Today I'm talking with Nicole at Happy Hippie Homestead.

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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 Nicole at the Happy Hippie Homestead in Kentucky. Good afternoon, Nicole. How are you? Hello. Hello. How's it going? It's going good. The weather here in Minnesota is gray and it's going to start raining again any minute. And I don't know if you know what the weather's been like in Minnesota for the last week and a half, but it's been hot and we have gotten rain every day for the last seven days now.

00:53
It's been kind of like that here, but we've gotten rain the last couple of days, which we're grateful for because the garden could use a good drink. Um, so we're, we're happy that we got some. Yeah. Yeah. It's been like a hundred here. What about you guys? Like humid and hot too? A week ago, Monday. So not three days ago, but a week ago. Um,

01:22
It was really, really muggy. Like it was above tropical dew point. And we don't get that very often in Minnesota. It was a very long, very sloggy day that Monday. That's hard. That's hard. Yep. we get them a lot here. used to that. So yeah, very muggy and humid here in the summer.

01:47
Yeah, it'll be muggy, but it's not like you step outside and you're in the shower. That's how it felt last Monday. Yeah. It was gross. My dog was very unhappy all day. She's a, an Australian shepherd and she has the real thick curly hair. Oh yeah. And oh she laid around all day and every time I would walk by her, she'd just look up at me like, mom fix it. Oh yeah.

02:16
Our dogs like to go out for a little, you know, runs around the big backyard, but then, you know, are happy to come back in because it's just too much sometimes. yeah. She, usually if I let her out, she'll go out in the grass and she'll do her rolly pollies. So she rolled around on her back and her tummy and, she just hangs out for maybe 15 minutes. And I let her out that day at about two o'clock in the afternoon. She walked out to the edge of the cement pad, got on the grass.

02:46
and immediately came back up the steps to be let back in. No laying in the grass, no roly-poly's. I was like, oh, it must be really miserable for you because this is not your routine. So yeah, it's been bad. um But our gardens are really liking the heat and then the little bit of rain every day. So I'm very excited about our gardens this year. Oh, that's nice. That's always so good.

03:14
when you have your garden going nice, you know. Oh, it looks so pretty right now. It is so gorgeous. And every time I look at it, I'm just like, please hang in there. Just keep going. Keep going. I want many, many tomatoes this year. Please. I I beg my garden to behave, you know. Yes, it's yeah, it's interesting. We work because we're always like if we.

03:43
plant too early, you know, and then it gets real hot and humid and then you get like, you know, you could get blight or whatever. So you try to, you know, time it. So things are looking pretty good right now. So we're hoping, we're hoping that's a good mater year. Yeah. The last two summers have been not good for us. So the fact that we have over 190 tomato plants in the garden right now looking healthy and happy.

04:09
is a very welcome site and we thought we were going to lose those because we had early blight. But somehow, somehow they recovered. I don't know how. I think the good Lord said, you guys had miserable summers. The last two summers were tomatoes. I'm going to fix your plants. I was like, thank you. Thank you. So, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at Happy Hippie Homestead.

04:35
So um we grow all kinds of vegetables. We have a no-till garden. um We use all the animal waste and compost it and put that back into the garden. And we don't do sprays or anything. And we also use all the wasted hay to mulch the garden.

05:02
kind of use like the roost out or the lasagna method if you're familiar with that. em And tell me what it is for the listener though if you want to talk about. Oh yes, yes. So it's basically where you, you know, just keep piling up plant matter and compost and it's a good weed preventative when you do that, but it also helps to keep the moisture in the ground and keeps the ground a little bit cooler.

05:31
which is nice when we have summers like what we were talking about. So the ground doesn't get too hot and dry out. And then it helps um also with erosion. And it's something that, you know, we really don't want to go out and have to weed um constantly or, you know, do any tilling. So it really helps, you know, if you just keep piling your hay on there, it helps to prevent all that. um

06:00
And it also can help to keep pests down. So, you you just mulch very heavily around the plants and it makes it, you know, a little more challenging for the pests to take over. You know, gives the plants kind of time to take a foothold. But we do, you know, try to get out and we do...

06:24
do a lot of succession planting. So we try to just keep things going for all season. One of the things we grow here is an organic garlic that we've grown and saved seeds from for the whole time we lived here 13 years.

06:44
That's really interesting. We also raise Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goats and make cheeses and soaps and other products like, you know, make some Kehita caramel and yogurts and different products also make some like sugar scrubs and stuff with the goat milk. And we have chickens.

07:14
and mostly for eggs, we will, you know, sometimes for meat too. And we just mostly do it for our own enjoyment and because we want to eat really good, high quality food and we just really love, um you know, interacting with our property. We also raise bees and harvest honey and it's just interesting.

07:43
to kind of be, you know, you're kind of like the caretaker of an ecosystem. And so we really just enjoy and it's just, you know, me and my husband and we do everything mostly with physical labor. We don't have a tractor. So it kind of helped to keep us physically fit too as a, like an extra bonus.

08:11
pretty much working out all day every day and just getting to be outside. It's just something that we do that we love. It's fun. When did you start doing this? Well, um we've been married for over 20 years and at our old house, had our whole backyard was basically a garden. I had grown up in a garden because my grandmother always had a garden. um

08:40
So it's just something that I've done my whole life. I picked strawberries and beans and everything out of her garden and she would always can. My grandfather was a doctor and I didn't really know at the time, but looking back, he really emphasized your diet and nutrition and to make sure that you got.

09:08
you know, the vitamins and minerals that you needed. And I just realized that they, you know, showed me all that through their gardening. And they always grew me pumpkins and things. And so I've just always loved, you know, to grow stuff.

09:29
He was a wise man. Yes, he was. They were different. You know, the old school doctors and I've had some really good old school vets that, you know, have been phenomenal. And that's really what everything, you know, everything is based on, you know, the nutrition and the management. And that's, you know, really what we focus on here.

09:58
because we want to maintain the soil health and we want uh like all the animals and the humans that live here to be able, you know, to thrive in the conditions. And we, we do a lot of rotational grazing. uh We do a lot of stuff with the goats up in the woods where we help to maintain the native plants and eat back a lot of the invasives.

10:29
um We appreciate that the goats mow for us a lot, so we don't really have to use a lot of, you know, like mechanical efforts, don't have to put pressure on the property like that as much. And it helps to save them fuel costs. So I have a question that I haven't asked yet of people who have goats, and I should have asked it many, many episodes ago. Do you think that

10:59
the work that your goats do for you offset what it costs to feed them.

11:06
I mean, in so many ways, you know, there's just the aspect of being around them. Sure. You know, helps to help you to connect with your own nervous system and to be able to regulate it. And I mean, also teach yoga, not goat yoga, just traditional

11:35
Angar style Hatha yoga. And you know, for me, just being around the animals is very relaxing. I mean, of course it can be very stressful at times ...