-
サマリー
あらすじ・解説
Today I'm talking with Gregg at Wisconsin Mineral Solutions. 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 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar. 00:26 because I needed something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. 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. 00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Greg Forster at Wisconsin Mineral Solutions and he's in Wisconsin. Good morning, Greg. How are you? Good morning. How about you, Mary? I'm good. I am your neighbor in Minnesota and the weather here is relatively warm for April and sunny. What is it like in Wisconsin this morning? Right, about 37 degrees and bright and sunny. 01:26 Mm-hmm. Yeah, we're moving slowly incrementally towards spring. I'm very excited about this and I'm sure you are too. Yes. So tell me about yourself and what you do because I know that you are a genius. Yeah, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder so is genius. Oh, yeah. Well, over here in Wisconsin I have 01:55 on a 19 acre hobby farm, Homestead, where we've got probably about 30 baby goats born this spring. So that's, that's exciting. And most of those are twins, I guess. Yeah, twins and a fair number of triplets born this year. So that's always fun. And kind of kicks off the spring season with a lot of excitement here around the Homestead. 02:24 And, um, well, we raise quite a, I guess you could say kind of like a rainbow of fruits and vegetables here. We've got, um, a couple of acres actually of elderberries, and then we grow Aronia and blackcurrant and some red, white and pink currants. And have a small greenhouse that, um, helps us kind of keep things going a little later into the season and also a little bit early. 02:53 So yeah, home setting has been good. We've been working with Dairy Goats for about 30 years now and learning a lot. And my personal background is I have a degree in physics and I utilized that for about 20 years in the world of software engineering and it wasn't until 03:21 2012 that I turned that education towards the world of agriculture. And now I have a business called Wisconsin Mineral Solutions, as you mentioned. And I help produce growers and dairy farmers more profitably produce and more sustainably produce nutritious foods. Okay. And that's where the genius part comes in. 03:46 I listened to your podcast with Jill Winger today. I think her podcast is amazing. Like I want to be Jill Winger when I grow up and I'm trying really hard to grow up fast because that would be great. Yeah, she does. Awesome. She's great. She's a lovely human being. But what I found really interesting is all the science behind the making soil work better for you to grow better plants. And 04:13 So did you go back to school to learn this stuff or what, how did that happen? Well, I did not go back to school. Um, but a lot of the principles that I've been learning and research that I've come across, um, my physics background kind of helps evaluate that and understand more how it, when the rubber hits the road, what's actually happening down there in the soil and then what's happening in the plants themselves. And 04:42 I've encountered quite a few really, really knowledgeable people over the last decade or so that have been instrumental in my learning and growing. And then of course, there are plenty of good opportunities like Acres USA and the Moses Conference and La Crosse, not too far from here. So yeah, there are lots of ways to increase your knowledge and become more proficient in 05:12 your understanding of how the natural environment works. Okay. I think that you suffer from the same thing that my dad and I suffer from. My ...