Today I'm talking with Crystal at The Homemade Homestead. 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 talking with Crystal at the Homemade Homestead, which I love the name. Go ahead, Crystal. Crystal, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm good. Tell me about yourself and what you do. 00:24 Well, my name is Crystal. I'm married to my husband, Robert, for 24 years, and we have four kids, ages three to 21. We had a little age gap in between number one and two, three, and four. And so we decided that we wanted to do some homesteading. It started many, many years ago when we lived in Georgia, and then we moved to Alabama. 00:51 and decided to purchase a poultry farm, a commercial poultry farm. And if you know anything about commercial poultry, you cannot have backyard chickens if you do commercial poultry. So we ended up selling the poultry farm and buying some land and decided that we really, our dream was just a homestead. Well, more so my dream. My husband was kind of along for the ride, but he gets more and more interested as we go. 01:20 So the Homemade Homestead was just a way for me to kind of talk about some of our beginner homesteading. I kind of consider myself a beginner at this point because all the things that we did in the past, I've kind of either forgotten or, you know, things have changed. I had to remind myself of things with with all the stuff I've got going on. But the Homemade Homestead was a way for me to document some of our beginning. 01:50 things with homesteading. We're a pretty private family, so we don't allow our children, we don't allow their faces on any kind of social media. So that presents a challenge for me when I want to document things because my kids are always around. So, but that was also a way for me to document my soap making and tallow. I started making homemade tallow balm for my face and homemade soap. 02:18 And once I started making it, it was so exciting to me just to be able to make something from scratch that I created that was natural and non-toxic. And then I started selling it. And now I'm just obsessed with all things natural and making whatever I can. Awesome. And I'm going to tell you a secret. I think that everybody is a beginner homesteader, even if they've been doing it for 20 years, because there's always something new. 02:47 Oh, yes, absolutely. It's a little scary, you know, when you, especially me, I love to research things and I get on there and I start researching stuff and it becomes a little overwhelming. And then you kind of get paralyzed because you're afraid to start. So I have to kind of withdraw myself from doing too much research and just get in there and do it. Yeah. We had a thing happen here last week. We had black ants. 03:16 flying ants coming in our window frame into the house. And we haven't had this happen in almost four years we've been here. And I was like, there's gotta be a home remedy to make these guys not come in. So I went to Google, as everyone does, and it said they really don't like lavender, they don't like peppermint, and they really don't like vinegar. And I had lavender essential oil and I had peppermint oil. 03:44 but I already had vinegar in a spray bottle. So I sprayed the window frame and within 24 hours, no more ants. And I was like, hey, it worked. And that's a homesteading hack, you know? Absolutely. There's so many natural, easy ways, even for somebody, I think, that lives on small acreage or apartments or anything small. There's so many different ways you can get into it that are fun and don't require a lot. 04:13 Absolutely. You are absolutely right. We did it out of necessity because we were raising four kids on one income and it's more time but less money if you make things yourself typically. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I know with a lot of the things that I make are out of necessity for our health. We each have our own set of health challenges. 04:42 I've got really bad migraines. My husband, after we had our poultry farm, he was in there in those houses for hours a day, breathing in just really nasty, dirty air, and he didn't wear a mask. And then after COVID, we had COVID three different times. And I think it might've damaged his lungs a little bit, along with all of the poultry house, just the in and out. 05:08 daily breathing that stuff in and he suddenly developed adult asthma, which was a huge hindrance to my homesteading goals because I need him to build things. I make things, but he builds things. It got to a point for a while where he couldn't even walk to the mailbox because he could not breathe. He ...
