A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Aaron and Julia at The Canny Couple. You can follow along on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. As a special bonus for A Tiny Homestead listeners, receive 35% off your total order from Chelsea Green by using discount code CGP35 at check-out!* *This offer cannot be combined with other discounts. For US residents only. 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. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Aaron and Julia at The Candy Couple. Good afternoon, guys. Hello. Thanks for having us. Yeah. 00:26 So tell me about what you do because from your Facebook page and your website, it looks like you're very much content creators. So tell me what about what you do. Yeah, we, we do content creation. We do podcasting. Um, it's really all comes to how we live a homesteading, frugal lifestyle. Yeah. And it all we've considered all underneath the candy couple. Like we have different. 00:55 side hustles things we do on the side, but in our mind, everything falls underneath the candy. It does. So the candy couple is the umbrella that covers everything you do. Okay, cool. We do a little bit of everything. Okay, so do you have a homestead or how does it work? Yes. Yeah, so we do. We have a small, we're a small homestead family. We have 25 acres. 01:23 Most of it is wood and mountainous areas. So we, we, we, we considered a small homestead because we don't have much real usable land unless we were to clear some of the forest out, which we don't have any plans of doing. Right. So, but we do have a small homestead. We do a lot of gardening, animals, poultry, mostly is what we focus on, on our homestead. And 01:52 Where it's really working every single day to be more self-reliant, self-sufficient. We do have a pretty extensive orchard. I guess you would call it. Most people call it an orchard that we are cultivating and working through. Okay. Tell me again where you guys are. So we are in rural Southwest Virginia. We're closer to the Tennessee line than anywhere else. So, um, like most of our trips. 02:20 involves going into Tennessee. And I know there's a lot of homesteaders in Tennessee areas. So we're always at least there usually at least every other week. Yeah, I was going to say you sounded more Tennessee than West Virginia. So it's mountain. It's a mountain accent. It's what somebody told me once and it made sense. It's just one of those, but it's not West Virginia where we live in Virginia, not West Virginia. We're just like in the south. 02:49 western part of Virginia. Oh, okay. Sorry, I misheard you. That's okay. Yeah, your accent is beautiful. There are some southern accents and I'm like, I can't understand it. And you guys is just gorgeous. Oh, thank you. I'm big on accents. Part of the reason I love doing the podcast is I get to hear a different accent almost every day. It makes me so happy. That is true. It is. Yeah. So do you guys... 03:18 I asked this of everybody homesteads don't be offended. Do you guys try to make what you do on the homestead support the homestead financially? Are you just more about being self-sufficient? So our goal is to have the homestead help support us financially. Um, with our tree crops, because that's kind of where our big focus was at the beginning of our journey was to work on our perennial systems. We look at everything through the lens of we are going to get older. 03:48 And everything takes a lot of really good systems take a long time to put into place. And we have experience on our property of these six apple trees and they produce a great crop for us. We eat them, we use them, we can them. And we wanted to have a lot more of that, but we're also hoping to eventually sell a lot of that produce and things like that. But that's a ways down the road. If I had it to do over again, I would probably put in more. 04:18 um, berry crops because it has a faster turnaround. Mm-hmm. Yep. And that could also still happen. We do have some property we could cultivate. Um, but it's just, that is like a five year plan, not a right now plan. Okay. You said apple trees. How, how did the apples do in the South? Because I'm up North in Minnesota. I'm a Yankee and, uh, our apple trees go dormant about October. 04:46 And they're asleep until at least April. So how does that work in Virginia? I'm sorry. That's the same one. So ours, usually we have, so we got, it's an old red delicious, old yellow delicious that we had. Um, these trees have been here almost, I guess, 40 years now. So they're older trees, that

Today I'm talking with Andrea and Renata at Tandi Family Farms. You can follow along on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. As a special bonus for A Tiny Homestead listeners, receive 35% off your total order from Chelsea Green by using discount code CGP35 at check-out!* *This offer cannot be combined with other discounts. For US residents only. 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. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. 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 Andrea and Renata at Tandy Family Farms. How are you girls? We're good. What's going on? How are you? Good. I'm great. You're in California? Yes, California. 00:29 Like where? California is a big state. Yeah, the San Francisco Bay area, specifically San Leandro. Okay, cool. Yeah, and I'm in Minnesota, so I'm a long ways away from you guys. So tell me about yourselves and what you do. So we're brand new. We launched everything that we're doing in May. 00:54 Kind of in honor, not kind of, but in honor of my grandfather who was a farm to table chef. Mm-hmm. Okay. And so what are you doing? Well we are forming a nonprofit organization. We're almost have that set. And we are currently spending our time helping people set up gardens in their spaces, whether that be a backyard or... 01:22 In one case, an apartment complex, community garden, but we are in the process of fundraising and looking to get a piece of land, hopefully in the near-ish future. But of course, that depends on funding. To have a teaching farm, which will be a regenerative farm, as well as a place to teach from, so a farm and farm school. So we're in the early stages. 01:53 That's where we are now. Okay. So a teaching farm. So like anybody, any age or kids or grownups or what? Everyone. Anyone willing to learn and wanting to learn about how to sustainably grow your own food and how to cook the food that you grow. I love that because usually farm school is about growing food. It's not necessarily about what you do with the food that you grow. Yeah. 02:20 And it's really important to use that food you grow because there's a lot of work that goes into it. There is a lot of work and patience. Mm-hmm. And it's so good for you. We have a farm-to-market garden that we grow. And it's looking real sad this year because we've had a lot of rain. But I did manage to eke out four cucumbers so far. And oh, my god, they're so good because of the rain. Go fig. 02:49 It's terrible growing conditions, but cucumbers love water. Yeah. Yup. It's a hard job growing food and I don't grow the garden my husband does, but I have helped him in years past and it's hard work. It's dirty work and it's such good work. Yeah. We love getting dirty and we love hard work. 03:16 So it's a great combination. Yeah. So why did you guys exactly start to do this? You mentioned your father? My grandfather. Grandfather, yes. Tell the story. So my Nono, so we are Italian. My Nono John or Giovanni Tandi, he's a first generation Italian American. And his family. 03:45 They come from a little province in Italy called Genoa, and more specifically, Appicella. And their vocation, they were farmers. So something that's kind of cool is that my great grandfather, Angelo Tandi, he brought with him these green beans. And they're an Italian broad green bean. And they've been in our family. 04:12 for over 100 years and they're currently growing in three of the Victory Gardens or community gardens that we've started. So they're literally heirloom vegetables. Yes, literally, yeah, literally heirloom vegetables. I love that, oh, you make me so happy. Yeah. Stories like this just make my heart too big for my chest. That's great. One thing, oh, sorry. Go ahead. 04:40 Oh, one thing that Andrea maybe didn't mention is that he, he passed this year. And so we've had this dream of launching this farm for a while now. And it was just kind of like the, the motivation or just the, the oomph we, we had to, this is the time, um, you know, to do it in his honor. Um, so, but it is a dream we've had for a long time. It just, it just kind of felt like it's the time is now. Right. Yep. 05:10 And I made the decision to leave public education after 22 years, the last 10 being an elementary school administrator. And yeah, this has been a healing process and it's like a passion too. 05:31 Fantastic. So it's non-profit. So does that mean that you won't be charging for the classes or does that just mean the money goes right back into the business? Goes right back into the business. Okay. Yeah. And currently how our, what we call little

Today I'm talking with Kate Herford at New Generation Homesteader - Homestead Business with Kate. You can follow along on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. As a special bonus for A Tiny Homestead listeners, receive 35% off your total order from Chelsea Green by using discount code CGP35 at check-out!* *This offer cannot be combined with other discounts. For US residents only. 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. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. 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 Kate again from New Generation Homestead. Good evening, or good morning, Kate, how are you? I'm very well, thank you, Mary. 00:26 The reason I said again is because Kate and I recorded a podcast episode months ago and my platform ate it. It's gone. I can't find it. So Kate was kind enough to come back and chat with me again. So Kate, you have been on vacation, right? Oh yes. Yes. I took three weeks. My partner was part of a support crew for an off-road. 00:54 racing event up in central Australia, if anyone knows where Australia at all is rock, or they call it Uluru. And up near there, there was an off-road race that's held once a year. And I thought, well, if you're going, I'm going too, not going to miss out. And so we spent three weeks touring up to central Australia and then around Uluru and the gorges and that sort of 01:24 which is a very off-road track in central Australia as well. It was a lot of fun. Good, I'm glad you had a chance to maybe let down a little bit, because I know you're really busy with your business. So, tell me about yourself and what you do at New Generation Homesteader. Okay, so I am a mom of two boys, and then I'm stepmom to three. So we've had five kids in the house at various times. 01:52 And I started New Generation Homesteader during the COVID lockdowns because I realized that we need to be more in control of our own food supply. So I started gardening and wanting to connect with people who had the same values as me. And it took me ages to find the word homesteader. And then when I did, I went, oh my gosh, this is where I want to be. I've been a business coach for a number of 02:22 Just my niche had changed a little bit, but nothing really set my soul on fire. And when I came to the homesteading area and I started looking up all the different homesteading pages and YouTubers and that sort of stuff, I went, oh, these people have the same values as me. But what I did find was a lot of people were really exhausted and burnt out and they're really struggling to make ends meet. And I thought, well, as a business coach, how can I help? 02:52 And the new generation homesteader was born because it's about getting back to the old ways of doing things and that's your homesteading and being more self-sufficient. But looking at earning an income in the new space, which is in that digital space, creating a course or a membership. At the moment I've got a resale rights program which actually teaches women how to create their own digital business and you know it's very quick and easy to set up. 03:21 So I just wanted to go down that path because the whole idea is to relax and have that time in the homestead. And if you've got little kids to be able to do that without really stressing about the bills and all the costs associated with homesteading, it was like, well, how can I help people to start their own digital business and bring in money even when they're sleeping? And so the new generation homesteader, doing things the old way. 03:51 but earning money the new way as well. Yeah, I didn't ask you this last time. How did you get into being a coach? Look, many years ago, I started up doing Tupperware when I was traveling Australia with my ex-husband and when my boys were one and three. And it was 2008, the global financial crisis hit and I'd taken two years leave from my job 04:21 my ex-husband had just got a redundancy. And so the financial crisis hit and we lost quite a bit of money and I had to, you know, work as we were traveling. There's a whole story wrapped in around that that's quite trauma based in that I wanted to have that experience with my kids, but I didn't. I ended up working government jobs and doing Tupperware on the side. And I love the Tupperware. 04:50 It was with women and it gave me a sense of purpose and they lifted me up. But when we got home, I got back into other government jobs and then the marriage broke down and I just realized I wanted more and you know, someone offered me, uh, uh, it was a opportunity for a health product and I took tha

Today I'm talking with Rachel at WhoopsyDaisy Farm. You can follow along 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 Rachel at WhoopsyDaisy Farm, I think is the name of your place, right? Yes. Okay. I have, there are so many endings to people's names, farm, homestead, farmstead. I'm like, which is it? 00:27 How are you? And tell me about yourself. I'm doing great. So yes, we are WhoopsyDaisy Farm. We are an eight and a half acre homestead in central Kentucky. And we raise dairy sheep. Very nice. If I sound a little flustered, it's because I, you are the ninth episode I have recorded this week alone. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So it's been, it's been crazy. I've talked to a lot of people this week. I've made 00:55 As of now, nine new friends. It's been really fun. Well, awesome. All right. So, um, where are you again? We're in central Kentucky. Okay. And do you have a big sheep raising operation or a small one or how does this work? Well, we have 30 sheep. So some people say, oh my goodness, that's a ton. And other people say, oh, that's it. You're a micro farm. So it kind of depends, um, on what your perspective is. Uh, I mean, it's, it's. 01:25 It's a mid-sized sheep operation, I would say. It seems like, again, you either own hundreds or thousands of sheep or you own four. I mean, there's not really a lot of middle ground in the sheep industry from my experience. So yeah, we're on the smaller range. We're larger for a homestead dairy operation, but we actually raise two different kinds of sheep. And so that's why we have so many. So we, yeah, we raise. 01:52 We raise dairy crosses and then we raise purebred Gulf Coast natives. So like we have a ram flock of at least five rams at all times so that we have genetic diversity for both types of sheep. Awesome. So tell me how you got into this because raising sheep is not something you just go, I think I'm going to get a couple of sheep and raise them. Especially not wool breeds in America today. So my... 02:18 Origins with sheep were when I was growing up in New Mexico, my best friend's mom had a fiber store and they owned two sheep, two llamas, and 18 Angora rabbits. And they harvested all the fiber, they processed it themselves, they spun it and they would either sell the yarn or they would knit clothing and sell those. And then, you know, they ordered either wool from other shepherds or they got yarn from other yarn outlets and they sold it in their store. 02:48 I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. So I always wanted to have some wool sheep just so I would have quote sheep yarn unquote in my backyard. But it wasn't really something I thought you could sustainably do, you know, during your working years. This was going to be like hobby farm when we retired that kind of thing. And then between high school and college, I went to Romania on the mission field and I tasted sheep milk cheese for the first time there. And I 03:16 never heard of sheep as a dairy animal, but the cheese was absolutely amazing. And then when I was in college in Louisville, I went to this little Russian grocery store and they would import sheep cheese from Bulgaria and that was always my favorite kind too. So I kind of had in the back of my mind of, you know, okay, well, I'll have sheep when I retire for wool and milk. And so then 03:40 You know, I got married to my husband and he had a major health crisis after he donated bone marrow right after we got married. And so we started seeing a nutritional therapist. I got my certification in nutritional therapy. I started learning about, you know, all the nuances of the food industry of our country and the medical industry. And we found out about Joel Salatin. And my husband was like, well, I want to farm like Joel Salatin. 04:10 thing he was actually passionate about after getting so sick. So I was like, well, let's get a farm then. Because if you're chronically ill, that's what you do. You go get a farm. Sure. Why not? That'll help. So we got a foreclosed property and Joel Salatin says put animals on your property right away. So we got the chickens because that's what you're supposed to do. And we were trying to do a pasture poultry operation, but in Kentucky, everyone still raises chickens. 04:41 corner of the world where everyone has little gardens every summer, everyone has chickens, everyone kind of gives you eggs in the spring or whatever. Like we haven't had a garden the last couple of years for a variety of reasons. And I mean, I don't miss it because people give us produce because they just have it. So all that be

Today I'm talking with Janet at Legacy Farms. You can follow along 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 Janet at Legacy Farms. How are you, Janet? I'm doing well, Mary. And you're in New York, right? I am. I'm just south of Buffalo, New York. Okay. So I'm going to ask my usual question. How is the weather in New York? 00:29 Well, right now it's hot and muggy, but true to form, Buffalo is known for its snowy winters. So anytime I say I'm from Buffalo, people go, oh, you get a lot of snow. Yeah, yeah, we do. It's lake effect snow, right? Right. So there's been multiple times where. 00:59 We've opened the door and there's six feet of snow out there, seven feet. Blizzards that take power out. Um, yeah, there's, there's been a lot of fun times in snowmen. Yeah. I'm in Minnesota. I feel your pain. And I'm going to say it again. We didn't get a lot of snow last year. We got a foot total for the entire winter, which is highly unusual. Uh, us too. In fact, I think it had. 01:28 something to do with it wasn't cold enough to kind of kill off the bad bugs. So right now we're in like a very buggy kind of season. And it's so the weather does play an effect on crops and how many flies I have to swat. And yeah, so I almost wish it was a colder winter. 01:58 We would be. We would have a lot less bugs. Yes. And part of the reason that I ask about the weather when I talk to people is because weather impacts everything we do when we grow produce. So it's kind of a way for me to gauge where we were at at this time when I listen to it back next year. Yep. And I mean, I'm not going to post on my Facebook wall every day what the weather is when I get up because that would get real old real quick. 02:27 And I'm not sure that Facebook would feed me back that particular memory anyway. So, so it's just a good running tally on what the weather has been doing all over the U S so that's why I ask if anybody's curious. Um, so tell me about yourself and what you guys do at legacy farms. Well, I, um, that's a great question. I decided that I want to leave a legacy behind. I have four wonderful children. Um, 02:56 They're 22, 15, 10, and 11. And I realized a while ago that my children did not have the upbringing and background and work ethic and all of the little nuances that my grandparents raised me with. I was able, I grew up canning and sewing and knitting. 03:26 spinning wool and it was a really nice family dynamic and I wanted to bring that back for my children and try to educate them on homesteading and permaculture and self-sufficiency. They, especially with COVID, video games became 03:56 Hmm, a really, for lack of a better term, just an obnoxious thing for them to spend their time with when we couldn't go out or do things. And I, for the past several years, I made it my life's mission to just buy a farm on my own, a single mom, and try to get my children these ethics and morals that 04:25 I grew up with and I wanted to instill that education onto them. I want to leave behind a legacy so that my children and my community can be better off homesteading, knowing the homesteading basics, understanding some basic principles of farming and self-reliance. There's a lot of kiddos in the community. 04:55 I mean, we know that there's drugs out there. It happens in the city. It happens in the country too. We know that there's kiddos that come from broken homes that might not have a mom and or dad. And I don't know about you, but there's been days, weekends where I've like, okay, kiddos, what do you wanna do today? And we can only go to the splash pad so often or the park, but I wanted to be on the map. 05:24 is something, a place where moms or dads could check and say, Oh, well, Legacy Farms is open to the public. Why don't we go there and ride a horse or milk a cow or have a, you know, pet the chickens or pick some flowers or learn what classes are open for what days and I want I wanted to give the community something too. 05:53 And that's really where it started. And I will tell you, my 15 year old really kind of started it. And I'll tell you how, because he is, first of all, I think he's gonna be a salesman or he's so personable. But Bradley and I were watching YouTube videos and he and I were watching how, 06:23 young woman and she goes Garlic is the mortgage lifter crop And he goes mom, you know if we just buy some garlic and plant it you can take those bulbs pick them Pick them apart every clove turns into another bulb. He goes mom. This is a no-brainer We could sell this even if it's 20 30 plus dollars a pound This

Today I'm talking with Dena at Little House in the Woods. You can follow along 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 Dena at Little House in the Woods. Good morning, Dena. How are you? I'm great, thank you. How are you? I'm good. So where are you in the great state of Maine? I am about midway. I'm probably central Maine. 00:29 Harmony, I don't know if anybody's ever heard of Harmony, but that's where we are. We're about 20 miles from Skowhegan. Oh, okay, yep. I know where Skowhegan is. I grew up in Maine, so I am very familiar with the landscape. I figured you were. Yeah, so tell me about what you do. Actually, Little House in the Woods is a domain name that I have had for many years, and I just started using it for my website. I actually grew up in a little house in the woods. 00:59 And we grew up about a mile from any neighbors with no power, no none of the amenities whatsoever. When you said run and get some water, you meant grab a bucket and run for it. And that's what we did for a long, long time. It was a great way to grow up. It was wonderful. I can't even imagine growing up the way the kids do now. But my mother did everything. All our meals were cooked on a wood-cooked stove. She would 01:29 phenomenal lifestyle. When I met my husband, we started running an off-grid sporting camp for bow hunters only. And that was more of the same kind of lifestyle. And that was fun, meeting people from all over the place. Our children enjoyed it because they got quite an education from the different people and the different walks of life and the things that they did. And just in the last... 01:56 I know it doesn't sound recent, but in the last 20 years, we've moved to where we are now and our kids are grown. We have grandkids and it was time for us to do something else. My husband is working on his own website and I decided to get this one up and going and I make baskets. I hand weave baskets, pack baskets are my favorite. It's something satisfying about doing them, I guess. And I like working on a bigger project. I've sold. 02:26 I can't even begin to count how many over the years. I started doing it where we previously lived because there was seriously nothing else to do. But I mean, it's good and it's a cathartic process. So I really enjoy it. I have a lot of crafty things that I do. I knit, I crochet, I weave on a loom, I weave baskets. I used to make a lot of soap. I like to bake bread from scratch. I got all that stuff from my mom, make donuts. 02:54 My daughter is the same way. She's in her 40s and has kids of her own. And we just live out in the country and live each day as it comes. I work on my website to get things done and ready and trying to decide the best next thing to put on there that people may be interested in. Fun, so much fun. So you're an original off-gritter. Yes. And you work with your hands all the time. 03:24 Yes. How did you learn to make the baskets? I saw the pictures on Facebook. They are stunning. Thank you very much. I actually learned where we lived before was in Jackman. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's right on the Canadian border and it's in the Moose River Valley. It's a very small town. It's very insular. There's not much there, but my husband's job took us there. So I... 03:51 As I said, I had to do something besides work and take care of my children. So there was an adult ed class for basket weaving and this wonderful lady taught us how to do it. And she's after the second class, she says, well, you're already way beyond me. She says, you're just natural. I said, well, I just love doing it. I don't use any molds or anything. Everything that I do, they'll never be too alike because I do it all from feel and hand and just the way I like the looks of it. 04:21 I write a lot of my own patterns, but it was fun. We did her class for like six weeks and by the end of it, I was totally hooked. I have been doing it off and on ever since. The off part, I had had a pretty serious shoulder injury where I kind of tore it all apart and had to have surgery. That kept me down for over a year, but I have learned how to compensate for my arm not working quite right. I'm back at it. 04:50 Loving it. Okay, so what are the materials that you use to make your baskets with? I use reed. It is the inner bark of the rattan tree. Okay. And it does not come from the United States, unfortunately, but it is a wonderful fiber. There are many fibers here that you can use, and a lot of the native tribes will use ash, which they cut the tree, pound the tree, get the stri

Today I'm talking with Codi and Michelle at More Than Farmers. You can follow along 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 comprises 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 Codi and Michelle at Not Just, or More Than Farmers is the name of your place, sorry. How are you guys? We're good, how are you? I'm good, I thought it was Not Just Farmers, but it's actually More Than Farmers. So, tell me about yourselves and what you do. 00:29 You want to go ahead, Michelle? Oh, you can start. Yeah, so we homestead on about 5 and 1 1 half acres. For the past, it's been about 10 years now. And we have our own milk, eggs, beef, chicken. We raise our own vegetables, berries, working on fruit trees. I mentioned milk. This is about the first time anybody's hearing about this. But we're working on the process of switching 00:59 a cow to possibly getting sheep in the future. So that's all in the process right now. But that's kind of what we do here. We've got four children and just trying to live the homestead dream. Yeah. We also have a YouTube channel called More Than Farmers and we have an Instagram account and we create content full-time teaching other people how to do what we're doing. So awesome. You are doing great things. So 01:24 Is all this all the food that you grow or produce is that for you guys or do you use it to help support the homestead? It is just for us at this point. So when we had first started we had dreams of building More of a farm business where we would actually be like selling products and stuff um We got to we got through the realization that It was going to kind of either be One or the other as far as either we were going to have to go all in 01:53 on growing food to sell or we're going to have to back off because that in-between stage of trying to grow some food to sell and still trying to hold down a full-time job and stuff like that, that's a really tough stage to be in. So we ended up backing off on the food production, just growing food for ourselves. And then that's when we started our YouTube channel. Yeah, we did Farmers Market for quite a long time. We had an egg business where we sold eggs to... 02:20 a restaurant, we sold eggs to a kind of like a butcher shop near us. We really enjoyed those things to some extent, but also for the small scale that we were at, that we were on, it just didn't, it wasn't quite worth it. Codi had a full-time job the whole time, so I was the one who was at home trying to do all the gardening and washing hundreds of eggs every week. 02:50 pretty much tanked after my third baby. And so we really just had to back off. We realized that the food production wasn't the kind of work that I was going to thrive on. And then plus we also wanted to homeschool our kids. And that adding that to the workload of the gardens and everything was just too much. So we really took a step back and just started focusing on growing our own food. And then yeah, eventually 03:19 Codi was able to come home from his job and we did the content creation, but we've never made a full-time income just from selling stuff on our farm. Okay. So, you said you started this 10 years ago and both of you sound really young, so how old were you when you started? So I would have been 24, Michelle would have been 23. Okay, so you were babies. You're babies. Yeah. So what? 03:47 Why did you want to do this in the first place? So Michelle grew up with some kind of farm-ish background. We both grew up in the Mennonite culture, but she was in more kind of a conservative group where like canning and things like that were just part of the culture. I didn't grow up quite so much in that. I was actually a skater punk when I was younger. 04:14 I did grow up in the country though I had a horse. I did and do enjoy the country life. But I had no intentions or dreams or anything of becoming a farmer. But I had some really bad teeth problems after a while. I just ate lots of junk food, did not care about how healthy I was eating and stuff. I had a lot of teeth problems. Somebody gave me a book. It was called Cure Tooth Decay. In there, it talked a lot about like... 04:44 the way you eat affects how healthy your teeth are. And it kind of was like a kick in the pants. And that kind of started it, just the desire for the healthy food. So we actually started like buying some bulk foods. We were living in a basement apartment at the time, but we were buying some bulk foods. We did a little bit of canning. We garden at a friend's house and at Michelle's parents' house. Started doing a little bit of that stuff here and there. 05:11 And then somewhere i

Today I'm talking with Kay and Courtney at Homestead Bakes. 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 Kay and Courtney at Homestead Bakes. Good morning, ladies. How are you? Good morning. I wasn't sure who gets top building. Billing. Geez, I can't talk this morning. I wasn't sure. 00:27 who gets top billing, so I just read it from the order on my screen. Sure. All right, ladies, tell me about what you do at Homestead Bakes. 00:39 Well, so we're two local moms. We're both Sane Hole moms and we decided to start baking out of our homes. So we're cottage bakers. And we mainly started because we both have small children and we cook on a regular basis and we bake on a regular basis. But we wanted to start focusing more on nutrition for our children and our families. 01:09 And bread was just something that we consumed every day. When we noticed one of our store bought bread that we actually paid a lot of money for, didn't grow mold for weeks on out, we sort of kind of came together and decided we have to change. We have to change something and try to make something from scratch that's nourishing and healthy and clean. And bread was that common thread that she and I both had. 01:38 And we came to Instagram locally within our town to see if anybody was willing to teach us. Because you know, as you know, sourdough is very popular now. It's on trend. And you see it on Facebook and Instagram everywhere on how to make it. But with so much information out there, we really didn't know where to start. And... 02:03 Luckily, a local baker around here, she was willing to teach us. So then once we were taught, we just couldn't stop baking. That's pretty much like how we got started. And Courtney and I, we've always talked about wanting to start a business, wanting to do something to contribute to our households, especially with us being stay at home moms. We needed another creative outlet. 02:31 to help us get through the day, get our mind going in different ways. And other than just being a mom and being a cottage baker and being able to kind of dictate our own schedules with baking, it just all came together. And here we are. Very nice. I know what you mean about... 03:00 the needing something to make your brain work when you're a mom, when you're a stay-at-home mom. My favorite part of having my babies was that first couple of weeks when they're brand new newborns and you're exhausted all the time and you just cocoon in for a couple of weeks and you just do what the baby needs and you sleep as much as you can. And if you have older kids too, it gets harder to do that cocooning. But when I had my first baby, my only daughter. 03:30 That first two weeks was the most beautiful time of my life. But as she got older, I was like, I can only wash so many clothes and wash so many dishes and back in the floor so many times before I'm going to go insane. And so I found things to do. I read a lot because it was the only thing I could do at the time to feed my brain. And so yeah, it's being a mom is, is an honor, but it also will drive you. 03:59 to insanity if you don't have something more than that. I'm like, well, the class didn't talk about the potty issues, right? Yep. I'm like, how can that be? There's just so many ways that the potty issues come up and we're just discussing potty. We know that you're a parent when you're starting to refer restrooms as potty, right? It doesn't go away. 04:26 I still to this day if I'm like honey I need to go to the bathroom I say potty because it's so ingrained in you and I'm 54 my oldest kid is 34 so it's never gonna go away guys sorry and I'm gonna say something that's probably not popular I'm not a big sourdough fan I know lots of people love it and good on you for making it yay team sell it to whoever wants to buy it 04:54 I can't, I don't love it because of that tang that it has. However, I'm really weird because I do like rye bread. So it's one of those to each their own things, I think. We've kind of found out that there's a lot of nuance to sourdough and it's really not, you know, there's so many ways to do it. And you can actually manipulate the sourness in the bread. 05:18 found, you know, we can make it more sour or less sour, depending on, you know, the different techniques that you use. Basically, the longer you keep it in the fridge to cold ferment is how you develop that more sour flavor. Okay. So, we've kind of come to a happy medium. I think we've found a good spot where our customers really like our sourness of our bread that it's not too sour. And some people like it more sour and t

Today I'm talking with Troy at Homesteading-ish. You can follow on Facebook as well. Homesteading-ish is a conference for new or current homesteaders. "Do you want to learn how start your own homestead? Already have a homestead property and need some extra help? We're bringing the homestead community together. Real people, real life homestead experience, all in one place, learning and living out dreams." Use coupon code HOMESTEAD24 to get $10.00 off admission price 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 Homesteading-ish. Tell me about Homesteading-ish. Why is it called that? So it's Homesteading-ish is kind of an acronym. It's homesteading in search of help. So the ish is an acronym. 00:29 And it was really, obviously the homesteading movements is really taken off here in the last several years and there's a lot of conferences and those things popping up. But here in West Virginia, we have not had one yet. So we thought, well, this will be a great opportunity to kind of do an inaugural conference here in the state. You get in these mountainous states, homesteading becomes a little bit more of a challenge in certain areas. So we thought, well, there's a lot of people in 00:58 It's a rural state, so there's a lot of people that already kind of have that. You know, we raise a backyard garden, we do that kind of stuff. But what can we do to encourage them to maybe look deeper into a homesteading lifestyle? So that's kind of why we thought in search of help. So you're kind of already homesteading, but you're also in search of help. You're looking for that extra push or some of those new ideas. 01:22 Awesome. I didn't even think about the fact that the ish was an acronym. I'm not with it today. So define your version of homesteading for me because I have talked to so many people in the last year who have different definitions. So what's yours? Yeah, so that's a great question, Mary, because it is all over the board. So I personally have a social media presence and talking about 01:53 for goodness, probably eight years now. And I still get people saying, wait a minute, you're not homesteading. The Homesteading Act of 1863 was, you know, that's done, nobody's doing that anymore. And it's like, well, okay, maybe we need to call it modern homesteading, or as my grandma would say, well, it's just everyday life because that was rural life for her. So I think it means different things to different people, but I look at it as taking more responsibility for 02:20 your livelihood when it comes to food, when it comes to income, when it comes to security, when it comes to just keeping the lights on type of thing. I think it's a pretty broad brush that we can paint with, but it'll mean a little bit of different things for different people. Somebody said, well, you're not really homesteading if you don't have this many acres, or you're not really homesteading if you don't have this many animals, or if you don't at least grow this much percentage of the food that you consume. 02:49 And I don't think there's any specific parameters that we need to put on that. I see people, I've got a friend, Harold Thornbrough, my goodness, that guy's homesteading on like two acres and he puts away more food than people on 10 acres do. So I don't think there's limitations that could be set on that, but I think it does have some fluidity for people depending on what their motivations are. Okay. 03:14 And you just made me really think about this because I haven't really defined it for myself either. And as you were talking, I was like, so the only people who aren't doing homesteading are those who don't actually do anything themselves. Like they don't cook for themselves. They don't do their own laundry. They don't grow anything. You know, if they don't have any self-sustainability skills, then they are not a homesteader. That's how I would define it. Yeah. And I think there has to be a conscious effort. Again, 03:41 I don't think my grandma, obviously, she didn't call it home studying back then, but if you came back and said, are you trying to be kind of push against the cultural norm in what you're doing when it comes to your food and your income and how you raise your family, all that type of stuff, you'd say, well, no, no, this is everyday life for us. So you fast forward now to our generation and say, what's everyday life? Well, everyday life is kind of a nine to five. It's a... 04:11 commute to an office, it's a majority of the population living either urban or suburban. And so home setting would be, well, we're kind of pushing agains

Today I'm talking with Jason and Tara at Whiterock 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 Jason and Tara at White Rock Homestead. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. We are doing great. Is it a nice day there? Oh, yeah. It's a beautiful morning. In Arkansas, you said? 00:29 Yes, ma'am. Okay. I am not in Arkansas. I am in Minnesota and it's actually really nice here today too. Thank God. We have had the worst spring ever. So tell me about yourselves and what you guys do. So yeah, well, I'm Jason. Obviously this is my wife, Tara. We actually sold our property about a year and a half ago in Michigan. 00:59 and we moved south here to north central Arkansas and I retired from the Marine Corps. She's retired from nursing and we looked at life and said we need to do things for ourselves. Grow our own food, raise our own animals and just have something that is ours that nobody else can tell us what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. 01:29 So we spent a few years researching, driving around, searching different areas to finally settle and we're building, we're running a homestead while we're still trying to build a homestead. 01:43 I understand completely we're doing the same thing. We've been here for almost four years and we're still building on it. Oh yeah, it's not gonna take an overnight thing. It's always a work in progress. Yes, absolutely. And Jason, thank you for your service. My stepson is a former Marine, although he says once a Marine, always a Marine. So he's always a Marine. So thank you. Yeah. Absolutely. And he is very correct in that statement. 02:12 Yeah, our sons and Maureen as well. Yep, it was the hardest eight years of my life waiting for him to be done with active duty. 02:23 Cause that boy has my heart and every time he was like, I'm getting moved here. I'm like, no, I want you to go home. I appreciate what you're doing, but please don't die. Yeah. I mean, there's always that chance or option, I guess. Uh, but for the most part, we try to go where we're going to go and come back and experiences that we couldn't have gotten had we not joined, um, and you know, of course the protection of our nation and, you know, 02:53 all that that lovely gig of a role but loved every minute of it. I mean there was moments that I could have questioned myself but definitely a great choice and it and honestly has been a good stepping stone. I remember early on in my career and I think even before I fully enlisted and left for bootcamp was somebody had told me they said if we gave you the best advice about joining the military was get a job that translates when you get out. 03:22 Um, and I said, okay, great. So I went in as a mechanic and I'm like, Hey, you know, there's always mechanics needed and you know, lo and behold, I'm not, well, I do a little bit of mechanic and around the homestead, but a little bit. Yeah. You fix everything, which I think as a homesteading family, you have to have that resourcefulness. So I'm, I'm very blessed to have a husband with those skills that we don't have to farm out, you know, every single thing that breaks her. 03:52 Um, you know, he's, he's able to, to fix it all. Yep. It's a good thing. Um, my stepson went into, I think it was like computer stuff. I don't know exactly what his, his MOS was, but, uh, he is now basically he would call it on effing problems with servers. I will not use the word cause I don't use that word on the podcast, but I think you know what I'm saying. 04:20 And he loves it and he's doing great. So he went into a field that translated after he got out as well. Okay. So enough about the Marines. And again, I really do appreciate our service to people and I feel for their families when they're deployed, cause it's really hard. So what do you guys do? I mean, do you have livestock? Do you grow gardens? What do you do? Oh, yes. So one of the first things that we put up. 04:49 on the homestead was a greenhouse and a chicken coop. We had those where we even had a structure. Well, I guess the well house, but prior to Jason and I getting together, I'd had a homestead in Ohio for 10 years. And so I had a really good start on what it took to build certain things, what worked, what didn't work and was able to kind of dial in for this homestead, things that I felt would work. Although it is a different, 05:19 climate in a whole host of different ways you have to learn the garden. But the greenhouse was definitely a pillar to getting us food sustainable. And we added chickens, we do meat rabbits, we

Today I'm talking with Tammy at Davis 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 Tammy at Davis Farm. Good afternoon, Tammy, how are you? I'm well, thank you. How about you? I'm good. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota. Is it lovely in Vermont? Oh my goodness, yes. It's absolutely amazing. 00:29 Finally, we've had this ridiculous humidity that just we're not used to. So today is a glorious, you know, they call it a bluebird day. It's just blue skies and green, green pastures and cool weather. It's a bluebird day here too, but it's muggy as hell. So I'm so, you know what? My heart goes out to you because I thought I was going to die last week and the week before. Yeah. At least it's not raining. 00:59 I have talked about this a lot. It's rained a lot in Minnesota this spring, so we're really happy to have some sun. Yeah, we've had a lot of rain. We had an incredible amount of flooding again, which we've had this 100-year flood now, literally on the same day, two years apart. That's not 100 years. Indeed. Indeed. All right, Tammy, tell me what you guys do at Davis Farm. Yeah, well, we're a dairy farm. So we... 01:29 We're milking probably about 70 cows now. We used to be a conventional dairy farm. We shipped to DFA for decades. And then in 2016, we made the decision to go organic. And then in 2000, shortly thereafter, I don't know, 18, 19, we decided to go grass fed. So we stopped feeding grain. 01:57 and we're fully organic now. Very nice. I have to ask, is that an expensive proposition because I keep hearing that going organic, anything costs a lot of money to get certified. Yeah, that's a great question. For us, it was not too much of a transition. The grain situation was kind of brutal because you have for the first year, 02:24 For us, we had to buy organic grain but still ship at conventional prices. They did give you, I think, like $3 per hundred wheat to help with the grain transition. But other than that, that was a little bit tough. But all of our land and most of our practices have always been organic anyway. We've always been a pasture-based farm, so there was not a lot for us to switch. We should have done this 30 years ago. But, you know. 02:53 how life goes. And so anyway, so, um, but it has been a great, a great, um, move for us, um, for our business. Good. So I know nothing about dairy cattle and I've been looking for someone to talk to about it. So guess what? You're it. Oh, fun. So you said you have 70 cows you're milking. Yes. That is correct. Yes. 03:20 Okay, so are you selling that milk to, I don't know where milk goes to, to be sold at grocery stores? Sure. That's great questions. So we belong to a co-op. As I mentioned, we belong to DFA for years. And then we transitioned and we went with Organic Valley co-op. So we shipped to Organic Valley. And they... 03:49 They basically pick up the milk and then once it leaves the farm, it leaves the farm as fluid milk and then they go and they take it and they do the marketing and most of our milk goes into fluid milk or cheese in this area, in the New England area. And then, yeah, I guess I should say that I'm from Northern Vermont. We're about 45 minutes from the Canadian border. Okay. So in our area. 04:20 Most of our milk goes into New York state and then gets processed or distributed. Okay, then that leads me to my next question. When people who sell milk from their cows sell it to a co-op and that milk goes to be processed, pasteurized, whatever, to be sold in gallons or half gallons at the store, it's not just your batch of milk in that. 04:47 jug, it can be mixed with other people's cow's milk, right? That is correct. Yes. So right now we're on the grass truck because we're a grass-fed farm. So all of our milk is picked up with all the other grass-fed farms in the area. When we were conventional, it was a huge truck that would come and it was all the farms in the area. They're on a milk route. 05:15 And so then it would just come and pick up all the different farms. Now every farm, I don't know if, if sort of you were getting to this. So every farm, when they pick up our milk, um, vials are taken samples of our milk. So everybody's, um, milk is tested and, um, you know, and then the tank is tested to make sure like everybody, you know, if somebody had bad milk, you know, um, 05:45 know, we might have to get dumped. I mean, it depends upon what happened. Yeah, that was going to be my next question because I think that when I was young, I assumed that the milk and the jug in the fridge probably came from the s

Today I'm talking with Nita at Winfield Farms 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 Nita at Winfield Farms, I think is the name of your place. Good morning, Nita. How are you? Good morning. Good morning, Mary. I'm starting to get confused because I've talked to so many people with so many names that I'm like, I know the name of the place when I sit down and when I start to introduce it, I'm like... 00:29 What was the name of the place again? So what do you do at Winfield Farms? So Winfield Farms has been around since like 1890s. So it's been traditionally a row crop farm. And after my mother was no longer able to manage it, my sister and I took it over and we now own it. And so we're moving from row crops to more agritourism. 01:00 and we're looking, we partnered with an organization that helps us get our food out to food deserts in the city. So we're taking a different approach. We're bringing the soil back up to where it needs to be, but we're also focusing on agritourism and food deserts. Awesome, I love that. Tell me about the history of the farms. I was looking at your website and it's really interesting. So tell me about it. 01:29 So our family has a really long, long history in Surry County as free blacks as early as 1804. But this was that's on my grandmother's side, but the wind fields are my grandfather's side. And so the first property was purchased by my great grandfather on a land contract in 1890. And that's where my grandfather was born in 1892. And then my grandfather, then the second track. 01:56 we have, which is the one that my grandfather purchased in 1923. So we have a total of three tracks. One was later purchased by my uncle and we've consolidated all of those. But the family has a very diverse history. My grandmother, it's funny, and you ask me this and it won't take long talking about it, but people look at me and they say, well, how old are you if your great grandfather was in the Civil War? And so. 02:24 That's more like great, great, great grandfather, right? But my grandmother's father was a Civil War veteran. And she was born in 1892. My grandfather was born in 1890. She was born in 1897. Grandfather was born in 1892. Okay. And my mother was the youngest. So we have long generations. My mother was born in 1930. And so to end up with a great grandfather in the Civil War, he married twice. 02:50 And my grandmother was the youngest of his second marriage, his first wife passed. So that's how I end up with that long span in terms of generational gap for us. So we have a lot of history in this story. That's called longevity and that's amazing. It is. Okay, so one of the things I try really hard not to do on the podcast is talk about religion or politics because they're very divisive topics. 03:21 However, the fact that your family was free blacks who owned land and made it go is really, really interesting. And I say that as a very, very white woman. I have been called whiter than the queen. And so it's always interesting to me because I actually, I think I have been told, I don't have it verified. 03:48 that one of my ancestors was an Abenaki Native American woman in Maine. And so I always feel real divided because I know what happened with the Native Americans. So if I have Native American blood in me, I am very, very conflicted a lot of the time about the things that happened. So I don't, like I don't want to make this a story about how terribly people who weren't white and privileged. 04:18 We're treated because I don't really want to get into it because we all know that that's true. But like, it's amazing to me that your family with probably a lot of odds stacked against them managed to do what they did. And now you're doing something that benefits your community. Right. 04:40 I'll tell you what, I think you see on our website, and at least we're a part of the Surrey Cultural Trail because of our family's history, we brought together a diverse group of experiences for African Americans because there were African Americans, and yes, slavery was bad. It was terrible. My grandfather's father was the son of his slave owner. 05:07 My grandmother's side of the family, they were free in 1804, property owners. And my grandmother's maternal grandfather escaped through the Underground Railroad and went to Canada. And so my great grandmother was Canadian and came down and married this guy who was free. So when you look at our family, it is, I think we have captured about every, well, close to every single kind of experience African Americans had in the

Today I'm talking with Crystal at The Homemade 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 Crystal at the Homemade Homestead, which I love the name. Go ahead, Crystal. Crystal, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm good. Tell me about yourself and what you do. 00:24 Well, my name is Crystal. I'm married to my husband, Robert, for 24 years, and we have four kids, ages three to 21. We had a little age gap in between number one and two, three, and four. And so we decided that we wanted to do some homesteading. It started many, many years ago when we lived in Georgia, and then we moved to Alabama. 00:51 and decided to purchase a poultry farm, a commercial poultry farm. And if you know anything about commercial poultry, you cannot have backyard chickens if you do commercial poultry. So we ended up selling the poultry farm and buying some land and decided that we really, our dream was just a homestead. Well, more so my dream. My husband was kind of along for the ride, but he gets more and more interested as we go. 01:20 So the Homemade Homestead was just a way for me to kind of talk about some of our beginner homesteading. I kind of consider myself a beginner at this point because all the things that we did in the past, I've kind of either forgotten or, you know, things have changed. I had to remind myself of things with with all the stuff I've got going on. But the Homemade Homestead was a way for me to document some of our beginning. 01:50 things with homesteading. We're a pretty private family, so we don't allow our children, we don't allow their faces on any kind of social media. So that presents a challenge for me when I want to document things because my kids are always around. So, but that was also a way for me to document my soap making and tallow. I started making homemade tallow balm for my face and homemade soap. 02:18 And once I started making it, it was so exciting to me just to be able to make something from scratch that I created that was natural and non-toxic. And then I started selling it. And now I'm just obsessed with all things natural and making whatever I can. Awesome. And I'm going to tell you a secret. I think that everybody is a beginner homesteader, even if they've been doing it for 20 years, because there's always something new. 02:47 Oh, yes, absolutely. It's a little scary, you know, when you, especially me, I love to research things and I get on there and I start researching stuff and it becomes a little overwhelming. And then you kind of get paralyzed because you're afraid to start. So I have to kind of withdraw myself from doing too much research and just get in there and do it. Yeah. We had a thing happen here last week. We had black ants. 03:16 flying ants coming in our window frame into the house. And we haven't had this happen in almost four years we've been here. And I was like, there's gotta be a home remedy to make these guys not come in. So I went to Google, as everyone does, and it said they really don't like lavender, they don't like peppermint, and they really don't like vinegar. And I had lavender essential oil and I had peppermint oil. 03:44 but I already had vinegar in a spray bottle. So I sprayed the window frame and within 24 hours, no more ants. And I was like, hey, it worked. And that's a homesteading hack, you know? Absolutely. There's so many natural, easy ways, even for somebody, I think, that lives on small acreage or apartments or anything small. There's so many different ways you can get into it that are fun and don't require a lot. 04:13 Absolutely. You are absolutely right. We did it out of necessity because we were raising four kids on one income and it's more time but less money if you make things yourself typically. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I know with a lot of the things that I make are out of necessity for our health. We each have our own set of health challenges. 04:42 I've got really bad migraines. My husband, after we had our poultry farm, he was in there in those houses for hours a day, breathing in just really nasty, dirty air, and he didn't wear a mask. And then after COVID, we had COVID three different times. And I think it might've damaged his lungs a little bit, along with all of the poultry house, just the in and out. 05:08 daily breathing that stuff in and he suddenly developed adult asthma, which was a huge hindrance to my homesteading goals because I need him to build things. I make things, but he builds things. It got to a point for a while where he couldn't even walk to the mailbox because he could not breathe. He felt like h

Today I'm talking with Kayla at The Wild Midwest: Heritage Livestock and Native Plants. 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 Kayla at the Wild Midwest Heritage Livestock and Native Plants. Good afternoon, Kayla. Hi, how are you doing? I'm okay. A little crazy, but good. 00:26 I'm excited to talk to you because you're in Illinois and I'm in Minnesota and we're going to talk about native plants. We put in some native plants to Minnesota last summer in the middle of a drought and we forgot that we needed to pay attention to them and they died. I'm very excited to talk about native plants today. Tell me about yourself and what you do. 00:54 the Wild Midwest, that is the business that I own and operate. And so it's currently a side hustle. And I also have a full-time job with a company called Canopy Farm Management, where I work in regenerative and restorative agriculture, especially as it pertains to tree crops and agroforestry. So my two gigs are kind of, they go together well. 01:24 I actually love that I've talked to a couple people in the last two months that have the same kind of symbiotic relationship with their jobby job or their career and their side hustle as it were. Yeah. I mean, do you want me to expand on like the business a little bit? The business that is your side thing, not your job? Yeah. I want to know how you came to doing this actually. 01:54 Okay. So I have my undergraduate degree in animal sciences and I knew that I wanted to do something that was helpful in terms of like conservation of biodiversity and like creating healthy habitats. So I ended up pursuing my master's degree in landscape architecture and during that time 02:24 studying more and more with the intention of trying to figure out how we can live in the world a little bit more harmoniously with the other species that are here as well. I stumbled upon how important native plants were to that whole process. So it became... 02:46 sort of a huge passion of mine, I started attending the Illinois Native Plant Society gatherings and hikes. And I had a seasonal position at the Champaign County Forest Preserve where I got to meet a lovely botanist who helped me learn a ton about the native plants to specifically Champaign County. And it just sort of became... 03:15 I just sort of became completely consumed by it. I started growing my own plants when I was still in grad school. And I think it was 2018 when I grew my first couple hundred plants and had a couple of design projects on the side with some acquaintances and friends. And then it's kind of just grown from there. I graduated in 2020 and 03:43 Due to COVID, it was pretty difficult to find another job. So I did have about close to a year of just working on this business and getting it spun up before I did get other full-time jobs. My full-time job I've been in now for not quite a year yet. So, I mean, I would love to. 04:10 work on the nursery full time and that is the eventual goal. But it's pretty, nurseries in particular are pretty high overhead businesses to run and they're pretty difficult to get off the ground because they just take so much infrastructure and investment. So yeah, we're still very much in the building phase of the business to try to give it some legs. 04:39 you put yourself into starting a business. And many, many people did. 04:48 Yeah, absolutely. And kind of out of necessity for a lot of us. Yeah. We moved in 2020 so we could start our farm to market garden and see what we could do with that. That's what we did. And my husband has a jobby job and he comes home and he putters in the garden and he does the farmer's market on Saturday and we sell stuff in the farm stand on the property. We did the same thing too. And it was time. It was time for that to happen. 05:19 I keep saying that COVID was terrible, horrible for so many people, but amazing for people who didn't lose anyone they loved and who didn't get sick themselves because it gave us time that we didn't have before to think about what we were doing and how we were doing it. Yeah. It was definitely bittersweet in that regard because for me personally, it certainly gave me some challenges. 05:48 debt burden and not having a full-time job was pretty challenging. And thankfully I have my husband who supported me during that time. But yeah, I don't think I, the business would not be as far as it is today if I hadn't have had that time to just solely focus on it. Yep, exactly. So I'm guessing you're probably in your 20s? I'm actually, I mean, my... 06:16 30s. So I'm 33

Today I'm talking with Jennifer at Hog Trap Herb & Flower 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 Jennifer at Hog Trap Herb and Flower Farm, I think is the name of it. I'm sorry, I got stuck there for a second. Good morning, Jennifer, how are you? I'm wonderful, how are you? I'm good. You're in Texas? 00:29 Yes, we are actually in an odd spot. We're in south Texas and we're not really central Texas. We are south of Austin and east of San Antonio. So we're in a non-regional area. So we call it south central Texas. Okay, well I'm in Minnesota and it is like seven, it's not even 70 degrees yet 00:59 And the reason I say this is because we have had the wettest, most miserable spring and early summer ever. So I'm so excited that it's gorgeous out today. Yes, yes, that it helps. But we've had rain, but we've had more storms this year, which has really impacted us a lot a bit. Yeah. Tell me about yourself and what you do. Okay, so I am actually a Texas transplant. I grew up along the Mississippi River. 01:28 Mississippi and Arkansas, lived in DC for 10 years and moved down here to Texas. And then married a cowboy down here and we live on a fifth-generational ranch. We do raise cattle, but we also have some areas to the side where I do some farming for our herbs and flowers. I'm a grandparent. 01:57 and we have a whole bunch of kids and I'm actually transitioning back into teaching and we're pretty active in our community and just outreach and just we stay busy. We really love living life to the fullest and we are constantly always adding to our busy schedules. Very nice, so my first question. 02:23 is I saw on your Facebook page that you have the apparatus to distill your own oils from herbs. What is that called? Oh, I am so excited. So that's kind of a new addition and it's kind of, I've learned to diversify a lot doing this type of work. And so it is a still, it's a distillery. So instead of making moonshine, we're filling a set of stills from raw material. 02:52 Oddly enough, I watched it on a TikTok and I thought, you know what, that seems really easy to do. And I purchased it probably about two months ago and I'm already looking to upgrade to a larger device. And so it's something I've really enjoyed in the spirit. It seems like it could be overwhelming, but it's very, very simple. 03:19 to use and it's just another avenue for us to get our product out into the market. Okay, the reason I asked is because I didn't know if it was called a still because I thought maybe it had a different name because stills are associated with alcohol. Yes. So no, it's a distiller. So what it does is I use depending on what I'm trying to get from the product. It uses steam and so on the it uses a bottom heat which of course 03:48 heats the water and uses the steam that goes up into a column, which then produces either the essential oil in the beginning and then it slowly turns up the hydrosol, which is basically just scented water at that point. You can use it that way or you can just use it for hydrosol and that's when you would just put the material directly into the boiling water and the steam would rise and you would get more of the hydrosol that way. 04:17 Okay, so how much essential oil do you get from like one batch of doing this? Because I'm assuming it's pretty small. It is very small. So it all depends on the, it has, if you have a high quality product or if it's dry material will help, will kind of affect the average, I guess, what you get from it. 04:46 So if I use dry lavender buds, for instance, I could probably use... 04:56 almost a pound and I may get one mil of essential oil. Wow. And how long does it take? Oh, it takes about... So for the essential oil process, you want to grab that first 30 to 40 minutes of the oil. After that, it kind of depletes. It's kind of... Not its pureness, but the aroma effect of it. 05:21 But the remaining time, the other two and a half hours, you're going to get your hydrosol from that. And the longer that it kind of distills, the less quality of a product because it kind of goes away after time. So for the most potent part of the whole process, it's going to be the earlier the better. I usually cut everything about two hours. And I usually get about a quart of hydrosol. 05:51 You could go longer, but it's not as potent as you do the initial batch that you get. Okay, so what do you use the hydrosol in? What do you use it for? Oh, there's a few different ways you can use hydrosol. You can add witch hazel. So if you're doing a lavender or even a rose, if you go to like departme

Today I'm talking with Savannah at Simply Rooted. 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 Savannah at Simply Rooted. Good afternoon, Savannah. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good. You're in Georgia? Yes. We are up in northern Georgia, very close to the North Carolina and Tennessee border. 00:29 Is it warm there? It is warm. Occasionally we will be up in like the 90 degree area, but mostly we stay in like the mid to high 80s. So like on average all summer long? Yeah, I would say so. It definitely gets hotter as summer progresses and that our winters are pretty mild. It's funny like we're all the way up in like the mountains of Georgia, but we're 00:57 technically a, I think it's called like a temperate rainforest here. So we do get a lot of rain in the winter time. Okay. Well, Minnesota, the summer can't make up its mind. What the hell it's doing. We were really, really cool over the weekend. I mean the high on Saturday, I think maybe got to 70. Wow. Maybe. And today it's really muggy and I think it's 75. And then, um, two weeks ago. 01:24 it was hot and the humidity was high. It was just gross. So we never know what we're going to get here. It's like a box of cracker jacks. You never know what the prize is going to be. So anyway, tell me about yourself and what you do at Simply Rooted. Yes. So I actually started Simply Rooted back in April and it really started as a subscription box. I am actually by career a registered nurse. 01:53 And so I work from home and I have my own company at home. I work with attorneys and I review their clients' medical records. But my husband and I, we have eight acres and we're very much into like the homesteading lifestyle, slow living type of thing. So I wanted to create a business kind of around this lifestyle because I'm so passionate about it. And I have a lot of our friends and family ask me, 02:22 about what I do, how I got started. And so I decided to kind of create a subscription box for those who are interested in that more simple living, slow living type of lifestyle. And so it's a quarterly subscription box and it comes in January, April, July and October. And so it's mainly seasonal, but we include products from 02:50 small businesses and small family-owned farms from other country. We put their products in our box and we usually shoot for about six to eight different products every quarter. They all kind of revolve around kind of like that home setting lifestyle, that simple living lifestyle. So, you know, we have non-toxic all-purpose cleaners, tallow body butter, tallow body soap. In this box, we have a peach jam. 03:17 and we have some non-toxic mosquito repellent. In our last box, we had a homestead and cookbook. And so just kind of things like that, kind of to push people towards cooking from scratch, creating a non-toxic home, getting in their garden and planting different things to kind of really push you in that direction. So there's so many people like with prices today that they really, and like just the stress of everyday life and they really just wanna take it slower. 03:45 and enjoy life and not have that stress that they have on a day to day basis. Okay. So I have a question. The in the subscription box is anything made by you or is it just from other crafters that you know? It's mainly from other crafters. We buy it through wholesale. We also have a couple of local people in our community that we get products from as well. 04:11 And then something new that I'm going to add here in the future is have our subscribers send in people that they know in their community and we can feature products from someone in their hometown. Nice. So you're a curator of good things. Yes, definitely. Yep. Fun. I should consider that. 04:38 I should think real hard about that because we do make stuff. We make lip balms and soaps and candles and whatever. And it's a lot of work. It's a lot of time. And I don't mind doing it. It's fine. But I like your idea better. Yeah. And it just gives a way to support the small businesses around the country. And a lot of these products you can't find on Amazon. 05:04 That's kind of like the whole point of it too, is that they're not readily available. And so by supporting these small farms, small businesses, you're supporting their kids and their college fund and all those great things. And then you also get a benefit of it too, if you get these amazing products that are actually good for you. And they come from good ethical people who care about your health as well. Yeah, I love it. That's

Today I'm talking with Nancy at Nana's Kitchen MN. 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 Nancy at Nana's Kitchen, Minnesota. How are you, Nancy? I'm doing good. How are you doing today? I'm good. The MN is for Minnesota, yes? Very good. 00:24 Okay, good. I never know if people want me to use the word that the letters stand for or just the letters. So, nope, we just had to tag it on there when I got my cottage kitchen because believe it or not, there's other Nana kitchens. Well, there's lots of Nana's in the world. So it doesn't surprise me. Yeah, so we had to distinguish ourselves. Okay. Well, tell me about yourself and what you do at Nana's kitchen. I cottage kitchen and I make gluten-free, basically pastries, pies, cookies, 00:54 I also make some that are dairy free. Been baking gluten free for the last 16 years and just have done it for family and stuff like that. People always say, gosh, you're so good. You ought to try to sell them. It's one of those things to kind of get the nerve up to put your neck out there and do it. Yes, I do. Yep. One of my daughters retired from the military, moved nearby, and she's been pushing me, just do it, mom. Just do it, mom. She's my spokesperson. 01:23 She pushed me into it. But anyhow, I enjoy baking. Gluten-free is something you have to learn to do. It doesn't come easy because there are so many different types of flours and stuff like that. I've worked on a technique that works for me and it comes out pretty darn good. You don't know that they're gluten-free products and that was the whole goal. People don't miss the gluten when they eat the product. Awesome. So when did you start? Okay, two things. 01:53 I can't talk this morning. How did you come into this? Like, why? Yeah. And when did you start the actual business part of it? The business I just started doing this year, like in January, I just kind of started putting stuff out on Facebook. Well, my daughter started putting stuff out on Facebook. She's my social media person, like I said. 2008, my oldest granddaughter was diagnosed with celiac disease and she's autistic. And 02:23 With that time it was, huh, what's celiac disease? I hadn't really thought, heard about it. Her mom had kind of, my oldest daughter, had kind of looked into it because of the autism, this connection sometimes with different things causing autism. But we waited, it was like December 2007, so January 2008 we had her go gluten free and it was, I mean, at that point in time there aren't products on the shelves. Like you can go in the store now and there's Char and Glutino and all kinds of different. 02:50 products you can buy that are gluten free. It was very, very limited. So she wanted like, you know, cookies and the things that she would miss. So I started baking those, looking for cookbooks and recipes. And back then it was a lot of gabaazanbee flour and heavier flours, and it was a product, but it didn't taste the same. And over time, flours have evolved. There's different types and brands you can use. And I'm finding different blends, putting different starches together. Finally, just all worked out that I could bake stuff. 03:20 that was palatable and she enjoyed it. So I went from cookies to cakes, all kinds of different things. But as it turns out, her mother then, my oldest daughter was diagnosed with Celiac of May of that same year, 2008. In July of that year, my daughter's younger son, who was seven, was diagnosed with Celiac's disease. Wow. So now we had three of them, which then, my youngest child, I have three daughters and a son. He at that time was 25. 03:49 And he got tested. Actually, the whole family did blood work tests. He has celiac disease. So if my four children, two have celiac, two don't. I have five grandchildren, three have celiac, because then the daughter has another child with another man, the second husband. He has celiac disease. So all three of her children have celiac disease. So it runs in the family. We did DNA testing on 23andMe. I'm a carrier. I don't have it, but I carry it. 04:19 And the percentages of I have it are the same as my daughter and granddaughter and stuff like that. So I'm gluten free as well. But I suspect my mom had it. She had symptoms years ago that hindsight looking back on it, I think she had celiac disease. So that got me started because I had to cook for the grandchild. Wanted to give her baked goodies that tasted like everybody else's that she could watch her friends at school eating cookies and she couldn't have one. So that's how it kind of evol

Today I'm talking with Jeff at The Heartland Self Reliance Conference. 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 Jeff at the Heartland Self-Reliance Conference. Good morning, Jeff. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm well. How are you? I'm great. So I don't know a whole lot about you or what you guys do, so tell me about yourself and the conference. 00:30 I sure will. Well, that's, uh, I'm, I'm known to many out there as the everyday prepper I got originally got started in the preparedness side of things. Uh, but always been into gardening and probably the last 12 years or so, my wife and I have been working towards being more self-sufficient and, uh, we just moved to a new place last year. Gives us some new opportunities. So we're, we're working to get everything going there. And, uh, it's, you know, one of my big things is. 00:59 coming from both sides, homesteading and preparedness, I really realized how the two really need to come together in a lot of ways and both sides need to learn from each other. Yes, absolutely. And the great thing about homesteading is it doesn't have to be a huge property. It can just be a quarter of an acre or a 10th of an acre. You can still. 01:24 grow things, you can still cook from scratch, you can still learn how to take care of yourself. Yeah, and you know, we had, I was just talking to a potential vendor for the Heartland Self-Reliance Conference, and they have a business in urban Cleveland, Ohio, and she was telling me about how many of their customers are. 01:48 actually, you know, in an urban area and they're growing whether it's on their balcony or on a rooftop or wherever they find space there Grown their own food and they they're developing an interest in homesteading Yes, because it's a lifestyle. It's not it's not defined by space or Ownership of lots of room and I love that because we did the same thing back when we lived in town so that's part of 02:14 The reason I started the podcast is because I wanted people to realize and maybe learn that they can grow some of their own stuff and they can make things in their apartment if they want to. My daughter, the apartment she lived in for several years while she was in college, she was able to have, I got her some planters that would fit over the railing on her balcony and she had some... 02:43 peppers, some tomatoes, some other things going there. And I got her a hanging herb basket arrangement that you could put about, if I remember right, about eight different plants in there. And she had that hanging on the side of the railing. And then she had, I think, one or two pots with tomatoes in them. So, you know, there's lots you can do and you're really only limited by your imagination. Mm-hmm, yeah. And... 03:09 Honestly with YouTube and Facebook and all the things on the internet you can learn how to grow anything or how to do anything I am so Happy that I live in this particular time. Oh Yeah, and there's you know, there's the internet really gives us the opportunity to really expand expand our knowledge and the ideas that are out there because that's 03:37 You know, 40 years ago, if somebody told me one day I would be raising hydroponic tomatoes, I would have told them they were crazy or growing hydroponic tomatoes. But that's, we did that a few years ago, just more or less as an experiment. We got everything we needed and we tried it. We haven't done any here at this house yet, but I imagine at some point in the future we'll be doing it again. Yeah. 04:01 I don't know how that works. Could you give me the short version of how hydroponics works? Because we've never done it. Yeah, sure. And you're just putting a combination of things. If I remember correctly, there's some salt and some other stuff that you make a mixture that you put in there with water by nutrients. And basically, we would get a five-gallon bucket. 04:30 and you can go online and you can find these covers. They're like a lid, will fit right over the bucket, but the center of them drops down and has sort of a mesh cup in there. And that's you put the plant in there, use some hydroponic medium. The stuff we were looking to look sort of like using looks sort of like lava rock that you would put down in there and actually plant the plant in there. 04:57 And you just had to make sure that the liquid stayed up where the roots of the plant could get to it. And really you could do anything and it was amazing. You would pull that lid off and look and the mass of roots that had grown down into that bucket, into the liquid was jus

Today I'm talking with Lori at Empty Pockets Ranch. 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 Lori at Empty Pockets Ranch. Good morning, Lori. How are you? Good morning. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm good. And I can hear the wind blowing, so it must be sunny and beautiful there. For right now, yes. And you're... 00:30 You're in New York? Yes, I'm in upstate New York. Okay, awesome. All right, well, tell me about Empty Pockets Ranch. Yep, okay. Tell me about Empty Pockets Ranch. Is it called that because if you're going to run a ranch, your pockets are going to be empty? Yes, basically. And it's funny because that's probably like the number one question I get asked by visitors is, why would you call yourself something like that? And I feel like if you're remotely involved in any type of agriculture... 00:59 like you're going to get it. It takes a certain kind of someone to want to do this. You work a bazillion hours a week for hopefully to break even type of thing. So it's just like a running joke amongst so many farmers about having empty pockets. So I was like, this is a nice tongue in cheek way to salute everyone in agriculture because we're all in this together. 01:30 Yeah, I was telling my son that I was going to be talking to you today and the name of your ranch and I said, we should have named our place Go For Broke Acres. It's true though, right? Yup, exactly. It's hard work and it's expensive and it takes time. So I think it feels like all of your resources are sucked dry all the time. Yes, exactly. 01:59 economic mess that we're in. It's so hard to be able to predict the future, what's going to happen, what should you invest in, what should you grow. It's very, I don't know, it's weird times right now. Yeah, that's what everybody I've talked to lately says. They're like, I don't know what's going on with this world, but we're just gonna keep trying to grow food and feed people. And I'm like, good, do that. Right. So I looked at your Facebook page and your website, 02:29 By the way, tried to look at it 10 minutes ago and I couldn't do it. Something about DNS stuff. So you might want to look into that. Yes, it's brand new. So maybe there's some kind of issue. Yeah. I don't know, but wanted to give you a heads up. So look, looked at your Facebook page. You have a gazillion things going on, like you said. So tell me what you guys do. So we started. 02:58 in 2017 with dairy sheep. And I had worked at a big dairy sheep downstate milking. And most people are like, oh, you can milk sheep? And then I say, yeah, you can milk anything with nipples. But I started my own flock after college. I went back to college as an adult later on and getting into cheese making is pretty much impossible. 03:29 Okay. It's so regulated. There's so many rules. Just to get started, I needed about $100,000 worth of upgrades to my barn. So right off the bat, I said, okay, no, can't do that. I had already started to piece together East Frisian sheep. They're not very common in my area of the country. 03:59 wax compared to here. So I had these sheep now and I'm like, all right, these aren't cheap. I went all over the place looking for them. Doing sheep cheese is not going to be an option, at least not at that time. So I'm like, what can I do next? So I bought a soap business. I had never made soap in my life. And I started like experimenting. 04:28 using the sheep milk and soap because goat milk was like all the rage several years ago. But it was getting played out at that point. So I'm like, all right, this is working. And I started doing pretty well with the sheep milk soap because it's different, you know. And we upgraded our farm. We were renting a farm in another town and it was only on four acres. So we had the sheep, we had the livestock guardian dogs. 04:55 And then we moved to this bigger farm that was 94 acres. So I went from four to 94. And then COVID came, like right after we had moved in. I did most of my business downstate on Long Island because that's where the money was. My town up here is pretty poor, rural, like typical agriculture town where they can't justify. 05:24 you know, the added expense of a luxury item like sheet milk. So, so I would take all of my stuff downstate. COVID came and everything was canceled. You couldn't go to markets. You couldn't go anywhere. So we had a three-car garage just sitting here on the property, and it was full of prior owner stuff. So I was like, all right, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm turning this into a farm store. So that's kind of what

Today I'm talking with Alain at Triskell Bakery. 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 Alain at Triskell Bakery. How are you? Hi, good morning. How are you? I'm good. Sorry to make you talk shop on your vacation. No problem. Okay. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. 00:30 Yeah, so, well, I'm a baker now. I was a food scientist for all of my career, and I retired last September, and I always wanted to start something from scratch. And I had several options, I had several hobbies, and I ultimately selected baking, because that was... 00:57 passion of mine. I've been baking for about 15 years and you know, I came from a family of baker in France and so I started the bakery in January of this year. January 23rd was my first day and so I you know I posted on on social 01:27 thousand followers from my town and you know, neighboring towns and quickly realized that there was a need for an artisan French baker in Medina, Medina, Ohio, where it is. And it started from there. And yeah, it's taken off fairly quickly. That's amazing. So I have a quick question. In Ohio, do you guys have the cottage food producer? 01:55 thing like Minnesota does? Absolutely. That's exactly how I operate. So back in December, I started an LLC for Triskell Bakery and I looked up the rules and regulations for college law and made sure that I followed those guidelines. So I operate out of my house. I converted 02:24 mixing and my ingredient storage and all the extra equipment that I need. And I essentially used the oven in the kitchen and I've taken over several rooms in the house now. So my dining room is my office and a freezer in there and a refrigerator. So my wife is very gracious. 02:50 That helps a lot. Gracie's spouses are amazing. Absolutely, absolutely. I could not have done this without her support. She still works, she's a marketing project manager for a pet food company. And she's the one who told me, follow your passion. I was ready, I was ready to retire. I'm 57, so I was 56 when I retired, so fairly young. But I had enough seniority that 03:20 I was able to do that. So she's the one who carries the load for, she's the breadwinner and no pun intended. And she carries the family with all the insurance and things like that. Yay, girl power. I love it when women have the chance to do that stuff. She's a rock star. Awesome. 03:47 Okay, so since you've taken over a bunch of your house, does that mean that you might be considering moving into a bigger space? You know, we thought about it and eventually I think this is something that I would like to get, you know, at least a commercial kitchen so I could expand and grow because I'm close to capacity right now. 04:14 And so that's something we've talked about. A couple of options that came up. Ultimately, we decided that we want to go through at least an entire conduit year and see how this progresses and make sure that it's not a flash in a pen and it's something that's sustainable, both from a business standpoint, but also from a financial standpoint for us. We didn't want to go into taking a significant investment at this point. 04:43 So, but in the future, I think this is something that I'd like to do. Not to have a retail place to sell bread. That is clearly not my, my, my, my objective. But, you know, we'll talk a little more about this. I'm sure I, besides selling bread at local stores and farmers market, I also teach classes. So what I'd like to do is to have a commercial space where I can, I can have more equipment. 05:13 and that I could also teach my classes out of. Yeah, yep. Because you'll need the room because you're very popular and people are gonna wanna learn from you. So speaking of classes, I have a question. I have a question about croissants. When you make croissants, we have never attempted that here. My husband loves to bake breads, but we have not attempted croissants yet. Is that? 05:39 Is that like the puff pastry dough? Is that how that works? So croissant is a laminated dough. So that means that there's layers of, yeah, so it's essentially it's a puff pastry but with a commercial yeast. So it's using yeast. So it's, you know, a very simple list of ingredients. It's, you know, very similar to puff pastry, but there's also yeast in 06:09 overnight then I create my butter layer which is Typically deposited on the center of that dough that I stretch and fold until I get multiple layers. So You know you you make what you do You make what you call a butter block butter layer and then the dough is Encasing that but

Today I'm talking with Kelly at The Fiddlin' Farmstead with an update on her Valais Black Nose sheep babies! 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 Kelly at the Fiddlin' Farmstead, and Kelly was my, I think, third guest back in August, and she was the third episode released back in August. How are you, Kelly? How you doing? I'm doing pretty good. 00:29 I'm good. So, Kelly raises Valet Black Nose sheep. And back when we talked in August, you were working on having full bread. I guess that's the right word. Valet Black Nose sheep. Is that what was going on then? Yes, I think we were in the process of purchasing a purebred ram. Okay. So what's happened since then? Because I know, but I know you're excited to talk about it. 00:58 We had our first purebred lambs and they are everything and more that I had hoped for. I couldn't be more just tickled by them. So that was super exciting. How many did they did you end up having? We ended up with three. They both had twins. Unfortunately, the little ram lamb on my second ewe didn't end up making it. He was just tiny, stillborn. So we ended up with. 01:27 three ewe lambs total. Okay, awesome. So are you going to keep all three or are you gonna sell a couple? No, we've been working on listing a couple of them. We ended up with a bottle baby again as well that lived in my house for a couple months. So she's a tough one to let go, we'll probably end up keeping her. But yeah, I think it just went so smoothly having a ram here. We're hoping to do the same breeding again next year. 01:57 Okay. And are you going to, is it going to be the same, the same number of ewes bred or are you going to be breeding more? Yes, it'll just be the same too this year because our bottle baby, you know, our ram would be a herciter. And then we have two polypay ewes as well that we've been experimenting breeding. That would be a first generation valley. So half polypay, half valley. Okay. And 02:26 I read something about that blend that there's a reason you wanted to do that. Yeah, I got into it. Well, with the Valley, their personalities and their friendliness just really caught my attention for somebody like me who was not very experienced with livestock. With the Polypay cross, their milk supply and their fiber is excellent. So my idea was to kind of create a perfect homestead sheep with those qualities you want for production. 02:55 Also the friendliness and well-maneu-rism. And they're also a polled breed, the polype, and because polled is a dominant gene, this cross will always be polled. It won't have horns, which also makes people more comfortable on the smaller homestead. Okay, do the valet ones have horns? Oh yes, they have massive horns. And they, you know, they're not mean with them by any means, but when they come run into greet you, they really get you in the back of the leg sometimes, and they get caught in the fences. 03:25 all the fun that comes with organs. Okay. All right. So for those who haven't listened to the original interview with Kelly, tell me, you were saying something about there are very few full-bred belay sheep in the United States and something about the country that they originated from. So can you refresh my memory? Yeah, so we come, they come from Switzerland. The UK had a breeding program. They were able to import 03:54 the actual animals were in the US, we were not allowed to. So we worked out something with the United Kingdom to purchase frozen semen. That's where the breeding up comes in. Artificial laparoscopic insemination. Lately, though, we've been able to import embryos as well. So there are more purebreds. They actually call the embryo ones pure blooded. But there's a lot more of them in the US now than there was two years ago. 04:22 just because of the availability of the embryos, more rams live here. So they're not quite as uncommon as they were a couple years ago. A lot of people really got into the program, but they're still hard to come across, that's for sure. OK, and why couldn't the actual sheep be imported? Because of disease resistance. It's kind of a closed. 04:52 with, I think with sheep, I'm not sure what other livestock that applies to, but mainly to keep disease out of the US. Yeah. And plus, I'm assuming that it's very stressful on the animal to be put on a boat or on a plane and shipped here. And that would make them vulnerable to being sick on top of being vulnerable to being sick with things they haven't been exposed to before. 05:18 Right. We had a similar situation with the valley. A lot of people a

Today I'm talking with Mackenna at Nothing But Knots by Mackenna. 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. 00:16 Today I'm talking with Mackenna at Nothing But Knots. Good morning Mackenna, how are you? I'm doing good, how are you? I'm good, tell me about yourself and what you do. So my name is Mackenna, I run Nothing But Knots by Mackenna. I've been doing it for about three years now as an actual business, but I've kind of been crocheting my entire life actually. 00:42 I learned when I was super young, was taught by my great aunts and my grandmother. And I just kind of picked it up when quarantine happened again. And then I decided after about a year that I wanted to make a business out of it. Okay. So did you choose crocheting because no one was knitting or have you tried knitting too? I have tried knitting. It's just mainly that I can't quite get it down. 01:12 I'm not super, uh, like- 01:17 Like able to do things with two hands at the same time kind of thing and with needles with knitting You have to use two needles and crochet is just one hook So it's a little bit easier for me to multitask when it's just with one Like one hook Yep, I understand I I tried knitting when I was younger and the thing that made me not want to knit is the sound of the needles Clacking I yes 01:45 Yes, I totally understand that too. When you're so used to it being a very quiet hobby, hearing the needles touching each other can be kind of overwhelming. Yeah, I just didn't like it. And then I learned about crocheting and learned how to do the chain stitch, you know, just one after another after another. I was like, okay, I can do this. And then went on to the single crochet and actually the turn and then the single 02:14 Oh, I can do that. And then I read about the double crochet and tried that and then triple and then the other things. And I was like, oh my God, I love this. It's quiet. I can do it while I'm watching a TV show in January. When it's cold out, it's great. I am a big fan of crocheting. Okay. Especially if you're making a blanket, you could just curl up with that blanket that you're in the process of making. When it's cold outside, it's perfect. 02:38 Yeah, it's a great way to stay warm if your house is not, if your house is drafty for sure. Our old house was drafty, so I loved doing that. And a scarf is so fast to make if you're crocheting. I couldn't believe how fast the scarf came together. Oh yeah, I tried to make, that's when I tried knitting for the first time was trying to do a scarf and I was like, man, this is really taking forever. I could knock out a scarf with crochet and like. 03:06 Couple hours and here I am three days later still working on this knitted scarf. Yeah, I think the hardest thing with crocheting is keeping the tension correct. Because when I first started, I did a scarf and it had spots that were narrower than they should have been by just a little bit because the tension wasn't right. And I also did the washcloth, the crocheted cotton yarn washcloth. 03:35 the one corner was always too tight, so they weren't square, and it drove me crazy. I finally figured it out, but the tension is probably the thing that you need to learn how to get correct, I think. Yes, I am on the same page with you there. I mean, it's the same with crochet and knitting, but crochet is a lot easier to keep your attention, because you have one hand free, essentially, at all times. Yep, exactly. 04:01 Okay, so now that we've raved about crocheting, because I love it, you love it, I haven't done it in a long time, but I love doing it when I'm doing it. So what do you make? Because I saw your Facebook page photos and the little bear with like the blanket that comes down for the body, that's very cute. Oh, thank you. Right now, I mainly specialize in making bags and baby blankets. 04:26 I get a lot of custom orders from my co-workers for baby blankets. I'm currently working on one for my son and I have a niece coming in September so she'll be getting a blanket as well. Besides that, I've kind of been venturing into wearables so like sweaters, hats, that kind of thing, obviously some scarves. 04:56 quite found my niche really for it is like stuffed animals and stuff. Everyone wants a stuffed animal. Everyone wants me to make like those lovies like the bears with the blankets attached to them. I am not a huge fan of sewing things together. So if I can find a no sew pattern where I can just kind of crochet everything together, that's where I what I like to do. But a lot of people want like super complicated. 05:26 stuffed animals and I'm trying, I love the loo

Today I'm talking with Cindy and Mike at Rustic Roots. 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 someone else in the background. I don't know who it is yet. At Ruster Groots Farm. Good morning, Cindy. Good morning. It's my husband, Mike. Hi, Mike. Sorry, I didn't know you were going to be part of this. Awesome. 00:29 Fantastic. All right. So tell me about yourselves and Rustic Roots Farm. Rustic Roots, sorry. Rustic Roots Greenery. We started a small greenhouse a few years ago and now we've built up. We found a used one for sale and bought it and put it up. We sold a couple of our cows to help pay for it. I don't know. It's fantastic. 00:58 Go ahead. All right. Mm-hmm. So for years, she wanted a greenhouse. And for a long time, I did a lot of the plants. And one year, she just couldn't handle me getting rid of the little helpless seedlings that we were thinning out. So she decided to keep them and took over our entire living room. So 2020, with the COVID and the COVID-19 pandemic, 01:24 Um, the kids getting kicked out of school, um, finally, after about eight or nine years of, uh, begging, we decided to have a, uh, arts and crafts and science program. And we built a greenhouse. About a eight by 12 or eight by 14 on the pad in front of our house with the kids with, um, rough cut lumber and glass panes and just basically things that we had around. And then we. 01:51 rolled it around to the south side of our house. And that first year she filled it. So the second year we doubled the size of that greenhouse and Cindy took that as a challenge. So she filled it again. Um, then I had a friend sent me a link to some people selling a 30 by 70 greenhouse about three or four hours away. And I'd been looking into. 02:19 I'm building a different greenhouse for a while and I've really been, I was really getting into the geothermal and some of the different ways to make greenhouses cheaper to heat and operate. And so we went down and we bought this greenhouse from some people that do the same thing. They sell garden starts. And then September of 22, we started our... 02:46 construction of our brand new greenhouse or brand new to us. And we dug a 20 by 60 foot hole in our front yard and filled it with 2000 feet of perforated pipe. And we built a climate battery style geothermal and then we plunked a greenhouse on top of it. He says we, but really he built, I just helped a little. You guys sound a lot like me and my husband. Um, we, I applied for a grant to. 03:16 to fund a heated greenhouse last year. And we actually got the grant, which dumbfounded me because I didn't think we had a hope in hell of getting it. And I was like, so do you want to build a heated greenhouse, honey? And he was like, I do. We can't afford to. I said, we can now. And he said, did we get the grant? I said, we did. I said, it's got to be finished, complete, by May 31 of 2024. 03:45 Can you make that happen? Because we didn't get the money until November of 2023. And he said yes. Oh, wow. And I said, OK, you better pray for good weather in the spring, because otherwise this is not going to work. And it was finished, I think, the weekend before May 31. Oh, nice. So yeah, go ahead. We applied for a grant. But what we learned is the grant money is only for brand new greenhouses. You can't. 04:14 You can't utilize that money to buy a used greenhouse or anything like that. Yes. We had to buy all the, the, we had to buy all the supplies new or they had to be in really, really good condition. Yeah. Almost new. So yeah, there's definitely some parameters that you have to meet. Yeah. We had a, we had a drought, um, 2022 and we had a small cow herd that we were running. 04:44 And basically it was a decision of, do we want to buy hay and rent pasture? Or what do we do? And we ended up selling the majority of our cows and calves. And we took that money and that's basically how we funded our greenhouse. Yup. You gotta find a way one way or another, because if otherwise it just doesn't happen. And the other thing is, is that animals are expensive to feed. I mean, people who have dogs and cats. 05:13 As house pets, they know how much money they spend to feed their pets. And it is just exponentially more expensive, the bigger the animal gets. And the more it's livestock, not a pet. So it's hard. And I don't blame you. It's the weather has been insane the last couple of years. You're in Nebraska, right? Yep. We're in a, we're in the panhandle in Nebraska. We're. 05:38 We're actually closer to the capital of Wyoming and Colorado than we are the capital of Nebras

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Groovy Grazers MT. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today, I'm talking with Morgan at Groovy Grazer's MT, and I'm assuming the MT stands for Montana, but I could be wrong. Good morning, Morgan. 00:22 Good morning. Yes, it is Montana. We're hoping to be another state. So we like to kind of divide it out. So this is our Montana location, which would be our original location. Okay, that makes sense. Well, tell me about yourself and Groovy Grazers. Yeah, so I'm an Air Force veteran. I spent about two years in and then I got out in Okinawa, Japan when I had my son. And it did set off some genetic disorders. So that's kind of how Groovy Grazers came about. 00:50 was I left my corporate America job making over, you know, $100,000. I was like, I'm going to do something different. And then we got some goats because we needed to like refresh our land. Goats are good land rebuilders. A lot of people don't understand that they can rebuild the land. So it just started with three goats and we were just sitting there one night, me and my husband, and I was like, man, these guys are just burning hay. They're kind of like horses or, you know, just kind of an ornament right now. They got to do something. 01:20 So it started originally with grazing because in the south, and that's where I came from, I moved from Arizona up to Montana, but I lived in Homesteaded in Louisiana and I lived in Texas. And I've seen them do this like massive grazing, but they've done it with meat goats. So I was like, okay, we're gonna try it. And that's kinda how it started. It went from grazing to birthday parties and events to kind of being like a community-based thing. So it's really got a lot of facets to it as a business and as like, 01:50 accompany what we do but the main thing is just go birthday parties right now. Fun! So how does that work? How do the goats interact at the birthday parties and is it for little kids or up to 18 or for grown-ups too? Anyone can have a goat party. I actually did a 34 year old males party this month and part of it was 02:15 He had goats growing up. So some of it is nostalgia, right? For the adults. Tonight we're doing St. John's United. They're a really big nonprofit. A lot of people know them. They're, I believe, worldwide. So we're doing it. So it kind of varies in who and what and where I've done. Dispensary grand openings, because it is legal here. We're doing a kid event at the park. So it... 02:41 There's really not like a person, right? If you ask who can do goat parties, it's anyone, but what do the goats do? Well, I mean, they're Nigerian dwarfs, so they're cute in general, right? They're like max 50 pounds, but I bring the babies. So I just rehomed my 10 to 12 week old. I think every 12 week, I'd have to count back. We had a few babies, but I would take them with, and the kids can hold them, the adults can hold them. You can take pictures with them, just watch them, right? 03:09 Sometimes kids will just sit there and watch them because they're really interesting creatures. A lot of the event is me talking and interacting with the public, which is really my favorite. So, you know, being disabled and not having a lot of things to do and being at home on 20 acres, you don't get out a lot. So a lot of it is me interacting with these people and explaining to them weird facts about goats and why we got into this and how it works and then them getting full range of touching them. 03:38 and exploring them. I love when the kids touch the horns and they look at, you know, their eyes, and I'll even show them their teeth. It's just a hands-on learning experience. And that's really what the whole party is about, is letting the kids touch something that maybe they wouldn't. I mean, not very many people have 20 acres or even goats per se, so it's something that they may never get to do. And so to allow them to do it to the fullest extent is kind of what Groovy Grazers is about, is like free or like... 04:06 I don't know how to explain it, hands-on learning, like free play. Like you play with the goats, you see what they do and you see how they interact and then the kids will ask you questions naturally. It's kind of a really cool interaction between the kids and goats. Super fun. No one has told me the, whatever you said, the facts. Oh yeah. Tell me some facts. Tell me some crazy facts about goats. Okay. So my favorite is land, right? Because in Montana... 04:34 our soil where we're at, I'm in Laurel, which is right outside of Billings. It's kind of a bedroom town for Billings. We're really high in al

Today I'm talking with Samantha at Runamuk Acres Conservation 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 Samantha at Runamuck Acres Conservation Farm. Good morning, Samantha, how are you? I'm very good, thank you, good morning. I'm in Minnesota, you're in Maine, and everybody who's listening to the podcast already knows this, but I grew up in Steep Falls, Maine. 00:30 Oh wow, that's cool. Which is like half an hour or northwest of Portland, Maine. So I know what Maine's like and I think it's beautiful and I can't afford to move back because it's gotten so much more expensive to live there. So I'm really happy that you get to live in Maine. I think that's fantastic. Tell me about yourself and what you do. Let's see, so I'm a farmer, writer and conservationist. 00:59 I own a 53 acre farm and ecological reserve in New Portland, Maine, which is nowhere near the city of Portland. It is about two hours north near the Western Mountains. Okay. Yeah. All right. So what do you do at your place? We raise chickens for eggs. We have a one acre market garden. We have maybe... 01:26 an acre or so fruit trees that we've put in since we got here. And I raise a small flock of sheep, which we rotationally graze on our 10 acre pasture out back. Awesome. So why is it why is it conservation farm? How does that play in? Yeah. So I built my business on bees with a bent for bee friendly farming. And it's kind of morphed along the way and become more 01:55 geared towards beneficial insects and soil microbial life. And so that's what we are working to conserve. We're working to conserve wildlife through the wellbeing of pollinators and beneficial insects and soil life to benefit the whole ecosystem. Fantastic. Last night as I was heading up to read, because I read before I go to sleep, my husband texted me a photo of a queen bumblebee. 02:25 that had landed on one of the logs or the logs that they were cutting up for our wood burning boiler. And I was like, is it a honeybee? Because I couldn't tell from the picture. I knew it was a bee. I just didn't know what it was. And he was like, no, it's a queen bumblebee. And she just happened to land there. And he was like, I'm going to stop and take a photo because this doesn't happen very often. Right. Yeah. She must have emerged from her family nest and be going off to start her own. 02:54 Yeah, I don't know. Usually it's earlier in the season. So I don't know why she blessed him with a visit. But it was pretty cool to get a photo. I'm going to post it on Facebook later today. So, okay. So you before we started recording, you said it's your sixth anniversary at being at the place you're at now? Yeah, we call it our farm-aversary. We've been here for six years officially today. Okay, tell me the story. Tell me how you how you ended up where you are. 03:23 It was very long and arduous. I was a landless farmer for these eight years. I had gotten divorced and I really just refused to give up on farming. It was kind of the way, the only way I felt that I could become a homeowner and provide a home for my family. So I used the skills that I had and it took a long time to build my income from agriculture. 03:51 I raised bees because everybody will have a hive on their property if they don't have to manage them. So I had apiaries all over the area and that allowed me to build my income to the point where I could justify to a financial institution investment in real estate. So and then at that point we weren't able to qualify with a traditional 04:16 financial institution. So I ended up going to the USDA as a beginning farmer and the farm service agency classifies a beginning farmer as someone who has been farming for less than 10 years. So at that point I was at eight years or so and I was like, oh geez, if I'm going to do this, I better do it now. So I didn't want to go that way, but because nothing else was lining up, I was like, okay, this is my last chance. I'm going to give it a shot and then I may have to give up farming. 04:46 Mm-hmm. So we did we went we were able to qualify it took 270 days to close on a property I went after this other property first and so we were in Closing process with that one for six months before we finally found out that the house wasn't going to pass an inspection and to save my loan I 05:10 I had to scramble and look for another property in the area that might qualify, and I ended up here. Okay. For those who don't know, Samantha has a Facebook page, and I started watching or, I don't know, following her Facebook page. It's go

Today I'm talking with Roxanne at LilyFire Farms. You can follow on Facebook a 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 comprises 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 Roxanne at Lily Fire Farms. Good afternoon, Roxanne, how are you? Hi, I'm doing well, how are you? I'm good, so did farm school go well this morning? We did not have farm school. It actually ended a week or so ago. 00:30 Oh, okay. I thought it was a summer. No, we have a spring session and we're looking at scheduling a summer session, but I do give myself some downtime in between just because I can't do week after week after week during our busy season for, you know, farm projects and gardening and all of that. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, well, tell me about yourself and Lily Fire Farms. Oh my goodness, where do I start? So. 00:59 I guess what you want to know about me is that I'm a mom and obviously a farmer. And we have our little farm here, like you said, Lollipire Farms, that we run it as a business and we're trying to grow and be that kind of resource for our community for what I would personally, of course I'm biased, but what I would consider to be kind of food the way nature intended it to be. 01:24 meaning that we follow organic principles. We're not organic certified, but we follow the organic mindset. You know, we don't use chemicals. If we can help it, I will obviously occasionally pull out a chemical dewormer if I need to for our goats, since those are, you know, extra picky. And, you know, I'd rather not lose any animals, but we try and go natural methods as often as possible. We pasture raise everything or free range here. We have poultry, we have chickens, turkeys, ducks. 01:54 We'll be getting geese next week just for fun for predator protection. We have goats Cows we have pigs We have a couple of sheep. We have a couple horses Just for you know, what's a farm without a horse kind of? So, yeah Yeah, what yeah exactly. So you're an agriculture zoo is what you are in a way. Yeah, uh-huh Okay, and I 02:23 asked about farm school at the beginning because I thought it was all summer long. So tell me about farm school too. Yeah. So we farm school plus other things we offer what I would call on-farm educational opportunities or community experiences, that sort of thing, where we have farm school that so far that's been a six-week program where we take each week and we kind of cover what's hard to do. And these kids work so hard and their parents too to absorb all this information. 02:52 It's basically all of the multiple facets of running a farm like this, slammed into those six weeks with that organic-minded, rotational grazing, regenerative agriculture kind of focus. So like we meet the animals, we learn what quote unquote jobs they all do. You know, like we call our pigs our rototillers because they're helping us clear land and they'll clear the garden later. And you know, the sheep are the lawn mowers, that kind of thing. We cover parasitology and nutrition. 03:21 and how those are connected and it connects to pasture management and how it connects to, I mean, all of the pieces of, you know, like I said, running the farm, rotational grazing, all of that. I do have, this year we're doing it a little differently. I have a, I'll call it a grow along gardening program. And so it's once a month classes from, when did we start? May until September. 03:47 And so that's basically like come and learn crash course of how to grow your own vegetables and a little bit of the fruits. And we do it as this once a month this year. So that way like you came in May and you know we're starting seeds and it's a little late, but that's okay. We start seeds, we plant some stuff in the class garden here, you know, and then the next one we'll be doing pruning and plant supporting and you know kind of as the garden progresses it's going to match whatever is growing in your garden. 04:16 And of course we offer field trips and hatching eggs. And we've had field trips here and we kind of try and cover the base of basically however it is that we can help connect our community back to these foods that we're providing for them. We kind of have a few different angles for that, like you mentioned with the classes and all of that. 04:46 I will put it this way. It's meant to be farm school for kids. By the time we get about halfway through it tends to be the parents that are really you can see the wheels are turning and they'll start asking some really good questions. They participate too. So I call both the kids and my parents. I call them my farm kids while they're here. So I have Awesome. I haven't

Today I'm talking with Debra at Harvest Creek Farm & Retreat. 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 Debra at Harvest Creek Farm and Retreat. How are you, Debra? I am doing wonderful today. Thank you, Mary, for inviting me today. 00:22 Oh, you are very welcome. I need you guys to talk to me or I don't have a podcast. So thank you for being willing to come visit. Tell me about yourself and Harvest Creek Farm and Retreat. Well, we started about three years ago and my husband and I were just looking for about five acres. We live in a subdivision and I wanted to have some chickens and I wanted to grow some vegetables and fruit trees. And well, you know what HOAs are like. 00:50 We would try to find about five acres. Well, we came across this 15 acre parcel that used to be a farm decades ago. And so we slowly but surely, it had completely grown up. It was woods, forest. So over the next about a year or so, it was literally just excavation and taking down trees and just trying to get back the pasture again. It was so overgrown. And so we started working on that. 01:20 put in a little vegetable garden that first year and it did amazing. So we started growing vegetables and we had our chickens and ended up buying four or five more acres adjacent to our property. So now we have 20 acres and it is just exploded and we have now built a pavilion on it. We have a vacation cottage that people love to come and stay and we've left, we left quite a few woods and put the cottage near that. 01:50 So people have a place to just come and relax and get away from city life. Yet we're only minutes from the main city of Lenoir City. So it's just been an incredible project. As all farmers know, it is tireless. You never get caught up. And so we've had help here and there that we've hired. But basically my husband, myself, and some friends really have been helping us here and there. But now we are officially 02:19 A You Pick Flower Farm. Nice. Okay. So, you're in Tennessee and how many years ago was this that you started it, that you bought it? Three years ago. Okay. Yeah. All right. Awesome. I want to talk about the flower farm for sure. Yeah. But I also want to talk about the work involved. Did you get your chickens? 02:44 So yes, we had chickens for, I think it was about 18 months and we started doing a lot of traveling. We've actually joined the Tennessee Agri-Tourism Association. Oh yeah. Yeah, we've been going to those conferences and getting more involved in that. So as you know, you just can't leave animals. No. It just got to a point where the chickens were not going to be our focus. So we were able to have them adopted by some friends. And so they're happy. They did not get beheaded. 03:13 Good. Yes. And so now we do not have any animals on the farm. Eventually, we'd love to get some horses. I actually lived in a farm in Australia on a stud ranch for some time. And so that's always in my heart. So eventually we'll get horses. But right now we're focusing on the flowers. Okay. You lived in Australia on a what ranch? A stud farm, a stud ranch. Stud, stud ranch. All I heard was said. And I'm like, I don't know what that is. Sorry. 03:43 Okay, Stud Ranch, that makes more sense, thank you. Okay, so you have the flower farm. Do you do events around the flowers? Do you sell the flowers? What's involved in the flower part of the business? So we actually ended up putting a farm store at the bottom of our property to sell our vegetables and to sell our flowers, which has now become this beautiful little boutique farm store that we carry honey, not from our own property, that we purchase honey from. 04:13 and we have flowers, other flowers and gifts and candles and soaps and things like that and wind chimes and garden theme that people love to just stop by. We just started that last month and so now they will come to the farm store and they will sign up for their you pick time and then they'll go out and they'll start picking flowers. So yes we have a pavilion and because we're part of the 04:40 We have a minimum 15 acres and we're part of the agritourism association. We can have events under, under that. So we will eventually do weddings and have lots of other fun events here. Awesome. I just, I just chatted a week or so ago with a lady who lives a couple of towns up from me and she has a flower place too. It's freedom, freedom, forge flower farm or something like that. 05:09 And she does events. She's got three planned this summer. And it sounded like so much fun. But I'm not so big on the pollinators that go with the flowers. I

Today I'm talking with Amanda at BlueSky 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 Amanda at Blue Sky Homestead. How are you, Amanda? I'm well. How are you? I'm great. It is really sunny and beautiful here today. So tell me about yourself and Blue Sky Homestead. So... 00:31 I just, um, so Blue Sky Homes had started just not even, probably not even a year ago. I would say about 10 months ago. I started venturing into more homemaking. I'm a stay at home mom. I work on a horse farm part time in the mornings, but other than that I'm home. So I started venturing more into. 01:00 cooking from scratch and the sourdoughs. I got married this past September and my husband lives on a little five acre farm. So we have goats and chickens, which I do not grow up around at all. Didn't have gardens, didn't have animals, except for cats and some dogs. But other than that, nothing. So it was like a, kind of like a culture shock to me really because I've never been around animals like that. 01:29 So, so I decided like maybe I can make my own little website and post things that I'm learning and share it with other people that are new to it and don't know much about it because that's still kind of where I'm always learning. But it's been fun. I still want to venture out into more like holistic things. 01:59 I like, I can't do like perfumes and stuff. Those chemicals really gave me migraines, like really bad. I had to get rid of everything. So I want to start venturing eventually, candle making, like incense and stuff like that, that doesn't cause and doesn't have all those nasty chemicals in them that really destruct your whole body. So. 02:29 I mean, that's where I want to head into, but for right now, I'm still in the works. Okay. Well, speaking of perfumes, giving you migraines, me too. You're taught, you're preaching to the choir. Me too. Oh, really? I know a lot of people and they, like my daughter, she doesn't believe me. She's about to be 16. She buys all Victoria's Secret and bath and body wash and I'm like, get it out of the house. 02:57 You want to know why I have a migraine all the time? Cut that stuff out for a little while and see how you feel. Yeah. Well, he's a teenager though, so. Yep, and you don't want to stomp on him, but you also don't want to have a headache all day every day either. Oh my gosh, yes. So the last time I was at a public entertainment event, it was a chorus thing for my youngest son, and the... 03:27 The high school has had, we don't live there anymore, they still have a really nice auditorium that they built. And we went and I was there for maybe 20 minutes and all the perfumes and all the deodorants and all the colognes, I couldn't even think my head hurt so bad and I didn't have a headache when I walked in. So it does cause issues for people who are sensitive to it. So crazy because I never used to be like that. 03:55 Or I did and I didn't realize it was comics or not because I didn't know anything about this kind of stuff until now, really. So I would, it was, it would really be bad because my husband and I would like, we don't really have date nights. So the one time that we would have a date night, I'd get all dolled up and looking nice. And I would put on my perfume and we would get ready to go. And I'd be in the car driving. And 04:24 All of a sudden my nose felt like stuffy and my head just started. I was like, Oh man, this is not going to be a good night because my head is starting to hurt and I don't know why. Yep. So it was a whole thing where I was reading books and was in a podcast. And I'm like, wow, like that could really be a thing. So I had like 20 different perfumes from like different places. And I just actually gave them all to my oldest stepdaughter cause 04:53 She doesn't care about stuff that doesn't affect her. So I'm like, here you go, you can take them. But it's amazing that just, well, even body lotions. And I was shocked when I learned about how that really can affect your everyday living, honestly. I got rid of all my plugins. I don't use Debreze anymore. So the only perfume that I really found that does not affect me is, it's a brand by Skylark. 05:22 So it's a little crazy. It's a roll-on. They do self-sprays, but when I found it, I initially just got a roll-on. And it's a cream, and I don't have migraines when I wear that. Because I do like perfumes and stuff, so I miss wearing them. But this Skyler line is the only line that I have found so far that has clean ingredients that do not have that effect on me at all. 05:52

Today I'm talking with Janae at Graham Fam Farm LLC. 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 Janae at Gram Fam Farm LLC. Good morning, Janae. Good morning. How are you, Mary? I'm great. I'm so excited to talk with you. Tell me about yourself and what you guys do. 00:25 Well, great. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. So I started Gram Fam Farm. Let's see. We officially started about 10 years ago, but we got our company up and running about three years ago. And we grow weeds, what people would call them, and use them for medicinal purposes. So we like to forage and gather and grow our own medicinal plants. And we use them to make all sorts of herbal products and like to teach people about natural holistic 00:53 healing and living and how they can use the plants growing all around them to make medicine for them and their family. Awesome. You are exactly the person I want to talk to today. I know a little bit about like essential oils. Like I know that when I have a migraine, if I open up my bottle of lavender essential oil and smell it, it takes the edge off the pain of a migraine. I know that clove oil can help with tooth pain, like toothache pain. 01:23 I know that mints can help with joint pain, but that's about all I really know. So are you a certified herbalist? Is that correct? So certifications are, I'm not certified and certifications are kind of wonky. A lot of people will claim that they're certified and it allows them more credibility in the industry, but there actually isn't just a standard certification for herbalists. So a lot of herbalists that tend to say they're certified, it may mean nothing. 01:51 So I have experience of 10 years with it. I'm a first-generation herbalist, but I am definitely not certified through any group or anything like that. Okay. I was wondering if certified meant anything because I'm going to say this and I really don't want anybody to come down on me about it, but probably we'll have a hard time with it. I know that when we sell our essential oil blends at the farmers market, we have to label them with what oils we use. 02:22 and we have to name whatever the thing is. I have like something I use for bug repellent and we call it bug off because it's funny, but we're not allowed to say what the oils are good for because the FDA frowns upon that. And so here's where I get confused because there are companies that sell herbal 02:51 things to help with ailments and they're allowed to say what it's for. So why can't I do it or why can't you do it that way but companies can? Do you know? Well, the FDA hasn't hit them yet. Pretty much you're not supposed to make any sort of claim at all about the viability of herbal products or what herbal products are used to cure, I'm doing air quotes, right? Or heal, I'm doing air quotes. You're not supposed to do any of that. 03:21 You can say, it is recommended for this and we recommend it for this. And that's where herbalists like to err on the side of because, I mean, we're not doctors. And so I like to make it very clear, I'm not a doctor. I'm an herbalist. This is an herbal recommendation. This is what I recommend to clients. Recommend is one of the best things, but one of the best terms you can use when you're talking about the benefits of herbal medicine. But as soon as the FDA gets a hold of it, they like to kick out anything natural, unfortunately. 03:52 Yeah, and it's so silly because we did this a long time ago. Yeah, we've forgotten. A lot of people have forgotten about it. The truth's been hidden, you know, and I think it would kill, I don't think it would kill the pharmaceutical industry. Yes. And it's unfortunate that we as human beings pay so much money for manmade things and corrupted things. When I can go out to my garden, pick mint. 04:22 and steep it in a sweet almond oil or an olive oil or a coconut oil, put it on my ankle that is sore because I twisted it, which is not true. I did not twist my ankle. I'm saying if I did. And it will actually help take away some of the ache. Yeah, because it's a hardcore anti-inflammatory. It's the same thing with dandelion. The root is used as an anti-cancer. The astringent properties of it alone are amazing. Same thing with red clover. Red clover is a blood cleanser. 04:50 These things are recommended to treat things like cancer, which actually doesn't need to be cut out of your body, despite what doctors claim herbalists don't think that that's recommended at all. In fact, your body can take care of it itself. It just needs to be given

Today I'm talking with Kelsey at Sweet Briar 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 Kelsey at Sweetbriar Farm. Good afternoon, Kelsey. How are you? I'm good. How are you, Mary? I'm good. It's been kind of a crazy day here, but I'm ready. So tell me about yourself and everything you guys do at Sweetbriar Farm. Oh, boy. Well... 00:29 My husband, Mike and I run our small family farm together. We have five kids and our farm is tiny. We're just under six acres and we got started here about 10 years ago. Okay, and what do you guys do on your farm? Well, right now we're getting into produce season. So... 00:57 Mike is the one with the green thumb, and he grows all different kinds of tomatoes and beans, cucumbers, pumpkins, squashes, the works. And then in addition to produce, we have livestock. So we raise dexter cattle, which are the smallest standard breed of cattle. And in addition to our dexers, I have a small herd of Nubian goats. 01:27 Our oldest child has her own herd of one mini Nubian goat and we've got some chickens too for laying hens. Okay. So, this is a question I always ask, what made you guys decide to do this? Well, I think it's something that Mike grew up with. He grew up gardening and being involved with agriculture. So that's something that was very familiar to him. 01:56 For me, it was a bigger leap. I grew up in a subdivision on the west side of Michigan and I had little tiny dogs growing up. But my grandfather used to have a dairy farm with like a hundred head of Holsteins. And he sold the farm before I was born, but I grew up hearing stories about the farm and how cool it was. So I think it's something that always kind of... 02:25 just simmered in the back of my mind about how much fun it would be to be a kid on a farm. So after Mike and I moved in together and got married and were able to, you know, have a place of our own with a little bit of space, we, you know, he put in his big garden and we started with chickens. That was back, gosh, 2009. Yeah. So 15 years ago, we first started. And I thought he was crazy. 02:54 but it sounded like fun. So yeah, we just do it because we enjoy it. That's the best kind of crazy. And I love that your husband is the one who has the green thumb because my husband is the avid gardener as well. I have a green thumb, I can grow plants. I've done it before, I will do it again. But he is the one who loves to get out there and work in the dirt. And it's the way he de-stresses from his jobby job, his regular job. 03:23 That's awesome. Yeah, it's really nice when a couple can compliment each other because if we depended on me to grow our food and plant form, we would be very hungry. Yes, and I'm the one that gets depended on to actually cook the food that comes out of the garden. I am all good with that because I love to cook. So it works out great. Yep, it's wonderful when our skills that we're good at compliment the other ones. Absolutely. 03:53 Yeah. So you said you have kids? Yeah. Yup. We have five children. We just had number five in January. Um, so our oldest is 12. Uh, she's our daughter and then the rest are boys. So we have a 12 year old daughter and then our boys are 10, eight, six, and four months. Geez. You are a busy mama and a busy dad. Yes. Yeah. They definitely keep us happy. 04:23 Yeah, it's funny how much in common you and I have because my oldest is a daughter and all three of the younger ones are boys. Oh really? So yeah, we're batting a thousand on quinkanings here. Okay, so do you guys just do this for yourselves or do you try to make the farm profitable to support itself? I think our goals have changed over the years. 04:52 produce for ourselves and then anything extra we'd sell. And then we kind of swung to the other end where we were producing to make money and to make the farm a growing business and then we'd eat the extras. And I think now we're kind of swinging back towards the middle point where we want our farm to be able to sustain itself. 05:20 We still want to be able to produce food for a small number of other people, you know, to kind of make it a self-sustaining thing because for many years, all our extra money we were investing into the farm. And now it's time that it needs to pay for itself or things need to not be part of our farm. So. Yes. We are right there with you. 05:47 It's really funny when you start this thing, this project, this dream, you're like, we're going to do all the things and the farm is going to support itself and we're just going to be happy doing the work. And then

Today I'm talking with Ed, Emily and Corey at Highland Ledge 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 to Ed and Emily and Corey at Highland Ledge Farm. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. We're great. I'm good. Tell me all about yourselves and Highland Ledge Farm. 00:27 We're a small business that produces all, makes all of our own jams, mustards, vinegars, simple syrups, and short breads. And we travel to different fairs, markets. 00:47 Okay, so how did you, how did that happen? How did you start it? 00:54 So we started a long time ago. Emily used to do fares and such recently, I guess about six years now. I think, yeah. I retired and decided to help Emily with her business. And so we put a little more effort into marketing 01:24 all that sort of thing, productizing, and kind of kicked off the business as it is today. Okay, so, okay, I don't know what to ask. Okay, so let me let me tell you, we're we're on 37 acres up on top of a mountain in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. Okay. We go to about 70 fare. 01:53 fairs and season and vend retail there. We also service about a dozen stores with wholesale. We sell products too as well. We do all our own labels, all our own packaging. Most of the fruit and such comes from the farm or locally. 02:22 Uh, we do most of our food prep cooking packaging in the winter because in the summer we're involved with selling it. 02:33 Okay. So do you travel outside of New England? Not yet. But we're looking at some shows that might be good for us outside of New England. Okay. And do you ship your goods? Yes, we do. We have a website that's active purchasing and shipping from the website. Okay. So here in Minnesota, we have a thing called 03:02 cottage food registration where we can make baked goods or jams or jellies or canned goods and sell them without having to be licensed as a commercial seller. So does Massachusetts have that or do you have to be a commercial? Massachusetts and in fact New Hampshire, Vermont, New York are the states we sell in. All of those states and locations. 03:31 All those states have cottage food definitions. In Massachusetts, to be a cottage food manufacturer, you have to have, it can only be non-potentially hazardous, NPF foods. Or it's also now it's called non-temperature sensitive. You can only do those foods, but you still have to be licensed and inspected. 04:01 Okay. The only restriction is we're not allowed to sell wholesale outside of the state. Okay so every single state has a different set of laws regarding this, I swear. Well it's all based on the FDA. 04:24 rules. I forget how exactly it's tied, but typically to get a commercial license, you have to be inspected to state standards, which typically mirror the FDA standards. The CAUTI's license relieves some of the requirements of the FDA standards if you promise not to do a wholesale outside the state. Yeah, okay. So, people, some people, 04:52 have a perception that when you work for yourself, it's easier. And I don't hold that perception because we started a small business last summer and we were busy all the time. So, do you guys put in 80 hour weeks? Yeah, I don't know where people get the idea that we're not busy. So, typically if we are awake, we could be doing business. 05:22 So anything can happen. Somebody could call, we need to get this, we need to get that. Somebody has a show for one weekend, we're open, so we have to scramble to get the paperwork in. So the business just happens, it's part of our regular life. It's not a separate thing. I think there's two or three different kinds of people like us that have their own business. There's the people who just wanna make 05:52 couple of bucks under the table. And they go to all of these events. And there's people like. 06:04 who have enough money to be able to do it right and they have a fancy set up and so on and so forth. And there's people like us, right in the middle, who wanna do it right, who take the time to get the... 06:24 paperwork and the permits and have made a good booth presentation and just keep trying and trying and trying to make it grow and that's that's the way it is I mean you see you see people all the time at shows and you can tell that they're not licensed 06:54 but they're doing something with their time and stuff like that, but just they aren't spending a lot of time doing it. For people like us who use foods, who do stuff and care about how it tastes and things like that, it's like an 80 hour a week job. Yeah. 07:20 because you're living it, you're living it and

Today I'm talking with Regina at Farmgirl Farmstead. 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 Regina at Farm Girl Farmstead. Good morning, Regina. How are you? Good morning. I'm excellent yourself. I'm good. I keep doing this thing where I introduce people and then I stutter through the rest of it and I don't know what is going on with me, but that's okay. 00:29 So tell me about yourself and Farm Girl Farmstead. All right. Well, I am 65 and a half years old. About three years ago before I retired, I decided I wanted to have a farmstead. I spent most of my life raising four kids and I raised three kids and I raised two tiny grandkids for about a year and a half. And I was like, when I get out of the classroom of learning and I actually have time to have a farmstead, 00:58 I'm going to start one. So three years ago I started, but I was still working full time as a supervisor, so I didn't have a lot of time to commit. But then I retired in December. I just worked two days a week remote, and now the Farmstead Dream is coming true. I mean, it's happening, it's happening fast because I did a lot of research prior to get into the full time. And it's almost self-sustaining with the products that I sell. 01:27 But my goal is next year, because it would be my, this year was my first real year of running a full time. Next year I hope to make a profit. Awesome, congratulations on retiring and starting your next season of life. That's amazing. So I have many questions. I was looking at your Facebook page and it looks like you're located in a neighborhood. Is that correct? Absolutely, I'm an urban farmer. 01:55 I have a tenth of an acre and I'm surrounded by the medical field right across the alley from me is ear, nose and throat within a block is a hospital, four blocks is another hospital. So I have a big population of buyers because I'm so visual where I am. Okay. So tell me and tell the listeners how you are. 02:22 utilizing what little space you have to produce lots. Okay, I gotcha. Well, the way that the homestead pays for itself is I start vegetable plants downstairs in the basement. I think I have 38 grow lights, we pot breakers like four times a day. And so this year I grew 5,000 plants from seed. Last year just like 500, just cause I wasn't retired yet. I sell those for $2 each. And I think I have about 02:51 150 left. So that's how the farmstead pays for itself. And I plant everything that we eat. We have dwarf apple trees, dwarf plum trees, a ton of grapes, strawberries, and I sell strawberry plants too. Every vegetable that we like to eat I plant. And that way we can be self-sustaining. I have a friend who has 55 hens, so she provides me eggs, 03:22 like three or four hens and see if something I want to do. I grew up, we raised chickens grown up in California and San Diego. Cause I don't want to jump in and then be like some people who are like, no, let's get rid of them. So I make sure it's something I can and I do want to do. And then also we planted mulberry trees too cause my 29 year old granddaughter loves mulberries but we plant everything that we love. 03:49 I'm hoping to do a beehive next year. There's classes locally and none of my neighbors spray. Nobody sprays anything. I don't use any chemicals. So I wouldn't have to worry about a loss of a beehive due to neighbors. Well, that's helpful. That's great. Yes. Okay, so when you started growing stuff, you grew 5,000 seedlings in your basement with grow light this spring. 04:18 Yep, yep, this spring. I started in January. As soon as I got back from Georgia visiting grandkids, I started in January because I knew with only 38 grow lights, I have to do succession after succession. So some went to the big greenhouse. It's only like 8 by 12, the small ones, 6 by 8. And I'd have a heater in there if the weather dipped, but they would rotate to the big greenhouse or the small greenhouse. And yeah, successfully 5,000. My goal was 8,000. 04:48 But with just me, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do 8,000. That's a lot to handle, yes. So do you grow anything outside? Like you have the fruit trees and stuff. But when you, okay, I asked that whole thing wrong. Let me start again. When you started growing things outside on your property, did you have to amend the soil because you were in the city? Absolutely, yeah. And when we first moved here, and I would say we, but I'm single. 05:18 When I first moved here, I rented the house. That was nine years ago. And the first spring, my landlord said, hey, what do you think about ornamental grasses in the front? And I said, hol

Today I'm talking with Terry at Red Dragonfly Animal Rescue. 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 Terry at Red Dragon Fly Animal Rescue. How are you, Terry? I am doing great, Mary. Good. Tell me about yourself and what you do. So we have a large animal rescue in the Panhandle of Florida. 00:28 Um, we rescue horses, donkeys, cows. Um, every, every single rescue has a different story of how they wound up on our, on our farm. Um, we also have Muscovy ducks and roosters that have been dropped off because people have found them in their front yard and don't know what to do with them. Um, we're trying to provide a service for animals that have been neglected, abandoned. Um, the equine that have been put into the slaughter pipeline. 00:58 which is just devastating. So I know people ask me, you know you can't save them all and I know I can't, but I feel like if I can just make a difference in a few lives and save what I can that I think I found my purpose. Okay, so what brought you to this? So in 2021, we purchased a small five acre lot in Southwest Florida. And we have... 01:27 We had a business up in New England and we thought, okay, so this is where we kind of want our last chapter to be. I'm originally from Florida. My husband's originally from Connecticut, but he was on board to relocate. And at the end of 2021, we didn't know what we wanted to do with this piece of land. We know we thought a farm, we thought animals, we thought, you know, we had somewhat of a vision, but it wasn't clear to be, you know, fully transparent. 01:56 So my husband called me, I think it was like November, December of 2021 and said, listen, I met this rancher and he's got these baby cows that he's gonna take to slaughter. And I was like, why? And he said, well, he has too many cows and too many males and he's, one's a male, one's a female. Female, he doesn't even know who the mom is. So I said, no, let's bring them to the farm. So I learned how to do barbed wire for the first time in my life. 02:25 Um, we fenced in two and a half acres and we had six week old calves. Mary, they cried for their moms on that. Oh yeah. Oh, it broke my heart and we weren't living there, but I was there. I was there every hour. Um, and then six months, not even six months, I'm going to say maybe a couple months later, we got a call that a petting zoo was closing and they had this donkey and, um, that's the story that we were given. 02:55 I'm still not 100% sure. I think he was a displaced donkey that nobody wanted. So we transported him to the farm and we thought, oh, donkeys are pasture mates. They're gonna protect the cows. Not this donkey. This donkey wanted to attack the cows. So we had to separate them. They each got their own pasture, their own pole barn, their feed stations, their hay. And I thought, okay, I could do this. And I started doing research. I signed up for 03:25 FEMA classes that have, and this is all free, and a lot of folks don't know this, they're available online. They bring teachers to, it's usually like community centers. I was the only lay person in the room. We did a two or three day course. I flew up to Long Island, and it was all first responders on how to deal with animals in a disaster, whether it's a natural disaster or unnatural disaster. So you know, the fires in... 03:54 wildfires in California and I didn't know Hurricane Ian was coming to southwest Florida, but what do you do with animals in these situations? What do you, you know, who, who's there to help you? Who has transportation? Where can we relocate them to? So I started to reach out to folks in southwest Florida. I think they kind of had their own established network, and then Hurricane Ian came. We were super lucky, Mary, super lucky that the animals survived. 04:21 And the house that we also had near them survived, but not much else survived. I'm sure you saw pictures of, of post-hurricane and the devastation and the, the loss of lives. And it was just, we thought better of maybe not staying there. Um, my husband rides dirt bikes as his mental therapy, and he found some trails up in the Panhandle of Florida. So we came up here on a weekend and he was like, this is gorgeous. Um, and better yet. 04:51 affordable. So I said, I will relocate. Here's my thing. I need to live where the animals are. And I want to do this full time as much as we can full time. So I got our 501 C3, which was no easy feat. We transported the animals. We bought a 25 acre. We went from a 2400 square foot house to a 900 square foot barnaminium. 05:21 and

Today I'm talking with Liz at Green Roots Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Liz at Green Roots Farm. Hi Liz, how are you? I'm well, thanks for having me, Mary. Sure, you're in between, you said, Mankato and New Ulm? Yes, that's where I'm located, that's where my little farm is. Okay. 00:27 Awesome. So tell me about yourself and Green Roots Farm. Well, I am a master gardener. I've been on this 10 acre spot for less than 10 years. I started this by just trying to be self sufficient and support, you know, healthy food for my family. And then it became much more of a passion. And I raise 00:55 beef cattle, I raise chickens and pork, everything. So I don't leave the farm very often. Wow, okay. That's a lot of things from just starting out to maybe do a little gardening. Yeah, it's pretty large. We just tripled the size. So it was 50 by 100 feet, so now it's 50 by 300. 01:25 Yeah, so did you have a background in this before you started it? Uh, no, not particularly. My mother was a very avid flower gardener, master gardener, so I grew up kind of with that, but I didn't have a green thumb until I was probably into my 30s. Okay, huh. 01:52 That's really interesting because typically when people get this deep into it, they've had a lot in their growing up years with it. And I get what you said about your mom, but the beef cattle are a whole different thing. Yeah, it's a learn as you go process. And thank goodness I've had some wonderful teachers around me to kind of show me the ropes. I don't do a lot at the time, but I do enough to... 02:21 support our family and others who want to buy. Very nice. Okay, so you have a CSA. How's that going this year for signups? I am currently working on getting the website ready so that I can take the signups online. Just to make things easier, but I'm setting up some different markets. Hopefully the Minneapolis Farmers Market. 02:51 and will be in the late Crystal Farmer's Market, hopefully this Friday. And then there'll be signups in person at those times. Okay. Thank God for Farmer's Markets. We decided not to do a CSA this year because we had so few people sign up last year. I think part of it was that money was really tight last year and people were leaving about the initial outlay without the guarantee that... 03:19 that they needed to be sure they were going to get what they paid for because everyone knows that not all the crops succeed. So we decided that we would do the farmers market last summer and that went really well and my husband's gone to the first two this year and done fairly well with no produce. He sold candles and soaps and lip balms and did pretty well. 03:45 So again, thank you. We make all that stuff too. It's wonderful. Thank God for farmers markets, yes. Yeah, we're doing the farmers market and the CSA and we use all of the animal products to do natural products also. So fat from the pigs become lard and I make soap with that. There's all kinds of wonderful fun medicinal things to do out on the farm as well. Do you forage? 04:15 Do you forage your property? Yes? I do. Yep. Awesome. So I got to know, are you originally from Minnesota? I am. Okay. You sound slightly Canadian. I was wondering if maybe you were a transplant. No, I am born in the cities and then grew up down in the Mankato-Nuwam area. Okay. Well, you have some Canadian lilt to your accent. And I was like... 04:43 Maybe she's not from Minnesota. Nope. I'm here. Okay. Well, I'm not from Minnesota at all, and I don't sound like I'm from anywhere, so I'm the last one to talk about accents. 04:57 There's nothing wrong with that. Blend in. Yep. You gotta hide. You gotta hide in with people. You gotta become like everybody else. Where are you from? Huh? Where are you from? I'm from Maine originally. Oh, wonderful. Yep. And I had to drop the accent because apparently it's not great to have a New England accent here. 05:22 Hmm. Yeah, I can see. I can see how that would go. It did not go well. So I just I just spent a whole year of my life eradicating any trace of New England accent in my voice. And it's gone. It's completely gone. And that's okay. Yeah, no, you sound...there's no accent. Yeah, it's pretty clean. I like it a lot. Okay, so 05:52 What else can I ask you? Why is it called Green Roots Farm? 05:57 Um, I spent some time with the naming and it's a, it's a family run farm. It's me and my, and my kids that do most of the work. And I wanted to do something with, with that name, but I kind of ended up with. Just the roots was really important to me. I'm also a therapist and I run a private practice and coming into. 06:26 the root of things was really important. And then als

Today I'm talking with Echo and Jonathan at Echo Springs Farm. 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 Echo and Jonathan at Echo Springs Farm. Good evening, guys. How are you? Good evening. Good. Tell me about yourselves. 00:26 So Jonathan and I, we met in 2010. We were both active in 4-H here in Pennsylvania and we were on the 4-H State Council. So we were selected as a group of, there was six of us that were on our State Council team. So they picked like the top six or top eight people in the state. 00:55 teenagers in the state to be on the state for each council and they plan like the state events and do all of the state legislative things concerning for each throughout the year and him and I met because we were both on the team in 2010 2011. We started dating when we were done with council. We got engaged in 2014 married in 2018 and 01:23 started the farm and the business in 2018. We both come from farming backgrounds. So I grew up on a traditional beef farm and he grew up on a traditional dairy style farm. And then when they sold the dairy, they had beef, cattle and sheep. And so we just, we both have a passion for farming. And in 2018, 2019, when we started our farm, we tried traditional style farming and it almost bankrupted us our first year. 01:51 So we realized we had to come up with something different. And that's how the farm concept of doing everything grass-fed, natural was born. Okay, so you were 4H sweethearts. Yes. And how old were you when you met? I was 16 and he was 17. So it's like high school sweethearts except it's 4H sweethearts. I love it, that's great. Yeah. Okay. 02:19 So tell me what you do at Echo Springs Farm. So we do a little bit of everything. Our primary focus is to produce the best possible quality food that we can for our customers. So be it natural, grass-fed beef, grass-fed lamb, grass-fed poultry, we have small... 02:49 batch of rabbits that we raise for meat rabbits that we raise on grass in a rabbit tractor, or produce. We do no spray produce, so a lot of tomatoes, a lot of cucumbers, some berries. We have a pretty big batch of blueberries that we pick every year, and everything is pesticide and 03:18 be toxic. We have two young children, a three-year-old and a one-year-old, and I'm pregnant with our third. So our goal is really for our kids to be able to walk outside, pick up what they want and eat it and not have to worry about what's on that. Wow. Okay. Congratulations on the third one on the way. Thank you. That's exciting. Okay. So do you guys have jobs off the farm or is this your job? Is the farm your job? 03:48 No, so we both work full time off the farm as well. So the farm itself is 14 acres and then we rent another 20 acres. So we farm about 34 acres. We run- And run a hay ground. And run a hay ground, yeah. We run about anywhere from 10 to 15 head of cattle a year. We have a couple of brood cows and then we buy stockers. In- 04:15 the spring or fall whenever we can get our hands on them. We have a flock of 21 sheep. We finish anywhere from six to eight sheep a year for customers. We do two batches of layer hens. So we typically have anywhere between 60 and 100 layer hens at any given time. We also then do meat birds. So we run batches of 60 meat birds at a time, and we do three to four batches a year, depending on what we have a want for. 04:44 And then, like I said, we also do the rabbit. And then we raise some pigs for ourselves. We have a couple of quail, some ducks, two peacocks, a donkey, it's kind of like a petting zoo. My God, when do you sleep? We don't. No, no. No, like I said, we both also work full-time jobs. So we really, we're five to six hours a night, if we're lucky. 05:14 Wow, I can't even begin to imagine. And luckily, I'm done child rearing. So I don't have to get up with little kids in the middle of the night anymore. But holy cow, you guys, that's a lot going on. Most mornings I start at between 330 or 4 o'clock and usually call it a day by 11, 1130. Yeah. Wow, I'm impressed. That is a gargantuan. 05:43 task in having two full-time jobs, well, one each, and two and a coming along child, two kids and one coming along, and running the farm with that many animals. Wow, I'm blown away. Awesome. So you're selling produce and meat. So that's to... Is that to support the farm? 06:12 Yes. So it didn't start out that way. We basically really just wanted to have the animals paper themselves. It was something where we were raising them for ourselves. So, you know, the two of us when we first got married, we didn't need a whole beef. We didn't need a whole pig. So we had the meat available to us. So why not, you know, pass that along to other people? 06:43 Then as it pro

Today I'm talking with Lorrie about the real estate market and things you may not have considered when thinking about buying a property for your homestead. You can reach her on Facebook as well. 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 Lorrie Adams, a Realtor extraordinaire and good friend of mine. Good morning, Lorrie, how are you? Good morning, I'm great. Good. So it may seem weird that I asked a Realtor to be a guest on my podcast. 00:27 But it's not weird because Lorrie is brilliant at her job and she knows things that people looking for land might wanna know. So Lorrie, tell me a little bit about yourself first. Well, years ago, before I was a realtor, I was a paramedic for a number of years for 911. So I know the area inside and out and subsequently became a realtor in 2007 during the crash, figured why not. I always do things the hard way. 00:57 So I've been a realtor for 17 years, absolutely love it. And don't specialize in one niche area. I like to be robust and be able to do multiple things. So I just stay on top of all aspects of real estate with the exception of I do not dabble in the business side. So just residential real estate, farm real estate, that kind of thing. Okay. And this is exactly why I wanted to talk to you because I have lots of questions. 01:26 First first question is the housing market bad right now and is it bad all over the United States? Bad is a Term that is kind of means different things to different people. Is it a challenging market? Absolutely The challenge is because we have very little inventory we have a lot of buyers sitting on the fence and Many of which have never even seen an interest rate over five percent. So 01:56 When they jumped up to around seven, people were a little bit flabbergasted as to what they could suddenly afford changes your buying power when you jack up interest rates. So, excuse me, with the interest rates up a little bit, historically though, 7% is an average interest rate. It's really not that outrageous. It's not impossible. 02:25 There is inventory out there. You just have to have eyes on it. You have to have somebody with their ears to the ground and nose to the grind, Stella Perse, and make sure that you know how to negotiate a good deal for your clients. As well as having an excellent lender that is good at communication, that is available, just like a realtor is 24-7 basically on weekends as well. And there's a lot of creative financing out there right now with some of the lenders coming up with a... 02:54 programs for helping buyers put in quote unquote cash offers and then financing after The transaction so there's a lot of things out there that can be done You just have to have somebody who knows what's out there and can find it and can negotiate for you I have to say I have never used Every tool in my toolbox as well as come up with new ones in the last few years to get my clients under contract But thank goodness, it's work 03:23 Yeah. So is the reason that inventory is down, does it have anything to do with the fact that people ran like there was fire under their feet back in 2020 and 2021 to get out of the places they were in and now they're happy in the places they're in and they don't want to sell? Well, some are happy, some are not happy, but they're staying in them because of the interest rates they got when they refinanced at historic lows of 2.5 and 3.5 interest rates. 03:54 To be honest with you, I wouldn't ever anticipate seeing those kind of interest rates again. But that's where people are in their mortgages. And then if they're not uncomfortable enough, they'll just stay where they're at. So there's a lot of restrictions as well on buildings. So new construction, the restrictions that have been placed on new construction by different government entities has added approximately $30,000 to each home. 04:24 and cost of building it. So building is restrictive with pricing, but there are builders out there. They're doing their best to get houses out there, especially for the baby boomers that want to downsize into homes that are just slab homes or smaller homes, one level, those kinds of things. Okay, I was just curious about your take. 04:48 on all this. Okay, so I'm going to talk a little bit about what you did for us. And then I have other questions regarding if people are looking for the kind of thing that we were looking for four and a half years ago. What you would suggest at this point because like you said, inventory is really limited. So the story is, Lori, we met Lori back in 2015, because we were trying to find a place back then. 05:17 And we looked at four or five places and there was just nothing within our price range. And we just de

Today I'm talking with Lawrence at Blended Acres. 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 Lawrence at Blended Acres. Good morning, Lawrence. How are you? I am well, and you? Good. Where are you? I am located in Quinter, Kansas. Okay. 00:27 I couldn't figure it out from your Facebook page. I didn't see anything about what state you were in. I was like, I have no idea where this person lives. OK, I will have to address that. Yeah. OK, so tell me about what you do at Blended Acres. We are a first generation farm with myself and my wife. We raise a 00:50 sheep for lamb meat. We also raise corn and wheat and currently some oats and millet and a few other feed crops. And then we, in the fall we sell pumpkins and kind of have a small farm market. 01:14 Very nice. How did you end up getting here? Because of your first generation, I'm guessing it wasn't family. It was not. I, uh, in 2004 when I graduated, I came to Kansas to go on a custom harvest crew. And, um, just absolutely fell in love with, with Kansas at that point in time. Um, and then, uh, it was in 2007. 01:43 when we moved here permanently. 01:52 Okay. So I get that you fell in love with the thing that you were doing, but it's a huge leap to go from falling in love to actually doing the thing. So were you just like, I'm young, I learned, I can do this? Well, okay. I'm sorry. I didn't give you enough detail there. I grew up in Michigan 02:22 of my neighbors in that area on the farm growing up. 02:31 Once I came here, it was quite a process. I mean, it started as a hobby. And... 02:45 most things were done in the evenings after work and that and over time as we've been able forward to is how we've gotten to this point where we we have our own operations. Okay so tell me tell me about the operation because this is this is not small scale correct? Not anymore no not really. We have a currently 03:13 a little over 200 years. We have 450 acres of farm ground that we rent. And then we custom farm on average, I do plant 8 to 12,000 acres a year between the different crops. 03:37 When we messaged you were like, I'm not sure that I fit what you're looking for. And when I said that you are, I'm going to tell you why I said that you are. You are perfect for what I'm doing with my podcast because there are people in the world right now who are interested in doing the kinds of things that you're doing, but they don't know anything about it. They don't know how to go from falling in love with the idea. 04:06 to making it go. And you fell in love with the idea and you're making it go and you're making it go big. So you're exactly the kind of person I want on my podcast because you're helping other people be inspired to go after the dream. What? I'm glad that that I can fill that role. Yeah because it's kind of scary for people. 04:34 especially people who maybe grew up in the city and get introduced to the idea of not being a city person anymore. And they're like, I have no idea how to get from here to there. So part of my goal from my podcast is that people get to live vicariously through the stories they hear, or they get inspired to stop living vicariously and actually go do the thing. 05:04 Okay. So that's why I wanted you to be on my show. Okay. So do you guys have kids? Yes, we do. We have... 05:19 I'm sorry, I'm counting. We had five kids. We have, our youngest is five. We have two girls that are, will be 10 here in the next, well, one couple days and the next one is in July. And then our, and Philip would be. 05:48 just turned 12 and then we had a son that passed away. He would have been 14 this year. Okay, so you're a classic farm family. You're married and you got a parcel of kids and that's way cool. It is. And that parcel of kids is gonna come in real handy as they get bigger and wanna help. Yes. And I'm guessing that. 06:16 the older of the five probably do already help. Well, he kind of, he does help in the shop some and does some stuff like that, but it's not really his cup of tea. The youngest one and our one daughter are probably the ones that are most intrigued and in love with the farming. 06:46 Well, a couple out of five isn't bad. It's real good. I don't try to force anything on the kids. We've been trying really hard to develop their likes and interests so they don't feel like they have to be part of the farm. But there's a lot of things that. 07:11 are still useful on the farm that aren't directly, you wouldn't think are directly related. Our one son is very, he's mechanically minded, so that is a very useful thing, but that also can take you into a lot of other industries. Sure. Yes, absolutely. So he's not pigeonholed into just mechanics on the farm. No. So that's... 0

Today I'm talking with Jamie at Strom Acres Homestead Pinnacle, NC. If you'd like to buy Happy Homestead Coaching by Jamie Strom, click here, and I will receive a small commission. 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 Jamie at Strom Acres Homestead. Good morning, Jamie. How are you? I'm well, thank you. How are you? I'm great. Is it lovely where you are? Yes, it is. Very sunny today. And where are you again? Pilot Mountain, North Carolina. 00:28 That's right, North Carolina. You're like the 10th person I've talked to from the Carolinas in the last month. It's, it's gotta be the place that homesteaders go to, to build their dreams. I swear. There's a lot of it around here. A lot of it grew up learning it. Yeah. Um, so tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Um, I live here on Six Acres with my husband. We are empty nesters. 00:58 And I replace my children with farm animals. As we all do, yes. Um, they're fenced in orchard. The orchard has apple, peach, pear, plum, almond, trees. I think that's all out there. And I keep the chickens fenced in with the orchard. That way I don't have to move their poop. They just fertilize the trees for me. Perfect. And you have two coops inside that. So if a predator or something has to get in, they got to go through two fences. 01:27 We've also got dogs and cats and honeybees. That's all for now. I'm also a nurse. I'm a diabetes teacher. I work part of the hospital and part time from home. I have two grown kids, 33 and 27, and I have a grandson that's 10. Wow, okay. I have four grown kids too, and one of them is 34 and one of them is 32. So your 33 year old is right in between. Yeah, yeah. 01:57 Nice. Okay, so how did you end up coming to this lifestyle? I think it slowly progressed over the years. Um, I've always had a little garden started out probably in my 20s. When I first got married, got my own place, always had tomato plants. And then started the raised bed thing and then started the chicken thing. And then we added on honeybees. 02:26 And then we expanded the raised beds to now we have about, well, I think it just keeps expanding. Um, I like the idea of living, being self-sufficient. Um, COVID did scare everybody when they ran low on food in the grocery stores. And I thought, Hmm, I could just do this myself. My grandparents did it. If they could do it, I can do it. So I've just slowly been learning more. And just. 02:55 building on the knowledge already had. Yeah, it's like a runaway train, I swear. Especially with social media, you always see something else out there you think, if they can do it, I can do it. Yeah, I think it's true. And I don't think it's true for everyone. I've said this a couple times on the podcast that 03:18 I'm not sure that homesteading is for everybody. I think that it takes a special person, and I don't mean in a derogatory way, I think it takes someone special to want to learn and grow in this way. Absolutely. I know lots of my friends say, I could never do that. I could never do that. I'm like, well, I'm glad I can. They don't wanna get their hands dirty. They don't wanna do a little chick-a-boop. They don't wanna hear a rooster. And that's the kind of stuff that just don't bother me. 03:46 Yeah, I kind of like hearing roosters. We don't have one, but our neighbors about a quarter mile away have a rooster. And I'm usually up before the sun comes up and I hear him calling and I'm like, oh, he knows what time it is. I recently made a ringtone out of my rooster's roost because he's teaching a younger rooster how to do it. Oh, fun. He's going, he's doing his, errr, errr, and then the baby goes, errr. That's adorable. 04:16 That's great. So I don't know when your book came out. I know you have a book out and I don't think it was out when I approached you about being on the show. So can you tell me about your book? Sure. I wrote it the last half of last year and it was published in January. It's called Happy Homestead Coaching. That's the book. It's on Amazon. Anybody's interested. Okay, what's it about? 04:46 about how to not just do the homestead thing, but how to maintain happiness and a peaceful life throughout it, not let it overwhelm you, not let it be something that you regret. That is a fantastic topic for a book because there have been days since we moved to our three acres where I'm like, what are we doing today? And it can, it can overwhelm you. Oh yes, absolutely. You have to know when to say, that's enough for now. 05:15 Yeah, last summer we were making lip balms and cold process lye soaps and candles. And my husband was doing the garden and the farmers markets and the CSA. And I was trying to keep everybody fed and make sure the clothes got was

Today I'm talking with Whitney at Shipshape Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Whitney at Shipshape Farm. How are you, Whitney? I'm doing really well. Loving this day. Good. Is it North Carolina? It's actually South Carolina, but we're super close to North Carolina, so it's all good. 00:28 Yeah, I've talked to a bunch of people in your area over the last couple of months and I always screw it up. If it's South Carolina, I say North Carolina and if it's North Carolina, I say South Carolina. I can't keep them straight, so. You're totally good. It's the Carolinas and I'm a North Carolina girl who now lives in South Carolina, so I'm good either way. Okay. Well, tell me about yourself and Shipshape farm. 00:54 Well, first off, the name, I know it's a little tricky, but it comes from when we first moved out here in 2020. My husband is former military, former Navy, and the land was in a lot of disarray because it had been a couple of years since it had been well tended. So the idea was that courtesy of the Navy with an anchor and getting things ship shaped and then also 01:21 kind of rescuing the land, that's where the name came from. But yeah, me, my husband, our four kids, and my parents all live here on the farm in the upstate of South Carolina. And I'm not exactly sure what you want to know about, so you'll have to ask me more detail. Okay. Well, how did you end up having a farm? Oh, I'm... 01:48 We had moved to the upstate after my husband got out of the military because it was near to all of our family and that was in 2017. And then in 2020, the world kind of went on fire for everybody. And we were living on a quarter acre in the city and it was just not the best spot if we needed to like, if food supply chains got shut down, we needed to have better, just 02:18 to take care of our family well. So we started hunting at the time. I was actually a real estate agent and was able to find this property that was only really 25 minutes from our existing home. And we were, the owner was lovely. We were able to meet and talk with her and then move onto the land. So initially we moved to the land for just. 02:45 our family thinking we didn't know what was going to happen in the world, but we wanted to be prepared. And then as we've lived here, thankfully the world has not imploded. So that's been marvelous. And we've gotten, that's a good thing. So we've gotten to learn a lot because we started out as like the very worst farmers ever. But we've learned. So here we are. 03:14 My mom is in charge of the garden. She does a fantastic job taking care of that. And really, from about April to November, we don't have a greenhouse yet, but from about April to November, we primarily eat all of our fresh produce is from her garden for all eight of us. And then we have chickens, and so we've got lots of eggs. And then we have goats who we milk. So they're dairy goats and then land clearing goats as well. 03:42 And so we're slowly working to the self-sustainable component. Yeah. Okay. You're not, you weren't the worst farmers ever. You were just beginning farmers. That's all. Oh, I don't know. We lost some livestock. The things that you think you're supposed to know, we just didn't, we just did so many things backwards. But the beauty of it was... 04:12 Our mistakes sent us hunting for the people who knew more. And so we've been able to build a phenomenal community here with people who are much more knowledgeable and very gracious in sharing their wisdom. So we've been able to learn a lot from them. It is so funny to me that so many people changed their lives during COVID. Yeah. And pretty much to either make sure they had food 04:41 or to get away from people because it was just so uncomfortable being surrounded by people but not being able to be around people. And the thing that's come out of it is this huge community or network of new people in our lives. Yes. And that's wonderful. It's this crazy circle that happened. It's been really grand. I would say my favorite part though is that... 05:11 getting to do life with multiple generations together. If you had told me that this is my life, would be my life, like 20 years ago when I got married, I would have said you were insane and that that was not me. It sounded like a terrible idea to especially live, share the land with my parents and I'm about a mile and a half away from all of my in-laws and... 05:40 But it is glorious. It's very much like a lot of people in a marriage. So there are times that it's tricky and challenging and conflict and confusion, but the good far outweighs the difficulty. So it's been really wonderful to build those deep relationship

Today I'm talking with Kim and Janice at Goose Ridge Soaps, LLC. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Kim and Janice at Goose Ridge Soaps, LLC. I do not know what is wrong with my tongue this morning. Good morning, ladies. How are you? Good morning. Doing well. 00:26 I'm good, except I hate it when I screw up the intro. It makes me mad. It's fine. It's always like goat rope. So which sometimes is accurate. Well on that note, my dad used to call people from the Midwest goat ropers. And he and my mom live in Maine. He's always lived in Maine and I live in Minnesota. So I am technically now a goat roper or a flood lander according to my dad. So go figs. 00:56 All right, so tell me about yourselves and Goose Ridge Soaps. Yeah, well, Janice and I met a number of years ago in a different part of the state. So we're both Marylanders and we met in Western Maryland, which is a good two hours or so from where we had lived previously and where we live now. We were really into, or still are, really into kind of outdoor stuff, the homesteading type things, learning new skills. 01:27 stuff our ancestors did that we've kind of all kind of sort of forgotten how to do, which is a shame. So there was a outdoor women's weekend where you do all kinds of things. You're doing everything from basket weaving to kayaking to fishing to trap shooting, archery, all kinds of just cool outdoor stuff. And she and I both attended this weekend, did not know each other. And I was actually in the process of selling the house I was currently living in and moving 01:56 an hour and a half south and found out where I was moving to. That's where Janice was from. And we were going to be living a half, a half a mile, quite literally apart, which was hysterical. Um, and both being into the same types of outdoor activities and stuff like that. I mean, we just instantly became friends. So when I moved down to my new house, I had a built in friend already and we would get together and do stuff. I kept bees. So we would. 02:25 We made canned applesauce. We got the honey from the beehives. We would go pawpaw picking because there was a pawpaw stand in the woods, a secret place near the river. We both lived at that point near the Potomac River. So we would do all kinds of fun things together. And one day I had been using. 02:48 natural like real soap with lye and fats and oils like the old fashioned stuff. I just just had started using it didn't realize that it was a different feeling than what you buy in the store. And I thought, well, how do you make this? And I started researching and I called Janice up and I said, Hey, let's make soap. I got all the stuff. Come on over, bring a bottle of wine. So yeah, we 03:17 She came over, we decided we were going to do this and we made a whole bunch of real soap that summer and gave it away as Christmas presents to friends and family that year and kept some for ourselves of course. But what we quickly found out was that other people, the people we gave the stuff to, they didn't realize there was a difference between real soap and commercially manufactured things that you bought at the store. 03:47 everybody commented on how it was, it felt amazing on their skin and oh, you guys need to sell this and all that kind of thing. And at the time I was working full time, Janice was a stay at home mom who was, who was also house babysitting other people's kids and working part time doing stuff. So we were both really busy and we just kind of made it as a hobby and sold it on Facebook just to pay for ingredients. So that's kind of where it started. 04:17 And then in 2019, I met my husband and I moved from Southern Maryland up to where we both actually live now. So a year later, Janice and her family sold their house and moved five minutes away up here and we decided to get the band back together and make our hobby an actual business. And so we formed our LLC in April of 2021. And it's been kind of a... 04:46 you know, a whirlwind ever since. So that's, yeah. Okay. So your story defines, um, um, coincidence and serendipity. Oh, totally. Every step of the way. I, we, that's how it's sort of worked out for us. Yeah. It's been, it's, it's been interesting. Everything that that has happened with our business since we decided to make it a business, everything is just really, 05:15 fallen into place when it needed to happen at the best time for us. And we've been really blessed in that respect that things have happened. And if things haven't happened, it's because we weren't ready for it yet. And it's been neat. It's been really neat. Okay. So are you guys like the only game in town for soaps and salves and things, or

Today I'm talking with Brooke at Alternative Roots Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Brooke at Alternative Roots Farm. Good morning, Brooke. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. The season's off to a great start. Good. Tell me about what you do. 00:25 Yeah, well, our focus at Alternative Roots Farm is on certified organic apples and other perennial fruits. Well, we have about 1,500 apple trees. We also have apricots, raspberries, cherries, plums, blackberries. And when I'm thinking spring in the orchard here, also asparagus and rhubarb. We have some pastured heritage breed hogs, some purebred Gloucester old spots. 00:55 And I do some herbal wellness products and grow greens in my deep winter greenhouse, which is a passive solar structure, and bedding plants in there as well, which it's the season for that. It certainly is. We are doing the same thing right now. I have, I think, 30 basil seedlings sitting on my kitchen table right now that need to go out to the greenhouse. 01:24 But I was worried that the cold would burn them. Because our greenhouse is not heated yet. It will be in the fall, but it's not heated yet. Yay. Yup. So I have a couple of questions for you right off the top of my head. If you're growing all that fruit and you're trying to be sustainable, and I assume not use terrible things on your trees or your plants. 01:53 What are you using for your apples to keep the bugs off of them? Yeah. So that's a big, huge question. And we've definitely evolved over the years. This is our 13th season and we expanded our orchard seven years ago. Um, so from the get-go, we transitioned to be being certified organic. And so we follow all, all organic practices, but what does that mean? 02:22 You know, that doesn't mean that we don't spray anything, but we are selective about what we use in the orchard. Now, at the very beginning, we tried to be, I want to say just like too organic. Um, we tried to just do nothing and that does not work if you want to make a living. Um, so we really focus on. 02:45 kind of a permaculture take in the orchard. We want a diverse understory. We've got comfrey planted and we're trying to continue to build that. But we do use organic sprays. My husband John does degree day monitoring, which is a... I'm not going to explain the whole thing, but it's tracking the high and low temperatures to monitor pest. 03:15 life cycles or like the life cycle of scab and other bacteria and fungus that might be an issue in the apple orchard. So we're making sure with what sprays we do use that we're targeting it at a very specific time to maximize the benefit and not spray anything additional that doesn't need to be sprayed on there. So we do use some organic insecticides. 03:44 We, for certain pests, but then like for coddling moth, we use a virus that is specific to that pest. So, we're being very specific as to which things we're trying to target. Some people like to spray like copper in the orchards. For scab, we prefer to stick with a sulfur. You know, that's a naturally occurring element. We just try to minimize as much as possible. 04:17 Okay, you mentioned comfrey. What does comfrey do? Oh, great question. This is one of the biggest questions I get when people come out to the farm, because you'll walk out to the farm, you'll see all these big, beautiful plants with these big purple flowers underneath the apple tree rose. And that was kind of the start of our diverse plantings in the understory, which we're kind of kicking back into gear now. Comfrey has a diameter of like... 04:46 three-ish feet. And it is a big hairy leaf, large-leaved plant that's basically like a living mulch under the apple trees. So I grow a variety that is not self-seeding, which is important. And basically it flushes up with these big nutrient-dense leaves. It's a very nutritive plant several times throughout the season. And then that mats down and just creates 05:15 a green mulch. It outcompetes all the grasses and everything. So it acts as a living mulch. It breaks down and feeds the soil and feeds the apple trees. And then it has a very deep taproot, like 20 feet. So it brings up water and nutrients that the trees can't access. I also use it to dry it for teas and infusions for myself. And I make herbal infused oils out of it and use it in my herbal salves. 05:45 Um, so it, uh, it feeds, feeds us and the trees. 05:54 I had no idea. I'm so glad that I'm talking with you. We have apple trees. We have, I think, 20. There's like eight in a row on the right-hand side of our house and there's a bunch over on the far left part of our property. We spray neem oil on the baby apples when they come a

Today I'm talking with Kendra and Louis at Lazy Ass Acres. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Kendra and Louis at Lazy Ass Acres. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. We're doing well. How are you? I'm great. Where are you? We are in Noonan, Georgia. 00:25 Thank you. I'm in Minnesota. It is a bright sunny day here. What's it like in Georgia? It's warm. I saw that you saw the northern lights last night. How was that? It was amazing. I've never seen them in real time before. We didn't know anything about it, so we didn't make it outside to look. So we don't know if they'll be visible tonight, but we'll definitely try to check it out. I know some people... 00:53 south of us, they saw it too. So yeah, it's unheard of to see it that far south. So I hope you get a chance to see it. The thing we learned last night is that our eyes don't see all the colors of them, but if you take a photo with your cell phone or with a camera, the colors you don't see show up in the photos. So that was really neat. That's cool. That's, oh. 01:19 Yeah, really, really beautiful. And Facebook is filled with photos this morning from all over the place. It was so neat to see it all. All right. So tell me about yourselves and what you do at Lazy Ass Acres. So, um, just a little bit about us. We've been married for 34 years. We have two kids, we have two daughters. One is 27 and one's 30, both grown professionals doing their thing. 01:49 We have always had a small-ish garden, even if it was just tomato plants and pots, we've always grown something. But we just decided, like, over time, to grow, I guess. We started out with a small garden, then we got a few chickens, then we got a few more chickens, then the garden got a little bigger, and then we've added. So, just continuing to grow our homestead and continuing to... 02:17 do everything we can to be as self-sufficient as possible. And how is that going for you? Like what percentage would you say you're at on self-sufficient? We're pretty high. I would say, based on how little we bought from the grocery store, I would say we're about 80, 85%. So I guess just before 02:46 COVID, we became empty nesters. And so we started applying our free time, our family time to the garden expanding. And we just live on a small lot here, about just over five acres. And it was all wooded when we first moved here. And so if you looked at it from Google Earth, it pretty much looked like the Unabomber lived out here. It's just, all you could see was a rooftop and just trees everywhere. 03:15 So we've just been etching out more and more ground space and the soil over here is just horrible. It's just Georgia red clay and rocks. So we started on just raised bed containers and just making our own soil using a horticulture method. And then we just 03:40 realized we could put that stuff on the ground and amend the soil there and it worked out great. We had moved our chickens around on top of the last year's garden bed and they fertilized and turned it and we just kept doing that. And we make our own compost. We bring in about, I'd say about 10,000 pounds of manure and hay and straw a month and then we turn that with some fresh greens that 04:10 local organic market. They give us our scraps every week. And it can be between one to 300 pounds of fresh greens, lettuce, and all those leafy greens. And so we feed that to our animals, and then we add some to the compost and turn it about every week, get all those nutrients in the soil. And that's really been a game changer for us. 04:37 Yeah, you can't grow anything in clay. It doesn't matter if it's the gray clay that we have here in Minnesota or the red clay you guys have in Georgia. Clay does not grow anything. So yes, composting and amending the soil and chickens are a miracle creature. I do not love chickens. I'm going to say it loud and clear. I don't love chickens, but I love what chickens do and what they provide for us. 05:07 Yeah, they do a lot for us because we grow, we harvest our own meat birds once or twice a year and we get the eggs and everything is used on our chickens because like I said, we harvest the meat. When we do that, all the feathers go to a compost pile. The innards and stuff, they go to a compost pile. The dogs get the chicken feet. 05:37 When we're done with the meat birds as a meal, we use the bones to make bone broth out of it and then we take the bones out of that, dehydrate it, and then crunch that up and blend that with egg shells so we make our own bone meal that we give to our birds and use as fertilizer. So it's zero waste. 06:03 Yup, exactly. That's why I said chickens are a miracle critter. They give back m

Today I'm talking with Kayla at Faith & Feathers Farm about the homesteading life. 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 Kayla at Faith and Feathers Farm. Good morning, Kayla. How are you? Good morning. How are things in North Carolina? It's been really rainy and kind of a... 00:27 We don't know if we're on the verge of coming in the summer or finishing spring. Yeah. This, this weather all over the world has been a little bit odd lately. It's okay. It's all going to level out. I think, I hope. All right. Tell me about yourself and faith and feathers farm. Okay. My name is Kayla, Kayla Creech, and we have a farm here in Eastern North Carolina on the coast and. 00:55 This come with a vision about five years ago, we started when my husband brought home six baby chicks from Tractor Supply. And I think the rest is history because that just started our love for poultry, for a farm in general. And we have just went with it. We started, like I said, five years ago, he brought the chicks home. 01:23 my children fell in love. At that time we were living in Alabama, a little small subdivision, and it was probably less than an acre. So that's one of the things I wanted to talk about today with people, it does not matter what size or how much land you live on or what you have, you can work with what you have, and that's what I love about farming. Amen, sister. You're preaching to the choir, that's what we did too. And... 01:52 Tractor Supply Company, we joke around here that it's evil because every time we go there, we come home with something we weren't going for. Yes, yes, yes. And so five years ago, we started with those baby chicks. Then the pandemic happened and everything kind of went into a scare or maybe where's our next food source gonna come from? Maybe we need to think of having something to rely on in case we can't get to the store. 02:22 We had no idea that, you know, which way it was going to go and kind of the unknown, not really fear, but just having a plan B and option in case you couldn't get to the store. How were you going to feed your family and what were you going to do? Mm-hmm. Yep. That's where the whole homesteading boom, craze, whatever you want to call it, seems to have started, the renewed interest in it. Yes. And so the pandemic happened, kind of jobs went on scare. 02:52 We weren't quite sure what we were gonna do and we decided to move back to North Carolina where we originally were born and raised. We did live four years in Alabama, like I said, and did farm there. We always had a garden, even if it was small, you know, just planting roots where you're at with what you have and kinda making it work is what my goal is in life. People say, oh, I can't garden. Yes, you can. 03:21 It doesn't matter if you've got a pot on a porch, a little small container bed, a kitchen window, whatever you have that you can put seeds in and start somewhere, wherever you're at. You don't have to start big and have a huge garden. No, you don't have to. You can have a little tiny raised bed and grow things because nature hates a vacuum. 03:48 If you provide the right conditions, nature is going to grow something. It's going to work out, isn't it? Yup. I love that you're saying all this because I have been saying this for over 20 years now. All the things you're saying. And people just assume because they see Instagram, they see YouTube, they see what the social media wants to project as far as what you've got to have and you do not have to have that to make it work, you know? 04:18 Yeah, and thank goodness there are people like you and people like me who are dispelling the myth because it is a myth. You can grow a potted basil plant to the size that you need it to be to be able to use that basil to cook with in your kitchen even. Absolutely. I started years ago Seed Starts and my husband, we were fortunate at a time, he did build us a greenhouse. 04:48 And believe it or not, I've had the best seed start in a milk jug, one gallon milk jug. So literally taking a milk jug and starting your seeds. You don't have to have anything fancy from what a lot of people think and once you get those seeds started, you know, it depends on if you want to direct sow or start your seeds ahead of time, but you can make it work. I have started plants in a milk jug. 05:13 almost making like a partial greenhouse with the lid and cutting it half open and starting your seeds. I've heard of people starting their seeds on their dryer in their laundry room using bread bags. Putting the seeds in egg cartons and putting that bread bag around the egg cartons and make a little ecosystem for those seeds to start in and using that bag 05:43 to act like a greenho

Today I'm talking with Shavonica at In The Kitchen With Grammy. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Shavonica at In the Kitchen with Grammy. Good morning, Shavonica. How are you? I'm great. How are you doing? I'm good. I want to know all about what you do at In the Kitchen with Grammy. Great. So... 00:28 It all started about four years ago and I started cooking with my granddaughter. She'll be six in July and we just started making videos and, um, cooking with, with her and now I have four granddaughters and a fifth on the way, but we get in the kitchen and we cook and I teach them how to make different kinds of foods, but now we've started a channel called In the Kitchen with Grammy and we're doing pies. Um, I think that pie making has been a lost art kind of, and 00:55 You know, people aren't really doing that anymore. So I want to teach my granddaughters and make sure that they know how to do all that. So we started the, in the kitchen with Ramy. We have a weekly broadcast that comes out where we, I have either a grandchild or I've had several gifts come on and, um, we're cooking and making pies. And then we actually take our pies out in the public and let them taste them and rate them on a scale from one to 10. And from that, uh, people were saying, where can I buy these pies? And I said, well, you really. 01:24 can't buy them anywhere. We're just, you know, it's a YouTube, Facebook channel and all that, but they kept requesting it. And so from that, we've actually formed Grammy's pies and I'm now in the pie business probably about a month ago and doing pies on a weekly basis. That's great. Um, so are you falling under the cottage food laws for Texas? Is that how you're doing it? Yes, ma'am. Okay. 01:51 So in Texas, are you allowed to ship your food if you have your cottage food registration thing? No, not yet. Okay. All right. That we're working on. It may require me getting a permanent location, getting it inspected and that type of thing. And so we've had tons of requests for shipping and that'll be something that we're working on and trying to get that in the works. 02:19 Yeah, all the cottage food laws in all the states are not the same. We're like you in Minnesota. We are not allowed to ship foods if we only have our cottage food. It's not licensing. It's a registration. I keep wanting to say license, but it's not a license. But I guess in other states, you can ship. And I'm waiting for Minnesota to decide that we're allowed to ship our goods as well. Okay. So... 02:48 Let me rephrase that. You can actually ship within the state. I should have said that. You can ship within the state of Texas. So I can ship. It's a big state. And so I could ship anywhere within the state as I've, what I've read, but I can't ship outside the state. Okay. We're not allowed to ship anywhere in Minnesota. No, no. And the people that are in charge of this, the higher ups as it were, not me, are working to get the laws changed, but it's a very, very steep climb. 03:17 So yes, yes. I love pie. I hate making pie because I cannot perfect a pie crust to save my life. Do you have a secret for making pie dough? Yeah, I use a recipe with we use real butter. People just say your your crust is really flaky. You know, it's just really it's crisp. It's good. And so, I mean, just. 03:44 rolling it out, using the right kind of flour, just the right ingredients. And one of the things when you're making a pie crust is using really cold butter. It's got to come straight out of the fridge and you've got to, you know, use it right away to make your pie crust stick. Okay. So do you, do you like use a grater and grate the butter so it gets incorporated or how do you use the cold butter? I don't. I cut up. 04:11 butter in kind of like cubes and then I use a food processor. Oh, okay. And it, you kind of pulse it, pulse it, pulse it and it, you know, grinds it up and gets it all in there and makes it a little easier. And you actually have to use really cold water as well. So cold water, cold butter in with your flour mixture and that helps. And I also offer a gluten-free crust in my pies. So that's another little option. You are a one-stop shop then. That's great. 04:40 I never thought of using my food processor to pulse the cold butter. I'm going to have to attempt making pie crust again now that I have been reminded that you can do that. Yes. Okay. So I don't know what to ask you exactly because I just don't know. So how old are your other granddaughters? All right. So my granddaughters are, my oldest one will be six in July. I have one that just turned three. 05:09 one that just turned two, one that's 19 months, and then one that's due the first part of August.

Today I'm talking with Karen at Sourdough Farm, Inc. Miniature Animal Retreat. 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 Karen at Sourdough Farm. How are you today, Karen? Hey, I'm great. Thank you. Tell me the name of your business. I don't have it right in front of me. Sourdough Farm, Inc., miniature something. 00:28 Miniature animal retreat. Thank you. I Tried to memorize it in my brain went. Nope not doing it this morning So what do you guys do at the sourdough farm ink miniature something retreat? Well, basically we are raising a variety of miniature animals and We are in the planning stages of opening up our farm to special guests with special needs 00:57 And it's a lot of work. I'm sure it is. I wasn't sure whether you were rescuing animals and giving them a retreat, or if you were having a retreat for people to come get good feelings from the animals. Well, that's a very good point, because actually it is working both ways. We rescue and help to rehome animals. Plus, we breed animals so that if folks 01:27 mini pig themselves or if they want to have a goat that's been handled and could be used as an emotional companion. We provide the opportunity to give homes to the animals but also a safe haven of peace and joy for folks that just need to get away and need to have good listeners. 01:56 Animals are great listeners. They are, and they don't talk back. They just love back. They do. So what kind of animals do you have? Well, right now we have fallabella, miniature horses. We have donkeys. We have miniature cows. We have miniature goats, Nigerian miniature goats. We have lots of pigs. 02:26 Just this week we have a new litter of Flemish giant rabbits. Nice. How big is a baby Flemish giant rabbit? Because we raised rabbits for a year and they were very small in the one litter that we got out of the rabbits. How big is a Flemish giant baby? Well, the babies look like little itty bitty puppies. I mean, they're just so tiny at birth. 02:53 They hardly look like rabbits, but our older rabbits, the mother and the father, they're good size. They're about the size of maybe a small dog. So they're pretty heavy. You can carry them, but you mostly want to sit down when you hold them. We try to handle our animals on a regular basis. My husband, Steve, and I, we take almost our entire day of spending time with each and every animal. 03:21 just petting and loving on and getting them used to being handled. And so that's what we do a lot of our day is just giving our animals love so that they will know how to give love back to any people that might come visit. What a lovely way to spend your days. Yes. I really love it. I love every minute of it. So how did this happen? How did this come about? 03:51 We've always loved animals. Both my husband and I have always had animals growing up, but we lived in the city. So when my husband retired, we looked for some farmland and this area right outside Savannah just kind of came into our radar. And the minute we saw it, we knew this was gonna be ours. And so after our first year of being here, we thought, you know, we need to figure out a way of giving back to the community. 04:20 We felt so blessed and so lucky to be here. So we were throwing around ideas of how we could help the people that need us most. And I'm talking about maybe people that suffer from depression, people that are just lonely. Our very special folks are our military veterans or folks with disabilities because we are by no means therapists. 04:48 just coming and sitting in the shade and listening to the pond and the fountain and the animals talk is just so soothing. So we just wanted to share that. Okay. So Savannah, Georgia, right? Yes. Okay. And I feel like nature's sound is music. And anyone who saw the news this morning saw that Taylor Swift dropped her new... 05:17 album last night. And I am sort of a Taylor Swift fan, but not like a Swiftie. And there was a news article on the news this morning about how music actually impacts your brain and that it is the most powerful thing to use all of your brain all at once. And so when people are listening to the water, 05:43 and the birds and your animals talking and whatever they're hearing outside. That is another form of music. So I understand that it really does work for people. And actually, I've done some research on music therapy for my animals. We recently had a miniature horse that had to have surgery and she had a long recovery period in the barn. So we were thinking, I wonder if music could help calm her down. 06:11 and help her not get depressed and make her heal faster. And so we do play music every day for our animals. And over time, I've kind of discovered that the most soothing music, at least for my animal

Today I'm talking with Dustin at the Butcher Shop Bake Company. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Dustin at the Butcher Shop Bake Company. Good afternoon, Dustin. How are you? I am doing fantastic. How are you doing today, Mary? I'm great. Other than the fact that... 00:25 Our technology doesn't always work the way it's supposed to. Everything's good. So tell me about yourself and Butcher Shop Bake Company. Sure, so I am a third generation entrepreneur, not in the family business. We were a construction family, but I've been in the food industry pretty much my entire life, more years than I haven't been. 00:50 And we've been doing the Butcher Shop Bay Company now. I wanna say this is, we're going on year seven. And really I started this whole company with one thing in mind is creating something exciting to eat. Cause we all gotta eat food. And I was in the health and fitness industry for a lot of years. And I did diets and this and that and the other thing. But you still gotta eat something that makes you, something that makes you salivate a little bit. 01:17 So that was where we kind of came up with the idea of making some ginormous products, specifically some gourmet cookies. Awesome. So I gotta know, did you start out as a cottage food producer or did you start out as a commercial place? Sure, so actually before I started Butcher Shop Bay Company, I had a cottage company called the Flexible Baker where I created healthy protein desserts that I 01:46 sold mainly kind of just like through Facebook and online like that through local meetups and made some cookbooks and stuff like that. And then that kind of just snowballed into the commercial side of things. Okay. So you started small because everybody's got to start somewhere. Yes, ma'am. Cool. So you're exactly the kind of person I want to talk to because there's lots of cottage food producers. 02:16 who are starting out in their galley-sized kitchens and maybe dreaming of someday doing something bigger, and that's kinda what you're doing, so that's awesome. Absolutely. All right, I have so many questions. Number one, this, number one, how do you get your cookies to be so tall and they cook all the way on the inside? Well, part of it is trade secret, but, so, 02:46 a couple of things. One, it helps that I cook extremely hot. My oven, my oven is convection, of course. But the temperature is way hotter than what you cook a normal cookie at. It helps if a lot of my cookies are also stuffed. So then there's actually less dough to cook through. So that helps a lot. And then what is not quite traditional. 03:12 with my dough recipe is I almost started off similar to a scone instead of a traditional cookie recipe, which I help. I think that that helps then distribute the fat a little bit different and a little bit better, which helps it cook through quicker. Okay. Because I was looking at your Facebook page, because that's what I do. I look at people's Facebook pages and websites before I interview them. So I know what to ask. And the cookies look almost like a cake cookie. 03:42 Just about, yeah. It kind of has some of my flower makeups. I try to mimic, because for me, I grew up eating very thin, crispy cookies. And as much as my dad loves those, not me so much. I like a nice, chewy, a little crunch on the outside, but I like it to still be nice and chewy on the inside. So that's kind of what I try to replicate. And then that's also where that 04:11 really hot temperature comes in to give the cookies a nice, um, crunchy exterior, so to speak, but then yet keep them nice and cakey on the inside. Yeah. I'm a huge fan of the, the crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, soft and chewy on the inside. So when I saw the pictures, I was like, Oh my God, how does he do that? And the other question I have is what is a hodag? Help me here. 04:41 Oh, that's funny. So, so the whole day has been around for boy, I want to say now, 120 some years or so late 1800s. Boy, Jean Shepherd was his name, kind of created this mythical creature that lives in the woods and eats white bulldogs. And it's just this giant lizard looking creature with white horns and red eyes. 05:10 And it is, for whatever reason, the Hodag has stuck. And I think last year or the year before, we actually won best mascot in the country or something like that. So yeah, it's kind of cool to be from a town that is known throughout the country. I've been everywhere you go, you meet somebody that's been to Hodag country. 05:38 Okay. So it's Rhinelander, Wisconsin? Yes. Okay. And is it specific to Rhinelander, Wisconsin, this Hodag thing? Yes. Okay. All right. Cause I saw the, the post about the, the cookies and I was like, what's a

Today I'm talking with Amy at Amy’s Garden Jam about her jam making and her podcast, Grounded In Maine, which is about sustainability. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 at Amy's Garden Jam. How are you, Amy? I am doing good, thank you. How are you? I'm good, it's been a decent day. It's been a decent week so far, so that helps. So. 00:29 So full disclosure, folks, Amy and I tried to do this a few weeks ago and the recording failed and so we're trying it again. So Amy, tell me about Amy's Garden Jam. Amy's Garden Jam is, I have a jam business. It is for a little over four years old. I just started making jam. 00:57 for not for fun necessarily, but I made it as my contribution to the income in our home. Because I don't make a lot of money at my job. I was thinking that if I, you know, grew produce and harvested and preserved it, then that would be just like making money. And so I started making jam. I mean, I've just I've always made jam for like the last 20 01:27 And my sister got married and I made little four ounce jars of jam for all of their guests as a gift. And they said, you really need to do this. To which I said, that's really funny. No. But then a few years ago, four years ago, I changed my tune. So 01:56 Amy's Garden Jam is a thing. And why did you change your tune? So I was, I actually had a car accident. I was in a car accident and I was out of work for a few months. And so while I was out of work, you know, a lot of people were like, you know, just catch up on Netflix and watch lots of movies and I was like, no, I just can't do that. So I was watching like... 02:25 I was doing webinars and... 02:31 stuff like that, webinars and workshops and just getting myself all hyped up. And I was like, well, maybe I can do this. And while I was out of work, I couldn't really walk. I had foot surgery. So I had the time to wait on hold with the state and get everything in line. So by the time I was able to walk again, I had a kitchen all lined up and I had my license in hand. 03:01 And I started with a, I started running. So you did all the leg work with a broken foot. I did. Very nice. Yeah. I mean, I had nothing to do, right? Yeah. It's amazing how that works out. Um, I just thought leg work with a broken foot was funny. Oh, I didn't even get it. Good one. Yes. Yeah. Very funny. 03:30 Okay, so are you at liberty to say what your jobby job is? Do you mind telling me? Oh, well, I mean, at the time, at the time of the car accident, I was working for an elder home care agency in the office. Okay. And what's your jobby job now? Now I work for a healthcare company in medical records. I work from home. 04:00 Nice very nice, but I should have been doing four years ago at the time of the accident because I could be working. Yeah Yeah Okay, so I also know that you have a podcast called grounded in Maine Actually how I found you. Yeah So are you like balancing your jobby job you're making jams and your podcast as your three 04:29 jobs that you do or does one take more time than the rest? Oh, my job takes up most of my time. Uh huh. Uh, the podcast takes up most of my brain space by choice. I mean, I get very excited about it. And so I'm thinking about the podcast while I'm working. Um, and then jam is usually like one day on the weekends. Okay. 04:58 So jam is where you de-stress, I take it. 05:02 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because we I called it I named it Amy's Garden Jam for a couple of reasons. So one, you know, it's a jam business. I'm making jam, obviously, but I also used to be a singer. And before I got like obsessed and and podcasting took up my my whole brain. I would listen to music and sing. So and so while I first started 05:32 making jam for the business, I would play like 80s music. It's always the 80s. And even still, like I'll do it sometimes. But so it's a jam session. I call it a jam session. And do you listen to music while you make jam and sing? I do. Uh huh. Yeah. I love having music playing when I'm doing housework or cooking. Oh my gosh. It is so it's like, I mean, I enjoy cooking and baking, but it would be unbearable if it was just quiet. 06:01 Yeah, the old house that we lived at, the music used to come out of our bedroom. When you walked in the door, our bedroom was to the right, the living room was where we walked into, and the kitchen was to the left. And so the music would just flow out of the bedroom toward the kitchen. So if I was cooking, I just turned the music way up and just danced around the kitchen and cooked and sang along and it was really fun. Here... What's your music of choice though? 06:31 Oh good lord. I don't even know. Um, alternative rock maybe? Okay. Um, I can't listen to 80s music. I

Today I'm talking with Liz at Lazy Knoll Farm LLC. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Liz at Lazy Knoll Farm LLC. Good morning, Liz. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm doing well. How are you? Great. You're in North Carolina? Yes, ma'am. Pilot Nob. Pilot Nob? Pilot Mountain. Mountain. Okay. 00:29 Alright, tell me about Lazy Knoll Farm LLC and what I really want to know is why it's called Lazy Knoll. Well I guess the name was just kind of situated on top of a hill and it's one of the highest points in the area. I was trying to find something that was more of like a relaxing name. It's a quiet area. It's in the middle of the country. 00:59 And to me, just a lazy novel is just a peaceful little place. But we actually got started in 2020. We started our first pumpkin patch and that was in the middle of us purchasing the property from my husband's family. And after that, the farm kind of began an annual pumpkin patch here and it slowly grew into what it is today with the chickens. We had pigs. 01:29 We ended up processing them and we have our cows, which is a variety of cows now. We have our Highland cows and white Galloways and belted Galloways and we have a Dexter and a ton of chickens. Nice. The Galloways, is that an Irish breed or does it just happen to be called Galloway? They're actually a Scottish breed. Okay. Yeah. 01:59 And I honestly, I was drawn to them originally before we even got howling cows. I liked the fact that they were smaller in size and polled. And we started looking at the different varieties of smaller cattle because we live on 40 acres, but you can only keep so many cows on each acre, especially when it comes to Angus or some of the bigger breeds that are so popular around here. And 02:29 And then we happened to be watching an auction. And I asked my husband, I said, it was for a Highland cows. And I was like, do you think we should try for it? And we ended up winning her. And that just started the snowball effect of getting all these different cows. OK. Polled means that they don't have horns, right? Yes. Yeah. How is it spelled? Is it P-O-L-L-E-D? Yes, ma'am. 02:56 Okay, I keep hearing it, but I never know if it's polled P-U or polled P-O. So thank you. Um, the Highland breed is the, the orange-ish colored cows with the real fluffy coats, right? Yeah, they, I mean, they come in a variety of colors, but they have, I guess most distinguishably their, their horns are those, um, similar to like long horns, but they, they curve a little bit and I mean, they all have a different. 03:26 shape to their horns. They're just, they're all unique. But yes, they had the long shaggy fur, which, you know, a lot of people call them the emo cows. Yeah, they look like a stuffed animal. They're the Justin Bieber's of cows. Cute. Okay. So what is the purpose of your farm? Are you guys just raising animals and 03:55 gardening and stuff for yourselves or do you sell? 03:59 We do sell our cows, but we sell them more to hobby farms, small homesteads, smaller farms. A lot of people like Highland cows for, you know, kind of, I guess, glorified yard ornaments, but they are actually sought after for their meat too, but they're so cute that a lot of people have trouble making that transition. 04:30 I do know that it was one of the, I believe it was the only beef that the Queen of England would eat. It was a highland beef. But it does take them at least two years to mature. And so you can't get it as readily as you would say an Angus or a Baldi or some of the more popular beef breeds. 04:58 They do. And it's actually rich in buttermilk. Okay. So it's, you know, if you're interested in churning butter or anything like that, it's one of the better cows for that. We don't currently milk any of our cows. We do have a mini Dexter, and she's our smallest. She won't get over 36 inches, and she has A2A2 milk. 05:25 She was tested genetically for that. And A2A2 milk is supposed to be better for people who have lactose intolerance, milk allergies, those sort of things. I guess it's easier to digest, which my five-year-old son has, he cannot drink milk or soy milk. He has allergies to both. And so it's been on my mind when she has her first calf that I've considered. 05:56 starting milking her and seeing how he can digest that. I also don't tolerate milk as well. So I'm curious to see what the difference would be in that. Yeah, you'll have to check back with me because I want to know too. That would be really interesting. Okay, so did you always want to do this or was this a new thing for you or what? It's kind of crazy. Our story is, I guess, 06:26 unique. I actually moved down to North Carolina from Alaska in 2016. I will say I was originally b

Today I'm talking with Therese at Salonek Farms. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Therese at Salonek Farms. Good morning, Therese. Good morning, Mary. How are you today? Oh, we are doing great. We're doing great. This is fun. I'm so glad you invited me. Yeah, I have. I have all kinds of questions. Before I get into them, tell me about what you guys do. 00:30 Well, we farm in Montrose, I understand you're in Minnesota as well? Yeah, in Lesour. Lesour, okay. So we're just about 45 minutes west of the cities in Montrose, Minnesota, and we raise beef. We have anywhere between 900 and 1,000 head of beef cattle here. And you know, we've... 00:59 My husband grew up on a farm not far from here. I, however, was a city girl and I go where he goes, right? And so we've been here at the farm since the early 90s. Yeah, mid-90s. And we bought the farm from his parents. We milked cows for until about the 2000 or so, 2001. 01:27 and switched over to raising replacement heifers for dairy farmers, and then ended, kind of landed on beef. And for a variety of reasons, beef isn't as intense as milking cows. And yeah, so that's what we do. Our beef goes, we have a pretty robust, private beef sales. We have... 01:56 We work with several processors in the area to sell privately to beef. And then we also sell, obviously, into the major beef markets. JBS in Wisconsin is where our cattle are shipped to. So yeah, that's what we do. OK. So is producing cattle or raising cattle for beef less intense than for dairy? 02:26 gets contaminated, you lose all that milk and it costs you money, is that part of it? No, because that's a pretty rare occurrence that that would happen. It's more, dairy animals require every day, twice a day milking. Some people do three times a day, we never did, we did morning and night. And they also are a little bit more finicky. 02:54 as far as how you feed them and how you carry. Dairy cattle are hardier, or beef cattle are hardier than dairy. And so, yeah, so that's kind of the difference between, and actually, sadly, dairy farmers are not, they're dropping out the small dairy farmers that are milking 60 to 150 animals. They're... 03:23 few and far between because the milk prices vary so much. And that was part of the reason that we got out is our monthly income could vary $15,000. And that was in the early 2000s. And that was just, it was frustrating to us because we didn't have that control. And so milk would go up, milk would go down. And it was just too frustrating. My husband loves. 03:53 farming, he loves livestock and he's good at it and he's done it his whole life. But you have to look at the economics of it. And that's why I think you see so many in the last 20, 15 to 20 years, dairy farmers going out and you're seeing the major 2000, 3000 cow dairies pop up because that's really the only way I think you can survive. You know, I'm sure there's people doing it, but for the most part, you're seeing all of that. 04:24 all of those dairies just get bigger and bigger and bigger. And it's tragic. There's a lot of empty farmsteads around here where you see, obviously, they had cattle probably for many, many years. And they went out of cattle. And yeah, so. OK. All right. I just didn't know why dairy was more intense than raising for meat. But thank you, because if I don't know, other people don't know either. 04:52 I feel, okay, I'm going to say this, this is my opinion and my opinion only. I feel like farmers and teachers don't make nearly the money they should be making. Well, with, it's the control of, I always said to my husband, you know, we would send a cow on a truck, right? And then to be butchered. 05:20 then once it gets there, they tell you what they will give you for it. Well, it wasn't in their best interests to give you, if they didn't have to, to give you a high price. So the farmer was kind of like, okay, what are you going to give me for it? And they're not going to be able to take the cattle back, right? It's already been there. So it always kind of frustrated me. And I say to my husband, this was years ago, you guys should unite, you know, because 05:49 It just didn't, it never, who else puts their product out there and not knowing what they're going to get for it and then just be stuck with whatever somebody deems it to be valued at and you know, but farmers are, are independent bunch and to not want to collaborate, which always confused me as well. I thought, why don't you guys get together? 06:17 have breakfast once a month and share your ideas so everybody can do well, you know, all boats rise with the tide. But farmers are, you know, kings in their own kingdoms. I probably get in trouble for saying that

Today I'm talking with Kristy at Future Farmers of America (FFA). You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Kristy at Future Farmers of America. Good morning, Kristy. Good morning, Mary. How are you? I am wonderful. It's a beautiful sunny day in Indiana. 00:26 Awesome. It's a beautiful sort of overcast day in Minnesota. The sun keeps peeking out. So tell me about Future Farmers of America. Yeah, so National FFA is an organization that allows students to take agriculture education classes and then also participate in FFA chapters. And what that means is along with taking those classes in their schools, they can then participate in FFA events. 00:55 that allow them to really focus on different projects and also on leadership skills. So instead of being like some clubs that are extracurricular, FFA is unique in that it's intracurricular, meaning you have to have an agricultural education class to be an FFA member. Cool. So it's just offered in schools. And I'm assuming it's not necessarily offered in city schools, or is it? 01:25 It actually is. Interestingly enough, we are in 23 of the largest 25 cities. We have more than 8,995 chapters and we're almost a million members strong. So FFA is definitely growing and really gaining interest for a lot of students on a lot of different levels. That's awesome. I'm sorry, I made a bad assumption on that one. 01:55 Okay, so what do you guys teach in the FFA classes? Yeah, absolutely. And Mary, don't worry, a lot of times people make that assumption. It's an easy one to jump to. So our ag education classes really run the gamut, right? There are more than 350 careers in agriculture, which a lot of times people don't realize because we usually tend to think just about production agriculture, but there's a lot more. 02:22 There's aquaculture, there's forestry, there's veterinary science, biotechnology, so a lot of opportunities. So depending on where your chapter is, it could vary of what you might really be focused on. For example, some of our urban chapters focus a little more on the greenhouse pieces or maybe the aquaculture piece. We have a chapter out in the Northeast that really focuses on aquaculture. 02:47 And then one up in Chicago that focuses a little more on agri-science. So it's kind of all over the board. But our goal really is to let students understand that there are so many opportunities in agriculture and really help them look at those career paths and figure out what their best pathway is to a career in agriculture. Okay. So what grade level can kids start taking these classes? Well, we've actually just recently expanded into middle school. 03:17 So they can start in fifth grade. Not every state has that, but some do. Traditionally, most of them are in high school, but we have expanded to include middle school and junior high. OK, and it's offered as an elective, I would assume. Well, so the agriculture education class is a regular class, but then FFA just is an additional piece. Yeah. It's been a while since I was in junior high or high school. But I'm. 03:46 The classes that weren't required were called elective classes back then. I don't know if that's what they're called now. Well, and also been a long time since I've been there too, but I believe that some of the agriculture education classes qualify as science classes as well. So some of them might fall under those science classes and not necessarily elective, it just depends on what those offerings are in your school. Okay. 04:11 I wish that they had been offered in my high school because I would have taken one. I would have loved to do that because my parents were very into the growing things and hunting and fishing and I would have been happy to take an FFA class. That would have been awesome. Okay, so on average, do you have any idea how many kids choose to take these classes? Oh, well, that's a little hard to break down on like how much it would be per school. 04:40 I do know we're reaching close to a million members nationwide. So there is a large percentage. It just depends on if those schools happen to offer those agriculture education classes and if they have an FFA chapter. Okay. And does it, it doesn't cost the students anything to take those classes? The classes don't cost, no. But FFA membership, there is a fee. 05:07 And usually that just depends on what the chapter fee is and then what the state fee is and then what the local fee is. Okay. All right. Well, what are the benefits of taking the classes? I assume the benefits are that the kids are interested in whatever they're interested in and they get to learn about it. Yeah, absolutely. The benefits are kind of twofold. One, it's an opportunity really for them to