A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Ruth at Rud Ridge LLC. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  Today I'm talking with Ruth at Rud Ridge  LLC in Wisconsin. Good morning, Ruth. How are you? Good morning. I'm fantastic. How are you? I'm good. Is the weather beautiful in Wisconsin today? Because it is gorgeous in Minnesota. 00:22 It's one of those Wisconsin days where you're not sure if 60 degrees is going to feel like 40 degrees or 60 degrees is going to feel like 80 degrees. So, uh, it's beautiful. I'll take it. Uh, but it's a little chilly out there for this time of year.  Yeah. May has turned out to be more like April and April was more like May here. So I don't know. Mother nature is just  a fickle.  Which  W I C H let's put it that way this year. 00:49 As long as my husband can get the corn in the ground today and the other crops planted, I will be very happy.  Yes, yes, because corn needs time. So it can be knee high by the 4th of July, as they say.  You've got it. They just planted  the field that surrounds our property  yesterday, day before yesterday,  and they're doing soybeans this year. It's been corn for three years in a row. I'm so thankful it's soybeans this year. 01:17 little bit of change. Yeah, we actually had some ice on the duck ponds this morning, which was not normal for me. So,  no,  our outside um water supply, I don't know what they're called. It's the it would in the old days, it would have been the well where you had to pump the water out.  And it's not you just lift the handle and it's like a spigot. Yeah, yeah, it's been frozen the last three mornings. And my husband's like, 01:45 I'm going to have to fill up a five gallon pail of water and take it out to chickens. I'm like, good luck with that because that's heavy.  So yeah, it's been weird, but I hear that this is the last cold week, supposedly  until fall. We will see. Weather, man. I don't know.  So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you guys do at Red Ridge LLC. So Red Ridge originally started with rabbits. em 02:13 Excuse me, specifically,  Rex, not many rabbits.  We started with rabbits because we lived in town on half an acre. ah children and I began with raising rabbits for meat and show.  And we relocated to another property outside of town and have expanded into crop farming and we will be adding beef hopefully later this year. So we are all around a family homestead. My husband is a seventh. 02:42 generation farmer here in Wisconsin.  So we are looking to continue that with the eighth generation that would be our children.  Nice. um I have a question about the Rex rabbit. Rex rabbits are the ones  that look like velvet, right? Yes, they are. They um are kind of generally considered a commercial  breed,  larger in scale. They have a versatility where their  their pelts are 03:11 utilized  in  a lot of garment making  and such. very, very soft. Once you feel Rex rabbit fur, nothing else feels quite like it in density and softness.  And they really are a joy to raise and watch  thrive in our homestead.  friend of mine had one and it was like 03:36 like a chocolatey, a light chocolate brown one, but she had black eyeliner around her eyes.  And I fell in love with that rabbit. She was friendly and she was the softest animal I have ever petted in my whole life. Yes, absolutely. And we specifically have always focused on temperament of our stock.  They are handled quite a bit from the day they are born. We do routine nest box checks. We're always hands on. 04:05 Um, you know, making sure that they're growing well,  um, everybody's alive in the nest that they are used to being handled, that moms are used to us handling them.  So it kind of really sets them up for, um, a thriving of their social personality in that aspect. But you know, you pointed out they can be really sweet and kind.  Yes. I mean, I think that rabbits make excellent pets as long as you, as long as they are socialized to being handled. Yes. Well, and you know, 04:35 Certainly historically in America, rabbits have been utilized for meat.  It's not quite as common  as it once was um in either the country or our region specifically to have rabbits as meat. But I think it's an important point for people or families who want to be  a little more self-sustainable, to be able to be involved in their own personal food chain, whether it be for themselves or for their pets. We do supply. 05:05 Some people rabbit meat for their pets, um dogs and cats,  sometimes snakes.  I think that  people can care for their livestock and rabbits can be a part of livestock while also being  kind of that cute and cuddly at the same time. It's an interesting dynamic to try to uh explain to people that are looking to begin on a homesteading journey. 05:34 Yes, you don't  just have to have meat chickens, you can have meat rabbits as well. Yes. Rabbit meat actually is considered one of the healthiest and easily digestible proteins  that's available to people to consume. um I know  that, again, people have to kind of get past the fact that it's their own um animal they would be harvesting,  and it's not  presented in a package  these days. 06:04 Every single animal that we consume  kind of looks the same on a grocery store shelf. They're all basically in the same size packages. They're in the same sort of presentation. But rabbit meat from a health standpoint personally can really give people a solid boost into their nutrition.  And I keep hearing that  if all you ate was was rabbit for your meat source. 06:32 that that doesn't go well because they don't have a lot of fat on them? So that is  more geared to wild game rabbit.  Okay.  Um,  while within the meat itself, there's not like a lot of marbling like you would see in, um, beef or in pork.  Um, you will find when you harvest domestic rabbits that they do have a certain amount of fat content within them. Okay. That being said, 07:01 There's no one  ever that's really  consuming solely rabbit in their diet, you know in this day and age if you understand where I'm coming  so it would be really really difficult to be so Exclusively relying upon rabbit meat that you would find yourself deficient, you know in  in nutrient Okay, so it's 07:26 I wanted  to bring it up because people keep telling me this and I'm like, I don't think anybody's just going to eat rabbit, number one. And number two,  we had rabbits for a while and when we butchered them, they had fat on them.  It's very much akin to um the old wives tale that if you touch a rabbit  or you  touch a nest from a rabbit that the mom will abandon that nest.  It's kind of the same  in the same vein that there may have been a 07:55 grain of truth  into, you know, exclusively utilizing rabbit being poor for your health. You obviously need a well-rounded diet  that somehow that translated into people believing that rabbit starvation is an issue when you're utilizing rabbit meat and that it's just not the case.  you. That's I was hoping you would clear that up for me.  Absolutely.  And you know far more about rabbits than I do. We did it. We did not. 08:25 do well at it and we don't raise rabbits anymore. I'm  sorry to hear that because we really define them to be a  positive impact in our life.  We had dumb bunnies. They did not know how to procreate and we had the right genders or sexes or whatever. They just didn't make babies.  I believe people have found that there is  the saying of, you know, breeding like rabbits  that particularly when you want them to, they may not. 08:54 uh It can be  a little bit of an art and a science. uh There  are  things such as the rabbit's over consumption of a pelleted feed that can lead them to be a little heavier in fat that would limit their ability to get pregnant.  There can be other environmental stressors or factors that can make it a little more difficult than it may seem on the surface to kind of really get an established rabbitry, even of a trio. 09:24 into a productive meat source for a family. But  if you can work through trial and error  and really talk to people that have an established  formula, you know,  sometimes it can, can really work out.  And I wish it had, but we were just, after a year, we were so frustrated with these rabbits and don't blame me  and feeding livestock that isn't, isn't doing the job. 09:50 is not a good plan.  we just were like, now we're just going to butcher the ones we have and stick them in the freezer. Now, having said that,  one of the females did get pregnant and she did have babies. And it was one of the most wonderful couple of months of my life because baby rabbits are freaking adorable. They really are. I always have to tell people when I show them pictures of new litters, like the day they're born, I promise they get cuter. ah It can be a little surprising for people when they see what a newborn 10:19 uh, rabbit looks like, uh naked mole rat. Yeah, we call them hippos.  Little, you know, blind hippos.  Um,  but you know, as they grow and it really can be a joy. My personal favorite age is three weeks old,  um, which we have some rabbits in the barn right now that are getting ready to be that age.  Um, but for the most part, it can be really a  joyous process. are so sweet and 10:47 The reason that I say it was one of the happiest couple of months of my life is because it was really hot when this mama had them. It was June.  It was way hotter than it should have been.  And there was no way to keep the hutch cool.  so  I demanded that we bring the mama and the babies in. So the mama and the babies hung out in a big old plastic bin with the nest box and hay, cleaned that thing out every day. 11:16 And I got to watch these babies grow from a day old until they went back outside with mom at about five or six weeks old. Six weeks old. It's amazing how quickly they grow, huh? You just kind of... Yes. It's hard to even believe sometimes. Yes. And because they were...  The bin was on my kitchen table.  I got to pick up baby bunnies whenever I wanted to and they were very socialized.  Yes, absolutely. 11:41 It was really fun. I don't want to do it again anytime soon, but it was really, really fun while it lasted. You're grateful for the experience. Oh, I  am. I would not change it for anything. And  I told my mom, she,  I live in Minnesota and she lives in Maine and I told her the whole story when we did it. And she was like, so you get up every morning and get your coffee, drink about half a cup of coffee and then just sit down and commune with baby rabbits. And I was like,  yes, I do. 12:11 Yes, and it's fantastic. Absolutely.  It really can be a joy. She said, I think I'm jealous. I said, get you some rabbits, Like,  no, I'm too old. Not doing that. I'm like, okay, that's fine.  So it was very fun. I don't want to do it again. But I commend anyone who is raising rabbits because it is an art and a science, I think. It is. I agree. Yes. So you said you said you're thinking about getting into getting cows. 12:40 So, yeah, so is that that's for meat or dairy or both? Meat. So my husband was raised on a dairy farm. He comes from a long line of dairy farmers. Unfortunately, in 2008, his family's dairy barn burned to the ground. Luckily, all the animals and all the people were safe. But since that time, 13:06 his family has pivoted to raising beef cows. ah They raise herford ah for the most part. And so we are looking to add our own  beef cows down here.  We're about 20 miles away  from my in-laws farm. ah We're looking to add beef cows to our pasture.  So  you don't have to tell me an exact number, but are we talking like 13:34 10 or are we talking like 100? uh So  we're on the smaller side of an operation, probably 25 or so.  Nice. And I'm going to ask a really stupid question because I  literally don't know the answer to this. Where does one acquire beef cattle in Wisconsin? Well, so  acquiring them directly from other farmers is an option. 14:04 option.  The auctions, equity livestock would be another  option. Certainly the last handful of years, three years or so, beef prices have soared quite a bit. Yes. We joke that it has not been a wonderful time to plan to get into beef cattle. uh So short of purchasing from our own family. uh 14:30 or going to the auction,  either way you slice it, it certainly costs more than it did probably five years ago.  So I think the farmer  is an ever optimist, right?  We have to be. em If you're pessimistic about it, you might as well not even start because Lord knows we don't control the weather, we don't control the commodity prices, we don't control whether or not our herd 14:57 remains healthy within our control or if something happens or you know government  forces at play or any of that. So I think we really at this point are just kind of looking to find  some sort of reasonable beginning and to try to flourish and expand  from within ourselves through breeding and other acquisitions that we really can do in order to leave something that our children 15:26 have been involved in starting and may want to continue in the future. I am thrilled to hear that you're looking into this and you want to do it and you're going to make it go because my other podcast called Grit and Grace in the Heartland, Women in Agriculture, my co-host is a cattle rancher in Nebraska and she and her family are going to have to sit down next week and figure out what animals they are keeping, what animals they are selling. 15:55 because Nebraska and South Dakota, basically the whole Midwest, other than Minnesota and Wisconsin, and we're upper Midwest, so it's different, is in the middle of a drought.  And there's been a lot of fires in Nebraska this spring. And so the grazing field, the grazing land is burned.  And uh a lot of people are going to be selling off their cattle this year.  And she told me that um a bunch of 16:24 people in her area are having issues with this, this strings calves being sick because of the weather conditions.  So if you think beef is expensive right now, it's only going to get more expensive. And I'm so sad about this.  I am as well, you know, and, us smaller scale farmers, you know, of course, small scale, think as far as upper Midwest versus small scale. 16:48 Yes. Kind of towards Nebraska and that are two different things, right? It's not necessarily the number of head we're talking about, it's kind of the operation in general. Yeah. But small scale farmers are really, you know, kind of disappearing a bit  and being absorbed absorbed into  larger operations. And  I would really love to see family farmers and ranchers be able to continue to push forward somehow. um For us,  that means 17:18 starting and scaling in increments that are manageable and small.  Not taking on operating loans or expenses, just trying to kind of chip it out  as we can and try to  teach our children to do the same and do the best with the circumstances we can control. And  if we can at least start with feeding ourselves,  feeding my family, feeding our, you know, the few families that are connected directly to us. 17:47 be good stewards of the animals and the land and just keep going away at it. It is our way of life and  what we would welcome and want people to try to continue to do. On the other hand, I realize it's difficult. Conditions can be brutal,  emotionally, physically, environmentally. And  I tip my hat to any  fellow farmer or rancher that is having to make these tough decisions because it's not fun. um 18:16 but I send our prayers and well wishes with them. Yes. And no one gets into raising livestock because it's all rainbows and sunshine and boxes of candy. No one does. Or for the money. I think that was especially in the rabbit world. We had expanded at one time to having our Red Ridge stock in 22 different states. 18:44 um kind of going through starting other people's barns for themselves, starting into show  territory. And there's an assumption that, well, you you're just in it for the  money or,  you know, exploiting these poor small woodland creatures.  But I can promise the profit  in farming is purely one of culture, lifestyle,  and that's really in the heart that certainly has nothing to do with uh 19:14 Monetary gain or loss as it were depending on the year  No, it's because you freaking love it Yes Yes,  and I want to I really want to pound on that because I feel like a lot of people just make assumptions about people who grow things or raise animals and  it's I don't know why it's weird to be in agriculture, but 19:40 A lot of Americans think that it's weird to be in agriculture. And I'm like, it's not weird. Why is it any weirder than being in selling boats for a living or selling cars  or selling crypto?  Do what you love. Yeah, I do think some of it, as far as the wider American public links back to our separation from our food and our specific food chain, you know,  we did see a swing back a little bit as far as American families keeping chickens, for example. 20:10 um after COVID or with the rise in egg prices. um But otherwise, I think people just see food  and agriculture as something that's like, well, somebody else is going to do it. What do you want to do it for? Somebody else will do it. um But for those of us that are in agriculture, um it's really a cornerstone of our lives. And it's interesting because I don't come from really an agriculture background. um I was not raised in the Midwest. 20:39 My husband 100 % was, this is his heritage. It's something I always felt drawn to even as a little girl. ah So the agriculture bug bit me somehow. um And I think it can really be something that anyone who feels the call can do. It might not be easy. It might not always be fun or Instagram worthy, but anybody can do it if they're willing to really  make 21:07 some sacrifices  and get into the community to learn from others as well. Yep. So are your kids into this? My kids are very into this.  Yes. I have one daughter and one son.  They are going into middle and high school. um They are involved in the FFA. They very much  are out there on the tractor and  you know, 21:35 working to acquire their own  beef herd as it were.  They have steak in the rabbits. So they are very much farm kids. That gives me so much hope. Yeah, me too. We need,  I'm going to use the term little people, but we need our little people and  our getting bigger people to embrace this because somebody's got to grow the food that America eats, you know? 22:05 Right, it's really that connection with  our food, with agriculture and with the real world that  is  required to operate within it to make sure it continues. We'll our best to give them that. I'm so glad and I'm so glad that your daughter is into it because again,  a lot of people assume that girls  don't farm and women are very into farming now. Very. Absolutely. Yes. 22:33 Yes. And she, you know, has a favorite brand of tractor. will not argue about colors of green on this podcast, but I promise my son and daughter have  differing opinions on it.  And they're very strong ones. Uh, they have their favorites for the field and what each of their own individual plans are, but raising a daughter that is interested in crops and in livestock.  Um, and then additionally in animal sciences, you know, really. 23:01 makes me proud to show other mothers and other daughters that we have a place here. Yes,  absolutely. And I don't care what color the tractor is as long as it gets the job done. You know, I feel that way. not quite... I don't understand what the whole  spiel is, but I am happy to let...  As long as they're going to drive it to do the chores, right? That's my  thing. Yeah. And as long as it starts and continues running, we're good. And as long as they can fix it. 23:30 We happen to run  older equipment. That too, yes. They can fix. oh Yes. And the other thing that I kind of want to touch on, because we're talking about tractors, which I never talk about because I don't really use ours, my husband does. um Tractors don't have to be brand  new, like came off the line yesterday, to work. 23:56 You can  pick up an old tractor and  re-habit whatever and it'll work just as good as a brand new tractor. You just won't have screens and computers that tell you  where you are in the field. Right.  Yes. That's how we personally operate. I understand why other operations may operate differently, but  for us, particularly since we only really started  within the last decade, it's important. 24:25 to us to operate something we can afford  at the jump. We can work on ourselves. um We may be able to still find spare parts for  versus waiting on a computer chip from somewhere that we don't know how long it's going to take to get here. Well,  the plants have got to get planted. Yes.  I am old enough to remember when cars did not have a computer system in them. Right. And I kind of hate that cars have computer systems in them now. 24:55 Yeah. One more thing to fix,  One more very expensive thing to fix. Yeah.  Yep. So, you know, our kids are an eye. I'm  I don't drive the tractors as often. It's  kind of my husband's thing. I am the one that is the gopher and the do and the, know, he needs me to go down to the implement store and bring him what have you. Because again, this was 25:22 What he was raised on, he's worked on these types of tractors his whole life. uh I can contribute in other areas, but,  you know, for the most part, it's been a positive way for us to kind of maintain things in our operation. Yes. So you're, you're in Southwestern Wisconsin?  Yes. We're just about halfway between Madison, Wisconsin and Dubuque, Iowa in the Southwestern corner of Wisconsin. Okay. So. 25:51 You've been to Minnesota, yes, no? Yes, I have. You know how Minnesota is weird because like the southern part of the state is pretty flat, but as you go further north, it's more hilly and forested?  Yes, we are the opposite.  So, so it's not flat where you are? No, it is not flat where we are. It's pretty, ah you know,  graded and hilly and it is not flat where we are. We're considered what's called the driftless region.  Oh, yes. um 26:20 So we are not necessarily in a really flat part of the state.  No, but you are in a really beautiful part of the state. I have been to the Driftless area. It's gorgeous. Yes, it's very unique and it  certainly has different landscapes for everyone. uh Your cattle are going to love it. Yes,  they will as long as the fences hold, right?  I think don't go through the, uh we have creeks that run through some of our property. 26:50 And they can be a little crafty about getting around the fences that go through the creek, but you know, it's a beautiful landscape and a beautiful area.  am so excited for you. What's the ETA or the possibility ETA on getting cattle?  Um,  we don't really have a firm  timeline. Um, we're kind of shooting for before summer. Nice. Um, but I think that has a lot to do with how the planting season starts and. 27:16 you know, lot of other things that are kind of intertwined with making sure we are set up with good fences and, you know, water and all that for the cattle. So hopefully  before fall.  am going to have to keep an eye on your Facebook page for when the first pictures show up of your cattle on your property. I'm sure there will be lots of them. So yes, please do. I love when I get to interview people and they have  new things coming down the road because 27:46 It'll pop up on my Facebook feed and I'm like, oh yeah, they finally got the thing, whatever it is. Yep. You know, the pivot away from rabbits has been, um, well, I shouldn't say away from rabbits, but away from rabbits being the main focal point has been a little bittersweet. know, um, rabbits built red ridge. Um, it did the purpose of beginning where we did with rabbits was because we lived in town. can't have cows in town. 28:16 My husband was still  active duty military at the time. And so it's how my children and I really started Rudd Ridge is kind of a segue into my husband's retirement. um now move forward into um cows is seeing  everything we dreamed of for 20 years kind of come to fruition. So  I feel like I'm departing from what built Rud Ridge and moving into, you know, the future that 28:45 I'm excited for, but it's also a  a little bittersweet. So I try to invite people to do their own part  for their family with their food source, still through rabbits, to kind of maintain that, connection. Yeah. It's so exciting, Ruth. I'm so thrilled for you.  All right. Where can people find you? I try to keep these to half an hour more, 28 minutes. Oh, okay. That went by fast, huh? Yeah. So people can find us at Rud 29:15 Ridge  LLC  on Facebook. That is most commonly um where I am able to update.  We do have a regular website, uh redridgewisconsin.com,  but that can be a little more clunky to update. So I'm trying to get there to get  a little more current, but we look forward to having people join us where they can find us. 29:41 As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Ruth, I love what you're doing and I appreciate the fact that you took time out of your busy day to chat with me. Thank you so much. Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you. Have a good day. You too.  

Today I'm talking with Jessica at Little Willow Homestead. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast 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 listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose. 00:29 At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful. If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care, you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. A tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Jessica at Little Willow Homestead in Idaho. Good afternoon, Jessica. How are you? Good. How are you? A little dumb today. I'm not going to lie. It's all right. 00:59 Maybe both of our brain cells together  will accomplish something.  Maybe. I think it's allergies. It's very sunny here in Minnesota and there's a light breeze  and I think all the things that are really starting to bloom are just ruining my brain. But my husband sent me photos of the apple  trees that are blooming today.  So I'm very excited. Our apple trees never do very well  in 01:29 end of April, 1st of May, because we get these big wind storms or we get thunderstorms and the blossoms get blown off. uh And I'm just, the weather's supposed to be good for the next five days. So  I'm praying  that the weather is good for the next five days. So we get apples on the trees on the far side of the property that we've never gotten apples from in the five years we've been here. Hey,  we can pray.  That's awesome. Yes.  So I think the allergies are kicking my butt. 01:59 And I got a really quick thing I want to share with you and listener. um I went out on my porch and looked out the window and one of our chickens was over by our useless garage. We don't use it for anything. It's ready to fall down.  And we have this one chicken who escapes the run every day. And I decided that her name is Hopper because she hops the fence. 02:24 I have a few of those and uh one of them,  she is ultra determined. She's a coffee agger and she loves to jump the fence and lay in this one particular spot.  But  I know it's going to be there every day, so I go and collect it every day.  Yeah, I don't think the chickens are actually laying outside of the coop, but this one just has to go explore after she lays her egg in the nesting box. 02:55 She's a little crazy. She's a little free spirit. She is and she looks so fat. I know if I went out there and picked her up, she probably only weighs about three and a half pounds. She's so feathered out that she just looks round. I love it. So I want to talk about the coffee agar thing, but first, would you tell me a little bit about yourself and about your homestead? Oh my goodness, where do I start? 03:24 So I really want to share with you the why why we moved out here to begin with. Yes. um So we  we kind of homesteaded a little bit before in our hometown, which is a little tiny town in Idaho.  And  I  don't know, I just  that was back in 2009. And I got chickens. I had a ton of chickens. I was doing meat birds, taught my kids how to process meat birds and all the things.  And my daughter 03:54 My youngest of, we call her the youngest of the  first batch. was the youngest of our five.  She was really struggling in school. And so we made the decision  because she was the only one  at home that we would um sell our house, move to a different town and get her into the best school in the area that worked well with children on an IEP.  And so we  sold our house, moved into a subdivision, stayed there for four years. 04:21 During that time we did foster care and then we  adopted our daughter. Well that daughter the daughter that we moved there for graduated from high school and a month later we put our house on the market  and and we had our daughter that we adopted from a foster kiddo  she had asked us to take her and and and raise her and so  we wanted to give her a life  away from the city teacher where her food came from and just 04:50 for me to be able to homeschool her and,  you know, just teach her all the things, you know, things maybe that I didn't learn and  just, I don't know, I just really wanted to raise her out in the country. I felt really strongly about it.  And I had this like idea that you move out into the country, far out into the country, because we do, we live 30 minutes away from anything,  a gas station, anything.  And so you have this like mindset, at least I did. 05:19 that you move out into the country and things are gonna be slow and peaceful and serene and all the things.  And that's not what it's been like for us being out here.  It's actually been really, really hard. When I first  got here, we got chickens right away, of course. And then I started to raise meat birds and  what have you. And then... 05:47 Shortly after that, um that daughter was 19 years old, was actually convinced to go into uh Washington state, get on a plane and fly into Washington state and she uh was trafficked while she was there, she was sold.  And so this whole time I'm thinking like, it was supposed to be easier being out here, but things seem to be getting harder.  And  I um struggled with um being diagnosed with lupus after that. 06:17 And then  really having a hard time with breeding my birds and trying to take care of my daughter,  struggling with lupus. But my husband was so amazingly, like, patient and loving. And  he saw this desire in me to do this. And so he would step in when I couldn't. so we just really learned to work together as a team. em you know,  we were doing really well. We were 06:47 building our business, creating the rainbow eggs and what have you. And while I was doing that, I came across that really deep dark brown color. And I was like, I know how I can make that, but what am I gonna call it? Because it needs to be something different. And so I looked and looked and I'm a coffee drinker. So I was like- 07:12 I love coffee and I have like coffee signs, have a coffee bar, like all the coffee things, right? And it just hit me one day, it was like coffee agar. And then I felt like God was like, go look it up  and make sure, know, dot all your I's and cross all your T's, make sure that it's not being used in commerce. And it wasn't, I couldn't find it anywhere.  It's just like, this is awesome, this is so cool. So I actually had the name for it before I ever even had the color, which I thought was funny. 07:42 pretty cool. And then I got the  color that like six months later, as soon as I figured out like how to do it, I got that color and hence that's where the coffee acres came from.  And so we were, we just started to breed like those colors and whatnot  and things were going well. We were selling to a local  like feed store, our birds and stuff. And  it was like literally in the height of like hatching season, you know, it was the end of April and I got a phone call. 08:11 at six o'clock in the morning on April 26th that my son had overdosed and died of a fentanyl overdose. And I was completely wrecked.  when was this? This was five years ago, April 26th, 2021.  And I told my husband, I couldn't catch my breath for one. And it felt like I was getting kicked in the gut daily. And I told him, said, I can't, I can't do this anymore. I can't, I can't breathe. 08:41 I'm going to cry. 08:45 said, want to sell everything. I don't want to do this. um And so I started to list things and he said, you're not selling the incubators and you're not selling your best. I'll let you sell, but I won't let you sell your best. I need you to keep back your best.  And he knew what I was trying to accomplish. And so I sold all but 10 birds  and I grieved hard, hard, hard for eight months. 09:14 And then I just felt like God's saying, go back into the brooder, like get back into this.  And I walked back, I just remember walking back out into the brooder and going, this is it. This is what is going to bring me healing. Like I just need to take all of that grief and pour it into genetics. So that's what I did. I just dumped it into genetics and  like that's all my brain really thought about, you know, and I was able to mass produce the coffee acres  and 09:44 I figured out how to do it and I figured out which ones were laying that egg without even having genetic testing done  just by the look of the bird. And so I posted a post one time. I mean, I didn't have very many followers. We weren't big or anything. And then I just said, these are our coffee agers. And it blew up after that.  And my husband was like, you're going to need to trademark that name.  And he said that from the beginning. 10:14 he saw interest in it. And so did my father-in-law. I said, no,  no, I'm okay with that.  And they just kept pushing me. And finally this last year, he was like, no, we're going to do this. And I said, okay, but you got to get all of  the duckies in a row because that's not my thing. I just want to breed the birds.  so he did. He found an attorney and we  filed our application and we had to prove. 10:42 When we started, like when we started using it, how long we had been using it, how long we were using it in commerce and stuff like that.  just this last, just uh in January it was finally approved and we, um it went, um it went live that it's now a registered, registered name under Little Will Homestead.  How did that feel? 11:08 Well,  with the hatred that I have had towards it,  it was actually like, God, you did this. 11:19 I never intended for  our business to get big. I never intended to even ship  out of the state.  really,  my whole goal when  I started to homestead was just like, I just want to feed people. Like I want to teach people how to butcher a bird and I want to teach people how to  raise chickens and,  you know, grow a garden and do the things, you know. I never had this like big plan of 11:48 this is what I'm gonna do.  And so  I was kinda,  I was kinda taken aback, you know, like, this is real. Like, this name now  is always gonna be tied back to little Willa Homestead, you know? And so  it was amazing. And you know, I don't think that  the biggest thing with coffee acres is  what it affords us to do. 12:16 with the funds that come into our business. We don't have a  5013C,  but we have a ministry where em we feed the homeless. We go every single week and  we meet at a  local burger place  and  we bring them in and  we don't feed them burgers every week.  We actually will bring food and supply all the stuff. We just have a place to do it.  And then we go out into uh our community, which em 12:46 is our homeless population  is bigger than Portland, per capita in this little tiny town in Ontario, Oregon.  It's about 30 minutes from us. And so if you could just imagine, you know, per capita, you've got this small town and a huge portion of this town is homeless people,  you know? And so we go out into what are called uh the flats or tent cities. 13:15 and we minister and we feed these people and we don't just feed them like food. We sit and we talk with them, they love on them, we pray over them. We're  just trying to be the hands and feet of Jesus  and do what God calls us to do. he, coffee acres afforded us the ability to financially support this.  How fabulous. It's  far bigger than that even, Mary. 13:44 Like I said, was telling you, I got on a plane and went over, I went to Bangladesh and it's a 91 % Muslim country and there are so many women and children are being trafficked over there. So we got to actually rescue a girl from trafficking while I was there. And if it weren't for my business, I would have never been able to afford to go to another country and do something like that. 14:14 just  do what  God is calling me to do. so every door that he opens, and I know it's of him, I just keep walking through it.  so, yeah.  So that's where we're at and they want us to come back.  So, yeah. Nice. Okay. So, uh are you mainly poultry focused on your homestead or do you grow gardens and have other kinds of animals? 14:42 I uh only have chickens, that's it, as far as animals are concerned. We did have a giant garden. The chickens now get that area  because we've grown so much.  We literally live on an acre.  We  can't  expand anymore. The people that own all of the property around us have it in a trust and they don't want it broke up. They don't want anything done to it, which I think is amazing. um 15:11 I think what they're doing is amazing and it keeps us being able to do what we do with somebody not coming out here and saying, you can't do that.  yeah, we only,  right now we're only doing our rainbow layers, our coffee acres and all of our other colors.  We  used to do meat birds and we used to sell them.  And uh I just had to mention, I saw that you had Joel Saliton on your, uh that's his name, right? Am I pronouncing his name? 15:40 And he uh was  my guy as far as being able to learn how to track your meat birds and do it efficiently and how  to process a bird even. I used to sit there and watch all those videos over and over until I could figure it out. He is the kindest man. Yep, I believe that. I do. If you ever have the chance to go... 16:06 Anywhere near Polyphase Farm, should set up a time to meet him and tell him thank you for teaching you.  Yes.  On video, nonetheless. Yes. Yes.  Absolutely. He is a darling soul. I like him very much. Yeah, I've really enjoyed watching his videos and learning. Are we still there? Yep. Okay.  I'm not sure why that popped up. It might, oh, it might've been my watch. I like, why is my camera popping? 16:36 Squirtle.  yeah, he, I used to watch countless hours  of his stuff and listen to him and very, very knowledgeable man. So.  all he wants to do is help people.  Just like you want to help people just in a different way. uh So uh how many chick, I've got two questions. 17:04 How many chickens do you have  and do you sell the eggs to people who want to eat them?  I have just over 200 birds. We just did our testing  and we never sell eating eggs. We only give eating eggs away. Okay. So if people want them for eating, we give them away. We do not sell them as eating eggs. We don't have very many eating eggs  because we 17:33 we sell our hatching eggs.  We ship them so people can enjoy  having the rainbow colored eggs and stuff.  And then the other question I have is do you actually ship chicks? We just started.  We just started shipping chicks. Yeah, I did my first shipment  almost two weeks ago and every chick made it.  Wow.  Every chick survived. So I was really, really excited. Yeah, we had. 18:03 We had  across the board  babies that went all over the United States and they all made it alive. And so, yeah, it was pretty awesome. It was very nerve-racking.  uh... Yeah, that doesn't happen very often.  No, it was... Well, I prayed over those babies like no other did, so... 18:22 I was like, Lord,  I feel like you're calling me to do this, so please let these babies survive, because  that would hurt my heart to send babies in the mill and see that they didn't make it.  Yeah. Yep. It's sad when that happens.  Mm-hmm. For sure.  Yeah. I've heard a lot of horror stories with  shipments and stuff, and so  that's why I was so reluctant to do it.  But I had so many people begging me to ship chicks. 18:51 and people that maybe didn't have good hatch rates with their coffee acres and they really, really, really wanted the coffee acres.  And so I opened up just a few slots for the end of spring and summer to ship some babies and  they actually already sold out. So  most of our stuff is sold, well,  I'm sold out of everything pretty much until fall. um 19:19 Or yeah, and even into the fall now.  Okay, since I'm not an expert on any of this, I'm going to ask you some some questions that might seem obvious, but they're not obvious to me. um When people buy the coffee egg or hatching eggs or the coffee egg or chicks, are they buying them because of the color of the egg because they want that color egg? Or are they buying them because the 19:48 because they want to sell the eggs as food?  What's the draw?  There are a lot of different reasons, actually.  I have had a lot of breeders that have  bought my birds, bought my eggs.  And then a lot of people, they do, they love to put the eggs in their mix that they sell, like maybe they have a farm stand. Yeah.  they... 20:15 they want to be able to, you know, offer that color inside of the mix of  their eating eggs.  so,  yeah, and they're pretty neat because when you crack them open, they're coffee on the outside, but they're blue on the inside. oh snazzy. I didn't know that.  There are some neat looking eggs. yeah. Okay. um Sorry, nose is trying to run. 20:43 It's allergies, I know it is. ah So  what do the chickens that, what do the coffee agar chickens look like? Are they a dark chicken? And the way I breed, there's a lot of different ways to get that chicken, right? There's a lot of different ways that you can go about getting that  specific color. The way I breed, my birds are blue and black. 21:11 and sometimes white, and that is a recessive white gene that they would have carried from one of the parents.  I don't get the whites that much anymore. I don't breed for it, but I didn't ever breed away from it just because I actually had people  would specifically come to me and say, I want all of your white birds because they thought it was neat that I had these white birds that would lay all these different colors. And so, um 21:40 But now, for the most part, they're mostly blue, which is gray in the chicken world.  Just so people know, because a lot of people don't know what a blue is, it's a gray chicken.  And then blacks. And then  some have muffs and beards, some don't. Some have pea combs, some don't.  Most of them have  feathered feet. em 22:07 Some of them have some really beautiful lacing in their feathering. It just varies. Not one of them looks exactly the same as another, which is kind of cool. You figured this out all on your own or you studied genetics to get to this?  I'll be honest with you. I'm not that smart.  I really truly believe it was God.  I would dream it. 22:34 I would dream genetics, would dream colors, I would dream how to put  two specific birds together to create a color. And  this is another thing that I have not seen in any other farm, and I'm not saying that it's never happened or people don't do it,  but  my entire rainbow of eggs was created with just two colors, and it's only been just two colors, and I do not buy in other birds. 23:03 to add to that, I started by making an olive agar chicken.  And everything else has been developed from that in the seven years I've been doing this. Wow. Wow. That is so freaking cool.  It's God. It really is.  It's amazing.  You can randomly stick some birds together and, you know,  if 23:31 they're colorful layers, you're gonna get some colorful layers out of them, you know what I mean? But what I've been able to do is literally  ban my birds. We're now even using  these like little uh vegetable bags, I guess, like uh netting.  And  I am putting very specific eggs into each one of them so that I can even  narrow things down even more. 23:57 so I can get speckles on specific ones. can get blooms on specific ones.  We now have been able to um create what we call  little willow lilacs,  which is like this just beautiful pink  egg with this really heavy bloom. And we're looking into um just some other names for colors.  I have another color. 24:26 I have a name and I haven't created the color yet.  we'll see how that goes. It's so far so good. It's always like panned out, which is pretty awesome.  um,  your story is so interesting. Like I have never, I've been doing this podcast for over two and a half years and have never heard a story like this before. uh Yeah. Well, you know, 24:55 That's God for you.  I just think that, you know,  he's had his hand in this the whole time. yeah,  it's just been neat to watch it unfold. It's been hard.  know, two years ago, I don't know how long you've seen my farm or followed it or whatever, two years ago,  we had a fire around our entire farm  and we were supposed to evacuate. I mean, we were... 25:24 We were told to get out of here and get out quick.  And uh the fire was burnt back on us four nights in a row. So it was coming at every angle.  And one night it  literally came within an acre and it was flying off  the trees. And you could just see the embers just flying through the air.  40 mile an hour winds were pushing it in our direction. And not one of those embers hit the other side of the road. I mean, that in and of itself is a miracle.  hours those trees were burning, for hours those 25:53 those winds were pushing those flames. And even the fire department guys that were sitting in our driveway said that was a miracle. I've never seen anything like that ever happen. but God, he's powerful. he was like, nope, far enough, far enough. And other people lost their homes, they lost their farms, they lost a lot, they lost cattle. 26:23 My birds didn't even get sick from the smoke, which was  pretty awesome. So  yeah, it's been crazy to see the things that have happened and to see God's hand in all of it. And I think that's why he gave me the name. I think that's why he called us to trademark it was because he wants his glory, you know, and he doesn't want other people taking it. he... 26:50 He deserves to get the glory for what he does in our lives, you know, and he's used my life  just to show people how good he actually is and that  though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you don't have to fear any evil, that he's always with us, you know, and so, yeah, he's been faithful. 27:13 He's been faithful, you know, I talked about having lupus before. I don't even have it in my body anymore. It's undetectable and has been  for many years.  There's just so many things that he's done that it's like  only him, you know, so. Well, I am  so  glad that you have found something or God gave you something. Let's put it that way. 27:41 that brought you out of the depths of despair and gave you something so positive to focus on. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. And  I mean, chickens of all things, know, egg colors of all things, you know, but that's just how he works.  You know,  it could have been many horses. One acre.  It could have been that probably wouldn't have gone very well. 28:09 No, no, would not have because you would only be able to have maybe one and a half mini horses on an acre. Exactly. Yeah. yeah, it's it's and I even thought about it like when we moved out here, of the things because I used to do ministry a lot, you know, like I said, we did foster care and we would work in the church and stuff like that. And when we moved out here, I was like, God, how on earth are you going to use me out in the middle of nowhere where I didn't even get 28:38 phone service at the time when we first moved out here.  And it felt kind of depressing to be honest. I wanted my daughter to grow up out here, but I also still wanted to be able to serve  in many ways and felt like there's no way I'll ever be able to serve out here.  And God's like,  oh honey. Hold my beer.  Yep.  Yep. Yep. And so. 29:09 Yeah, it's just,  it's amazing. is. I love your story so much, Jessica. Thank you for sharing it. I try to keep these to half an hour. We're at 2838. So uh where can people find you?  At littlewillowhomestead.com.  And also we are on Facebook  at Little Willow Homestead. 29:34 And  I am also sometimes very little on Instagram. I try to stick to one platform,  but you can find me on Instagram as well.  Little Willow Homestead there as well. yeah, those are our places.  Fantastic. As always, people can find me at a tinypodcast.com.  A tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Again, brain and tongue not working today. 30:04 Um, this was great, Jessica. Thank you for sharing your story with us. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Oh, absolutely. This was really fun. And I learned stuff again. This podcast  has been the joy of my life because I learned something  new with every person who talks to me. That's so awesome. It really is. It's really fun.  All right. You have a great rest of your weekend. All right. You too. Thank you so much. Yes, ma'am. All right. Bye bye.  

Today I'm talking with Joe and Jessica at Natures Farmacy. A Tiny Homestead Podcast 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 listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose. 00:29 At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. A tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Jessica and Joe at Natures Farmacy in Alabama. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Alabama this morning? 00:55 It's a little overcast. It rained yesterday and a lot last night. So overcast, warm. Plants are happy. I bet. I bet they are. It is a beautiful sunny morning here in Minnesota and there's a very light breeze and everything has greened up beautifully. And tomorrow is May 1st. Yay. 01:22 Very excited because May 15th is the date that we plant our seedlings. So we only have to wait 15 and a half more days. Awesome. So tell me a little bit about yourselves and what you do.  OK, so uh we're Nature's Pharmacy. We are a  micro farm here in Summerdale. um We grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables. um We're basically on 1.7 acres and we're trying to pack in as much 01:52 ah produce and fruit as we can on this.  It's not tiny, but it's not big either on this piece of land. And ah we use organic growing practices.  We set up at the markets. ah We have five kids.  We homeschool them. So we're here all the time.  That is a lot of little people in your life. We have two that are big people now and we actually just became grandparents. 02:22 from one of them. So that's really cool. She's a month old now. Jessica, you look amazing to be a grandma. saw your videos on Facebook and I was like, wow, she can't be more than 25. guess. Oh, thank you. It's the veggies. Yeah, absolutely. Are the kids involved in the... They're involved in the berry picking and eating. Yeah, it's hard to keep fruit on the trees and... 02:51 on the vines, ah but I'm guilty of that too. I love to get out here and pick berries and eat fruit.  It's really awesome to be able to have that experience and for our kids to have that experience running up and down the rows picking, whether it's fresh carrots or blackberries, plums, peaches. I'm so glad that we get to do that for them. They do help though. They  are oldest,  not our oldest, but the oldest living here. He's 13. ah 03:20 He helps us with harvesting and packaging and getting stuff ready for the market. He helps us set up at the market. The girls help some too. They'll come out when we're planting and want to poke a few seeds in the ground. We don't force it. So if they  want to help, they do. Nice. You're growing budding entrepreneurs while you grow your gardens and your fruit trees. Actually, our 13 year old has his own mushroom operation. I mean, I'm sorry. 03:49 Worm casting. Worm casting operation. Which could lead to mushroom growing. Well, we do grow mushrooms.  So,  yeah, that's definitely something that, you know, if he wanted to get into that, he could. We grow Shiitake mushrooms and  we'll grow other mushrooms as well, like wine cap. But yeah, so he's he's  farming worms and collecting castings and he sets his little worm castings up at the market and he 04:17 He sells worm casting, so it's really cool. He's pretty much staying sold out too. And the girls are trying to get into crickets. They  did just recently order their first batch of crickets. They want to be able to grow those, whether it's for like people that have lizards  or feeding their chickens  or even bait. Yeah, fishing.  I love it. You guys have been an excellent example for your little people and your big people. Thank you. 04:47 I wish everybody could be that kind of example because we'd have a much better world in about 10 years. Well, I think more people  are waking up and  moving towards, you know, going back to  homesteading and  I say a simpler life, but sometimes it's not simpler. mean, there's a lot of work involved, but  I see more and more people all the time. Seems like they're waking up and trying to. 05:15 disconnect from the system and become more self-sufficient.  So.  Yeah, as I've said on this podcast a bunch of times, I didn't know that homesteading was anything weird or different. my parents lived on an acre  in Maine when they were raising me and my siblings and they grew a garden and they heated their house with wood and my dad split wood by hand with a splitting mall and an axe. 05:44 And we helped him haul wood over to the basement and chucked it downstairs and moved it from one corner of the other to stack it for the winter.  We didn't know that that was not what everybody did. And I can remember walking into a house for the first time where they didn't have a wood stove in their house. And I was like, don't you guys freeze in the wintertime?  I think  I was 10 and  the dad of the family was like, what are you talking about? We have electricity. 06:15 We kind of grew up the opposite. Okay, yeah. Yeah, like we grew up on the TV dinners and the plopped in front of the TV and you know, just we didn't know people lived like you lived. Yeah. Yeah, we grew up completely different. But later in life, we, you know, started to realize that that's not the way we wanted to live anymore. So 06:43 We wanted to start growing. We got a piece of property in Summerdale, started our first garden  about 13, 14 years ago and just fell in love with growing and with the idea of being able to provide people with food.  so from there we just expanded on that idea and have continued to grow our farm.  And,  you know, we still want to expand. uh It's a work in progress for sure. Building new beds all the time and 07:12 planting more crops. 07:16 Yeah,  do I explain this?  We have a hard sided greenhouse that is permanent, but we had a,  a, I want to call it a high tunnel, but it's not one of the big ones, but that style of greenhouse, we had one up and the plastic ripped over the winter.  That whole thing came down yesterday. Cause we're not going to use it this summer.  And I was like, I'm kind of, I'm going to miss that little bubble out there. My husband looked at me and he said, what? 07:45 And I said, the greenhouse you took down today. Yeah. It's been part of the landscape for two years. And I it's going to look weird having a hole in there, you know? Yeah, for sure. We love our greenhouse. That's actually where we're sitting right now. It's actually become like a second living space or actually maybe this is the main living space and the house is kind of secondary living space. yeah, we have Thanksgiving out here. if you know, the big kids come over and bring the family then. 08:15 We have dinner out here. It's really nice. That is so sweet. I love that. And is it warm in Alabama at Thanksgiving time?  Sometimes. Most of the time. Yeah, it's very warm. We usually have to have the sides up and  sometimes fan going.  Yeah, we couldn't do that here. It would be very cold to be eating Thanksgiving dinner in our greenhouse. Yeah.  Yeah, most of time it's warm, but like two years ago we had snow. So 08:45 That was kind of unexpected. Bet it was pretty. It was. We actually played in the snow. I don't even think I came inside for two days. I'm just out here walking around in the snow. It's something we don't get to see very often. Did you eat the snow? Cause I would have. No, I did not eat the snow, but I definitely played in it. We do still have a bag in the freezer though. Our daughter wanted to keep some snow. 09:13 One of the most fun things that I ever did with my grandpa when I lived in Maine  as a kid is he would go out and get  the fresh fallen snow that no one had walked on and no dogs had done anything to.  And he would bring it bring it in and put it in a bowl and put maple syrup over it. And we would eat maple syrup snow. So like a maple syrup snow cone. Yeah. And if it snows again this winter you should do that with your little ones because they might get a kick out of it. 09:42 Yeah, that's cool. Never thought about doing that, but yeah, that's that'd be cool. And I don't know if it'll snow again. That's something that's very rare down here. Yeah. If it does, do not use the crappy store bought fake syrup. Get some real maple syrup because it will not be the same without real maple syrup. Oh yeah. That's all we use.  Okay, good.  My husband picked up some of the  not real maple syrup when he was shopping and I was like, we will eat it because you bought it, but don't keep buying this.  Yeah. 10:13 It's bad for you. It may taste good, but it's bad for you.  So much stuff in the stores is terrible for you.  Yep, absolutely. If I knew somebody close by that I could get uh raw milk from, we wouldn't even buy milk from the store. We would buy it from somebody nearby, but there's no one within a half an hour of us that sells raw milk right now. Oh my goodness. 10:39 And with gas prices the way they are, a gallon of raw milk is about $20 at the cheapest around here. And I don't even want to know how much gas it would take to get over to where they sell it. that's, we're pushing $30 a gallon for raw Oh my goodness. Yeah, that is insane. It's so crazy. But it's worth it. I mean, if we were some, if we were nearby somebody that was selling it, we should, would certainly stop in and pay $20 for a gallon because 11:08 Those dairy farmers work really hard to provide a really good product. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, it takes a lot of work. It's it is nonstop. Sometimes you got to get up in the middle of the middle of the night, you know, to handle business. So yeah. Yeah. Does Alabama allow raw milk sales?  No. No. Yeah. No. You have to put that it's for  pet consumption only, not for human consumption. 11:36 But if you want to drink it once you get at home, can, right? Sure. I mean, I'm sure if they thought they could bust in and bust you for it, they probably would. It's so dumb, isn't it? It is. Yup. mean, you're just trying to live their lives, man. And I don't know, people who want to dictate what you can and what you can't do. Yeah. Humans have been drinking raw cow milk for 12:02 Ever. Yeah. then the government went, no, it might make you sick. You can't do that. 12:10 Yep, it's insanity.  I can't say anymore because I'll get myself in trouble. I know, I know. That's why I'm just like, it's crazy.  It is. It's nuts. I do not understand why we regulate things that don't need to be regulated and we don't regulate things that do need to be regulated. I will never figure this out until I die. And even then I probably won't find out. It's just about control. Yeah, pretty much. 12:37 God love the government. And honestly, I'm going to say it again because I've said it a lot of times on this podcast. I think that we need government for for a few things, but I also feel like the government makes us trip over feet more often over our own feet more often than not. Yep, absolutely. Yep. Let's government. I mean, they definitely like you said, there are there are some things, but there's just countless things that they just need to. 13:07 you know, get out of our business. Yep.  I have, I have a  B in my bonnet this morning because I just found out that  our government decided that it's going to be okay to mine up in the boundary waters in Minnesota. Like it's, it's going to be legal. And I don't know if you've ever been to Minnesota, but the boundary waters area is one of the most beautiful places in the United States. And it is pristine because we have taken really good care of it. 13:36 Yeah. And now there's going to be mining pits there. Awesome.  Yeah, no, it's really not.  I'm quite pissed off about it. It's sarcastic. Yeah. I know. Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah.  I'm,  I took a big deep breath when I heard it and went, okay, well, maybe in two and a half years, they'll stop doing that. Maybe.  We'll see. We'll see.  So yeah. 14:06 Go ahead. So yeah, it's it's not great.  And I feel like there are so many or so few  untouched places left. That's right. You really should not be screwing around with them.  every time we lose a place that hasn't been touched, we can't get it back. That's right. Yeah. And they just keep on going.  It's so funny how the double standard, you know, it's OK for them to destroy and I  don't know. 14:35 I mean, I'm not saying that I want to destroy anything, but you know, they they want to control everything and and they give themselves a license to destroy, you know, our our ecosystems and habitats. And it's just it's it's mind blowing. It is. I wasn't even going to talk about it, but I did. So. So do you guys have any animals? You know, I know you do produce, but do you have any animals? We do. We have chickens. We did have some sheep. 15:04 But  where we live and  the fencing situation that we had, we live right on the highway. So  the stress of them getting out and getting in the highway and causing an accident was, it was pretty intense. So we got rid of our sheep, but we do still have our chickens and some ducks. And we collect eggs. And we have cats and dogs. iguanas. Yeah. We have the normal stuff like cats and dogs. 15:32 Iguanas maybe not so normal. um To each their own. Yeah.  What kind of dogs do you have?  They're nuts, basically mixed. They're good dogs, though. Just rescues.  Good.  Yeah. A lady  was going to take them all to the pound, so we adopted two and they turned out to be some fantastic dogs. 15:58 Yeah, it's always the ones that are going to not have a home that turn out to be the best dogs. That's right. I have not told this story before and you guys just gave me a really good opening.  One of my sons, he and his wife saw on Facebook or next door or something that there were three huskies.  They were living in Arizona. My son and his wife were living in Arizona at the time and there were three huskies running around loose in the desert. 16:26 Nobody around somebody dumped these three beautiful dogs. And my, my son's wife looked at him and said, do you want to go get them? Do we want to go get them and give them a home? And without batting an eye, my son said, yep, get in the truck. Sweet. They rescued these dogs and they were over six months old. They're now  two or three years old. There's two males and a female, they're siblings and they're the golden huskies. 16:56 like golden and white? Yeah. They have turned out to be the best dogs ever other than my dog is my dog is the best dog on the planet.  I won't die on that hill, but they have turned out to be the best dogs. Yeah. Huskies are really good dogs. They're, pretty smart. We've had some and uh, yeah, they're very intelligent,  uh,  very loyal. Yeah. Can you imagine being a Husky in the Arizona desert? 17:24 not knowing why you're in the desert. Yeah, no doubt.  Oh, poor dogs. I'm so glad that that my son and his wife were like, yeah, we can add three dogs to our household. Why not?  For sure.  OK, so you guys sell your produce and sell your eggs? Yes, we do. We set up at  the market and we also  we have a CSA program that ah we are running also right now. So you can sign up and become a member. ah 17:54 purchase a share in the farm and we provide you with local all-natural produce.  I think we're one of the few  farms that are actually doing that right now, at least that I'm aware of in our area.  Awesome. Have you gotten into the  making soaps or  bombs or salves or any of that stuff? I'm actually, I have oil going with calendula flowers in it now for making soap. 18:23 and salves.  Nice. Have you done it before?  No, I haven't. How are you liking the process so far?  Well, I've only gotten to the growing the flowers  and soaking it in the oil at this point. So I'm just waiting on the oil to be ready and then I'm going to order everything I need to start trying soaps out. Are you going to do the cold process kind? Yeah,  the lye. 18:53 Okay,  my husband makes it I'm scared to death of the the lion water situation I  it scares me to death that I'm gonna do something wrong and then I'm burning myself with it  But he's been doing it for years and once you get the process down, you'll be able to do it in your sleep Yeah, I was watching videos and it looks  I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize how simple 19:17 Like  it's really not that I mean you've got it, you know measurements and everything but I didn't realize it was that simple  Yeah, and back to Joe's statement earlier about people getting back to a simpler life that isn't it's not necessarily simple but it's got a lot of hard work  We all need to remember that Factories didn't make soap 250 years ago. That's right. They didn't make candles. They didn't make dish soap. They didn't make laundry detergent 19:47 people made those things. You're absolutely right. So clearly humans can make the things they need. We've been doing it for a long time. That's right.  I think it was done by design and  I'm not trying to get back into that whole control thing. But I think it was done by design to cripple us  and make us dependent on a system that, you know, obviously is just flooded with all kinds of toxins and everything is so poisonous.  I think it was done by design. 20:18 Think it was done by design. I don't think that I don't think that anyone meant to poison humankind. I Think that if it didn't actually kill us it was acceptable. Yeah, and number two Humans love convenience and they love making money That's true.  So when somebody figured out that they could mass produce soap  and It's not even really soap because if the thing that you're washing your body with doesn't have lie in it. It's not actually soap 20:48 Yeah.  When they figured out they could mass produce it and make a ton of money and people love convenience, that's when that all came together. Yeah. So, you know,  it's it's partly our fault as the consumer, but it's also the producers fault too, I guess.  And really proud of everyone who is trying to take back their power and their autonomy and provide for themselves.  Absolutely. 21:18 So you said you had you grow fruit what you said blackberries what else we have uh peaches plums  blackberries raspberries mulberries we actually grow pineapple  apples uh Occasionally  we'll have bananas, but not so often Let's see what else do we have that I'm not thinking about 21:44 Pear trees. haven't started producing yet. They're still young. Blueberry. Baby trees. Yeah, they're young. Grapes. Grapes. Wow, you guys could just go out and grab a whole fruit salad out of your own property. I know you know what  a food forest is and basically that's kind of the concept that we're  doing here is we're stacking in fruit trees, ah you know, real tight. 22:14 Everything is ah working together.  Like the shade provides a perfect space for lettuces and radishes and stuff here in the summer heat. And we're just trying to pack it in here. We have, our beds are, I know the standard is 30 inches by 50 for like market gardens, but our beds are two foot by 50 foot. And we have a one foot walk space in between. And we're just packing in as many beds as we can and fruit trees in the middle of all of that and our arbors. uh 22:42 on top of all of that and it works out beautifully.  I bet it does because that is an absolutely beautiful system. 22:52 Um, our peach tree is just, it's just getting buds on it. Oh yeah. Yeah. We have one big peach tree and one smaller peach tree. I don't know why they're not, they're not choking each other out or anything, but  one of them just has gotten really big and, uh, it's supposed to get into the twenties tonight.  Oh my goodness. So keep your fingers crossed for us that the, the peach blossoms do not open today because if they don't open today, we'll be fine. 23:22 Yeah.  That's kind of what happened to us this year. Yeah, it was, was, we had a really mild winter and all of our fruit trees, our plums and peaches, they bloomed early because we had a false spring and then  we had two cold snaps there right at the end and we lost a lot of fruit that we were expecting to have this year. I mean, we still, we still got some plums and we still got some peaches, but nothing like what we were anticipating. 23:52 Yeah, we were really hoping for peaches last year because we got like 12 the year before on the first year of growing. We got peaches  and it froze the blooms  last spring  and nothing.  And my husband said that the peach tree is loaded with buds and I was like, God, please don't let it bloom until tomorrow, please.  odds are they probably won't bloom today. 24:22 I don't know. It's supposed to be like in the  high fifties and it's supposed to be sunny all day. So I'm like, no, stay asleep for just one more day, guys.  I don't think anyone who doesn't grow produce understands the impact of the weather cycles. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're completely at its mercy. That's for sure. Yeah. It's really frustrating. We lost. 24:48 We lost  all the blooms off of two apple trees last year because there was a big wind  for two days in a row when they were blooming and  all the petals blew off the trees. So there were no apples on those trees.  Oh man. uh it's so hard.  apple tree is actually loaded this year. This is the first year that it's actually put on apples and held them. So  we are super excited about getting apples for the first time. 25:15 Do you know what variety of apple or is it just apples? They're eintchamir. I have no idea what that is. It was one that was developed in  an Israeli kibbutz. Okay. Yeah. So it's kind of, guess, like Middle Eastern  adapted and  I guess that's similar to our growing conditions.  Huh. I have never heard of that one. I'll have to look it up. What kind of 25:45 tree do you have? We have lots. We have like 20 or 22 apple trees. Wow. And we have. We're on 3.1 acres. Okay, awesome. We have a regent, we have a harrelson. We have four honey golds and the honey golds are the ones that have done the best and I don't even like them. My husband loves them. We have two honey crisp trees that were 26:13 really hoping to see apples from this year as we put them in three years ago.  And then we have a whole bunch of just like  mutt apples over on the other side of the property and we're not sure they're ever going to actually give us apples.  Yeah. 26:32 But we also have plum trees, we have peach trees, we have wild plums, we have... something else and I can't think of it right now. We have rhubarb, we have strawberries, we have asparagus, and then we have the usual suspects in the farm-to-market garden. I've never had rhubarb. Oh, honey. You've got to get some rhubarb. I don't think it grows here, or if it does, doesn't grow here well. 27:00 No, I'm sent you've never tasted it before. No.  Go to the grocery store. I know you don't want to, but go to the grocery store. Go to  the nearest one that has organic produce and get a couple stocks of rhubarb. I've never even seen it in the grocery store here. Really? Yeah. Like  I've never  even, I don't think I've ever even seen it in person at all.  That is crazy.  Huh. 27:29 I wish I knew that it would ship okay, because I would ship you some when ours is ready, but I don't think it would. I think it would get very squishy. might be why they don't have it here. If it doesn't grow well here, I know like pigs and things like that, you don't see them too often in the grocery store. That's something else that we have. Oh, crazy. didn't know that. Well, I've learned something new yet again from this podcast. I swear it's been an education for over two and a half years. That's awesome. 27:59 um So do you guys have any plans to do anything  new this year? Because we always plan for one little thing that's new every summer. um We're hoping to expand our mushroom production for sure.  just putting in new beds and  expanding um as far as any new type of produce or anything like that. um I don't know, we just kind of go through the seed catalogs and whenever we're looking 28:29 things if something pops out then we'll try it.  But trying things sometimes is just kind of frustrating because  you just don't know what you're gonna get.  I guess I kind of like to take the safe road and do things that we know are gonna do really well. As far as new journeys we're hoping to be able to put our farm stand out front and not catch any flak from the town.  Yeah. 28:55 I wish you all the luck in the world with that and if they let you do it, I wish you all the success in the world with it. Thank you. We have a farm stand and people love it. They buy eggs from us almost every day. How many chickens do you guys have? 14. Oh, wow.  So we usually have a dozen or two out there and we're looking at getting more chickens because people are  buying, they want eggs. 29:22 Like they pull in, if there aren't eggs, they pull right back out. And I'll get messages. Are you going to have eggs tomorrow? I hope so. Yeah, we added 32 new chickens this season because we had 24. We've lost a couple. And we get on average 17 eggs a day right now. But we eat about a dozen a day. Yeah, we don't eat as many eggs as we probably should. 29:52 But we also need to make sure the chickens get fed. So every time somebody buys a dozen eggs at $5, we're making sure that the chickens continue to produce. So we are trying a new thing this year. We are trying mini-me watermelons. They are personal sized watermelons. OK, awesome. Because big watermelons don't work here because our growing season isn't long enough for them. 30:22 That's right.  The mini me's are a 60 day um time frame from seed to producing watermelon, to picking watermelons.  Yeah, that's quick.  Yeah. Thank God. Cause we really like watermelon. We could probably fit in a second round of watermelons with those at the end of the season then. Cause we kind of get like a second spring. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of wish we had considered moving south when we bought this place five and a half years ago. 30:52 It's good and bad.  What, Jessica? It's good and bad. We get our storms and  the humidity is a lot sometimes.  Yeah, Minnesota has been  very humid the last four summers, like beyond what I've ever experienced in the over 30 years I've lived here. And I don't enjoy it. So you're probably right. Probably staying in Minnesota was probably the smartest thing we could have done. Yeah, I think our 31:20 like lowest humidity point that we hit here in Alabama is like 80 % humidity or something like that. It's like, we're very humid. You're walking through water in the summertime.  Yup.  All right, guys, I try to keep these to half an hour. Where can people find you?  We're on Facebook and Instagram. On Facebook is just Natures Farmacy. On Instagram, it's naturesfarmacy251. 31:51 Okay, cool.  is pharmacy with a F-A-R-M-A-C-Y like pharmacy. Yes, not P-H-A-R-M-A-C-Y like pharma.  Yes. No pharma on your place. That's right.  Absolutely not.  All right.  As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Jessica and Joe, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you. Yeah, we had a good time. Appreciate it. Have a great day. 32:20 You Thank you. Bye bye.  

Today I'm talking with Casey at Forsythia Farms.  A Tiny Homestead Podcast 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 listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose. 00:29 At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. That tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Casey at Forsythia Farms in New Jersey. Good morning, Casey. How are you? Good morning. I am well. How are you? I'm good. You said it's a beautiful day there in New Jersey? 00:55 It is. It's nice and sunny and it's going to be almost 70, I think, today. It rained all weekend, so we're due for some sunshine. Well, congratulations on having a great spring day because I am in Minnesota and I can hear the rain falling on our tin roof outside my bedroom window. Oh, my goodness. And it's supposed to rain all day and I think we're supposed to get thunderstorms too. So we are getting what my grandpa would have called 01:23 poor man's fertilizer for our garden.  Oh my goodness. You guys get some heavy storms out that way, don't you?  Um,  we get... I have never experienced nor seen a tornado in the over 30 years I've lived in Minnesota. Well, that's good. But we definitely get some high winds. We have had our power go out because of lightning strikes, stuff like that. 01:52 Minor things like  I'm scared to death of tornadoes like I don't ever want to Ever want to see one and I sure as heck don't want to have one come through my door yard. I would pass on that Yeah,  I understand  But no the weather has been unseasonably warm this spring our  Lilac bushes are leafed out our maple tree is leafed out  Everything is leafed out. I could do a list. It would take ten minutes, but it's very exciting 02:22 because we're ready, we're ready for this long, long winter to be over. It is, has been such a long winter. I know we started getting some good like sprouts and whatnot, but I know some farms around here are actually dealing with issues because it froze again. We were under a freeze warning last week. So I know there's some like fruit farmers that are concerned because it, you know, 02:50 usually doesn't typically freeze as bad at this point in April.  So they're seeing, some are seeing some detrimental like loss with some of their plants, which is really upsetting. We're supposed to have freezing temps tomorrow night, think, there's tomorrow night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, maybe. And I am so thankful that our apple trees are leafed out, but they're not budded out yet. They're not blooming. Okay. 03:19 because I really want apples and if it freezes there will be no apples this fall for us on our property.  yeah, yeah, we have an apple tree and a peach tree, they're,  I'm not expecting fruit from them for like another couple of years because we just planted them. So  anywhere from three to five years, depending on what the, uh, the variety is. Yeah. Honey crisp. I don't remember what peach variety it is, but we have honey crisps crisps. 03:47 crisps, there we  go, that we put in, I think, two or three falls ago. And we're hoping with everything we have that they actually bloom this year  and that we might get one or two, because they take a while and they were baby trees. So we'll see what happens.  So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at Forsythia Farms. So  we are first generation homesteaders or farmers, whichever 04:15 term you prefer to use. We are more on the animal side. I will say I don't have much of a green thumb. um I can do like we have our fruit trees, we have some berry bushes. um But as far as like plants,  I'm really bad  with the gardening aspect. My husband is actually better with that. I am the animal person. So  we have a lot of chickens, we have some turkeys. 04:43 We have goats and a pony and horses, and obviously they have cats and dogs as well. I am a certified veterinary technician by trade, so to say. So I've always been around animals and always wanted to have animals. I think I've wanted chickens my entire life. So we moved to New Jersey in 2023, because we were actually originally from Pennsylvania. 05:12 And we moved to Southern New Jersey to have some more land so we could start on our little farm that we have always dreamed of. And it has grown. It definitely has grown. Chicken meth is real. It sure is. We started with four in 2022 and now we have over 100 turkeys. they're definitely the gateway to the rest of the animals. 05:41 Chicken math got you real good. It did. It did.  It went from chickens to  goats and then to turkeys and then to horses. And if we had enough land, we would probably have a cow, but  we don't.  I wish we had a cow. I wish we had enough land for a cow.  And we do not. We have three acres and  there's no grazing area for an animal that big. So we are just not going to do a cow. 06:10 It's not happening. Yeah, we have about three acres as well. my we have grazing areas on some parts of our land, but a lot of it is wooded and trails. um But our neighbors have. Big like yards and stuff in the my horse, Chai, she'll go over and mow their lawn is what they say, but. The many that I have can't have fresh grass,  so they're mostly on a dry lot, which is one of the reasons why. 06:39 brought them here as opposed to boarding them because he can't really have grass to begin with. So us not having a ton of grazing isn't a huge uh deal for the two of them, but definitely not enough for a cow.  Yeah. Yeah. They eat a lot. And  the other thing that I hadn't really considered until I was listening to you talk is even if we had a cow,  we would have to have her bread to have to give her a milk because we don't have 07:06 If you don't have a cap to get things started, it's not gonna, it's not gonna work. Right.  And, um, the other thing is, is that a full-size cow gives a lot of milk and  we don't have anywhere to keep that right now. Right. That's exactly it. We've run into that problem a couple of times.  Um, with the chickens, we just had like in the spring and summer, so many eggs.  So  many. 07:36 Eggs, yes, yes. I think at the highest number we had 36 or 40 chickens and we have a farm stand on our property and we would sell the eggs and we were still overrun with eggs with that many chickens. So  we're down to a very reasonable 14 chickens. There you  go. just, we free range um and unfortunately,  you know, the circle of life, there are predators here so we do lose a few. um 08:06 Especially during this time, we're mostly ground predators are our issue. Foxes to be exact. We do have some hawks, but foxes tend to be our big issue. So around this time, I don't love to let them free range.  I always, it's part of the reason why I like to have a lot because if we do lose some,  now we have established a clientele that like order eggs from us. And some people get upwards of like 10 dozen at a time. 08:36 So I like to keep a certain number just so we can keep up with demand now. But  in the winter, I at least have enough to fill that demand. Whereas my older ladies might stop laying, I always have younger ladies that are still going. Yes.  Thank God for the younger ladies and the older ladies. Yeah. And when I let them live out their days, however long, I still have a couple of my originals from 2022. 09:06 And I have, I do breed for like olive aggers. So I have some of those are my more, I have silkies  and bless their hearts. They are just not smart. love them, but they are just not the smartest and they can't see because of their little head puff. So they don't free range and I have them in a separate coop. Yes. The dumb as a stump chicken variety. Yeah. 09:33 Yes, and the Polish, I have those as well. It's just, you got to collect them all, they're like Pokemon. Or Lay's potato chips. Yes. Yeah, exactly. So what is the nearest city in New Jersey to where you live? The biggest, largest city would be Philadelphia. So yeah, and we moved from the suburbs of Philadelphia to New Jersey. 10:02 Because the biggest city  in Jersey closest to me would probably be like Trenton. But even still that's further than Philly is to us. We're about 20 to 30 minutes, depending on traffic from Philly. So not too bad.  No. Yeah, we're in a good spot. We're not too far from family. Everyone's still over in Pennsylvania, but we're also in an area where it's like, I think when my family helped us move here, my uncle, 10:32 had made a comment like, feel like I'm in Alabama because it's just all farmland. This doesn't even feel like the Northeast. It feels like the South. And I was actually really surprised when you said New Jersey because I didn't think there was a whole lot of acreage available in New Jersey. maybe you lucked out. There is, there is. There's a lot of actually preserved farmland down here. um And it is the garden state, you know, for 11:00 for a reason, they do produce a lot  of um goods and it's amazing. There's a preserved farm, I'm not sure exactly how large it is, but I wanna say it's at least over 100 acres right around the corner from us. um And they switched from doing, I think, hay and corn. 11:24 But there is a lot of farmland down here. Now when you go further north, that's when you get to more like the city life, especially with Jersey City, because it's right near New York City. But it's like night and day from North Jersey to South Jersey.  I feel like I should do some research on New Jersey, mostly because I was born there. But when I was six months old, my parents moved to Maine with me. Oh, OK. So they never really talked about it because they weren't there very long. Yeah.  I've always wanted to... 11:53 visit Maine. I've never been. Go. Go while you can because it's really, really beautiful. That's what I hear. And we would be living there right now except that it would the cost of living is so expensive in the state of Maine that we just couldn't do it. Buying property and a house on that property would have been fine because it was it was fairly reasonable back in 2020 when we were looking. 12:22 But when I talked to my folks who still live there about the cost of actually living there, and they told me what they knew, I was like,  no, we're staying in Minnesota. Yeah,  New Jersey is very expensive.  We have very high  property taxes and, you know,  it is an expensive state, but I will say it was cheaper to move here. 12:48 and get the land that we wanted than it was to stay in Pennsylvania. Yeah.  And if we were to stay in Pennsylvania for what we wanted, we would probably be about 45 minutes to an hour away from family. Whereas where we're at now, we're very close.  you made it work for you in the way that worked best. And that's amazing.  The thing that we lucked out on is we started looking in, I think, end of May 1st of June back in 2020. 13:18 before everything jumped in price. So we were really glad that we did it then because if we'd waited even six months, there's no way we would be where we are now. Yeah.  And did you go to Minnesota for job opportunities or? ah No,  I moved to Minnesota over 30 years ago with my first husband, who is my first ex-husband. 13:45 And then I married again and got a second ex-husband  and the third one is the charm. we,  we decided that we wanted to move out of in town, little tiny town in Minnesota, like 6,000 people, I think.  We wanted to, we wanted to get away from town and we moved half an hour away from there  and we live in the middle of  corn and soybean fields and it's  glorious. There you go. That sounds amazing. It really is. And I'm. 14:15 I've talked about it ad nauseam on this podcast, so I'm quite sure that none of the listeners want to hear it again. But just  let's suffice it to say it was the best decision we've made in the whole time we've known each other.  Yeah, that sounds amazing. We  love it here. And it's definitely a different lifestyle. Like when our friends and family come to visit, they're like, oh yeah, it's definitely different because there's farmland. And  when we first moved, I think 14:44 Every week there was a new Facebook post about like somebody's animal got out. So there was an emu that was running around town  and then someone's bull got out. Bulls? Someone's horse. So it was like just the funny little things that you see in farm towns that like you obviously wouldn't expect when you were living in the suburbs of a major city. So we love it. It's so peaceful. We're on a very, very quiet street. 15:13 The only cars on this street are the people that live here.  I  am not on a quiet street. We are on a  two-lane highway that goes between  two towns.  And uh there's a lot of semis and tractors and stuff that go through because it's farm country. They're moving tractors, they're moving equipment for farming in the spring.  And in the fall, it's constant semis going through  loaded down with corn and soybeans. 15:41 Yeah, we have InTown,  which we're about 10, a uh 10 minute drive from InTown.  And um they have a lot of trucks that go through there, you know, delivering from South Jersey all the way through to Philly or where have you. So when we go in town, there's definitely a lot more traffic. um But when we come out of our little  neighborhood, we mostly get stuck behind the tractors  that are like... 16:11 doing the crop fields or moving the crop itself. And it's so funny because every time I drive by, always want to blast International Harvester on. And I just, I love it. It's just such a great little community that we're in. In the five years that we, well, a little over five years that we've been here, we've had friends come to visit. And I think three times in in that five years, somebody has said, 16:39 totally forgot we get stuck behind some kind of farm equipment. Sorry, we're late. I'm like, I knew you'd be late. It's totally fine. I don't care if you're late. You're here. Yay, I'm glad to see you.  So you sell your eggs  and you said that you have  goats still? We do. We have goats. um And we had tried to breed them because we had gotten a buck, but it did not go well. 17:07 So I would love to breed my does. have three of them.  They are called the Powerpuff goats. It's blossom, baubles and buttercup. Of course it is.  And they're adorable. They're  Nigerian dwarves. They're like dogs. My husband's favorite animal on the farm. I think that's the only animal I could come home with without asking that he would be totally fine with. um 17:31 Because I want to do their milk, so I would love to do like goat milk soaps and body washes, lotions. My dad has really severe allergies and his skin flares up a lot and I would love to be able to make something natural for him because he can't have or can't use a lot of the products that are on the shelves these days. uh So I would love to make something that he would be able to use to kind of soothe his skin when he's having a flare up. 18:02 Um, and I know it's really good for, oddly enough, we have a lot of people in the area that are asking for goat's milk for their dogs. Okay. So, and there's not many around here. It's not a lot of people that sell goat's milk. So that's definitely something I would love to do, but I have to, uh,  I have to run out of buck cause our boys are now weathered. So we'll see how that goes. I kind of want to breed them to a feigning goat. 18:31 That'd be fun. know, but I think I'll just do stick with the Nigerian dwarfs because their temperament is amazing. They're like little puppy dogs. They are. They are. And our first boy, Rocky, he was a bottle baby. So he was in the house until he was about 10 weeks old. And we got him when he was eight weeks old and we were still bottle feeding him. So he is a 19:00 legitimate dog. Like he just would prefer to be in the house, but I can't do that at this point.  Not without a diaper. And he won't keep it on or he'll eat it. He's not  love him to death, but he's also not the smartest either.  Well, he's a goat. He's not a human kid. So  we'll grant him a little bit of grace.  Why do people want goat's milk for dogs? I thought, I thought most dairy wasn't good for dogs. So goat's milk. 19:30 Actually, like some of the proteins in there can be beneficial. I wouldn't give it to my dog like every day.  But it can help with their coat, just like it can help like soothing our skin and things of that nature. Some  allergy  dogs can benefit from  goat's milk. ah There's specifically a woman here who breeds, ah and I should know the name, the actual name of these dogs because I'm a  tech. 20:00 but they're essentially like long haired greyhounds. They're not, but they're not whippets. can't think of their name. tall, right? Yes. I can't think of the name. I can see it in my head. can see the animal, but I can't think of the name either. But she uses it for her dogs. And some people also bathe their animals in it if they're having like a skin flare up. That's an expensive bath, but I bet it does the job. 20:27 Yeah, they might be Afghans. Yes,  that's what I was thinking too, but I couldn't think of the name. Yeah, they're not bores. I know that they might be Afghans. ah But she specifically asked me when she found out I had goats and I was like, no,  but if I do, I will definitely let you know.  For sure. ah So  do you love your life at  the farm? Are you are you happy that you did this? Yes. 20:55 Absolutely, I would do it 10 times over. It's just so amazing to just wake up in the morning and look out at my backyard and see just these chickens running around and you hear the goats. My children love it. They love being able to go out in the backyard and collect eggs. They love having their little pony chocolate that they can take care of. my youngest is... 21:22 huge animal. My oldest likes animals, but my youngest is our animal girl. she just, they're just like living the dream. And that's what my husband and I wanted for them. So it's  amazing.  nothing beats fresh eggs in the morning, in my opinion. Nothing beats fresh eggs at any hour of the day, as far as I'm concerned. That  is true. You are correct.  I make an egg bake once in a while in the wintertime. 21:51 We don't have it for breakfast. We have it for dinner. Hey, breakfast for dinner is was one of my favorite things growing up. Yeah, I make a great big casserole pan and here's all the hot dish. It's not a casserole. So here it would be a hot dish pan, glass pan. I make a big one and we freeze half of it. And that way we have some for breakfast if we want it. That sounds amazing. As it freezes great. Yeah, yeah, we. 22:20 I've always wanted to try either freezing or also doing the glass. Oh goodness, I can't think of the name of anything. 22:30 The eggs in the big glass jar with the water? With the lime, yeah.  Water glassing maybe is what it's called. I have never done it. It's a way of preserving eggs without having to pickle them, yes. Yeah, I will say because I'm not a big pickler.  So I know some people love it. I used to sell my silky eggs to a friend who would just pickle them because they're tiny.  I don't like pickled eggs.  I like hard boiled eggs for um... 23:00 for egg salad sandwiches, but I'm not a pickled egg girl. I think they're stinky. Yeah, I agree.  I can't do it. I love pickles. I love cucumbers as pickles, but pickled eggs are just not my jam. Yeah, I feel that.  I don't know what it is, but I just, if I smell them, I'm like, need to walk the other way because it's going to be a mess if I do not.  I agree. Eggs are great, but they can be very stinky in certain ways. 23:29 Yep,  not a fan. um So I saw on your Facebook page something about your turkey. Yes.  What can you tell the story without crying?  I think I can. So  I had a Tom, his name was Darryl. um And I  actually got his name, because everyone asked me, how did you come up with the name Darryl?  And  my daughters  are. 23:58 six and four and they were big bluey fans. I don't know if you're familiar with any kids TV shows. I've heard of it. I have not ever seen an episode. Okay. It's, it's an amazing kid show. I'll be honest. Like it's actually a kid show that was made for parents, but either way, um, they have funny names for their animals or their imaginary friends or whatever they're doing. And one of them, the one daughter was pretending to be someone and her name was Cheryl Landa. Okay. 24:26 So we got three turkeys  in the early  spring last year.  And at the time I didn't know what they were, male or female, but we went with Telemachus, Shubidua, and Sharolanda, all names from Bluey. Cute. Well, Sharolanda turned out to be a dude. So I was like Sharolanda, Darryl, Darrylanda. And then it kind of just stuck. So it was Darryl. It was Darryl, yes. 24:55 And he was a, I believe he was a bronze. I got kind of like a mixed group of breeds. And he was just, he was also like a dog. I had to harness train him because my youngest wanted me to bring him to school for her Bring Your Pet to School Day. Out of all the animals that we have, she chose him. So I harness trained this 30, 40 pound turkey. 25:25 Um, he went on car rides with us. We took him to, we don't have,  uh,  like local trash here. We have to go to a dump. So he would go to the dump with us and, and just ride around in the car. took him through Duncan and, um, he was a big part. Duncan give him a pup cup? They did. They did.  Um, he, so he got a pup cup and he was just, he was just a great, a great pet. 25:53 And he was a very good protector.  will say turkeys are very good protectors of our flock. They're very good at alerting and they're big. So not a ton of the predators in our area would, it wouldn't be worth it to them to try to come like to our flock. And unfortunately it is mating season and we had two of our neighbors children. 26:21 run onto our property. I'm assuming to see if our children were outside so they could play. Yeah. And the youngest is about 18 months. So she's little and they ran up to Darryl. I don't know in what manner because I didn't see it, but they ran up to him and he started. 26:46 like jumping on the youngest and I guess trying to mate. So he was doing the like stomping with his feet and he was scratching her up. And in the whole commotion to get Daryl off of the child, he was kicked not only by the child, but by an adult  to get him off of the baby. And that whole commotion, he broke his leg.  And he was very large. 27:15 poultry have very thin, tiny legs.  And  he was in a lot of pain. So I didn't want to put him through trying to fix it, because the prognosis of him getting fully healed was slim to none.  And it wouldn't be fair to him for me to put him through all of that pain and recovery  just because for selfish reasons, I didn't want to lose him, you know? 27:45 So we humanely called him and we did bury him next to his favorite tree. But it's just, it's quiet without him because he would always like talk to us. We would call his name and he would talk to us. And he wasn't doing anything wrong. He was  protecting his  flock. But it's definitely a good lesson  with  being cautious around animals and making sure, you know. 28:16 No one's unattended or anything like that. Our kids  knew  if they were going to be around Darryl,  they always had a stick and they would just wave it at him and he would run. He wasn't going to come after them. He's like, okay, these kids have a stick. I'm not going to mess with them.  And he grew up with them. So he was familiar with them. But yeah, that day was very stressful because we had also brought a Mustang home that day. 28:44 Oh, so double whammy. Yeah, and he  broke through our fence a couple times. ah So we were actually dealing with the Mustang when the incident happened. It was just very crazy.  sounds like it. It is. And you learn some hard lessons in life. um There's,  you know, you go back and think of everything you could have done differently at that time. But in that moment,  main goal was to 29:14 make sure the child was okay, you know? And I love my animals.  I love them to death, but I will always put a human child's  wellbeing above my animals.  Yep. And I feel like this is a good place to jump in and say,  if you are a neighbor of someone who has animals on their property, and I don't care whether it's turkeys or goats or a freaking elephant, and you have kids, tell your kids, 29:44 that they need to be aware and they need to be careful.  And if they're too little to understand that, then you should probably be with them if  they're going to the neighbor's house. Yeah. And  I  don't want to direct other people's traffic, but it's a shame that you had to lose your turkey because of the situation. It is.  And  my husband and I were, you know, we went through the motions of the stages of grief and 30:12 We were angry for a while and it's not that we were angry  at them.  We were just angry at the situation because we know it was just an unfortunate incident, but it's like we lost a member of our family. 30:31 It was just really, really unfortunate.  it's really hard. One of the things about farming or homesteading is that there are days that just suck lemons and you're going to have one.  It is. And  I think the hardest thing about having a farm and having livestock is that there's a saying for a reason. If you have livestock, you have dead stock because a lot of the times 31:01 At least in my experience with chickens, sometimes they just keel over and you have no idea why. And if you're like me and you get attached to them,  everyone takes a small little piece of your heart. And it's like, ugh, I wish I could have done something different. But it's just the hard reality of  having animals. I may be the most unattached to my chickens person you will ever meet. 31:29 I don't love them. I love what they do for us. I don't love chickens.  However, I keep trying to not get attached to the barn cats and that's a trick. Yeah, we have one barn cat. just got him recently. ah He showed up at my in-laws house actually and he was super sweet and we're like, you know what? 31:52 We need a barn cat because we do have a of mice because we are in the woods. Yes. Like we're in farmland, but where we are specifically is a lot of woods and trails. And he is just the sweetest thing. He  loves to just be pet and love Dawn.  And I would be devastated if something happened to him.  I was devastated when the first barn cat got hit by a car on that busy road in front of our house. 32:20 Like I swore a blue streak, I cried, I slammed cabinet doors, I was upset.  My husband said to me, said, honey, said,  if this is how it's going to affect you if we lose an animal, he said, we can't stay here. He said, this is awful. And the next one that got hit, like four months later, I swore less, I did not cry,  and I think I slammed a cabinet door when I realized that it had gotten hit. 32:50 He said, that's growth. I'm like, yes, I will eventually be able to handle this, but that's two in four months time. Yeah, that's a lot. It's a lot. And it's, it's different when you have like outdoor animals as opposed to indoor animals. Like you try not to get attached, but you do. But then you also know that they're here for a job  and sometimes bad things do happen.  mean, that can be said about any part of life. And I'm not. 33:20 unfamiliar with death and animals because I have dealt with my fair share of euthanasias and really unfortunate, sad situations just working in the veterinary field. it's always different when it is something that you have personally cared for. And the advice that I try to give people, even whether it be a cat or a dog or a horse or what have you, is the 33:48 best thing that we can do for them is to end their suffering, is to not let them suffer. So if something is happening  and  you have the choice to take away their pain, then that is the kindest thing that we can do for them. And that is why I didn't rehab Darryl. it just wouldn't have been  kind for me to do that. And I don't think if he could talk that he would want me to do that. 34:17 Probably not and  that's why it's called stewardship, you know, whether it's land or animal it's stewardship Yeah  All right.  Um, Casey, this was a joy. I try to these to half an hour.  Where can people find you? You can find me on Tiktok Facebook and Instagram um For Scythia Farms is our Facebook 34:43 profile, but Casey at for Scythia Farms is my Instagram and TikTok handle.  Um, so can find me there and I just, you know, have my daily antics of farm life on there.  It's very fun to watch you do your thing. It's, it's a huge part of my life now. I don't think my day is complete until I've done my like morning chores and you know, sang my songs to my animals. Cause I do that a lot. 35:12 Yep. Well, keep doing the good work because  every video you put out shows people what this is like, that it can be hard, that it can be absolutely joy-filled days, because that happens too.  But we need more people to get into this because we need local food sources. Yes, we do. It's incredibly important.  All right. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Casey, I hope you have a wonderful day. 35:40 Thank you so much. This was so much fun. hope you have a wonderful day as well.  

Today I'm talking with Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom .  A Tiny Homestead Podcast 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 listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose. 00:29 At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care, you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. That tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company.  Today I'm talking with Leah Peterson from Clear Creek Ranch Mom in Nebraska. And she also happens to be my fabulous co-host  on Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture. Good,  um, well afternoon. It's noon now. 00:58 It's high noon. It is high noon.  What's for lunch besides I have a birthday cake in my kitchen, but not much else going on yet.  I don't know. I might  nuke a couple waffles and put some real maple syrup on them. That sounds delightful. It kind of does.  So  Leah's been on the show, like,  I think it's been five times now. And then she became my co-host on the other  podcast. 01:26 Leah posted a photo on her Facebook page of a cowhide from a calf  and  was talking about why they have that. And I thought that it would be interesting for my listeners  to know what was going on with that. So Leah, do you want to tell me about that? I can.  I always say that  raising livestock teaches little people so many life lessons that are applicable. 01:55 you know, in all parts of your life and will be for all time.  And so as a child, um my first  memories, some of the harder memories from calving season was honestly learning about the miracle of adoption  right through my own  eyes,  watching it in the cowherd. 02:18 It's a practice as old as time. It's evolved and changed over time and many people are still advocates for this method of helping a cow adopt a new baby and other people have moved on to try different things.  But we're still  kind of old school here and we subscribed to what we call the no fail method. It is hard. It's kind of yucky. um But it works.  And so when we have a cow, 02:46 who has lost her calf for whatever reason and she's in milk. We can take another calf, say a twin for instance, or a calf whose mama doesn't have enough milk, and we call it grafting, grafting a calf onto the mama.  And it's very interesting when you look at different breeding programs, different breeds, there are different traits that rise to the surface as being most  usual for that particular breed. When I was with 03:16 Derek Josie out at TDF Honest, he raises pure red Jersey cows for milk.  And those ones do not have the maternal trait of desiring to have a baby. They have their baby and happily will let you take it and he won't even ball for it. There's nothing wrong with that. That's how the Jersey cows live.  Our beef cattle want to raise a baby. 03:40 I want to be careful in describing that though, because it's not, I don't want you to think, I don't want listeners to think that it's some emotional bond. It is a physiological response. It's biologically the way they are bred and how they live. And that is that those hormones that kick in when they have given birth and they start producing milk, they desire to have a baby. And so when we have a baby in need, 04:10 What we will do is we will skin the hide off of the deceased baby. So she's lost her baby, it was stillborn, it died, whatever the reasons might be. We will skin that hide off of her baby and we'll make what we call a calf coat  and we will adhere that calf coat on to her presumptively to be adopted baby. Do you tie it on to them? 04:38 Yeah, so you can use a variety of methods. We use  sometimes some glue to help hold it on and then we use baling twine  and  tie it  so that it kind of starts at the back of the neck and goes down their back, truly like a superhero cape, I guess you could call it,  and tied it on.  And then you  can do some other things. You can apply some scents to mask the smell because again, 05:06 The emotional connection  between a mama and a calf is not what you think it is.  They identify their calves by sound, which is truly amazing. They can find their baby in a group of 500 by their sound.  I think there is probably a measure of recognition.  Hard to say how complicated that is because I'm like, all little black baby calves, for instance, look the same to me. um And I can't remember if cows see in color or not,  but it's definitely by scent. 05:35 And so if you can mask their original smell and make it smell like their baby, they are  way more likely to uh accept it straight away. Now, depending on the cow, depending on the breed, I have seen it go like snap of a finger, this is my baby now, and I have seen times where it'll take 48 hours, but I've never seen it not work. 06:00 You  love what you do because you just told a very hard story  and your voice sounded so satisfied telling it.  It is. It's something  I'm passionate about because it helps elevate  more understanding about ranchers and not just ranchers because I know this method can be used with uh other animals. 06:29 and trying to help them adopt babies that aren't theirs. SAKE, it happened all on its own or with a little help from humans. It happens a lot.  I'm passionate about it. And it's so satisfying because while you see videos and photos of little girls and boys feeding bottles to baby calves, yes, it can be done. Yes, it's a good chore. Yes, it's  rewarding. 06:54 but there is  nobody that feeds a baby calf like the cow herself.  It's just the way nature intended it to be. In beef cattle, not talking about veal calves and those in dairies and whatnot, but for beef cattle, it  is the best outcome. And it's so satisfying when after a day together, being  confined together that you can turn them out. And we call it traveling pairs. You see them travel together as one. 07:23 back into the wild, so to speak, and feel so relieved and satisfied that you have helped them mother up  and that baby is going to be cared for until it's weaned.  I love it.  See, this is why I wanted you to tell the story because I knew you'd tell it in a way that everybody would get it. um So what happens to that calf hide once the calf is grafted? Well, usually it's sort of, it's 07:48 just like any piece of leather, right? It withers eventually and  they'll shed it. Sometimes we'll cut it off. It's very smelly, you can imagine,  a couple days and uh it'll wither away and eventually then the scavengers will pick it up and disappear with it. Okay, cool.  Thank you for telling the story.  I  always feel weird asking you this stuff because I am a novice. Like I am,  I know nothing. 08:16 about any of this. And I'm so curious and I'm like,  Lea knows the answer. I'm going to ask her. And it's so fascinating because again, it depends on the maternal traits in different cattle breeds  and what your breeding programs are. But I'm out watching our first calf heifers, right? These are their first babies.  And in their first year being mothers, these heifers are like, I don't know, they're energetic teenagers and they're all about everyone's baby. They'll let anybody's baby. 08:43 nurse and so we call them the little robbers. These babies are out there bebopping around. They don't care who's utter they're going to. It's that second year when she has her second calf that she generally, again, depending on the breed, is more interested in just having her baby nurse and kick  away at somebody else trying to rob.  But then we have some cows. em Some of them usually are those with a little more dairy influence, so they're short horns. They will let more than one calf nurse. 09:13 they  produce milk for more than  one often, but most of our true beef cattle who are bred towards putting all their work and energy into growing one healthy calf, they don't have enough milk for more than one. So it is not common to have a beef cow  raise more than one calf if it's her calf or if it's one that's been grafted onto her. I will say we  still have one set of twins on there. 09:39 mama and she is up in the corral getting extra groceries as we call it. She's doing phenomenal at raising  both of her calves and has not rejected anybody. um We will not kick her out to summer pasture like that because it's too much  to babysit that, especially if grass is kind of short and her energy needs are not going to be enough to feed two babies properly. But uh we're gratified that all of our 10:06 transplant, we call it also transplanting a calf.  Situations have been successful. We've had some kind of yucky stuff happen in the last 10 days with the volatile weather and we've had some loss. um But so far we're cruising through, we're now on the over the hump and calving season and thankful  for the wins, the victories, are when  mamas will take a new baby without too much work. 10:34 Definitely.  So how has calving season been for you? I  suspect it's been a lot considering everything else you've had going on. Yeah, isn't it something, you you try and just to get your work done and at this time, critical time, it's like, need to get  my work done and not start a fire  because conditions are so difficult in the pastures. It's branding season. Lots of folks are branding their calves. The challenge is there's nowhere to go with them at this time. 11:04 um Pastures need to be able to rest longer. Typically, here in Nebraska, we're trying to start kicking animals out to early grass, what we call cool season grasses, around the first of May, and it's not happening. um That's next week. We're really in a critical time.  We really would need, if we could get a half inch of rain, that could buy us some time. We'd really like one to two inches of 11:33 calm, quiet rain to soak in and recharge and get our cool season grasses to go so we have some early grazing possibilities that buys you time to get hopefully a first cutting of hay and things put up so that if we look to late summer and a resurgence of drought that we dry lot cattle and if we have to feed them ourselves.  That's where we're at. um 12:03 People are just having to make some very difficult decisions right now. I'm trying to sell Daisy, um Daisy and her calf.  She's our black Angus Jersey cross mama.  to relieve us  of one mouth to feed because we hadn't planned for her to stay. um We're making some decisions already on some older cows who maybe are not um feeding their calves the best. 12:32 or potentially are open and not having a calf, they're not gonna go to pasture and get another chance, they gotta go town.  And  meanwhile, you reconcile that with none of us are wishing to contribute to a further shrink in the cow herd size, but that's where we're at.  you know, literally, if you don't have anything to feed them, that's the choice that you have to make.  And you're not alone in that, which is even scarier. Correct, correct. It's... 13:00 It's so widespread. Now, there was a tornado watch in eastern Nebraska yesterday, and I know some rain did fall there. Even if it was hail, at least it was precipitation, a very small piece. uh But desperation really across  all of Nebraska, moving west and north  into multi-states,  you start to consider  the widespread effects, and they're pretty big. 13:29 Yeah, and that doesn't even count the effects of like your household. I mean, are people's wells going dry because it's so,  you're so lacking in water? Yeah, we're okay here.  Our work, to be respectful of our aquifer, is in full play. Conservation methods are,  but certainly like in Colorado, um there's pretty significant discussion  because of no snowpack to melt, that there will be early water restrictions in place. And that includes 13:59 golf courses,  know, water parks and things like that. I don't think  we Americans are very good at thinking beyond the end of our own nose too often. If you think, it's okay, I have access to water, well, and you let your sprinklers run and run down the street that you just, you're not thinking like, how does that affect the person that's downhill from me?  And I hate that we have to have rules and regs to make people be disciplined. 14:26 about their water use, but it's a finite resource  and nobody wants to turn their tap on and have nothing come from it.  So I encourage  everybody to just be aware of good personal accountability when it comes to water use. It's so important.  It is, and honestly, if we could just realize that it's not all about  us, it's about everybody. 14:56 You know, it's not just about me. It's not just about you. It's about everybody.  It's true.  We're all in this together.  All in this together when I,  um,  friends, you know, across the Great Plains and moving west that have had this abnormally period of dry years. And again, I'm grateful that I was raised in a home to practice  stewardship, picking up your trash. 15:26 um minimizing waste,  food waste especially,  not letting the water run freely while you're brushing your teeth.  Aim small, miss small is something  I say often.  Every single person has the ability to make positive difference  and they're not hard. It's an act of thoughtfulness and self-discipline. 15:52 Yes, for sure. um So  I had a question and then I forgot it because I was listening closely to what you were saying because that's what I do all the time.  Yes, you do. So the fire that uh blew up or showed up or whatever word you want to use  when you were in town the other day,  I'm assuming they got that at least  handled. Yeah, the National Guard. 16:22 was deployed here to help. were air dropping water in some very hard to reach canyons  where there's hot spots. They're using thermal imaging.  I don't know that people realize that cedar trees,  which are the bane of our existence in Nebraska now, can hold heat for so long and have flare-ups literally for weeks or months after a fire. So they're working really hard on that and setting backfires to stop any forward advance. We have loss. 16:51 structure loss and one home burned to the ground. And I actually know the woman who lost her home and she recently lost her husband. And bless her heart. She's handling it as well as could be expected. I'm very grateful for emergency responders who were able to advance enough to give proper evacuation notices and help people gather essentials and get them. 17:21 So people, for instance, could move their camper or their boat or their horses, gather up your purses and wallets and clothes and had some time. So she was able to do that, but obviously left 95 % of her life at home and it's gone. And for the rallying of community and churches to help her and other people who were displaced, you know, there's not enough time in the day to share stories of the goodness of 17:50 people. um You kind of, it's kind of fatigued, right, of having to  deploy so much goodness over and over and over again. But it's  what we're supposed to do for each other,  why these community organizations and efforts matter to help coordinate and organize, because it's not easy to figure out how to feed 200 firefighters by yourself. certainly is not. And the community has rallied and done so and given people given of their money when they can't. 18:18 serve physically and given up their time, given their prayers and kindness. And so we'll be all right. um But again, it definitely illuminates why we have to have fire departments, why we need emergency responders and EMTs and why we need community organizers because, you know, the whole place would have burned up if we hadn't had it because there was nothing that was going to stop that monster in the winds that were blowing. 18:45 It was the selfless giving of hundreds of people that stopped the advance of the fire, putting their own lives in jeopardy. um It's truly an amazing thing when you think about them all being volunteers.  Yeah, absolutely. um So fire season. um I feel like you have been talking to me about fire season  since we first talked a little over two years ago. Has it just been fire season for two years? 19:13 You know, my friend James, the meteorologist says we just have to face the facts with climate changes.  You can call it what you want, that we are a wildfire state. And part of it is because we're actually so good at stewardship that we have a fuel load, which is your standing grasses and things. Part of it is because of letting some invasives get away, like the cedar trees and my messages. 19:38 that Eastern red cedars are not your friend in Nebraska. First of all, they hog a lot of water. Oh, do they drink water? And second of all, they cause these tinderboxes to get worse  because they burn so hot  and the trees were exploding. They were exploding and then sending the embers straight into the air. And in the 40 mile an hour winds, the embers were then traveling a mile and then reigniting. 20:01 So we're in wildfire season. We have been for a long time in this cycle of wildfire. We had a lot of fire in 2012 during a flash drought, but the fire risk didn't start till July. That's when things really dried up.  I think it's paramount that people recognize that in building a new home,  in renovating a home, in thinking about what kind of yard you want to have, that you need wildfire preparedness as part of what you're doing. That is our reality now because 20:29 there are not enough volunteers to cover every need.  And you're gonna have to be able to try to defend your home a little bit yourself. That's just the reality. That is just how it is.  And it would serve everyone well to be aware of those things.  Well, I don't wanna give you more to do, ma'am, cause you are swamped. But maybe once graduation is over  and 20:58 calving season is over.  I, if it were me, I would take some time and email a couple of realtors and mention that. Yeah.  Because I'm not sure realtors even really think about that. I agree. I agree and young homeowners and maybe if you've, and I hate to say it Mary, but the palisades  in California should have shown every American the fire can come into your town too. You're not safe just because you're in town. No. 21:27 So you've got to think about it no matter where you live. This is not just for acreages and ranches and farms. This is for everybody. Everybody.  Yes. Part of the reason that I was so hot to trot, which is a really bad way to say that right now,  to get out of where we lived before we moved here is because our neighbor's house was literally three feet  from our house. Their outside wall was three feet  from our outside wall. 21:54 And I had  nightmares about their house catching on fire and catching our house on fire or our house catching on fire and catching their house on fire. Because if one went up, the other one was going up. And I just, couldn't, I was like,  the next place we buy has to have room between homes.  And now it's like a quarter mile of room between homes. So I'm very happy about this. 22:20 And it's a hard conversation because with this wildfire risk is also the wind. And the wind is our nemesis and it blows and blows and blows and that's why people want trees and shelter belts. But you're going to have to really be smart about how you put them together and how close you put it to your house.  absolutely.  So  you have a book  that you wrote for your daughter whose birthday is today. Happy 18th birthday, Maggie. Thank you. And it's called An Apple for Dapple. 22:50 Yes.  So we had a pony. My folks purchased a pony for the ranch for the grandkids. And his name was Dapple, a little Dapple Grey pony. And when Maggie was a toddler,  before we moved home to the ranch, we were enjoying the fruits of our labors of my childhood with the planted apple orchard. And we pick apples. And then my mom said, you know, they say horses love apples. Do they really love apples? I never really fed my horses apples as a kid, but we 23:20 When we're done picking all the apples we wanted, my mom went and got Dapple and tied him to the apple trees. And that pony went to town eating the apples that fell. Oh, he'd eat them till they'd think he'd be sick.  But he was the best cleanup in the late fall when the apples fell. He'd just eat them like it was going out of style. And Maggie, as a toddler, would love, I mean, she'd just giggle. I wish I had recorded it on video. She would pick up the apples and feed them to him and he'd snatch them. 23:49 right out of her hands. So I had this idea that I wanted to write a book, a children's book, I still want to write,  and I came up with An Apple for Doppel.  And I wrote it. And when I wrote it, I wrote it as if Maggie was like Lucy's age, nine or 10.  And made the story work that way because I thought that the book would be for young readers  at school. I self-published it.  That was it. 24:17 a learning experience. had to find an illustrator because I can't draw  and launched it  with a goal of Ag advocacy, sharing my love of reading with children, educating them. I got to read at a ton of schools. I love that. Kids always wished I brought DAPL with me.  bet.  And ultimately, 24:42 Something that spoke to my heart at the time was the beginning of,  in our community,  a campaign called Little Feet Big Dreams, which was to start putting money away towards new school facilities  that were focused on the arts. And I believe writing is one of the arts. so I came up with this thought that if DAPL sold copies when I was able to cover my costs, that I could  use the proceeds. 25:08 of any books to buy more books for other children who don't have access to books or to donate to different causes.  I don't talk about it a lot because I'm  an anonymous giver uh most of the time. And  it's just something I feel strongly about because I  didn't  ever want the attention to be on me, um but just on trying to do little pockets of good where I could. 25:37 um So I just decided on a whim because I did the shirt campaign and we sent money to a bigger wildfire relief fund. But when I saw some of the first bills coming in the other night,  just in fuel costs alone for the trucks, I thought, you know, maybe we could  auction off a copy  and get enough interest I could write a check and pay for  some. 26:06 tanks of fuel and I was overwhelmed. The woman who won the her final bid was $222, which I thought, a random, funny, crazy, wild number. And I want to talk just for a second about Liz, Liz from Ohio. She's a retired teacher and her classroom number was 222. 26:36 So that was a number that was special to her.  And  she doesn't know me, and she doesn't know Nebraska. She loves red cattle. She raises a few Herefords now that she's retired. She lost her mother in December,  and she's just trying to put her own pockets of good out into the world.  it. So I was able to match her donation and take a nice check today, and it just,  well, was special because it's Maggie's birthday. Yeah, that too. 27:06 And I couldn't have done that without the overwhelming support of people buying copies of my book from me for the last,  gosh, it's been 14 years.  I'm able to save those funds and then do these pockets of  good throughout the year. it just makes my heart happy when I can help.  yet it felt like, it felt  hard because it took $500 in there with me today. And like, that's not even enough to fill a semi. 27:35 truck with one tank of  diesel. But I said, like the starfish story, it's money they didn't have before I came in here.  my mom says, every little bit helps.  So proud of you for doing that. Thank you.  You are a fabulous person. You know this, right?  I have  moments  of thinking, am I doing enough? 28:04 em using my voice  the way I should.  And  also emotional just because I hate that we have so much need right now. Like I said to the girls when I took the money in, like we just have a few normal days where there's no national crisis happening.  That would be a novel concept, wouldn't it?  Yeah. em 28:32 It would just be lovely because everyone's just so fatigued and stuff right now. So.  Yes, everyone, even our little people are tired because we're tired and it's rubbing off on them.  Can I just share another story from this week  to speak to someone that I just deeply admire and respect with my daughter's softball coach. He is such a humble man. He's fighting cancer, which is known by everyone, but he's managing it. He's persevering. 29:01 And he's pushing through his chemo to coach these little girls in softball and his own, like they had to evacuate too, right? To get out of the way, like  his wife and he kept telling their little girl at softball practice during the fire, here's the smoke billowing in the background. em It's not because our house is going to burn down, it's we're just out of the way. So the emergency workers don't need to worry about us. They can just focus on the fire and little girl. 29:27 struggling with the emotions and fear. And I mean, they're all just caught up looking at the smoke and stuff. And also like recognizing for our little people, they don't miss a thing, but also knew that keeping them busy and focused on playing softball was a really appropriate distraction from the scary stuff. So I'm just so grateful for him and his family and their home is okay. um For people to remember that. 29:54 are little people that are always watching and listening and they're not stupid. It's this fine balance of helping them be aware  enough that's age appropriate, but also protecting them in their innocence as much as possible.  Yes.  And  it's a fine line. Yeah, it is not easy at all. And mine had a 30:22 field trip today and they were going to the tree nursery and talk about Arbor Day and all of that. And I thought that was a great needed also busy distraction, something different to do, get them out of town for a little bit. Yeah, I was going to ask you, it's probably weird for what this podcast is, but I was going to ask anyway, how has Lucy been dealing with her sister doing all these 30:49 fabulous things and getting ready to go to college and stuff because that's got to be kind of weird for her. It is and she's at that tender  age where again her awareness is really  waking up  and  there have been plenty of tough moments of late and because I can see the wheels turning  and we have tried very hard in our home  to 31:19 say that no topic is off-limit. We don't dismiss or diminish someone's feelings. say feelings aren't facts. However, they are your feelings and you are entitled to them, even if they're not correct, and then we'll deal with it. Do  not get some idea that I get it right all the time because I don't. So I'm trying very hard to pay attention. Lucy is a feeler. She feels everything. I'm trying to pay attention,  and we did that, but we had a particularly hard moment  at Easter. 31:49 where the awake, and I was a first born, so I was the first one to leave. I never ever thought about how my little siblings were feeling about anything, where she had this conscientious. 32:05 She said out loud, oh oh, Maggie's going to college and holidays happen while she's at college.  Lucy's so big in family gatherings, like being together at the table and stuff. And she said,  does  that mean that Maggie gets to decide if she spends her holidays with us? Maggie wasn't present for this. um 32:33 And I was trying not to have an emotional response to that because I didn't want her to feel afraid that her sister wouldn't choose. And I had to be practical and say, yes, it's true, holidays happen while she's at college. And we have created a home that is always warm and welcoming so that Maggie, of course, would want to spend her holidays here because her mama makes the best whatever I said. 33:01 it will be her decision and we will always just be so happy when she can spend her holidays with us. it  was still, but like then it was, but what if she doesn't?  And I said, well, then we'll go to her and hunt her down.  But not- We'll make her do all the cooking. Yes. um So yes, this awareness of what kind of change is coming is there. And I do not want to diminish or dismiss it. 33:33 though I can't relate very well because I didn't go through it.  Mm-hmm.  No, I was just thinking about Lucy yesterday because I know  you and I talk a lot because we talk on the other podcast and you're my friend  and I've been listening to you talk about Maggie's things a lot  and  you're supposed to and that's totally fine but I was like I wonder how little sis is doing with all this. Yeah, little sis will have  so much fun this summer. We're gonna be able to focus on 34:03 her activities and big sister being present for them for some new things. She's trying like playing softball.  yet I know it's going to be rough  because there's such an age difference that Maggie is Lucy's second mother. I mean, she just is and yet they share everything. em And so, yes. 34:33 It's the whole thing. And my husband also is an oldest, so he doesn't really have experience. I was close in age with my younger siblings. I mean, they flew the coop not long after me. And I think the second big piece that's coming for me is finding my newer adjusted identity also after the roles. 35:00 I've played change again.  Yep. And I guess it isn't weird to ask about this because everybody has similarities and  anyone who's a mother is going to go through this.  know, being a mother is  something I always wanted to do. Yeah. And being an involved mom who had my kids 35:29 in service organizations and participate in lots of things  was important to me. I thought it was important to trying to be a well-rounded person. I am not a helicopter mom. I'm not their problem solver. I oh am an assistant when needed. um She's kept me very busy because she has been a very involved student by choice. And so yeah, there is going to be a period of adjustment where I 35:59 I  get to shift the time I gave to that thing  to something else. Yes, some of it will be because I'm going to do a lot of the same things with Lucy in her own unique flair, but some of it isn't, we're not there yet because Lucy's so much younger.  That it will be a period of adjustment for me in particular, not the husband quite so much though he'll have some. um 36:27 do know there are lot of women who have struggled in this season of life.  Why did it always hit two during like paramenopause or menopause, which probably compounds it,  but for every woman out there who has been a mom, there is a shift and change in your roles. And if you deny it or you don't  maybe get help through it, if you're not coping very well, I can see why marriages struggle, friendships struggle, work struggles, your health. 36:58 Um, it's a huge deal and we don't, I don't know that we talk enough about it and I have more compassion for my mother, the older I get about how her rules adjusted. Cause she was very much the same serving, giving, volunteering, helping, you know, going to the field trips and  making the cookies and different things. And that like, who am I if I'm not mom, who am I? Because. 37:28 when you're in the trenches of motherhood, it does feel like your identity and whether that's right or wrong we can debate, but a lot of moms found themselves in places where there wasn't much left over time for them.  And then suddenly they had this time and they're like, but I don't know who I am. I don't know what I even like to do. What do I like to do that's just for me? And is that selfish to take that time?  And that's why I have two podcasts, Leo. 37:57 You've channeled it for the good,  which is what I hope to do.  Yes.  And you dipped your feet in the public speaking world this year, so maybe you'll keep doing that too. Yeah. I hope so. And I hope and I believe my daughter knows that I'm always a phone caller text away and that I will be moming her in the appropriate sense from 38:26 250 miles away. I think she'll come home when she can because she loves her little sister and wants to watch her from the bleachers like her little sister has always done for her.  So I hope so. I'm very close to my nephews as well who are both flying the coop and so it'll be a big period of change for my sister as well. It'll be an empty nester. So I look forward to getting to 38:56 having some time, I've just 38:59 I've just been in this role for 18 years today.  Darling,  I know. 39:08 Believe me, I know.  And  I wasn't gonna cry either, but here we go. The thing is you  get adjusted to it. I'm not kidding. um Talked to my daughter the other day  and she just called because we hadn't talked in a week or two. And I thought that was really sweet. And then she sent me a tech, a instant message or whatever they're called on Facebook.  And she was like, I wrote this thing. I'm thinking about posting online. Can you? 39:37 read it and let me know what you think. And my heart just went, yes. Oh, she loves her mama. And then she deleted it because we decided she hated it because I didn't get the time. Oh, sweetheart. I was like, well, crap, I really would have liked to have seen what you wrote, but that's fine. Oh, she's decided she's going to do an art piece to represent what she wanted to say instead. 40:07 And the other thing is my mom is 79 years old and she still is moming me in the appropriate ways. So it never ends.  And it's just, I think it's the emotion today,  is it just went so fast.  Yep. It just went so fast.  The good news is it's not over. It's not.  It's just different.  It's just different. 40:37 And you  may be lucky enough to have grandbabies someday.  I'm not going to have biological grandbabies. My  kids do not want babies.  And I think it's because of their youngest brother. I think because they were all  old enough to remember the sleepless nights, they don't want to do it. 41:04 So,  gosh, that's  a whole thing thinking of that. My mother transitioned into being a fantastic grandma, it was easy, like she was made for that and she's such a fantastic grandma. And I'm  so grateful. um I know, like women just, it's just hard for us to get out of our own way sometimes and let things be. 41:34 knowing there's just, there is enough goodness to go around. There is enough need and want to go around and hobbies and interests and work, careers, whatever you want it to be. There is enough, you don't need to  worry about that, but you do need to be open, you have to open your heart and your mind, which is very hard to do when you're fragile, like I am today. Cause you can't imagine that change. 42:01 Yep, but you've got people rooting for you and I'm one of them.  Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. um So  we got a little bit off topic, but I feel like a lot of people, women especially, are going through this right now. So why not put it out there? Yes.  People can find you at Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook and Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Instagram.  And they can find you and I at 42:29 Britain Grace and the Heartland Women in Agriculture podcast.  And people can find me at a Tiny Homestead podcast.  And that's all I got. Thank you for taking the time to visit with me. Yes, and keep up the good work. Amazing, important work.  And it has just been the joy of my year to join you in helping elevate these stories of amazing women from across  this great country. So many stories to be shared will never run out of stories to share. 42:58 I'm so grateful that you asked me.  I'm so grateful to have made a new friend in you.  Like this. And I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I hope Maggie's birthday party is amazing. Oh, we're having Shirley temples in Lasagna. You just can't beat that.  Oh,  man, if I could teleport, I'd be there. Anytime. There's always an extra  space for you. And it rained when we had her for three days. And so she even said, I'd be just fine with getting. 43:27 lots of rain,  if we could be blessed with some rain, that would be amazing. She'd love to have a campfire. Most of my girls love roasting marshmallows and I'm like, if we get three days of rain, we can.  I appreciate my kids are em able to show gratitude for like just the  the smallest trivial things. They're very sentimental like that. so yeah, our special memories are  a lot of times at the campfire. So we'd love some rain so we could have a campfire. 43:56 I'd love some rain for you for many, many reasons, the least of which is a campfire.  you. But anyway, please just soak it all up and enjoy it. And  don't cry in front of Maggie if you can help it. Cry with Matt. Yes. Thank you. Good advice. I appreciate that very much. Because otherwise she's going to think that you're miserable and you're not miserable. You are just stretching. I'm just stretching. Yes. And stretching is painful sometimes. 44:26 Damn right.  All right. Thank you so much for your time, Leah. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mary.  

Today I'm talking with Ryan at The Tiny Life. Ryan's newest book - Living Off Grid: 50 Steps to Unplug, Become Self-Sufficient, and Build the Homestead of Your Dreams A Tiny Homestead Podcast 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 listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose. 00:29 At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. A tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Ryan Mitchell at the Tiny Life in the Carolinas. Good afternoon, Ryan. How are you?  Good. Thanks for having me.  Oh, you're welcome. I'm  so thrilled to get a chance to talk to you because I had 00:58 Sent an email to you, I think a year and a half ago, and I didn't hear anything back. And then your person, because you have people, I don't have people. Yeah, there's a few of us. Your person emailed me and reached out and I was like, yes, finally I get to talk to you. Yeah. All right. So how is the weather where you are? It's good. Yeah. So I'm located in the, I say the Carolinas. So we are, my tiny house is in 01:27 North Carolina and we moved on to a homestead about a little less than a year ago. ah And then I live with my girlfriend in South Carolina. And so we're kind of gearing up the homestead to make the transition over to that. So that's why I kind of say, you know, I have one foot in both places right now as we make that transition. How far is it from where your girlfriend is to the tiny home?  About 30 minutes. 01:55 Oh, so close. You're real. Yeah. Yeah. And I was living, you know, obviously full time  in the tiny house when I met her. And then, you know, when we decided that uh we were going to, you know, continue the relationship and it kind of went to the next level and everything  that I was probably moving in with her because she had  her  two dogs, a Liz, two lizards, a spider and a 02:22 a snake, that was not going to fit into the tiny house at all. has a full house of critters.  It sure does. Well, I'm in Minnesota and I'm going to tell you right now, it's hotter than I would like it to be for April 22nd. Yes, yes. It is, I think it's 77 outside right now. And thank God there's a breeze because if there wasn't, it would be disgusting already because  Minnesota is really weird. You would think that 77 would just feel good. 02:52 It doesn't, it feels hot in April. 02:57 So, but at least it's not snowing. Yeah. Cause it could be doing that too. And I'd rather have this than snow cause I'm over it. It was a very,  it was a very moderate winter, but it seemed like a very long winter.  I'm  good on snow for the season.  Um, so I have a quick question about  where your, um, your tiny house is located. Is, is stuff has, has stuff been greened up for you? 03:26 for weeks now because you're so far south. 03:30 Sorry, ask that question one more time. Has stuff been green up? how are the trees leaving out? Yeah, like in the last two weeks, things have really kind of taken off. You know, we've had some warmer days, some really nice days, like low humidity, which is  not typical for us.  So yeah, things are starting to green up.  We just had our last frost date a couple days ago. So, you know, we're busy in the garden and things like that. m Get ready for spring and summer. 04:00 We have another month before our last frost date. But that doesn't stop the greenhouse from getting planted. That's true. Yeah, we have  that benefit of  long growing seasons. if you're really on  the spot, can sometimes cram two  rounds of crops.  And if  you're choosing shorter varieties that 04:28 you know, take a little bit less time to come to maturity. then, you know, during the winter, you have quite a few options if you have a greenhouse or you're going to do, you know, low tunnels or something like that. Mm hmm. Yep. We're starting a brand new to us variety of watermelon this year. We've never done it before. It's called a mini me and personal size watermelon. It's got a 60 day maturity. 04:58 Wow. Time frame. And my husband planted them,  I want to say two weekends ago.  And we have sprouts already and I'm so excited to see how these do because growing the big watermelons in Minnesota does not work very well because our growing season is so short. Yeah. Yeah. So hoping to have watermelons in  end of June, first part of July. 05:26 Excited so excited because I love love love watermelon and if they do well I want to grow a bunch of them again next year so we can sell them at the first farmers market in June. We'll plan.  I've never had much luck with any melons because the squirrels always get at them before they're ready and it always seems like I'm like, okay, I'm gonna pick it  one more day and we one more day on the vine and then I'll pick it and then that night something gets every time. 05:53 Huh, we,  it's weird, we don't have a lot of squirrels on our property. I don't know why, I think I've seen two in five years. Oh wow. So they just,  don't think they have a food source that is a natural food source for them, so they just don't live here. And we're surrounded by corn fields and soybean fields and alfalfa fields, and I don't think that squirrels are very happy with that,  so. 06:22 All right, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do, Ryan. Sure.  So my name is Ryan Mitchell.  I run the tiny life dot com and we focus on a simple living in kind of three different lenses.  The first one is tiny houses.  So, you know, small homes. uh Typically for one person, you're looking at two to three hundred square feet. 06:47 You know for a family, a small family, you might be looking at thousand, fifteen hundred, just depending on your needs, things like that. Then minimalism, which is basically, you know, thinking intentionally about the way that you live and your interaction with consumerism, what you buy, and just, you know, making sure that the things you own don't start to own you and just being, you know, kind of crafting that intentional life around what's important to you. 07:16 And the last one is home setting home setting, obviously, you know, very familiar to you. Uh, and that's a, a newer  kind of park tour or website we've been doing for about two years now.  Uh, but it's not new to me. I've been, you know, growing food, chickens, quails, bees, you, you name it,  um,  for  at  least a decade, um, if not more. Uh, so. 07:42 Yeah, we kind of focus on those three topics at the website. um, you know, why I'm speaking to you today is because we have a new book coming out. It's called living off the grid, 50 steps to unplug, become self-sufficient and build the home set of your dreams. And that basically was the book that I wish I had when I was kind of, uh, you know, going through my own journey, uh, with a lot of like practical steps, uh, of how to think about how to develop a plan. 08:12 how to make a homestead that's right for you,  and not just kind of adopting someone else's pre-packaged plan of or definition of what it means to be a homesteader. So yeah, that's kind of a little bit about me and our background.  Awesome. So I have to ask you, how do you define homesteading? And I will tell you how I define it first, and then you can tell me if you think it's accurate.  I think that homesteading is a  lifestyle choice 08:41 It is not owning 100 cows and 100 acres of land. How do you define homesteading? Yeah,  I think for me,  I do this also with a tiny house. I don't get too dogmatic about the number of square feet. You some people get very firm about like, it has to be under a certain square footage.  And I think with homesteading, um what's important is  coming up with your own definition. 09:08 definition and you know kind of defining that path for yourself.  So for me,  what my kind of personal definition is, is just thinking about ways that you  rely on external systems that could be the grid, that could be food systems,  that could be the store,  you know, different things like that, entertainment, all that kind of stuff.  And,  you know, thinking about those kind of points of weakness  or 09:37 Kind critical areas that  you maybe rely a little too heavily on and then trying to shore those up trying to replace some of those or bring those a little bit closer to you and that could be as much as like bringing, you know, getting off the grid,  bring solar to your home set and doing all that kind of stuff. It could be  growing your own food. It could be, you know, having a cow or two. It could be a whole, you know, herd of cattle or it could just be working with uh 10:05 the rancher down the street to buy,  you know, half a cow  and put that away in your freezer. So,  um,  yeah, in the book, I kind of walked through some thought exercises about like how people can think about this. And, and the thing that I've just seen over the years,  time and time again, is that people tend to say like, okay, in my head, home setting is this,  and it's usually someone else's definition.  And they adopt it  as almost like, 10:36 The rule and there there is no rules right like you can make this lifestyle whatever you want it to be and then they they tend to back themselves into a corner and figure out that oh don't really want this they'll get you know 10 20 30 50 100 cattle and then realize like oh I can never leave this house because I always have to be watching the cattle or milking the cows or. 11:02 or whatever the daily chores are constantly and I can never go on a vacation.  So yeah, that's why I've always kind of said like, it's important to sit down and define your own definition. Yep,  absolutely. I just, it's so funny because I was just interviewed by Cody Hanner at the Homestead Education Podcast  and I just heard it today. I was interviewed by her three weeks ago, I think it was, and  she was asking, 11:32 me about how we got started. And I was like, the honest answer is I just needed quiet. I just needed to not live in town anymore.  Yeah. And we started at 50 and my husband and I are 56 now. We bought our homestead when we were 50.  And she said, I love that the first thing you answered with is that you started, you bought your homestead when you were 50  because you, 11:58 doesn't matter how old you are, if you are sound of body and mind,  you can make it go. And I was like, yes, you can. I said, just realize that  sound of body may be a little less  definitive than it used to be. And she laughed. So yeah. And as for the tiny house thing, I used to refer to the old house as a tiny house.  was a three bedroom, one bathroom home on a 10th of an acre in town.  And the realtor 12:27 listing said that it was 850 square feet. And I believe it because I raised four kids in that house with my husband. That's tiny house for a family of six. Yes, yeah, definitely. Yeah. And my husband was very taken with the idea of actual tiny houses. When we got old and our kids were out of our small house and I was just like, no freaking way. Yeah. No. 12:55 You value your quiet, I value my quiet and us being literally in the same space all the time will have us divorced in a year.  So instead of doing that, we bought a three acre place with a 1400 square foot house on it. big.  So it's all how you look at it. It's all what you need to be happy.  Agreed. 13:23 So having said all that, I have a question about your tiny house. house. How big is it? So my tiny house is 149 square feet and then a sleeping loft. Okay. And is it on an acre? Is it on a couple of acres? So it's on a friend's property and that's 20 acres. 13:51 Okay.  It's gorgeous woods  and I got extremely lucky because it's in a this, this acreage is in the middle  of the city. like I would, you know, be, you know, doing just life and work and all that kind of stuff in the city. And then I would come home ah to my tiny house  and it was just on this acreage  that has this pond on it that 14:19 like is a spitting image of Walden Pond. And so it was like this little oasis in the city. And it was wonderful to live in. does it feel like camping when you're there? Or does it feel like home? I mean, I think initially it did kind of feel like camping. And also it was a long journey for me to get there. You know, I started back in 2009. 14:48 Uh, in the, when kind of the downturn happened and I  had made a decision like, I tell me that you change because I was just starting my career back then  and  the company that I was  working for closed and I was only six months into my career and I was already getting laid off with the whole, you everyone else in the company. was like, um,  maybe this wasn't the bill of goods that I was sold  when I was signed up for  college and all that kind of stuff. So. 15:18 I did some thinking about it and I worked a long time and in 2012 I moved into it. And so yeah, I did feel a little bit like camping in beginning. But then I kind of settled in and what I realized was it was probably one of the more comfortable homes that I've ever lived in because it was designed for me. Traditional homes are designed to maximize for resale value, not for 15:46 people or not for families. They're  a asset. They're not a home, which is a really sad state of affairs. But I also understand why, you know, like these homes are expensive. They're usually people's largest asset that they own.  So they have to be able to cash out at some point in the future  for, you know, their needs, their retirement, things like that. uh But  yeah, once I kind of settled in  and got comfortable in it, 16:15 It definitely  felt like a regular house. uh I was also younger  and  was out and active and doing things.  At that time I owned a business, so I was going to that physical location  most days of the week  while building up that business. uh It was just a nice little respite away from the big city. 16:43 Yeah, that's how I felt  when we moved because I had just had it with all the noise and the church bells and the train that went through town daily. All the noise was driving me insane. And when we moved here, we live on a pretty busy road because it goes from one town to another and the semis go by a lot because, you know, spring season they're hauling tractors and in the fall season they're hauling corn. 17:12 But you get used to that. That's part of it. But I'm not,  I'm not hearing the Catholic Church's bells toll three, four times a day. I'm not hearing cars go speeding up my road. I'm not hearing  all the things that drove me crazy.  it,  we basically bought the place that we wanted, that we really, really wanted.  And 17:39 It feels like we don't ever want to go on vacation because living here feels like vacation, even though we have chickens and cats and a dog and a big garden. So whatever makes you happy is what you need to do. And as I've said quite a few times on my podcast, not everybody is cut out to live in the middle of the cornfields and alfalfa fields and soybean fields. 18:08 There are a lot of people who really love living in the city. And if that's what floats your boat,  do that. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. You  know, we are our South Carolina home is right next to the  the big city that we live nearby.  And  we love both places. We have family here.  So, you know, this is a convenient place close to all of our family. And then we also really love the mountain. 18:38 um And  that's this nice little quiet  place that  is away from everything. um And so that... 18:50 that dichotomy or that juxtaposition, I guess you could say  of the big city, kind of the city house and the mountain house has been really nice.  um,  and you can do  home setting and  all those kinds of things going off grid, even in, you know, more urban locations or suburban, because, uh, getting back to  the earlier point of like make, define a home setting for the way that you want it to be. If 19:20 If you do want to be very social and  have things nearby, like lots of restaurants and concerts or whatever your thing is,  you can  have your cake and eat it too. You can live in  a place that's a little bit closer to town. You may have some smaller acreage. You may uh be just working on a patio out of like container gardening. 19:47 But you may be to do other things. So everything's a give and take and you kind of think about it that way. Yep, absolutely. When we lived in town, we had four chickens in a garden shed. We made it into a chicken coop.  And we had, I don't know,  I would say 50 by 20 square feet of garden in the backyard. That was it. Yeah. And we had more than most people in our neighborhood. So that was great. And we grew lots and lots of really good produce. 20:16 and shared it with the neighbors. And it was wonderful, but I just didn't want to be in town anymore. we decided to jump in 2020 and we're not sorry that we did it. So you said you're getting into homesteading. So what are you doing? What have you started doing for homesteading? Yeah. So I'm kind of bringing it more as like we're getting back to homesteading. 20:45 Um, when I  lived before the  tiny house,  you say I had a big garden. had like a third of an acre garden in ground  and  bees and chickens and quail,  um,  and  doing a few other things like that, canning, all that kind of stuff. And at that time, uh, I was at least part of it. I was in an apartment, so I was able to do all that at a community garden. 21:15 And, uh you know,  so I didn't even have to have the land and the cost was like 150 bucks a year to me  to just kind of get access to that. And then you had community alongside of it and, you know, fun activities to do and people to talk to and whatever. uh But then  now  we're kind of thinking about,  OK, you know, what are the things that  we want to do right now  while we are? 21:42 kind of in two places, you know, there's certain practicalities like we're likely not going to be able to have livestock if we have to be away for a couple weeks at a time, let's just say. um But we could, you know, have a garden, especially raised beds where we kind of do heavy mulching and things like that.  We could have bees, we can do solar, you know, there's certain things that  are practical there. um So 22:11 I think right now we kind of have developed a loose plan. We've gone on the land,  we've got the  house kind set up. One of the first things I did was build out a workshop to kind of be the jumping off point to  do all the other things. you know, having a place to build stuff, the materials on hand, the tools on hand.  in the book I talk about kind of orders of operation  when it comes to home setting and 22:40 Workshop is kind of a key step after you've got your basic necessities nailed down like your shelter your water your sewage things electricity things like that So now that we have the workshop now, we're kind of We've been taking a little bit of time to kind of learn the land through the different seasons and That's been nice to one just enjoy the land. But then to we've learned a lot about okay, you know, it's 23:09 When it rains heavy, it pulls here.  When it gets a little cold, you have these cold wells and these little spots.  The animals um that are around kind of come from this direction. So maybe we're not going to clear that way so we can leave their habitat. Things like that. The sun  angles and the shadows and all that kind of stuff that you learn throughout the year. 23:35 So we're kind of coming to an end of just like learning the land a little bit. And now we're setting plans for the next things, mainly as the garden. We had to do some infrastructure work and we're still working on that. Just getting water where we want it to, power where we want it to be on the house. We took down an old barn just a couple of weeks ago so that we could put our kind of large garden. 24:05 Uh, area we're going to do all raised beds  and  put our, our trees and our,  uh, beehives in it and then kind of fence the whole thing. with some,  uh, electric fence, because we have  several bears on property.  you know,  they love to munch on those,  uh, you know, you have to watch out for bears knocking over your hives to get the honey and things like that. So yeah, that's been kind of  the workflow so far is getting on the land. 24:35 getting a few key things established, learning it, and then setting plans for what's next. That is so exciting. I'm listening to you and you have just got to be chomping at the bit to see how this goes.  Yeah, yeah. There's a long list. Well, I sat down  like a year ago and just like made a list of like, okay, these are all the things that I want to get done. And they were kind of the smaller steps in between. 25:03 And then I ordered them and then I assigned dollar values because, you know, certain things cost, you know, for materials or whatever. And  I was like, oh, okay, I'm definitely not going to be doing this and all in the next year.  So how do I want to go about this? And so just kind of thinking through all the steps um was really exciting. And  also, you know, it allowed me to kind of prioritize things um and kind of paint that vision too. 25:33 Yeah, I've said a lot of times on the podcast, start small, dream big.  And I stand by it because unless you are a millionaire, you can't do all the things all at once.  It's not affordable. Well, and even if you are a millionaire, like it takes time. It's all going to take time. Like there's a lot of work. There's a lot of moving pieces.  you know, ah 25:59 I'm not going say having money is a bad thing, but like it also isn't the panacea for um kind of standing up a homestead that it could be. There's still a lot of work, time, effort and planning.  And I think frankly, you know, being a little bit more budget conscious, thinking about your dollars and things like that,  it slows you down just enough to make sure that you don't make any critical mistakes and you really think through your decisions.  I think that's an important part um that 26:29 kind in the book I laid out some of the  kind of the common mistakes I see people make in their journeys. And  so yeah, I think it's just important to kind of take your time with it for sure. Start small, 100%. When I that the community garden for many years, I ran myself.  I was kind of like the head person once  I got kind of involved with it. And  every year I would have  probably like 26:57 20 to 30 new gardeners come in and they always had big aspirations.  And I would always kind of coach them. like, okay, let's start small. Let's give you a hundred square feet. Let's start there.  And,  and you know, sometimes they would push back us like trust, know, just trust the process here. When it's August and it's miserable out and you have a bunch of weeds coming in, like you want it to be approachable and practical so that you're not just hating life as you're, you know, trying to weed. 27:26 way more garden than you're used to. And every time it's worked out for them and they agreed in the end. And those who didn't heed the advice always ended up with a garden full of weeds that they couldn't keep up with. yeah, small, starting that way is definitely the way to go, even if you're experienced. Yes, exactly. And I'm going to use chickens as an example. 27:55 If my husband had his way, we would have 200 chickens. He learned after we got up to about 36 chickens that having about 14 to 15 is a good number because there's enough eggs for us and there's enough eggs to sell to the neighbors in the farm stand. Yeah. Because 150 to 200 chickens, that's a lot of chicken coop cleaning out to do every week. Yeah. 28:25 Yeah.  And you need to have an outlet for those eggs, right? Like you're not going to,  if you never,  if you haven't had a business, even a small side kind of thing, uh, selling eggs, like you're not going to go from zero to a hundred as much as you want. Um, and unless, I don't know, unless you just have a particularly good location or you're really tapping in heavily into  farmers markets, but there's probably already people there selling kind of the same goods that you have.  yeah.  Um, 28:55 I think the most I ever had was about 15 chickens and  that was about right  for us at the time. Yeah.  And  honestly,  we did have, I think it was two, I  think it was last spring. I think we had 26 chickens  and now we're down to 14.  That's because chickens get um eaten by raccoons. Yeah. 29:24 Or they just get sick without any notice, keel over and die. So old, you know, all those things. Absolutely. Yep. So if I was going to give anybody advice and I shouldn't, cause I don't know anything, I know enough to be dangerous, but if I was going to give people advice about chickens, I would say start with like five and see how it goes. And if you actually like taking care of them and then you can always add more. 29:54 Yeah. So, so I try to keep these to half an hour, but I do have one last question.  How long did it take you to write your book and get it published? Let's  see. So this book, I had already had a publisher lined up and basically we worked with  Prince and Press  to kind of come up with a book concept. They wanted to be in this space. 30:23 They liked my writing because they saw it through the website, the timeline.com. uh, so I've always been fortunate to always have a publisher and not have to like shop a book around. So I've never actually done that before, but, uh, so I had that on my side and then I focused on it for, uh, about six months. It was basically every single weekend, uh, because I work, you know, like, um, you know, 30:51 Part of my own stuff consulting and then like a day job too. So I was doing a weekend and nights and things like that. So yeah, about six months of nights and weekends. Okay. So not, not forever, but it definitely took some time. Yeah. I mean, uh, this is probably one of my, I don't know. This is I think 60,000 words. So it was about middle of the road for my books and um, 31:19 He's this is my ninth book  and yeah, it's a lot of words and then you have to edit it too. So we spent, you know, three months editing as well  on top of that. then, you know, kind of going to press and all that kind of stuff.  yeah, I mean, I always enjoyed the process. It's something that I  found that I really enjoy through the years,  the tiny life and through all the other books I've written as well.  And I was really excited to work on this one because it was 31:49 Like said, the book that I wish I had handed to me when I first started. I'm sure people are going to appreciate everything in it because if it was the book you wanted, it's the book they probably want now. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Ryan, thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you? Yeah. So I appreciate the time and the conversation. For those who are interested, we're at thetinylife.com. 32:17 And  in the store, you can find a link to the book as well.  But the book is available at your local bookstores,  all major retailers online,  and a bunch of indie kind of mom and pop bookstores in  stores as well. The title is called Living Off the Grid by Ryan Mitchell.  And I appreciate the time. Thank you so much, Mary. Are you on social media anywhere? Oh, we have presence there. 32:46 We don't do a ton of social media anymore. We mainly focus on the website and our email So if people want to kind of like really stay in touch with us  I would encourage them to you know Just go to the website sign up with our newsletter and we'll kind of keep you in the loop on stuff  All right fabulous  as always people can find me at a tiny homestead podcast calm  Ryan. This was really fun. Thanks so much. Thank you. Have a great day    

Today I'm talking with Leah at Bauer Family Farms.  A Tiny Homestead Podcast 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. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose. 00:29 At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. That tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Leah Bauer at Bauer Family Farms in  Faribault, Minnesota.  Good afternoon, Leah. How are you? Doing well. I got most of my chores out of the way, so I'm... 00:56 sitting pretty with a nice coffee in my house and ready to chit chat about farm life.  Good.  And normally I would say, how's the weather? But you and I both know it is a gloriously beautiful day in Minnesota today.  Compared to yesterday, yes.  Yeah. And Saturday, Saturday, we got snow in the morning. Right. It was enough to to build up on the grass where we were at. We're we just had unhooked our our plow and everything and got it put away for the 01:26 spring, which those couple of 80 degree days really, really had me going for a second there. Yeah. And I just said that wrong Sunday. It was yesterday morning. I'm not quite with it. Oh, you're right. Yeah. It was yesterday morning because I was up at five and at 515, I went out on the porch with my coffee and looked outside and I was like, I will be damned. It's snowing big white feathery flakes. Right. Which is not what you want to see once you've already had what? Five 80 degree days? Yeah. 01:55 Yeah, it's  spring in Minnesota. Doesn't know what it's doing.  Oh,  it's coming. It's all going to be okay. Our rhubarb is leafing. Our tree line is leafing. My peonies are  up. They haven't budded yet. Thank God, because they'd be  useless if they had, because the snow would have killed them. We have um tulips up with buds on them. They haven't opened yet. um 02:24 The tree has not bloomed yet. The apple trees have not bloomed yet. So that's good news too. We have about  500 cloves of garlic planted that are, I think like eight inches tall already. Wow. I know I'm so excited. We started,  I think in 2023, we planted 80 cloves from a neighbor  and the plan was to just  multiply it, you know, cause garlic is 02:50 It's one of those things that if you plant one, then you usually get five to eight cloves back at the end of the season. Oh yeah. And so started with 80 and then replanted everything. And now we've got 500. So when we harvest, we should have 3000 or 4000 cloves to plant again at the end of this year. I am so jealous because we can't grow garlic here to save our lives. The dirt's too heavy, too black. You have more of a clay soil. 03:20 Yes.  Yes, we do. That sucks. Garlic likes  soft soil, kind of a loamy almost so that it has room to expand. Yeah, I asked my husband if we should just put in a raised bed and, you know, make the soil what the garlic would like. And he said, yeah, we could do that. And we haven't done it yet.  It's easy to to get all of the dreams together. 03:47 But then once it actually comes to putting the supplies together, that's a different story. Well, we're just not sure that we need to grow garlic because lots of people grow garlic in Minnesota.  And he really loves growing tomatoes, so he puts all his focus on tomatoes. 04:06 I think  it was 2024 that  we did a ton of tomatoes  and I still have some in the freezer. We just,  we don't need a ton of them. And some other family in Wasika actually grows a greenhouse load of them. So they  cover us for that and we're going to stick with garlic, I think. It's lot of fun. Yeah. And garlic is like God's gift to cooking. So keep growing garlic, please. 04:35 Yes, absolutely. We're hoping to put it in the farm stand if we get any  smaller heads that aren't suitable for planting at the end of this year. Yes. So we kind of jumped the gun here.  How about you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came to be farming and what you do? Right. So we  just kind of started up the farm and the farm page this year, but I do have  a rural 05:05 background and grew up out in the country.  Always had chickens when I was younger, but never really  cattle or  any other types of poultry or pork. ah So we're just really getting into it again, after a  few years hiatus  and  jumping in with both feet, you know, starting  chickens again, I have about 125 egg laying chickens. 05:34 Very nice.  And I have  six New Zealand doe rabbits  and one buck. And we're hoping to get some quail eggs in the incubator soon, along with  hopefully doing cut flowers for the farm stand  and lots of vegetables.  I love a big garden and I do a lot of canning myself. And so most of it's for my own shelves. But I'm hoping to get my cottage license here soon and I'll be able to sell  my canned goods. 06:04 Yes, do that. Cause I think it's still free. Oh yeah. To get the cottage license. It's  I've from  the women around me that have applied and gotten approved. said that the process is fairly easy.  It's super easy. have to renew mine and basically the website has a bunch of information you read through it. And then there's a  quiz. It's like 10 questions and you have to get seven or eight correct. Right. 06:33 I mean, it almost sounds too easy. Anybody could do it, but maybe that's the point. Yes. Yes. And the thing is, if you don't love to cook, you're not going to bother to get your cottage registration. So I think it's fine. But yes, we we have a farm stand on our place too. And my intention over the next month or so is to start cooking some start cooking, start baking some cookies and get them packaged up and out there because 06:59 People are stopping in for eggs anyway. And if there's like a little box of six cookies out there for eight bucks, maybe they'll buy them. Who knows? Oh yeah. I'm pretty terrible at the impulse buys. And so that would get me a hundred percent. Yes. And my cookies are way better than store-bought cookies. I promise. That rings true for, I think, at least 99 % of farm goods. 07:27 Why buy it in the store when your neighbor can make it and you can barter for it or...  And it doesn't have preservatives in it. You're right. Exactly. Five ingredients compared to a paragraph. Yes. And thank God for that because the labels would be impossible to create. So  our neighbor, um the lady that I do the farm stand with, her name is Summer and her cottage name is Summer Flowers. It's kind of a play on words. 07:57 Cute. so she does all of the cottage baking and she is incredible at it. I mean, she's she truly has a gift. I'm looking at uh jalapeno cheddar and cinnamon raisin loaves right now that I snagged  from the weekend.  And so she does a lot of  the cottage baking and I am going to supply cut flowers, fresh produce  and farm fresh eggs at the farm stand. So it's kind of a 08:27 oh co-operation with the farm stand. But it's been a lot of fun so far. We've only been open, I think, three weekends now on Saturdays and Sundays.  Nice. So do you get a lot of traffic in there? Yes. They  have a gorgeous property and  it's a little brick building that I think used to be like a pump house or a garden shed or something, but  it was  repurposed  beautifully into what the farm stand is now. 08:56 but lots of, uh, not nitpicking, but we'll change little things about it as the season goes. Yes. You'll have to re revamp it as the season goes. Right. Fresh pangy,  um, some decorations. I've saved seeds from when I grew  marigolds  last year and I have like a gallon bag full of marigold seeds that I just plan on kind of sprinkling everywhere.  That'll be really pretty. 09:26 Marigolds are great for  chicken eggs too.  I don't know the exact science behind it, but they're supposed to lower the cholesterol  in chicken eggs, along with making the yolks darker. If the chickens eat the blooms? Both flowers  and the greenery on the plant too, I believe.  Cool. I didn't know that. I will have to let my husband know that. That would be really cool to plant some marigolds for them. Right.  I inherited a 09:55 gallon bag of expired seeds from my mom  and was just kind of chaos planting everything because why not? You know, if it grows, it grows and I can separate it and put it where it belongs or it doesn't grow and becomes fertilizer. You know, one way or the other, it'll do okay.  But so I planted like eight packets worth of marigold seeds in like a two by two square. 10:25 in one of my planting boxes and all of them germinated and it just became this super dense marigold bush that got like three feet tall.  bet it was gorgeous. Oh, you could smell it from  a mile away. It was great. But so I saved all the seeds from that and I'll plant them around our chicken pasture this year. Your chickens are going to love you.  I really hope so. Yeah. ah 10:54 So  because we're talking  about the farm stand thing, I have a question for you. Do you know what scones are? S-C-O-N-E-S? Yes.  Summer makes  like blueberry white chocolate chip scones that are to die for. Okay. Are they like the ones at the grocery store that are really flat and dense or are they the ones that are fluffy? Oh, they're fluffy. They're so nice. Okay. 11:23 The reason I ask is because one of things I'm thinking about baking and putting in the farm stand is scones. Because I make a really flaky, fluffy scone. And I'm not sure that people will even know what they are because the only scones I've seen for sale in Minnesota  are the ones at the grocery store that are flat and dense. 11:44 Well, if your farm stand has a decent, I mean, you are on Facebook for the farm stand, right? Yes. I would just post them on Facebook first to gauge interest, maybe. I love those videos where people like take their sourdough loaf and split it in half and then like slowly open it to show the crumb. And squish it so it crackles. Yes, you could do that with the scones to show that they're not. 12:14 dense kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I was so flabbergasted when I, when I bought scones at the store the first time I was like, these are terrible.  same thing has been going for the  sourdough English muffins. The ones that I just bought at Aldi like a month ago are  so small and so sad and so thin. 12:42 And the ones that I am looking at in front of me are like an inch thick and they're fluffy. You'll, you'll never go back once you have one. Yes. And that's the other thing I wanted to, I wanted to bring up since we're talking about this particular subject,  everybody has their own magic when they cook. And if you're, if you're a good cook, that magic can't help, but be infused into the food.  So. 13:09 One person can make a scone and another person can make a scone  and they can be  absolutely wonderful and delicious,  but they're going to be different because two different people made them. I've always kind of wondered if different sourdough bakers, if their starters have like a different. I don't know, flavor or like base to them.  I don't think so. I think what's different, I think it's just water and flour. 13:38 I mean, it could be different kind of flour, obviously, but it's water and flour. What it is that every home has a different environment. What's in the air? Oh, interesting. And so that's what makes it different. But I also think that it's how the person actually makes whatever they're making out of the starter, how they make the bread or the pizza dough or whatever. Right. I know I've followed a recipe before where if you don't mix all the dry ingredients before you 14:07 add the wet ingredients, then that can change the entire outcome. Yeah, chemistry is amazing. 14:15 Chemistry is a pain in the butt, but it's also amazing. Right. It wasn't my forte in high school. I'll admit that. Yeah, I was okay with chemistry and biology. Physics was the one that kicked my butt. I don't think I ever made it to physics. I really loved uh reading, literature, English,  writing. I loved all that stuff. Yeah, that was more my thing. I'm good at math. I just don't enjoy it at all. And physics is a lot of math. 14:43 So that's probably why physics was very hard for me. Algebra was easy.  was,  I think geometry is what sucked. Once you get into like the cosine and tangent and that kind of stuff, that's where it tripped me up a little bit. Yeah. And what's funny is as a homesteader or a farmer, we all tend to use geometry without even thinking about it.  Right. But it's because it's practically applied geometry. 15:14 I know that every teacher that told me that I wouldn't have a calculator in real life was absolutely wrong. Yeah, funny how that worked out.  You're not always going to have a calculator a hundred years later. Oh, really? Right. I have one right here in my pocket.  And not only do I have that in the same device, I have a camera  and a video camera  and a way to access the answer to any question ever asked by any man ever. 15:43 It's  terrible, but it is true. It's real handy though.  I do believe that thinking for yourself is important, but having answers easily available is also  so much more convenient. Yes, like why is my dog scratching at her ear? Oh, she might have ear mites. What can I do about ear mites?  You can put olive oil in a Q-tip and put it inside of her ear and it will kill the ear mites. 16:13 Right. That's $200 that I can save instead of taking her to the vet and... And it worked. Oh, right. It's... love... I consider myself a semi-crunchy type person. Like, I love the holistic approach to bumps and scrapes and bruises, but I'll still go and get myself a nice coffee kind of thing. Oh, yes. Absolutely. They will pry my coffee from my cold dead hands. 16:44 They'll do their best at least. Yeah, I don't know. My spirit might come back into my body because I'll be really angry. I don't know. I'm just being silly. So you have chickens. What else do you have? Right. So we raise New Zealand rabbits, mainly for meat. I have a couple of pelts in the feet and the heads in my freezer. I am a sucker for oddities, curiosities, that kind of thing. 17:14 And so that world is in my wheelhouse as well. I sell any rabbits that don't make it or die of natural causes and some chicken eggs to the save a fox rescue out of Millersburg. 17:32 So they take some of the rabbit products. Otherwise, we're trying to market rabbit meat for human consumption as well. yes, definitely. Rabbit is really yummy. Millersburg, where is that? Oh, it would be north of Faribault, think like 15 miles or so. And then it's west of I've 35. And they are what? 18:01 What's the place that you're? It's called Save a Fox  and it's all one word. Yeah. They're pretty popular on Facebook, I think. They have a couple of different Facebook pages, though, but they're great. They rescue foxes from fur farms and let them live their happy little fox lives in a contained environment. 18:26 I'm going to have to look them up and see if they will chat with me because I like, I like talking to people that are sort of adjacent to what I talk about. Yeah. I, I don't know if they would be open to it or not, but  they've, I think they're above a million followers on Facebook. Wow.  I know they're awesome too.  The people that work with Fox's  have a lot of patients, I think. Yes. And it's interesting because I was brought up being told that 18:54 that wild animals are wild animals and that you don't really get to be anywhere near friends with them. But there is a uh fox rescue that I do follow it. I don't think it's the one you're talking about though. I think it's another one.  And  they have foxes that they rescued that literally will eat out of their hands and sit in their laps.  right. Yes. The foxes  at ah that rescue,  they... 19:23 are like nine generations  bred out of the out of  a wild habitat. So they're completely they're like a cat and a dog's body, I think is how they refer to them. Yeah. Yep. It's just it's so funny because like I saw on Facebook,  I find everybody I talk to on Facebook. So I spent a lot of time on Facebook. I shouldn't, but I do.  And there was a guy that rescued a coyote. 19:52 It had gotten hit by a car and it was, it was really hurt and took it to the vet. The vet got it fixed up and then the guy took care of it while it was in recovery.  The coyote comes back all the time to visit the guy. He let him go. The guy let the coyote go wild and the coyote comes back to see him all the time. That's really sweet. We've, it's, been a, I've, I've loved working with animals  since 20:21 I was younger, maybe it started with a chicken obsession, but who knows? But I would love to in the near future, if not, maybe like a five-year plan or something, but I would love to have a wildlife rescue. 20:37 uh I would love for you to have a wildlife rescue too so I can come visit.  Right. ah A lot of times in the spring people disturb like cottontail nests or a baby bird falls out of the tree or a possum gets hit on the highway kind of thing. I just really enjoy that  rehabilitation work. 21:01 Yes. And if you do it, I hope you get to rehabilitate baby raccoons because we had some visit last spring and oh my God, they were cute. They, their little hands just kill me.  They're little squeaks. The noises they make.  I know they're the best. I love little raccoons. That's a lot of,  um, roadkill happens in the spring because all these animals are trying to feed their young right now. So it's  in the spring, it's  usually a good time to take your 21:31 speed down five, 10 miles an hour or so on the highways because everything's crossing. Yes. And sometimes you hit people's barn cats and they die. And that's really hard on us who own the barn cats. Yeah. For Fairbolt has a really heavy, uh,  feral cat population as well.  There's,  um, the Fox rescue in Millersburg and Fairbolt, there is furball farms. Yes.  I actually did a, an article about them for, um, 22:02 River Valley Woman Magazine a few years back. They're so much fun. They have a pretty huge following around here. They're kind of like a local  celebrity type thing. But a lot of my family has gone to just go hang out with the cats. They have events where you can just go in and hang out and. Yes, and if you love cats, you will love being there because there are cats  everywhere. 22:33 I love cats. My husband is more of a loves kittens,  not the adult cats. Yes.  So we do have two of our own along with our livestock guardian dog. She's a great Pyrenees. Her name's Mika. Nice.  But then the two cats are kind of indoor outdoor. If  it's a thunderstorm, they get to come hide out in the garage. But typically they like spending their days outside. 23:01 So I have a question. your cats like your dog?  They don't snuggle, but they respect each other's space.  Okay. The reason I ask is our barn cats  love our dog. Our dog is an Australian shepherd and she's only about 36 pounds. And we just got three new kittens. They were like 16 to 20 weeks old when we got them last summer. 23:29 They wanted nothing to do with Maggie at first. They wanted nothing to do with anybody at first. And now in the morning they come running up when we let her outside and  they just rub up against her and purr. And I'm like, didn't take you guys very long to be friends, did it? Right. You have very well tempered cats and the dog, I think. Well, 23:51 Maggie would have been a great mama dog, but we got her spayed when she was six months old because puppies was not on the bucket list.  Right. We had a,  German shepherd just passed in January and he was the same way. I really wish we hadn't gotten him neutered because his temperament was  ideal. Yup. But  you can't, you can't know.  And also there are so  many. 24:20 animals in the world that are in shelters that don't have a home and I was just like I don't want her to get pregnant by oh geez a dog that's too big and she ends up dying because the puppies are too big right she's small dog and There was no guarantee we could find homes for puppies. So I was just like the smartest thing is to Make her not a mama permanently and it's sad 24:49 But it was probably the smartest thing we did. Right.  I would love to someday go to a shelter and adopt like who's who's been there the longest or the senior dog that got surrendered or something like that. I would love to give  somebody's pet uh a good ending to their life. Yes. Oh, I love that.  I love that. And actually, that's probably what we'll end up doing when Maggie is no longer with us. We probably will never get a puppy. 25:18 again because my husband and I are both 56 and puppy energy is a lot and I can't imagine going through it in our 60s. So we'll probably just get  a dog that is a dog, not a puppy. We still try to get out and travel as much as we can. We also have two small children here in our homestead, farmstead, whatever you want to call it. um But they're two years and six months.  so young children and the farm makes travel. 25:47 pretty difficult, but someday we'd like to  be able to take a month off in the winter and go to Mexico or something. But having too much going on and  needing to find someone to watch  everything, you know, and be able to learn feeding schedules and all that is  such a challenge.  It is. And we're going through that too, because it's just my husband and I.  So 26:16 If we want to go somewhere,  we really can't because  I don't know what you know about Australian Shepherds, but they are very, very close with their people, but not really close with anybody else. Oh, so she wouldn't do well with like a doggy hotel type thing.  No,  no, she would not. I suspect she probably would go on a hunger strike. And she also is scared to death of people, strangers. 26:45 So even if we could take her with us, all she would do the whole time we were not home, if she was with us, is bark. So  we have the joy of having a wonderful dog, but we also have the pain of knowing that it's gonna be a problem if we actually wanna go somewhere. Right? It's like a, kinda like a toddler in that respect. Yes, exactly. 27:12 And honestly, it is a lot like a toddler. husband took her out and  threw the frisbee for her last night.  And I got up at midnight to go potty and she was snoring in her crate in her crate. I thought you were going to say crib.  Yeah, almost.  I was going to say kennel and I'm like, it's not really a kennel. It's a crate, but she was snoring and I was like, wow, he must have run her  hard.  That's so funny. Yeah. But anyway, um, 27:41 So you said chickens, you said rabbits. Do you have other animals or is that it for now? For now, that's it. We have done pigs in the past, but  as  typical farm life goes, we found ah things that needed to be stored in the shed that the pigs were kept in. So it turned from livestock back into storage and  we just haven't really had the time. 28:11 with two small children to start pigs up again. I would like to start quails soon. I'm hoping my incubator has sat empty for about a week and I'm starting to get the itch to hatch eggs again. 28:23 Yep.  It's so funny because quail is very much on the radar here and it keeps coming up in these conversations with you guys. uh We're thinking about it. We're about 50 % sold on the idea of getting quail. I just found a little hutch on Facebook Marketplace  and so I think that I would keep quailing that. We have thought about doing other poultry, know, throwing some turkeys or something in with the chickens. 28:51 Getting turkey eggs or turkey poults is  they're so expensive. It's insane. I think I saw a sign in Tractor Supply that was like $18.99 for one turkey pulled.  Really? Yeah, like wildly expensive  and nobody around me has any hatching eggs available. So are  chicken chicks expensive this year too? Like five or six bucks a piece? Well, I mean, it depends on if you want 29:20 barnyard mix or if you want some sort of purebred specialty type. So I ordered from Hoover's Hatchery for our egg layers that I, oh, I think they were Valentine's Day chicks. So they're, I don't know how many weeks old that would make them. They're about to start laying next month. So we got 70 there and those were. 29:47 between four to six dollars a piece, because I went with the more budget-friendly breeds. But I see a lot of people hatching ah like cream leg bars, which do the blue eggs or  the black copper morans, which give you the dark chocolate eggs.  Those can be like nine to fifteen dollars a check if you're getting them from purebredlines. I swear, just like two years ago, 30:17 The not fancy chicks were only like a buck and a half a piece.  I would love to know where you saw those prices. It might have been three or four years ago, but it wasn't that long ago that they weren't five to six dollars a piece.  Right. I know that backyard chicken keeping has become wildly popular, especially after the pandemic. think a lot of people turned to  wanting to be more self-sufficient ah after you couldn't find toilet paper at Walmart. 30:47 made a lot of people panic on uh the whole food supply in America.  It absolutely did. That's why so many people moved out of the towns and cities they were in out into the country. And I'm not going to like throw any shade about that because I think that if you can do it, you should. Right. Absolutely.  I fully support anybody that wants to  commit to  a lifestyle in the country. Yeah. 31:15 Yeah, I do too. And it's not for everybody. There are lots of people who really want to live  in  an area where there are people around. I am not one of them. I really, really value being  not surrounded by people anymore. Let's put it that way.  Right. I grew up 20 minutes from  the nearest  town. And so going into town to the grocery store with my mom was always a trip. 31:45 You know, was preparation to get out of the house took 20 minutes in itself, 20 minutes to drive to the grocery store and then 20 minutes back home. Yeah, it was like half the day. But I always would go to sleepovers at a friend's house and not be able to sleep because of the headlights bouncing off the walls at night. It's like, how can you how can you sleep like this? There's so much going on outside. Like, aren't you worried about 32:13 people looking in your windows or, you why is your neighbor's window pointing at your kitchen? Uh huh. That's, it's just the strangest concept to me being stacked on top of other people like that. Yes. And it's part of the reason that we decided to move five and a half years ago. Well, actually almost six years ago,  we moved in here on August  7th  of 2020. Wow. You have a very good memory. Well, 32:40 Part of the reason I remember it is because I spent the first night I spent here was August 3rd into the 4th because we, had to be here because they were going to hook up the internet and bring a stove because this place didn't have a cook stove when we bought it. So I had to be here on August 4th in the morning and I vividly remember going to sleep on the couch downstairs that we had moved in. So I had a place to sleep. 33:10 And I couldn't sleep. I was just so excited to be spending the first night here. And my husband was actually at the old house because he had to work and it was much closer for him to stay where we were living before to drive to work.  And we hadn't moved clothes down here yet. And I could not sleep because I was so excited and because it was so  quiet. 33:37 That's like the night before a field trip when you're a kid that you're just jittering in bed. so excited. Your backpack's ready. Your clothes are set out. Yeah. And I've told the story a billion times, but I'll tell it again because it's one of my favorites. I made sure to set the alarm on my phone for before sunrise because the window over the kitchen sink faces east. And I really wanted to see the first sunrise out over the field. Oh, that's so exciting. 34:05 I think I slept an hour the first night I stayed here  and I was definitely awake for sunrise and it was worth every second of it.  I hope you took a picture or something that would be a framed photo.  I have a picture  of looking at the window so it's not like through the window at the sunrise it's just the window and you can see the sunrise outside so it's not 34:33 It's not necessarily focused on the sunrise. It's focused on my cute little kitchen window over the sink. But either way,  just, feel like certain people are city people and they always will be. And that's where they're comfortable and they love it. And there are certain people who are not and that's where they're comfortable and they love it. I think that  anything worth having you have to work for.  so convenience, 35:03 kind of  kills part of that. 35:09 Yes,  I agree.  do. However, I am a sucker for a good burger and I don't mean the ones we make here at home. So I'm real happy that one of the best dive bars in Minnesota is in Lesour. What is it called?  It's called the Bar and Grill. That's very vague.  Yes, it's very original. It's a bar and a grill and they make a really, really good burger. But the best thing they make is homemade onion rings. 35:38 battered onion rings. Oh, I put onions and mushrooms and almost everything I make. Uh huh. So when we're going to celebrate something, we we go grab a burger and really good onion rings at the bar and grill. That's awesome. I think there was just a do you know where Lonsdale is? I do. The Shields Lake cheesecake was just on the news. 36:05 And I've never heard of them. Really? Oh my gosh, they're it's the best cheesecake you'll ever have in your life. Is it a it a bakery? It's they only sell cheesecake. OK, so so is it like a store? Yes, they have a storefront in  Lonsdale. I think that the city of Fairbolt put up too much of a fuss about regulations, and so they intended to  open their storefront in Fairbolt, but 36:35 opted for Lonsdale instead. They're the type of place that you have to get there and wait in line because they sell out so quickly. is a that's a terrible problem to have. Boy, I don't know. It's I they it was worth I got there early one day and didn't have to wait in line for my cheesecake. But it is it is a hefty slice that you get. 37:03 and they do all sorts of different flavors and concoctions. They supply weddings. Huh? I might have to go check that out. I would say it's worth it. Yeah, because I'm kind of a real sucker for cheesecake, which is why I only eat it about once every five years, because otherwise I would eat it every day. Okay, awesome. Well, I try to keep this half an hour. We're at almost 37 minutes. So. 37:31 I am going to cut you loose, but before we go, where can people find you? So Bauer Family Farms is  currently only on Facebook. Bauer is spelled B-A-U-E-R. That is so far our only socials. We're getting connected to a couple of farm stand websites  and  the name is spelled the same in all those spots.  Okay. Hopefully  someday I'll connect to Instagram or TikTok, but for now it's just Facebook. 38:00 That's good enough. It's a place where people can find you online, which means that I can link to it for you in the show notes. All right, Leah, this was really fun. Thank you for your time. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you. You too. See you later.  

Today I'm talking with Becky at Homesteading with BeckyJ.  A Tiny Homestead Podcast 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. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose. 00:29 At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. A tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Becky at Homesteading with Becky J in Oregon. How are you this morning, Becky?  I am fabulous. How about you? I'm good. What's the weather doing in Oregon? 00:57 We're actually really overcast today. 01:02 Is it raining or is it just overcast? Just overcast. It looks like it wants to try, but nothing's happening.  Yeah. And rain is not, it's not anything unusual in Oregon or Washington state. So I'm sure you're ready for it to sprinkle whenever, right? Yeah. Well, and I'm in Eastern Oregon. So we actually, lot of the storms tend to go around us. We're usually pretty dry. So yeah, we definitely take all the rain that we can get. 01:30 Yeah, I'm in Minnesota. It is yet another really lovely morning. It's  the reason I sound weird about that is because this winter has been the longest, grayest,  wettest we've had in probably four years. Oh, geez. But the sun is coming in the bedroom window. There's no wind  and it's just really pretty outside. I'm like, hmm, another good morning. Yay.  So. ah 01:59 I have to tell you when I saw the name of your page, Homesteading with Becky J, for some reason it made me think of a pop star and I can't for the life of me think of who it is right now. But I was like, that sounds like a rock star homesteader. I want to talk to her. Easy to remember then. Yes. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Well, I am 37 years old. have 02:28 Three children, a whole full-fledged homestead now. I literally have animals all over, but it was not like that. You know, six, seven years ago, I was living in a trailer park. So, I mean, we made some major changes for the better, obviously. There was a lot of work to get here, but... 02:51 Still grilling.  So when you were in the trailer park, were you already like practicing homesteading skills though? you already learning? I mean, I've always been a meal prepper, baker, cooker. So I kind of had that going for me, but honestly, no. And I wish that I would have been practicing some of these basic skills. You know, like I could have been gardening on my porch. I could have been utilizing container gardening or 03:19 you know, worm composting or learning how to sow, but I was so oblivious to all of it. And I guess I just thought that like the property had to come first. So I'm a big advocate for people. Like it doesn't matter where you're at. Like you can literally do this anywhere. And I wish I would have started sooner, you know? Well, I would say, okay, listener, you heard it here first, but I say it all the time. So, okay, listener, you're hearing it again. Learn to cook, grow a plant,  learn to 03:49 crochet or sew,  just  learn some basic skills of do-it-yourself things because that way you're not caught flat-footed. Yeah. Yup. 04:01 Okay, so  when did you move into, when did you acquire your land? We have been here about seven years now. it  just slowly but surely we started getting some animals and the first year I tried to garden it was a complete flop because I didn't know what I was doing.  That's okay, at least you tried.  Yeah. 04:31 Yep. Okay. So tried gardening. Yeah. The people that had lived here before us, she had a big, big garden  and I know them personally. So like I seen what it looked like in full bloom and everything that she had been growing. like, Oh, I could totally do that. And so of course I just planted everything in the ground with no idea of like weed control or how I was going to water or anything. And then of course, 04:58 everything started sprouting. It looked fabulous, but then I couldn't tell what were like weeds and what were the plants.  By the time it was big enough for me to tell, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm not pulling all these. I just gave up.  I just let it grow wild that year. I'm like, yeah, no.  Did you get anything out of it though, even though it was crowded? Some lettuce. 05:26 I did get some lettuce, but that was about it.  Well, it's better than nothing. Yeah. Yeah, you're right.  It's definitely a learning lesson.  Are you plant, are you, so have you gotten better at gardening over the years? Oh yes. I now know like what works for me and because I do work full time still. So I definitely have to have some major systems in place in order for me to  make it work growing as much as I do.  Um, 05:53 but I have some weed barriers down. have an automatic watering system now. I grow certain things in raised beds, certain things in the ground. And so I have a system now.  Yeah. Systems are really  very, very, I would could say very a hundred times. It wouldn't be enough  important to making a homestead run where you don't feel like you're putting out fires all the time.  Definitely. Yup. And you said you have animals. So what do you have for animals and what animal did you get first? 06:23 Um, so funny enough, we got cows first, which seems backwards in my head. Yeah. But there, we already had a fence pasture and my husband always wanted cows, you know, raise our own beef. And we started with cows and that also obviously was a learning experience. Um, the first cow we had his name was Houdini given for a very good reason, because even though it was a fenced pasture, the fence needed some work. 06:52 And so he got out constantly. So I don't know how many times I, we had to walk that guy home. Like he would end up at the neighbors, you know, half a mile down the road and someone else's pasture. And it was like, oh my gosh, this animal is huge. I'm going to get ran over.  And I got chickens and chickens obviously were a little bit easier to manage.  Yeah. They say chickens are the gateway animal for homesteaders. Cows is not. 07:21 Cows is not the animal they say is the gateway animal. Yeah. Really quick. I'm going to jump in our neighbors to our west, our Northwest. They have cows and they have at least one donkey.  And we've lived here. We've lived here for a little over five years and I keep, I keep waiting to get up in the morning and find a cow or a donkey in my yard and they've never shown up. So they must have really good fences.  And what's really dumb, Becky is that 07:51 I would not be terribly offended if I woke up to a cow or a donkey standing in my yard. It would be definitely has their own personalities. Yeah. As long as I could get hold of the owner and say, you need to come get your critter because I can't do it. I would be fine with it. Cause I think that we don't have livestock here. We have chickens, we have a dog, we have barn cats. And I 08:18 We have three acres. We don't have enough room for anybody to graze and feeding livestock right now is real expensive if you're not grazing them. Yeah. So the idea of waking up to a cow or a donkey in my yard would be highly entertaining  once.  Yeah. Let me just visit. Okay. Like babysit them a couple hours, maybe once a week and then take them back. Yeah. Their beautiful dog came over one day and she's,  I think her name is shy or sky. 08:48 And she's the red  golden retriever. Like she's not the yellow golden. She's the reddish kind and friendly as all get out. I was just like, Oh my God, she can stay. And my husband was like, we have a dog. She's going home. oh So we've met their dog and she's wonderful, but  have not met any of their other livestock yet. And I wait for the morning where I do. Do you have like, I don't want to say. 09:19 There's a word. I hate this.  Do you have average chickens or do you have special chickens? Let's put it that way. Do you have like a bunch of different kinds or just have egg producers? em We honestly have a really big variety in our flock. I'm not really particular on certain breeds. I don't care if they're pretty. Yeah. We're dual purpose. So like I'll raise them and I incubate them and then, you know, 09:45 There tends to always be a ton of roosters when you incubate them, seems like.  so,  you know, those will go to freezer camp generally. So then that way it's kind of a full circle and it's less I'm having to buy from the hot trees like to fill my freezer. Yes,  absolutely. Especially right now. I mean, you've been doing it for a while, but right now it's really important to have that. 10:08 Yes. I'm real excited.  We just did.  So we've had cows for a while  and we do the chickens and we raised pigs and which I probably will never do again. They are so destructive. I mean, I love pigs. Don't get me wrong.  But we just picked up our butcher pigs yesterday and filled our freezer. So now I literally don't have to go to the store for any kind of meat.  How does that feel, Rebecca? Fabulous. It's fabulous. 10:38 Like I said, they're really destructive and they got really big. And I mean, they were super docile, the breed that I got, we got a Mangalitza red wattle cross. Oh, nice. Yeah, they were not mean like at all. I there's a few times my legs got squished, but they didn't, they didn't realize they were hurting me. You know, they just want food.  But yeah, they definitely tore up that section of the pasture and it's going to need a lot of work. 11:06 Yeah, I keep hearing people either be  very pro pig or very, I did it once, I'm not doing it again pig. Yeah, you know, I feel like if you have enough property or a lot of wooded area, they're really good at clearing land, but I just have a grassy pasture, you know, so like that whole section is just all dirt now.  Yeah.  Yeah. And trying to get it back to where you want it to be is going to take some time and probably some money. 11:35 Yeah.  Do you have goats or lamb or sheep? do.  I have goats, but I just have a dwarf variety because I'm  not a large person  and I wanted to be able to handle them. I did have goats, like regular,  full-size goats for like three months when we first got this property and it just did not work out. We got them from someone else when they were already full grown. 12:01 They were skittish of people. didn't want anything to do with me. And then when they did get out, it was so hard trying to get them back in.  And at least with a dwarf, like I can pick them up if I need to,  you know, I can actually handle them.  Yeah, absolutely.  Do one of the things that I would tell anybody looking to get any kind of livestock  is  really consider  what you can handle. 12:27 Because if you can't handle them you will sell them or you will process them within months of getting them. Yep I've been doing pretty good with the ones we have now  and we have it like they have a nice little fenced in area now So they're not getting out constantly even though they're dwarfs. They still got some hops on them. They can still jump.  Oh, Yeah, how many do you have? Let's see. How many do I have now? um 12:56 And then I have two babies right now in my backyard. I'm just weaning off and they're going to be going to new homes this weekend. So much fun. you, are you like an in love with baby goats person?  Yes, they're so cute and it's to get rid of them, but  you only get so much milk off them when they're dwarf size, you know? So it's like, I don't want to have like 20 goats  have to get rid of them. 13:25 While you're talking about that, have a question because we're very, very lightly flirting with the idea of uh dwarf goats at some point in the next couple of years. And I read that they're good for meat and for milk. So how much milk can you get from a dwarf mama goat? So it depends. So I have a dwarf Nigerian and a dwarf Lamontia, and I definitely get more milk off my Lamontia. 13:55 but it's still like maybe a  pint a day if I'm milking twice a day.  Okay. It's still like, it's not a whole lot compared to like, you know, a dairy cow or a full size goat. But I mean, if it's just you and your husband, it would be enough, you know, like it's really good in your morning coffee.  Oh, I know. And that's part of the reason we're even remotely thinking about this. Cause when we moved here, we were like, we are not getting goats. 14:24 We're not getting goats because we don't have enough room for them to graze.  And then I saw that there were mini goats, pygmy goats as it were.  And I was like, they wouldn't eat much. That would, that might work. Maybe. So I've been doing research on that and I've been doing research on quail and we have not decided on anything yet because  it's spring in Minnesota. My husband has been every weekend outside because he's been stuck in the house all winter. 14:53 He's been chopping wood for this winter and he's been planting seeds in the greenhouse and he's been checking out the fruit trees and the lilac bushes and the rhubarb and the peonies and I can't keep this man in the house from sun up to sun down. So he's been very, very busy and we're probably not going to do any major changes this year. 15:19 partly because we don't know what this year is going to bring with everything going on in the world. we're like, you know, the gardens and the chickens are pretty stable. Let's just stick with that for 2026. Yeah. Cause I would hate to get into something new and then  have to give it up because money just gets too tight because prices have gone up so much. Yeah. Well, and that's what, where I was kind of at, um,  cause I, I'd melt last year and I'm 15:49 will probably start milking again here soon. But getting them up on the milk stand, like after they finally get used to sitting there, you know, you typically give them like some kind of a treat or give them grain to like eat on while you're milking. And the grain here at where I buy it is really expensive. So I'm like, you know, I could probably just take this $30 and give it to another farmer that has a bunch of goats and just buy their milk instead. 16:18 That too, yes. And I'm always saying if you can't produce the thing that you want yourself, find somebody local who's already producing it and support them. Yeah. So it's a good plan. Yeah. So what do you, I'm just going to sound really dumb. What do you love most about homesteading? Possibilities, I guess. There is just so much  to it when you... 16:45 finally dip a toe in and then you're like, oh, well, I could do this, but then I could do that and I can collect my rainwater and I can sell my own clothes and I guess it just opens, opens your, your mind up a little bit more or, you know, we've been raised our whole life. Like, Oh, do this, do that, get a job, go to college, have kids. it's like, they don't teach you how to be self-sufficient or to. 17:11 you know, care for your family in the ways that you may want to versus just going to the store to buy dinner, you know what I mean? So it's kind of like, oh, well, I can do all these things. Like what do I want to do?  And so I think that's my  favorite part.  absolutely. And you bring up a good point. We are brought up in the last, let's say, 50 years, we've been brought up to be  do what we're told. 17:39 Instead of brought up to be functioning humans who know how to cook a meal, who know how to start a fire outside if you need to for, for, um, whatever you need it for.  Um,  we, we were not brought up taught how to know how to do a stitch in clothing, you know, how to hem pants, how to darn socks. We, didn't need to do that anymore, but. 18:08 I don't think that's true. I think that we all need to know how to do this stuff. Yes. And I was actually thinking the other day and I haven't said anything to my husband yet because he's got a lot going on his plate and he's also ADD.  So if I bring it up, he's going to want to talk about it for three hours. And I'm like, I don't have three hours.  But I was thinking about the fact that we now have a little thing that we carry around in our pockets called a cell phone. 18:37 most everybody does, smartphone, that lets us take video and photos whenever we want. And I'm 56, so I remember having to take film to the pharmacy or the Kodak, whatever, and get pictures developed, actual pictures you hold onto.  You can hold in your hand. And it was expensive to get film developed. When you chose to take a picture, you were making a choice. 19:08 And I mean, there hardly anybody I knew had a video camera when I was in my teens, because they were brand new. Isn't that scary? I'm only 56.  And  I couldn't just pick up the phone and call somebody. I had to ask my mom if it was okay if I called my friend  and we had to keep the conversation to under 60 seconds because  it was a dollar a minute. 19:39 That's funny. can't freaking believe that I have been alive for 56 years and what has changed since I was born and what changed from the time that my parents were born till now. You know, it's insane. And it's made it so easy. Everything has been become so very convenient, but we have lost the soul of creation. 20:07 human creation in all of this stuff. Yep, you can pretty much get anything you want delivered to your door, whether it's in days or hours.  Yeah, and I don't know about you, but I really do like cooking.  I really do. And when I talk to people who like, I can't believe you make soup from scratch, you can get it in a can. 20:33 It doesn't taste the same though. Like I don't want my soup to taste like aluminum. I want it to taste like soup. Yeah. It doesn't taste like aluminum. I'm like, um, yes it does. And if you want soup that doesn't taste like aluminum, I will make you soup. I had friends, we lived up at the old house. We moved half an hour away, so I still have friends up there. But if my friends were sick. 20:59 They would call me and say, do you happen to have any of your chicken soup in your freezer? My, the stuff I make, chicken soup. And I would be like, I do or I don't. And usually I did. And I would say yes. And they'd be like, could I, could I please have some? Cause I'm really not great. I've got a cold, I'm miserable. Your soup is like medicine.  And I would let them have a little container of soup. I couldn't give them all of it. Obviously I had a family of six, but I was happy to share. 21:28 And my next door neighbor, she was so funny. She had a really bad head cold and about three days after she ate my soup, she came over and she was like, I'm all better. It's all thanks to you.  That made me feel  so good inside and I helped her and it was no skin off my nose because the soup was already made. Yeah. oh 21:52 So not only do I feel like I'm accomplished, I feel like I'm helping other people. And I swear that's why people get into homesteading, because they're trying to do something for themselves.  And then their friends find out about it and you end up helping your friends and it's really fun. Yeah. Well, food really is fuel. Oh, know, it is medicine, you know, for our bodies. So it's I feel like it makes a big difference. Yeah. And I feel like I'm constantly talking about food. 22:21 on these episodes. And homesteading isn't just about food.  It's about getting outside and touching grass and getting your hands dirty.  It's about being responsible for other lives, even if it's just a barn cat. It doesn't matter.  And it's about being part of nature because humans are nature. We are.  And people have forgotten that too. Yeah. 22:52 So I just,  I don't want to beat a dead horse because it doesn't do any good, Beats your soul. Yes. Homesteading is not about having land. It's about the way you live your life.  And  if you have made chocolate chip cookies from scratch, or if you have made, I don't know, bacon and eggs, you've practiced a homestead skill. Yeah. I've had a few people, um, 23:21 You always, I don't know what you call them, trolls online. just, people just aren't nice sometimes. And then you get them behind a computer or a phone and then they just say really not nice things. But I've had a few people be like, I thought homesteading was working the land. What are you talking about? like, well, yeah, originally it was about working the land, but it's not the same as it was back then. No, it's not. 23:50 And if we can encourage, you know, your average  Joe that lives in apartment to have a tomato plant in the corner of their house with a sunny window and to start baking from scratch, even though they don't have any land, why wouldn't you? m 24:08 Hang on one second. 24:14 I was going to cough and I didn't want to cough in your ear. uh No, I'm good. That's fine. It's an echo.  It's an, it's an invisible echo. It was awesome.  Um,  the other thing is, is that I feel like people started looking down their noses at actual work a long time ago. Yeah. The trades are just dying for people to come to work for them. Plumbers, electricians. 24:44 construction. And the fact is, if we don't have people go into those trades, we're not going to have houses to live in.  Or a toilet to flush or water to drink or  where, where did everybody go? It's like there were so many people,  but I feel like the workforce is like diminished. Like there's no one out there actually working. It's like everyone just stuck at home behind a computer screen. 25:12 I think what happened is that back 20, 25 years ago when computers became quote unquote easier, and I'm not saying coding is easy. It is not. I've tried it. I don't like it. It's not my thing. My daughter learned and she's great at it. But when people learn that you can make a lot of money working in the computer field, they were like, oh, well, I can make more than being a plumber. So I'm going to go into computers. think that's what happened. 25:42 And don't get me wrong, you can make a lot of money if you're really good at in the computer field. But we still need people to, you know,  use a wrench or a hammer  or take down trees that might land on your house. I mean, that's a really important thing too. 26:03 So  I don't, I don't know.  And I didn't expect to go down this trail this morning, but it's interesting.  I think that, I think that to be a functioning human these days, it would be good if you knew how to cook a couple of meals from scratch. I mean, if you want to buy food from somebody else five nights a week,  just make a meal on Sunday, you know, learn on meal. Cause it's so, 26:33 Amazing when flour and butter and salt and milk turn into a biscuit. Yeah. Like a little experiment. Yeah, a nice fluffy biscuit that you can put star bot jam on if you want and butter and eat it because at least you made the biscuit. 26:56 Yeah. 26:58 And the gratitude that you feel or just the pure, what's the word I'm looking for? Being proud of yourself. Eating the food that you made. You're like, oh my gosh, I made this whole meal from scratch. it's so gratifying.  Oh yes. I have uh a drop biscuit recipe that I use all the time for, for just biscuits or for sausage and gravy and biscuits or for butter and jam biscuits, whatever.  And. 27:28 We had gotten strawberries a couple of years ago.  We did not grow them. We bought them and we made strawberry jam out of those strawberries. And we did not have a cow. We will probably never have a cow. But I was so excited to have our strawberry jam on biscuits that I made with butter from the store because two of those things we made. Yeah. Awesome. was super cool. I love it. um 27:57 The other thing that I will tell you, and obviously I will tell the listener as well, is that when we lived in town, we lived in town. We lived in a town of 6,000 people and we lived in the old part of town. Our neighbors were very, very close. And the main reason I wanted to move out to the country was for the quiet.  if you are a person who is shy and really likes quiet, 28:27 Living in town is not going to be your jam. It's just not. Definitely not.  People ask me why I moved,  why we moved to home. I'm like, because I needed quiet. And they're like, not because you wanted animals or more space to garden. I'm like, oh no, no, I wanted that too. But the main priority was  quiet.  More nature, less people, please. 28:54 Yeah. And I was so sick of having  our bedroom fronted on the street that we lived on and we had the windows open, all that smell from the cars going by and all the dust on the road would get kicked up and my bedroom was always dusty.  And I was like, this is so gross.  I sweep this floor twice a day and it's still dusty.  Oh my God. And we don't have that problem here because we're back from the road. 29:23 We still live off of a busy road, but we are way further back from it.  So there are many, many reasons that people choose to move to a quote unquote homestead and homestead can be a half an acre. It can be a hundred acres, but typically it is not just a little tiny lot city lot. Yeah. I have seen some people do some amazing things with their backyards though. 29:53 Like  their whole backyard will be like a garden oasis. Like it's amazing what people can do when they really put their mind to it. That's exactly what we did at the old house. We lived on a 10th of an acre lot with a house and a four car garage on it. 30:12 And we grew up, we put up trellises and we grew everything up instead of out. And it was really beautiful. I mean, it was crowded and it was a lot, but it was beautiful.  You make it work. Yeah, it was so fun. We  had the kids then, we have four kids. And the youngest was  born. He wasn't born in that house, but we were living in that house when he was born. And he knew no different than to have 30:42 a little tiny  piece of land covered in vegetable plants.  And he, he and his brother, older brother came home from school when they were in, I think Kent was a freshman in high school and Cameron was in fourth or fifth grade.  And  they came home from school and I guess they had talked to each other about this and they were like, we should talk to mom. 31:11 And they said, can we talk to you? And when your boys walk up to you and say, can we talk to you? And they're very serious. You're like, Oh God, what's wrong? Yeah. was like, yes, what's going on? they were, Cameron looked at Kent cause Kent's the older one and Kent said, can we start taking leftovers from dinner for lunch to school in a, in a pale, a lunch pail? And I said, why? he said, because school lunch isn't food. 31:40 I mean, he's not wrong, but.  Yep. And I looked at, I looked at Cameron who was in, you know, fourth grade, fifth grade, whatever it was. I said, do you want to do the same thing? And he was like, yeah. He said, mom, the school lunches just suck. 31:56 I was like,  sure. So I just started making more of whatever it was we were gonna have for dinner so that they could take it for lunch the next day. And luckily they both had  microwaves that they could use at school to warm up. Oh, very cool. Yeah, I was so impressed with these kids that they recognized that they were eating stuff that wasn't good for them. 32:20 Yep, you can definitely taste the difference.  Yes, but there is nothing scarier than your kids walking up to you and saying,  can we talk to you for a minute? I'm like, what did I do now? You know? And then it was just that. like, oh, well, absolutely.  Oh, definitely. easy, yes. Yeah. And they both really wanted soups, you know, like three, days a week. They wanted to take soups for lunch. 32:44 And I didn't have any little thermoses for them to take. So we literally went out and bought the little thermoses that are like a pint. You know,  like the  Stanley thermoses, the small ones, and got the little lunch bags that are soft.  we would just, they would just scoop the soup into the thermoses, put the lid on and take it to school. they'd warm, and it was still warm when they ate. So they loved it. It was great. 33:13 So that's another thing that happens is that you try things and then it surprises you at how well things work out. Yeah. So I haven't told that story before because I had forgotten about it. Thank you for giving me an opening.  All right. I try to keep these to half an hour. Becky, I appreciate your time so much. Where can people find you? um 33:38 Facebook. I'm on Facebook quite frequently. I do have a YouTube channel, but I don't know what I'm doing with it yet. So, but it's  all of them are home studying with Becky J. I have a blogs all connected, but I try to keep it all uniform. So it was easy to locate me.  Fantastic. I so appreciate your time as always people can find me. Sorry. 34:05 People can find me at AtidyHolmsteadPodcast.com.  Becky, thank you again. Have a great day. You as well. Thank you for having me.  

Today I'm talking with Maryann at Morning Sun Homestead.  A Tiny Homestead Podcast 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 Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose. 00:28 At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Green Bush Twins. That Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Green Bush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Mary Ann at Morning Sun Homestead in West Virginia. Good morning, Mary Ann. How are you? We're doing well. Thank you for having us on your podcast. 00:55 Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it.  I was just going to close Facebook, your Facebook page because it was still open.  Do you have an Australian Shepherd? We actually have two of them puppies.  We got them the first weekend in January.  Two males.  One is Remington, one's Winchester and we love them. They are wonderful dogs. 01:21 Yeah, I happen to see the always on guard even if it's watching a pesky cat post and I was like that looks just like my Maggie because we have one too. 01:32 We are in the process of trying to train them to herd cows and chickens. uh One is more  relaxed. He likes just to stay  on the porch and watch, but the other one has the instinct and the drive to really herd.  So we have to watch him a lot. He's very good about keeping the chickens across the fence where they belong, but  he likes to nip a little bit. And that is okay for a cow,  but a chicken is much more tender. So we're working on that right now. 02:04 I wish you all the luck in the world with that. Our Maggie doesn't really have a farm job. Her job is watchdogging for the home. And uh the thing we've learned in the five years we've had her is that she is not a dog that knows how to fetch. She loves to chase things, but if we say bring it back, she will not bring it back. 02:28 That sounds very familiar. Yup. And are yours full size Australian Shepherds or are they the smaller ones? 02:39 They are full size. Once they're grown, they'll be full size. Okay, Maggie's a small standard. weighs like 36 pounds. 02:53 Okay, so how is the weather in West Virginia this morning? It is sunny and cold in Minnesota. 03:01 We are supposed to have 78 degrees today. We had rain last night, a thunderstorm moved through. It rained really, really hard. Then this morning it was 52 degrees and we had a little bit more rain. It stopped, a few more showers. Right now it's 66. We're supposed to have 78. But this is a roller coaster. We've had some nice weather and now tonight it is supposed to be 37 and tomorrow we're supposed to have snow. 03:30 And then it's supposed to shoot back up to the 50s, 60s.  And then next week on Tuesday, we are supposed to have 17 at night. So we are just up and down with the weather. But this is a small taste of spring and we want to get out and do all kinds of things, but we have a lot of mud, which is okay because we needed the moisture. We are very dry. So that worked out to get more rain. um We're really anxious for spring to come when you have warm days like this and you get out and you're able to work a little bit. And then 03:58 you have snow again. So that's a let down,  but we are on a roller coaster ride.  Yeah, we're supposed to get a little bit of snow every day through Sunday this week here. And I'm like, okay,  um, I guess I can handle it because hopefully it'll be the last of it for the  winter. Hopefully.  Um, so tell me a little bit about yourself  and morning  sun homestead. 04:28 So my husband and I, um well when we got married of course we ate like everyone else.  You know, was fast food and quick dinners and things like that.  And then over time once we had our children we realized that that wasn't the life we wanted to continue. So we started to dig in  and um grow in our own food. And we have branched off from that and now we do our own meats. You know, of course we have our own eggs.  The girls are a tremendous help. 04:58 They  all are on the bandwagon with us, so to speak. So it really helps to have their help. They know how to do everything, which is a huge help now that as we're getting older, you just don't have as much energy. And uh when I look back, I wonder how I did it all when they were small. I guess it was just all willpower and grit. But that's how we got started. We just got tired of eating all the processed stuff, feeling bad, waking up with inflammation, you know, 05:28 bags under our eyes and that sort of thing and decided to pick a healthier path  and it's worked out well and we are so glad that we decided to do that. It has made a major difference in our lives. 05:43 Awesome, and I'm glad you just said all that because I'm gonna do my my public service announcement early in the podcast episode today  if you live in America right now, and you don't know how to cook  learn and If you don't grow anything to eat start a plant this year  try growing something even if it's herbs on your windowsill  and 06:08 get to know your local producers, your local farmers, because if the supply chain should happen to go down again,  it's good to be able to know who to buy from locally. That's my public service announcement.  And there is so much truth in that.  know, local is best. If you can't grow it yourself, the next level would be local. That way, the way I look at it,  have, we milk cows, so we have raw milk and it's became legal now to sell raw milk in West Virginia. 06:37 And I would never sell a gallon of milk that I felt my family wouldn't drink. And I think that a lot of people that are local feel the same way about their produce or their meat, their eggs, whatever they may be selling. I feel that if they wouldn't feed it to their family, they're probably not going to try to sell it to you. I know I wouldn't. Hopefully that's how most producers are.  But the big corporations really don't care. They will send us whatever. 07:04 And because it doesn't matter to them, it's all one big connection with pharmaceuticals and big farms and our health. 07:14 Absolutely yes.  Yes, yes, yes, you are absolutely right. uh I,  how do I say this?  We grow a garden and we have chickens, partly because it's fun,  but we're not doing it for funsies. We're doing it to feed ourselves and feed our community, if that makes sense at all. 07:39 Yes, it most certainly does. um I'm assuming from the comment that you made, must also sell any additional eggs that you have and uh garden produce you give away. Right, and we do that if we have extra produce to older people. um There's a lot of older people that used to eat healthy. This was not... 08:02 like a trend, this was the normal way of life, this is how they always did it, and now they're just not able to get out there and do it, and we will give them produce from our garden em just because  that's what we want to do. If we can help someone out, that's what we do, but it sounds like your family does the same thing, and that's wonderful. uh We need more of that in America. 08:23 Yes, we do. need everybody who has a talent. And by the way, everyone has a talent.  It doesn't matter what it is. If you sing, then sing to your kids or sing to your friends. It makes them feel good. um If you're good at writing, write a story. It makes people feel good. If you're good at growing things, feed people. Everyone has a talent. You just have to figure out what it is. 08:50 Yes,  you're exactly right. God gave us all a talent. We're all here on a purpose.  We just have to sometime research and dig deep to find it, but it's  Yes,  and uh yes, we grow a hundred foot by fifty foot or 150 by a hundred foot.  I don't know the dimensions. My husband does. He's the one that does it.  Produce garden, farm to market garden, and we sell at our farm stand and we sell at the farmer's market in town in the summertime. 09:21 And we mostly have chickens because we don't want to buy eggs at the store, but because we always have more chickens than we can keep up with. We sell the eggs too, because when the bird flu comes through, people are very happy to get their eggs at $5 a dozen from our farm stand. Yes. Yes, I'm sure they are. 09:43 So  I found you on Facebook and I am absolutely smitten with your Facebook page. I am thinking of you in my head. Your nickname is the Homestead Hack Queen because you have all the tips and tricks on your Facebook page. People, if you want to learn about homesteading,  go look at Mary Ann's Facebook page. Why are you doing a Facebook page full of homestead hacks? What's your motivation? 10:12 Well, I like to teach people what I know. uh I feel that knowledge is power.  And if we can teach more people how to do dry mixes or how to can, how to provide for their self more and for their family, they're less reliant on the system.  And therefore, we have more power as people for our nation. And when you can take care of yourself, you're much better off.  And with my hacks and things that I'm trying to teach people, 10:40 I feel that a good stock pantry is so important. And if you're able to do that, then you're able to survive a lot of things. And when we think of rainy days, we think of maybe a nuclear attack or something to that extent. It doesn't have to be like that. It can be a blizzard. It can be you lose your job. It can just be that a sickness has come through your home  and  the flu this year is really bad. A lot of people in our community are sick. But you know, if you just have a jar of soup to open, 11:09 That is going to be so convenient when you're so sick you can hardly stand up but your children still needs to be fed.  So, you know, there's a lot of different scenarios that we can look at and that's why it's so important to be able to have all these hacks and know a knowledge of how to can, how to preserve, how to grow.  Eventually, that is a complete circle and it comes back and you're able to provide your family with nutrition meals on the table. 11:38 Yes.  Amen, sister.  I  mentioned to you before we started recording that I saw your post about the homemade cough drops.  I have a story you might get a kick out of. Back when my youngest was probably eight or 10, I don't know, he was young. uh I had gone to the store because he was sick and I'd gone and gotten orange juice and cold medicine and I didn't get cough drops on the list. Therefore, I didn't buy any. 12:08 And I realized it the minute I unpacked the groceries and I was like, what do I have? How can I make cough drops? I had honey, I had sugar and I had the other things the recipe called for. And I was like, I'm going to make homemade cough drops. It'll probably be better for him. And he'll probably think it's candy, which means that he will like them. And I made homemade cough drops. I was so disappointed in myself that I didn't put cough drops on the list, but I was so proud of myself for making them. 12:38 Yes, because I can relate to them. 12:44 Yup, I couldn't believe it. He was standing there waiting for the cough drop package to come out of the bag. And I was like, I completely forgot. And he was like, Mom, you know how when kids are actually disappointed in you, it just breaks your heart? It was that kind of mom. And I was just like, I'm a better mom than this. I am going to do something I've never done. I'm going to make a curative for my kids. 13:15 And that's great that you went out of your comfort zone. I just think a lot more people need to do that because  a lot have the I can't attitude. You can't. It's just the willpower to do it.  And does everything I make turn out? Absolutely not. That was my second batch of cough drops. The first ones failed miserably. They would not harden.  So I just dug through, found a different recipe, and this one worked. This was an Amish recipe  with blackberry. uh They called for a juice. So 13:44 just made my own juice. had frozen blackberries in the freezer. I took them out  and I poured boiling water over it, let them set in that for 10 minutes, and then I strained them really well and squeezed it all through cheesecloth.  So sometimes you just have to make do with what you have.  I know many during the depression, there was a saying of make do, wear it out, use it up or do without. And that's kind of what I try to stick with. We have to use what we have. 14:10 We just can't say can't. We gotta do it. And that's great that you took the initiative and you did it. And that's what we all need to do. 14:20 Yes.  And  I have been kind of pushing my husband about eating leftovers because  he's the kind of guy who would like a different dinner every night. And I'm the kind of girl who likes to cook big and  money just keeps getting tighter and tighter with inflation. So I finally have him convinced that leftovers taste better or the dinner tastes better the second night. 14:48 And we have literally been eating the same thing two nights in a row.  And he said to me the other day, said, you know, this is actually better the second day. So I'm winning the fight here at my house. That's great.  That's great. And yes, mean, leftovers are important. But you know, another thing you could do is  one thing I did a lot when the girls were younger was at the end of the week, I just made a whatever stew. 15:12 Sometimes it didn't turn out so well, but sometimes it was really good. So whatever was leftover, I put in there. But yes, leftovers, that's a great idea of what you're doing. 15:24 Yeah, and  I have always been a leftovers girl because I was raised that way. And my mom used to make this fabulous  venison stew. And I swear to you, it tasted better the second day. I don't know why, but it did. 15:41 think that's the way with chili also. That's how we feel. If chili sets a couple days, it just gets better. But there's a lot of soup and stews that are like that. And it's just trying to get people to try them. And then once they do, they  realize, yes, it does taste better the second day. 16:01 Yeah, it's really weird. think it's because the flavors have a chance to hang out and get to know each other. That's how I see it in my head. That's a great explanation. 16:13 So what do you have for animals on your homestead? You said you have animals. We do. We have numerous chickens, uh well 25 chickens that lay eggs and then we have ducks. uh We think that we might be leaving that market just because  they're not real productive in the winter. We have muskogees and they were supposed to lay throughout the winter.  This year they haven't. 16:38 Now they do breed  very rapidly and we also butchered the duck meat. We wasn't crazy about it. We love chicken, but the duck was kind of, it was different.  We also have two milk cows.  And of course, when they calve, we usually butcher the calves or we sell a calf and then butcher the other one once it's raised up so far. uh The girls have a horse  and we raise our own pigs. 17:07 not from birth. We buy them  usually at 50 pounds and then we raise them into feeder hogs and butcher them in the fall.  And we also do meat chickens that we get  and they're supposed to come this year the first of May. We have a chicken tractor that we move around the yard and then  usually about 12 weeks we butcher them.  They're on a  grass diet  so they take a little bit longer but  even 17:34 You know people say they butchered in eight weeks. Ours would not be ready in eight weeks and I think factory farms do it in four to six weeks.  So without the hormones they just don't grow like that. So ours is longer and then we butcher them as well  and we have four dogs  and we have three cats  and I think that's the end of the zoo. 17:58 I have a question. Do you coach people on homesteading because you are  a  great source of information? No, I mean, a lot of people ask us questions and I'm very willing to give information but as to and a lot of people have said, you know, you should do classes and that sort of thing. But no, I don't. I don't. I'm always willing.  But I  don't do that. If someone asked, I would be helpful. But as a side gig, no, I don't. 18:31 Well, if you ever decide you want to, you're gonna be fantastic at it, because you have  all the skills, ma'am. 18:39 Thank you, that was a kind compliment. 18:45 I don't lie. So it was more than a compliment. was truth. You are brilliant. I love what you're doing. um You have girls. How many girls do you have and how old are they?  We have four.  The oldest one is 19  and she is a CNA  and she doesn't live at home anymore. She has moved on to a city. I'm not sure how she adjusts to that, but that's what she does.  And then we have 19:12 an 18 year old, she babysits  and she still lives at home.  And then we have a 16 year old  and she works at a local diner  washing dishes and that sort of thing. now remember they've all been homeschooled as well.  And then we have a 14 year old and she stays at home and gets to help mom with all the boring things.  But anyway, they've all been homeschooled, they're all doing very well and we are proud of the young ladies that they have become and are becoming. 19:43 Okay. So did they ever know anything other than homesteading and homeschooling growing up? No, they were homeschooled from kindergarten  on. They've never been to public school and we have homeschooled.  the older two, weren't  into the homesteading as much uh as the later two. They don't know any other life other than homesteading. The older two,  yeah, they, you know, 20:12 We ate the processed food and did all that when they were littler, but they were so young I'm not sure they remembered. 20:19 So  most other labs, I'm sorry. 20:25 No, go ahead, most of their lives? Most of their lives they've been raised on the homestead, all of them. And I'm guessing they're pretty healthy young ladies. Yes, they are. They are. you know, no sickness. Occasionally they get a snuffle or a cold or the flu. Our daughter that works at the diner, she just got the flu and the rest of us didn't get it, thank goodness. And that's who the cough drops was for, but... 20:54 You know with lots of liquids and herbal teas and things like that she's made it through except for her energy level but she continued to work because she's a little bit of a miser. So they are relatively healthy no one has any problems. They do great. 21:13 I'm also guessing, correct me if I'm wrong, that they can hold their own in pretty much any situation, especially with boys. Yes,  yes, they don't seem to have any trouble with that at all. I  know from an early age, they went hunting, so we eat a lot of venison, and  if we can get a wild turkey, that sort of thing. So they're very proficient with guns and that sort of thing. 21:41 But yes, they can hold their own with just about anything because once you wrangle calves and you know, you're chasing chickens,  so you've got muscles in your arms, you've got muscles in your legs, and overall you're pretty tough. 21:56 Yes.  One of the things I love the most about girls that are raised on homesteads or farms or ranches  is that they believe in themselves. They have been through hard things and they don't take any shit off anybody. You know? They don't. They don't. They, you know, they always have a comment. As a matter of fact, our youngest,  I was telling my husband that, you know, she has this mouth that, um 22:24 It's probably going to get her in trouble one day, but I don't really know what to say. That's just an issue that I'm kind of letting ride.  She doesn't have it with us  as she does other people, but it just, I don't know. She doesn't mind to tell people what she thinks, which is what we've always taught them, that you need to think for yourself and it's okay to swim upstream when everybody else is swimming down and, you know, staying for what you believe in.  But yeah, they do okay. They're  good. 22:53 good mom, I'm so glad because it is so hard raising kids. And I was raised in the golden age of the  1980s. I'm 56.  1980s were great. And then I raised my kids  in  the  1990s and the early  2000s. That wasn't quite as easy, I don't think, as it was for my mom to raise myself and my siblings.  And I don't envy anyone. 23:21 who's raising little kids right now. It is such a hard world for people to be raising kids and make the kids believe that there's hope that they're gonna have a good life, you know? I agree. I think it's a very difficult time.  Not only is everything so expensive, but we have all kind of propaganda that's trying to be constantly pressed at our children that we don't agree with.  One thing that we've always based our family on is God. 23:49 We feel that if God's in the center, everything else comes together. So we've worked with that. Not saying, you know, my husband and I, sometimes we really get into arguments because he's got to have the last word and I've got to have the last word  and we end up in that kind of tangle. But  yes,  if without God, I'm not sure how everything would come together,  but it is a difficult time. It's very expensive.  And you know, if you're just starting out, it's even worse, but it's possible and we need good children. 24:19 and we need good parents  to raise good children because that's our future of our country and our lives. So it's so important for good people to continue to have good children. 24:32 Absolutely. All right. I have one more question for you because I try to keep this to half an hour.  If somebody  is considering getting into the homestead lifestyle, we'll call it,  what would you suggest that they learn first before they jump in whole hog both feet? What would you suggest that they take unto themselves to learn to start the process? 24:58 think the first thing that they would need to do  is, of course, plan, but if we step past that,  the first thing to do would be to start in the kitchen and just learn how to make bread. I know that sounds very simple, but if you can get your family and you can learn how to make bread and you can get your family to consume that bread,  that's going to make it open for the whole family to want to go deeper. And when you have your family on board, that makes it so much easier for everybody involved. 25:28 Bread is a simple thing and once people taste homemade bread, they're on board to homestead.  I was expecting you to say get chickens, but I like make bread better because make bread,  if you screw it up,  nothing dies.  Right,  Chickens are a great thing, but you know, that takes room. It takes a building. It takes time. 25:52 Bread you can do even if you live in a suburb or  if you haven't bought your land, if you don't have your homestead yet.  That's something that you can test the waters. You're not going to kill anything. You're not going to kill anybody. uh It's just a yeast. So that's why I would suggest bread. 26:10 I love it. MaryAnn, this has been so much fun and I'm going to be looking at your Facebook page every morning. I'm adding it into the rotation so that I can smile  every single morning. um Where can people find you? Well, we're on Facebook, obviously. We're also on TikTok and we have a YouTube that we post there. We try to post once a week. It doesn't always happen. So we're at all three social medias that you can find us under Morning Sun Homestead. 26:39 Fantastic.  As always, you can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  MaryAnn,  no joke, this was a joy. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you for having us. We were glad to be invited. All right. You have a great rest of your day. Thank you. also.  

Today I'm talking with Abigail and Christian at Faithful Harvest MN.  A Tiny Homestead Podcast 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. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose. 00:29 At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Green Bush Twins. That tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Green Bush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Abigail and Christian at Faithful Harvest Minnesota in Dexter, Minnesota. Good afternoon, guys. How are you? Good. How are you doing? Good. 00:54 So I'm in LaSore, Minnesota and it's overcast here and it's like 57 degrees. Is that what it's doing where you are? Yeah, it's about that here. It's really windy today, but the sun is out. So we're happy about it. Yeah, the sun is not out here. It's kind of great.  Oh. 01:15 But that's okay, because at least it's warm and it's not snowing. Finally, yeah. You get all cooked up over the winter and then finally like the nice days, you just want to break out and do clean everything all at once. 01:33 Oh yes, my husband spent most of Easter day outside and he was either riding the tractor and watering chickens or he was in the greenhouse planting seeds. yeah,  perfect timing to start doing this stuff. It gets exciting when the weather finally starts getting nice and  itching to get outside and get all that stuff done.  Absolutely. So do you guys consider yourselves homesteaders or farmers? 02:01 Uh, we consider ourselves homesteaders,  um, just because  whenever I think of farm, I kind of think of the large scale industrial farming and  our homestead is  very small batch and homemade and we have it smaller right now.  yeah. Okay. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do as homesteaders. Yeah. So,  um,  I'm right now I'm an ER nurse,  um, and I'm 02:31 part time with that right now. And uh that's kind of a new transition for me personally. And  we've been doing the homestead for about four years now.  And uh recently over the last year, we've gotten much more into the business side of the homestead and just starting to share what we do on the homestead and our daily life and everything. So that's kind of where we're at right now and what we do. 03:01 I'm just spending a lot more time doing stuff for marketing and just getting ready for the planting season here. Yeah. When starting the homestead, I do have a drywall business. 03:21 other than doing the homestead. 03:26 so you both have outside income. 03:30 Yeah, yeah, we both have our jobs outside of this.  And then, you know, we're considering this a really fun job.  The homestead is the job you want to be doing. The other two jobs are the jobby jobs.  Yeah, exactly.  The goal is to maybe one day we both do this full time and that's kind of our long term dream one day. But for now, just paying the bills with that and then in our free time we... 03:59 do everything we can for the homestead just to be out there and just working together on it. sounds very familiar after talking with people over 500 episodes in the last two and a half years. You're not alone in that guys. That's how it's done. So did you always want to be homesteaders? Were you raised by people who grew things? How did it work? Yeah. on 04:27 My side, I did grow up on a small hobby farm is what we called it. And my parents just raised cows, pigs, and sometimes chickens just to feed the family and some friends.  And my mom always had a garden growing up. So it's kind of been in my blood. And when we finally got together and we've been, Christian and I have been together for five years and just got married last year. And in that five years we've 04:54 learned a lot about each other that we both would love to get back to our roots of making things homemade and growing our own things, growing our own produce and livestock and just being able to be self-sustaining more. And that was kind of our biggest goal. So I do have a background in farming, I guess, but I learned a lot more in the last five years of Christian than I ever had growing up. Yeah, I would I would agree with that in the last five years. 05:23 I've learned more than I ever have in my life. Growing up, I grew up on a small acreage and the extent of that was  what we would do was have a small garden and it was basics, tomatoes, peppers, onion. No, not onions,  just oh pretty basic garden plots, small garden plots. We didn't have any  livestock or anything like that, but 05:51 always grew up just being outside and either working  or just  playing mow the lawn, stuff like that. But yeah, it wasn't until Abby and I met and... uh 06:11 to start getting into this learning little by little. Yeah, it's a whole different ball game when it's just you guys and it's not family doing it.  Mm For sure. Yeah. There's a lot more that  I didn't realize that my parents know so much more that I never even learned that I find myself going back to them like, what did you do with this when we were younger and all this stuff and now when it's just us, it's fun learning the little things that maybe we didn't know in the past. 06:41 Yes. And honestly, I think one of the best things about getting into homesteading is the learning curve because it's not, it's not necessarily a steep learning curve. is a consistent learning curve. Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. Yeah, I agree. Everything we've done over the years has just come little by little. Reading here, watching, you know, watching this or then trial and error that and 07:12 At the beginning projects, it seemed a little daunting, but just getting into it, it's always been a steady, steady incline.  Yes.  And once you know it, you know it. You don't forget it. It's like riding a bike. It's true. I love that part because if I had to relearn everything every day, I would just throw in the towel. It would be too much. Groundhog Day is not an appealing concept to me. 07:41 Um, Abigail, I saw your video on your Facebook page of your soap, making your soap. Yeah. Yes. And you were saying that it makes your skin so much softer and that I can't remember the rest of it, but just you were kind of raving in the commentary about how much you love it. Is that cold process, Lysow? Yeah. So that is, I guess I'm... 08:10 not a connoisseur of making soap. And I, when I first learned how to make it, I actually learned it from a guy that makes it in Minneapolis and he had a YouTube video out there. I was, and I had always wanted to start making soap eventually. And so we just pulled the trigger and pulled up this YouTube video. Like let's just buy the exact ingredients. Let's do it. And yeah, it is a cold process soap. ever since then, we've been using that same exact recipe just because we, we love it so much and it 08:40 changed how our skin feels and everything. So yeah. Yeah. Well,  let me tell you, girly, I am, am 56 years old. We started making our own cold process Lysol a good 15 years ago, mostly because mostly because the store bought soap that I could get made my skin dry and it made me itchy. And I got a bar of cold process Lysol. 09:10 at the Renaissance Festival from,  I can't remember the name of the company, I don't think they're even out there anymore, but they had an oatmeal almond soap. And I fell in love with it and  I had the same reaction. I did not have itchy skin anymore. My skin was soft and it didn't smell like the soap at all.  And I said to my husband, said, can we please try making cold processed lye soap? 09:36 I cannot afford to spend five or six dollars a bar per soap and it will cost us like less than a dollar if we make it ourselves. So he took it upon himself to deal with the scary lie because I don't like dealing with it. And we still to this day make soap and we sell it in the farm stand that we have on our property and people really like it. They really like the coffee scented one and they really like the leather scented one. 10:04 Oh, that sounds really nice. I feel like I'd really like the coffee one too. It sounds waking up in the morning and taking a shower and just like that coffee smell. It's like, okay, I'm not gonna drink a cup of coffee now. It's fabulous. I actually love the lemon. 10:24 I can't remember the oil we used first. We use a straight lemon oil now and we have a lemon soap and that one's my favorite in the morning because it smells  so bright and sunshiny  and it wakes you up.  Oh, I love that. You might have to try a lemon one.  Sounds really nice.  Yeah, the unscented ones work just as good.  My wife makes like a forest one that I really enjoy. That's the one I use right now. 10:53 Yeah, it's like I ended up finding an Old Spice copycat mix and was able to kind of get that same smell. That's a lot of the people's favorites right now on the guys' side. Oh yeah, absolutely. The other thing that we did do, I don't know if we're going to keep doing, is we use the same oils to make candles. And so our candles mirror our soap scents. 11:22 And so at the farmer's market, people come up and smell the candles and then they look over and they see the soaps and they see the same names on the soaps and they're like, are you kidding? The soap smells like the candles. Yes. Yes, it does. That's awesome. I love that. It's really fun. Okay. So you guys have a garden now. You do a garden now. 11:48 Yeah, right now  we're getting ready. We're getting ready to start making more beds, but yeah, we have a raise. What we do is raise beds.  That's kind of what's kicked off everything. But. Yeah, we have a garden that we started indoors. I'm playing, sowing seeds and then we'll eventually be. Putting him outside to harden them off. Yeah, we ended up starting with raised beds when we started. 12:18 gardening about three years ago, just because we wanted to kind of keep it simple. We weren't sure if we wanted to do the tilling yet. We're just like, let's just start with five raised beds and see how it goes. And now we're up to 27 raised beds and planning to expand more this year. So we try to get enough produce to last ourselves for the year. That was kind of why we started gardening in the first place is we wanted to preserve and whatever we needed to do between canning, freezing, drying. 12:47 to save on the grocery bill every year. So being able to start that, and then it just kind of expanded into, okay, maybe we can start selling at markets. But yeah, our garden is one of our favorite times of year just to be able to see all the green out there and start getting the produce and eating what we  grow by seeds inside months and months ago. It's exciting. So is your kitchen table covered with seed trays right now?  Basement. Yeah, our basement is our... 13:16 We call it like the factory down there because we have tables of  seedlings growing down there. Racks, racks  and  LED lights. uh every morning  when our neighbors are driving by, they're like, your basement oh looks like a spaceship  down there.  Do you have the pink lights or just the white lights? White lights right now. And then eventually they're going to turn into pink lights when we start moving. 13:47 We start moving the tomatoes over to the other  table. Yeah, once the seedlings get bigger, we have to move them to a different table because they get  so tall when they're just in the basement. So we got more industrial lights on another side and those ones are pink and then it kind of looks like we're yeah. Yeah. Why? Like tabletops? Yeah. Doors and whatnot. Yeah. 14:11 Yeah, I made the mistake of getting the pink lights. I didn't realize I had ordered pink lights. I thought I had ordered white lights and those pink lights are really creepy in the middle of the night. They are. They were. What's going on over there? This is the first year in forever. And that's a that's a big overstatement, but whatever. This is the first year since we moved in here in August of 2020 that I do not have ceiling trays on my kitchen table right now. 14:40 because we started every single seed in our hard-sided greenhouse this year. Wow, that is awesome. So you have greenhouses outside right now? Yeah, we have a big, we have a, I always screw up the measurements. I thought it was 20 feet by 40 feet, but it's actually smaller than that, but not by much. So we have a hard-sided greenhouse, yes. That is cool. That's  another goal, but how... 15:10 How did you go about building that? I well, I applied for a grant, number one, and got it amazingly enough. I didn't think we had a chance in hell of getting it.  And then that paid for the supplies and my husband and my son and a neighbor helped us build it, helped us put it up.  Congratulations. That's awesome. 15:37 I feel like that's a big weight lifted  off your shoulders. You can just keep production going and be able to use that space all year round. Well, it gives us an extra couple months in the fall and it gives us a couple extra months in the spring. It is not great for growing anything past December and until March. 16:02 Okay. I suppose that makes sense here in Minnesota. I would need a heater if you had to want it to grow anything indoors and there's probably not enough sun either. Yeah, that's the thing. We would either have to use one of those, I don't know what they're called, they're a great big heating unit and they're heated with propane, I think. You hang them up. Or we'd have to use 16:29 electricity, which we don't want to do because it's too expensive,  or we would have to get solar panels and a generator. And all of those options aren't really worth it for just three months in the winter time. Yeah, that's true.  It would build a lot of costs up for,  and then I'm sure in the greenhouse, you can't grow much more than like greens and things that are more fragile that don't need a ton of sunlight.  So I suppose it might not be worth  the cost it would take to do that. 17:00 Yeah. And then the other thing is, that where would we sell them? Cause there aren't really a whole lot of winter markets.  Yeah, that's true too. So we decided that gaining that two  months in the fall and that two months in the spring  really was a good idea because getting our plants started in March and 1st of April means that we actually have stuff to sell at the first farmers market in June. Oh yeah. It's very smart. Yeah. 17:30 And we just wanted we just wanted a greenhouse. Darn it. That was part of the reason. 17:41 Yeah. One day we'll be building up to it. Hopefully. Well, you guys are young yet. Yes. Are you in your late 20s? Yeah, I'm 26. Yeah, 32. 17:59 You have lots of time to grow and stretch and decide what works for you for your homestead, which is amazing. Yeah, that is true. And you put it like that. I appreciate that. Yeah, it was just, at the feels of, you know, still trying to figure out what's the next step for us. And you will be until you leave the homestead for good. I swear to you, we bought our place five years ago, five and a half years ago. And, uh, 18:29 We're still not sure what we're doing and we're like fully fledged adult people. Our kids are grown. So it's always going to be what's next. It's always going to be what should we do? What do you want to do? Yeah. 18:45 I like that part that  we've felt  really creative since starting this, at least  just from all the ideas that have been coming up and the what ifs, like maybe we can do this and that and  how do we get there? that's, you  know, being creative is just what homesteading has allowed us to do. 19:09 And it's fun.  Yeah. 19:14 That's my favorite part. It's fun. 19:18 My wife and I were just talking the other day about that.  When you get home from a long day  of just being out there, whether it's  working on a project that you had no idea  how  to start it, ah being in the garden, hands  dirty, tired,  how satisfying it is when you get inside and the laughs you had throughout just working throughout the day, how goofy you can get. 19:48 We get really goofy out there. Yeah. Some of the some of the best memories we've made have been out outside working and being creative, as he said, and at the end of the day. And I still think back to last year, I still remember those memories out there working hard and until the moon comes out and we got blood lights out there just trying to keep working, trying to get plants in before it rains the next day. And yeah, I remember. Yeah, I remember we remember that time when we exactly we took out 20:18 the shop lights and I took out the drywall lights and we just started hooking everything up and planting in the middle of the night.  It looked like a basketball court out there. bet it did. You guys don't have kids, do you? Not yet, no.  it's going to be harder to do those kinds of things once you have babies. So enjoy the silliness now  because the silliness that comes with kids is a whole different animal. 20:46 Oh, I suppose. That's something to look forward to, Absolutely. So do you guys have any animals on the homestead yet? Do have chickens? Yeah, we do have chickens. have right now we have 19 hens that we get eggs from for ourselves and then to sell at markets. And then every year we do 75 broiler chickens to be able to we butcher them ourselves come when they're. 21:16 eight weeks old  and we have a whole family day of it, butcher the chickens. And then when we're done, we have our freezer full for the year. And then we're able to fill our parents' freezers and a couple friends. um So yeah, just have chickens, but no other livestock right now. um Potentially maybe work into getting pigs this year. that's in the plan this year. Nice. 21:44 If money was no object and time  wasn't a real object, and it is because you guys both have jobby jobs, what would you like to have for animals on the homestead? 21:55 Oh, that's a really good question. Yeah. I would like a whole zoo out there if I could. But Christian would probably stop me. I love all animals, but I think specifically for thinking for the homestead. Yeah. Yeah. I would like for as far as an exotic animal, I was like if money was no option, it gets a couple of peacocks out there for sure. That'd be the fun. That'd be the fun bird. But I would go. 22:25 I would go beef  and a lot of beef, lot of pigs, chickens, those basic ones, which I don't think  there was. Yeah, I think  we've always kind of, we've talked about goats in the past, but I think that we're kind of leaning more towards beef, pork and chicken just because those can have the most yield. And we kind of want animals that will. 22:53 give back to us in the long run. know,  we do we do love pets and everything, but I guess if money was no object, then we'd get all of the fun animals to like goats, and stuff. get like fish because we have like a little bit of a pond back there. You can start getting like you can start farming fish, trout, stuff like that. mean, just imagine getting into that. Yeah.  You start farming trout. I'm coming to see you and I'm bringing money.  Bring it over. 23:21 Come on, on.  It's sitting there.  You could just see at one point it was a pond and has water backed up. 23:39 Well, I've started asking that question now and then because the answers are always interesting. I asked them the other day and she said,  I think I would like kangaroos. And I was like, okay, that would be great.  Oh, would be a fine fence.  Yeah. My husband and I have been talking about getting into quail. And I mentioned this a couple of episodes ago and we haven't actually decided yet because 24:07 Money's a little tight with the way everything keeps going up in price. So we're waiting until we have at least an extra, literally extra, $200 before we do anything. Because we know we have to get an incubator. We know who we're getting the eggs from, and that's probably not going to cost us anything right now. But we still have to make the coop. We have to get the brooder. We have to get things to make this happen. So we're working on 24:37 putting $200 aside that is not allocated for anything for Quail. And that would be awesome. Yeah, it's amazing to when you think about you want to get an animal and then you start think like when it's a dream, it's like, oh yeah, we can do that. And then when you start thinking seriously about it, then you remember all the little things that will add up. that. But I think that's a really cool idea that you set aside. You're waiting to set aside that money. 25:04 to be able to do that. Cause then it's like, know that you are for sure. Like you have a really good plan going forward and everything. Oh, that's what it helps to us. I feel too, like it's always helped  like, well, not always, but I should say it started more  responsibility with money and really thinking about, right, what's, you know, let's sit down, let's write it out. Let's see, let's make a plan. I've always enjoyed that part of it too. Yeah, for sure. 25:32 Well, it's either feed the quail or feed us and we need to eat to be able to do the things to be able to feed the quail. So the quail comes  second. other thing that  I haven't said anything to my husband yet because I'm still chewing on it, but  I made the mistake of watching a video about pygmy goats the other day. The little tiny goats, they're only about two feet tall and the biggest they get. 25:57 The biggest they get is 70 pounds. And I was like, oh my God, I could have goats. We could handle those. Those are small. And then I was like, but they're probably going to cost $500 a piece and we have to have a fenced in area for them, which means you got to buy the wood to make the fence. And my brain just started spinning. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to keep this to myself until I figure it out.  Then I will be like, Hey, there's somebody that has two pigmy goats. We could have baby goats. And he'll be like,  um. 26:27 Lay out the full plan. What? Yeah. He's going to be like, we need a plan. I already got it. Yes, I am trying really hard to keep my bright ideas to myself right now because he has ADD or ADHD. And if I even so much as breathe the word goat with any kind of intention near him, he's going to be like, goats. And he'll do he'll do the he'll do the deep dive into how we can make it happen. I 26:55 don't want to do a deep dive. want to take it slow on this.  quail is much more doable. Pygmy goats  are  a pipe dream right this second, but I suspect there might be little goats here within two years. So we'll see. Oh, I love that. It's exciting.  Yes, and uh it's only him and I, and we like goat milk and pygmy goats are just as good for milk as regular goats. 27:24 but they produce less of it, which means we wouldn't be wasting any. Oh, there you go. That's a smart way of going about it. 27:33 Yes, and I could probably handle a small goat. I don't think I can handle a big 150 pound goat. That's not my idea of fun. So.  It is so much fun talking to homesteaders because you guys get it. I said, pig me goats and both of your voices just went up like, oh.  We'll have to come visit them when you can come to the trout farm, then we'll go visit the goats. 28:04 We'll trade visiting rights. It'll be great. Yeah, there you go. I remember my, was just thinking back to when my buddy had a Billy goat and that, uh, I see way bigger than pigmen goats, but this thing, this thing was named Bob and it was just a nuisance, man. It was, it would stand on cars. It would stand everywhere. I was, I don't know, that came to my head. thought those goats, man. 28:33 Goats are either a huge pain in the ass or they are a blessing. And if I get little tiny goats, maybe there'll be blessings. Maybe.  We'll see.  We will see how that plays out eventually.  But it's fun to think about and it's fun to do the research and I am a big lifelong learner. really like learning new things. So studying up on pygmy goats is no skin off my nose.  All right, guys, I try to keep these to half an hour. Where can people find you? 29:02 Yeah, so we're um on Facebook at Faithful Harvest MN and we're also on Instagram with this same uh username. And then  maybe in the future we're working on a website so you can keep an eye out for that. But yeah, I've been trying to post on social media a lot more so you can keep up with us on there and see some fun videos and content.  And that will be in the show notes so people can find you. 29:30 All right, as always, people can find me at tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  This was really fun, you guys. And Christian, thank you for making the time too, because Abigail said you were going to join us, and I was like, yes.  Thank you. Yeah, thank you for reaching out to us. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for giving us a platform to be able to share about homesteads and other people get to share different things going on with their tiny homestead. It's a good platform that you've created for everyone. Yeah,  it's so. 30:00 We've never done anything like this before. So  we're excited. We really were to be able to talk to you.  Good. And it's so fun for me.  You guys say thank you. All the people I've interviewed, you're all like, thank you so much. And you have no idea how this lights up my days too. So thank you.  All right. You guys have a great day.  Thank you.  

Today I'm talking with Diane at Montana Country Homesteading. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast 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. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose. 00:29 At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Green Bush Twins. That tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Green Bush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Diane at Montana Country something  homesteading  in Montana because it's Montana country homesteading. Good morning, Diane. How are you?  Good morning. I'm wonderful. How are you this morning?  I'm good. How's the weather there? 00:59 Actually yesterday for Easter was just about as perfect as it could be. And this morning it's a little overcast, but it's going to be a nice day. Unusual weather in Montana, to be honest. Yeah. It was a lovely day in Minnesota here yesterday too. Yesterday was beautiful. Sunny 50s light breeze. was, it was really good. All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at Montana country home study. Well, um, 01:28 Let's see a little bit about us.  I've been married to my husband who was my high school sweetheart for 47 years now. um We came to Montana exactly 30 years ago in just a couple of weeks, the first weekend of May.  And um we came with our three kids, two dogs,  a motor home,  a U-Haul carrying a pickup truck full of all my husband's construction tools and away we went. 01:57 and  came out onto a bare piece of property that quite honestly, my husband found in the back of a Field and Stream magazine  in a one inch by two inch ad and said, honey, let's go to Montana.  And  so we did, we packed up everything 30 years ago and came onto this 20 acre parcel that  we actually bought it with a couple of Polaroid, the shake pictures, you know, that you shake to develop them. 02:26 And  away we went  and it's  been a whirlwind since we actually did homestead this property.  It was set up in 20 acre tracks out here with quite honestly, no roads, no development, no nothing. They had just subdivided the land. um When we moved on the property, there was literally a two lane dirt path that came down to our 20 acres. And that I looked at. 02:52 dirt path up by the way. And it is actually considered um a stage coach line road from Billings, Montana to Park City, Montana back in the day. So that was of interesting. Yeah, we live on a stage coach road. uh It's now been a little better developed than it used to be, but it's still just a gravel road coming in here. uh But yeah, 30 years ago, we came onto this property with just a dream and an idea. uh 03:21 We were uh building contractors in the Bay Area and were just on complete overload and did not want to raise our kids in that environment.  And so we made a pact with each other to get the heck out of there before our kids got uh in middle school and away we went. And we've been here since. That is amazing. I love that.  Okay. So  did you... 03:47 Did you grow up with people who did homesteading or gardening or farming or ranching at all? My grandparents um on my dad's side had a farm, but we didn't go there very often. uh My other grandma was the most incredible gardener that you had ever seen. She lived in a  little town in Pemberville, Ohio.  And um quite honestly, that woman could grow anything. And what was really amazing to me is she would 04:15 pull all of her flowers in from her flower beds and put them in what she called her breezeway  in the winter months in Ohio. And she would hold those flowers over till next year and put them all back out in the beds. It was amazing to me.  I don't have that gift that grandma had, but  I can grow a thing or two.  So what are the  thing or twos that you grow?  We grow a lot of our own food. um I think it's really important that you grow your own food, especially today. 04:45 with what's going on with the food chain and the modified foods and all the sprays and such that they're putting on our foods. think it's wildly important that you grow your own food today.  So I actually have,  one of the first things we did on this homestead was we built some raised beds, started some gardens with my kids.  And then of course the deer came and ate everything. I didn't realize  that I was dealing with some serious 05:15 predation with animals and such around here, but we were. uh Then we decided to put a hoop house over the raised beds and got wise and kept the animals out and started growing food there. uh If you look on my social media page right now,  my husband finally finished uh our main greenhouse that we're going to be growing and I actually just started putting plants in there on Saturday afternoon. 05:39 That's exciting. It's super exciting. It's like over the top greenhouse, of course, my husband's that go bigger, go home kind of guy. um But the first greenhouse that we we grew food in  was just a little  raised bed area that we put  literally sheet panels that we hooped over it and uh buttoned them down to both sides of the  of the raised bed and then put um plastic over top of it. And that's what we grew and put a wall in the front. 06:07 some mesh in the back and away we went.  And I grew in that for  20 some years. So  it doesn't need to be elaborate, but you need to grow your own food.  And now we've just stepped up the game to grow into this uh major greenhouse.  And  years ago, I took a horse barn that we had when we were actually raising paints back in the day.  I took that horse barn and I rented it to somebody who cultivated. uh 06:34 inside of that and they have since moved out. So now I have an area where I can actually grow indoor produce all year long. So we're working on that next. That's our next big project. We've had one project after another here on this piece of land. Again, we drove up, there was nothing here, like literally nothing.  No water, no power, no phones, no driveways, uh just a piece of land with some pin markers so that you knew what was yours and what wasn't and 07:04 We laid it out from there and it's been  quite interesting. Okay. After everything you just told me, I have a couple of thoughts.  I'm going do my public service announcement now because it plays into what you just said.  I do this on every episode lately.  If you live in America right now and you don't know how to cook from scratch,  learn because you will save yourself a lot of money if you're buying ingredients instead of finished foods.  Number two, if you 07:30 can't grow a garden, get to know your local producers and growers because they can grow a garden  and you're feeding yourself really good food and you're supporting your neighbors.  Love all of that. That's incredible. Yep. And then number two, I have been trying to figure out a way to explain the feeling  that we homesteaders get when we have a project and we get it finished. And the only thing I can liken it to 07:57 is if you were in Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or you took art class in elementary school and you learned a new skill, whether it was building a homemade birdhouse or Girl Scouts, they used to have you make an apron  or in art class, did, I don't know what it was called, but we took a chisel and we chiseled out  a design on a piece of vinyl board and then we would make stamps with that vinyl board. 08:26 When,  if you've ever done those kinds of things as a kid, if you have the, I don't know, luck to end up having property and having some of your own choices be your choices, not the city planner's choices, and you can put in a greenhouse or you can put in a garden or you put in a raised bed and you see success with that.  It's the same feeling as when you took on a project when you were a kid. 08:57 Boy, and to add to that, Mary,  if you do have the property and you do have the means to do it, do some kids classes.  One of the other things that we did on this property, we actually started it in 2023,  is we built out an area on the west side of our property, which is called Montana Country Pines. um 09:18 Montana Country Pines is eight short-term rentals that we built over there that consists of teepees and a really cool 100-year-old sheep wagon and some  vintage RVs. But one of the other things that I do with Montana Country Pines is I put a sign out at the road  and the kids know that it's Craft Day at Montana Country Pines. And we have all the stuff here ready for them. 09:42 So all they gotta do is show up at noon on a Saturday when the signs out and they can come make something and take it back to their properties. So that's been really, really awesome to do those sort of things and teach kids that, you know, you can do things other than be in front of screens all the time. We can find things in nature and turn them into art. And I just love doing stuff like that with kids because when I was a kid, we used to ride our bicycles to a place called the 10:11 Miami Valley Rec Center, and there were volunteer moms that showed up with  stuff in boxes that you could make something and take it home.  And that was one of the most  biggest highlights of my childhood is going and making stuff at the Rec Center.  So that's why I do that. put a street sign out there, a little sandwich sign, and the kids know that tomorrow it's Craft Day at Montana Country Pines. So they show up, make something, and take it home. 10:40 That is so amazing, Diane. love it. uh Summer rec saved my mother's sanity. That's not bad. Mine too, I'm sure. 10:53 Yeah. And the same thing we would go and I mean, they were minor crafts. was like, I don't know. It's been so long. I'm 56. It's been forever since I went to summer rec. I remember having fun. I remember being outside for part of the day because it was at a school building. So we would play on the playground or play soccer or whatever. And then the other part of the day was indoor crafts. And I seem to remember having like little one foot by one foot boards and nails and we put nails in the wood. 11:23 And then we took colored strings and made really pretty designs on it. But I don't remember what  the art form was called. String art, some kind of string art. was really fun and it was really Zen. I loved that because you couldn't focus on anything except getting strings right.  And I think that's what's missing with kids today because with social media, it isn't Zen. It's just feeding your brain constantly in all different directions. 11:54 Yeah, that's why I grab my grandsons up and I say, let's go paint some rocks and leave them around.  We're that family too, that paints a rock and leaves it and picks up a rock and leaves a rock.  We're those people.  But yeah, my grandkids, they paint rocks and they leave them out here in our park. And uh it's fun. You you walk by and you see a rock that looks like a Volkswagen itself. It's pretty cool. yeah, have all sorts of stuff like that.  you do little rocks with them? 12:22 encouraging words like joy and kindness. yeah. Hippie rocks. That's what I call it. Hippie rocks. Hey, again, I'm 65. I grew up in the seventies. I am that old hippie at heart, but you we use it. We use that hippie spirit to do good things for kids and people today. I love it. I told you when we talked on the phone that I was so excited to talk to you for the interview, cause I knew it was going to be fun. And so far you have not disappointed me. And in the least. 12:52 So do you guys have chickens or goats or anything? We do, okay. So we used to raise horses, um got a little older and decided that maybe we'd let the younger people raise horses. um And um we do have a couple of goats. They are cashmere goats that we just use them for the fiber, um which is something else that we've got coming up here pretty soon. We're going to have a couple of gals come out here with a couple of spinning wheels and 13:19 bring a group of homeschool kids out here and show them how to actually take fiber and turn it into uh spinnable wool  and then show them some finished products that these ladies have done.  just to kind of plant that idea in some young kids' heads that, you  you look at that animal and it's not just the animal, it's the fiber and the garments and such that can come from it.  So we do have a couple of cashmere goats. Yeah, I have a flock of chickens. I've always had chickens. um 13:48 And a couple of Dobermans right now. Other than that,  we normally get em a little bum steer that comes in every year that we'll raise up. We don't have one right at the moment.  We do have a pig pen out there waiting for a couple of little pigs again, which I'm not overly excited about, but we'll deal with.  Their food. Their food. Yeah.  So when you say a bum calf,  would you define that for me? 14:17 We usually find somebody that's got a calf that the  mom didn't make it or ignored it or it got left when people rounded up the cows and what have you and they find a bum calf somewhere.  We got a couple of  local ranchers that we always tell them when you got something that needs a home and needs fed up and we'll just put it in this pen over here, but we usually get one every year. 14:42 And then one of my dearest friends in the world has a bison ranch just about an hour and a half from here that  we always have fresh bison meat here. And we go and help on the ranch and that sort of thing and barter for m boxes of wonderful meat from the ranch.  there a big difference between how cattle beef and bison beef tastes or is it pretty much the same? 15:09 It depends on how you cook it, but yeah, it's pretty close to the same, but bison meat is much better for you cholesterol wise. It's the good cholesterol that you want.  It's just a better protein source.  At one point on this homestead,  we actually had a USDA certified organic meat facility that my husband built out of a,  he put up a hundred by 80 foot pole barn and we actually built inside of it. 15:38 a certified organic meat plant. actually produced a bison jerky product for several years. We took it then from that particular plant that we built here on our place and took it to a co-packer because we kind of outgrew our space here.  And then COVID pretty much took care of that. COVID pretty much took care of a lot of things.  COVID took care of a really good business there. 16:04 But it was awesome that we were able to create it right here from our own homestead. uh We got uh certified trim that came in from Bison facilities and actually produced the product right here on our property.  I'll tell you that that was one of the learning curves that uh took me a minute.  Learning uh nutritional labeling, um recipes that. 16:29 actually produce the nutrition that you were looking for that didn't have too much sodium or too much fat or too much whatever. um I actually formulated the recipes. My husband did the cook  and um smoked everything and then we put it into the marketplace for years. It was pretty incredible right here from our homestead.  Very cool. I didn't even know you could do that.  Yep.  We had to have certified inspectors come out here every week. We had inspections and 16:59 um Yeah, it was quite the process, but we built it from the ground up, bought every piece of machinery,  put it all together,  did the packaging, the labeling, the production, and then actually put it into the marketplace. uh I want to touch on the labeling because uh we  have a farm stand here at our property and we sell cold processed lye soap. 17:26 and we sell candles and we sell roller balls with with essential oils in them and things like that.  And as soon as I renew my cottage food registration, which I haven't done yet, we can sell breads and cookies and things too. Nice. And  what I didn't realize when we decided that we wanted to do this is that it was going to cost money for the labels and for the ink to print the labels. 17:51 God forbid we actually get the labels printed for us by ordering them because even it's even more expensive then. So so what I would like the listener to know is that when you're paying I don't know ten dollars for a loaf of sourdough bread not only are you paying for the bread you are paying for the work that it took to make the bread you are paying for the bag that the bread is in you're paying for the paper 18:20 that the label is printed on because without the label, we can't sell you that bread because the state of Minnesota won't allow us to. Correct. Correct. So it's not that we want to gouge anybody as producers, but we have to make it worth the time to do the thing. Yeah. And the consumer needs to understand the fact that they are paying for all of those things,  but they're also paying for a better quality product. 18:48 rather than buying something that's  jam-packed full of preservatives that you're going to feed your family.  So there's a cost to all of that.  What was really surprising to me when we went organic with our product, uh well, there's two sets of inspectors that would come out. There was the USDA would come out and inspect us just based on the fact we were meat, we were a meat product,  but then we'd have the organic  inspectors come out. 19:16 And the first time that she came out, she said, I need to see all of your ingredients that you've bought over the past six months. And I need to see your production runs for six months because we need to see that they match. And it just kind of struck me funny. I said, what do you mean see that they match? Of course they'd have to match. Well, she kind of filled me in on the fact that there's a lot of fraud in certified organic labeling that they have found massive fraud that, you know, it, 19:45 The label says it's certified organic, but you haven't bought enough organic materials to create  that amount of product. it just struck me. oh I didn't realize that people would defraud that system as well, but apparently they do.  So for me, buying local, buying from a farm stand, if I don't have that particular vegetable in my garden. 20:09 is important. Buying meat from my local ranchers and so forth is important because I don't want to buy meat from the counters that are full of formaldehyde and  funky stuff to make them stay pink for a while so that they look good for you to pick up. I'd rather have it wrapped in paper in my freezer knowing that my neighbor took it to the butcher that I know. They processed it the right way and  it's  what I think it is rather than what's all in everything else you're buying today. 20:39 So it is important. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Yeah. And the other thing is that if you spend your money locally, it tends to stay local. True. Very true. Very true.  I was reading something on Facebook because everybody reads something on Facebook every day at this point. But it was a story about how a guy went to the local dude who sold 21:06 And he bought a box of steaks from the farmer. And the farmer then took that money and he ended up going to the local barber for a haircut. He donated some of that money to the tithing thing at church. He put some of that money in his local bank and he spent some of it at the local grocery store.  And by the time he had done all that, he had spent money  locally, not outside of a 15-mile radius. 21:36 And I was like, you know, that's how it used to be. Yeah, that is true. And it's important, you know, if we don't, if we don't keep our, our own towns funded, they die. True. Community is everything.  And that's one of the things that I have specialized in for years and years and years is creating communities of people.  I've been in the network marketing space  in the background of everything that my husband and I have done for 35 years. 22:06 Our first child was born autistic. We could not do the daycare thing, nor did I want to for that matter. So uh when our first boy was born,  I quit my job as a pediatric dental assistant  and became that stay at home mom and did the books for my husband's construction company for years.  And I was the one that was kind of filling in in the background.  Cause if you've ever done construction, it's feast or famine. It's either really good or it's really bad. uh 22:34 So I was kind of that buffer for all those years um until, uh oh, about 10 years ago, I was able to step up my game in that space  and uh create a really, really good network of people  and create that leveraged and residual income that my husband  tells everybody now that I'm his sugar mama and  have taken over to the point where he does not have to build. 23:02 homes any longer. He doesn't have to do projects he doesn't want to do. can pick and choose what he'd like to do. He's been doing a lot of volunteer stuff is what he's done. ah He can't sit still.  We figured that one out. So uh there's always a project around here on the homestead he can deal with, but he does not have to travel and go build someone's homes any longer, which I'm pretty excited about.  take it that you really love each other because you've been together for quite a long time. 23:31 Oh yeah, 47 years. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, my parents were married in 1965. They've never been married to anyone else. My mom was 19. My dad was 22, I think, when they got married. Yeah. And they are still just smitten with each other this many years later. And I'm just like, how in the heck does that work? Well, you either grow together or you grow apart. And we grew together. 24:00 and raised three incredible boys into nice young Ben. And it's been a whirlwind, I can tell you that. um I followed him from Ohio to Florida to California and now to Montana. So yeah, I think I'd follow the boy over a cliff, but um needless to say, Montana is where we really fell in love with the people, the surroundings, the opportunity um and a way to 24:30 to create a really nice lifestyle for our family. And that's why we've been here for 30 years. This is home for us now. Congratulations on knowing what you wanted, going after it and making it a success. That is fabulous.  We are pretty driven people, I must say.  We're that go bigger, go home.  That's kind of been our attitude forever. So we kind of overdo it when we do it. 24:56 just like  the meat plant, you know, we started out, that started out with us taking our buffalo jerky that we normally made to hunting camp. And everybody kept saying, you guys should sell this stuff. You guys should sell this stuff. Well, he heard it one too many times and took the building that he had just built that he didn't know he was gonna do with and said, let's just put a meat plant in there.  And we did it.  And it was crazy. 25:24 Okay, well, you've been doing this for a long time. So  I'm gonna ask you the question that's always really weird for people to answer. What would you tell a young couple who wanna get into homesteading? How would you tell them to get started?  Plan well first,  okay? Do the planning,  figure out what it is that you really want from your homestead. Do you want it to produce food? 25:51 And is that in the source of animals and vegetables or one or the other? um Figure out what your own gifts and talents are that you have. Because here's the thing, if you  can live on a homestead and you can take your own gifts and talents and monetize them,  and today there's  hundreds of ways to monetize your talents via the internet. um So if you can take your gifts and talents and figure out a way to monetize those from your homestead. 26:20 For example, if you have goats and you like making cheese, that should be something that you figure out how to monetize. Or if you're that person that wants to make soaps and candles and that sort of thing, then you need to hone in on that craft and that talent and figure out where on your homestead will you be doing that. uh Create the space so that the space is for that. We have so many buildings on this homestead, it's insane.  It looks like a village around here, it really does. uh 26:51 But at the same token, each one of those spaces has its own purpose on the homestead.  And I think that would be one of the first things I would tell somebody. Figure out what you want from it. Make a good plan to go after it  and know that you're gonna work your little butt off for a while.  Yes. Living doesn't come easy. If you want... 27:12 If you want to live well and you want to be in a place where you're not breathing smog and everybody's exhaust from their cars or hearing all the sirens and  all the stuff in big cities, um it takes a  little extra work to live in an area like we live in. um So plan on that. That would be my first advice. 27:37 That is really good advice because that's what I would have said too.  You have to... 27:44 You have to have a plan. It's just the way it is. And  when we bought our place five and a half years ago, our plan was to start with a clean slate. And boy, did we, we started with a clean slate and we had to put in a garden and the field where the garden is had not been grown on or in for 50, think 40 or 50 years.  last thing that anyone grew on it was a big old field of  pumpkins. 28:14 So it was all grass and weeds and my husband played hell getting that garden plot dug out to plant produce in.  I bet.  And uh this year  we now have our hard side of greenhouse that we put in three maize ago  and every single seed that's planted so far is planted in trays in the greenhouse for the first time ever.  Doesn't that feel wonderful? 28:41 Oh, I'm so happy to not have my kitchen table and my desk in my living room covered with seat dress.  But uh the garden went from like, I think it was 50 by  20 feet. And now it's, I think it's a hundred feet by 150 feet. Awesome. Nice garden. So we have been here for five, well, six years this August. And it took until last year to really feel like we maybe had 29:10 some kind of a handle sort of kinda on our plans. And that's the other thing is that if you're on a homestead, plans constantly change and grow and morph. Yes, absolutely. That's what happened with the west side of our property. There was an area over on the west side that I said, honey, one of these days we should build a little cabin over here because when our grandson Mason gets old enough, he may want to be out here. 29:38 And if we had a little cabin over there for him, that would be great. Which by the way, my husband was a log home builder for a year. So when I put him to task with stuff, he usually can just get her done. So I may mention that we should probably put a cabin there for him. Well, the space that we were going to put the cabin actually is what houses a 14 by 20 wall tent. That's part of Montana country pines, which is. 30:06 Our business, operate from the west side of our property, the short-term rentals.  We set up what is  an Airbnb style camping trip for people where you just bring your clothes and your food and we've got everything else handled for you.  But again, those plans changed  because I was just going put a little cabin over there for my grandson. And as it is now,  there's a whole village there in that area. Actually on that top side where I wanted to put that cabin. 30:35 there's the two hand painted teepees, the tent, and then the sheep wagon, which is kind of like a frontier area up top.  And then we put a road that goes in down below where we've got the vintage RVs at. ah yeah, those plans changed dramatically and they changed because we got into vintage RVs.  We started refurbishing some vintage RVs and flipping them and then. 30:59 We kept one and went to a show, went to a vintage RV show and got ribbons and was like, okay, we love this. uh And then  again, that go bigger, go home attitude. My husband said, well, we just create a little RV, you know, like a little Airbnb thing. Well, here we are now, uh three years later. And uh it's pretty exciting to be able to host people from all over. We had people here last year from Sweden, which was really awesome. 31:29 but to host people from all over the world now uh here at our place and share a little piece of paradise with them has been pretty awesome.  I bet it has. I love what you're doing, Diane. Where can people find you online?  The park itself is under MontanaCountryPines.com.  We have Facebook page, but we also have a website page for Montana Country Pines for the booking engine and such. uh You can see pictures of 31:58 The inside of the a hundred year old sheep wagon is just, it's all original. It's epic. uh It came off of the largest sheep ranch, which was in Martinsdale, Montana, just up the road about  an hour or so. uh It came off of the largest sheep ranch in Northwestern America.  And  that particular sheep wagon, someone lived in it and actually 32:25 tended to the sheep of that ranch for years. It's pretty incredible.  So yeah, we've got  some interesting things going on out here. I'm a firm believer  in taking your property and  utilizing it for  what it can produce for you uh income wise.  And uh my biggest thing I must say for the last several years uh has been on a little mission to empower women, just women in general. 32:53 Not that I don't like working with men, but I really enjoy working with women more so. I was raised back in the 60s by a single mom, which back then was not the norm. You were frowned upon if you didn't have a father in the household back in the 60s and 70s, which was my era. And I realized that if my mom would have had the skill sets that I have today and the knowledge that I have today, my life would have been really different as a kid, like real different. 33:23 And here's the cold raw statistic.  One  in four women survive either being divorced or widowed without having to change all the circumstances around them, like leave their homestead or drive a different vehicle or a lot of circumstances change for women. So I have been on this mission for the last 10, 15 years to empower as many women as I can to be that  one. 33:53 Right? To be the one that can survive whatever comes at you, that you know how to create income, you know how to handle the income, you know how to invest the income,  you know how to take care of yourself.  And I realized that  real wholeheartedly  when my father-in-law passed away and I realized the situation that my mother-in-law was in, she had always had dad taking care of  everything financially for her. 34:23 quite honestly, she was 72 and did not know how to balance a checkbook.  Didn't know how to get the bills paid because dad did it all the time. So that's when I really realized she became a project person for me there for a while. But uh that's when I really realized that, my mom was one of those  three women, she wasn't the one in four that survived a divorce, right? She worked really, really hard to take care of four kids and keep a  roof over our heads. 34:52 Um, but that one in four really just struck me. And I thought, you know, I need to help other women. I am that one in four. I've, I've created businesses for myself. I've created businesses for our family. Um, and I've made sure that, um,  everything's in order that if by any chance I'm the one that's left behind, which I keep  joking with my husband that I'm going first and there's going to be a casserole line down our driveway. 35:22 which is about 300 feet or so,  300 yards or so.  Anyways, I keep joking with him that I need to go first and he needs a casserole line because I don't want to be a widow. But uh again, you gotta be that one in four. So you gotta know how to take care of yourself, how to create income for yourself, how to monetize your gifts, your skills, your talents, because everybody has something, right? Everybody's got something that they have a passion for, um something they enjoy that they can monetize. 35:52 And so I've been helping women do that for a long, time.  I'm so glad that you took that upon yourself because it's really important. Thank you for  doing that, Diane. Yeah, it's a big deal. Really, it is. It is. 36:07 All right, as always, people can find me at tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Diane, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. You are certainly welcome. And  here's one other thing I wanna make sure everybody does. So Montana Country Pines is  our park over here, the Airbnb.  But at Montana Country Homesteading on the Facebook page of Montana Country Homesteading, we're doing a drawing for a  trip here to Montana Country Pines. You get a consultation with us on 36:36 on your home setting plans.  We're going to make a really great meal for you out of our chuck wagon that we've got.  So there's a drawing there. There's no purchase required. We just want to get uh people aware of the fact that this is here.  And we want to give away a weekend to somebody so that they could come here,  maybe learn a little bit off of our homestead that they can go take back to theirs. But we're offering that to our home setting community.  So go register for that. It's free. uh 37:05 And you just might end up here for a couple of days hanging out with my crazy husband and I. That sounds like fun. What's the deadline for that? What's the last day? The drawing is actually going to be live on a Facebook live on May 2nd. any by May 1st, by May 1st, get in the drawing. So go to Montana country homesteadings Facebook page. The drawing is on there. The link to that's there. 37:30 Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. All right, Diane, I hope you have a great day. Thanks. You as well. And this was really fun, Mary. It's really good to get to know you and I'm sure we'll do more things in the future. I hope so.  All right. That's just going on it. Thanks, Mike. All right. All right. Bye. Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Lydia at An Enchanted Homestead. A Tiny Homestead Podcast 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. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose. 00:29 At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. That tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Lydia at an enchanted homestead. I love that name in Idaho. Good afternoon, Lydia. How are you? Hi, I'm well. How are you?  I'm good. How's the weather in your neck of the woods today? oh 00:58 windy and rainy. Us too. In Minnesota, same thing. It is gross outside. Yes. It's like we can't make up our minds here. One day it's like a warm spring. Now it's like kind of reverting to winter. It's so funny. Every time, every time I talk with somebody about the weather and it just keeps flipping, they all have the same sigh and I do the same thing. I did it two days ago. 01:27 We just need spring to get here and stay here. That would be great. Yes. And it's unusually warm.  Um, cause I feel like winter skipped us here in Southern Idaho. We got snow like only three times and it melted the same day. And so  it got pretty warm. Like we were having a pretty warm  spring, um, which I was kind of excited about. And then this week it was like, psych.  So it's like cold and wet.  Yup. 01:56 I... There's that noise again. I hate this. Alrighty. So why is it called an enchanted homestead? Do you have magic on your homestead? Oh, gosh. I'm just always... love all things like magical and just like finding gratitude even in the mundane boring stuff and like turning it into something... Well, magical. 02:21 Enchanting and so I don't know it just it's stuck with me and we decided to name it that  Well, you'll be happy to know that one of my good friends gave me a fairy weather vane when we moved here five years ago, that's awesome  And it only took a year and a half to put up, but it's really pretty so 02:45 Yep, I can see it out my living room windows and every time I look at it, I think of her and I'm like, I hope you're looking down from heaven smiling at the weather rain.  Oh, that's awesome. That is awesome. I love adding all kinds of stuff. Like I have like  my courts around the garden, like sun catchers, wind chimes. just I love putting stuff everywhere. I'm like,  I don't know, like adding that little magical umph to like otherwise  boring places around the property. 03:15 And so I just, love that. Yes, because when things aren't blooming, you need something to look like it's blooming. Oh my goodness. Yes. Yes, indeed. Make it somewhat pretty. Yeah, I get it. I really do. I was talking to somebody about the fact that peonies are my favorite flower the other day and I realized I still have at least two months before my peonies bloom. Oh yeah? Well, I want to add more flowers around the property, but I 03:43 suck. I don't know. cannot  get flowers to bloom hardly at all.  just, I don't know. Is it shady?  Some parts, but our house  faces west and so the sun does like, whoo.  Um,  but I don't know. just, I have wildflowers though that have taken off and they come back every year, thankfully. So I'm trying to get more going.  Um, 04:12 So we'll see this year.  We'll see.  Okay.  I have a question. Did you grow up in Idaho? No, actually in Puerto Rico. Oh, okay.  I was listening to you talk and I'm like, there's some accent there, but I can't place it. Yeah, no. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, moved to Hawaii and then came to Idaho. Okay. It's really subtle. I don't think anybody else would have noticed it, but I am like a fanatic about it because I listened to everything really closely. um Okay. So. 04:42 Tell me about your homestead. Well, we have a little bit over 50 chickens, I would say,  give or take.  We have four goats. We have  nine cats, five dogs. Five dogs, yeah. And we are just on, I think about three and a half acres here. um Yeah, we do gardening. 05:11 We do obviously the farm fresh eggs, all the stuff. Nice. Because I'm a dog fanatic, I never was until we got our dog five years ago. My husband is the same. What breed, what breed, what breeds are your dogs or is it one breed? Oh, so we had, we started with one Shih Tzu and then she got pregnant. And she had five puppies that were mixed. 05:41 one passed away early on and so I could not part with the other puppies. And so we were in town at first and so that is what led us to then have to find somewhere out of town limits because I think it was a three dog maximum rule  and we had a little bit more than that. And of course they're little dogs so they yap. They are quite the little yappers. um And so then when we moved out here  we had a dog 06:10 that randomly showed up. His name was Jax. He  passed um two or three years ago. But then we had another dog show up, Bruno. He's still with us. He's  a  lab mix, a black lab mix. And then our son  brought another dog home and she is a border collie lab mix. And so  we currently, yeah, one, two. 06:40 three, four, five, because we've had a few that have passed away. yeah. Yep. My husband and I are  of  the mind that one dog is more than enough for us. We adore our dog.  her mama has a litter every year.  And friends of ours own the mama. And I'm like, man, those puppies are so cute. My husband's like,  our dog is so cute. We don't need to give her a sister or a brother. What breed is she? 07:10 She's a she's an Australian shepherd.  Oh,  okay.  And they need they need to be played with. Yeah, they have energy. Yeah. So  having more than one would probably kill both of us. Yeah, that's how it is with ours. That's a border Collie mix. Nova. Oh my goodness. She has energy for days and we have her kind of like on a routine. So like they get breakfast every morning and then she gets like after breakfast playtime. Then at around three o'clock she gets another playtime. 07:39 Then after dinner, they get playtime and it's like, she will, and she knows, like she will sit by the area where her toys are at and just look like the saddest abused dog. Like, please play. Oh my goodness. I calm down.  But she loves, thought she wants to be outside playing all day long. cannot for the life of me figure out if border collies and um Australian shepherds just know how to communicate better than other dogs do. 08:08 Mm-hmm. would say so. Maggie's the same way. She has all kinds of expressions for what she wants.  They're super smart.  Yeah, it's crazy. And my mom and dad have a purebred border collie and  her name is Duchess and she was aptly named and she has all kinds of faces for what she wants to according to my dad. So  I think that those two breeds are very expressive and very clear. 08:36 when they want your attention for whatever it is that they want you to do. oh absolutely. And I could talk about dogs all day. Like  I am an absolute convert. I go to the church of dog. I swear to you. uh I've always been a dog person, but my husband,  for his whole life was scared of dogs. Like it is the funniest thing. Like even the littlest dog, he'd be like, Nope. And I'm like, come on. Like it's not going to eat you. Like really? 09:05 and he will just walk the other way. And so then when we got our first dog together, Harley,  he started coming around and his family to this day, they're like, we would have never thought you would end up with five dogs. Like of all people, like you were so scared and they sleep in bed with us. Like they are so spoiled  and people like, man, you've come a long way.  Yeah, I always loved other people's dogs. I just didn't want one of my own. Oh, that's funny. 09:34 And then we got this cute little puppy at seven weeks and six days old and I fell in love and I went off the deep end. So,  all right. So you said you would think you have about 50 chickens.  you, and you have a farm stand, right? Yes, ma'am. Yup.  Yeah. So are the girls laying? Oh my gosh, a lot. get like  around 30 a day, 30 eggs. So it's like, we stock the farm stand. So we started opening every day. 10:04 except this week, I  do announce, like, hey, it's weather permitting. Because our house faces west and across the street, like, there's a field. So there's nothing blocking the winds or anything. So the farm stand um obviously gets affected. oh And we had an upgrade. We started the farm stand, I think it was two years ago,  and my husband built it, like, literally a little stand. He built it. My dad was living with us at the time, and my dad helped paint it. So it was, like, really special. 10:34 Um, but then the wins, like she went belly up several times, several times. Thankfully it was like when she wasn't open. we didn't have stuff in it. Cause we also have like apothecary items that I make and stuff. Um, so thankfully we never experienced like damage in that sense. And anytime like my husband was able to fix her up and just, would set her back up. But then we were like, okay, we got to figure something out. And so. 11:03 we had a shed in our backyard that was just full of junk. Like  it needed cleaned out. And so  we pulled that out and that's the farm stand. So it's like a green shed that has tables in it. And that's what we're using. And thankfully it's sturdy enough to where the winds don't affect it, but still like when you open the doors, like the wind is just like blasting it. So  we keep her closed. Yeah. 11:30 We have a farm stand too and it's got like a  one door. It's got one door that opens to the left and it's a big door. And I worry when people come to get their eggs because I'm so afraid that door is going to smack somebody when they go in when the wind's blowing, but everybody's been okay so far.  And we have insurance that will cover that.  But I still don't want anyone to get hurt. I mean, I assume that they're coming to a quote unquote 11:59 farm or homestead, they know to be careful. Right. mean, normally you would, yeah, I think that's a pretty safe assumption, but yeah, it's common sense.  Yeah. It's also, it's also probably not safe for people who have mobility issues and people know that too,  because you have to step up about four inches to get into it. And  I said to my husband, we should probably put a ramp on that. And he was like, it's on the list. This was, this was three years ago. 12:28 Oh, we have a list going on stuff too. Yeah, there's still no ramp, but maybe this summer there'll be a ramp on it. I don't know yet. Yeah, I want to turn ours just a little bit because I want it to still face the road,  but kind of angled so the winds don't necessarily just like slap her inside.  But also I want to paint because right now it's just a dark green shed. So I want to get her painted.  Yeah, there's a list. 12:56 There's always a list on a homestead.  never ends either. You get like six things crossed out and then seven more things show up.  Yeah, that's true.  So you do apothecary things. What do you do? We do elderberry syrup,  herbal salves. It's just stuff that  we use personally. I just make more.  We are big on essential oils, so I have rollers out there that we use. ah 13:23 And so it's very important though with like herbal remedies. I have a disclaimer like, hey, this is what we use. This is how we use it and why. But, you know, do your research. Your mileage may vary. Yeah. I'm like, these are the ingredients, you know, because for allergy reasons, I don't want anybody. But yeah, so I have essential oil rollers. I have herbal salves. I love plantain, calendula, lavender. 13:53 Dandelion we are big on dandelions here. We're probably the only property on this road that doesn't spray.  Oh uh I swear because everybody has all the pretty green yards and then there's our house with all the dandelions and which I think is prettier  Personally same I had to get my husband on board. He's like come  on and I'm like, nope, like they're just so good So we use it for like tinctures salves.  I feed them to our goats or chickens 14:24 They're so good.  and so have you,  have you done dandelion root tea yet?  No,  I did. I have the roots. I, but I want to do,  um, this local lady was talking to me about it and it just, it got me curious, but I have not done it yet. It's like a dandelion latte. So basically you do that the tea, but then to that you add milk and then honey and it's basically like coffee, instead of coffee, it's the dandelion root. 14:53 Yes, I bought dandelion root tea at the store at the co-op. Yeah. And tried it and it does it tastes like coffee. is wonderful. I just I have it. I just I've not been brave enough. Do it. Put those roots in the oven at the lowest temperature and let them dry out. OK, deal. That's good to know. She loved it too. She was like, no, it's so delicious. I'm like, OK, we'll see. And I have it. I just I've not done it. 15:22 Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it.  I will definitely report back. Yes, please. um I love my rollerball bottle that has  lemon, lavender and peppermint in it. And I put it on my like right behind my ears  and right under my nose and on my wrist when I have a migraine headache and it literally takes the migraine headache down by half.  Oh my gosh. Yes, we have a migraine roller. 15:50 Funnily enough, I had never added lemon to it. I do lemon, peppermint, and lavender as an allergy blend though. So that's awesome. killing two birds with one stone. Yes, for sure. Like it's so good. Yeah. And it smells good.  Yep. And I looked up the thieves oil recipe and I have thieves oil roller rollerball bottles too. I love these. We love thieves in this house.  Yep. I didn't know anything about it until I saw a former neighbor of mine was talking about it. 16:20 And I was like, what is Steve's oil? And I looked it up and I was like, oh, I can do that. I can make that. have all the oils for it.  Mm hmm. Yep. It's really good. And it smells good. It's almost like Christmas. Yeah, because of the clove, right? Yeah. Clove and cinnamon.  Yes. m We didn't really do much for Christmas this year and I'm kind of sad about it. We were just busy and  my youngest had some stuff going on and we just didn't do it. And my youngest is an adult. 16:49 Let's just make that clear. He's not little.  And ah we just kind of had a very quiet Christmas and we didn't really do cookies and we didn't do pumpkin pie.  And now I'm thinking about it. like, you know, we should pull some squash out of the  freezer and do pumpkin pie this weekend. Oh, that sounds so good. And nothing beats homemade. Yeah, and it's going to be chilly on Saturday. Maybe I can do that. Maybe that'll be perfect. That sounds so cozy. Maybe that'll 17:17 raise the spirits around here, who knows. If that doesn't.  And that's one of the great things about homesteading is that the stuff that people do at Thanksgiving and Christmas,  you can do anytime.  doesn't matter. Yeah, that is true. Yeah. I just baked  zucchini bread, I think it was like two weeks ago, and it was using zucchini from our garden last year that I had frozen. Did it work? Yeah. 17:44 Yes, it did. I always worry that it'll make it dry, but actually turned out so yummy. Oh, I thought it would make it really wet.  Oh, no, no, no, it did not. Huh. Okay. Mm hmm. Do you shred your zucchini before you freeze it? Yeah. Yes, I do. That's probably why it wouldn't make it wet.  Okay, cool. We grow winter squashes more than we eat zucchinis of the garden as they're coming in. So there's very little to go in the freezer because what we don't eat, we sell at the farmer's market. 18:14 But we grow winter squash and the winter squash gets roasted and put in the freezer. So that's what will be in the pumpkin pie. It'll be butternut squash pie. Oh, that sounds so good. Yeah, because pumpkins are actually squash. So it doesn't matter what winter squash you use for your pumpkin pie. It's all pumpkin pie. Really? Yep. Huh, I was now years old. OK, that's cool, Yep. I was this many years old when I discovered that pumpkin is squash. 18:43 I was like, has to be just pumpkin. Well, that's good to know. I don't think I would ever know the difference though. Yeah. I would not recommend using a Hubbard or a Delicata squash because they're not sweet. Oh, yeah. You would be able to be like, yeah, no, this is not traditionally made. But the joy of using butternut squash is if the butternut squash has had a good season, it's naturally sweet. It's so good. You can cut the sugar down in your recipe if you want. 19:13 Oh God, butternut swatch is so good. We have some planted. I'm waiting for it to start sprouting because I'm excited because they're so good.  am. I'm trying so hard to not wish the next six months away because last year's garden was not  overly successful. Let's put it that way. And the year before that, it was not overly successful either. had really terrible weather. We had a lot of rain and then a lot of heat and then a lot of rain. 19:42 which causes the blight, which kills plants. And I've got everything I have crossed that we have a successful growing season this year. Yeah.  I think it's going to be warm here. I'm nervous because we had a really warm winter. We're having an unusually warm spring. Yeah. So I'm nervous that we're going to have a really hot summer. So I'm trying to prepare for that. I hope with everything I have. 20:12 that everyone who wants to grow produce this year  has a good shot at it because the last couple of years have just been hellish. The bugs, the bugs got us last year and  so we don't, we don't use like toxic chemicals on anything. So like I make our own sprays and stuff. um But my goodness, last year I was like, holy cow,  squash bugs. I had never  known what they were and  oh,  yeah. 20:41 They give me the ick. They legit gave me the ick.  They're disgusting.  I was like, stop. I would stay on top of them, like trying to like, oh my God, was, nope. Zero out of 10.  Zero out of 10. Do you want to know a natural repellent?  What?  Neem  oil.  N as in Nancy, E-E-M as in Mary. Neem  oil. Okay. Okay. They don't like it. Good to know. I'll be able. 21:10 You bet I'm going to get some now because after last year, like, oh my goodness. I could not, like, I could not get rid of them. I had to like constantly, once I thought, okay, I got this last like hatch because you could see the eggs on the leaves and stuff. I would cut the leaves. But then I was like, okay, we're good. And then they would come back. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, where are you coming from? And once they get into the main part of the plant, you're done for. 21:39 Ugh, they just, no. Bugs in general just give me the ick.  And we've started finding ticks already.  Uh huh. I'm like, thankfully they're not on our animals, but I'm already spraying everything down. I'm like, nope. Like, no, no. They literally just, I start feeling them on me and I just, get the ick.  I cannot. Yup.  I hate that. It's so... 22:04 It's so hard to get rid of it too, because you know there's no tick on you, but you still have the creepy crawlies. Oh yes, it's so bad. The other thing that I was thinking of when you were talking about the squash bugs, back before we moved here, we were growing squashes or something, very broad leaf plants at a neighbor's house. And they got the mildew, I can't think what it's called, downy mildew on the leaves. 22:33 looked all over Google to figure out what we could do to treat it before it killed the plants. And it said milk and water, half water, half milk in a spray bottle. Really? And you wait till like 10 o'clock in the morning  and you spray the leaves and the milk somehow kills the mildew. Huh? So if you ever have downy mildew, and there's another name for it too, but again, think of it right now, spray it with a mix of milk and water. 23:03 That's  wicked. Like how interesting. I wonder what's in the milk.  I have  no idea, but it worked. We had the most beautiful squash from those plants.  Well, hey,  and it's natural. So that's a double win. Yeah, there are so many things that  people did before we had all this not natural stuff.  And they did just fine. Yeah, that's what I like. That's the whole. 23:32 thing here, like I always tell my husband like we like to turn to nature like for answers because that's how our ancestors did it. Like they didn't have all these fancy things that ironically are to make our lives easier.  But in reality, like, is it?  Um, in some ways, I'm really, really thankful for some advances we've made because because antibiotics kill strep throat. 23:59 and I used to strep throat all the time and no natural remedy  gets rid of that. So really thankful for that.  But the stuff that we can do that  is fixable with nature, think that we should do that first. Yes. Oh, absolutely. Same.  I had one time it was strep throat and ah an issue with my tonsils at the same time.  Oh my goodness. On the plus side, I lost weight. 24:28 I could not eat. So very thankful for the medicine for sure.  Yeah, I mean if I'm coming down with a head cold my go-to is orange juice and chicken soup, homemade chicken soup. And it usually does help.  But if I've got a sore throat and I've got white spots on the back of my throat, I'm going in for the prescription for antibiotics. Yeah, know. At the sign of anything here we start chugging Algaeberry syrup. I make our rollers. I diffuse oils. 24:58 Like also if it gets worse, like, okay, you know, let's get medicine. Yeah. So, so again, it's, it's one of those  six of one half dozen of another things.  I don't think it has to be an either or. think it's a yes and yes.  Yep. um I agree. I would do elderberry syrup, except that our two elderberry plant trees, sorry, not plants, they're trees.  Um, get. 25:28 eaten by the birds before we can get to the berries. Oh, so we have one here  and I didn't know what it was. It came with a property. I'm like, okay, because I wasn't into like homesteading. I didn't have that mentality when we bought our house. We literally came across it one morning and it was just like a good deal. Like, so we ended up moving in.  Plus we needed to be out of town because of the dogs. Yes. So it was like, okay. And it was the middle of winter. So it wasn't the ideal time. 25:59 But then this was  going on 10 years ago. um Then like we got chickens and like, like they say chickens, it's the gateway to everything homesteading wise. so  I started getting into essential oils, which is like the gateway to like a natural life. It's like the chickens of a natural living of sorts.  And so  all that while here, but I think like 26:28 We were like a year into the property and so like we had raspberry bushes out back that I trimmed at the wrong time and that's the end of that. um Come to find out we have an elderberry tree here on the side and I didn't know. So it got neglected for a minute  and  once I figured out what it was and I started learning about elderberry like the flowers, the berries and 26:55 how the leaves, everything is medicinal, I started babying it. Well, for the last few years, it's been like my pride and joy.  Last year, finally, it was at a place where  I could have harvested the berries. ah Except the birds.  They were like, nope, dead. I'm like, well, okay. So we go to the mountains here, we can forage them pretty locally. It's like a 45 minute drive, so I don't mind. 27:25 Worth it. Yes. Y'all,  absolutely. So I was like, okay, I guess I'll share with the birds this year.  So we just went up to the mountains and we forage. And so I've been very blessed in that sense that I still have them kind of close  and we're able to get them that way.  Yeah. Let's take a beat here on elderberry.  If you think you have an elderberry bush or tree growing on your property and you're not sure, 27:52 make sure you know somebody who can identify it for you. There's two kinds and I guess the one with thorns, you're not supposed to eat the berries. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, either way you have to cook the berries for at least 20 to 30 minutes. Yeah. Cause otherwise it'll send you to the bathroom. Yeah. But I think the one with thorns is actually poisonous. I think it can really make you sick sick. Yeah. I identify it properly. Yeah. And on foraging, 28:21 Definitely. Yeah, because  there's also another, I don't know the name of it, but it's very similar, but the berries are bigger. But they're the same shade of purple and everything, but they're bigger. I don't know the name of it, but it's also like one of those, okay, that's not elderberry. Like, no, don't do that one.  Yeah. If you want to get into foraging, find somebody who knows what they're doing and take all the notes you possibly can as they're walking through the forest with you. 28:50 Yes, and don't over harvest because I've seen also people they're just they take everything. I'm like, OK, like the tree has to be able to come back next year. Like, hello.  Let's share with nature since nature shares with us. Yes, and share with everybody.  Mm hmm. Right. Because other people would like some of those elderberries,  Oh, yeah. Like we've um we've been times where it's like you see that people have already harvested. 29:20 And it's like, come on.  Like you can tell they over-harvested. Yeah.  And  I'm going  to give them a little bit of grace.  Maybe they didn't know that they weren't supposed to.  Maybe they weren't greedy. Maybe they were just overzealous.  Maybe. Okay. But yes, try to consider the fact that we need to share. Yeah. Just like we were taught in kindergarten. 29:50 Exactly. All the things I need to know I learned in kindergarten, I swear. Yeah, for real. Be nice, share, be kind. All those good things that the world really needs right now. Oh, and that's the truth. Yes, it is. So I have one more thing about the elderberries. We are thinking about putting netting over the trees this year so the birds can't get to the berries. 30:18 The thing is, we did that with our strawberries a couple of years ago.  as the baby robins started showing up, we caught a couple of baby robins in the bird netting because they couldn't get loose. So  I'm thinking maybe we just say, screw it and let the birds get as many berries as they want. Because  I don't want baby robins dying in the  I know. think I would be like, it's fine. I'll share.  Yeah. 30:46 That's my thing here like much to my husband's dismay like I don't think I'm the typical like homesteader Because I say the goats they're just very expensive dogs. Yes um Our plan of breeding and selling babies that went out the window like I fell in love with our first baby Denver and he's very much still here. Uh-huh. Oh, I  Same with our chickens like we have raised meat birds 31:14 We raised a steer, we raised a pig, but everything that is raised for food is done so at my brother-in-law's property. Him and my sister-in-law. don't bond? Yes, literally. When we got the steer, my husband's like, no, like you're not allowed to name him. And I'm like, but why? And he's like, because otherwise he's going to die of old age. Uh-huh. Like, like he is going to feed our family when the time comes. And I'm like, so. 31:43 We would help, obviously, like they would live on their property, but we help with feed, like with chores. Like if they went out of town, like we were on duty. And so there were a few times where obviously like I went over and I was like, I like feeding him. And my husband's like, no, like, come on. No, no, no. Like, no,  you cannot fall in love with him. Same with the pig. Same with the meat birds. They were all at my brother-in-law's house.  And so he had  animals that I'll be able to love on. 32:13 That's really smart.  My husband's life is hard. He's like, well, like he's trying to figure out ways around this. Yeah, it's it's so hard. And I think all the time  we had our first litter of kittens two summers ago here.  And we knew that we were going to be finding them new barns to go be barn cats at.  And this family came and adopted two of them. 32:42 And I was so excited because it was the last two of the litter. There were like seven kittens. Oh, wow.  And I was thrilled. And the mom and dad showed up and like a three year old and a six year old got out of the car with them. And they, these little kids were so excited  and I couldn't be out there with them. I couldn't, I just would have cried. And I thought I had a handle on it. I really did. And I saw these little kids just light up like Christmas trees at these kittens. 33:12 And it was so good. Like my heart was so big and they pulled out of the driveway with those kittens and went home and I just cried. That would be me. Yup. That's why we just end up keeping them all.  And my husband, my husband came in and he said, is something actually wrong? And I said, no.  And he said, you're sobbing. And I said, they were so, those kids were so cute.  And 33:39 They took the last two babies away and he was like, oh, so it's, it's happy and sad. I said, yeah, the worst kind.  Yes. Yup. That's, yup. That's how we have nine cats. Mostly people just dump animals here.  every July, I swear for the last like three years, we've gotten a cat every July.  Um,  last year we ended up getting two and then already there's one showing up an orange cat and we have one that's orange. 34:09 And this one just looks just like him. And so one morning, my husband comes in and he's like, Hey, babe, I'm like, Yeah. He's like, there's an orange cat in the cat room. Okay, so we have an extra room that we have a little gate,  the dogs can go in it. Yeah, and eat their food. So we call it the cat room, but it's like just an extra room.  And, and I'm like, um our orange cat is in bed with us. And he's like, Yep. 34:36 That's my point. There's an orange cat in the room and it's not ours. This cat came in through the little pet door that we have in the window.  He came in, he was eating, he was on the bookshelf, obviously scared at that point because our cat had noticed him. He noticed my husband and I'm like, oh good God. So we're kind of working on him. He's come back a few times and I told my husband as soon as he lets me love on him, that's cat number 10. 35:01 And he's like, no, we already have nine. I'm like, you won't even notice. I'll just tell you it's tangerine. You won't even know the difference.  I swear people love homesteading because you have so much more. I don't know. Let's use the word freedom or autonomy. Yeah. To be able to do the things you'd like to do. Yeah. And regarding pet doors. Friend of mine, when we lived in the old house. 35:30 Again, my life is old house versus new house. We've been in the new house for over five years now.  Oh, right.  When we lived in the old house, I had a friend and they had a pet door and  one of their cats caught a pheasant and brought it in through the pet door alive.  Oh, no. They had a pheasant in their house.  That's happened to us with a pigeon. I'm like, open and they brought it in. 36:00 and they ran into the bathroom and I just heard like commotion in the bathtub. And so I opened the curtain and I see one of our cats with the bird and I'm like,  oh, like girl, like what are you doing? And then the bird just started flapping and it was alive and like this bird flying in, I'm like, oh my God. So I'm shutting off all the fans. I'm trying to keep the cats away from me. Cause then all the other cats were like,  game. Oh yeah. So, oh yeah. Yep. 36:29 The things that they bring in. Thankfully they have not brought in a snake. Well, no, that's a lie. They did bring in a snake once and I'm terrified of snakes, like petrified of snakes.  And  I was making coffee and I see like this little snake curled like in the corner. I started screaming. I called my husband and he couldn't understand what I was saying. And I'm like, there's a snake. 36:58 in our house. And he's like, okay, FaceTime me. Okay, so I FaceTime him and he's like, Oh, yeah, it is a snake. What did you think I was saying? Like, are you kidding me? Like he had to come home. Like he left work. He had to come home, get the snake out. And then go back to work. I could not I could I told him we're moving. We are moving. We are posting our house for sale. The house now belongs to the snake. Like nope. 37:29 I cannot deal with snakes. Well, luckily it got removed and you still got to keep your house. Yeah, otherwise we have been homeless. I cannot. I could see that. We don't have a pet door here because our dog is on lead all the time, so we have to hook her up. So having a pet door wouldn't help. But my biggest fear, like I've had nightmares about her not being on lead. 37:56 and having a pet door and she brings a live skunk into my house.  Oh, skunks. Oh my God. That's a whole other thing here because we had the tiniest skunks  actually kill a few of our chickens.  And so we had to dispatch them.  I am I love all animals except insects and reptiles. I cannot deal. But I love all animals. So I was like, oh, but at the same time, it's like my chickens or you, you're going. 38:24 So my husband would handle it, but anytime I would like smell it, I'm like, oh God, our chickens. And so I run out, I'm like checking, no, skunks, my husband's actually just last night, I smelled and I ran out. I was like, there's a skunk. And he's like, you have like skunk PTSD? I'm like, yes. Like it literally got rid of, I think it was  nine out of 11 chicks and a mom. It decapitated a hen. 38:53 Yeah, skunks and raccoons are the worst when it comes to chickens. We lost chickens last year to a mama raccoon and her four babies.  Oh no. See, I would be like,  ah, but also like, aw.  Yeah, it was really difficult because we didn't realize that she was a mama raccoon. My husband had actually tried to shoot her  and I stepped out on the porch at like five o'clock in the morning, the sun was just coming up  and 39:22 As I shut the door to the house, I heard little screech noises and we have a cement pad outside the door. And I looked and four little baby raccoons out there. I'm like, oh my God, here we go. Oh, how'd you handle it? She left. I don't know. My husband went out and fixed the chicken run so they couldn't get in it. So they couldn't get near the chickens. And once the food source was no longer there, the buffet had been shut down. They left. 39:52 Yeah, we had a raccoon once and my husband put a live trap and I swear it's like she saw the trap and just never came back. Mm-hmm. And I was like, okay with that. Yeah, if we don't have to dispatch wild animals on our property, we go out of our way not to. Same. It's because of me. Otherwise my husband would be like, he was raised very like country boy, like you do what you need to do, blah, blah, blah. But I'm like, but also how about we don't? 40:22 Yes, and we have coyotes around here and I'm telling you, a coyote is in the yard, it's going to get shot at because that's not safe. Oh, same here. And I'm terrified of coyotes. Like in my head, you know, like a werewolf in a movie. That's what I see in my head whenever I hear a coyote. It is like the dumbest thing I know, but I cannot help it. I'm terrified. But we've never, knock on wood, had issues with them and our chickens. 40:50 but we did lose a kitten two years ago.  she was half blind. I was getting her in. I brought her in and she got out again. And then I'm like, I hear the coyotes. I'm gonna go back and look for her. And I was out there and I could not find her. And it was mating season for coyotes. So it's when they're most aggressive. And so,  yeah, they took her. And so since then, I told my husband no. I,  that will be the one animal that I... 41:18 No, like he took our little Freya, like, uh-uh, that's it. You do what you need to do.  Yeah, and the thing that's so tough with coyotes is that they are a beautiful animal,  but they will catch and eat almost anything that is smaller than them or injured. Yeah, yeah, so, uh-uh. No, I'm just, terrified of them to begin with. I've never seen one in real life. Oh, I have. So I'm like,  uh... 41:46 So in my head, all I'm thinking is like this werewolf from a movie. So it it terrifies me and we hear them so loud. And my husband thinks, because behind our property, there's a field and there's like a little creek and everything. And there's like a section with a bunch of trees that he thinks there, there might be a coyote den. so he thinks that that's where they're coming from. I'm like, fantastic. Like I love that for us. Like why? 42:14 And he's like, so like, we're just going to have to stay diligent. I'm like,  you mean you, cause let's be real.  But yeah, no. Yup.  And again, homesteading is a great thing to do, but there are some real things that come with it, like predators,  like losing animals. 42:35 Oh yeah. having people steal money out of the farm stand. We haven't had that happen. really Oh God, knock on wood, us either. And everybody always  tells us like, you guys are very trusting because like we just, I don't know, it's the honor system. even like it's a self-serve stand. So like even if somebody just wants to take the eggs, my husband's like, listen, if somebody needs eggs  to feed their family that badly. They can have them. 43:02 And I'm like, okay, cool. But also like at least  leave us a note like, hey, I needed the eggs. Thank you. And it would be really sweet if people would do that. But I think that they feel ashamed. They shouldn't. But they probably do. um I have one last thing for you. I hope it will help if you haven't already done it.  Did you know that Venmo and PayPal, the online apps that people can pay through,  they usually have a QR code that you can actually print out and put up in the arm stand? 43:32 Yep, I have those. have that one. have Venmo, PayPal, Cash App.  And I also have the Apple thing to where I could run cards because we did farmers market two years. And so I had the credit card stuff, but I just cover that with the cash box.  Yeah. I get it as easy as possible for everybody. Yeah, I just didn't know if you knew and I wanted to let you know if you didn't know because it really helps because it does. Yeah. 44:01 Because sometimes people just don't have cash on them, but they see the sign and they're like, I'm going to stop in and see what they have. And if you happen to have the QR codes, they can pay right there with their phone. I was impressed with how much cash we've also gotten,  two dollar bills. I had never seen a two dollar bill.  Like our boys had some like they were collecting them when they were little, but 44:28 I got paid with $2 bills. This one lady came over and she did, I think it was $12 in $2 bills. And I was like, this is so cool. Like I'm keeping like all the $2 bills we get, I keep. And we've gotten quite a few. Like to me, that's so cool. I didn't know that was even a thing. Yeah. And they're not in print anymore. They don't make those anymore. My husband has a $2 bill folded up in his billfold from his grandpa. Oh, see, that's so cool. Like I had never seen one of my... 44:58 The first time I got one, I even posted it. I'm like, thank you. Like, this is like, I'm geeking out something fierce. And so I keep them all like they're all folded in my  little money thing. And I'm like, nope, these are just like a keepsake that I hopefully will pass on.  It's so funny. The little things that just make your heart sing. Oh my God. Yes. Like I color code my eggs. Like they're always like  very specifically set up in their egg. 45:26 containers, like even stuff like I feel so dumb because as I'm setting the eggs, I'm smiling like a fool. I'm like, oh my gosh, like it's yeah, definitely. It's the little things that bring joy  and everybody needs the little things to bring joy. swear to you, it's so good for the soul. Yeah. All right, Lydia, this was a joy. Where can people find you? Well, we are on Facebook, Instagram  and Tik Tok. 45:54 at an Enchanted Homestead.  Fantastic. I feel like this conversation was enchanted. Thank you for your time.  Thank you for having me.  As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Lydia, I hope you have a great rest of your day. Same. You too. Thank you. All right. Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Lily at Girlypop Acres. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast 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. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together.  Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality,  and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose. 00:29 At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful.  If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care,  you'll feel right at home with Greenbush Twins. That tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Lily at Gurley Pop Far- Acres  in New York. How are you, Lily? I'm how are you doing today? I'm good. I almost messed up the introduction yet again. I'm telling you, I- 00:56 I know what I'm going to say and the brain does not translate to my tongue to come out of my face. So how is the weather in New York this morning? Oh, it's actually decent for once.  We've been hit hard by snow lately, but it's sunny and shiny and everyone, all the critters are walking around happy. Good. It is March 30th, I think. And I'm in Minnesota and the sun is pouring through my bedroom window, which is the room I do my recording in. 01:26 And it's supposed to hit 75 degrees today. Oh, goodness. I'm jealous. think we're probably in like the 40s and I'm celebrating. Yeah, the weather's been so weird. We had 81 degrees two Sundays ago for the high. Oh my goodness. And then it was cold, colder all week. And then it was really nice yesterday. I it got up to 63. It's supposed to be 75 today and it's supposed to drop down again this week. So. 01:51 I'm gonna be real happy when we get a stretch of seven days where it is moderate and spring-like. It would be great. Oh, same here. Same here. It was snowing just two days ago here.  Yeah, it's nuts. So tell me,  I wanna know  about you and what you do, but tell me why your place is called Girlie Pop Acres. So I have four dogs, three great Pyrenees and one beagle.  And back when it was just the great Pyrenees, 02:20 um I had two of them puppies  and you know, great Pyrenees puppies don't listen to anything at all.  And it was just easier to yell girly pops at them instead of being like, over here.  So I would yell girly pops and I accidentally trained all three of them to only respond to girly pop. uh And now the beagle does So I just named it after my dogs.  That is so cute. 02:50 I call my dog girly all the time. Oh, I love it. I'm sure my neighbors know that we're girly pup acres because my dogs used to break out of the fence before we had our fences as good as we do. I'd be outside yelling girly pups, girly pups. Oh, Funny. You know what would be funny? It would you made cake pops and took them to your neighbors and were like, I'm so sorry that I'm always yelling girly pop. Here's some cake pops for you. 03:19 I should. I don't know if they can even hear me because my neighbors are pretty far away, but if they do. Yeah, I think that would be really cute. If you ever get an inkling or hear a rumor that they're upset, just throw together some cake pops and I don't know, put cute little dog faces on them and take them over to them.  Oh, that's a great idea. That's what I would do because I really like turning messes into messages. That's such a cute like motto. I love that. 03:49 Uh huh. have gained so many sayings from this podcast over two and a half years from people I've talked to. 03:57 and they're all relevant. So I just, have a whole rolling lexicon in the back of my head of things that I can do or say. I love that. Yeah. It's been great. Okay. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do,  Um,  so  I'm a homesteader as you can guess, since I'm here.  Um, I raised Nigerian dwarf goats. We have eight goats right now.  Uh, we got the four dogs.  Uh, we got a goose named Boopers. 04:26 walking around  next to me right now. I got a bunch of ducks, a bunch of silkies,  and  I raised two feral farm children and a potbelly pig named Big Bertha.  sounds like Homestead.  Yep.  Very  full life over here.  I consider myself a Lyme's disease advocate because I have Lyme's disease and so does my husband. 04:56 um I'm a disabled farmer. I have two leg braces because my knees are all messed up.  I'm either always in a cane or a walker, which  is a challenge  with farming, but we make it work.  Yes, yes. And I'm glad you said that because  I'm not saying that you are over 50. I have no idea how old you are. I am over 50. 05:21 You can do homesteading at any age as long as you feel safe in what you're doing. That is an amazing thing to call out because ah I'm only 28.  My husband is 25,  but we've been doing it for a couple of years and it was pretty much the second we could get a piece of land. We're like, okay, let's get back to farming. ah I was raised on a cattle farm when I was a kid and he grew up  at this lake. 05:50 semi-famous bed and breakfast in Arkansas, where they had like 100 acres. But there's definitely times where your safety is like, goodness, like people don't think about how much goes into homesteading. Oh, there are so many ways to get hurt on a homestead. husband was splitting wood over the weekend with our wood splitter, you know, the actual 06:19 motorized one. And I was sitting on the porch because I don't do  wood, he does it. And I kept going out and  kind of keeping an eye on him because he's out there by himself. And I'm like, please don't let him get sidetracked and leave his hand in the way. Because if you get your hand caught between the wood and the metal piece that splits the wood, you're going to have a broken hand for sure.  Oh, goodness, I couldn't imagine.  So he was fine. He's got it down to a science and he's very good at it. And it's kind of fun watching your husband do 06:48 manly work, you  but  But there are so many ways I mean The first time we came to see this place over five years ago before we bought it  it's it's 3.1 acres and it is a flat it's a piece of flat land and uh There were divots or whatever. They're called trenches. I don't know  but all over the yard from where the the tractors had gone through or been moved or whatever on the property 07:18 and I caught my boot toe on one the edges and went down. In the first five minutes, I was walking this property and I was like, well, that bodes well. I'll probably break a leg before it's over. So you can do the dumbest things and get hurt or you can be the most careful ever and still get hurt. So  it's something to consider. Yeah, I'm on the dumber end of it  with my first goat. He was a little baby. 07:44 And he loved jumping up onto my shoulders to get  piggyback rides.  And I just let him because I was like, this is cute. This is adorable. This isn't going to backfire on me someday.  And now that he's a full grown goat and still tries to do it  so swell. uh I also got attacked by an emu once on our farm when we tried to raise emu. So  yes,  they are big birds and they're not 08:13 I mean, I'm sure someone in their experience has raised an emu chick and it's the friendliest, sweetest bird ever and would never hurt a fly. But I don't think that's the usual course of events. I have no idea. We got one as a baby. It was given to us by a friend as a housewarming gift and it was in our living room and it would sit around and whistle at us all day long. I loved it. 08:41 And then one day he just  snapped  and like went at me  against a tree. And I'm like, nope, you are not staying on the farm anymore. Wow. Okay. Well,  he was a he and I don't... Well, he wasn't a DNA sex. I'm not a thousand percent sure. We just called him a he because his name was Betty Sneemu the emu. So, eh I was going to say roosters of any fowl breed tend to be more aggressive than the  females. So... 09:12 Apparently in emus, it's the girls usually who are the aggressors.  Oh really? Well, maybe it was a girl maybe  You did something that made her mad  apparently Okay Yeah, go ahead.  I just thought I'd say when you were mentioned in like your property and like how the like divots  you wouldn't imagine we bought seven acres  and  the previous owners,  don't know any of this like 09:41 it's like rumors, but they were rumored to be like dog fighters that were breeding pit bulls in the forest portion of our property. And there's just like barbed wire everywhere and all sorts of hazards. We bought the property and there was a five foot tall trash pile just filled with junk. So we've had to be like, 10:07 revamping the property since day one. We're two years in and we're still removing stuff. Yep. You inherit whatever the former people  left for you. welcome to this place was a dead skunk in the back of the barn. freshly dead, so freshly smelly. 10:30 That was exciting. ah dogs,  when they used to go  into the forest area before we  fenced it off so they couldn't get back there,  they came out once with a fully intact deer skull.  Yeah, the joys of living in the country,  Yeah.  So you said you have Nigerian, is it Nigerian dwarf goats or is it Nigerian goats? Nigerian dwarf goats. 10:59 Okay, anyone who's listened to the podcast over the last two and a half years knows that goats are my nemesis. I love them so much. I don't have any because we don't have any place for them to graze. And I say nemesis as in my weakness. I love baby goats. Grown goats? Not as much of a fan. Like I see a grown goat and I'm like, oh, that's a nice animal. But I see baby goats and I melt inside. 11:28 We're planning on getting a baby buck sometime next week because I want to breed all my girls. have like six girls and I have two weathers. And I kind of want to raise them from a baby just so could get the baby. huh. And they are very cuddly. I don't know. Do you have experience with baby goats? Just with the one. Cause everyone else I've got as an adult. 11:53 I have one goat that was bred on our farm. delivered her. Her name's Adalia. She's standing right in front of me trying to climb up a slide and failing. But she's about a year old now. Okay. Yeah, I talked a lot about baby goats at the beginning of when I started the podcast back two and a half years ago, because my friend, her parents raised goats and they had the long eared 12:21 goats? they newbies or lemonges maybe or both?  And those little babies with those long ears were the sweetest things ever. I will have to send you  some photos of my goats after because I love all my babies.  I have this one tri-color goat that I just had over heels for. She looks like she's a baby but she's not. She's like two years old.  Her name's Feather. 12:48 and she has this cute little collar with bumblebees on it.  I just adore her.  Nice.  Okay, so  you sound so  happy. Like your happiness, what you're doing is just rolling through my  headphones. Cannot talk today, geez. um So  are you just doing the homesteading for yourself or are you doing like a small business with it?  So  goal is both. 13:17 I've only been doing the homestead for about two years. um So I feel like I haven't really got to the businessy portion of it yet, except for like Facebook monetization from sharing  photos of the animals online. ah But I hope to eventually get into more businessy selling and stuff.  And beyond the animals, do you grow any produce? ah Yeah, we grow some, but it's very minimal. 13:46 Mostly because last year we had 28 ducks  and they were very destructive. So this year when we got ducks, we built them a run. We stopped free-ranging them. Okay, if you have 20 or you had,  I mean, I assume you still have a few ducks, you must have eggs in the summertime. So are you using them? Are you giving them away? Are you starting to sell them?  son would eat eggs for every meal. 14:16 every day if he could. And  when we had like 80 chickens, we've downsized since then, ah we had like 80 chickens, he was going through the eggs like, wow.  Yeah. So yeah, mostly you're going to my side. I also have my dog Penelope who we found out was stealing eggs out of the nesting boxes. Uh huh. 14:43 Yeah, I have seen dogs do that. My dog doesn't because she doesn't go anywhere near the coop.  We're really lucky.  So did you tease your son that he was going to turn into a chicken if he kept eating all the chicken eggs? uh I haven't. No, I'm just glad he's eating. He's a skinny butt, so I like to get some weight on him.  Uh huh. Yeah. The whole thing with your dog  eating the chicken eggs or taking the chicken eggs. 15:08 um I don't know if you know who Millennial Farmer is. He's a guy that lives in Minnesota. has a YouTube channel. Oh, I have not heard of him. Okay. Well, he has a German shepherd named Anna and he has a chicken coop that she can go into.  he just out of the blue finds chicken eggs on his property. it's because Anna goes in and steals a chicken egg and walks around in her mouth  and then puts it down somewhere. 15:36 Penelope, uh she was inside the house the other day and my daughter had found one of the concrete eggs that we had for the nesting boxes  and she had brought it inside and I looked over and I'm like what you got in your mouth and she was trying to eat the concrete  eggs.  Yeah that's a good way to have broken teeth doggo.  Yeah I took that away so quick. Yeah our dog when she was a puppy we had the uh 16:03 It's like river rock, but it's not river rock.  It's the ugly rock that you put around your house.  And she would go out and  she would come in the house with a piece of river rock in her mouth. And I'm like,  you cannot chew on rocks. I cannot afford to get your teeth fixed. She finally outgrew it. think it was two years ago that she finally stopped doing it. But I was like, why are you doing that?  Oh, these dogs will keep you on your toes. 16:31 Yeah, it's such a bad plan. Do not chew on rocks. Your teeth are not stronger than rocks. I promise you. And I loved her so much that I was like, I don't want her to her teeth. Oh my goodness. I was such a sucker. Okay. So you have a son. Is that your only child? No, I have a daughter too. She is obsessed with our ducklings that we got. So she will just sit down in the duck pond and quack. 17:03 She's only three. She just turned three. Okay, so how old is your son again? He's seven. So have they ever known any other kind of life other than this homestead life? My daughter not really. My son, yes, but he doesn't remember it. So we were living in our friend's attic. 17:29 before we got to this place and Isla was just crawling. She like just started and Isaiah, I don't have much to say about him. was, you know, it was he five. And then we were saving, we got this place and it's all they really know now. So I of course am a convert. I love the fact that we live on a homestead. 17:57 I'm really excited for your kids because your kids are going to have such... My son's finally starting to see  the possibilities of what he could do now that he has land.  And he's starting to build his own little playhouse um out of cob. He's using pallets and cob. And yesterday,  my daughter and him came in. 18:20 all just completely covered in mud. They showed me that they were mixing in like the hay and stomping it, trying to build their little playhouse.  love that.  And before you, before you jumped in, I was going to say they're going to have so many opportunities that most kids just don't have these days.  Your kids are not going to be  noses in tablets and cell phones. Your kids are going to be outside. 18:50 with the goats and the ducks and chickens and I don't know whatever else you add in over the next 20 years. We're saving now to get a horse. That is the big goal. Next week someone is coming in to finally finish the seven acre property fence and we'll have that ready so that we can get our horse soon. Awesome. Do you have a preference on what kind of horse you're going to get? 19:17 Oh, I still am in the research stages. I need to learn more about horses, but I've wanted one since I was a kid.  Like I said, I grew up on this cattle farm and my grandpa, he was like, if you can get your mama to stop smoking cigarettes, I'll buy you a horse.  And little five-year-old me took that as my life mission. And every single day I'd be like, Hey, what you doing in there?  You're going outside? What are you doing out there?  And eventually  she got. 19:46 tired of me being up her rear 24-7 and she quit. And my grandpa forgot that he had said that because he didn't think it would actually happen. So I didn't get my dang horse. Well, you gave your mother many, many years of her life. I did. The more important thing. Good job. I hear really good things about quarter horses because quarter horses are like the horse that can do everything. 20:17 I'll definitely have to do my research on those.  Yeah, but the best horse is the horse that  is a good horse that listens to you, that is calm with your children and isn't huge. A huge horse,  it's really hard to mount up a huge horse. It's really hard to get on them. Just me with me being as broken as I am, I would imagine it. Uh-huh. So. 20:40 But no, just, literally just had a conversation with somebody about quarter horses a couple of weeks ago on one of the podcast episodes. And I was like, so what is special about quarter horses? And she was like many, many things. And then she told me, and I was like, wow,  I, if we had room, we'd have a quarter horse.  Oh, I'm excited someday. It's going to be true, but you know, got to start with like the preparing.  Yeah. I learned that the hard way. Don't get an animal before you. 21:09 have all the fences and all the things ready because, you know, it doesn't go well. Yeah, it comes back to that safety thing. You want to be safe on your homestead and you want your animals that you care for to be safe too. Okay, so you are living on a homestead. Are you getting into the whole preserving, canning, I don't know, doing sourdough, any of that stuff? Yes. So my grandma was canned my whole life and she still does. 21:39 um Every year she makes this big trip up from Illinois to bring me her canned goods because she cans way too much for just herself  and completely fills my ah now canning room.  I just got into it myself about last year and  definitely got quickly obsessed.  We just planted some blackberry  plants, some strawberries, some blueberries.  So I'm hoping to be able to can up some jam soon. 22:09 Very nice. I'm so excited for you.  We put in apple trees the first fall we were here. So we moved in in August of 2020  and we had six apple trees in the ground in October of 2020. And we just got our first decent harvest of honey gold apples this past fall. So it took four years.  Well, gives me a timeline  because we did the same thing. So  hopefully two more years to go. 22:38 You might luck out. It's anywhere from three to five, depending on the variety and how old the trees are once you put them in. When you put them in. I don't know. My husband works at tractor supplies. So every now and then I'm just like, hey, while you're at work, get a fruit tree. Hey, while you're at work, get this. Yep. We bought alder or alden plum trees last year and we have no idea how long it'll take for them to produce fruit. have to look it up. My husband asked me the other day and I was like, I don't know. 23:08 I will put it on the list of things to Google.  But I'm kind of hoping that at least we get blooms on them this year because they always smell good.  I'm kind of a uh chaos homesteader and I just  throw things in the ground, throw  water and hope for the best.  We are too. And the apple trees that we got were actually a housewarming present from a guy that owns an orchard up near where we used to live. 23:39 That's very cool. Yeah, so six apple trees because he liked us. I was just like that is the sweetest thing ever. Thank you. And my husband is always like, you he's always going to Tractor Supply or Fleet Farm or Menards or Home Depot for something. And if he sees a fruit tree that he thinks will work, he'll call me or text me and be like, I can get a couple more fruit trees for $7 apiece. Do you want them? And I'm like, if you're going to plant them, sure. 24:07 So it seems  like every year we're putting in a new tree. We just have no idea when we will see fruit on it. That's so cool.  The plants I'm most excited about right now is last time my grandpa came up from Illinois, they're getting up there in age um and they're like, I think this might be our last trip. I don't know. um But they gave me a bunch of blackberry plants. 24:36 that they brought from their farm.  So I'm very excited for those so that I can have a little piece of their farm here.  Yes, and that I'm so glad you brought that up because that is so important. History is not just in books,  it is in plants and animals. And it sounds really funny saying it about animals. But when you think about racing horses, people are so 25:04 I don't know, bent on getting particular foals from grandparents or great grandparents or great great grandparents that won races. Like Secretariat the horse, he, if you have a horse from his line, you're golden. Yeah, for sure. And it's history. And when you end up bringing plants from your family's gardens from 50 to 100 years ago, 25:32 That's their spirit in those plants. That's how we remember them. 25:38 You made me smile so much at that.  like my grandparents  mean everything to me.  And I'm definitely super happy that they did that for me. I cried when they brought those up. Oh yeah. Absolutely. I would have too. My grandma on my mom's side loved peony plants. P-E-O-N-Y.  Those are my mama's favorite.  Uh huh. And she grew them in her garden behind her little house in Oakwood, Illinois, of all places.  And I 26:08 I didn't really know much about peony plants because we were never visiting them when they were blooming. So I didn't ever see them bloom. I just saw the leaves.  And when I moved to Minnesota from Maine, everybody in Minnesota has peony plants everywhere and they're gorgeous. And so I have become a peony addict. have over a hundred plants outside right I love that. I love that. That's why I have a bunch of hostas because they were at my grandma's house. 26:35 And they're not her hostas. But the second I got property, was like, honey, you are going to scavenge the internet. And if you see hostas, you are grabbing them for me.  So I'd send him links on Marketplace, like free hostas, free hostas. Yeah, absolutely. And I wish that I had known that my grandma, her favorite flower was peonies. I didn't understand because I was too young to understand.  I wish that I had known enough to ask her if I could take some home. 27:06 Because I could nobody thinks I would have asked from for the original farm. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I'd known because I would love to have peonies for my grandma in my my peony garden. And I do not. But I have like 10 different colors growing and they will be blooming in  two months, two months. And every time I cut peonies, I'm like, oh, my grandma in heaven is probably just grinning. She's like, yes, Mary Edlin. Good job.  Oh, so sweet. 27:37 Yep, my favorite is the baby pink ones. They are so pretty and they smell so heavenly. 27:44 gonna make me need to get some peonies here.  We do plan on doing beekeeping. We have the bee boxes, we're getting set up. uh So I'm starting to plant a bunch of plants around the bee boxes  so I could probably get some peonies around them. Well the good good and bad news on that is the best time to plant peonies is now. 28:08 And I don't mean now, but I mean when you want to do it, do it. This fall is probably the best time because you plant them in the fall. But it takes three years for them to bloom. ah So if you want to have flowers for your bees ahead of time, ahead of three years from now, um Bee Balm is really good. They love that. Hence the name Bee Balm.  And they also really like um basil when it's flowering. 28:38 Ooh, we have that planted in the duck area already.  Yeah, they love basil. They love thyme. T-H-Y-M-E thyme.  And uh I can't think of what else. Oh, they love them. ah Zucchini squash blossoms. They love those. And they love winter squash blossoms. So if you wanted to, you could put up a trellis and grow like butternut squash. be so much fun. Yeah. 29:07 And it would give them  nectar to play with and make honey. So you can do a whole bunch of stuff because bees are great.  I am not going to lie. I'm being very honest. I'm not a fan of bees. I don't want to keep bees. I love what they do. I think that the wild bees can do just as good as the ones that we might keep. And I would just assume the wild ones do the job.  Yeah. My husband, the homestead is very much more my thing. 29:37 uh Like, he likes it. He likes being able to see all the cool stuff that I've done.  He comes out and helps me with fences.  But that's the one thing that he really wants to do is bees. So I really want to get that for him so that he has his little passion project. Well, he needs one because you guys have to be aligned. That's important in a marriage. Yes.  Plus you'll get honey and you can be like, honey, I love the honey that your bees produced. 30:06 Well, if you met my husband, he can go through honey like no one's business. His favorite thing to do is go to like little farm stands nearby and get those little like honey sticks that are just straight honey. I don't see the appeal in those, but he'll just drink them all the time. My kids loved those. 30:27 When they were little, they loved them and I hated them because they always ended up dripping it on their clothes. They're messy. I don't know. Just too sweet for me, but he loves them. So well, anything that is easy to keep the spouse happy is always a good thing. All right. easy now. Just now that we have this little piece of quietness, you know, if I didn't want to get stressed, it's like, OK, go sit by the duck pond. 30:58 Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's why we did it. That's why we moved too, because I just couldn't handle living in town anymore.  We had the opportunity to jump and we jumped to a 3.1 acre from a one tenth of an acre lot. That's amazing. We were ready. We were so ready. We were high from the minute the house, the offer was accepted  until we moved in a month later. And I was just like, oh my God, I'm actually home. It feels like home. 31:28 We told the guy who was selling this place, we'll pay whatever you want. It doesn't matter.  We'll pay whatever it is. just went in.  Yep.  Absolutely.  All right, Lily, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're there.  Where can people find you?  I'm  at girlypupacres on Facebook and Instagram.  Awesome. Fantastic. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Lily? 31:53 You told me at the beginning that you woke up feeling like you might be getting the flu. Thank you for  sucking it up and taking the time to talk to me. This was really fun.  I'm glad. It was fun for me too. Thank you for having me. All Have a great day. You too. Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farms. You can also follow on Facebook. Content Seeds Collective 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. Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farms in Montana again. I think for like the fifth time maybe.  Good afternoon, Morgan. How are you? Good afternoon, good afternoon. Yeah, we've gotten to chat quite a bit since we met a few years ago over those little groovy goats. So I'm excited to be back on. 00:27 It's funny how podcasting can create friendships, real friendships.  Yeah. Yeah. It's  actually really honestly the digital age. It's crazy how we can create friends that we don't even see in person, but they, they're a real friend. It's I, mean, there's pros and cons to digital, but that is one of the things I love about it. Like the community I've made and met and the people like you I've gotten to meet have really shaped Cole Canyon farm. 00:55 to what it is today, honestly.  Oh, well, I'm glad to hear that. How is the weather in Montana today? It's hot.  We've been in the 70s. I'm not even kidding you. Like, I had shorts on and this is like unbelievable for Montana  to be this warm. So I think it's like 70 today with light breeze. So it's a good, you know, a good day to start spring cleaning and getting all of the, you know, future projects we have done. How's your weather? 01:24 It is partly sunny. is 68 degrees. Feels like 68 degrees. I'm looking at my weather app right now and there's hardly any wind today. So that's a nice change from Saturday. Saturday, the wind was blowing so hard. was making the house creek. man. Yeah, it does that to our house. We've had like, so it's windy where I'm at, right? So I'm not ever shocked by wind, but in the last few years, we were seeing more and more gusts. I remember when like 01:50 75 mile per hour gusts were huge a few years ago and now this is the second time in the last six months we've had 90 plus mile per hour gusts here. Yeah,  I,  this, I don't even know what to say. I've talked, I talk about the weather on every single episode and I am literally out of things to say except that it's just weird. It is the apps never correct. Like we had rain last night. We could hear it cause we live in a middle, like a metal tin boot. 02:20 like 10 house, you Yeah. And I could hear it and my husband, it was like, I don't know, we got in a bed kind of late last night because I went to the auction, the horse auction. So I had a lot to film in on about.  Did not come home with anything, side note, good thing on that. But, you know, we heard just this light pattering and I was like, is that hail? Because like that would normally like snow hail season as this season, right? Yeah. And we were like, no. 02:46 No, actually that it's sprinkling outside and the app never updated never said we had precipitation nothing. So I bought uh I think it's a hydrometer or whatever where you stick it outside. I need to figure out the real name for it, but I just called the rain catcher,  but it will tell me how much rain we're getting because I think to be honest with you, they're not they're not as accurately recording what's going on and being a farmer. That's super important. So 03:13 because the digital age has changed and we can't rely on these apps anymore as much as we did for weather, I'm having to learn  the old ways, which is always good, right? Like if the electricity goes out, you need to know how to do this. But I've started turning rain myself, so it'll be interesting. I need to look at what we got last night, but I don't think it was enough to even register, honestly, Mary. But yeah, we've had  strange weather here too. 03:37 Yeah, I'm at the point where if I want to get kind of an idea of what the weather is going to be in a few days, I will catch the morning news.  Yeah. They seem to be more accurate than the weather apps.  And if I want to know what the weather is right now, I literally step outside.  Yeah, that's how I am too. Like we live kind of on an outlook, right? So the storms whip around us because we're on the top. We're kind of on like it's called a rim out here, but it's like a fat uh kind of a flat  plane that's in the middle of 04:07 Some canyons right there's canyons in the middle of it where it popped up. Well, you know it'll if it goes around us left  If it goes around us left then Will sometimes get rain but if it goes right which is into Laurel the city Yeah, then we don't ever see it So you can almost stand on the flat and it'll say that it's you know, hailstorming and it's not where we're at 04:35 We don't even have any hail or snow, nothing coming. But in town, they're getting like beaten with golf ball size, literally golf ball size pieces of hail. So I'm, I'm like you, I just walk outside and I try to look, you know, and see if there's any storms blowing in. But you just, don't know. I pack enough clothes, I guess, with me for any type of weather. I've got bibs, I've got jackets, I've got shorts, I've got t-shirts in the truck, right? Like, yeah. 05:01 just changes often, so you just go with the flow, but it is gonna make farming interesting this year. So I think having,  like you said, just some idea of where to look for reliable stuff is important. It is, and it's so funny because  I listen to a lot of podcasts about podcasting and everybody's like, don't talk about the weather, it's boring. But anytime I ask someone who is farming, homesteading, ranching, it's not boring. 05:30 It's really interesting to hear everybody's take on what they've got going on and what it's doing. Yeah, it literally, I mean your whole life as a farmer is based on an amount of rain that's going to come down if you don't have irrigated land. And  we sadly have to haul every drop of water on and off this property, know, like there's, it's not an option for us. My leach field is green with three or four inches of grass already, which is crazy. The horses love it, you know? So 05:57 I think it's going to be great for the animals. They've had a rough swing this year. know my animals really need some extra TLC after going from 70, not even kidding you, down to one degree in less than 24 hours. That's really a big swing. So I think, you know, it's important to watch the weather because of that, but just knowing how to adapt to it. that's something that I'm actually planning my whole life around is all these weather changes, like building more greenhouses this year. 06:27 Yeah. Trying to  make more wind blocks. Like that's a whole thing. We've been looking up the Texas Ys.  They're like in Texas, they're known for it. You get a lot of wind there, right? So it's like a Y shape, but they use it for cattle and horses. We've been trying to plan how many of those we're going to need because if not, my poor horses, it doesn't matter where they stand in a shelter, they're going to get, you know, soaked. 06:53 with how much wind we have in the unpredictability. can't go put sheets on them, you know, because I don't know when it's going to rain.  exactly.  All right. So let's let's go back to when you and I first talked. When you and I first talked, you were Groovy Grazies, Grazies Montana, and you were raising  goats and taking the goats to parties and things. And the last time we talked in January, end of January,  you had gotten a couple of horses. So 07:23 What I'm wondering about is how you got into horses because that really wasn't on the radar for a while. Yeah. So I'm a horse girl. I'm a I'm a covert horse girl. That's what my husband calls me. Right. Because  Andy made fun of horse girls growing up. It's actually funny. One of the girls that I'm going to buy hay from this year, she knew Andy growing up and I was like, I turned him into a horse girl.  So he's like almost completely also turned into a horse girl himself. uh 07:52 But I was writing when I was nine actually, ah wild fact about me.  When I was little, ah Mike Baumgartner was my trainer out in Texas and he was like an Olympic  candidate. He actually taught the first girl ever  who was legally blind in death back in like the  1980s or  90s. I'd have to look it up, I haven't in a while to do dressage. So  I did weekly lessons and work. 08:21 my hind end off for Mike Baumgartner so I could do extra lessons with him and  I fell in love with horses. My mom gets bit by horses. When she comes out here, she's gonna get bit by every single horse I guarantee you I have on this property.  Not because my mom does anything weird, it's just her energy. I think they know she's scared of her, right?  But yeah, I've been writing since I was nine and then, so Mike Baumgartner, then uh I got into hippotherapy. 08:50 um Hippo, sorry, hippotherapy with the horses. um It's uh working with kids and adults on the spectrum,  nonverbal, some kids didn't move. ah And we were using horses to be a form of therapy. And I did that, uh she's almost like kind of like my mom, Tara, actually, out in Texas. And I was going to become an instructor for that. And then we moved to Arizona. So right, like my whole childhood, I was just immersed. 09:18 emerged into riding and being around horses. They were kind of my calm spot. then Arizona, I got really, really sick. January 11th, I can tell you the day of 2020. was riding before that, I was riding some Western Pleasures out there with Heather Meyer. So people are horse people, they'll know her. She won some world competitions in Western Pleasure and I was riding some really high end horses and just learning the ropes of that after being in the military. So the military was my big like kind of Hades on. 09:47 on writing because in Japan they don't have anything but ponies out there and on the island. So,  you know, I came back uh after my divorce, went to Arizona, wrote for Heather Meyer for a little bit, um learned a lot from her. And then I got sick and stopped writing literally for six years. Just Mary woke up one day and couldn't do the thing that kept me sane.  Oh, yeah, it was rough. So that's why I didn't even talk about it. That's why I wasn't even on the radar. So that's why I'm giving you that backstory. Like, yeah, that's fine. 10:17 I never thought I was gonna ride again.  I had a hysterectomy at a young age and I'm very open about that ah because it's a lot of things, a lot of women are having to deal with that. And honestly, it has to do with the chemicals that we're exposed to. So like that's a whole nother tinfoil hat thing we could go down to, but right. So I had a hysterectomy  and didn't ride. And then I got cleared a year ago. So actually it's coming up. 10:42 I didn't really talk about the one horse I had because he wasn't on the property a bunch and he wasn't really involved in the business. But  I've had horses my own for about a year now, but I've changed out obviously quite a bit  when I've had as we're trying to figure out the direction of them. But horses are my hobby. So they will never pay for themselves.  They will. I mean, they can. Later on, I'm going to breed. 11:09 I've got to throw a bread  off the track. I'm going to breed to my friend Shire that's registered and I'll get a registered baby and that'll move us down the path. like, eventually maybe they'll kind of cover themselves, but they are truly a hobby. So I always tell people like,  you got to decide on your items if it's a hobby or if it's a farm, right? And horses are a hobby for right now. um We do want to get into driving and stuff, but yeah, so that's kind of my background. um I'm a covert horse girl, not your typical horse girl. 11:38 and I'm turning Andy into a horse girl himself. He's doing so good with training the babies and gentling him up. And he's seeing the quietness that you have in your brain. Have you ever been around a horse, Mary? Have you ever been? I have. Yes, I have. OK, so are you a horse girl? I got to know now. I am not a horse girl. I would have loved to have been a horse girl, but no one I knew when I was growing up had horses. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was a city girl, right? So it's funny. A lot of people don't know that about me. 12:08 Well, I mean, like people that listen to this do, but like a lot of people just assume, you know, that I came from the country and everyone had them, but no, we drove like, I want to say it was like 30 or 45 minutes, one way to Mike Baumgartner's place. And I did that once or twice a week. And that was the only way I could ride. then I, mean, Texas, everyone rides out there or has a horse at a stable. So because I was a horse girl already riding, I just kind of found the rest of the horse girls. So that was really. 12:38 of my thing. yeah, so my program right now  is my son's paint,  Liberty. She was born on 4th of July, which is really cool. But he  wanted a really bad so I was bidding at the auction house, which is now my new favorite. uh It's the cheapest thing I can, well, if I don't bring anything home Mary, it's the cheapest. But um you know, I go, take coffee, I buy a drink and a little snack and I go and I'll sit there all day and 13:08 And just watch, I mean, it's interesting to understand the horse market, especially if I want to make this not a hobby. I need to understand that. But yeah, I'm going to be offering weaning startings.  I'm going to work with my friend, Hannah Jones, ah to start understanding how to do the missing link. I've ridden,  I've never had a baby this young or ever really, right? Baby horses, never. I've never gotten experiences. So this is all first. And I've done basic groundwork on horses that have been trained. 13:38 but never like started. So Hannah's gonna kinda help me start them. But I do plan  on being able to help friends consign their horses and ride them and stuff. Cause not everyone wants to go ride in the auction house. Me personally,  it doesn't bother me, right? um So that's kinda like how that'll play in a coal canyon farm. And eventually we do plan on having some like horse driven, my husband's obsessed with it, horse driven like a... 14:06 hay balers, swathers, things like that. He's gone down a whole thing because how diesel's like five bucks here almost. he's going down this whole path because we believe everything here at Cole Canyon Farm has to work for itself. So I still do goat parties, by the way. It's called  agri tourism, by the way. I didn't know that. So like I'm so behind on the time. So I caught up to that wording. was like, all right, cool. But um we're only dedicating 14:35 Friday, like Fridays and Saturdays, I have an employee that I've hired. Not an employee, like kind of like a subcontractor. She'll come and help me. And then if she wants to host her own parties, she can use the name and stuff. I got to look into it, right? Like I'm still in the works of like getting insurance fully done because of our expansion, making sure my employee is under there or she has to be a 1099 contractor, making sure I do the right thing for her. And then... 15:04 we have the sheep, so we've expanded. So we're still doing groovy grazers that helps the goats pay for themselves. I'm still milking them. I'm about to start milking today actually, because I've had some babies  and they're past their two week stage where I don't really want to milk them. So I've got some does I'm going to milk finally, and I'll sell my milk for that.  I'll have to get tested. Everyone needs to know that if you buy goat milk, you need to ask them. It's not the... 15:31 It's not a requirement in every state and it's not really even a requirement in Montana, but a good breeder should have biosecurity screening  down to CL. And if you don't know what CL is, you can totally look at my page. I'm going to put together some courses for that, like basics of buying that'll just be free  information for people.  But CL can be zoonotic and then like making sure if tuberculosis,  fever, mastitis rate. So I'll send off my pathogens. 15:59 My stuff for pathogen testing it'll come back. I'll start selling I do sell at 30 a gallon I encourage all of your listeners to do the cost if you were selling it ten fifteen dollars a gallon You are not breaking even it may feel like it but in the long run you are not Yep I believe it.  Yeah people undervalue it. That's a hobby. If you want to be a hobbyist do that. I'm not a hobby 16:27 I am a cottage farm that are selling the extras and if I'm going to sell them and my family's not going to consume it, then it needs to be worth my time, right? Because cottage farms, you're allowed to sell your excess. So the goats are still milking. We had sheep. I had  every you drop a baby.  My first year breeding. I'm so proud of myself because sheep is a learning curve.  How many babies? Okay, so tragic story. 16:55 But Betty, the one I talked about, because she's like kind of the most important horse here um because of her like role in our whole program eventually. But she's going to make painted pretty mules eventually.  which is our gold mules. I have Betty hits the sheep two weeks before she's due. They're like playing in the field and we're throwing hay, right? So like I'm setting the stage so you understand. So they she runs her over the sheep  and we like checked out the sheep. She seemed fine. Betty was fine. 17:25 But like Betty stepped on it and like with the wool kind of like rolled it and it's because they were staring at me with the hay, but super excited, right?  So that  one did have a dead on arrival uh ram. And it was really kind of sad because it had crushed parts of the baby when she stepped on it. I'm glad my U is okay.  And I didn't even like, there's nothing you can do at that point, right? So sad part of farming, that's the reality of it. One of them was born dead. I do know why, which is important when you farm too. 17:55 So one ram, then we had two healthy rams born and then two ewes. So I've had five babies, four alive, one dead. So that's a really good ratio because these are first time moms. So I think we talked about it  two episodes ago where we were talking about the changes and why we're moving to sheep. So these sheep  were bred  at nine months old. They have now dropped after a year. So it's five months, right? So they're about a year. 18:24 year and a half. They have now  had their babies.  So now these babies will grow up and then they will then be bred this year. All of them will be re-bred. So now next year I'm moving in with seven ewes into breeding season, the end of the season, right? So next year I'll drop seven different ewes. I will butcher one of the lambs,  one of the rams. I have to pick the two because my current ram is a shy eater. I did not know this was a thing about sheep. 18:53 that some sheep are shy and they don't want to eat in front of  other animals. So he like literally was withering away. I, because I never saw him eat. I just didn't ever think anything of it because I would catch him kind of by the pile. But because we've been outside a lot more, he wasn't eating.  So I had to move him in with like a really tiny little buck that I have. He weighs like  seriously no more than 30 pounds. So I've got my ram. 19:17 in there with this little Nigerian dwarf buck and their best buds and that goat taught him to eat. But because he has this like undesirable trait shy eating, we will process him also. So I'll process two lambs this year, which we will probably put honestly, both of them into our freezer because of the fact that food, right, food scarcity, diesel going up, just kind of the writing on the walls. I'd rather have some meat in there and not the excess.  lamb is really yummy. 19:47 Oh my goodness, I breed cheviyat and I encourage people to look at them. They're such an under underrated sheep because they only get up to like 120 pounds as a you, maybe 160 as a ram. they were they're from England and they are meant to graze. They're specifically made to grass grass finish. And I don't want anything that needs to be corns or fed really heavily because I'm I that's more input. 20:15 It's not even because of like how unhealthy it is that you eat all the soy and stuff through the animals, but literally because it's more input, right? So that's why I picked these cheviyats. So they're really interesting breed, even though they're smaller. I am getting them sheared this Thursday. So I'm gonna, I'll get to learn about the wool. We'll eventually process that, right? So the sheep really are just kind of coming along as the backbone because Groovy Grazers doesn't pay for itself. And that's where I had to decide. 20:43 are we gonna continue down the road, which you and I had kind of talked about on the, a few episodes ago about changes and when we came out with Cole Canyon Farm. Graziers is great. Pivot was a big word in that one, Yeah, exactly. We pivoted, right? So Groovy Graziers is great, but to make it sustainable, it's only got a six month season. It's not really worth it because it's a lot of work and time off the farm for myself. Each visit, if it's an hour long, it's a minimum of three hours off the farm.  If it's a two hour visit, 21:12 now you're talking four hours off the farm, right? So it was becoming like a job where nothing was getting done at home, but now we have a lot going on. So another pivot that my son wanted to do was we got pigs. So not only are we now doing sheep, we've got the Nigerian dwarf for milk and parties. We have pigs. My son bottle fed a pig, which was really a good thing for him.  And he decided he wanted to get into them. So we're making a pig pen because I didn't know this, but pigs are like called mortgage lifters. 21:42 Yes. Have you ever heard that? Yes. I have never heard that, Mary. Yeah, they're they can be the backbone of a homestead or a farm too, just like the sheep can.  Yeah. So like we got those guys now. Get it.  My friend gifted us those New Zealand rabbits. I think we might have maybe talked about them, but they've had their first litter. And  one, people want to buy them because you can breed them in the backyard. I'm going to do a whole course on how to feed your family. 22:11 supplementing with like the rabbits. You can't eat just rabbits. There's a whole syndrome because they have no fat on them.  But there's a way that people can produce beyond chicken at their home and use that as fertilizer. So that's something we're kind of getting into. I had done rabbits before, but I can't eat chicken. you  know, the year just, we're kind of in cute coming to the end of Q1 after April. And so, well, we're into 22:36 We were, you know, Q1, whatever. I'm just like kind of lost on the Qs. I've got to look back through them. But I know that Q1, I think ends in April or something.  And I sat down proactively and I was trying to get together what we spent the most money on.  And it was obviously beef, right? Even though I'm buying locally from somebody, which I recommend someone trying to find that or buy a half a beef or something. I buy it by the month. Butcher boxes for my friend here locally.  so beef was such a big number. Well, I did the math on rabbits, right? So I did how much feed? 23:06 how much space, how much to build the cages. And I was like, well, with how much I'm buying beef, I can cut that out by half, because I used to have chicken in there. And then it got replaced by beef and raised these New Zealand rabbits. And people are buying them for trios for a hundred plus here, non-paper, just meat rabbits.  That's income. That's good income, actually, like really good compared to the output of a rabbit. So we're also doing that. So I'm really focusing on items that are going to produce for the farm. 23:36 that are smaller scale. Like I don't have grass puppy money. That's what I call cows, the grass puppies. I do too. Yep. Yeah, I don't have that kind of money. I'm sorry. For a bottle calf out here, Mary, they're going for over a thousand, a thousand five hundred. Yeah. And a year or two ago, they were going for what? Four or five hundred.  They would take them out back at the auction house, the bum calves, if they couldn't get rid of them. Like if you want to be really like very stark and serious on this podcast, that's the reality of it. 24:04 They were begging people to take them.  Now they're little cash cows, literally cash cows, you know, like,  so I don't have that kind of money, but that's okay. Neither do I have that kind of water, cause I have to haul it, nor do I have that kind of like workhorse with the horses. You've got to have horses if you're moving cattle or doing anything with them and any source of like making money off of them.  It's just the reality of it or four wheelers.  So Montana can't really use four wheelers.  We're pretty rugged out here. 24:33 That's what we've been up to, right? Like I just launched my website. That's another big thing that happened. We're going to start doing courses. I have to change the date because I just realized I'm going to be the key speaker,  a keynote speaker. So one of the ones that are listed at Earth Day and it's like not in a big auditorium. It's just outside, but I'm going to get to make posters and talk about it. So and have like a set time. So because I got invited to do that. 24:58 I'm going to be moving the mini garden course that I'm doing. It's called Garden versus Grocery Bill because let's  be honest, that's how we all feel. ah Right now, yes, we do.  Yeah, so I'm going to move it. It was going to be March 18th, but I'll probably move it, um you know, like one weekend back or move it to a different day. I was going to do it on Saturday, but that's coming up. You can  sign up for free. It's just a free course I'm putting on. um 25:24 online and I'll have like a printout. mean, my very own printouts lately, like how I plan my garden, like deconstructing my own ways. like, since we last spoke in January, I don't think I've actually pulled my head up to breathe at all.  was going to say you've taken on a lot in just the last two months. Yeah, but I've worked less. Like, I mean, I haven't like taken a breath as in like leaving for vacation or like 25:53 taking a lot of time off of social media or posting or reaching out to people.  But I've taken days off. I take Saturday and Sunday off every week now. I'm a farmer, I can pick my time. Monday through Friday is great, right? We're still doing things on Saturday and Sunday, but it's family time and Sunday is a rest day. So  I wasn't doing that before. You and I talked about Melanie being my coach. She's still my coach, which is awesome. uh 26:21 and has been helping a lot, but her biggest thing was like, rest when you need to rest and work when you're inspired. And lately, like I've been doing that. So I just feel really inspired lately to get all these things done. And like some of it,  it's  more aimed at the farm. So having somebody that can help me means that I don't always have to leave, but then like bartering, right? I can barter with my employee for time on the farm too. Like, hey, you know, can I? 26:50 have you help me here and then you can take these goats for this party and I don't need a fee at all. Like there's, don't know if that's, you can do that. I don't know, I'd have to check right with a tax person, but  that's kind of our plan is to be spending more time on the farm and then we see the food scarcity. So I think I just feel really inspired lately because of that right there. Like  that's a main driver for me, especially being a veteran. Like Americans not eating and going hungry is like, 27:21 I could stand on a soapbox for hours on that one. Like it's really, it's really disappointing to me that we have that um catastrophe in America. So if I can feed people and make some money off and make some scratch, you know, to feed my animals and feed my family, then I'm absolutely going to do it. So that's why I think we've just expanded into just meat animals. It's there's a market for it. There sure is. And Morgan, this is my podcast and I get to say this because I am the one will get in trouble  for it. 27:51 Not you. Yeah. People going hungry in this country is absolute bullshit. It  is. I am upsetting. I am  livid  about what is happening in our country right now. And I don't want to get into politics. I don't want to blame anybody in particular, but we all need to stop and look at our lives and figure out what the heck we're doing.  Absolutely. There's no left and right here. 28:20 This is Americans helping Americans guys. Like I have the chills saying that, but like my mom's not from this country. My mom's from Iraq,  right? Like I grew up with a very realistic like view that there were kids in this world not eating. If there's  one single person going to sleep at night in America that is starving because they've been denied help, not the ones that don't want help, but denied help makes me as a veteran. 28:50 Question what did  I  serve for? Yeah, and I will stand on that soapbox and some people don't like it They tell me that I shouldn't have that view that I should know better as a veteran. Well, yeah, I do know better and that's why I'm upset Yeah, I think there's an awful lot of upset in the world right now and I eat not just in America, but in the world and It's so  hard 29:18 And I had a day last week, I didn't do a whole lot of interviews last week, I just didn't. And I had a day where I was like, do I want to keep doing this because I feel like I'm just screaming into the void. Yeah, but you're not.  then I decided that yes, I still want to keep doing this. And I just want to keep pounding on the fact that we all have the right to grow our own food. We have the right to get to know our local growers and producers and support them. 29:48 uh And my husband and I, as long as the garden does well this summer,  we'll be donating food to the food shelf. So yes, we are going keep going. Yeah, and you can get tax write-offs, by the way, for donating by pounds.  And like if you want to go become a master gardener, like that's one way that you can donate your time. I recommend Master Gardening course. I went through my local extension office and I did it. I didn't take the test because I know that we want to consult. 30:15 people across America and having  that title kind of I Couldn't use it as like a talking point, right? And then it also makes things more conflicting  and I would have to donate hours So for me, it just didn't make sense to get the Master Gardener title But I think for folks that are just looking for a way to help their community Like you can donate food and keep the Master Gardening title and then you're a part of a really cool group or organization without having to search far 30:45 or trying to find something to do that you can do in a group, can garden alone, but having access to the books that they hand out. Like my book is specifically for Montana down to when to plant and when to start harvesting.  Nice. That is fabulous. That helps. Yeah. So like,  I think for me and my focus on my farm that like I wanted to talk about was just expansion and how we're securing our animals, how we're securing our food. Like  I'm worried about food. 31:15 I will  not have my family go hungry by choice, if that makes sense, right? Like if there's catastrophes, you know, that happened, then it is what it is. But like having to report every year how many head of sheep I have and horses and then get charged for them locally, like for my property taxes is unacceptable.  Having to notify people when I put in a well. 31:42 Okay, like I can understand some of it, but like having to have your water tested or them like I've heard of people getting in trouble for not testing their water, you know enough times or whatever and it's expensive Like we shouldn't it's not why is it a pay to play in America? Like it's a pay to live in America like it's  uh The boys describe it my husband and son describe it as like a video game. That's free to play But all the upgrades you have to pay for so like if you want to harvest your water in some states you can 32:10 You got to do it illegally. That's not okay. Yeah. You know, like, and then all these data centers, Montana has 11 coming. am pissed about that. Yeah.  I,  I have all kinds of  opposing opinions about AI. Yeah. Because  some of what AI does is really good. Some of it is really terrible. Yeah. Like  I personally don't. 32:41 Yeah, I there are some of it. It's built into everything. I'm so tired of everything I used by force having AI somewhere in the background and it not being announced. But then there are some great things that you can use AI for. Like my website builder, I typed in what type of website I needed help with, and it just is going to pull and it did pulled from basics that were like that. Now I went in and had to adjust every single thing in there to be custom. 33:11 But that AI usage, okay, whatever. Like I don't have money for a web designer. If I had money for a web designer, I'd go pay somebody, but I just don't, right? As a small business that's trying to help people. So that's where like, I have leniency, but when there's big companies using AI posters, get out of here. They can afford an artist. exactly. You know, so I don't want to, I don't want to make this an hour long episode. already at 33 minutes. Yeah, you're good. But 33:40 What I wanted to tell you is I am really freaking proud of you. Thank you. For all the things that you're working on just in the last two months. I mean, I knew you were a go-getter because your catchphrases do the damn thing. Yeah. But, darlin', my god, you are, you are kicking ass and taking names. Yeah, I just want to leave a mark on this world. I'm going to leave this world with only my name. Nothing, none of my worldly possessions, just my name. 34:09 So I want everyone to know that like when they hear, right, like my name, they're like, oh, Morgan Cole. Yeah, she did this. Oh, yeah, I learned this from her and it did this for my family. Right. Like, yeah, I'm not here. I could care less about money. I'll be honest. Like, I know I need it. I know I do. But like at the end of the day,  I want to do the thing that I wanted to do in the military, which was make Americans lives better and not even just Americans, anyone's life better. Right. Like I just wanted. 34:39 there to be  a world that could coexist. And if me being on this platform doing what I'm doing right now is what I'm supposed to do, I am so here for it. Like I will always do the damn thing. And that has been my thing. And so I'm seeing such a huge gap online with needing information that's correct, not AI generated  and full of crap that doesn't mean anything actual real world experience. 35:07 because we used to all sit around and do it, then that's what I'm gonna do. And I'm proud of you too, because I know there are days where I wanna give up farming, but then I remember it and like your podcast does matter. I mean, it  does help people. Like I like the new podcast. I love everything that you're doing, but I think it's so hard for everybody like goes through this where they lose sight of what they're doing because they don't feel that they're making a big enough wave. 35:34 just because they don't see it. Like I guarantee you, like you found out today, you're a huge reason why I've shifted the way I have. I've listened to podcasts that you've personally hosted and been like, oh yeah, actually if I did things this way, or listen, they're doing it this way and they're getting really good success, let me try that. Like having that community that you build has been priceless. And like, I have met some of the followers on here. Some of them have messaged me, right? 36:02 So connecting people I think is your skill and I think you're really, really damn good at it. And I think you're really good at getting your word out there. Even if the people are silently listening to you, I think you just don't realize, Mary, how many people depend on listening to your episode. Like when you post them, they used to barely get 120 views after a week. You have 100 plus views on some of these episodes the first day you post them. Uh-huh, it's crazy, isn't it? 36:30 Yeah, I've seen it grow. So I'm proud of you too. But like also know that I'm sure there's more people that you've touched their lives or changed their lives in a way that you have no idea. And like me personally, I think it would be really cool if people under this episode could post like, what have you learned off of Mary's episodes? What have you learned from another homesteader? Because I want to learn, I want to learn what they may have picked up on that I missed. So like,  I think that 36:56 Continuing to do what you're doing, even if you keep interviewing some of us over and over again, there's so much. And I mean over and over again, like, but through time, right? To see the changes, the literal changes that we make as farmers is also very important. So like, I never mind clearing an hour of my day to come on here and answer questions that you have or tell you about what we're doing. Because I think this is like the reality of how we're all going to learn if we want to learn real information. Yeah. 37:24 Thank you for saying all of that. And I actually love sitting down to chat with you  every six months. is very short turnaround on this one, but  I love talking with you because  I  know  when we did the first episode where you were at. Yeah. And I've had four times now to see where you're going to through what you're doing now. 37:53 And I feel like it's a series. It's not just one episode. It's five episodes. It's a series. Yeah. Maybe you should like group it out in that. Maybe people you interview a bunch, because then people can like tune into this episode, but then they may not realize that was Groovy Grazers before. If they listen to Groovy Grazers that we turned into Cole Canyon. Like that may be even something for you to like expand on, you know, because you're good at that. You're good at showing the changes and showing the like evolving of us as 38:23 cottage farmers and homesteaders because there is so much involving pivoting, changing. These are all key words we've talked about.  And I think that's why people are drawn to farming and homesteading and ranching because it's never boring.  mean,  it may hurt like hell when things go wrong. It may make you higher than a kite when things go right, but it's never boring. 38:47 No, no, no, there's like literally nothing ever boring in my life. Like if someone asked me what I'm doing, I probably have some crazy story or they're catching me at a horse auction. I'm like, yeah, can't text right now. I'm watching horses go through at, you know, a minute, 30 seconds a piece here at BLS auction, right? Like  never do I have a boring day in my life. There are some days where I'm cussing at the sky, really pissed at my life because of some things that have popped up, you know, but then there are days like today where I'm like, 39:16 I walk around, things are a lot cleaner, we're getting things finished, we're buttoning up some projects, and I'm like, damn. Three years ago, there wasn't crap out here. There was literally a tin-like building that my husband lived in with a studio and a little horseshoe dirt mound, and now I have four horses and a pony, and I'm breeding a mare this year, and I've got pack goats, and I've got a pig for... 39:44 goodness sake, I've got baby sheep, they're so cute. Oh my god, they're so cute. You're gonna have to include that on the preview. I'll send you specifically the picture. It's smiling. Sheep are so cute, right? But like, had I given up when I wanted to, I would never get to experience this life. I wouldn't get to experience my kid riding around on a horse. You know, I wouldn't get to experience all these things that I wanted in my childhood, but now I'm able to give them. And my parents just, they didn't want to the country life. Fine. 40:12 but I wanted to live this life, so I'm gonna do the damn thing. like, everyone listening, you can farm, and I call it farming, right? Because you're producing stuff. You can actually profit off of an acre or less, and that's something else I'm gonna be going into on a whole fricking course because too many people think because they're in town on a quarter acre or less, they can't produce their own food. But there are ways, and I think... 40:37 that these types of podcasts are going to be the way that Americans will continue to feed themselves. And I think you got to remember that. Like you're helping people actually feed themselves. Yeah, I'm trying and I'm, I'm so thankful for all the people that have talked with me to share how they're doing it.  Um, real quick. Yeah. I understand what you're saying about when you first moved there, there was nothing cause, uh, you knew about how we put up the hard side of greenhouse. Yeah, I remember. Yeah. 41:07 or we're planting seed, we have planted seeds in there this year. We have no  seedling trays on our kitchen table this year. Everything is being planted in greenhouse. way. I remember that being like a huge stress for you too. You're like, there's everything everywhere  in my house.  like,  I remember when you got to eat some strawberries out of the greenhouse. Last spring, yep. Yeah, you were so excited about that. We're going to be building some tunnel greenhouses where 41:35 you know, winter, you'll winter it normally, we get a lot of snowfall. like, well, and you've been getting snow too. So everywhere, everywhere has been getting snow. But you know, like that's something I'm going to be working on. So I can't wait because I was telling my husband, I was like, oh, I can't wait to tell Mary when  I eat my first strawberries out of my greenhouse, because my husband builds them. That's something he like professionally has done um for dispensaries and stuff. yeah, I'm it's gonna be exciting. I think we should definitely check back in at least six months. 42:04 This fall.  Yeah, this fall. See where we're at. I'm like fully booked for May already with goat parties. Yeah.  So in April is filling up. So I think like it'll be really cool to see what changes are next. You never know. Maybe I'll find a unicorn.  If you do, I want pictures.  Oh, I will totally send you pictures. Maybe if it has wings, it's a Pegasus. Maybe I'll fly and come see you. That'll be my new transport with gas these days. 42:33 Wouldn't that be great?  Yeah. Thanks for having us on. I appreciate you so much. And  if any of the listeners feel like compelled um to reach out to me or if you have questions, like please do. Like that's that's my favorite thing to do is answer questions or help people get started on their journey or try and find hang ups, you know, that they're having because I think that human connection is so precious  and we don't I mean, we all take it for granted. So like, please reach out, ask questions like I encourage you. 43:02 to connect with us. Yep, absolutely. Your website is coalcanyonfarms.com. Yep, .com. has an S on it. So Farms with an S, because we will eventually be buying more. So it's Farms. And then Facebook is Coal Canyon. And then Instagram is Coal Canyon Farms. OK, awesome. As always, you can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Morgan, I love you. 43:31 Keep up the good work. proud of you. I love you too. I'm so proud of you. I'll see you in, well, we'll say six months, but let's see where  we're at next time we meet up, okay? All right. Thank you. Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Westen and Taylor at modernhomestead95. You can also follow on Facebook. Content Seeds Collective 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. Today I'm talking with Taylor and Westen at Modern Homestead 95, and I'm sure we'll find out what the 95 is about.  In Arkansas, did you say, Westen? Yes, we are. We're  in Northern Central Arkansas.  Awesome. 00:28 I told you to shut your video off because it uploads better without the video. But from what I saw before you shut the video off, it looks beautiful in Arkansas. Is it gorgeous there today? It is. Yeah, it's a 55 degrees and it's spring's starting to show itself. So we got all the trees blooming and the grass is turning green and starting to grow. things are all coming alive. All the bugs are coming out. Yeah. favorite part. Homesteaders. 00:57 Favorite time of year, I swear, is March and April. Yeah, it's a good time. Get everything going and just life seems to be waking back up. So yes, the long,  horrible winter is almost over.  I'm in Minnesota. It is sunny. is windy as hell this morning  and uh it's only about 35 degrees. So  I was going to say probably still cool up there. 01:22 Yeah, we had a 90, not 90. I think it got to 81 last weekend. Okay. And then it cooled right back down. I was like, okay, that's the second fall spring. Maybe the next one will be the real one. You know, we've done that a couple of times down here too. We kind of warmed up. What was it the other day? 89? Yeah. Yeah, I think we might've even hit 90 and then it's, it was 35 last night. So. Yeah. 90 in March is just gross. 01:51 Yeah, it's like we're not ready for summer yet. No, no, you cannot go from winter to summer overnight. We have to have spring. Yes, yeah, much nicer with them intermittent gradual incline. Yes. So the name of your place is Modern Homestead, Modern Homestead or 95. What's the 95 about? So my wife and I were both born in 1995. Okay. 02:19 So, yeah, we... It's a good year. Yeah, it's a good year and Modern Homestead was taken and so this is Modern Homestead 95. Well, that is a brilliant thing to call it. My kids are 36 and 34 and 28 and 24. So my older two are 02:48 are right around you guys' ages. yeah, yeah, it's perfect. Yep, it's so funny because I used to think that 30 was old. No, 30 is not old. Right. Yeah, I just realized that a little while ago. Yep. turning 30, we're like, no, we're still some spring chickens. Yes, and even at 56, you can be a spring chicken. Just make sure you take care of your health until you get there. I remember that. Yeah. 03:17 Tim McGraw has a song called in my, I don't know the name of the song, but the chorus is in, or the verses start within my next 30 years. And in my next 30 years, I want to be 25 again. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right. So what do you guys do at the Homestead? And did I read that it's, you've been, the Homestead has been a hundred year in the family? Yeah. Well, it's not in the family. we bought, 03:46 our property and house two years ago in 2023 and we moved out here to Arkansas from California. Oh wow. Yeah, so we were just just tired of all the the nonsense that California has going on with it. Just we don't need to get into politics and everything but we don't agree with a lot that the state has going on and the way they handled 04:15 COVID and  everything, we just didn't feel like it was the right way to go about it. um we've been looking  for a place to move for already a year when  COVID started going on.  And we had traveled around a couple of different states and  looked. I've lived in Texas and Mississippi and driven from coast to coast and back. 04:45 And we took a trip out to Florida and looked  and it was just getting pricey  and we couldn't really afford what we wanted.  And  one day we were sitting  in our apartment at the time. We had a little 600 square foot apartment or something.  And  my wife Taylor was like, have  you thought about Arkansas? And I was like, I don't know anything about Arkansas. 05:12 We started just looking it up  and  researching and it's just kind of checking the boxes.  And we had a pretty good list of stuff we were looking for, wanted and needed and things like that. And  so we just kind of went down the list  and it seemed to align pretty well. And we were like, let's take a trip out there and see what it's all about. And we did. We spent two weeks  or a week,  one week driving around in the car. 05:42 and just sleeping in the car and  fell in love with it. Trying to find where we wanted to be in the state. But yeah, we did. We  really liked just the landscape and the people are laid back and just down to earth.  you know, we'll help you if you need it.  just lots of God fearing people and beautiful country. And  the price was right. We found a spot. um 06:11 not too far out of town and we  bought a house with seven acres  and we've just been... uh The house is what was 100 years old and just needed everything. um I mean, we've... Gosh, we've done so much in the last couple of years since we've been here. Gotten dropped by our homeowners insurance a couple of times for things and, you know, had to rush to fix stuff to get... 06:40 our insurance back and yeah, actually last week we just got kind of to a stage where we're going to call it in quotes, let's say done. We've replumbed the whole house, redone all the sheetrock and texture and paint inside and move some walls around and tore down some walls and 07:07 We completely redid the whole kitchen, reframed the floor in it and everything, new cabinets, all new appliances. Went through the outside of the house. We got a new roof. Just sealed everything up, painted the whole house. So it's been a journey. And along with all that, I work full time and we were pregnant when we moved out here. 07:38 with our first kid  and had her  and then  got pregnant again and we just had our little boy, our second kid. um in the middle of all that, we decided  we,  you know, wanted to  do what we came out here for  and that was  just kind of be a little more, I don't want to say self-sufficient because self-sufficient is such a uh big encompassing uh umbrella. 08:08 But I think we just wanted to be a little more, I guess, stable kind of in our own environment where  we know where our food's coming from a little bit and it doesn't have all  the chemicals and pesticides and everything that are on it from the store  and, you know, good,  healthy meat that's been  treated right and just free-ranged and um 08:37 grass-fed and  and so we  built a chicken coop. I went down to the mill here in town. We have a redwood  cedar mill  and bought a bunch of first cuts which is just the like a half round log with one flat side and so I bought like four big bundles of those hauled them on our flatbed here and  and 09:06 pressure wash them and ripped them all down and built this chicken coop we have out of red cedar.  And that was a really fun project that uh kind of got the  online presence started. I was just doing all this work and I was like, you know, I 09:27 I  want our homestead  to  not only  generate good food and good things for our family, but I also,  if it can, you know, provide a little bit of, uh you know, monetary money for our family. uh The whole goal for me is to 09:55 not be working full time  and  being able to have some more time with my kids as they grow  and my wife and just just 10:07 That was another one of the reasons we moved out here is the cost of living is a little  less  than most places.  And  in the goal of all that, was hoping to set up the homestead so it can provide for our family in a way where we spend less money. And so we have to generate less money  and I can have more time. So the whole  goal in this thing is really freedom. um 10:36 Good healthy food and freedom, I guess. That sounds like a lot of the people that I talk to on a weekly basis.  Very impressed that you guys managed to do this young, because not everybody who's young has what it takes to do it. Yeah, thank you. I'm going to just take that compliment and say thank you, because yeah, it's not easy. um 11:05 just got up and worked hard every day to be here. Before my career has, I've been an elevator mechanic. so, and before that I was in the Air Force. And so, I did my Air Force career and then I jumped into the elevator mechanic thing, did that for about 10, 11 years. 11:36 And then I actually broke my back in a motorcycle accident  and  got laid off and  got hired with another company and just kind of set the wheels in motion ah for this all to happen, I think. um 11:56 So it can be done at any age. Like we were talking earlier, age is just a number on paper. And you just get up and make it happen. 12:14 pray, pray  to God that His will be done in your life because it's really not up to us. We can do everything right, everything wrong, it doesn't matter. It's really what it comes down to is God's will in our life.  Yes.  So, number one, thank you for your service. Number two, congratulations on achieving the dream and 12:42 I know that the dream isn't done because if you're a homesteader, you always have new ideas you want to try, right?  And congratulations on the new baby  and the fact that you guys are raising a little girl and a little boy. Kids are great. I miss my babies so much. Like I love that they are functioning adults. are good people, but man, there are days where I'm like, you know, 13:11 They were very sweet when they were babies. I know. feel like we're already going through that because our daughter, she seems light years bigger and older now that we have this little baby. Oh yeah. we're just trying to soak up every moment we have because it does go quick. Yes. The minute you bring a newborn into the house, if you have an older child, that older child seems like they're already full grown to you. I swear. It's so weird. 13:41 Okay, so I could hear your chickens squawking in the background. How many chickens you guys have? So we have 11 right now, which is the lowest number we've had in a while. We started with like 22 or something. And just nature kind of took its course. Chickens are good food for everything. And we have some neighbor dogs that were out roaming around. They got a couple. We had a 14:09 a couple hawk attacks  and then  we had a couple guineas that were just  being mean. They were rooster uh guineas  and  so I actually processed them along with another  rooster  and so yeah, now we're down to 11. And then we had another two hawk attacks or something after that  down to 11.  But  I do have an incubator in the mail right now. 14:39 and we're gonna put 20 eggs in there when it shows up.  Good plan.  Have you ever done that before? uh We have not. No, it'll be our first time hatching.  Okay. um I haven't done it before, but I watch a lot of videos about chickens and quail. We're looking into quail right now because my husband was like, we should look into quail. was like, okay. 15:09 Yeah, the thing that I have been seeing a lot of is it's the humidity in the incubator that can be the problem. So be sure you watch that. Gotcha. Okay. Good to know.  And I guess that sometimes when the eggs hatch,  the chicks don't come out quick enough and the membrane in the egg can get wrapped around them and dry out. And there are two schools of thought. 15:39 You either give them a little time to see if they figure it out and get out of the egg  or  you don't and use tweezers and you try to pull the egg off of them.  And I guess there's an amniotic sack that is attached to the chick when it first is hatching.  If you rip that amniotic sack, the chick will die. So you got to be really careful if you're going to try to heal m the membrane.  Help them. Yeah. So I hope that helps you. 16:09 I don't know, I haven't done it.  And this is another thing that's kind of like on my mind  when  we  do this.  So we have uh a really mixed flock. I mean, we've got a couple of... I don't want to say everything, but... We've golden comets, blue sapphires,  cinnamon queens, a silky rooster,  and guinea hens. And some guineas. And so  it's... 16:38 I don't even know if the guinea hens  eggs are fertilized. ah I'm going to have to crack a couple and see, but pretty much everyone else is it seems like, but they're all fertilized from our silky splash silky rooster. Uh huh. So is it good to  mix  silkies with all the other breeds? mean, is that, are we going to have like issues? 17:04 or like  mutation issues or is it just gonna be fine? I wish I could tell you because I don't know the answer but what I can tell you is that people have been cross breeding creatures forever so  the worst thing you find out is that you shouldn't do it. 17:24 You know? Yeah, that's kind of where we were at and we  just figured we'd give it a try, see what happens. Yep. And Google supposedly knows everything, so you could always Google it. Right. Yeah.  And at this point, it's like, you know, once you have chickens  and you look at the price chicks cost, it's, you know, five to eight dollars for one of them.  Nowadays, yeah. It's like, this is crazy. 17:54 I have chickens, I have eggs. em You know, I'll just hatch my own. That's kind of where we're at. Yep. Try it. See what happens. I mean, again, the worst thing that happens is that you can't cross those, but you could probably find somebody who's got a rooster that would make sense. Yeah, exactly. So the next step in our kind of homestead journey, I think, is this year we're going to work on getting the garden going. em We had a couple planters on the porch last year. 18:24 And we got some tomatoes and jalapenos and bell peppers and a lot of strawberries and some spinach and stuff like that. But  just want to expand and get some in-ground stuff going. I have an avocado tree that I need to transplant  that we started from seed and. 18:45 Get a little, I'd love to get a little orchard going.  Probably gonna just start some stuff from seed and then obviously get some root cuttings.  So that'll be fun.  Yeah, that's kind of where we're at now. um And just sharing our  journey with everyone. 19:09 Yeah, I saw that you started a YouTube channel in 2025 and you have a ton of videos already up. Yeah, so I was trying to do a couple a week there and I did for a good while. And I've tapered off recently just because of life and if I don't make any excuses, I just need to... 19:38 start doing it again. But we have been busy just with the house and and the new baby and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Suck that baby up because it doesn't last long as we were saying. Just spend as much time with him as you possibly can. Yeah. That's what we've been doing whenever he's not in the wife's arms. I usually got him. So. Uh huh. So speaking of well two things. If you're going to plant are you going to plant apple trees? 20:09 I do have some apple seeds and I was going to plant those and hopefully some root cuttings. Apple trees take at least three years from sapling stage to produce apples. And I know this because we put in saplings and it took almost four years for us to get apples. So don't count on apples the first year because there probably won't be any. Yeah, I was telling 20:38 Telling Taylor, just don't count  on anything from  the orchard really.  Cause it's just gonna be  a long game. is. It's a long tail game and it's hard to wait. We just got our first really good harvest of  honey gold apples this past fall. Well, congratulations. That's great. That was fabulous, except I don't like them. They're like golden delicious apples. 21:08 And I don't like Golden Delicious because they're kind of grainy. don't like them.  However, my husband loves them. So he was eating an apple a day until they were gone. Oh, that's great. Good. Yep. I'm waiting for our honey crisps to actually produce because I love those. Gotcha. Gotcha.  OK, so not that you aren't wonderful to talk to, Weston, but I would love to hear from Taylor about how she feels about  the experience that you've been going through for the last year. Absolutely. 21:37 Absolutely. So Taylor, tell me what you're thinking. Yeah, I know it's been great. It's been such a fun journey to embark on with my husband and starting a family out here in Arkansas has truly just been,  it's been amazing. It's been filled with um a lot of growth as well.  I think that it was a  a very bold move  to do what we did,  especially in the midst of finding out that I was pregnant. 22:06 But so so happy that we did because looking back we're just two people that  have really  grown so much and have accomplished so much together So it's been a really cool cool journey to go through I'm glad to hear that my second question for you Taylor is do you have a community of other women who help you because  I? Did not really have a community of women when my kids were babies, and I wish that I had so do you have one? 22:34 So yeah, mean,  to be honest, that's actually been kind of hard to cultivate. I am proud to say that uh now that we're a couple years in, because I think we've been here for almost two and a half years,  I think over the last about eight months, I've really been able to kind of find my tribe  of other moms who have kids ah of similar ages um in the community and have really kind of bonded with several uh women. 23:04 and moms. And so that's been really great because as you know, we moved from California. So we actually, we don't have any family out here. So it has been, it has been difficult. But yeah, I am, that's kind of the next phase now that the house is done and we have some more free time and  you know, cultivating friendships as an adult is, is a lot harder than it is when you're a child, just cause you don't have the time that it takes. So um 23:33 I am starting to get that and I'm so thankful for the friendships I've made. Good, because I've said this a couple of times to a few people in the last month or so, especially brand new moms or brand new moms, but they also have older kids. You have to have other women to tell you stuff. Because no one hands you a freaking guidebook when you have a baby. I know. And what's funny is... 24:01 You know, we talked to like our moms and it's been, you know, 30 something years since they've had babies. And so it's even hard for them to recall certain like, you know, nuances of what it's like and how they did this and things like that when the babies are young. So it's definitely important to have some, some other women to bounce some stuff off of. Yes. Wouldn't it be a lot easier if they did give you a guidebook when you went home with the new baby? I'm telling you. Yeah, it would be. 24:30 The other thing that is hard is that things have changed so much since our mothers had babies. Right. I mean, funny is things have changed even from our first born. uh Like in the hospital, you know, they kind of go over a few things and there's even some guidelines that have changed just from two years ago.  Yeah, it's nuts. And the one guideline that is always a constant is just love them through everything.  Yep. 25:00 If you can do that, you've got it beat by a mile. And Weston, I hope you have dad friends because men need friends that have kids too. Yeah. Yeah, that's something that I'm going to start putting some more energy towards. Plus, you miss out on all the dad jokes you need to learn if you don't have dad friends. He's pretty good at those, I have to say. Good. He's a natural. All right. 25:28 A question for both of you and I want two different answers because I want  both of your perspectives. What is your favorite thing that has happened since you moved to the homestead? 25:41 Well, for me, I mean, I don't know if I'm biased, but I mean our babies, our babies and having chickens. Having chickens has always been something that I've really wanted. And so just going through that and having them out in the yard and holding my babies and soaking up the sun, it's been like the most fulfilling experience. Okay. Weston, what about you? I think. 26:11 just watching  Taylor and I's marriage grow  and  just become what it is because we've been out here um by ourselves. We've just kind of had to rely on each other. And I think that just cultivated a strong bond that we have that just can propel us through. 26:41 trials  and  just showed us how much each of each other really care about one another and we're willing to  you know sacrifice  and and take care of each other no matter what's going on so  spoken like a man who adores his wife awesome ah okay so I know you guys have chickens do you have other animals too 27:10 We don't right now. We used to have a little  dog when we moved out here and we sadly had to  put him down for some health reasons.  yeah. Thinking about sheep. oh Sheep is  potentially sheep or goats. We haven't really decided because both are fun, but both come with their own stuff. um I got to the yard fenced. Yeah. Yes. 27:37 Yes, but good fences make good neighbors and that doesn't just apply to human neighbors. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Keep those dogs out.  Yeah. For sure.  And yeah, go ahead. We're right now,  the  incubator is coming and we're working  on,  I got a clear a bunch of trees for the garden area and I think we're just going to 28:08 plant in the ground this year and just try and get something  and then next year  work on maybe some raised beds  and then probably getting the fence in and stuff like that. So.  Very nice. You guys have so  much to look forward to in the future.  I had another question and I forgot it because that's what happens when you get over 50. You forget things really easy. um 28:37 Or just when you're pregnant. feel like my brain never recovered from the first child and then now having the second, it's like compounded. So I'm constantly like, what was I doing? What was I about to say? Maybe that's what it is. that maybe having all those kids just screwed up my brain forever. Who knows? So I don't know. don't know if I have any more questions for you. I am very 29:06 excited for you both.  I  love it when young people get into this and I just remember my question. I knew as soon as I started making small talk it would happen. um Have you guys gotten into the food side of homesteading like preserving or canning or sourdough or any of that? Not yet. That's definitely going to be something we do get into though. Once I think the babies get a little older and I have some helpers,  that's definitely going to be um 29:35 We're gonna be doing a lot of stuff in the kitchen  from scratch. Yes, and I just, have another podcast that I do with a co-host and we just recorded an episode about cooking from scratch and if you'd like I can send you the link when it's released. Yeah, that would be great. Okay, cool. The other podcast is called Grit and Grace in the Heartland and we have been having such a good time with it since January. We just started it in January. 30:04 So other than that, I don't think I have any other questions and I try to keep these at 30 minutes and we just rolled to 30 minutes. That was perfect timing. Where can people find you guys? They can find us at Modern Homestead 95 on Facebook and Modern Homestead 95 on YouTube. That is the only two platforms we're on right now and we are just so thankful. 30:30 that we were able to talk with you today and having us on. And hopefully we can do this again soon and maybe after we have a little bit more growth here. yeah, we just appreciate your time and hope you have a great rest of your Saturday. I would love to have you guys back. And as always, you can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com. 30:54 You guys, so proud of you. Keep doing the good work and bring those babies up in the Homestead Life cell. You're doing them a huge favor if you do.  Thank you so much. All right. Have a great Saturday. You too. Thank you. God bless you.  

Today I'm talking with Kalan at Redwood Seeds. You can also follow on Facebook. Content Seeds Collective 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. Today I'm talking with Kalan at Redwood Seeds in  California. Good morning, Kalan, because you're not in California right now.  Good morning. Yeah, it's 10 a.m. here  where I am in New Zealand. Tomorrow, for me, right? Yes. It's Tuesday for you. 00:28 Yeah, that's right.  Yeah, I've interviewed a couple of people in Australia and New Zealand and  it's so confusing because for me it is  4.03 in the afternoon on  Monday.  Yeah, definitely. It's confusing for me as you've seen trying to um set up meetings with people, especially the states just went through the time change. 00:52 Now it's a four hour difference for me. then when New Zealand goes through its time change in about another month, then it becomes a five hour difference the next day. Uh-huh. I, every time I talk to somebody who's that far away, I say that it's, it's actual time travel because it might as well be. Yeah. feels like it. Whenever we travel down here, we basically miss a day.  It's crazy. You lose an entire day. oh 01:19 Okay, so I want to talk about redwood seeds, but I also would love to know why you're in Austria in New Zealand.  Yeah, definitely. Well, I married a man from New Zealand 20 years ago. So we come down here  a couple of months every year during our off season  and spend time with family. Well, that is a hardship to have to go to New Zealand, boy. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, it's different. We come down here or not really tourists, so we don't like. 01:49 You know, it's less of a vacation and more just like my kids, go into the public school system when we're here and we  sort of just live normal life, you know, but we get to stay on the farm with em my in-laws. And that's really, really wonderful. That's really interesting. What do they farm?  They're both retired now, but my husband grew up on like a mixed em sheep  and cattle ranch. oh 02:17 the kind with like 2000 sheep, they're shearing for wool and that kind of thing. Okay, cool. That you are a very interesting lady. I'm very glad that I asked to talk to you. so tell me all about Redwood Seeds and what you do. Okay, well, we are based in Northern California. We're about three or four hours north of San Francisco up in the foothills of Lassen Volcanic National Park, actually. So if you're looking at 02:47 California, we are in the eastern slopes, the eastern foothills at about 2,500 feet. And we have a organic seed farm. We grow organic vegetable, herb, flower seeds, and sell them in packets, essentially. We started doing this in 2009. And then... 03:11 have  now we're expanded into like about 70 different retail stores. So we have seed racks in those stores and send seeds to the stores, you know, a few times a year for customers. And then we also have a website where we sell our seeds.  It's redwoodseeds.net.  And  sometimes I sell at like different festivals and markets and things like that.  I would say that I call us a farm based seed seed company. 03:40 grow the majority of the seed that we sell. I do  purchase some  extra seed  from other organic seed farms, mostly in the western states. 03:54 Yeah, we usually offer about 150 different varieties. um All of our varieties are open pollinated, which means that you can, they're not hybrids, essentially is what that means. And you can  use traditional seed saving techniques  and uh save the seeds  and you'll get trutatite results. Most of, many of them are heirlooms,  which means that the variety is like pre 1950. 04:22 but we also have a lot of really great varieties that have been bred using traditional plant breeding techniques  since 1950. Okay. So since you do this for a living, I have a question.  I bought a 60 day watermelon seed from, I want to say it was burpee, but I could be wrong  and I'm pretty sure it's a hybrid. Okay. So, 04:51 If we were to save, if we get any melons out of it, I bought 12 seeds, we're praying we get watermelons out of it this year.  If we get watermelons, which means we get seeds, and we plant those seeds, if we save those seeds and plant them, is there any chance that  we'll get seeds producing 60 day watermelons  next summer? There's a chance, yeah. 05:15 The way that it goes is that hybrid, it's called the F1 generation. Sometimes you see hybrids referred to as F1s. That's the first generation after the cross has been made.  That watermelon had two different parents that were crossed together to make the hybrid. Then when you save seeds  from the hybrid, the next generation is called the F2 generation.  That's when you start to see the genetic diversity come out. Seed breeders do this on purpose. A seed breeder 05:45 would make the cross, get the F1, then save the seeds from it, and then plant them. You might plant 100 seeds from it, and you might see 20 or 30 different types of melons pop up, or however many, but you'll start to see genetic diversity. So you could theoretically plant out a lot of that F2 generation and look for the 60, whatever is closest 06:14 to the 60 day melon that you loved and save seeds from that one and then do that again for like seven more years. And you might be able to stabilize that hybrid into an open pollinated variety. That's like backwards breeding, right? Yeah, that sounds like a really fun science project. may have to try that. Yeah, that's what seed breeders do. Okay. I just, knew there was something about hybrid seeds that it may not come back true. 06:44 That's the thing. That's why when you're saving seeds, um that's just to start with open pollinated varieties. And so that's what we do. We only grow open pollinated varieties um so that we can save seeds from them and we know that they're going to be true to type. Okay. Thank you for  humoring me in my question because  I wanted to ask somebody who really, really knew and I figured you would really, really know. 07:12 No, it's kind of a common question actually, or like people have this thought that you can only grow heirloom seeds if you want to save seeds, but it's really the term is open pollinated. Open pollinated means that basically it's not a hybrid. Okay. Thank you so much.  As I sit here with a big smile on my face, because now when my husband asks, I can be like,  yes, we can save the seeds. Yes, you can plant them, but,  but is the key word there. 07:41 Okay, so do you have a background in this  or  how did you get into savings? Yeah. uh No, I don't. I mean, if you had asked me when I was a teenager,  if I thought I was going be a farmer, it would have been like the last thing on my mind. um And  I didn't really know what I was going to do. did go, um I went to UC Santa Cruz  and was a language studies major. So I learned to speak Spanish really well. um 08:11 but and studied like linguistics and journalism. um But it was during  that time, like in my early  20s, I also became garden curious  and started taking, like I took a garden class in college. And then I um met my husband and he was traveling through Santa Cruz,  doing like a rock climbing tour of the Western States. um And  I went and visited him in New Zealand on my spring break. 08:40 And he had a big garden going over there. so I remember we, we just sort of started gardening together really.  Um, and then we lived in New Zealand for nine months and  his parents let us  put in a garden, like, you know, in the back, couple acres of their property.  And, um, I don't know, we just, got really into it and we traveled back and forth between New Zealand and us for a few years. And then we ended up. 09:11 buying some land in Northern California where we didn't really know what we were going to do, but we knew that we wanted a rural lifestyle. We ended up starting to grow seeds on contract for larger seed companies like Seeds of Change and Fedco Seeds. And we did that for a few years from like 2006, 2007. And it kind of quickly became obvious that 09:38 to really make a living doing it, we needed to get our own label and start packaging seeds in packets rather than selling like a pound of seeds um for a relatively low price. um So we did that in 2009. We just kind of got some coin envelopes from Office Depot and had a stamp made and started stamping packets. And my husband started making wooden seed racks and we  literally like showed up at Chico Natural Foods 10:07 with a seed rack and seeds in the back of our car and asked them if they wanted to  start carrying our seeds in their store. And  luckily somebody was in a good mood that day and they said yes. em And we're still in that store today. So. so that leads me to my next question. Are there regulations from the state of California about selling the seeds that  you produce?  Yeah, definitely. I mean, you have to register with the CDFA. em 10:37 California Department of Food and Agriculture.  And we are registered seed sellers.  As a registered seed seller, you have to like adhere to their packaging requirements and their germination standards and all of that. And they have, you know, like the local county ag inspectors who can and do sometimes do inspections. 11:00 So, okay. I figured the government would have their fingers in it. Yeah, definitely. It's not, it's not onerous. I mean, the, the  more difficult standard is the organic certification. You know, we are certified organic by CCOF California certified organic farmers and have been since 2007,  I think.  Um,  so that's a yearly inspection where an inspector comes out and they mostly want to look at our 11:29 paperwork uh and then they tour around the farm as well. So how hard was it to get your certification because I keep hearing that getting certified organic is an utter pain in the ass with paperwork and it's expensive. It is expensive.  It's about a thousand dollars a year. uh California has, ah oh they did have, I mean I'm not sure how much of  a cost share they're gonna have this year. It's been kind of 11:57 decreasing, but it used to be a 75 % cost share where  you would get reimbursed that much by the state of California for becoming organic. um Now that I know what to do for the certification, it's not that difficult. um when you start out and you just don't really know what they're looking for, and maybe you don't really know how to keep records, ah it can be much more difficult. 12:26 I became certified organic when I had to like fill out a paper form, but now it's all digitized, you know.  So I don't know, I have a friend who's, who's signing up on it right now. And honestly, if you, if you know how to fill out applications and tick the boxes, then  it's not too, too difficult. If you're on a piece of land that has previously been farmed conventionally,  then it becomes more difficult um for sure. 12:55 Okay. And then  since, since you're someone who sells seeds that you produce yourself,  um,  I assume that every state is different, but if you were,  if you  grew,  I don't know, some tomato variety and you save the seeds and you wanted to give some to a friend in California,  that's fine. Right? That's fine. Yeah. But 13:23 If you wanted to sell it to a friend, can you do that on a small scale and not have to do all the bureaucratic stuff or is that a no-no?  Oh, I'm sure you can do it. Yeah. I mean, and I think that like you don't have to become a licensed seed seller in every single state to, my business is based out of California. I'm selling the seed from California. So that's where I have my seed selling license from. I mean, that would be. 13:52 really a lot of paperwork if I needed to become a seed seller in every state. We definitely ship seeds all around the country. Yeah, it's so funny since I started the podcast over two and a half years ago, I have talked to people all over the country and many, many of them, I'm guessing at least 85%, maybe 90 % have started a business. 14:19 around their homestead or the craft that they make or the food that they produce. And every single state has different laws regarding that kind of business. Yeah. And I'm like, could we maybe find a standard here for everybody? That would be cool. definitely. Yeah, know that. Yeah, definitely. There are also many different standards. It's true. It's true. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's 14:47 That end of things, mean, there's always,  for me as a farmer, and I'm sure a lot of other farmers, it's like, we started because we just want to farm and we want to do agriculture, want to grow things or um work with animals. But the business side is always a steep learning curve.  And definitely for me too. mean,  if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have probably studied like plant biology and business or something, you know, or 15:16 Kind of business major and when I had the chance to be in university, um I back in those days, I looked at business majors and I thought they were like selling out to the man or something. uh,  but now it's like, those are the skills that farmers also need to succeed in having your own business. So, um, I've had to like belatedly learn all of that.  And in fact, I'm, taking an accounting one-on-one class at my community college right now. 15:46 Um, so. Well, that's good. mean, I, I  say that I have got to know itis, which means that I have an overactive need to know.  And I'm always taking some kind of course, whether it's a lady just sent me a course on raising quail.  Interesting.  Cause we're, looking into doing that on our place. Cool. 16:13 I haven't had a chance to sit down look at it yet because I've been busy with podcast stuff and oh yeah, dishes. There's always washing dishes to do here. Definitely. And so I'm hoping to get a chance to sit down tomorrow afternoon and look at the course and see if it's videos or if it's written or how it works. But very excited about this. I don't need to know how to raise quail. I could probably just go get some quail. My husband will build the coop and we'll figure it out from there. 16:43 But because it's interesting and because I have got to know it is I have to the course. There you go. Okay. have, I have questions about number one,  what kind of produce do you grow to save seeds from? And then number two, what's the process that you go through to save the seeds? Yeah. Um, you know, we really  save seeds from just about most crops.  Um, everything from corn and beans to lettuce and tomatoes and squash and onions and. 17:14 Um, most of the major vegetable types we save seeds from and increasingly more and more, um, flowers too. Like I would say that flowers are, I don't know, 30 % of our seed sales now are 40%. Like it's more and more. When we first started, really, I don't know that I was anti flower, but I was definitely like, if I'm going to grow it, has to be something to eat, you know, 17:43 But as we've progressed, I see more more uh value in growing things for pollinators and just for beauty.  so we have more flowers now  and a lot of herbs too,  medicinal herbs like yarrow and milkweed and  things like that.  I'm so happy to hear  milkweed because we need the monarchs to keep coming back. Yeah, definitely.  We have a really big patch of milkweed now. uh 18:13 And the thing is, like, I never see monarchs. Like, rarely do we ever see a monarch.  Instead, we get that milkweed beetle that loves the milkweed, that red beetle. um But it's there in case they want to find us. So,  you know, we grow all the produce, but uh and my family eats from our gardens, but  we don't sell any produce. So it's really different than 18:40 a regular mixed veg market garden operation. Our process is that we plant our main summer gardens usually about May 20th through June 15th. It takes me about three weeks to plant everything. And because we're up in the foothills, like our growing season, I don't bother getting things in the ground before then because we can have frost in mid-May. 19:07 I will have all my spring crops in like lettuces and things that can take a light frost. um But that's our main planting season is the end of May.  And we basically like plant these really big gardens,  which  it really is like some like we're farming, but we're also like garden scale. Like we have five gardens spread out on our 40 acres.  So each plot is about, uh, 19:38 60 feet by 60 feet or they're not huge. Like I did the calculations last year and we actually like grow all of our crops, like 60 to 80 seed crops a year on about only a half an acre. Like not a really big space. It's really intensive, like mixed production. You know, like I'll have like 30 tomato plants and maybe 200 lettuces and 20:08 like 100 squash plants  of a variety. And so we plant everything and then we can basically just let it grow all summer  and do the weeding, but we're not like continuously harvesting the vegetables like you would for  a market garden. Instead, we just let everything ripen and go to seed. And then our main seed harvest  starts like kind of the end of August. 20:34 through the end of October. So we like two or three months of intensive  seed harvesting and cleaning. the process for each variety is really different.  Okay, yeah. So what's the most difficult seed to save? ah 20:55 They're all just really different. um Like for example, know, tomatoes, I'd go out and I pick tomatoes into five gallon buckets. And then we smash the tomatoes  up into like this pulp. And then you let them sit and ferment in the buckets for three or four days  and stir them daily. And that actually like um breaks down the enzyme coating around the seed to that inhibits germination. um And it also kind of 21:25 breaks down all the tomato pulp um and then you add water to those buckets and pour off all the pulp and you're left with the seeds at the bottom of the bucket using water to clean them. So  that's not extremely difficult, but it's like a process, you know? um And um so there's the things that you  harvest and you process wet, like tomatoes and squashes or melons or cucumbers. 21:52 Those,  all, there's a degree of like cutting open the fruit, scooping out the seeds.  And then you have to figure out how to separate all the pulp and the gunk from the seeds. And usually that involves water. It's kind of like gold panning, actually.  Often, often the good seed will sink to the bottom of your vessel and then you pour off everything else with water and then put it on a screen  and let it dry.  I would label the ones that you have to do wet as squick. 22:22 That would be the squick,  squick, squack process. Yeah, definitely.  Um, yeah, I mean, it's kind of fun. It's,  it's really hands on.  Um,  and then everything that you process dry, uh, that's like most of your flower seeds, your lettuce seed, all the brassicas,  like kale or cabbage,  um, radishes, carrot seed, radishes. Radishes are actually very difficult because it. 22:51 I don't know, have you seen a radish going to seed? Makes those like kind  of... Yeah, it's like, well, each of those pods only has like four seeds in it. They're not very,  and the pods are really difficult to shatter. It's different than like kale pods. Kale pods or arugula, they just shatter right away. But the radish, man,  you really have to bash them. And we don't have  really fancy threshing equipment. 23:18 I have some equipment for winnowing, the threshing part, um so there's a lot of stomping and stuff that goes into radish seed. um But basically it's like you harvest the dry seeds and you have to thresh them. So you like break open the pods. um Same with beans.  And we often like 23:43 just throw all the seed on like an old bed sheet and then literally stomp things with our feet  or  things like that. And then you have to winnow it. So you use air to blow away all of the chafe. And so we do have some equipment for that. We have this really cool  machine called a winnow wizard that was created by Mark Lutera up in Oregon. 24:08 and it has a huge hopper that you can pour the seed into and a fan and an agitation tray. And so it's cool because I can like turn it on and get it set right and then walk away from it for a half an hour while it just continues to winnow the seed and the good seed falls into a bucket. yeah, I mean, there's a lot of like harvesting seeds, piling them up in bags. 24:36 where they continue to kind of dry for a couple months and then cleaning them as we, as we get to it. So my house definitely like  in  this time period of two or three months, there's a corner of it that just gets like stacked full of bags of drying seeds. Well, I was going to ask you what kind, I mean, I don't want you to tell me exact numbers, but  what kind of space do you end up needing and  what's your inventory like? I mean, are we talking? 25:06 hundreds of thousands of seed packets?  Yeah, well, I would say that  we maybe sell about 50,000 seed packets a year, but we have an office space. yeah, we used to have this whole thing would be in our house and then it moved to a back shed and it's moved around a lot over the years. uh There's definitely like now there's the farm production part of it and then we have an office uh at our 25:33 It's our old elementary school was closed and now it's our community center. And so I rent the old teacher's lounge as my office space. So  all of our like cleaned seeds that are just in bags  live there in the office and we do all of our seed packaging in the office, um not in my home anymore. So um I don't, we don't like pack everything into hundreds of thousands of packets. Instead we pack. 26:02 more like as we need. So we'll pack like 50 to 100 packets of a variety at a time and then sell through those or send those to stores  and then pack more as we need it. So the majority of our inventory is stored as bulk. um like on-demand printing? Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like that. Cool. Yeah. So, but we pack it all by hand.  We basically know how many 26:31 Seeds are in these little spoons that we have. We have like these little teeny spoons, some like from tablespoon size down to like 1 64th of a teaspoon size. Maybe we even have a smaller one than that. And so we've counted, you know, over the years several times and we have that recorded. So we know that like a quarter teaspoon is about 25 cucumber seeds. So we pack, pack the packets like that. 27:00 Nice. Okay. I try to keep these to half an hour or at like 27 minutes. So I want to say for the listener, anybody can save seeds. We do it with basil seeds every year and we haven't had to buy basil seeds in four or five years now. Awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody should try to seeds. Yeah. And they come back beautifully. 27:28 Yeah, I will say that if people want to hop on my website, I do have a pretty robust section about seed saving on there. So uh there's a lot of information  and I have a YouTube channel that has like two videos on it. But one of the videos is like an hour long seed saving uh Zoom class that I taught a couple of years ago that gives good info to. That's super to know. Thank you. 27:56 And  I mean, if people don't want to save their own seeds, I'm sure that if you want to buy seeds that have been saved, Kaylyn  would be happy to sell them to you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.  But there are things that everybody can do for themselves on a small scale that are really simple. And I feel like if I'm in Minnesota and I can save basil seeds from the basil we grow, 28:22 probably smarter than buying it from Kaylin in California for me to do. Yeah, absolutely. The more people who are saving the seeds, the more secure our seed supply is. Yep. And with all the crazy that's going on in the world right now, I'm going to say it again. I say it almost every episode. If you don't know how to cook from scratch, learn. If you have any place to grow any kind of food, grow it. Learn how to do it and grow it. 28:51 And if you don't know your local grower, your local producer, get to know them because shopping locally, supporting your local growers and producers will save your butt 100 % of the time. 29:06 Absolutely. I will die on that freaking hill.  All right, Kaylin, where can people find you?  At redwoodseeds.net  and at redwoodseeds on Instagram. Okay. Are you on Facebook at all? I am on Facebook. Yep. Redwood seeds on Facebook. Okay. So if anybody has questions or if they want to go see the video about saving seeds that Kaylin put out,  that's where you find her. oh 29:36 Thank you so much for your time, Kalen. I really appreciate it. Nice to chat, Mary. Thank you. As always, you can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Kalen, I hope you have a great rest of the day because you have a whole day in front of you. Yeah, I do. Yeah, it's awesome.  Yep. Thank you. All right. Bye. Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Kendra at Tryna Homestead. You can also follow on Facebook. Content Seeds Collective 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. Today I'm talking with Kendra at Tryna Homestead in Wisconsin. Good afternoon, Kendra, how are you? Good, how are you?  I'm good, and I'm not gonna lie.  When I looked at who I was talking to today, because I have it in my calendar,  I saw Tryna Homestead and I was like, you know, 00:28 I hope that's trying to, you know, a play on trying to. if your name is Trina and I've been thinking it's Trina, I'm going to sound really dumb. How is the weather in Wisconsin? Did you guys get all the snow that we got on Sunday? We were supposed to get 12 to 18 inches, but we're right up against the river. And so it kind of buffered us and... 00:53 I think we only got about eight. It's hard to tell though, because we had the blowing snow and the blizzard conditions. So we have spots where it's fair and then other spots where we have two feet there. we  definitely got snow.  Did it start for you Monday night? No, we, started Saturday night while we were actually outside boiling sap.  Oh. sitting in it as it started. And then  it went, it was still snowing through Sunday night. And then 01:23 uh Yesterday and today have just been cold and sunny but cold. Okay. Where are you in Wisconsin? We're in Western Wisconsin,  Northwestern. We're right on the border with Minnesota.  Okay, because I'm in Minnesota and  it started for us about nine o'clock Saturday night. Yeah, think it ended about, it really ended about seven Sunday night. But 01:54 The wind was so bad that you couldn't see anything. All day. insane. Yeah. Yeah. It was so loud. Like all Saturday night and Sunday night. was so loud. The wind was just whipping. Oh yeah. My Australian shepherd, she sleeps downstairs and my husband and I sleep upstairs. And about every couple hours Saturday night, I would hear, Arf! Just one Arf every couple of hours. She was barking at the wind. 02:23 I believe it. I was just like, there's nothing you can do about it sweetie, go to sleep. It's all good really. The house is not going to collapse, I promise. So yeah, it was some wild weather and I don't know about you, but it's the first real snowstorm we've had all winter. Yeah, it's the first we've really had in the last three years, be honest. Yeah, it's been so bizarre and 02:49 when I talk to people who don't live in the general Minnesota, Wisconsin area, they're like, oh, it's, been a real winter for you. I'm like, we're having a real winter at least five years. Right. Yeah. I,  I love winter. It's actually my favorite season  and I love the snow, but March snows are actually my favorite because at that point I'm done with winter. I'm focusing on spring. 03:15 But when we get snow, I know it's not going to last, it covers the brown for a little bit. uh Saturday morning before the storm hit, we had green grass showing. Yeah. I was like,  we don't need a foot of snow. This is ridiculous.  So the reason I open the podcast every time with how is the weather or did you get the same weather we got is because weather is a big freaking deal for people who grow things. 03:46 and you have a homestead. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Yeah. So we,  my husband and I, we've been homesteading in a rental for seven years and we just bought our property last fall  in like middle of August and we're just on four acres. And so this is our first year really getting to do the things that we've done on a really small scale  in our apartment for the last 04:15 seven years. um We raised chickens down at my parents place, but I'd have to drive 45 minutes to go take care of them. And I would garden in containers and fill our tiny little patio. And now I'm actually getting to have chickens right in our backyard and a large in-ground garden. So we're really excited.  And all the things that we have dreamed about  doing,  we're finally able to start putting those plans into action. 04:44 now that we have our own space. You sound like me  five and a half years ago when we moved from our tenth of an acre lot with a house and a four car garage on it to a 3.1 acre property. That's about we are just shy of four acre. We have 3.98. They couldn't give us the point oh two.  Yes, exactly. em 05:09 So I have a question. When you moved and you actually realized that you've done it, did you step outside and look around and go, oh my God, we did it? Oh, we walked around this property so many times and we're just looking at each other going, is this really ours?  Someone needs to pinch us. Is this real? we actually do this? Because with the way the housing market was every year, 05:37 Our five-year plan turned into a six-year plan, turned into a seven-year plan and it was feeling less and less likely. And the day that we closed, we just stood in the backyard looking at everything going, is this really ours? Like, is it really, really what we have been dreaming of is actually here and happening. And it was such a surreal moment to realize that all those years of hoping and praying for this property is actually happening. 06:06 Yep. I love it when I talk to somebody like you, who is like me five and a half years ago,  because  I,  my son and I had to come down and spend the first night in the new place by ourselves because my husband had to work. And where we lived at the time was an hour drive for him. And if he had had to stay here with us, it would have been an hour and a half drive for him to work. 06:33 So he stayed up at the old house and we stayed at the new house. We had to be here overnight because early morning they were gonna be a brand new gas stove for cooking, because the house didn't have a stove. And we had to be here for the internet to get hooked up because Lord knows you need internet.  I made it a point to get up before sunrise, it was August of 2020. 06:59 And I made it a point to get up before sunrise because there's a beautiful, huge window above the kitchen sink.  I did not have a window above the kitchen sink in the old house. And it looks out over, it was an alfalfa field and it's all wide open sky out that window. And I was like, I have to see the first sunrise the first morning I'm here. And I stood there and cried, Kendra, I cried. I believe it.  And I was like, oh my God, I have. 07:27 hot coffee because the first thing you put in a new house is the coffee maker if you're a coffee drinker. And the sun is all cotton candy pink and coral orange. Beautiful. And I'm just standing there tears dripping off the end of my nose and I'm like, I'm so freaking happy. Yeah, it was ridiculous. And it was the best happy cry I think I've ever had except when my kids were born. Yeah, it it was such an overwhelming feeling. And it's funny because you mentioned having a 07:57 big window over your sink. Yeah, we did not have one in our rental either. And that was one thing I always wanted.  And we have one now and it looks out over it has an eastern view.  And so I get to see the sunrise every morning from the kitchen as well. And it like, to this day, we've been here eight months now, almost nine.  And still every day, we just were like, is this really ours? And it's 08:25 so overwhelming to know that what you've worked so hard for, what you've dreamed for, for so long is finally here.  Yes,  it's so hard to explain the feeling to someone who hasn't achieved a dream like that. I mean, you can say it a billion different ways, but until the person has something they want so badly come true, they don't understand  that big feeling in your chest and in your heart. 08:56 Absolutely. know that  once we actually got everything moved in and we were done with the old house because we sold the  old house after we bought this place.  And I remember the last time being in the old house and it was just empty and I raised four kids in that house. 09:17 And I was a little sad about, you know, leaving the place that I raised my kids.  But drove back here and there were boxes everywhere. And I just looked around and I was like, okay, I'm over it. I don't ever want to go back to the other house. I'm done.  Yeah. And I also remember  once we were completely moved in, sitting  on the bench that we had refinished to have on the patio, because we have a little cement pad  outside the front door. 09:45 and sitting on that bench and looking around and looking at my husband and going, what do we do now? Yeah, it's kind of it's almost that feeling like when you get married and you're like, okay, now what? Like that's how I felt with like we purchased the place and then we still lived in our 10:13 apartment for three more weeks because of when we could actually get our stuff up here. Yeah, because it's about 40 minutes or so. And so we were just I every day I was making two or three trips a day coming up here bringing stuff, unpacking coming up bringing stuff unpacking like for two weeks and or like two and half weeks until our big move. And then once we were all moved in, and you know, we got everything here, we were done with the apartment. I can't look at my husband. was like, now what? 10:42 Like, you almost are like, this is really it. But now what do we do? Like we did the whole go through the move thing. It's like, okay. Yeah. And moving is exhausting. Oh, I don't ever want to do it again. I say that every time. I don't either. There are days where my husband and I are like, well, now we're nasty, nasty, uh-huh. Empty nesters. 11:11 Do we really want to stay? You know, is this where we want to die basically? Yeah. And some days we're like, I need to sleep on it. And then other days we're like, nah, we would be nuts to move again. Yeah. I'm, I'm okay staying here for a very, very, very long time. It's not a curse. Yep. Well, it became real to us when we ended up buying, I think we had 40 chickens at one point and I was like, so are we chicken farmers now? 11:41 And my husband was like,  no,  there. are a farm to market gardeners. And I was like, but we have 40 chickens. And he was like,  yeah, and that's probably the highest number we're going to have. I was like, don't say that out loud outside. You're going to jinx it. We're going to have 300 chickens.  Oh, but no, it's so lovely. Go ahead. Oh, no, I was just going to say the whole 40 chickens thing is making me laugh over here because 12:10 uh We  tracked, I ordered 20 chickens or baby chicks that are coming in through April. Yeah, yeah. But Tractor Supply got us and we ended up with six turkeys. And then the next Wednesday Tractor Supply got us again and we ended up with six more chicks. uh And then the next day we went to a different feed store and we ended up with six more chicks. So we currently have six baby turkey poults and 12 chicks in our basement with 20 more chicks coming. 12:38 Chicken math is real and they multiply before you even realize.  I think in your case, it's poultry math.  Right?  For sure.  That's okay. Those turkeys will come in real handy. Yes. We were hoping that we have a hen and a tom  in at least, we have two different breeds, three of each. And we're hoping we have a hen and a tom  in at least  one of those breeds, if not  both, so that we can 13:08 have some  for meat this year, but then have longevity with our trippies. So that's the goal with those.  Yes, it's really nice when the livestock reproduce because it's basically free food. For sure. Very expensive free food, but it is definitely free food.  Well, to start with, but there are dividends. So.  But my husband and I, he's like, you know, we should put a lot of money into these  free eggs that we're going to get.  So we always joke that. 13:38 It's very expensive free food because we didn't have go to the store to buy it, but we had to, you know, feed it and water it and care for it and it's expensive and all the other things. Uh-huh.  I asked my husband  if the chickens are paying for themselves because we sell eggs. Sure. And he said yes.  But there was kind of a  weird note to the yes. And I said, okay, what are you not saying? And he said, 14:08 They're keeping us in milk and butter because we don't have a cow to make, you know, to have drinking milk and to make butter.  And I said, okay, I can, I can live with that.  He said, and he said, we are never without eggs for ourselves. And I said, I can absolutely live with that. So it works out great.  So when I was looking at your Facebook page and you were telling your story at the beginning of this, 14:33 You were doing homesteading in an apartment. We were doing homesteading in an 800 square foot house and a tenth of an acre lot with a house and a four car garage on it. And the thing that I love when I talk to people who are doing homesteading, not on homesteads as people think of it, is it proves my point that homesteading is a state of mind. It is a way of being. It is not owning property. Totally. 15:02 One of our big things is we always say a home setting is a mindset, not a location. Yeah. That I have it written on many shirts, actually, because it's so true. It's not about where you are. It's about what you're doing with what you currently have.  And when we were in the rental, we like I mentioned before, we raised chickens somewhere else and we had small little  container gardens everywhere we could put them. But we learned 15:31 canning  and preserving  and we worked with other farmers and local gardeners to get the things that we didn't have and to make those relationships and we had we have met so many great people in our community that they were like hey I have a ton of apples on my apple tree and I don't have time to pick them or I've picked all I want does anyone else want them and we were able to go get them for free  and make applesauce with them and then I would give them some applesauce as a 16:01 thank you and then year after year they would contact me first, hey, would you like apples this year? And we made so many  great connections with people,  just looking for other people that were like-minded and  trying to achieve the same thing or maybe had more than what they could handle with those things. Yeah,  absolutely. And there's a joke about chickens are the gateway to homesteading. 16:26 But I beg to differ. I think that if you start learning to cook from scratch, that's the gateway to homesteading. For sure.  mean, when you start realizing, I mean, it's all connected in one big rabbit hole. But when you start looking at what's in the food, in the stores and on the shelves and all the preservatives and the things that are in there and you start realizing, I can make something fairly quick that tastes way better. 16:55 that doesn't have all these extra things added to it that's much better for my health and my family's health. And you start doing that and then you start looking at all the other areas of things that you can do and okay, well now let's get chickens and now let's, you know, have a really large garden so I don't have to go buy the things that we eat. I can just make it all from scratch here as much as we can. We'll never be a hundred percent able to grow everything, but  we do what we can. Every little bit helps, yeah. 17:24 For sure. Yep. We're trying to be really aware about what we spend for money at the grocery store right now, because we have food in the house. There's no need to go buy food that's already made. And we had a few containers of homemade sloppy Joe and homemade taco meat in the freezers. And we, Sunday, we're like, what do you want to eat? And my husband was like, I don't really want pot roast. That's what I was supposed to make. 17:54 I said, I'll make the pot roast tomorrow. What do we have in the freezer? And he pulled out what he thought was the taco meat. 18:03 I ate a sloppy Joe taco with taco sauce on it.  I don't recommend anyone do this. It really wasn't great. It was food and it was edible, but it was not great. And I looked at my husband afterwards and I was like, I must be taking this not buying already made food thing really seriously. And he said, why? I said, cause that was the most unsatisfactory filling meal I've ever had in my entire life. And I don't want to do it again. Oh, that's funny. 18:32 It was not great. And luckily,  luckily he knew because I told him that one of the containers was sloppy. Joe me and he had already he had uh him. can't talk.  He had thought out an actual taco meat one as well. So he had a sloppy Joe in a rolled up tortilla and he had a taco in a rolled up tortilla. I was like,  I'm so mad. I wish I had known because I would have had you eat the sloppy Joe tacos and I would have had the taco taco. 19:03 He's like, you're a good wife. I was like, yes, I am. Don't you forget it.  Oh, that's so funny. But point being is that even if it doesn't turn out the way you thought it was going to, it's probably still going to be okay. For sure. There's always things I feel like that you can, like you learn, like, okay, maybe we need a better label or organize things or. 19:32 you learn of like, maybe if I, instead of adding taco sauce, if I added something else, maybe it would have been better.  And who knows? You can always change things around.  was hoping the taco sauce would make it taste like taco,  but a sweet taco is not a great thing. promise you. was about to say the sweetness of that poppy joke was probably a little much.  It was very funny and I did not vomit. So we're okay. 20:00 But  I don't want to do it again. I just thought it was a funny story because sometimes we might take things a little too far.  And  if I had been sick on it, that would have been a little too far, but it was fine. So you have chickens, you have turkeys. What else do you have? So that's well, we have a golden retriever, but that's we have for right now. But we have  we have plans for adding some Gloucestershire old spot pigs at some point. Not sure if that'll be this year or next. 20:30 year. I'm kind of hoping for this year but budget-wise it's probably going to be next year. So  there's so many things that we want to do but we're not in a hurry to  do it all right now. We want to thoughtfully plan it out and make sure that we're doing the best that we can with what we have  and doing the best for the animals. We don't want to get them and then risk them getting out because we didn't plan their structures out well enough. 21:00 you know, any other scenario like that.  we're  my husband is going slow and plant thoughtfully planning things out. And I'm thinking of all the things that we should do.  So he balances me out in that way, thankfully.  Yes, that's what spouses are for.  I'm always saying start small, dream big. Yeah, that's actually our tagline, which is really funny.  So we say at the end of almost all of our videos.  Yep. Because if you dive in, m 21:28 head-first, you better pray there's a lot of water or a lot of money in the bottom of that pool.  Right? oh And it's usually not money. No,  and if there's no water, you're gonna break your neck. yeah, starting small,  looking before you leap, thinking it through is all really good advice. But the worst advice  is don't dream.  Everybody needs a dream. 21:58 Absolutely.  And the other thing is that a lot of people,  they're researching, they're planning, they're dreaming, but they don't ever take that first step.  we always say,  you just have to start at some point. Just do it, just try it.  This year, so this property that we moved on had five silver maple trees. And this spring, we're like, we've never tapped maple syrup or maple trees before. 22:26 and made our own maple syrup, let's just try it. Let's just see how it goes. It is a lot of work. We spent the last two weekends, both Saturday and Sunday, each weekend, 12 to 14 hour days making maple syrup. Like it is a lot of work, but we have this beautiful golden maple syrup that tastes phenomenal that we made and we did it. And we wouldn't have had that if we hadn't done it and just tried it. Now there's a lot of things that we're going to 22:56 change and do differently for next year knowing what we know now but we wouldn't have learned those things if we hadn't just done it. We did do  a little bit of research before but and I grew up around ah maple tapping and sugar bushes. The farm that I grew up on we own half of the woods and the other half is owned by a sugar bush that they tap they've always tapped my family's trees and so I grew up around all this but I've never actually done it and 23:26 It was such a good learning process. But if we had just said, you know what, let's just hold off until we know everything. So you have to find that balance of don't just rush in  and do it all at once. Pick one thing. But at some point you do have to just start.  Yes. And sometimes your friends help you along the way. My friend brought me some sourdough starter that was very well established and beautiful. And she was like, 23:53 Here's what you do. I wrote out the instructions, blah, blah. And I kept it alive for about a week and I went to move the jar and it hit the floor and shattered.  Oh no.  Yes, I was very sad.  And then I got over my sad and I was like, I can  make a new one. And I did the flower and water thing in another jar. And I actually made two loaves of sourdough bread out of that sourdough starter that I started. They both kind of turned out. 24:23 um bagel-y like bagel texture. Yeah. They were good  and then it got the dreaded pink mold. I've talked about this a few times in the last  two it had to go in trash and I cried over that because that is not okay. That's not fun. Especially when you start it from yourself that is so hard to do. ah Yeah so I waited until about a month and a half ago to start a new one. 24:51 They got the pink mold back in September, I think it was. So I started new one about a month and a half ago. And it's now at the point where I might actually be able to make some sourdough bread again. And it's got all the little bubbles on the side of the jar. And I'm like, oh my God, it's alive and it's working. That will never not make me giddy. When I wake up in the morning and I see those bubbles on the jar, I get so excited. Over bubbles. 25:21 It's so dumb, but it's so smart at the same time. It's such a rewarding thing because it doesn't take much. It takes five, six minutes to feed your starter. And then it's just time. You're just waiting. You're not doing anything. And then you come back and check and it's alive and happy.  It's just, it brings me such joy.  I think the reason homesteaders like sourdough,  you know, the process is because it's keeping another thing alive. Right. 25:52 There's lots of chaos in our life. Let's just keep something else alive.  I was gonna say it's not enough to grow plants and animals. We need to grow bacteria too. Right.  Well, let's grow it all.  But I'll tell you there is something  really special when you make your first loaf of sourdough bread. Out of sourdough starter,  you start it because it is literally all on you.  100%. 26:20 I was so thrilled when I pulled the first loaf out and it was bagel-ish, bagel-y, however you say that, because I love bagels and I happened to have a brick of cream cheese that we had just bought in the fridge. I was like, I can't make a bagel to save my life, but I can make bagel sourdough bread. I love it.  Oh, I bet that was so good. Especially, like you said, when it's your first loaf that you did all of it from start to finish, there's,  it just... 26:46 adds to the flavor. Like it'll taste good regardless because you did it all.  Yes and I feel like it's a true homesteading skill which probably sounds really dumb because all of it is homesteading skills but  I feel like it's what people associate homesteading with.  For sure there's a there's a few bigger things like there's like three or four things right we have sourdough, chicken, 27:13 canning and gardening, those are the things that people really associate with.  Home setting.  There's so much more to it than that, but those seem to be the big things that people recognize as home setting. Yes, one of the first things that we did when we kind of got into this, and it was more me than my husband because he was the breadwinner. He was gone all the time.  We're raising four kids on one income and I was like,  the kids need scarves. I can learn to crochet. So I learned to crochet scars for the kids. 27:43 And I was trying to be really  aware of our food expenses because kids eat a lot.  so  I to make oatmeal raisin cookies and chocolate chip cookies and any kind of cookie or banana bread kept them very happy and snacks. none of them were fat. They were always running around doing stuff. So they were like, can I have a cookie? Yes, please. Before you're too skinny to live, you know. 28:12 And it was just all things that I was like, okay, if I make cookies, it's going to cost me less than buying cookies.  Absolutely.  So for us,  was a way, frugality was our gateway to homesteading. I know a lot of people that that's how they start because they don't have the option to  buy  the extras at the grocery store. They can buy the necessities and that's about it. 28:41 flour, sugar, milk, bread, right? Those kinds of things. And then they start realizing, well, if I can buy those things, I can make the bread and then I can make the cookies and I can make all the other things. And it is a way for them to save money in the long run.  Yes. And I felt like I had to because 29:05 I love my husband and I loved my kids. I still love my kids, but they're adults now. They make their own cookies.  And I felt like if I was going to be home with the kids, because I wanted to raise them myself, whatever I could do to save us money was making us money.  Oh, for sure. So it was a big deal. And my husband would get asked at his job, they'd like, they'd say, what does your wife do? And he would say, well, she is at home with the kids. 29:36 And they would say, isn't she bored?  And he would just laugh. He was belly laugh.  He was like, okay, you understand that my kids are 13, 11, um six and one. And they're like, well, yeah, but three of them are in school. And my husband would be like, yes. And one of them is one year old. She's got four more years to go for the last one in school. No, she's not bored. And she's smart. 30:06 she saves us more money than I make. And every time he would tell me this story, I would just feel such a sense of pride because I was like, I am earning  my keep and not that I was ever told I had to. Right. But I am, I am so lucky to be able to have my kids leave my house and I'm home. They come home, I'm home and I get to be here for them. Yeah, it's such a great feeling knowing that 30:35 these short 18 years that you get to spend with them because those years, it's the smallest part of your life is when you're under 18.  So  bidding to have your kids in your home with you  and spending the life together and doing every single day in and day out together for those short 18 years  is, in my opinion, worth the sacrifice. um 31:05 And then it takes because living on one income is hard. And we have so we homeschool our son. He's 13 and my husband works full time out of well, he works from home quite often, but he has to go in on surveys and things like that. But. I work two part time jobs that I get to work from home, so we're still able to homeschool and do I. I'm still able to be home with him and still make 31:34 some money for the family and things like that. we made the sacrifices and the things that we gave up so that we could have that time with him because it goes so fast. It doesn't last very long. No, it does not. And that's all I have to say or I will cry. Also, every human being 32:04 has the opportunity to make a choice about how they live their life. And some of us come  at it from a privileged place, some of us do not. I'm not saying that the homeless person in Minneapolis has a lot of choice right now, so don't get me wrong. But if you happen to be lucky enough to make choices about what you want to do with your life, you're one of the luckiest people on earth. And not everybody has to be a homesteader. 32:34 I get that there are some people who want to be in an office building  as a CEO of a big company and that is totally fine. You do you. But  I love that we get to make these choices. I love that my husband and I are thinking about getting into raising quail, have not actually decided yet,  but it's a choice we get to make this year. I love it. My husband wants to raise quail. 33:03 Yeah, we've been looking into that too. They're so cool. I've been diving deep on this for  a couple of weeks and hopefully  we can make a decision this weekend about what whether we're going to buy an incubator or not. That's that's the next thing on the list is to decide that. So  exciting.  It is. It's really fun. And  I just I looked up the little quail scissors that you use to clip the eggs open. 33:30 I was like, oh my God,  I'm actually looking up quail scissors on Amazon. I've got to be out of my freaking mind. I love it.  A friend of mine raises them. And so she gave me some eggs, some quail eggs and eggs and the quail egg scissors uh in exchange. We were bartering. don't remember what  I had and we exchanged. And I love a good barter and trade, by the way.  Oh, yes, my favorite thing. And so 34:00 my friend who raises quails, she loves to barter and trade as well. So we're constantly finding things that the other one wants or needs.  We're exchanging things and she keeps telling me, she's like, hey,  I'm going to have eggs  if you want to have quail. And I'm like, we do, but we might need to wait a year for that.  But oh, it's so tempting to do it this year because they're so cute. I love them. 34:29 I'm,  I,  I am going to have a hard time spitting this out. I am very excited at the idea. I am very concerned about the actual doing it because where we live, I'm not sure there's a market for quail meat or quail eggs.  And they don't want to get deep into this until we know that we can move a quail meat and quail eggs.  So we're going to start small. 34:58 we're only gonna get like 12 or 14. And that way if we can't move them, we just don't do it past butchering the quail that we have and having them in our freezer for ourselves. That's a good place to start when you're trying to figure out if this is something that's doable and starting with just a few because and that's kind of what we did with the turkeys. We have six and so we're like if this goes the way we want to go. 35:26 and we get the breeding pair and things like that, then we do potentially have a future. If not, we have six that are going to our freezer. Yeah. And again, start small, dream big. 100%. Yup, exactly. I'm so excited to start a new project with the husband because like I said, empty nesters. And when we get snippy with each other, it's time to get aligned on a project again. 35:57 But I'm like, okay, so we have chickens, have a dog, we have barn cats, and you're gonna be getting  into the gardens again this year.  Do we have time for a new project? 36:11 That's the hard part.  Because like I see all these different things that we want to do. But each one of those will take a certain amount of time. It's like, how much do you want to put towards one thing? Because that's how much you're taking away from something else. So it's definitely a balancing act to try to figure out how much you actually want to do each year.  And it's okay to try something one year and then realize, hey, it wasn't worth the time and the effort. 36:40 next year or you know we're kind of with that with the maple syrup because of all the time into it we were looking at each other as the snow was flying on saturday night and we're still not done  and we're like is this really what we're doing is this worth it and we're like do we really want to do this again next year but then you boil it down and you look at it and  we're like okay this was this is a short season it's 37:08 on a great year, it's a month  from start to finish. Yeah. And there are some years where you're lucky if you get a run for three days because things warm up too fast  and the trees butt out. And so we're like,  what we get from it, the time spent outside,  we literally every day, every Saturday and Sunday for the last two weeks, my husband and I have spent outside together or in the house finishing it off.  And like, 37:37 Just spending time outside together, just us around the fire while we're boiling saps. It was so fun.  those special moments, like, that makes it worth it for us, even though it's  really long hours and it's a lot of work, but it's only for a short time where there's other things that, you know, it's every day for a year, you're feeding an animal. 38:06 two, sometimes three times a year, or a day for an entire year, and that might not be worth it depending on your schedule and other things you have going on. And it's okay to change from year to year what you put your focus and your time into. 38:26 Certainly, absolutely. And again,  if you guys don't want a maple syrup next spring, you don't have to because  those trees don't care whether you get the sap out of them or not.  Right. We definitely will be.  But  there was a moment as we're sitting in the start of the snowstorm looking at each other going,  is this really worth it? But  it is. It really is worth it for us. Just the time we get to spend together and then the syrup. 38:56 we go through because it's really the only sugar source that we use except for a tiny bit of raw cane sugar. And so for us, it was worth it because we go through two to three gallons a year. And that's a we have right now just over two gallons. So it's almost a year's worth of syrup in essentially two weekends worth of work. So for us, it was worth it at least. 39:21 this year.  Another year if it only runs for three days and we only get you know a half a gallon it might not feel worth it. So it's okay to change from year to year. Exactly that's what I love about this particular life choice is that again you get to choose what you want to put your time into. And the other thing is that I feel like the halfway mark on anything is the hardest part. 39:47 The beginning is exciting and fun and the end is satisfying. But the middle is the part where you're like, why did we start this? It drags on. It's just like when you decide to clean your closet and it feels like a really great idea in the beginning and you get everything pulled out and you look around and you're like, oh, I have to put it back. I like that feeling. Yep, exactly. It's new energy is amazing. 40:15 Finished energy is amazing. Middle energy sucks.  100 % on almost every project I feel like it. m Yep, that's how it always is. I'll be feeling that way tomorrow or Saturday when I make my next sourdough loaf because anyone who's ever made a sourdough loaf knows  that it's not the actual making of it that's the pain in the ass, it's the waiting time.  100%. That's what takes forever.  Yep. 40:45 I was like, you're kidding me. I do the pull, the stretch and pull four times and then I have to wait half an hour until I can do anything else. A lot  of it's very, it's very needy. Like  every 30 minutes you're doing something, but then you need to wait.  Like, can I just do it all and be done and move on?  Yeah. My husband is the, uh, the yeast bread maker. He's very good at it. 41:12 And he was like, I can't believe you're going to do sourdough when you could just do yeast breads.  The issue is, that every time I try to make yeast bread, I kill the yeast. We cannot figure out how I do this. And he's really good at making yeast bread. And I was like, I just need to be able to say that I finally made a freaking loaf of bread from scratch. Give me the sourdough.  Yeah. I did sourdough for years and I did gluten-free sourdough for many years. then 41:41 we found a flower that my son could tolerate. And so then I do regular sourdough and it wasn't until about, think it was January of this year, maybe early February that  I  tried yeast bread for the first time in probably 20 years.  And I don't know why I had never really made sandwich bread and I decided to try my sourdough sandwich bread. I didn't like how many holes were in it. 42:11 It wasn't great for sandwich for me. And so decided to try yeast bread and now I'm hooked. And now I actually haven't been doing sourdough for a while because I've been making every week, I've been making two loaves of yeast bread and then pizza dough. I'm in my yeast era at the moment.  My husband is always in the yeast bread era. He's been making, he's been making four loaves of bread every other weekend. 42:41 because he really likes bread with his eggs in the morning for toast.  the least expensive bread at the local grocery stores is terrible. The only really good tasting bread is like $7 a loaf right now.  At the least he was like, I'm just going to start making bread. I said, okay, how's the smell amazing every other weekend? And he was like, yes, will. 43:08 So we've been reminded that frugality has lots of benefits. Oh, for sure. When you start looking at well, and so my son can't have gluten or dairy. so when we would go to the store and I'm looking and I'm gluten free, anything is a minimum of eight dollars, if not 15 for a tiny little package of this thing. I just like it. 43:37 It's so expensive. Now  there are occasions, right, where we'll get it as a treat and then it's something I don't have to make for that week. But  I have started making so many things and it does come out of necessity because if I bought  everything that we eat just pre-made from the store that's organic and gluten-free and dairy-free, oh my goodness, I cannot imagine my grocery bill. It's already high enough that is it it? 44:04 as it is just eating organic. It's maddening how expensive things have gotten. Yeah. And that's all I have to say on that too, because boy, we don't want that soap box coming out either right now. All right. This has been so much fun, Kendra. And I am not saying that everyone should become a homesteader. 44:29 but I would be remiss if I didn't say this again. This is my public service announcement for every episode. You ready?  If you don't know how to cook from scratch,  learn. And please get to know your local growers and producers because  it's so important to have a local source because supply chains do  have problems  and things just keep getting more expensive. Please learn how to take care of yourself. Absolutely. 44:58 Where can people find you? So we are on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram as Trina Homestead.  Fantastic. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Kendra, thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. All right. Have a great day. You too.    

Today I'm talking with Andrea at Three Birch Homestead. Content Seeds Collective 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. Today I'm talking with Andrea at Three Birch Homestead in Canada. Good morning, Andrea. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Canada this morning? um It's a little bit cold. We had like a really warm spell and now it's kind of freezing again. 00:30 Yeah, I'm in Minnesota and we've had a couple of really beautiful days  and they're saying we're going to get snow tomorrow, a little bit of snow Thursday, and then they're kind of hyping up a bigger storm over the weekend. And I'm like,  it's March. Could we please put it to bed now? Please.  Yeah,  I'm ready for spring. There was actually a really like  heavy windstorm here the last couple of days and the power's been out, I guess, like all over the place. 01:00 um But because we're off grid, we like don't even notice. We just hear about it from other people.  Uh-huh. It's one of the benefits of living off grid. You've got that covered.  All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself, please. um We live in northern BC, Canada,  off grid um on a property, like a rural property.  We're about 45 minutes from the closest town. 01:30 an hour and a half from like a bigger center. So it's a bit of a drive. There is like a small community about  half an hour from here. um But there's just like a general store and a post office. It's not, there's not a whole lot going on there. Yeah.  So  and  we raise animals for  meat  and we um have kids and 01:59 homeschool and yeah, just sort of try to do as much as we can on our own and provide as much food as we can for ourselves. 02:11 Okay, I have a question. You have kids. How many kids do you have? um I have five kids. Two of them are adults, so they don't live with me anymore. And then I have  a  14 year old son and then a two year old and an eight month old. 02:29 Okay, having raised four kids without a whole lot of family around, because my family lives in Maine, uh how has it been for you? Do you have family at all in the area that can help out or is it just you? um When my other kids were little, I lived in a different area and I did have family around, so that was very helpful.  Here, we didn't have much family around, but my husband's parents recently moved to the area. 02:59 They live uh here half the time and then in Ontario half the time because they wanted to be closer to their grandkids.  So, um because the  two boys are their only grandchildren, so they wanted to be close. And so that's been really helpful. 03:16 good because when I hear moms having more than a couple of kids and I don't hear anything about extended family being able to kind of help out here and there, I worry because I did a lot of the raising of my four kids myself and it is a lot of stress and a lot of energy and I loved every minute of it but it would have been helpful to have extended family to step in. Yeah, it's definitely nice to have somebody. So I thought I 03:48 Yeah, I thought I would ask because  I don't recommend anyone do  homesteading or off-grid living or anything else like that if you don't have some form of community to  call on if you do need help. It's definitely nice. Yeah. you you disagree? Yeah,  I agree. It can be really isolating. When I first moved out here, 04:12 Like where I had lived before, I did live out of town, but I only lived a couple minutes out of town and I had lots of friends around. And so when I moved out here to live with my husband, like my now husband, I didn't really have that anymore. it definitely, I didn't realize how much it was going to affect me until I got out here. And then I was like, wow, like I don't have anybody. And so I was pretty lonely. And then my son joined Taekwondo. 04:42 which helped us to meet people. And so now I do have some friends around, but they're definitely not as close. they're, you know, a good 45 minute to an hour drive away. So I don't get to see people as often as I used to, but I've kind of learned to adapt. It's given me a lot more time to do stuff at home, which is nice. I spend less time socializing and more time making bread and doing other things that I wanted to do before too, but didn't have time for because I would be out and about. 05:17 Absolutely. I am an extreme introvert and I spend most of my weekdays from about 730 in the morning until about 430.  Just me. And I love it because I get so much done and I can pursue the things that I'm interested in without anyone being like, why are you watching about chickens?  Why are you reading a book about cows? know? Yeah. 05:43 So, all right, so tell me, tell me your, your living situation. Are you in a home? Are you in a cabin? Are you in a trailer? How does that work?  Um, we're in like a cabin, I guess it's,  it's not huge. It's  maybe like, there's probably 700 square feet in the main space.  And then there's a bit of an upstairs with the bedroom. It's pretty small. Uh, like I came from a house that was like, 06:11 2500 square feet.  it's definitely like been a transition, especially once we added two more kids to the mix. My teenage son has his own little cabin, which is nice. um And so  but then he's got to like run his own fire as well. So we've got two wood stoves that we have to maintain. But yeah, so it's it's a nice little like, long cabin. But we need more space. We're definitely planning on adding 06:40 some more space in the future. This summer we actually want to, we have a deck  and it's a really nice deck.  It faces a mountain and it's  a lovely view but we're actually going to enclose it and turn it into part of the house  and forego having a deck because we need the space more than we need a deck. 06:59 Yep, yep, understand. And that's the joy of being off-grid. You can probably add whatever you would like to add as long as you have the fundage or the bartering skills to get it done. Yes, well, and like where we live, there's not like building codes. Like we don't have to get a permit or anything. We can just kind of do what we want. And Will's parents are really good about helping us with that stuff. So they're going to help us build.  They've helped us build like all of our additions. My bedroom is actually 07:28 like upstairs and it used to just be like a loft and then there was like a big open like high ceiling and we basically closed that in so  we don't have the nice expansive high ceiling anymore, but we have like a whole bedroom up here now, which  we really needed because there was only one bedroom in the whole house and so  Sweet awesome. That's fantastic uh 07:54 Okay, and so do  you just heat with the wood stoves or do you have another source? Just the wood stoves, yeah. Okay. And do you have a... I assume you do not have a well, so how do you get your water?  There's a creek on the property that runs through and it's  basically glacial-fed water, like it comes off of the mountain. So we drink from that. It must be amazing water. 08:23 It's pretty good. Yeah, it's definitely, yeah, pretty pristine.  It's very cold.  I love that. My parents, when they built their first house when I was like six, we had moved from a suburb and the water was terrible to taste to drink. And when we moved into that house, the new house, they had an artesian well dug for it. And I can 08:50 vividly remember getting the first glass of cold water from the faucet and it tasted like heaven. It was so  clean and so cold and so sweet. And I was like, this isn't water.  My mom said, yes, it is. And I was like, it tastes really good. I could drink this all day. She's like, please do. It definitely makes a difference. Water is very important. 09:16 Yeah, where we live now,  my favorite glass of water is when it's minus 20 degrees outside because the water from the faucet gets so cold because again, it's a well. And  I really love my water  almost ice when I'm drinking it.  I understand the whole  glacial water is really, really good compared to just regular water. 09:40 Okay, so you have animals, what do you have for animals? We have um two milk cows  and a bull and then we have a steer that we're raising for meat. We have chickens, turkeys, pigs.  We have goats, but we're actually getting out of goats. We're going to sell the goats off. We use them to  clear land, like clear brush, to  create more pasture land for cows. 10:08 and they've done the job well  and  we really love having them like that when they have their babies. It's just like such a wonderful time, but  it's just a lot of work to move them around the pasture. So we're just, yeah, we're going to sell them off  and  focus on the cows. We got goats originally because  we wanted, well for pasture clearing, but also  we wanted to start with a  smaller animal for milking. 10:34 And so we did that, but we don't really enjoy drinking the goat's milk. We like, like I made cheese with it and the cheese was really good.  But so we, got a milk cow and we definitely like prefer the milk cow. 10:50 Okay, so as I'm sitting here listening to you, I'm assuming that you use the animals to feed yourselves. And so when you make cheese, how do you store it? Because obviously cheese needs to be refrigerated. So do you have like solar energy or how do you power your appliances? Yeah, we have solar power. We also have a generator. And yeah, so 11:18 The cheese gets stored in a fridge.  I vacuum seal it and then store it in the fridge. So a lot of our fridge is taken up by cheese and milk.  We don't have a lot of room for other things.  So we have to be careful about what we put in our fridge and we have to use up our leftovers like fairly quickly. uh But I haven't had to buy cheese at the grocery store in like a few years now, which has been lovely. 11:47 I was going to say, isn't that a great feeling just knowing that you are set because you did it? Yeah, I don't have to like really spend any time in the dairy section of the grocery store.  Okay, so now I'm going to ask an uncomfortable question because it makes me uncomfortable to ask it. But do you have a job because even if you are off grid and living quote unquote self-sufficiently, 12:13 money still does buy things that you can't make. So do you guys have a job or are you doing this all without jobs?  Yeah, for sure. It's definitely like a big question that people ask is like, how do you pay for this? And it was something that I asked too before,  you know, living like this. mean, I've always been interested in homesteading and I've always done a little bit here and there. But yeah, so I work online. 12:42 And then my husband has a glass studio. So he does some glass work. He makes jewelry and stuff. So that  funds like quite a bit of what we do. And then, you know, we have, we don't have a mortgage.  We don't pay an electric bill. Like, so we don't,  costs are low,  but we do, yeah, still need money. You could never not need money. I think it's. 13:10 silly to think that you could live without money.  Yeah, the reason I said now for the uncomfortable question is because I always feel weird asking people stuff about their  income or their finances or how they fund things. But people need to know that  even if you're going to be a homesteader, you're probably still going to have to have some kind of jobby job to fund it. 13:36 Yes, for sure. need to bring in an income. I get real twitchy when I have to ask that question. And I always preface it so that you guys brace for it, you know? Yeah, I don't like asking people how they make money either. I'm sorry, say it again. Oh, I don't like asking people how they make money either. Like it's one of those questions that's sort of like, it's like not really any of your business. But then I also totally understand why people ask it, you know? 14:13 Yeah, it's kind of like asking a mom these days whether their newborn son was circumcised or not.  It's a really slippery slope for a conversation. 14:27 Okay, what else can I ask you? um You're in Canada, it gets really,  really cold in Canada in the winter. So  when you have to get up  at, I don't know, 5, 6 a.m. and go milk the cows or feed the animals, how  many layers are you putting on in the morning? Because I know it gets really cold. Yeah, we live in like... 14:57 sort of a coastal area so  it's not quite as cold here as some places in Canada but we do still get like cold snaps where it's quite cold  and I actually don't go outside and do the chores I'm inside with the kids and I make the food and  stuff like that and then my husband and my son my teenage son go out and so  usually they're wearing 15:22 you boots and snow pants  and a jacket. If it's really cold, they're putting on like Bella clavas and,  you know, heavier wool underneath their jackets and stuff like that. But yeah, this year we haven't had any like really cold weather. It's actually been like quite mild this year. So that's been nice. If I go out, like if I'm milking the cow that I was milking the cow before I had my ah my last baby. 15:51 And  yeah, I would wear, you know, a sweater over top of like, I've got a lot of like merino wool base layer stuff.  And so, you know, leggings and pants and snow pants and wool socks and boots and wool hats. And yeah, you're definitely covering up everywhere.  Yeah, it's  interesting because my  mom used to pack away the summer clothes in October. 16:20 and pull out the winter clothes from the attic. And then in the spring, she'd pack away the winter clothes and unpack summer clothes again.  And I'm like, I don't even understand this concept anymore because in Minnesota,  you can have a 60 degree day in December. And I don't want to be without a tank top if it's 60 degrees outside because I'm going be outside and it's going be warm. And so my mom mentioned this to me that she had packed away 16:49 the summer clothes this past fall. And I said, you know, you don't really have to do that. You can wear the clothes all year round. And she laughed and she said,  you do your outfits the way you want to. I'm gonna do mine the way I want to. And it's funny because we all have our systems and our habits and the way we do things. And she said, seriously, you don't pack away your winter clothes in springtime? I said, no, because  it can be 17:18 in June in Minnesota and I want my sweater. And she just giggled and she lives in Maine. It's not that different. 17:28 Yeah, I do usually put away the  big winter gear  because  it doesn't get cold enough in the summer for us to need  snow pants and heavy woolies and stuff like that. But I will keep out some of the warmer clothes because at night, in the evenings if we're out, it gets chilly. um 17:51 Yeah, and actually, like I do keep a lot of  summer stuff out now because our house gets so warm because it's so small and we have like a big wood stove like right in the center of it.  It'll be 30 degrees in here at 30 Celsius. I'm not sure what that is in Fahrenheit, but it's it's warm. 18:17 Yeah. Okay. So what led you to wanting to live off grid? Um, I mean, I've wanted to live off grid for a long time. I, I've always been interested in gardening and wanted to have like my own animals and a milk cow. A lot of it is for health benefits and just having control over my own food source. But like my ex husband, 18:46 was not, he was sort of into that stuff, but not really. And so we never really like, actually were able to pursue it. I would do some like, I would dabble, you know, I'd do some canning and I did some wild harvesting and we had chickens and I had a garden and stuff like that. And then I got divorced and so I, I was, you know, on the market again and sort of was looking for, you know, someone to spend my life with and 19:16 that was definitely like something that I was looking for was somebody who was into those things, know, into self-sufficient living and stuff like that. It wasn't like it had to be somebody off grid necessarily, but just somebody who was living, you know,  on the land and gardening and  growing food and  raising animals and such.  And so when I met my husband, he was into all those things. So we hit it off pretty... 19:42 pretty quickly and he lived off grid, which was lovely. It was like, oh, that's cool. know,  I mean, we had a long distance relationship for like three or four years before I actually moved out here because where I lived, like my kids were attending the high school and  you know, I wasn't really able to move. Plus when I met him, he lived in just like a tiny shack. was just, it was like a non-insulated building.  The cabin that we're in now wasn't here at the time. 20:11 So it wasn't really like practical for me to move out here. ah But  yeah, like I definitely was attracted to the off-grid lifestyle, mostly just for self-sufficiency because you're not connected to, you know, main power grid. You're not paying a big corporation for your power and,  you know, they can hike up the prices at any moment and  stuff like that.  So. 20:37 Yeah, exactly. um We keep talking about looking into solar panels again. We have a big pole barn and it would be great for solar panels.  And every time I even dip my toe in the water to research it, I see big, big numbers to get solar panels installed. And I'm like, yeah, we don't have it right now. I want to real bad, but it's going to have to wait. Yeah, it's. 21:03 not a cheap thing, but I guess supposedly the prices have gone down significantly from when they first came out.  So the technology is getting better and  that's what we were told by someone that we know who installs solar panels. He was saying that  the prices have gone down significantly from what they used to be. em Well, maybe this fall I'll revisit it.  Yeah. 21:31 They now have like these bifacial ones too that capture sunlight on both sides,  which then you can kind of have them standing up. Like they maybe wouldn't work as well like  on a roof, know, like  mounted to a roof. But if they're standing up, then  you can get the sun from both sides, makes them more efficient. Very nice. That would be very cool. ah So  are your 21:57 I guess your younger kids don't know any different than living off-grid, right?  Yeah.  I mean, they're still young, like, so they don't really know  even what off-grid is, but  yeah, they won't know any different. Like, we have a composting toilet and we kind of joke about how our son is going to be like,  know, weirded out by like regular toilets when we go to town. 22:26 Yeah, the noise will scare him. Yeah, and like there's no water in our toilet and  you don't flush it.  But I mean, he has seen toilets in town, so I don't know if he'll actually be like so weirded out by it. But I'm sure at some point he'll ask us a question like, why,  why is our toilet not like this? Uh  huh.  Yeah, it's stuff you don't think about like that,  that when it comes up, you're like, oh, wow, I hadn't even thought of that. 22:55 Yeah, the craziest thing to me about like living off grid versus like living on It's like here. We...  Oh,  sorry. Yeah, just the  biggest thing that I've noticed with living like off grid versus living on grid is like when I go visit my friends who live on grid. 23:13 Like they're running, know, they've got their coffee machine on, they've got their microwave going, they've got their vacuum going, they've got like all these things running at the same time. And I just like, I can't live like that anymore. Like we can't do that.  You know, if  we're running the vacuum, it's like, that's the only thing that we're running. You know, we're not, can't use the toaster at the same time as the water pump.  you have to be really like. 23:39 careful about like what you're using when and so that'll be something that my kids  will  be used to and so you know maybe when we go visit other people they might be like why are they doing all these things at once like that's so crazy 23:59 Yeah, I feel like homesteading and living off grid makes you far more intentional about what you do and when you do it. For sure. 24:17 I lose you? No. Oh, sorry. I was really quiet there for a was like, Oh, sorry. for sure. then I paused. Yeah. I need to ask a couple of questions because it's three birch homestead and you're off grid. So 24:37 Yeah, no, that's okay. So again, three words. 24:48 Sorry, think we have a delay going on here. So, okay. No, we just have a delay. I can, I can tell. There you go. Okay. So your three birch homestead and your off-grid. So have you learned how to make your own soaps or your own lotions or do you do sourdough bread or any of the things that people usually think of when they think of homestead and off-grid? 25:15 um I don't make soap or lotion.  I buy those at the store from one of my friends makes soap. But I do  make bread and I make cheese and  cook most of my food from scratch. ah I have made sourdough, but  I haven't in a while. I recently got  a mixer for my birthday and so I've been making more bread. So I want to get back into sourdough. 25:42 I found that like hand kneading stuff just, it took too much time. So I just didn't bother. em But now that I have a mixer,  I am on a  major baking spree. 25:57 Yeah, my husband is the yeast bread maker. I've said this before, I kill the yeast every time I try to get it to bloom. I don't know why, it just dies on me.  And when  he wants to relax and  zen out, he will hand knead the bread dough. But when he just wants to get it done, he uses the KitchenAid mixer. And I always know when he's really thinking about something, because he's like, I'm going to make bread. And he gets everything ready and he gets the dough together. 26:26 And he slaps it on the island top and starts to hand knead it. And I'm like,  are you considering an idea or are you upset? Because the only time you need dough is when that's going on. And it's always a hint to me that he's in a state of mind about something.  could see that being like a therapeutic thing for sure. Yeah.  And the thing that I love most about cooking from scratch is that the house always smells good. Always. Yes. 26:59 My favorite thing that he makes is cinnamon rolls from scratch. And he makes the cinnamon rolls and I make the frosting and I always try to have lemon juice on hand so I can make a lemon frosting because lemon frosting on cinnamon rolls is amazing. That sounds really good. I've been making cinnamon buns too, actually. I  do like a sticky topping. So I cook like  that, right? I make butter and sugar and then cook it in that. um But yeah, lemon frosting. That sounds really yummy. 27:30 It's a drizzle. shouldn't say frosting because people are probably thinking of the buttercream frosting and I try to make it a drizzle  because if you try to put buttercream frosting on a warm cinnamon roll, it just slides off.  doesn't do any good. That's true. em 27:46 So,  all right, well, I try to keep these to half an hour.  I appreciate your time so much. I know you guys are all busy and you take time out of your busy days to just  basically entertain me and by default, entertain anybody who listens to the conversation. So,  where can people find you, Andrea?  I'm on Instagram at 3birchhomestead.com. 28:12 pool,  I will make sure I put that in the show notes so people can go look at your pictures because I did and I was like, wow, that's awesome. I  want to come back in my next life as an off-grid homesteader because right now on-grid homesteading is good enough. um As always, people can find me at AtinyHomesteadPodcast.com. Thank you again for your time, Andrea. I hope you have a great day. You too. Thanks.  

Today I'm talking with Sidney at Greenbush Twins & Company. You can also follow on Facebook. Content Seeds Collective 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. Today I'm talking with Sydney Greenbush at Greenbush Twins and Company in California.  And  is it 11 o'clock there? Yes. We just had daylight savings times,  you know, so that it would normally be 10, but now it's 11. 00:25 Yeah, so I would say, well, I'm in Minnesota, so I'm two hours ahead of you. So good morning to you and good afternoon to me. Good morning.  I am so happy to have you as a guest. I saw you on Facebook, your page, and I was like, hmm,  there's a story there. I've got to talk to her.  But before we get into it, I always say, how is the weather wherever my guest is? So how's the weather in California today?  Oh, it's really windy today, but the winds are supposed to... 00:54 die down. So we have the Santa Ana winds, which are the winds that come from the inland and blow out to the ocean. And they get very strong. You get gassed up to, you know, 60 to 100 miles an hour. So  we're all like  really ready for them to die down today.  I feel like 50 to 60 miles our mile hour and a winds. I can't say it.  I feel like 50 to 60 mile per hour winds. 01:23 are a weekly occurrence where we live in Minnesota. So  I'm used to it.  Yeah. We,  and for us, the winds aren't  the bad part of it. The bad part of it is when we have obviously the wildfires on top of it. So everybody kind of gets a little anxious because you never know when  one's going to pop up or where. Um, and so you're always kind of like got that little bit of guard going.  Yeah. Especially after last year, I'm sure you guys are on a swivel. 01:52 Yeah, and so for us that live in this area, we've had a few  really bad fires.  The last one was obviously the Palisades and the Altadena fire.  But years before that, we had the Woolsey and we've had um really bad fires in the  80s and stuff. One year,  actually burnt down part of  Johnny Carson's home.  So  it almost becomes a way of life here on the coastline around by Los Angeles because 02:20 It's not if you're going to have a fire, it's when are you going to have another fire? Because it's just the way that eh the vegetation and the habitat  kind of the ecosystem is. Well,  I'm always astounded at people who want to live in California. My daughter lived there for a few years and she loved it. She loved everything about it. And then she fell in love and moved to New York and now she's in Florida with her husband. So. uh 02:49 Yeah, it's amazing where you'll move for the person you love.  So let's just address the elephant in the room. If Sydney's name sounds familiar, it's because she played along with her sister, Carrie on Little House on  the Prairie. Right.  And Sydney  is  way more than just that. She has started a new project  and I think it's fairly recent, like in the last year. Yeah. 03:18 Well, the, really started in December was the official launch of the website and the ramp up for the book, the seven sisters, lantern of humanity.  And so it's all just very fresh for, for me. And it's been an amazing trip so far and I can only imagine what the future holds, you know. Yeah. Are you still riding the new energy high of a new project? 03:46 I am because I keep thinking at some point, you you try and build your audience and I keep thinking at some point, okay, it's going to taper down because it's not quite so new anymore.  And it's been about six months that we've been, we've been talking about it. But every day I'm so surprised because I, I log in and then the number has increased and sometimes it's not like a major increase, but it's still that momentum going forward and it hasn't tapered off yet. 04:16 And then I start to get excited and I start thinking, oh, I could do this and I could do that and I could do that. And I'm like, OK, slow down. You got to focus like one one thing at a time. Let's get through the first one first. You know, so. Oh, yes, I woke up this morning and I know I was going to be talking with you. I knew I had to get two podcasts ready to go out for tomorrow. I also have a course that I'm supposed to be taking that someone gifted me about raising quail that I need to sit down and look at. 04:44 And I was like, I can't do all three of these things at the same time this morning. So one thing and then the next thing and then the next thing. And if I don't get them all done, it's OK. Right. Yeah. And  see, I'm, you know,  I'm easily excited about things that I want to do.  And so that's where I really have to manage my focus, because it's easy for me to start something. Right.  But the hard part is. 05:11 Seeing it through to completion, right? So  I have to remind myself before I get off on another tangent like I really need to do this especially when it comes to like housework because I Really don't like it. So I have to go. Okay. Yeah, you need to really do like your laundry or clean the kitchen You know that kind of stuff that we all have a tendency to put off a little bit but em But it's all good once you know those things about yourself and your personality 05:39 and you acknowledge it, it's much easier to manage it, you know? Absolutely. And housework never ends. So you just do it as it comes up. um So tell me, tell me about, tell me about um Greenbush Twins and Company. Well,  Greenbush Twins and Company,  the and company really refers to other artists, other collaborators and our  our followers, right? 06:08 an idea that none of us can do something completely on our own, that we do need each other and together our differences and our experiences, they  make us  stronger. Because I might have experience in one area, but when I decided to do like the children's book, that's an area that I didn't have any experience in. But I was willing to,  you know, try and take that adventure. 06:37 but you need somebody really that has the experience to help to guide you, to show you  the ins and the outs and the dos and the don'ts.  And so that's really what Greenbush Twins is meant for. And it's also meant to help support the small batch makers, the smaller artists, people that  may not get the... 07:02 notoriety because  the marketing may not be in their budget or uh they just haven't  got to a platform where they can really, really shine  and uh sustainable living and all that stuff. So it's really a platform  made to be a hub where, say, if you're looking for a hair product or you're looking for a piece of artwork or something that's uh special, that's handcrafted, 07:31 You can look through the directory that we have,  the products that we represent, and you can see if you can uh find what you're looking for.  And if you can't, there's a few of the  collaborators and artisians that do  custom work. So you can reach out to them or we can facilitate reaching out.  And uh that's really what it's meant to be. uh Corporate America really doesn't... 07:57 care about people. They don't care really what they're putting in their products. And this has really uh been  shown by like, for example, everybody thought it was so great when we got non-stick pans that were coated in Teflon, right? But then they found that Teflon caused cancer and they knew about it, but they didn't take it off of the market. So it's really an aim at  bringing products that don't have those 08:26 conservatives, those toxins, those things that you may not see them affect you today, but down the road, it will have an impact on your health um and try and come back to the more  natural holistic living like you saw, you know, even in little house, you know, a lot of things were handmade.  And I think that  as a community, we will be stronger because we'll be able to 08:54 do things that  are more sustainable in the long run.  there's,  Los Angeles is known for having a huge um garment district. But now you're seeing that there's garment companies that take in, they recycle clothing so that it stays out of the landfills.  And there's companies that go to like the fashion district and they um buy all the fabric from the previous year from the fashion shows that didn't get used. 09:23 And they repurpose it, break it down and sell it out to  people that sew and create  and upcycle.  And so that we're not always just making the planet toxic  by shoving all this stuff in the landfill that takes so long to break down.  Absolutely.  I haven't bought new jeans in over five years.  I have three pairs of jeans that don't have any holes in them at this point. oh 09:53 And  I  patch my jeans with the old jeans that do have holes in them that I can't wear anymore. So I know what you're talking about. Right. And it's so stylish now to take those holes and put like  patterned fabric underneath it and let it peek through. then that um what normally would be  considered like  a uh flaw in that actual pair of pants. Now you've actually made it into a fashion statement that, you know, 10:22 can go forward on its own, its own design.  So it's really incredible a lot of what the people that are um doing the upcycling and stuff um are doing with  fabric. And there's people taking old lamps and making them into  plant stands and different things. And I'm  always amazed at the creativity of how people repurpose something into something else. I've 10:48 I would be like, I never would have even thought of that, but it works so perfectly the way that they've done it, you know? And so  that's the really fun part of the journey  is sharing the creativity with other creative individuals.  Yes,  there is nothing more beautiful than seeing somebody's light shine. Right, yeah, exactly. And  I love, you know, trying to help people  get their light to shine because 11:17 A lot of people will say that they're not creative, but creativity isn't something you're born with. It's actually a muscle that you exercise. And I think John Cleese one time uh explained it the best that it's like it's a mode of operating. It's like a perspective that you have. It's not anything that you can't learn or do. It takes practice like any other art form, but it's something that is available to everyone. Thank God. 11:46 Otherwise it would be a really boring world.  you said  back a few minutes ago, kind of like on Little House. So that leads me to a question that I feel comfortable asking you about Little House on the Prairie.  Did it inform who you became as an adult  in acting as Carrie in that particular timeframe? Did it color who you became? 12:11 Well, I believe that all our experiences kind of color who we are,  even if we don't, you know,  directly recognize that they did, they even subconsciously have  an influence. But yes, it did because  we started so young.  And when we started Little House, we actually had come off of another movie called Sunshine with  Cliff DeYoung and Christina Reigns. 12:39 And having a father that was an actor and a mother that was in  a model, a successful model,  it kind of gave us an open door that a lot of other people don't have.  But we started so young that we really didn't know anything different. We thought everybody did this, that this was like the normal way that you grow up. So when I think back on childhood or I talk to people about their childhood, there are 13:08 certain things that  are missing, like there's gaps, because we spent so much time on the studio set or there was  birthday parties that we couldn't go to because we were working or my mom used to trade out,  because we went to public school when we weren't uh working.  so  certain years, my sister is in the school photo and certain years it's me because my mom used to take one of us to work and then one of them would stay back for the  annual. 13:37 you know, class photo and such. So yeah, directly it shapes a lot of  who you are. And then  when you're a kid, you see how other people treat other people. And that is a guideline for you too. And the messages in the themes of Little House as we got older and we started reading the books, they resonated  also because then you understand, you have a better understanding of the purpose of the whole bigger picture of the show. Yeah. 14:07 Absolutely.  I grew up on the East Coast. I grew up in Maine. And I think the fifth or sixth  novel book I read when I was seven years old was the first book in the Little House series. And I ended up reading all of them and had no idea that I would end up living in Minnesota.  And so when I moved here, I was like, oh, man. 14:34 I live in the state where Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family spent some time. Do you think I've been to any of the places that  commemorate that? No, I have not yet.  I live half an hour from Mankato, Minnesota.  Well, we'll have to change that one time when I'm in,  next time I'm in Minnesota.  yeah, I would love that. That would be so fun. 14:58 Walnut Grove is actually one of my favorite places to go and when they have Laura Ingalls Wilder days, um every year that the museum has asked me to go, like, just tell me when to be there. I know it's July, but just tell me when. And uh the people in the town are so hospitable. And then you always hear the story of the people that came. It's like their family vacation and they've saved for it all year.  And it's a really big event. 15:26 And sometimes the stories are just so incredible because you'll see that um everything in somebody's life is totally breaking apart and they've got these huge things going on. But the one thing that gives them solace and consistency is watching the Little House on the Prairie  series and reading the books. And so a lot of times they'll tell you these stories and they make you teary-eyed because to have such a 15:53 profound effect on somebody's life. It's not anything you ever imagined you were capable of doing, you know,  so  it is  it's just really it's hard to articulate  the profound that effect it has on the cast as well as uh the fans and we're very appreciative of the fans because we know for all those years that we were 16:19 uh on NBC and the years after if it wasn't for their loyalty and their patronage, we wouldn't be able to do the things that  we have done like  for the 50th. They took  a uh group of the cast member to Monaco and they did a big film festival in Monaco. And you know, when  I was like, you know, seven or eight and doing the show, that is not, I mean, I didn't get to go. 16:44 because I didn't have my passport at the time, but  that wasn't anything I ever thought would be an offer for us to do. So it's just amazing. It's special in the truest sense of the word. Yeah. Yep.  And the other thing that I would tell you is that in reading the Little House on the Prairie books and watching the show, it colored my perspective and 17:10 I'm sure that's why I live on a 3.1 acre homestead with chickens and a dog and a garden and barn cats, because the stuff that you read when you're a kid, it sticks. It sticks in the back of your head and it, it paints a picture of the things that you could do when you're a grownup. Right. Right. And who doesn't want to have like a Jack or a bandit or 17:35 you know, a raccoon that stays in the barn  or a bunny who doesn't want to go riding on bunny all the time, you know,  and  there's a lot of those connections just not between people on the show, but between, you know, humans and animals and stuff like that. You know, you get kind of like the little lassie theme with with Bandit, you know, where he seems to have this understanding beyond just being a dog, you know. 18:03 uh And those things are really, I think, important to kids to inspire them to use their imagination and think beyond the social restrictions and not everything fits in a little, know, perfectly little neat compartmentalized uh box, you know. So it's important for them to know that there are alternatives out there if you don't want to settle for what is right in front of you. Yep. My bandit is named Maggie and she's a girl dog. 18:33 Mine is named Rios. Rios? Uh huh, Rios. Nice, okay.  So tell me about your book. I didn't realize that you had written the book because I glanced at the picture and didn't realize it was your book.  Yeah, it's my book and uh it's geared towards children ages two to nine. So it's  more, you know, pictures rather than actual uh written word. 19:00 But it's based on  the seven angelic virtues  and there's the seven sisters each one of them embodies  one of the virtues and is named after them and then they're sent to  the earth to help the humans because Psyche who is known  as the mother of the soul in Greek mythology she  was a human and then got turned into a 19:28 or God later, which is a whole another story.  she creates the seven sisters and sends them to Earth to help humans learn how to cope and manage.  then she gives them the  lantern of humanity, which is a beacon and will shine a light when somebody is struggling and lead the sisters to that person to help them uh work through a resolution together. So it um 19:59 It fosters that even though you may have a personal struggle, you're not alone in your struggle. There's others that can help you.  And it really kind of uh echoes that through teamwork, ah we can do  incredible things and make changes. That's beautiful. Did the book just come out?  It's actually being delivered today, believe it or not. So we were taking pre-orders and then... 20:26 We're gonna start uh mailing them out this week.  And the first 150 of the books are limited edition series  that have an authenticity certificate in the back of it.  They're numbered and they have my signature. And then they're in a hard laminated cover for longevity and durability so that uh they won't get  bent or tweaked out of shape. 20:56 And then the spines on them are all hand bound  and there's beautiful illustrations in uh them. it's been so interesting because when we made the illustrations, I didn't have any experience doing a book and neither did the illustrator that helped me. And so when you do it, you're supposed to use a little extra room so that some of it can fit into the binding. 21:23 And I didn't know that so that we had to go back and rework all the images so that when we bound them, all the um story wasn't in the the seam of the of the book. So I delayed us a little bit, but it's probably going to be better in the in long run, you know.  So, yeah, so so excited. I'm very excited to see them  with the certificate of authenticity and everything today. And then I'm going to do like an unboxing. 21:53 video so that everybody can kind of open them with me for the first time.  I'm so glad you said that because I was just going to ask you if you're going to do that because I would love to see your face when you open that box of books.  Yeah, I'm not uh I'm not  technically  good enough yet to do like a, you know, a Facebook live, but I will do the actual, you know, real video footage so that people can can see it and then. 22:22 Eventually I'll get there. I'll get to where I can do like the podcast and the live and all that stuff. But it  just has picked up so much momentum  since December that I'm caught a little off guard because I never did all the social media stuff  before. So now I'm having to learn it along the way too.  Just if you get frustrated, take a breath and walk away from it. 22:51 do something else like dishes by hand because it will give your brain a chance to catch up. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And there are times like that. And I think that's totally normal for everyone. So I have to remind myself because we always hold ourselves to a super high standard and I know I do. And so a lot of times when I'm trying to do some of the reels, I might have scripted out the keynotes of the dialogue. 23:21 that I want to use or the key points that I want to hit. But I try and keep it a little bit fluid because it's easier for me because as soon as I lock it down and it has to be certain words, I get super tongue-tied. And the more I get tongue-tied, the more frustrated I get. And there are times where I have to do exactly that and go, okay, just take a break for a minute. It's not such a big deal. Like we've got all day to do this, you know. 23:50 And you step away for a second and come back because uh you  start thinking like, you know, why can't I do this? Why isn't this easy? And one of things I had to adjust to is like when you  use like your uh cell phone to do a video, you're actually seeing yourself in the video as you're talking. And so that can itself can be a distraction. And then you start getting self-conscious and you're like,  well, 24:20 Do I really move my hands that much? Do I really make that face? And then all of a sudden you're off track from what you're trying to do and you're like, okay, okay, like just take a minute. absolutely. People think that doing social media, know, doing videos is easy. It's not. I refuse to do them because it does the same thing to me. I get distracted by the phone and I cannot think. And it's been something I've really had to 24:50 adjust to. never realized like I've known people that did like, you know, TikTok videos, and they call them influencers and that kind of stuff. And I was like, Oh, yeah, great. But I really never realized how labor intensive it is, how detailed it is. Like when you get into the marketing of it, how you can break it down into different demographics and stuff. And it's just way more 25:18 uh technical  than I ever gave it credit for. So  to all the people that do social media and run their own sites and their own pages,  you have kudos from me because it's way more work than anybody ever gives, probably gives you credit for, you know? It is. And it's funny because I  don't, I do two podcasts. It's easy because I don't go on video ever. 25:46 So I don't get distracted. get to focus on the person I'm talking to.  And it works great. And I keep thinking I really should do video. I don't want to. Probably never will. We'll see what happens.  So I have one more question about the Green Bush Twins and Company project that you're in the middle of, the beginning of. um Is it just California artisans or is it  nationwide? 26:14 No, it's nationwide and eventually I'd like to be, you know, worldwide. um Really, we're all just uh human beings. It doesn't matter if we live uh in Europe or if we live in  the United States or if we live in South America.  We're all just humans trying to  get along and  do our thing. And so  it started here in California because I am here, but it's not 26:43 uh restricted to anyone. I really want it to be an open format where everyone is welcome,  every voice matters, when we get to the part where we can share stories and uh experiences, then we can get there too. uh And it's  really  making those human connections. uh We  as a society have 27:08 lost some of our human connection, right? Because everything's um online now. And although you can connect with people  visually and auditorially, m you lose that touch and that feel. So eventually we'll go out and I'll do um site, like we can call them site visits, but um public appearances in different places and. 27:34 help to bring people into that area. And if anybody ever wants to be involved in the site beyond just being in like a joiner of the community, like if you make things and you think you've got something that you want to  propose to the site, by all means contact me, you know, because that's really what it's meant for. Like  it's to shine a light on those individuals that may be 28:02 uh can't reach out to a lot of people but have stuff that they believe in or they want to promote or  they want to show you that there's an alternative uh product that  you don't have to necessarily use the stuff that  Big Pharma or corporate America tells you  is what is proper to be used.  love that you're doing this, Sydney. Thank you for doing it. 28:32 And I love the concept of your book and I will tell you why. The reason why is because the last probably five or six years have been scary and chaotic and  weird and there is still light in the world. And I think that you are  like one of the brightest lights shining in it right now. Oh, thank you so much. That's sweet. But  I agree with you. I've seen that too.  When  I was a 29:00 a kid, you know, we were always talking about the golden rule. And sometimes you ask kids today and you ask them, do you know what the golden rule is? And they'll say, oh, yeah, that's Bitcoin. And they don't they don't have those little sayings and phrases that we had um growing up. And so it's really to to try and show the younger generation that  even if something looks scary or looks different, 29:27 It's not something to be feared. doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad thing. You know, it could be a great thing, but you won't know until you, you know, try. um so, yeah, it's really something that  has come around because of my time on Little House, but it's kind of the same um lessons and morals, but in a fresh uh format, you know. 29:56 There, for some reason I lost you. Oh, you can hear me now? I said, I here's an older, an old saying for you too. Don't hide your light under a bushel. That's right. That's right. That's a good one. I like that one. Yeah, I'm 56. My mom is 79 and my mom had all kinds. She's still with us by the way. But when I was a kid growing up, she had all kinds of sayings like that. And I remember all of them. 30:23 And I will say them around my grown kids. And they're like, that's so old fashioned.  It's it's funny because you and I are the same  age. I'll be I'll be 56 in May.  But yeah, you you you say that to people and then you go, oh, my God, I sound like my mother. Where did that come from?  Well, I love my mom, so I'm OK with sounding like my mom. And  my dad had sayings, too. He's still with us as well. He's 82. 30:51 I insulted him the other day because I said he was 83 and he was like, I am not. I was like, well, I just gave you back a year of your life then. but, but if you're lucky enough to have parents that share things like don't hide your light under a bushel and do onto others, it's, it's a great thing. Oh yeah. I mean, I, a lot of those little things are 31:18 Because the way Seven Sisters was set up was to be a series of seven different books. so  obviously the first one is easiest because it deals with envy and greed, which are really common themes. then that's some of the later stories are going to be,  know, don't  be afraid to be you. Don't be afraid to be different.  know, not everybody has to be the same thing. And  we're actually better when  we're different, you know. 31:47 So if you come up with any other good things, send them to me. Variety is the spice of life, my dear. That's one for you. Yeah, that's a good one too. All right. Sydney, this was a joy. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. Where can people find you? Well, you can always contact me through the website, is greenbishtwins.com. 32:12 or you can email me at info, I N F O at greenbushtwins.com. And both of those come straight to me. Okay. Fantastic. And your green bush twins and company on Facebook as well. Right.  And Facebook, Instagram, and in LinkedIn, think we have LinkedIn too. All right. Fabulous.  Um, as always, people can find me at a tiny homestead podcast.com and 32:38 Sidney, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your weekend. Oh, you too. And thank you for reaching out to me.  Thank you for having the time. I really appreciate it. All right. Thanks.  

Today I'm talking with Emily and Nathan at Small Scale Rebellion. You can also follow on Facebook. Content Seeds Collective 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 If you're a homesteader who wants to get paid for your content without living on social media, check out SteelSpoonFarm.com. Founder Jen Kibler teaches you how to build a real blog or your email list and use Pinterest for sustainable marketing. Inside her coaching group, Content Seeds Collective, you'll get weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to her Root Seller Resource Library full of tutorials and templates. Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm. 00:26 A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. 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. Today I'm talking with Nathan and Emily at Small Scale Rebellion in Canada, and  Emily told me, where in Canada?  Where in Canada are you, Emily?  We're in the West Kootenays of BC. Okay, thank you.  Welcome, you guys. Good afternoon. How are you? 00:56 We're good. Thanks for having us. Thank you. I always start every podcast with how's the weather? How's the weather where you are? That's a little gloomy. Yeah, we're over winter. It's just dragging on. But the words are coming back and you can kind of tell that spring is just around the corner. So it's like the final stretch. Yeah, I stepped out on my porch about two hours ago, maybe three hours ago now. 01:25 and I could hear birds singing and I was like,  oh, the blackbirds are back. have a, um there's a word. Can't think of it.  We're in a flight pattern for these blackbirds.  They come back every spring. Migration pattern. There we go.  And this is the earliest they've come through in the five years that we've been here. So I think we're looking at an early spring.  Yeah, for sure. It was like a really mild winter,  all things considered here. 01:55 So we are looking forward to hopefully an early spring, but also a moderate fire season because normally if the snowpack isn't very good in the winter here, we have like horrible fires.  So fingers crossed that doesn't happen. I'll cross everything I have for you because wildfires are a terrible thing.  And that does not mean that burns are a terrible thing. 02:22 Burns are important for agriculture and for growing things, but they need to be  not taking down structures that people live in or killing people. So that's my caveat there.  All right. So I was very excited to stumble across you guys on Instagram. Tell me about yourselves and what you do at Small Scale Rebellion. So  we're farmers first and foremost. um Our farm is called Confluence Farms. 02:49 And we started Small Scale Rebellion as a way to teach other farmers how to have profitable farm hubs. a farm hub is composed of four components. It's online ordering, a, help me out here. Home delivery, a collaborative. 03:13 a full diet offering. we do local food aggregation. So we've become like a one-stop shop for all things local.  And then we also do free choice  ordering exclusively.  And so people can order what they want, when they want. And then we even have like a credit-based CSA. So people buy credits to our store. And then that way we get money upfront, very similar to  a CSA, except you don't have to commit to like a weekly CSA box for 20 weeks. You can just pay us. uh 03:43 for credits and then use them whenever you like. And what we discovered is that  when you make eating local easier, a lot more people will start doing it. Yes, because humans love convenience.  And instead of fighting that, I think it's important to,  you know, just embrace it  because if you don't, it's really hard to make it as a farmer. Oh. 04:11 Absolutely. And what you're doing is amazing. So  what made you decide to do this? 04:19 Um,  well, it kind of happened by accident.  We actually started, um, we had this  kind of goal of just growing all of our own food for a year.  And  when you start growing food, you always end up having too much food. And so you end up giving it away to friends and neighbors.  And we were doing that for a few years and then COVID happened  and  we didn't really have, uh, 04:48 That kind of affected our income.  And we were getting ready to grow like a half acre worth of food, which  thinking back now for two people is like an insane amount of food. Like it shouldn't have been growing that much, but we, didn't know what we were doing. We're just like, Oh, let's just grow a little bit of everything. And then COVID happened. And then we were kind of locked inside and thinking of ways to make money and we were already growing food. So we're like, Oh, why don't we just start selling the food that we grow? And so we decided to grow even more food. And then. 05:18 because of lockdowns, like, well, what if we do like online ordering and home delivery? And so we started doing that and then that started taking off.  And then we had an opportunity to move to the Kootenays where we are now and start a farm on  an elderly couple's  homestead who were looking for farmers to come in and kind of take over the farm and to help them with the property. So, and moving here was like our ultimate dream. Like our ultimate dream was to start a farm in the Kootenays. 05:45 And then we just kind of stumbled our way into it. And then, yeah, it's just been kind of growing ever since. we've been refining the model and making it better. And now it's at the point where it can support the two of us full time, full year round with just a half acre and the two of us. no, employees or volunteers. Wow. That's, that's amazing. Okay. I have two questions. First one is what, what are the Kootenays? Is it mountains? 06:13 Very mountainous. Yeah, it's like rural, very rural BC.  We're in the boreal forest. So it's like green mountains in every direction, lots of rivers, huge  freshwater lakes. It's a really, really beautiful and popular area. There's a lot of actually Americans that live here too. It's like an international kind of hub because there's lots of  snowboarding and things like that here too. So there's like Australians and New Zealanders and Americans. 06:42 people from all over the place kind of in this one little unique area.  Okay, thank you. Cause I didn't know what they were and that helps.  Um, and then  if you are growing more than a half an acre of food, you must have equipment. You must at least have like a bobcat tractor or something.  No. we're doing a half acre like exactly.  And it's all by hand. 07:10 That's one of the really like when we started our farm, we had no money like  negative amounts of money  and  we've just been very scrappy  at um Making it work  and  We don't have like a walk-behind tractor. We don't have anything with an engine except for our Delivery vehicle, so it's all no till um regenerative  ag 07:38 And we have permanent beds  and  you know, we just make it work.  Um, and you know, we would have, if we had money in the pat, in like the first couple of years, we definitely would have bought a lot more tools,  but not having the money  made us half to get creative.  so we like borrowed tools, we got tool donations.  Um, we traded neighbors for different services, like tilling. 08:06 And we just kept everything super duper lean  because we don't own our land  and we've had to move our farm three times,  four times  in the past five years.  we just, you know, having a bunch of equipment wasn't  an option.  And it actually turned out to be good because like, what we realized is that you don't actually need to spend a whole lot of money to  farm. 08:36 You just need like really good systems. And then if you do like things like local food aggregation, you can get your sales up by collaborating rather than trying to grow everything yourself. oh So it was a very interesting experiment that actually turned out to be a blessing because, um you know, we've been able to stay small and manageable and profitable with just a very, very simple setup. And very little overhead. And that's also because, you know, you can't really invest. 09:05 in leased land very much. So working within the constraints that we have has been kind of like the theme. Okay. So what do you guys grow? So we focus on growing all of our summer stuff, like everything that's perishable. So we grow kind of like most of the normal things you would see at a farmer's market, know, carrots, beets. 09:35 all the salad greens, the lettuce, cherry tomatoes,  the hits, cucumbers. We also grow flowers,  which we just started a couple of years ago  and  is something that I really love doing. ah So what we don't grow  is all of the storage crops.  And we actually have a very long winter here. So we actually  buy in enough storage vegetables to last us like seven months of sales. So we buy in. 10:04 potatoes, storage carrots, onions, garlic, rutavega. All the root vegetables. All the root vegetables  and those in general come from farms with tractors. So we're leveraging the equipment that other farms have instead of investing in our own.  That's  smart. That's a really great business plan. uh 10:34 Okay. So the other thing I wanted to touch on, as you mentioned, COVID.  I can't believe how many times COVID comes up on this podcast. I swear it should be a drinking game.  If you hear a COVID, take a shot, you know,  and don't do that. I'm joking, but that's how it feels.  And I feel like COVID  really kickstarted what was already a movement into a runaway train.  Yeah. 11:04 One concerning  thing that a pattern that we see and one of the reasons we started Small Scale Rebellion is that there was a lot of farms that started during COVID  and a lot of those farms end up failing, um which is not good for the local food movement  and  we don't want that to happen. So that's why we're sharing everything that we've learned with farmers so that 11:34 you know, we can make local eating mainstream and we can make sure that farmers are thriving instead of just surviving or going out of business.  Yep,  absolutely. And I'm going to say it again,  if you, for the listener, if you don't know your local growers and your local producers,  you should start getting to know them because the supply chain issues that happened during COVID, that's not necessarily a one-time thing. 12:03 It could happen again and again and again. Yeah. I mean, it's inevitable.  It has happened for us before too. It's not just COVID. It's like if there's a natural disaster, like a fire is like the trucks.  But there was another time where trucks, uh, the food trucks couldn't get to where we're at. And some of the shelves went bare again and people were freaking out and they were all,  you know, excited to eat local again and reaching out to local farms. then once,  once the food's back on the shelves, they just. 12:32 people forget and they go back to their normal routine and it's just like this cycle of, you know, fear and then back to normal.  Yeah. And it's so frustrating because I feel like the stuff you get local tastes so much better than what you get at the grocery store.  100%. And I mean, in our area, the price, like, I'm not even, I need to go and do like a more thorough price comparison, but like the prices really aren't 13:01 very different.  And that's probably because we're in a very isolated area  and  it costs a lot to get things to us. And so local things are, you know, naturally a little bit cheaper. But I don't think that the price difference is that big or as big as people think it is in their minds. And then when you add in the fact that 13:30 you know, it's more nutritious  and it's strengthening the local economy, which has like a huge beneficial ripple effect. I think that  local food is the way to go.  Yeah. think it's, um, it's too inconvenient for most people's lives. And so people would eat  local more if it was more convenient. And then that's kind of what we discovered and that's  kind of what we feel. And that's kind of what we're trying to convince other farmers. 14:00 to do because there's this mentality like, the customer needs to go out of their way to support local. Like, why don't they care enough to go out of their way? But what we're saying is like, they do care. They just need to be easier. And if it's easier, they'll do more of it. Mm-hmm.  Yeah. And what I would say the average American, but I think the average human  doesn't realize is that the longer the produce has to travel and has to sit and then is stocked at the grocery store. 14:29 the nutrient denseness of it drops by grand percentages. Yeah. And then you're getting even less value for your money.  Right. Yep. So  again, for the listener, if you want nutrient dense,  really fresh,  good food, find out who your local growers and producers are because you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck. Yeah. And I will, I will. 14:58 I will die on that hill, damn it. Go ahead, Emily, you were going to say. Support them all year round too. Not just during the peak season, like farmers need income year round. Like one of the big things that we have an issue with is like, we have lots of variety of winter crops, but people just lose interest like dramatically during the winter and then they come back in the summer. And like, that's just not a sustainable way to. 15:28 you know, keep farms alive. No, yeah. And it's, it's like a cultural thing. I think, you know, people are used to eating cherry tomatoes and cucumbers all year and they just don't really know how to cook with winter vegetables or they don't care to,  you know, so it's definitely like, we've done a lot of education with our farm around eating seasonally, particularly in the winter. And it's pretty hard to move the needle. Um, but it's something that we're, you know, committed to doing. 15:59 Yes, and I call winter soup season. Yeah. Would you believe that I have not made a single soup this winter because we've been eating a lot of hamburger based meals. I haven't made a single soup this winter and winter is almost over. That is like a sin in my house. I need to make some soup. Damn it. Yeah. Before it's too late. Yeah. And the other thing is I refuse. 16:28 to eat tomatoes from the store in the wintertime because we grow tomatoes here in the summer.  our garden fresh tomatoes are amazing.  And ever since we started doing it, tomatoes from the grocery store tastes like cardboard to me.  The reason I say this is I am really craving bruschetta. I don't know if you guys know what that is. Yeah, really craving it. And I have been debating. uh 16:55 picking up some vine-ripened tomatoes at the store.  Because really what I want it for is that kick you in the face balsamic vinegar and olive oil flavor.  And I suppose that I can spend $15 on crappy tomatoes to get the flavor hit that I want. But I was thinking that maybe I should just pick up some organic  zucchinis, know, the small ones. Cut. 17:22 those up into small pieces and do that instead of tomatoes because the tomatoes here in Minnesota in the winter time  are not great.  No, I mean, it really like  when you can't have something all the time, it makes it way more special when you can have it.  Yep. Yeah.  Yep. That's why we all  love Thanksgiving and Christmas. 17:49 Because there are things associated with Thanksgiving and Christmas that we eat that we don't eat any other time of the year. Mm-hmm. Yeah So I love summertime I We didn't have we didn't have any cucumbers last year because it was so wet and then it was so hot and then it was so wet and then it was so hot that they got blight  and they all died  So there was not  one single cucumber out of our garden last year 18:18 Usually we have great success with cucumbers and I eat a cucumber and tomato every day the minute they start coming in. Yeah. That's Christmas for me.  Yeah.  So I love the name that you chose, Small Scale Rebellion,  because I'm always joking that if you can grow something on your property that feeds you,  you're a rebel.  Yeah. 18:47 And it's true because I don't know what the government is like in Canada, but the government in the United States probably isn't thrilled that we're not spending our hard-earned money on stuff at the grocery store.  We're spending it on seeds so we can have food out of our garden. Yeah. It's,  you know, it's definitely an act of rebellion.  Yup. Be a rebel. Grow something you can eat. 19:17 I need to get t-shirts made.  a rebel. Grow your own food. 19:23 You guys should do that. Do you have t-shirts? Haven't got around to it yet. We haven't even made t-shirts for our personal farm business confluence and it's been like five years. Well, it costs money to get t-shirts printed. So, this food hub thing, is it, are you going to have a website and set it up so that people can find where they can get locally grown food or what's the plan? 19:51 No, the plan is to teach farmers to become  farm hubs on their own. Okay.  And so it's kind of like a franchise model where we teach farmers the business model and then they use their own farm name and their own branding to promote it. Okay.  But it's like a full business model. we build them a website, we teach them how to work with other farms, we teach them marketing, which is lacking uh greatly in the farming community. 20:20 And we just teach them how to manage their money and how to become profitable so that  they can become  this convenient hub for  customers and then also a reliable sales channel for the farmers that they work with in their community. Cause a lot of farmers, like wholesale accounts are kind of dwindling year by year as supermarkets get bigger.  so farmers need wholesale accounts  and  customers need more convenience. So we're trying to kind of promote that whole model. 20:50 But it's all based off of our own  farm hub, which we do have a website for and you know, all of our sales come in through the website. So it's, it's all online ordering with free home delivery  and all of the systems that we teach we've perfected over the last five years  in our own business. What's your delivery radius?  It's like an  hour. 21:19 And a half at most.  So we live in a weird area. It's a very rural  and everywhere is like  minimum 30 minute drive away to go anywhere or do anything. So it's, go to the two  towns that are near us. So one of them is a 40 minute drive and it's a town of like 10,000 people,  maybe a little more. And then the other one is a  20 minute drive and it's like 8,000 people. And then there's like, 21:49 you know, some people in between there. So we basically drive to the town and then we stay within the city limits and then come back home.  OK, so it's not it's not like you're driving eight hours  on way. That would be. Yeah, we've actually been shrinking our delivery zone over the years because,  you know, there's enough people to support us. So at this point, we just need to be more efficient. um And it sucks to kind of like turn people away. But, um you know, your deliveries have to be quick. 22:17 Otherwise you'll spend your whole day driving around. Yeah, so this is a no to lot of people who just like live in the country. You know what I mean? Like we drive straight to town. We stay inside town pretty much. If somebody wanted to get produce from you and they were willing to drive further than that, could they come to your place and pick up produce? 22:40 No, we don't do any pickups. It's only home delivery. also don't have any meetup spots  or any pickups in town. And that's for two reasons.  One, to streamline our process because it just adds a lot of complexity, believe it or not. Communicating with people, arranging a time, making sure that they remember, et cetera, et cetera. Like  it's just not worth it. 23:07 And then also they can't come to the farm because we lease land and our land holder doesn't want people showing up at his house.  That makes sense. I completely forgot that was leased. I know you told me, but I wasn't thinking about that.  Yeah. again, constraints.  Yeah. We stopped doing our CSA because  it  was fine, but we only had a few people who signed up every year. 23:35 And sometimes they would forget and they would have to make a different time to come get stuff and My husband really enjoys going to the farmers market. Nice. Yeah farmers market is on Saturday morning from 8 until noon  That was when we used to have people come pick up the CSA stuff He can make more money on a weekly basis at the farmers market than we ever made through the CSA So we had to make a choice. Yep 24:03 Yeah, it's kind of tough like cutting things out. mean, what do you guys, what are you guys doing now? um Just the farmer's market and we have a farm stand on our property. Okay, nice. Yeah. Yeah. And are you, so are you growing vegetables?  Yes. Yes, we are. And  my husband is the gardener. I always give him all the credit because I am not the one out there in the dirt.  I used to be.  I don't love it as much as he does. So that's his Zen. 24:29 That's what he wants to do and I'm like go play in the dirt. Have fun.  But he grows tomatoes, grows cucumbers, he grows summer squash, he grows winter squash.  He has gotten into growing cabbages. He grew the most beautiful cabbages last spring. Nice. And people loved them. Like he did 50 I think  and when they were done people would be asking him if he had any cabbages. 24:57 And he would say, no, I only planted 50. They're gone. And people, people would be crestfallen on their faces. There were no more cabbages. Yeah.  That's the power of food when it tastes really good. Yeah, it was really sweet. I don't know what variety it was, but it was  really good.  Um, I also found a short season, personal size watermelon variety. Nice. 25:26 that we're gonna try this year.  It's a 60 day watermelon. What's it called? I don't know. I would have to look it up.  And I know exactly where the seed packet is downstairs. We haven't even opened the envelope that they came in yet. So when I open it, I will find out and I will message the variety to you. Cool. Sounds good. I'm sure you guys would love a 60 day watermelon. Oh yeah. I mean, we haven't grown watermelons um since we first started just because of space. 25:55 We're at the point where a half an acre is not really enough space, but we don't have other, we don't have anywhere to expand into. our climate is our growing season so short. Like you can, you can barely even grow a buttermoth here cause it won't ripen in time. I'm so sorry. It pretty much shows like the worst place to start a farm. Well, Canada has a short growing season. 26:25 over much of the country,  Yeah. And it's also very snowy here. Yeah. mean, I'm in Minnesota. I'm right over the border from you. I mean, I'm not. I'm like eight, 10 hours from the border. But  we have  a shorter growing season and we don't plant anything  usually until Mother's Day  because by Mother's Day, we're pretty sure the last frost has happened. Yeah. 26:56 Yeah, we had one year where we had a frost on June 15th and it killed all of our tomatoes. They frosted back down to the ground, but then they bounced back and they were fine. And we actually had tomatoes only like one or two weeks later than normal. It  was quite the experience. Huh, I didn't know they'd bounce back. They had established enough where 27:23 They did. They sprouted from the base of the plant. They were very, very, um,  branched that year, but they were fine.  Huh?  I did not know that. I will have to let my husband know we may have to do an experiment. Yeah, just give them a few weeks to see what happens. if they're, if they got roots, you know, they'll bounce back. So if you think about how many like runners they, they, they give out, right? Yeah. They'll just do that from the base. Okay. 27:53 Well, we have a hard-sided greenhouse that we're going to be starting seeds in here. I think he said this weekend. I'm not sure. It might be next weekend. But we've never started seeds in there before. We've had it up for two seasons now. A lot of people are writing. I asked him the other day, said, are you going to bring in the seed trays and do them on the kitchen table? And he said, no, we're starting them in the greenhouse this year. Nice. 28:20 And I said, are you sure you want to do that?  And he said, yes, I do. He said, because I've been keeping track of how much. OK, little tiny backstory. Most people who listen to the podcast have heard this before, but you guys probably have not. um We have IBC totes that we painted black filled with water  in the greenhouse.  as the sunlight comes in the greenhouse, heats up the water and it disperses the heat at night when it cools off outside. 28:49 And so usually by mid-March, it's not gonna get below, it's not even gonna get near 32 degrees Fahrenheit in there overnight. It's gonna stay at like 50, 55. And for seedlings, that's perfect. So this is the first year we're starting the seeds in the greenhouse. And I am nervous. I am very nervous that this is not gonna work and he's gonna be really, really disappointed. 29:17 As I keep saying to everybody, keep your fingers crossed that this works. For sure.  Well, know,  the ceilings are, they're very cold hardy when they're started cold. Like we don't have a nursery.  We've never used a nursery.  And I start my seeds and I put them outside way before you're supposed to with some cover, but they, you know, seem to do fine. As long as you're  very, um, 29:45 careful about starting them cold and not like giving them a huge shock.  Plants  hate, hate shock from temperature changes. Yeah. They do not enjoy it and they may survive it, but I'm, I'm just praying and I'm not a praying girl, but I am praying that this, this goes well because if it does, it means that  two springs from now we can really do a whole lot more. 30:15 Yes. Because the greenhouse is over 15 feet by 25 feet.  So it's a good size greenhouse. Yeah, nice. Yep. Very, very excited about all the things that it opens up for us. anyway, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're almost there. Where can people find you?  You can find us on Instagram. 30:42 Small scale rebellion or also our farm account is called Confluence Farms Kootenays. Okay.  Awesome. I hope that people go and look at your stuff because I think what you're doing is amazing. Thanks, Mary. We appreciate that. All the best, you guys. Thank you. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Nathan and Emily, thank you so much for your time. I hope you have a good rest of your day. Thank you. Thanks. You too.  

Today I'm talking with Kody at Homestead Education. You can also follow on Facebook. Save 15% off on the quail incubation for profit course!  Code "QUAIL15"    Content Seeds Collective 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 Mary talks with Cody Hanner from The Homestead Education in Idaho about homeschooling through agriculture, raising heritage pigs, and building a life centered around food, family, and practical skills. Cody shares how a life changing health diagnosis in her family led them to move to Idaho, embrace homesteading, and rethink how children learn. They discuss how agriculture can teach real world math, science, history, and problem solving while helping kids understand where their food comes from. Cody also explains how she turned her family’s farm learning experiences into a widely used homeschool agriculture curriculum now used in multiple countries. The conversation explores the importance of applied learning, the lost knowledge around food production, and how rebuilding those skills can strengthen families and communities. They also dive into homestead topics like raising quail, food preservation traditions, and why character and rural etiquette matter when building strong communities. Topics Covered How a health crisis led Cody’s family to homesteading Teaching math, science, and history through farm life Creating an agriculture based homeschool curriculum Why applied learning helps kids retain knowledge The connection between food, history, and holidays Raising heritage pigs and supporting local 4 H programs Why more people are returning to homesteading skills Raising quail for eggs, meat, and income Teaching character, responsibility, and rural traditions Resources Mentioned The Homestead Education curriculum and resources Homestead business and food safety coaching Holiday based agriculture lessons for homeschoolers Where to Find Cody Website: TheHomesteadEducation.com Podcast: The Homestead Education Podcast Social: The Homestead Education on Facebook and Instagram

Today I'm talking with Cally at Salt & Fern Bakehaus. You can also follow on Facebook. Market Entry Fund Content Seeds Collective 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 If you're a homesteader who wants to get paid for your content without living on social media, check out SteelSpoonFarm.com. Founder Jen Kibler teaches you how to build a real blog or your email list and use Pinterest for sustainable marketing. Inside her coaching group, Content Seeds Collective, you'll get weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to her Root Seller Resource Library full of tutorials and templates. Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm. 00:26 A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Sealspoon Farm. 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. Today I'm talking with Cally at Salt and Fern Bakehouse in North Mankato, Minnesota. Good morning, Cally. How are you? Good morning. I am really happy to be here. 00:50 I'm glad to have you and I'm really glad that I didn't screw up the introduction because I have been stumbling over my words the last few episodes and I'm like,  get it together, Mary. You know how to do this. That's moving for a cup of coffee. Yeah, I'm telling you. It's crazy. um Normally, I would say, how's the weather? But since you're about half an hour for me, I'm guessing the sun has just broken through the rain clouds from this morning. 01:15 It's still pretty cloudy here, unfortunately, but I'm sure the sun will be on its way. know we've got some 50 and 60 degree days coming up. I cannot wait. I am so excited. I am so ready for this winter to be over. Me too. Get me in the garden. Yep. Right there with you. My husband is itching. I said to him, I said, are you going to get seeds planted in the seed trays on the kitchen table this weekend? And he said, there will be no seedlings in the house this year. What? 01:44 And I said, okay, he said, I am starting everything in the greenhouse. Oh my gosh. Do have an exterior greenhouse or like those rollable ones? We have like a, I think it's 25. I don't, I don't know the exact dimensions. It is probably 15 by 30 feet. It is a, it's not one of the hoop houses. It's a hard sided greenhouse. What a dream. 02:12 Yes, I applied for a grant a couple of years ago and got the grant and the grant was to go for a greenhouse. So we are very... that through U of M Extension? It was through the market and entry fund. Okay. I'll have to take a peek at that someday. Yeah, I can send you the link to the website if you would like it. Please. That sounds fantastic. Yep. it's been up. The greenhouse has been up for two seasons now, but... 02:39 He's been leery about starting seeds in there because we had to figure out a way to  use the sunlight without using the solar generator panels. And so we put water in IBC totes and we painted the IBC totes black.  so starting about now when the sun is out and it's pouring into the greenhouse, it heats up the water and then the water disperses the heat at night. That's brilliant. 03:09 So this is the first year we're brave and we're going to try starting the seeds, you know, in the greenhouse. That's so exciting. What a new journey. We're very lit up about this around here and I'm just keeping everything I have crossed that it works because we sell at the farmer's market in the summer and if those babies die, we have to start again. So keep everything you have crossed for me that this works. 03:36 Absolutely, I will. Are you selling at Mankato or like up in Liss- because you're in Lissour, right? Yeah. Yeah, we sell at the Lissour Farmers Market. I'll have to come give that a peek sometime. Is that usually Saturdays? Yeah, Saturday morning from 8 until noon. 03:52 That sounds so fun. Yep. And it's a very  busy, very robust, very friendly group of people who've been there. Oh,  yeah. I'm definitely going to have to come give that a peek. Yeah. It's really fun.  it's,  I don't want to say it's really diverse, but there are definitely  some different things. People sell crafts there too.  Ooh.  Like everything from lotions to artwork? um 04:20 I don't know about artwork, but there's a guy that takes traidel sewing machines and makes them into tractors, makes them look like tractors. There's a guy who does jewelry, like  pendants and stuff.  And there's a lady who is in her eighties who sells eggs every summer. And there's like three or four people selling baked goods. And that wasn't the case a couple summers ago,  but this past summer. 04:49 there were like four or five people selling baked goods there.  I wonder if that's just a sign of the economic times that people are starting to get out there and  utilize their skills in a financially helpful way or if that's just like they just decided to pick it up at that time. I have no idea but  my husband ends up bringing home treats because everybody's sharing  and there's a lady who makes lemon cookies that are to die for. oh 05:17 That sounds really delicious.  when he comes home with lemon cookies, he is he is like all stars in my book.  I bet they don't last too long on the counter, huh? No. And he usually brings back like they're small. They're maybe the size of a half dollar or so. Perfect. So if you bite that, if he brings home six, they're mine and they're gone in about 10 minutes.  What a blessing.  I love it. I love lemon.  All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. 05:46 Well,  I  obviously, you know that I have my little bakery, my salt and fern bakehouse um started out doing sourdough a couple years back. I think I believe I started during the pandemic um and then started selling about a year and a half ago now. um It was just something a little therapeutic and I like keeping things alive. this sourdough starter was uh the next logical step, I guess. um 06:16 And then people liked it and I was like, well, maybe  I can be a neighborhood baker, even if I'm not gonna have an actual shop open. I can at least provide Mankato with a few extra loaves. uh And uh I like knowing where a lot of my food comes from. Local food is really important to me. My degree back in the day was with food systems, consumers and markets. So  I am under the impression that honestly,  buying local. 06:45 does more for the environment than even  specifically buying organic  can help because of the gas mileage that it takes. um It seems like buying local saves a lot of energy costs as well as em you tend to hold people responsible more when you actually know  where you're getting your product from.  for sure.  And every dollar you spend locally stays local for the most part. 07:15 Exactly, exactly. So back in the local economy and ah that can only help my neighbors further. Yep,  absolutely. uh We actually don't have any eggs in our farm stand this morning because somebody bought the last six dozen last night. Whoa. And I feel bad that there's no eggs in the farm stand today.  How many chickens you guys have? 18. Nice, a good number, a solid chicken math number. Yes, it's not crazy. It's not too few. It's not too many. That's so smart. 07:45 But yes, I am. I swear I say get to know your local farmer and producer on every episode of this that I do because I am such a proponent for it because it is crazy to me that  we can buy eggs from California at our local grocery stores. Yeah, which is wild because Minnesota used to have some of the most  chicken farmers  to my understanding in the nation.  I don't know if that's true to this day, but it used to be. 08:15 Yeah, I don't know. And again, I'm going to repeat myself as I do. It is coming up on bird flu season, season for this. And I want, I want my neighbors to be able to have eggs. So if eggs go up in price again at the stores because of egg, because of bird flu, I want my neighbors to know that they have another source where they can pay $5 a dozen, not 10 or $12 a dozen. So right. True. 08:43 I'm lucky enough to have both my sister-in-law and my mom-in-law both raise chickens and then I have another friend in Mapleton who also raises chickens so they're usually pretty willing to trade bread for eggs when I'm in need which is, you know, even cheaper than a  cash payment in my life. Oh, absolutely.  Speaking of sourdough, I just got my new sourdough starter started on Tuesday. Do you have a name for them yet? I don't name them. Fair enough. 09:12 I figure that they're probably gonna die so I don't name them. Once I get one that actually lives for longer than a month and a half, I'll start naming it. Did you start it yourself or is this do you receive them from other people and then keep them alive? I received the first one last year from a friend  and I was moving the jar over to my island to feed it and I dropped the jar and it shattered. No,  RIP.  Yeah, so that one went away real quick. 09:41 And then I decided to start my own and they were doing, did two and they were doing really well. And then they got the dreaded pink mold. No, no. And you can't come back from that. Nope. Those went in the trash too. And I was very disappointed because they were at that point where you put the spoon in and you dragged the spoon through it and it crackles because of all the bubbles.  That's so satisfying.  I was so mad.  So I started this one last Tuesday  and yesterday I pulled half of it out and added the 10:09 the flour in the water and stirred it up and I looked at it this morning and it's got bubbles all around the glass. I was like, okay, so another three, four, five days and maybe I can make a loaf. Maybe. I will be crossing my fingers and toes for you. That is the most exciting part. It is. And I've made two loaves so far. And I know this episode is not supposed to be about me, but I've made two loaves. The first one. 10:38 came out okay. was slightly undercooked and it was almost like a bagel texture. And it was yummy. I didn't even care that it wasn't not all the way cooked because I love bagels. Like the flavor, you can't beat the flavor of sourdough. It just doesn't compare to anything that you can find on grocery store shelves that's made to last. I know sourdough will disappear usually before it can mold luckily, otherwise it molds within a week. 11:07 And then my grocery store loaves will sit there for two months and still look like they did before we even, look like they did when we got them in the first place. Which is really scary. The second loaf I did, it was less undercooked, less baggily. Nice. like I was making progress and then I got the pink mold and had to stop. So did you know you can freeze some of your starter as well? I'm going to do that this time. Good choice. 11:36 Good choice, because then you can always bring it back.  way if anything happens to the one that's going, I will have a backup because  I really like the fact that I'm trying to do this because I don't like store-bought sourdough because it's so sourdough. Sure. Well, do you know why that is? No. Okay, so grocery stores, don't have enough time to do the three-day process that it usually takes to make a true loaf of sourdough. So they often are a yeasted dough. 12:06 that adds like essence of sourdough into it to make it sour, but it doesn't have the fermentation process that a true sourdough has. Oh, yeah, it's not my favorite thing. Yeah, so I learned that in the process of screwing up the first attempt, that it doesn't have to be super sour to still have the benefits of sourdough. Yeah, it's still, the yeast is still eating all of the sugars out of it. 12:33 not out of it, out of it, but like making it way more digestible. Yes. And I don't love the sour sour dough. So when I learned that I could make bread that I actually like to taste of that I would get the benefits from, I was very excited. Life changing, truly. Your sandwiches will never be the same.  No. And there's something about the chew of a sour dough bread that I love. It's dense. It can actually hold up to like a BLT, a juicy garden tomato won't just fall right through it. 13:04 So  I have all kinds of great things to say about sourdough. I love sourdough now that I know about it. And now I know it doesn't have to taste like vinegar.  Helpful. So made me very happy to discover this. And if my friend hadn't given me the starter a year ago or whatever it was,  I wouldn't be doing it now. Well, I'm glad you're here with us. Yeah, I've been assimilated.  It's always wonderful when your friends invite you into their adventure. Truly. 13:31 That's how we get to be curious and grow together and then maybe have a little guidance where we need it when we're just starting out. So tell me about your cottage kitchen because I was looking at your Facebook page and it looks like you have some pretty hefty equipment. So  how are you doing this? um Well,  I  just got a new simply bread oven earlier this year and it just got hooked up as of basically yesterday. 13:58 um So that's my heftiest piece of equipment because I've otherwise just been baking two loaves at a time in my Dutch ovens  and that was you know, if you're baking from 5 a.m. Until 10 11 p.m. Before a market it's a little  more exhausting So my capacity to be able to do 12 loaves at once now is going to be absolutely life-changing 14:21 Oh, yes. Oh, I screamed.  was just completely overjoyed and then had my husband and four of his buddies come help carry it inside because that was not a one-man job. uh And then I also have uh a new mixer that allows me to do 10 loaves uh at a time that was a lot more helpful than trying to mix all of my dough by hand. I might even upgrade this year to have a second one  so my timing can be more. uh I can do more loaves in the same amount of time again. 14:52 Do you have all of this in a small house or how is this working? Yeah, it's just uh a typical Midwestern  Rambler  kitchen. um I have a pretty big dining room table that most of the stuff gets set upon.  My sister is a carpenter and she built it for me. And yeah, I think it's like an eight foot table and it's real sturdy so it can handle all the shakes that come from the mixer. uh But yeah, most of it. 15:21 Probably most of my work takes place within a like a 10 foot square of my house. Wow. And honestly, I say wow and I shouldn't because I used to make like major meals in a galley style kitchen at our old house. So I know. get it. I know what can be done. It's just it's just that I always think that things are much, much bigger than they are. It's why I've been like, oh, people are like, oh, when are you going to open a physical location? I'm like,  I'm not. 15:49 I can get everything done here in this small space without paying for a lease. Yeah, that's a smart way to do it and it keeps your profits coming to you not going into rent. That's the hope. Because most of the businesses that I've seen that did take that step in my childhood, they never made it to the seven-year mark. Have you heard that thing of like, if you make it to seven years, you can be established there for 20, 30, 40. But if you don't make it to the seven-year mark, then you were kind of always doomed. 16:19 Yeah, I have. And it's either three years or seven years for any business. Sure. Sure, sure, Yeah. So I'm nervous to like start that and start that timer. I'm like, I'll just keep baking out of my kitchen until capacity is such that I cannot handle what people are asking for anymore. Yes. And that leads me to my next question. uh You started this a year two ago. So how is business? it? 16:46 Is it robust? Is it growing? Is it stagnant? How is it going? I would say in general, it's growing. I've been kind of on a two-ish month hiatus with the newborn. ah All of my brain cells have kind of gone into that small child at the moment, but I'm starting up again this weekend ah with the first experimental loaves out of the new oven.  And uh in general, I would say I probably have been selling, you know, when I was still going whole hog at this, I was probably selling 17:16 10 to 15 loaves a week on my Monday pickup days.  But then every time I would do an actual market, like at the Mankato Makerspace, I would sell out within three hours, no matter how much product I made. um So I feel like if I can start doing farmers markets this year, that would really be an excellent opportunity on my end.  And then I would probably continue doing the weekly pickups, although I'm 17:41 trying to decide if more people would be willing to do pickups if I made pick up day Saturday instead of Monday. But I just figured like, oh, you want to start your work week with fresh bread instead of start your weekend with it. But  there's a lot of experimentation and growth yet to still happen. I feel very  young in my process of this all, which is kind of crazy that people have been  appreciating what I've been doing to the extent they have because I feel so 18:10 Not unprepared, just it's unexpected to be appreciated in the way it's been. Yes, yes. I know exactly what you're talking about because we all suffer from imposter syndrome. When we start something new, it's like, OK, I'm going to try this. Yeah. Then it goes well. The first whatever span of time. And the further you get into it, you're like, I got a handle on this. 18:39 and then you take that next step. And then you go through it again. Do I know what I'm doing? Who am I to try this? Right. Who am I to explain it to other people? And I still feel like there's miles and miles of knowledge still yet to be gained before I could call myself any kind of a true  expert or baker in general. I still feel like such a novice. And then my friends are like, no, you're awesome. You can teach me these things. like, I don't feel like that's a huge responsibility. 19:08 I'm still making so many mistakes. What do you mean? Yeah, but every journey starts with the first step. True. And I'm willing to make a million of those because I'm a curious,  nonsensical human. Yes, I'm like that too.  I started this podcast over two and a half years ago now. That's awesome. I had no idea  how to do it,  where to start. And I just Googled everything and made notes and drove myself crazy. 19:37 for three months before I ever record an episode. That's awesome. And I mean, you know, the school of YouTube definitely helps for a lot of things like that as well, I imagine. I didn't even really look at YouTube. Really? Helpful. Nice though. Good.  Nope. I just went out and looked at what other people did on their podcasts.  And then I typed in, how do I start a podcast in Google? Word. And all kinds of help. So. 20:06 If  for the listener, if you want to start something that you're interested in, try it. Yeah, just do it. Just take the first step. It does not have to be perfect. No. And if you find out you hate it, you don't have to keep doing it. True sunk cost fallacy.  It's it's real and you don't have to do it. Yeah.  And no one's going to punch you in the face for trying something new. No. And then you'll know more about yourself when you come out of it.  Uh huh. Yep. 20:35 Absolutely. I am again a proponent of people following their dreams. Don't drown in them. If they're not going well, don't keep doing it. Right. But try it. You never know what's going to happen. Give it a shot, man. Yeah, absolutely.  And I'm old. I'm 56 years old and I started a podcast when I was 53 or 54. If I can do this, anybody can do something. 21:01 I feel like is not even that old these days. I feel like you  have so much more of sense of yourself at 54 that you probably have more freedom. I think that's what actually saved me. Is that I was like, nobody cares. Nobody cares what I do. I am not out to impress anybody anymore. I'm just gonna try it.  And that's what frees you. Like then you can just do exactly what you want because it's like, well, who cares? Who's gonna tell me no? No one. No one is gonna... 21:31 like yell at me for trying new things these days. Yes, and if you're 16 years old, the same thing holds true.  You don't have to be constrained by other people's opinions. You have to be true to yourself. I feel like that's a much harder lesson to learn at 16 than in my  30s.  Oh, I would never have done anything like this at 16, ever. 21:57 Do think it's because of the communities we've built up that we know have our backs or is it just our sense of self?  I think that when we are in our teens, we're trying to  rebel and conform at the same time. um And when you're trying to rebel and conform at the same time, you find yourself very confused, very insecure and very not sure of what you should do. That feels accurate. 22:25 And I think once you turn 40, especially as a woman, that's the time where you're like, okay, I have tried to conform. I have tried to rebel. I have found middle ground. I'm going to stay in the middle ground for a while and just be me. And then we're newsflash happy, crazy, happier. Yeah. Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully fingers crossed. But I don't think the age is the thing that that should keep anyone from trying out. 22:55 something that they're interested in. No, definitely not. It's  just about exposure. I'm really proud of you for doing what you're doing, especially with a brand new baby at home.  Thanks. I've just always wanted to have a family. think  my ADHD is kind of a superpower in the kind of life that I want to live between 23:18 Okay, well want to know everything about raising a child. I want to know everything about raising a garden. I want to know everything about starting a business and starting to bake all these things. Like, being able to bounce between all the different interests has made my life kind of more manageable and my mental health happier. Well good, because you've got to take care of you first. uh So  I'm assuming that you saw the email that went out a while ago from the cottage food. 23:47 law stuff in Minnesota about that we're going to be able to ship in Minnesota starting in I think 2027. Yes,  I'm excited to see it, but I'm nervous to see if people are going to be willing to pay whatever the shipping costs are. Yeah, and it's going to depend on on how heavy the thing is that you're sending them. Because I mean, one of my loaves is two pounds already. So I  mean, if people are going to ship canned goods, that can't be cheap either. 24:15 You know, honestly, I would never ship canned goods. I just wouldn't do it. I  would be so worried about it coming shattered.  Yep, I wouldn't even try. My mom lives in Maine, and obviously I'm in Minnesota, and she makes the best canned green beans.  I love them. They're one of my favorite things on earth. She offered to ship me a couple jars, and I said, please don't. 24:41 She said, why you love them? And I said, because if they show up broken, I will just cry for days. Don't ship me green beans. Just devastating.  Oh, it would be ridiculous. I would be crying over green beans and my husband would walk in the door and be like, what? Who died? And I'll be like, green beans died. OK, you know  the travesty. But um I am very excited about the fact that we're finally going to be able to ship in Minnesota because a couple of years ago. 25:09 someone asked me if I could ship my granola to them in Northern Minnesota. And  I couldn't because you're not allowed to until whatever the date is in 2027 now. And I had to tell them no. I believe it's August.  Good. And I mean, that's only another year and a half away. But I was I was just so frustrated. And  I for the life of me do not understand. 25:37 And I've ranted about this before and I'm going to shorten it up on this one.  I don't understand because if it's a  producer to consumer situation,  if someone in Northern Minnesota orders granola from me, I make it in my cottage food registered business in my kitchen.  I package it in my kitchen.  I take it to the post office. I get a tracking number for it. 26:07 It goes to the home of the person that opened it or ordered it and they receive it and it has a tracking number. 26:16 You can track where it was made. You can track who it went to. Yep.  It's  it's driving me crazy. I do not understand.  And why did they decide that we could ship in Minnesota, but we can't ship out of state? I wonder if that's due to other people's cottage laws. Like, have you looked at New York's cottage laws compared to ours? No.  So strict, ridiculously strict to the point where it probably wouldn't even be worth it to have a cottage license because you can't 26:45 bake anything. Like maybe you could do a single loaf of bread with no inclusions. Because I don't think you can use chocolate in a bunch of things. can't use like it's  yeah,  I feel grateful for the freedom we do have in Minnesota, but also feeling like there's so much farther we have to go yet. Well, on my other podcast that I do with my co-host, my co-host was telling me that um for the first time in 250 years, which is how long we've been a country this year, 27:15 that our government representatives are as far removed from agriculture as they've ever been. True. And so I feel like sometimes the people who are making the laws  don't have a working knowledge  about what they're making the laws about. That feels really accurate. They might know politics and they know nothing else and then it's they create unreasonable standards. Yes. 27:45 They also are some of the people who are like, I don't need to buy sourdough from Cali in Mankato when I can go to Hy-Vee and buy a loaf of sourdough bread. Yeah, it's about convenience, suppose. Which additionally, I wish that one of the rules that had changed for 2027 had been that we would be able to occasionally sell our goods at a co-op or like I've been reached out to by 28:15 Have you heard of Seal Foods  in lower North Mankato?  I may have.  They're fantastic and an incredible Asian grocery store. The only one that I'm aware of in southern Minnesota. uh they would have loved to work with me on making a milk bread to go with like a whipped cream and strawberry sandwich. But I'm not allowed to sell my bread to them to use in their deli stuff. Because of the commercial kitchen. Exactly. Exactly. And so I'm like, I know. 28:44 I know that my stuff is safe, but I'm not willing to risk my business in doing that. So I'm wondering if that'll be another change that maybe  we'd see in five years, or if by that time I'll just have  access to a commercial kitchen space that would be able to follow the rule of that law.  You might. Stranger things have happened. True. ah So tell me, I'd like to keep these to half an hour and we got a couple of minutes left. Sorry.  No, you're good. 29:13 Tell me about the Mankato Maker Space. my gosh. Okay, so they are this incredible, like if you are into skill learning and mutual aid, that is the place for you. um They can teach people how to do anything from  metalsmithing to pottery to woodsmithing or carpentry and uh jewelry making, 3D printing. Like if you want to learn a hands-on artistic crafting or building skill,  chances are they will have the 29:41 tool and the teacher for you. um can either take classes there or you can, um if you have a project in mind, you can become a member there and then  as long as you take the safety courses, you can just use the tools yourself.  They also put on markets for crafters to come in a few times a year and sell their wares there. So I'm not, uh I'm friends with a lot of people that help run it, but I'm not technically a member myself, but I come to all of the craft fairs that I possibly can. 30:09 uh And they also have these new things called Fix-It Clinics,  where  they're working with the community to  maybe they have a couple volunteers and you can help fix a lamp. So it's  helping the right to repair uh community as well. Like  they're just so involved in getting people  skills and opportunities to build that I think a lot of us have lost.  They've always been so impressive to me. When I went to one of their events for the very first time when I first moved here about five years ago, um 30:40 I  grew up in the church. I'm no longer part of a church. But walking into their event, where it people of all ages, all backgrounds, just kind of curious and loving on each other, felt like what I imagine other people experience in a church. Very nice. I'm going to have to get hold of them and see if somebody will talk to me on the podcast. I bet they would. They're really, truly fantastic. Yeah, because I'd love to get the word out about them.  Do you know if they have set hours? 31:07 I believe they do have set hours, but they're quite extensive. I want to say it's like 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Don't quote me. Well, you're obviously quoting me on a podcast, like it's fairly long hours availability wise. I'll look them up and put the links in the show notes so people get. All right, Callie, this went really fast. Holy cow. I love to gab. All right. Where can people find you? 31:32 I am on Facebook under Salt and Fern Bakehouse,  Bakehouse is B-A-K-E-H-A-U-S. uh So Instagram, Facebook, and then I have a Bake-See, which is where they can put their orders in. And hopefully I will be back in ordering business by the end of the month. Well, I hope you are, but I'm going tell you having raised four kids,  make sure that you get rest and make sure that you enjoy that baby before he's too big. 32:00 Oh, we are getting all of the cuddles. That boy does not want to sleep unless he is on top of me or my husband. So we are attached to the hip.  Do not sacrifice this time when you're first baby because it doesn't come back. That's very good advice. I will keep that close to my heart. Yeah. I hate to, I hate to sound like your mom, but I've been through it and you don't get it back.  All right. You can, as always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com. Kelly, thank you for sharing your time with me. I appreciate it. 32:29 Absolutely. Great talking with you. You too. Have a great day. You too.  

Today I'm talking with Rebecca at Thieving Otter Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. Content Seeds Collective 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 Episode Show Notes Guest: Rebecca Lynch Farm: Thieving Otter Farm Location: Tennessee Host: Mary Lewis In this episode of A Tiny Homestead, Mary chats with Rebecca Lynch of Thieving Otter Farm in Tennessee. What starts with a conversation about unpredictable winter weather quickly turns into a fascinating deep dive into otters, quail, chicken genetics, deer hunting, ADHD superpowers, and planning ahead in homestead life. In This Episode The Story Behind Thieving Otter Farm Rebecca shares the heartwarming story behind her farm’s name. After setting up trail cameras on her wooded six acres, she discovered river otters visiting her creek and pond. Despite their habit of stealing fish, Rebecca could not be happier. From spotting baby otters to watching an entire family swim by, these “fish bandits” inspired the name Thieving Otter Farm. Raising 4,000 Coturnix Quail Rebecca is primarily known for raising Coturnix quail, and she estimates she has around 4,000 birds. She explains: The difference between domestic Coturnix quail and wild bobwhite quail Why Coturnix quail thrive in smaller spaces How they can be ideal for homesteaders in areas with HOA or city restrictions The importance of understanding wildlife conservation when it comes to releasing captive birds Rebecca also shares her journey from casually accepting a dozen quail in 2020 to becoming deeply involved in quail genetics, writing standards, and judging international shows. Developing New Chicken Breeds Rebecca is currently developing two new chicken breeds, with the ambitious goal of becoming only the second woman to have a breed accepted by the American Poultry Association. She discusses: How her first line, affectionately called “Mop Tops,” began with mixed breed birds with crests The selective breeding process for temperament, egg size, body type, and color A second accidental breed that started from a mystery chick that did not match its hatchery label The long, detailed process required to stabilize a breed before applying for APA recognition Her birds are known for sweet temperaments and prolific laying, including large brown eggs. ADHD as a Homesteading Superpower Rebecca was recently diagnosed with ADHD at age 47, and she reflects on how it has shaped her homesteading journey. From raising thousands of quail to out hunting the guys during deer season, she embraces her tendency to dive deep and go all in on new interests. Mary shares similar experiences from her own homestead, including experimenting with rabbits, planting fruit trees, and considering quail after her husband fell down a research rabbit hole. Avian Flu and Planning Ahead The conversation turns to avian influenza and how outbreaks impact egg prices and poultry availability. They discuss: The risks associated with migrating waterfowl Biosecurity challenges with free range systems Strategic planning for adding laying hens before potential outbreaks The importance of thinking one season ahead in homestead life As always, homesteading involves balancing opportunity with responsibility. About Thieving Otter Farm Rebecca raises Coturnix quail and is actively working to develop two new chicken breeds with strong genetics, excellent temperaments, and productive laying ability. You can learn more at: thievingotterfarm.com Sponsor This episode is sponsored by Steel Spoon Farm. Founder Jen Kibler teaches homesteaders how to build a sustainable blog or email list and use Pinterest for long term marketing without relying on social media algorithms. Inside the Content Seeds Collective, members receive weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to the Root Seller Resource Library. Join for $37 per month at SteelSpoonFarm.com. Connect with the Podcast Find more episodes and resources at: atinyhomesteadpodcast.com Follow along on Facebook at: A Tiny Homestead Podcast If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow homesteader and leave a review. It helps more people find these real conversations with farmers, food producers, and makers across the country.

Today I'm talking with Caitlyn at Quirky Quail Acres.   Content Seeds Collective 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 If you're a homesteader who wants to get paid for your content without living on social media, check out SteelSpoonFarm.com. Founder Jen Kibler teaches you how to build a real blog or your email list and use Pinterest for sustainable marketing. Inside her coaching group, Content Seeds Collective, you'll get weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to her Root Seller Resource Library full of tutorials and templates. Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm. 00:26 A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. 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. Today I'm talking with Caitlin  at  Quirky Quail Acres in North Mankato, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Caitlin. How are you? Hi there. I'm well. How are you? I'm good, except I can't get through an introduction without stumbling all over myself today. I don't know what's going on. 00:57 Um,  so I would normally ask about the weather because that's the question I ask on every single podcast episode, but you're only half an hour away from me.  So I'm guessing it's sunny outside. Yep. Sunny and feeling balmy compared to yesterday. No doubt. Yesterday was terrible. I mean, it was pretty, but it was cold. Yeah, it hurt. It hurt, especially after  tank top weather last weekend. Yeah. 01:24 Yeah, that was really nice. And I knew it was fall, spring, but I was like, I will take it. It's a good reprieve. All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. OK, so I again, I'm Caitlin and I am a mom and I work full time and we have our little farm here just outside of North Mankato, Minnesota. We 01:53 He are kind of jack of all trades sort of farm. We raise quail and we raise chickens and we have an orchard and we have a very large garden. Hopefully this year we'll also have a greenhouse. We also tap all of our own maple trees and we make maple syrup. And we also have, we. 02:20 We volunteer at a nearby shelter. So we have three rescue dogs.  Um, it's just chaos all the time.  It sounds amazing to me.  Well, we're right there with you on the big garden  and we have 20 apple trees. We have  one huge wild plum tree. have some Alden plum trees. We have peach trees. have rhubarb. 02:48 We do have a greenhouse. have chickens, we have a dog and we have five barn cats. So  there's a lot of overlap there between you and I. 02:59 I freaking love it. Yeah, no, I wouldn't choose anything different. um I'm so passionate about it. And it's I've never been one to like I don't want to go to the gym to exercise, but I want to be I want to be active all the time. I want to be I want to be moving and working. And I like I like the hard work and I like feeling accomplished at the end of the day.  Absolutely. 03:26 So the reason that I asked you to be on the podcast, I have a little tiny ulterior motive and I don't usually.  My husband and I have been talking about maybe getting a few quail and seeing how they do.  And I'm guessing you know a lot about quail. So  can you tell me all about quail today? Yeah, absolutely. So we,  we raise Coturnix quail  because A, they are the largest variety that 03:56 and that you can  own really. um You don't need a special permit like you do for other species of quail because they are considered a domesticated species. uh Whereas for like, bobwhite, you would need a game permit.  And also  they don't lay as many eggs. um They  are smaller birds, so they're not really good meat birds. Generally people raise 04:23 Bob White for dog training and stuff. we're not,  again, our dogs are,  they're pound dogs there.  They'd be useless for that. um Anyway,  and  Coturnix quail lay about 300 eggs a year. um We  don't raise exclusively jumbo because we like to go for a good mix of colors in our birds too, just because it's, you know, it's nice to have a pretty bird that you're raising also. So we 04:53 focus more  on um egg and feathering  color genetics, but they are highly productive.  are their eggs are so nutritious when you compare them  side by side with like an equal weight of a chicken egg.  The nutritional profile is just phenomenal because they are heavier in the yolk. So then they have all of that additional um 05:22 nutrition to go with that. We find them very, very easy to raise. They were kind of our poultry introductory species. My husband had been wanting to raise birds for some time and I was kind, I knew, I knew that I would be doing the majority of the work and so I kind of said, whoa, hey, we're not going to dive in head first. 05:48 until I feel really prepared for this, let's try quail first because they require less space, they mature faster, they're productive enough that it can  serve our family's needs off of that. We started with about 15 quail  and now  at any given time we're sitting at about 100 quail.  so quail math equals chicken math. Same thing.  very much so. And it's especially because it's so easy to hatch out your own. 06:17 They're mature in eight weeks. uh Some mature faster, but generally they're all mature by eight weeks and laying. You know who's a boy, who's a girl. So within two weeks or within two months, you can vent sex them  and  separate the boys from the girls.  Unfortunately, they are not like chickens in you can't you cannot successfully have a bachelor flock. So  unfortunately, um 06:45 The extra males do  end up in freezer camp because um they are very unkind to one another if you have too many roosters in the cubby. But yes, we  very quickly went from 15 in  a hutch to now we have an indoor aviary in our barn because they are very flighty birds. They are very prone to oh 07:11 offing themselves if they get scared by anything. And so just with the number of predators we have around, we felt that it was best to keep them under stimulated a little bit in that sense.  And so they have an indoor aviary that we have a bunch of hidey holes and we have artificial sunlight and we keep them as entertained as possible and they get to run around but they you know, they just seem to live their happy little  lives they are. 07:42 They're sweet, they're beautiful.  are  what I would refer to as a feathered potato. They do not have brain cells or personality  of some larger poultry, but that's okay. That's okay. Cause they are still lovable. Well, that was a very good introduction to quail. have a couple of questions. 08:04 Is it a pain in the butt to crack quail eggs? Because I've heard that quail eggs, you need three quail eggs to equal one chicken egg if you're going to do scrambled eggs. So is it is it hard to crack the eggs or is it just like cracking a chicken egg? It's just smaller. So you actually are best off using an egg scissors for quail eggs because they are. It's not so much the size, it's that they have a much thinner shell, but a much thicker membrane than a chicken egg. 08:33 So if you try to crack it, you kind of end up just crumbling it without actually breaking through the membrane. So um you can buy quail egg scissors and cut the top off and dump them out. So that actually makes it very slick and easy,  way less getting, you know, digging shell out of the bowl or the pan with your fingers um than sometimes I have with our chicken eggs. using the scissors is very simple. 08:59 Okay, cool, I didn't know such a thing existed. So I have learned something new yet again on a podcast that I am doing. And then for the quail meat, my husband asked me to ask you this. said, can you ask her how she would describe how to cook quail meat and how it tastes? Does it taste like the dark meat on a chicken? What does it taste like? I can honestly, don't eat our quail. 09:28 because I'm just not a big meat fan. My husband reports that it is like the dark meat. It's not a lot of meat per bird, but it is very rich. It cooks quickly. They're very easy to process. And typically the way that we cook them is in a crock pot, kind of with potatoes and spices and 09:58 broth just sort of stewed. um But I know that a lot of people like to braise them and stuff. I will say generally it's just that my husband makes them more than I do because he eats them and he is a little bit lazier about the food preparation.  I understand. um My husband and I both love to cook, but  weeknights are kind of a pain in the butt because he doesn't always get home at the same time. um weekends are when we actually cook. 10:28 And that's when we make things that we want to spend time making  together. um The reason he asked me to ask you is because I'm not a fan of the dark meat on chicken. And he was like, if we get quail, we can have quail meat like three times a week. And I was like, not if it tastes like the dark meat on chicken.  Maybe not. Yeah, I can say it definitely. um 10:53 It has that game-ier smell to it when it's cooking. And so you can tell it is, you know, even though they are conventionally raised, is still definitely a game bird that you're eating.  Yeah, I had pheasant one time and it was really, really good. And I was like, why did I not know that pheasant is  yummy? I had no idea. um OK, so here's my here's my big question, because he and I have been going around about this a little bit. 11:22 because we both have differing opinions about many things.  I don't know that there is a market in Minnesota for quail meat or quail eggs. And I also don't know how much it would cost, you know, a round number to get started with like a rooster and six hens just to try it out for ourselves. So  do you have answers on that? Yes. So I can say there is a market in Minnesota and in Southern Minnesota. We actually sell our quail eggs at the St. Peter food co-op. 11:52 um And depending on the time of year, so like  around the holidays, we were selling a lot more. We were resupplying them pretty regularly. There are other times where it's, you know, we're only dropping off 10 dozen every few weeks.  So it's not, they're not necessarily flying off the shelves, um but there is a market for it.  And we are... 12:17 going to be opening our own farm stand here in the next month once  we can  get all the ice cleared away and keep it cleared away for a little bit  to get that set up. there  is Soul Foods in Lower North Mankato, a Korean foods market. They sell quail eggs. ah I know that Rebel Rooster partners with some  wineries and they have 12:42 quail egg pizzas and stuff that they get, they source their quail eggs from rebel roosters. So there, there is a market. I, we have not tried to sell our meat yet. Our meat, have mostly kept for ourselves or given away to friends and family. So I can't speak to that, but,  um,  the spaces I'm in online, does seem like there is definitely a market for that.  Okay. Cause 13:09 I was just, he was all excited and he was like, we could get quail and we can  take the eggs and we can incubate the eggs and we can sell the meat and we can sell the eggs and that. And I was like,  um,  number one, cool idea. Number two, slow down for a minute. We need to some research. Yes,  absolutely. And that's where we started with so few.  Um, and where we started, I mean, we would have every, if my husband had his way, we would have every farm animal under the sun.  Um, 13:39 that, as I mentioned before, I would end up taking care of because once it comes to that part, he's like, oh, well, I'm not that interested anymore. um But so we started small. We  ordered, I want to say from  Hoover Hatchery down in  Iowa.  We ordered some chicks to start with once they aged out. um 14:03 We were able to figure out the hens from the roosters. Our kids had already named every single one of them. We tried to do the bachelor flock because  we did not have the kids permission to process the quail. That didn't work.  they did end up in freezer camp and we don't even bother with it anymore because we know it's not going to go well. But the  introductory cost, especially compared to  larger poultry, is  much lower. 14:31 not only in the sense of the birds themselves being less expensive, or if you can find hatching eggs, even less expensive. And I will say, that sense, shipped quail eggs, so you might not be able to find a local supplier. Anybody who wants to look at hatching out eggs can feel very confident in ordering shipped quail eggs because 14:58 they have a much higher success rate than shipped chicken eggs or goose eggs or whatever. They are safely going to  get an 80 % hatch rate on shipped quail eggs. They're very, very hardy.  So that's a good way to cut that introductory cost is just ordering the eggs because uh most of them will end up hatching.  And then just their space requirements. Each bird requires about a square foot. Some people will say 15:28 three birds per square foot, but that  is too crowded and quail can be very, very vicious with one another. And we would never recommend anything less than one square foot per bird, um even in our aviary setting where they're running around all day long.  a  lot of people keep them in hutches are first because we just had so few.  We bought some two by fours at Home Depot and built our hutch, made a plywood floor. um 15:57 And the, was a couple hundred bucks versus our chicken coops, which we all know you cannot build for a couple hundred bucks. Not unless you have your own trees and a sawmill. Exactly. 16:14 Yeah, we bought some of the  already made garden sheds that they have at like Home Depot in Lowe's. our chickens have chicken mansions because they're bigger sheds.  so it's really funny when it snows because the front of the sheds look like little houses. so it's really pretty. And my husband will take pictures of the snow sticking to the doors.  And I'm like, oh my god, our chickens live in a castle. 16:43 That's funny because we actually have the same setup for our coops. we just like that, A, they have more vertical space. They like getting up high to roost. ah It's functional. It's pre-made.  Handles the weather well. Yes. It's so easy to insulate. um So we actually do the same thing. They have like a little loft in there that they can go up and. 17:08 hang out in. We have outdoor runs. We have such high predator pressure that we don't do free ranging. But we have massive runs that we were able to just attach to this pre-made shed that's very sturdy and build it out from there. ours too. And we've got the little like solar lights that are, it looks so fancy and it's just full of chickens. 17:35 It's such a special building for such an average animal.  Okay.  Well,  I am so thrilled that you told me all those things about quail because now I have answers to give to my husband. Because I was trying to look everything up and I was like, why don't I just talk to somebody who knows what they're doing?  So much easier. um So when you  when you incubate the eggs, is there 18:03 Is there a special incubator for quail or can you just get an incubator and it has trays that will fit the eggs?  No, you can put it into any  incubator. um You can get attachments, inserts for different incubators. So like a Matty Coop, you can buy  3D printed inserts that keep smaller eggs upright or  a Nurture Right 360 is another incubator lots of people have. 18:33 you can buy an insert for that, or you can double up eggs in any incubator that has chicken slots. I find that they roll around a little goofy and sometimes they get crunched with that thin shell. So I prefer to get a quail specific insert when I can. But I've had 95 % hatch rate success in cheapo incubators I got off of Amazon. So you don't need anything special at all. They have a 19:02 shorter incubation period than chickens as well. So they are an 18 day incubation period. Like a little over two weeks. Yeah. Yes. And I don't know that I've ever had them take the full 18 days. Usually we have them popping out like popcorn after about 16 days. um And they  do pop out like popcorn. They hatch so fast. You can hardly even catch them unzipping. just like, there's a quail. um 19:32 They don't require different um humidity or temperatures or anything like that. So it's very much as set it and forget it as a chicken egg. You just got to put it in the lockdown a little earlier. Nice. And then do you have to put them in a brooder for a few days or a week after they're hatched?  Yes, we do keep them in a brooder  generally just because we um 19:59 don't want to mix them in with the rest of the covey until we have been able to sex them. We keep them  in  a separate, we brood them in the basement for the first week or so when we want to keep a close eye on them. And then we move them out to the barn and they're  in a hutch situation where we can keep the heat lamps on them and keep them separate until they are grown out enough for us to tell who's a boy, who's a girl. And then  the girls and any boys we want to keep get. 20:28 tossed in with the cubby.  And on the Hutch's, how tall do they have to be? Because you mentioned that they're very good at unliving themselves. how tall do they need to be? Yes, that's a really good question. this is, it's so specific. This is one of the very specific things when it comes to quail. You do not want any height that is between 18 inches floor to ceiling  or six feet floor to ceiling. 20:57 So you can have them in a hutch that is no taller than 18 inches, Florida ceiling,  or  in our aviary, we have eight foot ceilings because um quail cannot control their flight. They get startled at their own shadows. They get startled at absolutely everything. um One time I had an extra nesting pad and I was like, oh, maybe they'll like this. I put that in their aviary. They did not lay for two weeks because that was such a disturbance to them. 21:25 terrified them, they wouldn't do it. So they are very flighty  and they go straight up. So if they flush  and there is a ceiling  at say two, three, four feet above their head, they will hit the ceiling and break their necks. So  it's really important. That is the one most important thing with raising quail.  The other thing being their feed, which I'll touch on in a second, but 21:53 that height is very specific. So I would say 15 to 18 inches floor to ceiling for a hutch. Okay. Cool. Go ahead. Yeah. Sorry. And then I would say the only, the one other really important thing I would say with quail is their feed requirements  are a little bit, well, they're quite a bit different than um other poultry. They require a higher. 22:19 protein. So they do need be started on a 30 % game bird feed. We get ours, we source ours locally here in Minnesota  from a mill down in Mabel. And then  we  use Chick Starter for them in their adult life because that's at that 21 % and that keeps them a lot healthier. um We 22:47 don't use a layer feed because of the roosters. So we provide calcium separately. We actually use uh a reptile  enclosure substrate that's calcium based  because they're so small.  can't handle the crushed oyster shells and we're not going to try to grind it up in a food processor. 23:10 But so that  is another distinction to be aware of is that they do have different nutritional needs. So you can't start them  on a regular chick starter, a regular adult layer feed.  They do best when they have that higher level of protein.  Okay, good to know. Thank you. Hold on one second. 23:33 I was gonna cough and I didn't want to cough in your ear. uh So we're looking at a little bit of  of fundage for the outlay to start this but once we get started it would be okay. Yes, yes and they're  they're so self-sufficient like you can just keep going you can just keep taking your own eggs especially because they lay so many. 23:59 that it doesn't feel like you're cutting into anything to save a few to toss in the incubator. um And you  just keep going. There's never a point where  I feel like we have to invest anymore in new birds. We do like to. Every so often,  we will buy some hatching eggs from outside to just add genetics back into our covey to  keep things  fresh. 24:29 But you can go several generations before that's even a concern. And certainly we have  more than the average person keeping some for their family would have. Yeah.  Cool. Oh, my God, Caitlin.  I was really hoping that you were going to be  a quail expert lady. And you are. I'm so thrilled that I got to talk to you because  this whole weekend, every other sentence was I was thinking about the quail question. 24:57 I'm like, oh my God, we're obsessed. Okay.  And I just, needed somebody who does it because you  know things that Google doesn't know. Trial and error.  And I do,  I'm glad to info dump about  our uh quail anytime.  Yeah. And I was like, am I being  like, I don't know,  terrible? Am I a terrible person asking you when you're only half an hour away?  But 25:27 But people aren't necessarily gonna drive from Jordan down to Mankato to get your quail eggs. No, absolutely not. And we don't expect them to at all. And again, you know, we know we're not even the only ones in the Mankato area. And I think that's great. And I think that's fine. And, yeah, definitely not a concern  on our front.  Good.  I just I always worry because usually people who are in 25:56 agriculture because quails agriculture. They're pretty good about no, you should try it if you want to try it. Absolutely. But there's always one person somewhere that's like, oh, they're going to be competition. That's not cool.  Not not not my vibe at all.  Yes. And I didn't say anything to my husband about this and he's going to listen to this episode because it's full of information he wants. I'm going say it anyway.  He was talking about ducks and I was like, 26:24 It wouldn't be fair to get ducks. And he's like, why? I said, because we have no running water on our property. There's no creek, there's no pond, there's nothing. And ducks like to swim.  Quail don't care. They don't want to swim. Nope, they don't at all. They just want to... We  have some... I bought some totes, some like decorative storage totes. 26:47 Those are flipped upside down inside their aviary. You can cut some evergreen boughs down and create little hidey holes for them. They  don't even want to roost. They just want to run around on the ground and hang out and eat.  How do they handle the really cold weather in  Minnesota?  They do fairly well. Again, ours are indoors, but they are in an unheated barn. know,  they're... 27:17 there have been times as you know this winter where it has been absolutely necessary to go out three times a day and give them some fresh water because freezing in 20 minutes. But aside from that, do well. I will say when we were having 40 below, we would lose one just from. 27:39 shock to the system. were generally our older birds that  we would lose one after got super, super dangerously cold.  aside from that,  they do really well. just huddle up together, fluff up their feathers, especially because they're on the ground um and they can kind of  burrow down into the bedding. do great.  Good to know. Thank you. uh 28:04 And then the other question I have, because I didn't think I'd look it up or ask my husband if he knew,  is are there wild quail in Minnesota? There are not wild quail in Minnesota. um We  used to have a small population  of Bob White quail in Minnesota, um but we do not have  an extant  population at this time of any species. OK. Hmm. 28:34 Did people shoot them? Did they migrate? Do you know what happened to the quail? Yeah, they seem to be migrating to... Well, okay, so here's... I'll go on another tangent. I actually work for Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever also. That's my full-time job. I have a lot of information on this specific topic too. 28:58 Most of it is because of our habitat loss. So the degradation of our native tall grass prairies has been  what has diminished quail populations across the entire United States and has condensed them to very small pockets around the country. uh And it's generally where they can find the best cover. So because we don't have the proper 29:26 ecosystems for them to thrive in.  They've just left.  Well, they got to go where they want to be, just like humans do.  Okay. And then the last thing I want to bring up, because I saw it on your Facebook page and I was very impressed, was your post about chickens  and what  the definitions are for free range and cage free and all that. Because I am going to share that on my page.  Perfect. Yes. That was... 29:56 something,  I was looking for sturdier  egg flats um for storing our eggs  before we packaged them.  And I ended up on the site  of a company that makes  products for conventional farm setups. And I just was struck by this is best case scenario. The pictures they're sharing on their website are. 30:22 best case scenario. This is them saying, look at how humane this is. And it was just like  shoulder to shoulder room full of chickens with no room to move. And that's cage free.  And so I just think that people are going to the grocery store and they're spending extra money for these labels that do,  that don't mean a whole lot. They do not mean that these birds are living in more humane conditions. If they were more humane conditions, they wouldn't be de-beaked so that they don't. 30:50 tear each other apart out stress. Even with free range, they just have to technically have access to the outdoors and two square feet per bird indoors. They do not have any minimum space outdoors. So it could be, you know, a teeny tiny run that only five of them can fit in at a time. But that meets the legal definition of free range. And that's what people are paying several extra dollars at the store for, is to have this label that doesn't actually mean those chickens are treated well. 31:21 And so I  just thought it was worth pointing out because I don't think a lot of people understand that. And I know that some people will hear that we don't free range ours and think that that's  awful and abusive, but we do have 15, 20 square feet per bird, as opposed to  one to two square feet per bird.  keep constant enrichment. is exclusively for their safety because we are positioned 31:50 along the river, m surrounded by woods. We have eagles, hawks, um raccoons, opossum, coyotes, foxes. We have red foxes, gray foxes. We have other people's barn cats. We have just so many things around all of the time. uh Plus  I am  doing breeding. so just from a biosecurity standpoint, we also have lots of wild turkeys that can bring disease. And um so for us, it's just 32:19 it just is a safer thing for them. But we do our best to make sure they have the maximum amount of space. They have the best nutrition they can. They have constant uh enrichment that's very, important to us, constant interaction. They're well loved. um And that's just 32:41 I just think that people should be aware that if  they're already paying extra at the grocery store for these labels, then they maybe shouldn't be turning their nose up at the fact that farm fresh eggs might cost a dollar or two more  because they are far exceeding those minimum legal expectations for a label to be slapped on an egg carton at the store.  Absolutely. And we sell our eggs. 33:06 at our farm stand and I am so thankful to our customers who just swing in the driveway, park, go in, buy their eggs, leave their money in the bin and go home with really yummy eggs at $5 a dozen. Yes, and it's, mean, we're not making a big profit margin out of the $5 a dozen. It's very little really, but it feels good. 33:30 It feels good to know that we're taking really, really good care of our birds. They are not de-beaked. They are well-loved. They get to go out and sit in a lawn chair with them, and they'll all climb up on my lap and get scratches. um we, again, we source our feed locally. We feed our birds on a certified organic diet. So we get a locally grown, locally milled certified organic diet um that we go straight to the mill for. We actually just picked some up a couple of days ago. 34:00 Um, and it's just, I can say they, taste better. They, the, the birds are not stressed. And I feel like you can tell that when you're, when you're eating the eggs. Um, and I think that it's, it's worth the, it's, it's the $5 farm fresh eggs from birds that are well-loved is worth more than the $7 free range. 34:30 eggs at the store.  Yes.  And as we all learned during COVID supply chains go down.  if you want to be smart, get to know your local growers and producers and buy from them. Yes. And that's  very much part of my motivation for,  what we're doing here  is not, not just self-sufficiency, but having the skills  and the means. 34:56 to provide support for my community because I think community care is so important. And I think that people need to be able to oh make community. They need to be able to help one another. And this is what I feel like I can do to be part of that no matter what else is happening in the greater  scope of things. The only thing that has been keeping me sane in 2026 is the fact that we have chickens. 35:24 that lay really good eggs and we get to sell them to people who want them. Yes. It's amazing. It has been a very, very long 2026 in Minnesota for us folk who live here. Yes, it has been. I can't it's only been two months. I can't believe that February is almost over. 35:46 What the heck, it all went by at the speed of really cold molasses, but also in the blink of an eye. And I don't know how that works. Time is just weird. All right, Caitlin, thank you so much. Like if I was standing in front of you, I would hug you. For all the information you just dumped, because I really needed to learn about quail so I can give my husband some answers. Absolutely, I'm so happy to share. Where can people find you? We are on... 36:16 Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. We are just quirky quail acres on all of those.  Did I say quirky quail farms or did I say... No, I believe you said quirky quail acres. I talked to so many people. I never know if I say the right thing. Pretty sure you did. If you didn't, I missed it.  All right. It's quirky quail acres. If I said farm at the beginning, I might have, who knows. um I really appreciate your time. 36:43 And as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Have a great day. It's so pretty. Get outside and have some fun if you can. You as well. Thank you so much. All right. Bye. Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Brad at A Better Yard. You can also follow on Facebook. If you use the code atinyhome, you'll get a discount on the price for the first month.   Content Seeds Collective 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 If you're a homesteader who wants to get paid for your content without living on social media, check out SteelSpoonFarm.com. Founder Jen Kibler teaches you how to build a real blog or your email list and use Pinterest for sustainable marketing. Inside her coaching group, Content Seeds Collective, you'll get weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to her Root Seller Resource Library  full of tutorials and templates. 00:21 Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm. A tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. 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. Today I'm talking with Brad Tabke,  the founder of A Better Yard in Shakopee, I think, Minnesota.  Good morning, Brad. How are you? 00:49 Good morning. I am happy to be coming to you from Shakopee. OK. And I forgot to mention that he's also a Minnesota state representative for Shakopee.  So ah how is your day? I would ask you about the weather, but since you're only about half an hour, an hour away from me, I know that it's sunny and warm. Warm. Warm is good. It is.  It felt so nice. Like  I was out this morning already. I had bird feeders to fill and do all that kind of stuff. And so I was out this morning and it was 01:19 gorgeous and I hear we're supposed to get some snow later this week. So  that would actually be kind of nice to give some more moisture.  That would help a lot. Yes. ah My husband actually cut down an ash tree  last weekend and he was out there cutting it up this weekend in a t-shirt and like khaki pants and sneakers. But  it's a goofy February. Goofy is the weather's goofy all the time right now. We'll see what happens with that. it  yeah it was a gorgeous gorgeous weekend. 01:50 It really was and I was like, why am I warm? And I looked up at the thermostat in the house, it was 75 degrees and the furnace was not on. I was like, oh, duh, when it's warm outside, it's gonna get warmer in the house. Go fig. Exactly. It's a good ambient heating there. Yeah, we've got lots of windows and so the sun was just pouring in the living room and I was like, why am I hot? And I'm like, oh, duh, I know I'm hot. It's not. 02:17 It's February, but it's not February according to the weather. Okay, so you had a group called Minnesota Gardening and you changed the name to a better yard in January. So tell me the history on this. Yeah, so during COVID, it feels like all the stories now start with during COVID XYZ happened. 02:44 We during COVID, I had a bunch of friends who were asking me they wanted to start doing planting vegetables and flowers and those kinds of things and wanted something to do. And so they knew that I was I have a horticulture degree from Iowa State and have been in the landscape industry since I graduated from college. Actually, since I was in middle school working in a greenhouse. And so I have been 03:10 started that out helping just friends. they're like, Brad, we want to pay you to do this. And how do we do that? And I was like, I don't know. I'm not sure oh how we can do all this and make it make sense. And so we were just helping folks. And uh then we set up what we called Minnesota Gardening to grow that and stretch that to be  helping  with landscapes and helping make sure people knew how to  reduce their chemical use and just fundamental things like that,  along with 03:38 fruits and vegetables and making sure to grow  those kinds of things. And so  we started that and was very Minnesota centric. It was very much here in  our thing that we wanted to be doing.  But then it continued to grow from there. And so it was the focus shifted  through COVID and after COVID to  focusing on  environmental landscape and making sure that people knew  how to  eliminate chemicals, how to feed pollinators, how important it was. 04:05 that we have a diversity of  native and helpful plants in our yards  and making sure that those kinds of things, saving water, storing carbon  that are important for our future, that those kinds of things are  happening. And so  we grew beyond just Minnesota  and just gardening into focusing  on making sure that we're helping to  do, you know, little things like helping to reduce the risk of cancer from chemical use and those kinds of things. And so 04:33 We switched to a better yard this year and it's been going really, really well. I'm excited about it. Awesome. I'm really happy for you because when you you when you rebrand, it's it's a it's a gamble. So I'm glad that it's going well for you. I want to tell a little story when when I moved in with my husband back over 24 years ago, I think now. Yeah, at least over 24 years ago, he lived in Jordan. 05:01 And he lived on a 10th of an acre lot with a house and a four car garage on it. you can imagine how little room  there was for growing anything.  And the backyard was basically crab grass and weeds.  And his mom was moving and she gave us some  iris roots or whatever they call rhizomes  and some lilies and some violets.  And she was like, 05:29 take these and plant them wherever you want to plant them. And neither my husband nor I had really considered putting in gardens as it were until that moment. And there was a pine tree growing in front of our bedroom windows between our house bedroom windows and the sidewalk. It was a little tiny, maybe six foot deep by 14 foot long bed where that pine tree was. 05:58 And it was just all weeds in the pine tree. And so  I said, would you cut the pine tree and can we get some stuff to amend the soil and we'll put the flowers out front? Cause that would be really pretty.  And he was like, sure.  And so we took that tree down without breaking a window, which was amazing  and ah got everything going. And it was really a sweet little garden,  really pretty.  And after the first summer, that winter, I was like, you know, we have a backyard. And he said, he sorta. 06:28 And I said, I know it's small. I said, but I said, if we tilled that up and amended the soil,  we could be growing food, not crabgrass and weeds. And we had four kids at the time. 06:42 He was like,  oh, almost free food. said, yeah, almost free food. mean, that first year is going to be expensive, but after that,  it'll even out. So we ended up working on that yard all that fall, think. No, was spring, I'm sorry. Got some little beds planted. We had a huge,  can't remember, rhubarb patch that had been there for years already. That stayed. You do not want to dig up rhubarb that's over a hundred years old, because that's good stuff. 07:11 and ended up growing tomatoes  and  summer squash and cucumbers in herb garden that first year.  And it did so great. And we were the only ones on our block doing this. Our neighbors thought we were nuts.  The reason I tell this story is because it got our neighbor right next to us. Her little girl was very interested in the cucumbers growing through the fence. And that got her interested in gardening. 07:40 and our neighbors, our former neighbors across the street.  She,  for the last two years has been doing cut flowers in her yard that's even smaller than our former yard was.  Wow. So, so you can  be an influence, you can make a difference on the, in the smallest ways and it becomes a movement. Exactly. 08:02 And it's so, important for people just to get  started with something, right? It's just so important that people find a place and find just a little thing. And what  we find happens a lot with people. So we do a lot of teaching around this getting started  concept of things. And  we help people understand that  it doesn't need to be this big grandiose. You don't need to have huge plans. You don't need to have all these things.  You just need to get started with one thing. uh 08:31 And just like with with Iris, um getting that out there and getting that going and learning,  learning the rhythms of how that plant grows and when you can expect to have  Iris, like beautiful Iris flowers for yourself and what you need to be doing. And then you can take and go to the next step and go to the next step. And it's a  it's a ladder to get to  really great things.  It really is.  And  there is something really special. 09:01 about planting a seed, nurturing it, and watching it become something different. And I think that's true in anything. I mean, if you want to write a book. uh A book is not a book until the idea comes out of your head,  onto paper, onto the computer keyboard, and gets printed and people can read it. A garden is not a garden until you plant a seed. Right. Absolutely.  right. 09:28 Now is like a lot of people don't realize it, right, especially for like native and local plants to be growing in your areas. Like right now is a really, really great time to be planting those seeds. So like coneflowers and things like that and planting those during the winter is is the time to be doing it. And so just grabbing a packet of seeds and tossing it in your backyard or tossing it into a milk jug for some winter sowing is a beautiful way to get started. 09:58 Yes, and it's all simple. I think the reason that people drag their feet is because they think it's going to be  a lot of time and a lot of hassle and a lot of energy expended for very little return. And I'm going tell you right now,  it can be a lot of work. And it can be a lot of time, but it doesn't have to be.  And even if it is, it's so worth it when that cone flower blooms and you're the one that put it where it is. Right. It's so rewarding, especially if you have like 10:27 kids and family around and that kind of thing or grandkids or wherever you're at in your stage of life, like involving them in these processes is always so like we have when we start things for the garden from seed inside like tomatoes and that kind of stuff, which I don't think I'm going to end up having enough time to get done this year, which is terrible. But I know it's it's been rough. And so we'll see what happens with it. But like my youngest, she's 14 now. 10:56 And uh we  check on the babies. call the babies  the little plants coming up. We call those the babies. And we check on the babies every morning and just seeing  who sprouted overnight and where it's at and all that kind of stuff.  we'll see what we can get done there.  we're a little behind our schedule with life.  Yes. And actually, we can talk about that in the last five or 10 minutes. 11:22 I usually do these for half an hour or so at about 20 minutes. I'll let you know we can  you can share what you would like about why things have been so crazy  for you. um I'm going to lose my kitchen table this weekend to seedling trays.  Oh, beautiful. What kinds of stuff do you grow?  We will be growing. I'm sure we will be growing thyme because I love it and I cook with it a lot. So we'll have thyme babies.  Beautiful. Tomatoes, cucumbers, squash. 11:51 um Probably chives. Chives are a really easy thing to start and grow for anybody listening. um Rosemary. Rosemary from seed is so fun because half the time it doesn't take and half the time it grows like crazy. So  when you plant rosemary seeds, there's a 50-50 shot whether you'll get the seedlings and when you do, it's like hallelujah, they came up. 12:15 I'm always like, Hallelujah, they came up on all of them.  It's just amazing to me to think about like  how  seeds are just this little  packet and this little bundle of everything you need for a  tree to grow or a plant to grow or however that is.  And just that it's all contained, especially when you put like a little, you know, a poppy seed down or you put a little  tiny tomato seed and what that grows into is just uh a wonder the whole time. And it's it's amazing to watch. 12:46 It's miraculous. is the epitome of the word miraculous. Exactly.  I love it. I  am not the gardener. My husband is. I always make sure I say that because I used to be  in it with him. And as I've gotten older, I'm not nearly as entertained with it as he is. He is an avid, ridiculously obsessed gardener. Like he just loves it.  And every spring he's like, I'm going to go get seed trays. And you can just see him bouncing on his heels because he's so excited. 13:16 Well, it's such a  great thing for this time of year, like  when everything just feels,  I mean, we had a great weekend here, but it's going to get cold again and we're going to get snow again and  we're going to have whatever our uh suffer through our  third or fourth winter, whatever we end up doing and just having that little bit of hope and that little bit of excitement  that we know the warmer days and being able to be outside are coming  and make it through. March is my least favorite season of the year. 13:44 And it is just the hardest. And so those are always great to help us get through. Yes, the having the little green babies in the kitchen just makes my heart happy. Every March and April while they're taking over my kitchen table, which I'm not happy about, but I am very happy to have the seedlings.  One of the things I would say is if you have a dog that is tall enough to reach wherever you have your seedlings growing,  you might want to figure out a way to put them out of a dog's reach because a dog will eat 14:14 babies seedlings. They will. I've never heard that before.  Ours have always been out of reach of our dog, but  she's never shown much interest in them. Oh, well, our dog is short. She's only about, I think her back is just below my knee and I'm five foot nine.  She can't reach the table. But the first year that she was full grown and we had seedlings on the table, she was very interested in all the smells coming from the plants. Oh, funny.  I wonder if it's the fertilizer maybe. 14:44 I don't know, but as soon as we had mint growing, she was always coming out the kitchen with me and sniffing the air by the table. And I'm like, you must like mint.  Funny. Yeah. So be careful. And cats will eat stablyngs like crazy. Oh, that definitely I've heard that for sure. And we're not cat people. So I don't have that issue. Yep. We don't have cats in the house anymore. We have barn cats. Barn cats are great because they're friendly,  but they're outside. 15:14 Yep. Doing their job. It's a good thing. Oh, we have three six month old kittens right now. I was watching them play in sunshine yesterday and one of them popped out of a bunch of wood that we have stacked for our wood burning furnace and had a mouse in its mouth. And I was like, all right, six months old and catching mice. I'm impressed. It's a beautiful thing. Yeah, it's they know what they're supposed to be doing. 15:40 Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And they're gorgeous cats. Two of them are long-haired. One of them is short-haired.  And I'm so in love with these babies. And  I suspect we'll probably have kittens by fall. And we didn't have kittens last summer at all because we didn't have a female cat on the property. So I'm very excited to have some more barn kittens come fall. Fun. Yeah. And we always find homes for them. So it all works out great because  other farms need barn cats too. Right. 16:10 We don't feel too bad about having more kittens because it's  once or twice a year and then we find homes for them at new farms. So it works out okay. Exactly. So  what  what do people get out of this a better yard  program because it costs money and I want people to know what they're getting for that money. Yeah. So we are um it's thirty seven dollars a month or people can get a huge discount if they do an annual 16:39 membership. so what we do is we teach folks how to grow with a focus on the environment and focus on our local ecosystems. Because as we as we know, cancer rates are skyrocketing. And those have been proven now to be mostly, or I don't know, mostly is the right word to use. many of them have been proven to be 17:05 chemically induced by other chemicals we use on our landscape and our properties and in the environment.  And  we need to make sure to protect ourselves and we need to make sure to protect those around us. I'm doing that. And so  this is  one way  we teach people how to reduce and eliminate chemical use in their landscape and in their lawns. then as well  from there, we work very hard on  on 17:29 feeding pollinators songbirds because we insect populations that are collapsing, partially due to chemical use, partially due to habitat destruction,  as well as songbirds. And the it is just amazing how uh much those populations in United States have dropped over the  course of last three decades.  And it's up to us to help  figure that out and out to  provide the habitats to support these things.  And the fun thing is by 17:57 doing this by eliminating chemicals and by  feeding pollinators and by doing that work.  What happens from there  is that  that also ends up saving our clean water, which we know that we also need to do because we have uh polluted water systems and we are uh having an epidemic of non clean water available for people.  And then also stores carbon to help eliminate and reduce climate change and everybody. 18:25 does their part. So it's a really good thing to kind of go back to our roots and go back to where we started.  And so we teach people how to do those things. So we have a monthly theme  every month where we talk through like this month is all about ecology and understanding  what our uh local ecosystems need and how they work. And then we give tools every weekend for people  knowing how to  enact these things and do them. But the  biggest thing, is that 18:54 It's a community of people who  care about similar things and who uh want to build a similar world together.  That is  safe for our kids to play in the grass and safe for  insects to come and  use our backyards or front yards as habitats and making sure that we're doing those things  to make the world a better place. I love oh it. And if I didn't already have a handle on all that, I would be joining your community.  However, I have a handle. 19:24 And I don't have time, I don't have the resources right now to join another thing. And I'm not saying that people shouldn't, but I'm probably not going to just full disclosure.  the  focus is on people who are  in a transition and focus on people who are, ah you have just purchased a new house or just moved or that kind of thing, or you've come to some sort of like, there are so many people that are having these 19:51 I mean, I'm sure that everyone listening to this knows of someone who's having a health scare right now or something going on or worse. uh And know that they want to start doing these things. It's always been in the back of their head that they want to start uh reducing the amount of  weed killer that they use on their lawn because it's bad for everything.  And so it's those kinds of folks who  need the help and need to know where to start and just how to get going on these things so that it's a 20:21 It's a livable practical ecosystem. And it also ends up reducing the amount of work your yard takes for yourself. It also reduces the amount of uh time and energy and money that it takes to  to get things going.  Yes. And as I always say, you can't eat grass. Right. Exactly. And nothing can eat grass, not even like  we as humans can eat grass. But it 20:48 Our lawns do nothing to support any sort of uh other living creature.  so it's really important that we provide that like  our...  So like if we talk about monarchs and monarchs are now on the endangered species list  because they are, there's too many chemicals being used and not enough  milkweed that is available for them to eat across their migratory patterns. And so it's really important that we... 21:14 all work together to develop these kinds of things so that not just humans can eat, but also  that we have things that are, you know, aesthetically pleasing and happy and great to look at that provide ah that piece for us. Also, you can do that  and do more with your landscape in your  Absolutely. I love what you're doing, Brad. It's amazing.  Thank you. All right. So you were saying actually, before we get into this. 21:41 The one thing I will tell people is that if you really get into gardening, don't be surprised if chickens show up on your property fairly soon because that's what happened to us. We started gardening and then we got chickens. that's funny. It's a natural follow through a lot of the time. Exactly. Yeah. mean, that whole thing of taking care of yourself and like and working and knowing where your food is coming from and knowing what is actually in your 22:11 landscape that your dogs or your kids or your grandkids are, are rolling around in and playing because we should be able to do that with a clear conscience and clear mind. And that's, that's what we, that's what we help people get to. it's, like you said, it's called a better yard and people can find us at a better yard.org. And there is a $37 to get started and we have a $30 discount that I forget exactly. this up on you, Mary. 22:38 I there's a discount that people can get and I don't know if you can send it  just to start for seven bucks for the first month.  I can put in the show notes if you can get me a code. I will do that for sure.  Okay, cool.  Um,  and  yes, I agree with everything you just said about being able to just be out and playing and be safe. That's a good plan.  Um, okay, so I don't know how much you want to say about why you've been so busy. 23:06 and why it's been so hard,  if you want to take the floor and talk about what's been going on, it's up to you. So we just came back from  Washington, D.C. and was working there with our senators and with a coalition of just absolutely incredible humans who are working  to help make the world a better place, which is what we all,  at least I hope that we all want to accomplish on things our communities have been  under assault by ICE and uh Shakopee specifically has, along with the Metro. um 23:35 and then other places outside the Metro, Lesour, uh Winona, other places have been just  rocked by ice and for no  apparent reason  all the time. so it's the people have been literally plucked off the streets, uh trapped on roofs uh and just lots of terrible, terrible things have been  happening in our communities. And we have to  work together to protect them and work together to make sure that we are uh 24:04 doing the best for our people that we possibly can. And so I just couldn't be more proud of Minnesota and  the amazing things that people have been  coming together to do and building these communities. And so it's a lot like we do at A Better Yard, which uh is  building  systems and building people together to find a path forward. And so that's uh what we've been doing  with pushing back against ICE here. ICE has a job to do. there are uh 24:34 without a doubt, uh people who have committed crimes and bad people that we don't  want to have in our communities. There are uh reasons for having laws and having public safety and those kinds of things,  but that is  well uh underserved by what uh ICE is doing in our communities. And so it has been  super proud of all of our people and it has just been  overwhelming and taking up a ton of time. So I appreciate everybody. 25:02 sticking with us and  being part of that journey as well  at A Better Yard.  Yeah, I really hope that this drawdown as they're calling it  continues because watching this from the outside has been, it's been really frightening and I can't imagine living in Minneapolis right now. I just can't. Yeah, it has, it's just been so unnecessary and um 25:30 The scariest part to me is just that there's absolutely zero accountability, zero recourse. And from a lawmaker perspective,  like there's no way for us to hold people accountable for their actions. Like they  are uh doing  many, many illegal things and  in the name of  safety, right? And so  it is really  difficult to watch and difficult to experience. And just the number of 26:00 drones that are constantly flying over my house. then  one day where I had a Blackhawk helicopter hovering  over my house ah and uh just the fear and intimidation tactics seem  well beyond anything that we have ever,  ever experienced  here in Minnesota and  anywhere else. And so  ICE, yeah, is going after ah the other day, just a quick story is that 26:27 They stopped the family for no reason whatsoever other than their skin was brown. And they took that family and intimidated them, pulled them out of the car. And they had citizens that are all citizens. And so they let them go. And then they went, and this happened on the road. They pulled them over. And a couple hours later, they went to their house and started yelling at them and screaming at them and said that they would only leave this 26:56 family of US citizens alone  if they  help them find five people and then they'll leave them alone. So it's extortion. It's just  horrible, horrible tactics  that just should not be who we are. And so it's really important that we hold,  we do everything we can to hold these folks accountable and make sure that they do actually leave. haven't seen uh evidence of that in Shakopee yesterday. We had dozens and dozens of agents here in town. 27:26 and it's still as bad or worse than it was because they're extremely aggressive right now and we want them gone. Yeah, it's like when you kick a hornet's nest. Yeah, yeah. They visit my house often, not to make it about me because we need to make sure that we are centering this on people who are immigrants in the United States, who are the ones that really have... 27:54 significantly less resources and ways to combat this than I do. And so I'm  doing everything I can to pull every lever  possible. We'll have a ton of bills with the legislature this year  to work on this issue and to help  Minnesota stand up in the face of this onslaught if it ever were to happen again, which I obviously hope it doesn't.  But I just don't know how we trust the federal government and all the people involved for this  moving forward. 28:24 Yes. And for the listener who doesn't quite understand, Minnesota is a sanctuary state as in, as in we're okay with people coming here no matter where you're coming from, right? uh Yes, we are a very, very welcoming state and we want to make sure  that we're welcoming to immigrants and people who want to be here. Shakopee is uh built on 28:50 immigrants and we have  a very large native population. We have Asian population. have  Somali folks. We have East African. We have  Hispanics and uh it makes our community who it is and it beautiful and wonderful and really, really great.  And, but that being said, like the, the sanctuary, what the federal government is saying on the sanctuary state  side of things  is just  not  accurate. Like we work. 29:16 together if there are uh bad people and if there are things like that that should happen, we work together. But we also want to make sure that nobody is left  behind and they are,  if they, someone needs healthcare, we want to make sure because it's better for all of our communities and better for all of our kids in schools.  If everyone is fed and if everyone is healthy and everyone is going that direction.  And some people just genuinely don't agree with that. And I. 29:46 I get it, but I disagree vehemently.  And we  should just be able to  do our thing. we should just,  they should leave us alone. And if the federal government had done their job  in making sure that we had secure borders, and this is not just a  Republican or a Democratic thing, this is  a uh United States of America federal government thing,  that if they had done their job, then this wouldn't be  a problem. But this is not the way. 30:13 to fix the problem that they created. This should be a uh civil kind of uh path forward and find a way to make sure that the people who are incredible, wonderful, loving people and families and supporting families here are able to continue that. And it's a federal government issue to fix.  It is. And  I guess I want to end this off by saying that unless you can for sure positively track 30:40 your ancestors back to the indigenous people of the United States.  We all have immigrant blood running through our veins. Absolutely. And that's a  really important piece of this is that we should  all love and trust and uh do the best we can  together because it's really important to recognize where we all came from. And like this work that we're doing here in Minnesota is uh standing on 31:08 that work from  that's been going on for  centuries in the United States and making sure that we're protecting our people and making sure that we're protecting our neighbors and making sure that our communities are  as safe as we can possibly make them. Yep.  And uh we learned all of our growing things from the indigenous peoples who live near us. So that ties it back into gardening and homesteading and a better yard. How's that? 31:37 That was really well done.  Okay. I'm not great at segues or  conclusions, but I tried really hard, That was perfect one. I'm proud of you for that one.  Thank you so much for being honest and straightforward and telling me what you think, because that's hard to get out of someone who is in politics. So  I very much appreciate it.  And this isn't, I want to say this, I don't know how to say it right. 32:05 This is not about politics. This is about being good humans to each other. Right.  Exactly. And, uh, and, and,  and  working together with our community, like that's, that's what this  all, all is. And we can all do better when we all do better. Yes, absolutely.  So go out there and be a good human today, folks, cause it might make things better.  Um, so you can find Brad at abetteryard.org. 32:33 And I highly recommend going and checking it out because it sounds like there's some fantastic knowledge and resources there. Thank you, Brad, for doing that.  Yeah, there is. And you can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com.  And you can find, if you want to support the show, sorry,  you can do that at AtinyHolmstead.com slash support.  This was  really fun, Brad. You have the most wonderful radio voice. I told you that when we first talked. Thank you. 33:03 I appreciate it. before we go, just want to make sure we can do the $30 off for the first for all of your listeners. If people want to go, it would just be $7 at and we can just use a tiny home and use that as the coupon code. we'll be go for those. So people use use the coupon code to get $30 off the first month and they can just check us out and see how wonderful our happy little community is. All right, I'm writing it down because I will forget a tiny home. Okay. Awesome. 33:32 Thank you so much. appreciate your time and I hope you have a good day at your job. Thank you so much.  

Today I'm talking with Jen at Steel Spoon Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. Content Seeds Collective 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. Today I'm talking with Jen Kibler  at Steel Spoon Farm  in Ohio.  And good morning, Jen. How are you? Good morning. Good. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Ohio this morning? Oh, it is beautiful. I think we're on fake spring round two already. It's going to go back to winter again this weekend, but I'll take it. 00:29 Yeah, they were saying this weekend on the news that we would be getting snow this week, but I'm looking at the forecast and I'm like, I think LaSore, Minnesota is going to get rain. I don't think we're going to get snow. Yeah. We had 16 inches dump on us about three weeks ago now. So I'm glad to see the snow piles gone. We actually have grass again. So that's nice, but now it's mud season straight into mud season. So yeah, God love mud season. We have a, we have a dog and 00:59 She freaking loves spring because she can go out and roll in the grass again. But she has these cute little feet and the cute little feet leave cute little dirty footprints all over my floor downstairs. And I'm just like, you know what? I'm not mopping the floor until the weekend. I'm going to it all at once. And then she's going to come in and walk on it again and I'll do it the following weekend because I am not mopping that floor every two hours. We have four. 01:25 and two of them are great Pyrenees, then the other two are black labs. And the Pyrenees, of course, are like horse size.  And they just clobbed in so much mud into the kitchen this morning to eat breakfast. Oh my gosh. Yeah, Maggie's a 35 pound, well, maybe pushing 40 pound um Australian shepherd. So she's got these adorable little footprints, but they're not adorable when they're mud on my floor. tell me what tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at Steel Spoon Farm. 01:55 So we have kind of everything here. I've had horses my whole life. So I've got my three big old horses that are all retired now. And then we have two little  feral mini mules. And I say feral because I've literally never touched the one in the two years she's been here.  We'll just take her time. She knickers at me now. She does her little mule money. So we're making progress, but mules and everything has to be on their time.  And then we have a little mini pony too named Apple for my daughter. So she's so sweet. 02:24 So we've got them and we have Angora goats  and then a bunch of just miscellaneous Nigerian dwarf goats too that are just, you know, they're pets. to sell some of the mohair off the Angoras. Haven't had time to even process it lately because I've been so busy with all my other business things. ah But I do really love spinning when I have the time. I've spun my own yarn, did a bunch of crochet with it.  Actually made the shawl that I wore in like our maternity pictures with 02:54 hand spun mohair from our own goats. So that was really neat. um That's a needle felting with it, all kinds of stuff. I've sold it to all kinds of different people online on Etsy and then on my own site too.  Everything from fly  lure creators, they use the mohair for their fly lures, which was really odd. um To of course the reborn dolls, which is amazing to see how realistic those are, but they've used mohair for those. 03:22 mask makers for theater mass in New York City, all kinds of stuff. So it's amazing to see how far that can stretch just from my little farm to all across the world.  is one of the reasons I love this podcast so much because  I hadn't even considered the fact that  that mohair would be used on the dolls. Yeah, they use it.  It was a local lady actually, and she  literally plucks one single hair at a time into these silicone doll. 03:51 It's the patience I do not have  for that, but she does.  And if they have really fine hair, like if she's doing a memorial doll, she actually paints the hair on and uses a paintbrush that's one hair width and paints these tiny little baby hairs on these dolls. It's incredible. And then the mask maker in New York City. This is a crazy crossover, but my husband is a lifetime wrestling fan and 04:19 this guy actually made the masks for mankind, for Mick Foley, mankind, and Undertaker, which are two of his favorites. And here he is buying mohair from my goats to make these theater masks. I thought, what a crazy small world that is. That's not small, that's miniscule world. Yeah, that was very niche. that was super cool. Wow. Wow. I just, every time I talk to somebody new, I find out something either 04:49 I either learn something new that actually can be used in my life, or I find out something that has  nothing to do with anything that I do, but it's a really neat trivia fact.  So thank you. I now have a new trivia fact. oh I've never actually pet a mohair goat and I've never touched mohair in my life.  What does it feel like? hear it's really, really soft. Oh, it's so soft. And everybody thinks they're sheep. 05:18 which  just because they're so fuzzy. uh But so I have to correct people all the time that they are actually goats.  They're in full fleece right now. We still call it fleece. Like there, if you take it the whole thing off, still collectively, it's called their fleece.  But it is  mohair. It's not fur. It's not wool. It's its own material. uh It's extremely fine  and quite slippery. Now that's that's kind of like a spinner term for like the slip or the feel of 05:47 the material that you're spinning, it's so super fine. So a lot of the times people will blend it with wool  or some other material to make it a little bit more grabby for when they're spinning. But the Kidmo hair especially, so on the babies that are usually under a year, um have the finest, finest hair. It is like a cloud in your hands. It's so thin. That's the stuff that you're gonna use for knitting like your close to skin wear. 06:15 kind of a thing. It's so fine and so high quality. As they get older, the hair quality sometimes goes down a little bit, but I have one of my oldest does, Patsy,  for everybody out there who knows Patsy.  She has  like  no grease  to her hair and  they have grease called a yolk. It's kind of like lanolin in wool where it has like a little bit of a greasy texture. That's what protects their skin, protects their hair. So goats have the same thing. 06:43 but hers is so clean and so fine. She has hardly any curl. She's just like this big white cloud.  And her hair is my favorite to spin because I can spin it literally straight off of her. It's so clean and so nice.  But then I've got some of my goats that have  really, really tight curls. ah I've made like Santa ornaments, especially with those ones,  with the needle felting I've done. I needle felt their. 07:09 curly little white locks on for Santa beards on the ornaments and things. So that's really fun. um Personality wise, they're very calm and quiet. um So if you're somebody that's used to the dairy goats, like especially Nubians are really loud. ah Even my Nigerians are pretty loud and friendly. uh The angoras are so super calm and quiet. They're just peaceful. They're really, really nice animals to have. And I'm glad that we got them.  Are they 07:36 probably a weird question, but are they more expensive than any other goat? They are, but the same with any other breed. ah Depends on where you buy them from, what their bloodline is. We have all colored angora goats, which is a different breed set. Then there's also like the American white angoras, which is  the ones that you typically find like running in the herds by the thousands down in Texas. Those are the ones that are bred like for  commercial mohair. I actually have two of those. 08:05 ah Their hair is totally different too. Those are the ones that have like they're really really tight curls their whole face is covered in it their legs They've got the pom-pom tails whereas the colored angoras because back in the day the colored angora used to actually be uh a Defect because if you had a hundred white angora goats, then you had one black one come through You can't put that black mohair in the same bundles as the white hair. So 08:31 they kind of bred the color out of them for a long time. And then a couple breeders started breeding the color back in and grabbing those colored ones. So now there's all kinds of different colors of colored Angoras.  So it just depends on the breeder, where you find them,  the quality of the mohair too, body size, everything. But same with any other breed of goat, any other breed of animal, it just depends on where you get them from. ah Mine, I'd say mine are all pretty pet quality. We got a couple from breeders. 09:00 And, I'd say now there,  I didn't breed specifically for like this goat needs to pair with this goat because of this bloodline cross and all these things. We just did it for part of our hobby farm and just to have the babies. Cause there's nothing cuter than a baby goat other than a kitten. Yeah.  Yep. Just had this conversation with another person for the podcast a couple of days ago and 09:26 I  literally said there's nothing cuter than a baby goat and I was like, eh, kittens are pretty cute too. Yeah, kittens and baby goats, we had those at the same time too. That was pretty ridiculous.  So are uh Angora goats any good for milk as well or not?  Technically, no. 09:45 Because they put so much energy into growing that mohair. They grow an inch per month. So they're putting, yeah, they're a high production breed. They put a lot into just growing that mohair. Most of them typically only even have singles when they're bred. All of mine have had at least twins.  We got the four  in summer of 2020. I  bred three of the four that fall, cause the one was still too young. 10:15 And all three of them had twins right out the gate. So we doubled our herd in like overnight. They all had their babies within 24 hours of each other. And then the one year I had triplets too. And she actually did raise all of them herself. She had enough milk and she's a great mom. So she actually did raise all of them herself. And then two of them. 10:37 The first year they had boy-girl twins. So when I pulled the boys off to put them in, because they were too young to castrate yet. So I just pulled them off, weaned them early and put them in their own pen.  So I was milking those two Angora moms for a little bit just to keep their utter balance and everything with going to the single twin.  And they actually milked out pretty well. ah I was kind of impressed with it because I had a Nigerian that I was milking at the time too. And honestly, the quantity was about the same. 11:07 Um, I did breed then  a couple of them back to a Nigerian dwarf buck and made some Niagara's, which is just a half and half cross of that.  Um, and the two girls that I had, they, actually sold them to a lady in Arkansas and they just had their first babies just this past week. So I'm excited to see how they milk out because their mom was one of my angoras that I was milking and she had pretty decent teat size and pretty decent capacity. 11:35 So, and then plus with the Nigerian then coming in too,  the one had triplets. So, and she said that their udders look really nice. So I'm curious to see how well they milk out,  cause they have the fiber then in the milk.  Yeah. That's what I was wondering about because how great would it be to be able to have the fiber and the milk cause you can make, you have a double income off one animal. Yeah. That would definitely, that's what the Niagara's are more for. And I liked them too, because they had. 12:02 Like everybody with the angoras, they want the big fluffy face and the fluffy bell bottom legs and then the fluffy poof tails. But all of that stuff is what you usually skirt off anyway, when you're cleaning the fleece to process the hair. So  I like them. The niagoras that I had, they had a totally clean face, clean legs, and even their belly was pretty naked. They looked like little Nigerians with puff. 12:26 They were so cute. So all of those areas that you would normally skirt off the fleece anyway were already just normal Nigerian hair and then they kind of shed also So you didn't even really have to shear them if you got them early enough They would shed that hair instead of needing sheared. So that's a nice dual purpose. There's those nigoras  Yeah, and  I'm sitting here listening to you completely captivated 12:51 And in the back of my head, I'm thinking never in my life did I think I would be having a conversation like this. And it's all because I started a podcast about homesteading. It's so funny. Yep. And never in my life did I think that I would be so entertained talking about genetics. We have, we had, she's gone now. We don't know what happened to her. We had a calico cat show up on our farm a couple of years ago. 13:19 longest haired cat I've ever seen in my life.  Black, bright orange and white.  Gorgeous, gorgeous animal.  And she ended up getting bred by a stray  and apparently that stray had the dilute gene  and one of her kittens ended up being like silvery gray  and beige and a little bit of white, like hardly any white. 13:49 And I could not figure out why this kitten came out looking like that. So I actually looked up genetics  on calico cats and why some of them are end up being gray and beige  and learned about the dilute gene. And I was like, Oh my God, genetics are so freaking cool. Yeah. It's like she ran out of printer ink. Yeah. And I was like, God, I think I missed my calling on another thing. Science is really fun too. Yeah. The pun of doing the pun at squares for  color codes. Yeah. 14:19 Yeah, it's crazy. And so, so entertained and captivated with these conversations because I find out things that I did not have any concept of. just tickles me. So how did you get into raising goats and critters? Well, I've had horses my whole life. Ever since I was a little kid, we've had these horses. We moved down here to this farm. 14:47 when I was just starting high school, we had them boarded somewhere else earlier when I was a kid, and then we moved down here to bring the horses home. So they've kind of always been here. um But that's like its own brand of having a farm, right? Like not everybody has those. We never even had chickens or goats or anything before that until me and my husband then moved back here. We bought, we had our own house with our first chickens and everything, like the perfect little backyard homestead, right? The half acre with my favorite coop ever.  It was such a gorgeous coop that he built me in. 15:16 our little raised beds and we had my perennial landscaping I put in everywhere. It was a gorgeous little first house for us. And then we moved back here. We bought my farm, my family farm then back from my mom. And so brought the chickens with us then. And I had been a farrier to roll back way to the horses. I had been a farrier years ago, a barefoot trimmer specifically. So working with owners that want to keep their horses more holistically. And 15:45 I had trimmed a couple goats hooves too. Some of them had them just as pets with their horses. And I always thought, I am never getting goats. Like, this is not my thing. I am never getting these goats, right? Well, fast forward to 2020 and this artist that I followed on Facebook for a long time, she makes these amazing dolls with their hair, like these just crazy, like Tim Burton looking kind of dolls and uses their hair to make their, the mohair to make this hand spun yarn for their, the doll hair. 16:14 And she was posting it, she was liquidating some of her herd. And I thought, you know what? I had written in my phone notes a couple years prior that  I wanted to at some point get fiber animals, either Angora goats or Angora bunnies. And I looked back on that note and thought, well, I think now's the time then. So we drove up there  and I told my husband we were getting three and we ended up bringing home four because the one was a baby  of one of the moms. 16:43 So we ended up with four goats because you never go and just get what you wanted. You're always going to find something else. So we got those  and honestly, we brought them home and then I just kind of looked at them like,  Oh boy, now what?  Like  we had kind of set up fence for them because we have a ton of round pen fence from the horses. And I tell everybody that when they're starting a new property, get yourself some round pen panels and use that as for any like large animal. And even the goats can't really get through it. 17:12 And then we have added welded wire, just rolled welded wire to it for some of the go pens. But that is the most flexible fencing option that you can get when you're trying to figure out a new property because you can move it. You know, so we had set up a pen for them and a little shed, little run and shed in the field. But I just kind of looked at them because they weren't super friendly. The ones that we had picked, were so they were handled enough that you could like catch them and to shear them and trim their hobs and things, but they weren't like in your pocket friendly. 17:40 And so we just kind of all looked at each other like, okay, now what?  Like  we kind of had planned ahead, but didn't really plan. And so that was kind of just, that's how I learned to is just kind of get thrown into it.  actually did the same thing, the exact same experience then. I didn't learn from it ah with a baby goat. Then the following year, I thought, okay, I've got these goats that I'm going to breed. Anyway, I had found some Nigerian dwarfs. 18:07 And cause I thought, okay, I've already got the place set up for goats now a year later. Let's go ahead and get some dairy goats. Like what's the, what's another goat  added to this herd anyway. So then I found a little Nigerian dwarf buck, just a tiny buckling.  And so we went and drove him, got him. was like, Oh, I'll just put him out with the moms and all the other baby goats and they'll take care of them, right? Wrong.  The mom goats of course, wanted nothing to do with this little baby. This is Ozzy, Ozzy Ago. He was part of the Cheesier. So this is baby Ozzy. 18:37 So I put him out with them and of course the other mom goats hated him because he wasn't their baby. So we had a house goat for about six weeks. He lived in the house. He literally was sleeping in my bed. This was prior to having a human kid. So I had my little goat kid in the bed because he would not stay in the bathroom. I had a little baby gate up for him to keep him in the bathroom in his own little pen and he was screaming all night about it.  you know, as a parent. 19:05 sleep deprived does, you just grab the baby and put him in the bed. And then he slept all night. So that was kind of how that worked. But  he went out to potty with the dogs. He thought he was a dog. It was the cutest thing ever. So, and he's still one of the most friendly ones, but yeah, it's like you learn these lessons and then you don't learn.  So we did the same thing. Like didn't really plan ahead to what we're going to do with the baby goat, but we got it. So that was fun.  The thing is baby animals will train you before you train them. 19:35 Oh, for sure.  Our dog that I mentioned, we got her when she was a day short of eight weeks old. And she had, she was born into a home with seven children  and I think six siblings, six, six litter mates. So she was never alone and it was never quiet.  Uh-huh.  And uh friends of ours had the mom and the dad. And when we went to pick her up, 20:03 My friend said, do you have a crate for her? And I said, of course we do. Cause I've done all the research on getting a puppy. Cause I thought I was smart. And she said, okay. She said, she said, I, I, um, have a, was a piece of cloth that was with mom.  She said, and I'm sending this home, put it in the crate and that way Maggie will, will smell mom and hopefully she'll settle down for you.  Um, that dog, our dog. 20:33 barked and whined  and screamed  all night every night for five nights in a row in the crate.  On day six, I was like, I cannot do this.  Cannot do this. And my husband was like, what are we going to do? And I said, we're going to bring that cute little six pound puppy to bed with us.  he said, she's going to be in our bed for the next however many years. And I said, she's only going to be about 30 pounds. It's fine.  Right. 21:02 I said, because we're both going to die from sleep deprivation if we don't do something. And we even got her the heartbeat puppy.  Didn't do any good. I mean, she loved it. She loved to play with it, but it did not help.  Finally, she was old enough to have the run of the house. And finally she learned that she could sleep downstairs if we were sleeping upstairs.  Now, now she's five and a half  and she sleeps on the stair landing outside the bedroom doors.  And so. 21:32 So if you can just get through that first year  with a puppy  or that first couple of weeks with a house goat, you're good. Yep. We just got a Black Lab puppy this past fall because I lost my heart dog. He was an Aussie doodle. He's Bloomer, Aussie doodle chief. I lost him.  He's 13, but still it was very unexpected ah back in June. And my husband had always grown up with Black Labs and he told me forever, like we had plenty of dogs. We didn't need another one. 22:01 But he's like, you know, we should really get a black lab. And so finally it was, we had, you know, kind of an opening in the pack.  And so I found this guy and he has been the biggest I told you so ever  because  like from the second we brought this guy home, he's just so good. And I'm used to the Pyrenees, right? Who are bred for their entire lifeline to not listen to humans and to make their own decisions and to be stubborn. 22:30 And you know, they're smarter than you. They know more than you do. And so then to get a dog that is just so purely a dog and just wants to do whatever you want him to do.  It is such a breath of fresh air.  But he was the same way. Like the first couple days, I put him straight in the bed. I was like, there is no way any of us are sleeping. And now he sleeps in his crate. He loves his crate. He goes in there and it's because it's a nice break for him, you know, to go and that's his spot. Get away from the other big dogs too. But those first couple days, man. 23:00 But it's funny though,  when we got, I think it was the second Pyrenees is when my husband said this. It was like just a random Tuesday and we're driving three hours to go get a dog. And he said,  you know, for most people, this is like kind of a big life event to get a dog, like, you know, 15 year commitment. And for you, it's just a Tuesday. m it's, it is a big thing and we, we love them all the same, but we're, I'm so much calmer about it. uh 23:28 So like even adding the puppy in this fall, like I'm plenty busy. Like I did not need the extra busy of a puppy and potty training and chasing my kid around, like all this stuff. But he just melted into the half the routines here so nicely. So just another Tuesday.  a new puppy.  Yeah. It was not just another Tuesday when we got Maggie, because we had been wanting a puppy forever and we did not have a yard to have a dog.  And so the first thing we did when we moved to our homestead. 23:57 five years ago  was see this post from my friend that they had puppies coming.  I was like, do you want a Daisy and Diesel puppy? Cause that's her parents name.  And my husband was like, how much are they? And I said, I don't know. wanted to ask you if you would consider it before I even asked him anything.  And he was like, find out how much they are. So I messaged my friend and I said, how much? And she said, 500 bucks. And I was like, cool. 24:25 didn't know puppies cost that much money in my head. And I said, we'd like one of Daisy and Diesel's pups. I said, we just moved to the new house and 3.1 acres. I think maybe we can have a puppy now.  And she was like, okay. And they weren't born yet. And it was the first litter from Daisy. Daisy is my friend's heart dog and Daisy's still around. Daisy's only like nine months older than Maggie. I guess she's my first litter.  And, uh 24:52 Jean posted when the puppies were born and I was like, oh my God, they're little potatoes. Yeah. And from that minute I was just like, okay, I have to learn everything I can about how you handle a puppy. Cause I had no idea.  So it was not another Tuesday when I went, when we went to get Maggie  and it wasn't another Tuesday for Jean either. She had already given up like three or four of the seven to their new owners. And she's standing there just holding Maggie and petting her and 25:21 not letting go. And I said, are you going to cry when you hand her to me? And she's like, probably. She said, I cried the first four. And I said, yeah, I'm probably going to cry when you put her in my hand. So we might as well just start crying now. literally laughed and then started tearing up. So it was not another Tuesday for me. But the thing that I have learned is that my husband and I are both in our mid fifties and 25:48 When Maggie gives up the ghost, we probably won't get another puppy. We might get a dog,  but we probably won't go through the puppy stage again because it's just so much.  It's a lot. Yeah.  But it's the same with anything like same with kids, same with any kind of farming, like new farm animals that you bring on. It's so much in the front end  of training them and it's so intensive. But then once you get that groundwork laid,  oh, 26:16 then you've got a buddy for life. And then you've got that foundation in place and then everything just runs so much smoother. Yeah, that's the sweet spot that you're hoping for when you're going through the terrible tantrums of a puppy, yes. Right.  Okay, so um I usually keep these to half an hour, but I really want to hear about the other part of your business. So do you have 15 more minutes? Oh yeah, I got time. Okay, so you have your farm, but you also have a business. So tell me about the business part. 26:45 Yeah, so I've been in some version of online business in that realm for closer to 15 years now, but I say over 10. So I've always had my own website, my own blog, done all of that kind of backend thing. And the past two years now, especially, I really got into teaching other people how to do that. Because what I see a lot now, it's like my clients and my coaching group members, 27:14 They have these audiences on Facebook or on Instagram or what are on Tik Tok or wherever, but they have no website. They have no email lists. They have no way to contact people if like Tik Tok shuts down every other day. I don't even do Tik Tok, but I know, you know, it's  gone every other day. Um, Facebook limits your reach so bad. So, and even if these people have already been monetized on these platforms, like they've got a heap, like huge audiences, some, some in the hundreds of thousands  and 27:42 they'll still get shadow banned. Like they'll have one video do really well and go viral, you know, and then they get paid a bunch from Facebook for the ads on it. And then the whole next week, Facebook doesn't show their content to anybody.  And that's frustrating for a lot of people because they're spending a lot of time creating this content and then it's gone in 24 hours. It just disappears. So what I teach people, have, do this one-on-one for clients directly where I'm doing the work and setting up the foundation for you. And then I also have my coaching group is content seeds collective. 28:11 where I teach you how to do all this.  And this month, especially in February, we're doing a business roots challenge where every week we're going through these setup phases. So the first week we already did business foundations. Like, do you need an LLC to be legit? Do you need an EIN? Do you need a PO box?  This is the funniest thing that stops so many people because when you go to send emails for anti-spam laws, you have to have an address posted at the bottom of your email footer. 28:41 And a lot of people, they have a farm or farm stand, they want people to know their address, right? It's another just marketing piece. But a lot of people  are just running this from their home and they don't want people to know their home address. So you need to go have a PO box. When I tell you that these people have had to go back to the post office three or four times because they don't have the right amount of IDs or they need their name on something and everything's in their husband's name on the farm, like all of these things. So this is what we set up the first week of Business Foundation Week because 29:11 People run into this and they didn't even know it was a thing. Well, I've been there, done that. So I can help steer you and get you past those roadblocks before they even stop you up. So that was week one. Week two, then we got into websites. You have to have a home on the internet. If you're writing these big, long captions for Instagram, that probably should be a blog post. So now you can drive traffic to your website. You can monetize the site with ads there that are more consistent. 29:40 And then you have somewhere that you can actually drive Pinterest traffic to that you own and you can track that traffic. Then you can make a social post that ties back to the blog post, take a piece of that post out for your caption and drive them back there instead of everything living on ground that you don't own. You're just posting everything on rendered ground on socials. So then  this week now, third week, we're into email. 30:05 And I use flow desk in particular, but I can set you up on, you know, whichever different email platform, but the concept is the same. need to get people off of wherever they're coming from, whether it's Google SEO, and they're landing on your website from a search, they're coming from Pinterest, or they're coming from your socials.  I want you to have their email. So you own that line of communication to them. So that's what we're setting up this week. And then next week, we bring it all together with Pinterest. So this is where. 30:34 everything starts to really get to be automated. Especially coming into spring, everybody's gonna be outside being busy with the garden and know, baby goats if you've got them bred, all the things in spring. And you don't wanna be stuck to your computer. You don't wanna be with your face and your phone making another reel for Instagram.  You wanna be out enjoying that. So you can have content going out on Pinterest, schedule a month or two months out even if you're using a different scheduling app, because Pinterest only goes out 30 days on the 31:03 native scheduler, you can schedule a month's worth of content so that you can go then be outside the whole rest of the month. You can take that two hours that you would have spent making one day's worth of content for socials and instead put that into an entire month and schedule it to go out automatically so that that whole system is working in the background for you around the clock without your input, setting up all of these kinds of things. But it all comes down to is your business set up correctly with that foundation? 31:32 Do you have a website and a home for them to actually go and to drive this traffic to? Can you capture their email so that you can talk to them? And then do you have a way to market that doesn't rely on you constantly being on your phone? So that's what I do one-on-one for clients. And I work with all kinds of people. I've got a couple right now with literally hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook and they had no website, no email, anything. And so now we're getting them up to speed to have all of these things. 31:58 to add those extra income streams. Cause now they'll have ads on their websites. Now they've just launched digital products too. So their own product that people are buying and it's just releasing that constant reliance on social media and being on your phone all the time. And then I teach people how to do it themselves in the Content Seeds Collective. We have a coaching call every Thursday at one o'clock Eastern time and everybody gets in there. We can screen share and I can walk everybody through it. 32:26 The group's still really small right now. So a lot of the time it's like a one-on-one session. Like last week, one of my members got basically a one-on-one session for the whole call because she shows up every single week since she's joined the group. And so we were working through a couple of changes on her website, how to optimize the WordPress theme so that it's faster and the pictures load better and it lays out the information better for her people that land on her website to actually go do what she needs them to do on the site, which would be 32:55 subscribe to the email list and buy her products. So she got like a one-on-one  with that coaching goal. And then all of my resources are in the Root Seller Resource Library where I've got my Canva templates for pins. I've got all of these checklists to go literally step-by-step. The exact same thing that I do myself for clients. This is how I set everything up and in what order. Random things too, like you need a Gravatar for your author bio on a WordPress website. What is a Gravatar? 33:25 So stuff like that that I help  set up so that you're not wasting any time trying to learn how to do this stuff. I just tell you the exact steps to do it in the exact right order.  Wow. That is a lot of stuff. um So do you assume that somebody who comes to you  knows nothing and you talk them through it from scratch or do you assume that they know a little and then you just go from where they're at? 33:54 It can be for both. So the way that I have Content Seeds  Collective set up  is if you are completely beginner, you can go through it step by step  and build out your business the right way  from the first time  and set everything up in the right order. Or if you're somebody that has a couple pieces in place, you've got a following on socials, you've maybe got even a website, maybe even have a Pinterest and email list, you're maybe just not even using it. 34:24 you can go through these same steps and treat it like a checklist to find any gaps  and then, you know, fix those pieces so that we're building that foundation correctly. So it works both ways for if you're a complete beginner or if you've already got some stuff in place.  Okay, cool. Cause when I started the first podcast, this podcast, I'm sorry,  get confused between the two.  When I started at Honey Homestead podcast,  I had no idea what I was doing. 34:53 at all, like huge learning curve. And I was talking to my mom about all the stuff I'm learning. And you need to understand my mom was 78 at the time.  And she's like, what's that? How does that work? I've never heard of that. And I said, well, no, of course you haven't heard of it because you don't do this.  And she was like, I can't believe you're learning this at 54. And I was like, I'm not dead.  You can learn something new anytime. 35:23 I said, 54 is not as old as it used to be. Right. And she said, you're just so smart. And I love it when my mom tells me that I'm smart because my mom has spent her life thinking that she's not smart and she is, she's brilliant. She has no idea how smart she is, but she's really smart. And I said, I get it from you. And she's like, now you get it from your dad. 35:49 I just, every time I try to talk to my mom about how much I appreciate how brilliant she is, she always deflects. And so as I've been talking with her and my dad about this project and friends,  when people are like, you're so smart, I'm like, thank you. I don't deflect because I saw my mom do it my whole life. Yeah, own it.  Yep. So it's really, really fun. 36:18 learning all of the marketing. if you want to do a podcast listener, you should do it because you will gain a whole lot of knowledge and understanding about how people react to marketing, how they understand how they're being marketed to how they're being sold to. uh blogs are really good too, because people who don't want to have earbuds in blogs are great because you can sit down and read them. 36:48 Yeah. And you can transcribe the podcast episode into a blog post  and then you can pin both of those on Pinterest. Yeah. And for people who don't know Pinterest is not a social network. It is a search engine. Yeah. It is a search engine. So you can comment and interact and stuff on post. There's a little bit of a social aspect to it, but it is a search engine. 37:14 So you're going on Pinterest. It's almost always a completely cold audience of people who've never seen you before. They're not searching like for you in particular, they're searching for, like I have a lot of uh recipe bloggers that I work with. do canning recipes and  baking and all that. So they're going to Pinterest and typing in beef canning recipes or how to pressure can potatoes, you know, like that's what they're searching for. And then the goal there is for them to find your pin. 37:44 and click over to your website. Pinterest is also the only platform that's designed to take people off of it.  All the other social platforms, they don't want you to get to leave that platform. They knock your views. If you post a link in stories,  if you post a link in the caption or the comments, they don't show that post to anybody because they want to keep you there and keep you scrolling. But Pinterest is literally designed to take people off of Pinterest and to land them to where you're trying to take them, which should be to your own website. Yep. 38:14 Absolutely. All right, Jen, I would love to talk to you for like three hours about all this because I'm so entertained, but I try to give you half an hour and we're already at 38 minutes. So where can people find you? can find me on all socials and all Pinterest and my website, SteelSpoonFarm.com or at SteelSpoonFarm and then all of my business content is at Jen Kibler online. Okay. And what's the name of the 38:44 the program that you mentioned? Content Seeds Collective, because we're planting our content seeds. Okay. That's on your website. Yeah. Everything's linked on my website. Okay, great. And can we say how much it costs for that? Yeah. Content Seeds Collective is $37 a month. You can cancel anytime. I do have an affiliate program for it also. So you can get in and get an affiliate link and then you get paid before I get paid actually. 39:14 When you join that  so you can it gets paid on every month to that people join using your link Fantastic, that's great  All right.  Um, was really really fun Jen. Thank you so much for your time  Thanks for having me  as always you can find me at a tiny homestead podcast calm  Have a great day  

Today I'm talking with Tricia at Silo Springs Farm. 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. 00:11 Today I'm talking with Trisha at Silo Springs Farm in Tennessee. Good morning Trisha, how are you? Good morning, I'm good. How are you?  I'm good. I'm just going to be honest. The first part, we tried recording this and it didn't work. So we're starting over from scratch. So I'm going to ask the same questions over again. um How is the weather in Tennessee? It is beautiful today.  Sun is shining and the ground is drying up. We had a really wet rainy day yesterday and today is looking really pretty. 00:41 I'm actually really glad to hear that you guys got rain because I have a friend that I co-host another podcast with. She lives in Nebraska  and they've been under fire danger for oh most of the winter time so far. And she's always lamenting the fact that they really haven't gotten any snow or any rain. And I'm like, oh, if I could just send you some from Minnesota, I would do it. 01:05 It is a gorgeous, sparkly, sunny, warm day in Minnesota today. And it was so cold three weeks ago that I have nothing to complain about. Exactly. It's so pretty. I'm like Mother Nature, stop teasing me because I know we have snow in the forecast later this week. Oh, really? Just a little bit, yeah. Whether we actually get snow or not remains to be seen. I suspect it might be rain because I don't think it's going to get cold enough to snow, but we'll see what happens. 01:34 Yeah.  All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and how you ended up raising Highland cows and High Park cows. um Well, it kind of started, it's kind of funny how it got started. My husband  was offered a job in Nashville, Tennessee, and we're  from the city. We're actually from Alabama and have lived in subdivisions all our lives. And when he uh 02:03 said that he had to move if he accepted this position. I was like, okay, well, we're going to get land and we're going to get us some mini cows.  And so that's what we did. We  moved to a little uh old farmhouse that had 12 acres and remodeled the farmhouse and got us some cows and  just kind of going from there. nice.  Your husband is a canine police officer. Is that what you're saying? Yes. uh Okay. have a quick 02:33 offside's question. When you're a canine police officer, does the canine come home with the officer that it works with or how does that work? Yes. He's actually had two dogs  and uh one  got sick and had to be retired. And so we adopted him and still have him, but  his other one  comes home with him every day. it's em not really 03:00 good for farm life. He's a  GSP and he  doesn't get along well with the chickens. He wants to point them and eat them. ah I imagine. So  the reason I'm asking is because I know with service dogs that you're not supposed to go up and pet a service dog at the mall.  And I'm assuming it's the same thing with a canine officer. You don't just walk up to a canine dog and, you know, an officer dog and pet it. 03:27 Yeah. Well,  it's always better to ask, but like  his dogs are explosive dogs.  Um, and so like they're not on duty. They know when they're sniffing an area that that's when they're working.  Um, his old dog, anybody could just walk up and pet him, but this dog, he just gets too ramped up and gets kind of hard to hold onto when people start giving him attention.  But yeah, yeah. He lets people pet his.  Nice. Okay. I was just curious because I've never known anybody who had, who had that 03:57 job and never never known a  canine that was working with police. So I thought I would ask while I had the opportunity.  Okay, so your cows you raise them so that you can have babies so you can sell the babies. Is that right? That is right. Yes. Okay. So when is when is calving season for you? Is it coming right up? Well, we usually um have in the spring and then some will have in the fall, we try our best to avoid 04:26 summer calving  just because of the flies and the bacteria that's rampant in the summer.  So we just actually delivered um our last 2025 calve yesterday and  really hoping that we start having some babies in March or April this year. Okay. Wow. The last one for that you that you were expecting in 2025 was just born. Yeah. Well, no, it was we sold it yesterday. Oh, okay. It was born in October, but it went to its 04:56 home in Alabama  yesterday. oh I misunderstood. Sorry.  All right. So when you,  like I said, I don't know anything about how this all works. When you sell the babies,  do you know what those babies are going to be used for? Whether they're going to be used for breeding stock or meat or milk or do you have any idea? Well, with the, um, with the Holland breed. 05:24 They're really popular right now for just pets or yard ornaments,  people wanting to breed their own.  They're so expensive. I  really doubt anybody would be eating them. uh I don't know anything about them and I know they're not, they don't get as big as say, you know, an Angus. Right. I wasn't sure whether people actually use them for food or not. And I don't know about their milk. Is their milk worth? 05:53 using or is it just for the babies?  I haven't ever actually milked these, but I have read that they're really good beef  and uh milk cows.  And I do know people that like have huge massive farms of highlands  and you know, lot of their bulls they'll steer and eat those, but  we're so small. don't, we can't do that. Yeah. Yep. We have a three and a half, sorry, 3.1 acre property here ourselves and 06:23 Somebody asked me if we were going to get a mini cow and I just laughed. was like, number one, cows are herd animals. That one critter would be so lonely it would die. Yeah. Yeah. They need a friend. Yeah. And number two, we don't have enough room or any place for them to graze. That's an expensive, expensive hobby. Oh yeah. So the answer was no, but I just laughed before I said anything. I was like, no, we are not getting cows. 06:51 Nope, chickens. Chickens in a big garden is about the extent that we're going to commit to farming here.  Yeah, I love our chickens. That was one of the first things we got was chickens. They're great. Do you have one specific breed or did you go crazy and get all kinds of different breeds? Well, I went crazy and got all  different breeds according to like the pretty ones and the colorful eggs. 07:15 which was probably a mistake because they're not real good layers. So we go a good portion of the year without eggs, but they're getting started back now. But we do have a lot of pretty eggs when we get them. You have the different colored ones? We do, yeah. Rainbow eggs. That's what my daughter would call it when she was little. She'd see the blue and the, I don't know what they're called, the Marin eggs that are dark. Yes, yes. 07:42 We'd be somewhere and somebody would have all different colored eggs and she'd be like, Oh mom, they have the rainbow eggs. And I'm like,  uh-huh. They sure do.  She was very disappointed when she found out that the blue ones didn't taste like blue raspberry. Yeah.  They all taste the same. That's cute. Yep. An egg is an egg is an egg. Just like a rose is a rose is a rose. That's correct.  Okay. Um, do you have lots of chickens? We have 18 so. 08:12 I don't think that we have lots of chickens, but I tell people we have 18 and they're like, oh, that's a lot of birds. Yeah, that's probably about how many we have. um I have two coops, the ones that lay and then I have some silkies um and another coop. And so probably all together  20, 25, something like that.  I was just talking with somebody that raises silkies and she was like, they are so pretty, but they're the dumbest birds ever known to man. 08:40 They really are. I have to go and collect some of them at night because they just can't seem to make it back to the coop. that's what she was saying too. She was like, I don't know what it is, but they just will not go in the coop on their own. like, they're dumb. She's like, they're dumber than dumb. 09:00 They do struggle. Dumb as a stump as my dad would say.  Okay, so do you  incubate any of the eggs from your chickens and sell the babies or not? I did at one point. I  have,  well actually the last two years I sold  silkies,  but I'm probably not going to this year. 09:27 But they're really good mamas. They're not real bright, but they're excellent mamas.  They're not so bright.  No one but a lady from the South can say they're not very bright in the nicest, lightest way ever. 09:43 God bless their hearts. They're not very bright. That's right. Love it. Okay. Um, are you guys parents or you just have your animals? Um, we have children. Um, I have a daughter, uh, that she, uh, just will be 19 this year. And then my husband has two sons and, um, they're grown. Okay. So you're, you're pretty much empty nesters at this point. 10:11 Very, very close. uh Yep. I understand. just, I'm going through it now and I raised four kids and I'm like, wow, the house got really, really quiet. I know.  So hard. Yup. um did,  did your daughter,  I don't know, was she younger when you guys moved to the farm?  No, she wasn't. And I wish she had been. When she was growing up, she was a little tomboy. 10:39 But when we moved here, she was like middle school age. And so she was um more into  doing video games and  she just, she would have been more into it if we could have uh moved here when she was a lot younger. she didn't, she didn't embrace the farm life. What like you would have hoped that she would have. No, she didn't. She was at the point where she was like, Oh, that's so gross. Ooh, they smell. 11:09 Oh, fine. Yeah. Huh. Did she love the babies though? Oh, yeah. She likes the babies.  Yeah. See, I'm a sucker for a baby. It doesn't matter what it is. I always say even baby alligators are cute.  She says that her, the goats are probably her favorite of all the animals. They're mine too. Other than a baby kitten. Baby kittens are my favorite, but baby goats are my next favorite. 11:36 They're totally different things. A kitten is going to be a pet. A goat, probably not a pet. Love it like a pet, but probably not a pet.  Yes, baby goats are the most adorable farm animal ever, ever created. I've had a thing for them since I was young. I've talked about it a lot on the podcast because my friend's parents used to raise goats and every spring  she would call me and say,  can your mom bring you over those baby goats? were born last night. 12:04 Every year she would call me and be like come now while they're brand new.  Oh, they're so funny. They're the funniest animal I loved them when they were anywhere from  18 hours to 36 hours old because they weren't quite Crazy bouncy yet and they would let you hold them. Yeah  Yeah 12:28 Once they got past that 36 hour mark, she's like, nah, don't even bother because they're already running around and climbing on stuff. I'm like, okay. Yes, they are love wars. Yeah. But oh, when they're brand new, they're so sweet and they're so soft. Yes. I love them so much. I do. It's ridiculous. My husband thinks that I have some kind of affliction or illness when it comes to baby goats. 12:53 Boring, they don't do anything. I'm like, that's the whole point They don't do anything they let you hold them and they'll get you like they love you whether they do or not  Ours are really um clingy like they'll just if you let them out of the gate They just follow you around the whole day Uh-huh. em I get the impression that sheep are kind of like that too We have friends and we went over to pick up we went to get chickens from them  and her son was 13:24 walking up the path from the barn and behind him was a probably four or five day old lamb. And it was a good 20 feet behind him following him and just doing that meh noise at him. And I said, you got a puppy back there? And he's like, that's not a puppy, that's a sheep. And I was like, I know it's a sheep. I said, does it follow you around like a puppy? 13:54 And  he said, yeah, said the only thing missing is it doesn't bark. And I was just like, kid, I can't figure out if you are being rude or if you're just playing my game. I don't know.  Have you ever seen the Valleys sheep?  I have. Yes, they're beautiful. They are. I'm begging my husband for some of those, but so far no luck.  Huh. Okay. Well,  um,  Christmas maybe? Asking for Christmas. 14:23 Well, the lady that I have been talking to, actually, said, do you want me to message your husband about Valentine's day? And I was like, yes, please.  But it still didn't work. Why doesn't he want them? They're so expensive. um They're like more than the Holland cows. They're, they're really up there.  Well, I know just enough to be dangerous on some of this stuff, but um I think the reason they're so expensive is because they're not common in the United States. Right. 14:53 Right. Yup. Anything that isn't common is going to cost much more than something you can get anywhere. Always.  Yep.  Which sucks because I would love for you to have a relationship because they're really, really cute. They are adorable. So I'm trying to figure out how to ask this without sounding rude because I don't want to be rude on my podcast. 15:19 Why are you  raising the cows? Why do you have chickens? Is it because you love them? Is it an income? Is it both? Well, it's not an income yet.  That's our goal is to have it as an income, but um it's just different. um it's something that me and my husband are doing together that neither one of us has ever done. And so we're trying to build like this business. um 15:48 together and it's just so much fun working together. Not that we always get along, but  there are days that we butt heads, but  at the end of the day, it's like, look what all we accomplished today. Look what we've done. Yeah. And you would butt heads no matter what you're doing, because that's what husbands and wives do.  Exactly.  Okay. um God, I don't know what is wrong with me today. No questions are coming to mind. 16:16 Uh, are you,  are there people around you who are doing things like you're doing so that you have a community?  Um,  we have a lot  of, uh, old time farmers around us, uh, that,  and by that, just mean like they've been doing this generational,  um, they, know, they're on their daddy's land, um, still raising  cattle, mostly Angus.  but 16:44 There's not really a whole lot of hollown.  I can think of maybe one or two that might be fairly close to us. um 16:54 We have some people that are on the hill right behind us and they're raising their cows um just to eat, but not doing kind of what we're doing as far as just raising them to  sell. And although we do, I mean, we have goals that we would like to be able to be self-sufficient and  do our meat. And  I've bought a milker.  I have one Jersey that I plan on milking, but working a full-time job and then doing farm life is kind of... 17:22 A little difficult at times. So the farm is like a very expensive side gig sometimes.  Yes, exactly it is.  But if you're like a lot of the people that I talk to, it pays for itself in joy and satisfaction. It is. It's really odd that you can get out there and work yourself to death  and you've enjoyed it, you know. Yes,  I do know. 17:48 I'm going to say this again. say this all the time. I am not the grunt worker at our place. My husband is. He  loves being outside. He loves gardening. He loves all the manual hard work.  I am, I'm kind of over it. I really worked hard raising my kids like in the trenches, playing with them, shuttling them, feeding them the whole bit.  And in my mid fifties, I'm kind of like, you know, I really don't want to be Holland wood. 18:19 And I'm not in the shape I used to be in. And he's like, that's okay. You don't have to, you do what you do best, which is cook and do the podcast. said, cause you love the podcast. You're good at it. I'm like, okay, cool. So yesterday he was outside cutting up a tree that he took down last weekend, cause it's a huge ash tree. And he came in after two hours, just his T-shirt was just wet with sweat. Cause it was so warm here yesterday. 18:47 I said, were you out there with no jacket? He's like, honey. He said, I've been out there without a jacket for the last two hours. He said, I am dying.  I need water. I was like, oh, let me get you some water.  And he loves it. He loves being outside. That's my husband too. He jokingly says he's the hired hand. I'm the one that comes up with the ideas and he's the one that brings them to fruition. um But it's funny that you mentioned cutting wood because he, um 19:17 installed  a Cast-orange stove and that's what he's been doing this winter is chopping wood to burn in the stove  Uh-huh best form of heat ever I grew up in a house where my parents had a wood stove in the house and we used it all the time in the wintertime loved how it smelled and Now we have a wood burning boiler system so the wood stove itself is outside and then there's a tube that brings water to the furnace and then 19:46 the furnace somehow takes the heat from the hot water and blows it into the house. And I really miss having a wood stove in the house because of the way that it smelled. Yeah. It's so pretty at night too. Yeah. And we just don't have a good place to put one in because otherwise there'd probably be one by now. That's how much I love that. So is right now through, I don't know, June, your favorite time of year because you're going to be calving and 20:16 The chickens are starting to lay and the light is changing and everything just feels full of promise. Yes.  Especially the day's getting longer. just, I hated the daylight savings time, but  yes, I love spring.  March 8th, we turned the clocks ahead just so you know.  I looked the other day. was like, Hey, it's staying later. Later, later. When do we change the clocks ahead? 20:42 And my husband was like, I don't know, they keep changing it. And I was like, okay. So I went and looked and I said, March 8th, we get an extra hour in late in the evening. He's like, yes. Yes. Cause then he can be outside longer when he gets home from work. So that'll make him really, really happy. yeah. He's so excited right now anyway, cause it's getting to be the time when we plant seeds. So I figure this weekend he's going to bring in the seedling trays and be like, we're going to plant. And be like, okay, I'll lose my kitchen table for two months. 21:11 but that's fine.  It'll pay for it later. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's really ugly the first week  and then as those little babies start popping out  three weeks from this weekend, I'll be like, Oh, look at all the green babies. It's so pretty. 21:28 We have tried and tried to get an uh orchard going, but everything we plant dies.  We have to regroup every year and try something different. ah What's your soil like there? Well, the soil looks really good. It's a little bit rocky,  but aside from that,  the dirt's good. It's not red clay or anything like that. What have you tried to plant? We've done blueberry bushes. um 21:56 My daughter loves pomegranates and so we tried to plant a pomegranate tree. em We've done lavender,  but  it may be just us.  We're having to learn all of this stuff. em Well, uh blueberries, is that what you said? Yes.  Blueberries really need sandy soil and they really need acidic soil. 22:24 Well, that may be the problem because we definitely do not have sandy soil up here. We'll have to work on that. Yeah, I grew up in Maine and that's where wild blueberries grow and the best wild blueberries grow right by the edge of the driveway or where it's sandy.  Yeah, and they really like being near or underneath pine trees because of the acid in the pine needles. 22:47 Well that's good to know. Yep, so that's probably why your blueberry plants aren't doing very well. And also you need to have two different varieties to pollinate each other. 22:58 Well, that could be part of it we've only been planting like we'll plant one,  it'll die. Yeah. And we'll plant another and it'll die. Yeah. They don't have the right growing. They don't have the right soil conditions and you have to have two different varieties. That's part of what's going on there.  And the only reason I know this is we tried to grow them at the house that we lived at before this one in Minnesota and it wasn't sandy soil and they just didn't do well.  They had blueberries for a couple of years in a row. 23:26 but there just wasn't enough acid in the soil and they didn't do well. 23:31 So that might help you.  And if you can find pine trees, or if somebody has pine trees, you can literally go and get pine needles in the fall that have fallen off the tree  and work them into your soil and add some sand. And then you might be able to get them to go.  We'll try that. Yep.  And  like I said, I know just enough to be dangerous and your mileage may vary, but you could try that.  And if you have good black dirt, good soil, 24:01 Try apple trees. Oh, we do actually have an apple tree. It was here when we moved and we've gotten some good apples off of it. Yeah, get some more apple trees if you want an orchard because we have 20 apple trees here that we've put in and this past fall was the first time we've gotten over a hundred apples from two trees. So it takes a while. We've been here five years. So were you baking lots of apple? 24:31 desserts and  jellies. We made apple crisp, but these are the  honey gold apples. They're like a golden delicious apple.  And they weren't very good in apple crisp. And I was like, you can sell them at the farmer's market. I don't love these apples at all.  So they got sold and people ate them and loved them. I like the really nice Regents and Harrelsons and um Cortland apples. Those are my favorites. 25:01 And those are really great for baking. So hopefully our Regent and our  Harrelson and our Honeycrisp trees will produce this year, hopefully. Oh, yeah.  And just so you know, if you have, I think it's eight apple trees, you have a small orchard. Oh, really? Yep. I had to look it up.  Yep. And um 25:28 I don't know if plum trees would grow where you are, but we have plum trees. have peached. have a couple of peach trees.  We've got some wild  plum trees, but I think our goats have just about  eaten them down.  I bet they have because I bet goats really love plum trees because they tend to be a shorter bushier tree. So I bet they can reach it. Yup. uh 25:54 Don't give up on trying to have an orchard because I'm sure there's stuff that will grow for you. You just got to figure out what it is. And in Tennessee, do you guys have, what are the little orange fruits? Not oranges. uh Persimmons? Oh yeah. Yeah?  There's some wild persimmons growing around here too. Yeah, we don't have those here. It doesn't stay warm enough, long enough for them to grow. 26:22 they would never produce. They might grow, but they wouldn't produce any fruit.  Okay. Well, I don't know. I would suggest trying out amending your soil for blueberries and putting in some more apple trees if the apple tree does well. Yeah. I'm to have to tell my husband about that.  Yup. 26:43 Again, the only reason I know about blueberries is because I grew up in the land of blueberries. I can't even look at a blueberry pie anymore without my stomach flipping over because I ate so many blueberries as a kid.  I can't eat blueberry anything anymore. My grandparents had  blueberry bushes on their land in Alabama and oh my goodness, those are the best blueberries ever. Yeah, it's really funny when I talk to people about the things that they grew up eating. 27:12 My mom grew up eating black raspberries because she lived in Illinois when she was a kid. And black raspberries don't grow wild in Maine anywhere. And she really misses black raspberries. And she was like, it must be like that for you with blueberries. And I'm like, no, I can't stand blueberries. And she's like, why? I said, because we picked so many blueberries when I was growing up. And we had blueberry muffins and blueberry pie and blueberry cake. 27:41 you know, during blueberry season.  I said, I can't even stand the thought of eating anything blueberry flavored at this point in my life.  She's like, you're weird. said, yep, I, what was your first clue? But yes, I am. can't do it.  She's like, what about blackberries? Cause we picked a lot of blackberries too. I said, I love blackberry jam. Other than that, I don't really do blackberries either. We did have some blackberry,  wild blackberry bushes,  but. 28:11 Our goats ate those as well. Those darn goats.  I know it. How many goats do you have? I have, um, four, five does  and  a weather and then about four bucks. I need to get rid of some bucks, but you kind of get attached to them.  Yeah. Do you, um, do you have babies with the goats and then sell the baby goats too? Yes, we do. 28:38 Do people just lose their minds when they get their baby goats? Are they like, yes, I finally have goats.  They do. um They're fairly easy to sell because they're so cute. uh How old are they when you actually sell them?  I believe they're  eight weeks old when I can either have to look this up. 29:02 Every year. think it's either six or eight weeks old when I can wean them. And then, um, once they're eating really good, um, then they can go to their new homes. Yeah. Um, fun fact about goats, goats don't have top teeth. They just have bottom teeth. Right.  Do they have top molars though, in the back?  I've not seen any, but I,  uh, have not really looked either. So. 29:30 I for the life of me cannot figure out how in the heck they chew hay without top front teeth. 29:38 I don't know, but they chew on it forever. maybe  it's  a combination. There's. Yeah. I don't know. I read this a couple of months ago about goats and I was like, how do they eat? How do they crunch anything? 29:55 You know, how do they masticate it, I guess is the word I'm looking for. But they definitely do enjoy eating. They eat everything.  Yes,  I've heard  two different sides of the fence on this.  One lady said that her goats were the best behaved goats ever. They weren't mischievous and they did not eat tin cans and paper. And then another lady was like, oh my God, my goats are terrible. They're everywhere that they're not supposed to be. They eat everything. 30:24 Including me if they're not supposed to eat so it make them sick  and I was like hmm sounds like kids to me Yeah, mine has not ever uh 30:36 Eating things like things that they're not supposed to, but like they'll get into the calf feed or some other animals feed and  go to town on it. But as far as like eating paper or things like that, I've never had that issue. And mine are the Nigerian dwarf.  Um, so they're not jumping fences or anything like that. As long as I have the wire at the bottom of the fence, they're, really no problem to keep in. Nice.  Yeah. My husband and I keep  sort of. 31:05 revisiting the idea of getting a couple of goats, know, youngins. And every time we talk about it, I said, I think I'm more in love with the idea than I am the reality.  And he's like, yeah, me too. He said, every time this comes up, we're like, we should get goats. And then we both come to the conclusion that we're not ready for goats.  hardest part to me about goats is that they're wormy,  the worms  and 31:34 Part of that's probably my fault because I don't have enough space to rotate their fields.  Yep. So  that does make it a little bit more challenging. Yeah. Well, we're lucky enough to have friends that have goats. So if I really, really, really need a baby goat fix in April, May, June, whenever they're due,  can hike my cute little hiney over there and visit a baby goat.  So I'm good. 32:00 I really, I think the garden and the chickens and the barn cats and the dogs are probably more than enough for us at this point in our lives. I've never given up that dog. The only way that dog is going away is if she dies. I am so in love with Maggie. It's ridiculous. And I've been remiss. I haven't been talking about Maggie as much as I did when I started the podcast two and a half years ago. So what kind of dog is Maggie? She is a mini Australian shepherd. Oh, 32:29 And she is the loviest, leasiest mini Australian shepherd you will ever meet. She,  you know how they talk about,  um, cattle dogs being very high energy and,  crazy.  She's like a lab. Oh, wow. She's very, very calm and  she's very athletic. If we take her outside and run her with the frisbee, she hauls  ass and she's jumping in the air to catch it. And she's just all go, go, go. 32:58 But when she's in the house, she's just a loaf. 33:03 We have a golden doodle  and talk about being wired up and crazy.  is, he actually, um, last week got bit on the head by a Brown recluse. Oh no.  Yeah. So,  um, he's  been getting a little TLC here, but he's all better now.  Good. Good. I hate it when dogs are sad or hurt. 33:30 I was never a dog person, Trisha, until we got Maggie. And now I'm a sucker for all of them. I see stories about dogs and if they're sad, I cry. And if they're funny, I laugh myself stupid. It's so dumb. To the point that I will see dogs that are being walked when my husband and I are out running around doing errands and I'm like, oh, who's a good doggo? And my husband's like, you are a sick woman. He said, you never used to be like this. 33:59 I said, but look at the pupper. And he's like, don't push it. Cause he thinks it's really weird that I am so a dog person now. Cause I used to be a cat person, way before I was a So she has, she has assimilated and ruined me for my love of cats. I'm now a dog person. Oh, cats are so funny too though. We made my husband was crack up at the little cat videos of them doing different things. 34:26 Yeah, my husband really likes the YouTube videos where the cats or they knock things off on purpose of  the surface they're on  or they get startled and fall over.  thinks that's pretty funny too.  Yeah.  But anyway, we could talk about things that aren't necessarily  farming or homesteading related all day, but that's not what this podcast is about.  So oh you would like to get Valet sheep. Right.  And is there anything else that you would like to add to your farm? 34:57 We have  a couple of donkeys. would like to get,  we have a mini Jack and I'd like to get a uh don't, uh, Jenny. Uh-huh.  Um, but other than that, just  the Valleys sheep and, and another donkey would be awesome. So then you could have baby donkeys too.  Yes. But they take like a year, I think. Yep. 35:24 Yep. It's a very long gestation period for equines and donkeys fall under equines.  So yeah, it's a long wait  and, it's,  oh, I don't want to burst your bubble. do not want to this out loud because I want to discourage anybody, but  I will  never have a horse or a donkey, mostly because I would want to have that horse or donkey have a baby.  And  it's really nerve wracking. 35:52 when they have their babies because you don't know whether that baby is going to come out good  or if it's going to come out not alive.  And I don't do so well with the second option there. m We had a calf this year that was stillborn. It was  very sad. oh Again, I don't want to discourage anybody from this lifestyle.  Farming, homesteading, ranching is  an amazing choice to make for your life. 36:22 But you've got to get comfortable with things not being alive when you expect them to be. Oh no, it's so hard. 36:33 I heard somebody say one time, if you've got livestock, you will eventually have dead stock.  Uh huh. Yeah. And you will. Whether it's a barn cat or a chicken or a foal,  it's going to happen  and it will break your heart.  yeah. So, you know,  I think that the joy that comes with farming, ranching and homesteading far outweighs the sad. 37:01 But boy, that saddle kick you in the teeth when it happens.  Oh, it really will. There is more good, there's more exciting things  that does happen, but not nearly as often.  So,  all right, Trisha, I try to keep this to half an hour. Where can people find you? Oh, we are on Facebook and Instagram at Silo Springs  Farm. Okay. And you have a blog, right? 37:30 Well, I do, but it has  not been updated in a couple of years. Life got kind of busy and I  quit  writing, but. Okay. Nevermind.  All right. I really appreciate your time so much. People can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. I hope you have a great day, Trisha. Thank you. You too. Thank you.  

Today I'm talking with Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom. 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 In this episode of A Tiny Homestead, Mary welcomes back returning guest Leah from Clear Creek Ranch Mom in Nebraska. Leah has previously appeared on the podcast four times since March 2024, and today’s conversation brings exciting updates. They begin with a little seasonal appreciation, talking about frosty mornings, baby pink sunrises, and the beauty of unobstructed rural views. From there, the conversation turns to what is new. Introducing a New Podcast Mary and Leah recently launched a brand new podcast together: Grit and Grace in the Heartland: Women in Agriculture After thoughtful consideration, Leah said yes to co hosting, and the two have been recording weekly conversations that highlight the voices and stories of women in agriculture. They talk about: Why so many podcasts stop around episode seven and why they are determined to keep going The joy of unscripted, authentic conversation Creating space for women to be heard The power of storytelling in building connection and courage The importance of real human connection in a world increasingly shaped by technology Leah shares how her background in communications and her love of asking questions have shaped her passion for elevating other people’s stories. Why Women’s Voices Matter Grit and Grace in the Heartland focuses on women in agriculture and the many roles they hold. The podcast explores: Identity and authenticity Wearing multiple hats in rural life Leadership, business, ranching, and family Financial literacy and independence for women The deep and often unseen emotional labor of rural women Mary and Leah discuss how meaningful it is to go beyond surface level conversations and create a space where women can share their real stories, including the hard parts. They also reflect on the courage it takes to put yourself out there publicly and the importance of community support, especially in small towns. The Power of Asking and Listening Leah shares stories about the impact of simply noticing people and saying thank you. From fast food employees to store clerks, she talks about how powerful it can be to acknowledge hard work and offer genuine appreciation. The takeaway is simple: If you see something, say something. And not just when it is negative. Kind words and curiosity can change someone’s day, and sometimes even more than that. Stories That Shape Us Mary and Leah also reflect on the women who shaped them, especially their grandmothers. They talk about unconventional women, loneliness, resilience, and the importance of preserving family stories. Every woman has a story worth telling. Every family holds stories that matter. That belief sits at the heart of both podcasts. A Nebraska Favorite The episode wraps up with a lighthearted discussion about Runza, the beloved Nebraska sandwich filled with beef, cabbage, and onions baked inside bread dough. They even share tips for making them at home. Where to Find Leah and the New Podcast You can find Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook. Listen to Grit and Grace in the Heartland: Women in Agriculture at: gritandgraceintheheartland.com Find Mary and A Tiny Homestead at: atinyhomesteadpodcast.com Thank you for listening to A Tiny Homestead. If you enjoy the show, please share it with a friend and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover these meaningful rural stories.    

Today I'm talking with Amy at Grounded In Maine Podcast. 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. Today I'm talking with Amy Bolduc at Grounded in Maine in Virginia. I know that's weird, but that's how it falls.  Good morning, Amy. How are you?  I am doing fine. Thanks. I know it's such a funny thing. People are like, where are you? Like I'm in Virginia,  but why is your podcast Grounded in Maine? Well, because you'll always be. 00:29 Your heart will always be grounded in Maine. That's why. mean, 49 years, not like that's nothing. That's not nothing. Yeah, exactly.  Well, what's the weather doing in Virginia this morning? Oh, geez.  It's so cold this morning. Like, I'm sure it's not Minnesota cold, but it's still cold. mean, it was 15 degrees when we were walking this morning. um And yesterday,  yesterday, it was so yesterday we had 45 mile per hour winds. um And  it was not much warmer. 00:59 So but then two weeks ago, I mean, if you're asking about weather, the weather here is so weird. I mean, all of like November, December, it was beautiful, like 40s, probably. And I know I, you know, everyone was like, oh, my gosh, it's so cold. It's snowing, snowing, snowing. And I'm like, well, you know, don't want to say anything because I'm in the south, blah, blah, blah. But then two weeks ago, the weather forecast was looking like we were. 01:27 My weather app was telling me we were going to get up to 21 inches of snow.  And I was like, what  is this about? ah And then when it actually came, it was like a dusting of snow, but then an inch and a half of freezing rain, ah which I would so I would prefer 21 inches of snow a million times over freezing rain and ice. ah Anyone who's dealt with freezing rain would agree a thousand percent freezing rain is so dangerous. 01:57 Yeah. it's, you know, it just is like, but since then, so last weekend,  I, my, my trusty weather app that I've been using for years lied to me and said, you know, maybe, maybe one between one to three inches of snow. I'm like, okay, you know, that's no big deal. But then we got 10 ish inches of snow  and it was fluffy snow, which was cool. But then like, when I moved here, I did not get a snow shovel because I was 02:26 You know, last winter we had four inches total, like  all winter long, two, two inch storms.  And I was like, that is no big deal. And then this year,  you know, and then the ice, I was like, I'm not I'm not even shoveling. I literally can't shovel that. But so I have a travel trunk shovel, which  it's in two pieces and it's rickety and plastic. I've had it for probably 20 years uh and. 02:54 I ever used it, only when I was working and I got stuck in a snowstorm.  But so that's what I've been using. I actually went out yesterday to try to get a real shovel and they were out. Of course.  Of course.  Because we just got 10 inches of snow.  yeah, I mean, the weather is great. And then, know, Tuesday is supposed to be like 60. I  like,  there's no,  I don't think there's like Virginia weather. I think it's just whatever. 03:23 happens, like what it just feels like. 03:28 Yeah, Mother Nature has become extremely bipolar over the last two years. That's a great way to say it. Maybe she's going through menopause too. I don't want to make you jealous, but it's seven, it's, what is it right now? I'm looking at my weather app. It's 27 degrees here in Minnesota in Lesor right now. And it's supposed to be 38 for the high. Tomorrow 45 for the high, Tuesday 38, Wednesday 38. 03:57 Thursday 40, Friday 40. Well, that's like making up for the last two weeks when it was below zero. That's exactly what I was going to say. We had, we had 14 or 15 days in a row where we never got close to freezing to 32 degrees.  And it was the longest stretch I've seen in years and it sucked. No question.  So anyway,  um, that's the weather update. I would do weather update.  Um, start with a weather update folks. 04:26 Oh, always do. In case you need to know. Every podcast opens with how's the weather because we're all doing stuff that weather impacts and I figure it's a good way to do it.  We're all experiencing weather. We sure are. And when we're trying to grow stuff or, um you know,  if we have chickens. Raise animals. Yeah. Yeah.  It's  kind of important to know what we're walking out into.  So that leads me to my first question. I saw that your  chickens are starting to lay again, beautiful eggs. 04:55 How are the chickens doing and how many do you have? The chickens are good. I have five. I've actually, so I've had one. Miss Lacey never stopped laying. Like every so often she'll skip a day, but then the next day she's like, before I even get there, she's already laid her egg.  She has not taken a break.  Jason, however, has not laid an egg for at least two months. uh Jason is a hen.  She came to me with that name. don't,  Jason Kelsey. I don't know. 05:24 I think that's football. Yes. I don't know. It's football. That's the name that she came with. That's so funny. And she's very nice and she's very pretty, but she had a really, really rough molt and she was really funny looking. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jason. I know you can't hear this, but she was funny looking. But it's always the worst timing when they molt. Do you have chickens, Mary? I have 18. You have 18. Okay. 05:52 How many kittens do you have now? um Well, technically we have three kittens, but they're about five months old now. Oh, well, they're still kittens. um Okay. So  I have, yeah, five still. I have not lost a single chicken in a year. Good job. They barely see the light of day, but  I feel like that's a good trade off. mean, they do. They get out. um 06:17 like an hour at the end of the day, because that's when I am not working and I can actually be out there with them. And even if I'm not out there with them, like usually when I get out of work, so now because the time, because with the time change and the light, longer darkness, whatever. So I get out of work at 4.30, my dog and I walk at 4.30 and I let the chickens out at 4.30 because 5.30 it's going to be dark. 06:44 So I let them out at 430 and I leave my phone while we're walking  with music playing so that the critters don't feel like the predators don't feel like they're alone.  I just looked at my farmer's almanac wall calendar and daylight savings time is March 8th.  So we only have a few more weeks until literally a month, literally a month from today.  Yep. So 07:10 Yeah, I know me too. I was like, yay, more light in the evening. It's so sad that we have to wait until March. like really winter is just, I know winter is a season of rest, but some of us don't get to do that. And then it's just miserable. Absolutely. I just had a thought and it went bye bye. Cause that's what happens. Um, I'm very excited to know that, uh, 07:39 daylight savings time switch is only a month away because that means that good,  spring weather is only two months away.  Yeah. It's just, you know, it's like  there are no holidays. So we're like March 8th, come on, come on, come on, March 8th.  You know, never push the  time to move as quickly as this last month for sure. Yes. And I figure 08:04 In Minnesota, we have March Madness, which is the hockey tournaments, I think. oh is it? It's not  baseball? Baseball? I can't remember. It's hockey or basketball.  It might be both. Who knows? I'm not a girl. Don't take sports information from us, peeps. Yeah, I am not a sports fanatic at all. 08:25 What I do know is that March, because of the tournaments that are going on, is always terrible for weather because of course it would be because people are traveling in for the tournament. Well, it's like that in between, right?  You're waiting for spring and you're so anxious for spring, but winter's like, eh, I'm just going to hang out a little bit longer. Just going to throw a little crap your way. Yeah, yeah. And it's always March. It's always the worst month. February's okay. I can deal with February, but March is the worst. 08:55 Cause everybody's so excited about this tournament thing.  And I'm like, yeah, good luck driving in that three feet of snow we're probably going to get. 09:05 Oh,  it's so  yeah, it's like going out with a bang. The last hurrah.  Yes, it is. then I'm like, okay, it's going to be peonies season soon. So I'm all for it.  let's get back to the whole grounded in Maine and you live in Virginia now.  When I first interviewed you two years ago, I think it was you were in Maine. I was in Maine. And then you got divorced and then you moved to Virginia.  Yeah. 09:36 It's for the people who don't know it is kind of a pain in the butt  to change the name of a podcast. Yeah.  So  I don't blame you for not changing it. Plus I  know when we last talked, you had mentioned that you were trying to get back to New England. So how is that? Is that anywhere on the horizon?  Um,  well, I mean, I would love it to be on the horizon. I really don't want to do another summer here in Virginia. Yeah.  Um, 10:04 So my goal is to get back there in some form by like May. I don't have any big things happening though. My house has been on the, on the real estate market since July and no one, no one has even like looked at it, which is sad. But, um, you know, my realtor says it's just really expensive, but at the, at the same time, like I put $25,000 in solar panels on this house. And so. 10:34 the electric bill,  except for this month because we got 10 inches of snow, uh has been literally $10. Like 11 months of the year, it's $10. Okay, I forget the nearest big city to you in Virginia.  So I am about an hour from Greensboro, North Carolina. I'm about an hour from Danville, Virginia, and I'm about an hour from Roanoke, Virginia. 11:03 Okay. What's the next biggest town from you though?  I mean,  like how far?  Uh, Martinsville is right next door. It's just like 10 minutes, but it's not, it's not like bustling by any means.  Everything is about an hour. Let's use the, the, American definition of how far away you are from stuff. How far is the nearest Walmart from you or Home Depot? Oh,  uh, Home Depot. don't, I think. 11:32 is like an hour. Walmart is like 10 minutes. So if somebody wants to move to Virginia, Amy's house is on the market. You should go check it out. Cute little house. Very simple, but you $10 electric bill, man. And it's on an acre, a little bit over an acre. 11:52 Well, maybe somebody will hear the podcast. you can have chickens.  Yeah. Maybe somebody will hear the podcast episode and be like, I would like to check out Amy's house. Maybe it's somewhere I would like to live. I would not be mad at that. Yeah, exactly. And then you can go find your house where you want to be.  I did though. mean, just yesterday I got, so Saturdays I get an email from the New England Farm Finder website,  which is really fun. I don't know if you subscribe to that, Mary, but it's really fun if you're dreaming. 12:21 Well, I'm not dreaming and putting that in front of me would probably be a bad plan. So  I would get nothing done.  But so a new one came out yesterday and I actually sent a letter of interest to two different properties.  Good.  And they were not selling. They were like leasing  per se.  I actually I got an email back just like an hour ago from one of them. 12:49 So that's like, that feels like progress, even though  it might not become anything, it's progress. uh I also,  have my actually next week's podcast  episode, the guest hooked me up with this guy who's also a podcaster and Mary, you might be interested in speaking with him.  His name is Ting, Tim Ang.  I have already talked to him. did? Okay. His wife actually. Okay. Sophia. Yes. Super, super nice. Fabulous. Yes. 13:19 They both are very, very nice. And so I got hooked up with Tim and he's a homesteader realtor banker. And so I paid him to help market my house to homesteaders. And he's put it on a list of off market homes, properties, which I've never heard of, I'm like, I'll take whatever. 13:48 Anything to get the word out at this point.  And so we took new pictures. We changed the wording and the listing. I changed the wording in the listing because it was too  sterile and it did not highlight the solar panels quite enough and the great things that are around here.  Well, fingers are still crossed. Love and light to get your house moved because I know how much you want to get back to New England. I totally understand. 14:17 I don't want to go back to New England. I am really, really happy with where we ended up.  I feel like a traitor saying that, but I am assimilated. Minnesota is pretty similar to Maine. It is.  is. It's just But that's where your people are. Yeah. It's just missing the ocean half an hour away and mountains the other half an hour away, but I can live without those things. It's okay. Yeah. I mean, a funny little... 14:43 I mean, it's not really a complication, just like literally yesterday,  my sister,  so my sister's been in Greensboro, North Carolina. She took a job transfer a month ago. She started in December. then uh just yesterday, she and her spouse  and their dogs drove from Cincinnati where they've been living for the last like eight years  to North Carolina. So now they're living an hour away from me. 15:12 God, I can't imagine  moving  again.  I know. I can't either, but I also can't imagine staying. Yeah. If I didn't love where we are so much, it would be a different story. But my God, trying to move a 20 years worth of stuff out of a small house into a bigger house, you would have thought that we  would have had lots of room.  And  after five years,  we're starting to... 15:39 starting to be like, okay, it's time to really deep clean the house and get stuff out of here again. Right. Well, I think you and I are similar in that we don't, we're thoughtful about what we let go of.  Um, my sister was like, I don't want to move this. I don't want to move this. And so they had a dumpster  and she was showing me,  she showed me the pictures of her new place, which has this beautiful deck. And  she was like, I'm not sure if I'm going to bring  the grill or not. And I'm like, but you have that deck. And she was like, well, but you know, 16:08 It doesn't work that great. guess,  you know, they  also move a lot. mean, eight years is a long time for them to be in the same place.  I think they don't have... um 16:26 What's the word that I need? um Like nostalgia for stuff. uh Stuff doesn't hold their emotions  like it does me.  doesn't hold their hearts, Travel does. So  here they are again.  Yeah, I hate travel. I hate it.  I have done so many road trips between New England and the Midwest in my life because my grandparents lived in Illinois when I was a kid. 16:56 um That I'm just I'm kind of over it being stuck in a car or an airplane or train just does not do it for me anymore  Yeah, I would rather have people come visit me at this point then then go you know  For sure uh So I we're gonna totally jump tracks here  I saw that your your cats maybe one of them got sprayed by a skunk. Is that right? Yeah a couple months ago uh Maybe a month ago 17:26 And you mentioned that you had a trick to get rid of the stinkiness. So what's the trick? Right. Well, I mean, I just Googled it because I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this actually happened. I never thought that it would actually happen. Google said,  what was it? A quart  of hydrogen peroxide. um I forget how much baking soda,  but I can get that to you. Yeah. So 17:55 Hydro and peroxide, baking soda and dish soap. Was it specifically Dawn dish soap or is it any dish soap? Well, I don't have Dawn dish soap, em it might've said Dawn.  Okay. Well, Dawn's just really good at  really, really good. I mean, I'm not sponsored by Dawn dish soap,  don't take it that way, but Dawn dish soap is really good at cutting oils. But Dawn, if you're interested, uh Mary's looking for sponsors. 18:25 Well, I always am, but I'm not sure Dawn would be the one, but we'll see what happens.  But it's really, really good at cutting oils.  It's fantastic. They  use it after oil spills.  Yeah, exactly. And so I'm assuming that  the skunk spray probably has natural oils from the skunk in it. And maybe, maybe that would help.  don't know. Well, I mean, what I did worked great. mean,  I, was, I was very, very happy and I was like, 18:55 Oh my gosh, I can't let her inside. Because I don't want that in my house. But then it was cold enough that I was like, we're just going to take this into the entryway. I gave her the little bath in the entryway and then it was, you know, better. My parents dog when I was a teenager got sprayed by a skunk and he was a Samoyed. So much hair. Holy moly. 19:24 My dad tried using tomato sauce. Well, that's what we grew up learning, right? Tomato juice cuts it. But then it stains a white dog. Well, that was fine, but he was still stinky for months.  And the worst part was that he took a full-on hit  of skunk. of course, my dad let him in the house to try to clean him up, and my clothes smelled like skunk for months. 19:54 And I was in high school. Can you imagine how that went over?  mean, somebody told me that cats and skunks usually get along pretty well. And I was like, what? But then  as I was thinking about that, somebody said, really, is that true? And then it clicked with me that  Pepe Le Pew from Looney Tunes  was in love with a cat. uh 20:20 So, mean, I think they don't necessarily not get along, but I think that my male cat was hissing and probably freaked it out. and skunks are finicky. There are times where you think they're going to spray and then it's like, no, I'm good. And then there's times where you think they're fine and nope, they're going to spray. But so this skunk came around. So it was like, it was 715 in the morning. I felt so bad because I was like, get away, you know, screaming. 20:47 and slamming, like I have a galvanized uh bucket that I keep my bird food in and I was just slamming it on anything just to scare it away and it wasn't moving. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like,  I wonder if it's rabid. And someone eventually said that  it's mating season for skunks.  Oh gosh.  But it was like, it was around all day and I haven't seen it since.  But that day,  like it was, it was circling my house. 21:16 And it creeped me out so much. Uh huh. Yeah. The joys of living in  an area where there's wildlife that can just come visit anytime they want. Yeah. But I've seen, this is probably the fifth time that I've encountered this skunk. I assume it's the same one because this is the, I'm guessing that this is the same one that I caught last year in a trap thinking that I was getting a possum. Oh no. So I put the trap, the have a heart trap in my 21:46 chicken pen, which is where one of my chickens was killed.  And I saw the possum. So I'm like, I'm going to catch that bugger.  I caught a skunk. Yeah. And I got sprayed when I tried to move it, of course.  And  then I found out that it's illegal to um to move it  from where it was living. So it's not like you can just  move it seven miles away or something like that. They said it's illegal. So 22:16 The options are kill it, which there's no reason to kill it. It's doing it's skunk thing. Yeah. Or release it.  Oh my God. I had a trapper come and he released it back into the woods and.  No, and it keeps coming back. I mean, I've seen it in my chicken coop a couple of times and I've just like, the chickens now are barricaded so that no one can get into their coop. They have a safe space and then usually  all the critters are gone. 22:44 when the light turns on at 430  and the light starts to come in. uh You know, most of them are  nocturnal. So they, they bail and I just leave the chickens in until it's light.  Your chickens have a safe room. I know it's so, I can't believe that this is, it's taken me this long,  but I mean safe as in like they are barricaded by with  cinder blocks.  I've got them all around the outside of their. 23:12 the inside and the outside of their coop and um their door, which was, it used to be just like a pillowcase,  a pretty pillowcase with a tree heart uh that they could just push in and out. Now it's blocked.  Not only do your chickens have a safe room, they have a fortress. That is true.  That is true. sure this is the love that you have for your chickens. 23:41 for not wanting a skunk to get in there. Heck yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's, think that that's,  it's actually  part of homesteading ish, isn't it, Mary? Like  you, you learn as you go  how much,  know, if you're, if what you're doing is not safe enough, you need to  add to, right? Or like be innovative and  figure out how to make everyone safe and get everything done right. 24:10 absolutely is part of being homesteadish. had I, did I tell you about the raccoons that showed up this past spring here?  Yeah, mama. have a raccoon story. Yeah. A raccoon showed up, a big raccoon showed up  and my husband tried to dispatch it and missed.  And then about a week and a half. No, I'm sorry.  Couldn't have been that shortly. Couldn't have been that short of amount of time. Like a month later. 24:39 I got up in the morning and was going out on the porch, drink my coffee, and I opened the door to the porch  and I heard all these little scritchy noises and it was a mama raccoon.  had  like four or five babies and they had all come up on  the cement pad that's outside the porch. It was their little feet scritching to run away.  That would have been fine except that they proceeded to find the weak 25:08 heart in the fence for the chicken run  and they killed like four or five of our chickens. my husband and my son went out and  and fortified uh the fence. And it was really weird because I never saw the raccoon or the babies again. 25:30 And I know that my husband shot  the shotgun off a couple of times after they fixed the fence.  He didn't shoot it at anything. He just discharged the rifle or shotgun.  And I think maybe the gun  going off a couple of times scared them and left. Maybe. But uh raccoons will rip, literally rip chickens apart just for the fun of it.  Yeah. They don't even eat. 25:55 And what a waste. I mean, I wasn't I wasn't crying upset, but I was just like, you know, those freaking chickens cost us twenty three dollars apiece. Oh. Five of them. Are they fancy chickens? No, it's just that laying hens that that are old enough to lay or just getting to be old enough to lay were expensive last year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you call them? Pullets. Thank you. Yeah. So we lost like. 26:23 almost $125 in one go. And I was just like, this is not okay. And my husband said, this is homesteading. I went, mm-hmm, sure is honey. Speaking of homesteading, have you seen the Homestead Living magazine yet? I haven't. Oh my goodness. If you have an extra $30 burning a hole in your pocket for a subscription for the year. 26:51 you might want to subscribe to it because it's really beautiful. started over two years ago  and it used to be monthly. Now it's bimonthly. So  one um issue, not episode, one issue every two months now.  And it's gorgeous. And I get it because I was one of the founding people that subscribed  and I am not willing to give up my subscription yet. But I... 27:18 had an article that was supposed to be published in the, I don't know, December issue. And it might, my article got bumped because of the gift guide and I was very sad. my editor said, how about we put the article on the blog? And I was like, yes, please. em So it was published on the blog on like December 17th, I think. And  it was just really cool to see it. Cause I spent time writing that thing. It was nice to see it get out in the world. 27:48 Absolutely, but it's it's a gorgeous magazine and their blog has all kinds of information for people who want to look into getting into homesteading or who are homesteaders and want new ideas.  I need I need outlets where people are supportive. That's good. That's good to know. Yeah, it's very very fun. um I really want to interview Melissa Canora. She's the lady that started the magazine. 28:17 But she's  really busy. This woman has her hands in everything.  I just, can't, I can't get her attention. I'm like, Melissa, please come talk to me. That I just can't, I can't get her.  So, um, we have a few minutes left. wanna, I wanna tell you, I'm very impressed with your podcast. You have had some fantastic guests lately.  I feel the same way. 28:47 Yeah. And your podcast is really about sustainability, right? Yes.  Although I take some poetic license with that. Everybody does with podcasts. There are no rules. That's right. 29:04 sustainability and then some.  Yeah, I just, I love it. I see,  I see your little snippets or whatever they're called  on your Instagram account.  And I'm like, Ooh, that's going to be a good one.  Yeah.  I've got a really interesting one coming up in a few weeks. mean, I've got, I've, so I don't, I don't know if you're on pod match.  I am. Okay. You are. 29:34 Why am I not seeing you? Maybe I'm not. I'll have to look. I'm on a whole bunch of pod things, but that may be not be one of them. don't remember.  So a lot of the guests recently have come from there, but also some of them  I've just found on Instagram and some of them are just chance. Like I think um if you  happen to listen to the one with Tia's prom  closet.  I did.  She just, and there are people that 30:03 that just follow people because my podcast is grounded in Maine and she's in Maine. So I think that she was just following me because of that. And then I saw what she was about and I was like, oh, heck yeah. Getting prom dresses and formal dresses back into circulation is so, so cool instead of being wasted. But then the story behind it was just like... 30:30 you make makes you cry to listen to but you know, in the most inspiring and  and happy way, right?  Yeah, it's always the stories behind it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love to be able to bring those out. And then I just think that, you know, she was totally chance like  I was looking at her profile and I was like, Oh, I want to hear more about that.  And then as I you know, when she filled out her guest form, she was talking about pain and to purpose and I'm like, Whoa, 31:00 This is going to be so good because it's so much, you know, I don't know what happened, but I'm, I'm here for the, you know, the, the stories I'm here for the stories. And I, I love when they have a good story. It's a stories are a hook. and  I, I personally hate the word hook cause  it's like tricking somebody, but, but in this case, it's not a trick. It's a gift. Yeah.  Well, yeah. I mean, it definitely was for me. 31:30 But then it also,  it just makes them, it makes it relatable because people,  know, everyone's lost a friend. Well, not everyone, but you can imagine what it would be like to lose a friend and  to be able to make, create something so powerful from that friend's  memory.  And to honor that friend. Yep.  Yeah. And I just thought, you know, she's got, 31:58 the girl that I interviewed, think she said she has three kids, three young kids. her youngest is just months old  and she's also running this place. I was like, you know, that just says so much about their friendship. Yeah. And about her, about, about the girl that, you  interviewed. Yep. Yeah. I just, mean, there, there are some really cool people there, you know, and I just,  I find them, I find them everywhere. I mean, I,  I do a lot of, I scour 32:27 Instagram, not, not like in a creepy way, but just, you know, there are so many cool people out there and I'm,  I'm out there to find them. It's a lot of work, but it is always worth it when I get a really good conversation. Yeah. It's a ton of work. mean, I used to do,  I used to release an episode every day, Monday through Friday in the morning. And now I'm down to  at least one a week because right now I'm having trouble finding people to talk with me because people are really busy. 32:57 Yeah. So anybody listening who knows somebody  they want to, if they want to chat with me, you can get ahold of me through  the, through the podcast information in the show notes. ah Amy, did you know that I started another podcast? know the, the last time we talked to you were, oh well you had interviewed me for this potential podcast. Did you start a podcast about podcasting?  I did not. Oh, okay. Then what is the second podcast?  It is called. 33:26 What is it called? oh I do this every time. Like I read it every day in front of my eyeballs. But every time I go to say it, I completely forget  grit and grease in the heartland women in agriculture.  And I have a cohost. Her name is Leah. She's clear Creek ranch mom on Facebook and on Instagram.  And I had interviewed her a whole bunch of times for a tiny homestead. She's a cattle rancher in Nebraska  and 33:56 I just off the cuff was like, do you want to do a podcast together with me? And she's actually, is 2026 is Leah's year.  She, she just got invited to do her first paid speaking gig,  um, at the end of 2025. Like she was invited then and she just did it, did it yesterday, day before yesterday. don't remember this past week, Friday, it was Friday.  And, um, she said, 34:25 She said, can I have a week to think about it? And I was like, absolutely. And so I,  I messaged her a week to the day and said, did you have time to think about it? And she came back with, I absolutely want to do a podcast with you. ah And so basically I didn't know,  but 2026 is the international year of the woman farmer. I didn't know that when I asked her and I found out about it afterwards. So. 34:53 Our whole mission for this year is to find women  who are doing big things in agriculture or little things in agriculture or women who have had to leave agriculture and have turned that into promoting  or advocating for agriculture.  I think we have eight episodes out now since the very end of December. Tell me the name of it again, Grace.  In the Heartland. In the Heartland. Women in agriculture, colon, women in agriculture. 35:23 But the podcast is actually called Great Grace in the Heartland. 35:28 Okay. So yeah, you might want to. Gotcha.  I have some people that I can recommend.  Awesome. Fantastic. We,  we just interviewed Carol from the old farmers' Almanac.  we. Oh, Carol Conair.  Yes. And I had interviewed her for the tiny homestead for this one.  And I messaged her marketing person. 35:51 I was like, a friend of mine started a new one, this is what it is. Could Carol come back and talk with us? And she was like, absolutely. And Carol has the most gorgeous laugh. And when she's talking and she's happy and she's animated, her voice completely changes into this other register of sound. And I love it when she's tickled. It just, makes me giggle. 36:18 Right. Well, I think it's also part of something that excites you, if you're talking about homesteading as opposed to, not that the almanac is not exciting, but it's something that you're doing, something that you are very involved in, something that just makes you really happy. hear that a lot. 36:46 I mean, I think I do that too sometimes, but it's, uh 36:53 Yeah.  It was, it was just, it was so fun to have her on. of course,  with Leo being a cattle rancher, she is a D a devotee  of the old farmer's almanac. And  there was a rumor going around that the old farmer's almanac was going out of print. was not, was the farmer's almanac. The farmer's almanac was going out of print. So we had to talk about that. It was just really, really fun. Yeah. It's very confusing. I didn't, I never knew that they were two.  I did. 37:21 And I always knew the difference was that it was the old  Farmer's Almanac that my dad used to buy. So I would just get that one.  But anyway, so where can people find you, Amy? Are you just on Instagram?  I am  just on Instagram. I've deleted everything else except for LinkedIn.  So Instagram is grounded in Maine podcast. Okay, cool. 37:47 And you guys should go listen to Amy's podcast if you want to learn about new ways to be sustainable and all the amazing things that people are doing, like the woman she talked to who is recycling prom dresses, because that is amazing.  All right. As always, you can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com. If you want to support the show, can find that at AtinyHolmstead.com  slash support, because I'm original like that. 38:16 And please go listen to the other podcast again. is written grace in the heartland Yes, exactly. Thank you because I was gonna call it again women in agriculture Yes,  yes It needed a tagline because grit and grace in the heartland apparently could mean anything and I was like, okay Well women in agriculture pretty much says it all.  Yeah So  Amy, thank you for coming back and chatting with me. I appreciate it. It's always fun Mary 38:43 It's a joy. love you so much and I wish you all the luck in the world with your home search.  Thank you.  All right. We'll talk again soon. Okie dokie.  Bye. Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Julie at Open Road Ranch. You can also follow on Facebook. The Old Farmer's Almanac www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Julie at Open Road Ranch in Wisconsin. Good morning, Julie. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm wonderful. Thank you. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather there?  Sunny and beautiful. It's so nice to see the sun.  Oh, we had that  yesterday and the day before. Right now it is inco... 00:28 incredibly overcast in Minnesota, but it's warm. Yes. It's nice, isn't it?  Oh my God. This last two weeks of  like living in the Arctic tundra.  Yeah. I had forgotten how terrible a more than a couple days stint of those temperatures is. Yes. I woke up on like the 13th day and thought to myself, if this doesn't break soon, I don't know what I'm going to do. 00:56 Yes, we just need like a day of sun to remind us or just a windless day or something just to hang on. Yeah, I grew up on the East Coast and I remember the song, the  song Oklahoma, where the wind comes rolling off the prairie. Yeah. And I had no concept of that because my house was surrounded by trees. The wind didn't roll across the prairie because there was no prairie. I moved to Minnesota and I learned real quick about wind rolling off the prairie. 01:25 Oh yeah, I just saw the other day  someone said the quote, it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the wind, said every farmer ever.  Yeah, absolutely.  It's just crazy. And I open every podcast with How's the Weather? Because I just feel like we're all in ag and it's important to talk about the weather. Oh yeah. I used to work office jobs and I worked in a basement office with no windows and weather was just, I'd never even thought about it. It could be light out, could be 01:54 night, could be raining. It just didn't really have any effect on my life whatsoever. Now it's everything. Yeah, absolutely. It literally is everything. okay, I don't do a lot of the outside work. My husband is the outside guy. I do a lot of the cooking and the cleaning inside. And even I pay really close attention to the weather because I'm like, I saw it's going to snow tomorrow. Are you set to plow the driveway? 02:22 Or I saw it's going to be minus 40 windchill three nights from now. Are the chickens going to survive in their coop?  And he's like, you never really paid attention to this before we moved to Homestead. I said, no, I didn't because I had no reason to pay attention to it. Yeah, you're so into your lives, you know, your animals.  It totally changes your perspective and the way that you live your life. And I kind of love it.  Yes. 02:50 All right, so tell me all about yourself and what you do. um I  am a first generation farmer. I'm a very new farmer. This is our second year in farming. um So all very new, um very new small business owner. um Just learning as I go.  We have a small farm in Greenbush, Wisconsin, um is five rented acres of family land. So Tony's folks live up the road and 03:19 our crop farmers corn, soybeans and wheat  and they very generously um are renting us five acres to start our farm here and they're very helpful with their farming knowledge and experience just up the road and so it's because of them that we're able to farm and so we have five acres here  and looking at right out the window in our backyard we have pasture raised hogs, uh have uh pasture raised sheep and we have some chickens that aren't  doing much of anything right now it's mostly for us m 03:48 but I did get three eggs the other day, so that's exciting.  we sell our pasture-raised um pork and lamb.  And  I also make lard products with lard from our pasture-raised hogs  because one of my missions when I first began was uh education and also to use as much of the animal as possible. So I dabbled in  trying to  tan sheepskin hides that didn't go very far,  make dog treats out of the organ meats, just different creative ways  because these animals give us such a gift. 04:17 you know I hate to see you go in the trash when especially our ancestors you know  would be you know grateful for the whole gift and use as much of it as possible and they needed to use as much of it as possible  but I hope to still  tap into a little bit of that so ah we use the lard from our pasture raised hogs to create um bombs, dish soap, shampoo bars,  things like that because lard is just incredible for us and  so I also feel strongly about educating people about  the wonder of  those 04:46 what are often considered waste products that are so wonderful for us and such a gift. Awesome. Tell me about lard dish soap, because I have not heard those words in the same sentence before. Yeah,  me neither until recently. And I had been making lard bombs for about a year and I thought, well, what else can I do  with this lard?  Because the bombs were going really well and I thought there must be some other things um that our ancestors used lard for that we can use it for. Because it's just full of vitamins and minerals and such healing properties. 05:16 uh You would not think that lard would clean dishes. You're often trying get lard off of your dishes, so I didn't really believe it either. ah We mix the  lard with lye and  some lemon. That's your degreaser. It's really pure and simple. ah It's just a uh dish soap bar, so it takes some getting used to, but you just use a sponge or a scrub. 05:41 You just get it wet and then you use it like you'd use  dish soap and it works wonderfully and it's clean and pure. It's not full of... um One of the reasons I started this is because laundry soap and  lotions and  shampoo bars and all those things, they're just full of so many chemicals. And I know people, myself included, are looking for clean things to put on their body and use in their homes.  And so it's just pure and simple, non-toxic.  So that's another reason I started making them. 06:10 Nice. Okay.  The reason I was so confused is because I always think of liquid dish soap. I didn't think of a soap bar dish soap. So  I didn't know you could use lard for dish soap. I am going to have to look up a recipe and maybe try that. Because we make, we make cold process lye soap here for  baths and showers and  love it.  Like all of our kids grew up using these bars of soap since we started making  them 15 years ago.  And, uh, 06:39 My youngest asked me the other day, said, can I have like four bars of that soap? I said, yes, you can.  Well, they last so long and they're so versatile.  And yeah, they're just wonderful. Yeah.  I have a daughter and three sons. The daughter is the oldest.  The oldest of the boys lives in Nebraska. And he also had asked for some soaps to take home with them a couple of years ago when he visited. 07:05 And he and his wife are now making their own cold processed Lysol. That's wonderful. It's such a good feeling to be able to do that. It's such a skill. So excited that the things that we tried to teach them really did sink in and sunk in enough that they want to do it too. Yeah. It does work. It does work. If you model good things for your kids and you make it fun, they'll probably want to do it too. 07:32 Yes, it's quite different than just telling someone to do something when they see you doing it and enjoying it and what can come from it. Then it's quite different than just telling someone very much so. Yeah. And I always say this when I bring up the soaps. The reason we started making cold process lye soap is because store bought soap makes my skin itch like crazy.  And I had bought a beautiful um honey oat bar soap. 08:00 from a lady that has been making them for years. And I just loved it so much, the way it smelled, that I was like, oh, I can't wait to take a shower with this. And I used that entire bar, went back to store, bought soap, and my skin was itchy, but the whole time I used the bar I from her, my skin was really nice. And I said to my husband, I said, can we please try making cold processed lye soap? Because I can't afford to spend $7 a bar. 08:29 uh It's a stretch for the budget back then.  And he said, let's look up how to make it. And we did, and he made a batch and it was unscented and we loved it. And we gave a couple bars to people to try to see what they thought. And they were like, can you make a lemon scented one?  Can you make a lavender scented one?  And then we got into the essential oils and it was just, it was so fun. 08:53 to learn all the things and all the properties and why lavender is so good,  why lemon is so good.  And we still do it now. So I just, always rave about the cold process Lysol because yes, it has some things to be careful of,  but  once you've made a couple of batches and you know your process, it's one of the simplest ways  to improve your life. Yes. You get so many out of a batch. 09:22 You get like eight or 10 bars and so much more cost effective. And um yeah, you have to be careful with the lie, but like anything, it's a skill that you learn. then, you you use safety and you get the hang of it. And then, you know, you get this cost effective product that, you know, saves you money. You can share with family and friends. It's really wonderful. And it's  satisfying, you know, you. 09:46 You make that soap, you use that soap, and I don't know about you, but I just get this bubble of happiness in my chest that we can do this, that we did this, that we use it, that it's good for us. Yeah, my first bar of soap, I couldn't believe it. There was no soap there, and then I made soap. It's something that you think you can only get in stores, and I made it. It's such a neat thing to know that you can do those kinds of things. There's such a sense of... 10:13 Accomplishment and pride when you create something with your own hands and it has like a different feel to it  Because you had a hand in it and you created it and it's just yeah Really nice. Humans are really skilled really special creatures. We are very good once we set our minds to things. Yes. Yeah  Okay, so uh I'm gonna bring up the fact that your place is called open road ranch not open road farm. Oh, 10:40 I have been told by a few people that typically a ranch is a property to the west of the Mississippi and a farm uh is a place to the east of the Mississippi.  So is there a reason that you named it ranch?  We like alliteration. Okay. So it just sounded nice. And actually we looked up ranch versus farm just to make sure we were being technically accurate because I didn't quite know the difference either. And I actually had not heard that. 11:09 ah But  my understanding was that  a ranch was primarily  livestock based uh and a farm could be produce or uh livestock. So  a farm could be a ranch, but a ranch couldn't be a farm kind of  thing. And I don't know if that's right. This is probably just on Google. uh But we are  livestock only and it  sounded nice. 11:36 Yes, we went with ranch, but I often call us a farm too. feel like  in a lot of ways they're interchangeable and in a lot of ways I'm sure they're quite different. Oh yeah, absolutely. And I don't have an opinion on this at all,  but my thought before a couple of people told me about the West versus East of the Mississippi thing, my thought has always been if it's a farm, it's more produce. If it's a ranch, it's more livestock. So I'm in the same boat as you. Yeah.  Interesting. 12:05 So do you have lots of pigs?  I wish I had more. um Well, it's always changing as  some go to the butcher and then we get new piglets. last  couple of weeks ago, we took five of our big pigs in and so now we have five um left. So usually I do batches of about 10 at a time. um And then once the  littles start getting big, then we'll get some more littles in so we can kind of. 12:32 face it out so we're  quite a small farm um and so we're still growing our avenues for selling and we're still getting freezers and things like that so that felt like a really manageable uh amount to be able to have enough to sell um without gaps and to be able to manage here from our little farm and our little farm store um but we do hope to grow  and I've just absolutely fallen in love with pigs so I love  tons of pigs and um 13:02 The sheep we rotationally graze  as well, so that takes  some thought with  how many acres we have and how many can  rotationally graze on the pasture and have enough to eat and  have that be beneficial for the land and the soil um to not stretch that. uh And so it's just kind of working out um between the sheep and the pigs  what's best for the animals and the land and how much we can feed and how we can grow. 13:29 So right now we have five um red wattle Berkshire crosses  for hogs and we have  seven  sheep. Some are south down and some are heritage breed called Jacobs.  I'm 19 Langhans. I just kind of hang out.  Are the sheep the hair sheep or are they the wool sheep?  They are wool sheep. Okay.  I don't know the names of the breeds well enough to go, oh yeah, that's a hair sheep or oh yeah, that's a wool sheep. I'm  not up to date on my. 13:59 My shape breeds.  We have 18 or 19 chickens. Last I was told we have 19, but there may have been one that decided to on alive itself. I'm not sure. Oh no. Are you getting eggs? Are they layers or? Yeah. They're the  ISA brown breed. Yep. And we have a light in their coop. So they  lay during the winter. Oh good. There's nothing like a farm fresh egg. 14:26 So I missed them during their sabbatical. Yeah, we're actually swimming in eggs right now because the weather's been so cold. People haven't been making the journey out to our place to pick up eggs from the farm stand.  And I'm glad we're talking about this because after I'm done talking with you, I need to post on Facebook and be like, there's eggs and it's warming up outside. Please come buy eggs. Please. Yeah.  We need you to take our eggs. Yeah, exactly. 14:53 um My husband brought in, think,  eight dozen from the farm stand a week or so ago  because  they  were getting to the point where we need to get them eaten up.  And I was so excited because as anyone who raises chickens for laying eggs knows,  you can't really, well, you can hard boil a fresh egg, but it doesn't peel very easily. You lose about a quarter of the egg white. 15:19 And he brought in all these eggs and I was like, yes, I can make egg salad again. Yeah. Oh yum, that sounds good. We made that in a while. Yeah. So I've had, I've had egg salad like three times in last two weeks. I'm probably going to do it again today because I really like egg salad. And I hadn't had an egg salad sandwich in a year because people were just buying the eggs before there was any time for them to be over two weeks old. Yeah. Yep. Eggs are like gold. 15:47 Yep. I love having chickens mostly because I feel like we're helping our community. sell our eggs for $5 a dozen. I don't know what eggs cost at the store now because I haven't bought eggs at the store in almost a year, but there for a while eggs were really freaking expensive and we were still selling our eggs at $5 a dozen. So we were trying to help and I'm a big believer in help where you can. Uh, yeah. 16:17 Yeah, yeah. That little touch point, that little access to food,  even if it's just a dozen eggs,  well, you know, connect someone to the farm and the farmer and kind of open doors, I hope. Yes. And the other thing that's  interesting, and I don't mean to make the interview about me, but we're talking about stuff I actually know about. Usually I'm talking to people and they're like, we're raising horses. And I'm like, I don't know anything about horses. Let me ask you a ton of questions. In the spring and summer and fall, 16:46 when people come by to get eggs and they've never been here before.  I watch them get out of their vehicle  and they're kind of tight in the shoulders when they step out of the vehicle.  And then they kind of stop and look around and I watch their shoulders just relax.  And I'm like, oh my God, our property, just being on the property helps people. And it just makes me so happy. Yeah. A lot of people don't have access to, of course, like 17:13 you know, being around pigs or sheep or chickens or anything like that.  I just, or just even out, you know, in the quiet and the fresh air and green grass and all that stuff. So it's just, it's a really nice, I absolutely know what you mean. Yeah. It's really fun when you get to observe people quietly, like they don't know what you're noticing.  Because if I said to them, did you have a rough day?  They would look at me like I was crazy. Yeah. 17:42 But you can see on someone that they've had a very stressful day and you can just watch it kind of melt from their shoulders down to their fingertips when they are  able to take that long deep breath of fresh air. Yes. I try not to take that for granted. because I grew up in the city and I've only been living out in the country and on the farm for a little bit.  I mean, when I see the sunrise or sunset or, you know, the pigs are running around as God intended and... 18:07 all of that, like I just try to pause and think like what a gift it is to be able to see pigs out our window and you know, sheep and  these sunrises and sunsets and you know, this fresh air and all these things that like some people might not  be able to have every day and how much that, how good that might feel and yeah. So what,  what pushed you to do this because you said you're, you're not, this is two years in. 18:35 So  what made you decide to do this?  I read a lot of Wendell Berry and Joel Salatin  and was just really moved by their works. I think it was just  a curiosity about where my food came from, which can, you know, uh results in all sorts of things like either just, you know, buying  organic or going to a farmer's market. And for me, it manifested in  becoming a farmer. ah 19:05 I just, yeah, I started to really think about and care about where my food came from. I was a vegetarian for 20 years and a vegan for three years. And now I raise animals and take them to the butcher. And so it's quite the leap, but I feel like there's a lot of fear of propaganda when it comes to veganisms and a lot of food choices. And I think it's because we are so disconnected from our food. 19:34 today that when you hear things or see these videos or see these things on social media, um if you don't have experience with it yourself, it's easy  to believe those things or to not understand.  so I think it just sometimes it takes, it's maybe over simplistic, but it's a simple act of like knowing your farmer or coming onto the farm and seeing how their animals are raised um to make that connection back. um 20:01 And with vegetarianism and veganism a lot, uh it's  fear-based. um And  I had gone the route of, I don't want anything to do with this.  And so I just cut it out of my diet and out of my life.  But then it was a little bit later on in life when I started reading  Wendell Berry and Joel Salatin. 20:21 that I started to see that there's a different way. Like you can have meat and it can be ethical and responsible and actually good for you and good for the earth.  And I feel like a lot of times that wasn't always portrayed, at least in what I was seeing uh with that sort of diet and lifestyle choice. so,  yeah,  I feel like  if people only  knew that or were able to have access to their farm or to their food, they could see that there's a different way um 20:50 to eat meat and ethically  and good for the land and good for the animals and good for us. And so part of why I love to do this is the education around that. I invite people come to our farm, see how we raise our animals, see the good lives that they live. And that makes me feel good about eating our meat is because I know how it was raised. know the life it had.  And I feel very proud of being a part of that. And I hope to educate people about that and share that with people. I love it. I love it, Julie. oh 21:20 Are you a reader of the Old Farmer's Almanac? Oh, I have one. found it in the thrift store and I have not read it. Okay, well, it's not an it. It's a publication and they come out every year. Yes. And there was a rumor going around that the Old Farmer's Almanac was going out of print. It is not the Farmer's Almanac. There are two different Almanacs. The Farmer's Almanac went out of print with this year's 21:50 last one.  The old farmer's almanac is still alive and kicking and doing really well. And  if you want to,  you will learn a whole lot of things about farming and ranching and growing produce and growing animals. It's only like  $10 to buy a copy and it's for the entire year.  Like it's one  little publication for the entire year. And the thing that I love about it is that 22:21 It has like days for everything like this is a good day to wean calves or this is a good day to plant seedlings and  It will take you all year to get through it. It's over 100 pages 22:36 But anyway, I was just curious if you were a devotee, because a lot of the people I talk to, they're like, oh yeah, I read the farmer's almanac every spring and I mark down what the days are for the things I'm going to be doing, blah, blah, blah. OK, it sounds like I would love it. I am going to open it up. Yeah, it's very fun. I can't remember the name of the website. I think it's just farmer's almanac, but I would have to look it up. It'll be in the show notes. 23:05 Hi, what else can I ask you?  You said that your pigs are red wattle and what?  Berkshire crosses. So those are both  heritage breeds.  A red wattle is a lard breed,  which I'm still learning about. um But  I believe it just has that really good  fatty marbling and really good taste.  Yeah, and they're like furry, right? 23:34 Oh yes, so our hogs have actually been sleeping outside. If it's above 10 degrees, I would say, and you know, windless night, I'll come out in the morning and we have a big brown hay bale out there for them to grab hay from and they can stuff their huts or they can hang out there. And they'll just be laying outside under the, you know, under the moonlight  in  their hay pile all night. They're very tough  because they you know, raised outside and they have thick fur. So  yeah. 24:04 Yeah, people think that pigs don't have fur, but a lot of them do. Yes. And it's interesting to depend on the breed we've had, like durochs and yorks and, all different kinds. And the Berkshire breeds will have, yeah, quite a lot of hair and  it does help them, you know, be pasture animals. Yeah. I know just a little bit about the red waddles because I knew people who had them and they're, aren't they kind of friendly? Aren't they pretty nicely demeanored as it were? 24:34 Yes, they are. mean, and I think that's too,  most of the pigs we've had have been really friendly demeanor just because we have so much contact with them. You know, we're out there  two, three times a day.  Um, you know, they have that one-on-one interaction and, and I sit and talk to them and, know, I'm friendly with them. So I think you get out of them, what you put into them. And so I think like the more contact you have with them,  um, they'll, they'll be friendly, but all the breeds we've had, we've had durochs and Yorks and a hundred percent Berkshires. We've had a ham. 25:02 Hampshire and they've all been, you know, so friendly. em Yeah, I think pigs are just very quite social and curious and friendly creatures um in general. yeah. And the sheep, are they, I don't know anything about sheep. Are sheep friendly or they just kind of aloof? uh Not compared to the pigs. They're quite aloof.  So they're just more skittish around. And again, it's what you put into them. So, um you know, we've had sheep 25:29 where, you know, we're out there, they do need less, um I would say, day-to-day care than  the pigs, especially in the summer. ah You know, you're not feeding them like you are twice a day with the hogs, and they're just rotating on the pastures, and you just need to make sure they have water.  So there's a little bit less contact there,  but we have had sheep. 25:50 where we're around them often and they get to know us. But even still, even when they know us quite well and we spend a lot of time with them, they're just generally tend to be a little bit more skittish. And the pigs, they're just so curious. They'll run out to the road when people walk by or a tractor goes by. They're just very, very curious and social animals. So I'm very smart. Okay, cool. So what would you say if you made a new friend at 26:19 the feed mill or the library or some place where people actually talk to each other. And that new friend said, I really would like to buy a couple acres. How should I start my homestead or my little tiny farm? What would you say to them? Oh boy, that's a million dollar question. It sure is. It almost reminds me of that joke. If you're a farmer, how do you get a million dollars start with 2 million? Yes. It's because I 26:49 I uh there can be oftentimes this romantic idea, which absolutely, this is like incredibly romantic  way of living, but there's also hard realities too, especially, I feel like there's not a lot of conversations around  maybe finance all the times and how much it costs uh to start a farm, to run a farm. um And uh there's those realities. uh 27:12 And I would say  too that you don't need to own land to  start a farm  because I was looking to buy land for quite a while  before I had this opportunity to rent land here. And so I know a lot of successful farms that start small and you can just rent land and kind of get your feet wet.  I would also say that  farmers are by far the friendliest, most um sharing folks with their knowledge and with their time. 27:39 So before I began farming, I spent a couple of years just emailing and reaching out to farmers coming out to their farm and they would stop their busy days and take time to walk me around and answer my questions.  And I would happily do that for anyone now. So  if you're curious about farming, reach out to someone who is uh already doing it  and ask them questions. And  I'm sure there'll be an open book and farmers wanna help other farmers and... 28:06 Um, because they know how important it is for farms to keep going and how important it is for people to have access to real fresh food. Um, so I would say talk to a farmer for sure. Yeah, me too. I, I would, I really kind of wished before we moved here in 2020 that I had had someone who knew more than I did about what we were doing. I love what we're doing. are a 3.1 acre property. 28:36 And we have our big old garden and we have our chickens and we have our barn cats and we have our dog. That is, that is it.  But I didn't, I don't know why I didn't think of it, but I didn't realize we were going to have to buy a small tractor because our driveway is long.  at the least we needed to be able to plow our driveway.  Didn't, didn't think about that. That a new tractor is not inexpensive. 29:03 And it took us three and a half years to pay it off.  So  we didn't know that we would need that. And we didn't realize that we had, I mean, we realized we were buying a place with a humongous pole barn,  but  we didn't think about the fact that there might be something wrong with something in the pole barn. there is, there is one support  beam, but it's not on in the ceiling. It's along the wall that is starting to buckle. 29:32 And we're going to have to have somebody come in and help us fix that because if that barn goes down, that takes out all of our vehicles, our tractor.  My husband's  as we call it workshop, but really it's a  bench with a bunch of tools on it. We can't have the pole barn buckle because of the pole barn buckles, we lose a lot of important things.  So there are,  there are all kinds of small things, but they're humongous things if they go wrong. Yeah. 30:02 that you don't  know  to ask about or think about because you don't know. Yes, exactly. There's so many things in a day that you are responsible for, like that you can't possibly, you know,  imagine like an animal gets sick or something happens with your fencing or, you know,  your trailer pops a tire, things like that, you know, that you're all  responsible for and that all adds up and it's all. 30:29 needs to be working for the farm to work. And so you have to be role with those things. And  yeah,  is an everyday education for at least the first five years. Oh, yeah. That's one of my favorite things about farming is I always say like, feel like I learned something new or multiple things. Like every single day. I'm just  and I love learning. And so I just  there and I feel like it will be endless my whole life.  I feel like I will be learning something new every day. Well, 30:57 The dumbest thing I've learned so far in the last 15 years because we were actually growing food on the city lot we lived on before we moved here  is Brussels sprout plants are very finicky. If you throw them, if you throw the seeds somewhere and basically forget about them, you might actually get really good Brussels sprouts. But if you throw Brussels sprout seeds  in a spot and baby them and tend to them and nurture them,  you don't get any Brussels sprouts. 31:26 I have been trying to grow Brussels sprouts for oh,  15, 20 years now. And the one year that we just kind of threw a couple of seeds down and forgot where we put them, we had the most beautiful, huge Brussels sprouts  for eating. Since then cannot grow Brussels sprouts to save my life.  So the dumbest things can be the most impactful on you because I really like roasted Brussels sprouts, but I only like the ones I grew.  So that has been. 31:54 That has been terribly frustrating for me. And my husband asked me the other day, he do you want me to throw in some Brussels sprouts plants? And I was like, no.  No, I do not because I don't want to be disappointed in August when there's no Brussels sprouts to eat, but there's some really pretty leaves on it.  Yes. You have to have a lot of grace with yourself.  You know, it's easy to focus on the things that you messed up or you did wrong. um Cause it's also important, but then it's,  it's nice to remember the things that just. 32:22 worked out that you didn't think would or the things that you did right and the things you are learning.  Yeah. Like I said, dumbest thing ever. Cause it's no skin off my nose that we can't seem to grow a good Brussels sprout here. I don't know why I have looked up all the things and I'm like, I don't know what we're doing wrong, but I give up.  no  big deal. As long as the chickens survive the winter and we have eggs, am  all good.  right, Julie, this was so much fun. And I feel like I talked a lot, but 32:51 It was really fun to actually talk about this place too. I don't do it very often.  Where can people find you? uh They can find us at  our website  is um www.openroadranch.com. And I'm actually working um on a little revamp right now of our website. So that'll change one day. And then um also  we have Facebook and Instagram, but this is relationship I really struggle with and, and, uh 33:19 but I'm trying to  be present on social media and see it for the good. uh So we're at Open Road Ranch um on  Facebook and Instagram.  And then, yeah, we're in Greenbush, so if anyone is local,  they are welcome to stop by our farm store  or just call or email if they wanna come get anything from us, and  we're here. Fabulous.  As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. 33:48 And if you like this podcast, you should go listen to grit and grace and the heartland women in agriculture.  Cause that's my second podcast. started a little over a month ago  with a cohost Leah. She's clear Creek ranch mom on Facebook. And we are having such a good time  with the fact that 2026 is the year, the international year of the  woman farmer.  thank you again, Julie. I appreciate your time so much. 34:18 Thank you, I really enjoyed talking to you and I appreciate your time as well. Have a great day. You too, thank you.  

Today I'm talking with Alisha at Ranch Wife Marketing. You can also follow on Facebook. www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Alicia at Ranch Wife Marketing in North Dakota. Good afternoon.  How are you? I'm doing good. How are you doing?  I'm good. How's the weather in South Dakota this afternoon? 00:22 North Dakota, um but it is getting better. We did have a negative 50 wind chills just a day or two ago, but now we're at least above zero. So for us, we can finally go back out in a sweatshirt. Nice. Did I say South Dakota? I swear my brain is not working today. You did. It's okay.  Oh, North Dakota, the one above South Dakota. Jeez. uh In Minnesota today, it is really cold. 00:50 I am looking out my bedroom window at uh the tin roof of the bedroom next to me  and the snow is all sparkly in the sunshine. It's really beautiful, but it's too cold.  Oh yes, I get it. We don't get a ton of snow, not as much as Minnesota.  I was born and raised there, so I know how much snow falls there. We're a little drier,  so we don't have em as much snow, but we do have a little dusting currently. 01:17 Just out of curiosity, where are you in North Dakota? I'm actually on the  North Dakota-South Dakota border. I live about 20 miles from South Dakota. um We live on the Standing Rock  Sioux Reservation um in a small, tiny town called Selfridge. Okay, cool.  Well, for the people who are following along on the podcast about my barn cats, um 01:46 We had a stray barn cat show up here a month ago maybe, and she has been kind of hiding out. She'll come and eat every other day.  And we have three kittens that we got a couple months ago. They're about five months old.  And  today is the first day that I have seen her, seen the stray hanging out with the other kittens in the dog house in the sunshine on the hay bales. And I think she's probably around the same age as the three kittens.  So, 02:14 That was the banner moment of my day was seeing this beautiful tortoiseshell stray cat hanging out with the kittens.  Oh, that's amazing. We have plenty of cats around here, um both indoor and outdoor. I love seeing all the kittens as they grow up in the summer. Yeah, it's really fun. And this cat showed up out of nowhere. I was like, why is there another cat? We don't have six cats.  We have five. 02:42 and my husband happened to get a photo of her and I was like, Oh, I hope she sticks around because she's beautiful. And from my local listeners, we have tons of chicken eggs in our farm stand. Farm stand is heated so the eggs don't freeze and we have lots of eggs in the farm stand for sale every day. So if anybody needs eggs, come on by. And that's it for my updates for my house, my homestead. Alicia, you are 03:11 farmer, but you're also a marketer. So can we talk about both? Yeah. So if my husband listens in, he's going to cringe because we're actually ranchers. worries. Some people call it cattle farming. Some people call it ranching. It's all about where you are in the world. But yeah, so we have a cow-calf ranch. We run about 500 mama cows. 03:37 about 200 heifers. We breed some bulls and sell some bulls as well. And we also have a quarter horse operation. So we have about a hundred horses. We run about a 65 to 75 mare brood band and have about six stallions. So that's kind of our ranch side. Wow. That's a lot. 04:02 Yes. Yeah, it is a larger  ranch. as much as I'd love to do the homesteading thing and like have the garden and all the other little animals,  we have plenty going on that my husband's always like, no,  you don't need to add more to our plate.  Yeah, I wish that my husband understood that concept. He's always like, I want to try this. I want to try that. And I'm like,  I think we need to get good at the first couple of things before we add more in. 04:30 I know. I really want chickens because I love fresh chicken eggs. And he's just like, just go across to our cousins. They have chickens. Honestly, it's easier if you just get them from somebody else. It really is. um We have 18 chickens  and  keeping chickens is not hard. I'm not saying don't get chickens. I'm not telling anyone to not ever get chickens because it's not that hard, but you have to make sure that you have bedding in the wintertime. If you live in a winter state, a Northern tier state, 05:00 And you have to clean out their coop at least once a month, if not twice a month in the warmer months because it gets stinky and that's not a fun environment for them to live in. So if you don't want to deal with chicken poop, don't get chickens.  Yeah, that's definitely a thing. I have had to babysit the chickens across the  way a few times and they are a little bit of work. I think they'd be so fun and my sons, they love the chickens. 05:30 Yeah,  I love watching the chickens. I just don't love going in the coop in August when it's been a really hot day and the coop needs to be cleaned.  And I have to hold my breath for the whole time and they're getting eggs, you know, it's very stinky.  But they are they are gorgeous. Even the most, I don't know, plain Jane chicken like we have, we have the ISA Browns. They're just a reddish brown chicken.  They're really pretty, too. So  I don't know. Chickens are great, but 06:00 I think that you probably have a very nice setup with your cousins across the way to get eggs from. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely does work.  And there's other people in our community that do eggs as well. m I hear one of your kitties in the background.  Yeah. Yeah. Whenever I'm at my desk, she has to be right here with me and she is a old girl. So she likes to complain. Does she help you type? 06:26 She would love to sit right on the laptop the entire time if I let her. Something about the warmth of it. Yeah, we don't have any indoor cats anymore, but we have a dog and she barks in the background. Probably  one out of every three recordings I do.  And sometimes I edit her out and other times just leave her in because we live on a homestead. There's going to be animal noises. Oh no. Yeah, exactly. I have my dogs right beside me too. And if she heard a noise that sounded like a knock, 06:54 She would be extremely loud.  huh. Yeah. Maggie's like that too. The trash truck pulls in the driveway and she loses her mind for the entire time.  I'm like, you know, even if you caught the truck, there was, there's not anything you could do about it. So just stop  and she won't until it pulls out of the driveway. She will not stop barking. And as it's pulling out of the driveway, she does this raw, raw, raw, like, yeah, get out of here. Exactly. sounds. m 07:24 It's very, very funny.  So, um tell me how you got into this marketing thing, because I looked at your website and I know the story, but the listener doesn't know the story. Okay. So, um I originally got into it by doing it for  the ranch. So, my husband is a fourth generation rancher and  we have the Quarter Horse Program, which is where it mainly started and 07:51 They always sold locally and by word of mouth, they got it out and kind of were selling their horses for the last,  they started in like  the mid 1900s. So it's been a long  family operation. And in, you know, 2012, 2014 ish when  Facebook came out,  we started using Facebook to market the horses. And that's kind of when the program blew up. 08:20 We don't do any  modern day bloodlines. We don't show our quarter horses. They're just ranch bred horses.  And when we were able to show them off online using social media and the internet and a website and all the things, um we started selling them all across the U S and now we have even started selling them overseas. 08:45 And when I was working for the farm service agency, before I had my, well, up until right after I had my son, I was always talking with the farmers, the ranchers, the stay at home ranch wives that had smaller businesses or the little businesses in town. And they always struggled to market their stuff. 09:11 like further than just going to the local elevator or the local sale barn or just farmers markets and things like that, especially in such a small rural community where we live. And it was hard to, for them to make side hustles or side businesses really work in such a small community. And they just, you know, always were at awe. Like, how do you guys sell your horses? You know, so 09:39 to so many states and now you've even shipped them overseas or how are you getting your cattle to be hitting the top of the sale barns every time you guys bring them to the  sale barn and most of the time we sell right off the ranch private treaty  because we're able to market and get a good deal where we don't need to take them to a sale barn and give up that commission.  so  kind of, yeah, questions kept coming up and people asking advice and that kind of 10:09 made me want to help people do it  the way that we're doing it. So  I built the business, quit my full-time corporate job with the Farm  Service Agency and started doing this full-time alongside moming and ranching. Yeah, and that moming job is the most important one of the three. Yes. Now we have two boys and it's been uh such a blessing to  not worry about going back to work with my second. 10:39 Yeah,  I imagine it probably has been. I did not ever have a job when my babies were babies, like from the minute they were born until they were at least two and a half.  having the privilege to be a full-time focused mother  is one of the joys of my life. raised three that I birthed and one bonus child. have a stepson.  And that first couple of months home with those babies are my favorite memories. 11:10 Oh yeah, I know. I was so burnt out and just drowning. I went back to work part time at six weeks because I got 12 weeks of maternity leave, but I knew that if I spent three whole months at home that I was not wanting to go back. And we didn't really want to give up the health benefits and all the things yet. So I was like, all right, I'm just going to do this slowly and went back part time at six weeks. And I ended up 11:39 quitting when he was 13 months old because I was just like, no,  I'm going to find something else and do something else. during that time from about, I probably started,  I started Ranch Wife Marketing  when I was eight months pregnant with him officially. And then I really,  you know, got into it and got it to where I felt comfortable leaving my job by that time that he was a year old. um 12:09 And so it's just kind of worked out to just leave and come home full time. And I, it was the best thing I've ever done.  Awesome. I'm so glad you found something  that you love and that works for you and your family.  So do you consider yourself a coach or how does, how does farm wife marketing work? So it started as coaching as a one person team. I didn't have, you know,  the, um, 12:38 capacity to run enough social media accounts while still ranching and being a mom  to bring in the kind of income I wanted to. So I started as a coach and more of a do it with you. um That way I could kind of have a  more,  at that time I could do  more with my time. I could set up, you know, three hours a day where I did client calls. 13:05 That way I could have multiple clients throughout the week and then um able to just assist them. We would just sit down in that hour and we'd go through what their marketing plan was  that week, um what goals they wanted to hit and kind of just work on their marketing strategy and get them all set up um for whatever the retainer was, whether that was three months, six months. um But it had then... 13:32 Um, this summer I had expanded it into a marketing agency and we're starting with social media. So we're doing social medias for businesses that just don't want to do it themselves. I also created courses and guides and books. So I have all kinds of little, um, low ticket or, um, medium ticket. can have like things that you can, uh, buy and do it yourself and. 14:01 kind of have your own education without having the coaching side or me do it for you. Okay, that makes sense. So I don't want your secret sauce because your secret sauce is the reason that you have a business and you're making money at it. But what would you tell someone who knows nothing about marketing their homestead or their little farm or their small ranch? I don't know there's such a thing as a small ranch, but we're going to call it that. 14:29 What is the first thing that you would tell them to do as their first step in marketing? The first thing is just visibility. You just need to be able to get yourself out there. um it's probably the biggest thing that, biggest hurdle that people have to get, especially in rural communities over is like  putting themselves out there for people to see them. um And 14:56 Showing up on social media, even if you don't have a plan, telling the world what you have, what you offer, that is  by far the first step. If you can get  started doing that, the rest will fall so much more naturally when you can start implementing strategies and plans.  Yeah, that's what I would say too. And I am not a marketer, but I worked for a PR and marketing company for about five years and started out just helping my friend who owned it. 15:25 do filing because she had a brand new baby boy at home and she needed some help. I learned so many things working for her  as an office assistant in the five, six years that I worked for her. And  it has helped me  so much with what we do here because we have a farm to market garden and we have the eggs.  And I'm always in the summertime when my husband's taking stuff to the farmer's market. Every morning he sets up the booth and he sends me a photo. 15:53 And I write a little blurb and put it on Facebook.  Kyle's at the farmer's market. Here's what we have for today. Stop by and say hi. He would like to, he'd like to say hello to you or whatever I say. And he always comes home and says, somebody stopped by and said, they saw that I was at the farmer's market because you posted on Facebook. So it does work.  Oh, definitely. It is such an asset. If you can just post on social media. um 16:19 A lot of people, especially probably my older clientele are so against it. But once I show them that it can be simple and easy and um you don't have to spend all day on it, just literally get a post out there  and it will even a little bit, even a couple of times  whenever you got something going on is going to help so much. Yeah. And once I feel like once people get past the, don't know what to say  thing. 16:48 They find out that it's fun. Yes. Oh yeah, it's  so much fun interacting with people  on social media. I've met so many people through social media that I would have never met if I hadn't started this business or  hadn't marketed our horses in the conversations that we've had with people over the years just from finding us online on social media. 17:13 Whichever business it was that I was working for, um it's just incredible the relationships we've built. Yes, and it is all about community and relationships and it needs to be right now.  I don't want to get into it, but it's been rough living in Minnesota for the last couple of weeks and we need more people talking with each other instead of at each other.  Exactly. Yeah, we don't need to get in it, but I do have an immigrant stepmother  who's living in 17:43 suburb of Minneapolis. So I do understand the struggle. Yeah, it has been a very, very  long  January and we're not even,  what is today? The 27th? We have a few more days of January and I don't see February being any, any faster. It's been a very rough start to the year here in Minnesota. uh So  I need to pick your brain for a second on email lists because I keep hearing and I keep reading. 18:11 that it's important to have an email list because that keeps you in contact with your customers.  Even if Facebook or Instagram or whatever social media platform you use goes down.  Do you think that an email list is really important?  Absolutely. It is one of the things I get people set up with  right away uh is how they're going to collect emails and how they're going to nurture that  email sequence because 18:39 I'm actually a great example.  So when I first started Ranch Wife Marketing, I had an Instagram page where I focused on helping burnt out moms  in the rural community, the ones that were like me working 40 hours a week, trying to start a business, trying to be a mom, trying to help their husband on the ranch,  um, find a way to  make that side income a full-time thing. And I had over 10,000 followers and my Instagram was hacked. 19:09 and taken away. I lost all my leads,  all my customers, all my potential from that um Instagram. And now the one I have now, which I know I'm not sad about,  followers don't mean sales,  but having a nice large follower amount. Some people are like, oh, she knows what she's doing. And now my current one is only around 1300.  But you have an email list now. 19:38 but I have an email list  and I was able to email all of my  email lists and tell them, know,  you can find me at this  Instagram now instead,  or I was able just to keep in communication with them.  own, once someone gives you their email, you own it. Like that is your information, that is your data. They have consented you to contact them through email  and it doesn't,  it's like, 20:07 on an Excel file or wherever you keep it, you have it to reach out to them.  Where social media,  you can lose that lead easily, they can easily change their username and you can't find them. ah You could get your account taken down. ah They could easily block you by accident even sometimes. ah So there's just a lot of things with social media that a email list helps  navigate if you can 20:37 collect those emails from your following. Okay, so here's where I get stuck because I just built a new website for the other podcasts I'm doing now. It's called Grit and Grease and the Heartland  Women in Agriculture and I  just set up the email list thing and I haven't sent out the first email because I'm going to do it in February because then I have all of January to draw from.  So 21:03 My thing about email lists is that I never know what to say in an email if I'm not actually selling something. I'm just promoting the podcast. So my plan  is to email people  a synopsis of  what the things are that we talked about in January  and do a little teaser at the end of the guests that we're having in February. Is that  a 21:30 good thing to do for an email list? Yeah, that sounds great. I honestly believe in one of like my foundation  beliefs in my business is that you shouldn't be selling every single time you post something, send something, whatever it is. It should be 80 % nurture and value and education driven  and 20 % selling because if we're not giving ourselves to our customers, why should they 22:00 open their pocketbooks to us. Right. Yeah, exactly. So  if someone is  selling their produce in the summertime and they have an email list, should their email they send out  once a month or every two weeks or however they're timing it,  should the first like 60 % of the email be about what they've been growing, what they've been seeing? 22:29 the cute garden spider that they found in the middle of the garden and it scared them to death. And then what they're going to be selling and where they're going to be selling. Oh, yes. And even if like, especially in that niche, if you can throw in gardening tips or certain varieties you came across or new things to try, throwing in any kind of little bit of knowledge or entertainment. 22:55 it before you actually lead to the sale is going to up your conversion rates so much.  That's what I figured. We have a beautiful photo that my husband took uh of an orb weaver garden spider. And it is orange and sorry, it's yellow and black and it's a beautiful spider, but lots of people are really scared of spiders.  he said, he said, I took this for you. He said, cause you're not scared of spiders. He said, but do you think that it'll get 23:24 attention on Facebook or an email and I was like probably because people are  arachnophobia is a real thing eh 23:35 Yes.  No, and uh I actually,  I'll even  use my husband as an example. So he's scared of snakes, but you know, he'll sit there and watch  a  TikTok or any real video about snakes and just be like  grossed out the whole time, but just interested because  I don't know what it is about it. But um yeah, they just are drawn to watching them even if they're scared of them. 24:03 It's like Gawker's in a bad car accident. I swear that's how the brain works. um So I have one more question about a marketing tactic and then we can, I actually have questions about your quarter horses too. Art, do you think that podcasts are a good way to market? Yes, if you can market, well,  so podcasts. 24:27 You have to be able to also mark the podcast, but then the podcast itself is a great way to nurture your audience. It's a great way for them to learn, know, and trust you and lead them to your offers by providing value, entertainment, and things like that. I have considered even myself starting a podcast. The only thing holding me back from starting a podcast is my time. I have 24:56 two under two and like I said a lot of livestock to take care of but I think once my boys get a little older it's something I even want to do so that I can teach on my podcast and then market my services through it. So definitely it is a great place to do that. And I want to tell the listener it is really easy. It will probably cost you anywhere from 25 to 100 dollars a month to do it. 25:25 because it does cost money to have a host  for the files. you have to have a way to record if you're doing guests. there there are expenses around having a podcast, but it's not  exorbitant. It's not a ton of money. And you can pick up a headset like I wear and the sound is fine. You don't have to have a fancy boom mic and the big fat earphones that don't stay on my head. Well, that's why I don't use them. 25:54 don't love them.  It's fairly easy. is  not hard to do. it  is my podcast, this one,  and the one I just started, it's a joy of my life right now because I get to talk to people  who are helping me educate people in the world about agriculture and about food and about cooking and about animals. And it just tickles me to no end when I get up in the morning and I know I'm going to do an interview with someone. It just makes my heart. 26:25 first, you know? Yeah, they are. I love listening to them too. And I've been on a few and they're always just a pleasure to be a part of and also listen to. And I always get little  golden nuggets from every single podcast I ever listened to.  Yes. And the best part about podcasts is that you can put your earbuds in and you can do dishes or you can cook dinner or you can muck stalls or you can brush a horse. 26:54 You know, it's something that you can learn from without having to focus completely on the thing that you're learning. can be doing something else in the process. Oh, definitely. I love them. I think they're great. And I would say that because I have to. And Alicia, your voice is beautiful. You would be great at a podcast. Oh, thank you. It's actually one of the things I'm insecure about. I feel like it's high and whiny. Oh, no, you would be great. You would sound 27:23 perfectly fine for a podcast.  the other podcast that I do is with a cattle rancher and she's in Nebraska. And so we talk a lot about her livestock, but we don't talk about quarter horses because they don't have quarter horses.  tell me about quarter horses. What are quarter horses for?  What's their purpose? 27:47 Quarter horses were bred to be very versatile. um So  there's not really a true purpose to them. They are so versatile, they're used almost in every uh equitation out there.  Originally, they were kind of  raised to... 28:10 have a little more strength than a thoroughbred  and um some endurance and be able to kind of go all day on a ranch chasing cattle and things like that  instead of breaking down like thoroughbreds  and then having a little more strength than Arabians  to be able to rope and pull cattle.  They're kind of  built through 28:36 those breeds and even crossed with some draft to bring in that strength. um So that's kind of what they were built for just to be your all around do anything and everything horse. They're  going to excel in those Western cattle  areas, but they're definitely,  they can be quick. They're used for racing and endurance. can climb mountains  and yeah, that's just kind of where they came from was. 29:03 a breed that could withstand that rugged American terrain that we have. they a smaller horse? Are they like 14, 15 hands or are they a bigger horse? So because they come from so many other breeds originally, they are anywhere from pony size. Like some of them even fall under 14. I think one of our mares is right at 14 hands. 29:31 And then they can be, I mean, we have 16, 16, two hand horses as well. I've seen quarter horses get as tall as 17 hands. Wow. Okay. All right. So they're, I'm going to use a bad word. My, the best dog that my parents ever had was a mutt. He was, he was not a purebred anything. And they only had him for about a year because he got hit by a car and he was the loviest, most healthy. 30:01 most uh athletic dog and his name was Lucky, which was  unfortunate because he was not lucky.  And we love that dog.  definitely were a mutt in the beginning. that is a great ex- now to the now they're just so old that it's now a purebred themselves. But yeah, that's where it came from was just that hybrid vigor of  combining a bunch of different things together. Yeah, I was a rare uh 30:29 I was afraid if I said the word mutt, you're going to be offended.  think a lot of quarter horse people probably would be,  but I completely understand where it comes from. um So  though we, all of ours are purebred, they're American quarter horse registered.  But yeah, if you trace any quarter horse back far enough,  you're not going to find a quarter horse at the end of the trail.  Exactly. I think that's what I was trying to get at. 30:57 I don't know enough about horses to talk to it  smartly  and that wasn't really smart either, but you know what I'm saying. I don't know enough about horses because I've never had any. um So I guess my last question, because I try to keep these to half an hour,  is are  some horses still used for work, like for hauling a cart  or for pulling a plow or any of the things that horses were used for 150 years ago? Yeah. 31:25 Yeah, there's a lot of people that still use horses for work. um Amish is a great example. um There's a lot of Amish communities still um in the United States. We have a lot of Amish customers  that uh use their horses still to  pull  carts and plow and work on them. So  yeah, it's definitely still a thing. 31:54 Okay, because a lot of the horse Facebook pages that I follow, I follow a couple,  they're more for racing or for showing. oh Or just for having because they're great. Horses are amazing animals. And I was thinking about the other day, and I knew that the Amish still use horses for actual farm work. But the average person who owns a horse, they don't typically use them for farm work. They race them or they show them. 32:23 Yeah, I would say we use ours for work, but not for farm work. have tractors and plows and all that stuff, but  we use ours to  herd our cattle. We to rope the cows and treat them out in pasture to round them up just because,  you know, a four wheeler or a dirt bike or whatever. lot of people use, especially where we live in North Dakota, we have a lot of rugged country. Can't get to where the cows can get, but a horse can. Yep. 32:52 Yep, that makes all the sense in the world.  All right, Alicia,  I appreciate your time so much as I do everybody who talks with me on the podcast.  Where can people find you?  You can find me by Googling Ranch Wife Marketing. That will bring you to my website. You can find me on Facebook, oh Instagram, TikTok, all with Ranch Wife Marketing. 33:16 Um, the actual at is ranchwife underscore marketing on both Tik TOK and Facebook. Um, and I love chatting and I'm always just a DM away or an email away if anyone wants to learn anything about marketing, your rural businesses. Or if they want to buy a quarter horse. Yeah. We, yeah. you want that's Freilich legacy quarter horses. If you want to look into our quarter horse program. Okay. Awesome. 33:46 You can find me as always at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to atinyhomestead.com slash support.  And if you like this podcast, check out  Grit and Grace in the Heartland, Women in Agriculture. That's my other podcast.  Alicia, thank you again for your time. I appreciate it. Yes. I had a great time talking with you, Mary.  Have a great day. You too.  

Today I'm talking with Sara at Santa's Crew LLC. Sara and her dad raise reindeer!   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Sarah at Santa's Crew LLC in Wisconsin. Good morning, Sarah. How are you? Good and good morning.  How's the weather in Wisconsin this morning? Because it's damn cold in Minnesota.  It's very cold here as well.  Getting through it.  Yeah. um 00:29 I know we shouldn't complain because we had a very long, extended, beautiful fall, but spring can't come soon enough, honestly. Yeah, I don't mind cold weather, but when it's like way, way in the negatives and it causes things to break or have issues, then it's like, okay, now it's maybe a little too cold. Yeah, I am prone to migraines. It runs in my family, and when the temperature drops like this and the air gets dry, 00:56 My head tries to hurt every morning when I get up and I'm like, spring's only a couple months away. I will survive it. Yeah. I would definitely be looking forward to it as well if I were you. Yeah. It's no fun getting up in the morning and you get that little twinge and you're like, okay, so am I going to be down for three days or is this just a few seconds of dry air bothering my nose causing sinus headache? 01:22 It's very frustrating, minor. There are worse things in the world. I'm not worried about it. I just don't enjoy it.  So um Sarah talked with me a week or so ago about their dairy farm  and she let it slip that she and her dad have a reindeer raising endeavor as well. And I was like,  oh, will you come back and talk to me about the reindeer? And she's back. So  how in the heck did you guys get involved in raising reindeer? 01:51 Right? It's not something you're, you know, not very common. uh But our neighbor used to have them.  And  I did go to one of these events one time and, know, it was a lot of fun. I did grow up on a dairy farm. So I grew up around animals and training animals  at, you know, going to the fair. So I was familiar with that.  And 02:12 we found out he was selling and my dad and I kind of talked. It was kind of spontaneous. It wasn't something like we planned. It was just kind of like the opportunity was there  and we're like, let's do it. So we kind of went in partnership. I was 17 at the time.  Um,  and  we started with  two baby calves  and kind of expand from there was a male and female. So they were calves. We showed them that first year. 02:40 And the following year they would be a breeding pair. So then we had to get another female, um, because during the holiday season is when the males are in rut. So you don't want to bring them out because they're very aggressive. So usually people will bring like females or steers. So then we kind of started with three animals within our first two years. And then, um, the third degree added another one. So then we had three females and kinda, oh um, 03:07 went with that and then we had three breeding females. But yeah,  we slowly built it. was, uh yeah, it's very fun. m Reindeer are different than  cattle in some ways. They have their similarities but their differences.  And growing up with dairy cattle, when I got the reindeer, I'm like, oh, reindeer are much quicker and  more nimble than  cows. But yeah, it's been a lot of fun. 03:34 And now we've been doing it since 2016, which is crazy to think that time's flying by that fast. do you have a big herd now? We're at eight right now,  which is a good size. I don't think we'll get  bigger than that um at all. We're pretty with the amount of space we have for them. It seems to work well.  It's enough  animals for like the holiday season. And then we do have some breeding females. 04:04 So we can kind of get calves. We'll keep a few every once in a while and sometimes we'll sell some to people who don't breed or want, you know, new genetics kind of thing. So other people who have reindeer or want to get into it. we had, let's see, last year we had two, but we were expecting four. We're hoping to have four. We had four breeding females. This year we have five that were in breeding. 04:34 with breeding bulls.  And we think the youngest one isn't bred because during the holiday season, we think she was in heat because the steer was kind of trying to jump on her. like,  oh, I think she's having a heat. I don't think that one's pregnant. So maybe we'll have four calves. Like, we'll see. um We'll just have to wait and see. How long is gestation for the babies?  Oh, two. 05:02 Why am I blanking on the exact? uh Let's see, October is typically when hours are bred and then they calve in springtime around April or May. Why? I'm blanking on the number of days right now though.  So like eight, nine months.  Yeah, yes. Yep. Around that. Okay. Awesome. And is it set in stone? They only have babies in the spring? Yes. Yep. Because rut. 05:32 For the males, always, usually the end of August is when it kind of starts.  So it kind of starts around there.  And then they drop their antlers in December or January, which means rut season is done. But we pull the females out of the breeding pen in October because if they get bred any later than that, then they're calving. 05:55 into like late spring and summer and it's really, you know, warm for the baby calves. They usually don't do as well  when it's that warm.  Once they get older, they're really good with like the warmer weather, but it's just the baby calves seem to take it harder, you know, in their first few weeks. So we just don't want to have any late late calves. So we just pull them in October. oh Okay.  I have so many questions for you because I out and did some reading on reindeer this morning and 06:24 Reindeer and caribou are not the same animal. They are cousins. Yes. And reindeer come from Siberia area, right? Yes. Yep. Across seas. They're native over there where caribou are native to North America. Okay. So how did reindeer get to the United States? Do you know? Yes. So, I guess I'll kind of go back and kind of tell people that 06:53 I go to so many events and people say that they're the same thing and they will argue with me and that they think that I'm just  lying, I guess, at like Chris said, that I'm like, am not. are completely like, they're separate animals, but they are close cousins.  They are the same species, but different subspecies. um Because even like national geographic or prominent zoos in the US will wrongly classify these animals, which is kind of why I think. 07:20 people get confused because you can research it and get different things. But they have done research  on the migration patterns of the two of them. they are close cousins, but they are different animals. And reindeer domesticated  have been domesticated where caribou aren't. So  some people will kind of make the comparison. 07:44 to kind of make it a little easier to kind of understand it as like wolves and dogs, like they're close related, one's domesticated. I guess it's kind of a way to put it in perspective in that way. yeah, so reindeer first arrived in Alaska in 1892 by a boat, obviously, because they weren't. 08:10 Unlike Caribou, they were already here because Caribou basically used the land bridge to kind of come over here and then you know, that's how that worked and they were shipped from Siberia. So you're right there. And they ended up having their peak population here for 640,000 of them around the 1930s, but they say there's only roughly 20,000 of them that are in Alaska today. 08:38 I'm not sure we're in Canada. I know there's some hers in Canada, but I don't know exactly what the numbers are over there. Okay.  And  I'm going to be bouncing all over the place because stuff's going to pop in from what I read this morning.  You and your dad raise reindeer to  take them to Christmas things or have people come see them at Christmas, right? Yeah. We travel with them  to all different places. We're in Wisconsin, so we... 09:06 basically stay in Wisconsin because there's enough events to fill the mid November through Christmas. It's a very short window to kind of get to all these places and jam pack it all in. So we do a lot of traveling with them and we do two teams. We started with one trailer and we travel with two at a time because they're herd animals.  they like to be with another one, seem to do better that way. And so we travel with two of them. We bring a whole display pen. We set it all up. 09:34 get, you know,  I'm in there with the, with the reindeer on a, uh, with a lead rope and, know, I'm able to kind of, you know, talk to people, educate them, and they can kind of take photos with the reindeer as well.  Um, and then we just, we added a second team a few years ago because there was just so many  people wanting the same dates.  And so now we travel with two teams on some of the days. So, um 10:00 four animals out at once and my dad will take one team and I'll take the other if we happen to have like double bookings that way. Um, but we will not add a third team. That would be really chaotic and a lot. we're, we're going to kind of two teams is good enough. Okay. And have you guys trained the reindeer to pull a sleigh yet? Not yet, but we have one that we are  hoping  to or working with. Um, it's a steer. 10:27 So he doesn't have the testosterone like an intact bowl, so he won't go into rut or anything like that. And he's like a big puppy.  Your steer is kind of like, you know, even in cattle, your steers are very, very calm, nonchalant.  And he's  bigger than two in size.  And I think he'll be, you know, a really good sleigh puller where the females are usually they should be pregnant during the holiday season. We don't want to have them, you know, being a sleigh puller during that or anything. But we're working with him. He's young. 10:58 He's going to be two this spring and we're working on that. So we'll see how that goes. But that is a goal to have a sleep holder. Fun. So much fun. So I don't want to, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but do people raise reindeer for meat as well or not? Not around here. There's not really a market for that around here, but like in Alaska or like, uh, Norway, Siberia, Siberia over there, it's you. 11:26 They can, or there's a market for it, but down in the lower 48, it's mainly to just kind of have them for either just to have them or to go to events or some people will have um their own farm where people come to them. Kind of like tree farms, some tree farms have them or they just want to have an experience  on their own property with them. Okay. I was really curious because we have. 11:53 We eat venison here. I don't love venison. My husband and my kids do.  And so we've had venison in the house off and on for years.  And I didn't, I really didn't think that reindeer were for that because  it's an expensive animal to raise, would assume.  Yeah.  So it's like where they're more like in Alaska where they have like more herds or 12:19 You know, they raise them more for meat up there.  I haven't had any,  so I can't speak on how it tastes. Yeah.  Haven't had any personal experience tasting it. oh But yeah, we, there's really no market down here for it. Otherwise you probably see it more on menus or in stores.  Yeah. Yeah. That's what I figured. Okay.  And are they,  I don't know how to ask this.  Are the reindeer friendly? 12:49 Yes. Well, the bulls when they're in rut, they're not, they're  all full  of testosterone, but when they lose their antlers, then they're back to like, testosterone's low, they're kind of back to their normal self, they're not as crazy. But yes, they're friendly. Okay.  And when the mamas have their babies, are the mamas super protective? Are they good with you being around the babies, but nobody else? 13:16 They're actually usually pretty good with us. We have one female that is a little more  iffy on it with us, a little more protective, but for the most part, they are all pretty good. I need to find somebody who's closer than Wisconsin who was raising reindeer. Cause I really want to hold a baby reindeer before I die.  They are so cute. They are. They're so tiny.  Yeah. 12 pounds on average. 13:43 Yeah, yeah, like 12 to 15 depending. Yeah, yeah, they're, not that big and they're like all legs. It's so funny. And, they  start walking pretty soon after they're, they don't like lay, like, you know, some animals you would think like they, they aren't mobile, but they're up and around really soon after and doing zoomies and yeah, they're, it's pretty impressive.  So much fun. 14:09 It's amazing to me that they are 12 to 15 pounds at birth because my dog weighs like 36 pounds. So they're about half of what she is right now. Yup. Yeah. When you put it that way.  Crazy. Crazy. She would love to have a baby reindeer friend. Maggie would just be the best mama to a baby reindeer for five minutes. It would be amazing.  Okay. The other things that I read are the female reindeer keep their 14:37 antlers longer than the males do because they use them to  make sure they can get food so they can feed their babies. Yes, yeah, they keep theirs on longer.  So when the males lose their antlers, the females are the ruler of the roosts. They have the advantage of, you know, being able to kind of pick on them if they need to and defend their babies. Fabulous.  That mama bear energy. It's mama reindeer energy. We do have a few that will 15:05 not often, but there will sometimes be females that'll lose one  before they calve.  I think we've had one lose both of them before she calved, but usually they keep them on. um Sometimes right after they have the baby, soon after they'll lose them, it just really depends from reindeer to reindeer.  But yeah, they do keep them on till spring. um Some males, I know there's like a thing out there where all males lose their antlers in December, and that's not the case. We actually have a bull. 15:33 that still has his antlers on. He is younger and it seems to be when they're younger, they sometimes keep them on maybe a little longer. And our steer still has his antlers on, so it's not always the case. But  a lot of males will lose theirs in December, but some of them will keep them till January. Do you do anything with the sheds at all? Right now, we've been just kind of stockpiling them.  I tried to do some macrame designs on some. 16:02 Um, but it's just, it takes a lot of time. I enjoy doing it. It's just getting the spare time to do it.  Um, and then there are some people who are interested in just having, you know, the sheds, like they're all like, they just like, if we sold them, they just want, you know, a reindeer shed. But we  have a big stockpile of them. I think now we're going to try to part with them since we've got a bigger herd now and they grow them every year. So we just keep getting more and more. 16:31 Yeah, I was reading that even the babies within four or five months start growing antlers. Oh, yeah, right away. So they're born with, you know, nothing. And then  all of a sudden you'll start seeing little tiny nubs forming and then they just keep getting longer and longer. And  some of them will just be little tiny ice picks. Some of them will have a few points, but they're on the smaller side. And then the following year, they just like triple in size. It's crazy how much how big they can get. 17:00 in such a young age from year to year. the racks  on caribou and reindeer are just gargantuan. Once they get to be about what, three or four years old, they're just huge. Yeah, yeah, they are big. And the males especially, obviously the males, their antlers are much thicker and larger in size. It's pretty impressive on how big they can get. And we bring  some sheds to events. 17:27 um And that's one thing we have to remind people. They look at them and they're like,  oh, they assume it's from a dead reindeer that we killed the reindeer or something. I'm like, no, they shed them every year. So those sheds, you know, they fell off. So it's kind of like a, you know, educational point as well for people. Cause some people just don't know that, you know,  deer,  you know, the species, that's just something that happens. 17:53 ah But yeah, the males, theirs get large real fast. It's very impressive in how fast and sometimes daily when they get really big, you'll just notice a difference daily on how much bigger they're getting. Well, I was reading that they can grow an inch or two a day. I was like, oh my God, that's got to hurt. Yeah.  I don't know if the growing process technically hurts on them, but they are very sensitive when they're growing because they're covered in this fuzzy velvet. 18:21 And it's just a bunch of blood flow that's just basically going through them to keep growing. And so like they're very sensitive. They don't use them. They don't want to touch anything with them. And if they even nick it just the littlest, it just bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. It eventually clots, but it's just if you nick it just a little bit, almost like if you cut yourself with like a razor, just doesn't want to stop. And it's just like the smallest little thing. So they're very sensitive and they're just full of blood. 18:51 through that process. then end of August is usually when they harden. Sometimes some of them will be a little later like September. had a steer this year was really late on wanting them to harden and then they just rub all that velvet off. They don't have that feeling and sensation once they harden. I mean, when they're rubbing that velvet off, there's some of that blood left between the velvet and the hard antler. 19:20 And so people think it looks painful when really  it's not. It's just a little bit that was just left on top of that hard antler. So it looks like a  bloody mess sometimes because they'll just rub their antlers in trees because it's like an itchy feeling for them. They want it  off.  And it just looks funny because it's just like their antlers will just look kind of bloody at first when they're doing that.  And it's just a natural process. It doesn't hurt them. 19:49 Yeah, I was talking with my  son like a year or so ago and I made the mistake of calling  deer antlers, deer horns.  And he said, you know better than that. And I was like, better than what? And he said, antlers are not the same thing as horns. He said, antlers are a living part of the animal up until they start to harden off. He said, horns are not alive. And I said, um 20:18 actually I didn't know that. He said, you're kidding. I said, no, I didn't know that. He said, yeah. He said the horns on a cow or steer, you know, bovine. He said, those aren't the same as antlers. And I was like, oh, I learned something new today. I was schooled on the difference between antlers and horns. Yeah. Yeah. There is a difference.  Um, cause obviously with reindeer, they fall off  and they grow a new set where horns, just, you know, they, and they grow from the base  of like, 20:48 the head  of cattle where  the antlers, growing from the tips. The tips keep growing because of all that blood flow. So they're not actually growing from the base. yeah, you don't think of that when you're just looking at  them, but yeah, they do grow differently and they are different. and getting schooled by my kid is my fault because I'm huge on semantics. And he was like, for a lady who's big on semantics. 21:15 I can't believe you didn't realize that there was a difference between antlers and horns. And I'm like,  you can stop now.  I have been schooled, now I know you can stop harassing me. And he's just laughing.  So it's great when you raise your kids to be smart because then they outsmart you.  It's a challenge then  for them probably. Yes, exactly.  The other interesting thing that I read is that reindeer on their hooves, they have a dewclaw. 21:44 like a dog has a dewclaw or a cat has a dewclaw. And I was like, what is that for?  And then I continued to read  and it's so they can walk on the snow and ice easier. Yep.  And, uh, and it kind of, cause the cows even have dewclaws, I kind of, cause they're hoofed animals, I kind of compare them. Their hooves are different than cows or even horses, but they have that dewclaw and it looks funny cause it looks like they need a hoof trimming, but they don't. 22:14 And  we do have trim them. So obviously they can get longer than what they should. But yeah, they are for that traction on snow and ice and their hooves are really big because it accesses no shoes  and shovels in the snow even. And if you looked at the bottom side of the hoof, it kind of indents a little bit. So they are really good shovels for the snow and they can dig as deep as three feet. Wow. OK. 22:43 um I was looking at a photo of a reindeer hoof  and it reminded me of the chunky  platform heels that were in fashion a while ago. was  like, oh, they have fancy feet. And they're softer  and they say like,  not saying super soft, but they kind of are like a little softer in like summer, more spongier. 23:09 And then in winter, they harden up a little like more firmer, you know, for that ice and snow.  in summer, so it's easier to do their hoof trimming in summer versus winter because they're very, very hard  in winter.  Yeah. Do the babies have the same  like angel feather thingies on their feet when they're born the  eponychium or whatever that's called for cows and horses? 23:38 Angel feather? I'm trying to think of what you're referring to. So that the hooves don't cut the mom when they're coming through the birth canal. Oh, yes. Yeah, their hooves are tiny. They're not like really big when they're first born. But are they soft? Are the bottom of their feet soft? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah, they're more rounded, smoother. Okay, because with horses and cows, they look almost like little flaps. 24:07 on their hooves when they're born and it's so that they don't slice mom on the inside of her body. It's so cool. is amazing how she takes care of things. because with our dairy, because I grew up on a dairy farm, yeah, their hooves are softer and then they're hearted and they're just different. it's weird how they're made that way. It's always interesting how things change too so fast in the calves. 24:35 Yeah, they go from being completely defenseless to able to take care of themselves really fast.  Yeah, yes. yeah, the  reindeer babies. So it's interesting because they are a little different  than like cattle. You you feed calves twice a day, bigger amounts, and they get that curd in their stomach and it kind of slowly releases throughout the day. But then you have reindeer babies, they drink 25:03 very often in small amounts. milk is really, really high in fat and protein content  as well. So that's also probably why they don't need like a ton at once, but yeah, they drink very often.  And  reindeer do have four teats, um not like goats where they have two. So  they have four and they're really, really tiny. Oh, okay. 25:29 And they usually only have one baby. are occasionally twins, but it's usually one baby per mama, right? Correct. Yes.  And  we actually had a set of twins.  What was that? Not this last year, the year before that.  So yeah, twins are very rare. They usually just have a single calf.  And when we had the twins, we were kind of calling around a bunch of other reindeer owners who've been in it for 25:57 a while, like did you ever have twins? Did you have to pull them both? So you had to feed them, like did you have to bottle feed them or did they do fine on the mom?  And the mom who had it, she's our oldest in our first range. She's always been amazing with all of her calves.  And at first we thought she was like pushing one away, the smaller one. The female was more runtier, she was smaller. And then we realized she was making them take turns. So like at night she was trying to let one drink. 26:27 And then she would let the, you know, she was trying to kind of give them turns. So she was, it was very interesting because at first we thought, oh, she's just pushing one away and that wasn't the case. So, and then you have to think, is she going to produce enough for both? You know, you want to make sure they're both getting enough nutrients or is that bigger one going to drink more? And then, you know, when the other one wants to drink, is there going to not just be enough? So we ended up having, we left them on the mom and we would kind of every like, 26:57 So if you ever bottle feed reindeer, we keep ours on the mom because we've just had good luck with that. And our moms have always been really great. You have to feed them like every three hours, almost like a baby human because they drink that often. And so we had to go out there. I had my cousins help me a lot. They were great. I actually just had my newborn son at the time. So I was already feeding my baby every like three hours. 27:26 So they would go over there and help and feed them,  the baby twins, and try to make sure, like see if they would drink off the mom. Then they had a little like, you know, syringe, like just to kind of do little, slowly put a little bit in their cheek at a time and  kind of see how much they would take  and record that  every day or every feeding. And then we'd weigh them. 27:55 Yeah, it was it was a very interesting with reindeer every year you learn something new there is And that was something that year I'm like and they live we showed them at shows there that first year with the mom They took turns we always bring the calves to events with the mom  They always do you know really well that way and then this last year we brought the twins out together So that was really fun that they were able to kind of go to all these events together awesome 28:24 So yeah, the babies, it's crazy that, oh, and I found what I've been looking for. Cause I'm like, I don't know the percentage of fat and I'm like, I'm just trying to find it  in their milk. So  this reads here, is it?  Reindeer milk is very high in fat compared to milk from other domestic species. Like a Jersey cow is known for its high butter fat content,  which is 28:49 which only has about 4 % milk fat, reindeer milk registers at 24 % milk fat. They rank first in fat content among milk consumed, or they rank, yeah, first in fat content among milk consumed by humans. People do not consume reindeer milk in certain parts of the world. some do, like, know, where reindeer are native, there are people, you know, in Norway, like you were saying. 29:19 And Siberia where they rely on these animals and herd them and this is like their food source and,  know, they, you know, have to drink their milk too. So, and they use, you know, they butcher them too. And it's crazy how  much the fat content in these animals are so high, but they are also native to those really harsh, cold climates too.  don't know if that's also why. Probably. 29:48 And what you're telling me is reindeer milk would make excellent ice cream.  Yeah, that would be interesting to try.  Yeah, it would be the smoothest ice cream ever known to man. Yeah. Oh, and then it does go on to say polar bear milk is 31 % fat. So yeah, it's interesting how  like they did this research on all these other animals and the fat content in their mouth and how it really, really varies. 30:16 I mean, even a dairy cows like jerseys just have more just naturally than Holsteins. You know, it's just interesting how that's just how nature works. Did you know that the milk from cats has a very high fat content too? Oh, cats. Okay. I don't know too much about cats. I mean, we have tons of bark cats, Yeah. I was reading about all this stuff this morning and I read the same kind of comparison that you just read. And it said that. 30:43 is that cats have a very high fat content in their milk. And I was like, I am not milking a cat.  That would be very hard.  I would just frustrate the cat and  I'd probably get sliced up pretty good. So no, we're not milking barn cats around here. That seems like a bad plan.  Okay. Well, Sarah,  I  would love to talk to you for days about this because I  love it that you're raising reindeer. think that's so fabulous. 31:09 There is just so much to them. It's endless amount of information I could give.  Yeah, I have one more question and then we'll wrap it up. When little kids come to the event and they see the reindeer,  do they get to actually pet the reindeer or do they just get to ask you a bunch of questions and stare at the reindeer? So for us,  we don't allow the petting of reindeer just for biosecurity reasons. For us, um 31:36 and liability, not that our reindeer are aggressive or anything. It's just,  it just puts a peace of mind. feel like for us, cause I'm not, we have two  teams and if I'm not at the other one, there's other, you know, I have helpers and if something happens, whether there's a person who doesn't understand what they're doing or a PETA person who wants to make a scene, I don't want them to have that on their shoulders. So it's not, I don't. 32:04 I allow it for that reason and just mainly biosecurity too, because you don't know  what those people, if they have animals either. There is something that sheep and goats can carry. It's called MCF and they can carry it. doesn't affect them. But if reindeer end up getting it, it's deadly to them. So if I ever have any helpers of mine and they have,  there's some who have sheep and goats at home and like you cannot wear any of the clothes or boots that you have that you go out. 32:33 by your sheep and goats because I just don't, it's a big risk. know, it's something that if reindeer get it, it's not a good situation. ah But yeah, the reindeer are very, very friendly. So we let people take photos with them and  I do bring antler sheds so people can hold those  and touch those. And then yeah, we get lots and lots of questions  about them. Nice.  Awesome.  All right. Where can people find you Sarah for your reindeer business? 33:03 So we do have an Instagram and Facebook. It's called SantasCrew  LLC  and we also have a website as well. um And there's a page if you just want to learn more just about reindeer in general, there's a ton of information on reindeerowners.com.  An abundance amount of information there. um So yeah, it's  interesting. um Some states don't allow people to own reindeer, which is really interesting too. 33:31 um So if you are listening and you're looking into wanting them, just, you know, first of all, check with your state's rules and regulations.  That's what I would say first before going on and trying to find some reindeer to purchase. Cause that would, you know,  you want to make sure you can get them to begin with  and then making sure you knowing the  facility you need. Some states require double fencing, some don't, you know, all those things, every state's a little different. 33:59 How expensive is it to acquire a reindeer calf? It varies. um It's quite a wide range.  It could be 12,000 and I see up to 20,000. It really depends.  Bottle raise seems to go for a little  higher for some reason.  And some people prefer that, which  is totally fine. It's just preference. We don't bottle raise. We do work with our animals though, too. um 34:28 So it's just really, really depends on that. And can you even get them from certain farms? So it depends on certain states. um I can't sell to certain states because of their regulations,  but I can sell to some others.  like, for example, I can sell to the of Texas. Their regulations currently is you can't have a CWD case  within a certain mile radius. Yep, chronic wasting disease. 34:58 Yes. Yep. And  I meet that requirement. But if someone else in Wisconsin has a case that was just within that radius, even within a mile, they cannot sell a reindeer to that state, which is, which is so crazy. Um, so I can, it can make it hard. There is a state I could sell to and they just change the regulations and now I can't.  Um, so it's,  it's a really, really interesting market that way, how it's constantly changing and it makes it harder. 35:26 to acquire them or sell them. So yeah, it's very interesting and constantly changing. Well, you're never bored. So that's good.  No, no, never. And like I said, we learn something new every year with these animals. So we'll see what happens this year. I mean, if we ever get twins again, we've been through that.  So  I think it's fascinating. And I'm so, I don't know, I'll use the word impressed. Probably not the right word. 35:54 So impressed that you do this with your dad. think it's great. um As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to atinyhomestead.com slash support.  Sarah, thank you for coming back and talking with me. Oh, of course. Thank you for inviting me back.  I loved this conversation and I have not talked with anyone about raising reindeer before. So this was really interesting. Thank you so much. Yeah, you definitely, you're welcome. 36:23 All right, have a great day. You too.  

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farm. Learn about how having a coach can change your perspective.   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon farm in Montana  for like the fifth time, I think. Good morning, Morgan. How are you? Good morning. Good morning. Yeah.  What a journey this has been um from Groovy Grazers to Cole Canyon farm to more surprises. feel like 00:26 We have so many pivots you've had to cover, so I can understand why we've been  on quite a bit.  Well, you're also really listenable and you're really fun and I like you so much, so you make it a joy to talk with you. ah Morgan has been,  I don't know how to say it, she found herself a coach. Yeah. And I wanted to talk with Morgan about how that is changing things for her because  I feel like coaches give us perspective. 00:53 That we need that our friends give us so tell me about how that's going Yeah, so we talked a little bit about the last episode. I was like alright. I just did this crazy thing I signed up for a coach, I've never signed up for a coach. I've actually never spent I Would say probably more than two three hundred dollars on continued education for myself, and this is thousands of dollars But it's really important that you invest in yourself just as much as much as you invest in your property right so 01:23 um I do some silver and gold stuff with a friend  and her name is Diane Graber. She has a homesteading thing that she just launched. So I'm going to have you talk to her about Mary because her and her husband have been doing this for well over a decade. Like,  yeah. So  she's coming out into her homesteading area as I was coming into my set, you know, my,  golden silver era. Like I was just learning about it. Right.  And she. 01:52 came into my life about a year ago and she was helping coach me and that was really great, but I just had a lot going on. We covered a lot of what was going on in 2025, know, just lots of pivots changes. And she asked me about, I don't know, two weeks before the class, she was like, hey, jump onto this class, just say yes. It'll change your, change your whole world. I've worked with this woman before in previous adventures that we've done. 02:21 And she's a great person I just reconnected with her after 15 years. So was like, all right, cool. Like I'm, I love meeting people. That's how Mary and I met. If people don't know, she just messaged me on Facebook. Like I love talking to people. So it was one of those things where I was like, fine, I'll jump on. I don't have a problem. It's free, right? Like for me, income  is lower in the winter time. It's kind of a squeeze here in Montana.  And 02:49 So being free was great. It was something I could commit to.  I got on  and a coach is a vibe. Let me tell you, like you  will not vibe with every coach. You will not like what some coaches say. You will think that it doesn't fit your niche, whatever, be it right. Like coaches are, they attract their vibrational group is what I'm gonna say. Like, sorry. uh 03:18 the wind's bad here, you're going to attract the people that need to be around you. So somehow I landed up, landed in this class and I was listening to it and it was about being a millionaire. And I was like, well, don't, I'm not just try, I don't strive to be a millionaire. And it's not that I think that it's unhumble to be a millionaire. It's just like, for me, 250 K a year would be life-changing enough, let alone 500 K in a year, you know, so. 03:46 For me, was like, all right, I may not vibe with as much the millionaire side of this, but  I can get through the whole breakthrough concept of it. So I think there's a lot of like shame around having coaches or being open about having coaches. But there's a reason why in corporate America there's bosses and those bosses have supervisors and supervisors have supervisors. It's a checks and balance because like you were saying, Mary, it's a perspective. 04:16 So I got on, Melanie talked, it was two days. I really liked what she said. I had some really big breakthroughs about throwing spaghetti on the wall. I've said that here on this show before. If you've heard me talk on here before, I've talked about how we love throwing spaghetti at walls. We don't  anymore. And all  throwing spaghetti at the wall does is it either gets butter on the wall or it gets spaghetti sauce on the wall and it makes a mess. Correct. Yeah. So like... 04:43 In the past, was like, I'm just, and I was real honest about it. Like I didn't try and tell anyone we had every, you know, my ducks were not in a pond and we all knew that they were like in everyone's property. Um,  and so  Melanie was like, girlfriend, like you got a lot of potential. You got to lead with your feminine side.  I  grew up  in a home with a first generation American as a mother from Iraq.  And my dad is a Marine. 05:13 So  there was no sugarcoating involved in my household. And so I speak sometimes from the masculine side of life. And sometimes people don't vibrate with that. And she's not saying that you have to be, know, whatever weird version we think women and men should be. It's just to say, you know, she was just saying like, you got a lot to say, use a softer voice, you know, like use my good storytelling voice and I'll capture a lot of people. And like you said earlier,  I have fun talking on these podcasts as much as I do. 05:42 um hearing what people think about my storytelling. My son loves when I tell stories. So, you know, it just naturally makes sense that this would be a calling for me. And, you know, she was like, just kind of pull yourself back in. And had I not done this coaching, to be honest with you, I wouldn't have written my mini gardening guide already. I wouldn't have completed also my full gardening course that I'll be selling this year. 06:12 I wouldn't be getting set up for a website so then I could actually get help because I was paying for Wix and I was paying for the $50 a month program.  And that was great, but I had to do all the work. spent,  Mary, I spent like four or five hours a night, some nights, for weeks on end trying to get Wix to operate the way I wanted it to.  And it's still not operating correctly for Groovy Grazers. 06:39 Yeah, I'm working on the one for the other podcast right now, the Grit and Grace and the Heartland  Agriculture podcast.  And I'm trying to get the social media buttons to work on the theme that I chose and it's not working. I'm probably going to have to look at a different theme. I do it through WordPress.  once you get your website built the way you want it to be, it's plug and play. It's easy. You just update it. But getting them built is a pain in the butt. 07:08 Yeah, which by the way, I'm just gonna blurb in if any of the listeners on this show have not listened to the new one. You gotta go. You should be like running to your search button right now getting that in. Hopefully Mary will link the link below for it. like, yes, you should. Absolutely. Because  I yeah, my son even listened to it with me. Like he was like, Mom, this is great. And like he loves the fact that 2026 is the year of women's agriculture, like 07:37 you know, especially being first generation farmers. that, that was something that you also had completed. So you can understand we're kind of in the same process of like getting something up and going and people don't realize how many hours you put behind this. So all it took, and you're going to be just floored. It took Melanie a 30 minute session with me. That was it.  That's all it takes. Like, 08:05 you don't have to pay for hours and hours and hours of coaching. I'm taking a course that is self-paced and there's like, you know, twice a month Zooms  where we can all meet together. You can watch a replay and I jump on the Zooms because I think it's really important to be present and plugged into what I'm doing, especially if I'm spending a few thousand dollars on it, that it's got to be priority at that point. Or then I feel like I wasted, you know, my own money and 08:33 that came included with it. to,  I am going to get more like one-on-one sessions with her because it was very minimal information that I gave Melanie, cause this is just like an introductory one-on-one, but she told me that  my whole goal has been  since doing  Groovy Grazers was to teach because I find that that's my passion. 09:02 and what I love to do the most.  being able to teach, but just not in my area, but all over and then creating a community, I've have probably been on the soapbox more times than I can count about community being so important and what we do. And so being able to create that was really kind of seamless for me after she explained that I needed to get a Facebook group going, which I did, Built From Dirt Facebook group. 09:29 We have over 400 members and as Melanie said on the master class a few days ago, like we have active members and it's because I'm not just blasting people with just like, I'm not just trying to sell them something. Like I want to build a community and that is my honest mission in doing built from dirt farm school is having a place that we can all bounce. 09:54 bounce off of each other, but then also help elevate each other's businesses because most people that are in the ag industry, like as we all know, you can't have every single type of livestock and excel in any of them. You've got to really kind of hone in on one. So most ag businesses were all kind of like just a few small streamlines that kind of play together income. So, I mean, I've, I, 10:21 personally also changed a huge mindset of like and I'm not biblical or uh Religious in  any sort of normal sense. I'll just say it that way, right? like I just kind of believe what I believe and My mother just came from Texas who  is from like the Bible Belt, right? And she is a I will love you so much as my neighbor type like I just absolutely adore my mom and her views and 10:50 She told me, and I can't remember what scripture it is, but there's a scripture about like what you say you create. And that theme kept coming up. First, it started with my mom saying it. Then Melanie brought up exactly the same thing. And that was during that masterclass. And then one of my good friends, Harley, she said the same thing too, right? Because I'm sure you saw Mary, but  for the listeners, Bambi is having to be put to sleep. And I'm sorry if I get emotional. No, it's okay. 11:21 Our Philly is lame beyond being, man, I'm sorry. I was hoping I wasn't gonna cry. No, it's okay, honest, it's okay, because I do it all the time, Morgan. I don't think I'm gonna cry, and then I'm like, oh no, here we go again. Yeah, Bambi has some issues, and you can't fix her, and I'm sorry. Yeah, and it's okay, and that was our $100 gamble, right? But to 11:48 To tie it into what I'm talking about, about what you create, we're sitting there and we had just posted the really heavy news. And this was after I had signed up for  my coaching with Melanie Greeninoff  and a thousand dollars later, the vet was essentially like Tyria Heid also.  And we're like, there's nothing we can do. 12:11 the hawk injury she sustained, like there's nothing we can do with that, even if we did surgery on the left leg, which it was up to $3,000. And we were considering it like Bambi, Bambi is a one of a kind horse.  And so  we get inside, I sit down and I'm like, everyone's going to start texting me because everyone knew that this was this big appointment. I just sometimes I'll just post on Facebook because it's easier to update the masses, right? Sure. 12:39 I get a message from ah Hannah. She's another farmer out here and she's someone you'll have to talk to too.  They raise cattle dogs, but she had given us Pearl and she said, hey, I got a filly here for you.  She's papered and she had a tendon surgery, but she's going to track sound. Montana equine did it. I said, oh yeah, she's super cute. I didn't understand Mary that she meant free. Oh, okay. 13:07 Yeah, so right like kind of like you you're like, oh that's cool. Like someone's offering you a horse right away. What a not good time, you know, and and I I don't know hannah very well actually i've I met her through getting the dog but um, she had uh Someone in her family passed away and so she's been dealing with that since i'm like bought since I went and got pearl our little uh, cauli dog, right? So hannah's like yeah, she you know explaining me 13:37 Yeah. Yeah. oh 14:07 So right, like I'm telling you this emotional story because these are all the things that led up to like where I am today and man has it been a rocky 30 days. But when Harley said that I had to remember that like  I always said that even if Bambi couldn't be pasture or  riding sound if she could be broodmare sound. And then when broodmare sound was really not looking great I was like if you can just be pasture pet sound right. 14:34 And then she wasn't past her pet sound, but I said, I told my husband, said, it's okay. I know it's really hard. We'll save up some money. Cause it's really expensive to get horses like that are paper. Oh Oh yeah, it is. Yeah. So I was like, it's okay. We, we took this hundred dollar gamble. We failed out on it. Well, I wouldn't say we failed out because literally the vet Dr. Campbell was like, you have some of the nicest babies I've gotten to handle with. Like 15:00 thanked me for how pleasurable my weanlings were to deal with, which is so cool because this is our first time having babies, right? So I  have taken so much pride and I do take a lot of pride in the way my animals are up kept, their behavior, their mannerisms. And so it felt really good for her to say that, but  she told me she was like, definitely let this one pass, but I mean, know that you... 15:26 that you've done a great job, this is nothing you did wrong, right? So I told my husband, I was like, the next one will be papered. She'll  be papered  because Betty is papered, my other mayor is papered. I mean, papers don't mean everything, but if we're trying to run a good program, like what is probably in the works right now with our friend Harley, then we need good mayors. So I sent Harley the paperwork on this mayor and she's like, yeah, absolutely. 15:56 Yeah, yes, that's really cool. And she's like, wow, like that is a nice mare. And it was all because Hannah said, um 16:06 you guys will do right by this mayor essentially. Like,  we're not going to overwork a horse, we're going to do right by them. But like in  another sense, like the vet being impressed, right? So, but I started speaking that into existence right away. Like as soon as we got the news before Hannah had messaged me, like we're going to have a papered horse. We're going to, we're going to recover from this. It's going to be okay. Maybe it wasn't great that we had three. 16:35 Three under three, right? But I had it horse style. I was like, it'll all be okay. And then we get the message from Hannah. So speaking  positively and speaking  the outcome you want is so, so important. And I think that's something that I've probably really failed at in the last few years of my life.  And it's  something that I had to come to terms with was sitting there and being like, man. 17:05 I have spoke like the most absolute negativity through this lawsuit over the land. I've spoken the worst about not being able to afford a house, which by the way,  we're getting pre-qualified because we are actually moving.  know, but that changed too. Yeah, it's a big change. don't want to, I'll be honest, Mary, with you, I can stay on this 20 acres and I can live around all these people that absolutely do not want me to farm. 17:33 And they're going to listen to this episode because that's on track with what they do to see what we're doing next. Or I can just say, I'm going to go farm somewhere else where there's water. Yep. Yep. I'm going to in just for a minute. There's a saying about when one door open or closes another or a window opens or something like that. I think that the Bambi situation is that. 18:00 And I listened to the free masterclass that Melanie, your coach had put on this week.  I missed the first hour because I had other things that had going on. But I listened to the second part yesterday and  she's big on the things that we worry about. We invite into our lives. Yes. And the one thing that I really got out of the 45 minutes I listened yesterday was that because I was like,  you know, I used to know that. 18:29 I used to be like, I'm not going to think negatively. No, I'm not going to worry about not having enough money. I'm going to manifest money. I'm going to think it's going to be okay. The money will come or whatever it was that I needed. And in the last couple of years, things have been rough and I have not been thinking positively. And when I got done listening to her, her second half of her webinar that she did, 18:58 I was like, oh, that was the thing I was supposed to take away from it. And I woke up at three o'clock this morning thinking, okay,  I have to get that website thing figured out and I'm going to make it work.  And  Morgan's going to talk to me today. That's exciting. And I didn't wake up worrying. I woke up excited. Yeah. It's different when you do that. Like even with Bambi and like, I don't think that there's such thing as like test, but I think that that was. 19:26 whatever you believe in's way of showing me that like, no, actually your mindset did change because like, instead of being down and feeling like I completely let down this Philly, which I didn't, I went above and beyond anything that I could do for her. ah I was like, it's okay, life's okay. Even if, you know, we  end up not getting this free Philly, like that, that still wouldn't make me go back into a negative mindset because that's... 19:56 It is what it is. It was a gamble, right? And I think that in this day and age, we're  all... Like news used to cycle, Andy and I were talking about this,  news used to cycle like a week, right? Like they would be replaying the same stuff. I remember when I was little and I like swear that I called this an existence sometimes. I'd be like, why isn't there anything new on the news? Why hasn't anything new happened? It's not like that anymore. 20:26 That it cycles out between 12 hours, a whole new string of stories every day.  Yeah. And it's getting really exhausting. I have had to actually turn the news off lately unless I see something really important come through on my phone, AP app.  I'm like, no, I can't, I can't listen to this anymore because it's all  negative. Yeah. See? So like that's exactly what I was getting to. So we're just  all. 20:57 Trying to escape the negativeness in life so we think something shiny and new or great needs to happen every single day because everyone makes things look like an Instagram story and like that is the last of the dreams that I could ever show like is a false Morgan like I 21:17 If you ask people about me, they'll tell you like, I just am who I am. Like, you never have to guess. I'm just going to say the things that might upset you, but I'm the same person in every room. And that's something that I'm really big about. So I try to share even on my Facebook, the good and the bad, because if everything you see is just positive all the time, and it's fake positivity, like you can tell. You're like, there's no way that there's something new. 21:44 and great happening every single day in somebody's life. But if you can take from the fact that I can create a good mood every day, and that'll lead to the next big positive thing in my life, then that's, I mean, that's really ideally it. Like, yes, you should wake up and feel like a million bucks. Yes, you should wake up and think you're gonna get a lot done that day. Because if you don't, if you only get two things done, that's a lot. 22:12 Right? Like that's still two more things that you've completed in a day instead of being like, man, I wrote a list for 15 things, but I only did two. So now I'm going to get down on myself. So as a woman in agriculture, taking a coaching with a woman that who does have a background  in  farming, her family comes from farming. we like vibed on the first webinar because I was talking about sheep farming and, and Melanie, what I like about her is it's 22:41 It's not just network marketing. It's not MLM stuff. She's actually teaching you how to  be the best that you can with offerings. like she, that's what that 30 minute was about was to figure out what offerings I could offer to help bring an income to offset while the sheep herd is growing. Cause eventually the sheep herd will kind of take care of itself. But it was how do we get from point A to point B  on limited income? 23:11 And I can write my own courses. I've done that kind of stuff before. I've written my own Zooms, my own webinars, you know, on my own research and then the love for teaching that we have. um Now, Groovy Grazers, is it like dead? No. I mean,  I'm going to find an employee this year. So,  I mean, as much as I hate to tell all of my reoccurring  clients, it may not be me this year coming in, but it's going to be somebody that I've trained. 23:41 you know, then I can still keep that portion alive. But being away from the farm is hard. And it even though it was bringing in money, it was  as hard as having a nine to five job. Yeah, it's not harder. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like, because I'm tired after that, because I have health conditions, you know,  and I want to spend all my time farming. But one thing I've really like, slacked on is gardening. Andy uh 24:09 My husband is an expert in organic living soil. So if anyone has questions about this regenerative farming word that's going on, you know, how to no till and all that stuff, we, that is something we specialize in and that is really our passion. So  Andy just has a lot of knowledge. He's just a hermit. So he's always been called a hermit. He's just kind of more in the background. 24:34 When it comes to teaching but Melanie was like you need to get your husband out there like you and you guys doing it as a wife and husband duo is like That's so cool. Normally. It's like just the husband wants to do one portion of it The wife wants to do another or like they don't want to do it together And I'm like, well, I personally couldn't imagine farming with anyone other than my husband So  it makes sense that we going on go in on the farm school together, but also knowing that 25:04 You can offer like there's something like Mary, I'm sure there's something you could probably talk about doing podcasts, right? Yeah. And help other people that are doing podcasts and just give them a formula essentially of what you've done. That's something you could offer. You know, um, the next farmer down the road, well, maybe they offer chicken eggs and that's the only thing they offer. Right. Melanie would be able to tell you how to do that  or how to at least assess it to make sure it's, it's profitable or not. And so. 25:35 That's something  that I think coming from a third party is a little easier.  dreams sometimes, I don't know if you dream big, I dream for the moon sometimes. I used to until I got really negative with the lawsuit stuff and I felt like that was never ending because we're like year four into that and it's still going, you know, like still  actively not even hit the first courtroom. 26:00 You're talking another three more years. That's seven years by the end of this. That's why we've decided to move because I'm not doing that at all. And I want water. We were already looking at a property that's 40 acres, by the way, with a well  and flood,  38 acres of flooded pasture, all within my budget.  So  good things happen, right? I spoke that into existence. I want, I'm going to find a house that's going to fit all these and we're going to get pre-approved for it. And so. 26:27 That's one of the biggest things for me is creating though a positive mindset that you can have like in a space you can't. woke up this morning at 3 a.m. You knew that we were going to talk and I was going to light a fire underneath you. Well, you usually do somehow, yes. Yeah, which is that's I mean,  we were destined by the universe to light a fire under each other. So I love it. That's why love coming and talking to you. uh 26:54 So you knew you were gonna do that. You knew that either you're gonna have to get these buttons to work or just change your theme.  Not once did you say, man, if I have to change my theme, I'm really gonna be disappointed. You just said, well, that may be what I have to do. Oh yeah, I honestly don't care what the theme is as long as the background that I'm working with does the thing I need it to do. Yeah, but you didn't even go down  that mindset. Do you know how many people would have like, 27:21 snowballed all the way into the worst computer program ever and they can't do this. Oh, yeah, that was me about 15 years ago when I first started screwing around with websites. I was like, oh, this is such a learning curve. Holy cow. But all learning curves are hard. And that actually leads me right back around to what I was going to say, because we're running out of time here. We're at 27 minutes already. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It flies. You don't have to... 27:51 Morgan loves Melanie as a coach and that is fabulous. I'm really glad that you found somebody that you vibe with. But there are coaches for everything.  Every coach is different. Some of them are very soft and very sweet and they still get the point across.  Some are very harsh and very direct and they get the point across. So you have to figure out what works for your style  with their style. uh 28:18 Some coaches are really expensive. Some coaches are not really expensive and you've got to figure out how to handle that too. Yep.  Yeah. So, um, I love that you went and listened to the new podcast and I want to talk about that just for a minute.  Um,  the new episode comes out on Monday and it's actually about how the immigration situation in the United States right now is impacting agriculture and women in agriculture. Yup. 28:48 I just, we were going to talk about it  shortly after that lady got shot here in Minneapolis by the ICE agent.  Yeah. And I couldn't talk about it without crying. And  Leo was like, let's wait a week. And  I really needed to talk with my dad about it because he's like my anchor when I'm spinning. Yeah. And talked to my dad about it. And  he said,  I don't want to make things harder, he said, but it's going to get worse before it gets better. Yep. 29:18 And once he said that, I took a big deep breath and I was like, okay.  And then I started looking into how important people from other countries are to agriculture because they come here to work and they work hard and they're good people. And they're sending a lot of the income home to their families to support their families. They're no different than you and I. 29:41 Exactly.  so Leah and I talked about that and so that one will be out on Monday and then the next Monday,  I think  the episode is about 4-H because  Leah has been involved in 4-H since before she was born, she says, because her parents were involved in it.  I love that. No, that's going to be a good episode. So I will definitely be tuning in and I'll share that also on Cole Canyon Farm because that'll be a good episode. That would be fabulous. Thank you. 30:09 The new podcast is called  Rit and Grace in the Heartland, Women in Agriculture. uh tomorrow we're interviewing the head editor, chief editor, whatever,  of the Old Farmers Almanac, Carol, I can't think of her last name.  Carol, I interviewed her on A Tiny Homestead, but we're going to have her come and talk to us on the other podcast too, because she is,  she is absolutely a woman in agriculture and she is 30:39 deciding factor in what gets published in the Old Farmer's Almanac. Wow, that's really cool. It's gonna be so fun. I'm so excited.  So Morgan, I am so proud of you for investing in yourself and having to make all of these decisions from a place of positivity instead of negativity. That's amazing.  People can find you at Cole Canyon Farm on Facebook and are you, you said you're working on building a website or getting your website? Yeah. 31:08 The website will be up and going we're coal Canyon MT  as in Montana.  Yep. As in Montana on Instagram. Okay. Awesome.  Thank you so much for sharing your experience with getting a coach because I'm not sure that  I think that people think that coaches are woo woo. Like, like only weird people get themselves a coach and that is not true. Yeah, no, I'm glad we got to talk about this because there is a big 31:37 dark shadow around coaching. And honestly, it's just a third perspective and it can excel your business. So yeah. And in case it didn't come through and I'm afraid it didn't. Morgan is a coach. Yes. Yeah, I do coach. So if you need help with gardening or I don't know anything else that Morgan's doing and would like to teach about, you can contact her at her Facebook page and eventually the website and 32:06 She will be more than happy to help you  get started on your next project. Yeah, absolutely. We're super excited. Thanks for having us on, Mary.  You are so welcome.  

Today I'm talking with Addie at Frostbite Family Farm LLC.   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Addie at Frostbite Family Farm, LLC in Lonsdale, Minnesota. Good morning, Addie, how are you? Good morning, I'm good, how are you?  I'm good. We're having some really gray weather this morning. We are. It's coming after a lot of sunshine though, so I can't complain. 00:25 Yeah, we're supposed to get snow tonight and I'm kind of hoping we do because the cornfield is looking very bare right now and it looks kind of ugly. So fresh coat of snow would be nice. Yes, we have some livestock and it actually gets harder when things warm up and get a little wet. So the dry snow is always a good thing. Yeah, I was just talking to a dairy farmer. I don't if it was this week or last week, but they were saying that it had been 00:54 like really muddy. And I of course assumed that the cows were out in the field and I said, I hear that wet weather is not good for cows feet.  And he said, oh no, he said, they're in the barn or they're on a dry lot and it's actually dry. He said, they're fine. He said, but yes, it can wreak havoc with their feet. And I was like, okay, cool.  Yeah, that is the difference between large dairies and small ones. So we operate a micro dairy. 01:21 And all of our cows are out in the field. So they have a good space to roam around in, but mud definitely affects them. Yeah. And, okay, I don't want to get too far into dairy stuff because I've interviewed two people about dairies in the last two weeks. But when you say microdairy, how many cows? So right now we have 16 cows. That includes our calves. So we are milking 10 currently twice a day. Okay. And I'm assuming you're not milking 10 cows by hand a day. 01:50 No, we use a surge bucket system. It works really well. My husband and I team up and do it together and it gets done pretty efficiently that way. It kind of keeps it cleaner than hand milking. Yeah. I think the days of hand milking have kind of flown. They've kind of gone away. Unless you just have one cow and you really like milking cows. Right. And even then I'm like, okay, you get a bunch of stuff that kind of flings into it and it's just, they make smaller systems now. 02:20 It's really easy. Okay.  So  I want to know how your farm got its name, because I love the name. Sure. Yeah, that is  always a topic of interest. It's so funny.  We picked that name after we didn't start out farming.  My husband and I got married and lived in an apartment. And I've always had this love of plants and food and good cooking. And  as we had kids, it developed into  including health and 02:50 um eating at home and making things ourselves.  And we sort of realized over time, like, I think we need to look for some land. I think we want to do some of this ourselves. And we began our land search, but at the same time realizing that neither of us had come from agricultural backgrounds. We decided to try to find people locally that were doing what we wanted to do or close  and  get to know them. 03:17 and hear their processes.  And um apples were a big point of interest for me. I love apple trees and  just the amount of food they can supply is amazing.  So  we found an orchardist in Northern Minnesota who was organic for a really long time.  He has this amazing little orchard on acres and acres of planted trees, really well maintained. A lot of them are like the semi-dwarf stock  and we would go visit every year with our little kids. 03:46 It was one of the only organic orchards that we had heard of locally.  It was about a two hour trip for us, so it was always a big event taking the kids.  And  as we had gone over a couple of years, we got to know the owner, and he is incredible  and would give us so much of his time walking around the orchard telling us all about his trees and the ones he was breeding and the different varieties he chose and why. I just... 04:11 I felt like I could just consume that information all day and he was so gracious with his time and he would walk around and show us, this is the triumph apple. It's a new one I'm trialing. You know, taste it. This is what I like about it. This is what I don't like about it. ah And on one of our trips up there, I mean, he was showing us the inside of his buildings and where he would make cider and all of these things and ah he was like, hold on, you got to come with me to the back of the orchard. He's like, my favorite apples are planted back there. 04:41 And as we took the trek back, he was telling us about the frostbite apple. And it was developed in Minnesota.  It's like a great, great grandparent of  Honeycrisp and some of the  original apples  that were planted here in Minnesota. It's this tiny little burgundy apple, and it kind of cracks on the top a lot. It's not really grown commercially because of that. It's not good for shipping. um But it's a dessert apple. 05:11 and he was like, you have to try this. Come over to the tree, like, here's how you pick a really good one. And he just like watched us and you know that's the sign of like a really good, a really good food. He's just like waiting for us to enjoy it. And I remember biting into this apple and thinking I had never tasted anything like this. And you your mind starts thinking back to other ones you've eaten, like the gala apples and things like that, where they're like a little mealy, not a ton of flavor. 05:39 maybe a little dry, and this apple, I mean, it tasted like brown sugar,  just molasses, it had these really complex flavors. uh And I remember just thinking, it crossing my mind that if somebody didn't care enough to plant these varieties that maybe don't ship so well, or maybe oh aren't great for grocery store, they're not perfect, uh I would never have gotten to experience this. 06:05 And it is one of my favorite apples. we, every year we go up there, we get a little box of them and our kids, you know, we all fight over them and we share them with people and  just watch people's faces light up and they go, I've never tried an apple like this. I didn't know they could taste like this. em And so as we were thinking about our farm and what we wanted, what our mission was, what we wanted to do, em the frost by apple kind of came up in our mind. It's like, we want to be the people who cultivate varieties that maybe 06:35 aren't the most popular but still deserve a place in the food landscape.  People should try these in their lifetime. We should not go our whole lives thinking apples are these boring standard  and not let little blemishes stop that.  we do a lot of different fruits and vegetables. 06:56 This last year was our first year at farmers markets  and selling produce direct to consumer and a lot of our vegetables even. love to pick heirloom varieties, weird shapes, weird colors. When we started, all of our ideas rolling and what we wanted to do, this was kind of the theme. And I had a lot of people actually look at me and say, this is not gonna work. People are not going to want a black tomato. They're gonna look at it and say, ew, that's gross. 07:24 We don't want to try that. Give us something, you know, the normal bushel boy tomato. Just stick with the normal varieties and then you'll be successful. And I just, like, you could not force me to grow a normal red tomato. And I've always been like that. I think the colors are so fun. We're losing varieties and people need to care about that. So yeah, just kind of come to that. I love that story. That is so beautiful. 07:53 And I'll tell you a secret, my husband and I have been talking since oh, a few years after we got married about wanting to do the homesteading thing and we're doing it now. We've been married for over 20 years and we bought this place in 2020. the first thing that got planted here was apple trees because we had talked and talked and talked about our dream. 08:20 for years and apple trees were like always at the top of the list. We wanted our own apple trees. So I get it, Addie, believe me. Yes. Yeah, they're so beautiful. They produce so much food.  It's an investment. It takes a lot of time. But we, the property we moved to  has two apple trees. They're a semi dwarf, so they're not super tiny, but they're not super large either.  And I am consistently baffled every year. Like we, my family,  have 08:48 I married and I have four kids and we could not get through all of those apples if we tried. There are so many, they're abundant. You know, we end up finishing our pigs on apples and giving them to the cows and chickens and all of that and selling them and giving them to friends. And it's just amazing how much food  one tree can produce. It is insane. And I have another story about apple trees.  The lady that we got our dog from. 09:17 She lives in Montgomery, Minnesota. Her name is Jean Bratz. I don't know if you're familiar. She has the  Minnesota farmer Facebook page.  Okay.  They raise small scale. They raise steers. They have many Australian shepherds that they breed and they sell the puppies and take incredibly good care of the puppies from when they're born until they go to their new homes because they have seven children.  Sure. So almost every puppy is assigned a kid basically. 09:47 Oh, but  they have apple trees in their backyard,  like many apple trees. And we were over there in the spring one year and all the trees were blooming and all you could smell when you opened the car door and got out in their driveway was apple blossoms.  And she has the the Wolf River apple trees, the great big apples. Oh, sure.  And  I 10:13 keep meaning to get hold of her. need to do it this year and ask her if there's any way that we could get  a cutting  of a branch so we can graft it onto one of our trees because I would love to have Wolf River apples as well. That's the thing. There are so many varieties and that is also just kind of what makes me sad about our whole food industry is we have reduced 10:37 reduced plants to a handful of varieties that  ship well, store well, all of that. And you just don't know unless you look.  We planted 40 apple trees this last spring in our  backfield. And looking through the varieties, it was so important to me. Sure, we'll do a couple of the honeycrisp and things like that.  these incredible trees that have existed forever, that have stories to them, and that have been lovingly cultivated over 11:04 centuries, we planted this black Oxford apple and it is almost entirely black on the outside. Inside looks like a standard apple. The flavor profile is very similar to a honey crisp.  But again, like we would not know that these varieties exist unless someone cared enough to continue to cultivate them. So I think that's so important. Get the cuttings, graft it, plant it. You know, there's a lot of work before you ever see the fruit. 11:33 You know, what do they say?  The best time to plant an apple tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today. I've always heard it the best time to plant a tree is a hundred years ago. Oh, sure.  I guess  the more modern varieties if we're grafting under rootstock don't typically last as long. some of those other ones, they're incredible and they do last, you know, a hundred years.  Yep. 11:59 I don't know why we were so fixated on apple trees, except that my husband and I really love applecrest in the fall. And we were like, if we had an apple tree, we'd be making applecrest by now  instead of having you buy apples at the local orchard.  But we planted  honey gold. We planted a regent. We planted a harrelson. then my husband went to Fleet Farm for something and he came home with 12:29 some other apple trees.  And I was like, where  are we putting those? And he said on the other side of the property. And I said, okay.  And  I was talking,  I was writing a piece for Homestead Living Magazine that got bumped because of their holiday gift section. I'm so sad. uh when I sent her the draft, when I sent the editor the draft, she said, you guys have a small orchard. And I had to look it up. 12:57 If you have more than six apple trees, you have a small orchard. And I was so excited that we are technically the owners of a small orchard because we have like 20 trees. Yes, I love that. That's awesome. Yup. I didn't know we had a small orchard, but we do.  So that was, that was pretty awesome.  Um,  I would love it if you could give me a rundown of the, the farm things that you have going on. So you have apple trees, you have some. 13:26 you have dairy cows. What other projects do you have going on? Sure. So something that was important to us was uh just the cyclical nature of farm life and how, you know, when we monocrop one thing, kind of, you you end up having to outsource things where if you have a bunch of little endeavors, they can all sort of feed off of each other. So we started with  one dairy cow  and her calf  and have quickly expanded from there. 13:54 um We came here really wanting to do market vegetables. So right now we have about 10,000 square feet of growing space out in our field  and we  applied for an Equip High Tunnel grant and ended up  being awarded the grant and we built a 100 foot by 30 foot high tunnel. So we are currently getting set up to start planting in there for the spring already.  We do  some poultry. 14:23 We were surrounded by a lot of woods so we don't free-range our poultry, but we do them in tractors behind the cows in our field through the summer and then they're in a stationary coop in the winter. And then this last year we added  meat chickens  and  feeder pigs. So we ended up doing four feeder pigs. We have a lot of woods again with a lot of oak trees em and acorns and  we ended up building a big paddock in the woods and 14:51 putting the pigs in there and it was awesome. we're, we do some cut flowers too. What kind of cut flowers? I love flowers. Yeah, we do. I'm trying to think how many beds we have right now. I think it's 30 to 40 beds that we do have cut flowers and we sort of do some of everything. We've got some perennials in there. I planted yarrow and what are my other perennials I have in there? Some echinacea. 15:19 Things that self-seed too, we grow lot of chamomile and calendula. And then we've got the kind of typical  zinnias.  And this year we're doing lyseanthus and ranunculus,  dahlias, bachelor buttons, cosmos. I just placed my seed order, so it's all kind of fresh on my mind right now. m Those pro-cut sunflowers, those are a really good one. And then a lot of just like greenery, filler, we do some basil. 15:49 What else? Eucalyptus. Things like that. Yeah, this was our first year, this last year selling market bouquets and it was super fun. Awesome. We grow peonies because they're my favorite.  And this year we'll probably have enough to actually sell quite a few if people want to buy them. That's awesome. Yeah, because it takes three years for peonies from when you get the roots and put them in the ground until they start to produce flowers.  Really. Yeah. 16:17 So it's the first year is creep the second year. No first year is sleep. Second year is creep.  Third year is leap and my peonies leaped this past spring. I had so many blooms. I was in heaven.  Oh, that's amazing.  We grow sunflowers.  think we'd.  I can't remember the name of it. It's a little yellow flower. It looks like a daisy and I thought it was rununculus, but it's not. I'm almost positive it's not. 16:45 And we have yarrow growing here wild. there's baby pink yarrow. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. We, we ended up starting, you know, if you go to like a green house and you buy like an established yarrow plant, they're like $15 a plant. And I was like, I really want these. So we started them from seed and in the first year we ended up getting blooms and they were like full size. was blown away by how quickly they grow. Yeah. And they're such a pretty plant. 17:16 and medicinal and all of that too. Yeah, the leaves are really pretty. They don't even look like a leaf. They look like a pine needle. Like a fern, yeah. Yeah, they're really lovely.  I am such a sucker for plants. I, if I had my way, our whole property would just be all peonies every year. That would be amazing. 17:37 But I don't have my way because I am married to a wonderful man who wants to grow vegetables and apples and pears and plums and peaches. We don't have pears yet. So he wants all the things and I'm just like, why can't we just pick  one and make it great? And he's like, because it's boring. And I'm like, okay, yes. I'm in all the things.  I'm in all the things person. think, you know, peonies even where they're they're done after a certain point. Oh, yeah. Short, short bloom season. 18:06 I just want stuff all year. One  of my kids was like, oh, what is your favorite flower? What's your favorite smell? And I was like, it's not a flower. It's a tomato plant. I love how tomato plant leaves smell. uh It's just the joy you find in all the different things. And plants are definitely good for that. Oh, they are.  I  can't have lilacs in the house anymore because I sneeze. Oh, no. Didn't used to. 18:33 But in the last year or two, if anybody has brought me a lilac stem, I'm good for about five minutes and I walk by it and it makes my nose tickle and I sneeze. It's not really an allergy, but it's just a little tiny irritant. But I love how lilac smells and we got some  lilac fragrance oil and made  lilac candles.  And the lilac candles don't bother me at all.  I still get to have it. 18:58 I still get to have lilac in the house and I don't actually sneeze every time I walk by it, which is great.  Yeah,  lilac has always been one of my favorites.  But this last year I grew stock. Have you ever grown that? No. Okay. It looks sort of like a snapdragon. It's a barassica. So it really likes those cool temps and it has the most unique scent I have  ever had with a flower. 19:27 like a little spicy, super floral,  the smell. had one stem of stock in our house and the whole house was just full of the fragrance of it. And it was so beautiful. We're going to do a lot more this year. just, we do  a lot of our seeds through Johnny's seeds and they have the varieties they have are so beautiful. The colors, that's another one. If you want to grow something that smells really good.  cool. I'll have to look it up and add it to the list. 19:56 The list just gets longer every January. Yes, January especially. These winter months are rough for us plant lovers. Yeah, although I'm really glad that I asked you to be on the show now because I think if I had asked you to be on the show in May, you would have been like, Mary, I'm not going to have time until January. Yes, that is definitely the downside of this life is you get busy. It keeps you busy. 20:22 Oh, yes, it does. And especially the younger you are because you have way more energy in your 20s and early 30s than I do at 56. Yes, there are a lot of things that we, you you get in January, you get really motivated and you're like, I can do this, I can do this, I'm going to start all of these projects. And then July, you looks back and is like, girl, what were you thinking? You do not have the time for this, but we do it anyway. It's great. 20:48 I figure I have one more weekend before my husband says I'm going to bring in the seed trays and get things started. Yes, that is my day today. Actually, that's what I will be doing after this. We're going to start some seeds.  Yeah, I'm hoping he holds out until at least the first weekend in February because if we start them now,  I will not have my kitchen table for 12 weeks. That that is a problem. We ended up. 21:13 with all of the growing space in the high tunnel. That's sort of how we started, but we transitioned into our garage is heated. um We insulated, got it heated and do grow shelves out there. And that has made it so, you know, the like LED glow where you're like, don't, we don't need this surrounding dinner and everything all the time. So that has enabled us to start those early crops sooner and not be bothered by that as much.  I made the mistake of buying the pink  grow lights from Amazon. 21:42 I thought I was getting the white ones. No, we got the pink alien looking ones.  Yeah. And that was like three years ago. And we have windows right all around the table in our kitchen  and they face toward the road.  And I said, you know, anybody driving by is going to think we're growing marijuana in our kitchen. And my husband laughed and he said, we have moved to the country.  They know we're growing vegetables. And I was like, okay.  Yes, that is a thing we've had people ask. 22:13 Yeah, but that pink glow is so creepy, especially at three o'clock in the morning  when you wake up and need to use the bathroom and you come downstairs and the whole kitchen is bathed in pink light.  Yes.  It's like, oh, there's aliens in my house. OK, cool. Yes, we started our growing  project before we moved out to the country. We lived on a little lot. ah And I was like, you know, if we want to grow, we should practice here. So we started growing some of our own things. And in our city house, I did the same thing and got 22:43 the blue purple lights and so many of our friends as they would come and go from our house would joke about that. Oh, what are you growing? know, like just tomatoes. That's it. Basil. have to leave to bite into it. It's basil. It's great. Yep, exactly. And honestly, marijuana is not as big a deal as it used to be. So I'm not always worried about it, but it just made me laugh when I saw that they were pink lights, not white. I was like, oh, I 23:11 I clicked the wrong thing on Amazon, but they're cool. It'll work.  So I try to keep this to half an hour. We're only 23 minutes in, but I wanted to talk about barn cats with you because  on your Facebook page, you have a photo of a beautiful long haired,  I assume it's a barn cat.  And we have a kitten who's about 16 to 20 weeks old. We don't know who got her from a friend. 23:37 who looks exactly like your cat. Our cat's name is Smokey. What is your cat's name? Her name is Floof, but I am not responsible for naming the kittens. Are you kidding me? That was our mama cat's name. Really? Oh funny, my three year old named her. yes, they get to pick the names for the cats.  Oh, we don't have Floof anymore. She disappeared.  Oh, that's the worst. Yeah, we've had that happen. Was your Floof a black, white and orange? 24:06 Calico by any chance, because that's what ours was.  She is a tortie. So she's dark, kind of gray and has some orange in her and got the long hair. That foofy hair, I think, lended to the name. That's exactly why we named ours Floof, because my husband was like, what do we name her? said Floof. She looks like she's going to explode. That's so funny. We had two of them, actually.  We had friends pick up the other one and it was Poof and Floof. uh Our Floof. 24:35 had three litters before she disappeared and we have one cat left from her. He's a little over a year old. He is an orange long haired cat. Oh nice. And his name is Fluffybutt because he has his mama's extremely long hair.  is name of Fluffybutt.  Cat names are the best. have some just outrageous names.  One of our cats name is Garbage. um 25:01 Constantly gets into our dumpster. So his name is garbage, but then our neighbor cat who's a long orange haired is Stanley So, you know you're out and you're like, hey Stanley you're walking a garbage. We've got you know, it's a whole thing Well the the one that looks like the cat that you have on your Facebook page Her name is smoky because when she moves  she is basically a dilute calico So she's got some buff and some really silvery gray  and 25:29 I don't think there's a speck of white on that cat,  but she looks like smoke when she's moving  and she's gorgeous. And then her sister is shorty because she looks just like Smokey,  except that she's got short hair. Sure. And then the third one that we got is another orange kitten that looks exactly like  the one that's over a year old that we had to begin with.  And his name is Junior because we can't tell them apart when they're away from us. 25:58 So yeah, I love having barn cats. Like when I was a little kid, we always had a pet cat and we had one at a time. And I said to my mom one time, said, why can't we have more than one at a time? And she said, because they're basically indoor cats.  We live in a thousand square foot house. I want one cat.  I said, well, I want all the cats. And she said, I know you do. You have loved kittens since you were a baby.  And now, 26:26 Literally, I could have all the cats I wanted to and they're outside and they're not a problem. Yes, that has been our experience.  I grew up my great grandparents going to their little farm and they had kittens, you know, when we would go over there and it was like the highlight of our day, my siblings and I.  And we have some allergies to like pet hair and stuff.  you know, when you have like a lot of little kids, you're like, I don't need anything else in the house to clean up after.  We've just decided no indoor animals  and for mom's sanity. 26:55 So when we moved here and there was a cat, my kids were just enamored with this cat. She's a barn cat, little standoffish at first, but had kittens and it, you just watch their faces light up and how much fun they have. And it's just been one of the highlights that we didn't know was coming with the farm that, you know, they just thoroughly enjoy every year.  Yeah. A um lot of people don't like cats and that's fine. They don't have to. 27:24 I love cats because cats, they decide that they are your friend,  it's an honor because cats really have no use for people. All they want you to do is feed them.  Yes, we have uh my husband is a cat lover. I'm a bigger dog fan, but I think especially as we farm, I appreciate what the cats do so much. You know, they'll come in with rabbits and different mice and things they catch. And I see they're so functional, but we will with our little micro dairy when we milk. 27:54 We have, you know, when we milk each animal, we'll strip out the first couple of squeezes of milk out of each quarter. And then we have this cup we strip into and there we tap it on the ground and all of our cats know they will come from near and far when they hear that tap on the concrete. And we pour it out into a little dish for them. And it's like the highlight of their day. They love it. It's so fun.  It's treat time at the farm. Yeah. And the other thing is, that we literally only had two cats. 28:24 up until a month ago, month and a half ago. Both males, one fixed, not fixed. One fixed and one not fixed. There we go.  And my husband was like, this is a problem. And I said, why? And he said, because they're not going to be able to keep up with the rodents in the string in the summer. He said, right now, everything's kind of quiet.  He said, but that humongous pole barn is going to be overrun with mice if we don't get some more cats.  And I said, well, considering we have two males, that's going to be a problem. he laughed. 28:53 Um, our friends over at O'Connor Family Acres here in Lesor,  um, Tracy and Paul have some barn cats and they happen to have some kittens and they brought us the three that I was talking about.  cannot freaking wait for fluffy butt and smokey  to get together and have babies as strength because they're going to be the longest haired, most beautiful kittens ever known to man.  Yes, they, we have. 29:19 We have the Siamese cat that we originally got with the house and then a long-haired orange cat that's our neighbor's cat and they we went from having  oh my goodness two females to having over the summer 20 um cats with all of their litters  and all of the kittens are so fun and so beautiful and it is  pure comic I mean fun to watch them all just like explode out of the barn door following their mamas around it's amazing but at the end of 29:48 the summer, we were like, okay, we got to find some new homes for these guys and found a couple of local families that wanted some barn kittens and you just, you you're like, we're good with one or two. But when you have animals and you have grain and feed and chickens and all, you know, I've seen people with like massive rodent problems and we just don't have any of that. And I attribute that 100 % to the cats and you know, it's it's great fun for the kids, but it's also functional. 30:18 Oh, we wouldn't have as many cats if we didn't have a big old  pole barn that needed to be patrolled for mice because that would not be a good plan. ah The saddest thing I've seen so far regarding kittens and dogs, we have a dog and I talk about her a lot. I haven't talked about her a lot lately though.  Her name is Maggie. She's five. She's a mini Australian shepherd. She would have made the best mama. 30:46 ever, but we didn't want puppies. So she was spayed when she was six months old.  She loves it when  the kittens come out of the barn and get introduced to her. And  she freaking knows when there's babies in the barn. oh Because my husband and my son would go out and play with the kittens to get them socialized so they were friendly. So she would smell the kittens on my husband and my son  when they would come in the house.  Saddest thing I've ever seen. 31:15 We didn't have any kittens this past summer because flu flaked off and that was it. We didn't have any female cats. And uh Maggie kept looking over toward the barn all summer long, like, where are my friends? Where are my babies? And so the other day, the three new kittens were in Maggie's doghouse. And I say that loosely because Maggie barely uses the doghouse. So the cat take it over  and Maggie can reach it. 31:42 and the kittens have discovered that there's hay bales in there and that it's a nice warm place to hang out. So Maggie noticed movement in the doghouse and went over and stuck her nose in and smelled the air and you saw the tail start to wag. She got a nubbin. She's not a tail, she has a nubbin. And I was like, oh no, this is going to go really good or really bad. And she was barking at the cats because she didn't know they were there to begin with. 32:11 They're not little babies. They're not six week old babies coming out of the barn. They're almost full-sized cats now. And I was like, oh, this is going to go bad. And after she got done barking at them and they managed to get past her and get back to the barn, she came trotting over the door like, I have new babies. Oh, cute. So saddest thing ever this summer, because there were no babies for her. And I think that she really missed them. And then 32:39 happiest moment of her life was discovering that there were new cats in her  doghouse once she figured out they were good kittens, they were fine.  Sweet. Yeah, we have an Anatolian shepherd. He's gigantic.  And he and the cats have a love-hate relationship, but he is a guard dog.  But he and the cows, when the cows have babies and stuff, it's so sweet. I love those like... 33:06 interactions they have with each other and the friendships they make and one of our cows is his best friend and it's just it's so funny to watch and we love it.  It's so funny because growing up I thought that cats and dogs hated each other. m Because you're told that as a little kid. and dogs don't get along and I'm like yeah okay I know better now because  Maggie would raise a litter of kittens even though she's a dog every year if we love. Oh sweet. 33:36 And she would let them just like curl up against her. One of the last kittens from the last litter  tried to nurse from Maggie. And  Maggie very gently put her nose right under that kitten and lifted up and moved it out of the way. She was like, no, I'm not actually your mama.  Yeah. was very sweet.  Very, very sweet. 33:58 There are so many moments like that when you live on a farm or a homestead and you have animals because they do the craziest, funniest things.  On the flip side, when a cat gets hit by a car and dies, that's hard too. Yeah, loss in any way. have,  you've heard  the phrase where you have livestock, you have dead stock.  You're like, it's just part of raising animals, right?  You get to enjoy them during their lives and then... 34:28 Then when they pass, it's always just so sad.  Yep. First barn cat we lost the road. I cried all day.  All day. Beautiful, beautiful silver tabby.  And the second one we lost, I slammed cabinets and yelled and said a few choice words and didn't cry because you got to get used to it. Yeah. have, unfortunately with dairy cows, specifically with the jerseys, the calves can be fragile and it's 34:57 It's an adjustment when you are not used to that kind of experience with loss  when you lose calves and it's just, yeah, you go through all the range of emotions.  Yeah, and you lose the potential of that animal. That's the hardest part because you have all these  hopes and dreams once you find out that your cow is pregnant. Yeah, it's a long process. 35:22 Yeah, and then that baby doesn't survive and you're like, but I had such great plans and now they're not going to happen. Yeah, and we bottle feed our calves too. So our kids are really involved and it's been rough every time it's happened. you know, you're like, it's all about teaching kids too. I feel like right now a lot of people don't have that hands-on experience dealing with loss anymore.  We're not close enough to nature. We're not close enough to things that are fragile. 35:48 And so we just try to really walk with our kids through that and be like, okay, you you take care of animals in life and you take care of them in death and uh having compassion and understanding the cycle of life has been really valuable. Another thing that I just, you you  look forward to a farm and all the things that you will learn and glean from it, but it's those little things where you weren't necessarily thinking that was going to be a huge part of it, but it is. 36:16 Yeah, there's a couple of things that I hold on to when it comes to loss.  One of the things that I tell myself all the time is that the price for loving something is knowing you're going to have to say goodbye at some point. Yeah.  And there's another one. And of course, now I can't think of it. Oh,  how lucky are we to be able to have that depth of feeling of love? Yeah. Those are the two things that make it easier for me. Yeah. 36:45 I have seen some posts recently about how cruel the dairy industry is and, you know, I'm not saying that that is never the case, but you know how calves are just a commodity and I'm like, oh, you know,  you've clearly never cried over a calf. Like, m you don't know until you find good places to get your dairy, find good places that really value their animals because there are those people out there where it really does mean a lot to them and it is their literal blood, sweat and tears that go into. 37:12 raising these animals and creating amazing genetics and the next generation of milk mamas and Yeah Yep, I am so proud of all you ladies who are under 40 who are taking all of this on Because it's a lot and it's a lot when you're raising kids along with the animals Yeah, it is. It's everyone warns you you know, oh this is 37:40 going to be so much work, you're not going have a choice. You're going to have to put it as completely different when you're experiencing it in those moments where you're like, okay, you know, my kids still get sick, and I still have to milk. You know, where you're like, there are still things that have to happen. There aren't days off, you know, it's negative 60 wind chill, all of that, you're like, it still has to happen. And walking through it is really the only way to fully grasp what that means.  Yep, absolutely. And you know that 2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer, right? 38:09 I had not heard that. Wow. It is. And you are doing it. So again, really proud of you, Addie. Thank you. All right. I try to keep this to half an hour. We're a little bit over. Where can people find you? We are actually going to be putting up a website in the next couple of weeks. So I don't have that info yet, but you can find us on Facebook or Instagram, Frostbite, Family Farms, LLC. And we would love to connect with you over Messenger or I think my phone number is on there. Yeah. 38:39 still love the name of your farm.  I  love wintertime and I  love frost.  I don't love frost bite, but I still love the name. I know it's still fun.  All right. As always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com. If you'd like to support the podcast,  you can find that at AtinyHolmstead.com slash support.  And if you like this podcast, you should listen to  the new one that I just started with. 39:07 Leah from Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook.  It's called Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture.  Addie, thank you so much for taking the time and I appreciate it and keep doing the good work. Thank you.  All right, have a great day. You too.  Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Sara and Nick at Day by Day Dairy.   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Sarah and Nick at Day by Day Dairy  in Wisconsin.  Good morning, guys. How are you? Good and good morning. Good morning. 00:21 How is the weather in Wisconsin? Snowy. um looks like it's all trying to melt today, but it's going to be like 40 today. Yeah. Not a warm spell before it gets cold again, but  never stays cold too long.  I'm your, I'm your neighbor in Minnesota and it's supposed to hit 40 today and 45 tomorrow.  Oh, okay. Yeah. It's, I prefer to stay frozen all winter instead of the thawing and I'm like freezing and muddy mess. 00:51 I'm sure it's not good for the cows feet.  They go out on a concrete this time of year. We have them on a concrete cow yard and the ones there in the tie stall barn, they go in and out. They'll go in and out for a little while, but then we put them back in the tie stall. So yeah, they don't see too much mud this time of year. Try to keep them clean and dry as best as we can with  the weather, you know.  Good, good. 01:15 My husband watches videos of farmers and dairy farmers and cattle, know, steer  meat, meat farmers on YouTube all the time. And he's watching, he's always watching these shows where the  cows' hooves are all messed up from being out on wet pasture. And I'm like, it's so gross. Why do you have to watch these? I, isn't Nate the hoof guy? I watch his videos. He does, he does pasture or  um, hoof trimming. Yeah. He does hoof trimming. 01:44 It heat up pasture  and uh a freestyle barn cows. So it's kind of a mix, but I don't know why it's satisfying. like watching it.  When we let ours out on the pasture, we rotationally graze all of our, all of our heifers. So they're always on fresh grass from probably beginning of May to almost first a week in December, sometimes a second week in November, depending on the weather. And the cows go out in a dry lot that has some. 02:14 green on it, but um just because they have a totally different ration, the milk cows do.  We haven't figured out a way yet  to perfect that intakes that they eat out and out if we do rotational grazing. yeah,  no, definitely, we do get them outside quite a bit when the weather is appropriate.  Good.  All right. So since I knew I was going be talking to you,  there is a song that I learned in school, I think. 02:42 And it's something about day by day, day by day. Oh dear Lord, three things I pray. And I don't know if you guys have ever heard it, but I had to learn it for a musical chorus thing back in probably sixth grade. So it was a long time ago. And so thank you for sending me into the way back machine by your name. And how did you, how did you get your name? Well, we were trying to think of names for a while. 03:09 And I'm like, Oh, what should we do? We had a lot of different like ideas, none of them just felt right. And one morning Nick woke up and he's like, I think, I don't know he said something about taking things day by day or something. Yeah. We're just trying to take it day by day to get to the next day. So then we're like, Hey, day by day dairy.  It just kind of happened. Yeah. It just kind of happened like that.  Awesome.  Um, and also Wisconsin. 03:38 As far as I know, last time I looked it up, which was a few years back,  Wisconsin is the or  pretty much the state for milk production in the United States. Is that right? think California passes us in fluid milk production, but I think we're still number one in cheese. ah I believe California, because they have... Yeah, go ahead.  Is that how you guys got the cheesehead moniker? 04:07 Yes, yes. Yeah, there's like a cheese store. There's so many cheese stores all over.  Yeah. Both proximity.  Yeah.  Oh, yeah. When my husband and I make road trips to go see my folks in Maine, we go through Wisconsin because we drive and there's a uh Dane DeForge exit and there's a cheese shop there.  And the first time we drove to Maine, he was like, we have to stop there. He grew up not far from there. 04:35 Well, he didn't grow up far from there. His family is from there. He grew up in Minnesota, but he used to visit family in Wisconsin.  And he's like, we have to stop there. And I said, why? And he said, because they have the most wonderful Granny Smith wine, Granny Smith Apple wine. He said, and they have chocolate cheese.  And he was raving about this chocolate cheese. And I was like, okay, so is it like fudge? He said, I can't explain it. You just have to try it. And I'm not a fan. 05:05 It is the weirdest like fudgy cheese thing ever and  I it smells like fudge but you bite into it and it's really smooth and and soft like cheese and He gave me a piece. I ate it and I looked at him and I said I'm glad that you like it because it is all yours  Yeah, I don't think I've ever tried chocolate cheese 05:30 Yeah, it's really weird. I mean, if you love fudge and you love hot chocolate, you're going to love this. But I just, couldn't get past the texture of it. we ship our mouth to a cheese plant too. Yeah, a little one. A small one. Yep. Screes. So our mouth goes to cheese. Is that all it goes to? It doesn't go to butter or anything? Well, I mean, some of the cream gets separated out when they're doing 06:00 when they're doing their process to make cheese, but that goes to, that would go to a different creamery. I mean, that's what most cheese plants, and then you, you know, you got your whey products too that come out of some cheese plants when they take out the whey. So I mean, there's a lot of things milk turns into when it gets turned into cheese. Okay. So usually, you know, your whey gets separated out from your milk and your, and your, 06:29 and you usually get some cream and that's on a cheese plant what they end up doing with that because they buy the product off of me. But um there's a lot of different things that milk gets turned into, you know, like your protein powder on your,  your, oh, I can't think protein shakes and stuff like that was where a lot of that way ends up. Okay.  And uh do all your creams, your cream factories take that and turn it into, you know, like your whipped cream and stuff like that. And, but 06:57 Yeah, no, mainly all of our milk here goes for goes for cheese. There's only really off the top of my head. I think one real local fluid milk plant. And when I say local, it's Appleton would be the Lamers that does liquid milk, drinking milk in the in the area. And when I say in the area, that's an hour and a half away. So there ain't too many plants that do drinking milk around here. OK, cool. 07:25 So how did you guys get into this dairy farming? That's a lot. We start way from the beginning. Well, ever since I was a little kid, I grew up on a dairy farm. My dad would have been the... 07:44 fifth generation dairy farmer and I'm sixth.  But he milk cows for a while, him and my mom did, and they ended up changing career paths.  Probably when I was about 14, the cows ended up going and we converted it to like  a beef operation and we calved out our calves,  cow calf operation is what they call it. All your animals freshen in and you raise them through the summer months and. 08:13 Me and my brother would work with them, cows and the calves in the summer months when they're out on pasture. And then every fall we'd sell the calves and put the cows, you know, back in the barn, take care of them all winter, get them bred and do it all over again. And we did that for a little while and I kind of got some steers and stuff through that, but I really just always felt like I was, if I was gonna farm, I was gonna do it as much as I could, as young as I could. And the only way I could feel like I could really do all. 08:41 farm  and get the calf, well was, you know, a milk cow you have 365 days a year and you get milk out of it and a calf where beef cow you only got the calf. And I was a lot more hands on with the dairy industry and I always kind of liked the dairy industry and I always milked for other farmers after my dad got rid of the cows. So, uh, yeah, I just, when I turned about, I think it was 20 years old, I started milking a few cows  and I kind of. 09:10 and renting out a barn. And I got one site that I rent out is where the milk cows is at. And then my home farm is where we do the rotational grazing with the dairy heifers and the dry cows and all of our young stock is at the home farm. And all of our, go ahead. So it's in your blood is what you're telling me. It's pretty much. mean, my grandpa spent a lot of time with me ever since I was real little working on the fields, fixing stuff. I mean, he's really the reason I'm doing what I'm doing. So yeah. 09:41 Do you still absolutely wholeheartedly love it?  Most days, but you know, you have your good and your bad days, I guess, just with anything. Let's put it this way, I've tried probably, I don't know, how many different careers or how many different jobs, and I just always say, I'm just gonna farm.  So I mean, it's just, I don't know, just something I've always probably do for as long as I can. 10:07 Okay. Is the dairy you guys' only job or do either one of you have a jobby job as I call it? So  I also grew up on a dairy farm.  Nick and I met in high school.  So we've been together since then. But once I graduated, then I um ended up working  off the farm  and doing that for a while. And then once we had our kids, we had two kids back to back. They're 11 months apart. So then 10:37 We were like, well, they're only young for, they're only at that young stage for, you know, a short period of time.  And so we made the decision that I'll just, you know, raise the kids  at home on the farm. Um, so that's kind of how that came about. Otherwise, um, we did have that income too. Um, and I also have, I also own a reindeer business with my dad, which I started back in high school. So we've been doing that. 11:07 on the side.  So busy with that as well, especially during the holiday season. yeah,  I'm sure that you were very busy here a month or so  ago. Baby reindeer are my favorite, favorite baby animal. They are so cute. They are, and they're so tiny when they're born. They're like 12 to 15 pounds. Are they as soft as they look? Yes. 11:35 They are very soft.  I'm so jealous, Sarah. I've never been able to pet a baby reindeer before.  have  been able to pet white-tailed deer because we used to go to a place when I was a kid, um Maine Wildlife Sanctuary or something like that. And there were always fawns in the spring that had come in with their moms.  And you could feed the moms and of course the babies would come up with them and you could pet the babies, which was really fun. 12:03 If you know anything about white-tailed deer, they are very soft, but it's more like a sleek soft and the baby reindeer look like they're just smushy. Like you just push your fingers into their fur. Yeah. And they're fluffy, very fluffy. Yeah. Yep. Boy, I am so envious that you get to deal with calves and baby reindeer. How lucky are you?  Lots of animals. Yes, absolutely. So I just talked to a young woman. 12:30 Uh, Friday, I think it was Friday for an episode for the podcast that came out today.  And she is also a dairy, but it's just her and she only has 15 cows and milk right now. And she only has access to 30 cows right now. So do you guys have a lot more cows than that? Or are you a small dairy as well? We're small. We keep 50 milking. There's usually about,  and then between dry cows and heifers and 13:00 If we have a couple of steers or anything else, there's, there's another probably 50 to 60 heads. There's around 110. Well, and then you got your calves. So you're always about 110 head roaming around here someplace between the two sites. And, uh, and, know, I guess, uh, and then we do cash crop land at the other site where we do our rotational grazing and stuff. So there is, you know, we do have other, uh, 13:28 I guess just get at it. It's pretty diversified.  I guess there's cash dropping. We sell hay. We do a lot of different other stuff too, I guess.  I'll still farming, but yeah.  I keep hearing that from a lot of people that if you're going to be in agriculture,  you probably are going to need to be diversified because  if something goes wrong in  one section, you have the other section to rely on of your business.  Yes. Yes. 13:59 Yup.  Agriculture is one of the most interesting fields to be in, I swear, because there are so many avenues to go down and you don't have to just focus on one. Actually, it's smarter to focus on more than one.  Yeah. And then because you talked about that  one girl, she had a lot smaller herd. But when we say because some people will probably think our  herd is big, but actually like in our area. 14:26 It's small. It's very small. There's there's thousands and thousands of cows of dairies around here. I think there's what more cows and people in our county. Yeah. And this side of the Mississippi. It used to be the statistic. The statistic. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. But yeah, no, yeah, it's there and it's you know, they all kind of go hand in hand. The crops kind of go with the cattle because if you're not going to grow a really good crop, you're going to get any. 14:55 good milk out of your cows, know, and cattle like eating good quality, healthy plants. it always kind of, everything kind of seems to go together. So yeah, it does seem like multiple different avenues, but it's all kind of neat at the end of the day when you come in the barn and they're full of milk that's all from work you did out in the fields and that you did obviously with the cattle every day. It all kind of bundles up into one thing that goes into one silver. 15:20 stainless steel tank that gets picked up every other day. It's just kind neat that way.  Yeah, it all works together in a circle and  that's what agriculture is. mean, we don't have cattle, we don't have goats, we don't have sheep, we don't have any livestock here except chickens. And I'm not sure that chickens count as livestock. I think they're little dinosaurs and  herding dinosaurs is not the easiest thing on the planet. 15:50 We do have a 50 foot by 150 foot um farm to market or farm to table garden. And we have the chickens and  the garden scraps feed the chickens. The chickens make eggs, the eggs feed us, the eggs feed our neighbors. And then we continue to have the energy to grow the garden. 16:15 So it is just a circle here too. All of everything in agriculture is just one big circle. uh Yep. That's amazing.  It's almost like nature had a plan, huh?  Yeah. It's almost as well, guess seeing you brought up the chickens, uh, this last summer, we tried some chickens out in pasture and it is amazing to see what them chickens will do. We, we moved them around in their, uh, chicken tractor, it's called. Yep. 16:45 And it's amazing to see the amount of clovers and other plant vegetation that comes back  out in them pastures, you know, because it was just grass before, like your fescue and your timothy. It's amazing to see the amount of clovers that's out there and the diversity from there from, you know, that chicken manure being applied to that area. It's really neat. yeah. It's almost like magic. I just, love everything about it. And that's why I love this podcast because 17:14 You guys know this stuff like the back of your hand, but when you're explaining it to me, I feel like the little spark comes back in your voices about how it all works together. Yep. Yeah. You get to interview all, cause in agriculture there's, a wide range. I mean, more than just dairy farming and beef and you get to talk to a ton of different people. I get to talk to people who buy acreage and turn it into, um, agritourism places. Oh. 17:44 Okay.  Which is really fun because people are so inventive. I mean, I talked to a couple months ago, they have a lot of them forested acreage and they put up a cabin so that people can come and spend a night or a couple nights or a week in a cabin in the woods. There's no outhouse, there's no shower, there's no nothing. It's very rustic. But the people who go there love it because they get to just decompress. 18:13 They're told what the rules are. Don't leave food out because there are bears around and they will come get your food. And if you're in the way, they will get you.  And I just love that they took something that was not  necessarily growable or harvestable. And they're growing it in a completely different way.  it's a good like people who want to experience that but don't own it or don't have, you know,  access to it. That's a nice thing that they offer to people. 18:42 even if it's just a short period of time.  exactly. I mean,  you don't have to buy an acreage and get cows and ducks and chickens. You can like think outside the box and use it for something completely different. If you want to. Yes. Yeah. It's like we are putting in more fruit trees this year because fruit trees do really well on the land that we own.  And we got 19:12 apples last year, like more than enough for us to eat and to sell some at the farmers market for the first time since we moved in five years ago. And we always wanted apple trees. Like my husband and I have been together for over 20 years and we used to just sit and dream about what our homestead would look like if we ever got one.  And the first thing out of both of our mouths was apple trees for sure. 19:36 Can't tell you how delicious that first apple tasted because we've been waiting a damn long time for them.  I believe it.  So, um do you guys have a specific time that you calve? Is it in the spring because it's warmer or do you end up  with calves in the winter?  Well,  with the dairy and us  being in the milk business, we calve year round.  I mean, there's no... m 20:04 Back in the day when it was a cow-calf pair, we always tried to have the calves in the ground, know,  middle to later spring. But with the dairy cows, I mean, we're calving year round, you know, trying to keep five to six animals coming in the barn  between the heifers and stuff a month. Sometimes that works out. Sometimes you only have two or three. It all depends on your breeding and how it goes. But yeah, we try to keep a uh decent  flow of  animals calving monthly. 20:34 You have babies all year round? Yep. Oh my God. I'm so jealous. I mean, I know it costs you a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of energy. And I know it's a job, but how sweet is it to have those calves every month? Yeah. There's a lot of them. There's a lot. Well, they add up. They add up. They add up. You don't think there's going to be a lot? Oh, yep. There's quite a few. 21:03 And then, sometimes I like little jerseys, but yeah, yeah,  I to know. Yeah, two of them are coming, but the jerseys were kind of something I thought I'd be fading out of. And they kind of came back with a vengeance. I had more in the barn at the other place than I really thought I had coming up. And I thought I was down to about two and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have seven again. So  as most of the herd Holsteins, yeah, most of the herd is Holsteins. 21:29 I say this all the time when people bring up Jersey cows, they are my favorite cow. I love their faces.  know. I agree.  it's like a... oh Holsteins are beautiful animals, but Jerseys just have this thing about them. It makes them look like a stuffed animal and I love them. I think the calves,  look like some kids, like I think it was my nephew, they call them a deer the first time they saw... 21:57 Jersey calf they're like deer. I'm like, nope. It's not a deer.  It's a calf  Yep, and the other thing that's that's really funny is I for a long time called any bovine a cow and My dad after years of this growing up. He was like just so you know, not all bovines are cows and  I said they're not and he said no he said a male  Not able to reproduce bovine is a steer 22:28 He said, a male bovine who is still able to produce is called a bull. He said, and there's a whole bunch of distinctions for the female cows, but they're cows if they're female. And I said, why didn't you tell me before? And he said, because cows are cows. He said, we're not raising them. And I was like, okay, why are you telling me now?  And he said, because you are so curious about everything. He said, I thought I should tell you before you ask. 22:56 So  the distinction for  the female bovines, a heifer is a cow that hasn't had babies yet?  am I mistaken?  what's the name for a cow that  has had babies? Is there a different name? No, no, no, no, you're a cow. No, it's a cow. oh then if you really want to get anything under a year, it's called a calf. And then when they're 23:25 a year they're called yearlings the heifers are now and then when they're bred a couple months just short bred and then when they're within a month or two don't quote me on that definition they're called springing heifers.  Oh okay. Yep so yeah so yeah I guess there's a uh plethora of terms if we really want to get down to it otherwise it's just calf heifer cow. And then there's steers. Steers and bulls. 23:52 Well, the whole point of the podcast is educate the general public on all the stuff they don't know. So I figured I would take the chance to ask experts. Yeah. That's a big misconception. And some people think, a lot of people don't know the difference between beef and dairy either, that there's a difference between the breeds. Yeah. And there is. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, there is. There's a lot of people who don't know that either. Well, a lot of your beef cattle, like what I 24:21 when my dad was converted to for a while there, um they're bred with just the idea that they're going to be meat animals and they're going to produce meat and they're going to, and then the,  then the cows are going to grow calves and they're going to nurse on over five months. And then those are going to be either their replacements eventually, or steers where your milk cow is obviously produced to have a calf, produce milk and get bred back and do the cycle over again. 24:52 Yup. Okay. So I know you guys are a dairy, but I also know there's no guarantee that all of your cows are going to have female calves. So do you guys sell the male calves off? yeah. Okay. So yeah, that's a loaded question with our breeding. A lot of the dairy industry has gone to, they look at their cow and they're only breeding. I'm just going to throw a random percentage out there. Like the top 10 to 15 % are getting bred with. 25:21 Sex semen  so you're getting like sex hosting calves usually on the ground.  They're female  and then you're breeding them bottom half to or the bottom third or whatever um You're breeding them to beef So they're getting crossbred with like a beef animal like we talked about before and that beef animal is then put out to market, you know,  Like an Angus or Simitol there's uh 25:49 Usually them are the two main ones, but there's quite a few beef breeds. But yeah, that's usually when that's kind of been the new trend that has been happening. Probably, I mean, 10 years ago, a bunch of old farmers thought it was never going to happen. And now, I mean, it is something that happens quite a bit. And it is really kind of taking the industry over, I'd say, a lot, a lot. You're seeing a lot more cross-bred calves go to market, which is 26:18 probably for the best, because now you have a high quality meat animal instead of a Holstein bull calf that, yeah, it's going to still put on meat, but it's not going to be as high quality as a cross animal. um yeah, that's kind of what happens. oh cool.  And then I have another podcast that I've started with a lady that is a rancher  in Nebraska.  And  she was telling me that this past year, 2025, 26:47 was a banner year for beef cattle producers. Is the dairy market not keeping pace with that at all? Well, the calf market, you know, guys are having the dairy producers are able to capitalize on this calf market really, really well, because replacements for these beef industry is so tight. that's something that 27:15 really, I think is really a good thing for the dairy industry. um But as far as the milk goes,  I say average and I say now it's starting to get a little below average. um Supplies there's enough milk out there by the sounds of it again.  But I mean, that's just with everything in this industry, it goes up and down. We've had some real good years in the past, but it's it's breaks are getting pumped and it's it's it's going to be a couple tight. 27:43 tight years coming up ahead for milk, I would say. Please don't stop doing it because I love milk. I just drank a whole glass of whole milk with cookie, with ginger snaps that my husband decided to make this morning for breakfast. Do not stop, please. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be here too. I mean, when I started, I went through COVID when that happened. I remember getting $10 a hundredweight and way back when I first started it was $13 a hundredweight. 28:13 And just to put that in perspective, a couple of years ago, I'd say last year, I think we hit 24 in July. It always goes up a little bit in summer. But like right now, if you look on the board for CMEA, it's gonna be down in January here to 1475. And our costs have not gone down any. And you're talking about being in margins or... 28:41 The price of milk being within a dollar of a $13 a  hundredweight that 10 years or eight years ago was tough floating for a lot of producers. So, I mean, just put that in perspective for you. mean, that's kind of the way the industry goes every now and again. Granted,  you know, through time, we tend to get more milk and, you know, more diversifying, like with the beef cattle and everything else. But  that just seems to kind of be the trend with that milk price. 29:10 Yeah, and the average consumer has no idea what it takes to raise dairy cows. They have no clue, the heart and the soul, number one, how much it costs to feed those critters,  not to mention any care that they need, like veterinary care. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.  And  yeah, it's  like I said,  I think that, you know, I'm glad I started when I did. 29:39 Cause everyone when I started thought I was nuts. You remember you had a hard time finding?  Wasn't the plants, certain plants? Yeah, was a hard time. It was hard to get into plants. know it's a lot of plants weren't taking, but I mean,  it's, how do I word it? I'm glad I started when I did, cause you just eventually got to hop on the bandwagon and you know, it's gonna, it's a roller coaster just going up and down no matter what,  no matter where you jump in on it. So when I started, 30:08 I was able to buy cows fairly reasonable. I'd buy cows from farmers that, you know, their barns are full and it was probably the bottom end of the herd, but I still took it home.  I, you know, and  with that beef market starting, I was able to breed some of them to beef and maybe kind of gave me time to breed my better ones to sex semen, which that helped a lot to grow the herd.  Um, cause yeah, I mean, when I think about what I started with, I want to have now for cows. 30:35 and how I was able to do it in such a short time. And I think about how like my grandfather and my dad farmed and they always said it takes a lifetime to get a herd of cows. ah I feel like I'm my cows now. I know I don't have the best of the best by any means the word, but  I feel like compared to when my dad and my grandpa's, you know, were done, I feel like I'm very competitive with what they had, you know, I feel and granted, you know, there's a lot of time lapse there, but 31:05 It took eight years instead of a lifetime. Just the genetics in these animals and the genomics is just,  it's outstanding what  has taken place in eight years that I've been doing it hard where I've been in the bar, melting cows. is just, it just floors me  how we were able to produce these animals now and for health traits and everything. It's amazing. Yes. It's amazing how when nature and science come together for good, actual good things happen. 31:35 Yep.  So for funsies, have a parting question.  Do you have a favorite milk cow out of your herd? The one that melts the most.  I like all lineback cows. I know Nick is, that's a,  we don't have a lot of them, but I think they're so cute. No, I got an old cow that she was going with me.  She was a calf when I started. 32:04 So she was born in that first batch, out of that first group of heifers I had when I started. So she's, she's what? I've been milking for probably eight, eight years. She's nine. She's no, well, she's eight years old. So she's on her sixth lactation. I don't know. I always really liked that cow. She never, never gives me no trouble. She's always there. Because she was there from the beginning. Yeah. Was she a calf when you got her or was she a cow? She cowed, her mom calved on the farm. 32:33 Okay. So she was a calf that I raised. One of the first ones. Uh know, when I started milking, milking cows. so eight years ago she was born, you know, so yeah. Don't hear. Yeah. 24 months later she had her first calf. So yeah, you got a couple of calves in the barn, but yeah, she's hopefully we get her bread and she can have one more at least. And I lied. That wasn't my last question. Cause I meant to ask you this earlier. Sorry about that. 33:01 I don't know what the laws are in Wisconsin for raw milk. So what are the laws in Wisconsin for raw, not pasteurized milk? 33:12 My understanding, it's illegal. it? Yeah. You can't. Yeah. You can't. In Wisconsin, at least. I know I've heard some states, they're way more lenient. I think Minnesota just passed a lot. Is that correct? I feel like it wasn't Minnesota. Somebody just joined the raw milk. There was some legislature, legislature, the legislation that just went through. And there's a handful of states that have passed it. But. 33:41 think it might come to Wisconsin. Um, I've been doing a little research on it and I think, you know, there's a lot more to that than people really  seem to look into. Like your water gets tested and, um, a lot of other things that need to be done. But I think it's, could be a real good opportunity for some smaller producers down the road. yeah. Um, yeah, I hope something happens with it. really do. Yeah. Cause we did look into it, but yeah, the state of Wisconsin is harder. 34:10 for that, the raw milk.  Does Wisconsin have the thing where you can sell raw milk  only for pet consumption?  That I do not know. I'm not sure on because we were looking at for farmers to sell. To sell to people. Yeah, I don't know. yeah, I kind of get scared when we start talking food and drug administration regulations, I guess. 34:35 You know, I just try to ask anyone who's in the industry because it is different in almost every state. Yeah. There is a handful of states. I know that just passed it because I remember reading some article, but,  um, feel like there's a lot more of a demand for it too. Now for people who want that as well, but it's just not as easy to get it because of those regulations. Yeah. The law here in Minnesota is that the farmers can sell raw milk out of their tanks. 35:04 as long as the person buying it  comes to the farm where the cow lives and where the cow was milked and where the tank is. And I'm not positive, but I  think I could be wrong.  I feel like the law is that the  consumer has to bring their own container,  but I could be wrong. Like I said, I did not  look in it that deep. mean,  it is something that I think  will eventually 35:34 just like everything will kind of pass, especially with all this stuff going on in West Chase of Nile with regenerative agriculture and everything else. think we're, it's an incredible time to really be doing this. There's gonna be a lot of changes in the next 10 years, I think, on these smaller farms, probably towards this. So I think it's gonna be interesting to see. 35:56 Yeah, I'm all for it because I absolutely love love raw milk, but I can't afford it right now in Minnesota. It costs too much and I want to be able to pay it, but I just can't. Yeah. How much is it in there over there? The last I looked, it was over $10. I want to say for a half gallon, but it could have been a gallon. don't remember. No, I, yeah, I, there was a podcast I listened to about it. Shera pointed me towards it. 36:26 Yeah. And there was a guy, a gentleman owned in California who started it and explained it. yeah, it is, it, could really do a lot of good for the industry if something like that would come ahead. And it just, to the testing that will be involved in it. Once they figure that out, and I think a couple more states do it and they have it for a while. I think that it's going to be an easier thing to get past probably in states like Wisconsin. But yeah. 36:56 Yeah, the best thing about raw milk is that you can make cheese from it. If you try to make cheese with pasteurized whole milk from the store,  it doesn't usually turn out the way you want it to.  No,  no.  And the thing is with, uh you know, with raw milk, it separates. So I know a lot of people like to use that cream for many different things  that you can just do at home with. 37:22 Yeah,  the cream from the unpasteurized milk is fabulous in coffee. It makes it into this decadent dessert drink, not just coffee. Yep, I believe it.  So yeah, I will be a happy girl when I can go to the regular grocery store and buy unpasteurized milk and know that it's fine. That'll be a great day. Maybe I will live long enough to see it. We'll see what happens.  All right, guys, this has been 37:51 Fabulous. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. Where can people find you? We're on TikTok, Facebook and YouTube, day by day dairy.  Fantastic. As always, you can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  If you want to support the podcast, you can go to atinyhomestead.com slash support  and just started a new 38:16 podcast with the lady I was talking about and that podcast is Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture. uh You guys, I know you're busy. Thank you  so much for your time. I really appreciate it. No, of course. Thanks for inviting us. All right. Thank you. You have a great day. You too.  

Today I'm talking with Haley at Wilson Dairy Farm MD. You can also follow on Facebook.   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Haley at Wilson Dairy Farm in Maryland, I think it is.  Good afternoon, Hayley, how are you? Good afternoon, I'm great. And yes, you're right, we are in Maryland here, Baltimore County. All right,  and you guys  are a dairy farm and 00:27 I've actually been really looking forward to this because I don't talk to people who do dairy. I talk to people who do  cattle for  eating the meat more often. So, uh number one, how's the weather in Maryland today?  Today is absolutely gorgeous. We hit 50 degrees and it's been sunny and just a light breeze and it feels like a nice spring day in January.  Yeah, oh in Minnesota it is pushing 40 degrees. Everything is melting. There's no wind. 00:56 It's sunny, it's gorgeous. It feels like April, not January. Yes, I'll take it though. Yeah, me too, because I figure two weeks from now it'll be minus 20 with a wind chill of minus 40. Exactly, we don't quite get that cold, but anything under 30 degrees is cold for me. Yeah, it definitely gets cold here in Minnesota for sure. 01:21 We had a night last winter that was pushing minus 50 windchill and I thought you know, maybe the northern tier states aren't as much fun as I as I think they are so I bet All right. So tell me about yourself and about your dairy farm because I am so excited to hear your story Sure. So my name is Haley Wilson. I grew up on a commercial dairy farm My dad milked around 220 Holsteins at our biggest 01:50 So we were a small commercial dairy farm because there are a thousand head dairy farms out west. There's much bigger farms than that. for us, that was a lot. We milked 200 cows a day. It was about three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. We had some family trouble over the property about six years ago. My dad's siblings had all left the farm when they were young. 02:15 like a lot of small family farm disputes go, they came back and they wanted their inheritance. we were in a lawsuit during the COVID timeframe between 2018 and 2021. And um because of COVID, we actually never got to see a jury trial. We had a judge who just decided everything. And because my grandfather's notes that said what he wanted to happen with the land were not notarized, he said none of them could be 02:43 admitted as evidence. So we actually ended up losing everything. had around 350 acres. it was all, yeah, it was all gone to my aunt and uncle who live in Virginia. They're not even local. So that was something we went through a couple of years ago that was really heartbreaking. And there were a lot of emotions surrounding the lawsuit, know, anger, frustration, just disappointment all around. My dad really took it hard. 03:09 And  my sister and I kind of felt the weight of the family and we kind of had to figure out how to keep things moving. As far as the dairy cows go, I was able to keep a couple of my nice show animals.  I just kind of took them to different dairy farms around the state of Maryland, actually. People were very generous and would house them for me. Just last year, I found this farm  about 10 minutes away from my home farm where I grew up. 03:33 and the people who own it were renting it out to a family who were moving and I reached out and everything worked out perfectly. I was able to move in last fall. I brought all of my young animals, so like my little calves and my breeding age heifers, no one who's in milk yet. I brought all them home here about a year ago.  And for the last year, I've been working on fixing up the farm  and getting a parlor built. 03:58 When you're going to milk more than just two or three cows, you've really got to have the facility for it. And since I planned on shipping milk grade A to a cooperative, like my dad did, I had to have the facility to match their standards. So I just accomplished that here in November, and I'm shipping milk for 25 cows for the last 60 days. So that's catch up to where I'm at. Is it just you? It's just me. 04:24 Yeah, it's just me. My parents live in a house that they rent down the road. My sister has a little farm she does ag tourism business  with, but I'm the only one that lives here. So whenever I say we, I mean me and the dogs, me  and the animals. We is a me and my animals concept. I um don't have anybody that lives with me or helps me. It's just me. Wow. Haley,  I am so impressed and so proud of you. Thank you. 04:53 That is a lot to take on as one person.  It is definitely a lot. Once I got a routine, know, things have, it's like anything, you know, once you get a system down, it becomes a little bit easier, but there, you know, there's definitely tasks out there that I have to wait until I can call my dad or somebody to swing by and help me. It's just not possible to do some jobs by yourself. So I do my best,  but I do have an intern that sometimes will come down from Penn State when she's on her breaks and she'll help me occasionally.  So. 05:21 People are very generous. Our community being in Baltimore, it is a big city below us, but ultimately the area that I'm in in the county, the community members are great. If I need help  fixing the manure spreader or fixing the tractor, there's people I can call that'll run over and just do me a favor and they'll help me out, which has been life-changing. Yeah, community is so important, especially when it's just one person trying to do what you're doing. Yes,  absolutely, yes. 05:51 I mean, community is important anyway, but boy, you are really fortunate that you have people around you who are more than willing to help. That is fantastic. So how many cows do you have? So I'm currently milking 25. Now with the whole community concept, they're not all my milk cows. I only owned about 13 milk cows. So the other cows are actually from three other neighboring farms who said, hey, this young girl is trying to get started. 06:19 go ahead, you can take a couple of our cows because I have to have enough milk to reach the agitator in my tank. They were willing to give me their money producing asset because they believed in helping a young person get started in the dairy industry. So I actually only own 12, I think it's 13 now, I just had one calf, 13 of my 25. I own them, they're registered in my name, but the other half of my milk cows are actually belonging to neighborhood farms who are trying to help me. 06:47 get my feet under me and get started here. Because the rule is when the milk goes in the tank, you have to have enough milk in it to reach the little agitation stick that's in the tank. And if I didn't ship enough milk, it wouldn't stir and it would create bacteria. So there's lots of regulations around that. So  I own about 13 of my milk cows and then I actually have another 13 of the younger stock, which would be the calves and heifers that are not milking yet. So I own about 30. 07:17 Wow. Oh my God, Haley.  I'm so blown away by everything you've just said. There's a  lot to it and it can be very overwhelming. It should throw at you all at once. So if I have to repeat anything, if you have further questions, feel free to stop me.  No, I just, can't believe how everything is coming together for you to do this. Yes. Nope. I don't believe it some days either, but I have to say I have faith. 07:44 And not just religious faith, but faith in myself, faith in the goodness of the world, faith in just things working out. And I hate to say it, but if I wanted to get this far or to even go further, I have to have that kind of just belief that things will work out because there are days, there are really cold days when equipment won't start or the days where maybe a cow is sick or if I lose a calf, they're really tough. And the only way to get through them for me is to have faith that things will  work out the way they're supposed to. 08:14 Yes,  and things do work out the way they're supposed to. The problem is sometimes the supposed to part isn't the way you wanted it to work out. Very true, very true.  I understand that completely. I've had a lot of those moments in my life, but I'm 56 years old.  I have lived a great life so far and it all does kind of come out in the wash. There's some really terrible things that happen. 08:42 And there's some really fabulous things that happen that offset the terrible things. yeah. Just keep moving. Just keep going. It's all perspective. It really is. Yes, exactly. Wow.  I am just sitting here dumbfounded. I cannot believe all the stars that had to align for you to get where you are. 09:03 Me as well. definitely, this fall as things were coming together, I, you things fell together and people offered, whether it's a manure spreader to borrow or coming to chop the corn. So I'd have feed in my trench for this winter to milk the cows, all those little things. I say little, they're big things, but like you said, everything just fell together so great. I will forever be in debt to lots of people around here. Well, I'm sure that if they needed something, you would be right there for them too. 09:32 Yes, absolutely. Yep, because that's how this works.  You don't receive the kind of blessings that you're receiving on this without giving some back.  Correct. And if you own animals, if there's people who have  homesteads and they have any type of sick livestock where they need medication and it's nine o'clock at night, you're calling your neighbor who maybe also has animals and has something in stock. So that's just how it works when you have animals and have to take care of everybody. 10:00 So if it's just you, do you manage to get any sleep at any point in time? I do. So I try to go to bed by 9.30 and I get up around five. So I do get  some hours of sleep. uh I do work a day job also away from the farm. And as sad as that sounds, I can't afford to pay my bills if I don't do it. So I wake up at five and I'm usually working outside until about eight or 8.30, depending if anybody needs to be bedded up or if I have to restock any hay or feed. 10:29 and then I'll eat breakfast and I'll go to a day job from about nine to one. And then from one to three, I either run some errands or I come home and just try to relax. And then I'll feed the cows and do some afternoon projects and start my feedings again. And I'm usually finished by about six, 30 or seven at night. And then I have about two hours to do  whatever inside I might want to do. Sometimes it's just hanging out, but. 10:55 Sitting still is not something I do well. So it's almost good that I'm this busy. Okay, tell me again how old you are, Hayley. I'm 29. Okay, so you're still in the, the, I'll sleep when I'm dead, 20s phase. Yes, yes.  Yeah, I was raising kids in that timeframe  and uh I was busy from,  oh my God, two o'clock in the morning until 11 o'clock at night because, because kids, you know. Yeah. 11:25 Kids don't necessarily sleep from  eight o'clock at night until six o'clock in the morning.  And I had four kids.  And my youngest didn't sleep through the night until he hit kindergarten. So  that was a rough five and a half years.  bet.  I can't imagine.  So when  you're talking about all the stuff that you're doing, I am absolutely blown away. 11:52 But I also know what I was doing when I was your age and people were like, I don't know how you do it. 11:59 Yes, yes. It has its perks. I do  feel tired more so than others other days, but that's usually in response to like mental exhaustion.  Like you said, the physical exhaustion, I can get through it, can  push through it. But usually if I'm very stressed, if something  takes a toll on me mentally, those are the days that it can get to me and get caught up on it. Yeah, for sure. 12:29 brain is good when your mental health is good, you can go without sleep for a while.  But you get that mental health thing dragging you down and you're not sleeping, it's not gonna go well.  Exactly, and I think that's very important to mention. In the dairy industry in general,  they talk about dairy farmers having a suicide rate higher than any other occupation, even above veterans. And that's one of those things that it speaks to you, just about how much of a toll that these people go through. uh 12:58 you know, and there's nobody there speaking for them and the number of dairy farms is shrinking and there's so many people who just don't relate to what they go through.  And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this as well is having a social media presence and sharing the  problems and  the challenges with the dairy industry. I love what I do, but  even in the last 60 days, I have learned so much of how much these industry 13:25 cooperatives that I am tied to, you I'm under their thumb because they are the ones hauling my milk. They're the ones finding a market for my milk. So I'm at their mercy when they want to change prices, when they want to change my hauling price, ah the  flexibility of their hauler or lack of thereof.  I've had to take buildings down. I've had to move my driveway. I have no choice. And most industries are not like that. You have some say or at least you get a day or two off here or there. 13:54 As a dairy farmer, you don't have a say and you don't get a day off. So it does become exhausting.  absolutely.  Okay. So I have a question for you that might be touchy.  Is raw milk illegal in Maryland? It is. Raw milk is illegal for human consumption in the state of Maryland. It can only be sold from a farm if it's labeled as pet consumption only. That's correct. So if somebody buys it under that  label, 14:22 and they choose to use it for themselves to drink. Is that  okay? Yes. Yep.  I know lots of farms who have said, know what, forget the co-op that I'm signed with. They're not doing anything to help me. Instead of getting 40 cents per gallon of milk from the grocery store, I'm going to sell directly to the customer, whether that's listed as raw milk or actually getting a grade A permit to process their own milk, either way. 14:47 They'll sell directly to the customer and get three, four, five dollars per gallon in their pocket. So people can do what they wish with whatever they buy as long as the label meets the standards of the state and the federal government, the farmers in the clear. Good. I haven't had raw milk in Minnesota in  years, and part of that is because  I can't afford it anymore.  I looked the other day. 15:14 I was just curious to see what some of the local farms were selling raw milk  at.  Over $10  for a half gallon. Oh my gosh. I was like, yeah, that's too rich for my blood. That champagne taste on a beer budget. I can't do it.  That's very true. And I think maybe some farms have gotten a little aggressive with it.  I have not gone down that route yet, but... 15:39 I know around here people will pay double digits for a good raw gallon of milk. And maybe that's because where we live, cost of living in Maryland is extremely high, but their incomes is reflective of that for the most part, so they can swing it. But most parts in the country are not gonna pay 10, 12, $14 for a gallon or even a half gallon. That's crazy to me to hear as a farmer who produces milk. Yeah, I... 16:08 I want to be able to pay it because I think that anyone who takes care of cows  earns every penny. But I just can't. I just can't do it.  Of course, of course. So, and I love raw milk. It is one of my favorite, favorite things for coffee in the morning because it is so good. Yes, I love raw milk. I have been drinking raw milk my whole life and I'm  happy to  share it with people who ask. It's just one of those things that I just do it quietly. 16:37 If people ask, we're like, yeah, bring a container over, I'll get you what you need. But it's not one of those things I'm allowed to sell for a profit. Right, yes. And I'm going to tell the story again. I've told it like five times in two years on the podcast. We drove home  to Maine. I grew up in Maine.  And  milk is actually allowed to be sold  in grocery stores in Maine. That's raw milk. And I didn't know that. That was not the case when I lived there. 17:06 And we went to the little general store down the road from my parents and they had glass bottles of raw milk.  And  I took a bottle up to the counter and the girl behind the counter, said,  how long has it been legal to sell raw milk? And she was like, I don't know where you from. I said, well, my parents live up the road. I grew up in Steep Falls, Maine. 17:30 I said, but I live in Minnesota now and it's, don't find raw milk in a store. You have to get it from the farmer at the farm. And usually you have to bring your own container. And she was like, oh man, I knew you weren't from Maine, but I didn't know you grew up here. I said, yes, I did. She said, I don't know how long it's been legal to sell it in Maine, but it's been a while. She said, cause we've been doing it for a while. She said, we're not allowed. 17:58 She said, it is frowned upon to advertise that you're doing it.  And I said, frowned upon. And she said, yeah, the state of Maine doesn't really like us to promote it.  And I said, okay, so every state has different laws about this. She said, they absolutely do. 18:21 Yep, yes, that's correct.  So yeah, it's crazy.  I... People drink raw milk for  a very long time before we've got into the pasteurizing and  putting parameters on what we as humans get to choose to drink.  it bothers me to no end, but I always have to ask if somebody's in the industry. Sure, absolutely. 18:48 And two, with pasteurization, know, back 100, 150 years ago, 200 years ago, when people were getting sick from raw milk, they did not have the regulations that we have now with the stainless material of the pipeline,  the cleaning regimen, whatever it is that the state requires. Each state's a little bit different. But I know the crucial testing that I had to go through, and I get test results every single week from my co-op. And I will tell you that our milk, whether it's, I say our milk, the girls' milk, my milk here, 19:17 is cleaner than anything else you're ever going to get. I believe it. And the other thing that a lot of people don't know is that if you  sell your milk to whoever the hauler comes and your milk is tested, the whole truck gets thrown out if something's wrong with the milk, right? Correct. Yeah. If you test positive for antibiotics, if a cow is sick and I have to treat her just like we would treat our children or ourselves, you go to the doctor and you get antibiotics because you have to kill. 19:47 that bacteria, whatever's growing, you've got to get ahead of it or it could kill you. It's the same with the animals. They have to be treated.  And then that milk has to be dumped appropriately for the right amount of time. And I have snap tests here. If anybody works in a vet office or even a doctor's office, they might've heard of a snap test. You can test milk, you can test blood with them. And my test specifically tests for antibiotics. And if I mess it up and I ship it,  I have to pay for the whole truckload. Yeah. 20:13 does that whole truckload get dumped? It's useless? that's I thought. that's correct. They can't do anything with it and they don't want us to contaminate any other milk at the processing plant. Yeah, that's what I thought because that's how it is here too. Yep. And it's really important that that's the way it is because, you know, we've got to have safe food. It's just really unfortunate that things like that happen. And I'm guessing it hasn't happened to you yet. 20:42 Not yet. Knock on wood. I am very adamant. I try to use leg bands to mark the cows if they need to be treated. I put it in my phone as constant reminders as to when was the last treatment date. I will test once in the morning and if it's questionable, I'll test again in the evening. It's just one of those things I'd rather be safe than sorry.  I can't afford to make the mistake. So fingers crossed I never have to do that, but I know new accidents happen  and it's just a good thing there's so many checks along the way to catch it. 21:11 Yes, exactly. And I'm going to say this too. I was talking with Joel Salatin back a year ago for the podcast. You know who he is, right?  The name sounds familiar, but place him for me. Okay. He has Polyphase Farm in, I think it's Virginia or West Virginia. And he's big in the homesteading uh realm.  And he raises cattle and pigs and chickens and 21:40 He's just really famous in  this circle.  And  he was saying that when he went to college, he went to college for becoming a journalist.  And uh when he told somebody he was going back to the family farm, they said to him, you're way too smart to just go be a farmer.  And the reason I share this is because  from what you just told me, you are incredibly smart.  You have to be. 22:10 to be doing what you're doing. Farmers are smart. They have to be. I agree with that. And I feel like farmers are smart in a funny sense. And when it comes to troubleshooting and trying to solve problems, a lot of people think, well, I'll just call the plumber to fix it. I'll just call the electrician. As a farmer, can afford $180 emergency call for the plumber. So guess who's just going to figure it out? You know, we're smart along the sense of being, I don't know, personal, 22:41 as troubleshooters. You know, we're always trying to find solutions. So we're forced to think outside the box when it comes to solving things. Well, the other reason I said that you're smart is because you have a lot of things you have to keep track of. And you have to be organized and you have to understand why you're doing the things that you're doing. That's correct. Yes, that's true. So I bet you're smart as a whip. 23:05 Ma'am?  try to be pretty quick. You know, you to stay on my toes. And I think a lot of dairy farmers are like that. So that's a good uh analogy. Dairy farmers are pretty quick. And if they're not, you'll see which farms maybe struggle.  You've got to be able to stay on top of it. And you've got six million things going on at once, just like a mom, just like a parent. You've got so many things moving at once.  You've got to stay on top of it or things get dropped. Yeah,  absolutely. So are your cows Holsteins? Because you mentioned Holsteins in the beginning. 23:34 I do have a couple Holsteins, that's what we milked growing up. So I kept a couple from my original family line. My dad did buy me a Brown Swiss when I was eight years old. So I have actually transitioned primarily to my Brown Swiss. So my herd of my 13 or 30, if you want to look comprehensively, is probably 80 % Brown Swiss. And then the last couple will be my Holsteins. Okay, I've never heard of a Brown Swiss. Tell me what's special about that breed. 24:02 So the Brown Swiss are from Switzerland. They are one of the  main seven dairy breeds in the world.  They have the high butterfat content similar to a Jersey or a Guernsey. So they're a color breed is what they're called.  They have big white fluffy ears and a nice dark gray coat. I just I love my Swiss. They're like big puppy dogs and they are a bigger breed. So they're going to grow to be some of the biggest in my herd. 24:27 but they're so docile and so slow moving.  I just love the personality of my swiss. They're super sweet and loving and like a lot of animals,  any breed can be that, but every single one of my swiss has been great to deal with.  I can hear the love in your voice and I am like that about the Jersey cows. I love them so much. Yep.  They are my favorite cow to look at. They are my favorite cow. 24:56 to actually go up to and pet if I'm allowed to. Yep.  They're gorgeous. So I get it.  Everyone has their own favorite animal. Yes, that speaks to you. It speaks to you in a way that just touches your heart. And my Swiss,  I love them to death. They're great.  Uh-huh, absolutely. um So how many gallons of milk does a um brown Swiss? Is that what you said? That's correct, yep. 25:24 How many gallons of milk on average does a brown Swiss give a day? So it depends on what stage of lactation she's in. Most of my brown Swiss are going to peak around 70 or 80 pounds a day. And when I say pounds, that's what we get paid in. So we're looking at pounds as a dairy farmer. Now, a gallon of milk weighs 8.6 pounds. So if she's milking 80 pounds in a day, that's about nine gallons. So she's not 25:51 white as high of a producer as some of my Holsteins who could milk 100, 120 pounds a day. But ultimately the Swiss will have your higher butter fat and protein content. And those creamy, those creamy factors are actually a higher pay scale for the co-op because the co-op is going to pull that butter fat and protein out to make your cheese and your butter and your ice cream. So they,  what they lack in quantity, they make up in quality. uh Absolutely.  You've got this down, ma'am. 26:21 I'm so impressed with you. Well,  I've done a lot of studying and I told myself if I'm going to do it, I've got to at least be somewhat prepared. em I understand I'm still learning every single day and I'm still calling my neighbor and saying, hey, this cow doesn't look right. This is when she calved. Her eyes are little sunken in though and she's not really milking right. You know, what would you recommend I give her? 26:45 and we'll go through the list of medications and treatment options. So there's still things I'm learning every single day.  ultimately my goal is to have happy and healthy cows. Obviously I want them to milk as much as they can because that affects my milk check,  but I do not push them beyond what their body is capable of. I'm a competitive person. I want to do well,  but ultimately I love my animals and I want them to do the best that their health can allow. Yep. That's exactly the reason to do it. 27:15 You don't get into raising dairy cows for  grins and giggles. That's correct. That's very correct. Okay. I don't really want to end this on a bad note, but  I know that dairy farmers in America  do not make a lot of money in their chosen profession. That's correct.  So you guys do it because you love it. And that is fabulous. But I really, really hope that 27:45 The love of it makes up for the lack of income because I worry about you guys. We need milk and I worry that a lot of dairy farmers are just gonna go away because they just can't afford to stay in it. That's correct. And a lot of legislation, a lot of the rules and like I said, the co-ops, the bigger dog people don't care about the small farmer. They're always looking at the dollar and unfortunately the small farms are not being taken care of. So your options are get bigger. 28:13 or sell direct to the consumer or be done. I have to weigh my options as well moving forward and see what I can sustain. I love what I do. I will always milk cows. I just have to figure out what would be the best for both them and myself right now. Yeah. And it's a very fine line. And I really hope that you get to continue to do what you love with the cows. And if you don't, don't 28:41 look at it as a failure, please, because you are doing the best you possibly can. Thank you. Thank you. Like I said, I didn't want to end this on a bummer, but people need to know it's really hard being in agriculture and it's doubly hard being a woman in agriculture. Yes, that is 100 % true. I know this year they've delegated 2026 as the year of the woman in ag. 29:09 So I'm curious to see what programs and what they're able to provide for women in ag this upcoming season. Yeah,  I'm just thrilled that there's finally a  year  of the woman farmer. Yes, yes. It's only taken till 2026 to make it happen. I know,  I know people. We're a very reactive country. We are not proactive. And that is one of the things that's driving these small dairy farms into the dirt as well. 29:39 But unfortunately we cannot change the mentality of the masses, but those who see it, know, those are the people who can step up and make a difference for some of these small farms. Yep, absolutely. And I'm always saying on my podcast,  know your local farmer,  know your local  producer, you know, gardener. Because if the shit hits the fan and our grocery system goes down, 30:08 it's gonna be really important.  And it's important either way, but it's gonna be really important then. Correct. Everybody should have some type of garden and even like a goat or a sheep.  That is a huge thing that I would love to see 90 % of the country, which I know populated cities isn't ideal, but I would love to see a higher percentage of the country have some type of animal more than just a dog or a cat  to raise their kids to take care of. 30:35 It just teaches so much responsibility and caring for life and understanding death and everything that comes with it. Like you said, even just having that relationship with your local farmer or producer is golden for people now. It really is. It's so incredibly important. And  important has become trite. That word has become so overused.  And I don't have another one. So it's the one I'm going to use.  All right, Haley, I tried to get these to half an hour. Where can people find you? 31:05 Sure, so you can find me on Facebook or Instagram. I post on both.  Facebook is Wilton Dairy Farm MD.  Right now  I'm growing steadily, so hopefully I'll see some people's new faces here soon.  Nice, okay, awesome.  As always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to AtinyHolmstead.com slash support.  And there's a new podcast. 31:32 that I am doing with a co-host. Her name is Leah  and she's from Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook.  And um there's two episodes out already, third one on Monday and the website's being built right now  and the first three pages are up. oh The website  is Grit and Grace in the Heartland and the podcast is Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture. 31:59 Haley, this was great. Thank you for filling me in on dairy and cows and how hard it is and how much you love it. I so appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on today. Thank you. Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Corey at Mystic Roots Homestead - Herbal Simples & Apothecary.   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Corey at Mystic Roots Homestead, Herbal, Simples, and Apothecary  in Kentucky. Good morning, Corey. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm good. Good. How's the weather there? It is sunny  and almost in the  50s in South Central Kentucky today. It's really kind of crazy for it being January. 00:29 Yes, I'm in Minnesota. It is going to be 40 and it is sunny and we have about three or four inches of snow on the ground right now. my goodness. I would love for some snow. had a very, very dry Christmas this year. So does it snow in Kentucky? You guys are pretty south, right? It does. I think in 2015 we had, or no, 2014, we had about eight feet here and I'm closer to the Bowling Green area. I was working at 00:58 I was a dispatcher then actually, and we had so much snow that we had to close the interstate down. It was rough that year,  but it does. It's not been bad or equated to a lot in the last few years, but we've kind of been waiting for it. The woolly worms have been telling us it's coming, but it's not showed up.  And the woolly worms lied to me this year. I saw seven different woolly worms and all of them had different stripes. 01:27 different width stripes. And I was like, okay, I need some consistency here, guys. And see, we've been all of the  persimmons have been given a spoons shovels, but we've not seen  it'll probably be here in mid February is when we'll see it. Okay, so for the listener who doesn't understand what we are talking about,  woolly worm caterpillars are are black and like a reddish brown.  And the ends of the caterpillar are black and the middle is brown, I think. And 01:56 The middle band of the caterpillar tells you how long and how hard the winter is going to be.  And all of them I've seen have been different. And the persimmon fruit, if you cut them open,  it looks like a spoon or it looks like a fork, right?  Or a knife. A knife, okay.  if it's  spoon, fork, or knife. Okay, so if it's a spoon, it indicates lots of snow. uh If it's a fork, it indicates what? 02:24 It will, I think it's very mild and then the knife it's going to be frigid. It will like, the knife will be cold enough it'll cut through you. Yeah. So it's a very frigid winter. Fork is very mild, but a shovel, you're supposed to be shoveling through that stuff. And that's what we've had, but we've not had it yet. Yup. I understand the last two winters we've had, not counting this one, we had a foot of snow each winter. That was it.  And the reason that I wanted to clarify what we were talking about is because not everyone is up on their, 02:53 their weather lore. And if you want to learn about it, the old farmer's almanac talks about this stuff all the time. It'll even tell you when to cut your hair. Yes, it will. It will tell you when to breed your cows. It will tell you everything. We do a lot of stuff based off of the almanac and the cycles. We like it and it works that way. They've been doing it that way for hundreds of years. Why would we change it? Yeah, if it works, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Don't fix it. Exactly. 03:22 All right. So tell me about your homestead and what you do. We started full on homesteading  last year. I've been staying at home for about three years now with the girls  and  I got a few quail and then I got some ducks and I got some chickens  and I started a hatchery.  We wanted to gear more towards sustainability  and 03:51 I had a lot of hormone issues and we had some fertility issues and I started falling in the rabbit hole of herbalism.  And that brought me closer to my spirituality because it allowed me to learn about the land and the things that are provided here that are local that I can forage,  but that also heal my body. And that led us into homesteading and it blew up.  You fell down the rabbit hole. 04:19 Literally with everything Just right in like Alice  Mm-hmm. Yep. Absolutely. That's how it happens. You get sucked in and you and you learn things and you're like what else is there? Yes, and now my family I Usually they come to me for little things. We don't get sick in my house a lot  So they're always like what are you doing? What are you using and I'll be like, well, here's some tea and 04:46 I say community herbalist because I just offer consultations to people now at this point and if they want product,  I just let them have it. And that gets them an entryway into this  and it's an amazing place. It really is. um I am trying so hard to remember  to this spring, get um bird netting over my elderberry plants. Yes. Because they're trees. 05:15 Which means we're gonna have to figure out a way to throw it over the top of the trees and they're at least six feet tall.  I would just grab a ladder  and tie some rocks to the other end of your net so it's heavier when you toss it. Yep. And that will help.  I have a friend that I used to teach with and she has a farm that's about two  minutes from my house  and they have a light. 05:42 Grove of elderberry that's wild and I made four gallons of syrup this summer. Wow. Okay. So  I'm going to ask you because I keep looking it up and I keep thinking I need to make a bookmark and I always forget and have to look it up again.  What do you do with the berries to make it into syrup? Do you put them through a juicer? How do do it? 06:02 You boil them on the stove. There are some people that will make an oxymilk first with apple cider vinegar, which allows it to be more shelf stable.  But what I do is  I put all of the berries into a big pot and I boil that down on a slow cooker for like seven hours.  Some people boil it because you have to  use that heat to break down  the bad chemicals in the elderberry because they have cyanides in them. 06:32 from the seeds. But when you do that, that breaks that down, that heat breaks that down and it makes it tolerable for you to use. Okay. So I don't even know what the inside of an elderberry looks like. Is it a little tiny seed or is it, is it like-  So you know how like blackberries, each blackberry little pod has a seed in it that's about the same size of the berry? Yes. It's about the same. Okay. And then  after it boils down, I run it through a fine mesh strainer, put 07:01 equal part honey to it and refrigerate it. Okay. Can you  okay. So  we have a pressure canner and we have a water bath canner. Can you can it too? You can if you use I believe the shelf stable version. I don't make the shelf stable version so it needs to be refrigerated. So it's only good for about three to four weeks  on um outside of the refrigerator but then it lasts for about six months in refrigerator. 07:30 Okay, so it might be easier just to put it in the refrigerator. Yes, and there are tons of recipes. uh There is the Appalachian Forager. She's from Eastern Kentucky. She's got a big following on Facebook as well. She has a wonderful shelf stable recipe for it.  I've just not tried it yet. Okay, I'll have to look her up too because she might be somebody I want to talk to on the podcast. she was the possum festival queen as well, I believe. She's cool. She is amazing. She's big into fungus and mushrooms. 08:00 So she's, she's who  got me started. found her and I was like, if she can do this, I can do this. She's not far from me. And I, she's,  I, oh, she's amazing. I'm going to have to look her up. Okay. So  I didn't mean to go off on a tangent about elderberries, but every time somebody brings up um foraging, it's the first thing comes into my head and we have been here for five years.  I have not gotten a single elderberry yet because the birds get to them before we do. They are so quick. 08:30 Yep. And they're so quick. And that's why if it's the minute you have to watch them about every single day, the minute that they start ripening, you got to grab them. Yeah. The minute that they're good, grab them. The birds will get them. Cause if you go back the next day, they'll be gone.  Uh huh. Oh yeah. The birds love them. Yes. And it's so funny because I didn't even know we had these two elderberry trees until the second summer we were here. And I was like, I swear that's elderberry. 08:56 And my husband said, okay, we'll look up how to identify it. And I did. And I said, does it have thorns?  And he said,  no. And I said, that's elderberry.  I have a little bush that's growing in like my tree line. It's only ever had like three flowers on it. So it's not really worth breaking anything off of to use for myself. just leave it for the birds to carry around and hopefully they'll spread some more. Yeah. But, um, when I saw it, I saw the flowers and I was like, Oh, what is that? 09:26 And then I learned that it is also  very easily mistaken for em nightshade  and also wild carrot.  like, not nightshade, hemlock. Yes. So hemlock and elderberry and wild carrot all favor a lot. So you have to be very particular, but they're  all larger plants than each other. Like wild carrot looks more like  a wild flower. 09:56 And hemlock grows up to like 10 feet. Yeah. And hemlock has some, has some medicinal properties, but if you're not careful, it'll kill you. Yes,  it will. And it's spreading so much in our area that I've offered to come and pull it  and remove it for people so their kids don't get into it  and things like that. Cause it's dangerous even to touch if you're not careful. Cause it has that powder on it. Yeah. 10:27 So,  yup. Do you guys have wild plum that grows in Kentucky?  We don't. have, um, pawpaw trees  and,  um, I've never found one, but those are common here. Well, we have wild plum all over Minnesota and it's one of the first trees that blooms in the spring.  I would love plum jam. Uh-huh. Oh my goodness. We have a, we have, uh 10:54 It's really hard to explain. We have a wild plum tree, but it was actually five that grew right tight together.  it looks like a massive wild plum tree, but it's actually five different trunks. So you have a little grove. Yeah, it's really weird. It looks like one tree and then you walk up and you're like, oh, there's five trunks here. All together, like touching each other.  It's really bizarre. And my husband picked some and brought them in just for fun this fall. And I 11:22 They have little spots on them because they're buggy. not going to spray a wild plum tree. And I basically like cut it in half, washed it, cut it in half, took the pit out and ate the plum. And it was so good. They're so good. So sweet. And I said to him, said, if you and the boys want to have a plum picking party this fall, I said, I will help you make wild plum jam. And he said, 11:48 This year, 2026, that's what we're going to do. We're going to try to get enough Oh, that's so exciting. Yep. Oh, I wish you were closer to me. Well, maybe if we make it, I can let you know and I can ship you a jar. Yes, I would pay for it. You don't have to, and it's not allowed. We cannot. In Minnesota, we are not allowed to ship anything that is bought. Bought. Okay, got you. But I can send it to you as a gift and no one Absolutely. I would love that. 12:18 Well, I will see what happens.  I'll have a little box together and send you some remedies as well. Because there's some I can say I can send things as long as it's not glass.  Yeah, and we can send a glass jar. It's fine. We just can't I just can't sell anything that I make  that I cannot ship it.  What are like,  I'm unfamiliar because of course, it states very but what are like your all's cottage laws there?  Okay. 12:45 This is one of my favorite and not favorite subject to talk about ever.  In Minnesota, there is a cottage food  registration.  It's not a license. It's called a registration.  And you sign up, you register for this registration and you can sell things out of your home kitchen, but they have to be shelf stable products. Right. So  no cheesecake.  Um,  no oh 13:14 No buttercream frosting. Right. No, no dairy that hasn't been cooked into something. Right. We, I think it's similar here. Nothing that has to be refrigerated or warmed up. Yes. Yep. And, uh, the other thing is that in, I think it said 2027 in the email that I got, we're going to be able to ship our products within Minnesota. Well, that 13:43 opens up some new doors.  helps. Yes. But that's good. But it'd be really nice if we could ship anywhere. That would be great. Yeah, that would be. think I'm not real, I don't deal with food stuff. And when I talked to  my local health department about the herbal stuff that I was doing,  with Kentucky, you have to be careful because of the realm of cosmetics.  So if it can absorb into the skin, 14:13 You have to be very careful with what you call things. That's why soaps are okay. Like goat milk soap and things, but you can't make lotion  and sell it because it falls in the realm of cosmetic. So you have to be really careful.  That's why I geared more towards, I'll give consultations. I don't really like to sell my products, but I'll teach you  how you could do this for yourself at home.  Do you make lotions, Corey?  No, I make some balms and salves, but I've never 14:42 dabbled in lotion.  Yeah, I tried making a lotion for my kid. He had some really dry skin on his face and he  wanted a homemade remedy. And I used um cocoa butter and coconut oil and something else. Can't remember what it was now.  And I was trying to make a lotion and that was what the recipe that I pulled off the internet said it was, said it was a lotion. 15:06 And  when I put it all together and stirred it, it was like a lotion. And the next day it had set up like a salve. And I'm like, missing an ingredient. I don't even know how to make it lotion. And I don't know the science behind That's why I like salves. I like something that I can like  dip my finger in. And  I  use beeswax.  And however much beeswax you use will determine the  stiffness of your salve, which just works better for me. m 15:34 If I'm using anything for the face, I'm going with tallow. Yep. Yep. I didn't have any tallow at the time, so I ended up using the cocoa butter. Cocoa butter's great. Shea butter's great. I love  aloe butter.  Aloe butter's a good one too. Yeah. The thing that we discovered though when I made this for him is that cocoa butter smells like chocolate. Didn't realize that it would. And especially if it's raw cocoa butter. 16:04 Yep. And so he went to use it and he said, my face smells like a of hot cocoa, hot cocoa. And I well, I said, it's too bad you don't have a girlfriend right now because she would be kissing your face all over because most women love hot cocoa. They do. We do like hot cocoa.  It smells, it's, just such a rich smell because of the cacao, but it's so  fresh. 16:33 I like hazelnut for that reason too, because it smells rich. It's a really good fragrance. Oh, absolutely. I love hazelnut coffee. Yes. And you can smell it when it brews through the entire house. It's... Yeah, husband made coffee scented soap last weekend. I it was two weekends ago. And the whole house smelled like coffee all weekend. I was just like, can make coffee scented. 17:02 Soap anytime you want. Does he make goat soap? Nope. He makes just the cold process. I gotcha.  Cause we have friends that have goats, but they actually sell their goat milk to people so that they can drink it. So they don't always have any extra. And well, it's a very lengthy process to do goat. My mom used to, we raised Nigerians at my mom's for a long time and we would milk them and make soaps with them. And the curing process is very 17:31 lengthy comparative to like cold processing. But  we loved it. My mom, she loved making soap, but she  got busy. She started teaching and  the goats were not suffering, but she wasn't spending the time that she wanted to with them. So it was better for her to discontinue her herd. Yeah, it happens. It takes time and it takes energy to raise animals. 17:57 It does the stewardship and it is a dedication that a lot of people don't have  and it's hard work and discipline. And even if you're sick or cold  or it's ugly outside, they still have to have care. Yes. I always say that when you take on animals, you're taking on another kid. Yes.  And we, have hundreds of chickens, goats, or not goats. have sheep, quail. 18:28 I  have rabbits now, we have pigs. They all have care. They all have to be cared for, but they're all like my children. Yep. it's,  again, I'm going to say it again. It's so hard when you have animals because  you  love those animals. And my dog yesterday, no, two nights ago was acting off. 18:54 She was acting like she was starting to not feel good and I was like, please don't make me worry about you right now. Everything is going okay.  Do not be the problem child. She's the only  dog. And I got up  the next morning and she was back to her normal self. But I looked at her I said, thank you for not making me worry about you today. Right. Yeah. Like I can't handle that today. I had a bunny that was acting funny the other day. We had moved some cages around because I had a bunch of grow outs and I was looking at them. was like, tricks dude. 19:24 I don't know what's wrong with you, but like we can't be having this. And the next day he was fine. Yup. It's so, it's so  heart wrenching when you think something's wrong. And then if it turns out to be actually wrong, it's even worse. Yes. And I think  it bothers me in the world that we're in because people don't understand. 19:50 the difference between that some of my animals are pets and some of them are not pets, but they still receive the same amount of care and love.  And I would not let anybody suffer and 20:07 That care that we give to them doesn't differ just because we choose a different timeline for specific animals for the needs that they provide on our farms. Yeah, absolutely. We just lost a chicken yesterday and my husband came in from feeding the chickens and he was like, we're down a chicken. And  I said, you kind of thought maybe we might be down one sometime soon. And he said, yeah, he said, I, I wish there was a vet to take chickens to. 20:37 And I said, if they didn't expect you to pay the cost of 50 chickens to take care of the chicken, that would help too. Yeah. And that's the thing is with you, you have to, as a homesteader or a farmer or animal steward, you have to make those decisions. Like, am I going to pay a thousand dollars to take one chicken to the vet?  Or  am I going to do everything that I have in my resources and power? There are things that I keep here on hand. 21:06 I've spent a lot of time learning how to doctor the chickens through the seasons. So that way we stay ahead as a preventative maintenance. Anytime there's a shift in the air, they get oregano oil. Yep. And that cuts respiratory issues about like 75 % on my farm at least. We're going to have to try that. We put apple cider vinegar in their water. 21:34 I like the oregano oil because  oregano actually acts as an antimicrobial.  And so it's  wonderful for your gut health, but it will also take care of any kind of bacteria that could be happening that doesn't need to. I'm going to have to add that to the list. Thank you, Corey. You're so welcome. love it. We,  um, I use Tygaard  if there needs to be treatment, of course, which is available on Amazon. 22:04 but  I also get oregano oil in a dilute form and it's on Amazon too. Okay.  I will have to look that up and acquire some and add that. think,  I think we'll probably still do the apple cider vinegar because  it to help  too. Yeah. Our chickens have been laying humongous eggs lately because we have a light in the coop.  Yes. And that's 22:33 People are like, it's cold. They're not like, it's not the cold that does that. It's the light. sun went away. Yep. They need 12 to 14 hours of sunlight a day to produce eggs. Yep.  And people don't understand that. And you can,  which a lot of people do do artificial. I have so many  birds that I don't have to, we still get enough that I have a plethora of eggs.  Um, but with my quail, I have to substitute light sometimes where I won't get anybody laying. Okay. 23:03 Um, I have a question about your quail. Do you have a lot, do you have a lot of quail? Yes. Do you sell the eggs to restaurants? I have not ever had anybody inquire. We considered it, especially being so close to Nashville. Um, but I am not producing that many. Um, we just hatched a close to a hundred in September and I've been going through and regrouping everybody. So I've got four. 23:32 No, five different coveys with at least 20 hens right now, but I've not been  supplementing light for the last month. Okay. So what do you do with all the eggs when they're producing full tilt? My dad pickles them. Okay. They either get pickles, he eats them, he likes them as well, or I feed them back out to the flocks or the dogs. Okay. And they're little tiny eggs, right? Yes. I can just toss them out to them and they just eat them. 24:03 Okay. That makes sense.  Um, if you ever do have a chance to sell them to restaurants, you should look into it because restaurants really like quail eggs. Yes. And I thought we have some interesting restaurants here in Bowling Green, of course,  because it's like the third largest city in Kentucky, but there's just not a huge market for it right here.  For me, at least that I found, and I may not have done enough. 24:32 digging, but maybe I need to, have some friends.  need to dig around more. Yeah. I mean, I'm not telling you, you have to do it. I'm just saying, there is a huge market for that. Yeah. And even like the duck eggs too. Yeah.  I was very surprised. We were selling our friends, duck eggs in our farm stand this summer. Could not keep them stocked in the farm. People love them. Yeah. 25:03 And people, there are tons of people around here that like the quail eggs too because of the nutritional value that they offer compared to a chicken egg. Yep. hear that a lot. They've got, they're so nutritious.  I don't, I'm not an eggy person, which is so weird because I have so many birds that lay eggs, but  I usually  gift eggs. think in the last six months, my male lady has gotten a hundred dozen eggs. 25:33 She's the best, so she gets all of the eggs.  Nice. I'm sure she appreciates it. She's wonderful. But we also raise button quail. Not just, I have catornix and buttons, which are like oriental to look at quail, and they're tiny. And when they hatch, they're about the size of a bumblebee. Oh my God. They are so little, but they're so fun.  And they whistle, and it's like, 26:03 And it's so cute. I didn't even know there were button quail. I learned something new every day on this podcast. They're not really worth anything to a homestead, but somebody that would want maybe a little ornamental bird, but didn't want like a parakeet. They're great. They covey the same way. They are a little bit flighty, but they're so cute. 26:31 Yeah, there's a lot of they're so cute on a homestead. swear. They will. there's because it's everything's so cute. How do you not like farm animals? Yeah, it's ridiculous. I am a sucker for a baby goat. My  husband's mom or my husband's mother-in-law  and his sister all or my mother-in-law and his sister all raise goats. We have hair sheep. Yeah,  I prefer the sheep to the goat. They 27:00 behave a little bit better.  do. And it's funny because my husband and I have talked off and on for 20 years about how great it would be to get a couple of baby goats and raise them. We have been on a 3.1 acre homestead for five years. Do you think we've gotten any baby goats? No. Do you know why? Because they're a pain in the butt. Right. That's what I told Jared. We've only got about five acres right here, but we've got neighbors. And I was like, 27:28 Honey, the pigs get out enough. don't need the goats getting out too.  which we have wonderful neighbors. They love all of the things that we have because the chickens and the roosters especially, they crow all day every day because there's so many of them. They just talk to each other and they're like, we love it. It's so funny. We get so tickled at it. And I'm like, I'm so glad you don't hate me. Yeah. Our neighbor, our closest neighbor is a quarter mile away and I wish we lived that for far. 27:58 They are industrializing our area. We're hoping to move soon,  um, on further away from  Bowling Green. We're 30 minutes away from Bowling Green and it's still growing fast and fast.  So we can't get away from it fast enough. Well, I wish you all the luck in the world with that because the best thing we ever did was move out of the town that we lived in. 28:27 So we were right in town. We were townies. And now we live in the middle of cornfields and soybean fields and we love it. And our neighbors have a rooster who crows every morning. I hear him at 4 a.m. and he's got the softest crow. Like if he's crowing hard, something's wrong. Right. And they have at least one donkey and I can hear it bray now and then.  We would love one. And they have they have at least one. 28:56 bovine, I don't know if it's a steer or a cow. And every once in a while I will hear it doing the lowing sound that they do. The really low, soft moo. I grew up on a dairy, I love cows. Uh huh. And I just, when I get up in the morning, I sit on the porch with my coffee and I just listen to all the animals waking up at our neighbor's farm. And I'm like, hey, better them than us. Cause I get to hear it, but I don't have to take care of the critters. 29:22 Well, like we're in one of the smallest counties in Kentucky  and I'm nestled right in Mammoth Caves back door. Like I'm five minutes from the whole entire park. We're from Edmondson County, which holds the majority of the park itself.  So you wouldn't think that it would be as populated,  it's Bowling Green is growing. So now Edmondson County is growing. 29:49 And so on the side of the river that we're on, on the South side, it's just becoming more populated. I want to go to the other side where it's not, and there's not so many people. And so we wouldn't be going far, but far enough that it's not populated as bad. Yeah. Yep. I understand, Corey. I really do. Which is just, I think it's just happening everywhere now. 30:18 It's at pop, people are moving.  There've been an influx  of people from California here, which is great. I love that. Come live, come live here. It's not a slow life. It's not simple either, but it's not as fast as the city. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely.  All right. I try to keep these to half an hour, Corey, and we are there. was an absolute joy talking with you. Where can people find you? 30:45 They can find me on Facebook,  Mystic Roots Homestead,  Simples and Apothecary, Herbal Simples and Apothecary.  I have a TikTok page as well. TTS, Mystic Roots. I do TikTok shop, wellness stuff that  I align with and then of course the bunnies.  But that's the two places they can find me. You're not on Instagram yet?  I have a personal Instagram, but I don't use it. 31:14 I don't know. I got so focused on TikTok and the farm page on Facebook. I was worried to take on too much at one time. That's probably smart. The best advice I've gotten since I started the podcast two years ago  is to pick a couple platforms and stick with them, the ones that work for you. Yes. And that's what they said. That's what I heard as well. And that's what I did. And so far it's working really well.  I would like to advance more in meta because I feel like 31:44 There's more growth as a content creator, but as far as like, if you're doing anything with affiliate, it's TikTok right now. Yeah, I don't even, I have a TikTok account only because my daughter posts things and a friend of mine posts things and they're like, you should have a TikTok account so you can see what we're doing. It's fun over there sometimes that people can be mean because there's of course billions of people can be mean anywhere. I don't understand that. It's free to be kind to just go on about your day. 32:14 I'm going to say this. I haven't said this on the podcast ever before. takes  less muscles to smile than it does to frown. And I feel like it takes less muscles to be nice than it does to be mean.  I agree. I agree wholeheartedly. 32:31 I don't know why people have to be mean. It's one of my biggest pet peeves ever and I try not to talk about it it just makes me mad.  As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. If you want to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com slash support.  And I've started a second podcast with  Leah from Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook.  The podcast is called 32:59 Grit and Grace in the Heartland, Women in Agriculture. There are two episodes posted. Love that. Yeah. And we have a website that is, building it. It's like three pages in right now. And that's gritandgracenheartland.com. I will run over there and give you a follow. Everybody else should too. Mary, this was such a wonderful experience for me. It was really fun and I learned new things. I love you guys because you teach me things every time. 33:29 Well, I would love to chat with you another time. Anytime you let me know if you want to. Yeah, I would love to hear more and half an hour is not nearly enough time for everything I want to ask. So we'll do it again in about six months. Okay. Sounds good, Mary. We'll talk to you later. Thank you, Corey. Thank you.  Okay.  

Today I'm talking with Tracy at O'Connor Family Acres.  The Soap BeeZZ   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Tracy at O'Connor Family Acres in Le Sueur, Minnesota. It's a hyper local episode. Welcome Tracy, how are you? Hi Mary, thanks for having me. I am doing well today. It seems like it's going to be a little warmer today here, so very excited. And we're supposed to get freezing rain later today too. 00:28 I mean, why wouldn't we? It's Minnesota. So  yeah, it's very gray, but that's why we're warmer. so yeah,  Tracy's been on the show before. It was a little over a year ago. And we talked about that you had just gotten pigs,  mangalitas, mangalitas. Yep.  And um that was the newest thing then. And Tracy has been selling her duck eggs in the summertime, all this past summer. 00:58 at our farm stand, at our place. So it's been kind of fun. Yeah, it's been a great collaboration. I really appreciated the opportunity and it's been nice because we,  springtime and summer, we are  overflowing with duck eggs and then they take the winter off  and  know, hunker down, I guess.  Yeah, about the time they stopped really laying, we had a couple of people stop in and ask if we had duck eggs and I was like, nope, they're on vacation until April. 01:27 It's very true.  they yeah we and you can put heat and light in the coop But we kind of let them follow their natural cycle. That's just you know, the way we've we decided to do it. So Yeah,  when they lay they lay very proficiently and when they don't they don't so You know, so what else is new on the farm in 2025 because I didn't talk to you on the podcast since December of 2024 01:57 Yeah, so we've really just been expanding the goats.  We've had some baby goats this past spring and so they've been doing really well. um Getting kind of a wrangle on what the ideal number of ducks are.  So we've been working on that. And then we had  baby piglets  unexpectedly this fall. I mean, kind of unexpectedly. We knew the boar was in there with her, but... 02:25 We didn't realize she was pregnant. that was a fun uh adventure.  And thankfully, our mama pig, Fiona, her name's Fiona,  has been doing  really well with the piglets. So  we have six  gorgeous little baby piglets running around. How old are they now?  Oh,  they would be about two and a half months. OK. Yeah. 02:53 They were right before Halloween. just, yeah, just over about almost two and a half months. And they are so adorable. Like so adorable. I saw the pictures on Facebook that you posted, but I couldn't tell from the pictures how big they were when they were born. Were they the size of your hand or were they bigger than that? Yeah, they were probably the size of two of my hands, I would say. But they were, I mean, they were teeny teeny. 03:23 um And then of course it was October in Minnesota, so we got to pick them up and bring them in the barn and mama did great with that. She was  not overly thrilled but was not aggressive, which was great. And then  we were able to, after a bit of time, coax her into the barn. um And we had the heat lamp set up in there and  they have a big enough paddock where they can 03:49 go to the other side or come back and be under the heat lamp if they want. And they are just, they're doing super great in there. So yeah, looking forward to figuring out what we're going to do with. So what'll be eight pigs now, two adults. We have the male boar and then the female. And then we have the six piglets and of the six, I think only one is male. So all the rest are female as well too. 04:19 Oh wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah.  Okay. Well, you might be in the market to sell a couple sows in the spring.  Exactly.  Exactly. I don't think they're called sows until they have babies. don't know  what version Yeah, I'd have look. It's... guilt? Are they guilt maybe? Yeah. Yeah,  I think that's right. I don't know. I'd have to Google it and I don't... 04:46 want to make the clicky clacky noises on the keyboard right now. So yeah, no, I feel you. Yes, exactly. And then I've been doing soap. Soap has been my new adventure this year. yeah, tell me the story on how that happened because I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, I kind of fell into it, which was awesome. So my neighbor has the soapies is the name of the business. 05:12 um And the soap bees has been around for 20 years, over 20 years. So my neighbor, Anne, who is amazing, um was looking to retire and not do soap anymore. um And  she asked if I would be interested in taking over the business. And so we made some soap together and I was like, oh my gosh, I love this. Absolutely, I would do it. So I have a full time jobby job, um you know, so it's really more of a 05:41 you know, a part-time  pay for my hobby kind of job.  You know, maybe make a little extra money, but not, you know, I'm not trying to do it full-time, full-time, but um so I do probably one,  one show a month or so  and um just, you know, direct sales then  and um 06:04 She mentored me for about seven months. made soap together.  I have her recipes, so it's all the same recipes that she's been  using for the last 20 years. um And the soap is amazing. Absolutely love it. And then  I ventured into,  also do, we do a shaving soap puck.  And then  I also ventured into dish soap this year. So I've been making that bar of 06:33 of dish soap. So that's new just in the last couple of months. um So yeah, I was really fortunate to have an amazing mentor  and um you know, she told me the do's and don'ts so I didn't have to learn those on my own through  trial and error, although I've made plenty of trial and error my own self once I was flying solo. So, but it's been good. It's been really good. Good. Have you had a batch Cs on you yet? 07:03 Absolutely. Yes.  Yeah.  It's  not fun at all.  And I just had my first batch  I  made.  So the soap or the shaving soap recipe is less because I put them in the round molds instead of the big square loaf molds. Yeah. And so it's less butters and oils  and  I put in the fragrance for a one tray of the square ones. 07:33 instead of the lesser. And so now I have this chalky,  crumbly soap and I'm like, oh great.  So that batch is  going to get tossed probably. But yeah. hate it when that happens. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I've had a few where, um, so the other thing too is the sense that she was using the company that she went through. I took over the business in January and 08:01 end of January, they went out of business. I was like 90 % of the  sense that she had been using were from that company. And I was like,  okay. So now I've  been kind of trial and erroring, erroring, trial and erroring soaps,  our fragrances. And so that's been a whole process as well too. But I feel like I have a good core group now of 08:27 sense and then I just kind of mix stuff in when I feel like something new. So that's been good. So what are your usual sense that you make? Yeah, the big sellers are, mean, oatmeal, milk and honey hands down is the like best seller and I put ground up oatmeal in there as well too. So it has a little bit of exfoliating action and also it's very soothing for the skin. So I have people who 08:56 have sensitive skin that order, I mean, like 15 bars at a time.  They just love it. And then um Angel Smiles is another big seller for us.  Sweet Rain has been an amazing one.  But I have a lot of the tried and trues. I have a cotton,  I have a eucalyptus, uh lemongrass is my personal all-time favorite.  I love the lemon smell. That's a good one. 09:26 Um, and then I tried a new one this fall called crackling birch. And that one has been a great seller. So that one smells really good too. Nice. Um, Kyle and I have had one batch of soap seized on us and it didn't all the way, but we just, we just went ahead and poured it because it was still pourable, but it was starting to get thick, thick. Yeah. One hadn't poured it and let it cure. 09:54 And it turned out that it was usable, but it was ugly as sin. And so we didn't share it with anybody. We just used it till it was gone, because it was fine. It was just, it just looked wrong. When we sliced it, had like little air bubbles in it. Yeah. Which you're I actually had a batch of eucalyptus that did that.  And the best advice I ever got was  just... 10:19 Basically just sell it. Don't worry about it because at the end of the day people understand that it's handmade and that You know, it's you're not a machine pumping it out. There's imperfections. It's gonna look a little different sometimes um and I was  Honestly, I mean there's times when I've been like, I'm gonna mix these colors and it doesn't work, know, or I'm gonna do I'm gonna make this. Oh, I did um 10:45 I did one for Valentine's Day last year  that was going to be, was the, the fragrance was sensual. So I'm like, oh, that's perfect. I'll do red. It'll be great. Right.  Um, it turned brown.  So I was like, wow, that's  not very sensual.  Um,  so I ended up calling it Woodland Bouquet and it was one of my best sellers. What did it smell like? 11:14 It smelled like woodland flowers basically when I first smelled it and that's the other thing too, which I'm sure you guys know from doing it.  Sometimes what you smell in the bottle when you get it is different  once it mixes with the oils and the lye and you know all the stuff. And so when I opened it, it smelled like, I mean, old lady perfume to me, honestly, like in a not good way.  And I was like, oh no. 11:43 But once it cured through the soap, oh, it smelled so good. It was just like, yep, like walking in and picking a bouquet of woodland flowers. That's what it smelled like. So that's why I called it woodland bouquet. And I figured,  you know, brown woodland. That's okay.  Yep. And honestly, not everybody is hung up on the names.  They want whatever they want. And if it smells good and it does the job, they're going to buy it anyway. uh It's so true. 12:12 Kyle made a batch of leather soap the other day, last weekend. eh That  leather scent that we get from Bramble Berry is  so strong when  you open the bottle em and it gives me a headache. So he told me he's going to make leather soap and I said, let me get some Tylenol on board before you start because it's going to make my head pound. And he was like, okay, I'm going to start in an hour. was like, okay, let me go grab two Tylenol right now. 12:41 Yeah. Did not end up with a headache, which was great. But the reason I'm even sharing about the leather soap is that I would never want a soap bar that smelled like this stuff when you opened the bottle. It's very, very strong and it's very chemically smelling. Yeah. But the bars of soap when they're done, they smell just like walking into a Wilson's leather shop. It's so good. Yeah. It's so nice. Yeah. It is so true that there are some where you open the bottle and you're like, 13:11 And there are some that are just not my cup of tea, but they sell well. So when I'm making them, I'm like, oh, I'm going to smell like this  all day.  But they sell really great. And someone had asked me that actually at the last show I was at. And they were like, are there any scents that you don't like? And I go, oh, absolutely. But I will not tell you which ones they are.  I'll never admit it. 13:40 Yeah, and I actually told you wrong. made the leather ones two weekends ago.  He made coffee soaps last weekend and that's always a happy day in my house because everything smells like coffee  all day long when he makes that. And then as it's curing, the whole upstairs smells like coffee.  Oh, and that's got to be your absolute favorite because you are a coffee fanatic. I love it. I do. I love the coffee soaps when they're curing because 14:05 It just permeates the whole house and it smells like there's brewing coffee even  though there isn't because I'm down to a,  we make a pot in the morning  and I only have about two cups a day now. Whereas I used to drink a pot and a half a day in my younger days. Yeah, I hear you. I feel like as,  as we get older, things affect us differently, especially caffeine and alcohol and you know, all the things, all the fun stuff, rude. 14:33 Well, I used to say all the time I would sleep when I'm dead and now sleep is my favorite thing ever. So that has changed too. It's so true. I feel like that's a whole nother podcast though. Yeah, the one about peri, menopause and menopause. exactly. The minute you hit 40, 45, everything changes. It's so true. It's so true. Okay. 15:00 So I just made back to sorry, back to soap. I just made a fresh batch of my first batch of coffee soap. So I'm going to have to bring it over and compare it with your, like do a smell comparison with yours. I'm not sure if I like it or not, but I got to wait for it to cure. So well, we can, we can trade. you like ours, we can give you a bar of ours. And if I like yours, we can take a bar of yours. Yeah, that'll be fun. That'll be so fun.  I love it. I love that you're doing so and 15:30 Kyle said to me the other day, said, you know, he said, I think I just want to make the business a hobby. Because we don't live in an area where it's going to really make money. And I said, that's true. And he said, so we should probably fold the LLC. And I was like, before you do that, said, I've got a podcast and I've got a second podcast starting here. 15:54 let's keep the LLC for a little bit because the podcasts might actually grow this year more than they have. And he was like, okay.  So, so we're basically gonna still sell at the farmer's market and still sell at the farm stand. But, his big dreams for being, you know,  rich off of our little business are  done.  Yeah, I don't, I feel like anybody that I talked to that does it, you know, on a smaller scale is. 16:24 You have to have two jobs or you have to have a breadwinner and someone doing it, you know, separately because there's just with the cost of everything, there's just no way to, you know, unless you're like really hustling and really, I mean, you have to, you have to really dive in. And to your point, I mean, there's so much in the market that you have to kind of, you know, really 16:53 I don't know, really hit a sweet spot  or, you know, travel a Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard. Yeah. There's got to be something unique because if you're just making the same thing everybody else is making, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Yep. Well, and I think like I've definitely been at shows where you can tell vendors when you can tell the vendors who are doing it for their sole income versus people who are not. mean, they're sometimes it feels there's like this 17:23 energy where it's really like intense. went with a friend. I met a friend  who started doing charcuterie boards with the em acrylic inlay. ah And I was like, oh, bless your heart because I can't imagine working with acrylic, but  she does beautiful work. so we were chatting, you know, shows and things like that because she knew I had done some shows and you 17:52 How do I figure out which shows I want to do and yada yada. And we were walking around this little vendor fair and we went to a soap booth and this lady had a laundry stick stain, which I love a good laundry stick stain. So I was like, oh, can you tell me what's in your laundry, you know, in your soap here, in your laundry soap, stain soap stick, I don't know, whatever. And she was like, no, I cannot tell you. And I'm like, 18:23 okay.  It was just so she's like, and then she went into the, 12 reasons why she won't tell me what's in there. But we were walking away and I told my friend, I was like, mean, good luck trying to find the right ratio of those ingredients to get the exact same thing. said, I literally have my ingredients on my label. I was like, you know, but good luck trying to figure out how to mix those seven butters and oils together to get the exact recipe I have, you know. 18:52 Um, so I just feel like sometimes people are really intense with it. Yeah. I have stopped asking people questions like that because, and if I do, I'm like, okay, I don't want the secret sauce thing. Just give me a basic idea of how you make the thing because people do get really testy and I'm like, I don't want to steal your idea. I just want to know what I'm going to be putting in my body or on my body. 19:20 Yes, exactly. Like knowing what's in there, like knowing it has coconut oil or shea butter or whatever is one thing. But if you're like, oh, I need to know, do you have seven ounces of this or do you have like, that's a fully different question. But just knowing what's in there. I what if you're, I had a, had a lady who came up and I have coconut oil and she's extremely allergic to, one of the ingredients, maybe it wasn't coconut, it was something. 19:51 And I was like, oh, yep, don't touch it. It's in there. oh It's important to know what you're  putting in there. then there's, people have  certain, um they want certain things in products or don't want certain things in products and that's your personal choice. if it doesn't align with what you want to utilize, then  you shouldn't have to. 20:20 Yeah, it's kind of crazy, but  I've really been enjoying it. The shows are fun. It's nice, especially since I work from home. It's nice to be able to get out and  see people and interact with people. um And for the most part, everybody's been extremely supportive, extremely friendly. um You know, some shows are great successes and some not so much. uh that's, you just kind of take the good with the bad. And you know, I always look at it as an opportunity to get out and try new things. 20:49 Yes, and you are a social butterfly, unlike me, who is basically a caterpillar still in the chrysalis. You're so sweet. I always say I'm an introvert that presents as an extrovert. I am great small group and great one-on-one. If you get me in a massive crowd of people, I'm like, ugh. I still force myself to do it, but I am... 21:17 I'm much better one-on-one in small group, which is perfect for affairs and stuff because it's small, you  you're talking to individual people. You're not having to, you know, speak in front of large groups or that's not definitely. I can do it. I don't love it. You know, I'm sitting in my sunroom right now looking at the birds outside, which is perfect. um I love your sunroom. Your sunroom is so cool. Thank you. 21:45 It is, it was a big selling point for their buying point for the house. guess it would be buying point. um Yeah, we were, I really love this room and it's my absolute favorite. Thank you, Mary.  Does it stay warm in the wintertime? It stays. Yeah, it does.  There's in floor heat, which is nice. um So it works out really well. um So the thank you to the people who developed this. 22:12 end of the house before we bought it.  It's beautiful though, so it's great. And I just refilled the bird feeders this morning, so, I knew we were going to be chatting and I'm like, oh, you can sit out here and relax a little bit while we, while we, while I get to talk to my friend Mary. Yeah, I'm going to fill in the listener here. I, my husband and I have been over to Tracy and her husband Paul's house once. I have been there once and the sunroom she's talking about. 22:40 It basically is uh windows on  one whole wall. And I can't remember if the other short wall is windows or not. Is it just one more? Yeah, it's got one like big sliding glass door basically. m Yep. uh behind their house is a ravine.  the glass wall looks out into the trees  that are at the top of the hill before the ravine.  And uh it's the most peaceful thing to sit there and 23:07 have a cup of coffee and chat and just be looking outside at the birds and the bird feeder. It is my absolute favorite. Thank you so much. Yeah. And I, um, you know, I have house plants in there too, so you kind of get the oxygen and the greenery going. So yeah. Yeah. We need to have you guys over again soon. we do. And today is not it because I'm not going anywhere in freezing rain. That is fair. But, uh, 23:37 Yeah, my favorite room in our house is my kitchen because  I've always had either an apartment with a kitchen, which is not fun.  And the house that Kyle and I had before had a galley style kitchen and it was very small and it wasn't a room that you could sit in and have a cup of coffee. And I love our little breakfast nook thing at the end of the kitchen because we didn't have that before. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and for the listeners, we've been to your house a couple of times and 24:05 There's an amazing island in the middle of the kitchen where we get to sit and have coffee and chat a bit while the boys are out talking garden stuff. And uh we've had dinner over to where we've sat in  the nook and had dinner, which was great. It's great conversation and it's warm and  welcoming and I love it.  Thank you. 24:29 And our little nook has windows that look outside into the trees too. So I think Tracy's going to have a running theme about wanting to look out into the trees and see the birds.  Exactly. Exactly.  All right. So  I wanted to share this too. Tracy gave us three beautiful kittens about what a month and a half ago, maybe less. That's about right. Yep.  Because we needed some more barn cats because we were down to two. 24:56 and two is not enough for humongous pole barn and a 3.1 acre  lot. uh the kittens have decided that they are brave. They have finally come out of the pole barn  and they were up on the steps this morning and they are gorgeous. And anyone who has a ranch or a farm knows that barn cats have their place and they need to be here to do their job. But I also fall in love with them just a little bit. 25:21 We were holding off on naming them because we were afraid that they would run away when we let them out of their carrier. They did not. They have stayed. And the long haired grayish,  blackish  one  is Smokey  and she's female. The one that looks just like her but is short haired  is named Shorty because she has short hair. And then there's a long haired orange one that we don't know the gender of yet.  And his name is Junior because he looks just like our other orange barn cat. 25:51 And thank you, Tracy, for sharing the kittens with us because they are so special. thank you for taking the kittens because we,  anyone who knows who has a farmer ranch knows they multiply very quickly. So,  um, yeah, no, it's been great. We, I'm glad that they're doing so well and I'm glad they're venturing up to see you, which is good. So they're, they're great. The cats are the, you know, just. 26:20 They're  to your point, they have a purpose, right? They're rodent control for sure. And they a really good job. A great job. Yeah. But they are also, you know, they're fun. They're fun to interact with and pet the kittens and, you know, watch the cats do funny things and  they're fun.  So I came out the other day, I went out to feed the goats and the pigs and I turn around and it's, you know, just like late. 26:48 dusk so it's almost night but there's just enough light you know yeah um and i turn around and there's cats in the tree like up in the tree over  where the roof is and i'm like what are you doing like there's four cats up there what is happening right now  um and they just you know they were just chilling they went up there after something i'm sure but oh crazy um 27:17 The kittens that you gave us, can't remember if was last weekend or the weekend before, whatever the last weekend was when it was actually sunny for an afternoon. We've only had a few of those lately. um All three of the kittens and the older orange cat were out in where the doors are to the pole barn, like where the track is.  They were just roughhousing and rolling each other and then they would be nice and groom each other and they go back to rolling each other. 27:44 And I sat there and watched them for 15 minutes because it was just so entertaining to see them playing. Exactly. It's so fun. I know I'll always get caught up, but sometimes when the baby goats are running around, I'll watch them play with each other, have a good time. I sat out there, I threw some hay out for the pigs because they like to kind of burrow and make a nest. so I threw a couple of hay. 28:11 pieces of hay over  and the pig was literally picking it up and throwing it and putting it everywhere, strewing it everywhere. And it was just really fun to watch him just love life. um And so that's always, you know, it's such joy. It brings such joy for sure, which is a lot of uh fun. Simple joy.  We humans think that we're the only ones that play. 28:38 but almost every animal will play when they're young.  Oh yeah. So apparently it's something we actually all need is to play.  Yes. Yeah. Well, it brings joy for sure. And then seeing other animals, peoples, humans,  know,  laughter  is definitely the best medicine. Someone said that.  I don't know who said it, but I'm glad they said it. Yes.  Agreed. 29:06 All right, Tracy, I tried to keep these to half an hour and we're almost there.  Where can people find you?  Yeah, so I have,  we have our farm pages, O'Connor Family Acres um on Facebook and I also have the Soap Bees, which is on Facebook as well. um So those are my two, my farm, you my homestead page and then my soap page.  So both of those are on Facebook and I... 29:36 You know,  do so I do ship my soap. um I actually have a customer in Massachusetts I ship to and a customer in Florida that I ship to. So, ah you know, just I post  a list of my sense every now and again, and people just message me through Facebook to order. So very nice. So these on Instagram. ah It is not, but I was actually just looking the other day about setting up an Instagram account. Do you have an Instagram? 30:03 I do. don't like Instagram because I still don't understand how the algorithm works. Yeah. Okay. I'm going have to, I'll do a little more research on that. Yes. And I have been asked by customers to set up a website for orders. So that's on my 2026 bucket list, but you know, there's an expense with that. So I also try to keep it as, you know, I try to keep my prices as low as possible. And some of that is, you know, 30:32 considering those things, but um so eventually I'll probably get a website together, but right now I'm all on Facebook.  Well, it's free and it works for now.  That is true. That is true. Thank you so much. It was really great to chat with you today. It really was. And I will talk to you after I stop recording about the website thing because I have a couple of things for you. Okay.  Oh, perfect. Love that. Thank you. All right. As always, you can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. 31:01 And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com slash support.  And I have a new podcast,  the first long episode. I did a teaser on Friday, but the first long episodes is going to be dropped tomorrow morning.  And the new podcast is called Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture. Which was amazing.  The teaser. 31:24 Anyway,  I did listen to it. You guys did a really nice job. It's I think it'll be  it'll mirror this nicely, but with a different focus, which will be awesome. um And you do an amazing job. So I'm excited to hear more about the women in agriculture.  Well, 2026 is the International Women in Agriculture,  sorry, International Year of the Women Farmer. So. 31:51 Yeah, very cool. Yeah, I learned that on your podcast. So  women are starting to really step forward and we, Leah and I really wanted to die.  Cannot talk. Talk about it in more depth. There we go. Perfect. Another cup of coffee coming. That's what I hear.  Oh, for sure.  All right, Tracy, thanks for taking the time to chat with me. Yeah, thank you for taking the time. Have a great day. 32:21 You, too.  Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. Built From Dirt : Farm School www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farm in Montana.  Morgan's been on the podcast a few times under a different name. So hello, Morgan, how are you? Hello, I'm doing good. Yes, most of your viewers know me as Groovy Grazers, which we're still doing, but... 00:26 We had talked about last time trying to come up with a farm name. And so we finally figured it out and it's coal Canyon farm. So we're super excited to finally have that done after two years.  That's a long time to settle on a permanent name.  Yeah. Yeah. It was hard to name the land. We live in a very unique area. We live in canyons, ah but there is  a Canyon battlefield. We were trying to take on like not your atypical Montana name, you know? 00:55 It definitely fits. We're excited. We got to come up with our brand next. That's going to be a nightmare. guess trying to get your brand registered here can be really hard and there's not very many like single stick brands left. So that's man. I hope that doesn't take two years, but that's next on her on the chopping block. So  I don't know that we have that situation here. When we started our place, we just picked a name, registered it with the state and that was it. 01:21 So the name's okay. I can pick my name without registering that with the state, but I mean, we don't have cattle right now. We have horses um and the sheep don't have to be branded. So it's not like a super big rush, but if I'm going to have horses, especially being in Montana,  going missing is not uncommon or they get out.  Brand, brand, brand. get it. Okay. Brand. It's okay. Yeah. I'm talking like iron brand and like, 01:51 either freeze dry or hot iron brand um because that's like one of the next big things that you do in Montana. You pick a name and then you figure out your brand  and people sell some brands for thousands of dollars if they're a single easy one, but it's only 250 bucks to register with that, I think with the state here. So that's not bad. That's one of the less expensive things  to have to do. Okay. Okay. oh 02:19 because I'm looking at a computer and because I know Facebook, was thinking brand as in brand like, Oh yeah. I mean, your brand is so important though when you're a farm, right? Like that's why I built it through Groovy Grazers, even though we didn't have a name because I was like, well, this is how we're going to operate anyways. Like having some type of grazing or deal going on, whether it be sheep or whatever, I just knew we were going to eventually be a farm face. And so I didn't want to wait on that. So yeah, like if you're a farm and you don't, 02:49 have a Facebook page, you don't have an Instagram.  mean, TikTok is one of those where I'm back and forth on if you really need it, but Facebook and Instagram for sure, or a website. If you don't wanna do social media, it's really hard, you gotta do more advertising and word of mouth, but having a brand is so important, like your colors, the way your logo is, can you put it on items? Like these are all things that people don't even think about, and that's actually why we did Cold Canyon Farm, and we built our, oh 03:18 Facebook group, it's called Built From Dirt Farm School. Because a lot of people, they don't know how to do this. Yeah, I was going to ask you about the farm page too. I didn't do my weather update. what's, I usually open it with how's the weather. So how's the weather in Montana today? Oh man. So I mean, it dropped from like 34 down to one degree last night and we have like a powder. 03:43 that came so like not feet of snow which can happen here but it's just the swings are ridiculous this year it's not good for the animals how's your weather? we are in a blizzard we are officially under a blizzard warning and you can't see to the road from my house and that's about 200 feet whoa look at this dedication though this is what it takes to like do any type of business right to be honest Mary like the fact that you're here still trying to do this is awesome you don't want to get you down 04:11 Oh no, no, no, no. It always makes me laugh when I see blizzard warning because we've had blizzard warnings before and it hasn't really been a blizzard. This is a blizzard. Like this is a for real Minnesota blizzard. And I'm like, this is great. Our house is warm. We're having roast chicken and winter squash and broccoli for dinner. The dog is fine. chickens are all nice and cozy in their coop. We're fine. We're going to ride out to No problem. 04:40 Yeah, when you have that. we went without power like two weeks ago for 36 hours. Oh, I traded which this is awesome about farming to we bartered six goats for a frickin wood stove, dude, like nice. Wait, because we don't have any heat in the house. We just have radiant floor heat, which is propane fed through our instant water heater. But if the power goes out, guess what? It does not work at all. 05:10 So,  you we went 36 hours without heat. Now, granted, was in the  50s, but like right now, it's, I mean, it's probably less than 10 degrees outside.  And  the floors are keeping the house warm and the oil heater is, but if we went without power again, our house would be cold.  So we traded for wood stove. Because then once you're in that position of being self-sufficient, like you guys are with your generator and stuff, then you're like, okay, it's okay. 05:38 uh Everything can burn down outside, but I'm okay right now. It's warm. It's good. We're okay. Yup. I will tell you something funny though. I said to my husband yesterday, I said, if you, need anything from the store, you should probably go now because it is going to be impossible to drive by nine 30 tomorrow morning. And he said,  Oh no, we're fine.  And then he got up this morning, grabbed his coffee and he was like,  I'm going to need to go to the store. And I was like, for what? And he said, sugar, we're almost out. And I said, we have enough sugar. 06:07 to last for at least a day and a half. I said, it's gonna be snowing by the time you're ready to get out. I said, do not, do not go anywhere. It's gonna be bad.  He's like, okay, we'll see. And then it was snowing by 9.30, I think. And  he looked outside and he said,  yeah, I think we have enough sugar to last us. I was like, yeah, I think so too. In that moment when you're like, I told you so.  I didn't say it. I tried really hard. 06:34 to say that out loud because it's really insulting and he gets really offended so I don't say it but I think it really really loud.  Okay so that's the weather update it's blizzarding here it is not blizzarding where you are that's good yeah  and you have all kinds of things going on since I talked to you only like a month or two ago. Yeah pivots right?  Big pivots so tell me. So no more throwing spaghetti at the wall. 07:00 that like, you know, we kind of talked about that last time we were like, we're just gonna kind of throw it and see what works there. And  really just spent like the last month since we talked, making some hard cuts, the goat market is down, sheep market is stable, the cattle market is insane, right? Like it's high, but it's dropping again. And so just trying to figure out like where 07:24 Where do we fit? We're staying at the property. So that helps a lot to write. We know what's going on.  Um, I think the last time we spoke, we had one horse, maybe two horses.  had the fillies. Yeah, we just had, yeah. So we had the new Philly, which is a paint,  um, Betty. And then we had Bambi, my husband's $100 BLS  Philly. And then I traded my six year old gelding, um, with a gentleman who really needed a mount. 07:51 This was before the horse herpes outbreak, EVH, which was turning neurological and killing a bunch of horses within 12 hours.  I traded because one of his horses had passed away, uh my six-year-old gelding for a Kiger Mustang. I have uh three young fillies. One is going to be two this upcoming year.  And then I have the two that are turning one on January 1st. 08:16 Quite the young gang here, which is fine. That's why we were kind of talking about branding in the beginning because I want to make sure if I'm gonna put all this time and money into them I have a marked em as mine  and We came up with farm school. There's a lot of downtime in Montana  and We've thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall. So one of the things about Cole Canyon farm is that you should know we're working  Actively on our farm as a family. We're diversified 08:44 farm, so not all of our streams of income come from what we produce. And it's not a hobby farm.  when we last talked, Groovy Grazers is 100 % a hobby farm. It was not making hay. It made half the hay this year that it needed to. I was working my body to death. think  the hustle culture in farming and homesteading needs to stop. You need to work when you're rested and inspired, and you need to 09:14 rest when you're tired, which is hard to say, but in the last month, I've taken three days off  and I have literally transformed our whole farm into what I've been dreaming and kind of alluding to in our last conversations over the few podcasts we've done is that this is what we wanted. We wanted to be able to educate the public ah and build systems from scratch. on  on very low income, I think we see too many Instagram farms where these people 09:44 have made six figures doing something else, now they get to Hobby Farm. That's a Hobby Farm.  A real working farmer is very different. You know, we've talked about finances, we've talked about how do you decide what's working and what's not. And I think that Andy and I have thrown enough spaghetti at the wall that we can help others. uh My big girl job before  I became a fully disabled veteran was working at Intuit. I sold accounting software. So all I did for 10:12 10 hours a day was pick apart other small businesses. And I really loved auditing the farms,  not auditing their numbers, but auditing their systems, figuring out what's working for them, what's not working for them, where might there be uh fat that they can trim off their bills, like all of these things are where my passion came from and why I was so good at selling QuickBooks accounting software. 10:37 I mean, I was top 10 % in the first six months. It was almost unheard of what I was doing. And it was because I had such a passion for helping people figure it out. So was like, well, how can I take that passion and still help other people? And that's why we made Bill from Dirt Farm School. You know, it's practical education for new homesteaders, single income families, because I think that's an untouched area in our industry. Nobody wants to talk about one income. 11:04 Women starting over that are trying to homestead by themselves on low income and really honestly just folks tired of working themselves broke like that's that's farm school Nice  nice Did you say that you you hired a coach did you tell me that yeah, so I actually hired a coach Which I think is a big thing. So that's what helped get me focused So like I'm not gonna sit here and say that I did 11:34 all of this reorganizing on myself, what I did is I hired Melanie Greenenough.  She's been on multiple areas, you know, lots of different podcasts all over the world actually. And I got hooked up in one of her free trial classes and I sat down and it was all about how to brand, how to make sure that you're using your time wisely, all these things that I knew how to do, but I needed a system put in place. 12:04 So  I thought about it and I was like, well, I can do this with farms. I may be not good at helping other people set up like a networking  or setting up. I mean, she is in the networking space, but that's not all she's doing. She's actually teaching me how to run my business and where to figure out when to hire like employees, when to. um 12:29 Like when to have somebody that's more specialized because you could be doing other things. So a lot of this is us going back to the education because she's like, you guys have so much life experience. We have  Andy, my husband, who  is  absolutely an expert in living organic soil on the biomes of dirt and stuff. And she's like, why are you guys not spreading this information farther than just Billings, Montana? 12:57 And was like, yeah, I guess I never thought about that. Like, do people really want to take online classes? Are they really doing that? And I guess because I'm so  adverse to being  online because I worked from home for many years, actually, way before COVID, I did  a little bit of online work that I was like, well, people want to get out and see people. But that's true. 13:22 But there's not a lot of people educating others because it's like this gate kept secret. Like, yes, there's some knowledge that in farm school will charge for, but not everything has to be charged. It's all about making a community.  And so that's what Melanie brought us to is like Groovy Grazers is great. But when we do the ROIs and we do the projections, it's just not going to work when I can't sell a Nigerian dwarf that's clean tested  and could be papered for $50. 13:53 Yeah. Yeah. There's no way, but I needed somebody  that was above me to say like, Hey, not above me, but somebody that worked in multiple business spaces to be able to say, this is just, here's some direction. like the coaching is definitely a huge part of why I've gotten focused because I needed that check of like, Hey, this is 14:19 The way you're doing right now isn't sustainable for 15 years with my body. It's not. Like  I am disabled even though I don't look like it all the time. I have problems and I'm starting to slow down. My whole dream was to do goat milk, right? To milk the goats. Now we're doing sheep because sheep market is more level and it's multiple streams of income. 14:45 So that's all I needed somebody was like Melanie to sit down and also inspire. So I think a lot of people forget how inspiring it is when you have a group of like-minded folks who all want the same thing. Like it's powerful, it's vibrational. If everything has a vibration to it, if you are low, you know, low hanging fruit that's vibrating low. 15:11 your life is just gonna bring in chaos. But if you're around other people that are successful and trying to be successful, even if they're not in the same industry as you and if they are even better, but it brings in this like, okay, I can do this.  You don't feel so alone. And that was why I decided to do coaching this year is because we live rural Montana. If you can hear the ticking in the background, that's the one I apologize. It's making our vent go, but. uh 15:40 We're in rural Montana. I don't get out of the house often. I'm a homeschooling mom, but there's ways that I can connect with other homeschooling moms. So that's why there's been so much change. And I think sometimes people need to understand that getting a coach doesn't mean that somebody is telling you how to run your job or how to become a brand. It's just direction. And that's what the farm school is built on. It's just trying to give people direction. Yes. And having a coach. 16:10 It gives you direction, but it also lets you see what you're doing from someone else's point of view. Yeah. She can use strong points. didn't even think of Mary. Yeah. You can't see it the way somebody from the outside can see it. Yeah. She was like, Morgan, get online, start educating, make a Facebook group so you don't feel so alone out in the middle of nowhere, Montana. 16:36 and connect with other homeschool moms that are in the same boat as you. Find other veterans, find other people that feel like they can't do this. That's why it's called built from dirt. We are built from dirt. There's not high revenue streams coming in on this farm. We are trying to do this as little debt as possible. I have less than $7,000 in debt other than my truck. 17:00 which yes, that is 45. Everyone needs to understand trucks are not cheap anymore. That's an F-150. And then we have, of course, our house note, but those are have-tos to survive. You've got to have at least one working vehicle and a home. Yep, absolutely. To even homestead. Yeah, yep. I am so excited for you that you're going to go in this direction because you have the best energy. Like every time I've talked with you, 17:28 You sound so full of positivity and good ideas and you're so willing to help. Of course you're going to teach. Yeah. And like that was her whole thing. She was like, Morgan, you are a little fire. Go light other people's fire. Essentially what she told me and like doing the consulting, the one-on-one and farm audits. Like we're going to help people with land, but no clear plan. Right? Like we've done it. We've,  I've done multiple. 17:55 of places, I had a small micro farm with my ex-husband  and we were planning that. That was in Louisiana. I farmed a little bit in Texas. I grew up in Texas, ah you know, in the horse industry. I lived in Arizona trying to farm there  and then I've come to Montana. So I've been in a lot of different areas. ah You know, this is going to help people that are bleeding money on feed and animals because it's really hard to understand when you're just starting out. 18:23 what goes into an animal. Like it's more than just the feed, the minerals, the medication. It goes into time. It goes into hoof trimming. It goes in to water if you have to haul it or owning a well and maintaining it. Like there's so many things that people don't realize and really just new farmers that are too overwhelmed with too many ideas. Cause like you said, when you have a coach, they stand back, they see all the good and 18:51 And let's be honest, the bad that you may not see.  And they're able to gently tell you, in a very  polite way, this is what I'm seeing, and then directionally point you. And I think that comes from the way humans used to live, know, hundreds of years ago, there was always like, you know, the elders that would kind of help out the youngins and help point them in the right direction. And so most coaches are going to be older than you. Some might be younger, but you got to look at their life experience. 19:21 You know, we're going to be able to help people with their livestock based on the acreage, the time, their physical ability, their cash flow, right? Like one of the things I'm really good at doing is looking at history, computing it into like some graphs and really taking a look at it and then also being able to understand grazing. OK, if you have this many head of cattle, this is where you live. 19:47 take a picture of it, go cut me a one by one square and bundle that up. How much hay do you have in there? How much grassland do you have in there? I'm gonna be able to give you an idea.  I'm not saying that I'm gonna change somebody's life just by consulting them. I'm saying that I'm gonna give them the right tools and help them see the things they don't see. There's a lot of things, turning animals into meat, breeding stock, fiber. 20:15 You can turn it into your own classes. I'm going to host a whole, like, probably a six month course on how to do a petting zoo. I did really well with Groovy Grazers. I do daycares for $2.50 an hour. There's nothing secret about it. You can go on my website. $2.50 an hour is what I was charging in the beginning  and I didn't do it with any employees. If you had employees that leaves room for it, right? So ethically, 20:42 Treating yourself and your employees is a thing. Like you  are an employee of the farm.  Teaching people how to do tours of their property. I've had so many people out here. Now I haven't been charging for this because our property is a little crazy right now. We're overhauling completely, but I like having people come out here because it's helping hone in my skills. So then when we do tours, we're gonna have a whole plan. There's a farm, TNC Farms out here. I'm gonna have to try and see if... 21:12 I can get you to interview Bridger because he is just, that young man is so brilliant,  absolutely brilliant on uh how to rotationally graze, but they do a wool festival  and they do  a pumpkin patch at the end of the year and they do tours and they have big homeschool groups come in and like there's so many things people don't realize that you can do without having to even sell an animal. There is income and you have to have multiple streams. 21:42 when you're a farmer because it's not good enough if you just have a day job and then it brings in a few hundred bucks a month. I mean that's a hobby.  Yep. Absolutely. You  definitely get me his contact information because he would be really fun to talk with.  Okay. Well, it sounds like you have a lot going on. There's a couple of things I want to tell you about that  is here.  Number one, I am an award winning podcaster officially.  I saw that. 22:11 Congratulations. I'm so excited because I've been on the show, what, two years now? Yeah. And like, I remember you're like, one day I'm going to get recognized for doing this and look at you. Like two years is awesome, Mary. Congrats.  Well, thank you. And I want to I want to tell you what it is because not everybody who's listening knows about this yet.  It's the Corporate Visions Media Innovator Awards 2025. 22:36 And I got sustainable living podcasts of the year 2025 USA because they're based out of England. That's so cool. That's even cooler that you have like an English following like being worldwide. Like that is really cool. I'm so proud of you. Thank you. It's so crazy to me. I they emailed me and they were like, do you want to be part of the pool for this this prize? And I was like, what do need to do? And they were like, fill out this form. 23:05 So I did and I told them about my podcast and I won this award and I was like,  I'm not even sure what this means, but I think it's really cool. No, it is cool. So what are your next steps with this award? you  going to do a different, like what  all is coming from getting this award that you're going to do? I have no idea. I just think it's super awesome, nifty that I want it. And then the second thing that I wanted to tell you. 23:32 is I'm starting a second podcast for sure. Yeah.  It's called Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture. Oh, I love that.  And I will definitely talk to my co-host about having you come visit with us because I think that would be really fun.  Yeah. My co-host is a lady named Leah and she is Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook. Okay. And she has the biggest heart. She is a fifth-generation 24:00 fifth generation cattle rancher with her family. love that.  And she also had worked with the USDA, I think, for grants. Oh, that's awesome. People have no idea about grants.  Uh huh. And she's just fabulous. And we've talked like three or four times on the podcast episodes over last two years. And  I said, we never get to go deep enough. I said, do you want to be a cohost with me on a second podcast? And she said, give me a week to think about it. And I said, okay.  And I 24:30 hit her up exactly a week to the day and said, did you think about it? She's like, I really want to do it. So that's going to be coming out the first full week of January.  Oh, I'm so excited for you. Like, I can't wait to just even listen to that podcast. it's just so cool to see women stepping into this place of like, yeah, we're here. We've been here the whole time helping people, know, helping our husband farm. 24:59 And now we're going to talk about it because back in the day men were hunters and women sat around and got to socialize, right? And took care of the babies and made the food. Yeah, we did everything social, right? In a group and men had to go off and they were silent, right? Hunting in the woods  and to see women stepping into this like we're going to gather again, we're going to get women back together and we're going to make clear 25:28 clear path for the next generation. know, Leah, right, is her name. She's a fifth generation farmer. Yep. She's like, guess what? I see so many I bet you she would even confirm it. She sees so many first generation farmers. And that's probably a lot of her drive is like, I want to help these new people. like, we're gonna have like words between humans is such a real thing, especially when you have, you know, artificial intelligence,  when you have people that just 25:58 we'll kind of write whatever.  You know, it's hard to know  what's real and what's not anymore. So being able to discuss with other people, even by phone or by virtual video is so powerful. And then to have a podcast that's on the same vibrational as everyone else,  you're only gonna raise your listeners to be better farmers. 26:23 but you're also gonna have all these people, women specifically, right? That are gonna come to you guys that are gonna say, hey, I wanna share my experience.  Exactly, yes. Yes, and what's even better is 2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer. Did you know that? Yes, that's why Melanie was like, you gotta step into this.  Like step into it. 26:46 did not know about that until after Leah and I decided to do this together. And I saw it, I was like, yes, great timing.  Oh man, see your internal instincts are just so, they're spot on, right? Like you are empathic with your listeners. You can hear our woes and you can hear the women that are like, there's not a lot of support. When I go talk and I have nothing against male farmers in this sense, but sometimes when I go talk to them and I have a throat tattoo for the listeners that don't follow me on Facebook. 27:16 Um, and it's flowers, it's dainty, Geo- like shapes, nothing crazy, right? No like skulls or anything on my throat. They look at me like I'm crazy. um I have to like almost win their trust over by like giving them like, oh, you know, this little insight tip about being a farmer. And then they're like, oh, she's cool. She can vibe. And it's like, I could vibe with you the whole time. I just had to win you over.  And 27:44 When I speak to a woman farmer, they're like,  no, they just listen to you. They understand you. There's no question of who you are because they've experienced it themselves. And like, I get it. There's a lot of women that come into farming and they are, they think they're tough enough to do this.  And you know, farming is not, it's not for the weak. It is not for the weak.  It's really hard.  My friend Nicole, she's somebody else that I want you to interview. She's a farrier and works with the Amish. 28:13 Um, in a horse breeding program, she had to deal with one of the old guys we had taken on. He's he choked the vets out there right now, putting him to sleep.  Um, and she was out there all night long with him in the middle of the blizzard. had, you know, they live an hour away from us. So where they are, there's like six foot plus feet of snow. I'm not even kidding you in Red Lodge right now.  Um, and she lives out there. And so she was out  all night with that horse. Just sitting there. 28:41 because no vet could get to him until 12 o'clock today. That's the reality of farming though. And so I'm excited for this because I think that so many negativities happen in farming that it can get people really down. So if we can get a group of women on a podcast talking about the positives,  encouraging each other, not being Instagram fake where we act like everything's peachy on our farm, right? We talk about the reality of farming. 29:08 then we're going to see some major breakthroughs in our industry and we need them. I'm actually a wholesale dealer for AgriBest. That was something else that happened. um They  do Redmond, Sweetlix products. Those are products  for horses, cattle, sheep.  It's all mineral based. um And being in that industry, I'm very far and few between. And so I think it's awesome because I am going to go listen to your podcast. 29:36 with Leah, I can't wait. Like, sign me up. You couldn't sign me up any quicker to just listen to it because... it was already out, you'd be like, hold on, I'll come back in half an hour, Mary. Let me go listen to the first episode. No, seriously, because  I think women...  I don't think... I'm not going to say they're smarter than men because I don't speak like that, but I think women are able to  meticulate their words better. 30:05 I don't even know or articulate. Sorry. I can't think it's been a long long night But like women are just able to use their words better to tell a story So women women are the communicators and I will tell you how I know this for sure  Did you know that  men  out? Outdo women in podcasting, but most of the men fall off  they suffer from podfade and the podcast disappear but 30:33 Wow. tend to hang in longer because they are the communicators. That's cool. See, I wouldn't have known that. like, that's interesting because that is true. Like me and my girlfriends, when something goes wrong, we call each other. Yeah. But when something goes wrong with men, they just text. They don't even text each other. Like they're just like, it's OK. They'll they won't question why I'm even here. And you're like, what do you mean? Like  if that was another woman, we would absolutely question why we hadn't heard from them. 31:02 Mm-hmm. Yeah, the only time a man will ask for help is if it's a dire emergency. Yeah, yeah, men are so stubborn  in that sense. so I think that next year being a women's agriculture,  I'm sure a lot of your demographic is women, right? Because like women attract women  in podcasting.  Actually, it's not.  Really? You are going to die on this statistic. I looked the other day  on my Facebook page, mine. 31:32 and Tiny Homestead podcast one. 56 to 60 % men listeners. was like, are you kidding me? That's interesting. I guess I need to look on Cole Canyon farm and Groovy Grazers and see what my statistics are. I haven't in a while, but yeah, that's really interesting. I think because it's easier to listen. Maybe if you're a man to like women talking, cause we paint the full picture. Maybe I don't know what it is. 32:01 So interesting. Maybe some of your listeners, if you're a man and you're listening, can you chime in on the homestead page on like, do you listen to more women or men podcasts? That would even be a cool poll for you to do. Yeah, it absolutely would. OK, Morgan, you know, I try to keep these to half an hour. Yeah. So the first episode of the new podcast will be out Monday of the first full week of January. So two Mondays from now. 32:31 And it's only going to be a one week,  one a week release. So one episode a week  for a while. But yeah, very, very excited.  Where can people find you? Cole Canyon Farm on Facebook. Is that right? Yes, you can. And you can find us still Groovy Grazers MT  on Facebook. You can find Cole Canyon Farm on Instagram. And we still own  www.groovygrazors.com.  And 33:01 We are doing a seed giveaway right now  on my built from dirt farm page  and some one-on-one consulting. So if you guys are looking for your group, then definitely add yourself in. We're going to be doing lots of freebie classes and courses, just getting the hive mind going. Okay. I will put the link to the new  group show notes for you so people can find the giveaway and get involved.  Thank you. As  always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. 33:29 And if you want to support the podcast financially, cause I could use some help, um go to atanihomestead.com slash support.  Morgan, thank you for taking the time to catch me up on what's going on with you. Cause I saw stuff on Facebook and I was like, what is she doing now? I'm not sure about this.  Yeah. Thanks for having me. Thank you guys for listening.  I'm sure we'll chat in the spring sometime soon about all the new stuff we've been doing. We have to. 33:58 That's all there is to it. We've got to make it happen. All right. Thank you, Morgan. Thank you.  Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Christie author of Moonlight Elk. You can follow on Facebook as well.   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Christie Green, the author  of  Moonlight Elk,  One Woman's Hunt for Food and Freedom.  Christie is in New Mexico this morning. How are you, Christie? Good morning. I'm wonderful. Thank you for having me. 00:25 You are so welcome and thank you for visiting.  love it when I get to people who are  into nature and also write books about it. um What's the weather like in New Mexico this morning? Well, it's unfortunately very warm and sunny and dry. We've had unseasonably uh mild weather. It's been in the high fifties and we haven't had uh much snow for a number of weeks. So it's really precarious here. It's not good when we don't have snowpack. 00:54 But we're hoping for some form of moisture, at least in the new year. We'll see. I will keep my fingers crossed for you. And I wish I could send you all the rain we got this morning. Oh, man. I do, too. I have a friend up in North Dakota, and they get snow and those cold temperatures. And I wish they could just push it down here. Yeah, it was so weird. I was looking at my Facebook memories, because I look at them every morning, because I sit down with my coffee and scroll through Facebook to find people to talk to. 01:23 looked at my memories and a year or so ago it was raining on this date as well. I'm like, okay, so is December 18th a rain day? Hmm. Yeah, interesting. It seems like it would be too cold up there for rain, but moisture is moisture. Yeah, I'm, I have an appointment tomorrow at 9 45 in the morning, half an hour from here and it's all wet out there. The temps are supposed to drop. 01:50 hard this afternoon and it's supposed to snow a little bit on top of whatever freezes.  And it's not supposed to warm back up until tomorrow afternoon. like, I may not make that appointment. We'll see how the roads are.  Go slow.  Yeah. Making appointments in the Northern tier States in December or January, February is a real  iffy game a lot of the time. 02:15 But it's fine. I love winter. Winter is my favorite. Well, fall is my favorite season, but I love winter because it's when we all kind of cocoon and  get cozy and eat really good food. So that's right. That's right.  All right. So Christy, tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do.  Well,  I  am  55 years old  and  I am originally from Alaska and now I live in San Diego, New Mexico. I've been here for 02:44 let's see, 28 years or so. And pretty much my whole career as I'm a landscape architect and I'm also an author and a designer and my work revolves around food and cultivating connection to each other and to place through the catalyst of food. And so in my work as a landscape architect, I focused on 03:10 building soil, harvesting water, and growing heirloom varieties of food for  people, like in the homes, but also in larger kind of contexts like housing developments and public spaces. And then I also work with native plants  and um doing like passive water harvesting landform grading techniques like berms on swales and bio-swales and things like that. And then uh I am a hunter. uh 03:39 As some people say, an adult onset hunter, started hunting when I was 40. And the original intent was to harvest my own meat, right? So I was growing all this food for myself and for other people. And I thought, well, what about, you know, meat? Why couldn't I hunt as well, you know, to fully round out this sort of self-sufficient way of gathering food. 04:08 I thought I was going to get food, so to speak, and what I ended up finding was this revelatory new relationship to place  and to myself, really,  through the animals and through the hunt.  So I started writing about  those experiences with the animals here in New Mexico and other places too, but mostly here  in the West with elk and deer and turkey. And these  stories ended up 04:37 becoming this compilation of braided essays and then a whole braid of a book,  which is Moonlight Up, which was published  last September. Very nice. um You said self-revelatory regarding hunting. give me a couple examples of that.  Well,  what I didn't realize, so I'm a mother and at the time my daughter was five  and  I was always, you know, 05:05 responsible and on. Like had to be home, you know, make food, go pick up my daughter from school, you know, attend a business, you know, very scheduled,  loaded life in terms of obligations, you know, and all of those I loved, but em I didn't realize  how  off balance I was in terms of my own unscheduled time and the freedom that that uh 05:33 affords like the feeling of being unencumbered.  And when I went hunting, it was the time I could be wholly  my own self without attending to anybody. And it was actually for lack of a better way of saying it, the time hunting was when I could become my own  animal, I could be as animal me as the animals were themselves. Because, you know, when hunting, you have to kind of become 06:02 that animal and understand how they move, what their habits are, where they're spending time, where they're crossing, all of that. So it was like I got to shed  all of these layers  of the human world and become wholly immersed in the animal world. And when I got a taste of that, I just wanted more and more of it because then I got to actually listen to myself, my own desires, my own inclinations in a way,  you know, like follow my nose. 06:32 And that's just become an essential part of my life that has translated into my regular sort of scheduled at home work life in  knowing how to listen to my body,  listen to my own instincts and follow my own way. 06:50 That is amazing. That's beautiful.  And the one thing that I will say about being a parent, especially being a mom,  is for me, I've  raised four kids, birthed three, have a bonus child from my husband, which is great.  And uh my favorite moments of being a mom, and people are like, I don't know why I would be so bored, but I wasn't bored,  was from the moment I got home with that baby for the first three months when 07:20 when you just cocoon in and you  focus on getting to know this little person that you brought into the world and you attend to them.  And you attend to yourself too, because if you can't be there for you, you can't be there for a baby. But  it's very baby focused and people come to visit  the baby. mean, they'd say they're coming to visit you, but they're coming to see the baby.  It's this very nurturing, very calming, very 07:49 animalistic  experience because  animals are very attentive to their babies. I mean, you don't think that they are because  wild babies are born ready to go, most of them.  But if you watch a mama deer,  she is  very attentive with her fawn.  So the one thing that I will say though is once that baby becomes a toddler,  it is time for mom 08:17 to take some time for her and hopefully sooner than that, but definitely once they start to walk  because you cannot lose yourself in your children.  It's not healthy.  No, it's true. We have to be our own individual selves. And it is interesting like that, those first moments  and days and weeks and months after the birth that 08:46 I feel the same like what you're saying that the clock goes out the door.  It doesn't matter. Any sort of routine doesn't matter because everything revolves around the body and the bodily needs  of that baby. So it is like this  sort of whiplash,  yank into a different world, a different uh realm of that very animalistic child, because the child isn't operating from the mind of 09:16 you know, a rationale of,  what time is it and what am I supposed to be doing? It's all driven by the visceral, by the needs. yeah. Yeah. And the other thing that I want to throw in here really quick, because you hit all the buttons for me with this, um is when you're a new mom, like when you have that first baby,  you have got to ask for help.  I didn't know that. 09:41 I didn't ask for help. was really lucky. I lived in an apartment building and I knew my neighbors.  And my first child was a girl,  the only girl out of the four kids. I was 20 and she was teething and she was having a very hard time with teething and she would cry and scream and cry and scream.  And one of my neighbors knocked on the door and I opened the door and I hadn't slept in three days, you know, up with baby all night.  And she said, can I hold her? 10:11 And I said, she bothering you? I'm really sorry. She was like, no. She said, you need sleep.  She said, she said, has she been fed? I said, yeah. She said, when was she last changed? I said, half an hour ago. She said, okay, I got it from here.  Go lay down, get some sleep.  Your daughter and I are going to get to know each other.  And I was so grateful because it had never occurred to me to ask for help. So anybody out there who's a brand new mom who is drowning, ask for help. People want to help. 10:41 No, it's true. need that community, not respite.  Yes, absolutely. So, sorry, I didn't mean to get all weird about babies, but I don't know, you hit a button this morning for me and I was like, oh, there are things people don't know about having babies that are very important. oh Okay, so I am not a hunter, but my parents both hunt  and I got taught by osmosis how to hunt. 11:10 One of my favorite memories  of the hunting season  is my dad would get up early in the morning and he would get all his stuff. He'd get all his stuff set out at night, but he would pack everything up the next morning really early.  And he would always clean his guns before hunting season started.  One of my favorite scents on earth is gun oil.  Oh, that's funny. Positive association, huh?  Oh yeah. Yep. Absolutely. And my mom hunted too. 11:39 And I've told the story a couple times in the last six months. It's really weird. But she actually got a doe when she was very pregnant with my sister. And she's so proud of that. that she went when she was pregnant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were so able when we're pregnant. I I worked almost up to the day my daughter was born. I was out in the garden and hoisting and shoveling and all kinds of things. It's like for most of her human 12:09 lineage, we were out working and hunting and doing all those things. weren't, you know, sitting on the couch waiting for the baby to be born. We had to survive, right? Yep, exactly.  So, so having said all that, I learned about hunting because my parents did all the things and talked about it ad nauseam for a month before hunting season started.  I cannot break down a gun. I will be honest, it's not my thing.  And  I don't hunt. 12:38 I  love the process of looking for animals in the woods. Does that make sense? Yeah, for sure. That's the hunt. Hunting is more hunting than killing, that's for sure.  Yeah, that part I love and I'm really good at it. Like I can spot a deer before seasoned hunters spot a deer because I understand the shape of their body and how they move. 13:03 And I just, love being in the woods, but the idea of taking a creature's life when I don't need to eat that food, I just can't do it. I cannot do it. It kills me. Just the idea of it. And I am all for people hunting. think it is an amazing, I don't want to say sport, I don't know, endeavor to hunt and kill and use an animal. It's not for me. 13:32 No, that's,  there's a lot of feelings like that. think every, every feeling and response  around hunting is valid. don't, um, I don't need other people to hunt. I don't need other people to agree with how I hunt or to want to.  I feel like we all have our own ways. And I think the most important thing that any of us can do is to pay attention to and honor what we, um, 14:02 desire and what we respect in our own ways. think m part of what's interesting to me in this book and Moonlight Elk and some of the traveling around doing book readings and events is uh the questions I've gotten from people. And some people  are hunters, of course, and want to talk about hunting stories and  the details of those hunts and the animals. Some people aren't hunters and feel strongly against it. ah Ask me things like that. Well, how could you do that? How could you take a life when 14:31 We have plenty of domestic meat we could be eating. And some people want to say, wow, you really inspired me. I want to learn how to hunt. Will you take me? So there's, you know, every range of experience and response. And I feel what is  so critical right now is to be open to the conversation and to be open to the questions and the dialogue. feel like uh adhering to a particular polarized perspective or only one view or one side. 15:01 is uh destructive, we have so much more in common than we don't. And I'm just really interested in learning how to make connections with people in all the ways that we do  share in common, like what values do we hold in common? And that there are more, I just so believe that there are so many more um connections than disconnects, you know? And it's just been  interesting that through hunting, is a,  people have very strong opinions about it. 15:31 practice, you the animals, also like, you know, brought up guns. There's a whole lot of  feeling around guns. And I agree. I feel like we should be talking about those  points of view  and  options and perspectives. And that's one of the biggest gifts of having written this book  is the,  just right now we're having this conversation, being able to be in dialogue with people and, and, and allowing myself to be open  to hearing new perspectives. 15:59 And I feel that for me, what's most important  is that there's respect. I mean, I don't expect anybody or need anybody to agree, ah but I do want respect going both ways  and  not even understanding. don't think that's one thing it seems like when people, you know, get in conversations like, I'm going to keep talking until you understand.  I don't actually feel that. I don't need that. think it's... 16:26 I don't need to be understood. don't need to be agreed with, but I would like to be respected and vice versa. You know, it's just critical for who we are. We're all on this earth together. We have to get along. We just have to. Yeah. Right now, especially. My goodness. It's been a heavy, heavy six months. I talked to Joel Saliton, the renegade rebel farmer, whoever he is. The other day. Yeah. Yeah. He's such a nice man. 16:56 And I was going to ask him about the cost of beef prices and the whole snap benefits fiasco that is going on. And just before I hopped on to talk to her, was like, I don't want to talk about those things.  It's too much. It's too heavy. Everybody is feeling this and we need to talk about something positive. And I asked him before we started talking, I said, can I just ask you where you've been this year,  what you've learned, what surprised you? Can we just talk about 17:25 positive things just for a little bit. And he was like, absolutely.  And it was so good. I was so thrilled to just have something positive to chat about, you know? Yeah. No, he's, he's so inspiring. He's been in the, he's been like this pioneer in the, the food industry for decades.  And I remember years ago, I used to work for the Bioneers and he was one of the speakers at the conference  and 17:53 just how revelatory his practices are with, you know, rotational grazing and cover crops and just honoring the animal.  as even raising them as a domestic food source, knowing full well, of course they're going to be killed and  eaten, but to  try to offer the best life possible and also the most healthy practice for the land. So yeah, he's always been one of my heroes. 18:18 Well, you will be thrilled to know that he is working on a new book this week and next week.  Oh, good. What's it about? I asked him the working title and he said, I said, it have a working title? And he said, oh, yes, food emancipation. And I was in my head, I was just like, oh, thank God. Oh, good. Yes. So I'm very excited. It won't be out for,  oh my goodness. think he said a year,  but. 18:43 He had just started writing the first two chapters two nights ago. And I'm just like, yes, please write another book.  Oh, good.  So I um was just going to ask you if it's okay. mean, in your practice as a homesteader and your offerings  of, you know, eggs and breads  and  goods from the garden, like, have you noticed  anything changing or shifts in your customers? oh 19:13 points of view or what they're asking for, what they're  hungry for, both literally and metaphorically,  what is the attraction  to what you offer and has that changed over time?  don't think it's changed over time. Now bear in mind, we've only been doing this for five years because we didn't have a homestead until five years ago.  But  what really has stuck out to me over the last year is 19:41 We have not been able to keep eggs in our farm stand for sale  for more than 24 hours. We have 19 chickens  and  the eggs are gone every day because people know we have them and they come in and pay their five bucks and go home with a dozen eggs.  And before all of this bird flu  stuff started and um before inflation really hit hard in the last year and a half, 20:08 People would stop by and buy eggs, but it wasn't like we have to stop by and buy eggs. Yeah. Yeah. I see.  And  here at our farm and here in Minnesota, the last two years have been really hard growing seasons. It was really rainy  in the spring for a month, both summers.  And it's been really hard for people to grow anything  like they had been. mean, 20:36 Four summers ago, we had so many tomatoes, we were giving them away.  These last two summers,  two summers ago, we had hardly any tomatoes. It was just so wet and then it was so dry that the tomato plants didn't stand a chance. And this summer, this past summer,  summer 2025 was better and we did sell tomatoes and people were like, oh, thank God you have tomatoes. 21:02 Because the thing that people want to do around here is can tomato sauce for the winter. Yeah. Yes. And so other than those two things, I mean, I think that people really realize back during COVID that it's a really good thing to know your neighbors and know your producers in the local area because you can't always count on the grocery store having the thing you need. Yeah. I feel like that changed everything. 21:32 Yes, yeah, I do too. It's also, I feel like when I, for example, if I host  a  dinner or something and offer the meat that I've hunted,  there's such a different experience  knowing  the person  and the place  where that food source came from and even hearing the story about it. 21:58 people like even people who've lived here, let's say in New Mexico their whole lives and know about elk or maybe where elk live don't understand that much about the animal and may have never even tasted the animal. So it's like offering a taste of the meat, but then also, you know, like if I have the elk hide or the antler or ivory, you know, tooth or something, it's interesting how  drawn people are to learn more and 22:27 The meaning behind the food makes the difference in how they are connecting, I think, to that source of food, but then also the experience of what I call, this isn't original, I know, but like the experience of communing, know, it's real communion with each other.  And I feel like our culture is  starving for that, literally, because we've become so individualized, we rely on 22:53 uh sources of whether it's food or anything else, we push a button on Amazon, get it delivered to our door. We relate to our devices more to each than each other. And I believe that coming back together through something as simple as  the egg or the meat or the apple is just critical right now. And it's a way of feeling at home,  I think in ourselves and with each other through food. 23:20 Absolutely. We have become so disconnected from where everything comes from.  Everything comes from the earth.  We've become so disconnected from the earth. We think that everything comes from the store  or a delivery truck  and it doesn't. Everything starts with the earth.  Absolutely. The ultimate provider. 23:53 It's um, it's so weird to me.  I grew up in Maine and as a little kid, I spent a lot of time outside in the trees, in the woods. And I used to go out to the edge of the swamp because there was a swamp behind our house  and every spring there were tadpoles. uh 24:19 I was always so excited to get a jar and have little tadpoles  that lived in the jar.  And it's probably not very nice, the tadpoles, but my dad wasn't going to tell me no. And  watching those tadpoles develop from these little  fishy looking things, two full-fledged frogs with  legs and a tail, actually. The tail  is still there, it's just very short. um And that was my exciting thing in the spring. 24:48 And then the rest of the summer was playing in the woods and gathering pine cones and acorns and making things out of them. And there were no tablets. There were no cell phones. was no,  there was, there was no internet. now kids don't do that anymore.  No, I know they're on their devices. I was just talking to a friend the other day saying, Oh, it breaks my heart that so many people on the earth have no reference of life without a device. 25:19 You know, they  were raised with them  and I think it's  really too bad. know, like how do you undo that kind of programming and go back to something that's tactile and visceral and sensory, exploratory, all of that, like direct relationship to the earth. know, something's definitely lost, I think.  Yes, absolutely. And the closest thing I can think of at this point for kids 25:47 is having a pet, an actual pet like a kitten or a puppy  and raising that pet from baby to adult pet.  Because dogs and cats are not, they're technology,  they're biology. Yeah, for sure. And then, you know, of course some kids do  live on a farm or do have gardens or do have close proximity to the outdoors. 26:15 There's more familiarity and comfort with that. then some, you know, so the majority of the world's population live in urban centers. And, um you know, and there is some access maybe to something that is soil or green or water, but a lot less. So  I don't know. It's, it's  how do we, how do we foster connection and remember,  you know, really, I feel like it's a remembering where we came from and what's  essential in our own selves and our own. 26:45 beings, like where are we rooted and how can we be rooted to the earth now given  all of these changes in the world? Well, you're doing a good job by writing the book and I'm trying to do a good job by sharing on the podcast.  And really, I think that  you have to be the change you want to see in the world and that sounds very trite and that is not my line. I don't know who said  it, but you're being the change that you want to see in the world. 27:14 Well, it's just,  I don't know, living in  what I believe in. It's my own sanity, actually.  In some ways, it's,  when I feel my best, then I can be my best outwardly too. So just learning as I make my way for sure and trying to share what I'm learning.  Plus, I have more questions. I don't really have answers. I have more questions. So em I'm open to  exploring those with people because I think we're all hopefully trying to discover and to be better. 27:44 Yeah, absolutely. And if you aren't, you should be. And  I don't want to direct people's traffic, but really just be the best you you can be.  So oh is this your first published book, Kristy?  It is my first. I have another that I just finished the manuscript. It's called Salmon Dreaming, Coming Home to Alaska. And that will also be published by University of New Mexico Press. And that'll come out in summer 2027. 28:12 And then there's a third that's published by UNN Press that's coming out two years after that. So  I'm deep in the writing and loving it  and looking forward to sharing the second book, which takes place in my home state of Alaska.  That's exciting. ah I'm going to tell the listeners that the hardest part of writing a book isn't the writing the book. It's the promoting, marketing, and selling the book. It's definitely its own.  It's, you know,  it's a 28:43 Something that I'll speak for myself, well, other friends of mine who are authors,  we're not good at that part of it.  And I didn't know how much, ah how much that is a part of the whole process that, you know, getting it out there and sharing it. And, and I just am very thankful for opportunities like this  to share the book and to reach audiences, you know, beyond my immediate network here. And  thank you for, for having me and for being. 29:13 uh, let's see, interested in and honoring that Moonlight Elk is in the world.  Oh, I do. I absolutely do honor it because I'm in the middle of trying to write a book myself  and  it is a hard thing to do.  It is, I don't know how to explain it.  When it's going well,  nothing else is happening. 29:38 You're in the zone.  The house could explode around you and you'd be like, Oh, what was that? Yes, exactly. But when it's not going well and you're trying to find the right sentence to convey the thing that's important for you to convey,  that's when it's tough. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's that flow state. And sometimes it's easier to tap into that than others. um But I don't know. I don't know if this is your experience. I feel like 30:08 If I can just stay open, basically what wants to come through, it's almost like using me as  as a, um, as a conduit or catalyst, vehicle to get the story on the page. And I feel like when I'm open enough and not resisting or not trying to force it, then it, then it can flow more easily.  Yes. And I always have to remind myself of that when it's, if it gets frustrating, I get up and go do something else for a while.  Because then I stopped trying to force it. 30:38 Um, so have you been doing any book touring? Are you just doing the things like writing blog posts and doing podcasts and things like that? No, I've been so fortunate to do some touring and I really like reading with other authors. So I got to do  reading here and in Virginia with a dear friend of mine, Erica Hauser, and her book is called The Age of Deer  and it was shortlisted for the Penn Award. oh 31:07 And  so she and I have done a couple of readings together. She was in Virginia and I was also in Vermont. I got to do a couple of readings in Vermont  and I did a reading with my friend who is an author, Gretchen Legler, and she's written a couple of books. Her most recent book is called Woods Queer and she's in Maine. And so we got to do a reading in Rockland this past spring  and I've done different readings here in New Mexico. 31:35 Yeah, so I've gotten to travel around, I love. And then also being part of these kinds of conversations  online has been really fun. And to meet all kinds of people, it's just opened up amazing different connections with people I didn't even know were out there and people doing such amazing work like you.  Thank you.  All right, Kristy, where can people find you and where can they buy the book?  Anybody can find me at KristyGreen.net. 32:02 And then the book is available. It's distributed by Simon & Schuster.  You can find it at the University of New Mexico Press online.  You can order it anywhere. You would order a hard copy.  There's hardback and paperback books. And then anywhere you find your audio books, it's available on an audiobook form anywhere you would go  to find your own audiobook and then on Kindle as well. So you can pretty much find it anywhere. Fantastic. 32:31 As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And if you want to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com slash support. Christy, I loved this. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. Thank you so much, Mary. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the cozy season of dormancy. Yes. And Merry Christmas and happy new year, Christy. Merry Christmas. Thank you, Mary. You're welcome.  

Today I'm talking with Joel Salatin at Polyface Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Joel Salaton at Polyface Farms in Virginia in the United States. Good morning, Joel. How are you? Good morning. I'm very good. Thank you very much. What's the weather like there today? ah Well, last night it was down about 00:29 15 degrees today. I think it's supposed to be a high of maybe 34, 35. And then drop down into 20s tonight. Tomorrow's going to be warm. It's going to be about a high of like 50 tomorrow. So. We're going to be warmer than you are in Minnesota today. It's supposed to hit 45 degrees today. Oh, wow. That's cool. That doesn't happen very often that we're warmer than Virginia. 00:58 Yeah. Yeah. Well, it, uh, it, it's, we, we've been in a really, really cold, I mean, the river's frozen over. It's, uh, we've been in a really cold, uh, cold dip here lately. Yeah. I think the whole United States has been at some point in the last week and a half. It's been, it's been unbearably cold here. And I'm really looking forward to getting back into what we would consider to be temperate degrees here. Um. 01:27 So I saw that Polyphase Farms is closed for the next week or so. Do you guys close for the holidays? Yeah, we do. We close for about two weeks. And that you got to realize much of many of our staff, we have a very, very young staff here. And so often they like to go to family over the holidays and things and New Year. we just, it's just the easiest thing is to just close for two weeks and 01:58 Um, just keep a, you know, keep a kind of a core here to  do chores and feed cows and gather eggs and  kind of hold the ship together, uh, for, for a couple of weeks and let everybody,  uh, just enjoy. And then, and then those people that, put their hands up and say, I'll stay through Christmas. Then obviously they get there. They get there two weeks. One guy already took us two weeks back at Thanksgiving.  And, and then, you know, they, they, they, 02:28 stagger out, you know, through January. you know, usually by the, by mid February, we're back at full staff and up and running, but these two weeks were pretty,  were pretty core. That's fabulous. And it gives you and your wife and your son a chance to maybe spend some time together as a family. Yeah,  some, although  I'm a bit of a scrooge, you know, we've done this all our lives and,  um, the, uh 02:58 The holidays, you know, the work stays. So we end up picking up the slack because we live here. don't have to go  see family. know, we're here.  so we pick up a lot of extra work during the holidays. I'm actually,  what I've started doing in the last few years  is the holidays oh with the crew kind of down to core level. 03:26 and not doing, not biting off any great big projects.  That's when I do my writing. So  yesterday I started on my next book and I'm almost  done with the third chapter. I got two chapters done yesterday. got, em I was trying to get my third one done this morning before this, but I didn't quite get it done. I have to finish after our call here, but  I'm hoping  to get this knocked out here in the next couple of weeks. 03:56 And we'll be up and running. you have a working title yet? Oh yeah. The title is  food emancipation.  Oh,  awesome. Cause we need that real bad right now.  We do. We, we need it desperately.  And, you know, this,  I consider this, told Teresa this morning, this is probably going to be my, my single biggest contribution, I think to the culture.  And  of course she said, well, 04:26 It's taking your whole life to get to this, you know, to get to this point.  but,  uh, this, this, the food freedom, the food freedom, I think is  the biggest issue we've got now agriculturally, oh uh, and, and in the food system.  And, um, so, um, 04:50 I'm really digging into it. I'm excited about it. In fact, I couldn't even sleep last night. got two chapters done  and, um, um, I'm really excited about it and glad to be jumping in. The  big thing with a book, hard part, the hard part is starting.  And, uh, so yesterday when I got that first chapter done, I  was, I say, you know, I was on a roll  and, uh, and now I'm, I'm just really excited about. 05:20 about knocking it out. Yeah, somebody told me a trick once that if you're stuck at the beginning, start in the middle. Like literally just get the words on paper and then you can move it around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's true. That's true. So, know, I have an outline, have an outline. And so I've got, you know, kind of the chapter, the chapter ideas, chapter titles,  and, know, they'll, they'll change and they'll morph and things. mean, a book kind of takes on its own. 05:49 Uh, kind of takes on its own, uh,  uh, persona, you know, as you get into it and  new things come to mind and all that. But for me, I find that, that just sitting down and cranking on it and trying to get it knocked out on a couple of weeks, you know, a rough draft at least,  um, is the way to be the most efficient because it's often hard to leave it for a month and come back to it. 06:16 You know, to know, what did I say this that I said, you got to go back and review. I can't remember where I put this in or that in. So, you know, if you just start and just, um, go through, you, it's a lot, it's a lot more efficient. Yeah. And if you stop and come back to it a month later, you've lost some of the momentum and the energy that you had for it. So that's right. So I, there's no, there's no energy like first energy. 06:44 You know, if you've ever written something and then lost it on a computer, you know, hit a button and it all goes away. And you can never, you can never resurrect  the second  writing with the same energy as you did the first one.  No,  it's like new relationship energy. You know, when you meet somebody new and you're just learning about them and you're all excited. 07:09 That's what happens with books and articles. It's amazing. I love it. I used to be a freelance writer and every time I would get into it, I'd start writing, come up for air two hours later and be like, oh, I was in the zone. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. That's exactly right. Zone.  Love that zone. And I actually would love to get back into writing, but I don't have time right now because I'm too busy  talking to amazing people like you every week. um So I was going to ask you about the whole 07:39 cost of beef situation and the snap benefits fiasco and things are just so heavy right now. I would actually just rather ask you about what where you've been this year, what you've learned, what your favorite parts of the year were. So where have you been? Where have you traveled this year? Oh my goodness. I've been, I've been all over the place. Uh, yeah, I mean, I'm gone. I'm gone. don't know a third of it, a third of the time or more. 08:09 Um,  I've,  I've,  I've do a lot of homestead homestead fairs.  Uh, so, you know, if you want to go around the country, you know, it's, it's, um,  it's a homestead festival in Columbia, Tennessee. That's about, you know, 6,000 people.  And then, uh, then you got,  um, Coeur d'Alene in Idaho. That's Melissa Norris's group. That'll be three or 4,000. 08:37 And you got Ozarks, Ozarks  Homestead Conference with the  folks there. That's, you know, that's another whatever, three or 4,000. um Cheryl is the lady that does all that. Then you, you know, you have the Ohio Food Independence Summit. That's another three or 4,000. You got Homesteaders of America up in Front Royal, Virginia. That's  7,000. 09:07 Uh, these, these homestead fairs are  huge. Then what's happening this year, for the first time, I really noticed it this year is I'm starting to do, um, 10 or 12 homeschooling conferences. It's like the homeschoolers have, have matured to, to move into the edu-, move into the food space beyond the education space. What I think there is that. 09:35 You know, when you, when you try something alternative and you find it soul satisfying, you, you know, you come up from that experience and you say, wow, that was pretty cool. Uh, what else have I been missing? And so these homeschoolers, when they find, uh, homeschooling to be satisfying, uh, they start looking at food, at investment, at recreation, at 10:02 uh, energy, you know, uh, all sorts of things.  And, uh, so I think it's a very, very natural permutation that the homeschoolers are coming to homesteading and, um they're just such a, such a fun bunch and, and I enjoy them a lot. So suddenly that, that has really blown open here in 2025  and,  and it's, it's pretty, it's pretty,  uh, it's pretty different. It's added a tremendous,  a whole new dimension. 10:31 I have a question based off of that. um So are you going to homeschooling conferences or are you going to actually homeschools and talking to the kids too? Oh, no, no, no, no, these are conferences. Okay. I don't do this for free. No, no. uh I go to these conferences and these are state, you know, almost every state has some sort of state homeschool convention.  The biggest one in the nation is Florida. 11:00 The Florida, and they all have different names, Florida Parent Educators, uh FPEA, Florida Parent Educators Association. ah You know, Virginia is a big one, but they're all over. And then there are, are uh overriding groups too. Like, ah they find it here, the great, great homeschool conventions. uh 11:28 those they do about six a year around the country. so, you know, they're big, know, there are thousands and thousands of people and yeah, they're a lot of fun. Awesome. So what have you, what have you learned in 2025? Because you've learned a lot in your beautiful long life, but what surprised you this year? 11:58 So this year, my epiphany was about halfway through the year.  And uh I've really become this voice of food freedom.  And  of course,  I've had the privilege uh of, for the first time in my life, being  seen by people in the political sphere, administration. 12:26 Uh, as an asset, not a liability.  And so I've been able to  spend some time with, you know, RFK junior with people,  uh, you know,  close to him as well.  And, um,  and this whole, you know, food emancipation, this, this food freedom thing is, is such a, is such a big deal.  And, um, the thing that's  struck me about it. 12:54 The epiphany I want to share  is all my life I've been. Whatever preaching, get in your kitchen. You know, if we want a different food system, get in your kitchen, get in your kitchen, buy whole foods. You know, don't buy processed, get in your kitchen and cook from scratch. It's never been easier. And you know, we've got Insta pot hot running, hot and cold water refrigeration,  uh, time bake  Insta pots, the bread makers, ice cream makers, you know, 13:24 Um, get in your kitchen this summer. I realized after looking at what Americans spend on convenience food, 75 % of the retail dollar is convenience food. Um, and hearing RFK junior talk about ultra processed and, and all this, and this, the whole, the whole maha, I mean, the year started with Teresa and I being invited to go as guests to the, to the maha inaugural ball in DC. 13:54 We'd never been to an inaugural ball. And so I had to go, you know, get a tuxedo and we had to, we had to go up there and froze our buns off. But, uh, we, you we went to that thing. And so what I've come to the conclusion is that I'm going to quit preaching, get in your kitchen. Now I still believe that I still think I'm not, you know, I haven't gone to the dark side, but what I'm suggesting is that that horse has left the stable. 14:23 Americans,  until some catastrophe happens, Americans are not going to get in their kitchen. They're just not.  And so that leaves the convenience food option  as the single biggest category of food purchasing in the country. Now there's no reason why a convenience food, say, you know, a heat and eat 14:52 frozen chicken pot pie needs to be junk. It can be good chicken, good carrots, good peas. It doesn't need monosodium  MSG in it. It doesn't need red dye 29. It doesn't need glycerin, antifreeze in it. know,  these 10,000 food additives that are in all these uh convenience foods that Europe only has 400 of them. 15:21 They don't have to be there.  And so, so  I'm... 15:29 And then you've got, you've got the farmers. There's  obviously you're watching these things too.  And, um, all the press on 2025 agriculture is negative. I'm the soybean farmers are going to lose a hundred dollars.  Uh, the tariff blowback is having this effect, that effect. Um, and of course, you know, when beef prices jumped, when they closed the border with Mexico and shut down a million, a million cattle coming into the country. 15:59 That spiked the prices and then Trump blamed the farmers, cattle farmers for being greedy and selfish. Well, they didn't have anything to do with it. That only took him a week to backtrack from that. I think somebody got to him on that because they told him, look, Trump, you these farmers are the ones that got you in the White House. Don't you be bad mouthing the farmers. And so I am done. 16:29 uh, trying to guilt people into getting in their kitchen. And instead I'm pivoting and saying, how can we get farmers  access to the convenience food market? That is, that is where the money is. That's where the food is. And there's no reason why it has to be junk food. It can be good food. And so hence food emancipation. 16:58 Let's take the shackles  off our farmers and let farmers  access the food supply  and take the shackles off of the buyers who don't have choice. So both parties win if we take the shackles off. The only party that doesn't win  is the industrial commercial  food system that will be uh 17:28 You know, that will have new competition in the marketplace. I love that you're pivoting and I do the same thing on my podcast. So I'm constantly telling people that if they want to save money, they should learn to cook from scratch and that it's better for them. And you're right. People don't want to take the time to cook. And it's so tragic. I love cooking.  spend, I spend an inordinate amount of time cooking and I enjoy it, but if you hate it, it's no fun. So. 17:58 Or  if you're so far removed from it, you're intimidated by it. I'm meeting more and more people now who,  young,  you know,  twenties and thirties, who  are literally intimidated by the kitchen. I mean, they're scared of food. They've heard about, you know, whatever, uh disease and safety  and all this sanitation and all this stuff. And they're paranoid that they're going to... 18:25 Um, make themselves sick or get some sort of disease because they didn't wipe the counter off well enough. mean, it  actually,  when ignorance, when ignorance finally hatches to its final uh destination, it turns from ignorance into paranoia.  And that's what we've got right now in the average,  uh, American home is literally food paranoia. 18:52 They don't want to touch it. They want to open up a bag, stick it in the microwave  and, um, and eat it because they're literally paranoid of, of viscerally engaging in the food itself. And so unless and until that changes the desperate need, desperate need of both consumers  and farmers  is to enable us to easily transact food commerce. 19:22 in that space without a million dollar facility and 10 bureaucrats breathing down our neck. oh That leads me to another question. I don't know what Virginia's laws are like regarding food production if you're not a business or a factory, but here in Minnesota, we're not allowed to sell anything from a home kitchen that requires cooling or heating. So 19:51 We can sell cookies that have already been baked because you don't have to put cookies in a refrigerator or an oven for them to stay good. Shelf stable things are fine. But if I wanted to make a cheesecake, I cannot make it in my home kitchen and sell it. So what's Virginia's laws like? Yeah, identical, identical.  And most, most states are identical. There are now four states. 20:20 that have  pretty effective cottage food laws. ah The best one is probably Maine. Second best is Wyoming. And in those states,  can uh produce any food in your home kitchen that you want to without inspection.  Now, the  ingredients in the food 20:49 have to be legal. unfortunately, this means that if you make a  shepherd's pie, let's say with beef in it, the beef has to be from an inspected  source. Okay,  Once you have the beef,  you can open that package and make a shepherd's pie and sell it without inspection in Maine and Wyoming. 21:19 So those  are huge wins  in this movement.  And  in fact, in this book I'm working on,  I'm going to oh put in the four states with these good  cottage food laws so that people can see the kind of language. So right now, the strategist that I'm working with, what 21:48 the strategy seems to be, we, if we could get, you know, 30 or 40 states to adopt these, these food freedom laws, then, then what we could get, hopefully, would be a federal blanket. I mean, I'm, I'm after a, an amendment to the constitution of the bill of rights that basically 22:19 Two consenting adults exercising freedom of choice to give their microbiome uh agency should be able to engage in a food transaction without asking the government's permission. Now,  I'm not saying that I should be able to sell it at Walmart  or export it to Sri Lanka and Vietnam. ah What I am saying is that  neighbor-to-neighbor food transactions 22:49 among voluntary consenting adults exercising freedom of choice. And I know those are powerful phrases, but I use them on purpose.  It should not require a bureaucrat's permission to engage in a neighbor to neighbor food transaction, period.  When do you think this book is going to be available to buy? Because I can't wait to promote it. 23:15 Yeah. So, uh, so I'm hoping to get it roughed out by the end, by, by the end of December. So I've got two weeks here and I'm cranking on it. mean, I'm, I'm every, I've got some other things I've got, you know, some podcasts I've got  a wood to cut and some other things to do tomorrow. We've got it. We've got a chip. So that Daniel wants me to go up and cut trees for him.  Uh, so, you know, I've got some things to do, but, basically,  uh, every spare minute I'm doing this, uh, I hope for this to be out. 23:44 sometime late next summer, uh August, maybe something like that.  And, um, because I'm trying to, I'm trying to coincide it with some other fairly large,  um,  documentaries that are coming out on food freedom. There's a, there's a lot going on in Maha  and, and, and I can tell you, I was just up in DC on Monday night at, at, uh, at the Maha,  um, 24:14 Gala.  And uh I mean, it was amazing. RFK Jr. was there and Lee Zeldin, uh Secretary of EPA  guy was there. uh Of course, you you had your regular uh group, know, CDC and  the new NIH administrator and all that.  that,  that 24:42 basic movement, that basic movement um is a real catalyst, I think, for this issue because ah one of the big phrases that's  been used now is agency capture. And I think people are beginning to realize that the watchdogs,  people wanted the government to protect them. 25:10 from those corporate interests that were hiding behind razor wire and guard towers in big industrial food complexes, whether they're,  know, canneries, uh know,  slaughter processing facilities or whatever. uh We didn't want a government bully big enough to look across the fence and protect our interests. And what they didn't realize was that  the government regulators  and the corporate interests were going to go to bed together.  That's what they didn't realize. 25:40 And that reality  is really coming to light now  with, you know, Maha, with Moms Across Americas and Honeycutt. ah What these folks  are exposing  is pretty dramatic.  Well, I'm thrilled that this is going on.  This is a  movement now because it has been incredibly frustrating to me. I make a killer cheesecake, 26:09 And I have my cottage food license or registration for Minnesota. can't sell cheesecake in Minnesota because it's cooked in my kitchen. I know that's minor. It's small. It's tiny scale. But if your book actually turns people to understanding that there's nothing wrong with what's cooked in a home kitchen, as long as that kitchen is like, you know, relatively clean and there's not dog and cat hair everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Well. 26:40 So here's,  so the difference is the expectations. So, you know, when a food chain, when a food chain is opaque, 26:54 Uh, there are,  there, there's a trust issue,  but when a food chain is short and relational, the trust goes way up. See the butcher, baker and candlestick maker, or in your case, I'll say the cheesecake maker. Yeah. You used to be embedded in the village as artisans as craft and, and, and their kids played with other kids in the neighborhood. They went to the same churches. 27:23 They lived above their shops.  They didn't have employees only hanging on the door. People could come in, wander around the kitchen, know, look in the garbage can.  I mean, there was a transparency and an accountability that created the  vetting  procedure. But as food industrialized and  started hiding behind 27:53 you know, industrial  walls, the public became paranoid of the food. think I already said that. and,  and, and, here's the thing.  Let's take  another way to say this is the Uberization of food. You know, if 50 years ago, somebody had come to you and said, uh, you know what? 28:21 Mary, um, you know what? In, um, next week, you're going to go to, uh, Calcutta, jump in a car with a guy that has no chauffeur's license. The car isn't registered with a chauffeur agency and he's going to pick you up and you're going to say, take me to, you know, the museum, uh, at D street. And you're going to trust him to take you there. 28:49 You'd have said, what are you crazy? Calcutta? No,  I'm getting a cab. I'm getting a licensed, you know,  chauffeur service. I'm not jumping in the car with some, you Well, that's exactly what happened. It's called Uber. And what made it possible was that the internet with real time, uh real time, 29:17 vetting, know, one star, two star, three star complaints, whatever,  has, has  re-embedded the butcher  and the cheesecake maker.  I love that. uh In, in the global village with real time vetting.  And this is brand new. This is brand new. 29:44 And I mean, the same thing can be said of Airbnb. know, who would have thought that in 10 years, we would double the number of hospitality rooms worldwide without driving a nail, making another room. Just the power, the power  of a transparent transaction enabled by a renewed democratized voice called the internet. 30:14 And so here we are with your cheesecakes.  And if your cheesecakes aren't good, somebody's going to say, you know, Mary's cheesecakes are horrible. I would never recommend them. And you know what? You'll be out of business.  That'll go viral. But if somebody says, wow, these cheesecakes are unbelievable. Everybody should go buy those. You could actually have a side hustle. You could actually start a little business and,  and, make some money. and. 30:43 And the point is that the internet is its own protective vetting device because it has resurrected the transparent village voice of yesteryear. Crazy how that works, isn't it? Yes, it is. I love it. I love it. All right, Joel. And that's why people don't need to be scared. I mean, I can hear people. 31:13 Oh no, what if, if Mary's, you know, what if they're not good? What if they're not? Well, you know,  are you, are you, do you really think that you can trust a bureaucrat more than, than an artisan, a craft person, a cheesecake maker that you know, that you've asked around, Hey, what do you think about her? You know, what do you think about her situation? You've been to her kitchen? 31:42 uh You know, is she clean? she good?  And this  conversation we can now have so easily and cheaply, we don't have to  use snail mail, we don't have to put a stamp on it,  is revolutionary in uh creating  self-policing within commerce. 32:12 Absolutely. All right, Joel, I try to keep these to half an hour and we are there. So thank you for taking time out of your time off as it were. Chat with me again. I appreciate it. People can find you at Polyface Farm on Facebook and the website is polyfacefarm.com. Yes? Yes. Okay. All right. And as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Loved talking to you again, sir. 32:42 Thank you, it's a real privilege and an honor, Mary. And Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  Same to you and yours. Have a great day.  You too, take care.  

Today I'm talking with Shannon and Allen at Hellfire Homestead.    www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Shannon and Alan at Hellfire Homestead in New Hampshire. Good evening, you guys. How are you? Very good, actually, despite freezing. Is it super cold in New Hampshire right now? Yeah, we could kind of a little, 00:25 cold snap going on so that makes for frozen water bottles and water buckets which is always a nightmare but yeah Minnesota's pretty cold too but not as cold as it's gonna be Saturday the high for Saturday where I live is gonna be minus one oh my gosh  and it's probably coming your way three or four days later so you I've given you a heads up oh 00:50 Yeah, I know it's really hard with livestock because they've got to have fresh water whether you want to go out and break the ice and put water in or not. Yep. And we have quite a few different animals here. Okay. Well, tell me the first question I have is why is it called Hellfire Homestead? So, mean, oddly enough, it was sort of to weed out people that would be turned off by that name. 01:18 I think, and feel free to interrupt me, dear. But I feel that like in recent years, you know, with the influx of TikTok and other various social media, not only is there a lot of information that's absolutely wrong about homesteading, survivalism, bushcraft, et cetera, but a lot of people into it are not multi-generational. And there's a lot of returning to sort of like bad 01:48 Um, bad themes, I guess I should say as far as what we perceive to be gender roles in home setting and things like that on top of,  uh, just a lot of bad information in general, which I mean, as somebody who grew up in New Hampshire and  my family's been out here since the 1700s, um, ah I learned generationally how to can, um, how to keep meat clean.  Um, hunting was big in parts of my family. Um, 02:18 And I just sort of like grew up in the woods, like a wild feral child. ah So,  you know, and then you, you know, you log on to like TikTok and you see like 25 year old kids like canning with, ah you know, jars they got, you know, spaghetti jars they got from the grocery store and saying this is viable. And it's like, no, that will kill you if not ruin your entire harvest. There's a reason our grandparents use ball jars. ah 02:46 So that was part of it. And another part of it is that people are incredibly interested in what it is we do. 02:54 just on the day to day, like they're interested in the farm, they're interested in the fact that we fill our own freezer with our own meat. They're interested in the fact that we do process the hides of the animals that we eat and kill. We have sheep. ah So, some of us being online was to satisfy the curiosity of our friends, but also to kind of counter some of these like... 03:20 these ridiculous ideas that people who are not even generational farmers are starting to promote as good.  Uh huh. Good. I'm glad that you're, you're like standing up for that because you're right. There's a lot of crap  on the internet about what's safe, what isn't, what you can do, what you can't do. And I was grown up the same. I was brought up, sorry, not grown up,  brought up the same way you were Shannon. I spent so much time in the, uh, the woods and the swamp behind my house growing up in Maine. 03:50 And  I'm 56, there were no computers, were no tablets, there were no cell phones.  Mom said, you ate a good breakfast, go play, don't come back till dark. And that's what we did. Yeah, was Gen X. So my parents were basically like, get outside, you're on your own until it starts getting dark. Yeah, me too.  And  I couldn't necessarily do that with my kids when I finally managed to find a husband who wasn't terrible and managed to stay with him. 04:19 and lived in town because there weren't really any woods for them to go play in. So we would take them on the weekends and go hike trails in the area. 04:30 Yeah, my son that way too. we, you know, when I was,  it took a while to get a farm in my first marriage. Um, and we lived in the city. We actually lived in Concord, New Hampshire.  Um, so like keeping that rural, that like, you know, that aspect of like self sustainability was a little bit harder.  Um, but you know, we did things like, you know, from a very young age, he was taught gun safety from a very young age. He was taught at least some of the basics of. 04:58 killing and cleaning your own food.  And then as we got our own farm  with my ex-husband,  we started raising rabbits and doing things like that. So, I mean, that's definitely uh something that he's held onto. And hopefully I can pass on to my grandchildren one day on top of, know,  those future grandkids into 4-H as quickly as possible.  Yeah, I love where your heart is at. I really do. ah 05:26 The other thing that's funny is I'm sitting here listening to you talk about how you grew up. And I didn't know that I was brought up under a homesteading umbrella because my dad heated his house for the wood. My mom and dad both hunted. They both fished. ate bass every summer or every spring.  My dad will not, he does not keep any bass these days. He's 83 years old. If he goes fishing and catches the bass, it's catch and release. 05:55 And the last time I had baked bass, he makes it with stuffing. is amazing. Was when my kid was like six or seven, my youngest, he caught the bass with grandpa. And I said to him, I said, if you catch a bass, talk grampy and bring it home. Cause I want baked bass for dinner. And  my dad got home. We're having baked bass for dinner. And I said, Oh, did you catch one? He said, no, of course I didn't. Your kid caught it.  And I said, Oh, did you bring it home? 06:25 He's like, yeah, cause he wouldn't let me put it back in the water cause mom wanted big baths for dinner.  So, um,  but seriously, I had no idea that my parents were doing anything unusual.  And as soon as I married my third husband, who happened to have a house in a small yard,  we started gardening because you can't eat grass. Yep. Very true.  And he was already a deer hunter. So we had that box checked. 06:54 And we started putting food away and preserving. And I started crocheting and making hats and scarves for the kids. And it was all stuff I grew up with. And now in quotation marks, it's a movement. Yep. For good or ill, I think that the preservation of these homesteading skills and bushcraft and things like that is not only just, you're preserving your heritage as a human being. 07:22 regardless of race, you we all came from the land. But you're also, you know, it's mental health. Because when you realistically look at it throughout human history, industrialization was what only the past, what since 1700, 1600, something like that. So you got to think how did we live for millions of years previously, well, we lived off the land and we lived side by side by animals. So there's a big mental health aspect to that, I think. 07:51 Yeah. And when I, when I said now it's a movement, it might've sounded snarky and I didn't mean for it to sound snarky. I just find it really interesting that the old ways are now the new ways. Yeah. And I'm not against that idea. I mean, I have go.  And the problem that I have with it, I think is that,  um, these movements, because they are popular on social media and they do generate money is that some of the easiest things that you can do when you're, when you're creating these, 08:21 this media is to slide backwards. And I've seen a lot of very detrimental, um, this toward women going back into the quote unquote, trad wife lifestyle. And I have watched a lot of these videos and they're, you know, on the surface, it's like, you know, this, this woman in a dress that looks like it's made out of a 1995, you know, kitchen curtain, you know, dancing around her kitchen, coop and cleaning it out in white sandals. And I'm like, this doesn't happen. 08:50 Like good luck keeping your manicure when you've mucked a sheep stall for like four hours.  So yeah, those are the ones that make me mildly crazy. I'm like, I can't even imagine trying to do that. I mean,  I haven't actually mucked out our chicken coop ever because my husband does it. God love him.  But if I was going to go out there and uh scoop poop. 09:15 I would be in the crappiest, holiest pants I have that I wouldn't be worried about throwing away.  my least favorite shirt, because you're going to get covered in straw or pine shavings  and poop. It's going to happen.  And spider webs and  dead bugs and beans. Of course, the dog is going to interrupt. Oh, that's okay. Maggie barked her head off this morning or yesterday morning when I did an interview with somebody and I was like, I'm sorry. And they were like, that's fine. 09:46 But  I think that um at least what we're going to try to do, we are putting together  some media. We're hoping to get some  videos up by the end of the year. We're just sort of collecting it and doing it in the winter while we have a little bit more time.  It's also to talk about that there's a lot of mistakes that happen in homesteading. It's not all like, oh, I get to go out and play with my cute little sheep and my dogs are frolicking happy and... 10:13 You know, like you do lose an entire litter of rabbits to a mother that, you know, knocks them out of the nest. Uh huh. You know, your sheep does split a hoof and then you have to figure out how to help, help that animal. yeah, break a horn on the wind. Oh my God. A broken horn on the sheet bleeds so terribly. So two of our sheep have four horns. Um, so, know, or, you know, a dog gets sprayed by a skunk or in the case of our. 10:42 idiot dogs,  porcupines and what? Four times last year.  you know, it's not all about, um you know, canning goods in your kitchen  and,  you know, your beautiful little pet chickens, you know, flitting around. um It's  gross. It's a lot of poop and it's a lot of um dirt.  And  it's not this like clean sunny thing all the time. 11:10 You're making it sound so incredibly attractive. Um,  um, but there is a lot of good to this and you know that, I know that.  And I think being real about it is really important. So like, when you look around, like, like what is, what is the pumpkin spice of the farmyard other than chickens, it's goats. I will tell you when Alan or probably chime in here,  goats are the most horrible animals you can ever have. And we say that from experience. 11:39 Like, you can't have fruit trees. can't have, I used to have goats that would break out of their pen in order to eat the dirt, like, and start destroying my rabbit hutches to eat the dirty peat on hay from my rabbits. Despite the fact that the goats had like a good acre of fresh, they always had hay. They always had fresh everything. I mean, they were just flat out destructive. Um, so I would always recommend sheep. 12:05 But you have a culture where homesteaders, the instant thought, and I fell into this too, which is why I'm mentioning this. The instant thought is, I'm gonna get goats. Don't get goats. Don't get goats.  It's so funny that you bring up goats because our friends have goats and they love their goats.  my friend loves her goats beyond probably loving her dogs. Wow. 12:32 I'm okay with that because everybody has a different experience with every single animal. swear I've been doing this podcast for over two years  and I have heard goats are not naughty. I've heard goats are great. I've heard  goats are terrible. So I think your mileage varies on what kind of goat you get and what kind of person you are. But I do know that you have to make sure that you have a really good place for them to be corralled because they will escape if there's any chance. 13:00 And our sheep basically, they just roam the yard. don't even fence them. We have a very small, I wouldn't even call it a neighborhood. We have a couple neighbors around us that are on a private dirt road and they just wander around and then about three o'clock in the morning, they start complaining because they want their pellets and to go to bed. So they're pretty easy. And we also have rabbits. We have two turkeys that I guess are pets now. 13:30 I think their purpose is to scream when the UPS guy shows up. uh I didn't realize that we ended up with Blackhead on the property, which is going to limit us from really ever having turkeys here. Yep. bought don't know what that is. So it's a, it's not at all. It's a, what is it? A protozoan. That lives in worms. Yeah. And so what it is is that chickens will bring it in, but it,  it'll actually 14:01 It's in the dirt now. So anytime, wherever the chickens have been,  and it doesn't even affect the chickens, but it does cause liver failure in turkeys.  the turkeys, any turkeys that eat like the worms and stuff, they come out of the ground because we've had chickens here for 20 years. Yeah. They, uh, yeah, it carries it with it. could have come in at any time during the last 20 years. It's hard to say.  So yeah, pretty much limited us to not having turkeys. 14:30 Yeah, so we lost 80%. Yeah, we lost 80 % of our turkeys and I bought like heritage breed.  Again, thinking that I was losing turkeys because they were the white meat bird and they just weren't healthy. And then it turns out they they had this blackhead disease. And again, I think this is why it's very important to tell people about your failures. ah Because now we're not going to have any more turkeys other than these two that are ah living with us now. ah 15:00 Because when you talk about your failures, things like blackhead disease or things about, you know, things, the realities of home study um are important to know because you also get into the situation where people think that they're going to come in and they're going to have this cute little farm and they go and they buy like uh a miniature cow and they go buy, you know, goats and rabbits and  a guardian dog. And then the next thing you know, 15:27 they're completely overwhelmed and have no idea what they're doing when that cow becomes a bull or that guardian dog wants to work and they have no idea how to control that. um I think it's very important to put out a realistic idea of what homesteading is because ultimately, even if you're eating your animals, you are the steward and the guardian of those animals. So their quality of life is on you up until that time that you um use them for food.  Certainly is. uh 15:57 Every time my husband floats an idea about what he would like to do next, I say,  we need to take six months and do the research and think about it before we make any decisions. And he looks at me like I'm cracked.  And I'm like,  no, seriously, we're not diving into anything until we know what we're doing. Because I'm one of those people who  when the animals die, it breaks my heart. We got, we got rabbits.  Um,  oh my God, three years ago now. 16:26 Rabbits are not our thing. Just for the record, we don't do rabbits anymore.  And the rabbits were not getting pregnant. And we still to this day don't know why. And we had a confirmed buck and two confirmed does.  We got one litter of rabbits out  of one of  the does in a whole year.  So either they were bad at their job or we didn't know what the hell we were doing. And I want to say it was probably both. But I did all the research. 16:55 I looked up everything. talked to the people that sold us the rabbits and it still didn't work. So, there's two schools of thought here. You can do all the research on earth and still fail or you can not do any research at all and for sure fail. And you can feel kind of strophically. Because I think people wonder. So both of us still work full time. I'm in school full time. And of course we have the friends that are like, how do you do it all? And it's like, well, you don't have a choice. So if you want to do home studying, 17:25 it's very rare unless you are inheriting ah the infrastructure and an established farm to actually make a living wage out of homesteading. And that's something that I've tried to explain to people as well. Like we don't, we, if anything, kind of break even by the fact that we can fill our, um you know, fill our freezers full of meat. Like we don't really have to go meat shopping at all. um And our dogs, we, 17:54 You know, I think that we avoid a lot of vet bills because our dogs eat a good raw diet. Um, for the most part that comes off of the animals that we process ourselves. Um, but I mean, are you going to make a complete living off it? I wouldn't quit your job. Yeah. Like don't, don't quit your day job until you're ready. You know, and that means you're going to be working yourself to the bone. Um, but that's again, that's the reality of the situation. 18:24 Yeah, yeah, and you're making a really good distinction here because a small homestead is not a big farm. It's never gonna be And one to two people um There's only so much you can do in a day, you know It does make it a lot easier with two people like we can get a bunch of chickens done in a day We can get a bunch of rabbits done in a day But it is it's hard work and it's constant work and 18:53 It's definitely, you know, a labor of love, but these are the realities of the situation. So again, like I talk about that on reality of things like tip-talk and stuff like that, where it shows these people, like one person doesn't have to work and one person doesn't have to do this. then I'm guaranteeing you that a lot of those people have landscapers. have, you know, people coming in and setting up the scene for them and things like that. So. 19:20 When it comes to people who actually want to start doing this themselves, don't believe anything you hear in that realm. If it looks too good to be true, it is. I always tell people if they're interested, they need to go to a place where the people are actually walking the walk and talking the talk. Absolutely. And that's what we've tried to do, you know, to an extent with our friends. um Next year, we're going to start raising meat birds ah to  help. 19:49 feed our friends and have them all come over and do a butchering party. I'm really excited for that. That will be very interesting on the psychology side. Yeah, well, it's kind of it's kind of interesting because once I think that people at least once in their life, if they're going to eat meat,  really should understand where it comes from. And at least on the homestead, you know that your you know, your meat, you know where it comes from, you know, it's not abused. You know, its final moments were not 20:19 you know, on a factory line, was,  you know, just picked up and  in the case of chickens, you just kind of cut their throat and it's instant.  Um, but I think that that's really important to understand because part of what we get at the supermarket where everything is sterile and pre-packaged is a distance from honoring the animals that we eat.  Um, and when you stop honoring your food and you stop honoring the animal, well, you don't miss it until it's gone. 20:50 And, you know, that's, that's part of a consumerist culture. That's part of a culture that just expects, well, when I need food on the grocery store in the grocery store, it's going to be there.  Um,  and part of homesteading and part of small time farming is to ensure that, or to understand that, no, it might not always be there.  And  you have to kind of provide for yourself, but it also connects you to that bridge between, um, you know, the wild. 21:18 and your domestic life because you are living with animals, you're caring for animals, you're  killing animals in order that their body feeds yours. So to have respect for that circle, I think is very important and very humbling as a human.  Oh,  absolutely. The first time I watched a chicken get butchered that was my chicken, I was like,  oh, this is hard. And I didn't cry. I was more shocked than sad. 21:47 And my husband said, are you okay? And I was like,  yeah, I said, but other people need to know this is how it's done. And he said, I think we're going to have that covered someday. And now I'm doing a podcast about all of this. So,  but yeah, it's really, really hard. The first time  you take the life of an animal to sustain your own life through eating it. 22:13 Yep. we try, I think another thing that we try to do is use every possible part.  um, you know, in the, in, in rabbits,  um, nearly everything is usable other than sort of the awful, which is like the digestive system and all the feces and things like that. Like you can basically use everything. The chickens will eat it. The dogs will eat it. You can eat it.  Um, and then the fur is obviously usable as our, like, we just barely completed a entire batch of rabbits. 22:42 cheek, our key chain, sorry.  Um, so we try to use absolutely everything we can. If we can't use it, we pass it on to somebody else. So we even save bones and skulls because these things are the ears even, um, because these are really big on the oddities market. Yep. So it's important for us that, you know, every part is used, everything is used and that the animal dies a very quick,  um, quick painless death. 23:10 And it is hard. is hard with rabbits, especially when you, you know, you're the one raising them. So I kind of, I feel better by the fact that I have,  um, I do have a favorite rabbit who will live her life out here. name's October. She's very sweet and she's a very good mom. So I've decided that, you know, she will be one of the rabbits that stays.  Um, but I also think of it too, as you know, not only do we as humans eat 23:38 horrifically processed food, but so do our pets.  And um that was another thing that I think that I had issues with on TikTok too, was that, you know, there's this big thing of like showing people feeding their dogs, like these vegetables and things like that. And I've been a,  I've worked in, I've worked with dogs most of my life. ah I was a groomer, a dog trainer, a behaviorist. um I've ran kennels, rescues. We have five dogs right now that are all rescues. 24:07 They're obligate carnivores. So the idea that it's good or easy for them to digest vegetable matter is something that was promoted by pet food companies in order to sell you corn and soy and rice and things like that that dogs really should not be eating, same with cats. ah So another aspect of that was I wanted to start also talking about 24:34 you know, Ron ancestral diets for dogs. And part of how we supplement that is through our rabbits and chickens.  Um, so it's,  uh, it's, it's, it's a whole thing, I guess, like when you do this, it becomes your life and it becomes,  um,  sort of a center,  not necessarily of your world because you're working on it, but like a center that centers you. Yes. Yep. You're grounded in it. 25:04 Yes.  I love that. I think that's fabulous because a lot of people are like, yeah, we have chickens, we have goats, have cows, and they talk to me about it  and they're thrilled to have them and they take care of them and they do what they're going to do with them.  And that's  wonderful. Absolutely.  But you are grounded in this. Like you,  you were died and centered in this.  Absolutely. 25:33 There's a line from a movie. can't think of it right now, but  I said it badly.  Go ahead. God, I'm trying to think of what I want to do. And so we're, we're always like adding projects too, which is crazy. He goes a little crazy cause I'm a little ADHD and I'm always doing things, but,  um, you know, we do maple syrup too. So that's pretty fun. Like we get, um, you know, we'd pop trees on our property.  Um, 25:58 And every year we come up with big batches of syrup done the old way, quote unquote. We do use the aluminum buckets and we, you know, we cook it outside on a stove that we rebuild every year. That's for Gordon and Hames, sure.  And everything goes up and down at the same time and everything's made of rock out here. Yeah, that's true too. If  anybody out there is unfamiliar with the quote unquote granite state, well, it's aptly named.  Gardening is very hard here. It is, ah there's, 26:28 There's a lot of rock in the ground, let's say, and our property is extremely rocky. It's hard to drive people. It is.  Fencing is an issue all the time. ah And we also heat the house using wood mostly sourced from our own property. Like we go out there and we cut it and drag it out with the Jeep and, uh you know, spend the warmer months kind of processing it and drying it and things like that. But again, it's work. 26:55 Are you always a year ahead on your firewood? I would say no. We laxed last year, I think we did. But we made up for it because one of the things too to remember is people are always getting rid of things. Yeah, so we sort the tremendous amount because the emerald ash borer came through this area. It's filled all the ash trees and it's standing dead now. 27:25 So they, we were helping out an older couple cleaning up trees that were coming down on their property. And that's where we got a lot of the stuff this year, which was nice because it's already dry. Yeah. The Emerald Ash borers found our tree line this past year or two and  the trees were hanging in. And my husband noticed this spring that there were a lot of holes in the ash trees, you know, the trunks. And he came in and he said, we have a problem. And I said, what's that? And he said, the, uh 27:54 The woodpeckers are basically putting holes in our ash trees. And I said, well, yeah, that's what woodpeckers do. And he said, no, we have emerald ash doors. They're going after the bugs. I was like, great. I said, how many trees are almost dead? He said, at least half. And almost our entire tree line is all ash trees. I was like, what are we going to replace them with? He says, apple trees, peach trees, plum trees. I was like, go for it. Please do that. 28:22 It's a good time. Is it south facing? Good time for like a food forest. You can see it.  It's actually  south. It is south. It's it runs north to south. And so we have plum trees and apple trees and pear and peach trees over there already. And they're doing great. So he's just going to keep adding some in every year. That's what I want to do. I want to do more like the permaculture aspect of things as opposed to  the annuals where you have to like 28:52 them every year. So you're getting more out of a out of the permaculture state like plants as opposed to like your corn, which you have to put a ton of effort into planting every year, you know, where you could just go out there and pick fruit or berries or. Okay.  You know how Shannon is very uh adamant about homesteading is hard and TikTok sucks because people put happy. 29:21 the lucky stuff on there. Yeah. I hate corn. Corn is not good for you. really is. It's a grain. It's not even vegetable. It's a starch. It really is not. Not gonna lie. The food quality is so poor in that. Yep. So I am going to die on that hill. Corn is not really good for you. And I mean, if you want to have an ear of sweet corn picked from the field down the road from you because it tastes good in August, 29:51 Go for it, slather it in butter, enjoy it. But  corn every meal is really bad for you. Yeah. It is a dietary, you know, like  the amount that we eat it or the amount that we force it onto our pets is absurd. It's a sugar spike here. Yeah. And I think again, that's something that we have to be aware of when we are doing this homesteading thing. Like, why are we doing it? Because the food that we're being fed in the grocery store, 99 % of the time is just manufactured garbage. 30:20 It's crap is what it is. My husband grew these beautiful cabbages, like an  old variety of cabbage this summer.  And uh I had told him to not bother growing cabbages because usually they're not very good and they take up a lot of room  and they're buggy. They get bugs really easy. Yeah, I the veracica as well. 30:43 Yeah, and he picked this very old variety from some place and got the seeds and put them in and started them from little baby cabbages.  And they were like  dark green. They were sweet. They were crispy. I said, you can grow those cabbages every summer for the rest of our lives if you want. Cabbage is good for you. 31:06 Yeah, we tried gardening. Our garden is a little, uh, was feral. We took off for a week in the river and came back and it just sort of took over. We went from the extreme water this year too. So it rained. I think it was like, you know, working full time made it really bad, but I think it was like 15 or 16 Saturdays in a row. Yep. 31:31 Like every weekend for like 16 weekends, all spring, rain every weekend. We got so much rain this year from the beginning. And then all of a sudden July came and then it stopped raining. It didn't rain again until October. That was our summer two summers ago here in Minnesota. And these things are difficult. So the garden did okay. We're probably going to try to refurbish the whole thing this year. And we do it again, composting. like we make 32:01 Rabbits make massive amounts of manure that you can literally just kind of throw in the garden. um But we have so much  poo production here that, you know, we definitely ah make enough compost, um which again is another thing that I think ah needs to be discussed too, because,  you know, rabbits are definitely a very sustainable way to raise meat for yourself. Supposing you can kill them. Caveat. um 32:30 But  there's a lot of push like, you can raise rabbits in a small space. You can raise rabbits like right in your backyard. But what they don't tell you is how much poop they produce and that you have to find some method of disposing of that, whether it's giving it away or uh putting it in the corner of your house because  animals make a lot of poo. And anybody who has ever worked with animals  will tell you that like, 32:57 Probably like 70 % of working with them is poop.  Oh yeah.  Even the dogs.  Yeah, for sure.  It's not a clean and shiny and roses and candy kind of lifestyle. No, and it's expensive too. know, like, I mean, when we have the egg shortages, I was trying to go get meat birds and everywhere I went, it's like, we're focusing on egg layers because people want to buy egg layers. 33:26 And I tried so hard to tell people like by the time you get your eggs, you've put more money. You could buy eggs even at that extended price cheaper than you ever could by raising your own chickens. Yeah. There's a lot of people in our area that have a $2,000 dozen eggs this year. Yep.  Oh yeah. Those first eggs are expensive. Yeah. Between the feed and the chickens. You can get it layers all day long on Craigslist right now though, free.  Yep. 33:55 give them a whole lot.  And the roosters were insane. mean, I even went to tractor supply looking for the meat birds and this woman was there like, Oh, we're get chickens, we're gonna get eggs. And I'm like, these are straight run.  So you might end up with roosters. And I told her flat out, said, I got a couple of Americanas. I got five just to sort of add the blue eggs to my flock. And I ended up with four roosters. ah So you also have what you know, another thing comes into home studying is responsibility.  And part of that is 34:25 On a homestead, males are kind of useless. uh know, like, do you, I mean, if you have pets, that's one thing, but like, how many rams do you need? How many bulls do you need? How many roosters do you really need? How many bucks do you really need? Not that many. So what happens when,  you know, someone goes and buys a straight run of chickens  and they end up with mostly roosters. Well, what are you going to do that? Nobody wants a rooster. You might be able to rehome a few or send a few to rescue, but. 34:54 for the most part, those roosts are gonna be culled. And that's another thing to consider that you have to be a part of. Even if you're not the one doing the culling, these animals that you're raising, responsibility-wise, they're most likely going to end up culled. And I think too that there's a lot of, there's a lot of rose colored glasses when it comes to how people perceive. 35:23 homesteading, or even chickens in general. mean, I'm not, my dogs are being ridiculous right now. I've gotten a lot of flack for, you know, how can you butcher chickens? Well, they're so beautiful and wonderful and friendly. And I said, well, chickens will eat each other. I was like, as soon as I go to butcher my meat birds, my egg layers are out here. They're looking for the blood. They're looking for the entrails. They don't care. They're little dinosaurs. They are absolutely. 35:52 And you see a lot of people's vision shattered by this sort of thing. And then again, you look on TikTok, like I saw some lady post this ridiculous ah post about she tried to make it out as her rooster was mourning a hen that died. And of course people in the comments were like, oh, those poor, you know, birds, were, they were, you ah meant to be together.  you know,  people were coming up with this entire love story of this hen and this rooster. When people who actually had chickens are like, 36:22 The only reason he's looking at her is he's cause he's trying to peck feathers off her to eat the feathers. Cause they do that.  And  there's again, there's this like sort of blindsided disconnect of how these animals actually are. And I'm not trying to like, you know, I'm not trying to say that if you want to have a pet chicken and you love that chicken, we have one here.  Um, that there's anything wrong with that. But again, when I go back to like, you have to honor the animal. 36:49 You have to honor the fact that yes, that chicken is a little dinosaur and they can be exceedingly cruel to each other. I mean, they will peck each other to death. So we don't honor these animals by giving them human feelings and emotions. We honor them by respecting the animal that they are. Yeah. It's like Joel Saliton says, the pigness of the pig. Yes. Okay. Well, this is not the conversation I thought I was going to have this evening, but I'm glad I'm having it. 37:20 Well, I'm actually glad to hear that  Yeah, I want to have you guys back because who makes the the pens and the crochet hooks is it yours at oh out? Well, let's have Alan come back when you guys have time and talk to me about that because those crochet hooks look amazing Oh, no problem. I'm sure he would love to oh 37:50 If  it was a hit or not. Yeah, he had, he really. look great. oh He would probably enjoy actually talking about that because he starts talking about wood stuff to me and I start glazing over. So.  We'll have to set it up for after the new year.  Excellent. All right. Shannon, Alan, I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.  Can people find you anywhere other than Hellfire Homestead on Facebook?  There's that and we've put up a YouTube. 38:20 Currently, we don't have any media on that because we're still kind of putting that together. Again, like I said, like over the winter where we have slightly less time um in the summer and fall to do this. So we're trying to just sort of get that done now and probably put it out by spring um because we also have our paranormal group and things like that going. So  lots of stuff. I wish my podcast, I wish I could figure out a way to stretch it to paranormal stuff because I would love to hear about that. 38:50 I don't think I can work Homestead and Paranormal into the same thing.  We could talk about how our rural history is very haunted.  Maybe we'll do that in the spring too.  All right. uh As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And if you want to support the podcast, you can go to atinyhomestead.com slash support, because I'm really original like that.  Thank you guys so much for your time. I appreciate it. 39:19 No problem. Have a good holiday. You too.  

Today I'm talking with Marcus at Hope Hill Homestead.  Route 2 Revolution   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Marcus at Hope Hill Homestead in New Hampshire. Good morning, Marcus. How are you? Good morning, Mary. How are you?  I'm good.  I'm very excited to find out what you do, but tell me how the weather is in New Hampshire this morning. Well, when I was dropping my kids off at their little 00:28 uh school, little farm school, little private  Catholic farm school. It was two degrees.  Okay. Is it sunny? it cloudy? What?  It's partly sunny, cloudy. Okay. so, but there's some snow on the ground and everything is frozen here. um It is, I think it's 22 degrees outside here. 00:56 In Minnesota, it's very overcast. Our yard light, we live on three acres, so we have a light that lights up the door yard at night. It was still on at 7.30 this morning and the sun was supposed to be up. I was like, oh, it is very overcast. And they are predicting rain this afternoon. Oh no. So you're going have some hard driving conditions pretty soon. Yes. And my husband actually has an appointment at two. So I was like, please be careful when you go. 01:26 True. Yeah, I don't love it when the weather does this flip floppy thing because it's been really, really cold here and we've had snow at least a trace every day for over a week and now it's going to rain. Yeah, it just makes a big mess. yeah, we did the driveway and like, for example, I had an oil truck try to come deliver oil to me and we burn wood and we have like oil as a backup and sometimes if the fireplace goes out, the stove goes out in the night, then you... 01:55 the heat kicks back on and I wanted to make sure I had the oil tank full because we live up on  a dirt road, a driveway is a dirt road  that goes up pretty  steep and uh at some points the oil company will say we  won't even attempt to go up your driveway because it's dangerous. uh yeah, yesterday he tried to, a few days ago they tried to get up, they couldn't make it up and I'm like, oh please God, please let them help him get up and then they came today and he delivered it. So now we're, hopefully we're set for the winter. 02:25 because it's really important when you live on a homestead, as we all know who do. Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at your place. Yeah, so we live on, me and my wife and my four kids, live on 10 acres and we have some sheep and we have some chicken and I also from home, I'm a work at home parent here and I 02:54 I make furniture, but I also make  like little A-frame cabins and greenhouses. That's primarily what I do now. I make these kind of these smaller concept cabin structures that people use for like Airbnb or just for,  you know, their backyard sleeping cabins or whatever. Yeah.  And as far as like the homesteading part, we just started milking some sheep this last spring, the first time we milked. um 03:24 That's been interesting and we made cheese. We were in the process of trying to become more self-sufficient, but as you know, you got to take little steps and sometimes with every two steps you take, you take one step back. Yes, you do. Sometimes you don't even go forward again. We did that with rabbits. 03:48 We're not doing rabbits again, I don't think. We keep talking about it, but I don't think we're gonna do it again. just not, it is not worth the return for us. So with the sheep, I already knew that you could milk sheep, but are they good with that or do you have to like train them to be okay Well, you know, there's a couple breeds that are very good milkers. So we have some East Phrasians and 04:14 The East Fraser's sheeps, can produce up to a couple gallons each one a day.  And a lot of people don't know that about um sheep that you can  milk them.  we love our sheep and we've had sheep for the last,  well, we had to get rid of our herd a few years ago because we just didn't have enough pasture and it was getting too expensive  and we had young kids and it all together was hard. so we... um 04:43 We got rid of our sheep and our goats for a little bit. And then we just had the chance to get back the same sheep that we got rid of, returned to us um because they had young children. They couldn't take care of them.  And luckily they were, one of them was in milk.  And uh so we just kept on milking and it was fantastic. And sheep's milk, if anybody has tried goat milk, there's a little bit of a taste with goat milk. It doesn't taste like cow's milk, but sheep's milk. 05:11 actually taste just like cow's milk, I would say even better than cow's milk. And it's actually better for you. It has a higher protein content. It's got a higher fat content. It's a higher vitamin and mineral content. And yeah, they're easy. Awesome. I know nothing about it, so I thought I would take the opportunity to ask. So what brought you to this lifestyle? Oh, man. mean, the simple lifestyle in the country, even though it's 05:41 It's simple, there's a lot of hard work, but there's a reward. right, so I think a lot of homesteaders do it because of what they get out of it. Not just because they think they're gonna be able to completely live off the land.  It's like you realize you're sacrificing some time, but the returns you get by the process of homesteading. So having like two young boys, I wanted them to uh kind of grow up. 06:11 having farm chores, being around animals,  and choosing just  that lifestyle, which seems so nostalgic  to the modern busy life that we're kind of living now. It just allows you to be home more, um enjoy the company of animals,  and enjoy  that work that goes into it. um So I think this altogether is for, yes, to have kind of 06:40 safety net if shit ever hits the fan, know, to be able to produce milk and have eggs. But also just for the experience of it and just for  the love  of the lifestyle.  Absolutely could not agree more. And sometimes you get to hang out with the neighbor's animals too. Just before we signed in to talk to each other,  our neighbor's dog showed up on our property. We have not actually met her before. Her name is Shy. 07:09 She is some kind of  Labrador retriever and she's very, very red. She's almost the red of a deer. Yeah. And we have a mini Australian shepherd  and apparently Shy showed up and our shepherd decided to say hello  and uh my son brought our dog in and my dog was losing her mind. So it's a good thing that we couldn't get together till  the time we signed in because I wouldn't have been able to talk until she stopped barking. Right. Yeah. I love that. uh 07:38 about getting the random visitors from the neighbors or other wild animals that  come around and the reactions of the animals are always fun. Yeah, she's a very friendly dog. I was like, hello, beautiful girl. And she came right over to the window because I was on my porch and put her paws up to say hi. That's funny because sometimes you hear them. You know you have the neighbor, the dog's neighbor. And then  every once in while, they come over to visit. you're like, OK, that's where the barking's coming from. 08:03 Yes, and if it wasn't icy, it's all hell out there. I would have gone out and said hello, but I don't want to break a hip. I would really rather not.  But she said hello through the window. And when she shows up this spring, because she inevitably will, I will have to just love on her then when it's not so scary outside. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, I love dogs. I was not a dog person until we got our dog as a puppy. 08:26 And now I'm like, oh, look at the good boy. Oh, look at the good girl. And my husband's like, oh my God, you are the most converted woman ever to dogs. It's so funny. Me and my wife, we've gone back and forth with having dogs. We've tried having a couple of dogs. And she says, oh, you're just not a dog person. I do love dogs. I love dogs. But they're also a lot of work. And it's like having another child.  It absolutely is. And it will break your heart when they're not feeling well. 08:53 or if they die early, our dog has a very sensitive stomach and when she doesn't feel good, I just want to fix it and I can't. And it makes my heart hurt like it did when my kids were little. So yes, it's just like having another kid. And it's funny because like we just got this new cat and I was reluctantly holding off, but you know, we had, we want to get rid of, know, there's some mice around here and there. So I'm like, all right, so I can. 09:19 I can go, my little boys really wanted to have a cat. I'm like, all right, we'll get the cat. And now I'm totally all in and now I understand. I see my friends who have their dogs, they love their dogs so much. And me and my wife would be sitting in our bed talking about our kids. I would always say her, I bet you our friends are just laying in bed talking about their pets before they go to bed. And now we do the same with the cat. And the cat sleeps between us and kind of. 09:47 her's us to sleep, you know, and, and, no, it is, it is a wonderful symbiotic relationship, isn't it?  It really is.  I  don't know that I want another dog once ours is no longer with us. I don't know that I have the energy  for another one. I'm 56. We've probably got another six years with her. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, maybe a house cat next time.  It's a lot of work and responsibility and cost. 10:15 And so you have to weigh it, right? Cost benefit.  so we tried this dog and it was just, was going to the road all the time and we're so far up the driveway.  have no neighbors around us, but um it would find a way to get to the road and it kept on, the police would have to come get it.  it just became,  everyone says in the beginning, like they're gonna do all the... 10:40 taking care of the dog and the boys like, yeah, we'll do everything. And it always ends up just falling on me. And then it ends up being this stressful, it becomes this stressful use of your time sometimes. there's a lot of benefits to dogs. Also, if you wanna go places, sometimes you have to find a place for them to stay. So yeah, it's like having a young child and you have to weigh the cost benefit. And sometimes that... 11:06 that benefit outweighs the cost and then sometimes it doesn't. So you have to figure that out.  Yes, absolutely. If we didn't live on three point, whatever it is, acres and we didn't need a watchdog, we probably would not have a dog. Right.  Because I really like the fact that if somebody pulls in the driveway, she lets me know. That is nice. So that's very important to me because I don't want surprises at my door.  I want to know somebody's going to be walking out the door. 11:34 I know, very true. then sometimes you'll see those like, you know, now all the reels they have on like the YouTube shorts or whatever, and you see  all these dogs, you know, uh helping out the little kids or like chasing away a coyote or  preventing some attack.  And you're like, Oh, yeah. So I know you're looking like, Oh, that's a good reason to have a dog. Yep, absolutely. And with the cat thing, we have a huge pole barn and we moved here. 12:00 There were many, many, many mice in the pole barn, to the point that they were having babies in the workbench drawers. Oh my goodness.  And so we acquired three barn cats. uh we've had many, barn cats over the last five or so years. And the cats do an excellent job of keeping the pole barn  free of vermin.  And they're not so good about keeping it free of possums, because possums like cat food. Ooh. But the great thing about possum is, you know, you know what? 12:30 Oh wait, it possums? No, or is it, yeah, possums. They  eat a lot of They do. Yeah, so that's kind of good. I think they eat the most ticks out of anything, I think. And that's great, as long as they're actually in the tree line where the ticks are. If they're in the pole barn, they get dispatched.  That's true. Or are good eating? I don't know. I've never tried. Ah, no. I wouldn't. I don't know. I'm sure that other people probably do eat them. We've never tried it. 12:57 But  wild games too, they call it, you know, just get a whole bunch of them and he's put it in a stew and.  I'll have to ask my husband the next time he has to dispatch a big one if he wants to try pasta.  But uh no, I agree with you on your  take on what brought you to this, because  I grew up  on a one acre lot with my parents  in Maine. 13:26 And half that lot, the back half was swamp, woods and swamp. And I loved  where I grew up. We spent a lot of time, me and my sister, my brother, hanging out in the woods and making forts underneath the spruce tree boughs and  walking the creek and fishing and the whole bit.  Yeah. And now in Minnesota, I live on flat land  and I don't live near a creek, but we have a tree line. 13:51 That tree line makes me so happy because there's a little path to get to the other side of the tree line. And I walk through there and it's not the same because Maine, Lanchester, Vermont, Massachusetts, lots and lots and lots of  conifer trees,  evergreen. Not so much here. Here it's hardwood. Really? Yeah. Oh, I thought there would be more ah softwood there too. I'm in south Minnesota. Up north there's a ton of pine trees.  Right. 14:19 but not so much down here. Down here it's more astens and oak trees and maple trees. Oh, no kidding. But it's really interesting because trees are trees. And if you grew up amongst trees, any tree will do. It will. Yeah. Yeah. I love trees. Me too. I love trees.  I harvest trees out of my  woods too. I'll cut some down. It's always kind of bittersweet when I cut down like an oak and I mean, 14:48 for firewood  and it's like, oh man, I'm getting rid of a tree, but I'm also heating my  house with it and it's, you know, it's good work, it's hard work, but it's good work too. It keeps you strong, keeps my boys strong. um But it's, that's what it's there for too. It's there to heat, you know, it's there for, that's what's special about trees. It  provides the food and it provides  the shade or provides the heat, all the things that you need.  So um yeah. 15:16 I mean, being surrounded by trees is a gift. If you've never been surrounded by trees, you don't really know kind what you're missing, huh? Absolutely.  One of the prerequisites, all right, I said it right, finally.  The prerequisites for where we were gonna land five years ago was that there must be trees.  Must be trees.  Must be trees and must be a flat space to grow a big garden. And we found a place, oh Perfect.  Love it. 15:45 We thought about moving back to New England and we looked at house prices and house prices were really reasonable five years ago. Yeah.  The cost of living has gone up so much for New England. was like, no, we're staying in Minnesota. I know we, we, um, we bought right before it was during the pandemic. We brought, we bought right before all the prices went up when the interest rates were still really low too.  we got lucky. We, we were renting. 16:14 and we had a bad landlord and we're like, okay, we gotta figure, we gotta buy, we gotta buy now. And luckily we just went far enough into Western, Southern New Hampshire where we just gotta, we can't believe what we found. And we were so, I say not lucky, but blessed, because it does feel more like a blessing when you find a place like what we have. But now I couldn't imagine trying to find something. 16:43 being like a younger couple, uh trying to find like  a homestead. Now you have to really, you know, look hard.  And you've got to have the money. Yeah, I know.  And the credit and the income and  that was always something I was never really good at the credit. And I was determined, actually, I was a traveler through my twenties and thirties. I backpacked all the time. And I, I'm a singer songwriter as well. And I figured out you can make money and travel while you're 17:12 while you're backpacking if you have a guitar with you.  Then I bought some land, 10 acres of land up on Prince Edward Island in Canada.  I bought 10 acres, sight unseen, it was right on the water, it was beautiful. I didn't go through a bank, I didn't have to go through a bank, it was like a land company that if you just put some money down, they would hold the note, they would finance you at an interest for like a five or seven year term. uh 17:39 And I was going up there, I spending like nine months out of the year, like up on Prince Edward Island. I was trying to live that simple, very simple life. And I did, and I had like a little cabin, just a wood stove, no electricity. And you know, that's when I really kind of like fell in love with the simple life. And it was almost giddy every day, just having everything be so simple. And it's funny, it's, we really... 18:07 There's a part of us that really enjoys the nature and just having simpleness. And I feel like today we overcomplicate things. You know, we have so much going on, so much modern, you know, all the modern conveniences and the comforts. It hasn't seemed like it's made us more happy, you know? I think when we simplify our lives, I think, you know, we are nature more and homesteading. 18:37 I think there's like an amount of satisfaction you just really can't get from the modern world. Well, I agree. And I have been thinking about this a lot because I hear this a lot from people on the podcast. And I feel like homesteading is genuine. And if you're just living in a box and going to work 40 to 80 hours a week, 19:02 Home is where you might sit down to eat if not stand at the sink and eat and it's where you sleep. Right. And I don't want to say it's performative, but it's not, I don't feel like it's living. feel like it's a... think you're all the guests in your own home, know, I guess almost where? Yeah. Yeah. I get it. And honestly, I love where we live. I mean, I have talked about this ad nauseum with anyone who will listen. 19:33 And when we first moved here,  I  really every day I would go outside in the morning with my coffee and sit on the steps and just  look out toward the trees and just breathe.  For the first, I don't know, a couple of months we lived here because I was just so dumbfounded that we did it, that we finally did it. uh I know it feels good.  And just being able to sit and have tea or coffee and just soak in that moment, huh? 20:02 Makes it all worth it, doesn't it? Yes, absolutely. And my husband still has a job, a jobby job as we call it. But his favorite place to be is here at home. Yeah. And when we decided to make this leave, I said to him, I said, we need to find a place that we love so much that it's like being on vacation, even though we're home. Oh, yes. Me and my wife, we talked about the same thing. That's the exact same thing. When we first moved here. 20:31 We did, we felt like we were on vacation. We were like, this is cool. It was very surreal for the first month. I was like, my house is clean because it was remodeled a year before we moved in and no one had lived here. And it was so clean and so perfect. And I kept going, this is way too fancy a home for us. And my husband laughed and he said, I'll just give it a year. It'll be not fancy. Oh, that's funny. I know. 20:57 all my walls now they need a paint job because when you have younger kids, their hands with chocolate gets smear on the walls. Do we repaint all the walls now or wait until they get a few years older to make sure they're not doing that? then they'll be teenage boys and they'll probably still make a mess out of them. Well, I'll tell you secret. My youngest still lives here. He's 23. He'll be 24 this month. And I see his hand prints. 21:27 not prints, not his hand prints, his fingerprints on the wall that goes toward the stairs  because he puts his hand on that side of the wall when he hits the stairs.  And uh we also have dings in our paint because the people that painted it painted it with a  latex paint on the inside. OK, if you ding latex, it peels.  Oh, boy.  So my husband went through and take and mudded those spots so they'll be paintable. Yeah. 21:57 Now we're stuck with what color do we want to paint it? So it'll be a bit before we don't have white spots on our coffee painted walls. ah So I don't want to go too far into all the home stuff, but I do want to know about the structures that you build because I saw them on Facebook and I was like, those are super cool. So tell me about that. Yeah, thanks. So, you know, I'm a third generation furniture maker and so we were wholesalers and so I'd make everything from 22:25 kitchen islands, to wall shelves, coffee tables, kitchen tables, small accessories, little garden signs, whatever was made of wood, we do.  We sell them to stores. And oh I did that  for  more than 20 years.  then having the homestead here,  I started building my own chicken coops, my own greenhouses. I'm like, oh, this is kind of fun to do. I'm like, kind of getting a little... 22:54 with a board of the furniture,  with competing with the imports and ah it's hard to make money, make furniture nowadays because there's just so much competition from overseas. You have Ikea and things like that.  I'm like, you know what? I'm going  to start making these trucks. I'm going to try that. I'm going to try building a chicken coop or a greenhouse and then put it on marketplace and sell it. And they started selling and I'm like, oh, this is cool. And then  I have this signature 23:24 I fire burn, instead of like staining, I'll fire burn all the wood first and I build it. And so now it has that protective fire burned stain on it, which protects from raw and from bugs and from, you know, this is from other, from wear and tear, lasts a long time with that fire burn technique that I use. so yeah, so now I'm, you know, I'll make a mini A-frames, you know, I'll make like outhouses. 23:54 you know, any type of structure, know, like a fire shed, you know, for your firewood. And yeah, so now, but now it's, you know, it's almost Christmas and no one's really buying anything like, you know, right now, but now I'm coming up with different ideas of different structures that I'm going to do different designs. And I want to keep them kind of like unique because there's a lot of people who sell different like sheds and things. So you have to always try to make it a little different, you know. 24:20 I do know my husband and son built a greenhouse two summers ago. Two summers ago. Yeah. And I got a grant for the supplies to make it. No way. Got a $5,000 grant and we spent I think a couple hundred dollars more than the $5,000 grant. Good for you guys. 24:44 I forget how big the greenhouse is. thought it was 40 by 20, but my husband informed me that it's not as big as I think it is,  but it's not eight by eight. Let's say that. They built it from scratch and I love this thing. It's gained us two months in the spring to get the baby plants going. It has gained us two to three months in the fall to keep anything that's a cold weather crop going. That's fantastic. 25:13 So I get it, I'm not a builder, my husband is the builder, he's really, really good at it. But I do absolutely appreciate the talent and the art that goes into it. There's a satisfaction at the end when you build something like that, know, really I think for man or woman, it's just that when you complete something like that and you step back and look at it, and you know can be used for such a practical purpose, and you're thinking, oh my God. 25:40 person's going to have this greenhouse now that they're going to be able to grow their food in and  or like a chicken coop that they can raise their eggs in and it's like, oh, that's cool. And I want to be able to teach my sons that someday too. And to be able to work with the hands because it is, you know, it is very rewarding  to build something with the hands  and that's going to last. And  I am not a builder, but I am a cook.  And when I make dinner and I go all out for dinner about once 26:10 once every six months, usually in the winter time. I do like a big from scratch meal and it's usually a turkey and it's not necessarily at Christmas or Thanksgiving. We like turkey other times too.  And  once I get that all on the table and we're sitting down to eat, I'm just like, I just spent six hours total putting all this together. We're gonna have it wiped out in half an hour, dinner will be over. And I just look at it and go, I don't care that it's gonna be gone because it was actually really satisfying to make it. 26:40 You  know, that's one of the keys to life, to  happiness in life is enjoying the process as you're doing something and not to do it like begrudgingly  or feel like you have to, but to actually enjoy  your craft or your skill, like cooking, to enjoy it as you're doing it.  I love all that too. I'm primarily the dinner cooker here.  And the only thing I hate is the mess after. That's the part that I'm the dishes. 27:10 Me too, right there with you.  I  don't mind the mess like when there's stuff on the counter, it's got to be wiped up. That's fine. It's the stacks of dishes that make me crazy. And I've learned, I've learned when I'm going to cook big to clean as I go, if there's time to wait for something, I try to get some of the dishes in those times and that way it's not so overwhelming. Yeah. 27:34 That's true. I have learned to do that too, is to like try to put some stuff away as I'm cooking so you're not also dealing with all the cooked stuff, you know, all the things that you brought out to try to minimize that.  But yeah, you you're always trying to learn new ways of making that part a little more efficient, you know?  One of the most fabulous things I learned in my 20s was the theory of no wasted motion. I'm not. 28:01 I'm not as good at it now as I used to be because I just don't care as much. don't have four little kids running under my feet.  But the theory is that if you're in the living room and you see something that needs to go to the kitchen and you're headed to the kitchen,  take the thing from the living room to the kitchen. No waste of motion. Oh, you're right. You're so right. eh You're right.  That is so true.  how  would you get your steps in in the day? If you're too efficient, you're not getting all your steps in. I'm just kidding. 28:31 I don't know, eat less terrible food. Right, it's true. Okay, so how many of your little buildings have you sold, do know? I would say, because I've done this now a little bit more than two years, about two years, I would say probably at least a couple dozen. Yeah, like right around there, and it's kind of like supplemental. 28:59 income because my wife works full time for a school district  and but yeah and so like you know the jobs are getting a little bit a little bit bigger the structures are getting a little bit bigger so now i don't have to do as many you know because i'm doing bigger so like the bigger they are you know the more money and i'm just trying to find that sweet price point where it's affordable for people but i'm also you know my labor i'm getting enough for my labor and um but uh yeah yeah so you know new 29:29 new ideas, new projects, you know, in my mind all the time. and  so, but now this during winter time is when I'm going to kind of ah put together like an official catalog too, that I can like send out, you know, to people.  Yeah. So do you build the structures on your property and then like,  truck them to where they're going, or do you build them on site or how does it work? Well, 29:55 It depends on the structure.  it's a small enough structure, I can build it completely here in my workshop and I can transport it assembles.  once they get to a certain size, I come up  with a way of  prefabbing.  can do like the whole, say like for an A-frame, I can build the front part of the A-frame by itself. I can build the back part of the A-frame and then that will fit on and I can build the floor and I can bring those three separate pieces. um 30:24 to the site and then I can basically I'm assembling on site.  So I'm not building it from scratch on site. you know, like, so right, it might take me like four to six hours to assemble on sites. Well, I'll prefab a lot of it in my workshop here,  which is just  a double door garage attached to my home. So that way the, you know, the it's easier to heat  and  the overhead isn't as much, you know,  so. 30:53 It's really the only way to make money when you're a builder is to have your overhead low pretty much.  know, yeah. So, um, always trying to keep, you know,  your overhead expenses cheap.  And, uh, that's part of the key of, you know, being able to do it.  Any small business try to keep your overhead low. It's true. I know. And there's always a, uh, a tendency to wanna cause I've seen it happen many times,  um, where you, want to get big. 31:22 um And then you look for a bigger place and you increase your overhead, but then that means you need increased sales. And if you increase your overhead, then you have to increase your sales. And if your sales aren't there, but your overhead always is there. yeah. Yeah.  There's a lot of talented people who have created amazing products  and drowned in their success because they couldn't keep up.  Right. Yup. 31:52 Yeah. And so I've seen this happen in the furniture business over the years. saw different times, m the rises and the falls of many different types of businesses like that.  And it's always been, you get to a point where you're successful and you grow. And then if there's a dip in sales, then you're kind of, you're, in trouble. And so, you know, just being happy, that's where like living a simple life comes into it. it's. 32:20 People, we always tend to upgrade all our expenses too. We start making a little bit more money. You're like, oh, I can buy that upgraded car. I'll get a bigger TV package. I'll spend money on this, spend money on that. But if you try to keep the simple living in the beginning, then it's not as hard. You don't need to be huge to be successful. Yep, exactly. 32:46 So do you market your buildings on Facebook or do you have other ways to let people know about them? know, do have like, uh it's primarily Facebook  and it's been good enough, you know, so far, but I'll probably have to, you know, venture out more. I mean, I do have like a small brochure that I made, you know, from Staples that I've given out. you know, marketplace is  just an efficient way  of, you can post to up to like 20 different groups. 33:16 And that's like, you know, might be like this town, you know, certain towns area, you know, or, you know, so, you you post one thing on some of these Facebook marketplace groups and, you know, tens of thousands of people are able to see, you know, and then, then you can like hashtag, you can get a link to your own page, to your, to your page. then, so as you do more, you're adding products to your page. And now, 33:43 It's like you have a catalog basically on your page so people can scroll down and they can see all the different things that I do. And then the algorithms, a lot of it has to do with algorithms.  sometimes it's a mystery how the algorithms work.  sometimes you'll see  a product that I have has  tens of thousands of views.  And then a similar product that I thought was just as good gets just like  a couple hundred views. I'm like, huh, wonder why? This is a mystery. 34:11 Yeah, I have no idea how all that works. I wish I knew because I would be the richest person on earth if I knew that answer. You know, I know. now I see like there are some, you know, I see some things on  on, you know,  I get advertisements on Facebook about, about like, you know, like AI advertisers, like, you know, we'll advertise for you just upload it to our AI program and in the AI will find your exact niche. 34:38 It probably would work because you figure, you know, like now it's funny because me and my wife joke about like, we were just talking about this and then we'll see an ad on the Facebook about the thing we were talking about. was like, is that listening to us? You know, is it?  But it does seem to know with pretty good consistency what you're interested in because you always see, you know, advertisements for the things that you've been talking about or you've been searching up on Google. It's so funny.  It's a little creepy.  It is. It is.  It really is. 35:08 And I don't want there to be  too much surveillance.  It's crazy. I'm a little worried about, we're gonna become too dependent on technology and all that stuff. And we are now, but hopefully we can strike a balance. And I don't know if it's gonna be for, we gotta find that sweet spot, I think.  Yeah, I think that we homesteaders have the sweet spot. We're doing all the things with our hands and enjoying nature. m 35:37 and we're using technology to get the word out. True. I think you're right. I think you're right. think  it is a great tool. It can be a great, fantastic tool. um Without it, you and I would not be talking this morning. That's right. And I wouldn't be selling my cabins. So you know, you can use it as a tool for good or you can use it to waste your time.  Exactly. I have one more question about your homestead and then I want to know where people can find you. um 36:05 You said you have chickens. Do you have chickens for eggs or do you sell the meat too? Yeah, chickens for eggs. So we just have, we had more, but you know, we had a bobcat come in, in one afternoon, take out a whole bunch of them. Um, and the hawks to the hawks here, we're like on this migration of hawks. So, so now I just have to kind of keep them in my large coop that I made, that I made. Um, so, um, they're not even right now, actually they're not even producing eggs because 36:34 some trauma they have. I don't know, trying to figure it out. So hopefully we'll get some eggs again soon.  Well, if they don't have any light in their coop, they're probably not going to give you eggs until there's at least 12 to 14 hours of light again. Really? Yeah. They are based on sunlight.  Oh, wow. See, I  didn't know that. Well, thanks for letting me know. Yeah. We have a light in our coop during the winter because our chickens are the ISA Browns. 37:01 And they were bred to lay an egg a day as long as they have light in the coop in the wintertime. Really? Yep.  it's not that it's not trauma, Marcus. It's that there's not enough daylight.  I'll see if it can be something as simple as that. And when you talk to another homesteader, that they can tell you these things. Yeah. So if you want eggs in the winter, put a light in the coop. And if you want to give your chickens a break, don't put a light in the coop.  Well, it's good to know. Thank you very much. 37:28 You're welcome. I know just enough to be dangerous.  That's great. All right, Marcus, this was fabulous. Where can people find you? Just on Facebook for now? Yeah, for now. Just go to Hope Hill Homestead and you can also listen to my music too because I have a band called Root 2 Revolution and we  sing songs about living simply and things like that. Is it R-O-O-T or  R-O-U-T-E? Yeah, like the road, like  R-O-U-T-E and then number two, Revolution. 37:57 So like route, they say route.  like they would say written route, route to revolution. huh. Yeah. We're on Spotify and on YouTube and we have a song called live simply. You want to look that up?  Nice. I will have to, I'll have to go find your channels and put it in the show notes. Awesome. Thank you very much. All right. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com and if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com slash support.  Marcus. 38:27 Thank you again, I really appreciate your time. Great talking to you. You too. Take care, peace.  

Today I'm talking with Christeen at Rustic Haven Homestead. www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. 00:12 Today I'm talking with Christine at Rustic Haven Homestead in Washington State. Good morning, Christine. How are you? Good morning. How are you? I'm doing great.  I'm good. I'm good.  I'm good. oh What is the weather like there? 00:30 Right now  it's eight o'clock in the morning, so we're just getting our day started and it's super foggy and trying to rain. 00:40 That sounds about right for Washington state.  Yes.  Well, in Minnesota, it is bright and sunshiny. We got a little bit of snow overnight on top of the snow we got over the weekend.  So it's very shiny outside because the snow is reflecting the sunlight. It's beautiful out. I love that. I can't wait for it to snow, but we still have a few more weeks of rain. Yeah, when. 01:05 I don't know anything about Washington state's climate except that you guys get a lot of rain. So does it get cold, cold there? It does. um Depending on where you live in Washington,  that'll depend on how much snow you get. I have kind of been all over. So  up in Skagit County by like Mount Baker, you get a ton of snow.  And  down here by Olympia so far, we don't get a lot of snow, but there's a lot of ice. 01:36 Okay. Yeah.  I don't love it when there's ice. My husband drives all over the place for his job and the days when it's freezing rain, I'm just like, please be careful.  Right.  I don't mind driving in the snow and stuff like that just because I'm used to it from living up in Skagit County, which I didn't  really grow up in.  For the most part, I was born and raised in North Carolina where they put ice  like 02:05 um,  ice salt down  instead of  sand. Here they do sand. And so  it's a little bit different on  that front.  But I've noticed that in certain areas of Washington, the roads aren't kept as  well as others. So up in Skagit County, they worked  really hard to make sure everything was maintained. Down here, it's like they're very short staffed. 02:32 And so the roads don't get cleared and when they do get cleared, it's clean cleared. So it's very scary. And if you don't grow up in an environment where you're actually driving in the snow and the ice, you become a danger to others. Yes. And that happens every fall here in Minnesota. That first snowstorm, there are more people who end up in the ditch than really should end up in the ditch. Yeah. And so... 03:02 I work in the medical field. have  for  almost 20 years and so I'm just like, just stay home. It's okay. Just stay home.  If you can, don't be on the roads. Yes. Yep.  Okay. is more important than your life.  Oh, absolutely. You're, you're  absolutely a hundred percent right. And other people's lives too, while we're talking about it.  So tell me a little bit about yourself and your version of your homestead.  Okay. So. 03:32 My name is Christine  and I have grown up with my grandparents canning and  baking everything and doing everything from scratch. My mama, she  lived to be almost 100 and had  a full-time garden, worked in the medical field. She worked in the hospital until she was in her 80s. And  so she taught me a lot about canning. 03:59 vegetables and how to grow a garden and all of that aspect. And then whenever  I  was  probably 30,  I started getting into sourdough  and learning all of that process, which has been quite fascinating actually. um But I met my spouse and we have started our own little homestead.  We have all kinds of animals  and 04:30 honestly all kinds of kids. uh Blended family  of seven, so we have five kids between the two of us  and they  love to ride our goats  like their horses. And it's fun to watch them get chased by chickens sometimes,  but we have kind of just moved everything into a very simple life and hopefully in the next couple of years we can start homeschooling as well. 04:59 Very nice. That sounds like a beautiful life that you're building. We're trying really hard. We have a few acres  and em within that we are pretty self-sustainable for the most part. 05:15 Okay, awesome.  So what animals do you have? Because I always ask that question.  So we have about 100 chickens.  We have turkeys and geese  and about 20 ducks. We have six pigs  and  four goats. And then  we have five dogs. And so  it all meshes well with our five children. I was going to say a dog for every kid. Yes. 05:45 Are the other dogs all different breeds or do you guys have a favorite breed? They are all different. So we have a 50 50 split Shepski. So he's Siberian Husky and German Shepherd. And then we have a purebred German Shepherd. We have a purebred chocolate lab. We have a purebred Belgian Malmois. And then we have what I like to call a Belgian chocolate accident. 06:15 because our chocolate lab got our Belgian and had babies. And so we have one of her babies. And so she is 50 50 Belgian Malinois and chocolate lab. Okay. I'm going to say something and don't get mad at me, but chocolate labs have always struck me as kind of dumb. They're very laid back and they're very lovey, but they're kind of dumb. Belgian Malinois is maybe one of the smartest dogs on the planet. 06:45 Absolutely.  So you have turned  the mix, the pub. We have. And she is actually very different. em Our Belgian Malinois, everybody has this idea that they're super crazy and  just kind of all over the place.  And ours is not like that. She is very much,  guard mom and that's what I do. em And she's never been hyperactive like that. And then 07:15 Like you said, our chocolate lab, he's our hunting dog and he would rather live in my skin than anything. And so he  has his job, but other than that, he's very much. 07:31 just hanging out. He likes to lay down. He likes to just be around his family. And so  it's a very different  aspect. But to get them two together, um she is hilarious because she's got the derpiness of the chocolate lab, but she's also very smart and very quick to learn. Yeah, was Belgian. So 07:58 What I was going to say is that you've taken the smartest dog and the dumbest dog on the planet and made the best dog ever. Yes.  She is hilarious.  And do not get me wrong. I think chocolate labs are beautiful. And  we have  a mini Australian shepherd right now who is five years old.  And my husband and I have both decided that when she is no longer on the earthly plane in about,  oh, hopefully 08:25 14 years from now, probably not. She'll probably be out long before then.  We would like a lab.  And  I said to him, I said, if you want a uh chill, goofy dog,  we should get a chocolate lab. And he was like, yeah, but, and I'm like, no, no, I think we should look at chocolate labs.  Yes.  Definitely not a Belgian Malinois.  Get them together. It's fine. So our chocolate lab we use to duck hunt. 08:55 And he knows how to track. Arshepsky,  he tracks too, but obviously that's not really in his  nature to hunt. um But we  hunt big game, we do waterfowl and all that stuff. We teach our kids  all of that as well. And so  we  really do embrace every single part of being self-sustainable and  really going back to our roots. 09:29 Awesome. So the chocolate lab goes hunting with you. So is he trained to hunt? He is trained to hunt.  Awesome. Awesome. I love it. I love it when the dogs do the job that they that they're naturally inclined to. Yes. And then so I had some heart problems and my Shepski has been my baby for the last three years  and he has never been trained or anything like that, but he will alert. 09:59 to  anything that's weird with me and he will go find  someone or he'll sit there and bark more like howl at me and be like, hey, something's wrong. Something's wrong. We don't like it. Something's wrong. And so he will make sure that you know one way or another that something's about to go  off sides. Uh huh. Sideways. Yep. 10:24 That's amazing. love it. have two very useful dogs. assume the other three are probably useful too. 10:32 Yes, they are. So when our German Shepherd  purebred girl was having babies, they were actually, he was the father to them. um And he was actually jumping our seven foot fence and going to try and find somebody to help her. And then he would come back and check on her. We have it on camera and everything. It's so cute. dogs don't actually have that like mentality for the most part. 11:01 And so it was really cool to watch. Yeah, but daddy dogs aren't usually interested when mom goes into labor.  No.  And so we could tell that she went into labor and was having babies because he was panicking and trying to find help. Just like a human dad is like, oh my gosh, we got to get going. We got to do this. We got to do that. He was very much dad mode. I love it. Do you have that video on YouTube or anywhere? um 11:28 currently, but we do have it on like our ring camera history.  You should put it on YouTube because people would love to see that. 11:39 Yes.  People  meaning me, I would love to see that. Oh, absolutely.  Okay. So, um sorry,  I was looking at your Facebook page and there is a photo of,  assume your husband with a bobcat over his shoulders.  Yes, that was this year.  Tell me that story. So we were out hunting. We had the kids with us  and  we were looking for a buck. We were on a 12:08 trail  and we saw a buck and we're trying to get in a better position for it. Well, we heard rustling  down below us and we're like, okay, maybe it's a bear or something like that. Just kind of avoid that area. But him and our son  go over and look and there's three bobcats playing right next to where it typically floods out in the wintertime. 12:36 They're wrestling around like house cats, but  then they noticed that we were up there and started charging up the hill.  And so he had to dispatch it  to protect the kids. you keep the hide? We did.  We took it to a taxidermy and actually a lot of people don't know this, but Cougar is actually a very sweet meat.  And so 13:06 We had talked about making like summer sausage or pepperoni out of it, but typically At least as much as I've ever had it It's mixed with deer or elk or bear or something along with it because it's also very lean Mm-hmm. So so you you saved the hide and you had meals out of it. Yeah,  very nice I didn't know you could eat Bobcat or cougar or whatever it is. It's cougar. Yeah, okay 13:34 Here in Minnesota, we have bobcats and we have cougars and cougars look like a leopard that's just like tawny colored. Yeah. And bobcats look like big old house cats. Yes. So we have both here and  he has hunted bobcat before. So we do have one that is up on the wall, but  it was smaller  than the cougar itself. 14:04 And so we have that, we have  all of our deer antlers and those sorts of things, ducks. It looks like a hunting paradise. 14:19 I love that.  It's so funny because my dad hunted.  I think he still hunts occasionally now, but not as often as he used to because he's 83 years old now. uh He had a deer head mount that hung in our house for a long time. Eventually, it made its way downstairs. I don't know if it's because my mom was not comfortable with the 14:46 amount being in, you know, in the main part of the house.  Yeah. Or if they just were bored with it and didn't want to have it up anymore. Hmm. Interesting.  I know when my kids were smaller,  we would go to my grandfather's house and he hunts  and they did not like the feel of the hide.  And  so the  bearskin rug and stuff like that. uh 15:14 the elk skin that he had hanging on the wall, they were not a fan. The touch and feel of it for them,  they would freak out and  they did not like it. Oh, okay.  And so  they grew out of that. Obviously they were a lot younger then,  but it was interesting to kind of watch them just,  nope, I ain't doing that. No, thank you, sis. You keep that over there every time we went to his house. 15:44 Funny. Now, Christine, do you hunt too? I do. Awesome. Because most women are not really into it. I know there are some, but men tend to be the hunters. Women tend to be the cookers, the ones who cook the food. And my mom hunted for years. My mom actually got a doe when she was very pregnant with my sister. Oh my goodness. I, this year, 16:14 on opening day, about 30 minutes into opening day after like shooting light starts  is when I took down a three point.  So my season was very short because I just hurried up and got it done, which honestly never happens. em And so  I was very thankful for that, but we are starting to get the kids into it. Our son  hunted last year and he got a spike. 16:43 And then this year our daughters got a chance to hunt, but we couldn't get anything for them this time, but next year.  I love that you're teaching your kids to hunt. And there's a reason why.  With all the stuff going on in the world right now,  I really think that we as parents should teach our kids  survival skills  and feed yourself skills. uh 17:12 Hunting and fishing are just a dying art.  I live in Minnesota. We have tons of deer. And  the hunting population is shrinking  every year. So few people are still hunting. Yes. So we hunt, we fish. em I cook everything  and the kids get to help me. On my page, there's a lot of  things that I've made with game and everything like that. 17:42 m Also, my spouse is a general contractor. And so  we  have kind of all of the aspects. I'm medical, he can build literally anything and it's just gorgeous. m And so  then we have incorporated hunting and being able to cook from scratch and not just out of a box. 18:08 and making sure that our kids are involved with that kind of lifestyle as well. That way they have those skills. um Obviously living on a farm, there's a lot of times where  you get to bandage up everything. And so they get to see that as well.  Our hunting dog had ripped open part of his chest  and I... 18:34 cleaned him up, got him all ready and stapled him back together because we called everywhere and all of the pet ERs around here were like, oh, we're at capacity. I was like, dude, I've worked in the ER. I don't even know what that means. We never got to be like, oh, sorry, we're at capacity. I don't know what to tell you. And you just take care of it. And so I was like, I can't let him just have this three inch open gash in his chest. 19:02 that's going to get infected if I don't close it up. So  I did like I would do to a human and shaved the area, cleaned it up, made sure it was all pretty and  put about 10 staples in there. 19:18 He healed up nice, you can't even tell that it ever happened. You are a superwoman, Christine. We just did it at home, it was fine. And so there's been times where I've had to do little procedures like that on our animals and take care of that. Obviously bandaging up kids as they get hurt as well. 19:42 Yeah, and kids get hurt  all the time.  really do.  Especially when they're running from chickens. Yes. Yes, exactly.  We didn't have chickens when my kids were small.  they didn't get hurt running after chickens, our chickens running after them. But they definitely got hurt um riding their bikes and swinging and things like that.  My stepson actually broke  one arm  one summer  and the other arm 20:12 the next summer. no. And during the summer, that's so hard. Yep. had, he had, um, can't think, casts on his forearms, opposite arms, two summers in a row. So we lived off grid for about a year. And so everything was like solar and all of that. and during that period of time, we had exposed beams for like in our ceiling. 20:41 And  my  daughter  who  adores Spider-Man jumped off of the top bunk of her bed, tried to grab the beam  with her hands  and kind of like swing from it, much like Spider-Man. um She was wearing her Spider-Man costume  and she fell because it had gloves and she slipped and fell and 21:09 broke her wrist like through a growth plate and I was like girlfriend what are you doing?  And she went to school and she goes yeah I fell I fell from the ceiling and I was like maybe don't say it like that.  You didn't fall from the ceiling. You  little weirdo. 21:29 Oh my God, the things that kids do. uh My stepson actually broke one of his arms because he was swinging really, really high and he decided to jump off as it was going up. Of course.  And uh the second one was that he was riding his bike down an incline, which he'd done a billion times, caught a weird rock sticking out of the ground. The wheel turned sharp and he fell off his bike and broke the other arm. Oh my goodness. 21:58 Yeah,  like totally a fluke thing. He had ridden that hill a billion times. So you never know what's going to happen. you just pray that they're going to be okay when they're grownups. um Okay. So you said you have a hundred chickens. Do you have chickens for eggs or do you have them for eggs and meat? So far just eggs. um But we are, well, most of our kids now like duck eggs better than 22:28 chicken eggs. And so  we have both for the eggs itself,  but my spouse has actually got into incubating. And so we have babies all the time now. 22:46 Yes. It's been  a treat because whenever everywhere stops selling baby chicks, we still have baby chicks and baby ducks and all of that. And so that's been special.  I wish Washington state wasn't so far away from Minnesota because we are going to be in the market for baby chicks here in February. Yes. 23:16 It would be great. We would love to have you out.  Yeah, I'm not driving all the way to Washington state for chicks. I can't afford it. And that would be some really expensive eggs eventually. Yes. But that's OK. um I've been trying to find somebody in the area who sells chicks  locally. I don't. There's a few Facebook  pages that I am  on that  are in your 23:46 area or have someone in your area or near your area  that are selling. Okay. So I will go try to find that because my husband wanted to order chicks from a hatchery and I  think I have him talked out of it because  the post office isn't very nice to box chicks. No. And I don't want to open up a box of chicks and find half of them dead.  Yeah.  No. 24:14 That's not good. And there's been a lot of that lately. Yeah. And I think I have him convinced that if he really wants to get into it, we can get an incubator and we can order eggs because  the hatching eggs are actually taken better care of than the chicks are.  And there's a lot of like local  places too that I know in our area, if you're part of like a farm swap  group on Facebook or anything like that, you can usually find 24:43 hatching eggs or chicks  locally? Yeah, I know we can,  but I also really,  when I talk to you guys, I'm like, God, I wish we lived closer because I would give you money. I would give you money for chicks. That would be fine. Do you have any like breed in Because want to support you guys too. Huh? Yeah. Do you have any breed in mind of chicks that you're looking for? Right now, the chickens we have are the ISA Browns. 25:13 Uh-huh. And we really love them because they're friendly and they're calm. Okay. So I'm trying to find somebody that has those, but I don't know. I don't know if anybody does. I'm not sure. I know usually like tractor supply and places like that carry stuff like that. Another one that we have found to be really mellow is the buff Orbingtons. And they're pretty. And they're pretty. So we have 25:43 a couple of those  and the first one that we got, we named her Blondie and she is just  so pretty  and  so nice. She  doesn't really like go after anybody or anything like that. She's actually just really mellow. 26:07 A friend of mine who lives about half an hour away has the Bantam chickens. Mm-hmm. The little chickens. The little chickens are actually aggressive. They are, especially the roosters. Yeah, I had no idea. And they're also really good moms. They are. We had  some silkies and they're supposed to be like really good moms and really into that sort of scene. Ours  were not smart. 26:38 So I don't really know.  We would find them like just hanging out. And I don't know if they couldn't see, but they would just stand next to the coop. Huh, weird. And they would try to roost like in the coop door and we would have to go out and like push them into the coop  at night  because they would just sit in the door. I'm like, dude, you got to go in. The owls are going to get you.  You know, um... 27:06 I follow a Facebook page called Harry Farm Pit Girls, which is really fun to say.  And they have silkies and their silkies are really dumb. Yeah,  they are. Maybe it's a thing with silkies.  Yeah, silkies are known to be pretty dumb. They're pretty useless. They're just cute and fun to watch. Yeah, they're really pretty, just like the buff warpingtons are pretty. But the silkies are like really fluffy, right? Yes. Yeah. 27:34 Whenever it rains, they look like they are drowned rats.  It kills me.  I mean, honestly, any chicken will look like a drowned rat if they're in the rain long enough. Our chickens look like drowned rats.  they're actually smart enough to go in their coop when it's pouring. I'm kind of impressed. Yep. All except for the silkies.  They just stay out there and hang out.  My dad would say they're dumb as a stump. Yes.  I agree. 28:03 That's my favorite thing that my dad used to say about people. He'd be like, don't want to, I don't want to his version of throw shade. You know, I know what he said, but his, he would say, I don't want to his version of throw shade, but that one's dumb as a stump. he's from Maine and he has an accent, you know, the New England accent. So, so dumb as a stump always sounded very funny coming out of his mouth. Yes. So, little. 28:30 tiny aside, I love my dad, love my mom.  They're still with us. They still live in Maine. They live on, I think 14 acres. 28:41 and they have chickens too. But anyway, do you have more time? Do you have like 10 more minutes? I do. I do. Okay. So I saw that you make homemade soap. Do you make the cold process lye soap? I have previously. I don't let my kids do that because of the lye itself. It's a little too dangerous for them right now until they get a little bit older. But I have done it in the past. 29:09 and right now we're just doing melt and pour to get them into it. So they  learn without having to handle lye immediately. um But I really like it. It's fun to do.  So how, I've never done that that way. We do the cold process lye soap. how does that work? So the melt and pour, you can actually buy a soap base that has already 29:36 kind of gone through the process, it's already mixed and you  literally just melt it, put your colors in, put your fragrance in if you want any, anything like that that you wanna do  and mix it together and pour it in a, any kind of like silicone mold that you have  is what I use mostly just to make sure it comes out pretty easy. um But that's what I do with the kids, that way, 30:06 It's an easier process for them and it's a little more instant since  with cold press or even hot press, it's a process and they're not that patient.  Yeah. So with the melt and pour, does it have to cure at all or is it ready to go once  it's all? It's  ready to go  once it's cooled down. Okay. And then 30:32 I'm really curious about this because I haven't talked to anybody who does it, the you do it. Is the Melton Hore base, is it already soap? Yes. Okay. Yep. It's already soap. And I don't want to get into your finances or business, but  is the base expensive? It's not really expensive. You can usually get like, um depending on what you  are wanting, because you can get like an aloe base, you can get coconut milk, you can get, oh. 31:01 You can get literally anything. So it depends on what you're looking for as  far as that goes. But you can usually get like five, 10 pounds of it, you know, for  20 to 40 bucks, depending on what kind. OK, where do you get it from?  You can actually get it from like Hobby Lobby or Amazon. I usually  if I'm just doing enough just to hang out with the kids and have something fun to do,  I'll just go to like Hobby Lobby. 31:31 Okay. Otherwise, I will order it and let them make for, you know, family, friends, and that sort of thing. As far as that part goes, the rest of it, I do like a cold press. Okay, awesome. I knew that there that you could do it the way that you do it. my husband is very into doing stuff from from like zero to 100. Yes. And 31:58 When  I asked him if we could try making it, he was like, let me look it up. And when he saw how to do it,  it's science. It's an experiment. really is. So he really wanted to do it. so when my kids get a little bit older,  I will. Yes.  Yes.  And like I was saying, when my kids get a little bit older, because  eight to 12, they don't have the capacity for that yet. It's a process. 32:26 It's not instant gratification afterwards. When they get older, we'll go back to just doing the cold process. But while they're learning and still figuring it out, I just let them do the melt and pour. I think that's great. And so do they make like crazy colors? They do. um 32:49 Their most recent  phase has been like blues and teals and purples.  And um so we have all sorts of like swirled soaps with those colors because you can still  do  some  of the  artistic parts. Not as much because I mean, it's not quite as technical as the cold press, but you can get colors, you can get 33:18 some fun things out of it as far as designs go. And so we have swirls  of blues and purples and greens and teals throughout the house right now. So much fun.  Do you give them as gifts at Christmas time? We haven't yet. They are very  new starting out. So this has been the first year that they've really been interested in doing it.  So we've done it a few times and 33:49 They like to take them for themselves, which I am fine with with those ones, because that's more of just  having fun while learning how to do it. em But they have taken them to their friends and  given them that way, not necessarily as like a birthday present or anything like that, but just  an anytime gift. 34:12 That's fabulous. love it. Rainbow Swirl Soaps. have to try making some of those. Okay. And then I saw that you do a lot of  bread baking and cooking from scratch. the kids involved in that too? They are.  On my  Facebook page, there's actually pictures of us making jam and breads and they  love it.  I make pickled green beans  and 34:42 they go crazy for them. I have to keep those stocked pretty regularly. That's one of their absolute favorite snacks.  Whenever I do  breads, they are like, nope, you have to make this one for us. This isn't a selling one. You have to make this one for us. And I said, okay. So  they really like the cinnamon loaf. like  the garlic parmesan loaf. Those are their favorites. And then just regular 35:10 like sandwich style bread  and they'll go through about a pint and a half  of jam along with that and I'm like, okay guys, we need another snack. 35:26 Yes. I told this story on the podcast months ago. had made a bunch with, we canned a bunch of strawberry jam  and I thought that we were out  and uh my son who still lives with us had grabbed a jar out of the pantry because he knew where they were. They were staffed.  And I still don't know where they are. I think there's four more jars. have to ask him where they are.  But he was having toast and 35:53 I was totally fine with him finding the pint of strawberry jam.  Yeah. Or half pint, the jelly jar size. Yes. And he, I went to do something, probably a podcast and I  went to look for that strawberry jam in the fridge the next morning  and uh there was no strawberry jam in the fridge. And I said, what happened to the jar you opened yesterday? And he said, I ate it yesterday. Yeah. I was like, you are an adult man child.  Yep. 36:22 Absolutely.  said, you ate an entire jar of strawberry jam on your toast. He said, yeah, it's really good. And I was like,  yeah, I know. Wish I had some. 36:34 Yeah, same. I also enjoy it. That was a new one on me, but  I have to ask him where they are because I don't think he's eaten the other four jars. If he has, he's in big trouble.  Right. Yes, I turn around and the dilly beans and the jam go quick. And so I have to  continuously  be making those.  Yeah.  You make freezer jam, right? 37:01 I do both.  The freezer jam I let the kids help with. It's a little easier process and so  it's a good starting point for them.  Okay, so when you make freezer jam, do you actually do that in  jars or do you do it in like a plastic container so it's not as breakable?  I do it in jars because we go through it really fast. Okay. And so  I just do the wide mouth  jars for uh 37:30 pretty much  everything that has to do with um anything that'll go in the freezer. Those are the only ones that I use for that. And  I think almost everything has been converted just to wide mouth at this point because I  am doing soups and all of that. um But with those, I think I do  usually about 10 at a time. 38:00 the kids will go through them within a month. 38:04 What's the age range on your kids again? So I have five kiddos. Four of them are girls between the ages of eight and 10. So I have a kiddo, our youngest just turned eight and then I have an eight and a half year old. And then we have a nine year old and a 10 year old. And then our son is 12. 38:26 Lots of drama.  They all fight over who's helping and who's doing what.  so everything takes a little bit longer, but they enjoy it a lot more.  Yes. And you are making memories. Yes. uh I listened to another podcast on Monday mornings. It's called best to the nest BST to the NST. uh one of the there's two women. 38:56 One of the women is older, think she's 60. One of the women is younger and she's in her 40s. And the older woman has been going back to school.  And she was talking about the memories that we  make when we're children  versus how we remember those memories when we're adults. And  we actually, we actually like, 39:25 construct  new things around the actual event that we're remembering. Yeah. It's really interesting. I wish I could say it better. But um the memories that kids make as children  influence everything they do until the day that they die. Yes. So keep doing the things with your kids because you are building amazing groundwork for them to build on. 39:54 I know that whenever my first season hunting with  my spouse and everything after we hadn't really got together and blended and everything like that, every single kiddo, plus my spouse and I, were all there whenever I shot my deer.  And while it wasn't the biggest deer, it was a core memory for everyone. I'm pretty sure our son levitated up to where that deer was, because he... 40:22 I think even beat me there. And I had to keep telling him, you got to wait. We got to make sure that he is completely dispatched before you go up there because he will be mad.  He will come at you  with his antlers. so  that was a core memory for all of them. And since then, it's kind of been tradition that we all go together regardless of who's hunting and not hunting yet. And so 40:52 Our son shot his deer  and everyone was there. We all got to experience it with them. And so it's been  a lot of core memories made. 41:07 I am sitting here  just like stuck, like there's a sob in my chest regarding this because that's so good. 41:17 I would rather them be out in the woods and experiencing nature and playing in the dirt like we used to,  than sitting on phones and tablets and nonsense inside or getting into trouble at school. A hundred and fifty thousand percent agree with you, Christine. 41:39 They always ask, what did you guys do as kids? And I was like, outside. That was it. We weren't allowed inside. Like in the summertime and stuff like that, your toys were outside. 41:51 Yeah, and it wasn't toys that were bought. was sticks and rocks and rain and mud.  You had to go build a fort. You had to go ride your bikes. You had to go  play catch or whatever. But all of it was done outside. You weren't allowed inside until it was time for dinner.  The good old days. I  miss those days so much. We don't even hardly have streetlights anymore. So there's no 42:21 time frame. It's just there. Yeah. Yeah. You are doing, you're doing it right. 42:30 And so  we try to make sure that our kids are set up to succeed in life, matter what this world looks like. 42:39 You're making me want to go back and do it all over again. And I can't. I'm too old to have babies anymore. can't do it all over again. 42:49 That's why I like working in the medical field because I get to see babies and give them snuggles while they're in our clinic and then they go home. So it's like having them momentarily. Yeah. And the thing is that's awesome, except that I don't work in the medical field and none of my kids want babies. Yes. So I am out of the baby loop completely at this point. 43:16 And it's okay because the last time I held a baby, was like, I think I might be past this because I don't know how to hold a baby anymore. It's weird. It's like riding a bike. You do it enough and you know it all over again. Yep. I just have to cock the hip out and do the thing that I did for years with mine. Okay. So we are 43 minutes and 30 seconds. I would love to know where people can find you, Christine. 43:43 um So I am on Facebook. You can find me at Rustic Haven Homestead. It's got a cute picture of a coop  and everything about us is on there. And  then, yeah, just reach out, come find me. 44:00 Okay. And you said, so you do or you don't have a YouTube channel? I don't currently. My daughter is  very forward on getting us to that point. She's 10 and she would love to be the star of that.  Okay. Well, let me know when you have it and I will add it to the show notes. How's that? Perfect. That sounds amazing.  Okay. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And if you would like to support 44:28 the podcast, can go to  atinyhomestead.com slash support.  Christine, I loved this conversation. I feel like we were kind of all over the place, but that's how it goes.  And uh really glad to talk about hunting and the fact that you can eat cougar. didn't know that. That was amazing.  And I hope that you have a wonderful rest of your week. Yes, you as well. All right. Thank you. Bye.  Bye. Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Santa Claus! Hope you enjoy our chat, and a small peek into the North Pole. Merry Christmas!   patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I have the supreme pleasure of talking with Santa Claus at the North Pole. Good morning, Santa. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm doing very well. How are you? I'm good. Is it cold at the North Pole? Oh, it's always cold at the North Pole, but we adapt pretty well. Yeah, it's a- 00:27 It's very cold in Minnesota where I am this morning. We are not even at freezing yet. True. We call that the South Pole. Exactly. So in our summers there, you need to come to Minnesota in June. It's beautiful. Yes, absolutely. All right. So tell me a little bit about the North Pole because I, my questions for, for 00:56 the North Pole is, you always listening to Christmas music?  Oh, not necessarily. I enjoy a nice variety. mean, Christmas music certainly keeps us focused on what we're doing, but I like some jazz music every once in a while. Of course, there is a nice crossover with Vince Guaraldi. I love his stuff. Very nice.  And what I mean... 01:20 I don't even know what to ask you. This is, this is crazy. I might actually, I might actually be nervous talking to Santa Claus.  So  is your, is your home decor, is it all Christmas stuff all the time? We have some areas that are off limits  to anything Christmas  because Mrs. Claus, she's very supportive, but sometimes she just needs to have something that is devoid of it. 01:47 Just to have a variety, just to break things up a little bit. She enjoys her Coca-Cola room and she enjoys her shabby chic room and there's lots of rooms in the castle. So she has many options and I give her carte blanche because happy wife, happy life.  Absolutely. So is the home a castle? Does Santa Claus live in a castle? 02:13 Oh, we, we have what you might call a compound actually. There's a whole village, not just the castle, but the ancillary areas where the reindeer live, where the elves have their home quarters, et cetera, et cetera. So just about any facility you might imagine that we need, we have, and it's protected by a great big dome so that we can't be seen by anybody who might want to find us.  I love it. I love it. That's amazing. um 02:43 So tell me about your reindeer. Are they the same reindeer all the time? Are they immortal or do you have baby reindeer sometimes? 02:54 Oh, we have a, we have the A team that everybody seems to know, although I do challenge the children to try and name them. Uh, they, they always miss two or three. The most famous example is Don Durr, not Don Ur. Uh, Don Ur is something else. Don Durr is the name of that reindeer. And then the B team and the C team. they, they are immortal, but we do have some grandparent reindeers and. 03:21 The beyond the first famous nine, there are two more teams of reindeer right now. So two more, 16 more reindeer. And they have fun names like chat and Shlomo and all of, all of the other reindeer.  Shlomo. Okay. I hadn't heard that one before. Right. Well, and then they're all different, but they don't see a lot of action, but they're there just in case. I usually use them when I make visits down south. 03:50 Uh, so that the A team stay in their peak strength.  Oh,  okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Cause I'm sure that even if you're an immortal reindeer, you probably do get tired. Oh, sure. They need their naps and they're, they're bedded by time and they're,  they're good diets and such. So you don't want to wear them out. They can still get sore hooves.  Oh my, we don't want that. That's not good.  Okay. So,  um,  what is your. 04:19 Well, number one, does Santa Claus like eggnog? Sure. I enjoy eggnog. Definitely the virgin types. You don't need anything tipsy. I'm always driving. Yep. So maybe,  so maybe milk is better. Sure. You can put anything out. It's the thought that counts. And I really appreciate the children who think of us and the reindeer as well. It's nice to put out things for them. They love things. 04:49 that make crunchy sounds. So red bell peppers,  maybe some zucchini, some cucumbers, things that crunch. They love making the crunching sounds. So those are always welcome and appreciated as well.  they like apples? Oh, sure. If it crunches, they munches. Okay.  And then,  so I'm assuming that you like all cookies, but you have a favorite. 05:14 Oh yes,  again, it's the thought that counts. appreciate whatever the children put out for me, milk, eggnog, a glass of water. It's all fine. And I do have my favorite, it's white chocolate macadamia nut, but cookies are cookies. They're like pizza. Nothing can go wrong if you put out pizza and nothing can go wrong if you put out any kind of cookie for Santa.  Good to know. My favorite cookie is a snickerdoodle.  Oh, that's a good one too. 05:42 Yeah, I'm probably going to make some over Christmas.  if you swing by, if you swing by the house in LaSore, Minnesota, where I live, there might be snickerdoodles for you. You can count on it.  Okay. So I know that you are the Santa, but there's all these Santas that people see at the malls where kids go to sit on Santa's lap and tell them their wishes for Christmas. Do you? 06:08 Do you feel offended that there are so many impersonators or do you feel flattered? No, I love it. It takes a village so I can  use all the help I can get. It's all a network, you see. So they're doing the recon for me and they pass it on  as long as it's appropriate. I mean, sometimes 06:29 children ask for the craziest nines or a whole house. So they filter it out really well for me. The elves on the shelves do a nice job too. So it's all part of my reconnaissance team all over the world. I have a little bone to pick with the elves on the shelves.  Oh, okay.  They are naughty. A lot of them are naughty elves and they do, they like, they personify silly naughtiness and. 06:57 I didn't have the elf on the shelf for when I was a kid or when my kids were kids. And so when the elves on the shelves showed up and I saw some of the things that they do, I was almost grateful that I was not part of that. Well, that's a very valid point. And you should rest assured that it's actually a bit of a pilot program because normally the elves are making the toys year round, round the clock. But 07:22 A few of them approached me  and wanted, guess what you could call a sabbatical where they come down south and they do a little field work, a little reconnaissance. 07:36 Oh, it is a pilot program. Sometimes when they get a little bit ribaldry or a little bit incorrigible, we have to bring them back to the pole and circulate them out. So the elf on your shelf might actually be a different elf from year to year, especially if they're naughty. We want to keep them on the straight and narrow. They just seem to look alike. So  one year you might have an elf that's very cooperative and friendly and nice. And then maybe they get a little too big for their britches and we have to swap them out. 08:06 keeping everybody humble. So even the elf on the shelf can be on the naughty list sometimes.  Oh, anybody can be on the naughty list. I try really hard to stay off of it myself. Sometimes Santa has a grumpy moment. Sometimes I get tired. And Mrs. Claus really helps me a lot to remind me of why I'm doing what I'm doing. Yes. And so tell me why you're doing what you're doing.  I just love making wonderful memories. 08:33 I love the joy and the wonder in the children's eyes 08:40 and it could be children of any age,  but so contagious that it drives me. I guess if you could say if Santa has a drug, it's the spirit of Christmas.  Okay. And tell me what the spirit of Christmas means to you, Santa. If I had one thing on my Christmas list and children of all ages ask me, what do I want for Christmas? I want peace on earth. And when we're all at peace, when we stop worrying about so many things, 09:08 So many opinions we don't need to have. We're arguing about so many things these days. Oh my goodness, stay off of the social media. So many irrelevant and irreverent things on there. Peace. Let's get back to the basics of what we are. uh A herd, a pack, a tribe, a social creature. We're meant to be together and to support each other, not to tear each other down. So the spirit of Christmas is the 09:38 perfect embodiment of peace and we're all striving to achieve that.  Right there with you. If you ask me what I want for Christmas, I want peace on earth really bad. I want it now. Yes, and we can all do our part. We don't have to worry about being like somebody else or how well or not well someone else is doing. If we mind our own business and do our part, everything works together perfectly. Yes, it sure does. 10:08 um What's the craziest thing that a child has asked you for Christmas? 10:15 Probably the most common requests I get are for living things and I have to set them straight. And honestly, the parents appreciate this. Santa doesn't fly with anything that can poop in the sleigh. So it goes for puppies and kitties and donkeys and boyfriends and girlfriends. don't do any of that. So  it's always adorable. 10:36 And it's always something that I have to advise them.  I can bring a toy puppy or a toy kitty or maybe a Ken doll or a Barbie doll, but that's about it. Mm-hmm.  Yep.  I wanted a teddy bear for my  15th Christmas.  And I asked Santa because Santa is real.  And my mom said, what do you want for Christmas from Santa? And I said, I want a teddy bear. And she said, what kind of teddy bear? And I said, a gunned 11:04 teddy bear G-U-N-D. Yes, very nice. Very, very nice teddy bear back in the  80s,  90s, 80s.  And I didn't think I'd get it because I thought that Santa might think that it was silly that a 15 year old girl wanted a teddy bear.  And there was a beautiful chocolate brown gun teddy bear under the tree Christmas morning that said, that said love Santa. So thank you, Santa. 11:32 It's my pleasure. I love teddy bears and I love anything that a child can use their imagination to play with. Yeah. My daughter actually asked if she could take it with When we're spoon feeding too, it's not good for children.  Sorry.  I  over you. sorry.  She asked me if she could take it with her when she moved out when she was 18  and it had sat on my dresser for years. 12:01 I took really good care of that bear, looked brand new. And I said, why do you want it? And she said, because you love it and I love it. And so she has it still and she's 36. 12:12 That's beautiful. What a wonderful tradition to establish.  The thing is, she's never going to have kids. She doesn't want any. So it's going to be her bear until she dies. 12:23 Well, and nothing is final. If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.  Yeah, I bet he laughs a lot. I he's entertained all the time. Yes. He has a great sense of humor.  He sure does.  I  say things out loud outside and I'm like, Ooh, I shouldn't have said that outside because now God is going to take that and run with it. And I'm going to be like, why did I say that?  Okay. So. 12:53 Santa, you  are a jolly old elf. You are a uh round guy. Is that from all the cookies or is that just because you like to eat during the year? Well, I love the cookies. That's a lot of calories to burn off. So I do. 13:11 to stay in shape. mean, you have to be to harness the reindeer and drive the sleigh and carry the toys and go up and down the chimneys. And I get a lot of steps in, but the cookies, oh, they're so good. Can't stop eating them. So that takes a little while to burn off. And usually year to year, there's always a little bit of a pooch. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard not to eat the cookies. agree. Yeah, they're so good. Speaking of up and down the chimneys. 13:40 I don't know if it's just magic or if you can actually tell me how you do it, but there are places don't have chimneys. So  how do you get in the house if there's no chimney? Oh, that's a wonderful question.  I have a magic key that opens any door and I carry it with me on my belt  all the time. It's such a powerful tool  that you don't have to have a chimney. I'll find a way in and 14:08 Sometimes there are some movies and I've seen some silly representations of me about what happens and if I shrink down or I magically create a chimney or things like that. But it's not so complicated as that. If I need to get in, if the house wants me to come in, that's very important. You have to believe to receive that the key will open any door that I need to use to get in. So sometimes it's the front door. Sometimes it's the back door. 14:37 Sometimes it's a chimney and sometimes it's through the garage.  Or through a window maybe. Right. Whatever works. We have an understanding. The believers in me.  Yes. And I feel like Santa doesn't exist unless you believe in him. Absolutely. And I'm a gentleman. If you don't want to have me come over or you don't want me in your lives, then that's fine. I will find many millions more who are interested in 15:05 Continuing a relationship with me and having a wonderful Christmas. I love it. I love it. Santa, you're a good guy. Thank you. So how old is Santa? 15:22 Well, let me think here. I think they, will be celebrating 1743. Hmm. Yes, about right. Definitely over 1700. I've been doing this for a while. You sound fabulous for 1700. Really? Get good rest and I get my steps in. So those are two good things. Good. So how can little kids or even big kids 15:52 Being your good graces and not end up on the naughty list. What are the three top things to be on the good list? Well, the first step, I think, and the easiest way to get your heart in the right way is to think of others before yourself, especially little things. 16:12 do little things with great love, with  mediocrity or apathy or begrudgingly. You'd be amazed at how  easy everything can go and how  smoothly everything can run just in your own home. If you're going downstairs, maybe take the laundry with you. If you're going upstairs, maybe feed the cats on your way up. Whatever you can do, it's no skin off your nose and it  makes the house so much more peaceful. And that's what we want more of in this world. 16:42 Mm-hmm. And then the second thing? The second thing  is ask yourself if things are a need or a want.  Oh my goodness, we're so addicted to more, more, more, more, bigger, faster, stronger. Be happy with what you've got. Sometimes what you really need is a wonderful experience and not stuff. You may not even remember who got it for you. Even if it's me, years later, you may not know. 17:12 Where this thing came from and you just throw it away and what a tragedy. Okay, and is there a third? Well, if you've got your heart right and you're not thinking of yourself all the time and you're staying humble and you're trying to work for the good of  others, you would be amazed at how much more fruitful your life can become and when you're at peace, it's a great spot to dream from. 17:41 And you might discover  wonderful abilities and talents and a calling to do something you never even knew you had in you. But you have to be at peace to have that frame of mind.  A hundred percent agree with you. And I'm on the nice list. I know I am because I got those three checked off already all the time. Oh, you're doing a wonderful job. Although dusting couldn't hurt.  It never ends. Right. Right. 18:10 Never ends. I swear to goodness, my dog sheds and I dust and I dust and I dust and her little white hair show up everywhere anyway. Yes. It keeps you humble. Yeah. And keeps me busy. It's, it's a lot. She, she's, she's got like crimped hair. so when she shakes it goes everywhere, but she's a good dog. So we're going to keep her and I will dust so I can have my dog. And so that I stay on the good. 18:40 the nice list. Absolutely, taking good care of what you're responsible for. Well, considering that I was the one who really, really wanted her, I have to be responsible for her. Well done.  And she was a want. She was a want.  I really wanted a puppy and we got a puppy. One of the best things we ever did. She's five years old now. She's still my puppy. That's beautiful. And she wanted a good home and you gave it to her. 19:06 Yeah, she's very upset right now because I locked her out of my room so I could talk to Santa.  Oh, well, she'll understand.  She will. She'll be fine. um Does Santa have pets beyond the reindeer?  Oh, we have lots of pets up at the North Pole. Sometimes the elves want something to take care of besides toys. So we have  geese and chickens and ducks and pigs and goats and just about anything. I have a whole zoo. 19:34 So Mrs. Claus's favorite animal is a giraffe. So you know we have a couple of those. You might be surprised at what you find up at the North Pole. If you are ever let in, again, we try to keep things private and quiet and invisible. Uh-huh.  And a partridge in a pear tree up there? 19:53 Yes, we have a whole orchard of pear trees.  I love pears. We have apples and peaches and grapevines and all kinds of fruit.  Underneath the dome, we can control different climates. I actually have a little beach because I don't think anybody else wants to see me in uh a swimsuit. I have a private beach for when I want to go swimming.  Very nice. That is awesome. 20:21 I love swimming. Swimming is a great exercise. That's how you get the calories down from all the cookies, right? 20:29 I float pretty well too.  Yep. bet you do.  All right, Santa.  I don't know that I have any more questions right off the top of my head. I'm sure that I will think of a hundred when I'm going to sleep tonight,  but  thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. I appreciate it.  It's my pleasure. Anytime. I'm happy to make time in my schedule for you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Merry Christmas, everyone. Merry Christmas.  

Today I'm talking with Jessica at The Homemade Mess. www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Today I'm talking with Jessica at the Homemade Mess in South Dakota. Good morning, Jessica. How are you? Good morning. I'm so glad to be here. I'm so glad you had time. Hi. It's really hard this time of year starting in September. Harvest season has begun and then the holidays hit.  And I'm like, okay, who's going to be available to talk to me?  Yes. 00:30 30 minutes isn't a hard time to carve out of the day. Well, it is and it isn't. It just depends. It depends on what people have going on and what time they have available. And things come up and they can't make it. And I'm just like, ah-ha! And it's not 10 o'clock at night? Yeah, I don't do... I try really hard not to record past 6 o'clock at night because I am not on my game at past 6 o'clock at night. Yes. That seems to be the only me time is after 10 o'clock. 00:59 Nothing else is there. Well, that's because you're a mom and you're a home sweater and you're busy and you're a teacher. Yes, I am. OK, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. So I am I live in central South Dakota and I grew up in North Dakota. I did have did grow up on a ranch. And so when I married my husband, I always had these big dreams. I was going to I was going to marry a rodeo guy. Right. And then I fell in love with a fisherman. 01:29 So  we,  love him to death and we, um, he really isn't into the homesteading, the animals, the, he's a fishing and hunting guy and that's, that's what he does. And so, um, we moved, he's not my husband's alignment. And so we moved to a really small town.  Um, there was no Walmart. So I said, we're not moving there. We compromised and we moved there.  And so,  um, 01:53 We, I really didn't have land.  I do have some horses and I do barrel race as well. And so I didn't have land. And then up until probably a year ago, a little over a year ago, uh we found like our dream place and it was like, God willing it happened and it worked out. And so we really are like living out our dream now.  I do also teach.  I teach in a very small town. have 11 kids in my class.  And then I'm a full time or full time teacher.  I'm a mom. And then from after that, after 02:23 whatever time I have left is when I do my social media business. um I actually started it in late  June of 2025, so like not very many months ago. um And I kind of blew up, um which is I'm very grateful, but um I don't really know what I'm doing on social media quite yet, which might, the half a million followers might seem  like I do, but I'm just living on a prayer and winging it over here. But um we live day by day. We don't really know. 02:52 I don't really know what I'm doing in life yet, so here we are.  You are in one of the most wonderful and most frustrating spots of life right now because  winging it is really fun, but it can also be really scary. Yes. Yes.  Especially being like, nobody prepares you for motherhood. You could Google all you want, but then you become a mom and you have no idea what you're doing. So I'm like trying to figure that out. 03:20 trying to figure out my social media business and trying to be a good mom and be a good wife and take care of all the hundred thousand animals I decided to accumulate and it's busy. Yeah, just just be a good human and everything else will fall into place. Yeah. Okay. I have a couple questions regarding your your answer to my first question. um How many kids do you have? Just have the one. I just have the one. Yep. He's 18 months.  Oh my that is a very busy busy time. Yes,  very busy. 03:49 And then did you teach at a bigger school before you moved? I did, yes. I taught in a very large school district. I taught in a school district that had 12 just elementary schools. So it was about 20 to 30,000 people in elementary. So I taught in a very large district. And then I came down here and I had nine kids last year. I didn't know what to do with my time. 04:15 So how many kids were in the class size before this new place? About 30. Oh, wow. So this is a huge change for you. Yes. Yeah. also, before that, I taught in really big district. And then I taught  over on um like a um meeting reservation school. And then I taught where I'm at now. So  there was a little bit of steps taken before I got to where I'm at now. 04:45 Yeah, very large class sizes. Do you enjoy the smaller class size more because you can give the kids more attention one on one? Yeah, I do.  It comes with its challenges as well, though.  The small school district also comes with a school, so it comes with a small community.  The small community was hard for me to adjust to. OK. All right, that makes sense. 05:11 Okay, so your place is called the Homemade Map. Yes. So why did you call it that? I feel like that really encompasses what I do. we are, I really encompass the reality of that life is messy. I also want to normalize the fact that like not everything is Instagram perfect, especially like the homestead we live on. My kitchen is really my main recording place and my kitchen has become a large. 05:40 profile of who I am  as our social media presence.  But it really encompasses the fact that life is chaotic, life is a mess and it's okay.  And it's normal. um Just embrace that mess and really  soak it in because that mess doesn't last forever.  And one day you're gonna miss that mess.  Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh my goodness, you just hit a button, I'm sorry. um 06:09 I'm 56. I've raised four kids. Oh gosh, I love that.  And uh they're all grown and  it's great.  I swear to you, I love the stage of my life.  do. Yeah. But I miss my kids, you know? Yeah.  I swear to God, every time I think I'm going to get through a podcast without tearing up, I can't. So  it's okay. ah 06:35 The other upshot is that once your kids are adults and hopefully you've raised them the way that you hoped you would. A hundred percent. And all move out and they're good human beings and they're doing their thing. Your stress level comes down immensely. I bet. I can't imagine. Today we, I had to get my kid out of the vent of the house because he was stuck and I thought he was going to fall to the basement. Oh my. like, Oh my God. I was like, what? When does this end? 07:03 Um, the sweet spot is when they're about eight or nine years old. Oh good. I look forward to that. Because I don't want to rush life. I really don't. I really, I really like where I'm at now.  Um, but nobody prepared you for that part of life.  Oh no, there's no, there's no owner's manual as it were for kids. No, but as far as social media, that is something that I feel like is really not normalized. 07:26 Um, especially as a new mom, like when I was feeding in the middle of the night, what was I doing scrolling social media?  And I feel like when I was, when I was doing that, I was, I really felt degraded on myself.  Um, cause I didn't have, I didn't have number one, I don't have family around. So I didn't have a village, right?  Um, and it wasn't even about the village because really our village has changed over the years. mean, I can get Amazon prime in two days now where we couldn't before. So like, I do consider that part of my village. Um, 07:55 But I didn't have I don't have family around here. So like, when I was scrolling social media, I felt like there was really nobody out nobody out there that  or that I had found they are out there.  But that really normalized like the mess in not only like my kitchen, but in like life, but also in like homesteading, you know, like  I really um that's one thing that I really wanted to encompass and I couldn't really find that and I wanted something 08:23 to give me answers. And that's kind why I created it.  All of my recipes and all my platform is completely free  because I do think that that is really important for moms  and not everyone is um in that financial space where they can afford healthier alternatives. um So that was something that I wanted when I was scrolling. When I was scrolling, I wanted someone to give me the answers right then. I wanted someone to read that it was going to be okay. You made the thing that you needed. Yes. Good. 08:53 Good job. That's what we all should be doing. That's why I started the podcast because I needed  a place to talk to people who were doing things like I was doing. So same premise. Yes, I love that. Yeah.  And, and I'm just going to reiterate life is messy. I mean, I  came down with some upper respiratory thing back the first week of October and I am finally over it. took like six weeks to start feeling human again.  Oh gosh. I feel that.  I feel like that's our house on rotate. 09:22 Yeah. And my downstairs right now is not very nice.  It's a mess. There's stuff everywhere. Yeah. But that mess is temporary. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes life takes the front seat. Well, being able to function, being able to get the dishes done and laundry handled when you're sick is enough  for at least that first couple of weeks when you don't feel good. um But the other thing about life being messy is that you can spend three days getting your entire 09:52 kitchen and living room,  cleaned up, organized and spotless. And within two days, it's going to look half as nice as it did the day you were done. Two days? I wish mine would last two days. Well, you have a little one. So  you get some slack on that.  You just you cannot make your house a museum. It has to be lived in. Yes. So, OK, tell me about your homesteading stuff.  What do you do that classifies as homesteading? 10:20 So  my main platform  is in my kitchen.  number one, my platform is I do 100 % think that everyone should have um the knowledge of learning how to can and preserve food. I think that that is a skill that is really dying. And I think that everyone should have access to that and for free. Bravo.  Whether you need it now, but I think you should know how to do that.  And so like a really big part of my platform in my homesteading community is learning how to can and preserve your own food. And that's 10:48 um not only for my garden, but it's also supporting local people. So  I feel like a lot of people sometimes think that they can't homestead because they live in an apartment. And that is like so far from the truth. You can homestead in a studio if you want to.  It's all about learning how to  really just be self-sufficient. And  that all starts in your kitchen. um don't need cows in your pasture. You don't need goats. You don't need chickens. 11:15 you don't need a chandelier in your chicken coop with wallpaper like that's so far that's so far fetched and we really and that's fine if you want that I'm not at all hating on people that do that like I love that and I really would want to be that but that's just not reality  and so like I feel like that is a really big  homesteading space right now and so I like really wanted to bring that back  and and just let that let homesteading be part of everybody's life. 11:44 And you can do it from anywhere. And so a really big part of my homesteading space is canning and preserving your own food and dry mixes. I have a really big space in dry mixes as well. Like transferring your homemade dry or store bought dry mixes to homemade. Number one, it's cheaper. You can do that. So if you are not in a space to be able to afford store bought mixes, then not only you can do it frugally, but you can do it with less ingredients and a healthier alternative. 12:14 um But outside my kitchen, I do have lots of animals. um Some that I have accumulated over the years. uh I have like chickens for, and my husband's rule, I have to preface this. My husband's rule is that I cannot have any animal unless it serves a purpose.  And so if it was up to me, I would have everything. um But he really humbles me. um But we have chickens, um obviously for eggs. We tried meat birds one time. ah 12:43 one and only time I will support local ranchers before I do that again. um But I have we have goats as well. We have geese,  we have horses,  we have cat well, we don't have to herd of cows, but we raise them for our own consumption.  But that's really the extent of our animals that we have here.  We have a few like random birds. um We'll just chop those up is like I have them for my mental health. But but that's really the extent of 13:12 our homesteading here as far as animals.  I do have a garden, it's about an acre garden.  And that is an absolute jungle after the first month.  But it still produces. So,  but that's the extent of my homesteading.  Most of my homesteading space is canning and preserving inside my kitchen. Okay, cool. That's awesome. And I agree 100%. I think that every freaking person on the planet 13:42 who has the means and the ways to learn to cook should. And I say it on the podcast all the time. If you want to save yourself money,  learn to cook. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And it's not like I get, I get comments all the time on my platform  asking like, I would really like to start, but it costs a lot of money.  And sometimes I think that a lot of different platforms, 14:04 Like it really doesn't cost a lot of money to start. You don't use what you already have. And that's a really big thing that I say on my platform all the time. We are absolutely  not an aesthetically pleasing homestead. We use what we have.  So,  um, and that's one thing that like, it doesn't have to be,  it's only expensive as you make it. You know, I think that people really should use Facebook marketplace a lot or thrift stores or goodwill. Um, like they have a lot of really good things there and it doesn't have to cost a lot.  I found my first set of matched dishes. 14:34 you know, plates  and coffee mugs and  salad bowls  at  Goodwill. And they are Faultscraf. They are like a, you know how mallard ducks have that greeny blue color on them? Yes.  They're that color. I love them.  I broke at least a quarter of them in the five years that we use them consistently because dishes break.  Yeah. And now when I'm feeling nostalgic for when I finally decided I needed matching dishes, 15:04 I will pull out some of those plates and use them, but I don't use them as often as I did because I lost a quarter of the setting that I had.  And I finally bought restaurant style white plates, bowls  and mugs because I was sick of dishes breaking. And if you want dishes that don't break,  get restaurant style dishes because they're meant to take a beating. I've actually never thought of that. Yep. gave up. genius. 15:31 I gave up because I really love Faults Graph. I think they make some beautiful dishware, but they're stoneware. And if you hit them just right, they break. They break right in half. And we've had this restaurant style set for over a year. And I think we've broken one plate and one mug out of a setting of 12. I love that. That's a genius idea. Yeah. Cause I was just like, I'm so tired of buying pretty dishes and they- 16:00 break and then I'm out, you know, a dish that I need.  So there are lots of ways to do it. And  I'm actually glad that you're very kitchen focused and cooking focused  because just before I got sick, I had 6,000 words written  for a, basically a book on how to kit out your kitchen and what needs to be in your fridge and your pantry and things like that.  And I am just now getting my brain back to where I can sit down and edit it. 16:27 and I'm hoping to have it up on Amazon as a Kindle ebook. Yeah. By the first of the year, wish me luck. And I wish you the best of luck because that is something that is definitely, I think needed in that stage of life. Yeah. And it's so funny. I keep talking about this on the podcast and with friends that it used to be that your great grandma, your grandma and your mom would teach you these things. And 16:57 moms are not teaching their kids this anymore. I did. I taught my kids how to cook and how to get out of kitchen because  it's important to me, but it's not as common as it was.  did not have that. I am completely self-taught. Okay. I taught myself how to can and preserve food right out of high school  because I started reading ingredient labels  and doing a lot of research. And I was also going to school to be a health and fitness coach at the time. Oh. And so I 17:23 I started reading ingredient labels and at first I didn't until  I started going to school and doing my research, I actually really didn't even know what a lot of these ingredients were. um I thought I grew up on these foods. I grew up on Pop Tarts for breakfast and no hate to my mom. She's probably going to listen to this podcast. So I like no hate to my mom. That's just what we did. um And so we had a lot of ramen noodles and we had a lot of canned soup and that's just what we had and that's what we ate. And so I didn't really know different. um 17:53 once I, I shouldn't say I did no different. I did. I didn't know ingredients. I didn't care. And so once I started going to school and started to be doing a little bit of research, I started reading ingredient labels and I knew that if  I wanted to be the best Jessica I could be, um the first thing to change was my diet. um And so that's kind of what started there. um And then  I have like, I cannot let food go to waste. That's like my,  I can't do it. 18:22 My brain will not let me do that. uh So I started canning  and then  I had  many fails before I  was successful at all. um But I didn't have that either. And that's something big on my platform too  is people come to me because they didn't have a mom or a grandma to teach them how to do these things. 18:43 And so I really work on not over complicating it because I did I was in that stage of life too where I where I needed somebody to like literally grab my hand and teach me what to do because I Didn't know and I mean ten years ago YouTube was a thing of course, but it  wasn't as a big of a platform as it is now  and so  I needed somebody to  teach me and to walk me through it and and Do it with me and so that's kind of what I created my platform on was on to 19:12 was that I want people to realize that it's really easy. It's not as over complicated as it seems. I am self-taught and trust me when I tell you if I can do it, you can do it. And the best part is you don't have to put pants or a bra on and leave the house. You just do it in your house. Yes, exactly. Jessica, do you mind if I ask how old you are? I am 28. I love that. There are so few people under 30 who are interested in doing what you're doing. 19:41 I am.  I'm going to do this again. I've said I'm proud of people  all last week and the week before. I'm proud of you. You're doing a great thing. Thank you. I do think, though, that it is  it is coming back,  especially  with like I don't I am not going to get into politics, but especially with the um like um things that have been brought into light about what ingredients really are. Yeah. And  that that how  normal it is. 20:11 And so I do think that canning and preserving, not even canning and preserving, which is making food from scratch, like my dry mixes, for example. um I sell, do sell,  all of my recipes are free on my page, but I sell um label kits for dry mixes that has over 35 dry mixes that you can exchange um store bought to homemade. And I think that that is like a first step into really becoming self-sufficient on yourself or really um getting to food freedom. I think that's really important. And I don't think... 20:40 I don't think there's ever going to be a time where we can't depend on stores. Like we just live in  the  age where we will have to depend on stores. I'm confident of that.  But the less that you can get there and the more you can make at home,  you know what's in it. You don't have any of those, you know, emulsifiers in your food. Then that's a win in my book.  Okay. I have two things I want to share regarding what you just said. 21:09 I learned how to make homemade mayonnaise uh a good eight years ago, maybe 10 years ago.  I don't do it very often. I should do it more often, but I'm the only one in the house who likes mayonnaise, so I'm not gonna make it every week because I don't use it every week.  And there is something incredibly magical about watching  something like that come together because it seems impossible.  And the first time I did it and I saw it, 21:37 go from olive oil and  egg and whatever was in it  to  mayonnaise. I stood there with my mouth hanging open because it was literally nothing and then it was the thing I needed it to be. That is even small alternatives like that. I  have a lot of them on my page, but the  DMs or the comments on all of my platforms that are like, I had no idea you could make this like powdered sugar or brown sugar. Yeah. Like people don't 22:06 And that's no fault of their own. Like they just don't know. It's  just lack of knowledge. So  once they know, well then you take that information and do with it what you will. But  it's  just knowledge and knowing that you can do it  on your own. can. And it's stuff you already probably have at home. And it's significantly cheaper. I mean, my platform is about doing it on a budget. It is significantly cheaper.  Maybe  not. You could probably get some really cheap mail. 22:35 because olive oil is really expensive. But um brown sugar and um powdered sugar or tanning your leftovers, I mean, you could do that for pennies on the dollar, really. Yes, absolutely. And the other thing that I made, speaking of the dry mixes you're talking about, I made a homemade ranch dressing because I actually love ranch dressing. I  am very vanilla in my taste, Jessica. I don't like spicy. 23:03 Me either. don't like bitter other than coffee. Freaking love coffee, but I can add sugar to that.  And I didn't want to keep buying ranch dressing at the grocery store because it has all kinds of preservatives in it. And I worked at this for  a whole summer trying to get a ranch dressing that I liked with actual real ingredients from scratch.  And I finally looked, I finally Google in, finally typed into Google, cannot talk this morning,  real ranch tasting. 23:33 recipe and somebody had come up with one that used buttermilk either dry buttermilk  or or just buttermilk  and I use in mine to buttermilk powder. Yeah, and I tried it and it tasted exactly like the ranch dressing that I buy at the store and I was so excited.  Yeah, and and the dry buttermilk is so weird because if you put it in your coffee, it's it's it's basically like a creamer.  Oh, we don't drink coffee, but that's a good thing to know. 24:03 So not only did I have uh the stuff to make a good ranch dressing, but if I was out of milk, I had something to lighten up my coffee. Yes, of course.  So that helped. But when it comes to talking about preserving food,  you certainly can can things  and you can freeze things and you can dry things and you can freeze dry things. Yep.  Am I missing any? um 24:32 You could freeze dry, could dehydrate. Dehydrate, yes.  Yeah, you can can. um That's like the main ones I do.  can. um That's it. That's the main ones I do. Yeah.  On my page. Yeah. Because I do I actually don't have a lot of freeze dry. Well, I don't have a freezer currently right with me but  around my house. But um I also realized that that's not something that  a lot of people have.  that's expensive. And so 25:01 um Most of my  content is about using, like I said, using what you have.  So most people have a freezer, a dehydrator,  and then my canning. Yeah, and I want to throw in here a dehydrator is not that expensive to acquire. You can get them at thrift stores for very cheap. Yes. Or you can buy a new one for less than $50.  Yes.  Yes.  I will say that they're like with a dehydrator, 25:30 If you're purchasing new,  you get what you pay for. um so especially if you're going to be using it in bulk, um using it often,  you get what you pay for when it comes to that. And that's really with anything, but um I got mine at a thrift store. All of mine have been from thrift stores. um and they work just fine too, but yeah. Yeah. And the other thing is, is if you don't have a dehydrator, if you have cookie sheets, 25:58 You can dry things in the oven at the lowest setting that your oven will do and it doesn't have to be a gas stove. It can be an electric stove. Yep.  Same with canning.  You can can and preserve food and that's kind of,  there's multiple ways to do that. You can can and you can do oven canning or what they call dry canning. You can do pressure canning. You can do steam canning. You can do water bath canning.  It's really just what method. 26:25 is easiest for you and what you are really knowledgeable about.  A lot of people throw out their botulism like they truly understand what it means. ah And so  just being aware of  number one, using what you have. You don't have to go out and purchase a pressure canner if you're not comfortable with that. But just using what you have and just understanding that even with canning, there's multiple ways to can.  So  we talk about dehydrating and freeze drying and freezing. 26:53 Um, and canning and so even within canning, there's a lot of ways  to get the end result. Oh, absolutely. It just, the one thing I will say about food preservation is before you get into it, do your research.  Yeah,  especially. and  I mean,  I do like to think that I'm a really good resource for a lot of people, but a lot of people go to social media, including myself. 27:19 A lot of people go to social media looking for support or answers to their questions. Like I said, I did it too. And I still do it. uh so like they,  TikTok is the new Google, right? TikTok is a new search engine. So uh I do it too.  But a lot of people, a lot of creators are, oh and vacuum sealing. I forgot that one.  Vacuum sealing as well. um But a lot of creators are really good at fear mongering. 27:47 Um, and so a lot of people don't want, don't want it to can because like I said, they're afraid of botulism and a lot of creators are, are, are throw a word vomiting that, that word without truly educating people on what that is. And so that is, I feel like a wall that I run into on my platform is like retraining you that botulism is not something to be afraid of, rather it's something to understand. It's something to be knowledgeable about. 28:15 Of course it's a real thing. I'm not going to disregard that. ah We know it is,  but you have to be knowledgeable about it.  I personally am a rebel canner.  I  100 % believe in that. aah But it's all  about education  instead of throwing out that word. People are scared of that.  And so that really turns a lot of people off of that. 28:41 Yeah, and that's part of reason I'm saying do the research. Find someone who's been canning for 20 years and knows what they're doing and have them  quote unquote hold your hand through learning it. exactly. And don't just believe the first thing that you read, you know? And that's with anything really and not just canning. Like just do your research. Yeah. And I'm not  about, I'm just about informed. I want you to be informed before you make any decision,  no matter what that is.  And I want you to have real facts. 29:10 Yeah, for sure. And the other thing is that this stuff takes time to do. Yes. I'm not saying it's going to take you a week to can some tomato sauce, but it's going to take you a good day.  Yep. And maybe two days, depending on how... you might fail. Yeah. And depending on how practiced you are. mean, when we did tomatoes  four years ago, it took us two days to get through it because we were hot and tired and we're like, let's do the rest tomorrow. 29:37 When we did them last year, only took half a day. Yeah. So  it's all about learning. It's all about practicing and it's all about getting comfortable with the things that you are doing. Yes. And being okay to fail. Yeah. Like failing is really part of your learning process and I know it stinks. I know it does.  you learn from your mistakes, especially with canning. When you do spend two days getting, you know, making your tomato sauce and  you figure out that... 30:05 you know, three or four jars didn't seal. Like, what do do with that now? And so just, just, just knowing that, that there's a possibility that you're going to fail and what are you going to do from that failure? And that's just not just in canning, but life, know,  definitely.  Um, I love that because we made our tomato sauce that we made two summers ago. Now  I don't love it. My husband and my son will eat it. I don't love it because they made it with different, a different variety of tomato. um 30:35 And it's not as sweet and it also had to do with the growing conditions that year. And so I'm very excited. We're going to be canning tomato sauce over the new year weekend, I think this year. That's what we do too. We make it, we, we all put all of our tomatoes in a freezer and make it a winter problem. Yeah, that's what, that's what we did too. And, uh, I have eaten a few of the tomatoes that I know we're going to be making sauce out of and they were so good this year. Oh my God. 31:04 So very excited for New Year's weekend to be working because we always work on holidays. We were always doing something that there just hasn't been time for. I love that. That's something that I wish that  I shouldn't say I wish something that I would like to have is to have like a community, local community that does that together. And  I live very rural. uh I live, I live two hours, three hours from like a Sam's club or a Walmart.  do live, there's a Walmart about an hour and a half away from me, but 31:33 So I live very rural and there's not a lot of people around that do that. So that is one thing that I wish that I had was just a community here to do that.  Well, it'll just be my husband and I. We are the community on this project, but  at least we have each other to  keep ourselves entertained while we're cutting up tomatoes and smooshing tomatoes and juicing tomatoes. Yes.  All right, Jessica, I would love to have you back because I feel like there's a whole lot more that we could talk about. I would love that. 32:02 Okay, awesome. Thank you. Where can people find you?  You can find me on all platforms. I am under the homemade mess on all platforms. I am on Lemonade, TikTok,  Facebook. I'm on threads, Instagram,  but I'm under the homemade mess on all platforms.  Good job, because I just talked to a lady the other day who has to consolidate all of her stuff in the new year. 32:25 And she was kind of poking fun at herself. And I don't think she realized that she was going to get as big as she did, as fast as she did. So I'm really glad you don't have to do that too. didn't.  well, I, so I started in late June.  Um, and  I've, I've built a community of half a million followers, have no idea what I'm doing on social media yet. there, um, with that came a lot of struggles. So I have,  I  think I have my, my ducks in a row. think there might be a few, um, off track, but. 32:55 I did, I have prepared myself for the, I have learned from the struggles that I already had. So hopefully after the new year, I know with like after taxes and all that fun stuff, there'll be some changes that I have to make, but hopefully my ducks are at least going the right direction. Well, please keep doing what you're doing because you are doing a fabulous thing. 33:19 Well, thank you. And I appreciate you  reaching out and I'm excited to get the homemade mess out there and really share our story.  Awesome. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com slash support.  Jessica,  I know it's Sunday. I wish I'd talked to you on Friday so I could say have a good weekend, but have a good week. You as well. Thank you so much for having me. Yep. Thanks. Bye. Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Becca at Moon Ridge Acres. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Cottage Foodie Con. The code HOME 15 will get you 15% off any ticket and is valid for the month of November   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15,  you'll get 15% off your registration costs. 00:29 And that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com.  A tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Becca at Moonridge Acres. I think it's the name of your place in Alberta, Canada. Good morning, Becca. How are you?  Hi, I'm good. How are you?  I'm good. Is Moonridge Acres the right name? That is correct. Yeah. Okay. And do you, you have a separate page for that or not on Facebook? 00:59 I actually do have a separate page for it, but I don't really  use it very much. um just, I'm spread a little too thin, but eventually I would like to do it and have it be more, you know, promotional for the horses. But  right now it's just kind of sitting there. Okay, cool.  I  looked at your personal profile. was like, I know she has a business name, but I couldn't remember it. And I was like, oh yeah, Mooner Jakers. Okay, cool. So how's the weather in Canada this morning? 01:29 It is brisk. Brisk is what I would call it. It's, I think we were at minus 11 last night, that's Celsius. So I don't know what that works out to in Fahrenheit. I'm still, I'm trying to get the conversion in my head, but it's not going super well. So yeah, it's cool. It's one of the cooler mornings that we've had so far. And honestly, this is a really great fall. It's been really nice. So I can't complain. 01:59 Is it sunny there? Sunny? Yeah, it is. is sunny. It's,  uh, Alberta's kind of known for being cold, but sunny. So  you, you get  one,  one  evil and one good thing. You know, the sun is nice. Cause when it's dreary and cloudy, that's just depressing. Yeah. Um, yesterday all day, looked like,  um, dusk cause it was rainy and cloudy all day yesterday. um 02:28 And I was okay with that because the weatherman was predicting that we were going to wake up to one to three inches of snow this morning. And I was excited. Oh, wow. And I got up and we got like half an inch of snow. I was like, it's going to be another one of those winters where they hype the hell out of the forecast. And then we get nothing. I swear every single year, like in the last like four years, they were like, this is going to be the worst winter ever. And then it's fine. 02:55 Like, I'm not sure  if they get more clicks on that. Like, maybe they make more ad revenue by saying it's going to be terrible. I'm not sure. I have no idea, but I was  in my five-year-old pram of mind of, okay, it's going to be the first really nice snow. It's going to be beautiful when I wake up. And oh no. No. I  was also excited because my dog loves the first real snowfall of a couple inches because she goes out and rolls in it. 03:23 And I was so excited for her to go out the door and be all crazy. And now I was like, okay, well, this was not the day already.  No, they seem to be doing that a lot. told us  Calgary, which is just  a boat three hours south of us, they got  a decent dump. Like I think it was  10 inches or not 10 inches, sorry, 10 centimeters. ah And they said it was coming our way and  to expect  a big storm and nothing. 03:52 Yup,  I don't believe the weather people anymore. The weather is what it is doing outside my window right now. And right now,  it is really windy. It is 28 degrees and I would call it brisk. So I think we're probably in the same, the same. I think  so. think Fahrenheit to Celsius, believe 20 is zero  Celsius. So we're minus 11 Celsius. So that's gotta be like. 04:21 I want to say around like the, in the single digits of Fahrenheit, I think. So we're having kind of the same weather day. It's all good. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So you've been on the podcast twice. They have been wonderful conversations. And just to catch people up, tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Uh, so I breed miniature horses, um, here in Alberta and we breed for 04:48 show purposes um and we show them and my, you know, my whole social media is all about promoting the breed  and hopefully getting more people  to get into them  and see that miniature horses are truly awesome little creatures.  I really, really love them. ah And yeah, that's,  we're all about the minis right now. Okay. So in the first interview we did, 05:15 You had mentioned rabbits and goats. Do you still have those? So I no longer have my rabbits. I would like to get back into the rabbits eventually. I really miss my rabbit people because I did rabbit shows as well. um But right now  I am just spread too thin. I don't have  the time to give them proper care and rabbits are very time consuming because they're all in individual cages. 05:44 and they all need individual feed. And it's just a very time consuming uh hobby to get into. I just, I'm spread too thin right now to  do rabbits  to the best of my abilities. ah And so we're pausing on that. I would love to get back into them though, cause I really do miss them. Okay. And do you still have goats? We do still have the goats and they are just ruling my life.  They're feral in my yard for whatever reason they don't leave. So I don't lock them up. 06:14 And they're just,  you know, eating my horse food  and causing troubles.  That sounds about on par for goats. Yeah, they're just  out there living their lives and being menaces. Okay,  and did you have chickens? I can't remember.  No, we did not have chickens. We would love to have chickens. Like, I mean, I would love to have a whole lot of everything, but... 06:39 um We're just kind of limited on space right now  and  the the minis are  currently our  major focus. Okay, I just wanted to check in on on what I remember. Well, I went and listened to both episodes this morning. I was like, what did she say to me the first time?  And I was like, there's got to be I don't know. I didn't know if you were just really focusing on the horses or if you still had the other things. So  and that's 07:05 You are still- My husband would really like me to get rid of the goats because they eat all of our trees  and they're they're just menaces and I don't do anything with them other than laugh at them when they climb on things they're not supposed to. ah But I just really enjoy laughing at them.  They are highly entertaining and my husband is really thankful that I have not like demanded that we get goats because he knows how much I love them. 07:32 Mm-hmm. Yeah, they're big trouble. um I like, yeah, there's something about them that I love,  but they're really more trouble than they're probably worth.  But here I am. Yeah, I use demanded loosely because I never demand anything from anyone I request. don't demand. But the thing is, is that I really love the baby goats, the adult goats. I'm not as thrilled with so. 07:59 So I just let other people raise goats and I go see the babies when they're little and then  they take care of their goats and I just get the benefits of seeing the babies when they come. That's fair. The babies are so entertaining and I'm not like breeding the goats anymore because I can't really sell them.  So  it just, doesn't make sense  to continue on with it, but I, yeah,  I am entertained by their shenanigans. 08:27 Yes, to quote Dawn's dirt. She's another person that does a podcast on Bershett  or something like that is her last name.  Her podcast is Dawn's dirt.  She calls that tic-tac-titioning, math-ing. 08:43 That's awesome.  Now anytime somebody's talking about  it not making sense to do something because there's no return in it, the thing that pops into my head is tic-tac-titioning every time now. That's funny.  I love it. And she's in Canada too. Oh, no way. Yeah, I can't remember.  I want to say Alberta, but I could be wrong. I would have to look it up. Yeah, I'm going to have to look her up too and see. It's always good to connect with some other 09:12 you know, Canadian people that are  probably trying to do  the same thing that I'm trying to do. Yeah. If anybody wants to listen to Dawn's podcast, and it's really great because she's,  she's very, very blunt. She's, she's friendly and she's honest and I love her, but she does not pull any punches.  And she's, she's, uh, she's very, um, anti-government. 09:38 And she's very honest about that too. So if anybody wants to listen to it, all I have to do is type in Dawn's dirt in  Google and it'll come up. promise. That's awesome. I might have to do that. So anyway, um I want to learn more about what's going on with the mini horses, but I want to say that I am so glad you're still in the world because I saw that you hit a moose. oh yes. I just did that with my favorite. 10:05 car ever. I absolutely loved that car so, much. um And it's,  you know,  I got really lucky because it was a cow calf pair  and I  was paying attention. It was just a really bad lighting situation. And, you know, where they came out of the trees were super close to the road. So  I saw mama and if I would have hit mama, we could have had a much different outcome. um But I swerved and I just 10:35 just nicked the hindquarters of  the calf  and  it totaled my car most likely. I'm still waiting for insurance to let me know on that. But you still haven't heard yet?  No, I won't know probably until the end of this week or even early next week.  Oh, my goodness.  And, you know, the adjuster was like, start car shopping.  And I'm like, OK, I'm going to find a vehicle that I really love and then you're going to fix my car  or. 11:05 You know, it's just one of those frustrating situations where the insurance companies make it really convenient for them  and you're at their mercy. So,  the best option is, is you find something  you like and you do have your vehicle back. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would be happy to have my vehicle back. um Unfortunately, I'm probably going to have to look at getting a truck because in reality I was probably towing a little bit too much with that vehicle. um 11:34 And  it sucks because I really, really did like that vehicle, but a truck will be more versatile, I suppose. Yes, absolutely.  And I'm not giving you a hard time. swear I adore you. But it could be worse. It could be so much worse. So much worse.  at the end of the day,  my daughter didn't even feel the she was like, what was that? And I was like, oh, you know, just our car crumpling into an oblivion. 12:03 But she didn't even know what happened. you know, like I  had a slightly sore neck the next morning. ah But I couldn't even tell. It kind of felt like I just slept on it wrong. So I'm not even sure if it was related. um So,  you know, us being okay is all that really matters.  And I'll  whine about that car for a little bit, but I'll get over it.  Yeah. And like I said, I wasn't giving you a hard time.  And I am  so glad. 12:32 that you are okay and that your daughter is okay because that could have been a terrible outcome for both of you. Yeah. Most are no joke. So the last time we talked, we talked about your horses and we talked about the PayPal fiasco that you have since gotten figured out  and really, really quick. Can you catch us up on how that got fixed? Cause it was actually a very simple fix once you knew what to do.  Oh,  it's so like looking back, it's so frustrating that I 13:01 had to go six months in just  absolute agony over this. ah Because what ended up happening was it wasn't that Metta wasn't trying to pay me, it was that PayPal was rejecting the payment because I used a PayPal account that I had had open for years. ah They had asked me to verify my account uh like years ago. 13:27 And I had never logged into the account. I never saw the notification and the notification just went away. And so there was no notification and I had called PayPal. They didn't know about this. They had no idea. Facebook obviously had no idea about it. then Greg from PayPal, I called, I asked and Greg was eating his Wheaties that day. He was like, 13:55 This is what you got to do. And it was like a two second fix  and boom, payment in my account and life is good.  So  yeah, and it has been fine since. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And this is uh specific to Canadians. ah It is a regulation put in by the Canadian government that any deposit over a thousand dollars needs to have a verified account. 14:21 And that means like with your driver's license and you know, it was a couple steps to get it verified, but it was easy and now we're all good. Good, because I know that was driving you absolutely bug wonky to use it when my mother uses. I mean, you know, was beyond frustrating. Like I had $50,000 sitting in that account. 14:45 that I couldn't access and my husband was on disability and like we were, we were struggling and I was at the point of like, do I give this up and just, you know, get a real job or,  or what do I do? Right. Because I'm like, I'm seeing this money here. Like I know it's working,  but it's not working if I can't access it.  thank Greg from PayPal. are my hero.  Shout out to Greg. Yeah.  Okay. So. 15:13 Let's get to the horses, because I know that's what you really, really love and what you really, really want to talk about.  How many babies were there this spring? Ooh, this year. So we had five babies total,  but one of them was in the fall, and that's been a whole situation. Okay. So yeah, we had  the first four were born all without a hitch. Everything was great. um And then... 15:42 We had the never ending pregnancy  of  the mare that I picked up, George,  from Tennessee. I drove to Tennessee and I picked up this mare in Niagara Falls and drove home  and she was bred.  And  she was supposed to be  due most likely at the end of June.  And  we got to,  the baby was born September 7th. So  it felt like she was pregnant forever. 16:12 Um, so yeah, the,  uh, that whole scenario, but this little baby, such a sweet, sweet baby. And we've had problems.  Uh, her mama wasn't making enough milk. Her mom just got diagnosed with Cushing's.  Um, but we've got her all figured out now we're bottle feeding her,  uh, just as like a supplement.  And  it's been great. It's been great. I think I've learned 10 years of knowledge just with this one full. 16:41 Which is going to be terribly beneficial to you in the future. So yay. Yes, exactly. It's the, we're just getting it all out at once. Like I feel like a pro now.  Good. Awesome. And the fact is you're never going to know everything because that would be a lot to keep in one brain.  Absolutely. Is this, is this the fool that's named after your friend? It is. Yes. Okay. Can you tell that story without crying or would you rather not? um 17:10 I mean, I could give it a go for sure. Okay.  We're, we're,  we're a little bit more healed.  I don't know about healed, but anyways, um, so  my neighbors  were,  they moved in a couple of years ago and we got connected because they were looking for someone to feed their cats.  Um, and  I offered, you know,  as my services to make a little bit of extra money  and we ended up becoming like, 17:40 close.  And the this July, I was at Stampede  and the husband of the pair called me and informed me that  Crystal had been in an accident  and that she was gone.  And that was just like, oh, I have no words.  I 18:07 I cannot imagine and I feel just  so awful, know, like  you go through the last thing that  you said to that person or, you didn't respond to that message and now you like, it's just,  I've never lost a friend in that way.  So suddenly and so tragically and, you know, her husband who  was just... 18:34 you could see how madly in love with her he was and they'd been married for like 27 years or something like that, you know, and he was still just that golden retriever husband that every woman dreams of, you know.  I love it.  And I just, my heart breaks for him. It still breaks for him. I can't even imagine. um And 18:57 Yeah, I asked because Crystal loved coming over and she would always save her vegetables that they didn't get through in the week for the animals and she loved coming over and,  you know, seeing the animals and  I asked him, could I name this baby after her? And he gave me his blessing. so now we have little Crystal and it's so funny because this little baby is sweet as pie, but she's got that little... 19:26 devil and I think that's that's kind of how Crystal was as well just the sweetest woman  and but you could see there was a little bit of  you know uh a sparkle in the eye a little bit of devious. uh perfect way to honor your friend. Yeah yeah it's  I feel really good about it and I hope that  Crystal is up there smiling  and enjoying watching 19:55 little baby crystal kick me when her milk is not correct.  Uh-huh.  Laughing her ass off in heaven is how I would see that. I hope so. I really do because this little baby is,  my goodness, you better have that milk to temperature, let me tell you.  She's worse than a human baby. Uh-huh,  uh-huh.  And cuter than a button, cuter than a button. You couldn't ask for a cuter baby horse.  Oh yeah, and they're all cute. 20:23 All the babies are cute. Your friend, I think it's your friend. I can't think of her first name. Her piercelle is how you- Oh, Nicole. Yes. Yes. Yeah. The baby that she had, the horse baby that has the rhinos. Yes. Riley. That is one of the cutest baby horses I've ever seen because of the shape of its face. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very cute. 20:52 um Yeah, she's a... It's just, it's crazy, the things that can happen, but you know, it gives them character and you know, you love them for it.  Yeah, absolutely. And we're all different. It doesn't matter whether we're humans or animals, we're all different. We have our own things about us that make us specials.  Exactly. Okay. So I'm super glad that Crystal is doing well and... 21:19 I follow you, follow Nicole, I follow Katie. And again, like I said in the last episode, I think I don't have any mini horses or horses. I don't intend to have any. So I don't live vicariously through you three amazing women who are doing the things because that means that I can enjoy it and I don't have to do it. Absolutely.  And I think like that's  kind of the point  of social media. Like that's how I view it. I feel like 21:48 You know, a lot of my followers are people that might never even live on an acreage or might never get the chance to  own one or never want the chance,  you know,  and  they get to kind of enjoy these animals through me.  And I  can't think of a better thing. Like, I think that's amazing. Yeah, exactly. And it's almost, it's going sound really dumb, but I'm going say it anyway. It's like a virtual petting zoo. 22:16 I don't get to pet your horses, but I get to see them and I get to like in my head I can sort of picture myself there with them. Yeah, absolutely. like  that's something I'm really trying to  get better at with my content is showing off each horse's  like individual personality because they all have their own personality. Some of them are very 22:42 you know, chill and calm and you know, they never do anything bad. And then there's some that are total clowns all the time. And I'm really trying to capture their essence in the content, which is a learned skill, I'll say that. But I think that's what makes it so fun, is getting to know the personalities of these little creatures that, you know, they all have their own. 23:12 Yeah, they are all good.  Yes,  I just love it. And I feel so weird sometimes. Like I feel like a stalker. Because  I didn't know about you until a good year and a half ago. And then I found your page and I was like, Oh, more mini horses. This is awesome. And then I got to sort of know you through your videos. And I was like, she's really sweet. And then I was like, Hmm, wonder if she talked to me on the podcast. 23:39 And since we talked the first time, you're now a new friend to me. So I'm not always talking to you, I'm just keeping up with a good friend. I love that. I love that. It's just so cool to like, you know, have these friendships all over,  like all over the world, really. I mean, I would say most of my followers are in the US, but you know, to see people from Australia being like, you know,  I just, that's just, it's bananas. It's, it's a very surreal. 24:07 kind of feeling, but it's super cool because knowing that somebody across the world is rooting for you is just, it's amazing. It's amazing and it's crazy at the same time because I'm an old lady, I'm 56. We didn't have this technology back when I was a kid. Right. Yeah. You know what? And I was born in 91. So I was right on that. I was on the line. I remember life. 24:37 before technology, uh but I was like one of the first  to get it, right? Like I was in high school when the iPhone came out. um So  I kind of know both worlds and it's just  so crazy to think of how different my kid's childhood is versus what mine was. yeah, it's just wild. And you now my kid, my 10 year old is like, I want to be a YouTuber. And I'm like, I created this, didn't I? 25:06 Uh huh.  Like how would I say no? Like I, it's a valid career. Yeah. And when I was growing up, my mom was one of those moms who was like, okay, you've had a good breakfast. You've had a big glass of orange juice. You've had a glass of water.  Get out of my house  and don't come back till the streetlights come on. And I'm saying that jokingly, but she might as well have said that because we spent all our time outside. Absolutely. 25:34 No phones, no screens, no nothing. And I lived in a little tiny town in Maine  and the neighbors all kind of knew each other and they all kept an eye on the kids. they saw, the moms would make a note of who they saw go by if they saw them. if mom called and said, you seen Lynn? My nickname is Lynn.  Have you seen Lynn today? They would be like, yeah, like at one o'clock I saw her headed that way. And that way my mom sort of had an idea of where I was. 26:04 It's so wild. think of the things that I did as a child. Like I was, I was an only child  and I would, you know, I was a little bit older than my kids are right now. I was like, you know, 13, 14, but I would get on my horse and ride like  miles away by myself with no phone, no nothing. And my mom was just fine.  It was like, I would, I would have a conniption if my children did that. oh 26:34 Absolutely. When my kids were kids, they're now all grown. The youngest is 24 next month. The oldest is 36. Oh my God. We lived again in a small town. And so pretty much the same situation. The kids would head out the door and all the moms in the neighborhood would keep an eye on everybody. And we had a library not a block and a half away. 27:01 If all else failed, I knew my daughter was probably at the library. Right. So it worked out fine. It's uh such a different time. Like now,  my oldest is at the point where I will send her into like a gas station by herself if she wants a drink uh or like a small grocery store if I need milk, trying to build that confidence of doing things on your own. 27:27 You know, if she takes an extra two minutes, I'm like on my phone, I'm messaging her, I'm are you? Like, meanwhile, I was literally swimming in a river by myself. I feel like kids used to be feral cats and now they are pampered house cats. Absolutely. Yes. And there is something to be said for both. I, you know, I do not want to disparage the way my mom raised me and I certainly don't want to disparage the way that you're raising yours. 27:57 And I sure as heck want to think that I raised mine right. So we're all doing the best we can with the information we have at the time we have it.  Um,  my, my horse was a bicycle cause I didn't have a horse. So I would ride my bike and the best freaking day of my childhood was when my parents said,  yes, you may ride your bike the two miles to the library and we're not going to worry about you. Wow. 28:27 fast day of my life because I love to read. have loved to read since I was in first grade. Yeah, that's amazing. And I didn't have to wait for them to have time on Saturday morning to drive me to the library anymore. I could just go.  Right.  And two miles.  That's a decent distance for a little kid. Oh, I had legs like tree trunks. I was so strong. was like, I think I was five foot four when I was 12. Oh, wow. 28:54 And I think I weighed about 80 pounds. And so I was tough. wasn't fat. I was solid. Yeah. And that's something I think that a lot of kids, mine included,  are lacking is  the physical activity of being outside and having to get from point A to point B.  you know, even me, I was horseback riding, but that is  not, you're not just sitting there. 29:20 You know, it was something.  I'm really, I'm really pushing this year to get my kids into  more stuff that is going to build muscles because it's just  so easy to, to sit around on a device, you know? How many kids do you have,  Two, I have a 10 year old and a five year old. So they're a good age, but they're a terrible age at the same time. You know, the, the five year old wants to play with the 10 year old and the 10 year old doesn't always want to play with the five year old. 29:50 But  the 10-year-old can help with the five-year-old, help her with some things and that sort of thing. there's pros and cons to the age gap, but  I like it. Yeah. And you have many horses. I know you must be feeding them and hauling hay and doing all that.  Do the kids help?  Absolutely. Absolutely. My oldest, as my youngest, is a little bit of a princess,  especially in the cold.  But this year, 30:18 We got round bales and we bought a skid steer in September. So my winter chores are honestly so much easier than my summer chores because in the summertime I am individually feeding horses for show. I'm making sure their diets are ultra specific. And in the winter time I get to be like, here's a bale. And I go out. 30:46 I make sure everybody's good, do that twice a day.  And that's about it. You know, we fill it, we have to fill the water every other day, but it's very streamlined in the winter because we made it that way. Cause I don't want to be outside at minus 30.  No, I don't blame you at all. It's no fun. No, it's terrible actually. Okay. So in the summertime they can, they can really kind of get into it. Yeah. And of course the kids are a lot more willing to, to help in the summertime,  um, with, you know, when we're feeding the square bales and we're 31:16 We're being specific about it, but right now the horses are all just  eating and happy. Fat and sassy. That's exactly how I like it.  Good. So  I don't want to ask a rude question and if you're not comfortable answering it,  just say so.  How many, many horses do you have? 31:40 It's so funny because this is a question that I get asked all the time and my typical answer  is, I don't know,  like a lot. And, know, I have 34, I  believe. Okay. Wow. This  is  where I, you know, I  know everybody's name, but I can never remember the exact number of the count because I go out there and I look for names. don't. 32:08 look for, you know, names and faces.  I'm not doing a head count. I'm, you know, if I,  as long as I see everybody that I need to see, then, you know, I don't, I don't count so much. And I'm, it's hard to, with the foals, like three of my foals are sold, or sorry, not the foals, two of the foals, and then a yearling is sold. So do I count them?  It's like, you know, they're still on my property. They're not leaving for a couple of months.  Um, but 32:37 Yeah, 34 is a rough estimate, maybe not including the three that are sold. See, the only thing I think of when you tell me all that is in the springtime when the cows have babies around here, they put the mamas and the babies out in the pastures to eat and babies nurse and it's very cute. baby cows out here are called grass puppies. And your mini horses aren't 33:06 Well, they're a little smaller than a calf. probably about half the size of calf. And all I can think of is the equivalent of grass puppies at your house.  Yep. And it is the best thing ever. Like there's, there's really nothing better than watching the babies, you know, run around and play with each other  and  get lost in the grass when it gets nice and tall. And it's, it's the best. Okay. 33:34 So um I had a question when you were answering my question and now it's gone because I do this all the time. um When did you get your first mini horse? So first mini horse goes back,  oh, I have to do the math on the years.  We're going into our third breeding season, so it would be four and a half years ago.  So  it skyrocketed very fast, but that's just 34:03 who I am as a person. I do something, I do it 100%. Um,  and  it was at the time, my  30 year old Arabian horse that I grew up on, he was my childhood riding horse. I, he was that horse that I was riding down at the river by myself  and he always took good care of me. Um, he was starting to, he was not holding his weight. He was starting to have a really hard time moving around and 34:33 we knew his time needed to be soon. So I made a deal with my husband and I said, I think a fair exchange when Flair passes is for me to get a miniature horse because I've always wanted one and I wanted it for the novelty of it just because I thought they were cute. And he said, that seems reasonable, way cheaper on food and you know, that seems good. 35:00 And little did he know that I would become obsessed with them.  So did you just get one to start with? No, I bought one. And then my dad saw that one, which is Boomer.  And I actually just gelded him. So he was a stallion and he was a nice looking manager horse. And my dad saw him and he was like, oh, that's a nice little mini horse. And he said, you know what? I've always 35:27 wanted to have a little miniature horse breeding program. And I was like, sign me up. Let's go. Immediately. Yes.  You're not going to have to ask me twice about that one.  And so my dad ended up buying a few mares  and, uh, you know, then we found a stallion that was 35:51 a little bit nicer than Boomer and then,  you know, it just, it snowballed very quickly. And there, there's something about them where, you know, they don't really eat all that much and it just feels like it's totally fine to just buy another one. So what you're saying is that mini horse math is like chicken math. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Because they're addictive and they're so sweet  and you 36:21 like yeah, they come in every single color, which a lot of horse breeds don't. um But minis come in every color. So there's a lot of collecting you can do.  Well, this must be why um Katie Vance like has the mini cows because I feel like it's almost the same thing.  Absolutely. Absolutely. I would love to get some of the mini cows. Absolutely love. But I don't have the space for them  yet. 36:48 Yeah, we don't have the space for goats, let alone many horses, let alone many cows, let alone any four legged critter other than the dogs and the cat. Fair, fair. mean, and most people don't. I think that's, you know, I thought to myself when I, before I started social media, I was like, you know, to be able to live this life with these horses and get to experience them, it would almost be  rude. 37:17 of me to not share them, right? Like it's almost a crime to not share them with everyone  because not everybody gets that. And I live a very privileged life and I'm very aware of it.  I- you are thankful for it. can hear it.  Exactly. Like I'm so grateful that that is, that this is what I get to do.  And  it would just be, it would be rude of me to not give other people  at least 37:46 the opportunity to have a glimpse into it.  know, and to get, you know, if my horse brings a smile to someone's day, like that's the most beautiful thing in the world.  agree, because every morning when I see new  videos of you on your Facebook page,  I smile and it makes my day better. So thank you for doing that. That is amazing. That's like just, that just warms my heart. I have no words. 38:14 It's so, it's so funny. I get up early. I go to bed early. I get up early because my husband snores and I've mentioned this in the podcast before and he does not care that I tell the story.  My husband snores. So I go to bed early so I can get at least four hours of solid sleep because otherwise I will not.  I average about four hours of solid sleep a night, which is driving me insane.  And so, and so I get up at like between three 30 and four in the morning because I just can't. 38:43 stay in bed and listen to the snoring anymore.  And I get up and I get my coffee and I go on the porch and I drink about half my coffee and I just listen to the outside because outside is quiet.  And you know, I hear the breeze, I hear the barn cats meowing and I'm like, okay, that's better than snoring. Absolutely. And then I come in and I grab my phone and I open up Facebook and I start looking at Katie's page and Katie's friend, um, Becca Miller's page  and your page. 39:13 And Nicole's page because it's all happy. Well, most of it's happy.  98 %  of what I'm looking at is happy and uplifting. And it's a really nice way to wake up.  So  you guys save my sanity every morning. If that makes you feel even better.  does. Like I, I, I feel just like my heart is full right now. Cause that's so amazing to hear. And  you know, it, it's. 39:41 Sometimes I get caught up in responding to the negative people  and that's just a good reminder to  try and ignore them  and just post the happy stuff.  You can respond all you want because it gets you more clicks and viewers. That is true. But don't take it to heart because it's not... Other people's behavior has far more to do with them than it does to do with you. Absolutely.  Absolutely. 40:10 Don't let it get you down. And there are times where you may have done something or said something and you may have to look at it and go, okay,  was that  actually out of line? Right. Because we all need to, we all need to like check ourselves here and there. Of course, of course. But for the most part,  everybody is going through things and you can't know what they are.  Exactly. Exactly. So true.  And I don't want to be all Pollyanna about it, but 40:39 you can't let it, you cannot let it screw up your psyche because it's probably, it probably has nothing to do with you. Oh, absolutely. I, this is one situation where I think the ADHD plays  a very solid role in how I'm able to  kind of move past things because I genuinely just forget. uh I just,  you know, it'll bother me for 41:01 five minutes and then something else will happen and then it's gone. It just leaves the brain because my brain can't handle any more  information to dwell on.  So I focus on the good  and the bad things kind of float in  and you know, I'll feel it and then it floats away again.  Yes, and I'm going to say something that will probably make you giggle beyond belief. My dad used to say, and he used the actual swear word, but I'm not going to. 41:30 He would say, Mary Evelyn, opinions are like buttholes. Everyone has one. That is the truth.  100%.  Absolutely. And if you can imagine him saying the actual word that butthole is replacing  to a 12 year old who was very upset, who had been bullied at school, which was me. was sobbing. And then he said that to me and I was just on the floor laughing with tears streaming down my face. 42:00 Oh, that's amazing. mean, sometimes you gotta say it straight because it's the truth. It really is. Yeah, and I just looked at him, threw my tears,  guffawing, took a big deep breath and said, you said a bad word and he just fell on the floor too laughing. uh Oh, that's funny. So, you know, every, they tell, the thing they tell people, they tell kids mostly, is don't be judgmental. The thing is, 42:28 All human beings are judging beings because we have to look at a situation and make a decision every moment of our day. Absolutely. It's not about not being judgmental. It's about not imposing your viewpoint on other people.  Absolutely.  Absolutely. That  is a true life lesson. I  mean, it goes back to if you don't have anything nice to say, just don't say anything at all. You know, like learning 42:58 when to keep an inside thought  inside. Yeah, the trick I used to pull is some, if one of my friends would say, what do you think of my dress? And if I didn't like it, I would say, it's a dress. Yep.  And my, my close friends were like, okay, I'm going to go change. Right, right. Cause they knew they knew that what that meant.  Yes. But I couldn't, I couldn't bring myself to 43:27 give my honest opinion because I was like, you like it. Absolutely. And oftentimes  I,  I'll even ask, like if my daughter asked my opinion on something,  um, you know, like, cause she's very crafty  and  she'll say, do you like it? And I'll say, do you want  like, you know, if there's something that  could be better about it or whatever, I'll always say, do you. oh 43:54 Do you want my mom answer or would you  like some input on how to make it better?  And sometimes she'll be like, I want the mom answer. I just want to know, do you like it? And I'm like, yeah, I love it.  You  couldn't make something that I didn't like. um But on the other times when she says, yeah, you know what, I'll take the  critique  and I'll say, this is what I really, really love about it. And here's what I think you could do to improve it. 44:23 You know, I try and always word everything whenever you're delivering maybe something that isn't what they want to hear. Always, there's always good in everything  and delivering that alongside a way to make it better and being constructive about it.  Um, but I always give her the option. Do you want, do you want my, your, my mom answer, which is  absolutely, I love it every single time. Or do you want the critique and  it's her choice. 44:53 Yep. And I'm going to wrap this psychology big net we're on with this. I always say to people when they start talking to me and they're like, what do you think? I say, are you venting or do you really want my opinion? Right. Absolutely. Because the last thing I want is to give someone a place to just vent their feelings and then step in and be like, oh, you could fix it like this. And they're like, I didn't need you to fix it. absolutely. Okay. So. 45:22 Yeah, definitely respond to the people who say things  that are inflammatory because you benefit from that, but please don't take it to heart because you're awesome. Thank you. Canada does not celebrate Thanksgiving Day. Is it Boxing Day or is it Boxing Day after Christmas? can't remember.  Boxing Day is after Christmas, but  we do have Thanksgiving. It's just on a different day than the States. Like the US celebrates tomorrow, I believe, which is at the end of November. 45:52 um And then Canada is usually the second weekend in October.  Oh, okay. And is it a harvest festival like  we have here? I mean,  kind of sort of.  I guess our harvest is probably just a lot sooner than yours because we go from Thanksgiving right into winter, whereas you guys are probably just starting to get the super cold weather now. um 46:18 But yeah, I would say it's kind of like a harvest festival and wrapping up  the season of growing and that sort of thing. It's just, it happens sooner here.  Yeah. And it's not, it's not based off of the same lore that ours is based off of, because ours is based off of the pilgrims or the settlers  and the Native Americans coming together to break bread and eat food. Right. And I'm guessing yours is not based off of that. 46:47 I do not think so. No,  I've heard of the the pilgrim stuff,  but I've never really heard it talked about  in a Canadian kind of fashion. So I mean, somebody could correct me if  I'm wrong,  but I don't think it has the same lore. It's just mostly about giving thanks.  Well, at our house, we  just get together to basically enjoy family and eat way too much food and be thankful for the year's gifts. 47:17 That is exactly what we do. just, we  like put our belts down a hole  and,  and  fill up.  Yeah. Well, we are having the most unconventional Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow that anyone possibly could think of. My husband is going to make homemade pizza pockets because our kid is going to be at his girlfriend's house. Oh, that actually sounds delicious. We are on a pizza pocket kick right now. whole house is, we're just kind of like. 47:47 We've been eating a lot of pizza pockets  and they're really expensive. So I would love to try and make one homemade. Well, he found, okay,  we are so far afield, but I don't care. My son who lives in Nebraska was introduced to something called a Runza,  R-U-N-Z-A. And it's like a meat sandwich pocket thing. And  I guess it started in Nebraska and he had been talking to his dad about it.  And my husband was like, 48:16 We should try making those. So we made some beef, sausage,  onion, cabbages part of it too.  Pockets last weekend and they were pretty good. And I was like, you know,  I said, I feel like these would make excellent pizza pockets if we put pepperoni and cheese and onion. uh A little bit of pizza sauce in there. And he was like,  that sounds really good. So then I find out that my son is, my youngest son is going to his girlfriends for Thanksgiving and I was going to do a whole turkey dinner. 48:46 Right. I'm not doing a whole turkey dinner for my husband and I that's craziness. Yeah, absolutely. And I said, you know, we have all the ingredients on hand to make homemade pizza pocket runs us whatever we want to call them.  I said, yeah, I just make those. And he was like, yeah. And the reason he makes them is he's the one that makes  the dough and it's a bread dough and I suck at making yeast bread. So he's dinner. He makes the dough.  That's amazing. So we're to do that. So as I'm talking to him about this, I said, by the way, I said, 49:16 Do you feel like making  Christmas sugar cookies for Thanksgiving too? Because he makes the most fabulous sugar cookies. They are soft.  Oh, I love those. Yes.  And he was like, we didn't make any last year at all, did we? I said, no.  He said, will you make the buttercream frosting and slather on them? And I was like, yes.  He said, OK. Christmas cookies in the morning and pizza pockets for dinner. I was like, OK. 49:43 The scene sounds like the worst ever food for us, but yes. I love it. I love it. But that's what it's all about, right? you know, that'll probably be like a solid memory, you know, in the future, right? Because it was different and it was a little bit off, like off the cuff, a little bit crazy, but it'll it'll stick with you.  Yeah. And Thanksgiving and Christmas are the only times that we really cook together.  I usually I usually make dinner before he gets home, so it's ready when he gets home. Right. 50:11 So we love to cook together, we just don't have a lot of time to do it.  Fair enough, yeah, absolutely. When you get older, you gotta find new things to do together.  I fully understand that, I fully understand that because  we have a very big age gap in my relationship and my husband is very much in his  sit at home and watch TV and typically not even good TV, like politics. 50:40 I  don't want to do that at all. trying to find  some common ground that we can  do  fun activities together,  it's a challenge. It's definitely a hard thing, but it's so important.  Well, if you want to stay together until you die, yes, it is. It's very, very important. Absolutely. Okay. So Becca, where can people find you? 51:09 Oh, on Facebook, um my handle  is  at Becca Bia Moon um or just search Becca Hammond.  And  that should bring me up. That's for Facebook and Instagram. And then I'm at Moonridge Acres on TikTok and YouTube. And I really need to make all of those the same, but I just  haven't done that. 51:34 When you're not completely busy with the horses, you will get it done. have faith in you. Absolutely. Okay. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com and I am lowering the price on my Patreon account because I priced it too high. So I'm going to be doing that today. And if anyone wants to check out my Patreon account, is patreon.com slash a tiny homestead. 52:02 Becca, it was a joy to talk with you again. I adore you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I love our conversations. This has been fantastic. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Chelsie at Rosewyn Urban Regenerative Farm. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Cottage Foodie Con. The code HOME 15 will get you 15% off any ticket and is valid for the month of November   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15, you'll get 15% off your registration costs. 00:29 And that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com.  A tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Chelsie at Rosewyn Urban Regenerative Farm in  Montana, right? Yes, Billings, Montana. Yeah. I've talked to a couple of people in Alberta in the last few days and I keep thinking Alberta. I'm like, no, she's not in Canada. She's in the States.  Okay. How are you ma'am? 01:00 I am doing wonderful this morning and yourself? I'm good. How's the weather where you are? It's it's a little chilly, but not  as bad as it could be. Okay.  It is definitely chilly here. We got sleet for the first time this season this morning  and it has all melted away already and the sun is peeking out. So it's, uh,  it's looking like it's going to be a pretty day, but it sure didn't look that way at three o'clock this morning when I got up, when I got up for no apparent reason.  It was. 01:28 pouring rain here at 3 a.m.  Oh no, we haven't had a lot of moisture. I've  been pretty lucky on that. I do have my wool out, but it's like mainly for mornings and evenings and then you just don't want to get caught  out before the temps go back down.  yeah, it's been a beautiful extended fall here. It sounds like it has been there too, so that's good. 01:55 Okay, so Chelsea was a guest on the show back in May and she was telling me all about her regenerative urban farm or urban regenerative farm. said it in the wrong order. So give me a quick update on who you are and what you do, Oh, well, I am someone that just took their health into their own hand and it led me here and now I like to grow lots of things and 02:24 have chickens and I just added rabbits. eh And the attempts  of creating a decentralized intentional community that's focused around edible landscaping and self-sufficiency  and personal growth. Okay, I have a question about decentralized.  Is that the same thing as hyper local community? 02:54 I have absolutely no idea. just said decentralized because we won't live together. Okay.  Cause with everything that's been going on in the States right now, I've talked to a couple of people on different aspects of the whole snap fiasco  and  what  we don't, we don't use snap, but I definitely was on wick when I had my first baby.  And, I think maybe way back. 03:22 My first husband and I might have had to use food stamps and it wasn't a card then it was actual like paper vouchers.  But, but SNAP is really, really important, but more important than SNAP, think is  number one,  not finding yourself in a position where if SNAP goes away,  you're, there's a bad word, you're in trouble.  And that learning to cook helps with that  planning ahead. 03:51 and trying to get things stored away in your pantry or your cabinet for an emergency is really important.  And  your local growers is really important because  farmers  in my experience really want to help. I can tell you right now, someone had pulled into my driveway  and said, do you have eggs? I'm on the SNAP program. I don't have any food. Can I just have some eggs? I would have given them eggs. Yeah. I mean, it's hard because for me, you know, 04:19 grew up, was a welfare kid, you know, like I didn't have a great childhood. And, know, even when I raised my children, I had to utilize that even though I still worked full time, you know, I went to college full time, uh, online and when I was working full time and raising two kids by myself, and I definitely used food stamps, but I still had to go sit outside of food banks, you know, on the weekends and in some way forage. 04:48 or  additional resources while raising two boys. So I get it. I get  using resources, but I also understand that being dependent on them makes you a slave.  Exactly. And you don't want to be a slave. And  let me just clarify, there is absolutely no shame  in  utilizing the resources that are available to you that taxpayer money pays for, especially if you're one of the taxpayers paying for it. 05:19 But I also, you know,  as, someone who has lived lots of lives, one of them is, you know, I  have been part of the Mormon church and watching how they take care of their own  and just everything that I've ever seen. I've lived in low income housing where there was 31 units and we didn't even have an apartment manager for a long time. And we took care of each other. We had a little community garden. You just have to be more intentional and connected. 05:49 You know, people are very disconnected with where their food comes from.  They're disconnected that they can forage food or grow food. And they're disconnected from each other too. Yeah. I mean, everything. We just need to be more empowered and think about what we can do instead of all the things we can't. Right. Exactly.  Okay. So you and I talked back in May  and what's  new? Is anything new? I know you had a... 06:16 uh, community gathering kind of event last night. Yeah, I went to, um, Morgan with Ruby Grazer had a homesteader meet up yesterday during the day.  Um,  I have my first intentional community meet up this Thursday coming up. Yeah.  Uh, I've been on a few more podcasts about various things  and 06:43 given a couple more interviews. I've added rabbits, meat rabbits to the farm recently. ah Yeah, I mean, but everything's kind of calming down right now for the season and focusing more on community and building that at this point since it gets cold here and there's not a lot of growing until I get my greenhouse up and going. Yes, and you had mentioned on the last episode, last episode we did. 07:11 that you were going to turn your swimming pool into a greenhouse and that has not happened yet?  We have utilized the last season of it and it's completely empty and so we'll begin the conversion  once it's kind of safe weather wise to do so. We don't want to be  caught in the middle of that and then have a whole bunch of water pool up on us because we're in winter. Yeah, no, that would be really bad. Let's not have that happen. um 07:39 Do you have any idea how long it will take to convert it? 07:44 Um, that's the thing. Like it, for me, honestly, depends on how fast the parts I have to rely on other people go. Okay. If it's me,  my neurodivergence just hyper fixates and gets it done. Like my front food forest or food meadow I did in a day  once I had a blank canvas. 08:12 Yeah. And it's so funny because many hands make light work, but many hands also make many distractions. Well, yeah. I just, you know, if there's like welding, I don't have that as something I'm proficient in at this point in time in my life. You know,  so there's, if I have to rely on someone else's schedule, there is a little different latency than I deal with than if I were doing it myself. Definitely. Yeah. I understand. um 08:42 When my husband and my son built our greenhouse, they spent,  oh, every weekend for, I think, five weekends building it. it's, think it's 25 by 15 or something like that.  I thought it was 40 by 20, but I was informed that it's smaller than that. And I was like, oh,  I was wrong.  But  they got it done over the course of a month. And had we had more people, I still think it would have taken a month because there would have been a lot of chatting and 09:09 probably would have been beer and pizza involved and it just probably would have taken the same amount of time. think the thing that's going to take me the longest is because the swimming pool, I'm on like a  shotgun property, so it's long and narrow  and the pool is at the back of my property and there's no alley. It's going to be  actually will bearing all the soil back there myself.  Oh,  you're gonna, you're gonna be even more fit than you already are by the time you're done with it. 09:40 I mean, that's part of the cool thing about like farming or homesteading is you don't need a gym membership no more.  So how was the homestead meeting with Morgan yesterday? I'm so curious because I saw that on Facebook and I just interviewed Morgan the other day. So how did that go?  It was good. It was small. There was  like her and I and our husbands and then one other person that showed up. 10:09 Everything kind of trickles in. So it was nice to just kind of talk about things. It'll grow. I bet you it will grow. I bet not the next meeting, but I bet a month from now you'll probably have like five extra people. Well, home studying is kind of a trend right now. So like every type of convention or fair I go to, it's either back to traditional skills or it's like plastic 3D printed stuff, know, like 10:39 There's no, it's either or. And so I think it will definitely catch on as people wake up to needing to have their own sustenance. Yes. Somebody else I talked to last week called it personal sovereignty. Yes. And I loved that because I love the word sovereignty. I have always been entertained by that word. 11:07 Mostly because people think of um you know, medieval England and the sovereign king and blah, blah. But  it's not that sovereignty is having your own choices and your own skills and being able to rely on yourself first.  I just, I love that word so much. Man, that's what makes me hecka thankful for  all my trauma because 11:32 You know, I've had to be that way since childhood. um But the problem with that also is that it requires that people use their agency. 11:44 And people prefer for someone else to be the villain or responsible. I don't. I don't love that. I am. uh I'm a minor control freak, so I really do like relying on myself because if I want to get it done, it's got to be me. Well, yes.  And there is the reason why you're also a homesteader.  What? There's a reason why? What? That you're also a homesteader.  Yes, exactly. 12:13 Exactly. So tell me about the rabbits. Rabbits are a new adventure for you? They very much are. We just added them last week. had said to my husband, because ultimately the goal for me is to close  everything on my property and show people that that can be done in the city. um So we have animals that do require meat, even if I don't eat them myself. Yeah. But we could use the textile, the fur. 12:42 Um,  so we did, we added a boy and three girls.  And last week,  and that is what I told my husband we should do for each other for Christmas. It was to add our meat.  Sweet. That's perfect. Yeah. So are the, any of the dough is pregnant or are you going to be breeding them? No, we're going to Jamaica next month. Um, this has been planned since last Christmas with his family. 13:09 So we're going to breed them right before we leave. That way there's no chances of anyone house-sitting the farm and having to deal with that. Yep. I think it's two months. Two months from breeding date to birth, I think. I think it's 31 days actually. Oh, is it? Yeah. That's why there's such a great livestock, especially for small properties, because it's quick. 13:37 Oh my God, you're right. I'm sorry. I was thinking cats, not rabbits. Um,  we've, had meat rabbits for a little while and you're right. It's like 30 days, 31 days. Yeah. Cats are two months. Cause we've had, we've had a barn cat that's had kittens three times and it took two months.  Yeah. At our other house, my husband liked to leave the basement door open and we had two stray litters in there that we ended up taking in and then giving out.  Yup. 14:06 We're actually getting three kittens this weekend from friends because we have two barn cats now that's it  and We have no female barn cats and  all of her kittens seem to be female But we need barn kittens because we need them to keep the mice down in the pole barn So if you see a photo of kittens on my Facebook page Monday, you'll know why  Okay, so the only thing that I would say about the bunnies because we've done it before 14:36 is you have a place for them to be warm because the cold is really hard on them and hot is really hard on them. So right now they're in the main house. have a bedroom in there that has like tile floor and that we've done up for them because they and the chickens will eventually live in the greenhouse.  Yeah. 14:59 Okay. greenhouse is going to be really, really cool because I'm not just like doing greenhouse. It's going to be just like an underground food forest that you can walk through and hang out in. And I want to do like a rocket stove type of situation to help heat and do some like radiant heating in the soil. 15:21 So there's a lot of different plans in there. Nice.  I can't wait. I can't wait to read about this when you post about it, because I'm assuming you'll post about it.  Oh, absolutely. There's going be hangouts. mean,  in the winter time, we just enclosed our covered area too, so we can hang out there. But like, if I'm going to be hosting a lot of community events here to have all these outdoor spaces when it's cold six months of the year, it's going to be fantastic. 15:50 And it's really great to have a hands-on experience too for the next generation to be in touch with their food. So to have like the chickens and the rabbits running around and then the kids just being able to hang out with them is going to be awesome.  Yes. And please, please, please do that. I just had a conversation with someone  not on the podcast the other day about the fact that the people. 16:16 The younger generations, it seems so weird to say that. I just turned 56 on November 4th and I can't say we anymore because I'm older than most people I talk to now. The younger generations are not teaching their kids these skills. They're not teaching them animal husbandry. They're not teaching them how to grow plants. They're not teaching them how to cook. And it can die out in a generation and that is not a good thing. 16:44 and coming from the concrete jungle, not having, I didn't even know that vegetables didn't come from a can until I was almost an adult. That's the kind of childhood I had. didn't, yeah. So I'm very, very determined that those skills don't go away. I've had to learn them, but I burned down those gates as soon as I go through them. Good, keep doing that. 17:13 because we need you, we need people like you.  And we need people like my mom who  very much wanted to teach me to cook when I was a teenager. And  I really didn't want to learn to cook. I wanted to go babysit and make money. I wanted to go hang with my friends.  I wanted to go to my job because I had a job too.  And uh I ended up learning almost by osmosis by watching my mom cook because 17:38 she would have loved for me to be right there in the kitchen with her working side by side. And I was like, nah, I got stuff to do. And that's not good. And I actually love to cook now. And I think it's partially from my mom. So yeah, if you're a mom listening and you have kids,  get them in the kitchen with you. Learn to cook with them if you don't really cook. Even if it seems like it's  inconvenience, because you're going to have to do more work. 18:05 Yeah, but make it a game, make it fun. Yeah. Yeah.  I totally agree.  I learned because I had to experiment  and, you know, I grew up mainly on, you know, everything that was leading to the anaphylaxis that I was  living in  because 18:28 know, poor people foods mainly have tomatoes and ground beef in them and whatever version, whether it's spaghetti or tacos or hamburger helper  or sloppy joes or whatever it is. And those are the things that I,  I actually need to avoid because the histamine intolerance that I have. So. 18:51 Definitely getting that connection to our food is so, important. It's because I get just seeing all these people be like, why can't you just go to the store and get it? It is just so sad. Well, you can always tell them the truth or you can just be a snot and say, because I don't want to. Yeah. Unfortunately, my brand of petty is always being the better person. Uh-huh. I understand. I do. 19:21 But you can only explain it so many times and then they ask you for like the 12th time and you're like,  because I don't want to. And I've done that before and people look at me like I'm crazy. But that's why for me, relationships that I have at this point have one pre-correquisite and that's that the other person has a growth mindset because I can't disturb my peace with people who refuse to grow. I'm growing too fast. 19:48 Yeah, that's why I don't have a whole lot of people around me ever because the ones that stay are the ones that are good. Yeah, I don't believe any good or bad. I just think there's lots of different perspectives. We're all on different journeys and some of us prefer comfort over growth. growth requires discomfort and we're sold comfort and convenience as the American dream. You know, like... 20:17 Yeah, and I meant good, like good for my peace of mind and not having to... Oh, got you. Okay, sorry. Not having to make myself crazy to make other people There's some autism literalism coming in right there.  I do it too, honey. I do all the time. And my husband has ADD, so trying to have him, you know, have a conversation with me  is really interesting sometimes because he's all over the place and I just need a straight line sentence. And I'm like, back up. 20:46 five sentences. I,  you lost me. And he's like, I don't remember five sentences ago. And I'm like, okay, start from here. What are you trying to tell me? And we get it figured out, but it's really, I would hate to record a hour long conversation between us and play it. Cause you would be like, what in the world were you guys trying to get at? Well, being that I have like body HD, I might actually get it. Cause the conversations that happen in my head oftentimes, I don't think most people would want to be privy to. 21:16 Yeah, it's so hard sometimes and  you know how it is with people you love you want to listen you want to understand and  there are days where I'm just like I don't I don't get it  I honestly do not understand what you're trying to tell me and he says okay hang on let me  let me get my thoughts together let me get them in order and then I will say it again I'm like okay and like ten minutes later he'll come back and be like 21:43 This was what I was trying to say and he will tell me in a straight line and I'm like, oh, I get it now. Thank you. So there's a lot of patience and love involved in our relationship. Well, that's good because I mean, that's the relationship is to have that yin yang where you balance each other out, you know?  Yeah, exactly. And we sure do. It may take a few bumps and stumbles, but we do. We eventually get to the same place.  And you both have grown at that point in time. 22:13 because now you have another view of or perspective because you had to kind of like muddle through it a little bit to see it all the way.  Yeah. Yeah. It's that never leaves. Yes. And the other thing that's funny is sometimes when, when this, this miscommunication happens,  new ideas pop in to getting his thoughts together and he'll tell me the thing. He'll tell me the thing you want to tell me. And he'll be like, 22:41 As I was thinking this through, I had this other thing pop in and I'm like, uh-huh.  And he tells me that and that's clear because he's gotten his thoughts in order. And co-regulation and verbally processing,  those things are beautiful love languages.  Uh-huh. And it's so funny because the first time he said it this way to me, probably 15 years ago, the whole, got  another thing popped in  and he told me. 23:10 what he wanted to say and then the new idea and it was all in a straight line, made sense, all words in the right order, blah, blah.  I put my hand over my mouth and I couldn't look at him and he was like, are you upset? And I was like, I put my finger up, like, just give me a second. And I took a big deep breath and I looked at him. I said, I was trying not to laugh because I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing in amusement  and appreciation of the person that you are. 23:37 And he said, go ahead and laugh. said, I get what you're doing. And I was like, okay, I just giggled, just giggled for five minutes straight. And he was laughing with me at the same time because it was very funny how that all went. And now I expect it, but either way getting way, way far afield again, because psychology makes me just, I love psychology and how people's thoughts and brains work.  I mean, really it's all connected. It is. Let's be honest. Everything's connected. 24:07 And  the other thing I wanted to say is that  one of the ways you can really get kids interested in all the things we want them to be interested in, food, growing your own food, animal husbandry, all of that, is remembering that we are nature. Humans are part of nature. And taking them out for hikes and stuff in the woods and showing them edible plants and  where the animal tracks  are and the deer trails are. 24:35 that will spark them into asking questions. Absolutely. I mean, I don't know how to go out in the woods personally. oh You know,  that's not anything that I was ever really taught. I know how to go camping and I know how to like throw a hammer,  but like hunting and  tracking and all of that, I've never had the opportunity or anyone to show me how to do any of those things. So  this is why I literally have to grow a forest around me. 25:03 so that I can know my plant allies from seed to fruit and through their death and rebirth cycles.  And  that's how I have to learn  is through experience and teaching myself and just relying on my brothers and sisters that aren't human. Well, if you ever come to Minnesota, darling, we will go on a nature walk. We will go on a nature hike and I will show you some things that you know. 25:31 That would be wonderful because I have lots and lots of books. But I mean, there's still a little bit of like,  what if, you know, when it's when it's a book  and so that's why I like I have to plant things that look like  so that I can know the differences.  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we used to take our kids when they were little, we used to take them hiking. We were really blessed to live in an area where there's hiking trails and. 26:00 The kids loved it and we came across a patch of wild asparagus. And  there is technically no such thing as wild asparagus. mean, I'm sure that there originally was, but now it's more like asparagus seeds have gotten dropped by birds in the ditches.  And we came across a patch and I was like, oh my God, asparagus. Cause I love it. I love asparagus. And my youngest was like, can be asparagus. 26:25 Why is asparagus growing in the woods? And I said, because some bird probably ate the seeds and then pooped them out  and they grew. He's like gross. And I said, yes, yes, it's a gross process, but it's very important because that's how things grow. And we had a whole talk about this and he's looking at the asparagus and he's like, well, it tastes like the asparagus from the store. And I said, no, it'll be better. And he said, can I break off a piece and try it? And I was like, of course you can. Cause I knew it had just rained. I knew that it was probably fine. 26:54 So he broke off a little piece and bit into it and chewed it and the look on his face was priceless. He's like it is sweet like candy and I said, of course it is because it's been grown in nature. ah He ate the rest of it. He said, can we come back in a week or so and pick some more? I was like, of course we can and we did and he ate it and most kids don't like asparagus. 27:18 So that's my favorite memory from a hike where I actually got to teach my kid about plants and about nature. 27:27 That is very, very cool. My very first step into any of this was like essential oils through someone that was still on doTERRA, you  know? ah To learn anything about holistic wellness at all. My children like to call them my witch's oils, because I literally like Lavender Balm any of their sleepovers. um But  now they will. They'll call me like, Mom, I'm dealing with this. 27:56 What would you do for this? Like,  it is cool. It is very cool. And we can show them some things specifically for me that I wasn't,  I did not have an example of growing up, you know? Yeah, I do know. And it's, I was really lucky, Chelsea. My parents are big nature nerds. mean, they hunt, they fish, they  grow, they grew a garden every year. They still do. And my mom's 80 and my dad's 83. 28:27 They had us involved in everything, whether we wanted to be or not.  least favorite. tried with mine. I really did to like,  I had the requirements of a language and an instrument at least in school. Yeah, my least favorite memory is my mom and dad had permission to go out and pick the blueberry field out behind the neighbor's house. 28:53 It would have been six acres of blueberries. Oh my goodness.  Yeah. And, um, number one, it wasn't my favorite thing to do because anyone who's picked blueberries knows that it is a, an utter pain in the butt because they're little tiny berries. And I'm not looking forward to picking my honey berries. I understand. Yeah. And the plants that they grow on, they're pokey. They're like a woody stem. So you're reaching into these plants to pick blueberries and you're scraping your hands on the stems. 29:22 And that wasn't even the worst of it. I didn't like picking blueberries to begin with. But my sister reached into a yellow jacket nest when we were picking blueberries. I think she was probably 10 or 11 and I'm a year and a half older than her. And I didn't know what happened. All I know is I had never heard my sister howl in pain. And she jumped up and was running away and the yellow jackets were 29:51 chasing her. They're flying after her and she kept getting stung. She must have gotten stung at least 60 times. And luckily she wasn't allergic, but she was definitely swollen up and she was very much in pain. And  I loved my sister and hearing that sound come out of her,  I still hear it in my nightmares sometimes. So again, my parents tried to have us with them. 30:17 doing whatever they were doing, but that one really sticks out to me because that was really hard. Not that there's always yellow jacket nests and blueberry fields, but sometimes there are and you need to pay attention.  So we had a wasp nest on the water slide this last season. So one of the last bigger events we had a kid actually got stung twice because we didn't see that it was  on there as they were going down the water slide. 30:44 Very quickly ran out into the yard and got some yarrow and made a poultice and put it on there and it just removed everything so Yeah,  isn't it amazing how nature has a solution for everything? It is and then the little boy was following me around asking me about the plants which was that was cool  See there's a there's a silver lining in everything. I swear. Yeah  Unreal I love it. That's amazing 31:14 You are, again, I told Morgan this the other day that I'm proud of her. And I'm going to tell you I'm proud of you and that I'm so impressed with what you're doing. Thank you very much. Thank you for connecting people together.  I'm trying everything I can to do that. And it's really super fun. So there's a payoff for me too.  All  right, Chelsea, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're there. Where can people find you? 31:41 Uh, right now I'm still on Facebook, but I have probably intentions of removing myself from Facebook and everything again once I get  this up and going. like, if people do want to get connected, they should do that. Otherwise it's going to just be like snail mail or telephone.  Okay. How is that going to work? I don't have any desires to be 32:10 famous or anything. just have desires to create and cultivate a peaceful place for people to come and be a part of  and have rest and recovery if they'd like.  I don't care about any way of this world and how it operates. I'm just creating my own. Okay. So basically right now people can find you on Facebook, but if they want to keep track of what's going on at your place, they need to get hold of you. 32:40 through your phone or they need to get an email. I haven't a rosewood urban regenerative farms at gmail.com is an email if people want to get in touch. Okay, cool. Because I'm like, you're doing really cool stuff, people are going to want to know and want to be involved, but they're not going to be able to find out about it. At some point, I'm going to need someone who wants to deal with the outside world. It's just, you know, 33:06 want to be surrounded by the problems. I had to crawl out of the problems as a child, you know,  and I finally have peace and safety and I just, I can cultivate that for others. I just don't want to deal with a lot of the other problems anymore.  I don't blame you at all. And you know what? You have to do what's right for you. So you do that.  You stay true to yourself because it's the best way to live. 33:33 All right, as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to atinyhomestead.com slash support. um Chelsea, thank you for coming back. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Have a great day.  

Today I'm talking with Amanda at Lala and Justin’s Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Cottage Foodie Con. The code HOME 15 will get you 15% off any ticket and is valid for the month of November   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15,  you'll get 15 % off your registration costs. 00:29 and that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com.  The tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Amanda at Lala and Justin's Homestead in Vermont.  Good morning,  Amanda, how are you? Good, how are you Mary?  I'm good, how's the weather in Vermont this morning? Chilly, we got our first freeze. 00:56 Um, well, our first day that the bowls in the barn, the ice bowls were all frozen. So that was a fun morning, topping out dishes, but it's to be expected. It's Vermont. So as my dad says, it's all part of it. Yep. Yep. It's, uh, it's very gray here in Minnesota this morning. It's chilly  and there's almost no breeze at all. It's very quiet outside, which is weird. We usually have some kind of wind blowing. 01:24 Okay, so  I want to know why it's called Lala and Justin's Homestead first. Well, Lala um was a nickname given to me by my stepdad.  And  when I got into rabbits,  he helped me a lot with like building nest boxes and building cage areas and different things that I needed help building. And he always called me Lala. So 01:52 When I started the rabbitry back up, um as an adult, I decided to honor him and call it Lola's Lovely Lops.  And Justin's my partner, so he gets to tag along.  Well, yeah, and he probably helps, which is really nice. um Is your stepfather still with us?  No, he passed away five,  he's been five years since he's been gone. Okay.  Well, what a great way to honor his memory. That's, that's fabulous. 02:20 Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you guys do. Um, sorry. Um, so I'm- Did I make you cry? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. 02:37 It's just... I just miss him. That's all. Yeah,  yeah, it's so hard. It's hard around the holidays.  Oh, for sure, yeah. And the way that I deal with people who have passed... The way I deal with it is I try to remember the really fun stuff that made me laugh and then it makes me laugh and it kind of counteracts the crying a little bit.  Yeah, he was hilarious. So there's a lot to laugh about. 03:05 Yeah, and you're carrying on his memory by doing something you love to do.  So that's a beautiful thing. And how much do you love raising rabbits? I mean, come on. I've been raising them since I was 10. I absolutely adore them. Yeah. one of my favorite animals in the whole entire world, other than my dogs. Okay. So are you okay? Yeah, I've got it back.  Okay, good. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. 03:35 So we are a family of four.  We have a point four or five acre property and we raise the rabbits  garden. We do a lot of foraging.  like, I'm very into mycology and mushrooms. um So we've been taking on teaching ourselves different types of edible mushrooms for the past,  I'd say 12 years or so we've been learning about mushrooms. 04:05 And I'd eventually like to get into herbs and learning about that. But I would like to find a mentor before I step into that because there's just so much to learn. But yeah, we're a small family and we raise the rabbit meat. I do a lot of bartering with people for rabbit. And I get most of my beef and chicken from other people that raise so that. 04:30 That's a good trade. It's a good barter system we have going in our community. And we started that back in 2020 with the bartering because of the shortages and stuff. So I just got deeper into the rabbits at that time.  And I have way more than I intended  now.  So rabbit math is not much different from chicken math. take it. Oh, I think it's a little worse. Okay. 04:56 But it's enjoyable, so it's okay. don't have anything bred right now. I have one that's due today. And, she was due yesterday and she hasn't had her litter yet. But other than that, I don't have anything bred because I haven't decided if I want to have babies in the cold, cold months yet. But I have a few that I was thinking of breeding this week so that I could have them born during my Christmas break from work. So. Yeah. And it's addictive. Those baby bunnies are so cute. 05:25 Oh, they're adorable. Yeah, I don't, I'm not, I am not an expert. We tried raising meat rabbits for about a year.  We had one litter after trying to breed rabbits for the whole year. got one litter out of the deal  and had to bring them, had to bring the mama and the babies in the house because they're born on the hottest day of and oh there was no way to keep them cool out in their hutch. And my husband was like, we should let nature take its course. And I was like, 05:54 No, because this is not nature.  She is not living the way she would live if she was in nature. If was in nature,  she would be burrowing into the ground to stay cool with her babies. I said, I am not letting those babies die. And so we literally put her in a clear bin with her nesting box with the babies. And I had little baby bunnies in my house for about three weeks. Oh my goodness.  No, it was so fun. 06:24 It was no, it wasn't bad. just we had pine shavings that we had in a bag and we would just empty the  bin out every morning  and put them for our shavings in and it was it was very educational but it was far more entertaining than anything else. Yeah. But they are they are the most adorable babies and  about the only time you can hold a rabbit really safely is when they're the size of your palm. 06:56 I know if I agree with that, but. Oh, I I got kicked really hard when I was about, oh, probably 15 from my pet rabbit. had a pet rabbit when I was 14, 15 and, uh, claw punctured the skin at the top of my breast. I still have the scar from that puncture. I have a scar in that area too from a rabbit I had as a child that bit me and. Yeah. 07:24 And I mean, if you hold the babies from when they're just  little and they become something that you hold every day, they trust you and they're fine. But I didn't get that rabbit until it was probably four months old. So it hadn't really been handled a lot. So it did not love to be held. And of course I wanted to hold the bunny.  I didn't hold that bunny as often after that happened. Yeah, they get kind of feisty if you don't really hold them too much, if you don't give them too much attention, but if you socialize on them and 07:52 play with them, they're usually pretty easy and chill. Yeah, exactly. They don't fight me too hard, but I think I just have a bunny way about me. I don't know, I  can handle almost any rabbit, even the wild ones.  You're a bunny whisperer. Yeah,  I've doing it a while. I I've had rabbits for 28 years, I've  had them for a long time. You have a lot of experience. Yep. 08:21 Okay, so since you've been doing this for a long time,  can you walk me through so that anybody who wants to get into rabbits could think really think about it more how you get started because  it seems like it's easy, but having done it, it's not as easy as one would think. Yeah, they don't really breed like rabbits when you want them to. They do not. oh Well, if I was to get started, I think I would research. 08:49 the breed that I want. There are so many breeds to choose from. And I would  look at the American Rabbit Breeder Association standard of perfection and find someone that knows a little bit about what they're talking about. Because  rabbits bred to the standard,  the meat breeds are bred to produce more meat. So if you get something that's closer to the standard of perfection, you're going to have more meat production. 09:17 and better meat production because they're going to be bred to the right standard. oh I would start by finding a breeder that knows what they're talking about,  that has a little bit of experience at least. I mean, there are new breeders that have done the research, so I can't say just experienced breeders, but for the most part, find someone that might want to mentor you. So if you have questions,  you can refer back to them and 09:47 I mean, as a breeder, if someone buys from me, when they message me, I answer their questions. That's part of it is they get mentorship out of purchasing my rabbits. um 10:00 But I would research that and then research  the type of environment that you want for your rabbits  based on your space.  So I don't have very much space because I'm a small property  and I do stacker cages, which work for me in my space.  But with that, you've got to clean more often because if you don't, you can get pneumonia buildup and end up with sick rabbits. So your space,  some people want like a full barn with 10:28 just hanging cages, which is nice because then you can shovel out the poop and you don't have to clean pans.  And you don't have to clean as often because  the droppings fall to the bottom and they're not ever going to be in their waste. you'd want to do, some people want to do colony style.  That doesn't work for my area. um I also don't like, I personally don't want my rabbits  on the ground picking up parasites and 10:58 being exposed to disease.  So for me, cages work best to keep them clean and healthy. Let's see. What else? have, I have a specific question. If someone was going to get into raising rabbits  and they were in it for the cuteness effect to begin with, because a lot of people love baby bunnies.  If you were going to get like,  I don't know, eight week old baby bunnies, is there a whole different 11:27 way of taking care of them until they're old enough to breed? um So my rabbits,  my rabbits are on hay and pellets. um The younger ones don't get treats, snacks and stuff because that can give them diarrhea.  So for the younger ones, I wouldn't expose them to like vegetated  stuff. I would wait until they're a little bit older to start introducing that to them. 11:53 Okay. Just so that their stomach doesn't get messed up because they have sensitive digestion.  But if they were into the  cuteness factor, they might want to consider what they actually want to breed for. Do they want to breed for pet? Do they want to breed for meat? There's dwarf rabbits that are primarily pet or show. And  is that the direction they want to go? But if they go that direction,  they might want to research. um 12:21 issues with dwarfs and know a little bit about like rabbit hips because some rabbits will get stuck if their if their hips are narrow when they when they go to birth. um So that's something I would look into um getting a properly  shaped rabbit obviously that's able to birth those kids.  and a narrow pelvic floor is no good for any female animal ever. No,  no. 12:49 And that's when you end up, can lose your female, lose your babies. Dwarfs are more prone to producing peanuts, which is a double genetic dwarf  and it's not viable.  So you might have to call those babies because sometimes they'll survive about 10 days or so,  but they don't grow.  why do they call those babies peanuts?  I've seen it before. Why is it peanuts? I don't know why they're peanuts, but they're super tiny. 13:19 Um, that could be part of the reasoning because the I've had, I've had letters where the mother had a peanut and a regular kit and the penis just don't grow. They stay like birth size.  They get fur and then they slowly like wither away and die. If you leave them in the nest,  um, they have pinched pointy ears that are like closer to their head versus a non-peanut that has a little bit bigger ear. So you can kind of figure them out when they're born. 13:48 They're usually like half the size of the rest of the litter. So it's like failure to thrive? Yeah. Yeah, they can't survive. They're not, they're not viable. Okay. I always wondered about that. Thank you. Cause I read about it when we were looking into getting meat rabbits and I was like, why do they call it a peanut? And I couldn't find any information about it. Well, if you're getting into meat rabbits, your meat rabbits shouldn't produce any peanuts. Um, I was just reading up on baby rabbits in general, and it mentioned peanuts. 14:18 And I  think probably the reason that people pick the word peanut for it is because they look like a peanut. They're so tiny. They're just little tiny things. Yup. And you know you're going to lose them. It's just pretty sad. This raising animals thing is like the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I kid you not. It's so  good and so bad at the same time. Yeah. There's days that I think about getting rid of all of them because it's just been hard. 14:48 Then I'm like, oh, look how cute they are.  I can't do that. I love them. Yeah. And honestly, meat from rabbits is really  nutritionally dense, I think. I think it's really good for you. It's the highest protein of any meat you can get  and the lowest amount of fat.  And it's absolutely delicious. It's very similar to chicken. Yes. And actually, I was thinking about this earlier, knowing I was going to talk to you. 15:18 I have an opinion question for you. you think that if you are trying to get someone to try rabbit that you should say, I made rabbit as a dish for dinner. Would you like to try it so that they know what they're eating? do you think that you should let them think it's chicken and then wait a few days and let them know that they ate rabbit? Wow. 15:44 The first time I went to Bible study at my new church, I brought buffalo body dip and I made it into, it looked like chicken, know, buffalo chicken dip. And I didn't tell anybody, I just let them enjoy it, you know? And then later someone asked me, oh, is that chicken or was that pork? That was really good. And I said, actually it's rabbit. And they're like, oh. 16:08 And were they like, ew? Or were they like surprised and considering they were like, more curious. So I mean, I've tried to bring,  I try to bring a rabbit dish every Bible study. It's once a month.  And I try to bring it with me every time I go so that they can try something different because I feel that, um, like a lot of people have prejudgment around rabbit and eating cute little animals, but aren't they all cute?  Like aren't the cows cute? Aren't the chickens cute?  Um. 16:36 So I think if  it's cooked up and made into something that's edible looking and smells good, people are more prone to try it. eh And when I have birthday parties for my kids, I'll make some kind of rabbit dish. So if someone's there that hasn't tried it, they get an opportunity. em I pulled rabbit for summer barbecues. People seem to love that. And I've had a lot of people that said they never try rabbit. Look at it. 17:02 and be like, actually, I'll try a little bit of that. That looks pretty good. Yeah, and part of the reason people don't have exposure to eating rabbit is because grocery stores don't really sell rabbit. No, only like the Asian markets like carry it. There's a couple of specialty food stores, the health food store around us used to carry it, but I don't think they've found another farmer to supply it to them. 17:28 Yeah, just yeah. So they don't I don't think they carry it anymore because the lady that was selling to them got out of it and I haven't bothered to see if they were interested in mine or I don't know. I don't think I make I  grow enough to  supply any stores, but I do grow enough to supply myself and my community with barter. OK, so the reason I asked you about that that question is. 17:56 When I was a young  lady, like not quite 18 and not 12, um I babysat for a guy who raised rabbits  and his kids ate rabbit all the time.  And I didn't realize that he thought that I would be grossed out at eating rabbit.  And so he was like, I fried up some chicken, it's in the fridge. You can have some if you would like it, but that's the kid's dinner. And I'm like, okay, cool. 18:25 And so I grabbed a chicken wing or chicken leg or something. remember what it was.  And I had a piece of chicken with the kid.  And he informed me like a week later that it was rabbit. And you couldn't tell the difference, could you? No, I had no idea. But I was really perplexed. I was like, why didn't you just tell me it was rabbit? Because some people have that mental block. I mean, my niece,  when she comes over, I make 18:55 chicken nuggets, but they're not really chicken nuggets. um And she's always said, Oh, Auntie makes the best chicken nuggets.  And she was over a few weeks ago, talking about how I'm cruel for killing little baby bunnies. And I'm like, you don't seem to mind my little baby bunnies when you're eating chicken nuggets.  Oh, that just clicked for her that she's been eating rabbit for four years. And what was her? What was her? uh 19:25 reaction to it clicking. mean, she's  10 and I got the big eyeballs.  but yeah, she's still going to eat it. think when I make it again and think it's chicken. I  don't think it'll ruin that.  Okay, good. Well, the answer that I got when, when I said, didn't you just tell me it was rabbit was that he had had people, he had told people that he raised rabbits. 19:50 And he would have people over for dinner and they're like, is it rabbit or is it chicken? And he would say it's rabbit and they would say, no, thank you. And he learned that asking for forgiveness was better than asking for permission to get them to try it. I said, how's that been going for you? And he said, well, he said, I've only had a couple of people get greener on the gills when I tell them they ate rabbit. And I said, is that why you wait a week? So they don't end up. um 20:20 up checking dinner. And he said, yeah. And I said, okay. I said, I understand your reasoning. said, I'm kind of offended that you tricked me.  He says, okay, I can accept that. He said, did you like it? And I was like, yeah, it tastes just like chicken. He's like, it does. He said, it might as well be chicken, but it's not. So that was why I asked you because people are like, oh my God, rabbit. And I'm like, it  literally tastes like chicken. It does. I mean, I've been labeling my crock pot lately when I go to places and 20:49 It's funny when people read it and I can  see the faces. And I went to a  baby shower this fall and I brought a, my friend wanted Buffalo bunny dip. So that's what I brought. And there were some kids there about my son's age, about 13, 14. And you could tell they were daring each other to try it.  And then one finally did. And like the look on his face was like, Oh, this is really good and impressed. And then the other little boys all tried it and. 21:20 they were all eating it and enjoying it. So I mean. 21:25 I  think if you label it, they have the opportunity to see what it is and then you don't get in trouble as much with them when they find out. Yeah, exactly. don't think it's fair to trick people into trying something. I  have a little bit of an issue with the trickery involved.  But I also think that people should try things because you never know what you're going to like until you try it. You don't know. 21:54 and kids are more picky usually, but I found that uh my son's friends when they come over, they're interested in trying it because they've never had it before. Most of them don't have a clue what it tastes like because that's not something on their menu.  And I've had quite a few of them that are like, ooh,  I'm coming for dinner tonight. Can you cook rabbit? And I'm like, OK, I'll go outside and pop one off.  You know, because it takes me about two hours to make it if I'm roasting it in the oven. 22:24 And  it's a lot quicker to take a fresh one than it is to take one out of the freezer for the most part.  Yeah, absolutely.  Rabbit takes forever to thaw out. Yeah, about a day. It's a chicken. That's  OK, so I have a question about that. I thought that you were supposed to let the rabbit carcass sit in the fridge in water overnight. That's not you don't have to do that? 22:48 And  when you put animals in water,  takes the blood and stuff out of the meat and it makes it like soft texture. oh I never soak my rabbits.  Some people brine them, I don't.  I usually will process and if you eat it before it hits rigor, then you're good. um But if it starts to hit rigor mortis, then you want to wait until it passes rigor mortis or you'll end up with tough meat. 23:17 And how long  is it from death to rigor setting in? I don't know. I don't know.  When I'm making them fresh, I go out and I kill one  and  process it right off and get it in the oven. So I don't usually  have to deal with that. em But if they've hit rigor, it's usually like you want to let it sit in the fridge for a couple of days.  If I'm processing and I don't have time to get them packaged up, 23:44 right off, I'll put them on like a baking sheet pan in little bags and  let them sit there for a day or two until I get to um them and then package them up when they're flexible again.  Okay. And if you're not going to cook them after that timeframe, then  you put them in the freezer? Yep.  Okay.  I usually take and I marinate  a large portion of my rabbits. So I'll 24:10 I'll bring them in and I'll put them in a marinade and let them sit in the fridge for two days anyway  to soak up that marinade. And then I'll freeze them. oh Awesome. And then since you know what you're talking about and I didn't know what I was doing, um do you, is it better to roast a whole rabbit or is it better to  piece them out and  cook them like fried chicken or is it different in general? Oh, there's so many ways. 24:39 There's so many ways to cook rabbit and it took me, I mean it took me about three years since, it took me about three years of cooking it to learn how to cook it properly. And I was always like, okay, this is tough, this is gross, like I don't know about this. But the thing with rabbit is if you cook it low and slow, so like 300, 350 for like two hours, if you do that, something like that in the oven and you want. 25:06 to add some kind of a moisture method. So like butter, oil,  water,  it'll help make it more tender in a closed vessel. You don't want it drying all out because if it dries out, it's not gonna be nice and tender.  No, it's terrible rabbit jerky and you won't be able to chew it. Yeah.  Yeah, I love to cook. So I'm glad you're talking to me about this because... 25:32 Eventually we will probably try meat rabbits again, not anytime soon, but we have flirted with the idea of trying again. Yep. Because I actually do like eating rabbit, but I don't know anybody who has any to buy. So yeah. mean,  yeah. I'm sure there's someone in your area. I've got a list of readers on my page that's pinned to the top. If you want to find someone close to you. Go look. Yeah. 25:58 And I really loved having the rabbits. I just didn't love feeding them for no return. Yeah, that's upsetting. So when I don't get return, I usually end up culling the rabbits that don't give me return. Yeah, that's what we ended up doing because we only had three  and they were not doing the job they were hired to do. No, sometimes a lot of rabbits get fat if they're not bred continually um and will not. 26:26 That sounds terrible, but not continually. um... When they're supposed to? I breed my does like two... two to three times a year. And if they go a whole year without breeding, they're gonna get a lot of internal fat and they're not gonna get pregnant for you. Or it's gonna be a lot harder to get them pregnant. Yeah, we had the most beautiful... I don't even know how to explain her coloring. She was... 26:54 She was like the prettiest, softest brown with gold tips and black mixed in and a little bit of white. All those colors together, the  predominant was like a deer color brown. Oh, so she's probably castor colored or chestnut colored, which is a wild rabbit color. Yes. She looked like a wild rabbit, but she was not a wild rabbit because you're not allowed to keep wild rabbits in Minnesota as any, in any way, shape or form that is highly frowned upon. 27:24 Same here.  But she was beautiful and I so wanted her to have babies and she just never took. And I was so frustrated after six months I was like, what is wrong with you? Why are you not getting pregnant? My husband's like, she cannot understand English. I'm like, I do not care.  I still want to tell her.  Why? Why are you not giving me babies? 27:48 And so after a year, we were just done with all of them because  the one that did give us babies actually died. have no idea why. um I don't know. Three, four months after she had that first litter. Yeah. My husband went out to the Hutch and she was just killed over dead. And he came in and he said, you are going to be upset. And I said, OK, well, I've been upset here before. What? And he said. 28:15 the white rabbit died and I said, well, it's a good thing no one's having babies anywhere in this house or around us. I said, because that would be a bad thing. It's the old joke is the rabbit died if you're pregnant.  he said, you're not as upset as I thought you'd be. 28:31 I said, well, I said the rabbits are not exactly doing what they're supposed to be doing. So it's one we don't have to call.  Yeah. And he said, I am so proud of you. said, thank you.  I said, when are we going to take care of the other two? He's like, oh, we'll give it one more breeding attempt. And if it doesn't work, they're done. They're food.  Yeah. I usually give three strikes and then they're out.  It was what I try for. And if I really  want them, 28:59 I threaten them one more time and give them that fourth try  and hope that it works. I mean,  you don't want to waste too much time on them. They should be breeding. And if they're not, then  it's time to find something else  that does want to breed because there's a lot of rabbits that do know how to breed.  Yes. And feeding rabbits is not cheap.  Nope.  I mean, my feed bill is about $400 a month, but I have a lot of rabbits. 29:29 Yeah. And I mean, they are lovely little creatures and I really do like them, but I don't want to spend the money to feed them if they are not doing the job that we've got them to do. Well, they do great fertilizer. They make great fertilizer. So I mean, that's a job that they can still do  if you still want to hold on to them for  fun.  Yes. And rabbit manure is um a cold fertilizer. You don't have to let it uh cure, right? 29:57 Right, you can add it right to the garden. Yeah, yep, and they are very good at producing poop. They poop a lot. Oh yeah, oh yeah. I pull four wheel barrel loads out every weekend.  And uh as I recall, it's not their manure that's stinky, it's their urine. So yeah, yeah, their poops don't really stink unless it gets like built up in a corner. 30:24 And the only reason it would stink is because it's getting built up and there's pee on it. So yeah, exactly. It's true. And to end this out, because I try to keep these to half an hour, I feel like we could talk for four hours about this. could talk for five hours about rabbits. Yeah. Yeah. But I, no one's going to listen to that for five hours, Amanda.  I know. uh Um, so I learned a thing when we had the baby bunnies,  they will eat the mom's poop, but it's  different. Can you explain about that? 30:55 Um, so they have hard poops and they have soft poops and their soft poops.  Um, so the mama's soft poops  have all the probiotics and everything the babies need to build up their gut system. So they'll eat the softer poops. The moms that will go in the nest box and drop off some of those poops for them.  And they'll, that'll be some of their first foods to build up their stomach.  Yeah.  There's a note for that. 31:24 poop though.  Centotropes. Thank you. it's the right, I don't know if I'm saying it correctly, I say things a lot of times. That's okay.  It's a very specific thing that the babies actually need to do. Yes. probiotics is a good thing to give them during that time too so that they can help build more of an immune system. Yep. um 31:50 The other thing that I learned when we had the baby bunnies is that they nurse upside down.  Yep. So when people are like, Oh, don't hold a bunny on its back. I'm like, what are you talking about? They eat on their backs when they're babies. Like I think they can go upside down. They'll be fine on their back.  Funniest oh thing I saw when the bunny, when the baby bunnies were probably  two, three weeks old,  I looked in the, in the 32:20 in the box and I had taken the nesting box out. They were probably three weeks old, I think. And they were just all over the place. There was no point in having the nesting box in there anymore. They were just in there with mom. And they were nursing and you could see their little feet kicking, their back feet up from under her eye. Oh my God. So funny. so cute. So. So cute. I've had, I got some heat because I shared a litter. I keep my doughs with the mom until 32:50 I'm ready to harvest or breed back the mom. So sometimes my does will be with the mom 12, 16 weeks. And it's very funny when you go in to go take care of your rabbits and you hear these loud gulping noises and you've got some 12 to 14 week kids nursing off of their mom. huh. Yeah. the feet are flailing and they're almost as big as her. 33:19 Yeah, I would feel so bad for that mom because that just makes me think of the fact that I nursed all three of my babies. And if they had come to me at like, I don't know, eight to nurse, I'd been like, no, we are way done. No, way done with that.  I nursed both of mine too. So I mean,  I'm like, well, if she wants to do it, that's up to her.  Absolutely. Our  barn cat,  she's gone now. She disappeared. 33:48 I'm so sad about this.  But uh last year at this time, she had her third litter of kittens. And uh when the kittens got to be about  six, seven weeks old, they were still wanting to be up close to her because it was kind of chilly outside.  And of course, they're up close to her, so they want to nurse. And she was trying to wean them. And they would get up underneath of her, latch on, and you could tell they were nursing. 34:17 She'd give it maybe a minute,  maybe, and then she would kick them off of her.  And she'd walk away like,  uh, no. And they would just follow her around waiting for her to lay down to take a nap. And then they would just swarm her to nurse. And I'm  like, oh my God, you guys.  So yeah, babies are always going to want that comfort, whether they actually need it or not. And it's up to the mom to be like, yeah, we're done. m 34:46 All right, Amanda, this was amazing and I hadn't really had uh a,  to quote AI,  deep dive on rabbits before on the podcast. So this was great. Thank you. You're welcome. I hope it's informational for some.  Oh, I think it will be.  Everything on this podcast is meant to teach people how to get information and how to consider the next step. And so every time I talk to people like you, I'm just like, Oh, you're brilliant. Thank you for that. uh 35:15 Where can people find you, Amanda? Well, I  have a Facebook page, Lalo and Justin's Homestead. I also have a rabbitry group, Lalo's Lovely Lops, I  post my babies when I do have them available. But I like to evaluate before I post anything, usually. And then I have an ad on American Rabbit Breeders Association if they want to see the breeds that I raise and  contact me through phone or email. 35:46 Other than that, I don't really have anything else for contacts. Okay. Well, if anybody listening wants to learn about rabbits, they should talk to Amanda. And I'm assuming if people have questions, they can message you on Facebook or they can email you. Yeah, they can comment on my page on something I post or keep those interactions coming so I can keep growing that page. Yeah. Yeah. 36:12 It's amazing what it takes to get Facebook to notice you.  as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And if you want to support the podcast, you can find  the support page at atinyhomestead.com slash support.  Amanda, again, thank you. I hope you feel better and I hope you have a great day. Thank you for having me, Mary.  Absolutely.  Bye.  

Today I'm talking with Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Cottage Foodie Con. The code HOME 15 will get you 15% off any ticket and is valid for the month of November   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 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. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15,  you'll get 15 % off your registration costs. 00:29 And that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com.  The tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Leah at Clear Creek Ranch in Nebraska. Good morning, Leah. How are you? Good morning, Mary. Always good to visit with you. Yes. And as I told you before we started, I love you. You are wonderful. uh 00:58 What's the weather like in Nebraska this morning? Oh, goodness. So if you didn't know, my first major in college was actually meteorology. I was planning to be a weather girl. And so I love to study the weather. It is foggy and dreary. I'm supposed to be 60 today, but if you follow the old wives' tales, I mean, I keep seeing these early foggy mornings, TNS up for precipitation in 90 days. I don't know. Winter has not arrived yet, but 01:27 It'll be interesting to see what ends up happening. We've had such a beautiful fall.  We have here in Minnesota too. And I thought we were going to be looking at an early cold snap, but it's been gorgeous. And we had our first, um, Sneet. We call it Sneet here, snow and sleet mixed together.  We had that three or four days ago  and it did it early in the morning and then it was gone by noon. Nice. 01:54 It's been, it's been foggy here every morning for the last four mornings. So I don't know. This, this climate change thing is freaky. I don't really love it, but it's okay. We'll see how it goes. And honestly, my husband drives all over creation for his job. So the less ice and snow on the road, guess is better than more ice and snow on the road. story. Yep. Yeah. Let's check like in February and see how things are looking. 02:24 Yeah. Well, I'm sure we're going to get snow. I just don't think we're going to get a lot. The last two winters here where we live, we haven't even seen a foot of snow total for the winter. Yep. Same. I always uh judge the snow by in my diary how many times we had to scoot bunks for the feeder calves in the mornings. And the feeder calves are with us until, well,  somewhere around the week after Valentine's Day when we usually sell them.  so I always know what kind of winter it's. 02:53 It's been, we didn't have to shovel at all last winter at all. Okay. All right. So Leah's been a guest on this show three times already because she's brilliant and I love talking with her  and she is a rancher, a fifth generation rancher, right?  Yes, ma'am. And sixth generation waiting in the wings.  Oh, there's a baby come in. uh No, the girls fight our daughters. Yep.  Yep. Yep. The ranch will be left. 03:23 to  these wonderful girls  when the time is right  and they can do with it as they choose.  But I love that fact. Good. And hopefully they'll marry really good, strong, smart men who can help them run the ranch. Yes, ma'am. That is the prayer when I go to bed every night is marrying the right man, not because of what I want him to do, but how I want him to be no matter  what occupation he's in. 03:53 Yes, absolutely.  need, okay, I'm gonna step on the soap box for a minute because I don't usually, but I'm going to right now.  We need our children who are adults to hook up with the right person so that they can have a really  long and lasting love and that they work together as partners because I've  been married three times.  This current marriage is my third marriage and we just celebrated our 20 something. 04:22 I can't remember right now.  I married in 2002. And  it's longest marriage out of any of the three that I've had. And my husband and I are very different people.  I mean,  very different. His priorities and my priorities on things are very far apart sometimes, but our core values are the same.  And so if you can find someone with the same core values, you can work through almost anything. Amen, sister. Yeah. 04:51 So um when we last talked in September, so this is a really quick turnaround for you to come back. I'm very happy about that.  We talked about beef prices.  And one of the things that you told me is that you guys were going to have to decide how many of the  baby, ah well, not baby, but younger bovines you were going to keep back to build your inventory back up. 05:17 So how is that going? Have you decided? Have you already made the decision what's up with that?  We were blessed with wonderful weather this fall and we weaned right on schedule and the weather was cooperative for that. Weaning is a stressful time for the calves mainly because they do lose that last bit of immunity benefit they're getting from their mother's milk even as most of them have tapered down.  And we did deal with some wild temperature swings and when that happens right in  that stressful period, 05:47 they can have some respiratory concerns.  And we did see that, but thankfully our people,  all of us, vigilant on top of that. And we got through the weaning stress just fine.  And then we moved right into harvest and then we moved back to cattle work. And so the last two months since I talked with you really have been a blur.  That's the way it is each year.  Oh, to the news  on beef,  you know. 06:15 We could talk just for days and days about  everything over the last 60 days regarding  beef in the United States.  insanity. uh Yeah. And  so, you know, my father is a very wise man, still very involved in the operation. And he reminds me constantly something we talked about before we went on the air today about only managing what's in your sphere of influence and sphere of control. And that's a good touch point. And it's important. 06:45 to do often, more than once a day sometimes,  as these sensational headlines and comments being made and swings on paper at least in the markets  and global challenges continue that the wisest voices have said, focus on what you control, which is ranchers, please keep raising high quality beef. 07:10 So here we are now in mid-November and all of our feeder calves are  growing away  and we have not made decisions yet on how many females we will retain next year. Now we always raise our own, our own replacement heifers, but there may be an opportunity to hang onto a few more rather than set them into the feeder cattle market. Preg checking was last week for us. That went exceptionally well and we're very grateful  because every cow 07:38 will hit a place in her life where it's time for her to exit the herd for whatever reason. Maybe she hasn't bred two years in a row. She's  got cancer. She needs to go.  Or maybe her last calf didn't wean off very well. Maybe she didn't have enough milk. So we're always anxious that we have a good quality crop of replacements, always  ready to step in  to that herd. Now we have finite resources as far as what we own for grass and the rent that we 08:08 do of grass, so we have to manage our grazing plans well, working with Mother Nature. But the  bigger question that many producers have right now who are justified in their concerns about what an operating note is going to look like, maybe they raise other commodities that are in the dumpster, like corn and markets are right now, are going to have to work really closely with their bankers, with their accountants, with their insurance people. 08:38 and with their families  and other decision makers and make  real hard decisions about what the plans are next year and try to do it without being caught up in speculation because that doesn't serve a purpose. So for us, means keeping on keeping on.  There may be an opportunity to keep back some additional females so we can do our part to try to help grow the herds. 09:07 size in America because it has continued to shrink. But that'll be a decision made in spring, probably. 09:16 It's really, really hard to explain what all this means to consumers or to those removed from agriculture, but  it's not unlike owning and managing your own business, especially if it's a business that's really can be really caught up in things affecting you that you don't have any say over.  That's the hardest part to translate  as again evidenced by comments and wild swings in the markets. um 09:46 things happen at least on paper and on the boards  that affect us,  sometimes minute by minute.  And I don't like it.  I can't do anything about it except for ask my elected people to be cognizant of what we've allowed to happen. And so much of it is well beyond my  limited understanding of economics um and trade. But. 10:15 Doing what's best for Americans, for consumers, for business owners, investors and all is very complicated. All I can say is there's a lot more that needs to be done  again as evidenced by what's happened. mean, it was terrible a few weeks ago and I  more than anything I think in this day and age of instant information, instant communications, it's every one of us needs to be much more cognizant. 10:44 of understanding the words have consequences. Good words and bad words, because you  just travel so much more quickly and you don't get an opportunity to provide further explanation to what you're saying. People have got to take responsibility for the words  and the impact that they have in all regards.  And that goes for us in agriculture, those of us working in it, those of us leading these industries. 11:13 And to those who are supposed to be looking out for us, who maybe have never had had a pair of boots in their life, your words really do have meaning and consequences. So choose really wisely.  absolutely. And  the whole thing about not having control. It also impacts little, little farms like mine, because  every time we see a report for the weather, 11:42 you know, for the week coming up in the summertime,  we're like, okay, well, we could lose the entire garden a week from now because they're predicting really bad storms, really high winds, hail, blah, blah, blah. And every time that happens, I take a deep breath and I'm not really a religious girl, but I, I phrase it as the universe, not God. And I say, universe, please don't take my garden right now.  And we've been lucky. It hasn't taken our garden, but at some point, 12:11 the weather will take our garden.  And so you just, I don't know, you gotta have faith in something, whether it's God  or yourself or whatever, that as long as you're breathing and capable, there's always potential. Yes. And your words do have consequences. Your actions have consequences  and sometimes things just happen. Yeah. 12:40 We want so badly to have  blame placed or responsibility assigned to  everything. And I mean everything.  And that's not good for us. It's not healthy. The thing I appreciate about America's  ranchers, I'm just, I'm going to, I'm going to say ranchers, but really mean throw, I'm throwing that blanket over people who raise a living thing, who are responsible for a living thing, whatever it might be. They understand. 13:10 they have to or they won't survive. Sometimes things just happen. So you try to plan for it. You try to make sure you have insurance, you know, for it. But sometimes things just happen and there aren't any answers and there aren't fixes. They're just not. And when those things come, for me personally, I have to rely on my faith and I have to rely on 13:36 Believing, choosing to believe that other human beings are good. They care about the wellbeing of others, even if others look different than them.  And that there is enough goodwill to get people through those things. um If we don't have that, and that's why I'm so passionate about community, if we don't have that, we all would fold because stuff just happens.  Yep, I have a couple things on that. Number one, 14:05 It's okay to have a damn good cry when stuff happens. Yes. And it's good for you. You know,  it's better than crawling into a bottle of alcohol or  I don't know, smoke in a joint. And  I'm not saying that marijuana is  bad. There's a lot of stuff in the news and among people right now that  marijuana is not any more harmful than alcohol.  I have never done a street drug in my life. Don't intend to.  am 14:34 way too much of a control freak to let go that far. sometimes feeling your feelings and just having a really good cry or a huge giggle fit is good for the soul. So do that first. And I was going somewhere with this and I think I lost my train of thought because that happens too. You can't judge people. You should not be judging people's response to things happening either. I am right. 15:03 really,  really hard on women on this one, because I've seen it a lot recently where women are judging one another's response and grief, whatever the grief is over, that that is a dangerous thing to do, because it doesn't look the same for everyone ever, and it never will.  No, no, it does not. And it changes for the same person. When we first moved here, five years ago, we got 15:31 a couple of cats from the Humane Society to be barn cats. And they were gorgeous. They were like six or eight months old and they were males. They were fixed. One was a silver tabby. One was an orange tabby. And within six months, the silver tabby got hit by a car.  And  it was the first  animal we'd lost here since we moved here. And I sobbed. Like I was really, really upset. 15:58 And my husband said, you're going to have to get uh a stiffer upper lip, honey, because things die on the farm. And I was like, I don't have to do anything. I have to cry right now. And he said, okay. He said, it's going to hurt every time. And I said, yes, this is the worst one. Let me feel it.  And he was like, I just hate it when you're upset. And I said, yeah, no, I know you love me. You want me to be happy. I understand. And so I, I felt my feelings that day. I slammed cabinet doors.  I. 16:27 did dishes and swept the floor and threw all my sadness and my disappointment into cleaning because that's what we women tend to do,  you know, a lot.  And then a year later, the orange one got hit by a car. We live on a really busy highway. And I saw him in the road and I knew he was dead. And I was like, well, I know where the cat is. And my husband said, where? I said, look, cause we'd see him out the window. And he said, oh no, are you going to cry all day? And I was like, nope. 16:57 I'm not, I'm gonna slam cabinets and clean my house." And he just laughed and he said, oh, he said, so you were right. The first one was really hard. It's gonna get easier. It's just never gonna be any fun. And I said, yeah. So even your grief process changes from  one day to the next because  you never get over losing something to death. You just get used to it, which sounds terrible, but it's true.  It is true.  And 17:27 I'm so thankful for my tenure in the past as a government employee. I'm thankful for it for many reasons. When October 1st came, not long after you and I had talked. 17:40 and government shutdown happened. I was so thankful for my experience as a government employee because it helped bolster my empathy for those affected, including myself a second time, but also to be a voice and push back against those who could not seemingly find their compassion or empathy for those affected by the decisions made. And 18:09 I don't love looking for a fight.  I don't. And I don't like arguing. really prefer peace. The older I get, the more I crave it. And yet there's this piece of me that says, you know, thank God made you for a reason to be an advocate for people who feel like they don't have a voice.  So I found myself  doing exactly what you're talking about in helping people, trying to help people see. 18:36 When you don't know how someone's feeling or how something affects someone, you don't have the right to tell them how they should feel about it. 18:51 And I don't know if I made an impression or not, but the second time that someone just said something like, well, you'll get your pay when the government's back open, I'm sure you have an emergency fund. 19:06 doesn't help.  you know, I don't know enough about other cultures to know if this kind of self-righteous, all-knowing  behavior  exists in other cultures the way it does in this country. But it's not a good look for us,  and it's really,  really left me thoughtful, especially in recent months, about how we conduct ourselves and how we think we are, all knowing about how everyone should think or feel or act at any time. 19:33 Yeah, and I have to be really careful with my podcast about this stuff because  I think the way that we do things at our house is good.  I think it's the right way to do things. It may not be right for everybody else.  Yes, and we need diversity. That's what makes our country so great. Yeah, and I actually talked to two different people oh in the last two weeks for the podcast  about the whole SNAP. 20:03 benefits fiasco  because the first one was about how to find help and how to be a helper  in that situation and then the second one was how to not find yourself in a bind  if  if something like that happens again how can you prepare for that ahead of time  and I almost didn't do either one of them because I was like well who am I to say anything about this I have food in my freezers and in my pantry because 20:32 That's how we operate here.  We plan for a month ahead at least, because it's how we've always done it.  Who am I to tell anybody how to do anything? And then I was like, but that's how we survive our  winters, because if we can't get out for a week, because we're iced in or snowed in, we're prepared.  So I did. I talked to people and I shared what I knew.  And  our state, Leah, honest to God, 21:00 I grew up in Maine. I didn't not want to leave Maine ever. And my first husband decided to take a job in Minnesota back when we were together for, we were married for a couple of years at that point. And I was kicking and screaming to not go, but my parents raised me that if you marry somebody, you go with them. Should have divorced him then, but didn't do it. But, uh, this state that I have come to call home is so good. Um, 21:29 whole bunch of restaurants put out the information that if you are hungry,  we will feed you no questions asked during this whole snap thing. And I couldn't, they didn't have to do that. And I know it's a really good public relations thing,  but they didn't have to do that. And the food shelves just banded together and basically were ready to do whatever they could to help people. 21:59 I'm just so impressed with my state and I don't know if other states have been that good about it, but I just,  love the state that I ended up having to move to.  Those wonderful stories have been told in many spaces and a couple of things that, you  wish you didn't have to ask, ask for people to do good for one another when they can. Um, in my, how I was raised, that that's, that was a commandment given, um, 22:30 from biblical times m to do that, to be that for one another and the expectation and yet we need more of those positive stories. And again, when you get away from sensational headlines and TikTok videos that went viral of people saying and being stupid, underneath of that was the superior majority of people just doing good for one another and being the helper. And thank God for that.  Yes.  I don't want to be that extreme. 22:59 And  people have to set that crap down because it's also not good for your own inner peace  and your mind. You have to learn how to filter what you're taking in. It's too much, too much information any day. You've got people need to be more discerning and stop idly just scrolling.  Yes. And the thing, the thing about scrolling is that the algorithm feeds you more of what you actually want. 23:27 what you're telling it you want. And for me, I want education. And so my Facebook feed is full of things like  your, your page, Facebook page, and many, many others like you who are trying to educate, who are trying to help who are trying to share. And so  I love my Facebook feed because it actually lifts me up, which is great. uh 23:55 When I feel like the algorithms get messed up, I start whispering things. I got that idea from a hilarious  woman I follow in Colorado. She whispers to her phone often like, baby otters,  happy cows,  puppies listening.  Cute kittens, cute puppies. exactly. Keep garbage away.  Yeah, exactly. 24:23 I just,  I have the news on as background during the day because my dog is not happy unless the TV's on.  Her name is Maggie, by the way, and I didn't realize that your daughter's name was Maggie. I realized that the other day.  with the news on during the day, if something happens, I know about it immediately. And it used to just make my heart skip a beat and I'd be like, what happened now? 24:49 Now when there's the breaking news music that every news station has, I'm like, okay, what happened now? And I read the little ticker at the bottom. I'm like, oh, nothing I need to worry about. And volume goes back down. I just keep doing what I was doing because it is too much. It's constant feedback. Yeah. There's one outlier that has, and I can't decide. I wish my grandma were still alive to help me talk through it. 25:18 And it's the whole conversation about AI.  I have not been able to discern that I can leave it alone and set it down and just be aware of what's happening or do I need to become more vigilant and more outspoken and be doing something because I don't trust those who have the power in their hands. Which obviously like many other things in history has all been about who has the money and influence  and that's not a good look.  But. 25:46 It's been hard for me to set that one down, I believe.  Yes, and the thing that I keep hearing from people who are concerned about AI but not afraid of it  is just keep being human. If you're a human, be human because AI can't be human.  As long as AI doesn't  gain the ability to out-human us in its own way. 26:14 I hope that doesn't happen, but in the meantime,  keep being you.  Because there's only one you. You're the only person who can be  you and show yourself to the world as being human.  Yeah, online arguments going on this morning. I was pleased when I did see that one woman had evidently used chat GPT to help her put her argument together. uh 26:41 And she was called out on that and said, if you want to debate this, you do it. You don't be going to. 26:49 other forums like that. That's not right and it's not fair. This is a human to human conversation and had to do with safety for incoming college students on campus. I don't want chat GPT to decide. I want to go with my gut. The questions I ask and the experiences I have. I'm not going to use chat GPT to tell me if this campus is safe for my child. Yeah, and and the other thing is is that I don't want to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway. 27:17 No place that is public is safe anymore on any given day, which is a  terrible, horrible thing to say, but it's true. ah A year or so ago, it might've been three years ago. don't know. Time is wimbly-wombly here on the farm  because there's no real schedule. We just do the chores and do the things we do. And we're not really aware of calendars as it were.  a couple of years ago, 27:46 My husband worked for a different company and he traveled to places then too, because he's a tech and he was at a clinic in Buffalo, Minnesota,  not an hour before it was shot up. He was out of there before it happened. And it was in the town  where my second ex-husband and our son live.  And  I was  shook. I could, I could have lost. 28:14 my kid, I could have lost my husband or my  former husband if they had been in that area. And I was like, is no place safe anymore? And the answer was no, no place is safe anymore. So asking  if a college campus is safe for whatever reason is kind of a dumb question.  Yeah.  And as you said, 28:43 depends on all of us remaining and choosing to be human and how we look at others.  exactly. Exactly. And it's really hard sometimes. Sometimes you look at people and you just know that it's not going to go well. The conversation is just not going to go well.  And  I am one of those people who will try. You know, I always stick out my hand and say,  it's nice to meet you. Tell me about yourself. 29:12 I know within five minutes if I'm ever going to want to hang out with that person again, because it just depends on how they react to that  one first interaction. Absolutely. Yes.  So,  so,  I have a question for you. You were off work because of the shutdown, right? 29:33 I was considered  rolled back in my hours because  our little nonprofit  is funded by various federal grants and some were frozen and some were not frozen during shutdown.  So we did for a little people and then we partially furloughed other people like myself um for the duration of that because  being a small nonprofit without other sources of income, we didn't have the funding to keep doing our work without that program support. 30:03 Okay. So was that, it doesn't sound weird. Was it sort of a blessing in disguise because you guys had so much going on at the ranch? Yeah. The blessing and very freeing Mary because it helped fix my vision a little bit. So my vision, my personal vision on some things  and  being a part of what's called that sandwich generation, though the women and particularly  wedged in the middle as their parents age. 30:33 They themselves are aging and they're still raising children. The pinch  that I had been feeling, feeling  that it was time to make some changes and truly step out in faith because who wants to abandon a paycheck?  And so near the, before the shutdown ended, I did put my resignation in to the nonprofit, not because I want to abandon the work. It's really important work. 30:59 But because of my reality of being a woman in the sandwich,  that they need someone else um to pick up the reins, so to speak, right now,  because  I have to choose differently for the next period of months. And that means being a present and focused mother of a senior in high school, being a present and focused daughter and business partner to the operations on this ranch, and frankly, taking better care of myself. 31:30 I am so proud of you. 31:35 It's difficult, Mary, because I'm so blessed with the way I was raised as a woman to work in what would have been considered a traditional way, but also very non-traditional. I love to  be an irritator sometimes. People love to make assumptions about me because I'm a white woman living  on a ranch.  We have fun with it. But so thankful to be raised to think through things. 32:04 really think through things  and evaluate them and not get caught up in like expectations and traditions. But also realistically that I am a money worrier, you know, so that's always in the back of your mind. But, um making this decision and being able to be  vulnerable about it in front of my 17 year old who may find herself one day walking that tight rope that women walk with so many decisions to be made. 32:33 not to tell her that I made the right decision, but to empower her to be able to make decisions  for herself. and that's a really good distinction in the difference there. uh No, seriously, proud of you.  That's a hard choice and  really brave. So when I say I'm proud of you, I mean it with everything I have in me. Thank you, Mary. There are so many women who have to make 33:01 hard decisions every single day. again, this back to the sandwich reference that  many, many, many, many, many women find themselves in right now that  when  you feel the pinch from both sides  and you recognize that you're so pinched that you're not taking care of yourself, that that serves nobody. If you're not taking care of yourself, you can't take care of either side of the sandwich either. Mm hmm. Yeah, for sure. 33:30 If you're not strong and you're not balanced in yourself, you cannot be that for anyone else.  And  I get it. It's a  really difficult spot to be in. um I am really fortunate because my folks live in Maine and I have a younger sister and she's the one that decided she was going to stay in Maine and she lives like a couple miles from my parents now.  And  I know that if something's going on,  she is there. 33:59 And that's the choice that she has made because I live too far away to be of any help in any kind of reasonable amount of time. And my kids, my oldest is 36 and my youngest is going to be 24 in December. And the youngest still lives with us. So I know what he's doing, but the other three are out on their own doing their thing.  I think we raised them well enough that they are very self-sufficient. 34:28 Self-sufficient to the point that the one who lives in Nebraska comes back at least three times a year and helps his dad on this little farm and loves every minute of it.  So I'm not quite as caught in that sandwich as you're talking about because I'm too far away from my parents to really help. And I'm kind of too far away from my kids  in their ages to have to help. They're really good on their own. So I am so fortunate 34:57 to be in the position that I'm in and I damn well know it. 35:03 Yeah, it's definitely unique. There's not a lot written or said of it. I think it's because the women who are feeling it probably don't have time to talk about it a lot. They just do one day to the next. But I recognized I wanted to be fully present for my daughter as she visits colleges and applies for scholarships and makes decisions, not because I want to helicopter her into making the decisions I want her to make, but so that I'm available and I'm present. 35:31 And that my mind is clear enough to be available to her to help her. And then  we will find our new normal when she leaves us  and then we'll see and reevaluate at that time. um And our youngest, of course, will still be at home for a long time yet. So we'll see.  I have been able to say yes to some opportunities after giving that notice. And  I'll be wrapping up there here in the next few weeks. But  say yes to some exciting opportunities in 2026 that I wouldn't have if I hadn't said. 36:00 said that it was time for this other tenure to end. Fantastic. I can't wait to find out what you're going to be working on.  And you're also in that really weird spot  of your first child becoming a fully fledged adult with her own life. And that is so exciting.  And it's so sad at the same time. It's  so exciting.  the sadness is because it just went so fast.  I know. 36:30 I'm going to cry for you.  When I had my daughter, I was 10 days past 20 years old. I was a very young mom.  And when they put her in my hands, was like, holy cow, 18 years is a long time.  And the day she turned 18, I was like, oh, no, it's not. It's a blink of an eye.  now that she's 36, I'm just like,  wow.  How did this happen? 37:00 You know, and I read this interesting talk last night about how kids of the 80s, you know, raise themselves and  today we're so hyper focused on making sure we're trying to not make any missteps with parenting our kids.  And I would say I landed somewhere in the middle. My parents were very intentional with trying to teach us the. 37:20 the rules of life and being prepared and whatnot. And when our daughter had a flat tire unexpectedly 60 miles down the road during harvest season and neither parents could go help her.  She thought to call her parents  and we talked through what she already knew, which was problem solving and how to overcome. And she did great.  And yet as she's driving home and I'm worrying that she didn't get the lug nuts tightened enough. um 37:50 thinking  she's about to go. Have we done everything we were supposed to do? Have we checked all the boxes yet?  And I don't know if my parents thought about those things when I flew the coop. You know, have we helped her check all the boxes  on how to stay alive and thrive? But I find myself thinking about it often. ah And it's important to me. And I think it speaks well because we're very 38:18 We're very open. She and I can talk about anything and disagree about anything um that makes me feel better. But yes, it is, like I said, when you're in this pinchy place and you're trying to think clearly, removing distractions is important. I know I speak from a place of privilege and saying that not every woman can decide to quit her job. 38:42 without having a backup plan. And believe me, as a child of the farm crisis in 1985, of course I have backup plans. it is important. It's just so important to be present. And if that means putting your phone down or whatever it is, parents have got to be present. I feel passionately about that. Yes. And I'm going to say another unpopular thing because apparently that's my thing today. 39:12 I feel like the women who are in their  mid-20s to early  30s right now who are having kids,  I feel like some of them are up a creek without a paddle when it comes to parenting because I feel like a lot of people didn't parent their kids in that spot. Yes, ma'am. And I don't know if I'm right or wrong on that, but...  You're right. By the feedback I'm hearing constantly from young ladies who got a... 39:41 college degree and know nothing about taking care of their home. Yeah. And  I did not enjoy the fact that my mom and dad had me and my sister doing dishes by the time we were like eight years old after dinner.  I didn't really want to wash the dishes. I didn't really want to dry the dishes.  I wanted to throw dishes in the trash and buy new dishes. That's what I wanted to do,  but that's not a really sustainable way to do it. 40:06 I was doing dishes at eight years old and I tried to always wash the dishes because that was better than drying for me.  And we were helping take the split wood to the bulkhead to the basement of our house and throw that wood down the stairs. And then once that bulkhead was full,  going back in through the house and moving the wood  from the bottom  of the stairs to the other corner of the basement for the wood stove. Okay.  I didn't really enjoy that either, but. 40:34 As an adult, I'm really glad that my parents were like, no, you are part of this family.  And part of being this family is being part of the work of the family. And somewhere along the way, I feel like that has gotten lost because  number one, there's not as much work to do unless you live that way.  But also when realtors tell me that people say, well, I don't have a kitchen table. don't need, I don't need space for a kitchen table. 41:02 That  speaks volumes about what you're just talking about, the illustration of that family unit, whoever's in your family, not having those touch points and connections  frequently, regularly, where you do exactly what you're talking about.  And so we raised them to be  smart  by our definitions and capable of earning a great income. 41:30 but the realities of life, all of that got glossed over in chasing titles and  income and all of that's important. I'm not dissing on any of that. when I have women say, but I don't know how to make a grocery list. I don't know how to look at the ad and put a meal together. I don't know how to balance my checkbook. I don't know how to think beyond the present  or  I have my phone. What else do I need? 42:00 Uh-huh. It's a very scary, dangerous place to be in. You're right. Now these women and men are the parents and they're little people. And part of that is the effort, the chase of, don't want my kid to hurt and fail and be left out and lose. And I understand all of that. Oh, do I understand it? But I so appreciate it on a college visit, this  really, really wonderful, empathetic  nursing advisor saying to my daughter, have you ever received? 42:30 a B, Maggie. And Maggie said,  no. And she said, I'm telling you right now, you're going to get a B, Maggie. You may get a C, a D, or an F. And your job is going to be to develop the resiliency and find the resources to here to move beyond it. You have to. 42:55 because they're seeing such a surge of young people who get their first B and they throw up their hands. Because everything's just been managed and curated for them so that they didn't fail. Yeah, and that's so wrong because if you don't fail, you don't learn. oh I just, it's so frustrating to me and I'm not gonna, I'm not, I swear to God, I'm not going on a tangent about this. I'm not, Mary Evelyn, no. 43:25 It's so frustrating to be a child of the eighties as it were. was born in 1969. I barely remember the seventies because I was just a little kid, but the eighties I remember. And the eighties seemed like just a golden time to be a teenager. And I look at how things are now. I wouldn't want to be a teenager in this day and age.  Can you imagine how difficult it would be? 43:55 and everything of your life being documented and potentially put on social media where it could  ruin you in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years? Oh, I would not. I would not.  Knowing the teenager that I was, if I was that teenager  now,  I would have killed myself because I was bullied. I was teased. I stuck my foot in my mouth more times than I can count. And you know, it would have been caught on video and posted to Facebook or  TikTok or whatever. 44:25 And  I was not the kind of child who would have had the resiliency  to live through that. I know that about myself.  And there are so many kids  bullied through social media that I just want to shake their parents and be like, what are you doing?  It can't do that. Right. And so we raise them to do their best to make things right when they've done a wrong. 44:53 to ask for forgiveness, to offer grace. Like that is the way you're supposed to raise your people. But now,  and  again, you and I would enjoy some political conversations today. I laugh, right? 45:09 Let's just talk about this week's news and what's being released for consumption to the public. The misdeeds of this man. Horrible creature, Horrible, inexcusable, despicable, disgusting behavior. And caught up in this narrative, this is new news. Americans today in 2025, at what your elected people are doing. Look at their terrible 45:38 terrible behaviors. Can you imagine if social media had existed at the inception of this country? uh Dare I say that if any former president of this country had had social media and had participated in it, would any of them been elected? Any of them?  Uh huh. Like, this kind of human behavior has existed since the beginning of time. It's just now we have the evidence. We have the proof, right? 46:07 Like there's journal stories about JFK and all the way back to Thomas Jefferson if you want, but we don't have the volume information today that has convinced us that this behavior has just all started. You know, it's trending now. uh People have made mistakes forever. Yeah, we just didn't know about them. That's all.  Every freaking waking moment of the day. uh was, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. 46:35 I'm going to shift this just a little bit because  I feel like this was a very good airing  of feelings, but I want to go back to the fact that the government shutdown was 41 days long.  And  what I took away from that, because I already had it in my pocket, is that we really do need to have a local community of people who we love and trust  and who we can help and who can help us. 47:02 I am the worst at this because we moved here five years ago. I've made like two friends in five years because  we literally have neighbors who are a quarter mile away. And when you live in the country, you don't just go knock on somebody's door in the middle of COVID when we moved here and be like,  hi, I brought you cookies. We live over here. Who are you? Because that would have been not really well received. And I did not want to take a chance on bringing 47:31 sickness to somebody's house or getting it from them in 2020, that seemed like a bad plan.  But my husband sells things at the farmer's market in the summer and he's there every Saturday morning. So he has formed  community and I'm all good with that because he and the people he's met, they all grow things and sell things that are different. So in our situation here, we do have a little community of people who are producers 48:00 who do want to help their community. And  what I think that people probably should take out of this government shutdown is that  we shouldn't solely rely on the government to  help us. We need to help ourselves. We need to have a community of people who we can help as well. And so I'm guessing that you agree with that, but if you don't, feel free to disagree with me and tell me why.  I do, Mary. And the pushback 48:31 is  we have to stop being a nation afraid of one another, afraid of inconveniencing, afraid of asking, and then afraid of just showing up to be the hands and feet we need to be. We  love to be called like these independent people, don't need anybody, but that's not true. 48:57 And historically speaking, it is community that has helped people truly make it through the worst and the hardest of times. can't even begin to tell you the stories I could share of the  resiliency of community and how the women, give, just talking about women.  The women are the only ones who got my community through World War II because the work had to keep going. So what were they forced to do? 49:24 to rely on community to help each other in the field, looking after the little people while the mama was out doing whatever needed to be done. We have to get back to community. And community means everybody provides and gives something, and maybe this isn't your season of giving, but next season is yours, and I'm not talking just about money. We have to.  A united, community-focused country cannot be divided. 49:53 And the division we have today is because we don't have community. That's my feeling. I will die on that hill. I worked in the Nebraska legislature in college and I learned a lot. This is pre-9-11 and we have a unicameral legislature, Mary, where your party is not part of  who you are.  You can gather by how someone votes, maybe what party they... 50:21 affiliate with, but that's not what we do.  And my memories were the man touted as the most liberal and difficult in the legislature,  walking down the hall, coming around the corner and plopping down in the office of my Senator, whose wife was dying of cancer,  to check in with him, to talk about the day's proceedings, to talk through and sometimes disagree, but they were not ugly to each other. 50:52 ever.  And if you have community and you're actually looking and talking and sitting  elbow to elbow with people. 51:04 You're not nearly as inclined to be ugly as what we see today. So helping each other, talking through our differences, finding consensus, because I'm not saying we're all going to agree, but consensus means you're willing to be respectful of another person's feeling or decision or have to go along with something. We have to, we have to get community back or we won't. We won't save our country without it. That's my opinion. We can't save it without it. Yep. 51:33 Absolutely. And that's again, part of the reason I started the podcast, because I needed a community of people that I could talk with and whether they agree with me or not. I learn a lot from people who disagree with me because sometimes I haven't considered the point of view because it's never been presented to me in the first place. yeah, it makes me stop and go, okay, now I understand where that comes from. And honestly, 52:01 One of the hardest things for me to get to, and it took me until I was probably in my late 30s or early  30s, is that people become who they become  because of their experiences. I said that really wrong, but I was trying.  Whatever has happened to them in the past forms who they become in the future. And  when somebody seems really mean or evil to me,  now my first thought is, 52:31 why are they the way they are,  not I don't like them, because I want to understand what brought them to what they think and what they believe and what they feel. And being able to understand it  helps me accept that that's who they are. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay.  and people  easily misunderstood if you don't get to know them. Yeah. 52:57 Sometimes there's no fixing the thing that's wrong with the person and I'm, I'm going to talk real roundabout about this. There is someone who is no longer in my life who has real big issues  and they have perpetuated throughout that person's life. And I know why I know the story behind it still has not gotten through that still has not learned how to be a good human  and 53:26 Good human to me may be different than good human to anyone else, but someone who respects people,  who  lets them have their own autonomy, does not gaslight them, things like that, okay? I understand why this person is the way that they are.  I do not understand why therapy  and seeing how other people behave hasn't brought them along to being, in my opinion, a good human. 53:53 I can't control that, it is not my place to tell them how to be. But being able to understand why they are the way they are has made it so much easier for me as a human. And that speaks to my heart so clearly because in my defense of agriculture, so easy to be caught up in like what my lens is like and the crops I raise and what I do. The great divide between us and consumers. 54:24 is because there isn't enough back and forth speaking with each other. And I don't know why that happened because I remember so clearly my mother shopping for groceries  and shaking her head on occasion about, you know,  a price jump in eggs, for instance, shaking her head, setting them some things down because it didn't fit in the budget, maybe wondering out loud about why something was more expensive. But I don't remember her ever blaming the farmer for it ever. And maybe because of who we are. 54:53 But this great divide between us and consumers and this, again, this thing about placing blame or we don't trust you, you know, you're trying to kill us or sicken us with what you're doing is because there's not enough community and not enough talking and effort just to try to understand, even if you don't agree, but just to try to understand. exactly. We all need to be better listeners, better tellers. 55:20 Because telling the truth is a big thing here too, in this whole  community thing. And we need to be able to be around other humans and have compassion and patience. And  I hate this part of this conversation because I always feel like Pollyanna, everything's great. If we would just be nicer to each other, the world would be a better place. And that is true. But it's not just being nicer. It's about being more patient and more understanding. 55:49 not just about being nice. And being willing to invest oneself in some of that self help, which is finding facts,  finding accuracy, doing your own research and not just buying into the hype and the trends and the sensation, which makes you think  one way or another, but asking more of yourself  to be invested in what is fact.  Digging deeper. Yeah. 56:19 Yeah, absolutely. enough. is just, I could go on for days, just not enough of that and wanting to be spoon fed everything instead of. 56:30 instead of 56:32 acting independently and wanting to validate and verify things because it matters, whatever it is, it does matter. Now you can say some act on faith. Yes, that's an important part of my life. But when it comes to making decisions about how to live and what to do and where to go and what to buy,  it really, I'm not gonna ask others to do all that heavy lifting for me. I've gotta be invested in that.  Well, that's why I asked you to be on the podcast back in September about the beef prices. 57:02 I knew that you knew facts that I didn't know. And I was like, I need someone who's more expert in this than I am.  And I so appreciate you for that. And I appreciate you for chatting with me today.  And we're almost in an hour. So I'm going to wrap this up because  I didn't mean to take this much of your time today, Leah.  Thank you so much for being here. where can people find you? You can find me at Clear Creek Ranch mom on Facebook and Instagram.  And I. 57:32 What is ahead of me in 2026 is taking my show on the road, Mary. I've been invited to be a speaker um across the country in a few different venues.  I'm really excited about the opportunity.  And my message is going to be very simple. It's all going to be about how to help advocate for agriculture, whether you're growing hazelnuts or chickens or beef or cranberries or pumpkins or great. uh 58:02 any row crop, how to best advocate for our industry and do it with compassion and empathy and an open mind so that we can better bridge these gaps between us. Congratulations. I knew that was going to happen. I knew you were going to end up doing speaking. I'm anxious and excited all at the same time because I challenged myself to go in front of audiences I've never been in front of before with people. 58:31 who love their lives as much as I love mine in a completely different way.  Awesome,  awesome. I'm so happy for you. I'm so proud of you.  I love you. You're fantastic.  Thank you. That's not what my senior says who has to be harping on her about scholarship deadlines.  That's because you're her mom. You're not my mom. uh 58:56 As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com  slash support. ah Leah, I can't say it enough. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate you so much. Mary, keep up the good work. The world needs your stories  and your voice in helping others tell their stories. I'm going to talk till I'm dead. That's what my dad told me. 59:25 I so  love that you're from Maine because I have a dear friend here in Nebraska whose daughter bravely put on her boots  and packed her bags and she's a student in Maine in college. A fish out of water but she's there because of the educational opportunities she was looking for and it has been an adventure.  I hope that the Maynards have been nice to her and embraced her because  New England folk have this uh 59:54 I don't know, this reputation for being very standoffish and  not very nice and being very blunt. And that was not my experience growing up.  all right, Leah, I hope you have a fantastic day. Thank you again. Thank you for taking the time with me, Mary. Appreciate it. You too. All right. Bye. Bye.