Today I'm talking with Mary at Front Forty Farm.

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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 to a fellow Mary at Front Forty Farm in Missouri. Good morning, Mary. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I don't talk to Mary's very often. I always think it's a very common name. Yes. think you're the second Mary I've talked to in over two and a half years on this podcast. Oh, really? I've always thought it's like a very boring square name.

00:30
Yeah, I honestly, I was nicknamed Lynn when I was a couple weeks old because I'm named after both my grandmother's Mary Evelyn. And my parents had a disagreement about which name should have come first. So they decided to nickname me Lynn. And when I went to kindergarten, they did the roll call and they were asked, you know, they were calling my given name.

00:57
And I didn't know my name was Mary. I thought my name was Lynn. Oh, wow. And the teacher called my mom and she said, there's a girl in our class and we don't know who she is. We think she's Mary. And my mom was like, uh okay, this is really weird. And my mom's okay, describe the girl. And they described what I've been, what I was wearing and my hair color and that I was this tall, whatever. And my mom said, well, yeah, that's Mary. And

01:26
They said she doesn't respond to Mary. And my mom laughed and she said, of course she doesn't because she's never been called Mary. She's been called Lynn. So there was a very big mix up the first day of kindergarten. then in high school, I switched back to Mary because I was like, it's my real name. I should use it. my close friends for a long time would call me Lynn, but no one except my husband calls me Lynn now.

01:55
Oh really? Interesting. Yeah, so names are crazy. Yeah. Okay, so the reason that I asked you to be on the podcast is because of your farm name Front 40. I'm assuming that is the opposite of Back 40. Exactly. My husband came up with it because he's like, well, you know, people are always saying out to the Back 40 or, know, whatever. And in the assessment plot, we are the front

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east 40 of the whole section. so there you go. Well, 47 actually, but yeah. Well, it got my attention. So I'm glad you called it front 40 arm. And it's three F's in a row. So that's cool too. So when did you, when did you start the farm? We moved out here in November of 22.

02:51
Okay. And were you city folk or do you have? Oh yeah. Um, yeah, we got married in October. He's a widower and I've been divorced for a very long time and we got married in October, bought the house in November and we lived in Independence, Missouri, which is, um, a suburb of Kansas city and the urban sprawl and all the crime and everything. So it wasn't a great place and we wanted to be more self-sufficient. Yeah.

03:21
I think COVID woke a lot of people up and yeah, so we did it. He sold his house, I sold my house and me came out here. Did you guys have any farming or homesteading background before that? Not really. He was raised on more of like a farm. They had a milk cow and they butchered rabbits and things like that. And I grew up on Lake Michigan. uh

03:50
So no, not really. had my first husband had to farm horses and a few cattle. So I do a little bit from that. And we just kind of wing it. We do a lot of praying for wisdom. Well, that's good because even when you've been brought up in a homesteading or farming family, you can't know everything. Rice can't. So it's good that it's a learning process all the way through. Yes. So you guys have highland cattle, you have sheep.

04:20
You have chickens? They're angora goats. Sorry, angora goats. They look like sheep. Oops. do. You have chickens? Chickens and guineas and one turkey at the moment. And am I missing an animal? Dogs, cats, bees. Bees, okay. Cool. I think that's it. Okay. I want to talk about the angora goats and your

04:46
Your minis, but I said I wasn't going to ask about this, but I am going to ask about this because I'm a sucker. Your dog, dogs, both dogs? have four altogether. Are two of the dogs the Wolfhound Australian Shepherd Crosses? Yes, they're a brother and sister. Okay. We were breeding Aussies and it was too questionable how they would turn out, whether they would kill our

05:14
chickens and we had two goats killed and then we were like, okay, we're done with Aussies. They sold well, but it's like, yeah, we're not taking that chance anymore. we had one, it's hard to find a group of dogs that work well together, get along and don't try to like chase the cattle or kill the chickens. And we had one.

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We had two Aussies and the one got hit by a car which only left one. So then I found on Frexlist the Australian Shepherd slash Wolfhound cross, drove four hours over into Kansas and got the female. She's gray and white with blue eyes. And a week later went back and got her brother. Okay. The thing that I didn't ask you before we started recording about this is was the cross

06:09
an oopsie for the people that had them or did they breed them on purpose that way? was an oops. Okay. That's probably why I've never heard of it before. Because I was like, that seems like a really interesting cross. Yeah, they're great dogs. Yeah. They're big. Like their head is twice the size of our Aussie just about. And the thing is, I have no idea what wolfhounds are like because I've never met one.

06:36
I've seen pictures, but I've never actually been in contact with one. Are they, are they lovey? they really good temperament? Oh yeah. They're very lovable and have a great temperament. They're sight hunters and you know, originally bred to fight wolves. And so we do have coyotes around, although we haven't really had any issues with them coming on our property, but we thought it would be helpful to have the great big dogs for that reason. And, um,

07:07
So yeah, they're pretty mellow, really. They're protective. We've had the female is more aggressive towards strangers than the male is. And so we have to be a little careful about that. Yeah. And the other question I have is, this breed that you find yourself with, are they as people focused as Aussies usually are? Because our Aussie is like, she can't lay down without touching one of us.

07:34
Yeah, they're not quite that bad. If we do have an Aussie that's like that also, he's very needy. but they are very, um, yeah, people focused, I guess is the right phrase to use. They're happiest when they're with somebody. So if we're working out in the yard, they want to be where we are. If we're working in the barn, they want to be where we are. Yeah. Um, my husband was out cutting down ash trees yesterday in our tree line. Cause we got the emerald ash borer bug.

08:04
Oh, He cut down, I think, nine trees yesterday. Wow. And Maggie was outside and she was laying in the grass at the far end, as far as her lead could reach, laying in the grass, flat with her head on her front paws, just looking where he was. Like, I wish I could be over there with you. Right. Yeah. It's it's amazing to me how how much she wants to be with her

08:34
people, her people. So and they all take a person like our female Wolf on Ossie. My husband is her person. The male, I'm his person. Maggie's persons are whoever is home. I have I've spent the majority of the time with her because I'm not I don't have an outside the house job. Oh, okay.

08:59
So she doesn't listen to me as well as she listens to my husband because he's not here all the time. Right. It's typical kid behavior. I think of her as like a three year old kid. Right. And she's actually going to be six in August. So. But I said I wasn't going to bring this up because I would talk about Maggie the whole half an hour. I am not going to do that. So tell me about the Angora goats first, please. Well, we were working on Fence Line.

09:29
And we have a ton of poison ivy. And I was like, all right. And I am I'...