A Tiny Homestead

The Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard

Today I'm talking with Emily at The Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Emily  at the Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard  in Virginia. Good morning, Emily. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on today. Thank you for making the time. I know that you guys are all very, very busy people.  How is the weather there today?
00:28It is sunny. It's beautiful.  The past week or so we've had a thunderstorm every day.  So, um, I don't know what's coming up later, but right now it's just beautiful. Yeah, I'm in Minnesota and it is very sunny. There's a light breeze, but it's also like 80 degrees with heavy humidity. So  I'm to be spending the day working on my podcast inside. Cause that seems like a good idea. Nice.  Yep.
00:57have laptop, we'll get work done. That's good.  So tell me about yourself and what you do.  So  I am an owner of the Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard.  We opened in 2016.  I am a farmer,  a baker.  I do all the stuff behind the scenes. I manage our social media.  I plan our events. kind of the
01:28everything at the farm,  which is a lot, but  yeah, it's great.  we
01:40The farm has been in our family since right  after the Civil War.  My great-great-grandfather James Swate opened an apple and peach packing plant there.  And then my grandfather  carried on the tradition and has been farming there  since the 60s, I believe.  So the property has been in our family for a really long time.
02:08Kind of why we got our name the Homestead Farm, because it's on our family's homestead. And then the Fruit Hill Orchard part comes from my grandfather's orchard business, which is Fruit Hill Orchard. nice. So do you have old photos from from generations past? Yes, we do. We so my grandfather, his grandmother grew up there.
02:36And we have pictures of her out back with  the old windmill, which funny story, she  accidentally  rolled her car into the windmill and knocked it over in the  80s, I think.  And  we  have since put a new windmill up in her honor. But  yeah, we have old photos of the family. The building next door that was the Apple and Peach packing plant, that used to be a barn,  but now it is a
03:06warehouse type building,  but we have pictures of that before they enclosed the barn area and change that around.  Yeah, old pictures of the house. Our farm market was actually the carriage barn  where my grandmother stored her car and my great grandmother,  um, stored her car. So  yeah, lots of interesting history there for sure. And pictures.  I love it.  Um,
03:35the reason I asked is our house is over a hundred years old  and We've only been living here for almost five years and I keep trying to find someone who knows anything about the property because it's been here a long time  and Nobody lives around here that knows anything about it from a hundred years ago So I'm out of luck on the history Yeah, you'll have to do some diggings.  Yeah, there's a  Historical Society in the town up from us
04:05So they might have something I got to get up there this summer and  ask and be like, so what do you know about this address in  LaSore, Minnesota? Cause I need history. need it. I need it right now.  So I'm sure there's a ton of it too. So hopefully you can find it. I hope so. Cause I'm so curious. I've been told that there was a real barn here and it got torn down or a storm took it out years ago.
04:32And now we have this big ugly maroon and cream colored pole barn. And every time I look at the pole barn, I'm like, I wish the old barn was still here because that would have given this place so much more character. Yeah. Oh, but it's long gone. you know, what are you going to do? Okay. So what do you guys do at the farm? You have an art, you have an orchard.
04:57We have an orchard that has been there for many, many years.  That is part of Fruit Hill Orchards original orchard. That's apples and peaches. And then we also grow our garden produce there.  We do tomatoes, beans, peppers, squash, cornmelons, blackberries, and that is all chemical free. We don't use any  chemicals on our gardens or our berries at all.
05:27We also source local and organic produce whenever we don't have something or ours isn't ready yet. Because chemical free and organic is super important to me. And then same with the bakery.  We source local fruits,  local eggs, as many organic  ingredients as possible.  And those are all,  all of our baked goods are all homemade.
05:56From scratch in our bakery, we also raise cattle. I have chicken, so we have some of our own meat and eggs for sale. We also have a sugar shack, which has hand dipped and soft serve ice cream and all kinds of toppings and specials and things like that. Trying to think. We also have some events.
06:26Every  year our big Sunflower Festival is coming up on September 6th this year,  which is huge for us. Our little place gets thousands of attendees that day.  And then we have a Farm and Makers Market that comes up on  the last Saturday of every month.  So  we love to support other locals,  people that are maybe homesteading or doing something that they don't have.
06:54a farm stand or a place to sell, love to try to help them out and get some of their products in our store.  We also, a big one for us is Bluegrass on Thursday nights. We have a back porch jam,  live music. It's just a bunch of local musicians that come out  and play and we serve a dinner that night  and it's a lot of fun. So we are really busy. We've got a lot going on at the farm.
07:23all the time.  Wow. Yeah, that's a lot.  Okay.  So I have two questions. The sugar shack that's on your property. Okay. Yes. It is right beside our farm market. We  built it. We kind of connected the sugar shack that's there now to  the cooler we had  already existing.
07:51So it's just a small little building right beside our farm market. That's awesome. I love that. I bet it's adorable.  And then you don't have to tell me specifics, but do you have a lot of land for your farm? So the farm that we have at the market here, that the land is split up between my mom and her sister.
08:17And it is in total, it's 300 acres, but we are only farming about 10 of that ourselves  that's not orchard. And most of our fields are like sunflower. We do the Sunflower Festival. So we have a two acre sunflower field  and then we do a big pumpkin patch  and  then our produce is on the rest.
08:45Okay, so what do you do with the sunflowers? So we grow them,  let people come out and pick them, we sell them  per stem, but we  just let people come out and enjoy them. Mainly we don't charge entry. The  only time we do charge entry is to our sunflower festival,  but otherwise if our markets open,
09:12People are welcome to go out and enjoy the flowers, take photos. We had one lady,  her family spread her ashes out there because she loved sunflowers. So we had memorial services out there.  But yeah, the sunflowers are a huge draw. We're kind of known in Winchester as the sunflower farm.  That is so cool. Yeah.
09:37We grow sunflowers here, but we only grow like a row of them because we think that they're pretty. And they grow so easily. if anyone has a patch they just want to happiness in, throw in some sunflower seeds.
09:55Yes, exactly.  We don't have a way to really to water ours once the seeds are in. So we kind of just depend on  God and the weather to take care of it for us.  So yeah, they are really easy. We throw our seeds out and every year we have a pretty good crop.
10:17Do you grow different colored ones or are they just all that really kind of orange yellow?  All of the ones in the big field are that orange yellow. We grow some specialty ones in rows like we do the  ones with the white petals or we do like the black center with the orange petals or the red ones.  So we do grow a variety but they're not the variety of those colors are not in the big field.
10:45Yeah, we grow some cream colored ones that are absolutely gorgeous.  love them. Those are my favorite too. They're so pretty.
10:55Yeah, and if you put them with  the reddish brownish ones,  they remind me of autumn. If you put the cream ones with  the reddish brownish ones, they're really pretty together in a vase.  Oh, yeah. Yeah, and we grow those too.  My son actually started it because he was like, can we grow sunflowers? Not we have room. And I was like, yes. And he had us order like a variety pack of sunflower seeds. So they were all different colors.
11:24He said, so what colors will come up? And I was like, I don't know.  It's a waiting game. It'll be like Christmas when they bloom.  we had so many different colors. He was like, I love this. Can we do this every year? said, yes, yes, we can. Did you guys save your seeds from the sunflowers?  Some of them, yes. Yeah.  We tend to leave ours for the birds.  We buy a new seed every year just because it's so much that we need.
11:53But yeah, it's amazing to see like all the birds and wildlife out there enjoying the sunflowers once they've dried up and died. So it's a win-win to enjoy them and then also  be doing that.
12:10Yes, here in Minnesota, because we get snow in November, December, January, February, and March, for sure. We leave a lot of the heads on the plants so that the birds can have seed and that way we're not buying bird seed from the store. Yeah, that's great. They seem to appreciate it. Yeah, they do. So, okay. So, so is the, is the farm or the homestead or whatever, um, supporting itself or do you have an outside job?
12:42So, nope, that is my job. It is supporting itself. I have been, so I have two kids and I have been working, well, we opened the farm in 2016 and we're seasonal. So I don't technically have a job in the winter time when we're closed. We have a couple months of downtime and I bake cakes during that time for some extra income.
13:12So, yeah.  Congratulations on doing something you love and making it go. Thank you.  I do. This was a dream of mine. And I'm so happy that it's working out. We're on our ninth season, so that's pretty huge.  Every year gets a little better and better.  I've started sourcing a lot more  products for the market that are
13:40super healthy, like real food, nutrient dense food, clean ingredients, free of seed oils, all that kind of stuff. I've been on my own health journey since I had my daughter in 2020. So it inspired me to just clean up my life and also offer these kind of products in our store. And it's really working out well. So I'm super happy about that. Okay, so
14:11I hate to use the word competition because I feel like farmers and homesteaders aren't really in competition.  Are there people who are doing kind of the same thing as you are anywhere near you? Let's not call it competition. There are a lot of farms,  small homesteads in Frederick County,  farm markets.  There's a lot of them here.  And there's one that's like two miles down the road from us.
14:37but they don't grow their own stuff. It's very different.  I don't like the word competition. I don't feel like we're in competition  with them because we're so different, if that makes sense. And what we offer is very different.  But as far as like the other farms that would be doing stuff that's similar to us,  we  all support each other and I love it. It's just this community of
15:05people who  we really do work together. mean, I bake some baked goods for another farm that's down the road and I get some meat from them for what we don't have. And it's like that just with a lot of the other farms. I get eggs from another farm and we're all just kind of in this together. know,  people are waking up, they're wanting local food, they're wanting to know their farmer and
15:34I think that it's more important now than ever.  And  so there's room for all of us  to succeed. Yes. And I'm going to say this for probably at least a hundred time during the tenure of my podcast.  All are a rising tide raises all ships. And that's what you're doing.  And you're right.  Now is the time. It wasn't the time before.  Now is the time for  all these small communities.
16:04to get to know each other and work together and produce food and produce products because  things could get real, real chaotic here in the next six months, especially this winter. So if you grow anything, produce anything, make anything,  get to know the other people who are doing it too and start like a little community so that your bigger community has a place to go for things. Yes. Yes, I love that.
16:33do feel like that's what we're doing here  in Frederick County, that's for sure.  There is a group, one of my friends started, it's called Frederick County Homesteaders,  and she creates a shop local guide, and there's a farm crawl twice a year where  people buy a ticket and they go around and visit all the participating farms.  And  that's something that I think that a lot of counties and communities
17:02should start. think she's going to offer a course on how to start up  a local chapter, I guess, for people who really don't know where to start but want to start something like that in their community.  But it has brought me together with  so many  of these small farms  and connected us all. And it's really cool to be a part of that and to have that here in our community.
17:31Awesome.  The other thing that I wanted to work into the podcast today and now is a good time to do it  is over the next six to eight months,  if you have relatives that are having a hard time now,  make sure you keep tabs on them and you  check in and see where you can help because  my parents live in Maine. I live in Minnesota. I'm really lucky that my sister  lives a couple of miles down the road from my parents.
18:01Because right now, if she wasn't there, I would be very concerned about my parents. They are elderly people. So make sure you check in with your neighbors and  not just your friends, but your neighbors and make sure they're doing okay. Yeah,  that's very important.
18:22We've all got to look out for each other.
18:27Yes, and if you're growing a garden and you know your neighbor likes tomatoes and you have a bunch that you're not going to use, offer them up.
18:36Yes, I love that. And it doesn't even have to be tomatoes. could be peas. It could be lettuce. It could be cucumbers. It could be squash, whatever. But just if you have a lot, give it  to people who need it.
18:50Yeah. I'm a little worried about the world. Can you tell? Hey, I'm there with you, but I think that it's going to be okay. We all are working together and I do think the majority of people are looking out for one another. I really hope it's true. I really want that to be true.
19:20Okay, so  what do people tell you when they come to visit your place? What's the, I don't know, general consensus on their experience with your place?  I get a lot of positive feedback, which makes me so happy because we work really hard and to hear those kind of things makes all that hard work super worth it.  I get a lot of people that thank us for
19:46growing our produce the way that we do without chemicals  and for carrying some certified organic produce.  And  we are also a raw milk pickup location  for another farm in West Virginia that is able to sell pet milk. And so people thank us for being an outlet for that.  And I've been posting a lot on our social media stories.
20:16And it's brought a lot of new customers in and I hear often that people love my videos and  I'm blown away by all the love and support that we are receiving. So yeah, it's, all good stuff. It makes it so worth it when people  tell you stuff that's positive because then you have the gas in your tank to keep going, to keep working, even though sometimes you have a bad day.  Yeah.
20:46once had a lady tell me she comes every year and she said she traveled 2000 miles for the best peach pie she's ever had in her life and that the trip is totally worth it and I just couldn't believe that someone would want to travel that far for one of our peach pies.
21:10So that was really,  really flattering.  That's a hell of a commute, but if it's for the best peach pie ever, it's worth it.  Yeah, I don't know if she was coming to the area already, but she comes through Virginia once a year  and  stops for the peach pies. So that's really awesome. That's high praise, Emily. Take it when you can get it.
21:37Um, so you said you have peach trees. Do you have a lot of peach trees? We do. I don't know exactly how many, um, but we grow freestone yellow peaches. grow freestone white. And if you don't know, freestone means that they fall off the pit easily. Um, and they, probably peel easier too, if they're a freestone. We also grow some semi-freestones. Um, and then we grow some clings.
22:08The clings are a yellow peach and they cling to the pit so they don't fall off easily.  But a lot of people want the free stone and I just have to say the cling peaches are the best for canning if you want to can like peach slices  or  freeze them because unlike some of the other peaches, these cling peaches hold their shape and they hold up  and
22:37have like such a good flavor  whenever you open that can of  canned peaches and or frozen peaches.  And so  I always try to tell people that they should try the clings even though they're not as easy to  cut. They are totally worth all the work when you're processing them.  And yeah, so we have a variety of different kinds.
23:06on the farm,  but the most popular would be the yellow freestone peaches, which are what we're picking right now.  I am so jealous. We don't really have a lot of peach growers in Minnesota. We grew peaches last year. Our trees did not bloom this year for some reason.  So we have two peach trees here that are cold hardy. And we did get peaches last fall off of those trees and they were so good and we're not going to have any this year. I am so sad.
23:36We did lose a lot to frost this year. We had an early spring frost  and the peaches that we do have  are  really great. Like the size of them is even  bigger because there weren't as many on the trees.  But yeah, it just depends on the weather again with  the crop. Thankfully we have some though. We're super thankful for what we do have.
24:04Yes, I'm sure you are because man, it is just such a bummer when you think you're going to have trees loaded and there's not a single one.  Do you can? Do you can peaches yourself? do. Yes.  That's one of my favorite things to can. Okay. I have a question because we want it. We were talking about canning our own peaches this year.  We don't have any can, but if we had, we would have.  And we bought a whole bunch of peaches a couple of years ago from
24:32the My Fruit Truck company and they were lovely peaches and we canned them and they turned brown. They're fine, they're edible, but they're brown. Do you know how to keep the peaches from turning brown when they're canned? Did you just can them in water or did you do a simple syrup? I don't remember. Is the simple syrup the trick?
24:58That would be yeah, the sugar in the syrup would keep them from turning brown.  And then some in some cases you can add a little like splash of lemon juice or so, but  I don't ever do that. I just do I make the light syrup. I use the recipe in the ball canning  complete canning book. It's you know, the little one you can get at almost any store that sells the canning supplies.  There's a recipe in there for light syrup  and
25:28Yep, that's the one that I use. And I don't like a ton of sugar.  I personally don't even eat  refined sugar at all.  So last year I experimented making a honey syrup  and that actually worked out really well.  And the peaches didn't turn brown, but I do think that they have a  better flavor when they're canned in that light syrup versus the honey.  in the water.
25:55If it was just canned in water only, that would be  why they would turn brown. think.  Yeah. I do not remember. It was like three summers ago and I have slept many nights since then.  Yeah.  But thank you because I've been trying to figure it out and I have that, that canning book you're talking about. So will look for that recipe.  And if you, if anybody wants to go into canning,  the ball books, any of them, anything that was produced by ball company is good. They're a good book.
26:26Yeah, I look in there for almost everything. I do my green beans,  the recipe out of there for green beans. I do  pickles out of there.  I've done jam and jelly. So a lot of things I turn to the ball book for.  Yep, absolutely. It's like the Bible of canning.  So  you said you have a bakery.  Do you mean literally a bakery? you, you, um,
26:53licensed to sell commercially or are you talking like a home a home-based bakery? So we are inspected by the Virginia Department of Agriculture. So our kitchen is certified. We had to do that for our business to be able to sell meals on our bluegrass nights. So we typically have to take a serve safe course every five years.
27:19to maintain  certification to serve food. And then we have a yearly inspection in our kitchen.  It's a full kitchen. So we do our baking there, but we also do food prep there as well.
27:37Okay. Awesome. And you just proved my statement that I talk about all the time on the podcast, that every state has different rules and regulations  for cooking and selling what you cook. Because in Minnesota,  we have the cottage food producer registration, which makes it so you can  make baked goods and things in your kitchen and sell them as long as you are present.
28:02And then we have the commercial licensing that you can get where you have to take the big class, you have to pay for the class, you have to get  the piece of paper that says, yes, you took the classes, yes, you have the license to sell anywhere and you can ship your goods anywhere. Yeah. And we have that in Virginia too, the cottage food law. A lot of the small homesteads around are operating off of that because they can sell their baked goods  to the consumer.
28:31without a license. But for us, we, I mean, we could have done the same thing, but we were expanding into serving meals. And that's a whole nother  ball game with,  you know, the licensing and stuff. Plus  having the certified kitchen, it does give us the option to wholesale. And I do wholesale some baked goods elsewhere. So that is,  that gives us the ability to do that.
29:01But yeah, I think every state does do things a little bit differently.
29:07They sure do.  I have talked to a lot of people over the last 22 months and yes,  every state is different in some way and it's what makes it work. So I'm okay with that.  I should have asked you at the beginning. Did you start out small with all of this or did you just jump in with both feet and hope that you could swim?  Well, we did start out small. Every year we've gotten a little bit bigger and we're still pretty small.
29:36But  our first year,  we didn't hire anybody. Well, we hired one person to help in the gardens three days a week, but it was just my mom and I,  and we didn't have any fancy equipment.  The orchards had a tractor and my aunt had a disc.  And so  we would borrow that and disc our field because we didn't even have like a tiller or anything.
30:03And we would disc our field and then we would use a wheel plow, like a push behind, like you push it and it digs the ditch.  And so we would do that. We would hand weed, put straw down. And then about our fifth season in,  after, mean, we would hand water everything and it would take like two hours each day on the hottest days. So  we, um, eventually were like, you know,
30:31we need to buy some equipment to help us. So we purchased a tiller,  we got a  plastic mulch layer so we could do the rows with the plastics that we didn't have to  weed as much.  And then we got a water wheel planter that we could ride on and pop the plants in the ground with it.  And so that was a game changer for our gardens.  It's a huge deal for us.
30:59to have that and then,  we still are  doing things pretty simple though. I mean, we plant our rose in the plastic  and don't have to hand water of course, cause we do the drip irrigation now, but  we still have to maintain in between the rows and we just weedy and mow to make it look nice.  So yeah, we and.
31:27for like that's just the gardens but for the rest of the store I didn't hire a baker my mom looked at me she's like who's gonna bake for this and I was like I guess I am I always made cakes when I was a kid and I love baking so I just jumped right in and decided I would be the baker and I would make pies you should have seen the huge bowl of pie dough I was making up every week
31:55And, you know, making it by hand, rolling it out by hand.  I'm cutting up all the fruit for the fillings, making everything from scratch.  And so  probably our third year in, my stepfather gifted me a giant mixer, which that was a game changer for the kitchen and the baking. Cause then I could mix up large batches of cake. I could mix my pie dough in that.
32:22And so, yeah, I would say we definitely have taken baby steps and it's taken us  about this long to kind of get to where I feel super confident in everything that we're doing. I kind of know  the ropes of everything. I feel like I've finally got it,  got it down to know like, you know, that we're making it and  that I kind of just know what I'm doing now.
32:50If that makes sense.  It totally does. And you're proving the point that anything worth having is  worth waiting for  and that you don't start out an expert. Everything is a learning curve and you are now at  the far end of the learning curve. So  again, congratulations, Emily, for  having the courage and  whatever it took to get this started and get this far because it's a lot.
33:19Thank you. And my mom, she's a huge part of this with me.  We're business partners and  we have done everything together and she's amazing.  So I definitely have not done this all on my own.  We're a great team when it comes to the business and yeah, I'm so thankful for her  because it would not have been possible without her.  One thing to mention too is we also...
33:47on my mom's farm at her house, have a wedding venue.  so that,  my mom really focuses on that. She's the wedding manager  and gets everything ready.  And so having the weddings has really helped out our farm because it's all kind of falls under the same business, two different locations though.  But yeah, that's another.
34:14another thing that has really helped us to have extra income and be able to do more with everything.
34:23Fantastic. I love it. And shout out to mom. Good job, mom. Congratulations, mom too.  All right, Emily, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're almost 35 minutes. So where can people find you? You can find us  online  at the Homestead Farm, sorry, www.homesteadfarmmarket.com. We are on Facebook.
34:47the Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard. We are on Instagram at the Homestead Farm VA.  And then if you are traveling through Winchester, Virginia, you can find us  at 2502 North Frederick Pike, Winchester, Virginia 22603.  We are open with the farm market and the sugar shack. Typically April through November, we do a small Christmas shop and then we close up.
35:15January, February, March. But anyway, yes, thank you so much for having me on here and I look forward to hearing more of your podcasts and yeah, thank you. Thank you. And as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Emily, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Thank you. You too. Happy 4th of July. Yeah. Happy Independence Day. Thanks so much, Emily. a great day. Thanks. You too. Bye.
 

Peaceful Pastures

Today I'm talking with Amanda at Peaceful Pastures.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.
00:26Today I'm talking with Amanda at Peaceful Pastures in Michigan. Good afternoon, Amanda. How are you? Hi there. How are you?  I'm good.  You said the weather's really nice in Michigan? Yes, it's beautiful today. We finally broke that heat spell that we had last week and the humidity has gone down and it's just perfectly sunny. So it's great today.
00:50So you're having a top weather day in Michigan, just like we are in Minnesota. It's really nice here today too.  That sounds great. I'm glad it's just as nice for you. Yeah, the spring has been actually pretty moderate. I have been,  I dare say impressed with Mother Nature this year.  So tell me about yourself and what you do at Peaceful Pastures. Well, my name is Amanda. I'm a mother to two. I have an eight-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter.
01:19My husband is here with me too. His name is Andrew. We like to jokingly call him Goat Daddy.  We kind of jumped into Peaceful Pastures, kind of like an overnight deal.  We weren't really looking to sell our house and happened upon this property, just a little over seven acres, and we kind of jumped on it and looked, put it on offer, and right away it became ours.  And overnight I went and crazily
01:47purchased Nigerian Dwarf goats  and one of them was pregnant and so it began with our livestock. So we now have 13  and we have a mini Dexter cow. Her name is Betty and we have chickens.  Awesome. it is absolutely do a little bit of everything here. Yes.  Fantastic. So if your name is Amanda and your husband's name is Andrew,
02:17Do you ever get Mandy and Andy as nicknames?  Oh, yes, we do.  All the time.  I have this thing in my head that I do all the time and I rarely ever tell people about it because I think it'll freak them out. But I always end up having nicknames for people that I like. And  one of my friends on Facebook, and she was also in a writing group online with me,  her name is Janna.
02:46For the longest time when I would see her name, would think Jana Banana. Oh, and I never, I never told her that. And I was like, I got to stop doing this, but my brain just does all these weird associations with names. So,  so if you were friends with me, you would be Mandy and your husband would be Andy in my head. That's okay.  My husband always gets called Andy Pandy. So  it works.  Yep. Absolutely.  Um, okay. So do you guys have a garden as well?
03:16We do.  actually have a quite large garden this year.  Last year we had a great time with it and a perfect harvest. So I went ahead and jumped it up a little bit more this year. So we planted about five times as much as we did last year. So we're growing  and hopefully by the end of this week, early next week, we will start having some produce. We have a little standout front too. And  I like to fiddle around with that when I can. And we do lots of different things.
03:46tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, pretty much everything you can think of. We grow here right in our garden. So it's a lot of fun.  Keeps me busy.  Yeah. I call it the usual suspects. When people ask me what we grow in ours, I said the usual suspects, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces,  et cetera, et cetera. So all the good things. Yeah, exactly. All the things that people want to eat in June, July, and August. Right. And I don't know.
04:16I don't know how things are going in Michigan, but here in Minnesota, we've had the nicest weather for getting an early start on crops this year.  And we also  built a heated greenhouse two Mays ago. So we had  seedlings ready to go in the ground  first week in  May. We usually don't plant until May 15th because of the danger of frost.
04:45And so we looked at the extended forecast and it looked like it was going to be good. And my husband planted tomatoes like three weeks earlier than we usually do. And I said, if they die,  they're done. There's no coming back from that. He said, they're not going to die. He said, I have faith. was like, okay, I hope your faith works out.  Well, I'm glad it did work out.  I actually got a late start this year.
05:12because of the weather, just because we actually took our first vacation in the last 14 years. So  we were gone for that last week and a half. So it kind of pushed me back a little bit. So we didn't get started until the last week of May, but everything's in the ground now and seems to be doing well. So.
05:32I don't hear farmers say, I took a vacation very often. Where did you have the opportunity to go?  I know, right? It's really crazy. So we actually went to Disney. We took the kids to Disney for the first time  and it was a lot of fun, but my husband and I have never really taken a vacation by ourselves. So it was wonderful to have the opportunity to do that. And we were happy to be back home as well. So we really missed our animals and missed what was happening here.  So.
06:01Good. I'm glad that you did that because your kids are only little once. Trust me. I'm 55. My kids are all grown. They're all adults. And we weren't in a position to do the things that people do with their kids. We never went to Disney. We never went to Florida. We never went to any of the most people go. And the kids would all tell you that they don't have an issue with that. That was fine. We would go see the grandparents and that was really fun.
06:31But  the thing that I would tell people who are looking at getting into homesteading or farming or ranching is that if you can at all do it, take that week or so a year for yourself. Find people who you trust to come in and handle chores and the gardens and animals.  And preferably  do your vacation in like September or October when the gardens are done. And that way the only thing the person coming in has to do
07:01is feed the animals and muck the stalls. Yeah, we were very fortunate, very blessed to be able to take a week away and  kind of chill out and relax for a little bit. Like I said, it was our first time being able to do that and it was very much needed.  And  we're really, really happy that we were able to do that with the kids and they got to experience it. But they also love just being home to their kind of home body. So they'd rather be in their own element here and know exactly what we do every day. They kind of have a rhythm here.  So
07:34Did they get to meet any of their favorite Disney characters? They did. They did. Actually, my daughter is obsessed with Stitch. of course, it was the day that the new Stitch movie came out. So she was super excited to see him. They also got to see Belle and the Beast. And it was a lot of fun.
07:54Yeah, I see videos of little kids meeting their favorite Disney characters at Disneyland and it just makes me smile. I think it's so sweet.  Oh gosh, yes. The way they lit up was, it was  so priceless. Very much worth it, no matter what the cost was.  You know, my husband wasn't too thrilled with the price of everything, but you got to do it once in a while, right?  Absolutely. And that's really my point is if you have the opportunity to do something like that.
08:22and you can find people you trust to handle the things at home,  go do it. You only live once. Right. Yep. Yep. Very much would have actually said YOLO, but the last time I said YOLO, my 23- My 23-year-old son laughed his ass off at me when I said YOLO instead of you only live once.  Nice. You got to get with the lingo, right? You got to stay with it.
08:49He gets so squirrely because my husband and I both are people of the eighties. You know, we grew up in the eighties.  And as you know, we Gen Xers think that we're going to be young forever and  pick up the newest music, the newest slang really easily because things change every day when we were growing up. And so he's 23 and he just thinks that it's ridiculous when  we and our friends talk.
09:18like we're his age. It's funny. I know my son is always saying sigma this, sigma that, and I'm like, what in the world? You're like on a next level. You're totally out of here, dude. I have no idea what you're saying. Uh huh. Yeah. It's crazy all the slang that happens with the next generation of kids.
09:41I mean, my parents were not necessarily up on the latest music or the latest slang when I was a teenager.  And my dad  loved  old country music. He's still around. He's 81 years old. And  I really loved  George Michael and Prince. And I kind of liked Michael Jackson. I really loved Janet Jackson when she brought out music.  And my dad was not really impressed with the music I listened to.
10:10And because he loved music, we had a really nice stereo with a really nice speakers.  So the minute my parents would leave the house, I would be getting the records out, vinyl records,  and putting them on the record player and cranking out music that I grew up with, you know, listen to it constantly. And they would go for a walk around the block every night after dinner. So they left, I had music on and they could hear it halfway around the block. That's how loud I had it turned up.  that's so funny.
10:39Good memories.  You know, my husband and I were just saying how we're huge country fans and we like 80s and  90s country  and there is no good music like it used to be. So we were just talking about that yesterday, how good the music was in the  90s compared to now.
10:57I am so glad you said that because I actually flipped the radio on a week or so ago when I was driving somewhere, I don't where I was going, and put it on a country station, know, like, like top 40 country as it were. I was like, all of this is crap. And I thought, oh my God, am I getting old, old now? And so I'm glad to know that it is crap because you're not as old as I am. If you think it's crap, it's probably crap. No, it is garbage. It's just terrible.
11:26I don't even know how they can call it country music anymore. But  I'm glad we got to listen to the good music and we can still relive that every day.  Well, I'm really grateful for things like Pandora and Spotify because you can listen to anything you want to now and not have to be in a vehicle with a radio.  Right. So.
11:50We're getting a little far afield, but today has been that kind of day with nostalgia. I actually cried on the episode that I did earlier today.  So I'm not going to cry on this one, hopefully. Yeah, And I only do it about once every 50 episodes. So think I'm doing okay.  So tell me again, the animals you have. Well, we have Nigerian dwarfs. We have Stella, Luna,  and...
12:19Vega, which all are our mamas. They actually just had a birthing here a couple months ago. So they all had babies. We got rid of half of them  and then we retained a few. And then we also have their counterparts, Rocky  and  Oreo.  And then we also have Frankie, which is the buck that we have. And then we have a mini Dexter cow named Betty.
12:43And we have chickens. So I like to call them Smokey and the Bandits because Smokey is our rooster and then all of his ladies.  They're a lot of fun. They keep us entertained, pecking around and squawking all day long. So that's pretty much the gist of the animals. And then we also have two golden doodles as well. So you got to include them in the farm animals.  There's always a dog on the farm.
13:10Almost 99.9 % of the time there's always a dog on the farm. Okay, I have questions about all the things you just said. Let me mute my mic real quick. got a cough, hang on.
13:24I try not to cough in my guests' ears.  So you have Nigerian dwarf goats, dwarf goats, Yep. Okay. Do you use them for milk? Yes, actually. So  like I said, we came into this kind of overnight. So it's been almost two years now that we've been at the homesteading chain.  And when we first got Stella, which was one of our first goats that we got  right away,
13:51like four days after we got her, gave birth. So I kind of was around and tried to learn and teach myself on how to milk.  Um, so then this year when it came up, I had three, uh, mamas that delivered and we were able to start milking. So I do different things with that. Um, butter, I try to make my own soft cheese and then, um, also just for drinking as well.  Okay.  And
14:19I'm guessing you don't use the goats for meat.  No, no, we don't do that here. I know a lot of people have asked us and I just cannot bring myself to do it. Nothing against it, just not our thing. So they're more like a poop here. We truly love our animals and we get super close to them.
14:41Yeah, a lot of the people that I've talked to on the podcast who have goats only have them for dairy. And there are a lot of people in the United States who will eat goat meat. I have not tried it because I'm the same as you. Goats are friends and I don't want to eat them.
15:01So, dairy goats are fantastic and I did not, I've said this a few times, I did not like goat milk. The goat milk that I tried in previous years tasted to me like hay and a cow patty in the field. It just didn't taste, it didn't taste good. And then friends of ours who have goats let me try their cream for my coffee from their goats and I love it.
15:29So it just depends on what the goats eat, I guess. It does, yeah. So at first I was really reserved. I was kind of nervous to try it. And then once I did, I was like, oh my gosh, this is actually really good. So it has a lot sweeter taste than like a cow's milk would. And the fat content is actually higher. So there's a lot more cream  to milk than what a cow, like a regular cow's  milk would be. So we quite enjoy it. Yeah, the cream is fabulous.
15:57It is so yummy in coffee.  I need to get hold of my friend and be like, can I give you 10 bucks for like  just a little bit of cream? I will pay whatever you want. I just want some goat milk cream. It's so good.
16:14Yeah, it really is.  And then your cow, do you milk her or not? So we don't currently. She's about two years old. So  obviously in order to get milk from her, she would have to be bred.  So we keep her right now just more as like a pet. I hope to  IA her this fall if everything goes correctly, but we will see how that goes. See how much time we have on our hands.  Yeah.
16:43I wasn't sure how old she was, so I didn't know if she'd had a baby yet.  then the chickens, do you sell the eggs or do you just have them for yourself? We do. We sell eggs.  We get probably  between 20 and 30 eggs every single day.  We have 32 chickens right now, so they're laying quite well.  We have a little stand that we sell eggs and jams and that type of thing out front of our house. And then we also
17:10We like to give them away to our neighbors and that type of thing too. So we usually have an influx of them. So we're trying to get rid of them quickly.
17:23Yeah, we're kind of going through that too. Back when we only had 12 chickens, we couldn't even keep eggs in our house because people wanted to buy them. then we got 14 more chickens. And so now we actually have enough eggs in the house during the week for my husband to have a couple for breakfast before he goes to work.  So doubling up on the chickens was a very good plan this spring. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly what we did. So last year we had 10.
17:50And then we added another 22 to our account this year. So it's been a huge change to go from 10 to 32. Uh huh. So do you guys have jobs outside of the farm? Yeah. So I actually just stepped away. I had a meal prep business and I just stepped away from that to try to be more involved here on the homestead full time. And then my husband is an engineer, so he works for Stellantis.
18:18We actually joke because you were talking about eggs and every week he's toting eggs to work. So we always laugh at him because he's like my little pack mule taking stuff with him when he goes.  Yeah. My husband works for a company that repairs printers and fax machines and things. And he takes eggs to work because people know we have chickens. So they buy eggs from him at work. Yep. And then as soon as one does, they love them so much, they tell their friend and then the next person wants to get them.
18:49Luckily, my husband was smart enough to let everybody know that we only have so many eggs right now. So  you've got to get to him fast if you want the one or two dozen we might have on hand.  I would love to buy a hundred chickens and just  have our place to be a chicken business as it were, an egg business. But the problem is we would have to actually, you know, spend the money to get laying hens.
19:18or spend the money to get an incubator and hatching eggs, or spend the money to get little tiny pullets. And right now, the money just isn't there for any of it. So we're basically doing farmers markets and selling at our farm stand to put money away so that we can expand our business. we wanted to do this last summer, but we lost $5,000 in income because our garden
19:45couldn't get planted the way it should have been because it rained so much here. So we're a little behind the eight ball on the expanding the business plans,  but I still have the podcast. So I'm making that work for now. Oh, that's good. That's good. You got to do what you got to do, right?  Yeah, exactly. And  people think that when you, when you buy land and you start a homestead or a farm, you just do it, you know, you just jump in all the way into the pool.
20:14And that's not usually how it works. you start small and dream big, I think is how people put it. Right. Yep. You have to grow a little bit each day or a little bit each year and keep expanding on that. Yeah, because it's really expensive to outfit a homestead. Oh, You will drop, if you tried to do it all at once, you could easily drop $50,000 in six months.
20:47Like easily $50,000. Oh, if not more. Yeah. Everything is so darn expensive right now too. All the fencing alone and posts and everything are just crazy.  know we had to rebuild our whole chicken coop this year with adding more chickens. Obviously comes a larger coop  and we easily spent,  I don't know,  close to a thousand, if not more just by  buying materials and building it ourselves. So.
21:16It's pricey. It's not an easy feat, that's for sure. No, it's not. it's, I see it as a dream. You know, you start thinking about this when you start thinking about it. And then it usually takes a couple of years for that to really get stuck in your brain that you really want to do it. And then you have to do research and then you have to find a place and you have to be able to afford it. And then you have to actually, you know, buy the place.
21:45and then you have to make it what you want it to be. I don't feel like this is ever an overnight thing. No, and I think you're supposed to evolve with it every year as well. So you learn as you do things, you learn and grow and keep  adapting to what you need. And a lot of things you just make work too. You don't always have to go out and outdo yourself from the year before. Just keep maintaining the same rhythm and routine and ends up being so much greater than what you expect it to be.
22:16Yes,  and it's the only job you will ever have where you see the entire process of the job  from beginning to end. Oh, yes.  That's my favorite part. by doing that though, because you get to see it come to fruition and all the hard work that you put into it along the way. It's truly something to be  admirable.
22:44Yes, I have a question for you.  When you plant your garden, you when you put the seed in the ground and you put the dirt over it and you water it and you say,  please grow, because that's how we do it here.  We say please grow and hopefully it does.  When the plant comes up and it's got the actual leaves it's supposed to have,  not the beginning leaves, but  the real leaves, and it starts to grow,  do you just stand there and look at that thing and go, it's
23:13It's a miracle. Do you have that feeling? Oh yeah, about every single morning and night. That's where I get my zen. So every morning I have my coffee and I take a walk out to the garden and I could sit out there for hours and just sit out there and stare because dad's work is truly, truly amazing. And all the thought that he puts into every single little thing is just, it's miraculous. It truly is.
23:45Yeah, I don't know that I ever understood the word miracle like I do  now. We have sunflower plants growing out,  out sort of beside and behind our greenhouse.  you can see the plants from the window on the landing on the second floor.  And I was coming downstairs this morning from the first interview I did. And I looked outside and I could see one of the sunflower blooms through the window.
24:13and I dead stopped and I just stood there and looked at it for five minutes.  I never did that kind of stuff before I lived here.  Aw, well I'm glad that you get to enjoy it, because if you're not enjoying it, then it's all work for nothing. So it's definitely important to take the second and just kind of take it all in. Yeah, the simple joys of this just blow me away.
24:38I'm so glad that I get to talk to you and the other people I've talked to on the podcast because you guys understand it. When I talk to people who haven't done this or haven't had any interest in it, they're like, it's a plant. And I'm just like, no, you do not understand. And they're like, you're right. I don't understand. And there's no painting. There is no painting a picture for them. If they don't get it, they're not going to get it.
25:06Yeah, and it's sad when they don't get to experience all the joys and stuff too, because you, like I get super excited about everything that we do here. So down to, I mean, just the simple flower growing is so amazing. And so you want to share it with everybody. And when they don't see eye eye with you, it's kind of like,  ah, I just want you to get it. So they never will until they get to experience it themselves.
25:32Yes, the one thing that most people do understand though when they come to visit is the peace here. Yes. we have friends over and they just calm down. We had friends come and visit I think the second spring we were here. No, first spring we were here. And they're not, they don't grow a garden, they don't do any of this, they don't even have a pet. And they came to visit to see where we live.
26:01And I can remember them getting out of the car and looking around, like a good five minutes of just looking around, because it's three acres. And Cal, the guy that's the husband, he looked at me and he said,  you must be  so happy.  And I was like, oh, you have no idea, buddy.
26:29And his wife came over and hugged me. She's like, I am so excited for you. This is beautiful.  And  they got that part. You know, they understood that we had really wanted to get out of town and have some land  and  have a cornfield around us. Cause why not?  And it was so nice to get that reaction from them because I was like, they're going to think we're crazy. And they didn't think that.
26:56Well, that's good. I'm glad they were able to see how peaceful it was too. Yeah. And I mean, there are moments that are not peaceful. Like when the chicken got attacked by a raccoon two weeks ago, that was not fun to... Yeah. We've been lucky enough to not experience any  animal attacks or anything like that, thankfully. So hopefully we don't have that, but I know that it's quite crazy around here. We've lost quite a few sheep and goats just down the road to coyotes lately. So...
27:26I anticipate to have some type of run-in. Oh, you will. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what you're going to go through when you do, because it's very sad. And the fact is, I heard this  a year and a half ago, when you have livestock, you will have dead stock.  And  I can tell you right now, you're going to cry, and it's going to be sad,  and you're going to want to throw up. And it doesn't matter whether you see it happen or not.
27:55The next time, you're probably gonna be really mad. You won't be nearly as sad. You'll be just pissed off about it. Well, that's kinda how we felt. We had one of our  baby goats that was born actually on my birthday this year. It was kinda cool.  As soon as we got to a birthday party, I had to turn around and help deliver babies. So that was super fun.  But we poured all of our heart and soul into this little goat and we bottle fed him and he was just the sweetest thing.
28:22My daughter kind of took him on as her own  and at about four weeks he passed away and we think that maybe  he aspirated on one of his bottles while we were gone. So  it was really sad and we had a whole little funeral service for him, of course.  But I don't think it'll get easier as time goes on.  It does not. It does not get easier. You just get used to it.
28:49Right. That sounds terrible, but you do. get used to the fact that you have to enjoy everything you have now because it may not be here tomorrow. Right. And I still tear up. I mean, we had barn kittens that died at three weeks old and I definitely still teared up, but I was just like, okay, I need to shift from destroyed and sad to pissed off because pissed off is easier. I promise you.
29:16Yep, you're able to get up and keep moving and do the next job that you need to do instead of sitting there and just groveling. Yeah, sobbing doesn't change the fact that the thing that died died. If it did, everybody would live forever. Right.
29:35So yeah, there are hard things on the farm too, but the thing I always hang on to is the joy that comes with the good things that happen. Right. There's always joy to be found somewhere. I know my kids were heartbroken and I just tried to explain that's the circle of life. And at least we were able to witness him have a great life, the short time that he did. And we got to enjoy him and he gave us lots of laughs and hugs and love along the way. And we got to do the same for him. So. Yep.
30:04Exactly.  And  the thing that's really great about farm kids is they experience loss early so that when they end up losing a grandparent or a great auntie or uncle, they have already lost something that they have poured their heart and soul into and it is actually easier on them. Well, and I'm glad you mentioned that because that is actually kind of what shifted my whole mindset of a homestead or wanting to do this type of a lifestyle because we actually did go through
30:33quite some significant losses. lost my dad  and then a short few years later we lost my grandfather and then my stepdad as well. And  my kids were extremely close to all three of them.  And to lose so much,  you just really start to think about life and what's important to you. And that's why we decided to move here and see what we could actually put our hands into  and just live.
31:01because we weren't really doing that before. So it makes a huge difference, I think. It does. It really does. And honestly, I have had more conversations in the last six months about the fact that life is supposed to be  lived. It's not supposed to be survived. It's supposed to live, enjoy every freaking moment of it and feel all the feelings because that's why we're here.
31:28Absolutely. All the ups and downs and hard work poured into something and all of the joy that you get from seeing something come full circle is  there's just no words for it other than just it's great. It's phenomenal. Let's use phenomenal. Phenomenal is a great big happy word. Stellar is a good one too. I'm a word freak. I'm a word freak. love words. I have words for everything.
31:54All right, so Amanda, this was lovely. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. Where can people find you? I'm glad we got to chit chat. So thank you so much for inviting me on here. And I look forward to sharing more  stories  and just enjoying all of the stories that you have along the way with everybody else that you interview. Awesome. I hope you come back and listen. Where can people find you, Amanda?  We are on Facebook under Peaceful Pastures.
32:23And we are also on TikTok, the same name, Peaceful Pastures. So we are located in Davison, Michigan, and we are about an hour north of Detroit.  We do some bookings and some private events here on our farm. And then  you'll find us on Facebook and you can just shoot me a message and I'd love to connect with you. Fantastic. All right. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Amanda, thank you again for your time. appreciate it. Thank you so much. I had a wonderful time.
32:53All right.
 

Our Little Farm WI

Today I'm talking with Sharon and Ben at Our Little Farm WI.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.
00:25Today I'm talking with Sharon and Ben at Our Little Farm, Wisconsin. Good morning, you guys. How are you? Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for having us this morning. Yeah, thanks. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for being here. I appreciate it.  What's the weather like in Wisconsin this morning?  Sunny and warm. Although it's not too bad. It's only going to be like 82, I think, today. Yesterday was pretty hot and humid and... But great for the crops.  Awesome. Good.
00:54our very handsome weather guy on WCCO here in Minnesota.  His name is Joseph Dames. My son just laughs every time he sees him because he's a very pretty, this guy's a very pretty boy.  Says that it is  a top 10 weather day in Minnesota today.  Wow.  That's something to on the calendar. Let's see if it's actually true though. I think it's going to be okay. 84 degrees, breezy, sunny.  I'm going to this.
01:23Right. Okay. So is your your farm actually little? Is your farm actually little? It is we're at five acres compared to around us. have three large cash croppers and they have, you know, I don't know. 1500 acres to 2000 acres each.
01:44Well, you've got us  by two acres with your five. We only have three acres.  There's a reason  we're called a tiny homestead because we consider ourselves to be minuscule compared to a lot of people. Exactly. That's how we're little just because everybody else is so big in this area.  Okay. And where's the biggest city near you?  We're actually located not just too bad.  Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and there's Manitowoc.
02:15Oh, Green Bay. Everybody knows where Green Bay, Wisconsin is. Right.  40 minutes  southeast of Green Bay. Okay. So you're closer to,  I'm blanking.  Illinois is below you. What's to your right? lake? Right. So Milwaukee, we're an hour and a half  north of Milwaukee.
02:40Okay.  All right. Cool.  Awesome. So what do you guys do at your farm?  We are we are into a lot of things. We're trying to figure out how to scale down. We like to do everything. So this is always our dilemma of what to do and what not to do. So  yeah, so primarily our crops on on the bulk of our land, we have a little bit of rented land as well. That's  again, small four acres.  And we use that for growing our
03:10Einkorn wheat, which is an ancient wheat,  which was really kind of the start or the spark, you know, for us three years ago to create our little farm and get going with what we wanted to do.
03:25And then we also do fruits and vegetables and then our baked goods is what we  pretty much primarily do at this point. And then we're going to be adding animals to our little farm, hopefully sooner than later. Okay. I want to get back to that, but  do you guys grow the einkorn  wheat for yourselves or do you have a market to sell it at too?  So that's a good question. Yes,  we
03:55We are currently growing it ourselves. This is our third cropping year. had the first year was a failure trial and error year. It turns out that it's not just like growing regular wheat where, uh, I mean, we don't spray, you know, it's all regenerative agriculture. So  that, was a huge learning curve.  Uh, so the second year we did much better and the third year now it's looking really good too. Uh, so yeah, we,
04:23Our goal with the einkorn is to bring it full circle. mean,  Joville was kind of an inspiration for us. when we landed on the einkorn, we just felt there should be a lot more of this available to everybody. So then we do sell the flour to people as well as we run it through our kitchen, through the baked goods.  Yeah. Do you grind it yourself?
04:50We do. So we actually  sprout it first and then I dehydrate it and then we have access to a stone mill. So then we stone mill it fresh about every three weeks is what  is about what we need to do to keep it fresh.  Wow. Okay. Awesome. I love that because  I hear about Einkorn flour a lot. I've never tried it. I probably should, but I haven't.  And does it, does it look the same as the wheat that we grow today when you grow
05:20einkorn wheat does it look the same as  a there's a word for it.  I can't think of it. The wheat that  a farmer would grow, you know, today. it's quite different. I mean,  if you had a handful of each,  it's,  you know, the differences are unmistakable. The einkorn, the berry itself is really tiny, okay. But then when you harvest, it's,  it's a hold.
05:48wheat almost like oats has a hull on it. And then  it also has these little beards that stick off of the hull about half an inch or so.  So yeah, it's  amazingly different than a modern wheat.  You know, your modern wheat comes out of the combine. It's nice and clean. It's  the berries  is what you're harvesting.  So it's pretty much ready to go.
06:18of the machine where einkorn, you know, presents a little bit of a challenge. There's extra cleaning, there's extra hauling.  So yeah, I hope that answers your question. Yes, it does. And the word I was looking for was conventional, conventional farmers.  Oh, yes. There you go. Because conventional is the way we do it  now.  And it gets confused with traditional, which is kind of what you're doing. So
06:46Okay, cool. And then I want to get back to the animals you would like to acquire at some point in the near future. What are you guys thinking of bringing on to the farm? Sure. Well, back in 2010, we had a dairy cow that we milked and we love doing it, but we have another business and we were just too busy with that. So we had to actually sell it after about three years. So we want to start back with the another dairy cow, maybe up to five, and then also chicken eggs, layers.
07:16Not like, yeah, they'd be layers.  We want to get those two. And then Ben does want to do pigs as well, but I'm on the fence on that one. So  right now, chicken layers and  dairy cow is our priorities.  We used to have also  steers too. This was back in 2010.  So we do want to get that footprint back on the ground because it is so much better for the soil to have animals on it then.
07:43You know, we do cash crop or we do  cover crops and  composting on our field, but nothing can replace the animal.
07:53No, you're right. You're absolutely right. Calminor is like the best fertilizer ever.  Right. And chicken, I've heard chicken is phenomenal. hopefully  we can just continue to grow our soil to be so much healthier and better. Yes. And I just misspoke. Actually, chicken manure is the best. Calminor is next best. We had, we did a garden one year and we put,  um,
08:22Cooled down chicken manure because chicken manure is hot. can't use it right away. has to  sit for a good six months or you will burn your crops.  But we used  chicken manure one year for our garden and we had the  best produce that year. So  I lied. Chicken manure is the best that you can get it.  Interesting. Yeah, that's our goal.  Yep. We had like the most wonderful cucumbers and tomatoes that year.
08:49We've had some good ones since, but  those were the best we'd  ever grown.  Do you not have chickens anymore? Oh, we do. We do. We put chicken manure in our garden, but  we also add in  goat manure from friends that have goats and cow manure if we can get it, because we just want to cover all the bases. You  can't just have one kind of poop. We must have multiple sources of poop. Exactly. Much have diversity in poop.
09:18Right. Exactly. Okay, cool. And then the pigs. If you're on the fence about them, Sharon, just start with like two. And then if you don't love it, you can just slaughter them when they're big enough to eat and then you don't have to do it anymore. Oh, there you go. You don't know unless you try, I guess, right? Yep. Uh-huh. Never say never, as my grandma always said. Yeah. And I keep hearing stories from people that they're of one or two mindsets about it.
09:47They either got pigs and they hate it or they got pigs and they love it because they love the pigs personalities. Right. That's what you hear so much that people, they're just fun animals to have around. They're supposed to be very smart. And there is a breed that we came across a few years back. don't remember it. is it? Yeah. So there's a breed out there. The meat and bacon, absolutely phenomenal. It's,
10:15a Mongolista mulefoot hog.  And the interesting thing is they're shaggy. You know, they're very hardy in the winter.  Their hair is like four or five inches long. And so it's quite interesting. Ever since we had that pork from those hogs  that's been on our radar, if we ever do this, that's what we want to try and grow.
10:44Well then you should find someone who has those. Are they common or not? They're not common. At  least not in our area. Not in our area.  I'm sure there's associations out there,  yeah, that'll be a little bit of a hunt, I think. Yeah, one of the worst parts about being involved in the homesteading farming life is that you get introduced to certain breeds  and therefore meet and you try it and you're in love with it.
11:14because we ended up getting a half and it  was a steer and the breed was Flechtia,  F-L-E-C-H-V-I-A, I think was what, how it was spelled. And that beef was so good and nothing has lived up to its sense.  Interesting. What makes them so much different? they smaller, larger? I have  no idea.  It was just, it was the most tender meat.
11:44I know how to cook beef so it's not really, you know,  um,  again, cannot think of words this morning. I'm sorry.  It was really, really tender. And I know how to make beef tender when I cook it, because there are ways to do that even with a terrible cut. And I didn't have to do anything to this beef. Every time  I pulled any cut of meat from this beef that we bought, it was just amazing. Wow. We're going to have to look that up and research.
12:14Yes. And I mean, maybe the farmer worked some magic and was like, your meat will be tender. And it was.  I don't know, but it was great. We had bought a quarter of a steer from a local organic farm  and they have their  meat hung for three weeks.  Yeah. And not a lot of butchers do that in this area. And that was the best. That was where you could, I did a  roast just in the slow cooker. Didn't add anything.
12:40to it and didn't need anything, didn't need salt and pepper, any seasoning. It was just so phenomenal, that flavor. So don't know if it was the hanging of it that made it extra delicious or what, but.  Yeah, I don't know enough about it to even offer up an opinion here. I just know that  I would give anything to get another half from that same variety and I haven't been able to find anyone who raises them.
13:08engine. I'll keep in touch in case we decide to try it.  Okay, awesome. Thank you.  Okay, so did you guys have like farming background  before you got into this or not? Yes, so I, I grew up on a very small, like a 25 cow dairy, conventional small dairy farm.  So that was, that was all I really knew as a kid. And
13:35left home, you know, out of high school and, you know, so here we are and all these years later and that's, you always think about going back to that and I guess this is our opportunity to try and do that.
13:53Fantastic.  It's so funny when I ask that question of the people that I talk to on the podcast, I get either your kind of answer  or I get, nah, we were city people and we're just like, we're going to make the jump. We're going to go  buy land and raise some chickens. And there's no real in-between on it. It's very interesting to me.  And  I'm going to tell you guys a secret. And I haven't really said this this way on the podcast. I've alluded to it, but I haven't said it.
14:23I don't ever want to live with people even 30 feet from me again. We have a quarter acre between us and our neighbors now.  And  I  love it. When we go back to the town that we lived in five years ago, all the houses are so close together. It  literally gives me anxiety when we drive into town.  I agree. I feel the same way, you know? Yeah. Once you're out in the country,
14:51You just get those close confines and it's like, nah, that's not me anymore.
14:57Uh-huh. can't. I mean, I'm sure I'm 55. I'm sure at some point I'm going to have to probably move closer to people because I will probably need help in my older years. But right now, I love it when our friends come to visit us here because there's space and they get to breathe in fresh air and they're like, this is so lovely. Thank you for having me. And I just, I love it. It's great. I agree. We have, I've got two sisters that are coming in August and
15:27One lives in California, close neighbors, and the other one lives in Washington state, but she's got a little bit, not so tight neighbors, but  they just love coming out here. We live on a dead end road. It's quiet. It's peaceful, great scenery all around. You know, it's just,  you can tell it, they just come in here and they just breathe, you know, they just  sigh, just like,  so peaceful.
15:50you watch their shoulders come down. exactly. You can almost see their stress just melt away. Yeah, after a few days, you know, working in the garden or going with us to markets,  they just, you know,  you can just see it melt away.
16:08Yes, I got up at four o'clock this morning as I always do, because I can't sleep past four  a.m.  The Lord has made me an early riser for some unknown reason.  And I went downstairs to grab my coffee and we have this little porch that's off the kitchen. And I went out on the porch and the window was open and it was like 68 degrees,  no breeze. And it was silent except for the crickets and the bullfrog that was making noise this morning. That is awesome.
16:37That doesn't happen often here. Usually there's a breeze. And I was just sitting there sipping my coffee. My son and my husband were still asleep. It was quiet. The dog was upstairs with my husband. And I was just like, I love 4.15 a.m. because it's quiet. It is seriously dead silent. Right. And it's still dark outside at four, so. Yeah.
17:02It's just a lovely way to wake up. You know, when you first get up, you're not quite with it yet. That's great. I don't know about you, but I need to get that first sip of coffee in me before my brain really starts. Oh, right. I up at five and that's usually just to turn the coffee maker on. a better way.  Right. That's the best way to start the day.  Yeah. can't think of a better way to wake up fully than sitting on that cute little porch with my hot coffee and listening to the bullfrog sing.
17:32Right, your own little concert. Yeah, absolutely.  And  the Fireflies are back. They just showed up about a week ago.  Oh. So we get a little show about 9, 30, 10 o'clock at night. If I'm still awake,  I'm not usually, but I try this time of year to stay up a little bit later so I can see the  Fireflies slash Lightning Bugs doing their dance. Yeah, that's, yeah. Ours come out a little bit earlier, I think, than that.
18:00Yep, and I'm not saying this is for everybody. It is not. There are people who really love the hustle and bustle of  in town  or big cities.  And I am all for diversity, know.  Differences are what make the world an interesting place, but it's just not me. I can't imagine living in a city again. No, anywhere else.  Now, we, last fall we went to, was about Thanksgiving time or so.
18:28We stayed in Milwaukee for what, three days? We to Acres conference. And yeah, I couldn't wait to get home. The conference was very good, very informational, lots of like-minded people, but yeah, I had had enough of the city. Yep. It's really hard to go back. Once you find what your soul wants and you
18:58get it, it's really hard to go back to the thing that you didn't really want. Right. We were just talking this morning that when we're ready to retire, we want to just get a little tiny house, you know, on a couple of acres, just have our garden, our milk cow and our chickens. And Ben, of course, would have his little repair shop or a little shop there, but just simplify, but quiet. Yeah, there's a lot of peace in quiet.
19:27I grew up in the woods of Maine, okay? Maine, the state of Maine. Right. And my favorite memory  was going to bed at night and we had the window open and we could hear the wind blowing through the pine trees, which is a whole different sound than the wind blowing through leaves. And it's kind of like a whistle and a hum. And  I miss that noise so much because we don't really have pine trees here where we live.
19:55And I just remember curling up and listening to that sound and just falling asleep and knowing that everything was good. Right. You can't get that back.  Nope. Exactly.  So I feel like I'm just waxing nostalgic this morning and I probably am. I don't know. It's been one of those days where you're like, huh,  I remember when I was eight.  The long memory starts to kick in. short memory starts to leave.
20:24Well, I hope that doesn't happen anytime soon, but I don't know. This is the time here we would usually travel and we're not.  More time for reflection then?  Didn't know I was going to do this. Sorry.  A little bit. Yeah. Yup. Nice. Give  me a second.  Wow. Definitely nostalgic this morning.  Okay. So.
20:53What are the plans for the farm?  Are there bigger plans? Yeah, so right now we're  building a certified kitchen and a farm store. I spent all last week digging in the ground looking for a water line that I knew was there and found it.  Nice. I would literally wake up every morning and  drag myself out there and think, well, today's the day and
21:22Did that for four days in a row  before we found it.  But  interesting part of our farm store is, so we decided to do this and we do farmers markets and the word kind of goes around and we have these other farmers that just kind of naturally started approaching us about having products that we don't have to fill in the blanks in our farm store.
21:49We were just kind of surprised by that. We were like, wow, you know, this is something people are looking for, you know?
22:01That's fantastic. So like a farm stand, farm store, or like a bigger building? Like a farm store, you know, retail space.  And it's not  big. Our retail space is going to be 20  plus feet long by 15 feet wide.  So we'll have a lot going on in a small area in there.
22:32Yes.  I don't want to discourage you, but I will tell you what Minnesota is like with that kind of situation with people wanting to sell stuff on your property from their production.  My friend has ducks and she asked if she could sell duck eggs in our farm stand. And I said, of course you can. And as far as I know, that is totally fine with the state of Minnesota. If she asked if she could sell her baked goods as a cottage food producer in our farm stand,  we're not allowed to do that because the person
23:01must be on property  who cooked the food. That's how our cottage law is too. But that'll be us. So I'll be selling my own baked goods  there. I won't have any competition.  So it'll just be me working through our certified kitchen. yeah, we're hoping like meat. We have the one farm that is  already checked into like wholesale licensing, all that.  we'll do that. And honey,  you know, stuff like that that you can
23:30typically get in vegetables where we don't  grow. I'm hoping that... We might have a couple of very talented vegetable suppliers too to fill in.  You know, it's only the two of us.  It'd be nice to raise a few more acres of vegetables, but  there's a lot of activities already.  Yep. When there's only two of you, you only have so much energy and so many hours in the day. Right.
23:58The only reason I brought all that up about the rules here in Minnesota is that every state has different rules about food production and selling whatever you grow or raise.  And  I want people to know that because it's not as easy as throwing up a building and being like, I'm going to sell everything I can get my hands on.  right. And the laws changed because we  purchased a freeze dryer. This was three and a half years ago, maybe four, just for our own garden, because, you know,
24:28It's just a great way to preserve your food.  And it became legal in Wisconsin for five years or five months to sell it. And just like that, that cap made it illegal. You know, so you really have to be aware of your state laws and rules and regulations.  Yeah, because they change. Sometimes they change for a second.  Minnesota does not allow us to ship big goods anywhere. No.
24:58They changed the law a couple months ago that in 2027, cottage food producers will be allowed to  baked goods.  I'm like, why 2027? Why not now?  Right. What's the two years? What's going to happen in two years?  Yeah. And I read it and I was like, I'm going to swear a blue streak, not on my podcast, but I did. I used every swear word I could find when I read it.
25:25And it all came out of my face, so I never utter it on the podcast.  But I was just like, I do not understand what the hangup  is. And I never will understand it because I can't get anybody in our government to have a conversation with me about it, because that would be very awkward.  But  yeah, the laws change, things happen, and  it only takes  one really dangerous experience and the laws will change immediately.
25:55Right.  So you got to work with your government and  I'm very excited that we're allowed to sell my friends duck eggs at our farm stand because somebody stopped in the other day,  bought duck eggs and talked to my husband and was like,  um, do they have  ducks or duck meat? Do they sell duck meat? And my husband was like, I don't  know. And then he said, do they have goats? And they do.  And he said,
26:23Do they sell goat meat? And my husband was like, I don't know, but here's everything's on the little label on the carton of duck eggs. So feel free to email them or  call them because they'll be happy to answer your questions. So hopefully our friends will get some more business out of the back. They're selling duck eggs. Right. It's all about supporting one another. It's a tough gig to do farmers markets and trying to sell your own produce or products. But you know, if you have the other farmers with you, it sure makes the journey a lot.
26:52easier and lot more friendly. Yes. And do you guys end up bartering with the other vendors? Absolutely. We do. And when we first started doing farmers markets, I mean, it was a big awakening for me. know, a couple of things I learned was, um, it's when you go to a market and set up a stand, it's not a competition, it's a community. And the other thing I learned is,
27:20We're packing the car and I'm going there to shop.  Right.  It's like you come back and say, okay, I don't have a lot of cash left, but I got all this cool product or this stuff that's good for you. I'm going to try something new.
27:37Yeah, my husband is the one that goes to the farmers market. I have anxiety. have social anxiety  and I don't want to go hang with a bunch of people that are strangers. It freaks me out.  So he will text me halfway through and say,  can I trade some of our lettuce for bagels or sourdough bread or cookies or whatever?  And I'm like, yes,  because then you're not spending the money that you made selling things. Yes, that would be great.
28:05Right. I had like a vegetable producer that because they're always early on there, know, lettuce and everything. So cookies and  we'd do a vegetable swap for cookies. So that worked out great for me and for them. Yeah. And I don't bake a lot because it would just be gone in a day here. So  my husband will bring home like six molasses cookies from Elaine who makes them  amazing cookies.  And we each,  my son still lives here too. So we, all three of us, we each get
28:34two cookies and that's it and they're gone. I don't have to worry about  my husband eating an entire pan of cookies, you know?  Right.  That's me. Uh huh.  Yeah.  Yeah. And  we all know that sweet treats are probably not great to eat an entire pan of in one day. So  I would much rather he barter for cookies. Right. Yeah. I do like that bartering system though, or even
29:03Yeah, at the end of the day, it's like, you know, you have something that might not be good the next day, you know, just that it's not looking as nice or their packaging isn't great. You go around to the other vendors and you just give them out to them. Uh huh. Everybody appreciates freebies. Oh, absolutely. When we were rolling in tomatoes two summers ago, well, three now.
29:28Not counting this year, last year  we were not rolling in tomatoes. Tomato season was terrible here. So the one before that,  we had tons of tomatoes and we were just giving tomatoes away because we just didn't have any way to use them all up. So yeah, I get it. You share the wealth when you have it. Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. How was your growing season in Wisconsin last year? It  was good. We did really well with everything.
29:58think everything we had. Yeah, last year was phenomenal. This year we're looking good as well. We've had quite a bit of rain every few days. We get a good shower of rain so we didn't have to water much. Last year I think we ended up watering quite a bit but...  we watered a lot last year in July and August. But this year, boy, we're right on track. I feel bad for some of the farmers that have to make hay this year because every three days it's raining which...
30:27I'm not complaining, I don't have to set up sprinklers, I'm okay with that.
30:34Yeah, but it's bad for hay. How's your season so far then? This year has been fabulous. Last year, soft lemons.
30:50Hmm. This year we had, we've, we've been picking peas for a week now.  The peas are huge. Wow. And, we have zucchini coming in. We have had lettuces coming in for a month. So it's been wonderful. And we're surrounded by a cornfield.  The corn is almost as tall as I am and I'm five foot nine.  Oh my gosh. Wow.  Yeah.
31:18Then high by the 4th of July has been met.  Have you had quite a bit of consistent rain as well then?  Yeah, it's been really weird. Like we'll get a week where we get a little bit of rain every day, but the sun will also come out for a couple of hours. And then we'll get like four or five days where it's just sunny and reasonable. And then we'll get a couple of days where it's super freaking hot and then it'll rain again.
31:45So it's been very up and down instead of either no rain or too much rain. Last summer we had so much rain. We lost like at least $5,000 last year because we just couldn't get anything to grow. That's heart, that's disheartening. It was terrible. I have bitched a lot on the podcast about it, so I'm not going to do that today. Let's just say I am so thankful.
32:15for this year because my husband kept saying,  I'm not gonna be mad about it. I'm just gonna wait until next year, next year will be better. And it hasn't. Wow.  And that's farming really. Every farmer ever, you'll hear him say that. Yeah, thank God he has a jobby job or we would have starved to death this winter.  I hear ya.
32:40All right, guys. Well, I try to keep this to half an hour. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. And it was really fun.  you very much. We appreciate this. Same here. Thank you. And where can people find you? Follow us on Facebook. It's our little FarmWI. OK, are you on Instagram at all?  No, we are not that tech savvy yet. So we're still trying to figure out  YouTube. We would like to do a YouTube channel.
33:08And eventually I'll get a website out there for it as well. But right now we're just  Facebook.  All right. Well, you guys heard it here first. You will find Sharon and Ben at Our Little Farm in Wisconsin. They're on Facebook. As always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com.  And Sharon and Ben, I hope you have a wonderful day. We wish you the same. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again. Bye. Bye.
 

Alpine View Farm

Today I'm talking with Kim at Alpine View Farm.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.
00:28Today I'm talking with Kim at Alpine View Farm in California. Good morning, Kim. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm fine. How are you?  I'm good. How's California this morning? How's the weather?  Pretty good. Can't complain. It's a little warm, but it could be a lot worse.  Yeah, the weather this year has been much better than  last spring and summer, but it's still been kind of weird. I'm in Minnesota. It's a beautiful, sunny,  relatively cool day.
00:57I'm kind of tickled with that. Yeah,  for sure. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do at Alpine View Farm. Well,  we moved to the country  about eight years ago  and I quickly fell in love with the homesteading lifestyle. I've always called myself a country girl at heart, but this is the first time I've ever lived in a country. So  I, uh,
01:26I guess I was foreshadowing my future without even realizing it. But we just love it here and we, you know, started a garden and then we started with five chickens and now we're up to 36. So, you know, that chicken math kicked in pretty fast. And then I learned how to can and I learned how to make sourdough bread. And so that
01:55has evolved into a little business where I have a micro bakery. And so I'm just really enjoying this  new part of my life.  Nice. What else do you make for your micro bakery?  I focus mainly  on sourdough sandwich bread,  and I also make these really fun pull apart wreaths. And that's our focus in terms of the bakery at this time.
02:24Awesome. So where do you sell your baked goods? Well, we started off just selling from the farm and then this year we've expanded.  We sell at this really cute  general store in a little town near us.  And then  last month we just started selling at a local farmers market.  Nice.  Awesome.
02:51So I don't want to be nosy, but I'm going to ask the question, how much do you sell your sourdough loaves Oh, for the bread. So we sell our loaves for $7 and we sell the pull apart rolls for $10. And I've been told by customers, it's too cheap. But we wanted to try to keep things, you know, manageable for people.
03:21You know, times have been really tight for so many people and,  um, you know, we just want to make  a little bit of money for ourselves, but also make  our products really sellable to everybody.  Awesome. The reason that I asked so pointedly, sorry,  is that  a loaf of name brand bread at the store, like Pepperidge farm or whatever.
03:49is going for seven to eight dollars a loaf right now. So you are absolutely reasonable and your product is better. So I think you're doing a good thing. I know we have our bread contain six ingredients and we use all organic ingredients. And you know, a lot of people don't realize this, but a lot of the bread that's sold in the store that's labeled as sourdough
04:17not actually sourdough.  They're using yeast and something to make it flavored like sourdough,  but they're not even using a sourdough starter. So it's not the fermented food that's such a health benefit for us. Isn't it amazing what  major companies get away with but we small home bakers have to label everything specifically?  Oh, I know it's so
04:47difficult to get everything on a cottage food label.  And not to mention  the  fees involved to be able to sell the products and even  we have to get in California,  an egg license to sell our  eggs.  You know, I just kind of  laugh and shake my head because  I'm thinking, do you know how many eggs I need to sell to cover this or?
05:13Do you know how many loaves of bread I need to sell to cover this cost?  Yeah, it just, doesn't seem fair. And I'm not implying that life is fair, but it just doesn't seem right, you know? Yeah, it actually feels like  they're trying to push out  the small farmer or the small producer.
05:37um, not help them succeed. But I'm hopeful that there's going to be some positive changes in the future along those lines. Yes. And as long as we small producers continue to fight and to work and to  produce good things,  we'll probably win the battle at some point. Yes.  I hope. In fact, a funny story, I have some tomatoes coming in, so I was going to add
06:04those last weekend to our  things that we're selling at the farmers market.  And you know, this is  new to me, the market. And so somebody who helps organize  asked me, well, do you have a permit?  And I said, no.  So I need to  this week, contact our agricultural department and  get a permit to be able to sell tomatoes and other fruits and veggies.
06:33But the good news is, is this one is not supposed to have a feet.  Good. Good.  Do you have a farm stand at your farm? You know, I don't. And that's kind of been a dream of mine.  But I shifted that dream because our road is a dead end road. And so we're not going to be getting the traffic I think that is needed to make a farm stand succeed.  So when the farmers market
07:02came up, an opportunity came up to sell at the farmers market.  At first I was really resistant because  my husband and I, we both work full time,  we're high school teachers in the county.  And so, you know, that's kind of a lot to take that  weekly commitment on.  But I came around to it and just, like I said, shifted that goal from the farm stand
07:31to the farmers market. And I think that was a really good move.
07:37For sure.  How big is your garden, Kim? Well,  we do raised beds because we have a really big gopher and mole problem in the area.  so  we started off with a pretty large  horseshoe shaped bed. And then we have since added  water troughs to  expand the garden.
08:05Last year we started from chicks for the first time  when we expanded our chicken operation.  And so we used the water troughs  as brooders  and then we  poked holes in them and, you know,  leveled them out and put them in the garden to expand the garden.  we have a pretty, pretty good  area for gardening. I'd say we have about
08:35ten raised beds  of varying sizes, but  it's really beautiful and in the future we're going to expand as well.  Awesome. And you're in California so you can grow year-round, yes?  Pretty much. We have a really long  growing season for spring and  summer.  And what's really neat is we live on a hill.
09:02And it's almost like we have our own microclimate, I've noticed.  And so even through the winter, we have a lot of things that still flower and we hardly ever get  any fog or frost. So I can pretty much  put my spring and summer veggies  in  the raised beds  about April 1st. know, obviously I track the weather and then we're
09:29still hauling in tomatoes the end of October.  Okay, so I have a very specific question about tomatoes. There are two different kinds of tomato plants. are determinate and there are indeterminate.  Determinate means that the plant has a limited life cycle and it will die when it's done producing. Indeterminate will keep producing until it gets frosted or gets dug out.  So
09:57In California, if you plant an indeterminate tomato, it will just continue to grow until it's too cold for it to grow? Yes.  In fact, last year we had fresh tomatoes for Christmas dinner. I am so jealous.  I know.  Now, they weren't still on the vine in December, but I had  picked them  green.  I transferred everything out of the
10:26summer garden and wanted to start the fall garden. So  I picked them, I think early November when they were green  and then just let them ripen on a counter.  And yeah, that was really special. Yeah. A fresh tomato from your garden for Christmas dinner is fabulous.  That doesn't happen here. It's too cold.  Although, although I think my husband still has tomato plants in the greenhouse and hope
10:56Hopefully the greenhouse will stay warm enough so that we can have fresh tomatoes through November and maybe  we might eat out a good one for December, but I doubt it.  Well, I hope you get the best outcome on that. Yeah, me too.  I just,  I love bruschetta. I don't know if you know what that is. It's a,  it's an appetizer at restaurants basically.  And about January.
11:26We buy  tomatoes from the store from a company that is in Minnesota that does greenhouse tomatoes and they do a really good job. They taste like a tomato. It's really  lovely, but it's never gonna taste like tomatoes that we get in July and August from our garden.
11:45So that's nice. Yeah, that's one of the things that we sell and can can and sell the brachetta You have do you still have your dog Claire?  Still have what i'm sorry your dog claire.  Oh, yes, we have our dogs. We have two cattle dogs Okay,  I was gonna ask you what kind of dog claire is because I was looking at your instagram page and she's beautiful Thank you. Yeah, she is
12:15So special.
12:18Yes, she got bit by a rattlesnake. that correct? Yes, she did. A few weeks ago,  she cornered a rattlesnake  and got bit, I think, twice.  But fortunately, she  was fine. I took her to the emergency vet and they checked all of her vitals and they looked good. And then,  you know, I thought we were going to have to get the anti-venom.
12:47Um, and the vet said  she could probably just do fine with Benadryl. And so he gave her a shot of Benadryl and then I,  um,  excuse me, for a few days followed up with, um, giving her Benadryl in a pill form and she healed really well. Um, the antivenom, I didn't know this  is $1,500.
13:16Oh, Ben had drove a lot less. Yeah, I definitely would have paid that. She's worth it. You know, I would have worked another year to keep this dog alive, but I'm glad we didn't have to do that. And I really appreciated our vet explaining things and going the more reasonable route because it was absolutely fine for her. Is she a small dog?
13:45She's kind of medium. She's about 40 to 45 pounds.  Okay.  The reason I ask is we have a mini Australian Shepherd or  an Australian Shepherd who is a small dog. She's like 35 pounds.  And I would have thought that it would have been the opposite, that the Benadryl wouldn't have worked because on a smaller body the venom would take them down. But I guess that's not how that works.
14:15Well, you know, this vet, he's been in the business for decades,  definitely in his retirement years, but still working.  And he said that,  you know, he really doesn't see dogs die  of rattlesnake bites unless they're really small or unless the snake  hits  on  a  major vein. Yeah.
14:45So that was reassuring.  Yeah, I'm really glad that she's okay because  I wanted to ask about her because she's so gorgeous. And I was like, please let her still be alive because I don't want us to cry on the podcast again.  Right.  Well,  and then last night she  cornered another snake. Oh,  and  you know, when I first saw her and the snake,  I thought it was a rattler.
15:15and I ran to get my husband to  help. then by the time  we found the snake, had crawled under one of the garden beds.  It didn't look like a rattlesnake  upon closer inspection.  But regardless,  Bella did not learn her lesson.  And she's just,  she's all cattle dog. So I kind of figured that's the way she would be.
15:43because she's just going to protect  even if it  is going to cost her. So it's one of the  more difficult parts of  living here, the rattlesnakes.
16:00Yes, we don't have any poisonous. Well, we do. have timber rattlers in Minnesota, but they're not anywhere near where we live. And I am so thankful, Kim, because if a snake bit my dog, I would be, and if she died, I would be a disaster. Like the podcast would be on hold for a month because I would not be able to do it. Just, all I would do is cry. I know. I just, when she first got bit that first time, I just,
16:29thought I was going to lose her at first because she  was showing signs of distress.  And I didn't realize  that rattlesnake bites were so survivable for  most dogs.  So I was just really  terrified.  But yeah, I feel the same way.
16:55has my whole heart this dog. She's a rescue.  She's just the best dog we've ever owned in our entire lives. So she's just  really special. huh. Our dog is not a rescue, but we got her when she was a day shy of eight weeks old and she's the first puppy we've ever gotten and raised like in the whole adult lives that my husband and I have shared together.  And so there's this real, I don't know,
17:24pride and satisfaction and the fact that we didn't ruin this dog. We've actually made her a really good dog.  So  I love her with my whole heart too. And  I talk about her so much on the podcast and I'm sure that people are tired of it, but  it's just such a huge piece of my life. Like  I didn't have a puppy that was mine when I was a kid or a teenager. So I've gotten to experience this as a fully fledged adult.
17:53It's very much like having a kid.  Yeah, our other cattle dog,  we got him as a puppy.  We had tried to get Bella a friend  through the shelter  and we visited a couple of dogs with her and  she did not want anything to do with them. It was so funny.  And so we figured, okay, we need to get a male and we need to get a puppy.  And there is something really special about raising a dog from a puppy like Bosco.
18:23He,  have you ever heard that expression,  someday you're going to have somebody in your life  who  looks at you like you're the world and it's probably going to be a dog. Yes.  That's Bosco. He adores me. It's the cutest thing. So they've become good friends and that's worked out really well for our family. Yes. And every farm needs a dog.
18:51I swear to God it's true. Oh yeah. Almost every single place I've, every single person I've talked to on the podcast in over 18 months that has a ranch, a farm or a homestead has at least one dog, if not six. Oh yeah. They are loyal companions and our dogs take guarding the homestead very seriously from whether that be people or a predator.
19:19They are definitely working dogs and take that  to heart. Another animal I think every homestead needs is a barn cat.  We've tried a couple of times to get barn cats and  it just hasn't worked out.  But recently,  a couple months ago, we adopted a barn cat from a lady who was moving across country.
19:47little guy is a stone cold killer, I tell you.  He  is bringing us home  his prizes  almost on a nightly basis.  And you know, if you live in the country, and especially if you have chickens,  you're going to get rodents. There's just no way around it. And so he has just been worth his weight in gold. Yes, we have two male barn cats and they earn their keep every single day in exactly the same way you're talking about.
20:16I do want to go back to Maggie, my dog, for a second.  The one predator that Maggie does not understand as a predator is a possum. look so much like cats that she thinks is a cat and she loves cats. Oh, how funny.  We had a possum in our yard and she literally did  the pose where they put their head down and wag their back and like, you want to play with me?  To the possum. I was like, oh no, no, we don't play with possums. That's not a good idea.
20:46No, that is cute. She doesn't understand that a possum is not a cat, but she does understand that a raccoon is not a cat. Oh good, because they're not as nice as possums. No, no, no, you don't want a dog tangling with a raccoon. Even if your dog has had its rabies shot, raccoons will rip up a dog. Oh boy, yeah. We try really hard to not have raccoons on the property.
21:15Well, you know, what's funny is we  did not see a raccoon until just this last year.  And we thought that was so  curious because  we had seen all kinds of other predators and signs of other predators and we have game cams and  we had never picked up a raccoon in seven years. And then just recently we've spotted a couple.  So, yeah.
21:43They look cute, but  they're not cute.  I was going to say I have a love-hate relationship with raccoons. They're so  beautiful,  but they will tear up your shit. They will injure your animals. They do carry rabies. mean, not every single raccoon has rabies, but they are known carriers. And the last thing you want to do is mess with a raccoon and end up with rabies.  Yeah, definitely.
22:11So what's your plan for your farm? Is it where you want it? Do you have  plans to expand it?  What's the story on that? Well,  at this point, think  I'm really content with the growth that we've had this year.  It is definitely keeping me a little too busy, which is a good thing. I'm definitely not complaining.  We're selling at the farmers markets, like I said, and then the general store.
22:40We also make wine jelly for a local winery.  And then we are going to be selling some of our jams, jellies,  and apple butters  at a farm stand  near us.  That's a really, really loved and popular organic farm stand. So that's exciting.  But  for future,  we do have a couple of areas of growth that we would like to do.
23:10Of course, always expanding the gardens.  We'd like to expand our flowers  and start selling those on a little bit larger scale. We've connected with a local nursery,  or I'm sorry, not nursery, a flower shop  that's interested in purchasing from  local producers.  And then  probably in a couple of years, we want to start dairy goats.
23:39Yeah, I'm excited about that.  Cool. You're going to have to come back and tell me about that six months after you get Dairy Goats because that's an adventure and a half and I can't wait to hear all about it.  So what do you grow for flowers or what are you planning on growing for flowers?  This year I'm growing a lot of zinnias and cosmos. Those are a couple of my favorites. I love them because  not only are they beautiful and good for pollinators,
24:08but they have a longer base life than a lot of flowers I found.  And some new ones I'm loving this year are asters. Those are doing really well and we have a few different varieties  and colors.  And then for a filler, I also am growing flocks this year and that has been a really nice one too, long base life and just really beautiful. In fact, when we...
24:36have bouquets at the farmer's market, people really  look at that fox and  ask about it. They're not used to seeing that, I guess. So  those are some of the newer ones we've been doing and really happy with.  Nice. And then the obvious question that I didn't ask 25 minutes ago  is, you have any citrus trees growing on your property?
25:02Yeah, we do  some dwarf citrus in half-boiled murals and those have been  doing really well. We've been focusing on lemons and limes and  they've just produced really well for us.  they get big? The actual fruits, do they get big?
25:24Yeah, they don't. They stay short and they're not too wide either. But this little tree that I would say is only as big as maybe a really good sized shrub produces a lot of fruit. Nice. And the other question I have is do you guys grow avocados? Because I freaking love avocados, but I
25:53I don't eat them often enough because they're kind of expensive. All right. I know.  I love them too. And they're so good for you.  We don't grow avocados.
26:06I looked into that and I don't think the climate or the zone was quite right up here. that would be  a real winner if you could grow avocados.
26:21Yes, my daughter lives in Florida and she's basically house sitting on a semi-permanent basis for her mother-in-law.  And her mother-in-law has avocado trees, bushes, whatever they're called.  And she was telling me that she was able to go out and just pick avocados whenever she wanted them. And I was like, I am so jealous.
26:43That is nice form of payment right there. Yeah, I wish we could grow avocados in Minnesota in my yard because I would be doing it  every year. You know, one of the things that I recently discovered as a nice  alternative to buying fresh avocados, especially when they're really pricey in the grocery stores,  is Costco has this organic  avocado mash  or
27:11Also, they have a guacamole that they sell. And so it's a really great price because it's Costco and it lasts a long time. It comes in three different containers, the package. So it's a good way to get that avocado fix and the nutrition when it's a little harder to find avocados at a good price. wonder if Sam's Club has the same thing. will have to look. Maybe. Maybe.
27:42All right, so Kim, thank you so much for your time today. try to keep these to half an hour.  Where can people find you online? We are on Facebook, Alpine View Farm, and also on Instagram at Alpine View Farm.  Awesome.  I hope that you get to have your dream come true about the Dairy Goats, because I think you'll really enjoy it. Thank you. As always, people can find me at AtinyHomesteadPodcast.com.
28:10Thanks for coming.
28:14Have a great day. Thank you so much.
 

Sourdough for Beginners

Today I'm talking with Sarah at Sourdough for Beginners.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.
00:25Today I'm talking with Sarah Frank at Sourdough for Beginners. Good morning, Sarah. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. Are you in Canada? I am. I'm just north of Toronto in what we call cottage country. Okay. What's the weather like in Canada this morning?  It's a beautiful day. A little bit overcast. We live right next to the lake. You know, it's nice and warm. It should be warm enough for the kids to go swimming later.
00:53Nice. It is overcast and not raining. It rained really hard here yesterday. Like we had inches  of water in front of our garage yesterday. It's been crazy weather this year for sure. So  every time we get a decent day, we're pretty excited about it. Yeah, us too. It's, it's been, uh, it's been a much better spring than last year. And that's all I'll say. Cause I've already talked about how terrible last year was.  Where are you located? I'm in Minnesota. All right. So,  um,
01:23I'm going to do a little bit of an intro here because I actually have info to share.  You are an administrator for the Sourdough for Beginners Facebook group, which is really a great group. I have been stalking it because I've been learning about sourdough.  And you are also an author of a book called Sourdough for Beginners, the ultimate companion for sourdough bakers.  And so I really wanted to have you come chat with me because
01:52As we were saying when we talked before,  I have been avoiding sourdough like the plague because I thought it was intimidating.  I thought that I would kill it.  and sourdough became such a trend during COVID that I was like,  eh, I don't know if I really want to do an episode about sourdough because it's very, very, very talked about online.  And then a friend gave me some sourdough starter.
02:20And now I'm learning and I made my first loaf a couple of weekends ago and it was, it was good. It turned out like a bagel texture. So it was under proofed, I've been told, but it was a loaf of bread and it was yummy with cream cheese. So I feel like I had a success. So tell me about yourself and what you do. So, um, I have a lot of kids. I'm a mom of five, two, three of my own and two stepdaughters.
02:50We're very busy. Our kids range in age from seven to 18. We were actually just at our oldest daughter's high school graduation last night. And grads? And we've always been pretty health focused. So we always are like learning about the food science that's out there and then it's sort of across our whole family. So we are always trying to eat well and you know, we go to the gym, our kids are all athletes.
03:17daughter's going to be playing varsity sports in university.  we, about a year and a half ago, started looking at the food that we were getting from the grocery store and learned  that one of the most,  you know, one of the biggest culprits to poor health related to food is the bread that you buy in the grocery store.
03:43So just like everybody else, we set out on the journey to learn about sourdough.  And  my sourdough starter, you know, took a really long time to get started. And I was in  the big sourdough groups on Facebook. And sometimes it's hard to get an answer when those groups are so big.  But ultimately I ended up figuring out not only how to make sourdough, but how to make it, you know, within a busy life  and with  the very most basic
04:12cheapest ingredients  and with very few tools. So the issue that we were having at the time is we were having some, you know, financial challenges.  And at one point I actually went to the grocery store and had to say, I can afford either bread  or the cheapest all purpose flour that they have one or the other. we just kind of took the leap.  you know, fast forward about
04:36three or four months, I'm making sourdough just like everybody else on the planet. I'm posting it on my Facebook. My friends start reaching out and asking me about it. I start sharing my sourdough starter, much like what happened to you.  And then I found myself getting sore thumbs, texting with my friends all the time, kind of walking them through what to do. So I started this group on Facebook, Sourdough for Beginners, and I've never  had a Facebook group before, so I didn't put any thought into, you know, a public group or
05:06private group or anything like that. I just started the group and started typing out step-by-step instructions on how to make sourdough. So then when my friends would take some sourdough starter from me or reach out and say that they had sourdough starter, I would just give them a link to this group. Well, the group went crazy.
05:27Like I think in the first month there was 5,000 members and by the sixth month there was 250,000 members and by the first year we were well over a million.  And I think the group's approaching 2 million  members now. I haven't looked at it today. So it just, and that's all in the,  in the sort of the, the span  of  18 months or so, two years at max. So,  you know, it just kind of evolved organically from there.
05:56People were coming on asking questions. I found myself  answering the same questions  all the time.  Really early in the process, a lady named Barb Froude, who's located in Alberta,  joined the group and started helping me. So she was sort of our first moderator who came on and she's still our, what I call my chief moderator. She's in that group every day trying to  get rid of the spam and get the literature and the information that we have.
06:25set up for all the newbies who joined the group. I think we're getting sometimes like 10 to 20,000 new members per day. So the biggest struggle with the group is getting that information out there, right? So that sort of led into, okay, well, let's make a video on YouTube. So we made the beginner bread recipe video and it's just kind of evolved from there. It got to a point where
06:54It became basically my full-time job to just, you know, and luckily with the internet, there's ways that you can take something that you're passionate about and that people are responding to,  like they were with Sarado for beginners.  And, you know, if you, if you focus on it, you can build it up so that you can give it more time because there's, there's obviously rewards that come back to you. Things like book sales and  ad revenue and that sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely. Holy crap, Sarah, that's...
07:23That is like an overnight success story for your group. That's unheard of.
07:31It was, it was shocking.  We've done some work  in  internet within our family.  We've, you know, we spent some time talking about it within the family. We're fairly close-knit family. We've got family in Texas and Arizona and up here in Canada. And so as it was going, you know, I had a lot of encouragement from the family. I would wake up in the morning and there'd be a screenshot of my group from my  aunt in Texas.
08:01And she'd be like, Sarah, you're at 50,000. Like what's happening here? You know,  it hasn't been without challenges.  Obviously, you know, managing a group means that you're managing all personalities that are out there. But I've been lucky that this group of moderators, this core group of moderators who have joined,  spend a lot of time within the admin group trying to talk about what we're going to focus on and what it comes down to for us is,
08:30sourdough, sourdough only and specifically making sourdough easy. So you'll never find myself or any of the moderators within the group saying, you can't use bleach flour or you can't use plastic or you can't use metal or you have to do it this way. What the message we're trying to send is you could be in financial hardship just like Sarah was and not be able to afford any tools and use just, you know, $3.99 bleach all purpose flour.
09:00and make this happen. And then you can learn so much over time that you can slowly collect all the things that you would want and get to the point where I'm at where I have, you know, I can grind my own grains. I'm buying wheat from a local farmer. You know, I'm making the healthiest of healthy bread, right? But I got started with nothing. And that's the message that we're trying to put out.
09:25specifically with sourdough for beginners. There's some really excellent groups out there  and amazing teachers. So sourdough geeks  gives a really good overview of like the advanced ways of making sourdough and the best practices  for making the best sourdough that you can.  And then there's guys like  Tom Kakuza who runs the sourdough journey. He can tell you about the science of sourdough  and all of those things I think  are part of the journey.
09:54do sourdough,  it's kind of up to you. Like what part of the journey do you want to enter in on? Yes, exactly. And  I love that the premise of your group is that anybody can try this, do it with what they have, because I always say do what you can with what you have, where you are.  And so, so I had said in our emails back and forth that I had some questions and my first question is,  can you tell how you get a starter?
10:23started. So that's the easiest part, but it seems to be the most intimidating.  And I think people get  really confused about it. So there's ways to go into all the math. But really, all you need is flour and water.  You take equal parts flour and water. Our suggestion is that you start with very small amounts.  The biggest confusion that comes in with starter is the word discard.  And
10:53The easiest way to explain that is that when you're building a sourdough starter, you're just, all you have is flour and water, right? It's not really good for anything.  And there's a certain point within the building of the sourdough starter where it starts to  ferment. And so it's at a certain phase within the fermentation process where it wouldn't taste very good.  It isn't good. So while you're building your starter, you should be kind of throwing away
11:22the waste every day.  But once your starter is established, you never need to discard again. So that discard question  is the biggest confusion. But really, all you do  is,  let's say, 50 grams if you've got a scale. And by the way, if you invest in nothing, I really recommend getting a scale  only because it makes things so very much easier.  But it's not necessary. You  can use cups and everything else. One of the biggest American questions we get is, why is everything in grams when
11:52you know, we're American and we  operate in cups and ounces, but  grams are just more,  what's the word,  accurate. You can get much smaller measurements with grams than you can with ounces.  So 50 grams each of water and flour or  half a cup of flour and a quarter cup of water. So if you're operating on cups, water weighs approximately twice as much as flour. It doesn't really need to be
12:20a scientific experiment where everything's exact. You just mix the flour and water together and leave it sitting on the counter until tomorrow. And then every day thereafter, you bring  that starter back to the initial amount that you started with. So  you started with 50 grams of flour and 50 grams of water, which was 100 grams on the first day, right? Throw half of that away, bring yourself back.
12:48to 50 grams. So now you have 50 grams of starter, 50 grams of water, and 50 grams of flour added in today. Right? So now you've got 150 grams total. On day three, throw away 100 grams, get yourself back to 50 grams  and do that every day.  And when you try to say it out loud, it sounds so confusing. And this is where people start to get caught up with the starter. Right? But really all you need to do
13:18is keep giving that starter base new flour to eat through and water to help it do that process  until it activates. If you're doing things properly, around days  six or seven,  the starter should start to double in size  and it should do that every time you feed it. Does that sound crazy? Does that sound too confusing?
13:45Well, not to me because I've done it. but  back years ago  when people were like, do you do sourdough? I was like, hell no. I don't do sourdough. I don't have time for that. It's a pain in the butt. hear I'm not doing it.  And I was being very obstinate about it. I will, I will be very honest. I did not have time  with four kids and I was doing other things. I just didn't have the want to do it. The  real desire.  But what I will say,
14:15is when my friend brought me starter, I killed it. I didn't beat it for like four days and it just didn't look good and it didn't smell good. And I was like, I think I just need to start over with my own. And so I started mine from scratch and I have a scale. the first day when I set up my little mason jar with my, with my 50 grams of flour and my 50 grams of water, I was like, okay, slick. got it. And I let it sit overnight and then
14:44the same time the next day, pulled off half, put in 50 more grams  of flour, 50 more grams of water, and did that for six, seven days. And it started to do the thing. And I was like, oh my God, I did it. I was so proud of myself, Sarah, that I did it. You're one of those lucky first try  people. Yeah. If it was one message I could get out to everybody who wanted to try sourdough.
15:12It would be that sourdough is so popular right now, unless you like want to overcome the challenge of making your own starter, you could just really go on marketplace on Facebook and there's people willing to give it away or who want 10 bucks for it. Oh yeah. You know, like it's just so much easier to get that starter, but if you can get through the process. So  on the YouTube channel that we have set up sourdough for beginners,
15:39All of the videos there are specifically geared towards people who are just getting started and who have no idea what the heck is going on. Right. And what we've done is we've sorted it into playlists. So if you hit the sourdough for beginners YouTube channel right across the top, says playlist. The playlists are kind of in the order you would need to follow them. So you can just go to the starter playlist and right there it's like, here's a day by day. Follow me for seven days.  And.
16:07we'll make this starter together. And while each day is happening,  all those little nuances that come up, all those questions that, you know, there's probably about 25 questions  about sourdough  that come up over and over and over in the group, right? And when you get to 2 million members, you've just seen them a lot and you know how to answer them.  Well, in these videos, when I make them, I just stand there and talk to them. You know, this might happen or that might happen. You know, focus on this. These are the most common mistakes that we see, whatever it means.
16:39And that is amazing because I didn't know about your podcast and not podcast, your, your,  um, can't talk.  Didn't know about your Facebook group  when I started my sourdough starter. So if I had known, I had known about the videos that would have been really helpful. And now that I know, I probably will go watch them just because I can.  Um, the other thing is that.
17:05This is a really cool science experiment for your kids to be involved in  because cooking is chemistry.
17:14Right, my 10 year old  stepdaughter like brags to people she's like, I know.  She calls, I know the sourdough recipe off by heart,  you know,  and most of it she can do. Her arm's not quite strong enough for some of the initial mixing, but you know, with that supervision and um,
17:37I put my kids' butts on the counter as soon as they could sit up, all of them. By the time my oldest daughter was 11, I could yell down the stairs, Lexi, make me cookies. I've just always included them and I think it's good for them. Like you said, it helps them with science, it helps them with math, it helps them with understanding nutrition, science and health and everything else.
18:06So it's fantastic with kids. really is. of the most viral posts that we get in the group  are people showing what their kids are doing with sourdough.  Awesome. I love it.  And sourdough is very messy and kids love getting their hands in mud.  They're going to love getting their hands in sourdough.  Oh yeah. I didn't realize how sticky that recipe for the  shortcut.
18:36um, bread loaf recipe is.  I was like, Whoa, this is some sticky dough, man. Yeah. So,  you know, usually if you've got sticky dough, um,  one of two things has happened. Um, the first thing is that you've used a high hydration recipe, which we have what we call the beginner bread recipe, which is specifically on purpose, lower hydration.
19:04And then we have like the level two recipe, which starts increasing that hydration.  The lower your hydration is, the denser your bread is going to be, but the easier it is to manage.  the higher your hydration is, the stickier your dough is going to be and the harder it is to manage. your probability of success as a beginner comes up quite a bit if you're working with a lower hydration. that's, that's sort of number one.  Number two  is,  um, if you overproof your dough, it becomes very sticky.
19:34And as a beginner, it's very hard to fix that later. And that's one of the most  common frustration posts that we get is it's too sticky, I can't manage it. I followed the beginner bread recipe,  but it's too sticky, I can't manage it. there's certain things that  I and the moderators in my group feel strongly about, although we never try to really push our opinions on anyone. just say, we think this.  And one of the things that we think is that
20:01leaving your dough on the counter overnight is almost  never a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have, I don't dare to leave my dough on the counter overnight because my dog would figure out a way to get it. And she's a little tiny dog, but she would figure out a way to get it because it probably smells good to her.  If I was going to leave it overnight, I would put it in the refrigerator.  but  the recipe that I used, found online cause that's how I find everything these days.
20:30And when I put all the ingredients together, it was very dry. And I was like, I think I screwed this up already. And when I read further in the recipe, it said that the dough would be very dry to start  and to leave it with a towel over the bowl to rise for an hour because it would get wetter as it did its thing. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go with this because I don't know what I'm doing. Came back an hour later and it had become much
21:00a much wetter dough. And I was like, I will be damned if it worked. This is so cool.  So basically I'm highly entertained by the process and I haven't made another loaf since we were, we were busy with stuff and I've got my, my sourdough starters, two of them downstairs that are all ready to be turned into bread this weekend. And I am, I'm going to on Sunday, I'm going to make two loaves this time  and I'm going to make sure that I actually let it rise long enough.
21:27because last time I think I didn't let it rise quite long enough. my suggestion for you,  once your dough is mixed up, if you can find  clear straight sided containers, and by the way, in the beginner baking playlist on the YouTube channel, there's  a video called Do This One Thing to Guarantee Bulk Proofing Success. I find that people who've made
21:56yeast bread before struggle the most with sourdough at first. mean, usually they, catch up really quickly.  But if you've made bread with yeast in the past, the way yeast bread rises is it rises like a ball, whatever shape it was when it started, it kind of continues to rise in that shape.  The sourdough, what it does is it fills in all the spaces first. So one of the most common things that we see in sourdough is my
22:23dough has been sitting here on the counter for 10 hours and it didn't rise. And the thing is that it did rise,  but you've got it in a giant bowl that has very sloped sides. And so your dough has kind of spread sideways rather than up. Okay. So people end up overproofing their dough. So what we do is we find,  and by the way, I didn't invent this. I learned this somewhere on the internet. I just started to teach it, right?
22:51There's something called like the alico method where people do it with a very small container with a piece of their dough. But essentially what we're saying is if you get a container that fits your dough fairly tightly, so for a standard size loaf, that would be like  a  one and a half or two quart sort of Tupperware container with clear straight sides.  And you get your dough into that and then  you mark the height of it. Then as.
23:18the day goes on, can see exactly how much it's risen because it's tied up against the sides of the dough. So the dough can only go upwards. Okay. And so when it,  when you're looking for the rise, do you want it to double? It depends on, there's a lot of factors  that would affect  why you would let the dough rise more or less. In fact, Tom Cacusa from the sourdough journey has an  excellent chart.
23:48that circulates on the internet. Now that I said it, you'll find it. But essentially what he says is, you know, if it's this temperature in your house and your dough was this temperature at the beginning,  then it needs to rise 35%, 65%, whatever. It's very scientific. And  I'll admit I've never once ever done it that way. But  usually to be on the safe side as a beginner, what I say
24:13is try to stay very consistent and only change one thing at a time. Pick a place to start. If you're gonna use the clear straight sided container and you're gonna let it rise, I would say let it rise to about 75%. Okay.  And  see how that turns out. If it falls a little flat on you when you bake it, then maybe go for 50 or 65 % next time. If it's still not as airy as you want it to be, then maybe let it rise a little bit more.
24:40Because that rise process, all that's happening is the dough is fermenting and creating carbon dioxide bubbles. So it's just a matter of how big those bubbles are.  If the bubbles aren't big enough, then it's very dense bread, right? If the bubbles are too big, they become just like, you know, when you blow a bubble, right? The bigger it gets,  the thinner the skin is, the more likely it is to pop, right? If your carbon dioxide bubbles get too big, then your bread isn't strong enough  to hold its own weight.
25:09before it springs in the oven. Yes, exactly. So really, this is all- Those questions are always funny because people are always like, what percentage? I'm like, I don't know, do it by eye. Yeah, I feel like a lot of sourdough baking is by eye and by feel. And I kind of love it. It's very zen. It's very relaxing once you get, once you become unafraid,
25:38It's very relaxing because you're learning. Exactly. Exactly. The stretch and pull thing. When I read stretch and pull, was like, I don't know what that means. And I did see a video about it. And I was like, oh, you literally take the top part, stretch it and put it down on top. And then you turn the bowl and you do it again. Turn the bowl, do it again. Turn the bowl, do it again. That's a stretch and pull. And the first time was great.
26:06The second time the dough was slightly stickier because it had done its thing and that was a little messy. The third stretch and pull was fine. Fourth stretch and pull was fine and that's all the recipe required. And I was like,  this bread is going to be dense. It's going to be a break, but I'm going to do it anyway. And I did it and it was fine. And the reason I say all that is because  if you don't start,  you don't know. Yep. It's true. The best.
26:33method for sourdough is the one that works best for  you. And once you acknowledge that you have ways of doing things and you understand things a certain way and you're in a certain kind of environment,  you've got humidity and you live in the Bahamas and it's very humid and you live in the desert, why would you expect your bread to be the same? Once  you understand that the process that seems to work
27:02best and most peacefully and most consistently for you is the best process, then you don't have to worry about all the things that are out there. We have kind of a list of what we call the essential processes that we think, and  it's not necessarily that you have to do them,  but we think that if you follow this set of essential processes, you have a much higher probability of success on your first few tries, if that makes sense.
27:32And if you fail on the first or second try, just keep trying. Eventually you're going to get it. That's right. That's right. Or some people just give up and that's okay too, because  you can go to any farmer's market now and get a beautiful loaf of sourdough from somebody who is, you know, supporting their family by making it for 10 or $12. So it's not like you can't enjoy sourdough. Some people just come in and we see that post in the group all the time. You guys are all amazing.
28:00I've enjoyed this journey so much.  I hate sourdough. I'm never making it again, but I love the way it tastes. So I'll be at my farmer's market every Saturday. Yeah. And if you're supporting your local bakers, that's  a great thing to do too.  Um,  the other thing that I see a lot of is people are frustrated because they can't make the beautiful fancy loaves of sourdough bread yet.
28:27Honestly, those are great. mean, if you are that, I don't know, entertained with making sourdough and doing all the fancy designs on the crust,  have at it.  All I want right now is to just make a good sandwich loaf. I'm good with that. Right. We call those the insta loaves.  And,  you know, there's some people who  have artistic ability. You know what I mean? Like it's,
28:55It's the same as saying,  you know, I've never picked up a pen and drawn something in my life, but I'd love to be able to draw a beautiful portrait of my mother. You know what I mean? Like  you have to acknowledge this artistic ability, but everybody can do some beautiful scoring. Um, there's a lot of tricks with scoring that actually can make  the scoring process better and the bread itself better. Um, but it's one of those things where you kind of need to like master the basics first. So in our.
29:25in our world, call it the essential processes, master the essential processes, understand that  there's all these other cool processes out there that exist and that could potentially make your future bread better, right?  Things like mixing your flour and water the night before and letting it ferment overnight before you add your starter, adding your starter and salt later, you know, doing these intricate score techniques, going to super high hydration, all of those things exist.
29:54But if you just come back and master the basics first and get a recipe that you're really enjoying, then you only have to make tiny little adjustments all the time to get to that perfect loaf. And then once you're at the perfect loaf and you can do that every single time or most of the time, because by the way, I still mess up loaves every once in a while. Nine times out of 10, I already knew I messed it up before it goes in the oven, but I just bake it anyway.
30:22You know, then once you get to that, then you can start exploring sort of those  artistic things. And there are influencers out there who  just do beautiful work and they do it slow enough so that you can kind of copy them, right?  that's influencers are generally putting their stuff out  to teach you how, but I mean, if you are going to copy them, make sure you give them credit, course, right? But  especially with artistic stuff, stuff that's, you know, that they designed in their own mind.
30:51But scoring is one of those things. we call it, we say that there's two kinds of scores. There's the functional score that you actually need to assist the bread in rising.  And then there's aesthetic store scores, which you're just doing because you like it.  The aesthetic scores are the ones that are the fancy one. Yeah. So  you need to  put a score in your bread for the science part of it.  Right. So.
31:21You've  fed your starter, it's risen.  You've mixed your dough. You were calling it dry earlier. used to shaggy loaf, right? You've stretched and fold it three or four times every 30 minutes. You've put it in a clear straight-sided container. You've let it rise to somewhere between 65 and a hundred percent. So somewhere between one and a half times to two times its size.  And you you've dumped it out.
31:51pre-shaped it, you've shaped it, maybe you've cold-proofed it overnight, maybe you're just gonna bake it straight away. The score that goes into the bread  and the way you hold  your lame or your razor is gonna kind of affect the way the bread looks. And again, those things come with practice and over time. But essentially you need  a score line that goes from one end of the bread to the other that's about a half an inch deep.
32:19And the reason for that is that when you let the dough rise and then you pre-shaped it and shaped it, you trapped all those carbon dioxide bubbles in there.  And  it's really funny on Facebook, whenever I do a live and I start demonstrating this with my hands, how  the dough sort of  starts out looking like  kind of flat and round. And then in the oven, it springs. I start doing this sort of upward motion with my hands and then.
32:46Facebook Live makes hearts happen and it's hilarious. People go nuts.  putting this score line in  is sort of alleviating some of the pressure on the bread so that it can do that spring. So what sourdough does is it goes in as this kind of bubbly ball  and then it explodes from the inside out. And so that's how you get that belly, that line that everybody's,  people call it an ear.
33:12Right? It's this coveted thing that everybody wants to see on their own sourdough. And that score, that essential score, that functional score  is what assists with that.  And a little trick that you can use is once you put your bread in the oven, set a timer for seven or eight minutes  and look at your bread. And if your bread looks like that score that you cut is fusing together,  what it means is that your bread sort of a little bit too heavy, cut that score line again.
33:40at seven or eight minutes, give it a second chance to  explode outward in because  that's  oven rise is what is the determinant of  a good sourdough loaf or not.  But of course it's everything that leads up to that that determines whether or not that's gonna happen. Gosh, I could go on forever. You're gonna have to stop me and  ask me your questions.  I feel like sourdough bread baking is
34:10all about anticipation. Right. So,  um, the other thing is, is you were talking about the discard at the beginning and I keep seeing recipes for, for discard and somebody told me they make discard chocolate chip cookies and I was like,  huh, okay. The recipe on my YouTube channel. They're so good.  You'll never make chocolate chippies chip, chocolate chippies, chocolate chip cookies.
34:38without sourdough starter again. Yeah, chocolate chippies work. I like that. I'm going start calling them chocolate chippy cookies. It'll be- Here's the thing. You should.  You know what? It's just going to be a thing now for me forever. I'm just going to tell all the girls that's what they have to call it. Yeah. I think that'd be great. If my kids were still little, they would love that. They would giggle every time I said it.  So  I do have a question. Did you self-publish your book or did you do it through a publisher?
35:07I just figured out how to use the software to build the book and self-published it on Amazon. Wow. You just started doing sourdough, what, two years ago? Yep. You're impressive. And then just lived and breathed it for about 18 months.  And I got a lot of help.  I'm an Indigenous woman.
35:37And they're in Canada, sometimes there's good programs for us.  So there was a program called First Nations  Women's  Entrepreneurs,  and they had a program where they would assist with, you know, building up a business. So they helped me with getting the website built, getting all the resources put together to start getting the YouTube channel built, you know, all of that sort of like.
36:07internet stuff.  And like I said, my family does have a little bit of a background in the internet.  So  it wasn't, it wasn't like it was  entirely new to me  to  work on sort of the, the teaching side of the internet and the teaching side  of  something, right? And then with that book, all it really is, is a compilation of all these recipes that I've come up with.
36:34on  a day-to-day, week-to-week basis to contribute to the group. Okay, awesome.  You are a very talented woman, Sarah. Thank you.  Wow. I just feel like a normal human, by the way.  I just made sourdough and shared with my friends. That literally is what happened. But I certainly would never downplay, you know,  if you'd want to do something like this, if you want to teach  about something.
37:03It's important that you're passionate about it that it's something that you really want to do all the time, right? Otherwise it starts to get old. And there is definitely a lot of work that goes into building up something like this.  Yeah. When I started the podcast back in August of 23, for the first six months,  the word podcast came out of my mouth more times than it had in my entire life.
37:30I literally was like, cannot say the word podcast again for a week. I've got to stop doing this. And my husband was like, don't. And I said, why? And he said, because you're so excited about this. He said, this is the thing you're meant to do.  Feel free to talk about it all you want. He said, I haven't seen you this excited in years about anything that is, that's work. And I was like, oh, okay. So I thought I was making you crazy. He said, no, he said, you're driving yourself crazy, but it's a good crazy.
38:00That's fantastic. That's so I think I think I think sourdough is the same for you. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's just  and you know, sometimes there's just opportunities that you can seize. And like you said, you know, your husband encouraged you to seize it. But sourdough has been a family affair around here. I tell you like my same thing with me. My spouse is there trying to hold the camera for me and trying to tell me, you know,
38:27try this, try that. He's in some of my videos doing his funny stuff, you know, like  it's been, you're lucky when you can, you're lucky when you can have all of those things kind of fall together. But even if you don't have all of those things, if you,  you love it, then you you should, you should do it.  Yes. And honestly, making a loaf of sourdough bread costs less than buying the sourdough, buying any kind of bread at the store. It really does.
38:56It's the best, think the  most fun part. So just going back to that book, like the way I got all these recipes  and just because you mentioned your husband, every recipe I made was something that my family asked me to make. the first one, my husband was like, I saw that people are making cinnamon buns with sourdough starter in them. And that's like his favorite thing on the planet. So we just made them, right? And then we tweaked the recipe and
39:26You know what I mean? Tried to make it the way we wanted it to be. then since you're in the group and you're operating the sourdough YouTube and everything, might as well share it with everybody. And over the two years, that's just kind of how it went. Cinnamon buns, dinner rolls, sandwich bread, you know. And  on the YouTube channel, there's a playlist called Discard Recipes, even though it's not technically discard.  That word discard is so confusing for people.
39:53Well, feel like most of recipes you can use active starter. If you want. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like discard comes across as negative and maybe we should call it bonus bonus starter. That would be good. That would be good. The only time you really need to throw your starter away and you really should throw it away is just in that first six or seven days. And I, some people are very against waste and I completely understand that. But we're talking about like.
40:23in total about a cup of flour.  know, after that, so the, so the general rule with what we would call discard recipes or recipes that are everything other than sourdough bread is  if the recipe needs to rise, then it needs to be either active starter  or inactive starter with a little bit of yeast added. Right. So that's things like cinnamon buns.
40:52dinner rolls,  sandwich bread, know, anything that rises. If it doesn't need to rise, go ahead and use whatever starter you've got. Use your active starter, use your starter that's been sitting in your fridge for a week and hasn't been fed. It's a little less active, right? That's things like cookies and brownies and crackers. Crackers, yes. Yeah.
41:17That's a funny thing. I've never once ever tried to make crackers. And I think that's like the most popular, um, sourdough discard recipe that there is, but it's just no one in our family eats them. But put me on some pizza dough and oh my gosh, we've made some pizza dough. We've got to try that. We have a pizza steel that you actually put in the oven and heat up. So we're going to try doing a sourdough pizza dough. Um, probably not this weekend, but next weekend we're going to try it see how turns out.
41:47Um, well, Sarah, this was fabulous.  we're wait, we're, we're 12 minutes over half an hour here because I try to get used to half an hour.  Where can people find you?  So  at sourdough for beginners,  just spell out the whole word and then it's for FOR on Facebook and YouTube.  Um, when you go on Facebook and you want to find the page,  um, we've got the blue check.
42:15We're on Instagram and Tik Tok too, but much smaller followings. I, my daughter tells me I'm too old and I don't know how to use Instagram or Tik Tok properly, but it's at Sarah sourdough for beginners on Instagram and Tik Tok. But my recommendation is, know, just go to the YouTube channel. It's we've really organized it well. Okay.  And tell me again, the YouTube channel handle at at sourdough for beginners.  Okay. Cool.
42:42Thank you so much for your time, Sarah. This was so fun. And honestly, I have been so not motivated to do sourdough. And as soon as my friend brought me that starter, was like, I am going to dive in. The name of our place is a tiny homestead. Sourdough bread is part of homesteading. I need to learn how to do this. So I'm thrilled that I got to talk to you today. It was great. Thank you for having me. I'm really honored.
43:11and you know just keep doing it you're gonna really like it and it's so good for you it's good for the kids it's good for everything. It is and I'm excited to keep trying new things.  As always people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Sarah I hope you have a great day. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.
 

Cooper's Knoll Farm

Today I'm talking with Jena at Cooper's Knoll Farm.
You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.
00:27Today I'm talking with Jena at Cooper's Knoll Farms. Good morning Jena, how are you? Good morning, I'm great, how are you?
00:37I'm good. You're in Ohio, right?  I am right in central Ohio, right outside of Columbus. How do you pronounce the name of your town? Pataskala.  It's a popular question.  Yeah, I was looking at your Facebook page and your About page and I was like, I have no idea how to say that one.  Pataskala, Ohio. We're about 20 minutes outside of Columbus. Pretty convenient location and...
01:05Easy to get to wherever you need to go, but still in the country, which is really nice. Yes, yes. 20 minutes to actual stores helps when you really need something.  Is it raining in Ohio? Because it's raining in Minnesota this morning. It is not. We got some storms yesterday, but we're hoping it does rain today because we are in a massive heat wave.  We're a heat index of 100. So everything right now is  how do we keep the animals cool?
01:34We're trying to work through this heat wave and hoping for a little rain actually. Yeah. How long has it been super hot for you?  This whole week. So, but since  maybe Friday last week. we've got a week straight of hundred degree index,  heat index. So,  and then before that it rained so much, we couldn't get it to stop. And now it's just dry and hot. So  you  can't get a good mix. It's all,  it's one way or the other. That's it.
02:04You can't win. Yeah, I know.  I feel really bad for complaining about the fact that it was so hot this past weekend in Minnesota because we only had really hot for two days.  a whole week of it, I would have been ripping my hair out by now. So. Well, yesterday was supposed to be the end of the heat index and then they have extended it now through,  through Saturday. So  just doing what we can to stay cool.  am so sorry.  It's no fun.
02:34Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself and about your farm because I can't wait to hear this story. Well, I'm Gina and my husband is Richard. We have two boys. They are ages 10 and 11. And then two years ago, we also inherited a daughter, a bonus daughter. She was 20 and
03:01parents had both passed away in the same weekend. She spent the night with us and never left. we've got we've got a bonus daughter that's going to be 22 as well that that lives with us. And my mother-in-law lives here too. And so we have a little multi generational home and I work full time and my husband works full time too. So he's a data assessment coordinator at at Reynoldsburg schools here in Ohio.
03:31And I work full time as a regional sales manager for an education software company.  So I manage our entire Northeast territory and all of Canada. I  teach jazzercise on the side when I'm not recovering from ACL surgery as I am now.  Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because it said something about that you didn't realize you would be bottle feeding lamb.  Oh, yeah. When you were down.
03:58ACL surgery two weeks ago,  delivered a goat on Sunday sitting with my brace on the floor of our barn and then  had creamy twin sheep  and  lost one and have had a house sheep for the last two weeks as well. So farming from my couch friend, farming from my couch.  the animals don't wait unless you're dead. Unless you're dead, you're working. Yeah.
04:25Exactly. So it has been adventurous here. tell me about how the farm got started because I get the impression that wasn't the original plan.
04:39No, it was not.  So  when COVID happened,  we were  living in a suburb  where my husband was invincible and it just was not good.  And our kids were stuck in this postage stamp size yard and we just wanted more space for them to run.  And so  we had decided then that we were going to get some land where the boys could go outside and run.
05:08play. And so we started looking for like two to four acres. And long story short, long story short, we were looking for two to four acres and the day before we went to look at properties, this 10 acre property popped up. And so we went and looked at all the properties and the 10 acre one actually ended up being just as much or less than the others that we were looking at that were smaller. So we we got this one, we built our house.
05:38And then we decided we were going to try and keep our CAUB taxes or farm taxes.  Didn't realize how in depth that is in Ohio,  but it is. So we got a couple goats  and we were going to have these goats and thought, yes, now we're going to pay for them taxes and everything's good. And then we found out that they actually look at your land and how much you are using for animals.
06:04Yeah. And so we were like, well, we need more pastures built and we are going to need some more animals to be able to justify this.  And so I had always loved shingles and cows. Before they were like popular and a thing, I had always loved them.  And so I told my husband, said, let's get a couple of cows and maybe a sheep just to, to, you know, have some things here. And I would love to have a lot of shingles in my backyard.  So.
06:33Another long story short,  we ended up  in April of 2023, April of 2023, we got 10 sheep and three cows in one day.  I don't do anything slow.  So  we got all of these animals in one day. And then we had a bunch of messages on Facebook of people just saying like, can I come see your cows? Can I come see your cows? Can I come see your cows?
07:01So I told my husband, said, why don't we just open up every Saturday in May, five spots, we'll charge like $50 an hour and see if anybody will come do a tour to see them. And that'll help offset our cost for the feed. And he was like, yeah, okay, we can try it. So we made a Facebook page and put it out just to our local community, like Pataskala page. That's it. We just were like, hey, this is what we're doing. We had.
07:282400 members of our group in 24 hours and sold out every five slot every Saturday in May.  In like a week's time. my god. We were like,  what just happened?  And it's just me and him. And so we started running tours, I do photography on the side. So we offered photography for some of the tours and did that and everybody loved it.
07:56Later, we had  local artists start asking us about doing classes  at the farm. so we did our first class was a Highland Cow painting class by a local  women owned business artist. And so she came out here and did that. We had 35 ladies show up for that class.  And we painted in our barn that was totally not set up for events at all, but we made it work.
08:21So we did a painting class and then that just led to another thing and another thing and another thing. And we've had a candle making class here. Now we've had pottery making classes and a rug making class. And so that's one of our unique things besides hosting birthday parties and things like that. So yeah, that's kind of the story of how we just got started and now we have about 130 animals on the farm.
08:50just built a new chicken coop. have Highlands  micro mini donkeys that we just got literally the night before my surgery. We just had our first calf.  And we are now currently raising meat chickens and we have loppier bunnies and goats  and  yeah, just everything. So wow. You are in deep. Been a wild ride. Yes.  So did you or your husband have any experience with
09:19farm stuff at all before this? I mean, my husband's uncle was a farmer in Alabama. So whenever he went to visit his family, he would hang out. I did grow up on a farm in Millersburg, Ohio. It was a family farm. And so, but we didn't have a lot of animals. I raised a pig for 4-H. We raised rabbits for a while, but never goats, sheep, donkey, like none of that.
09:47We had a few Angus cows, but like they were mean. We weren't really allowed near them.  We did mostly corn and hay on our land. So I did grow up on a farm, but listen, I had no intentions whatsoever of being a farmer. That was not in my planning whatsoever.  Well, congratulations, because you are now, honey.  I still am like,  is this real? Am I really?
10:16I'm literally a farmer. I don't know how this happened.  Well, it's also really interesting that your husband's job and your job have nothing to do with agriculture. No, not at all. Nope. But we love it. And we just we literally have joined a ton of Facebook pages,  the people that we've purchased animals from, we have made sure that they are good mentors to us.
10:42And so we've been really, really blessed with some amazing people and mentors.  I still remember delivering my first goat and FaceTiming the lady that we got her from and  Amber is her name and freaking out and her walking me through it and then being like, oh, okay. And now I've coached people through birthing animals and  that's kind of cool.  Yeah. The only experience I have with baby anything is my kids  and  kittens.
11:11We got a female cat showed up here a couple of springs ago and we thought she was a kitten because she was so small and she was actually six months old. She was always a small cat even when she was an adult and she gave us three litters of kittens. Oh my goodness. And I got to see the first litter just after they'd all been born. I didn't actually see them being brought into the world but they were still wet.
11:39Yep. And the kittens are so tiny. I can't even imagine. Yeah, we haven't had kittens here, but I had them at my old friend's, so itty bitty. Yeah, and they were just soaked and hurt. She was a very long-haired cat, so her tail, it looked like another kitten because it was all wet too. And I was like, oh, I think she had seven. And my husband was like, no, she had six. And I said, but what's, why am I seeing another kitten? And he said, because you're seeing her tail beside the kittens.
12:08He said, she is drenched. said her whole back end, that water breaking must have been epic.  There's definitely a lot of goo involved in brooding animals.  One of our best ones this year was one of our goats was supposed to have triplets  and  she actually went into labor during one of our tours. And so I was like, Hey guys, sorry, tours over or this is going to be your tour. And we obviously told them they could come back.
12:37So my mom happened to be here visiting and so she and my husband came out and helped. And so we delivered baby one, baby two, baby three. And then we were just kind of waiting on the placenta.  And so I said, all right, well, looks like, wow, it looks like she's gonna push the placenta out. I've never had anyone do that before.  And then I said,  guys, the placenta has nose and legs.  I don't think this one's a placenta. So she actually ended up having quadruplets, which was  crazy  and super fun.
13:06Nice. How did she do? Did you have to take some in? great. She did great.  The little baby girl, there was one girl and three boys.  The baby girl actually went as a bottle baby  because  we had a family that was experienced with bottle babies that wanted one and we just knew it would make things easier on mom. honestly, she was doing just fine. So,  but she raised the boys just fine. And the little girl actually just won first place at her local fair.
13:35And so it's really fun to Oh, so you have an award winning goat that you have to broaden the world. That's amazing. We do. do ADGA registered Nigerian dwarf goats.  And  we've really invested heavily into that program and into our Scottish Highlands.  And so that's what we're really  mainly focused on, even though we have a little bit of everything. Well, if you're going to have a petting zoo, it's good to have a variety.
14:04Right? Exactly. Exactly. We  really pride ourselves that our animals, almost every single animal on this farm, we have purchased as a baby or a weanling  and  raised to them here because we're very, very picky about our personalities. I mean, they can be award winning, but they also have to be nice.  So  it's pretty fun, Yeah, that's a good plan to have because  mean animals are  no fun.
14:33No, and  they can pass that to their kids.  A lot of people, I don't think, realize that the personality of the parents really matters.  It's a question that we always tell people, even if you're not going to buy from us, make sure you ask our mom and dad on site. What are their personalities like of the parents? Those kinds of things. So we try to do a lot of education.
14:55Because there are so many scammers, there are so many farms out there that are buying animals at auction and reselling them for what they're not supposed to be. And  so we try to do a ton of education for people when purchasing an animal, especially like a Scottish male and mini donkey. There are just so many not real people out, scammers, flat out scammers, then,  you know, farms that maybe, maybe haven't done things the right way. And so we try to educate on just what questions to ask, what, what things to ask.
15:24If you're buying it online, make sure you FaceTime them, get videos of them. I used to have people send me a code word. You need to make a video of the animal and use the code word jump or something, you know? They think I'm crazy and I'm like, hey, I need to make sure you're a real person and not just sending me a random video of an animal. So, um. Yeah. And I would suggest that no one ever send money to anyone for an animal ever because I've read stories of people trying to get puppies.
15:54And the person selling the puppy is like, okay, so I need a deposit for this, you know, for the first half of the cost, and then you can pay me the rest when you pick up the puppy. And then  there's no puppy.
16:09Yep. Yep. We've seen that happen a lot.  We do deposits, but we always make sure that they have videoed us.  They have seen the puppy, you know, like if you're doing that kind of thing, you can make sure that it's a real person come out to our farm, visit us, come see them, touch them, feel them, you know, all that kind of stuff. So,  but yeah, it's, it's a scary world out there. the internet is a double, double edged sword.
16:39I was going to say double bladed something and I was like, no, that's not it.  Didn't get a lot of sleep last night. Double edge sword because it makes things  so easy and so convenient and so wonderful. mean, I am having a chat with you in my bedroom in front of my computer in Minnesota  and you're in Ohio. It's amazing.  I love it, but it also makes it really easy for people to fool you. And that is so terrible. hate that part.
17:08I do too. And that's why we try to educate people. Like not everybody's bad. You know, we're real people that have real animals. And just try to educate people on what questions asked to make sure that they don't fall into that. I mean, I've had some pretty good ones. I've looked into a couple of animals where you're having a conversation and it seems legit. And I'm pretty cautious. And I've had two almost get me because at the end they say, you know,
17:36you need to send this much money and then they get really pushy about it. And  that's when you know, like, oh, dang, I almost fell for that one. So  they've gotten pretty creative.  like you said,  our three of our Highlands, our original Highlands are from  Taylor Blake out of Florida.  She's got, she's kind of famous on YouTube and TikTok and all the things with her hilarious animal videos  got connected with her. She's been a great mentor friend.
18:05And I never would have had that without the internet. You know, our other cows are from Tennessee, Michigan, Kentucky. So some really amazing people out there too. Yeah. I actually found myself thinking the other day,  how in hell did we meet people before the internet?  That's a really good question.  And being able to stay in touch with people you meet in person, you know, is, is really fun too.  Yeah, absolutely. mean,
18:35I tend to keep up with everyone that I talk to for the podcast because you guys become in my head friends. And so I have like a list of people I check every morning to make sure everything is okay at their place, even in Oh, So yeah, it's funny how your brain connects whether you actually meet someone in person or not. 1000%. I mean, my real job is all Zoom meetings.
19:04We work with school districts all over the Northeast and Canada,  and 90 % of our work is over the internet.  We do go to visit in person sometimes our larger districts, but you can't get to everybody. So  living in Ohio and not actually living in any of the states  that I work in,  I get there in person once in a while, but  all of those relationships are internet. Yep. It's so hard though, because  like,
19:32I have a little heart spot for everyone I talk to on this thing, on this podcast. And when I see videos of my new quote unquote friends going through hell with losing an animal or they have a house fire or a barn fire, I literally cry. Like I can't stop myself because I feel so connected to you guys. Oh, absolutely. I feel you there. Like we have people we've never met before that go through things.
20:01done fundraisers for them, all kinds of stuff for people we've never even met but have been good, you know, buddies and mentors and sounding boards for animals. I mean, we had we lost one of our baby sheep that was born as a preemie two weeks ago.  So we had our brother as a house sheep and  the outpouring of love from people just so sad about this sheep for instance was just amazing and 90 % of them we've never met. So  but it was great still to have the support.
20:31Yeah, absolutely.  anyone who's in farming or homesteading knows that if you have livestock, you're going to have dead stock. It is just a fact. Yeah. And you get to a point with it where, yes, your heart hurts, but  my knee jerk now  is shit happens. You know, there's just no avoiding it.  That  will not be my response when my dog dies. I love my dog more than
20:59life itself. She's amazing. I've talked to her to the point of sickening on the podcast since I started it. That one's gonna hurt. But now one of our barn cats didn't show up the other morning. He's fine. He's back. But my immediate thought was, okay, now we're down to one barn cat. It's time to get a couple new ones. It wasn't, oh no, he's dead. I'm gonna be sold. Well, I'll tell you this morning, I texted my husband and said,
21:28So  the bottle baby sheep we sent to his new home today.  He's actually going to be at one of the exhibits at the Ohio State Fair.  They have like a bottle baby and babies and mamas display that they do  with goats and sheep and things.  He was just too much for me to keep up with recovering from my ACL surgery and he's been inside.  My oldest son and I are kind of the simps of the family.
21:54We just bawled and bawled together on the couch for a while. And I told my husband, said, leaving me and Noah home  as the two when this, when Latte left was not a great idea.  So,  but we'll be okay, but we do miss him already.  It's,  it's hard. mean, it's, it's very bittersweet. You put time and love into that baby  and now he's going to go live somewhere else and I'm sure he'll be fine, but it hurts.
22:24So I understand.
22:30Yep.  So,  um, I saw something about a summer class you're doing for kids in July. Is that right? Say that again.  I saw something about a summer class you're doing for kids in July. We  are, um, we're very excited.  Um, this is brand new for us. We've never done it before.  Um, and so July 7th through the  11th, we're going to be running our first kids camp.  Um, and so.
22:58For ages six to 16, we hired just a couple months ago. We finally were to the point where we hired a farm manager because we just can't keep up with this ourselves. It has been too much. And so she's amazing. And she had a little farm of her own and because of circumstances had to shut down her farm. And so she's helping us and she has an eight year old son.
23:27They have just been incredible.  And so  she is a former educator  and  I have my master's in administration and in music education. And my husband was a high school band director and a high school principal for a very long time too. And so we're all in education.  And so  it's kind of great to be able to have people with that kind of background to be able to put a camp together. So we have  two local artists coming out. We have a...
23:56pottery class,  pottery project on Tuesday of camp. And  we have a local author coming out who's also a bison farmer and he's gonna read his book  and come out and visit the kids and talk to them about bison.  And then we have a candle making class that is one of the ladies is gonna come out. And so we've developed this tight knit group with other, they just happen to be women owned local businesses as well.  And we work with a bakery,
24:25And  we work with another lady that does just all kinds of craft projects from like chunky blankets and things like that. And so  those two are  participating in our camp and then the local author. And  we're really excited about it.  I think it's going to be a really good time.  That's amazing. I love it.  And yay, girl power. mean, yeah, it's taken a long time for women to become the amazing
24:55gender that they are. Let's put it that way.  Yep, absolutely.  so the three of us, it's Caitlin from Create Joy DIY Studio  and Tabitha from Common Sense Wax Company. And they've done a couple classes out here and then we said, you know what, let's start meeting once a month just to keep each other accountable.  We'll bring our computers, do our social media stuff together,  brainstorm ideas, run things past each other. And so we started meeting for coffee once a month.
25:24And now we have Lori from Lori's Bake Shop, who's a local baker. She has also joined us. And so we're kind of in the process of developing this local, there's tons of business groups, but there's not groups for just women owned local businesses. And so we're kind of in this process of developing this local women owned business group,  just support for each other.  And it's been just a blast to get to know these amazing women who have had great advice for me.
25:54We're currently working on a pass program where you could purchase a pass that would get you like an activity of each of our businesses  to see if that would fly too. So lots of different ideas and things and they're just amazing humans.  And so I've been really blessed to connect with them.  love it. I love it. I knew this was going to be a great conversation. I  knew it.  I think I'm still processing that I'm a business owner.
26:22that still is like, oh yeah, I literally am running a business, which is kind of crazy. Yes, I can relate. I was interviewed on a podcast by a friend  last week and she was like, so Mary is and she was like, she has a small farm, she this, she that. Oh, and she's a podcast host.  And the thing that stuck out to me the most was
26:47Oh, and she's a podcast host. was like, I never refer to myself as a podcast host. That's so weird. That's, that's what you are.  Believe it or  not. Yeah. I,  I have had this real weird disconnect with it because when I started it, I started it as a lark. I was like, I need a project. I'm going to try this. It'll probably fall apart in the first seven episodes and that'll be it.
27:13Almost two years later, it is going strong, it's growing and I love it. And because I love it, I don't see it as a job. when she said, she's a podcast host, my gears in my brain locked up. I was like, I'm a what? Okay. Right. Say what? Same thing here. We're like, we just have a farm that people come visit and it's kind of cool. And I'm like, oh yeah, it's not a business that makes money right now. Maybe someday.
27:42Yeah, the podcast is starting to make a little bit, but I am definitely not swimming in dollar bills right now.  Social media and getting things out there, that's probably one of our biggest challenges is we do so much  work outside on the farm.  And I know that monetizing like YouTube or something, like we have plenty of videos that would go viral on YouTube, but
28:11finding the time to sit there and make a reel,  put it online and like I never sit down as it is.  Well, I do now with my ACL but you know, I just don't  I don't have the time. I never wanted to be a social media marketer. That was not the job I wanted to do. And being a farmer is just so interesting because you have to be caretaker, you have to be veterinarian, you have to be  you know,
28:40social media marketer, have  to be 10 different jobs in order to farm in this day and age if you want to be profitable. That's one of our biggest challenges is just coming up with the time  to do the social media and to get things out there. How do you get enough followers? Where do you post? What time is most effective?  That's one of our hardest things to get through, I think, that we're still
29:09Figuring out.
29:13Yeah, I am a half-assed social media person. Like, I am not gonna go out of my way to make something. I don't know  what would be defined as fabulous. I  don't. just, my husband will send me a video of the cat that was cute and I will post it and people are like, oh, that's cool. And I get like, you know, a few followers out of it. I don't care.  I want to share stuff. I want people to come listen to the podcast. I want people to know that we have eggs for sale.  Other than that.
29:42I just share what I share. And if people like it, cool. And if they don't, they can go somewhere else. It's fine. Yeah. I think with the Petting Zoo farm, it's like trying to bring it in that business,  market our tours, get spots filled, that kind of thing. Like the camp,  we really focused on birthday parties in January, February, and we filled up really, really well for spring.  And now it's like,  oh crap, our camp is in two weeks and we have two kids signed up.  We probably should push this.
30:09So last night we got a couple different posts and posted to a bunch of different groups and we had three registrations this morning already. And it's like, just whatever you're focusing on is, what's going to do well, but there's a hundred thousand things we want to focus on. So  it's just kind of narrowing it in and figuring out the seasons, you know, as we go.  And it's interesting year to year as well, because our first year, our classes did really, really well.  Last year was a really tough year for everything. Nothing did well last year.
30:38I think just being an election year, think people were scared about what was going to happen and nobody did anything. And then this year, our classes didn't do very well, but our animal stuff has done well. So we have now like  a VIP tour where you can meet everybody.  We have donkey dates  where you can  have a smaller group that gets to come walk the donkeys, brush the donkeys and learn just about them. We have highland hangouts.  And so we've been able to expand our tour options.
31:07And it's just kind of experiment, learn and fail and try again. Right. So that's, we're still in that. I beating myself up because we're not doing this or that or the other thing. And everybody's like, dude, you've been in business for two years.  Yeah.  You're doing pretty good for two years then. And it's like, yeah, we've built,  um, this was literally a soybean field when we bought it. And so we've developed this completely from scratch. There was no infrastructure here.
31:36No water run to barns, nothing run anywhere. And we've built so far three pastures  and one, two, three, four, five barns.  And we just bought the 14 acres next to us as well, which is like, well, now we have that.  But we need money to be able to do something with it. So it's this constant battle of.
32:02much we want to do versus how much we can do financially, physically, all of that.  Yeah, this past year has been really rough. And  I think it's because of inflation. think it's because grocery prices have gone up so  much.  And people are really, really watching their pennies. We are.  My husband has a good job. And we're still like, okay, where's the least expensive place to get this thing where it's still edible?
32:32You know,  and we have a huge garden. mean, we are so excited that we're going to probably have our first zucchinis in this weekend.  Because we are not going to buy produce at the store when we can grow it. That would be silly. That was on our list this year.  But it kind of fell by the wayside with  in January, my husband actually tore his quad muscle.  Got his foot stuck in the mud, literally just went to pull it out.
33:00and  snap his quad completely detached from his knee.  So he couldn't drive or walk for three months. So now that he's recovering, then I had ACL surgery and it was just like that  garden  did not make it this year, but we're hoping to next year.  I have a black thumb too, so I'm a little worried about killing everything I put in the garden.  Animals, I can keep those alive. Plants, that's a whole other story.
33:30Uh-huh. Yeah. No, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try.  Patience and grace will help out a lot in your situation because you do have a lot going on.  We do.  But we love it.  All right, Gina. I try to keep you to half an hour. We're there. Thank you so much for your time and the great stories.  And don't leave me when I stop recording because I need your file to upload from your side too, okay?
33:57That sounds great. Thank you so much.  So great talking to you today. All right. Have a fantastic day. Thank you.  Oh, and I'm sorry. Where can people find you, Gina?  Oh, yes. So on Facebook and Instagram, we're Coopers, C-O-O-P-E-R-S, K-N-O-L-L,  And then our website is www.coopersnullfarm.com.
34:22Okay, because I want people to go and  do things with you so that you can get that  next 14 acres developed.  We would love that. We have a YouTube channel too that's also Cooper's Knoll Farm. So if you want to follow us there, I think we have six subscribers so far. So there you go. Maybe we'll get some more.  That would be great.  As always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com and I made that name way too long.  All right. Thank you, Gina. Have a great day. Thanks, Mary. Bye.
 

Shady Lane Farm

Today I'm talking with Martin at Shady Lane Farm.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Martin at Shady Lane  something.
00:29and the computer just like blanked out your name, Shady Lane something  in Illinois. Martin, tell me the name of your place again.  It is Shady Lane Farm. Thank you.  Once I hit record, it like cuts off half the people's names of their places. And if I haven't memorized it, I don't know what it is. So thank you.
00:51So what's the weather like in Illinois today, Mark? It  is cooler. It is only going to be 86 after about four days of  90s.  And we have occasional thunderstorms, but it's cloudy, not a bad day. We were out doing chores this morning. So not a horrible day to do chores. Yeah. Was the weekend rough on you guys? Cause it was really hot here in Minnesota. Yeah, it was. We...
01:19Mostly because I made everybody get up early to do chores before it got too hot. So it was, it was pretty rough, but we got through it. Yeah. The secret to homesteading and farming is get everything done before 10 AM that you have to do outside. Yes. We had a triathlon that came through our neighborhood here on Sunday and it was a heat index over 100. Yeah, it was gross.
01:50I think it's supposed to be 82 here today at like three, four o'clock and 82 is better than a heat indices of 105. Yes. So thankful times have come down. So tell me about what you do at your place. So what we do and we bought this five acre property in 2023, my wife, Lisa and I, I have been an urban homesteader.
02:18for many years  and finally it got to a point where  I had rented all the garden plots I could from the local park district and they had started to take plots back from us, which I understood to  because more people wanted to vegetable garden after COVID, which I totally support. I had failed in an attempt to get chickens allowed in the city.
02:48So  I went to Lisa and I said, you know, we just redid this beautiful colonial house here in Rockford. And we love it. Let's sell it and buy a rundown five acre  property  and do it all again  and  add animals and fencing  and  new garden and building all these scoops. And she said, okay. That's a good woman. And she had,  um,
03:18There were farms in her past,  but she herself had no homesteading experience. I had just taught her the vegetable garden  and  she was completely interested in doing it.  And she took a year off from her second master's degree  and was the general contractor for all the work on the house  and has really adapted to it.
03:47And now  is full on farm girl. Her cousins and relatives can't believe it. Has she raised a bottle lamb this spring all on her own  and  just has totally adapted to it. She's embraced it. Yes.  Awesome. I love her. That's great.  So why did you want to do this? Did you,  was it, was it just because you couldn't have chickens or did
04:17were you brought up around farming or what? Well, my mom's family  out in Western Kansas had a tradition  of farming  and she spent part of her childhood  on a small farm, very small by Kansas standards. They milked a few cattle, very, very rural. They made their own electricity with an AC Delco
04:46windmill generator.  Once they had milk, they would shut down the power to the house from the windmill and they'd power radio off the batteries because they had to use all the power to chill the milk. So she grew up very, very rural,  processing their own food, canning.
05:10They had a root cellar. So she grew up with all of that homesteading. In fact, that side of the family arrived in Western Kansas in 1887 and took up a homestead claim. So literally they were homesteaders. Wow. Yeah. She brought that ethos to even our very suburban upbringing. She would can things. She would
05:39very much make things from scratch. I grew up making my own egg noodles  that she taught me to make.  We didn't have a big garden because many of our government houses, you just didn't have the space for it.  But all of that ethos was very much there.  And I spent time in Kansas in summers and when my dad was in Vietnam. So
06:07it really impacted me. And then when I was earning my PhD in American history, my dissertation was  on the settlement of the far Western counties of Kansas between 1890 and 1929. And that transitional period where the railroad and real estate companies were pushing people to do  self-reliant homesteading.
06:34with truck gardens and raising their own food and raising for the nearby, well, there weren't really any nearby market  communities, but to ship things out by railroad.  And I became fascinated by these trains, the Santa Fe Railroad ran that basically taught you how to do all this. You come from the city, you get a homestead claim.
07:00Now this is how you make money on your homestead, doing these  various things. Oh, you can raise watermelons, you can raise this, you can  do small agricultural animal production. And so that planted a seed in my head and I like the idea of self-reliance  and  I like the idea of knowing where my food came from. Wow, okay. Now.
07:28It cut out when you were describing the woman that you were talking about. That was your mom? That was my mom. Yes. My mom  came from that. My grandparents, her parents, had  survived the Dust Bowl in the  1930s. And  so  that also informed everything in our house.
07:54that they had lived, sets of grandparents had lived through the Great Depression. So very much to be frugal  and to do those kinds of things.  My Irish grandparents who were fresh off the boat, my grandmother, I only found out later, kept  the traditional Irish market values. So  she would have my grandfather drive her out into the country.
08:23outside of Boston and should buy bushels of potatoes, bushels of vegetables and keep them in their basement in Boston.  And because they were cheaper, she wasn't going to pay the grocery store prices  and she could process them herself into anything she wanted. You came from Hardy stock, sir.  Yes.  I love it.
08:52And I love that you know all of this about your people because so many people don't know anything about their ancestors past their parents and possibly their grandparents. my dad's mom died when my dad was two years old. I never met her. He doesn't even remember her. And I so wish that there was a way to do, I don't know, a telephone to her so I could ask her about her life. know? Yeah.
09:21It's funny because I'm a history professor, but my family picks on me because I don't actually ever want to do art history.  They're like, and I'm like, well, that's not history. That's genealogy. But I will go on and on about the place where we come from  and that. So, but yes, I am not interested in genealogy. I am a disappointment to them.
09:49I feel like genealogy and history are very interwoven. So for me, I'm interested in both things.  And I have traced my lineage back to William the Conqueror in England on my mom's side. And I have traced my lineage back to the Salem witch trials on my dad's side. So  I got some weird, crazy things going on in my ancestry.
10:16Anyway, so what do you have on your farm? Do you have critters? Do you have produce? Do you have D all of the above? D all of the above. Okay. If we start with the vegetable garden, we have a 6,000 square foot vegetable garden that we broke in last year, which was an adventure in itself. The land had never been gardened by the people who had previously owned it.
10:45for 50 years.  And so we had to knock down a bunch of trees. It was a very typical rural story. Grandma built the house, daughter inherited it, daughter got  old and sick,  property got overgrown in trees, family dumped garbage  on the property. So we had abandoned boats, campers, tractors, yard tractors,  which we arranged for them all to take.
11:15But we still had all these just little groupings of trees that had popped up. So we had that cleared. And then approaching the soil, we actually had to rent  a cold mold board plow.  And we plowed it all up with our tractor. And then we had to till it, till it again, disk it again, plow it again.
11:41And so last year it was really intense trying to get it done  on time to get it planted. And it's turned out we have great soil. So we can grow anything. So  we grow, we have a big pumpkin patch. We usually do. We grow lots of watermelons, tomatoes, peppers,  all the brassicas.  So cabbage, lots of broccoli.
12:10We're not canners were freezers. We have a lot of freezers. So we freeze all the broccoli lots of peas and beans. Radishes  leaf lettuce.  I just successfully grew my first head lettuce ever. Ornamental corn  and popcorn  and two kinds of sweet corn. Very nice. In fact, the sweet corn  last year.
12:40kind of marked the beginning  of  us  selling things because  I planted a lot of sweet corn  and it came in really well and I said, hey, anybody want to buy some sweet corn?  And we completely sold out of sweet corn. So this year we're double the amount of sweet corn  because we didn't even get any sweet corn last year. We usually decurnal it and freeze it for the winter.
13:08And we got no sweet corn last year for us. So the garden  is wonderful. We grow parrots, pak choi. People always ask me what I grow and I say name it and we're probably growing it.  Strawberries,  cut flowers is a new thing this year. We were asked by some people to grow cut flowers  and to sell  kind of make your own flower arrangement flowers. So we're trying that this year.
13:38What  flowers are you growing? Because I love flowers you can bring in the house.  Lots of dahlias, poppies, dianthus, salacea,  daisies,  lots of cosmos because they're very popular for arranging. So  yes, we have just multiple varieties.
14:07And they're doing pretty well, but we direct so. So that's always an F-E thing. It's better if you seed start, but I don't seed start.  I don't like to seed start. So.  Awesome. And what do you have for animals?  For animals, we have rabbits. The rabbits are not meat rabbits.  I have nothing against meat rabbits. I have raised meat rabbits before.
14:37illegally in the city. But  for us, my wife has two granddaughters. And so knew immediately, and I had three sons that are between 23 and nine. And I knew the younger kids were going to request rabbits. So we built a rabbit tree. It's all enclosed so they can take them out of the cages one at a time, play with them. They all have their own rabbit.
15:05And they're just pets.  We raise Havanna's,  which are super soft. They're black, brown, Holstein. You can get lilac colored Havanna's.  They're very sweet rabbits.  We have people who bring their kids over to play with them. So the rabbitry  is a thing unto itself. And it's turned out to be a very positive, even though it's
15:34not a profit generator.  We have chickens.  We sell chicken eggs. We have ducks. We sell duck eggs. In fact, right now we have sex mature female ducks. We don't keep male ducks.  And we have five more in our basement brooder that are getting ready to come up.  And so we're going to increase  our number of ducks.
16:03And then we have two pilgrim geese that belong to my youngest son. And then he has two brown Chinese geese he is raising this year to show in  4H.  And we have already informed them that they're going to the fur and feather sale. We do not need two breeding pairs of geese. So.
16:30We're going to keep the pilgrim geese because they're his babies. He raised them  all on his own. We never wanted geese. It's one of those great homesteading stories. His mom who lived in the city bought him geese.  And we knew very quickly that the city man was going to discover these two very loud geese living in their backyard.  So.
16:54My wife jokes, she looks out and says, why are you doing? It's like, I'm building the goose coop because they're going to come here. And sure enough, they did. He showed him in the fair last year in the older pair one in the open class. So he's pretty excited about showing his Chinese brown geese. And then in our front pasture, we have a heifer, which we're in the process of breeding. And we have
17:24two steers we bought last fall that'll be processed this fall. One's a red Angus and one's a black Angus American white park mix. The heifer is a black Angus we actually got at a very good price from a failed homestead situation.  Kind of a relative of a friend, they bought her
17:53in partnership with somebody to butcher and the people backed out. She was all alone with their alpacas. She wasn't doing well because cows are social animals.  And so we got her at a very cheap price  and she came and she was a much better quality animal we thought she was going to be. And so we're going to go ahead and breed her.
18:21and we're going to do sex selected semen. So we'll get another heifer. And the idea  is instead of buying steers, we'll start breeding our own.  And  that will help insulate us against the cost. Many of your listeners are probably experiencing what we're experiencing.  Cattle prices are through the roof. I've heard that, yes.
18:50Yeah, it is  absolutely crazy. In fact, there's four age kids around here who can't show cattle this year because they can't afford to buy your basic feeder steer to show.  They're upwards  of over three thousand dollars. Heifers that are in calf  are over four thousand dollars here in the Midwest. So
19:20It really is crazy for us.  The other funny thing about us and cattle  is that  I sold the two steers  accidentally, all of them. We're basically only getting  probably an eighth of our own beef.  And we have an empty freezer because we had bought from a
19:48faculty colleague of mine who had a homestead for many years and they retired to a beautiful large property on a lake near Brainerd, Minnesota. Oh, yep.  And yeah, and they  shut down their homestead.  And so I'm like, well, we'll have our own beef. And then I turned around and like the corn, I sold all the beef except for an eight.
20:14So for the first time in 10 years, we've had to buy commercially produced beef.  Oh no.  Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing when you have tattle grazing on your front pasture  and you're having to go to the store. But  I had broker deals for years for  friends and colleagues  with my sources for homesteader meat.
20:43Now they're my customers, which is really nice.  So. Hey, can I, can I get you to backtrack to your son real quick with the, with the docs and the 4-H stuff? Sure.  You said he's nine?  Yes. Sam is nine.  And then I have George who is 15. And then  Ethan is 23.
21:11He just graduated with his degree in English from Northern Illinois University. And then Lisa, my wife, has a daughter who's 33, who's married and has two daughters. So you're a grandpa. I'm a Martin  because her ex-husband is  still around. And I think people are nervous because Lisa and I  have been together for
21:40five years, we've only been married for two years.  and when the babies were born, I think people are like, oh, how are we going to handle this?  And the little girls have handled it. I have a title, I'm Martin. That's it, which I'm, I'm completely happy with.  So I always joke,  I am the, I am the senior male without portfolios. So I have no responsibilities, but I get to enjoy the whole thing.
22:10I was just going to try to say that in a way that made sense and you did it for me.  Okay. So your, your son who's, who's little, I mean, he's grade school. Yeah.  Um, he, number one, he's going to be so excited when that, when you, when you get your heifer bread and she has that baby.  Cause if he's into ducks, he's probably going to love a calf. Oh yeah. And number two, he was very excited by the lambs this year. Oh yeah. So.
22:39So how long has he been involved in 4-H? This is his first year. Last year we just did  the open youth show  at the Fair one county over  and he kind of got the bug. It's funny because he's not a joiner. He  doesn't do a lot of group activities.
23:04And so he likes 4-H because he can do its own individual project. He'll go to a meeting and then he's just on his own and he enjoys it. Yeah. Cool. So if he's only been in it for a year or he just started this year, whatever you said that. Yes. Have you seen like the benefits for him in it? I mean, is it, I don't know anything about 4-H. I just know that kids get involved in it and they
23:33They raise something  and then they sell it and they have to part ways with the animal they raise and it's really hard at the end, blah, blah. But I keep hearing about all the good things that come from being involved in 4-H. So what have you seen change in him, if anything?  I have seen him grow more confident. He is willing to put himself out there. He's done speeches in front of the meeting.
24:02where he's talked about  his raising of the geese and all of his knowledge of geese. So I've seen him grow in confidence. I've seen him enjoy interacting with other people,  gains in knowledge. And 4-H,  while there's a lot of focus  on agriculture and animals, it's also science.
24:32It's geology, it's cooking, it's sewing, it's video production.  In fact, he  and his stepsister have kind of a band over at their mom, over at his mom's house, and they're actually going to perform in an entertainment show at the fair. Fun. Fun. So I've, I've seen just huge benefits. In fact, moving out here, there has just been
25:01A lot of benefits. My oldest son is autistic. So  he relates really well to animals.  He was away at school for the last couple of years after he moved out here, but he  enjoys the peace and quiet. He enjoys the opportunity to be out in nature more. He  really enjoys the rhythm of farm life. As you wake up, you do chores.
25:30In the evening you do chores  and he really enjoys that a great deal. So  I've seen a lot of those kind of benefits. They grow in confidence.  Sam, the nine year old took the front tires and wheels off of the small garden tractor he had bought himself just a couple of weeks ago because he needed new tires. So he did it this morning.
25:59Nice. We took him off.  We took him to the tire shop.  He's not thrilled about the cost, which is very funny because every person who owns machinery has to face the financial reality of the cost.  he's like, that's going to be a lot of weeding, dad, to pay for those new tires. And I said, well, we'll find you some other projects too. Anything worth having is worth working for, right? Yes.
26:29So just all sorts of benefits, not just through 4-H, but it's always been living, even when we are  urban homesteaders, living a homesteading lifestyle, you just understand more about the world.  To backtrack to animals, we also raise  Dorper South African meat sheep, sheep,  and
26:56One of the lessons we learned this year  is our first year to lamb was our smallest  and we had spent  all of her pregnancy worried she was going to have twins because she was very small. And we're like, please don't let Hanny have twins because it's going to be hard on her.  And she lambed and everything seemed to be OK. She gave us just a
27:25beautiful new lamb, which we've named Helen. We're going to keep her.  And so she got a name and was a great mom.  And then we discovered that there was another lamb stuck in the birth canal. And we called the vet after three days  and we lost Hanny and the, well, the other lamb was already passed away. So Helen became
27:54My wife's new baby,  the vital baby, we joke we're in our  50s and when we got married, we never thought we would be up every two hours feeding an infant together and have that experience. We've had it now.  But  it was really great.  It really kind of cemented my wife's attitude about the farm.  And Helen follows her around.
28:22and calls for she and her half sister are being weaned in our neighbor's horse barn  because they don't keep horses anymore.  And that's just been a cool experience. But everybody learned that when you have livestock, things happen.  And it was sad. Hennie was a super sweet you. And we also had to deal with the fact that right there we lost thirteen hundred dollars.
28:52Because Hanny was 650,  the ewe lamb we lost would have been 650.  And actually we lost more than that because we had about $300 in vet bills. Yeah. So there's lessons to be learned. But then our last ewe who lambed  almost two months after the first two  gave us a beautiful ram lamb, which we're keeping.
29:22named Kiron and  the boys have now understand first thing we do we got to go down cut the umbilical cord,  iodine it, check everybody out. Sam  loves doing that.  Sam is not a big kid but he will pick up the lamb and kind of  he says I gotta he goes mom go away.
29:50We got to do this. I know you don't like this. He talks to the use.  I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We're doing this to your baby, but it's for their own good. So yeah, he always does that.  And  I love Sam. want to meet Sam. He sounds adorable. He has a huge head of red hair too, and we're Irish. So he has very pale skin, red hair. And this year he has finally leaned into his leprechaun heritage.
30:20Good, good. And redheads are feisty and they're smart and they're ingenious and I love them.  you tell him that the lady you talked to today on the podcast episode said that redheads are fantastic. Yes, he is a good one. All of the boys are. The middle one, George,  who's 15,  is  really less into the farming, but
30:49He has a real sense of humanity  and he's a fierce protector of the animals. It's very interesting in that way.  He's not so much,  I love them, I love them, I love them. But when he does chores, he's very technician about it. It's gonna be done right.  And things are gonna be done correctly because their lives matter, which  I'm perfectly fine with.
31:19He's not going to gush all over it. But he did, you know, in 15 year old fashion when the last lamb, the little ram lamb was born, he said, okay, he looked at him and said, I got to admit you're  I love it.  It sounds like you have a fantastic team of folks on your farm, Martin.
31:43I try to keep these episodes to half an hour and we're there. I would love to talk to you for like eight hours because your stories are great, but no one can listen to an eight hour podcast.  Um, where can people find you on understand.  Um,  we have  a Facebook page called Shady Lane Farms.  I have an Instagram account called Rockford Homesteader. They can  look at two  and
32:11Two of my younger friends, I'm also a volunteer firefighter from the fire department because I don't know if you saw any of the videos I posted on the Facebook page, but after that they're like, you got to start doing tech talks. So we're going to start with tech talk soon. Awesome. Good. Let me know when that happens and I will go back and add it to the show notes. Thank you so much. This was a blast.
32:37Thank you so much for your time.  I  so appreciate it when you people take time out of your busy lives to talk to me for half an hour. You have  no idea how much I appreciate it.  as always, you can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And Martin, I hope you have a great rest of your day. You too. Thank you. Thank you.
 

Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm

Today I'm talking with Larkin and Kevin at Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Larkin and Kevin at
00:28Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm, I love the name, in Florida. Hello guys, how are you? Hello, doing good. Good. You're melting in the sun, but trying to stay cool. Yeah, we were going through that yesterday. I said this on an interview this morning that I did, but I will say it again because it was ridiculous. We have central air in our house and it was set for 72 degrees. It got to 77 degrees in my house at three o'clock yesterday afternoon.
00:58Yeah. Yeah. My dog was laying on the floor panting. I'm like, oh, this is bad.  What kind of dog do you have?  She's a mini Australian shepherd.  Oh, cute, cute. We have a Great Dane. Oh, well, they're very different sizes, but I bet they're just as lovey. I bet they're on the same love scale. Yes.  OK, so how did your farm get its name?  So when I was a kid, I watched the movie
01:27Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? It came out in 2000. Have you seen it? I have not. I keep meaning to find it and I just never get around to it. It's a worthwhile movie and the song, Bad Bottom Girls, you know, is in it. And the movie is about these guys that escape from jail and it's like a story of redemption, finding yourself.
01:58and really like prioritizing your self-well-being. And it just resonated for me for a long time. And so when we developed our mini farm, it became a little bit of a play on words because we had chickens first and, you know, the layered chickens have very heavy bottoms. And then we got into bees and all the worker bees are female. And it's just kind of snowballed into our
02:27our farm name. love it. it who what band did the Fat Bottom Girls song? Queen. Yeah, that's what I thought. But I wasn't sure. I didn't want to sound like a total idiot.  Okay, cool. That is very cute. I love that story. So tell me about yourselves and what you do at Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm. Sure. So my name is Larkin  and  we  are I would consider ourselves
02:56first generation homesteaders. It started as a hobby, you know, in the backyard before we had our first child. And that was around 2015 or 16 when we first got chickens and I was a zookeeper, worked with birds at our local AZA zoo. So I'm very fond of birds. And I decided I wanted to bring them to our
03:25backyard and Kevin is a good sport. So he was like, all right, know, eggs for the kitchen. Great. And then as we got into more gardening and,  and  planting our own crops in our backyard, we decided that this was like a really great, sustainable,  uh, an empowering hobby.  Um, and so we've just been taking like small approximations until we're
03:54where we are today, we have like a dairy cow.  We do homeschooling as of this year  and  we do take advantage a lot of our  public land for  hunting. And we just try and be as self-sustainable as possible without making it overwhelming. And so that's kind of how we got started.
04:23How much land do you guys have? So  we  have a family farm and it was built  for horses. My mom  is an equestrian. She breeds  Grand Prix jumpers and then they show on the circuit here in Florida and they travel around the country. So we have probably about 17 acres  and our farm is now down to two retired
04:52horses that we ride for pleasure and the rest of the farm has been made available to us for our our creatures. Nice. And what do you have for creatures? We have chickens, quail, changing list, ducks, geese, a cow. We have a couple of horses and that's it. We have a rabbit.
05:22for our  composting needs. He lives a life of luxury.  Yeah, we have the whole menagerie.  And  so are you using,  I don't know how to ask this correctly. I never asked it right.  Is anything on the farm produced to support the farm?
05:46Oh,  so we do  sell our extras,  if that makes sense. So we really produce for ourselves and for our family.  if we have... Go ahead. Well, Kyle's making what? About  a gallon a day or so? Gallon, gallon and half of milk a day? Yeah. We use that to make a lot of ghee. And then if we have some leftover milk or...
06:14Even occasionally we'll sell some ghee or butter. It's just the butter and the ghee is extreme and eggs of course. But the butter and the ghee is pretty labor intensive. So it's kind of a tough one to sell. So we end up using a lot of that for our cooking as well as we'll give some to like family and friends and stuff like that. Yeah. And then we do sell some products that we make. So we have like whipped tallow balm, soaps, and then we sell, you know, excess eggs and milk that we have.
06:45And it's really, we don't do like farmers markets. So the people that are interested, we invite them to the farm. They can take a farm tour, meet the animals, you know, that they are acquiring their food from.  And we try and make it like a fun experience  from when you drive through the gate and you drive off with our products.
07:10Yeah, if I was buying your butter or your ghee, I would want to go up to your cow and kiss it on the nose and say thank you. She is a miniature Jersey and she is in your pocket. She loves her treats and her people. So she comes up and interacts. Nice. Nice. I love those cows so much. They're so pretty. They're surprisingly friendly. It's like a giant puppy. What?
07:37Oh, same. They're like giant puppies for the most part. The miniature cows are super friendly. Oh, yeah, absolutely. If we had just a little bit more room here, we have three acres, but there's a lot on that three acres. If we had just a little bit more flat land with some hay, we might get a mini cow, but we just don't have the room and I'm kind of sad about it, but that's okay. So the reason I asked about whether you produce anything that supports the farm,
08:06is because when we bought our place, my husband loves to garden. don't know if you guys have listened to any of the episodes about on my podcast, but he loves gardening  to the point that our garden has expanded to a hundred feet by, I bet it's getting close to 250 feet now.  And it's not just one space. It's like  three or four different spaces that add up to that. And so the first summer we were here, we grew food and we had some of it.
08:36or sale to people who wanted to come get it.  And that was cool.  And then  we set up a farm stand three summers ago and we sold produce out of that and eggs and stuff. then  two,  three summers ago, he also started selling at the farmer's market because  we can't possibly use all the food that he's been growing.  Well, that's exciting though.
09:05Yeah. So, um, I feel like the plan was to sell some of our stuff to our community.  I'm just not sure that I realized how big the plan would become.  And I'm not upset about it at all. He loves it. It's how he, it's his Zen spot. It's how he distresses from his jobby job. Yes. Gardening has that effect. Very meditative.
09:31Yes. And I'm really happy when he brings me in fresh right off the vine tomatoes and cucumbers  and butter crunch lettuce that literally goes from the ground to my sink gets rinsed off and put in a bowl  and then dressed up with whatever dressing I want on it and I eat it. So literally five minutes from garden to my face.  That's awesome.  Yep. It's pretty great. It tastes better that way for whatever reason.
09:58Yeah. And who knew there were so many varieties of lettuce that you can grow in the United States. Yeah. Our personal favorite is rocket lettuce. Cause it's got a little bit of a spicy kick to it. Yeah. Um, there's a purple romaine lettuce that we grow and it's so beautiful. People see it and they're like, what is that? I'm like, it's a romaine lettuce. And they're like, nah, romaine's green. I can't be it.
10:27No, that's purple romaine lettuce. It tastes pretty much exactly like green romaine lettuce. It's just purple. can do the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And there's purple carrots now. There's white carrots. There's red carrots. Yeah, we've done the kaleidoscope carrots. Those are super fun, especially if you have kids involved because you don't know. It's like a surprise when you pluck them from the grounds. You don't know what color you're going to get. So it's really exciting.
10:57It's fun. And  if you want to get kids to eat foods they think they don't want, you got to make it fun. Exactly. Definitely. Wish I had known that with my first three.  Learned on the fourth kid.  That when they're interested in trying what's on your plate and they're old enough to actually chew it and swallow it without choking death,  it might be a good idea to let them try it when they ask.
11:25Didn't know that were the first three and they're not the most non picky eaters ever. The fourth child who's 23 and still lives with us is the most adventurous person when it comes to trying new foods I've ever met. That's funny how that works out. Wish I'd known, man. And the rule in our house when he was little was that big kids were not allowed to make a big deal.
11:51out of foods that they didn't like. If they didn't like it, they could just  not eat it.  And if  they tried something new and didn't like it, they could literally quietly spit it into a napkin  or they could walk to the kitchen, because we ate in our living room at our table. They could walk to the kitchen and spit it in the trash, but they were not allowed to be like, oh, that's so gross.  Because we didn't want the littlest one  to take on their biases.
12:18Right. You don't want them to be influenced. was awesome.
12:24No, I really didn't because I really wanted this kid to have the joy of discovering different flavors and different textures.
12:37Because food is supposed to be an adventure. It's supposed to be an event. Definitely. And if you can incorporate  activities that go along with it, you know, it used to be don't play with your food, but what better way to explore flavors than  to experiment and to play with your food. Yeah. And then everybody decided to get into making sourdough and sourdough is playing with your food. Yes.  And pasta.  All of it.
13:08Yeah, I took on sourdough about a month ago and I've been avoiding it like the plague because I knew it was going to take time and patience.  And  every day I get out my funnel and my fourth cup measuring cup and the jars that have the starter in it  and a bowl and a spoon  and I'm screwing around with pulling some of the starter out for discard and then I'm putting the flour and the water in and stirring. I'm like, this is like play dough. This is like playing with my food.
13:38It is. Yeah. Kevin is our sourdough person because he has the patience for it.  I like to step in at the end and do the scoring. Yeah,  I haven't gotten that far yet. I've made one loaf and it came out like bagel texture, which was great because I love bagels, but apparently  it's not supposed to be that dense. So I have to do that to my technique, but it was really yummy.  I've avoided
14:04sourdough for a long time because I thought that it was very technical. Like you had to measure the flour in grams and you had to measure the water in grams and you had to do it very specifically and come to find out you don't have to do that. Yeah, we you're reminding me that I need to feed our starter but we've got it to where we're feeding about once a week now. It just kind of sits in the fridge. So it's
14:32It's low maintenance once it gets going.  yeah, it's definitely,  there's a lot of play involved in just kind of in feeling and texture and do any more flour, do any more water.  It's  fun. But yeah, I've never made the same loaf twice. I don't know how these bakeries are like super consistent. That's what's impressive about it when you can get really consistent.
14:57I don't know either and I will never be that consistent and I don't want to be. think the joy in making sourdough bread is you can make it different every time  and it is a win if it tastes good.  The other reason I avoided getting into it is because I don't love sourdough bread. never have. And  it's the tang in the bread that I don't like the tanginess to it.  And I found out that, if you don't, if you don't make it right,
15:27As the sourdough starter peaks or something, it's less sour, something like that. uh, the loaf that I made, it was definitely sourdough, but it didn't have that really extreme tangy sour to it that I really didn't like. So I've learned a lot in the last month about sourdough and I have a lady coming on my show, I think Friday, I think it's this Friday, who is, who has a lot of experience with sourdough.
15:58I almost said expert, but I don't know that she's an expert. She has a lot of experience in it. And she also is an admin on one of the Facebook sourdough groups. I'm very excited to talk to her and I'm going to be like, so tell it to me. Like I'm a four year old beginner. How do people do this? Because I put it off for years because I was afraid of doing it and it's not that hard. honestly,
16:24If you don't like to cook, you're not going to want to make sourdough bread at all. Yeah, you definitely have. Yeah, it's cooking.  is  chemistry. It is cooking and it is patience. And I am not the most patient lady ever. So  we have to plan your day around it basically.  Because it'll be three hours in, it will be proofing at this point and then I can go do this and I got to be back to do this at that point. So.
16:52You really do have to plan your whole day around it. Yeah, and even the shortcut recipes, you're still looking at five to six hours. Sure, yeah. That's a lot of time. And you got to figure out stuff you can do in between the stretch and pulls on the dough because it's every half an hour or something on the recipe that I use. Exactly. So it's a thing and I don't want to get too far into it, any further into it because the lady is going to be on my show on Friday and I don't want to...
17:21overdose people on sourdough. We're  off the lesson now. Yeah. So you guys  have kids? We have a daughter.  She is six years old. And  she just went to her grandparents' house  for a science lesson. So we have the benefit of living very close to both sets of parents.  None of us are from Jacksonville originally, so we've kind of all
17:50come together on the same  mindset that we want to be close to family, especially  with grandchildren in the mix.  And so when we decided to do homeschooling, was mostly driven for health reasons.  Our child was diagnosed with leukemia last January. And so  going to a traditional school has been increasingly more difficult.
18:19Just because we miss a lot of school for doctor's appointments and things like that. So we decided to pull her for homeschooling and all of the grandparents have offered to take on a  subject so that Kevin and I  don't have to do it all on our own.  And what is great is that we have a few teachers, retired teachers in our family. And so they've been extremely helpful stepping in.
18:48for some of the harder things like handwriting and  word groups, you know, to learn to read.  That is stellar. I love that. So what grade would she be in if she was in is going to enter the first grade. Okay. So does she go to and regular school? She did go to kindergarten.  Yep. Okay.  How is she doing?  She is
19:18Great, we do have  occasional  hospital admittances, but  it seems to be very benign reasons.  You fever spikes require us to be there for 48 hours. If her blood counts are below where they're supposed to be, just to make sure there's no  like blood infections,  things like that.  So our last two admittances were just there, we were there,  but no  underlying.
19:47Reason causing the fever so they let us come home. Okay,  and I don't know anything about leukemia I mean I had a cousin who  who got it as a young adult not not a kid but it's like in her early  20s actually  and I've heard about it, but I haven't heard about it in little kids. Is there  a cause or is it just something that happened?  Seems to be just something that happens. They haven't really
20:16nailed down.  As far as I know,  when your kid's diagnosed, at least at our hospital, they give you a big encyclopedia on everything about childhood leukemia. course, we all poured through it that first week and read  it.  Kids seem to do better than when  young adults or adults get it. Kids seem to bounce back, take the treatment a little bit better, I guess, just because they're resilient.
20:45kind of by their nature. But no, there's no, as far as I can tell, they haven't nailed down what causes it or like what to look for. It was basically she had leg pain and Larkin noticed she had some bloody gums one morning and it was over a couple of days, I guess. And then some bruising on the legs and Larkin was just adamant like, need to take her into the doctor. And it pretty much, I mean, it was by that night, that's pretty much
21:15But they knew that's what she had. mean, it was pretty quick. Yeah. You know how they talk about  spidey senses regarding Spider-Man, the Spider-Man comic? Yeah.  Mommy senses always trust them. That's true. Yeah.  Well, it's totally left field. And there's different types too. So she was a low risk.  Quote unquote best type. Yeah. And so anyways, but.
21:43The hardest part of treatment is over and we are just kind in the maintenance phase.  And the tough part about it for unlike other cancers is that the treatment is just more long-term.  It's like over a two and a half year.
22:01span rather than like six months like some of these other cancer treatments are. So that's a little bit the tough part about it. But yeah, we're kind of, we see light at the end of the tunnel here. Good. I was hoping that was going to be the case because I didn't want to cry on my podcast again. I want to make my guests cry again.  What does she think about the farm? Oh, she loves it. Yeah. She,  uh,
22:28wants to be an animal rescuer and a vet when she grows up.  And so she's very hands-on with, especially like the chicks, we incubate  eggs. We live above the farm, so we can go downstairs and see our animals and  look out the window and see them in the pastures. we incubate most of our eggs,  but our last batch we let a broody hen
22:56do the incubating and she did pretty good for a first time mother. yeah,  Hazel loves the farm life.
23:08Okay, cool.  So,  oh, I was gonna say, your daughter is homeschooled.  I'm gonna tell you right now, that little girl is gonna learn so much more  through homeschooling than she ever would have learned in public school.  Yeah, we can already see a huge difference from  traditional school to homeschooling in a positive way. I mean, she's just made
23:37huge leaps and bounds because we're doing a little bit of catch up over summer so that we feel really ready for our first grade coursework. I mean, the one-on-one time  makes a huge difference.  And I'm not even talking about  the book learning part of it. If you've got grandparents involved and you guys are on a farm  and she's going to be an outdoor kiddo,  she's going to learn so much more in general.
24:07like about animal husbandry, about how plants work,  how dirt is not the same thing as soil, you know? Yeah. And she goes on us with hunting trips. We do a lot of camping.  She  just has a love for nature, which I love, because so do we. Yep.  My two boys, my two youngest boys, we did homeschooling the last couple of years of their high school.
24:35I'm not going to lie to you, we did homeschooling before they were homeschooled because we would go hiking, we would go camping, we were growing food.  We would go to farms and visit other people's animals because we didn't have any. We had cats, you know, we had all these things that we supplemented their public schooling with.  And these kids would tell their teachers stuff about a subject and teachers would call me and be like, how do they know about this?
25:04Yeah, that's like Hazel's superpowers. She knows all the animals, species names. So she would go in and, you know, they dump out all the animal toys and she could name every single one. Part of that is from like our zoo keeping background. We would when I was working there, if we had like a newly hatched bird that needed some around the clock attention.
25:34It would come home with me. So we have had penguin chicks and flamingo chicks and vulture chicks  long before we really started getting serious about our homestead.  So  just learning the cycles.  And then when we, when she finally entered school,  we were doing at home,  uh, the monarch watch. don't know if you've heard of this. Yes.
26:01Yeah, so go ahead, tell me. We would raise cat, well first we planted host plants that we had, you know, wild caterpillars visiting our host plants and then we would, when they were close to pupating or developing their chrysalises, we would put them in a netted enclosure so that when they hatched, could tag them, record it and submit it to the...
26:29Monarch Watch database and then release them. And then the following year we would see if we could catch any that had our tags. And so that was a great, fun, hands-on learning process. And we were able to bring some caterpillars to her school and show them how to participate in that with her classmates.
26:56I think you win the coolest parents award guys.  It's really fun. It's fun for everybody. You want to have an  activity that is engaging for all ages because that's when you really bond and  develop these great memories together.
27:23Yeah. And the hands-on of that project is so good for kids because kids learn best when they have something to do with their hands that  transfers the information from their fingertips to their brain.  And I'm that way with anything I need to remember.  I need to remember something, I have to write it down with a pen on paper or I won't remember it. Yes. I'm a hands-on learner as well. I think  that's the easiest way to make a
27:52cement in your brain. Yeah, the connection just happens. And I don't know why I could probably type something in the computer into a notepad and it still won't stick. If I write it,  it sticks.  Okay. So  what's  the future look like for your mini farm? Are you going to expand it? Are you going to just maintain it? How's that going to work? I think right now  we're just kind of maintaining, you know, we've
28:21tried expanding it and that was fine. We did a lot of milk sales, egg sales, things like that. There is a little bit of a level of stress though that comes with, know, selling some of your products, especially milk. you want to sell as fresh as possible and, and keeping up with your, it becomes very expensive on like our end if
28:51jars aren't brought back to us.  you don't want to charge people  necessarily  for that expense because then it becomes impractical for people to want to visit your farm and  buy your products if it's too expensive. And so we  had like a small clientele base and that was very comfortable for us. And so that's probably where we're going to maintain. I'm not trying to become a dairy or a
29:20or you know, a grocer or anything. Just kind of like a small farm that offers  on occasion some products and you can visit the animals.  That sounds great. Low key, low stress.  Yeah.  Yeah. Okay. So I try to keep these to half an hour. We're almost there. Where can people find you online?  We  are most present on Instagram.
29:49Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm.  We do have a Facebook page. It's not as active as mostly there to just maintain our name.  But yeah, we don't have a website, but we are on Instagram  social media.  Okay, awesome.  Larkin and Kevin, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. And how sweet is it that your daughter was at the grandparents' house so you had some quiet?
30:16Yeah,  thank you for inviting us.  It's really fun to talk with people  that are like-minded and  share and learn from each other. think that's what is at the heart of home setting is swapping information and  valuing  a simpler life really.  Absolutely.
30:40All right, guys. Thank you again. And as usual, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. I hope you guys have a great afternoon. Thank you. You too, bye.
 

Twin Acres Farm

Today I'm talking with Dana at Twin Acres Farm.
You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Dana  at...
00:28Twin Acres Farm in Idaho. Good morning, Dana. How are you? Good. Good. How's the weather there?  It's actually better today. Like last week was in the  90s.  And then this past weekend, you know, when you have something planned to do,  it dropped completely. Luckily, we didn't get a freeze, but it was cold and windy.  I was like, I thought it was supposed to be the first day of summer, but whatever.
00:56Well, you had the opposite of what we had this weekend and yesterday. Oh my God, it was so hot.  We had the central air set for 72  and at three o'clock yesterday afternoon inside my house, was 77 degrees and so sweaty. was gross.  Oh my goodness. Yeah, we've been having some like for Idaho, it's been like above like record highs.
01:21But then we had like this cool front come through on like right on the first day of summer. And we were like, what the heck? My daughter went camping and they went up to the mountains and they ended up getting snowed on like five inches of snow the night before. And she was like, I thought it was summer.  Yeah.  I had the opportunity to apply for a job in Idaho years ago and I gave it some serious thought.  And then I saw what the weather is like. And I thought, you know,
01:51Minnesota is a little more predictable than Idaho. I think we might just stay here. Probably. So, all right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do, So I actually am a school teacher. I've been teaching for about 15 years. And then when I'm not at school, know, evenings, weekends,
02:15school, you know, we get all those awesome school breaks then like I can't sit still. So I decided to start this little farm  to keep myself ultra busy.
02:28Okay, and it's Twin Acres Farm, is that right?  Right. So we own only, it's just small, if we have two acres  in Twin Falls, Idaho, and I have twin girls. So that's where  the name came from is like two, two, you know.  So that's where we came up with the name. Okay. I was going to ask, so thank you for telling me.  So what do you do at your farm?
02:53When we very first started out, know, it was like everybody else, you get a few chickens  and they're the gateway and then it grows from there. So I had some neighbors at the time and they had these adorable little goats. didn't, I thought they were baby goats, but it turns out they're dwarf goats. I knew nothing about them.  And then we were hooked. So you have to start with two, right? Cause they're herd animals. And then now I'm up to like 40.  Oh.
03:23my. we obviously I don't keep that many but you know after baby season we need to sell down some. We still have some babies and stuff to sell but I do  all the milking, make cheese, make soap, make caramel sauce, make you know all the different things that you can make with goat's milk pretty much.  And then  you know we make in can.
03:49and garden and we have chickens, have ducks, we have rabbits.  We've had other  homesteading animals like the cooney coon pigs in the past. We've had turkeys in the past, but some things,  we've even had quail in the past, but some things we've decided that that's not really our niche or something that we wanna tackle.  And those are things that you have to find out over time because some people love those.
04:15those types of things and then some decide that's just not for them or what they want to do. Just like some people are like, I would never have goats. I'd rather have sheep. You know, everybody has their personal preferences of like different homesteading animals that they would like to keep.  So chicken math translated to goat math for you. Well, I still got chicken math too, because I'm probably sitting on over a hundred right now. So I have both. Uh huh.  Yeah.
04:42Yeah, chicken math is weird. You start out with like two chickens and all of a sudden you find yourself with a hundred and you're like, where did they all come from? Right. We started with like a dozen, you know, again from like neighbors had an incubator and we were like, oh, we want eggs. And so we started with a dozen and then now I, um, breed certain, you know, purebred birds  and, um, we sell those here.  Um, we also, we,  a few years back, we started.
05:12I'm going to some farmers markets and to sell like our goat because we have our raw goat's milk permit here in Idaho. We, think we were number 205 and  now that number has over doubled. So,  um, we went through the process of getting that. And so we would go to farmers markets cause we'd been on Facebook for a while and our fan base had grown, but we hadn't got to meet a lot of the people that followed us. You know, it's just.
05:39via the internet and so that was really neat. actually won a farmer's market spot because it wasn't even something on my to-do list.  We entered like a giveaway because somebody had bought the spot. They had had to back out because they weren't going to be able to actually do it. They did like a giveaway for people that would want to  get a spot that hadn't entered because I mean it's a
06:04It's a packed market and everybody signs up and they almost never have spots for you to be there. It's right on main here in town.  And so we ended up winning that spot. And so my girls and I went and did six different weekends and we got to meet so many people and it was so great. We loved it.  The next year we did, we didn't do quite as many because when you do markets like that, it's a lot of prep work, you know, to get ready for those markets.
06:33And so the next summer we did a few, so we still got out there and then I started my master. So then my husband built  a farm stand because that's been the new trend, right? Everybody has their farm stands. And so we set that up a year ago  and  it's been great because it allows us our time back to keep still doing and making and tending the farm. And then people are able to come and get those products from us. So we are already upgrading.
07:03to a bigger like shed type soon. Like it's on order, but we're gonna upgrade. Cause in a year's time, the little farm stand is too small for what we've been doing. So.  Yes, we have a farm stand at our place and I love it because people just come in,  get what they want, pay through Venmo or drop some cash in a little container and they go on their way.  And that way we're not tied to the farm. I mean,  we're here a lot, but.
07:31sometimes as a doctor's appointment or dentist's appointment or something and there's no one here. And I love that people can just come in and see what we have, get what they want  and take off.  Right. Yeah, it's great. And  well, the thing here, you know, like you said, the weather is crazy in Idaho. So we started with that little farm stand and it's  more like open kind of concept.
07:55So instead of having it like available all the time, we kind of set it up at certain days and times. And we just feel like the bigger, little bit bigger shed idea would make it where people can come and go a little more often. We weren't hauling things in and out. So I think it'll work better for everybody involved because everybody has busy schedules nowadays. And when you're already out and about,
08:21you know, taking care of things, you want to be able to stop and get those things that you want instead of on a time schedule. Cause right now that's kind of how ours is. So  I think it's going to be. Yeah. Yep. have a question. When you started doing this, the, the farm stand thing,  the first time somebody came and bought your stuff, did you have like this bubble in your chest of excitement and happiness that you had provided something to a community member?  Well, I think it's, I've had that for a long time because
08:51even before I set up the farm stand and before we ever did markets, because that's kind of what led to it,  is we have another little building.  I didn't open it to the whole public, but it was more of like our friends,  friends of friends, like people we trust.  We had like a mini fridge set up and like that kind of thing. So we have been doing that for...
09:21probably over five, six years on a smaller, like personal scale. And then once we started with the markets, it's like, oh wow, like we're available to the public. Like the people that really wanted to support us were getting to meet them. And then, then it just grew into, okay, instead of like people coming down into our property, you know, cause it was mostly just our friends. Now we put that up at the  front of our property where like everybody can have access that wants it basically. So.
09:50But yeah, like this whole lifestyle gives you a sense of pride that I  don't feel like almost anything is. Like you're growing and you're making things not only for your family, because that's how it starts, right? Like I really want to do these things for my girls, my family, but you know, it can get pricey. You know what I mean? Like when you're going all in, there's feed costs, there's supply costs.
10:15that can get pricey. And then other people are seeing what you're doing and they're like, I would really like that or I would really like to try that. Like so many people have never tried goat's milk or they've had a bad experience because the goat's milk you get in the store is not the same as fresh off the farm. And that's if you can get it at the store. Well, that's true that too. But by the time you get at the store, it's so much older that you're already getting that funky like goat flavor. And I feel people all the time, like when you drink it fresh,
10:44within a week of when it was  gathered, you're not gonna, like my Niges have such a high cream content. You can put cow's milk and goat's milk side by side and have them taste it and they're not gonna tell the difference between the two most of the time.  Yep, Fresh goat milk is amazing. I did not like goat milk until I had fresh goat milk and I was like,  huh.
11:12I don't hate goat milk. Okay, good to know.
11:16Right, I've had so many people change their mind because they've had bad goat milk or bad goat cheese  from the store. And then I'm like, just trust me. I'm not going to steer you wrong.  I'm picky. If it has any kind of off flavor, I don't want it. You know what I mean? So I'm like, just try it.  I mean, we took a vacation once because I'm from Texas, South Texas. I didn't move up here until I was almost 30.
11:41And so all my family mostly is still in Texas. So we decided to take a vacation like, you know, six or seven years ago, we went halfway in Colorado and, you know, got one of those Airbnb's because I, you know, all my family thinks I'm nuts because they don't do this. They don't live this lifestyle, you know? And so I was like, well, guess what? I'm going to pack all the things, right?
12:05so they can taste all the farm fresh things and they were just blown away. Like I took the goat milk, the fresh farm eggs, the homegrown  pork sausage, made the whole breakfast layout  and they were pretty amazed. They started to get a clue like why I'm a weirdo, I guess. They gained an appreciation for the work that you do is what they did.  Right, yeah because they wait for Christmas and everything for me to send them all kinds of  different goodies in the mail.
12:35Yeah, I try. I try hard to do that. This past Christmas, I was not in a Christmas frame of mind. I didn't even send Christmas cards this year. But I try. I try really hard to send my brother and my sister handmade soaps because we make the cold process lye soaps. Right. Same. Yeah, we do it with our goat milk. So that was another thing. I have a neighbor across the road and they have a little bit bigger farm and they do like the whole pumpkin patch.
13:04little farm store. Like they've been doing that for years. And they were doing classes and it was to make soap. Well, they were just making the regular, you know, cold process,  soap. And so we went and took the class, but I was like, Hey, I really want to be able to do this with goat's milk. Cause you know, I milk all these goats.  And so she gave me like tips about like having to freeze the milk and those kinds of things.  And so, yeah, I've been doing that since I took their little class. So
13:34It's just great that, you know, everybody's teaching each other. I think that's the biggest part of it. Like what good is like a passion if you're not sharing it with others  or teaching them, you know, what you know,  you're never gonna learn it all. You know what mean? There's so much.
13:51Yeah, if it's a passion,  want, number one, you want to put your whole self into it. Believe me, I know.  And number two,  you want to share what you've done with other people, partly because you want them to benefit from it.  But also you need to share it. It's like important to you. Right, exactly.  And like here on the little farm, like obviously it's not that big, so we can't open it to the whole public, but we would do like
14:21open like, because everybody wants to come in the spring, you know, when you're having all those baby goats and baby chicks and baby, everything, everybody wants to come and see it. And so that's what we would do. Cause otherwise you have people wanting to stop by constantly, but you are so busy, especially, you know, we're still in school at that time. So I'm running hard.  So what we would do as at the kind of the end of spring break is we would set up like a little open farm day and invite like all our friends and stuff. And then
14:50you we'd have a meal together. They'd get to, you know, we'd get to share all the hard work that we've been putting in, like take a minute, enjoy it, share it with others. You know, it's, it's fulfilling that way. Yes. Have you converted any of your friends to this lifestyle yet?  Oh yeah.  I have several that like we've, they've tasted like the goat milk or the goat cheese and they're like, Oh, I never thought about it. And then they get a couple of goats and now they have a bunch of goats. And  you know, of course like,
15:20chickens,  you know, everybody starts small with like chicks and chickens like oh, you know, especially when the egg prices were getting so high. I had like this season, like this year, I've had so many people  come to us to learn about like what to do, how to raise chickens, ask all the questions because they never thought about it before. But then, know, when everything, not that it's cheaper, but you know,  by the time you buy everything, all the supplies, the coop, everything, it's not.
15:48necessarily cheaper, but it does give you food security, basically. Yes, peace of mind and food security. Yes. I had a question and it's gone. I hate it when I do that.  What was I going to say? Oh,  we were going to go without chickens this winter. We had chickens up until last October. They were getting old and lazy and we culled them. There weren't that many left.  Right.
16:18And we were going to get new chickens in May of this year.  And we bought, bought eggs from October until about the end of February when we needed eggs.  And I, I don't know, I cracked one back in February and I was like, these eggs don't taste like anything. I hate them.  And when my husband got home, said, can we get chickens like next weekend if I can find a source of laying hens? And he said, thought we're going to wait till May. I said,
16:47I don't want to wait till May. I want to do it now. I want chickens again." And he was like, yeah, call up our chicken broker and see if she got any laying hens. So I did. And we got 12  and we opened the farm stand early this year because the chickens were laying and people wanted to farm eggs, know, farm fresh eggs.  Could not keep eggs in the house for us to use because people were buying them.  So then we bought another 14 from our chicken broker and
17:16lost one so we have 24 chickens now.  Do you think I can keep eggs in the house? No, people are buying them as soon as they get put in the farm stand. Right, well and like not only is it the price, like you said,  it's the flavor, you know, it's just so much better. And  the thing about chickens is  you have to add new chickens every year because the chickens that are already a year old are gonna molt, you know, in the fall and then they're not gonna lay.
17:45So every year  we are adding new ones, either hatching them ourselves or for getting a different breed or genetics or whatever we're bringing some in.  But we wanna keep a new steady supply of those young layers because they're not gonna molt and they're gonna keep on laying a lot better than those older ones.  So  that's definitely what we're always doing here and we have so many. But yeah, we have ducks and chickens. We have people that are buying duck eggs because they can't tolerate the protein that's in that chicken egg.
18:15And so we have duck egg customers and we have chicken egg customers here. Yep. Absolutely. I have a thing about that too, but I think I misspoke. think I said, do you think I can keep chickens in my house? then do you think I can keep eggs in my house?  I get talking in my tongue twists and I'm like, oh, I said that wrong.  It's not going to phase me because I got chickens in my house. So  yeah, we have chicks in the house right now,  we have not kept chickens in our house yet.
18:44However, we're thinking about getting an incubator and trying hatching eggs. We haven't decided yet, but we've been flirting with the idea, you know, around the edges of the idea of  maybe growing our own chickens, as it were. Yeah, I mean, it's great. I suggest the Matty Coop X.  It's the best budget-friendly incubator that you can find, and I have been through so many incubators.
19:12I have a couple of cabinets, but then I have those Matty Coop X as tabletops. And so when we hatch them out, we want to be able to see everything. So it makes it where you can see everything. And they're only running about, uh, about 130 or so bucks, which is really budget friendly for someone who's never done it before. And just starting out and they have really, really, it's like set and forget as a water bottle on the side that you turn upside down and keeps it at the perfect humidity. It's, know, up here where we're at, we have to worry about.
19:40It's so dry. We're in a high desert.  And so, you you hear all these people dry hatch. Well, that's not even a possibility up here because  it's way too dry, not enough humidity in the air. But in the southern states, you  can do all that. Yeah. There is a lady on Facebook. I think her Facebook page is the hot mess homestead.  Oh, yeah. follow her. Yeah. Fun times.
20:04And if anyone wants to see somebody poke fun at having chickens or getting into chickens, she is a laugh riot. I love her. She is, she's a smart ass for real. And she's really, I don't know, she's really genuine in everything that she does. And I love that she wears all these big, these big
20:34Go ahead. You there, Dana? Oh yeah. It was just cutting it out a little bit. Okay. I'm going to finish my thought and then I'll let you finish yours. I love that she either is all made up and absolutely gorgeous and still gathering eggs and still flopping through the mud. Or she's in an old rock band t-shirt and cutoff shorts and Crocs and her hair is piled up on her head, no makeup. And she's gathering eggs and walking through mud.
21:04I love that she does both.  yeah, totally. Yeah, totally realistic. You know what mean? From one day to the next, how you're feeling or what's going on or what you got going on, you're making do.  You know, she's got all the little  that you're juggling along with, you know, all your other responsibilities. I mean, it's  totally realistic of how, how it goes around any,  you know, homestead,  not just those Pinterest perfect, you know, decorated.
21:33you know, farmhouses. like, well, my kitchen is usually a mess. And as soon as I clean it up, I'm cooking and making or canning or making something else. So it doesn't stay that way for long.
21:46Yes, what you see on Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and all those social platforms.  When you see the really pretty girl with the pretty sundress and the,  I don't know, the wedge sandals and her makeup is perfect or her hair's all curled perfectly.  That's fine. You know, that, that makes it look pretty. It makes it look attractive. I'm okay with that. I want people  to get into growing food.  Right.
22:13But I also want people to understand that it is not a clean hobby. It is a very messy hobby. Oh gosh. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how many times a day the girls and I have to wash our hands because we're handling eggs or chickens or goats or whatever, you know, just making a mess, digging in the dirt. love gardening. Like I, it's therapy, just digging in the dirt. You know what I mean? Dirt like a lot of times I have my nails done, but
22:43That's not going to stop me from digging in the dirt. Well, no, it shouldn't. And if your nails get broken, your nails get broken. Right, exactly. And you need that builder gel. That's the secret to life because  I'm hard on my hands and my nails.  And so my nail girl does builder gel on top  and that's what lets them grow because otherwise  they wouldn't stand a chance.
23:09Yeah. And my husband is the gardener. am not, I am the one who cooks the food that he brings in from the garden. And I'm constantly doing dishes. I'm constantly chopping vegetables. I'm constantly using my hands. always typing because of the podcast. My nails are either all the same length and look pretty good and they're not polished. I don't have my nails done because I'm not going to spend the money because they're going to get ruined.
23:38And so they're either all about the same length and they look okay or they're all different lengths or one's broken or  One's got a crack in it because I smacked something on it I never know so I don't really make a big deal out of my fingernails because I'm like they will grow back It'll be okay,  right? Well, and that's also what's great too is like everybody has a preference of the things that they like and the passion that they have
24:04And so like here, you know, it's kind of a whole family affair. I'm sure when my girls grow up and move out, I'm going to cut down on some of the stuff that we do just because it's so time intensive.  like each one of my girls, you know, likes to do different things. And so we split up kind of like our chores around here based on what things they like to do. Like one of my daughters, Brooke, she loves to collect the eggs. And, know, with our pure breads, we have to label
24:34our eggs that way we know which pin they came out of. So it's not like just going and getting a basket and collecting them. Like there is a little bit of work involved as well. And I offered like, you know, in the in the wintertime we just collect them. It doesn't matter. But when spring hits, then we have to start doing all the labeling and that way we know what's what.
24:51And I offered because I was like, well, you know, I kind of made the work and the extra pins. Like if you want, I'll take over that job. And she was like, no, I like, I love to go do that every day. So I was like, okay,  you know, I mostly deal with the goats.  Meadow here is the water queen. She waters everybody every day, which, you know, that takes some work, you know, especially in the winter.  My oldest, she  again is not.
25:16like the outdoors,  like she likes to hike and all those kinds of things, but farm-wise, like she doesn't really  mind, like want to do that, but she likes to bake and she likes to do stuff in the kitchen.  So she does more of that. Like we make it work where everybody's doing something that they really kind of like versus like, you know,  you don't want to be dreading what you're having to do every day.  No. And, and  here's the caveat to that. Back in the old days,
25:43when there was no choice, everybody had to kick in and had to do jobs they didn't necessarily like to do on the farm. right, right, right. Because it was their livelihood. That was how they made their money. It was how they grew. They had food to eat. It was the job for the whole family. These days, I feel like it's not quite the same. It doesn't have quite the same urgency that it did back in the old days. Oh, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
26:10And that's what's kind of great about it is like you can pick and choose the things that you want to tackle  or the things you want to like, you know, I just would rather buy that at the store. You know what mean? Like it's not worth the work to me. I'll buy that at the store or this is something I really like to do or want to do or like the flavor better. Like you can pick and choose now where back then you really couldn't. And same thing like here. I like I consult the girls like, do we really want to?
26:38Continue on with this or is this something that we can let go? You know because they're they're a big part of what we do here it's not just for me to make  all the decisions because  they help and do so much and I don't want them to just like resent everything we do  and They've even said like when they grow up like oh well This is what I would like to have at my house or my farm in the future You know, it's giving them an opportunity to try and see different things
27:06of what they want to carry on in the future versus what they want to let go. And that's great. That is so amazing that they are getting  to experience a whole bunch of different things to see if they enjoy it see if they want to pursue it. Awesome.  Did I see on your Facebook page that you or your daughters make snickerdoodle cookies?  Yeah. Well, we just started this adventure like not very long ago.
27:33you know, to add something else to like our farm stand because, you know, people love to get baked goods. And so we started like trying out making different, huge, like big, big cookies. So we make so far, we make a lemon poppy seed. We make a strawberry white chocolate with freeze dried strawberries. We make a s'mores cookie we've tried because, you know, it's summertime. So s'mores is a staple.
28:02Yeah. Then the latest one we were like, well, you got to make a snickerdoodle because like everybody likes snickerdoodles. Well, I take that back. One of my twins does not like anything with cinnamon. So she would take the other cookies other than the snickerdoodle.
28:18Okay, the reason I asked is because my mom,  I've told the story a couple times on the podcast, my mom makes snickerdoodles and she makes them as bar cookies. So she just takes the cookie dough and puts it in a  cookie sheet and bakes it in one flat cookie and then cuts it in bars.  And she doesn't necessarily make them  for her and my dad. She mostly makes them because their dog likes them. Oh my goodness.
28:44So she's always joking that she's getting a batch of snickerdoodle bars made for Dutchie, the dog who is a border collie.  Oh my gosh.  And I keep trying to tell both my mom and my dad that that sugar in there is probably not great for Dutchie.  And we have  a  mini Australian shepherd here who's like five years younger than Dutchie.
29:10I've become an expert on what's okay for dogs and what isn't in the last four and a half years because I love this dog more than life itself. So, I keep trying to convince them that maybe snickerdoodle cookies or any human cookie is probably not great for the dog. And my dad finally said Mary Evelyn and that's my middle name. When he, when he brings out my full name, I'm like, Oh no.  And he said, I understand that you love Maggie, your dog, two pieces. said, but Dutchie is my dog.
29:41He said, and I've been giving her snickerdoodle cookies since she was like 13 weeks old. He said, and she's not dead yet. So  we're just going to keep making snickerdoodles for Dutchie. And I'm like, okay,  Calvin Edmond, you do that.  So yeah, but I just, finally made a batch of my mom's recipe of snickerdoodle bars and  they're really good. I had not really had a homemade snickerdoodle before.
30:07I had them from the store and I don't like the ones from the store, my mom's recipe is really good. Yeah, anything homemade is gonna be way better.  Uh-huh.  Always.  Always, always. We are down to like a quarter teaspoon of vanilla in my  pantry right now and I was gonna make cookies this week and then I was like, you know, I think I'm gonna wait until there's an actual reason to go grocery shopping and get more of a vanilla.  There you go.
30:36Next you'll have to start making your own vanilla. Yes, I keep looking at the price of vanilla beans and debating whether I want to spend the money because it might actually save me some money. I don't know. I was about to say because basically we make a big batches, you know what I mean? Because they got to sit for a while. So if you're going to do it, you might as well make it big batches. And then those beans can be used over again  for a few different times.
31:01So yeah, you have to pay for it upfront, then you can use it to make quite a bit of another. So it seems like almost everything to do with homesteading and farming in the beginning, it's expensive, but the longer you do it,  it gets less expensive because you've already put out the beginning pieces. Oh yeah. And that's so true. Yeah. It's,  it's, it's an upfront cost. And that's why I like,  I tell people just start with something small, start, start little.
31:31You know, see if you like that, run with it and then add as you go. You cannot do  everything all at one time. Like there's just so much. Yeah. Start small, think big.  Right. Exactly. All right, Dana, I try to keep you to half an hour. We are there. Where can people find you online?  Um, we have Instagram  and Facebook. Our Instagram following is not quite as big because we didn't start that from the beginning.
32:00Facebook is where we post and do most of our things. We do share some to Instagram,  but  yeah, both of those.  Twin acres  farm.  All right. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Dana. I appreciate it. And as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  I hope you have a great day. You too. And thanks for having me.
 

Twin Creek Gardens, CSA

Today I'm talking with Beth at Twin Creek Gardens, CSA.
You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.
 
Muck Boots 
Calendars.Com
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Beth at Twin Creek Gardens, CSA.
00:29And Beth and I talked back in April of 2024. So it's been a year and a couple of months since we've had the joy of hearing about Beth's life at the CSA. So good afternoon, Beth. How are you? Good afternoon. I'm doing well. Thank you. Good. How's the weather in Wisconsin? It's hot here in Minnesota. Well, you know, it's funny. I've been waiting for hot and now that it's here, I'm going, oh, God, it's too hot.
00:56So it's beautiful. It's an absolutely beautiful day. So it's been fun running in and out of the house to to switch  gears with the water every once in a while. Yeah. Given everybody a nice deep drink. Yeah. My husband filled up three different bowls for the dog last night because she really wanted to play frisbee and it was hot out.  And he said  he said that she drank one and a half bowls of water  after after she played frisbee. And I was like, don't play frisbee with her when it's so hot like this. You're going to kill her. You know.
01:25Yeah, it is hard on them. Yeah, and when it's this warm and it hasn't been this warm yet, so she hasn't acclimated and she's a chubby dog.  She's probably five pounds overweight. So  I can't imagine it's fun being her and running across the yard chasing after the frisbee and realizing how hot she is when she's Right.  So anyway, it's been over a year since we talked on the podcast. So catch me up a little bit. Well,
01:55Um, last year I was doing a lot of dreaming and my tagline was if we build it, they will come. And I put that hashtag on just about everything as I was posting about what we were trying to do. And it seems like it's true. Um, we have a new website and that has been a game changer for us. I was trying to do that.
02:23solo and try to build something that would meet our needs and the needs of our members. And it just wasn't working.  And so I found CSAware. I don't know if you're familiar with  that. found it through localharvest.org, which is a nonprofit. And we are a nonprofit, so it was a perfect fit. And I've got a  wonderful person who knows the ins and outs of the website. She's my go-to gal. I can call her or send her a text.
02:52at any time of day to help me figure things out. I think it's really made the  difference for me in being able to meet the needs of the people of the community and yet still not have to spend so much time with the nuts and bolts of it.  So we currently have 10 families that have signed up for the season  and it's a perfect pace.  They trickled in.
03:21like two at a time, three at a time.  And  we have some really exciting partnerships that  have started. I'm really excited to share with you. so, you  know, I think it's growing at a pace that we,  and I, can still hold on to the bucking bronco and go for a ride. We're having a lot of fun. Good, because I know you really wanted to take.
03:46what you and Rob had started building and share it. And it sounds like you are, so that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. We have some families who come pick up their boxes here  on Monday or Tuesday.  And  they are,  what's exciting is it's families. So little people are coming with parents  and  getting a sense of the garden and what it's like here at the farm. And  we're talking about hosting one of their birthday parties in a few weeks. So
04:15They really love it here. And that to me is  such a blessing.  Yeah. And let me, let me catch people up. CSA, it stands for community supported agriculture.  And basically it is subscribing to a share of the farm's produce that is grown during the summer for a certain amount of weeks during the growing season. Correct.  And our season is 24 weeks.
04:40But we started a little earlier.  Now, I've learned so much about how I'm going to structure next year.  But  there isn't a ton of fresh produce right now. And so  what we've been doing,  and everybody's so lovely about it, is they're getting fresh microgreens that I'm growing weekly. And they're getting salad greens because I can grow them hydroponically, quickly, and cleanly.
05:07then the rest of what they're getting in their boxes right now is actually some of our specialty items that are available,  including preserves  and  other  like ferments and things like that, so that they have a sense of what else is on offer  besides the fresh produce. You're brilliant. That is a great idea. Thank you. It's been working really well.  It's so cute when I go to
05:34greet people and I say, here it is. They say, oh, it's like Christmas.  So they don't know what they're getting for sure. I mean, they do. Let me rephrase that. But they're not necessarily like, it's not carrots and potatoes yet.  know? And so it's an exciting little, ooh, what treat am I getting today?  we also are doing everything is  organic, of course.  But not, I'm not a certified organic farm because that's like a step beyond what we're
06:03really desirous of in our 60s to go through the hoops to do, but everything is made and done and grown organically and with  permaculture practices. So we're doing regenerative farming with our soil and all of those kinds of things. so  I'm also very much  about not only healing the earth, but healing ourselves through what we eat. So there's a lot of ferments and there's a lot of  sourdough ideas and
06:32all that kind of  healing food, I guess. I like to look at things, know, food was our first medicine.  And  so I want us to be able to go back to using it for our health, not just because we're hungry. Does that make sense? It sure does. That's why we, what we try to do here too.  This was the first, this is the first summer that we've had  lettuces, like butter crunch lettuce.
07:00and radishes for sale at the very first farmers market back two Saturdays ago. And Kyle's been doing the  farmers market. This is his third year. So first time in  three years now that we've had actual produce at the very first farmers market.
07:21Yeah, it's not easy up here. Our season is so varied. I mean, we had so many really warm, hot days in May, and then it would be 39, 42 at night, whatever, really low temperatures at night. so my poor plants were just, I kept them all very safe and protected in the greenhouse. And so...
07:48are we have these huge garden beds and now they're full because the weather's finally better. But we had three weeks  of  really, really cold, wet weather  and we could have lost everything if we had put them out when old farmers' almanacs said we should have, which I kind of found disheartening.  I think we were wise to go with what we could feel, you know, and just kind of look at the forecast 10 days ahead.
08:18kind of gauge it that way.  I mean, even our sweet potatoes, and they're under shelter, but it's just the top part of the greenhouse,  the walls are not on in our second greenhouse.  And so I keep them covered at night when it's under 50. I cover them with plastic,  because they're  sweet potatoes and they're a morning glory flower and they don't like it.  So.
08:44but there was a time there where I was starting to think I'm gonna start knitting sweaters for everybody out there in the garden, those poor babies, because we had three weeks in last week of June and the first two weeks of, or last week of May, excuse me, and the first two weeks of June that were just wet and cold. Yep, I understand. I really wish that we had had more rhubarb planted here, because this weather that we had here in Minnesota  would have been  perfect to grow  scads of rhubarb. We would have had rhubarb coming out our ears.
09:14And we only have  one really established plant that was here when we bought the place. We brought  some from our old house and put it in four fall ago, four autumns ago. And it just hasn't taken off the way we were hoping it would. It's doing well this year, but not, it hasn't been established yet. So,  but.  That does take a while. I'm having the same situation. I brought some from my house when Rob and I got married.
09:42I brought the stuff that was from my parents' place that I had at my house that I then brought here. And it's really just now, and that was three years ago, it's just now really, really establishing itself pretty solidly. Yeah, I feel like rhubarb and peonies take a long time to get going, but boy, when they get, when they're ready, they go crazy. Yeah, and then just get out of the way and let them do their thing.  Oh yeah, this was the spring.
10:08This is the spring I've been waiting for since we moved in for peonies.  Oh my God, my husband took a picture of our driveway. You hang a right into our driveway. It's a long driveway and then it's a round circle at the end in front of the pole barn.  And so on the right hand side of the driveway and  like just where that circle starts, there's a space that he put in a circle of peony plants, probably.
10:36Probably 15 feet in diameter. So across  the circle, it's  like a radius of 15 feet. And we had coral, had yellow, we had baby pink, we had fuchsia,  we had  what I call Hello Kitty pink, and we had white.  We had white panties this year. this was the year because it's the first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap. Well, this is the fourth year.
11:06Okay. And my husband was like, do you want me to bring you in panties? And I was like, no, I can see them out the window. Leave them right where they are. Yeah. So yeah, I was very, very excited to see them this year because I have been waiting and waiting and waiting. Isn't it funny how we get, you know, we get this vision in our mind and we just, I can do it. I can wait. I can wait, you know, but then when it takes
11:33three years to get there, I'm having that same feeling with my asparagus beds. This is my second year with them, but I put in two, know, second year asparagus last year. So technically this is the third year of that, those particular plants, but I'm waiting another year, but I'm just chomping at the bit as they, they're probably, I don't know, 12 inches tall, maybe 15 inches, the fronds.
12:00They're really thin and tiny and I'm like, oh, come on, sweeties. Yeah  I'm starving for you.  Yeah, so  it's hard to be patient when you know what they're going to be Someday. Yeah I was really hoping to have asparagus to sell in the farm stand this spring as ours have been in  since the second fall we were here so 20, okay,  and They didn't they're not quite at that point yet where I can go out and pick bunches and put
12:29rubber bands around them and sell them. So I got to have three different, I don't know, messes. My mom would call it a mess of asparagus. Three different messes of asparagus to have here, you know, to go with dinner three times this year. so sweet. Oh my God, I keep forgetting how good homegrown asparagus is. It's like such a flavor that doesn't exist when you buy it in the grocery store.
12:58No, it's a totally different thing. And  when we moved in here, I was like, can we please put in asparagus  crowns like now?  And my husband said, now. He said, because it's, he said, we have to get settled in, we have to get moved in. We moved in in August of 2020. He said, we have to find our feet. He said, this winter is about planning the gardens.  Now that didn't stop him from
13:26from accepting some apple trees as a housewarming gift from a  local apple grower that we know who was like, we have some apple trees for your place. I was like, thank you.  But the second fall over here, we got asparagus, crowns, we got strawberry crowns, anything that was perennial that we could get our hands on, we put in that fall in autumn. Yeah,  that's what we did when I got here. We started building the, Rob had
13:55apple trees before me.  And  we've been establishing guilds underneath them now for three years. So  each of them has  comfrey plants and rhubarb and  borage  and what's the other? Oh, some of them have raspberries under there too, under each of the trees.  And we have  eight trees out in our,  what I'm designating the food forest.
14:23Right now, because of the deer around here, each one of them has its own little,  what I call their play pens, with the fencing around each tree.  And so I have to peel those back and get in there and weed every few weeks or so.  I've only done two of them so far this spring. But our pear tree is doing remarkably well. And we've got several baby pears, almost probably 20, 25.
14:48little pears on there and then underneath I've been harvesting rhubarb from that one.  And then I just, the raspberries are starting to  look so beautiful. And that one has golden raspberries. So I'm excited about that.  So we did a lot of perennial stuff those first  two years. And then last year we did as well, but that's up in  the front yard. The food forest is in our backyard.
15:16And then it's literally up against the forest. So  we have a row of blueberry bushes there that I think the animals think is a buffet I put out for them. never got a, I think Rob got maybe a handful of blueberries a couple of times.  So we're going to probably be transplanting them more up into the cottage garden too, up in the kitchen garden in the front by the gazebo. Cause it's easier for our dog to patrol, you know?
15:44like this little sentinel around wherever I am in the yard at night,  our  biggest garden. Rob is an in-ground gardener. I, because of the nature of where I lived for 25 years, am a  raised bed  and  green stock planter gardener. Because of the cedar trees in my old yard, I couldn't dig.
16:11I planted on top of those beautiful cedar tree roots.  But Rob,  he built this beautiful kitchen garden for us around the gazebo that he put in the middle of his five acre front yard. And so that's just been growing exponentially. But now in front of that, he's created this massive in-ground garden  using the soil, the dirt from where the cows used to spend their days.
16:41So it's beautiful, incredibly beautiful black loam.  so we have, it's 40 feet wide by 80 feet long, no, 30 feet wide, excuse me, 30 by 80. And then  we have a potato patch besides that. And then  he has since made four hukulculture mounds to put more things on  next to the 30 by 80. He loves the big in-ground gardening and the
17:10I've, you know, because of,  like I said, I couldn't, now I'm discovering how glorious it is to have that space. It's just magnificent. And all I go is turn the water and one half of it gets watered. And then because of the length of the hoses, we only do one of them at a time. So the water pressure is good enough, you know?  So now that he's working days,  that's my job in the morning instead of his, and I'm really enjoying.
17:38that beautiful front garden of his too.  You guys keep going, you're going to be feeding the entire state of Wisconsin.  I have a question about the pear trees.  What variety is it? you know? No, I am not  certain. We got that the first year.  We had two of them and one of them, well, one of them got knocked over by the backhoe,  unfortunately, and we tried to...
18:07bring it back and couldn't. But I remember that this one was one that was like viable down to zone three, which made me feel like it would make it in zone four. And so it has. But I do not remember off the top of my head what the variety is. And the other one was a zone four pair that did not seem really happy. I think that where we're at, we're kind of in a bowl.
18:36And we get a lot, a lot of wind. So I think we feel more like a  3B than a 4A to  me. Okay. I'm  going to have to do some research on pears because we have two peach trees.  We have like 16 apple trees, but we don't have any pear trees.  I like pears and my husband will eat pears.  He would eat pears every day when they're at the grocery store in season.
19:02Oh, absolutely. Me too. I prefer them to apples, actually. Yeah.  So I'm really excited. Yeah.  I'll message you when I figure it out.  I've got it all  on a database. You know, I'm one of those former teachers who has to keep track of everything. 35 years in the classroom and  data with student learning. Yeah, I'm all about the data. So I have  spreadsheets  on my computer that
19:32go like the year, the  variety, the yeah, blah, blah.  where I've planted it on the farm, we have maps on there. Yeah. But  there's so many of them I don't have in my head the actual variety. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. I was just curious.  don't know half the varieties of the apples we have. I know  we have Regent, we have Harrelson, we have Honey Gold, we have  Honey Crisp.
20:01We bought two honeycrisp trees a couple of years ago. Oh,  those are so delicious.  They will not thrive up here. And I'm so sad because  my granddaughter and I eat them, love them from the store, right? So then we took the little apple seeds and my little, well, she was three then, planted them in a flower pot on our  window sill.  And now it's about a foot and a half tall and she wants to put it in the yard. And I'm like, baby girl, it won't survive.
20:30So  we are working  long term at doing a wallopini. Have you read anything or seen much about those? of. It's sort of.  The in-ground greenhouse that you can have like trees and things like that can't survive in your zone. we're planning on going that direction. So I'm going to keep her little tree in our greenhouse.
21:00and I'm gonna nurture it until we have a wallopini to let it grow in.  I saw this  brilliant thing where they have citrus trees and all of the kinds of trees that they want to grow that can't survive in their zone. They have them in those garden carts and they live in those garden carts and then they can just wheel them in and out of the greenhouse in the winter. So that's what we're gonna do,  because I want citrus.
21:28And I definitely, after my trip to Europe, I definitely need an olive tree, just for my own sanity. Well, I was in Italy and Greece and fell in love with olives. I've always liked them, but oh my heaven. So I want to grow an olive tree. Yeah, olive trees are really beautiful too. It's not just the fact that they give you olives to eat, but they're really pretty. they are. They're just...
21:56They're old world elegant. That's what comes to my mind when I looked at them when I was there. It's like, okay, now I get it why people, some people get really obsessed with the old world quote. It's very logical.  They're so just elegant and beautiful.  So that's a plan for me for long range is that wallopini.  But in the meantime, I'm going to hang on to her cute little apple tree, her little honey crisp.
22:26I think that's great.  So  I can't remember because we talked a while ago.  Do you have any animals? you have chickens or anything? We do not right now.  My  stepson, Rob's  son, Stephen, had the chickens and the ducks, so we didn't  bring them on board. He used to have chickens when he had the cows. But  the last of our chickens...
22:54was a free ranger boy and it was tough and it would flit around and the cat would chase it and it was kind of adorable that first year I got here.  But  she did not survive the winter.  we are talking about  what I love is one of the  traveling,  there's a special name, like a chick saw, they call it, like a  traveling chicken coop that's on wheels.
23:23Yes, I want to do that. And so I'm being more patient than I've ever been in my life about like getting a good idea and wanting to do it and then having someone make it for me. He's very, very busy doing all of the other big infrastructure stuff. So I'm waiting on the chickens. Yeah, chicken tractor is I think what most people call that. Yeah. Yeah.  We don't have I've seen them called chick sauce. Yeah, we don't have any of those. just have a run the chickens get let out into and during the day. So
23:53Nice, nice. if we  have a chicken tractor, it would drive my dog crazy because she would want to get to the chickens to see them. And  she is not allowed off lead because there's a very busy road that borders our property. And if this dog got hit, I would never forgive myself. So she is never off leash or off lead because  I'm afraid she'd get killed.
24:22Oh, for sure.
24:26Yeah. So I'm hoping that,  you know, we are in a back end of, we're almost at the end of a road. And so it's, the traffic isn't so bad here.  Our cat goes visiting the neighbors and we'll be down, you know, two doors down and  they're coming out of their driveway will be our little goofy cat who's just wandering the neighborhood. But our dog stays pretty close to home.  So  we're pretty lucky in that.
24:56Yeah. My sentinel, I call him, he just follows me. And when Rob is during the school year, he works during the night, you know, evenings. So I'm out in the garden this spring by myself  and there he is just looking at the woods, just watching. Nobody's coming in to get my mama.  He's such a good boy. He's doing his job.  as a teacher, are you going to try to have people come and see your farm?
25:26Oh, absolutely. In fact, the two families that come Mondays and Tuesdays to pick up their things,  we have been talking about  one of the families has teenagers.  And so one of those boys is coming  on Monday, he's going to become our weed whacker.  And he's very excited about clearing the,  you using the weed whacker tool. So I'm going to be able to teach him where we're going to be doing things.
25:54but that same family has teenage girls and her, the mother, Emily, and Allison, the other mother who comes in the beginning of the week, we've all talked about doing some sourdough stuff together. yeah, and then the people, I was gonna tell you about our partnerships. We have a partnership now with the City of Superior Wellness Committee has,
26:23promoted our farm to every employee in the City of Superior  and the Douglas County  Government Center. So they've been given our information, they've been given an email.  I did a frequently asked questions paper with pictures  and  we have that's  small but mighty group of five that have started with us and I'm very excited. Last Wednesday was our first delivery with them.
26:53And Patrick who is  on the Wellness Committee,  and his family want to come out also to see where their food is grown.  yeah, it's going to be that I'm encouraging everyone, the people in Iron River, there's three of them that are coming together  in  not this  next week, but the week after when the father is back. And there's a restaurant where the farmer's market is.
27:23and we are doing some farm to table  work with that restaurant with the rustic roost in  Iron River now. That's gonna be a partnership. have like, for example, dilly beans  that one of the ladies makes for  having in  their buffet, but also in their Bloody Marys. And so they are putting in a bulk order for beans.
27:47And so when the beans are ready, they're all gonna come over and harvest their beans  and go make their dilly beans for their restaurant.  And they've put in a request for other things like the salad greens, but also in particular spinach, because the spinach that they are able to  get for, they don't have local. And so they're,  doing,  actually I'm gonna be doing I think some perpetual spinach, which technically isn't spinach, but it's.
28:15It's much heartier and stands up better on salad bars and in  fresh, you know, when it's traveling to a restaurant kind of thing. So  that's one, two of our partnerships. And then the third one  is another local grower who does mushrooms,  extraordinarily gorgeous mushrooms.  And  I am a newbie at mushrooms. And so they have a website, it's called mushroomsreach.com. And
28:45with our partnership,  some of the time people will get like this week in their boxes, they got a lion's mane mushroom that was about the size of a small dinner plate.  And then they have recipes, there's a recipe on their website. So I printed that off. And everybody in their box got  a  copy of the recipe as well as a recipe that I had provided with them or suggested to them when they got their
29:13welcome plant of chives. So when they sign up, they get a  beautiful chive plant that's blossoming. I have so many gorgeous purple blossoms everywhere.  And  one of the things they got as a sample this week in their box was herb butter, which I made with some of the chives.  And then they got a recipe for infused  chive vinegar with
29:41different marinades  and  salad dressings to make.  So  we're trying to do more farm to table kinds of things so they don't have all of this produce and then go, what do I do with it? Yep. Good.  And I'm doing that with like a baba ganoush recipe. I'm trying different kinds of baba ganoush recipes to find the  yummiest, easiest because we've got tons of eggplant planted.  And I...
30:09I really want people to learn to enjoy them  other than just your standard kind of cooking process.  yeah, so we're doing a lot of like the pickles. I did two different pickles this last week in little sample jars in their boxes of refrigerator quick pickles. So  if they decide they love that recipe, then when they get their produce, hey, they've got a recipe and a quick pickle they can do with their.
30:40stuff, their onions and their cucumbers. So  I and it's I love refrigerator pickles. I do. They're so easy and they're so delicious. And  I grew up with a there was always a jar of what we called mom's pickles. And it was just a simple vinegar, but vinegar mayonnaise milk based recipe. And they were when we run out, we just chop up some more and stick them in the you know, it was always in
31:09in the fridge and and I just  love that it's summer to me is those cucumber pickles. and the refrigerator pickles don't get squishy like  I hate it when I when we can pickles here because we're not great at it I've got to get my mom's recipe she had pickles that were not squishy  but  the ones we've made within like two months of them being canned they're not crisp anymore and there's a trick I just don't know what it is. Yeah.
31:37Yeah, my grandma was really good at it too. And I think it had something to do with allium or  alum.  So I don't do,  I do can pickles, but I don't do  that for other people because I do my fermented pickles.  I prefer that or the refrigerator pickles to the canning pickles for that very reason, because they're the fermented pickles are so,  they get soft enough, but not too soft.
32:06And then that's a really good  food for your gut.  And I just do a quick ferment. So it's like three to four days.  And then you get all the probiotics that you should have. And yet you have the yummy, pickly, num, deliciousness.  And I just find that the more we work together to help each other learn about these things, the  gut biome, the brain-gut connection, all of this kind of stuff, as a teacher,
32:35I knew there was something that was changing about our children.  They were coming to us every generation less prepared to learn, less able to learn once they got there.  I mean, it was just, there had to be something in the environment because it wasn't that it was, you know, these aren't aliens. These are,  you know?  And so it's the food. I swear every generation, they are less and less able to digest and process and they're eating more processed yuck.
33:06And you know, our grocery stores, even the stuff that is quote healthy, still has addictive salt and fat and sugar in it. And it's just harder and harder for us to raise healthy kids.  by having them come here  and plant things  and fall in love with gardening and  get grounded by, we're having grass instead of rock. have grass and sand.
33:35so that if kids want to run barefoot in our gardens, they can, because I do. Yeah, That's the way to be healthy, you know? Connect to the earth again. For sure. I try to keep these to half an hour, Beth, and we are at 33 minutes. I so excited that all the things that you had planned on being sort of in the middle of by now, you're either in the middle of or you've
34:04mastered it and you're you're planning new things. Yeah it's been a miracle. Yeah absolutely.  So where can people find you online? We are at Twin Creek Gardens dot CSA where dot com. Okay cool and you're Twin Creek Garden CSA on Facebook? Yes.  Alright awesome  thank you so much for coming back to chat with me. I'm  I'm cheering you on honey keep doing the good work.
34:34Thanks so much. You too. I'm looking forward to talking again. as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Have a great day Beth. You too, hon. Bye.