Today I'm talking with Heather at Halfhacked Homestead.

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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 Heather at Half Hacked Homestead in Kentucky. Good afternoon, Heather. How are you? How are you? I'm good. You were telling me it's really freaking hot in Kentucky. Yes, it is disgusting hot. It is. Today will be, um,

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indexes will be over 100. Some talks of areas being pushing 110 with we've had humidity levels this week of anywhere from the upper 60s to over 90s a couple of days ago. So it's just hot and wet and miserable. the dew point yesterday, I think at 630 in the morning here in Minnesota was 65%. Yeah, that is

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Tropical and it's worse than tropical for Minnesotans because we're not used to that kind of heat, right? But back in January or December or whenever the heck it was because I don't remember We had a week this past winter where it was minus 25 real temp for a couple of days The day I was like, this is some crap. I don't like this any better than 65 dew point either

01:24
So we'd love spring and we love fall in Minnesota because the weather is temperate in those two seasons. wish Kentucky had more of those. We either have uh hot season or mud season. There's really not a lot of in between. We have allergy season and we have cold season. That's why Minnesotans sound like they talk through their nose a lot. Okay. Well,

01:52
I put up yesterday and it's still my unpopular opinion that I would much rather do all of this in the cold than the heat though. Yeah, definitely. I don't know that anybody will ever convince me otherwise. Uh huh. Exactly. All right. So I have to know why is it called half hacked Homestead? Well, a couple of reasons. Um, one, my initials are HAC. Oh, okay. Yep. So if you, if you, anybody ever sees me refer to as hack, that's, that's me.

02:22
Um, the other thing is when I first started this adventure, I was actually a hotel manager. I have almost 20 years in hospitality and corporate structures and things like that. And so when I started, I really didn't have a lot of time, but that business side gave me a lot of experience in working in systems and developing efficiencies and

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really analyzing, you know, data and systems and all the things that go into how things operate. And so because I was only able to focus on my personal life about half the time, um everything just kind of became half-hacked and it became a running joke because sometimes, you know, I do things that are unconventional or a little, you look at it sometimes and you're like, what the heck is she doing now?

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That's half-hacked. I love that. That is brilliant. All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at half-hacked Homestead. So obviously in the last few years I have left the corporate life and I work part-time retail now just to support some of the things. My Homestead does support other parts of it with different things but I have

03:50
An entirely too many amount of animals right now and more on the way. So I think my latest count was about 82 animals. Wow. How much land? Five acres. Oh, you can you can handle that many animals. That's okay. uh Most of them are chickens, rabbits. got meat rabbits, Rex's back in December.

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which was very exciting. And then just a couple of months ago, I got started on my quail.

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So I have the quail, the rabbits, the chickens, and then of course, you know, there's the outdoor cats and there's a couple of dogs and.

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Any goats? No. I don't have goats. I have a very I have to be strict with myself that I have a no pet poll. Like I'm full on pets. um So everything I have has to have some kind of use now because the cats and the dog um take up the freeloader status. Yes, they're very good at that, but they're worth it. Yeah, I don't.

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don't foresee myself wanting, I don't like goat meat. And I don't see myself wanting to raise them for dairy, because I don't want to have to worry about keeping them in kid or milking them several times a day. So it's just, they're not my thing. I'll let other people have all the goats. are a homesteader who knows her limits and I'm proud of you because

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There are a lot of homesteaders who get into this and they're like, I want all the animals and all the produce and all the fruit trees and all the asparagus and all the strawberries and all the rhubarb. And you cannot do that unless you have like a whole team underneath you to help. Right. And fortunately I have met some wonderful people out here in Western Kentucky who do have the goats and the dairy animals.

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and the pigs and we have created this wonderful bond and network of people so we don't have to do it alone. Right and that's really smart because many hands make light work. Absolutely. Alrighty so how is your rabbit adventure going because our rabbit adventure lasted a year it did not go well that's why it lasted a year. uh It's going really well so far. uh

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told you I tend to do things that make people go, oh man. And that's I have a colony set up. And so I started out with a trio, with two does and a buck. And they have now, I'm on my third litter from each one. And there have been, there were some challenges. The very first litters that I had, I didn't quite know they were pregnant because again, being in a colony situation,

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don't have them separated. Right. So I didn't know that they had come of age and that they were about to kindle until that week that you were talking about where it was negative in Minnesota. It was also uh pushing zero here. And of course, that's when they kindled. Of course, because that's how mother nature is. Exactly. So first time mothers didn't pull enough fur. um They didn't know what they were doing. And I woke up and I went, oh, there's babies.

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So did you manage to rescue them? We did. So the first, um I had both does kindled within a couple of days of each other. And oddly enough, I had a chicken go broody and also hatch out eggs during that time. So in a week, I had 28 babies born between the three different moms. um And everybody, I did lose one of the rabbit litters.

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Um, because despite checking on them multiple times a day, I, one of the rare days that I had to go to work and I came back and I was like, Oh, the whole nest is now frozen. So I did lose the whole first of one of the does, but the other doe raised her rabbits, uh, successfully. So half a bed.

08:28
Absolutely. And if it was the first time you've ever done it, congratulations. You learned something really important on the fact that not all mama animals really know how to be good moms. No, and in fact, the one that lost her entire litter, um she lost her second one as well to a completely different circumstance, which was the spring floods. we um

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I let her choose her own spot and I was like we're gonna do this as natural as possible we're gonna see what she's gonna do and she put them in an area that I could not reach underneath a set of concrete stairs which I've chosen to leave because it's a nice cool place for them in the summer and the rain came and it ran

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just slightly downhill underneath the thick layer of straw that I have in their pen and where she had dug out the little bowl for the nest, retained water.

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It happens. It is not your fault, just in case you're feeling bad about it. It is not your fault. So I rescued one of them. were able, I found it. It had washed out and was covered in mud. And the second time I rescued Kits from the same mom. And now she's on her third one and she had 13 and eight of them are still alive. So, and we are at four weeks now. So I think her third time she's finally figured out.

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how to do this. Sounds like your buck has figured out how to do this too. Holy crap, that's a lot of babies. Yeah, they both give me very, very large litters. The...