Today I'm talking with Debra at Harvest Creek Farm & Retreat. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm chatting with Debra at Harvest Creek Farm and Retreat. How are you, Debra? I am doing wonderful today. Thank you, Mary, for inviting me today. 00:22 Oh, you are very welcome. I need you guys to talk to me or I don't have a podcast. So thank you for being willing to come visit. Tell me about yourself and Harvest Creek Farm and Retreat. Well, we started about three years ago and my husband and I were just looking for about five acres. We live in a subdivision and I wanted to have some chickens and I wanted to grow some vegetables and fruit trees. And well, you know what HOAs are like. 00:50 We would try to find about five acres. Well, we came across this 15 acre parcel that used to be a farm decades ago. And so we slowly but surely, it had completely grown up. It was woods, forest. So over the next about a year or so, it was literally just excavation and taking down trees and just trying to get back the pasture again. It was so overgrown. And so we started working on that. 01:20 put in a little vegetable garden that first year and it did amazing. So we started growing vegetables and we had our chickens and ended up buying four or five more acres adjacent to our property. So now we have 20 acres and it is just exploded and we have now built a pavilion on it. We have a vacation cottage that people love to come and stay and we've left, we left quite a few woods and put the cottage near that. 01:50 So people have a place to just come and relax and get away from city life. Yet we're only minutes from the main city of Lenoir City. So it's just been an incredible project. As all farmers know, it is tireless. You never get caught up. And so we've had help here and there that we've hired. But basically my husband, myself, and some friends really have been helping us here and there. But now we are officially 02:19 A You Pick Flower Farm. Nice. Okay. So, you're in Tennessee and how many years ago was this that you started it, that you bought it? Three years ago. Okay. Yeah. All right. Awesome. I want to talk about the flower farm for sure. Yeah. But I also want to talk about the work involved. Did you get your chickens? 02:44 So yes, we had chickens for, I think it was about 18 months and we started doing a lot of traveling. We've actually joined the Tennessee Agri-Tourism Association. Oh yeah. Yeah, we've been going to those conferences and getting more involved in that. So as you know, you just can't leave animals. No. It just got to a point where the chickens were not going to be our focus. So we were able to have them adopted by some friends. And so they're happy. They did not get beheaded. 03:13 Good. Yes. And so now we do not have any animals on the farm. Eventually, we'd love to get some horses. I actually lived in a farm in Australia on a stud ranch for some time. And so that's always in my heart. So eventually we'll get horses. But right now we're focusing on the flowers. Okay. You lived in Australia on a what ranch? A stud farm, a stud ranch. Stud, stud ranch. All I heard was said. And I'm like, I don't know what that is. Sorry. 03:43 Okay, Stud Ranch, that makes more sense, thank you. Okay, so you have the flower farm. Do you do events around the flowers? Do you sell the flowers? What's involved in the flower part of the business? So we actually ended up putting a farm store at the bottom of our property to sell our vegetables and to sell our flowers, which has now become this beautiful little boutique farm store that we carry honey, not from our own property, that we purchase honey from. 04:13 and we have flowers, other flowers and gifts and candles and soaps and things like that and wind chimes and garden theme that people love to just stop by. We just started that last month and so now they will come to the farm store and they will sign up for their you pick time and then they'll go out and they'll start picking flowers. So yes we have a pavilion and because we're part of the 04:40 We have a minimum 15 acres and we're part of the agritourism association. We can have events under, under that. So we will eventually do weddings and have lots of other fun events here. Awesome. I just, I just chatted a week or so ago with a lady who lives a couple of towns up from me and she has a flower place too. It's freedom, freedom, forge flower farm or something like that. 05:09 And she does events. She's got three planned this summer. And it sounded like so much fun. But I'm not so big on the pollinators that go with the flowers....
