piece of that. So it's something that always fascinated me. I was lucky enough to grow up in a family that really values sustainability and conservation. My parents are both immigrants from Brazil and I grew up in the scuba diving industry down here in South Florida. They had a business for 23 years of my life. They sold it when I was 25 and I was very much part of the business.
04:17and worked there most of my life. And just being part of that, it shaped me. We composted at home. We were very conscious about what we used and what we threw away. And my parents participated in a lot of conservation efforts as part of their business, because that was something that always was important to them. So just growing up in that environment always caused me to just, I think, view things a little differently than my peers.
04:46And I didn't really notice that until I went to college, to be quite honest. I obviously knew that my parents were, you know, different, um, than my peers and the way they thought about things and, and approach things was different, but I didn't really realize how different it was until I went to college and, um, was put in the position of, you know, cooking for myself, fending for myself, and then realizing that, oh, wow, I'm throwing a lot of this organic material into the garbage. And I obviously didn't feel.
05:15It didn't feel right by me. So that's when I started getting like a vermicomposter and making my own home, like body care products and things like that. So just to, that's a little backstory, but then 2020 came, I was working for my parents' business when they sold it right before 2020. And I stayed on with the business to just help with the transition and all that, and decided to keep working with the new owners for the.
05:44next couple years and that's when I transitioned into copywriting. They knew I was interested in that and they needed help with marketing. So it was kind of like two birds, one stone. And yeah, so I took a copywriting course online and figured out how to start my own business because that was really the goal was to work for myself and to live a life of more freedom and flexibility. So they were my first client. And then I just transitioned. I just decided that instead of just focusing on
06:10any business, I really wanted to focus only on sustainable clients and nonprofits. Wow. Okay. I was going to say back when you started answering my question, what a pivot that was. But really, I don't feel like it was a pivot. I feel like it was a sidestep into something that you already had some background to build on. Yeah. Yeah. I would say it's like coming back home because I...
06:36I always felt that I was destined to do something with sustainability, but I always thought that it was an industry and a career that you needed to be in for 10, 20 years before you really could make a living in this industry just because it's smaller and I guess so niche. But I was clearly wrong. Uh-huh. Okay. So I don't want to get too far in the copywriting stuff because it's not really what my podcast is focused on.
07:04But not everybody knows what a copywriter does. Do you have a simple explanation for what a copywriter does? Yes. So a copywriter is a professional that writes for businesses and organizations. Basically, all the words that you see associated with the business you interact with on a daily basis, any words on a website, captions on a social media post, voiceover scripts, or just scripts for video in general, blog posts, email campaigns, anything like that, that's what a copywriter writes.
07:34So you're sort of like a ghostwriter for businesses. Absolutely. Okay, cool. All right, so tell me about how you're practicing sustainability. Cause I did look at your Instagram page and you have some beautiful photos of things that you're doing. Yeah, thank you. So like I said before, I think it's mostly focused on buying less and being very discerning as a consumer. But in addition to that, I also grow my own veggies and herbs and
08:04That's just a few of the methods, but I also advocate for eliminating plastic in the day-to-day life. That's personally something that I've been on a journey to do. I wasn't always full of plastic in my life, but I've just realized that I don't want to contribute anymore to microplastics into our waterways, into our air. So I just try to minimize how I interact with plastic. And ocean conservation is a big part of my work, obviously.
08:32growing up in the scuba diving industry. And I really just try to show people that there are fun ways to be sustainable. It's like any area in your life, you can make more sustainable. It really just matters like which one you're trying to appeal to like the other day I had posted about ways you can digitally help the environment and that's like one by deleting emails or not using generative AI or using a search engine that is eco-friendly like
09:01and yeah, just like giving tips in ways that others can feel useful because I think for too long sustainability has felt like an ideal that you can never reach. And I just think that it's a journey more like getting healthy or anything else. Yes, absolutely. It's a process and a growth experience. Absolutely.
09:29And speaking of trying to be more sustainable when you're dealing with them, with technology, my web host for our website, for our home, our place, our business, I can't talk this morning, sorry, is GreenGeeks and it's greengeeks.com. And they have a whole thing about how they're trying to give back to the earth on their website. So that's who we use. And I don't get any...
09:59kickback for saying that either. I just like them. It's been great working with them. Yeah, that's how I feel. I don't get much kickback from anything and I just want to, I usually just spotlighting small businesses and things like that, but I'll definitely have to check Green Gigs out. Yeah. And it's just one word, Green Gigs. There's no space between. And also the way that you can cut back on the technology footprint that we all leave.
10:27is try not to get the newest thing every time it comes out. Yes. This whole Apple iPhone thing drives me crazy because people are like, oh my God, the new iPhone's coming out. And they just got the newest iPhone a year and a half before. Mm-hmm, exactly. And trade-ins are just another way to convince us that we're doing something good for the planet, but it's not really helping. Buying the new thing is never, never going to help.
10:54Right. I'm an Android fan, so I have never had an iPhone and I probably never will. And I beat my iPhone, my Android phones to death. Like they have to die before I will replace them. I love it. That's truly the best way to be sustainable is using what you have. Yep. And I'm not going to lie. I have a desktop computer that I do the podcast on and I have, I happen to have two laptops. One is dying. So that's why I have two right now.
11:23But I refurbished the one that was the best one of the two laptops. I literally set it back to factory settings a month ago and did all of the freaking updates. It took like two hours. Because this laptop is at least four years old and I wasn't gonna spend another $300 to have a third laptop. That's crazy. So there are ways to cut down on the...
11:51the technology clutter as well as everything else? Yeah, absolutely. And if you're looking, if you need something, because of course, like I don't want to ever put down somebody if they need something for their job or whatever. So if you need a new laptop or new device, check out refurbished sites like BackMark. I don't have any affiliation with them, but I just think it's great that they have certified refurbished options. Yep, absolutely.
12:20It is not, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on the newest thing to have a functional machine in front of you that you can use. Exactly. So, and I don't, I mean, I'm not telling anybody what to do. I'm just saying I reset my computer because it still worked fine. It just was slow and it was cluttered with photos and things that I've written that I never submitted, things like that. And I was like, this is dumb. I have the photos elsewhere. I can just...
12:47dump this whole thing and start over and it will work just fine. And it does, it works great. So, okay. So is it hard growing vegetables and herbs in Florida or is it okay? No, it's so easy. We have a year round growing season and I don't have like, I live in an apartment so all my, anything that I grow is in containers, pots. So I, you know, I advocate for, you don't need much space, you don't need much time.
13:16you really just need to do it. It's rather easy. I really just have pots all over my staircase leading down to my place. And it's really that simple. Florida is the best place to grow anything, I would say, from tropical fruits and veggies in the winter. That's the thing when everyone else is hunkered down for the winter where that's our growing season for all our great veggies and tomatoes and strawberries and things like that.
13:47Is that because it's too hot and too muggy in the summer? Yes, exactly. Okay. Yeah, we don't have that problem here. It's too hot and muggy in the summer. It's too cold and dry in the winter. It's a trick growing things in the northern tier states and we do it, but sometimes we fail. I have been bitching for months about the fact that our summer garden this year, this past year was terrible because it rained and rained and rained. And my husband said to me the other day, he's like,
14:15I'm gonna go start some radish and lettuce seeds in the greenhouse. I said, it's not even February. He said, yes, but in the greenhouse, it's fine for cold weather crops. Yep. And I said, I could have pickled radishes in a month. He said, you sure could. I said, please go plant radishes. That would be great. So he's very excited. The greenhouse is new. It went up in May of 2024. Oh, that's awesome.
14:42So he's just dying to see how things are going to do in there with the sun pouring in the front where it's all, um, whatever he used, not glass, it's the polycarbonate sheets. Speaking of plastics, oops. So yeah, he, uh, he literally planted lettuce seeds and radish seeds yesterday afternoon when it was minus 32 windchill outside.
15:11Wow. So that was interesting. Got to work with what you have, you know? I love it. Yes. And he was practically dancing when he came in and showed me the photo. He took up the little packages on the little stick that he stuck them in the raised beds, you know, to mark where they were. Oh, I love that. It's really fun watching your 55-year-old husband act like he's five. It's kind of amazing. I think that's a huge part of sustainability is keeping that childlike wonder.
15:40I think if you don't have it, you're not going to do it. Yes, you're so right. It's motivation. Mm-hmm. Yes, you have to be curious. You have to have some courage and you have to be good with failure, I think, sometimes. Yes, absolutely. And that's the thing what I advocate for is imperfection. So there's going to be issues. There's going to be quote unquote failures, you know. But...
16:07The thing is that we learn and we grow from it and we don't expect perfection ever. Right. Because if everything was perfect, it would be so incredibly boring. Right. Yeah. And number two, if everything was perfect, everybody would just do everything right. And there would be no need for us to have grocery stores because we would just be growing our own stuff all the time.
16:29Hopefully eventually we get there, but even in the perfection of like policing each other and being like, well, you didn't do this and you're using a laptop right now and how could you be talking about sustainability when you're on an Apple laptop? Well, you know, that not everything is perfect. And I think that's, that is the beauty of it is understanding how it works in our modern world and not shaming people along the way.
16:55Well, just in general, Alexa, not shaming people along the way is a good premise to have, I think. Yeah, I'd agree. Shame does nothing but lock people up and they just stop and they don't try anymore. Yeah. It's just something that I have seen in the past and even I guess I've received the criticism in the past that, oh, well, what does it matter if you're not doing everything right? And
17:23I'm here to tell you that anything, any action you do does make a difference. Uh-huh. Absolutely. I have been sick for the last couple of weeks was with COVID. I might as well say it. And it's been hard getting over it. And one of the things that happened with it is that food didn't taste good at all. And I didn't lose my, my sense of taste or smell, but you know, you get sick, you don't want to eat and I knew I had to eat to get better. I knew I had to sleep to get better. And so I would.
17:52I would dish up my food and sit down to eat it and I get halfway through and be like, I'm not going to finish this. I'm not hungry. It tastes like cardboard. This sucks. And I would of course throw it away. And I felt really bad about throwing food away. That's fair. But at the same time, you're sick. Yeah. It's not like I was going to eat it the next day and it wasn't like my husband could take it to...
18:16work with him for lunch the next day because I don't know if COVID can get passed back to someone who's already had the same strain, but I sure as heck didn't want to find out. Right. So there are things that we do that we know are going to be successful and there are things that we do that they're not going to be successful. So you just have to find the offset and the balance I think. Absolutely. And yeah, just give yourself grace in the process. Yeah, exactly.
18:45So what do you grow? I'm really curious about what you grow on your stairwell. Like I will say, it's mostly herbs, just because that's the easiest thing for me to grow and I don't have a lot of space. I would like to get into potatoes next growing season, but I'm gonna have to figure that out. I'm trying to see if I can finagle a raised bed in my apartment complex. But for now I have jalapeno peppers, dill, thyme, mint,
19:15basil. I have a now a wild sweet basil variety that's like more for Florida. I have lemongrass, tomatoes, two different varieties of tomatoes that are popping right now, which is amazing. I have a cabbage that I don't think is actually going to produce, but we're watching it. Bok choy that I've been harvesting from. And then I also just got a Harwich product system.
19:42from my husband for Christmas. So we've been starting that and we're trying to grow some lettuces inside. Nice. Bok choy is one of the prettiest little leafy greens ever. It really is. I love watching it come in and so fast. Yeah. And it's so weird because it's like a lettuce and a cabbage mixed together. That's so true. Yeah. I'd never had it before. My husband planted it when we moved to our place that we live at now.
20:08We moved in four years ago and he put in bok choy and I was like, what's bok choy? And he said, it's like a, an Oriental, let us see thing. And I was like, I don't know that's the correct explanation, but I'm going to go with it. And, and he said, it's we'll use it in stir fry. And I said, okay. And he grew it and I tasted it raw after I'd watched some and I was like, Oh, this is amazing. It's crunchy. Yes. I love that. The texture is great. Yep. I had no idea. I had never had it before.
20:38And I don't know why I just hadn't, but I love it. And he's going to grow some more in the greenhouse. Yay. So we'll have that again, too. Again, I'm hitting 20 minutes and losing my train of thought because I'm still not quite on top of getting past this sickness. So I was going to say, if you need room to grow other things, are there any community gardens in your area or anything? Yes, there are. There's one not.
21:05far from me and I go there. I've gone there to volunteer and plant fruit trees. I do hope to spend more time there this year. And I think they I believe they rent out spots. And it's like very affordable for like a whole year and you can have a plot. But I just love having it accessible and next to me all the time. Me and my husband do share a car because we both work from home. So and also there's no need if we both work from home to have two cars.
21:34I prefer to have things closer to home. I'm not opposed to it. My parents grow a lot of things and I have the luxury of getting a lot of their produce that they hope grow at home. So I'm patient for now and the future. I have hopes and aspirations of, you know, having a property that it can grow things on, but for now this works for us. Sure, absolutely. Do what you can. What you have where you are is a mantra we use all the time.
22:04I will tell you if you get the chance to grow potatoes, it is so fun when it's time to harvest them because basically you pull the plant out of the ground and it doesn't bring the roots with it because they're heavy with potatoes. Right. And you take a shovel and you just lift the dirt and all these potatoes just roll out. It's so fun. Like I've seen it in person because we grow potatoes.
22:30and I've seen videos of it and every time I see it I'm just astounded. It's like nature is so freaking cool. It is so cool and yeah I would love to do like some canvas bags and then I've seen people like pour them out and then all the potatoes come out and I think that's so so funny as well like I would love to do something like that just we can't grow them I mean we can grow sweet potatoes year-round but have to wait on the regular potatoes until next year probably.
22:57Yeah, and we have trouble growing sweet potatoes here because the season just isn't quite long enough. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, so we've got the flip side going here. We've got, we do. You can't do potatoes and I can't do sweet potatoes, so we'll figure. It's really funny how different regions support different foods. Oh yeah, and in Florida in general, we have like three different zones. So like if you just go a couple hours north, not even an hour north, and it's a different.
23:25gardening zone and they can grow different things and can't grow certain things. So it's so fascinating. Yeah, my daughter is caretaking some avocado trees, bushes, whatever they are for her mother-in-law. And she can just go pick an avocado whenever she wants to when they're in season. And I'm like, I'm so jealous because we could never grow avocados here. We would have to have a room in our house designated for avocado plants.
23:54that was at a certain temperature and had a certain amount of light all the time. And we just can't, we don't have that. Yeah, that's the one thing I'm obsessed with tropical fruits, obviously, because I grew up with it. So my parents always, they have this amazing avocado tree that the avocados are so big, it's a different variety than like the Haas avocado. But the avocado avocado gets so big, it's like a butternut squash bigger than a butternut squash at times. Wow. Yes, it's huge. And it's like bigger than my forearm.
24:21and they're long and delicious, like creamy but firm. It's amazing. I'm jealous. Honestly, I didn't like avocado. I thought I didn't like avocado because I had guacamole when I was like 14. And when I was 14, I was really picky. So I didn't like anything anyway. And then I tried avocado like seven, eight years ago and had it in a salad.
24:48And I was like, I don't know why I didn't like this. This is great. Right? Avocados are, they don't necessarily taste like anything. It's what you put them in that makes them taste good. Yes. Yeah. And I grew up in Brazil, they eat it sweet. They don't even eat it salty at all. And so like I grew up with my mom always making it sweet with like, you basically mash it up and add brown sugar to it. But here in the U.S. everyone eats it with salt. So like, it's a really versatile vegetable. Or I guess, fruit vegetable, I'm not even sure.
25:17ehhhh fruit i think i can't remember it's kind of like lamb i don't know if you eat meat but lamb is one of the meats that takes the seasoning of anything you season it with takes the flavor and so you can cook it with mint jelly you can cook it with barbecue sauce you can cook it with salt and pepper and it's just going to absorb whatever the seasoning is that you use
25:41And so I always kind of liken avocado to lamb because avocado is just gonna take in whatever you season it with. That's a great point. So, you said you have hopes of maybe having some land someday. Is that like a dream or is that like a goal? I would say why not both, but.
26:05I guess a house is first and the house with like any amount of land would be enough for me. Like I said, I grow on steps right now in a garden so I can make any amount of land work. Yeah. And my parents have their own land so I don't feel like the need to get that unless it was .. I like living by the coast. I'll just say that and there's no coastal land near us. Yeah. That seems to be a problem on any coastal area right now. Right.
26:33I grew up in Maine and I can remember being able to walk along Sabago Lake, like for miles, just along the lake shore. And I guarantee you that's not the truth now. I bet that's not possible now. And in Minnesota, there are very few, I mean, it's the land of 10,000 lakes, but there are very few lakes where you can just walk the shoreline for miles because everyone owns the shoreline. Right.
27:01Yeah, and I'm not even talking about the shoreline because that's just not even, and I wouldn't want to do that anyway, but I live five minutes away from the beach right now and that's how I like it. So although it'd be nice to have land, I don't think I could give up the coastal lifestyle. Yeah, no. It was really hard leaving Maine and knowing that I would be so far from the ocean. But then I learned that there were so many lakes here that it was ridiculous, so that helped. And my father-in-law used to live on.
27:30a lake here in Minnesota. So I would get out of the car, walk to his backyard before I would even go on the house and just smell the air because air, air smells different around water. Absolutely. And so I would just stand there and breathe in for like five minutes and he'd be like, are you going to come in the house? I'll be right there. I'm just meditating for a moment with your lake. And he's like, Oh, I keep forgetting you have a thing about that.
27:57like, yes, yes, I do. Thank you for providing me a place to do this. He's like, I just need to get used to this. I said, uh-huh. Yes, if you could, that'd be great. And he said, you know, you could always just come in the house and go stand on the balcony out back and get the same fat. It's not the same. I said, but then I'm not rooted in the grass. And he's like, you're one of those. I'm like, yes, I am. I am absolutely one of those for sure. Have to ground. Yes. And I didn't even know it was called grounding bed.
28:27but now I do so intuitively you knew yeah it's I don't know I grew up in the Maine woods like my my lullaby was the wind through the pine trees at night because the windows were open so my parents raised me to be a nature baby and when people aren't raised that way they don't have the same understanding of it as I do you're so right and then trying to educate people on it they're
28:56I'm like, no, for real, you should try it. Yeah. And also they have to have their own experiences of nature to just realize how tremendous and amazing it really is. And then that's when I notice at least people become more catalyzed to be more sustainable and things like that. Yes. Yes, for sure. If I hadn't been raised the way that I was, I wouldn't be as interested and as practicing, I guess, as I am. No, same here.
29:23It never would have occurred to me. I just would have been like, I'm going to go to the store and buy pop and chips and not worry about it. It'd be great. And I try not to do that. I try to eat good or well, sorry, eat well. And I tried to drink a lot of water because we're what 90% water, I think. And the more water you put in, the better you feel. So. Same here. Yep. More, more nature.
29:49Yes, every day, every minute of every day, if at all possible, as I sit here and stare at my monitor. It's too cold to commune with nature today in Minnesota. I'm not going out there. I haven't been outside once today. That was more than enough for me. That's fair. Yeah. When your nose hairs freeze, when you step on your porch, you know it's cold. Yeah, that's enough. I'm over here and like I'm bundled up and it's just like in the 60s and just a little
30:17rainy, dreary, but I'm obviously not equipped. That's cozy napping weather. That's not freezing weather. It depends who you ask. I know, exactly. All right, Alexa, I try to keep you to half an hour and we're at 30 minutes. So thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day. Thank you. You too.
 

Shades of Green Urban Farm

Today I'm talking with Kimberlee at Shades of Green Urban Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Kimberlee at Shades of Green Urban Farm. Good afternoon, Kimberlee. How are you? I'm good, Mary. Thanks. How are you? I'm doing. I'm still alive. I'm telling you, I'm really glad to be through this sickness.
00:27My podcasts for the last three or four have just sounded like crap. I'm so sad about it. So you're in Phoenix? Yeah, I'm in Phoenix. Sunny, sunny Phoenix. Is it warm? It is warm. It's kind of well, I see that but it's been a little cool, cool for us. We've got down to like 30 degrees within the last few few days. But of course the
00:56at night. But of course, the days get a little bit warmer, you know, pushing 60s and upwards to 70s. But for us, that's kind of cool. Sure. Sure. Well, I guess just a little bit of background about me. Like I said, we're here in sunny Phoenix and kind of just the way we got started, just kind of always having a passion for plants.
01:24I love, love, love anything plants, mostly houseplants kind of a thing. Sustainability. Love the idea of building meaningful connections with the community and bringing the community together. And what kind of really started is this really kind of a small dream of mine of, you know, building this plant idea, the microgreens piece of things really kind of flourished into this.
01:50of multifaceted business idea of mine, which really focuses on the microgreens piece of things, the business side, houseplants, and then our homemade home goods that we do. My daughter is an amazing artist. She does fantastic pottery. She throws amazing pieces of pottery and she makes
02:19homemade rug, she's got this loom and she makes amazing rugs and she's just freaking incredible. With that, we just have this side business thing that we do with the home goods piece of that and the house plants that we do along with the microgreens, which is the side business type of thing. It's a broader aspect of things, but microgreens in and of itself I think is what you wanted me to talk about.
02:46Well, sure, but everything you just said falls under the headings of my podcast topic. Yeah. So we can talk about it all if you want, but you're multifaceted is what you're saying. Multifaceted, yeah. But really for the microgreens piece of things, kind of what we do with that is in a nutshell, we really specialize in growing and delivering the freshest microgreens to
03:12to people's homes, to restaurants, to local markets. We visit, as a matter of fact, I'm growing a crop right now for a farmer's market that I'm doing on Saturdays. We do a lot of farmer's markets. So our mission really is pretty simple. It's just to bring a touch of green into the lives of those that we're supporting. The community, we really wanna bring that touch of green into the community that we're here with.
03:41We deliver within 24 hours after harvest. So we ensure that our customers are getting the highest quality and the freshest flavor that they can. So it's pretty simple. It's a pretty simple business model. Harvest within 24 hours or deliver within 24 hours of harvest. So it's pretty simple. Most of our greens we can grow within 10 days, just depending on which green it is or which
04:09micro that they choose. We have a variety of different microgreens that we do grow. Our standard really can kind of grow within 10 days. So it's a pretty simple business model. Our customers love them. Sunflower is our biggest one. Pea is a big one. Broccoli, of course, is huge. Radish is huge. We have a really awesome variety
04:38Oh my gosh, it's a super food variety. And then we also have a spicy salad that is one of our customer favorites.
04:51Okay. So, so did you start out really small? Yeah, we did. Yeah. Started out pretty small. We're still pretty small, to be honest. The grow room that I have right now is probably, I mean, right now, I would say 600 square foot, maybe. Okay. Yeah. It's in our house. And so we've dedicated a spare room of the house. We kind of, you know, carved that out into this sterile little room that we
05:21We keep with just for the grow room. So it's pretty small. We've got four grow racks in here, all with lights and everything. We'll keep everything pretty much in this room. Nice. Is it warm in that room? It's warm in here, yeah. We keep it at about 72 degrees. Yeah. Yeah, I would love to have a room like that in our house in Minnesota because that would be wonderful on days when it's minus 20 degrees outside.
05:48Well, the beauty of this is you can grow microgreens year round. So when you're doing it in your house, you know, especially like, you know, with, with harsh climates, like Phoenix, like Arizona, we can grow year round. So in a harsh summer, we can still have fresh microgreens. And so we're delivering, you know, to customers, you know, year round, and we can do these, these, uh, farmers markets year round as well, because we're continuously growing them and within this 10 day span.
06:17you know, we are always able to have fresh microgreens and you in Minnesota can do it as well. So if you can have a space in your house, you don't have to have a very big space. You can have, you know, one, two grow racks and still be able to do it. You can grow them in your kitchen and have amazing microgreens. Oh, they're super simple. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. And we have, we, we have a huge kitchen. Like we have the biggest kitchen ever known to man. I don't know why they did the house this way, but I'm so glad they did. And
06:46They have a little eat-in area for a table and has three windows. And so up until last spring, we would start our seed starts, you know, our seedlings for the garden on that table. And you invariably have microgreens if you're starting seedlings. So we would have trays of seedlings, of lettuces and things, and I'd steal little leaves off of my husband's. Like they're never going to get big if you keep eating them. You keep snacking off them.
07:16And I was like, I only take one little leaf a day. And he's like, that one little leaf could be a big leaf in a month. I'm like, yeah, I know. I know. Yeah. And I mean, we started, we started them in February, the first year we were here four years ago, and he was like, we're not going to have any plant if you keep eating it. I was like, it's green food, honey. It's good stuff in February. It's good stuff. Yeah. They're so healthy too. Yup.
07:45And I just, I don't know, I really love the little baby lettuces and baby spinach leaves. They're delicious. So good. And the beads. I couldn't help myself. Couldn't stop. So good. I hear you. And so, I love it when we start seeds in the house because it's just so nice to have this tray of green on the table. Now the reason I said up until last spring is because we just built a hard-sided greenhouse this past May.
08:14And hopefully we'll be able to be getting our seed starting things happening in the greenhouse this year. That's awesome. We're very excited about this. This has been in the works for, I think we, I think I applied for the grant in the summer of 2023 that allowed us to build it. So it's been, it's been literally a year and a half, almost two, that this has been a hope and a dream.
08:43So the dream is going to come true in February. Oh, that's exciting. Oh, very nice. That's exciting, Mary. We're so tickled. My husband is losing his mind. He's like, we've got to get seeds ordered. We'll figure out what you want to grow. We'll order seeds, babe. It'll get done. Better get them now. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, so he's just so excited. He's just bouncing. He's dying to get to that time frame. How cute.
09:09Yes, and he's 55 years old a bouncing 55 year old man Who is acting like a five-year-old in a candy store is very entertaining to watch Yes, it's very fun so Here's what I want to know what you said what do sunflower microgreens taste like Well, they kind of taste they're they're like a nutty flavor kind of earthy nutty
09:38What I really love to do with them, and it's kind of funny because people think, wow, that's kind of an interesting concept. But one of the best things that you can do with them, or one of my favorite things is put them in a guacamole. The sunflower guacamole, it's incredible. Take two avocados, add some lime juice, salt, pepper, roughly chop up these
10:06put in some red onion, some jalapeno, and you've got an amazing sunflower guacamole dip. It's incredible. Nice, nice. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's some crunch. Yeah, how big do the microgreens have to be before you can harvest them, how tall? Oh, they get about, it just depends on the microgreen. Sunflower gets about two inches, maybe an inch and a half, two inches.
10:36Um, broccoli is not as tall. Some, you know, the, the superfoods gets a little bit taller. It just depends on what the green is. They don't, they don't get real big. They're tiny little guys. Okay. And then when you harvest them, how do you do that? Do you sell them with the roots still on them? How do you know? Nope. Um, I cut them and weigh them. I usually sell them by the ounce. So I package them in about like, uh,
11:05three ounces, four ounces, depending on again, the green. It's about six, three ounces for $6, four ounces for $6 typically, and then just package them in a clam shell with my label on it and then deliver them that way. Okay, so how do you keep them from wilting? Again, they're delivered within 24 hours. So I've got a little fridge in here, just pop them in the fridge and then they go out the next day.
11:34So stick them in the fridge and they're good for about 10 days, sometimes even a little bit longer. So they stay in your fridge and they stay in there for a good 10 days or longer. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. Huh. I thought maybe you would put like a damp paper towel in the clamshell or something, but it doesn't sound like you're doing that. You don't really have to. Huh. Well, goodness sake, so we're going to have to do some microgreens in Minnesota this summer. There you go.
12:04Now that I know they won't wilt in a day and a half.
12:09Because we sell at the farmers market. No, they're tiny, but they're pretty hearty actually. Yeah, I'm sure there's probably a market for them here at our little town in LaSore at the farmers market. So I'm going to have to talk to my bouncy husband and be like, how do you feel about microgreens, honey? Try it out. Mm-hmm. I'm sure he'll be thrilled. He'll be like, oh, a new thing to research. And I said that very flat, but he'll be excited. He'll be excited about it.
12:36Yeah, anything that he can grow that is a plant he's tickled with. So my kind of guy. Yeah, mine too. We've been together for over 20 years. I think he's a keeper. I think I'm pretty sure. Yeah, we have our moments because we're very different people, but for the most part, we're pretty aligned on the core values. So might as well. Yeah. Love that man a lot. Love the kid that we produced. I love the kids that came before the kid we produced and.
13:05Basically the four kids we have, we consider to be ours even though they all have different sets of parents. So yeah, it's a pretty good family. We did pretty good. They're all adults now, but they're still our babies. Absolutely. They always will be. Oh yeah, forever and ever. Amen. Yeah. And sometimes they still act like it too. It's amazing. So, okay. So,
13:34I don't want to be nosy, but I have a rather pointed question. Does the business support itself? It does because I have a variety of things that I do. And I say that because with the microgreens piece, what I really need to start doing and be able to do for that to sustain itself is to be able to scale.
14:02So what I'm really trying to do is really focus on really marketing towards the restaurant side of things. Because delivering to homes and to customers that way is fantastic. It's great. I love doing it. I love air quoting going to farmers markets. It's fine. It's good. It's great to be able to be with the community and talk about it and educate and all that kind of stuff.
14:31I think you can probably tell I'm kind of an extrovert and I kind of like doing that kind of stuff. I like networking. However, there's a lot of waste of product when I do that. I don't always know who's going to show up, who's going to be there. And so I've kind of got to play it by ear and like, okay, what we had, you know, this many people last week, you know, and it takes a minute because I've got a plan. I'm planning today for what's going to happen for next weekend. So it's a bit of a game. So
15:00what I need to start doing is really, really focusing on restaurants. Because if I can really get more restaurants under my belt and in my portfolio, I can start to scale better and be able to really just focus on those customers and be able to start scaling up better, if that makes sense. Yes, you'll have more of a quote unquote guarantee of what's going to be to be bought from you. Yes. Yeah.
15:29And that's the problem with this particular business model for anyone who grows produce. You end up with waste because you're not sure what's going to be bought. It's a gamble. And I've said this before on the podcast, but my husband wanted to do a CSA and he wanted to do the farmer's market. And he was like, so I'm going to plant this many of this and that many of that.
15:58hopefully will make this much money. And I was like, you do understand how much I despise gambling, right? And he laughed and he said, it's not gambling. And I'm like, no, it is, it is gambling. I said, it's not gambling like going to a casino and dropping coins into a machine, but it is a gamble. I said, I hate this. He's like, it's not a gamble, it's a dream. There are different things. And I'm like, okay, I have to think about it as a dream because I can't think of it as gambling. Yeah.
16:28And so it's really fun, but it's also really scary sometimes. It is. You have to get through that fear and be excited enough to fight through the fear, I think. Well, that's it. And you've got to think of it as, yes, it is a gamble, but it's a gamble in a way that you're continuing to put your name out there. You're continuing to
16:57reach more people. You're putting your card out there, you're getting your name out there to more people. It's another way to market. The really awesome thing about the farmers market that I go to, and I'm going to plug them, it's the Prickly Bazaar. They're out here in the west side of Phoenix. They're amazing. They offer free space to anybody that does produce.
17:22So it doesn't cost me anything to go there, so to speak. So I don't pay for any space, which is fantastic. So all it costs me is of course the greens that I take. Um, so it's fantastic in that. Yeah, they're amazing that way. So it's, it's just another opportunity for me to just network with people and, you know, take the product that I do. So what I'm doing, you know, again, for next weekend is like, okay, I'm looking through my seeds, looking through my product that I have the inventory of like,
17:52All right, well, I have a lot of this. Let's throw some of that in a tray. We'll see what that does. I've got a lot of that left over. I'm okay, I've got a lot of this done, Pete. Let's soak some of this and maybe let's get some of this. Get rid of some of this so we can make room for some new stuff or whatever it is. Keep the rotation going through. Yeah. So tell me what microgreens are good used in. I know you can use them in smoothies.
18:21Oh my gosh, you can use them just about in everything. Well, obviously they're great on a garnish. The restaurants really do is put them on a garnish, like fancy plated dishes have really awesome things in their garnish. In salads, I told you about the sunflower guacamole that I love to do. The spring salad, I have that spicy salad mix that I do, which is fantastic just in itself. You can have that just all by itself.
18:51Let's think of what else you can do with them. You can make, oh my gosh, it's amazing. Could you do like a pesto like you would do with basil? You can do, absolutely. You can do pesto. Yeah. Okay. Yep. There's this grilled cheese. I've heard about this restaurant that does this grilled cheese, like this ham and cheese with brie. And they have.
19:19these microgreens on it like this apple and Dijon mustard type of thing, it's supposed to be amazing. I haven't had it yet. They just throw a handful of microgreens on that and use it that way. My brother is an amazing cook. He doesn't do it for a living or anything. He just cooks here at the house. And he uses a lot of the greens that we don't sell. He uses a ton of the greens here, and he throws them in just about everything. And they turn out amazing.
19:48If somebody were to buy, I don't know, 12 ounces of microgreens from you and they can't use them right away, could they do the same thing that you can do with herbs and could they put them in olive oil and freeze them for future use? That's a great question.
20:06That's a great question. I don't know. I would assume so. Okay. I would assume so. I would assume like with broccoli, like just cutting just the, the tip of them off, just the, the floret off. I would assume so, but that's a great question. I'm going to research that. Yeah. Cause we, we make pesto and we freeze it because we make so much at a time. We're never going to eat all of it. And so we've learned to put it in ice cube trays and freeze it and then put it in the ziplock bags in the freezer.
20:36And once it thaws out, the basil is notorious for going black if it's frozen and the oil keeps it from blackening as it were. And so the pesto is just as good when you thaw it out and warm it up as if it was made fresh if you put it in olive oil and stick it in the freezer. That's really interesting. I'm going to research that.
21:03Honestly, we don't eat pesto often enough to have it be a problem because we don't love it enough to have it like every month. But man, when the basil is coming in from the garden in the summer, I want to use every bit of that basil we can keep. Yeah. Basil is not easy to grow. It grows great here. Does it? Yes. It does super well. And it only does super well for like two and a half months. So when it's coming in, I want to get it in.
21:32pesto. I want to freeze that. I want to dry it and put it in jars and stick it in my pantry. I want to use every last living piece of that basil coming in from the garden because I know it won't come back until the following June. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you can have a... I have basil micro green seeds, so I'm going to try those. I haven't tried them yet. So I'm going to give those a shot within the next...
22:02few go arounds here too to see how those work out for me. They'll probably taste exactly like regular old basil because I've kifed the leaves off of baby basils too to try them. So it'll just be little tiny basil. Little baby basils. Yeah. Little baby basils. You were talking about the clamshell containers that you put your microgreens in.
22:30What a lot of people who don't grow and sell produce, they don't know about this is that it's not the growing the stuff that kills you on price. It's the packaging and the labeling that kill you. It is. And it kills me when I have to throw those out. Kills me. Yeah. Because the outlay to start something like what you're doing is pricey.
22:57But I'm assuming that you can reuse your seed trays. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's an investment. It is. But the packaging and the labeling, it's an investment. But it's not a reasonable. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, one and done. And it kills me to see those go. Uh-huh. It's...
23:20It's so funny because people are like, oh, that must be great. You must be raking in the money. And it's like, no, because there are unseen expenses in every business. That's right. Doing it. No one's going to know that it costs you a dollar and a half per clam shell to, to sell the things in. It sure does. Yep. So, you know, you've got a, anybody who starts a business.
23:47that your accountant will tell you that your expenses are all of the things and that that cuts into your profit. Sure does. I think it takes a special kind of person and I don't mean that in derogatory way at all. It takes a really special person to start a business and have it succeed because it's so much to keep track of and understand.
24:14what is actually profit and what is actually cost of doing business.
24:20Right.
24:24So, and that's why I like talking to people like you, because you help me lead people down that road of making them understand what goes into it. Well, it's a commitment for sure. And it's a lot of research and it's a lot of, you know, talking to people and to families and businesses that are doing it. And like I said, just the research in it, like is this a viable business for me to get into?
24:51And after really looking at it and looking into the market here and the sustainability of it here, yes, I love it. I absolutely love what I do. But just because you love it.
25:06Can you make money doing it? Is the other thing of it too. And you have to be able to support yourself. Yeah, you love it. Yeah, I love doing what I'm doing, but I also have to support myself. So there's that balance of it as well. And so being able to have that conversation with yourself, okay, Kim, the clamshells do cost that. They're six cents a piece and the labels that you're doing and the ink that goes into making those labels.
25:35You know, and like I was saying earlier, you know, preparing for the farmers markets and the cost that goes into that and, you know, what waste that I might be doing and forgoing with within those farmers markets is like, does it make sense to do that? And so, you know, back to the restaurant side of things, you know, is it better to just not do those farmers markets?
26:03and just stay within, you know, just continue marketing the restaurants and, you know, keeping your head to the grindstone and just, you know, keep hammering it and keep going in there and taking those samples to the restaurants and just, you know, just hammering it away and making sure that, you know, you're doing everything you can to win that business, which you can do both. Don't get me wrong. But, you know, you've got to be able to make that.
26:30that decision of what is better for you as a business, what makes more sense to you as a business that's going to be for you for the long haul, what's going to make more sense for you. Yes, absolutely. You cannot do it any other way. It will fail. It will. You've got to be true to what you're trying to accomplish and what you're capable of doing. You mentioned labels. I...
26:57I am so impressed when people have these beautiful labels that they have made for them. My husband and I were talking and he was like, I really would like to have some cute labels. I was like, cute labels cost money. He said, how much money? I said, more than you're going to want to pay. He said, like three or four dollars a label? I said, it could be. I said, what are you thinking? He sort of drew up this design for our...
27:27our place for our labels. And I said, do you want it in black and white or color? And he said, well, color. And I said, color costs more. You work with printers, you know this. And he said, well, I work with the actual machines that print things. And I said, yeah. I said, doesn't the company that you work for charge more for colored documents than black and white documents? And he said, yeah. I said, so do label companies. And he was like, oh. And so.
27:55What we realized very quickly is that black and white is the way to go. And simple design is the way to go. If you're not flush with cash. Right. And it's really sad. I saw the most beautiful Christmas labels because we sold them candles and soaps and things last year. Yeah. And they were so cute and I wanted them so bad and it would have cost us our house to get as many labels as we wanted to get. I was like, I am not trading my house for labels.
28:24because they're cute. This is not happening. But you can get really, really creative with black and white, can get really simplistic and modern looking black and white. I kind of like black and white better sometimes. Yeah, ours is just a little farmhouse that I sort of, I sort of kife the drawing of the farmhouse and then added things to make it ours to embellish it. And it's got little potted plants and a couple chickens on it.
28:52and it's black and white and that's our logo and that's what we use for everything and people like it's so cute and I'm like yeah we made a cute label this is awesome but yeah it's it's all the little accessories and pieces and parts around what you're actually producing that make it so difficult sometimes but it's also the thing that people remember. That's just it and you've got to be consistent with it and so with that logo that you have
29:20Obviously that's why you have a logo so it's recognizable. You know so you've got to be consistent with it too and that's the challenge of it as well. Yep, I use it on everything. It's the logo for the podcast because everything that we do is under the tiny Homestead LLC umbrella. So everything. If we make a new product, it's under our umbrella.
29:47And so that logo covers everything. And I'm so glad I sat down and made it when I did before, before we even moved in here. I had the idea for the logo for our business and my husband was like, we don't even have a business yet and you're already doing the logo. I said, well, yes, I am. He said, you're crazy. I said, no, I'm smart. I said, there's a difference between crazy and smart. They may go hand in hand sometimes, but I'm smart. We need to have.
30:14We need to have the idea before we jump into the middle of this. And he was like, I'm so glad I married you. I was like, yeah, I know. Thanks honey. So yeah, so there's a lot that goes into doing any kind of business, but especially your business, because it is such a quick turnaround and you do only have a certain amount of time to get the product moved. Right. So I commend you. It's a lot to take on.
30:44Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I love it. I really, really do. It is fun. I love being able to just, I love being able to talk to people about it because not everybody, you know, you know about them, you know about microgreens, you know about the health benefits of them. Not everybody does. And so when I'm able to talk to people about it,
31:11That's what I love doing. I absolutely love growing them. Don't get me wrong. I love preparing the trays. It makes me happy. I love getting my hands dirty and being in the dirt and doing that kind of stuff. It just makes me happy. Being in my grow room makes me happy. I love doing it. And so it makes sense for me. This business makes sense to me. So it's just like I said, it's just the...
31:39the way that I'm going to scale it is my challenge now.
31:45So yeah, um, my ideas, I've got ideas. Yes, absolutely. My cook greens are really good for you. But why is it that they're so good for you? Well, they're so good for you because they pack so much in the little bit of package that they are, because they're like 40 times more nutritious, they pack 40 times more nutrients than their more mature counterpart.
32:15because they're so dense, they're so nutritiously dense now as they grow. They have so much more, like I said, than their adult counterpart, if you will. They have everything that their adult counterpart has as well.
32:43I just talked to a lady this morning. She has many horses. And I feel like I've spent the whole day thinking about many things because, you know, microgreens are many plants and many horses are micro horses.
33:00It's been that kind of day, ma'am. All right, Kimberly, I try to... Huh?
33:09No, I didn't say anything. Okay. I try to keep these to half an hour and we're at 36 minutes. So I'm going to cut you loose. Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you for, for having me. I appreciate you. For sure. Absolutely. You have a great day, Kim. Thank you. I will. You too, Mary.
 

Moon Ridge Acres

Today I'm talking with Becca at Moon Ridge Acres. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Becca at Moon Ridge Acres. Good morning, Becca. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. You're in Alberta, Canada? Yes. Central Alberta, near Camrose. Is it super cold there?
00:28Today not so much. It's actually around minus two But for the weekend, we're going down to minus 25 minus 30, which is a horrible jump real temperature Yeah, yeah, that's Celsius. Oh Yeah, I'm so sorry It's it's it's the jumping around that makes it really challenging because we get used to the cold we're used to these terrible colds, but
00:57When you go from, you know, plus, in the plus degrees down to minus 30 within a weekend, it, it is hard on everybody. It's hard on the animals, it's hard on us. It's not fun.
01:12Yeah, the last couple of days here in Minnesota, it's been really, really cold for us. And today it's supposed to hit 30. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 35, I think. I'm talking Fahrenheit. Right. And then, uh, today is Wednesday. So Friday is supposed to be warm again.
01:29and then Saturday it's supposed to start to drop and then Sunday and Monday it's supposed to be super freaking cold again. I'm like, mother nature, could you stop with the basketball bouncing, Jesus. Yeah, exactly. It's these extremes. It's like, ease into it a little bit, you know? Or just level out for a while. I mean, if it's gonna be cold, stay cold for a while. If it's gonna be warm, stay warm for a while. That would be fine. Absolutely, and like.
01:55Here with the melting and the freezing and the melting and the freezing, it just makes the roads absolutely horrific for driving. My husband is a full-time trucker, so it makes his job a lot harder to have to deal with ice on the roads. The counties are not always the best at getting out there and getting salt on the roads and taking care of them. It can be pretty treacherous.
02:24And on the flip side, I bet summer is really beautiful where you are. Stunning, absolutely gorgeous. I was kind of laughing because I had made some videos about George and Katie Vanslake being in Tennessee and how right now they have two hours of daylight more than we have here in Alberta. But then come June, we actually end up with two hours more of daylight than them.
02:53So it's just always flip-flopping in every way.
03:01I'm so glad you brought up Katie. I love Miss Katie. I watch Miss Katie's videos every day and very excited that Kennedy just had her baby. Yes, I love it because Katie falls out right before my folding season. So she kind of like fills that gap and gets me super excited for when our babies start to come. And so yeah, watching new babies will never get old.
03:29No, and she makes me happy because I don't have any animals like that. So I get to live vicariously through her videos, which I'm sure a lot of people do. Right. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. She's brought the joy of, you know, animal ownership to a lot of people. Yes. And she's so... Let's just rave about Katie Vance like for a minute here. Most people won't know who we're talking about. She's a young woman who does videos on...
03:59Facebook and YouTube and she has mini horses and thoroughbreds and quarter horses and mini cows and goats and I don't even know and she has just been this shining light of How to learn how to take care of livestock and it's been a beautiful progression for her Yeah, if you're if you're interested in raising animals, she is very honest about not knowing everything
04:28and learning as she goes and trying to share that. So I really like her. Okay, so this isn't about Katie Vance. Like I would love to talk to her, but she's a very busy lady. Absolutely, absolutely. So Becca, tell me about what you do.
04:44So what do you do at your place? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I think we had a little internet connection there. So we raise miniature horses. So kind of when you asked me to be on the podcast and it was about homesteading, I kind of laughed because I consider myself a bit of a homesteader, but I'm like a really bad one because I do horses. No such thing. No such thing as a bad homesteader.
05:14Yeah, we do miniature horses and we show them and we are kind of like working towards being on the upper level of that showing and having super high quality animals. I have raised rabbits for a few years now and I dabbled in the meat rabbits a little bit and my pride and joy were my Holland Lops which
05:42not so great for the sustainability factor, but I love them. And then we have ducks and we have a couple pigs and most of them are honestly pets. Like I said, not so great in terms of homesteading, but I follow a lot of homesteading practices in order to kind of keep things going. We get really resourceful around here to be able to manage what we have.
06:10And that is definitely a homesteading skill. Every homesteader I've talked to has done workarounds and created new ways to do things. Absolutely. I mean, I think especially when you're starting out and you don't, you know, the animals aren't sustaining themselves yet financially, you have to get creative unless you have, you know, someone funding you or, you know, you have a really great nine to five job that is sustaining that.
06:39financial burden, at least for the beginning. Eventually, I do hope the horses will sustain themselves, but that initial upfront cost of getting going is astronomical. You have to be able to work around and use a futon as a hay feeder and make it work. Uh-huh. Yep, absolutely. We used... Someone had an old toddler bed and it had the spring part.
07:09You know? Yep. And we use that as a trellis for our cucumbers one year. Oh, absolutely. We actually have a like a crib. A crib like I think it's like a frame, a crib frame as a gate right now. It's not the sturdiest gate, but it just needs to keep the goatees in. Yep. And it works. It works. Absolutely. I mean, if we can keep things out of the landfills.
07:37and make them work for us, why not? Absolutely, that is something, I always laugh at my husband, but I admire him for doing it. Every time he goes to the dump, he goes around and he will pick, he will pick. And he's brought home some really good stuff. So it's amazing what people throw away. And one person's trash is another person's treasure. And we've really made a lot just from.
08:05going to the landfill and taking what's still good. Yes, definitely. And I don't feel any shame about what you just said because my parents used to find stuff when they would take stuff to the dump too. And my dad would bring things home and I'm like, what's that for? And he's like, well, number one, it's clean. And I'm like, good. And he said, I can use it for, and he would list off all these different projects for all these different things he would bring home. And-
08:34The first time he told me a story, I was like, oh, okay. And then like the 20th time he started telling me a story, I would just start to giggle because I thought that he was so ingenious with his plans. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we always laugh. We look through our yard and a lot of people will come over and be like, wow, like you have so much, you have all the energy. It's like we worked for it very hard. We broke our backs for it, but we didn't pay a lot of money. Yep.
09:03Yeah, and honestly, I feel like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace have become the not so yucky idea of dumpster diving these days. Oh, absolutely. We have multiple dog houses. We have, at this point, seven dogs. We have big, big dog houses. I think the most we paid for one was $25, but most of them were free.
09:33Like I have my goat shed, I went and picked that up for free, just people wanting to get rid of stuff. And I mean, you have to kind of be on the marketplace and paying attention for those when they come up. But the amount of money you can save just by being resourceful in that way and not having to do everything yourself is amazing. Yes, have pickup truck and trailer will travel.
09:58Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We've even considered putting up like an ad saying, hey, we'll come clean away your, clean up your yard for you if you want, if you have things that need to go to the dump or whatever, we'll come deal with it in exchange for us keeping what we want. Because there are treasures out there that are buried in some farmer's field, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
10:26For sure, you're not wrong. And I love this. I love it because one of the things that I don't really pound on on the podcast is sustainability, but what you're talking about is sustainability. And it's really important as part of homesteading. So thank you for illustrating that. Yeah, yeah, I think that's one of our biggest fundamentals here, like despite the fact that I'm into horses and show rabbits and things that maybe don't feed us.
10:55We are really, really big on the recycling and repurposing. And I mean, even just recently, we got approved for the Loop program here in Canada. Okay. So Loop is a program that connects grocery stores that have unsellable food. It's not sellable for human consumption. And typically, this would end up in a landfill.
11:26farmers with the grocery stores, so we go and pick up a truck box full or a trailer load of like for the most part perfectly good food that the grocery stores can no longer sell because it's at its best before date or there's one moldy orange in a bag or there's a banana that's a little bit darker, whatever.
11:55get to bring that home for our animals to enjoy. And that has been such an eye-opening experience, like just seeing the sheer amount of waste, because each one of these stores has this amount of food that they are giving us every single day. And that was all going into the landfill up until Loop started.
12:22I think they're like seven years in now. Okay. And like we've gotten, like we've completely eliminated our dog food bill and that's with two large Great Danes, a pit bull, a Rottweiler, a Great Dane puppy. And the Pomeranians do not eat the loop because they are sensitive. But you know, for those big dogs, like we've gotten meat.
12:52And like all of that would have ended up in the landfill. And so this has been such a game changer for our little homestead. Now we have more money to put into other projects. But it's been really just shocking to see the amount of food waste that's out there and to know that Loop has been working hard to get more grocery stores on board, but they're not all on board yet. So...
13:21And you know, and you think, I don't know if there's a program like this in the US, but the amount of food that goes to waste is, it's bananas. It's bananas. It's crazy. And it might literally be bananas too. Who knows? They might be passing out bananas too. Before Christmas, we got an entire palette of bananas one day. My goats rejoiced. They were so happy.
13:51It was crazy. And another one we had was that we had an entire palette of tomatoes. And we couldn't for the life of us figure out what was wrong with them. But I mean, sometimes it's just a matter of, oh, these ones weren't refrigerated properly or there was a surplus or, oh, the new truck came in and we hadn't sold those like it's crazy.
14:20blows my mind and I really, really hope that, you know, especially here in Canada, if people are aware of the loop program, I think they could make their shopping choices based on a store that is contributing to the loop program because it kills me to know that there are many stores that would just rather throw it away. And
14:47To me, I appreciate the stores that are at least doing this because I have friends on the Loop program that have raised pork for their family of seven for the last couple of years just feeding their pigs loop. I think that's beautiful. I think that's wonderful. It's fabulous, yes. Yeah. I really hope that Loop takes off and they go worldwide.
15:17I'd like to see a little bit more of them being able to donate to starving humans, for sure, but the animals are a great start. Yes, and if you're raising animals to feed your family, you are feeding your humans, so that works out nicely too. I don't know if there's a program like Loop here in the States. There's probably something, but I'm not aware of it. Yeah. I know I've talked to a few.
15:46people who have animals and they have talked to their local grocery stores and said if you're just going to throw that away, can I just take it to my critters and some grocery stores are fine with that. Yeah, it seems like a lot of the smaller local stores are really open to it. It's the big box chains that are, and I understand they're worried about insurance, they're worried about legality and all of that stuff.
16:16the food being put to its highest use. Right, yes, exactly. Okay, so I'm really glad you talked about that because if I didn't know about it, I'm sure a lot of my listeners didn't know about it, so that was awesome. Absolutely. I have a question about the mini horses, and I'm genuinely not being a smart ass, I just need to ask, what are the mini horses good for besides being pets and being lovely to be around? So...
16:44That's actually a really common question that we get because, yeah, like they kind of seem like they're just little glorified pets. But I think where they really shine is in the driving. And what I have really noticed just based on the community of miniature horse people that I have found is that for...
17:13One reason or another, these people could not continue with the big horses. So my mom and I kind of joke that it's an old lady hobby. It's not exactly. There's lots of young folk in it too, but there's a lot of older ladies who maybe couldn't handle a big horse anymore.
17:43Hanoverians for 30 plus years and she's in her 70s now and she just can't handle them and she didn't want to give up her horses. So now she's in a cart and she's doing the in-hand classes with the miniatures and she's still getting her horse fixed but it's in a much safer space than with a
18:11giant 18 hand Hanoverian. Yeah, for sure. There's also a lot of people who have had injuries or maybe they're scared of big horses, but they love horses. So the minis kind of bridge that gap. And then for someone like me, I don't have enough land to support big horses.
18:41So I really couldn't realistically have more than a couple big horses on my property. And if I wanted to get into a breeding program...
18:55Sorry, did I cut out there? Nope, you're good, keep going. Oh, okay, sorry. So, yeah, it connects those smaller acreage people with a horse hobby. Like I live in an area where there's a lot of small acreages and most of these people wouldn't even have enough land to have one big horse, let alone two or three.
19:24but they would have enough land to have a few minis. And I think it's a great way for someone starting out to learn. And then maybe they progress onto big horses, or it's the opposite, where they're coming from big horses, but the big horses aren't working for them anymore. That's kind of what I've noticed with the miniature horse community.
19:52There are a few people out there who are just fanciers. They just love miniature horses and that's it. But yeah, then I think they're just kind of that gap filler. And then they drive as well. So you can do all of the same things that you can do on a horse riding, but with a cart.
20:22And, um, oh, I'm so sorry. My child is interrupting here. That's okay. Hey honey, come down and go pee. Just be quiet. Okay, sweets. Sorry about that. It's okay. Like I tell everybody who has kids in the background on other episodes, I love kids. I love their little voices. So that's good. That's good. I was, I sent them upstairs and said, try and be quiet, but
20:52When nature calls, we can only do so much. Absolutely, I guess. And I'm sure that mom hearing that somebody needs to use the bathroom on their own is a positive. Absolutely, absolutely. We're not complaining. OK, so. Yeah, so with the driving, I am very new to driving myself.
21:21I'm still trying to learn it, but it looks like it's a lot of fun. A lot of people really enjoy it. I actually have friends who was competing in upper level dressage with a big warm blood stallion. She started driving a Mini and she's like, I think I'm going to sell my horse. I like this so much. It's so fun.
21:50It's interesting. It's a different world for sure, but I don't discount the minis just in terms of pure enjoyment. They are great. They're great little animals. They're super easy to work with. They seem to be really smart too. Very smart. Very, very smart. And a lot of people, I think they get
22:19because of the Shetland pony, like the UK Shetland pony, which is very different from the American Shetland pony. And the UK Shetland pony is kind of notorious for being stubborn. And a lot of people at first glance will associate the miniature horse with the Shetland pony and think that they are stubborn and hard to train. And that's just not the case at all.
22:49The miniatures are so willing to learn. They are they're honestly Fantastic. I some one of mine my stallions I wish I could just multiply him and turn him into a big horse for me to ride because he's so well-minded So smart and just wants to please Just a really really great animal all around
23:14From what I've seen of the many horses, they remind me of a really good cross between a very well-behaved dog and a very well-behaved horse. Yes, yes, absolutely. And I kind of, I think I've joked about it on my page a little bit of how they are, they're kind of like dogs, but you can leave them outside. And you know, they're like, I find them to be less work than dogs, personally.
23:43and a lot of people are just shocked when I say that, but you know, and that's not keeping them up in a stall and turning them out every day. Like obviously you can make them as much work as you want them to be, but mine are out 24 seven. And they, you know, they have a hay bale and they have water and I don't really have to do a heck of a lot for them other than provide that and give them love and cookies and you know, work.
24:13Sorry. Got to give them scritches, right? Absolutely. I mean, I am forced to have these pretty nails so that I can give them proper, proper scritches. For sure. So, so where did the mini horses come from? Are they, are they a specific, separate breed from a regular size horse or is it just the smallest horses that have been bred down to minis?
24:41That is a really interesting question. So with the registries specifically, like they are considered a breed, but you can hardship into AMHA, which is the American Miniature Horse Association, you can hardship, which just means having a judge and an official measure them at the last hair of their withers. And if they're under 34 inches,
25:11you can register them as a miniature horse. So that kind of lends me to consider them more as a height registry, because there would be nothing to say that you couldn't, let's say you had some random quarter horse that just didn't grow tall, you could register that as a miniature horse as long as it met the height requirement. So,
25:41Yeah, I would say they're a height registry. And if that registry ends up closing and then becomes more of a bloodline registry, then that's kind of when I would consider them more to be a breed. But it depends on your definition of what a breed is. Because one thing I always say is that it's all made up. They just make up whatever they want with these registries. Like.
26:08If you look at the quarter horse registry, you can breed in thoroughbred and then breed it back to a quarter horse and it's still a purebred quarter horse. And it is confusing, but it's all made up and technically they are their own.
26:29My definition of breed says that it's a height registry until that hardshipping is no longer allowed. So, yeah. All right. Humans are nothing if we're not catalogers and labelers. We have to sort things into piles. You can watch babies start doing it when they start to sit up and play with blocks. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, there's...
26:56We have to have a group for them to be in. And everybody's definition is going to be slightly different in terms of that. I just think of the Arabian Horse Association, which the Arabians are the longest standing breed registration, I believe. They're one of the oldest breeds that are still alive. And.
27:25they don't allow any kind of cross breeding. So that's what my head says is a breed. But again, it's all made up. It's so vastly different from any other species. It's very interesting. The whole horse world, we could have a whole podcast dedicated just to...
27:51the intricacies of the different breed registrations and how they work. You should start one, Becca. Oh, that would be fun. I have considered starting a podcast eventually. I think it would be very interesting. You would never run out of people to talk to. Never, ever, ever, ever. It would be a very fascinating topic to go on to. I think it is an idea.
28:21Yeah, I can't do another one right now. This one takes all my time. And if I started a podcast with you about horse breeding, I would end up with a horse because I would fall in love with it. So I can't. I cannot do one. My husband would kill me. You need a mini. No, I do not. I need to watch other people with minis. I don't need one of my own. OK. So the reason I asked about the whole breed thing,
28:51is because we have a mini Australian shepherd, or at least that's what we were told she is. Right. And I've talked to a couple of people who raise Australian shepherds. And they're like, there's no such thing as a mini or a toy. They're just all Australian shepherds. They're just different sizes. And it was really frustrating to me before, but now that I've talked with people who
29:19breed Australian Shepherds and have done some research. I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter. We love our dog. She is like 35 pounds and she's shorter than my knee and I'm five foot nine. Wow. And she's gorgeous and she's a good girl and we love her. So she's a good girl. Australian Shepherd is what she is. Yeah. Then it really doesn't matter that.
29:44the true thing of it all. Like we recently in our club shows, we started allowing grade classes for people who have miniatures that aren't registered. And I think that was one of the most important things that we could do as a club. Because what is it? What does it matter? Well, you know, sure, we want to have the sanctioned shows and promote our breed and all of that stuff. But
30:13Why not welcome everyone to come and enjoy these little horses the way we do? And funny enough, after allowing these great horse classes into our show days, lots of these people went out and bought registered horses so they could do the whole thing. So how great is that, right? That's a beautiful thing. Yeah. Wow.
30:42That's impressive, actually. Because the miniature horse community is truly one of the best communities I have ever been a part of. And with horse people tend to get a bad reputation of being nasty, and I have not seen that with the mini community at all. It's just everyone is so welcoming, eager to help show you the ropes.
31:10Everyone is friendly at shows and you truly just feel like you're a part of a family. And that's what keeps you going back. The horses are wonderful, but it's the people at the shows that you're so excited to see and excited to go back and see how they've prepped their horses for the next year. And it's really about that community. And I think the more people we can get into it, the better. Yep.
31:38Absolutely. I think that when you have something that is positive, that brings people together, you're all learning, you're all enjoying each other's company, you are raising an animal that you love and the other people are raising theirs and they love them too. You can't help but walk away from it feeling good and feeling happy. Exactly. Exactly. It's, you know, and
32:06absolutely minimal. You know, I can do an entire show for a thousand dollars, whereas that could be an entry fee at a big horse show. So it's a really a lot smaller barrier to entry with the minis. So I think that's a really good thing. Cool. Okay. Well, Becca, I try to keep these to half an hour, but I have one more question. Sounds good. Do you have babies coming this spring?
32:35I do. I have up to 10 potentially. Oh, yeah, we've got a few coming. So I bred hard last year because I, I had a new stallion that I really wanted to get babies on the ground for. And he was the 2024 Canadian national grand champion. And so we've got babies coming from him. And I,
33:04I don't ultrasound to preg check my mares for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the only vet that will do it on a miniature is over an hour away. And then you're adding stress to your mares and all of that stuff. And then there's the cost associated with it. If I were to preg check 10 mares, I've basically given one of my foals away for free. Yes.
33:33While I'm in this beginning stages of my breeding program, I need to be very cognizant of costs. I hope I get to a point where, you know, ultrasound becomes a no-brainer. But right now I didn't, so I kind of left a little bit of room for some of these mares to be left open.
34:00And so I'm okay if they don't all end up pregnant, but I'm expecting at least eight for sure. If they're not pregnant, then they've been eating really, really well. Pretty round, huh? Yeah. So you have fancy babies coming. Not only do you have babies coming, you have fancy babies coming. Very fancy babies. The first one is the most anticipated. It is
34:29probably my top mare and my top stallion so we're really looking forward to that one. But all of the rest are, they're no slouches either so it's going to be a good folding season and it's going to last for, it should be from April to June so we've got a good three months of baby love.
34:58Are you going to post pictures on Facebook? Absolutely. Absolutely. We're, um, I'm actually hoping to kind of model my following season. Very similar to how Katie does. Nice. Um, yeah, because I mean, she's my, she's my inspiration, right? I started social media quite literally because of Katie. Um, I, I, I found her when she had just bought VS code red and I was, I saw so much of myself.
35:28in her content, I was like, wow, that's something I could actually do that I could actually, that I would love forever. Like sharing my animals with people has always been something that I've enjoyed. And being able to share it in this capacity, it just, it inspired me. So I definitely have to give Katie the credit there. She was the inspiration. And
35:55She's someone I really look up to in terms of social media. She's built an incredible platform of mostly wonderful people. And it's just really cool to see. And I just hope that I can find my community and we can all enjoy baby horses together. I think that's wonderful. And honestly, I started this podcast mostly because I needed a project.
36:25I said to my husband, I said, there are people who watch YouTube videos of cats cleaning themselves. I think I can probably do a podcast that's worth more than that. I love that. And he said, I think you can too. You should do that. So that's why we're talking today a year and a half after I started. So, all right. So Becca, thank you so much for your time and don't leave when I stop recording because I need your file to upload from your side too. Okay? Absolutely. Sounds good.
36:53All right, and I will be looking forward to videos of baby horses starting in April. Absolutely. Absolutely. I look forward to that as well. Thank you so much for having me. It was truly an honor to be asked to be on a podcast. Yeah, I really appreciate it. Oh, you are so welcome and thank you too. All right. Have a great day. Yeah, you too. Bye.
 

The Brickson Family Farm

Today I'm talking with Jim at The Brickson Family Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Jim at the Brickson Family Farm in Baudette, Minnesota, I think is how you say it. Good afternoon, Jim. Good afternoon. It is Baudette. Okay, cool. And you said it's right at the Canadian border?
00:27Yeah, we're about three miles from the Canadian border. Actually, the town we live in is Pitt, but there's not too many people. The township isn't that big, so they attach us to Bidet. Oh, okay, yep, that makes sense. So you said it's terribly cold up there. It is, it comes with the territory, though. It's the price we pay for solitude, stay away from all the rat race of life sometimes.
00:51Yes, I understand. We moved to outside of LaSore, Minnesota for exactly that reason because we lived in town, Jordan, Minnesota for 20 something years and we were done. So we moved out in the middle of soybean and cornfields and we love it. We've been here four years and it's so quiet. It's so wonderful. All right. So tell me all about yourself and what you do at your farm. Oh.
01:18We do a lot of stuff. Right now we're trying to do not so much because it's been cold. But my wife and I are both Navy veterans and work for the Salvation Army after our Navy career for well, until retirement as pastors. So we went back to college at a late stage in our life, became ordained and we thought nothing better to do than start a farm when you're 60. So we bought this
01:46little home set up here, 50 acres and a house and a few buildings and just kind of been feeling our way through and trying to find out what works for us and what doesn't work for us. And so right now what we're farming is Dexter beef cattle. We have a small herd of Jersey milk cows and I don't know, a couple pigs. I think the pigs are going to go this year. It's just too hard to maintain pigs in the wintertime.
02:15So we're probably just going to do like a finishing operation. Same thing with chickens during the summer. Yeah, we stopped our chickens back a couple months ago because we didn't want to feed them through the winter because they don't give us a lot of eggs over the winter so they don't earn their keep very well. So I understand what you're saying. It's tough. And they're expensive to keep too. People, you know, they're easy to raise but the bird, I mean chicken feed is expensive and...
02:44I think we were selling our eggs for like four bucks a dozen at the farmers market and people were kind of scoffing. I'm thinking, wow, that's cheaper than in the stores actually. But no, I think my wife said the other day, there's like 10 bucks a dozen because of this new H1N1 scare. So the price of eggs are going crazy up here. Yeah. My husband stopped at Hy-Vee on the way home yesterday and bought two 18-pack of eggs, two separate containers of 18 eggs.
03:11and he said it was $9.99 for 18 eggs. Oh, I ate the most expensive egg salad sandwich of my life today for lunch. Right. Yeah. Well, she freeze dried quite a bit of eggs before before we downsize our chickens. Actually, it was the chickens we didn't really didn't really go until. Oh, November, I think was the last of our chickens left here. So we were collecting eggs up until that point.
03:38Yeah, this inflation is no joke. I'm very worried about people who can't afford to eat right now. And there are people in the world who a year ago could afford to eat just fine. And I bet there's lots who cannot afford to eat right now. And it makes me really sad. We worked on this side of that for about 18 years, my wife and I, with the Salvation Army, trying to provide for those that can't or couldn't.
04:08And we were surprised because the stereotype that comes with that is that they've always not been able to but I was so shocked as we're going through our time there the amount of new people that were coming because Because life has just gotten too expensive and how humbling that is to have to ask somebody to help them out Yeah. Yep. It's it's a rough time right now and I am
04:32I am so glad that we moved when we did. We now have room to grow a garden. We canned tomatoes this year. So if nothing else, I will have spaghetti sauce and as long as I can afford pasta, we're good. But it's just crazy. Yeah, it rained up here so bad this year. We didn't really get much. Our garden really was kind of a fail. I don't think anybody's garden up here really did much because of the amount of moisture we had.
04:59Let's just say if you live in Minnesota and you got a good return on your investment on your garden this past season, I'm real happy for you because ours did not do great. It was rough. But like I keep saying, we're into 2025. I have everything crossed that this will be a much better gardening season. I'm really hoping. So did you have background in...
05:26farming or growing things before or was this a new thing for you? Well, kind of. We're from Mankato. My family and I, well, I grew up a little bit in Mankato and then in our younger years, we moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin and lived there. During the summers, I farmed with, there's always tobacco to be picked or corn to be detasseled. So I did a lot of that, a lot of milk cows during the summer times. So
05:52That was about the extent of our farming or my farming. And I brought my wife here. I imported her from New York City. Oh, good job. She's from Manhattan. Yeah, we haven't been back in a long time. So she, the person I thought would be the hardest to fit into this lifestyle, she's grabbed onto it a lot harder than I have. Oh, awesome. She's done well, going from, you know, one of the largest cities in America
06:23You know, what is, but at the whole county has 3000 people in the county, uh, Lake of the woods County. Um, and Pitt might have 20 people. I not maybe even not even that. In fact, they're the only county or the only, uh, you know, the only county in the state of Minnesota that does not have a stop and go light. Oh, really? Wow. Okay. So it's a little bitty town. Well, uh, the whole county is real small. Yeah. There's no.
06:51There's no even, you know, the big attraction up here is walleyes. The Lake of the Woods is very touristy. And when the fishing is good, our population quadruples overnight. And then when the fishing is not so good, it's back to just us folks again. Yeah, it's actually really interesting to hear you say that because I grew up in Maine and Maine is a tourist state. And I feel like Minnesota has tourist counties, but Minnesota is not a tourist state. No.
07:20So, but does your wife still have her accent from New York? No, she, uh, well, she does. If we go back to New York and she gets by her, her family and friends, she, it takes her about five minutes, but, uh, she sounds like she's from Minnesota. No, the extra O's and everything. Nice. I have tried really hard not to pick up any accent and dump every accent I ever had.
07:47And it's worked. Everybody's like, where are you from? And I'm like, nowhere. I don't have any accent. It's gone. So, um, okay. So your dexter's are your your beef cattle. Is that right? Yeah, we do dexter beef. And we chose dexter beef because actually we got into beef before we were one of the lucky ones before the price of beef went through the roof. So we were able to
08:16to start a small herd of beef cows and we went with dexters because we just plain couldn't afford to go the Angus route. The calves were way too expensive, maybe not so for the time. I mean they're a lot cheaper than they are now but we just didn't have that kind of money to invest into a herd so we bought a small herd of dexters and kind of based our herd on that.
08:46So we've since bought a few more. I mean, we've bought a couple more. We're starting to look at registering our herd for nothing more than just the ability to be able to look back and find out what's working and what's not working. So and our milk cows, I mean, we just bought a milk cow. I swore after milking when I was a kid, I would never milk again ever in my life. And I'm really finding that being part of the
09:14The nicest part of our farm right now is being able to milk. Yeah. Yeah. It's been, uh, it's a lot more calm if the, well, if the cows are behaving. So sometimes, sometimes the herd boss is not real happy and she makes everybody else not happy. Okay. And we chase them around a little bit. I mean, it's just, it's just a different life, I guess. But so that's probably pretty much our main thing. We do have some sheep too, but the sheep.
09:43We bought the sheep to clean up the pasture. And now that that's done, we're probably going to move the sheep on too. But the farm we bought was deserted for 20-some years. There was nobody here. And so the pastures were all overgrown. The house was dilapidated. We had to do quite a bit of work. So we tried to see what worked and what didn't work. And
10:09So far the beef cattle and the milk seem to be the thing to go do. Yeah, I'm surprised that your herd boss, as it were, is a pain in the butt, because I hear jerseys are actually really easy going cows. Oh, she is very easy going. But when she wants to be in charge, she lets everybody know. OK, so and I know it could be just something minor. We could change something in the barn. And when it set her off a little bit, so we try to milk every day at the same time. We were once a day milkers. We don't milk twice a day.
10:40We found that that transition was easy enough. Our oldest cow was already once a day milking when we bought her. And the other cows that we've been getting, we've been getting out of the Rochester area from a dairy. And of course they're twice a day milkers. So there's a little bit of transition time there. Oh yeah. But it seems like they're coming along real well. Uh-huh. The twice a day milkers, when they're going through the transition, do they yell a lot? Are they like, hey, come milk me? No. No?
11:09No, the Jerseys are pretty laid back. They really are a good cow. The cow, the other cow that we have right now, we got her, part of the reason we got her was we had a calf we needed to tie on her. Actually, it was the other way around. My wife will look at me funny if I say this wrong. Okay. We got the Jersey cow twice a day milking and we picked up a calf to put on her side to help us with the milk. Is that right? Yeah, I got the okay from that, yes. So we were like kind of.
11:38calf sharing for the first month or so day milking her. Doesn't make the calf eat and he's a happy guy. can't talk, how many gallons of milk do So our oldest cow is a Jersey and she's
12:08two and a half to three gallons a day. The other Jersey that we have right now is about at the same. We actually have another Jersey, but we only have one other one that we're milking. It's about the same. So we're bringing in almost five gallons a day, which has been okay. I mean, it does what we need it to do. And Minnesota gives us a good opportunity for selling raw milk too. So they're...
12:35there are provisions in the state of Minnesota for us to be able to not be overwhelmed with too much milk. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you is do you have a market for the extra because that's a lot of milk for a family to go through if you're not moving it on to other people. And it's just me and my wife and a couple dogs. We actually, our first thought was that we were going to feed the balance to the chickens and the pigs.
13:03because it's supposed to finish the animals off really nice. But the demand for raw milk has been so high that we really haven't been able to make butter since like October. The milk goes pretty fast. So we also don't leave anything in the display refrigerator for more than three days. So if it's cold, it's got to be cold. I mean, it has to be cold and fresh or it just goes away.
13:32I love raw milk. Oh my God. We don't have it very often for us. It's a treat and we maybe get a gallon once every couple of years just because we can. And we don't really use it to cook with. We just drink it or we have it in our coffee because we love it so much. Yeah. We just had one of our customers came and got milk and she's looking, trying to make sure that...
13:59What's the fact, Ken? I mean, what are we looking at? Good butter. And I think our cream has really started to improve because we've been feeding our cows a little bit better. So this whole thought of, you know, the regenerative farming is what we really wanna do. Or it's just really tough, especially up here, to be able to just grass feed your dairy cows. And we tried, we really tried to just grass feed them.
14:27And it just, it was the condition of our animals was really going downhill. So now our, our milk cows, the cows that are in the stanchion get, uh, they get about three pounds of, of, we call it their candy. They know exactly what the candy is and where it's at. So you have to get, and that's, that's really improved our milk quality too. So, um, and at the Jersey milk too, seems to be a little bit more golden or yellow. Um, which is.
14:54I mean, if you think about that, the milk you buy in the store that's homogenized and pasteurized is pure white and you get raw milk and it's got some color to it and you're like, huh, that's different. So it was a little different to start out. That was one of the observations I got when we first started that it was just a different color milk. Yeah, but it tastes so good. Yeah.
15:23And I think the taste comes from what you feed them too. We're feeding high quality alfalfa hay to the cows all the time. And I think that makes a big difference. Absolutely. And I'm just gonna say something. I don't think that grain is evil for cows. I mean, I know that there are a lot of people who want exclusively grass-fed cow's milk or grass-fed beef, I get it. But.
15:50I'm not one of the people who's like, oh, if you feed your cows grain, you're doing it wrong. I don't think that's true at all.
15:59Right. Well, to be clear about that, our beef cattle, our dexters are 100% grass-fed. We don't feed them any grain. We give them a mineral supplement that they can have at choice whenever they need it, and they have plenty of water. So there, we don't do any of that. The only reason we started doing the grain was because the condition of our animals was getting, it was really dragging them down, milking, or we had some that were on calves too. So it just was really hard on them.
16:29The long and the short is we started trying to find a feed that was better, something that we can give them that was going to be digestible and not just be zero benefit for the animal. We tried to go the non-GMO route and we can go that way. You'll pay a lot of money for it. And I would if I could. We really don't, we'd have to ship it from someplace else. We're buying a lot of our minerals and stuff from Mankato from a big gain.
16:59So, but we still can't get a full-time feed from them shipped up here. And if it was, it would cost us a lot of money. So, I was at the feed mill about a month ago and talking to the nutritionists up there saying, look, I just want to put together a non-GMO type of feed for our cows to where I can look at our customers and say, look, it's the best that you're going to get and we know that we're doing the best that we can.
17:24And he said, that's fine. He says, we can get you a non-GMO. And he said, there are some farms out here that have non-GMO. But his statement was, is if you knew how much stuff they spray on their property before they plant that, you wouldn't think much of the non-GMO. So the herbicides and the rest of the stuff that they put on it. So we've gotten to where we're more selectively trying to find a better quality feed or a grain that comes from a farm that we can trust.
17:51Yes, and in the meantime, you are doing the absolute best you can. I know you are. I can hear it in your voice. You are doing the best you can by your animals and by you and by your customers. So thank you. Yes, I it's so hard, Jim. I talk to so many people all the time with a podcast and every farmer, it doesn't matter whether they're raising livestock or produce or pecans. Everybody is doing.
18:20the best they can with the knowledge they have to put out quality products. And the, I don't want to say pain, but the angst that I hear in people's voices all the time about feeling like they're not, you know, like they're coming up short on what they're trying to accomplish is so sad. And I want you to be proud of what you're doing because you're doing something that is important.
18:49So you're doing the best you can. I'm proud of you. And we started a farm at 60, so we're now 62. There's a lot of great resources out there to start with. Going back to where Minnesota, the state of Minnesota is allowing farmers to sell raw milk from their property. That really, I mean, it really is a struggle, but it's a good deal in a sense. Now, if we bottled our...
19:18our milk, we'd have to have a bottling license. We don't have that. Right. So right currently, if I sold you a gallon of milk, you'd have to come to our farm and draw it off our tap. And that takes responsibility, I think, off of our shoulders. But it's still that might sound all good and dandy, but it still makes it to where you're still responsible for giving out a good product. You know, you get a whole bunch of attaboys and it just takes one old craft to make it all go backwards. So
19:48We really are very, we keep searching for a better way of doing things. Not that, and I think that's how me and you got together a little bit. There's got to be a better way to do it. The Facebook farmers that aren't farmers that have a lot of opinions and create so much controversy without having any education. Us raw milk producers have some great resources at our fingertips.
20:17Institute out of California. I'm just now looking into that and there's so much training and so much good resources through that group that I don't It can only help you. It can only help you be good. So if the idea is to give the quality product the best you can do then I think that you don't quit learning you keep learning and keep teaching because somebody gave to you so you need to give it back. Absolutely. Yes, I am in complete agreement with you.
20:45I am a big believer in people sharing what they know with the people who are coming up behind them because this has to continue. People who grow things are so important because without the growers, we're not going to eat. It makes me mildly crazy sometimes because people who don't know farmers don't know people who grow things.
21:11They're like, oh, well, we'll just get whatever we need at the store, whichever store has the thing. And I'm like, do you not understand that the food that you eat has to come from actual food? It has to come from produce and animals. And now like, well, yeah. And I'm like, no, I don't think you understand the way that this works. And I do spend time talking to people and trying to explain the process. Because
21:40We grow our food in our garden and I know the process. You have to do things a certain way to get a yield on what you put in the ground. So it's frustrating to me sometimes and that's part of the reason I started the podcast because I am not a farmer. I'm not, I just grow plants sometimes because I like tomatoes and cucumbers. I'm not a farmer. And spaghetti sauce. Yes, yes.
22:09And I love to cook, so. You know, I've got to say some of the, and I'm not, my wife and I are not strangers to hard work. But I will tell you that farming is pre demanding and I don't think it matters what kind of farming you're doing. If you're dirt farming or animal farming, it really, it's all hard work and it all has to be done whether you want to or don't. Like we're married to our cows. Oh yeah. We can't go anywhere without them. And I don't think that when.
22:39Somebody sits down, we're so used to like you said, going to the grocery store and getting a gallon of milk, sitting down and drinking a glass of milk and not thinking anything of that or how it got there. So we know firsthand how, what it takes to put it on our table. And sometimes it's not so glamorous like this morning when it was so doggone cold. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's hard work and.
23:05everyone who does it needs to be commended for committing to it because you can't do this without being committed to what you've chosen.
23:15And not without not without great failure you can't and even even those even us we've been very committed. How we could count the failures many times over of things that didn't go the way that we thought they would or the way that the textbook way of of having things happen. We just had two calves die this last week for no reason just died and. We had them in a barn they were well on their way that they were bottle calves so but that's quite a heartbreak.
23:44You know, it really is a heartbreak when you you put a lot into an animal and they just kind of don't make it It's not like you just walk out there and say oh that one's gone. So we'll just find another one They're not that easy to find They're not that easy to find and it's expensive to replace them and not just money wise you you put energy into that that You're not gonna get back, right? So yeah, very true. Yeah, it's hard. It's I don't want to be a bummer but
24:13this lifestyle is hard. You know when things go right they go really right but when things go wrong they go really really freaking wrong. Yeah you know the people you again YouTube is one of those things that we watch a lot of YouTube and have we didn't start the idea of a homestead because of YouTube but we found YouTube because we were trying to build a homestead and it was before oh gosh it was back
24:43I don't know, it's probably been five or six years now that we've been kind of planning this, making this go forward. So you hear all the right way or how these people that have been so successful, Greg Judy is from Moora, Minnesota. I don't know if you knew that or even who Greg Judy is, but he's a very big regenerative farmer down in Missouri now. And to listen to him talk and the way he thinks that it's a piece of cake, but I will tell you what, you can't grab a whole armful like that. And that was one of the hardest things.
25:13that I had to learn. My wife was like, you need to slow down, you need to slow down. And I was like, but you can't just do part without the other. And a lot of times I think humanists, we want to grab the whole pile and walk with it. And we end up dropping half the pile. So a lot of failure because of trying to not necessarily think too big, maybe dream too big, or misunderstand the way that it should be. So I'm glad they don't have room for a hundred milk cows. That's all I got to say about that.
25:41I'm really glad we don't have room for any cows because my husband would want 10 and I'm like, no, one is more than enough. Thank you. We'll pass. The other thing that I have found in our four years of living here at our little homestead is if you're married, you got to be able to talk with your spouse about decisions on the farm without getting into fights. Because if you can't communicate with your spouse.
26:09you're gonna break up over a living. All for sure. And I said, it's really difficult sometimes because my husband will come to me and be like, I was thinking I wanna do this. And I'm like, have you researched it yet? And he's like, no. And I say, okay, take some time. These are the answers I need from you to think about this. And then we can talk about it. And then he goes and finds me answers and then I go and look it up too.
26:38And we end up having debates about whether the thing that he wants to do is a good idea or not. We've had more discussions and debates in the last four years than we had in 20 years before that. And it's not a fight. It's just that we both have our ideas about how things work and what makes sense and what doesn't. And we have to come to some kind of middle ground on it. You know?
27:04Well, Lee and I had a little bit of a head start. We worked together in the same office building for, you know, 16 years, 17 years before and went to college together right next to each other for the two years to finish that off. So we've had a lot of experience. But even with that being said that if you both can't get your arms around it, it makes it very difficult. I'm not saying that it can't be done or that I haven't done things without Lee's blessing. But I'm saying when that happens.
27:31When that happens, not that if it'll happen, but when that happens, it makes it very difficult to pull through the other side because it does take both of you to run the farm. There's no way I could do this by myself. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. And in our house, two yeses is a yes, one no is a no. That's on the big stuff. That's how we've decided to resolve things. You're tough. It has to be that way because my husband is stubborn and...
27:59He digs his heels in and I try to explain things that I've looked up and found out about what he wants to do and how that plays out. And he doesn't, he can't hear it right then. So, so we do a lot of, have you considered? Have you heard what I said? Did you think about what I said? There's a lot of, of, um, repeating back to each other so that we know we're not just being mean and stubborn. We're actually considering the other person's opinion.
28:29Right? Sometimes I just have to go through things. I got it. I got to go through it and either win or lose. And I don't always win and I don't always lose. So that wasn't meant to sound arrogant. I'm going to use the example of we bought red wattle hogs. And my plan was is to create our own little herd or, you know, sows and a couple boars to create our own, you know, heritage breed hogs up here in Minnesota.
28:59And so we spent thousands of dollars, thousands, on getting the pens and everything we needed and the genetics from the boar. We drove to Michigan to pick up a boar, for goodness sakes, and he wasn't cheap. So we had probably, I don't know, $4,000 worth of animals that we went through trying to create that. This year, two of our three sows, we put in the freezer because they were with the boar all year.
29:28and didn't get pregnant. So, and they were proven self. So we bought them as guilts and then had, they all both had a litter. Well, the next year they decided they were gonna take the year off. And you spend all that money and these, I have these ideas of how it's gonna work out in the end. And it just never seems to work that way. So I really don't, the two chores I hate during the winter most is the pigs and the...
29:57chickens. I just don't like doing the extras on that. So we kind of got to, and my wife was happy I got to this point, but that we're going to just buy feeders and finish off whatever is whatever we have that our friends, families, customers would like to have. So if we sold six pigs, that's what we'll raise and not raise them during the winter.
30:25because oh my goodness, it's just busting water up and you can't have an automatic drinker for a pig in the winter because they will tear it up. Anything that the pigs just have a way that's part of the pigness is they tear stuff apart. So pigs will be shortlisted on our farm just because of that because it's been so much, we've lost so much. And again, at our age, I'm 62 this year. So if...
30:54If my children, one of my children, we have four of them, but if one of our children decided that they wanted to farm and came up here and farmed, that might change the outlook on it. But we have a son that's a chief in Hawaii in the Navy, and we have two daughters that have professional jobs down in southern Minnesota and northern Illinois, and none of them want to come up and farm. So it was kind of my dream.
31:24that they would want to do that. My youngest daughter married a farm boy. So I was kind of hoping that they would think about that. And of course with the parents come the grandchildren, which is the best part, but they just don't want to leave what they have to come up here and go farming. So if the question that was before my wife and I was, do we want to invest another three or $4,000 in another set of...
31:51of pigs and try to do something a little bit different. We learned a lot. And because we don't have anybody coming up, it turned out to be a big fat no. Because we already wasted three years on the ground with our pigs, we'd have to do it all over again. It would take us three years to get back to where we should start going in the black. And it just wasn't I just can't see myself doing that through the winter for three more years.
32:21when it's so cold up there by Canada. Yeah. It makes sense. So, to end this on a really good note, what is your favorite thing about this choice that you've made for your life? You know, it keeps me busy. A lot of people say, man, you are crazy for doing that. And maybe so. It keeps me engaged in life. And I'm not so sure that I would be able to engage in life without something.
32:49constructive to do with the responsibility. I'm a combat veteran and I don't want to wave that out there but sometimes life is a little bit difficult but through being able to farm for now it's helped me get through some of the things that I struggle with. So one of them is I would probably sleep all day long if I didn't have something to do outside. So I don't know, that's probably my favorite part. For now we're committed till we're 65.
33:18And the next jump will be until we're 70, but I think at 70, I'm going to be done farming. God willing that we're still alive and we're going to find a nice little place to retire and that gives some of our grandchildren an opportunity to grow up and say, you know, I'd sure like to farm, right? I don't want to farm. So it really, we don't really care that we don't have anybody coming after us because it wasn't, we didn't buy the farm and start the farm so we'd have kids to have the farm.
33:48When we started, we bought the farm to have the farm so that I could engage in life and be productive.
33:55Awesome. Well Jim, thank you for your service and thank you for your time and talking to me today. I've really enjoyed it Thank you so much. Thank you. Have a great day. Yep, you too
 

The Witch's Garden

Today I'm talking with Elm at The Witch's Garden. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Elm at The Witch's Garden. Good morning, how are you? Good morning. Doing just fine. Glad to be with you. Glad to be with you too. You said Tennessee is where you are, right? That's right. The west end of the state. About an hour outside of Memphis.
00:29Okay, and is it warm there today? It's warming up. We got incredible snow. I haven't seen it like this since we moved here, gosh, 16 years ago. We had a solid eight inches and it was beautiful. No ice, just, you know, felt like Christmas all over again. Well, I'm in Minnesota and you have gotten more snow this winter than we have, which is unheard of. I'm, I'm so confused by mother nature.
00:57this winter and last winter. Last winter I think we got maybe a foot total for the entire season. So I don't know what's up with Mother Nature, but she's having a lot of fun with us I think. Personally, I think she's a little confused with us as well. Well, I think that's been true since humans started, but you know, it's a thing. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do at The Witch's Garden.
01:23Sure, we've been in business for about two years. The, uh...
01:29The head of the business, shall we say, is Sanctuary Apothecary. So I have a little apothecary shop out here. And I'm beginning to do workshops and tours and that kind of thing. The Witch's Garden started as our flagship subscription service. So four times or eight times a year on a seasonal cycle, we send out boxes of ritual and inner work items. So I'm from a pagan tradition, European pagan background. And uh.
01:58title it the witches garden but we're really at a point where we're working with energy healers we're working with with Yogi Yogi's and those with meditation backgrounds so you know I love our community it's really very party-colored and I wouldn't have it any other way awesome so I don't okay I wanted to talk to you because I tend to identify as pagan if anything
02:25because I'm not Christian, although people who know me tell me I'm the most Christian, non-Christian person they know. I have a lot of that myself. And I take that as a huge compliment because I try really hard to be kind and helpful and do good in the world. And if that's what they're getting from me, that's what I'm going for. But I also am just, I feel like pagan is so much.
02:55nature and being in the world and in the moment. And that's how I am with everything. So, Parla doesn't want to talk to you is because I saw that you grow a lot of the things that you use to make the things that you sell. And I'm all about growing things. So what do you grow? So for the last several years, we've been building out beds of herbs around the house in the garden.
03:23and now across the landscape. So we started, gosh, close to 17 years ago, as a CSA. And we live in a home that's been in my husband's family for seven generations now. My daughter is number seven. And we started with a CSA. So we had the huge market garden and grew vegetables for several years and sold at local farmers markets and then also did a subscription service.
03:52there that helped us, you know, understand what our costs were going to be for a whole growing season, understand what we could grow and know that we had an audience for it, know that we had families to deliver it to. And that was really satisfying, but it was an incredible amount of work for two people. We both, over the years, have taken on day jobs in other places because keeping up a house that was built in 1835 takes a lot of income.
04:20So in my day job, I work in tech and it just became a little too much. Um, over the years, we've really started learning how to work with the landscape here. We both have a background in anthropology and are fascinated by those, I guess, intersections with people and culture that have existed for as long as we've walked upright, um, the landscape.
04:52The landscape is a part of us to our core and that environment impacts every piece of who we are. This is the longest I've ever lived anywhere. And in that time, we've started a relationship with the land. We've really gotten to know it. Historically, the land in West Tennessee has changed so very much. We're at a point where...
05:18big agriculture has caused a lot of environmental issues, but it's also changed the fauna and flora here. So we've, I guess, pivoted, we've shifted our focus, we've found our passion, and we're working hard to turn probably the 250 acres of this historic farm back into a native prairie and the landscape as it would have looked three, 400 years ago.
05:48So, you know, there's trillium in the woods. There are.
05:55heal all and hand it and dead nettle everywhere. Heal all and dead nettle are actually in my head, they're synonyms. Although some people say heal all is a different plant. So I've got to clarify myself. But now we're fully into herbs. We will probably four or five times a year will split and dig up and pot.
06:23several things from across the landscape. We still have several things in containers that were growing out till they're a little larger. And we'll do plant sales just kind of to help us support that shift that we're trying to make on the land. And right now the larger family is still renting out the agricultural land to larger scale farmers. Our long term goal is to recover all that land to native prairie and pasture.
06:54So in order to support that, we've been building beds. Oh gosh.
07:03I'm so glad that we're moving away from the row crop style classic garden that we've gotten used to seeing because most of our land still really wants to be hayfield. So the herbs that we focus on are ground covers, are big, beautiful, bushy herbs that will keep the local. Some of the problems that we have are with...
07:31grasses that have come in and taken over. So things like Bermuda grass sedge are everywhere and we're figuring out what can out-compete them.
07:41So some of those are things like yarrow and rue have both done very well here and they're both excellent medicinal and magical herbs. We are overflowing with, I think we're up to 26 different kinds of mints, each of which can have their own purposes. We are...
08:06in love with blackberries and strawberries. We've been building out strawberry beds for years. And again, those can be dried. So everything that we do is focused toward one, the native landscape and plants that we know will thrive here naturally and that are glad to be home. And two on...
08:32items that have either medicinal or magical uses or both. And it's amazing what a large variety of those there are. So the landscape's becoming more and more varied over time and it's just incredibly satisfying. And honestly, so much easier to maintain. Yes, because you're working with nature, not against it. Exactly. Okay. You mentioned Roo. And every time I hear the word Roo.
09:02I am reminded that I think that it's used for a blue colored dye. Is that correct?
09:10Rue is not one that I know of in that capacity, maybe partly because the varieties that I have here are yellow flowered. There is also an African Rue, which is not the same plant. It's far more poisonous. That may be a plant dye, but I wouldn't know. What I use for blues are blue pea flower, which I can get locally.
09:38It makes a lovely gorgeous blue dye that I use in inks. Okay, a friend of mine was asking me years ago about Roo and he was sure that it was used to make a blue dye and I was like I don't know. I don't know the answer to your question and Google probably knows more than I do so I'm gonna have to go look it up to find out again. I'm sorry I can't answer that one. No, that's okay. So here's the thing with with magic and
10:07and quote unquote witches. I have a couple things about this. Number one, I have traced my ancestry back on my dad's mom's side to John Proctor, the first man who was accused, tried and hung for witchcraft in Salem during the Salem witch trials. And so I have a very special place in my heart regarding this whole witchcraft thing because I feel like I have a family line.
10:37directly back to it. And someone asked me one time how I define magic. And number one, I had to find out from them if they meant like sleight of hand magic or if they meant magic magic. And they meant magic magic. And I said, honestly, I said, I think that magic is science and raised awareness and intent all blended together. And they were like,
11:07is a supernatural thing and I said no I said it's all energy I said I said energy never dies it just changes form and so if you can if you can take what you know to be proven true and direct that energy to the result you want then that's magic and they were like oh oh
11:34and they had a whole new concept of how to think about it. And so when people talk about witches and it's a derogatory term, I just have to giggle because I'm like, you know, really that's not correct. And I'm always saying that nature is magic. I have said the word magic more in the last year and a half doing this podcast than I think I have in my whole life. So what's your take on all of that?
12:05I tend to agree with you completely, and I think that it is a capacity that every human has. I think it's largely driven by intent, and that intent is what creates the energy that you're talking about. So that comes with a regular practice, and part of what makes magic magic is
12:27Ritual is a way to harness and guide our energies and to speak to parts of our brains and our hearts that aren't necessarily influenced by words, but by scents or emotions or, you know, general impressions.
12:51When you...
12:55put together, let's say you're working on an herb bag and I'm going to pick three different herbs that have to do with this particular intent. I'm doing the research, I'm spending time with each of those herbs picking and crafting, I'm spending time in a sacred candle-lit space that makes my inner self feel settled and connected.
13:25and that all ties that intent to me and to the larger world around me. And it's also gonna make me pay more attention to that thing that I'm trying to draw into my life and do the work that comes with drawing that thing into my life. So it's not as woo-woo as people make it out to be, but it's also incredibly mysterious and beautiful.
13:53in the way that it connects us to something that's so much greater than ourselves. Yes, and I'm going to even venture further. The surprise that comes with this, if you're trying to do something and you do the research and you pull everything together and the energy's right and it works, I'm always just astounded when something actually comes together and works the way I wanted it to work.
14:23There is, there's always that delightful surprise. And then what is so powerful about that is the next time you do it, you have more faith and confidence in both yourself and in the universe.
14:40that you are supported and held and you're going to find what you need. And the more you can live in that space, strangely, the more things seem to work out. I do think we kind of have a habit of living in a space that puts our attention on the things we don't have.
15:06especially with the 24-hour news cycle where it is these days, the things that are scary in the world take up an incredible part of our brains. And magic helps us return to ourselves and to our space and to the present moment where we can kind of discover that right here, right now, things are pretty good. And that has power.
15:36that the only moment I have is now. So what am I gonna do now? Because the next moment isn't guaranteed. I might die in the next 10 minutes and no one will even know that I'm gone yet. So you've got to be in the moment. You've got to plan for the future, but you've got to live in the moment, I think. That's very right. And another piece of that mindset that becomes so powerful.
16:04And something that I try to talk about when I can is that
16:10Death loses its power when you are comfortable with that assessment. The way that you just phrased things, you know, I'm not guaranteed my next moment, that becomes almost a companionable thing. You know, I'm aware of it, it's a thing that could happen. It doesn't have to scare me. And a lot of the pagan traditions...
16:40are phenomenally good at helping us face those inner fears. And as we do, as we do that work on ourselves, our magic gets stronger and our comfort, our stability, our even happiness, our presence in the world changes.
17:00and we become.
17:05less fear-based. I do believe we live with less fear. We're in land that we love, we're in a home that we love, we have a strong family. And all of that is due in large part to the way we choose to live our lives.
17:30Yes, exactly. I feel like every time I talk to someone who's not like specifically a homesteader or a cottage food producer or a crafter, I find myself very, very deep in the weeds and it makes me really, really think about what I'm saying. And I don't know, I'm really happy with my life. Like I'm 55, I've raised four kids, they're all great people.
17:59We live in a home we love. We have like three acres that we love. We have a dog we love. We have barn cats we love. And our whole life in the last four years has just been this, this bubble of building the thing we want to build. And I feel like so many people are building lives that are about things, you know, about money or about the boat or the mansion or whatever. And.
18:28It doesn't have to be that big. You, you can be exceedingly happy and not have all these big, huge dollar signs attached to it. You're very right. And I do think a steady practice of any kind that, that leads you back toward the natural world leads you to that understanding, you know, we're, we're made to be in.
18:57a natural space. And in my husband's world, he's an anthropology professor, you know, there's a lot that's problematic about this divide between human space and quote unquote natural space. The whole world is...
19:18The whole world is nature. We are a human animal. Trying to separate that.
19:25I think that viewpoint has caused far more problems than it's helped.
19:31Yes. And I actually that that what you just said has actually been on my mind a lot over the last six months that people are animals. We are mammals. We're no different than the dog or the horse. I mean, we are, but we're all mammals. And the prime directive for every mammal ever produced by nature is to survive long enough to procreate. That's it. And so,
20:01The big difference between us and other mammals is that most mammals only know now. They're not planning for 20 years down the road like humans do. That's the big difference between us and the horse or the dog or the cat. And so in some ways that's really wonderful, in other ways it really holds us back as living beings. It can get in the way a little bit.
20:30That consciousness though, that great mystery in the world is what makes us unique. There are so many animals that have consciousness and that may even have a concept of self-consciousness.
20:53But I deeply believe that there is a spark in each of us that is divine.
21:05I believe that two of basically everything in the world, but I think it's a matter of decree.
21:15And I would say that we are.
21:20far more than just animals, the greater self that's accessible to us.
21:27I don't know that I would say is accessible to everyone. Every, every being. Uh-huh. The other piece that I wanted to kind of call out that I heard you say a few minutes ago was, um, talking to somebody who's not, not truly a homesteader. Yes. Where in, we're definitely in a middle space. You know, we're very, very connected to the modern world, but
21:58I think the piece of our lives that's involved with homesteading, you know, I keep Angora rabbits. I spend for, I'm like a full-time crafter. I'm all in. That's the part that keeps me sane. So just for the folks out there listening who have that dream, you don't have to be off grid or have 2000 acres to find that connection. You can.
22:28You can find it in the middle of the city. Oh, yes. Oh yes. I've talked to a lot of people about exactly that over the last year. Um, there was a person I talked to who has an apartment and, and she does all kinds of stuff that is homesteading skill. Stop. And, and I was like, I'm so happy that I'm talking to you because I'm trying to make the point that, that homesteading is not about having.
22:56200 acres and pigs and cows, it's about being self-sufficient and being curious and wanting to be able to take care of yourself in a way that the store isn't the place you go to get the thing you need all the time. Yes. So thank you for saying that. Absolutely. But my point was that, you know, I am going to be very honest.
23:25pagan stuff, witchcraft things, anything to do with witches, partly because of my family background but also just because it's part of it. It's very wrapped around nature. And Christmas time is very hard for me because everyone's all wound up about, you know, the birth of Jesus and da da da and the light of the world. And that's fine. If that is your paradigm, do it up.
23:51I'm thrilled you have faith in something. Everyone needs to have faith in something. If that's yours, good. But a lot of people don't want to hear about Yule at all. And Yule is about the light of the world, but it's about the light, the sunlight coming back, not Jesus coming into the world. And there are so many tie-ins and so many parallels with both traditions. But
24:20It's really hard to get someone who's Christian to listen to why the traditions of yule are important too. And I get so frustrated. Like I blew off Christmas completely this year. I didn't even put up my tree. I was just like, I'm not in the mood. I don't want to do this. I'm frustrated with the whole thing and just didn't. And we had the nicest, quietest Christmas day ever. It was lovely.
24:51So sometimes I think you can just step away from all the trappings and just, I don't know, reevaluate your take on what you believe in and then maybe change how you express it. I think that's what we tried to do this year. Yes. We've definitely found our peace and it has, I mean, it's taken almost two decades. But we...
25:18have a really lovely mix. You know, so many of the Christmas traditions are built on a pagan history. That's not new. That's not the first. You know, it happened with the Greeks and the Romans. It's...
25:35has happened, this sort of continuation of ideas of God and goddess energy and the conflating of cultures across time. You know, even the ideas of shapeshifters, it's...
25:50in a way it's all happened before. Yes. So I try to approach Christmas with that understanding. You know, it is, it's the...
26:02It is the light in the darkness. It's the importance of family and community in the coldest part of the year. It's allowing ourselves to slow down into winter as a verb. We don't really hibernate, but we do need to slow down in this time. And the celebration of light and the big family meals, you know, it can be a lot and it can also bring us joy in the dark. You know, our tree is.
26:32both Christian and pagan. And we have our own little Yule Log every year. And that ritual is just ours. Mm-hmm. Yep. I got into a very short and almost heated discussion with a relative at one point because they were like, I don't know why you're talking about Yule. Yule is not real. And Oh, I'm sorry. And I just took a breath and I said, okay.
27:03You're clearly not interested in hearing about how I think about this. So I think we're done talking about this and I'm done talking about Christmas too. And my response and positions like that tends to be, well, you know, I'm interested in it historically, the historical facts in the time period. And, you know, this is the way cultures flow together and meet each other. And that fascinates me. And
27:34Winter light festivals have been around far longer than Christianity. Yes. And it, it, the whole thing would have been fine, except that it was so clear that I was being shut down and shut up. When I am, anyone who knows me knows that I am terribly curious about everything. And that if I ask you something, I actually want to know. And so this person is the only way to be.
28:03Yeah, and this person had asked me an open-ended question and I was all excited to talk about what I knew and what I felt and why it was important and they shut me down in the first two words. And I was hurt and I was frustrated. And so I guess the reason I even brought this up is that it's so important for humans to
28:32each other and not be so short-sighted and so boxed that you can't entertain someone else's perspective. Yes. You know, and here's where all religions, I believe, somebody correct me if I'm missing something, tie together at this idea of deep listening and compassion.
29:02Uh-huh. You know, our divinities are examples. They're ideas of our best selves and what we can be. And when we bring that into a daily practice, when we practice deep listening with somebody else who disagrees with us, sometimes we can still find a way to connect. Not always. It's got to be two ways. You've both got to be willing to converse.
29:30But when it does happen, that really is magic. Mm-hmm. Yes, it is. And I've had it happen. And it is so amazing when you see the light bulb go on in someone's mind, when they've actually heard you, understood you, and processed it, and went, I've never thought of it that way. That's the part I love. Same. Absolutely the same. I read.
30:00Tarot at events as well and those conversations where you know you've really reached somebody are always the most powerful and the most fascinating when they reach you in the same way. Uh huh. Yes. And I personally hate the word convert. I don't. I never try to convert anybody to my way of thinking or doing.
30:29I just try to be a good example of the good that comes from whatever it is that I think or I'm doing. And if someone wants to pick that mantle up and run with it, that's up to them. And so it's really hard for me when people are like, you should come to my church every Sunday and become a devout whatever their church is. And I'm like, that's not really an invitation to.
30:56to try that sets a mandate and I'm not into a mandate. If you're inviting me because you think there's some value there for me, that's lovely. But if you're asking me to come because you need more members for your church, that's not cool. So it's hard. And I feel like we're getting really far afield, but this is all relevant because a lot of the people who are doing...
31:25Homesteading or cooking or crafting or whatever it is that they're doing They are throwing their energy into something they produced to benefit the people around them And so it does tie in to everything we've been talking about Absolutely, it's that whole concept of of bright living. I guess in the Buddhist sense that I think Would be a foundation we could say
31:55Most of all, homesteaders really are attracted to and build a life on. Yes, exactly. All right, Elm, I try to keep these to half an hour. This was very deep for a Tuesday morning, but I appreciate your time. Thank you so much and keep doing the good work. Thank you. All right. And have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

Promised Land Farms

Today I'm talking with Brian and Sarah at Promised Land Farms.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at a tiny homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Brian and Sarah at Promised Land Farms. Hi guys, how are you? Great, how are you? I'm okay. I'm starting to turn the corner on this being sick crap, so.
00:26I had to cancel two interviews last week because of it. So I'm really happy to be talking new friends today. You guys are in Elko, is that right? Yes. Okay, so tell me about yourselves and what you do. So yeah, we're in Elko New Market, just south of the Twin Cities, and we've got a small farm, 37 acres, and we are raising grass-fed grass-finished beef, pastured pork.
00:54laying hens, and then we're direct marketing all of our meat and eggs. Okay. What do you define direct marketing for me? So we are selling direct to customers. We had always, since we started doing this, we were, we were selling eggs before we even had a farm when we were living in the suburbs. And then, um, so we would just start, start it all with beef and selling quarters to friends, quarters and halves.
01:24And then that just kind of turned into kind of selling everything. So cuts of beef, quarters, halves, whole steaks, hamburger, same with pigs and then eggs and some chickens. And we were just using Facebook and word of mouth. And in the last year, we signed up for Barn to Door and we're using that as our kind of our marketing tool and inventory tool. And what do you...
01:53Think of Barnador.
01:57It's really helped us streamline our business. It helps us cut down on human error. If somebody Venmo'd us a deposit and then there was an oversight and them getting the next cut of meat. This has helped everything just to funnel into one place. They have got a lot of really great training. I've been very impressed with their support. Yeah, it's been good.
02:27It's helped us expand and get going with some email marketing and yeah, they've got a lot of great resources available. Awesome. I actually need to contact them and get them to talk to me because I'm hearing that they're a really good help and resource for people who are doing what you're doing. And they've contacted me, but I'm not a big enough place to need their services right now for what we do.
02:54It hadn't occurred to me to see if anybody from their place would want to chat with me. So I'm going to have to email them and be like, hi, don't need your services, but I would love to promote your services. Sure. They have a podcast as well, which is super helpful. I listened to it. I don't know if Sarah does, but, um, all the resources that they have, they're kind of putting out on podcasts too, and it's just good stuff. They're interviewing farmers all the time and best practices and yeah.
03:22Okay, I'll have to go look them up and see what they're up to. Okay, so how did you guys get into this?
03:31Well, I caught the farming bug before we were married. So Sarah's dad had a small farm in central Iowa. And when we just started first started dating, we were going down there for a funeral. And I stepped foot on that farm and, you know, walked out in the pasture down to the creek and look at cows and just something inside of me came alive. And I'm like, wow, I could see myself doing this someday. And that just kept growing in me and became a passion. And, you know, then I was looking for.
04:00the five or 10 acre fixer upper. And we were, we were doing a big garden in our, in, in the suburbs in our backyard and then doing backyard chickens and way too many chickens that we were supposed to have in our, in the city that we're living in. But, uh, yeah, just kept looking and then we just came, the Lord showed us a property that was amazing and we went for it. And so that's how we started farming.
04:25I love that. I hear that story or some version of that story a lot. You have no idea. Okay. So here's what I want to get into with the beef and selling the beef. Most people don't know how it works. So if you could run me through how someone could acquire a whole or a half or a quarter or an eighth. Yeah. So it's kind of a...
04:53It's kind of a clunky process actually. So if you're selling a quarter, half or whole of beef, the way it goes is we sell by the hanging weight. So somebody contacts us and says, hey, I would like to get a quarter of beef. And so we put them on our list for the next available. And I don't really know the weight of the animal until it's brought in to the butcher. And then we get the weight of the animal
05:23pay based on that. Okay, I'm going to interject and give you the simplified version of this. I don't think it's a clunky process at all. I think especially since we started with Barn to Door, it has streamlined it and made it very simple. So, if somebody wanted to purchase a quarter or half, then all they would do is go to our online link and they would select quarter beef, put their deposit down online right there.
05:52And then when the cow goes in to be processed, the processor will reach out and contact that customer and walk them through what cuts they would like to get. And then when it's ready, they will be contacted, they go pick it up, and their final payment is done through our website. We take care of it. So I think it's pretty simple. Yeah. And because you have barn to door, it is really simple. But there are lots of places that don't.
06:21use barn to door to sell their beef. So I'm going to interject too. We bought our first half a few years ago. And when the butcher called me for me to tell them what cuts we want, I was very lost because I didn't know what the cuts meant. And I apologize all over the place. I was like, I'm really sorry. I'm not educated in this. I don't know what that means.
06:50She was so great. She was like, Oh, okay. So tenderloin is this. Cube steak is that whatever. And she ran me through the whole thing. She spent a good half an hour on the phone with me, which I'm sure she was not planning on doing. So anyone who wants to do this, if you're, if you're lucky, and I think it's probably pretty common, the butcher will talk you through it. If you don't know what you want. Absolutely.
07:20Absolutely. They're super helpful. They get new customers, first timers all the time. So they're used to that and prepared for that and absolutely will guide people through the process. Yeah. And you don't have to get fancy cuts. I mean, if you want half of the meat as ground beef, they'll do it for you. Yeah. Some people even get the whole thing as ground beef. So yeah, there are a lot of
07:50that's tough. If you're going to buy beef in bulk, you probably should really learn how to cook it because it's so easy to screw up a steak if you don't know how to cook. Indeed. There's also a difference between cooking grass-fed versus corn-fed too. There sure is. You're absolutely right. The first half we got was grain finished. The
08:20was grass-fed and I didn't really like the grass-fed. My husband and my son were fine with it. I didn't love it. So it can be very different. And if I had known that there would be such a big difference for my taste buds, I probably would have been more picky in who I went with because I would have been like, is it grain finished or is it grass-fed finished? So there are things to educate yourself on if you're gonna do it.
08:49And the other thing is that right now, I'm sure you guys know, because you are in the business, buying beef in bulk is a lot more money than it was a couple of years ago. And that is not the farmer's fault at all. It is just the fact that everything has gone up in price. Exactly. Yep. Not just the beef, it's everything. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We were looking at
09:18getting another quarter here at some point and I looked at the prices and said, we can't afford it right now. We literally cannot put out that money right now. We don't have that money right now. And it just blew me away. The cost of a quarter right now is more than a half cost as two years ago. Well, you know, and to that point, we like to offer options because not everybody
09:46can afford to buy in bulk. And also not everybody has enough freezer storage. And so we do have individual cuts available that people can purchase online as well. So if you only want 10 pounds of ground beef or only want a few steaks, you can go ahead and go with that option too. That's awesome. Cause not everybody does it that way. I'm so glad you said that. Yay, you guys are great.
10:17Okay. And do you also sell chicken meat too? We do. Okay. And eggs? Yeah. There's always an interesting tension of supply and demand with the eggs. But yes, we do sell eggs. Yeah. I had somebody message me yesterday asking if we had any eggs and we got rid of our chickens months ago because we weren't going to feed them through the winter time. I felt so bad telling that person, no, we got rid of our chickens for the winter.
10:46Like I didn't answer them for two hours. I didn't want to tell them no. And I finally was like, I'm sorry. We don't, we got rid of our chickens for the winter. We'll be getting new chickens in the spring. And I didn't get any response back. And I'm like, Oh, I broke their heart. So yeah, it's, it's hard when you're, when you're trying to help your community and then you make a decision for your household that impacts your community.
11:16I don't enjoy it. I really want to get back to being capable of meeting people's requests with a smile and a yes, you know? Absolutely. But that's not where we're at right now. So it's going to be better this year, I think, I hope. Well, last year's been straight. Yes. Last summer was rough. I don't know how it was in Elko New Market, but here in
11:48We produced a lot of thistle last summer in our garden. That's for sure. Yeah. We, we had a lot of weeds too. We didn't even bother to weed anything because nothing was growing except weeds. We're like, okay, it's a great crop of weeds. What can we do with that? Oh, we can stare at it. Feed it to the pigs. If we had pigs, we would've gone. Yup. It was a rough year, but we're now into 2025. So everybody's got everything crossed that it's going to be a better season. Amen.
12:18So do you guys have jobs outside of the farm?
12:24Um, I work full time on the farm. I quit about four years ago. I was a carpenter and struggling to do both of them. We were just getting at the scale where I wasn't able to really do anything well between when I was at work, I was thinking about the farm and I wasn't getting enough farm work done and family life was struggling. So made the break about four years ago to focus on the farm and relying on Sarah's income right now for.
12:54carrying the farm through. Yeah, I work full time doing pampered chef. Fun, that is a fun job. It's super fun, I love it. So when you say you work for them, does that mean that you are an independent contractor and you go and show off their products and sell them, or how does that work? Yep, I am an independent sales consultant. I've been with them for coming on 20 years in May.
13:21And so yeah, I do parties for people. I do in-home, I do virtual. And my passion really lies in my team and training a team and helping them have success. So that's our bread and butter. That's my passion. And you're right, it is a ton of fun. So. Cool. So I have a question about that because so many people don't cook now, don't cook from scratch.
13:49Do you find yourself creating converts when you show off the stuff? Yeah, we kind of get the whole gamut. We get people who don't cook at all, people who want to cook but don't have time. That's probably the biggest one we get. And then some people who are total foodies and do everything from scratch. And so what I appreciate about this job and about Payward Chef is
14:17you know, showing people these tools and recipes that can make it doable to get a meal on the table with their families. And even with a busy schedule or even if they don't feel like they're great cooks, we can show them tips that make it easy and quick and doable. Because that's, you know, the meal time message is so important. That's where life happens is around the dinner table. And the more we can cultivate that, the better.
14:45families will be in the better the world will be really. Yeah, I think that if you sit down at a table across from each other and have to look each other in the face, there's a word, I hate this. I'm always gonna say something profound and I lose the word. It helps communication, it helps people open up and start talking. Yeah. Facilitate. There's a lot of interesting statistics too about families that eat together a few times a week. There's like higher grades.
15:13lower substance abuse, lower teenage pregnancies. It's really fascinating just by eating dinner together. Yeah, I think the kitchen table or the dining table is the touchstone for families. It's not the TV. It's the kitchen table. So the reason that I asked is because I was just talking to a guy. I haven't put the episode out yet. He started a magazine called Home Cooked Magazine. So nice.
15:40And I kind of pressed him on why in the world he would start a magazine about cooking when so many people don't cook. And he had the best answer. Like I'm not going to paraphrase it because I will murder it. But he was just like, it's not just for people who cook, it's for people who are interested in cooking. It's for people who love to eat. It's for people who like to look at pretty pictures of food. It's for everybody. And I just, I loved that. It was like, okay, so you hit on everything.
16:10Good job. You know, another thing with people who, you know, not everybody cooks is, you know, as you mentioned, the cost of everything has been going up so much that eating out typically is something that gets cut from people's budgets. And so sometimes they need to start to cook or eat at home just for budget sake. And so that's where we can come in and help too.
16:39on both ends of providing some clean food and some recipes and tools to make it easier. Sure. I keep saying that I need to write a cookbook of like 25 recipes that are from start to finish half an hour to start cooking it to on the table. Because I always hear that people don't have time to cook, but I also think it's that they just don't have the energy when they walk in the door. And so the shorter cook time.
17:08the shorter prep time. I'm not saying this right. The less time from starting to cook to eating it is the important thing there because the less time, the less energy expended. And so I really need to sit down for about three weeks and get my recipes that I've been doing for years into a book form and get it out on Amazon because I bet that it would sell. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think a big piece of that too is just
17:37having a plan, like if you take 20 minutes to plan your meals for the week. Brian and I just sat in the parking lot at church yesterday and said, okay, let's map out our meals for the week so we're not stressed the day of, because that's half the thing is not knowing what to make for dinner. But if you do have that plan, right, then it's easier to get it on the table. And then with your cookbook coming out, then it'll be super easy for people. Yeah, it'll be at least a year before it's out.
18:05I really should do it because I've had it down to a science for years because I've raised four kids and trying to keep those kids fed every evening, Monday through Friday was a trick and having dinner ready within 10 minutes of my husband walking in the door from work was like the goal for the day. Making sure everybody got something to eat that they liked and that food was on the table 10 minutes after he walked in the door from his job.
18:31because his job was stressful and I felt like he worked his ass off. The least I could do for him was have something he wanted to eat in front of him in 10 minutes. You're a good wife and a good mom. I tried. I still try. Um, so there was something else in that whole food thing. Oh, the other thing is that once you learn to cook, you can cook ahead and you can put stuff that tastes good, pre-warmed in the freezer. And.
19:00Then if you really don't have the energy or the time, all you have to do is pull it out, thaw it out and cook it. Like heat it up, it's all ready to go. Exactly. Yeah, we love leftovers. Yeah, we did that for years. Like I would cook for an army just so that I had stuff in the freezer so that I could be like, oh, you don't like what I'm making? In that freezer right there is something you like, take it out and nuke it and eat it. And that way everybody won. Everybody was eating something that was good for them that they enjoy.
19:30Exactly. I called it feeding the freezer. My husband used to laugh at me. He'd be like, you're cooking for 20 people. And I was like, yes, I'm feeding the freezer for six weeks from now when somebody wants this. Hey, I think that there's a title for your second cookbook. Feeding the freezer? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta, I gotta get on this. I'm telling you. I'm not getting any younger and the days don't get any longer. So.
20:00But either way, cooking is really important. And cooking and the people that produce the food that we're gonna cook are even more important. So you guys are amazing. So we've got like 10 minutes. My brain is fried from being sick. I'm so sorry. I don't know what else to ask you. What would you guys like to tell me? Anything you can think of right now? I don't know if you wanna share about your...
20:28your practices, your rotation raising or how you your pasture raise pork or anything like that? I think so many people are interested in doing this. Getting on land, starting to raise some food and I grew up in the suburbs. We lived in the suburbs before we had this and honestly it was reading some books and YouTube and we figured out how to do it. We made a lot of mistakes along the way and learned a lot of things just by trying and starting.
20:59And now we're kind of getting into a pretty good rhythm with things where life is a lot easier just as far as animal husbandry and knowing what we're doing. So he mentioned that my dad was a farmer in central Iowa, but he passed away. And so it's not like Brian just learned from him. And additionally,
21:27Brian had very different farm practices than what my dad did. So even though my dad was a farmer, I didn't grow up on that farm. And so essentially, Brian was learning everything from scratch, from YouTube, from podcasts, from vlogs and blogs. So I think your point is anyone can do it if you have the desire, right? Yeah, for sure.
21:55If you have the desire and the physical capability. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Cause it's hard work. It don't, don't ever think that it's not hard work listeners because it is. It's, it's hard on your body and it can be hard on your brain. You know, you were saying that you guys had made mistakes. Well, that's where the learning happens, but it's hard on your brain and it's hard on your heart when you think you're doing it right. And then you find out that you screwed it up.
22:24That happens for sure. Yeah. We, uh, I bought my son one of those, um, those mushroom kit thingies that you can grow mushrooms in your house. Okay. And it was a cute little wooden log with holes dug in it. And then they would put the plugs of the stores in and you spray it. You put it in a plastic bag and you spray water in there and then you tie it off and you let it kind of hang out and get all
22:53rainy in there and we put it where it was warm because it said it needed to be somewhere warm. Well come to find out it was too warm and once the mushrooms started growing we pulled the plastic bag off of it because that's what it said to do. These beautiful little mushrooms dried out completely they were like petrified mushrooms. I know. Could not eat them. Prettiest little cedar log you've ever seen but they were useless as food. I was...
23:21I was so bummed out. I took a photo of it because it was beautiful. That's the best thing that came out of it. So that was a mistake. We learned our lesson and we're trying it again but we're being smarter this time. So I'll have to get photos of it this time when we actually use the mushrooms that grow that are edible. It'll be great. But silly things like that happen all the time and that was a minor in extensive fail. I can't imagine what happens when you've sunk.
23:49thousands of dollars into something and it doesn't go right. Yeah, it's definitely had punches to the gut for sure and you learn and you make it better moving forward. Yep. So do you guys, if you're doing beef cattle or beef cattle, do you also do dairy at all or is it just beef?
24:17Uh, so we currently just do beef. Um, our first four cows that we bought were dairy cows from a local grass-based dairy, because we were buying raw milk. We thought, oh, we're going to have a farm. Let's go ahead and milk some cows. Um, so our first four original cows were, uh, Dutch belted and milking shorthorn from a dairy. But we never milked them. Um, I was still working full time, trying to figure out how to add this milking enterprise.
24:44So ultimately, they just became good mamas and they could really great mamas with their milk supply. And through the year, in the last couple of years, I've really felt like I should add dairy to our farm. We have so many people asking us about if we do raw dairy. And I just know, you know, there's such a demand for it. And I just believe it's so beneficial that it's something we're going to add this year.
25:15slowly, slowly jumping into it. So I still have some cows that have the capability that I could milk. And then we'd probably add a couple other cows to the mix. But yeah, that's something that's coming on our farm this year.
25:30Well, that's exciting. I'm just slow to jump into it. Yeah. Um, the reason I ask is because I didn't know if you guys are breeding your, your cattle, or if you like go buy calves in the spring and raise them for a couple of years and then butcher them. I didn't know how that worked. Yeah. So we have a closed herd. We do. Um, we've, I've always had my own bulls. Um, and are basically almost all of our animals are born on this farm. And then.
26:00You know, they, um, to the point of when we take them to the, to the butcher to be slaughtered. So I do, I will calf my cows in the last week in May through June and first week in July. Um, and so that's when I would probably start milking some of my cows once they freshen up. Yep. Um, but we might add a dairy cow before that, or just take one of mine and work out the kinks in the system to get her in the barn.
26:30Yeah, and what breed do you guys have for your beef? Or do you have a beef? Beef is quite a mix. Our first four cows were Dutch belted and melting short horn. So Dutch belted is kind of the Oreo cookie cow, but it's the dairy breed. And then I bought belted Galway, which is the other Oreo cookie cow, but it's the beef breed. And then through the years I added some red Angus.
26:58So we have quite a mixture. None of our cows really look the same. A lot of them have a white belt to them, but they're a mixture of milking shorthorn, Dutch belted, belted Galloway and red Angus. So kind of an interesting looking herd. Yeah, and some really good beef there, I bet. I bet it's really great. So in the winter time, I'm gonna ask a dumb question cause I don't know the answer. In the winter time.
27:26Are your cattle in the barn or you guys have them out in the pasture? Ours are outside as much as possible. We do have some barn space that I can get them in. Um, you know, if we get this like freezing rain in the winter, that's probably the hardest thing on them. Snow is not that hard on them. As long as they can kind of get out of the wind, um, they're, they're better and they're healthier outside. So right now I'm actually, I feed my hay out on pasture whenever possible. So it just keeps them.
27:56kind of outside, separated. The more they're together in close confinement, the more likely if you've got any kind of viruses going around, respiratory things, they all get it. So I really try to keep mine outside as much as possible. Okay, cool. And then are they, such a weird question. Are they friendly or are they not friendly? Mine are very friendly. And I just try to be around them a lot. I try to handle them.
28:25peacefully. I try to never really get them too worked up. So I've got a lot of cows that I can just go up and you know, they'll come up to me to get their head scratched or get pet. Even my bull. My bulls have always been that way where they'll kind of come up and want to have their head scratched. So yeah, I just try to always be real calm and peaceful around them. I think that I think there's a couple things that go into that. One, the fact that your calves are all born and raised here, raised with you.
28:55in knowing you and then to just cultivating that peaceful atmosphere because you're gentle with them you show affection to them and so it just has created them to be peaceful and Yeah, we'll go out. We'll do farm tours and We've brought children and adults out into the herd And of course you have to be careful you right now, but it yeah, we've got a good hurt. Yeah
29:23There's a couple flighty ones, but just trying to be pretty calm and gentle around your animals just makes handling them so much easier. So even when I'm loading them, it's not stressful. And they just stay pretty calm. Wouldn't it be nice if people were calm and kind with other people like you are with your cows? Come on. That's right. Wouldn't that be amazing? I would love that. Okay. So.
29:51You guys, I am so sorry that I lost my whole train 10 minutes back. I'm sorry. It's been a hell of a week, I'm telling you. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today and I wish you all the luck in your business, and I love what you're doing. Hey, yeah. Thanks for just giving us the honor of being on your podcast. We appreciate it. It's a pleasure to chat with you. You too. I just wish I had been more on my game. Maybe we'll talk again in the fall and you can tell me about how all the babies did.
30:21That was good. That would be great. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks.