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  • Preserving My Sanity

    Preserving My Sanity
    2025/04/04
    Today I'm talking with Darcy at Preserving My Sanity. You can follow on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Darcy at Preserving My Sanity, which I think is the best name for a business I've ever seen. Good afternoon, Darcy. How are you? Hi, Mary. Thanks so much for having me today. It's nice to talk to you. Yeah, I'm so happy you're here because I need to know how you decided to call it Preserving My Sanity. Sure. Actually, I started my business and my blog in 2018. 00:58 primarily as a food preservation blog. So I was posting a lot about a variety of food preservation and kind of just did the brainstorming plan of trying to figure out what names were already being used and what was out there and what I thought would work well for what I was writing about. And settled on preserving my sanity as kind of a fun play on words since I was preserving food, but I was also doing it as a way to 01:27 do something I enjoy and spend some time away from the computer. So kind of a double meaning, I guess, play on words. love it. It's so cute. Thank you. So normally I would ask about the weather where you are, but you're in Minnesota and I know what the weather's like in Minnesota because so am I. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's sunny and it's been a little bit warmer than normal, I think. We're in Southwest Minnesota, kind of in the corner. 01:57 But it's been just really nice spring so far. Yeah, it really has been. did you see the weather report for Friday? It's supposed to be like 81 degrees here in Lesor. Yes, here too. It's going to be amazing. I'm kind of not looking forward to that. That's a little hot for March. it's a... and then I saw Saturday it's going to be back down to like 40. So it's really hard to get used to what you're supposed to... 02:26 do and where. Yeah, this weekend is going to be ugly. It's supposed to rain. I'm like, okay, so we're going from 81 to 40 and rainy and gross. And then what is the next day going to look like? Right. So anyway, I would love it if you would tell me about yourself and preserving my sanity. Sure. 02:50 So I mentioned how I started with the food preservation. Since then, I've continued writing about food preservation and cooking with Whole Foods at home, learning new things are some of the themes that kind of follow through my content. And then two years ago, I actually started making goat milk soap and I added it into my business as well. 03:15 Now, in addition to the food, I also make soap and sell that online too. Okay. Is the goat milk soap the cold process soap? It is. Yeah. I make cold process soap and I actually source all of my milk from local farmers here in my county. Okay. I have a question about this because we make soap, we don't use any milk of any kind in it. We make the cold process soap. 03:45 Does does it change it when you use the milk like the way it heats up the way it does what it's supposed to do In the making process but what okay when When you put Okay, when you do cold process So you do the the the lie in the water and then you add in the oils and whatever else you're gonna put in and you Use a mixer to make it all come together 04:13 when it's all come together and you pour it into the mold. it make it hotter? Does it make it cooler? Is it the same situation? It's a similar process. It is different though. And I actually have never made soap with water. only, I learned from someone who only makes milk soap. And so that's all I've ever done. But I do know, 04:39 Like I'm familiar with how it works to make it with water and how you, when you mix the lye into the water, it gets really hot and then you mix it with the other ingredients. So the lye still would make the milk really hot. So you actually start it with frozen milk cubes. Okay. So, um, instead of mixing it with just milk, because if, you did actually just put it with milk, it would curdle the milk and burn and that's not what you want. So, um, so you start it with frozen milk cubes and, 05:08 then when you mix it with the oils, it kind of keeps the heat under control. I guess is how I ...
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    36 分
  • KayLeo Urban Farm

    KayLeo Urban Farm
    2025/04/03
    Today I'm talking with Scott and Marilyn at KayLeo Urban Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Scott and Marilyn at KayLeo Urban Farm in Indiana. Good morning guys. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. What's your weather like? Cause ours is gray and it's raining. It's gray, but not raining. It's to rain the rest of the week though. Yeah. I'm in, I'm in Minnesota. We got like an inch of really wet, fluffy, gross snow last night. got up this morning. I was like, what? No. 01:00 No more. It really nice weather until this week basically. Yeah, this spring or what amounts to spring, it's been spring for two weeks really, has been really chaotic here. Like last Friday it was 80 degrees here and then was 35 on Saturday. I'm like, what are you doing? Yes, that is chaotic. So yeah. You guys have the tornadoes as well. 01:29 You have? Well, not here. We're at our place, but in Indiana. Yup. I think it's going to be another crazy growing season. And I was really crossing everything I have that it was going to be a moderate season. Oh, no guys. It's going to be interesting to see how the summer goes. Okay. So. 01:50 I am so excited to have you as guests because you guys are doing something really important in Indiana and you're actually in Indianapolis or near Indianapolis. Yeah, we're right in the city on the northwest side of the city. Okay. Tell me about what you're doing. Cause I looked at your website and I was like, Oh my God, you guys are special. Like you're really, really doing something good. Well, thank you. So we are a nonprofit urban farm. 02:17 We bought the property about 10 years ago and have been a nonprofit for the last five years. We kind of focus on three areas. So growing healthy food for people. And then we get that food to people through, we started a farmer's market. This will be our fourth season starting later this, well, in June we'll start that. And we also do a matching donation to either local food pantry or specific families. 02:47 as well. We try to do education related to growing the environment, how to be sustainable. We do that through field trips, working with different groups, classes, opening our farm to people, and we focus on environmental stewardship. So growing in ways that are going to benefit the environment and leave this place better than we found it, and then helping people learn how to do that as well. Fantastic. Scott, do you have anything to add? Because I have lots of questions. 03:17 I mean, she said it well, that's pretty much it. All right. So how did you guys get into this? How did this start? Well, like Marilyn said, we bought the property about 10 years ago. We've been kind of wanting some property for a while. We talked about options of living out in the country and looking for more property out there. But Marilyn really felt called to stay in this within the city limits here. 03:45 And that kind of limits it a little bit, but we've happened to find this place, is nine acres within the city limits. I don't know if you're familiar with Indianapolis. It's fairly spread out. There's actually, you can find three to five, maybe even 10 acres of places here and there in the city. Less and less, of course, as time goes by, but it's kind of rare, not totally unheard of, but it's rare to find a this big, especially in our part of town where we are. It's pretty developed. 04:14 This had been a farm for a decade before this, then this place, we're the third owners of this place. But we found this place and got it in June of 2015. And then we weren't sure what we wanted to do with it exactly. We knew we wanted some property and some more as a space, and then talked about doing some sort of animal rescue here, kind of a... 04:40 sanctuary for animals and we do that a little bit still sort of. But then we kind of started getting just into growing. So we had some raised beds and some things and kind of just started enjoying that. And we're fairly near to some food deserts. Not exactly one, but kind of around us. And even in our area specifically, we saw some of the grocery stores closing and. ...
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    32 分
  • The House and Homestead (and surprise! a bit about Homestead Living Magazine)

    The House and Homestead (and surprise! a bit about Homestead Living Magazine)
    2025/04/02
    Today I'm talking with Anna at the The House and Homestead. You can follow on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 Share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Anna at the House and Homestead. Good morning Anna, or afternoon Anna. It's one o'clock in the afternoon here. I screw up the intro all the time. Good afternoon Anna. How are you? I'm good. sorry Mary, where are you located? I'm in Minnesota. You're in Minnesota. Okay. So I'm a West on Vancouver Island. So it is actually morning here for me still. 00:57 Okay, well, it's one o'clock in the afternoon here, sort of. Fair enough. Yeah, Vancouver Island, right? Yeah, that's right. In Canada? Yes. Yes. I looked at your Facebook page this morning or your website or something and I saw Vancouver and I was like, I swear there's a Vancouver in Washington state, but I think she's in Canada. So now we know. Yes, yes, there is a Vancouver in Washington state as well, not too far from us as the crow flies, I guess, but we're out on the island now, which is... 01:26 Lovely. Yes. And would you believe that I scheduled two interviews on the same day for two women in Canada? I talked to somebody in Canada this morning as well. Oh, no way. Cool. I was like, wow, that was weird. Who knew? And Canada is a great place. have been to visit once. We took the Northern route from Illinois back to Maine. So drove up to Canada and then across and back down to the Maine because I grew up in Maine. 01:53 Oh, cool. You've probably seen more of Canada than I have then. I've been only to Quebec once and I've never even been to like Toronto or anywhere back east. I've traveled way more extensively in the US than I have across the rest of Canada because it's actually quite expensive to get back and forth across Canada using our airlines. Yeah, there's not a ton of competition here. So the prices tend to be high. I used to actually work as a travel agent funnily enough in another life and it was 02:20 often cheaper to, I kind of joked it was often cheaper to go to London, England than to London, Ontario. So, you know, if I was going to book a trip, I'm like, well, I may as well go somewhere, somewhere else, you know. Expand your horizons. Yeah. I think I was a teenager when we did that and I actually got wet from the Niagara Falls spray. we stopped in Niagara Falls too. Yeah, it was pretty neat. Okay. So tell me about yourself and the house in Homestead, please. Well, I 02:51 grew up with zero homesteading background. I did a little bit of gardening when I was a kid. remember with my grandpa, that was about as close as I ever got to growing food or anything. I remember he had a little backyard garden in the city where we live. I grew up in Vancouver in the city or in a suburb of Vancouver. And yeah, when I was a kid, I remember my grandpa had a little garden in the backyard and he would grow 03:15 beans and peas and tomatoes and a few things like that. And that was always a novelty to get them fresh from my grandpa's garden in the summer. And then I would help them out there. But other than that, I really had no experience growing food or doing any type of like food preservation or even like cooking. didn't like get into cooking for myself until I moved out in my twenties and, kind of had to figure some of that out. So I, you know, didn't come from any type of 03:44 home setting background. in about my mid twenties, my husband and I, we were engaged at that point, but we were kind of trying to determine what our future would be and where are going to stay in the city? Where are we going to look elsewhere? And I was just feeling very disenchanted with city life. was like that typical kind of stuck caught in the rat race and like, is this how it's going to be forever? And I was struggling with anxiety and depression and mental health issues at that time. 04:12 I'd always noticed that like when we got out into nature and just kind of got away from the traffic noises in the city and the hustle and bustle, I just felt at ease. I felt calm. And I wanted to, I knew at that point I wanted to get out of the city, but I didn't know what that looked like. And around the same time,...
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    40 分
  • The Homestead Farm

    The Homestead Farm
    2025/04/01
    Today I'm talking with Jesse at the The Homestead Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Jessie at the Homestead Farm. I love the name of your place, Jessie. Good afternoon. How are you? I am great. How are you doing? And thank you by the way. Oh, you're welcome. I'm great. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota. You're in Washington state and you said it's raining. It's actually dry right now, but it's very wet outside. The mud goes up to your knees down in the cow pasture. 00:54 Gross. That's no fun. We're excited for a sun tomorrow. 74 it says. We'll see what happens. Well, maybe you'll get a couple of days and we'll dry it out some. It'd be nice. It'd be nice. And then we've got thunderstorms and rain coming up after that. But hey, spring is here, but summer, guess, is slowly approaching. So we'll have dry soon. Yeah. Let's not wish spring away because here in Minnesota, winters are long and cold. Yes. Yes, absolutely. 01:23 We have to eke out every piece of beauty and an amazingness from the point that spring hits until winter arrives. Okay. Nice to see all the green things popping up everywhere. I love that part of spring. The baby's being born on the farm and everything else. It's awesome seeing all the new life. Yeah. If I, if I actually lived on an actual farm, I would never be inside. Yeah. Ever. So. 01:53 All right, so tell me about yourself and the Homestead Farm. So I am Jessie. Hello everybody. And I started the actual business, the Homestead Farm, just over three years ago. I bought this place nine or 10 years ago with a dream of having a hobby farm and living off the land. It's only nine acres here, but we are using every square inch of it. 02:19 So yeah, I moved in nine years ago, 10 years ago, and I owned a cleaning business. I went to college before that for graphic design and just it wasn't my thing sitting at a computer. I worked my butt off and met an amazing man who made help to make all this possible. And I actually am now a stay at home farm girl, which has really been my dream for a long, time. 02:45 So yeah, we've got cows, goats, chickens, turkeys, some guinea hens, and a bunch of dogs. How many dogs? Right now we have nine, but five of those are puppies that are going to their new homes very soon. We've got some great Pyrenees puppies that are just awesome and they're in training right now to be livestock guardian dogs. Well, if anybody's in Washington state and looking for a great Pyrenees puppy, you know who to contact now. 03:13 Yes, I love it. We've got three three left available. So, okay good Yeah, only have one dog. I talk it talk about her all the time I probably should not even bring her up, but I'm going to anyway Her her name is Maggie and she is a mini Australian Shepherd and she is the love of my life Even though I have four adult grown children. I Love dogs. I think they're just the best thing on this planet. So I have I had kids though. So there's that 03:43 Yeah, our oldest son came to visit just like a week or so after we got Maggie, so she must have been nine or 10 weeks old. And I have never had a puppy. I was as anxious about a puppy as I was about my newborn babies. And he was like, she's a dog. I'm like, no, she's the baby. 04:08 And he was like, oh god, you're going to be so in love. I said, I'm already so in love. I can't stand it. This is making me insane. He said, this is why we never got a dog when we were kids, because you wouldn't have been able to raise us. You've been too busy raising the dog. I sense a bit of jealousy there. He's giving me hard time, because I don't think he remembers seeing me that in love with anything. And his youngest brother is, I think. 04:38 10 years younger than him. So he sort of remembers when we brought the youngest home. But it's a whole different kind of love, you know? You don't hold a baby and pet it and kiss its nose and tell it it's a good girl. You know, it's a whole different thing. So anyway, that's my thing about Maggie today. Maggie was not feeling well last night, so I've been a little concerned about her ...
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    38 分
  • Home Grown Collective - Third time's the charm

    Home Grown Collective - Third time's the charm
    2025/03/31
    Today I'm talking with Hayden at the Home Grown Collective. You can follow on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 Share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Hayden from Homegrown Collective for the third time. Hi Hayden, how are you? Great Mary, I hope you are. I'm good. It's a really beautiful day here in Minnesota. The sun is shining and it's cold. It's like, I don't think it's above freezing yet. Oh man, I got nice 67 degree weather down here in North Carolina. Well, yeah, because you're in the south and I'm in the north. So go fig. 00:58 Spring so far has been pretty good, so we're really looking forward to the temperatures keeping climbing here. it really is. I'm ready. I'm ready for it to be May 15th so we can start planting plants. Okay, so just to catch people up, Hayden and I have talked a couple times already. Hayden has the most wonderful directory for people who want to get found if they sell stuff. And by stuff I mean produce or... 01:28 Homegrown meats or I don't know what else but Hayden's gonna tell you so Hayden. Tell me more. Tell me where you're at. What's going on? So we created a it's it's it's a what a directory an online store and it's a hub with tools for producers and consumers to organize a local Supported food system in their communities so you can create educational groups. You can create barter groups you can 01:58 share which which farmers markets you're going to be at if you want to if you don't want to sell online and you want to keep everything local. The point of the online market is to give those smaller producers access to that revenue. And you're still supporting you know, local and when I say a local food producer, mean somebody who grows their own food, and most of it goes back to a 50 mile radius of consumers. 02:26 is what I consider a local food producer. people ask, where are you located? And it's not about where our company is located. It's about where they're located and who they can find that has the same mindset. So our Homegrown Collective isn't just a collective of people selling food. It's a collective mindset of people who want a different food system in America. And it gives you the tools to help organize that. 02:54 all in one place and you're able to support and organize local food production and offerings with restaurants, household consumers, backyard gardeners, to small family farms. And it brings everybody with that same goal in mind for our food system together in one place. You could compare it to like a Facebook with a good cause and our 03:23 Our thought was with the revenue that social media brings in, you could really make some real change in a country with that kind of revenue. And if we can do it under a nonprofit business model and get that money back directly to the responsible food producers and grow new operations of food production, then by directly funding those efforts, I think we can change the food system in our country. Probably communities out of time, but it can be done. 03:54 Very nice. And I'm really excited to hear that the Homegrown Collective model has grown since we last talked. Yeah, absolutely. I thought it was just going to be a directory, but it sounds like it's much more than that this time. So that's great. Before we continue, it's national, right? It's not just... Yeah, international. You can access it anywhere in the United States. We can't operate outside of the United States based on our... 04:23 a nonprofit status, you can't take in funds and direct them outside of the country, which I totally understand and wouldn't want to do anyways. we are steadily growing and I know it'll be a long, with all the information being pushed out onto people, it's kind of hard to get it out there. So we really appreciate everything you do for us, Mary. 04:50 Well, I am a huge proponent for what you're doing because I have been saying on every episode for the last two weeks, I think if you live in America right now, find your local growers because it's really important. It's always been important, but it's even more important now. I agree. I agree. And we are, our board members are ...
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    31 分
  • Fun Farm Studios

    Fun Farm Studios
    2025/03/28
    Today I'm talking with Troy, author of Fun Farm Studios. You can follow on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Troy at Fun Farm Studios and I don't know where you are Troy. What state are you in? We are in New Haven, Indiana. Okay, well in New Haven, Indiana. What's the weather like there today? Oh, it's beautiful. I love Northeast Indiana. We get all the seasons. We have nine seasons in this part of the state. Oh really? Yeah, the joke is if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes. 00:57 Yeah, my dad used to say that I grew up in Maine and it would be beautiful and then it be boring. We'd come run in the house and be like, what happened? He'd be like, if you don't like it, wait five minutes. That's right. It lives true here. So I'm used to that. I'm in Minnesota and it is incredibly gray and windy. And yesterday they were saying we're going to get six inches of snow. And then when I got up this morning, the storm had taken us 01:25 of more southerly tracks, so we're probably going see some flurries and that's it. Oh no. It's fine. I really wasn't looking forward to six inches of snow on the day before the first day of spring, so we're good. Minnesota only has two seasons, right? Winter's near and winter's here. Minnesota has two seasons and winter and allergy. That's great. 01:55 Yeah, no, we have spring, summer, fall and winter. And the joke here is that we suffer through the winters because the spring, summer and fall are so beautiful. That's true. So, OK, so we've talked about the weather because I try to talk about the weather at beginning of every single episode because it's a good way to keep track of it. So tell me about yourself and what you do. My my inner child is on the outside. I am what I wanted to be when I grew up. 02:24 and I've known since I was seven. And it's been art. They are an artist and entertainer has been the wonderful evolution of the dream since I was in second grade. And it has come to fruition in a big way with this beautiful homestead that we purchased about 11 years ago in New Haven. It's a historical property, although it doesn't quite. 02:48 Meet the standards of the registry. You can't paint that. You can't change that window. The windows 143 here, so we gotta change the window so but it's rich with history on this property. There are Johnny Apple seed trees on our property. We have everything Indiana has on our property except a cave, so it's just beautiful everywhere you look. There's something to see. And it's been a wonderful fruition. We started our company tag our company on the. 03:17 turn of the millennium, Y2K, when we realized the computers weren't taking over. Three, two, one, okay, we're fine, all right, all right, so let's start a business. 26th year in business now. And it has just grown organically from customer needs with a focus on making good memories and family-friendly fun. And the property that we are stewarding now that we've been delivered to is just a huge blessing that has the fruition of 03:47 offering people an option to come to us. We always have gone to them, but they've never been able to come to us. So we have a village that we have built on the property that represents the variety, the versatility of services that we possess and can provide. And we call it the fun farm. So the fun farm is kind of a cart before the horse because we have a TV show on YouTube now, Fun Farm Studios, which is 04:13 I guess the Disney movie and then we built Disneyland or he built Disneyland. We've built Disneyland and now we built the show. So it's just whatever, it's all happening. And the, village is inspired by playhouse design. So we have a giant UFO and castle and pirate ship and, uh, an A-frame for the dinosaurs. And it's just a, like we bought a park and it doesn't disrupt the land. It's a wonderful flow. So people can, can look it up and see it. 04:41 Google Earth is just an amazing aerial view of the property from what the previous owners did and what we have continued to enhance it with never destroying anything that we that wasn't a dangerous thing I mean some things fall over some things ...
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    30 分
  • Turn Here, Sweet Corn - Atina Diffley

    Turn Here, Sweet Corn - Atina Diffley
    2025/03/27
    Today I'm talking with Atina Diffley, author of Turn Here, Sweet Corn. You can follow on Facebook as well. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Atina Diffley, the author of Turn Here Sweet Corn. Good afternoon, Atina. How are you? Hello. It's really a treat to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Oh, I'm so thrilled you had time. I reviewed Turn Here Sweet Corn on my book blog years ago and I haven't read it since and it's been a while, but I remember just being smitten with your writing. 00:57 Thank you. was really fun to write it and really healing. Yeah. Yeah. I imagine it would be. was so like, it was so comforting to read it and know that I'm not crazy to love everything about the lifestyle. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. The good, the bad, the ugly, the aberrant, the fantastic. It's all there. Exactly. So because not everybody knows about the book. 01:25 Asina, will you tell me about yourself and what the book and what you're doing now? Sure. The book is a memoir. And when I started writing it, really all I knew is that I wanted to write a memoir about my experience as a farmer. our farm started in 1972. My husband, Martin, started it in Eagan, Minnesota. So for those of you who are familiar with Minnesota, Eagan is now 100 % developed as a suburban. 01:53 area, it's 20 minutes downtown Minneapolis. So he grew up there at Fifth Generation Family Farm and saw all that change happen. And that in and of itself is so much what this book is about because he knew that land through his ancestors and their experience as settlers, as Fifth Generation on land that had been in that family since it was taken from the Indians. 02:23 And that was rolling land. It was diverse. It was never farmed industrial style because of the topography of the land. wasn't flat and possible to put big equipment in it. So it was small fields settled into a diverse landscape that still had an intact biological system from pre-colonial days. 02:53 fields that he grew there were small vegetable plots, settled into this extreme diversity. And as a certified organic vegetable farmer, before anyone knew what organic was, he was really utilizing that diversity of that land. So that right there is a great place to pause and to really just sort of celebrate this word biological diversity that has now become somewhat of a 03:20 buzzword and a catchword and it's now being greenwashed, but it really is that the essence of all life on the planet. Well, yeah, because different is good and same is not good. It's boring. And from a health perspective, the more diverse any system is, whether it's a living natural ecosystem or a relationship, and you talk about any system, diversity is healthy. 03:50 and creates reduced disease transmission, reduced disease issues. When you think about it from an agricultural perspective, as long as we had a diverse landscape around our fields, we really didn't have disease or pest issues. And I was really naive when I joined Martin in the 80s. I was young and 04:17 There wasn't really a lot of science and research and conversation at that point in time yet about this and how it works. And so really, I organic farming was really easy. I mean, it was hard physically. We worked our butts off. But the management of our fertility and our pest-centered disease and our water needs was done through the diversity of the landscape and didn't take a lot of effort. But I didn't know that at the time. 04:46 I just was doing the task of planting and harvesting and I didn't really understand the impact that diversity had on it until the sky fell out and that land was developed. Yeah. It's, I, okay, I'm sitting here thinking about how to say this next. We lived in Jordan for 20 years, Jordan, Minnesota, and we moved to our little piece of heaven like a little over four years ago. 05:14 Our little piece of heaven is in the middle of the corn fields right now. And it's a 3.1 acre lot and our nearest neighbor is a quarter mile away. And part of the reason that we chose to leave Jordan is because stuff was starting to get built up. There were a whole bunch of housing developments that went in. And when housing ...
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    37 分
  • Rural Route Bulbs

    Rural Route Bulbs
    2025/03/26
    Today I'm talking with Jodi at Rural Route Bulbs. A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe. 00:29 Share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. This Homestead Holler Shoutout is to our friends over at Freedom Reign Farm in Buffalo, Minnesota. Their new little farm shop is the perfect spot for seasonal fresh goat milk products if you're local to the Buffalo area. While their online shop makes it super easy to order shippable items right to your door. From natural handcrafted goat milk and tallow soaps to grass-fed tallow skin care and beautifully arranged gift boxes. Each product is crafted with care and love. Check them out at freedomreignfarm.com or follow their Facebook page to stay in the loop. 00:58 Let freedom reign. Today I'm talking with Jody at Rural Route Bulbs in Wisconsin. Good afternoon, Jodi. How are you? Hi, I'm good. How are you? I'm great. How's the weather in Wisconsin? Well, it's probably about the same as Le Sueur. It's windy. It's warm, which is nice. It's like 62, but we have a pretty good south wind. think we're gusting to like 40. 01:21 Oh, it's not too bad here, actually. They were saying this morning that it was going to be windy and it was, but I think it's died down and it's sunny and I think it's 50 degrees maybe. Yeah, it's beautiful. And I was just telling someone else this morning that I interviewed at 10 a.m. that they are predicting real measurable heavy snow for Wednesday. And I'm like, of course they are because it's the day before spring. Yep. We were supposed to get that same snow. 01:48 So we'll see how much we get. We're kind of on the line between rain and snow, which we ride the line like all winter between rain and snow, it seems like. are you in Wisconsin? Uh, we're by Eau Claire. So we're just east of Eau Claire. So about an hour and a half east of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Yeah. Eau Claire is really pretty. I have been through there. So. It is. Go ahead. It is. It is. It's, it's so pretty in the fall. Um, I'm from Southern Minnesota. 02:18 by where you're from. And I've been combining in some areas with previous jobs. And sometimes I just stop and I'm like, it's so beautiful here when the leaves are changing. And so yes, you're right. It's, it's wonderful area. town are you from in Minnesota? Janesville, Minnesota. Yes. Yes. I've heard of Janesville. My, my husband actually has family in Janesville, Wisconsin. So, okay. Yeah. I get confused. 02:46 A lot of clinking things going on here this morning or this afternoon. Sorry. keep thinking it's morning. It's not. It's one o'clock. Okay. So anyway, I'm very excited to talk with you because I've been talking a lot on the podcast with people about eggs, chickens, cows and pigs. And I really do love flowers. So tell me about yourself and rural route. I can't say it rural route bulbs. Yeah. So, um, 03:15 Roll route bulbs was just an idea that, well, my husband and I, we were trying to think of a crop to diversify into that was local. So we farm, we're pretty conventional farmers. know, we have a combine, we do corn, soybeans, rye. We're trying to rotate into a couple of different things right now, but we were really looking for a local market that we could diversify into. 03:44 We happened to be on a trip in Washington state for baptism for my sister and my husband was like, we should think about tulips. So we looked into them. We planted 5,000 one year just to see if they would grow well. And they did. then planting, I planted 5,000 tulips with COVID when it was new and I got very sick afterwards. And then we planted another 12,000, I think the next year and I. 04:14 planted those when I was pregnant. So I would like to plant tulips when I'm not in an otherly state. Your property must be gorgeous in what, May, June? May, yep. It is. 16,000 tulips didn't take up quite as much space as I thought it was going to, but yes, I often find myself, I go out to the garden just to 04:42 to take notes on my tulips, which ones are coming back, you know, but sometimes it's kind of a lie. I'm just out there because it's just so nice. Yeah. I feel like people who grow flowers do it partly because it's a good thing to grow, but because there's such joy when they bloom. ...
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    36 分