A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Josh at Upward Spiral Goat Service. 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 Josh at Upward Spiral Goat Services. Good morning, Josh. How are things in Otter Tail County, Minnesota? Good morning, Mary. It's really good. The rain stopped sometime overnight. 00:27 Yeah, did you guys get bad storms up your way? Because in Lesor, we had some pretty good thunderstorms going on. I saw lightning once, but and the wind picked up after half of the day. But no, no, it was just a pretty gentle rain all day. OK, good, because it was a little spooky here last night. The dog actually barked at the thunder. I was like, why are you barking at thunder? You can't fix it. 00:54 Okay, so tell me about yourself and Upward Spiral Goat Services and what you guys do. All right. I'm Josh. I've kind of discovered farming in my adulthood. My parents both grew up on the farm to some degree and I, as a travel opportunity, I learned 01:24 about wolf willing workers on organic farms. And that's where I first saw regenerative management, intensive grazing. And I decided to make it my business. 01:38 Okay. And so what is your, what do you do? What is your business? Um, I, uh, I have my herd of goats, um, my breeding herd specifically, and I move them at least once a day. Um, I bring them to other people's properties for a fee and I'll move them through, uh, especially for managing buckthorn and, uh, really weedy places. I guess they. 02:08 They love brush and they eat a lot of like pasture forage as well, but they prefer brush. So it's a, they thin it like, they'll stand on their back legs and they get the leaves up right as high as you can see. So it's a really drastic difference and it looks great. And I'm moving towards kind of a environmental like management. 02:36 sort of side of things where I've got a lot of test plots and I'm trying to see just how good I can make it look. Okay, full disclosure, I wrote an article for River Valley Woman, it's a regional magazine out of Mankato area, a few years back about people who have a business doing the same thing that you do, they're based over toward Montgomery, Minnesota. So I am aware of how this works, but the listeners probably aren't. 03:06 Um, what Josh does is he, he has his goats go to places where people need their brush and their, their undergrowth and their tree lines cleaned up. Or like, I assume that if a park has buckthorn, a buckthorn problem that you could, you could take your goats there and they would take care of it. Is that how this works? That's true. Yes. Okay. And 03:31 So my questions are, because I was terrible when I did my article and did not actually address this, can the goats do this work in the wintertime too? I just went to a pasture walk outside of vining here, which is like a neighboring town, and that was all about bale grazing with cattle. And I... 03:59 It wasn't until then that I started describing what I've been doing this past winter as bale grazing. Um, and yeah, they, the answer is yes, they, they have a really drastic effect in the winter because I'm feeding them hay. There's not much for them to eat, but they will, they peel the bark off of the buckthorn and they'll eat the stems way back a lot more than they would in the summer. Um, and their manure. 04:29 and the waste hay is a lot more concentrated. I don't have to move them over as much land. So I've got this big strip of tree line that I'm watching and the difference is already really dramatic. I love it. Okay, and then the other question I have is, I know that they eat the leaves and they eat the stems and they eat the bark, but do they eat the plants all the way down to the ground? I mean, if there's a... 04:57 If there's a trunk that's three inches in diameter, will they eat the trunk down to the ground? No, no, definitely not. Okay. Um, yeah, I work with my buddy Cody. He has his company, Jonas & Company, and that's brush clearing. So he's the brush clearing specialist, and he helps me with treat like fence lines, cutting fence lines and stuff. Yeah, the big stuff, they don't eat wood. They'll eat... 05:27 Um, uh, they won't eat lignin, but they do eat cellulose, which I think is kind of the same thing, but lignin is more hard and like that's actual wood. I think that's the line. Okay. And the other question I have is how hard is it on their teeth? I mean, how long can I go do this job before they start to destroy themselves? I don't know. I think they're made for it. 05:56 I think they prefer it. Honestly, I know they're in better health when they're on the brush rather than just a soft forage. And they'll, they rub up their whole bodies against trees and I'll look behind them and an oak t

Today I'm talking with Amber at Freedom Forage Farm & Flower. 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 Amber, Freedom Forage Farm and Flowers. Good morning, Amber. How are you? I am great this morning. How are you, Mary? I'm good. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota. Absolutely is. 00:26 And you're in New Prague, so you're only about a half an hour from me, I think. Yes, I am. If you're in Lees Center. In LeSore. LeSore. Oh yes. Yep. So not far. All right. Well, tell me about yourself and what you do. Um, well, I am a stay at home mom. I homeschool my three boys. And during the summer months, we grow cut flowers. We also have on-farm events called happy hour in the flowers where 00:56 We have our flower friends come out and learn about growing and harvesting techniques and build their own bouquets, watch the sunset, take pictures, all the fun stuff. Nice. Speaking of taking pictures, do you let like photographers come in and take photos of, I don't know, engagements and prom pictures and things like that at all? Yes. Or graduation pictures? Yep. Cool. Yeah. 01:25 How did you start doing this? Like a lot of other people, COVID, we were at home. We had a positive test, so we knew that we were stuck here for at least 20 days. And it had been something, you know, throughout the years, we would just walk around our pasture and think of all the things that, you know, we wanna do. And it was like, hey, we have the time. Should we just do it? And he was like, yeah, let's just do it. 01:55 Yeah, there was a lot of why not and let's just do it when COVID happened because people had so much time for self-reflection and so much time to actually pursue something they had thought about. Yes. Yeah. And it was like, when are we going to get this time again? And you know, what's the worst that could happen? We're here now. Let's just do it. Yeah. That's, that's kind of how we ended up where we are too. Amazing. And. 02:24 Like I've said to everyone who has mentioned COVID, you're not the first person to take a leap during a very uncertain time. And honestly, I feel like part of what COVID did is reminded us all that we only have a limited amount of time to be alive and pursue our dreams. And some people didn't get that. So we all who did decided to do something else. Yes. 02:54 So are your kids young? We have a 10 year old, soon to be seven year old and a four year old. And did they, are they into the growing flowers too? They love the flowers. They love to help. Except for when I asked them to help, then they're not fully on board, but they are just as much involved as, as any of us. Yeah. 03:24 They definitely prefer when the flowers are in bloom though. They like that work a lot better. Yeah, well, it's really, really pretty. And I'm sure that draws them to help. So what kind of flowers do you grow? Do you grow native flowers? Do you grow hothouse flowers? What do you grow? Mostly annuals, field grown. We got our first hoop house. Actually, we got it two years ago now. And this is the first year. It's actually up. 03:53 It has flowers in it. I was really scared to do a high tunnel because I had just that we're going into year four and I felt like, okay, I know what I can grow. I know what grows well. And I didn't, I kind of didn't want to mess with that because there's such a steep learning curve with season extension. And so it's a lot of, a lot of annuals. We have a few perennials. I'm starting to. 04:21 lean more towards perennials and every year I grow less and less things. More colors, maybe different varieties, but less actual different crops. Okay. So in particular, what do you grow? We have dahlias and snapdragons, tons of zinnias, forget-me-nots. We did, what else did I put in the ground? Buplerum, tons of basil. 04:50 What else? Celogea status is down there. Rubbeckia, feverfew, delphinium, eucalyptus, and lisianthus. You can grow eucalyptus here? I started from plugs, but you can, absolutely. It loves the hot and humid. So I didn't, last year was the first year that I had like a really nice big crop and I didn't let anybody cut from it. Like almost all season I wanted to do. 05:19 Dahlia, Lysianthus, and Eucalyptus bundles. And my dang Dahlia's just were so far behind for some reason, lack of rain, who knows what it was. And at the end of the season, I was swimming in it. Swimming in it, and I really was kicking myself because I could have been cutting from it all season long. And so in October, I sold just Eucalyptus bunches last year because it just was going nuts. I had no idea you could grow Eucalyptus in Minnesota. I need to do that. 05:48 You 100% do. Yes, there's a lot of like Queen bees in Prior Lake. She's got, I know that she

Today I'm talking with Joe Lamp'l (aka Joe Gardener) of Growing A Greener World about his love for gardening, where it started, and the unexpected fame that's come with it. You can also follow him 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 Joe Lamp'l, aka Joe Gardner of Growing Greener World. Good afternoon, Joe. How are you? I'm great. Good afternoon to you. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. You have no idea how tickled I am. 00:29 said yes. Tell me about yourself because you're pretty famous, but not everybody knows your story. This is true and I feel like I've told it a few times and I think maybe by now more people have heard it and the word's getting out I guess, but I love my story because I remember it as though it were yesterday. I grew up in Miami, Florida and I was one of four boys in the family. That was it, just four boys but... 00:57 Uh, in the pecking order, I was last, you know, I was eight years old when I was out with my dad on the weekends. He had his weekday job, his nine to five weekday job, although I know he worked more than that, but on the weekends he did his guard work, you know, his typical mowing the grass and edging the driveway and trimming the bushes. And because I was only eight years old and my next oldest brother was 13, he wasn't hanging out with me. He was hanging out with his buddies, which was fine because my dad was my buddy and I had them all to myself for the weekend. 01:26 And I love that. So I would follow him around and just tag along and do anything he needed me to do. But on this one day, when he finished up on this Saturday, he went inside and I still had plenty of energy. So I'm out running around and I, I hit a branch on a plant he had just got through pruning earlier that day and I broke it. All right. I basically broke it and I didn't want to get in trouble, but I wouldn't have. My dad was a very kind, sweet man. 01:54 But I didn't want to disappoint him. Maybe that's the thing. So I took the branch and I stuck it. I shoved it in the ground basically right next to the base of the plant, covered it up with soil. Although I probably would have called it dirt at that point. And, um, you know, went about my business and time went on and I forgot about it until I came upon it again, weeks and weeks later. And when I did, it reminded me that that's the, that's the plant that I broke the branch on, but I couldn't find. 02:21 I couldn't figure out which was the broken branch because they all looked the same. They were all green and growing. And I'm like, wait a minute, I know this is the plant. So I, um, I isolated it down to the one that I actually broke and I looked at it and it was a little less vigorous than the others, but it was growing in that. And that just surprised me. So, because I had no idea that it was going to live to begin with. And the fact that it was sprouting new leaves and forming new roots. Literally blew my mind. I just couldn't understand how that was happening. I didn't know anything about. 02:50 gardening at that time, but I needed to know more because that was the coolest thing ever to me at the moment. Still is. And, um, from that, that very moment was when I decided I'm hooked on this. I love this. I need to know more. And I started propagating. Again, I didn't know that word then, but I started, you know, making more cuttings and sticking stuff in pots and growing seeds. And I started a garden, a few gardens, actually a rose garden and a vegetable garden and fruit trees and daylilies and you name it. 03:20 So that was it eight years old. And, uh, honestly, I haven't slowed down one second of my interest in my quest to learn more and my love and enthusiasm for gardening and all that it has to offer. So you were eight and the magic of nature kicked you in the head is what happened. You know, it did. It kicked me in the head for, for, for garden. You know, I was. 03:46 Way earlier than that, I'm sure I was fascinated with nature. I was just in awe of being outside and hearing and seeing the birds and the trees and the wind and you know, back then, well, still, I mean, I was in the hurricane region and I know we had big storms coming through when I was little and all of that just amazed me. But then the, the gardening side really is what totally captivated me. Specifically, it was the gardening. Do you remember what the shrub was by chance? 04:15 Kind of, I do. I picture it as a privet. Basically your standard hedge shrub, ubiquitous everywhere. And I really feel like it was a privet. Okay. Just wondering, cause I don't know if you knew at eight years old, what, what the plant itself was. I, you know, I learned a lot of those plants. Uh, but I don't know that I ever really sp

Today I'm talking with Chebrai at Big Whiskey Creek Range. 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 Chebrai at Big Whiskey Creek Range. And when I first read the name, I thought it was ranch and I've been thinking it's ranch the entire time. Good morning, Chebrai. How are you? Good morning. How are you? I'm good. 00:28 This being over 50 thing that I got going on, I just think I read things the right way and then I realized that it's not ranch, it's range. So tell me about yourself and what you guys do. I have been pretty enamored with the farm life since I was a little girl. I can remember just being on my grandparents farm and it really ingrained like a passion for animals and farm life. 00:58 So I guess when I grew up, I always knew that farm life would be it. And I was really lucky to meet my husband who also loved the homesteading self-sufficiency life and big Whiskey Creek range was born. The range part actually comes from us having a small little shooting range in the back. So. Okay. 01:28 Awesome. So when did you guys start doing this? We started in 2019 and we got six chickens. And I remember going, yep, we can handle this. I had raised horses and trained horses. So I kind of knew what I was doing and thought chickens wouldn't be a big deal. And now here we are with, I don't count anymore. 01:54 But there's goats and rabbits and ducks and chickens and a horse and some pigs Yeah, you got hooked in with the gateway drug of chicken yes, yes we did Yeah We we got hooked in with chickens when we lived in town Because the bird flu was going through and I was like, you know I'd really like to have eggs so I can make cookies for the kids and if this bird flu thing is a real 02:22 problem and eggs go up to $10 a dozen, I don't want to pay $10 a dozen. So we bought four chickens and that was really cool. And then we moved here like almost four years ago now and we have 18 chickens now. So yeah, it meant chicken math. Chicken math is real. The only problem is that I found that chicken math starts applying to all the different animals as well. 02:50 It does. It's an umbrella term for, I got this, I got this handled, I know what I'm doing, what's the next thing I'm going to bring onto the farm? We tried bunnies, I have talked about this at least four times on the previous episodes so far. They were terrible at reproducing, so we decided we didn't want to feed rabbits that didn't give us any return. They were dumb bunnies. 03:18 We have, I think I have seven or eight litters out there right now. I have a mama that was due yesterday, but she hasn't kindled yet, so I'm impatiently waiting for those. Yeah, and nothing cuter than a baby bunny. Nothing. Yeah, I feel like the sweet spot is like three weeks old and they just, they look like an adult rabbit, but they're so small and fluffy. Yeah, and if you've handled... 03:47 them since they were born, they like to be held and petted. Oh yeah, we have three kids and they handle them daily so they are of course, you know, super snuggly. Yeah, they're a lot like kittens except that they don't meow. Yes, yeah and well I mean I was going to say I feel like their nails are sharper but they might be about the same. It's a different sharp because we did get one litter. 04:16 Yeah, they're pokey, but yeah, but kitten nails are curved down and so they hook into whatever they get hold of and If you pull away, it doesn't help you you just push, you know, so but anyway, um, so How do you I don't know? I want to ask you. How do you feel about what do what you do? Do you love it all the time? All the time. No, I'm 04:45 I think the good part is that I'm very passionate about what we do. Before we started getting the animals, I went and found the breeds that I wanted and that I loved the traits for. I think that really helps because there are days where it's hard and you just want to quit. At the end of the day, you crawl into bed if you make it to bed and you just lay there and go, okay, is it worth it? 05:15 Every morning I wake up and I walk out to the barn and I start milking and the birds are singing and the sun's rising and it's like, yeah, yeah, it is worth it. It might be hard but kind of our family saying is we're not quitters. So we keep going. Yeah, and it's really hard to quit when you have living beings counting on you. Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. And that's part of it. I think 05:45 a mom also helps me want to take care of more. So I'm never one to turn down another mouth. Yeah, and I'm exactly the opposite. When we bought this place, we had big, big ideas. Because when you buy acreage, and we only have three acres, but to us, that was a big jump. You have big ideas. You want to get 06:14 animals an

Today I'm talking with Bernis at The Honeyberry Farm. You can follow along 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 Bernis at the Honey Berry Farm. Good morning, Bernis. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm just great. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the honey berries are growing. Good. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota for growing honey berries. 00:28 Yep, we've had a week of rain and they're just loving it now that the sun's come out. Cool. So, tell me about yourself and Honey Berry Farm. Well, I grow honey berries along with my farmer husband, Jim, and we've been growing them for, well, about 14 years now. We planted our first ones in 2010 and we really like them. They are so... 00:55 tasty and good and good for you. And we also offer, once we got into honeyberries, it kind of led, it was kind of the entry, you know, the gateway fruit drug. So we then got into tart cherries and currants and a whole bunch of other cold hearty specialty berries that we didn't know about, that we found out about just because we started to grow honeyberries. 01:22 Nice. Are you up near the Canadian border? We're two hours south of the border of Minnesota with Manitoba. Okay. That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure. Okay. So how did you, how did you decide to start doing this? Well, it started in the winter of 2010 when I was looking through a garden catalog and I noticed this strange looking berry that was kind of oblong and never seen it. It's a berry like that before. Usually berries are round, you know, but this had... 01:52 kind of an irregular shape and it was bright blue, very attractive, and it was called a honey berry. So I ordered a couple and later that spring I got my first two bare root plants. They look like dead sticks. I was skeptical. I didn't think they'd grow. I had never ordered bare root plants before, but I stuck them in the ground and... 02:13 actually had 50% success. One of them did not break dormancy, but the other one did. And usually bare root plants are just fine, but once in a while there's a dent in the batch. And so I had my first honeyberry bush growing and then I went to Canada and Googled cold hardy fruit and I found out that the University of Saskatchewan was developing – they had a breeding program for something called Fast Gap and the more I read about it, I thought, wow. 02:42 I think that's what I ordered this spring. So sure enough, it's the Japanese name that they use in Canada, Hascap. Whereas down here we call it honey berry just because it's a lot easier to pronounce and it's a honeysuckle. It's the same thing. It's a honeysuckle berry, a blue edible blue honeysuckle. So that's kind of how the journey started, except there was one other key factor. I went to visit a friend. 03:11 at a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada there. And we got talking gardening and I said, I asked her, have you ever heard of these haskaps? And she says, well, my brother-in-law got some. She has some planted behind her house. You wanna go see? So I said, sure. And we went and there she had probably half a dozen bushes or more. And they were just starting to ripen. They had just started to turn blue. And I had my first taste. I've had a berry and it just, the skin was so. 03:39 tender, it just melted in my mouth and it had this interesting flavor I hadn't ever tasted before and I asked my friend, well, what do you do with them? And she said, nothing, my son eats them all off the bush. Well, that's what you first do is eat them off the bush, but they are so good for so many purposes, for jam and toppings and... 04:07 put in your pancakes and anything that you would do with a blueberry basically. Nice. So they don't taste like blueberries, right? Well, there's a much more complex flavor in most of them. But what I have to tell you is that honey berries, they need two parents. Most of them need two parents to produce fruit like apple trees. They need cross pollination. So every child, like humans, is unique. 04:35 different. You never know what a seedling is going to taste like. They have a lot of different flavors ranging from very mild, almost bland, to very strong, to put it mildly, even nasty. That's why these breeding programs do a lot of research, tasting their berries to select the ones that taste the best and grow well. 05:05 bigger ones that grow vigorously and they breed for, you know, a good size. And yeah, it's just a fascinating area of research fruit breeding that I got to learn about as well. So, okay. So what conditions did they like to grow? Because I grew up in Maine and we had wild blueberry plants all over my parents' property. And 05:30 Blueberries really like it kind of dappled sunshine and they really like acidic soi

Today I'm talking with Ginger at The Naked Rancher. 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 Ginger at the Naked Rancher. Good morning, Ginger. Good morning, Mary. How are you this morning? I'm great. You're in Texas, is that right? I am. The hill country of Texas. 00:26 I wasn't sure and I couldn't figure it out from your Facebook page, but then I saw something I was like, I think she's in Texas. Okay, great. Tell me about yourself and the Naked Rancher. Well, thank you. I appreciate you even talking about it. Well, I was married to a gentleman in the army for 40 years and after our divorce, I had a ranch to run and it was my 29th move and I thought I'm going to make this work and... 00:56 I had some girlfriends come over and they jokingly started calling me that. I'm not in the nude, so it's not about actual nudity. It's about being honest about trying to run a ranch and everything on it. From that, they suggested that I do stories about it and post about it. I also... 01:25 I started doing that and then realized I should get a trademark for it. So I applied for the trademark for the name and the brand and I've been posting for four years now. That's awesome. So if you were married for 40 years, you must be over 50 years old, I would assume. I am. I am 63 years old. 01:50 I'm impressed because I'm 54 and when I decided to start a podcast, I had a steep learning curve on all the technology behind it. So I'm impressed that you managed to do this four years ago. Yeah. Well, my children think I've got all adult grown children and they all think that I'm still not there yet. So. Oh, that's always going to be a thing. My 22 year old is like, I can't believe you're doing this now. I know. Isn't that funny? 02:20 I'm like, you know what, old dogs can learn new tricks. I actually said that to him this morning. Well, see, and to me, it's all about the learning process. So I'm not the only one out there that's like you, that's learning and trying to make it work in today's world. Yeah, and honestly, the minute you stop being curious and the minute you stop trying new things, you might as well be six feet under. That's my take. I agree with you completely, and I enjoyed. 02:49 learning new things and you know, I don't mind embarrassing myself or talking about things that I mess up on and have to redo. Yeah, because that's how you learn and how you teach. Yeah. Yeah. But I was going to say thank God for girlfriends. Your girlfriends helped out and I'm really glad we all have girlfriends because without them, I don't know where we would be. I agree completely. Okay. So I was talking with a lady 03:19 at a local, I'm in Minnesota, and I live in Sibley County in Minnesota. And I was talking with a woman the other day who I interviewed, and she is, I don't know what her title is, but she's involved with the Water and Soil Conservation District in the next county over from us. And she was talking about how trying to market what they do has been a bear. 03:46 and that they have not been really great at promoting what they do. And it's a county state agency thing. And I said, well, I said, it's a shame that the topics of homesteading and farming and ranching and growing things and raising animals for food or for milk or whatever you're raising them for isn't considered sexy. And I said, 04:13 We watch grown men run down football fields and they get dirty and sweaty and people pay big money to see that. And I think there's nothing sexier than watching people work hard at doing something that they love and they get dirty and sweaty. Exactly, I agree with you. So then I happened to watch a couple of your videos on your Facebook page and I watched the one where your pants are trying to fall down and I was like that right there. That's sexy. 04:42 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no part of that is sexy. But you know what? It happens. Yeah, it sure does. And you were working and you were getting dirty and sweaty and your pants weren't up all the way. And that's okay. So you proved my point because people probably see that video and they're like, oh, oh, okay. Okay. What is she, what is she actually doing? And then they're interested. So, so, um, 05:10 The lady that I talked to, her name is Holly. I was like, we need to enlist some people to make like promotional videos of people doing the work that they do in the garden or working with the animals or whatever they do and post that and be like, be a doer, it's sexy. There you go, I like that. So I said- It should be on a T-shirt. Yep, so I said on the interview, which will come out in two weeks. 05:38 I said, if anybody out there wants to help Holly and I start a campaign like this, let me know. Well,

Today I'm talking with Holly at the Renville County Soil & Water Conservation District. You can follow them 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. 00:15 Today I'm talking with Holly at the Renville County Soil and Water Conservation District. Good morning Holly, how are you? Good morning Mary, I'm fantastic. How about yourself? I'm good and I'm not quite sure how to start this because I don't really know what you guys do exactly. So tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Sure. So, the Renville County Soil and Water Conservation District is a local government unit. 00:43 And what we really focus on is working with landowners on promoting sustainable use of water and soil resources. So things that are going to have a direct benefit on water and soil for the county and the state. Okay. And does every county have an organization like yours or are you alone in this? Sure. So while I think we are unique and special. 01:13 five Soan water conservation districts across the state. So almost every county has a Soan water conservation district. Okay, I'm in Sibley County, which is I think right next to Renville. It is. You are a neighbor. I am terrible at counties in Minnesota because there are so many of them. Yes, there is a lot. But yeah, you're directly east of us. Sibley is a Soan water district that we've partnered with on projects in the past and wonderful team over there. 01:43 Okay, so tell me how this works. Sure. So really what a Soil and Water District does is we provide education and resources to stakeholders. And when we say stakeholders, that's anybody that uses water or soil in the state. So the bulk of our customers or clients that we work with on a regular basis are farmers, just because we're in a heavy ag region. 02:12 And, but that doesn't mean that we can't help somebody who's got a tree in their yard that they think is sick, or if they want to do something to change water flow through their property, things like that. So, we really can kind of just do anything, like I said, related to water or solar resources. Okay. So if someone has a tree that they think is sick, how do they contact you? I mean, do they. 02:41 Do they just ask around until they find out about you or do you guys promote what you do or how does it work? So it's interesting you bring that up, Mary, because even like my whole childhood and going through college, till I was in my senior year at college, I didn't really know what a Swinwater district is, right? And I don't know if we've always done a fantastic job of promoting ourselves. Historically... 03:07 In Minnesota, soil and water districts really cut their teeth on tree programs. So if we back up just a little bit, we're a product of the dirty thirties. So what happened is the dust bowl and we had massive erosion and the government, US government created our partners, the natural resource conservation service. And as a result of that federal partnership. 03:36 locals got involved and said, it's great, we have this federal partners, this federal money, but we also need local buy in and local support for programs. And so Soin Water Conservation Districts got organized, usually sometime between 1938 and 1960. And again, that varied on kind of those local stakeholders and just momentum of getting those organized. And so 04:05 part of that was is our USDA partners would say, okay, you have this massive field erosion, you tore out your trees and you broke up all the prairie to farm it. And so we need to plant some trees here to stop that erosion. And that's really where Soan Water Districts got their feet under them was selling trees and designing and installing that. And then we expanded that to also designing and helping with installation. 04:32 of structures out in the field where we would actually move soil to slow water flow or just adjust where wind would blow in a road soil. 04:44 Okay. So like last year, we're surrounded by what used to be an alfalfa field. Sure. And is now a corn field. Yay. Um, I'm not a fan of corn. I, I sneeze when it does its thing in. Oh yeah, all that pollen, right? Yeah. Kind of kicks my butt every summer, but it's okay. Um, they put in drained hyle. Uh huh. I can't remember what was last summer or the summer before. I think it was the summer before. 05:15 And is that something that you guys are involved in, or is that just something that the farmers just do on their own? So how we're actually involved with Green Tile is on the level of making sure that whatever is installed has no negative impact on what we have today for waters of the state, which includes lakes, rivers, and wetlands. 05:41 So our involvement is a landowner wants to install tile. They first start with the USDA Farm Service Agency

Today I'm talking with Brittany at Crazy GF Cookies. You can follow her 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 Brittany at Crazy Gluten Free Cookies. Good morning, Brittany. How are you today? Good morning. I'm doing well. How are you? I'm great. Tell me about yourself and Crazy Gluten Free Cookies. Right. So... 00:29 Um, I actually just started, uh, I call it crazy GF cookies, but yes, the GF stands for gluten free. Um, and I just started it back in January, but it's kind of been like a slow start. So, but I'm going to be at a farmer's market, um, come next month in May. And so, yeah, it's super exciting journey for me because I've never really done anything with 00:56 restaurants or businesses or baking and stuff like that for at a professional level. So it's kind of a fun adventure for me just starting off slow with a cottage food bakery. Okay, so tell me how you got started. I read your About Me on your website, but I would love to have you share why you started doing this. Yeah, so I feel like when somebody asks like, oh, why are you doing the baking? They always are like, because I love to bake. 01:25 That is not me. Mm-hmm. It is quite actually totally different. I actually got into it because I see a problem in our marketplace, especially I live in a smaller town outside of the Twin Cities, like an hour outside of the Twin Cities. And so I really don't even, this is even bigger problem where I live. But there's just nothing for people who have allergies and gluten. 01:54 being one of those allergies, which a lot of people don't understand what gluten is. It's just a protein in wheat, but wheat products are all over the place. It's pretty much in everything. And so it's very difficult to eat out anywhere or to be safe anywhere. And that's my story because I didn't used to have to eat gluten-free. So I know what it's like to just go to a restaurant and order whatever you want. 02:23 But yeah, back in 2012, I was basically told, hey, you're allergic to gluten. And I was like, can't I still eat it? And I was asking the doctor that and the doctor's like, you're going to die if you keep eating it. And so I had to go gluten free and it was awful. I mean, I love my pastas and my bread and the treats and the cookies and everything. 02:52 And so for me, it was just an awful realization. And so my passion really lies with, you know, helping people who have allergies like I do, because it's like, we just don't have that many options. If we go to a restaurant, we have to always like ask a million questions. Like, do you have gluten-free on the menu? Is this gluten-free? Does it have wheat in it? Is it fried in the same fryer with everything else? Like... 03:20 You know, so it's very difficult. And I just, I saw this as like a hole in our marketplace where there's really nothing that's super safe in our area and like that's dedicated gluten free. And so I was just like, you know what? We need something. We need something in our area. Cause more and more people are finding out that they're allergic to wheat, or they're just going gluten free for just to be healthier because in general, um, most people, even if they don't have an intolerance or an allergy to wheat. 03:50 they actually do better when they're off of weight. They lose weight and they are healthier and stuff like that too. So that's really why I started it. Okay. The restaurant thing. The thing I have found if you ask the waitresses or the manager questions about what's in the food is you get one of two kinds of responses. 04:17 Either they understand why you're asking and they're really kind and they're really sweet in their response, or they're really short with you because they're like, if you need to ask, you shouldn't be eating here. You know? Yeah, exactly. And I would feel like there's also the response of they have no idea. It's not that they're necessarily short with you, they just are so confused. They just don't know what you're talking about when you say gluten. And it's like, okay, well. 04:44 it's wheat. Is there any wheat in it?" And they're like, I don't know, what is wheat? And it's like, that's basically flour. So anything that has flour in it, that's your typical flour that hasn't actually been purposely made gluten-free by picking rice flour or corn flour or something like that, is going to automatically have wheat in it. And so I try to explain it to people. And it's just, it's countless times I've tried to explain it to a waitress going like, 05:12 this is what we is, like, and I have to explain it to them. And so then, but then that makes me feel less safe because I'm like, if I'm explaining it to you and you don't know, how do I, how can I trust your response and yo

Today I'm talking with Chonnie at Independence Gardens. You can follow them 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 Chonnie at Independence Gardens. Good morning, Chonnie. Good morning. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Good. Fantastic, actually. Good. 00:26 I'm actually in Lewisville, Texas. So it's a town a little bit north of Dallas. It's kind of in a North Dallas area. Okay. I thought it was Texas, but I just wanted to make sure. All right. Well, tell me about yourself and Independence Gardens and what you guys do. So Independence Gardens is a local nonprofit that has roots in Lewisville, Texas. We've been around since 2013. And our overall mission is to provide children access to fresh food. 00:55 through nutrition-based programs. And it includes sustainability programs. I was actually just recently had an opportunity to be at EarthX at 2024, that was held in Dallas. And I spoke about some of the programs that we had, specifically our Beanstalk project, which is our hydroponic system, which is a fairly new program for us. And so really it's just an opportunity for 01:22 school communities to not only grow their own food, but to feed everyone in that school, in the heart of that school. And the program started in 2013. And I tell this story because nobody believes me. It started with a simple school lunch. And my daughter was in kindergarten at that time. And I just happened to be having lunch with her, of course, like everybody wants. 01:51 first year of their child's public school years. And I remembered, right, our school lunch. I don't know if you remember your school lunch. Mine was like the best hamburger ever, right? It was the best hamburger I ever had. And, you know, everybody said it was kind of a hamburger, but not really a hamburger because it tasted like meat, but there were some additional fillers in it that made it. It was the best thing I remember when I was growing up. 02:17 So when I had lunch with her and went through the line, she had, I remember this because she had chicken nuggets. She got her chocolate milk and it was green beans that did not look like green beans. And it was the weirdest color I'd ever seen. And I didn't really think much about it, but I should have had a warning when I went in to check in and the administrator asked me. 02:46 if I brought her something to eat. And I'm like, absolutely not. I'm having lunch with her. And she said, well, maybe next time you can bring her something from either McDonald's or Chick-fil-A. And I'm like, that's odd. So as we went through the line and she kind of, you know, I saw these green beans. It was supposed to be green, but I don't know. I've never seen this color green beans before. She kind of picked her food a little bit, drank all of her chocolate milk of course. 03:14 and basically threw about 80% of it away. I noticed that in every child around me as they threw away their food, and there was 80% of everything they had in their lunch tray they threw away. I understood why she was so hungry when she came home because she didn't eat. I left and I was checking out this administrator said, 03:42 see maybe next time you need to bring her something else. And so I left that lunch. That's when I think the mission of the organization seeded itself because I could not consciously send my child to a place that is supposed to be the organization, the people that would nourish her mind and body when we can't even. 04:09 solve the simplest things and that is what would they put in their body, right? To actually nourish their mind and get them on the path of success. And also, I couldn't believe that adults would actively say, I wouldn't eat that lunch. And then my thought is, then why are you feeding it to my child? So that's really, and I talk about her because she is going to be a senior this year, so she's graduating this year, and Independence Gardens started with her. And so that really just 04:37 I surrounded myself with like-minded individuals and having a background in marketing and in health because I always say I started my journey in this sphere of food and health when I worked for the American Heart Association. So I was a marketing manager for them and I led part of the Heart Checkmark program. I don't know if you've ever seen it. It's on the... 05:05 It's on the cheer-grows boxes and it's like a heart with a check mark on it. And so I was really plugged in with the importance of how food impacted your body. And also at that time as well, the school that she was in was 55% Title I school. So everyone and those children received free or reduced lunch. 05:33 in food deserts. So believe it or not, there is still a food desert in the US and roughly, I think back t

Today I'm talking with self-described "A-team" of Egidio and Elisa Tinti, and Ryan, and Julie at New Beginnings Farmstead. You can follow them 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. Today I'm talking to the team from New Beginnings Farmstead. Why don't you guys introduce yourselves? I'm Elisa Tinti. And I'm Julie Noble. Ryan Kuhn. And Jiddy Tinti. Okay. So now that we've done that, I have never interviewed four people in a group at the same time, so this is going to be fun. 00:27 Tell me about what you guys do at New Beginnings Farms, Ted. Are you, Alisa? Well, we are about 130 acres in upstate New York, and we purchased this farm in 2015. At the time, we were not married, and we were looking for someplace that was between both of our homes so that we could start a life together. And my husband was... 00:55 born and raised up in the mountains and I was born and raised in the city of Kingston. So we had many challenges when we bought this farm. Okay. And so what did you want the farm for? What was your plan? We just wanted a place kind of in between where I was living at the time and where she was living in the city. A true city mouse, country mouse type of situation. I grew up around bears and snakes. 01:24 farm folk and firewood and she thought not she did not. That's correct. So when we when we bought the farm, one of the first things, of course, you know, we're walking around looking at the place and it had been a dairy farm for probably over 100 years and sat vacant for about 10 years. And everything was pretty overgrown. And one of the things that I thought of right away with one of our very large barns was to have a wedding venue and. 01:55 My husband, well, at the time we weren't married, but he said out loud, who in the world would want to be married in a barn? And little did he know that a year later, he'd be getting married in a barn. But that's how we met our friend here, Ryan Coon, who is now part of our family. Okay. So what do you guys do now? You host weddings, right? Host weddings. And our main... 02:22 Agricultural production revolves around firewood and maple syrup. We have a decent size maple collection system in place. Julie signed on that way. That's how she came on. Her current position, full-time job, gives us a tremendous amount of knowledge. She brings knowledge to the farm that, short of us identifying maple trees, a lot of the maple production that we've started with was small. 02:48 We still consider ourselves small as compared to some of the other ones, but we're up to over 500 taps and our collection system is running on vacuum. Every year, the four of us go up to a conference in upstate New York and we learn more and more and more and add more and more and more. I think of the entire team, I'm the only one that wants to stop or slow down our production. 03:17 the three of them out in the woods with their hard hats on, tapping trees and having a good old time. And you can see the smiles on their faces just thinking about it. And in the Sugar Shack, it's really a Ryan show. He's the one who's got the evaporator under control. Okay, so what's Julie's background? I am a sustainability coordinator, but my background is in environmental education. So 03:43 teaching about the outdoors, getting people outdoors. And I had some, I worked on another nature center before this and was doing maple production there as well and teaching about maple. So I came into an operation that was already well run and I feel as though I brought a little bit of fun and a little bit of knowledge and some organizational skills that maybe needed to be upped a little bit here. That's true. Everything's about a checklist, check boxes, whiteboards. We are 04:13 very efficient when it comes to planning and test management. There's lots of singing and dancing and having a good time. Right, Ryan? Well, life is nothing without music. That's true. So Ryan is our sugar maker. He kind of took under his wing. So our first evaporator was really an old wood stove that we converted. Lisa and I tried to do it up in, I say the country, but about 20 minutes away from here where my family was... 04:43 born and raised and we did some maple. It was fun. She got the bug once she entered that small batch of syrup in our local county fair and won, took home the blue ribbon. And at that point she considered herself a sugar maker and wanted to increase. So we built our first evaporator, old school, took a, you know, everything's about recycle, we knew we'd use. And we took an old oil tank and lined it, put a draft system in it, researched it, talked to a bunch of people. 05:10 welded the pants together and started making maple on a very small batch system. And over the time we just outgrew it because they kept tapping trees without my knowledge. And we had way too much sap collected and not enough time

Today I'm talking with Jonathan at Woodland Worm 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. Today I'm talking with Jonathan at Woodland Worm Company. Hi, Jonathan, how are you today? Great, how are you doing? I'm good. I've been looking forward to this interview because I have not talked to anyone about earthworms before. Awesome. So tell me about yourself and Woodland Worm Company. So I am... 00:29 I am the owner of Woodland Worm Co. We were formerly Wiggle Worm Farms, but we changed the name just recently actually, because it just kind of better suits where we wanna go and the direction we wanna take the business. So the Woodland Worm Co. is a relatively new name. I am a, I like to say I'm a jack of all trades, but master of none. 00:58 I have a really varied background, none of which is actually in worm farming. I'm an accountant, diesel mechanic, drummer, you name it, I can do it, I can fix basically anything. But I found myself in a place where I didn't have anything to be passionate about two years ago. 01:27 believe it or not, I stumbled across the Facebook post from a friend of mine that's Liz out in California. And he was just talking about random odd jobs or random weird family histories. And one of the folks, one of his friends, 01:49 put up a comment basically saying, yeah, my dad used to be a worm farmer. And I didn't know that was even a thing, to be honest with you. And so he, that guy's father wrote a book with his uncle back in the 70s. And I found the book amazingly twice online and I bought it. And it showed up in the mail one day while I was at work. And my wife said, 02:19 earthworms. And yeah, and I said yes, I did. And then a month later, I had worms. And here we are now. So two years later, I'm, I built the business. And we're really, really very in its infancy right now. So it's interesting, fun, exciting, and busy. I bet. So, so tell me. 02:47 Tell me how you begin raising earthworms. 02:53 So there's, when it comes to raising worms, there's different methods that you can do, but it all really comes down to a few, several key elements, right? The earthworms that I raise and most of the industry raise are composting worms. So they live within the first six inches of the soil. 03:21 right, they're horizontal movers, they don't really go up and down, they don't burrow up and down. They burrow horizontally and they eat the dead and decaying material that's on the surface of the ground. So if you know you really just need good food, which is usually for us, we feed compost. 03:47 um finished leaf compost and a grain mix or worm chow if you will and uh plenty of moisture and really you just give them a place where they can grow and be happy and not overpopulated and the worms they do their thing. It's really not complicated but it's easy to make it complicated. Okay and then 04:14 I guess my next question is, do you have bins that you have them in or do you have them outside in the ground or how does it work? So I tried several different breeds of worms before I actually started selling. My focus with the business is I want to build soil and make the soil great in your gardens. 04:43 so we can all eat better and eat healthier. So my focus is on producing the best worm castings there are. The way of which I raise, I use a breed called African nightcrawlers. And where I'm at in the country, we have really cold winters, so they don't survive outside. So I raise them, 05:12 temperature controlled environment in my basement and they are raised in three and a half gallon buckets and I stack them about, oh, I got 60 buckets per pallet. So yeah. Wow. Okay. And you're in Pennsylvania. That's why it's cold. Yeah. All right. And then tell me about why the castings are good. If anyone doesn't know, earthworm castings are basically earthworm poop. 05:41 exactly it. It's it castings I didn't come up with the name someone did somewhere along the line. It's it's a warm fertilizer. It's just it's a soil amendment. What's good about them is think of it kind of like a probiotic for your soil. Right castings are they are living. There's organisms inside. 06:10 in those castings and that fertilizer, what you put into the soil, what happens is those worms break down all the micronutrients that create all this life in their poop and all that life is also breaking down other, it's breaking everything down in the soil. 06:38 to a point where your plants can then absorb it through their roots. So the poop is really just a vehicle if you think of it that way, of which you can infuse a lot of good things for your soil environment. All different types of microorganisms are in there that will, they just, 07:07 benefits of it far outweigh the work. Okay, so how do you collect the casting? So do you just do you just scoop out the dirt that they've lived in? Or how does it

Today I'm talking with Amy at The Minnesota Marshmallow. You can follow her on Facebook as well. I was so inspired by Amy's description of the mint cookie marshmallows that I ordered some. Fantastic as a treat and even better in my coffee! 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Amy at the Minnesota Marshmallow. Good afternoon, Amy. How are you? Doing really good. How are you? I'm good. I'm dying to know the story about you and the Minnesota Marshmallow. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for interviewing me today. 00:24 Idea originally was something that I always had wanted, uh, growing up through high school. Um, the big dream was to have a restaurant and this was kind of my niche for the, the back and have this really authentic bonfire type setting where people would come up to like a little silver bullet trailer and get some marshmallows and some hot cocoa or, you know, and just kind of enjoy some, some family space and. 00:50 you know, providing that in kind of a different setting that just isn't out there yet. And, um, I joined the military right out of high school and I've just been chasing that dream and I wanted to retire. And meanwhile, we got hit with COVID and I was sitting with a friend outside of bonfire one night and I said, you know, I know I've said it a lot, but we should have like a juicy Lucy of marshmallows. Like all these toppings should be on the inside and all warm and gooey. And she's like, you literally can't. 01:18 talk about this anymore until you start making it." I was like, well, no time like the present, I guess. I hopped in the kitchen and watched some videos trying to figure out how do you even do that. Within four weeks, I had gotten carried away and started with just a vanilla and a strawberry. Then I started doing orange. Then I started doing hot fudge mamas. 01:47 Caramel ones and just the creativity was oozing at that point with excitement and I was bringing them up to the Air Force base and handing them out to friends and I'm like, I have so many marshmallows. I don't know what to do with these. So if you don't like them, you can just throw them away. But if you do like them, like let me know or if you have a suggestion and I should change something. And so I was just peddling marshmallows everywhere I went on base because I had just had so many at that time. 02:15 Um, next thing I knew, I was getting messages from friends and coworkers and they're like, Hey, make this one again. Can I get that for the weekend? And, um, another friend was like, you should just make this like a fun side hobby. And I was like, yeah, it has been really fun. So, um, I had just graduated college and decided like, I have a new, new thing where I can like pour my energy into. And so it just kind of focused on that through 2020 and, um, at 02:44 After I started the company in August of 2020, I had Mike and Jen's hot cocoa reach out and say like, we should sit down. We want to meet you. And I'm like, me? You want to meet me? I've only been doing this for like four weeks. And, um, that was really exciting and got to sit down with them and they, I'm kind of walking in their footsteps as far as like learning how to start a business and create it. And now here we are almost four years later and 70 flavors and just having a lot of fun with it. 03:14 That's fantastic. I do understand the, you want to talk to me question because like a month ago, a publicist for an author emailed me out of the blue and was like, we'd love to be a guest on your podcast, the author. And I was like, okay. And I actually went and researched because I didn't know if it was something that was not good, if it was like spam or a trick. 03:44 And it wasn't, it was not a trick. And I interviewed the author and she's a really neat lady. So it worked out great, but I understand that you want to talk to me. Why? Yes, absolutely. That was kind of like, Oh my gosh, like you want to have like dinner with me? And I was just like, that's really cool. I was like, okay. And, um, ever since then, um, it's Dean and Amanda, they've been so, I could not ask for better mentors. Um, Dean started his. 04:13 hot cocoa company from, you know, Cottage Food Law of Minnesota, and then was able to expand and grow, and now they're all throughout the United States and Mexico, and it's so amazing to have had them in my corner from the start, just to like, run questions by, or you hit an obstacle, and you're just like, what do I do? You know? So, I was very grateful for them, and having someone to like... 04:38 you know, teach you kind of like, or guide you saying like, oh, we hit that obstacle, try this or something. Yeah, I did my homework on you. I went and looked at your website and you were, or you still are in the Air Force, is that right? Yes, yeah. My husband and I have both been in for almost 15 years now and we're both

Today I'm talking with Rob at The Wegener Farm. 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprises entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Rob at the Wegner Farm. Good morning, Rob, how are you? Good morning, Mary, I'm good. How are you doing? Good, how are things in Michigan? That's a beautiful day here in Michigan, finally. We had a little snow yesterday morning, which always sets you back mentally a bit here, but it's beautiful this morning, so. 00:29 We're loving it. Yeah, it's April. Spring is coming. It's going to get here sooner than we think. It's beautiful here today in Minnesota too. So tell me about what you guys do at the farm. Okay, so at the Waggoner Farm, we're an organic, certified organic regenerative farm. We focus really on, you know, you've heard it called probably dirt, farming the dirt. 00:57 uh... move away from the idea of uh... feeding plants and rather uh... think about feeding the food web in the in the soil itself so we've been very big since the beginning on treating treating the soil right and it'll grow the plants and uh... and they'll be great and uh... so far so good that we've been at this now this will be our fourth year uh... we started the first year on this property which was new to us 01:24 with only 10 CSA customers, just to see, and mostly, by the way, friends and family who were fairly low risk, in case it didn't work. And year two, we went to 50. Year three, we went to 120. And this year, we'll be 130 CSA members, as well as some wholesale relationships and possibly a couple of restaurants. Wow. That is, that's huge. 01:54 Um, yeah, anyone who's never run a CSA does not have any idea the work that goes into it. We did it for two years, three years, and we only had nine people at our highest number. And it's a lot of work and it's a lot of pressure because you want things to go right. Yeah, you've, uh, you're right about the pressure because basically, you know, the model. 02:22 is such that the people, you know, they've paid you and now you better deliver, you know, and deliver well or the model falls down. Sorry about the dogs. Okay. I have one too. She does the same thing. Yeah. But our CSA members are great. They're people that are like-minded about looking for quality food. 02:51 Excuse me, let me just close this. Yeah. 02:58 at looking for quality food and not being, let's say satisfied or comfortable, but with the way the food system works and the way commercial farming works. We have a lot of visitors to the farm who I think also realize that USDA organic labeling is nice, but really transparency into seeing how things work is really where it's at. 03:27 And we love to have people at the farm. We have some chickens that free range around the house. Kids love them. They're friendly, and they can feed them. And it really is an interesting, at CSA Pickup, a real interesting sense of community as people come to get their boxes every week. Yeah, we had baby bunnies two springs ago. And they were just big enough that the people who came to pick up their CSAs could hold them and pet them. 03:57 That was a big hit here. We don't do rabbits anymore. I've already talked about this a billion times, but our rabbits were stupid. They did not understand that they were supposed to make babies. So we weren't going to let them. Rabbits that didn't make babies, I didn't think that it was possible. They were broken. There's something wrong with these rabbits. So we decided that feeding them with no return was not a good investment. So we no longer have rabbits, and that's OK. You were saying feeding the dirt. So. 04:26 when you take care of the soil, the soil is fantastic. It grows fantastic food. So the soil is great. It feeds the plants. The plants are great. And then the plants feed us, which is great. Yeah, and I think this is what gets lost in the commercial food system, honestly, now. Two things, I think, make a world of difference. Actually, probably three. One is. 04:55 When you are not trying to feed plants directly with synthetically produced fertilizers, plants get what they should be in terms of all of the micro and macro nutrients that the food web creates. These vegetables are just different. They're better for you. They taste better. 05:22 We also use varieties that are not bred to be trucked from Mexico. And those varieties that are bred to be trucked from Mexico have been hybridized through the years to be tough. You know, and the result is that the flavor and the nutrition has been bred out of these plants and vegetables. And it's just unfortunate. And 05:51 I would say to anybody listening, if you're not already connected with a local farmer, get connected. What you will learn about how things are supposed to taste, and just blow your doors off. Yeah, absolutely. And I am right there with you because we used to wait and wait and wait in the summertime for the tomatoes to come

Today I'm talking with Carol at The Old Farmers Almanac about gardening by the phases of the moon, frost dates, and the history of the almanac. 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. Today I'm talking with Carol at the Old Farmer's Almanac. Hi, Carol. How are you doing today? I'm good. How are you doing, Mary? I'm great. Thank you for being here. Tell me about yourself and about what the Old Farmer's Almanac is. 00:23 Well, the Almanac is ultimately really a calendar and a calendar of the heavens. And so, you know, old farmers or new farmers tend to need calendars because we like to know what's going on and what we need to be planning ahead for. But yeah, the greatest thing about the Almanac, I think, is that it's 232 going on 233 years old. So I'm the newest editor. I'm the 14th editor. I'm the second female editor. 00:51 of the almanac in all those years. So it's quite an honor and a responsibility. But I think we just see that there's such a resurgence and an interest in all of the things that the almanac is about, whether it's gardening and farming or astronomy or folklore or home remedies, those sorts of things. People are really paying more attention to those. So it's a great place to be. 01:18 Yankee Publishing is our home publisher and I worked here 20 years ago on a different publication for Yankee Magazine. So it's a bit of a homecoming for me. I've always been a fan of the Almanac. So it's great to be here. Very nice. So can you tell me where the Almanacs, actually before we even get there, there are two farmers' Almanacs. The old farmers' Almanac is the original? Yes. 01:45 So who puts out the other one? Not that I want to give them any press, but I don't know. We don't know a lot about them either, honestly. They are out of Maine. We are out of Dublin, New Hampshire. And the farmer, not the old farmers, the other one is, I think it started in the 80s or 90s. It's not that old. I think distribution-wise, they are pretty much in New England, whereas we are... 02:13 you know, all of North America. And I think they sell about, maybe their publication is about 300,000, you know, and we sell almost 3 million. So it's a little different, you know, I think, but again, like almanacs, when we started our almanac, there was many almanacs and really ours just kind of, well, we know that the weather was more accurate and we know that we were more entertaining. That's why we stuck around. So. 02:42 Honestly, there was always almanacs. So it's really kind of great that there are more than less, because some are regional, some are really specific to a certain aspect of almanacs typically. So good competition to have, I guess. So you guys are the old farmer's almanac, and you've been around for over 200 years, you said? Yes, 1792, first year. All right. So I have a little tiny story to share about your publication. 03:12 I think that the old farmer's almanac was probably one of the first things I read when I was six years old. I think. Cool. So, yeah, my dad bought it every year because he grew a garden and he needed to know when the safe time to plant was and when the full moon was going to be and all those things that are in there. You mentioned weather. 03:40 the coming weather is going to be. Are you at liberty to share that? Of course. And so yes, that's really what has been, I think, anybody who plants things in the ground, we're always pretty obsessed with the weather. What's it going to do? And so that's true for since, really, if you think back, people that are now homesteaders like yourself or farmers or if they aren't, it's only a couple of generations back that all of us were farmers. 04:10 The weather is of key importance. And as we have weirder weather too, we get a lot of more interest in it. And so from the beginning, it's been about data. It's been about this special formula. And so our founder, Robert B. Thomas, whose birthday is coming up, he really believed in and studied astronomy and planet science and pinned his algorithms and his data. 04:40 data at that time, of course, what he had to three sciences. And sunspot, sun science, sunspot activity is really the one that I think sets us apart in terms of our long range forecasting. We also use climate science and meteorology, but it's really that idea of layering the data that we have in those three science areas, one on top of each other and looking at patterns across... 05:08 that very large data set. And of course, in those days, we do have Robert B. Thomas' hand calculations. And these days we can crunch even more data, even more data is available. But to be more nuanced about it, for sun science, the sun is in its 25th cycle that it's been recorded and these cycles are 12, 13. 05:35 more, sometimes years old, years. And so this worth the very end of the 25th cycle, and it's quite a crazy cyc

Today I'm talking with Therese at Short Stack Ranch. 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Therese at Shortstack Ranch. Good morning, Therese. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing very well. Thank you. Good. You're in California? I am. We are in Northern California, just a little bit north of Sacramento. Okay. Well, tell me about yourself in Shortstack Ranch. 00:26 So the short stack ranch, I retired from 25 years with the California Department of Corrections about two years ago, and it had always been my dream to have comfort care minis, you know? And I never really thought it would happen, but I've also been heavily involved since I was in college with Special Olympics. 00:50 And everything just kind of fell together. I was gifted two beautiful miniature horses by a wonderful woman, Sharon Mariam, who had had them both for 15 and 30 years, but she's been involved in the mini world for about 35 years. And I had asked her to mentor me and she is luckily was just trying to get out of the mini world because of age and other commitments and things like that. 01:18 So she mentored me, very special to me. So it just kind of grew. We ended up getting Kenny and Kevin, and then we got two goats that were supposedly pregnant, and they were supposed to be due any minute, and 58 days later, my one goat was not pregnant at all, and the other goat had four, which is... 01:46 incredibly unusual. You know, they only have two teats and really can only, you know, manage about two. Well, we ended up bottle feeding three of them, which is just like a newborn baby every three hours. Bottle feeding those guys. And then in that process, we got kind of every a whole bunch of stuff happened at once. Kevin suffered a pretty bad. 02:15 well, a very bad injury. He had fallen and he suffered a spinal cord injury to his neck. And we did not think that he would make it. He did not stand for almost 10 days. He was completely paralyzed from the neck down. And he was such a fighter. Limus Basin Medical Equine Facility was amazing because he was so little. He was under 200 pounds. We could 02:45 It took us about, he got out of the intensive care about 58 days later and was walking with a limp, but we worked on his physical therapy. And in the meantime, we ended up getting two donkeys from a kill pen that were very badly neglected, could barely walk, one had one eye. So that was Bailey and Baxter. 03:14 And then we had heard about a gentleman who had passed away and left five minis behind with nobody to take them. And over the course of the next two months, we ended up getting four of those. One had passed while it was still at the sanctuary. And so that was Sophia and Rose. And goodness gracious, I'm kind of spacing out. Chandler. 03:41 his, which we changed his name to Wyatt and Jesse. So we had those four. Yes. And so we now had this zoo basically. And we also have two great Danes that are very, very large, a silver lab that was rescued and a cat that came with the house that we rent. Very nice. That's the short back ranch 04:11 We sadly did end up losing Kevin. He just succumbed to his injuries. Just wasn't strong enough a couple months ago. And Wyatt, who was 32, also passed. But they both had wonderful end of life here with all of their buddies around. And we've had, you know, I have friends and family and just people that I know and my Special Olympic athletes come by and 04:41 Everybody loves on them. They're just incredible. We've taken some of them to memory care facilities. I'm learning how to do that. It's a process. Everything is every day is a learning process. A couple of them starred in a in a manger scene at one of the local churches and were part of a play. So it's been it's been crazy. 05:10 Not at all what I had thought would happen when I ventured into this. You know, we, we, it is a financial burden, that's for sure. But it is one that, you know, I look at my life and I'm like, Oh my gosh, this, it couldn't be any better. You know, it's just happy. I have, I have so many questions. 05:36 So is it, are you registered as a 501c3 nonprofit or how are you doing that? I am working on that. I'm not super good with that kind of stuff. I'm that likes hanging out with the horses and doesn't like paperwork, I'll admit it. But we are in the process of doing that. 05:59 It is, we kind of had to take a break. We had some pretty bad storms out here and it was about a month after we finished building everything, my poor husband built everything. We had a really bad storm of hurricane level winds and it took away all of our barns and all of our fencing. So we are literally in the process, if anybody's been following us on Facebook and Instagram of rebuilding. And it's, you know, everything happens for a reason. We've met so many wonderful people along the way. 06:29 We did have a friend of mine set up

Today I'm talking with Brandy at Turnbull Clan Homestead. 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Brandy at Turnbull Clan Homestead. Good morning, Brandy. How are you? I am doing good, Mary. How are you? I'm great. I'm so curious about your place because I looked at your Facebook page and there's lots about bees. So I'm assuming that honeybees are your main thing that you do? 00:28 Yes, ma'am. So long story short, my husband is active duty military. We were stationed out in Hawaii. And in 2020, during the height of COVID, we ended up buying our home sight unseen. And we got very lucky, bought the house and it was big enough that we were able to do all of the things. So being very pregnant at the time, I got home and started getting to work. 00:56 started clearing off land. We've got now honey bees up until I got bit by a tick and contracted alpagel. We had meat rabbits and we have a greenhouse going up right now. And then we've also got a bunch of like bushes and plants and things like that. Rather than invasive species that were planted here, I went through and I dug everything up. 01:23 and I planted more native species like elderberry and blueberries, the blackberries and raspberries and strawberries and things. And you're in Maryland, right? Yes, ma'am. I am in the heart of Southern Maryland. Okay. I thought so. Blueberries. I miss blueberries. I grew up in Maine. Blueberries grew all over my parents one acre property. So when blueberries were in, we were eating blueberries every day for weeks on end. Yes, ma'am. 01:51 Yeah, kind of miss it. We're too far south in Minnesota where I live to have them grow. We've tried. We've tried buying blueberry plants and they just don't do well at all. Okay, so were you military as well? I was. I did 12 years in the service before I got back from my last appointment and I was a little bit too beat up to continue to serve. So I was medically separated. Uh-huh. 02:18 Well, thank you for your service. My stepson was a US Marine for eight years. And he says once a Marine, always a Marine. So I guess he's still a Marine, but he is no longer active duty. He is, he is always a Marine. Once a Marine, always a Marine is correct. Yep. So, okay. So I also saw something about Mission Believe on or Be Leave on your Facebook page. And I really wanna know what that's about cause I hadn't heard of it. 02:48 So Mission Believe is a nonprofit up in Taney Town, Maryland, and their whole focus is offering different modes of therapies to like military first, military veterans and first responders, police officers and the like. And their whole premise is bee therapy. There's a lot of things that can be said about working with bees. 03:15 there have been studies done to show that the vibrations that they create when they're buzzing is actually calming for like your neural cortex and can actually bring you down out of like panic attacks and anxiety attacks and things like that and help with like PTSD and coping mechanisms and that the vibrations themselves can actually be healing on a deeper level than we ever thought. I know personally for myself 03:45 Bee stings actually help with my arthritis. And there's a lot of information right now that's been going around and a lot of research that's been done to support bee venom therapy for chronic pain sufferers like myself. And what they do is they set first responders, military veterans, whoever has served our community up with a mentor and allows them to work with that mentor for a year learning about bees. 04:14 basic husbandry and then at the end of that season, their mentor will actually gift them their first hive of bees at no cost to the veteran. That is amazing. I love that. I had no idea such a thing existed. I had no idea until I got out here and it's been amazing. I actually raise honey bees for them and go out and catch swarms whenever the opportunity arises and then I donate the bees back to them. 04:43 Okay, so it's mission BEE as in A B leave. So it's BEE leave, but it's BEE leave. Is it national or is it just local to you? It's stationed here local to me. I believe that they are trying to get a larger footprint. There are several other operations that are similar to them in other parts of the country. I don't know if they have grown big enough to operate nationwide, but they are definitely working on it. 05:11 That's fabulous. I hope that they get it to be nationwide because that would help so many people. It probably would not help me because bees raise my anxiety. I'm still mildly afraid of anything that stings. So for me, it would just raise my anxiety, but I also don't have PTSD and I'm not former military and I'm not former law enforcement or fire department or anything. So, so yay, I'm glad that the bees have a different job than just making honey. That's fantastic. 05:41 Yes ma'am, that they

Today I'm talking with Jackie at Acres Away. 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Jackie at Acres Away. Good afternoon, Jackie, how are you? Good afternoon, good, how are you doing? Good, so tell me about yourself and what you guys do at Acres Away. So we're just kind of a family hobby farm. My husband and I have always wanted animals. I grew up with animals, he did too. 00:27 And when we had kids and moved to the country, we decided we were gonna, that's what we were going to do. So we bought, um, a house with 10 acres and a barn. And first thing we got was the horses. I grew up with horses, so that was a mandatory, um, and we just kind of expanded from there, had three daughters, and now we've got, um, just about everything you could have on a farm. We've had the horses, we've had pigs, all the birds, turkeys, chickens, ducks, quails. Um. 00:57 goats, we have cows, and I also raise rabbits. Very nice, you have the whole menagerie. The whole thing, I think the only thing we haven't had are alpacas and sheep. And are you interested in doing those or is that just stuff you haven't done? Maybe the alpacas, I do like to crochet, so it would be neat to learn how to spin their fur, their wool, and make my own yarn. 01:24 Same with the sheep, but I haven't heard from some friends that have sheep. I've heard they can be kind of temperamental. So I think for now we'll stick with what we've got and figured, you know, if we don't like something, we'll move on to a new animal. Yeah, that's what we did. We tried doing rabbits and it did not work out very well. So we did that for a year and then decided it really wasn't for us. Yeah. Yeah. I figure you got to try it. You know, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but you got to give it a shot. Yeah. It's funny in the over 01:54 50 interviews I've done since the end of August, the word crochet has not come up and I'm kind of surprised because I like to crochet much better than I like to knit. I hate the sound of knitting needles clicking. And so that's interesting that the word crochet has not come up. That's it's something my aunt, I started crocheting when my aunt was crocheting. I was pregnant with my first daughter. So this would have been 02:22 15 years ago, almost 15 years ago now. And I thought, well, if I can make some cute baby stuff, blankets and whatnot, and then it'd be a good thing to give as gifts, and it kind of took up my time because at the time I was able to stay at home, my husband was full-time in the army, so I was basically at home kind of twiddling my thumbs. And I thought, well, I can learn how to do this, and I'll make stuff, and I've made stuff for friends and sold a little bit, and it's kind of gone by the wayside. 02:48 my husband retired from the army and then I went to work so once I went to work extra time for stuff like that with the animals kind of went away but once in a while I'll still pick up and you know make somebody a hat or make some mittens or a baby blanket if I've got a friend that's having a baby or family so yeah I definitely I could never get quite the hang of knitting my grandmother uh... was she knitted everything she would make hundreds of hats and mittens for 03:14 like local hospitals and churches and things, but I never quite got the hang of the knitting. The crocheting is much easier for me. Yes, I agree. I tried knitting when I was a kid, like maybe 10 years old, because my mom knit, and I could never understand the knit one, purl two thing. I always messed it up. Yep. And with crocheting, once you have it down, once you have the basic stitches down, 03:42 It's really simple and I think it's a great thing to do in the wintertime when it's cold outside and it's dark outside. Yep. I got into it because my kids were small and they would lose their scarves. Yep. And I was like, you know, I could probably just crochet them scarves and that way they have extras when they lose the ones they have. And then I can just make more as they lose those too. And it worked out great. Yep. You always have some extra. 04:09 Yep, and they were little kids, so they loved all of the crazy variegated yarn colors. Mm-hmm, yep. So that made it fun. 04:19 So I just I want to hit on crochet because I hadn't even thought about it until you mentioned it. Okay, so to support your hobby farm, do you guys sell anything that you produce? Not really. I wish we could. It's but it being we're in New York State and they have a lot of regulations about selling meat and and being like USDA certified and 04:47 Even if you're an animal breeder, there's things I was just reading actually yesterday about having some kind of domestic animal permit and the taxes and things. It's really complicated. If I hooked up with somebody who's already doing it, maybe it would be less complicated, but I haven't really found anybody local

Today I'm talking with Katy at Olde Skye Farms. You can follow them 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. Today I'm talking with Katie at Old Sky Farms. Good morning, Katy. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm great. Tell me about yourself and Old Sky Farms because I know you have a lot going on right now. We do have a lot going on, but I feel like we're just getting started and don't know where to start, but we're starting. 00:29 Yup. So we have, we moved from Florida almost two years ago to North Carolina. So we went from like 0.26 acres to 23. Nice. And it's been a lot of cleanup and fixing structures and getting things ready for livestock and animals and all of those sorts of things. But we're just now getting into agritourism. Yeah. 00:58 and figuring out how to make that work for us on the farm. We just had our first big event, which was an Easter egg hunt, and that turned out pretty good. We have currently nine Nigerian dwarf goats. Three of them are, well, they're kind of babies. They're almost like teenagers now. And about 30 something. 01:25 adult chickens and then of course it's chick season so we have probably like 20 chicks right now. And the next thing we're adding are Highland cows in May which we're really excited about. How many? Two babies so they're half siblings. Fun. Yeah we're really looking forward to that and the experiences that we could you know open up to people with them. 01:53 Sure. Agrotourism is basically using what you have at your farm to have people come in and see how the farm works or having events at the farm. Yes? Yes. Yeah, exactly. We're still new to it too, but I did join. North Carolina has something called the Agrotourism Networking Association. 02:21 So it's basically farms from all over the state that do all sorts of things like hay rides you pick or just come visit the farm for camp or field trips, things like that. The fun stuff. Yeah, the fun stuff. Okay. Yeah, and that's been a really good resource, especially just starting out. And they had their annual conference in February. And one of the main things learning was just like, 02:51 There can be so many farms, but a family can visit each farm a different weekend and see something like experience something different completely. And just that there's room enough for everybody to succeed. Yeah. Okay, so I know what you were doing this morning because you told me in messages and I saw on Facebook, but can you tell the listeners what you and your husband were up to this morning? Yeah. So we were working on. 03:19 converting what was cropland into pasture. So my husband spent all week using a chain drag in our UTV because we don't have a tractor yet to prep the soil. And this morning we were seeding it also with our UTV and then a hand spreader. So it's going to be a long day. Yeah, so what time were you guys up and at them to do this this morning? Well, I have a 03:46 almost two-year-old daughter. So once my mom came to watch her, we went out. So probably, I mean, we were up around six, but probably got out there around eight. Okay. The reason I ask is because farming and homesteading and ranching, whatever term you want to use, is real work. It's not just, oh, yay, we're having baby cows or we're getting baby cows or, oh, the chicks are cute. 04:12 It's a lot of work when you're doing it. It is a lot of work and yeah, I'm just very thankful for my husband too because it would just be a lot harder. So those that are doing it by themselves, I give them a lot of props. Yeah, I'm not doing it by myself. My husband and my 22-year-old son right this second are outside putting in the, I don't know what they're called. They're like pavers, but they're actually tall and they have an X in the top so that 04:42 put things in that X to make a foundation. Oh, okay, yeah. The wood goes into the Xs and they're beginning the build on our heated greenhouse. I'm so excited. That is exciting. I had listened to one of your previous ones and I heard that you got a grant, which we're also working to try and get a grant for a hoop house to do producing stuff. 05:05 Yep. And hoop houses are great, but I really, really, really wanted a solid greenhouse, if that makes sense. Because we've lost one hoop house to the wind and I was just like, I can't watch another one blow over. I will just cry. And so when I saw that there was a grant available and I told my husband about it, he was like, you should apply for that. Yeah, I think that's awesome. I said, okay, I'm going to apply for it. I didn't have a hope in hell. 05:33 of getting it. I didn't think that we were ready. And apparently they did think we were ready. So they're starting the build today and they were supposed to start it a month ago, but then we got snow. So my husband was like, we're going to be hitting the starting the greenho

Today I'm talking with Lisa at Homesteading and Hungry. You can follow her 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. Today I'm talking with Lisa at Homesteading in Hungary. Good morning, Lisa, how are you? Good morning, I'm doing well, how about you? I'm great, we have another sunny morning here. I think it's gonna rain tonight, but right now it's beautiful. So tell me about yourself and Homesteading and Hungry. So. 00:29 We just got into homesteading. I mean, I guess it's going on three and a half years now. So I feel it's gone so fast. I feel like we just started, but really we've been doing it for a little bit now. But we first got into homesteading because my husband called me and said, hey, Lise, I bought a farm. Yay. So I decided to make my entire personality. 00:59 And homesteading and Hungry came about because we are a military family. And I was a food blogger and I blogged on my site at the time was called the crunchy sailors wife. And so I would share my recipes there and, you know, just a little bit about our military life. And then when we, I found out we were moving to a farm, I was like, okay, I'm just going to really bloom where I'm planted and embrace this. And so. 01:28 I changed our name to Homesteading and Hungry and started cataloging our adventures there. I love the name. Homesteading and Hungry just made me laugh when I saw it. I was like, that is such a great title. So what do you do? What do you guys do where you are? So we are in the Midlands of South Carolina and we started off with chickens as many do. 01:55 I'd never had a garden before, so we just got started with chickens and gardening. I used to always say that I had a black thumb, and now if I hear anyone say that, I'm like, no, no, no. You don't have a black thumb. You have a green thumb. You just have to cultivate it. You have to find it, but you can do this. I love encouraging people who are like, oh no, I can't do it. One of my favorite things is to get local friends and be like, let's go get you your first plants and get your garden started. 02:21 And I'm still very much a beginning gardener, but I really, really love it. Um, but so we started with chickens and then, um, that really, you know, we're bad at chicken math, so that's really, really fast. Yep. Um, and now we've got goats, we've got chickens, turkeys, goats. We got started with cattle. 02:46 And we thought chicken math was bad, but calculus is a whole nother thing. And so, calculus, calculus. Yes. That, so now we have 11 cows. Oh, wow. And we raise both dairy and beef cows. And we have, I think I said goats, so goats, cows, chickens, turkeys. And we've got a beautiful, sweet, loving livestock guardian dog named Chester. 03:15 And then we've got the worst homesteading dog ever. And his name is Deoshi. Okay, why is he the worst? He's so bad. So if anybody follows me anywhere on social media, they've seen my posts like free dog. I'll put his, you know, I'll just put free dog up there cause he just drives me up the wall. He's a hound. And we had him before we had a homestead. So because he's a hound, he wants to chase everything. He wants to bark at everything. And so... 03:45 He is just like very, very, very obnoxious when it comes to being a homestead dog. And he also loves to just make us crazy. He likes to steal things off the counter. He's a professional counter surfer. He likes to, anything that I'm working on, whether it's inside or outside, he comes, he steals it, he runs away, he's obnoxious, but we love him. 04:10 He's having a hard time growing where he's been planted, I think. Oh my gosh, he is. Yeah. Okay, so back to the black thumb thing. Yes. And when people say, I can't. To me, when I hear I can't, I hear I won't. And if you say I can't, you haven't tried yet. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, well, either that or they've tried and then like not, you know, tried like once. 04:39 and got discouraged and felt bad because they killed the plant and they're just like, I can't do it. So yeah, I agree. Definitely either never tried or just tried once or twice and then gave up when, if they keep going, they'll get it. Yeah. And sometimes they don't. I keep trying to make yeast bread and I kill the yeast every 05:09 is the one who makes the yeast breads, because he just has the magic touch with it. And so for me, I can't do yeast breads, is actually I won't try it again right now. So sometimes I can't, translates to I won't, because I don't really want to do it. Yeah. And other times I can't is I won't, because people are afraid to try. And I hate flying. 05:36 Like I will never be on an airplane again in my life if I can help it. And I have tried, I've been on a plane like three times in my life and I hate it. I cannot get past the anxiety. So when I say I can't fly, I mean, I absolutely will not fly. So, so it's just the way th

Today I'm talking with Beth at Twin Creek Gardens, CSA. 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Beth at Twin Creek Garden CSA. Good morning, Beth. How are you today? Good morning. In this beautiful snowy weather, I am wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, have you guys not had a lot of snow this winter? No, it was crazy. Everything was awake. My gardens were beginning to bud, and now we just got a pile, I think almost 17. 00:29 18 inches in the last three days. So I'm a little worried about my lilacs and my other little bushes out there, my blueberries, but hopefully they'll be protected and they'll come through it anyway. This is the first... You're in Superior? Yeah, we're south of Superior, about 10 miles. This is the first big snow we've had all year. Yeah, it feels like Christmas. 00:56 Yeah, we were supposed to get six inches to a foot in this same storm that you guys are getting in Wisconsin. And we ended up with only like a couple inches here. Oh. So I don't know what happened to our Christmas snowstorm. It didn't happen. I'm kind of glad because we were in the same boat as you. Our maple tree has started to flower out and we had onion sprouting and stuff. So I don't know. 01:24 Anyway, tell me about yourself and Twin Creek Gardens, CSA. Well, this is kind of amazing because this is a long dream, long time dream come true in a short amount of time. I actually, for 34 years, was a classroom teacher and a reading specialist in particular. And in working with kids and with literacy and with writing and reading, I always had, you know, 01:54 the desire to have them learn more about who they are as people through what they were reading and writing, not just the ability to read and write. And so my passion for gardening and my love for people and helping the world become a better place, my son calls me the biggest liberal hippie in the world, which I wear as a badge of honor, by the way. You know, and so I've always had this desire to. 02:24 help others find their goal, or reach their goals and find their path to the healthiest life, the best life that they could have. And so I've been having kids listen to podcasts and watch videos in middle school and then write about how that affects them in their thinking and their process of who they wanna become and that kind of thing. And so CSAs have been... 02:51 Um, not very prevalent up here, but I love the idea because my father has always had a garden when I was young, I grew up digging in the dirt. My favorite thing of, of gardening was always the, the digging of the potatoes in October because I knew we were putting the garden to bed then, you know? And so, um, you know, I grew up south of Superior here, just about five miles from where I live right now. And my sweet husband grew up about. 03:19 mile and a half from this house, and we grew up together. We were 10 when we met, and we both loved gardens, we both loved horses, and nature, and just being, we're both country kids, let's put it that way. And we grew up and went our separate ways when you go to school in Superior. If you go to the Catholic school, you kind of lose touch with your friends from the country school. 03:44 And at least that's how it was. And so he went one way, I went the other. And then we met back at high school. We hardly had any friends in common, so we kind of went our separate paths. But he and his first wife loved gardening as well and raised three children in various country homes doing gardening and raising horses. And they had cows for a while. And so very much a farm family. 04:14 after college moved down to the Green Bay, Manitowoc area where I married and had my son. And then when my marriage fell apart, I came running home to the northern woods of Wisconsin. And my parents were still here in Paterson Park at that time. And so cable is where I landed because the school that I found that needed me was Drummond. 04:44 which all these sweet little towns up here are just, it's like going back in time. It's such a beautiful, fresh air. I'll never forget when I came home to do the interview in Drummond and I got out of the car, the air smelled different. I left Green Bay and the big city area, I came home and the trees up here, the air up here, I knew I had to come home. 05:13 We had a kind of randomly meandering here, but we had a school garden at Drummond that I helped organize and participate in. It was actually a high tunnel. And so I fell in love with that kind of gardening because it extended our season so nicely. And so that's kind of building blocks. My cable house had a third of an acre right in town. 05:42 I had a ring of cedar trees around my yard and so gardening in ground was really not possible. The cedar trees had taken over the ground and so it was more of a forest floor. So I learned to garden in raised beds and also in a lot of pots and gr

Today I'm talking with Brie at Honeycutt Hill Farms. You can also follow them 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. Today I'm talking with Brie at Honeycutt Hill Farms. Good morning, Brie. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm great. Tell me about yourself and Honeycutt Hill Farms LLC. Yeah. Well, Honeycutt Hill Farms started in 2022 when we moved across country from Oregon to Tennessee. 00:30 So we kind of moved up into the mountains and had a relative idea of what we wanted to do, what we wanted to provide the community. And we've just been kind of, I guess just moving forward ever since. We do registered kinder goats, poultry and soap. So we make the soap from the goat milk. So that's kind of what our niche has been lately. Nice, what made you go to Tennessee? 00:59 My husband's from North Carolina, so it was a little bit closer to his family and where we were at the time, especially around the 2020, you know, stuff, it was just, it got really expensive, a little, a little crazy at times. And then we didn't really have a lot of family there. So nothing was really holding us there. And actually, my neighbor, we were in the army together and I've known him for about 12 or 13 years. 01:27 He had told me that his neighbor was putting his property up for sale. And so we drove out here, we looked at it, we put in escrow and now we're here. So, um, it was definitely a bit cheaper for us to live and a little bit closer to more family. So it sounds like it was right place, right time. It was. So I think it was definitely, um, what you want to call it, whether it was divine intervention or, um, 01:53 You know, if you manifested it, whatever you want to call it, it was definitely what we needed at the time we needed it. And it just kind of all fell into place. Yeah, we had that happen back in 2020 as well. That's why we now live where we live instead of where we used to live, because we were tired of being in town. So, yeah, like I said, it just kind of got crazy. Like I said, we had moved there. My husband and I met in the army. 02:21 I had gotten out and I was waiting for him to finish his contract and he was trying to finish his bachelor's degree where we were. And that all was fine, but then like I said, once 2020 hit, things just shut down or skyrocketed and we were, you know, starting our family. You know, my son was born in 2016, my daughter in 18, and it just got wild and it just, it wasn't meshing with our way of life anymore. 02:49 Yeah, it's really crazy how COVID changed so many people's lives in so many different ways. Yes, it definitely did. So, you know, whatever side of the fence people were on, I really had no problem with. But it definitely divided people. And, you know, it just really, it was an intense time. And it really, you know, took an emotional toll and a financial toll on a lot of families. 03:17 But it really kind of opened our eyes to say, you know, we really need, you know, more family. We need more community involvement. We need, you know, to be around more like-minded people. And it just wasn't happening where we were. Yeah. And it opened a lot of eyes to the fact that we all needed to be just a little bit more self-sufficient than we were, I think. Yes. Yes, definitely. Yeah. So the first part of the farm was mainly so that we could survive as a family if something happened. 03:46 You know, so I think chickens are the gateway to goats and goats to cows and cows to horses. But first and foremost, it was just making sure that we were self-sufficient enough to survive and help our neighbors and that kind of thing. And so we noticed a need in the community for other things, different types of chickens or meat birds or goat milk soap or a different kind of goat that, we noticed a lot of people moving here as well. 04:15 but they needed something more dual purpose so that they could be self-sufficient. Yeah, so tell, okay, I've talked a lot with a lot of people about goats, but I have not heard about kinder goats yet. So explain to me what kinder goats are. Yeah, so kinder goats happened from a pygmy buck and a Nubian doe. And so when you have a pygmy buck, a registered pygmy buck and a registered Nubian doe, together they make a kinder goat. 04:42 And the kinder is just a dual purpose goat. It is a meat goat and a milk goat. They don't get really tall or really like, you know, overbearing like a boar goat, you know, so they're not really intimidating, but they're good for both. So, you know, if you have a lot of bucks and they're meaty, then you know, you at least you're gonna get something good out of them. But you also, you know, would want enough milk and dairy for at least your family or maybe you and your neighbors. And so they're just a dual purpose goat. They get about... 05:11 I would say no more than maybe 130 140 on the big end and They're easy to mana

Today I'm talking with Sam at Thistle Dew Acres. You can also follow her 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. Today I'm talking with Sam. This'll do acres. Good morning, Sam. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good. Yeah, I actually saw snowflakes. I know, I'm not ready for it. I think the fall spring came and went. Oh, go ahead. Yep, I was just gonna say that. Yep. 00:26 It's you're only half an hour away from me. So you know what this winter has been like in Minnesota. So yes, yes. It's been wild. Yeah. It's been crazy. Um, our, our supplies are being delivered today for our reheated greenhouse that we're going to be building. Oh, that's exciting. So of course they picked the day it's going to snow to bring it. Yep. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do. 00:52 Yeah. Um, so, um, I live, um, on seven and a half acres right now with my husband and our two kiddos. And, um, I live in Jordan, Minnesota. And right now I made the transition to be full time. Um, we call it 10 99 or self-employed. Um, I have a couple of businesses that one is called, um, doll creations. And that's more of like eco-friendly. 01:21 nature-inspired items, things like fabric paper towels or on paper towels as some people call them, crocheting dishcloths, that type of thing. And then I started up Thistle Dew Acres and that's really focused on the homestead that we have. And that one is a food cottage license that I recently got, so I'm making breads and things like that, along with selling our eggs. We have chickens and ducks. 01:50 Then I also have a podcast as well. And that one is called Minnesota Crunchy. So that one's kind of similar to yours. The big difference is I just kind of talk about whatever I feel like talking about as it relates to either holistic approaches to life or foraging, all that fun stuff. So anything that someone might deem crunchy, which is the new word, or we always call it crunchy granola. 02:21 Um, so that's kind of where I go with that. I'm trying to figure out just a work life balance right now with it all. So that's where I'm at right now. But in terms of our homestead, um, for this'll do acres last night, we celebrated the spring equinox by planting our seeds so that we can get them started for our garden this summer. Yeah. My husband planted seeds this past weekend and my kitchen table is covered now with seed starters. 02:50 Yep. Yep. Um, we don't have a lot of great lighting in our house. It was, it's a 1970s house and they just, this, this house just the floor plan and everything is very weird. So I went and got some shelving and we have grow lights now. So I feel really official, finally like doing something like that. So we'll see how this goes for me. Yeah. Um, we have a. 03:16 big long grow light that we hang from our light fixture over our kitchen table. Oh, and the light itself is pink. I didn't know when I ordered it, but it would be pink. So when I get up at four or five in the morning and come downstairs and pop that on, there's windows right behind our kitchen table. And I'm like, you know, 03:36 a sheriff or a police officer is going to drive by and be like, are they growing pot in that house? Right? Well, and now it's legal, so they won't even care anymore. Yeah, it's just funny. And the paint is so creepy. It makes my kitchen look like it has alien lights in it. That's what mine is. It's supposed to be changing, but of course, when I was unpacking everything, I misplaced the remote to change the colors. So it's also, we have a nice bright pink light in our room too. Yeah, it's very bizarre. 04:03 But I'm getting used to it every spring. It's things light in my kitchen for eight weeks. Yep. So yeah. Yeah. So does thistle, thistle, is it thistle dew? Yes. Thistle dew, like a thistle in the forest, and then dew like a dew drop. So we're very much so a honey type people. So we were looking up names. And of course, I had a list of 15 different names. 04:33 start throwing them at my husband and he looks at me and he says, how about this'll do? And I'm like, this will do? And he's like, no, this'll do. And I'm like, I kind of like it. So that's what we did. Yep. We thought about naming our place last resort acres. Oh, I like that too. But we didn't. We kept with the A tiny homestead name. I cannot talk this morning. I'm sorry. It's okay. 05:02 dip thongs today. Okay, so does Thistle Do Acres have a Facebook page or anything yet? Yes, it does. It has a Facebook page. I will slowly end up becoming a person that has TikTok. I have a TikTok for Thistle Do. I have not posted anything yet. So it will have TikTok, Instagram, and it does have a Facebook page. It's Thistle Do Acres. 05:32 and the picture is a thistle. And then I also have my food cottage up in ready for ordering for that as well. And that's through Cast Iron, but the link is also on my

Today I'm talking with Stephanie at Minnesota From Scratch, author of Small-Scale Homesteading: A Sustainable Guide to Gardening, Keeping Chickens, Maple Sugaring, Preserving the Harvest, and More. You can follow her 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. Today I'm talking with Stephanie at Minnesota From Scratch. Good morning, Stephanie. How are you today? I'm good. How are you? I'm great. I am so excited to talk with you because I have wanted to write a book like you've written for years and I do not have the patience for it. So I'm so happy you wrote a book. Tell me about yourself and Minnesota From Scratch. 00:30 Alright, well I'm Stephanie Thurow. I have written four books. Three of them are food preservation cookbooks, mostly about water bath canning and fermentation. And then the fourth book that came out a year ago today, actually, I co-authored with a friend, Michelle Bruhn, and it's called Small Scale Homesteading. And I'm a master food preserver, master gardener with Hunnibin County. I teach food preservation classes and heirloom skill classes around the Twin Cities. 01:00 And yeah, I live in the suburbs of Minneapolis and we grow a bunch of food in our front and backyards and I have a small flock of chickens. And we just do whatever we can do from our little piece of land here in the suburbs. Awesome. So your book-aversary is today, March 14th, Pi Day. And I don't always release the... 01:28 podcast in chronological order. So I'm just saying March 14th is when we recorded this. So it is your book-a-versary. Happy book-a-versary. Thank you. Yeah, how exciting. I did not get a copy of the book, but I did go look at your listing on Amazon and looked at the look inside part so I could read some of it. And it's such a great idea to share how 01:58 we can homestead on a small scale. Yeah, thank you. That's, that's how the book idea was born. Um, my coauthor, Michelle Bruhn, she lives in white Bear Lake and I'm in Richfield and we met on Instagram a long time ago, kind of bonding over the things we both do from our homes. And so I'm on an eighth of an acre, but that includes my house, my garage, my driveway. 02:21 You know, people that don't know us in person think we have acres of land based on our photos and like our production and all we do. So yeah, that's what's in the book. We teach everybody to do what we do and how we do it. And we have, you know, varying methods for much of what we do. So it's kind of fun. The feedback has been good that people like these alternate perspectives and methods. You know, we have the same outcome, but we're doing it completely different ways. And you know, that's one big message is that there's no right way to do this. 02:50 It's whatever works for you and whatever you actually enjoy doing. That's what you should focus on. 03:00 Yeah, and I, okay, I don't want to alienate people who aren't doing any kind of homesteading because you don't have to do this. It's, it's not a requirement as a human to grow your own food or cook your own food or raise animals in 2024. It used to be, it used to be a requirement that we 03:25 We're nomads and we would travel the earth and we would eat what we could find to survive. But that's not the world we live in now. Having said that, I'm a huge proponent of growing your own food and cooking your own food and raising animals and trying to be part of nature in some way. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it was never a decision to like do this. It's something that happened naturally over 20 years. 03:55 started with canning. And, you know, it was like, well, now we do this, let's try this. Oh, let's add this on. And it's literally been 20 years of growing. And yeah, absolutely, people don't have to feel like they need to do it. And we're so lucky in Minnesota, we have farmers markets year round and that provide us with, you know, everything we need. So we're so lucky in that way. 04:23 Yeah, and I'm real thankful for the people that go to farmers markets to get local food because we sell at the farmers market in Lesor in the summer. So that helps our bottom line, but we also feel like we're helping our community. So it should be a symbiotic relationship between the grower and the buyer. 04:45 sure. And, you know, people oftentimes can't grow enough at, you know, in their residential home like we have. Like there's no way I could grow enough pickling cucumbers or sometimes I have grown enough tomatoes, but that only happened one year, you know, so we need our farmers. Yeah, absolutely. We did the same thing that you are doing for a long time, for 20 years. We had a tenth of an acre lot. 05:13 with a house and a four car garage on it. And we learned to grow our produce up instead of out, and that gave us more room. Yeah. And we had backyard chickens. We had four chickens for a while. Now we have 18, because we

Today I'm talking with Brittany at The Green Shack. You can also follow them 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. Today I'm talking with Brittany at the Green Shack. Good morning, Brittany. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm great. Um, tell me about yourself and the Green Shack. So I am, um, a horticulturist and we started the Green Shack to do, um, landscaping and things. 00:29 Um, and then I found out that I had rheumatoid arthritis and decided that landscaping was probably not a good idea. Yep. We pivoted and are doing more of a hobby arts farm. Um, but we do lots of crafts and birthday parties and, uh, we've got some animals. We've got goats and chickens and ducks and the rabbit. 00:58 and bees and I host Girl Scouts and 4-H and more of a community event kind of thing than landscaping, yes. So you're doing everything. Yeah, a little bit of all of it. Very nice. So I have a question about you being a horticulturalist. Yeah. My former neighbor was too credit shy of being a horticulturalist, like she went to school for it. 01:27 She's my age, she's 54, I think she might be 55 now. And she was saying that she got a lot of pushback from the males in the industry telling her that women didn't do well as horticulturalists. And granted my neighbor was a little tiny lady, she's like 5'5 and maybe 100 pounds spoken with. Did you get any pushback? Because I'm assuming you're not 55. 01:58 So it was a different time. Not 55. I went to school when I was about 30. I did not have any pushback because my teacher was a woman. Nice. And she had been in the industry for 25, 30 years. 02:17 but I didn't feel any kickback from her, I guess. There are... 02:26 There's always men out there that feel that women can't do the things men can or surprised when a woman can do the things men can do. Um, so there have been a couple of boomers that have stated like, wow, you can drive a Bobcat and, oh, you hooked that trailer on yourself. Or like careful that's heavy and it's a 50 pound bag of feed and I throw it over my shoulder and walk away. Um, yeah. Yeah. 02:55 So there's just, there's comments like that, that I think as a woman, we're always going to get. As far as like the science wise, I haven't had any, I haven't had any pushback or weird comments about that. I think, I'm not sure when your friend went to school. I'm assuming it was like right after high school and to college. And I mean, 30, 40 years between that and now. 03:25 there's been a lot more acceptance of women in the science fields. Yeah, I think it was probably a generational thing. Absolutely. 03:37 And I hate to put boomers down, but that's kind of their mentality is more of women are supposed to be in the home and doing cooking and cleaning and stuff. Right. That's just how they grew up and I get it, but we're not there anymore. So no, thank goodness. We're not there anymore. In defense of boomers, my, my parents are boomers and my, my dad, because obviously he's male, um, was very, very pro. 04:06 Go do the thing you want to do with me. Yeah. So, so it's not all of them, but just like the generation before my parents generation, the men tended to be very quiet. They didn't, they weren't very social and they weren't real good about expressing feelings. So we've come a long way, baby. We have. Yes. Okay. So I was reading your story on your website and 04:34 I love how this came about. Can you share about the beginning to now? I guess which part of the beginning do you want me to talk about? Whatever the beginning was on the website. I could look, but I don't remember. Let me look and I'll double check here. Just so I don't move forward or I don't hear them. Yeah, that's fine. While you're looking it up, the way I found you is my mother-in-law actually texted me and she had been doing some... 05:03 some researching for classes and found you guys' website. Well, that's awesome. She said, can you, do you want to see if they want to talk with you? I was like, yes, yes, I do. Thank you. Yeah, I was surprised that you had reached out. It's really, we still haven't gotten a lot of. 05:22 I guess I can't think of the words right now, but for us publicity, publicity marketing. Um, I've gotten some like outstanding things, like things, weird things that are like, I never would have thought that it would be something that we would be a part of. Um, and then other weird things like, or just like local small publication kind of stuff. So, yeah. Let's see here. 05:53 I'm looking to while you're looking, so we're both typing. Just as far as like opening a business, we've always, my husband and I have always kind of wanted to do our own thing. Um, he's a military vet served in Iraq for a little while. And I just, I, we got married pretty much right out of high school and he joined the military and I went to. 06:22 Cosmetology school

Today I'm talking with Connie at Faithful Friends Farm. You can also follow them on Facebook. 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprises entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Connie at Faithful Friends Farm. Good morning, Connie. Good morning, Mary. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm doing great. It's a beautiful day. Yeah, it is here, too. You're in Maryland? Yes, we're in Maryland. OK. All right, well, tell me about yourself and Faithful Friends Farm. 00:28 Okay, so back in 2010, my husband was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. We had just given birth to our second child, my daughter, when he started having all these fluke symptoms and, you know, he finally got a diagnosis of running to doctors, you know, for six to 12 months. They finally diagnosed him with MS. So, um, 00:56 In 2012, we worked our way from having a little garden, and then I wanted chickens. I talked the rest of my family into getting chickens, and it just took off from there. We started selling to customers, and then in 2014, we started offering meat to people, so we started processing chickens. So that's pretty much where... 01:24 It started from, it was from my husband's diagnosis. We wanted to eat healthier and that was just an easy way to do it. You know, the garden and the chickens. Yeah. And again, you are cementing my belief that people do things because they need to make something work for themselves and then it works for them and they want to share it with other people. Yes, exactly. I was, you know, my hands were laying so well. I had all these extra eggs, you know, and I'm like, 01:54 You know what, let me look into getting certified to sell these. You know, so that's what we did. And, you know, I, you know, I just fell in love with my customers and vice versa. And I mean, I've had customers from the beginning that have stuck with me, even with the move, because in 2020 we purchased a larger farm because we had started off on an acre and a half and it just, we outgrew that very quickly. We ended up leasing. 02:22 Uh, about five acres from the farmer who was next door to us, he, he let us lease his woods because he didn't have a use for his woods. And um, you know, it just, it's been step by step. It's been baby steps, but we've gotten to where we are through baby steps. Yeah. And those are the best steps to take because I'm telling you, a humongous leap is the scariest thing you will ever take. 02:50 Yup, yup. And you know, when you have little lives depending on you, you really want to make sure you, you know, you take your time. I know people who jump in to dairy animals right away and I'm like, why don't you just give it a little time? Start off with something smaller because you won't believe how much of a commitment it is just to have lives, you know, even a chicken on your farm. You got to make sure you're home at a certain time, you know, before it gets dark. 03:19 because the predators catch on pretty quickly, you know, you're losing your chickens one by one, you know, so yeah, baby steps are the way to go for sure, at least in my experience. Yeah, we have chickens and we also have coyotes that we hear in the field that around us, like it's a big acreage around us. And every night, as soon as the pole light by our pole barn goes on, 03:48 That's when the chickens get put in because otherwise we won't have any chickens because coyotes would be like, Hey, it's dinner time. Let's eat them. Yup. Exactly. And so it's such a commitment just to have, you know, chickens, you know, I've missed weddings and everything else before we had our guardian dogs. I'm, you know, I, that would be my first recommendation for anyone, you know, starting off with homesteading if they have birds is to get themselves a livestock guardian dog. If. 04:17 you're not sure you can be home at dusk, you know, cause this, yeah, they, like I said, they catch on quickly and then you won't have a flock, you know. Yeah, exactly. And it doesn't even have to be a big dog. We have a small dog and the coyotes have never come on our property because she has her scent all over the property. Yeah. And they don't want to get into scuffle. They want the easy meal. They don't want to have to fight for it, you know. 04:45 Yeah, so it's not like you have to have a great Pyrenees. She's a mini Australian shepherd and she is very good at making sure nothing comes on the property. So, yep, yep. Okay. Did I see that you guys sell? I looked at your Facebook page earlier and I saw some animal that had been butchered and I can't remember what it was. Okay, so we mostly specialize in poultry. Yeah. 05:14 We've started with processing pork and eventually we'll try beef. You know, maybe it was a pig. I can't remember. Okay. It might've been goat too. Um, you know, a lot of people are like, when you tell them you butcher goat, but goats actually very sustainable. You don't ne

Today I'm talking with Tanya about her accidental journey from fledgling homesteader to author of The Backyard Homestead Guide to Growing Organic Food: A Crop-by-Crop Reference for 62 Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, and Herbs. Also, trap crops, patience, and integrity. Full disclosure, if you buy a copy through the above link, I receive a small commission. 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Tanya, the author of The Backyard Homestead Guide to Growing Organic Food. Good afternoon, Tanya. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you. Yeah, tell me about yourself because I've done some homework and you have accomplished many and great things in your life. I'm sorry, I have to laugh. 00:29 I have had many lives in this life and so I've gone in many different directions. Yeah, so I've wandered all over the place and found a place that I love to be, you know, spiritually and mentally and all of the rest. And so, yeah, I mean, I started. 00:56 After college, I started in international labor rights and then relevant for this podcast and listeners is then I retired at an early age to go and the idea was we were setting up a self-sustaining homestead out in West Virginia. I was supposed to be in charge of managing a large organic farm. 01:25 I knew nothing at all about any of it. And in fact had killed my two peach trees in the backyard in DC and had, you know, had many, many disasters in the garden. And so I thought I really need to get my act together around this. And then, you know, that never really actually happened, but the story around this book is really quite. 01:56 quite unusual in that I didn't set out to write a book at all. I mean, that was not my goal. My goal was just simply to do a good job in managing this organic farm that we envision. And so I just started doing a lot of research, and this is in the days before Google, actually before much internet at all. 02:22 This is way back in the late 80s and when I started down this path. And so the book that's out today is really in some ways, you might even say it's like a classic because it's on its fourth life and it's been updated each time and some things changed and so this and retitled and so this is 02:52 book that is really one of my first babies. I mean, it was born in the late 80s for this homestead that never quite materialized, but basically threw me into sustainable agriculture. And I just... 03:13 You know, was surrounded by magazines and books and was so frustrated that I finally said, I've got to start organizing this material in a way that makes sense to me for what I can do. And I, you know, just felt like, oh my gosh, here's a great thing on pests, but there's nothing on how deep to put the seeds and here's something that's great on allies and companions, but there's nothing on how to harvest. And so it's like, I needed everything in the same place. 03:43 And I didn't know at the time what I was doing. I, today we might call it a kind of a database. You know, I mean, this is really, it feels like, you know, dinosaur time looking back. And so I went out to this, as part of my research, I was going to different farms and I went to this one Yupik organic farm outside of D.C. near Harper's Ferry. 04:12 And they had said, I had asked if I could come and pick their brains. And they said, yes, if you weed. And so I went with a girlfriend and we brought our gloves and we spent a beautiful morning, the entire morning weeding. And so finally midday, you know, we sort of like, you know, sort of slink up to them and like. 04:37 could we possibly get a minute of your time? And they looked at us and said, do you know in all these years of asking people to do that, nobody ever has, you're the first. And they said, nobody's ever actually weeded. And so you get as much time as you'd like, which was a riot. That's awesome. I know, I know it really wasn't, it changed my life because in... 05:03 talking with them and getting to know them, I ended up and they were asking, obviously, well, why do you care? What are you doing? And so I very scared, sort of tentatively shared what we might be aspiring to. And they said, oh my gosh, would you be willing to share what you have put together? And I said, well, yes, but it's... 05:32 It's like a lot. And they said, well, yeah, can you print it out? So this is again, the days of dot matrix printer, you can imagine it was like a box, you know, folded up. And so I did, I took the box out and left it with them. And about a week later, I got a call and they said, oh my gosh, Tanya, we wish we had had this 10 years ago. You would have saved us years of. 06:01 agony and I was like, what? And they said, would you, you need to publish. And I'm like, what? 06:12 And they were quite serious. They said, this is really important and helpful for other people. And I just, my mind kind of exploded. And I t

Today Susanne from North County Marketplace is interviewing me about our place, A Tiny Homestead. You can follow us on Facebook, as well.

Today I'm talking with Joel Salatin at Polyface Farm! Listen to what he has to say about family, farming, and unexpected fame. You can also follow the farm 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. I feel like today's guest needs no introduction. Hi, Joel Salatin, how are you today? I'm doing great, I hope you are, thank you. I am, so tell me about yourself. I did some research, but my guests don't know what I read. So tell me about yourself and Polyface Farm. 00:29 Yeah, so yeah, so our family owns, co-owns Polyface Farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. My parents came here in 1961, bought a property, and Dad was an accountant. Mom was a school teacher. The farm jobs paid for the land. Dad was quite a visionary and an experimenter and did a lot of experimenting with electric fencing, controlled grazing, composting, mobility, portable shade, direct marketing. 00:58 It was basically a glorified homestead, so that when I wanted to come back to the farm full time, September 24, 1982, we had all this wonderful legacy of experiments and land healing things that we knew would work. We just never done it at scale or to really make a salary. And so that's what we started then. And 01:26 It has been fantastic. What a run. We now have about 20, what, 2022 salaries generated from the farm. And we supply some, whatever, seven to 10,000 families here at the farm to market. We deliver, we supply some restaurants, some boutique grocery stores, and we ship nationwide. 01:56 and just have a wonderful team. We're in pastured livestock. So beef, pork, chicken, both meat and eggs, turkeys, rabbits, lamb, duck eggs, and forestry products. We have a sawmill, and so we sell lumber as well. And yeah, it's a great run. It's a beautiful life, it sounds like. 02:19 It also sounds like innovation ran in your genes because your dad created things and you've gone on to create things as well. Yes, when people ask me what's one of your greatest blessings, certainly if not number one within the top two, is the blessing of growing up in a family that embraced being mavericks. I just simply never had a need or a desire to 02:48 to be affirmed and confirmed by other people. The Frank Sinatra song, you know, I did it my way. That was truly mom and dad's, mom was a maverick growing up, dad was a maverick. And so we just, as an entire, the whole family persona was, you know, we don't need the endorsement of others. We don't need their approval. We're going this direction because we believe it's right. 03:16 And boy, is that a liberating, freeing way to live. Yeah, I'm kind of like that. I have very few close friends, and that's partly because I do things the way I do them. And if you want to come along for the ride, please come along, be ready to help, be ready to enjoy it. If you don't, that's fine, too. Yeah, it is. And, you know, I think farming, of course, everybody has a certain amount of peer dependency 03:46 at some level, but I think of all the vocations out there, the different vocations, farming probably is the most, the peer dependency is the most common because farming is a fairly lonely vocation. You spend a lot of time by yourself. And so the desire to be accepted and affirmed by your... 04:15 counterparts by the next door farmer and that next door farmer and the farming community is extremely intense more than other vocations that inherently tend to be more social. And so I think farming has a bit of a disadvantage in this and certainly 04:42 we see that in the conservatism and the reluctance of farmers to try new and different things. Yeah. So I was watching a video this morning that you were talking on, and I don't know if it was a class you were giving or what it was, but you said something about if you are in your mid-50s and considering starting farming or homesteading or anything that... 05:10 Maybe you should think twice or maybe you should have a young person who can help or something. I'm paraphrasing it badly. So tell me what you think about people who are over 50 trying to get into homesteading. Yeah, well, I would I would qualify that a little bit between homesteading and actual farming. You know, one I realize I'm I'm a whatever I'm a friend of homesteading. 05:40 And certainly for our first 20 years here, this was basically a glorified homestead. There was no, this was not a business. It was not a commercial enterprise. It was not generating a salary by any means. And so, you know, a homestead where you're just, you know, a couple three acres, maybe 10 acres, and you're just basically trying to grow as much of your food as you can, you know, then 50s is fine. Probably not ideal, but it's tolerable. 06:09 But if you think that you're going to, in your mid-50s, get a property and become a commercial farmer and make a living at it without a young partner, you're probably kidding yourself. There's jus

Today I'm talking with Josh at Streblow Family Farm. You can also follow him on Facebook.

Today I'm talking with Jessica at Barefoot Blossom Farm about creating one-of-a-kind flower bouquets, and dahlias, and peonies, and upcoming 2024 events. You can also follow her on Facebook.

Today I'm talking with Anna at Rise Bread Company about Sourdough Breads, Focaccia Bread, Pizza dough, and the satisfaction of baking from scratch. You can also follow her on Facebook.

Today I'm talking with Andrew at St. Croix Valley Hobby Farm. Andrew and his family faced adversity by pulling together after a truly scary event, and have begun a beautiful new future! You can follow them on Facebook as well.

Today I'm talking with Cana at Cedar Shade Farm about goats, and genetics, and the most important things to look for if you're considering raising goats. You can also follow her on Facebook.

Today I'm talking with Betsy at Summerhill Farm. You can also follow her on Facebook.

Today I'm talking with Jennifer at Wade River Critters.

Today I'm talking with Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom about ranching, different terminologies in different parts of the country, and why she started her Facebook page (here's a hint - people with good hearts do amazing things!)

Today I'm talking with Tia and Gabriel at Half-a-Barn Farm. You can also follow them on Facebook.https://www.facebook.com/halfabarnfarm

Today I'm talking with Gao at Uprooted Coffee about their Specialty Lao Coffee sourced from Southeast Asia. You can also follow them on Facebook.

Today I'm talking with Susanne at North County Marketplace. She is essentially a good food broker, connecting farms to her surrounding friends and neighbors. You can follow her on Facebook.

Today I'm talking with Emily at Keiser Family Homestead LLC about the ups and downs of homesteading, homeschooling, peacocks, and sheep. And also, when you have livestock, you will eventually have deadstock. It's all part of it, unfortunately.

Today I'm talking with Jeff Poppen at the Barefoot Farmer about his family legacy of homesteading and his thoughts regarding organic certification versus organic practices. You can follow him on Facebook, and also watch for his book release at Chelsea Green Publishing.

Today I'm talking with Elizabeth Ries. Some of you may know her from Twin Cities Live, but did you also know she loves to garden, and keeps chickens, and cooks?! You can follow her on Facebook.

Today I'm talking with Laura at Evergreen&Ink about small business and marketing, especially the KISS formula (Keep It Simple Stupid) if you're just beginning to build and grow your business. You can also follow her on Facebook.

Today I'm talking with Kimberly at Frosted Cakery. You can follow her on Facebook as well.

Today I'm talking with Crystal at Half Pint Coffee Co.

Today I'm talking with Jim Melvin. He's a talented author, but he's also a steward of the land. He and his wife are working toward their property becoming a seed repository for plants native to their area of South Carolina. You can also follow Jim on Facebook. If you'd like to purchase either of his two young adult books, click on the titles, Do You Believe in Magic and Do You Believe in Monsters. Full disclosure, I'll receive a small commission from your purchase.

Today I'm talking with Jazmyn at Bake Me Happy. You can also follow on Facebook.

Today I'm talking with Hayden at Home Grown Collective. You can also follow on Facebook.

Today I'm talking with Christine at Gingersnap Vegan Bakery. You can also follow on Facebook.

Today I'm talking with Shawna at 7 Anubis Farms LLC about her homestead where she raises Berkshire pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys, and guinea hens. You can also follow them on Facebook.