The Little Farm in the Forest

Today I'm talking with Katie at The Little Farm in the Forest.  This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company. https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/ https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/ www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead 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 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company. 00:28 Today I'm talking with Katie at the Little Farm in the Forest in Indiana.  Good afternoon, Katie. How are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to have me. How are you? I am good. What is the weather like in Indiana today? It is very warm. I think we have some rain that is much needed on the way, but hopefully not too stormy.  I am hoping we don't break the 90s, but it looks like we're going to.  Yeah. Yeah. 00:58 I thought we were through all of this really hot and muggy weather, but apparently we're still in August.  I'm in Minnesota and the last few days up until yesterday were really lovely, like 79,  low dew point, nice breeze.  And then yesterday the humidity started to climb again. I was like, no, because I thought my air conditioner in my bedroom was broken. 01:24 And I mentioned this to my husband because he's doing a training class working from home this week.  And he came up and looked at it and he came downstairs and he said, I think I know what's wrong with the AC. And I said, what? And he showed me the filter.  The filter was filthy.  So PSA people, if your air conditioners that are window air conditioner are not working right, first thing to check is the filter because now it's working fine.  I'm so glad to hear that. You know, being born and raised in Florida, 01:53 I would imagine you are not equipped or used to that weather. know you guys had some heavy, some hard hitting temperatures a couple of weeks ago up there.  yeah. Yep. My poor dog.  Oh my God, Katie.  She's okay. I don't want to spend too much time on this. talk about her all the time, but she's an Australian shepherd with the double coat and her top coat is all curly. 02:20 And you're supposed to Aussies because of that double coat. Right. So we don't. And that two weeks, she just laid around and looked at me like, save me from this. And we were giving her ice cubes every couple hours to chew on.  she loves ice. So that was great. But I knew she was miserable because she would go outside, go potty and come right back in. 02:47 I'm like, I'm so sorry, honey. I can't fix it.  And she's so dumb because she could have just been in one of the bedrooms where the ACs were on, but no, she wanted to lay by the toilet in the bathroom.  it at least tile? Is the tile cool? Yes, that's why she wants to be in there. Okay, that makes sense. So she's not actually dumb, but she could have been in a 69 degree temperature room, but she chose the tiles instead because they feel good on her tummy. 03:14 So anyway, tell me a little bit about yourself and the little farm in the forest. love the name.  Thank you so much.  So we it is a family operation. It's my husband and I and his mother and grandmother have moved up here. We are just outside of Louisville, Kentucky. So, you know, we're just across the border in Indiana. And it's kind of a family operation, first generation sort of family compound set up. 03:41 And my mother-in-law actually kind of came up with the name when we were thinking about what we wanted to name our little farmstead or homestead. And I wanted to include something with the forest in it because our property is heavily forested and we're working on restoring the forest while moving into market farming. And so that's kind of how the name came up to be was it was kind of just a mashup of conservation meets agriculture. 04:11 Okay, so I was looking at your Facebook page, because I do this every time I talk to somebody.  And the one post you've done in the last week really stuck out to me was about the SpaceX debris hitting the moon.  Do you know anything about that?  Were they just trying to shoot a rocket at the moon for funsies? 04:36 I, somebody had commented, didn't know too much about it. It was just sort of something that was like popping up all over my feed.  Um, and I guess it was already kind of like up there. weren't aiming and it just sort of got off track.  And I guess the gravitational pull or something had caused it to go there. Um, but it was, it was just something that kind of hit me kind of hard because. 05:00 As somebody who's really interested in conservation and being a little bit more self-sufficient and sustainable in my life choices,  just the thought of launching debris into space, it feels like another form of littering to me that we're taking it to the next level.  This isn't necessarily in regards to SpaceX specifically, but 05:29 just the thought of us launching things into space and then they just get locked there and it's like another form of pollution.  Well, we've already tried to ruin the ocean. So why not try to ruin space?  Right? Yeah, it just, you know, it really like it had caused me to sit there and reflect and think a lot about, um, just because we can, does it mean we should kind of questions?  Absolutely. Um, my 05:56 I have two podcasts. have this one and I have Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture that I do with a co-host.  And my co-host, I love her. She's fantastic. And one of her things right now is AI,  that it's not good. And I agree with her. I don't think it's good.  And that's another thing that's really screwing with agriculture and conservation.  just, we don't need 06:26 to do all this stuff. Why can't we embrace what we have, you know? Right.  It's kind of just this reminder.  You know, they talk about living in the moment a lot,  enjoying life, you know, especially this lifestyle. It comes with that, that mentality of having a slower pace of life, really being present in your life and with your community, your family, your friends. And it's like, now we have all of this. 06:55 this opportunity through technology to kind of instantize things and make everything accessible. That it almost feels like just the creativity of life, the mysteriousness of life is really just being pulled from us. Because now we can just type a few words into something and it can dream it for us. we're, it almost feels like we're being robbed of our ability to dream.  Yes. And that's not okay. And part of the reason it's not okay is because 07:25 We have little people watching us all the time.  And little people have big imaginations. And if we rob them of their creativity, we're robbing them of the joy of life. And I don't want to talk about this too much further, because I could talk all day.  I just, I'm the woman that still gets a pitter patter in my heart when my husband brings in tomatoes from the garden, the first tomatoes.  So I'm very much. 07:53 I wouldn't say I'm crunchy granola, but I am right below that, you know?  Right.  Right. 08:03 But either way, I just saw that on your Facebook page and I was like, oh, Katie and I are going to be friends because yeah, that's okay.  All right. So you have a humongous garden, right?  So I don't know if humongous would be the word to describe it, but it is the biggest one I have personally done. We are operating it as a market garden. So we're coming in at about 8,500 square foot, which I think roughs out to like a fifth of an acre. 08:34 Yep. So I guess it's a decent size.  That's a really good size. Don't sell yourself short.  Yeah. It's been a lesson this year. I've never done a market garden.  I've always just grown food, you know, for myself, my husband, friends, family when they're around.  And yeah, I'm learning a lot from this garden. It has definitely been the garden of lessons for me this year. 09:01 And what lessons have you learned so far? What are the biggest ones? I think approaching the market garden the way I would a personal garden was kind of one of my biggest mistakes.  love kind of the potage garden, the interplanted garden, the very wild and chaotic gardens. But when it comes to market gardening, there needs to be a little bit of organization there. And that is not my strong point. 09:31 So it got really out of hand really fast. I've just got like basil plants that are like two foot wide between my tomatoes, making it hard to pick right now, kind of hitting peak harvest season. And then I am not super familiar with this area. We just moved here last year. So I'm still again, being born and raised in Florida. I'm still navigating seasonality and like season extension. And that's something I've never really had to do. 10:00 on a scale when it comes to making money because this has always been a personal hobby. And so now that we've commodified it and turned it into a business, I have to start approaching it like a business rather than a hobby. Yeah, it does change the view of it. It really does.  My husband's garden, he's the gardener. His garden is 150 by 100. 10:28 feet, think, 150 feet by 100 feet. So that's a 5,000 square foot garden.  And he has a hard time keeping up with it.  I'm not the gardener, and he doesn't want me messing with it.  So right now, we've got a lot of beautiful cucumbers and tomatoes coming in for the first time in two years, because last year the garden was bad because of weather here.  The first cucumber he brought in, I was like, can I eat it now? 10:57 Do I have to wait till dinner? And he was like, no, you can eat it now. And I cut that thing up in slices and started eating it. And I was like, do you want any? And he looked at me and there was a beat of time. And he said, I would like a bite. He said, but it's yours. He said, cause I know you know how much you love cucumbers. I was like, okay.  So they're really, really good this year. They're just starting to really come in now. And our tomatoes are finally starting. He's picking like 20 to 30 a night right now. 11:26 And we're north of you by quite a bit. I'm sure you're picking way more than we are right now.  I, you know, I am actually kind of starting to peter out on the tomatoes and I'm out of cucumbers.  I've replanted cucumbers and I'm hopeful that I'll get a second round in before our first frost since they seem to grow so quick here.  But my tomato plants are kind of, I planted those back from seed in February. So I got them in the ground probably 11:55 Um, and April or May, I remember taking a chance and thinking, I'm going to bet that we're not going to have a late freeze. And thankfully it worked out for me this year, but that doesn't always happen up here. Sometimes the freeze does come late.  Yes. those are our least favorite freezes here because we have apple trees and last year they were calling, they were calling for like snow on Derby and I was like, but I have my tomatoes out. Like, what do you mean? 12:23 Yeah, we really watch the weather when we know the apples,  the apple trees are starting to blossom.  If there's a frost, we will get no apples at all. It's done.  And we have two trees loaded with honey gold apples right now. And we have a Harrelson and a Regent variety that we've never gotten apples from in the six years we've been here. And they're covered in apples too.  So we did not have a late frost. Thank God. 12:54 The last two years have been so rough with the weather that I was like, please just let us have a moderate season, please.  it's been lovely here other than that two weeks of hot. Yes. So you got your two weeks of summer.  You didn't even have to go to Florida. Boy, did we.  And I don't know if you know what Minnesota is like in the summer, but we don't get two and a half weeks of temperatures in the high 90s and tropical dew points. We just don't get that. We get a couple of days, if that. 13:23 So yeah, I don't want to live in Florida. I want to live in Minnesota where the weather is supposed to be temperate in the summertime. It's funny because my husband and I joke, we didn't move far enough north. We did a brief stint in Connecticut a couple of years ago. did 10 months.  And while it was lovely, we just, we really liked the Kentucky area, the Ohio Valley.  But now that we're currently like facing a hundred plus degree weather in the upcoming days, we joke all the time. like, yeah, we did not move. 13:54 far enough north, like this is not far enough. But I don't know if we can really go anywhere that doesn't get a heat spell anymore.  Even Alaska gets hot temperatures now in the summer, like hot,  hot.  yeah, I mean, you could move to the North Pole, but you're not going to be growing a lot of veggies in North Pole in the summertime. No, I've considered it though. I've considered it.  I'll find something to grow. 14:19 Well, you could have an indoor greenhouse, but it would cost you a lot of money to keep it warm.  would. I've looked into it. Not exaggerating at all. Yeah, my husband's dream for a long time. was like, we're going to end up in Alaska. And I was like, hell we are.  No, no, no, no. I don't want to live in Alaska where it's dark all day long, except for an hour and a half in the wintertime. I can't. I would die. 14:43 Yeah, I don't. That's the only thing that I think keeps me from wanting to move to Alaska. I know it's gorgeous. I have a cousin that lives out there.  But I don't know if I could do the constant darkness.  No, no. And it's bad enough in the wintertime in the lower 48. Can you imagine?  I couldn't do it. There's no way. I like it when it starts to get dark. 15:12 around Christmas time, you know, just before Christmas when it's dark at four o'clock and we get candles lit because it's pretty and it smells good.  we have, we have some kind of bread or something in the oven smells good and it's all cozy. But if I had to do that all the time, no. I don't think I would be productive. I think I would be very cozy in my house all the time. I would not be contributing to society.  Yep, exactly. And I mean, 15:41 I have the utmost respect for people who can live with those kinds of extremes. I'm just not that person.  I agree.  I think that's why the Midwest for us worked out like, well, I guess I use the term Midwest very loosely. There seems to be debate if, if the Kentucky and a region would be considered Midwest.  Um, I don't know. 16:04 You know? Yeah, I don't either. I'm like, I'm from Florida.  Florida is a weird state, you know? It's kind of southern and it's also very northern at the same time. So I was like, you know what? This seems like a good middle point of the country where I get the seasonality, but I'm not so far north to where I'm buried under feats of snow, but I'm not dying from the heat or alligators.  Right. Yeah.  And... 16:32 The thing that's really interesting to me, this is, I don't know, we're talking about a lot of stuff that isn't homesteading, but I used to take the road trip from Minnesota to Maine every few years because I grew up in Maine, my parents still live there.  it's Minnesota to Wisconsin to Illinois to Indiana to Ohio to Pennsylvania, I think is the route. 17:00 Indiana feels like it's right literally right in the middle of all these different seasonal changes because I consider I Consider Illinois to be sort of kind of part of Wisconsin because of the route we take so same kind of feel in the climate and Then you get to Indiana and Indiana has always seemed hot to me because when when I was growing up My parents lived in we lived in Maine my parents and I my mom's parents lived in Illinois 17:30 So the road trip was from Maine to Illinois and Illinois to home. And so I'm familiar with driving through Indiana in June and July and August. And it just always seemed kind of hot and sweaty.  And we would get to Illinois and for some reason, I don't remember the weather ever being bad when we would visit my grandparents. I'm sure it was, but I don't remember it. And Illinois always just seemed to really moderate and there was always just a nice breeze blowing through. 17:59 And then Ohio is where it starts to not be so flat. You know, just the inkling of, we're getting back into trees and some hills here.  And so Indiana has always been this really weird outlier for me from my childhood memories. And I know it's really pretty because my grandpa's brother lived in Indiana. So we would go visit them when we were in Illinois. 18:25 I know what it feels like. know what it smells like. I know what it looks like, but I think it's all very colored from the trips I took as a kid.  You do remember things I think differently in childhood. will say Indiana is an interesting state because where we're at in Indiana, right on the Kentucky border, we're only about 50 miles outside of Louisville. So we're very much in the hills here of Southern Indiana. 18:54 I don't know if you've ever been, it is, it is beautiful. And it's funny because, you know, just you go an hour to north of us, that's when you start hitting the plains of Indiana, the flat, not much to see,  just fields. And so we really got lucky when we moved to at least live somewhere where it does feel different topography wise and not necessarily so just vast and expansive. 19:24 It is gorgeous though.  I do remember that.  My least favorite part of the trip was the Illinois part and has been my whole life because Illinois is very, very, very flat. Yes, we recently made a trip. just did popped over to St. Louis and that's only a couple hours for us.  We're only a couple hours here near the Louisville area. 19:51 to a lot of major cities. So Cincinnati, we're not far from Detroit, we're not far from Indianapolis. So we made a little trip out to St. Louis a couple of weekends ago and Illinois was like, we didn't even have to go through that much Illinois, but it felt like forever because it was just like one straight field that we drove through.  Yeah, drive if you're driving it, it's you don't want to drive it by yourself or you'll fall asleep at the wheel. 20:18 Right. Yeah, we were like, wow, okay, we know we knew we had left southern Indiana and got into Illinois because there was not a single hill, like a cave, nothing. We very much live in cave country here in the hills. We actually live by two major cave systems down the road from us within miles.  Most of my neighbors have caves on their property.  Our property slopes down, like we're very much built onto the side of a hill. 20:46 And so, we were like, okay, we are in Illinois because there is nothing out here. Yes, absolutely.  I shouldn't say it because my mom grew up in Illinois, but I will never live in Illinois. It's too flat for me.  is.  So we have now touched on weather and geography. Let's get into growing things.  Did you? 21:12 Did you grow up with parents or grandparents who grew things? Did you say that at beginning?  Kind of.  So I grew up in a very rural part of Florida, kind of really some of the last part of real Florida that still exists, which is now, of course, being developed like most of the state.  So I grew up in one of the biggest peanut producing counties,  big monoculture right outside of Ocala, Florida, which is big horse country. 21:41 And like most rural people, like we raised hogs, we had chickens. I had a garden with my grandparents, um, one year, uh, a couple of times we did some canning, you know, things like that. wouldn't say it was a, we weren't a gardening family. were more of a raising meat and eggs family. Um, but I was very ag adjacent my whole life. Um, just growing up in a, a very rural place where there's nothing but farms and Florida's, um, 22:10 because it's so southern, the growing season is so long, you're just kind of surrounded by so much agriculture.  Okay, cool. And then the other thing I wanted to ask you and I'll forget if I don't ask now.  You had something on your Facebook page about making comfrey salve or salve. 22:32 Is that something new for you or have you been doing that for a while?  Comfrey is something new that I'm working with in the past couple of years. I started making home remedies probably in my early 20s. I think like most women,  I kind of got into this lifestyle when I started getting some health issues and I wasn't getting a ton of help from the doctors. 23:01 quite an extensive medical history for being in my 30s. And I had really started struggling with some autoimmune issues. And it was kind of a, I approach this lifestyle wise? Can I do this a little more holistically before I have to take the medications they give for those kinds of illnesses? Because I really didn't want to end up on like any type of like rheumatoid. 23:30 medications, any type of immunosuppressants, and I already have a cardiologist, things like that. So I actually got into making a lot of my home remedies for pain as a medical marijuana patient in Florida. It was cheaper for me to buy medical marijuana and make my own lotions to use topically than it was to buy the lotions. So that's actually where I started was as a medical marijuana patient. I didn't know you could do that. 24:00 I never really like I was like, if you can infuse oil, you know, with lavender, like, why couldn't I do it topically? I wasn't interested in necessarily like, you know, the mind altering aspect of the medication, which, you know, I'm very pro like, you know, that's, that's a choice people have to make.  That's not what I'm sorry, I'm a little topic here, but you're not you're anti pot. 24:29 Right. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say.  But it was, you know, just, I needed something more for topical muscle relief, nerve pain.  And I was, know, at the time on a very limited budget, I, know, I was newly married. We had bought our first house, you know, money was tight.  And after going the pharmaceutical route and not getting a ton of relief or my insurance would only pay for X amount of treatments. 24:56 I was like, you know what, if I'm going to have to pay out of pocket anyways, let me try this. And I just, kind of came to me one night. Like I was in the dispensary. saw lotion.  I was like, I don't have the money for that. And I was like, you know what? I know how to make lotion. Like let me, let me see if I can just figure this out. And so I just, that's where I started. I love that.  Um, I have a story that has nothing to do with pot, but it has to do with making a sap.  My youngest son, he is 20. 25:25 Born in 2001, so he'll be 25 in December.  He does not live with us anymore. I am an empty nester. I've raised four kids.  He had some dry skin happening on his face like three or four years ago. And he was using my Burt's Bees lotion, which is expensive.  And I was like, why don't you let me figure out a way to make something for your face? Because it's not going to cost $20 a thing. 25:54 it's going to cost about four because I have all the ingredients probably that I need. So I looked up what I thought was a lotion and it was a lotion but it set up as a salve and I said, can you just use it as a salve? And he said, sure.  And basically it was cocoa butter,  raw cocoa butter, which I didn't know smells like cocoa.  I thought it, I didn't realize that it would cause I'd never dealt with it before. 26:23 And I used that and some other things and made him some face cream and he loved it because he smelled like hot cocoa.  And I was so impressed with myself because he really, had spots that were just flaky and it was just like a minor psoriasis thing.  And it worked.  after like three or four days of him using this every night before he'd go to bed, 26:49 He came to me and he showed me his face. He's like, touch my face.  And you know, boys don't... Boy men, men boys, what are you gonna call them? Boys in their twenties don't really want their mom touching them in any way, or form other than maybe a hug now and then. And I said, touch your face. And he's like, yeah, touch my face. And he said, put your hands flat and just put them on my cheeks and then slide your hands down. And I was like, okay.  And I did. And his face was so soft. And he's like,  you fixed it. 27:20 And I don't know whether he was like, thank you, mom, and you fixed it. Or if he was just like, how cool is this? You fixed it. But I was so excited that I had made something that really worked for him. Yeah, that's amazing. And when you really do start kind of having to take your own health into your own hands.  It's funny how much we seem to be able to do for ourselves without needing 27:49 to necessarily take the steps to go to the doctor, handle insurance and pharmaceuticals.  Sometimes it's just you need to moisturize, you know? Yeah. And I knew that and he knew that too, but I was like, you are not going to use up all his Burt's Bees stuff that I still have. Stop using my good stuff. That I still love. And when I'm out of it, I'll use the other stuff I make too. But in the meantime, 28:16 Here use this homemade remedy that's probably better for your skin than the Burt's Bees stuff I have.  Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And it's so dumb because Burt's Bees was my go-to for a long time, you know, growing up and young adult and in my 20s and 30s Burt's Bees lip balm was my favorite thing.  I now have lip balms whenever I want them because I can just make them. I know how. You know, it's funny being in the the ag world because I never 28:46 realized how 28:50 how much you jump into when you start this lifestyle. And for me, like I've kind of jumped into the cosmetic stuff. Like I like to make like little tinted chapsticks or I make my own facial moisturizers and I'm like, oh my gosh,  I could just make this. I don't have to buy it. It's going to cost me $500 to make it, but I can make it.  the outlay, the beginning of anything is always the most expensive.  Always. Like when you want it, when you decide you want to get chickens for eggs, 29:19 Those first eggs are going to be thousand dollar eggs.  But six years later, they're not thousand dollar eggs anymore because you already have the coop and you already know how to take care of them.  And hopefully you found people you can barter with for hay for their nesting boxes.  And you start selling their eggs. If you have enough chickens, you sell their eggs and that pays for their food. But that first egg is like a golden egg, I swear to God. 29:46 For sure.  It's funny.  And you you find ways to get scrappy and frugal.  And it really, this lifestyle really does kind of lead you down the path of non-  I wouldn't say anti-consumerism, but it is easier to get more into a minimalistic habit, like habits. Because when you're not having to go to the store for, like you said, eggs or something, all of a sudden you're like, wow, like I'm not spending 30:15 as much money or gas or I'm not buying impulsive things.  it's really just I didn't realize how much of my life this lifestyle it would affect.  it impacts everything in the best way possible.  And and I'm going to say this again, I try to date. try to do this every third or fourth episode.  Homesteading, farming, gardening, whatever you're doing. If you 30:45 are a soft heart and you have animals, you're going to have to get a stiff upper lip because animals don't always make it on a farm. We just lost a barn cat the other day. We lost kittens two years ago because their mom flaked off. She left four week old babies. We don't know if she got hit or if she was just too young to have babies and she didn't want to raise them and so she went somewhere else, but we lost babies, kittens. 31:14 So you've really got to be able to roll with the punches and you will have some of your highest highs in this lifestyle, but you'll have some of your lowest lows too. Yeah, that was something I learned very young and early on with my parents raising hogs and chickens. I actually had a really hard time. I was vegetarian kind of on and off into my adult life. 31:40 And even though my parents had tried to explain it to me as a child, like, you know, we want to know that our food was raised in humane conditions, where it came from, what was fed, you know, they were very transparent about some of the horrors that exist in modern agriculture and how removed we are from our food sources.  That really impacted me at a young age to the point of vegetarianism. And it took me a really long time to, I guess, to accept it and be comfortable with it. 32:08 And I think a lot of people jump into this lifestyle and don't realize how much it does affect them.  Yep. And it's, it's really wonderful when you're starting out, when you're like, Oh, we're going to get bunnies and we're going to raise them for meat or we're going to get chickens and have eggs and we're going to have meat chickens too.  And we'll raise those up and butcher them for meat. And we're going to get a steer at whatever four months old and we're going to raise that for meat and we're going to butcher him. 32:38 The problem is you get to know those animals, you get to know their personalities, and it is really hard to not be attached to an animal you take care of all day long every day. And then you are the ones going end their life and you're going to eat them. It's a hard, hard shift.  And being so far removed from where our food comes from, people think nothing of picking up a nice ribeye steak at 33:07 the meat counter because they didn't know the animal.  didn't know that animal in particular really liked being scratched behind its left ear six times. 33:19 Mm hmm. Yeah,  absolutely.  As I got older, the wisdom kind of came where I was like, you know what, this animal is only going to know one bad moment in its life as long as I'm responsible for it. And we currently don't actually have any animals outside of our dogs. And my husband and it's funny you mentioned rabbits, my husband and I are getting two Holland Lops this fall. 33:45 We've never had a pet together outside of my dog that I had when I was 18, who recently passed in October, but we've never had a pet together as a couple. So we're like, you know what, we really want Holland Lops. And I told them, I was like, I know we're doing this homesteading thing, like bunnies are friends, not food. I don't want to get into meat rabbits.  Like I got to have a boundary and it's not the cow. It's not the pig. It's not the chickens. It's the bunnies.  Cause they're sweet and they're soft.  Yep.  Yup.  It's, it's such a. 34:15 It's such a satisfying way to live, but it's also heartbreaking sometimes. And I just, I want people to know that when you decide to do this, there are lessons you're going to learn and some of them are going to be hard.  Yes. And I, you know, it really puts, um, a lot of those hard questions that keep you up at night sometimes, like it puts a lot of things into perspective. 34:44 doing this,  you kind of, I wouldn't say understand the meaning of life, but a lot of things become much more apparent and seem much more trivial when you're, when you're having to put the responsibility on sourcing your food and raising that animal, knowing that it's living to nourish you and to sustain you.  Yes. And the way that I justify it in my head is 35:13 I have to remember to say thank you.  And if I don't say thank you, I feel really, really bad because that animal,  I mean, yes, you took care of it and you fed it and you raised it, but that animal gave its life so that you can live.  And I was watching something a while ago and somebody incredibly intelligent, I can't remember who it was, said something about everything needs to eat. 35:42 So we're not being mean or monsters in raising animals for food. This is how it used to work.  So I just, just, it's so hard and it's so great at the same time is what I'm trying to get at.  Katie, thank you. 36:05 So much for coming to visit with me. try to keep this to half an hour and we're already over that by five minutes.  Where can people find you? Yeah, I'm on YouTube at The Little Farm in the Forest. We do weekly videos, anything from herbalism to the garden to showing you how food is grown. And I'm also on Facebook, same name, The Little Farm in the Forest.  Not on Instagram? Not yet. I've been meaning to set one up, but my first market year, I had to drop the ball somewhere. 36:34 Yes, because you're a very, very busy lady.  All right. As always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com. Katie, thank you again for your time. I really enjoyed our chat. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day. You too.