Today I'm talking with Dana at Twin Acres Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. 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 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. Today I'm talking with Dana at... 00:28 Twin Acres Farm in Idaho. Good morning, Dana. How are you? Good. Good. How's the weather there? It's actually better today. Like last week was in the 90s. And then this past weekend, you know, when you have something planned to do, it dropped completely. Luckily, we didn't get a freeze, but it was cold and windy. I was like, I thought it was supposed to be the first day of summer, but whatever. 00:56 Well, you had the opposite of what we had this weekend and yesterday. Oh my God, it was so hot. We had the central air set for 72 and at three o'clock yesterday afternoon inside my house, was 77 degrees and so sweaty. was gross. Oh my goodness. Yeah, we've been having some like for Idaho, it's been like above like record highs. 01:21 But then we had like this cool front come through on like right on the first day of summer. And we were like, what the heck? My daughter went camping and they went up to the mountains and they ended up getting snowed on like five inches of snow the night before. And she was like, I thought it was summer. Yeah. I had the opportunity to apply for a job in Idaho years ago and I gave it some serious thought. And then I saw what the weather is like. And I thought, you know, 01:51 Minnesota is a little more predictable than Idaho. I think we might just stay here. Probably. So, all right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do, So I actually am a school teacher. I've been teaching for about 15 years. And then when I'm not at school, know, evenings, weekends, 02:15 school, you know, we get all those awesome school breaks then like I can't sit still. So I decided to start this little farm to keep myself ultra busy. 02:28 Okay, and it's Twin Acres Farm, is that right? Right. So we own only, it's just small, if we have two acres in Twin Falls, Idaho, and I have twin girls. So that's where the name came from is like two, two, you know. So that's where we came up with the name. Okay. I was going to ask, so thank you for telling me. So what do you do at your farm? 02:53 When we very first started out, know, it was like everybody else, you get a few chickens and they're the gateway and then it grows from there. So I had some neighbors at the time and they had these adorable little goats. didn't, I thought they were baby goats, but it turns out they're dwarf goats. I knew nothing about them. And then we were hooked. So you have to start with two, right? Cause they're herd animals. And then now I'm up to like 40. Oh. 03:23 my. we obviously I don't keep that many but you know after baby season we need to sell down some. We still have some babies and stuff to sell but I do all the milking, make cheese, make soap, make caramel sauce, make you know all the different things that you can make with goat's milk pretty much. And then you know we make in can. 03:49 and garden and we have chickens, have ducks, we have rabbits. We've had other homesteading animals like the cooney coon pigs in the past. We've had turkeys in the past, but some things, we've even had quail in the past, but some things we've decided that that's not really our niche or something that we wanna tackle. And those are things that you have to find out over time because some people love those. 04:15 those types of things and then some decide that's just not for them or what they want to do. Just like some people are like, I would never have goats. I'd rather have sheep. You know, everybody has their personal preferences of like different homesteading animals that they would like to keep. So chicken math translated to goat math for you. Well, I still got chicken math too, because I'm probably sitting on over a hundred right now. So I have both. Uh huh. Yeah. 04:42 Yeah, chicken math is weird. You start out with like two chickens and all of a sudden you find yourself with a hundred and you're like, where did they all come from? Right. We started with like a dozen, you know, again from like neighbors had an incubator and we were like, oh, we want eggs. And so we started with a dozen and then now I, um, breed certain, ...
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Jul 3 202533 mins