Episodios

  • Mabel's Herb Blog

    Mabel's Herb Blog
    Sep 27 2024
    Today I'm talking with Leah at Mabel's Herb Blog. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Leah at Mabel's Herb Blog. Good morning, Leah, how are you? Good morning, I'm good. Good. So tell me about yourself and this herb blog because I'm very curious about it. 00:29 Um, well, my name is Leah and I grew up in Southeast Texas, but I had my grandmother was from Nebraska and, um, about, I know that sounds random, but about six years ago, um, I took over the care of my mom who had Alzheimer's. And um, she had always been very. 00:58 pro-holistic care as her mother was. It was just kind of the thing her mom had taught her that, you know, in their belief, you know, pharmaceuticals, we had too big a dependence on pharmaceuticals and my mom didn't like chemicals in her body. So I mean, it kind of started as that when I was growing up. My grandma was a one-room school teacher. 01:25 this and I mentioned my grandma because that's who this is named after her name was Mabel. She was a one room school teacher so she taught a lot about you know botany and paleontology and all of this other she was a really good school teacher and that transition to us grandkids as we were growing up when we would go to visit grandma she was always teaching she was a teacher till the day she died. 01:55 in 1998, always teaching us, always showing us things as kids, which of course when you're a kid and grandma's teaching you paleontology, you're eager to go dig in the dirt and try to find dinosaur bones, you know? But the other side of that was also botany and herbalism and she taught a lot about plants and the importance of them. 02:24 Well, as a kid, you know, that's kind of the boring stuff. And I didn't really pay attention, of course. I knew then what I know now, I would have been hung on her every word. But about five, six years ago, when I started taking care of my mom, it really kind of hit home to me because they were wanting to pump my mom full of so many pills. 02:52 It was a pill for this, a pill for that, you know, and I knew that my mom would hate it. Because she'd have been in her right mind. She'd have been like, absolutely not. Let's find a natural way. And so I started studying herbs because I was like, there's got to be some kind of solution to help, you know, with her, all of her stuff, you know, not just her Alzheimer's, but everything. And um... 03:22 So I started studying plants and I realized that. 03:28 Herbalism and Western medicine, as I call it, pharmaceutical medicine, has a place to balance each other out. Herbalism doesn't have all the answers and neither does Western medicine. So that was my goal when I first started Mabel's Apothecary. And then in so doing, because in my studies, I was like, you know, 03:56 There's a lot of people out here that probably feel the same way about just shoving ourselves full of pills all the time. And so I started sharing on my website on Mabel's Apothecary.com and some friends of mine were like, Leah, you need to be putting this in a blog. You need to put this on a blog so that, you know, everybody, you know, even people who haven't been to your website can 04:24 can get this information and learn about their health. And so it kind of went from there. I started blogging about it. At first I was very gung-ho and I was doing it once a week. And then I realized that that was a huge job. So I've kind of slowed down to once a month so that I can do more in depth and get more research into my blog posts. And so that's where we are. 04:53 I got here. Wow. Yeah. Blogging once a week is a lot. Blogging once a day is a huge task. I did that for a little over a year many years ago about books and writing stuff. And after a year, I was like, I can't keep doing this. It's too much. So I understand why you would cut back to one a month. And yeah, if you have the time to put into one a month, then it can be a much more. 05:23 informative educational posts. So that's awesome. Yes. Okay. So did your, did your grandma grow herbs or did she just know about them? Oh, no, she had a yard full of herbs and plants and trees and everything you could imagine. She had, she was on a family farm. It was a century farm in Nebraska. So the family had had this farm for, I think, 05:53 when she died, it had been almost 250 years. So it was a family ancestral farm. And so there were plants from her great grandmother that were, or her grandmother, I'm sorry, her grandmother that she had planted. And then there were plants that her mother had planted and she had planted. And ...
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    32 m
  • The Garlic Farmers

    The Garlic Farmers
    Sep 26 2024
    Today I'm talking with Christi at The Garlic Farmers. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. This morning I'm talking to Christi at The Garlic Farmers. Good morning, Christi. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm great. How are you? I'm all right. Did you guys get a little bit of rain like an hour ago? I do not think it looks like it. Like it could, but we did not. 00:29 I'm wondering if today will bring some rain. Yeah, we got a sprinkle here and I'm only about half an hour from you. So yes, I'm near New Prague and New Market. Are you by St. Peter? Yeah, we're in the store. Okay. So all right. So tell me all about what you do. Well, we live between New Prague and New Market and we live on 10 acres and we've been here for 00:54 24 years and we've always loved gardening, I guess growing up in 4-H. And my husband's from Iowa and his grandparents and parents farmed for a while. And so when we moved here, it just kind of made sense to have a garden and that was mainly to feed our family and just really enjoying things like salsa. And my husband was, for years, grew tons of tomatoes and we still do. But at 01:22 At the beginning, he would make hundreds of jars of salsa and juice for chili and just eat all year and give away and enjoy the fruits of the labor. It ends up being more work than you always think, but it always feels like an accomplishment. And so we have six kids and I always loved it in summers. And when the harvest started coming in, then I could buy less groceries, you know, if we could have our own. 01:51 cucumbers and BLTs and make chili, but take the tomatoes right out of the garden and that kind of thing. And then about three or four years ago, I think maybe four actually, kind of a funny story. I saw a bill on our dresser and it was just a handwritten receipt really. And it said, garlic, $252. And I said to him, 02:17 wait, what's happening here? What did you buy? You bought garlic? Like I thought maybe to put in his salsa or, and he had said some, you know, talked a little bit about researching growing garlic, but I was like, wow, he's serious. And if you know my husband, he does everything big. So I wasn't joking when I said a couple hundred tomato plants, a couple hundred pepper plants, 150 pepper plants, like he. 02:40 He is very diligent and hardworking, and he has a day job, of course, but at night he likes to have something to do. He never sits on the couch, maybe on Christmas, I'm trying to guess. If he ever sits on our couch, he's just very active. And it's taught our kids, they're now grown, but our youngest is 16, but taught our kids about work too. They're hard workers, and they got to spend a lot of time with us outside, which is what you do when you have 10 acres, there's always a project. 03:10 But the garlic thing started where he went to somebody's house and bought garlic from them. And then the next year we went to the garlic festival and bought some more garlic. And it really is fun to grow because it's not easy, it's work and the level we're at, it's a lot of work. But if you just have a small patch, I think people really enjoy it because you can put it in the ground and then just let it be. And then you have to deal with it starting in the. 03:37 in the summer really, you know with weeding and stuff there's a little bit but I don't even know how many bulbs and cloves he planted that year, I suppose a few hundred. And then last year we harvested 5,000 and this year we harvested about 15,000 bulbs. So it has grown quickly and turned into a little bit of a business in that now people 04:02 want our garlic and are coming back for the second year. Last year was the first year we sold, lots of repeat customers. A few said, no, your garlic grew so well, I don't need any, I'm just replanting. Because every year we replant about 20 to 25% of our crop and then you end up with really strong, I'm not sure how it's exactly explained, but like a strong lineage if you keep replanting your garlic and then we sell some, we eat some, we give a lot away. 04:31 Um, and it's, uh, also been a whole nother aspect of it. He, um, we have a freeze dryer, which we kind of bought also just to start preserving our own stuff and freeze drying very different than dehydrating. Um, I mean, dehydrating is awesome too, but freeze drying takes out even more of the moisture and technically you hear of people, you know, you can freeze dry. 04:56 mashed potatoes and gravy, lasagna. I mean, I know a gal who has a thousand meals in her basement, freeze dried, and I think she does it for fun and kind of just to have food any time, but...
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    35 m
  • Working Aussies Homestead

    Working Aussies Homestead
    Sep 25 2024
    Today I'm talking with Jordyn at Working Aussies Homestead. You can purchase Jordyn's book at https://sawdustpublishing.com/product/herding-on-the-homestead-start-where-you-are/ And you can listen to Jordyn and Jill Winger's chat here . If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Jordyn Kelly in North Carolina at Working Aussies Homestead. Good morning, Jordyn. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm great. I am going to preface this entire episode by saying if you don't want to hear about 00:29 Stop listening now because I am so excited to talk to Jordyn about what she does. Do you want to tell me about yourself and what you do, Jordyn? Yeah, absolutely. So we operate on an acre and a quarter in North Carolina between Raleigh and Fayetteville. And we raise working Australian shepherds. We use our dogs on our homestead to rotation and graze our small flock of Gulf Coast native sheep, as well as our chickens. 00:57 But over the past few years, we've also had pigs and we still have rabbits. We've had goats before we had ducks. So a little bit of everything, but primarily our focus is working with our Australian shepherds. I wrote a book this past year. So herding on the homestead, start where you are. And I do public speaking and give herding demonstrations across the country to really help inspire. 01:26 anybody to get started where they are with what they have using a working dog on their small homestead or farm or even a large farm. But just to really help showcase the versatility, all the ways that you can use a good working dog and how they're probably the best addition you can make for your homestead or farm. Fantastic. I'm so excited to talk to you. My first question is, can you tell me what 01:56 that an Australian Shepherd puppy is gonna be good for herding right off the bat. And the reason I ask is because when we got Maggie, ours, she's a mini. And the lady that we got her from, who's a good friend, said that she was, that the breed is very people oriented, like they wanna be with their people, they wanna please their people, they want to love their people. And... 02:23 Maggie was trying to herd us by walking behind our ankles and doing the diagonal walk from three days after we brought her home. So can you tell that they're going to be a good herding dog from the get go? 02:38 I'm going to say yes and no. So with our puppies, we actually do instinct testing at five weeks old. So I will put them in with our stock. We've used turkeys in the past, and then we've also used our sheep and goats. And we do this to really help us determine which puppies need to go to a working home versus puppies that can go to more of just like an active family. Um, so yes, you can tell. But. 03:07 There's a couple other factors that come into play to say, yes, this is going to be a working dog versus no. That's where the Australian Shepherd breed has started to become a lot more popular, but people want to breed them to be more like your golden retriever, where they just are like good in a family home versus the workability. 03:32 Kind of a big controversial topic with some of the old timers and people who have been in the breed since the breed began 30 years ago is a lot of people want them to be watered down in terms of their workability. And so you don't see working Aussies as much anymore as you do like more pet Aussies that don't have that drive. So yes, you can tell. But I think. 04:01 that it's important to. 04:05 to especially like find breeders that are focusing on maintaining the workability and the breed if that makes sense. 04:14 Sure, yeah. We did not get her to be a herding dog. We got her to be a watchdog. And as I've said on the podcast episodes many times, she is an excellent watchdog. She is the weirdest Australian Shepherd I've ever seen, met, hung out with. She's very calm in the house. And the minute she's outside, she's all go. So. 04:41 We lucked out huge because we didn't want a crazy dog in the house all the time. And I know that you can train them to not be crazy, but we were a little concerned when our friend told us they could be kind of problematic with being bored. That they, that they would chew or they would destroy things. And she has been really good. And I listened to the podcast that you did with Jill Winger this morning. And. 05:10 You are so incredibly knowledgeable about all of this. I really enjoyed it. So if you get all the way through this podcast, guys, go listen to that one too. I'll put it in the show notes because it's really, really great. So do you consider ...
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    50 m
  • Thunder Ridge Ranch

    Thunder Ridge Ranch
    Sep 24 2024
    Today I'm talking with Sven and Jania at Thunder Ridge Ranch. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at a tiny homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm chatting with Sven and Jania at Thunder Ridge Farm Ranch. Good morning, you guys. Good morning. How are you? We are well and yourself? I'm good. You're in Kentucky? Eastern Kentucky. Yes, ma'am. Awesome. 00:28 I have never been and I've talked to a lot of people there and I feel like I should make a trip someday because it sounds really pretty. The site certainly has a lot to offer. Yeah. So, tell me about yourselves and what you guys do. Well, we are a military family. I spent three years in the military. A year of that I spent away from my family overseas in Afghanistan. Got back and things just didn't quite seem right. 00:57 which kind of led me down a series of rabbit holes and kind of pushed us as a family towards a bit in a sense self-sufficiency and whatnot and that that path itself has kind of led us to more of a community sufficiency mindset and so we really wanted to 01:20 be able to provide our own food and make sure that everything that we're eating was whole and good for us and none of the toxins that you find in a lot of foods that you find on the market shelves these days. 01:35 Awesome. So number one, thank you for your service. I'm sorry that you got injured in Afghanistan. That sucks. And without getting both of us in trouble, what kinds of things did you notice when you got back? It just, it just didn't feel, it almost felt like a prank. It didn't really feel like the States. It felt like we had landed somewhere else and it was some sort of a test. Just, I guess because I had spent the year away. 02:05 coming back, the atmosphere was noticeably different. It felt darker, it didn't feel like the free, happy place that it used to be. And then I started realizing that we've been under a lot of propaganda and indoctrination, just to put it as loosely as I can, without like saying that's in trouble. Yes, thank you. 02:31 I really want to know more but I don't want to get into it on the podcast because I have this awful feeling that it would not go well for either of us. Okay. So yeah, obviously growing things yourself and raising animals yourself, you have control. You know what you're putting on your produce or in your dirt or feeding your animals. So yay, that's a good thing. So what do you raise? 03:02 We started off in 2021 with 10 chickens. And as you know, chicken math. So we now have over 50 or 60 birds now we've kind of lost count. 2022 we added in a honeybee hive. We're now up to three. And we also added heritage breed turkeys. And then 03:30 Let's see, that would have to 2022, 2023. 2023, we focused more on clearing up the land and preparing it for a lot for bigger livestock. And then 2024 this year, we added ducks, quail, hay sheep and pasture pigs. Very nice. We had friends over yesterday and 03:59 They were talking about how they're going to be getting some poultry birds Next spring and they're talking about it and out of the blue They're like do you guys want to go in with us on it and we can keep them at our house and you guys can Come over in Butcher and once time and we all win and I was like yes, that would be amazing Cuz I don't I don't want to deal with poultry not poultry birds. I'm sorry meat birds. I said it wrong 04:25 But I don't want to deal with meat birds at our place. We don't have a lot of room, but they have more room than we do. So if you can do it all yourself on your property, that's great. But the other thing that works is collaboration with like-minded people. Absolutely. And that's where that community sufficiency kind of kicks in is working as a community to work towards common goals and everybody wins as a result. Yeah. 04:51 We gave them a whole bunch of stuff last summer from our garden for their goats because goats love leftover stuff from the garden. 05:03 Absolutely. So that's one thing that we do is take our fresh scraps and feed them to the hogs. And sometimes the sheep will get some as you know, let's say for the sheep. And we like to try and garden extra produce that isn't necessarily for us to eat, but is good for the chickens or for the sheep or the pigs. We like researching what's good for them, what are the benefits of everything and 05:32 On that note, we've also studied just the plants and whatnot that are on our property and we're still learning this kind of lifestyle. We were always learning. Once you stop learning, you stop growing. Yes. So we've tried to really learn about what is around us. How many different ways can we use it? What's the ...
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    30 m
  • Aunt Katie's Community Garden

    Aunt Katie's Community Garden
    Sep 23 2024
    Today I'm talking with Orran at Aunt Katie's Community Garden. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Orran at Aunt Katie's Community Garden. Good morning, Orran. How are you? Good morning. Glad to be here. Good. Tell me all about Aunt Katie's Community Garden. 00:26 Okay. Um, so and Katie's community garden was started about 15 years ago by my director, um, Mr. Michael Jackson. Um, he was a lobbyist for, um, non-smoking designated areas, um, back when that was a big column issue. And so after being kicked down from passing these bills, he, he, he, he transitioned into. 00:55 healthy living. And so that started a community garden, which was named after a childhood lady of the neighborhood, Aunt Katie. So he created the garden, started with a few raised beds. And over time, the community kicked in. He got donations, funding to build out the garden, starting with a small greenhouse. 01:26 100 beds and five high tunnel houses. So that's kind of a brief history of the community garden. Okay. I'm really excited that you were willing to chat with me this morning because I'm really trying to find all the different places that help communities have good food for them to have access to and I've decided on making it my mission to find somebody like you. 01:56 in every state before the end of 2025 to talk to. That's awesome. Yep. Because people need to know where to find food. It's the inflation prices have been so bad that people are starving. People who shouldn't be starving are starving. Yes. Um, that's, so that's one of the main, um, focuses of the garden is to grow nutrient dense vegetables. Um, 02:25 I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but the things you get off the shelf are pretty subpar when it comes to nutritional value. So what we grow using our compost, our special compost mix, it allows us to have a lettuce or a leafy green that tastes the way it's supposed to taste and also gives you that nutritional value that we all need in order to, you know, health of your living. So 02:54 That's our main focus is growing top, you know, top-notch vegetables. And the public, they really, they really grasp onto the concept, especially during COVID. So, you know, we got people, we got people who you never think eating bok choy. Now bok choy is a popular plant that we grow. And so, you know, during the off season, everybody's, when's the bok choy coming? So it makes me excited that we can. 03:22 you know, change people's taste palates and have them eat more healthier. Absolutely. So you're in Alabama. Where are you in Alabama? Um, we're in, we're in Dothan, Alabama. It's, um, South, Southeast, um, the very bottom of the, of the state. What's the nearest big city to you? Uh, Montgomery, we're about, uh, two and a half, two and a half, three hours from Montgomery. Um. 03:50 four hours from Birmingham and five hours from Huntsville. Okay, so do you know if any of the big cities in Alabama have anything like what you're doing? Absolutely, so me starting my work at the garden, it's a pretty cool story, I can tell you that, but I'll go into, so what I do now that I'm a director at a community garden, everywhere I go before I... 04:19 arrive, I look up community gardens and I either call or drop in and try to do a tour just to see what these different parts of the state have going on. And of course, I'm from Huntsville originally, so we do have two great community gardens, which one is Oakwood. It's a college. They have a great, great community garden and they also have a grocery store. 04:46 which is very state of the art. I love it. It has self checkout. It's very small, but it's really neat. You should check that one out. And also my alma mater, Alabama A&M, they're starting their community garden process. So it's exciting to see and exciting to, you know, come back around to what I started and then see it. You know, now I see community gardens everywhere. 05:15 Okay. So how did, okay. What does aunt Katie's community garden do? Is it that you guys grow food for the community or is the community coming in and growing food at the community garden? Okay. So what we do is kind of multilayered. Um, I think I have a diagram that I drew. So it's like a, it's like a three-legged stool and one is 05:42 Nutritional education and outreach to the community. That's from kids to adults. That's one part the second part is community gardening Which allows people to come in and grow and learn how to grow and we have bed subscriptions so people can subscribe to a bed for a year and they can either work their bed or We'll do it for them ...
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    30 m
  • WhoopsyDaisy Farm Followup - Benefits of Sheep's Milk

    WhoopsyDaisy Farm Followup - Benefits of Sheep's Milk
    Sep 20 2024
    Today I'm talking with Rachel at WhoopsyDaisy Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. If you order a copy of Rachel's book, The Guide to Homestead Dairy Sheep, she'll sign it for you! If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Rachel at WhoopsyDaisy Farm. Again, because last time we were supposed to talk about her book and about sheep's milk, and we talked about everything but I think. Good morning Rachel, how are you? I'm good, how are you? I'm good. You're in Kentucky, right? 00:29 Yes. Okay. All right. So let's try this again. I would love to hear all about the benefits of sheep's milk. Awesome. Well, you know, a couple of years ago, even just talking about milk as a health food was really weird, you know, because there's been such a push in our culture against the benefits of dairy, you know, nut milks and other protein milks have really been pushed forward. 00:59 If we return to a traditional source of our protein, a lot of us are seeing these autoimmune and chronic health issues are just kind of melting away. So there's groups like the Weston Price Foundation who've really pushed the benefit of raw milk especially. And with sheep's milk, pretty much everything that is beneficial about the cow and goat milk is in sheep's milk, but you multiply it by two or three. 01:26 So it's as beneficial as all the other raw milks, just more so. Okay. So I have questions. Number one, how much milk can you get from one sheep in a day? Well, it depends. There's, there's a couple of different factors that play with the amount, you know, and it's the same thing with cows and goats too. So you, the factors are breed and feed predominantly. 01:55 you know, there's some breeds of sheep that can give up to a gallon a day, especially the East Frisian sheep, which is like the whole steam of the sheep dairy world. But if you want to milk a non-dairy breed of sheep for, and there's a couple of reasons why you would want to do that. Sometimes you get as little as a cup of day, but usually more like a pint or a quarter a day. Okay. And I'm, I'm guessing that she, she being, uh-huh. 02:24 milking a sheep is not a whole lot different than milking a goat. Correct. Sheep teats are more on the side of the udder. So I haven't actually milked a goat. I have milked a cow. We, we own a Jersey cow. And it's very different milking a sheep than it is a cow because cow teats are on the bottom of the udder. You're not moving the udder. You're just squeezing the teats and just collecting milk that's automatically pooling there. With a sheep, you actually kind of have to 02:51 guide the teats and the udder toward the teats are facing whatever you're collecting the milk and if you're hand milking. Now they are starting to make attachments on mechanical milkers that will fit sheep. But if you can't find one specifically for sheep, you can use attachments for goats as well. And you know, sometimes there's a little bit of a difference in the udders there, but it's pretty compatible between goat and sheep. Okay. Now the next question I have, I don't even know how to ask it correctly, so bear with me. 03:21 Cows give a metric butt ton of milk when you milk them and clearly sheep don't. So how does this become financially viable? Does it? Yeah, so gallon for gallon you're going to get more cheese out of sheep's milk than you are cow or goat. And there's a lot less waste. A lot of cheese makers. 03:47 Traditionally, they raise pigs and the pigs would eat the whey and get fat off of it. Some homesteaders are starting to experiment with fermenting grains with the whey for like their chickens or pigs and that kind of thing. But for the most part, modern cheese makers just dump the whey. Either they discard it down a drain or, you know, some of the more creative ones will spray it on their fields as like a fertilizer probiotic. But I mean, there's not a lot of uses in our culture today for whey. 04:14 And so having a milk where there's not a ton of that whey waste is, you know, appealing if you're going to do a cheese making enterprise. I mean, the other thing too, is that, you know, when my husband and I started off, we really didn't have a use for three to eight gallons of milk per day from our cow, which she doesn't give that much. But I mean, like if you have a dairy cow, like you're looking at gallons per day, not cups or quarts or whatever. So. 04:40 To have a smaller amount of milk to play with and learn what to do with was really appealing for me. The other thing is that, you know, some people see this as a con. I saw it as a pro that my sheep will ...
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    34 m
  • Honey Friend Farm LLC

    Honey Friend Farm LLC
    Sep 19 2024
    Today I'm talking with Kristin at Honey Friend Farm LLC. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Kristen at Honey Friend Farm LLC. Good morning, Kristen. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How are you? I'm great. You're in Michigan, yes? I am. Is it beautiful there? Because it's gorgeous here in Minnesota this morning. It is. 00:30 Little warm for fall weather, but that's okay. It's gonna cool down soon, I know it is. It's gonna, a promise. Yes, absolutely. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. So I am a mom of three kids, and I work at the high school that they go to, but I also run a farm here at the house. We're trying to become more 00:58 independent I guess. We've got chickens and turkeys and a garden and I make a lot of our food, our bread. We try to buy from the farmers and not the big stores and that's I mean it's just it's a busy busy life. We just my husband works full-time and obviously so do I and then we do 01:26 all of the other things in the evening when we get home. Okay, cool. So it's always interesting to me because when I ask women to tell me about themselves and if they're a mom, almost invariably they say, I'm a mom of however many kids and then the rest of what they are. When I ask men, they tell me what they do, not that they're fathers of six or two or one. Right. 01:56 There's the difference. Yeah, it's really interesting how different men and women are. Yeah. You know? And I'm not saying it's a bad thing that the men don't immediately say I'm a dad of, but it's just different. Right. It is. We are built different. Yes, exactly. And that's what makes life really interesting every damn day. Absolutely. 02:25 Okay, so are your kids littles or are they teenagers or? I've got an 18-year-old, almost 16-year-old and a 13-year-old. And are they all in on the homesteading stuff you're doing? They resist occasionally when it's hot out, but for the most part, they're pretty good at helping. My youngest loves to help with the baking part. He loves to cook. And then my oldest, he typically does a lot of... 02:55 the strenuous work or the heavy lifting, I guess. And then my daughter, she helps with all like the household chores. She makes the house run when we are doing all of the other things. That's a hell of a team there, ma'am. I'm impressed. It is, yep. We, you know, it's rough sometimes, but for the majority of the time, we all figure it out. Awesome, I love that. 03:20 We didn't get our homestead till most of our kids had moved out, but I suspect that had we gotten our homestead when they were younger, they all would have been all in. Yes, they love it. Kind of wish we'd been able to do it sooner. Absolutely. So why is it called what it's called, the honey friend? The honey friend, okay. So that is because my husband and I were having an adult night and I usually call him honey as a joke. And then one night... 03:50 I just said honey friend and it kind of just stuck and we're like, I don't think there's any other honey friend farm. So that's where the name came from. That's adorable. I love it. Yeah. So it's fantastic. It has nothing to do with honey. It's just what we call each other. Oh, and that's fine. I think that's beautiful. So, okay. 04:16 Tell me what an average weekend day is like for you on the farm because I ask people this and they don't usually tell me. So I'm just curious if I'll get an answer on this one. So typically, so we run a roadside stand as well. So typically the weekends are full of picking the garden and loading the stand and baking bread and bagels and cookies and all of the things for the community to come in. 04:45 share a part of that. We do a lot of pay what you can events for the community so people can eat healthier and have a healthier option if they're not able to do it themselves or whatever the case may be. So we spend a lot of time in the garden and filling the stand and doing cutting the grass, feeding the animals. That's typically when we do like 05:13 clean out for the coupes and refill the food and, you know, just spend a lot of time outside bonfires at night. And we just hang out and just kind of work all day and then relax at night and have family time, dinner together. We like to barbecue a lot, like grill out. So that's typically what we do. 05:44 That sounds like a beautiful way to spend a weekend. The bonfire part is the best. That's my favorite part. Yes, absolutely. We have had maybe five since we moved in four years ago because it's been too busy up until this past, this past summer hasn't been as busy, but that's ...
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  • Bean's Bounty

    Bean's Bounty
    Sep 18 2024
    Today I'm talking with Maggie at Bean's Bounty. Buy Maggie's cookbook, The Reluctant Cook. All proceeds go to two different dog charities! If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Maggie at Bean's Bounty. Good morning, Maggie. How are you? I'm good. Good morning to you, Mary. How are things in Georgia this morning? Actually a lot cooler right now, but I hear the heat's coming back, so. 00:28 Is this hurricane that's approaching Texas gonna bother you guys at all in the next couple of days? It doesn't seem like it, but if anything, we might get a little rain from it, which I'll accept. Yes, definitely. So let's start this off with, I did not name my dog after the Maggie I am talking to. It just so happens they share the same name. And that's awesome because I love the name Maggie, always have and always will. 00:58 So tell me about yourself and what you do at Bean's Bounty. Well, I don't know what to say about myself. I'm not originally from Georgia, but I moved here in 2007, and I started gardening in 2008. And once I tasted what a fresh tomato tastes like, I think I was hooked. So my husband and I garden together. 01:27 for about four years maybe and I mean we rarely went to the grocery store. I still rarely go I've been doing the garden myself since then and What we don't get here will get from local farmers and then What I can't get from them then I'll go to the grocery store and that's just for incidentals like toilet paper paper towels things like that 01:58 but I love gardening, I love eating what we grow. And then of course, Beans Bounty is also where I bake. So I'll make homemade desserts for people, but they're not like all these fancy cakes and stuff you see there from very old recipes. We have over 300 cookbooks and they date back to the Civil War. So if you wanna know what an old fashion recipe tasted like, then that's me. 02:28 Wow. I made some kind of cookies years ago from an old, old, old cookbook. And I think there were only three or four ingredients and the main ingredient was egg. And it was like eating a crepe cookie. That's awesome. Really? Yeah. They weren't that great, but I suppose back in the very old days, anything that was a treat or a sweet. 02:55 was probably really special. Exactly. It really was. They couldn't afford much, you know. So whatever had any kind of sweetness in it, that's what was popular. Yeah. So you and I talked many years ago. I don't remember why. Why? I like a lot of it. You know, they're not really sweet. They're not, I don't know. They're just, I like a lot of it. Yeah. 03:25 You and I had talked many years ago, I don't remember why, we talked on the phone, and you said that you were in suburban, whatever your town is or your city is, and that you had a garden, and we talked about that for a little bit. So tell me how that's changed, how that's expanded. Well, we are in, we're in one of the suburbs north of Atlanta. So I have an acre and a half. 03:53 So the garden took up quite a bit of space. I mean, you don't normally find an acre and a half in Roswell, Georgia, but this is a very old home. It was built back in the 70s. So the only way it has changed is that as I have aged, I've had to cut back on the gardening. Before it was huge. And now I brought it up closer to the house and 04:22 take care of it from there. So I just have little sections all around my house that are growing different things. And it's easier for me because I'm getting up there. Yeah, we're all aging. As we get older, we're all aging, obviously, but we're all meeting new milestones in our lives every year. Yes, ma'am. And I understand, because ma'am, 20 years ago, 04:48 I would have been out in the garden with my husband every day of the spring, summer, and fall, and now it's his baby because I don't want to do it anymore. Yeah. Well, my husband is the same way. Well, he works a full-time job, so that's why he had to stop. So now I take care of it. Yep. The podcast is My Baby, the Garden is My Husband's Baby, and this is about the only time they meet is when I'm talking about him doing the gardening. 05:15 So what do you grow? Do you grow the usual suspects or is there stuff that's special that you grow? Whatever we eat, I try to grow. So I do potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, sweet and hot, squash, zucchini, well I guess that's a squash, pumpkins for the fall, lettuces, onions, I do onions and garlic. So whatever we use the most of. 05:44 And then we also eat seasonally. So whatever is growing in the garden is what we eat. So like we're done eating tomatoes until next year. And it's kind...
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