A Tiny Homestead

Steadfast Roots Homestead

Today I'm talking with Krista and Dave at Steadfast Roots Homestead.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Krista and Dave as Steadfast Roots Homestead. Good evening, you guys. How are you? Good evening. We're good. How are you?
00:22I'm good. Other than technical difficulties over the last 48 hours, I'm ready to shoot my computer. Other than that, I'm great. Thank you for spending some time with me on Friday evening. I'm sure you probably had more fun things you could have been doing, but we're going to try to make it super fun. Tell me about yourselves and what you guys do. So this all started just a couple years ago. We started really
00:51getting into the homesteading lifestyle just a couple of years ago during COVID, essentially. We had been thinking about getting chickens for a while and that's what we started with other than we were already gardening and stuff. But we started with chickens and we moved on from there to getting a new property and more animals and that's where we are today. We're starting from scratch essentially.
01:22We're learning along the way. The gateway animal got you, those darn chickens. Right. Yes. We've always been really interested in natural living and more whole foods and stuff like that. We really wanted to be able to have our own. When you really look into the meat industry, it's scary. And you're like, that's kind of like, we're like, we can make our own chicken. Why not make our own chicken?
01:53And then it just ballooned from there. And now we're trying to do 10 million other things. We didn't get chickens for meat. We got chickens for eggs. And it was a good plan until our chickens decided to be lazy and stopped giving us eggs about three months ago. So we don't have chickens right now, but we will have chickens again in the springtime. Awesome. Yeah, we started with eggs and we've moved on to, we tried the, with the kids,
02:24corn scrosses for 4H. We didn't really like their breed just because they're kind of gross and we decided we'd go with more heritage breeds. Breeds that haven't been bred to be more meaty and bigger and produce meat in mass quantities is what our... where we want we want the more natural, the less
02:55the less engineered, yes. Yeah, yeah.
03:00Yeah, I don't blame you. This is our first year going and, um, uh, growing out our own chickens from eggs to harvest and we're working on it. And I think our results are turning out pretty well. Yeah. That was kind of like the goal. It was, it was egg chickens, but for meat too, like dual purpose. Yes. Yeah.
03:27Is it difficult for you to raise them from egg to eating? Is it difficult when you have to call them or are you okay with it? So the hardest times I've had with calling isn't really the ones that are for me. It's the mercy calls, you know, when you have a chick born with a defect and having to take care of that one and sometimes that's what gotten the most. But.
03:57Growing them out, knowing that they're going to be used for me and that they're going to be used for sustenance, it's never bothered me. It gives me a new appreciation for it. It doesn't bother me. It's like I know I'm a meat eater and I eat meat and it makes me feel, I don't want to say good, but it makes me feel better knowing that this animal that I'm eating has lived a full and good life.
04:27throughout its whole life and that its ending is going to be swift and fast and it's not going to suffer. And almost, I mean, I would say probably all the meat we buy in the store probably suffered. So when I look at it that way, and you know, and for me, it makes it a lot easier to do the ending because swift and fast and I know that, you know, that animal's life was for that purpose.
04:57Yeah, and I didn't ask that for you to feel like you had to defend your choice. It's just that there's so many people in the world who are like, I could never do that. And the thing is you never know what you can do until you do it. So I just, people don't quite understand if they haven't done this, that this is not murder. This is not a terrible thing that you're doing. This is actually a sustainable.
05:27normal practice that went on for years before we had farms that grew tons of animals and dispatched tons of animals. So totally. I hope I didn't come across that. That's been done on it too. That it's just, it's better this way. Yeah. I hope I didn't come across like I was asking you to defend yourself because I'm absolutely not. I am right on the same boat with you. No, I just felt like that that's part of my explanation of why it, you know, like it doesn't
05:56bother me because a lot of times people are shocked because we eat things that are cute like rabbits too. And that can be really touchy for people. They're like, how do you do that? How can you do that? But it's so much sustenance. And when we have a meal that's rabbit, we can feel the difference in the nutrition in our bodies almost. You get fuller faster. Yeah, and rabbit is really tasty. Yes, it is. It's very tasty.
06:26Yeah, if you cook it right, it's fantastic. I kind of love rabbit. Um, okay. So I've got a couple of questions for you that have nothing to do with, with chickens or rabbits. Um, you have an Airbnb that you, that you do. Is that right? It's a camp. Oh, it's like Airbnb, but it's a camp. It's like, we, we go through hip camp and, um, hip camp is like, um, it's basically like Airbnb, but just for camping stuff.
06:55So we just do tent campers, but we have we have 20 acres and we have a lot of interesting buildings and stuff on our property and it just felt like It would be a good way to make a little bit of money on the side to help fund the homestead As well as give a sense of community to the property as well Give back. Yeah, we like to share we want to share. It's really magical here
07:22Yeah, and you guys are in Ohio. So do you do you do that during the winter too? Or do you shut down that part for the winter? We've left it open in the winter last year was our first year. And we did have a couple campers that came in the winter. And they did a really good job of doing their thing. And they had a great time this year, though we had that we recently had this really bad snowstorm and we're under feet of snow. So we did shut down for a couple months just so that we can figure out where
07:52what's even going on because we haven't even been to the back end of our property because of the depth of the snow and the storms. Wow. I didn't realize you guys got that much snow in your area. Yeah. Yeah. They, what was it? The governor declared it a state of emergency or something. We went under level three. Do not leave your house. Yeah. We weren't allowed on the roads. Roads are still pretty rough, but they're scooping them. Huh.
08:21Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. Winter hit with a vengeance for you guys. This is our second year here for winter and this is so far the worst so far, with snowfall. Yeah, yeah, definitely. We were not as prepared. We were told that we were gonna get between one to one and a half feet of snow and we were like, okay, we can handle that for a few days, but we ended up getting three feet of snow and trying to unbury things that we didn't know we needed at the time.
08:51It's become interesting. Yeah, that's one word for it. Interesting. Okay, so when people come to stay with you and it's not three feet of snow on the ground, do they get to help out on the farm or do they get to see what you guys do or how does it work? We would love that. We're open to like lots of different things like that. We've had people that want to see the animals.
09:20and we've had them and we had one. I have an option for photography because I'm also a photographer to add to our package. So if they wanted to have like their picture taken while they're here. So we did have a couple that did a little photo shoot. We did a photo shoot with them. We offer eggs for them to purchase if they wanna have from fresh eggs from our homestead.
09:44We, it's, hip camp is really open to like your own interpretation. It's kind of cool. You can kind of do what, what you want and charge for with what you want. Like some people charge for boat rental, but we have a couple of kayaks in a boat and we just let them use them, you know, like we don't charge for things like that. But then like, um, I have like, just. We're, uh, we're still figuring it all out too, because we really don't know what.
10:13exactly people want. It seems like most of the people really like to just come and be there in the back alone by themselves and they have the best time ever and then they leave and we don't even see them sometimes. We have a beautiful forest back there. It's definitely older and it's gives them plenty of privacy as they need it. Very nice. Is is hip camp
10:40a business like Airbnb is or what? I've never heard of it. Yeah, it is. It's kind of like Airbnb. We use them and so we don't have, you know, like we're insured through hip camp for the campers that come to our property. We're insured like similar to what Airbnb does, but it's for landowners.
11:04Most of the, some of them are even landowners where people don't live on the land and they, they do hip camp it out. Huh. I'd never heard of this. This is very cool. We, it's pretty fun. You should look it up. There's probably some around you that you don't even know about. I bet there are. I'm in Minnesota. I would bet my ass. There's probably some here. We have a cute little old like teardrop, not teardrop, but bigger than a teardrop trailer.
11:33that our kids use when they come to visit in the summertime, they sleep out there and it's in pretty good shape. I bet we could do a hip camp at our place with that trailer. I bet that would be really fun. You probably totally could. Yeah. It's fun. Like I'm one of the ones that's near us that they offer baked breads to their campers, which is kind of cool because they're like a bakery. We don't do that because we're not really doing the bakery stuff, but I think that's so fun.
12:03And there's lots of different kinds of hip camps. It's very interesting. And there are some where they do like, you can do a cabin or a building or a camper or something like that, like glamping type stuff too. It's not just tent camping. And we do have sometimes we have, I think some of the funnest visitors we've had are ones that were just driving through and they needed a place to stay for the night. We get that too with hip camps.
12:35Nice. So you meet all kinds of different people. Oh yeah, yeah. We've had some really fun and we haven't, I mean we've, we haven't had a ton of visitors but we've had enough that I can say we've had a lot of fun interesting mix of visitors and most of them have been really pleasant too. I would say we've only had like one or two that weren't too great but our backyard's kind of creepy and I think they got a little creeped out.
13:03Okay. All right. So my next question is you have a son named Max, is that right? Yes, we do. And he does videos on YouTube? Yes, Max does. And Max actually said, can I talk to you? So if you ever want to talk to Max, Max would talk to you as well. He loves the homesteading life. Like he's super, super into it.
13:34I would love to talk to Max sometime, maybe in January we can figure out a time to do that. That would be fun. How old is Max? You would enjoy it. Max is till he'll be 13 in January. We have other kids too and they're there, but Max is super into it. Super into it. Yeah. I will have to, I will have to have you and Max talk to me and we'll schedule a time and Max and I can have a chat. I've never talked to a kid as the interviewee.
14:03on my podcast yet. If you're okay with that, that would be really fun. I am so okay with it. And you will love talking to Max because he loves to talk about it to everyone that he can. And he loves to brag about his, you know, 4-H turkeys and everything that he's got going on. He's the vice president of a 4-H club and he's super proud of that. And he'll really enjoy talking to you.
14:30I am so excited. Please talk to Max tomorrow and ask him if he would be kind enough to chat with me in January and we'll set up a date. I think that would be so freaking fun. That was good. Okay. So, my next question is how did you guys get into this?
14:52Well, we started with that first round of chickens and we were living in, we had three acres and we figured we had plenty of room to do what we were doing. And we were on the edge of an HOA and part of an HOA that shared a lake. And when we bought the house, there was a little tiny itty bitty chicken coop next to it and the realtor told us to get chickens and we asked the HOA for their.
15:18list of rules and they never provided them to us before buying the house or after buying the house. But a couple years in we had put up a garage and I guess it wasn't allowed to face the road and be seen from the road. And so they sent us a letter and in that letter they mentioned our chickens. So I was kind of like, I don't know what should we do? And we both kind of thought maybe we should.
15:47At the time, the market in that area for housing was really good. And we thought maybe we could sell our house and get more land. Uh huh. Yeah, that's what we did. We did a crazy choice. We're just going to leave it all. Because you know what? It's not worth fighting the HOA all the time. And, and we were like, we're going to build up higher than this than what we already have and we're not going to stop. Yeah. And then when we came here, they took us to see the property. Like we came here and it was the son of the.
16:16the parents that had owned the property, one of the sons, and he met us out front and took us out back to see the property, not the house, the property first. And we were kind of like ready for it, you know, like we didn't even need to see the house. We're like, we can live here. It's all good. Because we just fell in love with it. And we had to sell our house within a week to make the deal. Oh. And then we had like two days to move.
16:45Yeah, it was insane. Wow. It was an insane week. That's a lot. Yeah. That's a lot. Not leaving the house to let showings happen and not knowing where we're going to be. And it was a very long, a few weeks that we were moving and getting things situated and chaos involved in that and unpacking. And you know what? I still want to try to, you know, even if they would have allowed us to do what we did, it was a lot.
17:13it wouldn't have been enough for us. We get a sense of fulfillment doing what we're doing and I would have wanted to stop them. We knew we wanted to go further than chickens. And when they said something about the chickens, we couldn't, we just, we knew it was, you know, if we could do it, if we could make it work, we should and we did. And now we're like, no, working on it all the time. Oh yeah, we just had to put a fence up to block the doors for the garage before we moved out as well.
17:41Yeah, so you couldn't see it from a road. So we had like two weeks notice to put up a fence and get all these things in line and it was chaotic. Uh huh. Yeah, we had a fence in Soho before we could move too. I forgot about that. Yeah, that was really cool. That was insane. Yeah, the HOA was going to put a lean on our house so that we couldn't sell it if we didn't put up a fence. Huh. And the fence is four feet tall.
18:08because there was a hill in front of the garage and you could only see the very top of the garage anyways from the road. So the fence only needed to be four feet tall so that you couldn't see the top of the garage. And 140 foot wide. So it's much bigger than a 8 by 10 garage door. I'm like, I don't understand it. But if this makes you happy and I have in writing, we'll do it. I don't really care as long as we can move on. Right and get out. Uh huh.
18:34Yeah, we told us the HOA was just to take care of the lake that was connected to the property. So we believed them Okay, two things you were like no clucking way am I giving up my chickens and number two HOA's are ridiculous. I I have never lived anywhere where I had to deal with that, but my mother-in-law did and She was told that she could not have like a raised bed
19:04outside of her little home. She could have patio bucket tomatoes, you know, because you can move those, but she couldn't put in a small raised bed because once you put in a small raised bed, that's where it stays. And she was very frustrated with that. And that's not the same as being told that you can't have your garage so that it can be seen from the street.
19:32We can't move the garage if you wanted to, to make it face the other way. Because there's not enough width of land. If we could make it at a like 90 degree angle, we could just angle it a little. It's already a pre-hab metal building that was huge. It's like a four car garage. Yeah. I don't, I do not understand. Like I get that there need to be rules and regulations for some things, but sometimes I feel like HOAs just like find the most ridiculous nitpicky things.
20:02to be like, no, you can't have that, or no, you have to do it a certain way. And I'm like, what are they talking about? Across the road from that house was a giant field of the protected farmland. And in the back of that field, while we lived there, somebody put up a garage with four doors. So it's not like even we were in an area where there wasn't garages facing the road. And it was a septic transfer site behind that.
20:32Oh my god. It was ridiculous. And we had three acres. So, you know, it wasn't like a typical cookie cutter, H.O.A. It was. It was old farmland that was not being allowed to be used as farmland anymore. My boys would say they were redonkulous. Totally. Geez.
20:55Well, I'm glad that you got out from under that situation because you never would have been happy there. And you sound like you're really happy where you are. Yeah, we both were living in separate houses in separate cities when we bought the house with the HOA. We wanted to get a place between so that we could live together. So that was the solution. And it seemed like a really good one at the time because it was a good one.
21:23We didn't, you know, we were told that the HOA is just to take care of the lake. And like, I'm like all about conservation. So that sounded great. And yeah, we lived there for like two years and didn't have any problem until we started getting chickens and putting up a garage. We just had rabbits too there. Yeah, we did have rabbits there. They didn't know about that. Okay. Well, the rabbits were on the down low, so that's good.
21:52It's really interesting because back in the old days, hang on one second, back in the old days, people were all about community. You know, you knew your neighbors and your towns were small and everybody knew each other and they all helped each other out. And yes, there were disagreements between neighbors, but that happens. And then we got away from that and we spread out away from people.
22:23And now if you're going to be back to that sense of community with your neighbors close, it usually is too close or it's an HOA situation. And we do things like move away from towns outside of town to where our neighbors are like half a mile away so that we're not stuck in all those rules and regulations. And it's so backwards to me that if you want to be close with your neighbors and feel like you're part of a community.
22:52You have to abide by all these rules. It's just, it's so dumb to me. I don't know what happened. Well, the awesome thing is when we were moving day one, pretty much when we were moving our next door neighbor of our new, new place that we were living now, he came up to me and asked me, Hey, if there's anything you need, you can, if you need my trailer, you can have my trailer for now. Like anything you need, we'll help you out. We don't know him. We didn't know him before. And he was just a nice character. He's like,
23:22You need to borrow my truck. You can borrow my truck. He's just a nice older man. And, and you know what? We ended up needing his trailer. I'm like, I'm like, I wasn't sure how we're going to get our chicken coop over because we were just renting a big box truck and I'm like, I don't know how we're going to get this giant. So I have it on sleds type and it's eight foot by eight foot on the base. And then it's about 10 foot tall. And I'm like, I don't know how we're going to move it. I'm like, it's.
23:50It was kind of wet in the backyard and stuff. I don't know how we're moving. And then he comes up to me and says, if you need anything, let's let me know. I was like, you know, I'll take that trailer for a day because I need to move a big old chicken coop. So we hooked me and a coworker of mine. We hooked it up to the trailer and we're taking this big giant chicken coop. All the way about an hour away from where we.
24:14we're living to our new house. From Cleveland to the North East corner of Ohio. Getting all kinds of looks because we're going down the side streets, not on the highway as much as we could, you know. And all kinds of looks. It was awesome, you know. Well, that's great that he was willing to help. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we have we've we've found a lot more community in the like you said, out here where there's less your neighbors aren't as close. But at the same time,
24:42It's been very interesting to see the different communities that we've lived in, because we've lived in so many different places. I lived in the area that we both graduated from, and he had lived in the city up in Cleveland. Then we moved to a more rural area, but then we still had the HOA in that rural area. That area is a completely different area from any of the other areas we've ever lived in.
25:12And where we live now is another whole, another world. It's really, really cool to see like, but at the same time, you're right. We're missing community in a lot of spaces. And it's hard because there's, there's definitely a divide in the country with people in general, and it's scary sometimes to see it. It really is. And I think the other thing that caused.
25:41people to, I don't know how to say this right, back in the old days you had the one room school house and kids walked like a mile to two miles to school or they had a buckboard and they had horses and they got rides to school. And then it ended up that we became these communities where kids went to a big school district and they rode school buses and your community was the parents of the kids that your kids went to school with.
26:10That's great while you have kids in school, but like I'm 55, my kids are grown. And so the friends that I make are friends that I meet out in the world. They're people I meet not with that immediate tie in to my kids with friends. And so making friends is hard. And every time I talk with a new person for the podcast, I'm like, I feel like I made a new friend today. That was great. And like,
26:38I'm never probably going to meet you guys, but I get my social stuff met with my podcast because I don't really go hang out with people very often. But when my kids were young, it really helped knowing my neighbors and having friends because you can't raise kids without other people in your life or you will go insane. That is so true. It's so true. So schools really help.
27:08Yeah, the schools, the schools help. Um, I've noticed like in our area, there's, there's a lot, we're really, really fortunate we haven't taken advantage of any of it yet, but there's a lot of art opportunities that I think would be good for kids too, and adults. There's a lot of, but yeah, it's hard. Cause I mean, I have a hard time making friends too. Cause I don't want to leave. I like being at home. Yep. It's not here. And I have all my stuff I need.
27:36Uh-huh. Yeah. And I have a smidge of social anxiety. So I really like where I live. I really like having people I trust come over and have coffee or a snack and hang out and talk. I don't love going out and meeting a bunch of strange people. It's not my favorite thing to do. That's one thing with hip camp that's been kind of cool too. We seem to get a lot of people that are nice. They're usually pretty pleasant. They have the same mindset. They are
28:04They care about the earth, you know, they leave no trace. And that's really, I can really appreciate people like that. We just, it's nice that we have the internet to make community because if it wasn't for the internet community, I'm not sure what we would have fully because that's where you can find all the information. That's where we've learned everything pretty much. You know, we obsessively research all the things that we need to know on the internet. We sure do.
28:34I love that you said leave no trace because I always translate that into my in my head to leave it better than you found it. And I like leave it better than you found it better than leave no trace because leaving no trace is easy but leaving it better than you found it requires something of you, you know? Mm hmm. Yeah, we're trying to figure out a way to make more community too of our hip camp. We're hopeful.
29:00We're slowly building, like, we would like to do like an online group, hopefully eventually where people might want to join so that they could possibly talk about their experiences here and if they wanted to add to things that or do things here, we would be okay with having help, you know, like, or having their creative whatever that they want to add.
29:28here. Like there's so many people that have come and had ideas and the like why no one took like a bunch of like sticks and made like a nice little area for their tent. And they were super proud of it. And it was really cool. And I was like, that's so awesome. We'd love to have more people that just want to leave it better like that, you know? Yeah. Yep. I think that's great. So what's the plan for the future in general? I mean,
29:58Right. We also have ducks, geese, and rabbits. Yeah. And are you are you growing gardens and stuff too? We are working on setting up the garden, the area where they used to have the garden before we even moved in. So it's been overgrown. We were trying to start it naturally where we didn't have, you know, anything to put down like any plastics or and stuff like that. But the land is really seeded there
30:27It has been difficult. So this winter or this fall, we've planted some winter rye to hopefully choke out anything that's in the land for now. And then next planting season, we'll probably be covering it to hope that we can get rid of the rest of the stuff within a year or two and hope to eventually get to that point where we can naturally grow our food.
30:56in the earth there without having anything added to it. We had a wonderful garden in our old house and we plan to have a wonderful one here eventually. We just have to amend the soil enough to the point where it can really flourish the way that we need it to. But we live now in this wonderful zone where it's very moist and I have inoculated logs with mushrooms and we have a wine cap bed full of that grows wine mushrooms.
31:26I've taken photos of so many mushrooms, I've lost track of how many and I obsessively research mushrooms almost daily. So we've got, you know, even our garden isn't growing like it used to with tomatoes and cucumbers, but we do have things growing in other ways. Fantastic. You have everything open to you at this point, because I get it.
31:54trying to grow stuff in a garden plot that hasn't had anything grown on it in forever, it's gonna take you a while to get the soil to where you want it to be. But you will be able to grow a really nice garden in a couple of years. So you will have animals, you will have produce, you will have the hip camp thing. You've got a little boy who's very into doing videos of all the homesteading stuff and you have other kids who are probably doing wonderful things too or will be as they get older. You guys are just set!
32:24for like miraculous fun times ahead. Right, I mean, you know, it's, yeah, it is. It's really fun. And we're hopeful that we can get things to go along. I mean, you know, we'll see. Like we've had some setbacks here and there that they're discouraging, but at the same time, they're usually a little bit empowering. Like, well, we can make it work even better if we just work, try a little harder, you know?
32:52Yeah, how could we make it better? And our top thing that we're trying to do is make everything sustainable. So chickens, they're going to make their own chickens, the pigs, they're going to make their own pigs. We don't want to have to continuously bring in more animals. We want to grow them out on our farm or homestead. Right. Like born here and bred here. And very nice.
33:18We really hope to be able to finish in here. We'd like to offer meat to people eventually. There's a lot of red tape with that. So we're not sure about how that's going to go about if we, you know, we have access because we're, if our pig has a lot of piglets, we're going to have to figure out where the rest of that meat's going because it might be more meat than we could handle. Bet it'll be easier than HOA rules. Right? Never getting the government systems.
33:48Yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm sure I'm not super worried with the larger animals. It's all just red tape with you know Taking to a proper butcher and do we don't take them off our property. We really want them to have their full life here That's why we struggle with that. Yeah, it's the struggle between What we feel is right versus what you know What we're allowed to do. Yeah in some states they allow you to to start the process on the property and then they take the carcass and
34:16you know, and they put it like in a cooler van and take it to the butcher shop. I don't think they do that here. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's how it is in Minnesota too. I'm not positive. Do not quote me. Um, I'm not, I'm not in the butcher business so I don't know, but yes, definitely do your research and do it right. And that way, that way you don't get hand slapped or at worst shut down because that would be terrible.
34:46We do it ourselves if we have to. Yeah, we can be a small animal producer with a little bit of red tape without having to take things places, but anything other than that, it's just a lot of navigation with the government. Yes, and funding. We've got to fund ourselves. Yes, and on that note, have you guys looked into grants? Because grants are a wonderful thing too.
35:13We had someone come out here from Ash Jabila's Soil and Water District. They have a free program with most of the, like I think with most local governments, there's like a free program that's offered by the government to help you out with determining how to handle your property and stuff like that. But she offered us a lot of good help. She talked about
35:42a few grants that we might qualify for like, with the USDA, there's like some type of forest pasture raised program that we have to look in that we can look into and rotational grazing and stuff. And other than that, like a forestry program, if we wanted to set up a program with the forestry divisions.
36:12to harvest our trees every so many years, which I don't, we're not really entertaining that idea, but it can lead to tax write-offs and stuff like that for your property. We're just learning about everything really. We're trying and no, we haven't had any grants, but we're, I know there's a few different ones out there that, and we're finding, we're finding what we can. You hear anything about any of them, let us know.
36:39I absolutely will because it's really important for people who are just starting out because this lifestyle costs money. Who knew? It's not just you just buy a piece of property and go crazy because you can't. You don't have the funds to do it unless you start out rich and not very many people start out rich and then buy property. It's not how that works. So the grants can come in really handy.
37:09There are also loans that you can get that are lower interest rate things because you're homesteaders. And I don't know if Ohio has them, but Minnesota has them. And I don't want to take out any loans, so I'm not looking into that, but it's another option for people. So anyway, we've been talking for 37 minutes, you guys. I'm excited that you spent that time with me tonight on a Friday night.
37:36And I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you for documenting homesteaders. It's really a cool thing you're doing. I am trying. I am trying so hard. You keep us going. Yes, exactly. Your own little community. And it's awesome. It's so cool. Thank you. Thanks. You too. And thanks for having us. All right. Bye.
 

Rising Phoenix Community Farm

Today I'm talking with Heather-Marie and John at Rising Phoenix Community Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Heather Marie and John at Rising Phoenix Community Farm. How are you guys? Good. Thank you. Yep. Great. How are you? I'm good. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota. Yeah. We have snow up here.
00:28We got a little bit overnight and I didn't know it was going to snow. We got like an inch in Lasur. What'd you guys get? We didn't get any last night, but it was maybe a week ago and we have maybe two winches, something like that. And you're light. Yeah. And you're in Barnum. Is that right? Yes. Half hour south of Duluth. Oh, so you're up in the really pretty country. It is pretty up here.
00:55Okay, well, tell me about yourselves and what you guys do. Yeah, I started the farm in 2011 and I didn't own land and proceeded over the next 10 years to move five times. And yep, I just leased land and so kind of moved from place to place. Also during that time, I built a tiny house. So it's a little house on wheels.
01:25and that got moved around so at least I had a place to live. In 2011, I started a very small CSA. It was just me. Then John and I met in 2018. Then in 2020, we bought our farm and have had a permanent place since then. We do flowers and veggies and we have a 56-member CSA.
01:57Very nice. And I'm so glad you found your permanent farm. Because I sort of do understand when we, back in 2019, I think, the summer of 2019, or summer 2020, a friend of ours said, do you guys want to grow a garden over at my place? Because we didn't have the room. And they had 24 acres and she had a perfect spot for a big old garden, but she didn't want to.
02:25She didn't want to do a garden, but she knew we did want to. And so we took her up on her offer and that went really well until they decided that they were going to go ahead and get their pole barn built and the contracting company decided that the best place to put the pole barn was right beside where the garden was, which meant it would be shaded out completely the next year.
02:47And that's part of the reason we actually bought our place in 2020, in August of 2020, because we were like, the only way we're ever going to have a big garden is if we actually move somewhere where we have some land. So I do feel your pain on this. And I'm really excited that you found a place that you don't have to move again from. Yes. Yeah, we are very excited about it as well. Yeah, it's gone. It's gone well. I think we were really lucky. We started looking in early 2020, you know, in the middle of the lockdown and
03:15We didn't have anything else to do. Looking for land. And, um, this farm was, uh, in the same family for four generations. And, um, uh, one member of that family is still just down the road from us. And, uh, you know, we, we actually got married on our farm the year after we bought it in 2022 and, and members of the, of the Johnson family, who, who, you know, whose family goes back a few generations on this land. We're actually at the wedding. So.
03:44It's pretty fun to have these connections to the land. And of course they go further back than that. And we can talk more about that if you want it to. I do want to, but I also want to say how sweet is it that you got to get married on your land? That's amazing. Yeah. That was pretty, pretty special and everybody gathered here and, um, yeah, it was, it was pretty great. Awesome. All right. So tell me, tell me more about the land that you bought. Yeah. So it's, it's a 40, it's a 40 acre farm and, uh, it's.
04:14You know, we were looking for, I guess, you know, everybody's looking for that perfect piece of land, but we like some of its imperfections too. It's on some rolling hills. It's on a busier road than we would like, but that's good for us because we are able to have a rather than go to farmers markets, we sell a lot of our produce on Fridays at a farm stand here on the property. So that's been great. And we've in the process got to know our neighbors. And that's also how we
04:42kind of opened the door to new customers. And then, yeah, going back further, we're also trying to learn more about the pre-colonial history of this land and the indigenous history of the land. And we've learned some things. We're really lucky that we are just down the road from the Fond du Lac reservation and have actually been able to grow some produce for a CSA program that they have as well. So sort of making those connections slowly has been fun also. Awesome.
05:12I love it. I'm like a big history buff. I wasn't when I was in school. I hated social studies. I hated history classes because it was just dates and names. But when I started getting into historical fiction and then into historical books that weren't fiction, I was like, oh, this is where all the stories live. Yeah. Yeah. So it's really great when you can find out actual stories of what really happened around you and in your family. Yeah.
05:42Yeah, that's really important. It is. And I, I kept telling my parents when I would come home from school that I just really didn't like my history classes. And my dad laughed and said, they're not teaching you history stories. They're teaching you facts. He said, wait until you discover some books about history and you start reading about it on your own and educating yourself, you're going to love it. And he was not wrong.
06:11So history is amazing as long as you can get the actual stories that go with the names and the dates. Yeah, it's true. And we're fortunate, among other things, I'm a journalism professor up at the University of Minnesota Duluth. And so I write an occasional column for our local independently owned newspaper. And the editor there recommended a book to me, and it's called North Country, The Making of Minnesota.
06:41It's written by, I think, a history professor at St. Cloud State, and I really recommend it to people. It tells the indigenous perspective and the indigenous story in a really strong way. And it's just a really, I started it last winter and I'll pick it up again this winter. It's really, really, I recommend it to anybody learning, interested in that history. I will have to find it. One more thing on history and then we'll get to the other stuff you guys do.
07:09I live in LaSore. Like I said, we moved to LaSore in 2020 and I knew nothing about this area. We were living in Jordan before that. And there is a history center in St. Peter, which is the town south of us. And apparently we don't live more than 10 miles from where all the Sioux Indians were marched through Minnesota.
07:35I had read a little bit about that, but I went to this museum and I was like, man, people still suck, but they sucked then too. Because what happened to those Native Americans is just reprehensible and it makes me crazy. And so I went to this museum with my kid who was, I don't know, probably 18, 19 at the time.
08:03And he was very taken with all the farming stuff that they talked about at the museum. And I'm standing there with tears in my eyes and he's like, what's wrong? And I said, you need to read this thing too. And he read it and he was like, oh man. He said, why do we have to be so sucky as human beings? Yeah. It's, it's, it's remarkable. And this book really does a good job in getting into that history and the complexities of even like the treaties and the money that was involved in those.
08:32Yeah, there's some unbelievable stories and like you say, unfortunately history classes maybe don't give us all the perspectives. No, they do not. They get whitewashed a lot and that's unfortunate because I think that we should learn from our mistakes in history and a lot of the times we just keep doing the same things over and over again. So that's all I have to say about that because we're gonna go down a rabbit hole that's gonna be way too deep. So did I see...
09:00Heather, did you make prints as well? Yeah, yeah. I had gone back to school thinking I wanted to teach art and then did not end up teaching. But yeah, I have an art degree. And in the wintertime, I've been trying to kind of dive back into the art world. And so yeah, I do linoleum block prints. And it's the first time we've put them
09:29on our website this year and so we have them up on the website for sale and I do a little fiber and some jewelry as well. So yeah, it's nice to have the winter time to do some of those things. Use a different part of my brain. Yes. The linoleum, lock prints are super fun. I did that in an art class in high school. Yeah.
09:56The chisels that we use, I was just so impressed with how that all works. Yeah. And I don't remember what the print was that I did. It was a very long time ago. But our art teacher was fantastic and she was like, so now that you carved out all this stuff, here's how it's going to work. And she's a little ink over it. We're going to lay it flat on a piece of paper and press it. And the pieces that aren't carved out are going to make a design on the paper. And I was like, oh. And
10:24We had some really talented kids in our class and there were some very nice prints that came out of that. And a few of us traded, you know, we made more copies and we traded and I had three or four of my friends prints framed and hanging in my room because they were so beautiful. Wow. It's a really, I don't want to say it's an easy art form, but it's really fun to do. Yeah, for sure. And it's...
10:52I've done some other printmaking too where it's called etching, but you have to have an acid bath and there's a little bit more of an up cost. Linoleum printmaking can get very complicated and the prints that people make can be quite big. But it is at least an art medium that you can do at home with not too many parts and
11:21up costs and stuff. So it is nice to be able to do that at home. Yeah, and there's something really satisfying in the actual carving out the design I found. I thought that was very relaxing. And no lie, I screwed up the first one. I pushed too hard with the chisel tool and ruined it. And I went to my art teacher and I was like, I think I screwed it up. And she said, yep, you did. She said, you got to go easier.
11:50you know, don't press quite so hard. She said, and here's a brand new piece, start again. She said, you got a good thing going, do it again. And so I wasn't intimidated by it because she was very kind about the fact that everyone makes mistakes when they're doing something new. Yeah, yep, for sure, yeah. I think that's one of the great things about art is that there's some good lessons in there. Yep, patience and everybody makes mistakes and.
12:18the wonder of it when it comes out right and comes out better than you even thought it was going to be. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. It can be pretty satisfying. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to touch on the fact that you do those because my podcast is all about people is also about people who craft. And I was like, Oh, she's gardening and she's a crafter. I got a two for one today. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll brag about Heather Marie a little bit more too. She's really
12:46taken her art and her design skills and abilities with flowers, both live or fresh cut flowers and doing arrangements there. But then then she dries flowers, I'll let you talk about it. And it's done some amazing stuff with dried flower arrangements and wreaths. And they've her and a woman named Christina who works with us on the farm. I've done some workshops and are planning more things along those along those lines as well. Yeah.
13:15Yeah, I added flowers. I think I grew some flowers like in the very beginning and then added a few things over time, but it hasn't been since being at this location that I've dove really more into flowers and bouquets and, um, and yeah, I think it sort of uses the same side of my brain as art. And, and, uh, and so it's sort of nice to have that.
13:41of my brain being used during the summer, otherwise it wouldn't be. And so flowers have sort of allowed me to be artistic and creative while also, you know, kind of expanding our offerings for the farm. Yes. Do you cook too? We do. That's where John excels. John is an amazing cook and a great photographer and great writer. And so, yeah, we both have kind of artistic ways.
14:10you know, things that we do artistically differently. Yeah, cooking, cooking brings out that same part of my brain that that doing painting or, or, I don't know, crocheting or any kind of art form does. Yeah, yeah, we've had, you know, one of the things we do with our weekly CSA, and I guess just for people who aren't familiar with them, but a CSA is, is it basically a vegetable subscription, right? And you sign up at the beginning of the season for either a full or a half share and you get weekly.
14:39boxes of produce. And so with that, we put out a newsletter and include lots of different recipes in there. And it's really fun to experiment and we try and encourage our members to share, you know, how they've prepared the vegetables as well. And just to get people excited about eating things they're not completely familiar with and to eat seasonally. And then this this time of year, you know, our CSA is done, but we've got lots of
15:08our freezers and our walking cooler and our cupboards are filled with produce that we've either pickled or canned or frozen and put up. And so this is the first year we're actually experimenting a little bit with making our own kimchi and sauerkraut and pickles and selling some of those on a really small scales right now, but hoping to expand that side of things as well. But our main goal is to feed ourselves over the winter months. And that's gone well.
15:38Yes, and I don't want to forget about this, so I'm going to ask now, can people, I don't know how to ask this the right way, if somebody wants to buy a subscription to the CSA for someone as a gift, like for a Christmas present for next summer, can they do that? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, this time of year is, you know, going into winter is sort of, you know, a time for many farmers where they're not getting any income.
16:06And so I know other farmers do this as well. And so we are doing it this year as well, where we're sort of offering some things for Christmas gifts for birthday gifts. So block prints, we are we put up our flower subscription for next year. So we have a full share option, and then a punch card option. And so yeah, those those gifts can be can be those shares can be
16:36for Christmas, for gifts. Awesome, do you let people know that? Because if you don't, you should be. Oh yeah, yep, yep, we actually just launched it. So we sent it out on our, we have a mailing list of not only our CSA members, but other people who have signed up for it, whether it's from our farm stand or elsewhere. And then, yeah, on our social media, we posted it there as well. Good, I can't tell you how thrilled I would have been.
17:0515, 20 years ago, if somebody had bought me a CSA subscription as a Christmas present, I would have been tickled. Now, not so much because we grow our own garden and we did offer a CSA for a couple of years. And so now probably wouldn't be as impressed with getting a CSA subscription for Christmas because I don't need it. But oh man, 15 years ago, I would love that. And speaking of preserving things.
17:34I literally just got a black garlic cooker machine thing in the mail today that I ordered because I tried black garlic a couple years back. That was already made and I love it. It's so yummy. And I was talking to a guy who makes it and he was telling me the best way to do it is to actually get a black garlic fermenter slash cooker and just do it that way. So I'm going to be trying my hand at making my own black garlic here in the next two weeks.
18:03Oh, that sounds fun. Yeah, we grow quite a bit of garlic and sell it raw and then look for other ways to preserve it as well. But we have not gone down the black garlic route yet, but I've heard good things about it. I don't think I've even actually tried it, to be honest. We did. We haven't? It's all like Sydney when we were visiting. But yeah, maybe. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. It's really yummy. It's like candy.
18:28the way that we had it was in some kind of marinade or something. It was through one of the meal places where you order the ingredients for food and it gets shipped to you and you make the recipe. And I had never heard of black garlic before and I was like, hmm, I don't know about this, you know, and tried it. And it's sort of like garlic, but it's like a
18:56It's sweet, but it also is garlicky. It's really yummy. Does it, uh, is it shelf stable or how do you preserve it once you make it? Um, in the fridge, it's good for six months in a, in a, in a glass jar with a screw in lid and think it's shelf stable for like a month. If you just have it in a jar with an airtight lid on the counter, I think right about today. So, well, another, uh, um,
19:23way that we like to preserve garlic is somebody recommended it to us who came to our farmstand. It's a Lebanese garlic sauce. I'm sure I'm saying it wrong, but it's called Tuome. I think it's T-U-O-M-E. It's very simple. It's just you make a paste with kosher salt and the garlic in the food processor. Then you just slowly drizzle in a neutral oil and some
19:53but just a wonderful way to slather garlic all over everything. Yeah, it's sort of a fluffy cloud of garlic. And that'll keep well too. I've read that keeps four to six months. We don't know because usually when we make it, it's gone in about two weeks. But yeah. I bet it's good on garlic bread. Oh, it'd be great. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. We dipped it with we had that just fresh veggies at Thanksgiving and dipped it in that. Nice. So it's sort of like a garlic hummus idea.
20:21Sort of. Yeah, it's very strong. Yeah, yeah. The texture is very similar. Okay. Awesome. I might have to try that. Yeah. See, this is part of the reason I love having these conversations with you and everybody else I've talked to because I keep getting all these new ideas to try because homesteaders and farmers are nothing if they're not innovative. Yep. Yeah, that's part of the fun of it all, right? Is trying to learn new things and think about different fun ways to feed yourself and to feed others as well.
20:50Yes, and I actually love the feeding others more than I love feeding myself. My husband goes to the farmer's market because I have social anxiety, so I don't like being around a lot of people in person. But I'm so excited when he comes home and tells me about all the stories that people tell him about what they're doing with the food that we grow. It's really fun. Yeah, that's one of our favorite things.
21:16like it is a lot of work. You got to get to put your extrovert hat on for a little while during our Friday farm stands. It can get really crowded and people just love to stop and visit and they'll talk about how they cook something or what they've made. And it feels really good. You know, this is historically a farming community, but a lot of the farms are no longer active. And so people are really excited to see us and other farmers coming into the area and and and you know, rediscovering
21:45local foods and things like that. So it's really cool to talk about the history of the land and the ways to prepare the different food and all of that is just, I don't know, it's really rewarding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. We had a guy come screaming into our driveway the first summer we were here. We were outside working in the garden and he pulled into the driveway really fast and he stopped and parked and I was like, who is this? Because we didn't know anybody. And
22:14He was like, I'm sorry. He said, I was just so excited to see somebody working in the garden. And I said, okay, hi, who are you? And he said, well, he said, I'm so and so, and my dad used to own this place. And my shoulders came down and I went, oh, please tell me about it. And come to find out there used to be an old actual barn, like a barn raised barn, like there was a barn raising to build the barn. Yeah.
22:43on our property, it's no longer here. And he told us about that. And he said that the last time anything had been grown where our garden was, was 40 years ago. And it was a pumpkin garden. That's all that was grown here. Wow. But you've got some pretty good soil down there, I would guess. We do accept that there's a bunch of clay underneath about, underneath about 12 inches of really good black dirt. It's clay. So this spring when it rained and rained and rained, our garden was soup.
23:12because there was nowhere for the water to go. Yes. So it was a very rough growing season this summer. We were very happy to see the summer be over and we're keeping everything we've got crossed that next summer is better. Sure, yeah, yep, we hear that. But it's really weird here because we live on a busy road too. And so we have a farm stand and people come in in the summer and buy whatever we have in the farm stand. And...
23:42That farm stand went up two summers ago. And two summers ago, we had people pulling in the driveway at least 12 to 14 times a day just to see what we had in the farm stand. And we have a dog that is a very good watchdog and she barks at everything that pulls in the driveway. So needless to say, two summers ago, it was very noisy here from mid-June until September. Sure. Do you do a self-service stand? Yes.
24:11Yeah. Okay. Yep. We do. We limit ours at the moment. We'll see how things have progressed here. But right now we just have it on Fridays in the afternoon. And so we spend, you know, we spend that whole morning harvesting for the farm stand. So it's, but we do hear from people who would like, you know, like to be able to pick up at other times, but some of our you know, some of our regular customers who work out relationships with and
24:39So if they need something, they know that they can just reach out to us and we'll get an order together for them. Awesome. Do you guys have like a cooler in your farm stand for stuff that needs like the leafy greens and stuff or just you just have stuff out? Yeah, I mean, we have we have a we. We we built a walk-in cooler in our barn and that's I don't know 15 by 8, something like that.
25:08And so everything gets harvested, washed, packed, and put in there. It kept cool. Oh, sorry. Okay. And then we put things just in coolers to have over at the farm stand, but we have tables and put everything out onto those tables. And so yes, the coolers are over there, but it's not like people are going in and out of the coolers. Okay. We don't have one.
25:35And so we're trying to figure out the best way to make that happen because the leafy greens are okay for the most part until the end of July and most of August. And then we're like, maybe we don't cut them and put them in the farm stand. Maybe we just wait and see if somebody wants them. We cut them when they come. Sure. Yeah. I know some people have used, have made like a walk-in cooler in a covered trailer.
26:05and sort of, and then it can kind of be moved closer to the farm stand. My goodness, I'm so sorry. He keeps turning it off and it just keeps coming back on. And then I know some people who have just like bought coolers and have them at their farm stand, kind of like the fancy glass ones, like big refrigerators. I think if we...
26:29eventually do a second day for our farm stand. We thought about doing like a, like we're here on a Friday, but then it's self-serve on a Saturday. We've thought about getting an actual like refrigerator so that some of those things can just, like you say, it just, they stay cool to a certain point and then they just don't look so great. Yeah. Wilted lettuce is gross looking and you're never going to make it come back to the way it looked when you picked it. It just doesn't work. Yep. Yep. For sure.
27:00Okay, well, my last question, because we're almost at 30 minutes, and I feel like we didn't really do any talking or anything substantial, but I'm sure that we did. I just, I get sidetracked by things that come up and I'm like, oh, what did I actually wanna ask them? You sound very happy. Are you very happy doing what you're doing? I mean, I guess it depends on when you ask us. If you ask us.
27:25mid-August when it's hot and everything is taking takeover by weeds. But yeah, I think we do love what we do and yes, it's a ton of work and we don't make a lot of money, but we know that we are providing food for ourselves. We're providing food for our local community with just within a 10-mile radius.
27:50Um, and then, you know, Duluth is sort of our biggest town nearby and, and we're bringing food into Duluth as well. So knowing that we're feeding people and making people happy and, and contributing to our community, I think is, is pretty great. And we get to play outside. Um, and, uh, and that's pretty great too. So, but it, you know, I think it's easy to romanticize owning a farm and growing vegetables and all of that. And if you just listen to our half hour discussion, it sounds like we're just.
28:19having a blast and making food, but it's, it's, it's unbelievably hard work, as you know, and, you know, during the summer months, I mean, if the sun's up, we're probably working and as we age, that's going to get harder. But it's, you know, there's a high burnout we have, you know, up here, there's a strong local farming community and CSA members and people who sell at market and things like that, and people who are choosing to live a similar kind of life.
28:48there's a lot of burnout and a lot of turnover. And I think, you know, it's, it's, if we didn't have off farm income, we wouldn't be able to make it. I think people need to remember that. I think it's, it's incredibly rewarding. And, and, and it's wonderful to, you know, both work hard physically, but also learn so much about the land and the soil and, and all of those things. But it is, it's tough. It's definitely, it's definitely tough. And there's
29:14days where one of us is having a meltdown, it's never good when we both have a meltdown on the same day. We try and alternate having a meltdown. Absolutely. With the way our summer went, it was so sad and so frustrating. And I had a couple of days back at the end of July when my husband was at work and I was like, maybe we made a mistake.
29:38Maybe we should have just stayed in the little house in Jordan in town and just had our little backyard garden and called it good because this is really frustrating. Yeah, it's crazy. Like each year, you know, like, like you last year, we had some really heavy rains at the beginning of the season and we had one rain event right after we planted potatoes that just flooded out that entire bed. We pretty much lost 70 to 80% of our potato plantings, which is really big loss for us. Yeah.
30:06For that, it was a drought, extreme critical drought, whatever the worst name they gave for that situation. And so, and I think that's just sort of the reality. Maybe it's always been the reality of farming, but with climate change and with everything that's happening, you sort of have to be on your toes and expect that every year is gonna be a little different and challenging in a different way. Yes, yes. And part of the reason this summer was so hard is because the first two summers we were here, it was...
30:35fantastic. We had the most beautiful, lush, producing or productive garden of the whole time we've been gardening, which is like 20 years now off and on. And so we got spoiled. And then the summer it was like, oh, this is the year of the suck. Okay. We have to not expect it to be amazing every year. But I was expecting it to be amazing. So it was really discouraging.
31:04I took two days to be kind of down about it and really think about it. And I looked around our property and I looked at my gorgeous dog. We would not have a dog if we hadn't moved because she is a barker and she would have barked all the time. And it wouldn't have been fair to her to live where we used to live. So I was like, okay, we have this beautiful three acre place. We have a nice home. We have a great dog and we have the potential for the weather to not be terrible next year.
31:31I think we made the right decision and I was fine. But you will have days where you will be like, Oh my God, did we make a mistake on this, whatever this thing is? Yeah, for sure. Yep. That's just the reality of farming. Mm hmm. Yep. But in the meantime, when it goes really well, it's really good. It's really fun. It's satisfying. It's exciting. It's, it's a character building at, at worst, really. Yeah.
32:01So I just want to say that because I don't like ending my podcast episodes on a downer. Yeah, for sure. You know, I think you asked the question, like, do we sound happy? And we are, but I think, you know, like, happiness can be hard, right? Like part of, you know, part of being happy is to have something that's challenging and that you have to push yourself to do and then to fight through those things and realize that, you know, maybe not everybody would choose this lifestyle. It is really rewarding. It really truly is.
32:31I agree and that's why we're still doing it and it's why you're still doing it. And as a total happy note on the end, I was so excited for you guys that you found a place to be, to not have to move every year because it has to be hard. So congratulations on finding your forever farm. Thank you, you too. All right. Thank you guys for your time. I really appreciate it and you have a great day. Thank you. Yep, you too. Have a good rest of your year. Thanks.
33:01Take care.
 

Brotzler Farms

Today I'm talking with Kayla and Trent at Brotzler Farms.
"We are a sustainable family homestead. We have over 120 free range egg laying chickens, fresh sourdough, herbal remedies, a few goats, and we make pure Wisconsin maple syrup. We believe you should know where your food is coming from! Local!"
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 Kayla and Trent at Brotzler Farms, I think is the way I pronounce it. How are you guys? We're good. Thank you for having us. Did I pronounce it right? Yes, you did. Okay, good. All right. So tell me about yourselves and what you do.
00:29Well, we have a tiny little three acre homestead in Osceola. We moved there about three years ago now. And we kind of do a mixture of all sorts of things. We kind of started out with 20 chickens that were handed over to us from the old owners. Trent has been doing maple syrup for a good while now. And then I started into...
00:56herbal remedies and different concoctions that I make, gardening. And now we have, I don't even know how many chickens, over 100 chickens, three goats, and I do sourdough now. So we kind of dabble in a few things. I also was doing microgreens last year and that turned into a pretty decent sized little business that I was doing pretty much all by myself, but I stopped doing that just because it took.
01:24quite a bit of time, but everything else we're still doing. There's nothing prettier than a tray of microgreens, I swear to you. I know. They're so cool. So for the listeners that aren't Midwesterners, Osceola is in Wisconsin, just so everybody knows. Yes, Northwest Wisconsin. Okay. All right. So does Trent have anything he wants to throw into that description? She pretty much covered everything. As far as the maple syrup, I started in 2018 myself.
01:54My grandpa done it many decades ago, but I never, unfortunately, never met him. Um, so I kind of, I guess I picked up a little bit where he left off and I started with one tree, one tap and now I'm over about 150 taps. And we do about 40 gallons of syrup a year. So, and just kind of looking and expanding that every year. So it's going good. Wow. I love maple syrup. I'm not kidding you. We always have some in the fridge because.
02:23I can't do pancakes or waffles without it now. Without real maple syrup. The stuff that is manmade or factory made, forget it. I don't even have it anymore. Yeah, I was just saying that the other day. I'm ashamed to say that I was raised on the store bought stuff and I didn't, at first I didn't like real maple syrup and I started eating it more and I was like, wait a minute, how did I ever eat the fake stuff? That's how I was too. Yeah.
02:50I had no idea that maple syrup that was made from maple tree sap was so yummy. Right. And especially when you look at the medicinal properties of it too, I think that's one of the things that I'm kind of passionate about is looking at the nutritional value and the medicinal aspects of different foods and different plants and herbs and everything. And it's really cool to learn about. Yeah. Two of the things that will never be missing from my pantry is real maple syrup and honey because they both have such great...
03:20medicinal and nutritional qualities that I don't want to be without it. Yeah, absolutely. We've talked about getting honeybees too, so that's probably on the list eventually. Mm-hmm. It's a great thing to have, but I don't know if you've looked into it at all, but it's an expensive hobby. Yeah, my parents did it for many years, and my uncle did it for many years, so we have supplies and stuff to view it. But yeah, you're right. It is a lot of work, so that's kind of why I haven't done it yet. But it's something I'd like to at least try at least once.
03:49Yeah, the reason we haven't tried it is because number one, we don't have all the things yet, and it's expensive to acquire them. But I'm also afraid that we're going to kill the beehives by accident. I would be so sad if we got them and they just died over the winter. Oh yeah. So no, we're not doing bees. We're doing chickens. Chickens and barn cats, those are pretty much the only things we do right now. So yep.
04:16Okay, so I was looking at your Facebook page because I do my homework, and you had a post on there about ghost pipe mushrooms. And I had to go look them up because I thought they were poisonous, but they're not across the board poisonous. They're poisonous in certain ways. So can you tell me about that? Yeah, so ghost pipe, it's actually a flower, but they do generally grow amongst mushrooms.
04:44From what I understand, they kind of work synergistically with the fungus and the different bacteria in the ground. So that's why they grow amongst the mushrooms. But yeah, they're really cool looking flower. I'm sure you've seen them. They're like a translucent white color and they lack chlorophyll, which is why they're that color. And they are medicinal and they're usually used as like a sedative.
05:14for anxiety and pain. And so what I did is I harvested some this year and I tinctured them. You want to tincture them right away, right after you harvest them. So you'll put them in a jar of alcohol and then you let them sit for six to eight weeks and then you strain it and then you have your medicine. And it turns into a really nice like deep purple color. So I've sold...
05:39quite a bit of it already and people have been having really good results as far as sleep, anxiety, pain. I use it myself for just like muscular pain and anxiety, tension, whatever I need it for. Yeah, it's a really really cool plant and I'm glad I discovered it. A friend of mine I figured out has basically the jackpot growing in her five acres that she has so next year I'll be going up there to harvest some more.
06:06Yeah, I assume it grows in Minnesota, but I don't know for sure. I have not seen it in person. Yeah, you know what? It's crazy because I had never seen it either, but now that I know where and how to look for it, I found it everywhere and it's the coolest plant I've ever harvested. It's so cool. It doesn't look real. It looks like a toy that some kid left on the ground. Right, and even like the stalk of it is so, I don't know, it's like a sturdy little
06:35plant, but it's also kind of dainty. But you have to kind of harvest it sustainably too, because in some areas it can be endangered. I don't think it's considered endangered in our area, but you still want to harvest just a little bit from each little plot just so that it can regrow. Yes. And I'm going to do this because anytime we're talking about something that people aren't necessarily sure of, I always say this. If you're going to forage, make sure that you have done your research.
07:05And then if you're not positive, take someone with you who knows what it is that you're looking for and can identify it distinctly. Because I would never want anyone to go hunting for a mushroom or whatever and get the wrong thing and get hurt or die. And when I researched the ghost pipe thing.
07:27It says that you can eat it in small quantities and that it tastes sort of like asparagus. And I love asparagus. So I might have to go find them and try it. Yeah. I actually did eat one because I was like, oh, let's just see what it tastes like. And it did. It kind of did taste like asparagus. And it's, I don't know, it was kind of cool. And then from the herbal remedy books that I have, from what I've learned about it, you can't overdo it as far as the tincture. So I always give instructions when I sell it.
07:56Yeah, you just don't want to do too much. And that's really the same with any tinctures. Too much can be, you know, poisonous to an extent. So you got to be careful with it. Yeah, it's that everything in moderation situation that I keep hearing about every time I talk about things or learn about things. Okay, cool. And then the other thing I saw on your Facebook page was some kind of sprout that tastes like
08:25Oh, watermelon maybe. Oh, I wonder if was it the borage that tastes like cucumbers? Yeah. Yep. So that was the when I was doing microgreens. I did I have like, kind of my staple greens that I would grow like broccoli and radish and cabbage and those kind of things. But I would grow some specialty ones every once in a while and borage was one of them. And if you let them grow to maturity,
08:52I'm sure you've probably seen them before, but they have like a really pretty blue flower to them and they kind of have fuzzy leaves. But as a microgreen, you're just growing it to the true leaf stage and they just have those fuzzy little leaves. And yeah, they're kind of crunchy and they taste like cucumber. Well, I had no idea about that. But what I do know about borage, we grew it. We grew it a couple summers in a row. Those dainty little flowers will change color from year to year. And one year they'll be that lavendery purpley color.
09:21or blue. And then the next year they can be white. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't either. I was like, why is my borage on that, putting out white blooms? This is very strange. Interesting. But the other thing about the blossoms is if you want to get real fancy at a dinner party, you can put those blooms in ice cube trays in the water and they will freeze in ice cubes and it makes really pretty ice cubes. Yeah, that's a good idea. And you can eat the blossoms in salads.
09:50Yeah, for sure. I wanted to dabble in edible flowers, but I just didn't really get that far. But like nasturtium is another one that are edible flowers. If you've ever tried nasturtium, they're very like peppery. I did infused vinegar this year with them. We grow nasturtiums with our tomato plants because supposedly they repel insects, I guess. Oh, sure. Probably because they're peppery. Yeah. And marigolds, of course, grow. We grow those in the tomatoes too.
10:19Our tomato patch is the prettiest tomato patch on the planet every summer. So okay, so how did you guys get into this? What's your history on becoming homesteaders, farmers, whatever you want to call yourself? Man, it's kind of a compilation of things I feel like. I didn't grow up doing any of this stuff. I mean, I grew up on store-bought eggs, fake syrup.
10:47boxed foods, like I didn't grow up canning, gardening. I didn't even have pets growing up. My dad wouldn't even let us have pets. So this is a huge change for me. But Trent, he has much more of a history, a family history with gardening and crops and syrup and I don't know, why don't you talk about it? Trenton Larkin Yeah, I mean, we grew up in that country. So this is just, it's just kind of like normal for me. And I'm so like
11:16having a different lifestyle just doesn't really, I don't know, it doesn't really make, I don't wanna say it makes sense, but to me, just living out in the country, we're on well water, we had our own septic, my parents did the gardening, we had chores, we had to go snap beans, weed the garden, pick rock and all that stuff. So just living in the country, that was just the way of life. So I guess when we got this property, we...
11:45I always kind of wanted to do stuff like that and here we are. So that's kind of my background on that. Okay. And how long have you been doing this? Well, we've been in Nostia La at our property for three years. So we've kind of started back then. But I mean, before that, we lived kind of in a neighborhood northeast of Rochester, Minnesota. And we...
12:12started to dabble a little bit. We had a garden down there and Trent, like you said, what did you tap? Like one tree, one or two trees. And he was super proud of his tiny little jar of syrup, but that's how he practiced, you know. And now, I mean, you should see, I don't know if you've seen any of the pictures of his operation, but it's a whole ordeal. Yeah, he's got like lines running all through our woods to different collection points. He's got a really nice evaporator. I mean, he's got it pretty much dialed in now.
12:42Yes, and Trent, you should be very proud of that first little jar of maple syrup because every win is a win. It doesn't matter how tiny it is. Right. I still have it in our cupboard, so I don't think I'm ever going to open it. It's like the first money you make when you open a business. You have to take a copy of the check or the dollar bill or the $5 bill or whatever and frame it and put it somewhere so you can see it to remind you of the beginning.
13:09Yeah, I know he started out with like this tiny little pot. I don't even, it was tiny. Yeah, I just did it on our stove in our kitchen and yeah, it was a tiny little pot. It just really made just a little bit, just to try. And then a couple of years ago, we drove to almost Green Bay in the Green Bay area to pick up his evaporator from, what was it called? Smokey Lake Maple. We're by Green Bay, yeah. Okay. Cake every win. Every win.
13:38every win just gives you the fortitude to keep moving forward. I think. I think so too, yeah. We've just been learning so much throughout the years and a lot of trial and error. Not everything's gone perfect, obviously, but it's been fun. And we're teaching our kids, you know, we have three kids, ages one, three, and five, and they're still pretty little, but they kind of help with different things and they enjoy all the things that we add. And they like...
14:07planting their seeds in the garden and visiting the goats and helping get the eggs and whatnot. Yeah, it's a wonderful way to raise children. And it gives you guys so many opportunities to spend time with them and bond with them. The connections you are making are forever. Absolutely, yeah. And I enjoy it especially myself just because, like I said, I didn't grow up with a lot of this stuff.
14:36to see them grow up with it. Like, it's just normal, it's awesome. I mean, I go outside and we look at plants and I tell my son, I'm like, that's mullin, that's the mullin plant, if you know what that is. And that's medicine, you know? And so he knows now, he's like, that's medicine. So he's just gonna grow up learning that plants are medicine and whatnot, so. Yeah, I don't think that kids need to associate the coroner pharmacy with medicine. I think associating. Exactly.
15:03plants growing on their property is probably the more, I don't know, not appropriate, but better association. Yeah. I mean, there's a time and place for everything, but definitely like herbal medicine is just, it's very effective if you know how to use it correctly. Absolutely. You were saying you have a bunch of chickens. We got rid of our chickens over a month ago because they were basically slowing down and not earning their keep.
15:31And so my husband was like, we'll just buy eggs over the winter and we'll get new chickens in the spring. I was like, okay. And so we've bought maybe a couple dozen of store bought eggs in the last month. And I hate them. It's the worst. It really is. You can never go back after you've had fresh eggs. Yes. Luckily we just acquired like five or six dozen of actual real chicken eggs from real chickens that people own. And I said,
16:01I said, I'm going to make some egg salad this week because I really want egg salad sandwiches and I don't want store bought eggs to make them like that. I know. Yeah, it's just not the same. It's insane. I know. I sell egg, well, we both sell eggs to our coworkers at work as well. And they always, you know, a lot of them have never had farm fresh eggs they've only bought from the store. And when they eat them for the first time and crack them open, they're like, wow, these are way different than the store.
16:29And they're the same price nowadays, really. Yeah, I was so mad. I made two butternut squash pies on Wednesday, I think, this week, this past week. And I used a whisk, I used a spoon, I stirred it by hand, the filling, and I used store-bought eggs. And when my pies came out of the oven, I was like, that's not right.
16:53And all through my pies, there's little tiny pockets of egg white that's just cooked egg white because it didn't mix in. That's crazy. I wonder if it's just because like what they can sit on the shelf, I think for what, 30 days? Yeah, the farmer has 30 days to move the eggs from farms to store and the store has 30 days to sell. So you could potentially get eggs that are 60 days old, which is not a gross to me. Yep. So I basically after those came out, I...
17:22tried the pie, it's fine. It doesn't taste bad. It's not going to kill anybody. But I said to my husband, I said, I need you to get hold of the lady from the farmer's market who sells eggs every summer and see if she has eggs. And we need to go get some every couple of weeks because this store bought egg thing is going to drive me into a bar. Yeah, I don't blame you. And I don't even drink. So he was like, really? You're going to drink? I was like, I'm, I'm.
17:47thinking real hard about it. If we don't get some real eggs in this house, he just laughed at me. Yeah, I know. So yeah, there's, I never really thought about it because we haven't had store-bought eggs in the house in over five years. So when he was like, we'll just get store-bought eggs. I was like, sure, that's not a problem. It is a problem. It's actually a problem. I didn't know what it is, but it is. So I'm testifying. Get some chicken and get your own eggs because it's way better.
18:16Yeah, definitely. They're not hard to take care of either. No. No, he just didn't want to have to be slipping and sliding to go feed him and water him this winter. He was like, I just had hernia surgery last year at this time. He said, I really don't want to have to be in the hospital over Christmas again. I was like, that would be good. Let's not do that. So there's all kinds of things that really are a benefit when you do it yourself. And... Yep.
18:45Chicken is one of them. And, and if we had room, beef would be one of them. I know. Yeah. Same are, are, I don't know. I don't even want to call it a five year plan, but sometime in the future, after our children are not in daycare and we're paying basically a second mortgage for daycare, we would like to, you know, buy more land and expand eventually, but that's, that's on the horizon at some point. And that's also something that.
19:15We have both never done is raise beef cattle at all. And we've raised meat, birds, meat, chickens. We did that, uh, what, two years ago now. That was pretty cool. Um, but Trent's mom, right? I think she was saying, I mean, they, that's all they grew up on is their own raised beef and raw milk and their own chickens and whatnot. So it's like, that stuff's only been lost over the last one or two generations. It's kind of sad. So there's a big comeback though. It's
19:44it's coming back. Yes. And for the listeners, if you're not in a position to have chickens or cows or steers or animals, just go support people who do have the resources to do that. And then you're supporting your local farmer, grower, and you're getting stuff that's good for you too. Yeah. And there really is a big difference. I mean, I've noticed, and I don't know, I've seen other people say the same thing, but
20:12Even the store bought chicken is just not the same. I don't know what's going on, but I bought some, and maybe I just got spoiled because we raised our own, I don't know, but I bought some and I made it and I was like, I can't even eat this. And our, we did 50 meat birds. We sold a lot of them. We split them up between like, um, Transparents and a bunch of our coworkers and stuff, but we kept about 20 for ourselves and it lasted us probably two years. I mean, that's a lot of chicken.
20:41Especially when our kids eat like mice because they're little. Yeah, just wait mom wait until I like 10 10 12 and 13 you won't be saying that anymore. I promise. I have four who are adults and they ate us out of the house and home for for many many years. So yeah, I'm waiting for that day. It's gonna be interesting time. Mm-hmm. All the reason to grow your own food really. Absolutely
21:09And can I give you a hint on getting them to try new stuff or are they good eaters? Oh, yeah. They're, yeah, it's hit or miss. Okay. The trick I learned with the last kid out of four, I wish I had known this trick at the beginning, is he was very, very curious about our food on our plates by the time he hit 10 months old. And I wasn't going to give him food off our plates that were seasoned because I didn't want to blow his little brain out of his mind.
21:37with new flavors, but by the time he hit about one and a half, he had had mashed bananas, he'd had applesauce, you know, the stuff that you do. And he reached into my plate and grabbed some green beans that had some mildly hot pepper powder on them and some salt. And I looked at my husband because I grabbed the kid's hand before he put it in his mouth. And I said, do you think it's okay? And he was like, yeah, what's the worst? Can you spit it out? And I was like, okay. So he tried it.
22:07And he was chewing it and he had that look on his face like, I have made a mistake. And I grabbed a napkin and I said, it's okay, you can spit it out. And I put the napkin over his face and he spit it out. And from that point on, I was like, food doesn't have to be a battle. And basically, as soon as he really could understand what I was telling him, I said, from now on, try everything. That way you know whether you like it or not. Give it an honest try.
22:33You have to taste it, you have to chew it a couple of times. If you don't like the taste, you don't like the texture, you can spit it into a napkin politely. Or if you're at home, you can walk right over to the garbage can and spit it out. I don't care, but just please try everything. This kid has the most, I don't know, curious palate on earth. And he loves to cook. And we went to a restaurant one time when he was probably 10.
23:03And of course they have the kids menu and the waitress was got to him and she was like, what would you like to eat? And he was like, I would like the stuffed tilapia with the, the whatever, the sides. And she said, are you sure? And looked at me and I didn't say anything. And she looked back at him and she said, she said, are you sure? And he was like, well, yes. He said, I like tilapia and I see what it's made with. And I like all those things. So, so yes, please. I would like that.
23:33And she looked at me again and I said, bring him the food. The worst thing that's gonna happen is we pay for it and you dump it in the trash. Oh my goodness, that's funny. And she brought it to the table and he dug in and she walked away after she put the plates on the table. And she came back maybe 10 minutes later and his fish was gone. Wow. And she was like, did you really like it? And he says, I loved it. He said, I wish I could have more. And she said, I wish I could bring you more.
24:03And before we left, I had my husband take the kids out to the car and I walked over to her and I said, I understand what you were doing. And she said, yes. I said, maybe, maybe don't do that. I said, because if there's a kid who's just for the first time being brave and trying something new, you're going to discourage them. That's not good. Don't discourage them. Right. And she was like, oh, I never thought of that. And I said, yeah.
24:32them explore their horizons with food. It's fine. She's like, she's like, I'm so sorry. She said, the look you gave me was like, stop. And I said, that was exactly the look I gave you. Yeah. I said, but I wasn't going to be rude or anything. But just from now on, if a kid is saying what they want, let them try it. As long as the parents are like, no, you know?
25:00And still kind of the same values and our kids with eating and trying to eat you're trying to create healthy eating habits you know like my oldest son he's five and sometimes his Well, how do you say it? Your eyes are bigger than your stomach And he'll say I want so much of this and whatever and he'll eat it and he'll get sick And sometimes he has to go throw it up and I'm trying to teach him like listen to your body if your body is full
25:28just stuff. It's not a big deal. Like there's going to be more. Or, you know, we teach them this stuff. This is the kind of food that has protein and protein makes you full. And if you eat a bunch of sugar, it's going to make your body think that you're more hungry and then you're going to want to eat more. And, and a really big thing for us and a lot of families nowadays is the dyes. You know, we try to avoid dyes at all costs. And I teach the kids why we avoid dyes.
25:56what they do to their bodies and their little brains. And, you know, my kids are not dumb. They're like, oh, why do they put dyes in kids' food? And I'm like, that's a great question, son. I don't know. And hopefully one day that changes, you know? Yeah. So. Yeah. I don't know. Did you guys grow up with the clean plate club rule? You kind of did, didn't you? Yeah. For us, we didn't have to eat all of our food.
26:26almost bad in a different way where my dad, because he grew up poor, so he was like, well, if you want more, eat more. And so we would overindulge. And so that's why I don't want my kids to overeat. It's such an icky feeling to overeat, like just eat till you're satisfied and that's enough. But I don't want them to go hungry either, you know, trying to teach them the balance.
26:56plate club thing is because my husband was raised that way and he is the biggest eater now because of it and I was really picky when I was growing up and my mom would always say I hope you have a kid just like you someday. I don't have a kid just like me my husband is the kid that's just like me. And so in our house we don't we never had that rule.
27:19There was no, you will sit at the table until everything is off your plate because it just causes so many hard feelings. Yeah, thank you. But anyway, as usual, we get talking about kids and it becomes how to raise kids. Oh yeah, I could talk about that all day. I've done it and I love my kids and it's so much fun. Okay, so we're at 27 minutes. Let's see. Try to keep these to 30. So let's see what I can do. Are you happy? You sound happy with what you're doing.
27:47Yeah, we are. We enjoy everything that we've been doing. It's kind of a struggle at times trying to balance, well, I won't go talking about kids again, but raising kids and trying to do the chores. Trent does most of the chores, honestly, while I'm inside getting dinner ready or bath or whatever. But I honestly have a list for him all the time if he hates it. He's like covering his face. He's like, oh, add that to the list, you know? But I don't know.
28:16you can answer for yourself. I mean, I guess just to build off what she said, I think we're in a good position and we're grateful for what we hang up. I think a lot of people think it's just a natural human like thing to always want more. And I keep telling myself not right now and just kind of live in the moment and take each day as it comes and not try to think about tomorrow. So I think we're good. I know there's stuff gonna come in our future. I think
28:46God has answered a lot of our prayers on where we're at and I feel like eventually we're going to expand and we'll grow on what we have. So yeah, we're happy where we're at right now. Good. And I have two things on that. Number one, being present is the best gift you can give yourself because the moments don't, they don't last. You know, the moment you're in is the moment you're in. Take everything you can out of that and enjoy it. And then the second thing.
29:15You were saying, Kayla, that you're usually in the house doing stuff because Trent's outside doing the other things or he's outside doing the other things. So you can do the things in the house. Everybody has the roles that they play on the farm or on the homestead. And the thing that I've found for us and for the people that I've talked with over the last year or so is that everybody is good at something like really good at the things that they're good at. And so.
29:41the chores and the activities get split up in that way. If Trent's really good at something outside that needs to get done, and I think you're probably a really good mom and the kids need you, it makes sense that you're splitting it that way. So don't feel bad about being in the house if you're doing the thing you're good at, you know? Yeah, yeah, we've been able to divide our chores and tasks up pretty well. And I have to work long shifts at work. I do 24-hour shifts. And so he's...
30:11kind of default parent a lot of the times when I'm not here too, so that can be challenging, but we've been able to split it up pretty well. Yeah, and that's really good for the kids too, because mom shouldn't be the only one they're looking for to help them. Yeah. It used to drive me crazy, because when my kids were younger, my husband had the full-time job and I was the one who was at home with the kids. That's right. And I loved it, but if he was home on the weekend, if they needed something,
30:39He'd be sitting right there in front of them and they'd turn around and say, Hey mom. Oh, I know. I'm like, and if it was something, if it was something right there that I could do, you know, if it wasn't a big deal, no problem. But if I was in the middle of something myself, I would be like, your dad's right there. Ask him. It's like they forgot. The blessing and the curse of being a mother. Yeah. It's like they forgot that he was a fully functioning adult human could help them. Definitely.
31:09It's crazy. It's nuts. All right. So we're at, we're at 31 minutes. We did it. You guys, thank you so much for your time today. This was really fun. Yeah. Thanks for having us. We appreciate it. Have a fantastic day. You too. Thank you. Yep. Bye.
 

St. Croix Valley Hobby Farm

Today I'm talking with Andy and Becca at St. Croix Valley Hobby 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 Andy and Becca at St. Croix Valley Hobby Farm, and it's a revisit episode. I'm so excited. How are you guys? Good. Great. Great, Mary. Thanks for having us again. We're excited too.
00:27For sure. And I didn't meet Becca last time, so it's really nice to hear your voice, Becca. Nice to meet you. Yeah, same. So what's new? What's been going on since I talked to you? Well, we've done over 20 shows across the metro this year from Islamic temples. We've been to Elko Speedway, residential birthday parties in Columbia Heights, Brooklyn parks all the way up to North Branch, retirement facilities around the metro. It's been just kind of a...
00:54Amazing journey to be honest since the last time we talked. I was kind of fresh and new to it and new to the scene, but the animals have taught us a lot and the people that we've seen has just been incredible throughout the season. So right now we're kind of setting up for our Christmas display and getting that ready so that we can have people come to the farm for walk-ins for our Christmas setup. So really good on our side, but let's let Becca add some to that if she has anything to say.
01:22Yeah, and it's been great. Our girls have helped out a lot. They're working in mission, helping with the animals. They do a lot of the traveling events also. So it's been fun to get them involved as well.
01:38Awesome. So you guys have been over to Minnesota? Yeah, quite a few times. We did Elko Speedway in Minnesota. We've done a few churches, residential birthdays, Easter, Halloween. Fun. Just so I can catch the listeners up. You guys are in Osceola, Wisconsin, is that right? Yeah, just north of Somerset. So it's almost smack dab in the middle between Osceola and Somerset right off Wisconsin 35. So.
02:07If you're heading north out of Somerset, you can't miss us. It's right off the road, big red barn, green roof, little small barnyard animals running around next to the road. Yeah. So, for you guys to go and bring the animals to Minnesota is not too far. I mean, I'm assuming it's not just a hop, skip, and a jump, but it's not like an eight-hour drive. Nope, not at all. And that was what was nice. Even Elko wasn't too bad. Nah, 35 mostly the whole way, 36 to 35.
02:36Head down to Elko, hour and 35, hour and 40 minutes, I think it was. And that's typically what we like to do for the animals is keep it under a two hour drive for them. The onsite events are ranging from two to four hours. So give them an eight to 10 hour day. And most of them are just over a year old. So we like to try to keep it as short as we can for them, especially in the normal months. Yes, because stress and animals is a bad combination. Right. Yep.
03:05Okay, so what animals do you have? Because I don't remember. I think you have many cows. We have four female alpacas. We got two, one micro high park heifer, one mini herford steer, and then seven Nigerian dwarf goats. We have a couple more on the way. Should be here to have some Christmas baby goats any day now. We have two pot belly pigs. We're working on a couple black faced sheep and some mini donkeys next, I think. So chickens, ducks.
03:34couple how and lop rabbits that free range at your feet when you come in to check in they're kind on the check inside of the pen so when you enter the barn they're hopping around they have their own little tunnel that goes underneath the barn and outside into their pen outside so it's kind of unique to see that but a hamster teddy bear hamster that rounds it out about for now anyway okay my sister has a pet rabbit and and I can't remember its name right
04:04She basically lets it run around the house like a cat and it uses a litter box. And I'm like, how in the heck did you train a rabbit to use a litter box? But he, I think it's a he, he's very sweet. He's a very sweet bunny. They're amazing. Yeah, ours are litter box trained, super friendly, super sweet. They're feet chasers, so it makes me nervous when people come in sometimes if they're not watching their feet, because they like to hop right up to people. They're definitely not afraid at all. They like attention. Super sweet, yeah.
04:32I didn't believe that at first either. I've been around animals my whole life, but I didn't know you could do that with a rabbit. And since our team has done it, it's been one of the most loved family members that we have. They come right up to you in the mornings. They put their heads down. Like, they want attention. You scratch their cheeks and their ears, and they start kind of making noises, and they kick their little feet down sometimes. They just absolutely love it. So.
05:01Great addition for sure. Yes, and for anybody who visits you guys, do you warn them that they're going to be right underfoot? And the reason I ask is because last night, my husband went out to do the evening chores, and it's minor, like closing up the greenhouse and checking that the barn door is locked and stuff. And we have two, I think they're 12-week-old barncats right now, kittens. And he literally kicked.
05:27one of them in the head last night by accident because it was right under his feet and it was dark out and he didn't see it. It's fine. It's bouncing around this morning doing all the kitten things, but he was like, I might've hurt one of the kittens. And I said, well, I said, if you didn't hurt it and it's okay, maybe it will learn to not get under your feet. Maybe. Yeah. Hopefully. Sometimes. Because I think we've got a year and a half old kitty and he's still all over my feet and gets bumped around once in a while as you walk. And because I think it's just a natural thing.
05:56you're moving along, going through your steps, and they're excited to see you, and they're by your feet. They don't know which direction you're gonna go next, and it happens, you know, so. We do encourage people, right when they come through the door, we have a sign about the rabbits. We don't allow anybody to pick them up. We try to tell them that immediately, so nobody does, because that's usually one of the first things they greet. So that's kind of nice, having it there by the door, as you can talk to them right away. Give them some boundaries, some guidelines, to make it a safe experience for everybody.
06:24Yeah, usually typically if we're having an event or I know we're going to be busy, I'll just lock them in their cage and open up the top so people are still able to reach in and pet them. But then I don't have to worry about them slipping out the door underneath somebody's foot either. But that's the price you pay when they're super sweet and want attention all the time. Yes. And it's really hard to get animals to not be under your feet because they don't understand that is dangerous. The other thing I was going to say is... Yes, animals, all of them.
06:53Yeah, the other thing I was going to say about rabbits is I'm really glad that there's signs that say don't pick up the rabbits. Rabbits are very lovely creatures and I love them. I do. But man, if they kick you, it hurts. I got kicked by my pet rabbit when I was a teenager and I still have the scar from where its claw punctured my chest and it's a little round circle.
07:17of scar tissue from where it literally poked me in the skin. Those back legs get going and it's hard though. Yeah and that's what I remind you know little kids and you know it's not just for their safety, it's for yours too because they do their back legs they they can get you and it hurts. When I clip their nails I'm usually covered in scratches just holding them while my daughter clips their nails because you know they're strong and they're fast so yeah that's definitely number one. They're holding them on top of paver stones too.
07:46So if they were to drop them, it would probably cause them injury and they are our pets and definitely adored and loved. So we don't want anybody to get hurt with them, but they do love cheek scratches and attention. Yeah. No animals going splat. Never. Okay. So tell me, like, I don't even know what to ask you guys because I don't know anything about what you're.
08:12doing, I don't know about it personally. Well another thing we added was to kind of help with the flow, we'd have events throughout the summer during the month and there'd be 275 to 300 people that would attend them over a four to six hour period. At first with just the animals and the admission it was kind of overwhelming and you had a lot of people in the area and a little overwhelming for the animals as well. But now that we opened up a look and find out in the backside of the property there's about a two acre patch of woods.
08:41We made a nice walking trail through it, seeded it down with grass. So people can come. It's a great hike, if anything. You get about a half a mile hike. You get a clipboard with a 41 item looking fine laminated sheet. Everything on that sheet is hidden from the forest floor, the forest canopy. Very challenging for all ages. We've had adults, we've had children out there, grandparents, a couple hours at a time trying to find every item. So that was fun. Um, very unique, different, uh, just like you're in a book.
09:11but you're walking it through the trails, just looking for everything. And kind of a beautiful trail too. So kind of old farms, dead equipment and stuff that they had from back in the 30s, 40s that's been laying around, just kind of rotting away. There's an old pickup down there. Chevy Apache, I think Fleetside, I think it was, I'm not sure of the year, but you still see the grill and everything. So it's kind of unique. Once the fall comes around too, in October, we opened our first haunted trail this year too. So.
09:38That was fun. We've seen over 100 people in a three-day period that we had that set up. It was more to initially get it going, make sure that there was interest and people enjoyed it. And I think we hit all goals on that. So we're excited to offer that next year. And a corn maze in between. We opened that up as early as we can. I think late July it was when we opened this year. It was still green, but it was nine to ten feet tall in spots and very fun, especially when it's green because it really fills in. So it kind of makes it really secluded out there.
10:08It all flows together right into the looking fine and then right back to the animals. So admission with the animals is good all day too and you can come and go as much as you want so that helps out. Fawn, do you have like a cute stamp that you put on people's hands for when they come back? You know for now it's just kind of been the honest system and I hope that doesn't get abused too much and I think so far it's been working wonderfully and people have enjoyed.
10:33kind of reasonable pricing and reasonable respect for one another in property without having to go overboard on it. But that might change someday and we'll have to get some sort of system. But for now, we're just kind of using the honor system and trusting that people still have some good in them. You know what you could do? You could get those bracelets, those silicone bracelets that people wear and have St. Croix Valley Hobby Farm on them.
10:59that they put on when they get there. And then if they have to leave, they come back. And if they have the bracelet, they get to come back in. Because that would be really good advertising for you guys. Yeah, that's a great idea, Mary. Thank you. Better than the stamp, because the stamp washes off. But the bracelet, they get to keep as a souvenir. Right. Yep, and then there'll be advertisement the rest of the time they had it. Yeah, I think that'd be great. And they're not that expensive. So you could try that.
11:27So when they do the look and find or the scavenger hunt, as I would call it, what kinds of things are they looking for? There's all kinds of items. Me and my nine-year-old found most of them. It was kind of a scavenger hunt and fun in itself, just finding all the stuff. We went to different flea markets, garage sales, spent maybe $0.25 to $0.50 on each object. There's a little rocking horse. There's a straw hat.
11:57Saw blades, yeah, there's all kinds of stuff out there. I'm just random items. There's little wooden docks.
12:05Fun!
12:08Yeah, so it was really fun to put together too and we've heard a lot of great things about it. Okay, for the the haunted trail thing that you guys did for Halloween, did you have actors jump out in costumes or what did you do for that? Yeah, we had a couple actors in different positions because it kind of hugs along the edge of a cornfield too. So we used the cornfield as a position for an actor. We had kind of an area where a lot of the animatronics from
12:38Spirit Halloween store. A lot of those were out there in the woods, so it was kind of unique because it's kind of a dark, ominous woods already to begin with. And then you add some clown animatronics and some fog and some strobe lights. And we've dug a few props in the ground. We had one spot where you had come to the trail in the woods where you had no choice but to enter two different doors. And of course, one said, not this door. And
13:07glow in the dark paint and the other one said definitely not this door so you had a choice to make and you know just kind of building fear in people's imagination is is one of the keys I think to haunted trails and and less is more sometimes so we had a few actors one with a chainsaw kind of off in the back you always seem to have a chainsaw around a haunted trail and it helps out noise effects but yeah it was it was really unique and kind of
13:34neat and it's self-guided too. You walk on your own, there's signage that goes all the way out through there so it gives people kind of a sense of being able to do things on their own again too and not have to be restricted and regulated so much. I love how you guys have taken this property and been so creative with it because I feel like lots of people buy land but they don't know what to do with it.
14:02And you guys have made this something really fun that supports you and supports your community and gives people something really fun to enjoy doing. It seems the more that you put your mindset to thinking that that's what it's all about, the more you see the results. And I got to credit God. It's all I can ever say is I know it's bigger than me. I know it's bigger than all of us. And I think that all of us are working on something very special.
14:31and someday we'll all see that. But for now, this little piece of heaven's right here and we love it every day. We honestly look at it and we're not sure how it even got here, because if you come and see it, there's a cattle tunnel that runs under the highway. We did most of the stuff by hand and thank you for all that, but I couldn't imagine if we had equipment, we had the resources like that to build, because I just want to build, I want to keep building. We have nothing but ideas. Just time.
15:01Time and resources are the thing that limits a person or a family or group or whatever it is trying to do something. Yeah, and creativity is a huge blessing in trying to build things because sometimes there just isn't enough money and there isn't enough time. So if you can be resourceful and creative and maybe cut the time down or cut the expense down, you're ahead of the game. We are.
15:29We put in a greenhouse this past spring and we're trying like crazy to figure out how to make it, keep it warm in the winter. We got two months longer growing season out of it. You know, this first year, which was great, but pretty much as soon as it got cold here, it's done. Our basil plants are toast, they're done. They can't handle anything lower than 40 degrees. So they're finished. Without a heater inside of it? Yep, yep. And we have strawberry plants out there and they had strawberries on them.
15:58As of two days ago, right now I suspect they don't have anything because I think they froze. But what we did is we got the IBC totes and painted them black and put water in them back two months ago. And that was keeping it warm as long as we got sunny days. But the minute we have two or three cloudy days in a row and it's cold, they don't throw any heat because they're not absorbing any heat. So
16:24We're in the middle of trying to figure out whether we want to put a small wood stove in there, which I really don't want to do because I really don't want that thing to catch fire because that would be bad. Or getting solar panels for the roof of it and getting some kind of heat producing thing and a fan to blow the heat around and doing it that way. And I think that's probably what we're going to do, I think. So resources are a big deal right now.
16:52Yeah, that's and that, you know, and that's what we did a lot of stuff, where, however we could, um, creativity. I got the Mrs here. She is very creative, very artistic. Um, you know, idea wise and resourceful. I'm pretty good at that. Cause I worked a lot in the oil and gas industry for a lot of people that want us to be resourceful and coordinated a lot of things. So it ties things together a lot and helps, but yeah, definitely. Um, a lot of people will wait around for.
17:22the money to show up or for the opportunity to be perfect and you got to just get up and go do it and find a way to make it work. A lot of people tell you you can't do things and I like how you guys keep on trying to find different ways to make it work because there definitely is and just because somebody says it can't work that way doesn't always necessarily mean that. They probably just heard that from the last guy and you just go out there and see if it works for you and maybe there's a different way around it and your greenhouse thing I don't...
17:50I don't know if there's a way around that, but maybe if you didn't want the stove interior, you could always have an exterior one and maybe try doing some sort of return system with some hoses heating, water return system, you know, and maybe that would give it enough to keep it at least warm enough because it's as much as I love winter and some of the activities, man, that seeing the growth all die is always sad.
18:16Yeah, and I mean, when we applied for the grant to get the money to build the greenhouse, part of the reasoning in my answers to the questions on the grant proposal, my answers were to extend the growing season into further into the fall and get a jump on growing bedding plants in the spring because we want to sell them to people who want them. So it's going to do those two things. It's perfect.
18:46you know, end of November till March in there. Wouldn't it just be wonderful to be able to have that kind of activity all winter long, you know? Yeah, so we're trying to figure it out. But I was going to go back to your thing about perfection. Perfection is the enemy of inspiration. If you're trying to do something for the first time and you want it to be perfect, number one, it's not going to be perfect. And number two, that want for perfection is going to keep you.
19:14from trying the thing that you're inspired to do. So I think that when people strive for perfection, that's great, but you can't let the picture stop you from trying in the first place. Yeah, and let me add a number three if you'd let me. Yeah. Nobody's gonna know anyway. Perfect is all that you know. Everybody else thinks it's already there.
19:41Yes, because they don't know what's in your head. Thanks God. We've gotten so many times where we weren't 100% ready. And I looked and we were about to get stressed or worried. And I said, hey, nobody knows what we're at right now, 100% or 90%. That could be 100 to them. That's all they know. So just make it the best you can. Don't stress about little things. Everybody will enjoy it just as much because your 100% might be.
20:10somebody else is 50 and they're going to think that's just as amazing as thing they've ever seen. So don't don't cut yourself short. Yes. And if you're doing something that other people aren't equipped to do, like you have all these amazing animals and you're sharing them with people, not everyone has that. So you're already 100 percent ahead because you have them and you get to share them. Yeah. And it's it's rewarding in itself seeing people come in.
20:39You get a lot of grown men that were tough guys, or closed off, they come in just for the kids. And by the time they're leaving, the kids are saying, Dad, come on, we want to go, we're bored. And the dad's smiling and talking and wants to stay, so just seeing that. Or somebody that's been through a lot, they come and they get a few moments alone. You can see that they're just kind of healing to themselves with the animals off to the side. I've been there and you can tell what kind of moment they're in, so it's amazing.
21:08Yes, what you guys are doing is a wonderful thing. So you both sound really happy. Like the minute you started talking, all I got was waves of happy coming through my headphones. Are you as happy as you sound? Some days. Yeah, I mean, we have three young daughters that keep us busy and on our toes. And we have one right here. This is Myla, she's nine. She's...
21:35one of the girls that is responsible, most responsible for the look and find, helping everything. Do you want to say hi? Say hi, Mary. Hi Mary. Hi Myla. Good job helping out. Yeah. I think it's just a battle like anybody else. You know, the teen years they're, they've been a probably the most challenging for us and that really kind of sets the mood on the day if the teens are in a good mood. Um, otherwise just growing together. We're trying our best and
22:02Ignoring the noise, that's one of the biggest things. If you want to be happy, ignore the noise. That's always going to be there. Just keep on focusing on what you're doing and be as happy as you can. Yes, because happy is better than sad. And I'm not saying you can't be sad. You need to feel your feelings. This has been a big thing in the episodes lately. I've been talking about feelings a lot. I don't know why. I think it might be just be the time of year, but.
22:31but you have to feel your feelings and you have to deal with your feelings and then you move on. Well, that's the thing. Knowing how and when, you know, the importance of moving on too for you, your family, and now animals. And you can't have one without the other. It literally wouldn't exist. You'd never, you wouldn't know what sadness is without happiness. So you absolutely have to have the yang and the yang. Yep, for sure. And I, I
23:00It's so weird. I feel like I should just start another podcast about feelings, but I'm not going to because I don't have time. They're not going anywhere. No, exactly. So it's Thanksgiving week. We are recording this the day before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is tomorrow. And so what are, I mean, I know you're thankful for a lot of things. What's your top thing that you're thankful for?
23:25I mean, the first thing that pops in my head is probably like the cliche thankful for, but it's for family for sure. Do you have anything to add? I'm just thankful to get a chance every day to show up and do anything I can to please God to be honest, even if it all shows up one day to be something else and it's all aliens living that kind of life.
23:52living with God in your heart every day is probably the happiest thing for me. Some days I wake up early and I'm just happy that I woke up. I get another chance to do it and the present is probably the happiest place you can find yourself and enjoy it. Even if it's something that's not so enjoyable, try to observe it and to see it for what it is and take any lessons it's giving you.
24:20and you'll still find happiness there even if it's something uncomfortable. But that's what I'm thankful for, free will, God's grace to let us be who we are. Like we tell the girls all the time, you just win each day. That's all you got to do. And that's kind of the key to happiness is just get through each day and take the next one as it comes. Myla, do you have anything you want to say that you're thankful for? I'm thankful for my kitty. Yeah. She's got a, she's got a little barn kitty, Casper. She's been wanting a cat for quite a while. So very nice.
24:50or a little mouser. I'm thankful for my barn kitties too. I love my two kittens right now. And I love my male adult barn cat, except when he bats the kittens, he's mean. He does not like the kittens. And really thankful for my dog. But mostly I'm thankful for my family too. And for the fact that we live in the middle of corn fields, which means I don't have to listen to a bunch of cars go by all the time. And...
25:19Thankful for you guys talking to me today and for all the people I've talked to in the last year or so I have released a hundred and ninety eight episodes since two August ago That's a lot of people I've talked to So I'm really thankful for the people who listen to this this crazy idea that I had to let you guys talk about what you do I'm really thankful that people like you take the time to talk with me and
25:47It's just been an incredible ride in getting to know everybody. So, so thank you guys for taking the time chat with me today. Absolutely. Have a fantastic rest of your day. Have a happy Thanksgiving and hug you kids and pet all those critters for me. Yeah. Happy Thanksgiving. Take care. All right. Have a great day. You too. Thank you. Bye.
 

Robin Easton - Author of Naked In Eden

Today I'm talking with Robin Easton, author of Naked In Eden. You can follow on Facebook as well.
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https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Robin Easton, author of Naked in Eden. How are you, Robin? I'm great and excited to be here with you, Mary. I'm excited to have you. You are such an interesting person to me.
00:30So tell me about yourself. What do you do? Oh, wow. That I've been listening to your podcasts and how you ask people that. And just, I was asking, they're great podcasts. I'm loving them. But anyway, I asked myself, well, what do I do? And I kept coming back to this line in my first book when I'm 25 in the jungle. And I'm, what do I do? And then the answer came, I feel.
00:59You know, what do you do for a living, Robin? I feel. And it sounds an odd answer, but from that is born my music, my writing, my communication with other species, you know, my love of the earth, you know, everything that I am and do. And right now I'm writing, I'm kind of finishing up two books.
01:29that I hope to get out this year. One is about all the incredible interactions I've had with other species and how it's changed my life, what I've learned, and how my own intelligence and awareness has just expanded more than I ever could have imagined through experiencing the intelligence of other species.
01:57and their emotions, their ability for compassion and love and tenderness and just so much. And then the other book is kind of a look, I suppose, looking at the world, a woman who lives so much of her life, wild in the wild and places when I went in decades ago were very wild, were virgin forests and remote. You had to winch and could take, I mean, it was an ordeal sometimes just to get in there.
02:27And then coming back out into my culture again and seeing the world again through wild eyes, because I very much went wild. And then another project I wanted to just touch on, but is I'm buying a piece of land. I've owned land before, but they were always bigger pieces, probably nothing
02:56a small like six acres anywhere up to like in Australia, almost up to 200 acres. And they were wild and I didn't really have to do anything. I could just kind of move in and enjoy being there. But the place I'm buying now is one acre. It's in a rural area like they're small acreages with the people are all kind of
03:23micro homesteaders. They have gardens and chickens and some nice docks and whatever. And it's a wonderful community. Like kind of back in the pioneer times where even though we're all on the grid, you know, it still has that feel where your neighbors say if you need anything, let us know. We'll come help. And I decided to do this, you know, this project. And so I'm
03:52buying this acre, my partner and I, and we're going to turn it into a pollinator conservancy. And someone might say, one acre? Yes. You know, and so it's the first time where I bought a piece of land where one half is lawn and the other half is kind of was made into this extended kind of drive that's gravel and hard and it has a couple fruit trees, a little mini
04:21great vineyard and a couple of trees. And it's like, what can I give back here? What life was driven from this acre? And that just touches me to tears, Mary. You know, what birds, what butterflies, what bees, what bats, what insects that are starved for homes and don't have them? What families?
04:51were driven from this property. And how can I give back? And someone could think, one acre, what are you giving? Oh, we all need to give back. Even if we just have a balcony that has plants on it, flowers, you know, in a city. Even if we just have a quarter acre and we decide to plant organic.
05:19lavender, organic things so the bees don't get harmed. Every little bit helps. And so right now, I mean, I'm coming from someone who used a hand crank washing machine, logged water from creeks and went without electricity, computers, phones, TV, radios for several, like decades. So now I have power.
05:49It's an interesting, I mean, it's like it's making me grow in a different way. In terms of thinking, what can I give back now? You know, I'm, I'll be 71 in December and it could seem a huge project, but I want to do it, you know, I think it's great that you're going to do it. I think it's fantastic. And I get your, I get your, um, I don't know, bafflement at.
06:18at really going from no technology to using technology because we here have obviously the internet at my house and we have TV and we have our computers and we have all the things but my favorite thing is just being outside and watching the sunrise and watching my dog play and my kittens run around. And so it's like I'm using this technology.
06:47to promote old-fashioned things to do. Oh Mary, that is so brilliant and so beautiful. Oh my word, I just find that so exciting. You really are using it and I wanna get people to your podcast. They are brilliant. All these people, the way you're bringing them out, like you're bringing me out, drawing me out. And like I said, mentioned to you at one point,
07:17are keeping alive a vitally important grassroots lifestyle movement that is still in touch with the earth and in touch with, you know, other species and humanity. And it's so important, Mary, I can't even begin to tell you. And so maybe it's not just so much about TV and all that. It's like you said, the sunset, the what you
07:45are aware of and are giving back. That's beautiful, Mary. What you said. Well, honestly, you grew up in Maine, right? Yeah, I know. Me too. Me too. In the Pine Barrens of Maine. Yeah, I love that. You're about 50, 55 minutes south of me.
08:15I think so. I think we talked about this before, but yeah, I grew up in in Steve Falls, Maine. Yes. I actually looked you up on the map and, you know, looked at where I grew up in Norway, Maine. You were just below some way. Yes. Yes. Yeah. We talked about this before. Yes. And I feel like you can't grow up in in that area without having an appreciation for nature. I swear to you.
08:45You know, going on Facebook has been so amazing for me, reconnecting with high school friends that I haven't seen or been in touch with obviously for decades because I was so far out in the wild that that wasn't my lifestyle. But I have loved it. And one of the things that we all kind of keep saying over the last few years I've been connecting with them is
09:13We were so blessed to grow up where we did in those pine forests and the woods and the lakes and the streams. I agree, Mary. And the blueberries and the lady slippers. And yes, I know. And the jack and the pulpits and the blue-purple violets. Oh, yeah. The wind through the pine branches. Oh, yeah.
09:43Yeah, you can't grow up in the woods or in farm country and not be in touch with nature. It's just how it is. Yeah, and we used to walk to school and through the huge maples down our street. And I mean, it was just, we were the only time actually we weren't submerged in nature because both my parents were in love with nature.
10:13and got us out into it all the time, but it was when I was in school. And I actually grieved when I had to go to school. You know, I'd be just, if there was a window and I could see the tops of trees, that's where I was in the tops of those trees. I believe it. So for people who don't know your story, you
10:42You keep mentioning that you ran wild basically, but can you narrow that down and sort of clue people into what you're talking about? Yeah, when I was 25, I married an Australian man. And he was, I went back to Australia and we originally thought, well, he was gonna live in Sydney, in the country, near his family or whatever. But it...
11:09The family dynamics were such that that just wasn't going to happen. And he basically wanted to run. And I was up for any kind of adventure basically, because I, you know, I graduated and people say, well, what's going to be your major? What are you going to be? You know, what are you going to do with, what are you going to become? What do you, you know, I had no idea. So the first year out of school, I took off and traveled through Europe alone. And
11:37And then I came back and eventually I did a whole assortment of other things, but I married this man, I ended up, he said, that's it, I'm leaving. And someone told us about this jungle, this rainforest way up on the East coast. You know? And so we, we left the city and we headed North and ended up in the Daintree rainforest, which then was.
12:04virgin rainforest. I mean, there was hardly anybody out there. You had Devo Winch and, you know, four-wheel drive just to get out there. And you'd go through these creeks and you'd see where someone had tried to get out there in a car or even just a regular truck that wasn't four-wheel drive. And the creek had washed their vehicle. They'd ended up hydroplaning trying to get across. And you'd see their vehicle, you know, downstream.
12:33there were like, you know, steep drops there where the, you know, the creeks would go to just drop off like a waterfall. And so they leave the doors open to their vehicles so the river can just, the stream can flow right through their vehicle so it won't wash it further downstream and over the edge and out of sight. And so, you know, back then it was just really wild country and we got out there and we ended up on the beach and way up in Queensland, Daintree.
13:02rainforest. And we drove back then, you could drive along the beach and hardpack sand and we winched up this little mini cliff, and basically lived out of the back. We had a tarp and out of the back of this Toyota truck, four-wheel drive truck. And that was just
13:32absolutely free. It was like for the first time in my life that one of the reasons I thought I wanted it, I realized I wanted to know who I was, separate from all the shoulds and supposed to's and this is how it is and you know right down to well being told well there's a god. Well I don't know that.
13:58So I started stripping away and looking at everything I didn't know for sure in myself. What it came down to, Mary, was nothing, you know? And then I started from scratch. I was terrified at first because there's so many potentially dangerous or deadly creatures there and plants or things. And from there,
14:27I, okay, Robin, this is still the earth that is connected to Maine. Again, back to our beautiful Maine. And you love that earth. And you love this. Yes, even though there is this snake, that snake, you know, the paralysis tick and this and this and this. Can you become that big that you could, you know, love this?
14:56And back then there weren't many books to learn about things. I think I had one book about identifying snakes. And there might've been a very skimpy kind of vague book on plants, you know, of the rainforest. And so it was through observation and literally step by step. And my ex-husband, he was first snake he saw, he was terrified. And so he tended to avoid.
15:24rainforest. So all my excursions were on my own, which was actually, at the time, I thought was, shouldn't be that way. But now, later I grew to realize it was the best thing that could have happened because I had to face myself, face life on a much deeper level. And one of the things I saw, and I'm still so aware of, like even on my acre here is
15:51You know, I was angry, all these things that could hurt me. Well, you know, they should just get rid of them. And I thought, Robin, that's not you. You love the woods and love the earth. And I thought, wow, what an attitude. And I thought, and then I started to understand humanity. So many people that have as a species, we have that.
16:14view of something we don't like is dangerous or potentially deadly, let's just kill it, let's cut it down, let's get rid of it, eradicate it. Instead of learning about it, understanding its habits, its needs, its territory, you know, is it diurnal, you know, does it come out at night or day, you know, is it arboreal, you know, in the trees, you know, what, you know, what, what is, what does it need, what does it eat?
16:44And slowly bit by bit, I merged myself into that world. And the main thing I learned was, oh, Robin, you're going to have to be as aware as everything else here. Because you see everything eating everything all day long, something is getting eaten. And then it was, oh my word, all these little beings.
17:14They have to be aware all the time. That is their state of being. And yet they still play, they still love, they still warm themselves in the comfort of the sun. You know, they have moments of bliss and all of that. And so I thought, can I become part of this? Be that aware? And that was probably one of the
17:42greatest gifts I gave myself in facing my fear was merging into that. Go ahead. That's amazing. So, so my next question after you relating all of that is how is it being not in the wild and, and still being aware like that? Oh,
18:12That is a loaded, amazing question. I love how insightful and juicy aware you are. It's so delicious. Well, you know, what's come out of all this? So out here, like before I moved here, the place I'm buying, we rented for like five years and now we're in the process of buying it. But before that, I lived on.
18:42in a little casita kind of in the foothills outside Santa Fe on this little small kind of mountain. And almost daily I went out and I hiked and slowly this whole herd of deer adopted me. Oh, talk about an experience. It was tragic having to leave there. But anyway, those deer would actually come down.
19:08Like the big buck, he'd come down and stand outside my office window in the casita and wait for me to come out. I'd walk out, he would start up the mountain and just kind of look back to see if I was following. I never fed them, I never touched them, but if I was on the mountain, they would seek me out and just stand around me. Or if I found them on the mountain, they would just let me stand with them. And
19:38in that they taught me a deeper level of empathy. So I finally really understand, and I'm still understanding it Mary, is how empathic I am and why my life was sort of different and so painful and why I just wanted to spend every waking moment in the woods as a kid and even young adult and even still.
20:07but I'm much better at it now. But that was the only place I could find that was things were peaceful, lined up. They aligned with who I was. I didn't have to like feel pain. I didn't have to feel chaos coming at me or weirdness or, you know, hear other people's thoughts that weren't being spoken even. They were just, you know, like I tend to see people
20:37and the other species on a soul level. And I guess by that more kind of the things that the deeper things they're feeling but maybe aren't telling people or that they're things they're going through whatever. But now, so this empathy thing being in this culture, so I think I was born with this, always had it. But now I'm aware of it.
21:04The deer taught me to be very aware of it. And now I'm aware, okay, yeah, it can be very overwhelming and painful. People have trouble understanding that I love my quiet time alone. Like during COVID, it was like, oh, I could feel the world slowing down. I could feel the, oh, the bliss in that for me, Mary.
21:34It was just like, I didn't miss all that. It was like, I love this and love the time alone and writing and playing. I'm also was a concert pianist at one time. My life can't read a note of music, but I started dreaming it in the rain forest and came out, sat down and started playing the piano like someone who did eight years of lessons or something. I love playing the piano.
22:04You know, I just, there was space. I could feel something in the world. I mean, yes, the, there was tragedy with it all. No doubt. You know, I lost five friends, five of my closest friends during that time. And yet there was a piece that I loved Mary. And so my challenge, I guess today. Yes. Is being in this world and having compassion for myself. I no longer.
22:33beat up on myself because things are painful or I'm uncomfortable in situations that I feel so fully. And I don't so much now need confirmation from that, I just know it's real for me. And I've since met other people that have similar, they are the same. And I don't even really have def-
23:01Defenses it's not like you have defenses against it, but you I Guess could choose to pull back you can choose you know, I make more conscious choices around what I do what I don't do and Give myself space To be who and what I am and I spend a lot of time in nature Yeah, that's what I was wondering because
23:30There are lots of people that I have known who do not know how to feel their feelings, process their feelings and move on. And a lot of the people that I've known in my life have things they do, so don't have to feel their feelings, whether they gamble or they drink or they do drugs. They never actually get real.
23:55with how they feel about something and they never process it because they stomp it down. And for me, that's not what I do. I have been feeling my feelings since I have had feelings. And if I'm supposed to cry, if that's what I feel like I'm supposed to do, that's what I do. And if I feel like I'm supposed to laugh like a maniac, that's what I do. But I don't ever stuff feelings because stuffing feelings will kill you.
24:22Oh, Mary, I just love you. I just love what you said then. I love how honest you are about it and about the whole aspect of so many people aren't feeling our feelings. I feel one, my second book that kind of is, I suppose, kind of social commentary, you know, like looking through wild eyes at our culture, but an aspect of that is I feel that even our.
24:51psychology, our medicine can like, you know, even some of our spirituality can like, still be advocating or fostering us to bypass how we really feel. You know, we have to manage, get to it, fix it, make it right. Do you know, we got to do something with this, you know, instead of allowing, you know, and I don't mean we take
25:19everything we feel out on other people. We are doing that, I feel, because we don't acknowledge how we feel and allow ourselves to grieve or even feel the bad feelings, like anger or hate or those emotions that we all can have that could be aggressive or whatever. I think when we do...
25:46deny those feelings, that's when we act them out. Because we feel what we feel. We can't stop. I mean, we can eventually learn to choose what we do with what we feel. But I'm the same way. If I cry, I cry. I mean, I can be giving a talk, a public talk. If I cry, I'll shamelessly cry, you know? But listen, I've had people thank me for that.
26:15And it's been mainly women just, oh, yeah, I love this and that. But a couple of men saying thank you for the first time in 30, 40 years, whatever. I cried, you know, and I'm like, oh, word. I think to Mary another, I'm the same way as you. That that is exactly I ever since my, I could feel I felt. And, and hunger too. It is not the feeling.
26:44that frightens me, it's the thought of not being able to feel who and what I really am. You know, that's like a death. Yes, numb is not a great way to be in your life. It's just not. No, it's not. Do you know, Mary, I also think there's another, if you look at a collective or the human species, I feel right now.
27:13for some time, we've been suffering an empathy. We're in an empathy crisis where we, when I merge with other species and I feel their intelligence, I feel like, oh, they're like me, my word. Yeah, I mean, to have like another female species, a deer or a wallaby, whatever, come and sit beside me just to be with me.
27:43while I watch her Fonz play or her Joey, the little Wallaby's Joy jump around. It's like my word. She's just a mother coming here to sit with me, to be with me, to share. Like we're like two women sitting on a park bench sharing our lives. And when you start to see that, you have empathy. Or when we allow ourselves to feel what the other person is feeling.
28:14then it makes it much harder to hurt them or cause any form of harm or damage or destruction. It is an absence. Absolutely, yes. It's that absence of feeling that allows us to commit heinous crimes against our own species, other species, the earth.
28:41Yep. Okay, so I really want to ask this question and I'm probably, I might regret it, but I'm going to ask it anyway. How do you feel about where the earth is at right now? Because I have four kids and my oldest is a girl, she's 35, my youngest is a boy and he's going to be 23 in December. I'm very concerned about the world that I have brought them into.
29:08And I don't know if the world's still gonna be here. How old are your kids? I lost you. It cut out a minute. How old are your kids, Mary? My daughter's 35. She's the oldest. Okay. And then my next two sons are 33 and 27. And then my youngest son is 22. And so what I'm concerned about is that there may not actually be a world for them to be living in in the next 50 years.
29:41What do you think?
29:44You know, that is a loaded question, I think, for any of us. I mean, I, I, no, I, I chose not to have kids. I came from a large family of eight and I mean, eight people, my six kids. And at one point my mom was really ill and I had to take care of the three younger ones. And so when I left home and that was at a young age. And so when I left home, I was like, Oh,
30:14I am never having kids. It wasn't until I was like in my 50s that it was like, oh, I would like to have a kid. You know, I have a child now. You know, I could really give them something. But anyway, you know, I have asked myself that I have close friends that have children anywhere from four and family members to, yeah, the ages of your children. And...
30:44I would be worried too. I'd be lying if I didn't say that. And I would also say.
30:56that I'm online a lot, probably like you, and I have thousands of people that are, like on Facebook or with my blog, they are the most astounding people that are doing amazing things, and they are loving and kind. And as we've grown altogether, I call them my soul friends. And I did kind of...
31:24don't like to say my readers, my followers, that's even cheesier for me. But, so my soul friends, they are even kind to each other. And this whole alchemy starts happening. And you know, where we're all like loving and supporting each other. I mean, if someone could think, how can you have hundreds and thousands of people? Yeah, you can. You can.
31:53the smallest piece of land I've ever owned. And it's like, no, number one, the earth will, I believe, will take care of itself. It'll destroy us before we destroy it. But I do feel, Mary, that there is this whole movement underneath that is happening, but it does not get the press to use a, you know.
32:24a crappy word, but this other does. But it is strong and it is there. And so many of these people are fighting for one cause or another. And we can't, none of us can do it all. But what I try to encourage is we each only have to do some part, do a part. Whether we're fostering
32:49hope and love and faith in people or we're teaching people how to organic garden or we're you know teaching them better self-esteem or how to embrace all of themselves or we're teaching them how to grow fruit trees or or how to turn you know how to protect a forest like i did environmental work for a while you know and fought to protect certain areas and
33:18There are just so many things that we all can do. Like this is why I cannot stress enough. The work you are doing is vital. And so we have to support people like you, people like me, people like all these people I've been talking about, my soul friends on the internet that are just incredible. And we have to reach out and connect in those ways like
33:47on a grassroots level. I think the change at this point is going to have to come from within ourselves and within this movement, this grassroots movement. And keep in mind that unfortunately the press, the media, they give the biggest billing to the down and dirtiest
34:17to the greatness that is happening. You know, my instinct is I want to say no, your kids will be fine. You know, and all you or I can do for our kids or each other is say find something you love and some goodness and put it into the world. You don't have to do it all, but just find even one thing.
34:47and live it. Trust your gut, trust your heart and go for it. I mean, I'm 71 and people will say to me, you know, I get up every morning and I jog and people say, oh, you can't do that. You're 71. Well, I do, you know, and I work out and I am so much better off. I am training so that I can lift, dig trees for holes. I can lift sheets of plywood. I can do this conservancy, this pollinator conservancy.
35:18and other things. Get out and speak and share my writings and my blog and teach and turn my garage into a learning center. You know, go and do the construction myself, you know, and turn it into a learning center. But to find our passion and do that, because it is so easy to get caught up in the message. We're going down. There's no hope, you know. And yes,
35:47There is no doubt, call it whatever word you want, but evil forces in the world that are trying to dominate. But there is also so much goodness that is fighting for your kids, fighting for you, for me, and for the children and the generations to come. I really believe that. Well,
36:11I really love your answer and I try really hard not to get too philosophical or too political on the podcast because it tends to get real weird real quick. But looking at things right now in the world, I have been a little anxious about what's coming down the pike and I thought who better to ask than the most lovely person I have ever had the joy of talking to other than Robin Easton because Robin will have an answer that will probably make me feel better.
36:43just this what you and I are doing today. I mean you have inspired me so much and your podcast. I cannot wait to share you on Facebook, my blog. I mean the work you are doing, Mary, is, I mean not only is it just world class, it's excellent, but it is so important and so vital right now and I know about coming down the pike in that.
37:12And so I say to myself and would say to my kids, look, I can either waste my thoughts and my physical or emotional spiritual energy. I know what's coming down the pike. I can just know you're going over there. Yep. And now I'm here. And what can I do to help? How can I help? How can I be the best me? How can I? What do I love doing that I could give the world?
37:42Yeah, because otherwise I'm contributing to what's coming down the pipe. If that's all I focus on. Yeah, I'm not giving the world. Yep. Exactly. Oh, Mary. That's part of the reason I wanted to do the podcast. It's part of the reason I started this because I was like, people want to know about
38:09growing things and growing animals and nature and making food and making things. And I was like, I do too. I want to know. So I was like, I'm going to start a podcast and ask all my questions of anyone who will answer them. It'll be so much fun and people will learn. That's why. Mary, absolutely. In fact, you've just reminded me of something. I thought, okay, so I have this Gryre gel there. It's not huge. And I thought, no, that's ridiculous.
38:39keeping a car in that? No, no. And so I'll get a little carport or build one and, you know, myself and, how about I'm gonna insulate and do something in this garage where even if I just teach people how to eat healthy, or write anything, teach anything, Robin, it doesn't matter, talk to them, present the possibility and show them how you commune with other species without feeding them, without touching them.
39:08so you don't rob their wildness. You know, that those species are actually capable of loving us without feeding them, without touching them. You know, or teach writing, teach music, teach anything that brings life. You know, that inspires life. And if we all just did that and stop saying to ourselves, oh, I couldn't do that, I'm not, like me. Mary, when I say,
39:37What do you do for a living? I feel everything I've ever done, I had no training. Absolutely none. And when I went to perform music, people said, well, how can you do that? You haven't even had any lessons. Well, I've got music coming out. I'm playing the piano. That's like a no brainer. 100 years from now, who's gonna care whether some woman sat down and made a fool of herself at a concert?
40:05two months out of the rainforest and I was doing a concert. And it was like, it was, it went incredibly well. You know, I, and I just talked with people and played music when it came out. And we have to stop thinking we have to be always trained or we have to be perfect. No, just start living. Just start living. Now more than ever.
40:35You know, we can't tell ourselves all the negative messages. They aren't even ours. You know, Mary, to the point, long before there were university schools, human beings were creating music. I mean, chimpanzees were banging on hollow logs to, you know, let other communities of chimpanzees warn them there is, I mean, you know, I mean, we've been creating music, dancing, forms of art, writing for millennia.
41:05You know, we got to dare to be new and fresh and brave and bold, you know? Yeah, we need to stop living in boxes. Oh, wow. Yeah.
41:21That's what I think. We need to stop living in boxes.
41:26I agree. And that's one thing I realized in the rainforest. Oh my word. I'm so boxed in. I don't even know who I am anymore. You know? Okay. What are, what are the boxes? What are the walls? What are the things that I've been hemmed in here?
41:44And it takes courage because we can end up thinking we have no right. You know, we have no right to be that alive, that bold. Well, these times are demanding it. You know, so I say be bold.
42:00Yep, I agree too. Robin, we've been talking for like more than 40 minutes. I'm going to let you go because I try to keep these to half an hour. I know. But I really appreciate you coming to talk with me. This was really fun. Oh, it was great for me, Mary. You're such an inspiration. I'm so honored and just so touched. Thank you. You have a great rest of the afternoon, okay?
42:30Okay, you too. All right, bye. Bye.
 

The Farm at Prophetstown

Today I'm talking with Sunshine at The Farm at Prophetstown. 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 Sunshine at the farm at Prophetstown. Good afternoon, Sunshine. How are you? Hello. Hi. I'm doing wonderful here in Indiana. Good. It's really funny because I call my kids.
00:29Well, I used to call my kids or grownups now, but when I would wake them up, I would say, good morning sunshine. So the minute I saw your name, I was like, oh. Yes, I get a lot of people who go, that's cute, but what's your real name? I'm like, well, it is, but it is unique. People do remember me. Oh, I would imagine so. Is it because your parents were of the hippie generation or what's the story? Yes.
00:58Yes, that's it. Okay. I think it's beautiful. I think that being called sunshine all the time would be a lovely way to live my life. Okay, so tell me about what you do at the farm and then tell me about the farm. Sure. The farm at Prophetstown is a 1920s living history museum located inside of Prophetstown State Park.
01:27I at the farm am in charge of our marketing, our website, our social media, our school tours, any kind of regular tour, anything public facing. I kind of consider myself an experience enhancer in a way. What a wonderful job, yes.
01:52Yes, it's super fun. My previous job I did the same things, but I worked at a university. I worked at Purdue. So this was a totally different environment for me. I did not grow up on a farm. So everything I do here is kind of first for me in a way, even though my day-to-day job and what I'm doing as far as event planning and
02:20tours and interacting with people. I'm very familiar with the course, but the farm itself and everything's a little different. Example, today it was our first snow here. So it's the very first time I'm seeing snow on the farm, but now we have a little bit of a mini, I don't know, it's not a blizzard, but it looks like a blizzard outside the window. I bet it's absolutely beautiful.
02:50It really is. When I first pulled into the drive this morning, the sun just came up and to see that snow on the barn, just beautiful and the horses out. Our farm is six on a hundred acres. We operate on about 25 acres and the rest we use for our feed alfalfa.
03:16We have several animals that we take care of year round. So our farm is open year round every day, seven days a week from 10 in the morning to 5 PM. We have three horses, three goats, three cows, six pigs, three sheep. We have a bunch of chickens, about 65 chickens, two turkeys, 11 ducks.
03:45two farm cats. I'm thinking if I missed anyone out of all them animals. Is there a dog? No, we do not have a dog. Okay. We do have a mini horse and a donkey. Okay, well that's a pass little animals right there. Yes, and so we care for those animals every day. We have a staff of about six part-time farm hands.
04:11And so our day begins, I come in in the morning, I open the farm, and then from there, the farm hands will start doing their, letting the animals out, feeding them, doing all the morning chores about 9 a.m. And then we will repeat it again about 4 p.m. in the afternoon and we button up the farm by 5 o'clock and we all leave. Okay, so.
04:39It might seem weird that I'm talking to Sunshine about this place in Indiana, but I really love places like yours because I, when I was in school, we went on a field trip to a farm in Maine called Norland's Farm, N-O-R-L-A-N-D-S. And I don't know if that's what it's still called now cause I'm older now. It was quite a while ago, but it was a living history place and kids would go there for field trips.
05:08and everybody on the farm was in character from like the late 1800s. And it was really fun, partly because one of the girls in my class, I think it was middle school, junior high, she had nail polish on. And nail polish wasn't a thing they did in the late 1800s. And the woman who was taking us through the experience of what we were doing.
05:35She saw her hands and she said, did you damage your fingernails? And the girl looked at her and said, no. And she said, oh, well, they're all red. I thought they might be sore. And she stayed right in character. And at the time, all of us girls were just like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, that makes sense. There wouldn't have been red nail polish in the late 1800s, especially not on a kid that age. But as an adult,
06:03that could have gone one of two ways. We all could have taken it in stride and then like that makes sense, or that kid could have gotten picked on for the next five years in school because she was the one that stuck out. So I'm sharing the story because I thought it was interesting. And then there's a place here in Minnesota where I am, and it used to be called Murphy's Landing. It is now called The Landing. And they take people on tours through
06:31acreage that is basically a small town and they've brought in buildings that are from the late 1800s, early 1900s. And they have cows and they have chickens and they have goats and I think they have sheep. And basically if you go on a guided tour, you get to go in the houses that are set up the way they were in the past. You get to see the cook stoves and things and you get to interact with the animals. So in saying all that, I
07:00Are you guys, when you do events, are you in character or are you just kind of walking people through and explaining things? We are not in character every day. We do have a special day that we designate and make it our living history day and we do get into some outfits. But it's very more fun, loose. I have visited other places where they are in character like that. I actually...
07:29just went to Ohio for a work trip just to kind of experience another living history farm. And they did that. They were in character through the whole time. We're not quite to that level, although we do think that that's neat. We, our property, we have two Sears and Robuck houses, and one of those was moved in from the town that's not far from us. And it was actually
07:59And so we moved it in and we made it a museum home. And then our big farmhouse was a replica of one from the Sears catalog. And both homes are open to everybody every day so you can come in. And we don't really have anything like roped off. Like you do step back in time when you come in. It feels like a 1920s home, but you can actually touch everything, move around.
08:29do pretty much anything you would like to do. We try to kind of make it feel like you could even sit down and have a conversation with your family and we do box lunches. You could eat a lunch and sit and just enjoy the space. We also do have our barnyard area. And so you can come through the homes, you can go out the back, interact with the animals. It depends on how much time you have, how much you wanna learn.
08:59but we try to kind of focus more on self-guided tours for people so that they can do it at their own time and pace. Nice. Okay, so what's the history on this? How did this place come to be? Sure. The farm itself started with a group of individuals that really wanted to not lose the history of Indiana agriculture.
09:29And so they looked and they thought, well, if we were to make a museum of some place that kind of connected agriculture along with, in this area, we have a very big Native American history with Prophetstown and the Battle of Tippecanoe. So there's a lot of that history. So they decided to kind of make it.
09:55more of like an event center where it would have a museum, it would have a Native American facet to it, an event center, a farmhouse, you know the early plans I saw it. But over time, you know it became a little bit too big for the group to handle and then the state was at the same time looking to acquire a new state park and so they kind of both met and
10:24work together and decided to kind of scale down what the group was really wanting to do with the museum and focus just on 1920s agriculture and then they let the park take over the prairie lands and the Native American side of it and they came in and they bought you know the land and started developing it for a state park and all of this happened around 1999.
10:52and the farm opened in 2000. And it was just one farmhouse and a barn. And then over the years it grew, you know, farm animals were added, the other home was brought in, outbuildings were built, things just started kind of growing. And then the park itself grew around us. So we have prairie lands and they do have the Native American structures.
11:21They have tours they do. So we kind of work in unison with the park, even though we're not really a park employee. We kind of sit in the middle of the park. Wow, huh, that's unusual. So I'm impressed that that's happening that way. Yes, it is. We're very unique. From my understanding, we are the only working kind of nonprofit of the size that we are inside of a state park.
11:51in the entire United States. And I think that they might have a couple satellite, smaller things in, I think in California they have one and I heard of somewhere else, but nothing to the scale of what we do. So our visitors mainly come from the campground. They have a big campground here of about 220 campsites.
12:17So all of those people, our audience is constantly changing from May to, you know, through Labor Day. We will have people from all over the United States visit us. But then we also have from our local community of people wanting to enjoy the park and then come in and enjoy the farm because we are free. Everything here that we do is, you know, we're a nonprofit. So we want to make it accessible for everybody.
12:45Okay, so if you're a non-profit, how do you fund it? Because you can't fund it without money. Yes, so we sell our beef and our pork, and that provides us some financial gains there. We have a small gift shop inside, and we do farm-to-table meals. We have a full kitchen in the basement. We sell box lunches on the weekends, and then we have a lot of donations.
13:15A lot of people support us and they feel that we are a very important educational place for our schools and people to learn and hang on to the history. Shout out to your supporters because we need people to support places like yours. Absolutely. Yeah. I kind of, we like to say here that the farm is our third, is
13:42is somebody's third place. Have you ever heard about a third place? No. So a third place would be, you know, your home is your first place. That's where your family lives and where you feel comfortable and you live and do everything you do. Your second place, then when you leave your home is your work. That's, you know, you're providing, you have your friends. You know, it takes up most of your time away from home. But then most people have a third place.
14:12And we want to be that. We want to be that third place where you go outside of your home, outside of work, to unwind, to just relax, to feel a part of something. And that's what we like to say. We're everybody's third place. Huh, I had never heard that phrasing before. And you're right. I think almost everyone has a third place.
14:39Yeah, mine used to be a library. You know, that used to be my third place I would go and I made it a point in my week to go there. And so now, you know, my third place of course is a farm, but that's what I try to tell people is, you know, when you come here and you first drive down our lane and you see that barn and you come around the bend and you see the farmhouse, you're already kind of feeling peaceful. You're already getting away from
15:08town and from your notifications, you know, even though we do have internet, it's not very good out here. So you really are disconnected. My third place when I was growing up was either the library, just like you, or being in the woods in the forest because in Maine, there's lots of forests, there's lots of trees. Yes.
15:35And as a grown up, it didn't change much. In Minnesota, it was a library or being out on the public trails, those state-owned land trails. So, yeah, I think that if I lived anywhere near the farm that you're at, I would probably see you as a third place now that I know what that means. That's super cool. I didn't know that phrasing existed. Yeah.
15:58And you know, I hope that anybody that might be listening to this podcast and maybe is a camper. Yeah. And they're traveling through, you know, Prophetstown State Park Campground is one of the top campgrounds in the entire United States. So hopefully, if it's not on their bucket list, they add it now. And then while they're here, they come over here and they visit the farm. Because it's really a treasure. Yes. What's the biggest city near you?
16:28That would be West Lafayette. Okay. And that's Purdue University. So Purdue is very large. So anybody coming in maybe to see a sports game at Purdue, we are about five miles from Purdue. Wow. Okay. And what's the major highway nearby? 65. So that we, 65, if you were to get on there, would take you of course to the farm. But if you went...
16:57An hour and a half north you would be in Chicago, and if you went an hour south, you would be in Indianapolis. Okay, that helps me. Like I said, I grew up in Maine, I live in Minnesota, and my parents still live in Maine. So when we go home, we do road trips from Minnesota to Maine, and we go through Illinois and Indiana. So I was trying to get a picture in my head of where you're at on the map. Okay, cool. What else can I ask you? Oh, when...
17:26I'm assuming that schools come to visit you guys as a field trip. How does that go? How are the kids, what are they like? What are their reactions to stuff if they've never been to a place like yours? It's interesting. We do ages from pre-kindergarten all the way up through high school. But I would say the bread and butter of most are between first grade and fourth grade. And they...
17:54This farm has been a part of their school typically every year they'll come. So they'll start with first grade and all the way up. So, you know, when a trip comes in, I'm like, who's been to the farm before? And, you know, I love to see all the hands because, you know, they've been here. And the ones that haven't been, they've heard from their classmates about it. But basically, we will do a
18:21We'll kind of bring them into the big farmhouse. We'll sit down. We'll talk about, you know, what does this room look like that's different from your home? You know, what are you noticing? You know, what right away? And you know, like there's no television. Because in the 1920s, they didn't have that. And we have a radio going with old timey 1920 radio shows. So we'll talk about that. We'll talk about the Sears catalog, that it was the Amazon of the day.
18:51and you know, I'll pull out some antiques and show them. I try not to do too much of the old timey stuff in the house, because kids get bored with that. They really want to see the animals, but I try to give them a little bit of history and then get them outside and get them around those animals and let, you know, we'll pull out some of the animals like our donkey and let them pet them and teach them a little bit about.
19:19how things used to be on a farm and show them, you know, we have old cars here, we have a Model T, a 1926 Model T, and, you know, old tractors and, you know, I'll show them, I'll go look at this picture, look at this tractor, and this is how we farm. But here's how we farm now, kind of show that history. So I think it's good, I think they really enjoy it.
19:47Okay, so in the classroom situation, in the 1920s, would it have been still like the little chalkboards and chalk that you had at your desk and the primer books? Is that right? Yes. Okay. So do you guys have that to show them? No, we don't have a schoolhouse. We have talked about it. It is something that we want, but that would have to come from a donor and from donations and we just haven't got there yet.
20:16There's a lot of things that we look for and we would love to have. We would love to have a mercantile, a building where we could actually sell things out of. These are all goals and things as we grow, we hope to have one day. Okay. I misunderstood. For some reason, I was picturing a classroom and you were talking about them being in the house. No, they come right inside the house. Gotcha. Okay. I bring them right into the living room.
20:45We have a living room, a dining room, a kitchen. We have a bedroom. I'm actually sitting in a bedroom right now just because my internet's a little better here. But it's really just a big farmhouse that kind of feels like grandma's farmhouse. Does the kitchen have a cook stove in it? It does. It is wood burning. It has water in it and we'll fire that up and we'll cook things on it.
21:14And we'll have events around that. Now we won't do that for a school tour. They're on a limited time. They got an hour with me, but we do events every weekend through our busy season. And so we'll make cornbread, we'll make homemade butter. We'll have iced tea on the front porch. We'll have homemade ice cream. We try to capture those 1920s things. Even the breeds of our animals are 1920s.
21:43Fun. So awesome sunshine. I love it. Okay, so here's the thing I wanna say about these places like yours. You guys do a fantastic job of showing what it was like and a lot of fun and cool things. But back in the 1920s or the late 1800s, like the places that I've been to, the world was a very different place in a lot of ways. And...
22:11Being on a farm was hard back then. It's hard now, but it was really hard back then because if you got hurt, you didn't have as many things to help you as you do now. And if your animals got sick, you didn't necessarily have a vet that you could take them to or they could have, they could come out to see your animal right away. So I feel like that timeframe has been very romanticized and for a good reason, because it's very romantic. It's a very...
22:41pretty picture that we have been sold. And I'm okay with that. I want kids to enjoy themselves. I want them to learn how things used to be done. But I also want people to understand that that late 1850s, early 1900s was a rough time of life for people sometimes. Yes, it is. And when we have tours come through or we are talking with children, we try to...
23:08Of course, we're not going to say, oh, our pigs are going to go off and be processed. So they may not be here the next time that you come through, but we want them to know where their food comes from. And so we try to, the best way we can, depending on their age, is explain to them, these animals may be here for your enjoyment, but these were food and this is food and this is where your food that you're eating is coming from.
23:38And you know the best way that we can to capture that and share it. We do have a blacksmith on site also and so we will talk to the kids about how the blacksmith was a vet and he would care for the horses, things like that. So they could kind of understand but we don't go too deep there because yes it does take away that romanticizing.
24:08the living on a farm. And we try to kind of stay period time. Some things we know we're out of like, you know, a 1920s farm wouldn't have 65 chickens and tons of breeds, but the kids really liked that. So some things we kind of were a little loose on and other things were not. Cool.
24:33So tell me, tell me what a 1920s farm in Indiana would have been like, because I have no idea what it would have been like. Yeah, well, we do have a windmill and we actually got it working and a windmill was a very big part of a farmer's life. And an Indiana farmer typically, he would have, he would live in this home that is our museum home, our bigger one. And then he would have a smaller home.
25:02which would be the tenant farmhouse. And that would be where his kind of farm, his lead farmhand would live with his family. And they really would save their money because they wouldn't have to pay rent of any sort, just work the land. And they would have one or two choices, kind of save that money to buy their own farm if that was their dream. Or sometimes tenant farmers really just enjoyed living on the farm and like...
25:32how they lived and not go and get a bigger farm. It could be a headache. But most of the time they would save up and move on. In Indiana, I think that there was about, I wanna say a hundred thousand Sears homes that were sold. Most of those were on farms. And I think that windmills providing that
25:59that water and not having to be near a water source helped Indiana's agriculture. And they could have, you know, hundreds and hundreds of farms. I think probably at this time in the 1920s everywhere were farms that looked just like ours. But now, you know, it's hard for us to find any that look like us nowadays. Yeah, they look very different now. You mentioned the Sears and Roebuck homes that people used to be able to order.
26:29Not everyone knows about that. I know about that, because my parents told me about it a long time ago. So can you explain a little bit about the Sears and Roebuck homes and how that worked? Yes, they were very popular in Indiana and I believe Illinois also, probably other states, but that's really all I know. And the catalogs themselves had everything from bullets to underwear. You could get everything you wanted, just like Amazon today. But the big thing was the house.
27:00and they would arrive on a rail car that the particular house I'm sitting in right now would have needed four complete rail cars to build this home. And they would arrive, the walls would be built, they would even have wallpaper on them. He would pick out everything from the catalog. And then it would arrive and then they would go around to the local farms around them and say, oh, my house is arriving this day.
27:29And they would, okay, and the farm wives would start prepping food and the men would get ready and they would all get together and work with their neighbors and put the houses together for each other. And the farm wives would cook a big feast and it was kind of a family farming event that was done across Indiana. So it was like a house raising, not a barn raising. Correct. Okay. And how much
27:59on average would a home like that cost? Do you know? This particular house was $3,176 and it's about 2,000 square feet. Wow. Okay. And what would that equate to in dollars today? Do you have any idea? Oh goodness. No, Mary. I'm sorry. I don't. No, that's okay. Don't worry about it. It would equate to a lot today is what it would equate to. Yes. Yes, it would.
28:29So I wanna compare it to like the prefab homes that you can have built for you now. My parents, when they bought their land, there was no house on it, like 12 years ago. And they decided to have the house put together for them and brought in in two halves. And they basically picked out exactly the home that they wanted. And my mom has video.
28:58from their phone, I think, of the two halves of the house being brought in on flatbed trucks. And the first one was placed, and then the second half was placed, and it was lengthwise. So the back of the house was placed on the foundation. The front of the house was placed against the back of the house. And then they went in and sealed everything up. It is so cool.
29:23And that's not how it worked in the 1920s. I mean, you had to build the framework and the whole bit. You had to build the house from the supplies, right? Yes. Yeah. So I think the Sears catalogs gave people a more affordable way to have a home that looked nice. Yeah. But it also, I think it gave them a way to raise it quickly.
29:51because it was hard work living on a farm. And the farm didn't stop because you are putting up a home. So it took a lot of work. I mean, every member of the family is working every day to survive. And you're bringing in other people to help you put this house up, but you're still having to take care of the farm and getting things ready for feeding the animals and all that's going on. So...
30:20I think it gave them a way to kind of move stuff forward quickly. And I think people today look for that quick, quick house too. You see that with the prefab homes, like what you're talking about. Sometimes people build them out of shipping containers I see now. Yes. Homes and tiny homes you can buy on Amazon. So maybe we're going back in a way to those pre early homesteading days and realizing, you know, these things worked. Why?
30:49Why go away from it? Yeah, or you can be like us and buy a remodeled home. Which is what we did. And we love it. We love it here. We've been here over four years now and we love it. Okay, so the Sears and Roebuck company that you're talking about became the Sears Department Stores that are basically not around anymore, right? That's correct. And they were the first radio station too. I don't know if you've heard of WLS out of Chicago.
31:19I have not, no. Well, it was a Sears radio station. They were very similar to Amazon of today, if you really look at it in that way, because here they're selling everything out of a catalog, but then they're like, well, they didn't know about TVs, of course, but radios are everywhere. Okay, we need our own radio station. So let's build a radio station and then talk about our catalog. So that...
31:48That's really what they did. But Chicago, and then from there, they were like, okay, let's just now we have department stores. And they're Sears department store. So they were really an entrepreneur. They were very, very good at marketing is what they were. So Christmas, well Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up. Do you guys decorate the farmhouse? We do. It's decorated right now. We are on top of it.
32:16We got our Christmas tree up last week and we're prepping last-minute things. We have breakfast with Santa Claus That we will have and everybody will come into the farmhouse with their kids and sit down at tables and then we'll have Santa near the tree and Then we will have Christmas on the farm Where actually Santa will be outside in the barn people can walk and would would dress up the animals and some Christmas
32:45attire and people love to see that and we'll have Christmas caroling, hot cocoa, just all that magic that comes with Christmas on a farm. I am so envious because I freaking love Christmas and I love everything that goes with it. So the Christmas tree, I am a huge fan of Christmas trees. I don't care what kind of tree it is as long as it's alive and it smells good.
33:15when back in the 20s, they didn't have electric Christmas lights for the tree, right? No, no, they had candles. Yeah. Actually, and that, that now, yeah, we of course do have a tree and we don't, we don't do that, of course, that'd just be too dangerous. But yeah, they, they had a lot of different slimmed down festivities. Yeah. But most of their stuff
33:45revolved around making things and so we try to still capture that and so we have an event coming up That will be where we will make Garland for your Christmas tree. Yep, and that's really what they did and they strung up popcorn and cranberries and that's what we will do here Yeah, and I I may be wrong, but I swear I read a book at one point where they use dried
34:13orange peels too for that garland, but that might not be true because oranges were probably hard to come by. Yeah, I would think so. It would be really pretty though. Yes, yes, I think so. And you know, the 1920s was an innovation, you know, that was horsepower to engine. You know, that's the time period right there. You know, the car came out along with the tractors. And so, you know, a farmer had to choose. Do I want to get a car?
34:43Or do I want to get a tractor? And most of the time they would get a car because they still had horses and horses could pull that plow. So a lot of times they, they didn't have the money for both. Um, but I think in cities that might be more progressive, they might've had that. They might've had the oranges and they might've had a lot different festivities and somebody in Indiana rural limited supplies. Yeah.
35:12Yep, absolutely. And did were paper chains a garland then too? Yes, paper chains. We make those and we put those around. Anything homemade pretty much we try to do. Yeah, a friend of mine gave me a handmade garland that is it's like a cross between tatting and crochet.
35:39And it's really pretty. I don't know what it's made of, but it's a like a light beige color um yarn and it has these little gold beads that are in the middle of each stitch. And I use that on my tree every year because it's just so gorgeous and I know the work that went into making it. Yes, I my granddaughter just turned one and she lives about five hours from me and so she'll get to experience a farm for the first time.
36:09um, next week. And so she'll get to, to see Santa here on the farm. And then we are in the Christmas parade with the horse, the horse is pulling us. We have a Christmas sleigh. And so, I mean, it's just magical. And the kids just light up when they see us, cause they know the farm. Does the sleigh have sleigh bells on it? Yes. I love it. Oh my God. If I was.
36:38If I was a little bit richer, I would be begging my husband to drive me to Indiana for one of these weekends. It sounds so fun. You said your granddaughter? Is that? Yes. How old? She's one years old. Oh man. She's going to be just so excited and overwhelmed at the same time. I know. I'm so excited to see her. So she arrives next week and so it's all perfect timing.
37:06She's gone sleep really good that night. Yes, she is. Well, how fun for you. That'll be awesome. All right, well, Sunshine, we've been talking for 37 minutes, and I try to keep these to half an hour. So I'm going to let you go. But thank you for your time today and entertaining me with your stories, because I had a blast talking with you. Oh, wonderful. Well, absolutely. Follow us on Facebook. See our pictures. We're very good about sharing pictures.
37:35We have a professional photographer who goes to every one of our events and captures every moment. So take a peek at our photo albums. And I enjoyed talking with you. Thank you for your interest in our farm. You are so welcome. And if anybody is local who wants to go to these events in the next coming weekend, go, go see the farm. Yes, absolutely. Our next event will be December 6th.
38:02which would be our popcorn Christmas tree garland day. And then our breakfast with Santa is December 7th. And then we'll be in the Christmas parade December 7th in the evening. So keep an eye out for us and think of us for your third place. Yes, absolutely. All right, thank you, Sunshine so much. Have a great afternoon. You too, bye bye.
 

Homestead Harvest of Delano

Today I'm talking with Ellen at Homestead Harvest of Delano. 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 Ellen at Homestead Harvest of Delano. Good afternoon, Ellen. How are you? I'm all right. How are you? I'm good. Are you looking forward to the snowflakes we're supposed to get tomorrow? Tomorrow?
00:29Yeah. No, I did not know that. My weather reporter did not tell me that. Oh, yeah. We're supposed to get like a trace to an inch of snow. I'm in LaSore and you're in Delano, so I'm assuming you're probably looking at a little bit of snowflakes tomorrow. Okay. I will let him know that he has, you know, got a demerit for failing to keep me apprised.
00:57Well, it is after mid-November. It's time. It's time for things to start looking holiday-ish, you know. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. I know you make jams. Uh, yep, I do. I started because my mom used to make wild plum jam jelly from our plums on our property and then she died and we had to sell the place and
01:27I decided I wanted to make jelly like she did because it was so good. And so I started making it and I had a good time doing it. Thought it was a lot of fun. So I then decided that I wanted to try other kinds of jellies and or jams. And that's where it started. But my nephew, my great nephew really, really likes the wild plum.
01:57So he kind of, you know, encouraged me as only a child can do. Yep. I've got four kids and they all are my biggest fans when it comes to trying out new foods, because they figure the worst it's going to be is edible. Yeah. It helps when you have somebody who will eat your practice sessions. Yes. We call it eating the evidence. Yeah.
02:27Okay, good. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah, my husband makes Christmas cookies every December and invariably some of them burn a little and none of us care because you just break off the burnt piece and the rest of it's yummy and he calls that eating the evidence. Yeah, that's, he's got a great point there. Uh-huh. And you can't waste food right now. I mean, you should never waste food, but right now don't waste food. It's so expensive to eat right now. It is. It's crazy.
02:57I have chickens, so they can also eat the evidence. Yes. Chickens will eat anything. So will pigs. Pigs will eat anything too. Um, so I, I knew that jams and jellies didn't always have to be just sweet. I knew that they could be spicy or they could be even salty or minty. But a lot of people don't realize that the jams and jellies can be of.
03:23a food that goes with like dinner, not just toast and jam. Right. Right. So over the past summer, I was asked by several people if I had any pepper jellies. And so I started making pepper jellies using my sister-in-law's peppers from her garden. And I've had good luck with those. I've had a lot of people.
03:53enjoy them and buy multiple, you know, come back and buy more. Mm hmm. And, um, that is gratifying because I had never thought of jelly or jam except for mint, mint jelly, you know, you, you know about that. Cause it goes on lamb. Yeah. But, um, also I've had people put it on their fish and their chicken.
04:22Your jams or mint jelly? Jams. Like, yeah, I have a pineapple variations and peach variations that are used on their meat, whatever, you know, chicken or fish or like that. And then I made, I had a boatload of tomatoes last year.
04:50So I started making tomato jam and that is so good on like your, um, it's a savory jam. So you put it on your hamburger or your meatloaf or your ribs. And it, um, you get the tomato, but you also get all the, the spices, depending on which spices are used, it brings out the taste of the meat more.
05:19Yeah, we tried a blackberry jelly and balsamic vinegar glaze on steak one time and that was really good. Oh yeah, that does sound good. Yeah, it was sweet. It was almost like a barbecue by the time it was cooked, but it was very blackberry-y but it had the zing of the balsamic vinegar. It was really nice. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, and years ago.
05:49I used to do roast chickens and I would mix apple cider vinegar and apricot jam and something else. I can't remember what the other thing was. Like whisk it together in a bowl and put that over the top of the chicken like you would put butter over on a turkey. Yeah. And then- Yeah, baste it with it. And that's really good too. My mom still uses my recipe because I sent it to her. I was like, you should try this. And-
06:17She's like, we make an apricot glazed chicken once a month since you sent me that recipe. I'm like, well, good, I'm glad you enjoy it. Yeah, no kidding. So yeah, you can use- That was a good idea. You can use jams in a lot of things. My, probably my favorite is my, I think it was my grandma on my dad's side, used to have leftover pie dough when she would make pies. And so she had this little, it was almost like a-
06:46muffin tin but they were smaller sized muffins for the opening and she would put the dough in there and just squish it so it was just like a little tiny pie shell and she'd put her her homemade preserves in there and bake it and oh my goodness those were so yummy. So more like a tart. Yes, yep just little baby pies is what she called them. That's cute.
07:12She'd be like, yeah, I just want to make baby pies. And I was like, yes, yes, we do. Please, let's make baby pies. So what a great memory for you. Oh, yes, absolutely. I can still remember the table in her kitchen. It was one of the Formica topped ones with the metal legs, the rounded metal legs. Yeah, I still remember. And she had the enamel sink that had the.
07:42I don't know what it's called, but the old fashioned ones where there's the sink, but then there's like divots in the sideboard so that if you put dishes there, the water would run in the sink. Oh, a dish strainer. That, yeah. She had one of those. Yeah. Those are handy. Yeah. So she had the old fashioned farmhouse kitchen. It was really cool. I'd love to have a sink like that. I would too, but I would want it to not be up.
08:11because enamel is a pain in the butt to keep clean. My kit, my sink is a white enamel sink. It was brand new when we moved in over four years ago and trying to keep that thing clean is the bane of my existence. Comment. Comment. Yeah, no you can't. You'd have to use like a soft soap, soft scrub. Okay. Not comment, not on enamel. Yeah.
08:39Yeah, had I realized how hard it was going to be, I think I would just replace the sink with a stainless steel sink right away, but I had no idea. Are you drinking porcelain? No, it's not. It's enamel. Oh, okay. Baking soda is a movie. Okay, I'll try that. I don't know. Oh, I'll try anything at this point because it's just, it's clinging when I clean it, but it has like little scuff marks on it.
09:09Yeah. That I can't get out. Yeah, in that bug show. Yep, I get that. Well, it's white. It's white. With scuff marks. I'm like, it's not marble. It should not have gray marks on it. Damn it. And my husband said to me one time, he's like, do you not clean the sink completely when you clean it? I was like, you do it. You try it. You try to get that off of there. You're welcome, I can do it.
09:34He was like, okay. And he grabbed a magic eraser and tried it and that didn't even get rid of it. He was like, what is it? I said, I don't know. I don't know why it does it. He said, when this sink needs to be replaced, we are getting a stainless steel sink. I said, okay, anytime, whenever you're ready, let's get one. Great, that sounds good. Yeah, yesterday would have been great. So anyway, it's fine. No big deal. Just bitching, cause I can bitch about it. Cause it's my podcast, why not? Yep, that's right. The wild plums.
10:04I grew up in Maine and we didn't have wild plums in Maine for some reason. You'd think we would have, but we didn't. And when I used to go hiking here, not even 10 years ago in Minnesota, wild plums grow everywhere in Minnesota. They do. So even if you don't have them growing on your property, did you know that you can harvest wild plums from state land as long as you don't cut the tree?
10:34I did know that I hesitate to do that simply because I don't know what's been on those plants, those trees. You know, I don't know if somebody has gone by and sprayed whatever and I'm just like, I don't want to take that chance. You know, the fact that I'm selling these products makes me extra special, careful. Yes. Of what?
11:02I use and how I do things. Yes, I hadn't thought of that. Sorry. But for anybody who just wants, anybody who just wants to try making wild plum jam, if you go for a hike out in the woods, like way out in the woods, and you pick some wild plums and wash them, it's probably fine. I would not, I wouldn't bat an eye about it if you're just doing it for yourself. So personal use, you bet. You go for it. Yep. And
11:31The other thing with wild plums, we haven't made wild plum jam because wild plums are not very big. And I feel like, I feel like they're kind of a pain in the butt to process. Is that incorrect? It is. All you do is wash them, sort out the bad ones, stick them in a crop pot. Or you can do it on the stove too, but, um, add a little bit of water, put a top on, put it on low.
12:00and let them start softening. And after they're soft, then you just run them through a food mill. And that takes the skins and the. Oh, slick. Okay. Yeah. Well, we have, we have a big old wild plum tree on our property. I appreciate it because we have a big wild plum tree on our property. We may have two actually.
12:28And it put out a ton of plums this year. And I said to my husband, I said, we really should use those. Yeah. He said, do you want to screw around with them right now? And I was like, no. He said, neither do I. He said, maybe we can ask somebody about how to do this and we can do it next year. I was like, okay. So I found my somebody it's Ellen. Ellen knows what to do. Here I am. Thank you. If you have extras next year, let me know because.
13:00Like I said, that kid loves the wild plum jam. Yes, I will let you know. I will make a note in my calendar for like, what is it, July? Yeah, you can, they harvest the end of August, generally, into September. Okay, then I will put a note in my phone, in my calendar that says, tell Ellen if the plums are ripe in August. Yeah, yeah.
13:30And the great thing about them is that you can.
13:35You can use them in so many different ways, like you were talking about using the meat, putting jelly or jam on meat. Yeah. The wild plum is great that way too. Uh huh. You can use it on.
13:53everything. Ham is particularly good as a glaze instead of using the pineapple rings. Yeah. Yeah, I bet it would be delicious.
14:07I am a huge fan of plum jam. I had never had plum jam in my whole life until a couple years ago and somebody, some brand was selling it, you know, like at the store. And I don't remember what the brand was. I think it might have been a store brand actually. And I was like, let's get plum jam. I've never tried it. And we had some really nice bread that my husband had made.
14:34And I slapped some soft butter on there and some of that plum jam on took a bite. And I was like, Oh my God, this is heaven on earth right here in my face right now. Okay. Now store plums, the domestic ones are very different tasting than wild plums. Uh-huh. So don't expect, I had one lady that, uh, she wanted my jam, my gel.
15:02It was, it's a jelly more than a jam. Okay. She wanted the plum because, um, you know, she thought it tasted good. And I said, I want you to taste it first because from her direction or her description, she was talking about a sweet plum from the store. And so she tasted the wild plum and she said, it is a different taste.
15:30Is it sharper or more sour? Um, tartar, I think is what.
15:39how you would describe it. I would be totally okay with that. That would be fine. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure, but I just wanted you to know that. Uh-huh. What other flavors of jams do you make? Well, we have the carrot cake, which is made with carrots and pineapple and pears, and tastes like a carrot cake.
16:06Um, nice. Pina colada, which is pineapple. It's a pina colada in a jar. Uh huh. And this year I've made some pumpkin butter, spiced pumpkin butter. That is a lot like eating a piece of pumpkin pie. In fact, I took some of it the other day and swirled a spoonful into Katie's
16:36Katie Hoker's yogurt, her goat yogurt, and it was so good. Yeah, before we go any further, Katie is your niece. I interviewed Katie months ago, and her place is Freedom Rain Farm, right? Correct. Yeah, Katie's fantastic, you guys. If you need goat stuff, go find Katie's Facebook page and get ahold of her, because she is great. She is, and she is very helpful,
17:06We'll do so much to help you.
17:11She's got eggs, goat milk, and soaps, shev, and the yogurt, like I just said. Uh-huh, yep. No, I love Katie. I actually have not met Katie, but I want to meet her at some point. I'm gonna have to take a drive up to Elano and meet you guys at some point. Yeah. Okay, so keep going. You said pina colada jelly? Pina colada jelly.
17:41jelly. So it's yum. Yeah, it is. It's got pineapple, rum, wine. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Coconut. Can't remember off top my head if it has anything else, but it tastes very like a pina colada drink. Yep. Then I have the regular strawberry rhubarb and rhubarb and black forest.
18:10preserves, which is if you're a fan of chocolate cake with cherry filling, that's it for you. I've had that on angel food cake, put it as like a drizzle on it, if you know what I mean. Yeah. And let all that chocolate goodness and cherry juice seep into the cake.
18:39It's also good on ice cream. Yeah, I bet it is. I bet it's amazing on ice cream. It is so very good. And then I'm right now making Christmas jam, which is several different berries and cranberries. And is a very rich tasting jam.
19:08Okay, does it have like, like, um, spices in it? Like, I don't know, pumpkin pie spice and things like that. Uh, cinnamon, ginger, cloves. Like that. Yep. Okay. And what are the berries in it? Uh, cranberries, strawberries and blueberries. And then there's orange juice, lemon juice, you know, give it some.
19:37a little bit of tart. Mm-hmm. I bet your kitchen smells amazing when you're making that. I think it smells good. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yep. So, so are you doing this as a cottage food producer or do you have a commercial license? No. Cottage food. It's a cottage food. Yep. Okay. So you can't ship your stuff just like all us cottage food producers can ship our stuff. Rant, rant, rant.
20:07Yeah, I don't know why that is. But nobody does. I don't know. Uh huh. That was the rules is right. Okay. I just, I feel like it's a cry and shame because I have talked to so many people over the last year who make amazing food things, they're doing it as Scottish food producers and they can't ship it. And I'm like, it sucks that you can't ship it. It's not fair. Yeah. I don't know why.
20:36I suppose it has something to do with regulations and, you know, you can't control how it's shipped. So you can't do this and you can't do that. It makes no sense. But by going to markets and by going to different, like farm stands, you know, you can, you can do something about it that to get your product out.
21:06And then you can always meet somebody if somebody contacts me on Facebook and says, hey, can we meet in wherever? I can do that. I can bring them the product. Yes. However, it just popped into my head that this whole not shipping stuff is silly because everything that is shipped is shipped with a tracking number now.
21:35Yes, I know. So why in the heck can't we ship stuff if we're shipping it from the post office in our town that we took the stuff to, to the person that's receiving it. It's, we know where it's coming from. Right. It's, it's so weird. I hadn't even, I hadn't even thought about it at all in that terms until I talked to you today. Hmm.
22:03good that I gave you that idea. Now you can research it and figure it out for all of us and let us know. I'm going to email my rep and be like, uh, my state rep and be like, um, explain this to me because hello, it's going from my kitchen to my vehicle to the post office in my town where it receives a tracking number and that tracking number traces it all the way to where it's going. What is the freaking problem here? Yeah.
22:31Oh, it makes me so frustrated. It's fine. I'm not making anything right now any way to ship, so it's not a big deal for me, but it frustrates me for people like you who are very talented and make things that are unusual and yummy and only people who are in the area can get it from you. It's not right. You're right, it isn't. So, I'm gonna stop, because otherwise it's gonna be a 20 minute rant. I'm not doing that today.
22:58So how did your event go this weekend that you had going on? Oh, well, we had one in Mound and we had one in Hutchinson. And did pretty well in Hutchinson, not too much in Mound, because the Mound one, I don't think, was advertised very well. I don't know.
23:26And it just could be that so much was going on that people didn't know where to come. The vendor did tell, or the organizer did tell us that some of his signs had disappeared. Oh no. Yeah. So that, you know, I don't know. I don't know why people take things that aren't theirs, but. Me either.
23:56Me either, because it's a mad, mad world, Ellen. That's why, because people are crazy. So do people buy your jams for Christmas presents? Yes, I have four ounce. I typically make eight ounce jars, because that's a good size for people to try. But I've been making some four ounce, too, for stocking stuffers.
24:25Yeah, yeah. Or perhaps buy two or three or four different varieties to try them. Do like a gift basket. Yeah, yep. And that seems to be a very popular idea right now. Yeah. For example, the Christmas Jam. Yeah. Is the Christmas Jam the Harvest Gold?
24:55pepper and maybe the strawberry pineapple jam, you know, and stick it in a box and wrap it up and give it to somebody for Christmas or a holiday of whatever sort that you want to do. Or bring it to Thanksgiving dinner. Yep. The the apple pie spice jam is
25:23great right now because there are so many, you know, with the apple harvest and I'm able to get apples from the orchards or from, um, like Joy. I don't know if you know Joy Gullings? Nope. Um, she gave me a whole bunch that I turned into apple pie spice jam. And again, it tastes like a piece of apple pie, but without the pastry.
25:53Mm-hmm. So I tell people that, you know, they get all the fruit goodness out of that, whatever pie it is like. Without the carbs. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. And all of my jams, jellies are gluten-free and dairy-free.
26:21I don't put some recipes because of the foaming issues with the fruit. For example, the peaches and, um, strawberries are very frothy during the cooking process. Yep. Some people you can put butter into it and that cuts the frothiness down. And I don't do that because of the dairy allergies.
26:52I just deal with the frothiness. Yes, and for anybody who doesn't know, the frothiness is not anything bad. It's not going to hurt you if you eat it. It just makes you look funny. Well, it's kind of like the froth on a beer. Some people really like the frothiness. It's tingly on your tongue.
27:22I think it's good, but I scoop it all off and stick it in a jar and save that for me. Yeah, my mom used to do the same thing. She'd scoop it off and throw it away. And I was like, why are you throwing it away? That's the best tart. She's like, it's gross. I said, no, it's not. It's delicious. She's like, well, you can eat it if you want. It's very pretty. When I make the strawberry rhubarb, it gets very frothy.
27:50And I put that in a jar and it's pretty pink with the strawberry rhubarb portion jam underneath it. Yeah. It's so pretty. Yeah. The other thing that you can do is I make a strawberry rhubarb compote to put over ice cream in the springtime from the first cutting of the rhubarb. Oh yeah. And I always end up pulling off some of the juice because there's so much juice in strawberries and rhubarb.
28:19and I take that juice and I put it in a jar and I stick it in the fridge. And if you get like fizzy water, plain fizzy water, soda water, and you add some of that juice, that soda water, it's like strawberry rhubarb pop. It is amazing. Yes, yes. My mom used to make something called rum pot. And she would take a jar and put all kinds of different fruits in it, stick it on top of the refrigerator, and put it on ice cream.
28:50Uh-huh. Was quite good. I hadn't thought about in a long time. Yeah. I have to do that. This is the beauty of these conversations. Cause I have that happen to me all the time too. Somebody would be like, my mom used to, and I'm like, oh my God, so did mine. I hadn't thought about that in 40 years. Wow. Mom's so great. Yeah. I love talking to you guys. Cause you just make me think of all kinds of things that have been stuck in the back of my brain.
29:19Forever and not access and I'm like, oh I got to dig that out. I need to dig that recipe out or I got to Try that again Whatever it is. So All right, Ellen. We're almost at 30 minutes Um, do you have anything else you'd like to share or do you have a website you want to talk about or anything? Well, I'm on Facebook as Homestead harvest of Delano Mm-hmm, and I would love for people to come and visit me there
29:47Okay. I'm just getting started with this project and I accept all kinds of advice and ideas. And I really like it when people try some of my jam and let me know what they think of it.
30:10Well, yes, because if it's fantastic, you get to glow in that. And if it needs something, you know what to do with it. Yeah. Yeah, like the wild plum. Some people like spices in it, so I started putting the warm spices in. And that's really good too. Uh-huh. Yes, you get all kinds of creative feedback, which means you get to play.
30:39Yes, and well, and that's why the carrot cake. That's how I started that with the carrot cake. I, I'm like, carrot cake jam. Hmm. This I have to try and it tastes like a carrot cake, a piece of carrot cake. Um, and the same with the black forest. It tastes or the pumpkin or the apple pie or, you know,
31:07Those I call those my dessert jellies. Yeah, you're not just making straight strawberry, straight grape, straight orange. You're doing things that are fancy and fun. Although I did make a strawberry grape. I had leftover strawberries and some grapes. And so I decided to combine them. And a little at this last event, little boy, oh, I don't know, six, seven years old,
31:36He tried the grape strawberry and he was like, oh, so his dad had to buy some for him. Well, yes. It's, you know, the kids, when they, they're very honest. If they like something, they tell you. If they don't like it, they tell you, you know? It's great that way. Yeah, and you can't get mad because you need that honesty. You need that kind of forthrightness. Right.
32:07You can't take a fancy to something like that. So whatever. Not from a little one. No. Little ones tell you the truth and we need them too. So. Yeah. All right. Ellen, thank you so much for your time today. I am so excited that you're doing this because I think the world needs more fun jams and more fun ways to cook with it. So thank you. Oh, thank you. You have a great day. Thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. All right. Thanks.
 

Waddle and Cluck

Today I'm talking with Lindsay at Waddle and Cluck. You can follow on Facebook as well. You can visit Nature Notes, as mentioned in the episode.
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https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Lindsay at Waddle and Cluck. Good morning, Lindsay, how are you? Good morning, I'm doing good, how are you? Good, wanted to make sure I pronounced the cluck with the C-L because it could have been misconstrued, and that would be really bad on my podcast.
00:28Yes, it's Waddle and Cluck, an old English pub for birds. Oh, okay. Cool. I was going to ask you the story behind it. So is there an actual story behind it? Yes and no. We started off with chickens and ducks and so Waddle and Cluck. And I just, I thought it sounded like when I went to London and I was visiting some of the places around there.
00:56I just like the way it sounded. So that's what we went with. Yeah. I feel like if you go to the UK, you can't throw a stone without hitting a pub. Is that about right? Yeah. Yes. I've never been, but every time I read a book about it or see a story about it, there's always a pub somewhere involved. So all right. So tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Well, we are a family of six. We're a blended family.
01:24We have four kids, three boys and a girl ranging from 14 to 19. The oldest is in college. And we have a little hobby farm. So we have chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, quail, and turkeys. And we plan to expand that once we can finish off fencing.
01:52I think fencing is the bane of existence for anyone who has animals. And then we also do a lot of gardening. I am also a business owner in addition to that. So we also, there's a couple of local markets around here, indoor markets that are geared towards local products that we sell eggs and baked goods and some handmade goods.
02:21And so we do a lot of things. Yes. I was looking at your, uh, your Instagram page and your Facebook page. And I was like, does this woman ever actually sleep for more than an hour at a time? Yeah, three. Yeah. You know, it's, it's one of those things when you want to have your dream life. Um, you're willing to work harder for it.
02:51Absolutely. And sometimes if you're lucky that dream life happens and you realize you don't have to keep pushing so hard, that's kind of what happened with us which was really nice because my husband and I are in our mid-50s and we worked really, really, really hard until we moved in here four years ago. And we still work hard but we're not quite as stressed about it as we used to be.
03:21Yep. And you know, once you really get the hang of things and you get systems in place, it does become a lot easier to do all of the things. I am intensely organized and we have all of our farm stuff on a pretty good schedule. And so other than getting up at sunrise, things flow pretty smoothly around here.
03:50Yes, and there is a huge benefit to getting up at sunrise. I have a kitchen sink that has a picture window above it. And so when I get up in the morning and get my coffee, I try to get up before the sun comes up because I didn't have the luxury, I guess, of seeing the sunrise from where we used to live. And now there's an open field out that window and it looks due east. And every morning if there's a sunrise, I get to see it and it just makes my day. It starts my day. So.
04:20peacefully and beautifully that the rest of the day can't go wrong even though there's a chance it will. That's a great way to start your day. Our daughter is currently obsessed with sunsets. Every time there's a sunset, it's prettier than the last one and her phone is filled with pictures of sunsets.
04:45So is mine because my husband does the same thing. He goes out in the morning if it's a pretty sunrise, he's taking six or seven pictures, and he's always out in the evening at sunset. It doesn't matter what time it is, but he's outside. So I have thousands of pictures of sunrises and sunsets in my phone. I told him we should make calendars every year. You should, you should. Yeah.
05:09My thing is that in the house that we lived in before this one, there was no window in the kitchen. There was a window out the back door that was in, you know, it walked, it entered onto the kitchen, but it looked north. So you could not see a sunrise or sunset from the kitchen. And when I did dishes, I was looking at a blank wall. So I'm so incredibly thankful for having a window over my sink.
05:36And that sounds really, really stupid and small, but it's not, it's huge to me. It is. And you know, there's, I have in my office here at the house, I have three big windows, or two big windows and then a window in the door. And then we have a window over the sink as well. So all day long, I can kind of look out over the pasture where the.
06:01Birds are free roaming and see our fruit trees and see the birds and it really makes a difference in your mindset and in your thinking when you take time to really appreciate nature and appreciate the things that are less focused on being busy and achieving the end goal.
06:27Yes, I think that things like that give us a reason to pause. And the world is so incredibly busy and driven right now that people miss those moments. They really do. And we had a similar situation to you guys in that we moved here about three years ago and the house that we lived in before was in a neighborhood.
06:55Um, it was really not big enough for all of us. We were constantly right on top of each other. And now that we have room to sort of spread out and have space, both indoors and outdoors that we can call our own or to take those moments to really just be, it's made a big, huge difference, I think for everyone. Yeah.
07:24And I don't want to get too far into this because I don't want to do a philosophy class on why calm and peace and quiet is good for you. But take my word for it, it really can be good for you. So why fowl? Why birds? You know, my husband grew up on a hobby farm with birds and things like that. And we love animals.
07:48In addition to all the birds that we have, we also have five dogs and a saltwater fish tank. That was something that we were just naturally drawn to. We all really like to eat eggs. We figured that that was a really great place to start with our hobby farm because we felt confident there. We felt that.
08:18You know, we were very good at taking care of animals. We had both done it for most of our lives, you know, with different types of animals. And we fully understood the care and the housing, the feed and all those things that they would need. Now our birds are strictly egg birds. So they're kind of like pets.
08:46and get treated as such, they are spoiled rotten. I have one little chicken that, she was much littler than the other ones and so she wouldn't get her turn at the feed. And so I started feeding her out of my hand and now that she's full grown, she fully expects to be hand fed at every meal. So it's just, you know, there's a connection that
09:15we feel with those animals and we enjoy spending time with them and learning their personalities and watching the dynamics and just enjoy spending time with them and laughing at them and with them. Yeah. I was told a long time ago that you can't train birds and you can't train cats and I don't believe it for a second.
09:42Number one, you train your little bird to eat out of your hand, and she's very happy doing that. We have two barn kittens right now, and they like to jump up on the railing by the door to our house. And we have a porch, so we sit on a bench on the porch and look out, and there's a window. And the male kitten, who looks like a little lion, he's a long-haired yellow cat.
10:07wants to jump up on the rail, the sill of the window, but if he does, he falls because it's real slippery and it's angled. And so he's fallen like three times. And I finally caught him getting ready to jump the other day and I said, no, really loudly at him. And he looked at who's going to do it. And I said, no. And he has not jumped since up on the window sill. So you can train a cat. It's possible.
10:35trained birds. You know, I always joke that I will never have all my ducks in a row. Because trust me when I tell you that herding ducks is ridiculously difficult. We moved them from they had a home that they were living in that we had built. And then last year we expanded and gave them a bigger home. And it took
11:04three days to train them to go to the new location. And so they're, it's so funny because they're kind of my signal now to know when to go out to secure all the birds at night because they will literally go stand right in front of the door to their shelter and then just line up and go in. So you absolutely can train them.
11:33Um, we've never tried to train them doing tricks, but I have seen on Tik TOK, uh, people training chickens to do tricks similar to dogs. Um, we've never tried that, but certainly. You know, with forcing habit, um, they've learned, you know, they know where they're going to be fed. Um, they know where to go at night. They know, you know, where is safe and where is not safe on our property.
12:03And so they definitely, they're a lot smarter than people give them credit for. I think animals are smarter than people sometimes. I think my dog is absolutely smarter than we are. She knows exactly when it's time for her routine, everything in her routine. She knows exactly when it starts. And if it doesn't happen, she gets really yippy and she doesn't bite, but she does this
12:32Yes, it's time for that. You're right. She, she has an internal clock. It's amazing. Yes. So on every day, you know, we have, we have a three part system. You know, the birds get let out and fed in the morning and then they get, you know, fed and watered again in the afternoon and then put up in the evening. And in the afternoon, you know, they know the gate that I'm coming through and they know which bucket, you know, if I'm carrying the green bucket, they know. And they all gather.
13:01at the gate at the appropriate feeding time. And they're ready. And then, you know, you spend 10 or 15 minutes trying not to step on birds because they want to be just right there with you when you have the food bucket. Yes. And honestly, what it is, is that food and kindness will get you really good results almost all the time. So that's how we're training our animals is with food and kindness.
13:31Exactly, exactly. And that's why Biddy, you know, she's, she will walk next to me the whole time until we get to her designated feeding spot. And then she starts jumping and hopping. And if I don't get to her quick enough, she jumps up on the bucket. Yeah, it's really fun, but it's also very predictable. And what I didn't know before we had chickens is that
13:59Animals as long as you you treat them well and you feed them things they like they're incredibly predictable And so are we as humans so it's a very symbiotic relationship that happens there Absolutely, and you know like I said we treat all of our animals as pets, but we also You know we do understand that they are wild animals all of our birds free range so while they are
14:27safe and secure at night. They have free range of the property during the day. And, you know, giving them all of the things that they need, you know, food, water, shelter, and a good place to live where they can be safe and healthy and happy really goes a long way into fostering relationships.
14:57those that are possible with these animals. My geese will not give me the time of day, and I just really want to pet their soft, fluffy feathers. But you know, it's important when you expand the type of animals that you have to realize that, you know, they're not always going to.
15:22have the same relationship with you depending on the types of personalities of those birds. You know, we've had everything from ball pythons and and bearded dragons to guinea pigs and turtles and every animal has a different level of comfort with humans. And my geese are probably better guard dogs than my dogs. I believe it.
15:52I believe it. Geese are scary, man. They will charge people and animals and just make tons of noise and whip their wings at the thing they're trying to get away. It's just, it's a frightening experience. It is. It is. And you know, our geese, we have African geese, not Canadian geese, but the area that I live in does have a lot of Canadian geese. And so they will...
16:20They will come very close to me, but they will not. They just don't want to be pet. From time to time, we do have to catch them to check them over and make sure that they're healthy and their webbing on their feet is healthy and all of that. And they don't attack us in those instances, but we have a system for doing that.
16:47where we do that at evening when they're going to roost. But yeah, I mean, and the guineas, they just don't wanna have anything to do with you either. They will just yell at you. But then, you know, the chickens are much more likely to form a relationship with you, especially if you go out and you sit and you spend time. My husband's mother, she still has, you know,
17:16all kinds of animals at her farm and she'll go sit on the porch back there and her chickens will just come sit in her lap. Mm-hmm. Yup. And I love that, except that I don't want a chicken to sit in my lap. I've mentioned it before on the episodes. I hate the way the quills and their fur or their feathers feel. And so if I just brush my hand across the back of a chicken, that's fine. But you're never going to catch me sliding my fingers in their feathers because it just freaks me out. I don't like it.
17:45Well, and it's real funny because, you know, I used to not kind of dig into their feathers and stuff like that. And with Biddy out there, I discovered that right up underneath her wings, if I rub her there, it makes her the happiest little chicken on the planet. And she does this little happy dance. Thank you. Oh, that's nice.
18:12I think, you know, when you scratch a dog at their favorite spot and they do that kind of happy wiggle, she does the exact same thing. Yeah, my dog, her spot is her booty, booty scratches. And the thing that we always say when we do that is, that's the spot, that's the spot. And she just, I don't know, she does a wiggle and she...
18:34She like arcs, or arches her neck back to look at us, like thank you, that's it. That's where you need to be right now. I think that's a requirement that when you scratch their favorite spot, you're supposed to say, that's the spot. But you know, just like you're supposed to say, oh, big stretch. Yes, the downward dog thing, yes. Yes, she does that all the time. And I'm like, doesn't that hurt?
18:59Every time she does it, I say, doesn't that hurt? And she looks at me like, no, it's great. No, this is the best ever. This is lovely. Thank you. Yes. And then they do the one with their back legs too. I'm like, I would die. I would be broken. I don't know how you do that. And the other thing that I didn't know before we moved to our homestead, cause we'd never had a dog, is that dogs after they go potty outside will like kick.
19:29the dirt back toward where they went to the bathroom. Yes. And so when she was a puppy, she started doing it. She's like, I don't know, nine weeks old and she did these kickies. And I was like, um, is she okay? And my husband was like, yeah, dogs do the same thing. Cats do. They try to cover their scent. I was like, I had no idea. I said, so not only will she do zoomies, she's going to do kickies. And he's like, yes, she's going to do kickies, honey. And.
19:58So the reason I bring this up is what I found out yesterday. I was that many days old when I found this out yesterday that dogs have scent glands between their toes. And that's the other reason that they do it. Yes. So they're not just trying to cover what they left on the ground. They're trying to mark their territory too. I was like, huh, there is still something new to learn. Okay, good. So yes, animals are.
20:27actually pretty complex creatures. And once you start paying attention to their habits and the things that they do and really taking a deep dive to learn about them, they're just absolutely fascinating. There's a gentleman who if you haven't visited the Waddle and Cluck yet, I highly recommend visiting our nature notes section. There's a gentleman here named
20:53David and he's in his early 80s. We've been friends for about 15 years. He started writing a nature note for the local newspaper. I used to be the editor there. David is absolutely fascinating. He grew up in West Africa and then he moved to the United States and his property is
21:24He is so fascinated by animals and wildlife and nature. And so in the paper stopped publishing his column, there's newspapers are dying. That's a whole different subject. They are. But the, you know, essentially the newspaper got bought, transferred to a larger
21:50publication and they no longer wanted to publish the nature notes. And it was about the time that I was starting Waddle and Cluck, I said, well, come write for me. And so every week he sends me a brilliant look at some aspect of nature, and whether that be wildflowers or a certain kind of herb or, you know, a different animal.
22:19and his insights and the things that he learns are just absolutely fascinating. And he spends a lot of time on his property trying to get pictures of all of these animals. So we have some amazing photography of the life cycle of a butterfly from a first person perspective. And it's just really fascinating because there are things that I will have never noticed.
22:48And he sends in his nature note and, you know, we spend the rest of the day chatting back and forth as I'm outside looking for the things that he's seeing because we only live about a mile and a half apart. Yep. That's super cool. So is that on your website? Yes, it's on the website. It's one of the main headers. It's nature note. Okay, cool. I will point it out in the show notes so that people can go check out what he does.
23:18because I think it's amazing that he's that old and doing his thing still, that's fantastic. Oh, he's still pushmo's. He has 20 acres and he spends a lot of time out there working on his property and they're not really homesteading anymore. They don't have animals. They do a little bit of gardening, but mostly he's just taking care of the property and enjoying his retirement with photography.
23:47and learning more about nature. Very nice. Okay, well my dad is 81 and he still acts like he's 50. So it gives me hope that I might see 80. Maybe, we'll see what happens. So when I was looking at your Facebook page, it's a lot. There's a lot of stuff on your Facebook page. I feel like you have the same curiosity about life that I have. Do you have the got to know itis bug? Yes.
24:16Yes, I also have the, I can do that, I just bug. Mm-hmm. Yep. I used to get teased all the time when I was in my teens. I don't know if you went through this. Because people would say something and I would say, what's that? Because I hadn't heard of it yet. And they would tell me and I would say, how does it work? And they would tell me and I would say, why does it work? And they were like, I am not spending the next six hours having a dissertation on this with you.
24:44And I would look at them and say, but why? And I just would get teased about being the girl who wanted to know everything. Did you get that too? Yes, I did get that too. And then, you know, when I went to college and we would have social gatherings, you know, all the different activities and stuff that they plan and the dorms, you know, the get to know yous and all that. And I had made...
25:13you know, new friend with my roommate, she would always say, well, if you're looking for Lindsay, you know, go find the philosophical discussion or the religious discussion or the politics discussion or the architectural discussion, she'll be, she'll be wherever people are talking about something serious. And still to this day, I probably read about, you know, 70 to 80 books a year. Me too. So
25:43You know, I'm always trying to learn something new. I'm always trying something new. Um, you know, the last few weeks I've been learning to crochet. So my daughter set found these, uh, turtle costumes, turtle shell costumes on the internet and they were not inexpensive. And I looked at it and I thought, well, I could do that.
26:12I've been trying to learn how to do that. I do the same thing in my kitchen. You know, I'll just pick up a spice one day and think, I can make that. Or, you know, I'll see a recipe on Instagram or TikTok and think, I can make that. You would not believe how many freaking things I have saved for recipes from Facebook in the, you know, where it says save this post. Yes.
26:41I have like 18 recipes I've saved in the last week that I want to try this winter because they're all desserts and winter time is dessert time. It is. It very much is. And yeah, I'm, you know, I'm always trying to learn something new to develop a new skill, you know, and especially I think in today's world where things do move so fast and things have gotten more expensive.
27:11Taking the time to break something down into its smaller pieces and then learning how to provide that on your own is amazing. There's nothing more satisfying, I think, than seeing something that you enjoy and then learning how to produce that for yourself. We love what we do.
27:40not everybody in the house, but I love apple butter. And I've made, you know, so many things with apples throughout the year. And a couple of weeks ago, I thought it's fall. Apple butter sounds really good. I know how to make applesauce and I know how to make apple pies. You know, I know how to why can't I make apple butter? So, you know, I did some research and broke it down and figured it out. Uh-huh. And it's so much.
28:10you know, less expensive than buying it already made at the store. And you don't have to have an apple tree, you know, in order to do that. It's cheaper to buy apples than it is to buy something that's already pre-made and pre-packaged. And, you know, one of the benefits to that too, is I know everything that went into it. So, absolutely. Yes, sister, you're singing my song.
28:36It's funny you bring up apple butter because I hate apple butter mostly because my mom made a metric butt ton of it when we were kids. I like apple jelly. Apple jelly is okay, but apple butter, if I never see apple butter again, it'll be too soon. I understand that it's really good for you and I'm glad that you're learning to make it and I'm glad that you love it. I personally don't ever need to try it again. And see, that's the same way. That's the way I feel about apple juice.
29:06My mother always, always gave us apple juice and now I just, I'm not a fan. Yup. But, I mean that can... What about cider? Do you like cider? I like hot cider sometimes when it's really cold. Okay. So it's not, it's just apple juice that you're like, I can't do it again. I just can't do it again. I had way too much of it. But you know, that applies for...
29:35Just about anything, if you like, you know, strawberry jam, strawberry jelly, visit your local farmer's market, buy some strawberries or strawberries are extremely easy to grow. Oh, yeah. And you can grow them. You know, we, I grow my strawberries in the front yard in what used to be a flower bed. So, you know, it's, they're very easy to grow. Even if you don't have a lot of space. We actually
30:02My sons and I, we started gardening for the first time when we were living in an apartment. And we put some pots on the balcony and grew some tomatoes and some bell peppers. So it's not really, I think one of the questions that people ask me all the time is, I really want to.
30:30try homesteading, but I don't have a lot of space. I don't have the space to have chickens or ducks. I don't have a pond. I don't have definitely the space for turkeys. It really doesn't matter. You can start where you are and use the space that you have. If you don't have space for chickens, try quail. Quail are much quieter.
30:58They take up a lot less space, like one square foot per bird. Try gardening in pots. There are all kinds of things that you can grow in pots. There are all kinds of ways that you can start to learn to make things from scratch, even if you're buying the pieces at the store, because you don't have the space to grow them. There's
31:26there's all sorts of ways that you can homestead with very little space and with a whole lot of space and everywhere in between. Yes, and I feel like homesteading is a lifestyle. It's not about having land and having cows and horses. When we lived in our smaller house on our 10th of an acre lot, we had a small garden, we had flowers.
31:53And we grew enough food to put some away for the winter for our four kids and my husband and myself. And we actually had enough to give to the neighbors. So you can start where you are with what you have. And I've done it. I know you've done it. And the other thing is you can grow herbs in your house. If you have a table that you can put a couple of pots on.
32:21buy used or buy new, if you can get it on sale, a grow light, you can grow the most beautiful fresh herbs. We've done it. And they're great. They taste just as good as if they were grown outside. So there are things you can do inside as easily as you can outside. Absolutely. And, you know, if you don't have the space to grow larger vegetables, you know, look around and see if there is a farmer's market near you.
32:49Yeah, the first time that I ever canned anything, I was not at a place where I was growing much yet, and I definitely wasn't growing enough to have things to save for later. But we would visit farmers markets and especially towards the end of the season for a fruit or a vegetable, we would buy in bulk and then we would eat what we could and can the rest.
33:19and all you really need to can is a stove top. So, there's all sorts of ways that you can participate in a homesteading lifestyle and slow down and appreciate the fruits of your labor without having a whole lot of space. Homesteading, I think is one of those things that can very easily get out of hand and very easily become
33:49extremely expensive and that's something that we've really had to consider, you know, now that we've moved to our forever home with the larger property is not trying to do all of the things all at once. And you know, just take them step by step. I've been blessed with a very handy husband. And so there's a lot of things that we've been able to, again, break down into smaller parts and build.
34:18I mentioned earlier that our docs used to live in a different home and then we moved them. Their first shelter was built out of old pallets. And then we moved them to a larger shelter now that's a little bit more open, has some hard cloth on there so they're safe and secure. But they have lots of...
34:46air and breeziness. And so, you know, it's not something that you have to think, oh, I need to make this very large investment. You know, all of those pallets we got by just calling around and asking if people had any pallets that we could come pick up. So, you know, as, as I think, you know, people I've, I've seen it said a whole bunch of times, I'm in my grandma era.
35:16where younger people are learning some of these Techniques that weren't necessarily passed down to all of us I know and they weren't necessarily passed down to me, but my husband did learn a lot because he grew up more in that Lifestyle But you know just looking around you and thinking what are the areas where you would feel
35:44satisfaction and accomplished if you were to learn that task. I try to learn something new every week and I think the first introduction that I had to homesteading was me and my boys, we were kind of on our own for a little while and money was tight and they had a sale on
36:14washcloth yarn at Walmart. You get those little bundles of washcloth yarn. And I thought, you know, I will just pick up a couple of knitting needles and a few of these skeins of yarn and figure this out. And jumped on YouTube and learned how to make washcloths. And you know, that I think that was where I was bitten by the bug.
36:43to really slow down and think about the creation of things and the way that I can participate in that versus just purchasing things and constantly sending money out. And especially for those of us that have jobs that don't necessarily produce a product, we're in.
37:11the information sector or we're in the service sector, taking the time to actually produce something with your own hands, I think is very satisfying for a lot of people. I agree completely. And I totally understand what you were saying about what got you into this because when we really got into it is we're a blinded family too. And our kids were small.
37:39And money was tight because we had four kids and it was one income. And that was a choice because we wanted one of us to be home with these kids to actually raise them ourselves. And so I learned to cook because cooking for six people is way less expensive than buying already made food for six people. Yes, it is. And once I got into that, I was like, Oh, I should learn to crochet. I should learn to sew. I should learn. And I learned a whole lot.
38:08in the 20 years that we lived at the other house, which we raised the kids in. So yeah, it doesn't necessarily have to be lack of money that causes you to be like, oh, there's got to be a cheaper way to do this. But I feel like lack of money sometimes really is the thing that kicks people into this. Yes.
38:32You know, with a lot of the people that I talk to, lack of money seems to be a prime motivator for learning how to do things less expensively. I think another thing that really kicks people off is health. Wanting to know where your food comes from and what is going into it.
38:56Again, being able to cook for your family and provides me. I know if we go out to eat, it's a couple hundred dollars if we're going cheap. I can make a meal for six of us for 10 or 15 bucks. There's something so satisfying. I remember when I was first really learning how to cook properly.
39:25My youngest son was pretty young at the time and he was obsessed with MasterChef. I made lamb. We had no idea what we were doing, but he had seen it on MasterChef. I thought, well, I've been learning to cook. I've been learning to put flavors together. Definitely don't think I can rise to
39:54know, the level of master chef, but sure, let's try it. And so we bought a couple and cooked them up and he said, Mom, Gordon Ramsay would be proud of you. He would say yes. And, you know, from that point on, it was just like, yes, I definitely want to cook. And he still says stuff like that, even though he's a teenager. So, you know, there's definitely a satisfaction there when you learn how to do something well.
40:24And then you're able to take those concepts that you've learned and apply them to other things. I think one of the most fun things that I do with Waddle and Cluck right now is coming up with new recipes because I'm always looking for ways to incorporate different flavors and ways to experience spices and things from around the world in ways that I can make in my own kitchen.
40:52versus trying, you know, because I live in Oklahoma, we don't have an abundance of worldly flavors here. Right. So it's very fun to experiment with, you know, those different flavors and different ways of eating the same foods. Absolutely. And do your kids, are your kids cooks? Are they learning to cook too? Not necessarily.
41:22There's been a couple of them that have gone through a phase where they've wanted to learn to cook, but they're all teenagers right now. I think friends is kind of the most important thing in their life right now. They all have expressed some sort of interest. At this point, they've been around long enough and they've been asked to cook.
41:50to help enough times that if they get hungry, they can just go in the kitchen and make something. Okay, so they cook. They cook stuff. They're just not cooks. They're just not cooks. My stepson the other night, he saw something on TikTok that he wanted to try. So he went to Walmart and bought the ingredients and cooked it up. And you often wonder, did they learn that from me?
42:20you know, did they learn that from seeing me do the same thing? And, and I hope that they did not just from TikTok, right? Um, but you know, he said it was, it was successful and it was great. So, you know, sometimes I think just, even if your kids aren't interested in what you're doing, they're still noticing and they're still paying attention and you're still teaching them skills, even if they're not right there next to you participating.
42:50Oh yeah, because kids are sponges. They soak up everything they see and hear. It's a great way to teach them and it's a really great way for them to learn swear words too. Because that happens when you screw something up and you're grown up. You will definitely let fly a word you shouldn't have said in front of your kids. The reason I asked if they cook is because one of the rules in my house as my kids were growing up is that they couldn't move out until they could cook a dinner.
43:18and a dessert that they would be proud to share with their friends. And all four of them, all four of them can and they really like cooking. So that was the rule in my house. Yeah, that's awesome. I definitely had rules like that, like at a certain point. And I think, you know, I still talk to people and they're amazed by this. You know, my kids do their own laundry. Yep. And, you know, they've, we've taught them.
43:47all sorts of skills as they go on. My oldest, who is in college right now, I would tell him all the time, you would be amazed when you get to college, the number of people who aren't going to know how to clean something or wash dishes or do their laundry. He grew up in a house where we've expected participation, help with cleaning, help around the property, do your own laundry, things like that.
44:18He called me a couple of weeks after he'd been at college and he was like, you know, you're absolutely right. He said, I've had to show no less than five people how to use the washing machine. Yep. It's crazy to me that that's true, but I believe it. Um, my stepson was actually in the Marines and he was so frustrated that there was no place for him to go cook. That.
44:44He broke a couple little rules and actually cooked on base in his assigned living quarters with his coffee pot.
44:56That was a no-no and he got away with it a couple of times, but you really shouldn't do that if you're in the Marines. They don't really appreciate it at all. And he also had a microwave, so he managed to do some things in the microwave that worked. But he was real happy to get out and be able to cook in a kitchen again because he really loves to cook. Yes. Well, and I think...
45:21You know, dorms are evolving a little bit, at least in my son's college. They have an entire kitchen area. The dorm that he lived in last year, they had an entire kitchen area down on the first floor where pots and pans and everything were provided. And so they, you know, they would go down there and they would cook things. And
45:46You know, he said it was kind of amazing the number of people that would kind of gather around and be like, Oh, you know, what are you making? What are you cooking? How are you doing that? Um, and he's in an apartment now. Um, but yeah, I mean, those are important skills to teach your kids before they. Fly the coop. Yeah. Yup. That's phenomenal. I had no idea that the colleges might be.
46:16actually understanding that people would want to make food for their friends. That's great. Yeah. So I think that was really beneficial for them, especially because it's dorm food. When you go to the cafeteria and stuff is not always the best food and not always available at the time when you need it. So yeah, teaching those skills is essential. And
46:44is that I'm still teaching myself skills all the time and always learning. That's something that I've talked to people quite a lot about with the homesteading lifestyle is they say, well, I don't know how to do all that stuff. That's fine. Take it one thing at a time. Just learn one skill. For every skill that you learn, it's going to help you learn the next skill.
47:14And the next skill, and we're not always successful. Anybody who's ever planted anything knows that failure is part of the game. When you have animals, you're going to lose some. That's just the way that nature goes. And I think in addition to learning those practical skills, you're also learning resiliency. You're learning
47:44you know, how to tackle failure. You're learning how to, you know, rise above and keep trying. You know, the first year that I planted carrots, it went just miserably wrong and they were about, you know, one inch long. They were not the best, you know, and so.
48:12You start trying to figure out, okay, what went wrong? Well, the soil didn't have the proper nutrients. Okay, how do I fix that? What do I need to do? You know, and you just start developing more and more skills and you start to find ways to creatively get things done. You know, even at our old house where we didn't have a whole lot of space, we had compost piles.
48:42that we fed all year long so that when it came time to plant, we had that rich, nutrient-dense compost to add to our garden bed. So just each little skill that you learn moves you forward so that you can continue to learn other skills, combine them, apply that knowledge.
49:10You know, I don't think I've ever tackled quite as much failure in life as I have as a gardener. But you know, we're getting better at it every single time that we plant something. And our crops just get a little bit better and a little bit better. And you know, we're hoping that by this next spring, we will be at this new place producing enough for providing for all of our needs.
49:40Yep, I think you'll definitely be there because you sound like you're absorbing every piece of knowledge you can get your hands on right now. So we've been talking for almost 50 minutes, so I'm gonna let you go, but I appreciate your time, Lindsay, so much. And I think as you start ending, every episode would do what you can with what you have where you are. Yes, absolutely. I think that's a great motto to have. Uh-huh.
50:08All right, thank you again, Lindsay. Have a great day. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. Bye.
 

Nourish and Nestle

Today I'm talking with Lynn at Nourish and Nestle. 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 Lynn at Nourish and Nestle. How are you, Lynn? I'm well, thank you. Awesome. I have to tell you, my nickname is Lynn. My given name is Mary Evelyn. Oh, okay. And my...
00:28and my parents couldn't decide which name was going to come first, and they settled on Mary. And by the time I was like a week old, they were calling me Lynn. So I grew up not knowing that my name wasn't technically Lynn. So when I saw yours, I was like, oh, a real Lynn. Okay. A real Lynn. Yep. All right. So tell me all about yourself and what you do. So this like
00:57stocks me when I say this, but I've been blogging for about nine years, which is like a lifetime. And I, you know, so my blog is Nurture Nestle, obviously, and it's a basically everything I like to do, you know, I kind of ignored the advice to niche down and I kind of niche out. So
01:21I like to cook, so I cook. I like to garden, so there's gardening. I like to knit, so there's knit. So whatever I like to do is kind of on there. So yeah, that's pretty much it. In a nutshell, I've enjoyed this blogging journey. I got to a point earlier this year where I was like, gosh, do I really wanna keep doing this? And what I did is I just kind of slowed down and just.
01:49focused on the stuff I wanted to do. And I really kind of stepped back from all the crazy stuff that, you know, make Facebook happy and Google happy and Pinterest happy. And I'm really blessed that I have a great email, active large email list. So I just started really kind of focusing on them and I'm in a happy place right now. You did all the hard work at the beginning and now you get to make the rules. I think that's great. Yes. Awesome.
02:19Okay, well, I have been doing my podcast for a little over a year. And at a year, I went through the same thing. I was like, do I want to keep doing this? Because it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work to be a creative and put yourself out there and put the time into it. And I talked to my husband about it and I was like, this five days a week thing is a lot.
02:47And he said, cut back to three days a week again. He said, when you first started, it was once a week. And then you moved to three a week and then you did months of five episodes released a week. He said, drop back down to three. He said, you have a following now. See what happens. And that's what I've done for the last week or so. And it's fine. So no one's your limits and slowing down is not a terrible thing. And, and there's a, there's a lesson for us all there.
03:16You know, we're not doing our best when we're not enjoying it and when we're feeling like under the pressure and we're feeling like, you know, I must do this, I must do this. And we're at our best, especially creatives, when, you know, we listen to our heart on that, you know. And luckily, you know, I am and hopefully you are in a position too where
03:42you know, we don't have to go to the daily grind. I know not everybody is lucky enough to do that. And I'm lucky enough to kind of step back and say, okay, this is what I want to do. And I don't want to do all the other things. So yes. And I'm in the same boat. So whatever it is that catches my eye and the person I want to talk to, if they say yes, I am all over it. And it can be anytime between 8 a.m. Central time and 6 p.m. Central time.
04:09After that or before that, I'm asleep. I'm done. I'm exactly. I need sleep. I am 55 years old. I spent years not sleeping, raised four kids. And sleep is like my favorite thing next to talking to people on the podcast. You and me both girls. Sleep is my happy place too. Uh huh. Yep. And I have to get in some reading just for me. I'm an avid reader. And if I don't read something for me.
04:36at least an hour a day, I feel like my life is off kilter. So that's kind of my thing. So we could talk about all that stuff all day, but we're not going to. So I wanted to talk to you basically, because you're all about home and design and creating things and I love it. First question for you is what is your particular style when it comes to decorating?
05:05I think I would be called eclectic. I don't, and I don't, so with not offending anybody, I don't buy decorations. I haven't really bought furniture in forever. I have hand-me-down furniture and I have, the furniture my husband and I bought when we were married 35 years ago.
05:32is the furniture that I still have today that I've recovered, obviously. But I'm kind of a... I don't want to say I'm a traditionalist. My poem's not traditional in any sense, but I like to use... I thought of getting rid of perfectly good furniture and buying new furniture. I have my grandparents' dining room table. I have my parents' sofa that I've recovered. I have...
05:58So, I would say I'm eclectic because nothing like I don't have a colonial. I don't have a contemporary home. I have a home that is really mixed with what was given to me. And then I've accumulated. We've bought a few pieces of furniture, but most of the furniture we've purchased has been like antiques other than our sofa that we bought when we first got married 35 years ago.
06:25we've bought a few antiques. I like artwork a lot, so I would prefer to spend money on art than furniture. So I would have to say I'm eclectic. I like bright light colors. I don't have curtains on my windows. I like the light to come in. I don't know. I don't know that I'm easily kind of pigeonholed because all my decor, when I look at my bookshelves, art, with books,
06:55But, you know, family heirlooms, I don't buy decorations other than original artwork. That's kind of my one weakness. So that's kind of what I would call if that explains it. Yes. And I'm going to tell you, older furniture is the best furniture because it lasts forever. Yes. And it has character and it doesn't look like everybody else's. Right. Yeah. And, I mean...
07:25We did buy a brand new kitchen table, like seven years ago, because one we had was old and it was just not repairable. It was old, old, like over 100 years old and it was just falling apart. My husband, yeah, my husband was like, why don't we buy that one that you saw, that you love, that needs to be finished and I will put it together and you can polyurethane it and then we...
07:53We sort of made it our own and I said, that's totally fine. So that's what we did. And honestly, had he had time, he probably would have made us a table because he's really good at woodworking. And I've said it before on the podcast that our bed frame, my son's bed frame, and a couple of our desks are made by my husband. He made those pieces of furniture. So if you can't inherit it and you can't get it,
08:23from thrifting, you might find somebody who's really good at woodworking who can make you furniture, which is always lovely. We've made a few things actually. You can buy legs, you know, turned legs. We bought some turned legs and bought a piece of wood for the top of the table. Anyway.
08:46For those of us who aren't as skilled as your husband. I picked the right one. He's really good at woodworking, and he's really good at bread baking. So I won. I won the lottery. Well, I don't hope my husband isn't listening, because he's really good at duct taping. That's OK, too. I mean, whatever gets the job done, I suppose. So I'm going to share my decorating style, because I asked you. So I'm going to share mine.
09:15Mine is very classic and functional and old fashioned things. That's what I love. And we have a desk that is made out of an old Tradle sewing machine base. And then my husband put a maple top on it. And it is my favorite thing he's made. It's so beautiful. And it honors that time frame. Yeah. And I also really, really love beach things because I grew up on the East Coast.
09:45And so I have like almost like a cartoonish painting of a lighthouse in my kitchen. And I have two small prints of like a beach scene. They're almost exactly the same. And I accidentally decorated my bathroom in our old house like Cape Cod and didn't even realize I had done it. Well, it was it was subliminal, right?
10:13It was very blue and white and bright and clean. And my neighbors knew we were redoing our bathroom and they came over. And the wife of the couple stepped in and I of course had a sand smelling, you know, suntan lotion smelling candle burning in there. And she was like, I swear I just walked into a Cape Cod house and I know your house is not a Cape Cod. And I said, oh no, no, it's not.
10:43She said, did you do this on purpose? And I said, no, no, I did not. But I think I might've been quite influenced by where I grew up. So I like, I really like old fashioned classic things and functional things. I also like things that no one would think of. I was in a public building and they rotate their artwork on their walls every six months.
11:14And there was this like shadow box frame and it had birch branches that were all about the same height, maybe five inches tall. And it was in the colors of a winter sky, the background. And it had like glitter on that background. So it looked like a birch forest where it was snowing. I wanted to buy it and I could not find anybody who could tell me where it came from. And so-
11:43stems painted or were they actually pieces of birch? They were natural. So you could probably make that. Yes it's on my list. I haven't done it yet but it's been on my list for five years so I'm hoping that maybe this winter I can I can get a frame or a shadow box frame and get some birch stems and some paints and just kind of play and see if I can come up with something like it. You just reminded
12:13My grandfather was more than just a handyman. He was a builder and he had a tool and die company back in the day. Anyway, so when he passed away, my parents were given and then I was given his old wooden toolbox. It was about the size of a good size toolbox, not one you would carry by a
12:43few feet tall with all the drawers and everything, but it's just a gorgeous wooden thing. I didn't want to – what do I do with the toolbox? I took it to a metal worker and I had him build a base. Now, this is an end table. I built the base so that literally my grandfather's toolbox is now an end table in our living room. Just like you said, finding unusual ways to use everyday items.
13:11Yeah, so they don't end up in the landfill. Right! Right, right, right. Yes. So, since we're talking about the fact that you can make things out of things, the whole purpose of chatting with you that we decided on was to talk about how to make our homes cozy and welcoming for the holidays. And you had suggested talking about homemade gifts, too. Right.
13:36So let's talk about how to make homes cozy and welcoming for the holidays. You go first. Well, you know, I think, and everybody's definition of cozy is different, right? So, you know, my idea of cozy might not be anyone else's, but in general, I'm not a clutter person. I don't like a lot of clutter. But during Christmas, we are like clutter-centric. And I am also somebody who, I reuse my same ornaments every year.
14:06get a new color scheme, I don't buy new decorations. These are the ones that we've had. So to my family and to me, there's a sense of cozy in that continuity of what we've seen for the last forever. But once again, that's just my definition of cozy.
14:30I'd love to have a fire going. That's my definition of cozy. I mean, I live in North Carolina on the coast and it's not really cold, but having a fire going is cozy to me. I bake a lot. To me, there's nothing more cozy than hanging out in my kitchen baking for us to give. That to me is a really cozy thing with music going on or football, whatever the case may be.
14:57So I think that everyone needs to define their definition of cozy, but that's what cozy is to us. I always have a puzzle at Christmas time, laying out on the dining room table or a table that we're not using. To me, that's sitting there and just working on it a couple pieces a day. That's a cozy thing. What about you? Okay. I've been thinking about this for a week now.
15:24is how things smell and how they sound. And part of that is that the olfactory scents and the auditory scents are two of the strongest of our six senses. Okay. And so if you're hearing a song when you're experiencing something, you'll always associate that song with that memory. And if there's a strong smell, like gingerbread cookies,
15:51You're going to associate gingerbread smell with Christmas if that's when you're making it. So for me, Christmas and Thanksgiving are very much about the food and having like either classical music or Christmas music on in the background quietly. Right. Because the other thing that's very cozy about holidays is getting together and just having conversations with your favorite people.
16:19Oh, absolutely. Having your kids, neither of my kids are at home. So when they come home, you know, they're not even in the same town. So when they came home, everything changes. It automatically becomes cozy when your family comes in. Yes. Yes. And it's about slowing down, if you can, being able to be in the moment with those people. And for the sense, I was thinking about this a lot.
16:44yesterday because it's getting to be that time. I mean, Thanksgiving is 10 days away, I think. And I was like, I don't know how to make my house cozy for Thanksgiving right now. Because my house is kind of a mess. So number one, I need to get it cleaned up. First thing. And then how do I want to make it look fall-ish? And then I was like, you know, I don't need to make it look fall-ish. I need to make it feel fall-ish.
17:13So what I used to do is we have a very specific old pan that never gets cooked in. It is only for water and dried onion, not onion, dried orange peels and cloves and cinnamon. And we make basically a pot of good smelling steam. And I was like, I need to find that pan. That's the second thing on the list because I wanna get that happening too.
17:44imagery of just that one pan with all that stuff in it. That's only used for that. That's great. Well, the other reason why is because if I don't have orange peels and cinnamon and cloves on hand, I usually have sweet orange essential oil and clove oil and cinnamon oil. So I just put that in the water. It does the same thing. So one way or another, my kitchen will smell lovely whether I'm cooking or not.
18:13And I was also thinking about cookies because, you know, cookies make every house smell good. So the thing I love and hate about the holidays is the food because I want to eat everything that is in my kitchen and I'm not fat because I can't eat everything in my kitchen. Like I eat half of my plate of food and I'm like, I'm good. I, you know, my brain is saying.
18:42Yeah, my eyes are saying keep going, but my brain is like, no, you're no longer hungry. You may stop. So I love cooking. I get full on the smells and the sense of cooking. So for me, food is not the enemy right now. And it's wonderful because for a long time it was the enemy. And the holidays can be really hard for people around food. It's very difficult. So cozy and welcoming.
19:12You want your house to be warm. If it's wintertime in Minnesota, if you want it to be welcoming, you want it to be warm. Not hot, not cold. Warm. 100%. Yeah, like 72 degrees on a 20-degree day in Minnesota. 72 degrees in the house is lovely for company. Are you in Minnesota? Yes, I am. Wow. Okay. Yeah. But I don't know what North Carolina's like.
19:41on Thanksgiving Day. It could be 80 degrees here. And for music, lots of people like lots of different music. I really like classical. I like bluegrass instrumental. I obviously like instrumental Christmas music. I don't like lyric Christmas music. I don't want words when people are around. Really?
20:08I sing, so if there's stuff that has words and I can hear the words, I'm going to start singing along and I don't want to be singing along. I want to be talking with my family. So for me, instrumental music is better. Interesting. Well, I love, I have to have certain, those certain songs with lyrics, but then when I'm working, you know, working, working on the computer, then I just need instrumental. But I have to, you know, there's certain songs we have to hear that...
20:35certain, you know, all the old ones. Like if I never hear Mariah Carey again, it'll be too soon. But, I'm sorry. Yeah, there's a lot of people in that camp. Yeah, like I want the old, you know, I'm looking for like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby kind of music and the... Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. But if we're, if we're sitting around after Thanksgiving dinner with family and talking...
21:02we're probably going to have instrumental music on so that I'm not. So none of us are really distracted. If we're like cooking, then the lyric ones are fine. Cause we're all going to sing. Right. Do you have a favorite instrumentalist that you listen to for Christmas music? No, no, I just pull up the instrumental Christmas song thing on Pandora and just let it go. I think that's what I do. Yeah. Yep.
21:29It's just easier and I hear new versions that I haven't heard before too. So it's kind of fun. Okay. So we've talked about how to make your home warm and welcoming and cozy for the holidays. Let's talk about making things because I have been making things for people for Christmas since I was probably 10. Right. And people, if you haven't actually made something with your own hands and given it to somebody for a Christmas present, try it.
21:56because the look on their face when they realize that you made it is just precious. Oh, without a doubt. Yeah, and you know, I've had this thing where, you know, DIY that doesn't look DIY. And I think, you know, calling it, their, DIY has such a bad denotation, right? I think that handmade sounds so much better. Yeah. So, yeah, 100%. I'm all about.
22:25you know, giving handmade gifts. I knit. I used to knit sweaters for people for Christmas, but then my feelings would get hurt when like the styles, like they didn't wear them after a couple of years. And I'm like, you know how much work I put into that thing? So now I give blankets or, you know, washcloths are huge. Everybody needs a washcloth, dishcloths, pot holders, you know, and nobody who has a kitchen doesn't need a pot holder.
22:55So yeah, anyone who cooks in their kitchen, right? The pot holder. I don't know. Recently, I rediscovered. Do you remember those loom pot holders that we all used to make in like third grade? They come with new colors of those little loops. And they've also come out with a book, like pattern books, to make really cool looking patterns. And those are the best pot holders. They're not too thick.
23:23And the size I have, the little loom I got is a little bigger. I want to say it's 10 by 10 or eight by eight, and the other one maybe six by six. But I have a long finger, so I like a big pot holder. And those make the greatest gifts. I mean, you can just whip out a bunch of pot holders in pretty colors and pretty patterns with the loom thing that you could get on Amazon now. That's going to be a lot of people in their stocking this year.
23:53Well, good. You can send me one if you like. Here's the thing though. A lot of people right now are two-income families with kids. And time is a commodity. Time is short. And so what I would say, and you can jump in if you want, is if you want to make something for somebody for Christmas and you're short on time,
24:22There are things that you can do that are very much of your making that you don't have to sink a lot of time into. And one of the things I've seen is if you know somebody who you care about has a particular hobby that they love, let's say they love playing cards, you know, Texas Hold'em or something, you can get a Christmas bulb, whether it's plastic and it's in two pieces so you can snap it together.
24:51or you can get a glass one if you really want to screw around a glass. And you can put like crinkly paper in it and you can fold a card, whatever their, their favorite playing card is. I mean, it could be a joker, ha ha. And you put it inside the Christmas ornament and then you snap the plastic back together if that's what it is. And you can write on it and glitter something to do with their favorite hobby. I mean, it can be that simple.
25:20And it means something to them. Absolutely. And it would take five minutes. Right. Oh, that's a great idea. And I don't know why I chose, I don't know why I chose Texas Hold'em, but I was just kind of trying to come up with something. Right. But it doesn't have to be, you know, a month long project of making a baby blanket. It doesn't have to be that extreme.
25:49No, make some vanilla extract, make some salt, put together your favorite taco seasoning, put it in a cute jar. That takes no time. You can whip out a whole bunch of them. Those are things that everybody will use. They appreciate that every time they have taco seasoning, they think, hey, so-and-so thought of me and made this for me. There are so many things you can do.
26:17Yeah, the kids and I, I have four kids. And when they were small, they wanted to make something for the grandparents. And I was like, what am I going to have these kids make when they're all different ages, you know, my youngest was five at the time and my daughter was 17. And I thought, okay, well, I saw a thing where we could make candy cane Christmas ornaments out of beads and pipe cleaners.
26:46And I thought, well, that's safe enough for the five-year-old and my oldest, who was the only girl, will get a kick out of it. And so we printed out the instructions and we learned how to make candy cane ornaments for the Christmas tree. Would you believe that their grandparents still put those freaking candy canes on their trees? Sure they do. So it can be something so easy and so not time consuming, but it means so much more than that.
27:15So many things, you know, get some potpourri and sew a little sachet, you know, there's so many things like that that everybody can use. There's so many things you can do. Yes, and if you don't have the stuff on hand, if you have a Joanne's fabric store within half an hour or a Michael's, there's all kinds of things there that you can get that aren't going to cost you thousands of dollars.
27:45love it and appreciate the work that went into it. And they're not going to think, oh, this is stupid. They're going to think, oh my god, you really put thought into this and time into this. I mean, you poke purine stuff that you put on your stove. I don't know if you use dried oranges, but to me, like a bag of your homemade potpourri, that would make my day to have something like that. That just would make my kitchen smell good.
28:13Yeah, and the wonderful thing is, is if you like oranges, if you like to eat oranges or the little halos or cuties, what the heck they're called? I don't know, little mandarins, yes. Yes, if you buy those fresh, all you have to do to get dried orange rind is to peel them and then break that rind up, throw it on a cookie sheet and stick it in your oven at the lowest temperature you have on your oven and just let them dry for an hour, hour and a half.
28:42dried orange peels and they're not going in the trash. Exactly. I mean, that's amazing. I guess today is all about sustainability too. Who knew? It all wraps up, right? It all ties up. It really does. So I know you make a lot of things because I went and looked at your Facebook page and I want to live in the Facebook world on that page.
29:11Oh, thanks. Mm-hmm. So tell me about some of the things that you've made. I know you said washcloths. So for gifts, oh my God. Well, I've made napkins. You know, making napkins was something that I enjoyed doing. Well, you could just make napkins and then, or if you crochet, you can just add a little crochet edge to them. You know, little, my mom had given me a sachet once. She went to Italy and brought home this,
29:41somebody had taken like a fabric, put some lavender in it and then put a wooden bead with this and then painted the face of the stalls face on it. And that was just a little sachet. So I've made, I kind of took that idea and made my own for like that. And you've put me on the spot. I got to pull up my boat. Oh, you know, you can not things, you know, T like coasters and stuff like that, you know.
30:10You can go to, like you said, Joanne's and buy like goat's milk soap and not have to do the whole lie, LYE lie thing. You know, avoid all that and just pour soaps and add pretty flavors to them, pretty scents. You know, crochet book, for anybody who crochets, crochet bookmarks. Everybody can use bookmarks.
30:34So those are just some to get you started. Let's see, well, dog treats. Like we have a dog, we love dogs and we have lots of friends who love dogs, make a batch of dog treats and put them in a little cute little bag and share them. And dog treats are super easy to make. They're so easy to make. And people with a dog, I mean, that's like such a great gift. They all think they died and went to heaven. So those are just some of the things that we've done.
31:04Since you said dog, one of the things that is pretty easy to make is the bandanas that go on their collars. Yeah. Because you're just cutting it in, you find material that you like, you buy some, and you cut it into like a triangle, right? Yeah. And use pink and gray so it doesn't ravel. Yeah. And yeah, you have some cute bandanas. Oh, see, now that's a cute idea. You could even like do...
31:32tie up your little dog goodies in a bandana. That's brilliant. We should market that. Isn't that cute? Yeah, that's a cute idea. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, you don't have to spend a lot of money to do thoughtful things. And then there's the whole time is such a gift for so many people. I gave one year my sister-in-law.
31:57Just needed help decluttering. So I just went up. I didn't you know, her gift was she had me for a weekend and we decluttered You know Just it which was fun too, you know, so given the gift of time is another Great gift that people Would can really appreciate Yeah, and if you love to cook cooking dinner for somebody or if you're big on kids You can babysit their kids for right on Friday or Saturday night
32:24Yeah, access service is a great gift. 100%. And we are here in my house, we're really lucky because we're always making things because we're always curious and we want to try stuff. And we started making, um, cold process lye soap years ago. Okay. So that, okay. And so we were trying to do that. Oh, it's, it's really okay.
32:50I shouldn't say it's really easy because I don't do it. I am really nervous about the lye in the water, but my husband is not. So we talk about how we want to make it and what scents we want it to have. And I'm the one who puts the scents in after he mixes the water, the lye and the oil. So it's already at trace where it's like pudding texture. So I add the essential oils or the fragrance oils because that doesn't scare me. But
33:19It's really easy. You just got to make sure that you have goggles and that you're really careful when you put the lye in the water together. Just the fact that I have to wear goggles and be that. I mean, you know, the thing is like I can, you know, I water bathed in a pressure can. So I'm like, well, if that doesn't scare me, why does lye make it? But it does. Yeah, and you don't even actually have to wear goggles. It's just a safety measure just in case, you know, on the very small percentage that it splashes, it doesn't get in your eyes.
33:49And I think those are one, did you give him as gifts? Yes, and I was gonna say, he's gotten, my husband's gotten lye on his skin before, and as long as you spray it with vinegar and then rinse it off, it's fine. It doesn't hurt, it's fine. Okay. So in case you really do wanna try making soap, those are the things I can tell you. So when we first started making soap, we wanted people to try it and see if they liked it, because we loved it. And so we gave our family
34:18bars of these soaps the first year we made them. And we actually had a couple of people come back and say, do you have more? And so one year we had made a whole bunch of different kinds and we went to the Christmas gathering and we brought just a box of all the different soaps and we brought Ziploc bags and we were like, guys, we didn't know which ones you want. So there's the box. Take turns.
34:48take a Ziploc bag, put your name on it, pick out like four bars of soap that you would like to take home with you. They had such a ball. They had such a good time picking out what they wanted. Oh, I'm making fun of the wonderful. Yep, it was really fun. And we needed to get it out of our house because we were big into the soap making at that point and we gave it to everybody. So, and we also make lip balms. So I have like, I have 150 lip balms in a box right now that we made last summer.
35:18And they last forever because I know what they're made of. They're good for at least four years. If they're kept in a temperate place and they don't get too hot or too cold. So people will probably be getting lip balms this year, too. And everybody needs lip balm, especially in Minnesota, I would imagine. But even here in North Carolina, we use a lot of lip balm. That always ends up in my kid's stocking. That's a staple for us.
35:47little tube of lip balm. So yeah, there's so many things you can do. And the lip balm and like hand balm and foot balm, those are super easy to make. Probably along the same, you know, if you probably know that if you're making lip balm, once you buy all the, you know, the beeswax, whatever you're using, you can make so many different things. Yes, it's kind of wonderful because you can't just buy a little bit of beeswax. No.
36:17or coconut oil or olive oil or any other things. My next learning project is how to make natural Neosporin. I talked to a lady yesterday, her episode came out this morning and she has beehives. And I was telling her that I need to get a new tube of Neosporin because the one we have is almost gone. And I said, you know about bees, can I use honey and beeswax and olive oil and whatever to make?
36:46Sav that will do what Neosporin does because Neosporin has Vaseline and it has stuff you really don't want on your skin All right, and she said well, yeah, I have a recipe. I will I will message it to you. I was like yes She sent it to me I'm working on that this winter because I'm really natural antibiotic antibiotic antimicrobial the whole bit. Yes Okay, so that's my next
37:14Yeah, I love that. Yup. It's so fun and people used to look at me like I was crazy when I was like, I'm gonna try making lip balm. My neighbors were like, what? Right. And then I would give them the results and they would be like, oh my God, it's great. Thank you. So I just don't even bother recognizing that the you're crazy look on people's faces anymore. I just do it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Same kind of.
37:44When people ask me what I'm doing, I typically don't tell them. Well, I used to be so excited about it. You know, when I was younger, I was like, oh, I'm doing grandma stuff in my, in my twenties, and it's not grandma stuff. It's everybody's stuff. But that was how I looked at it. And they were like, but why you can just buy a tubalip bomb at the store? And I'm like, because I want to see if I can do it.
38:11Exactly. Which can, like, there is that point at which you're like, you know, you spend a hundred dollars on supplies for a $5 tube, you know, but I, which I've done and, you know, I fully own that, but I had fun doing it. So. Yeah. Yep. Okay. So we're already over 30 minutes, but I'm having a really, I'm having a really good time talking with you. I was so looking forward to this conversation. Oh, thanks. I'm looking forward to it.
38:38The one thing that I do want to bring up before I let you go is making a turkey. I got myself in a world of hurt talking about how to make a turkey one time. And I won't mention names, but the girl whose feelings were hurt, she was a single mom and busting her ever loving ass taking care of her kid and was very busy and was not a cook. And I
39:07said something about I don't understand why they're selling turkey breast in a bag to throw in the stove these days. It's not that hard to make a turkey. Okay. And I was like, you buy a whole turkey and you take the wrapper off of it and you pull the neck and the giblets out. You put it in a roasting pan. You put an onion, a cut up onion and a cut up apple in the... There's a word in the turkey.
39:36And then you melt a stick of butter, you pour it over the top of the turkey, you put some sage, some salt, some pepper, and whatever else you want to put on it. And yeah, put a lid on it. We put water in it. You put a lid on it, you stick in the oven for like two and a half hours. And her back went up and she was like, well, not all of us have time to perfect it. And I went, oh, I just stepped in it. I didn't mean to. So here's what I want to say about making a turkey. Making a turkey is not hard.
40:06It is not real science. It's just, it's just what I said. And you're probably going to screw up the first one because you don't know what to look for. And again, the olfactory sense is one of the strongest ones. And a lot of people know when food is ready by how it smells. So if you want to learn to, to roast a turkey,
40:31you should do it because turkey is fairly inexpensive meat and it can be really good at other times besides the holidays. Okay, so I wanted to get that thing about turkeys in because Thanksgiving's coming up, Christmas is coming up, and really if you want to learn to cook, all you have to do is find a recipe book and jump in and try it. That very true. Yeah, everybody was a first time turkey baker at some point. Everybody was a first time something at some point. Yeah.
41:01No one is born knowing how to do all these things. That's why we have parents who take care of us when we're little babies. We have to learn, we have to grow and when you stop learning and growing, you might as well be dead. So don't be dead. Enjoy your life. Try new things. That's it, girl. That's it. That's what life's all about. Yes it is. So real quick, do you, I don't know, you're a blogger. Do you have a book? Have you done a book yet?
41:30I have not. Okay. All right. Just checking. If you had, I was going to promote it, but you're not there yet. No. Okay. All right. Cool. Well, Lynn, this was so fun. I have been dying to have a conversation like this since last year. I enjoyed it very much. All right. You have a great rest of the afternoon and enjoy your holidays. And enjoy your Thanksgiving. Bye-bye now. All right. Thanks.
 

Prairie Creek Farm and Apiary

Today I'm talking with Jane at Prairie Creek Farm and Apiary.
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 Jane at Prairie Creek Farm and Apiary. Good morning, Jane. How are you? I'm fine, thank you. Good morning. You're in Kansas, right? I am. I'm in South Central Kansas, just north of Wichita. Okay, awesome. So tell me about yourself and what you do at the...
00:29the apiary. Well, my name is Jane and I, I'm retired from federal government. I worked in the federal government for over 22 years in law enforcement. And back in 98, when I first was hired on, I bought this little farmstead in Harvey County. And after retirement,
00:58I continue to work it as just a small horse farm. We used to breed horses here, my daughter and I, but we've always had a garden. And then after my grandsons started being born, one of them had allergies and eczema, and the doctors wanted to put him on medication right away. And I said, well, why don't I just start keeping bees and see if honey really helps?
01:28And it did. And now 12 years later, I'm, I'm up to 25 hives and starting to do farmers markets on the weekends or during the week here locally. And then I started making goat cheese with a friend up in Park City, Kansas. And I made cheese for him for three years.
01:58and they purchase my honey and my byproducts to put in their little market shop. So that's kind of what I do. Fun. I love it. Okay. So I do want to get into a couple of things about the bees, but the first thing I want to ask you about is I was looking at your Facebook page and you have some kind of salt bar that you make. What is that? It is basically the base oil in it is
02:28olive oil, or sorry coconut oil with a little bit of olive oil and castor and then it has a couple grams or probably like a cup of Himalayan sea salt and it just lathers up and is so pleasant for your face and I do it with and without
02:58So, and it's just fun. It's fun to work with and it's really lovely on your face. And you can use it as a total body soap, but it's something I've started this summer more continuously. And I have people that just absolutely love it. And that's the first bar that they come to. Some of them I have with turmeric.
03:26So it has sort of an anti-inflammatory with the turmeric. And then I'm getting away from fragrance oils and using more essential oils now. So I have several different essential oils. I just made some with tea tree and then I have some with eucalyptus and thyme. So yeah, I'm just kind of experimenting. Okay, so my question is, it's a soap.
03:55bar but the salt bar. So why is the salt important in this? Um, it's fun because salt and sugars help with lathering but the salt also it can be used as
04:12Oh, it's like a scrub. So it just has nice lathering properties. And I wish I had a better answer. It's just a really beautiful salt bar. And I can go get some more documentation on it. But that's my best answer is because of the lathering and the scrubbing nature of the salt. Just like if you make salt.
04:38foot scrubs with honey and salt. It just helps with exfoliation and cleansing your face better. And then I'm just kind of experimenting different ways. I follow a lady, I believe it's the nerdy farmer's wife, and she has some really great books and series on soap making. And when I started making milk soaps, I followed a lot of her recipes.
05:08And then she had this series coming out with salt bars. And there was another group of people, because when you start doing one thing and you start researching, then all of a sudden you start getting these pop-ups and other people that make soap. And so I started looking at some of their recipes and putting things together. But mostly I would say that the salt itself is, getting back to the original question.
05:37um for exfoliation and help cleaning your skin and it helps with lather. Okay got two things off of everything you just said. The internet the internet is the most amazing rabbit hole to go down ever and the reason I asked about the salt bars is because I didn't know I'd never heard of a salt bar before and we make soap and I was like what is a salt bar I need to know more.
06:04Yeah, if you look up that nerdy farmer's wife, she has some great books. And then if you follow them, every once in a while you'll receive an email and she'll have a recipe in there and you can kind of look at the recipe and add things or take things away, you know, run it through a lie calculator and. Salt bars are just great. I find them to be one of my favorite soap bars. Okay.
06:34Awesome. I just I needed to know more. Thank you for sharing. So in looking at your Facebook page, it looks like it was a fabulous summer for growing for you. It was. We've had a little bit more rain this year in Kansas. Last year was a terrible drought and things just didn't produce as well. But this year is also the first year that I did decided to become an LLC.
07:03And luckily we had some beautiful rain and my tomatoes just went crazy. And I wasn't distracted and actually picked my corn at the exact right time it seems. The sugar was beautiful and my sweet corn. And our town started a Friday evening, midnight market or moonlight market. And so I was able to
07:32have a booth there and it was just fun because I had never really tried to sell produce before and I was able to go out into the community. I first time in 25 years really started meeting people in the community and sharing my produce and then paying off what I put into my farmstead. I was able to pay for all my seed and all my starting plants and
08:02hopefully can eventually get my own little greenhouse so I can start my own produce. Isn't it a wonderful feeling when the thing that you're making or producing or growing manages to pay for the things that you needed to start the project? Yes, I just lost my last great aunt. She was 99 years and three months. And my aunt Garnet lived up in Ohio and she said, well, Janie, if you're selling everything.
08:33Why aren't you putting some back for your family? I said, you will share. But you know, what I'm not using then I can share and sell with my neighbors. And it's been fun. And I really enjoy it. I enjoy meeting folks and I love seeing their faces when they see a tomato, you know, as big as a dessert plate.
08:59Yeah, we grow tomatoes. We haven't had a tomato that big yet. We're hoping next summer to have some humongous tomatoes. This year was terrible in Minnesota, where we live, growing. So. I'm sorry. I've been piling up my horse manure. I still have a couple of horses here on the farm. And I pile it up about midwinter and turn it.
09:29to get rid of the weed seeds and stuff in it and have been putting it back out on the garden. And boy, does that make a tremendous difference. I think anything grown in the dirt tastes so much better. You know, you can tell when you haven't, nothing against aquaponics or anything like that. I just don't have that kind of a setup. And I think that something grown in the dirt just tastes
09:58so much richer. It's like a beet, you know, I love beets. And that earthy flavor just really comes through. I love vegetables though. Me too. Speaking of things from the earth tasting better like stuff you grow. We don't have chickens right now and so we had to buy eggs. And my husband bought just plain old white eggs at the grocery store.
10:27a week or so ago. And we were down to the last one. So he bought some actual free range eggs at the grocery store. Yes. And that's a term that is not definitive, whether they're actually free range chickens or not. But he bought these eggs and they were in a clear container and you could see them and they're big. They're supposed to be large eggs, but they're huge and they're brown. My son cracked the last white egg and then cracked, I think, one of the brown eggs.
10:56and he knew which one was which. And he was like, mom, this is crazy. Look at this. And I walked over and he had cracked it into a white bowl. The yolk on the white egg was half as orange as the free range egg that we had bought. It's insanity. I just, it's astounding to me the difference that you can actually see in the different ways things are grown and produced. Yes. So just wanted to throw that in there. Yeah. You know, I'm sorry.
11:25I can't actually let my chickens roam freely. One I have four dogs and then two we have a big coyote and red fox population and the hawks and the prairie raptors that are out here. But they are in a hundred by fifty foot run and they're given all the scraps from the garden, they're given all the scraps from the kitchen. We do supplement them with a grain.
11:56But you can 100% tell the difference between a caged chicken and a non-caged or free roaming chicken. And what they're fed. What they're fed changes the color so much too. So you were saying moonlight market. Is that with the farmers market, is that when it's dark out or is it just an evening farmers market? It's an evening farmers market. So it's Friday in the summertime.
12:25I believe they started May and the last one was in September. And it's from like five to eight PM. Downtown and we have a really, it's a small town here. Yeah. And the outskirts of Wichita. So yeah, it was, it was great. We had a good time. Got to meet a lot of folks. Awesome.
12:51I just, I think it would be so cool to have a farmer's market when it's dark out and have one of the vendors be like a coffee, tea. Oh yeah. Something. Well, the folks that I work for, they own, it's a place called Eldersley Farm. The wife is actually a chef and they have an upscale restaurant there at the farmstead. It's where her husband, George,
13:18grew up on that farm and he had a goat herd there. And we were making artisan cheeses. And...
13:29In the fall, we have a farmer's market there, but he also has a big Blackberry Bramble. So in the spring, we have a bloom festival also. And they're fun. And they go in, especially Oktoberfest, it goes into the evening. So you have a chance to put lights on your awning and really jazz up your display. So it's great. It was much fun.
13:58the little lights on an awning or on a trailer or whatever that just make it so special. And it's part of the reason that I love this time of year because everybody's going to be putting out their Christmas lights soon if they haven't already because Thanksgiving is a week and a half away. And I just, I love it because you don't see it every day. And so it's this very unique, very special time of year and lights always make things better. That's my take. I love candles. I do too.
14:27everything. So it's very fun. And I have on the books with my husband to go do a, a light tour of our town and the town up from us because they do a really good job. Our neighbors go all out and I'm hoping that inflation doesn't stomp some of that because electric bills are probably high. I don't know. So, so anyway, um, I had a question. Oh, I want to talk about your bees. I have talked with a lady who,
14:55who was a beekeeper. She didn't take care of bees last year, but she did for eight years before that. So I have a whole episode about honeybees. But I had some questions. I know that bees will take care of things after you take the honey out of the hive, but most people don't know. So when you harvest your honey, you let the bees clean things up. So can you talk about that? Cause I saw your video about it. Yes.
15:23Well, you can put up your honey supers wet or dry. And then if you put them up wet, that just means that the honey that's in them goes into storage for the winter. A lot of beekeepers will put their honey supers out and let the bees clean them up after they've spun out the honey. For me, the area that I keep them in, it's a 40 by 60 foot shed.
15:50and the bees find their way in and they clean them up anyway. So, and then my different layers of screens that I filter the wax and bee bits and out of my honey before I bottle it. When I'm finished with that, with the wax cappings, because I try to spin out as much honey from my wax cappings as I can, but then I'll let the bees clean it up.
16:19I have a big trailer and I just set everything out on a trailer or underneath an awning and they're going to find it, especially if you're in a dearth when there's nothing else for them to eat, they're going to come and clean things up. So I put my hive tools out. A lot of people don't like it because then they think that, you know, you can spread different diseases that way.
16:43But I kind of have the thought that it's a waste to just wash that stuff off and let it go to nothing when they're already hungry and it gives them something else to do. Yes, yes. And honey is what the bees eat. It's the stuff they make so they have food during the winter. Right. And I, you know, I've not had a problem, knock on wood, with
17:12any diseases in my hives. I guess I've been fortunate or I just watch out and try to head things off before it becomes an issue. And I know there are probably some feral hives around here, there have to be, but I have 13 hives out behind my house and my farmyard and then I have some scattered throughout the county. But most of those bees are where I collected that honey from.
17:42and they're just cleaning up behind themselves. And of course they will fight a little bit over it and you're gonna lose a few bees that way. But I like them cleaning it up and they do such a good job. Yeah, and the reason I wanted you to tell me about it is because I feel like Mother Nature did a really good thing when she created honeybees, or if you're a God person, God created honeybees. Because honeybees are really efficient.
18:11at their lives. They, I don't know how to explain it, like I know just enough to kind of make a guess at this. Honey bees are amazing. Like I found out from somebody a couple months ago that in the fall that the female bees kick the male bees out of the hive for the winter. Is that, that's right, right?
18:39purpose in life is to meet a Virgin Queen. They go out on mating flights and they're still trying to figure out, they're called drone zones. And it's usually, I believe, don't quote me on this, but there is kind of usually in a low area, kind of like a draw. And the main, the Virgin Queen will go out on a flight. How she knows is another thing.
19:09greatness of nature. And she flies to these drone zones and she can made it with more than one drone on this flight. But drones do not have, they do not have stingers. Where their stinger would be is kind of like what we would assume to be a penis. And they, when they make the queen, they fall
19:35it releases or stays in the queen and instead of like pumping venom, their spermothica just starts pumping sperm into the abdomen of the queen. And she will, they think she may go on on multiple flights, but once she has finished mating, she does not go back out again unless she is on a swarm. So she goes back into the hive and within the week, she'll start laying a week
20:06to, you know, seven, oh, I guess seven to 12 days she'll start laying eggs. And then that's her job for the rest of her life. And she can live between, you know, three to five years in nature. Yeah. Yeah. And so the reason that the female bees kick the males out during the winter is because the males don't really have a job during the winter and they don't want them to eat all the food in the hive. So they just kick them out.
20:36The lazy SOBs have to go. Yeah. They're not allowed to just sit around and watch football. They, um, they do. They, uh, because they don't scavenge, like they're, their only job is to mate a queen and so in the late fall, um, early winter they're kicked out of the hive, you'll actually see the, the worker bees dragging them out on the porches of the hives and just booting them away. Yeah. Um.
21:05And then in the spring, you know, when it's time to watch for swarming and so forth, or that, you know, things are kicking a ramping up in the springtime because you'll start seeing drone cells, the drones are the males in the hive. And there are much bigger bee. So worker female bees have flat cappings on top of their cells, but a drone actually kind of looks like a bullet. It, it propels out a little bit.
21:32It rounds out. Yeah. Yes. And so once you start seeing those, you know that, you know, it's nature's warming up and spring is happening and you've got to start watching your hives. Yeah, it's just, it's so interesting watching the life cycle of honeybees. And I, I'm not going to lie. I was very afraid of anything that stung for years because I was stung on the bottom of my foot when I was like four years old and it made a very big impression.
22:02Yeah. And so I ended up writing an article about raising bumblebees because you can actually raise bumblebees. It's probably not the easiest thing ever, but you can do it. And I learned about the life cycle of the bumblebee and wrote an article about it for Bee Culture, the magazine. And then I was like, huh, I wonder what the life cycle of honeybees is. And I did a big deep dive into honeybees and how their lives go and what they do. And I was just so impressed at the effect.
22:31efficiency and the focus of these little tiny insects. It just, it blew my mind. I don't know why I'm so fascinated by it, but I am. Well, it's just the perfectness of nature. Everything has a purpose. In a bee colony, everybody has a purpose. Everybody has a job. And it's just, shows how wonderful nature really is. Yeah, there's such a beauty in it.
23:00And I'm gonna say this again, I've said it like seven times in the last year and a half on episodes on the podcast. People, if you're gonna buy honey, try to get it from a local person who raises bees, keeps beehives, and knows what they're doing. Because if you buy honey at the store, it might not actually be honey. It might be something that's supposed to be honey, but there's no honey in it and it's not great for you. Plus, if you buy it from a local person, you're supporting them.
23:29and they can keep having bees and they can keep producing beautiful honey. It's an expensive hobby. And you know, if you're, people are always concerned they think that their honey goes bad because it crystallizes. Well, if your honey is not crystallizing, it's not real honey. And it's so easy to decrystallize honey by just putting your jar into, you know, a warm bath. It will decrystallize.
23:58But real honey, because of the moisture content and because of the yeast and so forth, is going to crystallize. It never goes bad. No. It never goes bad. No, and honestly, crystallized honey is really great to spread on toast. It is. And spun honey is a wonderful byproduct of just regular honey.
24:25Clover honey usually has a very small crystallization content in it. So where I come from, like if you have a soft flower field or a soybean field, the moisture content or the crystals can be much larger. And so it is the only honey that I actually put through a fermentation or not a fermentation, I'm sorry. I put through a heated process to heat it up to.
24:53and then I cool it very quickly and that gets rid of those large crystals and it also takes away the yeast so that it doesn't ferment. And then I'll introduce a small crystallized honey, like a clover honey, into that. And then that's called spinning honey because you incorporate it. You use like a stirring process to incorporate that smaller crystallized honey into it.
25:22And then that makes it very spreadable. And you can also add flavorings into it. A lot of people will add cinnamon or they'll add different powdered fruits, flavors. And it just is another wonderful byproduct that beekeepers can have to sell to their customer base. Definitely. I don't know if you're gonna know the answer to my question, but I know you know a lot about bees. I was...
25:50Look, I was thinking the other day that I have to get some more neosporin, the antibacterial appointment that people use for, for owie. And I was like, I wonder if I can take some beeswax and some honey and coconut oil and make a salve and not have to use neosporin because coconut oil is an antibacterial and so is honey. Do you know, do you know if that's like nature's neosporin?
26:16It is. The inside of a bee hive is actually very sterile environment. They collect sap from different trees and make a propolis. That's what they use to seal cracks and so forth in their hive. And they kind of use it as their medicine chest. So if you can get some propolis and a little bit of honey and coconut and some beeswax, you can make some wonderful sabs. And there are several out.
26:43course on the internet because you can find everything on the internet now. Of course, yes. You can make some wonderful salves with honey and beeswax and propolis. You don't even have to have propolis, but it's always a nice additive to it. Yeah. I just, I was looking at the ingredients on the Neosporin tube and I was like, this can't be good. I mean, yes, it helps, but it can't be good for you. And I knew that, that, um,
27:12the manuka honey that people talk about can be used on wounds. And I was like, I bet I could make my own salve that would do the same thing that I needed to do that Neo's Soren does. So I'm going to have to work on that. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I have a little cookbook, the Kansas Honey Producers is a group and they have a cookbook that we sell at the state fair every year. And in the back of that cookbook are several different
27:43salves and hand lotions and so forth and I can send you a recipe. That would be awesome. I was trying to make a lotion for my son because he has dry skin and I wanted it to be lotion and it looks like lotion when I put it in jar and then it solidified and it became sap. And apparently I was missing an ingredient to keep it like a lotion. I don't know what the ingredient is. I have to look for it but I am.
28:11I am all for making my own stuff with natural ingredients because why wouldn't I? I have time. I'm smart. I can read a recipe. I can do things. So I had one more thing about all of this and now I can't remember what it was. Oh, it was a statement or question. That's why I can't remember it. Bees, honeybees are incredibly important and people make jokes about, oh yeah, everybody says save the bees.
28:41Well, number one, they are pollinators, and they pollinate our produce, and we need them to do that, or there are no tomatoes, there are no cucumbers. Nothing happens if these things don't get pollinated. Number two, they make honey, and honey is wonderful. If you like honey, you love honey. And I don't ever want there to be a world where there's not honey from my tea.
29:08the wintertime. I don't want there to be a world where there's not honey from my toast. And honey is not just tasty. It's something that can actually heal people like we were just talking about. And beeswax is a huge part of lots of things. So when somebody says don't kill that honeybee in your house, put it in a glass jar and take it outside and let it go, they're not crazy. They're just trying to keep them alive.
29:36Yes, and it's a little girl because only the little girls go out on foraging and she needs to get back to her hive because if you lose all the foragers that are out looking for these, it sets the hive out of balance because at different stages of the bee's life, they do different things. When they first attach out, they clean the hive.
30:03And then they start taking care of the babies that are under the cap cells. And they assist the queen or clean the queen. And then they, you know, guard the hive and then they become foragers. And if one part of that goes out of whack because all the bees are out in a field collecting and they get sprayed with a pesticide, then that sets the hive off
30:32you know, the next bee under them has to progress. They, I mean, they notice something is out of whack and it just, you know, it's like that perfect nature thing. It just sets everything off. So they are very important. They are important to the food we eat and the hive dish does so much more than what people really realize. Yes, and it's like the backbone.
31:00of farming and we don't want to lose that because we have enough issues with farmers going out of business, farmers losing their crops to weather. We need the bees to be the support and just I don't want to be a crazy save the bees woman, but I'm going to be a save the bees woman. If you know there's hives near your property, don't spray things near the hives. And if a bee gets in your house, if there's a way to get it out alive, you
31:30do it. And I am really still kind of afraid of bees. Like I have a huge appreciation for them, but I still get that that crinkle at my back when I hear a bee buzzing. And there was a bumblebee in our house a couple years ago and I managed to get it outside and I was very nervous about it, but I did it. So, so if you're afraid of bees, face your fears. And the fact is unless you're allergic to bee stings,
31:59A bee sting hurts for a minute and then it's better. You know, they had a little bit of ice and some, you know, Zequil, or not Zequil, Benadryl can't help, you know, fix. So yeah, and you know, people freak out when they see a swarm, you know, because that's how bees reproduce is once the colony becomes very, very populated.
32:27Those workers in the hive start putting out a pheromone for the queen and they start running her around the hive to have her lose weight so that she can fly further distance. And she will start laying certain eggs that will become a new queen. You'll end up with queen cells in your hive and that shows you that they're getting ready to swarm. And the older queen will fly off with a percentage of the colony and you'll see them, you know, like great...
32:57clump of grapes hanging from a limb or on the side of a building and people freak out over that. Normally, they will not sting you because they're not there protecting their colony. You may have a rogue bee sting from that, but for the most part, if you contact a local beekeeper, they will love to come and collect that swarm because that...
33:22increases the amount of hives you have and you're not paying for those bees, you're just helping them find a new home where they're wanted instead of in a tree or somebody's house. Bees normally only sting if you accidentally put your hand on them or step on them or sit on them.
33:51but when they're guarding their hive, they may sting. But for the most part, they don't want to because they know if they do, that's the end of their life. Yes, for people who don't know if a honeybee stings you, it's a one and done. They sting you and they die. Yes. We had a bunch of yellow jackets at our last Oktoberfest and people said, I think your bees are out. And I said, those are bees, those are yellow jackets. Because they were going into people's fruity drinks.
34:21We were serving a lot of hard apple cider and soft apple cider and of course they were attracted by that fragrance. Yes, and a good way to tell a yellow jacket from a honeybee, a honeybee is fuzzy. A yellow jacket is shiny. Yes. And they can sting multiple times. Uh-huh. They're mean. I hate them. I hate them so much. And they're pollinators too, but I still hate them. They're not as nice. They're not friendly, no. Okay.
34:50We could talk for hours about bees because I'm still terribly curious about all of it. But I told you 30 minutes. We're going to keep it 30 minutes, Jane. Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it so much. I thank you. It was nice meeting you, Mary. You too. Have a great day. You too. All right.