Today I'm talking with Jessica at Little Willow Homestead. You can also follow on Facebook.

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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. 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.

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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 Greenbush Twins. A tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Jessica at Little Willow Homestead in Idaho. Good afternoon, Jessica. How are you? Good. How are you? A little dumb today. I'm not going to lie. It's all right.

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Maybe both of our brain cells together will accomplish something. Maybe. I think it's allergies. It's very sunny here in Minnesota and there's a light breeze and I think all the things that are really starting to bloom are just ruining my brain. But my husband sent me photos of the apple trees that are blooming today. So I'm very excited. Our apple trees never do very well in

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end of April, 1st of May, because we get these big wind storms or we get thunderstorms and the blossoms get blown off. uh And I'm just, the weather's supposed to be good for the next five days. So I'm praying that the weather is good for the next five days. So we get apples on the trees on the far side of the property that we've never gotten apples from in the five years we've been here. Hey, we can pray. That's awesome. Yes. So I think the allergies are kicking my butt.

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And I got a really quick thing I want to share with you and listener. um I went out on my porch and looked out the window and one of our chickens was over by our useless garage. We don't use it for anything. It's ready to fall down. And we have this one chicken who escapes the run every day. And I decided that her name is Hopper because she hops the fence.

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I have a few of those and uh one of them, she is ultra determined. She's a coffee agger and she loves to jump the fence and lay in this one particular spot. But I know it's going to be there every day, so I go and collect it every day. Yeah, I don't think the chickens are actually laying outside of the coop, but this one just has to go explore after she lays her egg in the nesting box.

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She's a little crazy. She's a little free spirit. She is and she looks so fat. I know if I went out there and picked her up, she probably only weighs about three and a half pounds. She's so feathered out that she just looks round. I love it. So I want to talk about the coffee agar thing, but first, would you tell me a little bit about yourself and about your homestead? Oh my goodness, where do I start?

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So I really want to share with you the why why we moved out here to begin with. Yes. um So we we kind of homesteaded a little bit before in our hometown, which is a little tiny town in Idaho. And I don't know, I just that was back in 2009. And I got chickens. I had a ton of chickens. I was doing meat birds, taught my kids how to process meat birds and all the things. And my daughter

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My youngest of, we call her the youngest of the first batch. was the youngest of our five. She was really struggling in school. And so we made the decision because she was the only one at home that we would um sell our house, move to a different town and get her into the best school in the area that worked well with children on an IEP. And so we sold our house, moved into a subdivision, stayed there for four years.

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During that time we did foster care and then we adopted our daughter. Well that daughter the daughter that we moved there for graduated from high school and a month later we put our house on the market and and we had our daughter that we adopted from a foster kiddo she had asked us to take her and and and raise her and so we wanted to give her a life away from the city teacher where her food came from and just

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for me to be able to homeschool her and, you know, just teach her all the things, you know, things maybe that I didn't learn and just, I don't know, I just really wanted to raise her out in the country. I felt really strongly about it. And I had this like idea that you move out into the country, far out into the country, because we do, we live 30 minutes away from anything, a gas station, anything. And so you have this like mindset, at least I did.

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that you move out into the country and things are gonna be slow and peaceful and serene and all the things. And that's not what it's been like for us being out here. It's actually been really, really hard. When I first got here, we got chickens right away, of course. And then I started to raise meat birds and what have you. And then...

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Shortly after that, um that daughter was 19 years old, was actually convinced to go into uh Washington state, get on a plane and fly into Washington state and she uh was trafficked while she was there, she was sold. And so this whole time I'm thinking like, it was supposed to be easier being out here, but things seem to be getting harder. And I um struggled with um being diagnosed with lupus after that.

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And then really having a hard time with breeding my birds and trying to take care of my daughter, struggling with lupus. But my husband was so amazingly, like, patient and loving. And he saw this desire in me to do this. And so he would step in when I couldn't. so we just really learned to work together as a team. em you know, we were doing really well. We were

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building our business, creating the rainbow eggs and what have you. And while I was doing that, I came across that really deep dark brown color. And I was like, I know how I can make that, but what am I gonna call it? Because it needs to be something different. And so I looked and looked and I'm a coffee drinker. So I was like-

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I love coffee and I have like coffee signs, have a coffee bar, like all the coffee things, right? And it just hit me one day, it was like coffee agar. And then I felt like God was like, go look it up and make sure, know, dot all your I's and cross all your T's, make sure that it's not being used in commerce. And it wasn't, I couldn't find it anywhere. It's just like, this is awesome, this is so cool. So I actually had the name for it before I ever even had the color, which I thought was funny.

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pretty cool. And then I got the color that like six months later, as soon as I figured out like how to do it, I got that color and hence that's where the coffee acres came from. And so we were, we just started to breed like those colors and whatnot and things were going well. We were selling to a local like feed store, our birds and stuff. And it was like literally in the height of like hatching season, you know, it was the end of April and I got a phone call.

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at six o'clock in the morning on April 26th that my son had overdosed and died of a fentanyl overdose. And I was completely wrecked. when was this? This was five years ago, April 26th, 2021. And I told my husband, I couldn't catch my breath for one. And it felt like I was getting kicked in the gut daily. And I told him, said, I can't, I can't do this anymore. I can't, I can't breathe.

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I'm going to cry.

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said, want to sell everything. I don't want to do this. um And so I started to list things and he said, you're not selling the incubators and you're not selling ...