Green Roots Farm

Today I'm talking with Liz at Green Roots Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.

https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes

00:00 This 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 Liz at Green Roots Farm. Hi Liz, how are you? I'm well, thanks for having me, Mary. Sure, you're in between, you said, Mankato and New Ulm? Yes, that's where I'm located, that's where my little farm is. Okay.

00:27 Awesome. So tell me about yourself and Green Roots Farm. Well, I am a master gardener. I've been on this 10 acre spot for less than 10 years. I started this by just trying to be self sufficient and support, you know, healthy food for my family. And then it became much more of a passion. And I raise

00:55 beef cattle, I raise chickens and pork, everything. So I don't leave the farm very often. Wow, okay. That's a lot of things from just starting out to maybe do a little gardening. Yeah, it's pretty large. We just tripled the size. So it was 50 by 100 feet, so now it's 50 by 300.

01:25 Yeah, so did you have a background in this before you started it? Uh, no, not particularly. My mother was a very avid flower gardener, master gardener, so I grew up kind of with that, but I didn't have a green thumb until I was probably into my 30s. Okay, huh.

01:52 That's really interesting because typically when people get this deep into it, they've had a lot in their growing up years with it. And I get what you said about your mom, but the beef cattle are a whole different thing. Yeah, it's a learn as you go process. And thank goodness I've had some wonderful teachers around me to kind of show me the ropes. I don't do a lot at the time, but I do enough to...

02:21 support our family and others who want to buy. Very nice. Okay, so you have a CSA. How's that going this year for signups? I am currently working on getting the website ready so that I can take the signups online. Just to make things easier, but I'm setting up some different markets. Hopefully the Minneapolis Farmers Market.

02:51 and will be in the late Crystal Farmer's Market, hopefully this Friday. And then there'll be signups in person at those times. Okay. Thank God for Farmer's Markets. We decided not to do a CSA this year because we had so few people sign up last year. I think part of it was that money was really tight last year and people were leaving about the initial outlay without the guarantee that...

03:19 that they needed to be sure they were going to get what they paid for because everyone knows that not all the crops succeed. So we decided that we would do the farmers market last summer and that went really well and my husband's gone to the first two this year and done fairly well with no produce. He sold candles and soaps and lip balms and did pretty well.

03:45 So again, thank you. We make all that stuff too. It's wonderful. Thank God for farmers markets, yes. Yeah, we're doing the farmers market and the CSA and we use all of the animal products to do natural products also. So fat from the pigs become lard and I make soap with that. There's all kinds of wonderful fun medicinal things to do out on the farm as well. Do you forage?

04:15 Do you forage your property? Yes? I do. Yep. Awesome. So I got to know, are you originally from Minnesota? I am. Okay. You sound slightly Canadian. I was wondering if maybe you were a transplant. No, I am born in the cities and then grew up down in the Mankato-Nuwam area. Okay. Well, you have some Canadian lilt to your accent. And I was like...

04:43 Maybe she's not from Minnesota. Nope. I'm here. Okay. Well, I'm not from Minnesota at all, and I don't sound like I'm from anywhere, so I'm the last one to talk about accents.

04:57 There's nothing wrong with that. Blend in. Yep. You gotta hide. You gotta hide in with people. You gotta become like everybody else. Where are you from? Huh? Where are you from? I'm from Maine originally. Oh, wonderful. Yep. And I had to drop the accent because apparently it's not great to have a New England accent here.

05:22 Hmm. Yeah, I can see. I can see how that would go. It did not go well. So I just I just spent a whole year of my life eradicating any trace of New England accent in my voice. And it's gone. It's completely gone. And that's okay. Yeah, no, you sound...there's no accent. Yeah, it's pretty clean. I like it a lot. Okay, so

05:52 What else can I ask you? Why is it called Green Roots Farm?

05:57 Um, I spent some time with the naming and it's a, it's a family run farm. It's me and my, and my kids that do most of the work. And I wanted to do something with, with that name, but I kind of ended up with. Just the roots was really important to me. I'm also a therapist and I run a private practice and coming into.

06:26 the root of things was really important. And then also how healing, gardening and growing things can be was also another passion of mine also. So trying to spread the word on that for other people to get into and to enjoy is creative. It touches all of the five senses. If you let it,

06:57 amazingly transformational. Okay. I love knowing how people came up with the names because some of them are really, really creative and some of them are really, really meaningful. And sometimes it's both, which is nice. Um, so how's your planting been going this spring? Cause we just finally got our garden planted because it was a big mud puddle for a week.

07:25 Oh yes, I had to have mine. I had to work with the soil for a while to get it to my preference level, I would say. But I'm in full plant mode, almost everything's in, but I do a lot of successive planting. So some of that is just kind of babysitting plants and other things and seedlings until they're ready to be transplanted. So it's constant.

07:55 Yes, it never ends. My husband is doing succession planting this year seriously for the first time, mostly because he decided that he wanted to grow only the things that he knows will sell like tomatoes and cucumbers and green beans and peas. We sold a ton of peas last year, sugar peas, sugar snap peas, I guess. And he had only planted one set.

08:24 You know, it was like a big long row and they were sold out in two weekends. And so he said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put peas in now. And then in like three weeks, I'm gonna put more peas in. And then three weeks after that, more peas. And I said, okay, so what you're telling me is if they don't sell, I'm going to be eating a lot of peas this winter. And he laughed cause he doesn't like, he doesn't like green veggies at all. He likes to grow them, but he doesn't like to eat them. That's interesting.

08:51 No, it's frustrating, but yes, yes, it's interesting. Yes. So he's, he's doing that. I love that. I, I've got, I think 10 varieties at least of different tomatoes. And I like to grow rare things like black carrots and black tomatoes and the, you know, foot long or two foot long manjapookee carrots. There's.

09:20 I find a lot of enjoyment in finding things that are hard to find and then growing it. Yes. Have you tried growing the zebra tomatoes, the zebra striped tomatoes? I have not, but I think my mother may have. Yeah, they're a real thing. We grew them one year and they're finicky. They want to split when it gets too hot, but they're yummy. So.

09:46 You might want to just stretch marks. Don't you worry about those? Yeah, you might want to you might want to pick up some seeds and try that because they were really really pretty. I will do that. Yeah. Um, we're trying a new thing this year. We're starting honey berry plants. Oh, yummy. You have you tried them? Are they yummy? Are they good? They are. Okay. Yeah. Because we've never grown them before and I've never tried one and

10:15 A lady that I interviewed a few weeks ago graciously sent me one plant of two different varieties. So one of each, the lacrosse pollinate, and we just got them in the ground. So we're excited about that for next year. This is exciting. Yep, because no one around here grows them that I know of.

10:39 You do now. Yes, exactly. No one but us that I know of grows them around here. We're hoping that they will spread out and if it goes well, we'll get some more and we can sell honey berries at the farmers market. Oh, wonderful. So we'll introduce, we'll introduce LaSore to honey berries. It'll be great. Nice. I've got a large patch of elderberries, black elderberries. That should be.

11:08 I don't know anybody else who's got, you know, quite a lot of those, at least in this area. But I think those would be a good sell this year too. Healthy, everybody likes it. Yeah, do you put netting over the trees so the birds don't get the berries? I just harvest quickly. Uh huh, yeah. We have two. We have two elderberries. Elderberry trees in our tree line. And I can't get to the berries before the birds get them.

11:38 I'm not fast enough. The birds know where they are. Yeah, yeah, that is true. Yeah, you can do some netting to help with that. Yeah, I have to order some netting because we don't have any that will work right now. So I have to figure out what to use.

12:00 So but that's okay. It's only two trees and I don't really use elderberry a whole lot. So so if we don't get them It's okay. The birds can have them. We want a healthy ecosystem, right? Yep Okay, it said you said it's you and your kids. So are your kids teenagers or are they adults or are they little I? Have an adult son and then I have a ten-year-old. Oh wow awesome. That are yeah, so they've been

12:29 They've been out in the dirt for a while. I have a daughter also who's 26, but she lives up in Northern Minnesota right now, so she's not able to help hands on. Okay. So the boys help out is what you're saying. Almost definitely. The older boy and his crew have been diligently cleaning out the barn and working on fencing because we've got herd animals.

12:58 who like to escape sometimes. That's amazing that they help. Our youngest still lives with us and he helps on our little homestead too. And I can't tell you how invaluable his help is. Okay, so with the beef cattle, cattle? I was told it's rude to ask how many head of cattle people have.

13:26 So you don't have to tell me the exact number, but do you have like a couple or do you have a lot of cattle? Right now, all the cattle that I have are in the freezer. Ah. Or full. So yeah, hopefully be getting some calves here soon. Okay, so you don't- I don't do a ton, no, because I have my horses and cattle together and pigs sometimes will run out with them because I've raised some heritage breed.

13:56 pigs and it's the most delicious, beautifully rich and red. But it's, yeah, so they all really spend a lot of time together. So I don't, plus I don't have, you know, I don't have old farmer money. So I can't go out and buy just a herd. Yeah, I just, I wanted to get an idea because I was going to ask you if you breed your cattle, but if you just, if you just pick up a couple calves and grow them out for the meat for you.

14:26 then you wouldn't need to breed cattle. Right, yeah, not at this time. Okay. That's, you gotta keep the bull separate. It's just a whole, it's a whole process I don't need. It's a whole thing, it sure is. Okay, so have you tried sheep or goats at all? Yeah, I have goats. Currently have goats. They work, they've done a pretty good job of.

14:54 staying in the grove and eating out a lot of the invasive plants that are kind of coming up in there and they're slowly doing their job. They much prefer green but they'll settle for greens. Yeah if they're hungry they'll eat. Yes they will. The barn, the siding, whatever they can find. Yep I feel like okay

15:21 I was talking with a guy a couple weeks ago who has a whole bunch of chickens and they are very, he and his family are very, very good about the entire cycle of chicken from egg to stew pot to feeding the bones and the eggshells back to the chickens. So it's a full circle thing. And he was telling me about it. I was like, you know, chickens may be the most versatile farm animal.

15:51 or bird, fowl, whatever, to have on your farm. And I think the next thing in line is goats. I really do because you can milk them, you can eat the meat, they can help clear your land, and that's almost a full circle thing too, because if they're eating off the land and then you're eating the goat, it's a full circle thing. Absolutely, and that's pretty much how we do things here.

16:21 Full cycle, I raise meat chickens, I raise guineas, regular egg layers, I've got, I've had peacocks, I've got some about to hatch out hopefully, turkeys, now bronze turkeys, I got some bronze turkeys years ago as potential Thanksgiving meals. And the bronze turkeys started.

16:49 Following me around like I was mommy pretty quickly. So they They became off limits. They became pets and they are They they can be a therapy animal. I found them to be as therapeutic as horses and and other herd animals Yes, I'm starting to learn that any any living being can be a therapy being cuz um

17:18 I don't know what I was watching, but some teenage girl had a gecko and she referred to it as her therapy lizard. And I was like, oh, I had never thought of a reptile being a therapy thing. And I think it's about love.

17:39 I think that therapy emotionally supports animals in quotation marks, whether it's a bird or a lizard or a turtle or a dog or a horse or whatever. It's just about caring for something. Oh, absolutely. Having empathy, right? That's where I think farm life shows you that empathy, but also the brutality of nature sometimes. For example, my 10-year-old.

18:09 is out right now in the living room where he might even have it outside. He saved one of the little meat chicks I thought was going to have to be put down. He ended up saving it and now is following him everywhere. All over. It's adorable. But then right before this phone call, I had to try to give CPR on a kitten and it didn't make it. So it is, yeah, it teaches you the harsh reality of loss.

18:38 but also a way to bond and create love that isn't through language. Yes, exactly. So you mentioned kittens. We have barn kittens right now too. And one of them died at two weeks old. And I had already had this happen last year with another litter. So it didn't hurt

19:08 It's so sad when they're so little and they just don't make it. Yeah, it's, it's hard to watch what I've, I think when I initially started doing this, I probably was more sensitive to that. And over time now, you know, I still honor the animal and its life, but it doesn't, it doesn't hurt as much because I know that it's just nature's way. And anytime we

19:36 We decide Mother Nature's wrong, she shows us. Oh, yes, every damn time. Mm-hmm. Yup. Um, so, so kittens leads to cats, which leads me to dogs. Do you have any guardian dogs? I have, well, I don't know if I call them guardians. One's probably in bed right now. I have two giant English Mastiff females, a mother and daughter. And they eat way more than I do. They're, they're-

20:05 Pretty big, but they're gentle giants, at least with us. Yeah. They're pretty good around the farm. Mastiffs are beautiful. Yeah, they're. I don't want one that's too big for me, but they're so pretty. Yeah, they are. They're sweet. They're drool monsters, though. Oh yeah. Definitely. Yup. I can't have anything else. I really like St. Bernard's. I really like Great Pyrenees. I really like mastiffs, but my dog is a mini Australian Shepherd, and she does not drool.

20:35 Oh, she's got energy though, I bet. And she's actually a weird one. She's very laid back. I swear she has the soul of a Labrador retriever. She's very calm most of the time. I haven't met a calm lab in my life. Oh, I have like five of them and they were all just big puddles in on the couch who wanted to be petted. So she's got that she's she's channeling them.

21:03 the ones that I knew. She'd be along with my dog, Sam. That's what they do. Yeah. She's amazing. And I'm not going to talk too much about her because I talk about her on the podcast all the time. I released one, I'm releasing one episode a day this week. And I think I talked about her in the one this morning. But I think the next four, there's very little talk of Maggie because I know that it can get obnoxious listening to someone talk about their pet all the time.

21:33 But the reason that I wanted to work her in today is because her former owners, our friends own Maggie's parents. And then they got a new mini Australian Shepherd a year or so ago. And that one just had puppies yesterday. So I got to see baby mini Australian Shepherds on their Facebook page today. I was like, puppies!

22:01 Mini minis. I love them so much. I would love to get another one, but I am not prepared for the velociraptor stage again yet. Yeah, no, I can't do that. I do miss puppy breath though. Yep, me too, but luckily Maggie still smells like a puppy. She'll be four in August and she still smells like a puppy, so I'm good with that. I love it. Yep. So that's it for Maggie talk today. I don't want to...

22:30 I don't want to bore my listeners again with Maggie. But whatever. Anyway, so let me see. Do you love the life you have chosen?

22:46 Yes. It took a long time to get to this point. I decided many years ago that I didn't want to have a boss ever again. And that I was going to be the controller of my life, whether it led me into failure or it led me into success, but I needed to live authentically. And so I started a therapy practice and I... I...

23:16 started the farming and it's my sanctuary. It's definitely where I'm supposed to be. It's your therapy. You're right, it is. It's also my stress. Yeah, but it's a whole different kind of stress. Oh yeah, if you followed me around all day, it would be mostly me talking to the animals,

23:45 swearing at the animals, them swearing at it. It's an interesting vibe out here. All I can see in my head is the DNA helix. Where the strands wind around each other. That's what I'm seeing when you say the juxtaposition between talking to the animals and swearing at the animals. It's like having kids.

24:14 It is. It absolutely is. I call the dog kid all the time and I call the kittens babies all the time. I love it. Yeah we have one kitten he is white with like beige spots and a beige crown. His ears are beige and then down over his eyes is beige and then his mouth is white and his name is tilt because he was walking around with his head slightly tilted for a couple weeks.

24:44 He was out playing with his siblings today and he was not tilting anymore. Ah, what are you gonna call him now? I don't know. And... Nah, you gotta keep calling him Tilt. I like it. Yeah, yeah, and I mentioned to my son, I said we're gonna have to change his name and he was like, no, he's always gonna be Tilt. We're keeping that one. I was like, oh, okay, sorry. So Tilt. Tilt is his name. I love it. Yep, and he's a long... Sounds like a pretty cat.

25:12 He's a long haired cat too. Yeah, I had a black long haired, just well born on Easter. And I've got a long haired orange. Oh, so pretty. Oh yeah. And it's getting blonde. It's a kitten and it's blonding out. I haven't seen that before. It's pretty. So nice. See, this is the problem with kittens. They're so cute. You want to like name them all and keep them all and you can't keep.

25:42 10,000 kittens because they don't stay kittens. Oh no, especially on the farm. If you have lot tamales or multiple litters, then they're fighting and fighting over food, fighting over territory. It's, it can be a lot. Yes, yes it can. And we have, we're gonna keep tilt, but we have three females that I have to find homes for. Three female kittens. So I'm working on it. It's the right time of year for people to be looking.

26:10 to get a kitten. Oh, most definitely. So hopefully they'll have homes because otherwise I don't know what I'm going to do with them and it's probably not going to be pretty if I have to do the last resort thing. I don't want to do that. So I'm looking for homes for three female kittens right now. Yes.

26:32 I think there's, it pulls something on Facebook or Pregless, they should go fairly quickly. Yeah, we had two go become barn cats. They're barn kittens and the lady wanted barn cats and I said they're eight weeks old and they're kittens but they're barn kittens. They've been raised in the pole barn by their mama. I said, will that work? And she's like, that's perfect. I said, okay. So two of the six went already to their new home.

27:02 Oh, wonderful. Yes, I was very excited to let them go because they needed to go. They all need to go. We've got to get the mama cat spayed, but I've been trying to get her and the one daughter that we kept from her litter last fall into a lower cost spay program for barn cats. Cannot get an appointment anywhere.

27:32 Yeah, COVID really kind of took a hit on that because they stopped doing that during COVID. I think that's when, at least in our neck of the country down here, there were multiple kittens, multiple letters, and everybody had 13 to 30 kittens in their farms just trying to find homes. It's been difficult, I think, for some of those programs that maybe catch up with some of the rural need.

28:02 Yeah. Yeah. And I checked with our vet that sees our dog and it's like $300 to spay a cat. Yeah, that's, that's a lot for a free cat. Ah, it's a lot. It's a lot of money right now. So in the meantime, we have kittens. So, and I love them. They're great, but we have to rectify this situation sooner than later, sooner than next spring for sure.

28:31 Yes, I agree. I just have them all year long. It doesn't seem to matter if it's spring, fall, winter. They don't care. Oh, okay. Well, the mama cat did not get pregnant again until February, and that was when it warmed up to the unseasonably warm spring temperatures. And sure as shit, we've got getting since February. Oh my god.

28:58 So anyway, kittens, bad plan. We messed up. We should have had her fixed last year, but again, $300. So don't have $300 to just throw at a cat right now. I didn't hear you. So that's also a part of homesteading life is that sometimes the money is rolling in and sometimes the money is not rolling in. That's right. So, but anyway, instead of talking about the dog, we're talking about cats. I'm all in on this. Okay.

29:28 Is this your plan for the rest of your life, doing what you're doing? Yeah, for now. I think I like being in the dirt right now. And I've kind of hired a management team to take over and run my therapy practice. And I've got another farm business that I might be looking into, but this is definitely, yeah, what I'd like to do.

29:58 as many people as I can. Okay, and you said that you are a therapist. Do you have like a specific, I don't know what the word is, do you do therapy with all ages or do you do kids or teenagers or adults or what? Yeah, so I generally don't work with children, although I do have some other providers that do.

30:25 I tend to work with adults and generally adult males. I've worked with, I've worked kind of in the state systems, working with civilly committed, usually men. So I have a very interesting skill set in dealing with men who abuse. I've got anger management programs and domestic abuse program. So I'm again, trying to reach people who...

30:53 who need these services but may not be otherwise able to get them, you know, unless they're online. So, you are doing good things in your professional life and good things in your personal life. That's great. Trying. Good. I love people like you who are trying to make the world a better place. It just makes me happy. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. You're welcome.

31:23 You're welcome. All right, well, it's been half an hour. That was super fast, Liz. It must have been really interesting. We should do this again. Yes, we should. I should narrow it down and ask you something, like pick something and we'll delve deep into it another time. Absolutely. All right, awesome. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. You're welcome. May I give out my website? Yes. Okay, my...

31:50 site for the farm business is greenrootsfarm.org. You can reach me at Liz at greenrootsfarm.org and the therapy practice is Comp Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yep. Bye. Bye.