A Tiny Homestead

Mary E Lewis
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We became homesteaders three years ago when we moved to our new home on a little over three acres. But, we were learning and practicing homesteading skills long before that. This podcast is about all kinds of homesteaders, and farmers, and bakers - what they do and why they do it. I’ll be interviewing people from all walks of life, different ages and stages, about their passion for doing old fashioned things in a newfangled way. https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes

  1. 3D AGO

    Grounded In Maine Podcast

    Today I'm talking with Amy at Grounded In Maine Podcast. https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/ https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/ www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Amy Bolduc at Grounded in Maine in Virginia. I know that's weird, but that's how it falls.  Good morning, Amy. How are you?  I am doing fine. Thanks. I know it's such a funny thing. People are like, where are you? Like I'm in Virginia,  but why is your podcast Grounded in Maine? Well, because you'll always be. 00:29 Your heart will always be grounded in Maine. That's why. mean, 49 years, not like that's nothing. That's not nothing. Yeah, exactly.  Well, what's the weather doing in Virginia this morning? Oh, geez.  It's so cold this morning. Like, I'm sure it's not Minnesota cold, but it's still cold. mean, it was 15 degrees when we were walking this morning. um And yesterday,  yesterday, it was so yesterday we had 45 mile per hour winds. um And  it was not much warmer. 00:59 So but then two weeks ago, I mean, if you're asking about weather, the weather here is so weird. I mean, all of like November, December, it was beautiful, like 40s, probably. And I know I, you know, everyone was like, oh, my gosh, it's so cold. It's snowing, snowing, snowing. And I'm like, well, you know, don't want to say anything because I'm in the south, blah, blah, blah. But then two weeks ago, the weather forecast was looking like we were. 01:27 My weather app was telling me we were going to get up to 21 inches of snow.  And I was like, what  is this about? ah And then when it actually came, it was like a dusting of snow, but then an inch and a half of freezing rain, ah which I would so I would prefer 21 inches of snow a million times over freezing rain and ice. ah Anyone who's dealt with freezing rain would agree a thousand percent freezing rain is so dangerous. 01:57 Yeah. it's, you know, it just is like, but since then, so last weekend,  I, my, my trusty weather app that I've been using for years lied to me and said, you know, maybe, maybe one between one to three inches of snow. I'm like, okay, you know, that's no big deal. But then we got 10 ish inches of snow  and it was fluffy snow, which was cool. But then like, when I moved here, I did not get a snow shovel because I was 02:26 You know, last winter we had four inches total, like  all winter long, two, two inch storms.  And I was like, that is no big deal. And then this year,  you know, and then the ice, I was like, I'm not I'm not even shoveling. I literally can't shovel that. But so I have a travel trunk shovel, which  it's in two pieces and it's rickety and plastic. I've had it for probably 20 years uh and. 02:54 I ever used it, only when I was working and I got stuck in a snowstorm.  But so that's what I've been using. I actually went out yesterday to try to get a real shovel and they were out. Of course.  Of course.  Because we just got 10 inches of snow.  yeah, I mean, the weather is great. And then, know, Tuesday is supposed to be like 60. I  like,  there's no,  I don't think there's like Virginia weather. I think it's just whatever. 03:23 happens, like what it just feels like. 03:28 Yeah, Mother Nature has become extremely bipolar over the last two years. That's a great way to say it. Maybe she's going through menopause too. I don't want to make you jealous, but it's seven, it's, what is it right now? I'm looking at my weather app. It's 27 degrees here in Minnesota in Lesor right now. And it's supposed to be 38 for the high. Tomorrow 45 for the high, Tuesday 38, Wednesday 38. 03:57 Thursday 40, Friday 40. Well, that's like making up for the last two weeks when it was below zero. That's exactly what I was going to say. We had, we had 14 or 15 days in a row where we never got close to freezing to 32 degrees.  And it was the longest stretch I've seen in years and it sucked. No question.  So anyway,  um, that's the weather update. I would do weather update.  Um, start with a weather update folks. 04:26 Oh, always do. In case you need to know. Every podcast opens with how's the weather because we're all doing stuff that weather impacts and I figure it's a good way to do it.  We're all experiencing weather. We sure are. And when we're trying to grow stuff or, um you know,  if we have chickens. Raise animals. Yeah. Yeah.  It's  kind of important to know what we're walking out into.  So that leads me to my first question. I saw that your  chickens are starting to lay again, beautiful eggs. 04:55 How are the chickens doing and how many do you have? The chickens are good. I have five. I've actually, so I've had one. Miss Lacey never stopped laying. Like every so often she'll skip a day, but then the next day she's like, before I even get there, she's already laid her egg.  She has not taken a break.  Jason, however, has not laid an egg for at least two months. uh Jason is a hen.  She came to me with that name. don't,  Jason Kelsey. I don't know. 05:24 I think that's football. Yes. I don't know. It's football. That's the name that she came with. That's so funny. And she's very nice and she's very pretty, but she had a really, really rough molt and she was really funny looking. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jason. I know you can't hear this, but she was funny looking. But it's always the worst timing when they molt. Do you have chickens, Mary? I have 18. You have 18. Okay. 05:52 How many kittens do you have now? um Well, technically we have three kittens, but they're about five months old now. Oh, well, they're still kittens. um Okay. So  I have, yeah, five still. I have not lost a single chicken in a year. Good job. They barely see the light of day, but  I feel like that's a good trade off. mean, they do. They get out. um 06:17 like an hour at the end of the day, because that's when I am not working and I can actually be out there with them. And even if I'm not out there with them, like usually when I get out of work, so now because the time, because with the time change and the light, longer darkness, whatever. So I get out of work at 4.30, my dog and I walk at 4.30 and I let the chickens out at 4.30 because 5.30 it's going to be dark. 06:44 So I let them out at 430 and I leave my phone while we're walking  with music playing so that the critters don't feel like the predators don't feel like they're alone.  I just looked at my farmer's almanac wall calendar and daylight savings time is March 8th.  So we only have a few more weeks until literally a month, literally a month from today.  Yep. So 07:10 Yeah, I know me too. I was like, yay, more light in the evening. It's so sad that we have to wait until March. like really winter is just, I know winter is a season of rest, but some of us don't get to do that. And then it's just miserable. Absolutely. I just had a thought and it went bye bye. Cause that's what happens. Um, I'm very excited to know that, uh, 07:39 daylight savings time switch is only a month away because that means that good,  spring weather is only two months away.  Yeah. It's just, you know, it's like  there are no holidays. So we're like March 8th, come on, come on, come on, March 8th.  You know, never push the  time to move as quickly as this last month for sure. Yes. And I figure 08:04 In Minnesota, we have March Madness, which is the hockey tournaments, I think. oh is it? It's not  baseball? Baseball? I can't remember. It's hockey or basketball.  It might be both. Who knows? I'm not a girl. Don't take sports information from us, peeps. Yeah, I am not a sports fanatic at all. 08:25 What I do know is that March, because of the tournaments that are going on, is always terrible for weather because of course it would be because people are traveling in for the tournament. Well, it's like that in between, right?  You're waiting for spring and you're so anxious for spring, but winter's like, eh, I'm just going to hang out a little bit longer. Just going to throw a little crap your way. Yeah, yeah. And it's always March. It's always the worst month. February's okay. I can deal with February, but March is the worst. 08:55 Cause everybody's so excited about this tournament thing.  And I'm like, yeah, good luck driving in that three feet of snow we're probably going to get. 09:05 Oh,  it's so  yeah, it's like going out with a bang. The last hurrah.  Yes, it is. then I'm like, okay, it's going to be peonies season soon. So I'm all for it.  let's get back to the whole grounded in Maine and you live in Virginia now.  When I first interviewed you two years ago, I think it was you were in Maine. I was in Maine. And then you got divorced and then you moved to Virginia.  Yeah. 09:36 It's for the people who don't know it is kind of a pain in the butt  to change the name of a podcast. Yeah.  So  I don't blame you for not changing it. Plus I  know when we last talked, you had mentioned that you were trying to get back to New England. So how is that? Is that anywhere on the horizon?  Um,  well, I mean, I would love it to be on the horizon. I really don't want to do another summer here in Virginia. Yeah.  Um, 10:04 So my goal is to get back there in some form by like May. I don't have any big things happening though. My house has been on the, on the real estate market since July and no one, no one has even like looked at it, which is sad. But, um, you know, my realtor says it's just really expensive, but at the, at the same time, like I put $25,000 in solar panels on this house. And so. 10:34 the electric bill,  except for this month b

    39 min

  2. 6D AGO

    Open Road Ranch

    Today I'm talking with Julie at Open Road Ranch. You can also follow on Facebook. The Old Farmer's Almanac www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Julie at Open Road Ranch in Wisconsin. Good morning, Julie. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm wonderful. Thank you. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather there?  Sunny and beautiful. It's so nice to see the sun.  Oh, we had that  yesterday and the day before. Right now it is inco... 00:28 incredibly overcast in Minnesota, but it's warm. Yes. It's nice, isn't it?  Oh my God. This last two weeks of  like living in the Arctic tundra.  Yeah. I had forgotten how terrible a more than a couple days stint of those temperatures is. Yes. I woke up on like the 13th day and thought to myself, if this doesn't break soon, I don't know what I'm going to do. 00:56 Yes, we just need like a day of sun to remind us or just a windless day or something just to hang on. Yeah, I grew up on the East Coast and I remember the song, the  song Oklahoma, where the wind comes rolling off the prairie. Yeah. And I had no concept of that because my house was surrounded by trees. The wind didn't roll across the prairie because there was no prairie. I moved to Minnesota and I learned real quick about wind rolling off the prairie. 01:25 Oh yeah, I just saw the other day  someone said the quote, it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the wind, said every farmer ever.  Yeah, absolutely.  It's just crazy. And I open every podcast with How's the Weather? Because I just feel like we're all in ag and it's important to talk about the weather. Oh yeah. I used to work office jobs and I worked in a basement office with no windows and weather was just, I'd never even thought about it. It could be light out, could be 01:54 night, could be raining. It just didn't really have any effect on my life whatsoever. Now it's everything. Yeah, absolutely. It literally is everything. okay, I don't do a lot of the outside work. My husband is the outside guy. I do a lot of the cooking and the cleaning inside. And even I pay really close attention to the weather because I'm like, I saw it's going to snow tomorrow. Are you set to plow the driveway? 02:22 Or I saw it's going to be minus 40 windchill three nights from now. Are the chickens going to survive in their coop?  And he's like, you never really paid attention to this before we moved to Homestead. I said, no, I didn't because I had no reason to pay attention to it. Yeah, you're so into your lives, you know, your animals.  It totally changes your perspective and the way that you live your life. And I kind of love it.  Yes. 02:50 All right, so tell me all about yourself and what you do. um I  am a first generation farmer. I'm a very new farmer. This is our second year in farming. um So all very new, um very new small business owner. um Just learning as I go.  We have a small farm in Greenbush, Wisconsin, um is five rented acres of family land. So Tony's folks live up the road and 03:19 our crop farmers corn, soybeans and wheat  and they very generously um are renting us five acres to start our farm here and they're very helpful with their farming knowledge and experience just up the road and so it's because of them that we're able to farm and so we have five acres here  and looking at right out the window in our backyard we have pasture raised hogs, uh have uh pasture raised sheep and we have some chickens that aren't  doing much of anything right now it's mostly for us m 03:48 but I did get three eggs the other day, so that's exciting.  we sell our pasture-raised um pork and lamb.  And  I also make lard products with lard from our pasture-raised hogs  because one of my missions when I first began was uh education and also to use as much of the animal as possible. So I dabbled in  trying to  tan sheepskin hides that didn't go very far,  make dog treats out of the organ meats, just different creative ways  because these animals give us such a gift. 04:17 you know I hate to see you go in the trash when especially our ancestors you know  would be you know grateful for the whole gift and use as much of it as possible and they needed to use as much of it as possible  but I hope to still  tap into a little bit of that so ah we use the lard from our pasture raised hogs to create um bombs, dish soap, shampoo bars,  things like that because lard is just incredible for us and  so I also feel strongly about educating people about  the wonder of  those 04:46 what are often considered waste products that are so wonderful for us and such a gift. Awesome. Tell me about lard dish soap, because I have not heard those words in the same sentence before. Yeah,  me neither until recently. And I had been making lard bombs for about a year and I thought, well, what else can I do  with this lard?  Because the bombs were going really well and I thought there must be some other things um that our ancestors used lard for that we can use it for. Because it's just full of vitamins and minerals and such healing properties. 05:16 uh You would not think that lard would clean dishes. You're often trying get lard off of your dishes, so I didn't really believe it either. ah We mix the  lard with lye and  some lemon. That's your degreaser. It's really pure and simple. ah It's just a uh dish soap bar, so it takes some getting used to, but you just use a sponge or a scrub. 05:41 You just get it wet and then you use it like you'd use  dish soap and it works wonderfully and it's clean and pure. It's not full of... um One of the reasons I started this is because laundry soap and  lotions and  shampoo bars and all those things, they're just full of so many chemicals. And I know people, myself included, are looking for clean things to put on their body and use in their homes.  And so it's just pure and simple, non-toxic.  So that's another reason I started making them. 06:10 Nice. Okay.  The reason I was so confused is because I always think of liquid dish soap. I didn't think of a soap bar dish soap. So  I didn't know you could use lard for dish soap. I am going to have to look up a recipe and maybe try that. Because we make, we make cold process lye soap here for  baths and showers and  love it.  Like all of our kids grew up using these bars of soap since we started making  them 15 years ago.  And, uh, 06:39 My youngest asked me the other day, said, can I have like four bars of that soap? I said, yes, you can.  Well, they last so long and they're so versatile.  And yeah, they're just wonderful. Yeah.  I have a daughter and three sons. The daughter is the oldest.  The oldest of the boys lives in Nebraska. And he also had asked for some soaps to take home with them a couple of years ago when he visited. 07:05 And he and his wife are now making their own cold processed Lysol. That's wonderful. It's such a good feeling to be able to do that. It's such a skill. So excited that the things that we tried to teach them really did sink in and sunk in enough that they want to do it too. Yeah. It does work. It does work. If you model good things for your kids and you make it fun, they'll probably want to do it too. 07:32 Yes, it's quite different than just telling someone to do something when they see you doing it and enjoying it and what can come from it. Then it's quite different than just telling someone very much so. Yeah. And I always say this when I bring up the soaps. The reason we started making cold process lye soap is because store bought soap makes my skin itch like crazy.  And I had bought a beautiful um honey oat bar soap. 08:00 from a lady that has been making them for years. And I just loved it so much, the way it smelled, that I was like, oh, I can't wait to take a shower with this. And I used that entire bar, went back to store, bought soap, and my skin was itchy, but the whole time I used the bar I from her, my skin was really nice. And I said to my husband, I said, can we please try making cold processed lye soap? Because I can't afford to spend $7 a bar. 08:29 uh It's a stretch for the budget back then.  And he said, let's look up how to make it. And we did, and he made a batch and it was unscented and we loved it. And we gave a couple bars to people to try to see what they thought. And they were like, can you make a lemon scented one?  Can you make a lavender scented one?  And then we got into the essential oils and it was just, it was so fun. 08:53 to learn all the things and all the properties and why lavender is so good,  why lemon is so good.  And we still do it now. So I just, always rave about the cold process Lysol because yes, it has some things to be careful of,  but  once you've made a couple of batches and you know your process, it's one of the simplest ways  to improve your life. Yes. You get so many out of a batch. 09:22 You get like eight or 10 bars and so much more cost effective. And um yeah, you have to be careful with the lie, but like anything, it's a skill that you learn. then, you you use safety and you get the hang of it. And then, you know, you get this cost effective product that, you know, saves you money. You can share with family and friends. It's really wonderful. And it's  satisfying, you know, you. 09:46 You make that soap, you use that soap, and I don't know about you, but I just get this bubble of happiness in my chest that we can do this, that we did this, that we use it, that it's good for us. Yeah, my first bar of soap, I couldn't believe it. There was no soap there, and then I made soap. It's somethi

    34 min

  3. FEB 2

    Ranch Wife Marketing

    Today I'm talking with Alisha at Ranch Wife Marketing. You can also follow on Facebook. www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Alicia at Ranch Wife Marketing in North Dakota. Good afternoon.  How are you? I'm doing good. How are you doing?  I'm good. How's the weather in South Dakota this afternoon? 00:22 North Dakota, um but it is getting better. We did have a negative 50 wind chills just a day or two ago, but now we're at least above zero. So for us, we can finally go back out in a sweatshirt. Nice. Did I say South Dakota? I swear my brain is not working today. You did. It's okay.  Oh, North Dakota, the one above South Dakota. Jeez. uh In Minnesota today, it is really cold. 00:50 I am looking out my bedroom window at uh the tin roof of the bedroom next to me  and the snow is all sparkly in the sunshine. It's really beautiful, but it's too cold.  Oh yes, I get it. We don't get a ton of snow, not as much as Minnesota.  I was born and raised there, so I know how much snow falls there. We're a little drier,  so we don't have em as much snow, but we do have a little dusting currently. 01:17 Just out of curiosity, where are you in North Dakota? I'm actually on the  North Dakota-South Dakota border. I live about 20 miles from South Dakota. um We live on the Standing Rock  Sioux Reservation um in a small, tiny town called Selfridge. Okay, cool.  Well, for the people who are following along on the podcast about my barn cats, um 01:46 We had a stray barn cat show up here a month ago maybe, and she has been kind of hiding out. She'll come and eat every other day.  And we have three kittens that we got a couple months ago. They're about five months old.  And  today is the first day that I have seen her, seen the stray hanging out with the other kittens in the dog house in the sunshine on the hay bales. And I think she's probably around the same age as the three kittens.  So, 02:14 That was the banner moment of my day was seeing this beautiful tortoiseshell stray cat hanging out with the kittens.  Oh, that's amazing. We have plenty of cats around here, um both indoor and outdoor. I love seeing all the kittens as they grow up in the summer. Yeah, it's really fun. And this cat showed up out of nowhere. I was like, why is there another cat? We don't have six cats.  We have five. 02:42 and my husband happened to get a photo of her and I was like, Oh, I hope she sticks around because she's beautiful. And from my local listeners, we have tons of chicken eggs in our farm stand. Farm stand is heated so the eggs don't freeze and we have lots of eggs in the farm stand for sale every day. So if anybody needs eggs, come on by. And that's it for my updates for my house, my homestead. Alicia, you are 03:11 farmer, but you're also a marketer. So can we talk about both? Yeah. So if my husband listens in, he's going to cringe because we're actually ranchers. worries. Some people call it cattle farming. Some people call it ranching. It's all about where you are in the world. But yeah, so we have a cow-calf ranch. We run about 500 mama cows. 03:37 about 200 heifers. We breed some bulls and sell some bulls as well. And we also have a quarter horse operation. So we have about a hundred horses. We run about a 65 to 75 mare brood band and have about six stallions. So that's kind of our ranch side. Wow. That's a lot. 04:02 Yes. Yeah, it is a larger  ranch. as much as I'd love to do the homesteading thing and like have the garden and all the other little animals,  we have plenty going on that my husband's always like, no,  you don't need to add more to our plate.  Yeah, I wish that my husband understood that concept. He's always like, I want to try this. I want to try that. And I'm like,  I think we need to get good at the first couple of things before we add more in. 04:30 I know. I really want chickens because I love fresh chicken eggs. And he's just like, just go across to our cousins. They have chickens. Honestly, it's easier if you just get them from somebody else. It really is. um We have 18 chickens  and  keeping chickens is not hard. I'm not saying don't get chickens. I'm not telling anyone to not ever get chickens because it's not that hard, but you have to make sure that you have bedding in the wintertime. If you live in a winter state, a Northern tier state, 05:00 And you have to clean out their coop at least once a month, if not twice a month in the warmer months because it gets stinky and that's not a fun environment for them to live in. So if you don't want to deal with chicken poop, don't get chickens.  Yeah, that's definitely a thing. I have had to babysit the chickens across the  way a few times and they are a little bit of work. I think they'd be so fun and my sons, they love the chickens. 05:30 Yeah,  I love watching the chickens. I just don't love going in the coop in August when it's been a really hot day and the coop needs to be cleaned.  And I have to hold my breath for the whole time and they're getting eggs, you know, it's very stinky.  But they are they are gorgeous. Even the most, I don't know, plain Jane chicken like we have, we have the ISA Browns. They're just a reddish brown chicken.  They're really pretty, too. So  I don't know. Chickens are great, but 06:00 I think that you probably have a very nice setup with your cousins across the way to get eggs from. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely does work.  And there's other people in our community that do eggs as well. m I hear one of your kitties in the background.  Yeah. Yeah. Whenever I'm at my desk, she has to be right here with me and she is a old girl. So she likes to complain. Does she help you type? 06:26 She would love to sit right on the laptop the entire time if I let her. Something about the warmth of it. Yeah, we don't have any indoor cats anymore, but we have a dog and she barks in the background. Probably  one out of every three recordings I do.  And sometimes I edit her out and other times just leave her in because we live on a homestead. There's going to be animal noises. Oh no. Yeah, exactly. I have my dogs right beside me too. And if she heard a noise that sounded like a knock, 06:54 She would be extremely loud.  huh. Yeah. Maggie's like that too. The trash truck pulls in the driveway and she loses her mind for the entire time.  I'm like, you know, even if you caught the truck, there was, there's not anything you could do about it. So just stop  and she won't until it pulls out of the driveway. She will not stop barking. And as it's pulling out of the driveway, she does this raw, raw, raw, like, yeah, get out of here. Exactly. sounds. m 07:24 It's very, very funny.  So, um tell me how you got into this marketing thing, because I looked at your website and I know the story, but the listener doesn't know the story. Okay. So, um I originally got into it by doing it for  the ranch. So, my husband is a fourth generation rancher and  we have the Quarter Horse Program, which is where it mainly started and 07:51 They always sold locally and by word of mouth, they got it out and kind of were selling their horses for the last,  they started in like  the mid 1900s. So it's been a long  family operation. And in, you know, 2012, 2014 ish when  Facebook came out,  we started using Facebook to market the horses. And that's kind of when the program blew up. 08:20 We don't do any  modern day bloodlines. We don't show our quarter horses. They're just ranch bred horses.  And when we were able to show them off online using social media and the internet and a website and all the things, um we started selling them all across the U S and now we have even started selling them overseas. 08:45 And when I was working for the farm service agency, before I had my, well, up until right after I had my son, I was always talking with the farmers, the ranchers, the stay at home ranch wives that had smaller businesses or the little businesses in town. And they always struggled to market their stuff. 09:11 like further than just going to the local elevator or the local sale barn or just farmers markets and things like that, especially in such a small rural community where we live. And it was hard to, for them to make side hustles or side businesses really work in such a small community. And they just, you know, always were at awe. Like, how do you guys sell your horses? You know, so 09:39 to so many states and now you've even shipped them overseas or how are you getting your cattle to be hitting the top of the sale barns every time you guys bring them to the  sale barn and most of the time we sell right off the ranch private treaty  because we're able to market and get a good deal where we don't need to take them to a sale barn and give up that commission.  so  kind of, yeah, questions kept coming up and people asking advice and that kind of 10:09 made me want to help people do it  the way that we're doing it. So  I built the business, quit my full-time corporate job with the Farm  Service Agency and started doing this full-time alongside moming and ranching. Yeah, and that moming job is the most important one of the three. Yes. Now we have two boys and it's been uh such a blessing to  not worry about going back to work with my second. 10:39 Yeah,  I imagine it probably has been. I did not ever have a job when my babies were babies, like from the minute they were born until they were at least two and a half.  having the privilege to be a full-time focused mother  is one of the joys of my life. raised three that I birthed and one bonu

    34 min

  4. JAN 28

    Santa's Crew LLC

    Today I'm talking with Sara at Santa's Crew LLC. Sara and her dad raise reindeer!   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Sarah at Santa's Crew LLC in Wisconsin. Good morning, Sarah. How are you? Good and good morning.  How's the weather in Wisconsin this morning? Because it's damn cold in Minnesota.  It's very cold here as well.  Getting through it.  Yeah. um 00:29 I know we shouldn't complain because we had a very long, extended, beautiful fall, but spring can't come soon enough, honestly. Yeah, I don't mind cold weather, but when it's like way, way in the negatives and it causes things to break or have issues, then it's like, okay, now it's maybe a little too cold. Yeah, I am prone to migraines. It runs in my family, and when the temperature drops like this and the air gets dry, 00:56 My head tries to hurt every morning when I get up and I'm like, spring's only a couple months away. I will survive it. Yeah. I would definitely be looking forward to it as well if I were you. Yeah. It's no fun getting up in the morning and you get that little twinge and you're like, okay, so am I going to be down for three days or is this just a few seconds of dry air bothering my nose causing sinus headache? 01:22 It's very frustrating, minor. There are worse things in the world. I'm not worried about it. I just don't enjoy it.  So um Sarah talked with me a week or so ago about their dairy farm  and she let it slip that she and her dad have a reindeer raising endeavor as well. And I was like,  oh, will you come back and talk to me about the reindeer? And she's back. So  how in the heck did you guys get involved in raising reindeer? 01:51 Right? It's not something you're, you know, not very common. uh But our neighbor used to have them.  And  I did go to one of these events one time and, know, it was a lot of fun. I did grow up on a dairy farm. So I grew up around animals and training animals  at, you know, going to the fair. So I was familiar with that.  And 02:12 we found out he was selling and my dad and I kind of talked. It was kind of spontaneous. It wasn't something like we planned. It was just kind of like the opportunity was there  and we're like, let's do it. So we kind of went in partnership. I was 17 at the time.  Um,  and  we started with  two baby calves  and kind of expand from there was a male and female. So they were calves. We showed them that first year. 02:40 And the following year they would be a breeding pair. So then we had to get another female, um, because during the holiday season is when the males are in rut. So you don't want to bring them out because they're very aggressive. So usually people will bring like females or steers. So then we kind of started with three animals within our first two years. And then, um, the third degree added another one. So then we had three females and kinda, oh um, 03:07 went with that and then we had three breeding females. But yeah,  we slowly built it. was, uh yeah, it's very fun. m Reindeer are different than  cattle in some ways. They have their similarities but their differences.  And growing up with dairy cattle, when I got the reindeer, I'm like, oh, reindeer are much quicker and  more nimble than  cows. But yeah, it's been a lot of fun. 03:34 And now we've been doing it since 2016, which is crazy to think that time's flying by that fast. do you have a big herd now? We're at eight right now,  which is a good size. I don't think we'll get  bigger than that um at all. We're pretty with the amount of space we have for them. It seems to work well.  It's enough  animals for like the holiday season. And then we do have some breeding females. 04:04 So we can kind of get calves. We'll keep a few every once in a while and sometimes we'll sell some to people who don't breed or want, you know, new genetics kind of thing. So other people who have reindeer or want to get into it. we had, let's see, last year we had two, but we were expecting four. We're hoping to have four. We had four breeding females. This year we have five that were in breeding. 04:34 with breeding bulls.  And we think the youngest one isn't bred because during the holiday season, we think she was in heat because the steer was kind of trying to jump on her. like,  oh, I think she's having a heat. I don't think that one's pregnant. So maybe we'll have four calves. Like, we'll see. um We'll just have to wait and see. How long is gestation for the babies?  Oh, two. 05:02 Why am I blanking on the exact? uh Let's see, October is typically when hours are bred and then they calve in springtime around April or May. Why? I'm blanking on the number of days right now though.  So like eight, nine months.  Yeah, yes. Yep. Around that. Okay. Awesome. And is it set in stone? They only have babies in the spring? Yes. Yep. Because rut. 05:32 For the males, always, usually the end of August is when it kind of starts.  So it kind of starts around there.  And then they drop their antlers in December or January, which means rut season is done. But we pull the females out of the breeding pen in October because if they get bred any later than that, then they're calving. 05:55 into like late spring and summer and it's really, you know, warm for the baby calves. They usually don't do as well  when it's that warm.  Once they get older, they're really good with like the warmer weather, but it's just the baby calves seem to take it harder, you know, in their first few weeks. So we just don't want to have any late late calves. So we just pull them in October. oh Okay.  I have so many questions for you because I out and did some reading on reindeer this morning and 06:24 Reindeer and caribou are not the same animal. They are cousins. Yes. And reindeer come from Siberia area, right? Yes. Yep. Across seas. They're native over there where caribou are native to North America. Okay. So how did reindeer get to the United States? Do you know? Yes. So, I guess I'll kind of go back and kind of tell people that 06:53 I go to so many events and people say that they're the same thing and they will argue with me and that they think that I'm just  lying, I guess, at like Chris said, that I'm like, am not. are completely like, they're separate animals, but they are close cousins.  They are the same species, but different subspecies. um Because even like national geographic or prominent zoos in the US will wrongly classify these animals, which is kind of why I think. 07:20 people get confused because you can research it and get different things. But they have done research  on the migration patterns of the two of them. they are close cousins, but they are different animals. And reindeer domesticated  have been domesticated where caribou aren't. So  some people will kind of make the comparison. 07:44 to kind of make it a little easier to kind of understand it as like wolves and dogs, like they're close related, one's domesticated. I guess it's kind of a way to put it in perspective in that way. yeah, so reindeer first arrived in Alaska in 1892 by a boat, obviously, because they weren't. 08:10 Unlike Caribou, they were already here because Caribou basically used the land bridge to kind of come over here and then you know, that's how that worked and they were shipped from Siberia. So you're right there. And they ended up having their peak population here for 640,000 of them around the 1930s, but they say there's only roughly 20,000 of them that are in Alaska today. 08:38 I'm not sure we're in Canada. I know there's some hers in Canada, but I don't know exactly what the numbers are over there. Okay.  And  I'm going to be bouncing all over the place because stuff's going to pop in from what I read this morning.  You and your dad raise reindeer to  take them to Christmas things or have people come see them at Christmas, right? Yeah. We travel with them  to all different places. We're in Wisconsin, so we... 09:06 basically stay in Wisconsin because there's enough events to fill the mid November through Christmas. It's a very short window to kind of get to all these places and jam pack it all in. So we do a lot of traveling with them and we do two teams. We started with one trailer and we travel with two at a time because they're herd animals.  they like to be with another one, seem to do better that way. And so we travel with two of them. We bring a whole display pen. We set it all up. 09:34 get, you know,  I'm in there with the, with the reindeer on a, uh, with a lead rope and, know, I'm able to kind of, you know, talk to people, educate them, and they can kind of take photos with the reindeer as well.  Um, and then we just, we added a second team a few years ago because there was just so many  people wanting the same dates.  And so now we travel with two teams on some of the days. So, um 10:00 four animals out at once and my dad will take one team and I'll take the other if we happen to have like double bookings that way. Um, but we will not add a third team. That would be really chaotic and a lot. we're, we're going to kind of two teams is good enough. Okay. And have you guys trained the reindeer to pull a sleigh yet? Not yet, but we have one that we are  hoping  to or working with. Um, it's a steer. 10:27 So he doesn't have the testosterone like an intact bowl, so he won't go into rut or anything like that. And he's like a big puppy.  Your steer is kind of like, you know, even in cattle, your steers are very, very calm, nonchalant.  And he's  bigger than two in size.  And I think he'll be

    36 min

  5. JAN 23

    Cole Canyon Farm - The Impact of Having A Coach

    Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farm. Learn about how having a coach can change your perspective.   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to a tiny homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon farm in Montana  for like the fifth time, I think. Good morning, Morgan. How are you? Good morning. Good morning. Yeah.  What a journey this has been um from Groovy Grazers to Cole Canyon farm to more surprises. feel like 00:26 We have so many pivots you've had to cover, so I can understand why we've been  on quite a bit.  Well, you're also really listenable and you're really fun and I like you so much, so you make it a joy to talk with you. ah Morgan has been,  I don't know how to say it, she found herself a coach. Yeah. And I wanted to talk with Morgan about how that is changing things for her because  I feel like coaches give us perspective. 00:53 That we need that our friends give us so tell me about how that's going Yeah, so we talked a little bit about the last episode. I was like alright. I just did this crazy thing I signed up for a coach, I've never signed up for a coach. I've actually never spent I Would say probably more than two three hundred dollars on continued education for myself, and this is thousands of dollars But it's really important that you invest in yourself just as much as much as you invest in your property right so 01:23 um I do some silver and gold stuff with a friend  and her name is Diane Graber. She has a homesteading thing that she just launched. So I'm going to have you talk to her about Mary because her and her husband have been doing this for well over a decade. Like,  yeah. So  she's coming out into her homesteading area as I was coming into my set, you know, my,  golden silver era. Like I was just learning about it. Right.  And she. 01:52 came into my life about a year ago and she was helping coach me and that was really great, but I just had a lot going on. We covered a lot of what was going on in 2025, know, just lots of pivots changes. And she asked me about, I don't know, two weeks before the class, she was like, hey, jump onto this class, just say yes. It'll change your, change your whole world. I've worked with this woman before in previous adventures that we've done. 02:21 And she's a great person I just reconnected with her after 15 years. So was like, all right, cool. Like I'm, I love meeting people. That's how Mary and I met. If people don't know, she just messaged me on Facebook. Like I love talking to people. So it was one of those things where I was like, fine, I'll jump on. I don't have a problem. It's free, right? Like for me, income  is lower in the winter time. It's kind of a squeeze here in Montana.  And 02:49 So being free was great. It was something I could commit to.  I got on  and a coach is a vibe. Let me tell you, like you  will not vibe with every coach. You will not like what some coaches say. You will think that it doesn't fit your niche, whatever, be it right. Like coaches are, they attract their vibrational group is what I'm gonna say. Like, sorry. uh 03:18 the wind's bad here, you're going to attract the people that need to be around you. So somehow I landed up, landed in this class and I was listening to it and it was about being a millionaire. And I was like, well, don't, I'm not just try, I don't strive to be a millionaire. And it's not that I think that it's unhumble to be a millionaire. It's just like, for me, 250 K a year would be life-changing enough, let alone 500 K in a year, you know, so. 03:46 For me, was like, all right, I may not vibe with as much the millionaire side of this, but  I can get through the whole breakthrough concept of it. So I think there's a lot of like shame around having coaches or being open about having coaches. But there's a reason why in corporate America there's bosses and those bosses have supervisors and supervisors have supervisors. It's a checks and balance because like you were saying, Mary, it's a perspective. 04:16 So I got on, Melanie talked, it was two days. I really liked what she said. I had some really big breakthroughs about throwing spaghetti on the wall. I've said that here on this show before. If you've heard me talk on here before, I've talked about how we love throwing spaghetti at walls. We don't  anymore. And all  throwing spaghetti at the wall does is it either gets butter on the wall or it gets spaghetti sauce on the wall and it makes a mess. Correct. Yeah. So like... 04:43 In the past, was like, I'm just, and I was real honest about it. Like I didn't try and tell anyone we had every, you know, my ducks were not in a pond and we all knew that they were like in everyone's property. Um,  and so  Melanie was like, girlfriend, like you got a lot of potential. You got to lead with your feminine side.  I  grew up  in a home with a first generation American as a mother from Iraq.  And my dad is a Marine. 05:13 So  there was no sugarcoating involved in my household. And so I speak sometimes from the masculine side of life. And sometimes people don't vibrate with that. And she's not saying that you have to be, know, whatever weird version we think women and men should be. It's just to say, you know, she was just saying like, you got a lot to say, use a softer voice, you know, like use my good storytelling voice and I'll capture a lot of people. And like you said earlier,  I have fun talking on these podcasts as much as I do. 05:42 um hearing what people think about my storytelling. My son loves when I tell stories. So, you know, it just naturally makes sense that this would be a calling for me. And, you know, she was like, just kind of pull yourself back in. And had I not done this coaching, to be honest with you, I wouldn't have written my mini gardening guide already. I wouldn't have completed also my full gardening course that I'll be selling this year. 06:12 I wouldn't be getting set up for a website so then I could actually get help because I was paying for Wix and I was paying for the $50 a month program.  And that was great, but I had to do all the work. spent,  Mary, I spent like four or five hours a night, some nights, for weeks on end trying to get Wix to operate the way I wanted it to.  And it's still not operating correctly for Groovy Grazers. 06:39 Yeah, I'm working on the one for the other podcast right now, the Grit and Grace and the Heartland  Agriculture podcast.  And I'm trying to get the social media buttons to work on the theme that I chose and it's not working. I'm probably going to have to look at a different theme. I do it through WordPress.  once you get your website built the way you want it to be, it's plug and play. It's easy. You just update it. But getting them built is a pain in the butt. 07:08 Yeah, which by the way, I'm just gonna blurb in if any of the listeners on this show have not listened to the new one. You gotta go. You should be like running to your search button right now getting that in. Hopefully Mary will link the link below for it. like, yes, you should. Absolutely. Because  I yeah, my son even listened to it with me. Like he was like, Mom, this is great. And like he loves the fact that 2026 is the year of women's agriculture, like 07:37 you know, especially being first generation farmers. that, that was something that you also had completed. So you can understand we're kind of in the same process of like getting something up and going and people don't realize how many hours you put behind this. So all it took, and you're going to be just floored. It took Melanie a 30 minute session with me. That was it.  That's all it takes. Like, 08:05 you don't have to pay for hours and hours and hours of coaching. I'm taking a course that is self-paced and there's like, you know, twice a month Zooms  where we can all meet together. You can watch a replay and I jump on the Zooms because I think it's really important to be present and plugged into what I'm doing, especially if I'm spending a few thousand dollars on it, that it's got to be priority at that point. Or then I feel like I wasted, you know, my own money and 08:33 that came included with it. to,  I am going to get more like one-on-one sessions with her because it was very minimal information that I gave Melanie, cause this is just like an introductory one-on-one, but she told me that  my whole goal has been  since doing  Groovy Grazers was to teach because I find that that's my passion. 09:02 and what I love to do the most.  being able to teach, but just not in my area, but all over and then creating a community, I've have probably been on the soapbox more times than I can count about community being so important and what we do. And so being able to create that was really kind of seamless for me after she explained that I needed to get a Facebook group going, which I did, Built From Dirt Facebook group. 09:29 We have over 400 members and as Melanie said on the master class a few days ago, like we have active members and it's because I'm not just blasting people with just like, I'm not just trying to sell them something. Like I want to build a community and that is my honest mission in doing built from dirt farm school is having a place that we can all bounce. 09:54 bounce off of each other, but then also help elevate each other's businesses because most people that are in the ag industry, like as we all know, you can't have every single type of livestock and excel in any of them. You've got to really kind of hone in on one. So most ag businesses were all kind of like just a few small streaml

    32 min

  6. JAN 16

    Frostbite Family Farm LLC

    Today I'm talking with Addie at Frostbite Family Farm LLC.   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Addie at Frostbite Family Farm, LLC in Lonsdale, Minnesota. Good morning, Addie, how are you? Good morning, I'm good, how are you?  I'm good. We're having some really gray weather this morning. We are. It's coming after a lot of sunshine though, so I can't complain. 00:25 Yeah, we're supposed to get snow tonight and I'm kind of hoping we do because the cornfield is looking very bare right now and it looks kind of ugly. So fresh coat of snow would be nice. Yes, we have some livestock and it actually gets harder when things warm up and get a little wet. So the dry snow is always a good thing. Yeah, I was just talking to a dairy farmer. I don't if it was this week or last week, but they were saying that it had been 00:54 like really muddy. And I of course assumed that the cows were out in the field and I said, I hear that wet weather is not good for cows feet.  And he said, oh no, he said, they're in the barn or they're on a dry lot and it's actually dry. He said, they're fine. He said, but yes, it can wreak havoc with their feet. And I was like, okay, cool.  Yeah, that is the difference between large dairies and small ones. So we operate a micro dairy. 01:21 And all of our cows are out in the field. So they have a good space to roam around in, but mud definitely affects them. Yeah. And, okay, I don't want to get too far into dairy stuff because I've interviewed two people about dairies in the last two weeks. But when you say microdairy, how many cows? So right now we have 16 cows. That includes our calves. So we are milking 10 currently twice a day. Okay. And I'm assuming you're not milking 10 cows by hand a day. 01:50 No, we use a surge bucket system. It works really well. My husband and I team up and do it together and it gets done pretty efficiently that way. It kind of keeps it cleaner than hand milking. Yeah. I think the days of hand milking have kind of flown. They've kind of gone away. Unless you just have one cow and you really like milking cows. Right. And even then I'm like, okay, you get a bunch of stuff that kind of flings into it and it's just, they make smaller systems now. 02:20 It's really easy. Okay.  So  I want to know how your farm got its name, because I love the name. Sure. Yeah, that is  always a topic of interest. It's so funny.  We picked that name after we didn't start out farming.  My husband and I got married and lived in an apartment. And I've always had this love of plants and food and good cooking. And  as we had kids, it developed into  including health and 02:50 um eating at home and making things ourselves.  And we sort of realized over time, like, I think we need to look for some land. I think we want to do some of this ourselves. And we began our land search, but at the same time realizing that neither of us had come from agricultural backgrounds. We decided to try to find people locally that were doing what we wanted to do or close  and  get to know them. 03:17 and hear their processes.  And um apples were a big point of interest for me. I love apple trees and  just the amount of food they can supply is amazing.  So  we found an orchardist in Northern Minnesota who was organic for a really long time.  He has this amazing little orchard on acres and acres of planted trees, really well maintained. A lot of them are like the semi-dwarf stock  and we would go visit every year with our little kids. 03:46 It was one of the only organic orchards that we had heard of locally.  It was about a two hour trip for us, so it was always a big event taking the kids.  And  as we had gone over a couple of years, we got to know the owner, and he is incredible  and would give us so much of his time walking around the orchard telling us all about his trees and the ones he was breeding and the different varieties he chose and why. I just... 04:11 I felt like I could just consume that information all day and he was so gracious with his time and he would walk around and show us, this is the triumph apple. It's a new one I'm trialing. You know, taste it. This is what I like about it. This is what I don't like about it. ah And on one of our trips up there, I mean, he was showing us the inside of his buildings and where he would make cider and all of these things and ah he was like, hold on, you got to come with me to the back of the orchard. He's like, my favorite apples are planted back there. 04:41 And as we took the trek back, he was telling us about the frostbite apple. And it was developed in Minnesota.  It's like a great, great grandparent of  Honeycrisp and some of the  original apples  that were planted here in Minnesota. It's this tiny little burgundy apple, and it kind of cracks on the top a lot. It's not really grown commercially because of that. It's not good for shipping. um But it's a dessert apple. 05:11 and he was like, you have to try this. Come over to the tree, like, here's how you pick a really good one. And he just like watched us and you know that's the sign of like a really good, a really good food. He's just like waiting for us to enjoy it. And I remember biting into this apple and thinking I had never tasted anything like this. And you your mind starts thinking back to other ones you've eaten, like the gala apples and things like that, where they're like a little mealy, not a ton of flavor. 05:39 maybe a little dry, and this apple, I mean, it tasted like brown sugar,  just molasses, it had these really complex flavors. uh And I remember just thinking, it crossing my mind that if somebody didn't care enough to plant these varieties that maybe don't ship so well, or maybe oh aren't great for grocery store, they're not perfect, uh I would never have gotten to experience this. 06:05 And it is one of my favorite apples. we, every year we go up there, we get a little box of them and our kids, you know, we all fight over them and we share them with people and  just watch people's faces light up and they go, I've never tried an apple like this. I didn't know they could taste like this. em And so as we were thinking about our farm and what we wanted, what our mission was, what we wanted to do, em the frost by apple kind of came up in our mind. It's like, we want to be the people who cultivate varieties that maybe 06:35 aren't the most popular but still deserve a place in the food landscape.  People should try these in their lifetime. We should not go our whole lives thinking apples are these boring standard  and not let little blemishes stop that.  we do a lot of different fruits and vegetables. 06:56 This last year was our first year at farmers markets  and selling produce direct to consumer and a lot of our vegetables even. love to pick heirloom varieties, weird shapes, weird colors. When we started, all of our ideas rolling and what we wanted to do, this was kind of the theme. And I had a lot of people actually look at me and say, this is not gonna work. People are not going to want a black tomato. They're gonna look at it and say, ew, that's gross. 07:24 We don't want to try that. Give us something, you know, the normal bushel boy tomato. Just stick with the normal varieties and then you'll be successful. And I just, like, you could not force me to grow a normal red tomato. And I've always been like that. I think the colors are so fun. We're losing varieties and people need to care about that. So yeah, just kind of come to that. I love that story. That is so beautiful. 07:53 And I'll tell you a secret, my husband and I have been talking since oh, a few years after we got married about wanting to do the homesteading thing and we're doing it now. We've been married for over 20 years and we bought this place in 2020. the first thing that got planted here was apple trees because we had talked and talked and talked about our dream. 08:20 for years and apple trees were like always at the top of the list. We wanted our own apple trees. So I get it, Addie, believe me. Yes. Yeah, they're so beautiful. They produce so much food.  It's an investment. It takes a lot of time. But we, the property we moved to  has two apple trees. They're a semi dwarf, so they're not super tiny, but they're not super large either.  And I am consistently baffled every year. Like we, my family,  have 08:48 I married and I have four kids and we could not get through all of those apples if we tried. There are so many, they're abundant. You know, we end up finishing our pigs on apples and giving them to the cows and chickens and all of that and selling them and giving them to friends. And it's just amazing how much food  one tree can produce. It is insane. And I have another story about apple trees.  The lady that we got our dog from. 09:17 She lives in Montgomery, Minnesota. Her name is Jean Bratz. I don't know if you're familiar. She has the  Minnesota farmer Facebook page.  Okay.  They raise small scale. They raise steers. They have many Australian shepherds that they breed and they sell the puppies and take incredibly good care of the puppies from when they're born until they go to their new homes because they have seven children.  Sure. So almost every puppy is assigned a kid basically. 09:47 Oh, but  they have apple trees in their backyard,  like many apple trees. And we were over there in the spring one year and all the trees were blooming and all you could smell when you opened the car door and got out in their driveway was apple blossoms.  And she has the the Wol

    39 min

  7. JAN 14

    Day by Day Dairy

    Today I'm talking with Sara and Nick at Day by Day Dairy.   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Sarah and Nick at Day by Day Dairy  in Wisconsin.  Good morning, guys. How are you? Good and good morning. Good morning. 00:21 How is the weather in Wisconsin? Snowy. um looks like it's all trying to melt today, but it's going to be like 40 today. Yeah. Not a warm spell before it gets cold again, but  never stays cold too long.  I'm your, I'm your neighbor in Minnesota and it's supposed to hit 40 today and 45 tomorrow.  Oh, okay. Yeah. It's, I prefer to stay frozen all winter instead of the thawing and I'm like freezing and muddy mess. 00:51 I'm sure it's not good for the cows feet.  They go out on a concrete this time of year. We have them on a concrete cow yard and the ones there in the tie stall barn, they go in and out. They'll go in and out for a little while, but then we put them back in the tie stall. So yeah, they don't see too much mud this time of year. Try to keep them clean and dry as best as we can with  the weather, you know.  Good, good. 01:15 My husband watches videos of farmers and dairy farmers and cattle, know, steer  meat, meat farmers on YouTube all the time. And he's watching, he's always watching these shows where the  cows' hooves are all messed up from being out on wet pasture. And I'm like, it's so gross. Why do you have to watch these? I, isn't Nate the hoof guy? I watch his videos. He does, he does pasture or  um, hoof trimming. Yeah. He does hoof trimming. 01:44 It heat up pasture  and uh a freestyle barn cows. So it's kind of a mix, but I don't know why it's satisfying. like watching it.  When we let ours out on the pasture, we rotationally graze all of our, all of our heifers. So they're always on fresh grass from probably beginning of May to almost first a week in December, sometimes a second week in November, depending on the weather. And the cows go out in a dry lot that has some. 02:14 green on it, but um just because they have a totally different ration, the milk cows do.  We haven't figured out a way yet  to perfect that intakes that they eat out and out if we do rotational grazing. yeah,  no, definitely, we do get them outside quite a bit when the weather is appropriate.  Good.  All right. So since I knew I was going be talking to you,  there is a song that I learned in school, I think. 02:42 And it's something about day by day, day by day. Oh dear Lord, three things I pray. And I don't know if you guys have ever heard it, but I had to learn it for a musical chorus thing back in probably sixth grade. So it was a long time ago. And so thank you for sending me into the way back machine by your name. And how did you, how did you get your name? Well, we were trying to think of names for a while. 03:09 And I'm like, Oh, what should we do? We had a lot of different like ideas, none of them just felt right. And one morning Nick woke up and he's like, I think, I don't know he said something about taking things day by day or something. Yeah. We're just trying to take it day by day to get to the next day. So then we're like, Hey, day by day dairy.  It just kind of happened. Yeah. It just kind of happened like that.  Awesome.  Um, and also Wisconsin. 03:38 As far as I know, last time I looked it up, which was a few years back,  Wisconsin is the or  pretty much the state for milk production in the United States. Is that right? think California passes us in fluid milk production, but I think we're still number one in cheese. ah I believe California, because they have... Yeah, go ahead.  Is that how you guys got the cheesehead moniker? 04:07 Yes, yes. Yeah, there's like a cheese store. There's so many cheese stores all over.  Yeah. Both proximity.  Yeah.  Oh, yeah. When my husband and I make road trips to go see my folks in Maine, we go through Wisconsin because we drive and there's a uh Dane DeForge exit and there's a cheese shop there.  And the first time we drove to Maine, he was like, we have to stop there. He grew up not far from there. 04:35 Well, he didn't grow up far from there. His family is from there. He grew up in Minnesota, but he used to visit family in Wisconsin.  And he's like, we have to stop there. And I said, why? And he said, because they have the most wonderful Granny Smith wine, Granny Smith Apple wine. He said, and they have chocolate cheese.  And he was raving about this chocolate cheese. And I was like, okay, so is it like fudge? He said, I can't explain it. You just have to try it. And I'm not a fan. 05:05 It is the weirdest like fudgy cheese thing ever and  I it smells like fudge but you bite into it and it's really smooth and and soft like cheese and He gave me a piece. I ate it and I looked at him and I said I'm glad that you like it because it is all yours  Yeah, I don't think I've ever tried chocolate cheese 05:30 Yeah, it's really weird. I mean, if you love fudge and you love hot chocolate, you're going to love this. But I just, couldn't get past the texture of it. we ship our mouth to a cheese plant too. Yeah, a little one. A small one. Yep. Screes. So our mouth goes to cheese. Is that all it goes to? It doesn't go to butter or anything? Well, I mean, some of the cream gets separated out when they're doing 06:00 when they're doing their process to make cheese, but that goes to, that would go to a different creamery. I mean, that's what most cheese plants, and then you, you know, you got your whey products too that come out of some cheese plants when they take out the whey. So I mean, there's a lot of things milk turns into when it gets turned into cheese. Okay. So usually, you know, your whey gets separated out from your milk and your, and your, 06:29 and you usually get some cream and that's on a cheese plant what they end up doing with that because they buy the product off of me. But um there's a lot of different things that milk gets turned into, you know, like your protein powder on your,  your, oh, I can't think protein shakes and stuff like that was where a lot of that way ends up. Okay.  And uh do all your creams, your cream factories take that and turn it into, you know, like your whipped cream and stuff like that. And, but 06:57 Yeah, no, mainly all of our milk here goes for goes for cheese. There's only really off the top of my head. I think one real local fluid milk plant. And when I say local, it's Appleton would be the Lamers that does liquid milk, drinking milk in the in the area. And when I say in the area, that's an hour and a half away. So there ain't too many plants that do drinking milk around here. OK, cool. 07:25 So how did you guys get into this dairy farming? That's a lot. We start way from the beginning. Well, ever since I was a little kid, I grew up on a dairy farm. My dad would have been the... 07:44 fifth generation dairy farmer and I'm sixth.  But he milk cows for a while, him and my mom did, and they ended up changing career paths.  Probably when I was about 14, the cows ended up going and we converted it to like  a beef operation and we calved out our calves,  cow calf operation is what they call it. All your animals freshen in and you raise them through the summer months and. 08:13 Me and my brother would work with them, cows and the calves in the summer months when they're out on pasture. And then every fall we'd sell the calves and put the cows, you know, back in the barn, take care of them all winter, get them bred and do it all over again. And we did that for a little while and I kind of got some steers and stuff through that, but I really just always felt like I was, if I was gonna farm, I was gonna do it as much as I could, as young as I could. And the only way I could feel like I could really do all. 08:41 farm  and get the calf, well was, you know, a milk cow you have 365 days a year and you get milk out of it and a calf where beef cow you only got the calf. And I was a lot more hands on with the dairy industry and I always kind of liked the dairy industry and I always milked for other farmers after my dad got rid of the cows. So, uh, yeah, I just, when I turned about, I think it was 20 years old, I started milking a few cows  and I kind of. 09:10 and renting out a barn. And I got one site that I rent out is where the milk cows is at. And then my home farm is where we do the rotational grazing with the dairy heifers and the dry cows and all of our young stock is at the home farm. And all of our, go ahead. So it's in your blood is what you're telling me. It's pretty much. mean, my grandpa spent a lot of time with me ever since I was real little working on the fields, fixing stuff. I mean, he's really the reason I'm doing what I'm doing. So yeah. 09:41 Do you still absolutely wholeheartedly love it?  Most days, but you know, you have your good and your bad days, I guess, just with anything. Let's put it this way, I've tried probably, I don't know, how many different careers or how many different jobs, and I just always say, I'm just gonna farm.  So I mean, it's just, I don't know, just something I've always probably do for as long as I can. 10:07 Okay. Is the dairy you guys' only job or do either one of you have a jobby job as I call it? So  I also grew up on a dairy farm.  Nick and I met in high school.  So we've been together since then. But once I graduated, then I um ended up working  off the farm  and doing that for a while. And then once we had our kids, we had two kids back to back. They're 11 months apart. So then 10:37 We were like, well, they're only young fo

    39 min

  8. JAN 12

    Wilson Dairy Farm MD

    Today I'm talking with Haley at Wilson Dairy Farm MD. You can also follow on Facebook.   www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots  Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee  https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Haley at Wilson Dairy Farm in Maryland, I think it is.  Good afternoon, Hayley, how are you? Good afternoon, I'm great. And yes, you're right, we are in Maryland here, Baltimore County. All right,  and you guys  are a dairy farm and 00:27 I've actually been really looking forward to this because I don't talk to people who do dairy. I talk to people who do  cattle for  eating the meat more often. So, uh number one, how's the weather in Maryland today?  Today is absolutely gorgeous. We hit 50 degrees and it's been sunny and just a light breeze and it feels like a nice spring day in January.  Yeah, oh in Minnesota it is pushing 40 degrees. Everything is melting. There's no wind. 00:56 It's sunny, it's gorgeous. It feels like April, not January. Yes, I'll take it though. Yeah, me too, because I figure two weeks from now it'll be minus 20 with a wind chill of minus 40. Exactly, we don't quite get that cold, but anything under 30 degrees is cold for me. Yeah, it definitely gets cold here in Minnesota for sure. 01:21 We had a night last winter that was pushing minus 50 windchill and I thought you know, maybe the northern tier states aren't as much fun as I as I think they are so I bet All right. So tell me about yourself and about your dairy farm because I am so excited to hear your story Sure. So my name is Haley Wilson. I grew up on a commercial dairy farm My dad milked around 220 Holsteins at our biggest 01:50 So we were a small commercial dairy farm because there are a thousand head dairy farms out west. There's much bigger farms than that. for us, that was a lot. We milked 200 cows a day. It was about three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. We had some family trouble over the property about six years ago. My dad's siblings had all left the farm when they were young. 02:15 like a lot of small family farm disputes go, they came back and they wanted their inheritance. we were in a lawsuit during the COVID timeframe between 2018 and 2021. And um because of COVID, we actually never got to see a jury trial. We had a judge who just decided everything. And because my grandfather's notes that said what he wanted to happen with the land were not notarized, he said none of them could be 02:43 admitted as evidence. So we actually ended up losing everything. had around 350 acres. it was all, yeah, it was all gone to my aunt and uncle who live in Virginia. They're not even local. So that was something we went through a couple of years ago that was really heartbreaking. And there were a lot of emotions surrounding the lawsuit, know, anger, frustration, just disappointment all around. My dad really took it hard. 03:09 And  my sister and I kind of felt the weight of the family and we kind of had to figure out how to keep things moving. As far as the dairy cows go, I was able to keep a couple of my nice show animals.  I just kind of took them to different dairy farms around the state of Maryland, actually. People were very generous and would house them for me. Just last year, I found this farm  about 10 minutes away from my home farm where I grew up. 03:33 and the people who own it were renting it out to a family who were moving and I reached out and everything worked out perfectly. I was able to move in last fall. I brought all of my young animals, so like my little calves and my breeding age heifers, no one who's in milk yet. I brought all them home here about a year ago.  And for the last year, I've been working on fixing up the farm  and getting a parlor built. 03:58 When you're going to milk more than just two or three cows, you've really got to have the facility for it. And since I planned on shipping milk grade A to a cooperative, like my dad did, I had to have the facility to match their standards. So I just accomplished that here in November, and I'm shipping milk for 25 cows for the last 60 days. So that's catch up to where I'm at. Is it just you? It's just me. 04:24 Yeah, it's just me. My parents live in a house that they rent down the road. My sister has a little farm she does ag tourism business  with, but I'm the only one that lives here. So whenever I say we, I mean me and the dogs, me  and the animals. We is a me and my animals concept. I um don't have anybody that lives with me or helps me. It's just me. Wow. Haley,  I am so impressed and so proud of you. Thank you. 04:53 That is a lot to take on as one person.  It is definitely a lot. Once I got a routine, know, things have, it's like anything, you know, once you get a system down, it becomes a little bit easier, but there, you know, there's definitely tasks out there that I have to wait until I can call my dad or somebody to swing by and help me. It's just not possible to do some jobs by yourself. So I do my best,  but I do have an intern that sometimes will come down from Penn State when she's on her breaks and she'll help me occasionally.  So. 05:21 People are very generous. Our community being in Baltimore, it is a big city below us, but ultimately the area that I'm in in the county, the community members are great. If I need help  fixing the manure spreader or fixing the tractor, there's people I can call that'll run over and just do me a favor and they'll help me out, which has been life-changing. Yeah, community is so important, especially when it's just one person trying to do what you're doing. Yes,  absolutely, yes. 05:51 I mean, community is important anyway, but boy, you are really fortunate that you have people around you who are more than willing to help. That is fantastic. So how many cows do you have? So I'm currently milking 25. Now with the whole community concept, they're not all my milk cows. I only owned about 13 milk cows. So the other cows are actually from three other neighboring farms who said, hey, this young girl is trying to get started. 06:19 go ahead, you can take a couple of our cows because I have to have enough milk to reach the agitator in my tank. They were willing to give me their money producing asset because they believed in helping a young person get started in the dairy industry. So I actually only own 12, I think it's 13 now, I just had one calf, 13 of my 25. I own them, they're registered in my name, but the other half of my milk cows are actually belonging to neighborhood farms who are trying to help me. 06:47 get my feet under me and get started here. Because the rule is when the milk goes in the tank, you have to have enough milk in it to reach the little agitation stick that's in the tank. And if I didn't ship enough milk, it wouldn't stir and it would create bacteria. So there's lots of regulations around that. So  I own about 13 of my milk cows and then I actually have another 13 of the younger stock, which would be the calves and heifers that are not milking yet. So I own about 30. 07:17 Wow. Oh my God, Haley.  I'm so blown away by everything you've just said. There's a  lot to it and it can be very overwhelming. It should throw at you all at once. So if I have to repeat anything, if you have further questions, feel free to stop me.  No, I just, can't believe how everything is coming together for you to do this. Yes. Nope. I don't believe it some days either, but I have to say I have faith. 07:44 And not just religious faith, but faith in myself, faith in the goodness of the world, faith in just things working out. And I hate to say it, but if I wanted to get this far or to even go further, I have to have that kind of just belief that things will work out because there are days, there are really cold days when equipment won't start or the days where maybe a cow is sick or if I lose a calf, they're really tough. And the only way to get through them for me is to have faith that things will  work out the way they're supposed to. 08:14 Yes,  and things do work out the way they're supposed to. The problem is sometimes the supposed to part isn't the way you wanted it to work out. Very true, very true.  I understand that completely. I've had a lot of those moments in my life, but I'm 56 years old.  I have lived a great life so far and it all does kind of come out in the wash. There's some really terrible things that happen. 08:42 And there's some really fabulous things that happen that offset the terrible things. yeah. Just keep moving. Just keep going. It's all perspective. It really is. Yes, exactly. Wow.  I am just sitting here dumbfounded. I cannot believe all the stars that had to align for you to get where you are. 09:03 Me as well. definitely, this fall as things were coming together, I, you things fell together and people offered, whether it's a manure spreader to borrow or coming to chop the corn. So I'd have feed in my trench for this winter to milk the cows, all those little things. I say little, they're big things, but like you said, everything just fell together so great. I will forever be in debt to lots of people around here. Well, I'm sure that if they needed something, you would be right there for them too. 09:32 Yes, absolutely. Yep, because that's how this works.  You don't receive the kind of blessings that you're receiving on this without giving some back.  Correct. And if you own animals, if there's people who have  homesteads and they have any type of sick livestock where they need medication and it's nine o'clock at night, you're calling your neighbor who maybe also has animals and has something in stock. So that's jus

    32 min
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About

We became homesteaders three years ago when we moved to our new home on a little over three acres. But, we were learning and practicing homesteading skills long before that. This podcast is about all kinds of homesteaders, and farmers, and bakers - what they do and why they do it. I’ll be interviewing people from all walks of life, different ages and stages, about their passion for doing old fashioned things in a newfangled way. https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes

Information

  • Creator
    Mary E Lewis
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    402
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2023 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    A Tiny Homestead

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