Today I'm talking with Mindy at Pumpkin Hill LLC. 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 Mindy at Pumpkin Hill LLC. Good morning, Mindy. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. Thank you. Good. You're in Wisconsin? I am. I am in the southern west portion of Wisconsin. 00:29 Okay, what's the nearest big city? Um, La Crosse. Okay, so you're, I think you're like four hours from where I am in La Sour, Minnesota, I think. Yes, yeah, we're about, I mean, it takes me about three and a half hours to get to the Twin Cities. Okay. Well, every time I talk to somebody who's in a bordering state, I say, hey neighbor. So hey neighbor, nice to meet you. So tell me about yourself and what you do. So um. 00:58 I have two children and a husband and we own a farm in rural fairyville. We just started at this year and we have a pumpkin patch in animals and we're really focusing on farm to table on our farm. We have homegrown eggs we're starting to produce and sell hoping that it gets a little bigger as we go. I also own assisted living facilities. 01:27 more so group homes and then we also beef farm and green farm. Okay, when did you start doing this? Pumpkin Hill, I started a year ago. Okay. So we're really fresh. Well, that's good because fresh pumpkins are good pumpkins. Okay, so why did you start it? What brought you to doing this? Oh, so... 01:57 I guess my dad and I have been in businesses together for a very long time. And we also do vacation rentals. And so we actually, my husband and I came over to the neighbor's house one day because we were going to build a house and we were asking about her sewer and it just kind of took off from there. She looked at us and said, I'm moving. Do you want to buy the farm? And we were like, whoa, what? I think we were in shock. 02:26 And we were like, yeah, I guess. So we had talked and my dad and I chose to sell another property to buy this together. So he's part owner right now of the farm with me. And then it kind of snowballed from there. We're like, okay, we know that land prices are expensive. How can we still provide for our family, live on this beautiful land and pay our mortgage? And so it kind of came from an idea 02:56 let's do something where we can get the community involved and we can share the beauty of this land with everybody. So let's come out snowball. Awesome. The reason I ask everybody why is because everybody's reason is different and no one buys land without wanting to do something with it or on it. Yes. We bought land and we thought we were going to raise 03:25 rabbits for meat and we thought we were going to raise chickens for eggs and meat. And right now we have neither. Everything happens for a reason. I feel like we just kind of, we had different ideas in our minds at first and it just kind of went in this weird direction and here we are. Yeah. Our weird direction failed. We, we really wanted to try raising rabbits for meat and 03:54 Our bunnies were stupid and did not understand that they were supposed to reproduce. Even though we did everything right, since getting rid of the rabbits, we've discovered that Timothy hay may have been the issue because they were too fat. The female rabbits were too fat. And fat rabbits don't breed. Who knew? So weird things happen. You can't know what you don't know. And if you don't know where to look, you can't find out. 04:24 And so our rabbit enterprise was a very short-lived experiment that did not go well. But that's okay, because we got years to go and miles to go and lots of sleep to get, and we'll find a new thing. It'll be fine. So I was looking at your Facebook page and it looks like a wonderfully fun thing to do to visit your place. Yeah, we're focusing on family, I think, because my family's so close and 04:52 we're always doing stuff together. I mean, my grandparents came over there in their eighties and God bless them because they put their sweat and tears into this too, so help me get going. And we just kind of creatively came up with games for people and animals for people to see and things for them to do. My cows are kind of my little babies. Um, and they'll come up and they'll kiss me and they'll lick me and they'll, you know, play with people. So we really wanted an interactive place for people also to learn. 05:21 because we know that a lot of places around here don't have that. So people will ask us questions like about our Highland cows, like what different sizes do you have? Well, we just have a mid-size Highland cow. There are four different sizes and the breeds and all that fun stuff. So it's a good ...
