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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Episodes
  • 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
  • Get Bentz Farm

    Get Bentz Farm
    Oct 3 2024
    Today I'm talking with Theresa at Get Bentz 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 Theresa Bentz at Get Bentz Farm. Good morning, Theresa. Good morning. I have to tell you, I love the name of your farm. One of the most entertaining things about this podcast over the last year. 00:27 is all the names that people come up with for their places. So I'm assuming it's just a riff on your name. Yeah, it's a little bit of a riff on our name and also like we're in the Northfield area and there are so many beautiful little like vegetable farms or berry farms around here. And everybody has sweet names like singing hills and whispering meadows and stuff like that. And 00:54 When we first started, we were one of the only ones who had sheep, really. And so we were like, well, we got these funky Icelandic sheep that have an edge to them. You know, they're not the kind of sheep that'll come up and let you pet them. Um, and so we were like, we don't want a soft name. We need a tough name. And then we're like, well, our last name is Bentz. So why don't people just get Bentz? 01:22 Yes, I had never heard the phrase get bent until I met my current husband. And he said it one time and I was like, where, what is that? He said, you've never heard it before. I said, no, no, never heard it. And I can't explain on the podcast what it actually means. It's very insulting. So, but it's brilliant for your farm. So tell me, tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Yeah. So, um, we, well. 01:51 kind of a little bit about us. We were originally city folk and people who, like we lived, I lived and grew up in the cities and my husband grew up in the suburbs and for a while we lived in Savage together and we just, you know, we just kind of wanted to have more control over our food sources and how we get food and where the food comes from and just knowing that because that's 02:20 Part of the biggest issue as a consumer is figuring out where your food is actually coming from. And so then in 2013, we, what we had decided many years before that, but in 2013, we finally found a farm that fit what we wanted, which took a long time. For any of those people out there looking for farms, it takes a really long time. So just be patient. And then, you know, we found the farm in 2013. 02:49 We moved in in March and we just went full steam ahead and started, you know, raising some animals. We got our first sheep that summer. And then it's just kind of taken off from there. We've over the last, like I would say seven to eight years, we've really figured out our niche in the area, like what we do well, which is really the sheep and the wool. 03:18 Um, so as we, as we learned about sheep and as we got better with raising sheep and producing wool, I got really into the processing of the wool and turning it into, um, yarns and rovings and stuff like that and building a community around local fiber. Um, and then I purchased a wool mill and that's kind of what I do primarily now is, uh, care for the sheep and make yarn. Okay. 03:48 Isn't there a wool mill like a big factory in Northfield? No, that's Fairbow Woolen Mill. Oh, okay, yeah, sorry. Yeah, no, it's so proud. A lot of people ask me that. And they're down in Fairbow, obviously. And they really just, they make like blankets. They're more of a weaving mill than a big, I mean, they don't take in customer wool. They don't take in wool from the local area. 04:18 I don't think they do any scouring or washing of wool anymore. I think that facility or that part of their facility was damaged during some flooding. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. I had Faribault and Northfield mixed up. And in my defense, I grew up on the East Coast. I moved to Minnesota in, oh my God, let me think. My daughter was born in 89, so 91, 92. 04:47 I haven't really traveled the state a whole lot. Like I've been to Northfield, but I went there for a specific reason and went home. And I've been to Faribault and went there for a specific reason and went home. So all these billions, it seems like of little towns in Minnesota confuse me. And Faribault is really not that far from Northfield and the grand scheme of things, but it is a totally different place. So. All right. So can you, number one. 05:18 You have Icelandic sheep, but I think that you have another breed too, right? Yeah, we were primarily Icelandic and only Icelandic up until about four or five years ago. And then we started to cross in other sheep too. My philosophy on shepherding has changed over the years. And so initially I was very ...
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    38 mins
  • Abundantly Blessed Farm

    Abundantly Blessed Farm
    Oct 2 2024
    Today I'm talking with Scott and Lydia at Abundantly Blessed 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 Lydia and Scott at Abundantly Blessed Farm. How are you guys? I'm good. Doing well. Thank you. It's a really pretty day in Minnesota. Where are you? We're in Ohio and it is rainy, which we are very thankful for. 00:29 because it has been very dry this summer. Yeah, we had a really rainy spring, but it's been very dry for the last couple of weeks. So we're waiting on some rain here too. So tell me about yourselves and what you guys do. 00:45 We started a lavender farm about two years ago. Um, we had visited Michigan and visited a lavender farm up there. We had an extra acre at our property and we weren't sure what to do with it other than just mow it. And so we came back and decided we'd plant some lavender and see where it went. So we have been growing lavender and then we started a farm stand and we sell some products out of that. And then we've also started selling some, um, that pasteurized milk. 01:14 So we do pre-orders for milk that we sell on our farm stand as well. Nice, when I saw you guys are primarily lavender farmers, I was very excited because I haven't talked to anyone on this podcast about lavender yet. So what made you choose lavender? Yeah, so neither one of us have a true green thumb. So that was one of the things that attracted us to the plant. So when we went to Michigan, we took a tour, we were asking a lot of the interns there. 01:45 we were to start growing this, how much of a green thumb do you need? Each one of them said, yeah, we're all going to kill our plants. It's totally fine. It was a little bit of some hope that we had some chance. Lavender is a Mediterranean herb. So it grows in honestly some really rocky, junky soil. As long as it has good drainage, it will just take off. It'll explode. 02:13 And just thinking about the past two weeks, it's been severely dry here, brown grass everywhere. And the lavender loved it. Nothing else loved it, but the lavender certainly did. So kind of the main reason why we chose it is because either one of us have a green thumb and we've only killed off a few. So we're thankful for that. Yeah. And lavender has so many great properties. You can use it for, you can eat it. 02:42 I don't love it, but you can put it in lemonade, I hear, and you can use it as a seasoning for cooking meats and stuff. It's really nice to have as a dried flour in a bouquet. It's really nice to have in a bouquet not dried because it smells amazing. And you can use it in soaps and balms and lotions and things, yes? Absolutely, yes. So we actually grow two main varieties. One is a culinary variety. It's called Munstead. 03:11 England lavender. That's the one that we use for our lavender syrup kit. Our lavender sugar. We actually sell that we wholesale that a couple of bakers in the area who actually incorporated into a lavender lemon cookie lavender lemon scones. We've used it for a lavender lemonade made that fresh here on the farm and it's amazing. And then the other variety that we grow is something called phenomenal. It's a hybrid variety mostly for 03:39 its flower production, also for its oil production, because like you said, the scent is truly to die for. Even once it's dried, the scent is still present. You just kind of have to rub the plant a little bit, and you get that wonderful lavender scent right back. So, it's truly versatile. We use that for some of our other products, our linen spray. 04:04 Lydia makes a tallow bomb. It's so tallow, it's rendered beef fat. That's great as a lotion, as a cosmetic agent. So yeah, it's definitely a wide variety of uses. And we're very thankful that we can grow it here locally. Yeah, we grow it here every year, but we only grow a few plants because it doesn't do really well because our dirt is very black and really loamy and it isn't dry. 04:33 So, and especially this year, it wasn't dry. We grew our lavender in the greenhouse in a pot and that's doing fantastic because it wasn't in the wet dirt. But my go-to for lavender is when anyone on the house has a headache, we have lavender oil in a bottle. And anytime anyone has a headache, the first thing we do is take a sniff off that bottle of lavender oil because it really does take the edge off. It truly does, yeah. It's got so many great properties, whether it's for migraine relief. 05:02 We even have some individuals who claim that it's really helpful for just general pain control. It's fantastic for sleep. We know that. Great for ...
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    34 mins
Leadership Economics Social Sciences
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