Today I'm talking with Julie at Open Road Ranch. You can also follow on Facebook.

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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. Today I'm talking with Julie at Open Road Ranch in Wisconsin. Good morning, Julie. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm wonderful. Thank you. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather there? Sunny and beautiful. It's so nice to see the sun. Oh, we had that yesterday and the day before. Right now it is inco...

00:28
incredibly overcast in Minnesota, but it's warm. Yes. It's nice, isn't it? Oh my God. This last two weeks of like living in the Arctic tundra. Yeah. I had forgotten how terrible a more than a couple days stint of those temperatures is. Yes. I woke up on like the 13th day and thought to myself, if this doesn't break soon, I don't know what I'm going to do.

00:56
Yes, we just need like a day of sun to remind us or just a windless day or something just to hang on. Yeah, I grew up on the East Coast and I remember the song, the song Oklahoma, where the wind comes rolling off the prairie. Yeah. And I had no concept of that because my house was surrounded by trees. The wind didn't roll across the prairie because there was no prairie. I moved to Minnesota and I learned real quick about wind rolling off the prairie.

01:25
Oh yeah, I just saw the other day someone said the quote, it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the wind, said every farmer ever. Yeah, absolutely. It's just crazy. And I open every podcast with How's the Weather? Because I just feel like we're all in ag and it's important to talk about the weather. Oh yeah. I used to work office jobs and I worked in a basement office with no windows and weather was just, I'd never even thought about it. It could be light out, could be

01:54
night, could be raining. It just didn't really have any effect on my life whatsoever. Now it's everything. Yeah, absolutely. It literally is everything. okay, I don't do a lot of the outside work. My husband is the outside guy. I do a lot of the cooking and the cleaning inside. And even I pay really close attention to the weather because I'm like, I saw it's going to snow tomorrow. Are you set to plow the driveway?

02:22
Or I saw it's going to be minus 40 windchill three nights from now. Are the chickens going to survive in their coop? And he's like, you never really paid attention to this before we moved to Homestead. I said, no, I didn't because I had no reason to pay attention to it. Yeah, you're so into your lives, you know, your animals. It totally changes your perspective and the way that you live your life. And I kind of love it. Yes.

02:50
All right, so tell me all about yourself and what you do. um I am a first generation farmer. I'm a very new farmer. This is our second year in farming. um So all very new, um very new small business owner. um Just learning as I go. We have a small farm in Greenbush, Wisconsin, um is five rented acres of family land. So Tony's folks live up the road and

03:19
our crop farmers corn, soybeans and wheat and they very generously um are renting us five acres to start our farm here and they're very helpful with their farming knowledge and experience just up the road and so it's because of them that we're able to farm and so we have five acres here and looking at right out the window in our backyard we have pasture raised hogs, uh have uh pasture raised sheep and we have some chickens that aren't doing much of anything right now it's mostly for us m

03:48
but I did get three eggs the other day, so that's exciting. we sell our pasture-raised um pork and lamb. And I also make lard products with lard from our pasture-raised hogs because one of my missions when I first began was uh education and also to use as much of the animal as possible. So I dabbled in trying to tan sheepskin hides that didn't go very far, make dog treats out of the organ meats, just different creative ways because these animals give us such a gift.

04:17
you know I hate to see you go in the trash when especially our ancestors you know would be you know grateful for the whole gift and use as much of it as possible and they needed to use as much of it as possible but I hope to still tap into a little bit of that so ah we use the lard from our pasture raised hogs to create um bombs, dish soap, shampoo bars, things like that because lard is just incredible for us and so I also feel strongly about educating people about the wonder of those

04:46
what are often considered waste products that are so wonderful for us and such a gift. Awesome. Tell me about lard dish soap, because I have not heard those words in the same sentence before. Yeah, me neither until recently. And I had been making lard bombs for about a year and I thought, well, what else can I do with this lard? Because the bombs were going really well and I thought there must be some other things um that our ancestors used lard for that we can use it for. Because it's just full of vitamins and minerals and such healing properties.

05:16
uh You would not think that lard would clean dishes. You're often trying get lard off of your dishes, so I didn't really believe it either. ah We mix the lard with lye and some lemon. That's your degreaser. It's really pure and simple. ah It's just a uh dish soap bar, so it takes some getting used to, but you just use a sponge or a scrub.

05:41
You just get it wet and then you use it like you'd use dish soap and it works wonderfully and it's clean and pure. It's not full of... um One of the reasons I started this is because laundry soap and lotions and shampoo bars and all those things, they're just full of so many chemicals. And I know people, myself included, are looking for clean things to put on their body and use in their homes. And so it's just pure and simple, non-toxic. So that's another reason I started making them.

06:10
Nice. Okay. The reason I was so confused is because I always think of liquid dish soap. I didn't think of a soap bar dish soap. So I didn't know you could use lard for dish soap. I am going to have to look up a recipe and maybe try that. Because we make, we make cold process lye soap here for baths and showers and love it. Like all of our kids grew up using these bars of soap since we started making them 15 years ago. And, uh,

06:39
My youngest asked me the other day, said, can I have like four bars of that soap? I said, yes, you can. Well, they last so long and they're so versatile. And yeah, they're just wonderful. Yeah. I have a daughter and three sons. The daughter is the oldest. The oldest of the boys lives in Nebraska. And he also had asked for some soaps to take home with them a couple of years ago when he visited.

07:05
And he and his wife are now making their own cold processed Lysol. That's wonderful. It's such a good feeling to be able to do that. It's such a skill. So excited that the things that we tried to teach them really did sink in and sunk in enough that they want to do it too. Yeah. It does work. It does work. If you model good things for your kids and you make it fun, they'll probably want to do it too.

07:32
Yes, it's quite different than just telling someone to do something when they see you doing it and enjoying it and what can come from it. Then it's quite different than just telling someone very much so. Yeah. And I always say this when I bring up the soaps. The reason we started making cold process lye soap is because store bought soap makes my skin itch like crazy. And I had bought a beautiful um honey oat bar soap.

08:00
from a lady that has been making them for years. And I just loved it so much, the way it smelled, that I was like, oh, I can't wait to take a shower with this. And I used that entire bar, went back to store, bought soap, and my skin was itchy, but the whole time I used the bar I from her, my skin was really nice. And I said to my husband, I said, can we please try making cold processed lye soap? Because I can't afford to spend $7 a bar.

08:29
uh It's a stretch for the budget back then. And he said, let's look up how to make it. And we did, and he made a batch and it was unscented and we loved it. And we gave a couple bars to people to try to see what they thought. And they were like, can you make a lemon scented one? Can you make a lavender scented one? And then we got into the essential oils and it was just, it was so fun.

08:53
to learn all the things and all the properties and why lavender is so good, why lemon is so good. And we still do it now. So I just, always rave about the cold process Lysol because yes, i...