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Today I'm talking with Mary at Mary Loofah. 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. 00:57 It's still pretty cold. think it's probably 35, 40 degrees right now. Oh, yuck. No, thanks. But it's spring. It's coming tomorrow. They're saying we're supposed to 81. I'm like great. Thunderstorms tomorrow night for sure. Yeah, it's been a wild spring. We've had such shifts in weather and temperatures. I'm like, mother nature, if you could just find a moderate place to be for a week, I would be so thankful. That would be great. So. 01:27 Anyway, I covered the weather. I try to do this at beginning of every episode because why not? And everything we do is so dependent on the weather. I figure it's a good way to start. So tell me about yourself and what you do at Mary Luffa and explain why it's Mary Luffa because Luffa is not your last name. Well, I am Mary McDowell and I... 01:50 milk goats. So I never in a million years thought that I would milk goats. I am a horse trainer and equestrian by first trade. And I got into goats when I had my first child. He was six months old and I was breastfeeding exclusively. And I just stopped producing milk overnight. Oh no. given reason whatsoever. 02:19 And I was in a panic, of course. And so what happened was we tried the formula thing and it was projectile vomiting and projectile diarrhea out of my six month old who had yet to sleep through the night once. Oh God. So tired mama, very tired, hungry baby. And our neighbor across the street just happened to have a Nubian milking goat. 02:43 that they were using to feed other baby goats. And they said, well, you can use her to milk if you want to try the goats milk. So we did, we milked her. I had never milked a goat. I hadn't really even raised goats before, but I got on YouTube as everyone does and learned all the things I could learn as quickly as I could. And so we started milking her and God bless her. was this, gentlest goat in the whole world. 03:12 And so the first time we gave our son goat's milk, he slept through the night and started to gain weight and he was just thriving on it. And so we kept milking her. Well, once we were done feeding him milk and he was ready to switch over to regular food, we had to give the goat back because she wasn't ours. She was just on loan. And so she ended up going home. 03:41 And I was like, you know, I really miss this goat's milk. So we ended up being gifted another dairy goat and one goat turned into over 30 goats. And my main mission is I want a homestead and I want to help other people who need help. Like women trying to feed their children healthy is my bread and butter. That is like my passion. Of course, I will sell milk to anybody who wants the milk. 04:10 But that is where my heart really is, is I want to help people who were struggling like I was struggling when I couldn't find something that would work and quickly, you know what I mean? yeah. So the name Mary Lutha to go to the other half of that is of course we have the goats milk, but we also have so much milk that there is an abundance. So we had to do something. So I started making soap and all the body butters and the lotions and 04:40 all the things that you can make with goat's milk, cheese, yogurt, you name it. Well, at the time I had started growing luffas and I'm sure you know, but for any listeners who don't know, luffas are basically in the gourd family and they look like giant cucumbers while they're growing and then they dry and you've got this amazing cleaning tool inside. so my husband was offhandedly joking saying, you should just 05:09 make a little store, you know, like an eight by eight building in the backyard and call it Mary Lufa. And I just kind of laughed it off. I was like, yeah, I'm, never going to be selling anything at that level. Well, fast forward seven years and we have a huge shop that I have a commercial refrigerator in for all the milk and all the other things. And I have my soap making area in there and I sell all sorts of stuff. We have an online store. 05:39 It has just grown so exponentially from what I could have ever imagined. And ...