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
  • Cole Canyon Farm

    Cole Canyon Farm
    Dec 29 2025
    Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. Built From Dirt : Farm School 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 Morgan at Cole Canyon Farm in Montana. Morgan's been on the podcast a few times under a different name. So hello, Morgan, how are you? Hello, I'm doing good. Yes, most of your viewers know me as Groovy Grazers, which we're still doing, but... 00:26 We had talked about last time trying to come up with a farm name. And so we finally figured it out and it's coal Canyon farm. So we're super excited to finally have that done after two years. That's a long time to settle on a permanent name. Yeah. Yeah. It was hard to name the land. We live in a very unique area. We live in canyons, ah but there is a Canyon battlefield. We were trying to take on like not your atypical Montana name, you know? 00:55 It definitely fits. We're excited. We got to come up with our brand next. That's going to be a nightmare. guess trying to get your brand registered here can be really hard and there's not very many like single stick brands left. So that's man. I hope that doesn't take two years, but that's next on her on the chopping block. So I don't know that we have that situation here. When we started our place, we just picked a name, registered it with the state and that was it. 01:21 So the name's okay. I can pick my name without registering that with the state, but I mean, we don't have cattle right now. We have horses um and the sheep don't have to be branded. So it's not like a super big rush, but if I'm going to have horses, especially being in Montana, going missing is not uncommon or they get out. Brand, brand, brand. get it. Okay. Brand. It's okay. Yeah. I'm talking like iron brand and like, 01:51 either freeze dry or hot iron brand um because that's like one of the next big things that you do in Montana. You pick a name and then you figure out your brand and people sell some brands for thousands of dollars if they're a single easy one, but it's only 250 bucks to register with that, I think with the state here. So that's not bad. That's one of the less expensive things to have to do. Okay. Okay. oh 02:19 because I'm looking at a computer and because I know Facebook, was thinking brand as in brand like, Oh yeah. I mean, your brand is so important though when you're a farm, right? Like that's why I built it through Groovy Grazers, even though we didn't have a name because I was like, well, this is how we're going to operate anyways. Like having some type of grazing or deal going on, whether it be sheep or whatever, I just knew we were going to eventually be a farm face. And so I didn't want to wait on that. So yeah, like if you're a farm and you don't, 02:49 have a Facebook page, you don't have an Instagram. mean, TikTok is one of those where I'm back and forth on if you really need it, but Facebook and Instagram for sure, or a website. If you don't wanna do social media, it's really hard, you gotta do more advertising and word of mouth, but having a brand is so important, like your colors, the way your logo is, can you put it on items? Like these are all things that people don't even think about, and that's actually why we did Cold Canyon Farm, and we built our, oh 03:18 Facebook group, it's called Built From Dirt Farm School. Because a lot of people, they don't know how to do this. Yeah, I was going to ask you about the farm page too. I didn't do my weather update. what's, I usually open it with how's the weather. So how's the weather in Montana today? Oh man. So I mean, it dropped from like 34 down to one degree last night and we have like a powder. 03:43 that came so like not feet of snow which can happen here but it's just the swings are ridiculous this year it's not good for the animals how's your weather? we are in a blizzard we are officially under a blizzard warning and you can't see to the road from my house and that's about 200 feet whoa look at this dedication though this is what it takes to like do any type of business right to be honest Mary like the fact that you're here still trying to do this is awesome you don't want to get you down 04:11 Oh no, no, no, no. It always makes me laugh when I see blizzard warning because we've had blizzard warnings before and it hasn't really been a blizzard. This is a blizzard. Like this is a for real Minnesota blizzard. And I'm like, this is great. Our house is warm. We're having roast chicken and winter squash and broccoli for dinner. The dog is fine. chickens are all nice and cozy in their coop. We're fine. We're going to ...
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    34 m
  • Moonlight Elk

    Moonlight Elk
    Dec 19 2025
    Today I'm talking with Christie author of Moonlight Elk. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Christie Green, the author of Moonlight Elk, One Woman's Hunt for Food and Freedom. Christie is in New Mexico this morning. How are you, Christie? Good morning. I'm wonderful. Thank you for having me. 00:25 You are so welcome and thank you for visiting. love it when I get to people who are into nature and also write books about it. um What's the weather like in New Mexico this morning? Well, it's unfortunately very warm and sunny and dry. We've had unseasonably uh mild weather. It's been in the high fifties and we haven't had uh much snow for a number of weeks. So it's really precarious here. It's not good when we don't have snowpack. 00:54 But we're hoping for some form of moisture, at least in the new year. We'll see. I will keep my fingers crossed for you. And I wish I could send you all the rain we got this morning. Oh, man. I do, too. I have a friend up in North Dakota, and they get snow and those cold temperatures. And I wish they could just push it down here. Yeah, it was so weird. I was looking at my Facebook memories, because I look at them every morning, because I sit down with my coffee and scroll through Facebook to find people to talk to. 01:23 looked at my memories and a year or so ago it was raining on this date as well. I'm like, okay, so is December 18th a rain day? Hmm. Yeah, interesting. It seems like it would be too cold up there for rain, but moisture is moisture. Yeah, I'm, I have an appointment tomorrow at 9 45 in the morning, half an hour from here and it's all wet out there. The temps are supposed to drop. 01:50 hard this afternoon and it's supposed to snow a little bit on top of whatever freezes. And it's not supposed to warm back up until tomorrow afternoon. like, I may not make that appointment. We'll see how the roads are. Go slow. Yeah. Making appointments in the Northern tier States in December or January, February is a real iffy game a lot of the time. 02:15 But it's fine. I love winter. Winter is my favorite. Well, fall is my favorite season, but I love winter because it's when we all kind of cocoon and get cozy and eat really good food. So that's right. That's right. All right. So Christy, tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Well, I am 55 years old and I am originally from Alaska and now I live in San Diego, New Mexico. I've been here for 02:44 let's see, 28 years or so. And pretty much my whole career as I'm a landscape architect and I'm also an author and a designer and my work revolves around food and cultivating connection to each other and to place through the catalyst of food. And so in my work as a landscape architect, I focused on 03:10 building soil, harvesting water, and growing heirloom varieties of food for people, like in the homes, but also in larger kind of contexts like housing developments and public spaces. And then I also work with native plants and um doing like passive water harvesting landform grading techniques like berms on swales and bio-swales and things like that. And then uh I am a hunter. uh 03:39 As some people say, an adult onset hunter, started hunting when I was 40. And the original intent was to harvest my own meat, right? So I was growing all this food for myself and for other people. And I thought, well, what about, you know, meat? Why couldn't I hunt as well, you know, to fully round out this sort of self-sufficient way of gathering food. 04:08 I thought I was going to get food, so to speak, and what I ended up finding was this revelatory new relationship to place and to myself, really, through the animals and through the hunt. So I started writing about those experiences with the animals here in New Mexico and other places too, but mostly here in the West with elk and deer and turkey. And these stories ended up 04:37 becoming this compilation of braided essays and then a whole braid of a book, which is Moonlight Up, which was published last September. Very nice. um You said self-revelatory regarding hunting. give me a couple examples of that. Well, what I didn't realize, so I'm a mother and at the time my daughter was five and I was always, you know, 05:05 responsible and on. Like had to be home, you know, make food, go pick up my daughter from school, you know, attend a business, you know, very scheduled, loaded life in terms of obligations, you know, and all of those I loved, but em I didn't realize how off balance I was in terms of my own ...
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    33 m
  • Polyface Farm - Joel Salatin on Food Emancipation

    Polyface Farm - Joel Salatin on Food Emancipation
    Dec 17 2025
    Today I'm talking with Joel Salatin at Polyface Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Joel Salaton at Polyface Farms in Virginia in the United States. Good morning, Joel. How are you? Good morning. I'm very good. Thank you very much. What's the weather like there today? ah Well, last night it was down about 00:29 15 degrees today. I think it's supposed to be a high of maybe 34, 35. And then drop down into 20s tonight. Tomorrow's going to be warm. It's going to be about a high of like 50 tomorrow. So. We're going to be warmer than you are in Minnesota today. It's supposed to hit 45 degrees today. Oh, wow. That's cool. That doesn't happen very often that we're warmer than Virginia. 00:58 Yeah. Yeah. Well, it, uh, it, it's, we, we've been in a really, really cold, I mean, the river's frozen over. It's, uh, we've been in a really cold, uh, cold dip here lately. Yeah. I think the whole United States has been at some point in the last week and a half. It's been, it's been unbearably cold here. And I'm really looking forward to getting back into what we would consider to be temperate degrees here. Um. 01:27 So I saw that Polyphase Farms is closed for the next week or so. Do you guys close for the holidays? Yeah, we do. We close for about two weeks. And that you got to realize much of many of our staff, we have a very, very young staff here. And so often they like to go to family over the holidays and things and New Year. we just, it's just the easiest thing is to just close for two weeks and 01:58 Um, just keep a, you know, keep a kind of a core here to do chores and feed cows and gather eggs and kind of hold the ship together, uh, for, for a couple of weeks and let everybody, uh, just enjoy. And then, and then those people that, put their hands up and say, I'll stay through Christmas. Then obviously they get there. They get there two weeks. One guy already took us two weeks back at Thanksgiving. And, and then, you know, they, they, they, 02:28 stagger out, you know, through January. you know, usually by the, by mid February, we're back at full staff and up and running, but these two weeks were pretty, were pretty core. That's fabulous. And it gives you and your wife and your son a chance to maybe spend some time together as a family. Yeah, some, although I'm a bit of a scrooge, you know, we've done this all our lives and, um, the, uh 02:58 The holidays, you know, the work stays. So we end up picking up the slack because we live here. don't have to go see family. know, we're here. so we pick up a lot of extra work during the holidays. I'm actually, what I've started doing in the last few years is the holidays oh with the crew kind of down to core level. 03:26 and not doing, not biting off any great big projects. That's when I do my writing. So yesterday I started on my next book and I'm almost done with the third chapter. I got two chapters done yesterday. got, em I was trying to get my third one done this morning before this, but I didn't quite get it done. I have to finish after our call here, but I'm hoping to get this knocked out here in the next couple of weeks. 03:56 And we'll be up and running. you have a working title yet? Oh yeah. The title is food emancipation. Oh, awesome. Cause we need that real bad right now. We do. We, we need it desperately. And, you know, this, I consider this, told Teresa this morning, this is probably going to be my, my single biggest contribution, I think to the culture. And of course she said, well, 04:26 It's taking your whole life to get to this, you know, to get to this point. but, uh, this, this, the food freedom, the food freedom, I think is the biggest issue we've got now agriculturally, oh uh, and, and in the food system. And, um, so, um, 04:50 I'm really digging into it. I'm excited about it. In fact, I couldn't even sleep last night. got two chapters done and, um, um, I'm really excited about it and glad to be jumping in. The big thing with a book, hard part, the hard part is starting. And, uh, so yesterday when I got that first chapter done, I was, I say, you know, I was on a roll and, uh, and now I'm, I'm just really excited about. 05:20 about knocking it out. Yeah, somebody told me a trick once that if you're stuck at the beginning, start in the middle. Like literally just get the words on paper and then you can move it around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's true. That's true. So, know, I have an outline, have an outline. And so I've got, you know, kind of the chapter, the ...
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    33 m
  • Hellfire Homestead

    Hellfire Homestead
    Dec 12 2025
    Today I'm talking with Shannon and Allen at Hellfire Homestead. 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 Shannon and Alan at Hellfire Homestead in New Hampshire. Good evening, you guys. How are you? Very good, actually, despite freezing. Is it super cold in New Hampshire right now? Yeah, we could kind of a little, 00:25 cold snap going on so that makes for frozen water bottles and water buckets which is always a nightmare but yeah Minnesota's pretty cold too but not as cold as it's gonna be Saturday the high for Saturday where I live is gonna be minus one oh my gosh and it's probably coming your way three or four days later so you I've given you a heads up oh 00:50 Yeah, I know it's really hard with livestock because they've got to have fresh water whether you want to go out and break the ice and put water in or not. Yep. And we have quite a few different animals here. Okay. Well, tell me the first question I have is why is it called Hellfire Homestead? So, mean, oddly enough, it was sort of to weed out people that would be turned off by that name. 01:18 I think, and feel free to interrupt me, dear. But I feel that like in recent years, you know, with the influx of TikTok and other various social media, not only is there a lot of information that's absolutely wrong about homesteading, survivalism, bushcraft, et cetera, but a lot of people into it are not multi-generational. And there's a lot of returning to sort of like bad 01:48 Um, bad themes, I guess I should say as far as what we perceive to be gender roles in home setting and things like that on top of, uh, just a lot of bad information in general, which I mean, as somebody who grew up in New Hampshire and my family's been out here since the 1700s, um, ah I learned generationally how to can, um, how to keep meat clean. Um, hunting was big in parts of my family. Um, 02:18 And I just sort of like grew up in the woods, like a wild feral child. ah So, you know, and then you, you know, you log on to like TikTok and you see like 25 year old kids like canning with, ah you know, jars they got, you know, spaghetti jars they got from the grocery store and saying this is viable. And it's like, no, that will kill you if not ruin your entire harvest. There's a reason our grandparents use ball jars. ah 02:46 So that was part of it. And another part of it is that people are incredibly interested in what it is we do. 02:54 just on the day to day, like they're interested in the farm, they're interested in the fact that we fill our own freezer with our own meat. They're interested in the fact that we do process the hides of the animals that we eat and kill. We have sheep. ah So, some of us being online was to satisfy the curiosity of our friends, but also to kind of counter some of these like... 03:20 these ridiculous ideas that people who are not even generational farmers are starting to promote as good. Uh huh. Good. I'm glad that you're, you're like standing up for that because you're right. There's a lot of crap on the internet about what's safe, what isn't, what you can do, what you can't do. And I was grown up the same. I was brought up, sorry, not grown up, brought up the same way you were Shannon. I spent so much time in the, uh, the woods and the swamp behind my house growing up in Maine. 03:50 And I'm 56, there were no computers, were no tablets, there were no cell phones. Mom said, you ate a good breakfast, go play, don't come back till dark. And that's what we did. Yeah, was Gen X. So my parents were basically like, get outside, you're on your own until it starts getting dark. Yeah, me too. And I couldn't necessarily do that with my kids when I finally managed to find a husband who wasn't terrible and managed to stay with him. 04:19 and lived in town because there weren't really any woods for them to go play in. So we would take them on the weekends and go hike trails in the area. 04:30 Yeah, my son that way too. we, you know, when I was, it took a while to get a farm in my first marriage. Um, and we lived in the city. We actually lived in Concord, New Hampshire. Um, so like keeping that rural, that like, you know, that aspect of like self sustainability was a little bit harder. Um, but you know, we did things like, you know, from a very young age, he was taught gun safety from a very young age. He was taught at least some of the basics of. 04:58 killing and cleaning your own food. And then as we got our own farm with my ex-husband, we started raising rabbits and doing things like that. So, I mean, that's definitely uh something that he's held ...
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  • Hope Hill Homestead

    Hope Hill Homestead
    Dec 10 2025
    Today I'm talking with Marcus at Hope Hill Homestead. Route 2 Revolution 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 Marcus at Hope Hill Homestead in New Hampshire. Good morning, Marcus. How are you? Good morning, Mary. How are you? I'm good. I'm very excited to find out what you do, but tell me how the weather is in New Hampshire this morning. Well, when I was dropping my kids off at their little 00:28 uh school, little farm school, little private Catholic farm school. It was two degrees. Okay. Is it sunny? it cloudy? What? It's partly sunny, cloudy. Okay. so, but there's some snow on the ground and everything is frozen here. um It is, I think it's 22 degrees outside here. 00:56 In Minnesota, it's very overcast. Our yard light, we live on three acres, so we have a light that lights up the door yard at night. It was still on at 7.30 this morning and the sun was supposed to be up. I was like, oh, it is very overcast. And they are predicting rain this afternoon. Oh no. So you're going have some hard driving conditions pretty soon. Yes. And my husband actually has an appointment at two. So I was like, please be careful when you go. 01:26 True. Yeah, I don't love it when the weather does this flip floppy thing because it's been really, really cold here and we've had snow at least a trace every day for over a week and now it's going to rain. Yeah, it just makes a big mess. yeah, we did the driveway and like, for example, I had an oil truck try to come deliver oil to me and we burn wood and we have like oil as a backup and sometimes if the fireplace goes out, the stove goes out in the night, then you... 01:55 the heat kicks back on and I wanted to make sure I had the oil tank full because we live up on a dirt road, a driveway is a dirt road that goes up pretty steep and uh at some points the oil company will say we won't even attempt to go up your driveway because it's dangerous. uh yeah, yesterday he tried to, a few days ago they tried to get up, they couldn't make it up and I'm like, oh please God, please let them help him get up and then they came today and he delivered it. So now we're, hopefully we're set for the winter. 02:25 because it's really important when you live on a homestead, as we all know who do. Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at your place. Yeah, so we live on, me and my wife and my four kids, live on 10 acres and we have some sheep and we have some chicken and I also from home, I'm a work at home parent here and I 02:54 I make furniture, but I also make like little A-frame cabins and greenhouses. That's primarily what I do now. I make these kind of these smaller concept cabin structures that people use for like Airbnb or just for, you know, their backyard sleeping cabins or whatever. Yeah. And as far as like the homesteading part, we just started milking some sheep this last spring, the first time we milked. um 03:24 That's been interesting and we made cheese. We were in the process of trying to become more self-sufficient, but as you know, you got to take little steps and sometimes with every two steps you take, you take one step back. Yes, you do. Sometimes you don't even go forward again. We did that with rabbits. 03:48 We're not doing rabbits again, I don't think. We keep talking about it, but I don't think we're gonna do it again. just not, it is not worth the return for us. So with the sheep, I already knew that you could milk sheep, but are they good with that or do you have to like train them to be okay Well, you know, there's a couple breeds that are very good milkers. So we have some East Phrasians and 04:14 The East Fraser's sheeps, can produce up to a couple gallons each one a day. And a lot of people don't know that about um sheep that you can milk them. we love our sheep and we've had sheep for the last, well, we had to get rid of our herd a few years ago because we just didn't have enough pasture and it was getting too expensive and we had young kids and it all together was hard. so we... um 04:43 We got rid of our sheep and our goats for a little bit. And then we just had the chance to get back the same sheep that we got rid of, returned to us um because they had young children. They couldn't take care of them. And luckily they were, one of them was in milk. And uh so we just kept on milking and it was fantastic. And sheep's milk, if anybody has tried goat milk, there's a little bit of a taste with goat milk. It doesn't taste like cow's milk, but sheep's milk. 05:11 actually taste just like cow's milk, I would say even better than cow's ...
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