A Tiny Homestead

Wisconsin Mineral Solutions

Today I'm talking with Gregg at Wisconsin Mineral Solutions. You can follow on Facebook as well.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
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00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I needed something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Greg Forster  at Wisconsin Mineral Solutions and he's in Wisconsin. Good morning, Greg. How are you? Good morning. How about you, Mary?  I'm good.  I am your neighbor in Minnesota and the weather here is relatively warm for April and sunny. What is it like in Wisconsin this morning? Right, about 37 degrees and  bright and sunny.
01:26Mm-hmm.  Yeah, we're moving slowly incrementally towards spring. I'm very excited about this and I'm sure you are too. Yes. So tell me about yourself and what you do because I know that you are a genius.  Yeah, like  beauty is in the eye of the beholder so is genius.  Oh, yeah. Well,  over here in Wisconsin I have
01:55on a 19 acre hobby farm, Homestead, where we've got probably about 30 baby goats born this spring. So that's, that's exciting. And most of those are twins, I guess. Yeah, twins and a fair number of triplets born this year. So that's always fun. And kind of kicks off the spring season with a lot of excitement here around the Homestead.
02:24And, um, well, we raise  quite a, I guess you could say kind of like a rainbow of fruits and vegetables here. We've got,  um,  a couple of acres actually of elderberries, and then we grow Aronia and blackcurrant and some red, white and pink currants.  And have a small greenhouse that, um, helps us kind of keep things going a little later into the season and also a little bit early.
02:53So yeah, home setting has been good. We've been  working with Dairy Goats for about 30 years now  and learning a lot.  And my personal background is  I have a degree in physics  and I utilized that for about 20 years  in the world of software engineering and it wasn't until
03:212012 that I turned  that education towards the world of agriculture. And now  I have a business called Wisconsin Mineral Solutions, as you mentioned. And I help  produce growers and dairy farmers  more profitably produce  and more sustainably produce nutritious foods. Okay. And that's where the genius part comes in.
03:46I listened to your podcast with Jill Winger today. I think her podcast is amazing. Like I want to be Jill Winger when I grow up  and I'm trying really hard to grow up fast because that would be great.  Yeah, she does. Awesome.  She's great. She's a lovely human being.  But what I found really interesting is all the science behind  the  making soil work better for you to grow better plants. And
04:13So  did you go back to school to learn this stuff or what, how did that happen? Well, I did not go back to school.  Um, but a lot of the principles that I've been learning and research that I've  come across,  um, my physics background kind of helps evaluate that and understand more how it,  when the rubber hits the road, what's actually happening down there in the soil and then what's happening in the plants themselves. And
04:42I've  encountered quite a few really, really knowledgeable people  over the last decade or so that have been instrumental in my learning and growing. And then of course, there are plenty of good opportunities like Acres USA and the Moses Conference and La Crosse, not too far from here.  So yeah, there are lots of ways to increase your knowledge and become more proficient in
05:12your understanding of how the natural environment works. Okay. I think that you suffer from the same thing that my dad and I suffer from. My dad calls it got to know it is  because for you to learn all of that stuff on your own, to be self-taught  using your physics background, that's got to know it is on a large scale.  Well, I liked the old adage when you're done learning, you're done.
05:42Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think I've heard that out of my dad too. He's 81. I'm pretty sure I've heard every old adage out of my dad at this point. But either way, so Jill was asking you all kinds of questions and she's far more educated than I am on how to ask questions about this because I'm not really the gardener my husband is and he has by hook and by crook been teaching himself how to garden and not use
06:11pesticides or man-made fertilizers and how to till in a smart way and how to add things to the garden because of what he sees happening with the plants. But it's not a science-based thing for him.  So  for those of us who don't know anything about the science behind good soil, is there an ABC to it or is it far more complex than that?  Well,  it is complex.
06:41but it doesn't have to be complicated.  We can approach things with kind of common sense and  I think it does help to get a little bit of science going on  our behalf, like doing soil testing and understanding what's going on there.  But you don't have to exactly understand the nuances that the soil test may imply.
07:09You just have to have some guidance on how to take what shows up in the test and do something  good with that data. So  a large part of my business is working with produce growers  and  quite a few of them market their produce.  Some do directly to grocery stores and  things like that, but  ones that are going through  auctions,
07:38produce auctions  are able to really see the difference if they change their behavior on their farms, the behavior of the buyers at the auctions changes.  we're able to help produce growers to have,  well, from the buyer's perspective, they just notice that the shelf life is longer and that the flavor is better and that the aroma is better. But what's actually happening is we're helping those
08:08vegetables become more nutrient dense  and when they're more nutrient dense all of those minerals and flavonoids and everything are just  Allowing the produce to be more sellable and the buyers like them better so we can definitely affect what's going on in the plants by Managing better what's going on in the soil?  Mm-hmm,  okay
08:34Here in Minnesota, we have a water and soil conservation district thing. And  I interviewed the lady for the county next to ours. I couldn't get hold of somebody in my county. And she was saying that they do soil testing and they will come out and kind of direct you on what the results mean and what you should do.  Does Wisconsin have something like that or are you that?  Wisconsin has that too.
09:04In my experience,  a lot of that,  and this isn't necessarily true for  Minnesota,  but a lot of that is based on or is focused on how to manage manure. And so it's looking at  how much manure can you put on the land before you end up with runoff problems and things like that.
09:31To do that, you don't really need a whole lot of detail in a soil test. But when I look at a soil test, I want to see where the trace minerals are at and how they're balanced relative to each other. So you can get a really cheap soil test that gives you some guidance, or you can get a medium-priced soil test, like around, let's say, $30 to $40.
09:59That gives you a lot more information and can help you  take more strategic action  with your soil.  All right. So I'm trying to drill down to the same thing Jill was trying to drill down with you on.  For those of us who know  nothing, we're just trying to grow a decent tomato that has some nutrient value in our garden.
10:28The first thing you think that we should do is get a soil test and find out what the soil needs.  Is that kind of step one? That is correct. Yes, that would be the first step. Okay.  And then  once you do that test and you get the results,  is there anywhere online that  will help you figure out what those test results actually mean?
10:55I don't know of any place online that would give you any kind of personalized help in doing that, but whoever you do your test through, they probably would have the skills and knowledge to get you in the right direction. Okay. Yep. That's what I was wondering because I can, we did a soil test the day after we moved into our place four and a half years ago, cause we bought a 3.1 acre lot and we had high hopes of growing a garden.
11:24And we did  the soil test for like pH and that stuff but not necessarily I think more in depth like you're talking about and We bought the place without testing the soil. We were kind of dumb. We could have brought the test with us  But we just wanted to make sure that it was a seven point zero because we knew what we wanted to grow which is you know, the usual suspects cucumbers and tomatoes and  onions and things And we were really lucky
11:53because it's perfect. have grown a gorgeous garden three out of the four summers we've been here. Last summer sucked because it rained and rained and rained. And as you know, wet soil is not plantable  and it's not walkable either because then you squish all the air pockets and everything doesn't work under there right.  So last year was not great and  we've got everything crossed this year that it's not going to rain for six weeks straight and that we will have a beautiful garden again.
12:22So,  what else can I ask you?
12:30What really prompted you to get into this? Because I mean you gave me  the rundown before, but what really pushed you on learning about this? Right, well,  in my neighborhood, let's see, this would be probably about 20 years ago  now,  a few of the farmers got together  and were started
12:58started thinking about how they could do a little more like collaborative type of work  and not have to have all the equipment to do everything, able to share some equipment. And we  formed a little sustainability group together.  And  one of the men that  started that, he  happened to be very, very knowledgeable about soil health and  human health and a lot of correlations between the two. And
13:27Um, he told me at one point that if I was going to get,  um, the same amount of nutrition as my great, great grandparents did from eating broccoli, that I would have to eat about 12 servings to their one serving.  And so that was kind of like one of the things that triggered my thinking about this and wondering,  um, you know, how could that be that drastic?  And.
13:53I mentioned just a few statistics when I talked to Jill about a few different things. think I might have mentioned  snap beans,  like tomatoes is one thing that when we look at tests  of tomatoes that are grown,  the most common way like that maybe a university would recommend. And then we look at how Dr. William Albrecht recommended that people manage the soil.  And in his testing,
14:23You know, he went out, he sent students out all over the world collecting soil samples, and then they spun out the humus and they looked at how the trace minerals were balanced in that humus.  And it turns out it's balanced an awful lot like in a  human body is.  And  we're always trying to improve organic matter in the soil. We know that that helps the soil hold its nutrients and everything.
14:54Dr. Albrecht thought, well, what if we  tried to balance soil so that it's mineral-wise balanced like the humus is?  And so he started doing some tests and other people have done some experiments too and looked at what impact does that have on the vegetables that are being produced?  it's just staggering.  for like iron is one that we notice a huge difference in.
15:23tomatoes grown the way Dr. Albrecht recommend have a iron unit of 1,938. If you grow it to a conventional way, you get one. 1,938 to one. That's like crazy difference. also looking at tomatoes, the amount of potassium goes from 148 down to 58.
15:53and magnesium goes from 59 to  about four and half. So these aren't just like a little bit worse today.  It's like off the charts  crazy.  And in some of the,  so some of these things are like a thousand times worse today. And so when I started noticing that,  that just really piqued my interest that we're
16:21We're doing a huge disservice to the whole world when we produce food that just can't really support life like it's designed to.  And  that just kind of fueled my interest and my excitement in learning more about the soil and how all of that works.  Because usually if somebody's this deep into something, something really kicked them into it. And I just was curious what it was. So thank you for telling me all that.
16:50So I, when you say that tomatoes are far less nutrient than they used to be, and sounds like they are, is part of that also that we have created hybrid kinds of tomatoes, they're not heirloom tomatoes, they're not exactly the same as they were in your great grandpa's day? Yes, that is partly true, yes.
17:19I don't know to what extent it is, but I do know when we look at  tomato greenhouses, some produce growers in the same greenhouse are growing heirloom tomatoes and they're also growing some hybrid tomatoes.  you know, the heirloom tomatoes have a much more gnarly kind of look, know, knobby and  they split a little bit more easily and things like that.
17:49Um,  we noticed that the  modern heirloom or not  the modern  hybrid types of tomatoes will grow pretty well  on not very good soil, but the heirloom tomatoes, they need you to do a really good job in managing the soil for them to turn out well. And the reason is because they need more nutrients. They're pulling more nutrients up into them. And so just naturally you're going to have.
18:18a much  richer  product than  with the  hybrids.  Flavor even. Like if you just grab a tomato that's been bred in order to be able to  be transported all across the country and banged around  and still look pretty good.  It doesn't taste the same as a fresh tomato that's  of an heirloom variety.
18:47No, no, it does not taste the same.  It's really interesting. talk a lot about tomatoes with a lot of people on this podcast, Greg. No, no joke.  But when we grow tomatoes here,  we will grow a couple heirloom varieties and we will grow early girls because early girls grow really well and people want to eat them because that's what they think they're supposed to taste like. Okay.  We grew Brandywine, heirloom Brandywine tomatoes one year.
19:16and they were as big as a softball and they were really pulpy but they were also really juicy and they were sweet. I don't think that people realize that tomatoes can have a sweetness to them.  The early girls  never have a sweetness to them and I'm assuming that's because they're a hybrid.
19:36Right. Yeah. The sweetness is,  um, pretty reflective  of the mineral content in them.  And,  um, have you ever eaten a, um,  a black currant before? Yes. I don't love them actually.  No,  you, a lot of people don't, but as soon as you put it in your mouth,
20:00There's just all kinds of things going on.  And your body is like, whoa, what is this?  And there are so many nutrients in there and complex,  uh, complex flavors there.  And  I think you're going to find that  there are some varieties of plants that, uh,  just  are much better at pulling up nutrients and need really rich soil and others you can kind of get away with, uh, less good soil,  but.
20:29what you're going to eat is also less good,  less tasty  and less healthy for you too.  had  a tomato grower  that had some friend from the city come out and visit,  a  young teenage kid,  and he was offered some tomatoes, cherry tomatoes by the farmer and the kid said, oh no, I don't like tomatoes.  And the farmer was like, what? You don't like tomatoes?
20:59No, we'll just try one. And so  the kid just ate one and didn't really say anything. And then a little bit later he reached in and grabbed another one and  pretty soon the whole bowl was gone.  And the farmer was really shocked at how much this person that had only had, I won't call them garbage tomatoes, but you know,  tomatoes that don't really taste like they're designed to.  And once he actually got to taste what a real tomato tastes like,
21:29Wow, he just loved them.
21:33Yep, that sounds about right.  We grew kohlrabis. You know what kohlrabis are? Yes.  Yeah, we grew those at our old house in our crappy backyard that was maybe, the garden was maybe 50 by 60 feet.  And it was not great soil. We had to bring in a whole bunch of dirt. We'll call it dirt because I don't know where we got it from.  you know, the stuff you plant plants in.
21:58And we grew kohlrabi and the neighbor girl had never had a kohlrabi before. And she saw them growing and she said, what's that? And my husband said, that's a kohlrabi. And she said, a kohlrabi It's a kohlrabi. It tastes sort of like a cabbage and a radish had a baby. And she's like, I like cabbage and I like radishes. And he said, well, here, take it. And she, you know, he broke the bulb off for her. He the roots off and the stems off.
22:28or the leaves off. And she looked at it and she said, how do I eat it? And he said, well, if you want to, you can just bite into it. He said, but how we eat it is we take it in and we cut it in slices like you would a radish. And we just eat it like that with a little bit of salt and pepper, very little salt. And she was like, okay. And she ran in the house. I she was like 10 at the time. And she didn't come out for five minutes and she came back out and she said, how many did you plant? My husband's at 20. She said,
22:58She said, if I give you 50 cents, can I get another one?  And kohlrabis are really weird. You know, they're not, they don't look like they should be edible. They're a weird looking  vegetable.  And so we converted her on the spot to that. And she asked us the following year if we were going to grow any. And my husband had already planned for this.  And he said, yes, but it's surprise. Come back in a month. I have a surprise for you.  So she came back in a month and there were purple kohlrabis.
23:28And she said, why are they purple? And he said, I don't know. He said, I just saw purple colorado and thought you might like them. And she took that one home, came back like 10 minutes later  and she said, they don't taste the same.  And I said,  hang on. And we still had the package of seeds in the house. And I looked at it and it's a hybrid.  So I think that she could tell that it was not the original plant.
23:56just from the way it tastes. She didn't hate it. She was like, the green one's better.  so yeah, humans are capable of discerning things without even knowing that they're doing it.  Yeah. And the animals  are, seem to be even more attuned to that.  We have  done experiments where we set out  GMO corn  and you set out  just conventional non GMO corn and even organic corn.  That's
24:26grown  with different practices. And you'll see the  pigs or goats  mostly  come up and kind of check out the different piles and they'll eat the good ones. They will leave the GMO stuff unless they're just really hungry and they've eaten up all of the good  organic corn. yeah, sometimes animals are a little more smart than we are, but
24:54we can  take  these nice brains that we have  and  apply them to our situation and make wise choices. So  I do  really encourage people to do the soil testing.  And sometimes there are just like little nuances going on in the soil that if you can get those turned around,  a  lot of things just start working well in the soil because there is kind of a classic
25:22tool, well not tool I guess,  an image that people use in the world of agronomy that show the interdependencies of the different minerals in the soil  and it's very, very rich.  And  if you have like just a little bit too little of copper in your soil, sometimes you can have potassium deficiencies in the plant.  And if you don't have enough zinc,
25:50Maybe you're going to have phosphorus deficiencies in the plant. Or if you don't have enough boron, then all of a sudden the calcium can't do the job that it's supposed to do. And so we just tweak a few things to get them in the right balance. And all of a sudden things start to change. and I've told quite a few people in the past that I really respect homesteaders for getting out there and doing the best they can to produce at least some amount of their own food.
26:20But I also want them to realize that sometimes they can produce stuff that's not a whole lot better than what they could buy  in the grocery store. And it doesn't have to be that way. They can make changes. Like you were saying, not getting out in the garden when it's too wet and you're squishing out all the air space for the good microbes and getting that soil in balance. And then the food that we're producing is food that's going to be supporting our physical and emotional
26:49and even spiritual well-being too.
26:53Yes, exactly. And that's why junk food is so bad for us. Junk food will actually make you depressed, make you not be able to sleep.  And if you're depressed and you can't sleep,  you're cranky and you're mean.  And so I am a big believer in good, healthy, nutritious food because it literally helps you be a better human being. Not that it makes you a healthy, I mean, it does. It makes you a healthier human being.
27:23But because you're healthier,  you act nicer, you act better, you make better choices because your brain is working better. Right. Right.  So I'm a big believer in growing your own stuff and the more you learn about how to pack it full of the nutrients your body needs because you're taking care of the soil, the better off we're all going to be. Right.  Absolutely.
27:46All right. So tell me, tell me about your goats. Cause if you've listened to the podcast at all, which I'm guessing you probably haven't, I freaking love baby goats. said you have 30 baby goats this spring.  Yeah. We have miniature Nubians  and so they have the big long floppy ears and the Roman nose  and they bounce around so energetically. It's it just gets you in the mood for spring.
28:14I've been in the mood for spring since October.  I'm ready. It's time.  So do you,  are you a goat dairy? Do you sell the goat milk? No, we don't.  Most of what we do with the goats, mean, obviously we use the milk ourselves and we're making yogurt and  a lot  of the summer. We pretty much just eat goat milk blended with berries and
28:43A little bit of maple syrup or honey. We call it utter delight. But the baby goats are used for breeding stock. there's a lot of demand for third, fourth, fifth generation miniature Nubians with strong milking traits. Nice. And they're fun. Admit it, they're fun. They are.
29:12Mm-hmm.  Yep.  I always try to get the fact that raising animals or growing produce is fun in because for people who  aren't doing this yet, there's a lot of hard work in homesteading and growing things, but there's such fun in it  at points in time. I don't want to say it's fun all the time because it's not,  but those moments of joy when you see those baby goats being crazy.
29:41or the moments of joy when you bite into that perfectly grown tomato are so worth it.  all  right, Greg, I tried to keep these for half an hour and we're at like almost 29 minutes and I'm not going to lie, I've been up since 3 a.m. and it is now 1029.  So I'm going to let you go because I'm going to really try hard to get some sleep recouped here shortly.  But  thank you for your time. I really appreciate it and keep doing the good work.
30:11All right. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Thank you, Mary. If you like this podcast, you would probably love Amy Fagan's Grounded in Maine podcast.  You can find her on  all the platforms, groundedinmaine.com.
 

Harvest Of Joy Homestead

Today I'm talking with Joy at Harvest Of Joy Homestead.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Joy at Harvest of Joy Homestead. Good morning, Joy. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm good. You said you're in Mississippi when we were talking before I hit record. So  what's the weather like there today? It's very cold today. Really?  Yes.
01:23Like how cold? Because like I said, I'm in Minnesota. I know what cold is. See,  we don't really know what cold is. Like y'all, it's like 60 here. So it's cold to us.  Oh, you would not be enjoying this morning.  I don't think it's freezing yet. I think we're still below freezing here. Oh, wow. Yeah, we don't know what cold is here.  Yeah, I absolutely know what cold is here.
01:48People assume that I don't know what really hot is, but I can tell you from first-hand experience, two summers ago, we had a day that hit 101 degrees and the humidity was at the tropical level. So I do understand heat too. Yeah. we can be anywhere from minus 30 real temperature in January to 101 and tropical humidity in July. So. Wow. That's insane.
02:18It kind of is. That's why we all have lots of clothes here.  We have, I don't do this. My mom lives in Maine. I grew up in Maine and it's cold there too in the winter.  She actually has summer clothes and winter clothes and she packs away the summer clothes  in  November and she pulls out the winter clothes and then she packs away the winter clothes in April and she pulls out the summer clothes. I don't even bother. I just have all my clothes available and that way if I need 17 layers, I have them. Yeah.
02:49So,  I always start the podcast with the weather, well, almost always because it's just a good way to break the ice and it's nice to know what's going on in the world on the day I talk to people.  tell me about yourself and your homestead, please. Okay. So, my name is Joy. I go by Joy. I'm a homeschooling mom  and  I'm an  urban homesteader in...
03:13I run a Facebook of  Harvest of Joy Homestead for our homestead that we just started this year.  And I also run a Facebook group for Journey to Joy, Faith Family and Life Lessons for moms out there like me that has kids and just started homeschooling. And we just need a little compassion and upliftment and encouragement from each other. That's awesome. I love that.
03:40And I'm so glad that you just started your homestead this year because I don't usually talk to brand new homesteaders who are just building it. So tell me about that. I actually have a license in veterinary technology and so I've always loved animals. Well, I have four kids. I had twins in 2021. One of them ended up having Dandy Walker and they thought I was going to lose both of them. So I ended up having to quit my job to
04:10care for them. And so  the journey kind of started then where God was putting it on my heart to, you know, get your chickens, get what you can. Even though you live in city limits, you can do what you can.  And I kind of just like brushed it off, brushed it off. And last year  I started just getting little things and putting it as a hobby and part of our home school. So now we have  Brahma chickens.
04:38We have  just regular egg layer, barnyard mixes. We have rabbits for meat.  And we also have quail and just got into ducks.  Oh, I have a question real quick about all of that.  If you're in city limits, are there regulations about what you can and can't have, or is it just a complaint-based thing where if somebody complains, then they're like, what are you doing? So for here, it's a complaint thing.  But  we have a fenced-in backyard.
05:08And also  we are very kind with our eggs, so I think that helps.  Yes, yes. Kindness goes a long way. Yes.  Okay. So the Brahma chickens, are those the ones that are small? No, those are bantams that are small, which we also have those. I forgot to add them. But Brahmas are kind of like an uppity breed around here. They have the feathered feet and kind of grow big.
05:35Okay, I'm not familiar with the breeds, I thought I would ask.  So you said you have a fenced in backyard, so I'm guessing your chickens don't fly the coop as it were, or maybe they do and people bring them back to you.  I've actually  ordered like a metal coop off  of Amazon and I just use it. I secured it with hardwood cloth and I put
06:02wood on the bottom and use it as tractor so they never get out but they move daily. Nice.  Awesome.  How big is  your lot? It's about an acre.  Oh, so it's a good size city lot. Yes, ma'am.  Nice.  The reason I ask is we  now live on three acres. We used to live on a tenth of an acre in town, in a small town in Jordan. And we had four chickens and we had a coop for them.
06:32And they never got to get out because there was just no place for them to get out.  So we put in like a screen door and  like screen windows for the chickens. So we'd open the coop doors and then the light would pour in so they would have some fresh air and some sunlight. Because I felt terrible at the idea of just having them be in a big box,  know, with no fresh air and no sunlight. Because I wouldn't want to live like that. Yeah. Okay.  And you said you have rabbits for meat.
07:02And I know you have baby rabbits, because I looked at your Facebook page yesterday. I was like, oh, I'm so jealous she has baby rabbits.  Yes, ma'am. And I'm loving it. I'm loving it so much.  Aren't they the sweetest thing ever? are. They run to the gate.  When they see me coming, all of them run to the gate, because I always have some treat for the day. Yeah, they're very food motivated.  think all baby things are food motivated. They're like, hey, that's new. Let's go try that.
07:31Couple, well maybe three summers ago, we had gotten rabbits with the plan of  having them for meat.  And  I've told the story a billion times on the podcast, but I haven't told it to you. They did not get the memo that they were supposed to make more rabbits.  And we got  one  litter out  of a year of having meat rabbits, and I was like, I'm done, this is dumb. We're feeding these guys and they're not earning their keep.  But the one litter,
08:01ended up coming into my house in  a clear bin with mama because it got so hot for about four days in June that we lost some of the babies to heat. And  I was not going to let the other six die, you know, from being outside  in the hut. So I got to have baby rabbits in my house for like three weeks on my table in this bin and it had holes drilled in it so they had good air.
08:30And every morning I got to go and say hello to these baby rabbits and pick them up and hold them and talk to them. And it was so fun. Yeah.  My dog really wanted to be friends with them. But  what I discovered is  obviously rabbits are a prey  animal. Yes. And my dog, who's an Australian shepherd, is a predator animal.
08:55And I didn't think anything about it until I was holding one of the babies and my dog wanted to see it. And I put my hand down and my dog was just very gentle and trying to sniff the bunny. The bunny screeched like, oh, that's a bad thing. Get that away from me. Yeah. So you don't want to introduce baby rabbits to predator animals because they just know. Yeah, it definitely has to be slow. Like my dog is always around, so they kind of know him. But at first they was like, oh,
09:25Yeah, it's crazy how they know what's a danger to them and what isn't. Because they didn't scream when we would pick them up. They were fine. But the minute that baby rabbit smelled my dog on the air, she was like, no, they know. Yeah, it's crazy.  I'm so impressed with the way that Mother Nature designed everything because  it's it's literally  a dog eat dog world.
09:53And the animals that are not capable of defending themselves  know how to keep themselves safe. Yes, ma'am, you're right.  So it's just amazing.  OK, so you said you have chickens, have rabbits, you have kids. Yes, ma'am, I do. Yeah, twins and then two more. Yes, ma'am, have an  older son, the twins, and then I have a daughter.  OK, cool.
10:22And you said that one of your twins had something and I didn't catch what it was when they were babies. He was born with dandewalking and hydrocephalus. Oh, okay. I don't know what that first thing is. It's actually something that you really don't hear. we had to go to a specialist because doctors didn't even, like half of them didn't even know what it was.
10:43It's something like a missing part of the brain. And so it's a part where fluid's supposed to pump through, like your brain pumps the fluid through and out.  And here's this missing,  and just a little side note here. They actually told me that he wasn't gonna make it and that if he did, he would be a vegetable. He went to the doctor last year and they said if they didn't have his chart, they would never even know anything was wrong.
11:13I am so glad. That's amazing. Wow. anybody I talk to and they ask me about him, I always tell his testimony.  Uh huh. Yeah. And that's a good thing because you're giving hope to other parents who might be going through the same thing. Yes, ma'am. Wow. Okay. So do your kids, are your kids in on the raising the animals too? Or is it just your, your bag mom?
11:38Um, my daughter isn't cause she's just too young right now, but the boys they love it and they actually just got some chicks the other day that they're, um, that they're helping raise up.  Nice. Nice. And they know all about being gentle and sweet with the babies. Yes, ma'am.  Uh huh. Yeah. It always scares me when I see a toddler grab a baby animal because I'm like, either it's going to bite it  or
12:05the toddler is gonna squeeze too hard and it's gonna hurt the baby animal. And honestly, toddlers understand gentle. We have been gentle with our babies all along, so they do know what it means. It's just about teaching them. Yeah, yep, exactly. I can remember when my youngest son was probably two. He was outside and I went out to check on him and he had a toad, know, not a frog, a toad, in his hands.
12:35And I was like, be careful, because he was holding it real tight.  And apparently he had just started holding it really tight because it peed on his hand and he dropped the toe.  And I said, OK.  I said, from now on, if you're going to pick up something smaller than your hand, you have to be soft. And I took his hand and I put it in my hand and I pressed on his hand and I said, does that hurt? And he said, no.
12:59and I squeezed a little harder and I said, does that hurt? And he said, no, but it's not as good as the first one. I said, the first one is gentle touch. And from then on, he's been  so gentle with every little tiny thing  and he's 23 now. So. Wow. That  was a pretty good lesson. I could use that.  Yeah. He did not appreciate a frog or a toad peeing on his hand though.  He jumped as it did it and dropped the toad. I was like, oh no, here we go.
13:28So yeah, you can teach your kids all kinds of things like that that seem really  abstract, but there are ways to illustrate it for them so they can understand what you're saying.
13:41So,  okay, so do you grow a garden on your acre or not?  This is my first year actually trying.  So I pretty much just only growing what the rabbits like,  like radish and  I did do spinach for us and the rabbits kale. Yeah. And I also dabbled in  onions this year and they're growing pretty good. So I'm surprised.  I'm not.
14:08Onions really, really don't like having their feet wet. And I'm assuming that Mississippi  is warm all year round. I mean, you said it's cold there, but 60 degrees.  So I'm not surprised that they're doing well. Good job. Thank you.  Yeah. I don't know. Do you like tomatoes or cucumbers?  I do. I plan on... So  we're doing buckets right now because...
14:35We're planning on expanding and growing from here. Yeah. So we're not really digging in the ground or tilling anything. So I'm doing a bucket method. And so I'm planning on doing tomatoes and  cucumbers and the bush beans. Yep. Okay. Good. Cause really if you're going to be a homesteader, ma'am,  gardening is really important. Plus  not only are you feeding the chickens, you're feeding you  and you need to be fed too.
15:05Yeah. So, okay.  So, you sort of touched on why you started doing this at the beginning, but  can you tell me whether you were brought up around people who did this or if it was just something you got interested in?  I wouldn't say I really grew up around it.  My granddad had cows and things, but I was never old enough to
15:33By the time I got old enough to know about farming and stuff, they didn't do it anymore.  My daddy would raise pigs and butcher them, but it was never like we had our own pigs. He would go buy a pig, raise it a little bit more. So it was kind of, for my family, it was kind of unheard of. So I'm kind of like the crazy chicken and animal lady in my family. No, you're the smart chicken and animal lady in your family. Yeah.
16:01I want to take that crazy word off the front of things like that because  it's not crazy. It's smart. Yeah. It's not crazy, but it seems like around here, everybody is like, wow, you're doing that. Like, yeah, it's feeding my family and we know our food, their love. I know it sounds weird to other people, but their love, we take care of them, but we know where they're coming from. We know what they're eating. Yeah.
16:29Yep. And that's why I want to take that crazy word off the front because I want people to understand that just because they don't raise their own food doesn't mean it's crazy to raise your own food.  It bothers me, you know, I've heard it forever. I've heard it mostly with crazy cat lady or for people who have lots of cats. And yes, there can be mental illness associated with people who have too many cats or dogs or I don't know, whatever pets, but
16:58When you are doing something that is positive and it is improving your life, I don't think it's crazy in the least.  So that's what I'm saying. I don't want crazy associated with Homestead anymore. I want it to be smart because I think it's smart to Homestead. And you know what? I really needed to hear that. I really did.  Yeah. It's really hard when people don't, they don't understand or they don't appreciate what you're doing. And
17:26Like you said, you said you're giving your neighbors eggs  and so people are okay with you having the chickens. And it  takes people like us to do what we're doing.  Share the rewards of what we're doing with the people who aren't doing it for them to realize that it's a good thing. Yeah, I agree. We did that back when we lived in town.  We dug up our whole backyard and put in food we could eat. We grew food we could eat.
17:55And of course we grew more than we needed. So we took bags of tomatoes and cucumbers around the neighborhood and asked our neighbors if they would like some. And then we didn't seem quite so quote unquote crazy because everybody loved it. So  if you can, if you can share the bounty,  it really does bring people on board with what you're doing and they don't think that you're nuts anymore. Yeah, I call it abundance of blessings. That's what I call it. Yes, exactly.
18:24When we have an abundance of blessings here now on our three acres, we take lots of stuff to the local food shelf because  we want people who can't buy good stuff at the grocery store and can't find it sometimes to be able to have  good homegrown produce from our garden.
18:44And the guy that runs it is a friend of ours. And  when we asked him if he wanted tomatoes for the food shelf, he said, sure, how many you got? And my husband said,  boxes  of them. Wow. His face lit up. He was like, bring all you got. Everybody wants tomatoes right now. And it was so fun, Joy. Like, your name is Joy. There was so much joy in bringing this stuff to the food shelf because we were like, we have had to use food from the food shelf before we know.
19:14that when you're in a hard place, it's important to be able to get good food at the food shelf, not just macaroni and cheese from a box.  It is.  I believe everybody's been there.  And I think it takes having to be there to know how to help others and like what's needed. So that the end of the day, money is not important. It's the help and the love and the brother and sisterhood that's important in that.
19:44pushes you through.  Yeah, um, speaking of that,  one of the times, well, my husband volunteered at the food shelf in the town that we used to live in.  And there were times when we needed help too, cause people go through that.  And some of the ladies who were part of the board for the, the food shelf had put together the blankets that are like fleece and you just put two pieces together and tie them, you know, they have like a fringe all around the edge.
20:13When I went down to pick up my husband from the food shelf when he was volunteering,  one of the ladies who happens to be our neighbor said, do you want one these blankets?  We made too many. We have like a hundred of them. And she had one that no one wanted and it was sage green on one side. And it had like these button designs on the other side against a black background.  And I said, I would love to take that one if nobody's, you know, said anything about wanting it.
20:40She said, it's so funny. Nobody wants that one. They think it's ugly. And I was like, I think it's beautiful. I'm gonna take it home with me. I still have that blanket. I use it every winter here. Wow. Yeah. And just because nobody liked it, nobody wanted it. So I guess the point of my story, cause we're talking about food shelf stuff, is sometimes you find things that you don't expect and it really is a gift that you did not know you were going to get. Yes. Yes.
21:10So,  okay, so are you enjoying your foray into urban home setting? I'm loving it. I'm really loving it. It's like my quiet place, like  life getting too hectic or it's a hard homeschool day. It's just good to know I have my own oasis to go to. Yeah, yep, exactly.  And  when you do...
21:39when you go to that oasis after a hard homeschool day,  do you just like stand and look around and think, wow, look what I'm building? Or do you just listen to the chickens talk to each other and just breathe in and out?  It depends on the day. Some days I'm out there and I'm like, wow, like  I  see growth, even though we just started, I'm already seeing growth of what we didn't have and where we at. then some days it is like,
22:07Let me go hold a rabbit and breathe.  huh. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure that you have days where you enjoy homeschooling your kids, but I'm also positive you have days where you're like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Anybody with kids on the stage.  Uh huh. Yeah. I, I have a lot of respect for moms who homeschool their kids because I did it with my two youngest boys.
22:33And I was lucky I used the online platform so I didn't have to develop curriculum.  And even that was hard because my oldest was a senior in high school of the two. And he was doing pre-calculus.  Wow, yes.  I took pre-calculus in high school. Do you think I remember any of it? No, I do not.  I also think it's a useless math.
22:58class to teach a senior in high school who's not going to go on to become a mathematician, but that's just my opinion. And he would get so frustrated and I would look at what he was doing and I didn't know how to do it. Like I did not have the background to help him.  One of the most frustrating things of my life was that class with him. And so when  we moms take on the education of our kids, even if it's through an  online platform for homeschooling,
23:26It's a lot of time and it's a lot of patience trying to help your kids through it. Yes, you definitely have to pray and grow in patience.  Yes, you do.  And the  mantra in my house was, your grades do not define you.  Amen.  That's what I tell my son. Because in public school, I've been there. That's where I went. It's kind of like you get it or you don't.
23:54and we don't have time to stop on you.  At home school, it's tough and you might not remember how to do it, but it's always some way,  some always shows that whether that's a person or a YouTube video or something that helps you help your child.  Yep, exactly. And  like I said, my oldest with the pre-cal, he was really getting depressed about it. Yeah. And I emailed the advisor or whoever it was that was
24:24you know, the boss or whatever of the class.  And I said, he's really struggling, like he's not sleeping. And the guy was like, I don't know what to tell you.  I can't  give him a pass. And I was like, I'm not saying give him a pass. I'm saying help him.  He says, I need to talk to you during office hours.  Don't just be like, read the book. He needs help.  And he never got it. He never got help with that.
24:54And it made me crazy.  anyway, I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole on homeschooling, but I respect what you're doing, Joy, because I've done it and it is hard work.  so  are you going to continue doing the urban home setting or do you have hopes of getting out of the urban setting and more into the rural setting? I'm hoping to get more into the rural because I just, I want a lot of things.  I want goats. want
25:24Maybe. So I want our own little beef cow, maybe even a beef and milk cross. Nice. That would be great. Is there, this doesn't sound like a stupid question, but here in Minnesota right now, well for the last couple of years, there haven't been a lot of small acreages available for sale because during COVID everybody moved to the country who could.
25:52And so a lot of the small acreages got bought up and everybody is kind of sticking there. So is, is there, are there small acreages around you at all? What do you count as small?  Like under 10 acres. Oh, so it is a lot of like,  um, country, we call it country land around here.  It is a lot of country land for sale, but it's kind of like the prices are like crazy. Cause I guess they know people are looking for that.
26:21So we're just trying to wait it out and build and we're telling and speaking into each other that God gonna give us exactly what we need when we need it.  Speaking it into existence, yes. Yep, exactly.  And in the meantime, you can be honing your home setting skills where you are and then you're ready when you make the jump. Yes, ma'am. And  one of the things I would suggest if you don't already do it, I'm making an assumption here.
26:50is if you don't cook from scratch, learn how to. I've actually started baking. Good. it's pretty fun. It depends on how the kids are feeling,  if it's fun or not, because I try to incorporate them on things like that. So they're already learning without realizing they're even learning.  And so that's also one of reasons I got the duck eggs, like the ducks for eggs, because I heard with bacon, it's amazing. Yeah.
27:20I keep hearing that too. I haven't done it. But I keep hearing that duck eggs are richer and they're better for baked goods.  A friend of mine has ducks and she keeps saying next time she comes over and we haven't set up a time yet that she's going to bring me some duck eggs so I can bake with duck eggs and see what everybody's talking about.  It's good to have friends who have things that I haven't done before who want to help. is. It is because it's like I have  a friend that
27:48I actually got my first rabbits from her and  she has chickens and pretty much everything that we want to one day have, she's already had.  We had a fox attack  last week, like literally last week. And I was just, I was battling flies and maggots and trying to figure out what is going on. And she really helped me. So it's always good to have a friend that's an elder in the game of homesteading.
28:18I'm so glad you said that. I'm glad you shared that story because it really is good to have people who are doing it, who are willing to help. And I call them Homestead mentors. You know how you would have a mentor in school?  I didn't really have a Homestead mentor when  my husband and I started this back 20 years ago, learning about this stuff. I just watched YouTube videos or  went to blogs and read things. And I was like, I can try that and I can probably do it. And then I would do the one thing.
28:48and I would figure it out and I would master it and I'd be like, what's next? What else can I learn? So there are ways to do it, but having a person to show you the ropes really is  fantastic in a way that  reading about it or watching a video is not. It's very different. Yep, I agree. I'm so excited for you. You're at the very beginning, Joy. You have so many cool things coming down the road for you.
29:15Yes, ma'am. And it's just fun. The reason I created the Facebook for the homestead is not even to like  make money or anything, but it's just to show like you don't need what you see on a lot on YouTube. It's like the big beauty and everything. It doesn't have to be perfect. You do what you can with what you have. I love it. I say that all the time. Do what you can with what you have where you are.
29:42I am so glad you came to talk to me today, Joy. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for inviting me. I was so nervous, but you are very welcoming. I really have enjoyed myself.  I'm glad. you have, you have absolutely illustrated my point that you can do this,  even if you live on a little tiny lot of property. If you can put in raised beds or bucket gardens or  have a space for a chicken coop, you can do it and you're doing it. So thank you for sharing.
30:13Thank you. All right. Have a great day. You too. Bye.
 

The Punk Rock Farmer - Part 2

Today I'm talking with Jonathan Lawler at The Punk Rock Farmer. You can follow on Facebook as well.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
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00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. That doesn't work here. mean, I said number one, said, when you have 12,000 tomato plants planted per acre, the pheromones that we're releasing to the hawk moths and the gypsy moths, everything that wants to come a beat on these, that's going out. Huge, huge signals.
01:26And I said, we try to use, I mean,  I do integrated pest management where I try to incorporate insect predators and,  I encourage hawks here.  love the fact that I have hawks. My wife doesn't like it because of her chickens, but I like having hawks here because mice are such a problem for us as produce farmers. They are just the bane of our existence.
01:54we're getting ready to install 27 miles of drip irrigation just here at this location. And when we install that, the mice in the middle of summer when it's dry will actually chew on that drip irrigation. To get to the water. To get to the water. so,  you know,  I've always told people, like, I'll have guys who work for me and they'll see a snake and they'll go to kill it. said, that's fine. But you kill a snake, you got to do his job for two weeks for free.
02:22You know, because he's eaten the things I don't want him. We have bees and we're able to educate people. They're like, well, how can you use chemicals  and have bees? Well, because number one, the stuff I'm using, bees aren't chewing on the plants.  And these insects have to chew on the plants in order to ingest it. Number two,  we also spray in accordance with how the bees
02:52Whether they're, you know, we don't like to, we really don't like to spray plants late in the evening, but, uh, we will, we won't spray before a big bloom, like a big bloom of watermelons. We don't spray. mean, there's, there's things that we actively do that there's nuanced conversations that we can have with the people that are all or nothing. When it comes to there's people that are like, no chemicals all the way. That's the way we should do it. And then there's people like, absolutely don't use chemicals. And I see myself as.
03:22I'm the dude in the middle saying if I don't have to spray, I'm not going to. But at the same time, don't take the tool tools away from me that I need to help feed people.  And that's that's  that's  that's a hard part for me sometimes  is  what people tell me now.  The funny part about those those ladies that came, they were awesome.  They were like you guys, you know, she said she wanted to know how we  manage rabbits. And I said, Well, we throw lead at him.
03:511300 feet per second. Us too. Yes. And I could tell it took her a second to understand what I was saying. And I was like, all these, all these cute German shepherds that are your best friends right now that are, are, you know, circling you for, for their next pet. These guys also do it. They see a rabbit, they kill it, you know, and that's kind of, kind of how we've trained them to be. And they're like, yeah, we,
04:18But I'm like, you guys are also in urban environments. So discharging a firearm would probably be frowned upon. you  know, the things that you can do, I mean, I didn't really have an answer for him because I've always been able to manage pests the way we saw fit. Yeah.
04:40Yeah, I'm going to jump in for a second.  I think that what  everybody needs  regarding  these stories you're telling is number one,  listening. Number two, critical thinking. And number three, understanding what you heard and realizing that  it doesn't have to be  one way or another. It can be a blend of a bunch of things. Correct. I mean, I've always said in my mind,
05:07I've always said that the, the pinnacle of agriculture at some point is we're going to take the best of conventional and the best of organic. And we're going to be able to, to kind of merge them together, which I already kind of do on my farm. There's organic products.  I, I,  I, I, some of the truth telling that I, that I think has gotten me in trouble before is I was an organic farm. We were conventional. I switched to organic. I switched back.
05:37And so there were certain crops I just I could not grow them well organically.  Not without  a  huge reduction in yield as well as a lot of loss. Other crops though, especially now with the organic inputs that are out there. I don't know why an organic tomato cost more. Than a conventionally grown tomato.  I don't know why an organically grown bell pepper.
06:07cost more because the only difference in the growing methods, at least from what I can tell is the inputs and the inputs really aren't that much more expensive anymore, especially when you're buying them. If you're growing at scale, that you know, you're you're you're buying them in bulk. So the cost isn't really that much more. I think that like the Corteva product, I think it's $30 more a pint if it's organic.
06:37But that pint mind you is 700 bucks conventional,  but it makes a lot of product. I mean it makes a ton of product. So  yeah,  I see a lot of things in food that that I'm super critical of that nobody wants to talk about.  You know we could be growing organically or people can be growing organically. They have the tools now to to  to.  Really?
07:06Be able to compete with it, compete with a conventional farmer. But if I go to a farmer's market, I still see $7 pound tomatoes  and people  say, there's $7 a pound because you know, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. They have a checklist of things. Well, no, there's $7 a pound because you can't take advantage of economy of scale. That's why.
07:35And I don't have a problem with that. buy those seven dollar tomatoes sometimes just see what they taste like or if they grow a variety that I don't.  I'm happy to pay that to the farmer. Where I get up where I have a problem is is when farmers markets are utilized as things that can address food access, especially if we're talking about affordable food access here in Indianapolis, they put a farmers market in the city's largest food desert.
08:04And I went to it  and they had number one, had stuff that nobody wanted.  Um, you know, the, the, it was the kale or the, you know, these, these different, you know, the varieties weren't great. And  what they did have that the community looked at was  not affordable to them. They, they, you know, they did that. The tomatoes were  not one vendor was selling them for less than $5.
08:34They were all organic. The requirement of this particular market and this deal that they had made with this, with the center they were doing it with was that everything had to be organic and everything. And I remember I was speaking to the person that had put it together  and she was basically, I was there, we had some of the kids there and she's like, the very fact that none of you have tasted.
09:05and organic strawberry picked  right from the field is just, I just can't believe it. You guys have no idea what you're missing out on. And that's why this is important. And I just, wanted to like, just get in her face and be like, listen, you know, these kids, they're going to school with no food. They didn't eat breakfast. They're, they're, they're on the lunch programs.  And on top of that,
09:34They have no idea  where to go to get those organic strawberries that you're talking about pick straight from the field. They're lucky if they get a conventional strawberry from plant city, Florida, let alone what you're talking about. And your strawberries are very expensive. They're out of their price range. Even their snap dollars that they're all given to spend there. Just do not go very far when the prices of the food is so expensive. And we kind of looked at that.
10:02We started doing farmers markets just to address food insecurity. And we had this lofty goal of, well, if we're going into an area where there's a poverty level, everybody's on SNAP, everybody's on this or that, we're just going to provide, we're subsidized basically by our private funders. So we're going to just give the food away for free. You know, we hear something crazy. Nobody take it. Really?
10:30Nobody, they all insisted on purchasing it. So we made the tomatoes a dollar a pound. And when we made them a dollar a pound, they loaded up  on them. They, know, cucumbers, you know, our cucumbers were a quarter or you, or you could get, you could get five for a dollar, you know? And,  and so, I mean, we had, we had, you know, especially a lot of grandmothers.
10:59a lot of African American grandmothers that were saying they're going to show their granddaughters how to make pickles.  And what surprised me was as, you know, some people go out and look for pickling cucumbers. My grandmother never used pickling cucumbers. She always used a different type of cucumber.  never  I I always preferred those over the pickling ones.  And I think so today. But.
11:26I realized then that it was also about dignity that they could, they could buy this fresh produce. They could go home, make a meal for their family and be able to say, look what I got for you. you know, not every farm can do that. And that, wasn't an expectation, but that's why when people say small local only small local only like, okay, fine. But how do we feed people?
11:56You know,  the demographic that you're thinking of in your mind of that suburban soccer mom or suburban baseball dad that will come and drop a hundred bucks at your farmer's market without blinking an eye. That is only a percentage of what the American public is. The  folks in the urban areas and even rural areas that are living at the poverty line. There needs to be a place for them. Number one, to participate.
12:27And that means being able to buy. They should be able to buy it. But participate in such a way that.
12:35they can afford it and it doesn't like, doesn't like rock their bank account or they don't feel guilty.  I  had the pleasure of being at a dinner with Joel Salatin  and  Joel Salatin said, I don't want the single mom living in a food desert to be my client. That's low hanging fruit. That's what he said, it low hanging fruit. And I just thought, wow.
13:04Any respect that I had for that dude went out the window when he said that because as a farmer, my job's to. My civil  service is to make sure that my community is fed. That's my job.  And.  The greed and there's nothing wrong with somebody making money. You should be able to. Sustainability is also financial. But to kind of throw my clients.
13:32under the bus as if they're not important or they shouldn't be what somebody is striving to have as clientele, that just rubbed me the wrong way. And I was just like, okay, well, I'm going to try to do even more now. I outproduced his farm big time. Granted, he's only meat. I'm 99 % produce, but pound for pound, we
14:01What I do  is,  is I care more about making sure that people have this access.  Um, and if I want, if I wanted the money, I could have, I even as running the nonprofit, I could have just,  I know so many nonprofit leaders that,  know, they're rolling in cash. You know, they take these gigantic grants and they use them for everything other than the service that they're supposed to provide.
14:3010 % of it  is used for the service and everything else goes over. We actually got to where we were providing  one pound of food and that pound would, a serving,  to where it had the servings of three vegetables and protein for  almost  right at a dollar.  Now we were non-profit, so what I always tell people is you can't, because we were non-profit, we're subsidized by private.
15:00Private entities we actually never took any taxpayer dollars.  Subsidized by. By private entities we were able to do that.  So now that I've kind of closed my nonprofit we we we've we've you know we've got with the board and we said we don't want to do this anymore.  We feel like there's other ways to be more impactful.
15:28I can still, can't get close to that number, but I can still get to where it's affordable and my farm makes money.  You know, and that's because then that's how I feel. Everybody has a different path.  I do get a little bit hung up and that's what I'll call it. know, niche growers,  the pasture raise folks, those folks, the holistic farmers. When they,
15:57go as far  as saying things like,  isn't,  know,  if you're not buying this chicken, or if you're not buying this beef, or if it's not grass fed, or whatever it might be, you know,  it's almost a form of food bullying. And I don't like it, you know, because I know plenty of holistic growers,  holistic producers, they don't do that. They're like, this is what I have.
16:27This is what I, this is what I produce. If you want it, I have it. And they are providing such a valuable service for, for those folks that seek out that type of food. It's just when I,  when I see some farms and I just, there's one, I just talked about this. There's a farm on Facebook I used to follow. I had to stop following them because they're, they're number one, crashing farmers like me, you know, that, that, that, that's.
16:57here and over there, I can see that a lot. But they were trashing anyone who was making a decision based on the price  of the food. again, that's because I've worked in this, I've worked in this sector  of the hunger. I know  the sacrifices people make on food.  We're not  talking about people that are sitting on welfare at home. We're talking about
17:26People that some of them have two jobs and they're still in the poverty level.  mean,  it's just a very odd thing or there's a mental health issue.  Um, lot of, a lot of addiction issues that, that lead to hunger. But we always used our food as kind of a bridge to say, Hey, we can help you with if it's the mental health thing or it's the addiction thing, we can help you. You know, here's the, here's the bridge that we're building the food come across.
17:57And then with other people, was just about things. Healthy eating was not affordable to them.  And,  uh, you know, I, I met him,  uh, uh, a mother who we actually owned a grocery store in Indianapolis that our farm provided stuff for and multiple other farms did.  And,  uh, she was, she could not afford the organic eggs that were in the store.  And.
18:26There were some, couple other things, cause we offer both organic and conventional. And I told her the conventional stuff actually, I showed her the stuff that we were talking about. And she had three boxes of Annie's organic macaroni and cheese in her cart. And I was like, do you really think because that says organic on it, that processed cheese junk, whatever it is, is better than a conventional tomato?
18:54or a salad that you can make for your kids  or  that conventional watermelon that your kids would absolutely love. Do you think that's better?  And she said, I don't know.  said,  I kind of went through, she asked me a lot of questions about how we farm and I was able to answer. She loaded her cart up with my produce,  which I was happy about.  those are the nuanced conversations.
19:23And I do, I see that right now. I see a lot of barbs being thrown from like the holistic grower side of, you know, cattle that never, that never, uh, never are on pasture. I don't know. I mean, I raised cattle for market. I've never had them a hundred percent on a feedlot. They're two thirds of their life was spent on my pastures. And then, you know, when they go to finish, that's somebody else doing it, but
19:52That's where they're going. I don't know that. I don't know.
20:01why that's happening right now, why it's such a push  to trash every type of farming operation without actually knowing how it works.  I do think it's not understanding the complexities of the American food system that, you know, I don't believe that a whole list, if we went back to a holistic method, like say how Salatin is maybe telling us to grow or these other people are telling us to grow.
20:31I don't see that being able to feed our population. just don't know how it could. Not without like every fourth person having to go back to an agrarian lifestyle. And I also don't see the American public wanting to do that. I don't think it would be a bad thing. just don't see them wanting to do it.
20:56Yeah, I mean, it's work. It's hard work. It's good work. I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump in real quick cause we're coming up on like 55 minutes now.  You are a storyteller. I love that. I love everything that you're doing and keep doing it.  But I think that part of the reason that people are so quick to jump on each other, whether it's  egg  or I don't know anything right now is right now people are so stressed.
21:24And so worried and so  unsure of what tomorrow looks like that everyone is kind of on edge and it's coming out sideways. Now, I don't know how long you've been seeing this behavior that you're talking about. I I'll be honest. I think you're right because you know, Joel Salatin and folks like him have been around for a long time.  Um, it becoming mainstream in the sense of and again,
21:55Joel Salatin is one of those guys that I love that he gets people interested in agriculture. I just don't love how people will hang on to a sound bite, he said, and think that that's the gospel truth.  Or that what he just said will apply across the board, because it just doesn't. But  I think what you're saying is absolutely right, because it's just been recently where I've seen so many...
22:24And again, I've seen in the past where farmers like me or a skilled farmer will throw barbs at a small farm  or a conventional farmer will throw barbs at the organic folks.
22:39But the amount  of people just saying, know,  if it's not grass fed, if it's not pasture raised, if it's not X, Y, and Z, if it's not organic, if it's not, you know, it's It's bad. bad.  And that is to me probably what you're saying.  think, you know, a lot of these small farm operations, operate from
23:09Market to market.  It's, you know, almost like a paycheck to paycheck kind of thing. So I'm sure it's stressful. And if they can try to convince somebody to buy their product, you know, because they're worried about the economy or worried about whatever. And also, I mean, the political climate, everybody needs a bandwagon chip on right now. I mean, that's that's  something I see. You know, I'm not a fan of RFK. I'm not.
23:35You know,  and I'm in very red Indiana  and you say you're not a fan of RFK, then they're like, well, you must be like a Pico liberal. And I'm just like,  I have very cruel values, but I also understand what RFK  is and what he has done to farmers in the past.  And,  you know, that doesn't mean that I disagree with everything, you know, that he says, but there are some things that I just, I'm not.
24:06It's kind of a weird thing that people will take what their political party, somebody from a political party is saying about agriculture and then the accountant that lives in the suburbs all of a sudden becomes an ag expert and is going to tell me what I'm doing wrong because he just happens to be in line with that party. That's not quite how that's supposed to work. Right. You know, I mean,
24:33So yeah, but you're absolutely right. think it's just everybody is so uncertain of everything. Yeah,  it puts people on edge. And that's why I think it's better than ever right now is if you have  like these holistic farms and then like conventional farmers kind of locking arms, because ag's a big tent and there's room for everybody. Everybody has a place at the table. If we did that, it would just be such a better
25:03a better outcome, understanding that, you know, I'm not going to grow all the tomatoes for the city of Indianapolis, even though I grow a lot of tomatoes, you know, I'm not going,  you and, and, and same thing for this pasture raise operation over here. They're not going to be able to grow  all the pasture raise stuff that somebody needs, but if it's marketed correctly, they'll do well. This farm over here will do well. And if everybody's kind of working together  and
25:32And we're a unified front. It'll, it'll bring the Americans public's trust back to  agriculture  and it'll make us all stronger for it.  A, a rising tide raises all ships, so to speak. use that phrase all the time, Jonathan. Yes, it does.  Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna wrap this up because I try to keep my podcast to half an hour, but this one I'm just going to put on the show notes. It's a long one guys, but it's worth it.  Um,
26:01Thank you so much for your time and thank you for ending on that note because  if we all just take a collective breath, step back, look at what we're doing and maybe try to build community around us,  things could be better. Oh, absolutely. So thank you so much for your time. appreciate it. Perfectly. I was I'm glad you had me on.  Oh, I'm glad you could be here. Have a great day. Yep.
26:26Thank you.
 

The Punk Rock Farmer - Part 1

Today I'm talking with Jonathan Lawler at The Punk Rock Farmer. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Jonathan Lawler,  also known as the punk rock farmer in Indiana. I think you're in Indiana, yes? Yes, that's correct.  All right. Welcome, Jonathan. How are you? I'm good. How did you fare with the weather in Indiana last night?  It was a little bit rough. We're kind of used to it.
01:25My farm's been hit by a tornado. I don't know twice. I lost a packing shed to a tornado a few years ago. Weirdly enough, last night, you know, we thought we were kind of ahead of the storm. So we decided to run to Walmart together. Well, which was weird. We usually don't go to Walmart as a family. my wife wanted to stop at another place up to town. So she came with us.
01:56And  she actually came in because she said it was getting so bad. And as we were in there, the Walmart basically shut down and made everybody go back to their like, uh, receiving and storage area where it's designated as a storm shelter.  Well, I'm glad you're safe because I saw that there were bad storms in Indiana last night and I was like, Oh no, I think the guy I'm talking to today is in Indiana crap.  So glad you're good. Glad your family is safe.
02:26Um, so tell me about yourself and tell me how come you're called The Punk Rock Farmer.  So  I actually didn't come up with that name.  Um, I didn't like the name when people started calling me that,  uh, you know, because when you get a label put on you, that's as wide as something representing an entire subculture in a music scene,  it's kinda, you know,
02:54You feel like there's a lot of pressure there. You might not align with everything that that subculture represents.  But  I was  so we were working.  We were doing urban farm projects in Indianapolis  and a wonderful organization  known as the Flannery House  had been trying to put in an urban farm for like four years. They were working with a university and the university had them on like their ninth
03:24feasibility study  and the executive director was getting super frustrated and I was actually providing produce to this  this community center  and he took me out to where he wanted to do it and he said you know what is the feasibility of doing this because you know we we keep having you know  the university we're working with says we got to make sure we're doing this this and this and I said do you have soil Sam?
03:53And he's like, yeah, I said, okay, well, let's look at them. I looked at the soil samples and I'm like, well, we can put a plow on the ground  and, you know, start planting. I mean, I don't, you know, the spring, I don't know  what their holdup is.  And he said, okay, you know,  I'm all for that. So we actually put in a two acre urban farm there and they have a center for children.
04:22that  the center has a  after school, it's for after school for their working parents. And they have a lot of young kids there.  And Brandon, the executive director told me, he said, make sure, if you can,  bring a cool tractor or, so I was like, I can bring two tractors.  That way we get it done twice as fast  and the kids can see them. So we brought two,  one good size utility tractor than a smaller utility tractor.
04:53The kids had just never seen anything like that. And of course we used two big  F-350 farm trucks to pull those up there. I was wearing jeans, boots,  but I had a Misfits shirt on and my hair was really long and tattoos. And so the kids all started calling me the punk rock farmer.  You know, they're like, he's a punk rock farmer. And  a reporter heard it.
05:20You know, reporter that was actually covering us doing that.  And funny enough, that  actual project made it to the, she was a reporter with USA Today.  And I believe it was 2017. It was on the cover of USA Today during Thanksgiving weekend.  That we,  what we were doing there.
05:46Some other people heard about it. So a young woman actually created a Facebook fan page called the punk rock farmer.  She was a volunteer at our farm. She was constantly, you know, she did a lot of stuff for us and I liked it. I thought it was cool. You know, I still kind of cringed a little bit at being called the punk rock farmer.  I was also running the largest  nonprofit farm in the United States at the time.
06:15that because that's what we did in urban farms. We we injected community centers, food banks, food pantries,  you know,  assisted living homes that were income based with fresh produce and protein. So.  As the executive director of that nonprofit, there were a lot of things I couldn't say because of the politics around nonprofit and the politics around, you know, working with the city.
06:44But I realized, you know, cause she came to me, she said, this has like 8,000 followers now. You should probably, you guys should probably take it over.  And I kind of realized, well, I can say things as the punk rock farmer that I can't say as the executive director of Brandywine Creek Farms. So I took it over and  from there, it just kind of,  it kind of took off.  grew on you as things do, they get planted.
07:12I mean, it grew not just social media wise, but our earned media, the opportunities that we got. mean, we, we, we, since then we've worked with, of course we've been on RFD TV,  CMT, country music television, but then we actually had the opportunity to work with Mike Rowe.  Uh, we've had the opportunity to work with Disney,  um, Tyson foods,  uh, Culver's restaurants named us the one of their.
07:40There are farmers making an impact.  So yeah, we've had a lot of great opportunities with it.  So  do you think that that because the kids named you the punk rock farmer, it just brought more attention and that's how this all kind of got so big?  I do. I mean, I think people expect, you know,  when I go and speak publicly or wherever, I think  I think people are like, what, what are we going to get? You know,
08:10Are you going to set the stage on fire? You know,  people expect their expectations versus what I am.  think  our local Farm Bureau  person summed it up best. He said, you know, because  I'm starting to work with my state Farm Bureau a little bit and he said, you know, we're a big ship. We're old. Takes a while for us to
08:39to turn.  And he goes, I think a lot of people like in that farm bureau space, not just, and I don't mean specifically farm bureau, but the kind of that culture. He said, you know,  it's, taking a little bit of time for them to get used to your brashness. And he goes in and he goes in all fairness to your honesty, which is kind of not good, but you're very honest about how you see things. And that's the reason why I think a lot of our membership.
09:09likes you, but some people, you know, in our leadership are a little bit like, Oh man, he just came out and said that, you know, which I do. mean, I'm not, I, I, I've been known to, to say exactly how I feel. Um, especially I, if I think that, uh, you know, a farmer, any farmer is being taken advantage of or is getting the short end of the stick. I feel like that's who I I'm trying to stick up for the most is other farmers.
09:38And I think that's great. think you should keep doing that.  So  did you grow up farming or or did you get into farming later or what? What's your story?  It's kind of funny.  We I grew up on a farm until I was on a farm until I was 11.  My grandparents actually had a truck farm and my dad actually  farmed as well and just helped supply them. And we always had like.
10:07I don't want to call it hobby farm because it was bigger than that, but my dad worked a full-time job in trucking. He actually owned a trucking company. so he spent, the farm was almost a place for, think for him to get relaxation is what I'd call it.  Uh, you know,  I'll tell people I've worked in two industries heavily. That's agriculture  and logistics or transportation.
10:36both of which can be extremely high stressed.  you know, I think for my dad being able to help his parents  and, you know, us being able to grow up that way  was great. Funny enough,  my dad's trucking company grew enough to where it was kind of time to move closer to Indianapolis, which is where his trucking company was. We did, and so I went from being out in the country
11:05to a suburb  of Indianapolis and  it wasn't great, it wasn't fun.  I made sure I went to my grandparents farm as much as I could. But also my dad kinda kept our rural roots going,  know, hunting and fishing and that kinda thing, even though we were there so he could be close.
11:32And as I grew up, I didn't know if I was going to, if I wanted to go into agriculture  or if I wanted to go into the logistics side of our,  of our family, because we had people doing both. And I chose logistics. And I, at some point, me and my wife and my wife, just so you know, she actually, she's like the quintessential farmer's daughter. She grew up on a massive farm in.
12:01Mary in Ohio,  at one time her dad was farming 9,000 acres and his family anyway.  so she grew up in that and she  and I both thought, you know, we want to get our kids back on a farm. So we actually  started farming again,  but with no home out in the country. were looking for, we had some land, we weren't.
12:29particularly fond about building on it or, uh, or utilizing it was just where we went to the farm.  And, um, we started looking for a place and we found a, uh, old horse farm that,  uh, that's actually, it was a race horse farm. Uh, and it was beautiful. It had everything that I felt like we wanted it have the appropriate acreage for us to go, go to scale up  in our produce production. So that's what we did.
13:00We purchased it and that was in 2012. So I went back to full-time farming in 2012. Okay. So that, leads me to another question. Are you,  do you consider yourself a, a crop farmer or are you a farm to market farmer or what? I am a vegetable producer that sells to a local market and intermediate market, meaning brokers.
13:29And I also do direct to grocery sales. Okay. All right. So you're not just growing  one crop. You're not just growing corn and that's it for the year. Okay. Good.  Cause I know people do that and that's fine. Cause people need row crops, but I also know it's really hard on the earth to do it that way.  So. Yeah. I grow, our main crop  is.
13:59It switches back and forth depending on the year, but it's typically either tomatoes, fresh market tomatoes or melons. or the other. Love both.
14:13But I have had, I had one year, we got a giant,  we had a jalapeno contract that was really good. we, our primary crop that year was jalapenos.  And then after that,  we also got a bell pepper contract. And it was  actually  through a broker, which it's the first time I had ever gotten a contract through a broker.  And he wanted,
14:42He wanted the red and the yellow bell peppers as well as he wanted a supply of green bell peppers. So Mm-hmm Okay, so that I actually do have a really weird question about that we grow yellow and red sweet peppers here  and  When we when we grow them they start out green  And then as they ripen they turn yellow or orange or red. So how do you manage to time that?
15:11for a broker  so people get what they're buying. So we do a heavy nitrogen feed and then a heavy,  I don't know the exact numbers, actually my middle son is the one who does that.  I mean could get close on those numbers but it's just to really get the fruit to pop and then as soon as they've  gotten to a size that we feel like
15:41Um, especially with the varieties we grow up that we feel like they're, they're, they're ready. We'll pick them.  The worst part about it is if you wait too long, you know, they've ordered green bell peppers, but you're giving them bell peppers that are blushing  and,  know, they, they don't, mean, I've never had anything rejected because they were blushing, but at the same time, by the time, you know, if they come and pick it up from the farm or we actually deliver it.
16:09this particular companies in Indianapolis, we deliver it and then who knows where it's going from there. might be going to Cincinnati, might be going to Louisville, might be going to Chicago. Depending on how long it fits in their storage,  which is not long, usually it might be a day or two before those bell peppers are shipped out.  They can blush quite a bit. they almost, I've never actually,  I heard of it, but I've never seen it with my bell peppers. I've never seen a full
16:40like a green bell pepper after it's been picked turned completely red.  I've never seen one turn completely yellow. I was just curious because my husband will bring in the peppers that are supposed to be red in at the end of September when we have to pick them or they're going to get frosted. Right. I'm in Minnesota and they'll have like red spots on them, but they're not red yet. And it doesn't matter. They still taste good.
17:09They're lovely. yeah. mean, and the thing about a green bell pepper is a lot of people don't know it has more vitamin C in it than orange does. like, I know that the orange people have better lobbyists because you know, everybody's like eating an orange if you have a cold. Well, actually eat a green bell pepper, you'll get a lot more vitamin C. Yeah. And I, I don't love oranges, but I don't love oranges to the point where I want to eat one a day. Whereas I would eat, I would eat
17:38sweet peppers in everything.  They add something to every recipe.  It's definitely one of my favorite. It's one of my, I'm very picky. I grow things that I would never eat myself. I mean, I'm terrible.  I was like a health food ambassador for when I was doing a lot of  our hunger stuff and telling people to eat stuff that I personally  would never, like I won't eat zucchini.  I won't eat an onion.
18:07I don't eat broccoli. don't eat anything like that. And it's not because I have anything against them. I just don't like how they taste. just don't.  I don't like the taste of my kale is one of those things that I think is one of the grossest plants on the planet, but we grow it. I mean, we grow a lot of kale.  So do we, and I don't eat it.  It's one of the few leafy greens I cannot eat. I just hate the texture of it. Yeah, it's, it's definitely not a
18:37I don't know what it is, you know, and people are like, well, you collard greens. Well, I eat collard greens after they've been prepared as collard greens. don't eat them. You know, I don't know if you've ever tasted a collard green raw, but it is quite different than when it's been like cooked the way, at least the way I grew up eating. Aren't collard greens like rough on your tongue if they're just picked out of the garden and washed off? Yeah, it's like it was designed not to be.
19:07You gotta you gotta boil them and like my wife, she's so she's from northern Ohio.  But like where I'm like a lot of my family's from the south. So I mean, collard greens are  usually cooked for the number one. They're cooked either bacon or  or even a hog jaw or something. And then they're cooked for hours.  And there's vinegar added to them. There's all kinds of stuff or.
19:36pieces of bacon.  And I think it's almost like you're disguising  the collard green itself in order to be able to eat it. Yep, that makes sense.  Yeah, I don't do collard greens either, so we're of a like mind there.  So we've talked for like 18 minutes and I would love to know what it is that you're, what you're trying to do  with your
20:03You're a fairly new found notoriety as the punk rock farmer for ag. Well, so we because I've had. So because I've had so much earned media, which is something that people on social media don't typically get, I actually got the earned media first and I cultivated those relationships. So an understanding media, I mean, I got.
20:31In 2016, I started getting stuck in front of cameras to the point that one of the benefactors that  actually wanted us to become a nonprofit farm,  um, came to me and said, Hey, we need to get you some coaching. So, mean, there's a lot of reporters that want to talk to you. So  I got some PR coaching there and then I just kind of took it  and put my own style to it  of.
21:00You know, how do I, how do I motivate people?  Um, how do I get them to, to, how do, how do I,  make calls to action for agriculture? I can tell you it's a rough road. Agriculture is very much set in its ways.  just is.  and somebody like me, even though I probably share the same values,  uh,  I,  I live the same lifestyle. I just happened to be, you know, bit a little funny because,  know,
21:29I did  as a young person,  I was drawn to that punk  and both heavy metal scene kind of thing and that's what I liked. And so I put my style of that on everything.
21:47Now I feel like this is something that can make the average person. I hope the average person they can go, well, he's not, he's not from a big advocacy organization representing, you know, the 1 % of the big corporations and he actually, you know, is looking out for the farmers. hopefully like, when I tell people, Hey, this is okay. And this isn't okay that they could take.
22:15confidence in it that I'm not trained to You know, I'm not trying to get clout. I'm not trying to do anything other than look out for the farm
22:25So we actually started a media company, a media and marketing company,  and we're a little bit different. So we concentrate heavily on animal enterprise and livestock. Well, I we do anything ag, but we concentrate on them. We've done crisis management. We've actually done crisis management for a zoo. A zoo was being attacked by animal rights activists, and we came in and helped them navigate the media. We helped them.
22:53navigate the actual activists that were flying drones at their place that were, you know,  going on to social media and trying to trash them.  That's where I found the most fulfillment.  And I'm naturally a storyteller. You know, if you ever read my writings, was actually,  I did that April Fool's thing. I wrote like three or four years ago, actually, but I  saw that.
23:23And I actually had a gentleman that runs another marketing company.  Um, he,  he said that he's like shared it around his,  uh, around his office.  And I was just like, that's, that's great. mean, that you guys think that that's very, very cool. And he was just like, he goes, I feel like you're like the gene shepherd of agriculture.
23:51You can get people,  you're very descriptive in how you write or describe things. And sometimes like, well, I mean,  there's worse people to be compared to, I guess.  So.
24:07My whole point purpose now is I want to tell Ag's story, but I don't want to tell it to farmers. I want to tell it to everybody else. And I feel like 99 % of the things that we see today are echo chamber things. mean, if I attend a conference, you know,
24:33people sit around and talk about these issues and they all kind of pat themselves on the back. And I'm like, you realize the average person thinks that we're trying to poison them. The average person does not believe you that you treat your animals well.  They just don't.  And it's getting more, it's getting worse. Every day it's getting, or I see it, it's getting worse. So.
24:59That's what we decided to do. That's been, that's been kind of a rough one. Uh, we, we've shot one documentary  around animal enterprise and that was  unbelievably hard to get done. Uh, number one, because it is kind of a odd industry, that industry that we, it was a dog breeding industry actually.  And so you have, it's the weirdest thing. You don't have this in there.
25:26In this industry, you have like really, really, really good players, people that actually give a rip about dog welfare and want things to be the best. And then you have these really unethical bad players that at the end of the day, all they care about is making money. The problem is, is that these really bad players are the ones in control of the industry. Yeah. And that's just the way it is. Um, I mean, you, you have a.
25:55without naming the university, there's a professor that's doing a thing with dogs and they are supposedly an ethics professor as well. And the unethical actions of just this professor is unbelievable. The bullying that takes place in this industry is unbelievable. And a lot of these folks are members of the plane community, whether it be Amish or Mennonite.
26:25And they, they folks,  folks that are kind of top of it,  use people within that industry to bully the bad, to bully the good players. There are Amish people right now. Nobody believes me. I've been in their kennels. There are Amish people in this country that are breeding dogs and doing it better than anyone else. And their story will never be told because there are so many bad players also in that.
26:55in the playing community and the bad players get a pass. They really do. And so when we went to release our documentary, all this kind of stuff came to light. I'm just going, holy cow. Now we have to reshoot the, or well, we don't have to reshoot the entire documentary. We had to reshoot parts of it. had so that we could still tell the truth. And, but  at the end of the day, it was made to help.
27:21the good players in the industry. And I had so many people pushing back saying, well, we did a documentary like this two years ago. We don't need another one. Why does there need to be a documentary? I was like, well, because your opposition, which would be the ASPCA and the Humane Society and PETA, they're releasing 10 to 15 of these things a year. And they're well produced, they're well done, and they're changing minds.
27:49And so you're allowing them to tell your story. And I see that, and where I see that, as I see that nag too, nobody in ag, like when, like I'll go to somebody and I'll pitch something. I'll be like, this story needs to be told. And they're like, but why? We did this, you know, two years ago. I'm just like, do you not understand that these NGOs,
28:15This is how they're winning. You guys are sitting around scratching your heads going, how are they doing this? Well, they're doing it through social media and they're doing it through  these emotional  films, this emotional story telling. I said, and here we are, we have the best advantage because we can also tell an emotional story, but it has the truth behind it.  And that's why I guess I approach it different.
28:44Like when I do something, when we do one of our films, very, it's very gritty. It's very real life. And it's very emotional. And that's what we want because emotion is what calls people to action. You know, uh,
29:01And that has been one of the more frustrating parts in working with folks in HANAG.  I have  had multiple speaking engagements where, you know, somebody really likes what I say or talk about  and they book me and then somebody higher up than them will be like,  eh, that guy, he's a little bit,  he's too controversial.  Which is weird because I don't consider myself controversial at all.
29:27haven't heard anything terribly out there from you yet and you've been talking to me for almost half an hour so I don't know what the problem is. Yep, thank you. If you like this podcast you would probably love Amy Fagan's Grounded in Maine podcast.  You can find her on  all the platforms  and I think her website is groundedinmaine.com.
 
 

Langton Green Community Farm

Today I'm talking with John at Langton Green Community Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with John at Langton Green Community Farm  in Maryland. Is that right, John? Yes, ma'am. We're in Millersville, Maryland outside of Annapolis.  Okay, cool. Good morning. How are you? I'm doing well. Good. I am so excited to have you on the show because
01:22This community farm thing you've got going on is huge. So tell me about it. Well, Lankton Green has been primarily providing residential services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities since the early eighties.  About 15 years ago, we started also doing day services, which tends to be vocational or activities based for a small number of our consumers.  But we're always
01:50looking for more to do on an ongoing basis. So after a couple of years of doing a lot of landscaping and commercial and residential cleaning contracts,  our former executive director went to a conference and met some people who operated a small residential program on a farm in California  and said, hey, could we do something like this?  Which was exactly the kind of thing that I was already engaged in personally.
02:18doing a lot of  suburban homesteading kind of stuff, a lot of  gardening and canning. So it definitely matched a lot of my personal interests.  A lot of my job coaches and staff also had experience working in horticulture and landscaping. So there was a natural tie in there.  So I spent the next couple of years working with our board of directors,  going through some mentorships with local agricultural organizations  and
02:48looking at properties locally to actually develop an expansion of our existing day services program to be focused on an agricultural property. The spot that we found was perfect. It's right in the middle of a really very populated suburban area and to be able to provide 13 acres of
03:12animals  and  sustainable produce and flowers. We've incorporated a lot of artwork on the property over the past 10 years. It has just been a really great thing. It's benefited our consumer population tremendously. And I think we're increasingly a benefit to the public as we provide a space for them to come out and have those experiences  and to kind of get a sense of where food comes from. Because I think a lot of people have lost that.
03:42If you ask  a group of kids where does food come from, the number one answer is going to be the grocery store.  So to be able to give back  a little bit of opportunities to experience  the basis of that food  industry and where it all starts in a setting that's also focused on  providing therapeutic care for everybody,  but most primarily for our consumer population.
04:10That's phenomenal. I'm so impressed.  Okay. So my first question is how is the public interacting with the farm?  Initially our biggest, you know, we, we wanted to draw volunteers, so we needed the additional help with some of the work processes. Um, everybody that comes out here is just floored and really enjoys being on the property. So initially we started with a lot of
04:37group activities with local churches, local community organizations.  When we first got  our property in Millersville, it basically was a 13 acre, some of it was in agricultural production with one of our neighbors.  Part of it had been horse pastures with a collapsed very large barn  and two houses that hadn't been inhabited for probably decades, one of which was actually.
05:04Condemned it wasn't suitable for habitation.  There were a lot of big projects to tear down the barn to actually just get the property at the point where we could utilize it. So we had a lot of volunteers coming in  to assist with those things.  And over time, we've continued to bring in and recruit volunteers.
05:26Our kind of gold ticket volunteer is somebody that's available a couple times a week at their convenience, know, based on what works for them schedule wise to actually come out and assist on a regular basis with the agricultural processes, along  side our staff and our growers. So we've, you know, we've been really fortunate in look and finding and maintaining connections with a handful of people like that.  But we also continue to bring in groups.
05:55We have a local church and school groups that come out on a regular basis every year a couple of times. And this last year we did our first  CSA that was open to the public. We're expanding that this year.  So we'll have distributions for CSA and something we're calling kind of click and pick. It's  kind of an electronic farmers market where you can go onto our website. And each week we load up what produce we have available for the week.
06:24You can fill your basket, pay for it, and then come out on Saturday to pick it up. And we're also trying to incorporate things like yoga and some storytelling for children and additional activities on those Saturdays so that people can actually spend a little bit more time, get around, walk around, see the animals, pet a chicken, look at the, you we're doing  a goat yoga. One of our staff is a yoga instructor.
06:50So we're just trying to find opportunities to bring people out more and more often.  A lot of times during the summer we also have pick your own opportunities for blackberries and strawberries. We've just invested a lot of time in our orchard,  so we're hoping to have more  fruit and blueberries available as well as some cut flowers to augment  our vegetable and produce sales.
07:15This sounds like my idea of heaven.  You're doing a beautiful thing there.  So you said chickens and goats. Do you have other animals too? We have  some small herd of pot-bellied pigs.  Someone had a female pot-bellied pig that needed a home and we agreed to take her and of course she was pregnant.  So we got to go through all of those processes.  A couple of the babies were adopted out but we still have six.
07:43Hot-bellied pigs, we have four goats currently.  I think our laying flock right now is about 36 birds. We're about to add about 18 more.  And Atticus, the farm cat who kind of keeps us all on our toes and  is pretty much the boss around here. Is Atticus friendly? Atticus is extremely friendly. There's almost no tour or group that shows up.
08:10that he doesn't at some point join us and walk the property with us and have you give his input.  Yeah, he is definitely definitely our mascot. So Attic is the ambassador for the farm. Absolutely. Yes, ma'am.  Mm OK.  We have a black  neutered  male cat here that's our barn cat. He's like five or six years old now.
08:35And he's terribly friendly with us, but he doesn't like strangers. The minute somebody comes on the property, he takes off into the barn and hides. So  he is not like Atticus in that way. There's a wisdom in that, but Atticus is also a neutered black male,  but he's a love bug.  Yeah. It's crazy how  they either are really friendly or they are really not friendly.  When we got him from the Humane Society, they thought he was about two.
09:05When we went to pick him up, he was billed as part of their barn cat program where you pay like, I think it's like $25 or $50 for a barn cat as it were. And we went to pick him up and they said, you will never be able to pet him or hold him. is feral. He is mean. He is nasty. And we ended up naming him Satan thinking that we would never be able to touch him.
09:28He is the friendliest cat with us. mean, my son picks him up all the time and this cat just sits there and purrs and drools on his shoulder.  It's just nuts. We have a couple of feral cats at home that are also extraordinarily affectionate than you wouldn't think. But yeah,  you never can tell.  Yeah, I posted a video of Satan on our YouTube channel.
09:52and my son is holding him and he's growling his head off but he's not actually mad. He's just like, I don't really want you to hold me but keep holding me.  And I got so many comments about why would you name a cat Satan? That's terrible. And I'm like, cause he's the devil. He was supposed to be as built as the devil himself.  So anyway,  um.
10:14All right. So  how long have you guys been doing the farm part? you tell me to begin with? I forget. we, um, July of last year was our 10 year anniversary. So  our 11th season now.  Okay, cool.  And tell me the reaction of, let's start with little kids who come out to visit. It's amazing. And again,
10:35You know, I think there's just  a disconnect between these kind of processes in most people's lives, especially people that live in a primarily urban area. You know, we do have a lot of families who  commute  out to Western Maryland or Southern Maryland to go apple picking or to do farm kind of tours.  And people are  absolutely thrilled to have  this right in their backyard. I mean, we're literally,  it feels like we're a couple hundred miles away, right in the middle of  this kind of
11:05urban Metroplex. So it's been a real blessing. And when people come out, they're just amazed.  The property itself has kind of been a strange  zigzag pattern. So as you walk through the property, every time you turn a corner, there's something new that jumps out at you.  The animals tend to be at the right at the beginning of the property where most of our houses and activity is situated.
11:33The kids just are, it's wild to watch just the looks of amazement as they are able to not only see, but interact with the majority of the animals. You know, to pet the goats, had a young lady came out and did a storytelling last summer and read three billy goats gruff with our billy goats wandering around nibbling on people's clothing and sitting in and listening and being petted while we were doing the story.
12:03And it was just amazing to watch the kids did not only have the relationship of the story, but while they're doing it to have these animals accessible to them.  it's  just, again, something that I think a lot of kids in this area don't necessarily get an opportunity to experience.  And if they do, it's once or twice at a field trip in school, not on an ongoing basis where  we're here every day. And we encourage people to come out and to  have those experiences.
12:32That's awesome.  Okay, so do you guys offer classes as well or is that not on the agenda? We're not at the moment. We've transitioned a couple of times since COVID for different bar managers. We do have a virtual learning platform where we're doing some of our, we developed a lot of virtual content during COVID to remain connected with the community and with our service population. So we still have that platform. We really want to get back to it.
13:01because we have developed some cooking classes, we need to polish some of that a little bit more, but we definitely would like to be able to do those things in an online format where we can continually, people can continually access it after the fact.  So we're really, leaning into the virtual world. We had a poetry reading here last year that was virtual with Marilyn's poet laureate, a couple of poets from Europe and  the DC area.
13:31So that was really, it was kind of a strange sideline,  but we're kind of about strange sidelines. So that's actually still up on YouTube. And I think the video and the sound quality wasn't phenomenal, but it was really an incredible thing to be involved in. Yeah, this technology thing we've got going on in 2025 is pretty freaking amazing. yeah. It's opened a lot of doors that we wouldn't have even considered.  Yep.
13:58Honestly, I think it's great that you have the poetry readings on YouTube or yeah, you said YouTube That's great. But  I would recommend that if people  want to to be Want to be exposed to the events you have go to them, you know If you can't make it to it, then yeah catch it if you guys upload it But  there's something really amazing about being at an event in person in real time
14:25Yeah, we did our last farm manager did a couple of kind of instructional talks on starting a home garden and kind of those processes that were open to the public. And we also recorded to stream later. So probably a combination would be  something that we lean toward a lot. Yeah.  Do you get a lot of people like coming  and  spending time at the farm and  asking questions about how could I start a little garden in  my home?
14:56Not a tremendous amount because the area we're in is a little bit more rural for this space,  but we do,  about a year ago, opened our community garden plots on the front of our property. So we have offered 20 by 20 plots with some raised beds in that space. And we've got, we probably are about half full at this point.
15:20So,  me, a lot of people that are interested in gardening and that has become a whole separate community. Do we opened it up with the expectation that rather than charging people for access that we would ask for some service hours monthly and that's worked out really well and has certainly become its own little community within  our larger program.  And again, something we'd certainly like to build on and kind of have our own garden club, you know,
15:50kind of built around that. also doing a plant sale with a lot of vegetable seedlings and flower starts for the spring. So we're working to make increasing inroads with kind of that local gardening community because  again, that's the word of mouth to kind  of increase sales and just drive awareness that we're here.
16:13Minnesota has  a thing,  that thing is a really bad descriptor, but  we have Master Gardeners through our university. Yes. And basically they go and take the courses and become certified as Master Gardeners. Does Maryland have that too? We do and we have that locally. We've met with our local Master Gardeners program and talked about, you know, doing potential because of course they do service  projects and training as part of their curriculum and we've offered that here as well. It's never
16:42quite come to pass,  we're certainly open to  the Master Gardeners, Boy Scout troops, church and civic organizations.  But the Master Gardeners is a phenomenal program. It's pretty active around here and they're already awfully busy. Yeah.  Yep. The ones here are too. I  was actually going to start a second podcast called Mary and the Master Gardener with a lady that I had made contact with.
17:08We did three episodes and she got super, super busy and it hasn't gone anywhere. And I'm very sad about this. So I'm going to look, I'm on the lookout for a new master gardener person to keep going on it with me. I would tune into that. Yeah. I got to get on it. I've just been so focused on this one that I'm like, I can't, I can't allocate the time right now to go find somebody new, but I'm to work on it this week because I only have like four episodes scheduled to record. So I'm going to work on that one guys too.
17:38Um, okay. What else can I ask you?  Um, how many acres is the farm? It's just short of 13 acres.  Um, oh, so it's not huge. No, no. And we're probably working on about two and a half or three at the moment.  Um, the,  again, the bulk of the acreage had been maintained in agricultural use by one of our neighbors,  um, who operates a vegetable stand up on the, up on the highway where we're located and
18:07The soil was pretty played out. was very much a conventional guy who would dump a bunch of, you know, fertilizers and hope for the best. So we started utilizing what had been horse pasture on the front of the property. And they're doing really well with that in a raised bed system that we're rotating and doing cover cropping and trying to maintain really intensively.
18:32But we're starting to lean into that rear of the property. So we've been cover cropping that over the past couple seasons. We just did a small planting of Christmas trees  and are establishing some more formal garden spaces back there. It leads to about a four acre wood lot that we're also in the process of clearing out to do  some mushroom cultivation maybe and to set up.
18:57an outdoor classroom and kind of utilize that shady space as a break area and kind of another multipurpose space.  Lankton Green Community Farm is a fabulous resource, it sounds like.  We certainly try to be.  I think most of the folks that are here  are just tickled to death that we get to come in here and do this every day.  If you get the right kind of person who enjoys
19:24Being outdoors, you know, no matter how miserable the conditions are,  it's really a great thing. And the professional staff that have been here,  they literally talk about where on the property they want to be buried.  it's a pretty good work environment. I still count myself incredibly fortunate  when I come in here to think that, you know, I get to do this professionally every day. Yeah, it's like playing.
19:53Absolutely. If you enjoy, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, that kind of a thing. this is just that in spades. Yep. So  I have been to Maryland once  and I grew up in Maine. So it was a very easy road trip with my folks to go visit friends in Maryland. Maryland is beautiful.  Yeah. What are the, what's the growing like there? mean,  you guys can't grow year round unless you have a greenhouse. Yes.
20:23That's correct.  And we have a couple of poop houses,  30 by 60 foot poop houses. So we work on, you know, trying to do cool weather stuff year round there  and in our greenhouses and in indoor spaces.  And some, we play around with things like micro greens. You know, the idea is to always be cultivating something  even if it's on really small, you know, on a small scale.
20:48New farm integers vary into  aquaculture and aquatic systems. So we're looking to incorporate more of that  and hydroponics, especially in the off the traditional growing season.  We've been doing fall or I'm sorry, cool weather crops for about a month now. We're getting ready. We're starting to do some small levels of harvesting of pak choy  and kale that was over winter and those kinds of things.
21:15But we'll be harvesting summer produce into September, sometimes October, and then again typically we'll have a pretty good fall season as well into about the end of the year.
21:30Okay,  when's your last scary frost date in the spring?  Oh, I believe it's October 15th or at least that's, I kind of have locked into my head May 15th, October 15th. Okay, yep.  That's what it's like here in Minnesota for us. We don't plant anything in the garden until May 15th because  we've done it and we don't want to lose any plants again. Yep.  Yeah, I'm sitting on at home, I'm sitting on...
21:55two and a half foot tomato plants that I'm thinking about gambling on this weekend because the weather looks like it's going to be pretty consistently good. You better pray and keep everything crossed because the minute you think it's safe, it's not. Okay, so I try not to ask nosy intrusive questions, but you keep talking about new ideas and new things because of the new farm manager. How are you funded?
22:25We receive funding from the state and federal government to provide services for our consumers.  So that funding pays for staffing and vehicles and keeps the lights on.  All of the farm stuff that we've gotten, I've become a development person in kind of as a sideline. So we've written grants and dealt with foundations and gone out and found a lot of the funding for.
22:52our gators and tractors, our hoop houses.  There are lot of existing governmental programs. The USDA paid for both of our hoop houses. We're working on at least one more of those  fairly soon.  So yeah, but that's been a big sideline is to go out and find opportunities to match up with foundations and grants and governmental organizations that will provide some of that income.  And again, I...
23:20really like to get to the point where we're doing enough  sales that we can maintain a little bit of self-sufficiency.  We're trying to  ensure that we're able to  donate about two-thirds of our produce every season, which leaves about a third of it  available for sale. And the goal would be to allow the commercial sale end of things to support the donations.
23:48which go to local food banks, a lot of which are starting to accept perishables,  as well as the  34 homes that we operate in the county at the moment  that serve our residents. Okay. Is the farm nonprofit?  Yes, Langton Green is a nonprofit organization. Okay. That sort of kind of helps when you're looking for grants and things.
24:15Has the crackdown on grants from the federal government that's happened since November, has that affected you guys? Not yet, but everybody is  definitely talking about it.  I suspect there will be a trickle down  as some organizations funding is affected.  A lot of what we're leaning more into,  there's a local service club that has been really, really good to us.  We actually
24:41We won a couple of years ago, the Kubota Corporation's Hometown Proud competition, which provided a really nice amount of cash prize. So we're definitely diverse in what we are, where we go for grants and financial support. Congratulations on that. That's amazing. We had, I think we applied for $10,000 for material for our community garden.
25:11And they contacted us and said, Hey, this is really great. Could you give us a budget for a hundred thousand dollars  tomorrow?  Well, yes, certainly can do that.  And then, I think we were the Southeast  winter. were five, think regionally and we won for the Southeast. was  kind of out of the blue, but I mean, really, really fantastic people to deal with. And we've appreciated their support.  Oh, absolutely.
25:40You and your people should be so proud of what you have built with this community farm.  I'm listening to you talk and I'm just like, my God, this is amazing.  Yeah. I mean, again, it's, it's, it's a joy. I mean, half of the time that we feel like we're, you know, we're, we're getting the better of the deal.  Um, but, but again, to be able to share it with people is,  has been phenomenal. And during COVID.
26:05We closed for programming and it was just the staff here, just the core group of staff here. And those were actually really good years to just have it all to ourselves. But it's been a lot of fun to open back up and to be able to get even more involved with the clinical community. Sorry, I didn't mean to cough in your ear. So who's, I mean, this is a weird question. Whose brainchild was this?
26:35Who came up with this idea to start with?  Well, again, our executive director kind of came in with this idea based on  this organization in California that he had encountered. And it was just  a really magical fit because, again, it tied into exactly what I had been doing personally and was thinking about doing at a larger scale. You my wife and I were thinking, you know, maybe we should get some a couple acres and do something.
27:01when he suggested this and it just seemed like such an automatic win for our consumer population and our staff.  Because again, we were bouncing or we had a retail site that we worked out of  just  near our  main office area.  And it just wasn't enough consistently to do and we were sort of bounced around from one place to another all the time.  This gave us a home and my assumption
27:29was that there would pretty much always be something to do. And there absolutely has been. mean, everybody will ask, what do you do in the winter time? We've never slowed down in the winter time. By the time we're, you we come up for air at the end of the summer season, it's, you know, kind of operate a little bit less intensely for a couple of months, but it seems like every year it's time to start planting again. By the time we've cleared our wood lot,
27:58to prepare some other garden spaces, gotten all of our equipment and materials  recovered and cleaned up for the next season,  inventoried and developed a planting schedule, looked back on the previous season to determine what did well, what should we do more of, what do we need to cut.  So there's definitely  many, many, many opportunities.  And again,
28:23the agricultural processes themselves lend themselves to our consumer population because they think each task can be broken into smaller components. So somebody that might not be out working in the field four or five hours at a time can sit and seed or can assist with harvesting and packaging or produce. So the idea of it just developing a more engaged agricultural program made sense for our
28:52specific consumer population.  Being outdoors rather than  sheltered workshops is kind of was at that point more of the typical environment. And a lot of people  would definitely prefer to be outside and active than sitting at a table.  So it just made a tremendous amount of sense  in all of those ways.  And again, our board of directors was hesitant about it.  They saw it as  something that
29:20would potentially  cause some safety issues.  was told that I think farming was one of the most dangerous occupations  in the whatever the I'm sorry,  it was basically one of the  most consistently dangerous occupations. So I had to research that and it turns out that it is, but it's because it's lumped in with ranching and livestock and
29:49being run over by combines, we couldn't turn a combine around on our property. So  we're doing much more hand processes.  it all made a lot of sense. And over time, we were able to develop a business plan to demonstrate that  it was also a viable programming option. So I've got to give our former executive director, Arne Dordek, a lot of credit for coming up with the core of the idea. But once he kind of lit that fuse, myself and the staff that were working at the time,
30:19really ran with it and  everybody got excited about it really, really quickly. Fantastic.  Do you happen to know the population of the county that your  farm is in? I do not, but it's Anne Arundel County, Maryland. It's not as populous as the Baltimore, D.C. immediate suburbs, but a lot of the people, yeah, it's definitely one of the more populous regions in Maryland. Yeah, I was wondering because
30:49you are serving a fairly large community of people because I'm assuming people come from all over Maryland. Yeah, the majority of the folks are coming from like the Annapolis area. And again, the Anne Arundel County people that live here tend to work in either D.C. or Baltimore. So it's  definitely  a  large there. There's mixed  residential development of  single family home communities and apartments and town homes.
31:17So it's definitely a fairly dense population and growing. I freaking  love it, John. I'm so glad that you would come talk to me today.  We are at 30 minutes and 27 seconds and I try to keep these to half an hour. So I, you have no idea how much I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today. Absolutely. I really appreciate you reaching out and I'm glad we made the connection.  This was so fun. I'm going to be on a high for the next six hours because I love what you're doing.
31:47Thanks so much. Have a great day. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. All right. Bye. If you like this podcast, you would probably love Amy Fagan's Grounded in Maine podcast. You can find her on all the platforms, groundedinmaine.com.
 

𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗟𝗦𝗘𝗔 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗠𝗔𝗡 | homesteading + holistic wellness + growing

Today I'm talking with Chelsea Chapman.
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00:00Did you know that Muck Boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out Muck Boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Chelsea at It's Chelsea Chapy in Saskatchewan, Canada. Yay. Good morning, Chelsea. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing really well. It's nice and sunny here. Finally.  Oh, well, it's not nice and sunny here in Minnesota. It's kind of gray and it snowed yesterday. We got about an inch of snow on the ground.
01:26Oh man, well you're doing better.  I guess you're not doing as good as us. Our snow's almost gone. Yeah, ours was. Friday was 80 degrees here and then it got cold and rained on Saturday, thunderstorm Saturday night and then snowed yesterday. I was like, Mother Nature, what are you doing?  That's funny. It always  catches me off guard when it's it's 80 degrees and it's literally like a warm day here for us right now is like minus four. So it sounds so different. Yeah. And it's celsius.
01:56Yeah, and it's really different for here too. We don't get 80 degree days in March. So it was very weird. I did not love it. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do, So my husband and I, we raise cattle and we recently just bought our own  quarter section here. Was it six months ago? And so we've moved in into like a little sixties farmhouse that we're currently renovating and we
02:25Finally, can have our, you're okay. I just have my son here with me.  We're finally  getting our own chickens and doing all the homesteading and things that I've been dreaming about for so long.  And then I also do social media and that's just like such a fun, creative outlet for me. And it kind of started during COVID, I got laid off my job and  I love doing photography and writing and things like that. And so it was just a really cool outlet for me. And then it started to gain traction and
02:54Here I am  like five years later doing what I do now.  Nice, very nice.  And it's so funny for you to say you've wanted to do for so long because you're not very old. What are you in your late twenties if that?  I'm 25. But yeah, when my husband and got married, we were renting and we've been married almost three years. And so when I got married is when I really started to, my interest and passion in these things started to grow. And because we were renting, we weren't able to do that.
03:23And so I just spent the last three years really trying to  just learn and learn and learn so that when I am in the position that I am ready to go. So here I am now just waiting for the ground to defrost and everything like that. Yep, exactly.  I'm so excited that you're 25 years old because I usually talk to people in their 30s and up because it usually takes us that long to get to where we can homestead on any kind of land.
03:52So I love that you're 25, you're young, you're raising a family and you're getting into this and that's amazing. Cause you are the future Chelsea. Yeah, it's when I look around at the world and I just think, man, how are we raising our kids? And I just take it so much more seriously when I look at my son, especially be like, he is the future. And if we are not putting everything into our children, then our future is going to look weak.
04:20And I really try and show that on my page, the way that we're raising our children spiritually, but also how much more effort we're putting into looking at their health, you know? I do. I have four grown kids  and my daughter was the first and she's 35 now. And she was what changed my perspective on the world too.  having a child can't help but change your perspective. It's just how it happens.
04:51Oh yeah, I've had such a perspective change. He's going to be  one in a month. And so it's just been so fun seeing myself change and grow from the person that I was into the person that I am now, even in the short 11 months that he's been with us already. Yeah, exactly. It's amazing that it's almost an instantaneous  mindset change,  but then you have to learn all the things to go with that mindset change.
05:20Oh yes, yeah, it's been a  big learning curve for sure.  Okay, so you said you have cattle. Do you have beef cattle or dairy cattle or what? We raise beef cattle, black angus, so that's kind of our niche.  I grew up on a farm just raising commercial cattle and then my husband, him and his family raised purebred  black angus and then they also sell like breeding bulls as well and we kind of
05:48got our feet into the water of that now and we've sold a few of our own purebred bulls as well. Nice. Is it sad for you when you have to sell them off or is it okay? We don't really  create much of an attachment with the cattle because they're mostly out in the field. don't know, growing up on a farm, it's  such a feeling I can't describe of  knowing that we love our animals so much and we take such good care of them but also knowing
06:17that they feed so many people  and it's just a beautiful circle of life really. Yeah,  it really is and  I  am a really soft heart Chelsea, I'm not gonna lie.  When we put all our chickens down last fall because they were getting old and lazy,  our egg laying hens.  Oh yes.  I had a pang. I had that little thing in my heart of this is  terrible, I hate this.
06:43But every animal that you have on a homestead or a farm has a purpose. And when they've outlived that purpose, that's the end for them. Exactly. And I definitely, we have a dog and we have a few horses.  And I definitely do have a soft spot for them because they are my pets.  And I know when I get  my chickens here in two weeks, so we've been working hard to set up our chicken coop, I think I'm definitely going to have an attachment to my laying hens for sure.
07:12Yeah, speaking of that, are eggs really expensive in Canada because they're ungodly expensive in Minnesota at the grocery store? Yeah, I think to get like an 18 pack in the grocery store is around $7, which for us is like that's pretty expensive. But I actually have a friend who has eggs, so I've just been getting from her until I...
07:38I'm able to get my own and I think I pay her $6 for like an 18 pack. So it's worth it to me. Yeah, absolutely.  I'm not, I am not going to tell you you're wrong. Eggs  from somebody else's chickens or your own chickens that live in a coop, you know, and they get outside and they get to eat bugs and seeds and fresh air. Yeah. Way better than grocery store eggs. had to buy. You can really tell.
08:07Like I can tell the difference between farm raised or store bought eggs. The yolks are just so much more rich colored and they just are so much better tasting. Like they taste way better. hmm. Yep. I didn't think it was just an America thing. I figured it was a world thing, but I wanted to check and see what was going on in your neck of the woods too. Yep. Okay.  What else?  Do you grow a garden at all?  I do. So last year,
08:36Like I mentioned before, our renting situation, I was unable to have one at our house, but between my parents and my in-laws, I was able to grow a garden. And at my parents' house, I grew lots of things. I grew a ton of cucumbers, like  massive rows of corn and a lot of potatoes, which my  family and I, we kind of shared the responsibility between watering and weeding and things like that.
09:01I was able to make a ton of salsa, a ton of  spaghetti sauce, canned a bunch of carrots and pickles. I made about 30 jars of carrots and pickles. And then I was able to freeze a bunch of corn so that we can have corn throughout the wintertime and things like that. And I froze a bunch of beets, so  I really love trying to get in the garden and harvest a bunch and fill our freezers.
09:30our canning room with goods for the winter time. Isn't it fun?  It is fun. I love it. Okay. I had to, I'm not going to lie to you. had to look up Saskatchewan to remember where it is because  my geography stuff in school was not real in depth for any country except for America. Go figure.
09:53So I looked it up and I was like Saskatoon is coming to mind and I looked up Saskatoon and found service berries. Do you have service berries around US?  Are you meaning  like Saskatoon berries or the service berries? Yeah, we have Saskatoon berries. There's a few local places that I actually went and picked last year as well. That's another thing that I went and did and I was able to make Saskatoon jam and I made some Saskatoon juice and then I froze some so that we can have some Saskatoon pies as well.
10:22Yes, there is lots and just about 30 minutes north of where my husband and live, there's  up in the hills, there's wild Saskatoons too. Okay, when I read up on the Saskatoon berries or service berries as they're also called,  it said that they have like an almond flavor. Is that right?  I really want to describe them is that  it's almost like eating a blueberry, except they're not as tart.
10:51they're more sweet. Okay. And the wild Saskatoon berries are a lot smaller. They're almost like a, I can't remember if it's like a juniper berry or something like that. They're a lot smaller, but the tame Saskatoon berries, like if you were to go to a farm, they're a lot bigger. They look pretty much exactly like a blueberry, but they're a lot sweeter tasting. Some of them have a bit of a tartness, but they,  they remind me more of a blueberry. Okay. All right. Cool.
11:18Yeah, I was reading about it and I'm like, no one has ever told me that a Saskatoon berry has an almond flavor to it. you're wrong. I would never describe it. I would never describe them as that. Yeah, Google was wrong. Yep. First time ever. Hmm, weird. Yeah. Okay. So how long is your growing season there? Because ours is basically here in LaSore, Minnesota, where I live.
11:46It's May, we plant in the garden in May 15th and everything's pretty much done by first of October. So what's your growing season? So we can,  Saskatchewan, we can get some late frosts. And so usually I don't get things in the garden until like  May 27th at best, you know, or even the first week of June. And then typically depending on when the first frost  hit.
12:16It can go into that first week, second week of October as well. Okay. So, so we have maybe another week and a half compared to you. Yeah. Yeah. You're actually not too much different than us. Yep. And we're actually Southern Minnesota.  Um, I'm guessing if we lived in Northern Minnesota, our growing season would be shorter.  So how far south are you?  Um,  Iowa is maybe an hour and a half south of us.  Okay. Okay.
12:46So we're not far from the Iowa border. And  we're about four and a half hours from the South Dakota border.  And we're about an hour and a half from the Wisconsin border.  we're kind of, we're not central. We're like West central Minnesota. Yeah. Yeah. We actually live really close to the U S border as well. Like we are about an hour.
13:15straight south of us and you would  be going to Minot. Yep.  Okay, cool.  So I don't,  I'm really walking up to a line here.  I  don't talk politics on my podcast. I try really hard not to.  Yep. But  you're in Canada, I'm in America.
13:40How are things doing in Canada regarding the American government right now? Just be careful of what you say.  Yes, I will.  Well, as you  may or may not know, Canada is actually gearing up for an election in about 30 days, the shortest time for an election to be held ever due to our previous Prime Minister Justin Trudeau  not handling things well. So between that and then the tariff wars going on,
14:10Um, I don't know, it's been a little bit disappointing as a Canadian.  Um, just say, don't say this if I can't say this, but it's been a little bit disappointing as a Canadian just because  so many of us were rooting for Trump to get in. We've seen kind of what you guys have been going through with the Biden administration. And then  to see Trump get in and just turn his back so,  so quickly on a neighboring nation that, you know, we have been.
14:39friends since the beginning. And so it has been a little bit of feel like a stab in the back. And I know that maybe lots of the American people don't feel that way, but Trump does represent you guys. And so that's kind of how it's felt for us.  we're really hoping  and praying that  Pierre, the conservative leader that he can get in. And so in a month, we'll really be able to see it. Maybe we might be doing a little bit better, a little bit worse.
15:07Uh huh. I feel like we're all in a holding pattern right now. And I don't know about you, Chelsea, but I do not like holding patterns.  No. Oh no. Me neither. I hate that waiting area. You know, like I just, I struggle there. Yeah.  Yep. And the other thing that's been really hard here in America is the, a lot of the federal grants were stopped.
15:31And a lot of people in agriculture rely on those grants every year at this time.  So yeah, it's been, I'm going to be really careful because I don't want to say things that I'm not educated on, but it's been chaos here.  not like in my little part of the world here, my home, my land, everything's okay. But
15:58When I look at all the things that are affecting so many people in my country, it's really hard to not be, I don't know, sick at heart a little bit over it.  Oh, I feel you. it  kind of seems like just being so secluded out in the country, you're kind of secluded from it all. But it seems to be touching the small towns and just encroaching more and more to affecting our day-to-day life. Yeah. And  I don't know, it just seems like our
16:27current government, are so against like farming and the oil industry and things like that. And it just feels like every day you're waking up and you're trying to swim against the stream every single day. Yep. Is kind of how I describe it. Yeah. And, and I don't know what Canadian government is like, but here in the States, if you have a problem with the way things are going,
16:53our representatives and senators and all those people who are part of the bigger government, it's not just the president, the government part is who gets things done.  We can contact those people and say,  this is what I think about this particular thing that's going on, but you kind of have to tell them  what and why you think that way.  Not just the emotional part, but the actual how it's affecting you.  Yes, the actual reasoning.
17:23Yeah, in Canada, is that a thing that you guys can do? Yes.  Yeah, we do have representatives and then they take it to the next and then the next. And like, in each state, you guys have a governor, right? Yeah. Yeah. So here we have a premier. And so that's who we would, we would take our problems to him and then he would take them to more of a national level if need be. Okay, good. So you have a way to get your opinions and thoughts  to the powers that be, as I call them.
17:52That's correct. Good, because government in America is supposed to be for the people and by the people, and I'm assuming Canada is not that different. No,  it's really not that different. And I always like to say the government works for the people. We don't work for the government. And I feel like we have really lost touch with that saying, because that's way it should be. Yeah, it should be here in America, too. And I think
18:20I think that's all I really want to get into because I really, I don't want to make people angry. I want people to feel empowered. And that's why I said what I said about if you have a problem, these people are here to help you get that out there and dealt with. So anyway, that's the closest I've ever come to talking politics on the podcast with you, Chelsea.
18:46I'm literally sitting here buzzing like do I really want to talk about this? Have you ever had a Canadian on the podcast before? Yes, actually. There was a young woman. Her name was Becca Bia. She changed her last name to Hammond and she has many horses. I invited her to be on the show. Yeah, I don't know. I don't remember what province she's from.
19:15But she was great, she was adorable and she's so, so bubbly and is just mad about these mini horses. It was a really fun episode, it's already out. It's so funny. Yeah. That is so funny. So, and she just actually bought a mini horse from another person I follow on Facebook. And I didn't even know she was buying the mini horse from the first person that I follow on Facebook. I messaged her, I said, are you buying Katie's George? She was like, I am. I went, oh my God, it is such a small world.
19:44That's hilarious. Yeah. So, but we didn't get into politics, although she did mention that she wanted to get down to America to pick up George before April 2nd, before the tariffs hit. I don't think. right. Yeah. And something about she had to have a  broker because she was bringing another horse to America to drop off because she had an empty trailer. Why not?
20:12and she had to have the right paperwork to bring the mini horse back with her, George.  So yeah, there are definitely rules and regs to travel across the border right now and always have been, but there's just specific things when it comes to  livestock. Oh yeah, there's a lot of paperwork that goes into  transporting livestock to different countries.  Now, I am assuming that with your beef cattle, you are not...
20:40exporting that beef it's staying in Canada? Well,  we're not exporting it but I know that  once the beef is bought like by one of the bigger buyers then they often will export it.  Yeah. All right. Well, I'm going to throw this in in the middle of this because I've been trying to get it in on every episode for like the last three weeks. Whether you're in Canada or America,
21:07You really should know your local growers, your local producers,  and you should have a relationship with them because sometimes  things happen and supply chains go down. So get to know people like Chelsea and me who has eggs for sale right now at $5 a dozen.  just, you know, support your local people who are producing food because it's really good to eat local.  Amen.
21:34I could not have said that any better. really, people think they go into the grocery store and they think that  one stop shop, that's where their food comes from, but they do not see all the other hands and all the other processes that are involved. you know, if, if things go bad at some point on the world stage, getting food at the grocery stores is going to be everyone's last problem, except the people that are walking into the grocery store needing food for their family.
22:03And so even if you live in town, like there's so many things that you can grow. And there are so many people that live outside of town, like myself, that plan on growing a very massive garden that I want to feed other people. That is like a passion of mine is having a garden where you can come and pick for yourself  and,  buy it at an affordable price. Yeah,  absolutely.  Do you have people, you know, who are also doing this kind of thing, or is it, are you kind of in a
22:32a vacuum right now?  I know  quite a few people that like grow their own gardens but I don't know that I know any that really want to  get that food into other people's hands.  For myself it's just kind of a newer passion as I've just you know started to grow up and look at things and I love love love gardening and I really want to share that passion with others and share good wholesome organic food with others.
23:00Well, you would love my kitchen right now, Chelsea.  have baby basil  plants on my kitchen table.  think there's still some pepper seedlings. think there's still some tomato seedlings.  And out in our greenhouse right now, it is packed. My husband came in yesterday from  planting lettuce seeds  and he says,  we have a problem. And I said, oh, and he said, I'm running out of room in the greenhouse. I said, uh-oh.
23:28And he said, yeah, he said, it's going to be good when we can get the high tunnel plastic on the high tunnel greenhouse,  get the tables set up and start selling the bedding plants. So I have room to grow more things. And I was like, it's a never ending cycle, isn't it? He's like, yeah. No kidding. That is so funny. Yeah. I'm waiting for a nice warm day here so I can get out and start some of my tomatoes and basil and peppers and things like that, just to give them a head start.  Yep.
23:57Because it takes like six to eight weeks for the tomatoes to be ready to go in the ground. Plus, I'm guessing it's still too cold where you are to even get them in the ground. Oh yeah, it's really cold still. Yeah. So, but he sent me photos from the greenhouse and I'm  not kidding. It is packed. Like,  I can't, I don't even know how he's got a Tetris in there to have everything in there he's got right now. I'm so excited. I can't.
24:25I can't tell you how thrilled I am that we're going to be selling bedding plants for the first time this year. That is exciting.  Yeah, the last few years we've actually just sold produce. when we got the greenhouse up last May, said,  how do feel about growing extra seedlings? And he was like,  I feel fine about that. For what? And I said,  to sell to people who want to try growing their own backyard garden? And he went, oh, yes, absolutely.
24:56I love that. I love that your husband loves gardening too. That is so fun. He loves it. It is his therapy. He, it's so funny. He, um, his job is taking care of repairing printers and fax machines and things like that.  Oh, cool. So he's very much  a  tech at his job job. And so  he absolutely loves it when he gets home and it's staying lighter later now.
25:26So he gets home, he eats dinner and then he's like, I'm out to the greenhouse and here soon it'll be, I'm out to the garden. And  he just putters and plants and checks on things and just like gazes over his creation and just grins. And I'm like, God, you need this.  I love that. Yep. That's how I am. That is, I take my shoes off, I get out there and I just want to absorb everything, you know?  Yeah. You should have seen him last fall when he brought six peaches in.
25:56from the two peach trees he bought  the previous fall. He came in with six softball sized peaches from these trees he had just put in the year before. That's impressive. And he walked in and showed me and I was like, where did you get peaches? He said from our tree. Probably proud as a peacock, hey?  Oh my God, his face was just lit up like a light bulb. He was so excited.
26:23And I said, are they buggy? And he said, no, he said, look at these. And they were beautiful and they tasted amazing.  I bet. I don't know what variety they are. I wish I could remember because I wanted to write it down and the tag got thrown away before I could. But I bet you you could grow them in Canada because I think they're a Canadian variety.  Oh, are they? Yeah. Because I really, that's the other thing I want to.
26:47I want to plant an orchard so my husband and I, we've been, you know, looking at all the different kinds of trees that we want and  discussing like that. And there are some  cold hardy peach varieties that are available. So we're definitely going to have to add those to our orchard.  Yeah. Are you going to do apples too?
27:06Oh yeah, apples. I like to do plums, apples, cherries, grapes,  then peaches if I can find  a cold hardy variety for sure. Well, I I know the variety that we put in is cold hardy. So I will have to ask him if he remembers what it was and I can message it to you.  Oh, that would be amazing. Yeah.  Unbelievable peaches. I mean, I have had peaches shipped to me from Georgia and these were right up there with Georgia peaches. I'm not kidding.
27:38that oh man a few years ago my family and I we went to British Columbia and they are known for peaches  and oh my goodness their peaches were amazing I haven't had peaches like that since.  Yeah and it's so funny because you get you get fruit at the store you know the grocery store and it's fruit like  an apple tastes like an apple  but it's not the same as when you go to the orchard and pick an apple off the tree.
28:06rub it on your shirt and then bite into it. And I don't know  why, why it's so different. You would think that an apple is an apple is an apple, but it's not.  This is really interesting. Um, so all the fruit that we get in our grocery stores, like it has to be picked weeks before it's actually raped. they give it, I cannot remember what it's called, but it's a hormone  and
28:32You can Google it as soon as we're done. can't remember what it's called though. They give it a ripening hormone right before they're going to like put it into the grocery store. And that's probably why it's not the same is because they're picked so prematurely and then they're given a hormone to ripen quickly to look good, but it's actually not the same.  Yeah. And I mean, I knew, I knew there was a reason. I'm glad you mentioned that, but it's just, it's so funny to me that, that
29:02Yeah, grocery stores have a purpose.  know, not everyone can get 20 miles away to pick apples at the apple orchard.  it would be so much cooler if people understood that when they eat in season and maybe like gather a couple friends and somebody has a car and they can go pick  apples in season. And I would love to have somebody there take a  video of someone who's never eaten an apple right off the tree.
29:32biting into that apple. Wouldn't that be amazing?  Oh, it would be. You'd probably be shocked. This is what an apple tastes like. Yeah. And I choose apple because everybody knows what an apple is  in North America. And we all know that an apple tastes like an apple, but there are varying flavors and textures on apples. And there's this one apple that the University of Minnesota  developed.
30:01and it was called MN 1661 was the original name, because that's how they do it. They name it Minnesota and then a number. And it eventually became the Renaissance apple. And it's a really early apple. It ripens up like at the end of August. And I am in love with this apple. I did not get any this year because we weren't up to get them, but it tastes different than any apple I've ever had.
30:29It's nuts to me that  all these fruits have different flavors and different textures and different colors, you know? Yeah, it is amazing. So many different variations of the same fruit. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And  as humans, we love variety. We love a different color or a different feel or a different smell.
30:58I understand that apples  basically give you vitamin C. I think there might be a little vitamin A and it's good for you to eat an apple. But I don't think apples are about eating for nutrition. think apples are  for eating because they make you feel good, like  psychically, not biologically good. Yeah, that's interesting that you say that I can really...
31:27That describes a lot more how I feel eating an apple now, especially when you eat it like outside. Like there's just something about picking an apple from a tree and eating it. It just makes you feel connected. Yeah. You know, like, it's so that's so interesting. Yeah. And we're so, I mean, so many of us are so disconnected from where our food comes from, which is part of the reason I started the podcast, because I was like, there's a lot of people who don't know that milk comes from cows.
31:57Yeah,  think brown milk comes from brown cows. Yeah, no chocolate milk does not come from brown cows. Last I checked.  Yeah.  So  anyway, I'm mostly we're just yapping here because we're past 30 minutes, Chelsea. I try to keep us to 30 minutes. So  thank you so much for your time and please keep doing what you're doing and try to pull your friends in to do it too. Okay.  Oh, trust me. I will be trying my hardest.  Good.
32:27Keep doing the good work. Okay. Thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you. Have a good day. You too. Bye bye. If you like this podcast, you would probably love Amy Fagan's Grounded In Maine podcast.  You can find her on  all the platforms grounded in maine.com.
 

High Prairie Press - if you have wanted to write a book, this is for you

Today I'm talking with Annie at High Prairie Press. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00Did you know that Muck Boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out Muck Boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a Calendars.com  Lang calendar.
00:26because I needed something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.
00:56You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Annie Toro Lopez again. I just put out the episode with Annie from a week or two ago,  sometime in the last six days. can't remember when.  And  Annie talked to me about her Seeds to Savor page and stuff on the last episode.
01:25And today she's going to walk us through her process  of how she publishes books at High Prairie Press. So welcome back, Annie. How are you? Wonderful. I am well. Thank you so much, Mary, for having me back.  I'm very excited about this conversation. I am too, because that got to me like this bug has been kicking me for a week since we talked about doing this episode.  You're in Colorado, right?
01:53That's correct. I'm in  Elizabeth, Colorado, and we are  at 6,300 feet. That's  High Prairie. We're on the Colorado High Prairie, and that was the name for my publishing company, High Prairie Press. Beautiful.  the weather nice in Colorado today? Oh my goodness, not today. Everything's covered in ice. How about you up there?  It's gray.
02:22It's gray, it's probably 45 degrees and  we actually had kind of nasty thunderstorms yesterday. I believe it. There were tornadoes all across the country. saw,  I'm originally from Nebraska. I was born in New Jersey, raised in Nebraska  and in  an agricultural land,  lots of tornadoes across Nebraska. saw a video of someone in their house and all of their windows all the way around them were breaking with hail. Yeah.
02:50So it was, yeah, it was a rough day yesterday. I'm glad you guys are all okay. Yep. We're fine here. No broken windows. No, no cars got ding. No, no dogs got clunked in the head with hail. We're good. Um, and we're making a very small talk here, but I was, I was also born in New Jersey. I was also born in New Jersey. Where? Fort Dix. Wow. I was born in Plainfield.
03:19Yeah, I think Fort Dix is in New Jersey. So yeah, we have that in common too. Really weird. Yes, Wonderful. Okay. So what I want to ask you first is you had said back in the other interview,
03:39that it's always been your dream to be a publisher, but you have also written a cookbook. So were you a publisher before you wrote the cookbook or were you an author before you were a publisher?  So  I had published three books.  I published before my most recent cookbook. So I published four different books. One is a writer's handbook.  That was the first book I wrote. It taught me a lot about the process of publishing
04:09Um,  it was something just, just did.  I taught my degree is in English and I taught literacy, reading and writing for about 15 years. So  professionally and more before that, but  I,  um,  wanted to capture what  I had taught  as a literacy instructor.  so I made,  I spent like, I don't know.
04:39days, just listing words, like words that would come like metaphor and simile and antagonist and protagonist and  plot and resolution and  just words.  so this book is the death,  the writer's handbook defines those words and it's, it's  people who have it, I think find it valuable. It hasn't sold to many people, but writers, especially for  fiction,  memoir,
05:08anything you would have learned in like English 101 is all there and just really concise. So that's that book. Then I did a project in Southern Colorado around green chili because it's an iconic native indigenous, my husband is indigenous and so green chili was just always a part of his life. And so this was a way to capture stories and recipes.
05:38So that was the second real book that I published. And then I also published a small journal that's like available on Amazon.
05:51Journal of Memories and Food Connections and Traditions. And I used it to write the Green Chili Cookbook. And it ended up being kind of its own little thing. And it's a nice little thing. It's nice on people like it. But it's, again, it was never commercial, for commercial, really. So the Green Chili Cookbook is called Wharf and I was happy hard. it was a...
06:18kind of a passion project and I did it with a grant through  the age friendly initiative, which is something that Colorado has put money into.  and then I, so about a year after I published that cookbook,  uh,  my life changed a lot and I lost my best friend and my sister like six days apart.  And then three weeks later when I was in first place in a
06:48Cookie competition, was diagnosed with celiac disease and that really just derailed my life  at that point. So I did publish  the Simply Gluten Free,  Real Ingredients for Everyday Life almost by accident.  Because at that point I was really ready to go off  on a more published,  to be a publisher. That's what I wanted to do. I had published three books and I was like, okay, I kind of know that.
07:16You know, I know, and I'm going to learn more and  attending conferences and  workshops and professional development things. And I learned a lot  and was ready to write that I was actually approached by a chef here in Denver who wanted me to publish his cookbook. And literally on the way to that meeting, my brother-in-law called and said, you need to come home now. Yeah. Because my sister was dying. So,  um,
07:45But I didn't lose that. And then I published my gluten-free cookbook because I really felt like it could benefit the Celiac community. And I just received a review on Amazon that just so nailed what I was trying to do, what I was trying to accomplish, and that it felt really good. Because I want to help people who live a gluten-free lifestyle, or their family does, or they cook for someone.
08:15to navigate that world because it's rough.  But I didn't lose that. And so what I realized, I think, just even a couple of months ago, a few months ago at a big, there's a huge publishing conference that takes place in March. And in talking to colleagues,  I felt like I was kind of having an identity crisis because  I really want to be a publisher, but I'm out there marketing a book. So you have just doing both the...
08:44Marketing is ongoing, so it's always going to be there and that's part of the world.  So,  yes, that's the long answer. Publishing  is  truly my passion. love  getting other people's voice out there  to support them and have them have that voice. Okay, cool.
09:11So the reason that I wanted Annie to come back and talk to me is because she had said that she was interested in publishing books by people who are homesteaders and who are doing the homesteading things. And most homesteaders don't know how to approach a publisher. They don't know how it works. And Annie was kind enough to come back and she's going to tell us kind of the ins and outs, nuts and bolts of her process on how this works. we're going to use
09:41We're going to use me as an example because I have an idea for a book and I probably will never do it. But I figure  I'm here. I might as well tell you the idea. Yeah. Yeah. So the idea for my book that I keep talking about and I keep saying, I'm going to write a cookbook too, but I just haven't gotten there. That's not the same as writing a book book. My book book idea  is basically a simple book about how to get started learning.
10:10to cook because I've had so many people tell me I don't cook or I don't know how to cook or I don't have time to learn how to cook. And  I didn't either. And then in my  20s,  I was like, I need to make food at home. I don't want to keep eating out. I'm to be as big as a house. This is ridiculous.  And so I learned how to make a few things that come from a box, you know, add water, add butter, whatever.
10:36And then I was like, there's gotta be a better way. And I learned how to cook, you know, things from actual ingredients. And it's not hard. It takes, it takes the, the want to do it. And it takes being able to follow directions and it takes having the right tools. So basically in my book would, would be about introducing the idea of you can do this and the right tools, like how to, how to kit out your kitchen simply to start with.
11:05You know, do you need plastic measuring cups that are a quarter, a third, a half, and a one cup? Or do you need like fancy measuring cups? That kind of stuff. So if I was gonna come to you and be like, Annie, I have this idea for a book. And I run the idea by you and you go, that's a great idea, let's talk. What's the next step? Well, awesome. That was perfect, Mary, because
11:35The first step is to pitch your idea and that's what you just did. So you gave me the perfect pitch, right? This is  my idea, this is what I wanna do, this is what I wanna look like  and  that's the first step. So you would pitch your idea. If you have a manuscript already, that's fine and you  can accompany your pitch with your manuscript. But not having a manuscript
12:03is fine and  sometimes preferred.  So don't be afraid that, oh, well, I don't have anything  to show.  Just pitch your idea, just like you just did. Then the next step  is going to be  to,  so  if we accept it, if we say, you know, this is, we like this, I would want to see a copy of your writing, so a sample of your writing.
12:32and a sample of photos  where, you know, we, I would like, we  focus on beautiful books.  make beautiful books. Then if we would talk about, so what's your vision for the book? Do you want it to be fully illustrated? Do you want to have little stories in there in between?
12:59Do you want some full page illustrations or do you would you like to keep it? You know, so we talk about that.  Then we would talk about your goals for publication. So are you looking  to to have a bestseller? Are you? Do you want something that's just regional like a,  know, something just for your area? How to grow?  Crops that  are for your area.
13:29Um,  we were talking the other day about peony farms in Alaska and, uh, you know, like regional, that kind of thing.  Or are you looking for like a family keepsake? You know, you don't necessarily want to even  market it. So we would talk about that and your goals because that would inform. And then a timeline for the project. We would talk about  what's realistic, where you are in the  process.
13:59Uh, what your writing style, what we would, you know, if how much work we need to do there. Um, sometimes none at all, sometimes a lot.  And  so, uh, that we can  obviously make a plan and then we would talk about your budget because there are different  ways to publish  and  publishing is expensive. Like there's just.
14:29around it  and we would talk about the different types of publishing available. So I kind of want to talk a little bit about that because I think there's a lot of confusion.
14:47about  the difference between  a vanity press, a hybrid press, a traditional press,  and  self-publishing. So those are all different things.  And then there's even just like coaching, right? That isn't necessarily gonna take you, they're not gonna publish you, but they'll get you to the door.
15:16Then so a vanity press, vanity presses get a lot of bad  press and there's part  of that is because they deserve it in a way. Some do,  not all. A vanity press could be as simple as going to your local
15:39you know,  Minute Man, I don't know what you might have in your region, we have Minute Man press and they just publish whatever. They don't have any  criticism. There's no, you know, it's just I'm going to bring here and I'm going to get it published.  I'm going to print it basically.  And you know, they serve a purpose. So vanity presses get a lot of,  sometimes they miss the problem with vanity presses is they can misrepresent.
16:13They are something to be cautious of if you're really looking to publish a book and you want, know, okay, we're going to put that they don't offer any support. They don't offer any marketing. They don't offer any editing. They don't offer. So  it's literally just whatever you have, you can get printed.  Um,
16:35hybrid press is more  where is hybrid between,  me explain a traditional press first because then we could talk about hybrid. A traditional press would be  like one of the big five or a big publishing company that they're going to do  all of the work. They're going to own the rights to the book. They're going to do everything in house.
17:03you have less control, you have input for sure, but less control over things like cover design or  paperweight or whatever.  A lot of people get confused with traditional press because they get excited because you get an advance, right? So for one, those are going away. Like you just don't see that much anymore, other than the big five, obviously the big huge houses.
17:33But the royalty split generally with a traditional press is going to be 10 % to the author and 90 % to the house.  They do all the work.  get, you know, on the back end, they get  a bigger royalty split.
18:01hybrid press. Usually there's a  more  equitable royalty split is one of the things.
18:15but they're not also not they're not going to do all of that all of the
18:27upfront work and you're not going to get anything like a
18:36advanced because it comes out of that royalty later. it's  writing a book is always an investment, right? Like you're always investing in the future.
18:48With  an advance, what some people don't realize is that it's kind of like a loan. If your book  doesn't sell enough to cover the advance, you are responsible to pay back to that house. And most people don't realize that.  So that's  kind of the, you know,
19:13different, so those are sort of different paths to publishing  or the, then they're self publishing. So you do all, you know, you do the legwork, you do that. So it's always kind of up to the author how you want to approach it. But there's a lot of confusion, I think, out there about what those different entities  are. Yeah. far as paths to publishing. So what would you call your publishing house?  Hybrid.
19:42Yeah, hybrid press. Yeah, yeah. And so, so yeah, so then what we would, what we offer  and,  is,  once we, we agree that on, you know,  we want to work together and we can fit your budget and all of the things,  um, then we'll, we're going, we'd create a general, if you have a, so for, for your cookbook, we would create like a general outline for,
20:12you know, what topics do you want to cover? Like you were talking about the different, you know, like kitchen equipment, right? Like basic kitchen equipment, do you really need? So that would be one of our, that would be one section.  And so we would really, you know, create a skeleton of whatever you want to cover.  And then the next step would be, you know, let's put, put meat on the bones. So we would meet about,
20:41once a week  and  or if that doesn't fit in your budget we could meet every other week so we can work on whatever whatever works for you as the author.  About halfway through a book it is time to start applying for awards,  submitting for reviews,
21:11We would hire our cover designer  and  shout out to Tammy and Wood who's an amazing cover designer.  And work on  those sorts of things like starting to create buzz, get the word out there, do this, like podcast interviews, right?  And all of that, you want to do that early.  When you're about halfway through.
21:41A lot of awards have publication  deadlines, so you want to get that in. And  they open and close, so you want to get that in  pretty early. we're always,  of course, striving for excellence here, absolutely.  Then we would be working on things like  the
22:09basic metadata for the book, which are things like your ISBN number and those we get through Boker. Boker is the only official distributor of ISBN in the United States. Their website is my identifiers.com. are a lot, there are a lot of
22:41Predatory websites. don't know if predatory is the right word. That's probably not the right word. Third party. Let's just say that's a better word. There are a lot of third party websites that are that are.
22:58It's confusing because Boker is the name of  the company or the entity and their website is My Identifier. So there are like My Boker and you'll see things, but they're not official. Okay. So if you are self-publishing, if you do want to self-publish, you have to get your own  ISBN number.
23:25Amazon will give you an ISBN and so will Barnes & Noble.
23:31They, if your ISBN is through Amazon or Barnes and Noble, that is the only distributor. You cannot have global distribution. I highly recommend you buy and own your own ISBN.  Yep. Yeah. I learned about this back many years ago when I was doing, a friend wanted to write a book and she didn't know how to do it. She wanted to self-publish and I was like,  I can help you.
24:01I can learn this really quick and we can get it done. But do you want  an actual ISBN  number for your book?"  And she was like, I don't know. So we had to learn all that too.  And what I discovered is you can actually buy like 50 ISBN numbers or a hundred at a shot and it actually makes them less expensive. And I was like, I'm not going to be in this long enough to do that. So.  Yeah. Yeah.
24:30Yeah, I understand.  And you do want though.
24:36It's depending on how so each  each version of your book requires its own.  Is being  or is been, which is in the industry, what we call it.  If your ebook. Your paperback, your hardback, an audio book,  all those require so it is good to buy like five at a time. If that, especially if that I think they offer.
25:06And they don't expire. Right. So if you do want to, if you think you want to write another book, you know, that's like five Isbans a shot. I want to say, and I could be wrong here, but I want to say that the price break starts at 10. So like 10, 25, 50, a hundred. So buying 10, if you want to write more than one book, buying 10 isn't an under the question.
25:36And you do save a lot of money. And how much are they going for these days? Ma'am? Oh, was afraid you were going to ask that. I want to say $120, but I could be wrong. can look it up here. Per number? Mm-hmm. Well, but unless you bundle them and then they really are cheaper. And then you don't have to pay. Don't pay for your barcodes. I'm just going to look it up. Huh?
26:07Barcodes  are not are free you you can get a free barcode  when I bought a bundle from
26:20my identifiers at that time, they gave like five free barcodes. So that's fine if they want to. Let's see.
26:35So yeah, that's.
26:39I'm just looking here. I want to tell you, so  I'll try to get that for you. Okay. And we can even put, yeah, put it up later or whatever.  the other,  you're also, so at that point, we're also going to apply for your Library of Congress identifier.  You want to be in the Library of Congress, right?  And we'll also start.
27:08the  copyright process at that point.  when you're, again, so we're talking about halfway to,  you know, three quarters of the way through the book.
27:21was starting to do all of that paperwork and all of that legwork. You want it?  Go ahead.  All right. So we're getting into a lot of the nitty gritty and I wanted to do that. I think that anyone who's not really committed to the idea of writing a book at this point has just enough to know that it's going to be a process and that you need to have  your ducks in order to get it started.
27:51So I would love to spend the next 10 or so minutes if you have that to spend with me.  Talking about what kind of books you're looking for that you would like to publish from people.  Oh, absolutely.
28:07I would like to see manuscripts and ideas  around  homesteading in general.
28:19specifically all  food production  so  Can't  and food preservation cookbooks  seed preservation  Maybe you make pressed oils  People do like lati. I in our neighborhood. There's someone who has a lavender farm and she makes pressed oils  So  anything that  really has to do with
28:49food security,  your ideas.  I also am open to memoir. Memoirs are very, very different process. Memoir is its own  special genre.  But a lot of people like to write,  want to write a memoir. think a lot of it's one of the fastest growing  genres.  So I'm definitely open to that.
29:16Just so you know, if you do want to write a memoir,  like again, it has its own, it's its very own genre. There are very, very much rules  that you need to follow.  It  should read like fiction.  So if you have,  if you have a farm or a backyard farm or you...
29:41you know, grow certain vegetables. I mean, that's really,  really where  I would love to see submissions from  your homesteaders and the tattoos and beautiful, like illustrated.  We can work, if you're not a photographer,  there are,  we can work with what you have.  you know, and today's cameras really are high definition photos. So,
30:11You don't have to like have any kind of fancy equipment or anything like that. And Canva is amazing.  It's amazing. And we can  actually.
30:24One of the issues with photographs has been  for me anyway, for years, is always, you you can't scale up.  You can, yeah, you can scale down, but you can never scale up. Well, that's not true anymore, because, partly because of AI.  But you can, and you can also  convert files into like PNGs or whatever that translate better when we print. So it's,
30:53Don't worry if you're like, oh, I don't know if I have photos. It does help if you're a picture taker though. It does help if you like to take pictures of your process. That will help. Yeah. And it doesn't matter whether you have an iPhone or an Android because my husband has like the three generations back from new Samsung something.
31:19And  he took the most beautiful sunrise picture a week ago.  I swear to you, Annie, it looks like a painting. is so  gorgeous. it doesn't matter what kind of cell phone you have, whether it's Android or iPhone, you can do pretty much anything. Yeah, absolutely. And nowadays cameras, I just got a new Samsung because I  had a five year old phone and I think I dropped it to one too many times. So
31:47I had to get a new phone, which is just a whole like switch over, right? But anyways, but the camera is amazing. It's amazing. Yeah, absolutely.  Absolutely. Yeah.  And if you,  we would work, you know, for in design together. So with all your photos  that you want.  Very nice.
32:13The other thing that I want to throw in here really quick is that lots of people think that they're not writers. And  this may be true. There are a lot of people out there who cannot string words together and make it a good sentence. I understand that they weren't born with the talent to do it and  they haven't taken a class to learn how to do it. That's fine. Not everyone has to be a writer. Not everyone has to be a singer. I'm all good with that.  But  what is really nice these days  is
32:40There are all kinds of transcription services available online and you can literally tell your story out loud. The transcription  software  will put it into words for you and then you can edit it from there. So you don't even have to sit at the  keyboard for hours typing. can just talk into your phone, record your ideas.
33:08get it transcribed and then sit down and edit it from there. And  I learned this because of my podcast, because  the platform I use has a transcription function so that I can have the transcriptions in the show notes.  And I was like,  oh my God, I could be doing dishes, have my earbuds in, get ideas down, recorded, know, audially, and then have them transcribed and literally be able to sit down for four hours and edit them.
33:37I was so excited to discover this. So  even if you're not technically a sit down and type the words person, if you're a storyteller, you can jump on that and go from there. Yeah, absolutely.  Absolutely. That's a great point.  Isn't that amazing? Oh, I'm so glad because  I'm getting older  and I'm starting to get a little bit of arthritis in my joints and my fingers.
34:06So sitting and typing for hours is really not comfy, you know? That's excellent point. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, absolutely. I guess I'm thinking of the work that I did too, like, you know, through  our age-friendly initiative in a senior center, right? Like that was some, you know, I heard that as a concern. I don't, can't, you know, it's hard to write now. Yeah. Yeah,  yeah. And I'm so out of practice writing actual.
34:33actual longhand like with a pen or a pencil on paper because I never do it.  Who in the world actually writes on paper these days with a manual word processor?  do.  do.  I keep my notebooks. I have notebooks everywhere and I keep my notebooks. I was so proud of myself last year. had my notebook. I had my notebook from my business and I started it in January, I edited it in December and I had one page left.  Wow. I was very proud.
35:01Yeah, I write in notebooks. I write longhand a lot. helps  my brain to process what I'm writing. So  it's just something I prefer. I transcribe a lot from longhand, but I do write longhand, especially plans and that kind of thing. So yeah,  I do.  My husband brought me a box of pencils yesterday.  And can I just say it was like the sweetest thing ever.
35:30Uh-huh. He brought me my favorite Thai Khandro-Roga pencils. I was very touched.  That is really sweet. And I get it.  Back  when I wasn't so computer driven, I used to love a store called St. Paul Book and Stationery in Minnesota. And they had  every freaking thing under the sun for writing. And it had this, this smell.
36:00of paper and ink and  I don't know what it was but every time I went there I'd be here. Yes, Dixon Paper Company here in Denver. was the equivalent I think of what you're talking about. I know I was, oh I'd forgotten about Dixon until just now.  yes, that smell.  I understand your excitement about getting your favorite pencils because
36:25Um, years ago, um, one of the locations that my husband worked at, they were closing out one of their buildings and  he, he came across, he was helping clean it up and get stuff out and he came across a,  box and he opened the box, which is a really pretty little blue box and it had a gorgeous fountain pen  and,  a container of ink that went with it. And it was supposed to be like a gift to someone that just never got given out.
36:53And he asked the person in charge  if he could have it. And the guy was like, yeah, all this is going to the trash. Whatever you think is saveable and you have used for, have at it. He brought this home to me. I used that pen for five years. That's awesome. I love that pen. awesome.  Oh, that's, yeah, they're beautiful to write with, aren't they? Yeah. My favorite pen is the Uniball Vision. Just saying. Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
37:22I wish I knew what I need to do is I need to start keeping a journal a small journal again and actually writing it longhand because my handwriting used to be beautiful and I used to really enjoy the act of writing, you know, actual physical act. And then I got busy with other stuff and I just don't write anything on paper anymore. So I need I'm going to make a resolution right now. I'm going to find a book I'm going to start just writing the weather every day like
37:49like three or four sentences about the weather every morning.  that's a great start. I love the weather. I can be very weather obsessed. used to be a storm chaser in one of my previous lifetimes. It was a lot of fun, but I have to tell you that I posted a picture on Facebook in fact in January because  I bought two notebooks and  a package of pencils and for my business  notebooks for the year. And one was purple and the other one has  purple and pink unicorns and, and
38:19and my pencils were sparkles and I said, yes, they match and yes, they sparkle.  Yes, it helps when your tools make you happy. Right,  yes.  And it's sitting right here.  that's very, very, very nice.  We could geek out for days,  Definitely. I enjoy you, Mary. This was  so much fun. I really thank you so much for this because it really
38:48gives me an opportunity  to describe to your listeners  what we offer and  I really appreciate it.  I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about this because  most people do not know the steps. There's so much.  Yeah. It's a deep topic. It's a wide topic. It has a lot of moving parts, a lot of cogs, a lot of wheels. It's a huge topic.
39:17And we just  basically touched on the top of the ice or the tip of the iceberg today. Yeah. So  for the listeners, if anyone has a book idea percolating and they want to talk to  Annie,  how to contact her, be in the show notes, but it's, it's it's high prairie press.org, right? Correct. And my email is editor  at high prairie press.org. So feel free to reach out.
39:44Yes, because Annie needs books. She needs book ideas so she can publish them.  Yes.  All right. Awesome.  Thank you. All  right. Have a great afternoon. Thanks. You too. Bye. If you like this podcast, you would probably love Amy Fagan's Grounded in Maine podcast.  You can find her on  all the platforms, groundedinmaine.com.
 

Shell Smart - Australian Homesteader

Today I'm talking with Shell. If you've ever wondered what it's like to homestead in Australia, this will give you a small taste.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Shell Smart and she is  in Australia and it's actually morning in Australia right now, whereas it's six o'clock in the evening here in Minnesota.  Good morning, Shell. How are you? Good morning, Mary  Ann. Good evening to you.  Thank you.  And the other thing's different is you are in the middle of autumn and we are in the middle of a spring, right? That's correct. Yes.
00:58Okay, so based on all of that, your growing situation is very different from ours, so I wanna touch on that. But first, tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, I am a wife to Stuart. We've been married for nearly 33 years. And we have five children and they range from 28 down to 15. We're homeschooling.
01:27still got two homeschooling or sort of one and a half homeschooling at the moment. So we're nearly finished with being homeschooling. think this is our  22nd year of homeschooling.  And we're homestead as well. So we have three acres right within the town limits, but a very small town of a thousand people here in  the snowy valleys of New South Wales  and in Australia. And yeah, we have three acres and we have a little homestead here.
01:58Very nice and  congratulations on making your marriage work for that long with five children to boot  That's that's  I'm one grandchild. Okay  Yeah,  well you have outdone yourselves. I'm impressed. I I've been married three times. I'm keeping the third one. He's great
02:27And  I can't imagine  being with someone for that long with that many kids because kids are a huge stressor on relationships sometimes. Yeah, they can be. But I think they can also really make you work better as a team because you've got something bigger than yourself to work for as well within your marriage.  True enough. Yes, absolutely. But you also have to be willing to do that.
02:55You both have to be willing to work together.  And  my first two,  I don't want to say anything bad, but the third one is more than willing to work with me to make this work. Let's put it that way.  That's the big difference.  It sure does. Okay. So  what do you do on your homestead? Do have animals? Do you grow gardens? What do you do? Yeah, we generally do grow gardens. At the moment, we haven't got any luck.
03:24this season because we're just finishing our harvest season.  So we haven't done gardens this last year, this last summer,  because we are moving and we just didn't have the time and energy to into that.  But  we do normally grow gardens with, you know, not a huge vegetable garden,  but we do have, you know, herbs and veggies and tomatoes.
03:53Well, I'm not very good at tomatoes. I like to plant lots of tomatoes.  And I get a few every season that actually grow. So that's something I need to work on. And one day I'll work on that when I've got more time and energy.  But we do grow a lot and have grown at the, again, at the moment we've downsized, but we have been in the past growing.  Between growing  and we have friends that hunt, we've been able to raise most of our meat.
04:22that we eat as a family. So  that's been good. So we currently have  our chooks, oh sorry, in Australia we call chickens chooks. So if I revert to that I apologize.  So chickens are laying chickens at the moment, laying hens.  And we have goats.  They have in the past been milked, but at the moment we don't have any babies and they're not milking.
04:49And we have had  meat chickens as well  and we just sent back some milking cows that we had on our property  that our friend  had lent to us over the summer.  A,  it  benefited her because she needed to reduce her load on her pasture and B, we needed to get some big animals on our pasture.
05:17We were able to be blessed by having two milking cows and two calves on our  pasture over the last four months, I think five months maybe.  So we're very quiet at the moment. Our poor livestock guardian dog, Chief, he doesn't have a lot to do. I we're down to about 15 hens and three roosters and a  small clutch of chicks  and two goats. That's all he's got to look after other than us in the household.
05:46He does a great job of that and we have, yeah, captain, inside captain, outside captain, inside dog and, yeah, children.  So it's  a menagerie whether that we're working farm or not at the moment.  Do you have  kittens right now? No, we have chicks. So we have cats.  We just have an inside cat at the moment and we have a barn cat.
06:14as well that lives outside although he's currently inside comes in for a morning cuddle  on the call of mornings.  But we also have my daughter who's between homes at the moment so she's renting a room at a friend's house and she couldn't take her cat with her so he is also at our place at the moment. So  yeah right now inside I have three cats at this very moment inside and I'm not an inside cat person normally but anyway.
06:44I  used to be and then  we got a dog  and I have decided that the dog is actually better than the inside cat so we don't intend to have any inside cats anymore.  We have two barn cats that we love to pet outside. They're great outside.  We have always had a cat that's generally been like you know
07:11inside when they want to be but outside most of the time.  currently she's getting old.  We worked it out the other day. She's just turned 10 and she's just not really all that interested in going outside on a nice day that's not too hot or not too cold or not too wet. In the middle of the day when she feels like she's up to it she might go outside for a little bit. She's an old lady. She has to take it in her time.
07:41Exactly, exactly. She has a nickname on here as Cranky Cat because she gets very cranky that one. Okay. So what kind of dog is your livestock guardian dog? He's a Maremma. Okay, I don't know what that is. Oh, it's the big white, pure white, furry dog. Looks like a sheep when they're laying in the body with a sheep. Like a Great Pyrenees sort of?
08:08Yeah, very similar but the Great Pyrenees are a more of a gold color and then they can also have brown in them. a Maremma.  So  the Great Pyrenees, I think they were bred in the French Alps and the Maremmas were bred in the Italian Alps to chase the bears and things off. So very, very similar dogs. All right, big dog, big boy. Yeah, big boy. He's a big boy.
08:36Yeah, my dog is a little girl. She's 36 pounds. Oh, wow. Yeah, she's not. She's maybe a fifth of your dog. Yes, yes, probably. We also have a New Zealand Hunaway. So she's officially a sheepdog in her breed, named Lola. But she was a rescue dog.
09:04and she's never been trained to the sheep. You can see the instincts there. She likes to chase the goats around and try and do something with them.  And the chickens, she's not very well trained from that perspective, but she's my precious. She's my inside dog. The kids tell me that she's the favorite child.  Yeah, Maggie's my favorite child too. I have four adult children and  they all think that Maggie is the special spoiled baby dog.
09:34I love that you call the chickens chooks. I'm going to start calling my chickens chooks.  You're welcome. I love it. It's better than chicken. Chicken, such a dumb word, chook is so much fancier, I think.  Oh, there you go. We always think it's more  redneck. We call it bogun. So, yeah.
09:56it would be wickedness to see this, right? I think actually in England, I think some of those people, some of the people in England call it chooks too, because I was chatting to an English lady a little while ago and I said something online and I said something about chooks. Oh, I'm sorry, chicken. And she said, oh no, no, no, we call them chooks too here. I was like, oh, great. I'm going to tell my husband and my son to start calling the chickens chooks because it's so much more fun to say than chicken.
10:23Chicken sounds so very in your nose and American and plain but chook sounds much better. Yeah. Okay.  So let me think. What else? Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you. What kind of predators do you deal with where you are? Any? Yeah, yeah. We have foxes.  That's the main one. So we are, I think I said that earlier, in the town limits of our town, village.
10:51So we don't have any major wild dogs or anything like that, but we do have foxes. Foxes will come straight into the middle of our cities. Here in Australia, they're quite a big predator. So they're our main predator. So Chief, we had some pretty devastating wildfires, we call them bushfires, here at the end of 2019, beginning of 2020.
11:20and we lost all of our bush in the mountains just nearby and the foxes moved down into the valleys which was we have a valley right next door to our property and all day and all night you could hear them calling and screaming and we would lose 10-15  in one day or one night or they'd be gone  and we just couldn't do anything to keep them. You'd be standing there and foxes would just come in and
11:51take stuff, take children's chickens. And it was so frustrating and we tried everything and over the year of 2020, amongst all the other things that were happening, I lost count and I stopped counting at 100 chickens that we'd And I gave up and I said, that's it, I'm not having any more chickens, no more, I can't do this anymore. And then, know, early 21, I was like,
12:19can't live without my chooks, I need more chooks. So we started researching it and we decided to get a meremma as a protector for the chickens. He's not great with the chickens in the sense of, know, I mean, him purely being here has reduced our losses significantly even before 2020. But he's...
12:49He is very beautiful, but he's a little bit dumb.  He's a little bit dopey. And he plays, he has no idea how big he is. And he wants to play with the chicks when they are, you know, that scrawny teenage age,  like around about 10 to 16 weeks.  He likes to play with them. And he's got this massive paw and he puts that,  he'll play with them and he'll put his paw on the mentions.
13:19We've lost very few to predators since we've had sheep, but we have lost a few to him. Whoops. Yeah, but that's pretty common. I have another friend that has a Marama and she was suddenly, her chooks were off the line and she couldn't work out why they seemed to be doing everything. And finally one day she went out to check for the chicken coop and there's her Marama puppy with his head in the nesting box eating all the eggs. And she went, ah, blocked.
13:48Oh those damn dogs, geez. They're so cute, right?  foxes are our main predators here,  certainly in this area.  Okay, well  we have something like that here in America with coyotes. Coyotes have been
14:15coming into the big cities because that's where the food source is.  Yeah. Yeah. the trash, all the garbage.  I live in the country. So we have coyotes that we hear howling at night, but they don't come on our property because of my dog.  She's outside all the time. They know there's another dog here. So they don't want to come anywhere near our property, which is really good. That's right. Yeah.
14:43That's good. you can hear them.  Yeah. In the springtime when they have their puppies, you can hear the puppies talking to the parents. Like they do these little yip barks. And it's the same as any puppy. They're just babies. And the first time I heard them yip, I was like, oh my God, there's puppies out there. And my husband looked at me like I was dumb and said,
15:08Those are coyote puppies. They are not friendly. I was like, no, but they sound cute. He's like, they sound adorable. We're not getting one. I said, yeah, no, I don't want them.  I don't need a baby coyote. have my own baby coyote. Her name is Maggie and she's an Australian shepherd and she doesn't, she's not going to hurt me. So.  Oh,  they're beautiful Australian shepherds.
15:31I'm in love with her. I've talked so much on the podcast about her. It's ridiculous. So I'm going to stop right now. But yes, I love her and she is very beautiful. Oh, that's so beautiful. Um, we foxes, I don't, you have any foxes or any foxes where you are? We do. We have the red foxes. Yep. don't know that was what you guys have. Yeah. Yep. There's a reason they say a sly as a fox or a cunning as a fox.
16:01We have friends, had friends years ago who had dogs chained up next to their chook sheds to keep the foxes away.  And this darn fox worked out. was one about a foot between where the chain ended and the fence line.  And this fox would actually walk like stroll, they got it on a video, stroll past this dog.
16:31because he knew, this fox knew that there was a foot that he couldn't get him in and he just walked through there and took chickens and went past him again.  Oh my gosh. When they said, and we're like, no way. And they said, yeah, look, watch this. They've got it on trail cam. And we're like, far out. Oh my goodness. Do you guys have coyotes in Australia or is that not a thing? No, no, we don't have.
17:00any large predators,  anything bigger than a fox really that's native. We have wild dogs that have, well we have dingoes  which are bigger than a fox. They're probably a small coyote kind of size on the smaller side  but they're almost extinct now. There's very few of them.
17:29and what they've ended up breeding because they are a dog. They've interbred with just dogs that have gotten out and  gone wild.  So we have very, very few pure dingoes in the wild anymore.  But they  are  much more wary of people so they wouldn't come into towns or cities or anything like that anyway. we do have some that one of the last
17:58who have bred dingo sections in Australia is not far from here. But yeah,  I don't know that.  I've never seen dingoes in the town  or even Canberra, our capital city is just on the edge of that national park. And we used to live there on that edge of town and we've never ever seen them in town. But yeah, I mean, they would come in and take chickens, but they're very, very shy of people.
18:27they don't tend  to. Do dingoes look like a small golden German Shepherd? I guess I could say that. Yeah. They're golden color normally. We also have the alpine which is white, almost a silver color.  But they're very, very rare.  But yeah, generally. Yeah, I guess that I'd never thought of them as I am.
18:57smaller German Shepherd. But yeah, they've got that sort of tail long hairy fluffy tail on the end like a German Shepherd.  And yeah, much smaller.  Well, here in Minnesota, I don't know if you even know where Minnesota is, but here in Minnesota, is  mid northern tier state of the United States.
19:23Um, we, have coyotes and foxes down where I am, cause I'm in the southern part of the state and there are actually gray wolves up north. and they were almost hunted to extinction and now they're bringing them back and they are so beautiful, Shell. They're a predator and they will take down moose and deer, but they are so gorgeous to look at. Yeah. Yeah. I've only ever seen them in.
19:52you know, videos and movies, but they are beautiful.  We also have timber wolves, which look like  they look like a cross between a coyote and a wolf. So, so like a medium haired coyote  or a medium haired wolf, if that makes any sense at all. And they're really pretty too. They're really gorgeous. So  we're really lucky. We have some very beautiful animals here in our state. We also  have,  um,
20:22Cougars.  Oh, wow. Yeah. And for the longest time, the Department of Natural Resources in Minnesota swore up and down that we did not have big cats in Minnesota.  And then people started catching them on trail cams. And I was like, huh, those prints I saw down by the river definitely looked like a cougar print 20 years ago. They were cougars. So we have  the golden, short-haired cougar cats.
20:52here. And there you don't see them very often. They do not like people at all.  They will not come near a person unless they have to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. have really interesting animals in Australia. I don't know that I call most of them beautiful, like kangaroos.  They're interesting looking, but I don't know that I call them beautiful. When they're joey, they're very cute. When they're small, they're very cute.
21:23You know, as large animals, they're not quite so cute.  I mean, they're beautiful in their own way, I guess, especially the wallaby. The wallaby is a smaller cousin of the kangaroo.  Yeah, wallabies are adorable. Kangaroos are impressive. Yeah, that's right. Yes, exactly. I mean, we have wombats and we have lots of very placid, I mean, kangaroos aren't placid, but lots of very placid, shy animals in Australia.
21:53as our natives. know, platypus is beautiful.  Unless you  live in Tasmania,  their platypus are not shy. They are different, like a cousin to the mainland platypus.  But a mainland platypus is  very shy and you are very lucky if you see one.  And yeah, so I don't know, we just have lots of small
22:20koala as well also very shy animals.  Yeah we have lots of  furry, fluffy, marsupial natives that are very shy but almost none of them like very few. Tasmania has a few actually Tasmania has some more predator animals we used to live in Tasmania years ago.  They have the Tasmanian devil
22:46which is a predator,  mostly a scavenger animal,  but they will hunt if they have to, but mostly they'll just pick up something they find that's already dead. But then they have the southern quoll, and the quoll is very predatory, especially to chickens. You have to be very careful with those when you've got chooks. Yeah, they will break into anything. They've got,  we're pretty sure they've got opposable thumbs and can pick locks.
23:15A bit like your, what is it, bandicoots, I think, is it? Or? Raccoon? Raccoons, thank you. Yes, they're a little bit like a raccoon that will get in pretty much anywhere if you're not careful.  What is it called again? It's called a quoll. Q-U-O-L-L. Okay.  It's a caution quoll, it's called.  But  there's a few of them.
23:42On western part of Australia, in Western Australia, we have Poles  and they are around here in the southern states, but there's not many of them and they're not anything that we would ever consider to be concerned about.  But in Tasmania, yeah, they're quite a predator. In Tasmania, it's interesting.
24:08Well, for my listeners, if anybody  wants to see a baby platypus, go on YouTube and type in baby platypus when you have time because they are the most adorable baby critter I've ever seen. They are indeed. They're amazing. They're very beautiful. And echidna is another really cute one as well. They're actually mostly related to a platypus. The most related animal to a platypus is our echidna.
24:36They look like a hedgehog, sort of, but they're nothing, they're not related to a hedgehog at all, they have,  yeah, but they're related to platypus. They're quite a beautiful little animal,  full of spikes, so you don't pick them up very easily.  My dad used to joke that the platypus was the animal that God put together with the leftovers of everybody else. We always say God's clearly got a sense of humor. Look at the platypus.
25:05Uh-huh, exactly. Yes.  So  I don't want to get too far  much further afield here, but do you have poisonous snakes and poisonous spiders?  Oh, yes. Yes, we have plenty of them. Yes. We have,  I think we have seven of the top 10 world's most dangerous spiders in the world.
25:32But  we don't have bears or hookahs  or... So yeah, and I think it's very similar for our spiders as well. Yeah. So we have some of the world's  most dangerous deadly spiders  as well.  So you have some of the world's most deadliest snakes and spiders.  Uh-huh.  Yeah. Wow.
25:59There's a reason I live where the air hurts my face six months out of the year because we don't have poisonous snakes or poisonous spiders where I live. No, that's true. They would not survive.  And winter's a lot nicer because even our winter is cold enough that they hibernate. So we don't see them generally speaking in the winter. Okay. So that leads me into my next thing.
26:24I said at the beginning of the episode that you are in the middle of autumn and we're in the middle of spring. So  when I talked to Kate, Kate is the one that suggested that you and I chat.  She was telling me about this because when I talked to her, she was rolling into summer and we were rolling into winter here. And she was saying that she tries growing things in the winter, but it doesn't always work. So do you try to grow anything in the winter time? Yeah.
26:54Our climate's a little bit different to Kate's. So she's down near Melbourne and we're nearer Sydney or actually halfway between Melbourne and Sydney almost, but a bit nearer to Sydney. And we are up in the mountains. So we've got altitude. So summer here gets quite hot. So it gets to a hundred here most, like not most days, but you know, if it hits a hundred, we're like,
27:23It's a hot one today. know, so it gets quite hot here. So there's lot, actually a lot of vegetables we can't grow here in the summer because it's too hot. So any of the lettuces and spinaches, any of that sort of category, we generally can't grow here in the winter, I mean in the summer.
27:48So we actually would, I would normally plant those. They would be out, well, I've got some in little baskets on my background on my back deck.  And we will eat those right through the winter.  Because while we do get frosts, we don't get hard frosts. And so  we're not high enough for the soil to freeze,  but we're high enough that we do get some frosts regularly. Like most mornings we'll get a light frost.
28:18Okay. In America, in the frost country, it's called a light frost. Here in Australia, we call it a good frost.  But it's not a hard frost, not a freeze. So it's only in the very, very highest parts of Australia that we actually get a frozen soil. And even then, it's only maybe at the most it would be like.
28:46Maybe in the very, highest country where we've got snow for most of the year, it would be maybe a quarter, maybe. Most of our, know, where we live and stuff, certainly a couple inches deep, if it freezes. So yeah, so we actually do grow in the winter. So I will grow all the, I will often grow all the little wet.
29:12winter things and stuff like that. And I might just put a cover over them to stop them getting frostbitten. But they certainly  keep growing and producing for us. Once they've got to be mature, so they need to be mature about now,  sort of by  certainly  late April. We'll be expecting a frost in the next couple of weeks.  And so they have to be at a mature stage by then. But then if
29:41If they're mature, then we can grow them through the winter if we just protect them from the overnight frost with a bit of plastic or whatever, a bit of sea that extends or something. That is so awesome, Shell, because we can grow cold weather crops in our hard-sided greenhouse, but we can't grow that stuff outside. Not in the wintertime. no, you wouldn't find them, would you? They're too much to go on the ground.
30:10Um the last couple of years there's been hardly any snow where we live we have not even gotten a foot of snow this winter Wow Yeah, the climate is a little is a little screwed up right now  It ebbs and flows doesn't it?  You know I remember even just in my lifetime I've seen it ebbing and flowing  But yeah, okay, well there you go. Not even a foot  Yeah this winter
30:40this winter and last winter. So two winters in a row now, we have had hardly any snow, but  we have definitely had very cold  stretches of weather in the winter. So it's still,  it's still cold and windy. It's just not snowing. And I guess, I guess that's good. don't know. Okay. So  it's really interesting to me when I talk to people in other countries that are so far away because
31:09You know how it is, you grow up in one area  and  you think that the whole world is like where you live. And  it's so hard for my brain to flip to the fact that it's morning where you are and it's also autumn and we're talking to each other right now. know technology, right? It's amazing. I love it. I think it's great. I have  a bittersweet relationship with technology. I love it and hate it all at once.
31:39I love it when it works. I hate it when it doesn't. Exactly. Yes.  But yeah, it's pretty amazing, isn't it? I know I'm  on an online Bible study once a week and there's some women in that, or most of the women in that are from right across the states. And so we have it again, we have it in the morning and they have it in the evening.  And it's just so funny because
32:07I mean here in Australia, most of us are aware that we're the opposite to everyone else in the world  because there's so few of us down this area, us in New Zealand and a few little islands and that's basically  it. But  it's really interesting when we talk to people from America, but also from Europe as well and they're just like, what? I can't believe it.
32:35That's the opposite. That's weird. can't. Yeah, like you. And my brain's not computing.  It's like time travel. It's like I'm talking to the future. It's amazing. Yes, because it's Thursday here.  it's still Wednesday for you. Yeah, I've still got five and a half hours before I get to Thursday.  Yeah.  And a good sleep between them.
33:02I hope so. That would be lovely. Yeah. was funny when I got up this morning and found your message from last night to say, you still good for the morning? And I was like, yeah, well, I've had a whole night's sleep since you messaged me.  Oh, I knew. I knew you were probably asleep when I sent it, but just wanted to make sure because I wanted to talk with you because this is actually really exciting for me when I get to talk to people in other countries.
33:32Yeah, no, well, it's exciting for me too. love it. It's really interesting.  Yeah, I talked to a lady in Canada  a  couple of weeks ago and she raises mini  horses.  And it was so fun talking to her because Canada is not a lot different than America. I mean, it is, but it isn't. And  she lives  like maybe, I don't know.
34:0124 hours away from me.  it was just like talking to my buddy across the street on the phone, you know? She was great.  So  anyway, I try to keep these to half an hour and I,  didn't really talk a whole lot about homesteading, but we talked about some of the stuff that might hurt homesteading. So I think we covered the  draft here. So.
34:29Thank  I mean, we could do this again another time if you wanted to. We could actually talk about homesteading more. Yeah, that would be great. But I also am always so curious about the differences between here and where the people I'm talking to are that this always happens. So yeah, you should come back and have a list of things that you're doing that are homesteading.  appreciate you taking the time to talk with Michelle. Thank you.  My pleasure. you for listening.
34:58inviting me on it's been lovely and when I my podcast I I will invite you back to mine.  I think that would be amazing I love that because I don't get interviewed I do the interviewing so that would be fun. Lovely yeah well it's  it's in progress at the moment but you know okay planning stage.  Awesome let me know when you have it ready to go I will come back and visit.
35:27Indeed we will. Thank you so much Mary, it's been a real blessing to talk to you today. It has been a pleasure, Michelle. Thank you so much.
 

Growin and Crowin

Today I'm talking with Megan at Growin and Crowin.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29Share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Megan at Growin' and Crowin'. Good afternoon, Megan. How are you? I am good.  I love that Growin' and Crowin'. I just talked to a lady this morning and Cluck is in her name. And had to be really careful that we pronounce the CL. Right? For sure. So Growin' and Crowin' is safe. That's a good one.  Yeah.
00:52So you're in Illinois. it gray? Because she was in Indiana and I'm in Minnesota. It's been gray and sprinkling to hear all day. It was sunny earlier, but now it's all overcast again. Yeah, it's it's spring like, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Never know what you're going to get from one day to the next. Oh, thank God. It's spring. I know how your winter was, but it seems like our winter was a blink of an eye and the longest winter at the same time, which is really weird.
01:20Right. Nothing compares to last year with all the snow we got. yeah, it always seems to take forever for spring to get here. Yeah. We, I was, I keep saying this. We have not had a lot of snow where I live for the last two winters. I don't think we've gotten a foot  either winter of snow. Yeah. We definitely got a big blizzard last year, but this year was not bad.  Well,  I  can't figure out if it's good or bad because my mom said that my grandpa
01:50who was a farmer and then worked for General Motors for a long time. He used to say that rain and snow were  God's fertilizer or something like that. Sure, because it gives the ground moisture for the whole year of planting season and gets them started.  Yeah, and so this not having snow  sometimes  is a blessing because the roads aren't dicey, but it can also wreak havoc when we're trying to get stuff in.
02:20It's a crap shoot. I keep saying that and I stand behind it. You just don't know how it's gonna go. Yeah. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do growing and crowing.  Okay. So  it's my husband and I live, like I said, in West Central Illinois and we have an 85 acre farm or homestead or you know, whatever you want to call it.  We have three kids  and  I do photography. I'm wedding and senior photographer mainly. So this is
02:49Hobby farm stuff at home is just a fun thing to do and keeps me busy. Okay. I always feel like I'm being nosy when I ask this question.  Do you try to have stuff from the homestead support the homestead financially?  So we don't do any sort of farmer's market or anything like that, really. It's just...
03:13like I raise catod and pear sheep. you know, my goal with them is if I can sell enough lambs for, to buy the next year's hay supply, then, you know, then we did good.  So,  so no, we don't, you know, my husband and I both work full time as well. So it's not,  it doesn't support itself. It's more just about, it makes me happy. It makes us happy and, you know, get to try new things and that sort of thing.
03:37Yeah, and happiness is a payoff all on its own. So I don't blame you. If we could have done 85 acres, we would have too, but we did 3.1 instead. Yep. Well, that's we bought it, you know, at 21 and initially we bought it because we want to hunt and ground. We all hunt. And so that's why we wanted the ground we got. And we do all hunt on it. So. Nice. What do you hunt for? Mainly deer, turkey. The boys do some coyote hunting, that sort of thing, squirrel hunting.
04:08Yeah, my youngest still lives with us. He's 23 and he's always plinking rabbits because the rabbits eat our garden.  if he sees a rabbit, he's like,  um, I see a bunny and I'm like, uh-huh. He's like, I'm going to take care of it. I'm like, you do that. That would be great. So I have a question about the deer. I  do not love venison as a meat. I grew up with parents who hunted and  they loved it, but  I did not.
04:37It's very, it's too close to the way that liver tastes to me and I just can't, I can't do it.  And I love liver but...  Yeah, I cannot.
04:49Cannot do it, just the smell of it makes my stomach flip. I'm like, no. That's probably 95 % of what we eat. So we'll raise cattle every now and again. When the prices aren't so dang high, then we can buy them just as feeder calves. But we put the venison in our freezer and sell the beef. So it's just kind of our kids are used to it. That's what they were brought up on. And that's what we use pretty much every day.
05:16Yeah, I was brought up on venison too. Every time my mom cooked, I was like, Oh no. I would, I would do my best to get it down, but man, I, I don't think I will ever eat venison again as an adult. just, cannot do it and all of power to people who love it. it. Please have my. No, no, I just don't like it, but that means more for everybody else. Right? There you go. Yeah.
05:46And turkey,  I hear that  wild turkey meat is very different than what you get at the store. Is that true? It is. mean, like with a wild turkey, it's tough. know,  there's not much other than kind of breasting them out and you can cook the leg meat, but it's so dang tough. But yeah, we'll usually, Erin will throw the turkey breast on the smoker and that's the meal out of that. Okay. Yep.  Alrighty. Cool.
06:16Um,  so I was looking at your Instagram page and  obviously you're a photographer. The photos on your Instagram page are beautiful. Thank you. Yeah. I, I didn't realize you were a photographer. And when I was looking at the pictures, I was like, Oh my God, who is doing her photos?  Now I know. Yeah. Well, and honestly,  pretty much all of them are just my iPhone because it's what we have in our pocket. And,  I can, you know, quick.
06:46pull it out for a photo in the yard or whatever I'm doing. I very rarely carry my work camera  around home.  Just because it's work.  Yeah, it's amazing how far photography, know, the tools for photography have come. Yes. That you can get photos that that good from your iPhone is just crazy.  Yeah, I've always been, you know, a storyteller and...
07:11I started out scrapbooking when our oldest son was  first born. so that kind of got me into, know, pushing me into the photography world. And then I went full time with it.  I'm just,  my kids are so used to getting their pictures taken anymore. And even their friends come over now and they just know  like  there's going to be photos taken and they're just all cool with it.  good. I'm glad because I'm not a person who wants to be photographed or videoed.
07:40And I know that it makes it hard for the photographers and I'm sorry.  My husband  is the one who really like screws around with taking photos on his phone. Yeah. And he took one the other  night or morning. think it might've been sunrise between where our pole barn is and where our wood burning boiler  is outside.  And the light is such that it looks like an oil painting.
08:07It  is the most beautiful photo he's ever taken that I've ever seen.  I posted on Facebook and I was like, this looks like a painting to me.  And like four or five of my friends commented and they were like, you need to print this out and get it framed. This is beautiful. Cool.  So yeah, I  love, love, love, love people who can take photos like that. And I don't think he even realized how gorgeous it was going to be. think he was just like, hmm, the light's interesting. Let me catch that.
08:37Neat. Yeah. That's part of it is just recognizing that light and  I will always be like, hurry up. got to go. The light's perfect right now. It's going to go away. huh. Yep. Yep. We're losing the light.  Uh huh.  Okay.  Um, let me see. I, there was a photo of,  um, soaps. Were those soaps that you made?  Yeah. So, um, I don't, it's not a business or anything. It's just something that I wanted to try. think, you know, part of being a creative person is you want to
09:06try a million things.  So I did it a couple years ago and actually my husband prefers it and he's like, we need to make some more soap. So  that was kind of my goal  over the winter and it kind of, you know, trailed into the spring. But when we  process, we have process all around me. And so when we processed hogs this last time, we rendered down all the lard. And so we had, you know, quite a bit of lard in the freezer. So  I use that up making, making soap. So it's, it's fun. It's time consuming.
09:36But it's fun. And that's the cold process, lye soap that you Yes. Yeah, that's, I've never tried the other, so just that one. Yeah. The soaps in the picture look like marble. Yeah, the trying the coloring and the swirling is fun. I'm not an expert by any means and I usually probably cut it too early because I'm excited to see what it looks like, but it's a lot of fun. As long as you cut it after 24 hours, you're safe.
10:05Oh good. I usually try to wait three to four days. So I'm doing okay. I'm doing all right.  Yeah. We always cut ours the next  like 24 hours from them from the time it's  Okay. Then it's then it's still kind of soft and the knife goes through it easier. Yes. Okay. And I always worry about like the trails that the knife makes, you know, cause I'm like, shoot, maybe I cut it too early, but then I'm like, oh, that's part of it. It's all right. Yeah. It makes everyone different.  Um, wow, that was a squeak. Sorry about that.  Um,
10:35Uh, we actually bought a soap cutter, you know, like a, I don't even know how to explain it. It's a machine for cutting soap and it's just,  it's got a wood base and it's got a wire that you drag through the soap to cut it. And that thing is worth its weight in gold. It's so  nice because you get such uniform sizes.  We love it. It's fantastic.
11:01And I was the same way. My husband tried making soap years ago, the same  cold process thing. And I loved it because store-bought soaps make my skin itch.  And the soap that we made, it's great.  It  moisturizes my skin. I'm not itchy. It doesn't leave that  tightness on your face if you use it on your face.  And he hadn't made soap for a while.  And I was like, I'm going to have to buy store-bought soap.
11:31Right. Yeah. Not the same.  Yeah.  And I did. And I used it for a week and my skin was itchy and I was getting like little red spots on my arms. And I showed him and I said, can you please make soap?  And can I please buy a bar of cold process soap from someone until ours is done? And he was like, yes. He said, I didn't realize that the store bought stuff really bothered you that much. He said, but my God, you have little red.
11:59raised patches on your skin. And I said, yes, I don't know what they put in store bought soap, but it's not good. Yeah. Yep. So I get it. And  I, I try to convince everybody to use the cold process soap that somebody makes. Cause number one,  you're supporting a maker and number two, it's actually better for your skin. Yeah. Yep. And, I'm going to be saying things like that on this podcast till I die because no one knows, no one knows that this stuff is good for you. Right.
12:30But either way, I love that your soap looks like marble  countertops. It's really pretty.  Thank you. Okay, so how did you,  you said that you guys bought an 85 acre farm, basically. How come? What brought you to this? Well,  yeah, it was 2001. So obviously prices, you know, we're nowhere near what they are today.  Yeah. So when I say we bought 85 acres at the age of 21, people are like, oh my gosh, well,
12:59It was a little bit different time then.  I sound old by saying that.  yeah, we were looking for something that we  could hunt. We wanted a place that we could walk out our back door and go hunting. so we happened to cross this. It was down a gravel road. That's what we wanted.  Nothing on the main road, something kind of off the beaten path. And we were lucky enough to get it. Yeah, but what  brought you to learning the homesteading skills?
13:26Well, so the funny thing is like the whole homesteading thing,  guess, like growing up where we're at, know, having the backyard garden and doing those kind of things, it was just normal.  It wasn't really called homesteading.  Right. Yeah. I grew up my parents always had a big garden and stuff and we didn't have livestock or chickens or anything. And I think that's kind of one of the reasons now I'm like, give me all the things  because.
13:52I wanted those animals. I wanted to show at the fair and  do those kinds of stuff, but  we just didn't have that. so it started with chickens, like a lot of people's stories and just kind of snowballed from that.  Okay. Yeah. And it's interesting because I ask people how they got here to wherever they are when they're talking to me.  And I usually get one of two answers. Either I was a city person  and I was sick of it and I wanted to try something else and this is where I ended up.
14:22Or my parents or my grandparents or both, D all the above, had gardens, had animals, had dogs, had cats, and I wanted that too.  So I always ask because it's always interesting to hear the origin story. Okay, what else can I ask you? I saw pool noodles.  What's the story there?
14:48That is so funny. And we were just laughing so much in the store that it was like, okay, we got to get a video of this. But so a couple of weeks ago, we had some storm damage  and we have a hoop shed for my, that's for my lambs.  It blew the each end off of the canvas. And so  Erin's going to have to  take some sort of like siding material or metal material  to rebuild those ends. And so in order to  keep that from like,
15:18uh, wherein holes are, you know, kind of ruining the canvas around it. We needed a way to kind of make a barrier. And so, um, he was looking at like the, I don't know, it's called piping, something for pipes or something, you know, where you cover like insulation or whatever for pipes, but it was expensive. Well, the pool noodles were half the cost. So here he comes walking through Menards with a full box of purple  pool noodles. I'm just laughing and  I like the amount of people that would just look at us and they were like,
15:47What are you doing? Or you're not supposed to buy a mall or all the comments we got just walking out of the store was hilarious. But  yeah, it's nothing crazy exciting. It's literally going to be to fix a barn that we lost in the storm.  And you say it's nothing crazy exciting,  but it is exciting because you're illustrating my thing  that I love to say about homesteaders being resourceful. Right.  That is true. And ingenious and thrifty.
16:16Yes, thrifty there. That's a good one.  Yeah. I mean, we try to not spend money on anything here if we don't have to, because why would we? Yeah. And there's a place like,  I don't know, maybe  seven miles away.  It's a  veterinarian  medical supply  company. they're always getting supplies  in.
16:42and they come in on pallets and they give the pallets away. They just leave them out by their dumpster and like, if you want them, take them.  And I'm not kidding.  I've been there when they've had 50 pallets stacked. And pallets are great for building things.  If you don't need it to be a super strong piece of  two by four, they're fantastic. And the thing that's great about this place is they have like two different styles of pallet and
17:10My husband has figured out that one style is good for one thing and the other one's good for another. So it's not uncommon for him to grab the pickup truck and the trailer and drive down there and come back with like 30 or 40 pallets and just stack them because he knows he'll need them and they're free. Yep.  Absolutely.  We've definitely done some stuff with pallets.  I think anybody who is on land has done something with pallets. Our woodshed thing.
17:38is the walls are made out of pallets and it's very funny. I remember watching my husband build it and I'm like, you know, we had the old one car garage that can't fit a car in these days out there. And he's, oh, that's full too. I'm like, oh, okay, good. Good to know. But you might need it someday. So, you know, you gotta keep it. exactly.
18:02So yeah, just, feel like people who are farming or homesteading or just own more than an acre tend to be people who are like, I could use that thing that's sitting there that nobody wants anymore. Yep. Collecting, hoarding, whatever you want to call it.  Let's use collecting hoarding. Hording sounds ugly.  It's organized hoarding. That's, you know, I'll call it that. exactly.  Did I see, did you say you have rabbits?
18:33I don't. So we have had rabbits in the past, so we have some cages and I keep teasing my husband that I'm gonna go get some rabbits so that we can use the fertilizers directly on the gardens and he thinks I'm nuts to  feed rabbits and pay for all the feed just  for fertilizer. But I'm like, we have the cages, why not? So we did when the kids were little, they each had a rabbit to take care of and stuff, but we haven't had them for a while, so we'll see.
19:00And you do know you can have meat rabbits, right? Right. that's what, yeah, that's what he said is only, you know, he's like, if you get like a Cali or something like that, but I'm like,  I put it, I want cute ones. So we'll see.  We had one, we had a California rabbit. Yeah. And she was the only one of the three rabbit, well, two females in the male.  She was the only female that gave us a litter in the course of a year.  Okay.  Our rabbits were so stupid.
19:28I talk about this a lot on the podcast because I want people to understand that just because you have big plans they don't always work out.  Right. Our bunnies were dumb. They did not get the memo that they were supposed to procreate easily. And we had  one litter of babies and  sweetest things ever. I I held a baby rabbit every day for months  because they are, if you hold them from the beginning, they're not afraid. They don't mind being held.
19:57And when we we dispatched them, I couldn't be around it. I told my husband, I said, when you're ready to put these guys down and bring their bodies in,  they must be footless, tailless and headless and skinless because I can't see them with anything that reminds me of what they were. Right. It makes you feel bad, but it's something that you've grown yourself. So yes. And I felt bad. I felt like a terrible homesteader because I didn't want to be part of all of it. But I was just like, I'm either going to throw up or cry or both. So you really don't want me out there.
20:26No, I just had that conversation with a friend the other day because she had, they raised Katahdin sheep as well and they were selling their lambs at the sale barn and she said she got in the vehicle and just started crying and I said, you know, I feel like if we didn't have that emotion or that tie to the livestock or the land, you know, I don't think it's right. You know, I think that's part of it and I think that shows that, you know, you're human. So.
20:50I am such a softie, you will laugh. We had barn kittens, the first litter of barn kittens. We had  three over a year or so.  And we were very excited to find homes for them. And the last two kittens found a home together, which was great. And I was all good with this. And the mom and dad got out of the car  and they had two little kids with them. I think they were like four years old and two years old.  And I'm standing in the door watching these kids just light the hell up about these baby cats.
21:20And I was so excited and so happy that these kittens were gonna go somewhere where they would be loved. And the minute they pulled out of the driveway, I just burst out in tears. My husband was like, what is wrong with you? I'm like, I'm a girl, number one. I'm over 50, number two. I said, I'm so happy and sad at the same time, I can't even function. He was like, why are you sad? I said, because those were our baby cats. I know there's somebody else's. And he's like, oh my God.
21:50I said, I said, just, just give me a minute. I'll be fine. And he's like, you're really crying. And I said, well, yeah, I said, I cried everything, you know me,  but it was so weird. Like my, had this big happiness bubble in my chest and I had this terrible pit of sad in my stomach at the same time.  It was ridiculous. I don't want to do it again.  So when the next two litters found Holmes, I was like, bye kitties. It was nice knowing you enjoy your new life. And then I was fine. Right.
22:22So there are things that will just catch you entirely off guard in  this lifestyle.  And honestly, when  the first garden that we put in here,  four summers ago now,  when it came time to put the garden to bed  for the fall,  I definitely had a tear in my eye because I was like, was our inaugural garden and we're done.  Right.
22:52It's just weird.  I feel like I get way too attached to stuff that I shouldn't get attached to. I think this might be the wrong lifestyle for me, but I really do enjoy most of it. So,  okay. So what you said, you said you had a bad storm and it messed up your,  your sheep shed, sheep, whatever. Yeah. So it was, it just knocked over our little, like, we have a little garden shed in our yard and it just came through and  just wiped it out and then.
23:20You know, did some damage to the end of our hoop shed. So it was the weirdest thing. Didn't damage the house. My greenhouse was sitting next to the shed that it took out. Didn't touch that. So we got lucky, but we got some stuff to clean up and I guess it's given us some stuff to do for the spring for sure. when, when was this? Um, just like three weeks ago. Oh, so it was a winter storm. Okay. Well,
23:44No, mean, it was well, yeah, when I guess early spring, but yeah, it was just like it wasn't a tornado, but I could see like, like, I called it a dust tornado that came across the field across the road from us. And it was just went so fast. So it was a baby tornado. Yeah, that's kind of what I referred to it as. Yeah. I'm telling you, this weather has been so crazy for the last two years.
24:11I really, really am keeping my fingers crossed that this particular year is better because it's been rough where we live for  growing anything.  I kind of would like to have a pretty garden again. Right. Yeah. And a productive garden again. That would be helpful.  If I can keep up with the weeds, that's the biggest thing.  Yes.  Yes. And we let our garden go last year. It was so hard to get anything in.
24:41because we had six weeks of rain.  We just grew some tomatoes. We grew some cucumbers. I think I got three decent cucumbers out of a out of two  20 foot rows of cucumbers. got three cucumbers. Yeah. Yeah, we used to do a huge in-ground garden. And actually next year we were able to salvage some old hog feeders from a farmer around us. And so we put our entire garden into raised beds.
25:11Um, and so last year was our first year with that. And I just thought, is so silly. We're taking away, you know, all this area that we had and could grow so much food, but then it's like, well, if it's just one of the waste or it's going to the weeds and it's no good either. So, so far those raised beds have been better just as far as me being able to go out and keep up with the weeds and stuff. So. I feel like it gives you more control over what is happening. Yes.
25:39Because when you just stick stuff in the ground, Mother Nature is in control and you can maybe curb it a little bit.  Yeah. Yeah.  Yeah. My husband is the gardener. I used to garden. I don't love it anymore, but he still does. And he was just so crushed at the end of June last year because he could not get anything in the garden. It was just soup.  And  I said, are you going to blow up at some point? And he's like, no. said next year is going to be better. I said, okay.
26:09Because you guys are Minnesota, right? Yes. Yes. Okay. I wasn't sure how far up you were from us, but Yeah, we are about an hour north. Well, maybe an hour and a half north of the Iowa border Okay, so not far Yeah, it just it rained for six weeks here from yeah rain basically the first of May through mid-june I think it might have been mid-april through the end of May, but I don't remember but it was six weeks of rain every day
26:38I thought  we were going to mold. It was so  awful. was terrible. I hated every second of it. My dog. My God, when that six weeks ended and the sun finally came out and dried up the grass,  we let her outside and she realized that the sun was actually shining and the grass was not wet and she rolled for 10 minutes.  She's looking at me like, Mom, look, it's not wet outside.  It was great.
27:06And then she didn't want to come in, which was not great because, you know, I don't want her outside for four hours. She'll be all gross and dirty and I don't want to have to deal with that. but anyway, so I feel like we haven't talked about anything, but we really have. What's the future look like for your 85 acres? Are you just going to just keep having it make you happy or do you have any plans for it?
27:33Um, I mean, yeah, as far as like our biggest thing right now is I would say the Katahdin sheep kind of getting that going. And it's something that, you know, we used to do goats and then moved on to the sheep. A little bit easier to keep in fencing and that sort of stuff. So we're building our flock. I think I had 31 last year. So we had 42 babies. Um, and I've only got 17 of those left. So, um, you know, it's
28:00do we build our flock and make it bigger or I don't know.  And we used to have, kind of reserved one pasture for  the cows that we would raise because like I said, we would buy them and feed them out and then we'd sell the beef.  But because of beef prices being so high, we just, the past couple of years, we can't justify buying them and then passing that cost on to, you know, our customers. So we were just like, well, let's run the sheep down there. And we did that last year and that was awesome. So
28:28So yeah, I think probably focusing on the sheep and mainly just  it's home. you know, the kids can come back and hunt here and they come back and we process the meat here.  so it just, you know, we're home bodies. I guess that's the biggest thing is like for me is if I'm gonna be home, I've got a lot of stuff to do and it keeps us really busy. So.  Yeah, I have two questions.  One is about the Katahdin baby sheep.
28:58or  baby sheep, lambs.  And the other one is about why  feeder calves are so expensive right now. So let's start with the calves. Why are feeder calves so expensive? Yeah, I don't know if it's a market thing  or I don't know. It's just cows are outrageous. You used to be able to pick up a bottle calf for like hundred bucks and I just seen one the other day on Facebook. It was 800 to a thousand dollars for a bottle calf.  I wonder.
29:25There's a lady that I talked to her Facebook page is Clear Creek Ranch Mom, she's in Nebraska.  And she was saying that a couple of years ago, a lot of cows have been put down because there was no market for them. So I wonder  if that's coming back to  bite people in the butt now because there aren't as many calves to buy. Yeah, I don't know.  Some people say it's a political thing. Who knows, but.
29:51You know, we're not big farmers, so we don't, I guess if you had a cattle farm right now, it's a good place to be.  But  yeah, we're not there. And like I said, we would have maybe eight cows at the most that we would  feed out every year. So just enough for our pasture to cover it. And  that was  kind of a good way to get started on a little bit of farm part of the life.
30:19Okay, so you've switched to the the hair shape basically.  Yes.  The question I have about the lambs from the hair shape  is do they look pretty much the same as a wool sheep will look when they're babies? No, so the cool thing with the Katahdins is  they're all different kind of colors. So it's almost like raising the goats where you're not really sure what they're going to look like. They can be white, brown.
30:42We have some that have a Dorper, which is another breed. And so there's black in those.  So that's the kind of the cool part with them too, is you don't know what they're gonna look like. Not every one of them is gonna look exactly the same out there in the field. And  I have numerous of my ewes that are named  because I know who's who. And  so for me, that's the fun part.  With the hair sheep, they shed out so you don't have to have them sheared. So that's a big thing that takes out a huge.
31:10You know, obviously you don't have the wool to sell, but  it  takes outlacking to do that. There's no market for wool right now anyway, from what I'm hearing. So, right. I don't think so.  Uh huh. So I guess  I phrased the question slightly wrong for the answer I was looking for.  Oh, sorry. The wool sheep when they're babies, they're not like really fluffy. They're soft, but they're not.
31:38Clearly they haven't grown out their wool yet.  So are the hair sheep lambs like short haired?  Yeah, I mean, it's not a long. Yeah, I would say yes. And then, you know, as they grow, they'll get it gets longer and then they shed it out every year. So, yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure that wherever you have them, it looks like a snow storm hit your field. Yes. When they shed out in the spring, we always laugh that we have the most bougie bird nests around because  they grab all the hair off the fence.
32:07anything they've  rubbed up against. Yeah, I was going to say, I bet they're great for the birds. The birds probably love having all that to put in their nests. Yep. Yep.  I didn't know about hair sheep until a few years ago.  there was a guy that was raising hair sheep. And we had wanted to go see them because we were thinking about buying one for meat.
32:33And he was like, come on to the farm, come down, see the sheep. It's really kind of cool. And he was not that  lighthearted about it. was  kind of a gruff farmer guy.  And when we got there, it was when they were shedding and his whole pasture looked like snow. he  walked up and introduced himself and he was a gruff older guy. And I said, it looks like it snowed. And I was not being a smart ass. I was just making a comment.
33:02And he said, yeah, they're shedding right now because they're not wool sheep, they're hair sheep. And my ears perked up and I said, um, I don't, I don't know anything about hair sheep.  What's,  what's that? And then he smiled and his shoulders came down and he was like,  let me tell you a story and was teaching me all about the hair sheep and the different breeds and da da da. And he said, so basically their hair is worthless except for the birds.
33:31Right.  Yep. I said, so you're raising hair sheep for the birds? And he laughed. Oh my God. He laughed so deep. was like, huh, I guess that was funnier than I thought.  And, and he says, he says, well, no, he says, I'm raising them for meat. said, but I might as well be raising them for the birds. He said, because every bird nest in the spring has some of their, their hair in it. Yep.  I was like, okay, cool.  And he said, so he said, what do think of the farm? And I said, I think that your, your sheep are a
34:01adorable  and He said yeah, they eat a lot and I said  good I said because we might want to buy some you know We might want to buy one from you that you send to the butcher and we put in our freezer  He was like  that would be fabulous He said let me know when you want to do that and he said  and thank you for visiting my farm He said I forget that people don't know about hair sheep. Mm-hmm
34:24And he was very genuine and I was like, went from standoffish gruff to really nice in like a half an hour. This is great. Yeah. He has sparked what he liked to talk about. exactly. So that's why I was asking about the hair sheep babies because I didn't see any lambs because it wasn't the right time of year. Oh, sure. Yep. Which was heartbreaking to me because I love baby animals. I would have been thrilled to be hanging out with baby sheep. That would have been great. Oh, yeah.
34:51So anyway, we're at 30, well, almost 35 minutes and I try to keep this to half an hour. So, Megan, thank you for your time and keep doing what makes you happy. It pays off in so many ways. Thank you. All right. Have a great day. You too. Thank you. Bye.
 

Misty Mountain Homestead - Catch Up

Today I'm talking with Kelsey at Misty Mountain Homestead. This a follow up chat about what Kelsey has been up to since November of 2023.
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00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.
00:29share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Kelsey at Misty Mountain Homestead. Good morning Kelsey. How are you? Good morning Mary. I'm doing great. Good. I almost called you Misty. I was, I almost said I'm talking with Misty at Misty Mountain Homestead.  That's where my brain's at  this morning. That happens to me  very, very often actually.  Yup. My brain not functioning, words not working. We'll get it together eventually.
00:57Where are you in Minnesota? told me before, but I forgot. We live in South Haven, Minnesota, but we're actually closer to Fairhaven, but Fairhaven doesn't have a post office, so it's a South Haven address. Okay, so what's the nearest big city to you? We're about 20 miles south of St. Cloud. Okay, yep, that helps. Thank you. Is it gray? Is it gray up there today?
01:26Oh, yes, very foggy, very gray. huh. Yeah, I was all excited because Wednesday was supposed to be the official real swinging into warm weather spring.  And the last couple of days have been kind of bleh. Yep, that's true.  I'm waiting for the pretty sunny days where the crocuses start to pop up and that hasn't happened yet.  Okay, so Kelsey came back to visit and do a catch up episode with me.
01:55And I looked and the first episode Kelsey and I did was back in November of 2023. And I started the podcast in August of 2023. So it's been a minute since we've chatted. tell me what's happening since then.
02:14Um, well, we've really added to our meat rabbit colony. Um, we have probably close to, um, 60 rabbits right now. Um, I would say 15 of them are our breeders. Okay. And, um, we have been selling and butchering those ourselves and that's been, um, a really good adventure. Um, lots of.
02:42teaching moments for us and the kids both.  And we're starting to learn how to tan their hides as well.  A long-term goal, I would love to learn how to like make hats.  Cause  their hides are just so beautiful and I really don't like seeing them to go to waste.  And we've also started using,  you know, every part of the animal, their ears, their legs,  feet  as dog treats.
03:12And you just dehydrate them and they turn into chips.  Okay. Um, yeah.  And,  um, that's been  really, really fun. And of course the dogs enjoy it as well.  So,  and we also have cooney cooney pigs now. Okay.  Um, we're going to start breeding those,  um, and the selling the piglets and then of course,  um, having some meat for ourselves.
03:40CUNY CUNY pigs are extremely high quality pork. Their meat looks more like beef and it actually has marbling in it. And then once you eat like CUNY CUNY or Mangleesa is also another high quality pork, it's really hard to go back to like more of a normal pig like a Yorkshire. But yeah.
04:09So I have a question. have a question about that real quick.  so if it looks more like beef, does it have the same kind of texture and flavor or does it still taste like pork? Well, I think it has the same texture as pork, but it definitely has a very  rich flavor.  Um, I would say more even so than beef does.  but yeah.  Okay, cool. I just, I've never had either.
04:38kind so I thought I should ask. Okay and I told you before I hit record I've been looking at your Facebook pages because I wanted to see what you've been up to and you make some of the most beautiful breads ma'am. Oh thank you very much. And other things. It's been quite the process. So you've really gotten into baking since we talked last I think so tell me about that too.
05:05You know, it's been  a little bit surprising. Um, and I'm kind of just along for the ride  and,  I have had wonderful customers  and farmers and,  Just people show up out of the woodwork.  Uh, and I'm kind of just doing things that I would do for my family. And then I, you know, increased it by scale.  Um, which
05:34was really easy for me actually.  And, um, I started with a little KitchenAid mixer and I burnt through a couple of those motors. Uh, and I have a, now I have a 15 quart like professional mixer. And I remember being really nervous about buying that.  And my husband's like,  Oh, it's only, you know, 50 loaves of bread. He, he likes to encourage me.
06:02how many loaves I'd have to sell for something I need to buy.  But anyway, so I've had that for a couple years now and now it's too small.  Wow. Okay. So I'm probably going to have to look at getting a 30 quart mixer, which could make 20 loaves at one time.  So it's been nuts.
06:28I probably make a hundred to 120 loaves of sourdough a week. Um, I also do pizza dough and sourdough buns and pies. So many pies. think for Thanksgiving and Christmas this last year, I made like 90 pies. you do cookies too, Cookies, scones.
06:58Yeah, dipping oil.  Yeah, I do quite a bit,  I guess. Okay, I have two questions. I have a KitchenAid mixer and I think it's a six quart one. It's a bigger one.  And we haven't burned through it yet. We just bought it like a year and a half ago and we have not used it much really. I I thought when I bought this big one, we'd use it a lot and  been busy with other stuff like a podcast that I didn't know I was going to be doing when I bought the mixer.
07:28But we have burned through two KitchenAid mixers in the 20 something years that we've owned KitchenAid mixers. And it's so sad when they die. You're like, no, you're supposed to live forever. No. And so they're a great, they're a great brand. I love them, but I am so envious of the fact that you have that huge mixer because I really want one. I just have no room for it in my kitchen. I have very little counter space. So.
07:58So the question I have is how much bigger than a five and a half quart KitchenAid mixer is the one you have now that's a 15 quart? Well, I think a normal size KitchenAid mixer is like 15 pounds maybe. The one that I have that's a 15 quart, this thing weighs 200 pounds. Wow. It sits on the ground.
08:29So,  um, it doesn't need any special outlet, which is really nice.  Um, it's got  tons of safety features, but,  uh, it's, it's a workhorse. It's, um, I've been really pleased with it.  Is it, is it loud?  Uh, I mean, it's  my kids will be sleeping at 4am and they,  a couple of them sleep downstairs  and I can obviously hear the mixer going, but they don't ever wake up.  Okay.
08:59So I don't think it's terribly loud.  I asked because our dog hates the vacuum cleaner. Like goes to the door and sits there and whines because she hates the vacuum cleaner so much she wants to go outside.  And she hasn't reacted to the KitchenAid mixer, but I suspect that if the motor was louder, she probably would want to go outside then too. Okay. Yeah.  Yep. So I don't know. She's a big afraidy cat with the vacuum and I
09:28I cannot figure out why no one has ever  bothered her with it. She hates it. does she, um, is she afraid of storms too?  No, no.  it last summer we got a really close lightning strike. So, you know, you, you could hear the thump when it hit the ground  or the tree  and she just was like, woof. And she was fine.
09:53Oh my goodness. Yeah, she's not. She's not afraid of storms, but that vacuum cleaner is the devil itself, she thinks. That's me. I don't know. She's crazy. Um, okay. I had another question on the other stuff you told me and then I got focused on the mixer and I forgot what I was going to ask you because my brain is not great this morning. Um, so how much time are you putting into baking? Cause I know that making a dozen cookies,
10:22to put it together, to put the ingredients together and have it ready to go in the oven is no different than making the recipe for 12 dozen. But once you get into the big, big numbers,  is it a lot more time and effort?
10:41Uh, well, partially with the, with the big mixer, like, uh, two days ago, I made like 25 pounds  of chocolate chip cookies in that mixer.  And  the, part that takes the longest obviously  is baking it all.  Um, I, I do, I have one standard, you know, wall oven that I bake my bread in, but then now I have a convection oven, um, that I do,  you know, the pies and the cookies in that. Um, so that's.
11:10been pretty nice.  I am kind of at the point where  we are debating about putting in a second oven.  Because that's my biggest hookup is  how long it takes me to bake stuff.  But I guess daily. I'm at the point where it's probably I'm probably working on the farm business for maybe four to six hours a day.
11:40Um, while being home with the kids and we're homeschooling and you know, we're pretty involved in church and of course there's animals that need to be fed and,  um, cleaning,  you know, so I,  it feels like a full-time job to me. I've been a stay at home mom is, um, it's a, it's a good, very good responsibility. feel. Yeah. And I, I, I've said it before and say it again, I love that you are able to do your, your business.
12:10and be there with your kids because you are giving them such a gift in being there with them. Yeah, and it's a gift for me too. You know, and  when we first thought about  homeschooling, I remember us being nervous about it. You know,  we would always be together. There's never any break. And I wasn't sure, you know, as someone that, you know, did the normal, you know, public school stuff that was
12:37That was so like unnerving to me, but now that we've been doing it for five years,  we would never go back.  You know, they, the kids are amazing. They're mature and their faith is strong. And, um, they're just, they each have farm chores every day and,  you get to really spend time with your kids that way and you know what they're learning.  Um, so it's been a, huge blessing. so, you know, I, they also like, they see me working.
13:07but they also see me playing,  you know, I, I think there's a good, it needs to be a good balance of both, you know? And if it becomes too overwhelming, I just back off a little bit. And then usually within, uh, you know, uh, a couple of weeks I'm ready to go at it again, you know? So you kind of just take it in seasons. Yeah.  Yep. Absolutely.  Um,
13:31One of the tricks that I used with my kids from the time they were little until well now they're adults and I still use it when they're stressed or whatever  is humor. I'm always the first one to crack the joke so that they can laugh and take a big deep breath  because laughing forces you to take a big deep breath  and that's how you kind of bring stress down is that big inhale and exhale. So for anybody out there who's got kids that are stressing, just crack something.
14:01crack a joke that will make them take a big deep breath in a big deep breath out and get that bubble in their belly of happy. it'll, it'll, it'll break the tension a little bit. Yeah. I, I'm going to be real honest. I, I am a very serious person. I, I don't, uh, jokes are not something that come naturally to me. If somebody tells me a joke, um, it's usually I don't get it. Uh, and I'm very much more, uh, you know,
14:32just get stuff done, I'm doing this right now, but my husband is the exact opposite.  He is constantly cracking jokes  and he'll just be like, he'll make funny noises or  poke jokes at me.  it's really good that he's like that because, or else we would just all be serious all the time. Yeah. yeah, it's my husband's like that too. He is the king of dad jokes. I just talked about this with somebody else yesterday.
15:01And I am, I'm not a fan. I like really,  I like really clever humor. Like, like the stuff where you, you,  there's a split second of what and then you get it  because it's smart. It's a smart joke. And dad jokes are not like that. And my son that still lives with us, he really does appreciate a dad joke. So my husband does them to me and I'm like, it's not funny.
15:27He's like, well, Karen thinks it's funny. And I'm like, yes, because he's 23 years old and male. Of course he thinks it's funny. yeah, I'm more like you than I am like my husband in what I do. But I also learned really early on that if I could just get the kids to giggle, it made things easier. So I would find something I knew would make them giggle and then we'd be okay.
15:56I used it as a tool at work.  still use it.  My daughter called me months ago and  she was all bent out of shape about something. She's 35 years old. And  I said, okay, do you need a giggle? And she's like, kind of need a giggle. And I found something, I don't know what it was.  And she did. She giggled like she was five. And she's like, thank you. Now I can tell you what I need to tell you because this thing is driving me insane. And it just gave her that room to not be sobbing.
16:25not be crying in her frustration with the thing that was driving her crazy.  Anyway,  when we talked last, there was some  conversation going on about you having a farm store. Did that ever happen?
16:44Well, we are definitely getting closer.  We don't have the story yet, but we're actually, you know, in the active thought process of paying for the shed.  Um,  so that's been pretty exciting.  Um, I actually designed the shed online a few weeks ago.  Uh, so it's, it's, it's in the works.  Um, and we're planning, you know, how we're going to run electricity out there. So I.
17:12I'm pretty excited about that. That didn't really feel like it was attainable,  but now it obviously is. Cool. Good. And are you going to have  produce and eggs and baked goods in it or  what's the plan? What are you going to be selling out of it? Produce,  eggs.  We're also going to be, there will be a freezer in there.  We'll have  no corn, no soy chicken and no corn, no soy rabbit.
17:39There will be pizza dough and sourdough and candles. And I'm also wanting to do other people's products as well. Like if somebody has honey or somebody has maple syrup, just kind of supporting the community as a whole,  if I can in that way.  Fantastic.  Since we last talked, we have put in a farm stand. been up for two summers now, I think.
18:08And it looks like a little red barn. It's red with white trim. love this little building. And we put an old, um, a small refrigerator from a camper trailer in there and we run a, extension cord to it from the pole barn. And, uh, okay. And we have tables like folding tables that we put our stuff on to sell. And my husband says to me three weeks ago, he said, um, a couple of weekends in April, we're going to
18:37Cameron and I are going to be busy out there. And I was like, um, why? said, we're going to tape and mud the drywall and we're going to paint and we're going to put in some shelves on the walls and make it look nice. I was like, Oh, okay. I said, do you want any thing from me on that? And he was like, no. He said, I think we're just going to paint it off white because then it'll reflect the sun that comes in. And I was like, okay, that's fine.
19:04He makes beautiful shelves. Like I have a couple shelves from the old house that we brought to the new house that we've put up and  I end up finishing them. I'm the one that polyurethanes them, but he just does really beautiful, simple carpentry.  So I'm very excited to see what the inside of our farm stand is going to look like in June when we're ready to put produce and baked goods and stuff in it.
19:29Yeah, you'll have to share that on Facebook.  I will, cause that's, that's what I do.  I don't know if you've looked at my page lately, but I took,  he sent me photos of  the steps when he was done with each step when he built the greenhouse last year.  And  I would just throw pictures up every time he sent them to me because I'm like, this is so exciting. It's almost done. Yay.  So, so yeah, so we've put up a hard side of greenhouse since I talked to you last and that has been  a godsend.
19:59Because we extended our growing season by two months in the fall and two months in the spring.  I love it. I love it. It's packed full of seedlings right now.  Yup. mean, it's funny because you had all kinds of things that you were talking about and planning for and  we had all kinds of things we were talking about and planning for with the first episode with you.
20:28I think you were like the  11th or 12th episode I released to the podcast. And my husband was kind of listening to it a little bit when I was playing it back to get it ready  to go out. He said, I think they're kind of where we are in their journey with this. I said, I think so too. He said, you have got to talk to her again, like a year or two from now and see where they're at.  So he brought that up the other day. said, have you talked to anybody you talked to at the beginning? I said, a couple. said,
20:56What about that lady said, I can't think of her name, da da. And I went back through the episodes and I ran off the list and he said,  the Misty Mountain one. said, I remember because she was a Lord of the Rings fan or something. And I said, yeah. He said, you should, you should ask her. I was like, thank you for your input. will get hold of it right away.  So you made an impression on my husband anyway. Well, that's sweet.  But the reason I say all that is this is a journey.
21:25you know, what you're doing, what we're doing, what most homesteaders are doing  is a journey. It's not a destination, you know? Right. And it's so fun and it's so  frustrating some days because you're like, I want to do this thing. And then you get into it you're like, it's not working. How do I get this to work? And  big, big deep breath and sigh and figure it out.
21:52Yep. They're usually, the lessons are usually  very, very hard.  They're either really, really good or really, really bad.  yep. And we've had our share of both.  Oh yeah. Us too. And I don't want to say really, really bad. mean, nobody's been maimed or killed that's human here. So that's, that's good news. That does happen, but it doesn't happen here.  But we've lost barn cats and that was sad. We've lost.
22:20baby bunnies, that was sad.  We had  the motor go out on our furnace. That was bad.  was financially bad. And that was when it was so hot last summer.  And the furnace is actually the blower for the AC. So that was a few days of really miserable heat in my house.  But the good things that have happened is we had
22:48We've grown enough food to donate to our food shelf and that's been  wonderful. And we've  grown enough food to sell at the local farmers market and that just makes my husband thrilled. He's very, I don't have enough berries. He's very times a hundred social and I am not. the  farmers market is really good for him. He really loves going on Saturday morning and getting caught up with all the people he knows.
23:18So it's all kinds of really fun things that have happened since we moved here. And I love all of it. And even the hard things  are lessons I needed to learn.  what are the hard things that have happened for you? Well, I'm going to be real honest. guess one of the hardest things we had to go through was we  lost almost our entire rabbit colony last summer.
23:48Um, and we couldn't figure out why they were dying.  Um,  and my husband actually had a job change, but he was working road construction. So I was home most of the time by myself trying to, you know, deal with everything. Yeah.  And I would walk outside and they were just be bodies.  Oh no. You know,  and I, no matter what we thought it was, no matter what we gave them, it wasn't.
24:17stopping like them dying. But long story short, we ended up finding out that,  uh, they had bad hay.  Oh yeah. Uh, the hay was contaminated  and as soon as we figured that out and we removed all the, know, we moved, we didn't give them the hay. We burned that hay and then we like  really cleaned out,  um, their enclosures.
24:46And then they stopped dying,  but we, we lost probably like 55 rabbits for that.  Um, and I remember just crying about it because it just felt like, why are we even doing this? You know, I was,  um, felt,  obviously I felt terrible too,  you know, because we, do care about the animals and we try our best to take care of them, you know, for as long as we have them. And that was.
25:16That was pretty intense.  uh,  yeah.  Yup. But now, now, you know, now, you know that if something's wrong, check the food source too. Right.  And we've also realized that a rabbit is very similar to a horse,  uh, in regards to the quality of hay that they require. Um, it either needs to be like fresh picked  greens.
25:44or it needs to be like  straight alfalfa. So we started feeding them, uh, Timothy and alfalfa cubes.  Uh, and they're, that's actually really good for their teeth too. And then this way we know that the hay is clean.  yep. Alfalfa is,  Alfalfa is wonderful.  Um, I'm sad because we used to be surrounded by alfalfa fields and then the guys decided they were going to grow corn.
26:12So it's been corn the last two summers. And I don't know if you know this, but fresh alfalfa, like when it's growing in the field, blooms.  It has like little lavender and white flowers on it. And when we had our rabbits, we would go and kife a couple pieces of alfalfa off the corner of our lot, because the  farmer actually rounds the corner. So it's on our property.  And we would bring them sprigs of alfalfa and they loved it. Yes.
26:41So yeah, it's really good for them.  And our bunnies were fed Timothy Hay. We only had rabbits for a little over a year because they were not making babies.  Oh, yeah.  Yeah. Not impressed with that. They weren't earning their keep.  And six months after we culled our rabbits and put them in the freezer for food,  I was reading up on rabbits again.  And Timothy Hay can actually make them too fat.
27:11And if the female rabbits are fat, they don't conceive as easily. And I was like, well, there's my answer.  Now I know.  So we're not doing rabbits anymore. decided that  we were bad at it. So we're not doing rabbits anymore. And that's okay.  Yeah. But we have chickens because chickens are easier than rabbits. Yes. Yep.  So.
27:39But I'm sorry that you had to lose all those bunnies to find out it was their food, but I'm glad you found out it was their food, because then you could fix it. At first we thought it was some kind of weird parasite. And that was overwhelming, because it's really hard to know what it is. But so when we did realize that it was the hay, it was almost a relief in some way.
28:07because you can deal with the problem a lot easier as well.  Certainly. Yes,  absolutely. Okay, so I want to switch back to your baking really quick because we're almost a half an hour, but I have a couple of questions.  Are you still doing the baking as a cottage food producer or did you switch to commercial?  I am still a cottage food producer  and I did have to bump up.
28:33um, to a second tier license. And I did take the, the, the college classes  that I needed,  um, also, and I passed all that.  Um, but yep, I'm still underneath the cottage license. Okay.  And you're selling your goods at a local store. Is that right?  Um,  I do  a lot of farmers markets.  Um, also like the community has really picked up, you know,
29:03having lots of events.  Like different stores will have pop-ups and  I really think that's a really neat thing.  And people learn more about  different options for  food that farmers around the community have.  I do a lot of that, a lot of those.  Okay.  And do you,  I'm trying to get to this in a way that isn't rude.
29:31I always feel like I'm asking really noisy questions.  You're fine. With  the pop-ups, with the cottage food producer thing, the person that makes the food has to be at the point of sale to the customer. So does that mean that you have to be at the  pop-up sale? Yep. I have to be there.  the commercial license, you don't have to be there.
29:59And it means that you can ship and it means that you can sell in grocery stores if they wanted to carry your product. Is that right? That is right.  Um, actually I've been watching very closely, um, in the Minnesota legislature right now, uh, they are thinking about allowing cottage food bakers to  ship  their product.  And I was like, no way, you know, cause that would, that would open up a huge door.
30:28for everybody that has a cottage license.  So  it certainly would. And I have my registration and there was a lady that emailed me or messaged me and said, can you ship your granola? And I said,  no, how far away are you? And she said like four hours north of Lasur. And I said, you don't want to drive four hours from my granola.  And she said, no. And I said, I can't afford to drive four hours to bring it to you. And she said, I would never expect you to.
30:58She said, how come you can't ship? Because she didn't know about  the rules.  And I explained it to her. And she said, please keep me in your contacts.  if and when they finally allow you guys to ship,  I still want to buy it. And I thought that was so sweet that she didn't put a time limit on it. Now, the other thing that  I got the email that mentioned this thing that you're talking about, I got the email that  had it in it the other day.
31:26And I went out to the Facebook page for the Minnesota Cottage Food Producers Association thing. And there was a comment about if it goes through, we'll only be allowed to ship in Minnesota.  Oh, interesting. And I don't know if that's correct. So I'm hoping that  maybe it is incorrect and maybe we actually will be able to ship nationwide or worldwide or whatever. don't know. So I'm very excited to watch how this turns out because
31:55It's been floated a few times over the last couple of years about allowing cottage food producers to ship and it just hasn't gotten passed. So  I'm hoping this is the year Kelsey really am.  Yeah, that would be pretty awesome. Yep. And what makes me so frustrated with it all is my daughter made cookies last Christmas for me specifically and shipped them to me. But
32:23It's not a big deal if it's like family who's just shipping you a treat. Right. That's fine. there's no rules.  And my mom asked me if I could ship her something.
32:36And I said, of course I can make those and ship them to you. That's fine. I'll throw them in the overnight mail. No big deal. And then she called me just before I was getting ready to make whatever it was. I don't remember what it was now.  And she said, by the way, she said, don't make those. And I said, why? And she said, because someone just brought us  a tray of cookies. It's my dad and my mom.  She said, and there's lots. we don't have, we don't need anything else right now. And I was like, oh, okay, well, just let me know.
33:04But I could have shipped her the thing I was making. No problem. it's very frustrating. And I always get real tight in my voice when I talk about it, because it's,  it's so frustrating to me that we can't do this yet. Right.  Right. So fingers crossed that this is the year that cottage food producers in Minnesota get to ship their stuff, at least in Minnesota. We're going to hope for that. Yeah. That would be a step. Wouldn't that be helpful? Wouldn't that be great?
33:35And there's the tightness and the sarcasm bleeding through, I'm sorry.  So anyway, we're at 33 minutes and 15 seconds. Kelsey, thank you for coming back to visit with me and I'm so excited for all the new things you're doing. Well, thank you very much for having me.  Yeah, this was really fun.  Keep  doing the good things for your community because you're really important to the world, Kelsey.  Oh,  thanks.
34:04All right. Have a great day. Yep. You too. Bye. Bye.