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A Tiny Homestead

A Tiny Homestead

Auteur(s): Mary E Lewis
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 We became homesteaders three years ago when we moved to our new home on a little over three acres. But, we were learning and practicing homesteading skills long before that. This podcast is about all kinds of homesteaders, and farmers, and bakers - what they do and why they do it. I’ll be interviewing people from all walks of life, different ages and stages, about their passion for doing old fashioned things in a newfangled way. https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryesCopyright 2023 All rights reserved. Gestion et leadership Sciences sociales Économie
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  • Groovy Grazers - Autumn update

    Groovy Grazers - Autumn update
    Sep 10 2025
    Today I'm talking with Morgan at Groovy Grazers for an Autumn update. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Groovy Grazers in Montana. Good morning, friend. How are you? Good morning, good morning. It's starting to feel like fall here, which is always exciting after a hot summer. So I'm super excited to be here today. Oh, honey, tell me it's starting to feel like fall. 00:28 Our heat is not working and it was 63 degrees in the house Saturday and Sunday. Oh my goodness. Afternoon. And our furnace is broken. We found out because we turned it on and it didn't work. So it was rather nippy this past weekend and I actually made granola to heat up the kitchen and blow some warm air to the living room. 00:55 and made apple crisp with our own apples. Ooh, apple crisp is my favorite. We're gluten free, so there's a lot of fall treats that I miss. And I'm going to try and recreate. I'm going to get a little more adventurous. Last time we talked, we talked about sourdough and making various things with that. So I'm kind of excited for this fall because I think I can be included in the pumpkin spice treats that we all love. 01:22 Yeah, I am not a pumpkin spice fan. I like pumpkin pie and I like pumpkin bread, but the whole pumpkin spice thing, I'm not into it. I don't know why. I'm not really, I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin spice per se, except for like a few drinks, but like, I'm not even an eggnog person. I don't know. I'm just not a normal person, I guess, when it comes to like the drinks. I like a Thai latte over pumpkin spice. I mean, any day. 01:51 Yeah, I actually freaking love eggnog. So we're kind of opposite on this, but that's fine. But the important part of my statement regarding the apple crisp is that it was made with our apples from our trees. Honey gold, our honey gold tree actually produced at least 150 apples this year. Wow. I remember you were excited to see the numbers that it was going to bring and you were slightly worried it was not going to bring a bunch of apples. So that's a 02:20 That's a lot of apples, a hundred apples over, you Yeah, over 150. Wow, that's a good producing tree. And I think that's really important with what we're going to talk about today. Did you buy the home with that tree? No, they were actually given to us as a housewarming present from an orchard guy that we know. That's even better because that's first year producing over a hundred. That's big amount. I took a 02:47 Master Gardening since we last spoke. I just did the course to kind of like freshen up and learn about Montana because I am not a Montana native. Yeah. And it's really hard when you go, especially here to plant trees. So we've planted two trees now. We planted a Liberty Apple tree and we planted some type of pear and neither took, but we have really bad alkaline soil and I've learned more history about our soil. 03:15 And so to even put a tree, think we'd have to do some major soil reworking and pulling out material and putting it back in. Yeah. I've kind of given up slightly on the tree idea for a minute, just until we have a better location. Yeah. And it's, it's hard because you never know what's going to grow where until you try it. And, and just as a caveat, took five years from putting in those apple saplings to get the apples. 03:45 Five years, wow. Okay, so I mean, that's still not bad though for a five-year-old tree when you look at production. mean, the amount of apples that I'm sure you're gonna get to put away, you'll get to make many apple crisps, I'm sure all the way through the winter. So did you can any of it? No, we're actually selling some of them to the community at the farmers market. You've been doing the farmers market. How's that going? 04:14 Um, it's been really good. We live in a fairly small town. think our town has like 6,000 people, maybe 10,000. And so it's hit or miss and it depends on what other festivals or the state fair or the Renaissance festival are going on. If there's other things going on, the farmer's market is slower. But the beginning of the summer is always really good because there's nothing really going on in June and the first part of July. 04:44 Yeah, that's kind of the same here. I mean, our seasons are a little different, obviously, but like the beginning of farmer market season, everyone's so excited to get out of the house. And I live not rural Montana, like kind of rural, but not really for now. We are looking at moving and going more rural. And that's something that we've had to consider is like, what does our profits look...
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    58 min
  • Family Farm Beef Box

    Family Farm Beef Box
    Sep 8 2025
    Today I'm talking with Glade at Family Farm Beef Box. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Glade at Family Farm Beef Box in Nebraska. Good morning, Glade. How are you? Well, hello, Mary. I'm doing quite well. Thank you. How is the weather in Nebraska this morning? You know, we are just starting to feel a little bit of that chill, like it's getting towards fall and... 00:29 I'm excited about a couple things such as harvest and football and a freeze that's gonna kill all these flies. 00:39 Yeah, us too here in Minnesota. was 41 degrees when I looked at 5 a.m. today. So it's definitely winding down on the heat and I'm so glad because it's been a hot, hot summer here in Minnesota. I don't know what Nebraska was like, but Minnesota was kind of not a fun summer. Yeah, we were pretty blessed in Nebraska. It really was fairly nice and fairly, we got some rains when we needed it. 01:08 So I can't complain too much that much, I sure don't have any problem enjoying fall weather. Yeah. Fall is my favorite season, followed by spring, followed by winter, followed by summer, because I do not love high summer. I hate it. So, okay. Tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. My name is Glade Smith. I'm a husband of one wife. I'm a father of 01:38 seven children. I am a multi-generational cattle producer and I am a leading marketer of breeding stock for right livestock and the owner and founder of Family Farm Beef Box. Okay, awesome. How many generations back on the cattle? So my my grand, it'd be my grandfather three generations ago. 02:06 He moved to this area just down the road from where I'm sitting. uh He was born in 1896 and moved to this area. It seems interesting to be able to say he moved here with wagons pulled by mules over to where our general area. My wife's family, uh her roots go a little bit deeper. She'd be the ninth generation farming on the same general. 02:34 close to the same area where she's from. I've got a ways to go to keep up with my wife. Okay. Tell me about the beef box. Very good. No problem. Yeah. A family farm beef box is a conveniently sized share of an entire beef. It's been dry aged and hand cut and raised right here in central Nebraska. Think of it as just a smaller version of a half a beef. It works well for, for say a couple that 03:01 used to buy a half a beef, but now their kids are grown and they just don't need that much anymore. So you get a nice sampling of some steaks and ground beef and roast, but still the dry age quality that you grew to love when you purchased a half a beef. And we do ship that beef across the country every Monday and work with those customers as far as allowing them to subscribe and get a box every one, two or three months, or we let them try just a single box. 03:31 And we do offer a little options as far as a smaller package or a more bulk option. So that's what we strive for with our little beef business and try to focus on getting to know the people that we're actually sending the beef to. That's something that's important to us is trying to build relationships with these people. And a cute little story that from when I started Family Farm Beef Box, 04:00 It's been about eight years ago now. And honestly, goodness, what spurred it was I'd been farming and ranching and we'd grown enough to be able to grow the balance sheet, to be able to borrow some more money, to grow the business, to borrow some more money. I got to be fortunate enough that I had quite a bit of money borrowed and several bad things happened in the farming world. And I couldn't pay the bank back and I was underwater and the bank told me. 04:27 I say I was fortunate enough because it forced me to grow and learn and be creative in other ways. The bank told me that all the money I made was going to go towards debt. And so what I did was I told my banker, said, well, I know what better beef tastes like. And I know how to make friends with people in real life. And if I could use this social media thing to figure out how to make friends with other people. 04:56 I could share some beef with them and if I could get a price that was similar to an ice grocery store, I'd be able to make a little money. And so that was, that was my whole plan. And I went from there and I, didn't even use social media. I had no use for it, but my wife did. And I knew there was other people on it who used it a lot. And so I thought, well, that's where the people is location, location, location. That's, that's the location ...
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    33 min
  • Bad Baxter Farm

    Bad Baxter Farm
    Sep 5 2025
    Today I'm talking with Blaze at Bad Baxter Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well. 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 Blaise at Bad Baxter Farm in Oklahoma. Good morning, Blaise. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Oklahoma this morning? It's cooling off. So I think I'm the only one that's not happy about it, to be honest. 00:26 I am so thrilled that it is cooling down in Minnesota this week. I cannot tell you, I am giddy. I'm going to make sourdough bread on Wednesday or Thursday because the high is only supposed to be like 62. And I heard on one of your other podcasts that you have a mass amount of tomatoes to process. um Well, we thought we did until the blight decided that it was going to arrive and stop the plant. 00:56 We still have tomatoes coming in, but we are not going to have as many as we really thought we were. just pray for me the next summer is better because last year sucked. This year has been half better than that. So maybe next year it'll be good again. Yeah, I'm harvesting or I'm actually processing some enchilada sauce this morning. And I think we're pulling ours early just because of the cool down and they've kind of slowed. 01:22 slowed their roll a bit, but my husband was talking about it. We felt like we grew plenty this year and I just don't think you can ever grow enough tomatoes. We grew over 250 plants. We should be literally stacking crates of tomatoes right now and that is not happening. And I have so many bad words in my head about it, but I will not utter any of them on the podcast because they don't do that. So I am very disappointed. I'm very sad about the whole thing, but it'll be fine. 01:51 We have probably five or six gallon size ziplocks of frozen cut up tomatoes to can in October when it's actually cold out so we can open the windows. Yeah. So we will have some pasta sauce this winter, but we definitely haven't been able to provide for our community the way we're hoping to. Yeah. So I could go on and on. I don't want to, or I will just cry. I might anyway. It's always a learning experience. 02:22 Yeah, it's been rough. I didn't realize how sad I am about it. Wow. Okay, so here we go again. Mary cries on the podcast again. I'm sorry, I brought up your tomatoes. It's okay. The ones we got were beautiful and they taste great. So at least we have some that is the upside this year. So I have two questions about your name and the name of your place. Is Blaze a nickname? 02:52 Um, it's been my lifelong nickname. actually, uh, when I lived in California way back in the day, I was a hair salon owner and that was the color of my hair color. So when I was in beauty college, everybody started calling me plays. Okay. it's back. All right. And then why is it bad Baxter farm? Oh my gosh. I have so many different feelings about our farm name, but, um, when we moved to Oklahoma, I just. 03:20 I thought, I guess I really regret using the word farm to be honest, now that I know more, know what I know. But, um, at the time we had decided to move from California to Oklahoma. Part of it was health related and, um, I first. 03:37 I got certified as a nutrition coach through the National Academy of Sports Medicine and decided that down that rabbit hole, I wanted to grow and be responsible for all of my own food as much as possible. um so I kind of just named it Bad Baxter Farm just because I felt like we were going to be learning everything the hard way. And I just felt like there was so much misinformation and bad information out there that... 04:03 We were making a lot of mistakes. And so when we decided to like kind of start documenting our journey, I just figured I would call it bad Baxter farm because we were making a lot of bad choices and I didn't want everybody to have to do the same thing. Well, it's attention grabbing. that's, that's helpful. Thank you. I guess we should have called ourselves homestead. I have a lot of friends that I mentor now and I'm constantly like, don't use the word farm, like come up with, know, and I have a friend that she just recently, um, 04:31 built a home and got some acreage and she named hers um Anchored Acres. And so I'm always like, gosh, I really wish I would have chose something a little bit different than farm because I don't feel like that highlights us as much as homestead or farmstead or something else would have. But I think we're pretty stuck with it at this point. Yeah. And you're not alone in wanting to rename your place because we named ours a tiny ...
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    36 min
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