A Tiny Homestead

Today it's just me with a very short update at A Tiny Homestead. 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. Hey friends, it's Mary. It's just me today. 00:29 Um, I thought I would give a little update on what's going on in our place. And to begin with, I want to say thank you to everybody for listening and people who talk with me every day. It's been an amazing, almost two years of getting to people. And secondly, it was a really rough weekend in Minnesota. We had two lawmakers attacked in their homes, um, early morning, Saturday morning. 00:57 One of them died. One of them is recovering. And the one who died, her name was Melissa Hortman. She was 57 years old. She was the speaker of the Minnesota House. And the other one was Senator Hoffman, and he and his wife survived. Melissa Hortman's husband was also killed. And the person that shot them was actually taking cover in the county that I live in, in Minnesota, Sibley County. 01:26 So it was very much a nerve-racking, anxiety-inducing weekend around here. On the flip side of that, it is a beautiful day in Minnesota. Our gardens are thriving and flourishing. We have wild plums that are growing. We have apples. We have black raspberries. We have the usual suspects in the garden, cabbages, tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, peas, and 01:55 It's been an amazing start to the summer season. 02:05 As I say on the podcast a lot, if you support your local growers, you are supporting your community and we really need to do that. And we really need to do it every day in every way, shape and form that we can, which means that we should all probably take a big deep collective sigh or breath of relief and step back and think about how we approach conflict, how we approach problems and try to find the positive ways. 02:35 to uh... 02:38 To not have bad things happen this weekend really shook me and I'm not going to get into Democrat, Republican, any of that. And when President Trump was shot, I felt bad about that too. Luckily he didn't die. So yeah, violence is not the answer. So I really don't love doing solo podcasts recording and I'm going to keep this really short. 03:06 There should be a new podcast out tomorrow afternoon, new episode, and there should be one on Friday in the afternoon. There probably won't be one on Thursday. So thanks for listening guys and keep coming back to learn things. Bye.

Today I'm talking with Melissa at My Homesteading Chronicles 2.0. 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 Melissa. 00:27 at My Homesteading Chronicles 2.0, and we're going to find out why it's 2.0, in Ontario, Canada. Good evening, Melissa. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I'm very excited to chat with you. Number one, why is it 2.0? It is 2.0 because about two years ago, I started My Homesteading Chronicles and I had about 2,400 followers and the hackers got me. 00:54 Oh no. they hacked my Facebook, they hacked my Facebook page. So I had to start at nobody. So it was June last year that I got hacked. And yeah, I've been trying to grow my page back. So it's 2.0. I do not know why people have to suck so much. Yeah. Yeah, I have no idea. They didn't get anything out of me. just, yeah, they got my followers, I guess. 01:24 I'm sorry. It's so much work to rebuild it too. Oh yeah, it is. It is. But it's doing better than I expected it be. So I'm over 3,000 followers since June last year. So it's about my one year anniversary of 2.0 this week. Well, congratulations. Thank you. This social media thing is so weird. Yes, it is. It is. I've been on social media, but this starting a page is... 01:53 It was new to me. had friends that kept telling me you need to start a page and I kept saying, no, I'm not going to. And well, I did. Well, I'm thankful that you did because people need to know about this homesteading thing because it's important. So tell me about yourself and what you do at my homesteading Chronicles. So I am just a mom. I have a 13 year old daughter this week and my son will be 18 next month. I'm married. I have a wonderful supportive husband. 02:23 We live in a very small town, about 500 people, just kind of five minutes from the shores of Lake Huron. I work full-time in corporate finance. I live in the village, so I don't have a lot of space, but I like to grow everything I can and make as much as I can from scratch. That's about it. About 10 years ago, I hurt my back and had to change careers. 02:51 and I was off work for about eight months. And that takes a toll on your income of your family. So I started to learn how to make things myself. So I've kind of over the last 10 years, I've been growing mostly a lot of tomatoes and I learned how to can and I learned how to crochet and I'm very self-taught. 03:19 Very nice. We talk about tomatoes on the podcast a lot. I am the tomato lady. Tomatoes and chickens. bet if I went through and had some computer program count the number of times chickens and tomatoes have been mentioned, it would be in the probably 50,000 by now. I believe it. I don't have any chickens. I'm absolutely terrified of chickens, but I love to buy 03:47 local farm fresh eggs. So I like to look at the eggs from far away and the chickens from far away. But tomatoes is my thing. love tomatoes and my husband has planted over 200 tomato plants this spring in our garden. He's got me beat. I've got 185 plants this year. 04:09 What kinds? Because if we're going to talk tomatoes, let's talk tomatoes. What varieties? Okay, we'll talk tomatoes. I have 71 varieties of mostly heirloom. About 20 different kinds of cherry, chocolate cherry, a lot of the bumblebees. I'm trying a whole bunch of different paste tomatoes this year, different romas. 04:33 Um, one called OptiMax that I hear is really good, but only one of them survived. So I'm hoping the plant does well. but I like, it's funny because I don't eat tomatoes at all and no one in my house eats tomatoes, but, I can them all. um, yeah, yeah. They have a lot of heirloom beef steak type. Uh, last year, my, my number one was lucid gem. sounds pretty. 05:02 It is beautiful. It's an orange tomato. The top is purple and when you slice it, it's red inside. Nice. So you say you don't eat tomatoes, but do you eat like tomato sauce or salsa? I do. make a lot of tomato sauce and a lot of salsa. About 20 years ago, I ate a bad tomato and I just haven't been able to do it. So I was telling somebody the other day, my goal this year is to eat a toasted tomato sandwich again. 05:32 You should give it a Give it a try. You might be surprised. I OD'd on cherry tomatoes when I was like 10. They were so yummy. My dad was growing them in our garden and I love

Today I'm talking with Keesha at the Little Cabin Big Woods. 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 Keesha at Little Cabin Big Woods in Tennessee. Is that right, Keesha? That's right. Where in Tennessee? We're in Middle Tennessee, about an hour from Kentucky, so northern middle. Okay, and how's the weather there today? 00:44 Today it is gorgeous out. We are on day two of what should be three days without any rain, which is the first time that's happened in a really long time. Oh, so you're getting the same weather my parents have been getting in Maine for the last three weeks. All they do is tell me it's raining. Yes, constantly. Yeah, we had that last year here in Minnesota. This spring has been fabulous. I am so thankful, like dropped down on my knees. Thank God, thankful. 01:14 And today it's kind of gray, but it's not raining. So I'm, I'm thankful for that too. Okay. So you got you or you guys, is it just you or are there other people? Oh, there's my husband too. Okay. So you guys are off grid. Are you completely off grid? We are, but we have solar. So we do still have some luxuries. mean, we've got a window. 01:41 AC unit for the days that it's just really, really still and stagnant. We've got a TV for an occasional movie. Got a couple of ceiling fans. So. Okay. So this leads me to tons of questions because the closest I have been to off grid in my entire life, I think I was about 15. My parents lived in Steve falls main and I live there with them with my siblings. 02:10 And we had the tail end of a hurricane come through and we were without power for an entire week. And the first, the first day and a half, we couldn't even get to fresh water because there was a huge pine tree across the road between us and the fire barn where they had water. And so luckily my mom, what grew up in Illinois where, where tornadoes happened and every time there was bad weather in Illinois. 02:38 her mom would draw water. She'd fill the bathtub, she'd fill pictures of water for drinking, and my mom grew up with that. So luckily, we had drinking water and we had water to flush the toilet with. But we had no power, we had nothing going, no heat, no nothing. It was September, so it was in the sweet spot of not too hot and not too cold, thank goodness. But 03:02 Yeah, my parents cooked outside on the grill or they actually had a fire pit so they would cook on the fire pit because they couldn't use their stove. So that's the closest I've ever been to off the grid. And so tell me what it's like. 03:20 That's a good question. I will say it has its challenges, but it's also really satisfying. And from your taste of being off-grid that week from the storm, I so you have an idea. When you cook out over and open a flame, there's nothing quite like that. It's really, really good. since we do have solar, 03:48 It's an adjustment period. You do have to keep an eye on things. But we do like pressure canning and such we do outside on the patio and get these wonderful views. And so yeah, it can be a challenge, but it's worth it. And we just love it. We have an regret a thing. Okay, well, that's awesome. What brought you to it? 04:16 Well, we lived in Arizona in Tucson for about two decades and raised our kids there. And as time went by, just, we weren't really satisfied anymore. And so we did always bring our kids up with, you know, going camping and learning things about how they worked and such. so they got older and we just started thinking. 04:43 You know, maybe we should just go ahead and take the leap and do it. And so when the kids were in high school, we kind of had a timeline thinking, okay, we've got four years left until they graduate. So let's start making plans. So we started looking at different states and growing seasons and narrowed things down and finally ended up picking Tennessee. But I think what really convinced us to go ahead and go for it was my husband and I. 05:13 We went on a 500 mile pilgrimage hike overseas in Spain and you learn a lot when you're living out of a backpack for six weeks. 05:25 And we realized all this stuff that we had waiting for us at home was just stuff. And you don't own it, it ends up owning you. So when we got back from that, I think we got rid of about 75, maybe 80 % of what we had and

Today I'm talking with Heidi at the Secret Farmstead. 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 Heidi at Secret Farmstead. 00:29 in Texas. Good morning, Heidi. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I would normally start off with questions about the weather and things, but I was reading your introduction on your Facebook page and are you sure you want to talk to me in a public forum because it's a secret, farmstead? Yeah. No, I'm not worried about it at all. Let's do it. Okay. What I'm alluding to for the listeners is that 00:58 Heidi lives on a couple of acres from what I gathered, but there's something about an HOA situation. Do you want to elaborate, Heidi? Yeah, I can do that. We live in a super bougie neighborhood. Our houses in this subdivision range from probably the high 700,000 up to close to $2 million homes. We bought this 01:25 location because we left the house and it has a guest house or casita and initially my parents had moved with us. So we were told that we didn't have an HOA when we purchased our land and that is technically true. However, we do have what's called an ACC, an architectural control committee that thinks they're an HOA and we do have deed restrictions. So despite living in the county and 01:52 The county allowing, you know, so many heads of cattle or livestock per acre and those kind of rules, our little subdivision technically does not allow anything like that except for your household dogs or cats. So while I have a couple of acres that is flat and completely usable, technically I'm not supposed to have anything like what I have. And it started with maybe a couple of chickens from 02:21 uh, tractor supply. Um, and now I might have 24 chickens. Um, and then I thought, well, uh, I want dairy. So now I have maybe a few goats. So anyway, it's just kind of expanded from there and where we live, we're on a kind of a corner lot at the entrance of the subdivision. So we don't have a neighbor behind us and we don't have a neighbor on 02:50 the other side of the property where the animals are kept. It's next to a frontage road. So no one's disturbed by our animals. And really most people don't even know we have them. We don't advertise them, but we also are respectful and don't advertise that we're breaking the rules either. Uh-huh. Except for being on a podcast that anyone can listen to. 03:14 You know, I used to be really concerned about being more open about it, you know, because I'm, you know, I have a career in law enforcement and I was always a rule follower and a rule enforcer. But my neighbors all love my animals. So the ones that are directly adjacent to me basically across the street or next door, the opposite side. So that's not been an issue for us. And I routinely provide them, you know, fresh baked sourdough or goat milk or 03:44 eggs, you know, so they really do benefit from it, even though they're not quite willing or able to break the rules themselves, they are kind of reaping the benefits of my break in the rules. And I did a lot of research as far as how the laws work and, you know, an ACC is architectural control. So really that is they can dictate, you know, the size of your home and what is built out of and your fencing and things like that. 04:12 As far as the deed restrictions that they have put into place for our subdivision, technically, in order to enforce those, a neighbor would have to take me to court. And if I thought, you my husband and I had this conversation initially, if we thought that truly this bothered any of our neighbors, we wouldn't do it. I mean, I don't want to a bad neighbor. But also, I want to be able to use my land and not have people tell me what I can and can't do because it seems silly. 04:40 that I have a couple acres that I'm not allowed to utilize in a way that would allow me to be a little more self-sustaining and a little more, you know, organic in my approach to my, you know, skincare and my food. So anyway. okay. Thank you. Thank you for elaborating. Because once I realized what was going on when I read your, your about you thing, I was like, Oh boy, I don't know if she's really going to want to talk to me, but clearly you do. I'm very excited about this. 05:10 Um, so what, what brought you to doing this? Well, you know, I

Today I'm talking with Michaela at CZECH BAKER MN. 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 Michaela at Czech Baker, Minnesota. 00:29 in Savage, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Michaela. How are you? I am good. How are you today? I'm good. Sorry about the technical difficulties logging in. I'm going to be emailing Riverside tomorrow and being like, what is up guys? Cause it's not working very well for my guests. No problem. We figured it out. So we're good. Yes. So my 00:51 I usually I say how's the weather, but I'm in Minnesota too. So we know the weather has been kind of rainy, kind of sunny, kind of cloudy, and we never know what we're going to get. So, Okay. So you are a Czech baker and I need you to tell me how you pronounce K O L A C H Y or E or whatever it is. So Koláč would be a traditional size that we have in Czech Republic. And that would be one item, just one. 01:20 Kolache would be multiple. And then here in Minnesota, they do use Kolache keys. So they add the S at the end to make it multiple. But if you say Kolache key, that would be multiple already. And single would be Kolache. And that is just a smaller version from the regular Kolache word. Okay. And that particular pastry we're talking about is the one that... 01:46 that's flat on the bottom, but the corners are folded in and it has like a jam or jelly in the middle. Is that right? You know, we're going to be hearing a lot of people about this because I was born and raised in the Czech Republic. Koláč comes from words, kolá, which means round. So in Czech Republic, if you ask for koláč, you're going to get a round circle item with the filling on the top and open face. And that's the ones I make. And then the ones here in Minnesota, they do 02:16 put in the two corners or sometimes they just do two of the sides, kind of wrap them over and kind of hide the filling a little bit. So we make those in Europe as well. We don't call them kolache. We have different names on a different presentations. It's the same dough, same filling, just a different presentation and gives you a different name. But in Czech Republic, if you ask for kolache, you're going to get a round thing with open face. Okay. 02:41 See, this is why I love talking to you people on the podcast because I learned things I didn't know. My husband and I were at a friend's house last year or the year before and the male of the couple was telling me that it's Kalachi and I've heard it called Kalaki, like Kalaki days in I think Montgomery. Kalachi days in Montgomery, yeah. Yeah, and for the longest time, I'm like number one, I don't know how to pronounce it correctly. 03:10 And number two, I don't care, they're yummy. arose by any other name would smell as sweet. And I suppose that whatever this pastry we're discussing is called, it tastes just as good. Yep, I would think so. mean, know, different names, but different views or different looks, but the same dough, same kind of filling, of course, depends, you know, if you get it from commercial store, if you made it from homemade, but yeah, whatever they're called, they are delicious. You're right. 03:39 Uh huh. love the pastry dough. is so good. And I'm not even a bread girl. Like I don't love bread, but these things are amazing. Okay. Thank you for sort of straightening that out for me because I figured you would know the correct answer. And where in Czech Republic are you from? I was born and raised in Ostrava, which is the East North side. I lived about, I don't know, have 20, 30 minutes to Poland and then about 04:08 30 to 45 minutes to Slovakia. So we're kind of up in that corner and all of those three cultures kind of, know, interlope in there for us as far as food goes. So we'll get a little bit of everything. And when did you come to America? I have been here since 1998. Oh, wow. OK. So how old were you when you came over? I was 19. So I've been here longer than my original start of life in Czech Republic. 04:36 Was that hard for you? mean, this is not a geography podcast, but was that hard for you? Was it a real culture shock? Not at all. mean, you I grew up with one brother and a mom, kind of. She was married for a while, but we never really kind of had a stable father figure in our lives. And I don't k

Today I'm talking with Christi at Tee’s Kitchen. 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 Christi. 00:27 at Tee's Kitchen in Louisiana. And Christi was a guest on my podcast back, I think, in March. And it was cold and snowy and gross, and we're rolling into summer. So Christi and I are going to talk about some less hot, cooler summer dishes that we can maybe introduce people to so they can make their electric bill go down. Good morning, Christi. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. I'm so excited to be back on. I had so much fun. had 00:56 Such a great conversation the last time. We did and I listened to it this morning because I was like, what exactly did we talk about? And I was like, oh my God, I still love this lady. She's fantastic. Oh, I feel the same way about you. Thank you. Good. I just I make so many new friends who I probably will never meet through the podcast. And my husband says, so what new friend did you make today? love that. I'm like, oh, well, do you really want to know? And he's like, 01:25 Kind of? And I give him the short version. He's like, I'm so glad that you have people that you get to talk with all over the place. He said, because you need that. I'm like, I do. I really do need that. So it's wonderful. you're in Louisiana. We're rolling into summer. We're not quite there yet, according to the calendar, but it's literally a week or so away. And we've had some really hot days so far here this spring in Minnesota. I'm guessing Louisiana hasn't been any different. 01:55 Louisiana has been really, really hot. We're approaching 100 degrees here and it's just, the humidity is insane. So it's pretty hot here. So it's summer here as far as I'm concerned. Okay. So how do you combat that when it comes to feeding your family? I have lots of ideas, but I want to hear yours first. Well, we, you know, we, we try to grill outside, but then again, it's very hot. We always have to have a fan going. 02:25 Um, so I try to do meals that I don't have to use my oven as much, or if I have to use my oven, it's like a shorter period of time. Um, because it just, it gets really, really hot in my house. We do a lot of like, uh, rice cooker meals. do, uh, one pan sheet pan meals. Sometimes I use my air fryer, but I don't like to use it for, it's not big enough for the whole family. Um, yeah, we grill just simple quick meals, I would say. 02:55 Okay, well, let's back up just a titch. The first thing I would tell anybody right now in the climate that we're all living in, meaning weather and government, is if you don't know how to cook, it's a really good idea to start learning how to cook. It's also a really good idea to start maybe learning how to grow something, even if it's just herbs in a pot beside your doorstep, because 03:24 I am, I don't want to talk politics, I do not, but we're in a kind of iffy, bouncy, chaotic world right now. And one of the things that makes me sane is that I know how to cook and I have a garden. So cooking is not hard. I swear to God, people, it's not. It's time and intention. And you don't have to start out making a gourmet meal. can. 03:50 You can make a grilled cheese sandwich with two slices of bread, some butter and some cheese you love. And it's super easy. And then once you get that accomplished, you can make scrambled eggs and you can boil eggs for egg salad sandwiches. There are really simple things that you can do to start the steps to learning to cook. And I don't, I don't want to like force this down people's throats, but 04:17 but cooking is such a vital skill for everybody to learn. Secondly, one of the things that we do around here is we do a lot of salads, like just lettuce, sweet peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, know, that kind of stuff, because it's cold food on a hot day. And you can throw some shredded chicken or some ham that's been sliced up or 04:47 If you're into steak, you can take steak that you've already cooked from dinner the night before, slice it really thin and put that on your salad if you want meat in your salad. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, we try to do a lot of that to my husband. I will be honest, gardening is not one of my strong suits, but I can take, my husband is great at that and he runs the garden. And so I just, whatever he, he harvests, I'm good a

Today I'm talking with Stephanie at 60 Acre Wood. 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 Stephanie at 60 Acre Wood in Arkansas, United States. Good morning, Stephanie. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I don't think there's an Arkansas anywhere else, but I figured I'd throw the U.S. on there anyway. Sounds like a plan. How was the weather in Arkansas this morning? Well, it was real beautiful and now we're raining, which we need for the gardens. I'm pretty happy. Good. Good, good, good. I've got everything crossed that the weather is not as insane. 00:55 this season as it was last season, because we had rain for six weeks straight in spring and our garden was terrible. So, and I've talked about ad nauseam on the podcast because it just drove us insane last year. bet. Yeah, we've had a turbulent spring, more tornadoes than any other season. I think in history or something, it's been a rough spring and now it's kind of calming down. So it's pretty nice. 01:22 Fabulous. I wish you all the luck with all the things you're trying to grow because man It will break your heart when you put all that work into it and it just doesn't go Yep, and if you get hail and we do get hail so We get little we get little pea-sized hail. I'm really hoping that I never see golf ball size I really don't need to that. No, I we don't like to see it at all, but it does happen here. So Good 01:52 Okay, well, tell me about yourself and what you do at 60 Acre Woods. Wood. Wood. Wood or woods? wood. Acre Wood. Okay. Well, my late husband and I had a dream to be self-sufficient. We have six children and five grandchildren, and we wanted to not be off-grid 100%, but more self-sufficient. Just raising our own food, staying away from the grocery store. 02:19 And when he passed away, I said, you know, I'm going to make this dream happen. And I moved to Arkansas, bought a farm site on scene, never even been to Arkansas, which is crazy. And started building this farm that was in the end of 2019. I closed on the farm in the beginning of 2020 and been doing it pretty much ever since. We do a lot here. 02:47 We have a lot of animals for food and we have a lot of pets and we homeschool and it's, it's, it's a busy life and it's really rewarding and we love it. We love being that. We love that self-sufficiency. We're at about 65 to 70 % of our food comes from our farm now. And for us, that's Number one. 03:14 Congratulations on being a strong, capable woman. Proud of you. Thank you. Number two, that much food grown on your own property is amazing. That is astounding. It's huge. It really is huge for us. Yeah. And are you still a single mom? I am not. I remarried a wonderful man who thinks I'm crazy, but lets me buy goats. So keep him. 03:43 I'm going to keep him. Yeah. I would love to have goats and I've talked about this ad nauseam on the podcast too. We don't really have the room because we don't really have anywhere for them to eat, to graze. And I'm sure you've noticed that feed prices for every animal known to man have gone up in the last year or two. So we just visit goats. don't have any here. 04:11 Well, you know, our goal also is to start growing food for them. are not right now, but we have a goal to. the thing, goats have been our hardest animal so far. Believe it or not, we have, we have cows with pigs, we have chickens, donkeys, horses. If you name it, we've probably got it on this farm, but the goats have been very, very hard because there's a large parasite load in Arkansas. We've had a lot of problems with the, with the goats, but milk is 04:40 Cheese butter. I love them. They're fun Most of all they're But they're hard to grow hard to grow here so what's the what's the pesticide load not pesticide, um, what's the What's the problem? What what is it that's making it so hard? So the parasites here are very I want sorry parasite. They're very What is the word? resistant 05:10 to a lot of the common things that you use here. And we tried doing the natural, we do black walnut, we tried doing all the natural things and then we switched over to some of the not so natural things because we didn't want these animals to suffer. But we have just a resistant population of parasites, which we had just got under control p

Today I'm talking with Diane at A Farm Wife. 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 Diane at A Farm Wife. Good afternoon, Diane. How are you? I'm fantastic. How are you? I'm good. Are you in Michigan? You bet. Are you guys getting the wildfire smoke like we are in Minnesota? Yeah, it's kind of hazy. It's not really bad, but yeah, it looks a little bit weird. Yeah, it's raining here. So the air is already wet. And if I look across the cornfield that borders our property, it looks like it's foggy, but it's not fog, it's smoke. 00:55 Well, we actually have sun trying to peek through and it's very windy but it's getting it's like an 80 something right now, which is great for drying out our hay. I bet it is. We don't have any hay and I'm so glad it's raining right now because we've had like a week or so of beautiful dry weather and that's great because this time last year it was raining every day here, but 01:23 But it hasn't been and we've got a really good garden started this year. Like last year was a miserable fail for gardening season. So we've got everything crossed that it just keeps doing this week of really nice weather and then a day or two of a good rain and then another week of nice weather. Everything crossed. Us farmers are never satisfied with the weather. Oh, I know. And I feel so bad about complaining about it, but 01:49 If you could have seen my husband's disappointment last year, May into mid-June, because all it did was rain. We know what that's like. He was so good. Like it's just a farm to market garden, or farm to table, whatever you want to call it. But it's his, it's his joy. It's how he unwinds in these stresses. Yeah. It doesn't matter how big or how small you are, the weather affects what's happening. 02:16 Yeah, it was just rough and he was so good. He never blew up about it. He just had faith that this year was going to be better. And I said to him the other day, said, that faith is paying off. It's much better this year. He just laughed. Yeah, that's kind of our mantra as farmers. It'll be better next year or next harvest or next planting. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, that's all you have to hang on to. There's nothing you can do about what's going on in the atmosphere. So. 02:45 You just pray or send up smoke signals or just open up your hands and say that I will be done and hopefully everything turns out Okay, so yeah, all right So I have been looking forward to talking with you for a week since I well not week We only talked a day or two ago, but since I found out about you I have been very excited to talk with you because you are not a 25 year old lady Just getting started in this you have lived a very full very 03:14 I think lovely, wonderful life so far. Yes, very blessed, but I am not in my 20s. That is for sure. Yeah, so tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, just to back up a little bit, I was raised on the east side of Michigan. My dad was a tool and die maker and had a normal, what I thought was a normal life. Dad, home at 430, weekends home, went summer vacations and I 03:44 graduated in June, turned 18 in July, got married in September and moved across the state onto a farm and into a unknown territory. My husband would leave at five in the morning, come home at 10. It was crazy. It was so different that I couldn't even begin to tell you how different it is. And you learn how to do a lot of things that you didn't know you could do because there was nobody else around to do them but you. So I was, 04:13 Very fortunate to land on a beautiful farm here in West Michigan, a dairy farm. We had four boys. And to tell you the truth, the farm was my enemy for quite a while because it took my husband away and it took away what I thought was supposed to be family time and how family was supposed to look. And, um, he would be home on Sundays, um, after church for a little bit in the afternoon, because on Sundays we just did, uh, feeding. 04:41 and milking and everything else waited because it was Sunday, so that was the only time we had together. So it was very, very difficult trying to acclimate to a life that I never saw coming. But once the kids got a little bit older, you know, and they were on the farm and I was able to join in, then th

Today I'm talking with Daniel and Joni at Rawly-Mae 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. 00:25 Today I'm talking with Daniel and Joni at Rawly-Mae Farm in Tennessee. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. Good morning, we're good. How are you? I'm good. And as we just said before I hit record, you guys have been up all night getting ready for things going on in your life. And I have some pretty good allergies kicking my ass this morning. So we're going to try to make this as good as we can. So you were saying that it's really muggy in Tennessee this morning? 00:54 It is. It's very humid and muggy and we're, it's dry enough for us to our hay. So we're getting our hay done right now. So. Says it feels like it's 87 degrees. Ugh, gross. Well, it's raining here. Just so listeners have a weather update from Minnesota to raining. Nice soaker. I'm really happy about this. This is good. So tell me about yourselves and what you do. So, um, we. 01:22 of course, own Rawly-Mae Farm. We started that in 2021. We are a first generation. We've both been around agriculture, our whole lives. But when we got started, Daniel was a police officer with the city of Cookeville and I was a special education teacher in White County. So we have 01:52 We both put in over 10-year careers in those before we were both able to step away to just doing the farm. We have two children, Eliza who is nine and Ralston who is seven. They are big into rodeo. We travel a lot with them and try to support them the best we can with all of their endeavors. 02:19 I think we have too many pets to actually name as far as the livestock and the dogs and stuff. But that's just kind of like a short snippet of our life. Okay, awesome. And I don't want to, I'm going to do the opposite of burying the lead on this one. You said that you are getting ready to sell your farm. So does that mean that you're getting out of this? 02:48 No, it means we have outgrown where we're at currently. So we are landlocked where we are at. The airport in our area owns the land for the majority around us. So there's nowhere for us to expand. And with the amount of animals that we currently house, 03:17 needing hay and just the production of it all, we're needing to expand. So we've been looking in White County for a farm that offers more acreage. Okay, good. Cause I was, I was afraid this was going to be a sad episode because I just talked to somebody last night and she did end up selling her farm, um, year or two ago and she's moved on to a new thing and she's very happy doing it, but she misses her farm a lot. 03:46 Yeah, so I was like, oh no, not a second one selling no Right No intentions to stop Good. Okay. So what do you guys do at Raleigh May? So we sell various livestock we focus mostly on menter cattle and highland cattle as well as various exotics like llamas alpacas, especially chickens 04:14 Polish, Silkeys, know, stuff like that. Mature donkeys are a big thing that we sell. And we do little bit of everything. I we travel all over the United States. I think we go to several livestock sales across the country. we recently, the first of last year, started doing our own deliveries, which has expanded to, you know, we're delivering to, I think we're up to 23 different states that we have delivered to or sold. 04:43 livestock to over the past three and a half four years Wow, okay, and did I see that you guys take in animals that that need a home as well We do we've got Various rescue animals a lot of times when we buy animals to resell They just stay here. We all fall in love with them and they don't go anywhere. So that's 05:10 One of the perks of the job is we get to see all kinds of animals and sometimes we like them too much for them to go anywhere else. They become part of your family? They do. They do. They're a large family. Yeah, it sounds like it. It sounds like you are overrun with family. Yes. We have new members of our family coming sometime in next two weeks. We have three barn kittens coming to live with us. Awesome. We just actually might. 05:38 My cousin just gave us, she was going to give us a couple of her barn kittens and it turned into six barn kittens. we've recently found homes for four of them. So we're down to just the two. Well,

Today I'm talking with Dawn 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. Today I'm talking with Dawn at Dawn's Dirt in Alberta, Canada. 00:29 Good, I don't know what time it is. Good afternoon, Dawn, how are you? I'm really good. Thank you so much for having me. And yes, it's just after 4.30 in the afternoon here in Alberta. Yeah, and it's just after 5.30 here. And again, I tend to do most of my recording in the morning. So I'm programmed to start to say good morning. And I'm like, no, it's not morning. Stop it. It's funny how things go like that. You you get into a routine and a rut and... 00:59 But here I am throwing you for a loop already. So let's do this. I'm all good with that. And the only thing that I request is that we don't talk religion or politics only because I haven't and it can become really divisive and hurtful. And I would just rather talk about positive things like growing plants and feeding people. I love it. Those are my two favorite subjects to talk about, but I don't like the division and the the either. let's yeah, sounds great with me. Yep. And I just 01:29 I've come really close, Dawn. I did. asked one of your compatriots in Canada, how Canada saw America right now. And she was like, if I say something not okay, just edit it. And I was like, okay. And she was very, very diplomatic and kind. And we kind of talked around things for five minutes. And then I was like, okay, that's as close as I want to come to talk in politics on my podcast. And she just laughed. So worked out great. Okay. So. 01:59 Tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Yeah, so I'm Dawn from Dawn's dirt. If you're looking me up and I am a farm girl. was raised in the greenhouse industry here in Canada. So my parents had a 26,000 square foot greenhouse and they grew long English cucumbers and 02:19 In 2007, me and my ex-husband built our greenhouse my parents sold and we took over kind of my family business and we were growing long English cucumbers as well and we started, it was pretty tough. Farming is of all types and sizes, no matter what it is, is really hard. And so we ended up branching into tomatoes and peppers and then we eventually ended up growing 20 acres of garden and field crops and I direct marketed them. 02:46 everything that I grew to my consumers at farmers markets and online and things like that. So I was a vegetable farmer for many many years plus I had some chickens and some sheep. So that's who I was. Unfortunately a year and a half ago I had to sell and so now I'm getting into the whole online thing and if you give a man a fish he eats for a day but if you teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime. So I'm teaching people how to 03:13 grow food in the spaces that they have. think everyone should be growing something in their backyard and I'm teaching people how to do it. So that's my new venture. Fabulous. And I agree on the teaching Amanda Fish premise. And I am trying, we are trying to feed our community too. So we are aligned on both of those points. Perfect. I love it. I think that we've lost a connection between our food, you know, back in the day, back 50 years ago, 03:42 Grandma had a garden, know, great grandma had a garden. Everyone had a garden and a few chickens in their backyard. And I just feel like we need to take society and shift backwards to some of that again, because it's so important for kids to know where their food comes from. so, yeah, I just think that's where we need to head to is to know that your carrots come from the ground and that, you know, eggs come from chickens. Yeah, they sure do. Weird, huh? 04:10 They don't come from a grocery store. mean, grocery stores are a building that houses items that we can eat. But at the end of the day, the farmer and the field and the sun and the animals and the earth, that is where our food actually comes from. Yeah, yeah. Yes, absolutely. It does. I am living proof of it. ate 04:37 butter crunch lettuce out of our garden on my taco last night. Oh, yum. Yum. And did you grow your tomatoes too? Well, we do. We do grow tomatoes. We do can tomato sauce. We don't can tomato paste. Long story. Haven't tried it yet, but we just used our last jar of homemade canned San Marzano tomato sauce last weekend. And

Today I'm talking with Megan at The Kelley Family Homestead. 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 Megan at the Kelley Family Homestead in Connecticut. 00:30 Good morning, Megan. How are you? Good. How are you? Oh, I'm great. Is it beautiful in Connecticut today? No, it's raining today. I'm sorry. It is gorgeous here in Minnesota. Oh, nice. Last weekend was beautiful. It's the first Memorial Day weekend we've had in years where all three days were just stellar. And I thought for sure it would rain this weekend. It's really nice out today too. I have no idea why Mother Nature is being nice, but I'm very good with it. 00:58 The running joke right now in New England is it's the weekend because it's raining. It's only nice during the weekdays. The weekend, we've been getting rain for like a month straight. You are having the spring that we had last year. And my parents live in Maine. I just spoke with them this morning and my mom was like, so how's the weather there? I said, it's sunny and 57 degrees. She's like, I'm happy for you. I said, you sound really not happy for me. 01:27 that is pouring here in Maine this morning again. was like, oh great. Yeah, everything's wet this morning. So yeah, I'm sorry to hear that and I'm sure you don't actually need any more water from what they've been telling me. It's been bad. it's all right. It's filling up the rain barrels. So we're good. Good. Okay. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do at the Kelly family homestead. 01:59 Well, I'm a mom of three. I am very interested in native plants and growing my own food. So we moved into our house about nine years ago in the fall and the next spring I was basically ripping up the grass to grow gardens as soon as possible. We put in over 15 fruit trees, berry bushes, grapevines. 02:26 garden plots for annual vegetables and things. And it's just been kind of growing ever since. And a couple years ago, I just decided to go for it and planted a ton of seeds. And everything sprouted even though they were like super old. So that was kind of the beginning of the farm stand. I was just growing my surplus vegetables and putting them out there. The vegetable plants and 02:54 That did really well. So the following year I started adding native plants and cuttings of my grapevines and some of the berry bushes that I grow. And that did really well. So this year is the third year of the farm stand and it is even bigger. We've got a lot more bushes and trees. I mean, it's just a little roadside stand at the end of my driveway for right now, but the plan is to eventually get a piece of property and make it like a full on nursery and 03:24 do the whole thing. But it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun. I really enjoy gardening. I really enjoy propagating. It's always fun to see what works and what doesn't. And my kids like to help out, and it's just been awesome. Fabulous. You are in an urban setting, according to your website. Is that right? We're on a third of an acre. 03:53 Yeah. Where are you in Connecticut? I'm in Enfield, right on the Massachusetts line. Okay. So question for you is if you are in an urban environment, did you have to get any permit, any permits from the city to have the farm stand or did they, were they not even bothered by it? 04:16 Um, I checked with the city before I started and as long as my farm stand is under 200 square feet and is mobile, I'm good to go. Um, I did have to get a nursery license from the state. Um, um, you know, pesticide or a pest thing, know, license to say that I, I'm making sure that my plants are not, you know, carrying any pests that I'm selling and that I'm, you know, any starts that I get from anybody else, I'm making sure that they're. 04:45 equally certified and have their pest light prevention inspection done. And everybody I buy from sends me their copy of their certificate. I've been working with the... the re-go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. You've been working with me. 05:10 The North Central Conservation District, I bought some seedling trees from them this year. And then I also bought from the New Hampshire State Nursery, some seedling plants from them as well as some natives. Just because my property is so small, I can't alwa

Today I'm talking with Christina at Hayes Valley Farms. 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 Christina at Hayes Family Farm. 00:28 Good morning, Christina. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. Just watching the rain. Yeah. Where are you? We are in Marion, Virginia. That's right. I knew it was the South because you have that lovely Southern accent going on. Whatever it says. And I'm like, I don't hear it, but... You don't hear it if you don't... Okay. I am like a crazy fanatic about accents. You don't hear it if you live in it. Yeah, true. True. So... 00:58 It is gray here in Minnesota. It was supposed to be sunny and the sun has not decided to break through the clouds yet. Do you guys still have snow on the ground? Oh no, no, no, no. I think we had sleet three and a half weeks ago. I think. Might have been five and a half weeks ago, but it's been a while since we've seen any frozen precipitation. Thank goodness. 01:21 June 1st is Sunday and we have farmers market starting June 7th. So it better not snow. Has it snowed in June there before? Not when I have lived here. I've lived here. I've lived in Minnesota for over 30 years and I have not seen snow in June. I have seen like three inches of snow in May though. Yeah, it was really pretty though. Oh my goodness. 01:50 because stuff had started to leaf out just a little bit. So the snow got caught on all the little tiny leaves. It was really That's pretty. Yeah. Yeah. And I had a rose bush that had bloomed and there was snow on the rose. And I was like, oh my God, I got to a picture of this. And I did. So you don't want to see it snow in May and June, but on those rare occasions that it does, make sure you have a camera handy. Yeah, definitely. 02:18 Okay, so tell me about yourself and what you do at your farm. So we are, I'm a, I guess a third generation farmer, skipped a generation. So my parents, well, my father grew up in Nebraska and came from a farming family and then joined the Air Force. 02:44 And then my mom was born in Cuba. my grandparents on my mother's side are Cuban. She came to America when she was two years old. And in Cuba, they had a farm, but the great grandparents did not the grandparents. They were more city folk. She went to the Air Force. That's where I was born. so I guess, you know, 03:11 I don't know, third, fourth generation farmers skipped a generation. I grew up on a farm. grew up in Miami, Florida and met my husband in Tennessee and we, he had, grew up farming. Um, so he's, you know, country boy grew up in the mountains, the Appalachia mountains. And, uh, you know, he liked that I was the city girl. I liked that he was the country boy. He didn't want to farm. 03:40 He wanted to live in the city and I'm like, yeah, you don't want to live in the city. So we're farming. I won that argument. Nice. Yeah. We started our farm in Tennessee and long story short, the county we were in was expanding. A lot of the farms got pushed out. And so between property taxes and then, you know, we, I had been in Tennessee since about 2005, 2006. 04:09 And, you know, since then, you know, prices have exploded in East Tennessee because everybody's flocking, has been flocking to that area. So we couldn't afford to buy a bigger piece of land. You know, for what we sold our farm for, we were able to buy three times that here in Virginia. So that's how we ended up in Virginia. So his family, my family, they're all in Tennessee. So we're about two hours from family. 04:39 So I have a background actually, had a mortgage company. You know, my background is finance, business. So I traded high heels for muck boots. That's excellent trade. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we raised Angus in Tennessee. And then when we moved the farm to Virginia, because we wanted more land, we decided to start a micro dairy. So now we have jerseys. We traded. 05:08 one cow for another and we're a full working farm. We raise hogs on pasture. We have chickens, we have a small hatchery, we have a rabbitry, we have sheep, have goats, we have Jersey cows and a couple of mini donkeys and then standard donkeys. And then geese and ducks. I think that's pretty much everybody. But we offer, you know, grass fed beef. 05:38 pasture raised chicken eggs, poultry, rabbi

Today I'm talking with Claire at Hundred Acres Meadows. 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 Claire at 100... 00:27 100 acres something and I can't read the screen. What is it again, Claire? Hundred Acres Meadows. Thank you. I swear this technology doesn't work sometimes and my eyes get older every day. So it doesn't help me at all. So what's the weather like in Louisiana? Because that's where you are. Very hot and very humid. It's in the 90s and the air is saturated. Is that unusual for me? 00:56 Oh no, May is usually our kind of summer dress rehearsal. It's usually hot and buggy and icky and then it just gets hotter from there. Okay, well, I'm in Minnesota and we never know what we're going to get in May. We had a 90 degree day a couple weeks ago. And today it's like 67, I think, and it's sunny. I, Minnesota is weird. I don't really appreciate the swings all the time. 01:27 So at least you have sort of the gauge on May for Louisiana. Yes. Okay. So tell me about what you do because I think you have classes. I know you have horses. What is it you do? So we do a couple of things. A, we homeschool. So we spend time homeschooling our two kiddos. And then a lot of times we'll have homeschool families over to the farm. 01:57 teach them how to milk goats and introduce them to the ponies and the chickens. And they take home milk and sometimes cheese if we have some that we've been making. And then we run our farm. And then my main gig is I'm actually a vet. So that's a part-time job for me. Very nice. But that comes in handy with your animals. Yes. I mostly do small animal for work, but I'll take care of minor problems that come up here on the farm. 02:26 the major than I let somebody else handle it. Okay, awesome. And I'm guessing you're probably connected with other veterinarians if you are a vet. Oh, yes. So that helps. Okay, I have a couple questions about you being a veterinarian because why not? I don't get to talk to veterinarians other than when I take my dog to her vet who she loves. Thank God. 02:54 My dog is crazy, she loves going to the vet. How did you decide you wanted to become a vet? Did you know from when you were little or was it something that you got into when you were in high school? So I always loved animals and I thought from the time that I was, you when people start asking you what you want to be, that was often my answer. But I actually got to college and I got a C in chemistry and I said, 03:20 they're never gonna let me in because getting into vet school is harder than getting into med school. It's a very, very competitive process. So I actually stopped aiming for vet school and I switched over and became a teacher. My background was elementary education with a minor in special ed and talked for a couple of years. I got my master's in Ed specialist in gifted education. 03:45 And after a few years teaching, I said, this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I love the kids. I love the teaching. I didn't like all the other stuff that went along with it. So I said, I'm going to give myself one semester of retaking science classes and see if I can make. 04:05 A's in it, not hey, I scraped by and I got a B plus. I wanted to feel confident that I could handle material. And I did that and I said, okay, well, if I can do that, I'm going to apply to vet school. So I went ahead and applied and went to vet school and graduated later than most of my peers did, although we had somebody that was, I want to say 55 when he graduated and he owns his own clinic in Florida now. So. 04:32 age isn't a requirement with it, but it did give me a nice background for homeschooling my kiddos that I feel pretty comfortable with the education side of things. Well, that's impressive. I'm proud of you. That that must have taken a lot of I don't know, pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and really digging into to learning the things. Yes, yes, it did. And I actually had my son a few months before. 05:01 I started vet school, so I had him in April and we started in August. So I had a bitty baby and a toddler all through vet school, which made things extra challenging, but I have a wonderful husband and family who helped support me through it. Oh, honey, now I'm really proud of you. Wow. That is a big ask

Today I'm talking with Louis De Jaeger author of SOS: Save Our Soils. 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 Louis de Jaeger in Belgium. 00:29 and he's an author of a book called S.O.S. Saving Our Soils. Good. I don't know what time it is in Belgium. Good day, Louis. How are you? No, very happy to be here on your podcast. It's so nice. What time is it in Belgium? It's 10, 12 here in Minnesota. Well, it's 5 p.m. 5, 12 here. So almost time for dinner. OK, so good afternoon to you, Thanks. Good morning. 00:58 Thank you. So I was very surprised when you reached out to ask about being a guest on the podcast. And then I saw what you do. And all my surprise went away because you are trying to save the earth by teaching people about soil. Exactly. And so I would love to know what your background is and why you got involved in this in the first place. Yes. So 01:25 I actually have two grandmothers that grew up on farms and they had to move from the countryside to the city because there was actually no future anymore for farming. that actually influenced me until a point that when I was 18 years old, I actually wanted to become a farmer. The only 01:48 problem was is that I didn't have land anymore in the family and land is like super expensive in Belgium. It's around 100k per hectare or like, let's say 40k per acre. And so that wasn't really an option for me. And I was kind of curious about why that is, how things are going. And also was thinking about what kind of farmer would I like to become. 02:16 For that, really was looking for answers and the more I kept looking for answers, the more I realized that the farming system worldwide is actually pretty screwed. that the way we farm today is a lot of the reasons we farm today as we farm today is because of governments, of lobbyists pushing us in certain directions. actually nobody's winning, only big corporations and not the farmers themselves and certainly not 02:46 not the consumers. So yeah, we need to do something about that urgently. Okay, that explains the drive for you to write this book and do all the other things you've done over the last, I don't know, 12 years. And you're only 31. Yeah, correct. You're baby. My daughter's 35 and she's the oldest of four. So yeah, you could be my kid. 03:16 So what I want to know is in all your travels, because I know you've traveled a lot looking at your website, who is doing it the best out of the worst? Well, the good news actually is that I've traveled to like half of the states in the United States. I really love America. I've also traveled to Canada, to Central America, South America. 03:41 And every country that I visited, there are farmers that are really showing that it's possible to grow crops, very high yields and taking care of the planet at the same time. And also not unimportantly having more profits than their neighbors. So that's actually the good news that there's no one country doing better. are just like a lot of pioneers 04:09 spread across the world, spread across the United States as well. if more people would know about them, if more farmers would see that, like a farmer living only 50 miles away is like, gone by one Porsche car every year because of the savings and pesticides, then more people will make a transition to a more natural way of farming. Well, I'm glad that America doesn't 04:39 fall way down at the bottom because I live in America. And my husband is a gardener. He does a farm to table garden. It's 100 feet by 150 feet. It's a little garden. We're not a farm. We're a homestead. And he uses no pesticides, no herbicides, no chemical fertilizers. As close as we get to chemical fertilizers is our chickens manure. 05:08 And it works. mean, when we don't get rain for six weeks from May to the middle of June, like we did last year, we have a really beautiful, productive garden to the point where we have too much and we sell it. Wow, that's great. So it can be done on a small scale. For sure, we're doing it. But how do farmers who are doing it big scale handle this? Because 05:37 For a long time in America, it has been all about weed control and pushing bigger yields and using things that aren't good for the earth to make that happen. how can bigger farmers do this

Today I'm talking with Becca at Moon Ridge Acres. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Becca at Moon Ridge Acres in Alberta, Canada? Yes, that's right. Yes, okay. Good afternoon, Becca. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. It's a gray, drizzly kind of day here in Minnesota. What's it doing in Alberta? It is actually sun, shiny, and beautiful. After a mega thunderstorm last night, it's actually quite lovely. The birds are chirping. Everyone is. 00:53 Seemingly good the calm after the storm, I Yeah, the weather has been absolutely insane everywhere this past weekend was Memorial Day weekend here in the States and In Minnesota where I am Friday and Saturday and Sunday were absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous days Right that doesn't usually happen. Usually one day of Memorial Day weekend is a washout and it didn't happen 01:21 That's impressive. Our, our May Long was like last weekend and it was absolutely frozen. It was so cold. It was like, it was terrible. We couldn't do anything. Oh, God, mother, mother nature. didn't get snow though, which is, you know, it is normal for us to get snow on May Long. We say we don't plant our gardens until after May Long and we didn't get snow, but it was like in the, in the single digit. 01:50 So it felt very cold, but today it is, oh, it's got to be close to 20 degrees already. Which is what in Fahrenheit? Because I'm really bad at it. I'm really bad at it too. I would say that's like 45, 50, I think. Warmish. It's warmish there. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wait. 02:16 Yeah, I could be wrong on the conversion. I'm sure someone will correct me. I can always look it up and put it in the show notes and be like, here's the chart that says what's it actually is. When I went to the US, my car had this really handy feature that it just converted it automatically for me, which was so handy. And it's funny how quickly I was able to go from Celsius into 02:46 um, the Imperial system and then, and then back and it just felt totally normal with that, you know, system in my car. But like, if you asked me to convert it like right now, there's no way. Yeah. And one of my best friends is from Canada and you would, I've known her for over 20 years. You would think that I would have made a point of learning this, but I still haven't. It's terrible. 03:09 And my parents are old enough that they still use the Imperial system for like 90 % of things. Like the metric system was kind of imposed upon them like after they were out of school. So they're still very much on the Imperial system. They're always talking in Fahrenheit and I'm like, what? And you'd think I would pick up on it, you know, but no, like I'm, I got Celsius on the brain, but I use inches though, which is a very Canadian thing to do. 03:39 Yeah, I feel like whatever you're first introduced to, like I am not a Macintosh computer kind of girl. I really do like Windows. Right. And I tried using a Macintosh Apple as they were known when I was in school and that was a very long time ago. I'm 55, you can do the math. And I can do it. 04:06 but it's like retraining my brain to find where files are if I use that. So yeah, it's what you're introduced to as a brand new thing, what you tend to gravitate towards. So, okay, so got the weather covered, got the small talk covered. You have been going through some fits and issues with Facebook lately. Did you want to vent for a couple of minutes about that? Oh, absolutely. I would love to. 04:36 So as a Canadian, when it comes to content creation across social media, we are very limited in what we can access for monetization. We don't get paid for TikTok. And then we have Facebook and YouTube. 04:57 I believe Instagram also monetizes, but I don't think Instagram pays very well. think Instagram is very much targeted for like attracting brands to do brand deals. And for me, as a millennial where Facebook was like the OG platform, actually like just be like, we were just saying, I love creating on Facebook. I love that there's multiple different, um, 05:25 like ways, like I can do text, can do photo, I can do groups, I love Facebook. So that is where I've put a ton of my effort. I'm also on TikTok and TikTok is fantastic for like discoverability. The algorith

Today I'm talking with Chelsie at Rosewyn Urban Regenerative 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. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead is sponsored by the Homegrown Collective, the best option for organizing a responsible and regional food system for America. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Chelsie at Rosewyn Urban Regenerative Farm. Almost forgot the name of your place is Chelsie, sorry. Good morning, are you? 00:29 I am doing phenomenal and yourself? I'm good. It is a gorgeous day in Minnesota again, two days in a row. Yes, we're finally hitting steady seventies over here. So it is optimal outside time. Yes. Springtime is wonderful. Um, my favorite is fall, but spring is my second favorite season. So, and, uh, I know you're in Montana because I talked to Morgan yesterday. 00:56 and she recommended that I talk with you and Morgan is in Montana as well. tell me all about what you're doing because urban regenerative farm is not something I hear very often. No, no. I mean, the optimal idea was to get a big plot of land, but then I just figured I need to do something where I am to show other people it's possible to do it wherever you are. So I focus a lot on small footprints. 01:24 Growing options that way if someone's in an apartment or in a trailer, they realize that they have an option as well. Um, I really, really am an advocate for food and medicinal security as a community. And if we can all grow something in our yards and trade, then our community will be a lot more sustainable, uh, as a whole. And no one, it will, it will equalize kind of the deficit or the difference between income levels. 01:56 So essentially sovereignty for everyone and burning down the gates on the way. Good, good. I don't advocate burning anything, but I understand the phrasing, burning down the gates to keeping people out from doing what they want to do. Yeah, gatekeeping, know, just those gates. So I collect knowledge so people have access to it. 02:23 and can check out books or whatever they need to check out. Yeah, absolutely. The reason that I kind of jumped on that phrasing is because this is the five year anniversary of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis and I live an hour southwest of Minneapolis. And at the time that that happened, my husband worked not a mile and a half from all the destruction from the fires that were set. So 02:50 I'm a little twitchy about anything on fire right now. I understand and I apologize about any triggers that happened. No, that's okay. I just remember him coming home from work when he was actually allowed to go back to work because the place that he worked at was on lockdown for three days. So it was a hospital and he was, he looked pretty shell shocked when he walked in the door and we are both very white people. And I said, why do you look so sick? And he said, honey, he said, if you could see. 03:20 the road I drive on to get to the hospital. He said every building has plywood up on the windows or it's burned. it to affect him in that way when he had nothing, I don't know, at stake as it were in it, it was a big deal here. So I don't want to bring the discussion down, but I'm just making people aware that we all really need to respect each other. 03:49 And we really, really need to be careful of how we live our lives because everyone deserves a life that's good and everyone deserves respect. So that's all I have on it. Absolutely. No, I fully understand that. So anyway, so do you teach about the urban regenerative stuff? So I am definitely more a one-on-one person because everyone 04:17 and everyone's situation is so individual and unique. So what I do, I'm also a shamanic healer. So in all areas, I create like a sacred space for people to find their own power, you know? And so I do give tours and answer questions, but on a whole, have not done like classes at this point yet. I'm sure it will evolve into that at some point, but right now, 04:47 It's just trying to figure out how one, each person can implement something where they are. Okay. Yeah. Um, we have a bunch of plants, like bedding plants that we grew on purpose to sell to people this year, because I want everyone to be growing something if they have the space, if they can make the space because our, our supply chain stuff might go a little wonky this year again. And I'm really concerned about people having food. 05:17 And the best thing you can do for yourself is grow your own produce. if it's just herbs. Herbs have medicinal properties. They are also really nutritional and they make crappy food taste better. Absolutely. Yeah,

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Groovy Grazers. 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 Morgan at Groovy Grazers in Montana. Good morning, Morgan. How are you? Good morning. It's a wonderful morning. How are you today? I'm really good. It's a wonderful morning in Minnesota too. It's a little nippy for May. I think it's only like 45 degrees out. Wow. You guys are colder than us. We're like in the 60s. It's hot already in the morning. Yeah. A week or so ago we had some really high temps for May and then it dropped back off. 00:54 And I think the high for today is supposed to be 69, I think. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's pretty nice. I mean, it's easier to do things when you're able to be outside, you know, so colder almost is a little better, but not for planting season, you know, so it kind of depends on what you're doing here with the heat. It just it weighs on the animals because we'll we'll get snow and then all of a sudden it'll be, you know, like super hot. 01:24 So we're bouncing back and forth like a bouncing ball. Yeah, it's been that way here too. And honestly, I'm not, I can't complain about where we're at here because last summer was terrible with rain for all of May and into June. So we haven't had that this year, thank God, because our gardens are actually planted other than basil. We can't put basil in yet because it hasn't been warm enough overnight to not kill them. Yeah. So this year I actually decided to not do a garden. 01:52 Even though I took my master gardening course, so I did go to it's called Carbon County as the county I did it in and I was gonna take the test and it's an open book test which so if anyone's interested in Master Gardening most of them I guess level one is open book. But I just found out a lot about my soil being too alkaline-y which we kind of knew but it's so hard to amend it that it's not even worth. 02:18 trying to plant in it right away. So I learned so much in master gardening that I was like, whoa, pump the brakes. I don't want to spend a bunch of money, you know, because it's trial and error for a lot of us. And the more things we try, the more it costs. So the more failure, you know, so I've learned that sometimes it's better to do a lot of research, almost what seems overkill, such as going to a master gardening class to make sure that I'm able to do. Yeah, so I'm able to do. 02:46 you know, the multiple things that I want to do and not spend the money on it. Yep, absolutely. Okay, so now that we've gotten the weather report out of the way and the gardening report out of the way. Morgan was a guest on the show back last July and she was gracious enough to come back and visit with me and give me an update because you're doing a lot of new things. So where is Groovy Grazer is at now? 03:12 Yeah, so thank you for having us again, because I think having an update yearly is really helpful for some people. Because man, has the farm changed in a year? I might get a little emotional. Our first year of farming was really hard. You I came on the episode and I talked about worms. Yep. And that was just the biggest hurdle we had all summer long was trying 03:39 to overcome these worms, which were Barbara pole worms. A lot of farmers that have goats deal with them. Goats, yes, you have goats. Yes. Worms with goats, yes. Yep, worms with goats. So we have goats and sheep. We added sheep in and sheep kind of have the same cycle too. And I did buy a horse. Horses don't get Barbara pole worms. So we end up using land of Havala. I might be saying that wrong. 04:06 Um, but she's a master herbalist. has dairy goats also, and she creates her own blend of herbs. So we were doing like a worm tea. And this year I had 10 babies in one week. So I had three does drop triplets a piece. So nine babies in 48 hours. And what that talks to is like that we were able to get their health in control and they were able to produce. We had a lot of miscarriages last fall. I only had one baby. 04:35 born or not one baby one doe that gave three babies but like you know one birth last fall so we were kind of behind track so I kind of fell down you know and I was like man the worms are really kind of kicking our butt we got to figure it out so we made a lot of changes I changed feed we went to a locally l

Today I'm talking with Karen at Cottage On Cross. 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 Karen at Cottage On Cross 00:28 Good morning, Karen. How are you? Good morning. Thank you for having me. You're in Pennsylvania, right? I am, yes. Okay. I'm in Minnesota. It's beautiful here for the first time in four days. We've had clouds and rain since, I think, mid-afternoon on Monday. So it's been really nice to get up this morning and see the sun shining. So how are things in Pennsylvania? Well, we probably got your weather. Oh, We're in the midst of that rain, but it's spring and it's needed, so I'm not complaining. 00:58 Yeah, the weather people here were saying on Monday, they were giving us the heads up that this drenching was coming and they were all like, we need the rain. And I'm like, we don't need 17 inches guys. Oh gosh, no. Yeah. I think we've all, I think we've all ended up with five inches total. Well, that's better. Yes. You don't want your garden to flood. No, that happened last year. I don't want it to happen this year. So, all right. So you tell me why it's called Cottage on Cross. 01:28 That's a fun story. It's purposeful, but it's also out of desperation. This is not my first online business. And I learned accidentally with my last one that your name matters in Google searches. If people don't even know what they're looking for, but type in a keyword, you'll come up. know, cottage core, was super trendy when I started it. 01:56 And that's a lot of what I make. So I wanted that name somewhere. And the first maybe 28 names I chose weren't available either on Etsy or on Instagram. And I needed the availability on both of those. So I ended up with Cottage on Cross because we live on Crossroad. okay. Okay. So for people who don't know what Cottage Core is, can you explain that? 02:24 Um, well right now, grandma core is trending, which is pretty much the same, just another term for it. It's just kind of a, uh, a back to basics, um, aesthetic where, uh, if your grandma had it, you're gonna like it, but, but that's the grandma core. Cottage core is, uh, well, kind of the same thing. It's like little house on the prairie, um, vibe going on. Um, it's, it's a more, uh, old fashioned vibe maybe. 02:54 Uh huh. Okay. Um, what I find interesting about Cottage Core is that I grew up with Cottage Core because we spent time with my grandmas, obviously, and, my mom was very influenced by her mother, who was my grandma. And so we always had old fashioned things in our house. And to this day, I really, really hate sleek, shiny glass metal furniture. want, I want wood furniture. want cast iron. 03:23 hooks for my coats. want the old fashioned stuff. I am the same. I am the same. And I think we probably grew up similarly then. Yeah, just in touch with family and the generations back through and all their things that they brought with them and they didn't have the new shiny, partly because they couldn't afford it. And partly because it was cherished memories for them from the generations. And yeah, so you just grow up loving that stuff and 03:52 No, I shunned. I shunned all that too. So this is not a going back for me. This is a celebrating that they've caught up with us. exactly. And I feel like I'm going to sound really dumb. I feel like shiny glass and metal is very cold. And I feel like quilts and cast iron and wood are very warm. I agree. So I really like the cozy warm feeling in my house. I don't want it to be, you know, austere and cold. Yes, I agree. 04:21 So before we get into what you do with quilts, because I've seen the pictures and what you do is really beautiful. Thank you. Do you live on a farm? I grew up on a dairy farm. I had almost all the animals growing up and it was a fantastic way to live. We have land off my family's farm now. We are right across from the farm. I see it every day. It's beautiful. 04:46 I do not have a farm. I have a working knowledge of what a farm is and how much work it is. So I've chosen very carefully what I want. We have chickens. They are easy to care for. I can walk away from them for a day and bank up on their food and they're going to be okay versus a milk cow. can't do that. The goats are really hard to contain. So no, I do not have a farm. 05:12 I live on four acres with

Today I'm talking with Amy at A Farmish Kind Of Life. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 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 Amy at A Farmish Kind Of Life in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Amy. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. Amy is who I want to be when I grow up. don't even know who I want to be when I grow up. That's funny. Amy is an author. She's a podcaster. She's a blogger. She falls under the homesteading umbrella. 00:55 but it's more of a farm, right? I mean, what is a homesteader? know, isn't that what we're always trying to figure out? What is the definition of a homesteader, I suppose? I still We do have a farm. Yep. We do have a farm. I'm here. I have five acres in central Minnesota with, you know, a ton of different animals. We've been through, you know, all the different animals and we got all the gardens and we've got space. So yeah, it is farming, although... 01:23 there are people around here that have such huge farms that they think we're just kind of playing farm. So, you know, our little five acres is just kind of a little thing. But it's not. It's a big thing. It's a big thing. So tell me what brought you to this whole farmish kind of life, Amy. What brought me to the farmish kind of life? You know, when my husband and I were first married, we lived right in town and he had always lived in town. When I grew up, I grew up at 01:53 I grew up out in the country, but we didn't have a farm. We were more like in the woods and we had a creek and you know, all of that didn't grow up with, you know, the farm animals or anything. And we got married, we lived right in town and knew that was going to be a temporary thing. But we just we really wanted to be out in the country and have space, you know, to just kind of breathe. And I don't know if ever intentionally in the beginning, it was going to be we're going to have all these animals, we're going to can all this food and all this stuff. just 02:22 You just kind of morphed into that, suppose. think part of it was when we were first married, you we were, you know, you're trying to make ends meet and stretch the dollars and then you have the babies, you know, and things get crazy. And I think frugal living and just trying to figure out, you know, can we make this from scratch? What can we substitute? How can we do without this? How can we do something different? That and various other things just led us to whatever you want to call this. 02:52 this life, this farmish thing or this homesteading thing. Right there with you. That's how we got found ourselves in this, this, uh, this quagmire of trying new things all the time. Oh yes. Yeah. There's always something new to try. Yep. I, uh, front of mine brought me sourdough starter Monday night. Thank you Tracy. And, uh, it's fine. The starter she, she brought me, I, 03:22 got up this morning and I have water on top of it. And I was like, that doesn't look good. So I had to go Google it and find out if it was still alive. And apparently it's doing really well. So I threw some more flour in there. It's good. And then I realized, yeah. And then I realized I didn't know anything about sourdough starter. And I've been doing home studying stuff for a long time. So I went back to Google and, and, when looked in Wikipedia and I Oh, 03:49 this is not as hard as I think it is. I'm going to start my own starter too and see if I can make it go from scratch. So that now has water on top of it. And I'm like, okay, this, don't know what to do with it. So. I feel like, you know, like home setting is such a big thing. there's, there's, there's so much to learn. think for us this year, it was, I mean, we've been at the farm for 14 years now and just this past winter. you know, like not that many months ago, we finally tapped our maple tree. 04:19 And we've been here 14 years and we're like, wait a second, we have maple trees. Why are we not tapping these and trying to do this whole maple syrup thing? And it went way better than I thought it would. it's just, you know, I think there's just only so much you can have on your plate and process at once. And then you're like, wait a second, we could do this thing. We could do this thing. So there's always something new to get into. Well, yeah, I've been draggi

Today I'm talking with Marissa at 5 Acre Wood Homestead. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Marissa at Five Acre Wood Homestead in Washington State. Good evening, Marissa. How are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to talk with you because you have everything going on at your homestead. So tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, um... 01:27 I, so we weren't always, you know, Homesteader, Homestead life. I really just stumbled into it as a lot of us do, right? But I did, I am from a very small, tiny town in Idaho. And there was a lot of, you know, Homestead like things that went on there. And so I did have that very early young childhood. 01:52 experience of that. Like I have memories of the things my parents had to do to get us through winters and whatnot, you know. And my mother and my grandmother, you know, they sewed and crocheted and canned and did all the things. And so I kind of always had that influence in my life. But growing up, we were, I was, you know, displaced to the city here in Tacoma. 02:21 And that's where I spent 40 years was the middle of the city and had my kids there. And at a certain point in my life, I was, I just decided that. You know, we, it's nice to talk about how we want to get back to the country and the small town life and be self-sufficient and do all the things. But at some point you just got to do it. And that's really how this. 02:50 how the homestead came about. And we've been here six years now. Okay. And still no animals. Still a work in progress, right? Because our homestead was was vacant for five years before we got it. And so nature kind of just did what nature does and took over. And so it's been the last three years has been 03:18 a lot of rebuilding and a lot of taking down and a lot of getting the property back to where we need it to be so that we can incorporate the things that we want to have. It's been a lot of work. Well, I'm going to jump in for one second. You don't have to have animals to be a homesteader. It's totally cool if you don't. I know. I know. And so many people have told me that because I feel 03:46 you know, kind of some days like we're not a real homestead because we don't have animals yet. And you're right. That's not that's not true at all. 03:58 Yeah, my friend, she's become a friend. didn't know her a year ago, but now I do because of the podcast. My friend Amy Fagan at Grounded in Maine is her podcast. She asked me to be a guest and she basically introduced me as a homesteader who was bucking the system because we only have three acres and we don't have cows. And it was kind of tongue in cheek. And for anybody listening. 04:23 If you are doing something that's an old fashioned skill as a part of your everyday life, you are practicing homesteading. Yeah, that's true. That's absolutely true. And I do it on so many levels. And I think the animals and the husbandry is probably the only thing that I don't do. And honestly, that's probably a good thing because we tried raising rabbits here and number one, they were dumb and didn't procreate the way they were supposed to. 04:52 And number two, having to call or butcher those babies, not babies, I call them babies because they were my babies, but having to butcher those rabbits and put them in the freezer about killed me. I don't, don't want to do it again. really don't. It's that's a part that, um, you know, it's not everybody can handle that part. Now my dad, um, did have a family farm down in Corvallis, Oregon. 05:22 It's not in our famil

Today I'm talking with Steven at Hot Mess Ranch. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Good morning, Steven. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I'm really excited to chat with you because I understand that you have a ranch, but I also understand that you are all over social media. And I want to talk about that too. So first off, why is it called Hot Mess Ranch? 01:26 Well, when my wife and I started the ranch, uh, 2021, we thought for months on what to name the place. And one day when we were watching TV, one of my daughters walked through the living room, did something funny or whatever. My wife looked at her and said, Oh my word, you're such a hot mess. And then it was like a spark went off and instantly 01:53 My wife and I looked at each other like, let's just name it Hot Mess Range. Uh huh. And it was kind of a joke for a little bit. And then it just kind of stuck and we named it the social media that and that it kind of, that that's how it got started. So it's named after my daughters being silly. Well, I love that. And honestly, every time I see a hot mess before someone's name on any social media, 02:22 channel I'm like hmm what kind of hot mess is that one? Right. So it's a good way to get attention too. Yes. Okay so what what brought you to doing Hot Mess Wrench? 02:34 My wife grew up on a Longhorn cattle ranch for most of her life. And we had kind of kicked around the idea of getting land for years and we had always looked at it and coming out of COVID, we just, we found some property and then kind of got serious about it. And I have a daughter with autism and she was kind of having a rough time in the city and 03:04 Um, you know, kids can be kind of cruel and, and, um, we were like, let's just give this a go. Um, really my daughter is what kind of pushed it over the edge. And so we found this place and got out here and that main reason for her, uh, being a, a, um, 03:29 I'm a word I'm kind of brain farting here. The main reason for moving out here with my daughter, uh, played out really well. And, uh, she's her self-esteem is through the roof now and she's feeling great about herself and she's settled in with the animals. And so that's kind of really what it was all about. And then that's, that's why we came out here and got started. I have a question about your daughter and if you don't want to answer it, just don't, and I will edit it out. 03:58 Autism presents in a whole lot of different ways with kids. So how did you find out that she had autism? 04:08 Um, my wife is a teacher and so she holds a, well, she does now she holds a doctorate in elementary education. And so she's got a lot of experience with that, especially with kids in the, in school. Right. And so we could tell, she could tell kind of an early age that there was a chance she was kind of on the spectrum. And then we went and got her diagnosed. 04:35 Uh, early on, so we've, had known for quite some time. You can, you can generally tell they're not a, they're not as social as a lot of people, you know, she gets a lot of anxiety and in heavy social situations, a lot of people around a lot of noise, um, uh, over, over stimulation happens pretty quick, but the noise is really kind of. 05:05 you know, was a telltale sign. And she even to this day, if we go back into large gathering, you can tell she just kind of gets overstimulated pretty quickly. So that was one of the main signs that we noticed and she still has today. Okay. I was just wondering, don't want to make this about me, but I have a c

Today I'm talking with Jesse at Organic Urban 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Jesse at Organic Urban Farm. Good morning, Jesse. How are you? Good morning, Mary. How's everything? It's good. If I lose you, it's because we have some really high winds happening here in Minnesota today. Not a problem. Just a call away. Okay, cool. All right. So. 01:25 I had to go look up Long Island, New York because I never even wondered about where it is. I grew up in Maine, but never even wondered how Long Island fit into the state of New York. And it is literally a Long Island. Yes, it is. So is it very populated because that helps me raise my questions here? Yeah. So I've lived on Long Island my whole life. I've lived in the town of Oceanside since basically I was 01:54 Around three years old, we moved over here. The Oceanside is about 40 minutes from like New York City. So Manhattan and you you're very close to the boroughs. You're only a car ride away really from anywhere. But for me, I grew up upstate a lot in upstate New York with my grandparents, raising chickens and horses and other animals. With my papa was a big thing for me growing up. And I spent most of my summers over there. 02:23 I always loved it. So once my papa passed, I decided to do a little nice chicken coop in my backyard and start something small just in his memory and something that made me happy to do. But around us, we really don't have many chicken coops. I'm probably one of the few people in our neighborhood who has a chicken coop. So it is rare to have this over here, but it was something I love and it was something that I really wanted to do. But yeah, this is really more of like... 02:53 Urban city. This is more of you know a fast-paced area. It's You know more of a city suburban life, and it's a little bit different than Then what you would see on most forms I would say yeah, that was part of the reason that your Instagram page grabbed me because I was like organic and urban don't necessarily shake hands well unless you work some magic Yep, absolutely so 03:21 You know, we don't have our certifications and stuff like that, but we raise our chickens all organic when it comes to free-ranging them and then as well as feed. Right now, we use Scratch and Peck, which honestly is one of my favorite brands. It's a little pricey, but the chickens really do love it. And honestly, I haven't had any problems with it, even when they were babies with the coxodosis. you know, I was raising chickens, you guys know. 03:51 that the babies tend to sometimes eat their poop and stuff like that, which will make them sick. But a lot of people use the medicated feed, but I don't see a need for it, honestly. I've noticed that the organic feed, as long as it's a quality feed, seem to be, you know, you don't seem to have any sicknesses or anything. But that also goes with how neat you keep your coop and how neat you keep the brooder. Because that's very important when it comes to that. 04:19 When it comes to the health and the sickness in a small area like this, especially when you don't have a big farm, you really have to be neat. It's the most important part of it. Yep. Absolutely. Because those bacteria nasties will take any opportunity to get in and wreak havoc. Absolutely. Yep. So, um, so how big is your, uh, yep, go ahead. No, I'm sorry. That was, I was just getting, uh, in somewhere. Well, go ahead. What were you saying? How big is your, um, 04:48 your lot that you have your chickens on? So we have a very big backyard. So like by us, d

Today I'm talking with Lindsay at Home In The Pines. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Lindsay at Home in the Pines. Good morning, Lindsay. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you doing? I'm good. Where are you located? We are in East Texas. Okay, cool. Is it sunny there? Because it's gray here in Minnesota. Same here. We've had a lot of rain lately. I mean, honestly, it's just the humidity. I feel like we're just one big 01:26 ball of humidity. It's just like walking through steam all the time. Yeah. Yeah. I keep waiting for the first really nice moderate spring day and it just hasn't happened yet, but we're supposed to have a gorgeous weekend here. I'm so excited. good. Yeah. So tell me about yourself and what you do. And I have one quick question. Your Instagram page shows you as home in the pines, but it also shows you as something else. What's that something else again? 01:57 Um, Homestead Hustlers in Progress. Yes, that. So tell me, tell me about yourself and Homestead Hustlers in Progress. Okay. Um, well, my husband and I are actually originally from Minnesota. So we get through this stand. Yeah. We know what you're going through this time of year. Um, we both grew up in the city. My husband really inner city and I was, you know, more on the outskirts suburbs. And, um, when we first got married, I was teaching. He is a basketball coach, now teacher and. 02:27 Um, we were led to go to Iowa a couple of years after we were married and, um, he was coaching at a Christian college there. We adopted our two older boys while we were there and we were in a neighborhood, but we had about an acre of land. It was a super big yard for, for the neighborhood. And we absolutely loved it, especially both coming from the city. Um, my husband will say like, I never want to live on top of anybody ever again. And, um, so we just really got like that. 02:58 it to like, oh, this is nice. This is kind of nice having a little bit of space, you know. After a few years, we moved to West Texas where we worked in a facility for at-risk youth. We were both teachers, both coaches. Again, we had our two older boys and then we had a baby while we were there. And we lived on, was like a working ranch. We lived on the ranch there. 03:25 but we also bought some property about 15 minutes away. So we would go there on the weekends. My husband liked doing projects, being out there, bringing the kids, you know, just having some freedom and fresh air, that kind of thing. Excuse me. So then just two years ago, we moved over here to East Texas where we purchased a major fixer upper. it had been abandoned for a few years besides all the critters. And 03:55 had another baby, so we four kids, three boys and a little girl. And I work part time from home. My husband still teaches and coaches. And we just, we have about 13 acres here in the middle of the woods and we love it. It's just, it's like been a gradual progression from like where we started to now kind of just like fully immersed in this like own land, you know, work it, that kind of thing. 04:23 Okay, that's a fabulous story. I have to know, was your husband living in Minneapolis? Is that the big city? Yes. Yep, right there in South Minneapolis. Okay, cool. Yeah, I had no idea that you were from Minnesota, but the minute you said no, no, I heard the big O and I was like, oh, I would have known either way. everyone's like, where are you from? What accent is that? I was like, I'm the one with the accent. But it's funny. Uh-huh. Yep. 04:50 It's really interesting

Today I'm talking with Matt and Deb at Plotting To Plate - The people on plot 11 & 5. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at HomegrownCollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Matt and I think you said Debbie. I might have screwed that up. At Plotting To Plate. Hi guys, how are you? We're good. Thank Very good. Thank you. Did I get the name right? Yes, it's Deb. Okay, good. I blanked for a second. I was like, what is her name? 01:24 Okay. You guys are in Staffordshire or Staffordshire, England, right? Yeah, we're in Stafford, which is in Staffordshire. It's a market town, about 71,000 people. So it's quite a big town these days. It's so medium to large. And it's in the Midlands. Okay, cool. And how is the weather in England today? It's lovely. 01:52 It's really nice. So if you're wanting to go outside and get some time and sit and have a cup of tea and read books, it's great. If you're growing vegetables, not so good because this has been the driest spring that we've had since the records began. So obviously we have two hats on these. Oh, no. 02:19 Unseasonably warm and dry for the UK at the moment. I really wish that Mother Nature would get her act together. Well, just give us more warning about what she's going to be because we've got seedlings and things we need to look after. So, you know, you need to be able to plan for that, don't you? Yes. And we went through this last year here in my town because we had six weeks of rain straight in May and June. Yeah. 02:49 And it was bad. Our garden was terrible. And I've talked about it a lot, so I'm not going to talk about it anymore right now. tell me about what you guys do, because I know in England you can either have plants growing where you live or you can have allotments. And I'm not quite sure I understand what allotments mean. So tell me about it. Yeah. So an allotment is a large piece of land. 03:17 that's often owned by either a council or an association. And then it's subdivided into plots. And the sole purpose of the plot is to grow fruit and veg. And you rent that land from either the association or the council. So we rent two plots on our site. There's plot five and plot 11. And there's about 150 plots on the site. So it is a massive site. 03:47 But it's urban, so it's completely surrounded by housing. There's nothing rural about it outside of the gates until you get in the gates and then there's all the small plots that are put over to fruit, veg, flowers or whatever you want to grow there. Allotments, it's quite an old tradition in the UK. 04:15 the 1970s became popular and then it died off again. Then it came back to life in the 1990s and has sort of grown ever since. We found that we actually took ours on in just after lockdown in 2021 because during lockdown, know, we love food, we love eating well and we love eating organically. So lockdown gave us the time to think and consider about having. 04:43 a more sustainable and simpler life and part of that was to get these two allotment plots. We haven't looked back since actually, just absolutely love it. So as far as allotments for the third, as quite large. So normally in the UK they're about 300 yards, but as a bigger, so with the two together, I think we have about a quarter of a plot, something like that, isn't it? 05:13 A quarter of an acre. Not a quarter of a plot. That wouldn't feed us. It's about a quarter of an acre, which it's not too big. It's just about as much as we can manage because Matt still works. I'm retired but he works. But it does sustain us to be able to eat seasonally, to eat organically and to also grow

Today I'm talking with Ty at CT Farms Mobile Processing. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Ty at CT Farms Mobile Processing in Le Sueur, Minnesota. Good morning, Ty. How are you? Good. Hang on one second. My computer is doing something weird. Okay. Nevermind. We're good. Okay. So, um, Ty is not far from me. Where are you in LaSore, Ty? 01:26 Uh, right outside we live over by the Cambria plant. Oh, okay. Yep. And we live over by Michael Foods on Highway 8. you're maybe five miles away from me, I think. Yeah, not terribly far. Yeah. So it's a hyper local episode today, guys. I'm very excited about this. What does CT stand for? Uh, stands for Chad and Ty. So I'm Ty, the son of the operation and then Chad is my dad. 01:57 Okay, awesome. That makes sense. I would normally I would ask how the weather is where you are, but we have been having the most glorious streak of beautiful weather here in Lesor. Oh, God, yes. Today is just beautiful. My husband and my son have been outside all morning watering plants and getting our plant sale set up and all kinds of things. And I've been taking 02:22 I've been taking care of stuff in the house and doing dishes and the stuff that the girls do so So tell me about yourself and what you guys do, please um So kind of just all started, you know I was Wasn't having fun really doing concrete breaking my back for a whole lot of money, you know processing pretty easy money We've been doing it 02:49 I've been doing it for a very long time now. My dad used to do it when he was younger. So it was kinda like in our family. You know, we knew what we had to do. We knew that it would provide everything for us. You know, it cost us less money if we just butchered the animals ourselves. Saved us money and it provided food for our family. So you know, it was kind of a big plus to it. There's one guy getting out of 03:18 mobile processing for chickens and we just kinda started questioning if we could do it. We were gonna go buy that trailer but it sold so we were like alright well we can kinda base our trailer off of that. So we did, we tried our best and it turned out pretty good. As a business getting into something obviously there's some stuff that needs to adjust. 03:47 which we are slowly working towards. Our business is definitely getting better and better every year. Our customers love our birds that we do for them. They love us. And we love having them come to us. So yeah, I mean, it's pretty fun. Awesome. So is it only chickens that you guys butcher or do you do other things as well? 04:16 Uh, we mainly stick to chickens. Um, we do butcher our own animals at home. have a little hobby farm per se. So. Yeah. Cause, a friend of ours was looking at getting into mobile butchering and discovered that, um, the state of Minnesota does not really smile upon much else except chickens for mobile butchering. Yeah. They don't really like you doing everything else really because 04:45 You know, there's just a lot of stuff going on in the government. Uh huh. Yeah. All the rules and regs that you have to follow and, something about that, that the USDA inspector person has to come out and be there for butchering of anything other than a chicken or a rabbit, think. Yep. Yeah. And that's, that's difficult to schedule and they don't really like to do it from what I've heard. So. 05:14 Yeah, that's a big thing. If you're approved, they kind of just got to come out there, just have a little office, you know, cornered off or something. Just always check

Today I'm talking with Heather at Heather's Homestead. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Heather Richards at Homestead from scratch. Good afternoon, sorry, good afternoon, Heather. How are you? Good, how are you? I'm good. I have to keep reminding myself of what time it is because I almost said good morning again, and it's not morning, it's afternoon. So how's the weather in Montana? 01:23 It's beautiful today. We're supposed to be expecting a lot of rain though this week. So we're trying to get things kind of ready for that and things buckled up a little bit because it's going to be a rainy week. So got a batten down the hatches. Yeah. Yeah. It is a beautiful sunny day here in Minnesota, but it's going to be really hot in about an hour and a half. Nice. Well, I've actually been like waiting for it to get really nice and hot here. So I'm kind of jealous. 01:51 Yeah, it's too hot for Minnesota right now. This is not beginning of May weather. This is end of July, 1st of August weather. And actually on, oh, I can't remember what day it was. A couple days ago, my husband planted the tomato seedlings and they got burned because it was so hot and sunny. I don't know if they're going to recover. They're still looking a little yellow today. So we're keeping our fingers crossed that they're going to. 02:21 They're going to bounce back, I hope. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do at Homestead from scratch. Well, it's Heather's Homestead, technically. But I do say that's my little bit of a, I don't know what you would call it, my tagline, I guess. But yes, Heather's Homestead. We just started building this about four years ago, but we've only been here about three. We're kind of building, I guess, what you could call a family compound. We have five children. 02:51 And most of them are raised. have one at home that he's 18. But the goal is to someday hopefully have everybody want to build here and live here on the property. So we kind of gave each one of our kids a few acres apiece so that they can have. And just so we can kind of just live closer, I guess, as a family. And that's pretty much the goal. we have, like I said, I five children. 03:19 ranging from almost 29 down to 18. Three of them are married. Yeah, and one of them's about to get married, maybe this summer. That's the plan for him, maybe. So we might have a busy summer. But yeah, we are raw milk producers, I guess. We sell raw milk and eggs and have a little bit of, I guess you could call a little mini homestead. We have all the animals. 03:47 Actually, my husband's going to pick up some pigs today. So we'll be adding those to the farm this week. yeah, other than that, that's kind of been a little bit about me, but it's been a fun adventure for us. We started this place from scratch with nothing on it, and we've built everything ourselves. So it's been kind of quite the undertaking, but we've had a really good time and learning as we go. 04:17 So as we all do, yes, especially when we're not in our twenties and we have all the energy in the world to just dive in and beat ourselves up. So you said you sell raw milk. What are the regulations in Montana? And then I will tell you the ones here in Minnesota. So we have to get our animal disease tested once a year and we have to get the milk sent off twice a year to, you know, to a lab to make sure everything is good. 04:47 The counts are good. so yeah, we are actually pretty low key here. It's really nice. We don't have too many restrictions, I guess, but and we can sell fro

Today I'm talking with Rachel and Nick at Narrow Gate Homestead. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Rachel and Nick at Narrowgate Homestead in Lebanon, Maine. Good afternoon, you guys. How are you? Good. Good afternoon. Top of the soggy day to you. Yeah. I'm so sorry. I usually open the podcast with How's the Weather? And I know how the weather is because I just talked to my parents yesterday morning and 01:26 They said you guys have had a ton of rain in last, what, three weeks? Oh gosh, yeah. A couple inches. I actually, think it just finally broke. So this afternoon, I think it's going to be without raindrops. Yeah. Well, I'm happy for you. I am looking out my window and it is sunny. It's about 74 degrees with a light breeze here in Minnesota. Oh, nice. Well, that sounds nice. Much nicer. We have had the most beautiful week of just glorious. 01:56 reasonable, beautiful, sunny, hardly any wind weather for the first time in weeks. So it's been, it's been the opening day or the opening week for May, for spring. can't talk. It's been amazing. I'm so excited about it. My words are falling all over themselves. anyway, go ahead. Anytime that there's no wind is Nick's favorite kind of day. Yeah. 02:26 You know about the weather in Minnesota, how it can be just flat still or it can just be whipping through, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. huh. Yeah. Yep. We had, I think it was three weeks ago, we had thunderstorms and off and on during the day, but we had wind gusts of like 60 miles per hour that day. It was insanity. Well, that is a, that's crazy wind. Yeah. 02:54 or the greenhouses. Yeah. Our greenhouses survived, thank God, but we live on a very flat plain above the river valley. And so when the wind comes through, really comes through because there's hardly anything to break the wind. So it can get real iffy here sometimes, but so far we've been okay. Okay. So you guys tell me about what you do at Narrowgate Homestead and about yourselves, please. 03:22 Oh, yeah. Well, we started this journey in 2022. Before that, we're two Navy veterans with no farming background. That's true. 03:40 We decided in 2022 that we wanted to be a part of our, knowing how our food was raised and where our food came from. I suppose it started, I'm sure most people that you podcast with are familiar with the documentary Food, Inc. Probably yes. Yes, so that's when we met Joel Salatin for the first time. Never actually physically met him, but that's when he... 04:10 That's when we kind of first got involved with the idea that the way our food is produced and cared for and put on our grocery shelves might not necessarily be the most ethical and healthy manner that is out there and available. And we marinated on those ideas for quite a few years and really didn't do a whole lot about it. But I think it was, COVID was kind of like the catalyst for a lot of things, for a lot of people. And one of those things for us was 04:39 The fact that our food supply, I'm sure people remember going into the grocery stores and something like chicken has never been a problem before, wasn't on the shelf. So it kind of occurred to us that maybe we should put action into words or words into action rather. And, you know, now it's 2025 and we have probably what? chickens outside right now. Oh yeah. 600 here. 05:08 hundred down the road on pasture. So we solved the chicken on the shelf problem. Yeah. You sure did. Yeah. I mean, kind of going off of what Nick said, you know, we, very quickly and clearly saw just how weak the local food chains are and b

Today I'm talking with Kevin at The Kitchen Mechanic. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at HomegrownCollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Kevin at The Kitchen Mechanic. How are you, Kevin? I'm Dandy. And where are you located? I'm located in Reno, Nevada. Oh, well, not quite Sin City, but close. What's Sin City? Which one? There's so many. 01:26 The one near you. Okay. Is it hot there? Not yet, but it's still early. It's so, it's so, I only moved here like eight months ago. And so I'm still getting acclimated, but you know, where I moved from, had tomatoes in the ground in March. I'm still waiting to put tomatoes in the ground here. Cause I, they, the locals say you have to wait till the snow melts off of this certain mountain peak to know that you're going to have any more frost issues. So. 01:55 I'm waiting for the snow to melt. Okay, where did you move from? I moved from the Sacramento area. Okay, yep, that makes sense. I don't have you grow. Okay, I'm really garbling this. I'm sorry. I didn't really know you could grow a lot in Nevada. Well, I'm still figuring it out. We'll see. But they have definitely have a shorter growing season. 02:24 Yeah, so I'll know for next year, you know, get my hydroponics out and get them started early and be ready for them. Because right now I'm still waiting for seeds to emerge from my little starts. So we'll find out. Okay. Well, tell me about what you do at the kitchen mechanic. Well, I mean, I retired from the culinary world some time ago, but I've kept one foot in it. 02:52 I do a lot pro bono stuff like, you know, schools do fundraising events or like the city of Orangeville did a day of service for the city. And I ended up donating my time making breakfast for about 1200 people for that event. And so just looking for opportunities to give back and, you know, do some teaching. I started an online store. I've been off of it for a couple of years because of 03:22 everything that's going on in my life. So I just decided to get back on it. So I got a cookie sale going on. But you know, I make stuff and I sell it people over the internet or locally or whatever. Okay, so why did you call it the kitchen mechanic? Because I am very much not mechanically inclined. 03:51 Matter of fact, on the back of my calf, have a picture of two knives crossed with a sharpening steel going through the middle of them. I walk into Home Depot and I walk up to them and I say, see this? These are the only tools I know how to use. The only thing I know how to fix is dinner. So I need you to hold my hand. So that's kind of where it came from, the kitchen and candy, because the only thing I can fix is dinner. 04:17 That is very funny. I did a TV cooking show in Phoenix back in the 90s. And I wore an oversized tool belt with big, huge kitchen tools in it for effect. And basically, we did the whole thing there based on the premise of the kitchen mechanic. It's kind of where it all grew from. That's fun. I love that. OK. So what's your favorite thing to cook? 04:47 Well, if I had a dollar for every time I got asked that question. And it's funny too, because a couple of chef sites that I'm on, not Facebook, people bring us, what do you say when people like, what are your favorite thing is? It's like saying, what's your favorite child? The emphasis on my training is in pastries and chocolate. I was actually a senior chocolatier for Dub Chocolate Discoveries for a bit. 05:16 That's the stuff I enjoy doing for other people. I used to teach a class for Williams Sonoma on exotic cheesecakes and so that's kind of one of my things I'm kno

Today I'm talking with Katie at Sunset Creek Farm LLC. 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. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead is sponsored by the Homegrown Collective, the best option for organizing a responsible and regional food system for America. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Katie at Sunset Creek Farm LLC. Good, well, I guess it's evening, Katie. How are you? I'm good. How are you? 00:27 I am good. I usually record in the morning and so I'm always saying good morning and when I do them in the evening, I'm like, ah, it's not morning anymore. Yes, it is a dreary afternoon here for sure. Yeah. And you're in Georgia, right? Yes, in Trine, Georgia. Yeah. It's not dreary here cause it's not raining, but it's been gray all day. Yes. And I'm in Minnesota if you didn't know. So. Yes. Okay. So tell me all about yourself. 00:57 and Sunset Creek Farm. Okay, so like I said, we're located in Trine, Georgia. We have been here about six years. So my family actually owns part of the land and then we took a little bit of it and then we had actually built a barn so that way we could get married in it. So it all started from there. 01:22 And so then last year, and we've always had, I rodeoed my whole life. And so I had, I've had horses and cows my whole life. But then whenever me and Caleb got married, then of course we had planned to build here and everything. And then last year we ended up getting Kiko goats. So that was really kind of how we got started. 01:47 in having our own little farm. It had always been a dream of ours to have our own farm. And luckily we had the acreage. And so then from there, of course, the goat supply just kept coming. So we ended up, we have about 13 nanny goats. And so, and we've got a couple of billies that we're keeping separate. That way we can keep the. 02:16 the lines going and then in December, I decided that I needed a milk cow. So I do a lot of research before I do anything. Me and my husband are both that way. And so I got to look in and you know, we didn't need a full size cow because we didn't need that much milk just for our family. 02:40 And so I ended up doing a lot of research and discovered that the mini jersey was probably our best option. So we get anywhere from one to two gallons of milk a day, just depending on how much I'm milker. So I do have a full-time job. So this is our hobby on the side. And so luckily we do have a bottle cap. 03:06 that he helps me milk her during the week and then I milk on the weekends so that way we have enough milk to get us through the week and I like to you know make the different cheeses and I've made feta and mozzarella. I haven't tried hard cheeses yet. I'm a little intimidated but I'm trying to build myself up to there but then we like to do butter and yogurt and you know different things that I can make with the milk. 03:34 And so, so that's one thing that, you know, the mini Jersey, we have loved having her. And so in the, the buttermilk or the, excuse me, the milk is very rich and has a lot of butterfat. And so that lets us that I don't have to have as much milk or cream as I need to make the butter. So that makes it, it makes it easier for me to be able to produce butter when I want to. 04:04 That's really enjoyed it. Yes, yes. you know, really, it's been nice to be able... So the main reason that we started... So I had breast cancer in 2023. So that made me start looking at what chemicals that are in our food, what chemicals are in the shampoo, the conditioner. 04:30 the body washes, the even, you know, the different laundry detergents that you have, all the chemicals that are unnecessary to have and to put on your body. And so that was whenever we really started looking at what is the best way to be able to grow our own food and to be able, you know, to have our own milk and, and take those chemicals that we can. Of course there's chemicals around us all the time, but to 05:00 but to take what I could out of our lives for what I could. Yeah, because your skin is your biggest organ. Not everyone knows that, but your skin is exposed to everything. whatever you can do to cut back on what you're putting on your skin that's going to get absorbed that's bad for you is a grand and glorious thing. Yes. And that was one thing that got me started in the soap. 05:28 making was because you know, I only have you know, five different ingredients in my soap. And if you look on the back of a body wash, I mean, there's all these ingredients, I can't pronounce. And so then that makes you think if I don't, if I can't pronounce it, I definitely don'

Today I'm talking with Tim at Guldan Family Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Tim at I think it's Guldan Family Farm, but I could be pronouncing it wrong, and he's in Newall, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Tim. How are you? Good afternoon. It's pretty close. We say golden like the golden color, but you know what? We don't know for sure. So as long as it's close to the term, hey you, I answer to it. And it's too and well. 01:23 Yeah, you must be a dad. You must get hey you. I've been a hey you for a long time. Between there was a day at the farmers market a few years ago my wife was actually saying Tim, Tim and then it went to Mr. Golden, Mr. Golden because I was a teacher at the time and then finally she said hey you and I noticed and turned around and I said what do you need? It was a it's a joke that doesn't die anymore. 01:45 Oh, I know. mean, I've had four kids and if they can't get my attention, they're like, hey, and if that doesn't work, say, hey, you. And I turn around and like, why are you being rude? So yeah. I always ask about the weather at the beginning of the episodes, but I don't really need to ask because you're in New Ulm, which is not far from me. And Minnesota is having the first most glorious spring day we've had since last spring. 02:12 It is looking finally like it's here. We had a couple of tease days earlier on, but yeah, today I'm sitting at a beautiful 77 and sunny on a nice calm, maybe two mile an hour breeze day. So I have no complaints in my end. My husband's been outside almost all day and he just put out the open farm fresh eggs farm stand farm stand signs about half an hour ago. Oh, Yep. 02:38 We're very excited. This is the earliest we've had the farm stand open and we've had the farm stand for this is the third year. So this is great. We have we have bedding plants for sale this year. And this is probably the first year since we moved here four and a half years ago that we're going to have asparagus for sale before the farmers market opens. Very nice. Always a happy good day when you have asparagus. Oh my God. This is 03:07 This is the summer we have been waiting for. moved here in August of 2020. And with grand plans to have a farm to market garden and do all the things. And what we didn't take into account is that when you start from scratch, you have to build infrastructure. So that's what the last three years have been spent on. Yeah, there's that minor detail. So this is the summer that we have been. 03:33 working toward for three and a half years. We're so excited. Okay, so this podcast is not about me, but I just had to get that out or a joke on it. Tell me about yourself and what you guys do at your farm. Well, my name is Tim Golden and I'm, we, I am now the proud owner operator of Golden Family Farm. I'm actually the second generation running the vegetable version of this farm. Although the farm itself, excuse me, has been the family since the Homestead Act one way or another. 04:02 And so we're pushing close to 170 years in the family. And as it sits now, I'm operating 25 acres of fruits and vegetables. Very nice. Do you have the, I don't know what it's called. It's a thing they give you when you buy a home that lists the original plot and who signed the paperwork for it. Do you have that for your place? I have, I believe it's. 04:28 I don't know if you'd say it's original, if it's reproduction, but it is a certificate, you know, that has the President of the time, President Buchanan's signature on it, dedi

Today I'm talking with Raquel at Higher Calling Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Raquel at Higher Calling Homestead. Good afternoon, Raquel. How are you? Hey, how are you today? I'm good. It's gray and cloudy and rainy here and I'm kind of in that very mellow, I could take a nap, but I can't take a nap space. 01:24 I gotcha. It's the opposite here. It's warm and sunny. We were supposed to have storms today, but it turned out to be a beautiful day so far. So I love you. I'm looking forward to the first really moderate, beautiful spring day. I can understand that. Yeah, we've just started getting there. Really, really nice winds here in Tennessee within the last couple of weeks. It's heating up quick. I'm like, okay, it's not summer yet. So what's going on? 01:51 Mother nature is absolutely insane and has been for about two and a half years now. That's what's going on. I'd have to agree. Okay. So you have a homestead, but you also have a rabbit tree. And usually I say, tell me about yourself and what you do, but I'm just going to dive in with my questions about rabbits because we tried a couple of years ago to raise rabbits for meat and we failed miserably. So. 02:20 If I tell you what we did, can you tell me maybe an idea of where we went wrong? Yeah, I can definitely pray to help. I do want to preface this by saying that I started our rabbitry with the intention of doing the meat rabbits. We started back in, you know, like COVID times. And that was the intention and do like chickens and rabbits for me because the world was shutting down. was like, want to become more self-sufficient just in case this happens. And I quickly realized 02:49 that I loved raising rabbits, but I was not one of the people that was going to be able to do it for me. Yeah. I, number one, I couldn't be part of the butchering. I flat out told my husband and my son, said, if we do this, I am, I am more than happy to help take care of them. I am more than happy to cook the meat once it's just meat. But I, but when you bring that rabbit to me, when it's dead, has to be footless, tailless. 03:18 headless, skinless, because I'm going to fall in love with these things and it's going to kill me. It's hard, you know? it's like if I was in a position to have to feed my family, I definitely, definitely would be able to do it, but I'm not there. And I find it fascinating for people that can do that. And I follow some pages, you know, and I've watched the process and everything, and it's not like I shy away from seeing it, but it's just not for me. And I use the rabbits, you know, 03:47 I use their manure for our gardens and I love them. They have a great life and I raise them for pets, but just the meat rabbit thing ended up not being my thing. Yeah. And like I am just terrible about killing animals. I, I will stomp on a bug faster than you can say my name, but if it's fuzzy, I can't do it. It doesn't matter what the reason is. I can't do it. 04:14 I can see that. what ended up happening with your rabbitry? Like where did you think you went wrong with it? Well, we thought we were being smart. We got, we got two does and a buck proven buck. One of the does was proven. One of them was a new doe and we bought them from people who were raising rabbits had had good luck with their rabbits and brought them home and put them in the right size touches and gave them rabbit food. I can't remember what it was now, but you know, 04:43 whatever it was that they needed, they got. the lady that

Today I'm talking with Brandy at Shades of Green Permaculture. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Brandy Hall at Shades of Green Permaculture. Good morning, Brandy. How are you? I'm good. Are you in Georgia? Yeah, I'm in the Atlanta area. Okay. And is Shades of Green Permaculture based there? Yes, ma'am. We are based in the side of Atlanta. 01:24 in the metro area indicator, which is to reduce the sun. Okay, cool. Is it nice there this morning? Oh, it's gorgeous. We had a nice rain and now the sun is shining. It's about 70 degrees. Thank goodness. Cause we had a bout of like 95 degree weather in the beginning of April. So I was excited about summer coming early. Yeah, that's a little much for April. And we had a really warm day in Minnesota a couple of weeks ago and I was like, this is so wrong. 01:54 Yeah, there's something, it's like a cognitive dissonance because on one hand you're like, this feels so nice, the sun, and then you're like, wait, but it's too early. Exactly. And for the second morning in a row, we've got rain showers happening here. yeah, I'm just hoping that this remains a pattern of just a day or two of a light rain showers and then three or four days of sunshine. Cause I can't face another spring like last year where we got six weeks of rain in a row. Oh my goodness. 02:24 Yeah. And there comes a point where it's like, if you have the rain and then you've got the intermittent sun, the plants just love it so much versus just getting sun. Yeah. I really wondered if I had teleported to Washington state or Oregon last May and June, because I swear to you, I thought everything was going to mold. It was terrible. So tell me about yourself and Shades of Green permaculture. So my name's Brandy Hall and I'm the founder and CEO of Shades of Green. 02:54 firmaculture. I started the company in 2008. So we just celebrated our 17 year anniversary and we are a regenerative design, installation, maintenance and education firm based here in the Atlanta area. offer processes for our clients going everything from consultation through design and implementation and ongoing maintenance services, both 03:23 horticulture services like bed maintenance and perennial plantings and organic all-electric solar powered lawn care. Really encouraging people to move toward polyculture lawns. And then we also offer digital education. So we've got a few thousand students located around the country and some international students that participate in our online design program called the regenerative backyard blueprint. 03:53 Okay, so I have a few questions for you. Number one, how did you get into this? What prompted you to start this business? I think there were a few things, know, some like early childhood experiences definitely set the course for me on this. And then, you know, when I started the company, I was looking for work in this arena. 04:19 And there wasn't anything available. So I sort of just started my own thing so that I could do what I loved to do. But as a child, I grew up part-time in South Florida and part-time in Western North Carolina. My parents divorced when I was really young. And my mom and my stepdad had a nursery in South Florida, an ornamental plant nursery and a seed farm. And over the course of 04:45 maybe 10 years or so in the nursery business, they became really, really allergic to and chemically sensitive to the kind of quote unquote, innocuous pesticides and pesticides that were spraying on the farm to the point where my stepdad was in a

Today I'm talking with Tamber at The Giving Garden Farm Stand. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Tamber at the Giving Garden Farm stand. Good morning, Tamber. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Colorado? You're going to be surprised. It's actually quite sunny today. So we're very excited for this nice weather. 01:23 Yeah, is Colorado rainy? I don't know anything about Colorado. Yesterday we woke up to a complete fog storm and it was misty and nasty out. So you just never know what it's going to be. It's super bipolar. Okay. All right. Well, Minnesota's been a little bipolar lately too, as we were saying before I hit record. It's not raining right now, but we had a thunderstorm roll through around 7, 7.30. 01:51 and it's supposed to clear out and get hot and then we're supposed to have really nasty storms later today. So I'm like, okay. Bracing yourself. I'm just keeping everything crossed that it doesn't do anything bad because our high tunnel is full of seedlings, our greenhouse is full of plants, and my husband actually planted cabbage and lettuces and stuff this weekend in the garden. 02:17 Keep everything you got crossed so we don't get hail because that will ruin what's in the garden. We got a little hail storm this last week as well. We got about, I would say, eight minutes of pea-sized hail. it's unfortunate, you know, to watch it come through. It always makes your heart sink a little bit, especially growing up on the farm. But hopefully our first cutting of hay will bounce back and we'll see what the good Lord does for us. 02:44 Yeah, exactly. You just never know. And I said to my husband after he planted the stuff on, I think it was Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, I said, did you happen to notice that we have rough weather coming in on Monday? And he was like, no. Yeah, we do. And he said, well, they're all little tiny plants. Maybe they'll be able to be in between the hail. I'm like, okay, we'll go with that. 03:11 Well, hope for the best. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do at the Giving Garden Farm Stand. Yeah. So my name is Tambor, as we already went over. My family and I run the Giving Garden Farm Stand, and we just recently opened. So in our little 7 by 7, 10 shed that we bought off of Facebook and revamped, you can find our Fresh Farm Eggs. 03:39 You can find always a bread product, whether it be a flat bread, a sourdough loaf, a regular loaf of bread, bread crumbs, something like that. And then always something to satisfy the sweet tooth. So this morning I made fresh raspberry crumble bars and they are to die for. I hate to do my own harm, but they're really good. I do too, it's fine. Yeah. This weekend we did a lot of cookies and that went very well too. So. 04:09 Just testing it out, seeing what people are liking, and that's been a lot of fun, meeting people, hearing what they like as well. And then alongside with all that, I always have my canning items. So I do some food preservation and have my pickled vegetables and pickles out there along with some fresh jams. We have actually quite a big variety of those. 04:35 It seems to all be going well. There's a lot of interest and it's been a lot of fun. Okay. I want to know how you came to do this, but first I want to know about the, we call them cottage food laws here in Minnesota. Is that what they're called in Colorado? Yes, that is correct. So what's, what are your parameters for that? So the biggest one tha

Today I'm talking with Michelle at Wild Ones Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Michelle at Wild Ones Homestead and Michelle is in Wisconsin. Good afternoon, Michelle. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. Has the sun come out there yet? A little bit. We had thunderstorms earlier, but the sun peaked out and I was able to clean up some of my garden beds with the kiddos, which was nice. They don't have school today, so. Uh-huh. 01:25 Yeah, the sun just came out maybe 45 minutes ago here in Minnesota where I live. And I didn't think my husband had any time off because of Easter. And he texted when I was doing an interview at 10 o'clock this morning and it said, I'll I'll be home. I'll be leaving at noon. And I was like, Oh no, did you get fired? And, and I said, Oh, question mark. And went on to do other stuff. And he texted me back and he was like, it's good Friday. 01:54 the company closes at noon. was like, Oh, okay. So of course I was busy with stuff, not thinking and didn't tell him I had an interview at one. And he got home and he was like, so do you want to do lunch or you just want to wait till dinner? And I said, I have an interview at one. He was like, Oh yeah, no, we're not doing food right now. said, no, I mean you can make food, but I can't, I can't eat right now. So, so big surprises around here today after 10 30 in the morning. That was very weird. Um, 02:23 Okay. So tell me about yourself and what you do at Wild Wands Homestead. Oh gosh. It might be more of a question of what don't we do. But so we have, it's about 63 acres here and we raise beef cows. I actually just started milking one of them. They're Angus Holstein Cross. So they do have a little bit of that dairy genetics in them. And I really wanted to attempt to milk a cow. I'm actually not. 02:52 a cow person. My background is in horses. But it's like, we have cows here. We have bred them to have babies. Why would I not milk the cow? Like this? Well, yes. So my husband thought I was crazy. He grew up with cows and he worked on dairy farms a lot when he was younger. But he was like, you're nuts. That cow's never going to let you milk her. And ha ha. 03:16 I actually got almost a full gallon today and her calf has 24 seven access to her and I'm doing it loose in the pasture, which is really fun. But so on top of the cows, we also raise chickens, which I always joke that I have a chicken retirement farm because we have about 50 chickens, but probably 20 of them are really old hens that are pushing 10 and don't even really lay anymore, but I get attached. they just kind of out. 03:44 We do multiple gardens. We do a really big garden where we plant like corn and hot peppers and potatoes and melons and squashes and anything that we want on term. We actually did two years ago, we had so much corn. We had a bunch of friends come over and help us process it all. And we had enough corn for us and three other families to last two years. So we do a lot of corn. 04:13 And then I've got my smaller like potage style garden behind the house where I've got, you know, like my tomatoes and my garlic is my favorite thing to grow. And, you know, asparagus and strawberries and zucchini and my herbs, the things I like closer. We planted an orchard a couple years ago, but those trees are not big enough to start producing yet. We collect maple syrup and I turn a lot of that into sugar. So I almost exclusively use maple sugar in my baking. 04:43 Um, what else do we do? We forage and we lov

Today I'm talking with Sofia at Still Farms VA. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Sofia at Still Farms VA, which I assume stands for Virginia. Is that right, Sofia? That's right. All right. Where are you in Virginia? I am in Wakefield, Virginia. It's this itty bitty town right between Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia Beach area. 01:23 Okay, awesome. I can find you on a map now. That's good. How's the weather there? Beautiful, sunny, 80s, lovely. I'm so happy. Oh my god, it is gray and it's actually muggy here. I think it's 69 degrees in Minnesota right now. Yeah, no, we are finally with the sun out and my seasonal depression has lifted and it is lovely. 01:48 It is spring and you, I assume, grow things. So you have to be beside yourself. I do. I try to grow things more than I actually grow things. But yeah, we are very happy to have the sun out again. All right. Well, tell me about yourself and what you guys do at Still Farms Virginia. Sure. So I am very new to homesteading, farming, agriculture, any of this sort of life. I grew up in Boston. 02:17 I was actually a makeup artist for most of my life. I wore red bottom shoes and that's all that mattered to me. And then COVID happened and I was bored and I tried to think of a hobby and I went to Home Depot and I bought some tomato plants and killed them. And I bought one bean plant and realized that I couldn't feed my family off of one bean plant and became addicted. So we started doing a small garden when I was living in Norfolk at the time. 02:44 We started doing a small garden and year after year, I really started to just love the connection to the earth, connection to my food, learning how broken our food system is, trying to make small changes in my life that I can feel really good about inspiring the people around me. Then about, just about a year and a half ago, my husband and I decided to take the plunge. sold our business and we bought 11 acres here and have slowly been trying to 03:14 grow food and become the people, do the things that the people we want to be do. So we've got some chickens, we just got some dairy goats, we've got some livestock dogs and we're building high tunnels and greenhouses and really trying to do the thing. That sounds very familiar except we have three acres not 11. And my husband and son just, I hesitate to say the word 03:41 finished our high tunnel because the door needs to be hung. Okay. other than the door being hung correctly because the hinges that we had were too flimsy and they bent. as soon as he gets the correct hinges, it will be finished this weekend. Well, you're a little more ahead than me. I've still got to the whole top on. we're waiting for a not windy day to be able to tackle that project. We get horrible wind here. 04:07 I understand they had to wait two weeks to get the plastic on because every time they were ready to go out and do it, the wind was picking up. Yeah. And like I said, I hesitated to say the word finished because God only knows if it's actually finished. He might have another idea for it. That's what I'm learning. Things are never finished. They're just, you hit one stepping stone and then you get to the next one. Yes. And you're not alone, Sophia. Does that make you feel better? It does. It makes me feel so much better. Good. 04:37 Good. It's so funny because I mean, I've been talking to people for over a year and a half in the homesteading realm and the song or the tune is the same, but the words are different because not everybody's doing the same things, but they're de

Today I'm talking with Gregg at Wisconsin Mineral Solutions. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I needed something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Greg Forster at Wisconsin Mineral Solutions and he's in Wisconsin. Good morning, Greg. How are you? Good morning. How about you, Mary? I'm good. I am your neighbor in Minnesota and the weather here is relatively warm for April and sunny. What is it like in Wisconsin this morning? Right, about 37 degrees and bright and sunny. 01:26 Mm-hmm. Yeah, we're moving slowly incrementally towards spring. I'm very excited about this and I'm sure you are too. Yes. So tell me about yourself and what you do because I know that you are a genius. Yeah, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder so is genius. Oh, yeah. Well, over here in Wisconsin I have 01:55 on a 19 acre hobby farm, Homestead, where we've got probably about 30 baby goats born this spring. So that's, that's exciting. And most of those are twins, I guess. Yeah, twins and a fair number of triplets born this year. So that's always fun. And kind of kicks off the spring season with a lot of excitement here around the Homestead. 02:24 And, um, well, we raise quite a, I guess you could say kind of like a rainbow of fruits and vegetables here. We've got, um, a couple of acres actually of elderberries, and then we grow Aronia and blackcurrant and some red, white and pink currants. And have a small greenhouse that, um, helps us kind of keep things going a little later into the season and also a little bit early. 02:53 So yeah, home setting has been good. We've been working with Dairy Goats for about 30 years now and learning a lot. And my personal background is I have a degree in physics and I utilized that for about 20 years in the world of software engineering and it wasn't until 03:21 2012 that I turned that education towards the world of agriculture. And now I have a business called Wisconsin Mineral Solutions, as you mentioned. And I help produce growers and dairy farmers more profitably produce and more sustainably produce nutritious foods. Okay. And that's where the genius part comes in. 03:46 I listened to your podcast with Jill Winger today. I think her podcast is amazing. Like I want to be Jill Winger when I grow up and I'm trying really hard to grow up fast because that would be great. Yeah, she does. Awesome. She's great. She's a lovely human being. But what I found really interesting is all the science behind the making soil work better for you to grow better plants. And 04:13 So did you go back to school to learn this stuff or what, how did that happen? Well, I did not go back to school. Um, but a lot of the principles that I've been learning and research that I've come across, um, my physics background kind of helps evaluate that and understand more how it, when the rubber hits the road, what's actually happening down there in the soil and then what's happening in the plants themselves. And 04:42 I've encountered quite a few really, really knowledgeable people over the last decade or so that have been instrumental in my learning and growing. And then of course, there are plenty of good opportunities like Acres USA and the Moses Conference and La Crosse, not too far from here. So yeah, there are lots of ways to increase your knowledge and become more proficient in 05:12 your understanding of how the natural environment works. Okay. I think that you suffer from the same thing that my dad and I suffer from. My dad calls it got to know it is because for you to learn all of that stuff on your own, to be self-

Today I'm talking with Joy at Harvest Of Joy Homestead. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Joy at Harvest of Joy Homestead. Good morning, Joy. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm good. You said you're in Mississippi when we were talking before I hit record. So what's the weather like there today? It's very cold today. Really? Yes. 01:23 Like how cold? Because like I said, I'm in Minnesota. I know what cold is. See, we don't really know what cold is. Like y'all, it's like 60 here. So it's cold to us. Oh, you would not be enjoying this morning. I don't think it's freezing yet. I think we're still below freezing here. Oh, wow. Yeah, we don't know what cold is here. Yeah, I absolutely know what cold is here. 01:48 People assume that I don't know what really hot is, but I can tell you from first-hand experience, two summers ago, we had a day that hit 101 degrees and the humidity was at the tropical level. So I do understand heat too. Yeah. we can be anywhere from minus 30 real temperature in January to 101 and tropical humidity in July. So. Wow. That's insane. 02:18 It kind of is. That's why we all have lots of clothes here. We have, I don't do this. My mom lives in Maine. I grew up in Maine and it's cold there too in the winter. She actually has summer clothes and winter clothes and she packs away the summer clothes in November and she pulls out the winter clothes and then she packs away the winter clothes in April and she pulls out the summer clothes. I don't even bother. I just have all my clothes available and that way if I need 17 layers, I have them. Yeah. 02:49 So, I always start the podcast with the weather, well, almost always because it's just a good way to break the ice and it's nice to know what's going on in the world on the day I talk to people. tell me about yourself and your homestead, please. Okay. So, my name is Joy. I go by Joy. I'm a homeschooling mom and I'm an urban homesteader in... 03:13 I run a Facebook of Harvest of Joy Homestead for our homestead that we just started this year. And I also run a Facebook group for Journey to Joy, Faith Family and Life Lessons for moms out there like me that has kids and just started homeschooling. And we just need a little compassion and upliftment and encouragement from each other. That's awesome. I love that. 03:40 And I'm so glad that you just started your homestead this year because I don't usually talk to brand new homesteaders who are just building it. So tell me about that. I actually have a license in veterinary technology and so I've always loved animals. Well, I have four kids. I had twins in 2021. One of them ended up having Dandy Walker and they thought I was going to lose both of them. So I ended up having to quit my job to 04:10 care for them. And so the journey kind of started then where God was putting it on my heart to, you know, get your chickens, get what you can. Even though you live in city limits, you can do what you can. And I kind of just like brushed it off, brushed it off. And last year I started just getting little things and putting it as a hobby and part of our home school. So now we have Brahma chickens. 04:38 We have just regular egg layer, barnyard mixes. We have rabbits for meat. And we also have quail and just got into ducks. Oh, I have a question real quick about all of that. If you're in city limits, are there regulations about what you can and can't have, or is it just a complaint-based thing where if somebody complains, then they're like, what are you doing? So for here, it's a c

Today I'm talking with Jonathan Lawler at The Punk Rock Farmer. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. That doesn't work here. mean, I said number one, said, when you have 12,000 tomato plants planted per acre, the pheromones that we're releasing to the hawk moths and the gypsy moths, everything that wants to come a beat on these, that's going out. Huge, huge signals. 01:26 And I said, we try to use, I mean, I do integrated pest management where I try to incorporate insect predators and, I encourage hawks here. love the fact that I have hawks. My wife doesn't like it because of her chickens, but I like having hawks here because mice are such a problem for us as produce farmers. They are just the bane of our existence. 01:54 we're getting ready to install 27 miles of drip irrigation just here at this location. And when we install that, the mice in the middle of summer when it's dry will actually chew on that drip irrigation. To get to the water. To get to the water. so, you know, I've always told people, like, I'll have guys who work for me and they'll see a snake and they'll go to kill it. said, that's fine. But you kill a snake, you got to do his job for two weeks for free. 02:22 You know, because he's eaten the things I don't want him. We have bees and we're able to educate people. They're like, well, how can you use chemicals and have bees? Well, because number one, the stuff I'm using, bees aren't chewing on the plants. And these insects have to chew on the plants in order to ingest it. Number two, we also spray in accordance with how the bees 02:52 Whether they're, you know, we don't like to, we really don't like to spray plants late in the evening, but, uh, we will, we won't spray before a big bloom, like a big bloom of watermelons. We don't spray. mean, there's, there's things that we actively do that there's nuanced conversations that we can have with the people that are all or nothing. When it comes to there's people that are like, no chemicals all the way. That's the way we should do it. And then there's people like, absolutely don't use chemicals. And I see myself as. 03:22 I'm the dude in the middle saying if I don't have to spray, I'm not going to. But at the same time, don't take the tool tools away from me that I need to help feed people. And that's that's that's that's a hard part for me sometimes is what people tell me now. The funny part about those those ladies that came, they were awesome. They were like you guys, you know, she said she wanted to know how we manage rabbits. And I said, Well, we throw lead at him. 03:51 1300 feet per second. Us too. Yes. And I could tell it took her a second to understand what I was saying. And I was like, all these, all these cute German shepherds that are your best friends right now that are, are, you know, circling you for, for their next pet. These guys also do it. They see a rabbit, they kill it, you know, and that's kind of, kind of how we've trained them to be. And they're like, yeah, we, 04:18 But I'm like, you guys are also in urban environments. So discharging a firearm would probably be frowned upon. you know, the things that you can do, I mean, I didn't really have an answer for him because I've always been able to manage pests the way we saw fit. Yeah. 04:40 Yeah, I'm going to jump in for a second. I think that what everybody needs regarding these stories you're telling is number one, listening. Number two, critical thinking. And number three, understanding what you heard and realizing that it doesn't have to be on

Today I'm talking with Jonathan Lawler at The Punk Rock Farmer. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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, 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Jonathan Lawler, also known as the punk rock farmer in Indiana. I think you're in Indiana, yes? Yes, that's correct. All right. Welcome, Jonathan. How are you? I'm good. How did you fare with the weather in Indiana last night? It was a little bit rough. We're kind of used to it. 01:25 My farm's been hit by a tornado. I don't know twice. I lost a packing shed to a tornado a few years ago. Weirdly enough, last night, you know, we thought we were kind of ahead of the storm. So we decided to run to Walmart together. Well, which was weird. We usually don't go to Walmart as a family. my wife wanted to stop at another place up to town. So she came with us. 01:56 And she actually came in because she said it was getting so bad. And as we were in there, the Walmart basically shut down and made everybody go back to their like, uh, receiving and storage area where it's designated as a storm shelter. Well, I'm glad you're safe because I saw that there were bad storms in Indiana last night and I was like, Oh no, I think the guy I'm talking to today is in Indiana crap. So glad you're good. Glad your family is safe. 02:26 Um, so tell me about yourself and tell me how come you're called The Punk Rock Farmer. So I actually didn't come up with that name. Um, I didn't like the name when people started calling me that, uh, you know, because when you get a label put on you, that's as wide as something representing an entire subculture in a music scene, it's kinda, you know, 02:54 You feel like there's a lot of pressure there. You might not align with everything that that subculture represents. But I was so we were working. We were doing urban farm projects in Indianapolis and a wonderful organization known as the Flannery House had been trying to put in an urban farm for like four years. They were working with a university and the university had them on like their ninth 03:24 feasibility study and the executive director was getting super frustrated and I was actually providing produce to this this community center and he took me out to where he wanted to do it and he said you know what is the feasibility of doing this because you know we we keep having you know the university we're working with says we got to make sure we're doing this this and this and I said do you have soil Sam? 03:53 And he's like, yeah, I said, okay, well, let's look at them. I looked at the soil samples and I'm like, well, we can put a plow on the ground and, you know, start planting. I mean, I don't, you know, the spring, I don't know what their holdup is. And he said, okay, you know, I'm all for that. So we actually put in a two acre urban farm there and they have a center for children. 04:22 that the center has a after school, it's for after school for their working parents. And they have a lot of young kids there. And Brandon, the executive director told me, he said, make sure, if you can, bring a cool tractor or, so I was like, I can bring two tractors. That way we get it done twice as fast and the kids can see them. So we brought two, one good size utility tractor than a smaller utility tractor. 04:53 The kids had just never seen anything like that. And of course we used two big F-350 farm trucks to pull those up there. I was wearing jeans, boots, but I had a Misfits shirt on and my hair was really long and tattoos. And so the kids all started calling me the punk rock farmer. You know, they're like, he's

Today I'm talking with John at Langton Green Community Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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, 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with John at Langton Green Community Farm in Maryland. Is that right, John? Yes, ma'am. We're in Millersville, Maryland outside of Annapolis. Okay, cool. Good morning. How are you? I'm doing well. Good. I am so excited to have you on the show because 01:22 This community farm thing you've got going on is huge. So tell me about it. Well, Lankton Green has been primarily providing residential services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities since the early eighties. About 15 years ago, we started also doing day services, which tends to be vocational or activities based for a small number of our consumers. But we're always 01:50 looking for more to do on an ongoing basis. So after a couple of years of doing a lot of landscaping and commercial and residential cleaning contracts, our former executive director went to a conference and met some people who operated a small residential program on a farm in California and said, hey, could we do something like this? Which was exactly the kind of thing that I was already engaged in personally. 02:18 doing a lot of suburban homesteading kind of stuff, a lot of gardening and canning. So it definitely matched a lot of my personal interests. A lot of my job coaches and staff also had experience working in horticulture and landscaping. So there was a natural tie in there. So I spent the next couple of years working with our board of directors, going through some mentorships with local agricultural organizations and 02:48 looking at properties locally to actually develop an expansion of our existing day services program to be focused on an agricultural property. The spot that we found was perfect. It's right in the middle of a really very populated suburban area and to be able to provide 13 acres of 03:12 animals and sustainable produce and flowers. We've incorporated a lot of artwork on the property over the past 10 years. It has just been a really great thing. It's benefited our consumer population tremendously. And I think we're increasingly a benefit to the public as we provide a space for them to come out and have those experiences and to kind of get a sense of where food comes from. Because I think a lot of people have lost that. 03:42 If you ask a group of kids where does food come from, the number one answer is going to be the grocery store. So to be able to give back a little bit of opportunities to experience the basis of that food industry and where it all starts in a setting that's also focused on providing therapeutic care for everybody, but most primarily for our consumer population. 04:10 That's phenomenal. I'm so impressed. Okay. So my first question is how is the public interacting with the farm? Initially our biggest, you know, we, we wanted to draw volunteers, so we needed the additional help with some of the work processes. Um, everybody that comes out here is just floored and really enjoys being on the property. So initially we started with a lot of 04:37 group activities with local churches, local community organizations. When we first got our property in Millersville, it basically was a 13 acre, some of it was in agricultural production with one of our neighbors. Part of it had been horse pastures with a collapsed very large barn and two houses that hadn't been inhabited for probably decades, one of which was actually. 05:04 Condemned it wasn't suitable for habitation. There were a lot of big p

Today I'm talking with Chelsea Chapman. 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 Did you know that Muck Boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out Muck Boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Chelsea at It's Chelsea Chapy in Saskatchewan, Canada. Yay. Good morning, Chelsea. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing really well. It's nice and sunny here. Finally. Oh, well, it's not nice and sunny here in Minnesota. It's kind of gray and it snowed yesterday. We got about an inch of snow on the ground. 01:26 Oh man, well you're doing better. I guess you're not doing as good as us. Our snow's almost gone. Yeah, ours was. Friday was 80 degrees here and then it got cold and rained on Saturday, thunderstorm Saturday night and then snowed yesterday. I was like, Mother Nature, what are you doing? That's funny. It always catches me off guard when it's it's 80 degrees and it's literally like a warm day here for us right now is like minus four. So it sounds so different. Yeah. And it's celsius. 01:56 Yeah, and it's really different for here too. We don't get 80 degree days in March. So it was very weird. I did not love it. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do, So my husband and I, we raise cattle and we recently just bought our own quarter section here. Was it six months ago? And so we've moved in into like a little sixties farmhouse that we're currently renovating and we 02:25 Finally, can have our, you're okay. I just have my son here with me. We're finally getting our own chickens and doing all the homesteading and things that I've been dreaming about for so long. And then I also do social media and that's just like such a fun, creative outlet for me. And it kind of started during COVID, I got laid off my job and I love doing photography and writing and things like that. And so it was just a really cool outlet for me. And then it started to gain traction and 02:54 Here I am like five years later doing what I do now. Nice, very nice. And it's so funny for you to say you've wanted to do for so long because you're not very old. What are you in your late twenties if that? I'm 25. But yeah, when my husband and got married, we were renting and we've been married almost three years. And so when I got married is when I really started to, my interest and passion in these things started to grow. And because we were renting, we weren't able to do that. 03:23 And so I just spent the last three years really trying to just learn and learn and learn so that when I am in the position that I am ready to go. So here I am now just waiting for the ground to defrost and everything like that. Yep, exactly. I'm so excited that you're 25 years old because I usually talk to people in their 30s and up because it usually takes us that long to get to where we can homestead on any kind of land. 03:52 So I love that you're 25, you're young, you're raising a family and you're getting into this and that's amazing. Cause you are the future Chelsea. Yeah, it's when I look around at the world and I just think, man, how are we raising our kids? And I just take it so much more seriously when I look at my son, especially be like, he is the future. And if we are not putting everything into our children, then our future is going to look weak. 04:20 And I really try and show that on my page, the way that we're raising our children spiritually, but also how much more effort we're putting into looking at their health, you know? I do. I have four grown kids and my daughter was the first and she's 35 now. And she was what changed my perspective on the world too. having a child can't help but change your perspective. It's just how it happens. 04:5

Today I'm talking with Annie at High Prairie Press. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Did you know that Muck Boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out Muck Boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a Calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I needed something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Annie Toro Lopez again. I just put out the episode with Annie from a week or two ago, sometime in the last six days. can't remember when. And Annie talked to me about her Seeds to Savor page and stuff on the last episode. 01:25 And today she's going to walk us through her process of how she publishes books at High Prairie Press. So welcome back, Annie. How are you? Wonderful. I am well. Thank you so much, Mary, for having me back. I'm very excited about this conversation. I am too, because that got to me like this bug has been kicking me for a week since we talked about doing this episode. You're in Colorado, right? 01:53 That's correct. I'm in Elizabeth, Colorado, and we are at 6,300 feet. That's High Prairie. We're on the Colorado High Prairie, and that was the name for my publishing company, High Prairie Press. Beautiful. the weather nice in Colorado today? Oh my goodness, not today. Everything's covered in ice. How about you up there? It's gray. 02:22 It's gray, it's probably 45 degrees and we actually had kind of nasty thunderstorms yesterday. I believe it. There were tornadoes all across the country. saw, I'm originally from Nebraska. I was born in New Jersey, raised in Nebraska and in an agricultural land, lots of tornadoes across Nebraska. saw a video of someone in their house and all of their windows all the way around them were breaking with hail. Yeah. 02:50 So it was, yeah, it was a rough day yesterday. I'm glad you guys are all okay. Yep. We're fine here. No broken windows. No, no cars got ding. No, no dogs got clunked in the head with hail. We're good. Um, and we're making a very small talk here, but I was, I was also born in New Jersey. I was also born in New Jersey. Where? Fort Dix. Wow. I was born in Plainfield. 03:19 Yeah, I think Fort Dix is in New Jersey. So yeah, we have that in common too. Really weird. Yes, Wonderful. Okay. So what I want to ask you first is you had said back in the other interview, 03:39 that it's always been your dream to be a publisher, but you have also written a cookbook. So were you a publisher before you wrote the cookbook or were you an author before you were a publisher? So I had published three books. I published before my most recent cookbook. So I published four different books. One is a writer's handbook. That was the first book I wrote. It taught me a lot about the process of publishing 04:09 Um, it was something just, just did. I taught my degree is in English and I taught literacy, reading and writing for about 15 years. So professionally and more before that, but I, um, wanted to capture what I had taught as a literacy instructor. so I made, I spent like, I don't know. 04:39 days, just listing words, like words that would come like metaphor and simile and antagonist and protagonist and plot and resolution and just words. so this book is the death, the writer's handbook defines those words and it's, it's people who have it, I think find it valuable. It hasn't sold to many people, but writers, especially for fiction, memoir, 05:08 anything you would have learned in like English 101 is all there and just really concise. So that's that book. Then I did a project in Southern Colorado around green chili because it's an iconic native indigenous, my husband is indigenous and so green chili was just always a part of his life. And so this was a way to capture stories and recipes. 05:38 So that was the second real book t

Today I'm talking with Shell. If you've ever wondered what it's like to homestead in Australia, this will give you a small taste. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Shell Smart and she is in Australia and it's actually morning in Australia right now, whereas it's six o'clock in the evening here in Minnesota. Good morning, Shell. How are you? Good morning, Mary Ann. Good evening to you. Thank you. And the other thing's different is you are in the middle of autumn and we are in the middle of a spring, right? That's correct. Yes. 00:58 Okay, so based on all of that, your growing situation is very different from ours, so I wanna touch on that. But first, tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, I am a wife to Stuart. We've been married for nearly 33 years. And we have five children and they range from 28 down to 15. We're homeschooling. 01:27 still got two homeschooling or sort of one and a half homeschooling at the moment. So we're nearly finished with being homeschooling. think this is our 22nd year of homeschooling. And we're homestead as well. So we have three acres right within the town limits, but a very small town of a thousand people here in the snowy valleys of New South Wales and in Australia. And yeah, we have three acres and we have a little homestead here. 01:58 Very nice and congratulations on making your marriage work for that long with five children to boot That's that's I'm one grandchild. Okay Yeah, well you have outdone yourselves. I'm impressed. I I've been married three times. I'm keeping the third one. He's great 02:27 And I can't imagine being with someone for that long with that many kids because kids are a huge stressor on relationships sometimes. Yeah, they can be. But I think they can also really make you work better as a team because you've got something bigger than yourself to work for as well within your marriage. True enough. Yes, absolutely. But you also have to be willing to do that. 02:55 You both have to be willing to work together. And my first two, I don't want to say anything bad, but the third one is more than willing to work with me to make this work. Let's put it that way. That's the big difference. It sure does. Okay. So what do you do on your homestead? Do have animals? Do you grow gardens? What do you do? Yeah, we generally do grow gardens. At the moment, we haven't got any luck. 03:24 this season because we're just finishing our harvest season. So we haven't done gardens this last year, this last summer, because we are moving and we just didn't have the time and energy to into that. But we do normally grow gardens with, you know, not a huge vegetable garden, but we do have, you know, herbs and veggies and tomatoes. 03:53 Well, I'm not very good at tomatoes. I like to plant lots of tomatoes. And I get a few every season that actually grow. So that's something I need to work on. And one day I'll work on that when I've got more time and energy. But we do grow a lot and have grown at the, again, at the moment we've downsized, but we have been in the past growing. Between growing and we have friends that hunt, we've been able to raise most of our meat. 04:22 that we eat as a family. So that's been good. So we currently have our chooks, oh sorry, in Australia we call chickens chooks. So if I revert to that I apologize. So chickens are laying chickens at the moment, laying hens. And we have goats. They have in the past been milked, but at the moment we don't have any babies and they're not milking. 04:49 And we have had meat chickens as well and we just sent back some milking cows that we had on our property that our friend had lent to us over the summer. A, it benefited her because she needed to reduce her load on her pasture and B, we needed to get some big animals on our pasture. 05:17 We were able to be blessed by having two milking cows and two calves on our pasture over the last four months, I think five months maybe. So we're very quiet at the moment. Our poor livestock guardian dog, Chief, he doesn't have a lot to do. I we're down to about 15 hens and three roosters and a small clutch of chicks and two goats. That's all he's got to look after other than us in the househ

Today I'm talking with Megan at Growin and Crowin. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 Share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Megan at Growin' and Crowin'. Good afternoon, Megan. How are you? I am good. I love that Growin' and Crowin'. I just talked to a lady this morning and Cluck is in her name. And had to be really careful that we pronounce the CL. Right? For sure. So Growin' and Crowin' is safe. That's a good one. Yeah. 00:52 So you're in Illinois. it gray? Because she was in Indiana and I'm in Minnesota. It's been gray and sprinkling to hear all day. It was sunny earlier, but now it's all overcast again. Yeah, it's it's spring like, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Never know what you're going to get from one day to the next. Oh, thank God. It's spring. I know how your winter was, but it seems like our winter was a blink of an eye and the longest winter at the same time, which is really weird. 01:20 Right. Nothing compares to last year with all the snow we got. yeah, it always seems to take forever for spring to get here. Yeah. We, I was, I keep saying this. We have not had a lot of snow where I live for the last two winters. I don't think we've gotten a foot either winter of snow. Yeah. We definitely got a big blizzard last year, but this year was not bad. Well, I can't figure out if it's good or bad because my mom said that my grandpa 01:50 who was a farmer and then worked for General Motors for a long time. He used to say that rain and snow were God's fertilizer or something like that. Sure, because it gives the ground moisture for the whole year of planting season and gets them started. Yeah, and so this not having snow sometimes is a blessing because the roads aren't dicey, but it can also wreak havoc when we're trying to get stuff in. 02:20 It's a crap shoot. I keep saying that and I stand behind it. You just don't know how it's gonna go. Yeah. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do growing and crowing. Okay. So it's my husband and I live, like I said, in West Central Illinois and we have an 85 acre farm or homestead or you know, whatever you want to call it. We have three kids and I do photography. I'm wedding and senior photographer mainly. So this is 02:49 Hobby farm stuff at home is just a fun thing to do and keeps me busy. Okay. I always feel like I'm being nosy when I ask this question. Do you try to have stuff from the homestead support the homestead financially? So we don't do any sort of farmer's market or anything like that, really. It's just... 03:13 like I raise catod and pear sheep. you know, my goal with them is if I can sell enough lambs for, to buy the next year's hay supply, then, you know, then we did good. So, so no, we don't, you know, my husband and I both work full time as well. So it's not, it doesn't support itself. It's more just about, it makes me happy. It makes us happy and, you know, get to try new things and that sort of thing. 03:37 Yeah, and happiness is a payoff all on its own. So I don't blame you. If we could have done 85 acres, we would have too, but we did 3.1 instead. Yep. Well, that's we bought it, you know, at 21 and initially we bought it because we want to hunt and ground. We all hunt. And so that's why we wanted the ground we got. And we do all hunt on it. So. Nice. What do you hunt for? Mainly deer, turkey. The boys do some coyote hunting, that sort of thing, squirrel hunting. 04:08 Yeah, my youngest still lives with us. He's 23 and he's always plinking rabbits because the rabbits eat our garden. if he sees a rabbit, he's like, um, I see a bunny and I'm like, uh-huh. He's like, I'm going to take care of it. I'm like, you do that. That would be great. So I have a question about the deer. I do not love venison as a meat. I grew up with parents who hunted and they loved it, but I did not. 04:37 It's very, it's too close to the way that liver tastes to me and I just can't, I can't do it. And I love liver but... Yeah, I cannot. 04:49 Cannot do it, just the smell of it makes my stomach flip. I'm like, no. That's probably 95 % of what we eat. So we'll raise cattle every now and again. When the prices aren't so dang high, then we can buy them just as feeder calves. But we put the venison in our freezer and

Today I'm talking with Kelsey at Misty Mountain Homestead. This a follow up chat about what Kelsey has been up to since November of 2023. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Kelsey at Misty Mountain Homestead. Good morning Kelsey. How are you? Good morning Mary. I'm doing great. Good. I almost called you Misty. I was, I almost said I'm talking with Misty at Misty Mountain Homestead. That's where my brain's at this morning. That happens to me very, very often actually. Yup. My brain not functioning, words not working. We'll get it together eventually. 00:57 Where are you in Minnesota? told me before, but I forgot. We live in South Haven, Minnesota, but we're actually closer to Fairhaven, but Fairhaven doesn't have a post office, so it's a South Haven address. Okay, so what's the nearest big city to you? We're about 20 miles south of St. Cloud. Okay, yep, that helps. Thank you. Is it gray? Is it gray up there today? 01:26 Oh, yes, very foggy, very gray. huh. Yeah, I was all excited because Wednesday was supposed to be the official real swinging into warm weather spring. And the last couple of days have been kind of bleh. Yep, that's true. I'm waiting for the pretty sunny days where the crocuses start to pop up and that hasn't happened yet. Okay, so Kelsey came back to visit and do a catch up episode with me. 01:55 And I looked and the first episode Kelsey and I did was back in November of 2023. And I started the podcast in August of 2023. So it's been a minute since we've chatted. tell me what's happening since then. 02:14 Um, well, we've really added to our meat rabbit colony. Um, we have probably close to, um, 60 rabbits right now. Um, I would say 15 of them are our breeders. Okay. And, um, we have been selling and butchering those ourselves and that's been, um, a really good adventure. Um, lots of. 02:42 teaching moments for us and the kids both. And we're starting to learn how to tan their hides as well. A long-term goal, I would love to learn how to like make hats. Cause their hides are just so beautiful and I really don't like seeing them to go to waste. And we've also started using, you know, every part of the animal, their ears, their legs, feet as dog treats. 03:12 And you just dehydrate them and they turn into chips. Okay. Um, yeah. And, um, that's been really, really fun. And of course the dogs enjoy it as well. So, and we also have cooney cooney pigs now. Okay. Um, we're going to start breeding those, um, and the selling the piglets and then of course, um, having some meat for ourselves. 03:40 CUNY CUNY pigs are extremely high quality pork. Their meat looks more like beef and it actually has marbling in it. And then once you eat like CUNY CUNY or Mangleesa is also another high quality pork, it's really hard to go back to like more of a normal pig like a Yorkshire. But yeah. 04:09 So I have a question. have a question about that real quick. so if it looks more like beef, does it have the same kind of texture and flavor or does it still taste like pork? Well, I think it has the same texture as pork, but it definitely has a very rich flavor. Um, I would say more even so than beef does. but yeah. Okay, cool. I just, I've never had either. 04:38 kind so I thought I should ask. Okay and I told you before I hit record I've been looking at your Facebook pages because I wanted to see what you've been up to and you make some of the most beautiful breads ma'am. Oh thank you very much. And other things. It's been quite the process. So you've really gotten into baking since we talked last I think so tell me about that too. 05:05 You know, it's been a little bit surprising. Um, and I'm kind of just along for the ride and, I have had wonderful customers and farmers and, Just people show up out of the woodwork. Uh, and I'm kind of just doing things that I would do for my family. And then I, you know, increased it by scale. Um, which 05:34 was really easy for me actually. And, um, I started with a little KitchenAid mixer and I burnt through a couple of those motors. Uh, and I have a, now I have a 15 quart like professional mixer. And I remember being really nervous about buying that. And my husband's like, Oh, it's only, yo

Today I'm talking with Samantha at Cluster Cluck Acres. You can follow on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Samantha at Cluster Cluck Acres and I had to say that really carefully. Good morning, Samantha. How are you? Good morning. How are you? I'm good. You are where again? You're in Illinois. Is that right? Nope, Monticello, Indiana. Indiana. Sorry. Yep. Is it gray in Indiana this morning? Cause it is gray and drizzling here in Minnesota. It definitely is. And it is cold, very cold. 00:56 Oh, it's like 45 degrees here this morning. I got up at five and it was warm outside. was like, ooh, spring might be here. I don't call 45 that warm. Well, after the week or so we had back in January when it was minus 20 to 25 at night, I'm good with 45. So tell me about yourself and what you do at Cluster Cluck Acres. 01:25 Well, I am the owner. So it's kind of just a basically a family farm. We started off with chickens that were actually kind of given to us. We had a friend that had a bunch of chickens and the rooster had attacked one of our kids. I had wanted some and I grew up with chickens. So I knew. 01:51 Um, after I got in the farm that I wanted chickens and then we've moved on to, I was thinking, oh, they had rabbits also. They wanted to get rid of it. So we took two rabbits in and then, uh, my oldest son had bought a horse and we have horse stalls. So he wanted somewhere to bring his horse. So we have a horse. We have, uh, pigs. had three, we got down to two and then we just got six more. 02:22 Uh, in that chaotic time, we also had a litter of puppies. had 10 golden doodle or 10 doodles. I should say they're a mix of doodles, but they're 10 doodles. So we, we added a little, little more chaos to our, to our lives with puppies. So yeah, that'll, that'll shake things up a little bit. Just a little. I decided that I will never do a litter again. It's a very emotional process. I didn't realize how emotional it was. 02:54 I would have kept all 10 if I could, but... 02:58 Yeah, that doesn't usually work. That's a lot of dogs to handle. And not only that, but you get to deal with littermate syndrome too, which is something I've heard about. Yeah. Well, we thought we were coming, we were getting sick. So we spent a long night with mom delivering babies. So it was a, it was an all day process, but it was, it was a good experience. 03:23 We've had an opportunity to hatch some of our own chickens also. I took the time to get an incubator and so we do some chicken hatching and I just got into doing sourdough. So at the beginning of last week, 03:45 Or actually over the weekend, last weekend, we opened a little farm stand out in front of the house. So I have been creatively working on different items to put out every day to fill the farm stand. Your farm stand has inspired me, ma'am. We have a farm stand. It's a little red shed. It looks like a little tiny barn. 04:12 Yes. It's red with white trim. I love it. It's my favorite thing here. We had it put in a few years ago. And we usually just sell eggs and produce out of there in the summer. And I saw the way you have yours set up and I was like, I have got to get on baked goods and I've got to get them out there this summer and sell them because why wouldn't I? You know, we have it. So why not do it? So you have inspired me to get off my ass and make baked goods this summer. 04:39 That's exciting. I sell sourdough sardar. I have had what we call Sally now for several months. I actually did sourdough here at home. then shockingly enough, this is not my only thing that I do. actually a full-time, I have a full-time job. I'm actually an ER nurse. Wow. So yeah, that's a lot to do on top of what you're doing at home. 05:07 And I actually am also currently training, taking fire classes to train to be a firefighter. Oh my God. Wow. Wow. Lady. That's amazing. Yeah. I've been an ER nurse for 10 years and I took EMT classes last year so that I can kind of cross over to the 911 aspect of emergency medicine. 05:32 And in order to do that in our local town here in Monticello, you also have to be a fire certified. So I am getting fire certified now. do you actually want to be li

Today I'm talking with Janna at Authentic Food. You can follow on Instagram as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 Share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Janna at Authentic Food. Good afternoon, Janna. How are you? I'm phenomenal. How are you doing, Mary? I'm fantastic. I love the word phenomenal. I love it. No one ever uses it. Thank you for using that word. Where are you? Where are you located? Actually, right now I am in Miami, Florida, but I'm rarely here because I'm always traveling. I'm usually in and out for a day or two and then on the road. 00:59 Oh, okay. Is Miami nice today? Yes, of course. It's beautiful. It's sunny and warm and yeah, we're going into full on summer here. Yeah, we are, we are wintery today in Minnesota, but starting tomorrow, it's supposed to start warming up and stay warming up. So I'm very excited for this. Oh, good. Good, good, good. And my daughter actually lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. So. 01:28 Oh, lovely. So hopefully get to visit during those cold months. Not yet, but it's sort of been it's been floated. We haven't decided yet when we're going to go. So. All right. OK, so tell me about yourself and authentic food. So authentic food dot com has been brewing for about a decade. It has lived inside me and it's finally the. 01:57 It's such a good feeling to get it out. So I was traveling for work all over the world and sometimes I would be in a country for maybe a day or two. And I've always loved food. I'm also an Italian citizen. So, you know, for me, food is kind of religion. And I would always want to have some kind of dish that I could only get in a certain place. And 02:26 Like even if I was in Denver, I'd want a Denver omelet or I was in Australia. I wanted to try kangaroo, something that was very like regionally specific or culturally specific. And I kept, when I would be in a country, I would ask people, what, what's the most authentic dish here? Or I can't get anywhere else. And, um, the conversations were just really fascinating to me. And it was like, I couldn't get a straight answer. And then some people would send me places and I would feel like. 02:55 Oh, I could have gotten this, you know, in Florida. And so then I would start asking the concierge at the hotel, if they would eat there, they would send me to these places and, and they would say, well, no, I don't really eat there. And I'm like, well, where would you eat? And then I got even more intuitive and I would ask them, well, would your mom eat there? And it was like the deeper I was getting in the conversation. 03:23 the more authenticity I felt like I was getting for that kind of local flavor. And I really started to wonder how are people coming up with this idea of authenticity surrounding food and restaurants? And so much so that I went back to college and I got a PhD so that I could research it. I did a five-year PhD at University of Florida. 03:48 What was the PhD in? was the sociology? So I did the sociology of food and specifically how society creates the idea of authenticity in regard to Super cool. Yeah. I, yeah, I mean, starting a PhD in my forties, everyone thought I was nuts. Um, but here I am. I graduated almost a year ago now and 04:18 During that time, I hadn't been in academia in a while. So I realized that a lot of the stuff that I was writing was sitting behind these paywalls and these academic journals. And I wanted people to have access to the discussions that I was having, the interviews I was doing. so I at some point bought authenticfood.com domain and it sat. And then last fall, this past November, 04:45 My daughters are like, mom, you need to do something with appendixv.com. And I thought that it would be a little blog that maybe I did once a month or something, but it has really grown into something more. And I love these dialogues with people about authenticity because as a sociologist, I study how society creates this narrative. 05:12 And for me, I learned that it was through a very like socially constructed idea as an individual. So food is very universal, but we each have these very personal experiences with food. And it was driving me crazy because I would see like chefs or writers write these articles saying,

Today I'm talking with Annie at Seeds To Savor. You can follow on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Annie at Seeds to Save Her Farm and she's in Colorado. Good morning, Annie. How are you? Good morning, Mary. It's so nice to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. I love it when the people I invite have time to talk with me. It's really great. What's the weather like in Colorado this morning? Oh, it's a gorgeous day today. Yeah. We're like, we're at, I think we're going to get up to like 65. So just, it's perfect. 00:59 Nice. It's always sunny here. Well, that's awesome. It's only going to get up to like 30 here today. Where are you, Mary? Minnesota. Minnesota. Okay. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's really sunny, but it's windy and it's cold. The news, the good news is that the weather guy says that's going to warm up on Wednesday and we're just going to keep warming up until we get to like, you know, 01:24 reasonable April, end of April temperatures for Minnesota, which is 50s, 60s for the highs. Yeah. Yeah. In here, it's like we can get snow. We had a blizzard on Mother's Day three years in a row. And so we're like, I'm sure you're the same there, right? So you're covering your blossoms, right? So the apple trees are in full bloom, the plums are in full bloom, the peaches are in full bloom, and then along comes a blizzard. 01:53 We honestly, I've lived here for over 30 years and I have not seen snow, real snow in May, but I've seen heavy frost in May and that's what does in our blossoms. we keep our fingers and toes crossed in May that it does not frost. So, okay, so tell me about yourself and what you do and I know you do a whole bunch of stuff so start wherever you would like. I always tell people I've worn a lot of hats. 02:22 Um, yeah, I do a whole bunch of stuff. So I am a cookbook author, I guess we'll start with that. I have two cookbooks out. The first one is called, um, where Fino's happy heart. Um, and it is a collection. if in Colorado are, um, the iconic ingredient, um, the state food is green chili. And if you know Colorado, um, it is a, it's a. 02:53 very regional thing. We and it's in Colorado and New Mexico. So Hatch of course is like most people are familiar with. But there's always this like very friendly rivalry between Colorado and New Mexico who has the better green chili. I'm not going to say who I think. My green chili is the best. So there you go. My husband is indigenous to Colorado. And so he always talks about growing up with green chili, but you know simmering on the back stove all the time, always. 03:23 So that was kind of a passion project and I had a grant. I went down to do work with a senior center and I collected stories and recipes and we created that cookbook. So that's where that came from and it's a lot of fun. About a year after I published my first cookbook, I was diagnosed with celiac disease. that was actually in the spring of 2023. 03:53 And I had lost my best friend who I like, she was my friend since I was like, you know, a kid. She was, and she, and then six days later, my sister died from a fall, complications from a fall. And then three weeks later, I was diagnosed with celiac disease when I was in first place in a national cooking competition. So it was like, was, was flattening. 04:23 Literally flattening. And when I was able to finally look up again, I realized that I was really, I guess I found gratitude. And I realized that I was really fortunate that I was able to handle food. I know how to cook food. I grew up in Ogallala, Nebraska. 04:50 Heartland of America and the agriculture, agricultural. So food has always been just a part of my life, right? So like my mother was an amazing cook. actually known as an amazing cook. We did all the entertaining and all those things. So when I realized that I was a, know, that I felt fortunate about what I can do, 05:19 I felt like I could help other people. I kept seeing people say like, it's hard to navigate a truly gluten-free lifestyle. Like with celiac disease, you can't have any gluten at all. That means cross-contamination. That means like you can't have a burger grill

Today I'm talking with Jessica and Renee at Kesinger Homestead. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Jessica and Renee at Kesinger Homestead. And I don't know who should get first billing on this because Jessica and Renee are sisters and I don't know who's oldest. I'm oldest, Jessica. I'll take that. I think I said it right. Yes, you did. And I would normally say, how's the weather? But I'm pretty sure I know how the weather is. So I'm looking out my window and it's and spitting snowflakes right now. And you're in where in Minnesota? 00:58 Anoka County. We're north of those cities. It's not snowing here yet. It will be. I'm sure it will. You guys are probably going get more snow than we will in Lasur. Yeah, I'm really hoping this is it. I'm hoping this is the last hurrah of winter because I'm tired of it. I'm ready for it to be over. It's April 1st, damn it. We are all ready for it to be over. 01:26 This last snowfall was pretty. I'm not some pretty pictures and such, but I'm not even giving it that. It was not welcome. Jess wants to just live somewhere tropical. Oh, well, she is in the wrong state for that, but I hope you at least get to go on vacation somewhere tropical. I do. do. Okay, good. All right. So normally I would say tell me about yourselves and Kessinger. 01:55 Kesinger or Kesinger? Kessinger. Kesinger, Homestead. But I looked at your Facebook page this morning and you guys have a cow that is imminently due with a calf or two. Yes. Oh gosh. me about that. Oh gosh, what if it's two? So she, yeah, so her window to deliver started about a week ago. So we had a live bull on the property. So we're not sure exactly when she got bred. 02:22 But she is showing signs. She's swollen back there. She's just a little bit irritable. And this morning she may have lost her mucus plug. I know everyone wants to hear about that. It's pretty gross. No, it's not. I am hopeful that this snowstorm gives us a baby. So that's my goal today. Yeah. How late did you stay up last night watching? I was watching her on the camera all night. 02:50 As much as I want your cow to be more comfortable, I also would like to have at least 30 minutes to talk to you guys before you have to like run off to help her. Because this is real life listeners. This is what happens on homesteads. Animals go into labor when they're ready. And it doesn't matter what you're doing, you got to drop everything and go see if they need help. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So, I've Googled how to take care of cow and labor. we're... 03:17 We're semi-prepared. It's our first year with cows. Oh, okay. How many cows do you have? So we have two moms and they both came with babies. So we have four and then both of the moms are pregnant again. So we'll have six this summer. I'm so jealous you're going to have calves. I'm jealous. They're so cute. I know. I know. And I think they'll let me snuggle them as my, I've tried to make them my best friend the past year. So. They should. 03:45 My goal. It's my goal. So yeah, we're all about all the babies, baby chicks, baby cows, maybe a baby pony next year. As we're looking at little Coco out there in her pasture right now. Uh huh. Yeah. Um, is she, is she bred? No, we've been Googling that. So that might be we between the two of us, we have six kids. So the more ponies, the better, think. 04:14 Well, you won't have to rent one for the birthday party if you already own one. that would be great. Exactly. Yeah, she gets passed around for birthday parties for sure. Oh, funny. All right. So tell me how this all happened because you guys are sisters, you live four and a half miles away from each other and you're both doing homesteading. So what's the history here? 04:36 So I, this is Jessica. I started about 10 years ago when I met my husband. So he lived in a town home and when we were dating, he had home studying books on his shelf, which was funny. Cause again, town home living. Um, so we were just kind of meant to be, he was more than happy to move out to the country with me. Um, but he's an engineer. So he is the best at optimizing things. So 05:01 That's how we're able to do so many different things on a limited amount of time is becau

Today I'm talking with Mary at Mary Loofah. You can follow on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 Share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. 00:57 It's still pretty cold. think it's probably 35, 40 degrees right now. Oh, yuck. No, thanks. But it's spring. It's coming tomorrow. They're saying we're supposed to 81. I'm like great. Thunderstorms tomorrow night for sure. Yeah, it's been a wild spring. We've had such shifts in weather and temperatures. I'm like, mother nature, if you could just find a moderate place to be for a week, I would be so thankful. That would be great. So. 01:27 Anyway, I covered the weather. I try to do this at beginning of every episode because why not? And everything we do is so dependent on the weather. I figure it's a good way to start. So tell me about yourself and what you do at Mary Luffa and explain why it's Mary Luffa because Luffa is not your last name. Well, I am Mary McDowell and I... 01:50 milk goats. So I never in a million years thought that I would milk goats. I am a horse trainer and equestrian by first trade. And I got into goats when I had my first child. He was six months old and I was breastfeeding exclusively. And I just stopped producing milk overnight. Oh no. given reason whatsoever. 02:19 And I was in a panic, of course. And so what happened was we tried the formula thing and it was projectile vomiting and projectile diarrhea out of my six month old who had yet to sleep through the night once. Oh God. So tired mama, very tired, hungry baby. And our neighbor across the street just happened to have a Nubian milking goat. 02:43 that they were using to feed other baby goats. And they said, well, you can use her to milk if you want to try the goats milk. So we did, we milked her. I had never milked a goat. I hadn't really even raised goats before, but I got on YouTube as everyone does and learned all the things I could learn as quickly as I could. And so we started milking her and God bless her. was this, gentlest goat in the whole world. 03:12 And so the first time we gave our son goat's milk, he slept through the night and started to gain weight and he was just thriving on it. And so we kept milking her. Well, once we were done feeding him milk and he was ready to switch over to regular food, we had to give the goat back because she wasn't ours. She was just on loan. And so she ended up going home. 03:41 And I was like, you know, I really miss this goat's milk. So we ended up being gifted another dairy goat and one goat turned into over 30 goats. And my main mission is I want a homestead and I want to help other people who need help. Like women trying to feed their children healthy is my bread and butter. That is like my passion. Of course, I will sell milk to anybody who wants the milk. 04:10 But that is where my heart really is, is I want to help people who were struggling like I was struggling when I couldn't find something that would work and quickly, you know what I mean? yeah. So the name Mary Lutha to go to the other half of that is of course we have the goats milk, but we also have so much milk that there is an abundance. So we had to do something. So I started making soap and all the body butters and the lotions and 04:40 all the things that you can make with goat's milk, cheese, yogurt, you name it. Well, at the time I had started growing luffas and I'm sure you know, but for any listeners who don't know, luffas are basically in the gourd family and they look like giant cucumbers while they're growing and then they dry and you've got this amazing cleaning tool inside. so my husband was offhandedly joking saying, you should just 05:09 make a little store, you know, like an eight by eight building in the backyard and call it Mary Lufa. And I just kind of laughed it off. I was like, yeah, I'm, never going to be selling anything at that level. Well, fast forward seven years and we have a huge shop that I have a commercial refrigerator in for all the milk and all the other things. And I have my soap making area in there and I sell all sorts of stuff. We have an online store. 05:39 It has just grown so exponentially from what I could have ever imagined. And so it was just this little idea that my husband offhandedly