Today I'm talking with Abigail and Christian at Faithful Harvest MN.

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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. At Green Bush Twins and Company, we believe in the power of creativity, imagination, and art to bring people together. Our mission is to inspire connection across all ages, encouraging understanding, individuality, and a true sense of belonging. We're building more than a brand. We're growing a mindful community rooted in kindness, intention, and shared purpose.

00:29
At our core, it's about real people sharing real stories, ideas, and products that make everyday life more meaningful. If you believe in living with purpose and supporting brands that care, you'll feel right at home with Green Bush Twins. That tiny homestead podcast is sponsored by Green Bush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Abigail and Christian at Faithful Harvest Minnesota in Dexter, Minnesota. Good afternoon, guys. How are you? Good. How are you doing? Good.

00:54
So I'm in LaSore, Minnesota and it's overcast here and it's like 57 degrees. Is that what it's doing where you are? Yeah, it's about that here. It's really windy today, but the sun is out. So we're happy about it. Yeah, the sun is not out here. It's kind of great. Oh.

01:15
But that's okay, because at least it's warm and it's not snowing. Finally, yeah. You get all cooked up over the winter and then finally like the nice days, you just want to break out and do clean everything all at once.

01:33
Oh yes, my husband spent most of Easter day outside and he was either riding the tractor and watering chickens or he was in the greenhouse planting seeds. yeah, perfect timing to start doing this stuff. It gets exciting when the weather finally starts getting nice and itching to get outside and get all that stuff done. Absolutely. So do you guys consider yourselves homesteaders or farmers?

02:01
Uh, we consider ourselves homesteaders, um, just because whenever I think of farm, I kind of think of the large scale industrial farming and our homestead is very small batch and homemade and we have it smaller right now. yeah. Okay. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do as homesteaders. Yeah. So, um, I'm right now I'm an ER nurse, um, and I'm

02:31
part time with that right now. And uh that's kind of a new transition for me personally. And we've been doing the homestead for about four years now. And uh recently over the last year, we've gotten much more into the business side of the homestead and just starting to share what we do on the homestead and our daily life and everything. So that's kind of where we're at right now and what we do.

03:01
I'm just spending a lot more time doing stuff for marketing and just getting ready for the planting season here. Yeah. When starting the homestead, I do have a drywall business.

03:21
other than doing the homestead.

03:26
so you both have outside income.

03:30
Yeah, yeah, we both have our jobs outside of this. And then, you know, we're considering this a really fun job. The homestead is the job you want to be doing. The other two jobs are the jobby jobs. Yeah, exactly. The goal is to maybe one day we both do this full time and that's kind of our long term dream one day. But for now, just paying the bills with that and then in our free time we...

03:59
do everything we can for the homestead just to be out there and just working together on it. sounds very familiar after talking with people over 500 episodes in the last two and a half years. You're not alone in that guys. That's how it's done. So did you always want to be homesteaders? Were you raised by people who grew things? How did it work? Yeah. on

04:27
My side, I did grow up on a small hobby farm is what we called it. And my parents just raised cows, pigs, and sometimes chickens just to feed the family and some friends. And my mom always had a garden growing up. So it's kind of been in my blood. And when we finally got together and we've been, Christian and I have been together for five years and just got married last year. And in that five years we've

04:54
learned a lot about each other that we both would love to get back to our roots of making things homemade and growing our own things, growing our own produce and livestock and just being able to be self-sustaining more. And that was kind of our biggest goal. So I do have a background in farming, I guess, but I learned a lot more in the last five years of Christian than I ever had growing up. Yeah, I would I would agree with that in the last five years.

05:23
I've learned more than I ever have in my life. Growing up, I grew up on a small acreage and the extent of that was what we would do was have a small garden and it was basics, tomatoes, peppers, onion. No, not onions, just oh pretty basic garden plots, small garden plots. We didn't have any livestock or anything like that, but

05:51
always grew up just being outside and either working or just playing mow the lawn, stuff like that. But yeah, it wasn't until Abby and I met and... uh

06:11
to start getting into this learning little by little. Yeah, it's a whole different ball game when it's just you guys and it's not family doing it. Mm For sure. Yeah. There's a lot more that I didn't realize that my parents know so much more that I never even learned that I find myself going back to them like, what did you do with this when we were younger and all this stuff and now when it's just us, it's fun learning the little things that maybe we didn't know in the past.

06:41
Yes. And honestly, I think one of the best things about getting into homesteading is the learning curve because it's not, it's not necessarily a steep learning curve. is a consistent learning curve. Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. Yeah, I agree. Everything we've done over the years has just come little by little. Reading here, watching, you know, watching this or then trial and error that and

07:12
At the beginning projects, it seemed a little daunting, but just getting into it, it's always been a steady, steady incline. Yes. And once you know it, you know it. You don't forget it. It's like riding a bike. It's true. I love that part because if I had to relearn everything every day, I would just throw in the towel. It would be too much. Groundhog Day is not an appealing concept to me.

07:41
Um, Abigail, I saw your video on your Facebook page of your soap, making your soap. Yeah. Yes. And you were saying that it makes your skin so much softer and that I can't remember the rest of it, but just you were kind of raving in the commentary about how much you love it. Is that cold process, Lysow? Yeah. So that is, I guess I'm...

08:10
not a connoisseur of making soap. And I, when I first learned how to make it, I actually learned it from a guy that makes it in Minneapolis and he had a YouTube video out there. I was, and I had always wanted to start making soap eventually. And so we just pulled the trigger and pulled up this YouTube video. Like let's just buy the exact ingredients. Let's do it. And yeah, it is a cold process soap. ever since then, we've been using that same exact recipe just because we, we love it so much and it

08:40
changed how our skin feels and everything. So yeah. Yeah. Well, let me tell you, girly, I am, am 56 years old. We started making our own cold process Lysol a good 15 years ago, mostly because mostly because the store bought soap that I could get made my skin dry and it made me itchy. And I got a bar of cold process Lysol.

09:10
at the Renaissance Festival from, I can't remember the name of the company, I don't think they're even out there anymore, but they had an oatmeal almond soap. And I fell in love with it and I had the same reaction. I did not have itchy skin anymore. My skin was soft and it...