A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Kristin at Murrell’s Fowl Play. 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 Kristen at Merle's Foul Play. How are you this morning, Kristen? I'm good. How are you? I'm great. You're in Tennessee? East Tennessee, yes. Okay, cool. Another Southern accent. I love it. 00:27 I talk to so many people in the South and I'm in the very, well not the very, I'm in the North, I'm in Minnesota so I don't hear a lot of Southern accents up here very often. I like to say that mine's not that bad but if you ask my husband he's going to disagree. Yes and most of us who have accents can't hear them at all because we're so used to it. Yeah. Okay so tell me about yourself and what you do. 00:53 Uh, let's see. I used to breed, well, I used to show chickens when I was in 4-H in middle school. And for the last three years, I have been joking with my husband that I wanted to get chickens. And he thought I was not serious. And the next thing you know, we're going to, well, two, three hours away to buy a coop and bring it back. And I started with four birds that have now turned into 30. Oh my. Yes. So now we breed. 01:21 Silky's and seramas and we just got some Rhode Island Reds and now we are working on our egg production and our incubation Okay, so I was looking at your Facebook page because that's what I do and I saw that you raised chickens for show for showing them Do you also raise chickens for eggs and meat eggs? Yes meat? No, I have not got into meat birds 01:49 I have a couple friends who do that and they love it. And then I have a couple of friends who do that and they hate it. So we don't eat a lot of chicken here. We're more of a beef household. So I just couldn't justify the feed cost to meat cost. Uh-huh. Yeah. Um, chicken feed is very expensive right now. Yes. That's why we don't have chickens this winter. We called them a month and a half ago because they were being lazy and they're also getting old. 02:17 And my husband said, I don't want to feed chickens all winter for no return. And I said, that's fine. Yes, exactly. And I could, I mean, we eat chicken maybe twice a month in this house. So I couldn't justify raising a ton of birds to just let them sit in the freezer for a while. Yeah. And we didn't raise meat birds. We had them for eggs and we can afford to buy a dozen eggs a week. Right now it's fine. So, and there's a really sweet woman who sells eggs at the farmer's market in the summertime. And my husband. 02:47 works at the farmers market. He sells our stuff there. So he knows her and he's going to get ahold of her and be like, can we buy some of your eggs? That's probably going to be the cheaper route compared to chicken feed. Yeah. Your eggs are better than the store bought eggs and your eggs are cheaper than chicken feed. So we would like to buy eggs from you ma'am. So tell me how, how in the world did you go from, I don't know, taking care of chickens for 4-H when you were a kid 03:17 to now being so invested in this? I'm not even sure how it happened. I just kind of got this idea one day and I ended up with those four birds. And I bought, I originally bought pet quality silkies, even though I knew that my goal was to breed show quality silkies. So I bought these four silkies and I was just like, I just want to see if I enjoy raising the chickens. Cause I can maintain four birds and if I don't like them, they'll just live and die here and I never have to get any more. And then I got those four. 03:44 And they were so sweet and they're still really sweet birds. They're not as sweet as my seramas, but they're still incredibly sweet. And I enjoyed messing with them and I enjoyed hanging out with them. And then my grandfather had this coop at his house and he was like, I'm not raising chickens anymore. Why don't you take it? And I was like, well, if I get a coop, then I got to get more birds. So then I ended up with some egg laying birds and then my husband loves those birds. So he decided to get more egg laying birds and I was like, well, I got to go back to, you know, showing my birds. So I started getting. 04:14 I won a contest for six free bread to standard silkies and I was like well that would be perfect because then I can separate them into their color pens and work on that. And then one thing led to another and now there's birds everywhere. Well I bet they're clucking happy birds. Very much so. Uh huh. Okay so I am not anywhere near an expert on chicken varieties so tell me about what silkies are and why those. 04:45 Silky's are bantams, so they're a lot smaller than your regular standard

Today I'm talking with Mindy at Pumpkin Hill LLC. 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 Mindy at Pumpkin Hill LLC. Good morning, Mindy. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. Thank you. Good. You're in Wisconsin? I am. I am in the southern west portion of Wisconsin. 00:29 Okay, what's the nearest big city? Um, La Crosse. Okay, so you're, I think you're like four hours from where I am in La Sour, Minnesota, I think. Yes, yeah, we're about, I mean, it takes me about three and a half hours to get to the Twin Cities. Okay. Well, every time I talk to somebody who's in a bordering state, I say, hey neighbor. So hey neighbor, nice to meet you. So tell me about yourself and what you do. So um. 00:58 I have two children and a husband and we own a farm in rural fairyville. We just started at this year and we have a pumpkin patch in animals and we're really focusing on farm to table on our farm. We have homegrown eggs we're starting to produce and sell hoping that it gets a little bigger as we go. I also own assisted living facilities. 01:27 more so group homes and then we also beef farm and green farm. Okay, when did you start doing this? Pumpkin Hill, I started a year ago. Okay. So we're really fresh. Well, that's good because fresh pumpkins are good pumpkins. Okay, so why did you start it? What brought you to doing this? Oh, so... 01:57 I guess my dad and I have been in businesses together for a very long time. And we also do vacation rentals. And so we actually, my husband and I came over to the neighbor's house one day because we were going to build a house and we were asking about her sewer and it just kind of took off from there. She looked at us and said, I'm moving. Do you want to buy the farm? And we were like, whoa, what? I think we were in shock. 02:26 And we were like, yeah, I guess. So we had talked and my dad and I chose to sell another property to buy this together. So he's part owner right now of the farm with me. And then it kind of snowballed from there. We're like, okay, we know that land prices are expensive. How can we still provide for our family, live on this beautiful land and pay our mortgage? And so it kind of came from an idea 02:56 let's do something where we can get the community involved and we can share the beauty of this land with everybody. So let's come out snowball. Awesome. The reason I ask everybody why is because everybody's reason is different and no one buys land without wanting to do something with it or on it. Yes. We bought land and we thought we were going to raise 03:25 rabbits for meat and we thought we were going to raise chickens for eggs and meat. And right now we have neither. Everything happens for a reason. I feel like we just kind of, we had different ideas in our minds at first and it just kind of went in this weird direction and here we are. Yeah. Our weird direction failed. We, we really wanted to try raising rabbits for meat and 03:54 Our bunnies were stupid and did not understand that they were supposed to reproduce. Even though we did everything right, since getting rid of the rabbits, we've discovered that Timothy hay may have been the issue because they were too fat. The female rabbits were too fat. And fat rabbits don't breed. Who knew? So weird things happen. You can't know what you don't know. And if you don't know where to look, you can't find out. 04:24 And so our rabbit enterprise was a very short-lived experiment that did not go well. But that's okay, because we got years to go and miles to go and lots of sleep to get, and we'll find a new thing. It'll be fine. So I was looking at your Facebook page and it looks like a wonderfully fun thing to do to visit your place. Yeah, we're focusing on family, I think, because my family's so close and 04:52 we're always doing stuff together. I mean, my grandparents came over there in their eighties and God bless them because they put their sweat and tears into this too, so help me get going. And we just kind of creatively came up with games for people and animals for people to see and things for them to do. My cows are kind of my little babies. Um, and they'll come up and they'll kiss me and they'll lick me and they'll, you know, play with people. So we really wanted an interactive place for people also to learn. 05:21 because we know that a lot of places around here don't have that. So people will ask us questions like about our Highland cows, like what different sizes do you have? Well, we just have a mid-size Highland cow. There are four different sizes and the breeds and all that fun stuff. So it's a good learnin

Today I'm talking with Dan at Spring Hill Tree 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 Dan at Spring Hill Tree Farm. Good morning, Dan. How are things in Georgia today? Good morning. Things are good, sunny, clear skies, and I just got done working in the strawberry field a few minutes ago. 00:30 Nice. It is incredibly overcast and sprinkling here in Minnesota this morning. For the third day in a row. So strawberries, is that for next year? You're getting them ready for next year? Yeah. So in South Georgia, you grow, you plant strawberries in October, and then they fruit usually in March after that last frost, about 30 days after the last frost. 01:00 Okay, cool. So tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Yeah, so I am a third generation specialty farmer, if you will. We do what you what you call agritourism. So we're here on Spring Hill Farm in Bainbridge, Georgia. And we've been doing agritourism for about 40 years now. Agritourism, simply put, is 01:29 Really, I mean you can take the two words right so agriculture and tourism and sort of blend them together and It's anything that you can do on your farm whether it's an event or maybe like a you pick scenario Trail rides something of that sort right to get people to come out and enjoy your property and You know usually charge some some small fee for them to come and do that Okay, so you've been doing it for 40 years I know that 01:59 Agritourism has been a thing, like a buzzword for the last few years, but it's always been a thing. I mean, I'm 55 and I remember my parents taking me to farms where they were like, let's go on a hayride and pick apples or let's go see cows or whatever it was that they were doing. So you're an OG, you're an OG agritourism dude. Yeah. It's funny because, you know, my dad and I, so I'm... 02:29 I'm 28, I'm the younger person on the farm that's sort of starting to take over things a little bit more. My dad's been doing this for a long time. And I remember he and I would go on trips to Atlanta because we're in South Georgia. And a few years ago, man, it was longer than that, 10 years ago or so maybe, we were driving down Highway 27. And we saw this sign that says, you know, Georgia's first agritourism farm on the left. 02:57 We're thinking, well, what's agritourism? That sounds like what we're doing. And we started to learn more about it and we said, well, they're not the first. And we don't, we don't claim that we're the first, but, but it is growing in the, in, it is a buzzword and I think it's the second largest or second fastest growing business in Georgia and has been for some, for some time. 03:22 Yes, and I am a huge proponent for agritourism because so many people have never set foot on a farm. And I think that they thought that they couldn't like, call and ask if they come visit. So I love that people are opening up their properties to people to come see what they do. Yeah, that's, that's what my grandfather would have wanted when he bought the property. He, he worked his whole life, was in the military and 03:52 sort of came across the US, started in Oklahoma, went to Texas, went to Atlanta, then came here and always wanted to buy some property with the end goal of being able to share it with people. And what's really cool about this property is he came down here and searched and searched and searched for some property and everything down here is flat, you know, peanut fields, corn fields. 04:19 And he just wasn't interested in flat land. He had seen enough of that in Oklahoma and wanted to see more trees. And they found this property. We're on the highest elevation in Decatur County is where we're at. And we are 321 feet above sea level, which is not a crazy amount, but for here it is. And we're on what's called Curry Hill. So it's this ridge that runs through. 04:49 um this area and it just it has you know springs on the farm creeks on the farm valleys um really beautiful property and i think when he and my dad found this place they kind of looked at each other like hey you know don't say anything let's let's go ahead and get this deal done um so and so 40 i think we got it they got it in 1982 and the next year uh my grandfather had 05:18 you know, so many hundred Christmas trees and he and my dad were going to do that. And unfortunately my grandfather passed away before they, before they arrived. And so my dad just kind of had this, uh, you know, I guess he had a decision to make and when the Christmas trees showed up, um, he planted them and then the rest is kind of history.

Today I'm talking with my daughter, Cassandra, about how being raised by a mom with homesteading skills has impacted her life. 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 my first born child and my only daughter, Cassandra. How are you? Hi, I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I don't know what the weather's like in Florida right now, but it's gray and misty and cold here today in Minnesota. What's it like in Florida? 00:29 It's in the 80s and sunny and not a rain cloud in sight. Must be nice, although honestly, I'm real happy to see fall rolling in. So Sandra was nice enough to come and visit with me because she is a self-professed non-homesteader, at least that's how she told me or explained herself to me. But I think that there's some homesteading genes in there somewhere because 00:57 You are taking care of your mother-in-law's citrus plants and avocado trees, right? Yeah, mango trees, avocado trees. We have a lychee tree and banana trees. I think that's it. I thought you had lemons or oranges or something. We have a baby lemon and a baby lime tree. They are making fruit, but they're very small. They're not making grocery store-sized fruit yet. 01:27 So they look like toys? Yeah, it's really funny. Uh-huh. And how are all the plants doing? Well, so we just had two hurricanes. So the plants are not doing great right now, really anywhere near us. But right before the hurricane, the starfruit, that's what we have. We have a starfruit tree that just drops probably hundreds of fruit in October. So right before the hurricanes, that was producing like crazy. 01:56 But now we just have a lot of trees that are twigs. Oh, no. Okay. So, I don't know what you know about all the fruits that are growing on that property, but did they all, are they all in season at the same time? Or is it just different? No, definitely not. I can't remember when the mangoes go, but it's like the mangoes have their season. 02:24 And they're the kind of mangoes that like don't ripen until you take them off the tree. So they will stay, they'll stay good for like months as they're growing. And the lychee is a different season. And like I said, the starfruit is a different season as well. So you can't have a citrus lychee, starfruit salad all at once out of the garden as it was? Not from my yard, no, yeah. Okay. 02:50 So tell me about getting prepared for the hurricanes that came through. Yeah, it was kind of crazy. We had another hurricane, not the most recent two, but another one earlier in the year. And I'm not from here, my husband is. And he was saying like, oh, the hurricanes are not a big deal. They haven't really hit St. Pete in like 10 years. 03:15 So the first one was fine, we didn't do any prep. And then the second and third one, like people were predicting it to be so, so bad, we were like, okay, well, maybe let's go get some water. But, um, we talked about water. We have these big glass jugs that we always fill. My mother-in-law always fills before, um, hurricanes. We went. 03:38 The joke in their family is that the only hurricane supplies you need is boxed wine and bananas. So we got boxed wine and bananas in addition to like ramen and batteries and candles. Okay. And you told me that Helene wasn't bad, but Milton was worse, right? No, Helene was bad. Helene is the one that brought the floodwater surges. Yeah. 04:08 And that is what did most of the physical damage. Milton wasn't as like floodwater heavy, but the winds were crazy. So it took out like it took out trees, power, we were without power for like a week, I think here. No, I meant, I meant out of the two for you where you are. I thought Helene wasn't as bad as Milton. Because I live like on the only hill in St. Petersburg. So Helene didn't affect us as much. We're just we are not susceptible to flooding where we are. 04:38 Okay, cool. So I don't even know what to ask you. You were saying about... Let me ask you. So what's your wake up in the morning homestead life routine? Okay. And then we can compare and contrast. Oh, well, my wake up in the morning is at like 430 in the morning because I can't stay asleep past four. My get up is 430, five o'clock in the morning. And it's go directly to... 05:08 potty and then to the coffee maker and then to my phone to see if any new people have said yes to talking to me on the podcast. Sure. That's my get up routine. Yeah. What do you do throughout the day for home setting stuff? Meal planning? Do you do? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. We do a weekly meal plan. We usually do it on Sunday. 05:34 or Saturday and then shopping happens because sometimes you

Today I'm talking with Val at Off The Beaten Path Homestead. 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 Val at Off the Beaten Path Homestead. Good morning, Val. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. As I was telling Val before we hit record, I discovered Val on... 00:29 on Facebook through her videos and I fell in love with her immediately because she has such a great personality. Thank you so much for that. Yes, absolutely. So tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, my name is Valerie Bias and I live in Virginia. I've been here most of my life. I 00:55 I grew up in a small town in Virginia, in Buckingham County, and six sisters, so my mom and dad had seven girls. And I watched them garden and take care of livestock. And of course, feeding seven children was quite a feat. And so they had to do whatever they had to do to stretch what we had. 01:24 And so they garden and they preserved food and we had livestock, hogs and chickens and goats. And, uh, that's what we did to survive. And, um, so when COVID hit, you know, my, me and my husband were talking and, and we started thinking, you know, this is different and, and, and we've got to do something, um, because. 01:52 Our world had changed and so we moved from our home in North Chesterfield, Virginia, and we purchased a piece of property in a rural area. We're only about 20-25 minutes from amenities. We can still, you know, get to the grocery store. And so we moved out here and we started doing what I learned to do as a child, which was 02:21 We only have chickens right now. We've only been out here since 2021. And so we just love it out here and we love what we do. We garden and raise our own food. And we also have a farm store that we put our excess products in. We are just a shed and. 02:48 We stock that with food that we preserve for long-term use. And so that's what we're doing out here and we're trying to get our community involved and so that we can learn from each other. That's been a bit difficult because we don't know anyone out here trying to find people who do what we do and who wanna learn from us and so that we can learn from them. 03:15 And so that's what we're doing out here. We just. I love it. I'm so excited that you decided to do that. We did the same thing. We moved from in town to out in the country in 2020. So, Ben, where you are. So your videos on your Facebook page are so fun. And the way that you say hello to your viewers and then. 03:42 Identify who you are is adorable. Could you could you do it for me? Well, I mean it's part of my personality and who I am and when I Meet people or I'm introduced to people. It's hi, sweetie. How are you? And so I start my videos off with hey sweet people. It's mama Val and so That's who I am My my daughter she's 41 04:12 and all of her friends, they refer to me as Mama Val. And I love it and that's who I am now. And most people who know me, they're younger, they call me Mama Val, so. Yes, and your accent is a little bit more pronounced on the videos too. And that was the thing that really caught me because I am a big, I don't know, I'm obsessed with people's. 04:38 accents. I think that it's so fun when people talk in a way that's different than I do. Oh, wow. I've never noticed that. Yeah. And I don't know if it's a southern accent or what it is. And it probably has to do with my stepfather was in the Navy and we moved around so much. He was in the Navy for 36 years. And we moved all over and 05:07 I'm sure it has something to do with moving around. Yeah. Yes, I would say that your accent is a generic Southern drawl in the best way possible. And basically to me, you sound like a warm hug and a glass of sweet tea. Oh, you are so sweet. That's how it sounds. Yes. It makes my heart sing, so hearing that. Yeah. 05:34 I just, I don't know, I just, I saw your video and I just sat there and I was like, I love this lady. She's amazing. Thank you, Mary. Thank you. Um, yeah. You're welcome. And I'm not typically this effusive, but when people grab me, they grab me hard, like grab me in full and you're one of them. I don't know why. So any, anyway, um, you're okay. 06:01 your videos that I've seen one was making two pennies into a dollar and one was something else and I can't remember but the two pennies into a dollar one really struck me because I have raised four kids. My youngest is 22 and he still lives with us. Back when they were young, we were a family on one income. I was a stay at home mom and I was trying to cook for six people total. 06:31 And so I cooked for an army b

Today I'm talking with Kirbe Schnoor at FarmHer. You can also follow on Facebook. "FarmHer is all about the women who love the land, care for their community, and feed the people." 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 Kirby Schnoor, which is really hard to pronounce, at FarmHer. Good morning, Kirby. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. Thank you for having me on. Oh, thank you for coming because I have lots of questions and you're going to be an amazing person to get them answered. 00:29 Uh, so first question is, are you based in Nebraska or is FarmHer based in Nebraska? Well I'm based in Fort Worth, Texas. And FarmHer is kind of based all over, I would say most of our crew, our two videographers, editors, producer, they're all in Nashville at our offices there and studio there. And then we have offices in a studio here in Fort Worth and then we have office space in Omaha as well. Okay. 00:58 My stepson lives in Nebraska. So when I saw Nebraska on the website or the Facebook page for FarmHer, I was like, oh, Nebraska, here we go again. Okay. So tell me about yourself and what you do regarding FarmHer and tell me about FarmHer. Awesome. Well, thank you again for having me on to talk about this. I grew up in a farming family in the Central Valley of California, a tiny town called Chochilla. 01:27 It's based in between Fresno and Modesto. And then if they don't know those places, sometimes they'll say Bakersfield. Bakersfield is about three hours south of us. But I say in between LA and San Francisco, right? But it's all the heart of agriculture in the center of California. And I grew up, my mom's side of the family, they farmed in ranch and my dad's side of the family, they farmed. 01:56 Yeah, so it's just been a multi-generational thing that's carried on in our families. We used to farm a lot more diverse crops. And over the years, given land and regulations, prices, you name it, in California, kind of had to go into one main thing and make it a bigger production. And so my family mainly now farms almonds, and we do hay as well. But we used to back in the day do corn and alfalfa and tomatoes. 02:24 as well as almonds and hay and cotton. And so it's just interesting that I was able to grow up exposed to all of that and the diversity. And like I said, it's changed over the years, but still, yeah, everyone in my family, for the most part, is involved in the farming aspect. And I went to college at Fresno State in California, and I majored in mass communications and journalism. 02:52 emphasis in broadcast journalism and I said, oh my gosh, I'm never going to go into TV. I loved writing and I just didn't know what I really wanted to do. I didn't want to do a local network or local news station and hard news and things like that. But I found a place for me here in Fort Worth, Texas working at Superior Livestock Auction and they were the nation's leader in livestock marketing cattle via… 03:20 satellite and television. It was started by two gentlemen who grew up on our group ranching and they partnered with Patrick Gotch. They actually helped Patrick Gotch kind of get his start, Jim O'Dell did back in the day because Patrick, who is the founder and CEO and sadly had passed away earlier this year, he founded RFD TV and then which led into the Cowboy Channel and Cowgirl Channel as well. 03:47 He grew up in a farming family in Nebraska. And so that's where the roots of Nebraska and Omaha come from. Okay. But yeah, so I got my start with Superior Livestock and they didn't have a place for me. I started answering the telephone and working on the bid line and there it spiraled into some of their television shows that they did. And that still air to this day on RFD TV. And so I worked closely with RFD TV, never directly until several years ago. 04:16 I made the transition when they decided to open up the branch in Fort Worth called the Cowboy Channel. I helped get that started and I've been with RFD and the Cowboy Channel ever since. I basically have been with RFD since the start of my career, 2012, 2013. The two connected. I grew up showing livestock with my sisters. We had a cattle company, still do called Schnorr Sisters. We showed cattle throughout the United States. 04:45 And it was really fun and coming from the farming background with my family, running cattle, raising cattle, I was exposed to quite a bit. And when we started the Cowboy Channel, the original creator of FarmHer, she wanted to branch off into rancher as well. And so she said, she was so great. And she's like, her name's Margie. And she said, Kirby, wo

Today I'm talking with Paul at Blue Star Farm. 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 Paul at Blue Star Farm. Good morning, Paul. How are you? I am doing very well. Thank you. Good. So tell me about yourself and how this all got started because you have a lot of things that you guys do at the farm. 00:30 Well, I purchased this property back in 2016. I had been farming full-time and, oh gosh, I guess I started in 1993, actually. I was in a dairy business for a number of years and moved on to a couple other career paths for a while. And then I purchased this property and decided it'd be fun to play around with an apple orchard. I also grow some other vegetables, pumpkins, popcorn. 01:00 gourds and do a little bit of hay as well. So this is a part-time venture. I have a full-time day job as well at the moment. But most recently, I opened up a storefront where currently I make sweet cider and I'm in the process of getting licensed to make hard cider. Hard cider is the best. It doesn't give me a headache. Most beer gives me a headache, but hard cider does not. Okay. 01:29 So why? Why did you get into this? Well, it started off as kind of a little bit of a hobby, the hard center in particular. And there seems to be a market for it and I thought it would be a nice project to work on. I am not too far away, well a few years probably, from not having to have to have that day job. 01:59 can't sit still very long so I figured I'd create some kind of business keep me occupied and something that would be fun and make them hard cider and having people enjoy it is it's a good time for me for sure. Absolutely. So you're in Sharon Springs New York are you I don't want to offend you but I'm gonna ask are you near the Beekman boys guys? 02:26 I am not too far away. The farm that they purchased is about two miles south of the village of Sharon Springs here. Their flagship store is located in the downtown portion of our little village here and that is less than a mile from where I'm setting right now. And actually the building that I recently acquired where I'm starting my cider operation, Beekman 1802, used that as a warehouse for their product for a number of years. 02:56 So, thank you very much. 03:00 Very nice. The reason I said I don't want to offend you is because I've heard two sides of a coin about them. That they came in and made Sharon Springs not a small town anymore and made people mad. And the other side of the coin is that they came in and got Sharon Springs on the map. So I don't know which side of the coin you're on. 03:22 Well, honestly, Sharon Springs had been on a map for a number of years as a tourist destination for the mineral baths. It was in direct competition with Saratoga Springs, New York. And unfortunately, Saratoga had a little bit more going for it. They kind of won that battle, I guess you could say. But eventually, prior to Beekman 1802 coming to life here in the village, 03:50 There had been a resurgence, our former mayor, he and his husband had opened up several businesses in this area and they had, and actually I think their influence is why some others had relocated here, such as the folks that took over the Beekman farm, so it's been a long, slow process. 04:15 Okay. 04:18 Yes, and we haven't been home to Maine in a while. My parents live in Maine and I'm in Minnesota. So when we drive back, I don't fly. So we always do a road trip. So when we go through New York, I always see the sign for Sharon Springs on the highway that we're on. And I'm like, we should go to Sharon Springs someday. And my husband's like, the only reason you wanna go to Sharon Springs is to go to the Beekman store. And I'm like, well, yeah. 04:48 And we haven't done it yet, but someday maybe we'll do it 04:54 Okay, I do know they've got limited hours, so I think they're not open. They used to be open seven days a week there. I believe they're only open Friday through Sunday. I can't say for a fact, but you'd have to check their website. 05:10 Yes, and I don't have any plans to do a road trip in the next couple of years. So we're good for now. But it's just, it's funny because when I saw Sharon Springs, I was like, I wonder if that's the Sharon Springs. And so it is. Okay, so, so you're doing this as your retirement plan, basically, from the sounds of it. So you're not going to retire, you're going to keep working. 05:36 That is correct. 05:40 Yeah, I think that's the case for a lot of us who are over 50 at this point. I don't think any of us who are over 50 are like, you know, retirement sounds great. I don't think retiremen

Today I'm talking with Andrew at White Pine Berry 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 Andrew at White Pine Berry Farm. Good morning, Andrew. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. So tell me about what part you play in White Pine Berry Farm and... 00:28 the story of White Pine Berry Farm. Great. I'll kind of start at the beginning. My dad was a dairy farmer for his whole life. Opportunity presented itself that some other family, my uncle, my cousins would continue the dairy farmer. And my dad went from dairy to berry and started a you pick berry and egg tourism farm from just a neighbor's, you know, kind of hobby bee farm. And. 00:56 I just was helping out a little bit the first couple of years, helping out the first couple of years just on the weekends and getting it going. And he ran it for seven years. And then in 2019, I came back as the manager and dad took a different full-time job, but it was still helping me a lot on the weekends. And I ran it for the last five years. And then this year we've been running it together as he retired from the... 01:27 the job that he took as a farm director at a local university. That is so fun. Was it his dream that you guys would end up working together? Not necessarily. It seemed like it worked out that way. It worked out that way. It was something that we talked about when he was looking at what we want to do if he ever wanted a farm. 01:54 This intrigued me a lot compared to just dairy farming. If you always look at different farms, I think this is both really good fit for our personalities. We enjoy working with people. It's having guests and public out to the farm. Yeah. 02:10 Okay. Is your dad Greg? Is that his name? Yes, Greg Farmer Greg. Okay. Yeah. Farmer Greg. I was looking at your Facebook page today because I have been crazy busy and hadn't actually looked at it since I booked the interview with you. And I was like, it looks like such a fun place to be. And your Facebook page is brilliant. I don't know who handles, who handles that, but whoever does it is doing a great job. 02:38 Well, thank you. It's something we've always enjoyed. My wife and I have done it for many years. The last couple of years we have joined with. So thanks for the comment on our Facebook page. My wife and I had been running the Facebook together for many years. And then we also have hired an intern the last four or five years to give us a hand with it, especially on the video editing side. But it takes a whole bunch of us to come up with some fun, creative ideas and put them together. Yeah. 03:08 looks super fun and the the way the videos and photos are taken it's very colorful and inviting and that's what you want for people to want to come see you. Yep and we like to think that our Facebook reflects our farm when you come out here you're out here to have experience it's not just about us growing you know fruit and vegetables and pumpkins it's about having a good time on the farm. 03:35 making memories with your family and friends. And yeah, I just want to be a place that is really welcoming and just something that people look forward to. And we reflect that on our Facebook and our website as well. Yes, I was just going to say your website is crazy full. Yeah, it's really hard to describe what we do just in one page because we, like you were saying, it's all summer and fall long. 04:02 We start out with strawberries usually mid-June. Follow that up with strawberries at the beginning of July. Then raspberries, blueberries, and currants come into play. Throughout those times we also have strawberry shortcake days where we have shortcake we sell out of our store and food and wagon rides. On Saturdays we typically do those. 04:26 In July, we have the ElocoCoop Farm Tour. We're a part of where other farms and us, we are kind of used to open our doors. We open our doors, have people from all over Western Wisconsin and the Twin Cities area come out and check out what we got going on. Moving into August, we saw some blueberries that we do our sunflowers and zinnias. In the fall, we do a corn maze pumpkin patch. 04:49 Sometimes we sell some flowers depending when the frost comes, fall raspberry pickin', we even have golden fall raspberries, guided wagon rides on the weekends. We had at least six to seven hundred kids come for field trips this year and always a blast. On top of that we planted Christmas trees which are still a ways out and we host a handful of weddings here as well in our wedding barn. 05:18 And those photos are

Today I'm talking with Amy at Grounded In Maine. 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 Amy Fagan from Grounded in Maine. How are you, Amy? Again. I'm good. Good. Amy and I talked months ago. I think it was June. 00:29 I think. I don't remember. And we recorded an episode and it was released and it was great. But Amy is no longer grounded in Maine. She has uprooted herself to Virginia. So I wanted to have her back and talk about how that's all going. So tell me about what's changed. What hasn't changed? Yes. 00:50 No, I will always be grounded in Maine. I spent my first 49 years in Maine, so I will always be grounded in Maine, but I no longer live there. I got divorced in July. I moved to Virginia in August because Maine is way too expensive for a single income. And so I just relocated. And you moved to some land as well as a house on it. Is that right? It's not a lot of land. I'm on a little more than an acre, 01:20 It's all me. It's plenty. You can do a lot with an acre honey. Yeah well I mean it's weird because the backyard is this super steep downslope. That's where the chickens are and I need to fix that up but so everything is gonna be in the front yard. All the gardening is gonna be on the front yard and people are gonna hate me here because they are very they love their lawns. 01:49 are very meticulous about their lawns and I am not going to be mowing my lawn. I am growing a food forest. Maybe they'll be inspired. Maybe they will. I hope so. He'll be a trendsetter. I am going to be a trendsetter and I'm getting more chicken. So I will be selling my eggs to my neighbors and, um, and if I have a really great, if I have really great crops, I will be feeding them too. So meh. 02:17 Nice. Take that about my scruffy lawn. Well, yeah. And you can't eat grass. I say this all the time. You cannot eat grass. Absolutely. Doesn't taste good. It makes it smells good. Doesn't taste good. Yeah. Yeah. It makes me insane when people are like, but I want a nice green lawn. And I'm like, you can have a nice green lawn. You could be growing chamomile and it would smell amazing when you step on it. 02:46 But no, it's grass. Or mint or creeping thyme or anything. But yeah. Even Creeping Charlie smells good and it's a low ground cover and people hate the Creeping Charlie, but it's really pretty and it smells good. I don't know Creeping Charlie. I'll have to look that up. But yeah, I mean, I've had three people in the first month offered to mow my lawn. I mean, not for free, but. Well. 03:16 One of them did for free. But I said, you know, I don't plan to do this ongoing. So I'm sure if you want to know it now, but it's not gonna last. But the man that lives across the street is super, super sweet. He's a retired policeman, which was, I knew that before I moved here and I was psyched about that. I'm like, so he's gonna look out for me. And he is, but he's also 75. He just lost his wife this year. 03:44 He was in the hospital earlier. He can't really get around well, but he can get on his mower. Well, that works. My first time meeting him, he had come over and was mowing my lawn. I was like, oh my gosh, what? Wait, no, I was gonna have someone else mow my lawn. And he was like, I just didn't know how to say hi. Like, you know, I saw that. He can't just like walk up the stairs because he's older. 04:09 But he's, you know, he's been in this house across the street for 75 years, his whole life. And his daughter lives on one side of him and his son lives behind with his donkeys and other animals. And his grandson lives next door, which is right across the street from me. But so it's like, it's, it's kind of cool. It's family, it's family area. He owns some land up at the end of the road too. But it's, I'm an agricultural because I brought my chickens. Good. 04:39 Hmm. Yeah. So it's good. It's good. I have I mean, I've met a lot of neighbors and I will say my my. 04:50 I really like them. I really like my neighbors. People drive like they want to take me out and I'm not sure if they really do or if that's in my head. Nobody walks here except for me and we risk our lives doing it. Yeah, but it's so good for you. So keep doing it. As long as nobody runs you over, it's great for your health, right? Yes. Yeah, it's a nice uphill too. It's 05:19 It's so funny to me how many co-incidents you and I share because our neighbor who lives northwest of us, about a quarter mile away, he is a county sheriff. So you have former law enforcement and I have current law enforcement. And actually the county sheriff st

Today I'm talking with Teena at Serenity Farm and Stables about equine therapy and the grounding power of nature. 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 Teena, and of course I just shut the Facebook page, so I can't read your business name. Tell me your business name again. All right, well my company is Serenity Farm and Stables. We're at a water town, Minnesota. 00:29 We are a facility that specializes in programs that support mental health, healing, and so predominantly working not riding horses, but groundwork, a lot of group therapeutic experiences, individual couples and families. So how did this come about? Because I know that you are educated in all of this. So how did you get to where you are? 00:56 That's a great question. I would say in terms of the equine piece, I have children that were more or less born with a passion for horses. And so that's what got us into the equine world. As my children have now moved on into college, we still had these three amazing mayors and I desired to continue to work with them in a capacity. And that included as an equine therapist. My background was oncology nursing. 01:25 with a component of marriage and family counseling around oncology and family and cancer survivorship, which then led to holistic healing and homeopathics and other things. Ultimately, all of them tied together, though, so beautifully with equine therapy, which is really amazing for trauma release. And so much of our physical experience of suffering comes from suppressed emotions. So. 01:53 They are amazing facilitators for that. Yes, and what you just said about all of our misery coming from suppressed emotion. Folks, let it out. That's the thing I want to say about this, because you cannot suppress everything and manage to thrive. No, they cannot cohabitate, for sure. And a lot of times, which is why the horses are also the most amazing facilitators, because a lot of times, the suppressed emotion we have 02:23 might not even be on the conscious level. And they have the ability to meet us at both conscious and unconscious levels, which is why they do such beautiful and amazing healing work with clients, perhaps on the spectrum, who might not have the words to express their experience. The horses don't communicate on that language level. They communicate on an energetic level. And so they have the ability to understand. 02:51 and transmutate energetic experiences and emotional experiences in ways as humans will never comprehend. Yes, and so this is gonna get real deep if you keep talking that the way that you're talking because most people do not understand how this works. So can you, I don't know, in layman's terms, tell me how the horses help? Okay, so I'll try to... 03:20 You're right, this is deep work and it's what I'm submerged in, so it's kind of how I live day to day. But so how the horses work in a herd scenario is they rely on one another because they're prey animals. And so they can communicate in very, very subtle ways through energy. Just the slight movement of an ear or flip of their tail or the angle of their body could indicate there's a predator to be unaware that they should be in awareness of. 03:50 And so when you take that very strong sensitivity to their environment and you bring it into, for instance, an arena with clients, often when we come in with clients, the clients might have a lot of anxiety or a depressive state or high stress kind of personality. And as such, their heart rate might be very elevated, the respiratory rate might be elevated. And so the gift of the herd is as we enter into their herd, 04:20 meaning like our relationship as a human to them as a horse, often it will help bring down our heart rate, it will slow down our respiratory rate. So that's what we call co-regulation when there's a sort of a movement towards something that is more stable. And so we can apply that to the physical sensations of stress, which I just shared, like the respiratory heart rate. 04:48 But then also our emotional state can come down from a place of trauma and stress to a one of more of a harmonized state. Does that feel more simple? Yes. And I would have been happy to keep listening to the big words because I love words and ones I don't know. I would have been like, what does that one mean? But it makes it really hard for people who are listening because they'll be like, I'm lost and I don't have time to look up the word, you know? 05:18 All that is important is that we understand that we harbor and hold so much emotion in our bodies that sh

Today I'm talking with Amy at Francis Farm of Londonderry. 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 Amy at Francis Farm of Londonderry. Good morning, Amy. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm great. I'm really excited to chat with you about what you do. So let's just go for it. What do you do? Tell me about yourself. 00:28 So I have an educational and rescue farm here in Chilacothe, well, London dairy, but it's Chilacothe, Ohio. Um, we do events with, um, with children. We have 4-H and FFA kids. We finally got alpacas into the Ross County fair, um, as an approved project. And so we have students that will lease our alpacas and they come here and they learn how to take care of them. And we have. 00:56 students that purchase our goats for their projects. We have FFA kids come, any student that's interested in animal science, they can come on our special herd health days and learn how to take care of animals and learn about things like needle safety, which is a big, big thing for me, how to properly restrain an animal to give vaccinations, the importance of knowing everything about an animal before you bring it home. 01:24 the type of enclosure that it needs, to the type of food that it needs, to the type of grass that it eats, the vaccinations or any emergency medications you need, all of that. Excuse me, we have field trips here on the farm and so students can come and we do special STEM projects with the students. We do things like we use the alpaca fiber and I show them by adding hot and cold. 01:52 how they can make fleece or, I'm sorry, make felt. We do a hatching project, so they'll rent out our incubator and we give them some fertilized eggs to do the project. We have the shell dissolving stem project, and then my favorite one, which is kind of funny, it really only works on the little kids, but eggs can be pink, blue, green. 02:21 several shades of brown, white, and we have all of that. And so I asked the kids which egg they think tastes better. And of course the little girl is always like pink and the boys are like blue. So then while they're on their break, I make the eggs and I label the bottom of the plates and they taste the eggs and they have to guess which one they ate. And the moral of it is they all taste the same. So we do different training for people that would like to get started. 02:49 on with a farm and don't really know where to start. We give that training and education before they bring animals onto their farm. We have a few adult day centers that come once a month for animal therapy or they volunteer. So the program pays them and then they can do things like, you know, whatever their ability is, whether it's sweeping the barn or just sitting with the animals. 03:18 So we do that. We raise chickens and sell them as first year layers for people that don't want to have, go through the thing of having a brooder and warming them and waiting four months to have them. And so those are a couple of the things that we do. Wow, that's a lot. So I have to know, is this nonprofit or do you get paid for what you do? Well, it is nonprofit. We do things. Yeah, we do things that help. 03:48 pay for things that we need. So with a nonprofit, you can make a certain amount per year. But all of the proceeds that we get from events that we do, we do trunk retreats and we do different village events and vacation Bible schools. We do things off the farm and on the farm. But those things go back into the farm to do things like adding fencing or adding another shelter house. 04:18 big thing that we have to do is we added a watering system out back. We are needing to put a couple lean-tos on the side of our barn because we get so many calls between February and maybe March to take babies, you know, bottle babies because the mother is rejecting them or something happened to the mother. And so I get a lot of phone calls at that time to take. 04:46 orphans or babies that are rejected. So we need to place or rescues. And like when something comes in as a rescue, for example, we had four alpacas that we were asked to come and look at. They were in an area that didn't have any grass and they were giving them half cup a grain a day, which was fine, but they weren't really getting the hay that they needed. So they were about 40 to 60 pounds underweight. 05:16 Well, in the summer, that's fine. But in the winter, you know, you either need to have a coat on them or they need to be in the barn. And so we need to add some lean to's on the barn. Um, so the things that we do, it all goes back into trying to help make sure that we h

Today I'm talking with Christina and Seth at Dandylion Farms LLC. 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 Christina and Seth at Dandelion Farms LLC. Good evening, guys. Good evening. Hey. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. You guys are in Ohio? Yes. Okay. I'm in Minnesota if you didn't know. 00:30 Um, so tell me, tell me about yourselves and what you do. Well, uh, we're just kind of some average people who, uh, kind of started going down the whole homesteading trail, um, quite a few years ago. And, uh, you know, we, we kind of do a lot of, a lot of things, but 00:58 Our business right now primarily makes natural healthcare products like lotions, shampoos, soaps, salves, stuff like that. All the good things, yes. Yes, yeah. Yep, we make things like that here too. And Christina was kind enough to send me a lip balm and a shampoo bar. 01:28 And I'm probably, I don't know if I'm supposed to say that or not, cause it's a new thing, but I, I tried the lip balm today and it's a wonderful, I think you sent me the mocha kind. Yes. That one is her favorite. So I was like, Oh, let her try that one out. And then yeah, the shampoo bar, we haven't released them yet, but I've been giving them out to like a couple of people to try out and let me know what they think about them before we really put them out there. 01:54 Well, I have questions. I haven't used it yet because I wash my hair once a week and I had just washed my hair when the bar came in and I was like, um, I'm going to wait. So my question about the shampoo bars is how exactly do you use them? Do you use them like a bar of soap on your hair or do you lather them up in your hand and put the lather in your hair or how do I use it? So you could do either. 02:20 but I just put the soap bar under the water for a second and then obviously make sure your hair is good and wet. And then I just lather and it literally feels like there's a huge cloud sitting on my head. It lathers up so well. Yeah, I just scrubbed down. Okay. Like using a bar of soap. Okay, cool. And it looks like there's a lot of moisturizing oils in the ingredients and I am tickled about this because my hair tends toward dry and. 02:48 We have a cold front moving into Minnesota as we speak. Today it was 72, tomorrow it's supposed to be 55 for the high. And it doesn't look like it's gonna get hot, hot again until spring. Thank you, Jesus, I'm ready for this bouncing to be done. But my hair tends to get real dry in the wintertime because the humidity drops. So I'm very excited to see how the oils in it work. Yes, so I naturally have, 03:18 Like my hair will get, if I wash it too much, which when you said you only wash your hair once a week, I only wash mine twice a week. So it's much better for like the oil production. But I understand completely about your hair being dry because mine is as well. And that's why I packed it full of so many hydrating oils because I always feel like I had that issue. And that was one of the biggest things as to why I was like, we're making shampoo bars because one, all of the terrible ingredients that are in all the store-bought ones, you know, they, 03:47 can cause all kinds of issues. But also I was like, no matter what I purchase, my hair is still dry. So I was like, I'm just gonna make my own. So yeah, I made sure to put a bunch of nourishing and hydrating and moisturizing oils into it. So I'm excited to hear what you think about it when you try it. Well, it's probably gonna be tomorrow. So as soon as it dries, I will message you and tell you what it did. I also heard that I read, cause I looked up about shampoo bars, cause I keep meaning to get one and I never do. 04:16 And then one showed up magically in my mailbox and I was like, I don't know what to do with this. I don't know how it works. And I looked it up. And from what I read from three reputable sources, because that's how I decide whether I believe what I'm reading, people's hair goes through an adjustment period and you shift from shampoo to a shampoo bar. Yes, absolutely. So we'll see. Right now. 04:44 Right now I wash my hair and I let it dry and my hair is long. It's like mid back and I'm also 54 and my hair is about, I would say two thirds white and a third dark. Cause I started going gray really early. I have my first gray hairs at 14. And I have been saying for the last 10 years, I wish that it would just go white because this is driving me insane, but I don't want to color it cause it'll take forever to grow it back out again. 05:15 Point being is that no one tells you when your hair is beautiful and dark

Today I'm talking with Dawn at The Gorham 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 Dawn at the Gorham Homestead. Good morning, or good afternoon, Dawn. It's actually one o'clock in the afternoon here. Right. Good afternoon. How you doing? I'm doing great. You are where again? 00:27 I am in Dixon, Tennessee, just about 30 minutes west of Nashville. Okay, I have talked to so many people in the southern states this week that I'm starting to pick up a drawl. It'll happen. If you talk to us long enough, it'll rub off on you. It's the easiest one for me to pick up. So if I do it, I am absolutely not making fun of you. My ears are just telling my brain to gain a southern drawl. That's all. I wouldn't even notice if you did. Where are you located? I'm in Minnesota. 00:56 Minnesota, gotcha, okay. Yeah, and I don't sound like I'm from Minnesota because I grew up in Maine and I have worked hard to get rid of the Maine accent and not fully adopt the Minnesota accent. I gotcha. So everybody's like, where are you from? And I'm like everywhere and nowhere. Makes sense. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. So my name is Dawn and I'm... 01:23 the Gorham Homestead here in Dixon. And we started this farm about four years ago. And we're about 15 years into our natural health journey. I started when my son was young, started learning about natural foods and cleaning up our diet, things that I wasn't taught in like the 80s and 90s. We grew up on fast food and I thought it was fine. We trusted that it was fine. 01:52 until my youngest son was born and we thought he was autistic, which I'm still convinced if we hadn't changed his diet that he might have been more on the spectrum. So we started down that rabbit hole, which eventually led to, I quickly realized that I couldn't afford to shop at the organic Whole Foods all the time. There's a reason why they call it Whole Paycheck. 02:17 Yes. We started growing our own food as much as we could grow in our subdivision and our little, you know, 10th of an acre backyard, squeezed everything we could into it. And that just, you know, how that starts, you start with chickens and you start with a raised bed. And before you know it, you have 15 raised beds and grapevines and plum trees and whatever you can squeeze into that. And the next step for me was that I eventually wanted a milk cow because we 02:46 When he was about two, we also got onto the raw dairy. And, um, you know, I knew I couldn't, I knew I couldn't get away with having a milk cow in a subdivision, like I had gotten away with having chickens and that was contraband and I just, you know, threw a dozen eggs here and a dozen eggs there to my neighbors to keep them quiet. Yep. So in 2020, you know, I worked in the courthouse in Nashville and when 03:11 They tried to set the courthouse on fire just during protests and that sort of thing. I had been there for 25 years and that made me realize just how fragile a lot of things were and so that was our calling. That was our time to find our way out and to purchase the farm. So we've been here building it up slowly over the last four years. That all sounds really familiar except that I wasn't anywhere near a courthouse that somebody was trying to set on fire. So I'm real grateful for that. 03:41 It was a little scary. Yeah, and not to be a smart ass, but that was what lit the fire on your feet to move. Yes, yes. I mean that plus, you know, listening to some of my favorite influencers, they just kept saying, if you're in the cities, get out, you know, that it's not gonna get any better. And while Nashville had always sort of had a small town feel, it was quickly changing. Like when I moved to Nashville, it barely had a skyline. Now it looks like Dallas. 04:09 I mean, it's just crazy how fast everything exploded. And with that, you know, that kind of explosion and population increase comes a lot of the problems that comes with that. So yeah, we were just ready for our own sanity and safety to just get the heck out and live the peaceful life on the farm. Yeah. We lived in a small town for 20 years before we moved in 2020. And it is amazing. 04:39 how fast things get built up. I hadn't been up into the town, past the town I was living in, in over a year. And my husband and I needed to run up there a couple weekends ago. And I was like, that's new, that's new. Where'd that come from? When did this change on the highway? What happened? And he was like, you don't get out much, do you, honey? And I was like, I don't want to. I don't eit

Today I'm talking with Stephanie at Dancing Gardens Medicinal Herb Farm. 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 Stephanie at Dancing Gardens Medicinal Herb Farm. Good morning, Stephanie. How are you? Morning. Great. And you? 00:23 We tried to do this a while ago and you were driving and the signal kept cutting out. So I'm really glad that you're in one place right now. Right. And you said you're in Indiana? Yes. Okay, cool. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. My name is Stephanie. I'm married, four children, two grands. Since 2006, I've been on a journey with my own health because my husband is a veteran. 00:53 He's had some health issues, so we've decided to look into herbal medicine because big pharma is crazy busy money making junk. Okay, so I want to get into that, but do you grow your own herbs or do you acquire them from people who grow them or how does it work? We grow some, we accumulate some, we trade, you know, whatever works. Okay. 01:23 because some people will buy and that's totally fine, but if you're gonna buy, make sure it's a reputable place you're buying from because otherwise you may not know what you're getting. Absolutely. And growing plants in itself is healing, so I always encourage people to try to grow something. Yep. Okay, so what, like I wanna get into the nitty gritty of this, but I wanna be real careful. What kinds of herbs 01:53 I mean, I feel like every herb has a use, but I also know that some herbs are actually dangerous. So is there like a common couple of herbs that really do help the body? Well, it depends on what you're looking at to help the body. Like you said, every one of them have different uses. I have found, I believe, dandelion and... 02:22 calendula and hibiscus, I believe are most general that I grow outside of that. That's what I know what I grow. I'm learning other things to expand my horizon on knowledge because this is all brand new. 02:47 and learning the herbs. I have been already researching things for me specifically, but outside of my realm, you know, I'm still learning that. So that's what I found for a general wellness. Okay. And it's a huge field of herbs, obviously. There's so many. And some herbs are also really good for the body when you eat them, when you use them to flavor your food. And 03:15 some herbs are great in tinctures or teas. So there's a lot of ways to make this work. And I always kind of tread lightly because this is clearly a podcast that goes out to anyone who wants to listen to it. And I wanna be really aware of what we're sharing about things here. Right. So how long have you been digging into this? Really, for me, the past... 03:46 I've stayed five years that I have finally got to where, oh, look what I grow in my yard and it's been medicinal this whole time. But I have been on a journey with my health since 2006. Health as in I went through eight doctors because I didn't feel like they were listening to me. Here's a pill, that'll take care of it. Here's a pill, it'll take care of it. No, that's not what I'm looking for. 04:15 What is the problem? So it's been a journey. Uh-huh. Yes. And I'm going to, I'm going to go on a limb here and say, if you are female, like biologically female and a doctor isn't listening to you, I don't, I, typically it's the male doctors don't really listen, but there are female doctors that don't listen to get second opinions, keep looking because you will eventually find a doctor that is. 04:43 and no bullshit will tell you what they think and they will recommend what they think is the next step. And even if they can't do it, they'll find you someone who can. The reason I say this is with my fourth baby, who is now almost 23 and still lives with us, he, I had already had three babies. I knew how, or two babies, I knew how this went. And I knew that. 05:11 I could do it without drugs. I knew it. And I also knew that I wanted to do labor at home, most of it. And I just, I had it knocked. I knew what I was doing. And I knew that pain wasn't going to be the indicator to go into the hospital. And I told him all these things. And he went, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I thought, oh, this is not going to go well. And I was in... 05:42 pre-labor, whatever you call it before it's actual labor. For a couple of weeks, that was really fun. And my husband was getting antsy and he was like, we should probably go in and see where you're at. And I was like, okay. So we went in and the doc checked me and I was in labor, but it wasn't going anywhere. I think I was maybe two centimeters dilated. And the doc was l

Today I'm talking with Dedra at Streamwater 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 Dedra at, I have to look up the name of your place, Streamwater Farm. Good morning, Dedra, how are you? Good morning, I'm great, how are you doing? I'm good, except that I cannot remember the name of people's places to save my life most days. Well, there's a bunch of them. 00:29 Yeah, and they're all interesting. So, all right. Well, tell me about yourself. You're in Mississippi. I am. I'm in South Mississippi. I'm actually just a County above the Louisiana line. So we are way down here and, um, my husband and I, we moved here about eight years ago. We were living in the Jackson area of Mississippi before then I am a nurse and we were working up there and we kind of just wanted to slow her lifestyle. So we, um, 00:54 We made it down here and we're closer to family, we're closer to friends and just started our homesteading adventure, actually started our homesteading adventure while we still lived in the city, but moved down here and just expanded. So that's what we're doing here. I homeschool my kids and stay home full time and all the good things, so it's fun. Awesome. We started our homesteading adventures when we lived in town, in the small town that we lived in. Before we moved to the place we live in now. 01:24 four years ago. And we had a 850 square foot house, four kids, three bedroom house, and it was on a 10th of an acre lot. Yeah. That's less than what we had. We had a fourth of an acre in the city. Yeah. And we had a decent garden. We fed ourselves and then neighbors. And sometimes we even had enough to donate to the local food shelf, which was awesome. That is cool. 01:50 The kids would go pick whatever they wanted out of the garden when it was in season and just eat it and they did They loved sugar snap peas Those are hard to grow down here. We have to Actually, this is the time of year We can grow them right before our frost because they do not like the heat so sugar snap peas are kind of a delicacy down here Yeah, and the kids loved them because they tasted like candy. So great Yeah, but then the kids all 02:19 moved out except for one, the youngest one still lives here. And we came into some money through some tragedies. We lost two parent figures, which sucked. But they were kind enough to leave us some fundage. And we were like, the best use of that fundage is to live our lives while we're alive. And we bought a 3.1 acre property with a home and a big old pole barn, which is a storage unit, really. 02:46 And so we did a whole lot of homesteading skills when we lived at the old place. So we felt very ready to step into a bigger arena, I guess. Right. Oh yeah. Like, I mean, I'm all for like one of my favorite things to tell. I just want to encourage everybody that I can to do what you can where you are. And I mean, because I mean, some of my favorite memories are that sweet little garden in that backyard in the city. Like it was just such a sweet time of learning and really figuring out what we wanted to do. 03:16 And so I love like, I love hearing people. I was talking to someone the other day who had listened to my podcast and she's a friend of mine and she used to live in the country and she's had to move to city limits. She's got kids in the school system and things like that. And she was like, you know, I thought I was going to wait until I, um, my kids graduated and I was able to move to my land to get chickens. But you know what? After listening, I think I'm going to just go ahead and do it now. I was like, do it now. Life is too short. Like, you know, yeah, there's some things you can't accomplish, maybe where you are, but there's so much you can do. 03:45 And it made me so happy because I was like, yes girl, do it. Just, just fill that side yard up with some chickens and make you a garden. It's going to be just fine. Jump in the pool. Yeah. Um, I mean, I'm going to apologize right off the bat. My dog is losing her mind because they are harvesting the cornfield across the street from us and she, she hates the big equipment. Right. Like she'll bark at a car if it comes in the driveway, but if they're just driving down the road, she's fine. 04:14 but the big equipment she just does not appreciate it. So she's downstairs yipping and I can hear her. So I don't know what's gonna come through on the recording. I don't hear her actually. So we're good. Okay, good. I have a dog in here with me too. And if she barks, you will absolutely hear her and I apologize ahead of tim

Today I'm talking with Darlene and Leon at Whispering 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 Leon and Darlene at Whispering Homestead. Good afternoon, Darlene, how are you? We are great. We are excited to be here with you. I'm really glad. Is Leon there too? Yes, he is. He just walked away for a minute. Oh, okay. All right, cool. 00:30 Okay, so you're in Alabama, right? Yes, we are. We're on Sand Mountain. Oh, so you're on a mountain. That's awesome It is we're on the mountaintop. There's a nice flat plateau up here and it sounds like it's supposed to be an amazing place We just moved here a little over a year ago and we are loving it. It's beautiful weather here The soil is amazing 00:53 We bought a little 20 acre property here that we want to grow produce and have some animals, chickens, goats, we have some sheep. Keep expanding our herds of things and growing a lot of good, healthy, chemical-free produce. Fantastic. There needs to be more people like you in the world. We're trying to be like you too, so I understand. Yeah. Okay. So I have not talked to anybody in Alabama yet. 01:20 This is the first Alabama conversation in over a year and a half of doing this. Oh, wow. That's amazing. Well, we don't know a lot about how to grow things here. We're learning. It's our first year. So we've talked to different people on what to expect. And we've just been having fun trying things and seeing what works and what doesn't. How was your summer growing season? It was good. 01:47 We were very happy. There was some crops that didn't do as well in the heat in the middle of summer that I think we probably won't grow them as late in the summer. We'll probably start them earlier. We definitely could have planted things a lot earlier than we did. And definitely there's some things this fall that are growing better than they did this summer. And we're thinking of ways of how we could grow things better in the summer. Definitely we dealt with some bugs 02:18 didn't have other places we've lived. So we definitely had more bug, oh, what do you call that? We had a lot more pest pressure away with certain types of bugs in certain crops. Yeah, and you're always gonna have that no matter where you live. We have it in Minnesota too. Where did you live before? I grew up in Wisconsin. Oh, okay. 02:48 Then I met my original roots are from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. My folks would have grown up there. They moved to Wisconsin to dairy farm. And then I went back to visit my grandma and spend some time in Pennsylvania. And I met my husband there. And so we got married and we lived in Pennsylvania for almost 20 years. And then we moved to Wisconsin. First of all, I was taking care of my folks and they passed away, sadly. 03:18 And then we've been looking to move south further for many years. We've been kind of looking around to see what's available or what a good area would be. And then so we moved with a couple of church folks. We decided on Alabama. One of the fellows, he was a truck driver and he kind of knew some areas where there's good crops, where they can grow good crops. That's what we're looking for. We wanted a place where we can raise our families and grow food and not being such a 03:47 polluted populated area. Pennsylvania was getting very, very populated where we were and it was hard to find parcels of land that weren't outrageously expensive. So we found Sand Mountain, Alabama. Well, I think that's a fine thing to do. I think Alabama is probably a lovely place to live. It is and with being here on the mountain, we're up in the Northern corner. So I don't know if I'd want to move any further south where it's any hotter. 04:14 where it's any more muggy, but it's beautiful up here. It's a very, very nice area to live. Yeah, and Alabama doesn't have the market cornered on muggy. This summer in Minnesota was one of the stickiest ones we've had in a long time. Yes, Wisconsin, I've heard two different people talked about how Wisconsin was a lot hotter this summer than it normally is. Uh-huh, oh yeah, it's been really strange weather since this time last year. 04:43 Minnesota and I assume Wisconsin too. Yeah, Wisconsin was beautiful last summer when we left there in August but it was nice here when we got to Alabama in August it was actually not as hot as I thought it might be but we are really enjoying the long summers just living outside all the time just you know barefoot and don't worry about shoes and that has been amazing because living in Wisconsin you wear shoes most of the y

Today I'm talking with Carri at Ironstone Creek 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 Carri at Ironstone Creek Farm. Good morning, Carri. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing well. Thank you. You're in Pennsylvania? That is correct. Okay. What's the nearest city to you? 00:27 Um, and most people are familiar with either Reading, Pennsylvania or Allentown, Pennsylvania. We're kind of in the middle of that, those two. Is that the Allentown in the Billy Joel song? Do you know? I actually do not know. I'm not sure. I'm willing to bet it is. Okay. So, so tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Um, so, um, we have. 00:56 a multi-faceted farm, I would say. We have a little less than 20 acres here, and we, number one, raise some animals for meat. So we raise Berkshire pigs, chickens, and turkeys. We also have some sheep that we do raise for meat as well. And then the other side of our farm is our pet animals. So our. 01:25 Pet animals include pet pigs and goats, bunnies, and we have a little mini cow. So we do some on-farm events here, and then we also have a mobile petting zoo. Fantastic, I love it. Okay, so tell me how this started, because not everybody in the world goes, hey, I'm gonna buy a farm and share the animals with the whole world. Right, correct. 01:54 Um, so I grew up in Southern Lancaster County. I was surrounded by farmland. Um, growing up, I spent probably 95% of my time outside barefoot, playing in the creeks, um, around animals. And I've just always loved animals. Um, so I didn't have a farm for, um, many of my married years, um, but it was always the goal. 02:20 So we had been searching for a farm for probably about 12 years and finally, you know, came upon this one here in Boyertown that seemed to be the right fit. So we went ahead and purchased it and we spent about 10 months fixing up the house in order to move our family in. And then once we were in, we started with 12 chickens and two goats. 02:47 And it just rapidly expanded from there. I wasn't planning on having a petting zoo. I wasn't planning on really any of this, but it just happened organically where our herd expanded really quickly. I fell in love with the animals. I was getting a ton of joy out of spending time with them. And I just figured, why shouldn't everyone else enjoy them? 03:16 So I started really small just with like, you know, a little mini petting zoo and it's just grown exponentially over the past couple years. So I don't know how to ask this without sounding weird. How many people have been to your farm do you think to see the animals? You know, I don't know the answer to that question. 03:44 I'm not open to the public. We are open by appointment. And then we do have several public events throughout the year where we open the farm up. And those are kind of paid events where we have other vendors coming in and lots of activities for kids. It's always geared toward kids. But, I mean, there have been. 04:10 been events where we've had a lot of people. Our fall festival is always very popular. And I think last year we had somewhere around 1,000 people for that particular event. So I guess over the past couple years, again, I don't know exactly how many, but several thousand. Yeah. Reason I asked is because back when I was younger and our kids were small. 04:40 We used to go to places like yours, only in Minnesota. And we'd take our kids to see cows and sheep and goats and stuff. And the kids absolutely loved it. And so did I, for that matter. Yes, absolutely. And now that we're not the parents of small children, and we live on a homestead that we love, we don't really go to farms anymore because we're too busy on our own property to have time to go. 05:09 A friend of mine had a puppy socialization event yesterday. She has nine little Australian shepherd pups that they breed, Australian shepherds, and she needed to get them familiar with new people and new sounds and new voices. And we would have gone, but we had too much going on here yesterday to attend. Our dog is a half sibling to these new puppies. Okay. 05:34 So we just don't go to these things as much as we used to. So I think gearing it towards kids on your side is a brilliant idea because parents want stuff to take their kids to that teaches the kids, that gives the kids something to enjoy and basically to give the kids something fun to do so you're hitting all those marks. Correct. Which is amazing. So what... 06:03 What continues to drive you to do this? Is it just how much fun it is? Um, yeah, I've heard from, um, di

Today I'm talking with Andy at Andy's Little Homestead. 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 Andy at Andy's Little Homestead. Good morning, Andy. How are you? How's it going, Mary? It's going great. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota. I don't know what it's like in Michigan. It's beautiful, but the cold's starting to get here. 00:27 We were down about 29 degrees last night Yeah, we've had two mild frosts in the last two weeks and the the hard frost is probably coming next week So yeah, my wife was my wife was showing me on the weather report I guess next next week is our first chance of snow for the year, which is about average, you know middle of October Well, at least we're not in Florida today Yeah, yeah 00:56 That was a big reason that we had kind of looked at Michigan initially coming from Eastern North Carolina was there's no hurricanes. Mm-hmm. Yes. I don't want to live where the creatures want to kill me and the weather wants to kill me too. Yep. I'll pass. I'm not into alligators and poisonous snakes and spiders. I like Minnesota because we have none of those here. So... 01:26 Anyway, tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, um, I, uh, the short version of the long story is that, uh, at, um, at 30 years old, uh, my, my life hit a, hit a big restart. Um, it was all centered around, um, or more or less centered around when I, when I got sober, I was pretty bad alcoholic for a long time. 01:55 and moved up to northern Michigan and from eastern North Carolina and lived in a camper and I started filming. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a little over 700,000 followers on Facebook, though I'm kind of trying to push everybody over to YouTube. 02:25 on a piece of raw land that's got nothing here basically when we bought it and doing it on a pretty tight budget like many people are out there. Yeah, so that's what I do. I make videos. Fun, and a good way to make a living. I have no complaints about that. Yeah, exactly. 02:51 As I've said on the podcast before, I do not love doing video unless it's just the quick little thing on my phone outside when the kittens are being cute. Because video does require setup and thinking through the shot and trying to find something that people will be interested in seeing. And it has to be watchable and I don't have the patience. So I don't do video. Oh yeah, no. There's a lot that goes into it. Every angle. 03:20 every little change, you know, I um, so when the channel started to grow, I did a little bit of research, just like, I literally watch videos about making videos. Just to kind of figure it out. And, you know, one of those things that's not really thought about very much is that if you ever notice on my videos, I never have a single camera angle that lasts more than like six to 10 seconds. 03:49 and that's intentional, that's to keep everything visually interesting. You know, a lot of people have short attention spans, so that's, I don't want to call it a trick, I mean they've been doing it in movies and TV shows for years. But it's one of those things that is extra, it makes the projects take longer, it definitely adds quite a bit. And then on the back end, I've got, you know, 04:16 Each each individual video usually ends up with about 80 to 100 individual clips that have to get put together and the audio synced and You know putting what they call be roll footage over top of it That's you know, all of it has to kind of work together in a way that that makes sense one of the things that is you know, 04:41 I started making videos partially because I always liked and respected the guys who took the time to put something together to teach other things and I try and embody that spirit with what I'm doing. But one of the problems with most of the videos that have like it's just a lot of hard information, a lot of times... 05:03 you know, it's a guy who says, okay, now we've got to undo these four bolts from this manifold and he will keep the camera on and he's undoing four bolts from the manifold for the next two and a half minutes. So, you know, trying to make it all work in a way that flows is a challenge, but it's kind of fun. 05:23 Yeah, and for me, I'm a writer. I really do love to write, and I actually have to get on an article here for Homestead Living soon because they want it by February, and if I don't get started on it, it's not going to get there. But writing takes a lot of thinking through and how is this going to come across and what is exactly the right word for what I'm trying to get across to people. And I would rather write than do videos. I'm s

Today I'm talking with Anthea at Females In Farming. 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 Anthea in New Zealand at Females in Farming. Good evening, morning, whatever it is for you, morning. Anthea, how are you? Good, thank you. How about yourself? I'm good. Your today is my yesterday. 00:29 Or your yesterday? My yesterday? My today? I can't do it. I had it straightened out earlier and I screwed it up. It is like 6 o'clock here and what time is it? Is it in New Zealand? It's 12 o'clock lunchtime, like on Friday. Yes. Thursday. Thursday, yes. I'm sorry. Again, it's like the TARDIS from Doctor Who. 00:58 So anyway, tell me about yourself and what you do at your place. Yeah. Well, I am a single homeschooling dairy farming mom, and we live in the North Island at the moment of New Zealand on a 400 cow dairy farm. We milk once a day. I've been part of the dairy farming industry for the past 16, 17 years now in various roles and areas all around New Zealand. So I love it. 01:27 Can't get enough of it So it's not just you milking 400 head a day, is it? No, no, these are team. These are team. So yeah, there's three of us on this farm Okay, cool Alrighty, um, my daughter just messaged and said they're doing fine for anyone who doesn't know my daughter lives in st Petersburg, Florida and the hurricanes getting closer and closer. So that's why I had to check I 01:54 Rarely check messages when I'm doing interviews, but this one was important. Okay. So how old is your little one? He's 11 now. Okay. He's already yeah, he's been on farm since the day he was born nearly And yeah, I mean we haven't been all the time on farm I said I step back a little bit for the first bit but at some point of Each season we've been out there doing stuff. So 02:22 Pretty much since birth he's been on the farm and he also loves it which I'm so pleased about because some kids don't but this one definitely does. Yes, it would be really hard if he hated it. I can't imagine trying to do what you're doing and having your child despise it because that would make life really difficult. So tell me about the beginning because I read your about part on your Facebook page and you weren't always a country girl. 02:52 No, no, I was brought up in the city in Auckland. And yeah, it was just a city girl through and through, I guess. I didn't even really know you could work on a farm until I was about 24 years old. So, it was quite a surprise to find myself working on a farm, but here we go. Fast forward, what, 17 years, and there's just no way I would ever live in a city again. So, it's amazing how life can change sometimes. 03:21 Yeah, without any notice sometimes. Um, so, so here in the States, it, it was not easy for women to become accepted in farming for a long time. And there is a YouTube channel that my husband watches cause he's very into all the machinery and her name, her, her YouTube channel is Laura Farms and she's probably only in her early twenties. And. 03:50 She works her ever loving heine off on her farm. And she drives all the big machinery and she has a barn cat that she loves. I can't remember its name. And she is so about proving herself. And I'm all for it. I really am. But I don't feel like women should have to prove themselves. I feel like they should just be able to do it if they wanna do it. So- I know. 04:18 Yeah. My point in sharing the story is that, has it been accepted in New Zealand for women to step into farming or has there been pushback? I think there is still that it's a man's job kind of a feel. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I'd say that women definitely don't get the same opportunities as what men do. All the same recognition. You'll see one of my posts, I'm not sure how far back you've looked, but... 04:46 One of my posts is about how women aren't just helpers on the farm. And a lot of my followers shared stories about their responsibilities and what they do on the farm and their frustrations at that issue of not really being seen for who they really are. So I don't think that we're fully accepted. I mean, we're accepted and it's okay to be there, but like we're not fully seen for what we do sometimes, I think. Yeah. 05:15 And I always find it very interesting because women, I can't remember the exact wording, but men are strong until they're not. Like I feel like they gas out quicker than women do. Women tend to be, there's a word, I can't think of it. Women are better at long-term physical activity, I think, than men are. Oh, right. 05:42 Yeah, more sort of like longer endurance, I guess. That's it. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Endurance. A

Today Hayden Caraway of the Homegrown Collective is catching me up on progress since we last talked. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Hayden Carraway. I love his last name. At the Homegrown Collective. Good morning, Hayden. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm doing great. Hope you are. I am. 00:26 I'm a little twitchy today because my daughter lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. And at the moment that we're, we are recording this, there is a huge hurricane called Hurricane Milton barreling its way toward Tampa Bay, which is right near St. Petersburg. So I am sending out prayers and positive energy to Florida right now, like you wouldn't believe. Well, we will, we will join you in that. I couldn't imagine what that feels like. 00:53 It kind of sucks, but she's okay. She promised me she'll keep me updated as much as she can. So. Well, good. I will be contacting you later on, maybe tomorrow in a couple of days, just to check in on that. That would be great. Thank you. All right, so I have questions, Mr. Carraway. Tell me, tell me what you're doing first and then I'll ask the questions. Yeah, sure. So I, several years ago, I started a project. 01:22 called the Homegrown Collective Nonprofit. It was started due to a lot of different factors. One, realizing how our food system was being operated and certain personal immune and digestive issues that I wanted to get worked out and cure, not just... 01:46 not just deal with it. So I've been doing a lot of research and hoping to create a platform that allows people to come together and push for a locally produced, responsibly grown food system. Okay, cool. And last we talked, you were just getting it going, all the publicity and stuff. So, 02:15 I think your answer to my first question answered the first question, which was what led you to start the nonprofit? Well, I've actually, it's a little different than that. I've been blessed to be able to travel with family and for work. So I've experienced how other countries ate and understanding their quality and processes. I realized that America's regulators had led us off a cliff regarding our food system. Then you combine that with the immune and digestive issues I spoke about. 02:44 And it's almost too obvious to correlate the two. And that's what led me to help start this mission of personally eating naturally produced food. Okay, cool. And how does it help the people who grow the food and the people who consume the food? As busy as consumers and especially farmers are, we make it easy to connect. 03:09 support and learn from the producers whose offerings you deem worthy of feeding your family and The tools that the producers have access to only help them save money on marketing You know ecommerce tools marketing tools and local pickup alerts allows them not to miss somebody coming by while they're working So it really helps them save money and gain new revenue streams Awesome so so have you I'm I'm 03:38 I'm going off scripted hitch. Hayden and I have a thing here in emails back and forth about what we're gonna talk about. So what's happened with that? I mean, last I talked to you, you were working on getting the website up and I know that people have signed up because I've looked at the website since, since it's up and running. So what's new with that? So at the beginning, when we first spoke, it was only a mobile app. 04:06 that was only accessible through your phone. And that was our mock trial. We wanted to launch that first to see if we got traction, if people were on board with this and if it would be a good decision to push forward. And so we went on with creating the web version. So now you can access it on your computer. We added new features and we paid to have anything that we discovered causing issues during the mobile app mock trials to be fixed. And 04:36 much more user friendly moving forward. So do you have any, I don't know, stories from people who have talked to you about using it? Yes, we've actually had a lady who logged on. I think it was in Pennsylvania who was actually able within the first month, so the full platform launched this last month and we've already had people saying that they were able to find some things in their area. We have hundreds of you. 05:05 producers logged on across the country and thousands of consumers have logged on just in the first month. And I know it is a little disappointing when it's not fully, I'm current, you know, it's difficult when it's not fully, we don't have all the producers up there in every community quite yet, but, u

Today I'm talking with Christine at Hidden Brook Ranch LLC. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Christine at Hidden Brook Ranch LLC. Good morning, Christine. How are you? I'm good, Mary. How are you? I'm great. You're in New Jersey? Yes, we are. We're in Blairstown, New Jersey, which is Warren County. 00:27 Okay, I've said this before on the podcast, so I'm gonna say it again. I was born in New Jersey, but my parents moved to Maine when I was six months old. Oh, nice. What part of New Jersey? Um, I don't, I don't know for sure. It was the Fort Dix Air Force Base. Oh, okay. Got it. That's like South Jersey. So I think the town or the city is Burlington, but I'm not positive. Got it. Yeah. 00:58 small little state, the garden state. But yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. So my husband and I own an alpaca ranch. We produce fiber producing alpacas, as well as conduct a agro tourism business, where we get to educate people on alpacas and llamas, because we do have some llamas as well. About... 01:27 their care and their habits and how we use the fiber to produce products. Yes. Okay. Do alpacas and llamas get along? Is that why people who have one usually have some of the other? Well, typically, yes, because alpacas and llamas are both part of the camel lid family. And I say that kind of, it's kind of odd. 01:56 Most alpaca owners don't like llamas. Most llama owners don't like alpacas. So it's almost rare, actually, to find someone who has both. But we find that it's nice to have both, because we also use our llamas for protection. So our llamas guard the alpacas. Oh, OK. So I know that llamas and alpacas are different. 02:26 Alpacas you can use their fur hair or whatever it's called for for fiber for yarn or I don't even know but llamas not so much, right? 02:40 So alpacas, the fiber is definitely better than a llama's fiber, but llama's fiber can be utilized. It just tends to be a bit more coarse. So if you're making something to like a wearable, you would make something that is not going to be close to the skin. 03:08 All right, that makes sense. So it's kind of the difference between wool and man-made yarn because wool tends to be itchy depending on the breed of sheep. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, definitely. Cool. So how did you get into this? So we started about 2019. We were looking for a piece of property where, you know, we could 03:38 not necessarily farm because farming wasn't our thing, but raise some animals, you know, to produce something because New Jersey's very expensive. So having a farm and producing a product from your farm helps you tax for tax purpose. So we were looking for something that would be at least five acres. 04:07 and have some ability or capability to raise some sort of animals. So we found this piece of property that right backs up to Jenny Jump State Park which is a really big park here in New Jersey and it fit all the check marks. The check marks were all checked off and they happen to have been already 04:37 for alpaca. And we tried to learn as much as we could and we decided that we were going to keep the four alpaca that the previous owners had and our one llama at that time, Stella, and raise alpaca. So that was the plan. That's how we kind of started. And then COVID came. 05:06 So COVID kind of gave us the opportunity to get to know our land and our animals more. And I always tell people alpaca are kind of like tattoos. Once you get one, you kind of end up getting more. So we kind of dove into learning as much as we could about their care and then decided that we wanted a couple of more. So 05:35 We bred initially because we knew what the result of a previous breeding with those two alpacas would be. And now we're, you know, producing show quality fiber alpacas. Yeah, so it was almost a mishap, you know, well, maybe not a mishap, but definitely something unexpected. 06:05 You know, initially, as far as animals, we would get a property we could have horses on. But we just kind of fell in love with the animals, the alpacas and the llamas. So that's how it started. So when you bred that that pair and you had that first alpaca baby and is there a name for a baby alpaca? Yeah. So baby alpacas are called creas. That's what I thought. Yeah, it's one. 06:33 Pretty is names for a baby animal I've ever heard. Yeah. Were you just like in love with this new baby? Oh my God. Yes, she was adorable. So alpacas are very interesting animals and especially when the female is bred. You know, I think she knows you're watching to

Today I'm talking with Cindy and Bill at Harmony Mountain 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 Cindy and Bill at Harmony Mountain Farm. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. Doing well. So tell me all about yourselves and your story because I was looking at your website and it's a beautiful story. Well thank you. 00:29 Well, our story goes way back because Sydney and I together go way back. Um, so I don't know how far back you want to go, but we met in the eighth grade. So we go back pretty far. Originally from, um, a suburb in, in Connecticut outside of Hartford and we lived a pretty traditional life. So Bill and I, suburban, sorry, suburban life, but Bill and I, um, we met when we were 19, we started dating, we started raising a family. 00:58 um, built, you know, built a business and I was in education and we've done a lot of different things. And, um, when our resource allowed, we started skiing up here in Northern New Hampshire. And at the same time, um, my kids had grown and kind of left the house and, and we were just starting to, I think, examine where we wanted the next part of our life to go. 01:26 And I was having some health problems and we were getting tired of the hustle and bustle of living in the area that we lived in. And we started talking about how food was impacting on our health and we just went down the rabbit hole. I was reading a bunch of books on leaving the suburbs or leaving the city to become a farmer and we started researching farmers. 01:54 Joe Saladin and- Yeah, and largely for entertainment at the time because we're living vicariously through those folks, I think, and their stories. Yeah, and then, so this is a, we call it our midlife crisis farm. So we're city suburban people who did not grow up doing this, but we were attracted to the lifestyle for the health benefits and- 02:23 And the more we learned, the more we educated ourselves, Cindy more formally in reading books. I'm a YouTube university guy, so I try, I can, you know, I spend a lot of time watching other people's stories and farms and things. I think we also need to mention we connected with a lot of other farmers, one of them being my cousin out in Missouri, who is, you know, had a generational cattle farm. So we would talk to people and, and 02:53 how you think about what we wanted to do for the health of the animal, our environment, and for ourselves. We think that raising animals or doing what we do, it has many, I guess you've helped me with this. Yeah, well, it adds more meaning to life. Our lives were feeling meaningless in the traditional suburban American model 03:23 you know, our free time was spent, you know, just trying to fill it with shopping or going to different events. And then it didn't seem to be a lot of meaning in that. So when we started down the road with animals, um, which then brought us into our diet and, uh, it just gave more meaning to our life. It was, we felt as though we were doing things that had a greater impact than, you know, Hey, what do you want to do? Let's go shopping or, you know, 03:50 let's go see a movie or a show or yeah and it just seems so incredibly interesting for both of us. It wasn't like we can't, you know, we kind of were doing it at the same time kind of parallel doing research and then it just all kind of evolved on our long drives back and forth from New Hampshire to Connecticut how we wanted to proceed and that just continued to grow. 04:19 And the beautiful thing about farming and living off our land and living sustainably is that we're never bored. I mean, and the work is never done. So there's always something to be done and to be learned. I think I am absolutely motivated to learn new things. I think that's big for me. I think for Bill, it's probably the same. 04:49 Um, it's, it's definitely evolving. We've gone through different animals and, um, you know, trying to find that the right mix of animals for us. Right now we, we work beef cattle. We have a couple of our family dairy cows for ourselves. Um, we do pork and we do poultry, both layers and meat birds. It's pretty much the mainstay of what we're doing is the beef, the poultry and the pork. 05:17 And then we have other animals just for enjoyment. We have three goats that are family pets, we have guarding dogs that are extremely valuable and dear to us. And I think that the main thing for us is like some of the things that I took away from some of the farmers that I had read about or he had watched on YouTube is that everybody has a job here. And so e

Today I'm talking with Jessica Kelly at The Kitchen Gardens. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you'd like to contact Jessica, you may email her at [email protected] 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 Jessica Kelly, cannot talk, at the Kitchen Gardens. Good morning, Jessica. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm so excited to speak with you today. I'm so excited you reached out because you... 00:29 commented on a comment that I left on a Facebook post and I was like, oh, this could be fun. Absolutely, I saw your comment and just immediately I thought why haven't I thought about being on a podcast to get the word out? So I thought I'm gonna reach out to her right now and let her know that I would be interested in speaking more about that. So yes, and I need all kinds of people to reach out because honestly, October is almost booked. 00:58 I didn't have five interviews scheduled two weeks ago. Oh, wow. Well, it's working. I dropped the ball. Whatever you're doing. Yeah, I dropped the ball and I was like, oh my God, I need to get October booked and I need to get booking for November because I have to stay on top of this. 01:16 It's going to be the holiday season here soon. And I was like, I need to get stuff booked now. Absolutely. Yeah. And I bet it's not an easy task because it's like constant, right? You're always booking. So I can't imagine. Yeah. And people are really, really great about if they respond, they want to do it. So if someone actually responds to a request, I'm pretty much sure they're going to want to talk to me. So that helps. 01:42 But anyway, let's talk about what you're doing to change the world in California. Well, I would love to think that I'm changing the world. That's my goal. I honestly, I'm so passionate about what I'm doing. So what my business is, is I help couples who are feeling overwhelmed by the urban life, go from feeling disconnected and stressed. 02:08 to living a slower, more intentional life on a homestead where they can improve their physical, mental and emotional health and strengthen their family bonds. And my emphasis is really on the family by teaching their children valuable life skills like self-reliance and responsibility so that they can experience a more fulfilling and sustaining way of life and a healthier life. So I'm a bit- 02:37 I'm very, very passionate about this. I have a background in nursing and so the health side of it is very important to me. Okay. So how are you helping families? So first of all, I'm actually in the middle of creating a course. In the past, I've done consulting work and I always knew that I wanted to create a course, but I wanted some time 03:07 to interview families, get to know their needs in regards to how they could start a homestead, what are the obstacles that they're encountering with leaving their urban life or city life, even the suburbs. I came from living a suburban life my whole entire life. And five years ago, my husband and I made the decision to buy some land and raise our kids for the sole purpose of 03:36 raising our kids on the land because we've had a lot of issues with some of our older children. And so what I've been doing is consulting work. I put the word out though, I'm really, really, really trying to just put the word out that this is a huge need in our current day. The children are suffering big time. 04:06 You know, as parents, we're also suffering. My generation, like we're having problems, a lot of problems with depression, anxiety, and other things, but the children are really suffering. And it's getting a little bit scary. I wouldn't say a little bit, it's really getting scary. And it's important to put the word out. So I started an Instagram account over a year ago, but I was very slow to get it going. 04:32 But the last six months have really hit it hard. I'm just getting this message out there. So that's what I'm doing. I'm putting the message out there. I'm very active on social media. I started a YouTube, but I'm actually not actively promoting anything on YouTube yet because I'm working on this curriculum. So I'm actually currently taking on conversations with couples who 05:01 are in this situation and like I'm scheduling 30 minute Zoom calls and I have a goal of having 50 Zoom calls before my curriculum is finalized. So that's where I'm going. I'm creating a course to literally get hands on with these people and help them get out of the city and to the homesteads where they can raise their kids and make it work for them. So. 05:30 That's what I'm doing in a nutshell. There's a lot

Today I'm talking with Chuck and John at Turners Fresh Gourmet. 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 Chuck and John at Turner's Fresh Gourmet. Hi guys, how are you? Good. And you're in Wisconsin, right? We are. Okay, so you're neighbors. Yes. Yeah, we live... 00:28 I don't know, less than five minutes apart, right, John? That's a true story. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I meant neighbors to me because I'm in Minnesota. But hey, we're all neighbors. Oh, yes. Yes. No. So where in Wisconsin are you? So we're in Wapaka County and in the the closest town is Wapaka, whereby the beautiful chain of lakes area. 00:56 I guess the only other way I would describe where we are is we're in the central sands farming area, which is where the glaciers dumped a huge amount of sand. That's interesting because as my grandfather used to say, it used to be before irrigation or modern irrigation, some of the most difficult land to farm on. 01:26 And then with the advent of irrigation, which was something that really exploded during his generation, it became some of the best land to farm on because it has great drainage and you have more control over the water input. Awesome. So what's the biggest city near you? 01:54 We're between Appleton and Stevens Point, almost midpoint, a little bit more toward point, but about 40 miles west of Appleton, west a little bit north. Okay. That gives me a dot on the map to picture in my head. Perfect. Thank you. All right. So tell me the story of how you guys got together and started the project here. I'll start out because I was sort of the instigating person on this. I was actually on vacation with my 02:24 my wife in the Oregon area, Portland, we landed in Portland, and we were heading to the Willamette Valley to do some little wine tasting, do some hiking along the coast, et cetera. But first place we went to eat was a restaurant that had Portland ketchup on the table. And I've not been a particular foodie. 02:49 necessarily, but I do, I've always noticed that sort of thing. If a restaurant says we've got house ketchup, I'm like, okay, I want something with that ketchup on it. And so I ordered a burger, whatever had the ketchup next restaurant, same thing, portly ketchup, and I'm kind of turning the bottle over and looking at it, looking up on the website, portly ketchup, I'm just curious, like this regional ketchup company. So long story short, I just kind of put that in the back of my 03:19 marketing and healthcare consultant, very specific niche. That was my job. And we had just moved to Wapaka in this sort of retirement transition I had been doing, or we've been doing. And we knew the Turner family for years because we'd be coming up here. And at a historical society presentation about three months later, we see John, along with his father and his sister presenting all about Turner Farms. 03:47 and the history of it, all that stuff. And the last people to get up were John and his sister, Tara. And they talk about, you know, here's some things we're looking to do to kind of expand and looking toward the future. And this idea resurfaced in my head. I went up to John, I said, what do you think about making a ketchup and having your own ketchup? And he said, that sounds interesting. And for reasons that he knew that I didn't, which was that they have a bunch of tomatoes left over every year, so why not? 04:17 And so that was, I think, February right before the pandemic. In the ensuing, you know, couple of years, we'd been working on our recipe and just kind of making the ketchup from home and sharing some jars of John, but not really talking too much about it because there's a pandemic. And then about a year and a half later or about a year and a half ago, John and I met up and he said, you know, we've been talking. We'd love to have your ketchup on the shelf. And I said, 04:47 John it's not my ketchup. This is this be Turner's fresh ketchup. It's it's the it's your brand your tomatoes your farm I'm almost a minority player in this thing because I think you guys have got the local farming Etc. So that's it. I'll let John fill in the rest of it, but Okay, that that became the idea Yeah it's funny because I had 05:12 recently moved back to the farm after being away for a number of years. And, um, as Chuck said, like, uh, there was a presentation of mainly about the past and as I remember it, Chuck just was like, you know, what's next and how about ketchup and, uh, it all sounded good. Uh, but I, I really didn't know how serious Chuck was about, um, this project until, u

Today I'm talking with Theresa at Get Bentz 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 Theresa Bentz at Get Bentz Farm. Good morning, Theresa. Good morning. I have to tell you, I love the name of your farm. One of the most entertaining things about this podcast over the last year. 00:27 is all the names that people come up with for their places. So I'm assuming it's just a riff on your name. Yeah, it's a little bit of a riff on our name and also like we're in the Northfield area and there are so many beautiful little like vegetable farms or berry farms around here. And everybody has sweet names like singing hills and whispering meadows and stuff like that. And 00:54 When we first started, we were one of the only ones who had sheep, really. And so we were like, well, we got these funky Icelandic sheep that have an edge to them. You know, they're not the kind of sheep that'll come up and let you pet them. Um, and so we were like, we don't want a soft name. We need a tough name. And then we're like, well, our last name is Bentz. So why don't people just get Bentz? 01:22 Yes, I had never heard the phrase get bent until I met my current husband. And he said it one time and I was like, where, what is that? He said, you've never heard it before. I said, no, no, never heard it. And I can't explain on the podcast what it actually means. It's very insulting. So, but it's brilliant for your farm. So tell me, tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Yeah. So, um, we, well. 01:51 kind of a little bit about us. We were originally city folk and people who, like we lived, I lived and grew up in the cities and my husband grew up in the suburbs and for a while we lived in Savage together and we just, you know, we just kind of wanted to have more control over our food sources and how we get food and where the food comes from and just knowing that because that's 02:20 Part of the biggest issue as a consumer is figuring out where your food is actually coming from. And so then in 2013, we, what we had decided many years before that, but in 2013, we finally found a farm that fit what we wanted, which took a long time. For any of those people out there looking for farms, it takes a really long time. So just be patient. And then, you know, we found the farm in 2013. 02:49 We moved in in March and we just went full steam ahead and started, you know, raising some animals. We got our first sheep that summer. And then it's just kind of taken off from there. We've over the last, like I would say seven to eight years, we've really figured out our niche in the area, like what we do well, which is really the sheep and the wool. 03:18 Um, so as we, as we learned about sheep and as we got better with raising sheep and producing wool, I got really into the processing of the wool and turning it into, um, yarns and rovings and stuff like that and building a community around local fiber. Um, and then I purchased a wool mill and that's kind of what I do primarily now is, uh, care for the sheep and make yarn. Okay. 03:48 Isn't there a wool mill like a big factory in Northfield? No, that's Fairbow Woolen Mill. Oh, okay, yeah, sorry. Yeah, no, it's so proud. A lot of people ask me that. And they're down in Fairbow, obviously. And they really just, they make like blankets. They're more of a weaving mill than a big, I mean, they don't take in customer wool. They don't take in wool from the local area. 04:18 I don't think they do any scouring or washing of wool anymore. I think that facility or that part of their facility was damaged during some flooding. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. I had Faribault and Northfield mixed up. And in my defense, I grew up on the East Coast. I moved to Minnesota in, oh my God, let me think. My daughter was born in 89, so 91, 92. 04:47 I haven't really traveled the state a whole lot. Like I've been to Northfield, but I went there for a specific reason and went home. And I've been to Faribault and went there for a specific reason and went home. So all these billions, it seems like of little towns in Minnesota confuse me. And Faribault is really not that far from Northfield and the grand scheme of things, but it is a totally different place. So. All right. So can you, number one. 05:18 You have Icelandic sheep, but I think that you have another breed too, right? Yeah, we were primarily Icelandic and only Icelandic up until about four or five years ago. And then we started to cross in other sheep too. My philosophy on shepherding has changed over the years. And so initially I was very breed spec

Today I'm talking with Scott and Lydia at Abundantly Blessed 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 Lydia and Scott at Abundantly Blessed Farm. How are you guys? I'm good. Doing well. Thank you. It's a really pretty day in Minnesota. Where are you? We're in Ohio and it is rainy, which we are very thankful for. 00:29 because it has been very dry this summer. Yeah, we had a really rainy spring, but it's been very dry for the last couple of weeks. So we're waiting on some rain here too. So tell me about yourselves and what you guys do. 00:45 We started a lavender farm about two years ago. Um, we had visited Michigan and visited a lavender farm up there. We had an extra acre at our property and we weren't sure what to do with it other than just mow it. And so we came back and decided we'd plant some lavender and see where it went. So we have been growing lavender and then we started a farm stand and we sell some products out of that. And then we've also started selling some, um, that pasteurized milk. 01:14 So we do pre-orders for milk that we sell on our farm stand as well. Nice, when I saw you guys are primarily lavender farmers, I was very excited because I haven't talked to anyone on this podcast about lavender yet. So what made you choose lavender? Yeah, so neither one of us have a true green thumb. So that was one of the things that attracted us to the plant. So when we went to Michigan, we took a tour, we were asking a lot of the interns there. 01:45 we were to start growing this, how much of a green thumb do you need? Each one of them said, yeah, we're all going to kill our plants. It's totally fine. It was a little bit of some hope that we had some chance. Lavender is a Mediterranean herb. So it grows in honestly some really rocky, junky soil. As long as it has good drainage, it will just take off. It'll explode. 02:13 And just thinking about the past two weeks, it's been severely dry here, brown grass everywhere. And the lavender loved it. Nothing else loved it, but the lavender certainly did. So kind of the main reason why we chose it is because either one of us have a green thumb and we've only killed off a few. So we're thankful for that. Yeah. And lavender has so many great properties. You can use it for, you can eat it. 02:42 I don't love it, but you can put it in lemonade, I hear, and you can use it as a seasoning for cooking meats and stuff. It's really nice to have as a dried flour in a bouquet. It's really nice to have in a bouquet not dried because it smells amazing. And you can use it in soaps and balms and lotions and things, yes? Absolutely, yes. So we actually grow two main varieties. One is a culinary variety. It's called Munstead. 03:11 England lavender. That's the one that we use for our lavender syrup kit. Our lavender sugar. We actually sell that we wholesale that a couple of bakers in the area who actually incorporated into a lavender lemon cookie lavender lemon scones. We've used it for a lavender lemonade made that fresh here on the farm and it's amazing. And then the other variety that we grow is something called phenomenal. It's a hybrid variety mostly for 03:39 its flower production, also for its oil production, because like you said, the scent is truly to die for. Even once it's dried, the scent is still present. You just kind of have to rub the plant a little bit, and you get that wonderful lavender scent right back. So, it's truly versatile. We use that for some of our other products, our linen spray. 04:04 Lydia makes a tallow bomb. It's so tallow, it's rendered beef fat. That's great as a lotion, as a cosmetic agent. So yeah, it's definitely a wide variety of uses. And we're very thankful that we can grow it here locally. Yeah, we grow it here every year, but we only grow a few plants because it doesn't do really well because our dirt is very black and really loamy and it isn't dry. 04:33 So, and especially this year, it wasn't dry. We grew our lavender in the greenhouse in a pot and that's doing fantastic because it wasn't in the wet dirt. But my go-to for lavender is when anyone on the house has a headache, we have lavender oil in a bottle. And anytime anyone has a headache, the first thing we do is take a sniff off that bottle of lavender oil because it really does take the edge off. It truly does, yeah. It's got so many great properties, whether it's for migraine relief. 05:02 We even have some individuals who claim that it's really helpful for just general pain control. It's fantastic for sleep. We know that. Great for anxiety.

Today I'm talking with Victoria at Dreamweavers Homestead. 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 Victoria at Dreamweavers Homestead. Good morning, Victoria. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm great. Where are you located again? 00:29 Missouri Ozarks, but you are the first to know that we are now actually in the Arkansas Ozarks. Oh, okay. All right, cool. Yeah, a little inside scoop there. All righty. Well, you're not in the line of the hurricane that's hitting Florida today, so that's good. Yeah, we just get the residual rains, that's all. And so we've got a lot of people down there in Florida, so we're thinking of them. 00:59 Yeah, me too. My daughter is in St. Petersburg and she called yesterday and she was like, we should be okay. I'm like, okay, good. Please stay okay. I know. I'm always anxious when they start to get those this Louisiana and Texas. We get those heavy rains. Yeah. Yup. I'm not happy about the hurricane situation, but it will blow through. It will be okay. I think she'll survive it. It'll be okay. That's what I'm telling myself today. Yes, it will. So. 01:27 So anyway, tell me about yourself and what you guys do at Dreamweavers Homestead. Oh gosh. A shorter list is what we don't do, probably. Most people, if they know me, they're knowing me from rabbits. They're knowing me from permaculture and learning in those types of ways. We do strive to have a permaculture homestead. Obviously, we've recently moved. 01:54 So we're starting from the ground up, which is actually a beautiful thing because people are going to get to see it from the very ground of everything from the gardens to the animals to the theme to the food forest, they will be seeing it. So all of these things that we've been teaching about and talking about, I'll be implementing them in real time. So that's going to be really nice for people to see. But we do heavily. 02:23 focus on poultry, rabbits, we have dairy goats, we did pigs, not a favorite, but they'll probably be back with a different breed. When we do permaculture, it's not just an element, I'm actually certified in design, we're very passionate about that. My husband is currently going through the course himself to be certified for that, so we really are trying to focus on closing the loops on our property to really be sustainable. So when we go into this, 02:52 project there's a lot of things that everybody will have to pay their rent as people like to say for their animals and their things in their system. So there's a lot of things that we do but they fall under those umbrellas. Okay, how excited are you to start from scratch? Beyond. Beyond. They actually just put in our driveway and I... 03:19 already I'm just seeing okay this goes here this goes here we've been working on our design so I've been getting that all mapped out and everything so we can get that ready. I'm pumped very pumped and it is a decent size it's 25 acres. Cool awesome. Yeah so it is a decent size and one of the huge goals which a lot of people don't know I haven't even released this on my social media or anything yet but a goal that we've had for years has been 03:48 to have the largest food forest, the continuous food forest in the US that is quote unquote recorded. I'm not going to report it, but it's personal goal. The largest recorded public or private is 7.2 acres. So my goal is 7.3 of continuous. And I'm very excited with that. Multiple caveats with that. Not only will we be teaching about it and actually implementing it in. 04:16 but we will be able to transform our property all the way around and just really be a good steward of that land. But also in our area, some areas are a little bit more low income and things. Having that much food for us, especially all those perennials and things, we should be able to feed the community, also provide cuttings and plant starts and all these things so other people can do it as well. 04:46 So we really hope to contribute to feeding the Ozarks. Wow. That is fantastic. That's all very, very exciting and very helping the world news. And Victoria, I got to tell you, I get told stuff first on this podcast a lot. I had a lady announce her ninth pregnancy on the episode that we recorded that no one else really knew about yet. 05:16 another lady told me that she hadn't told anybody else yet that she was getting out of one aspect of her homesteading because she just doesn't have the energy and the push to keep doing this one particular segment. And so I'm at the point now when people are like, so I haven't said this anywhere else yet, w

Today I'm talking with Tammy Trayer at Faith Led Healing. 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 really excited to be talking with Tammy Trayer at Faith Led Healing. Good morning, Tammy, how are you? I am wonderful. Thank you, Mary, for having me on here this morning. 00:26 Oh, I'm so thrilled to have you. I've been wanting to do this for a while. And when you said yes, I was like, yay. So tell me about yourself, please. Hey, well, I, I put God first in my life. And as a result of that, I feel like I am living the world's best adventure. My family and I. 00:54 embarked on an off-grid lifestyle going on. 15 years, May this coming year will be 15 years that we've been living off-grid. And we embarked on that when off-grid living wasn't very glamorous. Matter of fact, we had family members and friends betting against us, but we embarked on that. Landed on raw wilderness land, lived in a wall tent for eight and a half months as we built our home. 01:23 And that was the beginning of a really amazing journey. A deep dive for me personally, I believe my family too, but a lot of things have transpired over the years and over those 15 years. And honestly, I believe that my message has morphed out of this lifestyle. And we are right now embarking on going 01:53 a whole lot deeper. We live in North Idaho and now we are expanding to be a community. So, I'm going to take this off-grid journey just so much deeper and family just thrives on simple living detachment. 02:14 and just sharing the message of trying to encourage others to learn how to live a life worth living. Okay, you're fading out just a little bit, Tammy. Can you get closer to the mic? Actually, yeah, let me see if I can do that. And worst case scenario, I can relocate. I am outside and it's a little windy this morning. So is that better? Yeah, it's better and I can still hear the wind. So if you want to move inside, that would be great. 02:41 I will do that and it'll take me two seconds and we can just continue this conversation. Sorry about that. That's okay. Okay. I'm inside. Sorry about that. That's better. Thank you. At least it's not the winds that Georgia's getting right now. Actually it is. Oh, is it? It is. I am visiting right now. Oh. So we are actually getting there. Well no wonder it's so windy. I thought you were in Idaho. 03:10 Not at the moment, but I will be in a day. Okay. So you were saying that you're in Idaho, you're living in Idaho now and you're moving. Is that correct? We are Lord willing, we are embarking on a life dream. 15 years ago, we would have hit the interior of Alaska, but we weren't sure if our son at the time who was 13 would have been ready for such a deep dive. We were. 03:38 but we weren't sure if he was ready for that seclusion. So we hit Idaho first and have been there 15 years. It's just, it nurtures my soul. So I'm, like I said, I'm a very outdoor girl and living as we do, where we do, and then having the opportunity, Lord willing, to step into this deeper space of just being enthralled by the wilderness and God's country. I can't even begin to. 04:08 express what that's going to feel like. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, my biggest question, I guess, is why did you get into the off-grid living in the first place? Well, my husband and I both had an extreme and have an extreme passion for the outdoors. We've met our match. We really feel our best selves when we are in the wilderness. And... 04:38 I was living on 150 acre farm in Pennsylvania at the time when I met him and we just felt this pull to detach in ways that we weren't reliant on the world, its systems and just to be able to more or less live a life by our own terms. We were seeing that, you know, to raise. 05:08 our son, you know, it would be so different than how we were raised. And we wanted to be able to give him that same setting that we had and the opportunity to explore and to be a kid and not be just experiencing the things that kids today do. And that was 15 years ago, you know. So 05:36 things are so different today, but that was the pool, just to be able to embrace a life that by our terms. And we successfully did that. It was, it's been amazing. Awesome. I have to tell you, I'm so glad that you're still in the world because I know you went through some health issues a few years back and it was rough for you for a little bit. Yes, very. I actually had life-saving surgery in 2016. 06:05 I am very open about this. I had lifesaving surgery from breast implant illness and I share very openly because, you know, I had previous surgeries that led t

Today I'm talking with Leah at Mabel's Herb Blog. 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 Leah at Mabel's Herb Blog. Good morning, Leah, how are you? Good morning, I'm good. Good. So tell me about yourself and this herb blog because I'm very curious about it. 00:29 Um, well, my name is Leah and I grew up in Southeast Texas, but I had my grandmother was from Nebraska and, um, about, I know that sounds random, but about six years ago, um, I took over the care of my mom who had Alzheimer's. And um, she had always been very. 00:58 pro-holistic care as her mother was. It was just kind of the thing her mom had taught her that, you know, in their belief, you know, pharmaceuticals, we had too big a dependence on pharmaceuticals and my mom didn't like chemicals in her body. So I mean, it kind of started as that when I was growing up. My grandma was a one-room school teacher. 01:25 this and I mentioned my grandma because that's who this is named after her name was Mabel. She was a one room school teacher so she taught a lot about you know botany and paleontology and all of this other she was a really good school teacher and that transition to us grandkids as we were growing up when we would go to visit grandma she was always teaching she was a teacher till the day she died. 01:55 in 1998, always teaching us, always showing us things as kids, which of course when you're a kid and grandma's teaching you paleontology, you're eager to go dig in the dirt and try to find dinosaur bones, you know? But the other side of that was also botany and herbalism and she taught a lot about plants and the importance of them. 02:24 Well, as a kid, you know, that's kind of the boring stuff. And I didn't really pay attention, of course. I knew then what I know now, I would have been hung on her every word. But about five, six years ago, when I started taking care of my mom, it really kind of hit home to me because they were wanting to pump my mom full of so many pills. 02:52 It was a pill for this, a pill for that, you know, and I knew that my mom would hate it. Because she'd have been in her right mind. She'd have been like, absolutely not. Let's find a natural way. And so I started studying herbs because I was like, there's got to be some kind of solution to help, you know, with her, all of her stuff, you know, not just her Alzheimer's, but everything. And um... 03:22 So I started studying plants and I realized that. 03:28 Herbalism and Western medicine, as I call it, pharmaceutical medicine, has a place to balance each other out. Herbalism doesn't have all the answers and neither does Western medicine. So that was my goal when I first started Mabel's Apothecary. And then in so doing, because in my studies, I was like, you know, 03:56 There's a lot of people out here that probably feel the same way about just shoving ourselves full of pills all the time. And so I started sharing on my website on Mabel's Apothecary.com and some friends of mine were like, Leah, you need to be putting this in a blog. You need to put this on a blog so that, you know, everybody, you know, even people who haven't been to your website can 04:24 can get this information and learn about their health. And so it kind of went from there. I started blogging about it. At first I was very gung-ho and I was doing it once a week. And then I realized that that was a huge job. So I've kind of slowed down to once a month so that I can do more in depth and get more research into my blog posts. And so that's where we are. 04:53 I got here. Wow. Yeah. Blogging once a week is a lot. Blogging once a day is a huge task. I did that for a little over a year many years ago about books and writing stuff. And after a year, I was like, I can't keep doing this. It's too much. So I understand why you would cut back to one a month. And yeah, if you have the time to put into one a month, then it can be a much more. 05:23 informative educational posts. So that's awesome. Yes. Okay. So did your, did your grandma grow herbs or did she just know about them? Oh, no, she had a yard full of herbs and plants and trees and everything you could imagine. She had, she was on a family farm. It was a century farm in Nebraska. So the family had had this farm for, I think, 05:53 when she died, it had been almost 250 years. So it was a family ancestral farm. And so there were plants from her great grandmother that were, or her grandmother, I'm sorry, her grandmother that she had planted. And then there were plants that her mother had planted and she had planted. And just

Today I'm talking with Christi at The Garlic Farmers. 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. This morning I'm talking to Christi at The Garlic Farmers. Good morning, Christi. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm great. How are you? I'm all right. Did you guys get a little bit of rain like an hour ago? I do not think it looks like it. Like it could, but we did not. 00:29 I'm wondering if today will bring some rain. Yeah, we got a sprinkle here and I'm only about half an hour from you. So yes, I'm near New Prague and New Market. Are you by St. Peter? Yeah, we're in the store. Okay. So all right. So tell me all about what you do. Well, we live between New Prague and New Market and we live on 10 acres and we've been here for 00:54 24 years and we've always loved gardening, I guess growing up in 4-H. And my husband's from Iowa and his grandparents and parents farmed for a while. And so when we moved here, it just kind of made sense to have a garden and that was mainly to feed our family and just really enjoying things like salsa. And my husband was, for years, grew tons of tomatoes and we still do. But at 01:22 At the beginning, he would make hundreds of jars of salsa and juice for chili and just eat all year and give away and enjoy the fruits of the labor. It ends up being more work than you always think, but it always feels like an accomplishment. And so we have six kids and I always loved it in summers. And when the harvest started coming in, then I could buy less groceries, you know, if we could have our own. 01:51 cucumbers and BLTs and make chili, but take the tomatoes right out of the garden and that kind of thing. And then about three or four years ago, I think maybe four actually, kind of a funny story. I saw a bill on our dresser and it was just a handwritten receipt really. And it said, garlic, $252. And I said to him, 02:17 wait, what's happening here? What did you buy? You bought garlic? Like I thought maybe to put in his salsa or, and he had said some, you know, talked a little bit about researching growing garlic, but I was like, wow, he's serious. And if you know my husband, he does everything big. So I wasn't joking when I said a couple hundred tomato plants, a couple hundred pepper plants, 150 pepper plants, like he. 02:40 He is very diligent and hardworking, and he has a day job, of course, but at night he likes to have something to do. He never sits on the couch, maybe on Christmas, I'm trying to guess. If he ever sits on our couch, he's just very active. And it's taught our kids, they're now grown, but our youngest is 16, but taught our kids about work too. They're hard workers, and they got to spend a lot of time with us outside, which is what you do when you have 10 acres, there's always a project. 03:10 But the garlic thing started where he went to somebody's house and bought garlic from them. And then the next year we went to the garlic festival and bought some more garlic. And it really is fun to grow because it's not easy, it's work and the level we're at, it's a lot of work. But if you just have a small patch, I think people really enjoy it because you can put it in the ground and then just let it be. And then you have to deal with it starting in the. 03:37 in the summer really, you know with weeding and stuff there's a little bit but I don't even know how many bulbs and cloves he planted that year, I suppose a few hundred. And then last year we harvested 5,000 and this year we harvested about 15,000 bulbs. So it has grown quickly and turned into a little bit of a business in that now people 04:02 want our garlic and are coming back for the second year. Last year was the first year we sold, lots of repeat customers. A few said, no, your garlic grew so well, I don't need any, I'm just replanting. Because every year we replant about 20 to 25% of our crop and then you end up with really strong, I'm not sure how it's exactly explained, but like a strong lineage if you keep replanting your garlic and then we sell some, we eat some, we give a lot away. 04:31 Um, and it's, uh, also been a whole nother aspect of it. He, um, we have a freeze dryer, which we kind of bought also just to start preserving our own stuff and freeze drying very different than dehydrating. Um, I mean, dehydrating is awesome too, but freeze drying takes out even more of the moisture and technically you hear of people, you know, you can freeze dry. 04:56 mashed potatoes and gravy, lasagna. I mean, I know a gal who has a thousand meals in her basement, freeze dried, and I think she does it for fun and kind of just to have food any time, but you

Today I'm talking with Jordyn at Working Aussies Homestead. You can purchase Jordyn's book at https://sawdustpublishing.com/product/herding-on-the-homestead-start-where-you-are/ And you can listen to Jordyn and Jill Winger's chat 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 Jordyn Kelly in North Carolina at Working Aussies Homestead. Good morning, Jordyn. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm great. I am going to preface this entire episode by saying if you don't want to hear about 00:29 Stop listening now because I am so excited to talk to Jordyn about what she does. Do you want to tell me about yourself and what you do, Jordyn? Yeah, absolutely. So we operate on an acre and a quarter in North Carolina between Raleigh and Fayetteville. And we raise working Australian shepherds. We use our dogs on our homestead to rotation and graze our small flock of Gulf Coast native sheep, as well as our chickens. 00:57 But over the past few years, we've also had pigs and we still have rabbits. We've had goats before we had ducks. So a little bit of everything, but primarily our focus is working with our Australian shepherds. I wrote a book this past year. So herding on the homestead, start where you are. And I do public speaking and give herding demonstrations across the country to really help inspire. 01:26 anybody to get started where they are with what they have using a working dog on their small homestead or farm or even a large farm. But just to really help showcase the versatility, all the ways that you can use a good working dog and how they're probably the best addition you can make for your homestead or farm. Fantastic. I'm so excited to talk to you. My first question is, can you tell me what 01:56 that an Australian Shepherd puppy is gonna be good for herding right off the bat. And the reason I ask is because when we got Maggie, ours, she's a mini. And the lady that we got her from, who's a good friend, said that she was, that the breed is very people oriented, like they wanna be with their people, they wanna please their people, they want to love their people. And... 02:23 Maggie was trying to herd us by walking behind our ankles and doing the diagonal walk from three days after we brought her home. So can you tell that they're going to be a good herding dog from the get go? 02:38 I'm going to say yes and no. So with our puppies, we actually do instinct testing at five weeks old. So I will put them in with our stock. We've used turkeys in the past, and then we've also used our sheep and goats. And we do this to really help us determine which puppies need to go to a working home versus puppies that can go to more of just like an active family. Um, so yes, you can tell. But. 03:07 There's a couple other factors that come into play to say, yes, this is going to be a working dog versus no. That's where the Australian Shepherd breed has started to become a lot more popular, but people want to breed them to be more like your golden retriever, where they just are like good in a family home versus the workability. 03:32 Kind of a big controversial topic with some of the old timers and people who have been in the breed since the breed began 30 years ago is a lot of people want them to be watered down in terms of their workability. And so you don't see working Aussies as much anymore as you do like more pet Aussies that don't have that drive. So yes, you can tell. But I think. 04:01 that it's important to. 04:05 to especially like find breeders that are focusing on maintaining the workability and the breed if that makes sense. 04:14 Sure, yeah. We did not get her to be a herding dog. We got her to be a watchdog. And as I've said on the podcast episodes many times, she is an excellent watchdog. She is the weirdest Australian Shepherd I've ever seen, met, hung out with. She's very calm in the house. And the minute she's outside, she's all go. So. 04:41 We lucked out huge because we didn't want a crazy dog in the house all the time. And I know that you can train them to not be crazy, but we were a little concerned when our friend told us they could be kind of problematic with being bored. That they, that they would chew or they would destroy things. And she has been really good. And I listened to the podcast that you did with Jill Winger this morning. And. 05:10 You are so incredibly knowledgeable about all of this. I really enjoyed it. So if you get all the way through this podcast, guys, go listen to that one too. I'll put it in the show notes because it's really, really great. So do you consider yourself

Today I'm talking with Sven and Jania at Thunder Ridge Ranch. 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 chatting with Sven and Jania at Thunder Ridge Farm Ranch. Good morning, you guys. Good morning. How are you? We are well and yourself? I'm good. You're in Kentucky? Eastern Kentucky. Yes, ma'am. Awesome. 00:28 I have never been and I've talked to a lot of people there and I feel like I should make a trip someday because it sounds really pretty. The site certainly has a lot to offer. Yeah. So, tell me about yourselves and what you guys do. Well, we are a military family. I spent three years in the military. A year of that I spent away from my family overseas in Afghanistan. Got back and things just didn't quite seem right. 00:57 which kind of led me down a series of rabbit holes and kind of pushed us as a family towards a bit in a sense self-sufficiency and whatnot and that that path itself has kind of led us to more of a community sufficiency mindset and so we really wanted to 01:20 be able to provide our own food and make sure that everything that we're eating was whole and good for us and none of the toxins that you find in a lot of foods that you find on the market shelves these days. 01:35 Awesome. So number one, thank you for your service. I'm sorry that you got injured in Afghanistan. That sucks. And without getting both of us in trouble, what kinds of things did you notice when you got back? It just, it just didn't feel, it almost felt like a prank. It didn't really feel like the States. It felt like we had landed somewhere else and it was some sort of a test. Just, I guess because I had spent the year away. 02:05 coming back, the atmosphere was noticeably different. It felt darker, it didn't feel like the free, happy place that it used to be. And then I started realizing that we've been under a lot of propaganda and indoctrination, just to put it as loosely as I can, without like saying that's in trouble. Yes, thank you. 02:31 I really want to know more but I don't want to get into it on the podcast because I have this awful feeling that it would not go well for either of us. Okay. So yeah, obviously growing things yourself and raising animals yourself, you have control. You know what you're putting on your produce or in your dirt or feeding your animals. So yay, that's a good thing. So what do you raise? 03:02 We started off in 2021 with 10 chickens. And as you know, chicken math. So we now have over 50 or 60 birds now we've kind of lost count. 2022 we added in a honeybee hive. We're now up to three. And we also added heritage breed turkeys. And then 03:30 Let's see, that would have to 2022, 2023. 2023, we focused more on clearing up the land and preparing it for a lot for bigger livestock. And then 2024 this year, we added ducks, quail, hay sheep and pasture pigs. Very nice. We had friends over yesterday and 03:59 They were talking about how they're going to be getting some poultry birds Next spring and they're talking about it and out of the blue They're like do you guys want to go in with us on it and we can keep them at our house and you guys can Come over in Butcher and once time and we all win and I was like yes, that would be amazing Cuz I don't I don't want to deal with poultry not poultry birds. I'm sorry meat birds. I said it wrong 04:25 But I don't want to deal with meat birds at our place. We don't have a lot of room, but they have more room than we do. So if you can do it all yourself on your property, that's great. But the other thing that works is collaboration with like-minded people. Absolutely. And that's where that community sufficiency kind of kicks in is working as a community to work towards common goals and everybody wins as a result. Yeah. 04:51 We gave them a whole bunch of stuff last summer from our garden for their goats because goats love leftover stuff from the garden. 05:03 Absolutely. So that's one thing that we do is take our fresh scraps and feed them to the hogs. And sometimes the sheep will get some as you know, let's say for the sheep. And we like to try and garden extra produce that isn't necessarily for us to eat, but is good for the chickens or for the sheep or the pigs. We like researching what's good for them, what are the benefits of everything and 05:32 On that note, we've also studied just the plants and whatnot that are on our property and we're still learning this kind of lifestyle. We were always learning. Once you stop learning, you stop growing. Yes. So we've tried to really learn about what is around us. How many different ways can we use it? What's the benefit of

Today I'm talking with Orran at Aunt Katie's Community Garden. 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 Orran at Aunt Katie's Community Garden. Good morning, Orran. How are you? Good morning. Glad to be here. Good. Tell me all about Aunt Katie's Community Garden. 00:26 Okay. Um, so and Katie's community garden was started about 15 years ago by my director, um, Mr. Michael Jackson. Um, he was a lobbyist for, um, non-smoking designated areas, um, back when that was a big column issue. And so after being kicked down from passing these bills, he, he, he, he transitioned into. 00:55 healthy living. And so that started a community garden, which was named after a childhood lady of the neighborhood, Aunt Katie. So he created the garden, started with a few raised beds. And over time, the community kicked in. He got donations, funding to build out the garden, starting with a small greenhouse. 01:26 100 beds and five high tunnel houses. So that's kind of a brief history of the community garden. Okay. I'm really excited that you were willing to chat with me this morning because I'm really trying to find all the different places that help communities have good food for them to have access to and I've decided on making it my mission to find somebody like you. 01:56 in every state before the end of 2025 to talk to. That's awesome. Yep. Because people need to know where to find food. It's the inflation prices have been so bad that people are starving. People who shouldn't be starving are starving. Yes. Um, that's, so that's one of the main, um, focuses of the garden is to grow nutrient dense vegetables. Um, 02:25 I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but the things you get off the shelf are pretty subpar when it comes to nutritional value. So what we grow using our compost, our special compost mix, it allows us to have a lettuce or a leafy green that tastes the way it's supposed to taste and also gives you that nutritional value that we all need in order to, you know, health of your living. So 02:54 That's our main focus is growing top, you know, top-notch vegetables. And the public, they really, they really grasp onto the concept, especially during COVID. So, you know, we got people, we got people who you never think eating bok choy. Now bok choy is a popular plant that we grow. And so, you know, during the off season, everybody's, when's the bok choy coming? So it makes me excited that we can. 03:22 you know, change people's taste palates and have them eat more healthier. Absolutely. So you're in Alabama. Where are you in Alabama? Um, we're in, we're in Dothan, Alabama. It's, um, South, Southeast, um, the very bottom of the, of the state. What's the nearest big city to you? Uh, Montgomery, we're about, uh, two and a half, two and a half, three hours from Montgomery. Um. 03:50 four hours from Birmingham and five hours from Huntsville. Okay, so do you know if any of the big cities in Alabama have anything like what you're doing? Absolutely, so me starting my work at the garden, it's a pretty cool story, I can tell you that, but I'll go into, so what I do now that I'm a director at a community garden, everywhere I go before I... 04:19 arrive, I look up community gardens and I either call or drop in and try to do a tour just to see what these different parts of the state have going on. And of course, I'm from Huntsville originally, so we do have two great community gardens, which one is Oakwood. It's a college. They have a great, great community garden and they also have a grocery store. 04:46 which is very state of the art. I love it. It has self checkout. It's very small, but it's really neat. You should check that one out. And also my alma mater, Alabama A&M, they're starting their community garden process. So it's exciting to see and exciting to, you know, come back around to what I started and then see it. You know, now I see community gardens everywhere. 05:15 Okay. So how did, okay. What does aunt Katie's community garden do? Is it that you guys grow food for the community or is the community coming in and growing food at the community garden? Okay. So what we do is kind of multilayered. Um, I think I have a diagram that I drew. So it's like a, it's like a three-legged stool and one is 05:42 Nutritional education and outreach to the community. That's from kids to adults. That's one part the second part is community gardening Which allows people to come in and grow and learn how to grow and we have bed subscriptions so people can subscribe to a bed for a year and they can either work their bed or We'll do it for them and

Today I'm talking with Rachel at WhoopsyDaisy Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. If you order a copy of Rachel's book, The Guide to Homestead Dairy Sheep, she'll sign it for you! 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 Rachel at WhoopsyDaisy Farm. Again, because last time we were supposed to talk about her book and about sheep's milk, and we talked about everything but I think. Good morning Rachel, how are you? I'm good, how are you? I'm good. You're in Kentucky, right? 00:29 Yes. Okay. All right. So let's try this again. I would love to hear all about the benefits of sheep's milk. Awesome. Well, you know, a couple of years ago, even just talking about milk as a health food was really weird, you know, because there's been such a push in our culture against the benefits of dairy, you know, nut milks and other protein milks have really been pushed forward. 00:59 If we return to a traditional source of our protein, a lot of us are seeing these autoimmune and chronic health issues are just kind of melting away. So there's groups like the Weston Price Foundation who've really pushed the benefit of raw milk especially. And with sheep's milk, pretty much everything that is beneficial about the cow and goat milk is in sheep's milk, but you multiply it by two or three. 01:26 So it's as beneficial as all the other raw milks, just more so. Okay. So I have questions. Number one, how much milk can you get from one sheep in a day? Well, it depends. There's, there's a couple of different factors that play with the amount, you know, and it's the same thing with cows and goats too. So you, the factors are breed and feed predominantly. 01:55 you know, there's some breeds of sheep that can give up to a gallon a day, especially the East Frisian sheep, which is like the whole steam of the sheep dairy world. But if you want to milk a non-dairy breed of sheep for, and there's a couple of reasons why you would want to do that. Sometimes you get as little as a cup of day, but usually more like a pint or a quarter a day. Okay. And I'm, I'm guessing that she, she being, uh-huh. 02:24 milking a sheep is not a whole lot different than milking a goat. Correct. Sheep teats are more on the side of the udder. So I haven't actually milked a goat. I have milked a cow. We, we own a Jersey cow. And it's very different milking a sheep than it is a cow because cow teats are on the bottom of the udder. You're not moving the udder. You're just squeezing the teats and just collecting milk that's automatically pooling there. With a sheep, you actually kind of have to 02:51 guide the teats and the udder toward the teats are facing whatever you're collecting the milk and if you're hand milking. Now they are starting to make attachments on mechanical milkers that will fit sheep. But if you can't find one specifically for sheep, you can use attachments for goats as well. And you know, sometimes there's a little bit of a difference in the udders there, but it's pretty compatible between goat and sheep. Okay. Now the next question I have, I don't even know how to ask it correctly, so bear with me. 03:21 Cows give a metric butt ton of milk when you milk them and clearly sheep don't. So how does this become financially viable? Does it? Yeah, so gallon for gallon you're going to get more cheese out of sheep's milk than you are cow or goat. And there's a lot less waste. A lot of cheese makers. 03:47 Traditionally, they raise pigs and the pigs would eat the whey and get fat off of it. Some homesteaders are starting to experiment with fermenting grains with the whey for like their chickens or pigs and that kind of thing. But for the most part, modern cheese makers just dump the whey. Either they discard it down a drain or, you know, some of the more creative ones will spray it on their fields as like a fertilizer probiotic. But I mean, there's not a lot of uses in our culture today for whey. 04:14 And so having a milk where there's not a ton of that whey waste is, you know, appealing if you're going to do a cheese making enterprise. I mean, the other thing too, is that, you know, when my husband and I started off, we really didn't have a use for three to eight gallons of milk per day from our cow, which she doesn't give that much. But I mean, like if you have a dairy cow, like you're looking at gallons per day, not cups or quarts or whatever. So. 04:40 To have a smaller amount of milk to play with and learn what to do with was really appealing for me. The other thing is that, you know, some people see this as a con. I saw it as a pro that my sheep will milk fo

Today I'm talking with Kristin at Honey Friend Farm LLC. 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 Kristen at Honey Friend Farm LLC. Good morning, Kristen. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm great. You're in Michigan, yes? I am. Is it beautiful there? Because it's gorgeous here in Minnesota this morning. It is. 00:30 Little warm for fall weather, but that's okay. It's gonna cool down soon, I know it is. It's gonna, a promise. Yes, absolutely. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. So I am a mom of three kids, and I work at the high school that they go to, but I also run a farm here at the house. We're trying to become more 00:58 independent I guess. We've got chickens and turkeys and a garden and I make a lot of our food, our bread. We try to buy from the farmers and not the big stores and that's I mean it's just it's a busy busy life. We just my husband works full-time and obviously so do I and then we do 01:26 all of the other things in the evening when we get home. Okay, cool. So it's always interesting to me because when I ask women to tell me about themselves and if they're a mom, almost invariably they say, I'm a mom of however many kids and then the rest of what they are. When I ask men, they tell me what they do, not that they're fathers of six or two or one. Right. 01:56 There's the difference. Yeah, it's really interesting how different men and women are. Yeah. You know? And I'm not saying it's a bad thing that the men don't immediately say I'm a dad of, but it's just different. Right. It is. We are built different. Yes, exactly. And that's what makes life really interesting every damn day. Absolutely. 02:25 Okay, so are your kids littles or are they teenagers or? I've got an 18-year-old, almost 16-year-old and a 13-year-old. And are they all in on the homesteading stuff you're doing? They resist occasionally when it's hot out, but for the most part, they're pretty good at helping. My youngest loves to help with the baking part. He loves to cook. And then my oldest, he typically does a lot of... 02:55 the strenuous work or the heavy lifting, I guess. And then my daughter, she helps with all like the household chores. She makes the house run when we are doing all of the other things. That's a hell of a team there, ma'am. I'm impressed. It is, yep. We, you know, it's rough sometimes, but for the majority of the time, we all figure it out. Awesome, I love that. 03:20 We didn't get our homestead till most of our kids had moved out, but I suspect that had we gotten our homestead when they were younger, they all would have been all in. Yes, they love it. Kind of wish we'd been able to do it sooner. Absolutely. So why is it called what it's called, the honey friend? The honey friend, okay. So that is because my husband and I were having an adult night and I usually call him honey as a joke. And then one night... 03:50 I just said honey friend and it kind of just stuck and we're like, I don't think there's any other honey friend farm. So that's where the name came from. That's adorable. I love it. Yeah. So it's fantastic. It has nothing to do with honey. It's just what we call each other. Oh, and that's fine. I think that's beautiful. So, okay. 04:16 Tell me what an average weekend day is like for you on the farm because I ask people this and they don't usually tell me. So I'm just curious if I'll get an answer on this one. So typically, so we run a roadside stand as well. So typically the weekends are full of picking the garden and loading the stand and baking bread and bagels and cookies and all of the things for the community to come in. 04:45 share a part of that. We do a lot of pay what you can events for the community so people can eat healthier and have a healthier option if they're not able to do it themselves or whatever the case may be. So we spend a lot of time in the garden and filling the stand and doing cutting the grass, feeding the animals. That's typically when we do like 05:13 clean out for the coupes and refill the food and, you know, just spend a lot of time outside bonfires at night. And we just hang out and just kind of work all day and then relax at night and have family time, dinner together. We like to barbecue a lot, like grill out. So that's typically what we do. 05:44 That sounds like a beautiful way to spend a weekend. The bonfire part is the best. That's my favorite part. Yes, absolutely. We have had maybe five since we moved in four years ago because it's been too busy up until this past, this past summer hasn't been as busy, but that's because i

Today I'm talking with Maggie at Bean's Bounty. Buy Maggie's cookbook, The Reluctant Cook. All proceeds go to two different dog charities! 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 Maggie at Bean's Bounty. Good morning, Maggie. How are you? I'm good. Good morning to you, Mary. How are things in Georgia this morning? Actually a lot cooler right now, but I hear the heat's coming back, so. 00:28 Is this hurricane that's approaching Texas gonna bother you guys at all in the next couple of days? It doesn't seem like it, but if anything, we might get a little rain from it, which I'll accept. Yes, definitely. So let's start this off with, I did not name my dog after the Maggie I am talking to. It just so happens they share the same name. And that's awesome because I love the name Maggie, always have and always will. 00:58 So tell me about yourself and what you do at Bean's Bounty. Well, I don't know what to say about myself. I'm not originally from Georgia, but I moved here in 2007, and I started gardening in 2008. And once I tasted what a fresh tomato tastes like, I think I was hooked. So my husband and I garden together. 01:27 for about four years maybe and I mean we rarely went to the grocery store. I still rarely go I've been doing the garden myself since then and What we don't get here will get from local farmers and then What I can't get from them then I'll go to the grocery store and that's just for incidentals like toilet paper paper towels things like that 01:58 but I love gardening, I love eating what we grow. And then of course, Beans Bounty is also where I bake. So I'll make homemade desserts for people, but they're not like all these fancy cakes and stuff you see there from very old recipes. We have over 300 cookbooks and they date back to the Civil War. So if you wanna know what an old fashion recipe tasted like, then that's me. 02:28 Wow. I made some kind of cookies years ago from an old, old, old cookbook. And I think there were only three or four ingredients and the main ingredient was egg. And it was like eating a crepe cookie. That's awesome. Really? Yeah. They weren't that great, but I suppose back in the very old days, anything that was a treat or a sweet. 02:55 was probably really special. Exactly. It really was. They couldn't afford much, you know. So whatever had any kind of sweetness in it, that's what was popular. Yeah. So you and I talked many years ago. I don't remember why. Why? I like a lot of it. You know, they're not really sweet. They're not, I don't know. They're just, I like a lot of it. Yeah. 03:25 You and I had talked many years ago, I don't remember why, we talked on the phone, and you said that you were in suburban, whatever your town is or your city is, and that you had a garden, and we talked about that for a little bit. So tell me how that's changed, how that's expanded. Well, we are in, we're in one of the suburbs north of Atlanta. So I have an acre and a half. 03:53 So the garden took up quite a bit of space. I mean, you don't normally find an acre and a half in Roswell, Georgia, but this is a very old home. It was built back in the 70s. So the only way it has changed is that as I have aged, I've had to cut back on the gardening. Before it was huge. And now I brought it up closer to the house and 04:22 take care of it from there. So I just have little sections all around my house that are growing different things. And it's easier for me because I'm getting up there. Yeah, we're all aging. As we get older, we're all aging, obviously, but we're all meeting new milestones in our lives every year. Yes, ma'am. And I understand, because ma'am, 20 years ago, 04:48 I would have been out in the garden with my husband every day of the spring, summer, and fall, and now it's his baby because I don't want to do it anymore. Yeah. Well, my husband is the same way. Well, he works a full-time job, so that's why he had to stop. So now I take care of it. Yep. The podcast is My Baby, the Garden is My Husband's Baby, and this is about the only time they meet is when I'm talking about him doing the gardening. 05:15 So what do you grow? Do you grow the usual suspects or is there stuff that's special that you grow? Whatever we eat, I try to grow. So I do potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, sweet and hot, squash, zucchini, well I guess that's a squash, pumpkins for the fall, lettuces, onions, I do onions and garlic. So whatever we use the most of. 05:44 And then we also eat seasonally. So whatever is growing in the garden is what we eat. So like we're done eating tomatoes until next year. And it's kind of s

Today I'm talking with Amy at Misfits Homegrown LLC. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Amy at Misfits, I'm sorry, hang on Amy. Misfits Homegrown LLC. It's already been a Monday and it's barely Monday, so. Yes, I agree. Our barn cat had kittens last night, so. 00:30 I got a photo from my husband this morning and I was like, yay, more kittens. Woo. Yay, just what you need, right? Yeah, there's six. We'll find homes for them. It will be fine. There you go. And they're very sweet. They're adorable. So it's been the Mondayest of Mondays in the best way possible. That's a good thing. So tell me about what you do, Amy. 00:59 Misfits Homegrown, we raise our own beef, pork and chicken and farm fresh eggs. We raise them from start to finish. Nice. So how did you get into it? Well, my partner and I, we've been in the, excuse me, the agricultural industry forever. He's managing a 2,500 cow dairy over... 01:26 And then I'm going to say Reedsville, Wisconsin. And then I was herdsman on a farm out in Valdez for years. That's how we've actually met. And, uh, we moved in together and we started out with three beef animals, just three steers we had. And as a word got out that we were raising beef, people started buying quarters and haves from us. And. 01:54 That was back in 2017. We established the farm in 2018. And with that, um, I had met some people who didn't have freezer space for a quarter or half steer. So I started doing individual cuts and I got a license through our county to sell individual cuts of meat. So now our clientele base has just grown. So when people need two pounds of ground beef and a roast, they can get two pounds of ground beef in a roast. 02:23 Awesome. Yeah. You guys are, how do you pronounce it? Manitowoc? Is that how it's pronounced? Yes. Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Yes. Yes. Okay. I interviewed a lady months ago from that area and I can't remember which business was hers, but she said that it's beautiful there. It is. It is. I actually left Wisconsin for about five years and came right back. So you get, you get a little bit of four seasons all in one day. 02:52 And sometimes you actually get months of each season, which is a blessing. So. 03:00 Uh-huh. Yeah, Minnesota's like that too. So yeah. Yep. We're neighbors. So, uh-huh. Hey, neighbor. So, so I saw on your Facebook page that you guys have a building now on your property. Yes. And you can, it's basically a store. Yes, we built. So basically what happened in the past, oh gosh, since 2018 and during the pandemic in 2020, people really realized 03:30 where their food came from and they wanted to know more. And that's where our clientele had tripled. So with that, I started doing the local farmers markets and I started, you know, advertising more. And we are now to the point where we built a small country store on our property and we're selling our meat and our farm fresh eggs. And then I have other local vendors in the neighboring area. 03:58 who does honey and maple syrup and produce. And we're pretty much trying to make this a central hub or a country farmers market. Well, congratulations on that. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a challenge. It's been a long year and a half since we started everything, but we're very blessed. We're actually opening the doors this Saturday, the 14th for a soft opening. And the 28th is our grand opening. 04:28 fantastic I love country stores my parents live in Maine and there is a there is a basically a country store down the road from them and we were back to visit we were back to visit in 2014 I think and we stopped by that store and it's stocked with the stuff that the people that own it grow and stocked with local producers yes things and 04:57 You walk in there and it's so cute. Yeah. The thing I don't like about grocery stores these days is they're very slick. They're very shiny. They're very colorful. They're very loud. Yes. There's always a radio station or whatever playing and I walk in and I'm like, I forgot what I came in here for because my brain is overloaded with, with what I'm seeing and hearing and smelling and country stores. You walk in and it doesn't do that to me. It's just like. 05:27 Oh, this is really calm and nice. Yeah. So I love country stores. We actually, so when Bryce bought this property in 2017, it was his great uncle's farm. So he actually, it's a family farm. And when he purchased it and when I moved in, we had a lot of repairs to do. The barns were falling down and it, you know, it was neglected for years. So we've put a lot of hea

Today I'm talking with Isabelle at FarmRaise. You can also follow on Facebook. Use code REF20MEL to save 20% off the life of your membership for FarmRaise Tracks – a expense tracking app that is simple and will get you ready to fill in your schedule F in April. 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 Isabelle at FarmRaise. Hello, Isabelle, how are you? Good, how are you, Mary? I'm good. You said you're in Missouri? Yes, I am. Okay, well I'm in Minnesota. I don't know if it's a pretty day there, but it's really pretty here. 00:29 Oh my gosh, the weather has been absolutely gorgeous these past few days. Yeah, I always start the podcast interviews with talking about the weather because our weather is always crazy. It's either strikingly gorgeous or it's terrible and it feels like there's no in between this year. So it really, it really is like that. And I know that a lot of people think that talking about the weather. 00:59 is kind of shallow or small talk, but in agriculture, I think it's a form of kind of like a love language or like showing that you care about somebody because the weather just really impacts our ability to do what we do. And so the weather is just a vital part of our lives. And so I think that 01:26 In other industries, it may just be small talk, but in agriculture, we love to talk about it. We love to talk about it. We love to predict it. We love to complain about it, but it's a real thing. It's a really integral part of agriculture. Yes, it really is. It is. But we could definitely use a shot of rain where I'm at, but we'll probably... 01:53 A lot of people will start harvest here in the next few weeks that are in the traditional line of agriculture, but I mean, I have zucchini coming out my ears. So if I get any more rain, I don't know what I'm going to do with it all. So yeah, we don't have anything coming. Well, we have tomatoes coming in finally. 02:18 but it's been a terrible growing season for us. And I don't want to talk about it at all because I've talked about ad nauseum on the podcast and in real life and I just give up. It's a wash to next year is gonna be better. Yeah, I've heard that from quite a few people. I was talking to my cousin on the phone the other day and she said that, you know, she had a horrible year for sweet corn and peppers. And so she was really glad 02:49 they had an overabundance from last year, still in the freezer and still canned from last year because they just had a horrible year. Sorry, what was that? I was going to say it's been rough all the way around. Yeah, this was my first year kind of doing a really, really large garden by myself. 03:16 in Missouri. I grew up in Nebraska and I did some small stuff after my husband and I first got married. So I was just thinking it was just me, but turns out it wasn't. It was kind of a rough year for everybody. So that made me feel a little bit better, but next year will definitely be better for everybody. Keeping my fingers crossed. 03:45 Okay, so tell me about Farm Raise. Yes. So Farm Raise was started by three people who were at Stanford University and they saw a need for farmers to kind of simplify the FSA records process. And then that moved into simplifying the grant application process. 04:14 and then moved into, well, actually what farmers, homesteaders, ranchers really need is the ability to track their records. And so with FarmRays, we have a farm accounting software that helps you to track your records for your schedule F, track your inventory. 04:40 and on the app and then create invoices to be able to send to your customers. And then prepare to apply for loans or grant programs. So we have a really great software that can really help you to see where am I spending money on my farm? And maybe where can I cut back on some of my spending? 05:08 That's not making me as much money. And then another piece of what FarmRays does is we have some B2B software. So we host applications for climate smart farming programs. So we currently host the application for... 05:35 the Mizzou Climate Smart Regenerative Crops and Livestock, and then one for blue diamond growers as well. So we help create applications and then reporting features so that it's easier for farmers to apply for those programs, get the money dispersed to them, and then report the sustainable practices that they are doing back. 06:03 to the organizations to get that USDA funding. So Farm Raise has a lot of different software solutions, not only for farmers, but for businesses who are hosting grant applications for farmers as well. Okay, what does FSA

Today I'm talking with Ashley at Shady Hill. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Ashley at Shady Hill. Good afternoon, Ashley. How are you? I'm doing great. It's about low 70 degrees here in Virginia, so it's feeling really good here. 00:26 It's a little warmer than that in Minnesota where I am. I think it's probably 75, but it's also overcast. So I'm hoping it does not get hot today. That would be great. All right, so tell me about yourself and Shady Hill. Yeah, so Shady Hill is very new for us. My husband and I, you know, I just turned 26 this year. I feel like I'm getting up there in age now, but I'm 26. 00:54 My husband is 25, so we're considered young farmers in our area. Um, but we always wanted to farm, but didn't grow up on farms. So after we studied agriculture at Virginia Tech and kind of grew up throughout FFA, which is an agriculture organization for youth, we were like, okay, now what, like, how do we start farming? You know, we got the education. We've kind of been a part of community groups that have tried to help us and encourage us to start farming. But. 01:24 It wasn't that easy. Um, I started off teaching as an ag teacher. He started off working at a community bank as an ag, uh, loan officer, portfolio manager. So we were still really plugged into the agriculture community, but we didn't have any money to just buy a farm. Um, where we ended up living and moving is where I grew up. And so around here, most of what it looks like to farm is cropland and minimum of like a hundred acres of it. 01:54 Small farms around here are probably about 50 to 60 acres big. So it just wasn't feasible realistic for us. So that's really where Shady Hill came about was, you know, after I left teaching, I worked in marketing for a little bit and then I had a baby and stayed home. And with that extra time and just getting tired of making excuses for not being able to buy a farm, we found ourselves, you know, we lived on one and a half acres, so why not just start where we are. And so. 02:23 Shady Hill was born because we live on a hill with a bunch of shade trees. Um, and we mostly do everything on one acre, but that's Shady Hill and a little bit about us. You can do a lot on an acre and a half, just so you know. And it's a lot, and it's a lot better to start farming young than it is to start farming old. I can tell you that from experience. Well, we had the most of the encouragement we got from older farmers was to start small. 02:52 and to start because we kept saying, you know, oh, we can't afford, you know, especially now. I mean, I remember when I graduated college, we were seeing an acre of land for about $6,000 to $7,000 an acre. Now you see, you know, if someone has a nice house sitting on 10 to 15 acres, you're paying nearly a million dollars just for that. So we always just had this dollar value on farming and homesteading and we thought we just couldn't afford to 03:22 do it. But then we realized homesteading anyways isn't even about making money. It's about just being more self-reliant. We didn't have to take out any big loans for this and we're learning a lot now. So kind of the advice from those farmers that we got about starting small that we used to get annoyed by, because the world is not set up for farmers to start small to be honest, was actually some of the best advice because now in the future, depending on... 03:50 where this takes us and what opportunities come up with land, we now have experience for some loans or depending on what that even looks like. Because before we didn't have any experience to prove that we would be able to farm the land that we were going to buy. So we just didn't look good on paper to begin with. So it's been a blessing to learn and get the experience now, but it's by far not the easiest thing we've ever done. 04:18 Yeah, and honestly, it probably wouldn't have been the easiest thing you've ever done, no matter when you started it, because it's all learning and experience and trying new things and failing and then trying again. I have been where you are and it's so much fun. The beginning is so much fun, but it's really scary too. Yeah. Yeah, we have so much of, should we keep doing it? Should we not? And I think too, I forgot to mention what we do at Shady Hill is... 04:46 We grow cut flowers. And everyone thinks I've got these acres of flowers. You know, at a farmer's market, they're like, oh, how many acres of flowers do you have? And I tell them like, you know, our beds are 50 feet long, four feet wide. I've got four of thos

Today I'm talking with Elisabeth at Fostich 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 Elisabeth at Foss Stitch Farms. Good morning, Elisabeth. How are you today? Good morning. I'm wonderful. Thank you. Good. And you were saying you're where? We are located in central Missouri. So that would be where... 00:29 Our very small town is called Edwards, but it's the Ozark area in Missouri. Okay. So I've heard a lot about the Ozarks. I watched the series on Netflix or whatever it was with What's His Face and What's Her Face and all the crime and stuff. I'm sure that that is not true. So tell me about the Ozarks because I keep talking to people from the Ozarks or that area, but I don't actually ask about it. What... 00:58 What is special about the Ozarks? Well, a lot is special. It's a beautiful, beautiful area, gently rolling hills. There's lots of beautiful rivers, bluffs. It, contrary to that episode, or that series, the Ozarks, I think a lot of that is fabricated. Oh yeah. But it absolutely is a beautiful area. And we love it down here. We have... 01:28 We actually lived in this area for about four years and we moved down here from, we had a farm in Oryk, Missouri, which was like about two hours north. So we do, we love it down here. And also there's like the Ozarks. Okay, I was just curious, I've never been anywhere near it. It's very beautiful. Yeah. I've never been in that area at all. And I keep saying to my husband, if we take a road trip, we should head that way sometime. 01:58 Yes, so of course my parents always want us to take the road trip to Maine to see them So that takes precedence every time and that's totally fine with me because Maine is beautiful, too Okay, so tell me about yourself and about Fossage Farms, okay So we my husband and I both grew up on farms. We'd be considered like second or third generation farmers but we're 02:24 first generation using regenerative practices, which is what we kind of have focused in on our own farms. So after I left home, I continued farming on a small scale. I went to college, I'm an RN in the ER since 2002. My husband and I got married, realized that conventional way of farming really wasn't for us. It wasn't long-term. 02:51 what is healthiest for the land or our livestock. So we started researching alternative ways to raise our livestock. And so we started with cow-calf pairs and then we started with small scale meat production, just like word of mouth, things like that. And then, you know, as mentioned earlier, like we grew up on a conventional farm. So we used, our families use conventional methods. 03:21 And both of our families had small ruminants, so sheep and goats. And then also we had, my family had a dairy farm, Jersey cows. And then my husband's had Angus for the most part, cows. So okay. I love Jersey cows. I don't love them because of the milk that they give. I love them because their faces are so sweet. They are adorable. 03:47 love them. Every time somebody says Jersey cow, I'm like, aww. Okay. So did I see something about hair sheep on your Facebook page? Or was that somebody else? Yes. No, we love our sheep. So what we got into after we kind of moved toward the regenerative 04:16 are bred specifically for meat, so we do not shear them. So we pride ourselves on like excellent genetics. We have Sancroix, which is a breed that is parasite resistant. We have Catodin, which are excellent mothers. They have a beautiful, good hair coat that sheds really well. And then our rams are Lewis White Dorper genetics, and they actually are out of Oregon. 04:45 But this combination of genetics, which we've kind of fine-tuned, I guess, over the last several years, end up being really good mothers, no hoof issues, they're parasite resistant, and then when we wean them, they have excellent weight. Their weight is really healthy and good. So that's kind of the direction we went to. We also have... 05:12 Angus cattle and so what we do is we do rotational grazing. So our livestock, our sheep are moved behind the cows. Sometimes they're moved together, it just depends. About every three to five days and then it allows the lamb that they were on to rest and kind of return to its, helps the biological ecosystem kind of return to normal, helps microbial growth and then it... 05:42 Basically, we don't use any pharmacological interventions because we have animals that are never in the same area for any length of time. They're constantly moving. So that's what we focus on. We basically, like I mentioned earlier, conventional farming is fertilizers. I'm kind of letting t

Today I'm talking with Anna at Winkleman Family Homestead. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Anna at the Winkleman Family Homestead. Good evening, Anna, how are you? Good evening, I'm good, how are you? I'm good, I don't usually do recordings in the evening, but I had to talk to you, so this was the only time that worked. I had, I get to talk to you. 00:29 Oh, thank you. Very honored. Yeah, I have a hard time at night because I tend to go to bed early. So I want to drink all the coffee in the world in the afternoon if I'm going to be up past like eight. And I was like, I can't drink coffee all afternoon because I'll be awake all night. So this is what we get people. We get a sleepy Mary talking to a very pretty Anna. It'll work out great. 00:56 All right, so Anna, tell me about the Winkleman family homestead. So I have a husband and three small children. My children range in ages of three months to four years. And I grew up in St. Louis city in Missouri, so not homestead at all. It was very urban. And honestly, like the little house in the prairie vibe, I always kind of liked. 01:25 but it just seemed like something that wasn't attainable. So yeah, I think my why started with COVID. When I saw those grocery store shelves empty, I was like, wow, maybe our systems aren't as, are more fragile than I think they are. Maybe I should do something about this and prepare myself more. 01:52 Yep. And that's, I think that's why the homesteading movement really picked up steam in 2021. I was going to say, you probably have had several interviews like this. Um, there's been a lot of talk of COVID babies and I don't mean human babies. I mean, new ideas, new projects, new focuses, COVID babies is what I call them. And the one thing that got me with the supply chain issues. 02:19 is I really like using Dawn dish soap, the green apple scented kind. Could not find it for a year. I was so mad because all the other dish soaps to me smell terrible. And I'm the one that does the most dishes. And I was like, I want my green apple Dawn dish soap back. Yes. But there were worse things than that. I mean, there were medications you couldn't get. There were just all kinds of things that you could not get. 02:50 And like we're through it. I think we're okay now for a while until the next thing hits. But yes. I had a formula fed baby during that time during the formula shortage. It was pretty rough. Yeah. Yeah. That's the other stuff that really scares me because I nursed all three of the babies that I birthed until they were... 03:15 I think my daughter was six months. I think my son was about six, seven months, and the last boy was eight months. And I can't imagine not being able to find formula for my babies if I wasn't nursing them. Just, it makes me choke up now just thinking about it. So yeah, that's terrible. So what did you do? How did you handle that? Well, we went to our pediatrician and... 03:42 We're like, well, what do we do? It's just not there. It's not on the shelves. And she's like, well, there's not really a substitute for formula. And I'm like, well, formula is a substitute. There has to be something. I know that our grandmothers made things. And she was basically like, you can't really do that. It's unsafe. Your baby will get sick. And so essentially what my husband and I did is we prayed before going to the store. 04:12 And just hoping that it would be there when we needed it and it was Every time that we went so I Just prayed Yeah, yep. And the fact is if it's a choice between your baby dying of starvation Right or trying something that might not be safe, but won't kill baby. I think that the thing that's not Not defined as safe might be better than it starving to death. So 04:40 Right. And the nice one of the good things that came out of COVID is that the European formulas are much more accessible in the US. So that has been great. And they're, they're healthier, they're better. If the US formulas, most of them, the first ingredient is corn syrup. But whenever you look at the ones from Europe, the first ingredient is milk, which is great. Yep. 05:09 Okay, so now I know your why. So what's the what? What's the how? What are you doing at your place? So we live, we're still pretty urban at the moment. We don't really have a whole lot in the way of land. We have like maybe a fifth of an acre. And we have a small house on top of that, 768 square feet. I know exactly how big it is because I have to use every inch of it. So. 05:38 Yeah, it just started with like preservation with just d

Today I'm talking with Megan at Weaver Meadow Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Megan and a couple other people at Weaver Meadow Farm, and Megan can tell me the other two people's names. We are here with Rye, my office administrator, and Bree, my sales rep. Oh my. 00:29 You got the business end happening with you today. Yes, we've got all three of us here. Good. That's awesome. All right. So tell me about your farm. So I am Megan Weaver of Weaver Meadow Farm. We primarily raise a rare breed of pig called mason. They originated in China and they've only been available in the US since 2016. 00:57 And I am one of the largest breeders here in the U S with registered stock. And then we also, uh, raise sheep as well. Okay. I literally not even our, an hour ago got done interviewing with a lady who raises hair sheep, so I would much rather talk about this special pig than sheep for another half an hour. So can we talk about the special sheep? I mean, special pig, sorry. Yeah. 01:24 Not a problem. I love my sheep, but I really adore my pigs. Okay, good. So is it is it kind of like the wagyu beef that people are so fond of? Is that the same kind of level of special for the pig? Yeah, quite similar. We're still restructuring our grain program to create that similar marbling that the wagyu has. We are getting close to that and it is a red 01:53 deep red pork that is super flavorful. The fat has a lower melting temperature and so a lot of it will melt during the cooking process and reabsorb into the meat, just creating something wonderful to eat. 02:11 Oh, you're, you're, you're barking up the right tree here because I'm not really a fan of pork, but that sounds wonderful. That's pretty delicious actually. Yeah. Uh, Brie here has been, uh, taking photos and playing with recipes in ways that you don't traditionally see pork being used. And she's come up with some really creative recipes. Nice. Are they on your website? They're getting there. Okay. Good. Yes. 02:40 Good because no one's going to cook with the the mason pork. But right now we're just taking photos and then trying dishes and posting them on the Facebook page for people to view. Awesome, because no one's going to know how to cook this to the best of their ability without recipes. Believe it or not, this pork is actually really quick to cook. It's not, you don't take your time. It'll dry out. It's very fast. 03:10 Easy meat to cook. 03:13 Awesome. So how did you get into this? Um, when I wanted to get into farming after I was a farm sitter, I didn't want to just get traditional breeds. I wanted something more unique. And so I was doing a lot of research. Um, and I finally came across the Mason pig, but at the time there was only roughly 200 registered in the whole U S and they weren't cheap. 03:42 So I decided to go with a mixed breed, half mason and half herford, because it was a lot more budget friendly at the time to give it a try, see if the meat was any different. And even with it being a crossbreed like that, it was a big difference to any other pork that I've ever had. And so then we took the dive and we actually moved to a different location that was more suited for farms. And we 04:11 delved into the sheep and the registered mason. And that took a little bit of time to grow them and then breed. And it just took off from there. I think I was a couple of litters in and I was number 300 on the registry. Peg registered number 300 for the whole registry there. 04:36 And so that was pretty exciting and now the breed has really taken off. So it's just been fun because I love this breed. The look of them is like crossing Eeyore with a Shar-Pei. I think they're super adorable. Other people say they're an ugly cute. But they're just they're very docile breed. They're very easy to be around. They're not. 05:05 aggressive or dangerous. I've had little kids supervised around my boars. There's just certain ones that capture your heart here on the farm that are just like well mannered little puppy dogs. They follow you around. They just want, you know, to be scratched on. And so they've been a lot of fun. And the piglets when they're born, their ears are really big, but they're flat against their neck and they look like miniature elephants. 05:35 It's the cutest thing ever. That sounds adorable. How big did the the male pigs get? Um, unfortunately, my scale is for sheep and my pigs are a little too long for it. Okay. I would say they're around three to 400 pounds. And I think my biggest style that I have and she's really b

Today I'm talking with Holly at MN River Valley Homestead. 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 Holly at the Minnesota River Valley Homestead. Good morning, Holly. How are you? I am good. How are you? I'm great. What a beautiful morning we have in LaSore, Minnesota today. It is wonderful outside. 00:29 Yeah, it's a little allergy inducing, but other than that, it's great. Yes, I agree. So, um, Holly is an acquaintance and sort of friend. She lives not far from me. And the way that I met Holly is because she sells her lovely baked goods at the farmer's market. And I had asked her months ago if she wanted to be a guest on the podcast, but there was stuff going on. So. 00:55 I finally get to ask you all kinds of questions today. So tell me about yourself, Holly. Well, I have been a stay at home mom for, let's see, gollish, it's been so many years, I don't think I even know, almost 20 years, mainly because I can't work because I'm epileptic, but I have all seven kids that I have raised and. 01:23 One is gone and now I just sit and keep track of the other six. And right now it's nice and calm because there's only two left at home because the other are at school. Yay. Today, first day today? Um, no, it's actually, um, they started their second week today. They started last week, so they were excited. 01:48 Yeah, I feel like kids are in one of two camps. They're either tickled pink to go back or they don't want to go back. Yeah, my two older ones were not very happy and the two younger ones were very, very excited. So. So how old are the kids that are still living at home? They are 345715. 02:17 16 Okay, so you got teenagers and little still at home. Yep Okay. All right. So what do you what do you do at your your? Minnesota River Valley homestead when I'm at home which is all the time obviously I Work on a lot of my yarn crafting I do a lot of crocheting I make blankets and 02:46 I make dishcloths and handbags and hats. Pretty much you name it, I can make it. Otherwise I make jams and jellies and then there's the other part of it that my husband is a really big part of. We make a lot of sourdough and bagels and other sandwich breads. 03:14 and we're now starting to get into dessert breads. 03:19 So yeah, we, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I guess that's, that's, that's the big part. Otherwise I get into making a lot of oils for different purposes, not, not scent, you know, not essential oils, but healing oils, things like that. So I'm a lot, I'm really big with herbal things. So always. 03:47 So you're a typical homesteader. You've got your hands in almost everything. Yeah, pretty much. Nice. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna toot your horn for you. Your bagels are amazing. Kyle brought some home Saturday and they were the Osceaga ones. Oh my god. So yummy. Yeah. And you're, uh, He said he's been eyeing those for a while, so he decided to get some. 04:16 Yep. And your raisin ones are really good too. Oh, I'm glad you like those. Yeah. We love bagels. We don't love store-bought bagels, but we love your bagels. So, Oh, I'm glad. I was going to ask, um, the Italian bread that he brought home. Um, I didn't get any. Cameron and Kyle ate all of it before I could get to it. Oh my gosh. But they loved it. I didn't get a chance to try it. 04:46 Oh, well, just let me know and I'll make you some. Okay. Yeah. I was going to grab some and I was like, where'd the bag go? And Cameron was like, we ate it. And then Kyle made honey oat bread and, and, uh, herbed bread yesterday that he makes, so I was like, okay, well maybe I'll get some of those maybe. Yeah. Food doesn't last very long in this house if it's, if it's really yummy. So it must have been really yummy, Holly. I will find out eventually. 05:16 Well, that's good. We make sure we have fresh herbs growing outside on our deck so I can grab them and we use those. So yeah, fresh herbs are the best thing. And if you can't have fresh herbs, dried herbs work just as well. So it works out great. Thank you. 05:39 I'm very excited you're going to get in dessert, two dessert breads. I cannot talk this morning. I feel like I'm not separating anything out and I'm not pronouncing my consonants. I don't know what's wrong with me. Your dessert breads are an exciting new thing. What kind of dessert breads are you guys doing? Oh, um, well, Chris has been making, um, one of them is a, gow, what does he call it? It's a cinnamon. 06:08 uh, cinnamon or not cinnamon chocolate, twist, I guess is what he calls it. But it's, um, he rolls it out flat and then he puts Nutella all over the whole thing and then he ro

Today I'm talking with El at Minnesota Half-Assed Homesteaders. A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support. 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. Today I'm talking with El, Minnesota half-assed homesteaders. Good morning, El, how are you? Good morning, I'm wonderful, how are you? I'm great, it is a glorious day in Minnesota this morning. It's beautiful, I always love it when I can go out and do chores in the morning with a sweatshirt on and you have that perfect, like, cool weather. It just... 00:29 It starts the day off perfect. Yeah, it's almost feeling like back to school day, used to feel when I would go back to school every year in Maine. So yeah, it's cool outside, but it's so sunny and everything's bright and shiny. It's lovely here. You are in Pine City? Pine River. Pine River, sorry. Nope, that's not it. And that's north of the cities, right? Yeah, we're in the Brainerd Lakes area. 00:55 Oh, so you're up there. You're in the really pretty area of Minnesota. Yes. It's beautiful up here. Awesome. Okay. So two things, El and I were talking before I started recording. El's real name is Elspeth. And I was saying that that's one of the most beautiful names I've ever heard. And I thought she might be named after a family member, but no, she's named after a person in a book. So do you want to tell me about that? Yeah, absolutely. I don't ever remember the name of the book. 01:25 But when my mom was pregnant with me, she was reading a book that had a good witch who was a steward of the earth and she would go around planting flowers and bringing life back to dead areas on earth. And her name was Elspeth. And my mom fell in love with the name. 01:52 They were going to name me Rowena after my great grandma. Um, but once mom found that name, she really liked it. And my dad liked it because I'm the youngest of four kids and the last girl. Um, and he thought it sounded like a princess name. So he was okay with that. And then gave me the middle name of Prairie. 02:19 Um, because he wanted to name me Prairie Rose. So they both kind of got to pick and ended up with Elspeth Prairie. I, like I said before, I think it's absolutely beautiful and how appropriate considering what you're doing with your life that you are named after, uh, a princess or whatever that, that basically stewards the earth. I, it's come to full. 02:46 come to full fruition for me. And it's one of those things that now, especially since my mom has passed on, and I'm kind of keeping her legacy alive too in homesteading and foraging, natural medicine, things like that, that I realized that maybe she was, she was getting to something and kind of determining my fate before I even knew it. So. 03:13 I feel like this podcast episode is going to be magical. That's how it feels from the start. Okay. So, and another thing, I love Minnesota half-assed homesteaders for a name. That is fantastic. We, you know, a lot of people who end up joining say, I joined because of the name. My husband and I started it about two years ago. 03:38 kind of just as a way for us to document what we're doing on our homestead. Our successes, our failures, our challenges. And it kind of grew into this community. It was originally strictly for people who were in Minnesota. But then we found, you know, we had people who had growing or similar growing seasons that we have. 04:08 and had similar interests and we wanted to have that diversity to be able to compare and contrast. So we started getting people from all over the United States and now we have 04:21 5,000 people, 5,400 I think in two years. So it's kind of grown into this fun little community of people who are like-minded. And our whole purpose for the name of the group is that we're not fancy. We don't necessarily, especially when we started, we didn't have a lot of money to put into. 04:49 our homestead, but we knew that we wanted to make our own food, provide for ourselves and be as self-sufficient as we could. And I was joking one day saying, well, I guess we're just doing it the half-assed way. And that is how Minnesota Half-Assed Homesteaders came about because we do what we can with where we are and what we have. 05:19 using plastic grow bags on the deck because we have horrible soil and we didn't know what our you know sun exposure was we didn't know where our best places to grow were and most of our yard was too shady for gardening anyway so over the last couple of years we've cut down trees and kind of expanded and built our way up. 05:47 to having raised beds and chickens and ducks, and we're just gonna keep seeing where things go. But that's kind of how we started, was just working with what we have and just wantin

Today I'm talking with Tracey at Makers Acres Homestead. You can also follow on Instagram. A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support. 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 Tracey at Makers Acres Homestead. Good morning Tracey, how is the weather in Tennessee today? Good morning. It is sweltering. I think we're going to have a record high today actually. So like... 00:28 actual about 100 degrees. I'm not sure what feels like temperature will be, but I am so sorry to hear that. We had feels like temps two days ago of 110. Wow. In Minnesota. I'm going to say that's something from Minnesota. My goodness. Yeah. It was gross. You stepped outside and you were immediately misted. It was terrible. Yeah. And we were in a drought too. So my gardens are a hot mess right now, a little bit of a dumpster fire, but you know, you just kind of go with. 00:58 We've got a pretty good dumpster fire going on with our gardens and absence. So may so I understand. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you're doing. Makers Acres Homestead. Yeah, well, we we do a few things where I maybe I should say I or I don't know my husband's kind of long for the ride and some of this stuff. I'm the person with all the ideas. 01:23 I want to do about a thousand times more than I'm doing because my ability to execute everything doesn't keep up with all my ideas. But we named, we kind of gave it this property when we moved here five years ago from Michigan. We gave this property, we're on six acres and my parents have a home on the property as well that we moved them down to a couple years after we moved here. 01:51 And Makers Acres is just meaning that we just recognize and proclaim that all this belongs to the Lord and this is His land, His property, and we truly just want to be obedient to Him in that and how He wants to use it. But back in Michigan, before we even moved, I really had this like dream that I felt like God put on my heart. 02:21 to grow food and give it away to people, basically. And mainly because a little bit of just a brief backstory is I have really seen the power of nutrition change my health story and that of my family. And so I just recognize like everyone deserves access to fresh fruits and vegetables. And even back, 02:51 before even my health transformation, we, for a time period during the crash in 08, we actually utilized some of the government services like food stamps and stuff like that because my husband lost his job. And so I have like this intimate knowledge of just that process and being a part of that, just that world. And I mean, 03:17 It's fascinating. That's like a whole different rabbit trail. But when you can get candy and junk food and all that with food stamps, just as well as anything else, you're going for cheap because you're trying to make your dollar stretch. And so I think when anyone, whether they're using government assistance or not, 03:44 When you're feeling that pinch in your budget, we're always trying to make everything stretch farther. And it's so easy to. 03:55 just to compromise because unfortunately the system and the setup is where like junk food is cheaper than healthy food. And so we, I just really wanted to give everyone the access. Now I, you know, not everyone wants it. That's fine. I mean, I get that. And so there is an educational piece behind it. But 04:19 I just really wanted everyone to have access to fresh food. And so that's what kind of started this idea in my heart to essentially grow it and give it away. And I personally use these vertical aeroponic tower gardens, a distributor for the company. And that's really how I got my start, zero green thumb, but I just wanted to grow food for my family. And 04:45 Michigan soil is very sandy and I lived in a lot of shade and so My back porch was really the only place to grow so That's a nice. I started growing with those and I just realized how much I could grow in a small space So that's kind of what spearheaded that and that dream really took root once we moved to Tennessee and we bought this property and we're like 05:12 Okay, so we actually, it's the name of that is called Maker's Pharmacy. And pharmacy is spelled F-A-R-M-A-C-Y. You know, just, you know, food is medicine. And so that's kind of the, the story in brief behind that. I'm sorry if I went off on a rabbit trail a little bit with your question, but. Nope. I want all the stories I can get. I am thrilled when people talk for five minutes about what they're doing. It makes me happy. Oh, good. 05:41 So when did you move to Tennessee

Today I'm talking with Lexi at The Steady Home. A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support. 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 Lexi Maitland, and I don't really have a business name for you. So good morning, Lexi, how are you? Hey, Mary, I'm good. And our business is The Steady Home, but how are you? The Steady Home, yes. I think that's how I found you, but I completely forgot. 00:29 No, that's okay. I'm well. It is not stiflingly, miserably humid and hot here today. So... Oh, I love that. I love that. Now, where are you, Barry? Minnesota. In what part of the country? Minnesota. Nice. Yeah, it's like 90, I think 93 here today. So it's a little toasty on my end. And you're in Virginia? I am. Just south of Richmond and Dimwitty. Okay. Yes. All right. So before we get into what you do... 00:57 I have a little minor self-promotion thing to say. Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my podcast. What? I'm so excited for you. I saw it on your Facebook yesterday. I was like, oh my gosh, that's so exciting. Yeah. And I just wanted to thank all my guests. I'm upset. I'm like, I'm shook up here. All my guests and all my listeners. Because when I started this, I didn't think it was going to do. 01:27 anything at all. So one year is a big deal. It's a massive deal, Mary. Your discipline through your podcast. I mean, you do multiple a week. I listened to a podcast not long ago and you said that you did nine interviews within a week. So I just want to congratulate you because it is not easy doing a podcast by itself, but your discipline and the community that you've created within your podcast has been amazing. I've loved listening to you. 01:57 Well, thank you. And if I didn't love it so much, I wouldn't be doing it. Well, you do a great job. I love it. Thank you. I didn't realize I was going to tear up, but boy, what a year it's been. Yes. Take that moment for you. That's amazing. So, that's my teary moment for the day, I guess. So, anyway, thank you everybody for supporting me. And so, tell me about the study home, Lexi. Tell me all about you. Sure. 02:25 a little bit about me. I grew up on a little over a hundred acre farm most of my life throughout my whole childhood and when I hit adulthood I had I thought I had been sheltered and so I thought maybe the city offered more to life and so I shifted to a smaller city and then I quickly came back to my to my roots and so how you found me I think was through 02:53 the Facebook group that I created. And so I'll get into a little bit about that. But how I started homesteading was my daughter, personally, I mean, I grew up on a farm, but personally started homesteading within my own home and cultivating that throughout my family was my daughter was born in 2021. And after the massive push for the COVID Vax and the boosters, I started doing my own research and questioning what feels like everything. 03:20 So when I started, I started a little Facebook group in November of 2023 to help others find a community of information and to feel safe in asking some of those difficult questions specifically for beginners. And since I started the group the end of last year, we've grown to over 97,000 in the group and our active newsletter subscribers reached a little over 40,000 now. So we have a total of 60 but active are right at 40,000. 03:49 Um, so we've, we've done some, a lot in a short timeframe and I feel like it's been a little overwhelming. So I understand celebrating your first year. There's so the, the grind and the hustle that first year is, is, um, you know, some of the best work I believe through that discipline. So again, hats off to you. Um, so since I started the group, um, yeah, we've, we've 04:16 We've done a lot. And so we've done, we've created like homestead workshops, we've created a membership, we have, you know, the newsletter and now, you know, we're inviting sponsors to sponsor the newsletter that are aligned with our audience. We've done a membership, we've started a little blog on Pinterest and yeah, it's been, it's been quite a year. So that's kind of like a gist and you know, what, what we're up to within this. 04:45 quote unquote steady home. It feels kind of cliche to say it publicly, but I really wanted to create more sustainability within our home and we ran a solar company for a little over five years. And so we really were immersed into sustainability before we were immersed into homesteading. So now we've got the basic homestead animals, the chickens, the goats, canning and. 05:13 growing our little raised garden

Today I'm talking with Troy at the Red Tool House Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support. 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 Troy at Red Tool House Farm. Good morning, Troy, how are you? Good morning, how are you? I'm good, it's nice to talk with you again. Last time we talked, we were talking about the Homesteading-ish Conference, but today we're talking about you. Yes. 00:29 So tell me about yourself and what you do at the Red Toolhouse farm. Well, Red Toolhouse is the name of the place that we've been on for the last 24 years. It is about a hundred acres and we're in the southwestern portion of West Virginia, what I consider the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It was a piece of property in major disrepair when we bought it. 00:57 had lots of garbage on it, old house, old trailer, just had been abandoned for so long or unused for so long that it had just accumulated a lot of the neighborhood garbage. So we bought it knowing that we were going to have to put a lot of sweat equity into it. We had a lot of potential with the property. We knew. 01:22 We knew there was a lot of potential there, but just, just going to have to get through a lot of that work. Got a great deal on the property. Um, so young and dumb, didn't know any better. So just dove head first into it. So over the last 24 years, just kind of embraced more of a regenerative agricultural elements, you know, the homesteading, we kind of picked up the homesteading vibe about 14 years ago and started pursuing that more kind of knowing where food comes from, producing our own food. 01:51 raising livestock and then just managing the forest on this 100 acres is kind of where we've landed. Okay. So where did you live before? Okay. So I, my wife and I, we dated through high school and we were West Virginians. So we were, well, she's a transplant. She was from Florida originally, but we went to high school together. We went to college together. We went to Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. 02:16 And after college, we decided, hey, we can't stay in West Virginia. We want to get a job. All the things that went along with that. So we moved to Orlando for a couple of years. And Orlando is okay, but there's a lot of humanity in Orlando. So we kind of felt the call to come back home. We always joke that West Virginians are like boomerangs. They keep coming back. So we moved back in. 02:44 1998, I believe, eight or nine. And moved back, actually stayed in a little cabin that was just over the mountain from where I grew up and spent a year trying to find property. I told Kelly, my wife, I said, if we're gonna move back to West Virginia, I don't wanna live in town, I don't wanna live around people. Orlando had really turned me off from even liking people anymore. I just didn't like people. So I... 03:10 I said, we need to live as rural as we possibly can, but we both still work full-time jobs in the city of Charleston. So we knew we still had to be a reasonable commutable drive from Charleston. So we looked about an hour out, just drew a circle around the city of Charleston and said, let's look for land. 03:31 This land wasn't even on the market. It was actually just a piece of land lying here and we had to go door to door. As before, the internet was really a thing where you could search all that stuff. So we just went door to door, finally found out who owned it and made an offer on it and they accepted our first offer. Okay, so you had a plan for sure to do this. This isn't like you were living in town and went, eh, I want to try something completely different and just chose this. You had a plan. 04:00 Well, I grew up rural in West Virginia. My folks, we just call it rural life. I mean, mom and dad did a garden. We didn't have any livestock. I think we did a garden. We lived on a bigger tract of land. So we cut firewood. We provided our own fuel source for heat and that type of stuff. So I thought, well, if I'm moving back to West Virginia, I want to go back to the things I miss and Orlando really made me realize how much I missed not being surrounded by humanity. 04:30 And there's just some beautiful land in Western, just a gorgeous state. And I thought, well, I want to be able to have something I can call my own and be able to carve out whatever I want, have enough acreage that I can do, do the little piddly things that I like to do. So that was, that was probably really the only goal. We weren't, I wasn't thinking self-reliant. I wasn't thinking prepper. I wa

Today I'm talking with Brenda at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance about composting as an environmentally friendly self-reliant activity. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support. 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 Brenda at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Good morning, Brenda. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. You're in Minneapolis? I'm actually in the Washington, D.C. office. Oh, okay. 00:29 All right, cool. What's it like in Washington, DC today? It's it's actually a very nice day. It's in the 70s. I don't have the AC on. I have the fans going. Very nice. It's it's overcast in Minnesota, but it's also not hot yet. So that's a good thing. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, I head up one of our. 00:56 initiatives at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. We are a national non-profit research and technical assistance organization and we were founded in 1974 so we turned 50 this year and we have championed local self-reliance, a strategy that underscores the need for humanly scaled institutions and economies and the widest possible distribution of ownership. So what does that mean? Well we work in key sectors of the economy so 01:25 We have an independent business initiative, which is fighting the outsize monopoly power of corporations like Amazon. Before that, it was Walmart, which has kind of been dwarfed by Amazon. We have a community broadband initiative, which is promoting municipally owned broadband fiber optic networks, for instance. We have an energy democracy program, which is promoting community controlled utilities and. 01:54 Looftop solar and the like, and I head up our composting for community initiative and have been working on waste issues for 38 years. I've been at ILSR for 38 years and, um, most of that time I've been fighting trash incinerators and documenting communities with the highest recycling and composting levels and in. 02:18 probably the last decade began to focus more and more on composting because composting is inherently local. We can do it in our backyards, in our communities, at schools, community gardens, urban farms. You can do it anywhere in the world. Wherever we are eating, which hopefully if we're lucky we're eating at least three meals a day and you have food scraps, so we should be doing something with those food scraps. 02:45 Even the final product that you make from compost is generally used locally. We're not shipping the food scraps from coast to coast. You know, we have, you know, markets for waste paper and steel and metals, other types of recycled commodities. Those can be global markets, but we're not shipping our banana peels from the East Coast to the West Coast. And then the finished product tends to be used within local and regional markets as well. Back into the soil. Good. Okay. 03:15 So I am gonna, I'm gonna tell you my experience with composting in a small town. We don't live there anymore, so I don't have to abide by their rules now. But back when we lived in this small town in Minnesota, in town, we were only allowed to have the compost barrels that get closed up and you turn them. We were not allowed to have any kind of open compost bin. 03:45 And I think the reasoning was that it would draw in pests. So do you hear this in cities that there's specific ways you're allowed to compost? Yeah, there are definitely archaic and two laws on the books, old laws. And there was ones like the one you described that are just far too prescriptive. So I actually did a report a few years ago called Yes in My Backyard. 04:15 for local government on home composting programs. And we had a whole chapter on how to address archaic laws and ordinances. And we actually called out the problem with the specifics like what you just mentioned is, and let me just back up and say that there are a few things that you need to keep in mind for successful composting. And they are things like you gotta balance your 04:40 nitrogen rich materials, that's your food scraps, glass, grass clippings, think of nitrogen rich materials and things that can rot easily or have a lot of moisture. And you got to balance that with carbon rich materials, that's your browns. And the right ratio, you got to pay attention to oxygen, composting is an aerobic process, it needs oxygen, and it needs moisture. And you know, you need enough mass, but to do it successfully and to keep out... 05:07 unwanted critters like rodents or raccoons or possums. It's not about whether it's

Today I'm talking with Karina at Niemczyk Family Farms LLC. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support. 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 Karina at Niemczyk Family Farms LLC. Good morning, Karina. How are you? Hi. Good morning. Doing well. Thank you. Good. I need to close an app real quick. Hang on. Okay. 00:27 Tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Yeah, so we started our business, or technically became a business in 2023. We've been living on our farm since 2020. So it's kind of been incorporating homesteading and small farm practices in our daily life. But when we decided that we wanted to kind of pursue this more as a business 00:58 potentially grow in 2023. So that was kind of the first kind of stepping stones. And, you know, the 2023 was kind of our basic growth year. And then this year has been a year that has been a little bit more, I want to say exponential, because that's a little bit aggressive, but definitely a bigger year for growth. So it's been good. 01:27 Okay, when you say we, is it you and a husband and kids? Yes, my husband and I are married. We got married in 2019 and so we partnered together and this is kind of our 50-50% business. We have two small kids, one is three and then one is one and a half. Our oldest is a boy and then our youngest is a girl. They don't really help out too much on the farm, but they are just, I don't know. 01:56 there and around and learning as we go. So soaking up all the good farm stuff. Yes. Exactly. So, okay. So you're, go ahead. Nope, go ahead. So you're a really busy lady if you have two under three years old and you're doing produce and you're doing cottage food production and you're doing meat too, right? Yep. Yep. And we, uh, we both still have full-time jobs. We haven't, um, 02:26 transitioned into being self-sufficient enough yet where one of us can potentially, you know, move into us having it as a full-time job. So that's kind of where we're, you know, wanting to grow and potentially within the next five years have one of us be able to stay home and pursue this full-time, which would be really great. But yep, so we both have full-time jobs, have the farm as our... 02:54 know, essentially side business right now and then our two, two young kids. And, um, uh, basically, you know, the, our passion or our desire to start the farm started with actually like the meat side of it and raising our own animals, um, raising our own food, um, and doing it in a way that was sustainable and regenerative in a sense of. 03:22 utilizing the land that we have, utilizing the resources and utilizing the environment and it being a regenerative type farm and using that instead of a conventional type basis. So that's kind of where everything stemmed from was producing our own food, but then also growing into doing it for others as well who wanted to purchase and also have similar beliefs as us as where their food comes from. 03:52 Yeah, absolutely. That's fantastic. So you must be working some time management magic over there in Arlington because I don't know how you're doing it. Yep, it's a long, long days, long, sometimes long nights. We also do hay. We run about 25 to 30 acres of hay. We do that in the summertime as well. So we, that's part of the... 04:21 regenerative aspect of our farm as well. Instead of necessarily feeding animals, crops such as corn and soy and things like that, which is definitely some things we utilize into the feed of our animals, but we also use hay for feeding the animals as well, but also using it to sell to other farmers who also utilize it for their cattle or you know a lot of times people use you 04:51 Yeah, so that's another piece of our farm as well. So yeah, time management is kind of just doing it as we go and trying to figure it out day by day. Sometimes it's not always like a week schedule or a month schedule. It's just kind of like flying by the seat of our pants sometimes. Well, I'm glad it works for you. I was hoping you had some advice because I know my listeners are dying for ways to schedule their lives easier or better. 05:20 I guess one thing we do utilize if nobody else, you know, I'm sure it's a very similar thing others do, but my husband and I, we have a shared Google calendar. So if you, each of you have like a spouse or a partner, use your Google calendar. And that's where we put in like, it's always, it always changes, but like we'll block out a week or we'll have a week of like, this is what we're projecting. We're doing, Hey, 05:45 or like thi

Today I'm talking with Sara at Fameflower Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast thanks Chelsea Green Publishing for their support. 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 Sara at Fameflower Farm. How are you, Sarah? I'm doing good. Thanks. How about you? I'm good. You're in Tennessee? Yes, middle Tennessee, not too far from Nashville. Oh, nice. 00:26 All right, well, tell me about yourself and what you do at Fameflower Farm. Okay, so we are a mini farm and we've been at this little homestead mini farm thing for about a decade now. And we, my husband and I moved here from the Chicagoland area with the ultimate goal of growing and raising as much of our own food as possible. We moved from a condo with zero land whatsoever. So it was a huge shift to almost 17 acres in Middle Tennessee. 00:56 And you know, we thought it'd be easy-ish to figure it all out. And we're learning as we go that there's just so many things and everything has a big learning curve, but we love the lifestyle, the homesteading lifestyle and are really happy we have moved here and are doing all the things. We've got a bunch of different animals, huge garden and permaculture food forest and probably other things I'm forgetting. 01:23 Oh, that's such a good question. Naming our farm was such a challenge. So our last name is Chodal, but it's spelled with a C-H, super hard to pronounce. So we figured that's out. We're not gonna use that name. And a lot of people name their homes that are farms based on their names. So since that was out, we had to go with something else. And we were looking for a bunch of different names and we discovered we are on limestone and we're in an area of the country that has some endangered plant species. We happen to have limestone glades on our property that grow maybe 01:51 up to 10 different types of endangered plant species. The fameflower is one of those. And it sounded kind of cool, fameflower farm, three Fs, so we went with her. So what is a fameflower? It's a tiny little, it almost looks like a succulent with its leaves and it has a very beautiful, bright, almost fuchsia color of flower that only blooms in the afternoons in the summer. 02:16 And it's an endangered plant species, so it's not found everywhere. It's challenging to find. And since we have it on our property, you know, that's pretty cool. Very nice. I'm always excited to hear about flowers that I don't know about yet. It makes me grin. Okay. So I really, I really want to talk about the dogs. And I mentioned this beforehand before we started recording. 02:41 We have a mini Australian shepherd named Maggie that I talk about ad nauseam on the podcast. I try hard not to talk about her. So that's what we have. We have a dog. Her job is to be a watchdog. That is her only job. She does it really well to the point of doing it too well. So you raise Pyrenees poodle crosses. And they're gorgeous. 03:08 But I need to know more about why that's a good mix. Okay, so we had a... Do you want me to tell you how I got into this whole dog thing to begin with? Yes, please. Okay, so we, both my husband and I have had dogs our whole lives. And we had, when we moved here, we had an Aussie poo, so Australian Shepherd poodle mix. He is an F2B, which means he's got a lot of poodle in him, essentially. 03:37 And then we also had a skipper keep poodle mix. So we already loved poodle mixes. Those two dogs are just house dogs, cute, friendly, whatever. Nothing that they're gonna have work to do. And then we had a big chicken loss with a predator. So we got a great Pyrenees to guard our flock. As our great Pyrenees grows, she's just a beautiful, wonderful, amazing dog. And my mom, who had previously bred dogs like 30 years ago, kept saying Bishop, that's her name, is beautiful. You should breed her. 04:06 And I told her I wasn't really sure that that was something I wanted to do because, you know, there's lots of dogs that need rescued and I don't know if I want to become a dog breeder. And then my mother-in-law also said she really wanted a dog and would love to have a dog if Bishop had babies. And they both had met our poodle mixes and everyone that we know likes the poodle mixes. I know poodle mixes are not for everybody, but they are for us. So we decided to do a litter with Bishop and a standard poodle. 04:34 my mom's water aerobics instructor happened to have a health-tested standard poodle available to be the dad. So it just all kind of came together perfectly and he was a very beautiful, calm-ish for a poodle, standard poodle. So it was all wond