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Some people are just experts in the subjects they excel in.
Others are experts with a joy for helping others and learning from those they interact with.
Tune into this podcast and checkout some of the links below, and it won’t take long to get an impression that Gianaclis is the latter.
Now, I could spend time talking about her love for Nigerian Dwarf Goats here.
Or perhaps her extensive knowledge in Cheesemaking.
Possibly even her 6 nonfiction books or her ventures into fiction writing.
Maybe you’d even like me to spill the beans on her thoughts on speaking and teaching classes?
Well I’m not going to do that, no, not at all.
But if you want to know more about the subjects we cover in this episode, please checkout the links below, because Gianaclis is someone you’ll want to follow and learn from!
Checkout Gianaclis’s books, future classes, consults and more at her website and Facebook page –
https://gianacliscaldwell.com/
https://www.facebook.com/gianaclis/
For more about Pholia Farm – https://pholiafarm.com/
Transcription
Brian: Oregon native Gianaclis Caldwell grew up milking cows, but was lowered to the goat side where she remains a committed devotee. She was a commercial cheesemaker at the Caldwell Off Grid Dairy Pholia Farm for over 10 years.
She now milks her Nigerian dwarf goats just for pleasure. In between writing books in which he has six, speaking, and judging cheese, which she considers the most fun.
Gianaclis Caldwell, welcome to The Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Gianaclis: Well, thank you, Brian. Thanks for having me.
Brian: Yeah, so why don’t you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do on a regular basis?
Gianaclis: Oh, gosh, it sure varies from day to day. And I was just talking to my mother about people who are drawn to this kind of life really have to be nonlinear, because you just can’t really schedule your day or your week sometimes with animals and farm life and that sort of thing.
So still milking the goats, you were very correct and I do it for pleasure, love having them can just working with the animals. We’ve been breeding the Nigerians now since 2003, and have developed a good name for the breed or as a breeder, I should say, of Nigerian dwarfs. Particularly for strong, long milking animals and with good milk production for that breed.
And that’s, that’s something that’s hard to imagine. And we’re getting older now, of course, as we all do. But it’s difficult to imagine giving up but that process of working on a breed and all those those genetics and all those improvements, and of course, there’s this addiction that every goat person will confess to.
I think about waiting for those babies to come every year. And goat babies are there’s a good reason that they’re all over YouTube and such.
They’re they’re so appealing, and they pretty much stay that way as adults.
So we work our local farm is mostly a pleasure farm now, we do Airbnb with a couple of farms days we have, and that keeps us busy also, but it’s a great income stream for the farm supplement a lot of the feed bills and that sort of thing.
And then working on books, which you said correctly, six nonfiction books and now I’m switching to what was originally my first passion which is trying to and I say that because I want to be humble about this, I write fiction.
And then we also are caring for elderly parents and current with all of that and that’s a wonderful thing to be a part of that certainly is a ongoing team team. Source of activity for us.
Brian: Absolutely.
What drew you to go after work in on a dairy?
Gianaclis: Well, it was a family dairy here growing up so wasn’t a commercial dairy.
But I had been dairy cattle for each leader and just always loved cows and had that typical kind of superior complex that dairy cow people have over goats. And that our youngest daughter was six or seven at the time and she wanted to get be a part of the livestock project.
I was just ready to get a cow again, got to a point in were my husband’s Marine Corps career and our property where we could have a milk animal. Our daughter was too small to handle a cow and I thought, well, maybe I should consider goats.
And so we got a couple of these Nigerian dwarfs because they’re so small that it’s easy for a child to handle and I just assumed it would be, you know, nice thing but fell in love with them.
They’re so much more interactive than a cow is and a little bit more trouble in some ways because they’re such thinkers that they’re so easy on the land and the biggest thing I like about working with them when no milking is they don’t have that long tail to smack you in the face with.
Brian: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Gianaclis: Oh and the fact that the manure isn’t floppy wet all over the place.
Brian: I grew up around cattle also so yeah, I get it. lol
Gianaclis: Dairy cattle or beef?
Brian: Mostly beef.
Gianaclis: Beef. Yeah, yeah. I still love cows that they are definitely a different, different mindset for them and they can afford to be that way when they’re so big, smaller the animal typically the more they have to think their way out of situations and bullying.
Brian: Yeah, absolutely, that’s great.
What led you to jump into kind of the public arena and becoming a public figure and doing writing and everything else?
Gianaclis: When we moved when Vern, my husband was getting ready to retire from the military. We were down in Southern California and we knew we could come back to this piece of the family land that my was left on.
My parents started by 220 acres when they were in high school here in Southern Oregon, back in the 40s. And this piece of it was going to be going to me eventually.
And it didn’t have any power on it yet and just was, it had a large cleared area and it was the early 2000s then and right about when you were starting to hear a lot about goat cheese and small farms and Creameries and I’d already been making cheese at that point and really, really loved the process.
I love processes where it’s a merger of science and art.
We were some things are under your control, some things aren’t and it’s ever changing.
So I very much enjoyed the cheesemaking and we thought about the farmstead creamery and fell into that that little romantic crevice that many people still do. Which isn’t a bad thing, but it being a such a romantic thing to do, and a way to come back to this land and be closer to our parents.
And all that was true. It was great, really loved the whole process.
It was all consuming, though.
At that point, when we decided to move back here, I’d been doing fine art for many years. And that was my focus of what I did. I did have solo shows and just loved thinking art. And I had this idea that I would still be able to do that.
It rapidly became evident that I took the time to make art, I would be taking away from work that needs to be done here at the farm. And somebody else would have to do that. I couldn’t feel comfortable with that.
Writing, nonfiction. When it became obvious that after we got started, there were many people out there that wanted that knowledge how to get started in a small scale creamery, and how could they do it and you start getting calls and emails and people wanting your time.
I thought all maybe this would be a good opportunity to try to write a book, write a book, take the time to do that it would be a resource for people, then I would learn a lot.
And it would just be something that meshed in with what we were doing. I wrote a proposal and it was picked up by Chelsea Green, which has been one of my main publishers, and I love them and what they do.
And that just became an addictive process because as with cheesemaking, it’s a process by the research, there’s a lot of growing as far as having people read and criticize and taking those criticisms to heart as like thank you for telling me that these pants make my rear end look big.
You know, you really have to want to be open.
And I gained as much as anybody from writing and every time I try to write it’s that same thing again. So it just kind of fell into that. And then we were members from the beginning of the American cheese society, co-founders of the Oregon Cheese Guild in 2005, or six when it got started. Then became more involved in, I won’t say the politics of cheese, but the bigger world of cheese.
Vern, my husband, is currently finishing up his last year as a board member of the American Cheese Society and once I stopped being a commercial cheesemaker, and I was able to be a chief judge or judge at competitions, without there being any conflict of interest.
And that’s been a wonderful, challenging, exciting and delicious thing to do.
You know, so it just kind of happened organically over that period of time. And I love that about life. Sometimes you follow one thing and if you just try to do it well, it usually leads to something else that you never would have never anticipated and got to go with it.
Brian: No, that’s a great philosophy.
How did you fall into doing speaking? Was that after writing your book? Or how did that come about?
Gianaclis: Well, I’ve always liked to teach. And I think that I was aware of that. Once I wanted to become a 4-H leader even, you don’t have to know much. And this may sound like, I don’t believe you should know should know much. But there’s always something you can share or teach to somebody just beneath you in their knowledge.
During and by sharing, you learn.
People ask you questions, and if you’re humble, you say, I don’t know, but I’m going to find out and you learn and you learn and you learn.
So I think teaching, speaking is a way to make your brain keep working. And to see the enthusiasm of others is very, few will view your own work. You know, seeing what you’re doing through others. That passion that you once felt about something, it rekindled it so it I kind of feed off of that.
I’m not a social person at all. But I do love teaching, speaking. Parties, I’m not that good unless it’s a cheese party and I’m teaching.
Brian: So did someone ask you to speak the first time or did you seek it out? How did that happen?
Gianaclis: Well, if you mean speaking at larger events that definitely coincided in my memory anyway, to the when you write a book. That’s something you really are signing on for when you write a an instructional nonfiction.
And even if you wrote fiction, you’d be expected to speak, although it’s usually in a smaller venue.
So I think if you’re not ready to sign on for that, it’s unlikely that no matter how good your idea for a book is, a publisher is going to feel like you’re not being part of a team.
So being part of the team for promoting your book involves that.
Brian: Absolutely, absolutely.
So that came along with your deal with Chelsea Green?
Gianaclis: Yes, I believe so I honestly haven’t thought about it and I don’t tend to remember or pay attention to try and remember all the things that have happened along the way.
But yeah, I was teaching before then and, you know, working as artists in residence at a school and in talking to the kids and things, but not speaking, as far as larger venues go.
Brian: Describe the type of person that was interested in the same topics that you were interested in the ones that would get involved and purchase your books and maybe you became friends with along the way, what type of person would that be?
Gianaclis: Well, there’s quite a spectrum from people now that I have six different topics or six topics that cover different areas.
You know, from people who just want to learn more about making cheese to people who are tastemakers that want to try to perfect their craft And then of course, on the business side, people who are thinking about doing this as a business. There’s definitely a lack of information that’s easy to find.
I knew that from trying to find it myself.
One of the more recent books on goat care and know how to approach a whole herd management from a holistic standpoint, which includes everything from herbal to traditional, but there I used to be a nurse.
I was a nurse first and that the LPN LVN. But when you’re a nurse, you learn to assess systems and you look at what you can interpret from the health and health symptoms present in a patient.
So you do that as a herd manager to you should be anyway, observing for changes in that homeostasis that indicates animals taking care of itself. So helping people to learn to look at their herd, that way is what that book is focused on.
And then what to do when it’s not going well, which every go owner stacks up a lot of information about that. And I definitely, always count on tapping into other people’s knowledge.
For any subject I try to write about or speak out and there’s for as much as you learn a lot goes out the other side of your brain to or isn’t accessible anyway in the moment.
That’s right thinking we got to always try to stay humble or otherwise you’re gonna get smacked upside the head by karma and the universe.
Brian: Absolutely.
What do you like best about your industry in your career as a whole?
Gianaclis: The cheese and food in general in the industry, but the small scale cheese and even some of the mid to large scale producers, it’s such a small worlds that it was, it was so embracing and still is for the most part. new people coming into it that you felt immediately part of this community.
And this is on the cheesemaking side of it.
Not that I’m mentioning right now. It was just so welcoming and so supportive and Oregon here where we are in particular, the guild is just, you know, no one is worried about competition.
There are a few that are, but for the most part, people are like, Yeah, get on board.
The more the merrier.
It’s a win win for everybody, and supportive and that’s, that’s wonderful. And then you bring in the fact that you’re talking about making something that other people love.
That’s one thing I found really gratifying compared to doing artwork, artwork you’re doing usually from yourself, it’s sharing some inner part of yourself. And that’s a very vulnerable thing to do, and isn’t always very gratifying and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But when I switch making cheese or when cheesemaking took over my life. It was so gratifying.
You know that have people try this thing and find out, you know, have their eyes light up and that they never knew goat cheese could taste like that and just super gratifying.
So that’s been been a really wonderful part of it too.
Brian: And why do you think that is, that distinction between those two worlds?
Gianaclis: Which the cheesemaking and art?
Brian: Yeah, between cheesemaking and art? Why is one more gratifying, do you think?
Gianaclis: Well, we all got to eat right and there’s really no, you know, that old saying now that quickly to someone we to be man part through their mouth and or through their stomach, that the quickest way to I think it really is true.
If people like to eat and there are very few people who don’t.
It’s a way to make a connection pretty faster than art is.
And the same way when it now that I’m going to suspect the fictions that will be more like art. As far as no matter how good of a book you write, there will be people that hate it. And they will.
But I guess that was true with the cheese a bit too you know you people who think they don’t want goats and have it stuck in their head that much less so food is an instant connection.
And this is why families gather for meals is why people are missing going to restaurants right now during the pandemic and just having that social thing centering around food.
Brian: It’s a great point is it since you bring it up, but how has COVID affected your life and in this this lifestyle that you’ve kind of chosen?
Gianaclis: Well, gosh, it’s interesting because if we had still been commercial tastemakers, it would have affected it much more greatly.
But the fact that we had already stopped it really hit us the most through the loss of Airbnb or pharmacy income. Oh yeah, yeah, cuz we shut that completely down until the first of July. And that was, it was definitely a tough period in that regard.
But, you know, another thing to the universe that also coincided I bought, all by speaking events were stopped also, classes are canceled. So that whole income stream went away also and gratifications stream if you will, was dried up.
But it coincided with our my husband’s parents, and my mother needing extreme amounts of our time is actually a wonderful time to have all that extra time if you will, to focus on something else. So it all worked out fine.
And we’ve opened up the Airbnb now with a lot of stipulations on masks and distancing and rules for contact, as well as how we take care of the space.
In between guests and now that most people are accustomed to doing those things, and it’s not new news to them, it’s going along very well.
Brian: Oh, good. Well, I met so much of that’s necessary right now.
How many guests can you accommodate at one time?
Gianaclis: We have two farmstays, but we’ve only opened one up for the season, because we felt that that was the best approach to keep the interaction between guests down.
So if we had one step that you know, wanted to be in a shared space, because there are certain parts of the barn that are shared spaces, that it wouldn’t overlap and make it anybody so awkward.
But we had an old Airstream trailer that we fixed up and three to four people can stay in that and that’s the one that’s open right now. And then the other ones a little little tiny building that we call the bunk callus that is has a justice two people capacity.
So it’s not like an inn by any means.
Brian: Oh, absolutely. Well, that’s really cool. I mean, and you have a variety that you’ve gone through just the past few years your life, it’s just..
Gianaclis: Yeah.
Brian: It’s such a great mix that’s cool.
Gianaclis: Yeah, you know, I’ve always felt even when I was young, or maybe in my late teens, I started feeling like life is really short.
And you got to get going, you know, if you’ve got something you want to do you better get started. And not wait.
You know, not dive in recklessly. But don’t keep waiting until you think you’re ready. Because if you do, you’ll be waiting forever, pretty much.
And Vern, my husband. He’s also very malleable that way. We always felt like if something’s not working well, in regard to…I’ll give you the example, being the cheese production, I still love making cheese and I miss making cheese commercially and selling it and then seeing people eat it, but it was not the right time to continue it.
We’d lost, or not lost, but our our children, adult children and moved away. And so that element of help went away.
And I was doing more and more traveling for the books and I really enjoyed that.
Then physically just getting older faster than you thought, were that sort of physical work of keeping up with everything help the number of goats I needed to manage.
Then I was the main cheese maker, also. The main goat care and the main cheese maker. It just becomes too much.
So I know let’s sit down and we’ve talked about what in our life couldn’t give what doing are we not ready to give up?
But what could we do without and probably be okay and then move forward from there. I miss making art, you know, I miss riding horses. I’m of that age where I don’t want to get broken.
So as much as I missed them, it would be really silly to start that up again. That’s how it is.
I think we’re kind of meant to enjoy things and parts of life, whether it’s when our children are really little, and then remember it and realize that you can’t have and do everything at once. That’s the way it goes.
Brian: No, that’s a great point.
So if we want to talk in like a year, let’s get you back on the show or something like that.
We look back over the last 12 months, oh boy, and just looked at where you’ve been what you’ve done.
What would you say would have had to have happen for you to feel happy about what you’ve accomplished?
Gianaclis: Well see now if I had an answer for that, I would be breaking my own philosophy, wouldn’t I?
Because I think, you know, if I’m really gonna follow what I said, it’s that I don’t know. I’m just trying to make good decisions now.
And I could fantasize you want my fantasy version?
Brian: Sure, let’s hear it.
Gianaclis: Okay, my fantasy version is that an agent decided my manuscript for this novel is just fantastic. And she’s going to shop it around and let’s see, our parents are all stable, and we’ve bought an RV. And we’re traveling to places and beautiful parks in the US that I’ve never seen. There you go.
Brian: Oh, that’s good.
Gianaclis: Oh and somebody moved into the farm to care for the goats because I don’t want to give them up either.
Brian: So how many goats do you have?
Gianaclis: We’re down, I’m down to milking only about seven. And then there are a number of goats and retired goats. So I think it’s only around 20 or so now, like at the peak, I milked 40, because you need to need a decent amount of milk to to make cheese and make it fairly efficiently.
So that, you know, you’re probably trying to get in the picture and because we live off the power grid, managing that system means that leaving this place if we leave for a few days.
Somebody’s got to be here to understand how to read all that and how to make sure that it seems cared for properly. We really have tied ourselves down.
And thank goodness, we really love this piece of land and love our place. But it does make that little fantasy I just shared a little bit implausible.
Brian: Sure, sure.
So what advice would you have for other people that are adventure seekers like you or I don’t know. how would you define yourself? First off, what would you call yourself?
Gianaclis: I don’t know. Farm girl, I guess. Yeah.
Brian: I think that’s a common thing that we see with both guests we’ve had on the show and yeah, listen, that they don’t really they do so many different things and go in so many different directions. They couldn’t just label themselves with one thing.
Gianaclis: Yeah, and if you are running a farm or a small piece of property, you do have to be a jack of all trades and to be able to fix things and he grew up like I did without money as a resource. You learn to make your brain your resource and you learn.
When we were first starting to do our own construction and plumbing and electrical. I thought I had to hire somebody. And then I realized, well, I can’t afford that. Hmm.
Do you think maybe I could learn it. And that was even in the days before YouTube that you go buy a couple books. And you read and you pay attention and you realize, well, that’s how everybody gets to be a master of something, they just study and practice.
So why not do that on your own stuff, and it’s definitely been, and that’s something we also love to do. We love to remodel houses, and it’s just so many things to do.
I feel very blessed and lucky that there are those things to do and that you know, despite how crazy the world is right now and has been off and on since we moved out of the trees and into the rest of the continent.
You know, there’s also lots of things to always be grateful for, and to try to focus on as positive.
Brian: That’s great. Yeah, absolutely.
Are there any other questions by then that that you’d like to answer?
Gianaclis: Oh, I don’t think so. I slipped up things about being off the power grid in there. And, and that’s something to people. Yeah, I guess I’ll speak a little bit about that for a second that for people who aren’t off the grid, that also sounds very romantic.
And I think it’s something we try to with our guests and anybody that comes to look at our system, ground people in the fact that first if you’re trying to be green for the planet sake, getting renewable energy and being grid tie is better for the planet.
So don’t think that we’re these wonderful examples of how everybody should be in that regard. But it also is a it’s another job.
Living like this, and it’s one we’ve adapted to and really appreciate as far as you don’t have a credit card for power, you only have a bank account and that bank account is filled by the sun and micro hydro we had and then in the worst cases a generator.
You can’t stand it just by plugging in. You know, you’ve got to think and I like that way of living for the most part.
But then again, I’d love to have a hot tub so that’s another fantasy is to live somewhere where we can, we can just plug in. So be conscientious that it’s easy to spend your life as a role model for how everybody should do it. But that’s not true.
And that’s not honest.
And I want people to understand that too, that they shouldn’t avoid doing something because it sounds hard, but they also should boot camps approach it from either side, the romantic side or that’s going to be too hard. somewhere in the middle is is the truth.
Brian: Absolutely. That’s great.
What can a listener do that wants to be able to follow your exploits online or be able to find some of your books or anything else?
Gianaclis: Yes, well we fully a farm has a website, pholiafarm.com. I have a website slash blog, which is my name GianaclisCaldwell.com.
Then we have the Facebook pages for both myself and the farm.
And I do my best to keep up on Instagram. But it’s for myself and for the farm so they’re all those three people can find email links from that and and message as the books of course are on all the usual online sites.
And through the publishers and I’m sure in a few stores to immigration one is a yogurt and keeper making book published by Storey which is probably will be the most visually appealing of the six.
So thanks to Storey’s, great work. It’s called, Homemade Yogurt and Keefer.
So, if you’re looking for some probiotics, including those in your life, hopefully that book will help.
Brian: That’s fabulous.
And what if someone would like to would like to come and stay on your farm at Airbnb?
How would they look that up?
Gianaclis: Yes, they can certainly look on Airbnb. And we’ve been doing this for long enough now I think about nine years that our listing comes up pretty, pretty high on the rankings.
So it should show up but it’s are also links on our on the Phila Farm website (philafarm.com).
So you can you can take a look at them there and if you can’t find it on Airbnb, we love having guests here. It’s been another one of those things where, as I said earlier, you start seeing what you’re doing to other people’s eyes.
So you can share a bit of that spark with somebody else and have them fall in love with goats or the fresh air and the beautiful stars, learn a little bit about the power consumption.
So when they leave, maybe they think more about it.
It’s nice for us, makes us feel good about what we’re doing.
And the income is helpful as well.
Brian: That’s awesome. Thanks so much for being on the show. Gianaclis.
Gianaclis: Yeah Brian, thank you.
Brian: Thank you for being on The Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Was a really cool conversation with Giannaclis. I really had a good time. She reminds me of a quote that a friend of mine always uses a line from Helen Keller, which says, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
And it seems that’s Gianaclis’s life, it’s just a constant adventure. She’s just going from one concept to the other. And, the way she talks about, it seems like no big deal. But if you actually think about all these different steps, and all these things that she’s done, she’s done so many things that people go their whole life without ever doing.
But those things that people are always interested in doing. Like she said, there’s romance behind so many of these ideas, when you get down into them, they tend to get a little bit dirty and a little bit messy.
But at least she went out and did them. It’s really cool.
There’s a couple things that she said that I want to point out.
One is that food is an entryway. That it’s quicker to get to a person’s basically to get to a person’s desires than through art, getting through via the stomach, you know, and reaching them that way. That was very interesting.
I’ve never quite heard it put that way, though. I’ve known a lot of artists that we’re also into the culinary arts. That was interesting.
I like her perspective of being a creative person in kind of an entrepreneurial role. And doing these projects over and over.
Each one is like a little art project for her. And it’s very cool to think about it in those in those ways.
I also like that she hasn’t held herself to labels, you know, she’s not just a cheesemaker, or a dairy person, or a, an Airbnb person. You know, she’s, she’s done it all, and continues to do it all. And just, you never know where the circumstances are going to lead you.
She’s very much of a free spirit and a very cool person to talk to and I think a really great addition to our conversations here on Off the Grid Biz Podcast.