A Tiny Homestead

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

Today I'm talking with Meg at Skylight 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 Meg at Skylight Farm in Wisconsin. Good afternoon, Meg. How are you? Hi, I'm good. Good. I was just telling Meg before I hit record, the weather here in Minnesota right now is 00:29 Going from it to gross It was over 40 degrees this morning and now it's 33 degrees It's raining and I expected to shift to snow any minute. So we're kind of excited. They had said two to five inches They're now saying six to seven inches overnight 00:47 Wow, that's a lot. I think we will probably get dumped on here at least one more time this year, but I definitely would rather the frozen ground and the snow right now over the rain and the mud. Yes, me too, because we have a dog and I have a husband and an adult son who live here. And mud is always on my kitchen floor right now. For sure. Yep. This past week, it's been like May, you know, it's been like May mud. 01:14 and dirt and leaves from the lawn or the, we don't have a lawn from the yard. And it's been kind of messy and that's great because it means strings on its way, but it's kind of bad when you got to sweep it all up. Yeah. So Meg, I always talk about the weather at the beginning of the podcast, just to give people an idea of what's going on. And it's a record of what was going on at the time. And so tell me about yourself and tell me what you do at Skylight Farm. 01:42 We do a few things here at Skylight Farm. Originally, initially, I've been a full-time horse trainer since 2012, and we purchased the farm here in Wisconsin for boarding and training of dressage horses in 2019. Yeah. And, you know, since we've had this beautiful, wonderful place, things have... 02:07 evolved a little bit and we do a little bit more of the farmsteading homesteading sort of stuff in conjunction with what we do with the horses. So we have like, I think we have 25 raised beds, we have some really beautiful soft root that we, that's come to, it's come to be, you know, a really adult producing. 02:33 thing now. We have really beautiful raspberries and currants and soft fruit. And just, you know, kind of try to do everything that we do here with partnership with nature and more surrounded by nature preserve here and in the southern kettle marine. And it's just, it's beautiful here. It's like our little paradise. 02:54 Everybody says that about their places if they're a homestead or a farm. I can't tell you how many times I've heard my little piece of heaven or paradise or whatever. And I love it. I really, really do. So you're the first person that has mentioned dressage horses in over a year and a half of doing interviews and podcast episodes. Um, so do you, do you offer training or how does that work? 03:19 Yeah, I have been a full-time dressage trainer since I started my business and left pharmaceutical sales in 2012. So I offer board really top quality, top, top quality care, really comprehensive care board training lessons. And we actually are capable here and do a fair amount of what we call rehabilitative boards. 03:49 horses that come in here that have had major surgeries or major injuries and are able to help them rehab in that difficult time of their lives and provide that kind of care that they they need oftentimes it's intensive with bandage changing and hand walking and medications and you know some some pretty intensive requirements for those horses, but I have a wonderful team here and I'm 04:15 I'm really grateful that we can offer those services because it's actually really hard to find. 04:21 Okay, cool. I want to talk about this for a minute because I love horses. I don't have any. I wasn't a horse girl growing up, but I think that they're gorgeous. And dressage is to me, every time I hear dressage, I think dancing horses, but I don't think that's right. Yeah, that's absolutely right. It's like a dance together. When it's done well, it's really beautiful. And it's all about the partnership. 04:48 So how old are the horses when people start training them for this? Well, that's a good question, actually. So my philosophy on that is from day one. And I kind of specialize in starting young horses, actually. So we don't obviously ride them as babies, but all of their interactions with people and learning how to trust people and learning how to interact with people on the ground. 05:18 All of that happens every day, even when they're very, very young, and that sets them up for success in all of their training later on. We

Today I'm talking with Angela at Millie’s Moonstone. 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. This Homestead Holler is a shout out to North County Marketplace. North County Marketplace's mission is to partner with and provide local farmers and zero waste slash clean ingredient products. You can find them on Facebook at North County Marketplace or online at NoCoMarketplace.com. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 Share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Now I'm talking with Angela at Millie's Moonstone. I love that name so much. Good morning, Angela, how are you? Good morning, I'm fine, how are you? I'm good, how's the weather in where you are? It's actually a beautiful day today. Yeah, and I forget where you are, sorry. I'm in Southwestern PA, like close to Uniontown, Pittsburgh area. Okay, yep. You told me a message and then I closed it and I forgot to make an order in my brain, sorry. 00:59 That's all it is going to snow in Minnesota tonight. That's where I am. Well, I actually love snow. So I'm the, like the only weirdo around here that's like missing this thing. Yeah. Well, it wouldn't be unusual. I wouldn't be so excited except that last winter we got maybe six inches total for the season. And this winter we've gotten maybe six inches and they're saying three to five tonight. So. 01:24 It would be really nice to get the last hurrah done, have it be pretty, and then just roll into springtime. I would be so excited about that. Right. I love the changes of the season, but we just don't seem to have winters like we used to anymore. As you'll find out through this, I'm very old fashioned for my age, so I miss the old times and always having snow on the ground all winter. Yeah. Somebody called it Grandma Cor to me the other day. Yeah. 01:53 At first I was like, you know, I'm 55, I'm a grandma. I don't know how comfortable I am with grandma core, but it's okay. I decided it was very cute. Yeah, like I'm still like fun and immature in a sense, but like I just, when it comes to like the values and the gardening and you know, things like that, it just, that's always been like super important to me and stayed with me. 02:22 I'm kind of surprised nobody's called it nature core yet, but maybe they'll start doing that too. I dig that. Nature core. That way it's not grandma core, it's not kid core, it's not an age specific thing. It's just an everyday thing. Okay. So everybody stop calling it grandma core, call it nature core. We'll start again. All right. Millicore. Yes, exactly. Okay. So I'm assuming that your grandma had a lot to do with your... 02:49 take on all this. So you named your business after her. Yes. So growing up, she lived walking distance from me. So that was, you know, super nice. And we were super close. She she always just had a way of like how everything is just so busy now and everybody's on their phones and just, you know, like busy working for corporations and different things. But like when you were at grandma's house, it was like you were at a pot like you were almost on vacation. 03:19 Um, she did like Sunday dinners every Sunday. Um, she would make a soup we called Sunday soup, but it's actually like an old hunky soup recipe, um, that was passed down like generations. Um, you know, we didn't always have that. She had other things, but you know, everybody was always welcome at her house, um, a lot of homemade cooking and, you know, gatherings. So. 03:46 I always wanted to be like her and be that type of person. And, you know, there was, like I said, like that always sense of pausing and not to get your thoughts and, you know, identify with people and yourself versus just being so busy and on the go. So that's something I really miss about her. Yeah. My husband's grandma was Grandma Kyle. My husband's name is Kyle. 04:16 the family surname. So if Kyle has his family surname, he would be Kyle Kyle, which wouldn't work. But she was Grandma Kyle to everybody, but to people who actually spent time at her house and to people who spent time at her house, she was Ma. M-A. Ma. And my husband told me the story and I was like, that is so sweet. And everyone was welcome to come. 04:44 to her house and sit down and have a cup of something and talk. And I liken her to the town therapist because she would listen to anyone. Right. So I think your grandma and my husband's grandma probably have a lot in common. Yeah, sounds like it. And she had like a love for the earth and that kind of... 05:07 how I started all of this. So like we would do a lot of gardening and snapping beans. And when they say snapping beans is therapy, they're not kidding. I feel like that w

Today I'm talking with Susan and Jasmine and Sean and Teresa at Self Sufficient and Homesteading Community Forum. 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, crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. This Homestead Holler Shoutout is to our friends over at Freedom Rain 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 talo sauce to grass-fed talo skin care and beautifully arranged gift boxes. 00:29 Each product is crafted with care and love. Check them out at redomarinefarm.com or follow their Facebook page to stay in the loop. Let freedom reign. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I am talking with Susan and Jasmine and Sean and Teresa at Self-Sufficiency and Homesteading Community Forum is the name of their Facebook page. That was a lot to say. 00:56 Good afternoon, everybody. How are you? Great. Awesome, we're doing good. Good. I don't, where is everybody located? 01:09 Um, Sean and I are located between Bloomfield and Ottumwa, Iowa. Okay. Um, I'm not far away. I'm over by Drakeville. So I'm about nine miles away from them. This is Susan. Okay. I'm about 160 miles from them. I'm located north of Ames, Iowa. So very much central Iowa. Okay. So you guys are all my Southern neighbors in Iowa, cause I'm in Minnesota. Is it really sunny in Iowa right now? 01:39 Yes. Yeah, here too. It's, it's just gorgeous and it's supposed to hit 50 again today for the third, third day in a row, fourth day in a row. So that's a nice change from last week. I assume it was very cold in Iowa too. Yes. Yeah. I think, I think we might be rolling into spring, you guys. I think it might be happening. I'm going to hope it is anyway. I hope so. Now if we can just get rid of all the mud, that would be wonderful. 02:08 Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if mud season was like the next couple of weeks and then the end of March and April and May when we all need to get in our gardens was dry? Yes. Well, not too dry, but not muddy. That would be great. Yes. Okay. So tell me about, well, I don't know how to do this. Whoever wants to go first, tell me about yourself and then the next person can and the next person can and then you guys can tell me about what you do. Well, kind of what information do you want to know? 02:38 Um, just do you guys have gardens and stuff at your places too, or not? 02:49 I'll go if nobody else is jumping that way we can get it. My name is Sean. I'm the husband of Teresa. Daniel is my oldest son. Matthew is my youngest that lives at home, our sons. And we've been interested in home studying for quite some time. We've got a goal to be off the grid within the next, no. 03:19 year, year and a half, possibly even sooner. The good Lord blesses us. I am the camp manager of Forest Lake Baptist Camp outside of Atoma. I'm also a pastor for Cedar Community Church in Cedar, Iowa. We are avid outdoorsmen, my entire family. In the wintertime, we trap. In the summertime, we... 03:48 We do a lot of foraging. I would say close to maybe 90% of our food comes from what I call God's grocery store. The woods, we have gardens, chickens. Our next goal is to get a milk goat. And just working towards becoming off the grid and... 04:13 going and doing whatever is, you know, God wants us to do and requires us to do, but He'll also meet our needs and give us the desires of our heart. Yep, go ahead. But as John said, you know, we do want to become full-time, well, somewhat full-time homesteaders. Obviously, you know, we still have a job, but as well as all that, you know, we homeschool our two sons, they're 16 and 18. 04:42 You know, I, I am in charge of the kitchen here at the camp. I'm like the program director. So we have a lot of things going on, but I think our biggest goal is we just want a simpler life. And so right now in this time of, of waiting, I would call it waiting. Um, we're learning skills. We're trying to learn as many skills as we can from other people, from other homes setters, from other self-sufficient people, and, um, just build a network of people. 05:12 they can help each other. Awesome. Okay, Susan, do you want to go next? Sure. So my husband and I actually farm. We grew up, both of us grew up on farms. He grew up on a dairy farm up by Oskaloosa. I grew up down here by Drake'sville. So we have actually the agriculture side of it where we row crop and do hay. And then we have two herds of cattle. We have Angus and we have Highla

Today I'm talking with Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom. She has some exciting things on the horizon after experiencing a health scare. 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. 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 Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom, and this is a catch-up episode. I interviewed Leah back last March, and her episode is originally called Clear Creek Ranch Mom. Go Fig! 00:29 So good morning, Leah. How are you? Good morning, Mary. Good to visit with you again. You too. I, it's funny. A lot of the people I talk to on the podcast, I, I don't necessarily ever talk to them again, but I have like six people that I check in with and I keep up with and you're one of the six. So. 00:48 I feel blessed. Thank you for thinking of me. Oh, you're welcome. And it's really hard to miss because you have been doing a lot and you've been sharing on Facebook a lot of all the new things you're doing. So give me a real quick who you are and what you do. And then I want to talk about all the new things you've been doing. Sure. Leah Peterson. I am from Custer County, Nebraska. I am blessed. 01:14 to live on and help operate a multi-generation family operation in Custer County. We raise cows and crops and kids, I like to say. Additionally, I am an executive director for a small nonprofit in Nebraska where we apply for federal grants. So if you hear that buzzword of late, you know, that comes with a whole bunch of rain. 01:40 Cringing and curling your toes, we use those federal grants to help provide education and technical services for farmers and ranchers in Nebraska. So I've been doing that for a little over two years. And then, you know, I'm just that busy lady as a volunteer service oriented person in my community and then doing stuff for Clear Creek Ranch Mom too. Okay, awesome. Before we get into all the new stuff you're doing since you brought up the federal grant thing. 02:10 One of the things somebody told me the other day when we were discussing this, it might have been my dad, I don't remember, was that if you had submitted an application for a federal grant and it's up in the air right now, there are also regional grants and local grants out there that aren't necessarily funded by the federal government. So if you're still looking, those are good alternatives to look into. 02:37 Absolutely. There are also so many donors, charitable groups out there that care about causes that you care about. Someone told me last week, it's as simple as trying to spend some time listening to public radio. If you'll notice on public radio a lot of times that your news breaks or your commercials are sponsored by some of those foundations that exist out there, and those people are also looking for opportunities to help fund projects. 03:05 and education. And so we have been looking under some of those couch cushions as well as we try to diversify some of the funding sources that we look to to help us keep on with our mission, which is to bring quality, solid education to farmers and ranchers. Yep. So that's an alternative or those are alternatives and you're not completely screwed on this right now. 03:31 I don't really want to talk about anything to do with government right now. Amen. The chaos is making me really nervous. I just talked to my folks this morning and they're, my mom is not in her 80s yet. She is two years away and my dad is 81 and they're very smart people and I love them with all my heart. And when I freak out about things, I talk to them and I said, so what do you think? And my dad said, hang in there. 04:00 I said, that's it. He said, yeah, hang in there. I was like, okay, I'm going to take you at your word, dad. Thanks. Absolutely. That's all I got. Hang in there guys. Hang in there, get off social media and go sit down at the dinner table with your neighbors, your friends and have one-on-ones and that will help center you, bring you back to center and help you feel more calm and assured that things will work out and be all right. Yes. Or read science fiction. Yeah. Or read. 04:29 romance novels because at least it gives your brain something else to focus on. Yes, or dad jokes. We're big fans of dad jokes in this family. Yes, exactly. So, okay. So, back when I talked to you a year ago, we talked about ranching, we talked about what's proper etiquette, asking questions about ranching. I will remember that. Whoops. 04:54 Now I know if I'm going to ask somebody a question that I don't know is a good question to ask, I say, I do not know if you can answer this or if you're comfortable answering this. If you're not,

Today I'm talking with Amy at the Natural Living Fair. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today's Homestead Holler is a shout out to the Grounded in Maine podcast. Amy Fagan is the host, and she focuses on the many ways to live a sustainable life. You can find Grounded in Maine on Instagram or at groundedinmaine.com. 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 Amy. 00:29 at the Natural Living Fair. Good afternoon. I get so confused because I record at 10am and 1pm, typically, and the light is pouring through the window in my room where my desk is and it looks very morningish right now. So good afternoon. Sorry about that. Good afternoon. I don't know where you are, but we have a ton of snow on the ground and so everything is so bright today. 00:55 Yeah, I'm in Minnesota and we have maybe a dusting on the ground. And I saw that you guys down in the South were getting pounded with snow. And I was like, you know, we've gotten maybe eight inches all winter and they're getting more than we've gotten all winter right now. It's insane. Isn't it? It's not right. I don't love it. And especially up here, we need the snow for insulation for the plants to, to do their thing in the winter time. They need time to rest. 01:25 And we had hardly any snow last year either. So this is getting to be a problem. I'm very concerned about what our gardens are going to do this year. Yeah, you know, for us, we get worried in the summer, because it's so hot and dry now. It's not like it used to be. And we're dealing with mid-summer drought after drought after drought. Yeah, I guess we're just going to have to see if Mother Nature adjusts to the new weather patterns, because this is. OK. 01:54 I can't worry about it anymore than I already do, or I will just call it. Sure. All right. So Amy, I want to know about your Natural Living Fair because I was reading the article that was linked on your Facebook page and it says you've been doing this since 2015. So tell me about yourself and the Natural Living Fair. Yeah. So I have a farm in South Clarksville. It's called the Sunday Morning Flower Farm. And I... 02:23 grow primarily flowers for summer CSA, which stands for community supported agriculture. So when you think CSA, often you think, you know, like a bushel of vegetables that you pick up from a farmer in the summer. And we kind of do that with bouquets. You can pick them up at our farm or we deliver them. And so that's the main thing that we do with our farm. And then in the spring... 02:50 I throw the Natural Living Fair, and you're right, it's since 2015. This is the eighth one that we're going to be doing. We took kind of a pause during when COVID first started. And we just feature farmers and artisans and any type of craftsperson, small businesses that kind of deal with the more natural living genre. And we just all meet up. 03:18 one weekend. It's the last weekend of April every year. And we just bring the community out and we sell tons of plants and all kinds of fun stuff. It reminds me of the Common Ground Fair that Maine holds every year, except the Common Ground Fair has been around for a long, long time. And it's huge. And I don't know that you guys are huge yet. No, we're not huge. 03:47 The location that we have, I think we could be bigger if we wanted to, but I really like the size that we are. We're kind of perfect just serving our community. We have between 50 and, really between 40 and 70 vendors every year. 04:05 And really the location that we have it at is gorgeous. It's at the Tanglewood House in Clarksville. And we have, it's like, it's an old historic building and the grounds are beautiful. 04:20 keep it. I'm sorry. Are we still here? Yeah, we're good. Okay, I got a phone call. I'm so sorry. It's important to me that we keep it there because the ambiance is so perfect and I want people to come away from the fair with just a peaceful feeling, you know, that they just left something good. Yeah, that's Clarksville, Tennessee, right? Yes. Okay, is that the same Clarksville in the song? The last train to Clarksville? 04:49 I think that's Clarksville, Indiana. Okay. I don't know. It's been running through my head all day when I saw where you were and I'm like, I don't think that's the right place. I think that's everyone's first thoughts. Yeah. Great song. Fun song. I love music. So anything, any word can trigger a song that will just haunt me all day. It's insane. Okay. So when you say natural living fair, 05:14 I'm assuming that a lot of your vendors sell herbs, they sell soaps, they sell lotions, they sell balms.

Today I'm talking with Tina at Red Dog Ridge. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you'd like information regarding the documentaries mentioned, click here. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today's Homestead Holler is a shout out to O'Connor Family Acres in Le Sueur, Minnesota. They offer duck eggs, goat milk, and soaps are coming soon. You can find them on Facebook at O'Connor Family Acres. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. 00:26 Today I'm talking with Tina at Red Dog Ridge. Good morning, Tina. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing well. Okay, first thing I wanna know is why is it Red Dog Ridge? Well, because we have sheebas and we live on a ridge and we were trying to figure out a name for the farm and we at that time had a litter of puppies and then we were overrun with red sheebas. So the sheeba in you. So. 00:54 My son was like, what about Red Dog Ridge? Okay. Awesome, I love that. I hear really good things about the Shiba's, but I've never met one in person. Are they really nice dogs? They're temperamental dogs. They're a bit of drama queens. They can be nice. There are ones that are very nice, but ours are not. They're not real friendly to others, but they're real loyal to their families. Nice. I know they're beautiful. 01:23 That's about all I know and I've just never known anyone who has one. Everyone I knew or know has German shepherds or labs. So, so those are the ones I'm exposed to the most. Okay. We also have a lab. So, labs are usually pretty cool. The ones I've met have been really friendly and really silly and I love them. Okay. So, 01:52 Tell me about yourself and what you guys do at Red Dog Ridge. It's my husband and myself and I have three children, two daughters and a son. We own 20 acres in the Houston, Missouri area. We raise mini jerseys, red bourbon red, red bourbon turkeys, chickens, cooney cooney pigs. We sell meat. 02:22 or chicken, pork and beef. We just opened a farm store where we sell milk and eggs and a few little homemade items. We just have been here about four years trying to get established with the communities. 02:38 Okay, was this a COVID decision? No, no. We had bought the property. It was completely raw. We bought the property in 2019, right before COVID had hit. And then during COVID, we were we traveled full time for 20 years before this property. And we always knew that we were going to buy property, we were looking, we have been, you know, back and forth across the United States and up and down. 03:07 probably 14 different times. So we looked all the way from New York to Arizona for what we were wanting. Finally settled on Missouri because it was pretty middle of the country and my husband's an electrician and my son's a lineman so they can get to the bigger jobs anywhere pretty quickly. But settled on Missouri and then during COVID we were over in Nebraska working. 03:36 And we came here on weekends just to kind of make it, you know, we put in an RV park for our RVs because we knew that, you know, we weren't going to be having houses for a while. And we just started building it from there. Nice. So what had you traveling for the previous 20 years? My husband and first off, my husband's work, he only did like oil refineries, coal plants. 04:05 large hospital jobs. So I mean, we went to the big jobs all over the country and we homeschooled our three children. And then my son, he wanted to go into becoming a lineman. So he took three and a half years into his apprenticeship and then we traveled together once he graduated and he went to transmission jobs and you know, we took smaller jobs, but we went to places we wanted to see and explore. 04:35 Well, I'm going to say that sounds like fun. I don't know if it was, but it sounds like it was fun. It was a blast. For 20 straight years, we were just nothing but tourists. So, I mean, it was no responsibility. We didn't have a home, you know, back in the sticks and bricks, we just were full-time RVers. And we saw, I mean, we've seen, we've been to every state except for Hawaii. And we've seen a lot of amazing things, met a lot of good people. 05:02 So I'm going to stick with fun. That sounds like a lot of fun. I'm, I'm, I couldn't do it. I am such a homebody. I love coming back to the same place when I leave. So, so for me, it would be really strange. So that leads me to my next question. Is it really strange that you've been in one place for four years? Oh yeah. It was a, it took a lot to get used to, but that was originally why we started RVing was my youngest daughter. She did not like. 05:30 packing up and moving and changing friends. S

Today I'm talking with Bailey at Wonderful Thyme Farms. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Bailey at Wonderful Thyme Farms. Good morning, Bailey. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. And you're in Iowa, right? Yep. Eastern Iowa. Okay. Is it cloudy in Iowa right now? 00:29 Yeah, it's pretty cloudy right now, but it's a pretty nice day. It's almost 50 degrees. So after we're done here, I'm headed out to get a few things done after I get done with work. Nice. Um, it's very cloudy here in Minnesota today, but it is, I think it's pushing 50 degrees too, so, so it's a nice reprieve from last week with the, uh, brutal frigid temperatures we had for a week. Absolutely. Yep. It's really nice to see the snow melting and 00:58 be able to get outside and get some things done. Finally, yes, exactly. And I don't see it getting really cold again. So I think, I think, carefully I'm saying, I think we're through it. I think, I hope. Oh, Iowa usually surprises us at some point after, after we think it's all done. So I won't hold my breath until it's May 30th, probably. 01:24 I'm talking about the brutal, your face hurts and your nose freezes when you go out cold being over. I think we're through the worst of that. Hopefully. Yeah. From my lips to God's ears, I suppose, but I hope so. Okay. So tell me about yourself and what you do. My name is Dr. Bailey Goose. I live on a small homestead we purchased last year. 01:51 Um, before that we were renting a different homestead. Um, my partner, uh, two bonus kids, one kid, uh, two dogs, several chickens, more in the incubator, uh, we run this, uh, small homestead in Eastern Iowa. Uh, my partner and I both work full time, um, off the farm as well. So right now we're kind of in a building year. 02:21 We're looking to get a bunch of projects done here, but I am a USDA veterinarian. I was in private practice for a few years before that. So we kind of have an eclectic mix of interests and hobbies and careers and everything else here in Iowa. Okay, well, since you are a veterinarian, 02:49 Before we're done talking, I want to talk about bird flu, but we'll get to that in a minute. How did you decide you wanted to become a homesteader? How did you decide you wanted to buy property and have chickens and things? I grew up on an acreage. My parents have an acreage not too far, actually, from where we live now. And I kind of grew up with that whole... 03:17 interest, but my mom always had a garden. When we were younger, at least when we got older, and we were quite busy with sports and activities and 4-H and all those things, she kind of had to let that go. But it was definitely a part of my upbringing as a child. My friends had different ag-related families, so one of my best friends growing up. 03:42 lived on a dairy, so I spent a good amount of time on a dairy when I was a younger kid. I had friends that had chickens and I always thought that those were so cool. My dad wouldn't let us get chickens when I was little. So I kind of came into the homestead space a little bit naturally. It's not too far of a jump from being a large animal veterinarian to wanting your own livestock and wanting to be fairly self-sufficient. 04:11 I've always really enjoyed gardening. So I've always had either a couple tomato plants when I lived in the city or some herbs in my window. So when I got the ability to have a bigger scale garden, I started planting one and then it's gotten bigger every year since I started. So as they do. Yep. Absolutely. So I guess I was kind of. 04:39 born into the seeds of it and I kind of have let it flourish the last five years for sure. And luckily my current career and job really lends itself to being able to be flexible and be able to do this kind of on the side. I don't work a whole bunch of overtime or anything and my partner's job is pretty flexible and we don't have kids. 05:09 every single sport yet. So just some sports. We do the best we can making it work here. Okay. All righty. The reason I ask is because it seems like there's people in two camps when it comes to getting into the homesteading thing. They either have seeds planted when they're little, 05:31 Or they just get sick of the corporate grind and they're like, I need something completely different and they get into gardening and chickens and they're like, oh, I want to do this. Oh, for sure. Chickens and gardening is a gateway drug to the full effect homesteading. So we're not, we're not, we don't have enough space to have everything yet. So we are sticking with our poultry and our gardening and 06:00 We

Today I'm talking with Morgan at C&M Homestead. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Morgan at C&M Homestead. Good morning, Morgan. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm good. Is it still super cold in South Dakota? You know what's warming up? The last couple of days have been bitterly cold, but today... 00:27 The sun is shining and the temperatures are warming up. So hopefully we're done with that little cold snap. Well, considering I'm your neighbor to the east in Minnesota, we're in the same boat. The sun is so bright this morning and I think it's actually above zero right now. I think it is here as well. I think we're maybe at like four degrees maybe. So not far above, but it's above zero. So that's good. 00:52 Yeah, last I looked at my phone, my weather bug app was telling me it was minus two, but that was at like five o'clock this morning. So I don't know what it is right now. Okay. So we've done the obligatory weather check-in because that's what I do with all the podcasts and tell me about yourself and what you guys do. So I am the C or I guess the M of C and M Homestead. My husband would be the C, Corey. So probably about two years ago, we... 01:21 decided that we wanted to do better for ourselves and kind of that's where the whole bread, baking bread started. I started kind of taking the deep dive into sourdough and it's just kind of transformed since those two years ago. But about a year and a half ago, we moved out to my grandma's farm. And so we rent now from my mom and dad, a house and two. 01:48 two acres and we've kind of just turned it into our own little paradise out here. We started with some chickens and it grew to ducks and turkeys and we had a couple of friends who could no longer take care of some of their animals. So we inherited some geese and it just kind of seems to keep growing out here. And it's just fun to watch our boys. We have a 02:14 nine-month-old, a four-year-old and a 16-year-old. It's his birthday today. And it's just fun watching them be involved in caring for the animals and seeing the four-year-old come into the house with a handful of eggs. And he's like, Mom, look what these chickens did. So it's just fun. We kind of just wanted a slower lifestyle for ourselves from in town in Aberdeen. And so we moved out here. 02:43 We're just slowly kind of making transitions to being able to be more self-sustaining. Awesome. Happy birthday, 16-year-old. Yeah. And boy, do I know what it's like to be a boy mom. My first child was a girl, but the next three were boys. So it was basically a boy household once she moved out. Yes. And it's a lot. It's a lot to be the only girl in the household. It is. 03:10 They are like, what do you mean you want to paint your nails? Like, let's go outside and like play trucks in the dirt. And I'm like, oh, all right, we'll do that. Let's go. Yeah, mom, just run a brush through your hair, pull it back in a barrette or a ponytail holder and let's go. Yes, I understand completely. Yes, they are all about being outside in the dirt with the chickens, in the duck pond with the ducks. You name it, they want to do it outside. Yes. 03:39 Yes, I have a husband who's like that too and he is chomping at the bit for this weekend because it's actually supposed to be not freezing tomorrow and Sunday. And when he got up this morning after he got his coffee, I said, so should I just plan on you being outside all weekend? And he said, yep. Didn't even bat an eye. So it's a male thing. It's not a kid boy thing. It's not an adult male thing. It's just a male thing. Boys and men like to be outside. Most of them. 04:09 And if they don't, then they like to be in a room with a desk and a computer playing video games or coding things. So they sure do. So when you started making sourdough bread, I need to know, did you kill your starter when you first started it at least once? Did you burn a loaf? I got to know the failures and the successes. So no, I did not kill my starter. I made my own starter. Okay. 04:37 I had great success with it. I didn't have any issues kind of going through that process. I have a couple of friends in my mother-in-law who've made starters multiple times and they're like, it died and I just, I don't know how, but it's very common. So I must have been very grateful and I'm very grateful and I was very lucky that I didn't have that problem. But have I burnt a loaf? 100%. 05:08 have quite the following for our Facebook page and we do some drop-offs for bread. And last week I was just struggling

Today I'm talking with John at Dailey 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with John at Dailey Farms. Good morning, John. How are you? Morning, Mary. I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on today. 00:21 You're welcome. I'm sorry we had some technical difficulties. I don't know what's up with this app, but sometimes it works like a charm and sometimes it fights people. I think it's more about me not figuring out technology fast enough here. Well, that happens too. Yes, yes. All right, so you're in Illinois, right? Correct. We're just on the western side of Illinois here, zone six if you're planting. And yeah, we're a dairy farm. 00:50 Nice and you're a goat dairy farm, right? Mm-hmm, yes. Tell me all about what you do. So about 2015 I decided to have a major career change. I was a desk jockey working in the tech and biotech world and had a career, came to a crossroads and I said I always wanted to be the million dollar question. What would you do if money were no object? I always wanted to be a farmer. And... 01:21 One of the major reasons that came up and so here we are and I was over in Australia and I have lactose issues and they're like, oh, you can't have milk? Yeah, you can. You can just drink goat milk up until that point. I've been drinking almond water and coconut water and oat milk and all the different alternatives and was not a big fan of that. So... 01:51 I said, why isn't anybody doing this in the States? And so I said, maybe I should be the one doing it in the States. So here we are. Yeah. Did I miss it? Did you grow up in Australia or were you just over there? Oh, no. I was, so when I was transitioning careers, I took a little sabbatical and spent a couple weeks over there visiting a friend. And that's when I came across all the people over in the, down in Australia, sipping on goat milk. Okay. 02:21 Now I understand. I apologize for not clarifying. I'm born and raised in Illinois. My mom was born in Illinois and then she moved to Maine when she was like 19 years old. So wow. That's a big move. Yeah. She met my dad, fell in love with him and was like, I go where you go forever. So all right. That's pretty neat. Yeah. I have one of my old roommates moved to Maine and they are now a chicken. They're doing chicken farming. 02:51 Which is funny because we're both in the tech world. We both decided to become farmers. It happens. I, my husband loves, loves, loves gardening and loves having chickens. I do not. So I do a podcast and he raises, takes care of chickens. It works out great. Um, that's a good deal there. And my dad actually was a, a, uh, electrical engineer. 03:18 by trade and then became a bio med tech. Oh, wow. And now he's 81 years old, living on 14 acres in Maine and raising chickens and has a border collie. So there's something about that thing. I think so. Or maybe the romantic idea of being the gentleman farmer as well. I don't know. He's my dad has always been a gentleman. And I mean that with all due sincerity. He is the nicest man you will ever meet. 03:49 So he would have been a gentleman either way. Fantastic. Mm-hmm, best man I know. Well, I don't know if I'd qualify for the gentleman part, but I definitely am farming out here. Hehehehe. 04:03 No. Okay. So I saw that you have goat milk soap and it's made with lard. Sorry, tallow and lye and goat's milk. And I also saw that you sell goat's milk that is pasteurized at your local store. So my question is, do you use the just the raw goat's milk for your soap or do you use? Yes, for the soap we can luckily use the 04:31 It does not need to be pasteurized. But with the process of saponification, which is what makes soap, soap, the temperatures do get up there. So it's slightly pasteurized. Pasteurization is just something the French figured out to make white to make wine and have a longer shelf life back in the 1800s. 04:57 It was a beautiful thing for farmers at the time as well, because it also extended the shelf life of the dairy products they would take to market. Long-winded answer, but during that saponification process, while I'm making my soap, the temperature on that milk does get up at now the same temperature range as traditional pasteurization. The milk you see at the store. 05:25 that doesn't need to be refrigerated. That's been ultra high temperature, pasteurization method, which is several hundred degrees, full other can of worms. Yeah, we make soap here too, and we actually burned our table at one point, because the saponification process gets super freaking hot. 05:51 And if you

Today I'm talking with Aaron at the Qwazy Quail 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Aaron at Qwazy Quail Farm. It's really hard to do two QWs in a row. Good morning, Aaron. How are you? Good morning. Doing good. How about yourself? I'm doing great. You're in Ohio? Yes. We are in Willoughby Hills, Ohio, which is just east of downtown. 00:29 Cleveland by about 12, 13 miles. Okay. Is it super cold there today? It is very cold today. Um, I think it's supposed to be in the teens at the highest today. Well, you've got us beat cause I don't think we're going to see above zero again today in Minnesota. It's been so freaking cold. 00:50 But that's okay, we're gonna get through it and it's gonna warm up next week. And I looked at the long range forecast and we're looking at spring temperatures in about two weeks. I'm very excited about this. Yes, I know all of my birds are very excited about the warmer weather also. Yeah, and I wanna hear all about your birds. So tell me about what you do, Aaron. Okay, so what we do here is we raise Coturnix quail, Bobwhite quail, and we also raise a small flock of chickens. So the... 01:18 Bob white quail we here in Ohio, because they're a native species, you have to have a special permit for those. So we have about a dozen of those right now, just getting into them. Um, as a, I'm not sure exactly what we're going to do with those birds, possibly get into a conservation program with the state of Ohio to repopulate them as due to environmental factors, uh, some farming practices, um, 01:47 predators, things like that. The Bobwhite quail population has dwindled drastically here in Ohio. So I think they're beautiful birds. The sounds that they make are, it sounds like you're almost at a zoo or something like that. It's really cool sounds. The Coturnix quail, we raise several colors of those, which we raise jumbo whites, jumbo Egyptians, jumbo 02:15 And then we have some Celadon and we have some black quail, which the black quail didn't come to the United States until around 2019 and they came from Germany. So there's a lot of people that are starting to get into them. Um, there's some people that have concerns. They have something called a yellow gene, which I don't get too much into the genetics. Um, I've attended a quail con last year, which was in, uh, Miami'sburg, Ohio. 02:45 And they had people, quail enthusiasts and farmers from Canada. And many, many states here in the United States attended that. And they have that every year in the fall. And so there you can meet like-minded quail farmers, people that are doing this as homesteaders, all kinds of different backgrounds in quail, but we specify or specialize in the quail for egg production and for meat. 03:14 We raise many of the jumbos because another thing we do is when you go to a pet store and you're getting some treats for your dogs, you want to make sure that you're offering them the best that they can get. And a lot of times these pet stores will have ingredients that have other stuff in there that's not necessarily the best for our pets. And it was just recently I had run out of our quail treats that we make. 03:42 And both of my dogs ended up getting extremely sick and coughing up and puking up blood and chunks of their innards. That was from a chicken treat that said it was all natural. And when I went and looked up more information on this company, they've got a lot of lawsuits and I almost lost both of my dogs. So what we do here is we raise the quail. The ones that are going to be processed for meat or for dog treats, they go to 04:12 a chicken or poultry processor that's USDA and Department of Agriculture really inspected. They're down in Baltic, Ohio called Pleasant Valley Poultry. And we take them down there and get our birds processed. We bring them back here. We put them in storage. We have our warehouse license so that we can also sell meat to grocery stores, to markets, to chefs and things like that. So. 04:39 But we've got a lot going on here and sometimes I don't know how I find the time to do anything. I was going to say you're pretty deep into the quaildom going on there. A couple things. My dog is actually allergic to chicken so she never gets any kind of poultry. We actually had to switch out her dog food because it turned out that the chicken in the dog food was making her sick to her stomach. So we don't do chicken here for the dog. We do chicken for us. Chicken is great. 05:09 But what I really want to get into is your expertise on quail raising, because I have

Today I'm talking with Julia at Sustainable Driftless, Inc. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you'd like information regarding the documentaries mentioned, click here. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Julia at Sustainable Driftless Incorporated. I think it is Inc., so incorporated. Good morning, Julia. How are you? I am good. I'm good. I'm glad to be here with you. I'm so happy to have you on because I... 00:28 I have been to the Driftless area in Wisconsin once and it's gorgeous, but I don't know all the history and the stories behind it. So I'm very excited to talk to you. You're in La Crosse, Wisconsin? I would say La Crosse kind of geographically might be roughly the center of the Driftless region. I'm actually in the, I call it the suburbs of a very rural area. It's where I live on an 80 acre. 00:58 Homestead. Ooh. But I travel all over the Driftless region. Today I'm in Madison, Wisconsin. And we just do a whole lot of stuff out there in the Driftless. Okay. Well, first off, can you tell me what your part in the organization is and what the organization is? Okay. Let's see. 01:26 About eight years ago, I collaborated with somebody else that I had been working with on another not-for-profit. These two guys have produced mysteries of the driftless through the Mississippi Valley Conservancy, Tim Jacobson and George Howe. And the three of us got together and we formed Sustainable Driftless with the purpose of kind of shining a light on the area 01:55 basic idea is that if you love something, you'll treat it well. So what we're, our attempt was and is to get people to love the driftless region, to see what is around them. There are lots of people that have lived here their entire lives and don't necessarily recognize how precious and fragile and gorgeous it is. I think you have to go outside the region to recognize how special it is sometimes. 02:25 But we're shining a light on that. We produced Decoding the Driftless six years ago, which won some Emmys and worldwide accolades. And I think it's one of the number one documentaries that is shown on public television throughout the nation. And what that has done is it kind of... 02:51 gets people kind of into what this special place is all about. So we've continued on with that, and we had a terrible unexpected loss of George Howe about a year ago in a farming accident. And my role as one of the original founders and vice president, and now also is to find new ways to... 03:16 shine the light on the area and to uplift other organizations that are in this area that do work on sustainability and environmental and wise and smart development of the area, water quality issues, soil issues. We just want to get all those individual groups working, not necessarily working together, but aware of one another and having the general public be aware of everybody because 03:46 It's a really exciting time and it's a really exciting story to see this kind of efforts for biodiversity and home setting and gardening and all kinds of good stuff. Okay, that helps. Thank you. So for those who are listening that don't know about the driftless area, can you explain what it is? 04:12 The driftless area is a very unique part of the Midwest. And what it is, is over the two last ice ages, I think the last one was 10,000 years ago, there was no glacier drift as things melted. There was no glacier scraping this area. So you're not going to find drift from... 04:41 Far away. 04:44 that has landed in this area because the glaciers went around both times. And it's kind of like an amoeba-shaped island that encompasses 32 counties in Wisconsin, southwest Wisconsin, western Wisconsin, a bit of Minnesota, southeast Minnesota, and northeast Iowa, and a little tiny bit of Illinois. And it has karst geology, which makes it very interesting. 05:15 It has what geology? Karst geology, which is kind of limestone. It's like the Swiss cheese of rocks. So the rain and the water that, and this was once underwater as everything melted, but the rain and the water that falls on the hills and at this area and the valley percolates through kind of a 05:40 Swiss cheese, I would say, imaginary rock system. So the water kind of goes through it and absorbs all those minerals and ends up in a very abundant water supply in the area. Okay, thank you. I just missed the word and I didn't understand what you said. Okay, so one of the things that I either understand or misunderstand about the driftless area and people who grow food 06:09 is that you're not supposed to use man-made herbicides or pesticides or fertil

Today I'm talking with Erin at the Erin Anderson Coaching. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Erin at Erin Anderson Coaching. Good morning, Erin. How are you? I'm great. How are you, Mary? I'm good. It's a really bright sunny day here in Minnesota, but it is cold. It's really cold here. 00:26 Yeah, it is in Utah. It's not bright sunny either. We've got the clouds, the cold, and the uncomfortable. We had that yesterday. Today it's just nice to see the sun pouring through my window because yesterday was just gray and I'm not even sure we got above zero. If we did, it wasn't by much. Yeah, yep, yep, yep. That's kind of where we're at right now. But you live in one of the most beautiful states in the whole 50 of them. 00:54 I love Utah, but you know, I've been to Minnesota too, and I've been to Montana and a lot of the 50, like the western half of the 50 states I should say. There's just beauty all over. There really is. Yes, I agree. I agree. I have done a lot of road trips between Minnesota and Maine over my last 20 years. And I grew up in Maine, so my parents and my family still live there. But 01:20 Yeah, it's always a joy for me to do a road trip from here to there because it's always just so pretty. And I don't like flying, so if I'm going to travel, it's going to be by car. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. I get that. Okay. So, Erin is a coach, a life coach, I guess is what I would say. Life and business. Yeah. And that might seem weird for a podcast, I mean a Homestead podcast, but it's really not. 01:46 Because there's a lot going on in the world that Erin might be able to help us understand and work through it herself. So Erin, tell me about yourself and what you do. Yeah, so let me tell you this much. I'm a homesteader myself, so there's that. We have 28 chickens. We built them literally a chicken Taj Mahal out in our yard. And so, you know, we gather our own eggs. We have family that raises dairy cows. And so, 02:15 you know, we can get our own dairy and things like that. So like we totally, totally understand like the homesteading thing. But what I love to do, um, is I love helping women, especially women, entrepreneurs heal from residual trauma. Uh, because you know, there's, there's so many things that women can do, uh, especially in the homesteading community, like we're, they're creators. 02:44 those women are massive creators in the homesteading community. And when we're being plagued with residual trauma, often what I see happening is we're not able to live our best life. We're not able to create the things that we want to create or even, you know, do the things that we want to do because we're always plagued with this. But what if, you know what I mean? 03:14 And so the thing that I love to do is I really love to help women heal those things. So that way they can turn around and they can create everything that they want to create with confidence, knowing it's going to work out, like knowing it's going to work out, not wondering. And believing in themselves because there's something beautiful about a woman. 03:43 who is really in that creative energy. Hmm. Absolutely. I agree. And the thing that's hard about living in the, the after effects of trauma is that you cannot move forward and extend the energy you're extending on feeling bad into doing something good. Yeah. Yes. It's, it's really hard. And 04:10 The reason I wanted to chat with you is because right now, there's a lot going on that is making people feel kind of anxious. And one of the things that's going on is people who have homesteads are kind of concerned about their funding. People have farms or homesteads or ranches because a lot of funding comes from the government and there's some stuff going on in the government that people are worried about. They're not gonna get funding to do what they're usually supposed to do. So, 04:38 How do you handle that as the person who is anxious about your future? So number one, you've got to get really close with your money story, right? When you are dealing with the anxiety of, oh my gosh, I don't know if I'm going to have that funding. I don't know if I'm going to have this. And you're feeling that there's a reason. And again, like it's. 05:06 probably has something to do with some type of trauma. There's several different types of trauma. But I would guess that if you're dealing with a lot of money trauma or these fears around money, you're probably dealing with something in childhood, like some sort of childhood or developmental trauma, or it can also be a societal

Today I'm talking with Anya at the Hedgerow Collective. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Anya at the Hedgerow Collective. Good afternoon. Well, I guess it's afternoon for you, but it's still morning for me. So good morning, afternoon, Anya. How are you? Good morning and afternoon to you as well. I am well today. 00:27 Pennsylvania, Southeast Pennsylvania where I live. It is a overcast day and it smells and feels like snow. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's not an overcast day here in Minnesota. It is just as bright as it could possibly be and it's very cold. I don't think we've come up zero yet today. Oof. Yeah. So that's exciting. 00:53 And I'm glad you opened with the weather because I usually do because like I've said, it's how I express my esteem for the people that I'm talking to. I always try to find out the weather where you guys are. So, all right. So I'm going to open this up with the fact that you're not really a homesteader, but reading your bio on your website, you are definitely a nature girl. So I figured they tie in pretty well. So tell me about yourself and what you do. 01:18 I agree, they tie in so well and I actually do a little bit of homesteading but I'm very, very new at it. But I am a nature girl, I am a gardener, I am a photographer and I also do horse massage which is really delightful. And I live on a little... 01:45 property in a town called Marietta, Pennsylvania. It is ancient Susquehannaq land. And we moved here about three years ago. And at the time, my husband said, we're not gonna have any big trees. We're not going to do anything wild like that. We don't want the maintenance of trees falling on the house or the leaves or anything. 02:15 And over, you know, these past three years, we've compromised and we now have 11 trees on the property. Yay. Yes, and more to come. There's apple trees that are sitting in my sunroom. I have serviceberry trees that are being shipped to me. So we've created a really wonderful little habitat here that I 02:45 Um, really, it feels really magical here, even though we're in, you know, we have neighbors on all sides and a road in front of our house. And, you know, I think, I think part of my goal is that you don't need to have, you know, 10 acres, 50 acres to be able to do this type of, of work and grow your own food or grow, create habitats or anything like that. You know, you can work with what you have and it's... 03:13 absolutely possible. I mean, it's great if you do have 10 acres or 60 acres or 500 acres, but you don't have to have those things in order to grow some really amazing flowers or food or both. Yeah. Yep. That's one of the things that I'm trying to promote on this podcast is that you can do this stuff in a little tiny house on a tenth of an acre, or you can do it on lots of acres. But the point is you can do it. 03:43 Absolutely. I mean, you can find cheap things like baby pools or old, like food grade buckets on Facebook Marketplace for super cheap and you can grow things. Yeah. You mentioned apple trees. My husband actually went out and pruned our peach trees and our apple trees this past weekend and brought in the stems and he's rooting them. 04:09 so that we can have saplings because if it works, they'll turn into more trees. Absolutely. Yeah. That's great. Really excited. I have a sapling. Well, I'm trying, not quite a sapling yet. I'm manifesting that it will become a sapling of a witch hazel cutting. So that's my little project. I have it sitting next to me here and I just, I talk to her every day. I'm like, come on, you can do it. 04:38 Spread those roots. Do your thing. Yeah, I was going to say talk to it and sing to it. It'll come up every day. Yeah. OK. You mentioned Susquehanna land. Is that Native American land? That is Native American land. They were. Marietta is situated along the Susquehanna River, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay, and it's one of the largest watersheds in Pennsylvania. The Susquehanna River. 05:07 is this is some fun facts here. It's 444 miles long and it is the longest unnavigable river in the United States. Because the Susquehanna goes from 200 feet deep to two inches deep so quickly, it's impossible to navigate it. 05:36 with any type of boat. And historically, they fixed, fixed, quote unquote, that by using canals, the remnants of which are still litter the sides of the river. But yes, the Sesquihana people were on these shores. They were part of the Lena Lenape tribes of the Northeast. 06:04 I try to acknowledge that they were here far, far longer and well before any

Today I'm talking with Sam at My Homestead Heart. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Sam at My Homestead Heart. Good morning, Sam, how are you? Good morning, Miss Mary. I'm doing wonderful, how about yourself? I'm good, and I love that you said Miss Mary because it's a very southern thing, I love that. 00:27 Yeah, that's what I am. I am from the deep south. Yes, and you have the most lovely sweet tea accent. I'm telling you, every time I talk to somebody with a southern accent like yours, I just smile. My face just breaks open because it's so pretty. Oh, you're so kind. Nah, I'm not kind. I'm honest. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't say anything because I'm not rude. Well, thank you so much. It's funny that I still carry it. 00:57 because I have not lived home in decades, but apparently I still bring it with me in some sort of way. However, if you were to listen to my family members, it is much more thick, thicker than mine. Wow. 01:18 Okay, well they must be terribly difficult to understand because you are clear as a bell. So if it's a lot thicker than yours, I probably would be like, Oh man, my sister's her accent. She's never, she was born and raised down there and, um, I can probably count on her hand the amount of times that she has left the area in her lifetime. And she is thick, thick, thick Southern drawl. 01:47 Well, I'm going to slip into it a couple of times because it's the one I pick up easiest. So don't be mad at me if I start sounding like a Southerner. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do, Sam. Well, I am a military veteran. So I served a career in the military and separated back in 2005. 02:16 And my husband was still active duty. He actually just retired a few years ago and we are parents to a 10 year old. He's about to turn 11 next week. So yay on that. But, um, but yeah, we got transferred up here in Pennsylvania back in 2018 through the military and, um, just fell in love with it up here. I'm we spent. 02:45 the majority of our careers down south, whether it be in mostly Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, spent some time in South Carolina, and then lo and behold, I don't know what in the world they were thinking, sending a bunch of country folk up here in Pennsylvania. But he took orders. His last set of orders were out of Philadelphia. 03:15 And we were like, Oh my goodness, what in the world? They, them city folk going to come see us hauling the tractor on a trailer coming to town. But we were lucky enough to be able to find some country space out here in the south eastern part, it's about, well, we've, we rented for a little bit in, in 03:43 outside of Westchester in a little Brandywine area, had found some country area that we rented until we found a place here. We moved here, it's about an hour outside of Philadelphia, right above the Maryland line. It's, you know, country, lots of Amish farms around us. And we got real lucky and found a 20 something acre little farmstead, so. 04:10 You know, we just love it. We love the weather. It's not so hot up here like it is down south and just the rolling hills and man, the change of colors and the seasons. It's just, we just love it. 04:28 Well good. Now you keep saying you're from the deep south. Where are you originally from? Mississippi. Okay. Way down by the in the bayou. Okay as much as I love southern accents I'm very bad at parsing which one I'm listening to so I had to ask. A lot of people say that I'm from Texas and no it's not Texas not Texas. Not many people you know we don't get a lot of tourists down where I'm from so not a little not a lot of people get 04:57 experience or particular dialect, I guess I should say. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so I messaged with you yesterday and you were saying that you're new to homesteading. So what inspired you to get into homesteading? Well, to be honest, you know, when we were living in West, when we first moved to Pennsylvania, my son at the time was four years old. 05:27 And we were living in Pennsylvania for about six months and before he was diagnosed with some autoimmune issues. And, you know, at, um, four years old, you know, I mean, he's just a baby, right. And then, um, as his condition would progress over, you know, time, he would 05:57 have more issues to have to deal with. And I just did not want to see my son on so many medications at such a young age. And so that's really where I began my whole deep dive into how can I help my baby, you know, have a good quality of life without having to take all these medicines. 06:28 And so, you

Today I'm talking with Sean at Blooming Health Farms. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Sean at Blooming Health Farms. Good morning, Sean. How are you? Hey, good morning, Mary. How are you doing? I'm good. It's, is it nice in Colorado, number one? It is gorgeous. It is chilly, but the sun here makes it feel like it's tropical. 00:31 Well, we have sunshine in Minnesota too, but it's not tropical. It's probably 10 degrees outside. Oh, that's fair. That's fair. And I always ask about how the weather is, where the person is that I'm talking to because how I show my esteem for the people I talk to. So that's why. Okay, Sean, tell me about what you do because I know it has to do with chickens. Yes. 00:59 Blooming Health Farms is a nonprofit aquaponic chicken farm in northern Colorado. We're located in Greeley. And I use that word aquaponic chicken farm, A, to get a little bit of attention, but it showcases some of the neat stuff we do. We actually grow some of our own chicken feed using aquaponics and hydroponic methods, as well as take care of our chickens in some really humane, compassionate way. 01:29 that we do with chickens, partially to run an egg laying operation and sell chicken feed. But we also work with at-risk youth and teach them entrepreneurship and give them mental health support so they get themselves out of those cycles that they find themselves in. That is stellar. Okay. So what is, okay, first off, what's the difference between hydroponic and aquaponic? Because I didn't know. 01:58 that they were separate things. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of like, you know, big funny fancy words in agriculture these days. So I like to say that hydroponics is an umbrella form of agriculture, like the big thing. And it really simply means to use water to grow plants that aren't growing in a soil medium. 02:22 So we're growing plants with a nutrient-rich solution, a solution that has all of the minerals and vitamins plants need. And we're doing that in something like just water or something that has an inert media, a media without nutrition. Aquaponics is a subset of that, a part of hydroponics, in which we 02:47 grow fish in a body of water and then we use the fish water to actually fertilize our plants, if that makes sense. So the fish are eating this really highly nutritious, high protein fish food and their waste product is going into the water. There's a bunch of naturally occurring bacteria that live in the atmosphere and they turn that fish waste from their ammonia waste into usable plant nutrients, mostly nitrates. 03:18 Okay, that helps. Thank you. Because I was listening and I'm like, I didn't know there was a difference. What's the difference? So you just defined it. Thank you. All right. So Sean, what brought you to doing this? Because everybody has a reason. Yes. You know, years ago, I found myself living up in the mountains here in Colorado. I lived in an area called South Park and I was a professional photographer. 03:46 And I would meet a lot of people that I was taking pictures of that was saying like, hey, Sean, you're living the dream up here. And I would reflect on the things that I was doing. And I was living as a poor ski bum, if you will. And I really did a lot of thinking and stuff. And I decided to get myself back in school. And a lot of that had to do with the fact that, to be honest with you, 04:14 I grew my first pot plant while I was up in the mountains and I did a terrible job at it. I tried to grow it hydroponically in a way that I mentioned earlier and the plant came out and it was, for lack of better words, just very poor. There were no flowers on it. So if I wanted to use it for marijuana, it was pretty much worthless. And it drove me down this path of trying to figure out how to do it better. 04:44 if that makes sense, to try to grow a better plant. Well, while I was researching and studying, I saw this picture in a book of a hydroponic tomato growing in the Epcot Center. And it was this tomato in a large pot growing over the size of a tennis court. And there were these tomatoes the size of baseballs. There was like 30,000 of these tomatoes on this tennis court size. 05:12 spot and I said to myself, oh my goodness, I think we should be growing food this way. And it led me down this path of trying to grow tomatoes hydroponically. So I literally rushed down from the mountains and enrolled in a community college and started studying agriculture, studying biology, studying chemistry. And I fell in love with just this whole world of trying to grow things. 05:42 hydroponically. Well,

Today I'm talking with Brecca at REKO- Local Food Community. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Brecca at REKO Local Food Community. Good afternoon, Brecca. It's one o'clock in the afternoon. I don't know where I was. Hello. Nice to be with you. You too. How are you? 00:26 I'm doing so well, thanks. We're trying to stay warm over here in my neck of the woods, but from listening to some of your previous podcasts, we're not that cold. So we hit two degrees this morning, and I was thinking I was not having a good day, but then I heard negative 25, and I was like, I'm OK. I'm OK. Well, it's really funny, because they're predicting rain for this afternoon here. It's like 35 degrees today. Oh my goodness, yeah. No fun. 00:52 It would be really, really nice if the weather would reflect what month we're actually in. Wouldn't it? That's true. My husband and I were talking in last year in January is when we got all our snow. So we didn't have snow all winter last year till January came and that's when we got pelted. And this year's been similar. We haven't been pelted with snow, but the temperatures are super cold. So I'm like, I'm ready to kind of start breaking into spring, not have the winter. 01:23 It's not that far away. We are rolling into February here soon. So there's hope. And I feel like all I do is talk about the weather at the beginning of every podcast episode. But like I've said, it's how I express my care for who I'm talking to. So well, when you're talking homesteading weather, that's what we're all thinking about. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So tell me about yourself and about RICO and what does REKO stand for? It's R-E-K-O. Yeah. So 01:50 REKO is actually a Swedish acronym that was put out by a Finnish farmer, and it just means fair consumption. So REKO itself here in Idaho started in 2020 around COVID craziness. So we had farmers markets that were threatening not to open because they couldn't meet the demands of city authorities and health authorities. 02:19 We had restaurants that were closed down. And for all of our small producers here in Idaho, those were two of the biggest cells for their farms and their homesteads was restaurants and farmers markets. And so we had Tia Groves with... 02:40 They no longer run it, but they sold mushrooms at the time. And she actually started Rico here locally as a collaboration of producers to create a way to continue to sell our goods because we were still producing them, but we just lost all of our avenues of selling them during 2020. 03:01 Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Did I see that it doesn't cost money to be part of it on your website or did I misread that? So actually, so there's two different parts of Rico. There's Rico the app, which is a great resource that has been produced by a couple of tech guys out of Utah and we just teamed up with them. 03:27 to be able to use the app, but the app is created with the producer in mind. So it is absolutely free for the producer. There's no cost. It is a storefront. So it's a great way to have a website that you can use that storefront of REKO through the app or if they're on a computer it goes through a website and 03:54 Sorry, my computer just notified me it's low. So anyways, but either way we can go, the producers aren't paying for it. There is a small fee that's asked from the customer at checkout and that's how the app is paid for. So we have a lot of producers here that have really taken advantage of that and created websites with that. 04:22 with REKO built in as the purchasing power for their website. So it saves our producers money on fees. It saves our producers money on having a storefront that's online, right? Because I know for our particular business, we have our own website and we set it up with WooCommerce years before REKO app was ever available. And we pay a lot of money for that every year. So 04:50 It is REKO. The app is definitely set up with producers in mind and it is a free tool for producers when that is When we talk about the farmers when we talk about the farmers market here in Idaho We have created a collaboration of vendors that have come together as REKO Treasure Valley And we actually created a farmers market out of it. So it's an online farmers market 05:17 We do charge, if you were to participate in all eight locations, it is $30 a month. So it's still very affordable. That $30 a month that we all pitch in goes to advertising the farmers market. So that's literally the only thing it pays for, but it's been a great resource for us as producers to

Today I'm talking with Kristi at Idaho Falls Community Garden Association. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Kristi at Idaho Falls Community Garden Association. Wow, that's a mouthful. Good morning, Kristi. How are you? Good morning. Hi. Doing good? Good. 00:30 I have a goal to talk to as many community garden places as I can in 2025, and I think you're the first one, Christy, so tell me about yourself. Lived in Idaho for almost 50 years now, came from Colorado. Got involved with community gardens when my kids were teenagers and growing more independent by the moment. 00:59 and we were all looking for something to put some energy into. And I came to the idea of getting a community garden started here in our small town. Oh, so it's your baby. Well, myself and, you know, three or four other people were part of the original group who started it. I have. 01:29 maintain my connection with it since we started it in 1995. So, yeah. That's amazing. Congratulations. I love that. Oh, thank you. Well, tell me about the community garden. How does it work? Well, we have now three community gardens. Our town is roughly 60,000 people, so it's not huge. We started with a single garden of about a quarter acre. 01:58 And within a couple of years, we started a second one in another part of town that's about a half an acre. And then five years after that, we started a third one that is a full acre. That was in 2003. And the gardens are open to the public. 02:24 Anybody can garden there. We have a formal registration every year where people sign up and get a plot assigned. Then they have their own garden space, including access to water. They bring their own tools and hoses and all that kind of stuff. They're free to grow whatever they want as long as it's legal and doesn't intrude into the spaces of a garden. 02:54 nearby gardeners. There's an annual cost, which up until this year was $40 for new gardeners. And then if you are a gardener in good standing, which means you've participated for one full summer and met all the membership requirements, which primarily 03:19 involve taking care of your own plot and then contributing to the community areas of the garden with eight hours of effort over the course of the whole season. So if you've done that, then your fee for the following years, as long as you maintain that standing, is half the original cost. 03:47 We have garden coordinators at each garden who are gardeners there and it's their challenge and Responsibility to keep the gardeners engaged to be sure that there's nobody causing problems in the garden to help people who are Maybe beginning gardeners pair them up with other gardeners who have more experience or help them themselves if they have time 04:17 And they participate in our board meetings so that they can give us feedback and tell us what they need and how things are going. And that's been the evolution over these now 30 years. 04:36 Some things have changed, but the basic premise and process is similar to when we started. Wow, that is super cool. So I feel like not only are you growing plants, you're growing friendships with this community. Well, that was a large part of the motivation in the beginning was to build a place. 05:04 where people in the community could gather to share a common interest in gardening and growing stuff and exploring new varieties and learning how to do things in new ways with people that they may or may not have a lot in common with otherwise. And it's a really good way to build a sense of community that is not founded on religious beliefs or political beliefs, but on a common interest in 05:34 seeing delicious, beautiful things growing. That's a wonderful premise, Kristy. I'm so glad you started a community garden. That's amazing. So how big is the smallest plot that someone can get? Well, you know, that's pretty negotiable. Our smallest formal plot is about 10 by 10, so 100 square feet. 06:04 But if a gardener comes and they're new or they know their time constraints are forbidding or they just want less space, we're happy to divide a plot and give them half a 10 by 10. Typically people want larger plots rather than smaller plots, but we have had it happen that somebody says, well that's just too much for me. And the garden coordinators, it's 06:33 at their discretion, they can just divide the plot and say, okay, here's what you need, use this. So that's how, and the largest plot is probably 20 by 30, which is a lot. And that takes an experienced gardener to really keep control of that. One of the

Today I'm talking with Brian at Sunny Acres 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Brian at Sunny Acres Farms. Good morning, Brian. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing good. How are you? I'm good. You're in Arkansas. I know we already established that before I hit record, but I like people to know where I'm talking to people. 00:28 So you're in Arkansas and you said it's kind of chilly there this morning. It is. Yeah. We're experiencing some single digits. It's been, this is day five, uh, uh, that will not get above freezing, which is pretty unusual for this area, but it's becoming more usual as we have these extreme weather fluctuations, but, uh, yeah, that's pretty chilly today. Yeah. Today at noon, we're supposed to be out of our, um, frigid air. 00:58 warning. So we've been really cold for at least four days now. So I'm very much looking forward to not having it be so cold. Yeah. Yeah, we have a little bit of livestock too. And when it's this cold, it's always an added chores to keep the ice broken up on the water and keep them in a good situation when it's this cold. 01:25 Yeah, and they're not used to it. I feel so bad for the animals that aren't used to it being so cold because they don't know what to do. Right, yeah. They're like, what is this? This is not right. Okay, so tell me about what you do, Brian. All right, so my partner Becca and I started Sunny Acres Farms. We just completed our third season, so we're going into season number four. 01:54 started with backyard gardening that just kept getting larger and larger until we had a 1,500 square foot garden in our backyard, which was able to produce way more food than we could ever eat. So we just started selling some and creating pickles and canned goods and giving it away or selling some to our friends and family and things like that. When the COVID pandemic hit, we were both... 02:23 had careers in restaurants. We were in restaurant management and bar management and things like that. But that shut everything down for quite a while. And that kind of really made us reevaluate both of our careers. And we had an opportunity to – well, I went to a trade school basically. It's called CAF, the Center for Arkansas Farms and Foods, during the 2021 or 2020 year. 02:50 and it's basically 11 month long trade school for farming. It was super interesting because I grew up gardening with my grandparents on both sides, had a big garden that fed the family and everything. But farming was something that was definitely a lot different, a lot more different than I thought it was gonna be. I kind of went into it thinking like, oh, I know how to grow food. Like I'm a pretty good gardener. And you get into the actual farming techniques and what it takes to maintain a farm, or to keep a farm producing. 03:19 week after week throughout the entire year is much different than a home garden. So, yeah, so 2020 was kind of when we really decided to shift our focus from kind of hobby gardening for ourselves and pursuing other careers to really turning growing food into our passion. You know, it was already a passion of ours, but like turning our passion into something that could also make us money. And so that's kind of been the start of our journey starting there. 03:49 Completing year three so a lot of people that have a story like yours and trust me I've heard it over the last year on this podcast, but everybody's story is different. Did you ever think you'd be doing this? No, man If you would have asked me five even just five years ago like before like right before the pandemic if you would have asked me this I would have not guessed this or 04:14 I might have believed you because I was into gardening but it would have been like, really? That's where I'm going to be in five years? I would have never guessed that. That wasn't really ever the plan. I've always enjoyed growing food. When I was in college, my very first apartment, I got a lot of my neighbors to get involved and we in the courtyard just created a raised bed garden so we could all kind of grow our own little bit of a… 04:41 of our own food there. And it's always just been fun for me. So I've always enjoyed the aspect of growing food and enjoyed the quality of food you get from homegrown food. So yeah, I mean, I wouldn't have guessed it, but it was kind of the next logical step if restaurants weren't going to be my career. I love that you enlisted your neighbors in the apartment building. That's amazing. 05:08 Yeah, and so I went back to that apartment building in years p

Today I'm talking with Roy at Morning Song Orchard. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Roy at Morning Song Orchard. Good afternoon, Roy. How are you? Good afternoon. How are you? I'm good. You're in Oklahoma? Yes, ma'am, I am. I'm in Minnesota. It is very, very cold here today. How is it where you are? 00:28 I woke up this morning fed the chickens at two degrees. Oh, well, I've got you beat. I think it's probably still minus 10 here. Well, you can keep it. Yeah, yeah, we're going to keep it for another couple of months. And then as we say in Minnesota, we live in Minnesota and put up with the winter because spring, summer and fall are so beautiful. So let me ask you a question. We just got done watching. 00:56 Fargo wasn't that supposedly filmed up in that area? Yes, supposedly yes. And yes, that's what Minnesotans sound like I'm not from I'm not from Minnesota originally. So I you probably won't hear it from me. Oh, okay. I I've tried really hard to dump the main accent that I had 01:21 grown up with and not adopt the Minnesota accent. I try really hard not to have any accent. Yeah, similarly, that's the same as myself. I'm actually from New York originally. So I've been around Southerners all my life. Yeah, and honestly, the Southern accents are so lovely and so sweet that if you talk with a Southerner, all people are going to be thrilled to listen to you. 01:50 the New England and the Northeast states, not as much. I don't know what it is, but maybe we just sound rude if we live there, I don't know. No, there is an allure with the Southern accent, I have to admit. It's very, very sweet. It's like sweet tea and lemons, it's good. Okay, so tell me about what you do at the orchards. What do you grow? 02:18 Well, we actually started out here growing chestnut trees. And there was a reason behind that. I stopped working in my construction company when we built our house. And I was like, you know, we should actually start doing something here that's totally different than what the mainstream is used to in Oklahoma. 02:48 Excuse me, the nut industry out here is pecans. And I was like, well, why don't we introduce chestnuts and hazelnuts? I did the research. My background is in horticulture academically. And I was like, well, I think we can do it in this particular zone. So we tried it. And we wanted to bring an old culture. 03:16 to an area that's never seen it before because America grew up on this, especially on the East Coast, right, with chestnuts until the blight hit and wiped out the American chestnut. So long story short, we started getting into those. We planted 3000 blackberry plants. So we started getting into that. Just got our hands into a lot of things. 03:44 Now we're doing blackberries, elderberries, chestnuts, hazelnuts, and some grapes. Nice. That's a very eclectic group of things to grow. It is. Yeah, that's great. So do the hazelnuts and the chestnuts do really well? They do excellent down here. Now these are hybrids because... 04:12 We can't grow American chestnuts to this day. Nobody can, not even the American Chestnut Foundation. Okay. We're trying, so we have hybrids, and the ones that I grow on my property are trademarked under the name Dunstan, D-U-N-S-T-A-N, and they do really well, exceptionally well out here. We get some really large nuts, 04:42 Interestingly enough, the deer have never seen a chestnut out here. And chestnuts are probably the healthiest nut for humans and animals that, that there is other than macadamia. Okay. 04:59 Okay, so what other than chestnuts roasting on an open fire from the Christmas song, what are chestnuts used for? 05:10 Good question. I've not really had that question before. The chestnut tree used to be used for lots of things. And, and because it's been out of use for well over a hundred years, um, it's kind of gotten, gotten away and going more towards oak trees. So the, the use. 05:37 of chestnut seeds from an industrial standpoint, I would say there's absolutely nothing unlike hazelnuts where you get Nutella from hazelnuts. But chestnuts are, they're so high in carbohydrates that if it were to become a market again, they'd be excellent crops for feed for pigs, for instance. 06:05 Because the high carbohydrates, they can keep animals warm for the wintertime. The wood itself from the tree is beautiful. If you look at any antique furniture made out of chestnut. But other than that, I really don't think there's a market for the chestnut itself at this point. 06:29 Okay. I was just looking at Google while you were talk

Today I'm talking with Alexa at Go Green With Alexa. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Alexa at Go Green with Alexa. Good morning, how are you? Good morning, I'm well, how are you? I'm good, you're in Florida? Yes, I am. I know it's a little colder than it should be there, but I bet you're not as cold as Minnesota this morning. Yeah, I bet I'm not. 00:30 It's, I think it's minus 13 and I think the real feel or the wind chill or whatever they're calling it now is minus 32. Oh, wow, quite the difference. Yeah, it's 65 here and it's raining, but otherwise can't complain. Okay, what's the nearest city to you? I would say Fort Lauderdale, about 20 minutes away, north. Okay, all right. My daughter's in St. Petersburg. Yeah. 00:57 So she's been like, it's kind of cold here. And I'm like, I don't want to hear it, kid. I was just there last week and it was freezing. Yeah. My definition of freezing. Yeah, I said, you grew up in Minnesota. You know what real freezing feels like. I don't want to hear it. Just stop. She's laughed. She's like, OK, fine. So tell me about yourself and what you do, ma'am. Yes. So I am a sustainability copywriter by trade. 01:26 And I also create sustainability content on my own for the world to see and really just to show people how fun and exciting and how you can get creative with sustainability in your daily life. Awesome. I'm going to pull a page out of my other podcaster friends. Podcast she actually does a podcast about sustainability. And then one question she asks on every episode is, 01:54 What does sustainability mean to you? So what does sustainability mean to you, Alexa? Yeah. So sustainability means to me is what it means is making the least amount of impact on the planet. And that means by, by, by the means of reducing our waste, reducing our purchases, reducing, or not even just reducing the purchases, but being more mindful of the purchase. 02:23 where we're purchasing from and what it's supporting. And really just thinking about the end of life of everything before we make that purchase. It's just being a conscious consumer and also an advocate for the environment. That is an excellent answer. I love that. Thank you. So how did you get into this, the copywriting and sustainability? Yeah, so for copywriting, basically it was a, out of, 02:52 2020 out of the pandemic. I just realized that I didn't want to do what I was doing. I was, I went to school to be, I was pre-med in school to eventually hopefully be a doctor. I decided at the end of my college career that I did not want to do that anymore. I had degrees in biomedical science and public health. And while those might seem 03:19 unrelated to sustainability, I would say that at least the biomedical science gave me a great foundation into science and the overall world of the chemical processes and biological processes of the natural world. And then also on the flip side, the public health degree gave me that foundation of understanding how our systems are currently in place and how they actually all work together. 03:47 health, it's also about community, it's also about the way we live our lives. And the environmental aspect is also a piece of that. So it's something that always fascinated me. I was lucky enough to grow up in a family that really values sustainability and conservation. My parents are both immigrants from Brazil and I grew up in the scuba diving industry down here in South Florida. They had a business for 23 years of my life. They sold it when I was 25 and I was very much part of the business. 04:17 and worked there most of my life. And just being part of that, it shaped me. We composted at home. We were very conscious about what we used and what we threw away. And my parents participated in a lot of conservation efforts as part of their business, because that was something that always was important to them. So just growing up in that environment always caused me to just, I think, view things a little differently than my peers. 04:46 And I didn't really notice that until I went to college, to be quite honest. I obviously knew that my parents were, you know, different, um, than my peers and the way they thought about things and, and approach things was different, but I didn't really realize how different it was until I went to college and, um, was put in the position of, you know, cooking for myself, fending for myself, and then realizing that, oh, wow, I'm throwing a lot of this organic material into the garbage. And I obviously didn't feel. 05:15 It didn't feel right by me. So that's when I started getting

Today I'm talking with Kimberlee at Shades of Green Urban 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Kimberlee at Shades of Green Urban Farm. Good afternoon, Kimberlee. How are you? I'm good, Mary. Thanks. How are you? I'm doing. I'm still alive. I'm telling you, I'm really glad to be through this sickness. 00:27 My podcasts for the last three or four have just sounded like crap. I'm so sad about it. So you're in Phoenix? Yeah, I'm in Phoenix. Sunny, sunny Phoenix. Is it warm? It is warm. It's kind of well, I see that but it's been a little cool, cool for us. We've got down to like 30 degrees within the last few few days. But of course the 00:56 at night. But of course, the days get a little bit warmer, you know, pushing 60s and upwards to 70s. But for us, that's kind of cool. Sure. Sure. Well, I guess just a little bit of background about me. Like I said, we're here in sunny Phoenix and kind of just the way we got started, just kind of always having a passion for plants. 01:24 I love, love, love anything plants, mostly houseplants kind of a thing. Sustainability. Love the idea of building meaningful connections with the community and bringing the community together. And what kind of really started is this really kind of a small dream of mine of, you know, building this plant idea, the microgreens piece of things really kind of flourished into this. 01:50 of multifaceted business idea of mine, which really focuses on the microgreens piece of things, the business side, houseplants, and then our homemade home goods that we do. My daughter is an amazing artist. She does fantastic pottery. She throws amazing pieces of pottery and she makes 02:19 homemade rug, she's got this loom and she makes amazing rugs and she's just freaking incredible. With that, we just have this side business thing that we do with the home goods piece of that and the house plants that we do along with the microgreens, which is the side business type of thing. It's a broader aspect of things, but microgreens in and of itself I think is what you wanted me to talk about. 02:46 Well, sure, but everything you just said falls under the headings of my podcast topic. Yeah. So we can talk about it all if you want, but you're multifaceted is what you're saying. Multifaceted, yeah. But really for the microgreens piece of things, kind of what we do with that is in a nutshell, we really specialize in growing and delivering the freshest microgreens to 03:12 to people's homes, to restaurants, to local markets. We visit, as a matter of fact, I'm growing a crop right now for a farmer's market that I'm doing on Saturdays. We do a lot of farmer's markets. So our mission really is pretty simple. It's just to bring a touch of green into the lives of those that we're supporting. The community, we really wanna bring that touch of green into the community that we're here with. 03:41 We deliver within 24 hours after harvest. So we ensure that our customers are getting the highest quality and the freshest flavor that they can. So it's pretty simple. It's a pretty simple business model. Harvest within 24 hours or deliver within 24 hours of harvest. So it's pretty simple. Most of our greens we can grow within 10 days, just depending on which green it is or which 04:09 micro that they choose. We have a variety of different microgreens that we do grow. Our standard really can kind of grow within 10 days. So it's a pretty simple business model. Our customers love them. Sunflower is our biggest one. Pea is a big one. Broccoli, of course, is huge. Radish is huge. We have a really awesome variety 04:38 Oh my gosh, it's a super food variety. And then we also have a spicy salad that is one of our customer favorites. 04:51 Okay. So, so did you start out really small? Yeah, we did. Yeah. Started out pretty small. We're still pretty small, to be honest. The grow room that I have right now is probably, I mean, right now, I would say 600 square foot, maybe. Okay. Yeah. It's in our house. And so we've dedicated a spare room of the house. We kind of, you know, carved that out into this sterile little room that we 05:21 We keep with just for the grow room. So it's pretty small. We've got four grow racks in here, all with lights and everything. We'll keep everything pretty much in this room. Nice. Is it warm in that room? It's warm in here, yeah. We keep it at about 72 degrees. Yeah. Yeah, I would love to have a room like that in our house in Minnesota because that would be wonderful on days when it's minus 20 degrees outside. 05:48 Well, the beaut

Today I'm talking with Becca at Moon Ridge Acres. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Becca at Moon Ridge Acres. Good morning, Becca. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. You're in Alberta, Canada? Yes. Central Alberta, near Camrose. Is it super cold there? 00:28 Today not so much. It's actually around minus two But for the weekend, we're going down to minus 25 minus 30, which is a horrible jump real temperature Yeah, yeah, that's Celsius. Oh Yeah, I'm so sorry It's it's it's the jumping around that makes it really challenging because we get used to the cold we're used to these terrible colds, but 00:57 When you go from, you know, plus, in the plus degrees down to minus 30 within a weekend, it, it is hard on everybody. It's hard on the animals, it's hard on us. It's not fun. 01:12 Yeah, the last couple of days here in Minnesota, it's been really, really cold for us. And today it's supposed to hit 30. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 35, I think. I'm talking Fahrenheit. Right. And then, uh, today is Wednesday. So Friday is supposed to be warm again. 01:29 and then Saturday it's supposed to start to drop and then Sunday and Monday it's supposed to be super freaking cold again. I'm like, mother nature, could you stop with the basketball bouncing, Jesus. Yeah, exactly. It's these extremes. It's like, ease into it a little bit, you know? Or just level out for a while. I mean, if it's gonna be cold, stay cold for a while. If it's gonna be warm, stay warm for a while. That would be fine. Absolutely, and like. 01:55 Here with the melting and the freezing and the melting and the freezing, it just makes the roads absolutely horrific for driving. My husband is a full-time trucker, so it makes his job a lot harder to have to deal with ice on the roads. The counties are not always the best at getting out there and getting salt on the roads and taking care of them. It can be pretty treacherous. 02:24 And on the flip side, I bet summer is really beautiful where you are. Stunning, absolutely gorgeous. I was kind of laughing because I had made some videos about George and Katie Vanslake being in Tennessee and how right now they have two hours of daylight more than we have here in Alberta. But then come June, we actually end up with two hours more of daylight than them. 02:53 So it's just always flip-flopping in every way. 03:01 I'm so glad you brought up Katie. I love Miss Katie. I watch Miss Katie's videos every day and very excited that Kennedy just had her baby. Yes, I love it because Katie falls out right before my folding season. So she kind of like fills that gap and gets me super excited for when our babies start to come. And so yeah, watching new babies will never get old. 03:29 No, and she makes me happy because I don't have any animals like that. So I get to live vicariously through her videos, which I'm sure a lot of people do. Right. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. She's brought the joy of, you know, animal ownership to a lot of people. Yes. And she's so... Let's just rave about Katie Vance like for a minute here. Most people won't know who we're talking about. She's a young woman who does videos on... 03:59 Facebook and YouTube and she has mini horses and thoroughbreds and quarter horses and mini cows and goats and I don't even know and she has just been this shining light of How to learn how to take care of livestock and it's been a beautiful progression for her Yeah, if you're if you're interested in raising animals, she is very honest about not knowing everything 04:28 and learning as she goes and trying to share that. So I really like her. Okay, so this isn't about Katie Vance. Like I would love to talk to her, but she's a very busy lady. Absolutely, absolutely. So Becca, tell me about what you do. 04:44 So what do you do at your place? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I think we had a little internet connection there. So we raise miniature horses. So kind of when you asked me to be on the podcast and it was about homesteading, I kind of laughed because I consider myself a bit of a homesteader, but I'm like a really bad one because I do horses. No such thing. No such thing as a bad homesteader. 05:14 Yeah, we do miniature horses and we show them and we are kind of like working towards being on the upper level of that showing and having super high quality animals. I have raised rabbits for a few years now and I dabbled in the meat rabbits a little bit and my pride and joy were my Holland Lops which 05:42 not so great for the sustainability factor, but I love them. And then we have ducks

Today I'm talking with Jim at The Brickson Family 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Jim at the Brickson Family Farm in Baudette, Minnesota, I think is how you say it. Good afternoon, Jim. Good afternoon. It is Baudette. Okay, cool. And you said it's right at the Canadian border? 00:27 Yeah, we're about three miles from the Canadian border. Actually, the town we live in is Pitt, but there's not too many people. The township isn't that big, so they attach us to Bidet. Oh, okay, yep, that makes sense. So you said it's terribly cold up there. It is, it comes with the territory, though. It's the price we pay for solitude, stay away from all the rat race of life sometimes. 00:51 Yes, I understand. We moved to outside of LaSore, Minnesota for exactly that reason because we lived in town, Jordan, Minnesota for 20 something years and we were done. So we moved out in the middle of soybean and cornfields and we love it. We've been here four years and it's so quiet. It's so wonderful. All right. So tell me all about yourself and what you do at your farm. Oh. 01:18 We do a lot of stuff. Right now we're trying to do not so much because it's been cold. But my wife and I are both Navy veterans and work for the Salvation Army after our Navy career for well, until retirement as pastors. So we went back to college at a late stage in our life, became ordained and we thought nothing better to do than start a farm when you're 60. So we bought this 01:46 little home set up here, 50 acres and a house and a few buildings and just kind of been feeling our way through and trying to find out what works for us and what doesn't work for us. And so right now what we're farming is Dexter beef cattle. We have a small herd of Jersey milk cows and I don't know, a couple pigs. I think the pigs are going to go this year. It's just too hard to maintain pigs in the wintertime. 02:15 So we're probably just going to do like a finishing operation. Same thing with chickens during the summer. Yeah, we stopped our chickens back a couple months ago because we didn't want to feed them through the winter because they don't give us a lot of eggs over the winter so they don't earn their keep very well. So I understand what you're saying. It's tough. And they're expensive to keep too. People, you know, they're easy to raise but the bird, I mean chicken feed is expensive and... 02:44 I think we were selling our eggs for like four bucks a dozen at the farmers market and people were kind of scoffing. I'm thinking, wow, that's cheaper than in the stores actually. But no, I think my wife said the other day, there's like 10 bucks a dozen because of this new H1N1 scare. So the price of eggs are going crazy up here. Yeah. My husband stopped at Hy-Vee on the way home yesterday and bought two 18-pack of eggs, two separate containers of 18 eggs. 03:11 and he said it was $9.99 for 18 eggs. Oh, I ate the most expensive egg salad sandwich of my life today for lunch. Right. Yeah. Well, she freeze dried quite a bit of eggs before before we downsize our chickens. Actually, it was the chickens we didn't really didn't really go until. Oh, November, I think was the last of our chickens left here. So we were collecting eggs up until that point. 03:38 Yeah, this inflation is no joke. I'm very worried about people who can't afford to eat right now. And there are people in the world who a year ago could afford to eat just fine. And I bet there's lots who cannot afford to eat right now. And it makes me really sad. We worked on this side of that for about 18 years, my wife and I, with the Salvation Army, trying to provide for those that can't or couldn't. 04:08 And we were surprised because the stereotype that comes with that is that they've always not been able to but I was so shocked as we're going through our time there the amount of new people that were coming because Because life has just gotten too expensive and how humbling that is to have to ask somebody to help them out Yeah. Yep. It's it's a rough time right now and I am 04:32 I am so glad that we moved when we did. We now have room to grow a garden. We canned tomatoes this year. So if nothing else, I will have spaghetti sauce and as long as I can afford pasta, we're good. But it's just crazy. Yeah, it rained up here so bad this year. We didn't really get much. Our garden really was kind of a fail. I don't think anybody's garden up here really did much because of the amount of moisture we had. 04:59 Let's just say if you live in Minnesota and you got a good return on your investme

Today I'm talking with Elm at The Witch's Garden. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Elm at The Witch's Garden. Good morning, how are you? Good morning. Doing just fine. Glad to be with you. Glad to be with you too. You said Tennessee is where you are, right? That's right. The west end of the state. About an hour outside of Memphis. 00:29 Okay, and is it warm there today? It's warming up. We got incredible snow. I haven't seen it like this since we moved here, gosh, 16 years ago. We had a solid eight inches and it was beautiful. No ice, just, you know, felt like Christmas all over again. Well, I'm in Minnesota and you have gotten more snow this winter than we have, which is unheard of. I'm, I'm so confused by mother nature. 00:57 this winter and last winter. Last winter I think we got maybe a foot total for the entire season. So I don't know what's up with Mother Nature, but she's having a lot of fun with us I think. Personally, I think she's a little confused with us as well. Well, I think that's been true since humans started, but you know, it's a thing. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do at The Witch's Garden. 01:23 Sure, we've been in business for about two years. The, uh... 01:29 The head of the business, shall we say, is Sanctuary Apothecary. So I have a little apothecary shop out here. And I'm beginning to do workshops and tours and that kind of thing. The Witch's Garden started as our flagship subscription service. So four times or eight times a year on a seasonal cycle, we send out boxes of ritual and inner work items. So I'm from a pagan tradition, European pagan background. And uh. 01:58 title it the witches garden but we're really at a point where we're working with energy healers we're working with with Yogi Yogi's and those with meditation backgrounds so you know I love our community it's really very party-colored and I wouldn't have it any other way awesome so I don't okay I wanted to talk to you because I tend to identify as pagan if anything 02:25 because I'm not Christian, although people who know me tell me I'm the most Christian, non-Christian person they know. I have a lot of that myself. And I take that as a huge compliment because I try really hard to be kind and helpful and do good in the world. And if that's what they're getting from me, that's what I'm going for. But I also am just, I feel like pagan is so much. 02:55 nature and being in the world and in the moment. And that's how I am with everything. So, Parla doesn't want to talk to you is because I saw that you grow a lot of the things that you use to make the things that you sell. And I'm all about growing things. So what do you grow? So for the last several years, we've been building out beds of herbs around the house in the garden. 03:23 and now across the landscape. So we started, gosh, close to 17 years ago, as a CSA. And we live in a home that's been in my husband's family for seven generations now. My daughter is number seven. And we started with a CSA. So we had the huge market garden and grew vegetables for several years and sold at local farmers markets and then also did a subscription service. 03:52 there that helped us, you know, understand what our costs were going to be for a whole growing season, understand what we could grow and know that we had an audience for it, know that we had families to deliver it to. And that was really satisfying, but it was an incredible amount of work for two people. We both, over the years, have taken on day jobs in other places because keeping up a house that was built in 1835 takes a lot of income. 04:20 So in my day job, I work in tech and it just became a little too much. Um, over the years, we've really started learning how to work with the landscape here. We both have a background in anthropology and are fascinated by those, I guess, intersections with people and culture that have existed for as long as we've walked upright, um, the landscape. 04:52 The landscape is a part of us to our core and that environment impacts every piece of who we are. This is the longest I've ever lived anywhere. And in that time, we've started a relationship with the land. We've really gotten to know it. Historically, the land in West Tennessee has changed so very much. We're at a point where... 05:18 big agriculture has caused a lot of environmental issues, but it's also changed the fauna and flora here. So we've, I guess, pivoted, we've shifted our focus, we've found our passion, and we're working hard to turn probably the 250 acres of this his

Today I'm talking with Brian and Sarah at Promised Land Farms. 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 This is Mary Lewis at a tiny homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Brian and Sarah at Promised Land Farms. Hi guys, how are you? Great, how are you? I'm okay. I'm starting to turn the corner on this being sick crap, so. 00:26 I had to cancel two interviews last week because of it. So I'm really happy to be talking new friends today. You guys are in Elko, is that right? Yes. Okay, so tell me about yourselves and what you do. So yeah, we're in Elko New Market, just south of the Twin Cities, and we've got a small farm, 37 acres, and we are raising grass-fed grass-finished beef, pastured pork. 00:54 laying hens, and then we're direct marketing all of our meat and eggs. Okay. What do you define direct marketing for me? So we are selling direct to customers. We had always, since we started doing this, we were, we were selling eggs before we even had a farm when we were living in the suburbs. And then, um, so we would just start, start it all with beef and selling quarters to friends, quarters and halves. 01:24 And then that just kind of turned into kind of selling everything. So cuts of beef, quarters, halves, whole steaks, hamburger, same with pigs and then eggs and some chickens. And we were just using Facebook and word of mouth. And in the last year, we signed up for Barn to Door and we're using that as our kind of our marketing tool and inventory tool. And what do you... 01:53 Think of Barnador. 01:57 It's really helped us streamline our business. It helps us cut down on human error. If somebody Venmo'd us a deposit and then there was an oversight and them getting the next cut of meat. This has helped everything just to funnel into one place. They have got a lot of really great training. I've been very impressed with their support. Yeah, it's been good. 02:27 It's helped us expand and get going with some email marketing and yeah, they've got a lot of great resources available. Awesome. I actually need to contact them and get them to talk to me because I'm hearing that they're a really good help and resource for people who are doing what you're doing. And they've contacted me, but I'm not a big enough place to need their services right now for what we do. 02:54 It hadn't occurred to me to see if anybody from their place would want to chat with me. So I'm going to have to email them and be like, hi, don't need your services, but I would love to promote your services. Sure. They have a podcast as well, which is super helpful. I listened to it. I don't know if Sarah does, but, um, all the resources that they have, they're kind of putting out on podcasts too, and it's just good stuff. They're interviewing farmers all the time and best practices and yeah. 03:22 Okay, I'll have to go look them up and see what they're up to. Okay, so how did you guys get into this? 03:31 Well, I caught the farming bug before we were married. So Sarah's dad had a small farm in central Iowa. And when we just started first started dating, we were going down there for a funeral. And I stepped foot on that farm and, you know, walked out in the pasture down to the creek and look at cows and just something inside of me came alive. And I'm like, wow, I could see myself doing this someday. And that just kept growing in me and became a passion. And, you know, then I was looking for. 04:00 the five or 10 acre fixer upper. And we were, we were doing a big garden in our, in, in the suburbs in our backyard and then doing backyard chickens and way too many chickens that we were supposed to have in our, in the city that we're living in. But, uh, yeah, just kept looking and then we just came, the Lord showed us a property that was amazing and we went for it. And so that's how we started farming. 04:25 I love that. I hear that story or some version of that story a lot. You have no idea. Okay. So here's what I want to get into with the beef and selling the beef. Most people don't know how it works. So if you could run me through how someone could acquire a whole or a half or a quarter or an eighth. Yeah. So it's kind of a... 04:53 It's kind of a clunky process actually. So if you're selling a quarter, half or whole of beef, the way it goes is we sell by the hanging weight. So somebody contacts us and says, hey, I would like to get a quarter of beef. And so we put them on our list for the next available. And I don't really know the weight of the animal until it's brought in to the butcher. And then we get the weight of the animal 05:23 pay based on that. Okay, I'm going to interject and give you the simplified version of t

Today I'm talking with Mike at Homecooked Magazine. You can follow on Facebook as well. Use discount code "tiny" to save 15 dollars for the first year when you subscribe to Homecooked Magazine. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking to Mike McCormick at Homecooked Magazine. Good afternoon, Mike. How are you? Good afternoon. Doing great. Thanks for having me. Are you in Oregon? Is that right? 00:24 Yeah, our company is based in Oregon. I'm just south of Portland, our warehouse and a lot of our team is in Eugene, but primarily in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Oh, I've heard it's beautiful there. It is. And, you know, we get a lot of grief about the rain, but honestly, you know, most of the year it's pretty, it's pretty tough to beat. I've been around lots of places and I keep coming back. So. Nice. 00:49 Okay, well, tell me about yourself and about the magazine. I see that it's very new. Yeah, so I've been in publishing for about eight years. We have three magazines. One we started in 2016 called Quilt Folk. And so I've been in the magazine space for a number of years, but Homecooked is really very new. In fact, we officially launched December 1st. So it's about, you know, 01:20 month and a half old, but we've been working on it for well over a year. Okay. And how did it come about? Whose brainchild was it? Yeah. So, like I said, I've been publishing for a while and had had the idea for Home Cooked for a number of years. And really, the idea was pretty simple. We just wanted to try to create a print magazine that sort of embodied everything we loved about. 01:48 home-cooked meals, we wanted to try to put that in print. So of course, the tastes that are familiar that we love, but also the faces and the people and the conversations, the plates, all the little things that go into making home-cooked meals feel warm and special. We said, well, can we recreate that in a print magazine? And so that was the simple kind of genesis of an idea. And then of course, it's just a lot of work to try to... 02:17 to make that happen and we've got a great team of people who love print. So our company is fully committed to print magazines, which I know is a little bit different in this sort of era. But that was the idea. And we felt like we've been doing this for a while. We had a business model that kind of made sense. And so I felt like the right time to kind of dive in. Okay. So here's the question that I was left with after I looked at your Facebook page and your website. And I'm... 02:46 I may be playing a little bit of devil's advocate here, but I don't think so. A lot of people these days don't cook anything from scratch. They don't use their beautiful kitchens for anything except a show place to have their friends come over and have a cup of tea or a drink of wine. And so why did you think there was a market for this magazine? 03:12 Yeah, I think that definitely what you said is true, but I think it's a big world and there are a lot of people who use their kitchens in pretty interesting ways. And if you just look at my family or my friend group, we've got people who kind of run the gamut. And so, you know, it's a big enough space. Everybody eats food is kind of a cultural touchstone for all of us in one way, shape, form. And so the idea with Home Cooked was... 03:41 It's not just for people who make everything from scratch or for people who maybe do it all the time, but it's for people who, like I said, appreciate a home-cooked meal, whether you're the person making it or enjoying it, all those kinds of things. And for that, I mean, there's just, I don't know, there's so many people who can resonate with that idea. And with home-cooked, it was kind of like, how can we create a big enough table where... 04:07 everybody feels sort of welcome here, whatever their relationship to cooking or food is, you know? Okay, that's a valid answer. I just was very curious because my kids are all grown. My oldest is 35, my youngest just turned 23. Oldest is a girl, the other three are boys. And one of the rules in my house, I've mentioned on the podcast before, is that they all had to know how to cook a dinner and a dessert that they would be proud to serve their friends. 04:36 before they moved out. And I cooked from scratch all the time with them growing up and they kicked in, they helped, they joined in. And every single one of them really does enjoy cooking from scratch. And I've been told that I was kind of weird making that a requirement. The other requirements were that they could do their own laundry and wash their own dishes because

Today I'm talking with Staci at Sunnyland 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Staci at Sunnyland Farms in Georgia. Good morning, Staci. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. Thank you. Good. Is it lovely in Georgia? Because it's really chilly here in Minnesota. You know, it's... 00:28 cold for Georgia actually, not normally this cold. So I'm kind of enjoying it actually. Well, I would be enjoying the cold and except for the fact that I've had some kind of upper respiratory things since Saturday. And when I go outside, I start coughing because the cold hits me and I'm like, Oh, okay. So sorry. Sorry. 00:51 Sorry listeners, people out there, my voice is not the best it could be today, but that's okay, because Staci's gonna tell us all about what she does and about Sunnyland Farms. Yeah. 01:02 Well, my name is Staci Wilson and I am from Sunnyland Farms, a Georgia pecan farm. We're way down here in southwest Georgia in the city of Albany. And we do say pecan many different ways down here. You will hear pecan, you will hear pecan, and it's truly tomato, tomato. 01:29 And our farm actually started and was planted in the 1920s. And my connection to the farm is actually my husband's great grandfather planted the farm, planted the groves and the trees. And then his grandparents started to mail the pecans to their friends. And then the catalog mail order business grew from there. 01:58 His dad began, moved back in the 70s to join the family. And I'll talk about him in a little while, but he had some pretty awesome innovations for the industry. And then Alex and I moved back about 10 and a half years ago. And I've been in the hospitality baking industry. So it really coincided with. 02:24 a desire to live a simpler life and also join the family business. So that's just a little rundown. I love it when there's co-ink-a-dinks when your background matches up with the thing you're doing now too. And I always kind of disliked pecan pie when I was a kid because it was so incredibly sweet. And then 02:52 I had some, um, couple of years back that someone made from scratch and they were like, you have to try it. It's not like the store bought super sweet kind. And I said, okay. And I took a bite and I was like, this is not pecan pie. And she said, well, yes, it is. And I said, no, no, no, you don't understand. This is wonderful. Right. So, so I'm a convert now as long as it's made in a way that's not super, super sticky, sweet. Just, that's the only, uh, 03:21 It's the only pecan story I have. Right. And that's interesting because the industry itself is known for the pecan pie. And it's tried in the last because pecans are indigenous and it's something that Americans can be very proud of that this is one of our native nuts and has more antioxidants than most nuts. So 03:50 The industry itself is really trying to get that nutritional information. Even the American Pecan Council, their marketing motto is beyond the pie, right? So anyway, using high quality pecans is always the key, in my opinion, especially for the pies. But anyway. 04:15 What else would you like to know about we I can get into the To the planting and the different varieties and and all of that Well, we can start there and then you can tell me a little bit about the the history of the farm Yeah, absolutely Yeah, it is fascinating and it's the history of it is just the the pecans themselves are indigenous to the southeast native and it was a 04:45 staple in Native American diets. Georgia actually is the top producer pretty much in the world. We are normally outproduced sometimes by Mexico. Pecans love heat and they love humidity. So, you know, Louisiana, Texas, all of those places, Georgia, obviously. But Georgia, I feel like, you know, just the 05:13 The growing conditions are even better because of our humidity. Pecans themselves love humidity and heat. So anyway, our particular farm sits on about, it's about 1,700 acres of groves. And the farm was planted in the 1920s. And what a lot of people aren't aware of is that pecans are more than just one variety and the different. 05:43 just like a, you know, a grape for wine or whatnot. And the different varieties have different oil contents and the higher the oil content, the better tasting the pecan. And just a little side note, because of the high oil content, you should definitely store your pecans or any nut really in your freezer. 06:09 A lot of people don't know that because you freeze that oil content, whereas if it's sitting at room temperature, the oils are evaporat

Today I'm talking with Ben at the Homegrown Show with Ben & Nicole. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Ben at the Homegrown Show with Ben and Nicole. Good morning, Ben. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing great. Awesome. So we were just talking. You are in Canada. 00:25 And you are in New Brunswick, which is north of Maine, which I knew, but I didn't know for sure. And what do you do? Goodness, I do a lot of different things. I guess you could call us influencers, homesteaders, farmers. I don't like the term influencer, but we do a lot of different things with regards to education from farming content. And we just, in 2020, we decided we wanted to live and try a simpler life. So. 00:53 We've been documenting that journey and been able to share it with others ever since. Isn't it fun? Oh, we have, I never grew up on a farm and neither did Nicole. So it's been a crazy whirlwind of a journey. We were fortunate enough in 2020 to be picked up for a small TV show here locally. And it's been able to fund a lot of my antics to be able to buy things like a ton of chickens or goats before we're ready. So being able to document that and film our journey to 01:22 learning how to figure that all out has been just chaos and hilarious. Yeah, I'm sure you're entertained every moment of every single day. And I don't do videos because I don't, I don't, I'm not good at it. Number one, I don't like being on video. Number two, but, uh, my husband takes videos here and there of the barn kittens when they're little or the greenhouse construction, when that was happening and he sends them to me and I'm like, I don't know what to do with these. I like. 01:51 They're cute, but what do I do with them? So I commend you on your videos because it's hard work to make them. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun being able to document it properly. That's something I even spoke about in a recent YouTube video is just any type of documentation like what you're doing or writing it down is huge for being able to go back and reference because year over year, you don't really feel like you've done very much. But then when you can look back and see whether you've written it down or had a podcast about it. 02:17 It's cool to be able to see, oh, I did grow from last year. I did grow from two years ago. And seeing that is just more beneficial to us. Yes, I have to sit down sometime this afternoon and do our end of year recap. I try to do it and have it posted on the first of the year. But I got up yesterday morning to the terrible news from New Orleans about a guy who ran his truck into a crowd of people at a market. 02:44 New Year's celebration and I just lost all steam to say anything positive. So I apologized on my Facebook page and said, I'm just not in the right head space, maybe tomorrow. Understandably. So yeah, I just, I felt really weird about being like, so this is all the silly shit we did this year and this happened today, you know? So it was kind of a rough, quiet day here. I don't know why it hit me the way it did, but I'm just real tired of people getting hurt for no reason. It's really hard here in the United States sometimes. 03:14 So anyway, I don't want to be a bummer. So I looked at your Facebook page and you do tons of stuff. And if you're above Maine, how far above Maine are you? So we're pretty close to Holton, basically. It'd be about a half hour from our place here to Holton, Maine. Oh, so you're over the border, not by much. Okay. So your growing zone must be like what? Three B or four? I think it's 03:43 Four, Nicole is better. I'm more the animal guy. Nicole is better with the vegetables. I just do the labor for her. Oh, well, she's a very lucky woman. Okay, so is it easy? I mean, I know she's the one in charge of that, but is it pretty easy for you guys to keep yourselves stocked in produce? 04:03 Yeah, we've been very fortunate, like I said, over the last few years to learn how to do this stuff. So it's this past year, recognize the biggest downfall was our short season. So we built a couple of greenhouses. We were originally just going to build one, but we decided to build two to be able to have basically a seed house to be able to use in the spring. And then to be able to have a secondary tomato house because we've learned that the best thing for 04:28 for us is to have as much food as possible and to figure out what grows here as well. But to be able to can and preserve, you really need to have that longer growing season, especially for things like tomatoes and peppers, which don't rea

Today I'm talking with Taylor at Acres U.S.A. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Taylor at Acres USA. Good morning, Taylor. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing well. How are you doing? I'm great. You're in Wisconsin? Yes. Did Acres USA start in Wisconsin? No. It's... 00:28 It started in Kansas City and then moved to Austin, Texas. And then the company that acquired it from the founders had moved it to Colorado and that's where we ended up buying it from and then moved it to Wisconsin. Okay, cool. All right. So, tell me about yourself and Acres USA because no one who hasn't heard about it probably knows what it is. So, tell me all about it. 00:56 Yeah, well, Acres USA was founded back in 1971 and the founder was Charles Walters, who truly was a visionary and he was inspired by his youth when he was a farmer in Kansas and then he ended up becoming an economist. So he believed from early on that farming had become disconnected from nature and it was becoming destructive to the soil and human health and the environment. 01:25 So through Acres USA, he began to champion the principles of ecological agriculture and published some groundbreaking research by soil scientists, farmers, and thought leaders like Dr. William Albrecht. And then over the decades, Acres USA grew from just a magazine into a full movement. And we published books, host conferences, have digital resources. And the goal is to... 01:53 empower farmers to work with nature and also profit from it. So today we remain committed to Charles Walter's original mission and that's to prove that ecological farming is not only sustainable but also economically sound. And I think that's always kind of a key part of Acres USA is, you know, we talk about ecological principles but we also focus on the economics behind it. 02:23 Is that right? Correct. Okay. How did that happen? Well, that's kind of a long story. That's okay. We've owned it for just over a year now. I grew up in southwest Wisconsin and did not have much agricultural background at all. I always liked land though. My first introduction to land was through hunting. 02:51 And I kind of have a little bit of an obsessive personality. So I was kind of obsessed with hunting and interacting with the land. I became a police officer when I was 20 and that was the first career that I jumped into. I knew, you know, shortly into that, that it probably wasn't going to be able to get me into a position to actually buy my own farm or have my own land to manage myself. So. 03:21 I jumped into the entrepreneurship world, learned about business. When I was 25, I moved back in with my parents and said I was going to make a go of it in the business world. And then two years later, we were able to buy a farm. And while we had that farm under contract, the initial idea was still revolved around farming or revolved around hunting. And I knew I kind of wanted to create a. 03:49 a media company that talked about managing land and interacting with land because I did love – I've always loved just interacting with land and manipulating it and doing different things with it. I found Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown and Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shepard and I got bit by the regenerative agriculture movement and I realized Mark was actually just 20 minutes from me. 04:19 So I started, I probably listened to his book that winter five different times and I would just drive by his farm and try to figure out what all he was talking about in that book. And finally, I just knocked on his door and Mark and I have been working together ever since and Mark is, you know, like I said, the author of Restoration Agriculture which is probably the highest selling book that Acres USA has. 04:49 So I got introduced to Acres USA, bought a ton of books, and that's how I began my journey into regenerative agriculture. My business world from the side had kind of morphed into marketing agencies and working with tech to help business owners create books and courses and events, but it was completely separated from agriculture. 05:17 COVID happened, that business kind of took a little bit of a hit just because the majority of our clients were pretty affected by COVID. So I jumped into real estate, took our agency and began doing more of a local type marketing services and then became a realtor specializing in working with land and helping people find regenerative. 05:46 or find conventional type farms with the plan of transitioning into organic or regenerative type practices. And Mark was always kind of in my ear bec

Today I'm talking with Laura at Aussie Rescue of Minnesota. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Laura at Aussie Rescue of Minnesota. Good morning, Laura, how are you? Good morning, I'm good, how are you? I'm good, it's a really grody day in Minnesota this morning. It is. For anyone who doesn't live in our area, 00:29 It is very, very gray and the fog in LaSour is like pea soup. I don't know what it's like where you are, Laura. It's raining here, which is always miserable in the winter. 00:41 Yeah, it's really weird. I'm not loving this winter so far because it reminds me an awful lot of last year. Yup. All right, so tell me about yourself and about what you do. So I joined Aussie Rescue of Minnesota in 2012 because I had heard such great things about Nancy and the organization, Nancy Anderson, and the organization that she had started with another person like 30 years ago. 01:09 And so she had started, she saw the need for Aussies to find Aussie appropriate homes, because Australian Shepherds can be special. They can be high energy, definitely, but also they're very smart. So sometimes smart isn't easy to live with, because they find lots of things to get into and to do, and if you don't give them a job, they find their own job, which is generally something you didn't want them to do. 01:36 And so she saw a lot of Aussies being re-homed because of that. She saw a lot of Aussies being re-homed because people, maybe their lives had changed. The dog didn't get along with a new baby or they'd lost their home or, I mean, there's so many reasons that people's lives can kind of go topsy turvy. So she started rescuing and a few years later made it into a formal nonprofit. 02:04 and she's been sailing this ship ever since. And I was looking for a way I could help and had heard so many good things about the reputation of Aussie Rescue of Minnesota. So I got on board and kind of got sucked in pretty heavy. I went from just fostering one dog to fostering multiple dogs, to being on the board, to adding roles as I went. So... 02:34 Aussie Rescue of Minnesota has been around for a long time, 30 years. And they pride, we pride ourselves on good matches with people, not just finding a good home for the dog, but finding a dog that really fits that family. And then we are with our dogs for the rest of their lives. So if anything happens, they come back to us. If the new owners have 03:00 behavioral issues or, you know, vet issues or anything like that, we're there to help them or assist them in any way we can. So that's what we pride ourselves on is the long relationship and the quality of our adoptions. Wow. Okay. This is why I wanted to talk to you because I need to know more. Number one, 03:30 because sirens were the mermaids that would suck the sailors in to basically dying. And Aussies suck you in. There's something about her little faces that you're just like, oh, I am yours forever now. I am your human. You are not my dog. And I know this because we have one and we've had her for a little over four years and I love her to pieces. And I've talked about her endlessly on the podcast. So. 03:58 I may throw in a couple things about Maggie today, but I want to know more about the process here because as you said, Aussies are a very special breed and they will get into trouble and they do need a job. And they also bond really, really tightly with their owners. So it must be incredibly hard when they're surrendered to you guys. Yeah, it can be. Although, you know, dogs live in the moment. 04:26 So as much as we'd like to believe that our dogs would shine away for us forever, if given up, they do tend to just bond with the next person, unfortunately for our egos. They really live in the moment and they're looking for that bond, like you said. Having an Aussie is more like having a partnership than having a pet. And I work with my dogs a lot, my own personal dogs. 04:53 I do a lot of competitions with herding and agility and obedience. And so that bond becomes even stronger since we spend so much time training together. But even a dog coming in that's just met me within a couple days, they'll pick the person in the house and it might be myself, it might be my husband, it might be one of my kids. But they actually have an opinion on that. They don't, you know, you can't get an Aussie and say, well, this one's going to be my dog because it's really up to them. They pick their person. 05:23 and you can't change their minds. So yeah, that bond is very strong. Yes, and they will pick the person that

Today I'm talking with Cheryl at Brookhaven Mill Farm-North Carolina. 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 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Cheryl at Brookhaven Mill Farm, North Carolina. Hello Cheryl, how are you? Hi, I'm doing well. How are you doing? I'm great. I was looking at your website and your story is so cool, so tell me about yourself and what you do. 00:29 Okay, so let's see, I'll just give you the brief rundown. At age 60, I purchased a farm, my first farm, and I am now 66. So I have been running this farm for the past five and a half, almost six years. I am in central North Carolina, right outside of Greensboro, and I diversify a bit as far as the farm model goes. Because I... 00:58 physically do not grow crops. I decided to grow livestock, and I am now centralized around growing sheep. I started with East Friesian sheep, and now I've diversified into a different breed that's a little more parasite resistant in this part of the country. And it's a Catawdin-Dorpor cross. Right now, I have about 30 head. But raising sheep is kind of boring. It's like golf. If you don't do it, it's kind of boring. 01:29 So what I do on the weekends is I open my farm for an agritourism destination. So I get locals from Greensboro and visiting to come out to the farm and not only see the sheep, but to see some of the other animals I've added. Sheep get along really well with goats. So I've added some goats and a couple of donkeys for a guardian, a couple of... 01:57 dogs, a lot of cats, and chickens, ducks, and geese. And it just makes for a wild menagerie of animals for people to feed and just get excited about learning. Awesome. I have two questions. I'm gonna forget one of them if I don't ask both at the same time. One is about the cross-breed of your sheep and one is about the fact that you started this at 60. So we'll start with the sheep one. The cross-breed that you have. Catodin is a hair sheep, right? 02:26 Yes, that's correct. Is the other one also a hair sheep? Yes, Dorpher is also a hair sheep. And you know, it's really just a bunch of mutts out there, but they have had four lambing seasons coming up on my fifth lambing season, Valentine's Day. We're expecting lambs. And each lambing season is getting more and more specific to the Katahdin look, the fine features, the sweet face, the little smile. 02:56 and just easy to handle, very docile, very good choice for meat. And not so much milk that I can tell. I'm going to try to milk some of my ewes in February. I morphed into this mutt breed of mostly Katahdin now, but some dorper, because the sire, the ram, is a dorper. But he's also a cross. 03:26 So he's a Dorper St. Roy cross. So these girls have all been lambing. 03:36 Some have been lambing for four years, some have been lambing for three. This year I've got a couple of first time moms, so it's gonna be interesting to see what they're offering exhibit as far as the traits that I'm trying to get to, which is worm resistant, hair, completely hair, because the original seven sheep I started with six years ago when I bought the farm were all German breed, East region, and they were wool. 04:04 So I've just about bred the wool out of the lands now. Okay, that was what I was gonna ask you about because I haven't actually talked to anybody who's bred a hair sheep and a wool sheep and how that works, because I have no idea. Is it just like any other animal that you breed with a different variety? That's why it's. 04:27 And then you get wool sheep or hair sheep or like maybe a wool hair sheep. I don't know. Yeah, you get a wool hair sheep and that's what's so funny is because it's taken a couple of generations now of lambing to get to the point where all the lambs are now starting to look like hair lambs. The first experiment, the first lambing when I crossed the dad with the, you know, the 04:57 lambs. Some of the lambs had the nubby, woolly texture. Some had sort of a half and half fill. And now they've been bred back to their father. And their offspring now exhibits very little wool nubby. But sometimes you'll get one that looks like it's... Where did this one come from? It's got almost like Velcro. 05:26 fleece, which is really hard to shear. So not only have I saved money for the farm by going to hair sheep, because it's quite expensive to shear, have a shearer come and shear 30 head of sheep. So this year, the shearer is only going to have to shear six sheep, which are the half and halves, but they still need that wool taken off. 05:55 how to be comfortable in the summertime. Okay, that's what I was won