Today I'm talking with Felicia at Patchwork Acres Farm. You can also follow on Facebook.

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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. This episode is sponsored by Greenbush Twins & Company, where creativity and community grow hand in hand. Just like a thriving garden or a well-loved homestead, the best things are built with care, purpose, and heart. Through thoughtful design, storytelling, and handcrafted goods, they're helping people celebrate a simpler or meaningful way of living. Learn more at Greenbush Twins & Company.

00:28
Today I'm talking with Felicia at Patchwork Acres Farm in Indiana. Good morning, Felicia. How are you? Good morning. Really good. How is the weather in Indiana today? Actually really beautiful, uh but we're supposed to get rain tonight. And does Indiana need rain? It doesn't hurt. We had a really, really dry, hot spring and then it has turned into cool and very rainy for the last couple of weeks.

00:58
It's just kind of catching us up. Good. Good. I talk about this a lot on the podcast, but we had the last two years, not 2026, but 24 and 25. We had rain all of May and into June and our gardens suffered for it. This year has been unbelievably moderate. Our garden looks like it's going to be incredibly successful. Fingers crossed and knocking on wood.

01:26
And we're very excited because we have a farm to market garden. And in twenty twenty three, we had tomatoes coming out of our ears like we had hundreds if not, I bet we got to a thousand pounds of tomato. Oh, wow. You had a good year then. We did. And we sold a lot and we gave a lot away and we got kind of a minor reputation in our area for having really good tomatoes.

01:54
And then terrible weather. And then 24 and 25 hit and people were like, do you have tomatoes yet? Do you have tomatoes yet? Do you have tomatoes yet? And we're like, no. And even when we did, we only had a few. So everything is crossed. Hopes are up for a really good tomato season this year. Yeah, that would be great. So really thankful for the moderate, beautiful spring that we have managed to eke out here in Minnesota this year. It is sunny and cool and lovely outside right now here.

02:23
Yes, I always do a weather update because mostly for me because if I listen to the episodes I can get an idea of what the weather is gonna be from the previous year's one weather Yeah Because it does kind of follow trends like that It does and I figure if we get two years of really terrible winter or a really terrible spring We're due for a good one. So I just have to go listen to what I want to find out. Yep, exactly

02:50
I'm almost as good as the farmer's almanac and I can say that tongue in cheek because I've actually interviewed the editor of the old farmer's almanac. Her name is Carol and I can't remember her last name. Oh, that's cool. She's super fun. I'm going to ask her to come back and visit at some point here this fall probably. So anyway, I wanted to know about you and what you do at your place. So can you kind of give me a little introduction and what you do at your place?

03:20
Yeah, we do a little bit of everything. Mainly goats. We raise goats, dairy goats, and uh show and milk and make soap and all that stuff. And then about six years ago, we started with the sheep and we've got a fine wool breed of sheep called CVM. So we raise them for uh fleeces and we sell lambs and then we process some of them. ah So we've kind of done that for the last about six years.

03:49
And then the last couple years, chickens. What's CVM stand for? California Variegated Mutants. They are an offshoot of the Ramadale breed. And Ramadales are all white. That's the breed standard. So CVMs are a colorful Ramadale. Because if they're white, they can still be a Ramadale. a gray CVM can never, you know, they're considered a CVM.

04:18
uh mutant. uh Because they're a mutated color. Yes, yes. So I thought the black sheep of the family literally. Yeah, I thought maybe the M was for mutt like a dog that's behind a

04:35
So, okay, keep going. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. You said you have chickens. Oh, yeah. And we have chickens and we just got ducks again this year. just a little bit of everything. Exciting. So do you have a background in animal husbandry? Did you grow up doing it or your grandparents or anybody? ah No, I have always loved animals since I was a little bitty kid and we lived in apartments. So um that was not really a thing. But as soon as I got

05:04
older and had my own money. I had animals and I started volunteering at vet clinics when I was about 10. And so that's just, I've always been obsessed with it. That's anybody who met me as a kid, like that's, they're not surprised by this now. So it's kind of like when you're a kid and you want to eat ice cream every day for dinner and your parents are like, absolutely not. And then when you get into college, you're like, I'm getting ice cream every chance I get.

05:34
I wanted to be a zookeeper in kindergarten and that's about where I've gotten. Well good. I think if you have a dream you should live it out. Yeah. So it's been a lot of fun and that's my grandparents had uh a market garden. They had a big vegetable garden. They did the markets and my grandpa raised honeybees. So I grew up doing that with him and uh so they had a farm and I grew up mainly on their farm.

06:05
I had lot of fun doing that, but he didn't do animals. Okay. But he did honeybees. Yes. So did you, did you learn about that from him? Oh yeah. I, uh, I was real involved in the honeybees from, I think five or six years old when he got them. And my grandma custom made me a tiny bee suit so that I could go work them with him. And I was involved in the whole thing of that for as long as he had them. We had a lot of fun doing that.

06:35
Awesome. So do you think that you'll ever get into keeping honeybees yourself? Oh, yes. We had them for a while. And then when we moved to this property, it is not we live, we're a long, skinny property between four cornfields. So it's not good for honeybees. They get sprayed and they die. I can't keep them alive here. So I need something that is more buffer from all the cornfields. Yeah.

07:03
I understand. live in the middle of on any given year, Felicia, it's corn, it's corn or soybeans or alfalfa. Yep. So I get it. And they just went through and sprayed some fertilizer on the soybeans two days ago. And we never quite know what they're spraying. And we like the people that own the land. So I'm not going to complain about it, but we have a dog and her lead.

07:33
goes like a foot into the field. So anytime they're gonna put manure down or they're gonna spray something, we make sure that she goes potty and she comes back in right away. Because we don't know what it is, we don't know if it will hurt her. And she's like, on a good day, she's 35 pounds, on a fat day, she's 40 pounds. And so she's not a big dog and we don't know what they're using and we don't know how it will impact her.

08:01
brain mostly so we're very careful so I totally get it. I feel like my voice is really rough. Does it sound really rough to you? Oh not too bad. Okay I've got some allergies going on like wow I have real gravel in there. Trying not to sound like I smoke a hundred thousand cigarettes a day. Allergies do that to you though I've always got the allergy cough and yeah.

08:30
Yeah, it's been like this time of year. It's one of the joys of springtime because we're not as well. No, it is officially summer. I'm sorry. Today's the 24th.

08:41
I think so. Yeah, so summer started two days ago. It feels more like spring now though than it did in the spring. So it feels very springish now. Yeah, well we've hit summer allergy season and I always joke that Minnesotans talk through their nose because they have two seasons. They have cold season and allergy season. That's about right for here too. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm not from Minnesota but I've been here long enough that

09:10
I have learned that it is really hard not to sound nasally when you are sniffling and snorkeling. Uh huh. In the 65 days a year. Yup. So, all right. So I have a question for you. I've not asked anybody this about sheep and goats because it never occurred to me until I saw that you have both. Do sheep and goats get along? Like can they be in the same pasture and be fine? Technically, yes. Okay.

09:40
I don't keep mine together. Mine have totally separate pastures. And then when we put them out on the big pasture, we rotate them so the sheep are out at night, the goats are out during the day. um They have different mineral requirements and the sheep are a lot bigger than the goats. And the way they play and interact is quite different. um So for the most part, it would probably be fine, but I raise a lot of Nigerians.

10:09
And I don't need a sheep headbutting somebody and losing kids or any of that. Yeah. So I don't really run them together. And we also run...