A Tiny Homestead

Hedgerow Collective

Today I'm talking with Anya at the Hedgerow Collective. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Anya at the Hedgerow Collective. Good afternoon. Well, I guess it's afternoon for you, but it's still morning for me. So good morning, afternoon, Anya. How are you? Good morning and afternoon to you as well. I am well today.
00:27Pennsylvania, Southeast Pennsylvania where I live. It is a overcast day and it smells and feels like snow. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's not an overcast day here in Minnesota. It is just as bright as it could possibly be and it's very cold. I don't think we've come up zero yet today. Oof. Yeah. So that's exciting.
00:53And I'm glad you opened with the weather because I usually do because like I've said, it's how I express my esteem for the people that I'm talking to. I always try to find out the weather where you guys are. So, all right. So I'm going to open this up with the fact that you're not really a homesteader, but reading your bio on your website, you are definitely a nature girl. So I figured they tie in pretty well. So tell me about yourself and what you do.
01:18I agree, they tie in so well and I actually do a little bit of homesteading but I'm very, very new at it. But I am a nature girl, I am a gardener, I am a photographer and I also do horse massage which is really delightful. And I live on a little...
01:45property in a town called Marietta, Pennsylvania. It is ancient Susquehannaq land. And we moved here about three years ago. And at the time, my husband said, we're not gonna have any big trees. We're not going to do anything wild like that. We don't want the maintenance of trees falling on the house or the leaves or anything.
02:15And over, you know, these past three years, we've compromised and we now have 11 trees on the property. Yay. Yes, and more to come. There's apple trees that are sitting in my sunroom. I have serviceberry trees that are being shipped to me. So we've created a really wonderful little habitat here that I
02:45Um, really, it feels really magical here, even though we're in, you know, we have neighbors on all sides and a road in front of our house. And, you know, I think, I think part of my goal is that you don't need to have, you know, 10 acres, 50 acres to be able to do this type of, of work and grow your own food or grow, create habitats or anything like that. You know, you can work with what you have and it's...
03:13absolutely possible. I mean, it's great if you do have 10 acres or 60 acres or 500 acres, but you don't have to have those things in order to grow some really amazing flowers or food or both. Yeah. Yep. That's one of the things that I'm trying to promote on this podcast is that you can do this stuff in a little tiny house on a tenth of an acre, or you can do it on lots of acres. But the point is you can do it.
03:43Absolutely. I mean, you can find cheap things like baby pools or old, like food grade buckets on Facebook Marketplace for super cheap and you can grow things. Yeah. You mentioned apple trees. My husband actually went out and pruned our peach trees and our apple trees this past weekend and brought in the stems and he's rooting them.
04:09so that we can have saplings because if it works, they'll turn into more trees. Absolutely. Yeah. That's great. Really excited. I have a sapling. Well, I'm trying, not quite a sapling yet. I'm manifesting that it will become a sapling of a witch hazel cutting. So that's my little project. I have it sitting next to me here and I just, I talk to her every day. I'm like, come on, you can do it.
04:38Spread those roots. Do your thing. Yeah, I was going to say talk to it and sing to it. It'll come up every day. Yeah. OK. You mentioned Susquehanna land. Is that Native American land? That is Native American land. They were. Marietta is situated along the Susquehanna River, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay, and it's one of the largest watersheds in Pennsylvania. The Susquehanna River.
05:07is this is some fun facts here. It's 444 miles long and it is the longest unnavigable river in the United States. Because the Susquehanna goes from 200 feet deep to two inches deep so quickly, it's impossible to navigate it.
05:36with any type of boat. And historically, they fixed, fixed, quote unquote, that by using canals, the remnants of which are still litter the sides of the river. But yes, the Sesquihana people were on these shores. They were part of the Lena Lenape tribes of the Northeast.
06:04I try to acknowledge that they were here far, far longer and well before any of us were here. And it feels like it's always the right thing to do to acknowledge how they tended and stewarded this land for centuries before white folks came in. It is the right thing to do. And I'm glad that you said that. There is a rumor and I've tried to...
06:33confirm it, but I can't get any hard facts because ancestry is weird. I am supposedly descended from the Abenaki tribe in Maine, New England. I am very, very white, very pale. I used to have really bright blue eyes, now they're green. I had really dark brown hair, almost black and extremely high cheekbones.
07:02and very long fingers and very long feet and I'm tall. And the Abenaki's are very, very pale. You know, they're not dark skinned native Americans. And they were very long and lean too. So the rumor is, and I say rumor because I can't make it, I can't find out for sure. But supposedly I am descended from an Abenaki woman
07:31generations back. And it's really funny because I've been told that I would look just like a Dublin girl if I got off the plane in Ireland. And I have been told by people who are Native American who were really good friends that, yeah, I definitely could be Abenaki Indian. And I'm just like, okay, well, I'm me. But in the meantime, I try to honor all cultures I know about and then learn about the other ones. And that way, I feel like I'm doing something.
08:00productive instead of tearing things down. I totally understand that. And I wish you so much luck on that journey of finding that ancestry because I think ancestry.com is particularly good at if you're European descendant, but I think it does get a little squirrely with anything else. Well, the problem I'm having is that my dad's mom
08:30died when he was two years old. And we have basically no family history on her side of the family. And I know her dad's surname and I have traced that name back all the way to William the Conqueror in England. That's so cool. Before England was England. Correct. That's right. But in that lineage that have moved over from England across the hundreds and hundreds of years.
08:59multiple hundreds of years, someone married a Native American woman and I'm descended from that clan. Interesting. So, so I can't, the problem we have is that back in the old days, you couldn't know who fathered children. You knew who gave birth to children, but you can't know for sure who actually fathered that child. Yeah.
09:25There's missing data. Yeah, so I'm a little leery to claim anything about my ancestry, but I really kind of hope it's true. I hope so as well. So anyway, I didn't mean to go down that rabbit hole quite that far, but it's always a neat story to tell. So you're a very nature-based girly and I love that because so am I. And I always say in the springtime that my fairy, my inner fairy, you know, the little
09:54a little woodland nymph kind of fairies. It's just dancing because the light gets brighter and changes and then the green leaves come out and I know spring is coming. And I feel like you probably have an inner fairy as well. Absolutely, and February is when she starts stretching and yawning and waking up and she's like, it's almost time. Yeah. And I start some seeds. And I feel like February is this really liminal month where we're in between
10:24the deep dark of winter and the bright freshness of spring. Yes. And I can get overly eager for that springtime, but then, you know, I'm sure this happens in Minnesota too, but where I live here, you know, February is like, not so quickly, and then we get a snowstorm. Yes. So I'm like, okay, all right, calm down, be patient, but it's hard.
10:53Yeah, that's why my husband went out and pruned the trees and got the stems started rooting because he was like, I can't take it anymore. We need to be growing something. Right. Exactly. So I have the most beautiful peach branches downstairs on my, what I call my desk, but it's actually just a little console table under the window, right underneath the window frame in our living room. And the peach branches are actually starting to green up. And I'm like, oh my God, there's green, the big things in my house already. Yay.
11:24how that feeds that inner fairy. Oh, she's very happy right now. Yes. She wasn't very happy when I had to go out and drag the dog in this morning, not even zero degrees, but she's definitely starting to bop and whistle and sing in the head. Yes. Definitely waking up, huh? Yeah, absolutely. I love spring. Me too. I love spring.
11:48But I love fall more because fall is really pretty in Minnesota and it's when we're harvesting our squashes and I love winter squash. So I those that's my order of favorites as well. Fall and then spring and then winter and then summer. I am of Scots, Irish and Lithuanian descent. So my skin is basically translucent and I burn on the drop of a dime.
12:17So the summer is not my favorite time, but I get through it, seeing the beauty and the growth and everything else is so happy. So I'm like, all right. Got to have it to get to home. Exactly. Yep. And I'm going to be even more definitive on my choice of words. I despise high summer. I cannot. I hate it. Amen, sister. Will you just skip high summer? I would be thrilled. But you can't.
12:47We can't see a plant summer because the plants need that. They do. So it's a thing, but... It is a thing. Anyway, you said you do equine massage, like you go massage horses? I do. Keep telling me about that. It's really, really interesting. Growing up, I was a horsey girl. I spent all my time at the barn. I worked there. My friends were there. I mean, that was my safe space.
13:17My horse at the time, his name was Mystic, and he, gosh, one day he just didn't quite feel right. I got on him and it just, it didn't feel right. And I knew this horse. I knew this horse as well as I knew myself. And I was like, something is just not right. We did a bunch of tests. He came back.
13:44positive for limes, the negative for limes, but testing for limes in horses is very difficult because there's so many false positives and false negatives. So it's almost impossible to pin down if that's the issue. But I did hear about a local horse massager and I was like, all right, well, let's just see maybe he's tight. Like, I don't know, he has big muscles.
14:11You know, he has all the same issues that we could have. He has bone structure. He has, you know, he's an athlete. He's working his body. So I called her up. She came out and she did a couple, she did a couple things with Mystic. And the next day when I rode him, he felt like a different horse. And at that moment I was like, yeah, you know what?
14:40I can do this. So it took me some years, took me a marriage, a divorce, a child, two houses, you know, et cetera, et cetera, life happened. And finally I'm settling into kind of my new groove. And part of that is working with horses in this way. And I never thought that I would be the horse massage lady. I always thought I'd be the crazy horse lady.
15:09But I'm fine switching out hats like that. And it's close enough. It's adjacent. So I can still be the crazy horse massage lady. Yes. Yeah. And you get to visit with horses all the time. Exactly. And they are so majestic. And I just feel like massage is a overlooked.
15:35of healing, overlooked modality of healing. And part of what I do at the Hedge Row Collective is I want to make this stuff accessible. People think horses and they think, oh, well, that's really expensive. They're not wrong. But there's plenty of people who own horses who...
16:04are not wealthy, who aren't coming from, you know, trillions of dollars in backing or sponsors or anything like that. And those animals also deserve healing touch and care and all these things. Same thing with photography, you know, I mean, gosh, however much you wanna pay for a photographer, you can find, and it can be astronomical. And I don't believe that good quality
16:33photos and memories or good quality horse care or good quality garden consulting has to be astronomical. I want it to be accessible. I want people to understand that, you know, with garden consulting, like you said at the beginning of this, it's possible. Even if you just have a balcony, it's possible to grow some of your own stuff. So part of my goal in all this is making
17:03these things accessible to everyone. And I'm so passionate about that. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. So I want to talk about your photography stuff and I want to talk about your garden design stuff. So let's start with photography. I looked at your Facebook page, you have a sum of samples of your photos that you've done. And there's one of a lady who looks, I'm going to use the word goth, but her hair is dark and she's like a side profile and it's kind of a dark picture. Yes.
17:32Beautiful. Thank you. You have some really, really nice photos and you have real talent. Thank you, I appreciate that. My photography journey officially started when I was like seven and my grandparents took me to Longwood Gardens, which is like a ginormous botanical garden outside of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. And it is stunning.
18:01You know, this place has been endowed with millions and millions of dollars, so they have the best of the best, the perfect environment for any plant that they're growing. I mean, it's just gorgeous. And I remember my taking my grandma's Canon camera and I said, can I can I take a picture with that? And she was like, absolutely. And from that moment, I was like, oh, yeah, this is it.
18:30This is where it's at. So obviously it took me many years to get my own Canon camera, but I did and I've always been the one who's documenting with pictures, you know, in friend groups, on trips, family events, you know, I'm always the one with the camera. I mean, it's become easier now with these really good cameras in our phones.
18:58But at the time, back in the day, I was the one who carried the camera around and documented all the things. And I love it. I think it's so important. I've watched some of my clients are, they have young children and I've watched these children grow up and it's beautiful. And to capture these moments, it's such an honor. Every time that these people trust me to...
19:26capture these moments and this snapshot in time. I recently did a session where the father-in-law of my client is sick and they don't know how much more time they have with him. And so this photo shoot was really to capture him with all of his grandchildren, him with all of his children, him with his wife.
19:54It was so beautiful and it was, it's just heartwarming. You know, everyone's on their best behavior and it's just, it's really, really special. And I feel so honored to be able to do this, this work. Yep. Well, then you do actually fit my three things for my podcast because one of my topics is crafters and photography as a craft. So hey, we found the thing that ties everything together.
20:24There you go. There you go. But you also design gardens. Now, when you say design gardens, are you saying that you sit down with someone and they're like, I have this much space and I don't know what I'm doing, help me? That's certainly part of it. Okay. Sometimes it looks like that. Sometimes, you know, it's a blank canvas and a piece of earth and people are like, I want, let's just use an example. I want butterflies.
20:53in my garden. So I'll plan depending on where they are, you know, native plants, depending on, you know, I'll take into account the water situation at their house, whether it's really wet, whether it's really dry, what the wind is like, how many barriers they have or not. And we kind of plan out their garden that way. Other times people will come to me with a really specific need. Like, hey,
21:22I have some really established gardens and I really like them and I don't wanna do anything with them, but I would like to add food to my property, more of a permaculture mindset. And so I can help them plant, decide on which cultivars to use or not, depending on what type of food they wanna grow. So we kind of go through all that and at the end, sometimes, and sometimes it's even broader than that. People are like, I'm having runoff issues.
21:52and I don't know how to slow down this water and I need help. So, you know, either way I'm going to their property, I'm looking around, I'm taking pictures, I'm observing. You know, and then at the end of our time together, people, they get a full consultation report of everything we talked about, you know, plant recommendations, erosion control,
22:21depending on whether their soils dry or needs more compost or whether they want to incorporate a compost, you know? So it really, it can take any number of turns throughout the time there and depending on what their needs are. But it's something that really lights my soul on fire. And I really, really enjoy doing that. Well.
22:47I was going to say back in the beginning, but I wanted to hear all the parts first. What I find in doing this podcast and talking to people all over the place is that the happiest people I've talked to are the ones who just took something they were really interested in or they were really talented at and made that into their job. Yes. And you are like an example of three things that just light you on fire and you've turned them into careers, basically.
23:17Totally. And it's really refreshing to have that joy in my life. Yeah. And there's a saying about if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. And it sounds really trite. But it's true. It is true. And it does sound like, oh, what a cliche. But
23:45Sometimes those cliches are the most accurate. Yep. My husband worked for a company. I'm not going to say the name of the company for almost 30 years, corporate America, and he basically worked on printers and fax machines and, and copiers, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And he decided he did not want to continue with them too. Well, almost a year ago now.
24:15And he basically took a hiatus and spent the summer gardening and selling stuff at the farmer's market. And that was a little weird and a lot of it was a big stretch for us because he's always worked for that company. And then we realized that the farmer's market wasn't going to support our lifestyle because we got to pay the bills. So he found a new job in the same arena.
24:43but it's a much smaller company that does work for much smaller businesses. And he's actually wrenching on the machines now. He's not doing so much computer time, sitting at the computer. And he loves it. He said to me the other day- That's great. He said, I love my job. Just out of the blue. And I was like- That's so great. How special is that? Yeah, I said, do you?
25:10And he said, yeah, he said, I love working on all these different kinds of machines. He said it just, he said, I just get such a charge out of figuring out what the problem is and knowing how to fix it and fixing it. And I was so thrilled to hear this because he was so miserable the last couple of years of the other job. Not only that, but on the weekends, he's the gardener. He loves to garden.
25:36That's so great. And we're rolling into gardening season. So he's on a minor high right now with how great he feels with his job and the fact that we're rolling into spring. His inner fairy is also very excited. Yes. And it's been so nice seeing this man smile and come up with ideas and actually talk to me about them. It's been amazing. Oh, that's so beautiful too. Like what a beautiful season of life to celebrate. Yeah.
26:04So really, I guess the reason I'm kind of pounding on this topic is for the listeners, if you had something that you wanted to do when you were a kid, or if you are a kid and there's something you love to do, you can keep going with that. You don't have to not do it just because you're not a kid anymore. Yes. I feel like we lose a lot of magic the minute we hit 18 and it really makes me mad. Absolutely. And it's, it's, I think.
26:32If we kind of draw the lens out a little further, societally, you know, magic isn't gonna pay the bills. Magic isn't gonna do this. Feeling good doesn't matter. It's about money, it's about this, it's about this. Well, the good news is you can have both. You can do both. And even, you know, I have a day job, I'm a paralegal. Oh my, okay. But you know, that gets us, you know, that helps.
27:00and everything else is supplementary and it's beautiful. And it works for me and my family. And so, yeah, I second that with what you're saying that just because life happens doesn't mean that you have to let go of those dreams that you had as a kid. No, and you shouldn't because life is meant to be lived. It's not supposed to be drudgery. Exactly.
27:30I hate drudgery. Drudgery sucks. Yes. And then the other thing I was going to mention is I used to carry a little digital camera with me when we would hike in the woods. I love that. And I was very drawn to the little tiny things like the little wildflowers that come up in the springtime. Yes. Or the little runoff streams that go down through the ditch into the rocks and out into the woods. Yes. Or the ravine and the view across the ravine.
28:00those little things that most people don't notice at all. Absolutely. And I have like tons of photos in my computer from 20 years ago from hiking around. And one of my favorite is there's a flower or a plant called bloodroot that grows here. Oh yes, here too. They're one of my favorite spring ephemerals. Yeah, and they have these really big fat leaves, but they have these little tiny white flowers.
28:26Yes. And I have photos of those and I love those. And then there's another thing that grows here. It's called a marsh marigold. Yes. And they're gorgeous. I have only seen them once out in the wild and on the trail. Okay. I had no idea what it was. It was this really lush, beautiful, yellow flower. And I literally made my husband pull over on the side of the road because I saw it on the
28:55Oh my gosh, I love that. And I said, please just let me get these photos. And he's like, okay. So I hopped out and I got photos. I wanted to be able to find out what kind of flowers they were. Got home, went to the Minnesota DNR website and typed in yellow flower and all the things I could see in the photo. And they're marsh marigolds. And I was like, what a fantastic name for plants. We have those here too. And they are beautiful. They are really stunning.
29:25happen upon them like on a hike or something. Cause I find that they pop up in very unexpected places. Yeah, but it's gotta be wet. Yes, yes, yes. Their marsh is in the name for a reason, but they're really stunning. Yeah, they would make a beautiful potted plant, but I don't think that's what you can do with them. I don't think they would survive inside. I don't know. I don't think so either. They are meant to be observed in their native habitat.
29:54And they're a gift from nature outside. They are. Yes, exactly. And the other one that I love is jewelweed. I don't know if you guys have jewelweed. Yes, we do. I love jewelweed. The little baby orchids. They're so pretty. Yes. I actually, I was doing a branding session for a friend of mine who's a farmer and he was teaching a class and I was there taking.
30:23pictures and I got so distracted by the jewelweed, I had like, I ended up with like 10 images of jewelweed and I was like, well, I guess he's getting jewelweed pictures because they're beautiful. But they really are quite stunning. Yes. And they're really stunning if they still have dewdrops on them. Yes. Oh my gosh. Or any of those raindrops or anything like that. Absolutely. I agree with you 100%.
30:51Yes, I think you and I are soul sisters who just haven't hadn't met yet. I think that's what's going on here. I think that's right. It's always fun when I get to talk to someone who's so interested in a couple of things that I'm also interested in, like the horse massage, not so much. I'm probably never going to do that. That's not my thing, but the photography and the garden planning. I actually love planning gardens. I just don't love doing the gardening part. Yes, that's...
31:18Yes, they are very labor intensive and it is certainly a labor of love. Yeah. When we first moved here a little over four years ago, my husband was like, so how big are we going to make the garden? And I said, well, how big do you want to make it? And he said, I was thinking maybe 30 by 50 to start with. And I was like, that's fine. And he was like, I was thinking doing this, this and this. And I took a look at where he had put the stakes to illustrate where the
31:46the actual inside space of the garden would be. Sure. And I said, babe, I said, here's what I think. And it was only slightly off from his plan. And he was like, why that? And I said, because that part over there is low and when it rains, it's going to soak. It's going to hold water. Exactly. So unless you build it up, you can't really put anything that doesn't like what you eat over there. Exactly. He was like, see, this is why I married you because you know stuff I don't know. And
32:14I know stuff you don't know, we make a good team and I was like, it's a good partnership. Yeah. So I really do know just enough to be kind of a help and sometimes a roadblock, but that's okay too. That is okay too. And we always are taking photos around here. It's ridiculous. We're always. I think it's really something that I have really tried to practice in this newer house of ours is taking before and after pictures. Yes.
32:44I'm really good at after pictures, but I get so eager to start the project that I sometimes forget to take the before pictures. And then I'm like, ah, like halfway through, I'm like, ah, shoot. So I've been really trying hard on every project or even every plan that I plant. You know, here's what it looked like when I first put it in the soil. Here it is three weeks later. Here it is two months later. Here it is two years later.
33:15And it's really amazing what happens in that time. Yep, absolutely. I don't want to ride this topic too hard either because I've talked about it a lot in the last six months, but we put in a new greenhouse this spring. Oh, please ride that topic so much. I'm going to live vicariously through you. Well, it got built last May. I think my husband and son started working on it at the end of April last year. And last spring.
33:44And I said to him when they were working on it, I said, can you please take a quick photo with your cell phone at every step that's completed? Because I want to remember what it looked like before it was finished. And he was like, oh yeah. So every time they would go out and do something, he would text me photos when that part was done. Perfect. And so we have, we literally have a documentary of the steps of this greenhouse going up.
34:12I love that though, because it's easy to forget. Yeah, it is. It's easy to be like, well, I remember what was there before, it was nothing. It was just, you know, grass or this or that, but it's not really sharp. It's not a sharp memory. And so to have those images, I think, is really, really special. Yes, and we also have a photo that is tacked to the wall.
34:42that's in front of his desk downstairs of this property as it was the day we bought it. Beautiful. And now there's a little red farm stand shed that wasn't here then. There's now a greenhouse here. There will be a like a high tunnel style greenhouse next to the shed this spring. And so...
35:06Every time I'm like, what did this place look like before we bought it? I go to that picture on the wall. I'm like, oh yeah, it was big. There was a lot of space here. Yes. Oh, I love that. And we just put it in. I love that. I recently looked at Google for this property. And that's what I used to be like, okay Anya, remember how far you've come. Like you just said, remember what the property looked like when you bought it.
35:36And I went to Google to remind myself, and I went to our address, and they updated the pictures. Yep. And I was like, no. Now, luckily I had already saved the old pictures. Okay, good. But I was just like, oh no, it looks how it does now. What am I supposed to do now? Yep. But now I just have to search through my pictures to find it, but.
36:04It is really amazing. Even, and again, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, even in a short amount of time, even in one growing season, it's unbelievable what one can accomplish and change on the property, even just in a day or a few weeks. Yep. And I think that's like the instant satisfaction that I get from that.
36:32Like that is a high that I am always willing to ride. For sure. And basically everything we've been talking about, I think we're illustrating that life is not about the destination, it's about the journey. 100%. Yep, because once your life's over, you can't go back and do it. So you gotta enjoy every single freaking moment of it. Yes, and fully.
36:57You know, the good, the bad, the ugly, the blood, the sweat, the tears, it's all there for a reason. I firmly believe that even when the reason sometimes sucks or you can't see it right away. But it is, it's a, and it's really beautiful. You know, when you sit down and think about all that life that you've lived, it's really beautiful. It's, it hurts to do it, but it's really beautiful. Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
37:26Okay, Anya, I feel like this was a very beautiful conversation this morning. I loved it. It was exactly what I needed for my Tuesday midday reset. Good. All right. Well, I try to give you this to half an hour and we're over that by about eight minutes now. So I'm going to let you go. But thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me. This has been so amazing. All right. Have a great day. Thank you. You too.
 

My Homestead Heart

Today I'm talking with Sam at My Homestead Heart. You can follow on Facebook as well.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Sam at My Homestead Heart. Good morning, Sam, how are you? Good morning, Miss Mary. I'm doing wonderful, how about yourself? I'm good, and I love that you said Miss Mary because it's a very southern thing, I love that.
00:27Yeah, that's what I am. I am from the deep south. Yes, and you have the most lovely sweet tea accent. I'm telling you, every time I talk to somebody with a southern accent like yours, I just smile. My face just breaks open because it's so pretty. Oh, you're so kind. Nah, I'm not kind. I'm honest. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't say anything because I'm not rude. Well, thank you so much. It's funny that I still carry it.
00:57because I have not lived home in decades, but apparently I still bring it with me in some sort of way. However, if you were to listen to my family members, it is much more thick, thicker than mine. Wow.
01:18Okay, well they must be terribly difficult to understand because you are clear as a bell. So if it's a lot thicker than yours, I probably would be like, Oh man, my sister's her accent. She's never, she was born and raised down there and, um, I can probably count on her hand the amount of times that she has left the area in her lifetime. And she is thick, thick, thick Southern drawl.
01:47Well, I'm going to slip into it a couple of times because it's the one I pick up easiest. So don't be mad at me if I start sounding like a Southerner. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do, Sam. Well, I am a military veteran. So I served a career in the military and separated back in 2005.
02:16And my husband was still active duty. He actually just retired a few years ago and we are parents to a 10 year old. He's about to turn 11 next week. So yay on that. But, um, but yeah, we got transferred up here in Pennsylvania back in 2018 through the military and, um, just fell in love with it up here. I'm we spent.
02:45the majority of our careers down south, whether it be in mostly Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, spent some time in South Carolina, and then lo and behold, I don't know what in the world they were thinking, sending a bunch of country folk up here in Pennsylvania. But he took orders. His last set of orders were out of Philadelphia.
03:15And we were like, Oh my goodness, what in the world? They, them city folk going to come see us hauling the tractor on a trailer coming to town. But we were lucky enough to be able to find some country space out here in the south eastern part, it's about, well, we've, we rented for a little bit in, in
03:43outside of Westchester in a little Brandywine area, had found some country area that we rented until we found a place here. We moved here, it's about an hour outside of Philadelphia, right above the Maryland line. It's, you know, country, lots of Amish farms around us. And we got real lucky and found a 20 something acre little farmstead, so.
04:10You know, we just love it. We love the weather. It's not so hot up here like it is down south and just the rolling hills and man, the change of colors and the seasons. It's just, we just love it.
04:28Well good. Now you keep saying you're from the deep south. Where are you originally from? Mississippi. Okay. Way down by the in the bayou. Okay as much as I love southern accents I'm very bad at parsing which one I'm listening to so I had to ask. A lot of people say that I'm from Texas and no it's not Texas not Texas. Not many people you know we don't get a lot of tourists down where I'm from so not a little not a lot of people get
04:57experience or particular dialect, I guess I should say. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so I messaged with you yesterday and you were saying that you're new to homesteading. So what inspired you to get into homesteading? Well, to be honest, you know, when we were living in West, when we first moved to Pennsylvania, my son at the time was four years old.
05:27And we were living in Pennsylvania for about six months and before he was diagnosed with some autoimmune issues. And, you know, at, um, four years old, you know, I mean, he's just a baby, right. And then, um, as his condition would progress over, you know, time, he would
05:57have more issues to have to deal with. And I just did not want to see my son on so many medications at such a young age. And so that's really where I began my whole deep dive into how can I help my baby, you know, have a good quality of life without having to take all these medicines.
06:28And so, you know, I just kind of learned a lot of information about our food systems and our medical systems and, you know, big pharma and all the things. And, you know, it was just a big wake up call. And so when the time allowed us to be able to start looking around for, you know, to get out of the...
06:55rent-in world into home ownership. I just wanted to have a place that I could, you know, start sourcing our own stuff for my family. And man, it's been a long journey of education and experimenting and readjusting your thought process and stuff. But really, that's really what brought me into this world is just wanting
07:24to take care of my family and so to keep us healthier in a way from all those chemicals and poisons that we're exposed to on a daily basis. Yup, right there with you sister. I understand. Yeah, so you know, I'm not that experienced in it. I'm just, you know, I learn a little bit as I go. But you know, we've got our own cows. We've got our own chickens.
07:54We got gardens and you know, I'm not an expert at it. I, you know, just it's a, it's every day's a learning experience. Yep, it is. And it's gonna be as long as you're in this lifestyle, you will learn something new every minute of every day. Sure. I learned how to can last year. So, you know, I'm having fun using things out of, out of our garden. And, and
08:24um, our animals on the farm and learning how to can meals and put them up for storage. And, and I tell you what, the, a lot of people homestead and can like, kind of like a prepper kind of world, but that's not really the stance that I take. I just love, you know, when we have those busy days and busy weeks, you can just go down and grab you a, a jar of
08:52you know, some canned burrito meat and just open up a can and warm it up and you got dinner for the night, you know? Easy peasy. Yeah. Yep. I've got a couple things about canning, but the first thing I want to say is I've said this a few times. Humans are the only species that will work their asses off to make something easier. Oh, I know, right? And I love that. Yeah, I love it. And then
09:18The other thing I was going to say is we started canning like three summers ago. I have not great memories of canning with my mom in the no air conditioning house in Maine in July and August. And I swear the walls would sweat. Oh, wow. So my husband asked me three years ago now that we have air conditioning in the house we bought a little over four years ago and we have a great big huge kitchen. He said, can we finally try canning? And I said, yeah.
09:48Yes. And so we bought a whole bunch of strawberries and we made strawberry jam. Oh, wonderful. And my son, I think, ate the last jar, the last half pint jar last week of that strawberry jam. And I'm so sad. I'm so sad that it's all gone. We have to get, we have to do more. Let me tell you what else I've learned. Yeah. I invested in.
10:16freeze dryer. You ever heard of that? Yep. So I will take strawberries and freeze drum and store them and those I tell you what if you want to get chips out of your house freeze dry some strawberries. Yes nature's candy and I don't have a freeze dryer and I can't afford one right now.
10:42I know, they're not cheap. I know, I know. It was definitely an investment we had to save up for, but man, it is so fun to play around with. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I really wish that the company that is the big deal in the freeze dryer world would offer me a small freeze dryer to try out and review, because I would be happy to do that, but I don't think they're going to do that. I definitely would ask about it. Yeah. Doesn't hurt to ask. Yep.
11:12But you're talking about Nutrious Candy, because you... I also have a...
11:19Yeah, exactly. I also learned how to cream my own milk. So, you know, I'll get like a few gallons of raw milk and I have like a creamer and I just pour it in there and I get my own pints of heavy cream. Very nice. Very, very nice. Are you a coffee drinker? Oh my gosh. Every day, all day. I love coffee.
11:47I don't drink coffee like, you know, normal coffee. I drink mushroom coffee. Okay. Yeah. So, but yeah, that's a, that's been a, it's been a journey. We've been here four years now. So, you know, it's been a lot. It's been a lot of learning. Uh-huh. Have you tried making, um, soaps or lip balms yet? No, ma'am. I have not ventured into that yet. Um,
12:16I don't know if I have a desire to learn all that just because it's so easy and affordable. I also love to support entree preneurship and I know that there is a whole world out there of people that make homemade soaps and stuff like that.
12:42my time and attention would be much more valuable to just, instead of me doing all that too, to just take the opportunity to support somebody else's business. Again, right there with you, because we actually started a business two summers ago and part of it was making soaps and lip balms and things like that. And it's really expensive for the supplies and it's even more expensive now. So we've done it.
13:12I get it. I'm kind of backed off of it some because it's just, it's not, I don't want to say it's not worth the investment, but it's not worth the investment and the time. Right now we have some for us because that was why we started doing it in the first place. So as long as I have soap and I have lip balms, I'm happy.
13:32Yeah. Oh, I totally get it. I mean, you definitely can't do it all. Right. I mean, you know, you can't be the, as far as my view and take, you can't be that homesteader to where, you know, you're doing your own processing of animals and, and dairy and food and cannon and all those things. And then go into the, the soaps and the, uh, you know, all that stuff. You just can't do it all.
14:00So I just kind of stick to what I enjoy myself to keep it enjoyable and fun where it's not like a chore and the other stuff I would just would rather source to a you know independent business owner. Yep. If you can't make it yourself, support someone who does make it and that way everybody wins. Yes. Yes, absolutely. So do you love what you're doing? I love, love, love what I'm doing.
14:31But that's my personal, everything that I've talked about so far is just my whole personal time that I spend doing things that I enjoy. But my employment, my source of income is I actually have a business where I represent a natural path at company. We have not a whole bunch of stuff. We've got probably about a little over a dozen products.
15:01But man, man, man, do they pack a punch. And the greatest thing that I love about it is that the ingredients that are used for the formulations, I don't have to grow them myself. Right? They have perfected already, you know, the perfect soil that you need and the perfect environment and the perfect way to harvest and source it, you know, so I don't have to worry about.
15:30you know, if I'm doing it all right or if I'm, you know, getting the best of the best because we have these naturopathic scientists that know how to do all that and then So yeah, it's basically our go-to Products that we use here in the house. It's helped my son immensely when it comes to helping with his blood sugars and his
15:57digestive issues and without having to be on medicine and stuff like that. And it's not that you can't grow a lot of this stuff yourself because you can. Not everything because some things just are not inclusive to the environment that we live in. You know, certain, you need so much sunlight and you know, more, a warmer climate and stuff like that in order to have the potency and the...
16:26the strength and the quality of some of the ingredients, but they take care of all that. So, that's one thing that these products bring into our household is that, even though they're naturopathic herbs, roots and shoots and botanical ingredients and stuff, I don't have to grow them myself.
16:56it to be to get the quality and the potency that comes in these products. But that's my professional life. That's my business. Okay. And do you do it from home? I do. I do it from home. I do it on the road. The greatest thing about being an entrepreneur is that it's your office, your rules, right? So, you work when you want and if you want to go on vacation, you can work then too.
17:25You know, you're not having to be nailed down to a weekend schedule or, you know, one or two weeks out of the year schedule or you don't have to. We homeschool, so we don't have to go by the school schedule. You know, it can go with you wherever you go. Yep. That's why I started a podcast because I want to make it grow and make it the thing I do until I retire. If I ever retire. Yeah. Excellent.
17:53Excellent, excellent. But yeah, so we are a military family, living on our retirement, but we all know that none of us in the military join for the money. Right. Because it's not a lot, as well as the retirement. It sounds good to say retirement, but that pension isn't that much. And you definitely can't raise a family on it. So you have to have
18:22some type of supplementation to go with that. And this business that I have is our main source of income actually. Nice, very nice. So can you tell me what the name of the company is? It is Bravely Global. It is rather new. I say that have heartedly because we're just entering our fifth year in business. And so we're...
18:52Past the startup phase, I joined and started building my business when we were in the startup stage. I've been with them for almost a year. We were in our fourth year, but at that time when I joined, the company, company-wide was only doing, I think, 19 million in year four or year three.
19:17They went from their first year in 2020. Let me tell you about the story of this company. In our house, we love the Lord. We are just Christians and we do our best to try to live our life that way. The company that I'm with is a faith-based company, so they love the Lord too. It was born right in the midst of COVID.
19:47back in 2020. So while everybody was, you know, running around in fear without, you know, a lot of information and on lockdown and not, you know, too scared to go out and go anywhere and, and all that kind of stuff, we have a founder that had a vision and knew that the world was going to need these products or, you know, need some help.
20:14And so this company was born in December of 2020. So if I don't know if you remember what you were doing in December of 2020. Crying, crying. Yeah. Businesses were closing, people were staying home and you know, the economy was going in the garbage and our company was born, opened its doors, you know? So she is a woman, the whole family, they're, they're, you know,
20:42have a lot of faith in the Lord and they just knew that they had a calling and a vision and they were brave enough, which you know, our name is Bravely, they were brave enough to step out in faith and put this out there to the world. And in their first year, which ended December of 21, they did a million and a half, that's it, a million and a half in sales.
21:09And, you know, they just kept plugging on in the year two. They ended with, um, I believe 6 million in sales. And then last year when right after, um, they ended their third year, right after that, I, is when I joined, they ended at 19 million and we just closed, uh, this past year in December, which would end our fourth year, we jumped
21:3850 million. So we went from one and a half million to 50 million in four years, which is unbelievable. And the reason why is because we are just very different than anything else on the market. Yes, you can get mushroom coffees, you know, from a lot of places, but our mushroom coffee is a lot different than what else, you know, everywhere else you get. We've got a product that
22:07attacks, inflammation and pain like nobody's business and keeps you having to take those daily inflammatory for people that struggle with aches and pains through whatever reason, getting old, arthritis. We've got a handful of things that do a lot of stuff. That's the story behind the company and how it was born and where it's been.
22:37my journey and when I found it and we've got products that help with all kinds of common issues and one of the main reasons why I decided this was for me, besides of all the things you've already heard, is that it really does give my son a good quality of life because we've halved his insulin doses since we've been using the products.
23:05can eat food without having stomach pain and his digestion is on point, his gut health is on point, his mood and focus. We don't have to deal with those ADHD medications.
23:33these products have done for not just for him, but my husband and me myself, it was just a no brainer. It was definitely something that I feel like the Lord put on our path. So, yeah, that's really our journey as far as all that goes. Okay, so a couple of things. I'm really glad that you found something that supports your son because I have four kids. They're all grown, they're all adults.
24:02And mostly when they were growing up, the worst things I ever had to deal with was stomach flu and, you know, upper respiratory infections now and then, and nothing that was quote unquote scary. And autoimmune things are scary. It's really hard, especially if you don't know what to do to help them. So I'm really glad that you found something that helps him and helps you guys.
24:32go hand in hand which is always really wonderful and helpful. Correct, yes, absolutely. So I love it when your core beliefs are able to be expressed in what you do in your home life and your work life because it's really hard when you have to have a job that kind of butts heads with your home life. Well, you know, I just this morning put a little post on my social media that says,
25:01You know, that talks about, um, you know, find something that you love and you'll never work a day in your life, you know? Yep. So absolutely. I totally agree. Yeah. And since you said that, um, I put out my podcast episodes every, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, and I do not get them ready until that morning because I enjoy getting up, getting my coffee, waking up and sitting down.
25:31two hours before my episodes are gonna be released at seven. And working on it, which is crazy. I could get them all ready to go on the weekends, but I just really like having that thing to get up to, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. Isn't that crazy? Oh, I totally understand, totally understand. And luckily it doesn't require a lot of editing. Clearly I listen to the episodes, you know, couple days before I'm gonna do anything with them just to make sure they all recorded right and what I need to edit if anything. Right.
25:59But because it's just conversations, it's super quick. And it literally gives me something that I look forward to getting out of bed for, if that makes any sense at all. Absolutely, absolutely. I know, I totally agree. I totally agree. You have to have ambition. Ambition is what keeps, I mean, it's just great for the soul. Yeah, exactly. And
26:29I started this as a hobby. Like my youngest was going to be moving out. I thought I was going to be going through empty nest syndrome and I didn't want to. And I needed something to focus on while he was making that transition. And come to find out he was only gone for a couple of months. And so when he got back, I was like, so I've been doing this thing and I can't stop because they don't want to stop. So here's what my schedule is like now. Please be respectful. And he was like,
26:58I'm really proud of you mom. This is very cool. And I was like, God, I love you. I love you. You are aware enough as a human being to understand that the world doesn't revolve around you. The world revolves around everybody. Oh yeah. We're, we're still getting there over here. Yeah. Well he is 10. Yours is 10. That's a different stage. Yeah. So we'll make it though. We'll get there. You will. Absolutely. You will.
27:24All right, so Sam, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're at almost 28 minutes. So is there anything else you would like to share in the last two minutes? No, I think we pretty much covered my whole day to day. If anybody wants to learn more about these products that I represent, they can always find me on Facebook. That's really where I work. My office, my social office is on Facebook. So I don't know if that's something
27:54you put out to people. I will put it in the show notes. Yes. All right. Well, thank you so much, Miss Mary. I so appreciate you. I appreciate you too. And I have a couple more things. Thank you for your service and your husband's service. My son, my stepson, but my son, he's mine. He might as well be mine, was a Marine for eight years. I think he was in for eight years. And worried every moment.
28:19every moment of those eight years, but he's good, he's out, he's thriving, he's married, he has a daughter, he's doing great. So I know, I sort of know the sacrifice that it is to have a family member in the service. It's hard. And I'm sure that being in the service is even harder. So thank you. Thank you. And thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today because I think this is super duper fun. And
28:50Your Facebook page also has photos of the stuff you're doing on your sweet homestead. So if people want to see your cows or your chickens or your garden stuff, that's all there too. So I highly recommend that people go look at the photos because they're gorgeous. Well, thank you so much. You're so kind. I'm just chatty. That's just me. All right, Sam. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
29:17You too, Miss Mary. We'll talk again soon. Alright, bye. Bye bye.
 

Blooming Health Farms

Today I'm talking with Sean at Blooming Health Farms.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Sean at Blooming Health Farms. Good morning, Sean. How are you? Hey, good morning, Mary. How are you doing? I'm good. It's, is it nice in Colorado, number one? It is gorgeous. It is chilly, but the sun here makes it feel like it's tropical.
00:31Well, we have sunshine in Minnesota too, but it's not tropical. It's probably 10 degrees outside. Oh, that's fair. That's fair. And I always ask about how the weather is, where the person is that I'm talking to because how I show my esteem for the people I talk to. So that's why. Okay, Sean, tell me about what you do because I know it has to do with chickens. Yes.
00:59Blooming Health Farms is a nonprofit aquaponic chicken farm in northern Colorado. We're located in Greeley. And I use that word aquaponic chicken farm, A, to get a little bit of attention, but it showcases some of the neat stuff we do. We actually grow some of our own chicken feed using aquaponics and hydroponic methods, as well as take care of our chickens in some really humane, compassionate way.
01:29that we do with chickens, partially to run an egg laying operation and sell chicken feed. But we also work with at-risk youth and teach them entrepreneurship and give them mental health support so they get themselves out of those cycles that they find themselves in. That is stellar. Okay. So what is, okay, first off, what's the difference between hydroponic and aquaponic? Because I didn't know.
01:58that they were separate things. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of like, you know, big funny fancy words in agriculture these days. So I like to say that hydroponics is an umbrella form of agriculture, like the big thing. And it really simply means to use water to grow plants that aren't growing in a soil medium.
02:22So we're growing plants with a nutrient-rich solution, a solution that has all of the minerals and vitamins plants need. And we're doing that in something like just water or something that has an inert media, a media without nutrition. Aquaponics is a subset of that, a part of hydroponics, in which we
02:47grow fish in a body of water and then we use the fish water to actually fertilize our plants, if that makes sense. So the fish are eating this really highly nutritious, high protein fish food and their waste product is going into the water. There's a bunch of naturally occurring bacteria that live in the atmosphere and they turn that fish waste from their ammonia waste into usable plant nutrients, mostly nitrates.
03:18Okay, that helps. Thank you. Because I was listening and I'm like, I didn't know there was a difference. What's the difference? So you just defined it. Thank you. All right. So Sean, what brought you to doing this? Because everybody has a reason. Yes. You know, years ago, I found myself living up in the mountains here in Colorado. I lived in an area called South Park and I was a professional photographer.
03:46And I would meet a lot of people that I was taking pictures of that was saying like, hey, Sean, you're living the dream up here. And I would reflect on the things that I was doing. And I was living as a poor ski bum, if you will. And I really did a lot of thinking and stuff. And I decided to get myself back in school. And a lot of that had to do with the fact that, to be honest with you,
04:14I grew my first pot plant while I was up in the mountains and I did a terrible job at it. I tried to grow it hydroponically in a way that I mentioned earlier and the plant came out and it was, for lack of better words, just very poor. There were no flowers on it. So if I wanted to use it for marijuana, it was pretty much worthless. And it drove me down this path of trying to figure out how to do it better.
04:44if that makes sense, to try to grow a better plant. Well, while I was researching and studying, I saw this picture in a book of a hydroponic tomato growing in the Epcot Center. And it was this tomato in a large pot growing over the size of a tennis court. And there were these tomatoes the size of baseballs. There was like 30,000 of these tomatoes on this tennis court size.
05:12spot and I said to myself, oh my goodness, I think we should be growing food this way. And it led me down this path of trying to grow tomatoes hydroponically. So I literally rushed down from the mountains and enrolled in a community college and started studying agriculture, studying biology, studying chemistry. And I fell in love with just this whole world of trying to grow things.
05:42hydroponically. Well, I rushed off to the University of Hawaii to learn how to do all of this stuff. And while I was there, I got to work with local farmers on the islands who were trying to figure out ways to enter into the market, who are trying to use novel ways to grow plants, to save space, to save water.
06:11doing research to help farmers install hydroponic and aquaponic systems so they could grow different plants. And my whole goal was to come back here to Colorado to start my own tomato hydroponic farm. So I went through this really, really good experience in Hawaii. And when I came back to Colorado, I was struggling with trying to get this idea off the ground.
06:39And one of the reasons that I was struggling is that I personally had a problem. I used to be a really bad alcoholic. And for a long time of my life, I made a lot of poor choices that got me in a lot of trouble. And I found myself in and out of jail for many years because I would get drunk, I would do something.
07:08I'm stupid, I would get in a fight, I would find myself in jail, and then I would repeat that pattern over and over and over again. It was me, and it was falling in love with tomatoes. That changed it. It changed everything for me. And when I came back to Colorado, quite honestly, I was still struggling with my alcoholism. I was still struggling with drinking.
07:34And I ended up getting my third DUI in 2014, which really sent me down this downward spiral, which ended up being a really deep soul-searching path. And while I was sitting in jail all of these times, I ended up meeting a lot of individuals in and out of these places that I recognized had similar backgrounds that I did.
08:03that had hopes, that had dreams, and they were struggling to find what it is they wanted to do in life. And while I was sitting in there, I came to this realization and this epiphany, if you will, that I wanted to be able to help people get out of tough situations. I wanted to help people like myself who were struggling with addictions.
08:30I wanted to help people become self-sufficient. And I say that really pointedly because I got out of jail. I got sober in 2017. And shortly thereafter, I met a gentleman here in Greeley, Colorado who's a clinical counselor. And he said to me that while he was studying in graduate school...
08:56that he was learning about this prison in Canyon City, Colorado that had a farm and they had an aquaponic system. And the prisoners that were working these systems, when they got released from prison, they were less likely to come back to prison than their other inmates that weren't working on this farm. And when he told me this, I immediately got goosebumps. And I was like, it resonated with my story. And then he said to me, he goes,
09:25I want to start a business, a non-profit, helping people learn how to get life skills, learn how to learn job skills, and support their mental health recovery on the medium of a farm. And I want to do this aquaponics stuff that I read about, but I don't know how to do it. And so we met soon after, and we formed this idea that I mentioned at the beginning called
09:54started to use our skill sets to develop a working business model to try to help kids that are young adults age 15 to 24 break that cycle of getting in trouble and getting stuck in the criminal justice system.
10:13Wow. Sean, I say this to everybody who actually makes me, moves me when they tell me their story. I love you. That is fantastic what you're doing. Thank you. I'm blessed to be where I am. I had a lot of people along the way that believed in me and supported me. And now I see this opportunity where I get to do the same thing. It's really cool. It's more than really cool. It is phenomenal.
10:40what you're trying to do for people and what you're doing for yourself too. Thank you. You're welcome. So tell me where you're at with it, with Blooming Health Farms.
10:56Yeah, yeah. So, you know, when I tell that story, a lot of times I purposely leave out the chickens, because when we start talking about Blooming Health Farms, I mentioned that we're a chicken farm. We never expected, I never expected to be a chicken guy. I never expected to have chickens in my life. As a youth, I had chickens in the backyard. As a young adult, I had chickens with parents' backyards, or backyard chickens with my folks and whatnot.
11:22So chickens have always kind of just been pockmarked, scattered throughout my background. Well, while we were developing our business model, quite honestly, we were trying to take these concepts that we had in our heads, and we're trying to essentially take, you know, like a square peg and shove it in a round hole, for lack of better words, that we knew that there were people out there that needed help.
11:52And we wanted to build an aquaponics farm and bring kids in and teach them how to do the things that we needed to do to operate that farm, how to feed fish, how to grow plants, how to sell those produce that we grew. And while we were developing that, we had a lot of start and stops and start and stops from the different things that we were trying to do. But most specifically, one of the biggest obstacles that I initially saw
12:21was in getting the buy-in from the youth over the long term in what it takes to grow plants. So to say that differently, I got to see that when we would bring the youth in to have us help them try to grow plants.
12:43there was a desire to see things happen almost instantaneously, or in another way, we could say there's like a desire for instant gratification. Of course, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And as many of us out there who have grown plants or have tried to grow plants know that it doesn't happen instantly. It takes days and weeks and months to get something from one stage to the next to getting that product. And we knew when we started down this path that
13:13delayed gratification is something that is missing in a lot of our youth. And it teaches discipline. It teaches a lot of these core soft skills that we believed are necessary to help kids stuck in the criminal justice system. So what ended up happening is... So for context, I turned...
13:41my house in the city of Greeley, Colorado into an urban farm. We converted a garage into an aquaponics farm, a vertical aquaponics farm. So if you're going to, us and the listeners can imagine like a 200 square foot garage that we put a fish tank in. It had filtration system and then vertical hydroponics. It looked like there were bunk beds of
14:09plants growing inside of a garage. And we would, I also had backyard chickens at my house. So while working with some kids, I would occasionally be like, hey, can you help me go take care of the chickens? And what I started to notice was more engagement and curiosity with what was going on with the chickens. What were they doing?
14:37what's going on with their eggs. I mean, there's actually a more instant gratification nature in raising a chicken because they would be able to get an egg, if that makes sense. And so what ended up happening is in our development of creating the business, I met a local teacher, a high school teacher who had a few youth that she thought...
15:06would benefit from what we were trying to do at the time. She recognized, hey, it looks like you guys are trying to do these neat things with aquaponics and you're still trying to figure it out. I have some kids that need some help. This one kid is running a gang, selling drugs, not showing up to school. Maybe you can help him. So this kid's name is Kewani and I met Kewani when he was a 16-year-old kid and he came
15:36wooden bunk beds flowing with water. And he looked at me and he goes, is that a tomato? And I said to him, yeah. And he goes, can I eat it? And I looked right at him and I say, yeah, of course. And he goes, you mean, I can actually eat this thing? And in the back of my mind was like, hmm, I don't think he's ever had a live tomato before. And I said, oh yeah. So I took one off the tomato tree and ate one and he did the same thing. And he got this.
16:04smile on his face and his eyes looked up and to the left and he was like puzzled and he's like, wow, this is a tomato? And I go, have you never had a fresh tomato before? And he goes, no. And I was like, wow. And I knew right there, you know, boom, I had him hooked on what we were trying to do. So I showed him around, I showed him the fish, I opened this fish tank, these fish jump out.
16:31We throw some fish food in there. I tell him a little bit of what we're doing. I go in the backyard. He sees some chickens and him and the teacher and I talk and we come up with an idea, a plan, and we decide that we are, that we could help him. And we, this is really one of the first ah-hahs in a big business development thing that happened. The teacher and I formed a partnership between myself and the local.
16:59between Blooming Health Farms and the local high school to have this kid come over twice a week for a few hours each time. And he would learn how to help me take care of the aquaponics system, how to take care of the fish, how to grow some plants, and then learn how to start selling some of those plants in exchange for getting school credit. So he would get credit for biology, for mathematics, and for a home economics course.
17:30And then the school was conveniently like three or four blocks away from my house. So we had a chaperone that would come walk in to and from school. And we did this for a whole semester. And it was actually during this time, this kid, he approached me during one of these moments and said to me, hey, Sean, do you think you can teach me how to grow a marijuana plant?
17:58And I looked at him and I said, you know, I don't think your teacher would really like me doing that. That would ruin our relationship. And he looks at me and he goes, he goes, yeah, but we don't have to tell her. And I go, how about this? How about I teach you how to grow tomatoes and then you can do whatever you want with that. You could probably use those skills to learn how to grow whatever you want. Maybe even a marijuana plant. And he looks at me and he goes, let's do it.
18:27And so it started us down this path. And that's how, what I was alluding to earlier, seeing the struggles with trying to teach these individuals, these young kids that are working with how to grow plants in an instant gratification. I was trying to teach this kid, Kewani, how to grow tomatoes. And it would be a lot of like, you know, one week we'd plant the tomatoes and two weeks later he wouldn't water them.
18:56They would die, he would complain that the tomatoes aren't growing, Sean, you don't know what you're talking about, this doesn't work, and etc. etc. So it was just this start and stop. And in one of those days I got, to be honest with you, I got a little bit frustrated with the misunderstandings and I couldn't communicate what was going on in those moments.
19:20So I said to him, hey, I need you to go take care of the chickens today. Your job is to go clean up the coop, clean up the yard, and I want you to just, here's a Bluetooth speaker. You go listen to your music, do whatever you gotta do. And so I handed him a rake, and I expected three hours later for his chaperone to come get him, and then I'd be done with him for the day, and I was like, oh man, I'm done. Well, about an hour later, you know, I hear the music out in the backyard.
19:49really, really peaceful, like energetically, if that makes sense. And I go out there and I just look and this yard is immaculate. The chickens are just happy and doing their little thing. They're right near his feet. And he's just kind of dancing and swaying to his rap music. And he starts asking me these funny questions, at least at the time they seemed funny, about the chickens. You know, Sean, why is the chicken walking this way? Hey, Sean, why do the chickens rub their beak on the ground like this?
20:18Hey Shawn, why are their feathers different? And I'm looking at him and I'm like, wow, you're really paying attention to what you're doing out here. I didn't realize it and he goes, oh man, these chickens, there's a lot to that. And so I kept encouraging it. I kept encouraging him to lean into this. Well, I invited this kid, Kewane, to the farmer's market. A few months after that, we were taking care of the chickens for a while. He was doing a really great job. And I said, hey, how about we go to the farmer's market?
20:48And we showed up at the farmer's market. It was an indoor winter market, November of 2022. And I bring that up specifically because of the bird flu pandemic during that time. And we went to the market and I have this teaching style, a lot like Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid, where I like to say, hey, go paint the fence. Hey, go wax the car, go Sam the deck. And then say, hey, let's go do kung fu.
21:16So with him, we walked into the market and I challenged him. I said, hey, why don't you go set up the table, how you think it would look good, and we'll go start selling eggs. I'm gonna go say hi to the other vendors and see what they're selling. So when people come over, we can say, hey, so-and-so has this, so-and-so has that. Do you need eggs? And he's like, all right. I leave the kid for about 15 minutes and I come back and I come back to the table, it looks great. And he says to me, hey Sean, I sold all your eggs. And I look at him and I go.
21:46No way. We brought like 20 dozen eggs. And he goes, he goes, oh, he goes, oh, yeah, I sold all your eggs. And I called it I called his BS. I look in the coolers and there's no eggs. And I was like, wow, well done. So here really, our rules with the farmers market are our vendors have to stay the whole time that that the farmers market runs to keep the market full and our obligation and in our own this is to bring enough produce so we can sell the whole time.
22:15And I was explaining that to him. And he looked at me and he goes, oh, you mean we can't leave? And I go, no, you can't sell things that quick. We can't leave. He laughs at me. He goes, well, Sean, you know what? We need more chickens. And I say to him, I'm like, you know, we have six chickens. We already have more than the city allows. We can't have any more chickens in the city. And he goes, well, Sean, but check this out. If we had two more chickens, we would get two more eggs a day and we could grow this business.
22:44And I looked at him and I was like, wow. In my head, I was like, this kid just gave me the most brilliant three sentence business plan I've ever heard in my life. And I immediately said to him, no, we can't do that. That's not gonna happen. Well, Mary, later that night, I went online, I got on Craigslist and I found a local farmer about an hour north of us in Wyoming, who had 100 hens, mature hens for sale.
23:13And I phoned him up and I said, hey, can I buy all your chickens? I had no plan what to do with these chickens at all. I was just like, this was a brilliant idea. So the guy's like, yeah, come on up. Pick up whatever you want. I call him back the next day, hey, can I have half? And he's like, yeah, sure, no worries. I show up and I was like, yeah, I'll take about 30. And he's like, no problem. So I bring these chickens back down to my house inside Greeley in the city of Greeley. And I
23:42and I put these 30 chickens in my backyard in a very makeshift yard. And Kewane comes to report for his next thing a couple days later and he walks out into this backyard and he looks at me and he goes, Sean, I was joking with you. And I look at him and I go, no you weren't. That was a brilliant idea. And he goes, what are we gonna do now? I go, well, we're a chicken farm now. And he goes, okay. And he puts on his boots.
24:09And he goes out there and he goes, all right, well, what do we have to do? And I go, well, the first thing is we've got to fix this fence. It's a really bad fence I made. And we started, we started to be in the chicken farm on that day. And now two years since then, we have expanded on to, um, we have partnered with some homesteaders on the north side of Greeley who have five acres and they have leased us about an acre of their property.
24:37where we now have 150 chickens laying organic eggs. And it's been a wild ride over those two years. That is the longest answer to the first question I asked that I've ever heard, but it was beautiful. Okay, I have two things. Number one, as the mother of four grown children, raising kids is a trip, and you're doing a great job raising other people's kids. Good job.
25:07Number two, you are a fantastic teacher. Well thank you. Yeah, I love, I've found my passion for teaching through this. You know, I never thought I would be a teacher, but during these things I've reflected on, you know, when I was a little kid, my teachers would often assign me to reading for other students.
25:31And I eventually was actually a ski instructor when I was living up in the mountains. I joked I was a ski bum. I actually was a ski instructor, a real ski bum up there. And there's something to teaching people through doing that I really enjoy. Yeah, yeah, no, I can tell. I mean, listening to you tell your stories, you sound so full of joy about everything you're doing. So the third thing is you need to write a book. You are so good at.
26:00at telling stories you've got to write a book about your experience.
26:06Well, I think that's, I really appreciate that. I do have a book called Thinking Outside the Soil. And it talks about how hydroponics helps farmers save water, improve livestock quality, and helping us all become better stewards. And I do weave in a lot of the story and journey that I've mentioned here. If any of your listeners are out there interested in reading about that or yourself, I'd love to send you a copy of the book. And you know, I can personally,
26:36autograph it to you Mary there and yeah, it talks about really how hydroponics is helping small scale farmers and stuff like that. And we discovered a lot of that. While I was telling Kewane to help me, we were selling vegetables at the time and our main crops were microgreens and sprouts. That's what we really were making ourselves known for.
27:03In Greeley, Colorado, for context, we are very rural. We are conservative from a political, we would be red or maybe more libertarian. We're very much, you know, we raise the food we eat, we don't eat the food we eat in a sense kind of a thing. And so for saying that pointedly is that we were selling microgreens, which are kind of, you know, what our animals eat. And...
27:33It was really, really interesting. So we were having a lot of challenges. And what one of those challenges was is sometimes we didn't sell all of the microgreens that we were trying to sell. And I naturally, like any resourceful farmer, throw them out to our chickens. And one of Kewanee's job was, hey, take some of our waste produce this week or even our leftover medium and go give it to the chickens and they can clean it up. And what happened was people started,
28:02Like now, people were like, oh, you got any eggs? You got any eggs? Where are the eggs at? And when people started telling us, man, they're like, Sean, you guys got some really, really good eggs. And we started noticing that what we were feeding our chickens was really affecting their eggs. And I encouraged other farmers to do it. And when I started telling other small scale goats and
28:30and cattlemen and those people, what we were doing, they were like, you know, it would be really great if we could, you know, grow some of our own supplements, especially during the drought or the winter times for our own herds rather than sourcing these from the big box suppliers or something like that. Absolutely, yes. Yeah, you know. And so it really, it's really started to shape.
28:58my journey of where we're at today and one of the reasons we're here on the outskirts of Greeley is A, that we can have this many chickens where we're at now. And I met a couple who has aspirations to be homesteaders. They want to be very self-sufficient. They too have four kids and are hyper aware of what...
29:26They want to be putting in their kids bodies, what they want to be putting in themselves, how they want to be interacting with other individuals, and really trying to build community amongst themselves and of like-minded individuals. I was just tickled when I got the invite from your podcast, from your show. I was like, wow, this just really fits in with some of the things that I'm getting to learn. So I got my playlist started.
29:55to play out with what I'm going to continue listening to on the tiny homestead here. All right, good. Yay. It's, it's so funny when you when you say that, because I started the podcast as a way to not go through emptiness syndrome, because my youngest was going to be moving out. And started in August of 20. August of 2023. Okay. I think it was 23.
30:25And I thought it wouldn't go anywhere. And all I wanted to do was have something to focus on. And you're not the only person who has told me that they're gonna start listening to the backlog of posts because they're interested in learning about homosteading from other homosteaders. So when you guys tell me this stuff, it makes me feel really good and like I'm doing something good. So thank you for saying that.
30:55It's an important, I see a huge movement back to it. And people like yourself are mediums for others out there to share how we can all do it together. I've started to understand more and more as I've been building a business, that successful businesses and individuals and communities that work together find ways to thrive.
31:24a lot more than those that are trying to compete, if that makes sense. When we come together, we all seem to win more. All boats rise with the tide, yes. Absolutely. And when you can start to come to these different things by being able to bring to the table these different ideas and then recognizing, all right, it's okay to...
31:47disagree and then not worry about it and not use it if it doesn't work for you kind of a thing and And well, that's one of the draws for me to homesteading is that idea of that we can find what works for us others have trailblazed paths before us and and you get to share those stories of how others have you know, you know how they've sunk their ship how the ship is now rising and and
32:15You know, one of the things I know we're really starting to find with us is that what's really set us apart is how we're feeding our chickens and our, for instance, the folks I'm working with, their names Ethan and Shay. And as I mentioned, they have four kids. The Ethan is a full-time business owner. He owns a painting business. And his, the matriarch, Shay, the wife is,
32:45portrait photographer and then a homeschool mom. And like 13 other things, because she's a creator and entrepreneur. She makes a bunch of the different things. She does, she's like a lot of us out there, I'm sure that are listening to this, that we're just, we like to do those things. Point being is that when I met them, I explained to them, I was like, I've got this really great way to work with kids, but also to get a really great product and to really.
33:13Help the Earth and the community. And I showed them how to sprout. And Ethan, without any background in biology or anything like that, took to it in a few days and has taught his kids how to do it. And we sprout in a space the size of a wardrobe or a little closet. And we're able to grow. I think we're growing about 15 pounds a day of live sprouts. And it takes them about 30 minutes.
33:43to do all of it, to go out and feed the chickens and then go about their day. And it's really cool to hear. When we started, I would go out with my chickens and I would throw the sprouts on the ground and I would go, sprout time, ladies, it's sprout time. And they would run in from wherever they were. And then people started to joke, they're like, man, your chickens are like addicts. They just come running. And we started calling our sprouts chicken crack.
34:12because the sprout, the chickens would run from all over. And now I hear Ethan's kids coming out there and they're banging on this bucket and they're like, Sprout time ladies, sprout time ladies. It just tickles my heart because I just like, I don't know, I find it kind of funny to just see the silliness of enjoyment and doing what you love translate out into different areas of life.
34:42And that's, I see that's the, what homesteading and this attempt to live this lifestyle offers at a way, there's that just pure enjoyment for whatever they're doing. And it's really neat to see. It's really neat to see and it's really neat to experience because we do, we have our little homestead here. That's why the podcast is called The Tiny Homestead. And I really, really am not a gardener.
35:09and I'm really, really not into chickens, but my husband is into both of those things. What I'm into is my dog. I love my dog, she's amazing. What kind of dog? She's a mini Australian Shepherd. Oh. I love her, she is my fifth kid, I swear to you. But we also usually have a batch of barn kittens every year, maybe two. Now you're speaking my language, I love kittens.
35:34And I really, really love the baby stage. I really love watching the mama cats, you know, grow in their pregnancy. The last mama cat we had, we lost her this summer. She looked like a basketball this summer with her last litter. And just watching her go from this skinny barn cat who was hunting mice to this round mama ready to give birth was really neat. And then seeing all the babies is always a joy. So for me, it's the dog and the cats.
36:03It's also cooking. I love cooking. Okay, so when my husband brings me in tomatoes and cucumbers and stuff I'm like, yeah, what are we having for dinner? And Then I make that work So that's a skill. I I appreciate that I am the more like your husband it sounds that I admire people who can just take those raw ingredients and Are you one of those types of people that just takes the same thing and makes?
36:32four or five different types of things out of it? Well, it depends on what it is. I mean, I love basil. And so we make pesto. We make, I always forget the name of it. I love it, but I can't think of the name of it right now. The appetizer you get at restaurants where it's diced tomatoes and garlic and chopped up basil and olive oil and balsamic vinegar, I can't think of what it's called. But anyway, it's an appetizer. And you put the chopped up stuff on the
37:01the toasted bread and just eat it and it's delicious. I make that. I will remember what I'm trying to think of an hour from now. But anyway, bruschetta. I make bruschetta. Oh, bruschetta. Yes. Pesto and bruschetta. And I use tons of basil and spaghetti sauce that's made from scratch. I just, basil is like my favorite herb ever. So I do a lot with basil. And we can tomato sauce, we can tomato paste, we can diced tomatoes.
37:30when they're coming in. Radishes. Radishes are great in salad. But did you know that you can make a quick pickled radish? I have heard that me personally. I don't I'm not a big pickled anything person. Well, pickled radishes are wonderful if you like pickled stuff. So yes, so there's all these things that you can do with what comes in from the garden, but my favorite thing is just to have him bring in a bunch of different leafy greens.
37:59and some tomato and some cucumbers and just have a salad. You know, it's easy.
38:06Yeah, I love salads. As I grew up, one of the things that was very impressionable is I had a grandmother who would always eat her salad at the end of the meal. And in traditional Americans, most of us eat our salads as an appetizer. And as a little kid, I would be like, grandma, why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? And she would always look at me and she would be like, Sean?
38:34because it's like nature's broom. It just cleans everything down when you're done. And I was, and it's so for me, when I was a little kid, it shifted and it's always been an impressionable thing. And I know it's influenced me. We would be in the garden and picking all the little things until I grew up in the garden as well.
38:54Yep, exactly. Sean, we could talk for hours. You are the chattiest person I've ever had on the podcast, which is wonderful, but I try to keep these to half an hour. So would you like to come back in the fall and tell me where things are at then? I would love to, Mary. I really appreciate all of your time, and I do enjoy talking, so thank you for allowing me that space. Oh, absolutely, and I have one more question if you can make it a short answer.
39:21How old are you? Because you sound like you've lived a hundred lifetimes and enjoyed every one of them. You know, I've wondered how many past lives I've lived, but in this one, I am currently 39 years old. You've done a lot in that time and you've done a lot of good in that time. Keep doing that. Well, thank you, Mary. Thank you. Keep sharing the journeys that we have. I'm trying. This is an awesome show and I can't wait to come back. All right. Thank you so much for your time today, Sean. Thanks, Mary.
 
 

REKO- Local Food Community

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

Idaho Falls Community Garden Association

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

Sunny Acres Farms

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

Morning Song Orchard

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

Go Green With Alexa

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

Shades of Green Urban Farm

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

Moon Ridge Acres

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