Today I'm talking with Hannah at Linden Hill Ranch LLC.

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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.

00:29
Today I'm talking with Hannah at Linden Hill Ranch LLC in Missouri. Good afternoon, Hannah. How are you? I'm fine. Thank you. How are you, Mary? I am a little frazzled. I don't know why, but I am. I think it might be the heat. So I always say, how's the weather? You're in Missouri. Clearly it's hot. Yes. It's think upper eighties today, but we're going to be back in the nineties real soon.

00:57
And humid, of course. Yeah, the humidity, the dew point is just kicking our butts here in Minnesota. We don't have tropical dew points for more than a few days in a row, usually in the summer. And it's been tropical dew points for over a week. like, um I feel like Frosted Snowman at the end of the show when he melts.

01:25
Yes. I'm dating myself because I don't think that that show is even played on network TV anymore at Christmas time. But I was born in 1969. So Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and all those cute little cartoons that they played at Christmas time. I got to watch those every year growing up.

01:52
And I'm talking about winter stuff to make myself think that it's not as hot as it is. So, all righty. So, tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at Linden Hill Ranch. Sure. So, um right now we're running a small regenerative grazing operation with commercial katan hair sheep. We have livestock guardian dogs that help keep them safe.

02:21
And we've recently introduced horses into our rotational grazing program. And we also have, let me count. I think we got 26 birds, uh combination of chickens and guinea fowl and turkeys. Okay. I have to know, did you have experience with horses before you introduced them to the farm? To the ranch? So that's, that's, I'll try to.

02:50
try to sum that up. So I had a little bit of contact with Western pleasure in my earlier life. uh My daughter, when she was in her preteen, early teens got into English dressage. And so she's been getting a lot of horsemanship in her life. We've sort of been reading and learning and...

03:16
We really wanted for her to have a horse of her own on property just for the, there's a lot of value. Horses are deeply sensitive, very attuned animals. And we couldn't get one, you have to get two because they need a friend. So we, you know, did like what we did with everything. We read, we studied, we learned, we found people who've done it, you know, for years and years that we could kind of pull on their knowledge.

03:46
And yeah, so we've had our horses here on property for, I'd say, let me count pastors because we're rotating them. I would say it's been close to a month and a half now. Nice. Are you enjoying it? I'm sure she is, but are you enjoying it? Oh, I'm loving it. I used to in my previous life have a pretty stressful job that I worked and em

04:15
Having the horses, my horse is, he's a 15 hand quarter horse gelding. And he kind of picked me because I wasn't sure that I was looking for a horse and he's lovely. I'll just go out there, we'll breathe together and he wants to be hugged and cuddled. So he's my buddy. And so that's kind of what I get out of it now. And then the other horse was.

04:44
I'm unhandled and he's my daughter's project horse. He's coming along nicely. Nice. Um, it sounds like you got yourself a puppy dog horse. Nomad is definitely, definitely like that. And I appreciate him just for what he is. And I just, I like, I love that horses, have to find your zero. You have to find your, some people might call it Zen space. I'm not in the Buddhist tradition. So

05:12
I hope I'm not misusing that term, but it's that place of, you know, sort of passionless peace. And that's what horses like to be. And then you can be with it, with them, if you learn. Yeah, I call it centering. m And that way I don't have to worry about offending anybody or appropriating anything because appropriating is a terrible thing nowadays. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I say that kind of with a curl to my

05:41
my lip because I feel like I've always been told that that imitation is the highest form of flattery. Yeah. But I feel like now imitation is the highest form of insult and it kind of drives me a little crazy. Yeah. It's it's a complicated world out there isn't it? It is. And if I'm 56 and I'm having

06:12
trouble feeling my way through all the changes in words. Can you imagine how it is for my almost 80 year old mom and 80 almost 83 year old dad? Yeah. They it's so funny. My dad is very, very with it. He's very hip. He's very, very up to date, but he's 83 years old. He's seen a lot of change or he will be 83 years old.

06:37
I keep thinking he's 83 because he'll be 83 on July 30th. And my mom is with it and very up to date, but she doesn't really follow. She's not very social, so she's not with younger people very often. And so my dad will say something and she'll be like, what's that? Because she wasn't with him when he heard the new term. So it's been really interesting watching how they

07:05
gather information and how they perceive it. Yeah. I think part of the key to all of this and to livestock and to homesteading is empathy. Yeah. It's whenever we put ourselves in the shoes of others or even our animals, our plants and think about, if I, what do I, what did they need? What would

07:33
If I were them, if I were a sheep or a livestock dog or I'm an apple orchard, what do I need? What are my needs? I think, I think people, it's, we're all, we're all kind of the same. We're all part of this universe together. And like, this is, this is something I'm learning. Like empathy is, empathy is so important and relationships. And I just think it might apply to almost everything. Yeah.

08:03
I think so too. And if you and I can just put that bug in people's ears with this episode of having compassion for your fellow man and instead of saying, why are you like that? Why don't you say what happened to you? Yeah. It changes the frame. Yes. So we could do a whole psychology episode, but we're not going to.

08:29
I want to hear about your Katatins, but I also want to hear about your livestock guardian dogs because we do not have a livestock guardian dog. We have a small Australian Shepherd. Her name is Maggie. I talk about her at an ad museum because I love her to pieces. She will be six in August and she is a fantastic watchdog. That is her job at our homestead. So tell me about yours.

08:55
Okay. I love to talk about my dogs. So here it goes. So, um, let me talk about them in the order that we got them. So just for some clarification, we moved to our current larger acreage, um, homestead, farmstead, just a couple of months ago. Before that we lived in a big city and we had a small property under 40 acres, um, where we basically ranched our sheep.

09:24
And so we were doing the driving back and forth. ah One of the things that was really key for us for that was our livestock guardian dogs. So we got our first, um well, back up even further, we got our very first livestock guardian dog, a purebred Anatolian Shepherd female a little over five years ago. And we got her while you were still in the city. Oh, wow. Hoping we were, yeah, this is how we learned about Anatolian Shepherds, but.

09:53
She's been able to manage her pretty well. I've had no incidents to report of anything negative happening with her, but she, yeah, we raised her in the city in our home and I took her on walks and the hope was that we would be able to get property sooner. And sometimes things don't happen on the timetable you want. So we ended up with this lovely, lovely, very protective watchdog, as you can imagine.

10:22
who adores us and is a little suspicious of guests and visitors. So, you know, she has a place where we can put her where she's safe whenever we have visitors out here. But that was our first introduction to Livestock Guardian Dogs. OK, I have a question. How old was she when you got her? We got her at about 10, 11 weeks. Oh, so not only Anatolian Shepherd, but Anatolian Shepherd puppy.

10:49
We raised, we raised a puppy, but she wasn't the first, she was the first puppy that we raised, not first one that didn't actually get to be with livestock. But yes, a puppy. we had, we don't, we don't go, we, go all in. um Um, but we, but we really work hard to educate ourselves, um, and get mentors and read and study and learn and practice because you have to be careful. I mean, I think.

11:19
I would not recommend that for ...