Today I'm talking with Joe and John at Farmstand: Fresh & Local. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company. 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. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company. 00:28 Today I'm talking with Joe and John at FarmStand, fresh and local in Oregon. Good morning guys, how are you? Well, how are you? I'm good. So, number one, how's the weather there? I always ask how's the weather? 00:46 John, you want to take that? Yeah. It's been pretty decent. Yesterday was hot. It was in the low 90s. Today is supposed to be more of the same, not quite as hot, but we're getting a little smoke blown in from some of the local fires, unfortunately. But overall, pleasant. Nice. And we are at the end of September, so things are going to get better. Well, 01:15 They're going to get better and then they're going to get worse, but it's going to be very fallish here soon. How's the weather in Minnesota? It is lovely. I was just pulling out my weather bug app to tell you what the temperature is. is 71 right now. The high today they're saying is supposed to be 87, but I don't think it's going to make it because it's overcast. I don't think we're going to get to 87. And it's just nice out right now. There's no rain. 01:42 And it's not hot and it's not muggy. It's just lovely considering a month and a half ago we had three weeks of tropical dew points for a three week straight. It was horrible. I was like keep saying Minnesota doesn't get a three week stretch of tropical dew points ever. So it was very weird. I feel like Minnesota do you guys get you get really hard winters. So 02:12 The summertime is like kind of in the Northwest. Everybody just lives for these few months of the year. We're always looking forward to it. Is it the same there? Yes, but the last two winters here have not been nearly as hard as they have been up till now. So usually the area that I live in an hour Southwest of Minneapolis, you'd be getting at least five, six feet total for the winter. 02:42 of snow. The last two winters we've been lucky in our specific little area to get even a foot of snow for the entire winter has been the weirdest thing. So I can't give you an answer on what the winters are like anymore because they're changing just like they're changing everywhere. But yes, true dyed in the wool Minnesotans, which I am not, 03:11 live for summer. I am a transplant to Minnesota and even after living here for 30 years, I'm like, it's weather. Wait five minutes, it'll change because that's what I grew up with in Maine. So I don't think I have the same culture about it that people who grew up here have. Sure. And that's fine. I don't have to. I just have to agree. I have to smile and nod. 03:39 a lot here because sometimes I'm like, yeah, that's not what I grew up with. But okay, yes, you're right. Anyway, can you guys tell me a little bit about yourselves and what you do? go for it, Joe. Okay. Yeah, we, my family of six, my wife and I, four kids live in Clackamas County here in Oregon. 04:08 We have a small five acre hobby farm where we raise pigs and chickens and bunnies and we have dogs and cats and all of the things. We homeschool our kids, have a little community co-op in Malala that the kids will go to. yeah, full time, I'm a fireman for Clackamas Fire District, currently working in Damascus. 04:38 Oregon with John, which is kind of how this whole business kind of got going. Being that John and I work together all the time, we got to brainstorm and talk and to come up with this idea. Okay. And John? Yeah. So I grew up in Southern Oregon, came from a big family. I'm the fifth out of nine kids. 05:07 And, uh, yeah, I grew up on acreage, uh, met my wife down there and ended up getting hired, uh, in the fire service up in, uh, the Portland area and, uh, moved my family up here. And we currently live in, uh, in like a suburb of the Portland Metro area. Um, uh, a little town called Westland and, uh, 05:36 We have a little garden and my wife and I have four kids as well. And yeah, I met Joe a handful of years back and we fortunate enough to get placed together on the squad, working together out in Damascus. And yeah, this year we jumped into the 4-H game with our kids. My oldest daughter really wanted to 06:06 raised some rabbits. we just last week finished up fair, which was our first 4-H year participating. Growing up, we always went to the fair and had friends doing that. And my wife's family was big into that as well. So yeah, so just a fireman, a dad, a husband. And yeah. 06:35 enjoying this farm stand journey that we're on. When Joe came up with the idea and shared it with me, was like, yeah, that is a fantastic idea. Because my wife also, she makes tallow and we had a garden. We always have a garden, but last year our garden was going crazy with kooks and zooks, we called it. And so I was like, man, we got more than we know we can do with. 07:05 You know, we just put a box out for free, you know, and, and, still it was like, there's so many, it's just people, you know, would come and take as many as they wanted, but it's like hard to get rid of them all, you know? And so, yeah, when Joe came up with this idea last year, it was like, yep, that's, that's genius. We should make that work. So. So I want to talk about the farm stand idea, but I also want to say thank you. 07:35 for being firefighters because with all the wildfires that we've been going through in this country for the last, I don't know, four or five years, it seems like there's getting more and more and worse and worse. So thank you for doing what you do. Our pleasure, yeah. It's an honor to be able to do it. And at the end of the episode, I actually want to ask, I want to pick you guys' brains about the things that we... 08:00 homesteaders, farmers and ranchers need to be aware of regarding fires on our property, because I figure you're probably going to have some answers for me. But we can talk about that at the end. So tell me about this farm stand idea. How did you, I mean, you just said because you had so much, but tell me more. Yeah. So, so last year around this time, we were 08:29 or I was driving home from work. And as I was pulling into, I live in in a little gated community out here in the country. There's like nine lots. We all have like five acres. And last year we decided to make our own farm stand so we could share the goods from our garden or, or my daughter likes making baked goods. So she would put baked goods in it. And so we had this farm stand. 08:59 which was off the beaten path and behind the gate. And I thought as I was driving through the gate, I thought, if this ever was available to the public, how would they find it? Yeah. There are resources online that people currently use to market their farm stands and their farms. But you potentially are lost in the mix. It's really difficult to find what's close to you. And so 09:27 I had the idea of developing an app, which is what Farms and Fresh and Local came from. But I've had a lot of ideas for a lot of different little businesses in the past. And I usually bounce them off my wife first and she shoots most of them down immediately. because she knows all the time and effort it takes to start a business. But this one was unique because she was in love with the idea from 09:56 the start, and so was everybody else. And so that's when I thought, well, maybe, maybe I'm onto something. Nothing like this specifically for farm stands existed. There was some other apps that would market farms or farmers markets, but not specifically farm stands. And when the idea came about it and realized that, that there was a farm stand movement that was kind of going to start. 10:25 And so since then, yeah, I had to, I had to figure out how to develop this app. I am not a tech savvy individual, but I have a friend who is in, in that world. And so I started picking his brain and I always envisioned somebody else developing the app. But that wasn't going to be feasible because I didn't have the funds to pay somebody to do so. I had, I had to research. 10:55 how to do it myself, using all the available resources to me. And yeah, so over the last about eight months, I've spent hundreds, probably over a thousand hours developing the app, constantly tweaking it. And I've got it to the point today where it works really well. It seems to be adding value to people's farm stands. And yeah. 11:25 We were seeing pretty decent growth at the early stages for app. Very nice. Do you happen to know the average number of how many people use the app? Do you have any idea? Well, daily average users. So we have about 515 farm stands nationwide. And originally we were thinking about 11:54 We're trying to target locally first to build up density within our, our County or the state of Oregon. But once you get it on the app store and Google play, everybody has the opportunity to download it and to add farm stands. And so we're seeing, we have 500 and about 15 farm stands nationwi
