
So You Wannabe a Farmer
So You Wannabe a Farmer
Homesteading is a Mindset
Surprise and Happy Holidays!
A little treat from Melissa and Wendy along with apologies for seemingly sneaking off under the cover of darkness without a word of warning or a decent goodbye. (We call that the Spence Sneak-off.)
Enjoy the update!
All that and more!
So join us as we head out to the farm...
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@so_you_wannabe_a_farmer
Melissa @sow_grow_letitgo
Wendy @chutzpahhollow
Music by Chris Spence
Artwork by Jane Rabadi janerabadi.com
Editing by Melissa Spence
Hello and welcome to So You Wannabe a Farmer. I'm Melissa and I live in suburban Maryland. I love to play in my garden, try out all kinds of homesteading skills, and fantasize about living on a farm. Yep, I'm the wannabe. My friend Wendy is the actual farmer. In July of 2021, she packed up the contents of her suburban Maryland townhome and with her two kids, dog, and two cats, moved to rural North Carolina, where every day is a new adventure. I didn't want to miss any of the excitement, so I started this podcast to follow along from the sidelines while helping her document the ups, the downs, and the in-betweens. Around the same time, I became obsessed with gardening in my own suburban backyard. We are friends, working professionals, Jewish mothers, and two gals willing to try new things and make a few mistakes along the way. Neither of us have any experience gardening, farming, or homesteading. But hey, if someone else out there can do it, so can we. We hope you'll join us on this adventure, either from the sidelines or while getting your own hands dirty. So put on your mock boots and let's head out to the farm. Hello, Melissa. Hi, Wendy. Hi. It's been a long time.
SPEAKER_02:It's been a long time. And so much and so little has all happened in this long time.
SPEAKER_00:And to clarify, we have seen each other in person and over computers. We have spoken, we have texted, we have done lots of communicating through various forms of social media. We just have not recorded a podcast since July.
SPEAKER_02:That just seems crazy to me. Like it, I don't feel like it's been that long. And yet we have heard from some people that we are woefully behind in our podcast recording.
SPEAKER_00:How many people do you think you've heard from?
SPEAKER_02:I've heard from like maybe 10 people.
SPEAKER_00:You have heard from 10 people. I've heard from two or three, and I thought that was going to be a lot, but oh. I mean, some of them are related to me. So, you know, there's that.
SPEAKER_02:But some of them are not.
SPEAKER_00:They're people. Well, okay, so people out there in the world, in the podcast world, you may have wondered what the heck happened to my gal pals, my farmer friends. Those wannabe, middle-aged, super hot, intelligent, creative Jewish mothers.
SPEAKER_02:Are we wannabe farmers or wannabe super hot in that sense? I'm not quite sure where that went.
SPEAKER_00:No, we're wannabes, we're middle-aged, we're super hot, we're intelligent, we're creative, and we're Jewish mothers, right? All of those things, sure. Yes, or you or maybe you just stop caring.
SPEAKER_02:About which part?
SPEAKER_00:The people who were listening, maybe they just wondered and then they were like, eh.
SPEAKER_02:No, they care. They care for us, Melissa. Well, at least my sister does. I know she'll be excited.
SPEAKER_00:That's nice. It's I mean that it's important that your sister cares. I'm pretty sure my sister cares too.
SPEAKER_02:I think she does.
SPEAKER_00:Um well, the good news is that nothing really happened. It's just that life kind of caught up with us as it does occasion occasionally.
SPEAKER_02:It has been a season of a lot of change and a lot of activity for both of us.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:In the last few months that just took us away from being able to carve out this time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And now we decided to give you a little Hanukkah gift. Yay! A little pre-holiday joy and fill you in on what's been going on. So we'll I think we should start with the highlights because there's just no way we can cover everything that's happened in four months. Everything and not so much. So, Wendy, why don't you tell us the top five or ish things that have happened since we last spoke?
SPEAKER_02:Um gosh. So since July, there has been some stuff. Um I got goats.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, wait. Oh, yeah, that's that was my follow-up question. How many times have you had 13?
SPEAKER_02:13 right now.
SPEAKER_00:No, oh, time, okay.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, third time.
SPEAKER_00:Third time.
SPEAKER_02:Um, so there was that. Um we were on, we were one of the three stops on a countywide homestead tour, and that was pretty incredible. Um, on many different levels. It was really an incredible. We welcomed almost 100 people over the course of an eight-hour day. So that was really amazing. Uh, I started selling in our winter farmers market every other weekend, which is really fun. Um, and our county to get to know people and to figure out what people are interested in and what sells and what doesn't sell, which is interesting. Speaking of selling, I sold our barn and am in the process of figuring out what a functional barnslash milking center will look like for Hoods Bahalo in the new year, which is exciting. Uh, we have pigs again, Yulefoot pigs, which I'm really excited about this particular breed. It's a it's a heritage breed, and I'm really excited about uh potentially even breeding them. Um mule foot? Yule foot, yes.
SPEAKER_00:A pig with a mule foot.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so not this. If you look at a normal pig's foot, it has like um a cloven foot, like a goat's foot with toes. A mule foot has like a singular foot, like a horse would have.
SPEAKER_00:Wait, what does that mean it's kosher? God know, because it's still a pig. But isn't it because it's a got a cloven hoof?
SPEAKER_02:That's a rabbi question. We'll have to consult a rabbi for that answer. I do not know, I just know pig slash not kosher, but you know, we don't keep kosher from that ways. Um, let's see, Nathan went to college, so that's incredible, and it has shifted um household responsibilities and homestead responsibilities now that it's just me and Sam. So that's caused a lot of thinking about what it's going to be like when it's just me in a few more years. And unfortunately, we had a massive death strike in our chicken coop and lost all of our chickens, which was incredibly upsetting. Uh, we're talking Esther and Buckbeek and um Rebecca, like the the OG chickens, even were killed. And so I am starting over. Um, starting over with different laying hens and starting over with raising chickens again. So that's that's been a thing. Wow. What's what's on your list? You've had a minute.
SPEAKER_00:You forgot something very wonderful and special.
SPEAKER_02:That your son Elay had a barmit.
SPEAKER_00:Oh no, no, no, that's on my list.
SPEAKER_02:That's on my list. Okay. No, Zeke. Oh, Zeke, I forgot about Zeke. I adopted um or was adopted by an incredible old dog who is an English Mastiff. We lost our beloved Molly in July, and I was determined to not get another dog, and yet I did in August. He's an English Mastiff, he's the size of a small horse. He's currently laying at my feet, and he's about 160 pounds. So he is uh he is a lovely, amazing companion farm dog, loves all the animals except for the pigs.
SPEAKER_00:Huh. What what what's the reaction of a dog toward a pig that he doesn't like? Big barking. Really?
SPEAKER_02:Big barking. Yeah, he doesn't try to go through the fence line towards them, but he will stand on the fence line and just bark and bark and bark at them, which is unusual because he could care less about everybody else who's here. He doesn't bark at the sheep or the cow or the goats or the chickens or the ducks. He just doesn't enjoy the pigs.
SPEAKER_00:Hmm. He also wasn't super excited about going outside when you first got him.
SPEAKER_02:No, I mean, he had been an inside dog. He's seven years old, as I said, an English mastiff. So he's older for the breed and big, and wasn't a huge fan from what the rescue told me about being outside. And it took him two or three weeks, but now he just runs gallops, laps around the 10 acres and um comes back with a great big smile on his face and a lot of slobber.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was gonna say that. Before we transition into my very different world, can you give a breakdown of what animals you have and how many?
SPEAKER_02:Sure. So currently today, uh, which is November 27th, because it'll change tomorrow. Yeah, we have three laying hens, two guinea fowl, two ducks, 19 meat chickens that are growing out in the garage, five outdoor cats, two indoor cats, one indoor dog, no outside dogs, fourteen sheep, thirteen goats, one cow, three pigs, potentially additional goats. We have uh two goats who are pregnant, one of whom is very pregnant, and so I'm on once an hour check on her uh kid watch because she's quite large, so I don't know if she's gonna have twins or triplets, um, but she's quite big. Has she had babies before? She has had babies before and she's had twins twins before. So we'll just see how she does. And then another who has got like another two or three weeks that that might be closer to a Christmas baby, and then in another two days, I mean they were shipped today, so I'm assuming it'll be Wednesday. Uh 17 new uh laying heads, chickens, little ones now, chicks.
SPEAKER_00:How many baby sheep did you welcome this fall?
SPEAKER_02:So far, we have welcomed four, and we have two more pregnant mamas that I'm hoping we'll deliver in December.
SPEAKER_00:And have you ever birthed a goat?
SPEAKER_02:No, no, this will be new. I have never uh I have never been a doula for a goat or a midwife for a goat. I have only done it with the sheep, so this will be a could be a new experience. I mean, generally they're born the same way, head down, feet forward, Superman pose, you know, that's what you want, is for them to come out like that. I do have goat colostrum on uh powdered formula, basically goat colostrum on standby. I have my goat kit ready, which is my same as my lambing kit. It's cold. That's the only thing that concerns me.
SPEAKER_00:And you got rid of the barn. So what shelter is there for the goats?
SPEAKER_02:We have shelters for them in the pastures, and we have a shelter. Um, the the goats like to hang out by the pool. We moved one of our temporary shelters next to the pool and filled it with hay and leaves and some bedding so that if either one of them decide they want to uh go in there for some wind shelter, they can.
SPEAKER_00:That'll be fun. And you're gonna try to milk the goats?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, yes. So we'll have two mamas, and I'm really you know, I've got the milking stand set up and I have my um milking machine for both of them. I'm not gonna hand milk. Um, and the goal is to be able to milk them both. Have they been milked before? They have both been milked before, yes.
SPEAKER_00:Those little goat babies are gonna be so cute because they're Nigerian dwarfs, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, they are.
SPEAKER_00:So they're little tiny things. So the babies are gonna be really cute and tiny.
SPEAKER_02:They're gonna be like five, six pounds. I mean, they're itty bitty. And uh of course, like Wednesday, our overnight low was 22 degrees, so I'm sure that's when they'll be born, when it's freaking freezing. And then, of course, I'm gonna want to bring them inside, and um, you know, and I might I might bring them into the the bathroom and let them be in the bathtub and have heat and all that good stuff. We'll see how they do.
SPEAKER_00:They need little sweaters.
SPEAKER_02:They might need sweaters. We have blankets, we had it like we had cow blankets and lamb blankets, but I think they might be smaller, in which case I might need to go get some sweaters.
SPEAKER_00:Very exciting stuff, and sadly, I was hoping to get there in the fall, but it didn't happen, so it did not. I feel sad. I'm having a longing. Longing.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you have exciting stuff going on, you've got stuff happening. What's your what's your top five lists?
SPEAKER_00:Well, my top five didn't even make it to five, so it really only made it to three. But as you did say, spoiler alert, Eli's bar mitzvah was in October, so about a little over a month ago. It was fantastic. It was lovely to see friends and family, and it was just a very, very nice weekend, very welcome, needed, much needed. That was took some took some planning and energy. And so that was kind of the main event. Okay, so this one is maybe less exciting for the average listener, but as my as I like to call them, my temple lady friends were recently discussing. I succumbed to significant pressure and made the switch from Android to iPhone. That was a momentous moment. It's not been easy, I will say.
SPEAKER_02:No, it's not easy. It is not easy, but thank you for no longer messing up with the weird colors of our group chat.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's probably the main benefit of having an iPhone is just that you can have more successful chats with friends. You can name groups, and as the lone Android user, you don't mess up the whole process and miss out on things because every once in a while there would be messages that I didn't get, or I don't know, it was confusing. But I'm still adjusting. It's fine. Whatever, it's fine. I mean, it's stupid, it's stupid that I made such a big deal about it, but you know, I have my principles.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, listen, I miss my Android phone often. Yeah, but I do not I I am thrilled to be able to FaceTime members of my family.
SPEAKER_00:I haven't really used the FaceTime all that much. You bile. I might, yeah. And I refuse to engage with Siri. I refuse. Okay. I'm not doing it. Number three, okay, another one. Totally unrelated to gardening, farming, nature, the outdoors, anything that you would expect, but it is a very important, significant milestone in my life. I'm 52 years old. I now finally understand the game of football.
SPEAKER_02:I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I never understood exactly how the game worked. The basics I got like you get four downs, you have to get 10 yards, then it starts over, the ball goes in one direction. It's like there's similar rules to soccer in some ways, but okay. I didn't know that there are only certain people who are allowed to catch the ball and run with it. I thought anybody could do that.
SPEAKER_02:I didn't know that either.
unknown:Okay, good.
SPEAKER_02:You just shared new information, and I have a kid who plays the sport, and I have no idea what you're talking about. What position does he play? X. He plays X. That's what I know. Um different plays. He's either X or Y. That's all I know. Or is it O? No, he's X or Y. And he runs and he catches the ball and he tackles people, and he never gets off the field. This is the extent of my football knowledge. Okay, so I'm ahead of you, Wendy. So far, so far ahead of me, Melissa. I I don't know any of the things.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay. So the cool thing about it is that Eli is the person who explained the game to me on the way to the Orthodonist one day. He suddenly decided that he's really interested in sports. He's been playing basketball with his friends after school at the Rec Center, and we have a basketball hoop, so he comes and his friends come over and they shoot hoops. He's also decided that he wanted to learn about all the players and the teams, and he's just become very interested in football and in basketball. He can tell you all kinds of statistics who the players are, who's good. It blows my mind. I have no idea when this happened or how he learned this information, but I'm happy. So when I was growing up, I have a sister, just the two of us. My dad would watch football all the time, and we would pick the team that had the cooler uniforms, or if the quarterback was cute, I don't know, you can't see anything under there, but that was kind of my mom's measure of which team she should root for. Like he would just sit there and watch football on the weekends, and we didn't we come in and out, we just didn't really understand it.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, but wait a minute. We grew up outside of Detroit. So are you saying that your family didn't automatically root for the Lions? Oh, Wendy. Wendy. Oh, Melissa, no. Do you know outside of Detroit? We rooted for the Lions.
SPEAKER_00:I know, but do you know that the Lions have historically been one of the worst teams in the history of? So what happened was one day, apparently, I said to my mom, why is daddy so angry and mean on Sundays? And he realized that watching the Lions every week was making him into a very angry, grouchy parent, and that he didn't like that. So what he decided to do was root against the Lions. So he would watch the game and root for what? I don't think you should say that out loud. I know. And you know what? Now that I'm saying it, I'm kind of thinking I'm airing his dirty laundry. Yes. But the thing is, once he decided that he wasn't gonna root, that he was gonna root for whoever was playing the lions, he started watching the games and enjoying them. Okay, well, anyway, I grew up, I asked people along the way, explain it to me. Nobody could. Eli very clearly, very succinctly explained to me what the different positions are. You got the offensive line, you got the defensive line, there's all these different plays, you've got these various people who have certain responsibilities, and others who have other responsibilities, and they are very separate. And you can't tackle, you can't be a tackle person and a ball catching person. Those are like two separate things.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, anyway, Sam is a tackle person and a ball catching person.
SPEAKER_00:He's in middle school.
SPEAKER_02:I know. I'm just saying you should tell Eagle.
SPEAKER_00:Now, because our whole family is Eagles fans, because Chris grew up outside of Philly in New Jersey. We are Eagles fans and they're doing incredibly well. And so it's actually fun to watch the games. I might even be coming be becoming a little bit of an Eagles fan. I'm just saying.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_00:Congratulations. Thank you. I get now why people get so excited about football.
SPEAKER_02:I never did. I still don't get it, but okay. Yeah. I get excited when my kid doesn't get carried off the field with a head injury.
SPEAKER_00:So I absolutely that's my excitement. Eli is going to be playing flag football though in the spring.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, good for him.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So that's the excitement in my life. I honestly don't really have anything else to add. I'm sure there are other interesting things that have happened.
SPEAKER_01:There are. There are. So okay, so are you overwintering strawberries?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. I feel like I'm at a new level in my gardening. I I swear, and I'm going to take this pledge, honestly. I am only going to plant things that I will eat next year.
unknown:Yes!
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, thank you. I am overwintering strawberries, which they are relatively hardy perennials. Are they really I I don't understand?
SPEAKER_02:Okay, because like all of my strawberries died, right? Because it got too hot. We had a drought and whatever. Are they really hardy? And you just leave them? Like you don't have to prune them, you just leave them.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So what happened with your strawberries was they didn't get established well enough. Once they're established, they'll do okay. I found this out last winter. This year, I'm multiplying the strawberries that I have. So I have this grow tower that's filled with strawberries. I have another grow tower that just has a couple levels of strawberries, but different kinds of strawberries, the kinds with the long runners. And each of those runners, it's like a spider plant. When a new cluster shows up, it's like a brand new plant. So I cut those off, okay, trimmed them down so they wouldn't waste energy trying to send energy out to leaves that it didn't, you know, weren't necessary, so that they could focus on rooting. And I put them in my greenhouse, and I've got a couple dozen, and I'm gonna leave them in there and I'll share them with the world in the spring. And my friend Sasha lives in Wisconsin. We know each other from way back in Denver, um, is an incredible gardener, nature lover, respecter of the outdoors. Um she said, and I'm gonna I might try this, that it's a good idea to plant so strawberries will just take over their, they're like, they're not invasive, but they will take over areas. If you plant them in the ground somewhere, they're great food for the wildlife. So I might just make a patch and have it grow and expand and feed the nature. But I also separated out, I had a big wad. They I they were too closely seeded, and I should have thinned them out, but I didn't, of um, a particular type of chamomile. And so they grew really well, but they didn't flower because they just they were too closely connected. So I split them all apart. Those are also a perennial, this particular variety, and I separated those out into smaller containers and I put those in the greenhouse. So I am going to think very carefully about where I want to plant those in the spring.
SPEAKER_02:That's very smart.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I'm gonna do, I think, a couple start a couple more varieties of perennials indoors that I can plant in my garden in the spring.
SPEAKER_01:Like what?
SPEAKER_00:I'm not sure yet, but I'm really trying to think about where I've where I'm planting things, what, and then how to prepare the soil. Like I've tried several times to grow asparagus and it has not been successful. I know that you've been very successful with your asparagus. But what I learned.
SPEAKER_02:I love my asparagus.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I've tried it, and the problem is that I tried to grow it in the same place and it wasn't happy there, so it didn't work. So I'm going to figure out where I need to put it, and then now is the time to prepare the soil. Probably a little bit late. Maybe I should have done it like a month ago, but it's okay. Prepare the soil now so that when the spring comes and I plant them, they'll have what they need already.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:I'm I'm also attempting to put together a calendar for myself with everything I have in the yard, when I need to prune my peach tree and my rose bush and my fig tree, and when and my Japanese maple, and when do I need to start my carrots? And when do I need to get those asparagus, the asparagus in the ground? I want to grow rhubarb. But then I was thinking, really, do I want to grow rhubarb? Will I eat rhubarb? I might not.
SPEAKER_02:I only I think rhubarb only goes with strawberries. So, you know, I think that now that you have established strawberry plants, if you wanted to go rhubarb, great. But this is why gardening I find is something that I find very challenging, because it is there are so many species that need different kinds of tending. And while I have many animals, I have basically five species, maybe six at any given time. And I can manage five or six, but 30 different species is really hard for me. And you do, you like you need a spreadsheet, you need charts. I got all of my bulbs, bulbs in before the frost. So I'm, you know, hoping that our front in front of the house is full of tulips and daffodils and lots of other wonderful things. I still have some asparagus roots that have been in my freezer, actually, that I'm going to plant in the spring, and they'll be the second round of the two to three year plan. But there's so many different things. I mean, just when you went through about the pruning, that list, that's a lot. I got I have all of my onions in and they're growing nicely. And the fig tree got trimmed or pruned, and the garden beds, I decided against to fall and winter garden so that I could mulch them and get them prepped and leave them alone until next spring. Hoping they will have a better growing season than I did this last year. But it's just it's a lot to manage when it's a garden compared to livestock.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And the stakes are lower. So if you just experiment and you see what happens, it's not a huge loss. Either it's a couple cents worth of seeds, some time that you put into it, not the herb, but the concept of time.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And you know, maybe a plant. But this past year, I started moving things around. That was my big change for this year was hey, this isn't doing great here. I'm gonna move it to another area. And I had some really good success with that. And just like anything else, you don't do it all at once. So you didn't start with eight or six or eight species, you started with chickens and sheep, and then you add things, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, you know, I I could do six species in six months. I I start, I jump in. I feel like I research that very differently than I do gardening, and that's just also an interest level thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. You have some more freedom with gardening because you can experiment with stuff. If I don't prune my rose bush, it's fine. Nothing's gonna happen. It might just not produce as many flowers next year. Or I also probably went in a little bit too aggressively at the beginning because I was excited. It was during the pandemic. I had a lot of time on my hands. Um, but I do feel like the last last year and as I I transition into this growing season and think about what I want to do. A lot has been clarified for me in the process. Like I had the greenhouse last year and I didn't really use it successfully, but now I'm thinking carefully. Like I ended up bringing my fruit trees in because they died last year. And this year I'm also focusing a lot more on saving my own seeds. That's kind of just something fun that I want to do because it's amazing and it's so cool to see. Like I spent an hour or two on Sunday sorting through shiso leaf seeds. And they're like poppy seeds, they're tiny, but it's like it's just so amazing when you think about you have to let it go to seed before it produces seeds. Then they have to dry out, but then there's like a whole abundance of seeds that most people don't even think about them being there. And I success, I consider this a big success. I love it. What you know, I post stuff on social media because I enjoy it and it brings me, it's delightful to recognize things. And I feel like now I go on a walk and I see things I didn't see before. And I post it because I just think it's amazing, and I hope that somebody else does too. And when people say to me, like people that were friends on social media, but I haven't seen in a long time, say, I just love looking at your the flowers you post. Everybody put somebody said this to me, and it just really warmed my heart. There's so much negativity on social media, there's like contention and arguing and just noise. And it's so nice to see something beautiful, and then to go outside and recognize that there's beauty all around you. And Chris told me he was downtown today, and he's like, he said, I think you're rubbing off on me because I noticed that there was a planter and it had a colorful cabbage planted in it, and it was really pretty. And then I started to think, what if we planted food in some of our city spaces? Yes. And then what if? Right. And we have, you know, he's like, I walk two blocks to the metro and I see homeless people. And what if we planted food in some of these places and made food? So that is super exciting to me. And I went on a tangent.
SPEAKER_02:That was not at all where the conversation started, but but I think that it's important to do the parts of this that you love. Like I can see you sitting at your kitchen table or your dining room table harvesting poppy seed size seeds versisho leaves and being thrilled, like just loving the experience of it to having awe in the experience of the drying and the plant and all of those wonderful things. As you're figuring out, as we are all figuring out what is this urban or rural homestead situation look like. We've been doing this now for this is our third winter, Melissa. Like both of us, we're really in our third winter of this. What do we love? Like, what are the elements of it that really speak to us? I will plant a garden every year because it provides food for my family throughout the year. Like, there is nothing like having a salsa in January that I canned in August, right? I mean, there are wonderful things about that. Will the garden ever be my highlight? No. But watching my hair sheep get their winter fleece or watching the calf grow and bringing home a new breed of pigs or whatever it might be, that's where I find joy. And I think that's part of what I'm what you know now in this third year is the what of this am I really good at? And what if it is bringing me more joy than what is practical? Like there's the element that is practical. The godforsaken meat chickens are practical. I hate them. They are monsters, they are weird, they're bred to live 10 weeks at the most. I don't enjoy them. And they'll fill my freezer. There, you know, the 19 that are in the garage will be in the freezer in a few weeks, and that's 19 weeks worth of a full roaster for our family. Fine. I don't enjoy that part of it. But the sheep, the pigs, the cow, having new laying hens, I love that part.
SPEAKER_00:You also love the idea of growing your own chickens. And you have the advantage of understanding that that's what everybody else is eating. They're eating those freakish chickens, they just don't know it. And the freakish chickens that most people are eating are not living in the kind of circumstances that your freakish chickens are living in. They're living indoors in pens, and you know, I know they don't have the same desires that other chickens have. I've seen them, they don't have any interest in free ranging and pecking around, you know, they just want to eat and they're yeah, eat and poop.
SPEAKER_02:That's what they do.
SPEAKER_00:But you you know that, and you're you're providing for yourself and your family, um, and seeing where it comes from. I mean, there are people who absolutely they don't want to know, just put it on my plate. I don't want to know where it comes from. And I think when it comes to growing food, because I certainly don't grow enough of anything to subsist on it or for my family to subsist on it, but just the fact that I'm connecting that way to nature, to the way people have been feeding themselves for since the beginning of time, going outside, growing or foraging for their food, that even if I can have a little bit of that, it's exciting to me. You know what it's like when you have a plate of food in front of you, and maybe it's just a garnish, but something on that plate, if not everything on the plate, you had a hand in growing and you watched it grow. That's like connects to this idea of you know mindfulness, just in general, that when you sit down at your table and you eat a meal or at a restaurant, nobody really stops to think about where did that food come from? How many people did it take? I think we've talked about this before. How many people did it take to bring that entire meal together on your plate? But when you are sourcing some of that from your own yard and you had a hand in it, there's just a feeling of pride and what nature, what the world can give to us, like the bees. I I just find it so fascinating. And I love when I give people honey or they buy honey and they're like, wow, you made this. And I used to think that too. And now I, you know, I say I didn't make it, the bees made it, but that I harvested it, my son helped me harvest it. It's really cool. Like, yeah, I did that. I you could do it too. So there's just a sense of wonder. And while I'm being philosophical, I had I a couple minutes ago I had a thought about wannabe. You know, we joke about being a wannabe, and what does that actually mean? And you said to me earlier today, because I was talking about how I went to the grocery store and they had bags of apples, like five-pound bags of apples for$1.50, which I couldn't.
SPEAKER_02:Amazing.
SPEAKER_00:And they came from, I looked, like a farm somewhere in the nearby area. So I bought two bags and I'm making applesauce. And then I bought these little pearl onions because I've been pickling things. And I'm like, make some pickled onions. And I'm like, yeah, I have such a wannabe. Um I mean, we joke about it, but really it's who's to say when you're just a quote unquote wannabe and when you're the real thing. You are what you are in that moment, with or without a label. You don't have to reach a certain level. You can put that little sprig of asparagus of parsley that you grew on, you know, your windowsill on your meal. And you're not a wannabe, you're a person who grew something.
SPEAKER_02:And that's like I think of homesteading, the more and more I engage with people who are raising their own food, growing their own food, milking a cow, um, raising their own herbs, like whatever it might be, it is much more of a mindset than it is a practice. I do think you are not a wannabe because you are mindful, as you said, about where your food is coming from, the food that you select, and how you use it. Are you growing what you can? Are you visiting the farmer's market? Are you engaging with local growers? Are you thinking about where your food comes from, how it is made, how is it processed, how it is eaten in your household? Like where is your waste? Where's your food waste, right? I think that those things take you out of the realm of being a wannabe and then to someone who is practicing what it means to be cognizant of the food system or cognizant of the way in which you spend your time making a home. You know, for such a long time, being a homemaker was a negative word. I am I am more and more mindful, as I am just about turning 55, that homemaking is in fact a verb. I consciously make choices to make my home a certain way. And it can be anything from the food that we eat to the laundry detergent that we use to what bulbs I'm planting outside of my house because they will feed the land, right? They're not just because they're pretty and they're going to match what the homestead association wants or the homeowners association wants, but because they have purpose or they're local or they're indigenous or whatever it might be. I think that there is something really powerful in reclaiming what it means to be a homesteader or a homemaker. And there's no there's no gender tied to that for me. There is just the idea of what it means to make your home life. And for you, it's like I watch you in this garden, I watch you with your bees, I watch you, you know, thinking about where am I going to grow this and what does this look like and how is this feeding my family? Or that to me is as much about being a homesteader as feeding my own family, is what am I doing as a member of a community?
SPEAKER_00:I love what you said about homesteading as a mindset, not a practice. Having paid so much attention over the last couple of years to the garden and growing things and you farming and animal husbandry, which is kind of a weird term, but and I do think it's a lens now that I look through when I make decisions about what I'm gonna buy and where I'm gonna buy it, and how I choose to spend my money and where. And and also trying to make more things at home when I realize like today, I picked up some muffins. I never buy like packaged stuff like that, but my kids, I've come to terms with the fact that I have two teenage sons that require a lot of food and calories quickly all the time. So I was gonna buy a package of blueberry muffins, and I'm like, I can make this. Like, why would I spend this? And look at this packaging. It's like this terrible plastic clamshell thing that probably will never get recycled. And I know that my decision not to buy one little plastic clamshell is not gonna make a difference in the environment, really. But I can make a choice that I feel good about that doesn't require that. And that for maybe 15 or 20 minutes, I can stir together some ingredients and pop a tray of muffins in the oven. Um, so I think that's that's really cool. And also the idea of homemaking as a verb and the need to reclaim this, that we look at people like, wow, you you made that. You did. I don't know. I have feelings about the industrial revolution.
SPEAKER_02:Tale for another day, but I often go back to the 80-20 rule. From time to time, buying that eight-pack or four-pack of plastic individually packaged blueberry muffin, that your your no in your head is full of hydrogenated oil and all of the things. And yeah, some of the time, Melissa, we just have to do that. Like we just do. And if I can get to the point where I feel like 80% of my choices about what I raise, what I eat, what I make, what I put out into our larger community is local, fresh, aware, I guess. You know, I don't know, mindful, I guess is the term that you used. If I can do that 80% of the time, that's a huge success. And it's also a huge rebellion from the world in which we live. And I'm all for good rebellion. You like I do love me some good rebellion, preparing your own food, being mindful of where your food comes from, thinking and choosing your food and your way of life and how you care for your family and the clothes that they wear and all of that stuff. That is a form of rebellion in 2023. I'm not saying we need to go back to the place where women were barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen or worse, wearing heels and pearls and in the kitchen. I do feel like there's a sense of reclaiming my ability and my choices around making my home.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I would say let's invite people to pick one thing that they one choice that they can make.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Pick one thing. And it can be very simple. It can be like your laundry detergent. It can be, I'm gonna buy my fruits and vegetables from a farmer's market if I can find one, or I'm gonna grow tomatoes next year in a pot on my balcony.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I have switched to those sheets of laundry detergent that instead of lugging around that big jug, which I don't lug because the laundry machine's downstairs, but if you have to lug, I recommend them. They're like concentrated sheets of soap of detergent and you fold up. Do something like that. Also, I really like the um little tablet toothpaste, but you know, pick a thing, pick a thing and just start there and then share it with us.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and let us know because I think that I mean, God knows, we are both in a in a learning posture, but I also think that there are choices that you make that I would never make. And same, right? I mean, you're not gonna raise all of your own chicken to eat. Um but at the same time, there are things like cleaners or where you source your coffee, or I'm not gonna eat at Starbucks every day, but I'm gonna go to the independent coffee shop because those are people that are trying to make their way. I mean, I think that there are lots of choices that we can make that fit our lives that is basically an F you to the commercial systems that tell us everything has to be easy, everything has to be quick, everything has to be wrapped in plastic. We have been eating outside of fast food, outside of a lot of restaurants, even for the last five, six, seven years in my family. And it has been a huge adjustment, especially for my eldest being in college now, to figure out how to eat in a commercial setting. And yet, like when we go to the grocery store, the first thing that goes in the cart is you know, Gatorade. And there are some, I know you're making a face. Melissa's making a face for the sense of the record. There are some things that fall into this 8020 for me. Like that's the 20. But if I can succeed on the 20, and if I can succeed on finding other ways of doing things like trash disposal, laundry detergent, food waste, etc., there's always gonna be an opportunity for growth and for making my home differently.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Amen, sister. I don't know, I guess I'm left speechless.
SPEAKER_02:Like we gotta think about it. We gotta think about what our choices are. We have lots of choices.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's true. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by choices and I don't want to make them.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but I think that once you start putting values alignment to your choices, I have found that my choices are far fewer when I when I tie it to what do I value about this decision, or what is my what is my value about where my meat comes from, or how far that mango traveled before it got to your grocery store? Right? When you think about it in terms of values alignment, I find I have far fewer choices to worry about than I used to.
SPEAKER_00:I should have been clearer because I don't find those choices as hard to make. It's the ones like when you said, Hey, should we record on FaceTime or Zoom? And I was like, you decide because I am bombarded. Those are too key choices. I am bombarded by small, insignificant decisions that other people don't want to make all day, and they make my brain hurt. So the big ones I'm okay with, it's just all the little ones. Yeah, well, it has been such a pleasure, and we should do this again sometime soon.
SPEAKER_02:We should do this again sometime soon.
SPEAKER_00:And listeners don't think we don't love you. We do, we do, we just got caught up in the stuff.
SPEAKER_02:It's been a busy season, and lots of um opportunity and change and growth for both of us, and we're figuring things out just like everybody else. So happy Hanukkah and all of the other good solstice, Merry Christmas, happy Thanksgiving. Di Wally, everything, all of it, happy, happy and prosperous and joyous, and family and food and all of the good things.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Let's talk soon, friend. Yes, friend. Okay, see you later.