[SPEAKER_04]: Fast forward productions, the women are speaking.
[SPEAKER_02]: when you start to garden, especially when you're growing your own vegetables.
[SPEAKER_02]: At first, you fail fail fail.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then you start to have these little successes that it's enough to kind of keep you coming back for more.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you start to recognize the taste difference in these things and how they make your body feel.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it just kind of slowly builds on itself.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so if a little bit is fun, maybe I should add a little bit more until you get to a point where like, wow, I've got like a thing going here.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're listening to the Good Dirt Podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a place where we dig in to the nitty-gritty of sustainable living through food, fashion, and lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_04]: Can wear your hosts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mary and Emma Kingsley, the mother and daughter founder team of Lady Farmer.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are sewing seeds of slow living through our community platform, events, and online marketplace.
[SPEAKER_04]: We started this podcast as a means to share the wealth of information and quality conversations that we're having in our world as we dream up and deliver ways for each of us to live into the new paradigm.
[SPEAKER_04]: One that is regenerative, balanced, and whole.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to put the microphone in front of the voices that need to be heard the most right now, the farmers, the dreamers, the designers, and the doers.
[SPEAKER_04]: So come call to be a better world with us.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're so glad you're here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now let's dig in.
[SPEAKER_05]: Hi Emma.
[SPEAKER_05]: Hi.
[SPEAKER_05]: Good morning.
[SPEAKER_05]: How's your week been?
[SPEAKER_05]: It's been a little bit topsy-turvy because there is this horrible storm last weekend that came through and it didn't seem to last very long, but it really left its mark, especially on this corner of DC that I live in.
[SPEAKER_05]: There were these huge, really old trees taken down all over our neighborhood and many of the streets, including mine and the surrounding streets were completely closed.
[SPEAKER_05]: to any traffic and some of the big thoroughfares and so it was pretty hard to get in and out and we of course lost power for multiple days which is pretty impressive seeing as just the general concentration of population that lives here and how much pressure there is on the power company to get stuff up.
[SPEAKER_05]: Usually it's very quick but it was several days and then internet was out for almost a full week.
[SPEAKER_05]: So it was pretty eventful and really kind of discombobulating.
[SPEAKER_05]: And while we got power on relatively soon, I think it was a full three or three and a half days of that power.
[SPEAKER_05]: So the biggest thing there was really this getting stuff out of the refrigerator, which we were able to save and bring it to your house.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Then when the power came back on so luckily we had AC, but the internet wasn't on that was interesting.
[SPEAKER_05]: It was interesting.
[SPEAKER_05]: I felt like there wasn't much to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is an interesting exercise.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, now you know what it was like here for so long struggling with the internet, which is kind of a funny thing because we talk about slow living and sustainable living all the time and the internet seems like such a thing that
[SPEAKER_01]: is an obstacle to slow living but it helps us immensely because here we can do this recording remotely when things are working.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's kind of a conundrum but that line of storms that went through Washington a week ago as you know had come through here the day before and we had the same thing several trees knocked down and we didn't even realize the extent of the damage for a while and it's only after I've been going out
[SPEAKER_01]: on my walk around in the surrounding fields and woods and stuff that I realized how many really, really big trees came down.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, so sort of been revealing itself over the past week.
[SPEAKER_05]: So yeah, it's been quite a week for both of us.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's also just kind of depressing and concerning when you think about how many dramatic weather events there are all the time now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know when we bought this place,
[SPEAKER_01]: over ten years ago now.
[SPEAKER_01]: There had been a very dramatic weather event that knocked the power out for the surrounding area for a couple of weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that fall when we moved in, everybody around us was getting generators.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're a big generators like whole house generators.
[SPEAKER_01]: We bought one too when we moved in.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when the power goes out, we're okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for you, when it goes out for three, four days, you really feel it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, yeah, in the middle of summer, you feel it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I know.
[SPEAKER_05]: For me, something that was interesting was for when the power was out, well, the food was one thing because you can't really use the refrigerator, which is really hard.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then the second thing is not being able to charge your phone, which shows you how much we're depending on that.
[SPEAKER_05]: That was really alarming.
[SPEAKER_05]: All the devices.
[SPEAKER_05]: And the other thing I was going to say was, yeah, the storm that you're referring to over ten years ago, while it was bigger than this and was probably
[SPEAKER_05]: one of the biggest in recent history is referred to all the time that dream to, twenty twelve, it was really alarming, but this was similar.
[SPEAKER_05]: This was not as big as that, but the fact that they're happening more often is scary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was called the direct show.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd never heard that term before.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not sure I heard of one sense, but as you say, it's sort of legendary around here now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you remember the direct show.
[SPEAKER_05]: So with that, today we're talking about ways that you can prepare yourself for if there's crazy bad storms or the power is out.
[SPEAKER_05]: Not directly.
[SPEAKER_05]: This isn't necessarily a disaster prep episode.
[SPEAKER_05]: No.
[SPEAKER_05]: But the idea of having your own homestead and being slightly more self-sufficient and having access to food that's outside in a near yard and not dependent on her refrigerator is a big part of that.
[SPEAKER_05]: So today we are talking to Leah Webb.
[SPEAKER_05]: She is incredible.
[SPEAKER_05]: She is a mom.
[SPEAKER_05]: She's an author, a gardener, and an all around family food enthusiast.
[SPEAKER_05]: She lives in North Carolina with her husband and her two children.
[SPEAKER_05]: And her book, The Seven Step Homestead, how easy is that?
[SPEAKER_05]: Seven steps came out in April of this year.
[SPEAKER_05]: She has worked in nutrition and gardening since, two thousand nine with a focus on engaging children in healthy eating habits.
[SPEAKER_05]: She started and runs the deep rooted wellness blog where she post stories and tips on nutrition, gardening, and healthy families.
[SPEAKER_05]: She also wrote a cookbook, the grain free sugar free dairy free family cookbook, which was published in two thousand nineteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we know there's so many of you out there listening who hold a vision of having your own farm, living off the land, having more food independence, but that might seem unattainable right now or even anytime in the foreseeable future.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, how might your life change right now?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you knew how much you could do right in your very M backyard, the one where you are right now, stick around and find out.
[SPEAKER_01]: In our conversation with Leah Webb today, author of The Seven Step Homestead, a guide for creating the backyard micro farm of your dreams.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am Lea Webb and I am the author of two books.
[SPEAKER_02]: The grain-free sugar-free dairy-free family cookbook and the seven-step homestead.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a garden educator and mother and I got interested in this because I actually have a background in soil science and at some point I moved over and got a master's of public health and during that time I had the opportunity to manage a children's learning garden and I watched kids
[SPEAKER_02]: eat things that you would not expect them to normally eat because of their intrinsic curiosity and they were involved in the garden and then they automatically were interested in eating these foods and so doing three years of a master's in public health.
[SPEAKER_02]: My takeaway message was that nutritional status affects every single aspect of disease from its development to the outcomes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then watching these children become involved in the vegetable garden and seeing how when you got people outside and you got them interested and involved in growing their own food, but it automatically improved their health.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I became a mother myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, and if you can imagine, I had spent the last ten years really working on my own health, being mindful about the things I ate, supporting my body through pregnancy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then my first child was born with severe food allergies in asthma.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my second daughter was born, or my second child, a daughter.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was born with cystic fibrosis, which is a genetic disease that impacts the lungs in pancreas.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you can imagine here I was this individual who had spent a lot of time focusing on their health and here I had to medically compromise children that needed care.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really turned to food as just one piece of their integrative care.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, I like to point out that I don't just use food.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are many things that have really helped support my children's health, especially my daughter.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you're talking about a genetic disease, she can eat all the kale in the world and it's not going to correct those faulty proteins.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I am very middle of the road with my approach to their care management.
[SPEAKER_02]: But these healthy foods have been such an important piece in their healing and their and supporting their health.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then having this amazing garden where they can see these foods being grown and I'm giving them some of the freshest things that are available that I feel like are really supporting their health in the way that I want it to has also really helped improve their health as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so
[SPEAKER_02]: I approach what I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I educate people about health and wellness and cooking, real food skills, gardening.
[SPEAKER_02]: I approach it from from a standpoint of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: These things are fun and engaging and they're good for the environment, but they're also really good for health in so many ways and that you're getting outdoors and you're having the chance to bend and move and
[SPEAKER_02]: your body in ways that you might not normally get to.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you're also consuming all these really nutrient rich foods.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I really have this very holistic approach to educating people about gardening and health and and how all of these things really play into a healthy body of mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's so cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: And how old are your kids now?
[SPEAKER_02]: My son is ten and my daughter is seven.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the questions, I often get asked how they're doing now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my kids are really healthy.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my son started out with a list of about seven to ten.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't quite remember how long that list was.
[SPEAKER_02]: He had about seven to ten diagnosed allergens that he would go into animal access, whether it be minor or severe.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's now down to just two.
[SPEAKER_02]: So and those are our relatively severe.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's anaphylactic to wheat and barley.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a pretty big challenge for us because wheat is the food that everybody is eating.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we don't eat out a lot almost never.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have very select restaurants that we eat at and so I cook a lot and having to cook so much and having kids that do really need this nutritional support, cooking takes a lot of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's actually what my cookbook is about is really streamlining this process of meal preparation so that you are able to feed you and your family, all of these healthy foods, but you're not letting it just completely consume your life.
[SPEAKER_05]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_05]: And can you remind us what the name of the cookbook is for anyone interested?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the grain-free sugar-free dairy-free family cookbook.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the diet that we followed pretty strictly for about four years.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't adhere to that anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we did that when my kids were pretty young and anyone whose parent knows that as your kids get older, they have far more preferences about the foods that they do and don't want to eat.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when they were young, that felt like the diet that was most supportive in our particular situation.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I do believe that following it so strictly for that period was extremely beneficial.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then it reached a point where my son already had foods that he absolutely has to avoid without exception.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then to further restrict his diet, actually causes some other problems.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we don't follow it as strictly anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: So so basically the diet that we adhere to now is that we just kind of eat the foods that are available.
[SPEAKER_02]: We eat the foods that are at friends houses or parties.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just try to make sure that especially for dinners that we're I'm always serving something that has vegetables in it and that that's just kind of the expectations that we have home cooked meals.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're such a voice of encouragement, I think, for so many families out there that are facing this.
[SPEAKER_01]: You hear about this fairly common for a child to have such severe allergies that it really limits activities or limits what the family does and you've done such a
[SPEAKER_01]: courageous job of pulling it all together and making it work for you guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know it's a challenge, but gosh, I just want to say, thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to have all the people out there that can hear this and say, well, she's doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds very encouraging.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, in two that points, I would say to anybody who is hearing this, who is going through these challenges that it does get easier, especially when my son was so young, if you can imagine having a two year old running around at a plot look and knowing that he can't grab food off of the table and
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there are all of these things that are just so high consequence and feel so difficult to manage.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, my daughter, we had to learn an entire set of treatments and therapies.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we had to do that a very young age.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, that was hard for the parents who's hard for her too.
[SPEAKER_02]: These are things that she didn't want to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: But now that my kids are seven and ten, this is the life that they've grown up with.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the truth of the matter is that as they get older and older, this burden becomes more and more theirs.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they have learned to take ownership of it and it is a very slow transition.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't happen overnight, but I do feel like the place that we're at with my kids right now is just it's so different than it used to be because they are older and they can take that some of that responsibility off of me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it just feels like a much more peaceful situation than say when they were very young.
[SPEAKER_05]: So something that I'm thinking about is with everything that you've been through and your kids, they're much older now, but they're not that much older.
[SPEAKER_05]: You also are releasing today a book about starting a micro farm.
[SPEAKER_05]: It just seems like you have done so much and figured out so much and it's pretty amazing.
[SPEAKER_05]: So can you tell us a little bit about how the micro farm idea and home setting idea came along and sort of how that fit into this.
[SPEAKER_05]: food, journey, and health journey, that's pretty intense.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the gardening piece is me, even me before I was a mother.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's a really natural progression for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: My mother garden, her mother garden, I'm very fortunate in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: There were a lot of people who have their parents, their grandparents, they didn't garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so oftentimes when people are thinking about real food skills, they think of them as being basic skills that we all should have, which is true if you were born to hundred years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: But now, if you haven't seen somebody do it, then these are all new things that you're having to learn.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so because my mom always garden, my mom always cooked.
[SPEAKER_02]: They were always things that I was interested in.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I started in landscaping.
[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, I was a really terrible waitress and ended up working in a plant nursery, making like no money, but being very happy and the work that I was doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I always garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I started gardening from a very young age.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what happens when you start to garden, especially when you're growing your own vegetables,
[SPEAKER_02]: At first, you fail fail fail and then you start to have these little successes that it's enough to kind of keep you coming back for more and then you start to recognize the taste difference in these things and how they make your body feel and how enjoyable it can be to be outdoors, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Cause it's not just about food, it's about being outdoors and having a hobby and a valuable past time, it's all of those things and then it just kind of slowly builds on itself and so
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm not necessarily sure this was even like, oh, I should build a farm one day.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was more so just, you know, oh, I really love doing this thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, if a little bit is fun, maybe I should add a little bit more until you get to point where like, wow, I've got like a thing going here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so you said that, you know, your mother cooked you grew up with, you know, what you said your mother cooked and your mother garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: So would you say you grew up with with homegrown food and did you stick with that before you had kids or did you kind of, you know, experience another kind of lifestyle before you got back to it?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious because it's really unusual to find somebody that this day and age, someone that has a extended history of eating, you know, backyard vegetables.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like eating vegetables.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, so I, you know, my mom always garden and she calmed my mom actually.
[SPEAKER_02]: She did a lot more food preservation than I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Food preservation is not my favorite, especially canning.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's messy.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's time consuming all of those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: But my mom still doesn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: She still doesn't like I'm one of three girls and so we had a family of five.
[SPEAKER_02]: She still can's for two people like she can for five people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I guess when I left home, I did always have a really small garden and it wasn't that successful.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think that's the key to remember here, too, is often people think that when you jump into this, that you can just expect all of this bounty and success.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it wasn't like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So even though I had helped her, I knew what to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: My garden was not as good.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it wasn't nearly as good as hers.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think just having grown up like that, it was just ingrained in me that I enjoyed cooking.
[SPEAKER_02]: I liked eat vegetables.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like to garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's interesting having my two kids because
[SPEAKER_02]: My son, I don't necessarily see that interest in him.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's not as interested in what happens here at the house.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's not as interested in cooking or eating vegetables.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I do see it in my daughter.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think it's probably just an example of how different people enjoy different things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe he'll be interested in it when he gets older, maybe he wants, you know, maybe this will shift for my daughter.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I think I've always enjoyed cooking and eating.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love food.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I guess what I meant to ask was, was there ever time in your life when you felt like the best choice for you was convenience foods and processed foods and that kind of thing, which so many of us, especially as parents, we get into just because, you know, because of life and this stuff is available and we're sort of, you know, we get away from real foods, we call it.
[SPEAKER_01]: because it's just more of an effort and it's more of an expense.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to a large degree, I think people aren't aware of the real pitfalls of it, but maybe that awareness is growing, because we talk about it a lot and other people talk about it a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, that was my question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Was there ever your time when you got away from it and realized this is not the way I want to eat?
[SPEAKER_02]: I would actually say that it was fairly recent when the pandemic started.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had just signed this book contract.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm starting to write a second book.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still have all of my responsibilities at the home.
[SPEAKER_02]: My kids came home from school and my daughter was going into kindergarten and I felt what in the world is she going to learn online for kindergarten.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I tried to genuinely homeschool my kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was impossible to be working full-time, home schooling, and then also trying to maintain a huge garden, trying to cook foods from scratch.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was way too lofty of an expectation for myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: I found that I was restructuring my priorities and it was one of the first times that food and prepping meals actually fell further down on the list than it ever had.
[SPEAKER_02]: I found myself in a state of exhaustion and
[SPEAKER_02]: Honestly, it was very humbling and eye-opening to be in that position and realize that I had been privileged enough to never have been forced into that before.
[SPEAKER_02]: For some people, that's their every single day reality and that there are many reasons that people don't cook from scratch, whether it be time, knowledge, access, resources.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, yes, there was certainly a year period there where
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I just felt so exhausted that I did end up relying on far more convenience foods.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that was a good experience in that it was humbling and it made me more grateful for this time that I do have to be able to invest in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a really beautiful testimony.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it speaks to so many people out there that, you know, they want this so much, but they just don't see how it's attainable.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where you and your book and your work can possibly help.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think that's really interesting and I wonder if you, after having learned that experience, if you would do it differently, like if it all happened again, would you say, oh no, I learned the lesson or do you think it's actually, was it a learning in your priorities?
[SPEAKER_05]: Or it was a learning to be so grateful when food can be a priority.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I would do it differently again.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that I did what I had to do in the moment and even though it may not have felt exactly what I wanted to be doing, it also felt really good to come back to cooking more and to almost rediscover the joy in it because during that period it felt like such a responsibility and such a burden that
[SPEAKER_02]: I think in that moment, it needed to get pushed to the wayside.
[SPEAKER_02]: It needed to be ignored.
[SPEAKER_02]: I needed to do what I needed to do and get through that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it has.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of revived this passion in me to think, oh, you know, I am really fortunate for these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I do really love this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I love the way it makes my body feel.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I love that I'm feeding my kids these foods too.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's so interesting.
[SPEAKER_05]: I just had this thought while you were talking of like, what if we all collectively decided that food was more important than work?
[SPEAKER_05]: And even school.
[SPEAKER_05]: It was just the number one.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like how would that change everything?
[SPEAKER_05]: And yeah, I think it would be pretty much impossible to operate in our collective society that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: It would be impossible.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought so many times during that first eight months, you know, I'm gonna break this book deal like, I guess, you know, I kept thinking, okay, something's gotta give.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's it gonna be?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I kept saying, well, maybe, you know, my work, I could get rid of my work.
[SPEAKER_02]: Your work has value to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I love my work.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I really do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love what I do.
[SPEAKER_05]: And ironically, your work is literally telling other people to be able to do this.
[SPEAKER_05]: So yeah, it needs to be told right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, but you know, and that also just kind of shows how what a privileged position I'm into to be really liking all of these things I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I know that that's not the case for everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And well, we are very much in the paradigm shifting here.
[SPEAKER_01]: What you have done in this book, the seven step homestead is help people realize how they can do it on a small scale.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very small to I think your book covers sort of a wide range of space like from a very small space to even bigger and you tell people how to expand.
[SPEAKER_01]: What would you say to someone that their life is very much like what you were feeling in the beginning of COVID where there's just, there's just no space for this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where is a place where they could begin, even in the smallest way there's a journey to discovering so that, you know, it might open up more opportunity for them to go deeper into it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say to keep in mind that when you're gardening and when you're home studying, it's important to get clear on your why, why it is that you're trying to grow any portion of your own food because what you will find from people who have been doing this for a while is that you don't save very much money.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's actually very costly to invest in all of the infrastructure and the compost and the soil.
[SPEAKER_02]: And these things break and they need repairs.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, one of the reasons I hear people saying that they want to start home sitting is to save money.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reality is that you're not going to save money for about a decade.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the beginning, you're just going to be investing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, so then if you're not saving money, then what is your why?
[SPEAKER_02]: So your why would be you want, you know, to grow some portion of your food, you want to be outdoors more.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want your kids to know that lettuce grows above ground and potatoes grow below ground.
[SPEAKER_02]: These are the reasons that we end up growing food.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you start to really focus on what your why is, what you will find is that a really, really tiny effort will actually get you there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's say you don't have a lot of space.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't have a lot of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Start with some ten gallon grow bags or a ten gallon pot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Something that's enough soil to where it's not going to be drying out all the time, but, you know, small enough to where it's not going to be unmanageable.
[SPEAKER_02]: And start with something where you're going to experience success, where you're actually going to achieve those check marks, those things that you're hoping to get out of gardening.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because if you do have success, and then all of a sudden, this little tiny effort, this becomes second nature is an incorporated into your life, then all of a sudden you find yourself in a place where like, oh, well, this is manageable.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I could expand a little bit more.
[SPEAKER_02]: I find all the time that people bite off more than they can chew.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was the whole basis for this book was to show people that building a homestead and building an enormous garden takes a variety of skill sets and it's totally unrealistic for us to expect to be able to just go from zero to nothing and no amount of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're very instant gratification oriented society.
[SPEAKER_02]: We like things now.
[SPEAKER_02]: We like a quick and gardening is slow.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you mess something up this year, it's not like you get to try again next week, sometimes you have to wait an entire year to try again.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the whole basis of this book is to show people, yeah, start small, you know, take this finite amount of energy that you have, concentrate your efforts in a small amount of space, rather than deluding them over this large amount of space where you're going to have a higher percentage of failure.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you are starting small, start small, commit to starting small and know that something is always better than nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That must be so encouraging to people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Someone listening that, you know, this has been a goal or a desire and they just don't know where to start.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to also ask you, if someone's brand new to this, what plant would you say they should start with?
[SPEAKER_01]: What should they put in that first tin gallon bucket that they're going to set up there and just say, okay, I'm going to see how this works.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think?
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say the first thing to do, and this is true for anybody, I still use planting charts as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say find a planting chart for your zip code and figure out what it is that you can put in that pot at what time, because for example, there are some things that like to get frost and there are some things that don't like to get frost.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if it is March and you're interested in planting something easy, you need to first know what can go in that pot in March.
[SPEAKER_02]: So always start with a planting chart, look at that list.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you can think about this, it's kind of a hierarchy of difficulty in some ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: Growing leaves is going to be the easiest thing oftentimes.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're just growing leaves.
[SPEAKER_02]: They take less sun.
[SPEAKER_02]: They take less energy.
[SPEAKER_02]: They take fewer nutrients.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not quite as sensitive to differences in water.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to get a little bit more complicated.
[SPEAKER_02]: Try growing some roots.
[SPEAKER_02]: Roots are going to be kind of your step up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then this final step are going to be growing some of these fruits.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some fruits are easier to grow than others, but if you're an inexperienced gardener, you might not necessarily know these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: These are things that you'll learn over time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would say start with some type of leafy green, but check out that planting chart and make sure you're putting something in that pot that is actually going to grow during that season.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't recommend, especially for these really small spaces, don't buy seeds, go in buy starts.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the best place to buy those starts is going to be at your local farmers market because the farmers are going to be selling things that are suitable for your region and that are supposed to be planted at that time of year.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for example, I should not be planting peppers in the ground until after May ten.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can go to a big box store and buy a pepper plant in March.
[SPEAKER_02]: I shouldn't plant that pepper in March.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I go to the farmers market, what I'm going to see is that they've got some leaduses and kales and collards and things that are appropriate for me to put in the ground at that time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you do have access to a farmers market, this is honestly the safest bet for ensuring your gardening success is to just do what the farmers are doing.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's so smart.
[SPEAKER_05]: And also you put them in the container first.
[SPEAKER_05]: Is that what you recommend?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if that's your starting point is just to have a ten gallon grow bag or a ten gallon grow pot.
[SPEAKER_02]: I also think that starting with two small raised beds to four by eights.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what my book recommends for stage one two small beds are actually pretty manageable.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you have this base time knowledge and money to actually put into it.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you don't just start with that grow bag, go and pick out the plants that the farmers have and get a high quality soil.
[SPEAKER_02]: Make sure you're actually adding quite a bit of compost to it as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's one of the places I see people make mistakes is that they think they can just use soil.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what you have to remember is that the majority of plants that we're growing are short-lived annuals.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they want to get this really big boost of nutrition as quickly as they can.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I pretty much just overload everything with compost and that's another trick that I use to make sure that things are working out the way I want them to.
[SPEAKER_05]: It reminds me of using bread flour for my bread instead of regular flour.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's crazy.
[SPEAKER_05]: Makes it a different.
[SPEAKER_05]: I have a question for you specifically.
[SPEAKER_05]: I have a tiny little front yard area.
[SPEAKER_05]: I live in the city.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's pretty shady.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's like one little section that gets good sun.
[SPEAKER_05]: But after doing this podcast, honestly, and talking to all these awesome people, I am getting more and more convinced to just put in some.
[SPEAKER_05]: This would be like so crazy in my neighborhood, but to put in some brave beds with like veggies in the front.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's not super sunny.
[SPEAKER_05]: Is that gonna be a problem?
[SPEAKER_02]: So to grow leafy greens, you need about six hours of sun per day.
[SPEAKER_02]: And surprisingly enough, I actually have a really terrible growing location despite what I have going on here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm in a valley kind of here in Southern Appalachia.
[SPEAKER_02]: We call it a holler.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm down in a little holler right along a creek and it's wet.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so wet.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have do that settles every night.
[SPEAKER_02]: So even in the summer, the maximum amount of light that I'm getting is really only about eight and a half hours.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is pretty much your minimum at which you can grow your fruits.
[SPEAKER_02]: So again, this hierarchy, you've got leaves or the simplest thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: They need the least amount of energy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Roots take a little bit more energy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Once you get into the fruits, you need even more energy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the fruits are going to be the ones that require the most sun.
[SPEAKER_02]: But even with eight and a half hours, I am able to grow all of those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so one of the ways that I make up for my shortcoming and sun is that I really make sure I'm beefing up those soils with lots of compost.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would say yes and the other interesting thing about your situation, you know, I hear you saying that, okay, this would might even be a little bit weird for my neighbors to see that I'm having this vegetable garden out front and I would add that I'm growing in a neighborhood where
[SPEAKER_02]: No one else is doing what I am doing here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I always wondered, you know, what am I neighbors going to think?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, here I am on three quarters of an acre.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've got a three hundred fifty square foot greenhouse chickens.
[SPEAKER_02]: I used to have ducks.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's, you know, it's like this little tiny farm right outside of town.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my neighbors are so interested by what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I will say that I've met some of my neighbors that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: They ask me different questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've seen other neighbors who've started gardens as a result.
[SPEAKER_05]: Trends at her totally Could be you yeah That's so I think it's a great idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great idea, am I?
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I feel encouraged.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you for encouraging me yet again, Leah.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're such an encourager.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and also all this great practical advice.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is just so fantastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you make your own compost?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you compost your own food?
[SPEAKER_01]: And how do you do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: We talk a lot about compost on here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gonna keep talking about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and compost is so important in a vegetable garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the reasons is, as I already said, these quick-lived annuals, they really like to get beefed up on nutrients.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you're talking about growing perennials, these are plants that come back year after year that you don't have to replant, they don't need as much compost.
[SPEAKER_02]: They hold that energy every year, and then they can recycle it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the majority of the things that we eat and the things that are in the grocery store, those are going to be your annual plants.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you're harvesting those foods, you're eating them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And very, very few people is that waste stream going back into the system.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not a closed loop system.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is an open system, which means all of those nutrients after you eat them are being lost.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so compost, even when you build your beds in a way that
[SPEAKER_02]: is going to be building healthy soil for years to come.
[SPEAKER_02]: You still have to replenish those nutrients.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you're talking about a small garden and really this is true for any garden, I aim to add about half an inch to two inches of compost on top of my soil every single year.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now that depends on the quality of the soil that is there, how that bed performs last year, what it is that I had growing there, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: These are things that you don't need to worry about until you're more advanced.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not beginner considerations.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what I'm trying to say is that compost is a constant need.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when I compost just my kitchen scraps, the volume is actually not very significant.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not really enough.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have somewhere around twenty five hundred square feet of growing space.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I cannot generate that amount of compost with kitchen scraps alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what I actually do is I use a deep litter system with my chickens.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oftentimes you hear people talk about deep litter systems in just the coop.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the house where the chickens spend the night is called the coop and then you have the fenced in area that's attached called the run.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my run is about two hundred square feet and I fill that entire run with organic matter different types of carbon that I can harvest locally.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there is a local artist who does bowl carvings and I actually get a ton of the wood shavings.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll fill their entire run with wood shavings, which is a really great source of carbon.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the chickens are going to be defecating all over this stuff, scratching it, turning it, turning it into compost.
[SPEAKER_02]: And chicken waste is extremely high in nitrogen.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then I have that really nice carbon nitrogen ratio that you're trying to get when you're generating compost.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I am able to generate nearly a hundred percent of my compost needs by using my chickens.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would not be able to do that by composing my kitchen scraps alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I do have a number of different compost piles where I pile things up, but the majority of my garden scraps and kitchen scraps just go right into the chicken run and then the chickens actually do the composting for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the chickens eat your kitchen scraps and then they make the compost.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you've ever owned chickens, you know that they're like garbage disposals.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they will literally eat anything.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: So you get in there and do like scrape up.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm just picturing like my parents.
[SPEAKER_05]: They clean out their run.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's mostly hay that they put down right mom.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think he just take my dad usually just takes that and puts it on the like the compost pile with the rest of the like horse manure and stuff.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: So is what you do with the wood shavings and all that you just kind of scoop it out of the chicken run and then it's ready or doesn't need to do anything else.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wait till it looks like compost.
[SPEAKER_02]: So depending on how much you add, you know, I can't give you an exact amount of time that it takes, but in general, it takes anywhere from three to four months, depending on a the amount of rainfall you get.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for example, where I live, we're actually a temperate rainforest.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we have so much rain here.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I have used hay in the past, but it's too softy wet.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really have to use something that's wood to be able to absorb some of that moisture.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the chickens will turn it into compost over about four months.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that I've let it go too far if it starts to stink.
[SPEAKER_02]: If it starts to stink, that means that nitrogen is off-gassing and there's not adequate carbon to be able to absorb it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if I remove it too early, then I actually have to let it sit for even longer to allow it to finish decomposing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there is kind of this sweet spot and it's hard to hit it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I usually over under shoot almost every time, but, you know, it doesn't really matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't get to nitpicky about stuff like this.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yes, I basically just go in there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I shovel it into a wheelbarrow.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's usually about five, six,
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes as many as eight loads and then I pile that up for six months.
[SPEAKER_02]: Chicken waste is full of parasites, bacteria, all sorts of things that you don't want to apply to your garden immediately, especially if you're growing things like leafy greens that are really close to the ground, right in contact with that manure.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want that stuff to age.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now I have used it in instances where I'll take it right out of the run and put it on a bed where I'm going to grow corn
[SPEAKER_02]: because corn is one of those things that has really high nitrogen needs and it'll burn off all of that nitrogen pretty quickly.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and the corn is never really in contact with the soil, but yeah, that is a good point.
[SPEAKER_02]: You do want to let that age a little bit longer because chickens are just kind of gross.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's such a good point too about the compost.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know that something's out of balance if it starts smelling.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a deterrent to people a lot that they don't want to mess with compost because, you know, it's so stinky and messy.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as you have just explained, when you get the combination right, it's really not.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually, it adds a pleasant smell and it just is, it's kind of fun to experience that turning your waist into something so useful.
[SPEAKER_01]: You and your book are just
[SPEAKER_01]: Chalk full of all this great practical advice and I'm curious about what is your idea of a homesteading?
[SPEAKER_01]: How would you talk about homesteading as a term?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such a lively topic these days and I think it kind of runs a gamut of what does that mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we'd love to hear about what that term means to you and in your experience what's the real difference between homesteading and just gardening?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's a funny question because that actually came up so much entitling my book because my publisher thinks that I have a homestead and I've always just thought that I have a really big garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think the main difference, it's varied.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it depends on
[SPEAKER_02]: How you feel about your space as well and how it is that you feel like your production is going and what it is that you're producing, but I think the biggest distinction between gardening and home setting is size.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that home sets are larger.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I do I have a very big garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a three hundred and fifty square foot greenhouse.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, these are I am producing substantial amounts of food and plants.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mind you, I am not producing a hundred percent of what we consume.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm still purchasing things at the grocery store, just like everybody else.
[SPEAKER_02]: The other thing that I feel is distinct about a homestead is the diversity of things that are being produced.
[SPEAKER_02]: So in a garden often times, I think it's kind of just vegetables and flowers, but here at my garden, or my homestead, I'm producing legumes,
[SPEAKER_02]: eggs, storage crops, like sweet potatoes, potatoes, winter squash, flowers.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really, I produce a huge diversity of things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think that that's the biggest distinction with home setting.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I also think it's important
[SPEAKER_02]: to note that very few homesteaders are relying a hundred percent on their own production.
[SPEAKER_02]: For example, I cannot produce certain things like citrus fruits.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is not something that is grown in Southern Appalachia.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is something that I get in my car and I drive to the grocery store to be able to purchase those things that were shipped here from Florida.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so homesteading, we kind of put it on this pedestal of
[SPEAKER_02]: self-sufficiency, yet I think it's important to note that very, very few of us are actually self-sufficient that we are still relying heavily on these outside inputs, especially unless, and this is where if you have large amounts of acreage, which I don't have, I have three quarters of an acre, if you have large amounts of acreage, you're more likely to be more self-sufficient, just because you'll be able to produce cattle and pigs and in some of your own meats, and with that,
[SPEAKER_02]: comes being able to produce some of your own fats and proteins.
[SPEAKER_02]: I produce very, very few fats and proteins here on my homestead.
[SPEAKER_02]: Eggs and beans are pretty much the two things.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there are some proteins in some of these other foods, but not enough to sustain my family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that is such an interesting point that homestead, I think implies self-sufficiency and historically speaking anyway, because the legacy of our American expansion was for the families to go way out somewhere and establish a homestead.
[SPEAKER_01]: upon which they live, they had all their needs met there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think the modern homestead has a lot more to do with creating alternatives to the industrial food system, but also engaging in community that helps support your own upkeep wherever you are because we don't, you know, few of us live in total isolation anymore like that, you know, with just, you know, hundreds of acres surrounding us and
[SPEAKER_01]: really having to go a really far away to get basic needs.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of not the scenario.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think the modern hymn instead is you do what you can with this space that you have, but there's no like it's not like a contest to say, look, I'm never going to go to the grocery store.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to grow my own food.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really not that practical these days.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not practical and I also think that we live in the society that we live in and most of us want to still participate in that because we do like community and we like to be around people and growing a hundred percent of your food could potentially be extremely isolating.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not interested in that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a big garden, but we also belong to a full diet, CSA.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get our meat, vegetables, grains, beans, dairy, milk.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get raw milk there, shout out to mootoo orchards, and they go to the grocery store.
[SPEAKER_05]: So it's, oh, we do.
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like gosh, what do you ever go to the grocery store?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, cat food, and you know, and so gosh, what do I do with my garden?
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to grow lots of herbs, perineals, flowers, so I like to entertain pollinators.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to just develop a local ecosystem where I can and the way I'm approaching it, it would be really, really hard for us to grow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Much of our own food.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can't some, you know, we've got some berries and things out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have our chickens.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have eggs, but we rely on a local farmer for our food.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that feels good does.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we're supporting a farmer.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what they do.
[SPEAKER_01]: They provide families with, you know, full diet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And me, I'm like my goals are sort of different.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it works for us for now.
[SPEAKER_01]: There might come a time where we realize, wow, we just really need to
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, to grow more of our food and reduce our carbon footprint and driving down there to get it every week.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's working for now, but it's our little place of homestead in a way.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has aspects of a homestead, but no, we're not self supporting and we very much engage in an alternate to the industrial food system through our community.
[SPEAKER_01]: Emma goes to farmers market this down the street and
[SPEAKER_05]: I haven't been going to the farmers market as much, and I want to.
[SPEAKER_05]: I really haven't gone because it is so expensive.
[SPEAKER_05]: Everything's just so expensive right now.
[SPEAKER_05]: So what I'm actually doing is I'm shopping around for another CSA because even the grocery store, even shopping, organic at the grocery store for and try to find the veggie suppliers that are closest geographically.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's kind of where I am.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I just want to be, like, totally open and honest about that.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, I'm trying to figure that out.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's hard.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's tricky.
[SPEAKER_05]: So now, but now I'll be growing some veggies in my front yard because Leah has encouraged me.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I think that that's such a valid point that's so important for us to remember when we're talking about these alternative food systems is that it's such a complicated mess in that you have the consumer on one side who needs affordability
[SPEAKER_02]: Yet you have the small local farm on the other side, she really is not making a huge profit off of this stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: To be in a position where you are supporting local agriculture is a real privilege.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not accessible to everyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so even though yet at the same time, it is so important for those of us who are able to support that community that we do it because those small farmers are such an important part of our society and they offer such a valuable service to us.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I do think that there is so much privilege in our food system at every single level that I just think is something that is important to keep in mind because even me owning three quarters of an acre, you know, not everybody can do this because not everybody can even buy land.
[SPEAKER_02]: where I live since the pandemic, some of these houses have tripled and value.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if I had tried to move here now, I would be priced out.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would not be able to buy property here, which means I would not be able to build what I have built.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't have a solution.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just I think it's important to remember that this is where the empathy and forgiveness and understanding really come in is to not point our finger at everybody saying, oh, well, you should be doing this or you should be doing that or if everybody was doing this, then it would be better because it's just not everybody's reality.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, but the truth is is that not everybody is the just like what you said, same reality, but even we all live in different I'm thinking of like Richard scary is like busy world like everyone's in different spheres and so we can't we literally can't all do the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also, it's very nuanced, according to your situation, according to a person's specific situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, sometimes we're forced into certain practices because of, like, for instance, your children's health, but you in a position of really aggressively seeking alternatives.
[SPEAKER_01]: And other people, their lives are filled up with other things.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very, very nuanced, complicated thing and we're here to kind of just explore and discuss all of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's many layers of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So give yourself grace what we can do is help to inform and people can become informed and then you know, you can make your decisions from there about what you're going to do because you know, knowledge is power and it's just good to gather information about what's going on out there in our food system and what are our options and what are our alternatives.
[SPEAKER_01]: Speaking of becoming informed, how do you think the average consumer awareness has shifted over the recent years, maybe the years that you've been doing this regarding problems in the food system and the importance of local food and the benefits of local food, do you think that that's a growing way?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a mixed bag.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of it I do think is regional, for example, my husband and I spent four years in Vermont before we moved here, and that was a bigger conversation in Vermont.
[SPEAKER_02]: Talking about local food systems and how to really help people access those local foods, where it is that we could make them more available to people so that they didn't even necessarily have to go to the farmers market that they could even purchase them in local stores here in Southern Appalachia.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are pockets of it, but it's just not as widespread.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I do think that is is regional, but I do think that one of the things I've watched happen for sure over the last three years since the sort of the pandemic was it is the first time that some people thought about the fragility of our food system.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are used to going to the grocery store and picking up the exact same product, the exact same day of the week.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every single day of the year and for the very first time people are showing up at the grocery stores by those things that they expected and they just weren't there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it revealed how this lack of skill ability infrastructure on the part of our citizens.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was the first time that a lot of people started talking about victory gardens again and how everybody should have a small garden in their backyard.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I do think that there was a
[SPEAKER_02]: Major resurgence in interest in real food skills and people were spending more time at home.
[SPEAKER_02]: So obviously, you saw everybody in their mother making sourdough bread and sharing these sourdough starter cultures and, you know, making Keefer and yogurt and doing and, you know, they had time at the house to implement these real food skills.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think in some ways that's kind of this blessing that came out of the pandemic was that it did cause people to rethink some of this and and I don't think that that trend came and went super fast like it does sometimes I've seen people who started gardening who
[SPEAKER_02]: Realize how hard it was who are now like, well, I really want to try to get this right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, there's something to this and I want to actually be involved in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And to tie into some of the other things you've talked about as well, I do think that when people start growing their own food, they realize how difficult it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then therefore have more appreciation for those local farmers who are providing that service.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they're less likely to see that food as expensive.
[SPEAKER_02]: And instead see it as something that's valuable, which still does not negate the point that if it is out of your budget, it's out of your budget.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I do think that growing your food does encourage people to be more supportive of their local farmers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you speak to how you approach regenerative growing practices in your garden and homestead?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so one of the main things that I do that I think really supports
[SPEAKER_02]: regenerative farming.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when you're talking about regenerative farming, just to explain to people who may not necessarily understand even what that term means.
[SPEAKER_02]: For many, many years, we talked about sustainable agriculture and how we could sustain the health of our soils.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now the conversation is shifted saying that
[SPEAKER_02]: We have actually degraded our soils to a point where they need to be regenerated.
[SPEAKER_02]: We need to repair them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so many of the practices that I focus on are not just sustaining the health of my soil, but really working to build it up over time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so my number one focus is always on adding organic matter, organic matter, organic matter, organic matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for example, when I start my beds, I'm using two different techniques and there, there's a lot of overlap between them and so I don't think that that difference is necessarily all that relevant as long as you're just using organic matter, but I essentially build up piles of organic matter, whether that be wood chips or sticks.
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks different based on your region.
[SPEAKER_02]: What is available to me is going to be different than what's available to somebody out in the desert more in the high mountains.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's really just a focus on piling up lots and lots of organic matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: topping that organic matter with about six to eight inches of some type of growing medium.
[SPEAKER_02]: Generally, I'm using compost just to really give it that nutritional boost because if you can imagine you're piling up all this organic matter that needs to decay, none of it is really suitable growing medium.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you want to use those beds immediately, that's where that six to eight inches of compost comes in is that then you've added something where your plants can actually grow.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I start by just piling up this organic matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm harvesting these things locally.
[SPEAKER_02]: My motto is that I'm trying to find things that are free and abundant because I want to cut down on the expense of all of this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I don't want to have to be purchasing every single thing I add at all of my inputs that go into my gardens.
[SPEAKER_02]: But once I start my beds in that way, I never till.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you tilt, your soil is full of carbon.
[SPEAKER_02]: And in a lot of your nutrients, actually hook onto that carbon onto that organic matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's how you build good soil nutrition over time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when you tilt, you're exposing all of that carbon to oxygen, which can cause it to off gas.
[SPEAKER_02]: You lose carbon into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can also lose nitrogen, off gasing that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I really tried to disturb my soils as little as possible.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to keep my soils covered by using mulches, cover crops, succession planting, you know, when I know that I'm getting ready to be harvesting something, I try to already know what that next thing is that I'm going to plant.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you protect the soils in this way, keeping them covered from the sun's radiation, it helps to protect
[SPEAKER_02]: The microbes that are so important, it helps to keep the carbon, it keeps the water in.
[SPEAKER_02]: So basically with regenerative practices, you're trying to treat the soil as a community and an ecosystem and work to support all of those pieces rather than just focusing on that plant production.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you for going into all of that.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's a really like holistic way of thinking about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, maybe that was too thorough, but I think they're a general super helpful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to your point, you know, there's the word sustainable and there's the word regenerative sustainable meaning to keep things going the way they are, but we're in a position where we have to build up.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to repair, as you said, and it's very important distinction.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah,
[SPEAKER_02]: It is an important distinction, and I also think there are a lot of choices that I make here that are not sustainable, which is why I try to make as many good choices as I possibly can, and then let some of these other things go.
[SPEAKER_02]: For example, you know, I am growing in a greenhouse.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm growing in a giant plastic house, and these are things that I'm always thinking about, you know, and trying to outweigh these choices.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm balancing choices and decide, are the inputs going to be worse than output?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I always feel that way when, you know, every spring, you know, I'm, you know, pick up betting plans and I pick up this and I pick up that and I, I do all this gardening and somehow I'm left with a giant mound of plastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, what?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to, I'm trying to do something regenerative, you know, grow things and there's all this plastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but that's the whole other conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it really is.
[SPEAKER_05]: So sort of circling back to the beginning of the conversation.
[SPEAKER_05]: You do so much and you get so much done and you are supporting the health of your two young kids who have a lot of who need a lot of support there.
[SPEAKER_05]: So we are wondering what slow living means to you and how you experience slow living in your everyday if you do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will say that spring is not very slow for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will say I do feel fortunate in that I'm a pretty energetic person.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that this is not for everyone and gardening does take a certain level of energy.
[SPEAKER_02]: But for slow living, I feel like gardening is part of the slowness because for me, it's very meditative.
[SPEAKER_02]: your outdoors, your observing processes that happen slowly.
[SPEAKER_02]: It forces me to slow down.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am a fast-paced person.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I tend to do things quickly.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the garden, I can't force it to go any faster than this.
[SPEAKER_02]: then it's gonna go and there are so many things in the garden that are out of my control.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a facilitator out there yet I can't control the weather.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are so many things that I can't control.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for me, gardening almost forces me to surrender into a slowness that I don't often get in other parts of my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think some of the slowness for me is inherent in being in the garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: and the slowness that comes from preparing real meals.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as you practice, it does get quicker, but it's still a time commitment that I set aside every day where there's not a lot of bustle, there's not a lot of stuff that's set, you know, the meal is the thing that I'm focusing on.
[SPEAKER_02]: The garden is the thing that I'm focusing on.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then for me, the slowness is also about the
[SPEAKER_02]: community that I generate through gardens.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do garden installations for people.
[SPEAKER_02]: I manage the garden at my children's school.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's four hundred and fifty kids that plant this garden a few times a year.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that feels slow to me too to actually connect with the people in my community because so much of work ends up being online.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I will admit I'm not super slow.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's great.
[SPEAKER_05]: That can be part of still living too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I know how you're going to answer this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway, because we ask all of our guests.
[SPEAKER_01]: What does the good dirt mean to you?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think this is definitely a, this, I can give you a very long answer.
[SPEAKER_02]: some of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And to me, it just feels like this basis for community, for health, for lands, for gardening.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's such a good example of so many of these tiny little processes and organisms that go unseen and underappreciated that are really behind the scenes like the powerhouse is making everything work.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when I think about the good dirt, I think about
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, nutrition and vibrancy and really building that community up and fostering good community and then letting that community kind of spread out into other areas that can almost be this ripple effect.
[SPEAKER_02]: So to me, it really is about the interconnectedness and the humility that comes from gardening and realizing that, you know, we are pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but it's the interconnectedness and the cumulative
[SPEAKER_02]: impact of us as communities.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's really where the significance is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Super cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: You said something there that no one's ever said before.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the way this this question always brings out some new new idea, but the idea that even those tiny micro organisms are also metaphorical never thought about that before.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like all the little things working underneath to produce the foundation that we so often talk about is the good dirt representing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you for another new insight on the good dirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having such a good conversation today.
[SPEAKER_05]: Leah, before we wrap up, what is it that you want the audience to most understand about the work that you do or about your book?
[SPEAKER_05]: That's coming out today at the time of this recording.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Lou, it finally is here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the most important thing for me is that I want gardening to
[SPEAKER_02]: feel approachable, no matter what scale or effort level that you're operating at.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that so many of us operate in this all or nothing mindset and it's just not practical.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are many things that go into having a balanced, healthy, fulfilling life.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you pour so much energy into gardening because you think it's what you should be doing or want to be doing, then you might start to miss out on some of these other joys that could also be experienced as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I want gardening to feel accessible approachable that it doesn't have to be a huge effort.
[SPEAKER_02]: It can be that tiny patio garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: It can be a four by four bed or it can be a full blown homestead.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't really matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's the matter of finding the place where you feel the most joy and are getting the most benefit out of your efforts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, and thank you for this wonderful book, The Seven Step Homestead, a guide for creating the backyard micro farm of your dreams.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know a lot of our audience has these dreams and just kind of don't know how to go about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there you have it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what a great resource that is being published today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where can people find you and read more about what you're doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: I am Leah M Web pretty much all over the place so you can find me Leah M Web.com and then that same name at Instagram and on Facebook.
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for your time today.
[SPEAKER_01]: We really enjoyed the conversation and I've gotten a lot of great information out of it and on this beautiful day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hope to go outside and play around in my own garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know I'm getting I'm getting ready to go out water when we're done.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, okay, thank you, bye, bye, we'll be in touch.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye, bye.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for tuning in, calling in and spreading the good dirt.
[SPEAKER_04]: We love hearing from you.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can reach our listener voice now at four, four, three, four, five, nine, one, nine, five, oh.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's four, four, three, four, five, nine, one, nine, five, oh.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can find this number in our show notes and in our Instagram profile.
[SPEAKER_01]: This show is produced by Lady Farmer, a slow living lifestyle community.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the original music is composed and performed by John Kingsley.
[SPEAKER_03]: For more from Lady Farmer, follow us on Instagram at VR Lady Farmer.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's me, our Lady Farmer, or join us online at www.ladyfarmor.com.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you next time on The Good Dirt.
[SPEAKER_03]: Goodbye.
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