Today I'm talking with Tricia at Silo Springs Farm.

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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.

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Today I'm talking with Trisha at Silo Springs Farm in Tennessee. Good morning Trisha, how are you? Good morning, I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I'm just going to be honest. The first part, we tried recording this and it didn't work. So we're starting over from scratch. So I'm going to ask the same questions over again. um How is the weather in Tennessee? It is beautiful today. Sun is shining and the ground is drying up. We had a really wet rainy day yesterday and today is looking really pretty.

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I'm actually really glad to hear that you guys got rain because I have a friend that I co-host another podcast with. She lives in Nebraska and they've been under fire danger for oh most of the winter time so far. And she's always lamenting the fact that they really haven't gotten any snow or any rain. And I'm like, oh, if I could just send you some from Minnesota, I would do it.

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It is a gorgeous, sparkly, sunny, warm day in Minnesota today. And it was so cold three weeks ago that I have nothing to complain about. Exactly. It's so pretty. I'm like Mother Nature, stop teasing me because I know we have snow in the forecast later this week. Oh, really? Just a little bit, yeah. Whether we actually get snow or not remains to be seen. I suspect it might be rain because I don't think it's going to get cold enough to snow, but we'll see what happens.

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Yeah. All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and how you ended up raising Highland cows and High Park cows. um Well, it kind of started, it's kind of funny how it got started. My husband was offered a job in Nashville, Tennessee, and we're from the city. We're actually from Alabama and have lived in subdivisions all our lives. And when he uh

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said that he had to move if he accepted this position. I was like, okay, well, we're going to get land and we're going to get us some mini cows. And so that's what we did. We moved to a little uh old farmhouse that had 12 acres and remodeled the farmhouse and got us some cows and just kind of going from there. nice. Your husband is a canine police officer. Is that what you're saying? Yes. uh Okay. have a quick

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offside's question. When you're a canine police officer, does the canine come home with the officer that it works with or how does that work? Yes. He's actually had two dogs and uh one got sick and had to be retired. And so we adopted him and still have him, but his other one comes home with him every day. it's em not really

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good for farm life. He's a GSP and he doesn't get along well with the chickens. He wants to point them and eat them. ah I imagine. So the reason I'm asking is because I know with service dogs that you're not supposed to go up and pet a service dog at the mall. And I'm assuming it's the same thing with a canine officer. You don't just walk up to a canine dog and, you know, an officer dog and pet it.

03:27
Yeah. Well, it's always better to ask, but like his dogs are explosive dogs. Um, and so like they're not on duty. They know when they're sniffing an area that that's when they're working. Um, his old dog, anybody could just walk up and pet him, but this dog, he just gets too ramped up and gets kind of hard to hold onto when people start giving him attention. But yeah, yeah. He lets people pet his. Nice. Okay. I was just curious because I've never known anybody who had, who had that

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job and never never known a canine that was working with police. So I thought I would ask while I had the opportunity. Okay, so your cows you raise them so that you can have babies so you can sell the babies. Is that right? That is right. Yes. Okay. So when is when is calving season for you? Is it coming right up? Well, we usually um have in the spring and then some will have in the fall, we try our best to avoid

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summer calving just because of the flies and the bacteria that's rampant in the summer. So we just actually delivered um our last 2025 calve yesterday and really hoping that we start having some babies in March or April this year. Okay. Wow. The last one for that you that you were expecting in 2025 was just born. Yeah. Well, no, it was we sold it yesterday. Oh, okay. It was born in October, but it went to its

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home in Alabama yesterday. oh I misunderstood. Sorry. All right. So when you, like I said, I don't know anything about how this all works. When you sell the babies, do you know what those babies are going to be used for? Whether they're going to be used for breeding stock or meat or milk or do you have any idea? Well, with the, um, with the Holland breed.

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They're really popular right now for just pets or yard ornaments, people wanting to breed their own. They're so expensive. I really doubt anybody would be eating them. uh I don't know anything about them and I know they're not, they don't get as big as say, you know, an Angus. Right. I wasn't sure whether people actually use them for food or not. And I don't know about their milk. Is their milk worth?

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using or is it just for the babies? I haven't ever actually milked these, but I have read that they're really good beef and uh milk cows. And I do know people that like have huge massive farms of highlands and you know, lot of their bulls they'll steer and eat those, but we're so small. don't, we can't do that. Yeah. Yep. We have a three and a half, sorry, 3.1 acre property here ourselves and

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Somebody asked me if we were going to get a mini cow and I just laughed. was like, number one, cows are herd animals. That one critter would be so lonely it would die. Yeah. Yeah. They need a friend. Yeah. And number two, we don't have enough room or any place for them to graze. That's an expensive, expensive hobby. Oh yeah. So the answer was no, but I just laughed before I said anything. I was like, no, we are not getting cows.

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Nope, chickens. Chickens in a big garden is about the extent that we're going to commit to farming here. Yeah, I love our chickens. That was one of the first things we got was chickens. They're great. Do you have one specific breed or did you go crazy and get all kinds of different breeds? Well, I went crazy and got all different breeds according to like the pretty ones and the colorful eggs.

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which was probably a mistake because they're not real good layers. So we go a good portion of the year without eggs, but they're getting started back now. But we do have a lot of pretty eggs when we get them. You have the different colored ones? We do, yeah. Rainbow eggs. That's what my daughter would call it when she was little. She'd see the blue and the, I don't know what they're called, the Marin eggs that are dark. Yes, yes.

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We'd be somewhere and somebody would have all different colored eggs and she'd be like, Oh mom, they have the rainbow eggs. And I'm like, uh-huh. They sure do. She was very disappointed when she found out that the blue ones didn't taste like blue raspberry. Yeah. They all taste the same. That's cute. Yep. An egg is an egg is an egg. Just like a rose is a rose is a rose. That's correct. Okay. Um, do you have lots of chickens? We have 18 so.

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I don't think that we have lots of chickens, but I tell people we have 18 and they're like, oh, that's a lot of birds. Yeah, that's probably about how many we have. um I have two coops, the ones that lay and then I have some silkies um and another coop. And so probably all together 20, 25, something like that. I was just talking with somebody that raises silkies and she was like, they are so pretty, but they're the dumbest birds ever known to man.

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They really are. I have to go and collect some of them at night because they just can't seem to make it back to the coop. that's what she was saying too. She was like, I don't know what it is, but they just will not go in the coop on t...