Tag: homesteading

Bevin Cohen: Small House Farm | The Artisan Herbalist

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Bevin Cohen of Small House Farm
Bevin Cohen of Small House Farm

 

The Artisan Herbalist, by Bevin Cohen
The Artisan Herbalist, by Bevin Cohen

Bevin Cohen is an author, herbalist, seed saver and owner of Small House Farm in Michigan.

Join us as we discuss topics like –

* why homesteading is a life long obsession

* The joy Bevin gets from sharing his knowledge with others

*Bevin’s latest book The Artisan Herbalist

Grab a copy of his latest book & other fine products today – SmallHouseFarm.com

 

  • 1:53 Small House Farm: We Believe in a Simple, Small, Intentional Life
  • 2:48 What Brought Me Into Homesteading: A Life Long Obsession
  • 4:03 From Music Festivals to the Beginning of Small House Farm
  • 5:49 Educational Products to Help You Grow
  • 7:09 Bevin’s Latest Book: The Artisan Herbalist
  • 8:11 From Our Seeds & Their Keepers
  • 9:11 Story Telling & Becoming an Author
  • 12:28 How Book Writing & Speaking Opens Doors for You & Help Others at the Same Time
  • 15:18 Teaching at Events like Mother Earth News Fair
  • 17:43 Gardening & The Power of Curiosity
  • 19:26 Small House Farms Top Sellers
        • Herbal Wellness – Witch Hazel
        • Seeds – Pineapple Ground Cherry’s
        • Books – The Artisan Herbalist
        • Workshop Classes – Seed Saving
  • 21:29 The Joy of Meeting New People at Classes and Workshop Events
  • 23:34 New Book Coming Out in February 2021 with New Society Publishers
            • The Complete Guide to Seed & Nut Oils
  • 25:45 The Secret to Success: Have Fun!
  • 27:15 Where to Contact Bevin and pickup his latest book, The Artisan Herbalist

Transcription

Bevin: I think that with everything in life as business owners or wherever we’re at when we put ourselves out there, challenge ourselves to try something new.

And it’s just that little bit of success can boost that confidence enough to be like, Okay, let’s try that again. Let’s push forward on this, let’s see where we can take this thing. Even if it doesn’t turn out we’ve tried something new, right and we’ve grown as a person because of that.

But nine times out of 10 it is gonna work out and that’s the beauty of pushing your limits, is we can find that we’re capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit.

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.

If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: Bevan Cohen is an author, herbalist, seed saver, and owner of Small House Farm in Michigan. He offers workshops and lectures nationwide on the benefits of living closer to the land through seeds, herbs, and locally grown food.

Bevin is a freelance writer and videographer whose work has appeared in numerous publications including Mother Earth News, Hobby Farms, Grit magazine, and the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company catalog.

He’s the author of, Saving Our Seeds, and The Artisan Herbalist.

You can learn more about Bevin’s work at www.SmallHouseFarm.com

Bevin Cohen, welcome to The Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast.

Bevin: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian: Great having you here.

Can you give us a little bit more about what it is that you do and how you got to this point in your life?

Bevin: Sure.

So my wife and I own a small homestead business we call Small House Farm, which is more based on the philosophy of living as opposed to the size of our building really, you know, a small house, we believe in simple, small, intentional life.

We grow a majority of our own food here we grow seed crops that we offer commercially. We’ve grown forage a number of herbs that we then craft into a full line of beauty, wellness, and cosmetic products that we also offer via our website.

In my spare time, I guess, I split wood to keep the house warm in the winter, and I do a lot of writing. We’ve published four books in the past four years, and we’ve got another one coming down the pipe and a little bit as well.

So I just like to stay busy. I don’t do well, just sitting around. We’ve always got something exciting going on here at Small House Farm.

Brian: What brought you into this lifestyle of homesteading and then beyond that, actually building a business out of it and teaching people and everything else?

Bevin: Well, you know, how does anybody get anywhere really, I found that the best thing I could do with my life is just getting out of my own way. I’ve been fascinated with plants ever since I was a little boy. I lived with my grandmother in an apartment on the edge of town and we were lucky enough to be right up against what was at the time, hundreds of acres of woods.

Now it’s been developed into housing and that sort of thing. But back then it was endless woods where young guys, we could just run out there and just play all day long.

So I started with this early age, spending so much time out in the woods, learning about the plants around me. And it became a lifelong obsession, that’s really kind of snowballed out of control, very organically, small houses came to me, what we offer commercially is just simply the way that we live.

We decided to share that with the people around us and people really responded well to it. We started offering some educational programs, the co-op in town, health and wellness store not far from here.

People really took to what we were offering and it just kind of took on a life of its own.

Somehow, here we are and the rest is history, I suppose.

Brian: Yeah.

Had you ever owned any other type of business before or is this something that you jumped into naturally?

Bevin: Well, that’s kind of funny. What I could consider a lifetime ago, I used to organize a small Music Festival, very different than what I do now. But there were a lot of overlapping similarities.

We did what we could to give back to the community. All the funds that we would generate through this event, we always donated to a different charity, big brothers and big sisters was one of our big charities that we donated to.

We got to work with artists, creative types, we got to see people that live a slightly different lifestyle than that nine to five job, you know, artists and musicians and those types of folks, we’re kind of coming at the world from a different angle.

That was always inspirational to see that there’s so much more than this world has to offer that we may not realize if we’re just focused on that daily grind, whatever.

The world has everything that we need right at our fingertips, but we’re usually moving so fast that we don’t even have the opportunity to notice it.

Working at the festival with these artists, I came to realize that if I did slow down and look around me, everything I had was already waiting for me there. And that was in a way the impetus for Small House Farm, where we decided, we’d move out to the country, we bought this property. And we thought, let’s try to do something a little more intentional, a little more focused on ourselves and our family.

We have two children now, but at the time, you know, Elijah, my oldest, was just a little baby. And we thought, wouldn’t this just be nice to think about life in a much smaller scale than we had before?

And well, small house, I guess, here we are.

Brian: It’s fabulous.

How long has that journey been, when did you first move out there?

Bevin: I want to say that we’ve been on this property for we’re going on our eighth year.

Brian: Awesome. Wow, that’s great.

You started out as almost like an educational service you had started putting out there. How did that grow into the other pieces to where you have your product?

You have books or everything else, how did that come along?

Bevin: Well, the books were a natural step from the educational process.

The books that we offer, help people learn to do some of the things that we’re doing here out at the fire, you know, the artists an herbalist is going to teach folks how to grow and forage all these different herbs, and then craft them into this full line of love his products very similar to what you can buy from us, certainly.

But at the end of the day, I like to put myself out of business, I would like other folks to be learning how to do all these things on their own. That’s very important to me.

My other book, Saving Our Seeds is a guide to teach you how to grow and gather and collect seeds from 43 different species of crops.

While I do sell seeds from my farm, I think the world would be in a better place if folks just learn how to do these things on their own. So the writing was a natural segue from the teaching, offering the products, it’s just kind of a thing that we just do.

Because people love the things that we offer, we didn’t really mean to get into the business of selling herbal wellness products, that was never really my goal. It just became a thing where so many folks kept asking for it.

So we started going to the farmers market to offer it and there was such a demand for what we offered, we thought well until I can get everybody making their own, I suppose we could provide them with some quality products in the meantime.

Brian: It’s such a cool dichotomy there and how that all fits together.

I was looking through your latest book, Artisan Herbalist and how you lay it all out there you show exactly how a person couldn’t go about doing this themselves. And it’s really great that you can have the final product, or here’s a way for you to do it yourself, which is what you’re all about. It’s what you’re promoting with the homesteading lifestyle. So that’s fabulous.

Bevin: It is all about doing it yourself. There are so many challenges that we face when we decide to start taking these steps in this different lifestyle. And one of them that I find with people, it’s a very common challenge that people seem to have is a lack of time where everybody’s very, very busy.

So as we find the time to maybe alter our lifestyles, even just small baby steps here, they’re where we work to free up that time to learn to do these things on our own.

In the meantime, we still want to have these high-quality, natural products. And you know, Small House Farm kind of fills in that gap.

Brian: Fabulous.

Saving Our Seeds. That was your first book.

Bevin: No, that was my second book.

Brian: Okay, what was your first book?

Bevin: My first book is called, From Our Seeds and Their Keepers: A Collection of Stories. It was out of all the books, it’s actually my favorite just because it was so much fun to write.

It’s as the title says, it’s a collection of stories.

As I’ve traveled about the country, I’ve met gardeners and seed savers, homesteaders, and preppers all these amazing different people. And they all have these fascinating stories to share and these wonderful seeds that they’ve also shared with me.

All of these seeds have a story in them as well.

So I realized along the way, that while it’s fun to sit around and tell these stories, right snapping beans or having a beverage and sharing stories with each other is wonderful stuff. But there’s going to come a time where maybe these stories are forgotten.

Maybe we’re not going to be there to tell the story anymore and too heavy responsibility.

But I kind of picked that up and I said I need to start writing these things down. These stories need to be documented in some way. So we collected these seed stories, as well as the stories of the people that keep the seeds.

They tried to get them all into one place and that is what ended up becoming my first book.

Brian: Now was that on your own impetus that you stepped out to write a book or did someone push you into it or how’d that occur?

Bevin: Well, the story starts with a lady by the name of Sylvia, an older lady that I met down in Kentucky.

Sylvia had this corn story that she was telling me about how her family had grown this corn. The grandfather had grown this corn had been passed down through the generations and we’re trying to trace this history back and fires because I sitting there and talking on the phone and one of the conversations Sylvie says to me, Bevin, I’m so thankful that you’re interested in hearing the stories that I have to tell because my children have already heard them.

They don’t want to hear about it, other people aren’t as interested in corn as you are. I don’t have other people to tell this story to.

These stories that Sylvia was telling me, it was more than just the corn. She would talk about how her father would come home at night and work in the gardens or how they would take their harvest to the mill to have it turned into cornmeal. She started telling me stories about when she was a young girl, when she would get sick, how her mother would go out into the woods, to gather plants to make the medicine from this little corn seed.

So many things came out of this story.

And I realized that if I didn’t write down everything that Sylvia was saying, there was going to be a day that Sophia wasn’t going to be there to tell the story anymore.

That’s all I needed, I realized the significance of the moment that I was in and we started writing the book. It just really, like everything else kind of took on a life of its own. And it manifested itself into, I think it’s just a wonderful collection of tales, is still probably to this day my most popular book.

I just had a gentleman call me yesterday, a guy in San Diego, who had bought the book was fascinated with the stories and wanted to call me and talked about some squash, you know, so the story continues to move, we tell the story.

But then the story has continued to have more chapters added to it.

Brian: That’s beautiful because there are so many people that have those stories that they’re wanting to tell, they have something that they want to get out there.

We’ve got business owners that are listening that want to get down write their first book. Where did you go from there, did you self-publish it, did you find a publisher, how did that happen?

Bevin: The first book was self-published, we did that ourselves, we independently published it here at Small House Farm. And it was really, boy what a learning curve.

That was a whole other thing.

It’s one thing to write a book, it’s another thing to publish and market a book. Right?

That’s a whole different skill set. But you know, it was fun.

At the same time that it was challenging. It was really a process that I enjoyed participating in, I would recommend it to anybody, if you’ve got a story that you think is worth telling, write it down, because you believe in that story. Other people are gonna believe in it, too.

We self-published it, and we put it out there. And just because of the nature of what I do for work, I do a lot of traveling to teach about gardening all over the place, I was able to bring the book with me.

It worked out very well having that book by my side, as I travel, people were very interested.

But publishers kind of picked up that idea to so now the books that we’re putting together, like The Artisan Herbalist, New Society Publishers contacted us, and they wanted us to write this book.

You got to start small and everything grows, just like with any small business. That’s how it is, as long as you believe in what you’re doing and you continue to do that, good things will come from it.

Brian: How would you describe the benefits that you’ve gotten?

You’ve put out three books, obviously, there are benefits tied to it, how would you quantify that?

Bevin: Oh, in so many ways, it is just it opens the doors to new conversations with people. I’ve gotten to meet so many interesting folks that when I go somewhere to teach, I inevitably always learn every time I’m on the road, you know, so it’s really enriched every aspect of what I do.

Being able to take my ideas and find a way to put them into words that other people can appreciate, it’s helped me fine-tune my own thought processes.

What we do here at the farm, it’s really helped me to tweak our operation by understanding it a little bit more, knowing that I’m doing something that is helping other people improve what they’ve already got going on in their life.

That’s awesome. It’s empowering to know that I’m having an impact on other people, just like I mentioned, the gentleman that just called, he was so excited to talk to me, he was so inspired by the book, even just reading a couple of chapters of it, he got a hold of me says you’ve changed the way that I’m looking at things, you’ve changed my perspective on what we’re doing.

And that’s powerful stuff to know, the impact that we can have every time we interact with a customer or client, or anybody in the public. We’re planting seeds, if you will. And those seeds are going to grow into beautiful things.

Brian: That’s really great.

Commercial Break: Okay, let’s take a break from that conversation.

I wanted to bring up a question for you, during these crazy times, do you feel like your business is indestructible? Most people don’t?

And if not, the real question is why? And what can you do to make it as indestructible as possible?

Well, that’s the basis of my new book, nine ways to Amazon proof your business. Let me talk about what we discuss in the first chapter, determine focus. So one of the main ways that you can Amazon proof your business is by determining the focus of your business. And the real problem isn’t that you’re not doing enough, the real problem is, is that you may be doing too many things in too many places.

So one of the things I suggest is decide whether your focus is going to be acquisition, ascension, or monetization. And I go into the details of what that means in this chapter. It’s really the only three ways that you can grow your business. And if you just do that one step of determining focus, you can have a huge change in your entire business. But I also have eight other ways to Amazon proof your business, basically the idea of making it competition proof to even someone as big as amazon.com.

So if you’d like to get your hands on a free copy of my book, go to AmazonProofBook.com sign up and you will get a free copy and get the chance to purchase a physical copy of it for a special price. And now let’s get back to our show.

Brian: And you’ve connected with all these great organizations and magazines, publishers out there, Mother Earth News and so forth.

I saw that you’ve put classes on for them, and courses. That’s kind of how you were explaining how you started out doing that?

Was that a natural fit for you, have you always kind of consider yourself a teacher? Or was it just being in the music festival industry that you’re kind of outgoing and used to kind of showing people the way?

Bevin: Well, I think that’s what it is, at the music festival, I would go out and I’d like to introduce the bands and stuff. And you know, you go out on a stage and there are 5,000 people out there, you can’t have any stage fright, you get used to public speaking very quickly when you’re in that type of a situation.

I think it made me very comfortable getting in front of groups of people to talk right, I was able to overcome that very quickly. As far as the teaching goes, it just kind of fell into my lap, the first couple of opportunities that I had to go and teach something.

There’s a local community college not far from here. They had a small-scale urban farm program that they were offering. And they were hiring local farmers to come and teach small classes, they’d asked me to come and talk.

So I went to this thing, and I prepped for it, you know, I really prepared for this thing, I felt like I was a little in over my head on what I was doing going to this college to talk to these folks. So I really put a lot of effort into preparing this, you know, get this presentation ready.

I went there, and it was a smashing success. Everybody seemed to really respond well to and I had a lady come up to me. And she asked, Did you go to school to learn about teaching? Or you know, do you have a teaching background?

No, absolutely not. I’m a gardener, and I’m farming over here.

She says, well, the way that you presented the information, it was very well-spoken, very impressive, you’re a natural, you may have found your color.

And I thought oh, you know, that’s laying it out heavy lady, but I appreciate it.

But I thought, you know, it kind of gave me that boost of confidence that I needed to try it again. Let’s go out there and do this one more time. And I think that with everything in life, as business owners, or wherever we’re at when we put ourselves out there challenge ourselves to try something new. And it’s just that little bit of success can boost that confidence enough to be like, Okay, let’s try that, again. Let’s push forward on this, let’s see where we can take this thing.

Even if it doesn’t turn out, we’ve tried something new, right?

And we’ve grown as a person because of that.

But nine times out of 10 it is gonna work out. And that’s the beauty of pushing your limits is we can find that we’re capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for.

Brian: Awesome.

Yeah, that’s really great.

Have you noticed characteristics or a certain mindset of people that get the most out of your books and courses and then people that become customers?

Are they newbies to the homesteading lifestyle, or have they people that have been around for a while?

Is there anything common within the people that you’ve met?

Bevin: I think you know, the commonality would be curiosity, people that are interested in trying something new. Some folks that I meet, certainly a great number of the people that I’ve met have been new gardeners, new seed savers, new to working with herbs, whatever it may be, and they’re excited about trying something new.

But I’ve worked with a lot of like, very experienced homesteaders very experienced folks in the industry that have come back and said, You’re coming at this with a different perspective, you’re approaching this subject from a different angle than what I’m used to. And I appreciate that because it helps us.

It’s so easy to fall into a bubble in our thinking. If we stay in the same group of people, and we keep doing the same things, it’s very easy to fall into a set pattern of doing stuff.

But when somebody can interject with this different perspective, this different point of view, helps us see what we’ve been doing in a different way.

So I’ve certainly had some old-school homesteaders that appreciate the angle that we approach them from. I would say that, since the pandemic has happened, that has blown the doors, on trying to choose the demographic for the folks that are in the home setting.

I mean, it seems to be anybody and everybody from all walks of life in some way or another even if their apartment, wants to grow something on their balcony. If they live in a city and they want to forage at the park, whatever it might be.

People from all walks of life are suddenly realizing that there’s a potential to this simpler lifestyle to come back to mother nature, that there’s something special in this moment that we’re in. It’s challenging is that maybe, certainly, it’s full of opportunities.

Brian: What would you say is the most popular service or course or product that you guys provide at Small House Farm, is there one that sticks out that people go bananas over the most?

Bevin: What we do is so diverse, we offer so many different things that it’s kind of hard to pick one so we’re going to break this answer down into subcategories and give us the best sellers in each category, right?

As far as say, the herbal wellness products that we offer via our website number one, hands down is the Witch Hazel that we make. We make a witch hazel, topical astringent from which has like a native shrub that grows out in the woods here that we gather and process from the bark.

And it is hands down the most popular product that we make. It’s unbelievable how people respond to that.

If we’re going to talk about the seeds that we sell this year, the number one selling seeds, for some reason are pineapple brown cherries.

And I can’t put my finger on why that is. It’s pretty common.

You can buy pineapple brown cherry’s from a number of seed sources. It’s not really unique that we offer it, but for some reason, and I mean, by a long shot, it’s the most popular scene that we’ve been selling this year.

It’s easy to grow. It’s very delicious.

I guess we have a nice photo of it on our website. I’m not sure what the appeal is, but boy, it’s really taken off. That one’s been really popular.

As far as books go, of course, The Artisan Herbalist is the number one seller it’s been moving like hotcakes. We’ve just been thrilled with how well-received is been.

We were Amazon’s number one bestseller for a while. But that’s selling new release when it came out. People have really been enjoying the book for sure.

As far as workshops that we offer. Seed saving has been a big one, you know, we do a number of seed saving workshops, people have really been coming back to if they’ve gardened in the past, they want to learn how to save seeds.

But even if they’re new to gardening, they realize the significance of learning how to save their own garden seeds. And that’s a class that I teach almost year-round, it seems like.

Brian: Overall, what would you say you like most about your business and your industry as a whole?

Bevin: I like meeting people, I like spending time with folks. I like to sit down and chat and everybody comes to conversation with them such a different place, different backgrounds, different histories, different religions, different politics, all these different things.

But when we come together, we’re not thinking about any of that we’re thinking about what we have in common, you know, and that’s pretty powerful stuff and I really do enjoy that.

And of everything that we do, that’s always the highlight is just all these wonderful people that I get to meet.

But also sometimes I’ll be out in the woods gathering plants. And I realized that, man, that’s my day at work right here is sitting out in the woods with my kids. And that’s pretty groovy too.

Brian: That’s awesome. On the other hand, if you can change one thing about your business or industry, what would it be?

Bevin: Yeah, that’s such a good question. And I don’t know if I have a good answer for you really, you know, I’ve tried to think about that.

One thing that I have the challenges us here at Small House Farm, is the seasons.

In the wintertime, it’s very difficult for us to do much of anything, because we’re not growing without harvesting. Sometimes travel can even be limited. But now, there’s something positive to be said about the natural cycle of the seasons. Even from a gardening standpoint, that cold, cold winter is really going to help keep the bug populations down the insect populations.

There are pluses to that as well, so I couldn’t choose that.

So I thought, well, what about the wacky weather that we have? That can be very challenging out here on the farm, when I’ve got all my ducks in a row here counting on the seed harvest to get me through and the gardens flooded?

That’s certainly a challenge too.

But at the same time, that’s kind of part of the fun of it all, are these unexpected challenges that we have to learn to overcome.

So if I could change one thing about my business, there’s nothing I would change. I have no answer for you Brian, I love it all.

Brian: That’s a great answer.

If we were to talk again, a year from now if we had you back on the show, what would you say would have had to have happened over the last 12 months for you to feel happy with your progress both professionally and personally?

Bevin: Well, I’ve got a new book coming out next year. This is, you’re gonna hear it here first folks, this is the worldwide announcement, I suppose.

I’ve got a new book coming out from New Society Publishers, February of 22.

The Complete Guide to Seed & Nut Oils.

It’s all about growing and forging seeds and nuts specifically for oil extraction. That’s another thing that we do at Small House Farm, we extract seed into oil, we use it as ingredients and our wellness products, as well as offer, you know, just the oil for culinary purposes as well.

And so for me to be super satisfied, 12 months from now, I want that book to come out as a smashing success. I want people to get their hands on it and really, really enjoy and make use of it. That’s the thing. It’s fun to read a book and enjoy it. But I want people to use these books to take this knowledge and make the world a better place.

Brian: What would you say are the obstacles standing in your way of getting there?

Bevin: Right now the greatest obstacle that I have is that most places have had to close down. And we don’t know if they’re going to be able to stay open. That’s kind of where I’m at, right?

So this is kind of a tricky place to even have an opinion in this world right now, what we want to say about how that works, but regardless, we all have different approaches to what we think the solution may be and we may not agree with each others solutions.

But we all have the same end goal. We all want the world to get back to where it once was, so we can all spend time together in person again, right?

But you asked me what my favorite thing about the business was, and my favorite thing is spending time with people. And for all of 2020, I wasn’t even allowed to, you know, we did a lot of virtual stuff and I guess that’s very nice.

We should be blessed that we have this opportunity to meet this virtual wonderland, certainly. But is that the stage during a meal with somebody and shake hands with people.

So for me, the greatest challenge that I have is the challenge that the whole world is facing, it’s possibly the greatest challenge that we’re all facing, as people, as business owners over we want to look at things. That is our greatest challenge, isn’t it?

Brian: Yeah, absolutely.

You’ve been on this journey for eight years on this particular half of it, this Small House Farm journey.

What advice would you have blanket advice out there for other business owners that want to take their passion and turn it into something that can make a difference, but it’s also sustainable?

Bevin: Yeah, to make sure you’re having fun, you know, and that might seem cliche, I suppose. But that’s what it is.

Obviously, you got to think about the bottom line and you got to think about marketing and you got to think about all these different things. And that certainly comes into play.

But none of that matters if you aren’t enjoying what you’re doing.

It’s all about pleasure, right?

We’re lucky if we get to hang out on this planet, 60, 70 years, that’s all you get, right? And then you’re done.

You want to enjoy it. You want to enjoy what you’re doing, if you believe in what you’re doing as a small business owner if you truly enjoy that, and maybe it’s not even considered work, even it is more challenging times.

That passion, that pleasure that you have, your customers will pick up on that. They’ll feed from that.

You’ll be able to bring that pleasure and translate into something that they’re going to want to exchange for Federal Reserve Notes, I suppose.

But at the end of the day, all that matters is that you enjoy what you’re doing and everyone else enjoys what they’re doing. We can find a way to kind of overlap that pleasure.

Brian: Fabulous. Yeah, that’s, that’s great. Thanks, Bevin.

I think you have a positive perspective but you also keep things nice and light. I really appreciate that. Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you’d like to answer?

Bevin: Where can people get a copy of my new book The Artisan Herbalist? h

Brian: There we go.

Bevin: And if anybody’s interested in that they can get copies via my website, SmallHouseFarm.com. It’s also available on Bookshop, Amazon and wherever books are sold.

Brian: Awesome. Also, where could listeners who are interested in everything else that you talked about, where can they find out more about you and Small House Farm?

Bevin: So the website definitely the central hub for all things Small House Farm, which is again, SmallHouseFarm.com.

But folks can also connect with us via our Instagram, or Facebook page, which is also Small House Farm on our YouTube channel. For folks that are visual learners, we have a YouTube channel, you can find also under Small House Farm, where you can spend time with us out in the gardens or foraging making maple syrup.

Any of the adventures that happen here at the homestead are going to find their way to YouTube. And that’s a great community for us to connect to that as well.

Brian: This has been a great talk I can’t wait to see more from you. I can’t wait to see this new book coming out and be able to look over your other stuff coming out.

Thanks so much for being on The Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast.

Bevin: Thank you so much for having me, what fun.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Bevin was a lot of fun to chat with. He has a lot of great ideas, and just his whole energy about him was just fun to be around and inspiring.

I think I’d say that the most about this conversation was very inspiring in terms of if you know you’re doing things right, if you can’t come up with a single thing that you’d like to change about your business, and the industry that you’re working in, it’s a good thing.

It just seems like he’s in a really great place and moving in a really great direction.

I want to point out something that you might be able to use in your business, two major things.

First thing, the teaching factor that Bevin has built into his business from the very beginning. It started out as a process of teaching and most of us don’t start businesses that way.

Most of us start businesses from a different direction and then we grow into a teaching factor. We eventually may write a book or we eventually may put on a course or speak at an event regarding what it is that we do and train other people how to do it.

But he went the other way around where he began teaching. And then that grew into a product source and a website and all these other things.

I think it’s a huge factor in how happy he’s been in building his business.

That comes to the second point.

What he mentioned at the very end about having a good time is so imperative to your business, because if you aren’t having a good time, nothing else seems to matter.

It’s not that it’s the most important thing, it is a factor that is necessary for doing the most important things in your business. If you want to get a message out there, if you want to get a product out, there is a service out there.

You have to be having fun in order to sustain that business growth had to handle the ups and the downs, the goods and the bads that come along with running a business.

Those factors, I think really make a big difference and it’s something we can all learn from.

Also looking at how he structured his books, and how he structures his courses and workshops that you could find online.

Be sure and check that out because I think everybody can learn a lot from Bevin Cohen.

I really appreciate having him on the show.

Outro: Join us again on the next Off The Grid Biz Podcast brought to you by the team at BrianJPombo.com, helping successful but overworked entrepreneurs, transform their companies into dream assets.

That’s BrianJPombo.com.

If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on The Off The Grid Biz Podcast, offthegridbiz.com/contact.

Those who appear on the show do not necessarily endorse my beliefs, suggestions, or advice or any of the services provided by our sponsor.

Our theme music is Cold Sun by Dell. Our executive producer and head researcher is Sean E Douglas.

I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

Lucinda Bailey – Texas Ready

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Lucinda Bailey
Lucinda Bailey

Texas Ready

Lucinda Bailey, (aka, The Seed Lady) is a Master Gardener and Certified Crop Advisor specializing in the cultivation of heirloom vegetables from seed.

Join us as we talk about how “old-time pioneer skills” are quickly becoming the hot new desire for many Patriots in our changing economy.

From the value of saving seeds to teaching Mittleider gardening, Lucinda was a joy to chat with and we know you’ll be blown away the wealth of information she has to share.

It’s easy to see she has a passion for the work she does.

Head over to Texas Ready & pickup a Liberty Seed Bank today! – https://texasready.net/

Texas Ready - Liberty Seed Banks
Texas Ready – Liberty Seed Banks

1:51 Beginning of Texas Ready: Taking Back The Reins of Food Production

3:05 Why This Business Gives Me A Personal Connection to My Customers and Community

3:44 Perfecting Our Message – By Going to Gun Shows

      • Building Relationships by Putting on Classes at our Local Community Center
      • Why Quail Is An Ideal Option to Raise for Practical Preparedness and Homesteading

7:21 Heirloom Seed Shortages

9:08 We’ve Seen a Huge Influx In People Wanting to Grow Gardens and Be Better Prepared

10:33 Ideal Customers: Family Oriented and Preparedness Minded

11:33 Top Selling Products: Liberty Seed Banks (Ammo Cans)

12:30 Lucinda’s 3-Skill Sets that Revolve Around Gardening

13:38 Knowledge Is Power: Giving Confidence to Patriots

18:55 The Inside Baseball of the Seed Industry

      • Just How Long Do Seeds Really Last?

22:12 Quality Food Production: The Mittleider Garden Course

24:49 10 Week Hands-On Class: Teaching Family Homesteading Skills

27:07 Follow Your Dreams: Work With a Standard of Excellence and Integrity

29:10 Where to Find out More About Texas Ready (https://texasready.net/)

Transcription

Lucinda: I think we’re moving in that direction. As a society, I think that we’re going to see the importance of networking, and connection, and of helping our neighbors. I’m seeing that happen.

And that breaks down all the barriers, whatever political party, whatever, religious institution, you come from whatever color you are, we are members of the human race.

That’s our first and only group that we need to be.

Intro to show: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family, you want to leave this world better off and you found it and you consider independence, a sacred thing. You may be a prepper, a gardener a homesteader, a survivalist, a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman. This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self reliance, for those living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: Lucinda Bailey, aka “The Seed Lady” is a master gardener and certified crop advisor, specializing in the cultivation of heirloom vegetables from seed.

Her interest began as a teenager in Michigan, where she grew posts in her backyard to sell to neighbors. She now spends her time traveling the country attending shows and presenting seminars on the Mittleider gardening and food production.

In addition, Lucinda also enjoys playing the piano, tending to her livestock and working with Texas Ready test gardens.

Lucinda Bailey, welcome to The Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast.

Lucinda: Oh, this is such a privilege. It’s good to connect with other fellow patriots and people that are like-minded and concerned about where our country is.

Brian: Absolutely.

So why don’t you let us know a little bit about what it is that you do and how you ended up here?

Lucinda: Years ago, I was in financial services and I realized all of a sudden, there was no good news coming out of the United States or Europe or anywhere else.

I thought, well, you know, there may be something to the need of preparing my family, for whatever might come? That’s how I personally got involved, I thought I was the only one thinking like that. Of course, that wasn’t true and I finally did connect with many others.

My business partner and I realized that God has given us the responsibility of taking care of our own food needs. And when Kroger’s or any number of other big chains, don’t pull through like they should for us, or GMOs are suddenly in our food supply, well, then we may need to take the reins of food production back.

That’s really how we started this doing it for our own family.

But in short order, our neighbors, our church buddies, and relatives all said, Hey, would you pick me up some speed collections as you guys have because we can’t find what we need at the box stores.

And that’s how we began.

Brian: Fabulous.

So you started in 2012. Have you ever owned a business up until this point?

Lucinda: Both my partner and I are extremely entrepreneurial. And so this is about my sixth or seventh different situation from a restaurant to a mortgage company to you know, three real estate companies and so forth.

Secretarial service company, a print company, etc.

But this has actually been the most personally fulfilling because I really feel a direct connection with my customer families and the direct ability to help them get better food, better health, lower bills, and confidence about the future.

Brian: Oh, that’s awesome.

Besides your friends and family and people you already knew how were you able to find the rest of your first customers?

Where was it, just by word of mouth or do any form of advertising, how’d you find those first customers?

Lucinda: That was a great question.

I knew one thing you need to have a 32nd elevator pitch and we’re better to practice this than at a gun show. Boy, if you don’t have a good message and you don’t catch their attention, they’re down the hall and they will not give you the time of day.

So I figured this will be great. And yeah, the first several gun shows you’re making a mess of everything you want to say but you get that message down. Then that’s how we began was just doing gun show, after gun show, after gun show.

And garden shows, you know we’re a little step up and survival shows up with that. Now, all those things have virtually gone away since COVID. So we’ve had to do some additional internet marketing now and you know, some other platforms.

For example, once a month I lease out the community center and I go to feed stores and tractor supplies and farmers markets and drum up attendees, and then I tried to build community within those attendees over the course of the next year.

So they come to an initial gardening class, we teach them about heirloom seeds, if they don’t know anything about it, we let them come on to the ranch rent our space to grow out some chickens, many of them have never held a chicken.

We teach them how to do egg-laying and meet birds and then at the very end, we teach them butchering if they wanted to attend that, so it’s really kind of a neat process.

Then we go back to an orchard item. So we’re alternating agriculture and animal husbandry.

We can teach them anything from quail, turkey, ducks, pigs, goats, sheep, and cattle, in order that they might be able to prepare, we know that not everybody is going to do everything.

They may not have the acreage, but you can run quail on a square meter and produce between 10, 15, 100 pounds of meat, that’s more meat than you’re going to get off of what cow. So it does not require a lot of space, rabbits are also very good for small situations. Rabbits and quail are very, very quiet and a lot of subdivisions would consider those pets and no prohibition against doing them.

We do understand that roosters, you know, are not liked by all the HLS we get that. But we can show you how to have an egg-laying flock that doesn’t even have a rooster in it, that will be very beneficial for the family.

So these are the kinds of things that we’re now teaching. And it’s really true, homesteading, staying away from the pharmaceuticals, expensive eggs, and also the grocery stores if you so desire.

So we’re teaching people the old-time pioneer skills.

Brian: Wow, fabulous.

So that’s all one-on-one, you’re saying that’s just the local community center?

Lucinda: Well, it’s a local community center, we rent that out. So we were hopeful of getting 40, 50 people there. And then from there, we have Friday night classes on our ranch, then we just develop long-term relationships with people, and word of mouth and things like that, or how things are spreading now.

COVID did change our business plan, no doubt. But I think it’s worked out for the better.

Brian: Tell us more about how COVID has affected things for your business.

Lucinda: You’ve been mostly meeting people at shows and so forth.

You know, we were an essential business being that we were in agriculture. So we never did any shutdowns, we know that there were tremendous and still are tremendous seed shortages, especially in the heirloom field, I believe nine out of 10, heirloom seed companies are out of business now.

And that’s because they just could not access it now, some of it was blamed on crop failure. I’ve never seen so many crop failures. So I don’t know, really, you know, we’ll never know the truth is that one.

I’ve never bought seeds from China and never will but was really stunned at the amount of Chinese seed that is in our culture. I don’t feel too comfortable about that, because I don’t believe in nice soils, and lead and all the things that we might find from the Chinese products.

But we realized that things were like celebrated, we had felt like the things economically, politically, socially, were like celebrating and not in a good direction.

We really ramped up our concern and our teaching schedule. And so we have had 10 families that are crack, come through our programs on the weekends and so forth. It’s very hands-on.

So if you’re in Texas, we would love to have you, you know, be part of those kinds of workshops.

But if not try to find somebody that’s doing on studying in your local area. And there’s lots of resources now, very popular to be a homesteader now or get on the internet, and start listening to several of the podcasts you will learn a lot as I certainly have.

And I’m so thankful for the variety of people training on goats, or rabbits or sheep or whatever it is. I’m really trying to listen and I encourage others to do the same.

Brian: Sure.

And with all the growing global chaos and so forth, have you seen a huge desire from the public to learn more of this more so than in the past?

Lucinda: They said that 50% of America is now growing a garden. I don’t really believe it’s that high. But yes, we have seen a huge influx of interest in growing.

Our view is that buying a seed bank that the proper seed bank is step one, that is not where it needs to be. You don’t need to be putting that on your pants yourself and leaving it there.

You need to be practicing this skill. It’s not an easy set of skills.

But we believe I’ve read over 300 AG books, and I believe that we’ve narrowed it down to the five or six most pertinent, most usable, most productive, you know books, so we’re going to have the best canning book out there.

We’re going to have the best.

I didn’t really want to The Amish. But guess what I’m studying Amish books. That’s like an encyclopedia of Amish skills. It’s called the Backyard Homestead. And it’s hilarious.

If you have a short attention span, as I do, it’s just perfect two or three pages on a certain point. But they’re demonstrating what I thought to be impossible initially, that on one acre, you can grow everything that a family of four to six would need.

Brian: Wow, that’s fabulous!

How would you describe your ideal customer for the people that come to you and they’re just it’s just right up their alley?

Who is that person, what’s our mindset?

Lucinda: Well, that’s a person who has begun to get awake or is awake understands that we can’t always depend on Kroger’s, H-E-B, or some of the chains perhaps to supply food, that there perhaps will be trucking shortages and so forth.

A person that wants a better quality food for their family, and the more nutrition’s less pesticides more control over that, that would be a great customer, us and someone that knows that there’s going to be a little bit of elbow grease involved in the production of food.

Whereas in the past, they may not have done that.

I really love it when we have kids, because their eyes are so sparkly when they grow a vegetable that they did not think possible.

They never knew where carrots came from, for example, or how a chicken even lays an egg. These are things that really brighten their experience. And we’re happy to do that for the families. We really want to be family-oriented.

Brian: Well that’s great.

What would you say is your top-selling product?

What’s the main thing that people purchase from Texas Ready?

Lucinda: Yeah, they purchase an ammo can that is full of seeds that will work in their area, we give about 75 varieties of vegetables, herbs, and fruit. That will definitely grow in your geographical area.

And we teach them if you are going to let cousin Joe and the boyfriend from college and the neighbor down the street participate in your food needs, then you need to buy seeds to cover all those people.

Because if you’re, you know not going to long your four-person kit, but now there are 10 mouths to feed, we don’t want you to be in a position of all of you can starving equally.

So buy seed for the number of people that you anticipate being able to help out. And then maybe if you’re not experienced as a gardener by a little bit more, ultimately we say that gardening revolves around three skill sets.

The first is buying plants, I’m okay with us buying plants in a box store or whatever, and popping them in the ground feeling good, keep them alive for 90 days, give yourself an A-minus report card at the end of that experience.

The next year, we want you to learn the skill set of starting seeds in your seed trays, and bypassing the payment of those costs for seedlings, do it yourself grow your own food, that is an entirely different skill set.

Now, in the third year we want you to learn to save properly so that you can keep this circle of life going and never have to buy produce seeds or seedlings again, to a great return on investment from these ammo cans. boxes that come into a person, four-person, six-person 12, and oh my God the church 30 people, 30 person kit.

We size them according to the number of people that you intend to feed.

Brian: Wow, that’s incredible!

Who came up with the ammo can design?

Lucinda: That’s a classic. I was tasked with finding good packaging. Okay, so I spent a week going here there, whatever. And I came back with a couple of nice little Chinese plastic containers, a paint can that we could customize, or this or that and I presented them to my partner.

Oh, he did not like any of it, which really ticked me off after a whole week of work on this right?

And so I slam my fist down and I go, well, gosh, darn, you’re not going to be happy until they’re in ammo cans!

At which point we both fell off the chair laughing because we knew that ammo cans came in various sizes and it worked out. We went down immediately to The Army Navy Surplus Store and bought every size cam they had.

When we put together the kits we don’t just throw in Oh, well it looks nice, yeah, 35 of these seeds 100 of that. No, we did it all on a nutritional model.

So how many calories would your family can we maximize out of the backyard?

We did this nutritionally and agriculturally. We’re the only Seed Company that’s ever done that you back engineer, what will I need? What does my family eat? How much space will it take to grow the number of plants it’s going to require for me to have one cup of beans, once a week for the whole year?

That’s how we put our kits together. And coincidentally, based on the number of the two for the small kit, the four for the average kit, etc, the size of the ammo cans matched perfectly, which was crazy.

So we just said, this is God, we’re doing this and that’s how we got started.

Of course, now we’re buying by the tractor trailer load, you know, a huge amount of ammo cans at a time.

Brian: Great.

Overall, what do you like best about your business and industry?

Lucinda: I’ve really loved the fact that we can help a lot of people. And if they don’t see the immediate ability for us to help it, let’s just wait and see where this economy goes, I believe that they’re going to be saying, I feel a lot more comfortable.

I am sure that I can feed my family and I really like that because we should not be living in fear, fear debilitates us it stops our creativity.

God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, but of wisdom, power, knowledge, love, and a sound mind.

If you’re in fear, that’s just simply not the right energy way that you should, you know, have your mindset.

So I believe Texas Ready is one of the things that takes a big serious problem off the table and gives confidence to the Patriots. I mean, after all, the pioneers do the thing of all this, they were given a handful of seeds from the groom’s family and a handful of seeds from the bride’s family, hence, heirloom seeds and they knew they had to make a go of it.

That was going to be the way they fed their family much of the time, except for hunting.

So they couldn’t afford to be making mistakes, and they didn’t make mistakes and they could do it as pioneers and settlers. I believe those of us can do it.

During World War Two women and children produce 50% of the agriculture of all America. So tough times bring out tough attitudes, and they bring the strength of character.

I believe that that’s the kind of time and season that we’re moving into.

Brian: Oh, yeah, the Victory Garden model. That’s very cool.

Lucinda: Exactly. Good job.

Commercial Break: Okay, let’s take a break from that conversation. I want to bring up a question for you, during these crazy times, do you feel like your business is indestructible?

Most people don’t and if not, the real question is why?

And what can you do to make it as indestructible as possible?

Well, that’s the basis of my new book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. I’m going to talk about the second way, which is called being consistent.

I covered this all in chapter two. And I’m not talking about being consistent in a very generic way, I’m talking about specifically being consistent in your communications with your customers, not just customers you’re looking to have but customers you’ve already had, and getting them to know like, and trust you. Now, you could be doing this through paid advertising.

But you could also be doing it organically through social media, via videos, via blog posts via podcast like this, getting out there so that people can get to know like, and trust you so that when they do become customers, they don’t just become customers that enjoy and love your products or services they know like and trust you as a person that’s a value they can’t get from big companies.

I also have eight other ways to Amazon proof your business. Basically the idea of making it competition proof to even someone as big as Amazon.com. So if you’d like to get your hands on a free copy of my book, go to AmazonProofBook.com sign up and you will get a free copy and get the chance to purchase a physical copy of it for a special price. And now let’s get back to our show.

Brian: On the other hand, if you will fit your business or your industry as a whole, if there’s one thing you can change about it, what would it be?

Lucinda: I would like people to be honest, they always say stand over those well diggers and watch how many rows of pipe they put in because that’s what they’re charging you by.

Don’t trust the well diggers, you know, is the model and I know the inside baseball of the seed industry, and I am alarmed at the stupidity and gullibility.

I’m just hoping that these were not dishonest people but misguided promoters, saying the seeds can last 10 years 15, 30 I’ve even heard 50!

No, that is absolutely bogus.

First of all, that is possible in a nitrogen-based refrigeration system, something that you and I will never own to their $1 million starters. They’re expensive and the US government only has 30 day supply of nitrogen to run them.

So I do not believe that that is a good expectation to take something that works in one venue and say that will reasonably apply to my backyard when it absolutely will not. If you have no refrigeration, you will have a shortened life expectancy of foods.

Oh, well, I’ve heard that they have these giant warehouses.

Yes, they have seven giant warehouses in the world. But if your name isn’t Oprah Winfrey or Bill Gates, you are not getting speed out of there.

So the average person needs to have their own personal feed bags. I would like it if the nongardening Seed Company owners would be honest about how long seeds last at 40 degrees.

The US Department of Agriculture says that they will last four to six years. That’s what we have, and always will tell our customers, we’re going to tell them the truth. We give a five-year guarantee on our seedbanks on our seeds, and we will sell people all my peppers didn’t work, I bought your kit. If it’s within that five-year deal, will send you fresh pepper seeds.

We’re a little different than the average company. We want integrity to be something that’s stamped everywhere. Excellence.

And this is something that we are feeding our own families with. We’re growing, I’m in the garden today, pulling weeds. We’re living the dream.

This isn’t corporate America saying you know, I think we can make a buck here. No, we’re homesteading, we’re patriots, we’re sacrificing just like you are.

We’ve had the fear function debilitate us for several months. But we’re on the top side of that and now we want to share and testify to you how you can get your confidence level back.

I’m reminded that in Genesis six, God says I gave you the seed, you know, he gave it to us. If he said that he gave it to us, he gave us absolutely the means of production.

It also says in Scripture, my people perish for lack of knowledge.

And we would agree that you do something foolhardy or stupid, or you skip a step or you don’t know what we don’t know, that can really hurt us. That’s why we have the training program.

The Mittleider Garden Course is the most productive, survival-oriented growing system that’s in the earth.

Today I taught 40 methodologies of gardening at the college level. This is by far the only one that I can recommend with no integrity. It’s been around for over 50 years. It’s a proven, quantifiable system.

And if you’re concerned, you know, hey, thanks might be disrupted for five years, you can get right now, all the trace elements and minerals that you would need to keep your plants healthy for whatever period of time you’re anticipating there to be unrest.

You cannot do that in an organic system because a family of four would need a literal shipping container full of compost to refresh his beds. And he’s always going to be playing catch up. He is not getting a dump load of manure from past farmer Jones, who’s not coming to your house because there’s no diesel to drive his wagon.

So there’s no way that you can compost enough to refresh your beds. On a annual basis. We require shipping containers not logically not going to happen.

Yet all the minerals and all of the nutrition for your plants that are needed per year will fit under one card table. It is we can stockpile security items.

We all know what that is and we recommend we stockpile the nutrition that your garden will meet. And nobody’s jumping the fence to steal your minerals and your rocks, they’re just not going to do that that would not be considered value valuable to them.

So we believe that a prepper, someone that’s concerned about the economy wants to have better tasting foods, more nutrient, nutritive dense food, once a great family activity wants to save money.

Any of these or all of these reasons would be great causes for you to go and get your own seed bag and begin using it and grow it now.

I’m out here today and I’ve harvested three times three weeks on my cucumber row 20 feet. I have harvested today. 158 pounds of cucumbers. I think garden method works a lot better than anything I’ve ever tried.

So we can really with a clear conscience, recommend it wholeheartedly.

Brain: Wow, that’s great.

That’s really good stuff.

Lucinda: I hope you like pickles. Pickles and sweet butter chips are going to be Christmas gifts this year.

Brian: If you and I were talking a year from now and if we were to look back over what had happened over the past 12 months, what would you say happened that leave you feeling happy with your progress, both professionally and personally?

Lucinda: It’s a great question. And at the beginning of the year, I wanted to take our training a step higher, I realized that sitting in a classroom for three to five hours on any of our topics. While we think that’s good, it’s interesting, it’s really the hands-on experience that people need.

So at that time, I said, Hey, it will be a successful year, if I’m able to take a 10-week class and take 10 families, and train them in animal husbandry, all topics chicken.

And then I wanted to rinse and repeat, give myself three weeks of reprieve, and then beef up the class or whatever I have learned as an instructor, and then, you know, do that again.

So I want to do four classes, I will have trained 40 families in my immediate area, in how to have an egg length block or a meat flock, and then how to butcher if necessary.

So for me if that if I can get that done, I’m on track to do it.

If I can get that done, I will consider this a marvelous year.

Brian: Oh, that’s great.

So what are the obstacles that stand in your way of getting there?

Lucinda: Always finding the right people and making sure that well, I can’t make sure of anything, but that their schedule would allow them to come to all 10 classes, that would be good because we have a lot of people making commitments.

And skipping out on half the classes, you get what you invest, and we realize that but I think with the kind of class size because we can families, that would mean an average of two kids per family.

So you got a lot of variables swimming around there.

If a family actually gets to the point where they’re competent, can go into Tractor Supply, or get online and order the right breed and, you know, do it order for chicks and let’s just see how this works, I will consider that a success.

But I am finding a lot of acceptability to the hands on approach as opposed to the lecture approach.

Brian: That’s great.

This is The Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast, so we have a lot of people that have an interest in business, and enjoy kind of the self-reliance into that.

What advice would you have to older business owners listening there, if you have any blanket advice that you could pass along?

Lucinda: Yeah, whatever you’re passionate about, you are going to be good at you are going to be able to help others in that. So don’t do something that you don’t like Gods designed it a certain way.

You built certain interests and desires within you for a reason, that’s a wonderful thing.

Follow your dream, follow your heart, and work with a high standard of excellence and integrity. And you will be surprised my customers from all around Texas, they look if you are driving into this little Podunk 500 person town, will you stay in our guest room when you come by?

This is craziness. I sold them a seed bank at one gun show. But we develop long-term relationships because we have compassion and love for that family.

We want to be givers but we can not out-give God. So that’s what I would say to a person that, you know, wanting to start a business it’s a very wonderful aspiration. And it’s really a little bit more in alignment with how God organized society back in the day, right?

Somebody was a carpenter, their son generally was considered a future carpenter himself, a carpenter in training or there was an apprenticeship with the neighbor across the way, but there was a lot more community.

I think we’re moving in that direction. As a society, I think that we’re gonna see the importance of networking, and connection, and of helping our neighbors. I’m seeing that happen.

And that breaks down all the barriers, whatever political party, whatever, you know, religious institution, you come from whatever color you are, we are members of the human race.

That’s our first and only group that we need to be thinking of.

Brian: That’s a great message I appreciate you saying all that.

What could the listeners do who’d be interested in finding out more about Texas Ready and your products?

Lucinda: Oh, we’d love them to go to our website, www dot TexasReady, that’s one-word spell Texas out dot net (www.TexasReady.Net).

And that’ll give you a lot of places to go.

It’ll give you some book reviews, some things that you’re going to want in your library. If this thing goes down or goes away, you’re going to need some reference material, because gardening is not intuitive. So we’d love for you to hit the site.

The other thing we offer that no other Seed Company does is you pick up the phone, you have a garden question, I will direct you to the proper book that’ll answer that, or I’ll solve the problem.

If I don’t solve the problem, you get yourself a free book.

But there’ll be a very good question because, in 10 years, I’ve only sent out two books but I think I can help you in three to five minutes. If I’m not cheating, then I’m going to work with you.

Even if I’m out in the field, I’ll stop what I’m doing and we’ll try to fit that in. That’s for customers or noncustomers, I don’t care. Any patriots that wants to be growing, we want to be of assistance to.

Brian: Awesome, that was a fabulous conversation within the thanks so much for being on the podcast.

Lucinda: It was my privilege, I look forward to hearing from some of your constituents.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: That was a really great talk with Lucinda, she made a lot of great points that I’d like to try to tie things back to and point out, and hopefully, you could see how you can use something similar in your business.

One, it’s the ability to not make it too much about the end product itself.

Yes, she has a lot of knowledge about the seeds that they’re selling. But it’s more about the reason why someone would want the seeds and then she has the education, or information tied along with it, that people can take and run with.

So the classes that she puts on the information that they make available through their website, and so on and so forth. And they don’t just tie it to seeds, they tie it back to the reason why someone would want seeds, if you’re concerned about basically the structure that’s in place, being able to stay in place through all the craziness that can happen.

Like so much of what we saw through the COVID-19 Pandemic, these types of things lead a person to want to do homesteading, to want to do all these other items. And so she plays into that she gives the audience what they’re looking for if they’re able to sell seeds off of it fabulous, but it’s all toward the same end, which is really cool.

She really goes into psychology without getting too deep. She goes into the psychology of what they’re trying to promote.

They’re trying to push people away from the fear mindset from the fear energy, and more towards being confident being self-reliant, knowing what you’re doing, having the knowledge, and having the skills built around the knowledge to actually be able to do what you know that you can do. That’s really cool.

I also like the way that she discussed how they were able to build the business, just from one person to one person just from one event to the next. Building up that 32nd elevator speech.

If you’re able to do these simple ideas in marketing, you can apply it anywhere it you don’t have to go to gun shows, you don’t have to go to live events, you can do the same thing. Online principles are the same.

People are the same whether you’re communicating with them in person or via the internet.

Really great stuff across the board from Lucinda, I’d love to see what Texas Ready does in the future. This conversation is definitely worth re-listening to.

Outro: Join us again on the next Off The Grid Biz Podcast brought to you by the team at BrianJPombo.com, helping successful but overworked entrepreneurs, transform their companies into dream assets.

That’s BrianJPombo.com.

If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on The Off The Grid Biz Podcast, offthegridbiz.com/contact.

Those who appear on the show do not necessarily endorse my beliefs, suggestions, or advice or any of the services provided by our sponsor.

Our theme music is Cold Sun by Dell. Our executive producer and head researcher is Sean E Douglas.

I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

Michael Foley – Farming for the Long Haul

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Michael Foley
Farming For The Long Haul

Episode 018.

How close in proximity do you get to your customer base? What would you do if the world economy went bust? Are you connected with a local customer base, and can you survive independently?

Michael Foley is a farmer, local food activist, and writer. He is the author of Farming for the Long Haul: Resilience and the Lost Art of Agricultural Inventiveness. He takes a historic look at farming, (with a global perspective) and discusses what he considers “good economics” especially regarding small farming.

Are you a homesteader? Do you take it seriously, or is it just a fun hobby? Michael may give you a new perspective of what it means to be self-sustaining.

Are you doing what you love in your business? Do you feel guilty for how EASY it is for you? I think you’ll relate with Michael’s story regarding writing and teaching. Listen now!

Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/

Full Transcript

Michael: That’s something that I’ve emphasized. I work with a lot of young farmers both through the school and through farmers market and through something we created called, the Farmers Guild, that direct sales are really what you’ve got to do at least as part of your market, if your going to make it.

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.

If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.

This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: Michael Foley is a farmer, local food activist and writer. Formerly a political scientist, he now runs Green Uprising Farms in Willets, California with his wife and oldest daughter. He is also a co founder of the School of Adaptive Agriculture, a farmer training program and Willits.

He is the author of Farming For the Long Haul – Resilience and the Lost Art of Agricultural Inventiveness.

Michael, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Michael: Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian: Yeah. Besides what we read out on your bio, what else can you tell us about yourself and let people know a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Michael: I actually just stepped down as manager of the Willets Farmers Market, which I did for nine years. And that put me in touch with lots of local produce vendors and a few, a few meat producers and I to know the sort of alternative agricultural community.

That doesn’t mean bunch of hippies and liberals by any means, though.

There are some people in this community who think of the farmers market that that way. But in fact, a lot of the people producing out there are second, third generation residents of this place and old school in a lot of respects, they just understand the worth of direct sales.

That’s something that I’ve emphasized. I work with a lot of young farmers, both through the school and through farmers market and through something we created called Farmers Guild. And that’s something that I emphasize with them that direct sales are really what you’ve got to do, at least as part of your market. If you’re going make it.

Brian: Oh, that’s great advice. What else can you tell us about the Farmers Guild?

Michael: Well, the Farmers Guild, it started out as a pretty much a social organization among young farmers. So some of us old folks played a role in it, and it’s gone back to being pretty much a social organization.

But for a while it was an organization where all of us traded ideas and learn from one another and sometimes we had worked parties on weekends to help one another on one another’s farms. So it was good source of solidarity for people who were doing, especially market gardening, but also, you know, the kind of farmers market sales.

Brian: I mean, I read that you had just written, Farming For The Long Haul.

Can you tell us a little bit about that book?

Michael: Okay, well, that book grew out of, I don’t know, 50 years of interest in farming and reading about agriculture, reading anthropology and history. And the book is kind of unusual in that respect among farming books, because it really goes back into a lot of that history and anthropology, but the reason it does so is to think about what farming in the future is going to look like.

Our industrial scale farming is just a blip on the screen. Though there been other experiments in large scale farming.

Roman senators, for example, had huge, huge latifundia, that were farmed by slaves, and it destroyed Roman soil, just like we’re destroying American soil with our industrial scale farming.

Our farming systems not gonna last, it’s not gonna last through the end of petroleum. And we’ve got to look for something else.

And so the book explores what we can do to make ourselves more resilient now, while still making a living farming. What we would look like in the future, what we would look like in the future, from my point of view looks a lot like what we looked like in the past.

And I spent a lot of time emphasizing that a lot of farming cultures for successful for hundreds, even thousands of years.

By and large people were prosperous, and they didn’t have all the gadgets we have, but they were prosperous, they ate well, and they lived well, most of the time, all those years.

So that’s an important point. I am underlined in the book, but I look at all kinds of innovations. I mean, after all, traditional farmers without any scientific training came up with all the cultivated crops we have today. All of them, and multiple variations on them.

That’s where the embeddedness comes in, you know, they, you didn’t need a plant breeder, trained at a university. And you didn’t need a plant breeder employed by Monsanto. You did it yourself. And some farmers are still doing it themselves, especially in poor parts of the world, but also increasingly here in this country.

Brian: So what led you to write the book to begin with?

Michael: Two things. One of them was frustration at the business advice young farmers for getting it was scale up, scale up, borrow. If you have to borrow be because you’re scaling up just go full tilt.

And I knew from my reading of the recent…that is the last 50 years of American farming. That’s a recipe for disaster.

That’s how millions of American farmers lost their farms.

So I was upset with that.

And I wanted to present an alternative point of view. A lot of the book is actually about the economics of farming or what should be the good economics of small farming. And then the other thing is, like I said, I’ve been looking at and thinking about and reading about and as a political scientists actually doing some research about farming around the world for 50 years.

I started teaching a class on the history of agriculture with, at the School of Adaptive Agriculture. And realized I had all this knowledge, some of it tucked away in notebooks that I’d forgotten about. I really want to share it. So those are the two impulses for the book.

Brian: Very cool. And I saw that it’s published by Chelsea Green Publishing. Did you reach out to them? Did they reach out to you? How did that work?

Michael: Yeah, I was unknown, in the farming literature world. You know, I did academic publications that nobody’s interested in. And so I got this thing started in summer of 2017. And I got far enough that my wife said, you know, you got to put this out.

Chelsea Green Publishing was my first choice of publisher, I looked up what they required a prospectus with two or three finished chapters and an outline and various things. And so I put that together and set it off. And they said, Yes, we talked a little about the timeline. How long was going to take me and I, of course, committed to a quick a timeline. Though I’ve met it, and we went from there.

Brian: Did you enjoy that whole process? Would you do it again?

Michael: Yeah, I enjoyed it.

I’m one of these people who find it easy to write. And I’m sort of embarrassed about that because so many people find it so hard, but it’s satisfying to me the way cooking is satisfying to me.

There’s some similarities. Yeah, I enjoyed the process and I enjoyed digging out stuff that I once knew and didn’t know quite and learning a lot of new stuff and I always like doing that.

Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to pause the conversation right there. What you’re listening to right now is a special edition podcast. These episodes all have to do with the Mother Earth News fair in Albany, Oregon of 2019 at the time I’m recording this, we have learned so much about how to take advantage of events and I want you to be able to use this information in your own business.

Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

We are going to be putting out helpful materials on how you can use events to grow your business.

When you go to this page, you will either see our latest programs or if you make it there early enough, you will see an email address, capture page, put in your email address and we will be sure and update you. As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this.

If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away.

These programs will be based on the experience of people who have written books, spoken at the events or exhibited.

They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.

Brian: So you’re slated to present at Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon, right? What will you be covering?

Michael: Well, the first talk is called the future of farming is homesteading. And it emphasizes one of the points of the book and that is that if we want to survive economically, our farming ought to feed ourselves, at least to some large extent, like it used to.

As recently, as you know, the 1950s American farmers were feeding themselves.

So that in hard times, you got something to fall back on. Wendell Berry tells a story about Kentucky in the 30s when the population actually grew, because people who were out of work went back to the farm because they knew that there was food there, at least then they could help out and make more food.

And he wonders what would happen today?

I think this was 2008. So the you know that prices of 2000 what would happen today because most of those farms don’t exist anymore, and they don’t produce for themselves.

So that’s why I say the future of farming is homesteading, not in the sense that we won’t be producing for the market. But in the sense that yeah, we’re going to have to learn to produce for ourselves and most homesteaders, my senses don’t produce enough for themselves.

It’s an ideal but none of us do. That’s a threat. And the second one is about the real economics of farming, and makes that point. And also the point that, you know, we have to sustain our land if we’re going to sustain ourselves economically, we have to start learning to farm from the resources available to us, instead of buying in all these external inputs and fancy tools, and that are all the rage, even among very small market gardeners today, because we’re not going to have the income to do that sort of thing.

And we have to meet a bottom line right now, we have to meet a bottom line. So the more we can minimize our expenses, the better off we’re going to be.

Brian: What do you hope people will walk away with after watching either of these presentations?

Michael: I hope they’ll be inspired to find new ways to make what they’re doing more satisfying, both personally and economically to themselves. Yeah, you know, they’ll either find new value in what they’re already doing, or they’ll do more of it and build more resilient farms and homesteads and gardens out of what they’re but they’re doing.

Brian: Well, that’s great. And what do you hope to get out of this?

Michael: Again, I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but I I like to teach I, I just do. I like to. I like to talk to people.

My style tends to be a lot of talk, but also a lot of interaction. I like to try to draw people out and get to know people and hear from them. That’s always something I get out of these things.

Brian: Have you done this before at the Mother Earth News Fair?

Or is the first time?

Michael: No this is my first time.

Brian: Oh, great.

Michael: Yeah.

Brian: Have you done it at any other expos or anything of that sort like this?

Michael: The only thing that I’ve done so far is we launched the book at EcoFarm, the EcoFarm Conference in California, which is, you know, the major sustainable farming conference that was in January.

And so I did a round table kind of thing there where I sort of laid out the basic argument and then opened it up to discussion. We had a great time.

Brian: Who are you most hoping to reach? Like if there was an ideal person that you think you can touch either through your speaking? Or one on one? Who would that be?

Michael: I think my target audience. So people I was thinking about as I was writing, where these young farmers and aspiring farmers that I know, and that I work with, in some cases taught but also just worked with on some local projects.

Brian: Very good. Very good. So we have a lot of business owners, executives who listen to the show, do you think it’d be worthwhile for them to plug into events like this?

Michael: Well, I think it depends a lot on the business. I mean, you have you have featured some businesses where yeah, it clearly makes sense. But yeah, it definitely depends on the business. everybody’s gotta, you know, judge their market find their audience.

Brian: Yeah. Good point. So how did you end up becoming speaker here was that set up through your publisher did you reach out to them, did they reach out to you?

Michael: Yeah, Chelsea Green Publishing presented it as an opportunity to me. So I went through the application process with Mother Earth News. And then I think Chelsea Green gave them a little nudge to and then they put me on the program.

Brian: Well, fabulous. But is there anything I haven’t asked you that you think you’d like to say?

Michael: Oh, boy, um, I guess there’s two things.

One of them that I spent some time on is being aware of what I call the whole farm, or what I’m beginning to call more and more the skin of the farm.

And there were a lot of uses that underpin the economy of the farm that need to be revived.

I ran into some biodynamic farmers who described the wild outer edges of their farmers skin. And I like that concept, because it’s porous and it lets good things in and protects the farm, but it’s also a resource and traditional farmers used the water wild edges of the farm, and a lot of them had woodlands or wood lots.

Some practices that we don’t know much about it all in the United States like coppicing, cutting trees down to their base, letting them grow up long straight poles, or ones that can be used for basket weaving or for pole construction or anyway. Just various practices of managing the wild that can be useful economically.

And good for the wild and good for the farm.

So that’s one piece.

The other pieces that I really emphasized the importance of community.

I think community is kind of the social skin of the farm, that the people in your community are your natural customers. And increasingly, as the crises of the century unfold, they’re going to be our principal customers, they are not just our customers, but our support.

I mean, I can’t tell you how many times people have said, keep the change, you work so hard at farmer’s market. Or given me exorbitant fees for, you know, for something simple, or people come out to help raise money.

The local community helped us raise money for drilling a well.

And that and then our farmers helping one another. Some friends, homemade hoop house, huge thing blew up in a storm, they were ready to quit farming and a bunch of local farmers came out, help them rebuild it.

One of the guys who’s an engineer or former engineer and a volunteer at the school, helped them redesign it so it wouldn’t blow up again.

Brian: Wow.

Michael: That kind of, you know, that kind of helping one another mutual aid some people call it which is common among the Amish and used to be common and American farmer, kind of country.

Yeah, that’s really important. And it’s important to the bottom line, I keep emphasizing, you know, it’s not just good feeling, which is important.

We don’t want to be depressed. But it’s also good for our bottom line. It’s supporting us.

Brian: Those are great points. Really good.

So, what could a listener do? Who want to find out more about you maybe get their hands on your book? Where’s the best place for them to go?

Michael: Okay, for the book, I would say, go to your local bookstore. Free Shipping, just like Amazon.

Avoid the giants if you can.

You can also go to Chelsea Green Publlishing.

I have a website called AnotherMadFarmer.org. And that’s where I rant and carry on and give information about where I’m speaking and post some reviews.

Brian: Yeah.

Michael: And so they can go there that comes from a poem by Wendell Berry’s that I like the, Mad Farmer Liberation Front. Then this the website for the farm itself Green Uprising, just look up Green Uprising Farm, to find it.

Brian: We’ll put the link in the description for it.

Michael: Okay. Yeah, good.

And then there’s then there’s the School-Of-Adaptive-Agriculture.org. Those are words separated by hyphens, or you could just type adaptive agriculture.org and get the website and see all the things we’re doing.

We’re doing a wonderful workshop series right now. That’s been really fun to see develop.

Brian: Fabulous. Well, that’s great. Hey, thanks for spending time with us, Michael.

I know you’ve had a busy week. And we’d love to have you back on the show.

Thank you for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Michael: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me, Brian. It’s been delightful.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Good conversation with Michael.

He’s a very interesting person, has a lot of great insights. Afterwards, it kind of hit me he’s really in the field of economic emergency preparedness, if you think about it.

And I relate with that, because my original interest in homesteading kind of came from a similar background. He has deeper thoughts about homesteading.

And he’s kind of a historian in that field, type of person we really haven’t spoken to up until now, I wanted to point out some of the ideas that he put out there.

The first one was, what brought him into writing a book to begin with, and that’s that his wife pointed out is that he’s got all this knowledge, he learned all this stuff, he might as well put it out there for other people to be able to consume. And that’s a great point.

I think a lot of people, they learn how to do things, they get out there and do them and they don’t take that extra step to teach it to pass it along.

And Michael already has a background as a teacher.

So writing a book really was a natural step for him.

Made a lot of sense, especially since he already found it. So easy to write. I mean, he said he’s embarrassed that he finds it so easy to write that he finds it so satisfying, and that he likes teaching. He likes to teach people he likes to talk to people. I think this is very, very common.

You’ll hear the same thing said in a lot of our other interviews that we’ve had with speakers from the Mother Earth News Fair, especially the part about being embarrassed about it.

I think that’s pretty common. If I were to guess where that comes from, I know for myself, I’ve always seen those speakers, teachers that are out there that enjoy the sound of their own voice, you know, they’re really into it, they really enjoy it, and it kind of leaves you feeling a little icky afterwards.

I don’t think any of us want to be that person. And so when we say that we enjoy talking to people, and we enjoy speaking in front of people and writing and all the rest.

We don’t want to sound egotistical, I think as long as you’re careful. Not to enjoy things too much not to get too much into it, you should be able to have a good time.

Enjoy yourself be happy that you have the inclination to be able to talk to large amounts of people to be able to express your thoughts in words, either physically or on paper.

That’s a great thing because it allows you the chance to be able to live beyond yourself and really pass your ideas on to the next person, something real magical about that we’ve been talking about learn, do teach from all the speakers because they’ve all gone through a similar process.

And that kind of brings me to the idea of publishing a book.

I like hearing his process of how he went about doing it. He wanted to get the book out there, he found a publisher that he thought matched him and that’s really important to do.

Chelsea green Publishing is one of the big ones in this space. Everyone I know that it’s been publishing with them seems to have good things to say about them, but it’s important They’re a match for you, you look at the other things that they have published, talk to maybe other authors that have published with them and whether they appreciate the services.

Then go through the process that it takes to get published. Michael’s willing to do that.

So he ended up with Chelsea Green. They in turn, linked him up with speaking opportunities, including the Mother Earth News Fair, and the rest is history. Everything works.

Well, when you’re working with people that are on your side.

The last thing I wanted to point out about what Michael said was his big point at the end about community and about community customers, it ties again, some of the first things he was talking about in regards to the farmers market.

And that direct sales, one on one relationship with people.

It’s like he says, not just for good feelings good for the bottom line. It’s a practical thing.

So whether you’re talking economic or ecological apocalypse, obviously in those situations, it’s good to have some self sufficiency with a homestead or something similar.

And it’s good to have that reliability of personal relationships, personalized customers that you can work with.

Everything online is an echo of physical reality. And a lot of times, people get caught up with the online world as if it’s more real than the real world.

When in reality, everything starts at the real world. And if you get in with a real relationship with your customers, one on one, even at a distance over the telephone is a good start.

But in person, maybe at events like the Mother Earth News Fair, maybe locally at a farmers market or what have you, you’re really hitting on that advantage that the big guys can do.

This is what the Amazon.com’s of the world cannot produce.

They cannot have that one on one relationship, use that advantage.

Use it, because it’s always good insurance in the long run, regardless of what happens on a global scale.

Even if you’re having a bad year as a business, if something bad happened within your business that’s lowering things, having that security to depend on those one on one relationships.

Those are the things that never go away. As long as you don’t burn those bridges.

You’re always going to have those connections out there, don’t take them for granted. And I really do thank Michael for coming on the show.

I hope to find out more about his ideas and concepts and theories as we go ahead in the future.

Outro: Join us again on the next Off The Grid Biz Podcast brought to you by the team at BrianJPombo.com, helping successful but overworked entrepreneurs, transform their companies into dream assets.

That’s BrianJPombo.com.

If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on The Off The Grid Biz Podcast, offthegridbiz.com/contact. Those who appear on the show do not necessarily endorse my beliefs, suggestions, or advice or any of the services provided by our sponsor.

Our theme music is Cold Sun by Dell. Our executive producer and head researcher is Sean E Douglas.

I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

Deborah Niemann – Thrifty Homesteader

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Deborah Niemann
Thrifty Homesteader

Episode 009.

Are you an expert in your field? Do you speak publicly? Do you write articles and books? Do you teach your skills and knowledge?

Deborah Niemann of Thrifty Homesteader is an author, speaker and successful homesteader. She’s written several books including Homegrown and Handmade, Ecothrifty, and Raising Goats Naturally.

Though she didn’t grow up on a farm, she has become a leading homesteading expert. She can tell you about raising chickens, dairy, pork, goats, and so many more topics. Her thirst for practical knowledge is evident after just a few minutes of conversation with our host Brian J. Pombo.

What does it take to be an world-renowned expert? Deborah’s journey through life, and her ability to take advantage of opportunities around her is motivating and instructional. Listen now!

Find out more about Deborah Niemann: https://thriftyhomesteader.com/

Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company:
http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/

Full Transcript

Deorah: Raising goats naturally basically means you are letting the moms raise the babies. To me, that’s the cornerstone of everything.

You know, I saw something the other day online that said 10 things you must have in your goat medicine cabinet. And I’m thinking, Oh my gosh, if you think you have to have 10 things in your medicine cabinet, you’re doing something wrong.

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.

If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your Maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure life off the grid.

Brian: Deborah Nieman is a homesteader, writer and self sufficiency expert. In 2002 she moved her family from Chicago suburbs to a 32 acre parcel on a creek in the middle of nowhere. Together they started raising goats, sheep, cattle, pigs and poultry to provide 100% of their meat and eggs.

They have a garden and fruit trees for fresh produce, and they make their own sweeteners with a little help from these and maple trees.

She’s authored several books including,Homegrown & Handmade, Eco Thrifty and Raising Goats Naturally. She’s currently at work on her sixth book.

If all that wasn’t enough, Deborah puts on workshops across the United States and Canada. She’s presented at the Mother Earth News Fairs in North Carolina and Maryland. And you’ll be able to see her at the upcoming fairs in Oregon, Pennsylvania and Kansas.

Deborah Nieman, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Deborah: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here today.

Brian: It’s great to have you. Besides what we heard about in your bio, tell us a little more about who you are and what you do?

Deborah: Well Usually the first question people ask when they meet me is did you grow up on a farm?

And the answer is no, I did not.

Just because you didn’t grow up on a farm doesn’t mean you can’t do this. And I think that, really that’s the main reason most people ask that because for some reason, you know, I used to be a reporter and nobody ever asked me, were your parents reporters?

Like they get it, like you can go to school and learn to be a reporter or a doctor or a lawyer or whatever.

But for some reason, when it comes to just living on a homestead people think you have to grow up like this. Otherwise, you can’t learn it and you totally can.

We made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, but you know, I read books, I found mentors online.

The people around here pretty much all thought we were crazy. But you find your people online, which, that’s the awesome thing about having the internet and even in 2002 you know, back then it was Yahoo groups. Today, it’s Facebook groups.

So we can we can find people who can help us and find books and that’s why I started writing the books because when I got started all the books had been written by people who did grow up on a farm.

They did have chickens their whole life or goats or whatever. The books were missing a lot of really basic information that we could have used, you know, it could have prevented a lot of problems.

One of the things was you shouldn’t have….well most of the books just said, for poultry like, Oh, you only need one rooster for every 10 or 12 hens.

They didn’t say that you shouldn’t have more than one rooster for every 10 or 12 hens. But it only took us a couple of years to figure out the whole background. They’re like, yeah, you don’t want more than one rooster for every 10 or 12 hands or you’re gonna have a world problems.

Brian: Absolutely. Well, that’s great stuff.

You mentioned your books. Can you tell us a little bit about them?

Deborah: Well, the first one, Homegrown and Handmade, was pretty general.

It has a section on gardens and orchards, which I think orders are the coolest thing ever. It’s like there isn’t a stock on Wall Street that can can give you the return that a fruit tree can you know, it’s like you buy a fruit tree for 20 bucks, you plant it permanent if you have time every year to maybe even every three years, and then it gives you 50, 100 pounds of fruit year after year.

I mean, it’s incredible.

So I’m a big fan of fruit trees.

And then there’s another chapter in Homegrown and Handmade, on a whole section on backyard poultry, backyard dairy and homegrown fiber. And then in the second edition, which I published six years after the first one, I added a section on raising pigs so that you can have your own homegrown fat because lard is just awesome stuff important, great too.

Then a section on homegrown sweeteners because we do our own honey and maple syrup, as well as a section on homegrown businesses because so many people they start doing this and they think wow, this is fun.

I would rather do this seven days a week.

Then go to my job five days a week so how can I make money at it?

And they don’t realize that like there’s so much stuff you have to think about and not just in terms of like laws like do you need you know, like you have to be licensed to become a dairy but also in liability.

We could process chickens on our farm and sell them because we’re not going to sell that many but I don’t want that liability you know if somebody goes home and get sick after eating chickens I don’t want them to sue me and you know take my farm away.

Brian: Absolutely. No those are all really great points and that was the second edition of Homegrown and Handmade?

Deborah: Yes.

Brian: Awesome, and then tell us a little bit about your other ones.

Deborah: Eco Thrifty was, well the subtitle for Eco Thrifty says it all, cheaper, greener choices for a happier healthier life.

And that was basically the idea.

Homegrown and Handmade was kind of like writing you know, homesteading 201, first and then Eco Thrifty was kind of like self sufficiency 101, because so many people said to me, oh, I would love to live like you do, but it’s too expensive.

And it’s like, no, it’s not too expensive. This is totally like you save money doing this, you know, because we’re not talking about buying like the Amy’s organic dinners at the grocery store.

We’re talking about making it from scratch, Eco Thrifty was all about like, they’re really super simple things you can do that will save you money like using baking soda for facial scrub.

I mean, it doesn’t get any cheaper than.

The third and fifth book is, Raising Goats Naturally. The original was published in 2013.

And the title you know, pretty self explanatory said about raising goats and naturally. I wasn’t too happy with my publisher. I wanted to call it homestead goats, and publisher was like, Oh, you’re raising them naturally.

And I’m like, people are gonna think this is an herb book and it’s not. It’s a book about doing things as naturally as possible.

Kind of like I try to live as naturally as possible, you know, I want to eat natural food.

I want to do everything I can to avoid medication but you know if something happens and I need penicillin, I’m gonna take penicillin.

It doesn’t mean that I don’t, like I use ginger for, you know, I always keep ginger in my purse when I’m flying, because it’s just awesome for air sickness.

The raising goats naturally basically means like, you’re you are letting the moms raise the babies, which is like, to me, that’s the cornerstone of everything. If the moms raised the babies, and the babies are getting all of the natural antibodies, then they are going to be healthy.

And that right there is just going to avoid so many of the medications that people think they need.

You know, I saw something the other day online that said 10 things you must have in your medicine cabinet. And I’m thinking oh my gosh, if you think you have to have 10 things in your medicine cabinet, you are doing a lot of things wrong.

That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about when I say raising goats naturally like you shouldn’t be giving, you know, you shouldn’t have to give your goats all these drugs to keep them alive.

You if you get the nutrition right, that’s really the most important thing.

If you get the nutrients right for them. They are incredibly hardy, healthy animals. And the biggest challenge for most of us in North America is that goats are desert and mountain animals.

They are in nature. They live in places where they have evergreens available 12 months a year, their browsers and most of us are trying to turn them into grazers, which I tell people like if you stick them in a little pasture and you don’t let them leave, you’re basically forcing them to eat out of their toilet.

How healthy would you be if you were eating out of your toilet?

Probably not very healthy, like you would have some problems.

So part of raising goats naturally is rotating them, you know, you’re mimicking nature, you’re moving them from one pasture to another, rather than in nature.

They’re going to be naturally moving. They’re going to be ranging across thousands of acres.

So that’s really what raising goats naturally is all about.

And then I really I love research.

The frustrating thing for most people about goats is that they go online and they find they’ve got a question and they find 10 different answers. And then they send me an email and say, which one is right?

It’s like, oh, well, that that answer right there is what everybody thought back in, you know, the 1990s.

In the early 2000s, this is what they thought, but nothing ever dies online.

So this is what the current research says. And so that’s why you know, like, after six years or five years, I updated raising goats naturally after five years.

Because there was so much more research that had come out in five years and I wanted people to have that, because we had a really rough time raising goats.

Initially, we had goats dying. We never had a buck that live past the age of three for the first five years we had goats.

Then we finally found out it was because they were copper deficient because our well water is very high in sulfur and iron, which binds with a copper making it unavailable.

So they needed a lot more copper than your average goat. And then we had problems with parasites because back in the early 2000s, nobody knew about the importance of rotating pastures to keep goats from eating out of their toilet and things like that.

Unfortunately, there’s still a lot of people who are passing around that information that you need to give your goats and dewormer every month or two months or whatever their magic number is. And you don’t need to do that.

Like, you know, this year I have given one dose of dewormer to one goat and I have over 20 adults.

That’s really it. Like you shouldn’t need to do that.

If they say if you’re deworming more than 10% of your herd every year. You’ve got some problems like there’s some things you could be doing in terms of management that could make your whole experience much better and your goats experience much better.

Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to pause the conversation right there. What you’re listening to right now is a special edition podcast. These episodes all have to do with the Mother Earth News fair in Albany, Oregon of 2019 at the time I’m recording this, we have learned so much about how to take advantage of events and I want you to be able to use this information in your own business. Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

We are going to be putting out helpful materials on how you can use events to grow your business.

When you go to this page, you will either see our latest programs or if you make it there early enough, you will see an email address, capture page, put in your email address and we will be sure and update you. As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this.


If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away.

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They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.

Brian: Now you had mentioned you first started writing these books because it was information that you couldn’t find anywhere else. And obviously, you’ve got the journalism background. Was it really simple to jump right into your first book?

What was the was the impetus to really go out and try it?

Deborah: The whole thing actually started really organically when we moved out here and from the suburbs. People talk to people and people they would contact me and say, Hey, I heard that you’re making your own soap or cheese, can you teach me?

So I started teaching people how to make cheese, at my house in my kitchen, one at a time. And then finally I realized, Hold it!

This is really getting time consuming.

So I started having official classes. And then people would say, Hey, could you come here to teach this class?

So I said, Sure.

I started going places to teach classes. Then I wind up speaking at the very first Mother Earth News Fair in seven springs, Pennsylvania and 2010. And the rest, as they say, is history.

You know, that was where my publisher discovered me and said, Hey, you ever thought about writing a book?

And I was like, Oh, yeah, I’d love to write a book. And so, you know, I wrote the first book, The goat book.

I did so much research to dig us out of a hole, which is kind of a horrible metaphor. You think of how many holes we had to dig to bury goats that died.

Like we just had such a horrible time with goats. It was like, either we give up and just sell them all, or we figure it out and I did a ton of research to figure it out.

And by the time I was done doing all the research and saving my goats and my goats were doing great. I was like, holy cow, I have enough information here to fill up a whole book.

Brian: Wow.

Deborah: So and that’s where it came from.

The first one was really close to 300 pages. The second one is close to 350 pages. So the first one was 90,000 words, the second one is 20,000 words more, so it’s 110,000. It’s a lot, but that’s how it goes.

Brian: That’s great. Do you enjoy the process of writing and the whole process of putting the book together?

Deborah: I do. I love writing.

You know, I say that whenever you get lost in whatever you’re doing, you lose track of time, that means you’re doing the right thing.

So, that’s definitely it. It’s funny though because sometimes when people hear me talking about my aches and pains are like, Oh, you’re gonna have to give up the farm and I’m like, No, no, it’s not the farm.

No, my first book, I gave myself carpal tunnel. My second book I gave myself tennis elbow.

And my fourth book I gave myself a frozen shoulder.

So working at a computer for 12 to 14 hours a day is very hard on the body.

Brian: Wow.

And we saw that you’re slated to present at the next handful of Mother Earth News Fairs, you have a whole bunch of different workshops.

So why don’t you tell us a little bit about those?

Deborah: Yeah, coming up, I’m going to be talking, I’m gonna be doing my raising goats naturally talk in Oregon. Which is all about, the importance of all those little decisions you make that people think, oh, you just stick the goats out there and they’ll be fine.

You know, it’s like, No, no, we’re gonna talk about, housing and fencing and the importance of making sure that kids nurse and get enough milk when they’re little, you know, like, you don’t want to start separating them from mom too quick and taking the milk that they should have. They need it to stay healthy.

We may like it because it tastes good, but like, you know, that’s your health insurance for the next generation, it’s there for the babies.

So there, they should get first dibs. And then you can take whatever’s left over after they’ve had their fill.

I’m also going to be doing one on spindling. Basically how to spin yarn with a hands on spindle.

I’m doing a full day of fiber workshop on Friday, I’m going to be talking about marketing your fiber products, and relationship marketing and value added products, how you can sell more than just raw will have your shapes.

And I’m also going to be doing on Sunday, I’m going to be doing a soap making talk. Tell everybody how to make soap.

Brian: That’s great. Such a variety, have you always been attracted to multiple things? Or are you always bouncing from one thing to the next learning something new because you’re an expert on so many of these things?

Deborah: Yeah, pretty much.

I’m one of those people like ever since I was a little girl like, you know, most people just take things for granted. Like they go to the store and they buy a food and just like hey, it’s a food they eat it.

And I remember even as a little girl like asking my mom, how do they make peanut butter?

You know, and how do you make cheese and like I just always wanted to know that stuff. From the time I was really young.

Brian: Very cool. If someone’s thinking about going, if they never been to a Mother Earth News Fair before, what would you tell them that would encourage them to go?

Deborah: Oh my goodness, okay, if you’re into homesteading and all that, you just have to go okay?

Like I keep going because it’s just so much fun.

You get to meet so many incredibly cool people, you get to learn so much interesting stuff like you know there’s there’s stuff I still learn, I go to one and you see something like, oh I don’t know anything about that and you know I go sit in on a session and learn more stuff.

My knowledge and bees is pretty rudimentary and so I’m just so amazed by some of the really in depth beekeeping sessions and like how these people know so much about these tiny little insects.

Somebody said it’s like Disney World for homesteaders you know, you can just go and spend all day and they usually have really good food there. So like they get food trucks from locals, that are using meat and produce from local farms. And it’s just so much fun.

Brian: Great. Who are you hoping to reach personally? Who’s the ideal person that you’d either like to connect with through your presentation or in person there?

Deborah: Oh, I always love to talk to goat people.

So because girls are definitely my favorite animals, and it’s really where my passion is. And it’s where I just kind of keep digging deeper and deeper and deeper.

Like, I have 450 articles on my blog.

120 of them are about goats. And you may think that like there isn’t anything more that could be written.

But I assure you there is, I get emails and messages every single day from people asking me questions about goats, and an awful lot of them I can just say, yeah, you know, just send them a link to an article on my blog.

But I still get questions that I haven’t written an article about.

And so like, that’s actually where a lot of my new blog post ideas come from is is from the emails I get.

Then after I’ve answered a question two or three times, I know like, Okay, this is I got to read an article about this.

Brian: Very cool. That’s a great look into the process.

We have a lot of business owners, executives that listen to the show, do you think it’d be worthwhile for them to plug into it an event like this?

Do you think it’d be useful networking or what have you?

Deborah: Well, considering the focus of your show, as we give business owners are listening to your show, then yeah, they would probably be a really good fit for the Mother Earth News Fair.

You know, if nothing else, like they could check it out this year and see if it looks like it might be a good place for them to be a vendor next year. Because I know it’s got to be a good thing for vendors because I see the same people there year after year.

Brian: That’s a great point. That’s something I haven’t heard till now.

How did you become a speaker at that very first one, did they reach out to you?

Did you reach out to them?

How did that happen?

Deborah: I was just surfing online one day and I just happened to stumble across a call for speaker proposals on their website.

Brian: Wow!

Deborah: Yeah. So I filled it out and sent it in.

And at that point, I already had a lot of other speaking that I had done in the area, like in Chicago and stuff. So I was definitely, you know, I was experienced and everything and I had so many topics, which that was what they really liked is that I had so many different topics that I was willing to talk about, I sent them a quite a few proposals like so making him bread making and, you know, all these different things.

And that was one of things that they really liked was the fact that I could just fill in in so many places, and I think it’s one of the things that they still like is that I can fill in in a lot of places.

I probably have 30 different PowerPoints for different talks that I do, you know, so like if somebody just called me up and said, Hey, could you do a talk for us on seasonal eating in an hour, I’m sure.

Brian: Very cool. You have any tips for people that they end up becoming vendors if they end up becoming speakers, you’ve done a lot of traveling for these things.

You have any logistical tips on things to watch out for or to keep in mind?

Deborah: Wear shoes that are good for walking, definitely dress for comfort, because nobody’s there dressing up fancy or anything. You know, I know in the beginning I felt like oh, I’m a speaker. I need to dress up you know, and I don’t do that.

Like I wear blue jeans. I wear blue jeans are really comfortable walking shoes now.

Brian: Those are really great points.

Oh, what could listeners do who are interested?

They want to find out more about you maybe get one of your books, where could they go?

Deborah: My website is ThriftyHomesteader.com.

And I also have online classes at ThriftyHomesteader.Teachable.com, and I’m on Facebook so facebook.com/ThriftyHomesteader.

I’m on Instagram, Thrifty Homesteader. Kinda see a theme there.

So I’m trying to keep it simple. Unfortunately, I don’t have thrifty homesteader on Pinterest yet. It’s just under my name, but there’s a link to my Pinterest page for my website.

Brian: Awesome. Awesome. Hey, Deborah, thanks so much for being on the show. Appreciate your time.

Deborah: Oh, I appreciate you asking me it was lot of fun chatting.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: If you can’t tell Deborah is an absolute delight to interview.

There’s a lot that she brings to the table.

One is expertise. Another is passion.

Another is a whole lot of practice that she’s put into it. She’s been a speaker for a while she’s been a writer for a while. All this equals confidence.

That’s a really great formula to look at expertise plus passion plus practice equals confidence.

With that you trust her, you trust what she’s saying. It makes sense.

She’s confident she’s easygoing about her delivery. Something to really keep in mind if you’re looking to be an expert out there in your field.

I love her outlining the organic path that she’s taken into the information realm.

She started out showing people one on one what she did, she started holding classes for groups of people. And then she started traveling to do classes. And then she started speaking.

And then she wrote books. And it all kind of happened at a natural rate, but it was something that she was interested in.

So she was looking for it when the speaking opportunity showed itself, she jumped on it.

Tthat automatically led to her being a book writer and the rest is history.

You can do the same thing, not necessarily in that order. But you can take the same steps that she took and do it purposefully.

Even though a lot of this stuff happened by serendipity for her. It’s what I call the organic life formula, which is learn, do, teach. It’s a big cycle.

You learn something, you do it, and then you teach it to somebody else.

Teaching, if you haven’t done much teaching, it’s a huge piece of the learning method!

You will learn more about what you’re doing by teaching, whatever you already know how to do.

For one thing, you will train yourself more, you will come up with questions that you would not have come up with before because the people you’re teaching, come up with those questions.

It’s a great process and something that anybody should do anyways, even if you aren’t in business, even if you aren’t promoting anything out there, whatever you’re learning how to do go out there and do it and then teach others how to do it.

And you can do that process all at the same time. It’s all part of the learning cycle.

I mentioned on the previous episode, what she said here because it stands out so strong Disney World for homesteaders when she’s talking about the Mother Earth News Fair.

This is an attitude I have gotten from most of the people that I’ve spoken with that have presented at other fairs. And what’s that mean?

Disney World for homesteaders.

Well Disney World or Disneyland is really the gold standard for acting experience based entertainment.

It sounds like an advertisement for Mother Earth News Fairs. I’m not meaning to I haven’t even been yet. But it’s amazing how they’ve created something that is so experiential for the end user that they compare it to Disney World or a carnival, as you’re going to hear Frank Hyman and the next episode.

And once again, you hear her talk about creating articles based on the questions that previous people had.

Content begets content begets content.

If you’re talking about any form of content marketing, once you get it out there once you start getting feedback on it, that helps you to create more content and be able to speak more to what people are interested in.

I can’t wait to meet Deborah, and all these great people that we’re meeting through these podcasts in real life over at the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon.

Outro: Join us again on the next Off The Grid Biz Podcast brought to you by the team at BrianJPombo.com, helping successful but overworked entrepreneurs, transform their companies into dream assets.

That’s BrianJPombo.com.

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I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.