A Tiny Homestead

By: Mary E Lewis
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  • Summary

  • We became homesteaders three years ago when we moved to our new home on a little over three acres. But, we were learning and practicing homesteading skills long before that. This podcast is about all kinds of homesteaders, and farmers, and bakers - what they do and why they do it. I’ll be interviewing people from all walks of life, different ages and stages, about their passion for doing old fashioned things in a newfangled way. https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
    Copyright 2023 All rights reserved.
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Leadership Economics Social Sciences
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Episodes
  • Harmony Mountain Farm

    Harmony Mountain Farm
    Oct 8 2024
    Today I'm talking with Cindy and Bill at Harmony Mountain Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 talking with Cindy and Bill at Harmony Mountain Farm. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. Doing well. So tell me all about yourselves and your story because I was looking at your website and it's a beautiful story. Well thank you. 00:29 Well, our story goes way back because Sydney and I together go way back. Um, so I don't know how far back you want to go, but we met in the eighth grade. So we go back pretty far. Originally from, um, a suburb in, in Connecticut outside of Hartford and we lived a pretty traditional life. So Bill and I, suburban, sorry, suburban life, but Bill and I, um, we met when we were 19, we started dating, we started raising a family. 00:58 um, built, you know, built a business and I was in education and we've done a lot of different things. And, um, when our resource allowed, we started skiing up here in Northern New Hampshire. And at the same time, um, my kids had grown and kind of left the house and, and we were just starting to, I think, examine where we wanted the next part of our life to go. 01:26 And I was having some health problems and we were getting tired of the hustle and bustle of living in the area that we lived in. And we started talking about how food was impacting on our health and we just went down the rabbit hole. I was reading a bunch of books on leaving the suburbs or leaving the city to become a farmer and we started researching farmers. 01:54 Joe Saladin and- Yeah, and largely for entertainment at the time because we're living vicariously through those folks, I think, and their stories. Yeah, and then, so this is a, we call it our midlife crisis farm. So we're city suburban people who did not grow up doing this, but we were attracted to the lifestyle for the health benefits and- 02:23 And the more we learned, the more we educated ourselves, Cindy more formally in reading books. I'm a YouTube university guy, so I try, I can, you know, I spend a lot of time watching other people's stories and farms and things. I think we also need to mention we connected with a lot of other farmers, one of them being my cousin out in Missouri, who is, you know, had a generational cattle farm. So we would talk to people and, and 02:53 how you think about what we wanted to do for the health of the animal, our environment, and for ourselves. We think that raising animals or doing what we do, it has many, I guess you've helped me with this. Yeah, well, it adds more meaning to life. Our lives were feeling meaningless in the traditional suburban American model 03:23 you know, our free time was spent, you know, just trying to fill it with shopping or going to different events. And then it didn't seem to be a lot of meaning in that. So when we started down the road with animals, um, which then brought us into our diet and, uh, it just gave more meaning to our life. It was, we felt as though we were doing things that had a greater impact than, you know, Hey, what do you want to do? Let's go shopping or, you know, 03:50 let's go see a movie or a show or yeah and it just seems so incredibly interesting for both of us. It wasn't like we can't, you know, we kind of were doing it at the same time kind of parallel doing research and then it just all kind of evolved on our long drives back and forth from New Hampshire to Connecticut how we wanted to proceed and that just continued to grow. 04:19 And the beautiful thing about farming and living off our land and living sustainably is that we're never bored. I mean, and the work is never done. So there's always something to be done and to be learned. I think I am absolutely motivated to learn new things. I think that's big for me. I think for Bill, it's probably the same. 04:49 Um, it's, it's definitely evolving. We've gone through different animals and, um, you know, trying to find that the right mix of animals for us. Right now we, we work beef cattle. We have a couple of our family dairy cows for ourselves. Um, we do pork and we do poultry, both layers and meat birds. It's pretty much the mainstay of what we're doing is the beef, the poultry and the pork. 05:17 And then we have other animals just for enjoyment. We have three goats that are family pets, we have guarding dogs that are extremely valuable and dear to us. And I think that the main thing for us is like some of the things that I took away from some of the farmers that I had read about or he had watched on YouTube is that everybody has a job here. ...
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    35 mins
  • The Kitchen Gardens

    The Kitchen Gardens
    Oct 7 2024
    Today I'm talking with Jessica Kelly at The Kitchen Gardens. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you'd like to contact Jessica, you may email her at Jess@thekitchengardens.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 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 talking to Jessica Kelly, cannot talk, at the Kitchen Gardens. Good morning, Jessica. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm so excited to speak with you today. I'm so excited you reached out because you... 00:29 commented on a comment that I left on a Facebook post and I was like, oh, this could be fun. Absolutely, I saw your comment and just immediately I thought why haven't I thought about being on a podcast to get the word out? So I thought I'm gonna reach out to her right now and let her know that I would be interested in speaking more about that. So yes, and I need all kinds of people to reach out because honestly, October is almost booked. 00:58 I didn't have five interviews scheduled two weeks ago. Oh, wow. Well, it's working. I dropped the ball. Whatever you're doing. Yeah, I dropped the ball and I was like, oh my God, I need to get October booked and I need to get booking for November because I have to stay on top of this. 01:16 It's going to be the holiday season here soon. And I was like, I need to get stuff booked now. Absolutely. Yeah. And I bet it's not an easy task because it's like constant, right? You're always booking. So I can't imagine. Yeah. And people are really, really great about if they respond, they want to do it. So if someone actually responds to a request, I'm pretty much sure they're going to want to talk to me. So that helps. 01:42 But anyway, let's talk about what you're doing to change the world in California. Well, I would love to think that I'm changing the world. That's my goal. I honestly, I'm so passionate about what I'm doing. So what my business is, is I help couples who are feeling overwhelmed by the urban life, go from feeling disconnected and stressed. 02:08 to living a slower, more intentional life on a homestead where they can improve their physical, mental and emotional health and strengthen their family bonds. And my emphasis is really on the family by teaching their children valuable life skills like self-reliance and responsibility so that they can experience a more fulfilling and sustaining way of life and a healthier life. So I'm a bit- 02:37 I'm very, very passionate about this. I have a background in nursing and so the health side of it is very important to me. Okay. So how are you helping families? So first of all, I'm actually in the middle of creating a course. In the past, I've done consulting work and I always knew that I wanted to create a course, but I wanted some time 03:07 to interview families, get to know their needs in regards to how they could start a homestead, what are the obstacles that they're encountering with leaving their urban life or city life, even the suburbs. I came from living a suburban life my whole entire life. And five years ago, my husband and I made the decision to buy some land and raise our kids for the sole purpose of 03:36 raising our kids on the land because we've had a lot of issues with some of our older children. And so what I've been doing is consulting work. I put the word out though, I'm really, really, really trying to just put the word out that this is a huge need in our current day. The children are suffering big time. 04:06 You know, as parents, we're also suffering. My generation, like we're having problems, a lot of problems with depression, anxiety, and other things, but the children are really suffering. And it's getting a little bit scary. I wouldn't say a little bit, it's really getting scary. And it's important to put the word out. So I started an Instagram account over a year ago, but I was very slow to get it going. 04:32 But the last six months have really hit it hard. I'm just getting this message out there. So that's what I'm doing. I'm putting the message out there. I'm very active on social media. I started a YouTube, but I'm actually not actively promoting anything on YouTube yet because I'm working on this curriculum. So I'm actually currently taking on conversations with couples who 05:01 are in this situation and like I'm scheduling 30 minute Zoom calls and I have a goal of having 50 Zoom calls before my curriculum is finalized. So that's where I'm going. I'm creating a course to literally get hands on with these people and help them get out of the city and to the homesteads where they can raise their kids and make it work for them. So. 05:30 That's what I'm doing in a nutshell. There's a...
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    46 mins
  • Turners Fresh Gourmet

    Turners Fresh Gourmet
    Oct 4 2024
    Today I'm talking with Chuck and John at Turners Fresh Gourmet. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 talking with Chuck and John at Turner's Fresh Gourmet. Hi guys, how are you? Good. And you're in Wisconsin, right? We are. Okay, so you're neighbors. Yes. Yeah, we live... 00:28 I don't know, less than five minutes apart, right, John? That's a true story. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I meant neighbors to me because I'm in Minnesota. But hey, we're all neighbors. Oh, yes. Yes. No. So where in Wisconsin are you? So we're in Wapaka County and in the the closest town is Wapaka, whereby the beautiful chain of lakes area. 00:56 I guess the only other way I would describe where we are is we're in the central sands farming area, which is where the glaciers dumped a huge amount of sand. That's interesting because as my grandfather used to say, it used to be before irrigation or modern irrigation, some of the most difficult land to farm on. 01:26 And then with the advent of irrigation, which was something that really exploded during his generation, it became some of the best land to farm on because it has great drainage and you have more control over the water input. Awesome. So what's the biggest city near you? 01:54 We're between Appleton and Stevens Point, almost midpoint, a little bit more toward point, but about 40 miles west of Appleton, west a little bit north. Okay. That gives me a dot on the map to picture in my head. Perfect. Thank you. All right. So tell me the story of how you guys got together and started the project here. I'll start out because I was sort of the instigating person on this. I was actually on vacation with my 02:24 my wife in the Oregon area, Portland, we landed in Portland, and we were heading to the Willamette Valley to do some little wine tasting, do some hiking along the coast, et cetera. But first place we went to eat was a restaurant that had Portland ketchup on the table. And I've not been a particular foodie. 02:49 necessarily, but I do, I've always noticed that sort of thing. If a restaurant says we've got house ketchup, I'm like, okay, I want something with that ketchup on it. And so I ordered a burger, whatever had the ketchup next restaurant, same thing, portly ketchup, and I'm kind of turning the bottle over and looking at it, looking up on the website, portly ketchup, I'm just curious, like this regional ketchup company. So long story short, I just kind of put that in the back of my 03:19 marketing and healthcare consultant, very specific niche. That was my job. And we had just moved to Wapaka in this sort of retirement transition I had been doing, or we've been doing. And we knew the Turner family for years because we'd be coming up here. And at a historical society presentation about three months later, we see John, along with his father and his sister presenting all about Turner Farms. 03:47 and the history of it, all that stuff. And the last people to get up were John and his sister, Tara. And they talk about, you know, here's some things we're looking to do to kind of expand and looking toward the future. And this idea resurfaced in my head. I went up to John, I said, what do you think about making a ketchup and having your own ketchup? And he said, that sounds interesting. And for reasons that he knew that I didn't, which was that they have a bunch of tomatoes left over every year, so why not? 04:17 And so that was, I think, February right before the pandemic. In the ensuing, you know, couple of years, we'd been working on our recipe and just kind of making the ketchup from home and sharing some jars of John, but not really talking too much about it because there's a pandemic. And then about a year and a half later or about a year and a half ago, John and I met up and he said, you know, we've been talking. We'd love to have your ketchup on the shelf. And I said, 04:47 John it's not my ketchup. This is this be Turner's fresh ketchup. It's it's the it's your brand your tomatoes your farm I'm almost a minority player in this thing because I think you guys have got the local farming Etc. So that's it. I'll let John fill in the rest of it, but Okay, that that became the idea Yeah it's funny because I had 05:12 recently moved back to the farm after being away for a number of years. And, um, as Chuck said, like, uh, there was a presentation of mainly about the past and as I remember it, Chuck just was like, you know, what's next and how about ketchup and, uh, it all sounded good. Uh, but I, I really didn't know how serious Chuck was about, um, this project ...
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    32 mins

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