A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Jim at Vinestops. 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. 00:11 Today I'm talking with Jim at Vine Stops in New York. How are you, Jim? I'm good, how are you? I'm good. How was the weather in New York? It's beautiful today. We're in that part of the season where one day it's beautiful and the next day it's starting to turn super cold. So it's going into flu season, I guess. Yay, that's exciting. 00:37 I am actually, my bedroom is where I record at my desk in my room. And uh my bedroom, it feels like a refrigerator this morning because when I went to bed last night, I had to have the AC on and uh my husband didn't turn it off when he came downstairs this morning and shut the door. So I am almost shivering talking to you in my room. Yeah, we do that all the time. We love it. We like the cold, so we're okay with that. 01:05 For sleeping, it's great, but for sitting at a desk with my hands needed to move the mouse and stuff, it's not awesome. Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you have going here. So obviously, my name is Jim. We bought this farm during COVID and it kind of changed our lives significantly. was 01:31 in the corporate world and also in the film industry and some law enforcement experience. so that was kind of everything I did, you know, seven days a week was somewhere in that realm. And then COVID hit, obviously all of our lives had changed, but we had the opportunity to buy this small 1800s gentleman's horse farm, about 10 acres. uh And it was where I grew up. And so I wanted to come back closer to my mom anyway, because she was getting sick. 02:02 Yeah. So he said, you know what, let's do it and rehab it. Because my wife grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, so she always had horses and she always wanted to get them again. So we decided to do it. And very quickly, we went from that fast paced or I did anyway, that fast paced life to kind of country life. You know, we bought chickens and then I started like, you know, I put a little stand on the side of the road and we started selling our extra eggs and then 02:29 You the whole chicken math thing happened. You start with six, you go to 10, 20, then you're fluctuating back and forth. And next thing you know, have 150 plus chickens in our yard. And, uh, and then, you know, towards the last year of COVID, uh, which was the, this is the year that we purchased it. Um, we put it, when we bought it, we put in about, I don't know, 50 fruit trees. And we, just wanted to start kind of a hobby farm. You know, I didn't do the whole homesteading thing yet. 02:58 and I just wanted to kind of grow extra. So we had some fresh food because I was frustrated with what we were getting in the supermarkets. know, if like when the egg crisis happened, you couldn't find eggs anywhere. And when you can find them, they were like $10, $15, you know, a dozen. was just ridiculous. And so I eventually, I just started changing. I started eating so much more from my garden and from my trees. 03:23 spending less and not going to the supermarket and all my health numbers, my doctor's office, they all started getting better. And I like really realized like, holy cow, know, that all that fast food and that crap put into my body, it really does make a difference. And so kind of the homesteading was born, you know, of having the passion of, you know, growing my own stuff and then, you know, running a farm stand on the the on the front of the driveway. So, you know, after 03:53 after that was kind of successful the first year. The next year I doubled everything, the size of everything, added more fruit trees, bought more chickens. And then my farm stand that I made kind of fell apart. And it was funny. So I was like, all right, I got to buy a farm stand because like, I need something that's gonna last. And 04:18 I went to go look for one and I couldn't find anybody that sells farmsteads like Home Depot, Lowe's, Tractor Supply, even on Amazon. know, when I was like, you know, where can I buy a farm stand or, you know, farm stands and nothing came up. And I was like, huh. So I took some time and uh I refined the farmstead I had and I was doing a lot of research what people were doing, like farmstead groups and uh social media groups and whatnot. And I just. 04:47 developed my own and started testing it out to see what the pros and cons of it were. And I ended up getting into designer and I said, hey, can you build me this on paper that would be structurally sound and good quality? And so we did that and that's how my farm stand was born. Nice. Okay. I have a question that d

Today I'm talking with Elizabeth Ries at Home To Homestead. 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 Elizabeth Ries at um three different places, I guess. Well, four actually. You've got Twin Cities Live, you've got My Talk 107.1, you've got... 00:22 HomeToHomeStead.com and you've got bestofthenest.com and Elizabeth is in Minneapolis. So good morning, Elizabeth. How are you? Good morning, Mary. It's nice to be back with you today. Thanks for asking me. You're so welcome. I loved our chat back in March of 2024. That's how long it's been. It's been a while. Yup. And I was really nervous because I'd only been broadcasting for like six months at that point. And I still had no idea what I was doing. And I listened back to it I was like, God, I'm so glad I'm more comfortable now. 00:50 It is, a lot of it is just getting the reps in. I think that that is a huge thing with broadcasting or interviewing or asking questions. It's just the more you do, it's just like anything. It's a skill and the more you do it, the better you get at it. And I hope you look back on those early days fondly and think about how far you've come because I thought you did a great job that time. So I can imagine it's only going to be better today. 01:15 Thank you, and I do look back. I went back and listened to the very first episode of, I can't think, a Tiny Homestead podcast. And it wasn't awful. Like when I listened to it back the first time, I was like, ugh. And I listened to it back about six months ago, and I was like, you know, it really wasn't that bad. People learned things, it was a fun chat, I'm okay. So, I don't want to get too far into... 01:42 what you do because you did a huge intro on the episode that we did before. And if people want to know all about Elizabeth's professional life, you can go listen to the original episode. The OG. Yeah, exactly. The OG Elizabeth Ries But you are the co-host for Twin Cities Live. You and Marjorie Punnett do a show together on what station is it? Well, we had a radio show together on MyTalk107.1. uh 02:11 for a couple of years. And then um we both ended that because we moved on to different things. Oh, you're not doing that anymore. Right. And then the podcast is called Best to the Nest. So Marjorie and I teamed up for the podcast and we kind of joke that it's like the show within the show. It's the conversations that we were having during the commercial breaks about life and home and family and relationships and all those things that then we brought into the podcast. But I do still get to fill in over at MyTalk. 02:40 pretty regularly and it's always fun to show up. They just got new studios, so now I really like going over there. uh It's all bright and shiny in there. It's nice. Okay, so I want to, I got questions about your homesteading stuff in your city home, because you don't have a homestead. You live on a city lot, right? Yes. Yes, I do. I am on a city lot. on about about a third of an acre in the city of Minneapolis. 03:07 Prior to living in this house, we've been in this house for six years. Prior to that, we were on 0.13 of an acre in the city of Minneapolis and really did a lot of the same things that we do here. Yeah. So did you do a garden this year? I did a garden. I have the garden going. And um I have four raised beds in the backyard. Two of them are like four feet wide by, um I think they're 10 or 12 feet long. 03:37 however long my husband made them. And those are wooden raised beds. This year I added an arched, a cattle panel arch trellis between the two of them, which has been really, really fun. And I'd wanted to do it for a long time. And then finally, you know, spent the $75 and has sent my dad to tractor supply with his pickup so that he could make himself useful during retirement and bring me the cattle panels. then- That's what dads are for. That's what dads are for. That's why dads get pickup trucks. That's exactly it. And then um 04:05 I have two of the, like they're those Veggo garden raised beds. They're that metal and I've really liked those too. Those are really easy to put together. And then I do a lot of trellising. So I have trellises kind of growing up everywhere so that I can maximize my space. So it's definitely not huge. It's not overwhelming, but it's amazing how much food you can get out of a small garden. 04:35 Sure. And growing up instead of out is so efficient on a small piece of property. Yes. And it's just easier and it's pretty. That's the other thing I like about it. It's just, you know, I don't have a picture perfect manicured garden. um But wh

Today I'm talking with Gentry at Southern Charm Up North: Tales of a Maine Magnolia. 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 Gentry at Southern Charm Up North, Tales of a Maine Magnolia in Maine. How are you, Gentry? I'm great, Mary. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. I saw the name of your page on Facebook and I was like, oh, she sounds like a fun one to chat with. I hope so. 00:30 So how's the weather in Maine this morning or this afternoon? Well, actually, I'm in Mississippi today. How are you? Okay. I am. But I think the weather's probably better in Maine. Okay. Well, how was it in Mississippi? It's hot. We had a rainstorm this morning, which we desperately needed, and I know we did. So can't complain about that. But now it's muggy. It's that typical Mississippi humidity. 00:59 We're experiencing the same thing in Minnesota this morning. I'm sorry, this afternoon. I keep thinking it's 10 o'clock in the morning. It's 1 o'clock in the afternoon. It is supposed to hit 95, I think, today here. And the dew point is above 60. So needless to say, the dog and I are hanging out with the freestanding air conditioners in the house today. Do not blame me about that. 01:23 Yep. And if she barks, it's because somebody pulled up to our farm stand because we have eggs out there that people want to buy. So. Oh, I love fresh eggs. I wish I was there. Yeah. Yeah. Our chickens have done really well this summer and we have not been able to keep eggs in the farm stand for any more than 24 hours. Once they go out there. It's been really funny. Wow. So tell me a little bit about yourself and about what you do. Well, I am living between 01:53 two states, two worlds really. We live in Mississippi. I was actually born and raised in North Carolina and I've lived different places, but primarily the South. I've lived in Mississippi for, I guess, 27 years now. And about two and a half, three years ago, I was getting remarried, lots of life changes. And I told my fiance, I said, I'm going to live in Maine. 02:21 He just kind of looked at me and said, oh, okay. And so we went up and he asked me, he said, have you ever been? And I said, no. And he said, don't you think we should go check it out first? And so we went up there. I had a broken ankle at the time. So was on a knee scooter, couldn't do anything, but just sit and look while he got to go explore and do all the fun stuff. And we went back about six months later, maybe, and made the offer on the house. 02:50 and bought the house. So my heart is always there even when I'm here in Mississippi. um And I started my blog in the Maine Magnolia just as a way of kind of interweaving those two worlds and sharing with my friends there and my friends here um and just people that I've met all over, you know, what it's like to transition between 03:19 dramatically different states um but still find the similarities and the things that you can call home in both. Well yeah and people are people and food is food and home is a home and you know I don't know that it matters exactly where you live as long as you actually live where you live. Exactly. So. Just did a blog post this morning about the importance of being present and 03:46 That's being present wherever you are and whatever the circumstances are at that given moment, but finding your why, your reason, your joy in whatever situation you're in. Yeah. Otherwise, why are you here? know? Right. Exactly. Hang on one second. 04:09 I had a tickle in my throat and I didn't want to cough in your ear. uh So having moved from Maine to Minnesota when I was 22 and I'm 50, almost 56 now, and you moving from Mississippi to Maine, how was that for you? Because growing up in Maine, I have a very special place in my heart for that state. But I also know that Mainers are very, very direct people and they communicate. 04:38 very clearly and a lot. So how was it for you? They do. It's different. know, they, I think we're first not quite sure how to take me and because I'm, I'm just me. I show up and I'm how y'all, what are you doing? And, um, but I think the biggest concern because Mainers are very protective of their world, you know, in their peace. And, um, 05:08 They're very independent, ah very self-sufficient. I think their biggest fear with tourism is that people are coming in to change what they love about their home. I think when they realized that there was nothing I wanted to change, it was those very things that drew me there, then they quickly accepted me. mean, they love to laugh at some of 05:35 my sayings or the way I talk sometimes, or my shoes. I do like a little bling and the bling is not normally, you k

Today I'm talking with Aaron at Appalachian Highlands Farmers Magazine. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Aaron at Appalachian Highlands Farmers Magazine, and you are where? I'm in Bristol, Virginia. Okay. Welcome, Aaron. Thank you for being here. Thank you. I appreciate being here. So how's the weather there? It is... 00:29 study in a little bit chilly. You're lucky. It is very muggy in Minnesota. That's where I am. This is about as this is the first couple of days we haven't had rain since I've been here. uh Oh, okay. So are you new to there or what's up with that? I've been here about two years. Um, I'm a transplant from Southern California, um, and still moved out here just to retire. And then I figured out I can't retire. 00:59 So I started getting busy again. Yeah, my husband and I are both in our mid fifties and anytime retirement comes up in conversation, we just do that very sardonic laugh and go, we're never retiring because it's not going to do us any good to retire. Yeah. And it's also not good for your brain to sit off that much, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. My dad retired over 10 years ago. He is now 80. 01:28 I think and He acts like he's 50. He lives like he's 50. You would never know. He was 83 years old. So I'm very proud of All right, so tell me a little bit about yourself and about your magazine Okay, well I was gonna mention that I'm planning out here from Southern California in the mountains of Southern California About 5,000 so I come from a kind of a rural 01:58 not rural really, it's urban forest I guess you could call it, it's a little town called Crestline, California. um I spent most of my career in the printing business and when I say print I mean magazines, newspapers, that type of thing. um My education is actually graphic communication, kind dawned into the print business and ended up consulting with authors. 02:25 These are the things that I like the San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego New New York Review, and people like that. About, you know, how they used to go out and do their layout design. So, later on in the managing, I my little hometown newspaper at the time. It was called the Alpenhorn Nude. It addressed my town. And I worked there. 02:54 for a while and I just wanted to it. was definitely going to buy it from after that fence fell through and I moved away to Montana for five years and I came back and it turns out somebody had bought it from the old owner and he was not doing well with it and so I was joking, strictly a joke. I wrote up the contracts for me purchasing it and was supposed to just be something funny. 03:24 And I said, no, I'll buy it for $295. 03:29 And that was how much they that's how much money they were in the black for the year. Uh huh. So he's he he's didn't even look at it. He just said, you know what, where's this? Where do I Wow. Right. And I ended up publishing that newspaper and upgrading the branding on it. It had already been changed to to a new name, which was the Alpine Mountain here in this case. 03:58 It was just a typical little newspaper, a real small town newspaper. Nothing's honestly known, no stories or anything like that. No politics. So then I retired, moved out here, got calls from a son of mine back in California who owns stable farmer's markets, some private farmer's markets. And he said, you know what, I want you to do my marketing for me. 04:26 So what I want to do is create a farmer's market newspaper. Okay. And I said, sir, I'll do that. I put one together, you know, a mock up of one and pricing, I'll be distribute distributing that. And when he thought it was going to cost him 20 grams, was looking for alternatives. So I said, well, why don't you do an online news? You know, the money. And so that was the 04:56 impetus for creating something called the California, well, it's called the farmer market times. And it's at ca farmers market.com. And it's just mainly just really a marketing tool to promote each farm. But it's best media, news and stuff. And so I thought, you know, I live out here in the middle of the last year where everyone's farming, farming culture. 05:26 I was eating on a call. I buy my meat from a place around the corner. It just occurred to me. that's kind of what I do. it turns out, there should be some kind of a really neat thing. I haven't made any money on it. But the whole idea is that once it's mastered, I can duplicate that anywhere in the country if I want to. 05:56 All I got to have is somebody that wants to do the reporting or get any storage. Um, and I can create like a franchise out of it. And like I said, I haven't

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Groovy Grazers for an Autumn update. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Groovy Grazers in Montana. Good morning, friend. How are you? Good morning, good morning. It's starting to feel like fall here, which is always exciting after a hot summer. So I'm super excited to be here today. Oh, honey, tell me it's starting to feel like fall. 00:28 Our heat is not working and it was 63 degrees in the house Saturday and Sunday. Oh my goodness. Afternoon. And our furnace is broken. We found out because we turned it on and it didn't work. So it was rather nippy this past weekend and I actually made granola to heat up the kitchen and blow some warm air to the living room. 00:55 and made apple crisp with our own apples. Ooh, apple crisp is my favorite. We're gluten free, so there's a lot of fall treats that I miss. And I'm going to try and recreate. I'm going to get a little more adventurous. Last time we talked, we talked about sourdough and making various things with that. So I'm kind of excited for this fall because I think I can be included in the pumpkin spice treats that we all love. 01:22 Yeah, I am not a pumpkin spice fan. I like pumpkin pie and I like pumpkin bread, but the whole pumpkin spice thing, I'm not into it. I don't know why. I'm not really, I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin spice per se, except for like a few drinks, but like, I'm not even an eggnog person. I don't know. I'm just not a normal person, I guess, when it comes to like the drinks. I like a Thai latte over pumpkin spice. I mean, any day. 01:51 Yeah, I actually freaking love eggnog. So we're kind of opposite on this, but that's fine. But the important part of my statement regarding the apple crisp is that it was made with our apples from our trees. Honey gold, our honey gold tree actually produced at least 150 apples this year. Wow. I remember you were excited to see the numbers that it was going to bring and you were slightly worried it was not going to bring a bunch of apples. So that's a 02:20 That's a lot of apples, a hundred apples over, you Yeah, over 150. Wow, that's a good producing tree. And I think that's really important with what we're going to talk about today. Did you buy the home with that tree? No, they were actually given to us as a housewarming present from an orchard guy that we know. That's even better because that's first year producing over a hundred. That's big amount. I took a 02:47 Master Gardening since we last spoke. I just did the course to kind of like freshen up and learn about Montana because I am not a Montana native. Yeah. And it's really hard when you go, especially here to plant trees. So we've planted two trees now. We planted a Liberty Apple tree and we planted some type of pear and neither took, but we have really bad alkaline soil and I've learned more history about our soil. 03:15 And so to even put a tree, think we'd have to do some major soil reworking and pulling out material and putting it back in. Yeah. I've kind of given up slightly on the tree idea for a minute, just until we have a better location. Yeah. And it's, it's hard because you never know what's going to grow where until you try it. And, and just as a caveat, took five years from putting in those apple saplings to get the apples. 03:45 Five years, wow. Okay, so I mean, that's still not bad though for a five-year-old tree when you look at production. mean, the amount of apples that I'm sure you're gonna get to put away, you'll get to make many apple crisps, I'm sure all the way through the winter. So did you can any of it? No, we're actually selling some of them to the community at the farmers market. You've been doing the farmers market. How's that going? 04:14 Um, it's been really good. We live in a fairly small town. think our town has like 6,000 people, maybe 10,000. And so it's hit or miss and it depends on what other festivals or the state fair or the Renaissance festival are going on. If there's other things going on, the farmer's market is slower. But the beginning of the summer is always really good because there's nothing really going on in June and the first part of July. 04:44 Yeah, that's kind of the same here. I mean, our seasons are a little different, obviously, but like the beginning of farmer market season, everyone's so excited to get out of the house. And I live not rural Montana, like kind of rural, but not really for now. We are looking at moving and going more rural. And that's something that we've had to consider is like, what does our profits look like if we move farther away from the town that most p

Today I'm talking with Glade at Family Farm Beef Box. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Glade at Family Farm Beef Box in Nebraska. Good morning, Glade. How are you? Well, hello, Mary. I'm doing quite well. Thank you. How is the weather in Nebraska this morning? You know, we are just starting to feel a little bit of that chill, like it's getting towards fall and... 00:29 I'm excited about a couple things such as harvest and football and a freeze that's gonna kill all these flies. 00:39 Yeah, us too here in Minnesota. was 41 degrees when I looked at 5 a.m. today. So it's definitely winding down on the heat and I'm so glad because it's been a hot, hot summer here in Minnesota. I don't know what Nebraska was like, but Minnesota was kind of not a fun summer. Yeah, we were pretty blessed in Nebraska. It really was fairly nice and fairly, we got some rains when we needed it. 01:08 So I can't complain too much that much, I sure don't have any problem enjoying fall weather. Yeah. Fall is my favorite season, followed by spring, followed by winter, followed by summer, because I do not love high summer. I hate it. So, okay. Tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. My name is Glade Smith. I'm a husband of one wife. I'm a father of 01:38 seven children. I am a multi-generational cattle producer and I am a leading marketer of breeding stock for right livestock and the owner and founder of Family Farm Beef Box. Okay, awesome. How many generations back on the cattle? So my my grand, it'd be my grandfather three generations ago. 02:06 He moved to this area just down the road from where I'm sitting. uh He was born in 1896 and moved to this area. It seems interesting to be able to say he moved here with wagons pulled by mules over to where our general area. My wife's family, uh her roots go a little bit deeper. She'd be the ninth generation farming on the same general. 02:34 close to the same area where she's from. I've got a ways to go to keep up with my wife. Okay. Tell me about the beef box. Very good. No problem. Yeah. A family farm beef box is a conveniently sized share of an entire beef. It's been dry aged and hand cut and raised right here in central Nebraska. Think of it as just a smaller version of a half a beef. It works well for, for say a couple that 03:01 used to buy a half a beef, but now their kids are grown and they just don't need that much anymore. So you get a nice sampling of some steaks and ground beef and roast, but still the dry age quality that you grew to love when you purchased a half a beef. And we do ship that beef across the country every Monday and work with those customers as far as allowing them to subscribe and get a box every one, two or three months, or we let them try just a single box. 03:31 And we do offer a little options as far as a smaller package or a more bulk option. So that's what we strive for with our little beef business and try to focus on getting to know the people that we're actually sending the beef to. That's something that's important to us is trying to build relationships with these people. And a cute little story that from when I started Family Farm Beef Box, 04:00 It's been about eight years ago now. And honestly, goodness, what spurred it was I'd been farming and ranching and we'd grown enough to be able to grow the balance sheet, to be able to borrow some more money, to grow the business, to borrow some more money. I got to be fortunate enough that I had quite a bit of money borrowed and several bad things happened in the farming world. And I couldn't pay the bank back and I was underwater and the bank told me. 04:27 I say I was fortunate enough because it forced me to grow and learn and be creative in other ways. The bank told me that all the money I made was going to go towards debt. And so what I did was I told my banker, said, well, I know what better beef tastes like. And I know how to make friends with people in real life. And if I could use this social media thing to figure out how to make friends with other people. 04:56 I could share some beef with them and if I could get a price that was similar to an ice grocery store, I'd be able to make a little money. And so that was, that was my whole plan. And I went from there and I, didn't even use social media. I had no use for it, but my wife did. And I knew there was other people on it who used it a lot. And so I thought, well, that's where the people is location, location, location. That's, that's the location that matters now. And so. 05:26 I got online with my wife's social media, her Facebook account, and she let me send ou

Today I'm talking with Blaze at Bad Baxter Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Blaise at Bad Baxter Farm in Oklahoma. Good morning, Blaise. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Oklahoma this morning? It's cooling off. So I think I'm the only one that's not happy about it, to be honest. 00:26 I am so thrilled that it is cooling down in Minnesota this week. I cannot tell you, I am giddy. I'm going to make sourdough bread on Wednesday or Thursday because the high is only supposed to be like 62. And I heard on one of your other podcasts that you have a mass amount of tomatoes to process. um Well, we thought we did until the blight decided that it was going to arrive and stop the plant. 00:56 We still have tomatoes coming in, but we are not going to have as many as we really thought we were. just pray for me the next summer is better because last year sucked. This year has been half better than that. So maybe next year it'll be good again. Yeah, I'm harvesting or I'm actually processing some enchilada sauce this morning. And I think we're pulling ours early just because of the cool down and they've kind of slowed. 01:22 slowed their roll a bit, but my husband was talking about it. We felt like we grew plenty this year and I just don't think you can ever grow enough tomatoes. We grew over 250 plants. We should be literally stacking crates of tomatoes right now and that is not happening. And I have so many bad words in my head about it, but I will not utter any of them on the podcast because they don't do that. So I am very disappointed. I'm very sad about the whole thing, but it'll be fine. 01:51 We have probably five or six gallon size ziplocks of frozen cut up tomatoes to can in October when it's actually cold out so we can open the windows. Yeah. So we will have some pasta sauce this winter, but we definitely haven't been able to provide for our community the way we're hoping to. Yeah. So I could go on and on. I don't want to, or I will just cry. I might anyway. It's always a learning experience. 02:22 Yeah, it's been rough. I didn't realize how sad I am about it. Wow. Okay, so here we go again. Mary cries on the podcast again. I'm sorry, I brought up your tomatoes. It's okay. The ones we got were beautiful and they taste great. So at least we have some that is the upside this year. So I have two questions about your name and the name of your place. Is Blaze a nickname? 02:52 Um, it's been my lifelong nickname. actually, uh, when I lived in California way back in the day, I was a hair salon owner and that was the color of my hair color. So when I was in beauty college, everybody started calling me plays. Okay. it's back. All right. And then why is it bad Baxter farm? Oh my gosh. I have so many different feelings about our farm name, but, um, when we moved to Oklahoma, I just. 03:20 I thought, I guess I really regret using the word farm to be honest, now that I know more, know what I know. But, um, at the time we had decided to move from California to Oklahoma. Part of it was health related and, um, I first. 03:37 I got certified as a nutrition coach through the National Academy of Sports Medicine and decided that down that rabbit hole, I wanted to grow and be responsible for all of my own food as much as possible. um so I kind of just named it Bad Baxter Farm just because I felt like we were going to be learning everything the hard way. And I just felt like there was so much misinformation and bad information out there that... 04:03 We were making a lot of mistakes. And so when we decided to like kind of start documenting our journey, I just figured I would call it bad Baxter farm because we were making a lot of bad choices and I didn't want everybody to have to do the same thing. Well, it's attention grabbing. that's, that's helpful. Thank you. I guess we should have called ourselves homestead. I have a lot of friends that I mentor now and I'm constantly like, don't use the word farm, like come up with, know, and I have a friend that she just recently, um, 04:31 built a home and got some acreage and she named hers um Anchored Acres. And so I'm always like, gosh, I really wish I would have chose something a little bit different than farm because I don't feel like that highlights us as much as homestead or farmstead or something else would have. But I think we're pretty stuck with it at this point. Yeah. And you're not alone in wanting to rename your place because we named ours a tiny homestead before we even saw the place. We had a little tiny 05:02 City lot back five years ago and we h

Today I'm talking with Dawn at Homesteading-ish. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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. 00:11 Today I'm talking with Dawn at Homesteading-ish in West Virginia. Good afternoon, Dawn. How are you? Great. It's nice to be here. Oh, thank you for being here. I appreciate it. So you are not the, I don't know, founder of Homesteading-ish. You are part of Homesteading-ish. So tell me what Homesteading-ish is. uh 00:39 um So I'm actually one of the organizers for the event. There are a couple of us that got together and decided that we wanted to bring something different to our community and trying to help people establish a homestead, know what to do, kind of help them build those foundational skills that they need in order to live off the land or be more sustainable, to work on things that they would like to do to help support their family, providing 01:08 food or um whatever other things they might need in order to make their homestead work. So we put our heads together and kind of decided that we would go this route by bringing some non-traditional resources to the table and bringing people from not just the talking head and university world but from real life experience to the table that could have an influence over how people view homesteading and small farm life. um So 01:37 That's how it was kind of born. uh it last year was our first year. It was a fantastic event. We had a great turnout. And one of the things we love the most is that we really wanted to bring a more intimate environment. Um, we were able to really bring people together, let them talk with one another, meet one-on-one, actually have real life conversations in real time with people that are living a lifestyle that they are seeking to be better at. So we were able to do that. 02:08 oh This year, I hope we're going to be able to bring that same kind of intimate atmosphere, the same kind of energy, the same kind of feeling to the table where people are really going to get to get into the bones of what they're doing and why they want to do it and how they can accomplish all of their goals. Awesome. And when you're referring to last year, last year was the inaugural conference for Homosteading-ish. 02:33 It was, it was our very first one. So we were excited that it was so well received to be able to bring it back again a second year. Okay. So when I, when I interviewed Troy last year, cause Troy is the one that, that kind of kicked this all off from what I've been told. He was just getting ready for the first conference and he was very, very, very excited and a little bit nervous. I am not sure that. 03:01 I'm not sure that he really knew what he got himself into, number one, and how it was going to go, number two. That's kind of what was coming through. And so how did last year go? it, was it well received? Were there a lot of attendees, that kind of thing? So we were all a little bit nervous last year, not really knowing what we were going to get ourselves into and what people were going to think or how the event was going to go. But honestly, um there was 03:31 It almost was, I hate to even say it, but it was almost flawless. It went so well. We had a lot of people that came from all across the country, people from as far away as California down to Florida. um I think at one point we had at least a dozen states that were represented at the conference. A lot of people were really hungry to receive the information that we were trying to invest in them. 03:57 people came and they loved it. They were screaming to come back and hoped that we would do it a second time. Again, it goes back to that kind of we brought people to a place where it felt like home, where they were comfortable and they could ask the hard questions and get the hard answers and dig a little deeper into topics that they were interested in and actually get to speak with our presenters one-on-one. In some instances, we had a lot of opportunity for them to be able to mingle with each other and really 04:26 You know, talk to people that were like minded be able to just make connections with people around here. The chairman of our board says that more gets done before and after the meeting than during the actual meeting. And so people were able to make meaningful connections with one another and then have those conversations even before or after the conference in order to follow up on topics that they were interested in or get more. 04:53 connected with someone that knew more than they did about something that they were working on. So was really, really great. We had a great turnout. People were really very interested in hearing from

Today I'm talking with Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom about why beef is astronomically expensive right now, and some alternatives to get you through. 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 Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom in Nebraska. I was gonna say Arizona, I don't know why. And Leah's been a guest a couple of times on the podcast and she's here today to talk to us about the cost of beef right now. So good morning, Leah, how are you? 00:27 Good morning, Mary. Always good to visit with you. Thank you for having me. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for coming back. I love talking with you because you are. My dad would call you a no bullshit lady. You are. You are very, very forward and straightforward. And I almost blunt. Almost. I hate the word blunt because people tell me I'm blunt all the time. And I'm like, that's so mean. But you're very, very shoot from the hip. And I love that about you. 00:55 And if Maggie barks in the background, I'm sorry, we've got the farm stand open, we've got tomatoes in there and people keep pulling in for tomatoes. So. And it's International Dog Day, so she should have her moment. It is. Yeah, I didn't post on Facebook about Maggie for International Dog Day or whatever it is because I forgot that that's what it was. Yeah, I did too. I'll have to do it later. Be like, my dog's the best dog. I will die on that hill. 01:23 So, um Leah, you are a cattle rancher, right? Yes, ma'am. And you're in Nebraska, and you know as well as I do that beef prices have become astronomically expensive. And since you're a cattle rancher, I thought maybe you could give us all a little insight on what is going on with that. Yeah. Well, 01:48 It's a long and complicated story. Like many things that go on within our food chain. And even in 2025, the story in Nebraska has been a bit complicated. So when we had our cattle branding the first Saturday in May, I always call that our celebration, our first big celebration of the year. We brand those calves and get ready to turn the cows and calves out to grass. 02:17 But that day was anything but celebration. We were in a terrible drought in early May. And I have a couple of photos that I took that morning. One of the photos my daughter took of me. And I look at that picture of myself. I don't like it because the somberness was all over my face on what would typically be a joyful occasion. And it was me really evaluating the pasture conditions. we have been in drought. 02:46 on and off, some pretty significant drought really, since 2019, which was the last year of overabundant rainfall. If you want to back up even further across the Great Plains to 2012, we had what was called a flash drought across the Great Plains. What we saw then was the beginning of many ranchers starting to cut down on their herd inventory. 03:16 So 2012 was that drought. It was terrible in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. And Nebraska was plenty bad as well. And we included had to make some very difficult decisions that year as late summer came evaluating our pasture conditions and our feed and stock to see if we had cattle. 03:39 feed that would provide for those cattle and thankfully we did, but we knew if 2013 didn't improve, we were going to have to start selling down to manage our pastures well. Thankfully that turned the corner here, but that persistent drought did not get better in many places. And as fluctuations in inputs continued to plague ranchers, what we really saw as 2013 and beyond to the 04:09 it's really been the last 10 years, ranchers tightening those inventories. Couple that with the fact that ranchers continue to age and land transition plans have not been great. Ranchers don't have a child to pass that operation to and kids inherit and sell off and not necessarily not selling it into production for future ranching. 04:38 So the resulting effect is smaller numbers because of drought, shrinking numbers of ranches, which translates into shrinking numbers of cattle, cows in particular, which are the pipeline, if you will, for what becomes the beef in the stores, they're the mamas, make this all happen. And we won't even really get into the challenges of imports and tariffs and unrest. 05:08 and uh consumers making different choices about what they want to eat as far as their protein choices and those challenges, but the perfect storm of conditions. So here we are in 2025. Cattle inventory continues to shrink. We are historically at the lowest number in a very long time in the United States. That includes cows, the pipeline. 05:37 as well as the cattle in the finishing operations to be butchered to go to the grocery stores, historically lo

Today I'm talking with Kerry Adams about music, and why it's important on the homestead. 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 Kerry Adams at Lagoon Records. think it is in Michigan. Good morning, Kerry. How are you? Good morning. I'm fabulous. How are you, Mary? I'm good. So again, it's going to seem weird that I asked somebody who's into music to be on the podcast about homesteading, but music is a craft. 00:28 And music is a big part, has been a big part of Homesteaders for a long, long time. So tell me about yourself because people then understand why I asked you to be on the show. Wow. That's a big question. Well, yes. I've been doing this for about 50 years. So I started back in the Jurassic era and it's, I'm a guitarist or producer. I used to be on tour. 00:55 I managed a couple of different artists when we were on tour and I'd be their guitarist. um I've owned three recording studios. I still have one now. um And to me, the music is not a whole lot different than eh cooking the vegetables that you grow or being a painting artist or whatever. It's all art and it all kind of comes from the same place. So I love to play and I love to cook. So it comes from the same side of the brain, I guess. 01:23 Um, so yeah, I've been doing this since I was a kid. My dad was an amateur guitarist. Um, my sister was a published, uh, pencil and ink artist. So I guess it's kind of in the family a bit. Um, so that's my thing. That's what I know how to do uh and cook. know how to cook seven days a week for my family. And we try to do shopping locally and, and 01:51 I don't have enough property to grow enough vegetables and stuff to feed my family. So we do a lot of shopping locally and farmers markets and things like that. And to me, it's all kind of the same thing. And I've seen a number of your podcasts and I think they're very cool. So I'm honored to be here today. Thank you. Well, thank you for saying my podcast is very cool. I love it, too. uh So you said that you think it's something to do with the brain that actually leads me to it's something that I believe, too. 02:21 My dad was a bio med tech for years and he just turned, he just turned 83 in July and he's been retired for quite a while. And I know that you worked for Ford as an engineer and I feel like engineering or wrenching on machines is something that goes with music. 02:47 See, that's, uh, you know, we, I don't know that people know this, but we've kind of known each other for awhile. Um, you're one of the few people, there were old engineers that used to tell me, well, you know, if you're an engineer and musician, that's two different sides of your brain and they'll never connect. You can't do both well. Um, I believe engineering is artistic. Um, it's creative. Like any of those things. Um, if you look at engineering and you say, okay, I got, I either have some new widget I want to design or I have some problem to solve. 03:17 Yes, there's mathematics, there's trusted formulas, things you do. But before you even do that, you have to look at a problem and go, okay, what would be the best way to handle this? And so the artistic part is being creative before you even start a project. I think it all, even engineering comes from the same place and the same side of the brain. But having done that for 35 years and being a musician for 50, I think they're actually more similar than they are different. 03:47 Yeah, my dad played guitar for a long time and he is a natural tenor singing voice and his voice is beautiful. I don't know if you heard him sing a long time, but when I did hear him sing, it was gorgeous. So I think that music and engineering are tied together and I will die on that hill. Well, thank you. There's not a lot of people ascribed to that, but it's true, I believe. Yeah, I've known enough people who who wrench on machines, whether it's cars or 04:17 radios or copiers or whatever that have some musical talent that I really think there's a tie in there. So anyway, em I am assuming that back many, many, many years ago when people were starting farms that guitars were not exactly easy to come by. And that's why there's something called the flat top box. Yep. 04:45 Yes. Um, some of those instruments actually, speaking of being artistic and creative, some of those, uh, if you look at some of the early stuff from the twenties and thirties down in the Delta, which is where a lot of this music came from, um, it, you will see everything from, uh, a, a wash bucket with a stick and a single string. And mean, all those kinds of sort of cliche looking things, um, a lot of this stuff, and there was three string guitars and fo

Today I'm talking with Matt at Matt The Garden Guy. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Matt at Matt the Garden Guy in Wisconsin. Good morning, Matt. How are you? Hey, good. How you been? I'm good. Is the weather any improved in Wisconsin today? I mean, it's been raining like crazy. Fortunately, all that rain that hit Milwaukee and that flooding missed me, but 00:28 We've been getting rain like crazy every day and you know the bugs are destroying everything but I think the rain is holding off now. I woke up this morning and the sun was actually out and I was like, oh hello! Nice of you to stop in! It's not here yet, it's still cloudy and 70, I'm just still waiting for it to rain again but yeah we need the sun badly. Yeah, my husband dumped out the uh... 00:56 the rain gauge last night and he came in and he said, we got six and a half inches of rain from Saturday until yesterday. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. It's been terrible. I don't want to engage. Sorry. My range actually broke, so I got to try to fix it. So I'm like getting no nothing coming in, but yeah, you don't have any empirical data to work with. 01:22 I know. I'm kind of like, need to know how much rain I got, but it's a lot. That's all I got to say. Yeah. Last summer we had a terrible, horrible, no good growing season. this year it started out pretty good, but with all the rain and it's been so hot that we haven't been able to keep on. Our garden is slowly giving up the ghost. And I'm like, second year in a row, next year better. 01:50 We kind of, we kind of started out the same way. um, we, we, planted everything, but then we got some weird cold weather and then some really hot weather. like, I planted a bunch of beets and carrots and all of that and it came up, but then didn't do anything. but then like it started to, sorry, reseeded and then it started exploding. like I try to get. 02:18 I tried to do at least three harvests a year. So I started early as possible and, know, cover it up with frost blankets or things like that. And this year we're only going to get probably two. So, but that's okay. Um, my husband planted over 250 tomato plants. Whoa. And we thought we were going to be rolling in, in tomatoes by now, but because of all the rain and because it's so hot, we're starting to get the blight already. 02:47 And once that happens, we're screwed. so, and so, um, yeah, our hopes for raking in some money on tomato sales this year are now kind of down the tubes too. And I'm like, are you sure we're in the right gardening thing? You know, it's funny you say tomatoes. So like my wife looked at me, I think earlier, I know we were at our friend's house over the weekend and she's like, yeah, we don't have a lot of tomatoes. said, um, 03:13 We cut down our crop by half. So last year we had 10 plants. only got, well, we got six this year. She's like, Oh, that makes sense. Because like our, our like, I don't know, my, my, my dream or whatever last couple of years is really, you know, know, canning my stuff and then going downstairs and getting it. like that's been consuming all of our. 03:37 tomatoes and all that. But I also want to sell stuff too, but we're not able to do that because we just don't have enough plants outside right now. yeah, it was funny when you say that, you you guys have that many and I'm like, yeah, we had the same conversation, but it was the opposite. We didn't plant as many as we normally do. And then my wife is like, well, how can we not have any tomatoes? Well, because I cut it in half almost because you asked me to. It's really hard gardening with your spouse. 04:07 And I use the term gardening loosely because I'm not the gardener. husband. But I help him. I help him plan and I help him with, you know, he'll say, I'm thinking about getting this variety. I look it up and find out what's required. And I tell him, and then we make a decision together. he's the, he's the boots on the ground guy and I'm the logistical planning part. So she does all of our harvesting. 04:36 because so I'm, I'm colorblind. So for me, it's hard to really tell when those tomatoes are really ready to pull. I just, I just gave up. she does all the harvesting, but she lets, you know, the planning, the planting, the, know, I've been trying to take on the role of helping like store the stuff or do something with it. Cause a lot of times she was just cutting them up and freezing it. like, we got to look at other ways, but yeah, I like how 05:05 I like how spouses and that do get involved. For the most part, my wife likes gardening, but she can care less. She just wants to reap the

Today I'm talking with Nancy and Sylvia at Family Tree Food & Stories. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you use my link, https://amzn.to/4lDqg06, to buy the book, My Family Tree, Food & Stories: Your Personal Journal of Favorite and Memorable Foods, Recipes, and Stories to Remember and Share, I will receive a small commission. 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 00:01 Today I'm talking with Nancy May and Sylvia Lovely. What a wonderful last name. Thank you. Family Tree Food and Stories. Sylvia is in Kentucky. Kentucky, you got it. Nancy is in Florida. There you go. So good morning ladies. How are you? Good morning to you and so good to be with you. I love your voice. Thank Doing good. Yeah. Thank you. 00:28 I always feel weird when people say that because I don't hear it the way other people hear it, but that is totally fine. And what a lovely compliment. Thank you. Sure. All right. So what's the weather like in Florida, Nancy? It is warm and a little sticky. It's August, but that said, we have lovely air conditioning inside. So the weather inside is beautiful. It's sunny outside. And what's the weather like in Kentucky, Sylvia? 00:54 I might say a big ditto. It's about 95. It's very hot. The weather's supposed to break. I wish I was in Minnesota where my son lives in Duluth. It'd be a little cooler. He says it's cooler up there. But it's coming our way. So that's good news. Yes. Fall is definitely coming. I heard geese honking the other day and our trees are just starting. The maples are just starting to change. Wow. That's early. 01:20 And it's been cooler at night. mean, the last couple of nights it's been warm because we've had rain and thunderstorms, but it's coming. And I'm not sad to see the summer go. It has been so hot and so muggy here. That's what Ross says too, up in Duluth. But you're around the Minneapolis St. Paul area. Is that where you are? I am an hour southwest of Minneapolis. Okay. All right. 01:44 Yep. I am where the Jolly Green Giant started out. yeah, that's right. how cool. That's right. We did some work on that, didn't we, Nancy? It's been several episodes ago. And frozen foods for sure. Yeah, exactly. ho ho, Green Giant. Well, you just gave me a perfect opening. Tell me about yourselves and what you guys do. All right, Nancy, you want to go first? Sure. So I'm Nancy May and I'm the co-host of 02:13 Family Tree Food and Stories podcast. And we are also the co-author of a book called My Family Tree Food and Stories, which is a book that shows you how to take all your family recipes or the recipes that you love, whether it's family or not, and write the stories related to the recipes. Some are good, some are like, yeah, you know, those flops actually make good stories and good fodder for future conversations too. And there's always a way to fix a recipe and a meal. But let me see. 02:42 I am not the best cook in the world, but I keep trying and that's half the fun. But food is an outlet to be creative and bring family and friends together at the table. In fact, we just had a nice gathering of some friends at our home the other night and somebody said, oh, well, I don't cook at home for friends. Why not? Because I much rather do that than meet somebody at a restaurant because that way you actually know who they are as people in your home and whether you want to invite them back or not. 03:11 So that's kind of our, we like them or do we not like them? And let me piggyback onto that. I'll tell how we came together, Nancy. That could be an interesting thing. How did Florida marry Kentucky? We came together because of a local podcaster here. 03:31 in Lexington, Kentucky, which is where I am based. And he introduced us in the rest of his history. We just started clicking together. I mean, I guess that's kind of the best word for it. We compliment each other beautifully. I don't cook. I so admire, I own a restaurant, Azura Restaurant and Patio here in Lexington. It's high-end restaurant, lots of seafood, steak, and that kind of thing serves the local racetrack. And that's where 03:59 My husband and I love the community of the restaurant. That's why we got into it. The stories that come in a restaurant and come together are just amazing. So I've enjoyed my journey with Nancy. We are coming up on a year, I guess, of our podcast. And our book has been out there for a little more than a year. So yeah, real exciting. I love it. Congratulations on almost a year. And what's the book? What's the name of the book? It's called My Family, Tree Food and Stories. 04:26 And it's on Amazon and it's a journal slash memory book really of being able to look at your family history in your trees. And really how do you pair those stories around meals that you had with grandma or grandpa or mom or dad or your sister or brother or even just friends who have

Today I'm talking with Mark at Raised Bed & Container Gardening with Mark. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 to Mark at the Raised Bed and Container Gardening with Mark. And Mark is in North Carolina. Good afternoon, Mark. How are you? Good afternoon, Mary. It's good to be with you. It's good to have you. I love talking to people in North Carolina because you guys have the sweetest Southern drawl. 00:28 Well, sometimes I, my kids tell me I talk pretty country sometimes. It's really sweet and it's very easy to understand. Sometimes the drawl is so thick that I'm like, excuse me, what did you say? So it's great when I get somebody who sounds like sweet tea and a rocking chair on a front porch. makes me very happy. You said the weather has been raining there. Yeah, we've had a good bit of rain. We've had. 00:56 We had a really hot stretch during the summer and then some rains came in and it's kind of been cool for the last couple of weeks. as my grandfather would say, we had a zizzly zazzly this morning. It was, you could hear the rain just sizzling as it hit the ground. yes. I remember being a kid in Maine and we had a dirt road for a while and then they tarred it. 01:22 The first time it rained after they tired it in like August, it was so hot. I could hear it steam. I could hear that noise you're talking about, but I never heard it called a Zizzle Zazzle before. That's great. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Well, I am a, I'm a newspaper editor is my day job. I'm a sportscaster, which is one of the things I do for fun. And I, I'm a gardener pretty much, I guess it's in, it's kind of in the blood and 01:52 I particularly enjoy growing tomatoes. That's my big thing. My favorite food in the world is tomatoes. So a good tomato right off the vine is just the best thing in the world. So I stay really busy. Okay. How's your tomato season been? We had a really good season, but it came all at once and it was just... 02:20 Within two weeks and everything was done. don't recall having a season like that in the last few years, but it just, everything produced. They all ripened almost at the same time. We had some smaller like black cherry tomatoes that they lasted a little bit longer, but when the rains hit, it kind of ruined them. whatever was left there, they were done. Just got too much rain at one time. you know, sometimes those little tomatoes will 02:50 If they're near full grown, they'll pop open if you get too much rain. split. Yeah. Yeah. Our tomato season just really kicked in about two weeks ago and my husband planted over 250 tomato plants in the spring. So we are going to be swimming in tomatoes in a week. Oh yeah. That's awesome. Now what kind of tomatoes do you like to grow? He grows. Of course you asked me this and usually I can reel them off top of my head and now I'm like, what does he grow? 03:19 He grows early girls. grows, he tries to get sweet one million cherry tomatoes, but I think he just got sweet 100s this year. And the San Marzano tomatoes. I love San Marzano's. I have trouble though. I don't ever get any size on them. I wind up with a lot of kind of maybe they'll grow in two and a half, three inches long. 03:48 and be almost hollow inside. And I'm not really sure what's happening with mine on those. They taste great. They cook up well, but there's just not a lot of it. I'm not the gardener, but what I can tell you that I've observed with ours is that if it rains moderately and it's sunny reasonably, it seems to help them have more flesh on the inside. Okay. Because they need the water, but they need the heat too. 04:16 Yeah. The, uh, mean, San Marzano probably is my favorite tomato. It's such a good cooking tomato too, but it's got such a good taste because you just got all that flesh too. It's a, it's a good fleshy tomato. It makes something new. Go ahead. I'm sorry. It makes a killer sauce. Oh, it does. It does. Absolutely. Absolutely. I tried a new tomato this year. It was, I just out of curiosity. It's, 04:46 It was an Amish paste tomato and I bought the plants at the farmer's market and I paid a lot more than I wanted to for them, but I wanted to try them and they turned out really well. I'm saving seeds, so I'm hoping to have those next year, but they were a big thick plum tomato and it was about twice the size of the San Marzano, but really, really thick. we used to grow, or my 05:16 My father-in-law would grow something, he called it a hot dog tomato. And it was longer than a San Marzano and just there, you know how you got a little bit of a globe at the bottom of the San Marzano, not

Today I'm talking with Erika at Taste The Local Difference. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Erika at Taste the Local Difference. Good morning, Erika. How are you? Good morning. I am doing great. How are you? I'm good. Where are you located? I am in Michigan, just south of Ann Arbor. Okay. 00:26 Awesome. I'm going to be talking to an old friend on Monday morning for the podcast who lives right near Ann Arbor. So that's kind of funny. That's great. Yeah. What a small world. Yeah. He, he's a musician and he's, uh, older than me. I'm, I'm 55 and I know he's at least 10 years old than I am. So he remembers when, um, music was something you got on records and eight tracks and it should be really fun. Wow. That's cool. Very cool. Yeah. It'll be really fun. I'm excited. 00:56 Um, so what's the weather like in Michigan this morning? Thankfully, it is actually pretty beautiful. It has been quite hot and humid lately, so it's, it was nice. took a nice little walk this morning around my neighborhood and it was, it does seem to be getting a little bit cooler, but you know, what are you going to do? It's August. It's pretty normal for this time of year. Oh, for sure. And it's coming. 01:21 fall is coming. heard geese calling the other day. Some of our maple trees are starting to turn and that could just be the weather stress, but I really think we might be looking at an earlier fall. So that would be welcome after this very hot summer we've had. I'm in Minnesota, so it's been hot here too. Yeah, definitely. When I got up this morning, my husband had opened the kitchen window and the living room windows because our AC is broken. 01:50 Oh goodness. was awake at like 4.30 this morning because I get up early and I got my coffee and I was sitting in my living room, sipping my coffee and scrolling Facebook as I do. Everybody does these days. And I could hear the crickets chirping because the windows were open. It was just such a lovely way to start my day. Yeah, that sounds great. It really was because usually the windows are closed because the AC is running and you don't want to let the mugginess in. 02:18 when you're running an AC. So there's a blessing to our AC being out. I'm okay with it. It's true. Okay. So tell me a little bit about yourself and your role with Taste the Local Difference and what Taste the Local Difference is and what you guys do. Yeah. So I am the Director of Impact here. Which I love. I love that title. 02:41 Thanks. love it too. And, uh, so what we do is we do marketing for farms and local food and beverage businesses. And that also encompasses things like agritourism, farmers markets, restaurants, food trucks, et cetera, know, distilleries, craft beverage, anything along those lines. And, um, this is our 21st year. So. 03:09 We started in Michigan, but we work with businesses nationwide. We also have Michigan's food and farm directory, which is really cool. And we are just big believers in local food and local food systems, local food economies, and really uplifting the people who grow and make food and beverage for other folks to. 03:36 enjoy. And so we really like to be able to help them with marketing education and primarily marketing services. So folks can come to us for their websites, their e-commerce, you know, to do full branding, like if they need, you know, a logo and a brand kit, we do marketing strategy, email marketing setup, social media, pretty much the whole gamut if it's under marketing and 04:05 Then what my role overseas is, um, I do a lot of the marketing education here as well. So I just was teaching a webinar last night for one of our partners. And, uh, we also do what are called food systems impact partnerships. And so I will work with folks that are from like nonprofits. 04:30 governmental organizations, economic development agencies, universities, et cetera. And we partner with them to help support the folks that they work with. So a lot of times these are organizations that are supporting farmers or small food producers. And they will work with us to help either like subsidize marketing. 04:57 what is called in the industry, like technical assistance, which is basically marketing services and or marketing education. So that's what I do. So like right after this, I have a call with somebody who is in Vermont at a nonprofit that helps farmers and they have a farmer education program. So that call will be all about seeing, you know, if there's a way that we can partner together to help support the folks that they work with. 05:24 Okay, since you mentioned that, how much time do you have? Because I do

Today I'm talking with Helana at Her Wholesome Homestead Life. 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 Helana at Wholesome Homestead, and I don't know what state you're in. I'm in Michigan. In Michigan. So good morning, Helana. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. I'm really excited to have you talk with me because you said that you're new at the homesteading thing. 00:28 So first off, how's the weather in Michigan this morning? It's beautiful this morning. It's been really hot here lately, but yesterday we got a nice rainy day, so we definitely needed that. So yeah, today is beautiful. Here too in Minnesota. I mean, I'm kind of your lateral neighbor. We're a couple states apart, but good morning neighbor. It's sunny and it's cool. Thank goodness. So it's a great day. I love it. Our weather lady said that she wanted to call it a top 10 weather day today. 00:57 Yes, I can agree with that today. Yeah, so I hear a little one in the background cooing. Do you have a new baby? Um, yes, he's only a couple months old so he's new Nice and you have another one, right? Yes. I have a daughter who is a toddler Okay. Well, hopefully they'll let you chat with me without making too much noise Notice how I heard the baby cooing and I turned my voice down. That's really funny 01:25 Okay, so tell me about what you do at your homestead. So I am just getting started as we talked about. So basically I just have a garden and this is our second year doing it. So we're in a learning curve with what grows well here. So that's been fun. And then I've also dabbled in making sourdough bread. That's definitely what got me started in the whole homesteading thing. Like they always say, once you start doing sourdough. 01:54 You kind of go down that road of getting into everything else. So yeah. How is it going with the sourdough? The reason I ask is I have two sourdough starters on my counter downstairs and they didn't rise for like four days, even though I fed them and they're a good month old at least. And I was like, what am I doing wrong? 02:17 And then the temperature in the house went up and I fed them and they doubled. And I was like, oh, it's too cool in my house. That's what's going on. So how are you doing with it? I'm doing well. My sourdough starter, I started in February of 2023. So it's two years old now. And yeah, they're definitely very finicky with the temperature in your house. I've always found that if I feed it and I put it in the microwave, 02:45 and just let it stay in there. Then I usually have better luck with it rising when it should and all of that. I'm going to have to try that trick this winter because I know it's not going to be warm enough in the house. just know it. I always feel like such a dork when I notice that it's doubled in size the way it's supposed to. It's risen double. Because my sourdough for some reason, I started it from scratch. I built this thing. 03:10 There's so many big bubbles that you can see on the side of the jar on the inside. And every time I see that, I just have this big note of happiness ring in my head because it works. Yes. It's so exciting when it goes how it should because it's definitely a craft. And especially when you are making like a loaf, that's definitely a craft and a learning curve to like getting the bulk fermentation and everything right. Yeah. And it takes such a long time. 03:39 If your loaf comes out like a brick, all you want to do is cry. Yes. It's awful. I haven't had that happen. I've only made one loaf and it wasn't a brick, but it was definitely bagel texture. Yeah. And it tasted great and I love bagels. So I was quite pleased that I didn't come out with a brick. As long as it's edible, that's all that matters, right? Yeah. Yeah. They always say just bake it anyway and see what happens. And I'm like, I'm gonna stick to that. That's good advice. 04:07 So what made you get into homesteading? Like what was the impetus that sent you down this path? Honestly, it was when I was on maternity leave with my first child. I just like started going down the rabbit hole of being more natural living and trying to make as much as I can myself. So I know exactly what's in everything so that I feel more confident feeding it to my children and my family. So that's kind of what. 04:34 started the whole thing and like I said it started with the sourdough and it just kind of blossomed from there. I'm really proud of you and you're not the first person to tell me that they got into this because they were having kids because kids change your whole perspective on the world they really truly do. They do for sure. Yeah I had my daughter ma

Today I'm talking with Stephanie Hansen at StephaniesDish. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Stephanie Hansen at Stephanie's Dish in Minnesota. She's local, yay. I love it when people are local. And good morning, Stephanie. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. And I would normally ask about the weather, but I'm guessing you're in Minneapolis area? I am in Ely, Minnesota today. Oh, you're way up there. 00:29 of the true North cabin cookbook. It's where I wrote it. Um, we have a summer home here that's on an island in a middle of a lake. And so I kind of do the reverse commute and go back and forth. My husband stays up here most of the summer with our 92 year old mother-in-law. Oh, okay. So you're way up there. So how's the weather up North? It's nice. It's nice today. A little rain's coming in, but it's been a weird summer though. Uh, 00:57 lots of smoke from the Canadian wildfires. I'm a gardener and the garden has started out real slow. I'm finally starting to get beans and cucumbers and tomatoes and those kinds of things, but just kind of a weird summer. Second one in a row. Yay. I'm so sick of it. I'm praying. Like I spent the winter praying that this year would be moderate and it's been better than last year, but it hasn't been the three summers ago summer that was so beautiful. So 01:27 I don't know. We're all just going to do what we do. it's funny how it seems like September is like the old August where it's super hot and dry. That's also, summer is extended in some ways, but maybe starts later. Yeah. don't know. Climate change, global warming, weather patterns of 01:51 Billions of years, who knows? Either way, we're just all going to still keep trying to grow things because that's what we do. I'm in Lassour and it is sunny and cool. Thank goodness because our compressor on our air conditioner died yesterday. Oh, I did that last week. Got a new air conditioner and furnace and a home equity loan. Yeah, that's what we're looking at too. You're in Lassour, the home of the green giant. 02:21 Yes. And Sprout. Yes. Yes. We have the new billboard up that has the green giant and Sprout on it. I was driving back and forth to Jordan when they took the old sign down and put the new sign up. And every day there'd just be a little bit more of each character building on each other. That's great. It's fun. And it's so silly because every small town has something like that. 02:46 I didn't know that the Jolly Green Giant started out in LaSore. I had no idea and we were driving down here for the move. I was like, oh, oh, okay. And I had no idea that the guy that started the Mayo Clinic lived in a small house in town in LaSore too. Yup. So there's a lot of history here. And I grew up, I grew up on the East coast. So when I moved to Minnesota, like 30 something years ago, 03:14 I was like, ah, there's no history here. My history back home beats the history in Minnesota. And then when I started learning about Minnesota, I was like, um, I'm going to have to amend my opinion. Yeah, no offense, but it's very, uh, common to get sort of the East coast, West coast vibes of the Midwest. And then people come here and they're like, Oh, this isn't just flyover country. And particularly when you think about like the food scene. 03:43 We are the bread basket. know, much of the grain is grown in the Midwest. Much of the animal husbandry happens in the Midwest and a cheese making culture happens in the Midwest. So while we laud the fancy restaurants from both coasts, when it comes to like actual food production, we're doing pretty good. absolutely. And I'm not dissing on Minnesota. I've lived here a long time. It is beautiful. 04:11 And I had the choice five years ago when we were looking for a new home to decide whether I wanted to move back to Maine. And I was like, I don't want to. It's expensive. I'm already settled in this state. I know how to behave myself now. I'm just going to stay here. So it all worked out fine, but very disappointed to find out that we're going to have to drop probably five to $6,000 on a new air conditioner here in the next week or two. That is not a welcome Monday morning surprise. No, but 04:41 The good news, well, you're kind of, I mean, we're probably gonna get, cause state fair always gets super hot. For me, like getting the furnace done now, I was like, well, at least it won't be 30 below when I realized my furnace doesn't work. Yeah, we've done that before too. That is not a fun surprise either. Okay, so now that I've bitched about my AC problem, cause I knew I was going to, tell me a little bit about yourself, Ste

Today I'm talking with Dave Jackson at the School of Podcasting. You can follow on Facebook as well. “The School of Podcasting” Is a podcast that helps you discover the power of podcasting. It helps you avoid the common mistakes that podcasters make. From planning, producing, and promoting your podcast along with all the tools and techniques. If you're looking to start a podcast or a veteran podcaster, you can catch some great insights with this free podcast." "The School of Podcasting is for the person looking to launch their own podcast. They want to do it right the first time. They want to be seen as an expert, reach a global audience, make more sales, know their audience, meet like-minded people, and grow their community. I have great step-by-step tutorials that will show you how to use podcast software titles like Audacity (a free software package), Adobe Audition, Sound Forge, and more. These tutorials walk you through the entire podcasting process." If you use my affiliate link to join the School of Podcasting, I will receive a small commission. 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 Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting in Akron, Good afternoon, Dave. How are you? Mary, I'm doing great. Happy to be here. Good. I'm so glad you could come talk to me. And I'm going to preface this whole thing by saying that it probably seems odd that I invited basically a podcast coach to 00:29 visit with me on a tiny homestead, but some of my guests have asked, you know, have asked me about how to get started because they've expressed interest in wanting to start a podcast of their own. And so it does tie in also because podcasting is a craft and I talk to crafters and it's an art. It takes practice and it takes creativity. So it's an art and a craft. So having said all that. 00:56 Why, Dave, is a podcast a great way to promote a small business? Well, there's a few reasons. Number one, I always say when you start off, like time everything you do. And that way you can say, oh, wow, this took, you know, 10 hours to do a one hour podcast. And then you can go, do I have 10 hours a week to do a podcast? And if not, either make it shorter, or you're not doing a weekly show you're doing every other week or whatever it is. 01:24 So when you can come up with a schedule that you do on a regular basis, you become part of their routine. Like I listen to a show every Friday night. They drop it somewhere around two in the afternoon. And by six o'clock, I know it's going to be there. And I'm off to, this is how I party. I go to Walmart and I do grocery shopping. So, you know, that's how I'm rocking out on a Friday night. But I'm also listening to Adam Curry and Dave Jones on Podcasting 2.0. So you become part of their routine. And I've had people say, 01:52 because I publish every Monday morning and they're like, Dave, you're with me on the way, you know, you're with me on the way to the feed store. Or one guy said, I shower with you every Monday. And I go, that sounds a little weird, but okay. So that's one. So you're seen as reliable. And then when you give them content that they can use, they're like, oh, I, I like her. She's really helpful. He's great or whatever it is. And then if you can make a point with a story about whatever you're in your life, then they kind of get to know you. 02:22 So now you've got the whole no like and trust factor going. And so when you say, oh, I've got this new soap or I've got these new fragrances or whatever it is you're selling, they're like, oh, I'm going to check that out because you kind of start this law of reciprocity, which just basically means I've scratched your back with my podcast. Now you scratch my back by buying my stuff. But it is one of those things. know one time when I was married, I had a 16 year old. 02:50 who was dying to get his driver's license. And I found out within 20 feet of that kid, hey, can we go driving? Hey, can we go driving? And so I always say, in that example, I said, when you start a podcast, you need the passion of a 16 year old wanting to get their license. And so I had people email me, they're like, oh, I have one of those too. She almost killed me last week, you know, that kind of thing. So it's just a way for your potential customers to get to know you. And then 03:17 sometimes behind the scenes stuff, you're like, Hey, we're trying this, this new product, we're not sure if it's going to work. I know the there's a software company called Evernote, and they had a podcast where you had the CEO, the main marketing person, and I think the community manager all doing this podcast together. And how often can you send in

Today I'm talking with Mark Lawley at Practical Prepping. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Mark Lawley at Practical Prepping in Alabama. Good morning, Mark. How are you? Good morning, Mary. Doing well. How's the weather there this morning? This morning, it is fairly nice. We're at 83 degrees right now, which is a whole lot better than that 98 we were at last week. 00:30 Oh yeah, no doubt. It is exceedingly muggy in Minnesota this morning to the point that we had ground fog in our door yard this morning. We have had the exact same thing. I just looked over here at the weather station and we've got 76 % humidity here right now. Yeah, it's so gross. I can't wait until mid-September. Yeah, I'm ready for Thanksgiving. 00:55 I'm not quite there because I really do want our tomatoes to keep producing because we are going to be swimming in tomatoes by midweek next week. Well, we have some grandsons playing football and it's just not some, there's something not right about sitting at a football game wearing a t-shirt. You need to be wearing a jacket. And so I'm looking for football weather at least. Yeah. It's been. 01:21 I mean, I don't want to spend 20 minutes talking about the weather because it's boring, but the last two years have just been insane. And I really, really, really would like Mother Nature to become more moderate for next growing season because it has really messed with our farm. Yes. And not just the growing seasons and such, but you look around at some of the things that have happened this year. The floods, the earthquakes, the 01:50 The fires, the wildfires are somewhat normal. We're accustomed to having those. But we've been having more floods. We've been having, and in places that never flood, we've had hurricanes 200 miles inland that have caused floods, caused major power outages that have lasted four to six weeks in some areas. 02:16 And that's one of the reasons that we are trying to get people to be prepared. Yes, absolutely. And since we're talking about the weather, that actually was a really good lead-in to this particular episode. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Well, I'm retired law enforcement and have a long history of being involved in disaster relief. 02:46 I talk disaster relief, I've been on many disaster relief scenes coming in, in a number of capacities. And one of the capacities is chainsaw teams and mud out teams and such as that to help folks to recover afterwards. And what we actually do is we teach people how to be prepared for life's emergencies. That's what we do. Yep. 03:16 And really what we do from a prepping standpoint and you do from a homesteading standpoint is we live like our great grandparents and grandparents did in a lot of areas. Now, they didn't have all the modern conveniences that we have, but they prepared food for the winter. They had tools if something happened. 03:41 I have a house on the old home place where my dad grew up and where I grew up as a small kid. And when dad grew up, that was a working farm. When I grew up, it was a hobby farm. you didn't, if something broke, you didn't just jump in the truck and run to the store. You had to have on site what you needed to fix it or to deal with it. And it was just life for them. And so what we try to do. 04:12 is pretty much have everything that we could need. Well, to give you an example, last year I had a limb fall, poked a hole through the roof. So I got my ladder out, I got my things out, I went up there and I patched the roof. And about six months later we had a new roof put up. But I had those things to be able to do that. Something breaks, I want what I need here. And I learned some of that from my dad. 04:39 You need to have whatever you need to fix a problem at home. If it breaks at 10 o'clock on Tuesday, on, Saturday night. And that's plumbing, that's electrical, that's whatever. But I also have the skills to do those things. Yeah. I'm going to jump in just for a second. I am so baffled by the fact that so many young people don't have. 05:09 this information, you know, as part of their upbringing because I'm 55. Okay. My dad just turned 82 on July 30th and he acts like he's 55 still and he still acts like he needs to be ready for anything coming down the road. And he does, everybody does. Right. And they taught my siblings and I how to prepare for things that we couldn't see coming. Right. 05:39 And I taught my kids because they watched me do it when they were growing up. how in heck did we lose this? Well, we're two generations into soft. Let me call it that. We're two generations into being

Today I'm talking with Miss Jenny at Wild Roots Nature School. 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 Miss Jenny at Wild Roots Nature School in Indiana. Good afternoon, Miss Jenny. How are you? I'm wonderful. Hi, Mary. It's such a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to have you. The reason I'm calling Miss Jenny Miss Jenny is because I'm sure that's what her little 00:28 humans call her at school. Or Miss Jimmy. Those that can't quite pronounce Miss Jenny, they'll say Miss Jimmy. I love it. love what you're doing because I love little kids. Teenagers are a whole different ball game, but little kids are adorable. Yes, they are. My little sprouts make every day so much brighter. But I have a teenager too, so I'm balancing both of them. 00:58 in life right now. So yeah, and they both have their stellar moments, but teenagers are hard. It's really hard to know what kind of mood they're going to be in, what kind of reception you're going to get to something you say. It's just a whole different thing. It sure is. So anyway, what's the weather like in Indiana today? It's absolutely gorgeous. So it's a little bit of a breeze, the sun shining. 01:26 The birds are chirping. It's great. It's not so humid and hot as it has been over the last couple weeks. So I think things are cooling down a bit. Yeah, the Midwest has gotten its butt kicked in the last couple of weeks with temperatures and humidity. I'm in Minnesota and it's still muggy here, but it's not hot today. So that's helping. Yes, it's quite a relief. Yeah. 01:53 have said before and I will say it until the day I die. hate high summer. And for me, high summer is mid-July till the end of August because Minnesota is so crazy from in that timeframe. We never know what the weather is going to be. We could have the most beautiful 65 degree day with a breeze or we could have 105 with tropical dew point or we could have a tornado. You never know. 02:21 So summer is not my favorite season. Spring and fall are my favorites and I wish that we could just do six months of spring and six months of fall. That would be perfect for me. And the mosquitoes add a whole new challenge to being outside all day. Yeah. And the black flies. We don't have too much trouble with that, but the mosquitoes run us out of here sometimes. We have black flies every spring and 02:49 my husband will come in and he'll have blood dripping down the side of his neck because they bite him behind his ears. Oh no. Yeah. And they don't, they have, they must have some kind of anesthetic thing in their saliva because he never realizes he's been bitten until I'm like, um, you might want to go get a wet cloth and wipe your neck. And he's like black fly. Oh my goodness. So yeah, it's, uh, nature is wonderful. It really is. But there are things that you have to deal with to 03:18 get that wonder. So, absolutely. right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. So I am the founder of Wild Roots Nature School, which is a nature-based home school nestled right in my own backyard, right here in Indianapolis. It's a play-based 03:43 program where kids are welcome to be wild and free and barefoot and kind of have the freedom to choose how they want to play most days. So it's a emergent type curriculum where I follow the lead of the child in the interest of the children. so if we find 04:13 a caterpillar that will lead to discussions on the life cycle of a butterfly or right now you can probably hear them. They're very curious about the cicadas and lots of lots of cicada shells in every pocket that I find. So yeah, it's a mixed age group of kids ages three to six. 04:43 And it's just, you know, I grew up like the barefoot running around with my friends and my sister in the fields making friendship soup out of weeds and pine cones. And I think that not many kids have that opportunity to learn and play outside every day anymore. 05:10 Um, there's such a big focus on kindergarten readiness and, um, academics that they just can't play anymore. There's such a, so much pressure to be prepared for school. So we slow it down a bit and focus more on just playing and learning through play and, and they're learning all the time. And it's, it's just beautiful. Lots of giggles and, um, 05:40 Yeah, they just have a blast. Lots of light bulb moments too. Oh yeah. Yep. So we have chickens and kittens and currently we found three black swallowtail caterpillars when we were harvesting our carrots in the garden one morning. So we've put them in an enclosure and we've been able to observe the life cycle and 06:09 Unfortunately, we were on vacation last week, but we came home to three ch

Today I'm talking with Danette at Cookies in a bag by Danette. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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. 00:11 Today I'm talking with Danette, well Danette, at Cookies in a Bag by Danette in Kentucky. Good morning, Danette. How are you? I am fantastic. Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome. And it is Danette. It's not Donette, right? My mother actually born and raised Danette, because I was going to be Dan if I was a guy, but I'm not. So I was Danette. But I actually am kind of. 00:36 I a bit when I was about 18. I went off to college and I changed it from Danette to Dinette. So just the same name but just slightly pronounced different. yeah, so, Dinette. Cookies in a bag by Dinette. I just hate it when I pronounce people's names wrong because I have very Oh, you're so fun. I have very easy names. I have Mary, I have Evelyn for my middle name, and I have Lynn for a nickname. And those are all really easy. 01:04 That is. Okay. So what's the weather like in Kentucky this morning? Fantastic. Absolutely beautiful. It poured and rained all evening yesterday. Um, but it's fine. It was in the evening and that means I don't have to water plants today. Um, but I love the rain in the evening and at night because it just makes everything green and lush and beautiful. And we've had a great week here in Paducah, Kentucky. So no complaints from me. Good. Cause I know it's been really hot. 01:33 everywhere and I'm in Minnesota. It is a lovely day outside. is sunny. It is cool. There's not even a breeze. don't think. Great. That's awesome. I'm happy. for us. gardening. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So I really wanted to talk to you because you do cookies in a bag. It is a really simple concept. It really is. But I had never thought of putting it in a bag. 02:03 I had heard about the jars, but I hadn't thought about a bag. So tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, if you look at my bags, they're actually shaped like mason jars. So this really is sort of what you said. This is a very simple concept, but hopefully done well. And it has just surpassed my wildest expectations. went into business. Well, actually about 2004, I was like a big 02:33 PTO president at my children's elementary school and we had this fundraiser called shop till you drop. It was brand new and you know the first year for anything is the hardest. And so we were trying to get vendors to come into our gymnasium and pay $50 for a table. And you know, like we had the local Pampered chef lady and then we actually had businesses. We'd reach out to like a local gardening center and have her bring her stuff in. And so, you know, I was. 03:00 just using my very best persuasive skills and it was going pretty good but we had a few empty spots and several of my friends said, oh my gosh, Jeanette, why don't you set up a table? You're a fantastic baker. And this was in between Christmas and Thanksgiving. So like a week after Thanksgiving. So three weeks until Christmas. And they're like, why don't you sell your cookies and cakes? And I was like, well, I appreciate the fact that you think I'm good enough to do that, number one, but nobody wants. 03:29 cookies three weeks before Christmas, you know? They want them at Christmas. And so I was like, gosh, how can I give people what they want, but when they want it? And I'd always seen those little glass jars, you know, like the, I want to say they used to sell them in our farmers market. There was this Amish lady there who always sold baked goods. 03:52 And so I was like, oh, that's cute. I could kind of do something like that, but I really don't want to deal with glass jars or anything. That seems like a pain and things could break. And I was like, how can I do this in a more simpler manner? And so I came up with these little cute clear plastic. Actually, my colors are all red and white with polka dot and stripe. And so I came up with these cute little plastic bags, not the ones I have now, but they were just like a cellophane bag. 04:21 with a flat bottom and I filled them with my contents. Like these are my homemade recipes. Like literally I created or came up with or my mother handed down to me every single recipe that I sell. And so I just had four or five recipes and then I would put the chips on top. So I mixed everything in. It wasn't like the layers like the, that used to be in the glass jars. I mixed everything together and then I put. 04:47 the chips or the toppings or whatever on top. So it would kind of look cute. And then I had this adorable little red bow and I set up, I don't know, I made a hundred or something and I was like, oh my gosh, how's this goi

Today I'm talking with Brittany at Hillside Harvest Farms. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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. 00:10 Today I'm talking with Brittany at Hillside Harvest Farms in California. Good afternoon, Brittany. How are you? Good. How are you doing? I'm good. I had to think about whether it was morning or afternoon because you're in California. Yes. They're an hour behind us, so it's afternoon now. We're actually two hours. And I was so nervous. I was not going to figure out the time change. But it's 11 o'clock, so we're still morning here. 00:36 Okay, well good morning to you and good afternoon to me. How's that? Thank you. Perfect. How's the weather in California today? We have actually had like a fairly mild summer. So it makes me a little nervous what our August and September is going to be like into October, because we'll be like 110 into October. So I'm a little nervous, but the summer has been great so far. Awesome. My daughter used to live in LA. lived there for 01:06 like over three years. then she made a lateral move to Florida. Oh my gosh. I'm like, okay, that's interesting. Well, you'll still have oranges and lemons. That's good news. Uh huh. Oh yes. It is kind of a gray day here in Minnesota. It's overcast and it's not really muggy, but it's not really not muggy if that makes any sense. Uh huh. Uh huh. And it's not hotter than hell. So that helps. 01:35 That's always nice. Yes. After the week we put in last week, I'm very happy to have it be cooled down. Yes. Okay. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Well, we live in Paso Robles, California. We moved here about three years ago. My husband and my two boys. 01:57 We're, my husband and I are both from California, but we went to school in Utah and lived there for quite a few years. And then we're able to move back here to California, which we were really excited about. Um, we don't live in typical California. We're very rural. Um, and just, it's, it's so beautiful out here. about an hour from the coast in central California and wine country. And just love being out here. We're on about three acres and. 02:26 have goats and chickens and pigs and ducks and about an acre garden and a little farm stand down at the bottom of the driveway. And we just have so much fun doing all that. Very nice. And California is an odd state because you've got high fashion, you've got Silicon Valley, you've got the, assume the wine industry is pretty big. You've got. 02:54 citrus fruits that are pretty big. And then you've got all the agriculture. Yes. So there's so much agriculture. I love it. We actually just went to Tahoe over the weekend. It's about a six hour drive. And besides just the quick drive through Sacramento, we were just driving through orchards and vineyards and just it was almost completely agriculture and it was such a fun drive and I love it so much. 03:24 I forgot a big one. have movie production out there too. Yes, we do. Uh-huh. I know. It's so, I love how diverse the state is. And it's really cool. I love being in a small town. It's about three hours to our closest international airport. It was really funny when we moved from Utah to California, everybody was like, what are you doing? 03:47 Like it's just, you're just going to be moving to the city. And I'm like, I don't think you understand where we're moving to in California. Like it's so much smaller than where we're living now. I don't, I don't think you quite understand where we're going. Yeah. And I'm, I don't necessarily want to make the podcast all about Mary today, but Minnesota is, is odd like that too. When you hear Minnesota, when anyone hears Minnesota. 04:16 They make Minneapolis St. Paul, which are the two biggest cities in the state. And they're right next to each other. But southern Minnesota is cornfields, soybean fields, and alfalfa fields. And northern Minnesota is pine trees and the boundary waters and cabins. so it's funny to me when people immediately assume big city when they hear Minnesota. like, no, there's... 04:43 There's very little acreage that is big city in Minnesota. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It's so funny. Yeah, but it's great. We love it here. Last year, we opened our farm stand for our first year, and that was so much fun. And it was just a little trailer last year. And this year, we built a greenhouse and a little shed. So that's been a lot of fun. 05:10 I do a lot of canning and preserving and we grow a lot of our own meat and my husband's family, have a 40 acre avocado ranch in a little town called Cayucas that they have, they raise steer. So we have our own meat, our beef cows that we raise. so it's, it's a lo

Today I'm talking with Jess at Apocalypse Acres. 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/lewismarye 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 Jess at Apocalypse Acres in Florida, and you can hear the birds singing in the background. How gorgeous is that? Good morning, Jess. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. Thank you so much. How's the weather, Jess? Right now, it's beautiful. It's the perfect temperature to go outside and get stuff done, but that doesn't last very long. 00:27 probably have like another half an hour before it's almost unbearable to be outside. you're killing that half hour with me. I'm so sorry. Oh, no. That's okay. It's worth it. Okay, good. Um, I'm in Minnesota and it is cool and sunny and like a tiny little breeze happening. So that's kind of a welcome relief. Nice. We always have a breeze because we have, we have a big like 40 or 50 acre 00:54 pasture next door to us and it just happens to be that the wind is always blowing across that. So even when it's not really windy elsewhere, we always have a breeze. And so even when it's really hot, it still feels pretty good here. must be nice. It's been real sticky hot in Minnesota up until yesterday. Yesterday was gorgeous and today's looking to be pretty nice too. Okay. So why is it called Apocalypse Acres? Well, when I first moved here, 01:22 And I've been here for five years now. I was travel nursing up in Wisconsin actually, and I lost my travel nursing contract because of COVID. So when I moved in here, it was about two, not even two or three months after the COVID lockdown started and happened and all of that was going on. And it felt very like post-apocalyptic kind of at that point, or like things seemed really crazy. people still weren't going out in public and people were still really focusing on like trying to 01:52 try to homestead for a purpose of not, know, because the shelves were empty in the stores and things like that. So Apocalypse Acres just ended up kind of making sense. And the reason we chose that type of a name is because growing up, my grandparents had a 10 acre farm called Pickery Acres. And so we kind of just put a spin on that. Okay, um, on the whole COVID thing. 02:17 I was talking with a friend like six to eight months into it after lockdown started in March of 2020. I said that it was the quietest apocalypse ever. I had no idea the first apocalypse I experienced was going to be so quiet. In a good way. It was nice, wasn't it? Yes. And I've said this a few times on the podcast, but I'm going to say it again. 02:46 COVID was a horrible thing to have happen, but there are so many amazing things that came out of it. And I hear about them all the time from people on the podcast. Yeah, things have changed for sure. It was like a weird tipping point for everybody. Hold on one second. I'm so sorry. Alexa, stop. And I hear about things all the time and there's negative things too, like some stores and pharmacies and things like that not being open 24 hours and not planning to ever open 24 hours again. 03:16 Um, but I think that there are quite a few positives too, that kind of outweigh, you know, some of those negatives. Yeah, it was the craziest time and I'm glad that we're mostly through it. I actually had COVID diagnosed for the first time in January of this year. That was not fun. And, uh, I slept like 18 hours a day for four days in a row, and then I was fine. So I got the very pale version of COVID. 03:45 Yeah, for sure. I had the bad one, but then I had it most more recently too. And I also had it when I was pregnant, which was really scary. Oh, not good. Yeah, but back to kind of the apocalypse thing, I think. We, my wife and I, we go to Wasteland Weekend, which is out in California every year or every other year as we can. And it's a five day it's kind of like Burning Man, but it's post apocalyptic. 04:13 Costumes are required. It's fully immersive. No one's really on their phones and you go camp, primitive camping in the desert with like 1500 other people and it's fully like Mad Max, Furiosa, like, you know, a dystopian society. And so we want our farm to be kind of like that. So we've actually filmed a couple of movies here on our property and we've, we actually won an award for like set design and production for a movie that we filmed here called Hinders. 04:44 That is so fun. You're very talented. And I had no idea that you did that. That's amazing. I would love to talk about filmmaking. And if I was a filmmaking podcast that I would have you back, but I'm not. what, so what do you do at your homestead? Well, our main crop, I guess, is super hot peppers. So we grow super hot peppers, and then we make hot pepper jelly. And th

Today I'm talking with Lauren at Wildflower & Bone Company. 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/lewismarye 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 Lauren at Wildflower and Bone Company in Oklahoma. Is that right, Lauren? Yes, it is. Okay. Good afternoon, Lauren. How are you? I am great. How are you? I'm good. What's the weather like there? We are actually extremely hot right now. think we've... 00:30 for the last five days. 00:34 I am so sorry to hear that. Today is the first day in probably five days that it hasn't been unbearably muggy in Minnesota. Oh my. So I'm taking a big deep breath of much less wet air today. Yes. Yes. We, my boys want to go outside all the time and I hate having to tell them not right now. Yeah. Unfortunately tomorrow we're going to be under a, a wildfire smoke. 01:04 thing again from the Canada fires. Oh no. Yup. So you you can't win for losing, but I guess you take the gifts you're given. If that's a gift, yes. Well, today is. Today is really beautiful and not hot. And I don't have to have the AC running in my room right now where I'm recording. And that's a good thing because otherwise you would just hear the hum from the air conditioner. 01:34 Right now our air conditioner cannot keep up. Yeah, we had a day like that a couple weeks ago where it was set for 72 and the house got to 78. Yep. It's ridiculous. I think I have it at 70 right now and it's 75. Yeah. I'm not gonna lie. I love spring and I love fall. And if we could just stay, you know, have six months of spring and six months of fall, I would be thrilled. 02:04 I agree with that. So I'm, I'm very much looking forward to September. I just have to get through August to get there. That's all. Yes. Okay. So you're a crafter. Tell me about yourself and what you do. Okay. So I am 29 years old. Um, I taught elementary school for about six years, um, resigned. And then I'm currently going back to school. 02:32 to be a speech pathologist. So about 10 years ago, I picked up my first skull. We own a ranch or partial owners of a ranch. And I painted one and then just put it to the side. probably five years ago, I had someone reach out to me asking me to paint something for a silent auction. 03:00 for a cancer patient. And so for the last five years, I've done that. And then I had so many people reach out after this last silent auction that I decided, let's go out and make it a business. So I'm going to school full time, a stay at home mom of two and starting a business. an artist who's starting a business. Yes. Very nice. 03:30 I have a quick question about your speech pathologist thing. a speech pathologist someone who does speech therapy with people or what did you do or what do you do? Yes, it is for speech therapy. Okay. And is it, I don't know how to ask the right questions about this. Is it for people who have hearing loss? Is it for kids that have tongue ties? How does it work? 03:58 It kind depends on the area you specialize in. Generally, a speech pathologist will work with all sorts of patients. So elderly with hearing loss, children who are born deaf, tongue ties are very common. 04:17 The audiologist side, which is a whole nother degree, are the ones who really work on the hearing. A speech pathologist basically makes it just so they can communicate in everyday life, whether that be AAC, which is assistive devices, or teaching them how to speak. 04:45 Okay, well, as someone who started a podcast almost two years ago and is highly entertained by the way that people talk and how they pronounce things, the minute you said speech pathologists, I was like, ooh, what an interesting job. Okay. So, um, a podcast that's only audio is terrible for, um, talking with crafters because crafters want to show 05:14 the things that they make. But if people would like to see your work, they can go to your Facebook page and I would highly recommend that because the skulls that you paint are beautiful. Oh, thank you very much. I do have an Instagram as well, but it's also wildflowerandboneco. I do post there quite a bit as well. Yeah, the photos that you have posted on both Facebook and Instagram are just stunning. 05:44 I saw the name of your business on Facebook, that's how I found you. And I was like, wow, Flora and Bone, what's that? And I scrolled down and I was like, oh my God, I wanna talk to her. Okay, so what, like I'm terrible about these crafter interviews because I'm not an artist. I used to draw, I used to paint when I was a kid, but I haven't done it in forever. 06:13 What kind of designs do you do? I will honestly do absolutely anything. One of my favorite pieces that I've ever done was for a friend's late grandfather. And it was one

Today I'm talking with Julia at Farm Fresh Wife. 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/lewismarye 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 Julia at Farm Fresh Wife in Pennsylvania. Good afternoon, Julia. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. What's the weather like in Pennsylvania? Is it hot? Oh my goodness. It is think around 90 some degrees, but the humidity has been around 95 to 99%. So it is 00:29 kind of gross. I'm so sorry. The good news is it has finally broken here in the upper Midwest in Minnesota. So maybe in a couple of days it'll be bearable in Pennsylvania. Uh, it says next week it's supposed to be around 70, like upper seventies and a little bit of rain hopefully tomorrow. So I'm looking forward to that. I think the whole freaking country is ready for it to not be so hot and sticky. 00:55 Yeah, my kids have been spending more time inside. They go from the pool to the house. That's about it. Yeah. And let's just start this off with congratulations on the newest baby. Well, thank you. 01:09 I saw pictures on your Facebook page and he is adorable. He is really good. I can't complain. All of my kids have been really good sleepers and babies and so far he's been really well behaved for us so I can't complain. You are so lucky. My youngest kid, I birthed three and I have a stepson. My youngest baby that I birthed did not sleep through the night solid until he hit kindergarten. 01:39 Oh my goodness. My little brother was like that. He was the worst baby. And of course, my room was next to my parents' room at the time and he would wake up like every half an hour. So I dreaded that when I wanted to have kids, but I can't say much now. Like I know I'm lucky. Yeah, you really are. And I mean, we're all lucky to be privileged to be moms, but if you get a baby that sleeps through the night, you are very blessed. Absolutely. Okay. So. 02:07 Tell me a little bit about yourself and Farm Fresh Wife. So I am 29. My husband and I have known each other for 13 years. We've been married for five years as of July 11th. We have a farm out in Jonestown, Pennsylvania. We raise beef cows. I have obviously the dairy goats. But actually before I started my business, I worked in healthcare. 02:38 After we had our second child, I was working full-time nights and I just kind of got tired of it. I came home one day and I said, I'm buying Dairy Goats. He goes, do you have a plan? I said, no, not really. I said, but I found two on Craigslist and I'm going to go pick them up next week. He said, okay. Then I started making soap in our garage and I watched a lot of YouTube. I talked to a lot of people. I even took a couple classes. 03:07 That's just kind of how it started. was really just on a whim that I was like, I want to do something for myself. I grew up in a family of business people. My mom used to have a garden center and she does gourd crafts and she's been doing that for 20 some odd years. And my dad has done construction and landscaping for a very long time since he was like 16. So having a business or like 03:36 being business oriented has always kind of been a part of me. I worked for both my parents growing up. So it just, kind of was more appealing to me than having to wake up every day and work for somebody else and leave my kids at home. And, you know, it was kind of like, it turned into like a vicious cycle where everyone was tired and, you know, they needed mom and mom wasn't home. I was working 12 hour shifts. 04:02 And then it was like, hi bye to my husband. You know, we weren't going to bed at the same time or we weren't waking up at the same time because we worked opposite shifts. So it was kind of just like taking a leap. know, at this point I'm three, almost four years into it. And now I'm referred to as like the goat soap lady and I love it. It like, tickles me pink that people actually know who I am and they come looking for me at craft shows and stuff now. And it's actually, it's helped. 04:31 you know, cover a couple extra costs here and there. And I get to be home with my kids and do extra stuff here on the farm too. That is amazing. And the entrepreneurial, that's a hard word to say for anybody, is strong in you because of your parents. And that's great. Um, when you said that you've been making soap for four years, almost everybody I talked to on the podcast makes some 04:59 form of skincare or soap in, you know, whether they do it to sell it or whether they just do it because they like to do it. I'm astounded that Procter and Gamble is still in business. Yeah, I, it was funny though, cause COVID was, you know, that was kind of the turning point. That's when my oldest son was born. And like I said, it was j

Today I'm talking with Jason at Sow The Land. You can follow on Instagram as well. 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/lewismarye 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 Jason at Sow The Land in North Carolina. Good morning, Jason. How are you? Good morning. Doing well. Thank you for having Good. Thank you for being here. I know that you all are very busy people and I really appreciate the fact that you take time to talk with me. How's the weather in North Carolina this morning? 00:29 This morning early this morning. It was very nice Before the Sun comes up, know or right before it's about to come up. It's really nice But like right now we've had a pretty good heat wave here this week You know, I think high of 95 which that's pretty hot for us because I'm we're kind of more in the mountains And humidity is there still 00:55 But other than that, know, it's sunny. We got a little bit of rain, maybe five minutes of rain yesterday, which we needed. But other than that, it hasn't rained here in a good week or two. Okay. Well, I'm in Minnesota and it's been very hot here and we've gotten over five inches of rain in the last four days. Which I mean, it's better than last year because last year it was a drought by now. We had hardly any rain. Yes. 01:23 That was us too, I believe. Yes, that was us too. We had quite a bit of rain in the beginning of this summer, which was nice. I think that was kind of like normal. But yeah, I remember last year we had a good drought. Yeah, and the thing is the rain has been fabulous for our over 250 tomato plants. I just ate the first tomato yesterday and they are so sweet. They are fantastic. Yeah, nice. But... 01:48 but all the off and on rain pretty much did in our cucumbers and we have no viable cucumber plants this year. I'm so sad. Oh man, I know. Yeah, it's always sad times. So I begged my husband the next time he's at the farmer's market, because we sell our stuff at the farmer's market. I said, next time you're there, trade tomatoes for cucumbers, please. And he said he would. So we're good. And it is the first day in 02:15 Oh, a week or so that it hasn't been sweaty, sticky hot at 5 a.m. So I'm counting my blessings. Yeah, that's wonderful. It really is. I record in my upstairs bedroom and I can't have the air conditioner on when I'm recording because you would hear the hum. Oh, yeah. And the last few interviews I've done, I've been like, oh my God, it's so hot upstairs without the AC. So thankful that it's cooled down finally, because it's been gross. 02:45 Yeah. Okay. So tell me about yourself and about Sow The Land. Yeah. So we have a homestead farm in Western North Carolina. We as in me, my wife and my daughter, she's now a We've been doing this since 2016. We first started when we first moved out in North Carolina, we started at one and a half acres and then 03:15 lived there for six years and now we're on 14, which we've been here about three years now and where we grow a lot of our food, not all of it, but you know, currently we have a 72 foot high tunnel that we grow in plus a 1200 square foot outside garden and then some raised beds. We also have raised pigs, cooney cooney pigs, which 03:45 If you're not familiar with them, they are probably the cutest pigs that you'll ever see. And they're very easy going. If you're new to pigs, they're a great pig to start off with. And they're very gentle on the land. hear they're sort of friendly too. Oh, they are. You could train these pigs easily to follow you around. You know, we butcher them for meat. I mean, that's a little hard because they are cute. 04:15 You know, but we breed them here too. And we've had them since we lived here. So I guess in three years, we have a breeder pair and we breed them. then we also had two, we raised two steers here. do, geez, this year, think we've almost 300 meat chickens this year that we're raising. 04:43 You know, we have 40 egg layers and we move everybody around on pasture, in the woods, constantly moving these little pig and chicken structures everywhere. And we also have our own YouTube channel and the whole time while doing all of this, we film what we're doing. it's kind of been, you know, as we're learning this lifestyle, 05:13 kind of sharing what we're learning and just documenting that for folks who want to watch what we're doing. Well, good on you because trying to video the things that you're doing takes time and patience and skill. So I'm really proud of you for sharing it. It definitely does. It's a whole other aspect that some people, know, when you're watching us doing something, you kind of don't realize that that's what we're You know, and it's just so, you know, 05:42 Editing v

Today I'm talking with Deborah Niemann at the Thrifty Homesteader. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Debra Neimann at the Thrifty Homesteader in Illinois. Good mor- well, it's noon. Good day, Debra. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me. Ah, thank you for being here. Um, what's the weather like in Illinois today? Insanely hot. 00:26 Um, we actually have this really horrendous thing called evapotranspiration. Um, Illinois is actually more humid this time of year than the Gulf coast because of corn sweat. Um, all of these billions of acres of corn and soybean are drying out in the fields, releasing their moisture into the air. So, um, we have a heat advisory today, even though it's only like, um, only supposed to be 90 degrees. 00:55 But the heat index gets dangerously high because of the high humidity. Yeah, we're here in Minnesota, where we live, around my house. It's all corn fields and there's a soybean field across the road from us. And I can remember my dad and my mom mentioning corn sweat when I was a kid and being like, that's gross. I don't want to know about that. That sounds terrible. 01:22 Yeah, I swear to you it is hotter on our property than it is in town, which is four and a half miles away when it's like this because of that trans evaporation or whatever it's called. Yeah. Evapotranspiration. Yep. Crazy. Yep. But it's summer in the Midwest. So there you go. Yep. It's pretty brutal. Yeah. Somebody told me that 01:49 When I moved to Minnesota, they were like, oh, you live in the Midwest now. And I thought, you know, I don't think Minnesota is Midwest. And I had to look it up and it's upper Midwest. So I learned something because somebody was like, oh, you're a Midwestern or now you're a flatlander. I was like, um, okay. Cause I grew up in Maine. Oh yeah. And my dad called people in, in the Midwest flatlanders. 02:17 and goat ropers. And I was like, you know, that seems really mean. I don't think that you should call people names who live in other states just because you're so in love with yours. And my mom would laugh and say, he's right. It is pretty flat in Illinois. I'm like, oh, okay. All right. Well, the weather here is not as miserable as it was yesterday, but not as lovely as it's going to be tomorrow. 02:44 Nice. Hopefully you're sending in the nicer weather our way. Supposedly it's going to cool down toward the end of the week, but I'm not sure I trust it just yet. Yeah. Cause you know, weather, who knows what it's going to do. Exactly. All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Well, uh, we moved to the country in 2002 to grow our own food organically because 03:14 I wanted my family to eat healthier and get natural exercise. When I was growing up, I ate lots of fast food and convenience food and I was sick all the time. And when I got pregnant the first time was when I learned about the connection between your diet and your health. And that was such a wildly revolutionary idea to me. Like, oh my gosh, so like, if my kids have a healthier diet, maybe they won't be sick all the time like I was. 03:43 And so that was where it started, you know, and we were originally shopping at health food stores all the time, spending a lot of food on money because I had started reading labels. And finally, in the early 2000s, we started looking for a place in the country because I realized the only way I was going to be able to get the kind of food I really wanted to feed my family was for us to grow it ourselves. And so we did. 04:09 Um, we ultimately found 32 acres on a Creek in the middle of nowhere, about a hundred miles Southwest of Chicago. Um, I always say we're an hour from everything. Um, but anyway, we started, we were so clueless. I had this crazy idea that people have been growing their foods since the dawn of agriculture. So how hard could it be? Right. Um, cause everybody would ask me like, Oh, did you grow up on a farm? And I say, no. 04:38 And they're like, well, how do you know what to do? And I was like, oh, it's not that hard. Like, I seriously thought you just plant some seeds in the ground, come back a few months later and harvest dinner and that any mammal, every mammal lactates and they're all just gonna let you stand there and take their milk. it was so unbelievably naive when we got started. 05:04 Okay, so I don't want people to think that it's extremely hard to do this though, because it's not. But you do need to do a little bit of learning and research and hopefully make a friend with a farmer who can tell you the secrets. Yeah, and read books and stuff. I was very ada

Today I'm talking with Deb at the MeanderingCottage Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Deb at Meandering Cottage Homestead in Michigan. Good morning, Deb. How are you? I am fantastic. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Michigan? It is entirely too warm and very muggy. Same in Minnesota. 00:28 literally under a heat warning, excessive heat warning for the whole day today. Yeah, you know, you live in a northern state, you don't expect it to get this hot. This is just not right. 00:42 You would think that it would not happen, but global warming apparently is an actual thing, climate change. So we're experiencing that. guess that's what it is. My dad says that there are seasons and cycles to weather, and he's not sure that we're actually suffering through anything new or different. It's just the seasons and cycles. But I have no idea because I am not a climate scientist. 01:10 Tell me about yourself and about Meandering Cottage Homestead. Well, geez, I don't really know where to start. My parents moved up to Northern Michigan from like the Ann Arbor area when I was 14 years old. And I watched them build their own house. They saw their own lumber and everything off their property. 01:38 built their homestead from nothing. And I was so intrigued and impressed and just all the things with that. yeah, it just kind of happened from there. I mean, after I graduated, I thought maybe I might want to go back to the city. So I went back to Ypsilanti. That lasted about, I don't know, maybe six months. And I came back home. 02:07 I just, didn't want to be in the city anymore and here we are. Okay. Why is it called meandering a cottage? Well, the little house that I have, it's a, I'm sorry, my cat wants to play right this moment. It's the little house that I got. It's, it reminds me of a little cottage. I used to go camping and, 02:35 do little cabins and things like that with my parents when I was younger, the whole family did it. And I don't know, I just thought it was always so neat being in a small little space just always felt so comfortable and cozy. And I also like the idea of like little paths around your property. You just have all these cool little nooks and 03:01 just neat little places tucked away and out of the way places on your property. I thought, you know, meandering cottage just sounds like where I want to be. I love that. And I know exactly what you're talking about. When I was growing up in Maine, people had homes on lakes and here in Minnesota, it's a big deal to go up to the cabin up north. And a lot of those. 03:28 going up to the cabin spaces are actually big homes. They're not cabins. And when I was growing up, these were actually little lake cabins and it felt like being in a dollhouse. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of, I mean, I decorated my place. It's, it's, um, you know, it's not your typical little cabin looking place. I don't know. just. 03:56 In my mind, I just wanted something that was very, I like being hugged when I come home. So, you know, I just, I guess I wanted to do that and make that the vibe. 04:11 Very nice. I'm thrilled that you are embracing the cozy theme because cozy is so nice. And especially on a day like today when it's so hot, our house feels, our house is pretty big. It's over 1400 square feet on the inside, but it's warm and it's welcoming and it's cozy and it's comfortable. as long as I don't actually go outside, I can pretend that it's not 150,000 degrees outside. 04:39 Oh, absolutely. Watch a Christmas movie. Yeah, I made them. I made tortellini salad yesterday because I knew it was going to be super hot today. tortellini salad is basically a cold pasta salad. And it is waiting for me at about 11 o'clock this morning to dive into. I'm a little bit jealous. 05:02 It's super easy to make and that's part of reason I make it. takes like the time it takes to boil the water, cook the tortellinis and then, can't talk, slice up an onion and of sweet bell pepper and dump a can of quartered artichoke hearts in it and some zesty Italian dressing, some balsamic vinegar and whatever seasonings you like to put in your cold salads. That's pretty much it. Oh yeah, that's easy peasy, isn't it? 05:32 Yup. I, when I was making it, I was like, it's hot today. I don't want to be cooking today either. This was yesterday. I thought, I thought when I went to bed last night, I thought I'm going to be so grateful that I did it today, which was yesterday instead of this morning when it's already hot outside. So, Oh yeah. Yeah. It hit 71 here by, geez, I think it was seven o'clock this morning. It was a

Today I'm talking with Adrienne at Stonehedge Farm Produce. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Adrienne at Stonehedge Farm and her three little kittens in the background. Good morning, Adrienne. How are you? I'm doing just fine. Awesome. You're in Kentucky? I am. Okay. How's the weather? Hot and humid. Here too in Minnesota. It is disgusting. Yeah. 00:29 Yep. You walk outside and immediately start sweating. Yeah. And, uh, I got a double whammy going on because our corn is, is tasseling and putting out the silk on the ears. So I have an allergy to that. And so I am just a disaster this morning. My head hurts. My head hurts. My nose is stuffed up. like, Oh, I'm going to sound amazing on the podcast. It's going to be great. Okay. So tell me about what you do at Stonehedge farm. 00:58 Well, in a nutshell, we raise vegetables. Nice. What do you raise? A little bit of everything. start our markets generally in April with like lettuces and green onions and spring turnips and radishes and peas and that sort of thing. And then we continue through the summer with squashes and eggplant and peppers. And that's where we are now. And then we pick up the 01:26 winter squashes like the acorn and butternut and spaghetti squash. do them a little earlier in the season because they're so good as a cold soup or on the grill and so I like to have them available in the summer. yeah, absolutely. So why is it called Stonehedge Farm? 01:50 My late father-in-law named it because it is bordered on three sides by the old stone fences. Nice. So it is a play on Stonehenge, but it's Stonehedge. Yes. Great. It sure is. So this is a family farm? My late 02:13 in-laws bought it in the mid-90s. So it's been, you know, it's been in my husband's family since then. But, 02:24 So it's not really a family farm. I do come from family farming though. Okay, tell me about that. My mom married my stepdad when I was six. My stepdad's dream was to be a cattle and tobacco farmer. So at six years old, I was plopped on a tobacco setter and taught how to set tobacco. And I was tied to more calves than I can remember. 02:54 you know, taming them to be able to be walked on lead. And grew up with a huge vegetable garden and then tobacco went out of fashion. So my dad took the tobacco buyout and we started raising vegetables together. 03:14 Awesome. So you're a country girl. Yes, I am. I am an old farm girl. Nice. OK. So do you grow your produce just for you or do you sell it at farmers markets or to restaurants? We sell directly to some restaurants. And then our main outlet is the Lexington Farmers Market in Lexington, Kentucky. 03:40 We sell there four of the five days of the week that it's open. The guys, know, some of my employees do the weekday markets and instead of paying them by the hour or, you know, per market, you know, a lump sum fee, they get half of the sales because I feel like that incentivizes staying on your feet and engaging with potential customers and, you know, the more 04:09 The more the farm makes, the more they make. So. I think that's more than reasonable. That's a great marketing plan. Yep. And it seems to work. But and then with our leftover vegetables, we have a table at our farm gate that we call the pay what you can table. 04:33 There's a little drop box there you come and you get you know, you get your peppers in your eggplant and or your bag of lettuce or whatever and then you drop whatever your budget allows in to the cash box and then that gets that gets given to the crew Fantastic. So you're helping the community and the crew gets paid. Yep Love that. That's great. So I have a question about 05:02 the produce that you sell to restaurants. I don't know what the regulations are here in Minnesota, so maybe I'll look it up later because we don't do that with our stuff. Are there certain things you have to do to sell to restaurants? Not really. Be eye-catching. That's about all I can come up with is to catch the chef's eye because the chefs come to the farmers market. 05:32 I have some chefs that have been buying from me for years, you know, through multiple restaurants or through beginning as, you know, as a, as a line cook coming along with the head chef to now they're the head chef, but there's really no state or local regulations. It's good to have your produce safety. 06:03 your FSMA training done, but it is not a requirement. 06:11 Okay, I still have to look into what they are here because we're gonna have metric but tons of tomatoes coming in in about two weeks. My husband planted over 250 tomato plants this year. That's a lot of tomatoes. Uh-huh, an

Today I'm talking with Dawn at Dawn's Dirt. She's running me through a sample coaching session. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you'd like to attend Dawn's webinar mentioned in the episode, click this link, Homesteading Masterclass. 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 Dawn at Dawn's Dirt in Alberta, Canada? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I couldn't remember. I've talked to a few people and I'm like, oh no, I'm going to screw it up again. Dawn is going to run me through a basic coaching session because that's what Dawn does. Dawn coaches people on how to start. 00:28 farms or homesteads or something where you grow things. So go ahead Dawn, let's do this. Now I feel a little nervous actually. just act like I know nothing. Well, but that's not the truth though. You've got a homestead going there and I think it's a pretty good one. 00:50 I guess what I do with my clients, first I jump on a jumpstart call just to get a feel for who they are and what their goals are. So I guess that would be my first question is what are your goals with your homestead? To keep it. 01:05 Okay. What are the blocks and barriers from you keeping it? We need to figure out a way to have better systems. Like my husband started growing a garden four summers ago and it's a hundred by 150 feet now. And he started out growing all the things. And as we've gotten further along, he's now whittling it down to the things that sell like tomatoes and cucumbers and cabbage. 01:35 And so I think that was a smart thing to do, but do you think that's a smart thing to do? I absolutely think that that's a smart thing to do. So when I had my farm, I was a farmer for many years. I had a 36,000 square foot greenhouse and I did 20 acres of garden and people would ask me what I don't grow. And there was a handful of things that I didn't grow. So I didn't grow asparagus because I just didn't get it established. I just never went down the asparagus route. I didn't grow, um, 02:04 Peas didn't really grow on my farm very well. And so I stopped growing them because they didn't produce very well and they just weren't effective. I didn't grow garlic because again, garlic, I just never got it figured out. And ironically enough, I didn't grow carrots and people go, why wouldn't you grow carrots? Like they're one of the biggest sellers. And the reason I didn't grow carrots is they didn't grow super well and they were super labor intensive. And so by the time I... 02:32 planted them and weeded them and harvested them and packaged them. It just took so much time that it didn't really pencil out very well and it wasn't one of my high, it was a high cost item for low net margins. Like I didn't make as much money on it so on them so I just quit growing them. So I think that's super smart that you're gonna grow the things that sell the best. 02:59 and grow the best and are easiest for your customers. good. So we've got that knocked, I think. And you'll be happy to know that since we last talked, all, well, over 250 tomato plants are still growing and they are loaded with green tomatoes right now. So we should have, but tons of tomatoes in August. I love it. 03:26 How many leaves do you have on your plants right now? Are they full of leaves and green tomatoes or are they full of just green tomatoes and a few leaves? Probably right in between the two. My husband's been pruning them and tying them up. Okay, perfect. Yeah, because that's how I got more production out of my tomato plants is I actually pruned them. And so I took all the suckers and shoots off and then I stressed my plants out. had a client a couple years ago, she said, 03:55 Dawn, my tomatoes are all green and the plants look big and beautiful and healthy, but these tomatoes are green. I've got some flowers, but I'm not getting red tomatoes. And I said, that's because your plants aren't stressed out enough. And so if your husband goes through and kind of takes off a lot of the bottom leaves, opens up the green tomatoes to the sunshine, you're going to get more production. It's going to stress your plant out a little bit. And a stressed out plant is going to want to produce a seed and a seed is a red tomato. And so 04:22 When I had my farm, and again, I was in perfect growing conditions. So perfect watering, perfect temperature, perfect sunlight, perfect, perfect, perfect everything because I was in an enclosed space. But you can still take the principles and move them outside to your garden. I only had 12 to 15 leaves on my plant at any given point. And so I don't think you should go that 04:51 far into stressing your plant out, but I do think, yeah, it's not going to hurt to take

Today I'm talking with Lynne Bowman, author of Brownies For Breakfast. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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. Good morning, Ms. Lynn Bowman. How are you? Well, like you. I'm ready to roll, but prepared for all kinds of crazy stuff today. How about you, Mary? It's already been crazy stuff. Lynn and I have been trying to get Zoom to work for last 10 minutes. We are not technically broken. 00:29 but you would think we didn't know anything about technology. Well, to me, it's always the fault of the UX engineers. Always. It's not my fault. We'll blame it on them. Okay. So today I am talking with Lynn Bowman and she is the author of Brownies for Breakfast. And the reason I wanted to talk to Lynn is because my kids used to get brownies for breakfast two days after their birthdays. I made them brownies for their birthdays. 00:59 A swell way to celebrate. my brownies are as brownie as brownie gets. Difference is, Mary, they are made with no sugar. They are made with pumpkin, nut butter, cocoa, let's see, baking soda, eggs or egg substitute if you don't eat eggs, and know, salt, couple other little things, cinnamon. 01:27 But it's all whole food, good food, real food. And I guarantee when you set them down in front of people, they will look exactly like a quote, real brownie because they are real. Then what happens is somebody eats them and they go, oh my gosh, that's the best brownie I ever ate. is a, just don't ever tell them there's no sugar in them. Because when you do that, they go, oh, no thanks. Right? 01:58 Yeah. But there is something called Alulose in them. Terrible name, terrible name, wonderful product. It's real food. It's one ingredient. Uh, it doesn't give you tummy ache. It doesn't leave a funny aftertaste. And that's what I want everybody to know about. There is a way you can quit sugar because yes, you need to, you know, you need to. 02:25 You can quit sugar if you have a couple of tools like one, Alulose. You will never miss sugar if you have it. have to look this Alulose up because I listened to your interview with Amy Fagan on Grown It in Maine and you mentioned it on her podcast too. I meant to look up Alulose yesterday. I got busy and didn't do it. So shame on me. Shame on you. You did not do your homework, girl. I didn't. 02:53 It was terrible. I'm sorry. But you know what? And I know I sound a little crazy granny here because yes, I am. having spent most of my life, nearly all of my adult life trying to stay healthy and on my feet and may I say succeeding, I know some stuff about how to eat really well if you're diabetic, if you're trying to avoid chronic disease. 03:22 If you don't want to carry around extra weight, all the things, if you don't want to have heart disease, if you do have heart disease, all the things are really not complicated to deal with if you know a few things about how to eat. Really easy. You probably already know, but are you doing them? Real food, whole food, mostly plants. You can eat some other stuff, but mostly plants. Okay? Work together. Oh yeah. 03:52 I love a good salad. I do. And I absolutely love like steamed broccoli and steamed green beans and steamed whatever green veggie there is. okay, but what I'm talking about too is sneaky vegetables. You know, vegetables that don't come onto the table screaming, Hi, I'm a vegetable. I'm good for you. I like things that come onto the table like my brownies going, there's some vegetables in here, but don't worry about it. 04:20 Oh, like, like covert veggies. Kind of. Yeah. And if you've got children, the way of course to get kids to eat veggies is to have the kids raise the veggies. If you have any dirt, if you have pots, they love growing vegetables. Two, having the kids cook themselves, you know, with their own little darling hands, starting very, very young. If they cook it, they'll eat it. But 04:48 The recipes in my book, a lot of them are, they're vegetable forward recipes, but they're not salads, particularly, you they're not like a bunch of raw vegetables with some stuff on it. They're, mean, here's soups. Let's talk for a minute about soups. Um, Americans don't eat soup. Do you eat soup? Oh, I make, I make soup, let alone eat. Yeah. Good. Okay. That's great. Because it's a super way to. 05:18 Eat up what you have to use what's in the fridge to not waste food and to take what you have and make it something fabulous and then turn it into something a little different every day without a big deal. mean, my superpower, if I have one, was making dinner in 15 minutes. know, I'd come, like moms do now, you'd come screaming home with people yelling and dogs barking and t

Today I'm talking with Annie at Annie's Homestead. You can follow on Instagram as well. 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 Annie, Annie's Homestead in Idaho. Good afternoon, Annie, how are you? Hi, Mary, I'm doing so well. How are you? I'm all right. What's the weather like in Idaho this today? It's actually very beautiful today. We're sitting at about 90 degrees, so it's warm. 00:29 Our skies are clear, thank goodness, and it's just a beautiful, bright, sunny day. So I have no complaints over here yet. Well, give it time. My dad used to say, you don't like the weather, wait five minutes, it'll change. He sounds right. Yeah, and I'm in Minnesota and it is about 70 degrees out. It is bright and sunny and big, puffy marshmallow clouds. It's really lovely. Those are my favorite. I love those. We don't get those too often. 00:59 No. love them. We are really hazy. Our skies have been just like the sun, you know, has just having a hard time come through all the haze that we've had lately. So it's nice when we have clear skies and it's even better when we have puffy clouds. I love those. Yeah, I remember laying on my back as a kid finding shapes in the clouds. I haven't done it in years. That might be something I have to do this fall. I don't know yet. It's a good exercise. 01:29 Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself and about what you do. So I am a homesteader. I'm actually off grid in the mountains in Idaho where my husband and I, we are in the Sawtooth mountain range and we love, love, love being out in the middle of nowhere. So we got really lucky when we were searching for land. We found 01:57 a 40 acre property. It's all undeveloped when we bought it and two sides of the property border at the Boise National Forest. So we are just secluded and we love it. We have elk and turkey and mule deer, little baby quails running through the property all the time. And it's just, it's heaven on earth. It's amazing. So we actually bought our property in 2021. 02:27 and started developing it very soon after. My husband is just a mastermind. Like this property would be nothing without him. He helped design all of the infrastructure. So we've got our solar panels. We've got really large solar panels. I'm not sure exactly what the size of them are. I just know that they're really big. 02:53 We've got a lot of those. We have about six of those. And so that's where we get all of our solar power to run our electricity. And we are on a well. Our well is probably dug about 150 to 200 feet down. Most of our neighbors, they were having to drill down about 400 feet. So we feel really fortunate to have the very strong well that we have. We've got a really strong stream. 03:22 down under all of the rocks, which is just a blessing. So... Let me jump in really quick for anyone who doesn't know, the deeper you have to dig a well, the more expensive it gets. Yeah. Thank you for pointing that out. I know. have just, we spent so much money homesteading, you know, and it's everybody's dream, but it's almost so hard to do it because it's so expensive. And we live out in the mountains. 03:51 So we always joke, you know, it's not a funny joke, it's kind of a painful joke, but we always say that we have to pay the mountain tax to any of our contractors coming out there because everybody is always more expensive when of course you have to, you know, go through the back country and drive on roads, you know, that are full of ruts. So it's been a really fun adventure. got occupancy on the home that we built. 04:21 last May. So we've been living full time out there for about a year. And oh my gosh, it's amazing. So we've got a garden, a greenhouse, we built an indoor grow room, because for those weird people who are always watching the aerials spraying and the chem trails and we're like, oh my God, how can I grow produce that isn't covered and all of these chemicals falling from the sky? 04:50 So we did that. I do outdoor garden as well, just because of space. And then we've got our small flock of about 70 birds. We do chickens, geese, and ducks, and we use them all for meat and eggs. I love goose meat, so I think we'll always have geese. As much of a pain as they can be, they're very delicious. So I think we'll keep them around for a little while. Okay. 05:20 Number one, I'm a very live and let live kind of lady. And so if you want to have, if you want to grow plants inside so that the stuff in the air outside doesn't get on them, I am all for that. I love that. It has been a challenge. I am kind of new to gardening. I've, you know, I've had houseplants, you know, for about, you know,

Today I'm talking with Lara at Mulberry Hill Microfarm. 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 Lara at Mulberry Hill Microfarm. Good morning, Lara. How are you? Good morning. I'm fantastic. Thank you so much for inviting me to chat with you guys. I appreciate that. Oh, you're welcome. I'm so happy when people say yes, because without you, I don't have a podcast. 00:29 That just helps. Where are you located, Laura? I'm in Northwest Arkansas in a tiny little bump in the road called Evansville. Okay, how's the weather there this morning? Hot. Hot and very sticky. Actually, for us, it's been a fairly mild summer. We've had a lot of rain. 00:56 And typically this time of year, we're sitting at 97, 98 degrees. Sometimes we're over a hundred. And really it's just been this week that we're getting into the nineties solidly. And for us, that's a nice break. Yes, we're having a break today too. It's supposed to only be 71 degrees for the high and it's supposed to rain all day. 01:25 Oh, that sounds heavenly. Yeah, I think there's probably a short nap in my future this afternoon because this is very good sleeping weather. Oh, excellent. Be bold. Make it a long nap. I can't. I've got too much to do, but I might crawl into a book for a few minutes and see if my eyes close. We'll see what happens. That's what happens when you get over 40 years old. You realize that naps are a gift. Right. Remember when we used to fight those? 01:54 Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Now that was silly. Now I now I want them badly. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So tell me about yourself and what you Well, I've been an educator for almost 20 years now, and I think that's something that's run in the family when we get together for holidays and reunions. It feels more like. 02:20 teacher professional development as much as it does, just seeing each other and catching up on family news. But there's also been a strong presence for conservation in our family. My grandfather worked in Southeast Arkansas conservation efforts. 02:46 Water purity, he did a lot for Felsenthal Wildlife Preserve in South Arkansas to work with them and make sure that chicken plants weren't dumping water into the system and things like that. And so they were avid hunters and fishermen on the Saline River for a very long time. 03:11 And so even though I wasn't terribly close to my grandparents, there was still that thread that was always present about conservation efforts and ecosystem health and whatnot. And I think I carried that with me for a long time, kind of dormant. There were marriages, there were children, there was the career in education that was very successful, but there was always this sort of 03:41 little nagging in the back of my soul that said, a little land, just a few trees here and there, just a few birds here and there. And so I started that journey kind of late in life. I did not start until I was 48. I am 52 now and I am loving it. 04:05 I feel like there is a fulfillment here in some of the things that I'm doing on my tiny acreage. We're only just over an acre and a half. But there is a sense of purpose and meaning here that I have finally sort of plugged into and it's made my life very rich, very wealthy. 04:33 Fantastic. I figured that you didn't have a lot of land because you are a micro farm, right? Right. I think that's probably still a generous labeling for us. I started out here 150 years ago. My tiny little patch of land was hardwood forest, hickory, 05:02 Elm ash, hackberry, black walnut, black locust, and it was cleared for cattle grazing. Uh, but there have not been cows on my part of the property for probably 60 years. Uh, so it was just mowed as a lawn. The trees had been cleared long ago and so the topsoil had completely degraded. I don't know. 05:32 sort of slid downhill into the creek and is probably sitting at the bottom of Lake Tenkiller right now. And I just felt like I wanted to regenerate this little piece of nature. And so that's been my focus for four years. When I first came out and started planting trees again, 05:57 There's a layer of grass and grass roots and then there was just slabs of clay. No root systems, no organic material. There were places where there weren't even worms present and that kind of thing. And I've been working for the last four years to change that. And I have been, I think truly gobsmacked at just how quickly 06:26 the ecosystem is changing, even though the acreage is very small. Yes, I'm not surprised at all at how fast it's changing for you because nature wants to do what nature wants to do. So if you just take away the things that are preventing nature from doing what nature does, she's go

Today I'm talking with Maggie at New Frontier Farms LLC. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Maggie at New Frontier Farms LLC in Lonsdale, Minnesota. Good morning, Maggie. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I would ask how the weather is, but since I'm only about 15 miles away from you, it's gray and cloudy and may might rain, right? Yes. That seems to be the theme this summer. 00:29 Yes, and thank God it's not just constant pouring rain like it was last year. I don't know how you guys did, but our garden did really poorly last year. 00:40 Yeah, so I actually had a baby in March and I really underestimated how having a March baby would impact the farm compared to a September baby. And so we didn't plant a garden. But oh, because I had the baby and it was just it was a lot between kidding and camming and farrowing and the baby. The garden did not get planted. But everyone told me my garden did terrible this year. And I was like, you know, maybe this was a good year to not not plant a garden. 01:08 Yes, we, my husband's the gardener. I've talked about this a lot on the podcast and he planted tomatoes three different times. And I think we got our first tomato at the end of August last year. Oh goodness, that's crazy. Yeah. I like to joke. Um, I grew bacon seeds instead, cause I have to put my piglets on my garden. Um, things are growing great this year. So I think they did a good job of fertilizing, but it was all we could manage last year was bacon seeds. Well, you're only one person. 01:37 and you were growing a human and then birthing a human, so that is completely understandable. Okay, so I'm really excited to chat with you this morning because I looked at your Facebook page and you have so many things going on, so tell me about yourself and your farm. Yeah, so my husband and I have wanted to be farmers our entire life. We both grew up one generation removed from production agriculture, and so our grandparents farmed, but our parents had chosen to not. 02:05 And my mom had always wanted to be a farmer, but she was turning 18 during the 80s farm crisis and my grandpa just didn't want that. It was not a lucrative career at the time. And so my mom has always worked in agriculture. And then we always had beef cattle on our farm. was my grandpa's retirement gig. And so he retired from dairy cattle and got a hundred beef cows. So I grew up spending my summers in the pasture with the cows and fell in love with. 02:34 with everything to do with farming. I was very involved in 4-H, which just kind of fostered that love. And I went to South Dakota State University and I studied dairy production and speech communication with a minor in animal science, all with the goal of someday owning my own farm. While I was there, I met a man in a similar situation. He wanted to have his own farm someday too. And so we fell in love and that's my husband, Nick. 03:02 We got married in 2017. And right after college, we actually worked on a ranch and it was a really good experience. We were kind of thrown to the wolves and had to care for 600 head of beef cows on 20,000 acres in western South Dakota. It was a cool experience. We gained a lot of knowledge in a very short amount of time. And then we worked various in town jobs after that. Our oldest son came a little early. 03:31 Um, and that kind of whole experience really pushed us back home to Minnesota. So we moved back home with the entire intent of buying a farm. Um, we moved in late 2019. Um, and by the time we were working on selling our house in South Dakota, COVID had hit, um, and it had really, you know, changed the landscape of people at the beginning of COVID people weren't buying houses. Um, so it stalled things out, but we finally found our farm here. 04:00 in May of 2020 in Lonsdale. So we purchased that. We have 36 acres. 18 of those acres were in cropland when we purchased it, but it's all highly erodible land. And so we turned it all into pasture. It's not very good cropland. So it's been quite a few years process turning all that into grassland and it was very eroded. So a lot of our topsoil is in our swamp. 04:30 And so it will be many, many, many years until much of it is really fertile again. But we are seeing a lot of progress. It's made between our chickens, our pigs and our cows. It's getting there, but it's been a process. So we milk a herd of dairy goats. We milk about eight right now. We have a herd of cooney cooney pigs. They're kind of our primary product. So we sell a lot of pork. We do a lot of haves and holes, and then we do individual cuts. 05:00 And t

Today I'm talking with Casey at Haggard Mountain Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Casey at Haggard Mountain Homestead. Good morning, Casey. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. How are you doing? I'm good. Where are you located? We are in Western Pennsylvania, a little bit outside of Pittsburgh, PA. Is it raining? Not today, but apparently it's supposed to, I think tomorrow. 00:30 Have you been going through what my parents have been going through in Maine where it's rained all every day for the last 10 years, it seems like? Basically, yeah. Every single weekend it's been raining. So a lot of our projects have gotten pushed back, for sure. But now we're having a heat wave, so opposite. Great. That helps a whole lot, doesn't it? Yeah, it's literally the exact opposite, though. We went from cold and rainy to now, I think it's supposed to be like 95, 96 today. Yeah. 00:59 talked to my dad the other day. Whoops, I talked to my dad the other day and he said, honey, he said, I swear, it feels like I have been trying to get my summer garden in since two summers ago for this year. I'm like, yeah, we went through this last year too. So, all right, so tell me about yourself and what you do at the Homestead. So how much of a backstory do you want here? Cause I can talk, trust me. 01:26 Tell me what led you to having the homestead. All right. So my husband and I got married in 2016 and started looking for a house. And we knew that we wanted a little bit of property. And at that point, I just wanted a garden, some chickens, all of that. And we ended up purchasing our property. have a little bit under two acres in 2018. 01:55 Got our chickens, got our garden in, and it's like we can't stop. It's honestly been addicting. We started with a garden and the chickens and we put in fruit trees. He's gotten into honeybees. Now we're doing flowers. We've done meat chickens and now I'm doing the social media stuff too. You are cementing my belief that once you get into this, the questions that come up are why not? 02:25 And what's the worst that could happen? And I'm very, very careful about the second question. I try not to say that outside where the universe can hear me. Oh yeah. If you put it out there, it might actually happen. Well, if I'm going to say it outside, I say what's the best that could happen instead of the worst? That's fair. I like that too. And that way the universe is like, what do I do with that? 02:51 hopefully give you the best that can happen because that's what we want to put out there, manifest it. Exactly. And that's what I'm kind of getting at is that if you try, the worst thing that happens is it doesn't go quite the way you wanted it to. But if you don't try, nothing happens. Yeah, that's very true. We actually, we have a five-year-old son now and teaching him to emotionally 03:18 regulate himself and trying to like give him these life lessons and how to cope with things. That's actually, he's, I'm a perfectionist and he's very much a perfectionist as well. And that's, I'm trying to tell him, I'm like, what happens if it, if you fail, you just learn a lesson and you move on. Yeah, I used to be a perfectionist and then I realized that it was stopping me. Like if I couldn't do it right the first time, I didn't want to do it at all. And 03:46 I finally just was like, okay, start something that you don't have to tell people about. Just try something and see if it fails. If it fails and you want to share about what you learned, cool. If you don't, no one has to know about it. Yeah, I like that too. I think I'm 34 now and honestly, through all of high school, was scared to try new things because I was so much of a perfectionist. And I think at this point in my life, 04:14 Not that I stopped caring, but I stopped caring what other people think. And now especially I make silly videos for the internet. Sometimes I act a fool and I just, don't care what they think. If they think I'm an idiot, so be it. There's a really good saying that what other people think is none of my or your business. What they think about me or you. And it's true. What other people think about me is not my business. It's in their head. Yeah, I like that. 04:42 So I try to hang on to that and I try to realize that if I screwed something up, other people probably have too. And if I keep trying and share it, people will learn from that. So I'm trying to be very positive about my failures. And when you're home studying, I feel like you kind of have to be, because there's a lot of failures and a lot of learning. It's the best part. The learning is the be

Today I'm talking with Angel at Feeding Feasible Feasts. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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, podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Angel at Feeding Feasible Feasts. And you're in Washington state, right, Angel? Yes, I am. Okay. Awesome. How's the weather in Washington state? It is, well, where I am in Washington. It's beautiful today. Yeah. 00:26 Good. was a very, it's very warm here in Minnesota. It's very muggy. Midwest. Yeah. It's going to be warm out there. Are you in the Midwest? Did you say Minnesota? Yes. 00:43 Yes, it's really muggy. It's gross. And that's par for the course for July 2nd. I don't know why I'm even saying it out loud. Everyone knows it's muggy in Minnesota in July. So tell me about yourself and Feeding Feasible Feasts, because I am so curious to know what you guys do. Well, I'll give you a short version. I'm a little on the older side, so I've done quite a bit in my 01:11 I guess in my world, in my life. Uh, let's see here, uh, born in Chicago, 1961. So, uh, here before women could vote and black folks to vote and all of that, uh, moved here to the state of Washington, uh, Seattle, Washington. And let's see, that would have been 20 or no, 1989. We moved here. Uh, my husband and I, and we have seven children that are all adults. 01:40 Opened my first business here. Well, my second business. First business here was a promotional products company and had some pretty nice contracts with large companies. Developed a transportation model where we folks could get online and order their promotional products and have them delivered directly. So we did that with Labor Ready and True Value and some of the large companies out here. 02:08 I sold that company, moved on to real estate. My mother got very ill. So I had her here. So I went into real estate so I could control my schedule. fairly well with that until the downturn in the economy at a time. So I sold my book of business and moved into another arena here in Washington state at the time was a pretty hot topic, which was recreational cannabis. My husband in his years growing up. 02:37 enjoyed recreational cannabis. I myself never and still haven't tried it, but really felt that the medical part of that unit to be examined and supported. I became an advocate, joined our liquor control board as a board member to help with oversight for that particular industry. We still, we actually have at this point two retail cannabis licenses. 03:05 that we have in another county, not where we live. And I sit on the board here for the Washington Food Coalition, which is a coalition designed by congressional districts. And I am the representative here for that. As well as I had a chair with our city here for economic development on their advisory board, as well as I was a political delegate this year during the 03:35 the political race. And now we are feeding feasible feasts. It came about because I am a heavy gardener. garden, we have a pretty good swath of property here. I garden my entire portion of my house yard is a garden. So I produce quite a bit of food. And one of the things we do with feeding feasible feasts is we do teach folks how to can, freeze, hydrate, 04:05 You know, how to preserve food. I have about 16 fruit and nut trees in my backyard and two in my front yard. During the time of COVID, well, before all of that, I discovered that my neighbors didn't actually like zucchini as much as I thought they did. So I had to come up with a better method of, you know, finding a home for all of the food and found a national organization. I don't know if you know about it. It's called Food is Free. 04:35 And it is built for people like me, gardeners like me, who just produce way more food than they're ever going to eat. And you, it's a simple concept. You just put a card table on a corner with a sign, handwritten, if you like, that says food is free. Put the food on the table and people who drive by can take whatever they like. Awesome. I didn't know about that. It's a national movement. It's actually, we have several pods of that movement here in Washington state. 05:04 part of the effort during Kovac to rescue, had a potato onion problem at the top of Kovac when the schools closed down and restaurants closed down. Our farmers were not able to sell all of the produce. And so we did a huge rescue movement at that time. Several of the large food agencies here and lots of small ones like mine at the time drove over to Eastern Washington and we brought over, I don't know how many thousands of tons 05:34 potatoes and onions, but we were able to do to because he come from rotting in the field and in arms

Today I'm talking with Pam at Mother Nature's Apprentice. You can follow on Facebook as well. Pam's new book, Wonder and Joy for the Wired and Tired: A Guide to Finding Inspiration and Well-Being in a Wonder-Filled World, releases in August 2025. 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, podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Pam, at Mother Nature's Apprentice in Kentucky. Good morning, Pam. How are you? I'm very well. How are you today? I'm good. How's the weather? It actually is nicer today. It's a bit overcast here in beautiful Northern Kentucky. We've been having 00:28 like most of the country, some hot weather, but we did get some rain and I think we may get a bit more today. How about you? It is lovely in Minnesota right now. The sun is shining. There's big puffy clouds in the sky, bright blue, and it's about eighty to seventy five degrees, I think, if that it's the first really nice morning we've had in just under a week because it's been really muggy here. So. 00:56 I was very happy to drink my coffee sitting on the porch with the window open and see the rogue raccoon we have visiting us. Oh, the rogue raccoon. Yes, we have one of those. How often does that little critter visit? 01:14 Yeah, our little guy looks like he has a leg that is maybe hurt because he looks like he's hopping a little bit. I've been calling him hop along in my head. And we don't have a live trap big enough to catch him. Plus our cats would get caught instead of him. And my husband wants to end his suffering with a firearm. And I am okay with that. The problem is he's never where we can get to him. 01:43 They are smart. They're very smart. Yep. And I saw him actually face on toward me the other morning and the sun was coming up. He's so beautiful. I'm like, God damn it. I don't want to kill this animal. He's gorgeous. Yeah. Those are tough calls, aren't they? I hate it. I absolutely hate it. And I know it's part of the life that we have chosen, but I hate it so much. Pam, it makes me sad. Yeah. 02:10 Yeah, I know we've been there a couple times. don't have the beautiful weather. You have, but we get things off the pond and whatnot and it just breaks my heart every time. 02:23 Yeah, it's hard, but if we don't put him down, a car is going to hit him. And I don't know which is worse. So we'll see what happens. Okay. So tell me about yourself and about Mother Nature's apprentice. Ah, well, I'm, I was born and raised in Indiana. And actually I'm a dual citizen. I'm a Canadian and a U S citizen. Lived here in 02:52 until my early twenties and then found my way actually to Western Canada, the beautiful province of British Columbia, which is just north of Washington state and lived there for quite a while. But you know, as beautiful as Canada was, I mean, I've always loved nature and backpacking and an incredible geography there. You know, when you're born somewhere, that's still where you consider home. 03:22 So I found my way back to the Midwest and not Indiana though, my husband and I, you know, live as I said in Northern Kentucky and we have sort of three acres that we've reclaimed. I'm a wife obviously, a mom, a grandma. Our kids are grown. We've got a bunch of little ones running around and we love nature. 03:50 Professionally, I guess that's the other hat I wear. I have a PhD and earned PhD and I'm a nurse practitioner clinician and an epidemiologist where I'm also an adjunct prof here at Northern Kentucky University where I investigate winter joy, wellbeing and nature, how nature has such a wonderful, powerful impact on our health and wellbeing. 04:20 And you're an author too, right? Yes, that was unexpected. As an offshoot of a research study I did, which talked about wellness versus well-being and nature and extraordinary ornery, cetera, I decided to indulge in my passion for creative writing. So I started the blog, Leather Nature's Apprentice, and it talks about nature and 04:49 all the things I just mentioned and some funky kind of nature, quirky things too, because I am a science nut. But that kind of dovetailed into a book, which I can't believe I did. That's been a journey. You people were very, thankfully, very kind about the blog and developed a bit of a following. And I said, you should write a book. And I guess even more than that, at the same time when I was 05:18 presenting some of my research findings on well-being at conferences, it really resonated with people and I got asked to talk more and more. And I initially thought, you know, I'll publish this in an academic journal like most academics do. But I realized that's, you know, that's not where most people are going to see this. This is information t

Today I'm talking with Amy and James at The Dorr Family Farm. 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, podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Amy at Dorr Family Farm in Whitefield, New Hampshire. Good evening, Amy. Again, I'm all confused on time. Sorry. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. You said your husband is there and I of course blanked his name already. Yeah, have James, my husband James with me. 00:29 James is with us too. So we have a couple to talk to tonight. Have you guys been getting a ton of rain? Yeah, way too much. Today too? A little bit. Okay. All right. My folks live in Maine and they have done nothing but tell me how much rain they have gotten this spring. So I assumed with you being in New Hampshire that it would be the same thing. Yeah, it's been, the ground is really wet. 00:58 We still have the remnants of vernal pools that are usually not still present this time of year. A little bit. Trying to get into it a little more. Well, this year must be hard because it's taken my dad 10 plus years to put in this garden this year. That's how it feels anyway. Okay, so I looked at your Facebook page and Door Family Farm has been around for a long time. 01:28 So tell me about yourself and what you guys do. So yeah, this place has been here for a really long time. We've been here 13 years. So the farm has been in my husband's family for now eight generations. And it started out in the 1800s. My husband's, let's see, great. 01:57 Great. Many greats. Many great. Grandfather settled here from Canada and just started like a small, he was alone and he had a little shack and he just, you know, worked the land and the house that stands today was built in the 1800s as well as the barn. And we just kind of ended up here. It wasn't in the plans. 02:28 That happens. hear that a lot. Yeah. Are you from New Hampshire? Well, I was born in Massachusetts, but I lived in New Hampshire most of my life. Moved here when I was about five years old. Okay. I'm just not picking up on any New England accent at all. And I was like, maybe she didn't grow up in New Hampshire, but okay. 02:54 Okay, so what do you guys do at the farm? It's a farm, so I'm assuming it supports itself? Well, it definitely doesn't support itself. Oh, no. No. So we hold full-time jobs. I'm a nurse and James is an independent IT consultant. The farm once did support itself. It has gone... 03:22 through many different changes over the years. At one point it was a strawberry farm and at another point it was a potato farm. Before that it was a dairy farm. So it's always been a farm of some sort. And when we came here, it was not in the plans and we sort of ended up here through happenstance. The house 03:52 has been in the family for generations and it was about to be sold. We didn't want that to happen, so we bought it. We moved here with no plan. We've consistently raised chickens the entire time we've been here. That's been the constant. At one time, this place provided all the food for the families that were here. 04:21 And we'd like to tap into that and get back to some of that. Okay. Awesome. And I think I saw something about a hip camp. You guys offer that? Yes. Yep. So we rent campsites on the property in the field and woods area in the back. And it's just kind of a little very minimal effort thing that we offer. And we've been doing it for a few years now. This year has started off kind of slow. 04:50 I think things are weird, but last year we were able to pay almost all of our property taxes with our hip camp income. So I feel like that's a win. 05:02 Okay. So for people who don't know, hip camp is sort of like Airbnb only for camping, right? Exactly. Yeah. And it's like rustic, undeveloped camping. So you're not going to get a fancy bath house or a pool. We rent to a lot of people who arrive on bicycle, actually, traveling across the Cross New Hampshire Trail, which starts in Woodsville, New Hampshire, goes to Bethel, Maine. So we just hosted one the other night. We rarely ever see them. It's kind of a... 05:33 just a really private, rustic camping experience. So we came up with that as a way to kind of utilize the land because it's just kind of sitting here and it's very minimal effort. And sometimes we meet some really neat people, but a lot of times we never see them, which is great. So it's easy. It's almost passive income. Exactly. Yeah, very much so. I'm a big fan of passive income. 06:02 I am. think that if you can provide a service that doesn't require a whole lot of effort on your part, you should do it. definitely. I agree. That's why we started it. I kind of talked my husband into it. Yeah, the closest we ha

Today I'm talking with Jennifer at My Attempt At Homesteading. 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, podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Jennifer at My Attempt at Homesteading in Missouri. Good evening, Jennifer. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. What's the weather like in Missouri today? Very warm. Yeah, here too. It's 81. I think you guys are hotter than we are though. 00:29 Yeah, we've we've been in the 90s for the past week or so. Oh I'm in Minnesota We had four or five days of that a week or so ago and it was disgusting. I hated every second of it Okay, so I hate saying this because people get kind of Miffed that we talked before the interview before before I started recording You were saying you're a little bit nervous because you're new at this and I was trying to say but the connection was bad 00:58 that you are exactly the kind of person I want to talk with because the beginners are the ones that give the people who haven't even started yet hope. So tell me about yourself and your attempt at homesteading. 01:12 Um, well, so I am a mother of two. my youngest just graduated last year. So, um, he still lives at home, but he's in, he's in college, so he's kind of doing his own thing. Um, my oldest, she just moved out earlier this year. Um, so it was one of those things that. 01:39 You know, my kids are kind of grown up and doing their own thing. And I kind of didn't know what to do with myself. So used to taking care of them and just, you know, even though they were older, but them just being around and just, you know, doing stuff with them. And, you know, I kind of took a step back and realized that, you know, I was, you know, for so many years I'd been, you know, the band mom or the softball mom. 02:08 the karate mom or the track mom or, you know, all those things. when I kind of slowed down for a minute, I realized that I didn't know who I was anymore because, you know, they weren't doing those things anymore. And I realized I had, you know, no hobbies or anything like that because my life had revolved around my kids for so many years. So basically I needed something to do something to occupy my time. 02:38 So I don't know actually what specifically made me start looking at, you know, different things, but I think it was just one of those like on a whim, I was like, oh, this looks like fun. So I just started like looking at things and reading up on things and I started very simple, like. 03:06 looking up different homemade spice mixes. And I just kind of started with that. And basically over the winter was kind of when I started trying to dabble with different things and trying to see what kind of mixes and things I could make from scratch. because at that point I'd never canned anything. 03:35 Um, pressure canner scared me. I, you know, I thought I was going to blow up the house. So, um, it took me a couple months before I would even attempt to do that. Um, but yeah, I just started small and, uh, mixes and that type of thing. Like, uh, I had no idea. Like I was amazed, like, you know, brown sugar, you know, who even knew that that was sugar and molasses. Like I had no clue. I just thought brown sugar that it just. 04:05 came like this. didn't know that. I didn't know you, you know, mix things together to make brown sugar. So, you know, it's definitely been a learning process and it's definitely, you know, I've discovered so many things and still, you every day learning something new. But baby steps, you know, every day just, I mean, I'm constantly Googling things and trying to figure out, know. 04:34 How do I do this or how do I turn this into something or how do I maximize? You know, if I have this ingredient, how do I, or this, um, you know, thing, how do I use up the whole thing without any kind of waste? And, um, it's definitely been a fun process. Um, uh, I've definitely been using my family as guinea pigs. Um, they've been there for. 05:04 some of my successes and definitely a lot of my not so much successes. But it's been fun. Yeah. You're not alone. I didn't know that brown sugar was just white sugar and molasses mixed together either until I found out about it on Google. And I'm not going to lie, I'm still afraid of our pressure canner and our pressure canner is still practically brand new. We bought it three years ago. 05:33 My husband is not afraid of it. So when we're going to pressure can, he's the one that handles it. Because I just, every time I walk by that thing, I'm like, it's going to blow up. It's going to blow up. So you're not alone. And we've been canning for four years now. So we did the water bath canning to begin with. And he was like, we're go

Today I'm talking with Emily at The Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Emily at the Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard in Virginia. Good morning, Emily. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on today. Thank you for making the time. I know that you guys are all very, very busy people. How is the weather there today? 00:28 It is sunny. It's beautiful. The past week or so we've had a thunderstorm every day. So, um, I don't know what's coming up later, but right now it's just beautiful. Yeah, I'm in Minnesota and it is very sunny. There's a light breeze, but it's also like 80 degrees with heavy humidity. So I'm to be spending the day working on my podcast inside. Cause that seems like a good idea. Nice. Yep. 00:57 have laptop, we'll get work done. That's good. So tell me about yourself and what you do. So I am an owner of the Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard. We opened in 2016. I am a farmer, a baker. I do all the stuff behind the scenes. I manage our social media. I plan our events. kind of the 01:28 everything at the farm, which is a lot, but yeah, it's great. we 01:40 The farm has been in our family since right after the Civil War. My great-great-grandfather James Swate opened an apple and peach packing plant there. And then my grandfather carried on the tradition and has been farming there since the 60s, I believe. So the property has been in our family for a really long time. 02:08 Kind of why we got our name the Homestead Farm, because it's on our family's homestead. And then the Fruit Hill Orchard part comes from my grandfather's orchard business, which is Fruit Hill Orchard. nice. So do you have old photos from from generations past? Yes, we do. We so my grandfather, his grandmother grew up there. 02:36 And we have pictures of her out back with the old windmill, which funny story, she accidentally rolled her car into the windmill and knocked it over in the 80s, I think. And we have since put a new windmill up in her honor. But yeah, we have old photos of the family. The building next door that was the Apple and Peach packing plant, that used to be a barn, but now it is a 03:06 warehouse type building, but we have pictures of that before they enclosed the barn area and change that around. Yeah, old pictures of the house. Our farm market was actually the carriage barn where my grandmother stored her car and my great grandmother, um, stored her car. So yeah, lots of interesting history there for sure. And pictures. I love it. Um, 03:35 the reason I asked is our house is over a hundred years old and We've only been living here for almost five years and I keep trying to find someone who knows anything about the property because it's been here a long time and Nobody lives around here that knows anything about it from a hundred years ago So I'm out of luck on the history Yeah, you'll have to do some diggings. Yeah, there's a Historical Society in the town up from us 04:05 So they might have something I got to get up there this summer and ask and be like, so what do you know about this address in LaSore, Minnesota? Cause I need history. need it. I need it right now. So I'm sure there's a ton of it too. So hopefully you can find it. I hope so. Cause I'm so curious. I've been told that there was a real barn here and it got torn down or a storm took it out years ago. 04:32 And now we have this big ugly maroon and cream colored pole barn. And every time I look at the pole barn, I'm like, I wish the old barn was still here because that would have given this place so much more character. Yeah. Oh, but it's long gone. you know, what are you going to do? Okay. So what do you guys do at the farm? You have an art, you have an orchard. 04:57 We have an orchard that has been there for many, many years. That is part of Fruit Hill Orchards original orchard. That's apples and peaches. And then we also grow our garden produce there. We do tomatoes, beans, peppers, squash, cornmelons, blackberries, and that is all chemical free. We don't use any chemicals on our gardens or our berries at all. 05:27 We also source local and organic produce whenever we don't have something or ours isn't ready yet. Because chemical free and organic is super important to me. And then same with the bakery. We source local fruits, local eggs, as many organic ingredients as possible. And those are all, all of our baked goods are all homemade. 05:56 From scratch in our bakery, we also raise cattle. I have chicken, so we have some of our own meat and eggs for sale. We also have a sugar shack, which has hand dipped and soft

Today I'm talking with Amanda at Peaceful Pastures. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 00:26 Today I'm talking with Amanda at Peaceful Pastures in Michigan. Good afternoon, Amanda. How are you? Hi there. How are you? I'm good. You said the weather's really nice in Michigan? Yes, it's beautiful today. We finally broke that heat spell that we had last week and the humidity has gone down and it's just perfectly sunny. So it's great today. 00:50 So you're having a top weather day in Michigan, just like we are in Minnesota. It's really nice here today too. That sounds great. I'm glad it's just as nice for you. Yeah, the spring has been actually pretty moderate. I have been, I dare say impressed with Mother Nature this year. So tell me about yourself and what you do at Peaceful Pastures. Well, my name is Amanda. I'm a mother to two. I have an eight-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter. 01:19 My husband is here with me too. His name is Andrew. We like to jokingly call him Goat Daddy. We kind of jumped into Peaceful Pastures, kind of like an overnight deal. We weren't really looking to sell our house and happened upon this property, just a little over seven acres, and we kind of jumped on it and looked, put it on offer, and right away it became ours. And overnight I went and crazily 01:47 purchased Nigerian Dwarf goats and one of them was pregnant and so it began with our livestock. So we now have 13 and we have a mini Dexter cow. Her name is Betty and we have chickens. Awesome. it is absolutely do a little bit of everything here. Yes. Fantastic. So if your name is Amanda and your husband's name is Andrew, 02:17 Do you ever get Mandy and Andy as nicknames? Oh, yes, we do. All the time. I have this thing in my head that I do all the time and I rarely ever tell people about it because I think it'll freak them out. But I always end up having nicknames for people that I like. And one of my friends on Facebook, and she was also in a writing group online with me, her name is Janna. 02:46 For the longest time when I would see her name, would think Jana Banana. Oh, and I never, I never told her that. And I was like, I got to stop doing this, but my brain just does all these weird associations with names. So, so if you were friends with me, you would be Mandy and your husband would be Andy in my head. That's okay. My husband always gets called Andy Pandy. So it works. Yep. Absolutely. Um, okay. So do you guys have a garden as well? 03:16 We do. actually have a quite large garden this year. Last year we had a great time with it and a perfect harvest. So I went ahead and jumped it up a little bit more this year. So we planted about five times as much as we did last year. So we're growing and hopefully by the end of this week, early next week, we will start having some produce. We have a little standout front too. And I like to fiddle around with that when I can. And we do lots of different things. 03:46 tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, pretty much everything you can think of. We grow here right in our garden. So it's a lot of fun. Keeps me busy. Yeah. I call it the usual suspects. When people ask me what we grow in ours, I said the usual suspects, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces, et cetera, et cetera. So all the good things. Yeah, exactly. All the things that people want to eat in June, July, and August. Right. And I don't know. 04:16 I don't know how things are going in Michigan, but here in Minnesota, we've had the nicest weather for getting an early start on crops this year. And we also built a heated greenhouse two Mays ago. So we had seedlings ready to go in the ground first week in May. We usually don't plant until May 15th because of the danger of frost. 04:45 And so we looked at the extended forecast and it looked like it was going to be good. And my husband planted tomatoes like three weeks earlier than we usually do. And I said, if they die, they're done. There's no coming back from that. He said, they're not going to die. He said, I have faith. was like, okay, I hope your faith works out. Well, I'm glad it did work out. I actually got a late start this year. 05:12 because of the weather, just because we actually took our first vacation in the last 14 years. So we were gone for that last week and a half. So it kind of pushed me b

Today I'm talking with Sharon and Ben at Our Little Farm WI. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 00:25 Today I'm talking with Sharon and Ben at Our Little Farm, Wisconsin. Good morning, you guys. How are you? Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for having us this morning. Yeah, thanks. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for being here. I appreciate it. What's the weather like in Wisconsin this morning? Sunny and warm. Although it's not too bad. It's only going to be like 82, I think, today. Yesterday was pretty hot and humid and... But great for the crops. Awesome. Good. 00:54 our very handsome weather guy on WCCO here in Minnesota. His name is Joseph Dames. My son just laughs every time he sees him because he's a very pretty, this guy's a very pretty boy. Says that it is a top 10 weather day in Minnesota today. Wow. That's something to on the calendar. Let's see if it's actually true though. I think it's going to be okay. 84 degrees, breezy, sunny. I'm going to this. 01:23 Right. Okay. So is your your farm actually little? Is your farm actually little? It is we're at five acres compared to around us. have three large cash croppers and they have, you know, I don't know. 1500 acres to 2000 acres each. 01:44 Well, you've got us by two acres with your five. We only have three acres. There's a reason we're called a tiny homestead because we consider ourselves to be minuscule compared to a lot of people. Exactly. That's how we're little just because everybody else is so big in this area. Okay. And where's the biggest city near you? We're actually located not just too bad. Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and there's Manitowoc. 02:15 Oh, Green Bay. Everybody knows where Green Bay, Wisconsin is. Right. 40 minutes southeast of Green Bay. Okay. So you're closer to, I'm blanking. Illinois is below you. What's to your right? lake? Right. So Milwaukee, we're an hour and a half north of Milwaukee. 02:40 Okay. All right. Cool. Awesome. So what do you guys do at your farm? We are we are into a lot of things. We're trying to figure out how to scale down. We like to do everything. So this is always our dilemma of what to do and what not to do. So yeah, so primarily our crops on on the bulk of our land, we have a little bit of rented land as well. That's again, small four acres. And we use that for growing our 03:10 Einkorn wheat, which is an ancient wheat, which was really kind of the start or the spark, you know, for us three years ago to create our little farm and get going with what we wanted to do. 03:25 And then we also do fruits and vegetables and then our baked goods is what we pretty much primarily do at this point. And then we're going to be adding animals to our little farm, hopefully sooner than later. Okay. I want to get back to that, but do you guys grow the einkorn wheat for yourselves or do you have a market to sell it at too? So that's a good question. Yes, we 03:55 We are currently growing it ourselves. This is our third cropping year. had the first year was a failure trial and error year. It turns out that it's not just like growing regular wheat where, uh, I mean, we don't spray, you know, it's all regenerative agriculture. So that, was a huge learning curve. Uh, so the second year we did much better and the third year now it's looking really good too. Uh, so yeah, we, 04:23 Our goal with the einkorn is to bring it full circle. mean, Joville was kind of an inspiration for us. when we landed on the einkorn, we just felt there should be a lot more of this available to everybody. So then we do sell the flour to people as well as we run it through our kitchen, through the baked goods. Yeah. Do you grind it yourself? 04:50 We do. So we actually sprout it first and then I dehydrate it and then we have access to a stone mill. So then we stone mill it fresh about every three weeks is what is about what we need to do to keep it fresh. Wow. Okay. Awesome. I love that because I hear about Einkorn flour a lot. I've never tried it. I probably should, but I haven't. And does it, does it look the same as the wheat that we grow today when you grow 05:20 einkorn wheat does it look the same as a there's a word for it. I can't think of it. The wheat that a farmer would grow, you know, today. it's quite different. I mean, if you had a handful of each, it's, y

Today I'm talking with Kim at Alpine View Farm. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 00:28 Today I'm talking with Kim at Alpine View Farm in California. Good morning, Kim. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm fine. How are you? I'm good. How's California this morning? How's the weather? Pretty good. Can't complain. It's a little warm, but it could be a lot worse. Yeah, the weather this year has been much better than last spring and summer, but it's still been kind of weird. I'm in Minnesota. It's a beautiful, sunny, relatively cool day. 00:57 I'm kind of tickled with that. Yeah, for sure. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do at Alpine View Farm. Well, we moved to the country about eight years ago and I quickly fell in love with the homesteading lifestyle. I've always called myself a country girl at heart, but this is the first time I've ever lived in a country. So I, uh, 01:26 I guess I was foreshadowing my future without even realizing it. But we just love it here and we, you know, started a garden and then we started with five chickens and now we're up to 36. So, you know, that chicken math kicked in pretty fast. And then I learned how to can and I learned how to make sourdough bread. And so that 01:55 has evolved into a little business where I have a micro bakery. And so I'm just really enjoying this new part of my life. Nice. What else do you make for your micro bakery? I focus mainly on sourdough sandwich bread, and I also make these really fun pull apart wreaths. And that's our focus in terms of the bakery at this time. 02:24 Awesome. So where do you sell your baked goods? Well, we started off just selling from the farm and then this year we've expanded. We sell at this really cute general store in a little town near us. And then last month we just started selling at a local farmers market. Nice. Awesome. 02:51 So I don't want to be nosy, but I'm going to ask the question, how much do you sell your sourdough loaves Oh, for the bread. So we sell our loaves for $7 and we sell the pull apart rolls for $10. And I've been told by customers, it's too cheap. But we wanted to try to keep things, you know, manageable for people. 03:21 You know, times have been really tight for so many people and, um, you know, we just want to make a little bit of money for ourselves, but also make our products really sellable to everybody. Awesome. The reason that I asked so pointedly, sorry, is that a loaf of name brand bread at the store, like Pepperidge farm or whatever. 03:49 is going for seven to eight dollars a loaf right now. So you are absolutely reasonable and your product is better. So I think you're doing a good thing. I know we have our bread contain six ingredients and we use all organic ingredients. And you know, a lot of people don't realize this, but a lot of the bread that's sold in the store that's labeled as sourdough 04:17 not actually sourdough. They're using yeast and something to make it flavored like sourdough, but they're not even using a sourdough starter. So it's not the fermented food that's such a health benefit for us. Isn't it amazing what major companies get away with but we small home bakers have to label everything specifically? Oh, I know it's so 04:47 difficult to get everything on a cottage food label. And not to mention the fees involved to be able to sell the products and even we have to get in California, an egg license to sell our eggs. You know, I just kind of laugh and shake my head because I'm thinking, do you know how many eggs I need to sell to cover this or? 05:13 Do you know how many loaves of bread I need to sell to cover this cost? Yeah, it just, doesn't seem fair. And I'm not implying that life is fair, but it just doesn't seem right, you know? Yeah, it actually feels like they're trying to push out the small farmer or the small producer. 05:37 um, not help them succeed. But I'm hopeful that there's going to be some positive changes in the future along those lines. Yes. And as long as we small producers continue to fight and to work and to produce good things, we'll probably win the battle at some point. Yes. I hope. In fact, a funny story, I have some tomatoes coming in, so I was going to add 06:04 those last weekend to our things that we're selling at the farmers market. And you kno

Today I'm talking with Sarah at Sourdough for Beginners. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 00:25 Today I'm talking with Sarah Frank at Sourdough for Beginners. Good morning, Sarah. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. Are you in Canada? I am. I'm just north of Toronto in what we call cottage country. Okay. What's the weather like in Canada this morning? It's a beautiful day. A little bit overcast. We live right next to the lake. You know, it's nice and warm. It should be warm enough for the kids to go swimming later. 00:53 Nice. It is overcast and not raining. It rained really hard here yesterday. Like we had inches of water in front of our garage yesterday. It's been crazy weather this year for sure. So every time we get a decent day, we're pretty excited about it. Yeah, us too. It's, it's been, uh, it's been a much better spring than last year. And that's all I'll say. Cause I've already talked about how terrible last year was. Where are you located? I'm in Minnesota. All right. So, um, 01:23 I'm going to do a little bit of an intro here because I actually have info to share. You are an administrator for the Sourdough for Beginners Facebook group, which is really a great group. I have been stalking it because I've been learning about sourdough. And you are also an author of a book called Sourdough for Beginners, the ultimate companion for sourdough bakers. And so I really wanted to have you come chat with me because 01:52 As we were saying when we talked before, I have been avoiding sourdough like the plague because I thought it was intimidating. I thought that I would kill it. and sourdough became such a trend during COVID that I was like, eh, I don't know if I really want to do an episode about sourdough because it's very, very, very talked about online. And then a friend gave me some sourdough starter. 02:20 And now I'm learning and I made my first loaf a couple of weekends ago and it was, it was good. It turned out like a bagel texture. So it was under proofed, I've been told, but it was a loaf of bread and it was yummy with cream cheese. So I feel like I had a success. So tell me about yourself and what you do. So, um, I have a lot of kids. I'm a mom of five, two, three of my own and two stepdaughters. 02:50 We're very busy. Our kids range in age from seven to 18. We were actually just at our oldest daughter's high school graduation last night. And grads? And we've always been pretty health focused. So we always are like learning about the food science that's out there and then it's sort of across our whole family. So we are always trying to eat well and you know, we go to the gym, our kids are all athletes. 03:17 daughter's going to be playing varsity sports in university. we, about a year and a half ago, started looking at the food that we were getting from the grocery store and learned that one of the most, you know, one of the biggest culprits to poor health related to food is the bread that you buy in the grocery store. 03:43 So just like everybody else, we set out on the journey to learn about sourdough. And my sourdough starter, you know, took a really long time to get started. And I was in the big sourdough groups on Facebook. And sometimes it's hard to get an answer when those groups are so big. But ultimately I ended up figuring out not only how to make sourdough, but how to make it, you know, within a busy life and with the very most basic 04:12 cheapest ingredients and with very few tools. So the issue that we were having at the time is we were having some, you know, financial challenges. And at one point I actually went to the grocery store and had to say, I can afford either bread or the cheapest all purpose flour that they have one or the other. we just kind of took the leap. you know, fast forward about 04:36 three or four months, I'm making sourdough just like everybody else on the planet. I'm posting it on my Facebook. My friends start reaching out and asking me about it. I start sharing my sourdough starter, much like what happened to you. And then I found myself getting sore thumbs, texting with my friends all the time, kind of walking them through what to do. So I started this group on Facebook, Sourdough for Beginners, and I've never had a Facebook group before, so I didn't put any thought

Today I'm talking with Jena at Cooper's Knoll Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 00:27 Today I'm talking with Jena at Cooper's Knoll Farms. Good morning Jena, how are you? Good morning, I'm great, how are you? 00:37 I'm good. You're in Ohio, right? I am right in central Ohio, right outside of Columbus. How do you pronounce the name of your town? Pataskala. It's a popular question. Yeah, I was looking at your Facebook page and your About page and I was like, I have no idea how to say that one. Pataskala, Ohio. We're about 20 minutes outside of Columbus. Pretty convenient location and... 01:05 Easy to get to wherever you need to go, but still in the country, which is really nice. Yes, yes. 20 minutes to actual stores helps when you really need something. Is it raining in Ohio? Because it's raining in Minnesota this morning. It is not. We got some storms yesterday, but we're hoping it does rain today because we are in a massive heat wave. We're a heat index of 100. So everything right now is how do we keep the animals cool? 01:34 We're trying to work through this heat wave and hoping for a little rain actually. Yeah. How long has it been super hot for you? This whole week. So, but since maybe Friday last week. we've got a week straight of hundred degree index, heat index. So, and then before that it rained so much, we couldn't get it to stop. And now it's just dry and hot. So you can't get a good mix. It's all, it's one way or the other. That's it. 02:04 You can't win. Yeah, I know. I feel really bad for complaining about the fact that it was so hot this past weekend in Minnesota because we only had really hot for two days. a whole week of it, I would have been ripping my hair out by now. So. Well, yesterday was supposed to be the end of the heat index and then they have extended it now through, through Saturday. So just doing what we can to stay cool. am so sorry. It's no fun. 02:34 Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself and about your farm because I can't wait to hear this story. Well, I'm Gina and my husband is Richard. We have two boys. They are ages 10 and 11. And then two years ago, we also inherited a daughter, a bonus daughter. She was 20 and 03:01 parents had both passed away in the same weekend. She spent the night with us and never left. we've got we've got a bonus daughter that's going to be 22 as well that that lives with us. And my mother-in-law lives here too. And so we have a little multi generational home and I work full time and my husband works full time too. So he's a data assessment coordinator at at Reynoldsburg schools here in Ohio. 03:31 And I work full time as a regional sales manager for an education software company. So I manage our entire Northeast territory and all of Canada. I teach jazzercise on the side when I'm not recovering from ACL surgery as I am now. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because it said something about that you didn't realize you would be bottle feeding lamb. Oh, yeah. When you were down. 03:58 ACL surgery two weeks ago, delivered a goat on Sunday sitting with my brace on the floor of our barn and then had creamy twin sheep and lost one and have had a house sheep for the last two weeks as well. So farming from my couch friend, farming from my couch. the animals don't wait unless you're dead. Unless you're dead, you're working. Yeah. 04:25 Exactly. So it has been adventurous here. tell me about how the farm got started because I get the impression that wasn't the original plan. 04:39 No, it was not. So when COVID happened, we were living in a suburb where my husband was invincible and it just was not good. And our kids were stuck in this postage stamp size yard and we just wanted more space for them to run. And so we had decided then that we were going to get some land where the boys could go outside and run. 05:08 play. And so we started looking for like two to four acres. And long story short, long story short, we were looking for two to four acres and the day before we went to look at properties, this 10 acre property popped up. And so we went and looked at all the properties and the 10 acre one actually ended up being just as much or less than the others that we were looking at that were smaller. So we we got this one, we built

Today I'm talking with Martin at Shady Lane Farm. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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 and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Martin at Shady Lane something. 00:29 and the computer just like blanked out your name, Shady Lane something in Illinois. Martin, tell me the name of your place again. It is Shady Lane Farm. Thank you. Once I hit record, it like cuts off half the people's names of their places. And if I haven't memorized it, I don't know what it is. So thank you. 00:51 So what's the weather like in Illinois today, Mark? It is cooler. It is only going to be 86 after about four days of 90s. And we have occasional thunderstorms, but it's cloudy, not a bad day. We were out doing chores this morning. So not a horrible day to do chores. Yeah. Was the weekend rough on you guys? Cause it was really hot here in Minnesota. Yeah, it was. We... 01:19 Mostly because I made everybody get up early to do chores before it got too hot. So it was, it was pretty rough, but we got through it. Yeah. The secret to homesteading and farming is get everything done before 10 AM that you have to do outside. Yes. We had a triathlon that came through our neighborhood here on Sunday and it was a heat index over 100. Yeah, it was gross. 01:50 I think it's supposed to be 82 here today at like three, four o'clock and 82 is better than a heat indices of 105. Yes. So thankful times have come down. So tell me about what you do at your place. So what we do and we bought this five acre property in 2023, my wife, Lisa and I, I have been an urban homesteader. 02:18 for many years and finally it got to a point where I had rented all the garden plots I could from the local park district and they had started to take plots back from us, which I understood to because more people wanted to vegetable garden after COVID, which I totally support. I had failed in an attempt to get chickens allowed in the city. 02:48 So I went to Lisa and I said, you know, we just redid this beautiful colonial house here in Rockford. And we love it. Let's sell it and buy a rundown five acre property and do it all again and add animals and fencing and new garden and building all these scoops. And she said, okay. That's a good woman. And she had, um, 03:18 There were farms in her past, but she herself had no homesteading experience. I had just taught her the vegetable garden and she was completely interested in doing it. And she took a year off from her second master's degree and was the general contractor for all the work on the house and has really adapted to it. 03:47 And now is full on farm girl. Her cousins and relatives can't believe it. Has she raised a bottle lamb this spring all on her own and just has totally adapted to it. She's embraced it. Yes. Awesome. I love her. That's great. So why did you want to do this? Did you, was it, was it just because you couldn't have chickens or did 04:17 were you brought up around farming or what? Well, my mom's family out in Western Kansas had a tradition of farming and she spent part of her childhood on a small farm, very small by Kansas standards. They milked a few cattle, very, very rural. They made their own electricity with an AC Delco 04:46 windmill generator. Once they had milk, they would shut down the power to the house from the windmill and they'd power radio off the batteries because they had to use all the power to chill the milk. So she grew up very, very rural, processing their own food, canning. 05:10 They had a root cellar. So she grew up with all of that homesteading. In fact, that side of the family arrived in Western Kansas in 1887 and took up a homestead claim. So literally they were homesteaders. Wow. Yeah. She brought that ethos to even our very suburban upbringing. She would can things. She would 05:39 very much make things from scratch. I grew up making my own egg noodles that she taught me to make. We didn't have a big garden because many of our government houses, you just didn't have the space for it. But all of that ethos was very much there. And I spent time in Kansas in summers and when my dad was in Vietnam. So 06:07 it really impacted me. And then when I was earning my PhD in American history, my dissertation was on the settlement of the far Western counties of Kansas between 1890 and 1929. And that transitional period where the railr

Today I'm talking with Larkin and Kevin at Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Larkin and Kevin at 00:28 Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm, I love the name, in Florida. Hello guys, how are you? Hello, doing good. Good. You're melting in the sun, but trying to stay cool. Yeah, we were going through that yesterday. I said this on an interview this morning that I did, but I will say it again because it was ridiculous. We have central air in our house and it was set for 72 degrees. It got to 77 degrees in my house at three o'clock yesterday afternoon. 00:58 Yeah. Yeah. My dog was laying on the floor panting. I'm like, oh, this is bad. What kind of dog do you have? She's a mini Australian shepherd. Oh, cute, cute. We have a Great Dane. Oh, well, they're very different sizes, but I bet they're just as lovey. I bet they're on the same love scale. Yes. OK, so how did your farm get its name? So when I was a kid, I watched the movie 01:27 Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? It came out in 2000. Have you seen it? I have not. I keep meaning to find it and I just never get around to it. It's a worthwhile movie and the song, Bad Bottom Girls, you know, is in it. And the movie is about these guys that escape from jail and it's like a story of redemption, finding yourself. 01:58 and really like prioritizing your self-well-being. And it just resonated for me for a long time. And so when we developed our mini farm, it became a little bit of a play on words because we had chickens first and, you know, the layered chickens have very heavy bottoms. And then we got into bees and all the worker bees are female. And it's just kind of snowballed into our 02:27 our farm name. love it. it who what band did the Fat Bottom Girls song? Queen. Yeah, that's what I thought. But I wasn't sure. I didn't want to sound like a total idiot. Okay, cool. That is very cute. I love that story. So tell me about yourselves and what you do at Fat Bottom Girls Mini Farm. Sure. So my name is Larkin and we are I would consider ourselves 02:56 first generation homesteaders. It started as a hobby, you know, in the backyard before we had our first child. And that was around 2015 or 16 when we first got chickens and I was a zookeeper, worked with birds at our local AZA zoo. So I'm very fond of birds. And I decided I wanted to bring them to our 03:25 backyard and Kevin is a good sport. So he was like, all right, know, eggs for the kitchen. Great. And then as we got into more gardening and, and planting our own crops in our backyard, we decided that this was like a really great, sustainable, uh, an empowering hobby. Um, and so we've just been taking like small approximations until we're 03:54 where we are today, we have like a dairy cow. We do homeschooling as of this year and we do take advantage a lot of our public land for hunting. And we just try and be as self-sustainable as possible without making it overwhelming. And so that's kind of how we got started. 04:23 How much land do you guys have? So we have a family farm and it was built for horses. My mom is an equestrian. She breeds Grand Prix jumpers and then they show on the circuit here in Florida and they travel around the country. So we have probably about 17 acres and our farm is now down to two retired 04:52 horses that we ride for pleasure and the rest of the farm has been made available to us for our our creatures. Nice. And what do you have for creatures? We have chickens, quail, changing list, ducks, geese, a cow. We have a couple of horses and that's it. We have a rabbit. 05:22 for our composting needs. He lives a life of luxury. Yeah, we have the whole menagerie. And so are you using, I don't know how to ask this correctly. I never asked it right. Is anything on the farm produced to support the farm? 05:46 Oh, so we do sell our extras, if that makes sense. So we really produce for ourselves and for our family. if we have... Go ahead. Well, Kyle's making what? About a gallon a day or so? Gallon, gallon and half of milk a day? Yeah. We use that to make a lot of ghee. And then if we have some leftover milk or... 06:14 Even occasionally we'll sell some ghee or butter. It's just the butter and the ghee is extreme and eggs of course. But the butter and the ghee is pretty labor intensive.

Today I'm talking with Dana at Twin Acres Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Dana at... 00:28 Twin Acres Farm in Idaho. Good morning, Dana. How are you? Good. Good. How's the weather there? It's actually better today. Like last week was in the 90s. And then this past weekend, you know, when you have something planned to do, it dropped completely. Luckily, we didn't get a freeze, but it was cold and windy. I was like, I thought it was supposed to be the first day of summer, but whatever. 00:56 Well, you had the opposite of what we had this weekend and yesterday. Oh my God, it was so hot. We had the central air set for 72 and at three o'clock yesterday afternoon inside my house, was 77 degrees and so sweaty. was gross. Oh my goodness. Yeah, we've been having some like for Idaho, it's been like above like record highs. 01:21 But then we had like this cool front come through on like right on the first day of summer. And we were like, what the heck? My daughter went camping and they went up to the mountains and they ended up getting snowed on like five inches of snow the night before. And she was like, I thought it was summer. Yeah. I had the opportunity to apply for a job in Idaho years ago and I gave it some serious thought. And then I saw what the weather is like. And I thought, you know, 01:51 Minnesota is a little more predictable than Idaho. I think we might just stay here. Probably. So, all right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do, So I actually am a school teacher. I've been teaching for about 15 years. And then when I'm not at school, know, evenings, weekends, 02:15 school, you know, we get all those awesome school breaks then like I can't sit still. So I decided to start this little farm to keep myself ultra busy. 02:28 Okay, and it's Twin Acres Farm, is that right? Right. So we own only, it's just small, if we have two acres in Twin Falls, Idaho, and I have twin girls. So that's where the name came from is like two, two, you know. So that's where we came up with the name. Okay. I was going to ask, so thank you for telling me. So what do you do at your farm? 02:53 When we very first started out, know, it was like everybody else, you get a few chickens and they're the gateway and then it grows from there. So I had some neighbors at the time and they had these adorable little goats. didn't, I thought they were baby goats, but it turns out they're dwarf goats. I knew nothing about them. And then we were hooked. So you have to start with two, right? Cause they're herd animals. And then now I'm up to like 40. Oh. 03:23 my. we obviously I don't keep that many but you know after baby season we need to sell down some. We still have some babies and stuff to sell but I do all the milking, make cheese, make soap, make caramel sauce, make you know all the different things that you can make with goat's milk pretty much. And then you know we make in can. 03:49 and garden and we have chickens, have ducks, we have rabbits. We've had other homesteading animals like the cooney coon pigs in the past. We've had turkeys in the past, but some things, we've even had quail in the past, but some things we've decided that that's not really our niche or something that we wanna tackle. And those are things that you have to find out over time because some people love those. 04:15 those types of things and then some decide that's just not for them or what they want to do. Just like some people are like, I would never have goats. I'd rather have sheep. You know, everybody has their personal preferences of like different homesteading animals that they would like to keep. So chicken math translated to goat math for you. Well, I still got chicken math too, because I'm probably sitting on over a hundred right now. So I have both. Uh huh. Yeah. 04:42 Yeah, chicken math is weird. You start out with like two chickens and all of a sudden you find yourself with a hundred and you're like, where did they all come from? Right. We started with like a dozen, you know, again from like neighbors had an incubator and we were like, oh, we want eggs. And so we started with a dozen and then now I, um, breed certain, you know, purebred birds and, um, we sell those here. Um, we also, we, a few

Today I'm talking with Beth at Twin Creek Gardens, CSA. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Beth at Twin Creek Gardens, CSA. 00:29 And Beth and I talked back in April of 2024. So it's been a year and a couple of months since we've had the joy of hearing about Beth's life at the CSA. So good afternoon, Beth. How are you? Good afternoon. I'm doing well. Thank you. Good. How's the weather in Wisconsin? It's hot here in Minnesota. Well, you know, it's funny. I've been waiting for hot and now that it's here, I'm going, oh, God, it's too hot. 00:56 So it's beautiful. It's an absolutely beautiful day. So it's been fun running in and out of the house to to switch gears with the water every once in a while. Yeah. Given everybody a nice deep drink. Yeah. My husband filled up three different bowls for the dog last night because she really wanted to play frisbee and it was hot out. And he said he said that she drank one and a half bowls of water after after she played frisbee. And I was like, don't play frisbee with her when it's so hot like this. You're going to kill her. You know. 01:25 Yeah, it is hard on them. Yeah, and when it's this warm and it hasn't been this warm yet, so she hasn't acclimated and she's a chubby dog. She's probably five pounds overweight. So I can't imagine it's fun being her and running across the yard chasing after the frisbee and realizing how hot she is when she's Right. So anyway, it's been over a year since we talked on the podcast. So catch me up a little bit. Well, 01:55 Um, last year I was doing a lot of dreaming and my tagline was if we build it, they will come. And I put that hashtag on just about everything as I was posting about what we were trying to do. And it seems like it's true. Um, we have a new website and that has been a game changer for us. I was trying to do that. 02:23 solo and try to build something that would meet our needs and the needs of our members. And it just wasn't working. And so I found CSAware. I don't know if you're familiar with that. found it through localharvest.org, which is a nonprofit. And we are a nonprofit, so it was a perfect fit. And I've got a wonderful person who knows the ins and outs of the website. She's my go-to gal. I can call her or send her a text. 02:52 at any time of day to help me figure things out. I think it's really made the difference for me in being able to meet the needs of the people of the community and yet still not have to spend so much time with the nuts and bolts of it. So we currently have 10 families that have signed up for the season and it's a perfect pace. They trickled in. 03:21 like two at a time, three at a time. And we have some really exciting partnerships that have started. I'm really excited to share with you. so, you know, I think it's growing at a pace that we, and I, can still hold on to the bucking bronco and go for a ride. We're having a lot of fun. Good, because I know you really wanted to take. 03:46 what you and Rob had started building and share it. And it sounds like you are, so that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. We have some families who come pick up their boxes here on Monday or Tuesday. And they are, what's exciting is it's families. So little people are coming with parents and getting a sense of the garden and what it's like here at the farm. And we're talking about hosting one of their birthday parties in a few weeks. So 04:15 They really love it here. And that to me is such a blessing. Yeah. And let me, let me catch people up. CSA, it stands for community supported agriculture. And basically it is subscribing to a share of the farm's produce that is grown during the summer for a certain amount of weeks during the growing season. Correct. And our season is 24 weeks. 04:40 But we started a little earlier. Now, I've learned so much about how I'm going to structure next year. But there isn't a ton of fresh produce right now. And so what we've been doing, and everybody's so lovely about it, is they're getting fresh microgreens that I'm growing weekly. And they're getting salad greens because I can grow them hydroponically, quickly, and cleanly. 05:07 then the rest of what they're getting in their boxes right now is actually some of our specialty items that are available, in

Today I'm talking with Lindsay and Kaleb at Homestead Hobbyists. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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 and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Lindsay and Kaleb at Homestead. 00:29 Homestead hobbyists. There we go. Good afternoon, you guys. are you? Doing well. Good afternoon. Thanks for having us on. Yeah, you're kind of saving my bacon. It's been, it's been rough getting guests to commit because it's a really rough time of year for people who are, I don't know, birthing animal babies or trying to get their gardens in or their crops in. So I appreciate you making the time. Yeah. It's like it's busy season all of a sudden. 00:58 Yeah, I went through this back in November, trying to schedule interviews around Christmas time because everybody was busy with Christmas plans. And we're not big holiday celebrators here. We just aren't. We're not Jehovah's Witnesses or anything, but we just don't make a big deal of it. And I always forget that other people do. And I was like, huh, I might be entirely screwed on my podcast or two weeks straight at Christmas time. This is great. 01:28 Well, if you ever need us to jump on as backup conversationalists, you let us know. will. I will put you on in my stable of, of they'll talk to me, I think, hopefully. All right. You guys are in Ohio. We're in Ohio. We are more on like the middle Western side of Ohio. We're in a really, um, 01:52 not super small town, but we are surrounded by a lot of really small towns. There's probably only 20,000 people here and we're about 45 minutes north of Dayton. If folks know where that is. I know where that is because I drive through Ohio about once every five years from Minnesota to Maine to see my parents. So I know I have an idea of where Dayton is. my great aunt and uncle lived in 02:21 Oh my God, I can't think of the town, but right near Indianapolis, Indiana and my grandparents on my mom's side live in Oakwood, Illinois, which is not far from Chicago. I think it's an hour south of Chicago. So I'm familiar with the route that I drive and all those towns are on little signs that say, if you want to go to Chicago, go that way. then it takes you two hours to get there. 02:47 Yep, exactly. I love road trips. I really, really do. I haven't done one in four years now and I'm getting older. I'm not so good at the sitting in the car for three, four hours straight at a time. My back starts to hurt from sitting in the seat of the car. So road trips aren't as much fun as they used to be. But boy, when I was a kid, my parents were like, we're going to Illinois. I was like, yay, snack foods and pop all the way. 03:16 Our kids are just getting to the point where they like that. They like the idea of a road trip. My youngest, asked me probably just this week actually, I can't remember if it was this week or last week. She goes, mommy, when are we gonna do that thing where we get up really early and we get to wear our jammies and leave in the car? I was like, yeah, we're gonna do that soon. Yeah, it's exciting. It's getting you out of your comfort zone and going to a brand new place. 03:46 or a place you've been to before, but it's always fun to go there. So, all right. So tell me about yourselves and Homestead hobbyists, cause I want to know all about you. Okay. Well, Caleb, do you want to kick off? No. So we are originally from the Ohio area. We kind of had a, we're, 04:15 We've had an interesting journey to get to Homestead Hobbyists. Both of us grew up in this area and then went away to college and then lived in different states and then sort of found our way back to Ohio, especially as we were getting more solidified in our careers and starting a family and we wanted to be back close to home. So we live in the same town that 04:44 my parents and my in-laws live in, which comes in handy. And one of the things that I think we both recognized is that we grew up with some different homesteading activities in different ways on both sides of our family. And especially as we got kind of more into a routine of day-to-day life, it was like, well, I kind of want to bring some of this stuff back. 05:13 So, like, I grew up in my mom, she made a lot of our clothes when we were little. And, you know, we did a lot of just stuff ourselves. And then, Caleb's side of the fami

Today I'm talking with Dawn about homesteading and farming as we age at Dawn's Dirt. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 00:25 Today I'm talking with Dawn at Dawn's Dirt and Dawn was a guest on my show, not two weeks ago, and told us about what she does. But today we're going to be a little more focused and we're going to talk about homesteading and farming and gardening once you get past the age of 40, especially as a woman. Good morning, Dawn. How are you? Good morning. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity again. I just love talking about these things. So yeah, it's good. Me too. so 00:55 If we're talking about when you get past 40, obviously I'm past 40, I'm 55. I think you told me you're 44, is that right? I was just going to say who says I'm past 40, but I'm just teasing. I'm 44. I almost had to edit all that out. Okay. So the first thing I want to say is aging is a privilege denied to many. And so I'm really glad that I'm getting older and hopefully wiser. 01:24 trying anyway. But there are some real things that come with getting older, especially with our bodies and manual labor. So how's that going for you Dawn? Because I will share mine after you share yours. For sure. Make me go first. Well, I'll tell you this. Like I'm not a 01:46 bigger, fatter woman, but I'm a bigger woman. I'm tall and I've got big bones and I've got good muscle structure. So I can actually lift and outlift a lot of people. I was just thinking back this morning, I went to the gym for a couple of months just after I got through my busy season on the farm. And on the farm, I could lift, you know, three buckets of potatoes, which was about 150 pounds. And I went to the gym and dead lifted 185 pounds. So 02:13 I can do it, I am stronger than most, but I'll tell you this, my back hurts a lot at the time and my lower back and my upper back and into my neck. It hurts a lot of the time and I've learned, I used to be able to do the 150 pounds in one shot and just do it and bust it done, but I've learned in the last couple of years here that I'm better off to do three trips of 50 pounds than one trip of 150 pounds. 02:42 It's harder. Everything aches a bit more and I fall into bed at night and I'm just physically exhausted, tired from doing physical work. Yeah. And it takes longer to recover once you get past 40 as well. Yeah, for sure. My youngest son still lives with us and he's 23 and his job is to help us out on the quote unquote farm. 03:12 And this kid can just bust his ass for two days in a row, be mildly sore the next day. And the fourth day from the first day, he's like, let's do it again. I'm like, nah, I'm not doing anything. You can go play. You do it. For sure. And I found that too. know, back when I had my farm, I would have to, in the spring, I'd have to get my boiler system going again. so, 03:38 What that involved was taking a ladder around the greenhouse and crawling up it and crawling back down it, know, opening the valves and things like that. And so I was up and down ladders, up and down ladders, up and down ladders all day for a full day. And I could do it while I was going because once I'm moving, I'm moving. But let me tell you, the next day when I try and do it again, my body says, uh-uh, you do not want to do this again. Like it just took longer the next day. And I was sore for several days after that. Yeah. 04:06 It's just your muscles don't recover the way they did when you were young. And part of it is that your body has extended a metric but ton of energy up to the age of 40 because you had all the energy in the world. And at some point your body is just like, you can go easier now. I give you permission by telling you to stop. Yeah. The problem is, is my brain doesn't want to stop and I just keep pushing. And so 04:35 Yeah, it's not the same as I was when I sold my farm. I'm I and then starting this new this new farm I'm I'm starting over from scratch and I'm you know doing cleaning jobs and you know have my animals and my gardens and things like that again and I'm doing it on my own. I'm a single mama and yeah, it was easier the first time around to keep up and do it all and work, you know 12 14 16 hour days and now I'm like a 12 hour day like a 16 hour day right now is