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Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm. A tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. 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 Brad Tabke, the founder of A Better Yard in Shakopee, I think, Minnesota. Good morning, Brad. How are you?

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Good morning. I am happy to be coming to you from Shakopee. OK. And I forgot to mention that he's also a Minnesota state representative for Shakopee. So ah how is your day? I would ask you about the weather, but since you're only about half an hour, an hour away from me, I know that it's sunny and warm. Warm. Warm is good. It is. It felt so nice. Like I was out this morning already. I had bird feeders to fill and do all that kind of stuff. And so I was out this morning and it was

01:19
gorgeous and I hear we're supposed to get some snow later this week. So that would actually be kind of nice to give some more moisture. That would help a lot. Yes. ah My husband actually cut down an ash tree last weekend and he was out there cutting it up this weekend in a t-shirt and like khaki pants and sneakers. But it's a goofy February. Goofy is the weather's goofy all the time right now. We'll see what happens with that. it yeah it was a gorgeous gorgeous weekend.

01:50
It really was and I was like, why am I warm? And I looked up at the thermostat in the house, it was 75 degrees and the furnace was not on. I was like, oh, duh, when it's warm outside, it's gonna get warmer in the house. Go fig. Exactly. It's a good ambient heating there. Yeah, we've got lots of windows and so the sun was just pouring in the living room and I was like, why am I hot? And I'm like, oh, duh, I know I'm hot. It's not.

02:17
It's February, but it's not February according to the weather. Okay, so you had a group called Minnesota Gardening and you changed the name to a better yard in January. So tell me the history on this. Yeah, so during COVID, it feels like all the stories now start with during COVID XYZ happened.

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We during COVID, I had a bunch of friends who were asking me they wanted to start doing planting vegetables and flowers and those kinds of things and wanted something to do. And so they knew that I was I have a horticulture degree from Iowa State and have been in the landscape industry since I graduated from college. Actually, since I was in middle school working in a greenhouse. And so I have been

03:10
started that out helping just friends. they're like, Brad, we want to pay you to do this. And how do we do that? And I was like, I don't know. I'm not sure oh how we can do all this and make it make sense. And so we were just helping folks. And uh then we set up what we called Minnesota Gardening to grow that and stretch that to be helping with landscapes and helping make sure people knew how to reduce their chemical use and just fundamental things like that, along with

03:38
fruits and vegetables and making sure to grow those kinds of things. And so we started that and was very Minnesota centric. It was very much here in our thing that we wanted to be doing. But then it continued to grow from there. And so it was the focus shifted through COVID and after COVID to focusing on environmental landscape and making sure that people knew how to eliminate chemicals, how to feed pollinators, how important it was.

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that we have a diversity of native and helpful plants in our yards and making sure that those kinds of things, saving water, storing carbon that are important for our future, that those kinds of things are happening. And so we grew beyond just Minnesota and just gardening into focusing on making sure that we're helping to do, you know, little things like helping to reduce the risk of cancer from chemical use and those kinds of things. And so

04:33
We switched to a better yard this year and it's been going really, really well. I'm excited about it. Awesome. I'm really happy for you because when you you when you rebrand, it's it's a it's a gamble. So I'm glad that it's going well for you. I want to tell a little story when when I moved in with my husband back over 24 years ago, I think now. Yeah, at least over 24 years ago, he lived in Jordan.

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And he lived on a 10th of an acre lot with a house and a four car garage on it. you can imagine how little room there was for growing anything. And the backyard was basically crab grass and weeds. And his mom was moving and she gave us some iris roots or whatever they call rhizomes and some lilies and some violets. And she was like,

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take these and plant them wherever you want to plant them. And neither my husband nor I had really considered putting in gardens as it were until that moment. And there was a pine tree growing in front of our bedroom windows between our house bedroom windows and the sidewalk. It was a little tiny, maybe six foot deep by 14 foot long bed where that pine tree was.

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And it was just all weeds in the pine tree. And so I said, would you cut the pine tree and can we get some stuff to amend the soil and we'll put the flowers out front? Cause that would be really pretty. And he was like, sure. And so we took that tree down without breaking a window, which was amazing and ah got everything going. And it was really a sweet little garden, really pretty. And after the first summer, that winter, I was like, you know, we have a backyard. And he said, he sorta.

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And I said, I know it's small. I said, but I said, if we tilled that up and amended the soil, we could be growing food, not crabgrass and weeds. And we had four kids at the time.

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He was like, oh, almost free food. said, yeah, almost free food. mean, that first year is going to be expensive, but after that, it'll even out. So we ended up working on that yard all that fall, think. No, was spring, I'm sorry. Got some little beds planted. We had a huge, can't remember, rhubarb patch that had been there for years already. That stayed. You do not want to dig up rhubarb that's over a hundred years old, because that's good stuff.

07:11
and ended up growing tomatoes and summer squash and cucumbers in herb garden that first year. And it did so great. And we were the only ones on our block doing this. Our neighbors thought we were nuts. The reason I tell this story is because it got our neighbor right next to us. Her little girl was very interested in the cucumbers growing through the fence. And that got her interested in gardening.

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and our neighbors, our former neighbors across the street. She, for the last two years has been doing cut flowers in her yard that's even smaller than our former yard was. Wow. So, so you can be an influence, you can make a difference on the, in the smallest ways and it becomes a movement. Exactly.

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And it's so, important for people just to get started with something, right? It's just so important that people find a place and find just a little thing. And what we find happens a lot with people. So we do a lot of teaching around this getting started concept of things. And we help people understand that it doesn't need to be this big grandiose. You don'...