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 ...
