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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Economics Leadership Social Sciences
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Episodes
  • Prairie Creek Farm and Apiary

    Prairie Creek Farm and Apiary
    Nov 15 2024
    Today I'm talking with Jane at Prairie Creek Farm and Apiary. 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 Jane at Prairie Creek Farm and Apiary. Good morning, Jane. How are you? I'm fine, thank you. Good morning. You're in Kansas, right? I am. I'm in South Central Kansas, just north of Wichita. Okay, awesome. So tell me about yourself and what you do at the... 00:29 the apiary. Well, my name is Jane and I, I'm retired from federal government. I worked in the federal government for over 22 years in law enforcement. And back in 98, when I first was hired on, I bought this little farmstead in Harvey County. And after retirement, 00:58 I continue to work it as just a small horse farm. We used to breed horses here, my daughter and I, but we've always had a garden. And then after my grandsons started being born, one of them had allergies and eczema, and the doctors wanted to put him on medication right away. And I said, well, why don't I just start keeping bees and see if honey really helps? 01:28 And it did. And now 12 years later, I'm, I'm up to 25 hives and starting to do farmers markets on the weekends or during the week here locally. And then I started making goat cheese with a friend up in Park City, Kansas. And I made cheese for him for three years. 01:58 and they purchase my honey and my byproducts to put in their little market shop. So that's kind of what I do. Fun. I love it. Okay. So I do want to get into a couple of things about the bees, but the first thing I want to ask you about is I was looking at your Facebook page and you have some kind of salt bar that you make. What is that? It is basically the base oil in it is 02:28 olive oil, or sorry coconut oil with a little bit of olive oil and castor and then it has a couple grams or probably like a cup of Himalayan sea salt and it just lathers up and is so pleasant for your face and I do it with and without 02:58 So, and it's just fun. It's fun to work with and it's really lovely on your face. And you can use it as a total body soap, but it's something I've started this summer more continuously. And I have people that just absolutely love it. And that's the first bar that they come to. Some of them I have with turmeric. 03:26 So it has sort of an anti-inflammatory with the turmeric. And then I'm getting away from fragrance oils and using more essential oils now. So I have several different essential oils. I just made some with tea tree and then I have some with eucalyptus and thyme. So yeah, I'm just kind of experimenting. Okay, so my question is, it's a soap. 03:55 bar but the salt bar. So why is the salt important in this? Um, it's fun because salt and sugars help with lathering but the salt also it can be used as 04:12 Oh, it's like a scrub. So it just has nice lathering properties. And I wish I had a better answer. It's just a really beautiful salt bar. And I can go get some more documentation on it. But that's my best answer is because of the lathering and the scrubbing nature of the salt. Just like if you make salt. 04:38 foot scrubs with honey and salt. It just helps with exfoliation and cleansing your face better. And then I'm just kind of experimenting different ways. I follow a lady, I believe it's the nerdy farmer's wife, and she has some really great books and series on soap making. And when I started making milk soaps, I followed a lot of her recipes. 05:08 And then she had this series coming out with salt bars. And there was another group of people, because when you start doing one thing and you start researching, then all of a sudden you start getting these pop-ups and other people that make soap. And so I started looking at some of their recipes and putting things together. But mostly I would say that the salt itself is, getting back to the original question. 05:37 um for exfoliation and help cleaning your skin and it helps with lather. Okay got two things off of everything you just said. The internet the internet is the most amazing rabbit hole to go down ever and the reason I asked about the salt bars is because I didn't know I'd never heard of a salt bar before and we make soap and I was like what is a salt bar I need to know more. 06:04 Yeah, if you look up that nerdy farmer's wife, she has some great books. And then if you follow them, every once in a while you'll receive an email and she'll have a recipe in there and you can kind of look at the recipe and add things or take things away, you know, run it through a lie calculator and. Salt bars are just great. I find them to be one of my favorite soap bars. Okay. 06:34 Awesome. I just...
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    35 mins
  • Cultinary Family Farms

    Cultinary Family Farms
    Nov 13 2024
    Today I'm talking with Eric at Cultinary Family Farms. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 Eric at Cultinary Family Farms. Good morning, Eric. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing great. And you? I'm good. You're in New Jersey? Yeah. While we're in Jersey, we have to say South Jersey, Central Jersey, or North Jersey. So we are in South Jersey, right by Philly. 00:30 Okay, cool. I'm in Minnesota, if you didn't know, so I'm not going to sound like you and you're not going to sound like me and that's what makes the world go round. And I'm from Montreal, so I have a double accent. I'm not hearing a lot of the Montreal, I'm hearing more of the New Jersey, but either way it's all good with me. All right. So, tell me about yourself and what you guys do at the farm. Well, it all started in Quebec when we lived there. I have a passion with... 00:56 garlic so I started garlic you know I said you know I'll try farming garlic for fun I started really small and I failed miserably and then that got me like a kick just to try again and and then you know I rented a little lot and then we started planning and it went really well so it got me you know what I'll do it bigger so we sold where we were we bought a little land with a house and we started 01:25 farming there, starting getting animals and everything. So starting to do in like, you know, people would come to the house and buy her honey, buy her, you know, garlic, eggs and everything. And then when I moved here, since I was a brand new immigrant, it took me about 16 months to get my green card. So I didn't want to wait, you know, because it was, so I opened up my farm again here in Morristown. 01:51 So I knocked on everybody's door. I was looking for vacant lot for farmland and everything. I got turned down for like six months and then someone answered one of our ads and said, hey, you know, I have a land. It's not ready, but hey, if you wanna rent it, go ahead. So I started with smaller tools. I pulled out all the tree. There was about 10,000 trees on it. So I started by myself and I removed all the trees, all the rocks, got a beat up tractor. We have a. 02:19 hashtag that's called curse tractor because everything happens right now. I'm working on my tractor as we speak. And, uh, so we started with that, you know, so it's like a second year. We're heading into our third year. So we, last year we harvested about 45,000 cloves that I planted by hand. And, uh, you know, we do a fast farmers market, we do food expos, we do a few things and now we started a home delivery. So it's the farmers market delivered to your door. 02:48 So that's what we're trying to do. And that's where we at today. If you put that in like a, in a ballpark real quick, that's pretty much what we do. That's awesome. And the more you talk, the more I'm hearing the French accent. You have a beautiful speaking voice. Thanks. Okay, so I had a couple of questions that are specific and then we can just kind of go from there. I saw that you sell black garlic. I freaking love black garlic. I had never tried it until a few years back. And... 03:17 I tried making it and it was an epic fail. I tried making it in a rice cooker and it did not work. So is there a trick to, well, number one, tell people what it is and then number two, is there a trick to making it at home? Well, yeah, the black garlic is a fermented regular garlic. So what you do is you really in a slow heat, you slowly cook your garlic to, depending on 03:47 what you use to cook it in. So it's you people try rice cooker, slow cooker, you can put it in your oven, you can bury it in the ground with you know, it's depending on where you at, you know, like so, so it becomes like a gummy bear in a way kind of like texture. And we actually cook it a little bit so it's harder and it's a bit drier so people can handle it with their hands and it's not sticky and you know, so that's what we do. 04:16 And it becomes like, it's crazy, the antioxidant and everything, it's the benefits for your health and the flavor. It's like it becomes that umami flavor. 04:33 I think it's like candy. Yeah, well, it's like a brain kind of tease in a way because you go through five steps. Well, the one we have, the one we make, I tried a few other ones that, you know, like we go to a store and it's really like watery and it's like mushy. It doesn't give you the same, but ours give you like five flavor steps. So it's kind of like for 10 seconds when you put the gummy in your, in your mouth, it becomes like a, like a brain teaser. Cause ...
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    34 mins
  • Murrell’s Fowl Play

    Murrell’s Fowl Play
    Nov 11 2024
    Today I'm talking with Kristin at Murrell’s Fowl Play. 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 Kristen at Merle's Foul Play. How are you this morning, Kristen? I'm good. How are you? I'm great. You're in Tennessee? East Tennessee, yes. Okay, cool. Another Southern accent. I love it. 00:27 I talk to so many people in the South and I'm in the very, well not the very, I'm in the North, I'm in Minnesota so I don't hear a lot of Southern accents up here very often. I like to say that mine's not that bad but if you ask my husband he's going to disagree. Yes and most of us who have accents can't hear them at all because we're so used to it. Yeah. Okay so tell me about yourself and what you do. 00:53 Uh, let's see. I used to breed, well, I used to show chickens when I was in 4-H in middle school. And for the last three years, I have been joking with my husband that I wanted to get chickens. And he thought I was not serious. And the next thing you know, we're going to, well, two, three hours away to buy a coop and bring it back. And I started with four birds that have now turned into 30. Oh my. Yes. So now we breed. 01:21 Silky's and seramas and we just got some Rhode Island Reds and now we are working on our egg production and our incubation Okay, so I was looking at your Facebook page because that's what I do and I saw that you raised chickens for show for showing them Do you also raise chickens for eggs and meat eggs? Yes meat? No, I have not got into meat birds 01:49 I have a couple friends who do that and they love it. And then I have a couple of friends who do that and they hate it. So we don't eat a lot of chicken here. We're more of a beef household. So I just couldn't justify the feed cost to meat cost. Uh-huh. Yeah. Um, chicken feed is very expensive right now. Yes. That's why we don't have chickens this winter. We called them a month and a half ago because they were being lazy and they're also getting old. 02:17 And my husband said, I don't want to feed chickens all winter for no return. And I said, that's fine. Yes, exactly. And I could, I mean, we eat chicken maybe twice a month in this house. So I couldn't justify raising a ton of birds to just let them sit in the freezer for a while. Yeah. And we didn't raise meat birds. We had them for eggs and we can afford to buy a dozen eggs a week. Right now it's fine. So, and there's a really sweet woman who sells eggs at the farmer's market in the summertime. And my husband. 02:47 works at the farmers market. He sells our stuff there. So he knows her and he's going to get ahold of her and be like, can we buy some of your eggs? That's probably going to be the cheaper route compared to chicken feed. Yeah. Your eggs are better than the store bought eggs and your eggs are cheaper than chicken feed. So we would like to buy eggs from you ma'am. So tell me how, how in the world did you go from, I don't know, taking care of chickens for 4-H when you were a kid 03:17 to now being so invested in this? I'm not even sure how it happened. I just kind of got this idea one day and I ended up with those four birds. And I bought, I originally bought pet quality silkies, even though I knew that my goal was to breed show quality silkies. So I bought these four silkies and I was just like, I just want to see if I enjoy raising the chickens. Cause I can maintain four birds and if I don't like them, they'll just live and die here and I never have to get any more. And then I got those four. 03:44 And they were so sweet and they're still really sweet birds. They're not as sweet as my seramas, but they're still incredibly sweet. And I enjoyed messing with them and I enjoyed hanging out with them. And then my grandfather had this coop at his house and he was like, I'm not raising chickens anymore. Why don't you take it? And I was like, well, if I get a coop, then I got to get more birds. So then I ended up with some egg laying birds and then my husband loves those birds. So he decided to get more egg laying birds and I was like, well, I got to go back to, you know, showing my birds. So I started getting. 04:14 I won a contest for six free bread to standard silkies and I was like well that would be perfect because then I can separate them into their color pens and work on that. And then one thing led to another and now there's birds everywhere. Well I bet they're clucking happy birds. Very much so. Uh huh. Okay so I am not anywhere near an expert on chicken varieties so tell me about what silkies are and why those. 04:45 Silky's are bantams, so they're a lot smaller than your regular...
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    34 mins

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