A Better Yard

Today I'm talking with Brad at A Better Yard. You can also follow on Facebook. If you use the code atinyhome, you'll get a discount on the price for the first month. Content Seeds Collective https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/ https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/ www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead 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 If you're a homesteader who wants to get paid for your content without living on social media, check out SteelSpoonFarm.com. Founder Jen Kibler teaches you how to build a real blog or your email list and use Pinterest for sustainable marketing. Inside her coaching group, Content Seeds Collective, you'll get weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to her Root Seller Resource Library full of tutorials and templates. 00:21 Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm. A tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Brad Tabke, the founder of A Better Yard in Shakopee, I think, Minnesota. Good morning, Brad. How are you? 00:49 Good morning. I am happy to be coming to you from Shakopee. OK. And I forgot to mention that he's also a Minnesota state representative for Shakopee. So ah how is your day? I would ask you about the weather, but since you're only about half an hour, an hour away from me, I know that it's sunny and warm. Warm. Warm is good. It is. It felt so nice. Like I was out this morning already. I had bird feeders to fill and do all that kind of stuff. And so I was out this morning and it was 01:19 gorgeous and I hear we're supposed to get some snow later this week. So that would actually be kind of nice to give some more moisture. That would help a lot. Yes. ah My husband actually cut down an ash tree last weekend and he was out there cutting it up this weekend in a t-shirt and like khaki pants and sneakers. But it's a goofy February. Goofy is the weather's goofy all the time right now. We'll see what happens with that. it yeah it was a gorgeous gorgeous weekend. 01:50 It really was and I was like, why am I warm? And I looked up at the thermostat in the house, it was 75 degrees and the furnace was not on. I was like, oh, duh, when it's warm outside, it's gonna get warmer in the house. Go fig. Exactly. It's a good ambient heating there. Yeah, we've got lots of windows and so the sun was just pouring in the living room and I was like, why am I hot? And I'm like, oh, duh, I know I'm hot. It's not. 02:17 It's February, but it's not February according to the weather. Okay, so you had a group called Minnesota Gardening and you changed the name to a better yard in January. So tell me the history on this. Yeah, so during COVID, it feels like all the stories now start with during COVID XYZ happened. 02:44 We during COVID, I had a bunch of friends who were asking me they wanted to start doing planting vegetables and flowers and those kinds of things and wanted something to do. And so they knew that I was I have a horticulture degree from Iowa State and have been in the landscape industry since I graduated from college. Actually, since I was in middle school working in a greenhouse. And so I have been 03:10 started that out helping just friends. they're like, Brad, we want to pay you to do this. And how do we do that? And I was like, I don't know. I'm not sure oh how we can do all this and make it make sense. And so we were just helping folks. And uh then we set up what we called Minnesota Gardening to grow that and stretch that to be helping with landscapes and helping make sure people knew how to reduce their chemical use and just fundamental things like that, along with 03:38 fruits and vegetables and making sure to grow those kinds of things. And so we started that and was very Minnesota centric. It was very much here in our thing that we wanted to be doing. But then it continued to grow from there. And so it was the focus shifted through COVID and after COVID to focusing on environmental landscape and making sure that people knew how to eliminate chemicals, how to feed pollinators, how important it was. 04:05 that we have a diversity of native and helpful plants in our yards and making sure that those kinds of things, saving water, storing carbon that are important for our future, that those kinds of things are happening. And so we grew beyond just Minnesota and just gardening into focusing on making sure that we're helping to do, you know, little things like helping to reduce the risk of cancer from chemical use and those kinds of things. And so 04:33 We switched to...