Today I'm talking with Carrie at Bear Country Blooms & Bakery.

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00:00
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 Carrie at Bear Country Blooms and Bakery in Young America, Minnesota. Good afternoon. Carrie, how are you? I'm great. Thanks for asking. I was like, am I saying Young America right? I hope I am.

00:22
Well, technically it's Norwood, Young America. But since I live on the Young America side, I try not to draw any more attention to our crazy town name than I have to. And so I just stick with Young America. Oh, I thought Norwood and Young America were like just side by side, but it's actually one town. It is. Back in the 90s, they decided that it would be more fiscally responsible to combine the two towns. But em

00:50
As the story goes, because I didn't live here then, uh the old German blood did not allow them to compromise with a new name. So Norwood and Young America combined to become Norwood Young America. had no idea again. Love my podcast because I learned something new every time I talk to somebody.

01:14
And you might not even see Norwood Young America written because it's too long to fit on most things. So my driver's license might even say NYA. So I'm giving it a couple of generations and will probably just be known as NAYA because that's what people say when they see NYA and don't know about our town. Wow.

01:41
I have lived here for over 30 years in Minnesota and did not know that about Norwood Young America. I am so glad I got to talk to you today. Yeah, fun facts. I would say how's the weather, but since you're only about an hour north of me, I'm assuming that's been kind of gray and then the sun peeked out and it's kind of gray and the sun peeked out. yep. Humid.

02:01
The humidity has kicked in. um I did learn that a friend that lives only two and a half miles from here got significantly less rain than we got. um So that was an interesting fact. Overnight, she had mentioned that her rain gauge had 0.0 something and mine was 0.8. Well, Lasur, where I live, in my little tiny

02:28
plot of land in the cornfields and the soybean fields. Got 1.8 inches of rain yesterday between 2.30 and 5 o'clock in the afternoon. oh And so yeah, that's it really varies. I mean, we need it. So oh yeah, um I'm really, really thankful that this spring has not been like the past two though. Yes. Past two, you know, has just been.

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rain all of May and halfway into June. Yes. And you live on the other side of the river. So I can relate to that. Yeah, it was. is not fun to cross anyway and throw in a flood and it just got more complicated. Yes. Luckily my husband could get to work, but we had a terrible growing season last year and the year before, because our garden was so wet. It took so long to get it It was like soup. Yeah.

03:27
Yeah, I heard that a lot. were, you know, people come to the farmers markets looking for vegetables. like, sorry, it's too cold. It's too wet. There's you got to wait an extra, I don't know, four or five weeks for the second set of seeds or whatever the plant was that they were hoping to see fruit from.

03:49
It was bad. It was very, very bad. So we're happy this year with our farm to market garden. Yes, for sure. wasn't soup in May. Thank God. So all right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Well, as you can probably guess, I am a gardener. I call myself a market gardener because I don't know many people that grow 80 tomato plants or

04:17
70 pepper plants just for fun just for themselves Although if you can or you really like salsa, which is why we grow ours You could just be growing those for yourselves, but we grow to sell at farmers markets We used to grow onions and zucchini um And as my other side of my business took off I had something had to give And so some of the vegetables got cut from the list um

04:46
but I also grow flowers. So that's where the bear country blooms comes from. I do cut flowers that thrive here. people have to wait after peony season, they have to wait until about July before we're drowning in flowers. But it is worth the wait to grow flowers that are fresh, long lasting and aren't imported, which I think it's like 70 % of the flowers.

05:16
are imported. our carbon footprint is a lot smaller because of that. that's a positive there. um And then my bakery side of my business, um I've been a cottage baker for I think this is my sixth year. But last summer I started selling sourdough um and now a year into selling, um it's gotten to the point where

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My husband wishes I would give up the flowers, but I love it too much to do that. But it's pretty much an all-consuming job in that sourdough doesn't give you a day off. It's got to be fed. It does not. It needs attention. Yes. Yes. So yeah, we do farmers markets. have a

06:10
bakery trailer that's new for us this season. So we have a, we call her Poppy because our most popular muffin that we sell is a poppy seed muffin. And then we also have poppies in our garden. So Poppy is our bakery trailer that we sell from at markets and events. We average around 45 events in a year or so. We're out a lot.

06:38
Yeah, that's a lot of running around to sell things. Yes, yes. And we do have a farm stand. So after that crazy season is over, about mid-October, then we dial it back and people order their bread and they pick it up at the farm stand instead. Or I do a delivery run on Fridays as well. So it's a nice um way for someone who

07:06
likes to do a variety of things. I'm never bored and I'm never doing the same thing two days in a row. Sure. I have a question about your panties this season. Yes. Did it seem like the panty season was one week? Because that's what it felt like here for our panties. Sarah Bernhardt's, I think, opened in maybe 72 hours, every single one of them. Yeah. I do try to plant mine for the most part.

07:36
um We like to incorporate our perennials into our landscaping. We do have a few rows of them, but they are contained in our flower beds. And so I put some in the shade and I put some in the full sun to try to spread that out a little bit. But yeah, I did notice that too, that uh my need to look out the window to see if any peonies are starting to pop. That window is really short.

08:05
as far as time goes. So yeah, I couldn't believe it. Last year our peonies bloomed for like a three week window. This year. This year, I swear to you, it seems like they just started maybe 10 days ago and they're pretty much done. Yeah, I, I maybe have, um, so I have two plants that are

08:30
in a different location by themselves. so they're still, they maybe have 10 more blooms, but otherwise everything else has either been taken to the farmers market or is wrapped in um Saran wrap and in my refrigerator until, and then they'll get doled out into bouquets probably for the next four weeks. But then that's it. For anyone who doesn't know the Sarah Bernhardt, Bernhardt? Yeah. um

08:59
peonies are the light, light, light pink. They're like white with a blush of pink. And they're my favorite. I love those. They're wonderful. And for anyone else who does, and also for some, anyone who doesn't know, that was really bad, sorry. ah What Carrie's talking about with them being in the refrigerator and Saran wrap is that if you pick the blooms, when the buds feel like a marshmallow, if you gently squeeze them, they feel like a marshmallow.

09:27
you can wrap them, wrap the buds in Saran wrap and put them in your fridge and they will stay good for a while. How long, do you think they'll stay good? Oh, I've heard people doing it for months, but um I don't have the patience to give up the refrigerator space. Yeah. So, and then by July, I have, um I think, 1,200 seedlings of annual flowers in my yard right now, plus

09:55
you know, 40 by 80 of perennials. I don't need them after four weeks. So. Right. Exactly. Cause not...