Today I'm talking with Jess at Muddy Roots.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Jess at Muddy Roots in Boston, no, near about Boston, Massachusetts? Yes, Boston, Massachusetts, but located in Dorchester. Okay, cool. Yeah.

00:24
Awesome. So what's the weather like in in Dorchester? Because it's really gray and overcast and kind of chilly in Minnesota today. Yeah, looking at my window, it's about the same. I mean, we had like a pretty delayed start to our winter. So that was great. But yeah, it's gloomy. It's cold. You know, we're probably get snow soon. And that's what it is until, you know, till March, April. Yeah, I understand.

00:50
we're actually supposed to hopefully get a little bit of snow because really we haven't had any and we are coming up on Christmas next week. And I'm like, okay, if it's got to be gloomy, can we at least have pretty snow falling? You know? Well, that's what I said. I said to my kids at work, I was like, God, like, have you had like, have you had a snowy Christmas yet since you've been born? And they're like, no, you know? So, hopeful for that too.

01:13
Which is insanity because I grew up in Maine and I don't remember not having a snowy Christmas in the entire time Until I moved out of the state when I was 21 22 So Just the fact that that new england is not having Consistently white christmas is so weird. Well, it's not and I moved here almost four years ago and since then like

01:41
you know, the warmth of our winters and the fact that we really are like compared to what it used to be, barely getting any snow. I mean, we used to have 12 feet of snow, six feet of snow, and now we're lucky, you know, now we're lucky if we get a couple inches snow, you know, and I grew up in New York in Long Island, and I remember being little and small and going out into the snow and it coming up to my to my chest, you know, and growing up having these

02:10
you know, massive snowstorms every year that you kind of got to look forward to. You get to take them from school and, you know, with the way the climate's going, that's just not happening anymore. Yeah. And there's lots of people who don't believe that climate change is a real thing, but I think that climate change is real. I think that it's definitely here and I think it might be a little too late to fix it, so I'm, I'm kind of worried about it, but

02:37
I'm going to make the best of every day that I have alive on this planet. So that's where I'm at with that. So tell me about yourself and what you do. Sure. I mean, so we started or I started Muddy Roots. I mean, I started Instagram for myself to find an online community of what I was going through, which was chronic illness at the time that was undiagnosed and being a woman and just how long that was taking for me to understand what was happening. And so I sought.

03:06
community and I found a bunch of young women going through similar things, right? Just being young and it taking so long to get where you need to be. So in that time I had started that for myself, but was also at my wits with you know medicine in general and I've always been a gardener. My last name is gardener. My dad always used to bring us outside to our yard, force us to garden every year and do a vegetable.

03:33
Garden and plant all the flowers and just say, you know, your last name is Gardner and you will do this And you know, this is in Long Island, New York And I so I grew up like that right your parents Sometimes force you to do these things and you grow up and they just become part of who you are and you continue them You know, you don't start to stop doing them You learn to love them and appreciate them and you know, thank your parents for it later so when I was going through the midst of my illnesses and things like that and

03:59
you know, there really was no medication from me to help my pain, I, out of pure desperation in order to function and have some semblance and quality of life, went to my garden. And I started going herb by herb for what I was growing. Sage, rosemary, oregano were like mainly the three things that I started with and noticed that like, they helped my pain significantly when other things weren't. And that kind of led me down this rabbit hole.

04:29
Like if I was never taught about this, if I didn't know about this, if people don't talk about this, and this was almost 10 years ago, what else don't I know? What else can I find just by growing more, experimenting, being inquisitive, you know, and trial and error, really, you know? I wasn't like, I didn't go to school for this. It just was happenstance and desperation that I fell upon this. So yeah, muddy roots kinda.

04:57
started as a way for me to treat myself and also connect with a community of women and help people advocate for themselves and their body as I was learning to do that for myself and help women gain access to not only Western medicine, but other holistic options that I saw effective, you know? And we would kind of piggyback off each other, you know, because all of us were young and wanted to have a life worth living, you know?

05:25
Yes. And when you say oregano and sage and rosemary, do you mean eating them or do you mean teas or do you mean tinctures or all day above? I started with tincturing and now I, so yeah, it really depends like what I'm going to use it for, right? If I have a UTI, I'm going to use a tincture. If I have gastric upset, there's other herbs I'm going to use and I'm going to use that mainly like from a tea.

05:53
Yes, or you can put these things in salves and use them as muscle rub. So it really depends how I'm going to make it for what part of my body I'm going to use it for. Okay. Yeah. I was just curious because we did not have an herb garden this year. We didn't even really have a garden this year. The weather was horrible. All of May and June, it rained and rained and rained, and our garden was just a sad mess this year. But up until this year...

06:21
For three years straight, we had the most beautiful herb garden and we had rosemary growing, we had thyme, we had sage, we had, oh my God, I don't even know, all the usual suspects. And what I do with that is I cut them and dry them and put them in my pantry and we cook with all those things. Yes, yes. And so we eat a lot of our good for us herbs. For sure. We don't really do tinctures or teas. That's like such another way to just, an easy way to incorporate.

06:50
these things into a daily diet, right? They're not just seasoning. Yes. So yeah, for sure. Yeah, we do that as well too. We dry, you know, we have our garden in the back and we're lucky we live in Boston and we have a yard and my husband made me a garden last year so I can start using. So what we try to do at Muddy Roots, or I try to do anyway, is we set up our garden, we grow everything and we

07:19
shutdown shop for the most part when we're done with our garden for the year. That way we don't source out and unless somebody personally comes to me like, hey I like this product can you make it for me? Like you know then I'll do it but that's for the most part except for our skincare we keep that going. Fire cider I do all year round. But salves and tinctures normally stop probably by March and then start again come June. So it's a short window that it's not going on.

07:49
Okay. Yeah. All right. So I have a very specific question for you because you live in Massachusetts and I live in Minnesota and every state is different when it comes to the rules and regulations about what we people who aren't factories or businesses, you know, big businesses, can make and sell. So what do you have to do to be legal to sell the things you make? I mean, mainly as far as skincare, it's all good as

08:18
as far as you're accurately labeling, now it's tricky, you know, when it comes to fire cider and things like that. You know, that we can't sell at pop-up shops and things like that and I don't. You know, if people come to my house, they want a fire cider, I'll sure I'll make it for you and you can have it. But we don't sell that without a license. Okay. Yep. It's very tricky sometimes when you're trying to help people but the government is like putting handcuffs on you and saying,

08:47
No, no, no, you have to pay for this license and you have to take this test to be sure you know what you're doing and blah, blah, blah. So. No, I read, you know, and obviously like for sure things need to be regulated, but you know what? You know, they also regulate, I mean, you know, it's also the Twinkie, you know what I mean? The FDA approves the Twinkie. So. Uh huh. No, I know. I know it's so. It does need to be regulated. People do need to stay safe and they do want, they do need to know what they are ingesting and they have the right to know and you know, all that, you know, so I get it.

09:17
Yep, I just here in Minnesota, we don't really, we have to label everything. Like we make soaps, we make lip balms, we make candles, and even the candles sort of have to have a basic label that says what the candle was made with. And that's only because of fire hazard. But for sure, soaps and lip balms, we have to put every ingredient on them. Well definitely. And...

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