Today I'm talking with Joe and Jessica at Natures Farmacy.

A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company.

If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.

Or just buy me a coffee

00:00
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.

00:29
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 and Joe at Natures Farmacy in Alabama. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Alabama this morning?

00:55
It's a little overcast. It rained yesterday and a lot last night. So overcast, warm. Plants are happy. I bet. I bet they are. It is a beautiful sunny morning here in Minnesota and there's a very light breeze and everything has greened up beautifully. And tomorrow is May 1st. Yay.

01:22
Very excited because May 15th is the date that we plant our seedlings. So we only have to wait 15 and a half more days. Awesome. So tell me a little bit about yourselves and what you do. OK, so uh we're Nature's Pharmacy. We are a micro farm here in Summerdale. um We grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables. um We're basically on 1.7 acres and we're trying to pack in as much

01:52
ah produce and fruit as we can on this. It's not tiny, but it's not big either on this piece of land. And ah we use organic growing practices. We set up at the markets. ah We have five kids. We homeschool them. So we're here all the time. That is a lot of little people in your life. We have two that are big people now and we actually just became grandparents.

02:22
from one of them. So that's really cool. She's a month old now. Jessica, you look amazing to be a grandma. saw your videos on Facebook and I was like, wow, she can't be more than 25. guess. Oh, thank you. It's the veggies. Yeah, absolutely. Are the kids involved in the... They're involved in the berry picking and eating. Yeah, it's hard to keep fruit on the trees and...

02:51
on the vines, ah but I'm guilty of that too. I love to get out here and pick berries and eat fruit. It's really awesome to be able to have that experience and for our kids to have that experience running up and down the rows picking, whether it's fresh carrots or blackberries, plums, peaches. I'm so glad that we get to do that for them. They do help though. They are oldest, not our oldest, but the oldest living here. He's 13. ah

03:20
He helps us with harvesting and packaging and getting stuff ready for the market. He helps us set up at the market. The girls help some too. They'll come out when we're planting and want to poke a few seeds in the ground. We don't force it. So if they want to help, they do. Nice. You're growing budding entrepreneurs while you grow your gardens and your fruit trees. Actually, our 13 year old has his own mushroom operation. I mean, I'm sorry.

03:49
Worm casting. Worm casting operation. Which could lead to mushroom growing. Well, we do grow mushrooms. So, yeah, that's definitely something that, you know, if he wanted to get into that, he could. We grow Shiitake mushrooms and we'll grow other mushrooms as well, like wine cap. But yeah, so he's he's farming worms and collecting castings and he sets his little worm castings up at the market and he

04:17
He sells worm casting, so it's really cool. He's pretty much staying sold out too. And the girls are trying to get into crickets. They did just recently order their first batch of crickets. They want to be able to grow those, whether it's for like people that have lizards or feeding their chickens or even bait. Yeah, fishing. I love it. You guys have been an excellent example for your little people and your big people. Thank you.

04:47
I wish everybody could be that kind of example because we'd have a much better world in about 10 years. Well, I think more people are waking up and moving towards, you know, going back to homesteading and I say a simpler life, but sometimes it's not simpler. mean, there's a lot of work involved, but I see more and more people all the time. Seems like they're waking up and trying to.

05:15
disconnect from the system and become more self-sufficient. So. Yeah, as I've said on this podcast a bunch of times, I didn't know that homesteading was anything weird or different. my parents lived on an acre in Maine when they were raising me and my siblings and they grew a garden and they heated their house with wood and my dad split wood by hand with a splitting mall and an axe.

05:44
And we helped him haul wood over to the basement and chucked it downstairs and moved it from one corner of the other to stack it for the winter. We didn't know that that was not what everybody did. And I can remember walking into a house for the first time where they didn't have a wood stove in their house. And I was like, don't you guys freeze in the wintertime? I think I was 10 and the dad of the family was like, what are you talking about? We have electricity.

06:15
We kind of grew up the opposite. Okay, yeah. Yeah, like we grew up on the TV dinners and the plopped in front of the TV and you know, just we didn't know people lived like you lived. Yeah. Yeah, we grew up completely different. But later in life, we, you know, started to realize that that's not the way we wanted to live anymore. So

06:43
We wanted to start growing. We got a piece of property in Summerdale, started our first garden about 13, 14 years ago and just fell in love with growing and with the idea of being able to provide people with food. so from there we just expanded on that idea and have continued to grow our farm. And, you know, we still want to expand. uh It's a work in progress for sure. Building new beds all the time and

07:12
planting more crops.

07:16
Yeah, do I explain this? We have a hard sided greenhouse that is permanent, but we had a, a, I want to call it a high tunnel, but it's not one of the big ones, but that style of greenhouse, we had one up and the plastic ripped over the winter. That whole thing came down yesterday. Cause we're not going to use it this summer. And I was like, I'm kind of, I'm going to miss that little bubble out there. My husband looked at me and he said, what?

07:45
And I said, the greenhouse you took down today. Yeah. It's been part of the landscape for two years. And I it's going to look weird having a hole in there, you know? Yeah, for sure. We love our greenhouse. That's actually where we're sitting right now. It's actually become like a second living space or actually maybe this is the main living space and the house is kind of secondary living space. yeah, we have Thanksgiving out here. if you know, the big kids come over and bring the family then.

08:15
We have dinner out here. It's really nice. That is so sweet. I love that. And is it warm in Alabama at Thanksgiving time? Sometimes. Most of the time. Yeah, it's very warm. We usually have to have the sides up and sometimes fan going. Yeah, we couldn't do that here. It would be very cold to be eating Thanksgiving dinner in our greenhouse. Yeah. Yeah, most of time it's warm, but like two years ago we had snow. So

08:45
That was kind of unexpected. Bet it was pretty. It was. We actually played in the snow. I don't even think I came inside for two days. I'm just out here walking around in the snow. It's something we don't get to see very often. Did you eat the snow? Cause I would have. No, I did n...