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  • A Farm Wife

    A Farm Wife
    2025/06/06
    Today I'm talking with Diane at A Farm Wife. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 00:25 Today I'm talking with Diane at A Farm Wife. Good afternoon, Diane. How are you? I'm fantastic. How are you? I'm good. Are you in Michigan? You bet. Are you guys getting the wildfire smoke like we are in Minnesota? Yeah, it's kind of hazy. It's not really bad, but yeah, it looks a little bit weird. Yeah, it's raining here. So the air is already wet. And if I look across the cornfield that borders our property, it looks like it's foggy, but it's not fog, it's smoke. 00:55 Well, we actually have sun trying to peek through and it's very windy but it's getting it's like an 80 something right now, which is great for drying out our hay. I bet it is. We don't have any hay and I'm so glad it's raining right now because we've had like a week or so of beautiful dry weather and that's great because this time last year it was raining every day here, but 01:23 But it hasn't been and we've got a really good garden started this year. Like last year was a miserable fail for gardening season. So we've got everything crossed that it just keeps doing this week of really nice weather and then a day or two of a good rain and then another week of nice weather. Everything crossed. Us farmers are never satisfied with the weather. Oh, I know. And I feel so bad about complaining about it, but 01:49 If you could have seen my husband's disappointment last year, May into mid-June, because all it did was rain. We know what that's like. He was so good. Like it's just a farm to market garden, or farm to table, whatever you want to call it. But it's his, it's his joy. It's how he unwinds in these stresses. Yeah. It doesn't matter how big or how small you are, the weather affects what's happening. 02:16 Yeah, it was just rough and he was so good. He never blew up about it. He just had faith that this year was going to be better. And I said to him the other day, said, that faith is paying off. It's much better this year. He just laughed. Yeah, that's kind of our mantra as farmers. It'll be better next year or next harvest or next planting. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, that's all you have to hang on to. There's nothing you can do about what's going on in the atmosphere. So. 02:45 You just pray or send up smoke signals or just open up your hands and say that I will be done and hopefully everything turns out Okay, so yeah, all right So I have been looking forward to talking with you for a week since I well not week We only talked a day or two ago, but since I found out about you I have been very excited to talk with you because you are not a 25 year old lady Just getting started in this you have lived a very full very 03:14 I think lovely, wonderful life so far. Yes, very blessed, but I am not in my 20s. That is for sure. Yeah, so tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, just to back up a little bit, I was raised on the east side of Michigan. My dad was a tool and die maker and had a normal, what I thought was a normal life. Dad, home at 430, weekends home, went summer vacations and I 03:44 graduated in June, turned 18 in July, got married in September and moved across the state onto a farm and into a unknown territory. My husband would leave at five in the morning, come home at 10. It was crazy. It was so different that I couldn't even begin to tell you how different it is. And you learn how to do a lot of things that you didn't know you could do because there was nobody else around to do them but you. So I was, 04:13 Very fortunate to land on a beautiful farm here in West Michigan, a dairy farm. We had four boys. And to tell you the truth, the farm was my enemy for quite a while because it took my husband away and it took away what I thought was supposed to be family time and how family was supposed to look. And, um, he would be home on Sundays, um, after church for a little bit in the afternoon, because on Sundays we just did, uh, feeding. 04:41 and milking and everything else waited because it was Sunday, so that was the only time we had together. So it was very, very difficult trying to acclimate to a life that I never saw coming. But once the kids got a little bit older, you know, and they were on ...
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    37 分
  • Rawly-Mae Farm

    Rawly-Mae Farm
    2025/06/05
    Today I'm talking with Daniel and Joni at Rawly-Mae Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 00:25 Today I'm talking with Daniel and Joni at Rawly-Mae Farm in Tennessee. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. Good morning, we're good. How are you? I'm good. And as we just said before I hit record, you guys have been up all night getting ready for things going on in your life. And I have some pretty good allergies kicking my ass this morning. So we're going to try to make this as good as we can. So you were saying that it's really muggy in Tennessee this morning? 00:54 It is. It's very humid and muggy and we're, it's dry enough for us to our hay. So we're getting our hay done right now. So. Says it feels like it's 87 degrees. Ugh, gross. Well, it's raining here. Just so listeners have a weather update from Minnesota to raining. Nice soaker. I'm really happy about this. This is good. So tell me about yourselves and what you do. So, um, we. 01:22 of course, own Rawly-Mae Farm. We started that in 2021. We are a first generation. We've both been around agriculture, our whole lives. But when we got started, Daniel was a police officer with the city of Cookeville and I was a special education teacher in White County. So we have 01:52 We both put in over 10-year careers in those before we were both able to step away to just doing the farm. We have two children, Eliza who is nine and Ralston who is seven. They are big into rodeo. We travel a lot with them and try to support them the best we can with all of their endeavors. 02:19 I think we have too many pets to actually name as far as the livestock and the dogs and stuff. But that's just kind of like a short snippet of our life. Okay, awesome. And I don't want to, I'm going to do the opposite of burying the lead on this one. You said that you are getting ready to sell your farm. So does that mean that you're getting out of this? 02:48 No, it means we have outgrown where we're at currently. So we are landlocked where we are at. The airport in our area owns the land for the majority around us. So there's nowhere for us to expand. And with the amount of animals that we currently house, 03:17 needing hay and just the production of it all, we're needing to expand. So we've been looking in White County for a farm that offers more acreage. Okay, good. Cause I was, I was afraid this was going to be a sad episode because I just talked to somebody last night and she did end up selling her farm, um, year or two ago and she's moved on to a new thing and she's very happy doing it, but she misses her farm a lot. 03:46 Yeah, so I was like, oh no, not a second one selling no Right No intentions to stop Good. Okay. So what do you guys do at Raleigh May? So we sell various livestock we focus mostly on menter cattle and highland cattle as well as various exotics like llamas alpacas, especially chickens 04:14 Polish, Silkeys, know, stuff like that. Mature donkeys are a big thing that we sell. And we do little bit of everything. I we travel all over the United States. I think we go to several livestock sales across the country. we recently, the first of last year, started doing our own deliveries, which has expanded to, you know, we're delivering to, I think we're up to 23 different states that we have delivered to or sold. 04:43 livestock to over the past three and a half four years Wow, okay, and did I see that you guys take in animals that that need a home as well We do we've got Various rescue animals a lot of times when we buy animals to resell They just stay here. We all fall in love with them and they don't go anywhere. So that's 05:10 One of the perks of the job is we get to see all kinds of animals and sometimes we like them too much for them to go anywhere else. They become part of your family? They do. They do. They're a large family. Yeah, it sounds like it. It sounds like you are overrun with family. Yes. We have new members of our family coming sometime in next two weeks. We have three barn kittens coming to live with us. Awesome. We just actually might. 05:38 My cousin just gave us, she was going to give us a couple of her barn kittens and it turned into six barn kittens. ...
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    31 分
  • Dawn's Dirt

    Dawn's Dirt
    2025/06/04
    Today I'm talking with Dawn at Dawn's Dirt. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Dawn at Dawn's Dirt in Alberta, Canada. 00:29 Good, I don't know what time it is. Good afternoon, Dawn, how are you? I'm really good. Thank you so much for having me. And yes, it's just after 4.30 in the afternoon here in Alberta. Yeah, and it's just after 5.30 here. And again, I tend to do most of my recording in the morning. So I'm programmed to start to say good morning. And I'm like, no, it's not morning. Stop it. It's funny how things go like that. You you get into a routine and a rut and... 00:59 But here I am throwing you for a loop already. So let's do this. I'm all good with that. And the only thing that I request is that we don't talk religion or politics only because I haven't and it can become really divisive and hurtful. And I would just rather talk about positive things like growing plants and feeding people. I love it. Those are my two favorite subjects to talk about, but I don't like the division and the the either. let's yeah, sounds great with me. Yep. And I just 01:29 I've come really close, Dawn. I did. asked one of your compatriots in Canada, how Canada saw America right now. And she was like, if I say something not okay, just edit it. And I was like, okay. And she was very, very diplomatic and kind. And we kind of talked around things for five minutes. And then I was like, okay, that's as close as I want to come to talk in politics on my podcast. And she just laughed. So worked out great. Okay. So. 01:59 Tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Yeah, so I'm Dawn from Dawn's dirt. If you're looking me up and I am a farm girl. was raised in the greenhouse industry here in Canada. So my parents had a 26,000 square foot greenhouse and they grew long English cucumbers and 02:19 In 2007, me and my ex-husband built our greenhouse my parents sold and we took over kind of my family business and we were growing long English cucumbers as well and we started, it was pretty tough. Farming is of all types and sizes, no matter what it is, is really hard. And so we ended up branching into tomatoes and peppers and then we eventually ended up growing 20 acres of garden and field crops and I direct marketed them. 02:46 everything that I grew to my consumers at farmers markets and online and things like that. So I was a vegetable farmer for many many years plus I had some chickens and some sheep. So that's who I was. Unfortunately a year and a half ago I had to sell and so now I'm getting into the whole online thing and if you give a man a fish he eats for a day but if you teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime. So I'm teaching people how to 03:13 grow food in the spaces that they have. think everyone should be growing something in their backyard and I'm teaching people how to do it. So that's my new venture. Fabulous. And I agree on the teaching Amanda Fish premise. And I am trying, we are trying to feed our community too. So we are aligned on both of those points. Perfect. I love it. I think that we've lost a connection between our food, you know, back in the day, back 50 years ago, 03:42 Grandma had a garden, know, great grandma had a garden. Everyone had a garden and a few chickens in their backyard. And I just feel like we need to take society and shift backwards to some of that again, because it's so important for kids to know where their food comes from. so, yeah, I just think that's where we need to head to is to know that your carrots come from the ground and that, you know, eggs come from chickens. Yeah, they sure do. Weird, huh? 04:10 They don't come from a grocery store. mean, grocery stores are a building that houses items that we can eat. But at the end of the day, the farmer and the field and the sun and the animals and the earth, that is where our food actually comes from. Yeah, yeah. Yes, absolutely. It does. I am living proof of it. ate 04:37 butter crunch lettuce out of our garden on my taco last night. Oh, yum. Yum. And did you grow your tomatoes too? Well, we do. We do grow tomatoes. We do can tomato sauce. We don't can tomato paste. Long story. Haven't tried it yet, ...
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    36 分
  • The Kelley Family Homestead

    The Kelley Family Homestead
    2025/06/03
    Today I'm talking with Megan at The Kelley Family Homestead. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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 and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Megan at the Kelley Family Homestead in Connecticut. 00:30 Good morning, Megan. How are you? Good. How are you? Oh, I'm great. Is it beautiful in Connecticut today? No, it's raining today. I'm sorry. It is gorgeous here in Minnesota. Oh, nice. Last weekend was beautiful. It's the first Memorial Day weekend we've had in years where all three days were just stellar. And I thought for sure it would rain this weekend. It's really nice out today too. I have no idea why Mother Nature is being nice, but I'm very good with it. 00:58 The running joke right now in New England is it's the weekend because it's raining. It's only nice during the weekdays. The weekend, we've been getting rain for like a month straight. You are having the spring that we had last year. And my parents live in Maine. I just spoke with them this morning and my mom was like, so how's the weather there? I said, it's sunny and 57 degrees. She's like, I'm happy for you. I said, you sound really not happy for me. 01:27 that is pouring here in Maine this morning again. was like, oh great. Yeah, everything's wet this morning. So yeah, I'm sorry to hear that and I'm sure you don't actually need any more water from what they've been telling me. It's been bad. it's all right. It's filling up the rain barrels. So we're good. Good. Okay. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do at the Kelly family homestead. 01:59 Well, I'm a mom of three. I am very interested in native plants and growing my own food. So we moved into our house about nine years ago in the fall and the next spring I was basically ripping up the grass to grow gardens as soon as possible. We put in over 15 fruit trees, berry bushes, grapevines. 02:26 garden plots for annual vegetables and things. And it's just been kind of growing ever since. And a couple years ago, I just decided to go for it and planted a ton of seeds. And everything sprouted even though they were like super old. So that was kind of the beginning of the farm stand. I was just growing my surplus vegetables and putting them out there. The vegetable plants and 02:54 That did really well. So the following year I started adding native plants and cuttings of my grapevines and some of the berry bushes that I grow. And that did really well. So this year is the third year of the farm stand and it is even bigger. We've got a lot more bushes and trees. I mean, it's just a little roadside stand at the end of my driveway for right now, but the plan is to eventually get a piece of property and make it like a full on nursery and 03:24 do the whole thing. But it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun. I really enjoy gardening. I really enjoy propagating. It's always fun to see what works and what doesn't. And my kids like to help out, and it's just been awesome. Fabulous. You are in an urban setting, according to your website. Is that right? We're on a third of an acre. 03:53 Yeah. Where are you in Connecticut? I'm in Enfield, right on the Massachusetts line. Okay. So question for you is if you are in an urban environment, did you have to get any permit, any permits from the city to have the farm stand or did they, were they not even bothered by it? 04:16 Um, I checked with the city before I started and as long as my farm stand is under 200 square feet and is mobile, I'm good to go. Um, I did have to get a nursery license from the state. Um, um, you know, pesticide or a pest thing, know, license to say that I, I'm making sure that my plants are not, you know, carrying any pests that I'm selling and that I'm, you know, any starts that I get from anybody else, I'm making sure that they're. 04:45 equally certified and have their pest light prevention inspection done. And everybody I buy from sends me their copy of their certificate. I've been working with the... the re-go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. You've been working with me. 05:10 The North Central Conservation District, I bought some seedling trees from them this year. And then I also bought from the New Hampshire State Nursery, some...
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    30 分
  • Hayes Valley Farms

    Hayes Valley Farms
    2025/06/02
    Today I'm talking with Christina at Hayes Valley Farms. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Christina at Hayes Family Farm. 00:28 Good morning, Christina. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. Just watching the rain. Yeah. Where are you? We are in Marion, Virginia. That's right. I knew it was the South because you have that lovely Southern accent going on. Whatever it says. And I'm like, I don't hear it, but... You don't hear it if you don't... Okay. I am like a crazy fanatic about accents. You don't hear it if you live in it. Yeah, true. True. So... 00:58 It is gray here in Minnesota. It was supposed to be sunny and the sun has not decided to break through the clouds yet. Do you guys still have snow on the ground? Oh no, no, no, no. I think we had sleet three and a half weeks ago. I think. Might have been five and a half weeks ago, but it's been a while since we've seen any frozen precipitation. Thank goodness. 01:21 June 1st is Sunday and we have farmers market starting June 7th. So it better not snow. Has it snowed in June there before? Not when I have lived here. I've lived here. I've lived in Minnesota for over 30 years and I have not seen snow in June. I have seen like three inches of snow in May though. Yeah, it was really pretty though. Oh my goodness. 01:50 because stuff had started to leaf out just a little bit. So the snow got caught on all the little tiny leaves. It was really That's pretty. Yeah. Yeah. And I had a rose bush that had bloomed and there was snow on the rose. And I was like, oh my God, I got to a picture of this. And I did. So you don't want to see it snow in May and June, but on those rare occasions that it does, make sure you have a camera handy. Yeah, definitely. 02:18 Okay, so tell me about yourself and what you do at your farm. So we are, I'm a, I guess a third generation farmer, skipped a generation. So my parents, well, my father grew up in Nebraska and came from a farming family and then joined the Air Force. 02:44 And then my mom was born in Cuba. my grandparents on my mother's side are Cuban. She came to America when she was two years old. And in Cuba, they had a farm, but the great grandparents did not the grandparents. They were more city folk. She went to the Air Force. That's where I was born. so I guess, you know, 03:11 I don't know, third, fourth generation farmers skipped a generation. I grew up on a farm. grew up in Miami, Florida and met my husband in Tennessee and we, he had, grew up farming. Um, so he's, you know, country boy grew up in the mountains, the Appalachia mountains. And, uh, you know, he liked that I was the city girl. I liked that he was the country boy. He didn't want to farm. 03:40 He wanted to live in the city and I'm like, yeah, you don't want to live in the city. So we're farming. I won that argument. Nice. Yeah. We started our farm in Tennessee and long story short, the county we were in was expanding. A lot of the farms got pushed out. And so between property taxes and then, you know, we, I had been in Tennessee since about 2005, 2006. 04:09 And, you know, since then, you know, prices have exploded in East Tennessee because everybody's flocking, has been flocking to that area. So we couldn't afford to buy a bigger piece of land. You know, for what we sold our farm for, we were able to buy three times that here in Virginia. So that's how we ended up in Virginia. So his family, my family, they're all in Tennessee. So we're about two hours from family. 04:39 So I have a background actually, had a mortgage company. You know, my background is finance, business. So I traded high heels for muck boots. That's excellent trade. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we raised Angus in Tennessee. And then when we moved the farm to Virginia, because we wanted more land, we decided to start a micro dairy. So now we have jerseys. We traded. 05:08 one cow for another and we're a full working farm. We raise hogs on pasture. We have chickens, we have a small hatchery, we have a rabbitry, we have sheep, have goats, we have Jersey cows and a couple of mini donkeys and then standard donkeys. And then geese and ducks. I think that's pretty much ...
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    33 分
  • Hundred Acres Meadows

    Hundred Acres Meadows
    2025/05/30
    Today I'm talking with Claire at Hundred Acres Meadows. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Claire at 100... 00:27 100 acres something and I can't read the screen. What is it again, Claire? Hundred Acres Meadows. Thank you. I swear this technology doesn't work sometimes and my eyes get older every day. So it doesn't help me at all. So what's the weather like in Louisiana? Because that's where you are. Very hot and very humid. It's in the 90s and the air is saturated. Is that unusual for me? 00:56 Oh no, May is usually our kind of summer dress rehearsal. It's usually hot and buggy and icky and then it just gets hotter from there. Okay, well, I'm in Minnesota and we never know what we're going to get in May. We had a 90 degree day a couple weeks ago. And today it's like 67, I think, and it's sunny. I, Minnesota is weird. I don't really appreciate the swings all the time. 01:27 So at least you have sort of the gauge on May for Louisiana. Yes. Okay. So tell me about what you do because I think you have classes. I know you have horses. What is it you do? So we do a couple of things. A, we homeschool. So we spend time homeschooling our two kiddos. And then a lot of times we'll have homeschool families over to the farm. 01:57 teach them how to milk goats and introduce them to the ponies and the chickens. And they take home milk and sometimes cheese if we have some that we've been making. And then we run our farm. And then my main gig is I'm actually a vet. So that's a part-time job for me. Very nice. But that comes in handy with your animals. Yes. I mostly do small animal for work, but I'll take care of minor problems that come up here on the farm. 02:26 the major than I let somebody else handle it. Okay, awesome. And I'm guessing you're probably connected with other veterinarians if you are a vet. Oh, yes. So that helps. Okay, I have a couple questions about you being a veterinarian because why not? I don't get to talk to veterinarians other than when I take my dog to her vet who she loves. Thank God. 02:54 My dog is crazy, she loves going to the vet. How did you decide you wanted to become a vet? Did you know from when you were little or was it something that you got into when you were in high school? So I always loved animals and I thought from the time that I was, you when people start asking you what you want to be, that was often my answer. But I actually got to college and I got a C in chemistry and I said, 03:20 they're never gonna let me in because getting into vet school is harder than getting into med school. It's a very, very competitive process. So I actually stopped aiming for vet school and I switched over and became a teacher. My background was elementary education with a minor in special ed and talked for a couple of years. I got my master's in Ed specialist in gifted education. 03:45 And after a few years teaching, I said, this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I love the kids. I love the teaching. I didn't like all the other stuff that went along with it. So I said, I'm going to give myself one semester of retaking science classes and see if I can make. 04:05 A's in it, not hey, I scraped by and I got a B plus. I wanted to feel confident that I could handle material. And I did that and I said, okay, well, if I can do that, I'm going to apply to vet school. So I went ahead and applied and went to vet school and graduated later than most of my peers did, although we had somebody that was, I want to say 55 when he graduated and he owns his own clinic in Florida now. So. 04:32 age isn't a requirement with it, but it did give me a nice background for homeschooling my kiddos that I feel pretty comfortable with the education side of things. Well, that's impressive. I'm proud of you. That that must have taken a lot of I don't know, pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and really digging into to learning the things. Yes, yes, it did. And I actually had my son a few months before. 05:01 I started vet school, so I had him in April and we started in August. So I had a bitty baby and a toddler all through vet school, which made things extra challenging, but I have a wonderful husband and family who helped ...
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    32 分
  • Louis De Jaeger - SOS: Save Our Soils

    Louis De Jaeger - SOS: Save Our Soils
    2025/05/29
    Today I'm talking with Louis De Jaeger author of SOS: Save Our Soils. You can also follow on Facebook. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Louis de Jaeger in Belgium. 00:29 and he's an author of a book called S.O.S. Saving Our Soils. Good. I don't know what time it is in Belgium. Good day, Louis. How are you? No, very happy to be here on your podcast. It's so nice. What time is it in Belgium? It's 10, 12 here in Minnesota. Well, it's 5 p.m. 5, 12 here. So almost time for dinner. OK, so good afternoon to you, Thanks. Good morning. 00:58 Thank you. So I was very surprised when you reached out to ask about being a guest on the podcast. And then I saw what you do. And all my surprise went away because you are trying to save the earth by teaching people about soil. Exactly. And so I would love to know what your background is and why you got involved in this in the first place. Yes. So 01:25 I actually have two grandmothers that grew up on farms and they had to move from the countryside to the city because there was actually no future anymore for farming. that actually influenced me until a point that when I was 18 years old, I actually wanted to become a farmer. The only 01:48 problem was is that I didn't have land anymore in the family and land is like super expensive in Belgium. It's around 100k per hectare or like, let's say 40k per acre. And so that wasn't really an option for me. And I was kind of curious about why that is, how things are going. And also was thinking about what kind of farmer would I like to become. 02:16 For that, really was looking for answers and the more I kept looking for answers, the more I realized that the farming system worldwide is actually pretty screwed. that the way we farm today is a lot of the reasons we farm today as we farm today is because of governments, of lobbyists pushing us in certain directions. actually nobody's winning, only big corporations and not the farmers themselves and certainly not 02:46 not the consumers. So yeah, we need to do something about that urgently. Okay, that explains the drive for you to write this book and do all the other things you've done over the last, I don't know, 12 years. And you're only 31. Yeah, correct. You're baby. My daughter's 35 and she's the oldest of four. So yeah, you could be my kid. 03:16 So what I want to know is in all your travels, because I know you've traveled a lot looking at your website, who is doing it the best out of the worst? Well, the good news actually is that I've traveled to like half of the states in the United States. I really love America. I've also traveled to Canada, to Central America, South America. 03:41 And every country that I visited, there are farmers that are really showing that it's possible to grow crops, very high yields and taking care of the planet at the same time. And also not unimportantly having more profits than their neighbors. So that's actually the good news that there's no one country doing better. are just like a lot of pioneers 04:09 spread across the world, spread across the United States as well. if more people would know about them, if more farmers would see that, like a farmer living only 50 miles away is like, gone by one Porsche car every year because of the savings and pesticides, then more people will make a transition to a more natural way of farming. Well, I'm glad that America doesn't 04:39 fall way down at the bottom because I live in America. And my husband is a gardener. He does a farm to table garden. It's 100 feet by 150 feet. It's a little garden. We're not a farm. We're a homestead. And he uses no pesticides, no herbicides, no chemical fertilizers. As close as we get to chemical fertilizers is our chickens manure. 05:08 And it works. mean, when we don't get rain for six weeks from May to the middle of June, like we did last year, we have a really beautiful, productive garden to the point where we have too much and we sell it. Wow, that's great. So it can be done on a small scale. For sure, we're doing it. But how do farmers who are doing it big scale handle this? Because 05:37 For a long time in America, it has been all about weed control and pushing bigger ...
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    36 分
  • Moon Ridge Acres - Becca Hammon

    Moon Ridge Acres - Becca Hammon
    2025/05/28
    Today I'm talking with Becca at Moon Ridge Acres. You can follow on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system. You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 00:25 Today I'm talking with Becca at Moon Ridge Acres in Alberta, Canada? Yes, that's right. Yes, okay. Good afternoon, Becca. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. It's a gray, drizzly kind of day here in Minnesota. What's it doing in Alberta? It is actually sun, shiny, and beautiful. After a mega thunderstorm last night, it's actually quite lovely. The birds are chirping. Everyone is. 00:53 Seemingly good the calm after the storm, I Yeah, the weather has been absolutely insane everywhere this past weekend was Memorial Day weekend here in the States and In Minnesota where I am Friday and Saturday and Sunday were absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous days Right that doesn't usually happen. Usually one day of Memorial Day weekend is a washout and it didn't happen 01:21 That's impressive. Our, our May Long was like last weekend and it was absolutely frozen. It was so cold. It was like, it was terrible. We couldn't do anything. Oh, God, mother, mother nature. didn't get snow though, which is, you know, it is normal for us to get snow on May Long. We say we don't plant our gardens until after May Long and we didn't get snow, but it was like in the, in the single digit. 01:50 So it felt very cold, but today it is, oh, it's got to be close to 20 degrees already. Which is what in Fahrenheit? Because I'm really bad at it. I'm really bad at it too. I would say that's like 45, 50, I think. Warmish. It's warmish there. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wait. 02:16 Yeah, I could be wrong on the conversion. I'm sure someone will correct me. I can always look it up and put it in the show notes and be like, here's the chart that says what's it actually is. When I went to the US, my car had this really handy feature that it just converted it automatically for me, which was so handy. And it's funny how quickly I was able to go from Celsius into 02:46 um, the Imperial system and then, and then back and it just felt totally normal with that, you know, system in my car. But like, if you asked me to convert it like right now, there's no way. Yeah. And one of my best friends is from Canada and you would, I've known her for over 20 years. You would think that I would have made a point of learning this, but I still haven't. It's terrible. 03:09 And my parents are old enough that they still use the Imperial system for like 90 % of things. Like the metric system was kind of imposed upon them like after they were out of school. So they're still very much on the Imperial system. They're always talking in Fahrenheit and I'm like, what? And you'd think I would pick up on it, you know, but no, like I'm, I got Celsius on the brain, but I use inches though, which is a very Canadian thing to do. 03:39 Yeah, I feel like whatever you're first introduced to, like I am not a Macintosh computer kind of girl. I really do like Windows. Right. And I tried using a Macintosh Apple as they were known when I was in school and that was a very long time ago. I'm 55, you can do the math. And I can do it. 04:06 but it's like retraining my brain to find where files are if I use that. So yeah, it's what you're introduced to as a brand new thing, what you tend to gravitate towards. So, okay, so got the weather covered, got the small talk covered. You have been going through some fits and issues with Facebook lately. Did you want to vent for a couple of minutes about that? Oh, absolutely. I would love to. 04:36 So as a Canadian, when it comes to content creation across social media, we are very limited in what we can access for monetization. We don't get paid for TikTok. And then we have Facebook and YouTube. 04:57 I believe Instagram also monetizes, but I don't think Instagram pays very well. think Instagram is very much targeted for like attracting brands to do brand deals. And for me, as a millennial where Facebook was like the OG platform, actually like just be like, we were just saying, I love creating on Facebook. I love that there's multiple different, um, 05:25 like ways, like I can do text, can do photo, I can do groups, I love Facebook. So that is where I've put a ton of my effort. I'm also on TikTok...
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    58 分