Today I'm talking with Kayla and Trent at Brotzler Farms.

"We are a sustainable family homestead. We have over 120 free range egg laying chickens, fresh sourdough, herbal remedies, a few goats, and we make pure Wisconsin maple syrup. We believe you should know where your food is coming from! Local!"

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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 Kayla and Trent at Brotzler Farms, I think is the way I pronounce it. How are you guys? We're good. Thank you for having us. Did I pronounce it right? Yes, you did. Okay, good. All right. So tell me about yourselves and what you do.

00:29
Well, we have a tiny little three acre homestead in Osceola. We moved there about three years ago now. And we kind of do a mixture of all sorts of things. We kind of started out with 20 chickens that were handed over to us from the old owners. Trent has been doing maple syrup for a good while now. And then I started into...

00:56
herbal remedies and different concoctions that I make, gardening. And now we have, I don't even know how many chickens, over 100 chickens, three goats, and I do sourdough now. So we kind of dabble in a few things. I also was doing microgreens last year and that turned into a pretty decent sized little business that I was doing pretty much all by myself, but I stopped doing that just because it took.

01:24
quite a bit of time, but everything else we're still doing. There's nothing prettier than a tray of microgreens, I swear to you. I know. They're so cool. So for the listeners that aren't Midwesterners, Osceola is in Wisconsin, just so everybody knows. Yes, Northwest Wisconsin. Okay. All right. So does Trent have anything he wants to throw into that description? She pretty much covered everything. As far as the maple syrup, I started in 2018 myself.

01:54
My grandpa done it many decades ago, but I never, unfortunately, never met him. Um, so I kind of, I guess I picked up a little bit where he left off and I started with one tree, one tap and now I'm over about 150 taps. And we do about 40 gallons of syrup a year. So, and just kind of looking and expanding that every year. So it's going good. Wow. I love maple syrup. I'm not kidding you. We always have some in the fridge because.

02:23
I can't do pancakes or waffles without it now. Without real maple syrup. The stuff that is manmade or factory made, forget it. I don't even have it anymore. Yeah, I was just saying that the other day. I'm ashamed to say that I was raised on the store bought stuff and I didn't, at first I didn't like real maple syrup and I started eating it more and I was like, wait a minute, how did I ever eat the fake stuff? That's how I was too. Yeah.

02:50
I had no idea that maple syrup that was made from maple tree sap was so yummy. Right. And especially when you look at the medicinal properties of it too, I think that's one of the things that I'm kind of passionate about is looking at the nutritional value and the medicinal aspects of different foods and different plants and herbs and everything. And it's really cool to learn about. Yeah. Two of the things that will never be missing from my pantry is real maple syrup and honey because they both have such great...

03:20
medicinal and nutritional qualities that I don't want to be without it. Yeah, absolutely. We've talked about getting honeybees too, so that's probably on the list eventually. Mm-hmm. It's a great thing to have, but I don't know if you've looked into it at all, but it's an expensive hobby. Yeah, my parents did it for many years, and my uncle did it for many years, so we have supplies and stuff to view it. But yeah, you're right. It is a lot of work, so that's kind of why I haven't done it yet. But it's something I'd like to at least try at least once.

03:49
Yeah, the reason we haven't tried it is because number one, we don't have all the things yet, and it's expensive to acquire them. But I'm also afraid that we're going to kill the beehives by accident. I would be so sad if we got them and they just died over the winter. Oh yeah. So no, we're not doing bees. We're doing chickens. Chickens and barn cats, those are pretty much the only things we do right now. So yep.

04:16
Okay, so I was looking at your Facebook page because I do my homework, and you had a post on there about ghost pipe mushrooms. And I had to go look them up because I thought they were poisonous, but they're not across the board poisonous. They're poisonous in certain ways. So can you tell me about that? Yeah, so ghost pipe, it's actually a flower, but they do generally grow amongst mushrooms.

04:44
From what I understand, they kind of work synergistically with the fungus and the different bacteria in the ground. So that's why they grow amongst the mushrooms. But yeah, they're really cool looking flower. I'm sure you've seen them. They're like a translucent white color and they lack chlorophyll, which is why they're that color. And they are medicinal and they're usually used as like a sedative.

05:14
for anxiety and pain. And so what I did is I harvested some this year and I tinctured them. You want to tincture them right away, right after you harvest them. So you'll put them in a jar of alcohol and then you let them sit for six to eight weeks and then you strain it and then you have your medicine. And it turns into a really nice like deep purple color. So I've sold...

05:39
quite a bit of it already and people have been having really good results as far as sleep, anxiety, pain. I use it myself for just like muscular pain and anxiety, tension, whatever I need it for. Yeah, it's a really really cool plant and I'm glad I discovered it. A friend of mine I figured out has basically the jackpot growing in her five acres that she has so next year I'll be going up there to harvest some more.

06:06
Yeah, I assume it grows in Minnesota, but I don't know for sure. I have not seen it in person. Yeah, you know what? It's crazy because I had never seen it either, but now that I know where and how to look for it, I found it everywhere and it's the coolest plant I've ever harvested. It's so cool. It doesn't look real. It looks like a toy that some kid left on the ground. Right, and even like the stalk of it is so, I don't know, it's like a sturdy little

06:35
plant, but it's also kind of dainty. But you have to kind of harvest it sustainably too, because in some areas it can be endangered. I don't think it's considered endangered in our area, but you still want to harvest just a little bit from each little plot just so that it can regrow. Yes. And I'm going to do this because anytime we're talking about something that people aren't necessarily sure of, I always say this. If you're going to forage, make sure that you have done your research.

07:05
And then if you're not positive, take someone with you who knows what it is that you're looking for and can identify it distinctly. Because I would never want anyone to go hunting for a mushroom or whatever and get the wrong thing and get hurt or die. And when I researched the ghost pipe thing.

07:27
It says that you can eat it in small quantities and that it tastes sort of like asparagus. And I love asparagus. So I might have to go find them and try it. Yeah. I actually did eat one because I was like, oh, let's just see what it tastes like. And it did. It kind of did taste like asparagus. And it's, I don't know, it was kind of cool. And then from the herbal remedy books that I have, from what I've learned about it, you can't overdo it as far as the tincture. So I always give instructions when I sell it.

07:56
Yeah, you just don't want to do too much. And that's really the same with any tinctures. Too much can be, you know, poisonous to an extent. So you got to be careful with it. Yeah, it's that everything in moderation situation that I keep hearing about every time I talk about things or learn about things. Okay, cool. And then the other thing I saw on your Facebook page was some kind of sprout that tastes like

08:25
Oh, watermelon maybe. Oh, I wonder if was it the borage that tastes like cucumbers? Yeah. Yep. So that was the when I was doing microgreens. I did I have like, kind of my staple greens that I would grow like broccoli and radish and cabbage and those kind of things. But I would grow some specialty ones every once in a while and borage was one of them. And if you let them grow to maturity,

08:52
I'm sure you've probably seen them before, but they have like a really pretty blue flower to them and they kind of have fuzzy leaves. But as a microgreen, you're just growing it to the true leaf stage and they just have those fuzzy little leaves. And yeah, they're kind of crunchy and they taste like cucumber. Well, I had no idea about that. But what I do know about borage, we grew it. We grew it a couple summers in a row. Those dainty little flowers will change color from year to year. And one year they'll be that lavendery purpley color.

09:21
or blue. And then the next year they can be white. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't either. I was like, why is my borage on that, putting out white blooms? This is very strange. Interesting. But the other thing about the blossoms is if you want to get real fancy at a dinner p...