A Tiny Homestead

Get Bentz Farm

Today I'm talking with Theresa at Get Bentz 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 Theresa Bentz at Get Bentz Farm. Good morning, Theresa. Good morning. I have to tell you, I love the name of your farm. One of the most entertaining things about this podcast over the last year.
00:27is all the names that people come up with for their places. So I'm assuming it's just a riff on your name. Yeah, it's a little bit of a riff on our name and also like we're in the Northfield area and there are so many beautiful little like vegetable farms or berry farms around here. And everybody has sweet names like singing hills and whispering meadows and stuff like that. And
00:54When we first started, we were one of the only ones who had sheep, really. And so we were like, well, we got these funky Icelandic sheep that have an edge to them. You know, they're not the kind of sheep that'll come up and let you pet them. Um, and so we were like, we don't want a soft name. We need a tough name. And then we're like, well, our last name is Bentz. So why don't people just get Bentz?
01:22Yes, I had never heard the phrase get bent until I met my current husband. And he said it one time and I was like, where, what is that? He said, you've never heard it before. I said, no, no, never heard it. And I can't explain on the podcast what it actually means. It's very insulting. So, but it's brilliant for your farm. So tell me, tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Yeah. So, um, we, well.
01:51kind of a little bit about us. We were originally city folk and people who, like we lived, I lived and grew up in the cities and my husband grew up in the suburbs and for a while we lived in Savage together and we just, you know, we just kind of wanted to have more control over our food sources and how we get food and where the food comes from and just knowing that because that's
02:20Part of the biggest issue as a consumer is figuring out where your food is actually coming from. And so then in 2013, we, what we had decided many years before that, but in 2013, we finally found a farm that fit what we wanted, which took a long time. For any of those people out there looking for farms, it takes a really long time. So just be patient. And then, you know, we found the farm in 2013.
02:49We moved in in March and we just went full steam ahead and started, you know, raising some animals. We got our first sheep that summer. And then it's just kind of taken off from there. We've over the last, like I would say seven to eight years, we've really figured out our niche in the area, like what we do well, which is really the sheep and the wool.
03:18Um, so as we, as we learned about sheep and as we got better with raising sheep and producing wool, I got really into the processing of the wool and turning it into, um, yarns and rovings and stuff like that and building a community around local fiber. Um, and then I purchased a wool mill and that's kind of what I do primarily now is, uh, care for the sheep and make yarn. Okay.
03:48Isn't there a wool mill like a big factory in Northfield? No, that's Fairbow Woolen Mill. Oh, okay, yeah, sorry. Yeah, no, it's so proud. A lot of people ask me that. And they're down in Fairbow, obviously. And they really just, they make like blankets. They're more of a weaving mill than a big, I mean, they don't take in customer wool. They don't take in wool from the local area.
04:18I don't think they do any scouring or washing of wool anymore. I think that facility or that part of their facility was damaged during some flooding. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. I had Faribault and Northfield mixed up. And in my defense, I grew up on the East Coast. I moved to Minnesota in, oh my God, let me think. My daughter was born in 89, so 91, 92.
04:47I haven't really traveled the state a whole lot. Like I've been to Northfield, but I went there for a specific reason and went home. And I've been to Faribault and went there for a specific reason and went home. So all these billions, it seems like of little towns in Minnesota confuse me. And Faribault is really not that far from Northfield and the grand scheme of things, but it is a totally different place. So. All right. So can you, number one.
05:18You have Icelandic sheep, but I think that you have another breed too, right? Yeah, we were primarily Icelandic and only Icelandic up until about four or five years ago. And then we started to cross in other sheep too. My philosophy on shepherding has changed over the years. And so initially I was very breed specific. And
05:45you know, really focusing on the breed and all of that. And then I, you know, had a couple of good mentors and looked back at how people have shepherded throughout history. And, you know, we really have developed different sheep breeds that matched our properties and landscapes. And so we started bringing in other sheep breeds to find something that would match what we're doing here on our farm.
06:13really well and be really successful. So we have a couple of, we brought in some Jacob sheep, which is a desert sheep, and we found that crossing them really helped fix some of the, you know, the cons of the Icelandics, and then the Icelandic fixed some of the cons of the Jacob. So we got this great crossbred sheep. And then we tried some cheviots, because they're supposed to be really good on hillsides, and
06:42move on from the cheviyets and we're going to try a different British breed this summer or this fall. It's not summer anymore. It's fall. So we're going to bring in a blue-faced luster ram and try crossing those and see what happens. So when you start to think about crossing breeds, do you look to see if other people have done it and kind of...
07:11decide off of that or are you just completely surprised when you're like, we're going to try this one and see what happens? Yeah, I've actually, I mean, I'm in a great place because my whole world right now is in wool. And since wool is worth really nothing in the market, I get my hands on some really fancy stuff that people would otherwise burn. So that's where I kind of figured out the cheviette piece.
07:40are really big, long-legged sheep. And part of the reason we're getting rid of them isn't because they're bad sheep, it's just because they outweigh me and I don't really like that. Mm-hmm. But the wool, the cross between the chevier and Iceland, it gives you this really lofty, strong, bouncy, soft wool. So kind of ideal for outerwear, like sweaters and stuff like that. Icelandic can be very,
08:09abrasive, it has a lot of bite to it, just because it has the dual coats. It doesn't have a lot of crimps, so it can, it can be really heavy and dense. But if you add a little bit of another breed into that genetic, what I find is that the lofty, fine undercoat of the Icelandic really comes out and you lose a lot of the hair, but you get the length that you want.
08:38So it's kind of, for me, it's been a journey of seeing what other local shepherds have done, because Icelandics are pretty popular in this state. So I get to see what other shepherds have done with, and then how the genetics play out in their fleeces, and then also, you know, how long those crosses last, or, you know, are you getting a higher yield on your carcass when you take those lambs to the butcher?
09:06you know, are they more parasite resistant? So that's like I'm just lucky because I live in wool. So I get to learn all the stuff before I make the mistakes. That's amazing. So do you like do it all? Are you like, OK, I've got a ram, I've got to you. We're going to mate them. They're going to have a baby. And then from baby upwards to shearing or butcher, do you do all the things? Yeah, yeah, we do all the things. So we.
09:36We are, Icelandics are seasonal breeders, and that's true for many sheep breeds, except for kind of your more domesticated sheep breeds or breeds that were bred to have multiple lambs each year, like the polypay. So they will start going into their seasonal breeding season, you know, at the end of October. I think with this heat, it might keep it off for a little bit longer.
10:04But like October, November, they'll start breeding. We'll bring in this new ram. He's a nice looking fella. And then we'll let the sheep do their thing. But also during this time is when we harvest last year's lambs. So the lambs are usually born in March and then they get to graze alongside mom and mom will naturally wean them in July. So I don't have to do any of that stuff. And then, you know, like.
10:30We just sheared this last weekend. So we run them up to shear and we kind of pick out, you know, which lambs are looking really good for the first butcher dates and which lambs, you know, will hold on to. So yeah, and then what we do after we shear is I take all the wool and I hoard it in my mill and turn it into lovely yarns. And for the ones that go off to butcher,
11:00We sell a lot direct to customer, but we also keep meat in the freezer so when people come out to visit the farm, if they're looking for some ground lamb or something, we have that available for them. And then we take their sheep skins. So if we didn't shear all the wool off or if they've had plenty of time to grow more wool, we'll take those skins and salt them and then tan them. And then sell those products as well. And if they have nice looking horns, we'll keep their skulls and
11:29sell those as well. Wow. How do you have, how do you prioritize all of this? Like, is there an order of operations to it? Yeah, yeah, there totally is. You have to find this like, this balance, you know, cause otherwise you could just drive yourself crazy spinning your wheels. So we, we have balance. We, you know, we always share around the same time each year.
11:58And then when the lambs go off to the butcher, we know like, okay, we're going to pick up our sheep skins and we're going to salt them. And then we're going to check on them. You know, it's kind of like, like you would at work. You have many different projects that you have to do and you just kind of prioritize which ones. In the mill, I have, I have a lot of stuff going on all the time in the mill. And so I have to keep myself on a pretty strict deadline to make sure that I'm fulfilling
12:28the orders that I need to get done. I do a lot of fiber CSAs, so kind of the same model as what you see at a vegetable farm in the summer and winter where you get like a weekly ration of fruits and vegetables, whatever is in season. I do that monthly with yarn and roving so people can see what's in season here in Minnesota and get a skein of yarn and a story about the yarn and the sheep.
12:57and where it came from each month. So I just have to make sure I get those things out. And, you know, it's like any job. You just kind of, you balance it and you shut yourself off at a certain time so that you can have some family and lifetime. Yeah, you mentioned the word roving. What is roving? Yeah, so roving is like, it's like cleaned, carded, or cleaned and brushed, I would say brushed wool.
13:27Sometimes I add in like alpaca. So it's just clean brushed wool alpaca fiber, whatever I put in that comes out of the machine through a certain deck that makes it into a long tube of you know brushed fiber I guess. So someone else can spin it? Yep. Okay. Yeah. And I also make bats
13:57Some spinners like to spin on bats. So it just depends on what you want, you know? So bats like a bat of insulation, that kind of usage of the word bat? Yeah, it's very similar to a bat of insulation. Okay, I just, I wanna make sure that I understand because if you're mentioning things that I don't understand, my listeners aren't gonna understand it either because we've never heard it before. So that's why I asked about roving and bats. And I, it's...
14:26When I talk to people like you who are so immersed in the thing they're doing, you talk and I have so many questions pop into my head and I'm like, how do I make this cohesive when I ask the next question? So the next question is I've talked to a few people about sheep and about wool and about meat and I keep hearing there's no real good market for wool. But apparently...
14:53there's actually a market that's a micro market in the area that you're in that will want to use the wool. Yeah. Yeah, so back, I would say before 2018, before the pandemic, and before the 80s, so there are two big shifts in the wool industry. So before the 80s, we used to have
15:22taxation on imported woolen grids from other countries. And that taxation would turn into a commodity payment to shepherds in the states. And so the shepherds would shear their sheep and send their wool off to the wool broker, or we called it the wool pool back then. And then the pool would class it, grade it. Classing is like giving it a classification of how fine it is, like what the quality of it is.
15:51and then grade it and then sell it on the larger market to be turned into garments or rugs. Rugs used to be, wool rugs used to be the thing back in the day. And then in the 80s, there was that huge farm bill or that huge farm, not a bill, but a, what is that? When the farm, yeah, like everything fell apart for farmers in the 80s. Yes.
16:21Yes. And so when that fell apart, the wool industry also fell apart because we lost our tariffs. So we, you know, the president at the time had changed a bunch of things and how we do business with other countries and took away those tariffs. And when those tariffs were gone, there wasn't a lot of incentive to grow wool because wool prices started to like drastically drop. Tank. You know. They started a tank. Yep.
16:51Yeah, super tank. And then with that, lamb prices started to tank because we had a big push for beef, you know, beef grazing. And we changed a lot of the ways that we raised animals. We went from, you know, grazing in paddocks and woodlands to feedlot grazing or feedlot management, you know. So we changed a lot of stuff. And then with this last change.
17:21before the pandemic and during the pandemic and the different political powers at that time. They really changed how we do business with China. And China used to be one of the biggest buyers of American wool. But when we started to add additional taxation and change those those trading
17:48rules with China, we lost our industry. In Australia, New Zealand, we're happy to come and snap that industry up. So we went from, you know, back in 2019, from having wool being priced at maybe $1.50 to $2 a pound to right now for fine grade wool. This is like next to skin, good textile wool. My
18:14My sheer friend who also works with the wool pool and the brokers, he said it's worth four cents a pound.
18:22Yeah. Yeah. So it's at this point wool is worth, wool is so devalued in the States that it's not worth the $15 burlap sack that the wool goes into. And the burlap sack usually holds about 200 to 250 pounds of wool. Wow. Okay. So you just made it very clear to me what I've been hearing because I've heard that that wool is hard to move. It's not worth anything, but it is literally not worth.
18:51anything. Yeah, it's not worth the sack. Yeah. Okay. So living in a Northern Tier State and I grew up in a Northern Tier State, I have had wool coats, full jackets, full sweaters and people, wool is worth something if you live in a Northern Tier State because it is so warm. I have, I have the most beautiful hip length jacket that I wear in like November and December here.
19:21and it's made from wool and cashmere and cotton. And I watched this thing at Kohl's for months over the winter when I got it and it started out at like $150. I did not have $150 at that point in time. I had like 40 tops for a new jacket and I really wanted this one because it was really beautiful. It was black, it was fitted and it was wool, cashmere and cotton.
19:50And I just basically said, universe, if I'm meant to have it, I will have it, but I have to wait. I ended up paying like $35 for this coat. I wear this thing all the time in November and December because it's just light enough to wear in the car, but it's really warm because it blocks the wind. Wool is fantastic as a sweater or a jacket. I can't handle wool blankets because they get too hot.
20:17And wool is great for mittens. I love wool mittens. Yeah, yeah, wool is fantastic. I think it's such a disservice to the industry that, you know, like, so when, in the 80s too, we had the uptick of polar fleece and the petroleum-based clothing industry really took off with its synthetics, like polyester and micro,
20:47fibers and stuff like that. And a lot of their marketing, you know, and if you were a kid of the 80s, like I am, a lot of the marketing around wool was that wool was scratchy. Wool was hard to take care of. Wool was really hard to clean. And so we were kind of spoon-fed this information about wool in order for us to want to go buy, you know, those polar fleece
21:17wool and they, you know, take, you can wash them in the washing machine, you can do this and that, but at the huge price of the microplastics that are now inside of our tissues, you know, because we've washed these things and they've ended up in our water systems. And a lot of that information about wool being scratchy and wool being difficult to care for are absolute lies. Like anybody who knows and loves wool.
21:44We'll tell you outright, it's incredibly easy to care for. You know, like a wool sweater. So some of the cool pro, I'll get nerdy on wool real quick. Please do, yes. Okay. If I get too nerdy, just be like, Trace, that's enough. Geek out all you want. So the cool thing about wool is that it is, so I'm gonna say some pretty amazing things that might make people's heads just explode. Wool is antimicrobial by nature. And that's not just like,
22:14The merino breed, it is every breed of wool. In like all wool types, all wool breeds, whatever it is, wool is anti-microbial. So that means when you sweat in wool, so if you're out there working in the garden in the fall, in the spring, when you're wearing a wool sweater and you start to sweat, and you take that wool sweater off, those, the bacteria from your sweat and your skin
22:44isn't able to live on the wool. So it's not going to retain the smell. It might retain like perfumes, but it's not going to retain the smell of your sweat. So you can just leave it out and it'll air out and be fresh like it was just washed. So you really don't have to wash wool very often. I usually will only wash my wool sweaters once a year, kind of at the end of the season just to get it ready for storage.
23:13But other than that, I don't wash it. I wear wool socks and I rotate. I've got three pairs of wool socks and I rotate them. I wear them about a week and a half each and then wash it and then wear the next pair for a week and a half. And I've had the same wool socks for probably three years now. Wool is also a fire retardant naturally. So...
23:38Think about that, those wool carpets. Everybody thinks, oh, wool carpets are gonna be really tough to take care of and they're super expensive. They're actually pretty reasonably priced these days and they're fire retardant. So if your house catches on fire, we have so many manmade items in our house that are super flammable. Anything polyester, that's plastic, that's oil, that's gonna go up in a heartbeat.
24:05But if you have wool, like wool carpets, that's gonna help stop the fire. It's gonna put it out. Wool garments, same. If you're out at a fire, you know, enjoying a campfire in the fall and you just happen to get a spark on your sweater, that spark is gonna, you know, go out. It's not gonna be able to ignite the sweater. The sweater isn't gonna melt to your skin like a polar fleece would melt to your skin.
24:33Same with pajamas, like if you had wool pajamas on the kiddos, you don't have to worry about those pajamas melting to their skin if you have a house fire. And if you're able to afford it, because wool's expensive in the end product, but we're gonna try to make that cheaper, I think, in our country in the next couple decades. But if you're able to purchase wool insulation, what a great...
25:00you know, upward expense, but in the end it pays off because if your house catches on fire, that insulation is going to help keep it from continuing from that fire being a complete loss of the house. So it's like a firewall, literally. Yeah, yeah, it really is. It really is. I know. And then a really cool property of wool is that it is hydrophilic. So it pulls the moisture from
25:29fiber. And when you have moisture, I don't know if you've ever done this in the winter, but if you have warm moisture at the core of a garment or at the core of something, like think about wetsuits. When you put on a wetsuit, you put water into it and you let your body temperature warm up that water. And that water next to the skin creates a barrier from the colder water on the outside. So our bodies like to have that barrier of
25:58like a wet warm. Wool is the same. It likes to hold on to that moisture. So if you're wearing a wool sweater and it's nice and warm in the house and then you go outside it's kind of like a typical spring or fall day here in Minnesota where it's wet, it's very moist outside, you're not going to get as cold because even though the wool will kind of pull in some of that moisture.
26:25it's going to hold it right next to your skin and your body temperature, and it's going to keep your body temperature at the right degree. Cause like wool is really good at just regulating your body temperature by holding that in. So it also is really great for landscaping and for gardens because it likes to hold on to moisture. So if you have a garden that needs a little amendment in your soil, or if you have house plans that you don't want to water,
26:55Too often you can put a little bit of like waste wool or like wolf. If you know anybody who has sheep, you can ask them for a little bit of their garbage fleece and they'll just give it to you and you could put it right on the top of those potted plants. And that'll help hold that moisture. It does regulate your body temperature. So sometimes those wool blankets can be too, too hot. And that usually is because of how they're manufactured. They're very dense.
27:25If you had like a wool comforter where it's more batting, there's more air in between those fibers, that air will stay warm, but you won't be hot. It like just kind of regulates you perfectly. There are a lot of really great studies in Europe that touch on how wool reduces our respiratory rates while we're sleeping and while we wear it. So it kind of keeps us calmer.
27:56like it, you know, like calms your body down as you're wearing it versus other things which, you know, can, like some clothing has dyes in it that can be hormone disruptors and sometimes polyester and stuff like that can cause the respiratory, our respiratory rate to go up or our immune system to be heightened. Since wool is a natural fiber, it really calms those systems back down.
28:25And yeah, like wool comforters are great. Like wool blankets are great all year around. If you find one that doesn't make you hot, because in our humid Minnesota summers, the wool, since it likes to pull moisture to its core, will wick away that humidity away from your body and let you sleep better.
28:46I feel like wool is magical, who knew? I know, right? Right? It's such a cool fiber and it lasts forever. So you know, you look at these Norwegian sweaters that people knitted, you know, decades ago and they're still crisp and good and could get another couple decades out of them, if not more. And all you have to do is, is wash it once a year and wear it. That's it.
29:15Yeah, I have a wool trench coat that is, it comes to my mid calf on me. I'm five foot nine. That is probably 70 years old. I got it at a yard sale or a garage sale like 15 years ago and it still looks brand new. It's like my favorite dress up coat. If I'm going to, oh my God, wear a skirt, which I never do. But, but if it's cold, cold, like it was minus 20 in Minnesota and I have to go somewhere. I want that in the car because I'm going to be.
29:45warm no matter where I go. Like shoe insoles. Those wool shoe insoles are fantastic for that kind of stuff. But that trench coat looks, I mean it's in my closet right now. I just looked at it yesterday because I was like hmm, might be time to start thinking about what I've got for winter outerwear because you know it's going to be October. And saw that trench coat hanging there. I was like oh my god I forgot I have this. How did I forget I have it?
30:14pulled it out just to look at it again. I was like, my God, it's such a beautifully made garment and it looks brand new. And I know it's over 70 years old. Yeah. Yeah. I wish, I wish in the next, like one of my most sincere wishes is that in the next decade, consumers start to see how, how
30:41bad the fashion industry, how bad our textile industry is on our environment, how much they've contributed to a lot of the issues that we have with our environment currently, pollutants in our water system, you know, the amount of textile waste that we dump into other countries is mind-blowing. I wish people would see that, would open their eyes to that.
31:11And next time they wanted to purchase, you know, a new garment or something, they took a moment to look at the label and they, and before they purchased the item, they asked themselves, will this go back into the soil and feed it? Or will this become, you know, a forever thing that won't go away. So if it's polyester, it's there forever. It just breaks down into smaller particles.
31:39If it's wool, cotton, silk, cashmere, any of the wood fibers like bamboo and tinsel and stuff like that. If it's that stuff, it will break down and feed the soil. So that's my biggest wish. My biggest wish is that people looked at garments and thought, you know, can I wear this garment for many seasons? Is it classic? You know, is it a classic garment?
32:09Will it last me through my 30s and into my 40s and 50s? And it'll still drape well on my body and look good versus just a, yeah, I'm at Target and I'm consuming and I'm just gonna grab that polyester t-shirt or that new summer polyester dress that I might wear three times and then I'll donate it thinking that that's part of the...
32:35solution, you know, I donated it so it didn't go into the landfill, but not really following that a lot of our donated textiles end up in landfills in other countries. Yeah, yep, I am right there with you. Most of my clothing is either, I mean, my shoes are almost always leather because I happen to love calvaboot, so that's what I wear, and cotton jeans and cotton
33:04I hate blended material for t-shirts. It just grosses me out and I don't like how it feels. So it's not a cotton t-shirt. I'm probably not wearing it. Wool is great. I hate fleece. I hate micro fleece and polar fleece. It feels weird on my skin and I don't, I'm not autistic. I don't have any of the things that make me, you know, my socks rub wrong, that kind of thing. But fleece just makes me.
33:34feel gross. It's too hot. It feels weird on my skin. I don't love fleas. I love wool fleas but I don't love polar fleas. Yeah, it's plastic. Why would you want to put plastic on your biggest organ? Yeah and you're right. Cotton and wool and leather and all the things you mentioned. Number one, they are better for the environment but number two, they feel better.
34:03when you wear them. And I was going somewhere with this. And three, it's how it should be. Let's just go with that. That's how it should be. That's how it should be. It really should be. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the big things we do, because we kind of touched on this earlier, like micro niche markets for the wool industry. And that's really what we're a big part of is this niche market. It's hard.
34:32It's hard because it's very dependent on the shepherd and the farmer to be all the things. We're already all the things on our farm and now it's requested that we are all the things marketing wise. So you have to have your own website and be your own social media specialist and marketer and like inventory. Public relations and yes.
35:01Yeah, you have to do all of those things just to sell your yarn, just to be competitive in this very big industry that's very ignored. Like the yarn industry, since it's kind of seen as craft and women's work kind of stuff, it's very ignored by the larger industries. And it's, I could tell you, being in the middle of the...
35:29yarn and fiber industry, it is a, it's got to be a multi-billion dollar industry. I mean, people just, it's a, it's a thing. It's a huge thing. But it's ignored because it's women's work. So, so as a small shepherd, you have to, you have to make yourself known. You have to fight in this larger industry just to get people to pay attention to you. You have to tell people why it's important to buy local.
35:59You know, the food industry did a great job with promoting locals and the fiber industry is just slowly making up, um, or catching up to that local food movement with the local fiber movement. Um, so it's, it's really not, it's not easy to exist in these small markets and niche markets, but we're there and I think, I think we're making, we're carving out a little bit. Um,
36:27Hopefully more in the next decade or so. Well, I think you're definitely making a mark in your area and you're so passionate about it. Like I'm so thrilled I got to talk with you today because I feel like I just listened to a TED Talk by Theresa about Get Bentz Farm. And honestly, it's funny, a lot of the people that I talk to on the episodes on the podcast, I get done with them and I'm like, wow, I just got to be
36:56a one person audience right in the moment for a TED Talk that TED Talk doesn't even know they did. Right, yeah. And we have to be experts in it. It's super cool. Yeah, I think it's great. I think you should contact TED Talks and be like, hi, I'm Theresa and I do this. And I would really love to talk about it at a TED Talk in wherever you're doing the next one.
37:18You'd be great. So anyway, I'm mostly being silly because I'm trying to wrap this up. We're at 37 minutes and I try to keep it to half an hour and I could have talked to you for three hours, but my platform, wow, platform won't allow for three hours. So I appreciate your time so much, Theresa. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me. Absolutely, I'd like to have you back next spring so I can talk to you about the baby. Oh yeah, totally. All right, let's do that then.
37:48Alright, you have a fantastic rest of your day and enjoy this cold, crisp, sunny Minnesota day. Yes, you too. Alright, bye.
 

Abundantly Blessed Farm

Today I'm talking with Scott and Lydia at Abundantly Blessed Farm. 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 Lydia and Scott at Abundantly Blessed Farm. How are you guys? I'm good. Doing well. Thank you. It's a really pretty day in Minnesota. Where are you? We're in Ohio and it is rainy, which we are very thankful for.
00:29because it has been very dry this summer. Yeah, we had a really rainy spring, but it's been very dry for the last couple of weeks. So we're waiting on some rain here too. So tell me about yourselves and what you guys do.
00:45We started a lavender farm about two years ago. Um, we had visited Michigan and visited a lavender farm up there. We had an extra acre at our property and we weren't sure what to do with it other than just mow it. And so we came back and decided we'd plant some lavender and see where it went. So we have been growing lavender and then we started a farm stand and we sell some products out of that. And then we've also started selling some, um, that pasteurized milk.
01:14So we do pre-orders for milk that we sell on our farm stand as well. Nice, when I saw you guys are primarily lavender farmers, I was very excited because I haven't talked to anyone on this podcast about lavender yet. So what made you choose lavender? Yeah, so neither one of us have a true green thumb. So that was one of the things that attracted us to the plant. So when we went to Michigan, we took a tour, we were asking a lot of the interns there.
01:45we were to start growing this, how much of a green thumb do you need? Each one of them said, yeah, we're all going to kill our plants. It's totally fine. It was a little bit of some hope that we had some chance. Lavender is a Mediterranean herb. So it grows in honestly some really rocky, junky soil. As long as it has good drainage, it will just take off. It'll explode.
02:13And just thinking about the past two weeks, it's been severely dry here, brown grass everywhere. And the lavender loved it. Nothing else loved it, but the lavender certainly did. So kind of the main reason why we chose it is because either one of us have a green thumb and we've only killed off a few. So we're thankful for that. Yeah. And lavender has so many great properties. You can use it for, you can eat it.
02:42I don't love it, but you can put it in lemonade, I hear, and you can use it as a seasoning for cooking meats and stuff. It's really nice to have as a dried flour in a bouquet. It's really nice to have in a bouquet not dried because it smells amazing. And you can use it in soaps and balms and lotions and things, yes? Absolutely, yes. So we actually grow two main varieties. One is a culinary variety. It's called Munstead.
03:11England lavender. That's the one that we use for our lavender syrup kit. Our lavender sugar. We actually sell that we wholesale that a couple of bakers in the area who actually incorporated into a lavender lemon cookie lavender lemon scones. We've used it for a lavender lemonade made that fresh here on the farm and it's amazing. And then the other variety that we grow is something called phenomenal. It's a hybrid variety mostly for
03:39its flower production, also for its oil production, because like you said, the scent is truly to die for. Even once it's dried, the scent is still present. You just kind of have to rub the plant a little bit, and you get that wonderful lavender scent right back. So, it's truly versatile. We use that for some of our other products, our linen spray.
04:04Lydia makes a tallow bomb. It's so tallow, it's rendered beef fat. That's great as a lotion, as a cosmetic agent. So yeah, it's definitely a wide variety of uses. And we're very thankful that we can grow it here locally. Yeah, we grow it here every year, but we only grow a few plants because it doesn't do really well because our dirt is very black and really loamy and it isn't dry.
04:33So, and especially this year, it wasn't dry. We grew our lavender in the greenhouse in a pot and that's doing fantastic because it wasn't in the wet dirt. But my go-to for lavender is when anyone on the house has a headache, we have lavender oil in a bottle. And anytime anyone has a headache, the first thing we do is take a sniff off that bottle of lavender oil because it really does take the edge off. It truly does, yeah. It's got so many great properties, whether it's for migraine relief.
05:02We even have some individuals who claim that it's really helpful for just general pain control. It's fantastic for sleep. We know that. Great for anxiety. It's an all-around wonderful herb that can be used for many different things. Thinking about plantain, so we actually grow it in a limestone base. That's one thing that we have found that's been fairly successful because we've got a lot of dense clay in our area and it does not grow well in clay.
05:32But as long as you mound it up and you grow it in limestone, it does seems to do fairly well. We should try that. Hmm. See, again, this is why I love doing the podcast because I learn things all the time and Minnesota has tons of limestone. So why not try that? Yeah. So the other thing we do is we mix it in with a little bit of topsoil or potting soil so that you don't have some.
06:02You still have some nutrient properties there. We got that idea from a farmer down in Virginia. She's one of the largest lavender farms, this side of the Mississippi. She grows thousands of lavender plants every year. That's one of the things that she does is she uses a, they call it dirty limestone where she's from, an unwashed limestone. She can get it really cheap, but yeah, came up with that idea and it's done.
06:31Like I said, it's done pretty well. Well, we will have to add that to the arsenal of tricks that we are gaining from every episode I do of this freaking podcast that I started as a hobby. Who knew? So what else do you guys do besides lavender? Yes. That's pretty much the main crop we grow here on. You know, we only have a small farm. We've got two and a half acres that we have here on the property. So we do the lavender. We have sunflowers.
07:00We've done fairly well with the sunflower. We do have some other wildflowers here on the property. We've got chickens that we raise mostly for our own egg production. We've also done some meat chickens along the way where we sold off some of those. Yeah, honestly, it's been a lot of it has been turning our lavender into various products. That's really where we've seen kind of the most success from test for stuff. Okay, do you love it?
07:31Absolutely. Yeah. From a business standpoint, 100%. And even just from the plant standpoint, our kids, we have four children right now under the age of 10. And they love the scent of lavender. They love spraying on their pillows at night, being able to use that. And yeah, it's honestly been a great opportunity for us as a family to bond together. But we also see our farm as a ministry.
08:00being able to invest in the lives of others, and just truly being able to share the love of the woods with others. So we've been able to do that. Very thankful for that opportunity. Fantastic. I love it when people want to help the community. We do that too. We didn't have a lot of chance to do that this summer because the way we help our community is by giving some of our extra produce to the food shelf. However, our garden did terribly this year because of the wet.
08:30We haven't been able to donate anything to the food shelf because we haven't had anything. I'm very sad on many levels about this growing season this year. No, absolutely. It seems like across the US it's been kind of a hot year. Yes. Well, we got spoiled because the first three summers we were here, we moved here four years ago, were wonderful. We were swimming in everything. And selling and donating and sharing.
09:01And this spring, my husband was like, it's gonna be a rough gardening season. I was like, yep, that's okay. We were really lucky the first three, it's all right. You take what you're given. So that's what we were given. No, 100%. Yeah, unfortunately, you know, that's one thing that we have learned as, you know, kind of new to the area of farming, large gardening.
09:30That you know, you can't control the weather and you can't control the outcomes and you just roll with the punches Whatever is is given to you you you embrace Yes, and we're embracing tomatoes right now because my husband is a very smart man and He planted tomatoes before the rains and they did not do anything and then he planted again and they Started coming in about a month ago and those plants are almost done
10:00And then he planted again on the off chance that the second planting wouldn't do anything. And so the third planting is now set with green tomatoes and they're starting to get blush on them. And as long as the frost holds off, we might actually get some from the third planting as well. So we may yet be able to donate some food to the food shelf. We're not sure. So how many plants do you guys put in the ground as far as tomatoes? I think he put in 150 on the first planting.
10:30Benke put in 75 on the second planting and I think the third planting was 50. Yeah. God bless you guys. That's, that's awesome. Uh huh. Well, we also eat a lot of tomatoes in the winter. We like tomato sauce. We like spaghetti. We like lasagna. We like to put tomato sauce. We like our homemade tomato sauce on our homemade pizzas. We like tomato sauce in the stock for our.
10:57pot roast. So we use tomato sauce all winter long. How big is your garden? 150 feet by 100 feet. Wow. So yeah, it takes up a lot of room for the tomatoes and the cucumbers. And we do other stuff but usually the cucumbers and the tomatoes are the majority of the space in that garden. So, but anyway, this isn't about me,
11:28So how hard was it to get into the business mindset when you decided you were gonna start making and selling?
11:38I would say it's been a little challenging, just finding the time to get into it. And I can't say we're completely there yet either. I think it's a lifestyle change of just deciding what you're selling is worthwhile, that people want it. And we can be kind of frugal people. And so knowing that we might not spend the price that we charge, allowing ourselves to charge what is reasonable.
12:06And what we make a profit on has been probably the biggest challenge for us. Um, you know, just charging what we need to and not undercharging. So something else that, uh, you know, we've, we've, uh, I won't necessarily say struggled with, but something that we've learned to embrace a little bit has been not everybody is your customer. Right. And that's one thing that we have really had to kind of
12:35shift our mindset around that it's okay if people say no, it's okay if people walk in, look at your stuff, walk away or it's okay if your neighbor down the road doesn't even stop by to take a look at your stuff. That's okay. Because yeah, at the end of the day, you're not selling to everybody. Even if we've got produce, we've got extra produce.
13:03Yes, everybody needs to eat, but not everybody needs to eat our stuff. And that's been honestly, probably one of the biggest challenges that I have had has been kind of lifting my mind around that. Um, and like Lydia said, you know, we are very brutal people. And one of the things that we've really had to kind of embrace has been, you know, kind of getting over some of that mindset. So, yeah.
13:33I have been listening to a metric but ton of podcasts lately. And it's really funny because I was never a podcast listener until I started my own podcast, which is crazy. But I've been listening to podcasting podcasts and marketing podcasts and home setting podcasts because I need to learn about how to do this. And in the process, I've been learning a lot about mindset and about charging what your products are worth.
14:01There is a podcast that Charlotte Smith does, if you type in her name in Facebook. Three shell companies. Yeah, she's fantastic. And she talks a lot about charging what your products are worth, and she has a formula to figure that out. So I don't know, if you listened to her already, yay, but I just wanna put it out there for anybody that doesn't know about her, go check her podcast out too, because she really has been a big help.
14:31Yeah, I ended up coming across her one day on YouTube and started following along some of her content. And, you know, my, are we willing to pull the trigger on, on one of her courses? Not at this point. No, me either. Just to grow and continue to develop some different ideas. But yeah, I tell you, that's, that's one of the biggest struggles I think honestly, any new business person has, you know, as far as the selling aspect. And one of the other challenges, I was just thinking about this.
15:01as we were talking, but one of the other challenges that we have had has been, and when I say we, I mean more me than anything, not wasting your energy on social media. Is it important that people find you? Yes. Is it important that people hear about you and learn about you? Yes.
15:24but it doesn't always have to go through social media. It can go through word of mouth marketing. It can go through Google. It can go through your own website. It doesn't have to be an expensive website. Because yeah, that's one thing that I have found with even other farms in our area that have tried starting up, that they tend to fizzle out fairly quickly when you put out a few posts and no one comes and buys my stuff.
15:52Because yeah, you gotta get found first. So.
15:57Preach to my own self here because yeah, something we've been working through. I think it's a don't put all your eggs in one basket kind of thing, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And since we're talking about homesteading, don't put all the eggs in one basket. But yeah, I had no idea how much background there is in learning to run a business. And if you've never done it before,
16:25you can spend six months learning about all the ins and outs of running a business. And you'll never start a business if you do it that way because you will be afraid. You will get three months into learning how to start a business and be like, I don't know how to do this. Right. Well, and you think, I mean, a lot of, a lot of your new hobby farmers, I would say that we are a hobby farm, but obviously transitioning to a business, transitioning to a business. But, you know, in our
16:55normal everyday professional lives were not taught how to run a business. You get on Google, you get on YouTube and you start searching, how do I start a business? You learn a little bit, but then you start breaking into so many different avenues. Honestly, you can become overwhelmed so quickly. It's important to focus on doing one thing good at a time and do everything.
17:23at once and end up doing nothing well. Yes, absolutely. And the other thing we talk about a lot here is CYA cover your ass. Because there are so many things that you have to consider if you're going to sell a product, what if someone gets sick? What if God forbid you're selling candles and your candle catches someone someone's house on fire because that does happen. So.
17:51We talk a lot about contingencies and CYA here because we do not want to lose our livelihood because we didn't think through what could happen. Right. Yep. And it's, those are important things to consider and something that, uh, often goes unnoticed and overlooked. Yep. And I don't know what Ohio is like, but Minnesota.
18:18has a thing called cottage food law. And we occasionally sell granola at the farmer's market along with our produce. And we had to get, it's not a license, but it's a registration. And you basically have to study a form that explains what the laws are to be able to sell food that you make in your own home kitchen. And then you have to take a test. And if you fail a test, you're really not allowed to sell from your home kitchen.
18:48And when we decided we were going to do that and then decided we were going to have a farm stand on our property to sell produce, we talked to our insurance guy and said, is there anything we need to do regarding insurance? And he said, why, yes, yes, there is. And he said, you probably should switch from homeowners insurance to farm insurance because you're now going to be a farm with people coming on your property. And if someone gets hurt, you want to make sure you're covered.
19:19And then he said, you might want to look into LLC insurance. And I knew about LLC as a business designation, but I didn't know there was LLC insurance and he said that way, if God forbid something happens, you're, you don't lose your home. The business will be sued, but you're, you personally won't be sued. And I was like, I don't want to talk about being sued. And he said, well, let's not, let's hope that doesn't happen. I was like, yeah, that doesn't happen.
19:46But there's all these little detail things behind the scenes that if you don't ask people who know, you'll never know about it. Correct. Yeah, it's one thing that Olivia's definitely looked further into as far as the Ohio cottage laws. And what we've noticed is that every state's different. Some states allow you to sell raw milk under a cottage law, other states will not. And you've got, I mean, here in Ohio, we can, as an example, we can sell produce, but you
20:15wash your produce if you sell it. You can make certain kinds of baked goods, but you can't have cream in your pie, if you will. A lot of those little anomalies that really are dependent upon various states. Then yeah, the other thing we've got, and I know some states have this, Ohio is one that is kind of embracing it a little bit, but not quite there, is the idea of agritourism and how agritourism, if it's designated by the state,
20:45thankfully Ohio has this, it offers additional legal protections for the farms that when they are holding agritourism activities, whether that's an event on site, a you-pick event, a tour, some kind of an activity, that you have some additional liability protection in place automatically granted by the state of Ohio as long as you're not being stupid, not stepping across fines intentionally.
21:14that we have really learned about recently and trying to embrace that more. Yep, and agritourism is becoming a huge business. So, yeah, knowing about that helps too. The main reason we started really asking questions is because one of the people that came to our CSA the first summer that we had it had two little ones. She had a two and a half for three year old girl and a baby, like the eight month old baby boy.
21:43almost a year old baby boy. And she would bring the kids with her when she came to get her shares. And the little girl absolutely loved our chickens and our chickens were in a chicken run with the chicken wire. And she went over and reached her hand through the chicken wire to touch one of the chickens. And I was like, if she hurts herself, we are screwed. This is gonna be bad. And I asked the mom gently if she could get the little girl because they didn't wanna get hurt. And she totally understood.
22:13It was fine, but that was the day that we sat down and talked about calling our insurance agent and saying, how does this work? How do we protect everybody ourselves and the people come here? So that was the kicker for us. Cause she, Oh, this little girl's adorable. She's so cute. And I thought I'm going to hate myself forever if anything happens to her. Yeah. No, that's one thing that we've, uh, we had to look into as we started opening up for photography. So we all.
22:43we open up during the bloom of lavender for photography.
22:49where a photographer can come in and rent the field for an hour. And that's one thing that we really had to designate was, you know, you are in a very controlled area. You're not leaving this area. You're not interacting with the animals. Please know that there are animals on site. You're not bringing your, your pets, your dogs. Yeah. Because yeah, you started thinking through a lot of that liability and you've exponentially increased your risk when you start having to do your property. Yep.
23:18Absolutely. So do you guys? I'm sorry, say it again. No, I was just gonna say we love having people. But yeah, you definitely take on that risk when you invite people to your to your farm. Yes. And I don't ever want anyone to think that the only reason that we do our due diligence and try to take care of things is to protect just us. It's about protecting the other people as well. Because
23:45I care about the people that come here. I want to make sure that they are safe or they are taken care of if something does happen. Absolutely. So, you guys have animals. What do you have for animals? We just have chickens and too many cats right now. Oh, okay. You don't have a dog? No dog. We have one that's begging for a dog, but not right now. One child that's begging for a dog. No animals begging for dogs. So.
24:14Yeah. Is there a particular reason you don't have any dogs? The last one we had ran away, then the last one we had needed to be trained a little bit better and have the opportunity at another location, another farm to have that opportunity. The one before that, unfortunately, got hit by a car. So, yeah. Okay. So you're taking a break from dogs, huh?
24:40Taking a break right now and we have way too many cats that would probably not interact at all with the dog right now. It's so funny that you say that because our dog absolutely adores our cats. Our cats are all barn cats and the barn cats adore the dog. And we have baby barn cats in the barn right now. And they're almost three weeks old and they will be venturing out in a week or so into the world. And
25:07The mama cat has had two litters so far, this is the third litter. And our dog loves the kittens when they come out of the barn. She just, she sits and she waits for them to come introduce themselves and she grooms them and she puts her paw on them and she treats them like they're her babies. It's very cute. What breed is your dog? She's a mini Australian Shepherd. Okay. Yeah.
25:32and she thinks that she is the mama to the kittens. When they go back in the barn with the actual mom, she sits and pouts. So I have a very special place in my heart for dogs. And when people are like, we don't have a dog. I'm like, do you not like dogs or is there a reason? No, we love having animals around. We just know at this point in our life, we still enjoy being able to get away to go on vacation.
26:02Um, yeah, being able to go through and have somebody come over and watch a few animals is enough at this point. So sure. That makes all the sense in the world. We live in a place that we consider a vacation home, like our, our property on our home, we are so thrilled with it. We never want to leave it. So, so we live, we live where we vacation and we vacation where we live because we never go anywhere. There's nothing wrong with that.
26:32That was the whole point of finding this place. We wanted somewhere that we wanted to love so much we never wanted to leave it, and we were really lucky to find it.
26:42And I really feel like that's true of a lot of homesteaders and farmers and ranchers. They find their place and that's it. They're good. They don't really go anywhere. They're like, I'm so happy here. I'm never leaving. Exactly. It's always nice to be able, even if you do go away, it's always nice to be able to come back home because there's nothing, no place like home, honestly. There's nothing better. No, exactly. Every time I leave the house to go somewhere, which isn't very often.
27:11We come home one of two ways and we can see our house from a mile and a half down the road, both directions when we're coming back home. And I see our little house behind our trees and I'm like, I still can't believe we live there. Still cannot believe that's our place and we've been here for over four years now. That's cool. Yep, makes my heart too big for my chest and it's ridiculous. I shouldn't still be this enamored. We've been here too long, but it's fantastic. So anyway,
27:41Yeah. So lavender plants, what's the plan? I mean, are you going to keep doing this forever? Or do you have plans to grow or change?
27:53I don't think we have any major plans to change. Hopefully, we'll be able to get some more lavender to replace what we have lost and just keep growing what we have and work on promoting ourselves more so our products sell more. We'd like to start a blog to go along with it and maybe that will help generate some income as well. I think that's probably our biggest plan to grow at this point is just to provide information to people and
28:23work on that. Cool. People will tell you that blogging is dead, but it is not dead. Blogging is still a really good way to communicate with people and generate interest in what you're doing. No, it's very encouraging. Going back to what I was sharing back in the beginning, as far as throwing a lot of energy in different areas, one area that I've thrown a lot of energy has been in social media.
28:51Yeah, I think it's been helpful to be able to kind of get our name and our face out there, but we know that there's still opportunity to be able to branch out even more, to be able to see and connect with even more. One of the challenges you have with specifically Facebook is, I know it's like this for many of the social media platforms, but you don't engage for a couple of weeks and then all of a sudden your traffic is just done. Whereas with a blog, it seems quite the opposite.
29:20We've almost got a never-ending supply of engagement opportunities. So one thing that we're looking at for the next go-around. Well if it makes you feel any better or any more secure in your take on blogging, I started a blog years ago, over 10 years ago, about writing and books and stuff. Have not put a new post on that thing in over six years and people still come and read it. So yeah.
29:49It's a long game and it works. So I have one more question for you about the lavender and then I will cut you loose because I know you're probably busy. The lavender flowers, do you dry the flowers and sell them for like putting on top of homemade soap or stuff like that? Yeah, we do a few different things with them depending on if they're culinary or not. So our culinary, we do dry and sell in bundles and then people can use them either.
30:18We have somebody buy some stems to put on top of cupcakes, or we will take them off that you can use as lavender buds. And that's what we use for our lavender syrup for lemonade. Or the person puts them in their cookies, she sprinkles them on top of her cookies. So we use the culinary in that way. And then for our other ones, we also, we sell bundles. So we have those drying in our shop right now. Well, they're dry, but they're hanging up in our shop that people can buy for decorations.
30:46or we will use those as well in different things that we make. And you can also, for the hybrid variety, the second one that Lydia was talking about, you can take those buds, and that's what you would stick into a sachet. They have such a strong oil production. And they're continuing to distill that scent. So lots of opportunity with those. Yeah, I bet your shop smells just amazing.
31:15You know, people come in all the time and they say, oh, it smells so good in here. We've been around it so much that we walk in there, we don't even smell it anymore. And we're like, oh, it smells in here. Yeah, your nose blind to it. Yes. Now it is wonderful when it's blooming. And I usually get the job of mowing between the lavender rows, because Scott mows with the tractor and I mow with the lawn mower. And when it's blooming and you mow, I'm like, oh, I could mow all the time in this smell. Yeah. And for me, I'm.
31:44We make candles with a lavender oil. I think it's lavender leaf oil, I think. And I can't handle it. My husband's like, we're gonna make lavender soap or we're gonna make lavender candles. And I'm like, okay, let me take Tylenol now. Because we're doing it in our house, typically in the wintertime, so not a lot of ventilation. And it gives me terrible headaches. Well, which is-
32:11Crazy, because when I have a headache, all I want to do is smell lavender.
32:17Okay, maybe it's just the intensity. I don't know what it is. Just out of curiosity, is that an essential oil or is that a fragrance oil? It's an essential oil. Okay. Yep. Yeah, I don't want any lavender fragrance oil. I would probably die. That would probably kill me. Yeah, it's one thing that we have really tried pushing away from in our business as well as we don't have any artificial scents, no fragrance oils. I mean, they're
32:46There is a business for everything. There's a business for every person. It's just not the business for us. And we try to stay as natural and clean as possible. Yeah, as you get a whiff of those fragrance oils, it can be overpowering. Yeah, absolutely. There's a lilac one that we've done. That's a fragrance oil. We've done it for candles. And it makes fabulous candles. But oh my god, my house smells awful when we're making them because it's just so overpowering.
33:17I told my husband, I said, I really, I love the candles, but I really don't love making them. Can we maybe not make candles anymore? And he was like, which ones don't bother you? I said, the coffee one, the lemon one, the peppermint one. He was like, okay, we'll make those instead. We won't make the ones that give you headache anymore. I'm like, thank you. So you can make it work. It's just working around things. So
33:45On that note, you make anything work as long as you know what you can handle, I think. Yeah. All right, guys. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today and good luck with all the lavender growing and I'm very excited for you. I think it's a great plan. Thank you very much. Thank you. You have a good day. You too.
 

Dreamweavers Homestead

Today I'm talking with Victoria at Dreamweavers Homestead.
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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 Victoria at Dreamweavers Homestead. Good morning, Victoria. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm great. Where are you located again?
00:29Missouri Ozarks, but you are the first to know that we are now actually in the Arkansas Ozarks. Oh, okay. All right, cool. Yeah, a little inside scoop there. All righty. Well, you're not in the line of the hurricane that's hitting Florida today, so that's good. Yeah, we just get the residual rains, that's all. And so we've got a lot of people down there in Florida, so we're thinking of them.
00:59Yeah, me too. My daughter is in St. Petersburg and she called yesterday and she was like, we should be okay. I'm like, okay, good. Please stay okay. I know. I'm always anxious when they start to get those this Louisiana and Texas. We get those heavy rains. Yeah. Yup. I'm not happy about the hurricane situation, but it will blow through. It will be okay. I think she'll survive it. It'll be okay. That's what I'm telling myself today. Yes, it will. So.
01:27So anyway, tell me about yourself and what you guys do at Dreamweavers Homestead. Oh gosh. A shorter list is what we don't do, probably. Most people, if they know me, they're knowing me from rabbits. They're knowing me from permaculture and learning in those types of ways. We do strive to have a permaculture homestead. Obviously, we've recently moved.
01:54So we're starting from the ground up, which is actually a beautiful thing because people are going to get to see it from the very ground of everything from the gardens to the animals to the theme to the food forest, they will be seeing it. So all of these things that we've been teaching about and talking about, I'll be implementing them in real time. So that's going to be really nice for people to see. But we do heavily.
02:23focus on poultry, rabbits, we have dairy goats, we did pigs, not a favorite, but they'll probably be back with a different breed. When we do permaculture, it's not just an element, I'm actually certified in design, we're very passionate about that. My husband is currently going through the course himself to be certified for that, so we really are trying to focus on closing the loops on our property to really be sustainable. So when we go into this,
02:52project there's a lot of things that everybody will have to pay their rent as people like to say for their animals and their things in their system. So there's a lot of things that we do but they fall under those umbrellas. Okay, how excited are you to start from scratch? Beyond. Beyond. They actually just put in our driveway and I...
03:19already I'm just seeing okay this goes here this goes here we've been working on our design so I've been getting that all mapped out and everything so we can get that ready. I'm pumped very pumped and it is a decent size it's 25 acres. Cool awesome. Yeah so it is a decent size and one of the huge goals which a lot of people don't know I haven't even released this on my social media or anything yet but a goal that we've had for years has been
03:48to have the largest food forest, the continuous food forest in the US that is quote unquote recorded. I'm not going to report it, but it's personal goal. The largest recorded public or private is 7.2 acres. So my goal is 7.3 of continuous. And I'm very excited with that. Multiple caveats with that. Not only will we be teaching about it and actually implementing it in.
04:16but we will be able to transform our property all the way around and just really be a good steward of that land. But also in our area, some areas are a little bit more low income and things. Having that much food for us, especially all those perennials and things, we should be able to feed the community, also provide cuttings and plant starts and all these things so other people can do it as well.
04:46So we really hope to contribute to feeding the Ozarks. Wow. That is fantastic. That's all very, very exciting and very helping the world news. And Victoria, I got to tell you, I get told stuff first on this podcast a lot. I had a lady announce her ninth pregnancy on the episode that we recorded that no one else really knew about yet.
05:16another lady told me that she hadn't told anybody else yet that she was getting out of one aspect of her homesteading because she just doesn't have the energy and the push to keep doing this one particular segment. And so I'm at the point now when people are like, so I haven't said this anywhere else yet, we're going to share it with you. Like, okay, lay it on me. You're like, I'm ready, hit me. Yeah. Yeah. We...
05:46We have leaked a little bit of some sneak peek pictures on like Instagram, Snapchat, our TikTok, but our Facebook is kind of our main thing and then here locally and we haven't quite let people know what's going on. We wanted to have that element of, okay, look what we're doing and then people don't have to deal with the transition.
06:14the chaos that comes with transition, but we're so, so, so, so excited about it. Our initial property, we worked really hard on it actually for years, did a lot of work, especially with the soil and doing all that. We utilized the rabbits and the goats, which are both a cold manure, and then the duck manure, which is not hot like chickens, which a lot of people don't.
06:42realized that because of the high water content of their poop, essentially. That is why. So we use that, their water and everything. And so we like accelerated that property, things that should have taken three, four years, you know, it was only like one or two years, and that was really working out well. Yeah, this new property does have a pond that we get to revitalize. So very excited about that. Because then we can add
07:09fish, which is something that we wanted to do and fiddle with aquaponics, which is something else that we wanted to do on a larger scale. But we worked really hard on that. We had to go into a transitional property, but unfortunately there was some scammy stuff that happened there. We lost that. And that's why we have moved on to this. But realistically, it was just paving the way because this property ticks all the boxes. So we're very excited about that.
07:39Nope. That's another thing. Yes, it. We are doing another shabin, which for those of you don't know, that is shed house or shed cabin. So they deliver the shell and then we need to finish the inside ours will be unique in the fact of the initial building that is being placed, we will be finishing that out and living in it correct. But actually,
08:05our house will be a series of three houses that will be connected together through a completely see-through sunroom. And so this initial building will actually be transferred over into just the kitchen and preservation pantry when the other buildings are there and finished. Okay. So... So a lot going into this, you know, years of this is what we always wanted to do and now we finally have the opportunity and the space to do it.
08:34And so, yeah, people will want to follow along with that. I want to, I want to see how this goes. This sounds very exciting and very nerve wracking. Oh yes, very, because I forgot to say that because of the situation with this house that we kind of got surprised with, we only had 90 days notice and now we are under, I think we're at 47 days. And it is, you know, I just, we're just at the driveway stage.
09:04Wow. Okay. So how many people in your family, like how many people will be living in the new home? There is three of us full time. My husband and I have had infertility issues. So we just had our daughter. She's eight months old, but we tried for her for like 13 years. Wow. Yeah, that was crazy. My son.
09:29is 15. He's over 15 years old. If I say he's 15, he says I'm older than 15. He's 15. He actually doesn't live with us full time. That's by his choice. He is a teenager. But also, he just has different interests. And so he chooses to stay with his dad, most of the time, because his dad lives in the city. And his dad is also a gamer. And my son is a gamer. And it's
09:58that kind of thing. So with him being so old, he's kind of calling his own shots there. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So part-time, yes, but full-time, there's just the three of us. If we were blessed with more children, who knows? Okay. So a smaller home situation to start with is not going to be terribly hard on you. It's going to be hard on you, but it's not going to be a hardship on you. No. And our previous, we've always lived tiny. So our first property...
10:27Same thing, tiny. Here, we do have a house that's transitional property, but we do not use three fourths of it. Literally, they're just empty rooms because we don't have anything to put it up, and we just are so used to always being together in one or two rooms that, other than the kitchen, the living room, and a bedroom, we just don't use it, barely. We do have family locally, and so they're at their own house, but they are local, so we do spend a good bit of time.
10:57I will say my friends, I have a lot of friends who live tiny, but some of them have very big families, you know, six, seven, eight people, and they're living in the same size tiny as us. So it's awesome to see how they navigate that with all the kids and all that great use of space.
11:27And it was tight. And when we moved to our new place four years ago, we went from 850 square feet to over 1400 square feet, which is my husband, my son and I. And it's so weird being able to actually walk through a room and not touch an opposite wall. You know? Yes. Yeah. This one, this building is the same size as what we moved.
11:52from thankfully so no shock there but it's a 12 by 32 so 300 and what is that 86 square feet or so? Yep, that's small. I commend you. My husband for years was like once the kids are grown we should look at a tiny house and I was like absolutely not. And he was like why and I said honey I love you.
12:17but we need our own spaces. We need to be able to step away from each other and a tiny space is not gonna allow for that. And he was like, but it'd be so much fun. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, it would not be fun, no. In our house, two yeses are a yes, one no is a no. Yeah, we have. Yeah, I can't. Yeah, for us, it's like.
12:43We have that bedroom space and the living room space in my brain that is two separate spaces. So, if he's in the living room watching a movie or something and I go to bed, which is how it was before, I was like, oh, I'm in the bedroom. I totally separated that out, but I can definitely see because my mom's the same way. My mom's like, absolutely not. I could never.
13:10Yeah, and the other thing is that I've said this a couple times on the podcast my husband snores like crazy even when he's just napping he snores and I have to listen to it all night when I'm trying to sleep I don't want to listen to it during the daytime too. So that's the other reason no on a tiny house. No Yeah, well, I love the concepts. Right Good thing you're interviewing me and not my husband
13:36because then he would have had to sit here with you on the snoring part because I snore really bad, really bad. My daughter sleeps through it, you know, she's adjusted. But he's a snorer, but it's circumstantial. It depends. I am just, if my eyes are closed, I'm snoring. And I'm like, well, I can't hear myself. And he's like, yeah, good thing. He's like, you take the roof off the house.
14:06Yeah, he's probably with you there. We just spend a lot of time outside and stuff.
14:16Yes, and we're lucky here because we have a huge pole barn, we have a greenhouse, we have a farm stand. So my husband is outside a lot and that's awesome because he's doing what he absolutely loves and I'm inside doing things I absolutely love. And then we actually get to talk to each other about different things. So we're not talking about the same thing daily, you know? Oh yeah. But either way, I don't want to get into a marriage counseling discussion here because it's not worth it. So...
14:46So what does this first year look like for you at the new place? Tell me about that. Well, because it's transitional and not a startup, it's going to look different. Normally, you know, you'd want to do it in a different order than we're going to do it. But the barn, so we do have that milking space and kidding space, that's going to be important because we already have Dairy Goats and they're already, you know,
15:17going to be kidding and those things are already happening. So normally we would have set all these things up before we got livestock but we already have livestock. So for us getting all that the livestock shelters put up for what we already have and then focusing on our perennials that's going to be a huge thing. Our annual garden we know where the spot is going to be we're going to just do it at a certain size this year.
15:45because we're going to be heavily focused on the perennials. Now, when I say that, most people are thinking, oh, she's just going to put in a handful of each type of plant and she's going to go about her day. No, I just mean that we're probably going to only have five or six 50-foot rows, or we're going to have just that smaller space instead of instantly putting in an acre annual garden. That's not how it's going to be.
16:13especially for our design, but those are the main things. We have had, we know the area, that helps, so we don't have to get used to the area. I know the topography, we've walked it several times. We've been able to see it into a couple of seasons because we actually had had this land where we had an inkling, something might be funky. And then it's not our first rodeo, which I had before. So we're just gonna go into it.
16:42focused on those things. And next year, we will resume with our full rabbitry and our poultry breeding stock coming back in. I've already gotten myself on a waiting list for all of my stock to come back in from people who I'd used before or who are really good, excuse me, who have excellent stock because...
17:10We were an MPIP poultry breeder, which I mean, technically we are, but I sold my stock. We are on Murray McMurray Hatchery's website in their marketplace as someone who has poultry and things like that. Those are a heavy focus for us to get on. Things that we'd like to do are getting some of the pasture areas seeded out.
17:40and create those silvopastures instead of just dense forests, because a lot of the forests that we have essentially monocropped itself through lack of management. There was no management, so it's just, you know, you've got like 50,000 oaks, you know, and everything else is struggling and the canopy is so dense that now you have issues on the floor where it's not getting any sun, it's not drying out, you know, things like that. So we're going to really be focusing on that management.
18:10after all these things are initially set up and all that, then we'll get into other things such as expanding the goats, cattle, things like that down the road. Thank you for telling me all that because most people don't know that there kind of needs to be at least a loose knit plan when you do something like this because you can't
18:36I mean, I suppose you can just go buy 25 acres and be like, I don't know what we're going to do with it, but we're going to buy it. But then I feel like you spend the first couple of years doing a lot of trial and error to see what works. Yes. And they will tell you, heck, even I do when people ask me, and especially they tell you in permaculture to watch your land, know your seasons, know your patterns. And if you were moving to somewhere new, I would also agree with that. For us.
19:06since we're only living 20 minutes from where we were in the same environment in an area that we frequent, it's a little bit different, you know? But some people move here to the Ozarks and they do not prepare themselves to handle the amount of rains that we get and things wash out for them or something like that. And then on the flip side, they're not prepared for the severe droughts that we get then after the rains.
19:35So for us, that was a big thing. In this property, we did think about it. We wanted to have our boxes checked because we already knew what we wanted. There's a spring head on the property. We hope to be able to tap that open. Instead of it being seasonal creek, then we could get some flow all the time. The pond was a bonus because we need to put, otherwise we'd have to put another one in. The way that it kind of all lays at a slope.
20:04For us, we weren't looking for something completely flat, because then I have to do even more earthwork than I was going to have to do. But I will say, having done so many of the designs, I also work with a permaculture firm out of Omaha, I'm part of their team. So they've done their designs and I've been in with them and all these things. I think we had a leg up there.
20:31But my advice to people when they get these huge pieces of property is to just focus on zones 0 through 2, which is the house, the immediate area of the house, and then right outside of that. Just focus on those couple acres so that you can get your bearings and stuff before you just start wiping out trees or doing this or putting a pond here and all this. People get very excited and they move very quickly. And then they're like, oh crap.
21:00and then they have to move things around because it wasn't good. Our first place, we ended up having to move some stuff around like, oh, this doesn't work in this spot, I gotta move it. That's because on our initial place, we bought from out of state. So even though we knew what we were doing, we didn't know how this piece of property would be. And then we had to deal with the repercussions of that. So that's what I would suggest. A lot of people are...
21:29living in their campers and stuff now while they watch their property. And we're thankful that we don't have to just have that watch period. But yeah, I'm glad you pointed that out because some people will just be like, I think I'm just going to go ahead and run. No walking. I'm just going to run. Yeah. And the other thing is, is that even if you do sort of know the property that you're getting and you have been able to do the research and get some early answers.
21:58Sometimes things will surprise you because we put in like, I don't know, 100 asparagus crowns in the first year that we were here. And this past spring, they came up like crazy. Like I was so excited. It takes two to three years to get your first yield from asparagus because that's how long it takes from putting the crowns in the ground to having edible yummy asparagus. And it did really well, but there wasn't enough to sell any really yet.
22:29I keep debating whether we should get more asparagus crowns and put them in because they do really well. We could be selling tons of asparagus in three years from now. And then I'm like, but what happens if that doesn't actually pan out? You know, it's just stuff. And like we bought, no, we were given strawberry roots the first summer over here and the strawberries do okay.
22:56We're just not really good at paying attention to them because we forget that we put them in because we're crazy. And so we had some really yummy strawberries this spring as well. And I keep debating saying to my husband, why don't we just stop with all the freaking tomatoes and cucumbers and make half the garden of asparagus and strawberries because they grow really well and then we could focus on that. But he really loves having a diverse garden, veggie garden as it were. So.
23:25I'm trying to figure out how to broach this to him so that it seems like a good idea. I haven't quite figured out how to do it yet. Well positive news is that strawberries are such an excellent ground cover that you can just sell them on the ground cover. He can still have all of his plant diversity and the strawberries will crawl around the whole ground. So you'll still get a bigger crop and actually a better yield. Plus you'll have to water less because it's in its shades out and keeps your soil.
23:54You know, from burning up there in the summer, there's so many things and then you can sell off your runners and all those. As far as the asparagus go, oh man, they're so beautiful. I love asparagus. I put in 40 crowns here at the temporary place until I realized what was going on. So I was going to put in my next 40 but when I obviously waited. So we're going to be.
24:20putting in a lot of crowns because, but I will probably cheat and do two year crowns this time because I've had to move and I don't wanna start all the way back over. Yeah, but yeah, they're an excellent border plant and all those things too. So they'll help with a lot of the shading and he can plant up his greens and lettuces underneath them and extend his season.
24:46Okay, thank you. You just helped me more than you could possibly know. Because I've been trying to figure out how to float this without having him be like, no, I don't want to do that. Because I really want him to think about it. For he says no. So, and I also, if I had my way, our whole property would be peony plants, asparagus, and strawberries. Because I know those all do really, really well. But that's not what he's going to want to do. So I'm hoping to get him to cut the
25:15the annual stuff down to about half of what he's got going now. And then have these perennials, big perennials come back every year and less craziness. Yeah, we're going to just heavily focus on, we will have the annuals like I said, but I will intentionally let some of my annuals self seed. So that well, and I guess for anybody listening, that means I'm just going to leave them. Let them go.
25:43so that they can come back up the next year on their own time. I do that with tomatoes and stuff in my last place because then they would just pop up and then I can just pluck them and put them where I need them instead of focusing on doing so many starts because we were off grade at the last place. But I am like your husband in the fact that we'll grow anything because I'm all about season extension or micro climate or do this, do that, whatever.
26:14He likes some of the things that are super non-traditional like pineapple, pomegranate, mango, things like that. So we're looking at alternative varieties, how cold can they handle, what are the hardier varieties and then we'll be putting some of those in. I did just post on Facebook recently about compost heating for structures as well as hot water using your compost pile.
26:43as its own hotbed so that it can heat your pipes. Well, that's the method that we're going to start with for our initial greenhouse. But we will have another greenhouse where we will likely heat it with wood because he is wanting some of these things to keep the trees pruned down, but it'll essentially be like a tropical greenhouse. It's just something that he really, really wants.
27:11And so albeit they're perennial, they will have to be a bit baby. But fortunately, as far south as we will be, they don't need like a ton of babying. Um, where we'll be is seven B, but it's very close to eight A, um, with some season extension, like some extra layers, we'll be able to create, um, that AA eight B environment.
27:39without heat and then if we add heat that'll push us down into those zones that he's needing. I've got some friends that are doing bananas and pomegranates and things here. Where they are here in Missouri, they're actually like the 6B7A line and they're able to grow those things outside. So there's so many options. So I'm with you. I think you should push the perennial envelope. See how far you can push it.
28:07Yes, I'm gonna I'm gonna try he's doing I think the last farmers market of the season for him is this Saturday So I'm hoping next weekend not this coming to take Sunday afternoon be like, okay so can we sit down and talk about our plan for the Produce and the gardens and stuff for for 2025 now that you have some time to think about it because he's been so busy and
28:34and stressed and I'm like, I don't want to introduce a new concept or a new idea until things are a little less nuts around here. So I was going to say, so he's a market gardener then? Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. I hear him then. You should suggest to him also those perennial lettuces and perennial kales. Then he can, you know, kind of have those to fall back on if he puts enough in.
29:03and kind of buy him some time on some of his succession planting if he's somebody who sells greens. Yes, exactly. So this is the reason I love the podcast so much, Victoria, because I get to talk to people like you who know about this stuff. And that way I can go to him and be like, you need to listen to episode 122, 154 and 96 because those are important information for you to know about. And he will go listen and he takes notes. So
29:34That's good. I always love to talk to market gardeners, pick the brain of a market gardener. I used to think I'm going to do that, but my husband and I had this conversation yesterday, which is interesting you bring this up. We just said we were going to do market and then we did find some places where we could do market privately so that we wouldn't have to be part of the farmers market.
30:04and all that and just do our own booths. But we talked and we decided, no, we're gonna do our annuals to really get ourselves put up and feed all of the livestock, anything extra we hope to give to people who are in need of it, or if we have like some huge bulk.
30:28try to discount that down for people who maybe live in town and they want to do some canning or something. But our main focus is not that. That's just if we have extra. We really wanted to just focus on trying to offer those type of things through the perennials. We really just wanted to focus more in on that fair share and people care part of the permaculture ethics because I get
30:58I'm one of those people with people listening, I'm sure they'll resonate. I'm one of those people that will just do and do and do and do and do. And I'm like, okay, well, we have this, we'll try to make money off this, we'll try to make money off this, and we can do this, we can do this, we can do this. And I think that's one thing that we're going to change going into this property is I like the teaching aspect. Because I like to do the public speaking.
31:25or the podcast if somebody asks, I'll do that. I've been asked to teach about rabbits and things to homeschool groups. I'm very big into that. And I like to do all of it on social media as well. Answer questions, share knowledge. That's my passion there. Not like getting rich or making that type of money on these things. So I know a lot of people ask me, they said, well, aren't you gonna...
31:50sell all this stuff from your food forest. We would sell some, I mean, obviously, but we really want to have that at that lower cost. Of course, if you have a food forest that's even an acre, half acre, the cuttings and the plants and everything that you would have on that would be just exponential. So we really want to try to hone in on those things. So now I'm going to be watching my market gardening friends.
32:19from afar, they work so hard, they do so much. But I just decided that that is just something that is, that's hard for me to do because I'm so type A. And it just I get so overwhelmed about it. I'm like, oh my gosh, I have five less cucumbers than last week. And I start to panic. So we had this conversation yesterday about how to scale back and I had to cut the market out of my plan. Yep. We
32:48It's been a rough year here for the farmers market. I don't know if you know anything about what the weather did in Minnesota this spring. And I have talked ad nauseum on the episodes all summer about what a terrible wet spring it was here. And so basically we didn't have any tomatoes until the very first of August to sell at the farmers market. And luckily we had candles and lip balms and wax melts and soaps.
33:15So that kind of tied us over until we had any produce to sell. So what we usually do, the first three summers we were here, we sold from our property, donated a bunch to the food shelf, and shared with friends. This second summer, sold from the property, shared with friends, canned. We canned a bunch for ourselves finally. Third summer, which was last summer,
33:45the farm stand, the farmer's market for the first year, I think, and canned and gave a whole bunch to the food shelf. So we have like four places we're dispersing the produce and it's great. The thing is, we feel like we kind of failed our community this year because the garden didn't do well. So we're going to make it better next year. It's going to be better next year.
34:11Well, seeing that attitude you have, like, you're like, no, we're going to do it better, you know, this and that. And for me, I just am like, oh my gosh, I messed up. That's like how my brain works. So I would just be so frantic. So that's why my husband was like, no, I'm going to put a full stop on you. Reel it in because he's like, if you want to focus on the teaching, you want to be building up the whole property, you know, he's like, let's do that.
34:37And he was like, and then whatever's extra because in my brain that I'm like, okay, it's extra. You know, so that was that. So maybe we'll circle back in the future and go back to that. But you know, I had some people who were actually kind of mean. You know, if I ran out of something or I didn't have anything and not only it's even just like the plants like we had pruned our trees, I had cuttings and things like that. People just get really sassy when you ran out of stuff. And so I think that's where I had all that extra.
35:07The pressure, it was like that with my birds too. As soon as I ran out of birds, I'm like, oh my gosh. So, cause I always like everybody to be happy. I want everybody to be happy. Everybody get what they have, what they need and all those things. So I'm hoping to dive more into that, you know, on the ground teaching stuff.
35:30I think you are going to be a massive success once you get through this year of transition. I think you're going to do great. We actually had people concerned in June. When my husband went to the farmers market, they were like, are you guys okay? My husband said, why? He said, because you don't have your signs out at the end of the driveway. You don't have your banner up on your farm stand shed. Is everything okay?
35:57My husband was like, everything's fine except that you have noticed all it's done is rain for a month and a half, right? And they were like, well, yes. And he said, the garden is soup. If I step into the garden, I'm up to my ankles in mud. That's how bad the flooding is in our garden. And they were like, oh, okay, so nobody's sick or broken or anything. It's just that it's terrible growing conditions. And he has, my husband was like, yeah, it's not great.
36:27We were really fortunate that part of the garden dried out enough. We have been pulling tomatoes in for a month and we've been able to sell some. We actually have, I think, 12 gallon size ziplocks of frozen tomatoes in our freezer that we will be canning for ourselves because we're almost out of tomato sauce from last two summers. This can't stand. This cannot stand. So. Yeah. My.
36:53Probably the plot twist behind all of this is that my husband doesn't want to share cucumbers and tomatoes. That's probably really what's happening this year. Any of the tomatoes that we got, he was eating them as fast as they were coming on. Since we just this year, as we were on transition, we just did the containers. And not only were we on transition for the property, but also the baby's eight months old.
37:19So obviously if you backtrack to planting season, you'll see how young she was. And like I said in the beginning of this, we waited 13 years trying for her and my son's 15. So having, he was 14 when she was born. So it's like, I had not done that in a long time. And let me tell you, it's not like riding a bike after you're a little bit older. I was tired. I was exhausted. So
37:48But next season should be pretty good. I'm pretty excited about that. Pull all my stuff out. I even made a post yesterday on Instagram and I was like, who's ready for spring? Because we're already winding the season down and I'm like, nope, I'm ready for the next one. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I love fall. We can't take fall away from me. I will die.
38:16That's how my husband feels. But after fall comes winter and I am not a fan. Yeah. Well, I understand that. And I applaud you for your your wanting it to be spring. But I really, really need December, January and February to do some planning and some resting and some thinking for next year and for the podcast stuff and a bunch of other things. So.
38:42I need that three months. My husband needs that three months where he's not running around like a chicken with his head cut off with all the stuff outside. So I probably needed it too. I definitely probably need that as well. We hopefully next year, honestly, I hope next year doesn't go quite as fast as this year. I just feel like this year was, I mean, we're talking it's the end of September. I mean, yeah.
39:12Yeah, the end of September. Yeah, man, I almost said the beginning, but no, I mean, this is closing in. And then once we get to those birth months, it's like, they're just one continuous, it seems like, oh, but it's been two weeks and it's New Year's. Uh-huh. So that's already gone a little bit fast. So I'm hoping next year is a little bit slower. I hope so too, because I hope you have time to slow down and enjoy your toddler, because she'll be a toddler by then.
39:42Yes. Yes. Well, we are fortunate too that we work from home and not work from home like being work from home. We work from home because we're self-employed. So that does help because we don't have to, you know, we're not sitting on phones all day. You know, we do have a lot of independent work and stuff like that. So we've been able to be here for these milestones, these things, which is a lot different from when my son was growing up. Obviously I had
40:12a job outside of the home and I was young and we didn't have property back then. So very different, very, very different. All right, Victoria, I am so happy that you took the time to talk with me today and we're at 40 minutes and I told you like 30 minutes, so I'm going to wrap it up. Thank you again. You are the perfect person to talk to if you're going to start.
40:39again on something like this or if you're just starting new because you know all the stuff. I try and I love research so if I don't know we'll learn together. Absolutely. All right you have a fantastic day and kiss that baby for me. I will you have a wonderful day. All right bye.
 

Tammy Trayer - Faith Led Healing

Today I'm talking with Tammy Trayer at Faith Led Healing. 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 really excited to be talking with Tammy Trayer at Faith Led Healing. Good morning, Tammy, how are you? I am wonderful. Thank you, Mary, for having me on here this morning.
00:26Oh, I'm so thrilled to have you. I've been wanting to do this for a while. And when you said yes, I was like, yay. So tell me about yourself, please. Hey, well, I, I put God first in my life. And as a result of that, I feel like I am living the world's best adventure. My family and I.
00:54embarked on an off-grid lifestyle going on. 15 years, May this coming year will be 15 years that we've been living off-grid. And we embarked on that when off-grid living wasn't very glamorous. Matter of fact, we had family members and friends betting against us, but we embarked on that. Landed on raw wilderness land, lived in a wall tent for eight and a half months as we built our home.
01:23And that was the beginning of a really amazing journey. A deep dive for me personally, I believe my family too, but a lot of things have transpired over the years and over those 15 years. And honestly, I believe that my message has morphed out of this lifestyle. And we are right now embarking on going
01:53a whole lot deeper. We live in North Idaho and now we are expanding to be a community. So, I'm going to take this off-grid journey just so much deeper and family just thrives on simple living detachment.
02:14and just sharing the message of trying to encourage others to learn how to live a life worth living. Okay, you're fading out just a little bit, Tammy. Can you get closer to the mic? Actually, yeah, let me see if I can do that. And worst case scenario, I can relocate. I am outside and it's a little windy this morning. So is that better? Yeah, it's better and I can still hear the wind. So if you want to move inside, that would be great.
02:41I will do that and it'll take me two seconds and we can just continue this conversation. Sorry about that. That's okay. Okay. I'm inside. Sorry about that. That's better. Thank you. At least it's not the winds that Georgia's getting right now. Actually it is. Oh, is it? It is. I am visiting right now. Oh. So we are actually getting there. Well no wonder it's so windy. I thought you were in Idaho.
03:10Not at the moment, but I will be in a day. Okay. So you were saying that you're in Idaho, you're living in Idaho now and you're moving. Is that correct? We are Lord willing, we are embarking on a life dream. 15 years ago, we would have hit the interior of Alaska, but we weren't sure if our son at the time who was 13 would have been ready for such a deep dive. We were.
03:38but we weren't sure if he was ready for that seclusion. So we hit Idaho first and have been there 15 years. It's just, it nurtures my soul. So I'm, like I said, I'm a very outdoor girl and living as we do, where we do, and then having the opportunity, Lord willing, to step into this deeper space of just being enthralled by the wilderness and God's country. I can't even begin to.
04:08express what that's going to feel like. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, my biggest question, I guess, is why did you get into the off-grid living in the first place? Well, my husband and I both had an extreme and have an extreme passion for the outdoors. We've met our match. We really feel our best selves when we are in the wilderness. And...
04:38I was living on 150 acre farm in Pennsylvania at the time when I met him and we just felt this pull to detach in ways that we weren't reliant on the world, its systems and just to be able to more or less live a life by our own terms. We were seeing that, you know, to raise.
05:08our son, you know, it would be so different than how we were raised. And we wanted to be able to give him that same setting that we had and the opportunity to explore and to be a kid and not be just experiencing the things that kids today do. And that was 15 years ago, you know. So
05:36things are so different today, but that was the pool, just to be able to embrace a life that by our terms. And we successfully did that. It was, it's been amazing. Awesome. I have to tell you, I'm so glad that you're still in the world because I know you went through some health issues a few years back and it was rough for you for a little bit. Yes, very. I actually had life-saving surgery in 2016.
06:05I am very open about this. I had lifesaving surgery from breast implant illness and I share very openly because, you know, I had previous surgeries that led to that, but the world, you know, dictates perfection and beauty over health. So I'm very open about it because I'm trying to share that message and also help those that are struggling behind me.
06:33And that was a passion put on me right from the very beginning, but I never in a million years imagined that in my 50s, I would be schooling and my mess would become such an intensive message. Because I am now an integrative health practitioner and a certified breath worker as a result of my, my journey. And it's really amazing. It's, it's like the best thing I've ever experienced in my life. So.
07:01Fantastic. I love it when things that go wrong turn into things that become right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Perspective is everything. You know, that's our choice to make a bad situation good. And that is how that's the lenses I live out of. So it makes life really nice because you learn to roll with the punches with if something goes wrong on the homestead, you just roll with it. If health goes south, you roll with it because there's a lesson to be learned.
07:32I feel there is a lesson to be learned in everything we experience in life. I've gone through some really ugly stuff in my life and I will be the first person to say that I've celebrated because it's made me who I am and I'm thankful for that. Even though it was brutal during it, my focus is always on the other side, not what I'm enduring. Yeah. I don't want to call her out. Someone that I love very much.
07:59had breast implants done like a year and a half ago. And one of them did not heal correctly. So they had to go in and redo it. And this is a very important person in my life. I don't, like I said, I won't call her out because I don't know that everyone knows about it. And I was so worried for her and everything's okay, but I'm gonna worry until I die about this one because I don't know what's gonna happen next with that.
08:29And the other thing I wanted to say is as we get older, we tend to not panic as easily about things. My son sliced the tip of his index finger open yesterday afternoon. And instead of freaking out, I was like, okay, let's put pressure on it before we go to the urgent care because maybe it's going to clot on its own, blah, blah, blah. And we waited like 10 minutes. He kept pressure on it and he sliced it just enough so it would not knit or clot.
08:59So we made an impromptu visit to the urgent care yesterday afternoon so he could get two stitches in his finger. And normally I would have been freaking out because he cut his finger years ago on garden shears and I was not nearly as calm when he did that. So I think that perspective is a real lifesaver, a real sanity saver and the way you view things changes as you get older too. Oh yes.
09:29Yes, and your circumstances, you know, but I have to say, I have clients on both sides of the spectrum. And my husband said to me when I got into this field that, you know, you're going to have people that you can lead to water and you can't make them drink. And I never in a million years imagined that it would be somebody very close to me, that I'm watching like a bump on the log, just withering away, woes me in these circumstances where I have other people that are going through the same exact...
09:57things he is and they are thriving. Our minds matter and what we focus on, where we are mentally and emotionally. So like in my practice, I've helped people, not just physically and to get to the root cause of whatever's ailing them, but I try to get their mind right. If we're not mentally, emotionally and spiritually right, we can't be right physically. So...
10:25You know, my journey has taken me on this deep dive personally. I was flat on my back for a year and I was deathly ill for six years prior to that. And I, I just became, I just did a deep dive with God on my couch. Um, I instantly heard him say to me that I'm going to use you out of that place. The first week was brutal. I really didn't want to be there. I, I may.
10:54recovered type A and I, you know, I was push, push, push. I love the adrenaline of just doing things and being active. And my family and I would hike 21 miles in a day. And all of a sudden I am flat on my back. Within a day, I got neuropathy in my arms and my legs, helping my son deliver cords of firewood and I couldn't do anything. So, you know, when we are put into those places, we are forced to decide.
11:24are we going to thrive or are we going to just sit there and wither away? I'm grateful that I had the desire to thrive, but I'm also grateful for the relationship I had with God enough that I pulled in. There was so much self-growth and self-reflection and healing. I've gone through a lot of emotional trauma, well, physical, mental, and emotional trauma in my life.
11:51And through my nine years of healing, I've been able to really conquer that and step into this place, beautiful place of just loving who I am. And I don't say that in a prideful way, but the majority of our population looks in the mirror and they don't like what they see. They see wrinkles, they see, you know, sun marks, whatever, but they don't like what they see. I'm finally in a place where I don't see all that. I just, I just, I see me and I'm, and I'm desiring to be.
12:20me where a lot of people again in the world are focusing on what other people think. We had people that were naysaying about us going off grid and that it was the worst thing we could ever do and blah, blah, blah. We just zoned all that out and we embraced what we desired. And I'm so grateful that we did because it has been the most amazing ride. But we allow life. We allow the world and people to dictate.
12:49how we live our lives. And that is part of my message, is that we need to really step into who we are and where God is taking us and our purpose, and be able to really live a life that we desire to, not what the world dictates, not the nine to five, not what our friends and our family dictate because they're living out of a place of fear. So, I kind of try to bring that all together, but yes, as you said, with your son and...
13:17I'm cutting his finger. We do we change and that's the important thing is we should be changing every day and And heading in a good direction if we're not moving forward that we're stagnant or going backwards There's something wrong. We need to be able to move forward and that's what I'm trying to give people also in my community I have a free community where they can just gather and feel like they're a part of something and you know kind of lock arms with people that
13:44maybe are wearing the same pink shady glasses. I was told that in a derogatory way one time by my mother and I own that. I live through pink shady glasses and I celebrate it. Me too. I was not always a rebel or a, I don't know, ceiling breaker.
14:06Once I got into my 30s, I was like, you know, I don't want to live for other people. I want to live for me and my family and what we believe in and what we want to do. Yeah. And we lost friends because of it. And I'm okay with that because their walk is different than ours. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. We were in the same boat and, and, you know, I'm a true believer that everything happens for a reason, you know, things are removed, doors are open, doors are closed. You know,
14:36It can be sad, but at the same time, I look at it this way. I've grown to look at it this way, that there was purpose in it all. I gained some new knowledge and there's something better ahead for me. There's other good people coming our way. And I prayed for that and God has blessed us with such tremendous people to replace those that left. And it's just like learning to roll.
15:08Mm-hmm. Okay. So now we've talked for 15 minutes about all that Tammy has written some books about I think the off-grid living and you have a radio show and You are just all over the place. So a Homesteading is not necessarily off off-grid living They're not always the same thing because we consider ourselves homesteaders and we are not off-grid and probably won't be
15:38But tell me about the off-grid living experience. Like no electricity, no modern conveniences. So how was that for you when you first started doing it? Amazing. I didn't miss anything. I missed people, but I didn't miss material things. We lived in a eight foot by 14 foot canvas tent.
16:07for eight and a half months. There were three of us. So my husband and I and our 13 year old son, two dogs and a hamster. And we had a wood stove in there and we each had a very small rubber made tote that had our personal effects in it. So, you know, very simplistic. You reach in, you grab a pair of jeans, you grab a t-shirt, you grab some socks and out the door you go. And we had...
16:33lighting was headlamps or deep lanterns, the oil lanterns that were hanging in the tent that we lived in. We also had a mess tent. That was our lighting for eight and a half months. We had all of our personal belongings in a storage unit. I will be the first to tell you, it almost made me cry when we brought all that stuff to the house once we moved in because it was so overwhelming.
17:03I didn't need all that stuff. I didn't miss it for eight and a half months. So we're beginning to step back into that again, where we are gonna be tremendously downsizing and simplifying and just taking our most favorite things. But there is a great power in decluttering and detaching. And you don't have to be off grid or homesteading to feel the joy of that.
17:31You know, just start decluttering a room and you'll feel it. It's, it's really powerful. And then I didn't really ever use a whole lot of, um, uh, you know, powered appliances. Um, but right now, okay, let me, let me just share a little bit. Our first homestead was around 1800 square feet. Um, we built that homestead from the ground up. We were off grid. We had solar power.
17:58We had a very large system because my husband makes furniture and he's a jack of all trades and a master of many. He's very humble, but I'm very proud of him because we couldn't be doing what we're doing without him. He is truly a mastermind. He's my MacGyver. I say he can make a pistol out of a paperclip and he probably could. It might have a rubber band, but he'd still do it. But he's amazing. With his skills.
18:28And I grew up in a home that was built in 1749 and my dad was redoing it. So I spent a lot of time with my dad helping spackle and, and, and, um, do stonework and different things. So I have a level of, um, you know, abilities as well, but we're mine and his pickup and we're his and mine pickup. Cause he's totally technologically challenged. I'm a web designer and programmer by trade.
18:56So that is what enabled us to take the deep dive is that as long as I had an internet connection, I was able to keep going while we were embarking on this journey. And we had to sell that first homestead. We built that up with a chicken coop, a goat barn, a birthing area. We had a guest cabin, a smoker, a really big garden, bees.
19:26into a very beautiful place. But because of my healing journey, we needed to sell because we got on this slippery slope and because of medical expenses. So we rebuilt and we now live in a 12 foot by 16 foot cabin. So I can pivot and turn in the middle of my home and see everything, you know, my living room to my kitchen.
19:54And we do have some modern appliances. I have a washing machine right now. And we harvest all of our meats. So we have a grinder, meat grinder, and a vacuum sealer. But let me share though, on our first homestead, we butchered a moose and put that in our freezer and still had five buck to...
20:24process that year. So we hand cranked all that moose meat that needed to go to burger and five big buck venison and we canned the venison. We put 113 cans of meat on our shelf that year. So we did do everything very traditionally and we still do but we've added a couple things over time. So we've got the washing machine.
20:50But that's about it in my kitchen and in my home that I use electric for other than like my laptop and my iPad and stuff. I have a hand crank coffee grinder on my wall. I have the hand crank blender, if you will, on my hanging on the side of my refrigerator. All of the antiques, I love antiques. I don't like modern things. So all my antiques are hanging on the wall. I pull them off, wash them off, use them. So they're my decorations. They're my tools.
21:18But we do have solar power right now, but let me just share this also. Our first homestead was a 4800 volt system. I now have 400. I have 400 watts coming into my home. Let me just put perspective there. A clothing iron is 800 watts when you're just running it to iron your clothing. If you add the mister, it's 1200 watts just to run an iron.
21:47So that gives you perspective on the 400 watts I have coming into my home. It's basically to keep things charged and to give us lighting, which is very minimal to begin with. So we do live very simplistic. And I've had people say you're not off grid because you have Internet. Well, yeah, but I still need to make a living and I still need to. And I'm being led to share what we're doing. So I need to have that connection with the world. Though we shut it off so that...
22:17that connection is gone and we can just be for a while detoxing from our equipment is like super important. I love that and I don't think that everyone is cut out for that lifestyle but I still love it like I am not at place in my life where I want to be off grid but back in my twenties I think I really would have loved it. Okay. Yeah. It's definitely not for everybody.
22:46And in my book, How to Embrace an Off-Grid Lifestyle, I really share about that because everybody gets this big idea that it sounds glamorous. And in my opinion, it is. But for somebody who's really dependent on the grid and modern-day appliances and things, you can still go off-grid and use all your appliances. It's just going to cost you a lot because...
23:11you're either going to need a very huge solar system or you're going to need a generator running all the time because you're just overusing power. So you have a big fuel bill. I mean, I, we, we, uh, have clients, you know, we help and assist people to go off grid. And, you know, some of our clients choose to have bigger systems and
23:34be able to live that way without giving up things where there's others that, you know, are like us, like we're super frugal. You're not in the room, you shut the light off, you know, and just not going into the store and being drawn by all the marketing because, you know, it just takes up space. So you know, we don't purchase on the whim and things like that. But it definitely takes a special person to be able to live the life. And the thing I recommend to people is if you can.
24:02Go for a week camping somewhere and find an Airbnb that's off-grid or go tent camping or camper camping and just go very minimal and see if it bothers you. To be honest, the week you settle in, you feel the joy, you like it. Try it for like two, three weeks and then make the decision if it's for you because
24:26A lot of people can feel like they are going without. I never felt that because I'm drawn. I think I was born 200 years too late, so. Yeah, I loved camping up until the last time we went and I slept on a sleeping bag on the floor of the tent and woke up stiffer than I'd been in my entire life. And I was like, I'm done. I'm done. I can't sleep on the ground anymore.
24:55And the next time we went, we took a air mattress and I slept on that and I was still stiff and I was like, nope, I'm done with camping, but I used to love it. Yes, it's funny how when we age, because my husband and I, when we go, like we don't go typically on vacation and we'll get out for our anniversary and we'll go into the woods for three days and we will live off the land basically. We'll create our own shelter. We'll...
25:25Maybe take olive oil and some seasoned salt and then just forage. So we'll find berries, we'll find fireweed or cattail roots or frog legs or squirrel, whatever. We live off the land and we'll do that for like three, four days. And out there, you know, in that situation, there are no air mattresses. So they do feel nice, but you know, we will pile up pine boughs and lay on those. And it's...
25:55It takes the body a while to get used to that. I will agree with that. I enjoy hammock camping more than anything. Mm-hmm. Yep. There's lots of ways to do it. It just depends on what you're going to do. So my favorite thing about camping is that you learn how to make a fire. And you learn how to cook over that fire and how to make coffee over that fire. And you do learn all the different things around you that could be
26:25really important if you needed to do it instead of just doing it for fun. Where we used to camp, it was this beautiful, beautiful campground in Minnesota. And there's a pond and along the pond, there's some quote unquote wild asparagus growing. And I discovered that one spring and I was just like, oh my God, asparagus growing in the middle of the woods. This is amazing.
26:52and then looked up wild asparagus and it's not necessarily wild asparagus, it's probably seeds that some bird pulled out of somebody's garden and dropped in the woods. But just finding it there, I was just so excited. And there's wild plum trees here and you have to wait until the plums are actually really ripe for them to taste good and they're about the size of a golf ball, so they're really small. But they are really delicious and we can make jam out of them.
27:22That's got to be good Jane. Yeah, so there's all kinds of things out there that people don't know until they learn it. Oh yes, for sure. And that's another side of what we do. My husband is, grew up in the woods. We both did. And you know, so one of the things he educates on our YouTube channel and on our website and in our membership area is
27:49you know, learning how to do all those things, starting a fire in a varied, you know, varied ways. Because so wilderness survival is the thing that he dives into. And, you know, that was something that we had to teach our son right away was, you know, to have those kind of skills so that if he ever got displaced, because Idaho is vast, Alaska is even more vast.
28:15you know, to have those skills of being able to create your own shelter, light a fire in whatever conditions you're in. Because, you know, when wood and your dry tinder is wet from rain or snow, it gets really difficult to light a fire, but having the skills and knowing what to look for. So it's really important. And that was also part of our draw. This is kind of funny. But the way we ended up online was because I had created a website.
28:46And we started YouTube, but it was only meant for our families because my mom was scared to death that we were going to get eaten alive by wolves or mountain lions while we were living in the tent. So we just started every once in a while, I would post an update on the blog and we'd upload a video of our progress. And it just ended up that other people started to find it. And it just kind of morphed into what we're doing today.
29:15the need to share with people because there are people on this planet that don't know where eggs come from, don't know where milk comes from. They just think it comes from the store. Our world is in a volatile place right now. Again, as we were talking in the beginning, perspective is everything. We have the opportunity to choose to be very fearful or we have the opportunity to choose to be educated.
29:44And that's what we're trying to do is educate people on, you know, what you can do when the power's out, you know, and you have to exist and growing your own food, what you can forage from the wild. And I love that you said about the asparagus, you know, those are those moments that stick with you is when you learn that things are out there and that you can access them and
30:10because everybody has stuff in their backyard. You know, my practice, the way I'm running my practice is to utilize what the world offers in a wholesome way right now to speedily get people healthy, but also to use the herbs and things God put on the planet for us to utilize and bringing that full circle that if you can't find this supplement, you might be able to find this in your backyard. So.
30:36to be able to educate people to that level and teach people how to can their food, grow their own food, to smoke their meats or salt their meats to keep them preserved for longevity. You know, all of that, that's been our journey since 2010. And it's really rewarding to live that life for us, not only for ourselves and the rewarding aspect that we put
31:05All three of us put meat on the table every year and that, but also that we are able to turn, you know, I feel our biggest blessing of being able to live this lifestyle into something that is helping others. So it's just really rewarding. I love my life. I'm glad. I'm really glad that you did all that because you have helped numerous, innumerable folks to learn about this.
31:33I always say when people talk to me about homesteading or off-grid living or any of this stuff, that it's the difference between spending your money or your time. Because if you're going to be living off-grid or you're going to be homesteading, you're going to be spending a lot more of your time than you will be spending your money, hopefully. Right. Yes. That typically is the goal. And the thing that popped in my mind when you said that is, you know, so many people go to the gym.
32:03my husband and I will go out to the woods and we'll harvest a tree and we'll fell it and we'll limit and we'll cut it and we'll bring it back and we'll chop it and we'll stack it. For most people, that sounds like grueling. That is our gym. That is our workout. I love that kind of sweat just in that it's a day's worth of work that you detoxed, you
32:31would for the winner, you know? I love that part of our life. So to someone else, that would look like a chore. To us, it's just family time. And it's doing what we need to do to keep our world moving along. And it's just fun. You know, again, perspective. Some people may choose to view that as such a grueling thing. But if you view it as a fun thing,
33:01It changes everything. And there is, there's a lot of time put into everything that we do, but it's, it's good time. Like I'm not in front of a machine just scrolling senselessly and walking away and have not accomplished anything. I'm, I'm making leaps and bounds forward on my homestead, getting a garden put in place or fruit trees planted or the firewood, you know, forage, whatever. Um, and
33:30You know, I mentioned hunting. I absolutely love to hunt. It is, even if I don't get anything, being out there, you know, especially archery hunting, you sit there and you're out there really early, it's dark and you just watch the forest come to life. It's just amazing. And then the interactivity with the animals and being able to put such wholesome meat on our table, it's just, it's...
33:57It's a really wonderful thing, but I just love sitting there and just taking it all in. And like you said, it's not for everybody, but the biggest takeaway I hope people get today is to embrace the life you want to live and embrace it with everything you've got because you'll be walking away saying you love your life just the same as I am, regardless of what it is you're doing.
34:22Yeah, you've got to be true to yourself. If you're not true to yourself, you might as well hang it up because there's no point in living the life that you don't love. Right. My, speaking of hunting, I was raised by two parents that hunt. My mom and my dad hunted. And I am real leery about guns and there's a reason why when we were little, my parents would target practice in the gravel pit down the road from where we lived. And...
34:51If you've ever shot a gun in a gravel pit, you know how loud that gets because it echoes back. And they kept us, they made sure we sat behind the old station wagon out of the way. So not only were we in a, basically a round or a half circle where the sound kicked back, we were behind a station wagon so that we couldn't see what they were doing. And I know why my parents did this. They wanted us to be safe. They didn't want us to get hurt. I get it.
35:21But it scared me a lot. Yeah. And I was little, I was probably seven and my brother and sister were younger than me. So, and my dad also, my dad and mom kept their guns on a rifle rack in the hallway of our home and they kept the ammunition on the shelf on the same rifle rack and that's how it was done when I was young. And the rule was you don't touch the guns. You don't touch the rifle rack.
35:51I will call it respect, but probably some fear too about guns. And it bothers me because I am actually a really good shot. I have a shot BB guns, I've shot a 22 and I've hit the target right away. So I have really good aim. I just don't like doing it. So if I had to hunt to feed myself, I could do it, but I really don't love it.
36:21dear when she was about six months pregnant with my sister. And every time she tells that story, I just laugh. I'm like, your belly wasn't in the way. That's funny. And you know, that the important part there is that you know how to do it. If you have to, you know, it's, it's not for everybody, but I think that it's important for people to have the skills, you know, just like, because taking a life. Is.
36:51is not an easy thing. I don't hunt because I enjoy doing that part of it. But I hunt because it provides for my family. But knowing how to do it, the same with trapping an animal, you know, people get really funny around the subject. But if we have an over abundance of animals, disease sets in.
37:19So there's that circle of life and that then they're gonna die a grueling death in their lifetime. This is quick, it's fast, it's done and you've got meat for your table and we're keeping a handle on the disease that could be out there. But having that skill that if you're like, we always taught our son how to set snares
37:49If he were displaced in the woods and had no means of getting, you know, back out, didn't have, let's say he didn't have a gun, he would be able to, you know, snare a squirrel or a rabbit and be able to eat. I think that people need to have these skills even if they don't use them all the time.
38:13Muscle memory is there and it enables us to be able to protect ourselves when we have to. And I totally, you know, like I totally respect where you're at. We're all different. And I can see how that could have been scary because yes, it is loud. And it's always good to have earmuffs or earplugs because to value our ears and our hearing when you're shooting guns. But I think it's also good that you said, you know, you had a really good respect for
38:42the firearm, you know, that's just that's what we really instilled in our son was, you know, the understanding that it is something deadly. But if you know how to use it and you respect it and you handle it with care, it's it's not something that's harmful. You have to know how to use it. You know, exactly. Yeah, very important. Yes. You know, they have and the same is true with, you know, lighting a fire.
39:11You know, there's not too many people that go out and teach their children how to light a fire. However, at 13, it was important for him to know that because if he got displaced, he needed to know how to keep himself warm, you know. And so respect for everything, you know, our animals, the weapons, all of that is like really important. But the knowledge is priceless. And I always say that knowledge isn't power until you put it to action. Yeah, for sure.
39:39I really wanted to be the one to teach my youngest how to start a campfire. And my husband was going to show him and I was like, can I please do it? I know how to do it. Can I show him? And he was like, yeah, why is it important? I'm like, because I'm the mom and moms don't usually teach their sons how to do this stuff. So I showed him how to do the might what I call the teepee style of starting a campfire.
40:05To this day, he still can't do it that way. He has to do it the way dad does it. But at least I showed him it can be done that way. That's awesome. And I get it. And you know, it's fun being able to do those things with our sons. My son and I have an amazing relationship and I'm so grateful for that. And to be able to do things like that with our guys, it's just, I totally get you saying that. I just never wanted my boys. I have three.
40:35I have a daughter who's oldest and three boys. I wanted my boys to understand that women are not, I don't know, fragile or incapable. I wanted them to see through me that women can do many, many things that men can do too. And I wanted my boys to respect women. I didn't want to see them as objects. Yes, I think that's great because there's two different sides to that coin today. There's another...
41:05segment of, you know, I think, let me put it this way. I think God's design is perfect in that, you know, you have the man and the woman is to help me, but that doesn't mean that she's behind the man. That means she's walking beside the man. You know, we are all fully capable of doing things, you know, I like to, um,
41:29I like to do firewood. I'm learning how to blacksmith with my husband. I do leather craft. I like to spackle. He and I were side by side building our home. I think that that's so important. The other thing that you said that is so important is that you're teaching your boys, your men, to respect women. When we have a mutual respect for one another, that goes so far.
41:59talents, whether gender is involved or not. You know, there's some welder, women welders out there, there's blacksmiths, you know, we're all drawn to different things. But, and you hear a lot of like, there's a lot of cultures where the woman was not allowed to hunt, yet there were so many women that desired to do that. And like, I get the impression you're in a lot of ways like me that
42:28I like to do household chores, but if I was stuck in the house all the time cleaning and cooking, I would go bonkers. I need to be outside with my hands dirty and doing things too. So there's a good mix. And I think it's important that, you know, we, one of the things I did with my kids was to let whatever their passions were, you know, I support them on that and, and, and help them to shine and whatever that looked like, you know, and, um,
42:58So if my son wanted to knit a pair of socks, I would have taught him how to knit a pair of socks. I did teach him, but he didn't like it. Yeah, I taught the boys how to crochet a chain, you know, a link, not a link. I taught them how to do the chain stitch for crocheting because I was doing it and they were curious. None of them ever really went on to do anything else with it. And I'm like, huh, well, I guess that's off the list.
43:28But I think that's great. I think that's so great the way that you did that. Yeah, but I did teach them all to cook, and they all cook, and they all cook really well. And lots of people think cooking is the woman's job. Well, no, it's everybody's job to feed themselves. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. My husband is an amazing outdoor cook. He used to do pack trips and hunting trips out into the back country in Wyoming.
43:58So he makes a killer pie in a Dutch oven, and my son, like yours, he learned to cook, and off he went to college, and he's the one making cookies for his house, and cakes, and pies, and so, yeah, absolutely. We gotta learn how to eat, and it's an important skill.
44:22I bet they love him. I bet they're like, what are you making for dessert today? Right? They did. Awesome. All right, Tammy, I don't want to take up any more of your time because I try to keep this to half an hour and we could probably talk for two hours, but we're not going to do that. Thank you so much for being, I don't know, amenable to speaking with me. I really appreciate it.
44:45Oh, absolutely. This was awesome. I really appreciate the opportunity to sit here with you. This has been a wonderful conversation. And yes, I agree. We probably could do that. All right. You have a great day. Thank you again. Yes, you as well. Take care. Bye.
 

Mabel's Herb Blog

Today I'm talking with Leah at Mabel's Herb Blog. 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 Leah at Mabel's Herb Blog. Good morning, Leah, how are you? Good morning, I'm good. Good. So tell me about yourself and this herb blog because I'm very curious about it.
00:29Um, well, my name is Leah and I grew up in Southeast Texas, but I had my grandmother was from Nebraska and, um, about, I know that sounds random, but about six years ago, um, I took over the care of my mom who had Alzheimer's. And um, she had always been very.
00:58pro-holistic care as her mother was. It was just kind of the thing her mom had taught her that, you know, in their belief, you know, pharmaceuticals, we had too big a dependence on pharmaceuticals and my mom didn't like chemicals in her body. So I mean, it kind of started as that when I was growing up. My grandma was a one-room school teacher.
01:25this and I mentioned my grandma because that's who this is named after her name was Mabel. She was a one room school teacher so she taught a lot about you know botany and paleontology and all of this other she was a really good school teacher and that transition to us grandkids as we were growing up when we would go to visit grandma she was always teaching she was a teacher till the day she died.
01:55in 1998, always teaching us, always showing us things as kids, which of course when you're a kid and grandma's teaching you paleontology, you're eager to go dig in the dirt and try to find dinosaur bones, you know? But the other side of that was also botany and herbalism and she taught a lot about plants and the importance of them.
02:24Well, as a kid, you know, that's kind of the boring stuff. And I didn't really pay attention, of course. I knew then what I know now, I would have been hung on her every word. But about five, six years ago, when I started taking care of my mom, it really kind of hit home to me because they were wanting to pump my mom full of so many pills.
02:52It was a pill for this, a pill for that, you know, and I knew that my mom would hate it. Because she'd have been in her right mind. She'd have been like, absolutely not. Let's find a natural way. And so I started studying herbs because I was like, there's got to be some kind of solution to help, you know, with her, all of her stuff, you know, not just her Alzheimer's, but everything. And um...
03:22So I started studying plants and I realized that.
03:28Herbalism and Western medicine, as I call it, pharmaceutical medicine, has a place to balance each other out. Herbalism doesn't have all the answers and neither does Western medicine. So that was my goal when I first started Mabel's Apothecary. And then in so doing, because in my studies, I was like, you know,
03:56There's a lot of people out here that probably feel the same way about just shoving ourselves full of pills all the time. And so I started sharing on my website on Mabel's Apothecary.com and some friends of mine were like, Leah, you need to be putting this in a blog. You need to put this on a blog so that, you know, everybody, you know, even people who haven't been to your website can
04:24can get this information and learn about their health. And so it kind of went from there. I started blogging about it. At first I was very gung-ho and I was doing it once a week. And then I realized that that was a huge job. So I've kind of slowed down to once a month so that I can do more in depth and get more research into my blog posts. And so that's where we are.
04:53I got here. Wow. Yeah. Blogging once a week is a lot. Blogging once a day is a huge task. I did that for a little over a year many years ago about books and writing stuff. And after a year, I was like, I can't keep doing this. It's too much. So I understand why you would cut back to one a month. And yeah, if you have the time to put into one a month, then it can be a much more.
05:23informative educational posts. So that's awesome. Yes. Okay. So did your, did your grandma grow herbs or did she just know about them? Oh, no, she had a yard full of herbs and plants and trees and everything you could imagine. She had, she was on a family farm. It was a century farm in Nebraska. So the family had had this farm for, I think,
05:53when she died, it had been almost 250 years. So it was a family ancestral farm. And so there were plants from her great grandmother that were, or her grandmother, I'm sorry, her grandmother that she had planted. And then there were plants that her mother had planted and she had planted. And just over the years,
06:24her yard was just covered in everything. And she never, it was a good thing she didn't live in HOA because they would have painted her yard kind of thing. Yeah. Because she did not believe in using pesticides. I mean, although she and her and my grandpa were farmers and pesticides had their place, you know, for their crops.
06:52she did not allow pesticides in her yard. And so she saw value in every living plant that grew in her yard and the surrounding pastures. Even the what most people consider a nuisance such as dandelions and bull thistles and things like that.
07:22had an appreciation and understanding and held a lot of value for every single living thing that grew in her yard. And she passed that on to my mom and me. Now, I do not have her green thumb. She had an absolutely glowing green thumb. And I have more of a brown one. It's getting better. But it's...
07:52You know, she could take, and I witnessed this or I wouldn't tell anybody this ever happened, but she took a half of a leaf of a plant and stuck it in a pot of dirt. And by the end of the summer, there would be a small start of whatever that leaf was in that pot. Now I'm sure there was a little more to it than that, but as a child, that's all I saw was her pinch a leaf in half and stick it in the dirt.
08:22Magic, yes. Yes. Well, I can vouch for dandelions. I tried dandelion root tea probably eight years ago. And I thought that it was going to taste terrible and come to find out it tastes like coffee to me. Oh, oh, yeah, with the root, yeah. Yeah. Add some of the flowers into it, it'll give it a floral taste. Yeah. And so if we.
08:50If I don't want coffee, but I want, and if I don't want real coffee with the caffeine, dandelion root tea is a really good way to fake myself out that I had coffee.
09:02Yes. And it's good for your kidneys and your liver. Mm hmm. Yeah. Much better than coffee. Well, I'm not giving up coffee because it's my favorite thing to drink in the morning, but... Oh me either. Occasionally I'm like, wow, too much caffeine today. Where's the dandelion root tea? Yeah. And it's really good. I didn't, I really thought I would hate it, but it's fantastic. No, the tea is amazing. And you can even put dandelion.
09:30leaves and flowers in in a salad. And it's very it makes it very very floral and very not your average salad. It's really good. Yes, and I also learned a while ago because this is all I know about weeds and herbs. I learned that there is a a plant that I think is actually chicory.
09:59that grows around here. It looks like a bachelor button. And I don't know if bachelor button is the other name for a chicory plant, I have no idea. But I had asked my husband to please, please, please dig me some from a ditch one time, because I knew it was chicory. And he was like, I don't know who that property belongs to. They probably wouldn't appreciate me digging it out. And I was like, okay, fine. So I did not get the chance to try it, but I'm gonna buy some seeds this winter.
10:29and put some chicory in on purpose that we bought. And that way he doesn't have to feel bad about digging out wild chicory. It's probably better anyway, because I, with foraging, you have to be careful where you dig it up from, because you don't know what kinds of pesticides and other chemicals have washed down through the ditch. What kind of ick, yeah. Yeah, what kind of ick. And those do go into the plants. That's why a lot of
10:58You'll hear some herbalists that are like wild foraging and they'll say, get it where you can off public land, but you have to be careful because the plants actually do take in the properties of the pesticides and chemicals and carcinogens that rinse off of the road and out of farm fields and things like that. And you don't want to get too much of that into your system.
11:24No, because I don't want to die young because I was foraging something that was bad for me. Yeah, right. Exactly. But I will tell you that chicory root is very bitter. It's good for you. It's awesome for you, but it is very bitter. So you have to zhuzh it up a little bit. Yeah. It's very popular down south because...
11:53uh, chicory coffee, uh, chicory used as a coffee was actually very, very popular, especially in Louisiana, Southwest Texas or Southeast Texas and, um, West Alabama and Mississippi. They all used it as kind of a poor man's coffee years, many, many, many years ago, but it's, it is very bitter. So just be prepared for that. So add triple the sugar. I would put in my coffee. I will, I'll make it. Probably.
12:23Okay, so where are you located? I am located in Ozark, Missouri. It's a small community just south of Springfield, Missouri, which is where kind of one of the campuses is college campuses is Missouri, Missouri, state of Missouri, sorry. And there are several other colleges there. So it's basically a college town, but it's a little north of Branson, which is where
12:53most people may know better because of Silver Dollar City and other things like the Andy Williams Theater and the Tillis's when they retired, they had a theater there. So that kind of place. Southwest Missouri. Okay. Awesome. I was going to ask at the beginning and I forgot. So you mentioned colleges and
13:21study of herbs before you decided to do the blog? No, I didn't. I actually, I originally went to college for music as a music major, ended up with a degree in business administration. Okay. And this was purely purely just kind of started off.
13:47just inquisitive and kind of a hobby kind of thing. I was kind of going through a journey, of course, with my mom and I had been through a pretty nasty divorce about 10 years ago and just kind of trying to find a new purpose in life. And it turned into a borderline obsession from there. Unfortunately, we don't have
14:16here in the United States, there is no accredited degree you can get. Now, you can get certifications from herbal schools and things like that. And there are a lot of resources that you can go to to learn about herbs and things, which of course I have absolutely utilized. I have a friend of mine that actually used to teach in an herbal school in Florida.
14:46And she has been kind of a mentor to me and a wonderful person. Um, so I kind of check with her to make sure sometimes when I'm not too sure about something, I'm like, eh, did I wear this clear enough? Did I, did I represent this accurately? And she'll read through my stuff for me sometimes.
15:09Well, it's always good to have a friend in your back pocket if you need them to help out. So that's great. So my next question might be mildly inflammatory to listeners, but I'm going to ask it anyway. How do you get around the FDA when you're writing about these herbs? Because the Food and Drug Administration, they're very difficult about what you can say and what you can't say on a public forum.
15:39So the only things that the FDA requires is that you don't make flat out claims of like cures. So for example, I can say dandelion root is very detoxifying for your kidney and your liver, but I cannot say it's going to cure your liver disease or your kidney disease. I cannot say that, you know, this is your...
16:08cure-all for everything that ails you because I you know that is while there are tons and tons of scientific studies on a lot of herbs especially like dandelion, mullein, thyme, rosemary, things like that even they don't make claims of a cure-all or a cure for anything so I can't say that
16:39this is going to cure your kidney disease or your diabetes or things. All I can say is that it assists with those things or it helps with those things or this is what the medicinal properties of this plant addresses in your system. So that's kind of how herbalists have to... That's where we have to be careful is not to make...
17:09claims of curing or a treatment. It has to be worded as, here's an additional something to help, here is an alternative to, or do it in conjunction with your Western medicine. And in a lot of cases, that is absolutely the best way to go about it, because like I said, there is a happy balance between Western medicine and herbalism. There are a lot of...
17:38I've heard some herbalists that claim, hey, this will help with your cancer. While it does scientifically have indications that it could help with cancer cells and things like that, I can't say it's going to cure your cancer. I can say it helps prevent the growth of cancer cells. So it's all wording. Exactly. Okay. Awesome. That's what I was wondering because...
18:03We had to be really careful when we were talking about the things that we make and sell because I couldn't say this will fix what ails you because they don't want you to say that. No. Okay. So you are very into herbs. So if someone was going to start like a quote unquote medicine cabinet and medicine cabinets don't really exist anymore but you know I'm talking about.
18:33What would you suggest be in that medicine cabinet regarding herbs?
18:41Umm...
18:44Well, a lot of that has to do with your medical history. Because there are herbs that can hurt more than help depending on what you have, if you have chronic illness. For example, people, I always have white willow bark. It's the original aspirin. It's what our synthetic aspirin is based off of.
19:14is white willow bark. However, if you have a condition where you have to take blood thinners, you don't want to take white willow bark, obviously. Just like aspirin, you wouldn't want to take aspirin if you're on blood thinners because that makes it worse. It could make you bleed out and have other issues. There are quite a few, there are not, I should say, there are not that many herbs, excuse me, that
19:44scientifically have been proven to not have counteractive results with specific medications. So it's really dependent on what is going on in your life and so that's why research is super super important.
20:12You have to be careful. I is for me, for example, I am a type two diabetic. Mine is genetic. Um, I will never not be a diabetic. Okay. Um, however, if I take dandelion root too much, it causes because of its detoxifying properties, it makes my diabetic medication process through my kidneys faster. So while I take a once a week.
20:42diabetic medication that's supposed to last me all week, if I take dandelion root on a regular basis, it will cause my medication to go through my system faster and thus render it ineffective towards the end of the week every week, if that makes any sense. Yes, it makes all the sense in the world. So you can't tell me what an emergency herb kit would look like because it depends on your own anatomy and physiology. Exactly.
21:12One thing that I can tell you is Mullen. Mullen is one of those few herbs that they have not found any counter indications with any medications, with any chronic conditions, with anything that it's one of the few that don't, that they have not been able to find anything that it counteracts with. So,
21:41That's what I mean by that. There's a few of them. There's extensive studies on it. I always go to, oh, what's the name of that website? I always use a specific website. Let me see if I can look it up. It's a government website that posts all papers on scientific studies.
22:11see if I can find it. It's like in MDB or something like that. Well, if you don't want to take the time to look it up now, if you could just send me the link to it later, I can put it in the show notes. Yeah, absolutely. But um, but yeah, so I always suggest that you do extensive research. Don't just I mean, lots of people like to say Google is free. However, with Google, you can pay for the top results. So
22:41Don't trust the first two or three links that you see when you Google the medicinal properties of whatever. So do some extensive research. Go into the second or third page of Google and find those places. Go to reputable places like Learning Herbs, although you have to pay for Learning Herbs. I think it's only like $8 a month.
23:10If you use it regularly, it's really worth the money. Those people, you have a lot of new herbalists and then you have a lot of seasoned veteran herbalists, Rosemary Gladstar, Matthew Wood. All of those are people that have been doing this for decades and decades. Some of them have been doing it their whole lives.
23:37And those are the people that I tend to listen to, which is why I try to cite all my sources that I get so that when you look at my blog, you see exactly where I got the information from. You are a smart woman. That is a good plan. Okay, so I have, I'm gonna try to stump you. There is a...
24:02wildflower slash weed slash it grows in the woods by water, likes its feet wet, called jewelweed. Do you know anything about jewelweed?
24:13I do not actually. Okay. Well. I don't live here in Missouri. I tend to like every once in a while I'll do something that's not native to Missouri. I have to do a lot more research about it. But so no, I have not done anything on jewelweed. Okay. Well, the reason I bring it up is that is one of our emergency kit things that we use
24:43come to find out it's good for poison ivy. It helps with poison ivy, takes the itch out. And it's also good for like bug bites and bee stings. And we love this stuff. We use, I have like a quart mason jar full of sweet almond oil that has had the jewel weed soaked in it.
25:07And so it's ready to be made into a salve. And I put it in lip balm tubes because it's just easier to do it that way. And my son used it last summer. He got stung by a wasp and he was like, where's the jewel weed stuff? Cause it's driving me crazy. And I said, it's right where it always is on the shelf. And he grabbed it, rubbed it on the stings mark and not even seconds later, he was like, the sting, the burn is gone. And so.
25:34And so the reason I ask about this and whether you knew about it or not is because I was gonna say are there any side effects for jewelweed but you don't know yet. So not yet but we might see a blog post on jewelweed soon now because you brought you piqued my interest. Yeah and it's a really pretty plant. They look like little not like little they look like orchids. Little tiny orchid flower shapes. Yeah and there's yellow and there's orange.
26:04I will tell you another one that's good for those same symptoms is, and you're probably, most people don't even know they have it in their yard, is plantain. Yes. And it doesn't matter whether it's longleaf or broadleaf. I had a very similar incident here not too long ago. I'm very bad in the spring, summer, early fall, having grown up in the south.
26:32I am very bad about running around in my yard barefoot. I love to put my feet in the grass, touch, you know, have the grass between my toes. It is a comfort. I call it my grounding when I run around. I ground to the energy and the space of earth that way for me. I just love it. But anyway, I was running around my yard, taking care of all my plants in my yard or checking on them actually.
27:01And I thought I stepped on a rock, to be honest with you. I was like, ooh, I stepped on a sharp rock. Because Missouri, in southern Missouri, our ground is extremely rocky. So sometimes these little rocks will work the way up through the soil. And so I didn't think anything about it, but I was like, ah, that kinda hurt. And then when I got done, you know, checking my plant, which I was almost done checking my plants anyway, I started to walk towards the house and I realized that it was starting to...
27:30radiate like get worse and I was like maybe I didn't step on a rock well I sat down and looked and I had a little stinger stuck out on one of my toes and I said nope I got stuck I got stung I stepped on something and it stung me rightfully so um so I ran out my yard found some plantain in the ground and chewed it up and stuck it on there and within a few seconds that sting came out it wasn't hurting anymore
28:00And then I took some turmeric and black pepper and made a paste out of it and kind of put it on it to kind of take the inflammation because while it wasn't stinging, it still was inflamed. So I did some turmeric and black pepper and made a poultice out of that and stuck it on there. And by the next day, couldn't even tell why it even got stung. So. Yes. And this is the stuff that I love hearing about because there are so many ways to handle.
28:27And not not an injury more of an irritation Then going in and getting the store-bought stuff out of your bathroom cabinet, you know Oh, absolutely. And I feel like you know half the time that store-bought stuff does not work like it claims especially the over-the-counter medicines Not saying it don't work. I'm just saying they don't work as well as they claim Yeah, and and I don't okay
28:56Honey is not an herb, guys. It's a food. Honey is really good too. Honey does things that you have no idea that it will do. It can actually help a wound heal. Yes. And I didn't know about this until a couple years ago. I was like, oh, okay. It has natural antibiotic properties in it, yeah. Yeah, and like I said, honey is not an herb. It has nothing to do with growing plants. It's something that honeybees produce. We all know this, but food can be healing,
29:26There's a word I want. Not just nutritious. Yes, thank you. And herbs can be food too. I mean, I use rosemary and garlic and chives and thyme and basil all the time. And you think it's just good for you nutritionally, but it also is good for you for things beyond just feeding you.
29:56Right. Exactly. And the thing about herbalism is not so much because you will find that most herbalists, if not all, use honey in addition to their herbs. So they consider it part of herbalism. It's probably more would be more considered holistic care. But the only difference
30:26holistic care is the full scope, like including your honey and your cabbage and your tomatoes and all of that other stuff. It's called all-encompassing versus herbalism just really mostly focuses on the plant, the herb side of it. But really and honestly, everything that grows is an
30:55if that makes any sense. Yes. So your oak tree that's growing in your yard is an herb. Your rose bush growing in your front, in the front of your house is an herb. Every growing plant is actually an herb. I didn't know that that was defined that way. Thank you. Yeah. Awesome.
31:21Okay, Leah, we are at 31 minutes and 12 seconds. I try to keep these to half an hour. So I'm gonna let you go Thank you so much for your time. I learned so much today I hope the listeners do too.
31:34Yeah, they can always go to the blog at Mabel's blog or they can go to my website at Mabel's Apothecary.com. I have my blog there too as well, as well as my products. And I always try to make sure and tell both the medicinal side and even the spiritual side connotations of herbs because they all kind of interconnect and work together. Fabulous.
32:04Thank you so much, Leah. Have a great day. You too. Thank you. Yep. Bye. Bye.
 

The Garlic Farmers

Today I'm talking with Christi at The Garlic Farmers.
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. This morning I'm talking to Christi at The Garlic Farmers. Good morning, Christi. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm great. How are you? I'm all right. Did you guys get a little bit of rain like an hour ago? I do not think it looks like it. Like it could, but we did not.
00:29I'm wondering if today will bring some rain. Yeah, we got a sprinkle here and I'm only about half an hour from you. So yes, I'm near New Prague and New Market. Are you by St. Peter? Yeah, we're in the store. Okay. So all right. So tell me all about what you do. Well, we live between New Prague and New Market and we live on 10 acres and we've been here for
00:5424 years and we've always loved gardening, I guess growing up in 4-H. And my husband's from Iowa and his grandparents and parents farmed for a while. And so when we moved here, it just kind of made sense to have a garden and that was mainly to feed our family and just really enjoying things like salsa. And my husband was, for years, grew tons of tomatoes and we still do. But at
01:22At the beginning, he would make hundreds of jars of salsa and juice for chili and just eat all year and give away and enjoy the fruits of the labor. It ends up being more work than you always think, but it always feels like an accomplishment. And so we have six kids and I always loved it in summers. And when the harvest started coming in, then I could buy less groceries, you know, if we could have our own.
01:51cucumbers and BLTs and make chili, but take the tomatoes right out of the garden and that kind of thing. And then about three or four years ago, I think maybe four actually, kind of a funny story. I saw a bill on our dresser and it was just a handwritten receipt really. And it said, garlic, $252. And I said to him,
02:17wait, what's happening here? What did you buy? You bought garlic? Like I thought maybe to put in his salsa or, and he had said some, you know, talked a little bit about researching growing garlic, but I was like, wow, he's serious. And if you know my husband, he does everything big. So I wasn't joking when I said a couple hundred tomato plants, a couple hundred pepper plants, 150 pepper plants, like he.
02:40He is very diligent and hardworking, and he has a day job, of course, but at night he likes to have something to do. He never sits on the couch, maybe on Christmas, I'm trying to guess. If he ever sits on our couch, he's just very active. And it's taught our kids, they're now grown, but our youngest is 16, but taught our kids about work too. They're hard workers, and they got to spend a lot of time with us outside, which is what you do when you have 10 acres, there's always a project.
03:10But the garlic thing started where he went to somebody's house and bought garlic from them. And then the next year we went to the garlic festival and bought some more garlic. And it really is fun to grow because it's not easy, it's work and the level we're at, it's a lot of work. But if you just have a small patch, I think people really enjoy it because you can put it in the ground and then just let it be. And then you have to deal with it starting in the.
03:37in the summer really, you know with weeding and stuff there's a little bit but I don't even know how many bulbs and cloves he planted that year, I suppose a few hundred. And then last year we harvested 5,000 and this year we harvested about 15,000 bulbs. So it has grown quickly and turned into a little bit of a business in that now people
04:02want our garlic and are coming back for the second year. Last year was the first year we sold, lots of repeat customers. A few said, no, your garlic grew so well, I don't need any, I'm just replanting. Because every year we replant about 20 to 25% of our crop and then you end up with really strong, I'm not sure how it's exactly explained, but like a strong lineage if you keep replanting your garlic and then we sell some, we eat some, we give a lot away.
04:31Um, and it's, uh, also been a whole nother aspect of it. He, um, we have a freeze dryer, which we kind of bought also just to start preserving our own stuff and freeze drying very different than dehydrating. Um, I mean, dehydrating is awesome too, but freeze drying takes out even more of the moisture and technically you hear of people, you know, you can freeze dry.
04:56mashed potatoes and gravy, lasagna. I mean, I know a gal who has a thousand meals in her basement, freeze dried, and I think she does it for fun and kind of just to have food any time, but you could take it camping into the boundary waters. But we do it so that we can make garlic, freeze dried garlic scapes and freeze dried basically garlic powder. And then my husband developed four different spices. So we are...
05:25We were at the Prior Lake Farmers Market on Saturday, last Saturday, we'll be there the next three Saturdays hopefully, selling the spices and we have our garlic there too, but people were really intrigued with the spices and we had samples and we actually had it on popcorn and in a chicken dip and people loved it. They just loved the popcorn idea because it was so different to put garlic on popcorn. Have you ever tried that? I have.
05:53that and parmesan cheese. Yes, or ranch seasoning. Yes, both. Yep. So, I mean, that's a little bit of the history. Our kids help us, our friends and family help us. I always say, you'll never have to buy garlic again. My sister grows onions in New Ulm and we grow garlic. And I said, I'm perfectly fine never growing another onion and I'll give you all the garlic you want and we trade. So that's kind of fun. And it's...
06:21You know, it's been a labor of love, I guess, because it is a lot of work when you get to 15,000 bulbs. Yes. Okay, so I have I have a couple things that I need to tell you and then we can keep talking. I have talked to two people in the last three months about garlic. So I don't necessarily want to get into how you grow it because I've really talked about that a lot lately. Okay. But are you growing the hard neck or the soft neck kind? Great question. We have, I think, nine or 10 hard neck.
06:51and only one soft neck called a Chilium, which is a very tasty one and it lasts, they say six to nine months, even a year if you store it properly. So people say the soft necks are harder to grow. Chad hasn't had any trouble really. He puts extra straw on top because we live in Minnesota just for the melting and freezing in the winter and just the extra protection for the mulching, but we put straw on top.
07:18So nine, mainly hardneck for us, one soft neck. Okay, because I was told that hardnecks do better in Minnesota by someone who's been growing garlic forever. And we tried growing softneck and it did not go well, so we're gonna try hardnecks here. Sure. We have some coming, I think, and it's gonna be here in October. Sometime in the next couple of weeks, and we're gonna get them in and see how they do. Awesome.
07:47So what I kind of wanted to talk about is I love garlic and not because it's great to eat and to cook with, but because it's such an elegant tuber. It's so beautiful. It is. And I'm not the only one on earth who thinks this because people have done oil paintings of garlic. I believe it. And even there's a garlic festival. Are you familiar with that?
08:15in Hutchinson. I am. We have not been. We've been a couple times. I've heard it. I've heard about it. Yeah, it's really a fun day. I mean, just seeing all of these things people have done with garlic. But when you said how pretty it is, if this wasn't an audio, I bought a $40 braided garlic thing because I just thought it was so cool and I wanted to hang it in our shed where people come to buy garlic. And I'm not saying that it's ours. I tell them I didn't do this. I bought it.
08:40It's so pretty. She does smaller cloves at the top and bigger cloves at the bottom and it's this beautiful braid. It really actually makes sense because you could just kind of cut one off every time you need garlic hanging in your kitchen as an ornament. So I believe it. I have not seen an oil painting of garlic, but I bet that would be really pretty. And when you crack open the cloves and some of ours are really bright red, there's a Spanish Roja and they are just beautiful. And I say that every time I look at them. I'm like those are just beautiful.
09:10Yeah, they say that you eat with your eyes first. And I, every dish that's ever been presented to me or I've ever cooked, that's different colors or a different shape or a different texture. I'm just like, it's so beautiful. I don't even want to eat it yet. I just want to take it in with my eyes first. I agree and it makes you want to eat it. Yeah. So do you like garlic? Like do you like to eat garlic? I love garlic actually.
09:39I mean, I think with all the years of Chad making salsa, even my kids have a very strong, would you call it a tolerance for hot stuff. And garlic, there's some mild ones also, but they always have liked a lot of garlic and probably starting with the salsa. But I put our spice and cloves of garlic chopped up in.
10:06pretty much everything. I mean, if I make a quesadilla, I put on our Facebook page, we have a Garlic Farmers and Greenhouse Facebook page, and I made a quesadilla with our homemade pesto, which had garlic in it, but then, you know, more garlic spice on top, and then just meat and cheese and the quesadilla maker. And it just seems like it brings out the flavor, makes everything taste better. I mean, I put it on eggs. And again, I'm sometimes talking about our spice because I don't always...
10:33open up a clover, you know, peel a clove of garlic, but you know, soup, salad, sandwiches, any kind of meat, chicken, steak, hamburger. It's really, it's just an easy way to add so much extra flavor. Yeah, I always say you have to measure garlic with your heart. Yes, true. Yep. So what I wanted to touch on is that.
11:00People think that garlic just goes in like spaghetti sauce. And there's so many things you can do with it. You can make a garlic paste that you can have on toast with avocado, if that's how you like your toast. Or you can use it, the paste on like homemade garlic bread with butter, and that's fabulous. You can roast garlic in your oven and it caramelizes it and it brings out the natural sugars in it.
11:27There's just so many things you can do with garlic and people like, eh, garlic. And I'm like, no, you do not understand yet. You're so right. And I always tell people, uh, they'll come to buy garlic to plant and maybe they haven't grown any before and I'm like, well, do you want some to eat? I really feel like every family, especially for the health benefits and just having your food taste amazing could go through a minimum of a bulb a week.
11:54I mean, honestly, you can put it like you said, you can roast it, you can, I had it on sourdough bread last night. We've even figured out you can put it in the air fryer. You don't even have to turn your oven on. So if you put cloves in the air fryer and then you just squeeze them onto bread, onto a cracker. So yummy. And we need to think outside of the Italian dishes and put it on your salad.
12:17I was just reading about one of ours, I think it was called Georgia Crystal. It's mild enough. It said just cut it up raw and put it on your salad. And my mom was just telling me she owns Barton Pumpkins. I don't know if you know my mom, Fran Barton. She's so amazing. I do not. I'll have to hit her up to be on the podcast. You'll have to. She's always into health benefits and eating from the earth.
12:43And she was saying when you cut open a clove of garlic, and I just heard this yesterday, so I need to look it up, let it sit for like, I don't know, did she say 30 seconds or something? Let the, right away put it into your pan. Let the nutritional benefits, she knew how it all worked, but she said let it sit for a little bit, a minute or two, and let some of that release before you put it in your pan to fry it. And I was like, oh wow, now I gotta look that up.
13:12The other thing I was going to say is the ease of it. Just have it on your counter. Just get used to using it. And not wait until it's some special, people are coming over for dinner, and I'm going to get some garlic to put in this pasta. And that is what I love about our spices, is I can just shake them right on, right there, and have them easy. But people chop it up and put it, and freeze it, and have it just accessible any time of the year.
13:39And if you store it properly, you know, four to six months for some of them, six to nine, you can keep it in a cool, dry place in a pantry, well ventilated, not in a plastic bag or anything, a mesh bag or just so it can have some air. We also make, and I've just done it for friends and for us, honey garlic. Have you heard of fermented honey? Garlic? I have. I have not tried making it. So tell me about it.
14:09Well, we happen to have bees too, just to help pollinate all of our apple trees and pear trees and stuff. But I would take local honey, you know, somebody who's not honey from the store really. And then you peel the cloves of garlic and put in, fill up a, I do like a smaller mason jar, you know, a pint. And you could you do even smaller, what's a half pint or whatever.
14:33and put honey in there and maybe not quite full because it will kind of bubble over. So maybe an inch from the top and then I mean 30-40 cloves whatever fits I guess pack them in there and then every day you need to open the jar and kind of let the release the bubbles basically and that is so it doesn't overflow and roughly about 30 days this is how I do it. I guess I'm not really following a recipe. I read the recipe and then just have been doing it.
15:03And then over time, the garlic, after like 30 days, you don't need to burp the jar anymore. We call it burping the jar. Yeah. And the garlic will start to taste like candy. And even my family was like, no, it won't mom. I'm like, no, actually it really turns to like, not very garlicky, more sweet. And you're getting the benefits of garlic and honey. So you can drizzle that honey over your salad or a pear and a cracker and a piece of cheese, you know, a little appetizer as for the health benefits, but also.
15:32Some people say, well, take the piece of garlic when you feel sick. I say every day, even if the cloves are cut in half, take a little piece of the garlic clove and eat it every day, just chew on it. If that's not you and you don't like it, then put it in something, hide it somewhere, I guess, and just to stay well. And I almost think it'd be hard to get sick over the winter if you ate a clove of garlic a day. I mean, I can't make that claim, but I think it would be an awesome experiment, you know, take...
16:0030 people and say I'll commit to this and see if anybody gets sick because the health benefits are so, the vitamin C and vitamin B all giving you immune boost and just feeling better hopefully. Yeah. Does garlic have antioxidant properties? So it does. Antioxidant and antimicrobial, which is, you know, double whammy.
16:27I was even reading that it can be good for allergies. Some people take garlic pills, but I would think eating garlic should help too. I mean, you can't get much stronger than eating a clove of garlic. So it really acts like a supplement. And it also said manganese and selenium, which all are good for immune boost, plus vitamin C and vitamin B. And we always hear about vitamin C for health. So...
16:55It's kind of a hidden secret. And after reading about this, I decided we need a whole page on our, we just did our website. It's very new, theg But we need, I told my husband this morning, we need a whole page on the health benefits. Because, you know, they, I mean, they can't make claims, but they say healthy heart, lower blood pressure, immune support, AIDS and digestion. I mean, the list is like, it's like it's magic stuff. Yeah.
17:22I think it is. And again, that's why we measure garlic with our heart and not with a recipe. I swear the reason I have not been sick in over four years is because number one, I don't really hang out with very many people, so I'm not exposed to a lot. But we eat tomatoes, some form of tomato at least three times a week. And we eat garlic in everything. Well, great. So I think it's so awesome. What a testimony.
17:52That's fabulous. And so people who don't garden, who don't ever plan to plant garlic, you know, really should plan to eat it and get it incorporated into more of their meals. And I was had a real eye opener. Have you watched the movie Rotten on Netflix? Not yet, but it's on the list. Yes, it's very eye opening. And they say and I am not exactly sure, but I think it was 70 to 80% of the garlic that we eat here from the store is from from China.
18:22And I mean, garlic originated a lot of it in China and Russia and different places, Germany. But they show in the movie, they actually show it where prisoners are peeling the garlic and they're forced to peel it like, I can't remember if it was 12 or 14 hours a day. They have a quota they have to fill. Their hands are like just raw and like their fingers are just ruined. And then they put it, their teeth are too because they...
18:52They bite the corner of the clove to get it to peel, so they have to peel fast, so they can peel faster. This is all in the movie. I mean, I'm not making any of this up, but if that's not a testimony to find a local farmer and buy some garlic and not take your chances on having any of that in your house. Yes, anything you can get local from people you know and trust is a great thing. And that actually leads me to my next comment about all of this.
19:20How freaking lucky are we to live in this area, this 50-mile circle of Newpreg and Jordan, Prior Lake and Lesor and St. Peter and this whole little, I don't know, it's not a corner, but it's a segment of Minnesota where we can get pretty much anything from a local grower. I agree. We are so blessed. I mean, you don't have to go far to find grass-fed beef and eggs and...
19:49I mean, even I can drive somewhere three miles and I, as long as I have change in my, we used to have chickens, but as long as I have change in my car, I can find, I like supporting whatever egg stand I see by the road, you know, and many, many different produce stands and we are very lucky. Honey, everybody knows someone who sells honey. And we take it for granted because you'll see people post on Facebook, I live in Minneapolis, like how far I'm gonna have to go for raw milk or how far I can't find.
20:17This or that, they really rely on the farmer's market where people come in from the suburbs and the outer to bring them vegetables and fresh things. We can support, I love supporting local. I mean, that's again, why I bought the braid of garlic for $40 at the garlic festival, even though we have thousands of bulbs of garlic, but I'm like, I want to support this gal who worked this hard.
20:45on braiding this and I can only imagine the work and it's nothing I can ever do so I'm buying it. For sure. We had friends over this weekend and they have goats and they usually have goat milk and she was going to bring me some and she was like I'm so sorry but it didn't work out that we actually got a lot of milk from the goats this year but I was going to bring you some and I was like darn it because I've had the goats milk from their goats and it's fabulous. So next spring I'm going to make sure that I
21:15cut a deal with her and be like, if I put money on this ahead of time, can I reserve goat milk every couple of weeks? Right. That's a great idea. Yeah. So it's just, I don't think about it very often because I'm so used to being able to find people to buy raw milk from or goat's milk from or produce or beef or pork or chicken. I don't think about it every day.
21:41But then I get talking with people like you and I'm like, how freaking blessed are we that we live in an area where we can do this and it's not a hassle to find it. Exactly, and it makes you just feel better. I mean, not only health-wise, but just mentally that you were able to either support someone or help support yourself or feed your family. I guess I realize that sometimes when a friend will come over and help us.
22:06peel garlic because even once you pick the garlic, you have to dry it and cut off the stems and peel it and all of that. And a friend came over and helped just peel off one layer of the skin just to make it not so dirty and to get the dirt off the end basically. Anyway, and so when she left, I gave her honey and garlic of course, and we have apples and we have pears and we make apple cider. And if somebody's not used to that, it's like.
22:33They felt like they went to the grocery store, but when they leave, you're just able to give them things that you grew, and this year, tomatoes aren't doing that great, or I would have loaded her up with tomatoes, but it's just kind of fun to be able to give a neighbor a gift or a friend of really just stuff you grew that you don't think of, and some of it, the apples just grow themselves, so you can kind of share the wealth and enjoy your harvest with other people.
23:03We did not have good luck with our garden this year. I don't want to talk about it. I know. Terrible. I've talked so much about it on the podcast this summer. I feel like I'm just bitching at this point about how bad it was. Point being, last summer was the first summer we really had our farm stand on our property open all summer long. It made me feel so good when people would pull in the driveway and they'd see the little open sign and they would open the door and go in.
23:29look at what we had and I'd watch out the window and they would go out like two bags of stuff that they bought that we grew. That's so fabulous. And like, I don't know, I was always like kind of teary about it. I was like, this is so great. I love this. You made their day and then you were able to benefit from it a little bit too. So it's all, it's all great. Yeah. And the funny thing is it wasn't about the money that was being left in the container in the farm stand. That made me teary.
23:59It was the fact that we grew this stuff and people like it enough to want to buy it. Exactly. It's like, it's a sense of accomplishment. Yeah. It was just wonderful. And we haven't even had the farm stand open this summer as we've had nothing to put in it. I agree. Our 16 year old has special needs and he is such a great helper and he loves to help. And what you just said reminded me of the little bit of a greenhouse that we do have in the spring. And he.
24:29filled so many pots and we'd stand and talk at the wagon full of dirt filling pots. And he'd help my husband or I plant and water and it was just such an accomplishment. Same thing when people would, mom, someone's here buying plants. He just loved it when they would come and he'd see them walk to their car, he'd help them. And our other kids help too, but he's here more than everybody else. They have jobs and things going on. So it's been, I see what you mean because we can.
24:57we can relate to having people stop in. And then you get to talk to them, that's the best part. I mean, the people who've come even in the last two weeks to buy garlic, I'll just say to my husband, oh my gosh, this guy and his wife live on 41 acres in Webster and they do this and this and they have maple syrup. And like, you just learn so much about people. Just from a short conversation, and especially if they're buying to grow, they usually have chickens or some other thing going on at their place. So it's really fascinating to learn from.
25:27from people and I would never meet them if they weren't stopping over to get garlic. Yeah, that's why I love the podcast because I get to talk to people all over the world about what they're doing. It's so much fun. Awesome. Yeah, I want to listen to more of your episodes. I'm excited. Well there's over 150, so it may take you all to get through them. And my mom would be a good one. Barton Pumpkins, she would be a great one.
25:53I will look her up and message her and be like, hi, your daughter, Christy said I should talk to you. Definitely. And she's between us. She's by Union Hills. So she's here too. She's in this area. Okay, cool. Yeah, I feel like I'm either talking to people in this 30 or 40 mile radius from Losor or I'm talking to people in Virginia and the Carolinas. That seems to be the places I'm talking to people from most. And that's totally fine with me. I like a lot of people. But you are right there. There are many, many people, right?
26:22right by us. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. It's almost frightening how many people are doing these kind of things in this little bubble. And I don't... Frightening might be the wrong word. What do we know in our little bubble that other people don't know, I guess, is what I'm getting at. Yeah, I'm wondering the same thing right now. We're just smart. That's all there is to it.
26:50Well, I think we're a good distance from the cities. People do have maybe 10 acres or five or a little more room to grow, you know, a couple acres and more, some, you know, big farmers too. Mm hmm. And people just make it work. I mean, it's a very hardworking community. You know, my dad worked a full-time job and had 140 acres he farmed, which was small compared to some of the big farmers by us, but he didn't have the big equipment. He, he made do with the, you know, old planters and then.
27:17old falling apart combine, but he did it. I mean, it was important and he farmed with what he had. You know, a big farmer could afford a bigger combine and all the fancy stuff. And he made it work, but it was something he wanted to do, work the land plus work a job.
27:36Yeah, what did he grow? He had, well, we had pigs and corn. We had some green giant property for our people. Our green giant grew on some of our land. I think it was mainly corn, soybeans, soybeans and corn over by Union Hill. Yep. We are surrounded by a cornfield right now. And it's looking perfect. They're letting it stand and dry.
28:03I assume they're using it for, I don't know how it works. Is it, if they let it stand, it's silage or is that something else? I think maybe or else is it just everything's going late this year with, I don't know the way the weather has been. You know, July wasn't very hot. So we're kind of, everybody's waiting on tomatoes and it seemed like the corn has, I haven't seen, I don't know if I've seen anybody harvesting corn yet. Yeah. My husband saw soybeans being harvested.
28:32outside of St. Peter yesterday. So sure, they probably start with soybeans. But the ears of corn on these plants. Are you familiar with girl escapes? Is anybody on your... pardon? I was going to say the ears of corn on the corn in the field around us, they are humongous. They're gigantic. Oh good, because I've seen some fields that didn't look good at all. Yeah. I can't believe how great it did this year with the spring that we had and then the July that we had. So I don't know. Crazy.
29:02Well, that's great. And anything low, you know, was so, so wet for a while. So I really worried for farmers, but they're used to it. They take the good with the bad. That's how farmers are. That's how it works. Yeah. So you said garlic scapes. What about garlic scapes? Oh, I just didn't know if any of your other people talked about scapes. I mean, we love garlic scapes. You probably do too. You know, the kind of the flower. I have, I have talked with them a little bit about them. And I've never actually eaten a garlic scape that I know of because I haven't had access. I haven't been anywhere where I could get them.
29:33Sure, so when you plant your own garlic that you're waiting for in about mid-June or so, when the stock of the garlic, think of the scape as maybe like a green onion. And you'll see in the middle, there'll be one shoot that then curls. And when that curls, you can pick it and you snap it off pretty low to the ground. I can't remember if it's a few inches. And then you...
30:00can saute it like you would in a stir fry or with eggs, salad, soup. I mean, it's just kind of like a green onion and they're so, so tasty. One gal came last year and picked up garlic and she sells 400 pounds of scapes to a local meat markets or at a local meat market. I think she takes orders and they distribute it for her. And we had somebody call us and offer to buy all of our scapes. And we said, no, thanks. But we, the higher we freeze dry them and put them in our spices.
30:29But, um, you know, it's very tasty. So watch for your scapes. Now a soft neck will not produce a scape, but all the hard necks will. And when it curls, it's important to get, take, take it off so that the bulb can finish growing. If you don't take it off, you'll have smaller bulbs because then all of the energy will go into the scape, kind of the flower, and there's a bulb at the top of that too, and it's called a bulbill.
30:54And that would have maybe 50, 100, I guess I don't know, teeny little seeds in it. So we do leave some of ours because my husband wants to keep some of our bulbils, replant those, or plant those teeny little seeds that are like fourth of the size of your nail, not even fingernail, half a size or eighth of your fingernail. You plant those in the ground. The next year you get a ball and you plant that and the next year you should get a clove.
31:23So anyway, pick your scapes and then in June, three weeks later is when you can harvest your garlic, usually three, four weeks later, you can harvest the actual garlic. And then if you don't take off that scape, you will have a smaller bulb of garlic. So you wanna take it off and enjoy it. Okay, so I have one more question and I'm gonna cut you loose because I try to keep these to half an hour. If you leave the garlic,
31:52bulb in the ground for more than one season. Does it just keep growing and get bigger or does what happens to it? I have seen people post that online and it seems like it maybe starts to look a little misshapen like it might grow another another second bulb or I don't think it would grow like just the hugest bulb ever because maybe everybody would do that to have really big garlic or something.
32:17Um, that is a good question. I know, um, even this year, I think my husband pulled some. Yeah, they just kind of got left accidentally. And I think they were just maybe they added a leather little couple of cloves started growing, or they just look a little odd. I mean, I don't think it would hurt anything. Um, in fact, he harvested a whole handful of garlic that just, as we were harvesting, we dropped cloves and dropped bulbs.
32:42And we never, ever, ever mix up our kinds or anything. And so they just grew by our greenhouse. And then we just ate them or put them in the powder. If we don't know, we put them in our spice. We don't know what kind they are. But to answer your question as a great question, I think they would not just get bigger and be perfect. They would start to just look maybe a little ugly, for lack of a better word, just a little weird, but they would probably, they'd be fine to eat. Okay, the reason I asked is because I feel like onions and garlic are sort of like the lily family. Right.
33:11They're not, they're alliums, but same idea of how they grow. And we have lilies and they just spread. They just keep growing and they spread out. So I didn't know if garlic would spread or if it just stays one bulb. That's a great question because I wonder if the bulb bill at the top with the 50 or 100 little teeny, if those eventually would drop, if that's just the way nature intended that it would just kind of start to spread on its own.
33:39you know, because, you know, of course we take them off and we, we, um, you know, get involved, but if we didn't, I wonder if it would just kind of keep going like that. That's a, that'd be an interesting experiment. Yeah. I'm always curious about how nature does it, because if nature can do it better than I can, and it makes it easier for us, I'm going to let nature do what nature does. Cause I don't want to get in the middle of it if I don't have to, because nature always has a plan.
34:08I know and it's so fascinating how it even works. I mean, how does one clove turn into a bulb? I mean, how does, you know, bee pollinate? I mean, it's just all so, so fascinating. Yep, it's fun and it never stops. Like you could study until you were 200 years old if you lived that long and you still wouldn't know it all. So it's really neat. Awesome. All right, Kristy, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you. I appreciate you calling and.
34:37having us on. And I will definitely message your mom about her pumpkin place. She'll love that. She'll be great. All right. Thanks so much. Have a great day. Thank you, Mary. Have a super day. You too. Bye.
 

Working Aussies Homestead

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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 Jordyn Kelly in North Carolina at Working Aussies Homestead. Good morning, Jordyn. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm great. I am going to preface this entire episode by saying if you don't want to hear about
00:29Stop listening now because I am so excited to talk to Jordyn about what she does. Do you want to tell me about yourself and what you do, Jordyn? Yeah, absolutely. So we operate on an acre and a quarter in North Carolina between Raleigh and Fayetteville. And we raise working Australian shepherds. We use our dogs on our homestead to rotation and graze our small flock of Gulf Coast native sheep, as well as our chickens.
00:57But over the past few years, we've also had pigs and we still have rabbits. We've had goats before we had ducks. So a little bit of everything, but primarily our focus is working with our Australian shepherds. I wrote a book this past year. So herding on the homestead, start where you are. And I do public speaking and give herding demonstrations across the country to really help inspire.
01:26anybody to get started where they are with what they have using a working dog on their small homestead or farm or even a large farm. But just to really help showcase the versatility, all the ways that you can use a good working dog and how they're probably the best addition you can make for your homestead or farm. Fantastic. I'm so excited to talk to you. My first question is, can you tell me what
01:56that an Australian Shepherd puppy is gonna be good for herding right off the bat. And the reason I ask is because when we got Maggie, ours, she's a mini. And the lady that we got her from, who's a good friend, said that she was, that the breed is very people oriented, like they wanna be with their people, they wanna please their people, they want to love their people. And...
02:23Maggie was trying to herd us by walking behind our ankles and doing the diagonal walk from three days after we brought her home. So can you tell that they're going to be a good herding dog from the get go?
02:38I'm going to say yes and no. So with our puppies, we actually do instinct testing at five weeks old. So I will put them in with our stock. We've used turkeys in the past, and then we've also used our sheep and goats. And we do this to really help us determine which puppies need to go to a working home versus puppies that can go to more of just like an active family. Um, so yes, you can tell. But.
03:07There's a couple other factors that come into play to say, yes, this is going to be a working dog versus no. That's where the Australian Shepherd breed has started to become a lot more popular, but people want to breed them to be more like your golden retriever, where they just are like good in a family home versus the workability.
03:32Kind of a big controversial topic with some of the old timers and people who have been in the breed since the breed began 30 years ago is a lot of people want them to be watered down in terms of their workability. And so you don't see working Aussies as much anymore as you do like more pet Aussies that don't have that drive. So yes, you can tell. But I think.
04:01that it's important to.
04:05to especially like find breeders that are focusing on maintaining the workability and the breed if that makes sense.
04:14Sure, yeah. We did not get her to be a herding dog. We got her to be a watchdog. And as I've said on the podcast episodes many times, she is an excellent watchdog. She is the weirdest Australian Shepherd I've ever seen, met, hung out with. She's very calm in the house. And the minute she's outside, she's all go. So.
04:41We lucked out huge because we didn't want a crazy dog in the house all the time. And I know that you can train them to not be crazy, but we were a little concerned when our friend told us they could be kind of problematic with being bored. That they, that they would chew or they would destroy things. And she has been really good. And I listened to the podcast that you did with Jill Winger this morning. And.
05:10You are so incredibly knowledgeable about all of this. I really enjoyed it. So if you get all the way through this podcast, guys, go listen to that one too. I'll put it in the show notes because it's really, really great. So do you consider yourself an expert on the Australian shepherd breed? Because I have a couple of questions about the breed itself.
05:36I am a super humble person when it comes to dog knowledge. I've tried to make myself as knowledgeable as I possibly can. I don't know if I would label myself as expert. I have not been in the breed for 30 plus years. So that would just be my main downfall with that. But I have tried to really research and be knowledgeable in every aspect of.
06:05the breed itself and dog. So you're more than welcome to ask questions. I'm sure I have an answer for you. Okay. So the Australian Shepherd breed, what, how did it come to be? Do you know what, what dogs they're, they're from? Yes. So the Australian Shepherd breed is newer. And even though the, the name is Australian, it is a breed that was founded in the United States.
06:35In terms of the breed itself compared to other breeds, it's a very young breed. And it's only been around, you know, between 30 and 40 years. It's very young in comparison to like your German Shepherd that's been around for centuries. The Australian Shepherd is relatively new. And the name came from using these dogs to herd Australian sheep.
07:05The dogs themselves are comprised of several different breeds. That's how any breed of dog is really formed is they take qualities that they like of this breed, qualities that they like of this breed, and combine them together. And then breeding those dogs together, initially you have a lot of line breeding and inbreeding to create the standard for the breed, the characteristics that you want to stick.
07:35You have a little bit of collies, you have a little bit of cattle dogs in there for the bite inhibition that you want in these dogs because they do need to have a bite in their back pocket if needed. But there are certain traits that were bred into the breed for the purpose of the climate and conditions that they were used in. So these dogs were primarily used out in the Western United States.
08:05So you have, you know, big, open, you have a lot of open land out there. And so one quality, one characteristic that these dogs were bred for was to have taller in height than length in body because they needed to cover ground. So that's part of the breed standard is ability to cover ground.
08:35the length of their body. The natural bobtail was also bred into the breed because when you're out in that environment, you have a lot of thick brush and cacti. And typically the Australian Shepherd, if their tails are full in length and they're not docked within the first few days of birth, they are long and thick.
09:03And so can easily get caught, can easily get stepped on. And so that's why that was a part of the breed standard was docking tails or breeding dogs for natural bobtail gene. So there's just a lot of things that were bred into them for the purpose to be a nice versatile dog. So can cover ground, has a natural bobtail so that the tail's not getting caught in brush or stepped on.
09:33but then also has the ability to read the stock and use a bite when needed, but not, like that's not their first go-to when it comes to moving stock. So having that little bit of healer, but not so much that their first instinct is to go and bite the livestock in order to move them. Now the difference between like how collies work versus Australian shepherds is really the eye
10:02the use of the eye for moving the stock. The Australian Shepherd is referred to a loose-eyed, upright working breed. So they don't typically crouch when they're moving the livestock and they're not going to stare their stock and apply that pressure that way, which I find very useful on our small homestead because my dogs can get right up next to the livestock if I need them to.
10:28without applying so much pressure that it pushes my livestock through the fence. So really just kind of a little combination of all things good and put into this form of beautiful dogs with different colored eyes that come in four different colors. And then their coat is meant to be a medium length and so that they have that double coat, that undercoat.
10:54Um, a lot of times they're referred to as a wash and wear breed. So they're meant to be able to go out and work in the rain and then come in and be dry within a matter of minutes. Um, and I find that a lot more with my working line bred dogs versus like some of our dogs that have more of the show lines in them, um, that have the longer coat takes them longer to dry out versus. My shorter coat dogs, they, you know, dry out.
11:24very quickly, which is nice. You know, if they go out and get money, they come in and it all just falls off. So I can just vacuum it up. Um, so it's, it's really cool how the breed was founded and then how it's kind of transitioned into like this really cool working dog.
11:47Okay, that was a lot. Thank you. I'm sorry. No, that's great. I just didn't know when to jump in, so I just figured I'd let you tell me exactly what you needed to share about the dogs. So our dog has the fluffy curly coat on the top of her back, and then along her ribs she's got the short coat, so she looks really funny a lot of the time. And she dries off probably in...
12:16half the time that your working dogs dry off. The other thing I was gonna ask you about is these dogs are really athletic and they can be shown doing like tricks and stuff, yes? Yes. Yes, Maggie is terribly athletic and it confuses me sometimes because she's such a loaf in the house but her favorite thing to play is frisbee.
12:45And she catches the frisbee out of the air like she's been doing it her whole life, like somebody taught her how to do it. And so is there, I don't know what the right way to say this is, is there a market for show Aussies? Like is it a thing that people are very into because I don't know? Yes. So that's kind of where we see, especially recently, there's a huge breed.
13:15lit. And, you know, of course, being an Australian Shepherd enthusiast, I'm a part of a lot of different like groups on Facebook and whatnot. And we're a part of the Australian Shepherd Club of America, so ASCA. And they're just, there's a lot of controversial conversations, especially recently. There's kind of a lot of drama going on with
13:44the Australian Shepherd Club of America as of the last two to three years, but especially recently they've had a lot of issues with the board. But with that, there's been a big focus on should there be different classifications within the breed? So the working Australian Shepherd versus the Australian Shepherd in terms of like a show dog specifically. So that's, there's some breeders.
14:14pedigrees, that's where there's so much that we can dive into just focusing on the breed itself is there are breeders who specifically breed for dogs that are going to win in the show ring, but not necessarily ever step foot out at a field trial. And so the controversial thing is you should have a dog that should be able to do both go and win in the ring, but then also go and win high and fast.
14:44a herding dog triangle. So there are people who specifically want the fluffier, cuter looking Australian Shepherd. And there's a lot of people who look at my dogs and go, what breed is that? Because I have more of the working line bred. So I have the shorter coat dogs that maybe look a little lankier. And it just, it really is where I encourage people if you're wanting to.
15:14um, has a working dog, that dog needs to come from working farms. And there's really just that, that difference. There is a market for the show or fluffier puppies, but those are really going more to like pet companion homes, uh, versus going to working farms. Yup, exactly. Um, Maggie's parents are both working dogs. They work the farm or
15:40Her dad actually passed away a year or so ago, which we're very sad about, but mom is still kicking, still around. She just had puppies Monday morning at 4 a.m. so Maggie's a big sister again. And yeah, oh pictures, oh just kills me. I want another one, but I really don't want another one. Maggie's perfect. We're sticking with her for now. I understand. But her dad was
16:07He would have heard the sheep that they have. He would have heard the cattle they have. And he was a really thick, stocky, mini Australian shepherd. He probably weighed 35 to 40 pounds. And that's on the high end of a mini. And he did a great job. And mom does the same thing, but in a slightly different way. It's really interesting. You can have two working dogs that are a basically mated pair. And they will.
16:36they will do their jobs differently. They will have their own style from what I saw. Yeah, and that's another thing is like, there's a lot of controversy over the Mini Aussie is really supposed to be the miniature American Shepherd because it's like a different breed. Whereas the Australian Shepherd is not supposed to come in a size variance. So there were some breeders
17:06breeding for larger Australian chakras, who have 65, 75, 70, 80 pound dogs. They're not meant to be that large, but they're also not meant to be smaller than 30 pounds. They're meant to be a medium breed. And so that, you know, it's so interesting to watch those conversations take place because there are people out there who are like, oh, my Aussies are bigger boned, they're taller. There's, you know,
17:34There's a breed standard that says they're not meant to be smaller or bigger than a certain height or a certain weight. But the thing is, part of the standard too is size. If you have a quality dog, then the size variation is kind of not considered as much. Right. Yeah. We keep saying that Maggie is probably just a small standard.
18:03Australian Shepherd because she weighs 35 pounds and she's just below my knee and I'm five foot nine so if she's a mini American Shepherd, she's a big mini and My girls are 35 pounds. Yeah, I have 36 pounds. Yeah, so she's she's right in the right weight to be a smaller standard and I Know that my friends have the papers from Maggie's
18:33grandparents. They didn't parent, they didn't paper Maggie's parents, but they have the papers from the parents of Maggie's parents. Wow, that was a lot. Sorry. And they are, they are certified or officially called on the paperwork, many Australian shepherds. So it gets real weird with the American versus Australian shepherds. Yeah. And that's where like there are some
19:02not as, um, not as consistent with their record keeping. And so there's some registries that are, um, like not just not taken seriously. If that makes sense. And so there's a lot of controversy in the dog world with that as well as, um,
19:26you know, if the dogs are not registered through the parent club, like the Australian Shepherd Club of America, then is the registry valid? If that makes sense. Does it mean anything? Yeah. Right. Whereas, so like the Australian Shepherd Club of America, in order to have your dog registered with them, your dog must be DNA genetically verified to be a purebred Australian Shepherd.
19:52Which is different than any other registry because they don't always require that. And the other thing is it just depends on whether it matters to the person who is going to take care of that dog for the rest of its life. For us it didn't matter. We just wanted a puppy. Our friends happened to have these dogs who we had met who had great temperaments, who were healthy, who were strong.
20:20When I found out that Daisy was pregnant with Maggie's first litter, which was Maggie's litter, I put my hat in the ring and said, I would love to be the owner of one of the pups when they're ready. And will you trust me, basically, to take this dog on? And my friend was like, of course, of course. And we had no idea how to raise a dog from puppy. My husband and I had never had a puppy. So it was very much a learning experience for us.
20:50if you're looking for that papering or certification or classification or whatever, I guess you just have to do your research. Yes. And some of that, really, a lot of people will say, well, the registration doesn't matter, the papers don't matter. It costs $25 to register a dog. So it's not...
21:15necessarily the cost that's involved. It's more of like you are breeding to register dogs that adhere to the breed standard to maintain the breed standard. That's a big thing with a lot of puppies that come in and people will say, oh, I have an Australian Fepard and looking at it, you're like, I'm not so sure that that's what you actually have.
21:46And the purpose of going through a breeder who has their dogs registered, has done genetic health testing, has done ORFAs, they have done everything to ensure that those dogs are absolutely sound so that the puppies are not born into automatically having issues later on in life. And that's where just kind of the...
22:15the mindset is of, it's not necessarily does it matter, but it's what quality of puppies are you producing? If that makes sense. Yes, and when I say the way I'm using matters is to us, it was important that we knew Maggie's parents and what kind of dogs they were, but Maggie is never going to reproduce. She's not going to show.
22:44any of those things where that would be required. And so I guess what I'm saying is if you're going to show your dog or you need them to have that clout of being papered and that I'm not using the right words. You said it's more record keeping is really what the registration is. It's the record keeping. These two dogs had these puppies.
23:14issues come up later on, like that is where that you can track through a pedigree, you know, dogs that had specific genetic issues or genetic markers for whatever. And so that's really just the importance of the pedigree is that record keeping that ability to look back and go, these characteristics came from this dog or, you know, especially like in border collies, it's really important to know which lines carry epilepsy.
23:43So that you aren't breeding those lines into your program. So that later on you're not having issues with two and three year old dogs getting epilepsy because that's a huge issue in the breed. So that's really just the primary importance of the pedigree and registration is just more of the record keeping. Okay, yes, exactly. Thank you. I was getting way, way in the weeds there. Sorry.
24:10I'm, it's terrible because I have done a lot of research on my dog because I love her beyond measure. But she's a quote unquote mini Australian shepherd. So I haven't really looked into the Australian shepherd stuff as far as I probably should considering she's probably actually a standard and just on the smaller end. So I need to do some more research on Australian shepherds. But my parents have a border collie.
24:40It's really interesting to me how much the border collie faces and the Australian shepherd faces look almost identical. The shape of their nose, the look in their eyes, the shape of their ears, their head, they look very much alike and they are not the same breed. Yeah, and that's really where it just comes down to the characteristics too. Yeah.
25:10Um, like a lot of people think one of my dogs looks like a Britney, uh, just primarily because of her coloring and she has the little ticking on her nose. But you know, a lot of times, like one of our younger puppies that we have, she, both of her ears go fully forward and a lot of people ask if she's a Labrador mix. And just because of her ear set. And so it's just.
25:39It's so interesting how similar different breeds look alike for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Um, our dog, basically I have been with his dog since she was one day shy of eight weeks because I'm an at home person. So I have been the one with her the entire time. And as I've watched her grow and change, I have seen like hints of beagle.
26:07to her the way she looks. I've seen Corgi, I've seen Lab. So you know it's just how you see other breeds and then you you sort of superimpose that on your dog if they show any any likeness to that other breed. And I told my husband I said we should have named her Bandit not Maggie after she'd been Maggie for like six months. And he said why and I said because she's got this thing about her face where if you see her 30 feet away
26:36she looks like she has a mask. We should have named her Bandit. And he says she's not a raccoon. And I had not seen raccoon in her, but the minute he said it, I was like, oh yeah, I could see her. I could see raccoon in her and hadn't even thought of it. So it's all perception and perspective, and they look different to you when they're up close. Like, I don't think she's a big dog.
27:05When she's next to me, she seems small. But if she's out in the yard running around, she looks twice her size. And I'm like, why does she look so big outside? It's just weird, I don't know. Anyway, we've been talking for 27 minutes, Jordan. I haven't even asked you about your book. Tell me about the book. Yes, so the book I really wrote, because of course I've read a lot of different hurting books, but...
27:32Getting into hurting can seem really intimidating. There's a lot of gatekeeping when it comes to getting started. A lot of times if you're wanting to get into it, you know, there's this advice given over here, this advice given over here, there's online series, but there's also, you know, we live in the day and age where you can access anything at any time, the roofing or chips. The thing with hurting is you
27:59to put the miles on. It has to be something you do in person. You can't just read about it. You can't just watch a video, go out and be good. And the thing with that is it can be very intimidating because you don't, you know, you're taking this dog out that is technically a predator and teaching it how to move prey. And so it can be very intimidating, especially like if you are a failure person like myself.
28:29And so I really wrote the book in order to help inspire people to just start that, you know, I was that fear of failure person where I waited until I had a one year old dog. And then I went to a very well known trainer in our area. We attended, you know, hurting lessons once a week, we would go and it, you know, it was a two hour drive one way. And so it was a whole day thing for us to go to a hurting lesson.
29:00And so, but I did that with her. I did everything the right way. I took her to trials, you know, she did great. And then with her daughter, I started when she was 10 weeks old, working on stock. And a lot of times people say, Oh, well, you know, don't touch a dog until it's at least a year old. So that way it's mentally and physically mature enough to work with stock correctly. But I wanted to just share my experiences.
29:28and say, you don't necessarily have to do that. If you have somebody in your area that does herding training, that is worth what you pay them, absolutely do that. But if you don't have that, that's okay too. So my book is titled Herding on the Homestead Start Where You Are, and I share a lot of experiences, but I also tried to kind of cover all of the bases of this is why different breeds matter.
29:55This is why and what you would look for in a puppy. This is what your foundational training looks like. This is what teaching working manners looks like. This is what life's junk introduction looks like. And then this is what your initial lessons that you're gonna do with your dog looks like, but then also how animal husbandry plays into that. So it's really like a great book for anybody who wants to get into herding someday.
30:23or even if they have a dog or even if they're ready to do it now. So is it like a primer sort of? Somewhat but then also, you know, for somebody who's already getting into it to just help to just help really be encouragement. You know, I share a lot of instances where things did not go well with my dogs and how I worked around that.
30:52A lot of times, if you are working with your own livestock, you've got a lot on the line. There's a big risk because you're working with a dog that could potentially kill one of your animals just if the situation was wrong in any capacity. There's always that risk. But also, if it seems like too much.
31:22That's where I wanted to be encouraging and say, this is what you can do to help with a lot of these different behaviors. And you heard me talk about some of that on Jill's podcast of, you know, there's a lot of tools in your tool belt that can help with a variety of things. Yes, exactly. I feel like the puppies in this breed are very much like...
31:47toddlers, they are like sponges. They want to learn, they want to do what you're teaching them and asking of them. And so why is it a bad idea to start training them as puppies? I mean, that's what I keep hearing. And I'm like, we taught Maggie to sit and lay down in like three minutes with a couple of treats when she was nine weeks old. Like it took no time at all.
32:17So if you have stock that can be rougher on a dog, like that's where you could put a puppy in with, you know, the wrong goat and that puppy loses all confidence to work because it gets head butted by the goat. And so that's really like when you're working with a puppy of herding breed, I'm not putting them in a ring and expecting them to go do anything.
32:44I'm going to walk around the ring with the livestock, with the puppy, and just be there to help ensure a smooth interaction. But I'm not putting a puppy in with a bunch of goats and letting my goats just invite the puppy to the greenhouse. So that's kind of like where that comes with is it takes a lot of management to work with a puppy that is one day going to work with livestock.
33:15A good example of this, last week I had my sheep out, they were just kind of free ranging. And my husband and I were working in the garden. And so we had our two youngest puppies out there, three and a half months and four months old. And they were just hanging out watching us work in the garden. And so I was like, you know, the sheep are fine to be out. They didn't know where the sheep were. Well, we hear a commotion and I look over and my sheep are just running to the barn. And I was like, what in the world?
33:45And I look and Snips, the youngest, who's three and a half months old, is just over there hurting them by herself. And I was like, okay, girlfriend, come here, come here. We don't need to work them. Like the sheep are being fine, out grazing by themselves. But that is where she has watched her mom and her big sister Rogue put the sheep in the barn. And so she has learned that behavior from watching the other dogs do it. But I'm not.
34:14expecting her to be able to do that by herself. Not at this point at the age that she is. Yes and the one thing that I tell everybody who's considering getting this particular breed of dog, whether it's a mini or a standard, is these dogs are incredibly intelligent and they really do learn fast and whatever they see they will they will try to copy it.
34:45Oh yeah, absolutely. Sometimes we, uh, we'll, we'll share our experiences raising puppies is like, we want them to be problem solvers. So we encourage that a lot, but sometimes we have to really get creative on how we think ahead of them of if we even have one little inkling of, Hmm, they might get into that, odds are they probably will.
35:10And that is one thing that we really like vouch for with new puppy parents too, is they'll complain, oh my gosh, they chewed up another pair of shoes. Well, were the shoes out in a place that your puppy had access to them? Okay, then they were not set up for success. And it's really, you have to set those puppies up for success because they're going to be smart, they're going to check things out, they're going to figure out, ooh, this is really fun to chew on and pretty tasty.
35:38But if you don't give them access to that, then they're not going to learn that behavior. Right. We say Maggie's too smart for her own good all the time. And we try not to set her up to fail. And we were really lucky because we got her very shortly after we moved into our new home. And we hadn't really gotten settled into the new home yet. So there was no clutter around for her to get in the middle of and chew on and get in trouble with.
36:08So I tell people if they're gonna get a puppy, make sure they have a space that the puppy can be in and set them up for success. Don't leave your shoes where the dog can chew them up. Don't have cords from your computer or your cell phone hanging around because they will eat them. And it's not- And if you have a destructive puppy and you're like, man, I've tried everything, try a kennel. Try just a crate. It works wonders.
36:38I will always be an advocate for crate training. If you're anybody but Maggie, it works great. We did that. We did that for six days in a row when we brought her home. What has been the issue there? Well now she loves her crate. She's three years and a month or so old. But we basically would sit down with her and let her go in and out. And she liked her kennel as long as the door wasn't shut.
37:07And then we would put her in the kennel at night and she would cry and bark and whine all night long. And then you would let her out, wouldn't you? No, we did not let her out. Didn't even go check on her, which was probably part of the problem. But after six nights of no sleep, we were like, never mind, she can just sleep with us because we were walking zombies. Now, she trains you well. Yeah. Now she loves her crate and she actually has the run of the house at night. And she
37:35She sleeps on her kennel or she sleeps on the chair downstairs. She's totally fine having the run of the house, but she's also, like I said, three years old. She's not a puppy anymore. But we didn't have much luck with crate training at all with her. Yeah. With puppies, you have to kind of get some thick skin with it and say, nope, we're going to do this. We're going to go in there. That's where...
38:01You know, a lot of times these dogs are so smart, they'll train you. And sometimes you don't realize it. And, you know, until they, they do something specific that gets a specific reaction or a specific response from you. And that is a great example of those dogs have learned if they do this, they get that response and that was the response they wanted.
38:27Uh-huh and we tried not to do that and we failed. I don't know what we did wrong, but we failed And i'm not gonna lie not gonna lie having a five pound cute little fluffball In you know on your shoulder when you wake up is is not the most horrible experience. So we weren't upset about it But the only issue then is if you have a pushy dog that does that then when it's 50 pounds And it's not as cute and fun anymore
38:56So my advice is always if you don't want them to do that as an adult, don't let them do it as a puppy. Yeah, we lucked out because she's very good now about not jumping on us on our bed in the morning. She doesn't have to. She's asleep when I get up at 5 a.m. So she doesn't have to come yell at me. If she's yelling at me, if she's jumping on me in the middle of the night, something is very wrong. Yeah, well good. I'm glad that she's worked out for you.
39:27Yeah, she's fantastic. Like, the minute I found out what you do, I was like, oh my god, another person who loves Australian Shepherds probably more than I do. We have 10, so it's a little bit of a bias at this point. Uh-huh. If I could have 10, I would have 10, but number one, that's a lot of dogs, and number two, I can't afford to feed them.
39:53So we don't have that. We feed them partially from the homestead. So that helps a lot. Yeah. Yup. I can't imagine having 10. Like, Maggie is one. And she's so loud when she's watchdogging that I can't imagine having five of them barking at the same time. It would kill me. Yeah. It does take a lot of training.
40:19And it takes a lot of management, but that's where, like, especially with having 10, if I, and these dogs are smart enough. So if I say, Hey, if you do that one more time, you're going up. That's, that's all I need to say in order for them to be like, okay, I'll stop doing that. Um, and we will board friends and families dogs. And so we might have 15, 16 dogs at a time, but
40:46Honestly, like having 10 feels like most people's five. Like if we had different breeds of dogs and we had five dogs, that's what our 10 Australian shepherds feel like because they just, you know, like you said, they want to be wherever their people are. And so we have 10 dogs that love to be wherever we are. So it doesn't seem like a lot of dogs. Yeah. The, the friend that we got Maggie from warned us that they are Velcro dogs.
41:13And I didn't quite understand how serious she meant that because Maggie hates not being with us. Like, we'll let her out of the house on her lead. We live on a very busy road, so she does not have the run of the property without being tied because she would end up dead and that is not a good ending for her. But if she's outside by herself, she kind of goes and checks out the cats if they're out there. She goes potty.
41:39She's out for maybe five ten minutes by herself and she is right back up on the steps doing the bark that lets us know That she misses us and wants to come in because we're in the house So yeah, they're very Their people centered. They don't want to be with other people. They want to be with their family
42:00or at least in our case. So what do you love best about these dogs? Because clearly you love them, but what's your favorite thing about the Australian Shepherd? Honestly, their goofiness and the companionship that they give. They just, there's not a single day that goes by where they don't make us laugh. But then also like their intuition.
42:28with us in different situations. You know, that's one of the things I talk about in my book is just how smart these dogs are that they learn the routine of everything. So that's what makes them such a great working dog is they go, well, that's out of place, that needs to go back up. And you know, being so in tune with their people, you know, when we have like a sad day.
42:57they give us a lot more attention and they really want to help cheer us up. Obviously, having livestock, you have dead stock sometimes and I'm the emotional person and so all of our dogs will come and just push themselves under my arm so that I am focused more on them and give them more attention. But then also just...
43:25if there's something going wrong, like they try their hardest to figure out how they can help make it better. And I just, I really appreciate that, you know, and when, when you're homesteading, when you're farming, it can be a very lonely thing. It's hard to find people that have the same interests, have the same passions as you that live next door, you know? So most of our friends are at least an hour, hour and a half away. And
43:56it can get kind of lonely. And so it's nice to have such smart dogs that want to be wherever we are doing what we're doing and have just that companionship. Because you know, they're smart enough dogs, you can have a full conversation with them and they understand. Yes, and they will have conversations with you too. I did not know that dogs can actually talk to you with their body language and their faces and their movements.
44:26until we got Maggie. Oh yeah. And Austrian Shepherd, they're not subtle about it. She... No, no, and she... I keep trying to explain this to people, and people who don't know this breed do not quite understand it, but Maggie has these head tilts that she does when we are talking to her, where you can just see she's trying to pick out the words that she knows, and the minute she hears one that she
44:55the head comes back up because you're like, oh, that's not an important word. But if she hears treat or she hears frisbee or she hears dad, because she loves my husband, my husband is dead. Her head just goes aside like, yes, I'm listening. And there's a routine at dinnertime because we refused to have a dog that begged for people food. And so the routine at dinnertime is that she gets her food, she gets water.
45:21And then we eat our dinner, she eats her dinner, so she's not interested in what we're eating. And then when we're done, our vet recommended we put her on a joint support supplement because her legs are short, because she's small. And these dogs have issues with their joints. And it's all good stuff, it's all natural. And I've read the label, I'm very cool with giving her this stuff. And so she gets half. Which is so interesting, because for a three-year-old dog, I wouldn't.
45:49anticipate putting her on a joint supplement at that age? She had, she hurt herself at like nine, ten months. I do not know how it happened but she was holding her back leg up and we of course panicked and took her to the vet because you know we're new puppy owners and the vet said that because she's, she's got short legs and a fairly substantial body and she's not fat.
46:16but she's real solid that she was concerned about a joint issue or a congenital joint issue I guess and that these joint support supplements tend to help. And I was like, is it going to hurt her to give them to her? She said no. I said, is it going to hurt her to not give them to her? And she said no. And I said, okay, well, let's give these to her and see if it helps. And she was back to normal in a week. So she was fine.
46:46But I figured that the ingredients aren't gonna hurt her and they're actually gonna help her because I know what they are and know what they do. So she gets half of one of these tablets after dinner and she gets her dental life for her teeth to keep her teeth clean. Because she's not chewing on bones, she's not doing that. And so she knows that she gets these things after she eats her dinner. And if we are busy, she is right under the cabinet where her joint support supplement tablets are.
47:15and she's just sitting there prettily waiting. And then as soon as she gets that, she goes right to the pantry closet door and sits and waits so she gets her dental aid. They are so directed by routine, it is crazy. And obviously you have a routine on your farm, they are working dogs, but they are just in general, routine driven animals.
47:37Yeah. Definitely. And with as many as we have, I always say that dogs are also better not knowing the true routine. So like being unpredictable can also be beneficial for dogs like this. Like the routine is the same with the chores. But life in general, you know, my dogs don't know what the usual routine is because our life is not the same routine every day.
48:06Yeah, but if you do have a routine, they pick it up really quickly. It's frightening. So anyway, I could literally talk with you all day about your dogs and about Maggie. I, we could be here till midnight tonight, but that's not going to happen. Jordan, I am so happy that you took the time to talk with me. And I know we didn't get real in depth, but I mostly just wanted to, to talk about the
48:32how great it is to have these dogs because they are fabulous and I think we covered that. So absolutely. All right. And if you guys want more information about the actual ins and outs and the details of the working dog part, go listen to Jordan's interview with Jill, what is Jill Winger because it is really good. I'll put it in the show notes.
49:00If there's anything else that you have questions about, you can go to our website. It's just work We also have a YouTube channel and then we're on Facebook and Instagram as well. Awesome. I will put that in the show notes too and that way people don't have to try to remember it from the last part of the interview. All right, Jordyn, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day. You too.
 
 

Thunder Ridge Ranch

Today I'm talking with Sven and Jania at Thunder Ridge Ranch.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at a tiny homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm chatting with Sven and Jania at Thunder Ridge Farm Ranch. Good morning, you guys. Good morning. How are you? We are well and yourself? I'm good. You're in Kentucky? Eastern Kentucky. Yes, ma'am. Awesome.
00:28I have never been and I've talked to a lot of people there and I feel like I should make a trip someday because it sounds really pretty. The site certainly has a lot to offer. Yeah. So, tell me about yourselves and what you guys do. Well, we are a military family. I spent three years in the military. A year of that I spent away from my family overseas in Afghanistan. Got back and things just didn't quite seem right.
00:57which kind of led me down a series of rabbit holes and kind of pushed us as a family towards a bit in a sense self-sufficiency and whatnot and that that path itself has kind of led us to more of a community sufficiency mindset and so we really wanted to
01:20be able to provide our own food and make sure that everything that we're eating was whole and good for us and none of the toxins that you find in a lot of foods that you find on the market shelves these days.
01:35Awesome. So number one, thank you for your service. I'm sorry that you got injured in Afghanistan. That sucks. And without getting both of us in trouble, what kinds of things did you notice when you got back? It just, it just didn't feel, it almost felt like a prank. It didn't really feel like the States. It felt like we had landed somewhere else and it was some sort of a test. Just, I guess because I had spent the year away.
02:05coming back, the atmosphere was noticeably different. It felt darker, it didn't feel like the free, happy place that it used to be. And then I started realizing that we've been under a lot of propaganda and indoctrination, just to put it as loosely as I can, without like saying that's in trouble. Yes, thank you.
02:31I really want to know more but I don't want to get into it on the podcast because I have this awful feeling that it would not go well for either of us. Okay. So yeah, obviously growing things yourself and raising animals yourself, you have control. You know what you're putting on your produce or in your dirt or feeding your animals. So yay, that's a good thing. So what do you raise?
03:02We started off in 2021 with 10 chickens. And as you know, chicken math. So we now have over 50 or 60 birds now we've kind of lost count. 2022 we added in a honeybee hive. We're now up to three. And we also added heritage breed turkeys. And then
03:30Let's see, that would have to 2022, 2023. 2023, we focused more on clearing up the land and preparing it for a lot for bigger livestock. And then 2024 this year, we added ducks, quail, hay sheep and pasture pigs. Very nice. We had friends over yesterday and
03:59They were talking about how they're going to be getting some poultry birds Next spring and they're talking about it and out of the blue They're like do you guys want to go in with us on it and we can keep them at our house and you guys can Come over in Butcher and once time and we all win and I was like yes, that would be amazing Cuz I don't I don't want to deal with poultry not poultry birds. I'm sorry meat birds. I said it wrong
04:25But I don't want to deal with meat birds at our place. We don't have a lot of room, but they have more room than we do. So if you can do it all yourself on your property, that's great. But the other thing that works is collaboration with like-minded people. Absolutely. And that's where that community sufficiency kind of kicks in is working as a community to work towards common goals and everybody wins as a result. Yeah.
04:51We gave them a whole bunch of stuff last summer from our garden for their goats because goats love leftover stuff from the garden.
05:03Absolutely. So that's one thing that we do is take our fresh scraps and feed them to the hogs. And sometimes the sheep will get some as you know, let's say for the sheep. And we like to try and garden extra produce that isn't necessarily for us to eat, but is good for the chickens or for the sheep or the pigs. We like researching what's good for them, what are the benefits of everything and
05:32On that note, we've also studied just the plants and whatnot that are on our property and we're still learning this kind of lifestyle. We were always learning. Once you stop learning, you stop growing. Yes. So we've tried to really learn about what is around us. How many different ways can we use it? What's the benefit of it? Is there a benefit of it or is it something that we can get rid of and focus on more important things?
06:02Yeah, so is this an all day, every day kind of thing for you guys? More or less, I'm medically retired. So I'm basically, I was home with the kids and we homeschooled them as well. So they're usually done about this time. And then they have the rest of the day to play, take care of chores and help out around the farm. The wife, she recently...
06:28was able to step down this year down to three days a week. So that's been a huge blessing. That brings her home now four days of the week to help out on the farm. So we've been able to do a lot more this year than years past. But that's exactly what we're working for is just basically living on the farm, working on the farm, and helping up the community and then just taking care of our basic needs. Wonderful. I love that.
06:57Um, so were you interested in this lifestyle before you went into the military? Uh, actually not. Um, I grew up out in the country. Um, my parents were bird farmers. Uh, my wife, uh, she grew up, uh, she, she was born in, in, uh, in Idaho and her parents raised, uh, horses, cattle, pigs, uh, chicken, her grandmother garden. Uh, my mom tried to garden. She did not have the green thumb.
07:28And then my parents and I used to play through a different live, or excuse me, poultry. So we both kind of grew up with the lifestyle. But as far as wanting a farm, my wife always wanted cows ever since I first met her. I was, me growing up, I was told my mom, I'm not a country boy. I met for the city. And so the first thing I did was I moved out and about a month after I graduated high school, I moved up to Denver, Colorado. And.
07:57started going to college up there and started doing the same thing and very quickly found out that I'm not, I can survive in the city. I'm definitely not a city boy. So I've also moved to smaller and smaller communities and then now being at the military and having a little bit more freedom to kind of do what we wanted to do. We've kind of just kind of navigated down to this path, especially with the in mind of the rabbit holes I mentioned earlier.
08:27Yes. Okay. Jenea, I'm right there with you about cows. I freaking love cows. Me too. I think that they are adorable, number one, especially the calves. We call them grass puppies here because they're, they look like little dogs out in the field in springtime. And I, I like, I really like milk. I like milk to drink. I like milk for what we can make out of it. I would love to have a cow, but we don't have room for one. So.
08:56right there with you on the loving cows thing.
09:00That's one thing I don't know if you wrote too much notice in our logo or not. That's 1 animal that we have on our logo that we haven't quite attained yet is the cow. 1 of the cows we're interested in getting is the silence. And then we would also like to have a product of Jersey or just any kind of breed.
09:22Yes, for butter and cheese and yogurt. Oh my God, and ice cream? Yes. One animal we thought we would never want or have interest in is actually goat. However, we are actually considering adding goat to the farm as well. For the milk itself, you can make cheeses and whatnot from that, but our main focus of why would we want the goat is for their milk to make.
09:52homemade soaps. Yes, have you done it before? We have not done it before but we do have a really good friend who's got a couple two three or so years experience in it and she's given us that note note note note charge just graciously and generously given us all the information that we need to and continue to support once we once we go down and navigate that road.
10:20We do know we want to do it with beef tallow, the goats milk, and then we have a wood stove we burn in the winter and we'll burn just hardwood in the wood stove, you know, when we burn the hardwoods. And then we'll take that ash and we're collecting it right now so that once we get started, we can make our own lye using that ash. Awesome.
10:49cold process lye soap yet. I'm going to give you a couple hints because we make it. Number one, be really careful because lye hurts when it gets on your skin. So pay attention because it does sting like crazy and it can really, really hurt you if you're not careful. Goggles are a great thing so it doesn't splash up into your eyes. And if, God forbid, your soap seizes, we've had our soap seize like twice when we're stirring it, which basically it
11:19clumpy and it doesn't stir anymore and it will not become the soap you want. You can melt it down and keep going but it's kind of a pain in the butt. So you got to make a choice whether you want to deal with the pain in the butt part of it or you just want to toss that batch and start again. So those are my hints for you guys for soap making. Thank you. We appreciate that. Yeah and I love our soap. Homemade soap is the best soap ever.
11:48It's really... We've grown to love it. It's basically the only soap that we use throughout the house. We have goat milk and beef towel soap, stays in all the sinks. It's all that we use in the showers and the tub, even for our youngest. That was one thing that we were really shocked to kind of experience. We had our youngest, and we would experience where she would eat foods with say like red 40 in it.
12:16and she would just be off the wall for 24 or 48 hours. And then we leaned her off of that and we stopped buying anything that had the dyes in it. And then every other day we would notice that she would spike back up and do the same thing all over. And we're like, we took all the foods out. I don't understand why this is happening. And then one day the wife was bathing her in the tub and she just happened to turn the children's body wash.
12:43over and read the ingredients and there was red Florida Lake right there on the back. And we were just astounded that you know it's not just it's not just the foods but they're putting it in just about everything. Yeah, there's bad stuff in everything unless you make it yourself and and you got to make sure the ingredients you're you're getting if you have to buy ingredients that you didn't make you got to make sure they don't have bad stuff in them too. Right. So.
13:13It sucks. I don't have a ton of allergies. It does, but at the same time, it's not being able to return to the roots.
13:23I'm sorry, you blanked out there. Say it again. I was just saying, what did I say now? It's a real blessing in a sense, you know, it does suck, but it's also a blessing that we're able to return to our roots and kind of live like our ancestors. Oh, for sure, yes, absolutely. If we didn't have the old fashioned alternatives, I don't know what a lot of people would be doing. Exactly.
13:54So I'm right there with you. You're preaching to the choir this morning. So, I'm trying to think. Did you know that you can use the tallow to make bombs for your dry skin too? We did. There's actually, there's quite a few different things that you can do with the beef tallow. And then likewise with, since we have the honeybees, we can use the wax for a lot of stuff as well for the bombs and sands and. Yeah.
14:23All sorts of candles, all sorts of different things that we can. Yeah, you just got to do research and dive in and be ready to explore and learn new things.
14:39Yeah, and you got to have time and it sounds like you have time. So that's a blessing right there. Yes. That's the problem that everybody has is either everybody has time, but they don't have the money or they have the money and they don't have the time. Yeah. Understand where we're at that point too here because my husband had last summer off, he quit his old job and was looking for a new job and we got so many things accomplished last summer and then discovered that.
15:08what we were doing wasn't gonna support us enough, so he had to go back to work. And we haven't gotten as many things accomplished this summer as we did last summer, so we're trying to figure out how to make this place work better and more efficiently so that he can go back to not having a jobby job. Because jobby jobs suck your time, suck your soul, and it's a necessary evil right now, but we're trying to figure out how to make it an unnecessary evil, like he doesn't have to keep doing it.
15:39Yeah, that's the struggle that we all face. We're very blessed in the fact that I am disabled and I do draw the check from the VA. It is of course, it is a negative, but at the same time, I'm still able to do some things. It might take me longer to do it than what it would otherwise take me at this age, but it's a blessing to have that income so that the wife can afford to step back from working a real job.
16:09and we can all work together on the farm. And we've also, this year was our first year with the farmers market, and that's helping out a good deal as well. Obviously we're not getting rich at the farmers market, but it is additional income, and it's the first year that we're actually generating income from the farm. So that's been a real incredible experience this year as we continue to move forward. Do you enjoy doing the farmers market?
16:38We do. We like, you get some random people, you know, throughout the summer, but you do get your regulars and you see the consistent people who are coming week by week or every other week or whatever they might be doing. And you build these relationships with these people and you get to know them some. Then, of course, there's the vendors that you work with as well. And so you're forming all these, you know, these relationships with them. And then, you know, you can learn.
17:07all sorts of different tips and tricks of the trade from people that have been doing it longer or maybe even some from some that just got into it, but they've had a different perspective and a different walk that's revealed to them things that even people that have been going at it for a few years like ourselves haven't experienced. So we can all learn something from each other. Yes, that's the beauty of having reasonable human beings in your life who want to know you and wants to want to share their experience with you.
17:38Absolutely. Okay, so what's your favorite thing about your branch? What do you love the best?
17:53Um, there's so much to pick from this. It's really hard to narrow it down to just one. Okay.
18:03Um...
18:10I guess I would say that the beauty of the land that we've been blessed to live on, we have a beautiful 24 acres, basically rolling hills. We live basically on the top of a ridge and the property kind of rolls down towards the bottoms and so we have at the very, not the very bottom, but towards the very bottom in the back 40, we got a spot we like to call the low aces and we have a little waterfall and a little spot where the water pools above the slate.
18:39And the kids really love it in the summer. They can splash around and cool off in the winter. They pull the icicles off from the rock wall. So that's one thing that we really enjoy. It's a real peaceful and serene environment. I would say for number two, we also have a sawmill and I would say that's probably our second favorite thing here on the farm is.
19:09just the ability to drop trees and then throw it on a piece of machinery and turn it into lumber that we can use to craft building, bridges. I built a toy box. On the agenda is to build the kids a new bunk bed, and we're also discussing even building ourselves our own couch. So just really neat to be able to have these kind of technological advantages and tools to provide.
19:39for ourselves and then we can even use it just as much for ourselves. We can use it for our community and our friends and neighbors.
19:50Yeah, it's really funny. My husband and I needed some small cabinets for our laundry room in the old house that we lived in. And I had been asking him for months and months and months if we could build cabinets and put them up on the walls. And he was very much dragging his feet on building these cabinets. And after about six months, I said, why do you not want to build cabinets? And he said, I'm afraid I'm not gonna get them square. That was what was holding him back. And I said, okay.
20:19I said, I'm going to help you. I said, you figure out what size you need, you get the pieces cut and I will help you build them. And he was really, really anxious about building these cabinets. And he finally got the first one built and he did the diagonal across the corn from the corners with the measuring tape. And he his shoulders came down, he blew out his breath and he said, I'll be damned. And I said, what he said, it is completely square. I said, see.
20:48I knew we could do it. And it was just so fun because he was so worried about screwing it up. And when it came out right, then we were at it for another two weekends, making the rest of the cabinets, cause we knew we could do it. I can actually relate with that. Um, 2016, two homes ago, uh, we got ourselves into ducks and we, we went down to Lowe's and we bought Tiva floors and we bought plywood and
21:18we put ourselves together a very crude duck cut. And we've gone back since then and tried to pull up pictures or videos or something to show people just how atrocious it was. But apparently it's so bad that we didn't even want to take any sort of video or photographic evidence of it. Since then, I've had a lot of people throughout, you know, over the years in and out, I've had people kind of give me their...
21:46Share knowledge with me and teaching me how to properly build with woodworking because I've never done that in high school I had woodworking or I could do metal shop and I decided I wanted to learn how to weld So I never had any woodworking experience so I've been blessed to have people my life who were in the industry and could teach me different tidbits and so from that I was able to build a Chicken coop and it wasn't perfectly square. But for a chicken coop it doesn't really have to be
22:16I got it down to, I think it was about a quarter of an inch off square. But that was a very big accomplishment for us. Yeah. And it seems so simple, but it's, it isn't, it isn't. There's, there's a whole science and geometry that goes behind building things. I'm terrible at it. Like the only thing I did with those cabinets was helped, helped him hold the pieces of wood so he could screw them together. That's the only help. But.
22:44I was also the biggest cheerleader and the encourager that he could do it.
22:50And that makes a big difference as well. Just having the support. Yeah, and I really needed cabinets for my laundry room. So I was like, I'm gonna cheer him on until this happens.
23:02So it worked out great. And the other thing that's interesting about my husband is he's really good at woodworking and always has been. He was just worried about this particular project. He's also a really good baker. He made homemade cinnamon rolls yesterday morning and oh my sweet Jesus, they were so good. I picked exactly the right man for me because he can build a cabinet and he can make cinnamon rolls. It's perfect.
23:30Vinny is the baker between us. She's really phenomenal. There's not a whole lot that she can't bake. Was it this year, last year he started into the sourdough? Last year. Last year she started out with the sourdough and she's getting it down pretty good now. She'll even make it around Thanksgiving time. She'll make a sourdough bread but it would be shaped like a roasted turkey. All fun.
23:57And then throughout the years, I'm a big cheesecake fan. That's kind of how she stole my heart. So ever since then, most families, they'll do like a birthday cake. Well, in our family, for the most part, we do cheesecakes. And so over these years, we've been married for coming on 13 years now. She asked me what kind of cheesecake do I want? And I'm like, okay, well, what cheesecake can I stumble with this year? And I've yet to be been able to do that.
24:27Uh-huh, I love cheesecake. I don't make it very often because it's very fattening and I don't want to eat a lot of it. But I love cheesecake. And people think that cheesecake is really hard to make. I bet Janaye doesn't think that cheesecake is hard to make.
24:47No, no, it's not that hard. I love that you can just get really creative with them and you can make all sorts of flavors with them and it's fun. It's like a blank canvas. You can just go crazy for it. You can do a bunch of different kinds of fruits or make them really decadent and rich or anything you want. Yeah. Janaye, do you have a favorite flavor for cheesecake you want to eat? My favorite is key lime.
25:16I like, I'm not like him. He loves like this for his birthday this year. He wanted a Swiss roll cheesecake. He likes that sweet rich. And I'm like, no, I love a lot of fruit and citrus. I'm more, you know, not, I'm not the big, the sweet tooth like he has. Yeah. My two favorites are raspberry or lemon cheesecake.
25:38Those are good ones. Yeah, that was probably the first one that she made I had her make a white chocolate swirl raspberry cheesecake was either my first or second one that I requested first one Yeah, baby. That's a good one Okay, so you had mentioned something in that string about food and I can't remember what I was gonna ask you I Had a question then you brought cheesecake and I was gone on cheesecake So
26:07So what's the future look like? You guys just are gonna keep growing and trying to be more and more self sustainable until you don't have to go to a grocery store ever again? Yeah, that's the plan. It's already getting pretty sparse when we go down to the grocery store. If we were spending the same, what we were, if we were buying the same things that we were buying even two years ago, it would easily be a $400 trip every week with the way that the prices have risen.
26:34Fortunately, we've been able to put ourselves in a point where we can raise a lot of our own food, support other farmers that are local to kind of offset that cost some. But that is the goal is raising our own food, being able to provide for a community as well, not just not just being greedy about it and keeping it all for ourselves, but we want to help the community. I actually run a Facebook group.
27:03four homesteaders, family farms, and off-gridders here in Kentucky. And we call ourselves the Kentucky Homestead Coalition. And what we do with that is we just try and motivate and help and share on everybody and just kind of help people. People learn how to live in this lifestyle. You know, I need help with my chickens. I've never done chickens before. Okay. Well, this is what you need to know. Or, you know, what exactly are you struggling with? And then we can work with them in that manner.
27:33We have people that have been, we have multi-generation farmers in our group, and we have people that they've just left the city, they've never done anything like this before, their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents, well maybe not great grandparents, but you know what I mean, their family for the longest time, they've always just been in the city, and so they're just absolutely disconnected from the lifestyle, and so they're all just brand new, learning everything.
28:03So we have everybody from all sorts of walks of life and different stages of experience working together and helping everybody else learn and grow strong and create these relationships. We encourage building local networks just within everybody's counties. And we highlight community sufficiency, especially by means of a broadening and trading. You might not.
28:32feel like you have something, but even time is a valuable asset. Yeah, time and energy to contribute to a project.
28:43So we try and just kind of motivate everybody and build everybody up and teach everyone that even though you wanna have this idea of self-sufficiency, you can't truly be self-sufficient. We all need each other at the end of the day. For example, we might have a really bad year for let's just say corn. Our corn didn't do so well, but we are swimming up to the ears in potatoes. Well, our neighbor down the street
29:13He might not have had the same luck with his potatoes. And he's just up to his ears in corn. Well, now we can take from our excess and trade, and now we're good with corn and taters as is our name. And we're both strong as a result of it. Yes, absolutely. We're doing the same thing with the garden that we grow and our friends that are gonna let us have the meat chickens next summer with them.
29:39So yeah, anything you can do that benefits each other is fantastic. It's a great way to run your life. Absolutely agree. All right, so Sven and Jania, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're almost there. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Absolutely, it was really fun. Have a great day. You do the same. All right.
 

Aunt Katie's Community Garden

Today I'm talking with Orran at Aunt Katie's Community Garden.
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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 Orran at Aunt Katie's Community Garden. Good morning, Orran. How are you? Good morning. Glad to be here. Good. Tell me all about Aunt Katie's Community Garden.
00:26Okay. Um, so and Katie's community garden was started about 15 years ago by my director, um, Mr. Michael Jackson. Um, he was a lobbyist for, um, non-smoking designated areas, um, back when that was a big column issue. And so after being kicked down from passing these bills, he, he, he, he transitioned into.
00:55healthy living. And so that started a community garden, which was named after a childhood lady of the neighborhood, Aunt Katie. So he created the garden, started with a few raised beds. And over time, the community kicked in. He got donations, funding to build out the garden, starting with a small greenhouse.
01:26100 beds and five high tunnel houses. So that's kind of a brief history of the community garden. Okay. I'm really excited that you were willing to chat with me this morning because I'm really trying to find all the different places that help communities have good food for them to have access to and I've decided on making it my mission to find somebody like you.
01:56in every state before the end of 2025 to talk to. That's awesome. Yep. Because people need to know where to find food. It's the inflation prices have been so bad that people are starving. People who shouldn't be starving are starving. Yes. Um, that's, so that's one of the main, um, focuses of the garden is to grow nutrient dense vegetables. Um,
02:25I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but the things you get off the shelf are pretty subpar when it comes to nutritional value. So what we grow using our compost, our special compost mix, it allows us to have a lettuce or a leafy green that tastes the way it's supposed to taste and also gives you that nutritional value that we all need in order to, you know, health of your living. So
02:54That's our main focus is growing top, you know, top-notch vegetables. And the public, they really, they really grasp onto the concept, especially during COVID. So, you know, we got people, we got people who you never think eating bok choy. Now bok choy is a popular plant that we grow. And so, you know, during the off season, everybody's, when's the bok choy coming? So it makes me excited that we can.
03:22you know, change people's taste palates and have them eat more healthier. Absolutely. So you're in Alabama. Where are you in Alabama? Um, we're in, we're in Dothan, Alabama. It's, um, South, Southeast, um, the very bottom of the, of the state. What's the nearest big city to you? Uh, Montgomery, we're about, uh, two and a half, two and a half, three hours from Montgomery. Um.
03:50four hours from Birmingham and five hours from Huntsville. Okay, so do you know if any of the big cities in Alabama have anything like what you're doing? Absolutely, so me starting my work at the garden, it's a pretty cool story, I can tell you that, but I'll go into, so what I do now that I'm a director at a community garden, everywhere I go before I...
04:19arrive, I look up community gardens and I either call or drop in and try to do a tour just to see what these different parts of the state have going on. And of course, I'm from Huntsville originally, so we do have two great community gardens, which one is Oakwood. It's a college. They have a great, great community garden and they also have a grocery store.
04:46which is very state of the art. I love it. It has self checkout. It's very small, but it's really neat. You should check that one out. And also my alma mater, Alabama A&M, they're starting their community garden process. So it's exciting to see and exciting to, you know, come back around to what I started and then see it. You know, now I see community gardens everywhere.
05:15Okay. So how did, okay. What does aunt Katie's community garden do? Is it that you guys grow food for the community or is the community coming in and growing food at the community garden? Okay. So what we do is kind of multilayered. Um, I think I have a diagram that I drew. So it's like a, it's like a three-legged stool and one is
05:42Nutritional education and outreach to the community. That's from kids to adults. That's one part the second part is community gardening Which allows people to come in and grow and learn how to grow and we have bed subscriptions so people can subscribe to a bed for a year and they can either work their bed or We'll do it for them and at the end when it's harvest time we can we'll reach out and say hey you can come pick up
06:12a basket or sometimes they just, they give it away to somebody else, which is the other part. And then one of our new things since I came on board is we do value-added product production. So I make like 13 different products. When I arrived at the garden, I just saw this food, food, food. And so I began making
06:41hot sauce, Verde sauce, I make lip balm, I make hibiscus tea, I make all these different value added products. And they just gained popularity and it began, people started requesting it and coming and I was selling out, you know, like in two days, I will make, you know, six, seven cases of hot sauce and they'll sell out in two or three days. So I was like, man, I'm really onto something, so.
07:08That's leading us to work on a future processing center where we can have more capacity to produce, but that's the three things that we really focus on. Okay. So when you say people buy us or get a subscription, do they buy a subscription to the plot? Yes, ma'am. We have corporate sponsorship and then sponsorship for, you know, just individuals.
07:36families with two different price points, but that's the way we do it. And we also offer discounts to people with EBT. They get like a, I want to say 50% discount. So people with EBT can also subscribe. So the subscription, Camp Talk, is not a bar to people being able to do this. People who aren't.
08:05Flush with cash can still subscribe to be part of this. Absolutely. Awesome. Awesome, I'm so excited. I love it when people come up. Different what's up.
08:18Go ahead. Yeah. Different walks of different, different, um, walks of life. Come to the garden and you know, there's elderly people, um, where lady comes, she'll say, what can I get for $5? And I'll say, Hey, just give me, give me the five. I'll hook you up. Um, and you know, I always give a little bit extra love. That's just the way we do it at the garden. Yes.
08:42Extra love is the best thing ever and I get it because we ran a CSA subscription for three years from our farm to market garden and we always threw in extra stuff because we were like People want it and we have it and it's just gonna go to the chickens if we don't share it with the family So why not just why not add some to the to the box? Yes, and so we're
09:09We're focused on upcycling food, so nothing goes to waste. And like we do, I do have chicken farmers that we give our scraps to, but I also have a couple of restaurants that we bought or in exchange. I work with a pizza shop and they buy from us, but they also, if we have a load of peppers, I know it's a chef life, it's a window. So I say, hey, can y'all use some jalapenos this week?
09:39They'll say, yep, we won't order from the truck. We'll order from you. And that offsets the cost for that week, just whatever they're spending on that, we're giving them a greater market value. And also I noticed they always give us praise, like, oh, these bell peppers lasted so long. The ones that came from the truck were already starting to rot and we got them. So we really appreciate the quality.
10:08There's a big difference from picking from the garden and going directly to the restaurant. Um, you get a longer shelf life, you get a better quality, better taste, um, all of those, you know, points from that. Yes. It's amazing how the stuff from the garden, the produce from the garden lasts longer, but if you make homemade bread, homemade bread doesn't last as long as store bought bread because store bought bread has conservatives and stuff in it.
10:37Yes, that, that, that, um, but once, once you, once your program, the other way, um, working at the garden, it, you know, I, I don't, I see differently. So when I go into a grocery store, I, uh, I kind of, I kind of skim past the produce section on different from certain times of the year. I really know I do check the quality sometimes and compare, but now that I'm eating
11:05you know, from the garden, it's a lot more, I don't rely on it as much and it feels better because you don't have to accept what they give you.
11:19Yeah. Um, so do you, do you actually feel better? Do you feel healthier eating from the garden? Absolutely. Um, so I'm, I'm, I was a healthy eater anyway, and I also grew my own things in the backyard. So, um, part of, you know, you have to be, you have to represent what you're doing. You know, you wouldn't sell a product if you didn't use it. So, um,
11:47I'm always cooking at the garden, doing pots of soup, you know, making fancy salads, pickles and whatever. And I eat, I eat that daily. So it's, it's a part of my lifestyle. It keeps me going. And, um, we have a lot of people that come in with health issues and they begin to eat better and feel better. So I'm a, I'm a testament of that. It works eating healthy and cutting the meat out a little bit. Um, during the week I do, you know,
12:16three, four days, no meat. And then, you know, on the weekends, I'll have a barbecue or something, but I try to do everything in moderation. Yes, absolutely. So how many people do you think that Aunt Katie's Community Garden has helped since it started? That's a great question because I was thinking about that last night. I think she made... So we serve thousands of people.
12:46Um, I did have a number of the pounds of vegetables. I don't have it right with me, but like, like on an average day, you know, 10 to 20 people coming by yesterday, probably, probably more like 30, 40. Um, so, you know, so on a yearly basis, I think we serve, you know, thousands, we serve, you know, we're in a, we're in a, we're in a low income community. So we serve all those people.
13:15And then we serve the people outside of that area, all walks of life. So it's, you know, it's up in the thousands.
13:26Yeah. Do you guys donate any of the produce to food shelves or anything like that? Absolutely. We, um, we donate, we donate to the food bank. Um, we also have a free days where people can come and pick. We have church groups and, um, boys and girls clubs and different nonprofit organizations. Um, we give them a day where they can come, they come help us, um, finish projects.
13:56weed beds, clean up and organize our seed houses. And then in exchange, they get to pick whatever they want, pick a basket of produce. Fantastic. So I feel like the whole thing is your favorite thing about Aunt Katie's community garden. But do you have a favorite story that you could share about it? So yeah, I love to tell.
14:26the story of how I found the garden. So I was driving along, minding my own business and I kind of coasted by these raised beds because I was building my own raised beds and I saw like 40 or 50, I was like, what is this? And so screeched on the brakes, errr, backed up. So I parked crooked because I was like,
14:54I gotta see what this is. And I saw this lady in the garden, bending over, working. And so I ran towards her and was like, what is this? And she was like, welcome to NK this community garden. My name is Miss Belvie. She's the queen of the garden. So I was like, I grow vegetables, I'm a da da da. Just going on and on and on, talking fast. And she was like, yeah, we've been here for several years. And
15:23Um, this is what we do and and Katie, she was still alive then she looked at Katie lives over here and, um, so fast forward. So every Saturday I get up, I go to the garden and hound Ms. Bell via, uh, my tomatoes aren't producing. What am I doing wrong? And she's like, do you prone them? Like, no, I'm like, this is not growing. She's giving me so many tips. And so I know they were like,
15:51this guy, he's never gonna stop coming. So it was like I was stuck in the garden. And so about a year later, I got a call from the director. He was like, hey man, I need your help. You know, I'm going through some health issues. He's like, and I need somebody that is passionate about this, you think you could fill in? I said, sure, I'll do a couple of days a week, you know, volunteer, whatever. And it ended up turning into a position.
16:21He made me the deputy director and I've done, you know, so many, the garden is involved so much since then, um, not bragging about me, but you know, I, once I got in there, I just started putting in work, putting in work, creating new products, um, and then all my followers, people that, you know, in my network start coming, so it created a new influx of people too, as well. So that's the like.
16:50kind of my history of being involved with the garden. That's amazing. I love it. I am so excited for you. This is great. So do you guys do any classes? Do you teach people about produce and growing and stuff? We do. Yes, we do. We do greenhouse workshops. So people, so the high tunnels are becoming a new wave in
17:19our area, there's probably 80 plus that's been coming up in the past couple of years built by Mr. James Curaton. He's the builder. So they're popping up everywhere. The USDA is involved with assisting with the funding. So we have workshops where we come out and show people how to grow in those houses. We also show them how to grow in raised bed situations.
17:48We have cooking and canning classes. I did a pesto party class. It was just like a, I made pesto kits and we just blended up the basil and garlic and cashews and everybody made pesto. And then I showed them the different things you can dip, used pesto vegetables, you can dip in the pesto, pesto pasta, just different.
18:15The versatility of Pestos is great. I love Pestos. So, we do Pestos classes, we do herb classes. We do sound healing. Or we have an herbalist that does sound healing. So, in the greenhouse, we'll have a sound healing session. And it's the most amazing thing because you see people just so relaxed, tears streaming down their face. And when they done, it's like, oh my gosh, I feel so happy. Like,
18:44Sound healing is a great, it's a great, great session. I would encourage everyone to try to do a little sound healing. It's very, very relaxing and empowering. Wow. Okay, so you guys aren't just about food, you're about overall healing and help. Yes, ma'am. Oh my God, I just, I was so excited to get hold of you guys and now I'm even more excited because this is amazing.
19:17What you guys and yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Nope. Say what you're going to say. Oh, yeah. I wanted to also talk about, um, cause I'm an artist. I'm a, excuse me, my voice. Um, I'm a classically trained artist. Um, I've done, you know, painting, ceramics, pottery, all that kind of stuff. Um, as well as photography, but, um, last year. Well,
19:46Two years ago, I filled out for a grant, the Verde Art Grant, and I won. And I was so excited. So what I did, I did a project called Cultivating the Community. And what that entailed was I went out and did portraits of these people that were connected with me through the garden. Um, I didn't realize that until after the project was done, cause all these people I either met through the garden or they came.
20:16to see me at the garden. So I shot my friend Charlie and his wife there homesteaders. I shot a farmer. I shot Spencer our herbalist with his herbs. I did these black and white portraits and I did a greenhouse exhibit inside of one of our big tunnel houses. It was like one of the first that I've ever seen a art exhibit in a greenhouse and it was spectacular. It was so many people came.
20:46I had lo-fi music in the background. It was just a total vibe. I had some of the panes were suspended from the beams by wire. And so you could see just the panes were like kind of floating in the air and it was great. As an artist, it was like a form of completion for me. It made me feel like I finished the project and the public really enjoyed it. And I had it up for like a month. So it was great.
21:14It was great. It was time to garden in with my art. You are brilliant. And anytime you can bring creativity into a one focus thing, like, like growing plants is a one focus thing, but there's so many other things around it that you can bring in to get people's attention. Absolutely. Yeah. So even, even with growing, um, when I first started at the garden and it was trial and error,
21:44I begin to grow things that, because I'm an artist, so colorful things. So I discovered purple basil, which is beautiful. Thai basil, which is beautiful. Um, there's so many varieties of lettuce that I went crazy. I probably spent about $300 on seeds out of my own pocket. And. I.
22:11I was able to grow the specialty lettuces and I grew them in patterns in the greenhouse. So you got red, green, speckled, you know, like the frilly kind of lettuce. And it's just the textures and the variety in colors, it's art in itself. So I'll have to like inbox you some of the pictures of how it looked, but it's art. And people are like, this looks like you. I was like, thank you.
22:41So you can express yourself through growing too. Just step outside the norm and grow some rainbow beets. People love those. You slice and you see all these rings on the inside. It's pretty cool and artistic. Yeah, we grew the peppermint beets, the ones that are white and red on the inside. Yes. And we grew red romaine lettuce and we sold them at the farmer's market. And my husband kept telling me that people would be like,
23:11They're so beautiful. I've never seen this before. Yes. And they taste great. Um, there's, um, what, what are, what are, what's the newest thing? Um, it's the purple pea flower. Okay. Um, King tut beats. I mean, no King tut beans. So they're like the, they're like the, they're like the, um, snap, not snap, but the sugar snap peas.
23:38but they're purple on the outside and when you crack them, they're bright green on the inside. Those are beautiful and they taste good. They're good on charcuterie boards. And what's the other? Oh, there's a lettuce called flashy trout back. It's a red and green speckled lettuce with like broad leaves. It's one of our most popular lettuce varieties. People love it. It tastes good and it's great.
24:05in my spring mix. I do like a spring mix and those are some of my favorites right now. Well since you're an artist and I assume that you cook, there's so much artistry in cooking too. Oh yeah, I'm actually working on a cookbook. I have a lot of recipes I've been developing over the years and I finally sat down and made a list and categorized my recipes and
24:33I'm the resident chef at the Garden light. And I've done a few cooking shows, segments with another one of our local cooks, Mr. Woodall. And I also cook with, we have a chef named Chelsea Gisleman. She's a good friend of mine. She actually beat Alex Garnaschelli on the Food Network. Oh my. Yeah, right here in our hometown.
25:02She beat her on a food competition. So I'm really big on the chef scene. And I have a specialty pizza coming out September 23rd at Firestone Pizza. I developed a Jamaican jerk pizza with a Jamaican barbecue sauce. And it is phenomenal. We did the test run and I let the crew, all the chefs.
25:30in the restaurant, they try, they say, man, you, you, you knocked it out the park. So that'll be featured for Dolphin restaurant week and the proceeds from that dish will go back to the garden. So we're, we're working together, man. I'm so excited about, um, reaching out and locking arms with these community, you know, community businesses. You are a busy man and you completely understand networking and marketing.
25:58I'm so impressed. Thank you so much. So what's the, what's the future look like for this? Just, just keep growing. Yes. The future, the future is looking, um, I'm excited. So, um, I can, I can say we've the city and the CBDG grant. Um, they awarded us, um, some money.
26:26I'm not sure if I can say how much, but it's a nice piece of change. So my plan is to get those funds matched because I want this project to be completely funded and built out to completion. I don't want to piecemeal it. I want it to be so the future for Aunt Katie's is a commercial processing center with coolers, you know, shelf.
26:55places we can process and bag and cut our produce and put it in bags and jar it can it whatever we need to do and this processing center would also allow our small farmers to be able to use our facility to process their you know if they get a ton of tomatoes they can bring it to us and come use our kitchen maybe rent it maybe a small fee maybe not I don't know but this kitchen will be for the small farmers which we're
27:23deeply connected with, they'll have a place that they can process their food and eliminate a lot of waste. So that's coming soon. I wanna say, in the 2025, 2026, I'm hoping that'll be done. Wow.
27:46I am just blown away. I am so glad I got the chance to talk to you today, Oren. This is fantastic. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you for having me. I'll just, um, I'm just excited and, uh, I'm not a big talker, but when I talk about community gardening and what we're doing, I can, you know, freely speak with confidence about that type of thing. Any other subject I might be fumbling around, but this is a passion of mine. You can tell. And.
28:16Um, I just get worked up every time anybody that's interested wants to learn. I'm just here to talk about it. Awesome. I, it's so funny. When I started the podcast, I was like, I'm just going to talk to people who homestead and garden and make things and cook. And then I found out that there were all these topics adjacent to it. And I have met so many amazing people doing fantastic things that helped their community in the last year.
28:44And every time I talk to someone like you, I walk around just smiling all day long after, because I'm like, wow, there are amazing humans in the world still. Oh yeah. That's what I was talking to my friend, which he's a homestead of yesterday. And I w we were talking about, you know, the temperature of things today with the politics and all that type stuff. And I was like, but I said, people like me and you, we just, we're, we, we're living in our own kind of normal.
29:14quote unquote, we're just normal people that want to grow food, take care of our families and just be regular in my opinion. And it's really encouraging to see these across these platforms, you see all these people kind of like-minded that's doing the same thing, kind of just trying to make the earth a better, the earth, not just America or where we live, but the earth, trying to make the earth a better place to live.
29:43and take care and be just be kind to one another. And there's things that I can help you with. There's things you can help me with. So, you know, bartering is a big, it's a broad subject. We barter, you know, anything from goods to even just services or even just encouraging each other is bartering, you know, exchanging information is the same thing. So I'm real, I'm real confident that we as a people can, you know.
30:12keep this thing going, you know? Yeah, what a great way to end the episode today. Thank you, Orran, for your time so much today. I appreciate it and good luck in the future. Keep doing the good work. Oh, thank you so much. Have a great day.
 
 

WhoopsyDaisy Farm Followup - Benefits of Sheep's Milk

Today I'm talking with Rachel at WhoopsyDaisy Farm. You can also follow on Facebook.
If you order a copy of Rachel's book, The Guide to Homestead Dairy Sheep, she'll sign it for you!
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 Rachel at WhoopsyDaisy Farm. Again, because last time we were supposed to talk about her book and about sheep's milk, and we talked about everything but I think. Good morning Rachel, how are you? I'm good, how are you? I'm good. You're in Kentucky, right?
00:29Yes. Okay. All right. So let's try this again. I would love to hear all about the benefits of sheep's milk. Awesome. Well, you know, a couple of years ago, even just talking about milk as a health food was really weird, you know, because there's been such a push in our culture against the benefits of dairy, you know, nut milks and other protein milks have really been pushed forward.
00:59If we return to a traditional source of our protein, a lot of us are seeing these autoimmune and chronic health issues are just kind of melting away. So there's groups like the Weston Price Foundation who've really pushed the benefit of raw milk especially. And with sheep's milk, pretty much everything that is beneficial about the cow and goat milk is in sheep's milk, but you multiply it by two or three.
01:26So it's as beneficial as all the other raw milks, just more so. Okay. So I have questions. Number one, how much milk can you get from one sheep in a day? Well, it depends. There's, there's a couple of different factors that play with the amount, you know, and it's the same thing with cows and goats too. So you, the factors are breed and feed predominantly.
01:55you know, there's some breeds of sheep that can give up to a gallon a day, especially the East Frisian sheep, which is like the whole steam of the sheep dairy world. But if you want to milk a non-dairy breed of sheep for, and there's a couple of reasons why you would want to do that. Sometimes you get as little as a cup of day, but usually more like a pint or a quarter a day. Okay. And I'm, I'm guessing that she, she being, uh-huh.
02:24milking a sheep is not a whole lot different than milking a goat. Correct. Sheep teats are more on the side of the udder. So I haven't actually milked a goat. I have milked a cow. We, we own a Jersey cow. And it's very different milking a sheep than it is a cow because cow teats are on the bottom of the udder. You're not moving the udder. You're just squeezing the teats and just collecting milk that's automatically pooling there. With a sheep, you actually kind of have to
02:51guide the teats and the udder toward the teats are facing whatever you're collecting the milk and if you're hand milking. Now they are starting to make attachments on mechanical milkers that will fit sheep. But if you can't find one specifically for sheep, you can use attachments for goats as well. And you know, sometimes there's a little bit of a difference in the udders there, but it's pretty compatible between goat and sheep. Okay. Now the next question I have, I don't even know how to ask it correctly, so bear with me.
03:21Cows give a metric butt ton of milk when you milk them and clearly sheep don't. So how does this become financially viable? Does it? Yeah, so gallon for gallon you're going to get more cheese out of sheep's milk than you are cow or goat. And there's a lot less waste. A lot of cheese makers.
03:47Traditionally, they raise pigs and the pigs would eat the whey and get fat off of it. Some homesteaders are starting to experiment with fermenting grains with the whey for like their chickens or pigs and that kind of thing. But for the most part, modern cheese makers just dump the whey. Either they discard it down a drain or, you know, some of the more creative ones will spray it on their fields as like a fertilizer probiotic. But I mean, there's not a lot of uses in our culture today for whey.
04:14And so having a milk where there's not a ton of that whey waste is, you know, appealing if you're going to do a cheese making enterprise. I mean, the other thing too, is that, you know, when my husband and I started off, we really didn't have a use for three to eight gallons of milk per day from our cow, which she doesn't give that much. But I mean, like if you have a dairy cow, like you're looking at gallons per day, not cups or quarts or whatever. So.
04:40To have a smaller amount of milk to play with and learn what to do with was really appealing for me. The other thing is that, you know, some people see this as a con. I saw it as a pro that my sheep will milk for only about six months in a year. So we had a six month break where we weren't milking every single day. And I mean, if you're in a commercial operation, that's not necessarily appealing, but if you're a homesteader and you want to like,
05:07go someplace for the holidays or you just don't want to go outside because it's nasty out, having that break can be appealing. Okay. There's a couple of things I want to ask and I'm going to forget, so I'm going to ask you to remind me the second one. The first one, tell me in layman's terms why sheep's milk is good for you to drink or eat in things.
05:30The second one is I think sheep's milk is really good in soaps and lotions. So if you could talk about that, if you know the answer to that too. Yeah. So the first benefit of sheep's milk is the fat. Sheep's milk has two to three times the amount of fat as cow or goat's milk. And the fat is actually differently shaped. It's smoother and it's smaller in shape, which means that minerals will pack more tightly to it.
06:00Like I said, it's a lot more smoother and so the smoothness factor is beneficial because if you have any kind of leaky gut issue, if you have any digestive issues, those smooth fat globules will actually go through your digestive tract easier and it will help repair your digestive tract as it goes through. The next thing is, did I say fat or proteins? Fat. Fat, okay.
06:27The protein in sheep's milk is A2A2, which if you're familiar with that, it's a specific kind of protein that is easier to digest than A1 proteins. But the sheep milk A2 protein is again, differently shaped and it's more, your body can assimilate it easier. They're studying a particular chemical in milk fat and I can't remember what it's called offhand.
06:53but they're finding that it's actually kind of toxic. And if you have too much of a buildup in it, your body can turn it into a radical, like a free radical and it causes issues. Sheep milk has that, but it's bound. And so it just passes right through your system. Whereas cow milk, it doesn't do that. And then sheep milk has the lowest amount of lactose of cow and goat milk. And so it's a lot more similar to human breast milk. The milk that has the
07:21lowest amount of lactose that is the most similar to human breast milk is actually camel milk. Which we've actually purchased camel milk in the past to help some gut healing stuff and it's like $100 a gallon. You can get it here in the United States and sheet milk is more like $40 a gallon. So if you need that kind of low lactose milk, it's a much more affordable version of it. And the low lactose basically means
07:49that it doesn't ferment very quickly. So a lot of people who say they are lactose intolerant, it's not that they're lactose intolerant, it's just they have sluggish digestion. And so as the milk is going through their digestive tract, those sugars are fermenting in their gut and the gas is a byproduct of the fermentation process. So like if you think of when you make sauerkraut or kombucha, like a lot of people say, burp your ferments, because you're letting that gas go out into the air. And when you have gas after eating,
08:19Milk, it's the same thing. It's just, you know, you're not opening a glass jar, you're farting or belching. So. Yes, exactly. You have a low lactose milk, you're getting all the benefits of the probiotics, the enzymes, the fats, the proteins, but it's not fermenting and then you're not embarrassing yourself if you're in public. And again, since it's ferment slower, it's doing a healing movement through your digestive tract. So.
08:48And then there's plenty of enzymes, there's probiotics that we're learning more and more, we just desperately need on a daily basis. So there's a study currently being done by an overseas university and they're finding that cow milk when it's raw will either contain or create betaine in your body and that's a digestive enzyme. And so it's a self-digesting food.
09:11Sheep milk actually contains more than enough to digest itself, so it's actually helping you digest other foods as well. So that's your crash course on sheep milk and digestion. Thank you. Okay. So I know that people use sheep's milk in soaps and lotions. I didn't forget. I knew I thought I would forget, but I didn't. So I'm assuming that it's really good for your skin too. Yeah. You know, with the human genome problem.
09:40project and discovering the microbiome and all that gobbledygook like we're we're realizing as a society more and more that not all germs are bad and we do need to have other beasties besides human cells playing with us nicely so you know when you're using antibacterial products all the time you're actually just destroying the the biota on your skin and so when you use a natural soap like sheep milk or goat milk that's made with natural products you're actually
10:10rebuilding that on your skin and it actually like lends itself to a more healthy immune system overall in your body. So you know there's that dynamic and again the fats are really absorbable. You know there's proteins, there's enzymes, there's sugars that your skin can just automatically take and assimilate so you have a healthier skin or healthier hair. Nice, okay.
10:37So if the sheep's milk has such a high fat content, does it make amazing ice cream? Oh yes. Yeah? Very, I mean that's sheep milk ice cream or sheep milk yogurt are typically the two entries people have to it as a food product. Okay, the reason I ask is I am not a huge ice cream fan, I never have been, but I like really good ice cream if I'm gonna eat it, the real smooth.
11:06I don't know, decadent ice cream. Yeah, I'm the same way. And they don't know if that's because the higher end ice creams use a higher fat content or if they put all kinds of things in it to make it do that. Well, there's a couple of factors at play. I mean, cheap ice cream, some of the ingredients used for the flavoring are the same ingredients they use for like washer fluid in your car. Okay.
11:34So if it's a higher end ice cream and you're paying more for it, typically they're using more real ingredients than the cheap ones. So that's probably part of it. But the other part is too, yeah, when you have a higher fat content, for some people, like I am German, Polish, Welsh in my ethnicity. I mean, there's a couple other Northern European genes in there.
12:03in the mountains or on the coast, very poor peasant people. And so they were not having fruit loops and Twinkies to get through a days of hard work. They were eating really, really hardcore proteins and fats. You know, I don't know that there was a single vegan or vegetarian in my family tree ever. So I need more fats on a day-to-day basis. So with the sheep's milk,
12:28you know, that actually really helps my body digest other foods. Like if I'm going to eat a vegetable, I need it to be drenched in butter. And that's not just for flavor. It's it helps my body digest it easier. And butter's yummy. I love butter. Butter makes me so happy. It does. It does. My son asked me this morning, he sent me a recipe for a double chocolate chip cookie. And he was like, do we have the stuff to make this? And I said, um.
12:56everything but the butter. I said you'll have to see if there's any in the freezer because I don't think we have enough butter handy to make them. He said can I make them if there's butter? I was like, please do. I would love you to make me some double chocolate chip cookies. Exactly. He was like, oh, oh, okay. He said I was thinking of making them. He said I was gonna make them for you. I said I'm kidding. But yes, I would love a double chocolate chip cookie. That'd be fantastic.
13:24Yeah, but I mean, if he's using your kitchen, then he's got to pay tax, right? Yes, absolutely. So that's my little aside for butter content this morning. That's the only thing I can pull in. Anyway, so you wrote a book about sheep's milk and nutrition and the benefits. Is that what the book is about? Yeah. So the first couple of chapters are about the benefits and nutrition of sheep's milk.
13:50To be honest, at the time when I was writing the book, I had to scrounge for any information on the health benefits of sheep milk. It was really hard to find actual data. Most of what I found was like, sheep's milk has more nutrients, so you should try it. And I was like, well, that's not helpful. I need to know what nutrients I need to know, you know, something besides just there's more. So
14:17there's one chapter that's solidly just sheep milk nutrition. Since writing the book, I have started finding more resources that are more in depth on the nutritional benefits of sheep milk. So I do have plans to write another book or two. But the book overall is basically how you can raise sheep and get sheep's milk from them and not lose your mind. Because in our country, sheep have lots of rumors and...
14:46slanders and reputations and most of them are not true. I'm actually finding through research that there was a proactive push in our country against sheep and shepherding so that the cattle industry could become a lot more predominant. So, you know, a lot of the things that quote everyone knows unquote about sheep are just not true. Like I've had people come up and be like, sheep are stupid, right? And I'm like, no, they're not. They're like, no, but they are. I'm like, no, they're not stupid. They just don't make good humans.
15:15So like I talked about that like sheep do have species specific psychology and if you learn how to work with that it's a very enjoyable experience. I go into a lot of information about the sheep's nutrition because that directly affects breeding and lambing. You know animal husbandry is really key with sheep to have an enjoyable shepherd and experience and the problem in our country is that we're so inundated with bigger, better, faster, fatter, cheaper, leaner. As Joel Saliton says.
15:45And sheep don't thrive in that kind of environment. So, you know, I've done a lot of pushback from some shepherds because I don't recommend breeding your sheep in their first year. I really recommend strongly that you wait till they're at least a year and a half before you breed them. So they're two years old when they land. And there's a lot of pushback against that because, you know, you're cutting in on your you're cutting your profits and you're increasing your cost when you wait. However, when you wait till a sheep is larger, you
16:13don't have the need to assist in lambing and lambing season is not the nightmare that it has a reputation for being. You know, with just a simple animal husbandry trick is just wait for them to become full grown because most sheep take two years to become full grown. They don't mature in their first year. So you know, I talk about that and I talk about training sheep, which again, you really need to understand sheep psychology to in order to train them because, you know,
16:40You can train a sheep to pull a cart, you can train them to walk on a leash, you can train them to do tricks, but you have to earn their trust. And you can't just walk up to a sheep and be like, trust me, you have to understand that to them, you're a predator and you have to basically convince them that you're a sheep. And I don't mean walking around on all fours and buying, but like you have to really spend time in non-threatening ways to convince them that they should trust you so that they'll do what you want. So I talked about that. I have a few.
17:08recipes in the book. So it's basically the book I wanted to have when I started shepherding and couldn't find anywhere. Yeah, I swear that's why people write books. They're like, the book that I want to read isn't out there. I'm going to write it. Yeah, basically, I've heard that from so many people, like, this is the book I wanted to read when I was starting out. And I'm like, oh, I thought that was my idea. But no, I guess it's not. Yeah. And the big difference is there's lots of people who are like, I want to write the book that I want to read, but they're not writers.
17:38Yeah. And so if you happen to be able to string words together in a reasonable manner that is readable, then you should write that book because then you have the book you wanted to read and you get to make money off of it too. Exactly. Although just a spoiler alert for everyone, the whole starving artist dynamic does come into play with being an author as well. I am not rolling in cash because of book sales and I'm doing really good book sales. So yeah, it doesn't.
18:07It doesn't necessarily pertain to podcasting either. Yeah. But it's still enjoyable and you do make some money. So it's worth it. It's just, you're not going to go on a cruise just off of podcasting or authoring. So. Yeah. I actually looked at my, my monetization cause I just monetized it like three weeks ago. I've made a whopping just under $4 in three weeks. You can get a Starbucks coffee now.
18:34Probably not because I want the medium-sized one and I want the fancy one. So now I'm gonna buy that Okay, well next month maybe I could I could maybe get a terrible Burger off the dollar menu at some fast food restaurant, but I don't really want that so no I'll pass. It's good. Yeah, but yeah, no artist gets rich quick unless
19:00Unless by some miracle they have connections in the industry they're working in, then maybe, but not always. But that's okay. So is the book self-published or is it through a publisher? It is through a publisher. Sawdust Publishing is a brand new publishing company by homesteaders, for homesteaders. The founder of the company, Janet Garman, has actually published.
19:29several books. So she's done it through a traditional publisher, she's self-published, she's used, you know, she's done ebooks, she's used independent publishers. So she's kind of done the whole gamut. And she was like, I want to make this accessible to new authors. I want price points to be accessible to readers. I want authors to actually get paid what they're worth. So instead of writing the book she wanted to read, she made the publishing company she wanted to use.
19:58So again, it's very small, but all of the books are very practical, very easy to read, very plug and play information for people wanting to do the topics discussed in the books. So I was really happy I got to work with them. And you know, a lot of people have asked me about self publishing, you know, and I don't think there's anything wrong with self publishing. I will say having an editing staff is...
20:26worth their weight in gold because I have done a couple ebooks and the experience of hitting up some friends saying, hey, could you edit my work? And they'd say, sure. And so you send them the file. Like they just, they're not going to be as effective as someone who's paid to edit, who doesn't care about your feelings. And so it's going to be ruthless. Like I really think like
20:49My traditionally published book is a much better quality piece of literature than the stuff I put out myself just because I don't have that feedback of the people who are paid to make it better. Yeah. Your friends aren't going to tell you to kill your darlings, but the editor that gets paid is going to tell you to kill that darling. Right. Yeah. Like the editor straight up said, you're rambling here. Like, this makes no sense. And my friend was like, you know, I maybe tighten that up a little bit.
21:19It's just different and I do better with direct up frontness. Like a friend was like, oh, maybe you should edit it some more. And I was like, no, that's why I sent it to you. So you tell me where to edit it. Um, you know, so. Yes. And I actually did help people publish their books many years ago, maybe 15 now. And it was really hard because I won't mention who it was. I only did four.
21:48Cause it was a lot of work and a lot of time involved to do it. But, but I was like, you, you need to rewrite this section. And the person was like, okay. And then they would rewrite it. And it was the same thing. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You need to fix this and this and this and this. And I actually wrote it down for her and it just never came together. And I was like, okay, this is how you want it to be. So we're going to go with this.
22:18It's really hard to be in that business. And especially if you're just a really avid reader who's really good at editing. Like, I got into it because a friend wanted to write a book and I was like, you should do that. And then the friend did it and they were like, can you help me self-publish this? And I was like, sure, I'll set up an account and you know how to do it. And I did it. I don't wanna do it anymore.
22:48It's too much for one person. So, but is the book of, is your book available on Amazon for people who like to buy their books that way? It is if you are in the United States. I'm trying to convince my publisher that she needs to do Amazon overseas. We just, right now we don't have the demand to justify that through the publishing company. So if you are in a different country listening to that, you can contact me.
23:17on my website or my email and I will set up international shipping for you. Just you will have to pay the shipping cost to get it to you, which I shipped a couple books to Australia and New Zealand and apologize to those purchasers up one side and down the other because it is very steep shipping to get it over there. And we don't have a digital version of the book at this point. We might in the future, but right now it's just the hard copy. Oh, okay. That was going to be my next question. So cool. Yeah.
23:46Is there a reason why and there's no digital copy yet? Basically, the publisher would have to hire a whole new staff and it would be a whole new learning curve. Like it's not as simple as just you upload a file to a website. You have to do formatting and then you have to make sure the formatting is translatable across different readers. So like Kindle is not the same as your iReader. So you have to make two different formats and that kind of thing. So it's basically.
24:14They're just not large enough at this point to justify the staff for that because most of our customers are in the farming or homesteading community and we may not all wear tin foil hats 24-7, but we have them somewhere and so we want hard copies of books just in case. So the demand more is for hard copies anyway. So to hire a whole new staff for the few people who want the digital version, it just doesn't justify the cost right now.
24:41Okay, that makes all the sense in the world. I was just curious because everybody's so about e-books these days and I would die hard. I don't want an e-reader back when they became a thing. And now I read every night on my e-reader, my tablet. Because I don't have to have a light on in my room to read it, I can actually just read it with the light from the screen. Right. Well, and I mean...
25:07I don't know, I can definitely see it both ways. I have a really good friend who is, it is her vendetta in life to get me to read on something digital. But, you know, for me, there's actually studies being done that if you hold a hard copy and turn the page, you retain that information better than if it's an electronic device. And then, you know, there's all kinds of studies being done on blue lights and EMFs and all that kind of stuff. And where my, and my husband's systems are so messed up, we're healing them on a daily basis.
25:37I'm just like, you know, I will just buy a hard copy. It's healthier. And then my grandkids can enjoy it versus, I don't know what they're gonna have, you know, down the road. They may not be able to use my e-reader. So there's my reasoning. I mean, I don't have an issue with people who want digital copies. It's just, we don't have that available right now. So- Well, maybe, maybe sooner than later, they'll be available. That would be great. Yeah. Okay, let me think. I had questions when I began this and then we get talking and now I don't know where they went.
26:06They flew away. Okay, so when, we have five minutes left, when your sheep have lambs and you're milking your sheep, do you let the lambs get what they want and then do you continue to milk the sheep after they've gotten what they need or how does that work? Yeah, so that's a animal husbandry topic that will elicit bloodshed on the sheep boards.
26:36Oh, well, I wouldn't worry about it. No, no, no, I'm just saying like it's a lot of people. When people ask me that, I'm like, you I know what I do on my farm, but for other people wanting to decide, it's like you really need to look at the data and decide what works best for you. My flock is is I have East Frisian genetics, but my dairy crosses are all East Frisian is crossed with another heritage breed. So what works for me is I will separate the lambs for 12 hours and then milk the ews at the end of that time and then put the lambs back with the ews.
27:05And then that way the lambs can nurse off the ewes for the next 12 hours and they're getting nutrition that way. I do let my lambs stay on the ewes exclusively for two weeks right after they're born. So they're getting all the colostrum. Some of my more heavier producers, I will go ahead and milk them once a day just because they're producing so much. They need that extra taken off. That way I have colostrum in the freezer just in case something terrible happens.
27:30And I'm keeping their milk supply up. But for like the Gulf Coast native heritage sheep, I just let the lambs stay on them because they, they're not producing an overabundance. They don't need that pressure taken off. So with some of the heavier producing breeds, like the purebred east creations overseas, you can let the lambs have all they want to, and they still produce enough where you can get a harvest. It's not a huge harvest, but you know, you can do it. So most people separate lambs.
28:00for some amount of time to harvest milk. And again, there's different reasonings behind each of it. When I was doing my research, the study showed that if you let the lambs have the milk exclusively for a month and then took them off and did either put milk in a bucket from whatever, they had a lower butcher weight than the lambs who were.
28:25given the colostrum exclusively for two weeks and then were separated for 12 hours. They, at weaning weight, were less heavy than the lambs who had, you know, access to the milk for three months solidly. But then once the 12-hour separated lambs were given, you know, food and nutrition that was for adults, they caught back up to the same weight as the other lambs quickly. So for us wanting milk and wanting healthy lambs,
28:55We've decided that separating for 12 hours at a time and the milking is the best setup for us. But, you know, there's reasons to do it different ways. Okay. That's what I was wondering about. And I'm going to cap off this episode of this podcast by saying something I've wanted to say for months. I am so sick of people thinking that they know what's best for other people. And you just touched on it with the people on the boards.
29:23And honestly, life is a learning curve. Yeah. And you cannot say to somebody, you're doing it wrong. If you know that they're doing the best they can and doing the research as they can to do the best they can. It makes me so crazy. Yeah, same here. Well, and it's like the whole point of us doing small farming and homesteading is to find what works for us.
29:51to have food that works for us, to have a lifestyle that works for us. And yeah, I mean, every single farm is different. Every animal conglomerate on every farm is different. Every human running the farm is different. I mean, both my husband and I have scoliosis and he has kyphosis and he works in emergency services. We're not going to raise Cornish Cross chickens because their tight schedule does not work for us. But my friend up the road, Cornish Crosses work.
30:19Perfect for her. So great. She has fatter chickens than me. It's fine. So I really think the Battles being fought amongst us about well you do you feed your you know, you're ruminant some grains Oh, no, I do only grass-fed grass-fed stupid. How dare you use chemicals. It looks like stop everyone stop We're all doing the best we can we're all learning
30:45We're all having learning curves. And what I do this year may not work next year, and it certainly didn't work two years ago. So just everyone take a deep breath and chill. Yeah. And consider other people's perceptions, perspectives, and maybe learn from other people too. Yeah. It really, it just chaps my ass when people are like, you're doing that wrong. It's like, okay.
31:07Right. I might be, but I guess I'll find out if something actually goes wrong with it. In the meantime, I'm going to keep trying to learn how to do this. I think asking people their why behind their choices is really important. Like I have a friend and she is really, really up like in people's face of feed your cow grains and stop judging everyone and stop forcing grass fed. And so, you know, it's like her why is she's seen cows die from starvation. And I get that,
31:37The person who's like, you can must do it only exclusively grass fed. Well, the milk from a cow who only eats grass is molecularly different than a cow who's fed grains and she has health issues where she benefits from exclusively grass fed. I don't think either of those two friends are wrong, but neither of them are going to learn from each other and they both irritate me when they get all up and about what to feed your cow. And it's like, breathe. We're all doing the best we can. We all have our cows. We all love their milk. It's fine. Like it will be okay.
32:07Yes. And the same could be said, you know, the up in your face thing. It's a big deal right now across the board in the world on many, many things. Yes. I had a friend over yesterday who I love to death. And I said, did you watch the debate the other night? And she said, she said, can, can we have a discussion about politics without becoming a battle? And I was like, of course we can. Because, because apparently her husband is the opposite.
32:33party than she is, which makes their discussions about politics really interesting at home. Oh boy, yeah. And I said, I think that we just need to get through this election cycle and remember that we are all humans, we're all doing our best and try to respect each other. And she went, I love you. Yeah. So let's just try to remember we're all humans, we're all doing our best and try to respect each other every day. And maybe things would be a little less combative. I 100% agree with that.
33:02And that's all I have to say getting anywhere near politics because I do not talk about politics on the podcast because it's a bad plan. But just be a decent human people. It makes things so much easier. It really does. And you know, I think working with sheep and seeing when you're gentle and polite and calm and peaceful, you have a really good shepherding experience. And when you're fast and loud and demanding, those sheep say,
33:30Absolutely not. And there's more than one reason why the Bible compares us to sheep all throughout the entire book. And it's not because we're stupid. Mm hmm. Yes, exactly. And really gentle and patient helps in a lot of situations. So no surprise that sheep are like that. So I know when people come up to me all loud and waving their hands and scary, I'm going to back up. Yeah. So.
33:59There you go. All right, Rachel, so we actually talked about the thing we were supposed to talk about. I'm so proud of us. I know, me too. All right, thank you for coming back. I appreciate it. No problem, my pleasure. Have a great day. You too. Bye.