Whispering Homestead

Today I'm talking with Darlene and Leon at Whispering Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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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 Leon and Darlene at Whispering Homestead. Good afternoon, Darlene, how are you? We are great. We are excited to be here with you. I'm really glad. Is Leon there too? Yes, he is. He just walked away for a minute. Oh, okay. All right, cool.

00:30 Okay, so you're in Alabama, right? Yes, we are. We're on Sand Mountain. Oh, so you're on a mountain. That's awesome It is we're on the mountaintop. There's a nice flat plateau up here and it sounds like it's supposed to be an amazing place We just moved here a little over a year ago and we are loving it. It's beautiful weather here The soil is amazing

00:53 We bought a little 20 acre property here that we want to grow produce and have some animals, chickens, goats, we have some sheep. Keep expanding our herds of things and growing a lot of good, healthy, chemical-free produce. Fantastic. There needs to be more people like you in the world. We're trying to be like you too, so I understand. Yeah. Okay. So I have not talked to anybody in Alabama yet.

01:20 This is the first Alabama conversation in over a year and a half of doing this. Oh, wow. That's amazing. Well, we don't know a lot about how to grow things here. We're learning. It's our first year. So we've talked to different people on what to expect. And we've just been having fun trying things and seeing what works and what doesn't. How was your summer growing season? It was good.

01:47 We were very happy. There was some crops that didn't do as well in the heat in the middle of summer that I think we probably won't grow them as late in the summer. We'll probably start them earlier. We definitely could have planted things a lot earlier than we did. And definitely there's some things this fall that are growing better than they did this summer. And we're thinking of ways of how we could grow things better in the summer. Definitely we dealt with some bugs

02:18 didn't have other places we've lived. So we definitely had more bug, oh, what do you call that? We had a lot more pest pressure away with certain types of bugs in certain crops. Yeah, and you're always gonna have that no matter where you live. We have it in Minnesota too. Where did you live before? I grew up in Wisconsin. Oh, okay.

02:48 Then I met my original roots are from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. My folks would have grown up there. They moved to Wisconsin to dairy farm. And then I went back to visit my grandma and spend some time in Pennsylvania. And I met my husband there. And so we got married and we lived in Pennsylvania for almost 20 years. And then we moved to Wisconsin. First of all, I was taking care of my folks and they passed away, sadly.

03:18 And then we've been looking to move south further for many years. We've been kind of looking around to see what's available or what a good area would be. And then so we moved with a couple of church folks. We decided on Alabama. One of the fellows, he was a truck driver and he kind of knew some areas where there's good crops, where they can grow good crops. That's what we're looking for. We wanted a place where we can raise our families and grow food and not being such a

03:47 polluted populated area. Pennsylvania was getting very, very populated where we were and it was hard to find parcels of land that weren't outrageously expensive. So we found Sand Mountain, Alabama. Well, I think that's a fine thing to do. I think Alabama is probably a lovely place to live. It is and with being here on the mountain, we're up in the Northern corner. So I don't know if I'd want to move any further south where it's any hotter.

04:14 where it's any more muggy, but it's beautiful up here. It's a very, very nice area to live. Yeah, and Alabama doesn't have the market cornered on muggy. This summer in Minnesota was one of the stickiest ones we've had in a long time. Yes, Wisconsin, I've heard two different people talked about how Wisconsin was a lot hotter this summer than it normally is. Uh-huh, oh yeah, it's been really strange weather since this time last year.

04:43 Minnesota and I assume Wisconsin too. Yeah, Wisconsin was beautiful last summer when we left there in August but it was nice here when we got to Alabama in August it was actually not as hot as I thought it might be but we are really enjoying the long summers just living outside all the time just you know barefoot and don't worry about shoes and that has been amazing because living in Wisconsin you wear shoes most of the year so here we don't. Yep.

05:11 It's almost like an extreme weather difference versus Wisconsin. Yeah. Let me say I miss the beautiful snow. Like I love seeing the snow. It, Wisconsin definitely has an edge on beautiful snow. Well, it's about 45 degrees here today right now. Okay. It's a little cooler here. We've had some cooler weather this week, but definitely in the fall like this, we have 65 right now.

05:41 So it's gorgeous weather. Yeah, we had a very hard frost overnight. We are so thankful for our greenhouse right now. Yes, last year we didn't get frost till sometime in the middle of November, which is kind of normal for years not to get a killing frost in the middle of November. So we're still having fun growing things. Yeah, absolutely. I saw the pictures on your Facebook page of some of your produce from the summer and it looked beautiful. Oh, thank you. We've had some really

06:10 really definitely peppers we grew peppers till we were about sick of picking peppers we've been drying them we've been canning them we've been freezing them and selling as much as we can and then whenever we don't sell we've been making different things with them we've canned some sweet pickled peppers hot pickled peppers we've dried them and made pepper fusion mixes where we've blended all the different peppers we have that has been a pretty

06:39 good selling item for us this summer. It sounds like a Peter Piper tongue twister on your end. Yeah, it is. Yep. Okay. So, so you sell from your property. Do you sell at farmers markets and stuff? Yes, that is where we started. We started at local farmers markets.

07:04 There's a trade days close here that a lot of people everywhere come to and we did really well there. Then we expanded to some actual farmers markets that are just vegetables and things that you grow and raise yourself. So we've been doing a few of those Fridays and Saturdays. We had done a few more around here in Alabama. There's little pop up farmers markets in every little town everywhere. Yep.

07:31 And so those have been fun. We've done some of those, some done really well and some did not, but we've done that. And so then we opened at the farm here just a couple of weeks ago. Oh, we haven't had a lot of business here yet. We're working at a SetAmba website so that people can order and we have drop points. They can order ahead of time and pick it up at the market. So that's what we're working on right now is to get that. People seem to really like that. Cool.

08:00 So how big is the farm? 22 acres. Nice. That's fantastic. Our homestead is 3.1 acres. I'm mildly envious of you. Well, we lived on a one and a quarter acre in Pennsylvania for many years, and we tried out a lot of different things there. We tried wood chip gardening, and we really, really loved that process. We loved how the food tasted. We tried to do a lot of

08:30 companion planting and raised beds and try to grow more in a smaller space. So that has went along with we tried a lot of different types of natural bug control, you know, using different herbs and things. So we definitely have to up our game with 22 acres because there's a lot more ground to cover. Yes. And do you have animals? Yes, we do. We have.

08:59 half a dozen goats, Nigerian, they're the Nigerian, or the dwarf, Nigerian dwarfs, like I always forget. The Nigerian dwarfs, and then we have a couple of fin sheep, and some rabbits, and we have about 300 laying hens. Oh, my, okay. So we use the laying hens for bug control, we rotate them around the property and wherever we've had crops.

09:25 that are finished, we put them on there so they can scratch and eat and eat all the bugs and let them manure there and fertilize it for us for the next crop. You must never be without eggs. No, pretty much not. We usually have so many we don't know what to do with. We sell a lot and then we keep a lot. We've been canning them, doing like pickled eggs. So we've done a lot of that.

09:55 We like to have that around. That's a really handy snack to have when we're out working and we need some quick to eat. That's a really good thing to open up. So we always have eggs and we sell a lot of eggs too. Nice. Do you donate anything to the food shelf in your area? We have not. We have talked about it. It is something that we need to check into that we want to do. So far we've been working at building a Marine house is the thing we're working on now.

10:25 So get a greenhouse up so we can grow lettuces and, you know, veggie crops inside in the winter. Uh huh. We're in the process of finishing off our winter greenhouse right now. Oh wow. That is awesome. Yeah. My husband and my son have been putting up plastic on the inside walls and, um, like the silver, silver coated insulation sheets. So they're shiny. Oh wow. And

10:55 And then we just picked up four IBC totes. So I don't know if you know what those are. Yes, I know what those are. Okay. And we're gonna, they painted two of them flat black yesterday. And once we have the other two painted, they're going in and they're going to be filled with water. And supposedly the plan is that the sun will heat the water during the day. And then the water will offset the heat into the greenhouse at night overnight.

11:22 Yes, that is supposed to work. We've never tried it. It's on our to-do list, so someday we want to try that. One thing that we've done already in Pennsylvania, we had a green, it was a white plastic we had done. We had done it to raise broiler chicks, so we could raise them out in the field in tractors. Then we had, quit doing that, but then we had rabbits in there in pens, and then we had big, we had chickens in there as well in the wintertime, and we had a big...

11:50 mulch pile that we made to cook. So we made this ginormous big pile in the back corner. And as it heated up, we would stir it and that would release heat into the greenhouse and it would have made a nice room space for the chickens. They love to sit on that mulch pile, compost pile at night to stay warm. So that's another way to kind of get some heat in your greenhouse.

12:19 The ammonia smell can get rather strong, so you have to have a little ventilation for that. Oh yeah, definitely. Well, this is the, we got the greenhouse built. It's a hard-sided greenhouse. We got it built in May. So this is our first winter. So this winter is an experimentation year on Yes. on how this is gonna work and what we can actually make grow in there. So it's gonna be really fun. Yeah.

12:46 That's kind of, this is the first time we've ever grown anything in a greenhouse in the winter time, so we, this is an experiment for us as well. Yeah, well it was 33 degrees here at 530 this morning, and it was 40, 40 or 42 in the greenhouse and it doesn't even really have a way to heat it yet. So the stuff that's in there right now, we have some herbs and some strawberry pots and things like that and nothing.

13:15 burned or froze. So we're hoping that we'll get through the next couple of nights where it'll stay above freezing so we don't lose everything in there. And then hopefully by next weekend, everything will be set up so that it will be able to heat with that warmed water and maybe nothing will die. Maybe. Yes. Well, we had pretty good success. We always with our compost pile in there that we did.

13:44 It always was a number of degrees warmer in there. And it's wind still, so you don't have the brunt of the wind. Inside the greenhouse, that always helped. But definitely, even in the coldest part of the winter, we would go in there and working in there, taking care of our rabbits and our chickens. You take your winter coat off to be in there. It actually got warm enough in there for last. Yep, it's very exciting. It's funny because most people be like, eh, it's a greenhouse, how exciting can it be?

14:14 But it really is. If I talk to people who know what I'm talking about, they're like, oh my God, that's so cool. Yes, well, we enjoy, and you know, at Greenhouse, it's exciting for the people that love to grow things. And my husband and I have enjoyed growing food ever since we were children, and it was a passion we had together. After we got married, we just loved gardening. We just loved growing our own food. Yes.

14:43 I used to love gardening. I don't love gardening as much as I used to, but my husband is a fanatic. So he has a hundred foot by 150 foot garden that he putters in and babies and loves to be in from April until now. And then he puts it to bed for the winter and he spends the rest of the time planning the next garden.

15:10 We had a very small greenhouse in Pennsylvania the last couple years we lived there and it was kind of nice in February to go out there and start, you know start seeds and have little plants and transplanting It made the winter not feel quite as long if you had something to do in the dirt and I really enjoyed getting out of the house and Getting in the greenhouse and starting my next year's stuff Although for a number of years I had been really ill

15:38 And so I wasn't able to do as much of the gardening and I would have given it up and been like, well, I can't do it physically. I had Lyme and also fibromyalgia. So I was in a lot of pain. It took everything I just do my normal household activities to take care of my children. And if it would have been for my husband, we would just gave up gardening. But he took it over then. I mean, he helped a lot before that. He did a lot of the main work, but he took it over then and him and the children really got into it.

16:07 They took it over and kept growing things. And so that's kind of what we're doing now is he does, I help a lot more than I did. I'm a lot better than I was. And that someone said to me in the process of that, why don't you just quit gardening and buy all your food? And I said, but if I'm gonna get better, we need to eat healthy food. And I know if I grow it, I know what's in it and what's been applied. Yes, exactly. Why go backwards? You wanna move forward. Exactly. And I believe

16:37 Our food should be our nutrition as much as anything. I mean, Yes, there's a lot of great supplements out there. There's a lot of great pills and so on But I think the biggest thing is to eat healthy food food that is nutritious And not been sprayed with chemicals and junk and you know that we put nutritious and not chemical fertilizers either but animal manure and green manure like

17:06 help me out honey. Like alfalfa and those types of things planted cover crops. Yes. Planted and then tilled in to have a nutritious product. Yes, for sure. And one thing that we noticed that makes the plants more nutritious, the vegetables more nutritious and a lot juicier, full of nutrition, you know, not just a... Okay, so let me back phrase that. My husband hates peppers.

17:35 He never liked peppers. He couldn't stand the aftertaste that they had. To one year we were growing, we were doing the woodchip garden. We were experimenting with it. And I started some seeds. I gave some of the plants to my mother-in-law and I planted some. She planted hers in dirt. I planted mine in wood chips, in the dirt. And we compared peppers. She brought me some peppers that she had and her peppers, the pepper wall was, you know, normal. It had the aftertaste that the husband doesn't like. We,

18:04 picked my peppers, they had thick, juicy walls. Like the pepper was a very juicy pepper. And it did not have that aftertaste. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. The aftertaste that you're talking about to me is sort of bitter. And I want my sweet peppers to be sweet, damn it. Yep. So. So definitely we have noticed a big difference in using wood chips.

18:33 And gardening and we want to get to that on our farm here again, although it's, um, we've been having a little trouble finding wood chips in our area because of all the chicken houses. Um, from what we found out, um, when they trim trees along road sides, it goes to a local place where they chop it up for, um, for sawdust for chicken houses. So we're part time getting a hold of wood chips. Huh? Um,

19:03 So where are you in Alabama? Like are you on the border or are you in the middle? Now we're- Northwestern corner. Yeah, we're about an hour from Tennessee and an hour from Georgia. Okay. I assume it would cost a lot to have wood chips brought in. Northeastern, northeast. Oh, sorry, northeastern, I'm sorry. Uh-huh. Northeastern corner. Okay. But it would cost a lot of money to have wood chips brought in to you. Probably if we can get a hold of them. Okay.

19:33 Because we've talked, we've heard some people that, well we talked to a few different people and it seems like all the wood chips are being allocated to the chicken companies. Huh. Well, that's not fair. It's not, but there's a lot of big broiler houses here. Yeah. All around us. Okay, well.

19:56 I don't have any solution ideas for that one. I'm sorry, I was digging, but I can't think of anything right now. Our next thought is we want to purchase a wood chipper ourselves. And then there's some local people that want their woods cleaned up and so we can come in to clean it up and we can have the branches and things. So that's our next step that we want to eventually do here is get a wood chipper and do it that way.

20:21 I was going to say something like that, but I figured that it would be too expensive, but I'm sure you guys can figure it out if you want to do it. Oh, absolutely. That's our next plan. But first, when you get the greenhouse up, get seeds growing for next year. Yes. And since you mentioned that, one of the things that we're planning on doing is growing bedding plants, seedlings to sell to people who want to get stuff in their gardens next year. Yes.

20:49 And we want to do that as well. We want to start enough of our own and then have some to sell. Yep. Cause ours, my, ours for our friends and neighbors and yours for your friends and neighbors will be better than the stuff from the local hardware store or home depot or whatever. Yes. And you know, right here where we live on sand mountain, I'm not sure why, but there are not very many greenhouses around. A lot of the places that have plants are like Lowe's and

21:18 And some of the local, there's one local store that has them, but they're very expensive. So we would like to provide an outlet for local people to come and get them at better prices than having them shipped in like they are. Yes, and stronger and healthier too. Yes.

21:48 The last time we did it was six years ago. And all the basil plants that come into Lowe's and Home Depot and the different stores that sell them, they all end up with that powdery mildew in the last few years. And we talked to our favorite nursery that they grow their own basil and they've been having trouble with it too.

22:13 And so we finally said, forget it, we'll just grow our own. We have not had powdery mildew on our basil since we started buying seeds and growing the seedlings ourselves. Interesting. And what, what do you think is causing that in the, in the bought ones? Well, I don't want to disparage anybody who grows basil seedlings and sells them. But I was told that some of the places down south where it gets hotter sooner, they were having issues with it and they were just selling the plants to be shipped anyway.

22:43 And if you put them with plants that aren't already exposed to it, it just jumps to the other plants. Oh, interesting. Yep. And so I love basil. I've said it a billion times. I'll say it again. I love basil in everything when I get my hands on it in the summer. So not having basil plants is a not going to happen thing here. Yes. We love to have our herbs too. And that's another thing I was hoping to start this summer.

23:13 which is moving here, there was a million and one things that we wanted to do. And so we decided there's some things I have to wait for another year, which was starting my herb garden. And we had a nice in Pennsylvania, around my vegetable garden, I had done herbs the whole way around two sides of it. And we had herbs growing everywhere. And I felt like that helped attract a lot of good, good pollinators.

23:40 Pollinators is what I want. I kept thinking bacteria. I'm like this is the word pollinators. Good pollinators for the garden and it also help repel some of the bugs that we were having trouble with. So that is something we want to set up again for next year. Start growing herbs and planting them all around our gardens. Uh-huh. I didn't have an herb garden this year. I had herbs in pots in the greenhouse. Well, I guess that works too. Yeah. My husband...

24:09 told me last summer he was going to cut the herb garden down, like he's going to start from scratch again. And I said, please leave the time. And he said, there is no time. The weeds have taken over and they died. And I was like, oh, okay, go ahead. And then it rained for a month and a half straight this spring. And so no herb garden got put in, but he did buy herbs and put them in the greenhouse that I would have some. God love him. Thank goodness he did that.

24:39 Yes, I bought pots. I bought several plants different times and we never got around to planting them out and they died on me and I said this is not okay. I said we're going to have to wait till next year and hopefully over winter here we'll have time to work up the ground and get it ready for next spring which spring comes sooner here in Alabama. Yeah, like March? Oh absolutely, yes. I mean people are planting things out. I think people plant their potatoes by Valentine's Day around here.

25:09 Wow. So that is really exciting because we... I gotta feed my bees before Valentine's Day because the red maple is a good honey flow around here and that starts right around Valentine's Day. You guys have bees as well? Yeah. Oh. I won't do without my bees. We have five hives we started with this year. Nice. Is that new or is that something that you've been doing before?

25:37 I had some in PA and then Wisconsin, we didn't have any. Now down here, I have some again. Nice. That's awesome. One thing different between PA versus here, I'm going to be treating my bees with essential oils instead of the chemical treatments that they have for the mites and high beetles and stuff. Uh huh. We've been researching that a lot because.

25:57 We're really about, a lot of beekeepers told us there's no way you can do it without chemicals and we're determined that we can. We've done everything else without chemicals, so we wanna do this. So we've done a lot of research the last couple of years and we wanna try different essential oil products. So what have you come up with? What have you found out that might work? A mixture of essential oils. Well, actually like spearmint. If you feed your bees spearmint,

26:27 in with your sugar water, like your sugar syrup, they will feed the larvae with that and the mites do not like any larvae that had been fed with the spearmint. Somehow the spearmint changes something in their bloodstream and the mites don't like it. Well, awesome. So it is a mite repeller. And spearmint and peppermint in and of itself is a repeller for the...

26:57 hive beetles. So I made myself some hive murder sauce that I found from a guy in Ohio. And they've been doing it for quite some time and he finally for the first time shared his recipe that he's using.

27:18 So yeah, there's a lot of info out there if you really search it. I started with searching it on YouTube with just essential oils for bees and there's a lot of info out there of different mixtures. I think the first time we heard or we kind of really got introduced to it was at the Homesteaders Conference in Virginia that they have every fall.

27:47 I think one of the homesteaders there was talking about it. Homesteaders of America.

27:53 Okay. It's a group of educating different things. They have a, they have a homesteaders conference every fall and I think it was just this past weekend and they have a lot of different speakers come in talking about different ways to raise crops and, and animals without chemicals or pesticides or anything like that. So that was the first time we introduced it. So we've been slowly researching it and trying different things. Very cool.

28:21 I'm impressed. I didn't know that peppermint and spearmint would do that. That's fantastic. They are very good bug repellers depending on what bugs you're trying to get rid of. Yeah. Bee balm is a very good pollinator that the bees really like. So yeah, there's a lot of that kind of stuff that goes across state lines that will grow in a bunch of different states that is actually a bee honey source.

28:50 Well, and I think from what we've been learning, the one fellow that we've been kind of working with from Pennsylvania, and he said that a lot of what the bees feed on is being mowed down along road edges and in wood, you know, along along woods and things that stuff is being killed off that our bees don't have what they need to actually make good honey.

29:20 That's okay. I love little voices. We have our food stand here, or vegetable stand here. And so it's not been real busy yet, but every now and again, a neighbor will pull in with their local, with their gators or their forage-lers and things and come and buy them some things. And that's great. That's what you want. Exactly. So our goal is to eventually

29:49 not have to go to market as much, have drop points where everything is sold before it leaves the property and we just take it and drop it somewhere, meet the customers, give them their order and leave again. That would be so great. That is what we're aiming for. We would really like to be able to do that because it can just be so frustrating sitting at a market and you take all this stuff along, you have no idea if it's going to sell and you spend all that time and it doesn't sell or you know, sell some of it and what do you do with everything when you bring it home?

30:19 So we'd like to be able to work with subscription boxes, produce boxes, and just everything that leaves the farm is already sold. Fabulous. I think that you have a very good plan going on there, ma'am. I think it's going to be great. All right. So we're at 30 minutes and 29 seconds, and I tried to keep you to half an hour, so I'm going to let you go. But it was really lovely talking with you. All right. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Have a great day. You too.

30:49 Bye.