A Tiny Homestead

MN River Valley Homestead

Today I'm talking with Holly at MN River Valley Homestead.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Holly at the Minnesota River Valley Homestead. Good morning, Holly. How are you? I am good. How are you? I'm great. What a beautiful morning we have in LaSore, Minnesota today. It is wonderful outside.
00:29Yeah, it's a little allergy inducing, but other than that, it's great. Yes, I agree. So, um, Holly is an acquaintance and sort of friend. She lives not far from me. And the way that I met Holly is because she sells her lovely baked goods at the farmer's market. And I had asked her months ago if she wanted to be a guest on the podcast, but there was stuff going on. So.
00:55I finally get to ask you all kinds of questions today. So tell me about yourself, Holly. Well, I have been a stay at home mom for, let's see, gollish, it's been so many years, I don't think I even know, almost 20 years, mainly because I can't work because I'm epileptic, but I have all seven kids that I have raised and.
01:23One is gone and now I just sit and keep track of the other six. And right now it's nice and calm because there's only two left at home because the other are at school. Yay. Today, first day today? Um, no, it's actually, um, they started their second week today. They started last week, so they were excited.
01:48Yeah, I feel like kids are in one of two camps. They're either tickled pink to go back or they don't want to go back. Yeah, my two older ones were not very happy and the two younger ones were very, very excited. So. So how old are the kids that are still living at home? They are 345715.
02:1716 Okay, so you got teenagers and little still at home. Yep Okay. All right. So what do you what do you do at your your? Minnesota River Valley homestead when I'm at home which is all the time obviously I Work on a lot of my yarn crafting I do a lot of crocheting I make blankets and
02:46I make dishcloths and handbags and hats. Pretty much you name it, I can make it. Otherwise I make jams and jellies and then there's the other part of it that my husband is a really big part of. We make a lot of sourdough and bagels and other sandwich breads.
03:14and we're now starting to get into dessert breads.
03:19So yeah, we, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I guess that's, that's, that's the big part. Otherwise I get into making a lot of oils for different purposes, not, not scent, you know, not essential oils, but healing oils, things like that. So I'm a lot, I'm really big with herbal things. So always.
03:47So you're a typical homesteader. You've got your hands in almost everything. Yeah, pretty much. Nice. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna toot your horn for you. Your bagels are amazing. Kyle brought some home Saturday and they were the Osceaga ones. Oh my god. So yummy. Yeah. And you're, uh, He said he's been eyeing those for a while, so he decided to get some.
04:16Yep. And your raisin ones are really good too. Oh, I'm glad you like those. Yeah. We love bagels. We don't love store-bought bagels, but we love your bagels. So, Oh, I'm glad. I was going to ask, um, the Italian bread that he brought home. Um, I didn't get any. Cameron and Kyle ate all of it before I could get to it. Oh my gosh. But they loved it. I didn't get a chance to try it.
04:46Oh, well, just let me know and I'll make you some. Okay. Yeah. I was going to grab some and I was like, where'd the bag go? And Cameron was like, we ate it. And then Kyle made honey oat bread and, and, uh, herbed bread yesterday that he makes, so I was like, okay, well maybe I'll get some of those maybe. Yeah. Food doesn't last very long in this house if it's, if it's really yummy. So it must have been really yummy, Holly. I will find out eventually.
05:16Well, that's good. We make sure we have fresh herbs growing outside on our deck so I can grab them and we use those. So yeah, fresh herbs are the best thing. And if you can't have fresh herbs, dried herbs work just as well. So it works out great. Thank you.
05:39I'm very excited you're going to get in dessert, two dessert breads. I cannot talk this morning. I feel like I'm not separating anything out and I'm not pronouncing my consonants. I don't know what's wrong with me. Your dessert breads are an exciting new thing. What kind of dessert breads are you guys doing? Oh, um, well, Chris has been making, um, one of them is a, gow, what does he call it? It's a cinnamon.
06:08uh, cinnamon or not cinnamon chocolate, twist, I guess is what he calls it. But it's, um, he rolls it out flat and then he puts Nutella all over the whole thing and then he rolls it up and twists it and turns it into a circle. And then after it's done baking, it's covered in a caramel sauce and, oh, it's, it's just really good.
06:35And then last night with our daughter, he made a raspberry, a raspberry twist that has chocolate chips in it. And that one is just super good. And then he made, oh, he made a sticky bun kind of thing. And they have a really light glaze on top of them. And they're just to die for. He's he's so good with
07:04baking stuff. I mean, I like baking, but he goes beyond. Yeah. I've told this story before a bunch of times on the podcast. I'll mention it again. Kyle is the bread maker in our family because I kill the yeast every time I try to make it, try to use it. And so I have been saying that I want to try making some and he's like,
07:30Now that I'm busy with my job, because he got the new job back last year, he said, if you want to try making bread, he said, have at it. He said, if you kill a beast, he said, he said, just keep track of what you're doing. And I will try to help you so that you figure out how not to kill it. I was like, okay, that would be great. But yeah, it's wonderful when our husbands, when our husbands do some of the baking too. Yes. I really like the fact that he does it and he got into doing sourdough. I.
07:59six years ago, seven years ago, somewhere around there. And it's just really flourished since then. And he's just so into it. And I just come up with new ideas on what to do with them. And I'll, he'll make the dough and then I'll put everything in it and put it together and bake it. But as far as the dough is concerned, he's, he's got that. I can't do it.
08:29Yeah, but you're a team. So that's amazing. I love that. I think when married folks can work together, even if you're doing separate parts that come together, it's fantastic. Yeah. Oh, I had a question. Oh, the farmers market. I keep meaning to ask other people who are part of it because Kyle's really the only one I talk to about it. It seems like
09:00in the last three years? Do you feel like it is too? Well, the first year, excuse me, I had my zapper go off. The first year went really slow. And then the next year, last year was a lot better. And that's when Kyle came and started and it got a
09:30amazing with how many people, vendors have showed up. And it's just, it's really flourished. It's been great. I really like it. I think that it's really nice. There's a lot of new people coming to shop. And I just, I couldn't have asked for anything better.
09:58big a deal. Like people showed up, they sold stuff, they went home. And when Kyle started going last summer, he was like, it's really robust. It's really good. And I was like, well, maybe you were the magic charm. Maybe they just needed you to show up. Yeah. Well, last year he was a really big part of it because it was a good year with the tomatoes and all the other produce that he brought.
10:27Because not very many people were bringing things like that. And so, you know, he was a big deal With it and it it's a bummer that it was so bad this year Because I was actually looking forward to more tomatoes because all of our tomatoes went they just drowned Well, if it makes you feel any better, there are 50 tomato plants in the garden right now that he put in like end of June
10:56when he could finally get in the garden and they're growing. So as long as they don't get frosted anytime soon, we might be able to help you out with some tomatoes in like mid September, maybe. Don't hold your breath, but if we have enough, we will make sure you get some. Oh, that would be wonderful. I still have a couple bags of what I got last year that I need to get turned into something.
11:25but I need a couple more because I want to make some more sauce and just some more canned tomatoes overall because we ran out really quick. It doesn't last very long in our house at all. Yeah, all of our tomato sauce is gone from the last two years. We've used everything we can in the last two years. So I understand completely. Now I have a funny story to tell you that Kyle probably will never tell you, but I'm going to tell you it.
11:53He was talking last winter about making some breads and selling them at the farmers market. And he's made bagels before and he loves doing it. He was like, I can make bagels and sell them at the farmers market. I said, excuse me, sir. And he looked at me like, what? I said, our friends sell bread and bagels and stuff at the farmers market. I said, do you really want to be in competition with Holly and her husband?
12:22You're going to lose. Their stuff is better." And he was just laughing. He was like, I completely forgot that we would be in competition with them. I said, yeah, don't do that. I said, if you want to make something, make your cinnamon rolls, because I don't think they make cinnamon rolls and yours are really yummy, make those. Oh yeah. He was like, oh yeah, I have things I can make that won't be in competition. I said, no, they won't. And that would be good.
12:49And he just, he completely wasn't thinking about it as he was saying it. I'm just inside, I'm just dying, giggling my head off in my brain. So I saved you guys from some minor competition by reminding him that that's a bad plan. Don't do that. Thank you. I, I am very grateful for that. I mean, there's, you know, two other people, um, vendors that go that sell bagels
13:20Um, and sourdough and one of them, I mean, she's nice and her husband's nice. And, but I mean, I, and I hate sounding like I hate her because I don't hate her. It's terrible to say that, but every time we come out with something new for a flavor or, or the other vendor, they come out with something new with a flavor. They come out the next week with the exact same thing. And it's.
13:49Just, it's horrible. It's like, oh my goodness, can you just think of something your own? It's terrible. It's frustrating. And, and competition is good, but, but, uh, direct copying, maybe not so good. Uh-huh. I know what you're saying. And I'm sure that you don't hate her. You're too nice of a person to hate anyone.
14:15But I'm also positive that it is very frustrating for you because you're like, we've been here, we've been doing the work and now somebody else is just like doing the same thing all of a sudden. It's very disheartening. Yeah. It would be like us trying to bring out candles and he sits there with that whole table full of candles and free smells. I love it. It's great. We were right next to him last weekend.
14:45I laugh every time he says it to somebody. It just cracks me up every time. But I wouldn't want to do that to him with candles on my table. I felt bad when I started doing granola. And last year he brought granola, but he didn't have it this year. So I decided to start making granola. That's because I haven't been making it. That's the thing that I make. Okay.
15:12And the granola has been being eaten here for breakfast. So we just haven't had any extra to sell. Ah, and I haven't had time to make it because I've been doing the podcast. Okay. Well, that makes sense. Yep. Most of the time I do a recording at 10 and then I go downstairs and I eat a bowl of granola for breakfast because I don't like to eat food before I record because it gets in my teeth and I'm licking my teeth through the hole.
15:42conversation is just gross. I don't want to do that. I actually felt weird about the granola last year because I know how I make it. It is a very simple thing to make. I know how much it costs per bag. It cost me to make it. I was like, how much should we sell the bags for? Kyle was like, I don't know. Whatever we sold it for, 10, 12 bucks last year. I don't remember.
16:12Yeah. And it's not that big a bag. And I'm like, I feel really weird about this because people are paying for it. But it seems like it's a lot of money. And yeah, I looked at the same size bag at the store, you know, people who are selling it at the store. And granola is freaking expensive at the store. Oh my gosh, it is.
16:35And I was like, I am taking the time to do this right to make sure they know what's in it. And it doesn't have any preservatives or colorants or anything in it. Now I know why people are buying it. Uh huh. Exactly. And I found that, um, we were selling it at $10 a bag and I think they're 15 ounces and, um, they weren't really selling very much.
17:05So I lowered it to eight and now it sells constantly. We went to those who were fair the other, you know, a couple of weeks ago and I sold out. I was like, what? I mean, it was crazy. I didn't- But that's fabulous. Oh, it was. I was like, I didn't realize I needed to make more granola before we go to the market next week. I think the thing with granola
17:35is that people like it, but they don't want to eat it every day. And so if they find it at a fair or a farmer's market, they're reminded that they like it and it's a small bag. And they're like, yeah, I can eat this before it goes stale. And they'll buy it. But no one's going to go buy a humongous five pound bag of granola because they're never going to eat it. Right. Yeah, I don't eat it every day. I eat it.
18:04maybe every other day or every few days. But I mean, it's just, it was kind of crazy how much it sold. I was really astonished. It really floored me. I am applauding you. I'm not, I'm not going to sit here and clap in front of the mic, but in my, in my head, I'm applauding you because that's fantastic. Good job. I don't know how you make your granola. I will tell you how I make mine and it's why I felt weird about selling it.
18:34I basically dump a bag of oatmeal into our roasting pan. You know, we spray the roasting pan with nonstick stuff. And then I flatten it out with a spoon. And then I pour in like a cup and a quarter of veggie oil, a cup and a quarter of honey, stir it all up, add in some cinnamon and a couple splashes of vanilla, stir it up.
19:00Bake it at 350 for 15 minutes, stir it, shut the oven off, leave it in there for another 15 minutes, and it's done. That's how simple my granola recipe is. Yeah, that's pretty simple. I put them in a bowl, in a big bowl, and I use maple syrup that we get from the gas station downtown. And I use that unless it's... I have four different flavors that I do.
19:29and one of them has honey, but the other ones, all the other ones have maple syrup. And then I'll put any nuts, usually pecans and cinnamon. And a lot of them have, I use pepitas and sunflowers, sunflower seeds. And I'll mix it all up and put it in the oven for 15 minutes, stir it 15 more minutes.
19:59and then I pull it out and I let it cool. And then I'll add craisins or raisins. And then when it's all cooled, then I just bag it up. So yeah, it's still pretty simple. Yeah, it really is. And if you don't like granola, no one's gonna make it themselves. It's not even worth making it. But.
20:27I feel like people don't realize how simple it is to make it. And that's probably to our advantage. Um, the other thing I will say about granola, I tried to make granola bars years ago for the kids. And I didn't know that you were supposed to not put the dried fruit or chocolate chips or whatever in it before you baked it. Oh yeah, I did that a couple times. God, the chocolate, like it didn't burn burn, but, but it burned. And so the entire batch tasted like.
20:56charred chocolate. It all went in the trash. I was so sad. There was no saving it. So if you're ever going to make granola, anyone listening, do not put anything with sugar, like dried fruit or chocolate or Nutella or anything like that in the granola bowl or you put it in the oven because it will burn and you will ruin it. Oh yeah. And also if you do put any dried fruit or anything, if it doesn't burn, you
21:26It'll just get really, really hard, and you'll probably break a tooth. Yeah, it does. It gets really hard and it's gross. It's just not good. Add that stuff in after it's cooled off and then it's great. So there's a lesson on making granola for the day. Um, I do have another question for you. It has nothing to do with granola or the farmer's market or anything else. How did you and your husband get into the homesteading stuff?
21:56How did we get into the homesteading? The home, the homesteading. Yeah. Um, we have been wanting to do it, um, for a long time and, um, we've moved from a lot of different places that were, you know, small and we went from a trailer to a house, um, in Arlington, which is really small.
22:25And I mean, it had a bigger yard. We had a big garden there, but it wasn't, you know, big enough to really do much with. And then we found our house here and we have a nice big yard where we can grow stuff. And we finally decided that we should actually do something and actually make an actual homestead with it. We've been wanting to get an actual farm
22:55get some goats and, you know, just kind of expand a little more. But right now we're, we're pretty good with what we have. And, um, we've been, that's, that's what we've been wanting to do. Just kind of expand a little bit more with what we have and we use what we have. We're making an orchard in the yard with a whole bunch of different fruits and we've got berry bushes and all kinds of stuff. So.
23:25It's just Chris grew up on a farm, on a dairy farm. So he's always loved farming and I grew up in the city. And I've always liked being outside and working in a garden with my grandpa and stuff like that. So I didn't like being in the city and we just, we like being out in the country. So that's kind of what we do.
23:55Us too. We're right there with you. Um, speaking of fruit trees, we just, I just made our first apple crisp with our apples last night. First, we've been able to actually have from our trees that we put in, in the fall of 2020 and it was delicious and it was more delicious because it was our apples. They were honey gold variety apples.
24:25No, we got, we have, we started with one apple tree that was here when we moved here and we don't know what kind of apple tree it is, but the apples are huge. And if the deer don't get them first, we get some. And last year I finally got some in the freezer and that's what I made my apple pie sourdough with last week. And it is amazing. I use my apple pie filling.
24:53that I got from my grandma and I put that in my sourdough and it is really good. Those apples are wonderful. You gonna have any this weekend coming up? Probably. Okay, I'll put in my request with Kyle Lainley of Saturday Morning. Yeah, I've been trying to do a new fruit sourdough every weekend. So it's been challenging because I'm trying to.
25:23do fruit that are in season. So apples are definitely one of them. I am so happy it's September. I, anyone who knows me knows that basically the very last week of August, I start to get high because I know fall is a week away. Yep. I love fall. I love apples. I love, I love winter squash. I love all the
25:50the things that come rolling in starting in September. So I am, I'm feeling the best I have felt since, oh, probably this time last year, because winter was weird, as you know, and spring all it did was rain, and our garden, as you know from Kyle's stories, has been a disaster. I mean, he has made it go as much as he can, but it's just been an impossible year for having a really good garden.
26:18And it's so sad because the first three gardens we put in here did great. And this year, no. So I'm much more bright and shiny and happy today than I have been since this time last year. Well, that's really good. I am right there with you. I mean, this time last year, I was not in a good place. I was getting over the surgery that I had and I was going in
26:48In a couple days, I was going back in to get one of the wires fixed that they had put in and it was a mess. This whole last year was terrible for me. But now that everything is taken care of and they took out what they put in in June, so I'm just, I'm back to myself. I feel good. And now that it's turning fall, which is my favorite, all that stuff that you like, I am right there with you. I love all of it.
27:18Uh-huh. It's just, it's wonderful. I love it. The only, I think the only part that I, I like it a lot, but it gets really overwhelming is that I have two boys that have birthdays in September and it gets a little bit much. Uh-huh. I, I understand. Um, my, my routine back when I had the kids all at home when they were younger was that we had a birthday in August.
27:47and then we had Labor Day, and then we had the kids going back to school, and then we had Halloween, and then we had my birthday and my daughter's birthday, and then Thanksgiving, and then Christmas and New Year's. So basically from August 21st through New Year's Day, there was planning for all kinds of things that entire stretch, so I get it, it's crazy. Yeah, we go from my birthday,
28:17in April, two weeks later, it's Chris's birthday. And then two weeks after that, it's our oldest daughter's birthday. Two weeks after that, it's our 15 year old's birthday. And then we go a month into July, it's another birthday. And we get another month in, and then it's September with two birthdays. So it's like, holy cow, there's our summer.
28:44There's always something to celebrate in your home though. Yes. And we get a good rest, I guess, break, after September in fall and beginning of winter and after Christmas. And then all of a sudden, February comes and it's like, oh, two more birthdays. But it's crazy. I love it. I really do.
29:13It's wonderful. It is. You must make a lot of cakes in your household for birthdays. Actually, I don't make any of the cakes in my house. Oh, does Chris? My daughter makes most of them. Oh, okay. Chris makes some of them, he used to, but now our oldest daughter likes to make them. So she usually makes the cakes. And I am very happy about that
29:43of a baker as I am, I do not like baking cakes at all. Unless it's a cheesecake. Yeah, I love cheesecake. I keep saying I should make one and I don't do it because I get busy and I forget. I don't mind making cakes. What I mind is having to do a two-tier cake and decorate it. If it's just a cake in a cake pan, I am all over that because I love cake batter more than I love the finished cake.
30:14No joke, I will make a cake just to lick the bowl. Yeah I kind of agree with you on that one too. I like that too. I really have to stay away from all that though. Oh my word I do. Well that's why I only make a cake about once a year. And I only make outrageous brownies once a year because I don't know if you heard that story yet from Kyle but I make these brownies and they are...
30:43My god, I think the pan probably weighs six pounds when it's cooked. And it's butter and chocolate and all the good things. And the batter on this stuff is so rich and so beautiful. It looks like silk when you're stirring it. Like it's so pretty. I want to take a bath in it. And it's so smooth. It's so smooth that all you want to do is eat it like pudding. And you can't do that. Cannot do that. You will be sick.
31:13But when I make them, I get like one brownie. That's all I can handle. They're so rich. So I only bake those things once in a great while because otherwise I would be 500 pounds and I cannot do that to myself. Yeah, I'm in the same boat. So I have to stay away from a lot of that stuff just because of the extra weight that I ended up gaining this past year.
31:42because I was on antibiotics all year and I ended up gaining so much weight with it. It was terrible. So I had to stay away from all of that. Oh, I'm so sorry. It's no fun. Yeah, it's terrible, but I manage and it's going good because I'm finally able to get up and move. So it's good. I have to stay away from the cookies that I made for the...
32:12fair. There is so many cookies in our freezer and the triple chocolate ones are just, it's really hard to stay out of them. But yeah, it's, it's a temptation that you don't need, but you needed to make them for the fair. I understand. Yeah. I'm, I'm just glad that they're out in the freezer in the garage instead of in the house. So, but yeah, I don't know.
32:41That's about all I can say. Yeah, no, I understand. I really do. I have finally gotten to the point where I have a handle on my weight, totally, for the first time since I was probably 20 years old. I used to be a string bean until I got pregnant with my daughter when I was 19. She was born like 10 days after I turned 20. And I put on some weight.
33:10with that pregnancy. And it's been kind of a yo-yo thing for years. And in the last three years, I have maintained a reasonable weight for my height and I feel really good. So it can be done. But yeah, it's a habit thing a lot for me. Like, if I get in the habit of choosing certain behaviors, then I just continue to choose those behaviors. So for me, that's what works.
33:40but it doesn't necessarily work for everybody. So anyway, we're at like 33 minutes and I try to keep this to half an hour, but I do wanna say that you have been real honest with me about your epilepsy issues and journey. And you have managed to build a beautiful life and a business with your husband, with all the things that you have been going through with the epilepsy. Number one, really proud of you. Number two,
34:09you are living proof that you can do this, even if you have an issue. Yeah. I, I, I try. I mean, I've been trying really hard and I try to make it so people like me can do it. So, I mean, it's, it's somebody has to be there, you know, to show other people that they can do it. So, Yeah.
34:38Exactly. So I'm really glad that you're doing it and I'm really glad you wanted to come on the podcast to talk to me because this has been really fun. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time, Holly. I appreciate it. Yeah, it was fun. I was looking forward to it a lot. Good. Then then objective met for the day on that particular topic. Yes, ma'am. All right, you have a good one, Holly. Thank you. You too, Mary. Bye.
 

Minnesota Half-Assed Homesteaders

Today I'm talking with El at Minnesota Half-Assed Homesteaders.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with El, Minnesota half-assed homesteaders. Good morning, El, how are you? Good morning, I'm wonderful, how are you? I'm great, it is a glorious day in Minnesota this morning. It's beautiful, I always love it when I can go out and do chores in the morning with a sweatshirt on and you have that perfect, like, cool weather. It just...
00:29It starts the day off perfect. Yeah, it's almost feeling like back to school day, used to feel when I would go back to school every year in Maine. So yeah, it's cool outside, but it's so sunny and everything's bright and shiny. It's lovely here. You are in Pine City? Pine River. Pine River, sorry. Nope, that's not it. And that's north of the cities, right? Yeah, we're in the Brainerd Lakes area.
00:55Oh, so you're up there. You're in the really pretty area of Minnesota. Yes. It's beautiful up here. Awesome. Okay. So two things, El and I were talking before I started recording. El's real name is Elspeth. And I was saying that that's one of the most beautiful names I've ever heard. And I thought she might be named after a family member, but no, she's named after a person in a book. So do you want to tell me about that? Yeah, absolutely. I don't ever remember the name of the book.
01:25But when my mom was pregnant with me, she was reading a book that had a good witch who was a steward of the earth and she would go around planting flowers and bringing life back to dead areas on earth. And her name was Elspeth. And my mom fell in love with the name.
01:52They were going to name me Rowena after my great grandma. Um, but once mom found that name, she really liked it. And my dad liked it because I'm the youngest of four kids and the last girl. Um, and he thought it sounded like a princess name. So he was okay with that. And then gave me the middle name of Prairie.
02:19Um, because he wanted to name me Prairie Rose. So they both kind of got to pick and ended up with Elspeth Prairie. I, like I said before, I think it's absolutely beautiful and how appropriate considering what you're doing with your life that you are named after, uh, a princess or whatever that, that basically stewards the earth. I, it's come to full.
02:46come to full fruition for me. And it's one of those things that now, especially since my mom has passed on, and I'm kind of keeping her legacy alive too in homesteading and foraging, natural medicine, things like that, that I realized that maybe she was, she was getting to something and kind of determining my fate before I even knew it. So.
03:13I feel like this podcast episode is going to be magical. That's how it feels from the start. Okay. So, and another thing, I love Minnesota half-assed homesteaders for a name. That is fantastic. We, you know, a lot of people who end up joining say, I joined because of the name. My husband and I started it about two years ago.
03:38kind of just as a way for us to document what we're doing on our homestead. Our successes, our failures, our challenges. And it kind of grew into this community. It was originally strictly for people who were in Minnesota. But then we found, you know, we had people who had growing or similar growing seasons that we have.
04:08and had similar interests and we wanted to have that diversity to be able to compare and contrast. So we started getting people from all over the United States and now we have
04:215,000 people, 5,400 I think in two years. So it's kind of grown into this fun little community of people who are like-minded. And our whole purpose for the name of the group is that we're not fancy. We don't necessarily, especially when we started, we didn't have a lot of money to put into.
04:49our homestead, but we knew that we wanted to make our own food, provide for ourselves and be as self-sufficient as we could. And I was joking one day saying, well, I guess we're just doing it the half-assed way. And that is how Minnesota Half-Assed Homesteaders came about because we do what we can with where we are and what we have.
05:19using plastic grow bags on the deck because we have horrible soil and we didn't know what our you know sun exposure was we didn't know where our best places to grow were and most of our yard was too shady for gardening anyway so over the last couple of years we've cut down trees and kind of expanded and built our way up.
05:47to having raised beds and chickens and ducks, and we're just gonna keep seeing where things go. But that's kind of how we started, was just working with what we have and just wanting to kind of build this dream for our future of being able to be self-sufficient in as many ways as we can be with the limited land and resources that we have.
06:17Yep, absolutely. I'm always saying do what you can with what you have where you are. Yep. And it's better to be half-assed than no-assed. So you're doing a good job. You know, exactly. And the other thing I like about it is that it implies that there's, you know, some amount of work that goes into homesteading. Some people think that homesteading is just, oh, I have this little vegetable garden and I just kind of putz. And
06:47Homesteading is hard work and it is a labor of love. It's a lot of dedication. It's a lot of heartbreak, but there's also a lot of joy that comes with it. And we wanted that to kind of be one of our messages too, of it's not for the faint of heart, but anybody can do it. And I get a lot of people that I talk to who say,
07:14Oh, I would love to have a homestead, but I don't have any land. I live in town and I want a garden. And, you know, I always point out, like we started with buckets on our deck. Um, and you don't even need buckets. You can use, you know, empty coffee containers and, you know, like empty food containers to get started. It's not something where you really have to put a big investment in right away.
07:44And once you figure out what works for you, then you can expand. Um, but that's kind of always been where, you know, I guess kind of the soul of our group and of our homestead has been with.
08:03being half-assed, but also, you know, it's a lot of hard work and there's a lot of failure. But at the end of the day, it is very fulfilling looking at our...
08:18cabinets looking at our pantry and knowing that we grew that, that we preserved that. Absolutely and my definition of failure is not doing anything. My take on my mistakes, which people would call failures, is that they're learning experiences.
08:42Exactly. And, you know, there's stuff that we've done that just has not worked out. But very rarely have we ever went, well, I guess we're done with that. We're never going to do it again. It's okay. Here's how we can do this better next time.
09:01Yeah, and the other thing is that sometimes things that you try, you can't make go because you don't have the conditions to make it go. Correct. So you can't count that as a failure because it's nothing that's beyond your control. Right. So, you said you started out small. Where are you now? How are you doing now? Now we have... Oh...
09:28Can I talk? You can talk. Hubby's here. My husband, Eric. Welcome, Eric. The other part of Half-Assed Homestead. Hi. He knows better on where we're at because he does all the building. I just help with procurement. Okay, sure. Chime on in, Eric. All right. Right now we're growing in about 70, 5-gallon buckets still. We have 22 raised beds that are around a 5-foot diameter.
09:57and 70 foot hugelkultur mound that's doing very mediocre. Okay. I also have just a shelter logic, 20 foot greenhouse with a few various greens and some starts in it. Awesome. Can you, can you do me a favor and explain what a hugelkultur mound is, how you, how you did that? Because I keep hearing about it. I keep reading about it, but I don't know how to explain it.
10:26Simply, it's just a compost hill you grow on. It's a fancy compost hill in simplest terms. Ours, I didn't do full horticulture because I didn't have the time to do it. I laid out just fresh cut and some forest fall trees we had in the yard in a long line. Put a little bit of dirt on it, let it sit for about two weeks to compress some, and then just pile dirt and straw on it. Okay.
10:54It so it ain't fully composting it has some hot spots where he just kills everything because some of the stuff is composting a little too well. I figured in five years, it'll be a good mound to grow crap on. And the whole kind of concept of a Hugo culture is that you basically create a self feeding self sustaining environment for whatever you're planting in there. So the
11:22tree fall and whatever you're putting underneath the soil ends up composting, which feeds your plants. And then because you have all of the extra wood and it's in essentially a stack or a mound, as it rains, that wood absorbs the water. So theoretically, you should never have to touch your hugelkultur. You shouldn't have to water it. You shouldn't have to fertilize it.
11:53this microclimate for whatever's growing on there. So right now we use that for our potatoes and then our squashes. So we did squash all along the top so that as they grow, they'll go down the mound so that they're easier to harvest. And then I also have my blueberry and my raspberries in the end of the mound. And then we just have wildflowers all over.
12:21I bet that's gorgeous right now, because this is the end of the season for wildflowers. It's mostly our zinnias and some of our nasturtiums. It was really pretty when all of our potatoes were blooming, because then we had the purple flowers all over the mound. We do still have quite a few squash blooms, but next year we're going to start over and really put down a lot of tack mulch.
12:49because the hardest part about maintaining it because it's kind of this, you know, natural microclimate is there is a lot of weeds. Yeah. So we're gonna do tack mulch at the beginning of the year so that we can kind of use that for some weed control to make it a little easier on ourselves so we're not spending an entire day weeding. Yes, because weeding is terrible.
13:17I hate weeding. I hate it. I don't want to do it and I don't do it because I'm not the gardener my husband is but I remember weeding with my mom in her garden and I despised every second of it. When I'm growing up with my mom in her garden, I also I hate weeding. I don't like it. I never have.
13:40And I, but I always wanted all of the goodies that came out of the garden. I wanted the fresh tomatoes and the fresh peas. And so my mom would be like, you didn't pay the weed tax, so you don't get any. You don't work, if you don't work, you don't eat. Yeah. If you don't work, you don't eat. And so I would go out to the garden and I would be more than happy to help pick stuff. But when it came to the weeding, I was like, I don't want to do it. And so my mom would.
14:04finally get to the point where, you know, she'd come in with these gorgeous peas and I'd want to eat them and she's like, you didn't come out to help weeds so you don't get any. Oh, that's, that's mean. I mean, I know it's tough love, but it's mean. Tough love and it teaches you that, you know, you need to work for what you want. And if you want it bad enough, you'll do the things you don't like. Yes. Yes, you will, because that's how it works.
14:31So how did you guys do with rainfall this summer of never ending rain in southern Minnesota? Because I don't know what it's been like for you. You know, we were pretty... Obviously, it was a pretty mild winter, so we didn't have the snowfall to start out the season with adequate moisture. But we did have a lot of rainfall. And...
14:58For us, in some cases, that's been nice because one of our biggest challenges with expanding the homestead and the gardening has been water sources. So last year we ended up putting in a well at the other end of the yard that's run off of our solar generator so that we can water everything at that end of the yard because that's our direct sun. It's, you know, it gets Northeast sun.
15:28Um, and that was our biggest obstacle. Uh, we, we didn't have a lot of success the year before last down there because we just, we were running hoses and our well that we have here wasn't enough to support it. So we're thankful this year that we have it, but we've had to use it very rarely because of
15:57the rainfall. Now, the other way that we designed our beds is it's a raised bed, but then in the middle of the bed is a five gallon bucket that has holes drilled into it in the bottom. And the purpose for us doing that is that when it rains, we can take the cover off and let it catch rain. So it'll help to water, kind of disperse the water throughout from
16:28the middle of the bed. But then we also, when we are weeding, or if we have, you know, a tomato that's gone bad, we put our compost into the middle of the bucket so that it can put the nutrients back into the soil so that we don't have to do as much soil amendments. That's brilliant. We also have started a couple of colonies of worms that we've kept going of red wigglers.
16:57And so each spring, we'll get a pretty healthy batch of worms going over the winter. And then we can just put a handful of compost and worms in the bucket in the spring. And then they help to aerate and spread the nutrients out, eat the compost. So that has helped having that set up so that it's not as
17:26you know, these solid beds that have to be watered. Um, that really has been beneficial for us too, even with the rain and having that, I think also helps with some of the drainage because we haven't really had overwatered stuff. We haven't had anything that's really drowned because of too much water. And I think that that's because of how we designed our raised beds. That whole.
17:56story of what you've done with that bucket and how you're using it sounds really simple, but it's also ingenious. It's really smart. It's, it is in the spirit of half-assed homesteaders. We try a bunch of different things and see if they work. And if they work, we ramp them up. So one of the other things that we did this year is we were gifted from somebody in our group.
18:24a water catchment system that had four large barrels. We decided it doesn't really work with our setup and we're going to do a water catchment system in the future. But we ended up taking one of those barrels and while I was at work one day, Hubby went and drilled holes and
18:53from the top to the bottom, I think we have six rows. The top was cut off and then we used a heat gun and actually a wine bottle to heat up the slits and then push the wine bottle in to kind of make it a cup. Yeah. To turn it into a planter for herbs and it's kind of my like salad planter. So I have chives and tomatoes in the top.
19:20Um, and then all of our herbs and lettuces around the side, but we did the same concept that we did with the five gallon buckets in that with using a four inch PVC pipe. So there's actually a four inch PVC that runs from the bottom all the way up to the top that has a cap on it so that when I need to water, just because, you know, it's a little closer together, it's a little bit harder to water all the way to the bottom.
19:50I just stick the hose in the middle and I let it fill up until it starts spouting water out the top. And I think I've probably only had to water that thing three times this summer. But then we can do the same thing with the compost too. So we just, you know, put a leaf matter or any weeds, anything like that down into the hole and between the water and the...
20:18the compost and the worms, it's been really, really healthy with all the plants. So we're hoping to do another one or two of those for next year. But we looked at it and it was just stuff that we had laying around. Most people have a chunk of PVC pipe and an old tub or something around to do it, but it really helps, we've noticed.
20:47you know, retaining moisture, being able to water easier, but also with our soil health. The ones where we kind of had bad soil to start with because we were using what we had. After two seasons of using the bucket with the compost and the worms, the soil is beautiful, and it is healthy. It's balanced, and we haven't really had a whole lot of issues with
21:17either because we do a lot of companion planting. So I think that all of that, we've kind of hit a sweet spot, so to speak, knock on wood. I hate to say that because I feel like we're deeming ourselves for disaster next year. But it's been a good year. And despite the lack of water in the spring, and then the constant rain all summer.
21:45I think our setup is kind of the perfect system for that. I am so glad that you have had a good growing season. We have not had a good growing season here in Lesor, Minnesota. No, Minnesota is rough. Yeah, I've talked about it a lot on the podcast already, so I don't want to get too far into it. But the one thing that it did teach us that we didn't know is that you don't have to
22:15to stake your tomato plants. We couldn't go stake our baby tomato plants this spring because it was a soupy mess in the garden. Could not get out there without sinking up to our ankles. And the tomato plants didn't die, they just stalled out. And we're pulling in tomatoes off those plants and they are literally laying on top of straw because we had to put straw in so that the fruits that were on the ground wouldn't rot. So you know.
22:44Our tomatoes are that are in our raised beds, the ones that are in the buckets we stayed up. Um, but our raised bed ones, we did not stake and they are, you know, taking over, they're laying on top of other stuff. They're hanging off the side. They're, you know, growing, laying on the ground and they are coming in like mad. Um, we had no idea that you didn't actually have to stake them.
23:14You don't. Generally when people recommend staking your tomatoes, it is so that you can get the appropriate airflow so that your, your vegetables, your tomatoes don't end up rotting, but you know, if you think about commercial tomato fields, they don't stake theirs, they don't trellis theirs, they don't do anything. They literally just.
23:42put them in the ground and they grow like bushes. Yeah, yep. So it hasn't been a total loss that we thought it was going to be this year. That's good. We have some, we have 50 young tomato plants that my husband Jess put in the actual garden, like a month ago. Oh wow. Cause we had them growing in the greenhouse. We put up a greenhouse in May.
24:08a hard side of greenhouse and my husband was smart and planted 50 more tomato plants from seed back in mid-June because he knew that we were going to have issues with the plants that were in the garden already. And those tomato plants look gorgeous. I looked out the other day and I was like, oh my God, look at that beautiful row of tomato plants. You know, and it's funny that you mentioned that because our tomatoes that we actually put in the bucket.
24:38did not, granted the sunlight that they get is a little bit different than the ones that are down in our actual raised beds. But the ones that we put in the buckets did not do well. Our plants didn't do very well, but they were the...
24:59the little, kind of the more, so we learned a big lesson this year that the soil that you use for your seedlings is vital to the health and abundance of your plant. Oh, yes. We had a bunch that we had used some compost mix that we had gotten from the store and it wasn't composted enough. So we ended up...
25:28burning all of our seedlings because they got too hot. So we started just doing our own mix of taking a big giant tub and doing a third potting soil, a third compost and a third perlite. Yep. And those ones, when we did our second start, our second set, because we saw that our first ones weren't doing very well.
25:54those ones did amazing and they're continuing. Those are the ones that are producing. I mean, the plants are so full. I don't know how I'm gonna get all the tomatoes out of them. But the ones that were in the first set that were in the less nutritious soil just did not do well. And so I'm glad that we went and we did do the second round of starting with new soil
26:25everything that we started with that first set just didn't do very well when we, you know, planted it with a hope and a prayer. But even the same tomatoes, the same kind from the same pack of seeds, the ones that were in the soil that got too hot were having a lot of issues with blossom end rot and with cracking.
26:49But the exact same ones that were started in the better soil, we haven't had any of those issues with. So it really is kind of amazing how you can just make one change, you know, with seed starting in a couple of different batches and really see the difference that that change makes either positive or negative. Absolutely. I can't agree more. And
27:18I end up talking about tomatoes a lot on this podcast because I happen to love tomatoes. I love spaghetti sauce. I love bruschetta. I love just a cucumber and a tomato cut up with some dressing on it. I love tomatoes. So if it seems like I talk about tomatoes on this podcast a lot, I do because I love tomatoes. Not everybody loves tomatoes. So I'm sure that I've had people like...
27:46leave because they're like, I can't listen to tomatoes anymore. Funny because I adore fresh tomatoes. I always have. Eric does not like them. So a lot of people who know that they're like, why do you guys grow so many tomatoes when he doesn't like tomatoes? So we grew one cherry tomato plant this year for me for like fresh tomatoes to have in salads or just to eat, however. Yeah. But we use a lot of tomato products as well.
28:15Um, and we love making last year. We did catch up. We did pizza sauce. We did pasta sauce. Um, we did our own barbecue sauce last year and you know, it's the stuff that we use on a daily basis and a lot of it is condiments, but you know, we're Minnesotans and it gets cold here in the winter and sometimes you just want to have, you know, spaghetti once a week. Um.
28:41So yeah, we talk about our tomatoes a lot as well, just because that's, I think, what we grow the most of, but it's because it's what we use the most of. Yeah, exactly. That's us too. And I would talk about cucumbers a lot, but cucumbers are not easily preserved. You basically preserve cucumbers by making pickles. That's pretty much it, because you can't freeze them, because they go to mush. And you can't just can a pickle. I mean, a tomato. I can't even talk. A cucumber.
29:11because it doesn't taste like anything if you just can a cucumber, you have to make them into something. So I love cucumbers, but I don't talk about them a lot because I don't use them in a lot. I eat them in season and that's pretty much it. So I was going to say about tomatoes, the other reason tomatoes are important is because they are a huge source of antioxidants and that's really important for your body. So that's the other reason that I eat a lot of them.
29:40I talk about tomatoes more than I talk about Maggie my dog. So I guess that's okay. Just change her name to tomato and then people- No, no. I can't do it. She's been Maggie since before we picked her up. So I can't change her name now. Yeah, we're known around town as the dog people and the garden people because that's-
30:06That's pretty much what we talk about. That's pretty much our lives is our dogs and our gardens. What kind of dogs do you have? We have three. So we have Bert. He is a King Corso Mastiff. So he's our big boy. Oh, yeah. Loves just this morning we were out in the garden. He loves fresh vegetables. And so his favorite thing is garden snacks. And even this morning, he was.
30:33sticking his head in the bean plant, pulling beans off of our bean bush. Oh, he even picks them himself. Oh, he will help himself to those and cucumbers. And he's not a huge fan of tomatoes, but his beans, cucumbers, he will help himself. He thinks that it's the greatest thing that mom and dad built him and all you can eat buffet. Okay. And then the other two dogs? The other two we have Sally. She's our golden doodle. She's our little...
31:00our little rescue we found actually Burt found her running down the middle of the road by us. Oh my. And went to save her. And then we have their not planned baby that we call our canoodle because she's a cane corso and a doodle cross. And Abby's so she's kind of the the best and the worst of both of us. Your canoodle I love that. That is so cute. Okay. All right.
31:29Well, if it makes you feel any better, Maggie loves winter squash. She loves slices of zucchini. She loves slices of cucumber. She loves watermelon, more than anything in the world. Our dogs are melon fans. I kind of thought that they would be. My other dog, Emmett, that I used to have, he loved melon, but Bert never really liked it and I think it's a texture thing. Yeah.
31:59We can't eat watermelon without Maggie sitting at our feet, being very, very well behaved and just staring at us like, can I please have a piece? And she doesn't, she's not a begging dog. Like we trained her not to beg. So her version of begging is just sitting politely beside you and waiting for a piece to be offered to her. Bert doesn't beg, but in the true nature of a mastiff, he will just sit there and drool. Yeah.
32:28two laces down the side of his face until you give him some. So that's his way of begging for food. Yeah. Maggie's way is being very pretty. She's a mini Australian shepherd and she's the classic black tri. So she has the gold beauty marks above her eyes. And she's beautiful. And she knows the face to put on to be like, I'm just waiting patiently. I'm being good until you give me some. Right.
32:57So she doesn't beg, she doesn't whine, she doesn't try to get your food, but she definitely makes herself available. They'll get someone when you're done. Yeah, and she just loves watermelon. If we cut a watermelon open on the counter, she hears the snap when it comes apart, and she comes running from wherever she is in the house and sits down and she's like, I'm ready and I'm pretty. Cool, good, we'll get to you when we get to you.
33:27So yeah, I try not to talk about Maggie too much anymore because I really talked about her the first six months of the podcast. So I'm like, it's gotta be relevant. So- Well, we talk about the things we love and the things that are important. And honestly, our dogs are a central part of our homestead. So it's kind of, we don't have kids, we've never had kids, don't ever wanna have kids.
33:56So it's, you know, our dogs are our babies, and then we have our chickens and our ducks, and they take up our time, so. Oh yeah, yep. We have four adult kids, and the youngest one still lives with us. He's 22. He'll be 23 in December, oh my God. And I don't talk about the kids much, mostly because they all, one lives in Florida, one lives in Nebraska,
34:26Minnesota not with us and then the youngest lives with us and the youngest doesn't want me to talk about him on the podcast. He's like, it's your podcast, don't talk about me. I'm like, okay, that's fine. So I don't really have little kids to talk about. I don't have medium kids to talk about and the grown kids don't want me to talk about them. Well, and that's why you have Maggie. I do. She's the kid that doesn't tell me not to talk about her.
34:55Usually she barks in the background. She's been real good this morning. I haven't heard her yip yet. So anyway, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me, Elle. It's been a pleasure. I apologize that it's taken us so long to connect. This ended up working out. I took a couple of days off from work to do the fall stuff. We're working on stew and soup this weekend. Hubby planted leeks.
35:25Yum. And they're doing amazing. So we are doing our beef stew that we put up. We are gonna try freeze drying that this year too. And then it's soup weekend. So we have chicken wild rice soup that we're gonna be making and potato leeks. So. I am so looking forward to fall soup season. I just mentioned this to my husband yesterday.
35:55I was like first cold weekend, I am making French onion soup. I am making chicken, wal-braise soup. I am making bacon potato soup. And if Cameron doesn't want it, he's our son, you and I are gonna eat it and I'm gonna freeze the rest of it. Because we didn't really do a lot of soups last winter. I don't know why, but we didn't. And I have just been craving soups. So as soon as it gets cold, it's gonna be like three weekends of soups going on. I am.
36:23eternally and will always be a soup girl. I used to say that I could live off of soup. Oh, me too. Eric is not a soup fan. He's not a chili fan. He likes everything that goes into them separately. Yeah. But he likes stew. He'll do that. But I am the soup person. So I know how you feel there. I did. Actually, we just pulled him out of the freeze dryer the other day.
36:51because last winter I made ham and bean soup and I made chicken enchilada soup for me for lunches for work. And I just, I made too many, you know, starts getting hot and you don't wanna eat soup. So we freeze dried them so that we can take them out on the ice this winter when we go ice fishing. So that'll be a new adventure for us too with our first actual like freeze dried meals. So we're really looking forward to doing that this winter.
37:20That's so fun. You're gonna have to message me and let me know how it was. I'm really, really hoping we have some winter squash growing out in the garden. I haven't dared to ask because I'm afraid that they didn't make it. But I love making squash soup too. So that's gonna be on list for like January, if we have any, I will roast it and freeze it. I'm looking forward to that too. And just fresh squash. Luckily, ours is doing okay.
37:48Emerald pumpkins are taking over everything. So we're going to definitely have a lot of pumpkin, but I'll have to figure out what to do with all that. Yep. And we're going to have to, the husband and I are going to have to get up to the apple place in Jordan and get some apples so that we can do some apple crust here in the next couple of weeks. Cause that is like the, the thing for September. Cause I make a killer apple crust. Where you're talking about and their apples are divine. Mm hmm.
38:17Yep. Um, I'm not talking about the, the apple barn though. I'm not talking about Minnesota's biggest candy store place. I'm talking about the one further up 169. And I'm not talking about Sponsles either. Uh, maybe that's one that I'm thinking of. But they do. Sponsles has great apples as well. They actually sold an apple called Minnesota 1666 about eight years ago. And they ended up renaming it, whoever developed it.
38:45renamed it the Renaissance Apple, which I thought was so funny. And it's an early apple. It's really hard to find because they aren't, there's not a lot of supply yet because it's a brand new variety. It is so good. It's great to eat. It's great to bake with. It's great to dry for like, you know, fruit leather or apple wedges that are just dried that just eat. Yeah. It's fantastic. Crack some of those down. Yeah. I love them.
39:14We won't get any this year. They're probably sold out by now because they're they're really early apple Okay, but anyway, we've been talking for almost 40 minutes. I try to keep these to half an hour So i'm gonna i'm gonna cut you loose. I'm sure you got stuff to do Yep, we gotta run to town and do some errands. So All right. Well again, it was an absolute pleasure talking with you l I appreciate it. Thank you so much You too. Thank you. And if you ever want to do this again
39:43would be more than happy. All right we'll have to set it up for spring so I can find out how your winter went. Yeah that's a great idea. All right cool thank you. You're welcome. Bye. Bye.
 

Makers Acres Homestead

Today I'm talking with Tracey at Makers Acres Homestead. You can also follow on Instagram.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Tracey at Makers Acres Homestead. Good morning Tracey, how is the weather in Tennessee today? Good morning. It is sweltering. I think we're going to have a record high today actually. So like...
00:28actual about 100 degrees. I'm not sure what feels like temperature will be, but I am so sorry to hear that. We had feels like temps two days ago of 110. Wow. In Minnesota. I'm going to say that's something from Minnesota. My goodness. Yeah. It was gross. You stepped outside and you were immediately misted. It was terrible. Yeah. And we were in a drought too. So my gardens are a hot mess right now, a little bit of a dumpster fire, but you know, you just kind of go with.
00:58We've got a pretty good dumpster fire going on with our gardens and absence. So may so I understand. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you're doing. Makers Acres Homestead. Yeah, well, we we do a few things where I maybe I should say I or I don't know my husband's kind of long for the ride and some of this stuff. I'm the person with all the ideas.
01:23I want to do about a thousand times more than I'm doing because my ability to execute everything doesn't keep up with all my ideas. But we named, we kind of gave it this property when we moved here five years ago from Michigan. We gave this property, we're on six acres and my parents have a home on the property as well that we moved them down to a couple years after we moved here.
01:51And Makers Acres is just meaning that we just recognize and proclaim that all this belongs to the Lord and this is His land, His property, and we truly just want to be obedient to Him in that and how He wants to use it. But back in Michigan, before we even moved, I really had this like dream that I felt like God put on my heart.
02:21to grow food and give it away to people, basically. And mainly because a little bit of just a brief backstory is I have really seen the power of nutrition change my health story and that of my family. And so I just recognize like everyone deserves access to fresh fruits and vegetables. And even back,
02:51before even my health transformation, we, for a time period during the crash in 08, we actually utilized some of the government services like food stamps and stuff like that because my husband lost his job. And so I have like this intimate knowledge of just that process and being a part of that, just that world. And I mean,
03:17It's fascinating. That's like a whole different rabbit trail. But when you can get candy and junk food and all that with food stamps, just as well as anything else, you're going for cheap because you're trying to make your dollar stretch. And so I think when anyone, whether they're using government assistance or not,
03:44When you're feeling that pinch in your budget, we're always trying to make everything stretch farther. And it's so easy to.
03:55just to compromise because unfortunately the system and the setup is where like junk food is cheaper than healthy food. And so we, I just really wanted to give everyone the access. Now I, you know, not everyone wants it. That's fine. I mean, I get that. And so there is an educational piece behind it. But
04:19I just really wanted everyone to have access to fresh food. And so that's what kind of started this idea in my heart to essentially grow it and give it away. And I personally use these vertical aeroponic tower gardens, a distributor for the company. And that's really how I got my start, zero green thumb, but I just wanted to grow food for my family. And
04:45Michigan soil is very sandy and I lived in a lot of shade and so My back porch was really the only place to grow so That's a nice. I started growing with those and I just realized how much I could grow in a small space So that's kind of what spearheaded that and that dream really took root once we moved to Tennessee and we bought this property and we're like
05:12Okay, so we actually, it's the name of that is called Maker's Pharmacy. And pharmacy is spelled F-A-R-M-A-C-Y. You know, just, you know, food is medicine. And so that's kind of the, the story in brief behind that. I'm sorry if I went off on a rabbit trail a little bit with your question, but. Nope. I want all the stories I can get. I am thrilled when people talk for five minutes about what they're doing. It makes me happy. Oh, good.
05:41So when did you move to Tennessee again? So we moved in the summer of 2019. Okay, so it's been like five years. Yes. Okay. Do you love it? It's been a really good move for us, yes. I mean, it was just really God. We had zero plans to move. All of our family lived in Michigan. Well, I shouldn't say all of my family did. My husband had a few.
06:09family members outside. And, but, you know, never, never planned on moving in that sense. And then just a few things happened. My husband really was feeling super frustrated at work, wasn't able to grow and, but it was like the best job he could get in the area kind of thing too. So you feel easily can feel trapped and I'm not going to lie.
06:38I mean, you live in Minnesota, so you get this. I was kind of over the winters. Oh, I'm getting there, yeah. And our actually, our oldest son had already graduated and he was living in Florida with my father-in-law. And so initially we started, it was like one of those like wild hair ideas that all of a sudden you just like start pulling that thread and God just seems to be like, yes, yes, yes. Let's see what happens next, yes.
07:06So we explored the idea of Florida initially, but I wasn't overly, I mean, I like it going to the beach on vacation or whatever. And I know not all Florida's beach, but it just, it didn't seem to be the fit for us. I had visited Tennessee a few times with my business and it still had four seasons, you know, albeit they're, they're different a little bit, but I just, yeah, we ended up, we ended up coming here.
07:35And it's been a nice like just in between place between all the family and then family continues to move closer to us now. That's always helpful. The reason that I won't leave, I will never live in a non northern tier state is I love the Four Seasons. I hate like with a purple passion, passion. I hate high summer when it's hot and muggy. And I hate low winter.
08:05mid January to the end of February when it's cold and icy and snowy or just cold. We didn't even get real snow last year. So what the heck Mother Nature is doing? I have no idea. We got like a foot of snow last winter. But I love spring. I love rolling into summer. I hate high summer and I love fall. God, I love fall.
08:35Michigan. It's not the same, but I'll take my mild winters. Yeah. Yep. This past winter here was crazy. And it was probably the mildest winter I have seen in the over 30 years that I have lived in Minnesota. It was crazy. So the reason I asked you if you love Tennessee is because I keep talking to people from Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, and the Carolinas.
09:02That's where most of the people I talk to who are growing things live. Most of you are homesteading live. And I'm like, well, maybe we should have moved to freaking Tennessee instead of state Minnesota. I don't know. Oh, you would hate the summer though. Yeah, I know. I know. But we're, we, we have basically found our favorite place on earth to live. So I can't imagine that we're going to.
09:27move again before we die. We found our dream home. We love it. We live here. We live here. I mean, it's not like it's where we lay our heads. It's where we live our lives. So, so I'm going to tell you this. It's really funny to me when people, it's not funny to me. It's unusual to me when people talk about God like he's their friend, like personal friend, because I am
09:57religious person I know. And it's not that I don't appreciate people who have faith, but it's just really unusual for me to hear anyone speak of God as if he's their best friend. So when people do, I'm like, oh yeah, people do that. I forgot. So if I seem weird about it, that's why. I just had a conversation with a lady yesterday and I was like, I'm the most Christian.
10:27un-Christian person you'll ever meet. And she said, how's that work? And I said, I try really, really hard to live by the tenets set forth by the Ten Commandments, but I don't go to church. I don't know if there's a God. I don't know if there's a heaven. I don't know if there's a hell. I don't know. And she was like, huh. She said, so you're Christian, but you don't ascribe to being Christian. I said, kinda sorta. She said, you're the most interesting person I've ever met. And I just laughed.
10:57So it's really interesting to me when people do have a strong faith and I'm always curious about it. So good for you. I'm glad that you have a strong faith and you remind me so much of the girls in the TV show Sweeping Magnolias. Sweeping Magnolias, is that what you call it? Sweet. Sweet Magnolias, I think it is. I don't think I've heard of that. Oh, I think it's on Netflix or Prime. I can't remember, but it's adorable.
11:24It's this little southern town with all these southern bells. It's so much fun. So anyway, we got way off track there. That's okay. Well, thank you for sharing a part of your story. Yeah. The reason that I am not a church going girl, and I can tell this story because I'm sure that the pastor of that church is long gone by now. When I was living in my little town of St. Paul's me when I was growing up, there was a pastor.
11:53and he did some very unsavory things, and I know it to be a fact because I got the facts, and that was the church that I went to when I was a teenage girl. And the people involved were teenage girls in that church. I luckily was not involved. And I used to go to Sunday school there, and I found out what happened, and I went home from Sunday school that day, and I said, I need you guys, my parents, to verify if this is true.
12:23And they did. And I said, I'm never going back to church. I'm not. And I know that churches are not God. Like it's where people go to worship. It's where they go to commune and learn. But it put me off it pretty hard. So that's why. Yeah, I respect that. On behalf of
12:52Christ followers, I'm sorry. I apologize on behalf of people in authority that have not walked humbly before the Lord and obedience to Him. And unfortunately, unfortunately, I mean, I'm not making excuses. We all, everyone, I don't care if you're a leader or what authority position, we are all in need of a savior because we have all fallen short.
13:22But when you're in a position of authority, that, yeah. I mean, so many people, it's sad to me. I mean, sad's just not even the right word. How many people have been hurt, grieved, grieved and abused by the church when that is truly not the heart of God? Yep, no, no, it's not. But I was like 15 when I found out about this. And I was just like, nope, if I wanna talk to God,
13:52I'm gonna go for a walk in the woods and I'm gonna have a chat with God. That's where my church is. So anyway, we're getting real deep on this. The other thing I wanted to touch on is I'm so proud of you for wanting to feed people. Make sure that people have good nutritious food. And I will tell you why. There was a period in my life back when I was in my twenties where I didn't eat a lot of food because I didn't have a lot of money.
14:21And I learned what it actually feels like to be truly hungry. You know, I was eating one meal a day and I felt really lucky to have that. And hunger is a weird thing because you can get used to it. You can adjust to it. And I lost weight. I didn't, I didn't get too skinny, but I lost weight for sure. And hunger, if you have never felt it before, feels like the inside of your stomach.
14:48one side of your stomach is rubbing the other side. That's what hunger feels like. You also get like your brain gets cloudy because it's not being fed. Yeah. Hunger is not a fun place to be. So really, really happy that you're doing what you're doing. So tell me how you're doing it. How are you feeding people? How are you feeding your community?
15:18vertical gardens. We use those primarily, but then this last year I actually received a couple raised beds and trellis from Vago Gardens. They donated to us and so that's allowed us to expand our offering because the vertical gardens
15:40can grow so much, but they are a little limited to, they cannot grow root vegetables because it's not, it's a soil-less system that we use. And so, and it's, you know, root, so I'm not growing onions. So I'm growing onions, potatoes, carrots, that kind of thing outside of those towers. I can do that in the raised beds and stuff like that. So that kind of gave us some more options. And so we partnered, like the,
16:10Last couple years, we just kind of play it by, well, I don't know if play it by ears is exactly the right term, but each year we approach it. Each year we approach it differently and see who we can serve. My goal or our vision is more to, I'd rather go deep with one organization than do a little bit with a bunch of organizations, if that makes sense. So Yep.
16:38I'm not trying to be a food pantry itself. I want to partner with the organizations and ministries, whatever, that are already working and have relationships with people in the community that they're serving. So we've worked with a couple in the past, we've worked with a couple homeless shelters that serve a few meals during the week and or give out food bags.
17:07this year we partnered with a ministry that's actually serving women that have gotten out of sex trafficking and sex exploitation and they're kind of in a rehabilitation home. And so we've helped provide fresh food for them. And you know, when you start something
17:37morph as you go because, you know, for example, when you're serving, so when I'm serving this home that is, that has women that live there and I can provide for them and they have a kitchen and they can make stuff, you know, that is, that's different than even when I'm providing food bags for, for largely.
18:02The homeless are on I think on houses, the more politically correct word. It's the new word. Yes. But, um, you know, like, so with them, I'm like, I've packaged up some cucumbers and some cherry tomatoes, cause I'm like, you can just eat those going down while you're walking down the street or sitting at the park or whatever, you don't have to have a kitchen, you know, to prepare that. So it, I, I. Totally.
18:32I would say I started with a lot of ignorance, but God is so faithful to just, He can do so much with obedience. You don't have to be skilled and completely knowledgeable or educated and all the things you want to do. You just, a little bit of ignorance on fire and you show up and He does the rest. So like I said, we're changing kind of what we do from year to year. And then
19:00I'm going to be completely transparent with you. OK. We are actually, just last week, our board, we voted to put it on hold to go dormant in a gardening term, whatever, for the winter. So last fall, we did raise money. Last fall, we put up a greenhouse so that the towers are in the greenhouse.
19:30That way, the goal is to be able to grow year round in a greenhouse. So that was the vision. We haven't been able to complete all that work yet financially, but as far as like wiring the greenhouse for all that. We put it on hold largely because I kind of got burnt out. It happens. Yeah. Well, and...
19:56And I want to say this very carefully because I don't mean any disrespect to anyone board members or people that partnered with us, but.
20:08no one will work as hard for your dream than you will. And I totally understand that. But yet, we got to a place where I'm like, I cannot do everything. And so alongside, I have a business, I homeschool my boys, I'm a wife, I'm a caregiver for my parents. There's just so many different
20:37this ministry can become and did become, especially during peak growing season, easily at least a part-time job several hours a day. And it just became where I just couldn't do it. And then it got to where even if I could do it, I didn't want to do it anymore. But not from a like, I didn't believe that it wasn't important. It just was like, I am tired of doing this by myself.
21:07I don't know, I'm working through that a little bit and I feel good with putting, essentially closing it down for the winter. I mean, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I fight like, oh my gosh, did we do something wrong or did I try to make something happen before it was the right time? You know, where have I failed or whatever.
21:38I just have to surrender it and release it and just trust what God is doing and trust the process. And we'll see, you know, I just, I need more people to come around to make it actually work. Yes. And you have not failed. You have started something wonderful. And I'm going to be completely transparent with you. I'm going to bust my everloving hiney over the next couple of weeks to get some episodes recorded and banked.
22:07So I can take a week off from recording because my house needs a humongous cleaning. Oh girl. I know. And I'm, and I'm, I'm starting to find that trying to do a, a interview a day every day is a lot. Yeah. So I'm going to try to do a few extras a week so that I have some bank so that I can take like four days off from recording.
22:34so that I can get stuff organized so I feel like I'm more focused on the podcast when I'm focused on it. And I think that you taking the winter to, number one, give it a rest, number two, reevaluate, and number three, figure out where to go from here, is healthy. That is not a terrible thing to do. I agree. I...
23:00Like I said, I'd be lying if there weren't those doubts, but at the same time I reached such a place where I'm like, I just, I don't even know if I can say this, but it's like, I don't even, I care, but at the same time when you're so tired and weary, like I don't care what happens either. There's a word, I'm not going to use it. You have no Fs.
23:27to give at this point. Yeah, I know what you mean. And there's another term, out of spoons. When you're tired, when you're done for the day, I have friends and I learned it from them that say, I'm out of spoons. I just, I can't keep going right now. So if you don't want to use the F one, you can use I'm out of spoons and people look at you funny. You just say, I'm just out of gas. I can't keep going right now.
23:51Yeah, and I just felt like it's like a season for me to withdraw. It's not like the right word either because I don't, it sounds a little bit of a negative connotation, but it is just to be like, okay, I am just setting some boundaries and I'm just focusing on my home, my family and my business. And like you said, I mean, I'm just working through even
24:13some basic cleaning projects around my home and property because it just gets neglected when you're going in 20 directions. Yep, it sure does. If you could see the back of my stove in my kitchen right now, you'd be like, Mary, why did you not clean your stove for a month? Because we don't have a vent above our stove. We don't have the thing that blows the grease out because it's just not set up that way.
24:38I can't seem to find a place that has one of those when I live in it. It just never shows up. But my husband and my kid love bacon. They love burgers. So grease gets everywhere when you don't have one of those hood vents. I have got to, got to this weekend clean that because it's driving me insane. It's going to feel so good when you do that. Oh, you're going to be so proud of yourself.
25:06And nobody else really cares. And I don't really care because nobody really visits here very often. Cause that's how my life is set up. I'm not a people person. I don't have people over very often, but when I'm looking at it and going, that's just gross, I got to take care of that. It's time. And it's just, there are so many things that you have to make choices about every day about what you're going to do and what's going to wait. And, and I looked at your Instagram.
25:35page feed, whatever they call it. You have lots going on. Yeah. So don't beat yourself up. Mentally hug yourself. Say that you're taking care of you and do things you need to take care of you. It's okay. And don't lose hope because once you take a break, you get yourself together. You figure out what you want to do. You're going to have renewed energy to make the next thing even better.
26:06Yes. And I sound like a cheerleader, but that's what I would tell myself. I'm going to tell you. Yeah. So, and I'm assuming you're not going to go anywhere. You're still going to be available online on Instagram and Facebook. Oh, yeah. People can still learn about stuff from you. I love, I love talking about it. And I love, and like, I love equipping and inspiring others to, you know, to provide for their family and have hope for the health of their own family, as well as
26:36you know, to be able to operate in the plans and purposes God has for them and designed for them too. So I love, I'm the worn out woman and maxed out mom right now, but I love to champ. I really love championing them because I've been there. I am there. And, but I know it's not our story forever. It's just a chapter. Yeah. And the thing I've learned in 54 years is everything is a chapter. Yeah.
27:05Every stage of your life is a chapter and sometimes you have to go back and read past chapters To figure out what maybe the direction of the next one is Yeah I've had to I I have and to remember what is like Remember how you've changed and grown through every chapter because of the chapter, too Yeah, the thing I hang on to is you can only make decisions based on what you know at the time and so
27:35I refuse to see anything I've ever done as a mistake. I see it as a learning experience. Yeah. I tell people that about gardening all the time. It is always an adventure and experience. The best gardeners have killed many plants. Oh yeah. So I actually did a post about this the other day. I said, I was talking, the video of my dad cucumber plant, even the healthiest plants, they come to an end. They have a season.
28:04But it's like, I don't regret planting that. I don't think it was a waste of time. So I shouldn't view where I'm at and just where Maker's Pharmacy is at either that way. I should just, it's just a season. It is and hang on to that because it will keep you sane. There have been days in my life where I have looked around and gone, what the hell am I doing? Why? Burn it all to the ground.
28:31Why am I doing this? Well, how did I even get to where I'm doing this? You know, just having one of those terrible days. And I haven't had one in quite a while, but I remember the last one I had, it was probably eight, nine years ago. Frustrated, beyond measure about something, and just mad, you know, horny mad. And I called my mom and I was like, I need to vent, because my mom's real good about that. She's like, you call anytime you want to talk. So I called her, I was like,
29:01This thing is going on. I know I did it to myself because I made these choices, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, yes. I said, having a bad day. She was like, yep, that happens. She said, I have compassion for you and I'm glad that you called the vent because that's what I'm here for. She said, but you need to sleep on this. She said, go on with your day. Try to find some good things in it. Get some sleep. Look at it tomorrow morning. It will probably look better. Love, my mom.
29:31So I got off the phone and I basically hiked up my big girl pants and finished my day and went to sleep and actually slept. That helped too. Got up next morning. I don't know why I was so mad yesterday. This is easily fixable. I just need to change some things. It's okay. And the other thing I'm going to say, I was thinking about this this morning, is that sleep is as important as food. I, my husband, my husband snores.
30:00And I go to bed early so I can get at least four hours solid sleep before he comes to bed because half the time he comes up, he doesn't snore, I'm good. Other half of the time he snores like a chainsaw and I get no sleep. And four nights in a row of no really good sleep will make me really, really angry. So, so people, good food is really important, but good sleep going hand in hand with nutrition is really important. Yes.
30:31Yes. Amen. Amen. I will join you on the amen on that one. So, so it's all about, I mean, you're tired. I know you're tired and you're busy and you're trying to give of yourself and that is a noble, wonderful thing. But if we don't take care of ourselves, we can't take care of anybody else. And this whole podcast today has been very, very new agey, coachy.
31:00And that's not what the podcast is really about, but it really does apply because when you're trying to do things like grow produce or raise animals for meat or heck raise kids, cause you wanted a pastel of kids, it's all very big and very tiring and very good makes you feel great when it works, but you have to be good in yourself to be able to do it.
31:29So I think it's appropriate. I think that this whole 30 minute conversation was really important today. Good, I hope that it encourages someone and just they feel seen and know that there is hope. It's okay, like you said, we have bad days. We have rough, hard seasons. It's been a hard year, but it's laying the ground for something better too. And I just.
31:58I put my hope and my trust in Lord Jesus. Yeah and I'm not religious at all but I'm going to say this and people are going to laugh at me. Maybe God put me in your path for me to talk to you about this today. Yeah, God uses, God can use anyone. Was it they believe in him or not? Exactly and I figure he has a very good time doing that. He's like, I'm going to let her know I'm here whether she thinks I am or not.
32:28All right, Tracey, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're there and I really appreciate you being so open with me. That was great. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for the invitation. You're welcome. And thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. Thanks. Have a great day. You too.
 
 

The Steady Home

Today I'm talking with Lexi at The Steady Home.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Lexi Maitland, and I don't really have a business name for you. So good morning, Lexi, how are you? Hey, Mary, I'm good. And our business is The Steady Home, but how are you? The Steady Home, yes. I think that's how I found you, but I completely forgot.
00:29No, that's okay. I'm well. It is not stiflingly, miserably humid and hot here today. So... Oh, I love that. I love that. Now, where are you, Barry? Minnesota. In what part of the country? Minnesota. Nice. Yeah, it's like 90, I think 93 here today. So it's a little toasty on my end. And you're in Virginia? I am. Just south of Richmond and Dimwitty. Okay. Yes. All right. So before we get into what you do...
00:57I have a little minor self-promotion thing to say. Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my podcast. What? I'm so excited for you. I saw it on your Facebook yesterday. I was like, oh my gosh, that's so exciting. Yeah. And I just wanted to thank all my guests. I'm upset. I'm like, I'm shook up here. All my guests and all my listeners. Because when I started this, I didn't think it was going to do.
01:27anything at all. So one year is a big deal. It's a massive deal, Mary. Your discipline through your podcast. I mean, you do multiple a week. I listened to a podcast not long ago and you said that you did nine interviews within a week. So I just want to congratulate you because it is not easy doing a podcast by itself, but your discipline and the community that you've created within your podcast has been amazing. I've loved listening to you.
01:57Well, thank you. And if I didn't love it so much, I wouldn't be doing it. Well, you do a great job. I love it. Thank you. I didn't realize I was going to tear up, but boy, what a year it's been. Yes. Take that moment for you. That's amazing. So, that's my teary moment for the day, I guess. So, anyway, thank you everybody for supporting me. And so, tell me about the study home, Lexi. Tell me all about you. Sure.
02:25a little bit about me. I grew up on a little over a hundred acre farm most of my life throughout my whole childhood and when I hit adulthood I had I thought I had been sheltered and so I thought maybe the city offered more to life and so I shifted to a smaller city and then I quickly came back to my to my roots and so how you found me I think was through
02:53the Facebook group that I created. And so I'll get into a little bit about that. But how I started homesteading was my daughter, personally, I mean, I grew up on a farm, but personally started homesteading within my own home and cultivating that throughout my family was my daughter was born in 2021. And after the massive push for the COVID Vax and the boosters, I started doing my own research and questioning what feels like everything.
03:20So when I started, I started a little Facebook group in November of 2023 to help others find a community of information and to feel safe in asking some of those difficult questions specifically for beginners. And since I started the group the end of last year, we've grown to over 97,000 in the group and our active newsletter subscribers reached a little over 40,000 now. So we have a total of 60 but active are right at 40,000.
03:49Um, so we've, we've done some, a lot in a short timeframe and I feel like it's been a little overwhelming. So I understand celebrating your first year. There's so the, the grind and the hustle that first year is, is, um, you know, some of the best work I believe through that discipline. So again, hats off to you. Um, so since I started the group, um, yeah, we've, we've
04:16We've done a lot. And so we've done, we've created like homestead workshops, we've created a membership, we have, you know, the newsletter and now, you know, we're inviting sponsors to sponsor the newsletter that are aligned with our audience. We've done a membership, we've started a little blog on Pinterest and yeah, it's been, it's been quite a year. So that's kind of like a gist and you know, what, what we're up to within this.
04:45quote unquote steady home. It feels kind of cliche to say it publicly, but I really wanted to create more sustainability within our home and we ran a solar company for a little over five years. And so we really were immersed into sustainability before we were immersed into homesteading. So now we've got the basic homestead animals, the chickens, the goats, canning and.
05:13growing our little raised gardens and now we're getting ready to the big dogs now. So we're pretty excited. And it was just a, it was a lonely journey when I first started. So I didn't want that for anybody else. And so that's why I created the Steady Home and the little Facebook group and it's just grown immensely. You got some big numbers going on there, ma'am. Yeah, it's been quite a, it was wild.
05:40to be honest with you because I had only started this group in Virginia. And I think because of the beginning of the group, it says getting started, homesteading and natural living. I think a lot of people, at least towards the end of the year and the beginning of this year, started growing within the nation. And so what was meant for me to just find my people in Virginia, it quickly grew to nationwide. So we're looking to see how.
06:08We can kind of connect everybody. So right now we have within the Facebook group, we have all the states, all 50 states. And you can go in there and introduce yourself, figure out who within the chats, I'm sorry, within the chats, you can go in there and say, I'm from Dimwitty, Virginia, and who's around me? And they'll shout out and say.
06:33I'm in Prince George, I'm in Chester, and everybody kind of gets excited because you start finding all of the people that are also on that same journey of getting started within homesteading and natural living. And so it's been amazing. I absolutely love this journey. You've created a network so that the tribe can find its people. Yes. Yes, I have. Good job. You're a connector. That kind of feels...
07:01very fitting. That feels fitting for me. I found that I've really enjoyed operations within business and, you know, helping people kind of work up the hierarchy ladder and, you know, who they would manage well and looking at their skill set. And so this just kind of feels like my skill set is, I just like to connect things, connect the dots. Yeah, and I'm a systems girl. I really like having a system for things.
07:28Yeah, which is real hard when my husband has ADD and wouldn't know a system if it bit him on the butt. So, so yeah, it's a part of the reason I started the podcast is because it's mine. It's the only thing that's mine. I have a system. I know how it works. I work the system. This system works. Yeah, I get it. And you you partner pretty well too. And just finding your network for your podcast host, you know, who you want to host with and making sure that they're aligned, they're aligned
07:58your goal as well. So Mary, if you don't, I know you typically ask the questions, but I have a question for you if that's okay. That's totally fine, I think. So what is your mission with the podcast? Like what is the origin story of A Tiny Homestead and what is your long-term vision for A Tiny Homestead? What would you like to see? Well I've told the story a couple of times, but I'll tell you real quick. My son was going
08:27four kids. He was going to be leaving in September last year and he was going to go stay with his brother for a while, which is totally fine. They're really good friends. It was just going to be me and my husband. I was like, I need a project because otherwise I'm going to go through that empty nest thing hard and that's going to suck. I need a new baby. I had really been wanting to do something that actually used my talents. I was like,
08:56And I wanted to do a podcast, but I don't know what it is. And I talked with my husband about it, and he's like, just keep throwing ideas at me. One of them will stick. And after a month or two, I was like, how about interviewing people who are doing homesteading, cottage food producing, and crafting, because that's what we're both into, and other people would learn from it, and it would be really fun, and I wouldn't get bored with it. And he was like, yes, do that.
09:23Oh my goodness. That was so perfectly aligned for you guys. So that's how it started. And then my son actually moved back two months after he moved out. And I've told this story already, too, but I'll tell it again. He was like, I have a doctor's appointment. Can you take me? And I had told him when he got back that you need to put stuff on the calendar because I have a calendar now that is booked. It's all it. And.
09:49I was like, I have an interview at that time. And he was like, can you reschedule it? And I said, yes, but this is why we need to put things on the calendar. And he has since he's let me know every time when he has something going on that he needs a ride to. Very long story on why he can't drive right now. He has a thing going on that he has no control over and I can't talk about it. I'm not allowed to. So it's.
10:16He's home living with us for very, very good reasons. There's nothing bad that he's done. So the long-term plan, I don't know, until I am bored of talking with people who are brilliant and inventive and creative and geniuses. Do you ever get bored of that, ever? Not really, no. And I mean, the long, long-term plan is that it brings in some supplemental income to put toward the homestead here.
10:46Yes. Oh, that's an amazing vision. I love that. Yes. And I actually had my first sponsor two Mondays ago, trial sponsorship two Mondays ago for two weeks. And I just monetized it that same day. So I had my first sponsor and monetized it in under a year. Oh, my goodness. That's an amazing milestone, Mary. That was the goal for the first year and I didn't think I'd hit it. So Oh, gosh.
11:15Yeah, you hung on to that vision. Even with a little bit of self-doubt, you did amazing. That's so exciting. I figured if I didn't think I would make it, I would be so excited if I did, and I wouldn't be disappointed if I didn't, so. I get it. There's pros and cons. But also, the other thing I wanted the podcast to do is get the word out about all of you guys doing the things you're doing. Because it's really hard to market if you're not a marketer. It is.
11:45It is. Yeah, that's something that I've learned to grow as, especially, you know, running a solar company for the last five years. We really adjusted to, you know, the different marketing strategies on the different platforms, having the different channels and what speaks to this person doesn't speak to that person. And so it's always interesting to test, you know, different ways of the delivery channel and then, you know, what makes people bite.
12:15Um, and so I've, I've really loved that part of the life that we've created is, you know, learning the different styles of personality within the people too, because, you know, you'll have a voice for people that I won't ever have a voice for. And you know, my channel is not, is not a podcast. And so the people that you reach in collaboration with, you know, those two different audiences is
12:42is a very strategic way for you to grow your podcast. So that's incredible, Mary, I love that. So that's the shorter version. The short version is I needed a hobby, so I picked one up. That's the simple version. Yeah. That's amazing. So what do you guys do exactly? Sure. So when I started the Facebook group, I really wanted to just create a community where people feel safe in asking the questions.
13:11It took me personally two years to really just understand the basics of homesteading and natural living. A ton of trial and error, hours of research, reading through tons of blogs on Pinterest and watching the YouTube videos to learn what I know today and picking my grandparents' brain too. I still feel like I know very little about homesteading if I'm being completely honest.
13:41people can jump in and ask the questions that they think are silly. I think that there's a big push since the keyword, I'm sorry, the C word, to take back some of the control and question everything. And if there is one thing I've learned, it's if I'm interested in something someone else is too. And so that I trust I'll personally pioneer the path to learning and then educating as my give back for my active service. So...
14:10I have a, I created my mission last month through this workshop that I was doing. And my mission is to educate sustainability through homesteading and cultivate an abundant mindset. I think a lot of times in homesteading, it can be perceived as limited or minimalist or frugal. And the sub effects could impact our own mindset and that we have a limited resources or a limited supply because it's what we've created off of our.
14:39our own land. So my goal is just to cultivate the overflow mindset and the abundance mindset. So that way there's, you know, always more within their own little family, because I think a lot of the people that I touch are the either the homemakers or the people that are, you know, working the nine to five job want to control some of the things that are going into their children's bodies, their own bodies.
15:09what the better goal of the government is. And so just having like more more control within their own home and what goes on for their children. So we have with our membership, we have we like to just turn down the noise of the Internet and turn up their action into Homestead and Natural Living. And so we have tutorials on all things Homestead based on.
15:37research that we've done. We've cultivated many, many different blogs that we found extremely helpful through the two-year journey that I have and so that I did within my first two years. And so just kind of finding those resources that really impacted my journey that I felt were extremely educational. So we've condensed the amount of information that a lot of people can just go on Pinterest and search for. Within our
16:05newsletter, we do three personalized emails. So we have like a DIY, DIY email and educational email and then homemade recipes. Those are the three dedicated emails that they get within the membership. And then we also do giveaways. And then they have access to pre-launch within the merch because we have like a small e-comm store. And
16:31Let's see, I'm trying to think of what else. They get discounts on our website. They get discounts with our partner brands. One of the things that we are working on is for the beginner homesteads. They don't, homesteaders, they don't have a lot of assets on their homestead, but we still want to ensure what they do have. We have, within our group, we have beginner homesteads, stutters, intermediate homesteaders, and advanced homesteaders. And so one of the things that
17:01we've seen within our community is that somebody's homestead caught on fire and they lost so much equipment and animals in their barns. And so one of the things that I really touched my heart is that the community themselves chipped in to get them back on their feet, get them back. And they were living off of their land. They didn't have full-time jobs. Their entire living was based on their own homestead. And so when that happened, they felt like...
17:30they went to nothing. And so when I saw that, I was like, Oh my gosh, I wonder if there is insurance that protects homesteaders for in an event for a fire. And luckily everybody was safe. Um, minus some of the, the barnyard animals, they, but there was nothing that I could find that really protected the smaller homesteaders. There were things for, you know, the larger farmers. And so that's one of the things that we're looking at.
17:59to turn our membership into an actual homestead association. So that way we can lend a helping hand in the event anything happened. They're also protected through the Homestead Association. So that's in the works that'll probably be live within the next 45 days. So that's been really interesting. So I've basically buckled down and just put my head down, figure out what people want. That's the most, that's the creative.
18:28Part of me that I absolutely love is just learning what other people are looking for. You can typically share what those journeys are based on what you've already been through. Because I was able to look at the last two years, all of my Pinterest, my massive Pinterest board, look at the things that I changed within our own home, I was able to create a community within my little network. Then I was like, well,
18:57Let's create a Facebook group because I'm sure there's more people out in Virginia that I don't know that I'd love to connect with. And so that was the, that was the idea. I think I created, I created the group back in November and then it caught wind November, December, and January. And in January is when we took it nationwide just for other people to find their people. Um, I figured I didn't.
19:26I don't want to be selfish and just kind of keep my little network. And so I just created a bunch of different chats for each state and so that way everybody could find their own. So it's been a blast. I absolutely loved it. It's had its challenges. Some people would be in the group and given false information.
19:50And so that's been really interesting. Just, I had to hire an admin just to accept the amount of group members that we received in a little over 10 months. Um, and so I had to hire an admin and I was like, okay, I'm, you know, I'm paying for this out of my pocket, which is fun, but it'd be really nice if, you know, we could just somehow offset some of the costs. And so that's why we started the membership, just so that way we could have, you know, I couldn't.
20:16hire somebody to write the newsletters and so that way I could focus on my full-time job of running another business. The entire idea was not to monetize the Facebook group. The entire idea was to just create friends, create a little network for myself. With every startup, there comes its challenges and there comes their delegation.
20:46So that's the idea of the membership. And we have a little over 300 people that are within the program currently. And we're consistently seeing growth every single day. So it's been awesome. Super cool. I love that. I love it. I love it when people are like, I'm gonna do this thing. And then it just keeps exponentially growing like a spider web, you know? It really has. I think the coolest part is just seeing it.
21:14the different levels of homesteading. It's like, we have, you know, people within the Facebook group that'll ask the most basic questions and you can tell that they just feel bad or they'll ask, you know, questions and be anonymous. And then you'll also have, you know, people that will talk about, you know, the insemination of different animals. And it's like, huh, I haven't gotten there yet. You know, there's levels to this game. But it's...
21:43It's really, really cool to see just how the community itself can be like help just has an active service to help. You know, I've been there, let me help you with that. You want to learn sourdough. Okay, first you need a starter. Here's how you start. Here's the, you know, portions. And so, just seeing the different people kind of jump in and be so resourceful within their own life and then want to give back to the people that are in the beginning stages has been.
22:13incredible. Yeah, the thing I've learned over the last year is that most people I've talked to, whether they're bakers or they're crafters or they're homestudders, they're all genuinely happy and willing to share help and information. And I love that because the world is so small, but so disconnected sometimes. It really can be. And I think the disconnection even
22:43has been a massive push for the last few years. I think that's what the pandemic did to a lot of people is kind of cut off the social and the bartering. And I'm seeing a lot of people go back to the bartering lifestyle. And that's been amazing too. I guess you can call her my mother-in-law. She's got chickens and they're producing eggs and she's so excited about it.
23:13And her neighbor across the street has like opened up a little farm stand for blackberries and blueberries. And she was like, Oh my gosh, I wonder if they would trade for my, my eggs for their blackberries and blueberries. And I was like, they absolutely will. Like you just have to, you have to make that connection. And so it's interesting to just see people be a little more hesitant to just going up to people and asking them, Hey, you know, would you be interested in, and maybe swap in or doing this service?
23:44Yeah, we've done quite a few within the last few months. We've provided sourdough starter to a couple hundred people within the group. We created a seed swaps chat within the group too. So people are swapping seeds. We did that in the spring and every morning we do a Bible devotion within the Facebook group. I'll go into the Bible app and
24:09read the devotion and copy and paste it into the Bible devotion app. And there's been, I think there's like over 3000 people in that, in that individual chat. And so that's been really cool to see too. So there's a lot in the works. I think people are really kind of going back to their roots. I think there's been so much more awareness that has peaked over the last few years. And I think it's.
24:38for the better, especially with, you know, the different bioengineered foods that are coming out, you know, genetically made eggs and things like that. So just people taking back that control and responsibility in their own life has been really awesome to see.
25:05They're all kind of winding down on giving us eggs and feeding chickens just to feed chickens is not the plan. And so over the winter, we're going to be buying eggs at the store. We haven't done that in four years. Oh my goodness. Are you considering getting chicks again or just... Next spring, yeah. Next spring. Gotcha. Yeah. We did a workshop not too long ago. One of the girls... One of the...
25:31group members named Caitlin did post a workshop on how to process a chicken. And so I'll have to send you that video because if, have you already, have you already or ever called a chicken before? Yes. Yes, we have. So this is new for you. Yeah, but it's good that you have that because a lot of people have never called any animals. So right. But we're going to take the healthiest chickens because there's still like four of them that are fat and sassy and look really healthy.
26:00and we're going to dispatch them and then we're going to roast them up in our roaster and make chicken stock and hand the chicken stock. Oh, that's so perfect. So they're not going to go to waste. No, no. And you could savor every single part, almost every single part. We have a friend and not too far, he's been an hour and a half away from us and him and his wife also process chickens and they do a big batch twice a year. I believe it's twice a year.
26:30I've bought quite a few chickens from them just to get away from the grocery store. And anyway, it was really crazy to see the difference in a chicken that was raised and processed on a local farm versus the store-bought chicken. I could not believe the difference in the taste. And it is a little bit more expensive, but for me, it's so worth it.
26:58Just to know where things come from and you know what goes into their bodies and you know what they're what they're feeding them so I think that's the that's the way to do it is support the local farm stands and support the local farmers that are Getting off, you know their feet to to process because that is not an easy job After watching the workshop video. I was like, wow, this is insane. And I had no idea how much work went into just plucking
27:28So it's a lot of hard, good work. Yeah, I was going to say, it's relatively hard. I don't think it's difficult. I think it's time. It's a lot of time involved. Yes, if you don't have the proper equipment, it does take quite a bit of time. Yeah. So I have a rather pointed question. It's going to sound pointed. I'm not trying to be a snot. I just need to know.
27:57Is your, is the study home your only business or do you guys like garden or do you have animals or do you do any of those things? Yes, we do. So we have, let's see, Martha, we have goats, we have Nigerian dwarf goats. My first goat that we got, her name is Martha, she just had her first, she just went into, I guess came out of kidding season.
28:24And we just pulled her babies from her last week. So we have five total now Nigerian Dwarf goats. And then we have, let's see, one, two, three. I think we're at either 11 or 12 chickens. So very small. And then we have the raised garden beds that I realized this year are just way too small for us for our goals with having a massive pantry. So that,
28:55bought the equipment that we needed to be able to do our own full garden. So I think that's going to be like 0.25 acres of a garden is, yeah, so pretty big. At least for us, it's pretty big. But my grandparents have a bigger one and a massive greenhouse too. So I always feel like I'm just a little guy. But
29:17Yeah, so we do everything that we teach. We're not just all business. We very much are hands-on, and my kids are hands-on. So that was the main reason that I wanted to do this was for them, because I realized a lot of the grit that I was taught as a kid came from having my hands in the dirt, riding fullers, and being outside, and fishing in the pond. So a lot of the grit was instilled
29:46through my childhood and as I was reading my oldest daughter, Lily, I realized that she didn't have a lot of grit. She was actually a little scared of the dirt. And I was like, no, we need to pivot. So we jumped into chickens first, like I think everybody does as far as hands in the dirt. So we got the chickens and then we...
30:10Got two goats after that and got another set of chickens and we got meat chickens and that did not actually did not turn out the way that I had expected. We had a predator get to them that wasn't we were not prepared for that as much as I thought that we would be. And so we're going to do another another round of meat chickens next year just to be able to do it.
30:38you know, see how we like it. And if it's something that we like, then we'll continue to do it just for our family. And let's see, I think that's it. But we're only on like two and a half, a little less than two and a half acres. And so we're in search of more land that is centralized to the kids school. And my oldest daughter is eight and then my youngest, she's getting ready to turn three.
31:04And so just finding something that is central to the area and then not too far from our family because our family is about an hour and a half apart within his mom's side and then my dad's side. So it's quite a hike. So we got to find something kind of in the middle. Okay. And the reason I said it was a pointed question is it was going to come off sounding like, well, if you're doing this, but you're not actually raising anything, then why are you doing this? And that's not what I was getting at.
31:34Oh, I didn't take it that way. Yeah, so I wanted to make sure that I put that in there because you don't have to be a homesteader to learn about homesteading skills. Right. Yeah, there's a lot of people that are just putting potatoes in a five gallon bucket on their back porch in their apartment. And so I think.
31:56You know, you can really start at any point wherever you are in your life and, you know, growing little seedlings within your house. That's where I started with my garden. And yeah, it's just, I think to be educated and just to consume the knowledge and not take any action on it. If you have a goal of taking future action, that's completely great. Like that's great. You're doing what you need to in order to get started. But if you never take the action, what's the
32:24There's minimal point in my opinion of doing it because you learn so much more hands on. You know, there's, there's, you can consume as much information as you like, but if you don't apply the knowledge, you lose it in 30 days. Yes. And honestly, if you can make a meal from scratch, one meal, that's homesteading. If you can, if you can crochet a basic scarf, that's homesteading.
32:54Exactly. Yeah, the first thing that I ever, I was so, I don't know all of the ends and outs of it. I got a sewing machine for my birthday and I still have yet to really put in more than an hour's work on it. We've just had our hands in so many other different projects that I just haven't slowed down. And I think slowing is like...
33:17the intention of that is just to take a break and disconnect and be creative with your hands and you know, learning how to do the basics. And I've watched a couple different videos on sewing, but I did mystery, like a wasse mystery. That was part of the thing, one of the launches that we did for the sourdough. But yeah, we've done, I've done a couple different
33:47plug in the little, the needles into. And that was the first thing that I ever said. And so just taking time to just slow down and create little things like that, I think is so fulfilling too. Yes, because the world is so busy and distracting. You can find anything to do where it's your hands or your body and you are focused on the one thing that you're creating. It actually gives your brain a chance to relax.
34:17Mm-hmm, and that's what I love about cooking. Oh So you're in the kitchen that's where you relax Yeah, and on the podcast because I really love listening to you guys's stories So I'm focused on your stories for a half an hour to 45 minutes every day. Hopefully You know a lot of people think that it it takes and I know we're coming up on time No, I think a lot of people
34:40think about homesteading or just slowing down, like that's slowing down as a particular lifestyle that you have to slow down in every area. And I've studied masculine and feminine energy and understanding the different roles and how they integrate. And I think integration is extremely important. There is a certain point where you have to have a lot of drive and a lot of masculine energy to go, go, go. And then there's a certain time where, even if it's five to 10 minutes a day,
35:09For me, it's walking out in my backyard with my toes just ingrained in the grass. I just feel so much more connected to what our long-term mission is. I can really go into a creative space within my mind if I want to of what is the next vision. Or I can slow down and say, okay, I'm going to be present here in this moment. I feel sun on my skin. Just taking that time for us to get out of the hook.
35:38the hustle culture that they've created has been my wind down. I've just connected and then, you know, doing the devotions every morning has been very fulfilling. And reading a book, you know, anything that I think just makes you utilize some of your, your senses rather than the mind so much. It's definitely ways to slow down. Yep. And everybody needs a chance to slow down.
36:08I've said this a bunch of times over the last year, your body cannot handle a state of constant anxiety for very long without starting to break down. Right. Yeah. Staying in a fight or flight state is not going to keep you alive or, you know, see your great grandchildren towards the end of your life. You've got to learn different ways to cope and to...
36:35get back into your body and figure out what it is that you wanna do within your life that doesn't create a go, go, go. Because at the end of your life, I think you always question, what is it that I was here to do and did I fulfill that? And if the answer is no, it may seem like a life full of regret. But if you do take time and say, okay, what was extremely important to me and to the people?
37:01around me that creates the fulfillment, then did I have a life worth living? Absolutely. Yep, absolutely. And that is a great note to end this podcast episode on. Thank you, Lexi, for your time. I appreciate it. Oh, thanks so much, Mary. And congratulations. Happy one year to you. Thank you. And I will put all the links to all the things in your show notes, okay? Yes. Okay. Sounds good, Mary. Thank you. Thanks. Have a good afternoon.
 

Red Tool House Farm

Today I'm talking with Troy at the Red Tool House Farm. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
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https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Troy at Red Tool House Farm. Good morning, Troy, how are you? Good morning, how are you? I'm good, it's nice to talk with you again. Last time we talked, we were talking about the Homesteading-ish Conference, but today we're talking about you. Yes.
00:29So tell me about yourself and what you do at the Red Toolhouse farm. Well, Red Toolhouse is the name of the place that we've been on for the last 24 years. It is about a hundred acres and we're in the southwestern portion of West Virginia, what I consider the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It was a piece of property in major disrepair when we bought it.
00:57had lots of garbage on it, old house, old trailer, just had been abandoned for so long or unused for so long that it had just accumulated a lot of the neighborhood garbage. So we bought it knowing that we were going to have to put a lot of sweat equity into it. We had a lot of potential with the property. We knew.
01:22We knew there was a lot of potential there, but just, just going to have to get through a lot of that work. Got a great deal on the property. Um, so young and dumb, didn't know any better. So just dove head first into it. So over the last 24 years, just kind of embraced more of a regenerative agricultural elements, you know, the homesteading, we kind of picked up the homesteading vibe about 14 years ago and started pursuing that more kind of knowing where food comes from, producing our own food.
01:51raising livestock and then just managing the forest on this 100 acres is kind of where we've landed. Okay. So where did you live before? Okay. So I, my wife and I, we dated through high school and we were West Virginians. So we were, well, she's a transplant. She was from Florida originally, but we went to high school together. We went to college together. We went to Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.
02:16And after college, we decided, hey, we can't stay in West Virginia. We want to get a job. All the things that went along with that. So we moved to Orlando for a couple of years. And Orlando is okay, but there's a lot of humanity in Orlando. So we kind of felt the call to come back home. We always joke that West Virginians are like boomerangs. They keep coming back. So we moved back in.
02:441998, I believe, eight or nine. And moved back, actually stayed in a little cabin that was just over the mountain from where I grew up and spent a year trying to find property. I told Kelly, my wife, I said, if we're gonna move back to West Virginia, I don't wanna live in town, I don't wanna live around people. Orlando had really turned me off from even liking people anymore. I just didn't like people. So I...
03:10I said, we need to live as rural as we possibly can, but we both still work full-time jobs in the city of Charleston. So we knew we still had to be a reasonable commutable drive from Charleston. So we looked about an hour out, just drew a circle around the city of Charleston and said, let's look for land.
03:31This land wasn't even on the market. It was actually just a piece of land lying here and we had to go door to door. As before, the internet was really a thing where you could search all that stuff. So we just went door to door, finally found out who owned it and made an offer on it and they accepted our first offer. Okay, so you had a plan for sure to do this. This isn't like you were living in town and went, eh, I want to try something completely different and just chose this. You had a plan.
04:00Well, I grew up rural in West Virginia. My folks, we just call it rural life. I mean, mom and dad did a garden. We didn't have any livestock. I think we did a garden. We lived on a bigger tract of land. So we cut firewood. We provided our own fuel source for heat and that type of stuff. So I thought, well, if I'm moving back to West Virginia, I want to go back to the things I miss and Orlando really made me realize how much I missed not being surrounded by humanity.
04:30And there's just some beautiful land in Western, just a gorgeous state. And I thought, well, I want to be able to have something I can call my own and be able to carve out whatever I want, have enough acreage that I can do, do the little piddly things that I like to do. So that was, that was probably really the only goal. We weren't, I wasn't thinking self-reliant. I wasn't thinking prepper. I wasn't thinking homestead. I was just thinking, I don't like people and I don't want to be near them. And of course that, that changed the good Lord changed my heart in the first.
04:59first 10 years and, and, uh, and it kind of had me refocus on what was important and what wasn't. Yeah. I'm going to jump on the, I don't like people part. I, I keep saying that I don't like people. I like persons. Yeah. Like I can deal with one person at a time. Just fine. It's when I have to be around a lot of people that I get real twitchy and it's because people are unpredictable critters. I have no idea. If I go.
05:29someplace where those people I haven't met, who those people are, what they're gonna do, or what they're gonna say, or how they're gonna act. That's the part that makes me not like people. Now, as a general rule, I do enjoy people. I just don't like being in confined spaces with more than one or two at a time. Right, yeah, Orlando traffic really affected me negatively, and you're exactly right, the crowds.
05:55And in West Virginia, we're only 1.8 million people. So even in a state our size, it's just usually not around a whole bunch of people, even when you're in urban areas. So it was quite an adjustment for us. And when I got home, I was like, man, I really need one. I wanna stretch my legs. Those several years in Orlando really, really kind of cramped me. Yeah, that happens. Okay, so tell me about your farm. What do you guys do on the farm? Well, so.
06:23So the 100 Acres is, since it's West Virginia topography, it obviously has a lot of pitch and roll to it. And I joke that with 100 Acres, I only have two places where I can turn my truck and trailer around easily. So it's very hilly. It's out of the 100 Acres, probably 95 of it is wooded. So it's Appalachian hardwood forest, which is just absolutely gorgeous all year long.
06:51So it provides for us a lot of natural resources. So when we bought the property, I, uh, to help fund our initial expenses, I had the property selectively timbered, which was a very, um, it was a very detailed process. So the timber broker that I use, he went through and of course, itemized and inventoried everything. So point being that, that not every, it wasn't a clear cut. It wasn't a slash and burn. The forest was maintained nicely.
07:18And it gave us quite a bit of revenue to be able to help do some startup stuff. So we built a small garage apartment to live out of until we could afford to build a main house. And took, took all these projects on for myself. I was in my mid twenties. Again, too young to know any better. Um, so, uh, took those projects on. So as, as it developed, we started, as most homesitters do, we, we started by adding chickens because, uh, we thought, well, we, we want to be more.
07:45responsible for our food that we eat. Our first child was born at that point and that was kind of that catalyst. It's like, well, we want our son to eat better than we do or did at his age. So we got chickens for eggs. And then I realized that, Hey, I could, I could put pigs on this property very easily because pigs on pasture and woodlot are easy to do and they won't have a huge expense and fence and I really like bacon and that really.
08:13really started my love affair with pigs. I just absolutely love those animals. And so we still raise pigs to this day. We still have our egg laying chickens. In fact, we have multiple flocks that we're doing different things with. And then we do broiler chickens during the season. We have some in our brooder right now. That'll be our final run of broiler chickens. And up until, actually up until the last couple months, we decided we were gonna do all of this at retail scale. So...
08:42I'm self-employed, so it just seemed like kind of a fit to say, well, if I'm going to raise one pig or two pigs or three pigs for me, why not raise 15 or 20 or 30 and try to make some revenue from that. We've had retail sales with the pork and with the eggs and with the broiler chickens and just here recently, but my youngest son, I have two boys, my youngest son graduated from high school, so I lost my labor.
09:10So we're deciding now to kind of scale back to the homesteading level. We're going to raise just enough food for ourselves and some friends and family. Um, but we're, we're constantly experimenting with things. We're experimenting with the land and, and how to, how to improve it, how to improve soil, how to manage the forest, how to have a good symbiotic relationship with our, our pigs in forest, uh, we're creating Silva pasture.
09:36because we do want to introduce, hopefully within the next five years, get enough land open up that we can introduce beef so we can raise some of our own beef. And then just, we really like, I like a permaculture aspect to a lot of things. So I try to do things on the homestead that allow me to do function stacking or just have a little bit more responsible approach to stuff. I do have a tractor. I do burn fossil fuels and do those types of things.
10:05be a little more deliberate on how I do it and maybe when I'm burning those things, I'm maximizing that potential as much as possible. Okay. The experimentation part, I have a thing about that too. We put in two peach trees last year, you know, just saplings, and my youngest walked in the house last night with four peaches in his hand from one of our two trees. Yeah.
10:33They are delicious and we didn't expect the peach trees to produce anything for three years. So we were very excited that we now have another food source on our homestead that we didn't expect to have for at least three years. Yeah. Peaches are fantastic. I keep forgetting how much I love them because they're also expensive, which means we don't buy them very often. Yeah. And they're not just a Southern tree. A lot of people just assume that peaches are only the Georgia.
11:01You know, the, the south, uh, part of the United States region, but yeah, you can get peaches to grow real far north. I think they grow them in New England. So, yeah, I think you can grow them in Southern Canada, but it has to be a specific variety. I mean, the peach tree you're going to grow in Georgia is not the peach tree we're going to grow in Minnesota. Exactly. But I was so excited and it's like the highlight of my summer, which seems like a really low bar to reach.
11:31But it rained here all springs or our garden did not do well. So seeing those beautiful peaches on my island was just fabulous. Like I went to bed just smiling. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's a perfect example of you kind of experimenting with. Can, can we raise, I really like the perennial plants. My wife's more of the annual, she does the annual side of the garden. And I really like the perennials. So an example of experimentation in line with your peaches was
12:02We have an apple, a cherry, and then I cultivate some wild plum here that just occurred naturally on the property. And so we have that in a small little orchard area. And around June, the Japanese beetles come out in full force and they were just skeletonizing our fruit trees, just wearing them out and really stunting the growth and I thought, man, I tried the traps, the traps just seemed to bring in more.
12:27I tried all these different things and then realized, well, I just hate to use all these chemical processes of eliminating this pest. There's got to be something more natural. And then do a little bit of research and just trial and error. I have a mobile chicken coop, so it's a trailer that I can pull behind my ATV. I call it the coop de ville. We move it in May. I move it.
12:54around the fruit trees. And of course, we use the poultry netting so I can move that wherever I need to. So I ring in all of the fruit trees with the poultry netting and have the Coupe de Ville park there. And the chickens, we let them stay there for about a month and a half. So they are a little bit hard on the grass in that area, which I don't mind, but they eradicate the Japanese beetle larvae as they come out of the ground. And so
13:22that has been able to completely eliminate damage from the Japanese beetle. We may see one or two that have flown in from the outskirt type of thing, but we don't have that high concentration that we've had for years. And so this year was the first year that I got a decent amount of apple production off the apple tree because they weren't stunted by the Japanese beetle activity. Very nice. The other thing that you could have done.
13:50because I talked to a lady who taught me about trap crops, T-R-A-P, is Japanese beetles really, really love rose bushes, rose leaves. And we had rose bushes at our old house that went up a trellis. And our garden was small in our small backyard where we used to live. And the Japanese beetles showed up back 10, 12 years ago when we still lived there. And they were eating the rose leaves.
14:18And I was like, I will sacrifice the roses for the stuff we can eat in the garden. Right. So I was talking to this lady. She's, I can't remember her name right now, but I interviewed her and her episode was released weeks ago. She said, you had a trap crop. I had never heard of a trap crop. And she said, so did you sacrifice your roses every year? And I said, well, yeah, cause they would bloom in a big lush bloom phase before the Japanese beetles showed up.
14:46So I got my one really pretty moment and then the Japanese bees would eat the roses and they wouldn't eat my garden. And she was like, you did something you didn't even know you were doing. I was like, yeah, huh, weird. So a trap crop works as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there's a lot of different options to explore more natural methods of pest management. And again, with the permaculture aspect, not if I would...
15:14If I would redo it, I wouldn't even plant my fruit trees together in a small orchard. I would mix them up in guilds and that way that pressure in one area doesn't spill over easily into the other. So definitely things you learn as you go along. Yeah, because you can't know everything when you start. I keep saying on this podcast, everybody has to start at the beginning. Absolutely. That's where the beginning is. It's at the start. You can't know until you know. You can't experience things until you do the thing.
15:43So that's why I really love doing this podcast because I get to learn things from people that I hadn't even known existed and get to try them or find out I've been doing a thing that people have been doing forever. And I'm like, oh, well, okay. Yeah, yeah. So I saw your video about how to tell a boar from a sow on Facebook and laugh myself stupid and thought, well, yeah. And then...
16:12I was like, not everybody knows all these things about animals and I shouldn't laugh. But it was a very funny video. Yeah. I always say my spiritual gift is sarcasm. My wife disagrees that she doesn't think that's a spiritual gift. But I do. Yeah. So it was just, it was just funny simply because of, and there's actually a funny story behind this. We had some friends that came out with their young children, two young girls came out of
16:39Last year to the farm and visited the farm for the first time and so I was taking them around and showing them We had piglets on the farm at the time So showing them piglets they want to see the chickens the baby chicks all of those type of things and then we when we got To our breed stock we had our boars. We had them at that point We had them sequestered in their own little little pasture area because we didn't want them breeding at that time and so the Boars are hanging out and these are good sized boys as you saw in the video and so they're
17:08They're just big. They're big everywhere. They're, they're well endowed and the, um, the physiology of a bore, his, his reproductive organs, of course, hang out very prominent on the back end of him. And so the girls didn't say anything. They, you know, they was, oh yeah, bore. Okay. And no words, but, but our friends called us when they were on their way home. And they said, we have to tell you this. And we could tell they'd been laughing so hard that could barely breathe.
17:32We have to tell you this and we got in the car, headed back, we asked them, you know, what was your favorite part of the farm? And they were talking about all these different things. And then one of the daughters said, it was just really strange. The boars with their, their, their little pig butts. And so they're like, what are you talking about? Their pig butts. And she, they both assumed that these, these large, this large appendage hanging off the back of the pig, which kind of looks like a butt cheek. Well, it was actually the butt cheeks of the pig and instead of its testicles.
18:02So they got a good kick out of that. And we just laughed and laughed about that. And it's like, yeah, you kind of, you kind of, you're sexing a full grown pig is not difficult to do if he's intact. So that's why I did the video. It's like, let's do a little tongue in cheek here to say, if you're having a hard time figuring out which is a sow and which is a boar, then let's give you some tips. And of course, just go to some of the non-obvious things while showing the video of the very obvious thing right there in front of you. So, yeah.
18:32Kids say the darndest things and I love kids. They make me laugh all the time. I was highly entertained for basically concurrently over a hundred years raising my kids. Not consecutively, but concurrently with all their years. So yeah, kids are fun. And kids are also a lot of work. I mean, I am happy that my children are adults and they're raised and I did a good job. And I'm pretty sure I did a good job.
19:01So I'm at that point in my life where I get to kick back and watch them be grownups, which is almost more entertaining. Yes, yeah, it is. It is good to see them. Almost. Right, yeah. Yeah, it's good to see them make good choices. Yeah, the one knot of my body is actually starting a garden. He's my husband's son from a previous relationship. And he has the most beautiful produce coming in right now, and he keeps texting us pictures.
19:30And then we send him pictures of our sad garden. And he's like, there's always next year guys, it's okay. So he's being our cheerleader this year. That's great. Yep, he's very excited. We did send him the pictures of the peaches though. And he was like, those look fantastic. I was like, yeah, the one thing we didn't expect is doing great. The things that we expected to do well are doing nothing. Go big. That's the way it goes. Yeah, nature is fickle. When she...
19:59When she provides, she really provides. When she says no, there's nothing. It's not, it's not fair. Okay. So I don't, I, you also said you do timber stuff. So do you sell wood from your property? So, um, at one time I did, I've had a, I've had a mill for about, well, off and on, cause I sold one and then, uh,
20:28got my other one, I got a new one. So yeah, probably 10, 15 years of being here, we we've had a mill or at least access to a mill. And with, with that, I, I, I like doing woodworking. The, the little garage apartment that we lived in for two years before you built the main house is now my wood shop. So I have, uh, finishing equipment. So, you know, what would you consider the standard equipment you'd see in a wood shop to make furniture and do that. So I was doing a lot of.
20:56of milling to the point of taking it to furniture building. I was getting into cabinetry a lot, like gun cabinets, that type of stuff, not kitchen cabinets, building small furniture, doing that for some extra income and just for the love of it. And then as we got more invested in the homestead and experimenting with doing more agriculture type stuff, then I kind of shifted and said, well, I'm going to do less woodworking and kind of come back to doing more general carpentry and construction.
21:26The mill allows me to produce lumber to build, I build our farrowing barn, which is a decent size structure that our pigs hang out in when it's time to farrow. And then I built a fixed coop that we use for compost creation. And I call it the chicken church. It's built to resemble, even has a little steeple, it's built to resemble the old country churches that you don't see much of anymore. It's kind of my homage to those relics that are going away. But.
21:56The mill allows us to provide that type of building material. So we're, we're constantly doing that. I'm actually sitting on a deck that I made for Kelly as a surprise for our anniversary this year that was all milled from white oak that, uh, that are harvested from the property. So I really haven't done much here in the last couple of years that, that I would resell the timber because every time I fire the mill up, I have a purpose or a use for the material that's going to come off of it. Okay.
22:25That makes sense. And what a great present for your wife. Oh my God. How did you keep it a secret? Well, fortunately, she and the boys were on their way to her side of the family. They were just getting together for a niece's birthday. They were doing four or five days down in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. So they were going down, renting a cabin in the mountains and hanging out. So I had this idea brewing in my head, and this was a perfect opportunity to say, well, I need to stay home and take care of the farm.
22:55They wanted me to go. I was like, well, if I take care of the farm, we don't have to put the dog in a boarding situation. So we'll save some money there. I just got so much work to do. I just can't do it right now. So they were disappointed that I didn't go, but all the while I was lying to them because I had this project in mind. So I had basically a four-day window to get it done. I'm 51 years old, but my mind still thinks I'm 25. It was tough.
23:21But did get it done. In fact, the Sunday morning they were to return, I was cleaning up and attaching the last boards and doing all that type of stuff. So I was able to pull it off just in time. And we did a whole video about it. But when they showed up, I was sitting out here on the finished deck in the shade just enjoying a nice afternoon. And poor girl, she showed up. Everybody got the flu down there. That was their gift for going to the...
23:51She came back and she was sick as a dog, but she was so excited about the deck. You know, actually was, was quite a blessing because, uh, being, she was sick all week and we, we had just a beautiful stretch of weather. It was about, it's about a way it is now 70 degrees during the day, low humidity. So she just stay out here on her hammock all week to just recover and, and just soak up, soak up that UV, get the sun, get the fresh air. And then it really helped her in her recovery process. But.
24:20Yeah, it was fun. It was a fun project. I bet. Um, speaking of sickness, I'm a jinx myself. I have not been sick since the December before COVID hit. There you go. And that was four and a half years ago now, I think. And I don't, I like, I'm so afraid if I get a bug, I'm going to be so miserable and it's just going to be perception. Cause I haven't felt sick in over four years. And so long, right.
24:50It's crazy and you know, in my, I don't wanna say in my defense, it doesn't really matter, I'm not defending anything. I don't really go anywhere or see anybody. If I go anywhere, it's to pick up groceries because I'm not gonna spend my time actually shopping. Right. Because why would I do that? And I love where I live, you know? We have three acres. If I wanna be outside, I just step out the door and I have three acres to be wandering on. Exactly, yep. So, yeah.
25:19It's crazy. And I don't want to get what anybody else has gotten. I sure as heck don't want to share any germs I have with anybody else. So I just don't people. It's just easier. Yeah. Um, so speaking of people, you have a conference coming up here in a couple of weeks and I don't want to get too deep because we already talked about it, but how's that planning going? How's it coming? Do you know how many people are planning on attending that kind of stuff? Yeah. So it's, um,
25:49Yeah, it's first time, so it's an inaugural conference and it's got a little bit of growing pains as we'd expected. So we're still working out some of the kinks, but you've got a good lineup of speakers coming and those have all been confirmed and so excited about that. Ticket sales, we still have tickets available. We're only selling 500 because of the venue. We wanted to try to keep it a little bit more intimate so people could interact more with the speakers and have more Q&A time.
26:18But still, some of the vendors and sponsors are probably our biggest hurdle right now, still trying to get some of that taken care of. But we are, we're at least to the point where we're net neutral when it comes to expenses. So that's been a big relief to say, okay, we're at least, we're covering our expenses here, the nuts covered, so anything else, we get to reinvest for next year if we wanna do this. But it's gonna be a fun, fun event. We're partnering, so Red Tool House,
26:47is partnering with our Capital Conservation District, which is a conservation entity. They have more ties to nonprofit organizations, academia, that type of stuff. And of course, what we bring to the table is more of the homestead or social media connections that we have. So I think it's going to be a neat mashup of practical homestead interaction. Of course, meet some of your favorite homesteaders with people like Joel Salaton and...
27:17and Josh Draper and Nathan Elliott, those guys. But then they're going to bring in, hey, here's kind of the soup to nuts on how to take advantage of this type of process if you want to, like high tunnels, utilize NRCS money to help with a high tunnel, that type of thing. So it's kind of an interesting mashup. I really haven't seen a conference that's kind of doing it this way. So I'm hoping it's going to be successful. And
27:44at least present information that we think people will find useful. I hope so too. And I actually don't have any doubt that it will. I think it think it's going to help a lot of people. Um, so this whole homesteading farming, growing produce, raising animals, whatever. People think that it's either really hard or it's really easy to the point that the dumb people do this. And.
28:14It's not really hard and it's not really easy. It's really what you want to do with your life and what you want to do for yourself versus what you want to pay somebody to do for you. Yeah, yeah. And honestly, I don't think that this is for everybody. I think that if you are a person who wants things to be done for you and you want to pay money instead of time and effort, that's totally fine, do that. But I really...
28:43love it when people learn how to do things themselves because there's such satisfaction in knowing that you took the time to learn how to do the thing, you tried to do the thing, you may have failed a couple of times trying to do the thing, and when you finally get it right, it's just amazing. Yeah. And I agree with you 100%. And I think the two biggest mistakes that I have seen people do is that they don't know
29:10do or their attitudes towards homesteading when they want to do it, but don't necessarily want to embrace it. And I've got one friend, I'll leave his name out so I won't embarrass him in case he's listening. But when he first was looking into this, he was a doctor, so medical professional. His ability to earn income off the property, of course, was much, much higher than he could ever do on property. Very specialized doctor. So he had a lot of resources.
29:41So what he would do is he would start to bankroll these things. He would, you know, bit these big seed caches together. He'd buy all this off grid equipment and have it just, just kind of squirreled away in these places. And I remember just having a conversation with him. He's like, yeah, if it hits the fan one of these days, then I'll be able to, we've got all these seeds, I can plant a garden. I'll be able to do this and provide for my family, do this and this. I'm like, but you've never done that before. And the fallacy of saying, well, I've got all the material and.
30:10not having the experience. I mean, you know good and well, Mary, just as well as I do, that first time planting a garden, you take a handful of seeds, you take it out and throw it in the ground, you're not going to get a bounty of produce that's going to allow you to feed your family for another year. And that was kind of the fallacy. It's like, man, you need to be experiencing this seasonally every day. You need to be out here doing this so you have the experience. So when it does hit the fan, then you've got the experience. You can't just go to your cash of stores and say, bang, here's the money.
30:39This is all going to work out for me now. So that was a big issue. And then, and then the second problem I've run into are people that will. That will, will approach us about, Hey, um, we're having trouble making ends meet, playing the game, you know, the rat race, working the nine to five, the, the, the car, the house payment, all that type of stuff. We want to scale back and save money. Uh, so we want to embrace the homesteading lifestyle because we think that's going to be cost effective.
31:08And I would say, well, even though your intentions may be pure, your motivation and the actual results could be different. Homesteading doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a cheaper way of living, especially if you don't have your land. And right now, post-COVID with land prices just going out of control, that's become the biggest obstacle. Somebody says, well, I want to move out of the suburbs, so I'd like a 10-acre tract. It's like, okay, are you ready to throw down?
31:35anywhere from five to $10,000 an acre in some places. It's like, well, okay, now I've got a mortgage on that. So I got to work a job. So, and then try to buy all the equipment and the experiences of learning to homestead and raise your own food and do that type of stuff. They think, you know, the joke of, you know, when you grow your first tomato, this is the tastiest $100 tomato I've ever eaten type of thing. And they just don't see that.
32:01Accumulatively, it's actually going to cost you more money to transition into that lifestyle. So you have to be a little bit more deliberate. It's not going to be a way to save you money immediately. It may have savings and other value added benefits in the long run. And that's the thing I always try to caution people. It's like, don't think you can make this change. Sell your house in the burbs, even if you sell it for way more money than what you're going to buy property for.
32:28You still got to have a place to live and you still got to find a way to pay your property taxes and you still got to find a way to buy and acquire the supplies you need to have a homesteading lifestyle. Yeah, I've said a billion times in the last year doing this podcast that homesteading is not property. It's lifestyle. It's about learning skills piece by piece and then eventually moving into what you want to do with those skills.
32:58home in the burbs and just have a little side garden and make your own stuff, that's homesteading too. So it's not about, we call our place a tiny homestead. It's 3.1 acres. We have a garden, we have chickens, we have barn cats, we have a dog, and we have a really nice home and we love our home. So for us, we call it a tiny homestead.
33:25A lot of people would not call it tiny because it is three acres. It's not like a tenth of an acre like we used to have. Yeah. You can do a lot on three acres. Yeah. But we're not doing livestock or anything. We don't, we don't, we're not interested in doing growing animals. We're interested in growing produce. Yeah. So it's all choices and decisions about how you want to practice homesteading as a lifestyle. Yes. I agree. That's what, that's what I think anyway. Yeah.
33:54Yeah, very eclectic options. Yeah, you can do anything. And that's the other thing that's funny is I hear from people all the time. Well, I can't do that. And I'm like, well, you probably could if you tried. Is it more that you don't want to do that? Yeah. And I'm like, well, yeah, I don't want to do that. And I'm like, okay, don't say I can't just say I'm not interested in doing that because they're two different mindsets. Right. Yeah.
34:21Yeah, there's that initial apprehension to learn something new. And if you get over that, that's one thing I've tried to ingrain in my boys is like, you need to be learning every day. When you stop learning, it's time to start dying. And you just, you need to challenge yourself every day. And, and as you learn new things, you discover, well, I really enjoyed that. Or I didn't like that at all. I really don't want to do that again, but at least you have an educated opinion now of whether that's something worth your time and effort. Right.
34:50And the other thing is it's a lot easier to get started on the homesteading stuff when you're younger and your body is younger, because you don't hurt half as bad when you work hard. Right, for sure. I would have loved to have started this when I was 25, but at 25, I was still married to the guy, the first husband that I am no longer married to, hadn't married the second one, and hadn't even met the third one. So...
35:19So it's just life gives you choices and you make the choices with the information you have at the time. And so if you have the opportunity to do something you really want to do, jump on it. If it doesn't present itself and you think you really want to do something, I don't know, go make the opportunity. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Just, yeah, exactly. Take advantage of what you can take advantage of. Explore what...
35:47what you feel is a challenge and then embrace the suck as they say, right? Yes, yes. And even if it's a great thing you're doing, there's always going to be some kind of suck that goes along with it because that's how life works. Right. All right, Troy. Thank you for coming back and talking with me. I really appreciate it. Well, I enjoyed it, Mary. It was a good conversation. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. Thanks. Have a great afternoon. You too.
 

Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Today I'm talking with Brenda at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance about composting as an environmentally friendly self-reliant activity. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
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https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Brenda at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Good morning, Brenda. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. You're in Minneapolis? I'm actually in the Washington, D.C. office. Oh, okay.
00:29All right, cool. What's it like in Washington, DC today? It's it's actually a very nice day. It's in the 70s. I don't have the AC on. I have the fans going. Very nice. It's it's overcast in Minnesota, but it's also not hot yet. So that's a good thing. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, I head up one of our.
00:56initiatives at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. We are a national non-profit research and technical assistance organization and we were founded in 1974 so we turned 50 this year and we have championed local self-reliance, a strategy that underscores the need for humanly scaled institutions and economies and the widest possible distribution of ownership. So what does that mean? Well we work in key sectors of the economy so
01:25We have an independent business initiative, which is fighting the outsize monopoly power of corporations like Amazon. Before that, it was Walmart, which has kind of been dwarfed by Amazon. We have a community broadband initiative, which is promoting municipally owned broadband fiber optic networks, for instance. We have an energy democracy program, which is promoting community controlled utilities and.
01:54Looftop solar and the like, and I head up our composting for community initiative and have been working on waste issues for 38 years. I've been at ILSR for 38 years and, um, most of that time I've been fighting trash incinerators and documenting communities with the highest recycling and composting levels and in.
02:18probably the last decade began to focus more and more on composting because composting is inherently local. We can do it in our backyards, in our communities, at schools, community gardens, urban farms. You can do it anywhere in the world. Wherever we are eating, which hopefully if we're lucky we're eating at least three meals a day and you have food scraps, so we should be doing something with those food scraps.
02:45Even the final product that you make from compost is generally used locally. We're not shipping the food scraps from coast to coast. You know, we have, you know, markets for waste paper and steel and metals, other types of recycled commodities. Those can be global markets, but we're not shipping our banana peels from the East Coast to the West Coast. And then the finished product tends to be used within local and regional markets as well. Back into the soil. Good. Okay.
03:15So I am gonna, I'm gonna tell you my experience with composting in a small town. We don't live there anymore, so I don't have to abide by their rules now. But back when we lived in this small town in Minnesota, in town, we were only allowed to have the compost barrels that get closed up and you turn them. We were not allowed to have any kind of open compost bin.
03:45And I think the reasoning was that it would draw in pests. So do you hear this in cities that there's specific ways you're allowed to compost? Yeah, there are definitely archaic and two laws on the books, old laws. And there was ones like the one you described that are just far too prescriptive. So I actually did a report a few years ago called Yes in My Backyard.
04:15for local government on home composting programs. And we had a whole chapter on how to address archaic laws and ordinances. And we actually called out the problem with the specifics like what you just mentioned is, and let me just back up and say that there are a few things that you need to keep in mind for successful composting. And they are things like you gotta balance your
04:40nitrogen rich materials, that's your food scraps, glass, grass clippings, think of nitrogen rich materials and things that can rot easily or have a lot of moisture. And you got to balance that with carbon rich materials, that's your browns. And the right ratio, you got to pay attention to oxygen, composting is an aerobic process, it needs oxygen, and it needs moisture. And you know, you need enough mass, but to do it successfully and to keep out...
05:07unwanted critters like rodents or raccoons or possums. It's not about whether it's enclosed or not. I mean sometimes that can help but I know lots of composters that are and even in Brooklyn, New York there's a site that has open piles but they seal the piles, they're composting correctly, there's open space around them. So composting successfully is not so much about the system
05:36but about whether you're taking into account things like the recipe and the oxygen and the moisture. Sure, yes. So when we moved to our acreage, we were so excited to have room for actual big old compost bins that weren't regulated by the city. And we've been here almost four years, on our fourth anniversary, August 7th. And we have three huge compost bins out by our tree line.
06:05And we have had them since we moved in, I think. And we have made the most gorgeous compost for our big garden. And we do all the things you just said, the greens, the browns, the whole bit. So it is absolutely doable. But can you tell people who live in cities how to go about it? Because again, there are, there are regulations and laws on cities about how you're allowed to do it. How do you, how do you get around that?
06:36I guess is what I'm asking. Yeah. If you're in a city, contact your local recycling office, Department of Public Works, and ask what kind of resources they have for home composting. Increasingly, we're seeing cities and counties offer educational materials at the local level. You can also contact your local extension agent. Sometimes they
07:04local university extension offices will have actually do training on how to compost and level up. Take a course, take an evening course. Many are offered just an hour. Increasingly with COVID, we have more opportunities to learn virtually. I do think that that can help, but there's nothing like an in-person class to learn how to compost and get your hands in there and smell the system and build a pile together.
07:32But if your community offers a course, it's not rocket science, but you do need to know the basics. And so taking a short course can really help. As I was mentioning, some cities and counties have programs where they might give away a home composting bin for free, like the City of Orlando in Florida does that. Or they might offer, you can order online a few times a year.
08:02bulk purchasing so you can get a bin for wholesale prices. Then they might have a day where you just go, all the bins are delivered, come pick up the one you ordered. There are cities that have those programs. If your city does not, which is perhaps sadly more common than if it did have a program, then advocate for one and contact your local city council or county council rep.
08:30They need to hear from their constituents about the programs that you need. You need the resources, you need the bins, you need the equipment. But if you want to get started, we have some resources on our website, ilsr.org. And you can go just Google once you're on there for home composting. Actually, you could just Google ILSR home composting resources. We have a series of YouTube videos, so you can watch those there. You can watch the whole.
09:00One hour training we do or it's broken into pieces. Like, how do I know what bin to get? Or now that I've made compost, how do I use it? We also offer that training in Spanish. So, um, and we're increasingly looking at offering more of our resources in different languages. Awesome. That's fantastic. Um, okay. So it might seem weird that I asked, asked you to be on the podcast, but
09:27Part of the reason I asked you is because I had never heard of the Institute for a local self-reliance. And I have actually been being fed through my Facebook feed a lot of places that I didn't know about because they relate to my podcast topics. And it's frustrating to me that I don't know. I didn't know that your organization existed. There's been a couple other organizations that have been fed to me. And I was like...
09:56Who are these people? I didn't even know they existed. Like there's an organization, I can't think of the name of it right now. And it's Water and Land Conservation is part of the name. And they've been around forever and I didn't even know about them. So how can help? I mean, I'm trying to help get you out there in the world so people know about you.
10:25by having you on the podcast. But how can we get organizations like yours more known? Do you know? Wow. Thanks for finding us. I'm so happy to be on here. Thanks for finding us, Mary. And you know, we're not a huge nonprofit organization. We're fairly small as national.
10:47nonprofits, we're not strictly like an environmental nonprofit like the Sierra Club or Natural Resources Defense Council, or the Nature Conservancy. And we really do have a unique mission and lens, which is fighting concentrated corporate power. So we don't really fit into one of those kind of silos, but you know, for lack of a better byline where we really do promote sustainable.
11:13local economic development or promoting a homegrown economy. But you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. So I think our Facebook is, I mean, not people are moving away from Facebook, but more and more but facebook.com slash local self-reliance on Instagram, where instagram.com slash ilisr.
11:40underscore org. But anyway, if you go to our website, ilsr.org, you can click on any of our social media handles. And, you know, if you go to our website, we have a lot of resources. One of our biggest campaigns right now is fighting the proliferation of dollar stores and in both rural and urban communities. And there are now more dollar stores in America.
12:08Then there are Starbucks, McDonald's, Walmart's, and Target combined. Think about that. It's like 36,000. It's probably more than that because every day there's more. And at best a dollar store, you know, when it comes to healthy food, at best it's like frozen waffles and canned peaches. So they, um, their model is really putting out healthy local grocery stores in communities and taking over. And there's.
12:37Most of those stores that I mentioned are owned by two companies alone. And so this is, you know, this is the kind of monopoly corporate concentrated power that is our lens to fight. And we have, if you're facing a dollar store, there's just lots of resources on our website about that. Um, Amazon, you know, it was very popular for many reasons. It's kind of like frictional, frictionalist buying, but they're outside control.
13:06in so much parts of the economy now is really scary. I mean, you go online and you're like, I don't know, looking for pot holders or bar stools for your kitchen. They control so much of the internet infrastructure that they can now feature their store above any other independent suppliers or vendors. Not only that, but their algorithms now
13:35show that, will tell them the data that what's popular, what people are looking for. So then they can start manufacturing that and put out other independent businesses. So the way that Amazon just needs to be broken up. I mean, it's just too much concentrated power. So most of our resources are really oriented, not necessarily towards the everyday person on our website. You know, it's, it's, um, we,
14:04run a coalition Athena of independent business owners. So, you know, elected officials, we do a lot of policy work. And I would say our home composting resources is one of the outliers on that, that of course we're trying to reach people who, you know, like to garden, have big yards, or wanna really be able to use that black gold. Maybe you're buying soil amendments and you realize you can create your own.
14:32So, but I think part of the issue for people not knowing who we are is partly because our audience isn't necessarily just the everyday person. Okay, that makes sense. Wouldn't it be nice if corporate America and the little guy could maybe shake hands and cut a deal and the healthy things that the little guy is trying to create or produce could be marketed by corporate America and that way corporate America is not this big
15:01scary in it only for the dollar thing. I mean, that's very, very, very idealistic, I understand. But wouldn't it be nice? Yeah. And you know, we're not against, you know, just to be clear, we're not against businesses and corporations. I just mentioned the Athena coalition where we have thousands and thousands if not hundreds of thousands of independent businesses, part of that coalition through independent business coalitions that exist in
15:30So we're just against concentrated monopoly power. And you know, you think about, you know, this election that's coming up too, is people are feeling disenfranchised and left out of things and that the system is rigged against them. And a lot of the reason that they're feeling that way is because of whose pockets are being lined, it's not theirs.
15:59It's the big companies, you know, profits are at all time highs for so many companies, Amazon being not an exception to that. And so this is this is kind of the one of the big structural issues that's facing us as a country and our economy and some of the key problems that and challenges that people face on a day to day basis. Yep, absolutely. The other problem with with.
16:28what you're talking about is when you buy something that is manufactured, it's probably going to break sooner than something that someone actually built themselves. And I'm going to give you an example. My husband built me this beautiful desk for the corner of our bedroom and our house. And I wasn't going to give that desk up and move because it's gorgeous and it's solid and it's never going to fall apart.
16:57So we made a spot for it in the new house. That thing is made out of maple. It is never gonna break. And when we moved in here, I really wanted a coffee table and there was no time to make one. So I ordered a coffee table through Amazon. It lasted two months. If people are interested in buying long lasting things, then maybe find a local
17:28business that isn't a corporation where they actually do build things by hand. And yes, you are going to pay more for it, but it's going to last you a lifetime and probably your grandchildren's lifetimes. Yeah. And you know, there's a, there's a growing sharing economy too. Um, I was looking for a nice dining room table set because we just needed a new one and, um,
17:57you know, I wanted to support local artisans and it was so expensive. Like, you know, talking thousands of dollars for the table, the chair. And I'm like, Oh, I thought I got to buy something that fits in with my values. You know, not gonna, you know, and, but then I'm on my community listserv and somebody says, I have my family dining room set and I'd like to sell it and it's Oak and you know, I want it to go to good family. So.
18:22My husband and I went over there and we ended up buying this beautiful set for like a thousand dollars. I had the seats reupholstered and I supported a local, talk about reused, reupholstery business and picked out the fabric. And it's just like so great to have this table. And the woman who sold it to me was so happy that her family set ended up with another family. My kids were young at the time. We've had it for 20 years now already.
18:52Yeah, I mean, there's so many other ways to get durable products. And, you know, back to your compost bin and your town that was so prescriptive, oh, you need to have this, you know, enclosed system that you buy. Well, it is actually, um, if you have somebody who's handy, like, it sounds like your husband is to build your own, they actually work better. Like you can take repurposed wooden pallets. It's cheaper local resource. You can, um, if you are in an urban area and you're concerned about.
19:21critters and rodents because you know that there's like in DC where I am, you know, and other major cities in America, there's a lot of rat problems. So you might enclose it with what's called hardware cloth, quarter inch will keep out mice too. It's like a steel mesh and you can build like three or four foot cubes and you could do like a multi bin. There's tons of designs, you know, online for these type of systems.
19:50It's easier to compost in a multi-bin system. You can flip from one bin to the next and it'll last you longer. Whereas the tumbler that you're talking about, it's, I have tried to use those and it's really hard to get oxygen in there. So having the mesh, you know, in a wooden pallet is actually easier to do composting than an enclosed system. So then often with these tumblers, you end up with a mushy kind of mush in there.
20:17you know, and it's harder to troubleshoot or you have to empty it. And so it's just, it's just almost easier to do composting and it do it yourself system. Yes. And the bin that we had, because we were going to do it, you know, we, we, we got a composting bin, a one that you rotate. And number one, that thing gets heavy when it's full. So it's really hard to rotate.
20:41And number two, when you open it up, you might want to be wearing a mask because it does not work the way it's supposed to and it's super stinky. So yeah, don't, don't buy those rotating ones. If you don't have to, they don't work as well as other things that people have tried. Yeah. You know, a few things on that. The ones that rotate on the vertical access. So they're kind of taller when they're full.
21:06they are actually harder to turn. So the ones that are on the horizontal axis are easier to turn. There's a lot of systems, the cheaper systems tend to be smaller and you do need sufficient mass to compost. I mean, they say you need like three feet by three feet by three feet in order to have enough of a pile that it can heat up. And by the way, the temperature when your pile heats up comes from the microbes consuming
21:36the organic material you're feeding them and they're giving off energy in the form of heat as they consume the material. So that's where the heat comes from. It doesn't come from the sun. So you don't need a black bin to absorb the sun. You can compost during the winter. It can slow down a little bit more in the winter, but you can compost your round.
22:00The heat comes from making those microbes happy. And one way you make the microbes happy is you, you don't, you have to have oxygen in there. So if you have a tumbler and. You know, in some urban areas where there are rat issues, you may want an enclosed system, but just know like you have to get air in there. You have to fluff it. You don't want it too wet. If you do have a strong odor.
22:25that can indicate that the nose knows, as we say, people were training the nose knows. So if there is, composting does smell, there's an odor, but it shouldn't be a noxious odor that you think, oh, this is not good, then you got to troubleshoot, maybe add more leaves, more carbon, maybe it's too wet. Because when it's too wet, you fill up those spaces in your pile.
22:52what we often call pores, and then the pile goes anaerobic, meaning lack of oxygen. And when it goes anaerobic, then you produce methane and it creates more odors. So if you're having a strong odor, that's always a sign you need to just do some quick troubleshooting, fluff it, get some oxygen in there. Maybe it's too wet, put some wood chips in there to create some pore space. But you can compost in a tumbler.
23:20But don't get one that's too small. Sometimes they have these tumblers that are like split. So there's dual sides, which the reason they do that, it's a batch system. So while one side is composting actively and maybe you want to let it finish, because if you keep adding material, you're never going to get compost. You need to let it cure and finish and stabilize. So that allows you to start a new batch on the other side. But what happens is it makes them,
23:49each chamber gets smaller often. And so then you don't have that adequate mass to, to be able to enable the microbes to heat up the pile. And so just keep that in mind when you're buying a tumbler, it's bigger to get a, it's better to get a bigger tumbler for more mass. And, and, um, there are some systems that are insulated that can help through the, that really, um, deep winter, which maybe in Minnesota might, what it would have been interesting if you had tried some of those. So.
24:17You know, not all tumblers are created equal and you can actually make your own tumblers. There's lots of good design on those too, but I just think they're just a little more challenging. Yes, we, we think so too. And we, we kind of love our open bins because they're made out of pellets, because that was the easiest way to do it. And the least expensive. And, uh, last winter, my husband took the tractor out and wanted to see how hot the inside of the
24:46compost pile was. So he took the tractor and he dug into the middle of the pile from the outside, flipped it, and it looked like smoke out there. It was so hot on the inside. So yes, composting does work in the wintertime, even at minus 20, which is good to know. Yeah. So tell me what, I know what we use compost for, but tell listeners why compost is important and how you can use it once it is compost. Yeah.
25:16I like to call compost black gold because there are so many benefits to using it. So when we throw our food scraps in a landfill, landfills are actually anaerobic conditions without oxygen. So you're producing methane. Landfills are one of the top sources of methane, very potent greenhouse gas. So one of the top sources in our country of manmade methane emissions. And if they say a food waste was a country, it would be the fourth.
25:46Just the food, yeah, food waste, if food waste was a country, it would be the fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases. So how we handle our food scraps and wasted food has very direct connections to climate protection and climate disruption. So, but when we make compost, that black gold, it's a soil amendment. Now, compost is not soil, but it's something that you can amend your soil with.
26:15helps sequester or store carbon in soil. So when you're adding compost to soil you're now instead of emitting methane you're now putting carbon into the soil and holding it there. Once it's in there it can improve soil structure, it improves the water holding capacity so if we're facing more drought conditions it can be the difference between your tomato plant surviving or a crop for a
26:45because of its water holding capacity. And even during storm water conditions, because there's humic acids in compost, kind of humic acids act like a glue, like an aggregator of soil particles. So compost is organic matter and it holds soil together, which is one of the reasons why it increases water holding capacity in your soil. But it also, during storm events, it can prevent soil erosion.
27:15that works much better when you've got plants in it too. So when plants go into the soil amended with compost, you have bigger root structure, you have bigger plants, more photosynthesis, so then you're getting those added compost benefits and you're holding the soil in place, so you're having less soil runoff and soil erosion. In addition, there has been many studies on the benefits of
27:42compost to plants. Like a lot of people, if they're doing like fossil fuel based fertilizers, it's like, you know, it's more like steroids. You know, you're giving your plant, you know, food for a day. But if you're feeding the soil, then you're actually helping the plant survive over the long term. So studies show you're resisting plant disease when you're adding compost, you're improving growth hormones. So the ability to put us for seedlings to.
28:12leaf growth and grow early on in their life. So there's all these nutrient benefits, plant growth benefits and carbon benefits to compost. Okay, thank you. Cause I just talked with my friend who's a master gardener on my other podcast, which is Mary and the master gardener. My friend Liz is the master gardener. We did a whole episode on compost that hasn't been released yet. And so...
28:39Um, that one's being released probably Monday and then your yours and my episode will be released a week or so from now. So there's gonna be two compost episodes coming up. So if people want to know about compost, I have people covered. Um, so I, I'm going to say this, probably going to sound stupid. We knew all this stuff back in the day. We just didn't know the science behind it.
29:08like in the 1800s, farmers did this stuff all the time, yes? Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, indigenous knowledge and ancestral knowledge. I mean, the Mayans were doing it thousands of years ago. I was in the lease on an island, Ambergeese Key, and the local guide said, oh, if you go down to the southern side of the island, you know, the mangrove groves are like, whatever they were, I don't remember exactly, but like 10 or 12 feet tall, because the Mayans would compost back.
29:38that you know down there at that side of the island. So yeah, composting it, you know, has been around for a very long time. So the question for me is, how did we get so far away from all of this stuff?
29:55Well, you know, there's probably many factors like with so many problems, but just coming back to the corporate concentration piece, I mean, in the U.S., there are just a handful of companies that control the $90 billion solid waste sector. I mean, think about that. There's like three companies that own more than 50% of the landfills. So they're a vested interest.
30:23that want to see us continue to consume and produce waste and throw them in their landfills so they can line their pockets. Whereas the alternative, you know, is for the public good is community, cities, and counties giving out bins, training their citizens how to do this in their backyard, educating them on the connections to healthy soils, which we need to survive, and climate protection and waste reduction.
30:53frankly, controlling cost. I mean, if you have a truck coming every week to pick up your food scraps, which is the heaviest part of what we put out at the curb every week, then your local government is saving, you know, a boatload of money. The research I did and that guide I mentioned earlier on yes in my backyard showed that for every 10,000 households composting, local government could avoid up to $250,000.
31:23a year just in collecting and throwing away the food scraps. Because now once you set up a household for composting, for success, that's why the training and the giving away bins is so important, that household will continue to compost for as long as they have that bin. And then those savings, you know, compound for that local government over time. And so there are all these benefits and we just need to do a better job of
31:52telling that story and providing that narrative and fighting against the vested powers that be that make money off of us continuing to throw away our stuff. Yes, I agree. And honestly, we have we have chickens. So a lot of our food scraps go to the chickens. And then whatever's left goes to the compost pile. And so I guess what I would tell people is if your city allows you to have three or four chickens,
32:22get three or four chickens and get a composting bin or figure out a way to do it. And then you can give the chickens treats and you can have a compost pile and you'd be well on your way to some self-reliance. That's what I think. Absolutely. And there are cities like Austin, maybe Austin's the only one, but they, Austin, the city of Austin offers a $75 rebate if you on the cost of building a chicken coop using a design that they have or the brand that they use.
32:52But cities like Austin are actually encouraging backyard chickens. And chickens can eat a lot of food scraps, as Mary can attest to. Uh-huh. And they love it. And they're very fun to watch when you throw the food scraps in the run. When we buy strawberries, which doesn't happen often because strawberries are expensive. And we grow strawberries, but the one that's season here, we give them the hulls. And
33:18The chickens lose their minds when we take the bowl of hulls up to them. It's like watching them dance. It's so much fun. That's great. And yes. Then you, and then how many eggs do you get every week or day? Well, a chicken lays an egg a day. So we have, I think nine chickens right now. So we get, well, we got a couple freeloaders. They're older, so they're not laying. So we get about seven eggs a day. That's a lot. That's, that's great. Yep. There's, there's a lot of.
33:48good to be found in doing things the old-fashioned way. And that's part of this nice start of the podcast because I was like, there's a lot of people out there doing things the old-fashioned way. I want to talk to them. Yeah. And you know, one thing that we promote is, you know, there's many ways to compost from backyard bins or worm bin in a classroom all the way to huge industrial sites. And food waste recovery is growing. I mean, curbside collection, but I think there's a disturbing trend.
34:17to collect food scraps and take them to far away industrial sites. And you know, at some point we may need those. I think the jury is still out on that, but they shouldn't be privileged over local, hyper-local options. I do some work in Baltimore. I've done over many years and there's a great site. It's called Hidden Harvest Community Farm in the middle of Baltimore. And
34:44There's such a model, I think of what you're talking about, local self-reliance, because they have, they're all volunteer cooperatives. So there's volunteers that run the farm cooperative and there's volunteers that run the chicken coop cooperative. And then there's volunteers that run the compost cooperative, but right as part of the farm, they have a part of the farm that's set aside for growing, uh, plants for, for dying cloth, for dying textiles. So Marigold, gold, indigo.
35:10can't remember all the plants that they have there. And then right next to that in the alley there, they have a warehouse where they're drying the plants and creating the dyes and teaching workshops and how to use the dyes to dye textiles. And so I just love that it, and then in the alley too, they have a refrigerator for rescuing food. So people can come and drop off food that they don't need or want on, you know, unopened kind of stuff.
35:38And then other people can come and take what they need. So it's the community fridge. And it's such a lovely model of community, local self-reliance, like, you know, it's in an urban area, it's a neighborhood. They're engaging the community. They're teaching classes. Um, you see people of all ages working together, coming together to build this fabric of community. And so, you know, growing food together. Um.
36:06learning how to compost together and manage a little community site. And on Saturdays they have a drop off. So people from the neighborhood can drop off their food scraps. I think it's like 10 to 12 every Saturday. And I've been there a number of times and there's families coming in with their kids and then they come to the garden and they could get stuff at the farm. So it's just, it's just so lovely to see these things percolating and growing across the country. That is super cool. I.
36:34I love it when communities come together to help each other out. I live in LaSore, Minnesota, and technically I don't live in LaSore County. I live in Sidley County because we're right on the border. But my mailing address is LaSore. And we have a really thriving farmers market in LaSore. And we grow a farm to market garden, so we sell at the farmers market. And there is a dollar store or a dollar general or something in town here.
37:03And our town is like 6,000 people. And it's really interesting to me that we have this robust, thriving farmers market. It's just been growing and growing for the last three years. And people come, I mean, they walk from their homes in town to the farmers market. They don't even drive. And so they're not driving, which means they're not emitting greenhouse gases, which is good. And honestly, the dollar stores don't have.
37:33produce really. They have stuff that's canned like you said. So our community is really stepping up and providing homegrown healthy produce for our town. And my husband and I are part of that because we grow the garden and we sell there from our stuff. And I feel like every little town that does something like my town is doing or like what you were just talking about.
38:02It's one little tiny step, but if there's a lot of tiny steps, it becomes a week. Yeah. And you know, that's where a lot of the work we do is kind of structural work for on policies and, um, passing state laws. I mean, on the, I mentioned the community broadband work we did. Well, you know, in, um, there was, there were cities like Chattanooga that were early cities that developed their own.
38:31municipal owned broadband and they could offer that service for cheaper prices at faster speeds to more of their citizens or residents. So it was an equity issue in terms of access. And then the big companies, telecom companies tried to pass statewide laws to prevent cities from owning their own municipal broadband networks because they didn't want to give up that market.
39:00That's where the structural, like exercise, you know, we need to lead by example and do the things we're talking about. But it's also, I think, really important to exercise your civic muscle, your citizen muscle, and advocate for good policies. And fight, you know, they have so much money for lobbyists and to pass bad laws and prevent us from doing the things we need to be doing to promote.
39:27you know, the sharing economy, reduce waste or save money or be more self-reliant or, you know, the homegrown economy. And so we have to really fight that power structure and we have to protect. And, you know, my, one of our co-founders, David Morris coined this term because we're a democracy, like we make the rules as a democracy and the rules make us so, you know, it's very important being engaged in the rulemaking in your community.
39:54One thing I want to go back to that you said, what you talked about the table your husband made for you and durability, and then when you bought the coffee table from Amazon, it fell apart in two months, but durability and just moving towards more reusable products is really easy. And it can save a ton of money, not only for our local governments, but also individuals, as families. If we carry a water bottle and fill it up, we're blessed to have clean water in this country.
40:23You're not buying bottled water, that's a ton of money. If you get old towels and you rip them up as rags and you're not buying paper towels or you use cloth napkins and you're not buying paper napkins, you're saving money, et cetera. So there's just so many ways that we can save money through reuse and I think some of the policies are catching up at the local level. There's now, I think it's, forget the...
40:52some of the towns that have passed bills that if you're using single, you know, that single use like coffee cups, you can get a discount for usables, but you pay a fee for the single use. Same with like a lot of shopping bags. I don't know in Minnesota where there is, but it's big in Maryland, in my area, where in the county, Montgomery County, for instance, you pay a five and DC to you pay like a five cent fee for your plastic shopping bags.
41:22everywhere you go, people are using, we use bags just to avoid that five cent fee. So it's, it's not a lot of money. It's not a big, um, incentive, but it's enough of a policy shift, setting the infrastructure that we can shift people to different behaviors. And I think that's just really important. Yes. And on that note, it takes a month to build a habit. I've been told. And.
41:48We do shop at Sam's like once every couple of months because we need to stock up. This is how it works in my house. And we got the cooler bags for milk and butter and things. And we always remember to take the cooler bags because if we don't, then stuff gets warm and it might spoil and it's not good. Took us two months to remember to bring the cooler bags because, you know, it was new back when we started doing it. But...
42:16Now there's always a cooler bag, at least one in every vehicle that we own so that if we do stop somewhere and get milk, the milk goes into the cooler bag. That's a reusable system. And really a lot of the stuff that we do in our daily life is habit. So it only takes a month to build a habit, whether it's bad or good. So if the listeners think that they can't change how they do things in their lives,
42:46They can. It may take a month, but you can change to a better way of doing things.
42:54That's right. And we're trying to, we've been doing work in the schools because there's nothing like your young kid coming home and saying, we're going to start doing it this way. So kids have a lot of agency and a lot of, um, and, uh, can get, you know, it was kids, they say has got us all to wear seat belts. They'd be like, your seatbelt's not on, you know, so, um, holding their parents accountable. Um, it can work both ways. I know, but, um, but. Yeah. Getting.
43:23giving kids the tools that they need to improve their own world. I just find they're just fierce advocate advocates for the change we need to be making. And it's a good thing they are because if they weren't, they probably won't have a world to to be doing better things in. And I say that not to be a downer, but because I believe it's true. My son and I were talking, I don't know, last year about this time about something.
43:53And he's a young adult. I mean, he's 22 now. And I said something about the future, like 50 years from now. And he completely deadpan looked at me and said, it doesn't matter, I'm gonna be dead by then anyway. He's 22. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, the world is gonna blow up long before then. And he was not being silly. He was completely serious.
44:19He said, mom, he said, all the damage has already been done. Do you really think we can fix it? And I just, I was so sad in that moment. I was like, this is my kid saying this to me, you know? And I said, I think that if we keep doing what we're doing and other people keep doing the kind of things that we're doing, yes, I think that the world can be saved. Do I know for sure that that's true? No.
44:49So yeah, kids are definitely a good gauge of what we can do to make things better and they're sponges and they soak up everything. So if they get fixated on a good thing, encourage it. Yeah, and you know, I'm not a behavior expert, but my understanding is some of the research but from behavior experts indicate that
45:16you have to give youth, all of us really, hope. Because once you give up hope, you can descend into despair. And once you do that, you begin to deny the science. So in the case of climate, we don't want people giving up hope and then beginning to deny the science on climate disruption. And so that's one of the reasons I love to work with youth is and...
45:40particularly with, with, with food waste, because you can reduce it, you can rescue it. Kids are advocating for shared tables and fridges in their schools and composting, you know, in terms of the field in which I'm working, and I'm sure there's so many others that kids can be involved, but we're giving them something that they can work on and make a difference on gives them hope and gives them something to work on and provide some action and activity. And it's just so important right now.
46:08And we can't let any of us give up hope. And the other thing I'll just say when it comes to climate is that if we're facing rising temperatures, there's a huge difference between four degrees of global temperature rise on average and eight degrees. So there's a lot of momentum towards global temperatures increasing and we have to still do everything we can to slow that down.
46:36because the planet's warming, but we don't want it to be the catastrophic warming. So, and like I said before, food waste is a part in the pond, a low-hanging fruit, because along from farm to table and back into the ground, there's so many places along that route to avoid the climate implications of how we consume and use our food and discard it.
47:06Yep, exactly. So I feel like I'm just saying, yep, yep, yep, a lot. And it's because I completely agree with everything you're saying. Not everyone does, and I guess that's okay. I mean, I don't think it's okay. I think that everybody should be trying to improve their world. But I'm trying really hard to get people to wake up a little bit. And that's part of the reason I do the podcast is because people need to know
47:36is out there that they can do to change their little part of the world. Because if they change their little part of the world, it changes all kinds of things in the bigger scope. That's right. And you know, how we talk about things doesn't make a difference. I mean, just to give you an example, you know, when you talk about organic farming or regenerative agriculture, a lot of rural areas of farmers, you just cut off discussion for whatever reason. I think it's ridiculous. But
48:05If we're talking about healthy soils, like everybody wants healthy soils, for some reason is just not as loaded. I have no term. So figuring out how to tell the story in a way that makes those connections and crosses the aisle or crosses the bridge and becomes nonpartisan, I think is just going to be increasingly important in our country. Yeah. Healthy soil, clean air, and clean water are the really important things.
48:34And when you say it in those words, people are like, well, yes, of course I want those things. But then you get into all the layers of how we achieve that. And I think a big part of it is that people get overwhelmed. They, they don't, they can't take in all the information, but they understand healthy soil, clean water, and clean air. So I guess it's just a matter of, of trying to break it down enough.
49:04little pieces. My friend used to say how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? And so maybe what you're doing or what I'm doing, what a lot of the people I've talked to on the podcast are doing is that one bite at a time part. Yeah, yeah one step at a time baby steps. I mean we recommend that whether you're an individual or city like here's a whole menu of options you could be doing and you know if you don't have a
49:32you know, millions of dollars to implement a program or a huge site, whatever you need, don't worry. You can do these other things. Just, you know, do something. Oh, yeah. And we like to emphasize the cost savings. So whether it's to the individual, like on the reuse examples I was giving or, um, for city, like doing these things actually really saves money and taxpayer money in the long run. I mean, if we're building more landfills and more incinerators to
50:00you know, because we continue to live in this throwaway society, that's, that's expensive. I mean, waste incinerators are like, and Minnesota has its fair share of those, you know, is one of, is the most expensive way to handle our waste. You know, you need bonds on, on Wall Street issued, and then you got to pay back those bonds, you know, over a 30 year period. And landfills are expensive too. And so the main thing,
50:28And that comes back to us as taxpayers. So talking about the job creation, saving money is always gonna be important. And on the jobs, I'll just say we've done tons of research over many years. So for like 10,000 tons flowing to a landfill, maybe one job, but if you take that 10,000 tons and you send it to a recycling facility, just for sorting the materials,
50:58just so it's ready to go to remanufacturing plants. That's 10 times the number of jobs. And once you make new products from the old, like you have a reused paper mill, that's gonna be like a hundred times the jobs per ton than even sorting, let alone landfilling. And composting is the same way. I mean, if you have a distributed kind of more hub and spoke,
51:28infrastructure for composting like at schools or farms or smaller sites, you're going to create more jobs per ton because you've got it distributed now or diverse or decentralized rather than one industrial site. So there's many ways I think to make the case and reach people where they are. I think it was in Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point, where he talks about the things that are needed for things to tip on and
51:57catch on like wildfire. And he says, we need the early adopters. I mean, he didn't come up with this, of course, the notion of early adopters and the majority has been around for a long time, but, um, the early adopters, you know, willing to take risk, whereas the majority early majority, late majority, at very risk, adverse has to be proven first cost effective first. And then, so you need the early adopters, but you need the translators who translate the experience, tell the story. Right.
52:26of the early adopters and their success to the early majority so that things can tip and catch on. And so all of these, you know, you need the models. Some people won't do it unless it's proven. So you got to prove it. You got to tell the story in a compelling way. You got to get things to tip. You need the mavens to tell the story. So you're a maven, Mary. All right. You're telling the story. You're getting it out there, getting things to tip. Go girl.
52:54I'm not telling the story. I'm giving people a place to tell the stories. Yes. The Tipping Point is a fabulous book. Anybody who loves to read, read it. I read it years ago. I loved it. It was so interesting to me how that works. So yeah. And the point I was gonna make, I almost forgot, was that one of the things he said for things to tip, it's gotta have this thread that connects to a lot of issues that people care about. So if your issue is climate,
53:22you sell on that. If your issue is jobs or economic development, you sell on that. If you're like in Baltimore, I mentioned earlier, a lot of the abandoned buildings or row houses that
53:36you know, have been taken down, they become places and drug dealers to hang out and rats. And so, you know, if you're now creating green spaces and gardens that have compost as an accessory activity, then you're, you're, you know, the people in that community are like, oh, you're doing youth engagement. You're, you know, I'm in a food insecure neighborhood. Now you're producing food. So that's why they are interested in composting food scraps. You know, if you just gave them a bin and it went to some industrial facility far away, they wouldn't be, you know, so inspired to participate.
54:06You need to make these connections in all the areas in which different people care about in order for things to tip. Yes, and everyone needs to eat. So yes, so food is the thing. And good food, healthy food is the thing that we all want. And so I'm going somewhere with this. If we teach people how to be invested in
54:34how their food is grown and where it comes from. That's the tipping point, I think. Yeah, and affordable food. And that's why the dollar stores are so popular, even though there's so, you know, it's because it's viewed as, this is what I can afford. Yes. And the other thing that's really frustrating with all of this is that money is the underlying thing for everybody. And
55:04I hate that. And I understand there are buy nothing sites, there are sharing sites, there are thrift stores where things that are really expensive, you might be able to find them for less, blah, blah, blah. There are ways to not spend so much on money. But money is the root of all evil, as we all know, and hurt our entire lives. And so when we talk about the dollar stores,
55:31I have read so many things about people saying that the only place they can get to get food is a dollar store in their city because they have to take public transport or they just don't have the resources to be able to go somewhere else. And I really wish, and again, this sounds really idealistic and I hate to sound like Pollyanna but I'm going to do it anyway. I wish that every
56:00Small town would have a big community garden that is central to the whole town so that people could go and grow their own. I wish that if it's a big humongous city like New York City that they would do that for the boroughs, I guess is what it's called, where there's different little communities in a big city. Because then maybe dollar stores would be
56:30I wish that that would be a thing.
56:34Yeah, I'll just say another word about dollar stores and it's not the initiative that I focus on, but they are data showing, our data and others, that they're actually the cause of decline and poverty in the areas in which they go in. So they're creating and exasperating food deserts.
57:00They create fewer jobs and pay lower wages than independent grocery stores. They have very poor labor practices. They extract wealth from the community. You know, you're just lining, as I said before, the pockets of just a handful of companies. And they provide really poor value to customers. They are targeting black and brown neighborhoods.
57:29There's just so many problems with the proliferation of dollar stores at this point. So, yeah, I mean, I could just go on and on about them, but I know we're running out of time at this point. Yeah. And I could talk to you all day. This has been fantastic. So really what it all comes down to is compost is wonderful, which is what we were supposed to be talking about in the first place. And if you have...
57:58If you have a small yard, you can get like three or four chickens if your city allows you to. You can have some kind of compost bin and you can put some of your food waste into the compost bin and chickens love strawberry hulls. They love apple peels. They love all kinds of things. So whatever you're not going to throw in the compost bin can get to your chickens and you'd have your own little yard full of things that are good for you.
58:25And also another option for small yards is worm composting, vermicomposting. So, you know, keep that in mind people. Yep. There's all kinds of things. And if you're curious, go look up composting on YouTube or the internet or wherever, because you will find all kinds of ideas to do composting. There you go. There's a lot of misinformation on the internet, so do check out our website. Um, yes, yes, of course. Thanks to some good. Yeah. But, um,
58:53Yeah, not all compost is created equal. So. Yep. All right, Brenda, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Oh, pleasure to be here. Take care. Have a great day.
 

Niemczyk Family Farms LLC

Today I'm talking with Karina at Niemczyk Family Farms LLC. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Karina at Niemczyk Family Farms LLC. Good morning, Karina. How are you? Hi. Good morning. Doing well. Thank you. Good. I need to close an app real quick. Hang on. Okay.
00:27Tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Yeah, so we started our business, or technically became a business in 2023. We've been living on our farm since 2020. So it's kind of been incorporating homesteading and small farm practices in our daily life. But when we decided that we wanted to kind of pursue this more as a business
00:58potentially grow in 2023. So that was kind of the first kind of stepping stones. And, you know, the 2023 was kind of our basic growth year. And then this year has been a year that has been a little bit more, I want to say exponential, because that's a little bit aggressive, but definitely a bigger year for growth. So it's been good.
01:27Okay, when you say we, is it you and a husband and kids? Yes, my husband and I are married. We got married in 2019 and so we partnered together and this is kind of our 50-50% business. We have two small kids, one is three and then one is one and a half. Our oldest is a boy and then our youngest is a girl. They don't really help out too much on the farm, but they are just, I don't know.
01:56there and around and learning as we go. So soaking up all the good farm stuff. Yes. Exactly. So, okay. So you're, go ahead. Nope, go ahead. So you're a really busy lady if you have two under three years old and you're doing produce and you're doing cottage food production and you're doing meat too, right? Yep. Yep. And we, uh, we both still have full-time jobs. We haven't, um,
02:26transitioned into being self-sufficient enough yet where one of us can potentially, you know, move into us having it as a full-time job. So that's kind of where we're, you know, wanting to grow and potentially within the next five years have one of us be able to stay home and pursue this full-time, which would be really great. But yep, so we both have full-time jobs, have the farm as our...
02:54know, essentially side business right now and then our two, two young kids. And, um, uh, basically, you know, the, our passion or our desire to start the farm started with actually like the meat side of it and raising our own animals, um, raising our own food, um, and doing it in a way that was sustainable and regenerative in a sense of.
03:22utilizing the land that we have, utilizing the resources and utilizing the environment and it being a regenerative type farm and using that instead of a conventional type basis. So that's kind of where everything stemmed from was producing our own food, but then also growing into doing it for others as well who wanted to purchase and also have similar beliefs as us as where their food comes from.
03:52Yeah, absolutely. That's fantastic. So you must be working some time management magic over there in Arlington because I don't know how you're doing it. Yep, it's a long, long days, long, sometimes long nights. We also do hay. We run about 25 to 30 acres of hay. We do that in the summertime as well. So we, that's part of the...
04:21regenerative aspect of our farm as well. Instead of necessarily feeding animals, crops such as corn and soy and things like that, which is definitely some things we utilize into the feed of our animals, but we also use hay for feeding the animals as well, but also using it to sell to other farmers who also utilize it for their cattle or you know a lot of times people use you
04:51Yeah, so that's another piece of our farm as well. So yeah, time management is kind of just doing it as we go and trying to figure it out day by day. Sometimes it's not always like a week schedule or a month schedule. It's just kind of like flying by the seat of our pants sometimes. Well, I'm glad it works for you. I was hoping you had some advice because I know my listeners are dying for ways to schedule their lives easier or better.
05:20I guess one thing we do utilize if nobody else, you know, I'm sure it's a very similar thing others do, but my husband and I, we have a shared Google calendar. So if you, each of you have like a spouse or a partner, use your Google calendar. And that's where we put in like, it's always, it always changes, but like we'll block out a week or we'll have a week of like, this is what we're projecting. We're doing, Hey,
05:45or like this is where the week we're projecting like our chicken butchering, or this is when our layers are getting delivered, and this is when we're hatching these chicks, or certain things like that. So we kind of have a general outline of, okay, this is what we're blocking off for this week. And if it doesn't work out, we can change it, but then we kind of know what's coming up. So, and then we can schedule it. Okay, this kid has this appointment. This day at work, we have to stay late. So you always kind of have a running schedule of.
06:16what's going on and then incorporating your farm in there as well. So you kind of have an idea of, you know, when you get home from work, this is what we need to be doing. Or on the weekends, this is what we need to be focusing on. So I know it's very simple. It's kind of basic, but it's, um, you know, if you're at work, if you still have a regular full-time job at a computer on your phone, very easy. Look at the app on your phone, look at your computer, remind yourself, okay, this is what we have going on. So that's one thing we do.
06:45utilized pretty frequently. Yeah, I didn't think you were a time wizard or anything, but I just know you are extremely on the go from what you're telling me. And the other thing is you can plan all you want, but then the universe throws you a curveball. We had a bunch of big logs delivered, I don't know, three, four weeks ago for cutting up and splitting for our wood burning boiler that we need the house with.
07:15and my husband and my son went out to work on it. And my husband stood funny and threw his back out. He was literally at the doctor's office like three days later. And he was not laid up, but he certainly wasn't in any condition to continue doing any kind of heavy lifting or heavy chores for a couple of weeks. So.
07:40The logs are still sitting right now and we have about two months before we have to get them done. So he's much better now, but it would have been nice if that hadn't happened because it threw a wrench in the works and that's part of farming and homesteading. You never know what's going to happen. Yes, absolutely. Oh yeah. And injuries, you can't really do much about injuries. Same with weather. That's one thing that's really gotten us behind this year is weather.
08:08cooperating for when we wanted to do things. So that's just one thing of mother nature just saying like, hey, this was your plan, but I have a bigger plan and you guys are not not in our radar at all. So it's. Yeah. And I, and I didn't say what state you're in. You're in Minnesota. You are, you are like 20 minutes from where I live. So, yep, yep. So how did your guys garden?
08:35fair this year because ours did not fare well at all. Very terrible, very terrible. Yeah, we had a bunch of sweet corn, all of it basically drowned out. We do a bunch of potatoes, those also got rotted, all the roots rotted out. The only thing that's been doing okay is our cucumbers. I think our carrots are gonna make it, and tomatoes are doing okay because we have them in beds. But yeah, anything that we had kind of in our, in our,
09:04big garden, Jan didn't do well. So I'm assuming that's similar to you as well. Oh, yeah, it's, it's been, wow, that's not very Minnesota. I'm actually not from Minnesota. So anytime I say something that sounds Minnesota, it startles me. And I've been here for over 30 years, but I just typically don't sound like I'm from here. We grow a farm to market garden, anyone who's been listening to the podcast for almost the last year knows that. And
09:33Last summer we had a farm stand on our property and it was open in mid June and we had our banner out and people would just come into the farm stand and buy what they wanted and it was awesome. This year we didn't even bother to put the banner out because we don't have enough to sell in the farm stand. We did bring in a whole bunch of tomatoes last night that look really good. Like maybe three quarters of a milk crate full.
10:02Oh, wow. Nice. And I didn't even expect to get those. So I'm very excited about this because a lot of them are not quite ripe, which means we can sell them at the farmer's market Saturday. Finally. Yay. So it's been it's been rough and disappointing. And the thing that I'm holding on to with every fiber of my being is that the last three summers that we've had the garden going since we moved in in 2020, the garden has performed.
10:30majestically. It has been gorgeous and lush and full and vibrant and productive. And so I'm really hoping that this year is just a fluke and we can go back to the regularly scheduled programming next year. Yep, I agree. It's definitely disheartening when all your work that you put in is a failure. Yeah, and especially when you did everything you possibly could and it still fell apart.
10:59Yep, absolutely. It's just kind of the nature of farming and you know, it's farming is the biggest gamble in the world that you can take. So that's definitely, sometimes it can be really rewarding, like you said, and other times it can be very, very disappointing. And but you know, like you said, we kind of hope that certain years that make up for the bad years and we just keep going. Yeah, because you can't quit.
11:28We're addicted.
11:58And then people are like, Oh yeah. I'm like, Oh yeah. Everybody's struggling this year. Okay. I know it's kind of shocking to like how many people are, you know, your customers come and they're like, you know, asking, you know, what's going on? Why is there no produce here at the markets, this and that. But then you say it's all been drawn out. Everybody's struggling because of the, all the rain. And then, like you said, they're kind of like, Oh, like it hits them. Like.
12:26it's been super wet. It's almost like people aren't necessarily as aware of where their food is coming from, especially at markets, and how that this is local, their local environments affect their local farmers markets. So being out there at farmers markets and inspiring the community of how, where their food comes from affects the entire community. Yeah.
12:50Absolutely. My dog is losing her mind because my son is taking off for the day to go hang out with friends. And she's very upset that she's not going with him right now. That's Maggie. That's the dog I talk about all the time on the podcast. She'll settle down in a minute once they take off. My son has been so excited about this day trip thing for months now. And he said something about, yeah, I'll be leaving at 10 o'clock this morning. And I said, what?
13:19He said, are you dumb? I've only been talking about this for two months. I said, oh, it's the 20th. That's right. Okay. Yes. I said, when are you leaving? He said 10. And I'm like, great. Maggie's going to lose her mind. So she is losing her mind right this second. That's all right. It happens. You got to go with it. Oh, yeah. I never, I never edit out the dog because there's no point. I live on a homestead.
13:49We have a dog, we have cats, we have chickens. There's always going to be noise. So it's fine. Um, so I saw you guys sell lamb. I have a very specific question about that. Yes. Would you, I don't even know if this is legal in Minnesota, would you sell a lamb to somebody so they could butcher it themselves or do you have to have it butchered before you sell it? Um, so typically.
14:17At least how we do it, I know there's a lot of red tape with the USDA, so we follow the USDA guidelines. So specifically for us to sell direct to consumer, we have to have the animal butchered already and packaged with certain food label for us to be able to sell direct to consumer. As far as selling of live animals, I don't think there's necessarily any
14:46you know, there's there isn't anything different. You know, what does it matter if I go buy my lamb from a farmer that I'm just going to finish raising out and butcher? So I guess it doesn't necessarily matter if someone wanted to buy my live animal and then butcher themselves. But that's not necessarily, you know, there's plenty of other farmers out there that do that and like raise the animal to about, you know, you know, for lamb would be like three months, that's kind of when
15:16finish out on grass. That's what we do. But, you know, there's plenty of other farmers that do that. And that someone could potentially, you know, buy that land at an older age and then butcher it themselves. So I think there could be options out there for people to do that and just buy a land at an older age and then just butcher it themselves. However, that's not necessarily what we do. But I guess I'm not 100% sure.
15:46of anybody that does that. We have done it once. It was years ago. I have no idea what the legalities are involved with that. It was like a friend of a friend was going to sell some lambs off and it was already dead and skinned. No head, no hooves, no tail.
16:15and we butchered it on our kitchen table. And that worked out great because we didn't have to pay the extra money for the processing. Yep, for sure. And anyone who's ever bought a whole or a half steer beef, what do you want to call it, or a lamb or whatever, it's not only the cost of the animal that you're buying that you're going to use for food, it's the cost of the processing of the animal too. And a lot of people don't know that.
16:43Yep, absolutely. And the processing is expensive because butchering is a talent. It is a skill. Yep, absolutely. Yeah, we definitely were not confident in butchering lambs ourselves. Um, you know, there's, you know, if we were to just eat the lamb for ourselves or like a family friend or whatever, absolutely. There's no, I wouldn't even question if someone wanted to butcher it themselves. You know, um, that's your own food, your own.
17:13you know, whatever you're going to do with that animal. Totally. But for us, we knew that we wanted to sell it to other consumers. And we were like, we are not confident in our own betraying skills of a lamb. You know, that's just, like you said, an art, it's if you want to get nice cuts of meat, especially with those lamb chops, you want to get them looking nice, good, thick with a bone, you know, it's just you're like, yep, nope, there's no way. Yeah, and
17:42I am not going to get too far into my opinion on lamb here because I've already talked about a billion times on the podcast episodes, but we love lamb here. And if we were going to get lamb, we would try to figure out a way to do it so that we get the animal, dispatch it on our property and butcher it ourselves because it would just be more affordable for us. Yes, for sure. And especially if you're eating it for yourself, who cares what it looks like? Yeah. And lamb is so delicious. I hate it.
18:12I hate, hate, hate that it comes from such a cute little critter. Yeah. But it's so good. Yes, it is a very, uh, it definitely has a taste different from pork or beef, but it's, it's very mild and it does have a very savory, rich flavor, but it does, you know, especially the way, you know, it depends on how it's raised, but I feel like the way that, you know, if they have a lot of good grass and pasture in their diets mixed with, you know, the grain, it doesn't get that gamey flavor, which is. Oh, you know.
18:40one of the better things, one of the things you worry about with lamb is if it tastes a little bit on the gamey side. Yeah, I've never had lamb that tasted gamey. Well, there you go. We've had, we've had lamb, oh my goodness, I mean, obviously the one that we butchered ourselves, we had that for the year until it was gone. And honestly, I don't think we made it to six months, but, yeah, you know, lambs are not very big when you butcher them. Yeah, but, but we've had lamb from other places that we just bought.
19:09you know, a roast or a leg or whatever. And I've never had gaming, gamey tasting lamb in my life. So there you go. Very good. So it's, it's a great option. If you're sick of beef and chicken and pork, God knows I am sick of beef and chicken and pork. We bought a half a year or so ago and we are, we are through all the ground beef.
19:38We have eaten all the ground beef from that half. Yep, that's a lot. Yeah, my husband picked up beef from, I think it was Sam's club over the weekend and we didn't have a plan for Sunday for dinner. And he was like, we've got burger, do you want to do hamburgers? And I'm like, no, I really don't want to do burgers, but yes, we can do burgers. I'm so over it. Like if I could eat nothing but vegetables and pasta for the next month, I would do it. Yep, just skip the protein, who needs it?
20:07Yeah, and you can, you can get overdosed on stuff. Yes. So, that's where I'm at and he will never be overdosed on meat. He wants meat and some kind of starch for dinner every day. Yep. And I'm like, dude, really? There are other options. Yep, absolutely. Yeah, we can have variability, can't we? Yeah, please. So.
20:33So I'm going to beg him next week, can we please do something other than a potato and a protein at least twice? And he'll probably be fine with it. But it's really hard when you're partnered up and you're very different, but your core values are the same. Yes, absolutely. Because don't get me wrong, I adore my husband. I love everything about his soul. But I don't necessarily love his obsession with...
21:01the things that he loves to eat because I'm the cook, which means I have to make dinner, which means I have to eat what I make, which means he's going to get what he wants and I'm going to eat it. So yes, absolutely. That's not working around here. Yup. I hear a little one, I think. Yup. I have my little guy who just came in from outside with down. So hello little guy. Who's talking?
21:31I'm talking, I'm just working on the phone. Come here.
21:38meet myself for a minute here. Yep.
21:42Okay, good. So cute. What a cute little voice. Who's talking mom? Who's talking? Who are you talking to? Hi. I love. Yes, we'll be starting preschool in the fall here a couple days, so that'll be good. Don't cry mom. I know. It'll be good. He's ready. Yeah. Okay, so back to the farm stuff. Yes.
22:12Do you guys grow? What kind of hay do you grow? So for our on our property we have um four acres that are hay that we have cut in the past but now we're uh might only cut it in the future maybe once a year and then we but for uh grazing um but we seeded it ourselves with three different types of pasture grasses and then this year uh we seeded it with
22:43to think what kind of grasses are there mixed, but there's three different types of pasture grasses that are in there. And then the other land that we have is rented through our neighbors. So there's also around like a kind of like a county ditch area, the neighbors that we have also
23:13We also have another rental property that is 20 acres, very similar, where they had seeded some pasture grass that's been established for many years that we cut to be able to sell those small squares to other farmers. But for our pasture, we know more specifically what grasses are in there just because we seeded it ourselves.
23:41Yeah, I've become very aware that hay is not just hay and hay and straw are different. Yeah. And the whole bit because my husband keeps wanting to get wheat or oat or rye straw to use for bedding in the garden. And he's like, I don't want hay. And I'm like, why? And he's like, because we're going to get more weeds. I'm like, aren't you going to get...
24:08straw, aren't you going to get wheat or rye or oat weeds too?" And he was like, not as much. I'm like, okay, fine. Yep. Yep. I know. It's a whole thing of, you know, straws for bedding, hay is for eating, you know, so it's a whole thing of, you know, you want to get good quality and certain animals prefer certain types of hay. Horses can be pickier. So certain types of grasses that are in hay, they, you know,
24:36people don't necessarily want to buy because it doesn't agree with them or they get ulcers. So that's a thing. Cows can be a little bit less picky. So it kind of, you know, most of the time alfalfa and clover is a little bit more sought after because it has a higher protein content for the cows. But yeah, it's definitely a huge learning curve in trying to figure out which people and which...
25:04you know, customers like certain types of things for other animals that they're raising. Yeah, and until we moved here, I had no idea that straw and hay were very different things and they were used for very different things. I had no idea. So, even in my mid-50s, I'm still learning all kinds of things about how things work. Oh, yes, absolutely. It's always learning. You can always learn new things and there's always new things.
25:35changing and farming in a culture of ways that we can be more sustainable and ways that we can utilize the land for the soil and plants for for better utilization of them Yep for sure Okay, so I have like a couple more questions and I'm gonna cut you loose because I know you're busy You sell lamb. Do you sell poultry too? Yep, so we do
26:05chicken broilers that we raise in the summertime, primarily on pasture grass. When they're young chicks, they, you know, stay in the barn on heat until they're able to tolerate the environment and the weather outside. Once that happens, they stay 100% outside. They never go back inside and they're on pasture. They get moved every day. New pasture with new grasses on the pasture that we seeded. So they have all that different variabilities of the grasses.
26:34alfalfa, clover, those things that they eat, plus the bugs and the grubs and the dirt and they also eat the dirt. And then they are out there until we butcher them. They do get some supplemental corn feed that kind of just helps put on a little bit more muscle mass to their, I don't know if we marked that content too, which is sometimes nice for those skin on cuts that you like or a whole chicken.
27:00And then we also do turkey. So turkeys will be ready, usually butchering in September, early October to be ready for Thanksgiving. And that's primarily the two poultry animals that we do. And then we do lamb. And then hopefully within the next upcoming weeks here, we'll get our first cow. We're getting a first year bred huckler who will come to the farm already pregnant.
27:28either by AI or a bull that's on the farm that we're getting it from. And then we'll be getting two steers as well that we'll be able to finish growing out on the pasture for butcher. I was wondering if you were going to head toward cows and steers and you are. I'm very excited for you. Yeah. Okay. And then my other question is you're a cottage food producer. Yes. Because I saw the pictures of your treats. Oh my God. Yup. I do.
27:55I want to come to your house and live in your kitchen for a day. Absolutely. Yeah. So you make? So primarily sourdough is what I do. Um, mostly different kinds. I just kind of experiment with a whole bunch of different types of sourdough. Um, and some, I do some can, not a bunch of canning kind of just what I get from the garden to kind of produce for the family throughout the, uh,
28:20throughout the winter and if I have any extras for, you know, jams, jellies, things like that, I will bring to our farmers markets. Sourdough, I obviously bring us the farmers markets as well, but also that's kind of what we use to, you know, feed my family is I make the sourdough bread. And that's just, you know, one of the things that I like to do to be more sustainable in our own kitchen, you know, get out some extra preservatives in our diet as much as possible.
28:50and lowering food costs when going to the grocery store. So, yeah. I do not know how you do it, Karina. I would be like crazy trying to do everything that you're doing with little ones underfoot and a job job, a jobby job. Yep, I mean, granted in the summertime, I worked with a school system, so I can have some recess, which is super nice.
29:15So I only have to go into my job a few times during the summer occasionally, but I have summers off which makes it really nice so we can focus on going to farmers markets, being consistent at farmers markets, bringing our products, having consistent baking type of thing. Just kind of, so I mean, that's one thing that is nice about the summertime is having that option for our farm and everything.
29:44especially with taking care of the animals and everything because we obviously have a lot more animals in the sire time throughout the winter. That's one most benefit. Yeah, and if you don't mind me assuming something, I'm assuming you're not like 40. I'm assuming you're probably in your mid to late 20s. Yes, I'm 28. I'll be 29 pretty soon. My husband's also 29.
30:11So you have the energy of your 20s kicking you too. You're like, I can do it. I'll sleep when I'm dead. It's okay. Yep. Pretty much. It's kind of like, and you know, it's fine. We're just going to do all these things all at one time. And then eventually once we work the kinks out, it'll be fine. But yeah, we just, uh, uh, have the mentality. I mean, both my husband and I have very strong work ethics. We're very, uh, you know,
30:38very, if we're sitting still, something's wrong. Like there is no sitting on the couch. There's no watching TV and, you know, chilling. If we're sitting down, it's like, okay, something needs to be done or we need to do something. So that's just kind of how we both have been for forever. And it was just kind of, you know, happen sense that we both met each other. And that's probably why we, you know, hit it off so well. And, you know, have the business that we have enough.
31:07mentality and the momentum that we have is, you know, just having that dedication, that passion of, you know, strong work ethic and just wanting to better ourselves as well. So, yeah. Yeah, we have a good work ethic, but we do not have the energy we had when we were in our 20s. I know, it changes for sure. It does. It really does. I miss those 20s days. I really do. I miss my 30s too, actually. Yep.
31:35I don't know, you know, 30s I hear are good years, so I'm looking forward to that too. 30s were the best years of my life. I will die on that hill. 30s and up to about 45. Yep, I've heard the same thing. I've heard the same thing. So I'm happy to hear that, that it's, you know, good years are ahead. Yeah, and I don't want to discount my 45 to 55 stretch here either. I mean, these have been good years too, but in a different way.
32:06All different, but all good seasons and phases of your life. As long as you're breathing and you can walk, life is good. Yep, absolutely. All right, Karina, you keep on keeping on. Give those babies kisses for me. Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. Yes, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. If any questions come up, please let me know.
32:35again we're Niemczyk Family Farms LLC. We are located in Arlington Minnesota. We do have a website so you know feel free to look and you know there are ways that you can contact us through our website too. So let us know. And I will put the website address in the show notes okay. Fantastic thank you I appreciate it. Absolutely have a great rest of your day Karina thank you. Thank you. Bye.
 

Fameflower Farm

Today I'm talking with Sara at Fameflower Farm. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Sara at Fameflower Farm. How are you, Sarah? I'm doing good. Thanks. How about you? I'm good. You're in Tennessee? Yes, middle Tennessee, not too far from Nashville. Oh, nice.
00:26All right, well, tell me about yourself and what you do at Fameflower Farm. Okay, so we are a mini farm and we've been at this little homestead mini farm thing for about a decade now. And we, my husband and I moved here from the Chicagoland area with the ultimate goal of growing and raising as much of our own food as possible. We moved from a condo with zero land whatsoever. So it was a huge shift to almost 17 acres in Middle Tennessee.
00:56And you know, we thought it'd be easy-ish to figure it all out. And we're learning as we go that there's just so many things and everything has a big learning curve, but we love the lifestyle, the homesteading lifestyle and are really happy we have moved here and are doing all the things. We've got a bunch of different animals, huge garden and permaculture food forest and probably other things I'm forgetting.
01:23Oh, that's such a good question. Naming our farm was such a challenge. So our last name is Chodal, but it's spelled with a C-H, super hard to pronounce. So we figured that's out. We're not gonna use that name. And a lot of people name their homes that are farms based on their names. So since that was out, we had to go with something else. And we were looking for a bunch of different names and we discovered we are on limestone and we're in an area of the country that has some endangered plant species. We happen to have limestone glades on our property that grow maybe
01:51up to 10 different types of endangered plant species. The fameflower is one of those. And it sounded kind of cool, fameflower farm, three Fs, so we went with her. So what is a fameflower? It's a tiny little, it almost looks like a succulent with its leaves and it has a very beautiful, bright, almost fuchsia color of flower that only blooms in the afternoons in the summer.
02:16And it's an endangered plant species, so it's not found everywhere. It's challenging to find. And since we have it on our property, you know, that's pretty cool. Very nice. I'm always excited to hear about flowers that I don't know about yet. It makes me grin. Okay. So I really, I really want to talk about the dogs. And I mentioned this beforehand before we started recording.
02:41We have a mini Australian shepherd named Maggie that I talk about ad nauseam on the podcast. I try hard not to talk about her. So that's what we have. We have a dog. Her job is to be a watchdog. That is her only job. She does it really well to the point of doing it too well. So you raise Pyrenees poodle crosses. And they're gorgeous.
03:08But I need to know more about why that's a good mix. Okay, so we had a... Do you want me to tell you how I got into this whole dog thing to begin with? Yes, please. Okay, so we, both my husband and I have had dogs our whole lives. And we had, when we moved here, we had an Aussie poo, so Australian Shepherd poodle mix. He is an F2B, which means he's got a lot of poodle in him, essentially.
03:37And then we also had a skipper keep poodle mix. So we already loved poodle mixes. Those two dogs are just house dogs, cute, friendly, whatever. Nothing that they're gonna have work to do. And then we had a big chicken loss with a predator. So we got a great Pyrenees to guard our flock. As our great Pyrenees grows, she's just a beautiful, wonderful, amazing dog. And my mom, who had previously bred dogs like 30 years ago, kept saying Bishop, that's her name, is beautiful. You should breed her.
04:06And I told her I wasn't really sure that that was something I wanted to do because, you know, there's lots of dogs that need rescued and I don't know if I want to become a dog breeder. And then my mother-in-law also said she really wanted a dog and would love to have a dog if Bishop had babies. And they both had met our poodle mixes and everyone that we know likes the poodle mixes. I know poodle mixes are not for everybody, but they are for us. So we decided to do a litter with Bishop and a standard poodle.
04:34my mom's water aerobics instructor happened to have a health-tested standard poodle available to be the dad. So it just all kind of came together perfectly and he was a very beautiful, calm-ish for a poodle, standard poodle. So it was all wonderful, had the first litter, and my mother-in-law ended up getting one of those puppies once she worked through some health issues because that kind of delayed getting her puppy, but then everybody else got puppies and they all loved them. And one of the reasons I think they love the puppy so much is because
05:04When we first bred the dog, I posted about it on Instagram, and somebody commented and said, have you looked into puppy culture? That's a training program that you can do as a breeder. And I had never heard of it, have had dogs my whole life. I had no idea the breeder could actually start doing things with the puppy to make them a more calm, confident, wonderful family dog as they grew. So we looked into the program, got it, and started implementing it right away.
05:32You can start on day three of the puppy's life doing certain things with them. And it just makes the most amazing puppies. So after that first litter, we had so much positive feedback, we decided to continue to breed the periodoodle puppies. So ours are an F1 generation, meaning that the mom is a full great Pyrenees and the dad is a full standard poodle. So first generation F1 are periodoodles. There are other options available out there, of course, that have more poodle in them for less shedding.
06:01but we really like the F1s because they still maintain some of those great Pyrenees traits. And they're just so sweet, loving. They aren't necessarily the best guardian dogs like a full great Pyrenees would be, but they are such amazing family dogs. And as we kept one of the puppies from the first litter, she's now almost three and she exhibits some natural guarding of our kids.
06:27So she'll put herself between other people if she's concerned about the other people and our kids. It's really amazing to watch. Okay, so here's what I know about poodles. Zero. I know nothing about poodles. I have seen them. I don't think I've ever pet one. I don't think I've ever met a poodle. Okay. I have met Pyrenees dogs, many, and they are lovely animals.
06:53The only issue that I have heard about with Pyrenees is that they like to wander. And there's one that lives about eight miles down the road from us. His name is Yukon. And he came to visit us the first summer after we moved in four years ago. And my dog, I just let her outside and she's on a lead all the time because we have a big busy road outside and she yipped.
07:20And she was looking towards the side of the house and I couldn't see her on the corner, but she could. And I was like, what is over there? So I step around and there's this big great Pyrenees dog. And I was like, hi buddy, what are you doing? And he just trotted over and introduced himself wagging his tail. I was like, okay, at least you're friendly. And then he had to go check out Maggie. And Maggie is a mini Australian shepherd. She weighed maybe 25 pounds at the time. So
07:49You can imagine this little black tri, mini Australian shepherd and this probably 90 pound great parent, his dog introducing themselves. I was like, please don't kill each other. And come to find out the owners had tried many, many things to make Yukon stay home and none of them worked except that we haven't seen him this summer. So either their solution is working, keeping him on his property.
08:18or he's no longer with us and we don't know which. So, Pyrenees like to wander. We have friends that own a couple and they wander as well. Yes. So tell me about poodles. What are the traits for poodles? So the poodle is known for being very intelligent. If you look at the dog intelligent charts, you'll oftentimes see poodle at the very top. I normally see them as the second most intelligent dog, which is awesome for training.
08:48They also, if you look at their history, they are known for doing just about everything a dog has ever done to help humans, such as even retrieving and guarding and doing service dog duties. The list just goes on and on and on of things that they have been able to do for humans, depending on what you look at, since there's just so much information out there about everything. The other thing they can be known for is being a little high strung and maybe a little bit
09:15neurotic at times, some of the standard poodles or poodles in general. They also are known for not shedding, of course. So that's, I think, where the breeding of poodles with other dogs has come to become more popular because people want a specific dog breed, but then they don't want the shedding. So they mix the poodle and that breed and then they get less shedding. So that's nice.
09:45experienced the fact that great Pyrenees dogs tend to be pretty calm, pretty laid back. Yes. And so does that kind of mitigate the neuroticness of the poodle? I think yes. And we also, when we're breeding, we're looking for a dad dog that is on the calmer end of the poodle spectrum. So breeding for temperament, I think, is really important because you want to get those traits passed along. And then also with the puppy culture stuff that we do when they're young.
10:15We play the puppies classical music, and that's been shown in studies to calm them, not only as puppies, but through their lifetime. So we're doing things to help reduce any type of neurotic tendencies that any puppy might have. So we're already working with them from a very young age to help get them to be pretty chill. And we have had feedback from the majority of our puppy owners now saying, this is the calmest dog I've ever had.
10:42is this really a puppy? She seems so old, she's an old soul, that type of thing, because they are calmer with all the training and then also that great Pyrenees jeans. So you're really helping out the new owners before they even get their puppy, because you're training them from three days old. That is the goal, yes. So what really sold me on the puppy culture thing was when I looked at pictures and I saw a picture of
11:09I think it was five week old puppies and they were all sitting still staring at the person. And I thought, yes, that is what I want. It's amazing. And there's a ton of other stuff that goes into it. But to get them to do that is really not that difficult. As long as you are consistent and you work with the dogs when they're little, they can obey and just be much more calm than a regular puppy that doesn't have that type of upbringing.
11:39It's just we don't give them treats or attention unless they are sitting. And they learn it so fast when they're little. It's kind of like kids, you know, they learn stuff really, really fast. Puppies learn really, really fast too. You don't have to tell them multiple times. Just do it a few times and then all of a sudden they have figured it out and they are sitting whenever they see you because they know that you're gonna give them attention or the food or whatever it is quicker if they sit. Yep. I'm gonna talk for a minute or two about what we did with Maggie because we had never had any...
12:08We'd never had a puppy. In the 20 something years, my husband and I have been together. We didn't have room for a dog. We didn't have a yard for a dog. We did not have a dog. And friends of ours had the mom and dad, Minnie Australian Shepherd, and she, the female got pregnant and they, this was the first ever litter from the female that they'd experienced.
12:38our friends, you know, they post on their Facebook page and I was, I messaged Jean and I said, I would, we would love to have one of those puppies. We're moving to a 3.1 acre property here soon. And that seems like more enough room for a mini Australian shepherd. And I think when I messaged her, she thought that I was just like, Oh, it would be nice to have one. So it got down to where the puppies were.
13:04were starting to find homes and she posted and she said, we have two left if you want one, message me. And it was just a general post on Facebook. And I messaged her immediately and I said, I wasn't joking, how much are they? And she told me and I was like, cool, I want one. And she sent me a picture, two black tri puppies looked almost identical, both female. And she said, which one do you want?
13:29And I said, I have no idea they look exactly like. And she said, just pick one. I said, the one on the right in the picture. And she was like, do you have a name in mind? And I said, Maggie. And she said, okay, we will be calling her Maggie from now on, so she learns her name. Yeah. So Maggie knew her name long before we picked her up.
13:48So, Diesel and Daisy, Maggie's parents, the dog parents, they were outdoor dogs. They are farm dogs, they are working dogs. So the puppies spent a ton of time outside. So, Maggie was practically potty trained before we even got her. That helped too. Now, this dog had seven kids who were around all the time because Jean and her husband have seven kids. And so,
14:17Maggie was terribly socialized to children and to her litter mates, but she wasn't terribly socialized to being confined and she wasn't socialized to other people. So when we brought her home, we were trying to crate train her. We lasted six nights and we got no sleep. That dog cried and screeched and barked all night long for six nights in a row and we gave up and brought her to bed with us, which was a mistake. It's fine. She's small.
14:47Yeah. So, um, within a week of her coming home, I was trying to teach her sit, because I didn't know how to train a dog. I'd never had a puppy. And we had some little treats that she really liked. And, and I, I basically put the treat in my fingertips and held it above her head and said, sit, and as soon as she sat down, cause she lifted her head up, I would give her the treat took five minutes. This dog has known sit and lay down since.
15:16And she thinks that sit means sit and lay down all in one motion. So if you say sit, she's going to sit down and then she lays down, which is very, very cute. She's, she's been terribly trainable. And once she hit about three, she's four now. Once she hit about three, she did it. She decided that her crate is her favorite place in the world. Go fit. So if she's going to lay down and take a nap, she goes in the crate.
15:45And she's also old enough now to have the run of the house at night. So she doesn't need to go in her crate and have the door shut. So she trained herself for the crate three years later. Go fig. But the one thing that I can say about having a puppy and never having had a puppy before is the things that we tried to do was number one, always talk to her in an upbeat, gentle voice from the very beginning.
16:14Never yell at her if we could avoid it. I mean, if she was in danger, of course we were gonna yell, but that didn't happen. So she's never really been yelled at in panic or anger. And never ever hit a dog, ever. I agree, yep. Because it teaches them fear and it breaks their spirit. You should not hit a dog. The old thing about taking a rolled up newspaper and swatting a dog, don't do that. It doesn't help. So.
16:44Those are my hints on raising a puppy since I'm very new at it. What are your hints? I mean, you're doing the puppy thing that you were talking about, but what have you learned? Yeah, I totally agree with not hitting a dog and the puppy culture program talks about that a lot as well. They actually have another program for people when they first bring a dog home. So there's one for breeding breeders and then there's also one for when the dog first comes or the puppy first comes home with you.
17:13I think that's extremely useful as well. I think all their information is amazing. So getting that and then preparing for the puppy before it enters your home is always really helpful to have all the things on hand. It doesn't need a ton of things, but a crate is very helpful, I think. I know it didn't work out so well for Maggie, but for the most part, you know, crate training works very, very well. That's one of the things that we do as breeders with the Puppy Culture Program is we introduce the crate to every puppy.
17:40multiple times before they go home. They actually have a crate in their area just so they can go in and out of it. We put treats in there. We'll put part of their food in there sometimes. We'll have them have meals in there just so they're used to that confined space because our dogs, our puppies are also born outside but they come inside every day, many times a day once they're old enough and they can see in here because before they can see in here it's not really useful. And they're with mama a lot then. But since our mama dog is an outside dog, she never comes inside. So they don't come inside until they are
18:10able to see and hear, which is around three weeks old. Yeah, Maggie was born inside. She was in the house. But as soon as she could see and hear and was walking well, the puppies would go out with mom and dad. So I'm not at all upset that Maggie was an outside dog for a while when she was still with the mom and dad dog. That's totally cool. Yeah. Go ahead. You were saying. Oh yeah.
18:41Yeah, so we just try to get all them used to as many things as possible before they go home with their owner, their human parents. And we also bring people over once the puppies are old enough to see and hear and they're able to be socialized and mama dog's okay with it. Because the puppy culture program talks about how dogs do not generalize. So even if they see a person and they're used to a person, they're not necessarily going to...
19:08correlate that with another person. So they need to see as many different size, shape, color, hairdos, hats, shoes, clothing, all the different things so they get used to all of those things because they're not going to generalize from one thing to the next. So we specifically have people come over to show them different types of people and different clothing styles and different hats and different... I have my kids put on costumes, so they get used to costumes and different noises. So we're trying to get them used to all that stuff.
19:38And then when the parents do first bring their puppy home, if there's anything that they do that's specific to their lifestyle that they want their dog to be very used to, let's say they have a boat or an RV, or they go to a gym every day and they do gymnastics or taekwondo or whatever, and they want the dog to come with them, I always recommend taking the puppy with them to as many of those things as possible before they hit 12 weeks, because they say that 12 weeks is the...
20:07critical socialization period. And after 12 weeks, they can definitely learn new things. It just will take longer. So it takes one positive or negative thing to happen to the puppy before 12 weeks, and it should be imprinted in their brain for the rest of their life. And you can obviously help them if something negative does happen, but if it's a positive experience, then it's way easier to say, okay, this is our boat, and we go on the boat all the time, and you like the boat, and it's great, and you saw it before you were 12 weeks old, and now you're not scared of it, that type of thing.
20:36Wow, I didn't know it was before 12 weeks. That's good to know. The other thing that we learned when we brought Maggie home is that puppies grieve. They grieve losing their litter mates. She was so sad that first three days. I mean, she was okay, but she was just very down. And I was like, did we buy a dud puppy? She's not very bouncy.
21:05And then after about a week, she livened up. She was eating fine. That's the other thing is that they're weird about eating if they're grieving. Oh. So we had to basically feed her food out of our fingers for the first three or four days because she was just so sad. Oh my goodness. It was terrible, yeah. And I think she missed her human kids too. Mm, interesting. Yeah, when we took her back over,
21:35to visit. And I asked before we did it, I was like, Jean, do you think that Maggie would recognize Daisy and Diesel if we brought her back over? And she was like, I have no idea, but you're welcome to bring her over. I'd love to see her. So we took Maggie over to see them. And the mama dog, Daisy, she was very interested in Maggie, but I'm not sure that she realized that Maggie was her kid. But the most interesting thing of all is that
22:04My friend Jean would give each of the kids a puppy to basically kind of take care of while they were little. Yeah. Kids would have some responsibility for that particular puppy. And come to find out Maggie's puppy name was Lulu. And one of Jean's teenage sons was in charge of Lulu, who eventually became our dog Maggie. And he was standing off the side watching Maggie and I said,
22:32I said, do you want her to come to you? And he was like, yeah. And he scooched down. And I said, Maggie, it's okay. And she looked at me like, I don't know him. And he said, it's okay, Lulu, come here. And her ears perked up, her face changed, and she ran over to him and gave him the biggest dog hug I've ever seen in my life. Jean and I cried, no joke. No joke, just lost it.
23:02I was like, can I hug you? She's like, yeah, I need a hug. I'm like, okay. And Maggie immediately, as soon as she heard that first name and his tone of voice, she knew who he was. So it's amazing to me what they remember, but what they don't remember as well. Yes, for sure. We have had a number of puppies come back and either we puppy set them or just came to visit and mama dog doesn't.
23:29really seem to care. Some of them she actually doesn't seem to like that much and would prefer them to not be near her. But most of them she's like, oh it's another dog, you know, we can play and it's fine. Others she's like, well you're fine but I'm not really caring too much that you're here. She doesn't seem to recognize them at all. But they all seem to recognize me. I spend the most time with the puppies. So they definitely seem to remember me to some extent and it's really cool to see. Yeah, it's, I wonder...
23:58I really wonder if maybe the reason the mama dogs don't recognize their offspring later is because the last time they saw them, they were little, they still looked like puppies, they still smelled like where they live and they still smelled like mom. And then if you bring them back six months later, they're dogs, they don't smell like mom anymore, they don't smell like where mom lives anymore. So maybe that's part of it? Oh, I definitely think it could be.
24:26And our mama dog, she's an amazing mother, but after a while, you know, she's like, it's been six weeks of this whole nursing thing and I'm really ready for a break. Especially when there's, we've had, she had a litter of 11 for her first litter. She was done with them. She was ready to go back to work and be the guardian dog and be done being mom. It was too much. She was done. There was lots of them jumping on her all the time whenever she saw them. Oh yeah, absolutely.
24:54Daisy, Maggie's mom, she wants to be back outside running when the hups are about, from what Jean told me, from about four to six weeks old. And she won't leave those puppies that first week. She is right in the welping kennel or whatever it's called. And she'll go out to pee and number two. But that's about it. And the day that we picked up Maggie.
25:24Maggie was a day shy of eight weeks old. She was one of the last puppies to leave. And, uh, Jean told me that day that that was the first day that Daisy had really been out and running around with Diesel. Oh, wow. The daddy dog and really just letting the puppies be while she, she went and ran and checked out the farm and, you know, got reacclimated to it. So she was a really good mom. That first litter, that was the first litter she'd ever had.
25:54So yeah, I'm so glad that you were cool with talking about dogs today, because I've been wanting to talk about this in depth for a while, and I tried to reach out to a couple people who breed Australian Shepherds, but I haven't gotten any response back, because I wanted to know more about that particular breed. But I think that dogs in general, if you treat them well, if you aren't mean to them, if you don't teach them, train them,
26:23to be mean, to be attack dogs, you can have a wonderful animal and it doesn't matter what the breed is. That's my take on it. I tend to agree with that, especially if they have a good start to life because they can get real scared real fast if something bad happens when they're little. So yeah, just treat them well and positive reinforcement. The puppy culture thing, when I was going through it and every time I reacclimate before we have a litter and it just reminds me of a toddler.
26:49I just think of these little puppies as toddlers. You set them up for success. You give them a yes space. You give them things that they can have. And they just do great. I feel like they become little people in puppy suits. Maggie has all these expressions and yips and barks and whines and whistles that she does to tell me what she needs. And as long as I'm paying attention, she does great.
27:17It's when I drop the ball and I'm not listening to what she's telling me that things happen. Yeah, I would agree with that too. A lot of the things that the dogs do that you may not like are generally because there wasn't enough attention being paid. It's a lot, so I understand that happens sometimes, but if you can pay attention to them, especially with potty training and stuff, you see their cues, take them outside, less accidents. Uh-huh, yes, absolutely. And that actually leads me to my next thing.
27:48If somebody's gonna get a puppy, and I am not a dog trainer, I'm just going from the experience we've had with the one dog that we got when she was a day shy of eight weeks old. You can't just get a puppy, put them in a crate for eight hours a day, take them out, and let them be out with you for a couple hours and expect to be able to put them back in the crate all night because you're going to ruin that dog. Yeah, they need a lot more.
28:16A lot more than that. They need time. They need attention. They need training. They need love. You can't just put them in a box. That's not how that works. No, definitely not. We actually send a potty training and crate training document to puppy parents before they bring their dog home to give them some ideas of how to potty train and how often to be taking them out and things like that. A little sample schedule just to get some thoughts started and kind of get some ideas going.
28:46Yeah, I was told that the pups can hold it as it were for an hour for every month they are old and that is not necessarily true for a four week old puppy. A four week old puppy is going to pee when it needs to pee, end of story, it doesn't matter where it is. But basically when you bring them home at hopefully eight to ten weeks old, they're good for about an hour. And then as they get older, once they're a year old.
29:16They can probably hold it for eight hours and asking them to hold it for more than eight hours is a little much. I think eight hours is a good amount for an older dog and any dog really. As they get older, some of them can hold it for so long. We have had puppies go home and they're sleeping through the night in a week or two. These are a bigger dog though, so they've got a bigger bladder. When they go home, maybe they're, oh gosh, is it 10 pounds?
29:45good size and they grow to be between 70 to 100 pounds. So they're a larger dog with a larger bladder so they can hold it for longer. But yeah, ours will, our puppies, we've heard reports back that they slept through the night starting quite soon. And I'm always very happy to hear that because I want them to have a really successful integration into their new family. That must be so nice. Maggie was five pounds when we brought her home and she's 35 pounds now.
30:08And I'm telling you, we would have been totally cool with creating her at night from the beginning, but she was not totally cool with that at all. Oh yeah, I get it. So, yeah. So, I love that you're, this is gonna sound crazy. I love that you are doing this, but I also love that it looks like you only let her have one litter a year. Yes, we just do one litter per year. So she...
30:37She had a litter and then we gave her a break. There's a heat cycle about every six to seven months. So she'll have another heat cycle after that litter. And then the following heat cycle is when she got bred again. And so she's had three litters so far. She will be having her fourth and final litter next year. So we don't want her to be too old, you know, when she has more litters. So she'll be done after next year. And we're hopefully gonna have another mama dog step in after that. So you are very, very purposeful and directed
31:07this. This isn't about making lots of money. This is you're doing this because you love it. Yeah, we love it and we want to be able to provide good family dogs for people, especially now that we have young kids. I appreciate the fact that I feel comfortable with these dogs going to a home with children. And I think rescuing is an awesome thing, but I also have many friends who have been attacked by their rescue dogs. And if that were to be a child that got attacked, that is just too much of a worry in my mind.
31:35I know some people are really great at training and that works well for them, but I want to be able to provide that for people to have access to a great family dog for them and their family. Yeah. And I feel like if you're going to rescue a dog, I think that's a noble thing to do. But I also think that you need to know about dogs. You need to understand dog's cues. You need to understand how to work with them and work them through issues. And we were not those people.
32:03When we talked about getting a dog for our place, we really wanted to get a puppy because that way if there were issues, we caused the issues. We knew where it came from and we would figure out how to fix it. I did not want to go get a three-year-old dog from the Humane Society that I didn't know, that didn't know me, and they had no background on it because we were not educated enough about that to help.
32:33that dog. Yeah, I understand that. Yep. So, um, the one of the last things I will share about Maggie, because I'm allowed to talk about Maggie today, is that she's she's gorgeous. She is she is perfect. She is the epitome of a black tri Australian shepherd, except that she's a mini. She looks exactly like a normal Australian shepherd. She's just small.
33:03It doesn't look like they took an Australian shepherd and bred her with a chihuahua. That's not how that worked. And I would have loved to let Maggie have babies. The reason we didn't do that is because I don't want to be in the dog breeding business. And what would have happened is we would have let her have puppies and I would have wanted to do it every year like you do, because I love puppies. The problem with breeding puppies is that you have to find homes for them.
33:32And you have to let them go to those homes. And I would have just cried every single time. It's funny, people ask me that all the time. How do you let them go? And I always say, I don't have enough hands. You know, you're gonna have nine puppies left. I can't pet all of them at once. There's too many. They need to go somewhere else where there's enough hands to love them. Yep, I still would have sobbed every time though. Yeah. And I am so in love with this dog.
33:59that if anything had happened to her having puppies, I would have shot myself. You know, I just, I wouldn't have ever been able to forgive myself. So she was spayed at six months. Okay. And she will never have puppies. So she will basically always be my puppy until she's no longer with us. And I don't know if we're ever gonna get one again. Not that kind, not that breed. She's a very laid back.
34:28many Australian shepherds. She's very calm when she's in the house. However, we got her during COVID. We could not socialize her because we weren't going anywhere. So the dog wasn't going anywhere. And every time new people come, she barks her head off. She eventually decides they're okay and they're her friend, but it takes her a little bit. So I'm hoping that with the next puppy, maybe a lab, maybe. We'll see. Not a Pyrenees though. They're too big.
34:58But they're very big, yeah, and they do love to be outside. I know they can't be house dogs, but man, do they love to be outside. They're beautiful. I mean, if I was 24 and still had the energy that I had when I was 24 and we had 3.1 acres, I might consider a Pyrenees. But I'm 54 and I don't have the energy to run and play with a Pyrenees and I would want to run and play with it. Yeah.
35:26not happening in my lifetime. However, I do love them. They are beautiful. And when my friends, when we go to our friend's house, I'm always petting the male. The female is kind of skittish, but the male is really friendly. And he's so funny. He chuffs. You know, he does that, that kind of, it's like a snort except it's just in your mouth. He chuffs to say hi. And I'm like, I'm chuffed to see you too.
35:53So anyway, I don't know, I wanted to talk about, Maggie, I wanted to hear about your dogs and why you're doing it, and I know it's because you love doing it. And I wanted to talk about that you really have to do certain things when they're puppies if you want a good dog on the other side. So I think we covered that today. Definitely. And I appreciate you indulging me. I have been desperately wanting to talk about puppies with someone who knows what they're talking about too.
36:22Yeah, we love the puppies so much. It's so fun to have them and see them grow and learn and get it. Just so cute when you see it clicking in their heads. Oh man, cutest little things ever. And their little floppy puppy ears and head when you pet them. So, so cute. Oh yeah, do the Pyrenees do the head cock, the turning their head to the side when they're listening? Um, I would say sometimes, yeah. Not as much as our Skipperkey Poodle mix. He was...
36:49the king of head cocking. He was constantly looking at you trying to figure out what you were saying. He had those big ears sticking up that were kind of twisting like satellites or something. So they don't quite fit. The two big Pyrenees traits that I think are so cute in most situations, they hug, which is not cute when they're dirty, but they will literally stand there and hook you. And a lot of the periododal dogs that we have that have grown up, they also will do the hugging with them. They put their arms around you and hook you. And then they also smile.
37:19When they see you, they will give you the big smile. It's adorable. Yeah. Maggie smiles. And at first I thought it, at first I thought it was just bearing her teeth. And then I saw, and then I saw her bear her teeth and I was like, Oh, that's different, they're different things. Yep. It's so cute when they smile at you. And then when they're bad, they give you that smile like oopsies. I did something bad. Yeah. Maggie has the, the rosebud ears. So her ears don't stand up. They're, they're down.
37:49Okay. And when she thinks she's done something she's not supposed to do, she lays them back flat, you know, like toward her neck. Yeah. And she hasn't actually done anything wrong. She just thinks maybe she has. And I'm like, no, honey, it's okay. And she looks at me and she gives me the actual smile and she brings them back forward. And I'm like, okay, we're good. It's so weird. They...
38:16there are certain tones of voice that Maggie hears and she thinks that she's maybe stepped in it, you know? Oh, I see, yeah. And I'm like, nobody is upset with you. I don't know why you're doing that. The period that we kept, her name is Ziva, she will give us that smile in her head down when she's jumped up on the counter and grabbed something out of the compost bin when we were gone. So when I come in and she's doing that, I'm thinking to myself, is that compost on the floor again?
38:45And normally it is because she has jumped up there and I left it in the wrong spot. So yeah. Yeah. And that's probably a good way to end this. If you're going to have a puppy that you're going to grow into a full-grown dog as your pet, you have to make sure that you're setting them up for success. Oh yeah. Definitely. And I'm not saying you didn't by leaving the compost or whatever too close to the edge, but.
39:14But when we moved in here, we got Maggie like a month later. So we hadn't even fully unpacked our home yet. So there was very little for her to get into, which worked out great because there was nothing for her to eat or get choked on or trip over. And if we thought about bringing a puppy in this house right now, we've been here for years, I would have to, I'd have to completely clean my house from top to bottom to get a puppy again.
39:43Yeah, they like to chew on things. It's what puppies do. They learn with their mouth and they lose their teeth. And their teeth, yeah. They teeth from basically like nine weeks until about six, seven months old. And all they want to do is chew. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. Lots of chew toys are good. Uh-huh. And they'll chew on you, too.
40:08If you let them, best to not let them go. I always switch. If a puppy puts its mouth on my hand or my arm or anything, I just grab something else and shove it in its mouth. You want to bite? Here's a stick to bite on. Here's a toy to bite on. Here's something you can bite on. Yeah. And if you look up how to stop a puppy from biting you, it says make an ouch noise. That doesn't do any good. We did that and Maggie would just be like, oh, more play now. Let's go. Right. Yeah. I switch them for something that they can have. Uh-huh. Yeah.
40:37And the other thing that really worked for us is we put white vinegar and apple cider vinegar in a spray bottle. And she wanted to chew the corners of our futon mattress on our futon couch. And she did. She chewed the corner pretty good. And I finally found out about this mix and it's called Bitter Apple. It's apple cider vinegar and white distilled vinegar. And you put it half and half in a spray bottle. You shake it up. Let it settle.
41:06and then you spray it on whatever you don't want them to chew. Oh, okay. And she hated the smell of it. The minute I sprayed that stuff anywhere, she would go and lay down and doesn't hurt them. They just don't like the scent. And she loved the taste of vinegar. Like she'd go over and lick the couch, but she would not chew on it. Interesting. It was really weird. So.
41:32We use that and we still use it. If she's being crazy for no obvious reason, like she's been fed, she's been watered, she's been outside, all the things, we just spray the vinegar in the air and she goes and lays down. I'm like, good girl. That's a great way. I love it. Thank you. Yeah. She doesn't get hurt and it doesn't mess up her brain or her nasal passages or her stomach and she would just behave. It was so great. So good tip for people with puppies right now.
42:03Try it, see if it works. Okay. All right, Sara, I really, you have no idea how much. I have enjoyed this, I learned a lot. I hope I taught some people some things too. And I appreciate your time so much. Well, thanks for having me. It was great chatting with you. I had a great time. Thank you. Have a great day.
 

Firefly Farm & Mercantile

Today I'm talking with Andre at Firefly Farm & Mercantile. 
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Andre at Firefly Farm and Mercantile. How are you Andre? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. You're in Wisconsin, right? Yeah. We are located right in the Driftless, right about 25 miles east of La Crosse.
00:29in a little town called Cashton. You live in one of the most beautiful areas I have ever visited. I have been to the Driftless area, and I can't remember the name of the town I went to, but it was gorgeous there. Yeah, we feel pretty lucky. It's, you know, we moved here, kind of sight unseen six years ago. My wife's like, you sure you wanna move here? We haven't been up to see it yet. And I said, I feel, I'm fine. I'm, you know, it's tired of Texas heat, so.
00:57Oh, yeah. I'm sure Wisconsin is a big change for you from Texas. It is. I was in Texas for a few years, but I was happy to trade in 110 degree summers, though. Yeah. And honestly, the upper Midwest can get kind of nippy and kind of unbearably muggy, too. But as I say, living in Minnesota, spring and summer and fall are why I tolerate the winters in Minnesota.
01:26Oh, the Four Seasons are so nice. Growing up in New England, I just loved the Four Seasons. You kind of get in those cycles of things. So as you move around the country, and I've lived in Florida and Alabama and then Illinois, I'll say the Four Seasons, I've always loved the Four Seasons. So. Me too. Where in New England did you grow up? I grew up in Connecticut. Okay, I grew up in Maine, so.
01:53Hi there, buddy. How you doing? Okay, so tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, Firefly Farmer Mercantile, we have a garden shop and farm out here in Cashton. So my love is gardening. And I would say didn't really plan on starting a garden shop when we moved up here, but just sort of it happened.
02:19We love just heirloom seeds. That's our specialty. And then kind of garden bulbs for all seasons, whether it's winter or summer, spring, fall, everything in between. We raise our own chickens and we raise our own lamb. So we sell those to a lot of restaurants. We do a lot with herbs. We do a lot, it's more specialty items that we grow for some of our local restaurants. Things that maybe no one else wants to grow or things that are just so small scale. They're like...
02:48It's not really worth our time. So I'll say we're pretty lucky that a few chefs will seek us out and say, Hey, can you grow me like three pounds of this or five pounds of this? And since we have the seeds, why not? What do you mind telling me what kind of special things you grow for them? Well, I will say that I have a request for the most pungent mustard I could get my hands on. Okay. So our wasabina mustard by High Mowing Organics is perfect for that. It gives you that pungent, that heat.
03:18We have another one, it's called Southern Curled, and that is another great little mustard too. So that's just an example. We have Red Vein Sorrel going in for a couple places. They wanted to have that for the fall, and that's a fun one. You know, and I'm surprised more people don't grow more of the perennial type greens, just because I think there's such a place and a need for them in the local food restaurants. Yeah, and
03:44Honestly, perennial things are so much easier than annual things. You plant them, they continue to grow, you do very little, I don't know, babying them typically and you're set for years to come. With annual stuff, you have to get the seeds every year or the seedlings, you got to put them in, you got to do all the work, you got to baby them. And then at the end of the season, you're done. It's so frustrating.
04:12I say that as not the gardener. My husband is the one who loves to garden. He's a lot like you. And I used to help. I don't help now. I don't like it. I don't enjoy it. I don't like being out there when it's hot. I get headaches from heat. So it's just, it's not fun for me. He loves it. And he's, I've said this a billion times this summer because I'm so frustrated with it. We had terrible weather here this spring and the garden is pretty much a no show. It's, we're not.
04:42We're not getting nearly as much out of it this year as we have the last three years. And he's been so great. He's been doing what he can with what he has. And he's been terribly sad and terribly frustrated, but he's kept a really good attitude. So I'm very proud of my husband this year. Well, it was a trying year for a lot of folks in a lot of areas. June was, you know, May was warm.
05:10And then June came along and was wet and cold. Yep. So things like you traditionally would love to put out by then tomatoes, peppers, okra seeds, squat, you name it. Um, they were just slow going and it was hard. And then in July we had hot and dry. Um, so that was, you know, that complicated things, but there's things that, you know, gardeners can do to sort of mitigate, um, some of these, and this is what some of the things that we like to.
05:38talk about and teach down here. You know, one is we actually have a third acre or exhibition vegetable garden. It is one third of an acre and it is all compost. 100% compost underneath where we actually raised up that third acre by about six to 10 inches in places, which is pure compost. And why we did that is our top soil in our field was a lot of sand, but it's also low lying. And so when we get the rains,
06:09It would actually just stay and get drenched and water soaked for periods at a time. And when we put the compost in, we don't have that problem. It could rain six inches and our beds are just fine to walk on. So it really does make a difference for us folks. But you know, it's one, when I get the common question about raised beds, what do I put in my raised bed? I tell folks just pure compost. Find the best compost you can source and put it in there. You don't need any topsoil to grow, believe it or not.
06:38Yeah, we have three huge open compost bins on our property. It's three acres. We have lots of room to do that. And we've been adding compost to the garden since we moved in four years ago, but we only have so much compost to add every year and the garden is like a hundred feet by 150 feet. So we're doing, we're doing all the things to amend the soil and fix the soggy pooling problem that we have.
07:08Mm-hmm. And we started that the spring after we moved in because we moved in in August of 2020. But we haven't been here long enough to do what you've done yet. We just haven't had enough compost to do that kind of depth on it. No, it takes time. And compost is, you know, to make good compost, it's a struggle because if you don't have it covered and you get too much rain, it slows the process down and then it drives the temperatures. You can't, you know, kill your weeds. Yep.
07:37That's why I tell folks, I said, I know people always get sticker shocked when they go find compost and they start sourcing it. And I just tell them, I said, you know what? Good compost is worth it. You have no weeds. It's worth every penny, yes. Yes. I said, just imagining putting down, you know, I'll say that the three foot by eight foot raised bed seems to be one of the most common sizes. You know, and I tell folks, I said, really, for about 40 bucks, you can put about three of these beds together, three or four of these beds together.
08:07and have six inches of compost in there. And guess what? You just started off a weed free environment. Yep, exactly. And weed free environment is so important. And I'm gonna say this because we've been dealing with it since we moved in. The place where our garden is was an open field of grasses and weeds and wildflowers when we moved in. And I knew it was gonna be hard.
08:30I knew it was going to take years to mitigate the weeds. Oh yes. It is taking years to mitigate the weeds and no matter what we do, they come back to the point that we're probably going to take half of it this fall, till everything under and then use something to kill the weeds and hopefully not the bad stuff but the more natural weed killing, I don't know, products and see if that works because we're fighting a losing battle here right now.
09:00I would caution you on the tilling, and here's why. Okay. Does not think tilling doesn't have its place. You have to till big farms. You have to till big plots of land. We have to do that to a point. No till is great when the soil structure allows it. I'm a big proponent of no till as much as possible. In the garden, so just think about that six inches of topsoil underneath your garden.
09:28you know, that's a seed bank. And if you get deeper and you get down to seeds that haven't been disturbed in a while, you're pulling up seeds from the last few decades or last century, wherever it case may be, seeds that before you, they plowed them under. So you're bringing all that to the surface. Most seeds are causing you the problem that top one inch or two inches, really just the top inch of soil. And if you bring all those new seeds up, you've now just got to keep exasperating your problem.
09:57So what do we do instead? Well, I would suggest a few things. One is I love old silage tarps. So I buy silage tarps from our local farm place. I like silage tarps because they're not penetrating for light and they're not penetrating for moisture. And so I can kill very large areas very quickly and smother the weeds underneath.
10:24So when I have a large area and that may be something I just wanna say I can't kill all the weeds, but I at least wanna knock a lot of them out, I'll cover that for about 30 days if there's a lot of weeds on it. And then I will actually go ahead and just pour, put a little bit of compost on, or if I have to till, I'll call it the top dress, the bed, I may just barely, just a little bit like a half inch just to make it smooth again for planting. And then I'll go in there and...
10:54and actually go ahead and plant just right on top of that right away. Okay. And that usually does the trick. Um, the other thing you can end up doing, if you're not sure, like, um, coming into the winter months right here, you could apply that smothering right now, and then you can get crops like buckwheat or mustard, things that even do well for the, you know, until it freezes. Um, even in Minnesota, you can put a lot of these things on right in September and October and, uh, at least get a green crop on there for you for the winter.
11:23and then you have less seeds. And then come spring when you're ready to go, you can say, all right, I gotta go kill this thing. So you can take that same tarp and just smother it again, and then be ready to go. And what happens is as you're smothering that tarp, you're warming up the soil. So you're waking everything up, good or bad. And as you're doing that, as the mustard or the greens, you know, rot away, you actually are bringing up a lot of your organisms that will eat those weeds.
11:51Eat that greens and then incorporate into the ground and I think that that is It's worth doing now Sometimes you might have a lot of clay and there's other things you can't tilling make sense to put you know to put compost into It I get it But if you have good soil structure already, I would probably encourage you to try that method and said Charles doubting over in England He has a lot of great YouTube videos and I always recommend folks to just check it out He's big believer into the smothering and adding the compost on top
12:20But even if you can't quite do it large scale, maybe you find a few small beds and you start doing it with that. Like, carrots are a good example. Carrots are, it's really nice to start an area and when I do some carrots, I tend to go six to eight inches deep of compost with paper underneath. And the paper is, it rots away so fast that by the time the carrots get to be that length, it's not a problem. Okay. So.
12:46All right, you are the most recent person to make me so thankful that I started this podcast almost a year ago, because my husband is going to be so interested in everything you just said, everything. Well, you guys are more than welcome, he's more than welcome to drive out and visit us, so. Yeah, okay, so after all that, we've been talking for almost 13 minutes, and we haven't even gotten to the things I wanted to ask you about.
13:13And that's fine because I just learned a whole bunch of stuff I didn't know so thank you very much So you guys do you guys grow? The stuff that you sell or do you source it from outside or both? Mostly source so you can't grow that many seeds in one place Cross pollination is a big problem. So we use companies like seed savers out of the core Iowa very popular here in the Midwest
13:41Yeah, I'm high mowing organics out of Vermont. It's a, it's a small seed label and they're pretty popular. I say across most of us, but they're just strictly all things organic. Seed savers will do organic and then conventional, but their focus is heirlooms organic and high moans about organic and things that will grow for people so they can make a living or for gardeners so they can grow crops and food.
14:07And we have other labels too that we do Southern Exposure, New Living Sea. They're just, you know, they're mostly small farm operations for the most part. And then our bulbs are sourced from all over the world. We do grow and starting to grow our own dahlias because to try to source really great dahlias is next to impossible for the most part. And it takes when you import dahlias, you go through, it takes about a hundred dahlias to get to really like 50 or 60 good ones.
14:37And one thing I've learned as I get older, my eyes deceive me a little bit more. And I just don't really, it's harder to focus when you're trying to go through about 4,000 dahlias at that level. We, we, so we'll start growing out things quite a bit and then we're going to bring about 40 dahlias to the market over the next, every year and just rotate things on and off. But most everything is we, our main bulb company is a small family.
15:05I say small because it's small by some standards, but they have a 300 acre Tulip and Daffodil farm in the Netherlands, which is actually a really small farm for the Netherlands. And that's where I'd say I get quite a bit of my bulbs from. Other ones, you know, they're just sourced from the Canary Islands, from Peru. I mean, you name it, Israel, all places across the world. It's unbelievable where all these bulbs are, where they come from.
15:33You know, for us, we just go to the store. When I was a kid, I'd go to the nurseries and the garden centers, and they were the greatest place for bulbs. That's where I got my love of putting my hands like through the daffodils or the tulips. Very sensory that way. And I still remember that experience, but as I sort of grew up into my 20s and 30s, that disappeared. You know, there was no more garden centers really stopped carrying a lot of fall bulbs, especially fall bulbs and crates.
15:59Only because the big-box stores started getting the quick packaging, but you don't know what you're gonna get sometimes So, you know, there's just something when you come to our shop You get you know three or four hundred options and you're actually putting your hands in the bins touching the touching the bulbs that you're gonna bring Home with you. So most people just they just love that because you can't do that anywhere anymore Yeah, um, the sensory thing is interesting. My
16:30I mean great aunt and uncle, they weren't my parents' siblings or my grandparents' siblings. And they had a chestnut tree, a horse chestnut tree. Oh yes. And it would drop those, you know, when we would be up there for Thanksgiving, there would be horse chestnuts on the ground and the pointy, spiky part would be off of the nut already. And those are really smooth. They're like glass when you touch them.
16:59I can remember grabbing handfuls of stichmanoy in my pocket and bringing them home and using them almost like a worry stone. And I loved those. I haven't seen one in forever, but it was just one of those things where it was fun to put your hands on them. Yes. And gardening is so much more than just growing food or flowers or just making your house look pretty. You know, it's really this collection of experiences.
17:25It's amazing where a flower or a scent or eating something can just really bring back You know something from your childhood or something about another family member. So Yeah, um, okay. So you mentioned you you import bulbs for daffodils and tulips I have a question for you. Hopefully, you know the answer we put in tulip bulbs and daffodil bulbs Two and a half three years ago And they did great
17:54when they came up the first spring after we put them in. And now they're not coming up as much and I think it's because the critters under the ground are eating the bulbs. So is there anything that we could put in the ground around the bulbs that would allow the plant to come up through but the critters couldn't eat the bulb because this is driving me crazy? Well, a couple things. So one is your daffodils are probably coming up no problem. Not so much.
18:22Well then I would maybe say that you might have some... do you have heavier clay soils? We do, but I don't think we do where they are, if that makes any sense. Nothing eats a daffodil. So daffodils, they don't smell good to rodents. So one of the strategies is we'll put daffodils, hyacinths, around in different places where you're trying to deter some of the critters. But you know, it doesn't always do the greatest.
18:50I find that the Imperial Fertilary, that is really the best one and the alliums do great. Tulips, there's two things happening with your tulips most likely. One is if the tulips aren't, when the tulips don't come back, a lot of tulips, they grow these little things called bulblets. And when you pull up a tulip bulb after the, say you pull it up in August or July when they're done.
19:18you'd see all these little tiny bulblets right here. And you know, there could be five of them, there could be 20 of them. It just depends on the variety. And hybridizers and growers, they like the bulblets because when you put a bulb in the ground and you're getting, you know, you get some more bulblets going on, it's like, all right, I can take those up and I can go ahead and, you know, grow those. I clone it. I basically grow the same thing out every year and you're kind of on the cycle. While other tulips, they only grow maybe one or two.
19:45bigger bulblets, so they don't grow as many. And those tend to be the tulips that are more perennial in nature, I would say, where you kind of have to divide them up a lot less. Daffodils, they're not heavy feeders like a tulip. So a daffodil tends to just sort of naturalize in very long drifts, but they don't spread by seeds, so that's why we don't have daffodils popping up all over our forests and prairies everywhere. They're very much about the bulbs.
20:14So I would say that if you remember where the daffodils were, try digging them up or maybe they got buried a little bit too much sometimes. That can happen. But the tulips, I would venture that either you have something, eat some, they are the deer love the blossoms, the squirrels love the tulip bulbs. Moles really don't eat any of the plant life. They're more interested in protein around the critters that are...
20:43eating things and driving your lawn nuts, you get things like voles, of course, they'll go after them, but a tulip bulb is pretty deep. So you're not getting too much of those dangers other than maybe like the squirrels trying to dig them up. And you'll know them when they do. But if you try daffodils again, we always tend to mark things where maybe things might be so we can start digging them up. But if you're not getting anything back where the daffodils were, I would probably say they may have rotted.
21:13That does happen. Yeah. Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me. I don't want to spend any more money on tulip and daffodil bulbs at this point. So maybe what we'll do this fall is dig them up because I know exactly where they are and see what's going on under there. And maybe we can split some. I don't know. But the daffodils, the daffodils. So when we moved into this property, there was a lot of daffodils everywhere, but they were very...
21:42dense and they're very, so you got a lot of green but you had no blossoms. So just me and the kids are just digging them up and spreading them out. And, you know, sometimes planting things too densely can be problematic because you have to dig them up faster too. Yeah. Yep. I just, I can't, I cannot justify spending the money on the bulbs this year. It's, it's a little bit of a tight year for us. I'm not going to lie. We're doing everything we can.
22:11but we thought we were gonna have some supplemental income from the garden, which we don't have. Yeah, it can be challenging. Things like the tulips would be one where, they don't come back the greatest. The darwins do, but the daffodils and crocuses are probably the most reliable in the great pyocene. They're just, they're gonna go no matter what happens. Nothing really likes to bother them.
22:36So they're always kind of a joy to have in the springtime. But it can be trying times. It's always, as I tell folks, you're just, you know, not unlimited funds when it comes to gardening. Kind of whatever your passion is, grow that and see what happens. Yeah, my passion is peonies and everyone knows it. Oh yes, yes, we love peonies. Yeah, and anytime someone's like, I'm gonna be splitting my peonies. Do you guys wanna come help and take some home? I'm like, yes, when? Yep, yep.
23:06Because free peonies are good peonies. We have been given so many peony roots over the years and they have all done fabulously. The only problem with peonies is it takes about three years for them to really be established and give you some really beautiful blooms. So it's a waiting game. Big waiting game, because they really, even our bare roots that are harvested when they're dormant. So they go through less trauma than the splitting of
23:35you know, during the summer, the spring, the fall. And I always tell folks when you do have, when you wanna split and thin things out, I said early spring is typically the best time. Cause then it's active to get the roots in. Fall can work very well too, but you wanna give them enough of a growing season to get some roots established. And they kind of just choose big tubers cause they gotta make it through the winter time when they're doing it. But they're really easy. But yeah, I noticed when, you know, you're doing anything in the summertime, oh.
24:04three to five years you're gonna be waiting for that blossom to come and then all of a sudden it comes out like in a vengeance like oh where these 40 blossoms come from. And sometimes Mother Nature really surprises you. We put in two peach trees last year, saplings, and one of them has just shot up, has no fruit on it, it's beautiful. My husband's actually gonna have to prune it when it's time to do that. It's so big. The other sapling has 12 peaches on it. We just put it in last year.
24:36that can happen. It's amazing what the fruits can do. Everything depends on your stock as well. Is it on a semi-dwarf? Is it on a standard? Over in our garden, in our orchard section, we do what's called a permaculture orchard. It goes by the acronym NAP. N stands for Nitrogen Fixing of some sort. A for apple. Then P is for pear, plum, or Asian pear.
25:04And so we kind of just rotate things in the orchard that way where it's NAP, NAP, NAP. And you know, my wife would say, oh, we don't got enough. None of these trees over here have given us anything. I said, well, those are standards and they take, you know, five to seven years, while our semi dwarfs will take like a year or two years and you finally have fruit. So it just, it all really depends on that root stock. That makes, that does make a big, big difference.
25:27Yeah, and I have no idea. He picked them up at some store when he was out. So not a clue where he got them or what they are. But he sent me a photo from them. They're way on the back corner of our property. So I haven't been over there yet. And he sent me a photo. I was like, are those peaches? And he texted back. Yeah. He said that one tree has peaches. I was just dumbfounded. I was like, I thought it would take three years before he had peaches.
25:56Oh no, you know, every tree is a little bit different. There's a little, I prune my trees heavily and we're in a valley, so it is every year. Even my most dependable tree is a zest star tree for the apples, but the other items, we can't do peaches in our valley because we get the frost just at the right time when the peaches wanna start blooming. So that's always a shame, but you know, and we don't do cherries for that reason either, but.
26:24Hey, we can do Asian pears and a few other things, but fruit should taste good. And I always recommend, they're like, oh, what should I start my garden with? I said, put in some fruit trees. We have a dozen blueberry bushes. We're getting ready to till an area to be acidified so we can get them in the ground. We love blueberries. And the one regret is we didn't do blueberries soon enough, right? Yeah. Because if I did them five years ago successfully, but we did do them, but my dogs decided to dig them up one day. Oh no.
26:52It was not happy about that. Um, but anyhow, so we were at it again and, uh, you know, we went blueberry picking a few miles away from our house. And it was so just nice. And my wife's like, we gotta get more blueberries for, for our garden. Yeah. The, the, the battle cry or the, uh, clarion call for gardeners everywhere is we need to get more of whatever it is. Yes. You know.
27:19Right now I am loving our thornless blackberries. So between our orchard, I put shrubs in. We got currants, erroneas, buffalo berry, and right now black thornless blackberries. I have raspberries elsewhere because I don't want them anywhere near my fruit trees to get all, you know, bit up with thorns. So we'll put them elsewhere. But the thornless blackberries are really nice because we're like I need three or four of them and you get clusters.
27:47of giant blackberries. And it's so nice to go just walking through and you can stop at one bush and you can walk away with like, you know, a couple cups of blackberries and you still have, you know, 10 times that amount on the bush starting to ripen. So that's that's my favorite fruit right now going on in our orchard. What's a buffalo berry? Oh, a buffalo berry is a nitrogen fixing shrub.
28:14So it actually puts nitrogen back into the ground, so to speak. And the jury's still out on how much it does, how much it doesn't, but I thought, well, I'll just try it. They're not really edible for us. The birds love them. And that's one thing in an orchard is, you know, your winged friends, you really want them around despite, you know, maybe they're going to eat some of your currants or they're going to eat some of your fruit because they take care of like all your pests. So you know, you get the kingbird.
28:43he's my favorite bird to see in the garden and to see in the orchard because he'll eat more caterpillars and winged pests and any other bird out there than your bluebirds, of course, and your wrens. So the buffalo berry is kind of there and we just do it to feed the birds. So they're not really something for us to eat, but they're native out in the, out further west, out in the Colorado areas. And that's where I got them from a small family who has them. And...
29:13You know, they do okay. It's not like I'm gonna get a thousand of them, but they're kind of fun. Okay. I'd never heard of Buffalo Berry, so I thought I would ask. We're almost at 30 minutes, and I don't know how much time you have. I mean, I can go for another 15 if you want, but my main question left that I have is how did you get into this? Oh, well, gardening in general? Well, yes, and the business.
29:39Well, gardening in general, so the family, my family's were gardeners for the most part, growing up and my grand, my grandfather, some of my uncles were big time gardeners. My mom did like to garden. Um, I was really busy all the time. It was raising five boys, so we can be a handful. So it was kind of exposed to gardening. And then my brother passed away at when I was 12 and gardening was sort of a healing activity for me.
30:09and you can get your hands dirty, you can, it really helped get me through, you know, through that, through that, his death. And so gardening kind of always stuck with me and I learned more about it going into my teenage years and it was just always a joy and I always loved gardening. And I was toying around with an organics counselor, you know, when you become a junior or senior in high school about different career options. And you know, I said, well, I think I'm just going to go.
30:36start a garden center, maybe go to school for business or this and that, but probably just do a garden center. Yeah, I really enjoyed gardening. She's like, oh, you know, you're so good at athletics and you have a good science and math score. She goes, I really encourage you to think about engineering or just something maybe a little bit, you know, different path. And I went down different paths, of course. And then it was okay. I really enjoyed my careers. But when I left the
31:05we sort of came up to the driftless area. I was like, gosh, I really, you know, missed the gardening side. And I said, I'm just gonna start a gardening business. We have this old 90 year old barn. It's a perfect place to start some operations. And I really wasn't planning on being open to the public. I just really wanted to have some fun selling seed and bulbs and maybe growing some things around the sale. And, you know, people would just start coming at all hours of the day. Oh, can I come see your farm? Can I come see your garden?
31:33And we start talking, I start showing. And I told my wife, I said, we just are gonna have to open up our own farm and have a garden shop here. And it's been a joy. It really has been a blessing for us. Wow, that's a great story. You think we may have the same thing happening here next year. We put in a heated greenhouse this May. Oh, lovely. And we're going to be doing bedding plants and hanging.
32:03hanging flower pots, you know, like you would buy it. Walmart only, ours will probably be better, maybe. And that kind of thing. And we're just gonna have people come in and pick out what they want. You know, they're gonna come into the greenhouse. So I suspect that if all goes well, keep your fingers crossed for us that all goes well next year because this year's been a bitch.
32:27It'll be really fun to have people come see what that greenhouse has done for us over this winter and next year. Oh, yeah. And I would say that, you know, even think about things that aren't in your area. So I know the hanging baskets are fun and they're exciting. You know, there's a lot of demand, but there's a lot of supply. And I would challenge to think about what makes up your baskets to be sort of the colors people are looking for. But
32:54to be a little bit more drought tolerant. And one thing I know from a lot of the successful growers, when I bring in hanging baskets or I have them grown for me, I get the bigger baskets. I want the 12 inch or 14 inch baskets, minimum. I do not want the 10 inch, I do not want the eight to nine inch because they dry out so fast. And I tell folks, I said, you know, a hanging basket is really just, these are all kind of temporary baskets.
33:20for you. You really got to think about the plants that you're going to want to grow, they're going to need more food, they're going to need soil. Every basket you almost get, you almost need to put into a bigger container and you should almost have a permanent container of some sort. So 14 and so as you're going down this path of thinking, you know, some of these items that make them a little bit more low maintenance, you know, you can, you can actually command a bit of a higher price.
33:46But if you're pointing out these things for people, that they don't have to like come late July and then their baskets are looking like, oh my gosh, there's no soil left, it's all roots. What happened here? It's very common things I hear quite a bit. Yeah, I also was thinking that it would be really fun to have some baskets and the compost or whatever we're gonna put in the bottom of them, whatever growing, there's a word, I can't think of it. Medium. We call it medium, medium. Yeah, medium.
34:15having them come and pick out the seedlings for the flowers they want in their hanging basket and teaching them how to make one of their own. Oh, absolutely, and then you just sit there, they pack it, and then you grow it out for them in the heat. And there's a lot of fun with that. It's kind of like make your own bouquets and make your own baskets. It really becomes a big deal for them. Yeah, and I'm like the least social person on earth, and I just said that on a podcast. I don't know what I'm thinking.
34:45No, it's fine. The podcast, I'm not required to be with actual people. I just talk to people. I don't have to be in the same room with them. And I just said that I would like to have a class on how to make a hanging flower basket. I don't know what I'm thinking, but maybe it'll work. Who knows? All right. So anyway, Andre, I don't feel like we talked.
35:08about a whole lot of the other things that you're doing because I know you're doing other things, but this has been great. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Oh, no, thank you. We appreciate it. We're excited for this upcoming year. We have 2100 seeds that we'll be bringing in and they started arriving this past week, so it's going to be really exciting. Yeah, I love, love, love when seeds come in the mail and I can look at the packets if it's the packet and be like, oh,
35:38we're going to be buying seeds soon and they probably won't come in a packet, they'll probably come in a bag because we're going to buy bigger amounts. If you buy bigger amounts, yeah, we sometimes will have like 10 pound bags of the wildflower seed. We'll get them in 25, 50, 100 pound sacks and it's always just like daunting to me to think how many seeds are in one of these 25 or 50 pound sacks. There's a lot of seeds in there. So many, yes. And...
36:04In about four months, it'll be time for garden company catalogs to be coming in the mail, and that's always fun too. It is. Well, thanks for having me, Mary, and appreciate it. Absolutely. I really, really do appreciate you taking the time. Thank you.
 

Little Blue's Traveling Zoo

Today I'm talking with Irene at Little Blue's Traveling Zoo. You can also follow on Facebook.
A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support.
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00:00This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Irene at Little Blues Traveling Zoo. How are you, Irene? I'm great, how are you, Mary? I'm good. You guys are in Minnesota, yes? Yes. Okay, I wasn't positive, so I thought I should ask.
00:29So what do you guys do? Well I have a traveling petting zoo which means that I just take my little crew of farm animals around to different parties. We're normally around the twin cities except kind of the area beyond. But we do like birthday parties, community events, church events, festivals, just kind of whatever anyone would want a petting zoo for. Okay and when did you start doing it? I can't talk this morning. And how did you get into it?
01:00So my dad actually started it when me and my sisters were in college. Probably about four years ago, he started it, like started the idea of it. Um, and I always called it his mid crisis that he just started a petting zoo cause he thought it would be fun. Um, but I got my degree in agriculture education and so I was going to be a high school agriculture teacher. And I did this for my dad one summer cause it was a lot busier than he thought it would be and he has a full time job. So I did it for him one summer and I decided I actually.
01:29really loved and I wanted to stick with it. And so now I'm doing all of the management side of it as well. And I love it. It's just so much fun. How much has it grown since you started it? It's amazing how much it's grown. We started out in the fall our first year, and so we only did a couple events that fall, which was a lot of fun, but that's all we did. And then that next summer, I think I did like 15 events a month in the summer, which I was ecstatic about.
01:57And now fast forward two years, this August actually, I have 39 events in August. It's amazing. I just get busier and busier and we have a second truck trailer now too, so we can do twice the amount of events. So it's just been, it's been a wild ride. Okay. And I don't want to get real personal on finances, but how much does it cost to book you guys? So my base price for two hours is $600. And then I have a trip charge of $1.50 per mile from the farm.
02:28Okay, so it's a lucrative business if you have that many people booked for August. Yeah, I mean animals sure cost a lot to take care of, but it's able to pay for them and pay for my own living expenses, so I feel very blessed. That's amazing. So you guys don't really have a homestead as it were, but you work with livestock and you have a business that serves the public, so I figured that you might fit the bill for my podcast.
02:58Um, what kind of animals do you, do you take around to show people? So I take goats, sheep, pigs, turkeys, and then I have an alpaca and a mid sized cow. So I usually take all those animals and then either the alpaca or the cow. And is it just you taking them or do you have help? I help. I have my amazing friend Jordan, who I convinced to move up from, uh, Iowa to stay here and do this job with me.
03:27And so it's both of our full-time job. Okay. So it's the two of you moving the animals from where they live to wherever they're going. Okay. Cause that's a lot of critters to move by yourself. And are the animals with the program, are they, are they on board? Are they happy? Do they love doing what they do? Do you think? Yes, they really are. Cause we have some who don't love it and they stay at home.
03:52But we have a bunch that love it. I have in particular this one goat, his name is Mr. Waddles. And when we try to leave the farm without him, he just stands at the gate and he just yells. He is so mad. He does not want to be left behind. They love going out. They love the fresh green grass that they get. And they love directing and meeting new people. Awesome. So when you take them places, where...
04:18Where are the events usually held? I mean, is it outside? Is it inside? Is it both? Yeah, most of them are outside. I have a strong preference for being outside because then we can get a nice breeze going through and it doesn't get as stuffy. But in the winter I do some indoor events and for the indoor events you have to lay down a tarp and then some shavings and all that stuff for the animals. So I prefer being outside but we do indoor events as well. Okay.
04:44So tell me about the latest event. Like I want to get a feeling for how it goes, how it works. Yeah, my last event was Kai Chai Saga days in Chasago, which is my home turf. So I love doing that one. It's just kind of their city days. And so we get there about 45 minutes ahead of time to set up, pull the truck and trailer up into the park and we have a 30 by 30 foot pen, just six foot panels that we connect to each other and make a big pen. And then we have.
05:13couple tents we set up to make sure the animals have shade. On really hot days I also have fans and a jetter all set up for the animals. But yeah we just set up their pen, water, hay nets, all that stuff for them. And then once we get started we let 15 to 20 people in the pen at a time and they can brush the animals, pet them, all that good stuff. Okay so what do people think when they come to these events or these birthday parties or whatever it is you're doing? I mean what kind of feedback do you get?
05:42I get great feedback, which just makes me so happy. The best thing that I can hear that people tell me how friendly and calm and healthy the animals are, because I really do pride ourselves on that animals are our family. It's not like we get baby animals in the spring and get rid of them in the fall. They stay with us their whole life. We just love them and we try to take the best care of them. People love it. They love how calm they are because for a lot of petting zoos, you don't get to actually go inside the pen with the animals.
06:10unlike with ours where you can come in and brush them and pet them and all that stuff. So that's the most kind of feedback I get is how calm and friendly they are. It just always makes me so happy. Yeah, I mean, obviously that's going to help if you want it to go well. I mean, I don't mean to state the obvious as dumb, but yeah, you want your animals to be comfortable with people and new situations and new places because otherwise it would never work. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, they're exposed to so much different stuff.
06:40We were at a speedway, like a racetrack, and that was really fun. But they saw monster trucks for the first time. They weren't thrilled at first, but they settled in pretty quick once they realized nothing's going to hurt them. Well, they're better than my dog. I can't take my dog anywhere because all she does is bark at people. She, we got her in 2020, so she was never really socialized to anything because we didn't take her anywhere because we didn't go anywhere.
07:09And she was a puppy. So when people come to visit, she barks at them for a good five minutes. And then she finally decides that it's safe to sniff their hand. And pretty much once she does that, she settles down. But even in the car or the SUV, we park. And if she's with us, she's in the back seat. And if anybody walks into the parking lot, even 100 feet away, she's barking at them.
07:37I'm like, you're so dumb. They're number one, they're not going to hurt you and number two, you might like them. But no, she doesn't. She does not people well. They're warning you. Yeah, she does not people well. So yeah, managing to get your farm animals acclimated to all the different things is a trick and it's a skill. And I'm really impressed because we can't get the dog acclimated to anything here.
08:04My parents have a farm dog and he's definitely not as well behaved as some of the farm animals are. Yeah, it's crazy. Dogs are supposed to be your best friend and apparently she's just me and my husband and my son's best friend and everybody else can just go away. I don't know. She's crazy. Okay, so I have questions but I'm trying to phrase them in a way that doesn't sound obnoxious because they're kind of obnoxious.
08:33So yeah, I'm stuck. The, okay, do you have rules for when people go in with the animals? Yes, I do. My two main ones that I tell kids is no running and no feeding the animals. Cause when we start getting food involved, my goats can get kind of jumpy and I want them to stay as calm as possible. And we bring pigs as well. I don't want any little fingers near those pigs mouths. Yeah, no. So those are my two main ones. I-
09:02I found, you know, if you try to tell more than three girls at the gate, kids just stop listening. You know, I don't blame them. Kids have a short attention span. They just want to come in. They want to visit the animals. So I kind of just take to those two. And then you have somebody monitoring everybody in the pen. And if they notice something like, you know, a kid's trying to touch their legs or pull on their tail, you know, you're like, oh, maybe not do that. But generally, it's just a no running and the no feeding. And that serves us pretty well. Okay. So I'm going to ask you the same question that I asked Andrew.
09:32at the St. Croix Valley Hobby Farm when I interviewed him. He spoke very highly of you guys, and I think you guys have a working relationship somewhere along the line. But I asked him, because he has the hobby farm where he has people come in and visit with the animals. He doesn't, last I knew he didn't take them anywhere. I asked him if he requires people to wash their hands, because during COVID and the bird flu thing that came through back years ago,
10:02the fares were real hesitant to let people come in and pet the animals. So do you require people to wash their hands or anything? I have hand sanitizer for people to use if they want. I mean, knock on wood, I haven't experienced any disease yet and all of my animals are fully vaccinated. One of the big things too is when we show up to places where they have other animals they didn't tell us about, I'm very clear that we need to be far away from them.
10:29They don't know what our animals have been through. We don't know what their animals have been through So I try to steer as clear away from that as possible and because we do a lot of stuff in the cities most of the City people they don't have goats or chickens at home, you know, yeah, but so I have the hand sanitizer It's a little too difficult for me to lug around a hand washing kind of station But yeah, I mean knock on wood Sophie haven't had any disease incidents
10:57Yeah, it's amazing to me how risky it is to bring a new animal onto your farm or into your property. Oh my gosh, yeah. We have to be so picky now. Some of our first animals were rescues. You know, you don't know what their background is like or where they've been. And now, you know, as much as we love to rescue, we just can't really do that anymore, especially with like our goats and our sheep, because we need to know that they came from like a tested herd or a closed herd to make sure that we don't bring anything into our own herd.
11:28Absolutely. We were really stupid and really lucky a couple of years ago. We had chickens already at our place and we went and got like, I don't know, 10 more bullets. And I didn't even think about the fact that we should have kept them separate for like a week. And so we basically let them in with the other chickens right away and everybody got along. And then I was doing some research, obviously, because I'm...
11:56about this homesteading thing. And then I started doing the podcast and people are mentioning all the time that they tend to keep new animals in isolation for a little bit. We could have killed the chickens that we already had and had no idea why they died, you know, by doing that. So we're actually going to be culling our flock here soon because they're lazy and they're not giving eggs and they're old.
12:22Yeah. And they're going to make excellent chicken stock and then we're going to get new chickens next spring. And so when we get new chickens, I think we're just going to get as many as we think we need and call it good for a while. And that way we don't have to worry about introducing any new guys to the group. Yeah, that's a good plan. It is so stressful to introduce new animals. Yeah. And chickens are crazy. They either love each other immediately or they fight. Yeah. Right. And then if there's like even just a little bit of blood on one of the other chickens, they really go for it.
12:52Yeah, they're destructive little dinosaurs is what they are. They are. I'm not a fan. I don't love chickens. I love the eggs that I get from them, but I just don't love chickens. And it's fine. I don't have to love them because they're not really cuddly anyway. It's not a big deal. Right. Exactly. Okay. So do you have, I mean, I hate to make you pick favorites, but if you can, do you have a favorite event that you've been involved in so far?
13:21Oh, that's a good question. There are so many that I love. I think one of my favorites is Little Canada's Canadian Days. It's a city in the Twin Cities. And we've been there for three years. So since we started, they've had us, which just makes my heart happy that they keep having us back. I just love the people in that community. It's always a really fun event. And the lady, her name is Sue, who organizes it for us.
13:49It's just so sweet and so accommodating. She always has the nicest area for the animals, but I really love that one. I love the people in that community. They're always just really excited to see the animals and really grateful. Awesome. Do you have a funniest story about any of the events that you've been at? Um.
14:12Hmm. It's gotta be something. Kids can say the funniest things, you know, I've definitely got some funny quotes from kids. I had one of my goats, his name is Snoopy and you know, he's a boy goat, but they still have their little udders and this little boy kneeled down behind him and pointed up and he whispered to his friend. He was like, he's got two weenies.
14:40One of the funniest things I've heard from kids, but I can't think of a specific event that was really funny. I think a lot of like the child cares that we go to just, they make me giggle just from the things that the kids say and how excited they are. Yeah, I love kids. I love kids from like, okay, my favorite age for kids is
15:03newborn to six months because they're snugly and they're not mobile yet. That's my preference. I love it when they're all snugly and they smell like brand new babies and you get to hold them all the time. I don't want any, I, Lord knows I don't want any more. I'm 54. I've raised four. I'm good, but I love babies. But I think my favorite age is probably from about four to about eight when they're still small and still pretty brand new to the world and they're still absorbing everything.
15:32And they have no online editor. Whatever they're thinking is going to come out of their mouth. I think. Yeah, exactly. I love some of the older kids too, you know, from like six to 10. I love how chatty they are. They always have so many questions for me about the animals. I did an event last week that was just these boys sat with me with one of those and were asking me just everything about how his horns work, why he's chewing his cud, all this stuff. They were asking about his hooves. And when it was time for them to go, one of the boys looked up at me and he was
16:02next time you come I want to talk about the sheep and it was just so cute they just love to learn and they're so curious I just love that. They're sponges they soak up everything if if they're asking questions answer them because it'll stick with them forever. Um okay I do have a question about why goats chew their cuds and I have another question about the regulations for all this so let's start with why goats chew their cud because I've talked to a lot of people about goats lately but that has not come up.
16:32Yeah, well, you know, the kids are always curious when they see them laying down and chewing, they're like, what are they eating? And I just always explain to them that it's their cud that they have a ruminant digestive system like a cow and the sheep have that to my alpaca as well. And so when the food moves into the first chamber, it sits there for a little bit and then they regurgitate it back up into their mouth and they chew it a second time and blow it and it moves it to the second chamber, eventually the third and the fourth and it moves throughout their whole system. But I love telling that to the kids and I'll tell them, you know,
17:02Especially my alpaca after he's finished swallowing one bite of his cut I'm like, okay now watch his neck and you see as he's regurgitating because he's got such that long neck You can see it moving all the way up through his neck until it comes up into his cheek And they just think that is so cool, you know, cuz they most of them never heard about anything like that before Yeah, I thought it was something to do with how their digestive system works But I just hadn't ever ever talked about it on the podcast and that seems like a cool thing to know
17:29Um, yeah, so so so ruminants have built in chewing gum basically exactly Although let me tell you it doesn't smell as good. Oh, no. No, no, no, it's disgusting I've I've had the not pleasure of of having that experience of smelling it. It's not great um, okay, so It's not like just anybody can go out and get a couple goats and couple sheep and some rabbits and some ducks and whatever and
17:57just be like, hey, we have these critters, can we bring them to your party and get paid for it? I know there's regulations and there's all kinds of stuff that has to happen to make this work. So without being nosy, what kind of regulations do you have to meet to be able to do this? Yeah, so to start it, I mean, we had to first just be registered as limited liability company is what we are. And so we had to go through that.
18:22whole process and then our insurance agent is just the best ever. And so he helps us with all that kind of side of it. Uh, but to do the actual events, a lot of cities require permits. And I always tell my, um, the people who are hiring me that this is up to them to look into. I'm not the one applying for the permit. They're applying for the permit and I'll just give them any information they need. They usually require vaccine records. Um, and they need a rabies certificates.
18:50and the stuff that I always have on hand for them. But that's the biggest one is that a lot of cities require permits. But other than that, I do not need a USDA license. My type of petting zoo does not require that. I think if you, I might be wrong on this, but I think if you have people coming to you, you might need that. But since I just do the traveling stuff, I haven't needed to apply for that. And so unless that changes, I don't need that part of it.
19:19The biggest thing is just the permits for us. Okay, cool. And then the other question regarding insurance. God forbid something goes wrong, someone gets hurt or your animals get hurt. Is it the person that is hiring you to bring your animals to the place that is hit with the insurance claim or is it you or is it both?
19:46You know, I haven't encountered that situation yet. Thank goodness. Yeah. But I think it will depend on the kind of events too, because me going to a daycare is a lot different than if I'm going to a huge city event where I'm interacting with the public. Yeah. So I think that would kind of make sense. But I think that both of us would really have to work on that together. A lot of the schools that I work for, they always have contracts for me. They're pretty much the only ones that ever get contracts to me.
20:15where we're working out those kind of details if something happened, you know, like my insurance would kick in and we would take care of that. So I think generally it would come to me and my insurance guy. But luckily we haven't had to deal with that yet. Yeah, there's just there's so many rules and regulations for businesses that I'm always curious to see what's involved in something like yours versus something like us with our
20:45produce from. And we had to change, well, we didn't have to. We were gently persuaded by our awesome insurance guy to switch to farm insurance instead of homeowners insurance because it covers different things and it also covers the home under that policy. So for anybody listening and looking to get into a business, always, always, always talk to your insurance person about what you're doing.
21:15what needs to happen with insurance because it is not a great feeling to have something happen and realize that you are not covered Right. Oh man. I owe my insurance guy so much. He he knows what he's doing and that's the important thing Absolutely Don't don't ever stick with the same insurance person either if you don't get along and you don't see eye-to-eye with your your insurance company
21:41You don't have to stick with them. Find someone that you actually like and click with because it makes it so much easier. Absolutely. And I mean, everybody can do how they wanna do it, but we just found that the person that we dealt with was great about explaining things in not legalese, but in layman's terms so that it was just easier to understand what the policy covered. Yep.
22:12Because Wiggly's is a lot of double-speak. It's a lot of words that you may not be familiar with. There's some Latin in there. And if you're not a word nerd, you may not understand what's being put in front of you. A lot of that just goes right over my head. Yeah, yeah. If you're not in the business, you aren't necessarily going to understand everything that you're handed at an insurance meeting. So, and it's not because we're stupid. It's just that that's not our specialty. Exactly.
22:41So yeah, it's important. And limited liability company or corporation for anybody who doesn't know, that's what LLC stands for. When you hear a company name with LLC at the end, that's what that LLC stands for.
22:57So, okay, let me think. I don't know what else to ask you. Like I'm out of my depth here. Uh, yeah, I'm stuck. Is there anything else you would like to talk about or share? Um,
23:18No, I mean, all of my animals, they live on our family farm. It's about 10 acres. And we have like 52 animals now, but that's including chickens and all that stuff. Yeah. But yeah, 10 acres works really well for us. We have full-sized horses that take up like four or five of the acres, and then a couple acres for the little animals. But yeah, it's a lot of fun. I love doing the traveling stuff. I would very dip into the...
23:46having people come to our farm territory. I'm not interested in that. That seems like a ton more work. And more liability, yep. Exactly, and my parents live there, you know, so that wouldn't be, I love doing the traveling stuff and it's been lucrative for us, so very blessed. Awesome, I do have a question. I just thought of while you were talking. Do you guys have merchandise? Do you have like t-shirts or hats or, I don't know, magnets or whatever?
24:16Yeah, we have coloring books. And my mom actually, she has a boutique in town. And so she also makes like sweatshirts and t shirts with those machines that can do that stuff. And so she makes our little blues merch for us. And so we do get that to people sometimes too, which is a lot of fun. It's fun to see people wear the little blues merch. Yeah.
24:43Yeah, we don't like we're not actively like putting that stuff out there. Um, maybe one day we will, but when people ask, we make them some stuff. Oh, okay. All right. And, um, the trailer or trailers that you transport the animals in, do you have a logo or are they fancy painted trailers? So people know what's being, who's being moved. The trailer, not, but one of our trucks has a wrap on it with
25:11It says Little Blues Traveling Zoo. It is gorgeous with cutouts of the animals and it's super fun. I love it We'd love to get a wrap for the truck But the second truck is a bit older and we're hoping to upgrade in the next couple years And so when we upgrade we'll do the wrap on the new one as well So when you're driving down the road do people honk at you if you're driving the one with the wrap?
25:36I get a lot of stares. I get a lot of looks, a lot of excited kids in the back seat of cars looking. And then a lot of people also recognize me or they know that my dad and so they'll see the business and know that's what he does. So they'll wave at me as they're driving by. So that's really fun. I love that. Do you feel like a minor celebrity in your area? Sometimes I do. Yeah.
26:03I bet little kids you see the truck that has the logo and stuff on it. I bet they're like, what is that? Is that an ice cream truck? I love when we pull up to an event and there's already kids around and they're just like, it's the petting zoo! Yeah, kids love animals. I mean I have met maybe two kids in my whole life who were skittish around animals and once they realized that they were okay, they were great with it. My neighbor who
26:33lived across the street from us back when we lived in Jordan, Minnesota. She had a little girl and I think it was the youngest one. And we had cats and she came over with her kids and the littlest one started crying as soon as she saw the cat. And I was like, oh no, no, it's okay. And the lady who lived across the street, she was like, she's really afraid of cats.
27:01I said, why? And she said, I have no idea. She said, none of the kids really like cats, but the youngest one nod into it. And I think she finally, the youngest finally did get brave enough to pet one of the cats, but you could just tell she was like, I don't like this at all. So she's the only, she's the only kid I've ever met who was that anxious about a cat.
27:27Yeah, you know, some of them are just so nervous and sometimes at events there's kids who are they're too afraid they don't want to come in the pen they're really anxious about it. But after sitting outside the pen because they'll just sit out there and look at the animals, you know, five minutes they start to get more interested and more brave. And then my favorite is seeing kids like that come into the pen and just like blossom. They just get so excited and they get more comfortable. They're not nervous of the animals anymore.
27:54a lot of times they'll choose like one animal to be like a favorite and they'll just stick by that animal. And it just makes me so happy to share them with kids who don't get to see these kinds of creatures very much and watch them become more comfortable and not as scared. Yeah. I can't imagine life without some kind of pet or...
28:18Or a livestock animal, I mean we don't really have livestock animals. We have barn cats and chickens That's about as far as we go with livestock But but growing up we always had a cat or a dog or both I mean, I don't remember a time when we didn't have a pet and The idea of not having a pet if you're a family with kids is just foreign to me. I don't get it. Mm-hmm Well, I think animals and having pets could teach a lot to children about responsibility and empathy
28:48All that good stuff, respect.
28:52Yeah, I mean, their pets are in your care. And if you're part of a family that has pets, I feel like everyone in the family should be involved in the care of that animal. And I don't care if it's a toddler, toddlers can get a kibble for the cats or the dog or whatever. And they love to do it. I had a job when I was younger as a camp counselor for a farm camp.
29:22one of the things the kids would do is help feed the animals and give the animal the water. And the little toddlers would do it and they just love it. They love that responsibility and like knowing that they're like taking care of something. No. Yes. I love it when two-year-olds say, I do it. Yes. It's one of my favorite things ever. And then they say, no, I don't want to do it by the time they hit 13, 14. So. Exactly.
29:49What happened to the excitement and the grin and the smile and the I do it part? That was great. Bring that back. Well, Irene, I really love the idea of what you're doing. And if I had small children, I would maybe entertain the idea of having you guys bring your critters to my place for a birthday party, but I don't have small children anymore, so I have grown up now. Maybe we'll see you at a public event.
30:16Could be, never know. Stranger things have happened. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me though, Irene, all joking aside, this has been great. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me, Mary. It's been fun. All right. Have a great day. You too.