Today I'm talking with Diane at Montana Country Homesteading. You can also follow on Facebook.

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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. 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 Green Bush Twins. That tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Green Bush Twins and Company. Today I'm talking with Diane at Montana Country something homesteading in Montana because it's Montana country homesteading. Good morning, Diane. How are you? Good morning. I'm wonderful. How are you this morning? I'm good. How's the weather there?

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Actually yesterday for Easter was just about as perfect as it could be. And this morning it's a little overcast, but it's going to be a nice day. Unusual weather in Montana, to be honest. Yeah. It was a lovely day in Minnesota here yesterday too. Yesterday was beautiful. Sunny 50s light breeze. was, it was really good. All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at Montana country home study. Well, um,

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Let's see a little bit about us. I've been married to my husband who was my high school sweetheart for 47 years now. um We came to Montana exactly 30 years ago in just a couple of weeks, the first weekend of May. And um we came with our three kids, two dogs, a motor home, a U-Haul carrying a pickup truck full of all my husband's construction tools and away we went.

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and came out onto a bare piece of property that quite honestly, my husband found in the back of a Field and Stream magazine in a one inch by two inch ad and said, honey, let's go to Montana. And so we did, we packed up everything 30 years ago and came onto this 20 acre parcel that we actually bought it with a couple of Polaroid, the shake pictures, you know, that you shake to develop them.

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And away we went and it's been a whirlwind since we actually did homestead this property. It was set up in 20 acre tracks out here with quite honestly, no roads, no development, no nothing. They had just subdivided the land. um When we moved on the property, there was literally a two lane dirt path that came down to our 20 acres. And that I looked at.

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dirt path up by the way. And it is actually considered um a stage coach line road from Billings, Montana to Park City, Montana back in the day. So that was of interesting. Yeah, we live on a stage coach road. uh It's now been a little better developed than it used to be, but it's still just a gravel road coming in here. uh But yeah, 30 years ago, we came onto this property with just a dream and an idea. uh

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We were uh building contractors in the Bay Area and were just on complete overload and did not want to raise our kids in that environment. And so we made a pact with each other to get the heck out of there before our kids got uh in middle school and away we went. And we've been here since. That is amazing. I love that. Okay. So did you...

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Did you grow up with people who did homesteading or gardening or farming or ranching at all? My grandparents um on my dad's side had a farm, but we didn't go there very often. uh My other grandma was the most incredible gardener that you had ever seen. She lived in a little town in Pemberville, Ohio. And um quite honestly, that woman could grow anything. And what was really amazing to me is she would

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pull all of her flowers in from her flower beds and put them in what she called her breezeway in the winter months in Ohio. And she would hold those flowers over till next year and put them all back out in the beds. It was amazing to me. I don't have that gift that grandma had, but I can grow a thing or two. So what are the thing or twos that you grow? We grow a lot of our own food. um I think it's really important that you grow your own food, especially today.

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with what's going on with the food chain and the modified foods and all the sprays and such that they're putting on our foods. think it's wildly important that you grow your own food today. So I actually have, one of the first things we did on this homestead was we built some raised beds, started some gardens with my kids. And then of course the deer came and ate everything. I didn't realize that I was dealing with some serious

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predation with animals and such around here, but we were. uh Then we decided to put a hoop house over the raised beds and got wise and kept the animals out and started growing food there. uh If you look on my social media page right now, my husband finally finished uh our main greenhouse that we're going to be growing and I actually just started putting plants in there on Saturday afternoon.

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That's exciting. It's super exciting. It's like over the top greenhouse, of course, my husband's that go bigger, go home kind of guy. um But the first greenhouse that we we grew food in was just a little raised bed area that we put literally sheet panels that we hooped over it and uh buttoned them down to both sides of the of the raised bed and then put um plastic over top of it. And that's what we grew and put a wall in the front.

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some mesh in the back and away we went. And I grew in that for 20 some years. So it doesn't need to be elaborate, but you need to grow your own food. And now we've just stepped up the game to grow into this uh major greenhouse. And years ago, I took a horse barn that we had when we were actually raising paints back in the day. I took that horse barn and I rented it to somebody who cultivated. uh

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inside of that and they have since moved out. So now I have an area where I can actually grow indoor produce all year long. So we're working on that next. That's our next big project. We've had one project after another here on this piece of land. Again, we drove up, there was nothing here, like literally nothing. No water, no power, no phones, no driveways, uh just a piece of land with some pin markers so that you knew what was yours and what wasn't and

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We laid it out from there and it's been quite interesting. Okay. After everything you just told me, I have a couple of thoughts. I'm going do my public service announcement now because it plays into what you just said. I do this on every episode lately. If you live in America right now and you don't know how to cook from scratch, learn because you will save yourself a lot of money if you're buying ingredients instead of finished foods. Number two, if you

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can't grow a garden, get to know your local producers and growers because they can grow a garden and you're feeding yourself really good food and you're supporting your neighbors. Love all of that. That's incredible. Yep. And then number two, I have been trying to figure out a way to explain the feeling that we homesteaders get when we have a project and we get it finished. And the only thing I can liken it to

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is if you were in Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or you took art class in elementary school and you learned a new skill, whether it was building a homemade birdhouse or Girl Scouts, they used to have you make an apron or in art class, did, I don't know what it was called, but we took a chisel and we chiseled out a design on a piece of vinyl board and then we would make stamps with that vinyl board.

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When, if you've ever don...