Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farms.

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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. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company.

00:28
Today I'm talking with Morgan at Cole Canyon Farms in Montana. Good afternoon, Morgan. How are you? Good afternoon. I am doing wonderful. I mean, it's 100 degrees here, but we haven't melted quite yet. Well, I'm glad you haven't melted. And in Minnesota, it is, I can tell you exactly what the temperature is because I'm sitting here holding my phone. 77 degrees right now feels like 77. Can I switch you? You come here and I'll go there.

00:56
No, I'm sorry. I can't do that because we had two weeks of dew points that were tropical and temperatures above 90. This break we've had has been beautiful. Yeah, I thought I moved up to Montana for it to not be Arizona weather, but here we are, 100 degree weather. I mean, it literally raises, you know, 10 degrees as you're watching it, you know, the time. So if it's seven o'clock in the morning, it's 70 degrees and outside 80 at eight. It's just wild.

01:25
em I'm shocked. I understand because I don't remember a time in my 30 years of living in Minnesota two weeks of that kind of heat and humidity. It's crazy. We've had high humidity here too, which is out of dorm, know, but it's destroyed crops out here. Hay is astronomical. can't even, I four times as much. I'm just like, all right, well.

01:53
I thought Montana grew a little bit better hay and wheat, we just haven't gotten the moisture. It's been really humid outside, but the rain is like coming later in the year. We normally don't get a lot of rain this month, but we have and it's way hotter than normal. Yeah, I don't like it. I would like things to go back to the night to 19. Honestly, if I'm being real, I'd like things to go back to 1985. You know,

02:21
I have heard that a few times that like the early 1980s to early 90s was like the time to be alive. I wasn't alive until 1994. So I missed that whole fun part. Yeah, I was like 15 or 16 in 1985 and I hated school, but I loved my life in general at that age. So it would be nice to revisit it. Yeah. You know, everyone said I was going to need all that, you know, all that school I was learning and like, well, I needed some of it, honestly.

02:50
wish I would have just started farming sooner. I understand why some kids would just drop out and go farm instead. Yes. And don't get me wrong. I loved my teachers. I loved learning. I didn't like the social aspect of it at all. Yeah, that's right. Because like I'm a social butterfly and over the years I've learned you're kind of a homebody hermit. like to be your space. I have been shy and quiet my whole entire life. I have been an extreme introvert and

03:18
I tell that to people in real life and they're like, no, you're not. And I'm like, you have no idea how hard I have to work to be social. You and my husband are scup from the same cloth. Let me guess your husband's a bubbly extrovert. He is most of the time. Yeah. See, that's funny. Opposites definitely attract. So he does your farmers markets, doesn't he? He's the one that goes and sets them up. Yes, he's very good at it. That's right. He was growing cabbage. How did that go?

03:45
That was our last podcast. talked about the cabbage and lettuce. it was. Yeah, it was cabbage. I think he's sold every single head of the cabbage he's taken so far this summer. See, it was smart of him to up his cabbage amount, but that's because you guys tracked your numbers and you knew what you guys were going to sell. We just started doing farmers markets and I've learned from what you guys told me. Well, you specifically, because I talked to you, not your husband. Well, you talked to him through me, but yes.

04:13
Yeah, of course, you know, and he he had tracked his numbers. So he went three times as many as that. Correct. I think so. Yeah. See, so I track my milk and I've been making goat cheese and I started making goat caramel also. And it's been helping. So this week I had to have like a break because of the extreme heat. get issues with the milk animals in general.

04:40
you know, cows or goats. They just have a really hard time with the heat. It kind of bogs down their immune system. It's also been really wet, which is like typical intestinal worm season. So we've just been kind of working through that and at a later time. So we had to take two weeks off and man, I felt it. I felt it in our wallet. I felt it. You know, I was like, I can't wait until you're back in milk. So I ended up buying a second milk goat just to try and keep up with the demand that were.

05:08
already having our first year at this Red Lodge Farmer's Market. Mm-hmm. So you said you're making caramel? Yes, it's called Kahita and it's a goat caramel. Yeah. It's so good. I sold out in my first 30 minutes when I took it to the first uh Red Lodge Farmer's Market. I was selling pints for 15. I'm going to up them to 20 just because supply and demand. It takes one whole gallon of milk, you know, to make six uh

05:38
I think they're half pints. Sorry, not full pints. They're half pints. it's it renders down really far. But I added in cinnamon sticks to the first half instead of adding an actual ground cinnamon this time. And I like figured out my own recipe. Like, know, you kind of take a base recipe, tweak it a few times. So this was my first time taking it out. And I did free samples and everyone who tried it bought a

06:07
bought a half pint of it. I even had two roommates and they were like, I'll fight you over it. They were going to just split it for their coffee. And they're like, no, I'll fight you over it. They were younger and they were real funny. So they ended up each buying a half pint and they wrote their names on them so they could keep them separate because it was so good. Uh huh. And the thing is not very, I mean, I am ruining this. Sorry. Let me try that again. That thing is Kehita or Kaheda, however you say it. Yeah. Is unusual.

06:35
not a lot of people make it. it is definitely a supply and demand thing. And I would pay $20 for a half pint of that because I'm only going to do it once a year and I'm going to enjoy it. And a lot of the people that go to this Red Lodge Market, it's a tourist town. So a lot of them are traveling. So a lot of the people, it's almost

06:59
I mean, there's a lot of normal farmers markets where they're not in tourist towns that I could go to, but my booth is $15 there. And so it's a very affordable booth and you constantly have a new crowd and every Saturday during the farmers market, they have some type of event that's either going on before it. have Zuma this weekend and a car show, or they're doing like something after like they did Shakespeare in the park last weekend or the weekend before that.

07:29
Like they do this really cool. If you look it up, you'll laugh. It's called the Iron Horse Rodeo out there. And it's a bunch of bikers that are doing the barrel racing and all those types of events, but on their motorcycle. So you get a new crowd every week and they have, they all have different things they're looking for. Or, you know, you're attracting a crowd that's maybe not used to some of the things that you're in the farmer's market doing. So having an item like I have, and also offering Chev.

07:56
um, which is just goat cheese. I didn't know that it's any type of goat cheese. I didn't realize that until after I started making it, um, was one of those things that it's a niche, not a lot of people are doing it. And so I had people showing up, you know, from an hour away just to buy goat cheese from me because it was closer than where I'm at in Laurel. So it's honestly opening up to a whole new

08:22
I guess you could say atmosphere of folks, right? Like I'm getting to see a different market every week. So I feel that tracking my numbers is really important. So I'm able to kind of watch all those different things, you know, because the Iron Horse rodeo, I didn't sell any goat cheese. I didn't have um a lot of the products that I had because my goat was taking a break, but I'm almost glad I didn't because of the fact that, you know, we...

08:50
I wouldn't have sold them. Nobody asked for them. I talked about them, but everyone was like, oh, goat cheese. There's this like weird stigma around Shev, around Kehita, um and goat milk in general. So it's one of those things. I mean, we've talked enough times about it. I'm very passionate about it. I'm very passionate about kind of breaking the stigma because goat milk is going to be something with the way hay prices are going that I think we're going to start seeing...