A Tiny Homestead

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

Today I'm talking with Diana at Farmhouse 302. 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 Diana at Farmhouse 302 in Delaware. Good morning, Diana. How are you? Good morning. I'm very well. How about yourself? 00:42 I'm good. It is a beautiful sunny day again in Minnesota. And I say again, because it doesn't happen days in a row all the time. What's it like in Delaware today? It's sunny today, but it's cold. When I woke up this morning, it was 28 degrees. But it's sunny and I'm glad to see the sun. 01:03 Yeah, me too. I really love it. And I'm going to say this again, I've said it a couple of times lately. When I sit at my desk to record the podcast, there's a window to my right and the sunlight just streams in that window. So I get to sit here and just look at this beautiful stream of light through the window while I'm talking to people. It's really nice. Oh, that's wonderful. So for half an hour, I get to look at sunlight. It's kind of a beautiful thing, especially when 01:31 Especially when we are known to have three or four days in a row of clouds and then it's like, ah, the sun came back. Thank you. Okay. So this, this episode is going to be what I'm labeling a topics adjacent episode because you're not a homesteader, but you curate and sell things that homesteaders used to use. So I really want to hear about what you do, Awesome. Where would you like me to start? 02:01 Where would you like me to start as far as like how I got where I am or? Yes. Yes. That yes. Well, I'm not. I'm just going to jump right in. I I just turned 60 and I grew up on a farm on a hundred acre farm in Delaware. And my grandfather was a mechanic for the Pennsylvania Railroad. 02:29 and he was their fix-it man. Any part that broke, he could manufacture it, he fixed anything. And I grew up on the farm with my grandparents. And my mother was born in 1931, so she grew up during the Depression. So I got firsthand knowledge on how to use something until there was no youth left. 02:57 Um, I grew up learning how to fix tractors, fix lawnmowers. Um, we had, basically, I mean, where I lived, even though Delaware is small at that time, it was podunk. Like I lived out in the boonies, so to speak. And, um, I guess you could say we were kind of homesteaders because we had a full garden. Um, 03:26 We had cherry trees, had apple trees, pear trees, we had blueberries, blackberries, and we had geese and ducks and all kinds of animals. So that's kind of how I grew up. I learned how to fix things for their purpose and just kind of grew up knowing. 03:54 how to use old fashioned hand tools and all that. So that was sort of like, I don't know, I guess the roots of my beginning. I was always, I was like, for lack of a better word, I was a feral child that grew up in the woods on a farm. And I was always a crafter. I was always making something. And a lot of it was, 04:23 You know, I drag home, you know, sticks and brambles and grapevines. And I was making wreaths and like when I was like 12 years old, I was always bringing something. So it's sort of like been on. Organic path for me. So I, I grew up at crafting and painting and making and all of that. And then I met a boy and he was. 04:53 We were in high school and fast forward, we've been together 40 years. And of course we got married. have two fantastic boys. One lives here in Delaware and the other one broke my heart and moved to Tennessee. 05:18 And, um, there, they took a lot of our time, you know, so of course I had to move into the corporate world. got a job, you know, the whole kitten to bootle. My husband's a contractor. was in banking forever. And then I was just like, one day I was like, I can't, I can't do this anymore. I just, I simply cannot do this anymore. And he goes, so quick. So I quit and just started, you know, 05:47 painting furniture and selling it out of my house, paint furniture, post it online, sell it out of my house. And then it got word of mouth and it just kind of grew from there. I had done a couple of like shows, like cramp shows. And then I had the opportunity to move into a brick and mortar building. So that's, and I've been here now. 06:15 for si

Today I'm talking with Joanna at Majestic Acres 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 Joanna at Majestic Acres Homestead in Texas. Good morning, Joanna. How are you? Good morning. How are you doing? I'm good. What's the weather like in Texas? Today it's cloudy and overcast. Yesterday we reached 90 degrees. So summer is not far off. We were already sweating and we were feeling it yesterday. Wow. OK. 00:55 Here in Minnesota, there's still frost on the dead grass outside and it's really bright and sunny. And my husband informed me this morning before he left for work that we're supposed to hit 81 degrees on Friday. Wow, that sounds crazy for you guys, I guess. Yeah. I said, are the seedlings in the greenhouse going to fry? And he said no. He said he would open the door and... 01:23 We have two doors, so there's a cross breeze through there. So he's going to open the doors before he leaves for work on Friday. And that way they don't die because that would be terrible. weather report done. And tell me about yourself and Majestic Acres Homestead. OK, so we are a family run homestead out in Paradise, Texas. It actually is called Paradise. I get the joke a lot. 01:49 of, know, are you actually from Paradise? Like, I'm like, yes, that is a town that we live in. It's a five acre homestead. And we do all things. We do chicken, sourdough. I make my own vanilla extract. We're gonna be doing meat chickens, honey bees. We have goats, sheep, turkeys. So kind of just a whole variety of things going on here. 02:16 We are new to homesteading. We probably started about two years ago. We are kind of your typical suburban people that got tired of living in, you know, a cookie cutter neighborhood and wanted to venture out and try new things and, you know, really give, you know, self-sustainability a chance. And it has been wonderful. Nice. 02:44 I get the joke about Paradise, Texas because there is a town in Minnesota called Embarrass. I have never been there. way up north. I don't know how I would feel about living in a town named Embarrass. That would be interesting. Paradise is probably better than that. Yes, absolutely. It's about, I would say, an hour outside of DFW Metroplex Dallas-Fort Worth. 03:12 So we're close enough to the city, but far, far away enough that you still get that country feel. And, you know, there's not so much hustle and bustle and traffic around here. Yeah. So did you always want to do this or is this something you guys just came to after living in the cookie cutter suburbanite lifestyle? We started talking about it probably after my husband's last deployment. So probably about five, six years ago. 03:40 And we kind of started thinking about what do we want from our family? What are our goals? And country life and just developing new skills and venturing out from what we were used to was definitely a goal for us. I am not from the country. I am a northern girl. I am born and raised in Delaware, right outside of Philadelphia. So this is a whole new aspect to me. 04:07 But we definitely wanted this for us, for our children. We wanted them to be exposed to this and develop skills and essential knowledge. We all know that the world right now is kind of uncertain. We don't really know what our future kind of entails. today's society, the kids are just so plugged into their phones and social media. And we just wanted something different for our kids. 04:33 That's kind of where we, that's kind of where the idea came from. And we just started, you know, researching and spend hours of, you YouTube videos. I think the first one that we watched that we really enjoyed was, it was Off Grid with Doug and Stacey. And I really enjoyed them and just watching what they were doing, kind of implementing old school, old school knowledge with, you know, new school technology with them. And that was really inspiring. 05:01 So, you know, just kind of gathering information and, you know, finding the right property and moving out here and kind of the rest of history, I guess. Okay. Well, it's good to know that you're a fellow former North Easterner because so am I. Oh, nice. Yeah, I grew up in Maine and very cool. don't think De

Today I'm talking with Darcy at Preserving My Sanity. 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 Darcy at Preserving My Sanity, which I think is the best name for a business I've ever seen. Good afternoon, Darcy. How are you? Hi, Mary. Thanks so much for having me today. It's nice to talk to you. Yeah, I'm so happy you're here because I need to know how you decided to call it Preserving My Sanity. Sure. Actually, I started my business and my blog in 2018. 00:58 primarily as a food preservation blog. So I was posting a lot about a variety of food preservation and kind of just did the brainstorming plan of trying to figure out what names were already being used and what was out there and what I thought would work well for what I was writing about. And settled on preserving my sanity as kind of a fun play on words since I was preserving food, but I was also doing it as a way to 01:27 do something I enjoy and spend some time away from the computer. So kind of a double meaning, I guess, play on words. love it. It's so cute. Thank you. So normally I would ask about the weather where you are, but you're in Minnesota and I know what the weather's like in Minnesota because so am I. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's sunny and it's been a little bit warmer than normal, I think. We're in Southwest Minnesota, kind of in the corner. 01:57 But it's been just really nice spring so far. Yeah, it really has been. did you see the weather report for Friday? It's supposed to be like 81 degrees here in Lesor. Yes, here too. It's going to be amazing. I'm kind of not looking forward to that. That's a little hot for March. it's a... and then I saw Saturday it's going to be back down to like 40. So it's really hard to get used to what you're supposed to... 02:26 do and where. Yeah, this weekend is going to be ugly. It's supposed to rain. I'm like, okay, so we're going from 81 to 40 and rainy and gross. And then what is the next day going to look like? Right. So anyway, I would love it if you would tell me about yourself and preserving my sanity. Sure. 02:50 So I mentioned how I started with the food preservation. Since then, I've continued writing about food preservation and cooking with Whole Foods at home, learning new things are some of the themes that kind of follow through my content. And then two years ago, I actually started making goat milk soap and I added it into my business as well. 03:15 Now, in addition to the food, I also make soap and sell that online too. Okay. Is the goat milk soap the cold process soap? It is. Yeah. I make cold process soap and I actually source all of my milk from local farmers here in my county. Okay. I have a question about this because we make soap, we don't use any milk of any kind in it. We make the cold process soap. 03:45 Does does it change it when you use the milk like the way it heats up the way it does what it's supposed to do In the making process but what okay when When you put Okay, when you do cold process So you do the the the lie in the water and then you add in the oils and whatever else you're gonna put in and you Use a mixer to make it all come together 04:13 when it's all come together and you pour it into the mold. it make it hotter? Does it make it cooler? Is it the same situation? It's a similar process. It is different though. And I actually have never made soap with water. only, I learned from someone who only makes milk soap. And so that's all I've ever done. But I do know, 04:39 Like I'm familiar with how it works to make it with water and how you, when you mix the lye into the water, it gets really hot and then you mix it with the other ingredients. So the lye still would make the milk really hot. So you actually start it with frozen milk cubes. Okay. So, um, instead of mixing it with just milk, because if, you did actually just put it with milk, it would curdle the milk and burn and that's not what you want. So, um, so you start it with frozen milk cubes and, 05:08 then when you mix it with the oils, it kind of keeps the heat under control. I guess is how I would explain it. That's what I was wondering about because I was like, wouldn't that burn the milk?

Today I'm talking with Scott and Marilyn at KayLeo Urban Farm. 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 Scott and Marilyn at KayLeo Urban Farm in Indiana. Good morning guys. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. What's your weather like? Cause ours is gray and it's raining. It's gray, but not raining. It's to rain the rest of the week though. Yeah. I'm in, I'm in Minnesota. We got like an inch of really wet, fluffy, gross snow last night. got up this morning. I was like, what? No. 01:00 No more. It really nice weather until this week basically. Yeah, this spring or what amounts to spring, it's been spring for two weeks really, has been really chaotic here. Like last Friday it was 80 degrees here and then was 35 on Saturday. I'm like, what are you doing? Yes, that is chaotic. So yeah. You guys have the tornadoes as well. 01:29 You have? Well, not here. We're at our place, but in Indiana. Yup. I think it's going to be another crazy growing season. And I was really crossing everything I have that it was going to be a moderate season. Oh, no guys. It's going to be interesting to see how the summer goes. Okay. So. 01:50 I am so excited to have you as guests because you guys are doing something really important in Indiana and you're actually in Indianapolis or near Indianapolis. Yeah, we're right in the city on the northwest side of the city. Okay. Tell me about what you're doing. Cause I looked at your website and I was like, Oh my God, you guys are special. Like you're really, really doing something good. Well, thank you. So we are a nonprofit urban farm. 02:17 We bought the property about 10 years ago and have been a nonprofit for the last five years. We kind of focus on three areas. So growing healthy food for people. And then we get that food to people through, we started a farmer's market. This will be our fourth season starting later this, well, in June we'll start that. And we also do a matching donation to either local food pantry or specific families. 02:47 as well. We try to do education related to growing the environment, how to be sustainable. We do that through field trips, working with different groups, classes, opening our farm to people, and we focus on environmental stewardship. So growing in ways that are going to benefit the environment and leave this place better than we found it, and then helping people learn how to do that as well. Fantastic. Scott, do you have anything to add? Because I have lots of questions. 03:17 I mean, she said it well, that's pretty much it. All right. So how did you guys get into this? How did this start? Well, like Marilyn said, we bought the property about 10 years ago. We've been kind of wanting some property for a while. We talked about options of living out in the country and looking for more property out there. But Marilyn really felt called to stay in this within the city limits here. 03:45 And that kind of limits it a little bit, but we've happened to find this place, is nine acres within the city limits. I don't know if you're familiar with Indianapolis. It's fairly spread out. There's actually, you can find three to five, maybe even 10 acres of places here and there in the city. Less and less, of course, as time goes by, but it's kind of rare, not totally unheard of, but it's rare to find a this big, especially in our part of town where we are. It's pretty developed. 04:14 This had been a farm for a decade before this, then this place, we're the third owners of this place. But we found this place and got it in June of 2015. And then we weren't sure what we wanted to do with it exactly. We knew we wanted some property and some more as a space, and then talked about doing some sort of animal rescue here, kind of a... 04:40 sanctuary for animals and we do that a little bit still sort of. But then we kind of started getting just into growing. So we had some raised beds and some things and kind of just started enjoying that. And we're fairly near to some food deserts. Not exactly one, but kind of around us. And even in our area specifically, we saw some of the grocery stores closing and. 05:06 people have to walk a lot or go places to g

Today I'm talking with Anna at the The House and Homestead. 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 Anna at the House and Homestead. Good morning Anna, or afternoon Anna. It's one o'clock in the afternoon here. I screw up the intro all the time. Good afternoon Anna. How are you? I'm good. sorry Mary, where are you located? I'm in Minnesota. You're in Minnesota. Okay. So I'm a West on Vancouver Island. So it is actually morning here for me still. 00:57 Okay, well, it's one o'clock in the afternoon here, sort of. Fair enough. Yeah, Vancouver Island, right? Yeah, that's right. In Canada? Yes. Yes. I looked at your Facebook page this morning or your website or something and I saw Vancouver and I was like, I swear there's a Vancouver in Washington state, but I think she's in Canada. So now we know. Yes, yes, there is a Vancouver in Washington state as well, not too far from us as the crow flies, I guess, but we're out on the island now, which is... 01:26 Lovely. Yes. And would you believe that I scheduled two interviews on the same day for two women in Canada? I talked to somebody in Canada this morning as well. Oh, no way. Cool. I was like, wow, that was weird. Who knew? And Canada is a great place. have been to visit once. We took the Northern route from Illinois back to Maine. So drove up to Canada and then across and back down to the Maine because I grew up in Maine. 01:53 Oh, cool. You've probably seen more of Canada than I have then. I've been only to Quebec once and I've never even been to like Toronto or anywhere back east. I've traveled way more extensively in the US than I have across the rest of Canada because it's actually quite expensive to get back and forth across Canada using our airlines. Yeah, there's not a ton of competition here. So the prices tend to be high. I used to actually work as a travel agent funnily enough in another life and it was 02:20 often cheaper to, I kind of joked it was often cheaper to go to London, England than to London, Ontario. So, you know, if I was going to book a trip, I'm like, well, I may as well go somewhere, somewhere else, you know. Expand your horizons. Yeah. I think I was a teenager when we did that and I actually got wet from the Niagara Falls spray. we stopped in Niagara Falls too. Yeah, it was pretty neat. Okay. So tell me about yourself and the house in Homestead, please. Well, I 02:51 grew up with zero homesteading background. I did a little bit of gardening when I was a kid. remember with my grandpa, that was about as close as I ever got to growing food or anything. I remember he had a little backyard garden in the city where we live. I grew up in Vancouver in the city or in a suburb of Vancouver. And yeah, when I was a kid, I remember my grandpa had a little garden in the backyard and he would grow 03:15 beans and peas and tomatoes and a few things like that. And that was always a novelty to get them fresh from my grandpa's garden in the summer. And then I would help them out there. But other than that, I really had no experience growing food or doing any type of like food preservation or even like cooking. didn't like get into cooking for myself until I moved out in my twenties and, kind of had to figure some of that out. So I, you know, didn't come from any type of 03:44 home setting background. in about my mid twenties, my husband and I, we were engaged at that point, but we were kind of trying to determine what our future would be and where are going to stay in the city? Where are we going to look elsewhere? And I was just feeling very disenchanted with city life. was like that typical kind of stuck caught in the rat race and like, is this how it's going to be forever? And I was struggling with anxiety and depression and mental health issues at that time. 04:12 I'd always noticed that like when we got out into nature and just kind of got away from the traffic noises in the city and the hustle and bustle, I just felt at ease. I felt calm. And I wanted to, I knew at that point I wanted to get out of the city, but I didn't know what that looked like. And around the same time, we started watching a lot of documentaries on Netflix

Today I'm talking with Jesse at the The Homestead Farm. 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 Jessie at the Homestead Farm. I love the name of your place, Jessie. Good afternoon. How are you? I am great. How are you doing? And thank you by the way. Oh, you're welcome. I'm great. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota. You're in Washington state and you said it's raining. It's actually dry right now, but it's very wet outside. The mud goes up to your knees down in the cow pasture. 00:54 Gross. That's no fun. We're excited for a sun tomorrow. 74 it says. We'll see what happens. Well, maybe you'll get a couple of days and we'll dry it out some. It'd be nice. It'd be nice. And then we've got thunderstorms and rain coming up after that. But hey, spring is here, but summer, guess, is slowly approaching. So we'll have dry soon. Yeah. Let's not wish spring away because here in Minnesota, winters are long and cold. Yes. Yes, absolutely. 01:23 We have to eke out every piece of beauty and an amazingness from the point that spring hits until winter arrives. Okay. Nice to see all the green things popping up everywhere. I love that part of spring. The baby's being born on the farm and everything else. It's awesome seeing all the new life. Yeah. If I, if I actually lived on an actual farm, I would never be inside. Yeah. Ever. So. 01:53 All right, so tell me about yourself and the Homestead Farm. So I am Jessie. Hello everybody. And I started the actual business, the Homestead Farm, just over three years ago. I bought this place nine or 10 years ago with a dream of having a hobby farm and living off the land. It's only nine acres here, but we are using every square inch of it. 02:19 So yeah, I moved in nine years ago, 10 years ago, and I owned a cleaning business. I went to college before that for graphic design and just it wasn't my thing sitting at a computer. I worked my butt off and met an amazing man who made help to make all this possible. And I actually am now a stay at home farm girl, which has really been my dream for a long, time. 02:45 So yeah, we've got cows, goats, chickens, turkeys, some guinea hens, and a bunch of dogs. How many dogs? Right now we have nine, but five of those are puppies that are going to their new homes very soon. We've got some great Pyrenees puppies that are just awesome and they're in training right now to be livestock guardian dogs. Well, if anybody's in Washington state and looking for a great Pyrenees puppy, you know who to contact now. 03:13 Yes, I love it. We've got three three left available. So, okay good Yeah, only have one dog. I talk it talk about her all the time I probably should not even bring her up, but I'm going to anyway Her her name is Maggie and she is a mini Australian Shepherd and she is the love of my life Even though I have four adult grown children. I Love dogs. I think they're just the best thing on this planet. So I have I had kids though. So there's that 03:43 Yeah, our oldest son came to visit just like a week or so after we got Maggie, so she must have been nine or 10 weeks old. And I have never had a puppy. I was as anxious about a puppy as I was about my newborn babies. And he was like, she's a dog. I'm like, no, she's the baby. 04:08 And he was like, oh god, you're going to be so in love. I said, I'm already so in love. I can't stand it. This is making me insane. He said, this is why we never got a dog when we were kids, because you wouldn't have been able to raise us. You've been too busy raising the dog. I sense a bit of jealousy there. He's giving me hard time, because I don't think he remembers seeing me that in love with anything. And his youngest brother is, I think. 04:38 10 years younger than him. So he sort of remembers when we brought the youngest home. But it's a whole different kind of love, you know? You don't hold a baby and pet it and kiss its nose and tell it it's a good girl. You know, it's a whole different thing. So anyway, that's my thing about Maggie today. Maggie was not feeling well last night, so I've been a little concerned about her this morning. Poor Maggie. Well, we'll be thinking about her from over here. 05:

Today I'm talking with Hayden at the Home Grown Collective. 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 Hayden from Homegrown Collective for the third time. Hi Hayden, how are you? Great Mary, I hope you are. I'm good. It's a really beautiful day here in Minnesota. The sun is shining and it's cold. It's like, I don't think it's above freezing yet. Oh man, I got nice 67 degree weather down here in North Carolina. Well, yeah, because you're in the south and I'm in the north. So go fig. 00:58 Spring so far has been pretty good, so we're really looking forward to the temperatures keeping climbing here. it really is. I'm ready. I'm ready for it to be May 15th so we can start planting plants. Okay, so just to catch people up, Hayden and I have talked a couple times already. Hayden has the most wonderful directory for people who want to get found if they sell stuff. And by stuff I mean produce or... 01:28 Homegrown meats or I don't know what else but Hayden's gonna tell you so Hayden. Tell me more. Tell me where you're at. What's going on? So we created a it's it's it's a what a directory an online store and it's a hub with tools for producers and consumers to organize a local Supported food system in their communities so you can create educational groups. You can create barter groups you can 01:58 share which which farmers markets you're going to be at if you want to if you don't want to sell online and you want to keep everything local. The point of the online market is to give those smaller producers access to that revenue. And you're still supporting you know, local and when I say a local food producer, mean somebody who grows their own food, and most of it goes back to a 50 mile radius of consumers. 02:26 is what I consider a local food producer. people ask, where are you located? And it's not about where our company is located. It's about where they're located and who they can find that has the same mindset. So our Homegrown Collective isn't just a collective of people selling food. It's a collective mindset of people who want a different food system in America. And it gives you the tools to help organize that. 02:54 all in one place and you're able to support and organize local food production and offerings with restaurants, household consumers, backyard gardeners, to small family farms. And it brings everybody with that same goal in mind for our food system together in one place. You could compare it to like a Facebook with a good cause and our 03:23 Our thought was with the revenue that social media brings in, you could really make some real change in a country with that kind of revenue. And if we can do it under a nonprofit business model and get that money back directly to the responsible food producers and grow new operations of food production, then by directly funding those efforts, I think we can change the food system in our country. Probably communities out of time, but it can be done. 03:54 Very nice. And I'm really excited to hear that the Homegrown Collective model has grown since we last talked. Yeah, absolutely. I thought it was just going to be a directory, but it sounds like it's much more than that this time. So that's great. Before we continue, it's national, right? It's not just... Yeah, international. You can access it anywhere in the United States. We can't operate outside of the United States based on our... 04:23 a nonprofit status, you can't take in funds and direct them outside of the country, which I totally understand and wouldn't want to do anyways. we are steadily growing and I know it'll be a long, with all the information being pushed out onto people, it's kind of hard to get it out there. So we really appreciate everything you do for us, Mary. 04:50 Well, I am a huge proponent for what you're doing because I have been saying on every episode for the last two weeks, I think if you live in America right now, find your local growers because it's really important. It's always been important, but it's even more important now. I agree. I agree. And we are, our board members are growing. So we got a new lady in, uh, in Georgia that's come on and a man in New Hamps

Today I'm talking with Troy, author of Fun Farm Studios. 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 Troy at Fun Farm Studios and I don't know where you are Troy. What state are you in? We are in New Haven, Indiana. Okay, well in New Haven, Indiana. What's the weather like there today? Oh, it's beautiful. I love Northeast Indiana. We get all the seasons. We have nine seasons in this part of the state. Oh really? Yeah, the joke is if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes. 00:57 Yeah, my dad used to say that I grew up in Maine and it would be beautiful and then it be boring. We'd come run in the house and be like, what happened? He'd be like, if you don't like it, wait five minutes. That's right. It lives true here. So I'm used to that. I'm in Minnesota and it is incredibly gray and windy. And yesterday they were saying we're going to get six inches of snow. And then when I got up this morning, the storm had taken us 01:25 of more southerly tracks, so we're probably going see some flurries and that's it. Oh no. It's fine. I really wasn't looking forward to six inches of snow on the day before the first day of spring, so we're good. Minnesota only has two seasons, right? Winter's near and winter's here. Minnesota has two seasons and winter and allergy. That's great. 01:55 Yeah, no, we have spring, summer, fall and winter. And the joke here is that we suffer through the winters because the spring, summer and fall are so beautiful. That's true. So, OK, so we've talked about the weather because I try to talk about the weather at beginning of every single episode because it's a good way to keep track of it. So tell me about yourself and what you do. My my inner child is on the outside. I am what I wanted to be when I grew up. 02:24 and I've known since I was seven. And it's been art. They are an artist and entertainer has been the wonderful evolution of the dream since I was in second grade. And it has come to fruition in a big way with this beautiful homestead that we purchased about 11 years ago in New Haven. It's a historical property, although it doesn't quite. 02:48 Meet the standards of the registry. You can't paint that. You can't change that window. The windows 143 here, so we gotta change the window so but it's rich with history on this property. There are Johnny Apple seed trees on our property. We have everything Indiana has on our property except a cave, so it's just beautiful everywhere you look. There's something to see. And it's been a wonderful fruition. We started our company tag our company on the. 03:17 turn of the millennium, Y2K, when we realized the computers weren't taking over. Three, two, one, okay, we're fine, all right, all right, so let's start a business. 26th year in business now. And it has just grown organically from customer needs with a focus on making good memories and family-friendly fun. And the property that we are stewarding now that we've been delivered to is just a huge blessing that has the fruition of 03:47 offering people an option to come to us. We always have gone to them, but they've never been able to come to us. So we have a village that we have built on the property that represents the variety, the versatility of services that we possess and can provide. And we call it the fun farm. So the fun farm is kind of a cart before the horse because we have a TV show on YouTube now, Fun Farm Studios, which is 04:13 I guess the Disney movie and then we built Disneyland or he built Disneyland. We've built Disneyland and now we built the show. So it's just whatever, it's all happening. And the, village is inspired by playhouse design. So we have a giant UFO and castle and pirate ship and, uh, an A-frame for the dinosaurs. And it's just a, like we bought a park and it doesn't disrupt the land. It's a wonderful flow. So people can, can look it up and see it. 04:41 Google Earth is just an amazing aerial view of the property from what the previous owners did and what we have continued to enhance it with never destroying anything that we that wasn't a dangerous thing I mean some things fall over some things rot but whatever we could preserve we have so it'

Today I'm talking with Atina Diffley, author of Turn Here, Sweet Corn. 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 Atina Diffley, the author of Turn Here Sweet Corn. Good afternoon, Atina. How are you? Hello. It's really a treat to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Oh, I'm so thrilled you had time. I reviewed Turn Here Sweet Corn on my book blog years ago and I haven't read it since and it's been a while, but I remember just being smitten with your writing. 00:57 Thank you. was really fun to write it and really healing. Yeah. Yeah. I imagine it would be. was so like, it was so comforting to read it and know that I'm not crazy to love everything about the lifestyle. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. The good, the bad, the ugly, the aberrant, the fantastic. It's all there. Exactly. So because not everybody knows about the book. 01:25 Asina, will you tell me about yourself and what the book and what you're doing now? Sure. The book is a memoir. And when I started writing it, really all I knew is that I wanted to write a memoir about my experience as a farmer. our farm started in 1972. My husband, Martin, started it in Eagan, Minnesota. So for those of you who are familiar with Minnesota, Eagan is now 100 % developed as a suburban. 01:53 area, it's 20 minutes downtown Minneapolis. So he grew up there at Fifth Generation Family Farm and saw all that change happen. And that in and of itself is so much what this book is about because he knew that land through his ancestors and their experience as settlers, as Fifth Generation on land that had been in that family since it was taken from the Indians. 02:23 And that was rolling land. It was diverse. It was never farmed industrial style because of the topography of the land. wasn't flat and possible to put big equipment in it. So it was small fields settled into a diverse landscape that still had an intact biological system from pre-colonial days. 02:53 fields that he grew there were small vegetable plots, settled into this extreme diversity. And as a certified organic vegetable farmer, before anyone knew what organic was, he was really utilizing that diversity of that land. So that right there is a great place to pause and to really just sort of celebrate this word biological diversity that has now become somewhat of a 03:20 buzzword and a catchword and it's now being greenwashed, but it really is that the essence of all life on the planet. Well, yeah, because different is good and same is not good. It's boring. And from a health perspective, the more diverse any system is, whether it's a living natural ecosystem or a relationship, and you talk about any system, diversity is healthy. 03:50 and creates reduced disease transmission, reduced disease issues. When you think about it from an agricultural perspective, as long as we had a diverse landscape around our fields, we really didn't have disease or pest issues. And I was really naive when I joined Martin in the 80s. I was young and 04:17 There wasn't really a lot of science and research and conversation at that point in time yet about this and how it works. And so really, I organic farming was really easy. I mean, it was hard physically. We worked our butts off. But the management of our fertility and our pest-centered disease and our water needs was done through the diversity of the landscape and didn't take a lot of effort. But I didn't know that at the time. 04:46 I just was doing the task of planting and harvesting and I didn't really understand the impact that diversity had on it until the sky fell out and that land was developed. Yeah. It's, I, okay, I'm sitting here thinking about how to say this next. We lived in Jordan for 20 years, Jordan, Minnesota, and we moved to our little piece of heaven like a little over four years ago. 05:14 Our little piece of heaven is in the middle of the corn fields right now. And it's a 3.1 acre lot and our nearest neighbor is a quarter mile away. And part of the reason that we chose to leave Jordan is because stuff was starting to get built up. There were a whole bunch of housing developments that went in. And when housing developments go in, population expands and then bi

Today I'm talking with Jodi at Rural Route Bulbs. 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. This Homestead Holler Shoutout is to our friends over at Freedom Reign Farm in Buffalo, Minnesota. Their new little farm shop is the perfect spot for seasonal fresh goat milk products if you're local to the Buffalo area. While their online shop makes it super easy to order shippable items right to your door. From natural handcrafted goat milk and tallow soaps to grass-fed tallow skin care and beautifully arranged gift boxes. Each product is crafted with care and love. Check them out at freedomreignfarm.com or follow their Facebook page to stay in the loop. 00:58 Let freedom reign. Today I'm talking with Jody at Rural Route Bulbs in Wisconsin. Good afternoon, Jodi. How are you? Hi, I'm good. How are you? I'm great. How's the weather in Wisconsin? Well, it's probably about the same as Le Sueur. It's windy. It's warm, which is nice. It's like 62, but we have a pretty good south wind. think we're gusting to like 40. 01:21 Oh, it's not too bad here, actually. They were saying this morning that it was going to be windy and it was, but I think it's died down and it's sunny and I think it's 50 degrees maybe. Yeah, it's beautiful. And I was just telling someone else this morning that I interviewed at 10 a.m. that they are predicting real measurable heavy snow for Wednesday. And I'm like, of course they are because it's the day before spring. Yep. We were supposed to get that same snow. 01:48 So we'll see how much we get. We're kind of on the line between rain and snow, which we ride the line like all winter between rain and snow, it seems like. are you in Wisconsin? Uh, we're by Eau Claire. So we're just east of Eau Claire. So about an hour and a half east of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Yeah. Eau Claire is really pretty. I have been through there. So. It is. Go ahead. It is. It is. It's, it's so pretty in the fall. Um, I'm from Southern Minnesota. 02:18 by where you're from. And I've been combining in some areas with previous jobs. And sometimes I just stop and I'm like, it's so beautiful here when the leaves are changing. And so yes, you're right. It's, it's wonderful area. town are you from in Minnesota? Janesville, Minnesota. Yes. Yes. I've heard of Janesville. My, my husband actually has family in Janesville, Wisconsin. So, okay. Yeah. I get confused. 02:46 A lot of clinking things going on here this morning or this afternoon. Sorry. keep thinking it's morning. It's not. It's one o'clock. Okay. So anyway, I'm very excited to talk with you because I've been talking a lot on the podcast with people about eggs, chickens, cows and pigs. And I really do love flowers. So tell me about yourself and rural route. I can't say it rural route bulbs. Yeah. So, um, 03:15 Roll route bulbs was just an idea that, well, my husband and I, we were trying to think of a crop to diversify into that was local. So we farm, we're pretty conventional farmers. know, we have a combine, we do corn, soybeans, rye. We're trying to rotate into a couple of different things right now, but we were really looking for a local market that we could diversify into. 03:44 We happened to be on a trip in Washington state for baptism for my sister and my husband was like, we should think about tulips. So we looked into them. We planted 5,000 one year just to see if they would grow well. And they did. then planting, I planted 5,000 tulips with COVID when it was new and I got very sick afterwards. And then we planted another 12,000, I think the next year and I. 04:14 planted those when I was pregnant. So I would like to plant tulips when I'm not in an otherly state. Your property must be gorgeous in what, May, June? May, yep. It is. 16,000 tulips didn't take up quite as much space as I thought it was going to, but yes, I often find myself, I go out to the garden just to 04:42 to take notes on my tulips, which ones are coming back, you know, but sometimes it's kind of a lie. I'm just out there because it's just so nice. Yeah. I feel like people who grow flowers do it partly because it's a good thing to grow, but because there's such joy when they bloom. Yeah. So my trade is in agronomy. So I generally work wi

Today I'm talking with Wanda at Minnesota Farm Living. 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 Wanda at Minnesota Farm Living and by the name of the farm, you know it's Minnesota. So good afternoon, Wanda. How are you? Good, good. I'm glad to be here. I'm happy to have you. And I'm really glad you're in Minnesota because when I ask you about the weather, we can just grin because it's sunny and it's warm. Oh, know. It's crazy. And it sounds like this next week. I mean, the next like seven days is going to be like a roller coaster. And I mean that literally almost. 00:58 Highs near 70 and it will be down to lows in about the 30s by the end of the weekend and probably snow again. Yeah, but not much not much snow and will melt next week. Yeah, exactly. can't Considering the winter we've had and how little snow we've had I would be very happy to not have three feet dumped on us. That would be great. I'm in Lasur. Where are you? I am in Welcome, Minnesota. So I'm actually right along the I-90 01:25 In fact, I can actually see I-90 from my house and yeah, just south central Minnesota. Okay. I have no idea how far away that is from me in Lesor, like an hour. I'm going to guess an hour and a half. Okay. Cause I think St. Peter for us is like an hour and 15 minutes. So you're a little bit north of that. So yeah, we're about 10 minutes due north of St. Peter. Yep. We go to St. Peter all the time. It is such a cute town. Oh my city, I guess. I think it's a town. 01:52 But I think every town is a town other than Minneapolis. So yes, I had a daughter that actually went to school there for a year. So it gets Davis. So familiar with that. So yeah, my son and I, a couple of springs ago went down to the campus and there's this really pretty like park area and they have some walking trails and it's really, really gorgeous. So we, we enjoyed that cause we moved to Lusore. 02:18 little over four years ago and we really busy getting things set up in our new home and getting a garden plotted out and getting a chicken coop set up and you know things you do when you buy 3.1 acres in the middle of cornfields and so there's hadn't been a lot of time to go familiarize familiarize there we go ourselves with the area and we went down to St. Peter and I was like I want to live in St. Peter this is so pretty and then I got home 02:46 Then I got home and went, no, I want to live in the middle of I hear you. So anyway, yeah, the weather is going to be a little nutty starting Friday and be nutty into Sunday. And then I think we might be through the worst of this winter. think we might be on our way to spring. I would be okay with that for sure. Me too. So Wanda does a whole bunch of stuff, but I think the biggest thing is, that you guys grow. 03:16 pigs to supply Hormel, is that correct? That is correct. we've been- Okay, tell me about that. Yeah. So we've been raising pigs for 47 years. So that's how long we've been living on our home site. And so we've always raised pigs. We started off with actually having sows and boars and they would feral, which is another name for giving birth. had 24 farrowing stalls. 03:44 And so we could have 24 cells actually giving birth at the same time. And so then at first we just started raising them up just a feeder pig weight, which is about 40 or 50 pounds, because we didn't have any room for them to grow up to like 280 pounds, which is what we do now. And then we would sell them, we'd go to Windom, Minnesota, and we sold them on a feeder pig auction. So that was how it started. And then eventually we got into, we actually, 04:12 built what we call gestation barn, which is where our cells actually were housed. And the reason we did that, if anybody really knows much about pigs, they can be pretty aggressive towards each other because what they have to do is they have to figure out their pecking order, you know, who is going to be king sow. And so the way they do that is they can kind of fight with each other. And that was kind of hard to see at times. I mean, we actually had a sow die because another sow attacked it because they were just trying to figure out 04:41 Who's going to be K

Today I'm talking with Matt at The Cottage Foodie. 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 Matt Rosen, also known as Sergeant Shortbread at the Cottage Foodie, because he has a new thing going on. Good afternoon, Matt. How are you? I'm doing fantastic, Mary. Thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. Just to catch people up, Matt and I talked quite a while ago about his business, Sergeant Shortbread. He makes fabulous shortbread, I have heard. 00:54 And then he decided he wanted to do this new thing called the cottage foodie. So this is kind of a catch up and to talk about that. So tell me about yourself and what you're doing now. Yeah. So like you said, I started out in the cottage food community or the cottage food industry as Sergeant Shortbread. I still am a cottage food producer here in Minnesota. Yeah, I love it. I don't know if I'll ever quit. 01:23 Physically, that might be the only way that I stop, but we'll have to see. Only time will tell, I guess. But yeah, I've been a cottage food producer here in Minnesota for, seven years now. Yeah, seven years in April 2018 I started. yeah, like I said, been a cottage food producer since then and about a year and a half ago or so just had a... 01:50 I don't know, a revelation if you want to call it. I'm not sure what exactly you'd call it, but I just felt like there was a need for a directory of cottage food producers. for those of us who remember the yellow pages, maybe I'm dating myself here a bit, but. I remember them. Yeah. There's no digital yellow pages for cottage food producers. look for. 02:19 for this and I saw there are some out there but it didn't look like they were really being managed or maintained and I wasn't sure if they were still being used and so I thought well I'm gonna do a new upgraded version of this and so yeah, joined up with a social media, a digital marketing company and we created a platform for cottage food producers to become members and have profiles on 02:48 the cottage foodie and then in return, what I do is I do some of their digital marketing forum. I don't take over their digital marketing and so I tell them, keep doing what you're doing. This is just gonna be in addition to what you're doing. So I run Facebook ads for them. Anywhere we have members, I run paid advertising in their areas. So for example, I think 03:17 in Minnesota here alone, we're close to 70 members. so essentially I just run it in the entire state of Minnesota, just because I'm not going to pick and choose little communities. Once I do that, I'm going to be covering the whole state practically anyway. But take for example, California, I think we have four or five in California. Two or three of them are in kind of the Los Angeles area and that surrounding area. And then two or three of them are up in like the San Jose Sacramento area. So 03:47 So I just run specific ads within those areas. I'm not running in the entire state of California. I mainly just want to highlight the cottage food producers within their areas. So for example, I might put San Jose in the Facebook when I'm doing a targeted audience, I'll put San Jose plus 20 miles. And so it'll be San Jose and then 20 miles from downtown San Jose, it'll cover that. 04:16 So yeah, that's what the cottage foodie is all about. I grew my business, my cottage food business from being a cottage food producer to moving into a commercial kitchen. So I do have a wholesale food manufacturing license on top of my cottage food producer registration. So I just wanted to help other cottage food producers grow their businesses if that's what they wanna do. If their goal is to... 04:46 move into a commercial kitchen and sell in grocery stores and coffee shops and things like that, then I just want to be able to help them achieve that. And I know that one of the hardest things that we as cottage food producers will run into is, and I hear it all the time, how do I get my name out there? Nobody knows I exist. I can't hire somebody to do my marketing and I can't afford. 05:14 all this paid advertising on Facebook and social media. And so, so that's where the cottage foodie steps

Today I'm talking with Nikki at Cotton Cupcakes, LLC. 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 Nikki at Cotton Cupcakes LLC. Good afternoon, Nikki. How are you? Good afternoon, Maryam. Great, thank you. Good. I always, I swear like one out of three intros that I do, I screw it up somehow and I'm like, ah, it's all right. It's okay. We got it covered. Those are the ones people remember, so that's good. I'm sorry, say it again. 00:54 And those, think those maybe help people remember the names. So it's good if you mess it up, then maybe someone will remember the name more so than not. Or they just giggle and go, yeah, that's Mary again. Okay. So you're in, where are you in New Hampshire? So I'm in a small, very rural town called Alexandria, New Hampshire. What's it near? So we're near Newfound Lake, which is a stunning, gorgeous, pristine lake. We're very, very fortunate to be beside it. 01:23 And we're also close to Plymouth. So we're close to PSU, which is the university up there, Plymouth State University. Okay, that doesn't actually help me because when I think of Plymouth, I think Massachusetts. So what's the next biggest town or city? We have Laconia, which is pretty close. We do a huge annual pumpkin festival at Laconia Pumpkin Festival. you know, I probably haven't heard of that. Maybe you have, I don't know. I actually grew up in Maine, so I do know where Laconia is. 01:53 fantastic. All of my family's from Maine. Yeah, and now I live in Minnesota of all places. Oh my goodness, that's quite a ways away. Yes, yes, I've told the story a few times. I'm not gonna repeat it. It's just sickening to keep saying it over and over again. If you really want to know, I'll explain when we're done recording. So your business name is Cotton Cupcakes LLC, but you don't do cupcakes, right? I do not make, I mean, I make cupcakes for 02:20 for joy, you know, for my family and for neighbors and whatnot. But cupcakes, I do not produce cupcakes as a business, no. No. So tell me about yourself and what you do do at Cupcakes, LLC. Okay, so Cotton Cupcakes came about because I have wanted to own my own t-shirt company for about 20 years. So 20 years ago, my husband and I said, we're going to do this thing, we're going to start a t-shirt company. Then we went down to our state house and we applied for our name. 02:49 And one thing led to another and we never got to do it. So 20 years later, my children, I've been a homeschool parent for forever. And about a year ago, about a year and a half ago, my littlest said, I've decided that I don't want to be homeschooled anymore. I want to go to public school. And I was devastated. I went, I was just almost in mourning for a little while, but I've always told my children that if they wanted to go in public school, they could, the option was there that we're homeschooling. 03:19 because we have the pleasure of being able to do so. So I said, okay. So she went in and then my eldest who's going to be starting high school, just after a year, I said, you you should take some courses so that you can get ready for high school. So I went through a bit of a little emptiness syndrome with one in school full time and one starting to take courses. And I started to freak out like, oh no, I've got to be something because I've been a homeschool parent for years. And I made a picture. 03:47 I was painting a picture and I put it between two pieces of plastic and I pressed on it. And then I pulled the plastic off and I looked at it it was a squished cupcake. And I was like, oh my gosh, I love this squished cupcake. I want to do something like this because I went to school for design and I've used it in various elements of my life, but I haven't really been able to do anything for quite a few years with it. And I sent it to my husband, I took a picture and I sent it over the phone and I said, 04:15 you know, do you think if I start my t-shirt business now?" And he just responded, that's it. That's it. He just said, that's it, as the words. And I went, I knew it. I was like, okay, because he and I are very in sync and we believe in a lot of the same things and feel a lot of the same

Today I'm talking with Josie at Heirloom Garden Studio. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Home Grown Collective. 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 Josie at Heirloom Garden Studio. Good morning Josie, how are you? Good morning. I'm great. How are you? I'm good. You're in Texas, yes? Yes, I'm in Houston. Okay, how's the weather? The weather is great. Spring has sprung here. It's going to be close to 90 degrees today. 00:56 So we're getting some warm weather, but you know, Texas does this little two-step thing where we kind of stutter into spring and then we'll have some cold weather again and then warm. So it's kind of all over the place for a while until it gets hot. Yeah, we've been going through that in Minnesota. It hit 70 here yesterday. Oh, that's wonderful. That's great. It was kind of really refreshing to step out on my porch. 01:25 and the window was open and I was like, oh, it's beautiful. It's not gonna freeze my face. This is great. I can't imagine. I could never live someplace where it gets cold like that. I love the heat. Yeah, I love it when people are like, I'm never gonna live somewhere where the air hurts my face. And I'm like, well, you're also missing out on spring, summer and fall here. that's really great. true. And I understand. I can't imagine living somewhere without the season. 01:54 So we're kind of on opposite ends here, but I do get it. All right. So tell me about yourself in Heirloom Garden Studio. Okay. Yeah. So my name is Josie Haley with Heirloom Garden Studio. As you mentioned, I design and install kitchen gardens or backyard gardens, whatever you prefer to call them. 02:19 in and around the greater Houston area and I also provide gardening services and I teach gardening classes and workshops. Awesome, I love you already. Great. We also have a small urban homestead which is funny to say. I never thought I would hear myself say that but here we are. Well, what do you do on your urban homestead because I'm always trying to make the point that you can homestead anywhere. 02:48 Correct, yes. we live very close to downtown, about four miles in kind of an urban area. We have about an 8,000 square foot lot, so not big. And we have three chickens right now, which give us plenty of eggs, but we also have five baby chicks that my kids just love. And we're hoping to introduce them to the flock. 03:16 in a few weeks here and get some more eggs going for this year. And then of course I have my beloved kitchen garden, which is where it all started. So that's what we have here. Nice. What do you plant in your kitchen garden? Do you have herbs or is it just veggies? my. Herbs and veggies, yes. 03:43 Houston actually I know everyone thinks oh my goodness it's so hot here you can't grow much but believe it or not we can grow year-round so I have four raised beds about a little over a hundred square feet of growing space and I love to pack in as much as I can and right now we're starting to plant all of our tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and squash and 04:12 Just everything spring and it's just it's probably my favorite time of the year. Anytime I can put a tomato plant in the ground, I'm as happy as I can be. So we're also harvesting all of our what we call winter vegetables here. Our cool season vegetables like lettuces, snap peas, brassicas and all of that. So. 04:42 So what you're telling me is that you're never without fresh produce during the year to use in your house. That is true. And that's what I really love. And I love teaching it to people here locally because, you know, in Houston, it's cyclical, right? Gardening. You should never have an empty garden bed. You can be growing something and constantly adding to it and taking things out. So 05:10 You know, even if you just have a few minutes every day to go out and grab a handful of snap peas, you should do that. And then you should also plant something. Uh huh. I'm right there with you, sister. I agree completely. Um, what I, what I try to tell people when they're like, I want to start a garden, but I don't know how to do it. And I want to start small is I tell them to start with herbs, like chives and thyme, because chives and thyme are really hard to screw up. They really are chives. I would s

Today I'm talking with Bobbi at BLB Farms. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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. 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 Bobby at BLB Farms. And Bobby, what does BLB stand for? 00:53 Butcher's lazy bee farm and depending on who you talk to myself or my husband is who the lazy bee is. Oh Okay, I get it Yeah, we don't swear on the podcast so lazy be is perfect Thank you for explaining that you're in Texas and What's the weather like in Texas right now? Well, we just got over having two tornadoes come through 01:21 One was three miles and one was about eight miles from us. So it's nice and beautiful and sunshiny right now, so we'll take it. Yeah, I'm really glad it was three miles and 10 miles away because I would be very sad if I wasn't talking to you right now. Thank you. We would be very sad too. We lucked out. We didn't have any damage this time around. Last couple of years, we have really bad straight line winds here. So it makes farming very difficult. 01:50 Yeah, I'm in Minnesota. We have tornadoes here too. Luckily, I've never actually seen one in the over... Oh my God. I don't know how many years I've been here since 1991. So over 30 years, I think? Never seen a tornado, but I have seen the sky look really scary and like it could turn and I don't love it. So, and for those who don't know, I talk about the weather at beginning of the episodes because it's my way of expressing my esteem for the person I'm talking to. 02:20 So the weather in Minnesota today is sunny and it's supposed to hit 70 degrees this afternoon. Yay. And no tornadoes that I know of. we're set. So all right, Bobby, tell me about yourself and what you guys do at BLB Farms. I am a 47 year old housewife and farmer, chief cook and bottle wash. And I have three children. My youngest is 18. 02:49 oldest is 27. So we kind of spread them out there a little bit. But I found out very early that I wanted to do farming. was raised with farmers. So I already had a good background. And we just kind of, you know, rolled with it from there. Okay. So have you always been farming? 03:18 Yes, we were raised, we grew all of our produce. My mother, we did chickens. We processed our own chickens. We had friends that done their own meat chickens. So that was the extent of the animals that I grew up with. But as far as vegetables, fruits, anything like that, that we could grow, we did so. And my mother preserved them. 03:47 via freezing or dehydrating or even canning, pressure canning or water bath. I think that's a beautiful way to grow up. It was. I took it for granted. And then when, because I was raised between my mother and my father had gotten a divorce and we had moved to Alaska when I was three. So up there things were very expensive. 04:16 So if you have a good ground somewhere where you can actually do some of your own produce, it's best to do that. And so when we moved back to Texas, I was lost because that's what we done. And it was cheaper down here, so we got the routine of just going to the store. So I had to come kind of full circle back to the way I was raised. 04:44 I feel like that happens to a lot of us. When I was growing up, I grew up in Maine. My parents had an acre of land on a block. So you would drive down a mile into the woods and there was a block. You drive down, hang a left, come back out around on that same one mile lane again. my dad put in a garden, oh my goodness, I think the first year that we lived there in 05:14 Oh, moved in the summer of 76, so must've been 77. He put in a big garden and he had a garden every year until I moved out and I was six when we moved in there and I moved out at almost 19. And so I watched my dad and my mom garden. And then when I moved out, I moved into the city and lived in cities or suburbs until, oh, can't think. 05:42 1999 maybe? And then moved in with my husband and we were in a little tiny town and we didn't have a big lot. We had a tenth of an acre lot with a house and a four car garage on

Today I'm talking with Dawn at VT Blodgett Family Farm. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective. Log in using the app or your computer. 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 Dawn at Vermont Blodgett Family Farm. Good morning, Dawn. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing good and you? I'm great. Tell me I pronounced Blodgett correctly. You did. Okay. Cause I was like, could it be Blodgett or is it just Blodgett? Blodgett. Awesome. Good. I always hate like slaughtering people's names. I feel really bad about it. What is the weather like in Vermont this morning? 00:55 This morning we've actually had a warmer day. It's up in the 30s. We got about an inch and half of snow in an hour this morning when we were milking. So the roads are nice and slushy and we're all white again. Well, it's pretty. I'm sure that you're like a lot of Northern Tier State people. You're probably looking forward to spring. Yes. Yes, us too. 01:22 just to do my usual thing that I do at the beginning of every episode. Here in Minnesota this morning, it's bright and sunny and it's warm. And we're supposed to hit 70 degrees today for the high. I'm jealous. Yeah, me too. I'm gonna be real happy to see that hit this afternoon. The problem that we're having with this though is that it's really bouncing up and down. And today it's to be, it's supposed to hit 70. 01:51 And then it's supposed to go back down to like the fifties and then Friday they're saying that it's going to be over 70 and we're, might get, um, severe thunderstorms in March. Wow. Yeah. I'm like, you know, this is not great. I don't, I don't really love the, uh, the zigzagging and the up and down that we're going through right now, but hopefully by May it will have worked it all out and it'll be okay. Saturday. was negative five with the wind chill. 02:21 Oh, all day long. Yeah, a week and a half ago, two weeks ago here, we were in like minus 20 real temperature weather for a week. So yeah, it's really hard to know how to dress for the day. I'll tell you that. Layers and it all then can come off. Exactly. All right. So tell me about what you guys do at your farm and about yourself. 02:51 So we are classified as a dairy farm. So we have 45 milking jerseys. So we ship to Organic Valley. so that is what we actually do. Like our whole farm is set up as a dairy farm. We've been here for almost 10 years now. are high. 03:20 What is it? High rotational grazing or intense. That's it. Intense. Great rotational grazing. We have about 50 acres of land that we we pasture. We have about 100 acres of land that we hay and then we have beef cows. But we only have 15 of them. That's more for the farm stand that we have. 03:48 And about three years ago, four years ago, my husband built the stand, the farm stand, and I have been increasing my egg sales since. So I'm up to 670 chickens. Wow. But we are a dairy farm. OK. I understand that you're a dairy farm, but 670 chickens lay a lot of eggs. Yes. 04:17 You must be very popular right now with egg sales. Very. I right now because I have various ages of birds. I have about 250 that are laying consistently. So I get about 21 dozen eggs a day and I sell out within an hour. Well, I was impressed that our chickens just started laying a week ago. They're starting to be consistent and we've been getting 10 eggs a day. So 21 dozen a day seems like a wonderful thing. Yes. 04:47 It is a lot of eggs. I'll be happy when we have a dozen a day because we have 12 chickens. So if they're all laying the way it was supposed to, we will have seven dozen a week, which would be really nice right now. Yes. Yes. And I don't really want to talk too much about eggs and chickens because it's all over the news. And I saw your post on Facebook that you did about your chickens and what it costs to take care of them. 05:13 And I'm going to share that on my page and my tiny homestead podcast page because people don't quite understand that that that first outlay for the chickens is expensive. 05:27 So it definitely can be. As you said, I posted it. But for the first four months of a chicken's life, it actually only cost about $10 for four months to feed them. But what's going to cost you the money is starting up. So you need a housing p

Today I'm talking with Daniel at Valor + Harvest. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. 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 Daniel at Valor and Harvest. Good afternoon, Daniel. How are you? Doing well. Thank you for having me. Oh, absolutely. I live for you people to talk to me. This is what I... 00:27 I spend my life doing lately, so thank you for being here. So tell me about yourself. Well, actually first, tell me what the weather's like, where you are, where are you? So we are located just north of Cincinnati, Ohio, behind Kings Island Amusement Park, if you're familiar with that. Well, I'm not, but that's pretty cool. And what's the weather like there today? The weather is, we'll say mixed, so we have partly cloudy. 00:54 and sunshine mix between the two. It's very windy out there, probably right above freezing. Could be wrong. Ohio weather is very hit or miss this time of year. So it was snowing last night. I think it's supposed to be 60 or something tomorrow. So it kind of gives you a overview of what we have around here. We're in that spring crazy weather pattern right now. Yeah. I'm in Minnesota, but I grew up in Maine. 01:22 And my dad used to say, if you don't like the weather, wait a minute. And, and Minnesota is like that too. And honestly, I think every state is like that. So, okay. So we've done the weather report from Ohio. Yeah. Ohio you said, and Minnesota this morning. tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Yeah, absolutely. So we started Valor Plus Harvest back in October. We are a bath and body company. 01:50 We initially started with candles. We have soap coming, also beard oils and other items. So the very basics, that's what our company is. We're a veteran owned small business. So I'm a Marine Corps veteran. I served in OIF 1 and 2, straight out of high school. What's unique about our company is first and foremost, our products are made with, we try our hardest to get all locally sourced ingredients. 02:18 and Made in America products. It's very hard, but that's what we're going for. And what's really interesting about our company in totality is the end of the day, we give back 10 % to veteran organizations. So I know you're not familiar with Cincinnati, Ohio, but we're very close to the Disabled American Veterans Headquarters. That's our organization that we donated to last year. That's the national headquarters for all disabled American veterans. you know, 02:48 Not only do we create a good product and what we're striving for in our space, we also like to give back and that's at very high level, that's our company. Fan, I would use the F word, I-N, tastic, but I'm not going to do that because I don't do that on my podcast. My son was a, well, he says that once a Marine, always a Marine. So he's a Marine, but he hasn't been in service for a bit. He served for eight years actually. 03:17 duty. Nice. Thank you for his service. Well, I don't know if I'm saying this right because I don't know a lot about how this works, but he was in the Marines for eight years. I don't know if active duty means like fighting with guns or it just means being in. Yeah, same eight year contract for myself as well. So once a Marine, always a Marine. Still live by that motto, created really good work ethics and self-discipline. Yeah. 03:46 I always joke that I started the process of growing him up and the Marines finished him. There you go. That's a very good way. I like that. Yeah. And he came back like a year after he enlisted to visit me specifically before the kids got home from school. And we had a slightly rough parting of the ways when he moved out and he showed up at the door to the house that he grew up in. 04:14 knocked and I was like you don't have to knock just come in to your house and sat down and first thing he said was I need you to listen and I need you not to say anything and I was like okay he said first off I'm sorry I said for what he said for being such a pain in your ass and I was like oh well that's that's okay I said I love you and he said I love you too and then we just kept talking 04:41 It was the most beautiful moment of my life with that kid, swear to you. That's good. I'm glad you have that relationship. That's really important. Yep. And I don't talk about it a lot because it's very, it's very personal, but I was scared to death that he would get killed when he enlisted. And I, I'm not a praying girl, but I, I said a lot of messages to the universe saying, please keep them safe in that eight years. And so. 05:08 when he came out and

Today I'm talking with Christi at Tee’s Kitchen. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. 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 Christy at Tee's Kitchen in Louisiana. Good morning. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing well. Good. So what's the weather like in Louisiana this morning? Oh, it's... 00:29 Actually, it's raining. It's raining here, kind of humid, muggy, the typical Louisiana weather. Okay, well, it's like 35 degrees, I think, here in Minnesota and the sun is just pouring through the window. Oh, wow. I'm a little jealous. Yeah, so we're kind of on opposite ends of the spectrum, but that makes sense considering how far north I am and how far south you are. 00:56 Okay, so did the obligatory weather report. This is a thing now. I do this on every episode and tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, my name is Christy. I'm from South Louisiana, as far South as you can get. I'm married to my high school sweetheart and we've been married for 20, 25 years. And we have two, I'm a boy mom. We have two boys, an 18 year old and a 10 year old. 01:24 I'm an elementary teacher, so I currently teach third grade in the charter school system. And I also have, I guess you could call it a business, T's Kitchen, which kind of started out as a, I would bake from my home. slowly kind of got away from that lately because I've been so busy, but now I mostly do, like as my side gig, I do social media. And so I do cooking videos and. 01:52 Sometimes I work with brands and so I enjoy that social media aspect of my life, which is more of a hobby, but sometimes I wish it would be my full-time job because I just love it so much. Yeah, I'm discovering that media content production is really fun. Who knew? It's so much fun. Yeah, I mean, I'm not doing videos, but I'm definitely sharing my voice and other people's voices. And when I started it, 02:18 I was really nervous and now I just sit down and like, hi, how the hell are you? Let's chat. Right. Me too. I was so nervous at first too. I wouldn't even show my face. Like I would just show my the food, you know, and then slowly I started showing myself and becoming more vulnerable and I feel like people really connect to that, you know. Well, I think your face is adorable. I watched a couple of your videos and you're really good at it. Well, thank you. Yeah. Okay. 02:45 So we need to stretch this to half an hour about what you do. We're going to talk about your videos first. Your videos are really good. Like your diction when you talk, you are so clear, which is really helpful if there's actually like something you're trying to get across on how to do something. That's helpful. And you're always smiling. Whether you want to be or not, you're always smiling. I think it's beautiful. And some of your videos are funny, but 03:14 a lot of them are just really interesting. thanks. Wow, what a compliment. you know, we're always our own worst critic, you know, so I don't sometimes it's funny to see how other people's people, not people's other people perceive you, you know, so that's such a compliment. Thank you. You're welcome. And believe me, I am always my worst critic. I listened to the podcast back before I released them, obviously, to edit them. 03:42 Some of them I'm like, I don't know about that one. I'm not sure I want to put that one out. And I wait, I wait like a couple of days and I sleep on it then I listen to it again. I'm like, I don't know why I thought that was bad. It's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. I know, I know. And sometimes, you know, whenever you think something is terrible, other people really connect to it. And I don't know if it's cause it's, you're a little more vulnerable. I don't know, but some of the videos that I release and I'm like, the next day I'm thinking, Oh, I shouldn't have posted that. 04:11 I get the most comments or the most private messages from people that were like, I'm so glad you shared that. I'm going through that too. yeah. Yeah. The episodes I really get tweaked about when I'm doing this is if somebody says something that makes me tear up and you can hear it in my voice, and I don't like hearing my voice like that. Yeah. I'm like, that's a real reaction. It's important that people realize that 04:41 I'm human too, so. Right, right. Yeah. I've done my fair share of crying on social media. I'm really glad that it's not video from mine because I have the worst ugly cry face you've ever seen. no, that's not going to ever be seen on a video on the internet if I can avoid it. Okay. So are you in gumbo country? We are. We are. 05:10 S

Today I'm talking with Danielle at Country Roads Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 After 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. 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 Danielle at Country Roads Farm. That's it. Good morning, Danielle. How are you? Good morning. How are you, Mary? I'm good. I've got a really goopy voice. 00:26 Right now, I don't know why, hopefully it'll clear itself up as we keep talking. It's that weather. Yeah. We got some real weather last night. We were supposed to get six to seven inches of snow, supposedly, but we live in the plains area of Minnesota. So the wind just blew and blew and blew and there's maybe an inch and a half on the ground out there. But the wind was really, really bad. I mean, I had the fan on in my room and I could still hear the trees creaking outside. was like, oh. 00:55 50 mile barwind. No, have in, we are in the thumb of Michigan and it's been a winter. It's been a long time since Michigan has had a good winter. I don't want to say hard. It hasn't, but it's been a good solid winter and honestly we need it. But this week is finally 40s and today is almost 50 and it's definitely given spring fever. 01:25 You're having the week that we had last week. Last week was gorgeous here. 01:32 Yeah, we're supposed to have snow. Oh, I saw it in the forecast. I want to say it's in a couple of days. you know, lovely, lovely Michigan. Well, it is spring in a Northern tier state. You just never know what you're going to get to quote Forrest Gump. You just never know. Right. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you guys do. So. 01:56 We have country roads farms, which is last year was our first year being open for business. And we are a an agro tourism farm, I guess is the best description of it. We have a petting farm and we offer you picks. We do workshops, all sorts of fun stuff. We're open from May to December. 02:26 fun. And for anyone who doesn't know what agritourism is, it basically is a farm-ish place that offers entertainment through people going and experiencing the activities on the farm. Right? Yeah. So it's absolutely what it is. Okay. Good. Yeah. I was looking at your Facebook page. Your place looks like so much fun. I want to go. 02:55 It's definitely a lot of fun and we kind of, oh, so what started out originally as the idea for a Christmas tree farm quickly involved into being more of a multi-seasonal. And more so it was, know, financially it was driven just by not putting all of your eggs in one basket. 03:22 Christmas trees are a little bit of a risky business in that they take seven to 10 years to grow. during that time, you have to hope and pray that they make it, know, blights, know, drought, too much rain, you name it, everything in between doesn't wipe out your tree lots. So. 03:47 So yeah, we decided to just kind of open it up and then we were given the advice of several other farmers about agritourism and looking for ways to invite the public to your farm and kind of capitalizing on that. And we absolutely love that aspect of our farm. So I'm really glad that you do. I'm guessing you're not shy. No, I'm not shy. I'm. 04:14 I'm a mom of four kids and we're all outgoing and kinda, there's not much that holds us back, that's for sure. We're a spirited group. I love that. Spirited is such a great word. So you diversified your business is what you're telling me. What did you add in? 04:38 We open in May with Mother's Day flowers and flats of vegetables. And I'm sorry if you can hear that. That's my dog scratching at the door. I kicked him out so they wouldn't bark. are so many dog noises on every episode of my podcast. It's totally fine. So, but we, well, that's good. So I'm not the only one, but no, so we have the flowers and the plants and that kind of, and then we do hard dip ice cream. 05:09 in the petting farm. So all that opens up in May. And then come June, we start transitioning into cut flowers and dupix. And then as that goes, the vegetables start coming in. So then we start getting the produce for the farm market. And then that transitions into fall with the mums and pumpkins. 05:34 Apples, we are licensed to press their own cider. So we do that and do cider slushies and fresh donuts. And then we transition into Christmas with the pre-cut Christmas trees, wreaths, porch pots. And in between all of this, we're doing field trips. We do... 06:00 workshops and different classes and events and farm to table events. We also do fundraisers. So there's a lot that goes on on any given day, week, month. So. Wow. I don't, I don't want to know wh