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A Tiny Homestead

A Tiny Homestead

De: Mary E Lewis
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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/lewismaryesCopyright 2023 All rights reserved. Ciencias Sociales Economía Gestión y Liderazgo Liderazgo
Episodios
  • Wilson Dairy Farm MD

    Wilson Dairy Farm MD
    Jan 12 2026
    Today I'm talking with Haley at Wilson Dairy Farm MD. You can also follow on Facebook. www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead 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. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Haley at Wilson Dairy Farm in Maryland, I think it is. Good afternoon, Hayley, how are you? Good afternoon, I'm great. And yes, you're right, we are in Maryland here, Baltimore County. All right, and you guys are a dairy farm and 00:27 I've actually been really looking forward to this because I don't talk to people who do dairy. I talk to people who do cattle for eating the meat more often. So, uh number one, how's the weather in Maryland today? Today is absolutely gorgeous. We hit 50 degrees and it's been sunny and just a light breeze and it feels like a nice spring day in January. Yeah, oh in Minnesota it is pushing 40 degrees. Everything is melting. There's no wind. 00:56 It's sunny, it's gorgeous. It feels like April, not January. Yes, I'll take it though. Yeah, me too, because I figure two weeks from now it'll be minus 20 with a wind chill of minus 40. Exactly, we don't quite get that cold, but anything under 30 degrees is cold for me. Yeah, it definitely gets cold here in Minnesota for sure. 01:21 We had a night last winter that was pushing minus 50 windchill and I thought you know, maybe the northern tier states aren't as much fun as I as I think they are so I bet All right. So tell me about yourself and about your dairy farm because I am so excited to hear your story Sure. So my name is Haley Wilson. I grew up on a commercial dairy farm My dad milked around 220 Holsteins at our biggest 01:50 So we were a small commercial dairy farm because there are a thousand head dairy farms out west. There's much bigger farms than that. for us, that was a lot. We milked 200 cows a day. It was about three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. We had some family trouble over the property about six years ago. My dad's siblings had all left the farm when they were young. 02:15 like a lot of small family farm disputes go, they came back and they wanted their inheritance. we were in a lawsuit during the COVID timeframe between 2018 and 2021. And um because of COVID, we actually never got to see a jury trial. We had a judge who just decided everything. And because my grandfather's notes that said what he wanted to happen with the land were not notarized, he said none of them could be 02:43 admitted as evidence. So we actually ended up losing everything. had around 350 acres. it was all, yeah, it was all gone to my aunt and uncle who live in Virginia. They're not even local. So that was something we went through a couple of years ago that was really heartbreaking. And there were a lot of emotions surrounding the lawsuit, know, anger, frustration, just disappointment all around. My dad really took it hard. 03:09 And my sister and I kind of felt the weight of the family and we kind of had to figure out how to keep things moving. As far as the dairy cows go, I was able to keep a couple of my nice show animals. I just kind of took them to different dairy farms around the state of Maryland, actually. People were very generous and would house them for me. Just last year, I found this farm about 10 minutes away from my home farm where I grew up. 03:33 and the people who own it were renting it out to a family who were moving and I reached out and everything worked out perfectly. I was able to move in last fall. I brought all of my young animals, so like my little calves and my breeding age heifers, no one who's in milk yet. I brought all them home here about a year ago. And for the last year, I've been working on fixing up the farm and getting a parlor built. 03:58 When you're going to milk more than just two or three cows, you've really got to have the facility for it. And since I planned on shipping milk grade A to a cooperative, like my dad did, I had to have the facility to match their standards. So I just accomplished that here in November, and I'm shipping milk for 25 cows for the last 60 days. So that's catch up to where I'm at. Is it just you? It's just me. 04:24 Yeah, it's just me. My parents live in a house that they rent down the road. My sister has a little farm she does ag tourism business with, but I'm the only one that lives here. So whenever I say we, I mean me and the dogs, me and the animals. We is a me and my animals concept. I um don't have anybody that lives with me or helps me. It's just me. Wow. Haley, I am so impressed and so proud of you. Thank you. 04:53 That is a lot to take on as one person. It is definitely a lot. Once I got a routine, know, things have...
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    32 m
  • Mystic Roots Homestead - Herbal Simples & Apothecary

    Mystic Roots Homestead - Herbal Simples & Apothecary
    Jan 9 2026
    Today I'm talking with Corey at Mystic Roots Homestead - Herbal Simples & Apothecary. www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead 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. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Corey at Mystic Roots Homestead, Herbal, Simples, and Apothecary in Kentucky. Good morning, Corey. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm good. Good. How's the weather there? It is sunny and almost in the 50s in South Central Kentucky today. It's really kind of crazy for it being January. 00:29 Yes, I'm in Minnesota. It is going to be 40 and it is sunny and we have about three or four inches of snow on the ground right now. my goodness. I would love for some snow. had a very, very dry Christmas this year. So does it snow in Kentucky? You guys are pretty south, right? It does. I think in 2015 we had, or no, 2014, we had about eight feet here and I'm closer to the Bowling Green area. I was working at 00:58 I was a dispatcher then actually, and we had so much snow that we had to close the interstate down. It was rough that year, but it does. It's not been bad or equated to a lot in the last few years, but we've kind of been waiting for it. The woolly worms have been telling us it's coming, but it's not showed up. And the woolly worms lied to me this year. I saw seven different woolly worms and all of them had different stripes. 01:27 different width stripes. And I was like, okay, I need some consistency here, guys. And see, we've been all of the persimmons have been given a spoons shovels, but we've not seen it'll probably be here in mid February is when we'll see it. Okay, so for the listener who doesn't understand what we are talking about, woolly worm caterpillars are are black and like a reddish brown. And the ends of the caterpillar are black and the middle is brown, I think. And 01:56 The middle band of the caterpillar tells you how long and how hard the winter is going to be. And all of them I've seen have been different. And the persimmon fruit, if you cut them open, it looks like a spoon or it looks like a fork, right? Or a knife. A knife, okay. if it's spoon, fork, or knife. Okay, so if it's a spoon, it indicates lots of snow. uh If it's a fork, it indicates what? 02:24 It will, I think it's very mild and then the knife it's going to be frigid. It will like, the knife will be cold enough it'll cut through you. Yeah. So it's a very frigid winter. Fork is very mild, but a shovel, you're supposed to be shoveling through that stuff. And that's what we've had, but we've not had it yet. Yup. I understand the last two winters we've had, not counting this one, we had a foot of snow each winter. That was it. And the reason that I wanted to clarify what we were talking about is because not everyone is up on their, 02:53 their weather lore. And if you want to learn about it, the old farmer's almanac talks about this stuff all the time. It'll even tell you when to cut your hair. Yes, it will. It will tell you when to breed your cows. It will tell you everything. We do a lot of stuff based off of the almanac and the cycles. We like it and it works that way. They've been doing it that way for hundreds of years. Why would we change it? Yeah, if it works, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Don't fix it. Exactly. 03:22 All right. So tell me about your homestead and what you do. We started full on homesteading last year. I've been staying at home for about three years now with the girls and I got a few quail and then I got some ducks and I got some chickens and I started a hatchery. We wanted to gear more towards sustainability and 03:51 I had a lot of hormone issues and we had some fertility issues and I started falling in the rabbit hole of herbalism. And that brought me closer to my spirituality because it allowed me to learn about the land and the things that are provided here that are local that I can forage, but that also heal my body. And that led us into homesteading and it blew up. You fell down the rabbit hole. 04:19 Literally with everything Just right in like Alice Mm-hmm. Yep. Absolutely. That's how it happens. You get sucked in and you and you learn things and you're like what else is there? Yes, and now my family I Usually they come to me for little things. We don't get sick in my house a lot So they're always like what are you doing? What are you using and I'll be like, well, here's some tea and 04:46 I say community herbalist because I just offer consultations to people now at this point and if they want product, I just let them have it. And that gets them an entryway into this and it's an amazing place. It really is. um I am trying so hard to ...
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    34 m
  • O'Connor Family Acres - Surprise Piglets and a Soap Business Begins

    O'Connor Family Acres - Surprise Piglets and a Soap Business Begins
    Jan 5 2026
    Today I'm talking with Tracy at O'Connor Family Acres. The Soap BeeZZ www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead 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. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Tracy at O'Connor Family Acres in Le Sueur, Minnesota. It's a hyper local episode. Welcome Tracy, how are you? Hi Mary, thanks for having me. I am doing well today. It seems like it's going to be a little warmer today here, so very excited. And we're supposed to get freezing rain later today too. 00:28 I mean, why wouldn't we? It's Minnesota. So yeah, it's very gray, but that's why we're warmer. so yeah, Tracy's been on the show before. It was a little over a year ago. And we talked about that you had just gotten pigs, mangalitas, mangalitas. Yep. And um that was the newest thing then. And Tracy has been selling her duck eggs in the summertime, all this past summer. 00:58 at our farm stand, at our place. So it's been kind of fun. Yeah, it's been a great collaboration. I really appreciated the opportunity and it's been nice because we, springtime and summer, we are overflowing with duck eggs and then they take the winter off and know, hunker down, I guess. Yeah, about the time they stopped really laying, we had a couple of people stop in and ask if we had duck eggs and I was like, nope, they're on vacation until April. 01:27 It's very true. they yeah we and you can put heat and light in the coop But we kind of let them follow their natural cycle. That's just you know, the way we've we decided to do it. So Yeah, when they lay they lay very proficiently and when they don't they don't so You know, so what else is new on the farm in 2025 because I didn't talk to you on the podcast since December of 2024 01:57 Yeah, so we've really just been expanding the goats. We've had some baby goats this past spring and so they've been doing really well. um Getting kind of a wrangle on what the ideal number of ducks are. So we've been working on that. And then we had baby piglets unexpectedly this fall. I mean, kind of unexpectedly. We knew the boar was in there with her, but... 02:25 We didn't realize she was pregnant. that was a fun uh adventure. And thankfully, our mama pig, Fiona, her name's Fiona, has been doing really well with the piglets. So we have six gorgeous little baby piglets running around. How old are they now? Oh, they would be about two and a half months. OK. Yeah. 02:53 They were right before Halloween. just, yeah, just over about almost two and a half months. And they are so adorable. Like so adorable. I saw the pictures on Facebook that you posted, but I couldn't tell from the pictures how big they were when they were born. Were they the size of your hand or were they bigger than that? Yeah, they were probably the size of two of my hands, I would say. But they were, I mean, they were teeny teeny. 03:23 um And then of course it was October in Minnesota, so we got to pick them up and bring them in the barn and mama did great with that. She was not overly thrilled but was not aggressive, which was great. And then we were able to, after a bit of time, coax her into the barn. um And we had the heat lamp set up in there and they have a big enough paddock where they can 03:49 go to the other side or come back and be under the heat lamp if they want. And they are just, they're doing super great in there. So yeah, looking forward to figuring out what we're going to do with. So what'll be eight pigs now, two adults. We have the male boar and then the female. And then we have the six piglets and of the six, I think only one is male. So all the rest are female as well too. 04:19 Oh wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Well, you might be in the market to sell a couple sows in the spring. Exactly. Exactly. I don't think they're called sows until they have babies. don't know what version Yeah, I'd have look. It's... guilt? Are they guilt maybe? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. I don't know. I'd have to Google it and I don't... 04:46 want to make the clicky clacky noises on the keyboard right now. So yeah, no, I feel you. Yes, exactly. And then I've been doing soap. Soap has been my new adventure this year. yeah, tell me the story on how that happened because I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, I kind of fell into it, which was awesome. So my neighbor has the soapies is the name of the business. 05:12 um And the soap bees has been around for 20 years, over 20 years. So my neighbor, Anne, who is amazing, um was looking to retire and not do soap anymore. um And she asked if I would be interested in taking over the business. And so we made some soap together and I was like, oh my gosh, I love...
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    32 m
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