November 14, 2025 • 51 mins
Episode sixteen of Food, Flowers, & Fun: Visits with farm women from around the world features Cassidy Ball of Daigle Farm, LLC as we discuss:
- Raising chickens and pigs
- Baking bread
- Rediscovering faith
- Doing the “right thing”
- Much, much more!
You will love this cheerful and down-to-earth farmer!
About Cassidy:
Cassidy Ball is considered a “Jane-of-all-trades” at Daigle Farm, LLC. She runs the non-perishable side of products, manages the baking, creates sustainable/reusable beeswax wraps and custom-made jewelry, and even offers serene Reiki experiences.
Connect with Cassidy at:
- Website: https://www.simplygrowingfood.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daiglefarm/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaigleFarmLLC
Connect with K at:
- Website: https://www.penlightfarmers.com
- YouTube: @k.castrataro3466
- Facebook and Instagram: @penlightfarmers
- Podcast (audio): https://www.penlightfarmers.com/podcast
- Podcast (video): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIVBn53rrIsTwS4ag6hH4DHnxG_Lxqt7x
Want to use lists for more than wishes? Download your free guide on using lists to help manage your farm at: www.penlightfarmers.com/farmlists.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
Have you ever looked at your farm life and thought, am I
(00:04):
even supposed to be doing this?If so, you'll want to listen as
I chat with Cassidy Ball ofDaigle Farm about this and so
much more on today's episode ofFood, Flowers and Fun: Visits
with farm women from around the world.
(00:28):
if you're the woman who does itall, farm work, housework, book
work, homework, getting up atthe break of dawn. This is the
podcast for you. How do you
multiply my
first do you get away from thecares of the day? Restock,
rootstock, feedstock, seedstock. Chat with women around
(00:51):
the world to raise food flowersand fun with your host, K
Castrataro, that's me.
Welcome back to Food, Flowersand Fun: Visits with farm women
from around the world. And I amhere with Cassidy Ball from
Daigle Farm in Connecticut. Andas always, we are sponsored by
Pen Light for Farmers, who ishelping you to create more time,
(01:15):
energy and abundance in yourfarm life. So Cassidy, welcome.
How are you today? Doing verygood. Thank you so much for
inviting me. K. I'm so excitedto be here. Oh, I'm so excited
to have you. So your farm isquite diverse. Like I said,
you've got, you've gotlivestock. It looks like you do
some root vegetables and andI've got to say, I was just
(01:37):
scouting around on your website,and I found your weekly menu
thing, and I'm thinking, Man, Iwish I were living closer to
you, because I totally want fooddelivered to my house from your
farm. So like we always do, I'mjust going to hop in and start
with, why don't you tell ourpeople who you are, how you get
into farming and and we'll gofrom there. All right. Well, as
(02:00):
you said, K, my name is Cassidy,so you know, when I was about 24
years old or so, I had learnedabout the program called Wolf,
W, O, F, which I don't totallyknow the you know, I'm going to
butcher it a little bit, butit's basically worldwide.
Organic farming, it's worldwide.So I was going to start small.
There was a couple places,probably, you know, a town over,
(02:24):
you know, right over in RhodeIsland, since I'm in
Connecticut, so I was sointerested in it. But basically,
the program is kind of like aWork Share. You reach out to
these farmers and all kinds ofdifferent farms. You know, if
you just wanted to work in anorchard, you could work at an
orchard. If you want to work ata sheep farm, you can find a
(02:46):
sheep farm that's looking forhelp. But basically, farmers are
looking for help, and they can'talways pay. So it was kind of
like a work trade, where you cango to a farm, they'll put you
up, room and board. Some of themwill pay you, definitely feed
you, and then, in exchange, youlearn some new trades, you learn
some new skills, and you get toimmerse yourself in the life. So
(03:10):
I was signed up for that for acouple years, but I was too
scared to do it actually, so Inever, I never took advantage of
any of the farms. So did youknow, did you get offered
positions? And you said, Sorry,I'm not gonna
so a couple of them had reachedout and said, Yeah, you know, we
have some people already rightnow as like host farmers, is
(03:31):
what they would call it. Sowe're looking for woofers. But I
was too scared to do it. Andthen
a friend of mine, Dylan, who isnow my partner, my boyfriend,
you know, future husband, youknow, really the creator of
Daigle farm, if you will. I sawthat he had been farming, so we
grew up going to schooltogether. I'd known him since
(03:51):
the third grade. We kind of fellout of touch in high school and
a little bit into our 20s. And Isaw that he had started a farm,
and he was doing the homedelivery then, and I was like,
you know, I've known himforever. I don't have to be
embarrassed or scared oranything if I don't know
anything. So I reached out tohim. And, you know, I never did
it through Wolf, but I got to doit right in my, you know, my
(04:14):
hometown.
And he was, you know, it wasjust him. So he said, Yeah, of
course, you know, come on over.Come learn some stuff. At the
time, he was split between twolocations. He had a house and a
farm, kind of up the road fromwhere we are now, and then this
property that our farm is on nowis where he grew up, his his
(04:34):
family's property. So it wasn'tever a farm before. But
unfortunately, his dad is prettyeasygoing. Dylan's his only son.
And was like, you know, whateveryou want to do, I'll help you
out. If I can. Whatever you knowyou want to be a crazy farmer,
you go right ahead. Like, I'll,I'll reap the rewards. So,
yep, so, so he had a couple, youknow, he had a sheep, a goose
(04:58):
that I did not like, namedTimmy.
Because it was me okay.
I gotta tell you, there was ahorse farm that I used to get
grain from, and they had geeseeverywhere. And every time I
drove, in fact, this is why Istopped going there, because
every time I drove in there thegeese just like came in from
(05:21):
everywhere, and then they're allaround, and you're trying to
leave and you're trying not tohit the geese. And they're,
they're just like, Yeah, I don'tmove for cars. And I'm like, I
don't want to kill you, drivingout of this person's property
and and then, you know, I
(05:42):
charging, yeah, I remember, thisis so funny first grade. You
know, we used to do phonics backback in the day, yeah, phonics.
And we had these cards thatwould have the letters on them,
and we would read this littlestory and do the sounds. And
when we did the th sounds, wethey actually had a story about
geese, and when the geese werehappy, they'd go,
(06:05):
and when they were angry, theywere
and
so I think my, my wholeimpression of geese has has
definitely been covered, thatand Candida geese that we need
our crops every spring in therise. Oh, we were like, get rid
of the geese, right? The geese.Gotta go all this about Timmy.
Poor Timmy. Poor Timmy. I knowthat was Dylan's like, best
(06:28):
friend. And he sure was, like,he was a little Snow White, like
all the animals would follow himaround the property. He had,
like, one goat, one sheep, youknow, vegetables, he always did
chickens. So he had that goingfor him. But so as I, you know,
started helping out, I just kindof fell in love with it. I love
that he could kind of turnnothing like he could just turn
(06:49):
this dirt into soil intovegetables, into a whole
business where he could deliverit to people's houses. And I
just thought that was so, soawesome. And then I kind of just
never left. And then we kind ofjust kept, you know, one thing
we would that really also wasgood about us is we would just
ping ideas off of each other. Wewere just like constantly paying
ideas, and then they would cometo life. And that was so
(07:12):
exciting for me, because I'dalways been a dreamer, but I'd
never had that person to help mereally
put them into a solid plan. So,you know, here we are six years
later, and we do about, let'ssay we do about 300 meat
chickens
once a month from May throughNovember. We do this year, we
did 27
(07:33):
pork pigs. You know pigs, we do,you know, about 130 laying hens.
And then we are raising about 50Thanksgiving turkey. So we've
got quite a bit going on as faras livestock. And then we've
got, you know, huge marketgarden. We do a greenhouse that
we heat with wood in the wintertime, just to kind of hold us
(07:54):
over. Use that outdoor woodfurnace for that. Or how do you
know that in the in thegreenhouse, because I know
sometimes people worry about,like, carbon monoxide being too
much in a greenhouse andpoisoning things. So not
poisoning the food for people,but just that the plants don't
survive very well. Yeah. So tellme how you're doing that, by
(08:15):
heating with wood. Um, so yeah,it's just a regular old wood
stove. Every year we, you know,put pallets of wood that we
chopped down on the property,because we do have a lot of
woodlands,
and we've never had a problemwith any of the plants not
growing very well with thecarbon we, you know, there's
been times where it's backed up,and it's been, you know, smoked
(08:37):
into the into the greenhouse alittle bit. We don't stay in
there, but some carbon loadingis good for some of the crops.
And I most of them are rootcrops at that point. So I
haven't noticed any kind of, anykind of issue with it. Sometimes
we'll even, you know, fertilizethe rows with some
of the the pot ash. Yep,
(08:59):
I use, I use the potash from mywood stove to get rid of my
front lawn,
keep spreading it, my front yardand and I noticed that it's
killing the grass and that themoss is coming in. And I'm like,
that's working for me, becauseI'm a big fan of not mowing.
Yes, okay, and because I think,I believe, don't quote me on
(09:23):
this one, but I believe ashmight raise the pH, or does it
lower it? I can't. I can'tremember. Yeah, no, I always
have to, I always have to doublecheck. I should not, yeah,
that's on this, but I alwayshave to check. But whatever it's
doing, whatever it's doing, thegrass doesn't like it as much as
the moss and that, yeah, me
like, alright, we're green. It'sgood. We love it. Oh, my God,
(09:45):
that's so fun. And it's softunderfoot too.
So we do all of our hot water.We do have one giant wood
furnace on the property, and itdoes all the hot water in the
main house. And then we're overin the the in law house, or the
in law Garage.
Other. But that is the goal,eventually, someday, to be able
to get another wood boiler,because it would just be so
(10:06):
much, so much more simple,because we do have to go out
there, you know, two to threetimes a day to stoke the stove.
And it's not, you know, it's notperfect. At the far end of the
greenhouse, it gets a littlecolder, so we can always tell
the crops grow a little slower.
It's on sometimes, like we have,you know, in the past, we've had
some really, really cold weekswhere we still have to put frost
(10:26):
cloth over some of the crops. Soit's definitely not foolproof,
but it keeps us open year round.So where a lot of farms, I would
say, have to close down. But youknow, one of the other reasons
we wanted to really do that too,was because our pigs, we do
spring pigs. So they're, they'reready to go around right now. So
we get the pork back earlyNovember, early December.
(10:47):
Sometimes
we have all this, all this meatin the freezer that we, you
know, we'd like to continue tosell. So it goes a little bit
better. If you have some. We domicrogreens as well. So we'll do
those in our inside grow roomwith with lights and all that
stuff. So it goes a littlebetter if you've got some some
other stuff with it. Yeah. Solet's talk about the year round
(11:10):
growing thing, because
it is something that, as yousaid, it's nice to have it for
income and to kind of steady outthe labor a little bit. I
compare it, and maybe this isnot quite accurate, but I
compare it to when we were dairyfarming, that we actually found
(11:32):
that we had more time when wewere dairy farming
than we did when we werevegetable farming, because the
vegetable farming was so laborintensive for such a short
period of time that it's like wealmost went offline from our
lives, which I do not recommendlisteners out there. I am, I am
supporting you to do better thanthat,
(11:54):
but that's how I grew up and soand then dairy farming. It's all
year round, every single day,but you have, you know, bigger
chunks of time during the daythat you can, like, leave the
farm and do stuff like go out toeat or stuff like that. So I'm
curious
as to how you manage to keeptaking care of yourself when
(12:18):
you're farming year round,because you don't get now that
you know, downtime. So what doyou do? What do you do to keep
yourself sane and to work withyour relationship with Dylan?
Because, you know, that's a veryimportant part of you as a
person. So yes, that's a greatquestion, so I'm still
(12:39):
navigating that. For sure, Iwould say we've taken on some
more helpers, and we have plansto take on more helpers next
year, even if it's only one daya week kind of thing. And that
was one thing, you know, thevegetables, they did fine, but
in the past, when we didn't haveas much going on,
I noticed that they had donebetter. So that is one thing.
(13:01):
The vegetables kind of fell tothe wayside as far as they
could have got a little bit moreattention this year. Well, I
think in the past, when wedidn't have as much going on, I
was more diligent, diligentabout getting out there. You
know, weeding more, trellisingthe tomatoes more. You know,
thinning some of the plants thatwe had started, the seedlings,
(13:24):
you know, being more diligentabout giving the baby seedlings
that we started as much tendercare as possible, where this
year was more like, okay,they're not dead. Give them a
quick water. Walk away. Theweeds can wait. The tomatoes
will still grow, kind of thing,thing like that. So next year, I
would really like to hiresomebody that is passionate
(13:46):
about growing vegetables thatwould want to come one day a
week, couple hours, just to doGen general maintenance, whether
it's harvest, weeding, plantingnew things, anything like that,
just to kind of give us someextra hands for help, because
one other thing that we added toour plate was doing baking and
(14:07):
kind of like making jams andthings like that. So that takes
a lot of time as well. We'redoing we're doing a lot. Yeah,
so do you have a I'm assumingyou've got the farm kitchen
authorization. Is that? How youyou manage to do that? And so,
yeah, how long a process wasthat for you?
(14:28):
As far as building it goes well,just the whole thing, like, from
when you decided to start doingthe farm kitchen, to the
permitting process to all ofthat, because everybody does it
a little differently. You know,some people actually have, like,
a second kitchen in their homes,and so it's, you know, they can,
they can set that aside and thenjust deal with that. And other
(14:49):
people can use their kitchen,but they need a second hand
washing sink or, you know, soI'm just, I'm curious as to how
your process worked.
So we had original.
Done a cottage kitchen, whichanybody can do. It's meant for
people to use from their homekitchens. Our kitchen is very
small, so we, you know, made do.We would do Thanksgiving pies.
(15:11):
We would do some breads.Primarily, Dylan was baking all
of the bread, and he reallywanted to get out of that. He
wanted me to kind of take itover. He wanted to be outside
with the with the chickens andthe vegetables. So totally
understood that. So aroundOctober of last year, actually,
okay, so about a year ago now,we did our first farm to table
(15:34):
dinner at the farm. So we had topull a couple temporary food
permits. You know, we did amaybe about 30 people. We have
one of our catering friends whocatered it and cooked all the
food for us. And that kind ofwas so exciting and so
successful for us, beyond what Ihad dreamt it to be, that it was
(15:56):
like, wow. We should do thismore often. We should
ask the questions that we needto ask on how we can we can do
this more. So we have downstairsin the basement. It was kind of
already our grow room, where wewould process all of our like,
wash our greens and package themand things like that. Nothing
crazy. There was no ovens downthere or anything like that. So
(16:18):
we weren't doing the baking downthere. But we said, Well, why
don't we, you know, put akitchen down here. I don't see
why we wouldn't be able to. No,it's not being used right now.
We can still process thevegetables down there. It'll,
you know, kind of get us to thenext level. So we started, you
know, I called the town, Icalled the Health Department, I
called anybody that I that wouldanswer. And kind of because I
(16:40):
had absolutely no idea what todo. And when I Googled it, it
was very you know,
every state is different fortheir laws, so you really got to
know your laws.
You know, everybody hasdifferent permits and all that
stuff. So I finally figured outwhich direction I needed to go
in, and we're still finisheddoing the fine finishing
(17:02):
touches. I still need to have,you know, the health department
come out and inspect it. I stillneed to have the the town zoning
changes so we're not making theready made meals yet, or we
haven't done another farm totable dinner this year, but it's
closer than it's ever been. Sowe're able to still do all of
our baked goods. So that'sprimarily what we've been doing
right now, right? And yeah, wejust taken over the baked goods.
(17:26):
Now I have Yes, yes, I have, soyup, yup. So that's Yep. That's
what's been been happening. Wejust finally got a brand new
oven in it just got hooked uplast night.
Thank you. Yes, it's gonna be agame changer. Because before I
was just working off of mybrother gave me his old propane
(17:47):
oven, and it worked great, youknow, it got the job done. But
it'll be nice to be able tobake, you know, more at once. So
so it doesn't take me all day.Tell us about your oven. Tell
us, tell us what it, what it is,and how it how it was an
upgrade. It was a commercialoven. It was, you know, I got it
from webster.com's
I was going to get a used one.There's a couple used appliance
(18:09):
places around us,
but we had purchased an icemachine, and it worked one day,
and then it broke. And we're notvery savvy when it comes to
fixing things like that. So Ireally didn't want to get, you
know, something that was goingto break on me. So I said, You
know what? I'm just going tobite the bullet. You know, I got
a little small loan from afamily member so that can work
(18:33):
on paying that back for them,which was, that's extremely
helpful when you have peoplethat believe in you as well. So
I would not have been able to dothat if it weren't for that. So
I just put bit the bullet. Webought the oven. So they dropped
it off on an 18 wheeler. It'sbrand is CPG cooking performance
group. It's probably, I wouldsay, middle of the road brand.
(18:56):
So they have ones called Blodgetovens, which is typically what
you'll see in, you know, pizzarestaurants, big restaurants,
things like that, which wasabout double the price. So I
figured I would get kind of themiddle model, the beginners
model, see how it goes. BecauseI really only Bake about two,
three days a week.
So I didn't really needsomething two, and it
(19:19):
was only one day a week. It's,it's spreading out over two or
three at the at this point. And,yeah, it's, it's a good thing.
It's a great thing. So, sothat's what, what we got right
now. So let's, let's talk aboutthe spreading out thing.
Because, you know, one of, oneof my big passions with farmers
is being able to create the farmlife that works for the farmers
(19:42):
and not being driven by thefarm. And I think it's very easy
for us as farmers to have thingsthat kind of expand on their own
and create their own life. Andthen we suddenly wake up one day
and we're like, oh, I'm puttingall of my.
Energy into this thing that Inever really expected to do,
(20:04):
maybe never even wanted to do.And you know, maybe that's not
working for me. So I'm curiousas to
how the planning process worksfor you. And Dylan on, you know,
what to expand, when, like,what? What are some of those
decision making processes you gothrough?
(20:26):
Okay, that's a good question. Soat this point, we are on year, I
want to say six or seven of thefarms, so we're still relatively
new. So the decisions that getmade are, which ones are going
to like, pay off first, Isuppose. So there is other
updates we want to make, likethe, you know, the wood boiler
(20:49):
expenses that we want to do,buying more equipment for our
chicken processing that willmake things go smoother. So when
it comes to that, it's, it's,which ones will pay off first,
and which ones make more sense,and which ones can we make do
without? So right now, we onlyprocess chickens two days a
month, for only seven months outof the year, so we don't need to
(21:12):
make that purchase right now,
because we can do without. Ittakes a little bit longer, just
like the oven. It took me almosta year to finally buy this oven,
because, sure, it took me longerto do in the smaller oven, but I
need to make sure this wassomething I was going to
continue doing and not decidehalfway through I don't want to
(21:33):
do baked goods anymore. So it'skind of a lot of
what? What are you going tostick with what makes more
sense, what can go without,what's working just fine, but
doesn't totally need an upgrade.And then I'm a big fan of making
lists of like wish lists, soI'll find that sometimes they
just end up getting checked offor or something better comes
(21:56):
about, and I'm like, Oh, I don'teven want that anymore. Another
one is our greenhouse. We've reskinned it maybe like
three times now,
and this year, Dylan's finallygoing to pay for the some of the
things that because we wefabricated it ourselves. It was
just
(22:16):
some metal piping that hisfather got from a job that he
did probably 1520, years ago andhad been just sitting out in the
field. So finally, when Dylandecided he wanted to be a
farmer, he said, Hey, Dad, wehave all this
greenhouse.
Yeah,
(22:37):
we did. He did, but we didn'tbuy, like, the wiggle wire. That
would help, you know, when itcame to rolling up the poly, and
the poly is so expensive, so wenever double skinned it, we,
which would help a lot with,with keeping it warmer, with the
with the especially in thewinter, yes, with the wood
stove,
yep. And then, you know, becausewe made ourselves, we'd had it
(23:00):
the first time he he made it. Hespaced out the the pipes a
little bit too far away fromeach other. So when we had a
really heavy snowstorm, itcollapsed, and that was probably
only like, the first year he hadit. So then he immediately
feeling so devastated, and solike, what, you know, am I even
supposed to be doing this? Hepatched it up. So then there was
(23:21):
a lot of little holes and tapehere and there, but it was a
greenhouse and it worked andwhatever. So this year, we're
finally going to reskin it.We're not going to cut the poly
this time. We're going to putthe wiggle wire on. We're going
to get the track system. So nextyear, when we roll it up, we
don't have to use greenhousetape when we want to close it
back up for the winter. So smallthings that that over time too,
(23:46):
I almost feel like they'rejustified to do. It's like,
okay, we put up with it for thelast five years or so. I think
it's time to upgrade and makethings a little smoother
ourselves. So, yeah, as part ofour system, as far as our plans
and not letting things all toobig, yeah, well, I think that's
(24:07):
one of the really key things, isthat farmers are constantly
trying to balance time versusmoney, because we sometimes feel
like we don't have enough money,so we don't want to put money
into things,
if we can make up for it byspending time. And yet,
(24:29):
sometimes that time expensebecomes an emotional stress. It
takes away from other activitieswe could be doing. And so like,
we have to
almost like, look at our timeand put a value on that as well,
and say, What is it worth to me
(24:49):
to get extra hours or not tohave to be, you know, repairing
a collapsed greenhouse, becausewhen it collapses.
This is now you're not justlooking at putting it back
together like usually, you'vegot torn, torn plastic
everywhere, and so you got tobuy new plastic, and you're
rushing around and you you'vegot crops on the ground that
(25:11):
are, you know, getting cold. Andso sometimes that money up front
is actually the thing that'sgoing to save you both time and
money in the future, I know thatthat's a really hard,
hard juggling to do to figureout what that is.
Yeah, you know what to yousaying that it makes me think
(25:32):
too. It's kind of funny how ifit's personally me that has to
take the extra time, or if it'spersonally Dylan that has to
take the extra time, you tend tolike brush it off a little bit
more. But if, if I can doanything to have our helpers,
whom we pay, have an easier timeand get things done more
efficiently, I'll pay whateverit takes. You know, it's so
(25:55):
funny how that works. It'salmost like, you know, you don't
value your time with the work asmuch as you value other people's
time. So yeah, so I'm gonna, I'mgonna share a perspective right
now, just because this comes upso perfectly that I heard from,
actually, he's a guy who doeslike Instagram stuff, Jake Adam,
but he dv, Jake Adam, Davey, butanyway, he was talking about how
(26:20):
we use our time. And he wastalking about unproductive time
versus productive time versussuper productive time. And he
has this very interestingperspective that I've just
really adopted, well, cerebrallyadopted. I still haven't put it
into practice as well as Ishould, but unproductive time is
(26:42):
the time you spend doing thingsthat are not meeting any of your
personal goals or values orbusiness goals. You know, it's
just stuff that you have to do,but it's it's not meeting any
felt need that you have. Andthen productive time is the time
that you spend actually meetingyour goals and objectives. And
you know, we can all define thatdifferently, but then that super
(27:05):
productive time is when somebodyelse is spending their time to
meet your goals and objectives,freeing your time up to do
something else. And I think thatwhole idea of help, you know, we
want our help to truly be superproductive, like we want to be
able to give them a job and say,go get this done. We want them
(27:26):
to do it with the least amountof expense on our part and the
least amount of management. LikeI was thinking about your lists
that you were talking about andhow the list just sometimes seem
to get done like you just lookand say, Oh, look at that. I
wrote it down, and then ithappened. And there's actually
(27:48):
studies that say that justwriting down your goals will
make you 42% more likely toaccomplish them just by writing
them. Doing nothing you donothing else, you just write it
down, and you're 42% more likelyto get it done. So there's a
reason for lists. This is alsowhy I have a freebie for farmers
(28:09):
that's about using lists to helpyour help. Help you, because the
list can really make a hugedifference in so many aspects.
You know if, if people are doingan activity and they're not
sure, you know you've got aprocess that you want, but they
haven't internalized thatprocess, because it's not their
(28:29):
business, like, let's face it,our help, our help, might really
care about our businesses, butthey're never going to care
about our businesses. Shouldn'tthey should never care about our
businesses as much as we do. Soyou write a list, and you say,
just do it in this order, and ifyou do this, then I'm getting
what I want. You're gettingwant, you know, everybody's
(28:49):
happy. Everybody's happy. Yes,yes,
I love that. Yeah, no, that's sotrue, too. About, like, if I
write down my wish list, like,this things that I want, you
know, I want this new thing. Iwant that most of the time it
just ends up, yeah, people belike, Oh, my God, I had this
extra thing. Could you use it?And I'm like, You have no idea.
I've been wanting one of these.I, you know, it's on my wish
(29:12):
list. It's in my Amazon car. Iwon't buy it. But, you know,
yeah, I love that, yeah? Becauseit also, I think it also puts us
in a frame of mind where oursubconscious is working for us.
You know, you hear all aboutthis, like manifesting stuff,
and I'm I'm not, yeah, I get themanifesting and it does work,
(29:32):
but it works because we actuallythen take action to do
something, like, if you justmake the wish and walk away from
it and never do anything, itain't going to happen, but when
you have it in the back of yourmind as this thing that you're
working towards, then whenopportunities arise, you see
them right away, and you jump onthings, and you make choices
(29:56):
that get you closer to where youwant to go. So it's like.
Planning, planning on light, alight version of planning.
Yeah, or, or, you know, I grewup going to Catholic school, so
I have a pretty religiousbackground. I kind of fell out
of it. Now I've found my faithagain. And so I used to be big
(30:17):
into the manifestation, and Ihad all these little things I
would say to myself in themorning, but now I kind of have
lumped them together withreligion, and I, I kind of feel
like sometimes, like with themanifestation. It's like, if you
hold on to something you want itso bad, you're not letting faith
in. You're not letting so when Iwrite, when we write things
down, we put them on our list,and things like that, we're
(30:39):
still thinking about themsubconsciously, like you were
saying, but now we're allowing,you know, God to deliver too, so
to do it and to do it the wayhe's gonna do it right, and of
us forcing something that mightnot be right for the time or the
place. And I, I love thatlearning that I'm learning that
(30:59):
every day, because I I'm kind ofa control freak. I won't lie,
I've had to learn, I've had tolearn to let go of that a little
bit, because most of the time,like you said, it works out in
in a way that I didn't evenpicture, and it's better than I
could have ever pictured. So doyou have an example of that?
Because I think this is justsuch a great thing. And of
(31:19):
course, I'm putting you right onthe spot. Yeah, I know. I'm sure
that there are so many. I'mtrying to think, Okay, this,
this would be a great example.So we bought a party tent for to
have our farm to table dinnerin. And this was my like, this
is going to be great. We havethis party tent now. We can have
all kinds of more events. We cando little talks, all this stuff.
(31:44):
And then it blew over into mygarden, and it crumpled up
because we did not use
really good rebar stakes. Weused whatever it came with. And
it came from Home Depot. And,you know, it wasn't, it wasn't
1000s of dollars, it was lessthan that. So it wasn't the best
thing. So blew over into mygarden, and I'm like, oh my god,
(32:05):
ruined. Everything's ruined. SoDylan was able to fix it. And I
was like, oh my god, this isperfect. Great. You know, he can
do anything. We fix it. We getrebar stakes to hold him into
the ground. Awesome. We're backin business. This is great. So
we retired the tent for thewinter time. Next the spring
comes out this spring, actually,we usually set up our tent for
(32:25):
our opening stand weekend, andwe have vendors and things like
that, selling their crafts andsoaps and all that. Yeah. So we
had our opening Yeah. So it wentgreat. The tent was up. It was
perfect. We had our stakes down,you know, we thought we learned
all the quirks from it. And then
(32:46):
we the next day after, after ouropening weekend, it blew over
again, Dylan. Dylan says, Oh, myGod, the tents gone. Where's the
tent? So we go outside, and atthis point it's like, crumpled
like a pretzel. He was callingit our farm art installation
because it was just like, thisabstract
thing, and I am just so indisbelief. I'm like, How could
(33:07):
this happen again? We took allthe precautions. Like, what the
heck, you know? Are we meant toare we meant to be doing this?
This is just ridiculous. Butagain, it was one of those,
those thoughts that we had hadpreviously. We originally said,
Well, why don't we build aposted beam structure, like
you'd see in a park, but it wasone of those. We're not going to
spend the money on that, becauseit's very expensive. Let's try
(33:29):
it out. By buying the pop uptent we put, you know, we got a
load of stones down to to makethe ground compact.
But because of that happening,it was, I think it, you know, it
was God's way of saying, hey,like you kind of tried to take
the the easy route that youthought was the easy route.
This is the plan that I have,actually. So we had Ellis tech
(33:52):
come, which the technical schoolnear us, which his father taught
masonry for, you know, 30 yearsat So, okay, very, there some
connections. He knows thestudents, the students, you
know, any of the shops at techschools, will will take on the
public, as long as they have theroom and they have the means and
they've got the budget. So we,you know, signed up for them to
(34:14):
come out and pour us a concretepad. That was the first step
they were able to do that. Wewere able to use some of the
materials on the farm to make ita little bit cheaper. As far as,
instead of buying all the Ithink it's like the rebar stuff,
we were able to use some oldfencing. So it comes in handy
when we call his dad the packrat, but it always comes in
(34:35):
handy. So I can't even get madthat he keeps all this extra
stuff. Oh, we say that all thetime, because I come from a
family of Hoarders, and so it'slike, on the one hand, and the
reason they Hoard is becausethey're like, well, I could use
this. I could Yes, I could usethis. And I don't know when it
might be 20 years from now, andyou hold on to all this stuff,
(34:59):
and then that one.
In time that you can use it, youcan use it that feeds the
hoarding. And it's like, but seethat, like, Am I
really
doing a good thing or nothing?
I know I'm feeding it. I'mfeeding his problem, but it's
it's working out. So, like,Okay, I'm feeding your
(35:21):
addiction. Yes, yes, yes. Andit's just and then as soon as,
also on the other end, as soonas you get rid of something, you
say, I'm just gonna get rid ofthis stuff. That's when you need
it the most. That's when youneed it. Like, all of a sudden,
you're like, I had that onething that would have been
perfect for this thing, and nowI don't have it. So then that
feeds it too. But this workedout good. We got a concrete pad
poured, and then we actuallyhave a neighbor who is a
(35:42):
contractor, and we did a littlebartering, you know, for a pig,
and he is helping us build thestructure. So it is a slow and
steady process, and I'm trustingthe process, and eventually it's
going to be, you know, thefoundation is going to be there,
that it's not going to be ableto get blown away. So I think
that was a situation where,
(36:02):
you know, I had different plansin my head, and they didn't work
out the way I wanted them to. Sonow I'm like, Well, that was a
good wake up call to
slow it down. I don't need toknow everything. I don't need to
know why,
but it will all work itself out.And I think one of the things
I'm hearing in this too is, youknow, there there's a wee bit of
(36:25):
judgment that I hear in the backof what you're saying, that it's
like, well, you know, I wastrying to do the the easy way or
the cheap way and and really, Iwant to reframe that like You
were trying to do it in littlesteps.
That's a big investment, and Idon't want to go and, like,
(36:48):
invest in this huge building ifit's not going to be what's
going to work for us, which isvery reasonable. And so, you
know, I think sometimes we makethese choices and they don't
turn out the way that weexpected them to. You know, you
were expecting to get a coupleof years out of that tent, I'm
Yeah, and that that that wasgoing to be, you were going to
(37:11):
work on that for a couple ofyears, while you decided whether
to build the next thing and andit didn't work out that way. You
had a season out of it, sort of,and then you forget this, we're
gonna go build the building.And, yeah, yeah, I don't think
that's a bad thing. Like, Ithink sometimes we need that
(37:31):
learning process. And it's notbecause you made a bad decision
by getting the tent. It's thatthe tent just really wasn't
going to be enough for you.Like, you're ready to move
further faster than that, and
and that's okay, like to justsay, All right, so we're
learning from it, and now we'removing forward. And the fact
that
(37:51):
I don't know there's so much inthis that, that in this story,
that's really just resonatingwith me, like I love the fact
that you used Ellis tech forthis stuff, and it gets you to
thinking about how manyopportunities there are for all
of us to be working with schoolsand tech schools. I mean, we
have charaho tech right down theroad my kids
(38:15):
and so
thinking about all of the stuffthat their tech school does, and
their small engine repair and,like, how many of us don't even
think about that as as apossible resource? And what an
amazing thing to actually createa partnership where you I mean,
what farmer doesn't always havesome kind of building project on
(38:39):
the on the docket? Like, isthere any farmer that doesn't
have a piece of equipment thatthey want repaired? Or, you
know, like,
you don't always want to takethe kids who are learning to do
that. Like, if you've got yourYeah, I don't even know what a
good tractor is going for. Now,I swear they probably cost more
than my house, but
(39:00):
at least 50 grand. You're notgonna. You're not gonna,
necessarily, she's like, You areso out of touch with the No no,
I don't so I'm only thinkingthat because my, my friend last
year brought us to Syracuse,does like a farming convention
every year. Oh, this will begreat. Out of our league. We,
we've got a rinky dink tractorfrom from the 70s, that that
(39:22):
that sometimes starts, and thesetractors were, like, as big as,
you know, as bigger than myhouse. Some of these tractors
lit, I've seen them. The onesthat they use in the Midwest
are, I mean, my house is 540
square feet. I think, yeah,they're literally bigger than my
house, and we are not in Kansasanymore. No, no, not at all. And
(39:46):
so anyway, all that to say, youprobably don't want the kids
just learning how to work onmotors, working on that piece of
equipment, right, right? But ifyou're putting up a pole barn
like that's a pretty low skill.
You know,
speaking, it's a good entrylevel thing where, if you've got
somebody guiding them, that'swhere you learn, like, you learn
(40:09):
how to lay cement, you know, youyou learn how to put the the
frames in place, and to do allthat stuff. So I think that's
beautiful. And I'm hoping thatthe farmers out here are
listening to that and thinking,Oh, maybe that's a way. Did you
pay them for that? Or was like,so how did that? I'm curious as
(40:29):
to the price now, because I wantto give people an idea of, you
know, how that would work forthem. I'm not totally sure on
the price, because I wasn'tinvolved in that part, but I
would say probably at least halfof what it cost to have, you
know, professional concreteperson or Mason come out and do
it. So definitely, you do haveto pay for all the materials.
(40:51):
That's a that's a guaranteed andthen I think there's kind of
like a suggested kind ofdonation that comes with it for
the school so that they cancontinue to do those kinds of
projects. I don't know exactlywhat it is, but, but Dylan did
say, if we paid for ourselves,it would have been 30 grand, so
it just wouldn't have beenfeasible. So definitely, and
(41:13):
yeah, give letting the kids havelike, I don't have any children,
so I don't know, but I do knowwhat it's like being you know,
when I was a teenager, andparents don't trust, you know,
they they're a little afraid togive you more trust. They don't
want to give you, you know, theystill a lot of people, they
still look at you as a kid, andeven your dad is not going to
give you his expensive powertool. I mean, my dad, it's like
(41:36):
you're not dealing with his I'mnot gonna let you borrow my tile
cutter.
Exactly. But the parents thatdo, and they teach their
children how to use the tools,how to use the equipment, they
end up becoming better. Youknow, those children end up
being better, obviously betteradults because of it. They then,
then they go on, usually, toteach other people how to use it
(41:57):
and and fortunately, Dylan'sfather has always been a
teacher. So he's always been so,like, I always think about that,
because my dad, that was my dad,like, I have to be there. I have
to help you do it, because Idon't want you to break it. I
don't want you to hurt yourself.Yeah, you whatever. So, but
Dylan's father has always, youknow, been like, yeah, this. You
learn it by learning it. So, sogo ahead and do it. And I see
(42:20):
that with Dylan, with ourhelper, because one of our
helpers, you know, is a seniorin high school, so he comes on
the weekends kind of thing. AndI tend to, like, like, we
shouldn't give him all thesehard jobs. And he's like, What
do you mean? Like, this isliterally his job. Like, he does
the dirty work. He gets to learnit. He probably, you know, I
can't I've seen him build hisown confidence up just by
(42:41):
knowing that he's such anintegral into integral part of
the farm. And like, we trustHim, and we do make him list,
and he just goes and does themand and, you know, yeah, so, so
it is, it's, it's a good thing.And how cool that you have the
opportunity to be building thenext generation of farm support
(43:02):
team like that's, that's theother thing. You know, we are in
such a place now where so manypeople are so far removed from
farming in a practical way thatthey don't have any of this
skills or knowledge that farmersneed, even when they're when
they're hiring somebody to comeon, or as a, as a long term
(43:25):
helper, any of this stuff. Andso I really love the whole
finding partnerships withschools or with younger kids,
that you can get them in thereand really start to train them,
because that that builds up thewhole system. Like that builds
it up for everybody. You know,
so much, oh gosh, so much there.And I do want to also just bring
(43:48):
up your bartering idea, because,yeah, I have a consultant who's
like, I don't consider barteringincome generation. And I was
like, I get that, you know,like, help me make money,
which we're working on,
if you were going to spend themoney on it anyways. Well, you
(44:08):
just, you know.
But my thing was, I had, mysister knew of somebody who was
writing a memoir, and he was acontractor, and so he wanted to
have me edit his book. And I waslike, Okay, I do that. No
problem. I'm a writer, and I waslooking at it, and I'm like, but
(44:31):
I need work done on my barn tokeep my barn solid. So I can't
afford to hire, like you weresaying, can't afford to hire
somebody to do that. So we took,like, half of the cost of of the
book, and we decided to do abartering thing. I would give
him the time. He would give metime here and do work on the on
(44:52):
the barn. We, you know, pulledthe cost of materials off of,
you know, what we each owed eachother. And.
And it worked for us, you know.So I think that those kinds of
creative, you know, ways ofbartering with each other, is
something that we need to notlook at that as like a second
(45:13):
class way of functioning like Ithink we need to value that and
to realize that in doing that,it's great to exchange money for
things. It really is. It's, youknow, people value things when
they when they give money forit, there's, there's no doubt
about it.
And yeah, if you have two peoplewho both have skills, right, and
(45:35):
they're willing to exchangeskills for each other that that
fit what everybody needs, like,what a beautiful synergy that
is. And that's so much of youknow, how our country was really
founded with, you know, peopleexchanging the labor that they
had for the things that theythey could do. So,
so I just love, love so muchabout that.
(45:58):
Oh, yeah, we've bartered. We'vebartered for a couch before,
like we
did, a half a pig for a couchthat they were going to sell,
you know, for like, 500 bucks.We barter for the guy that came
and hooked up our stoveyesterday. We bartered with him.
You know, We barter our helpwhen we do. We got away a couple
weeks ago for the weekend, andwe were like, how's the
(46:20):
Thanksgiving turkey sound, youknow, maybe we don't have to pay
you, but that's something you'regonna buy anyways. So I think a
lot of the time, people like yousaid they they don't necessarily
value it as as income, andthey'd almost rather go buy it
from the grocery store instead,because it just the money
transaction, the the tie withmoney they see, they feel like,
how could it possibly be I'drather just pay you for it, and
(46:43):
I don't understand why, but Idon't think that way. So there's
got to be a reason. Well, Imean, I think it's because,
again, our culture is so rootedin an exchange of money, like,
right, right? We do it. We do itin every aspect. I mean, when my
my family came and and put on myroof, I paid them to come and
(47:05):
put on my roof. And I paid thembecause I looked at them and I
was like, well, going back toyour, you know, Catholic roots,
the workman is worth his wages.And so, you know, I believe in
paying somebody for the workthat they do,
and at the same time that, ifyou've got something of value
(47:25):
that they that they can benefitof,
you know, it's okay to foregothe money thing and just let
that fall by the wayside. And,you know, everybody has to be
happy with that. But,
yeah, right. So it's a, it's ajust a clever solution. And I
guess that's what I'm seeinghere. Is that this story that
(47:46):
all came out of your party tenthere,
that story that you were like, Idon't have an example. Oh, wait,
yes, I do. I probably havebetter examples too.
I'm looking at this partyexample, and we talked about
faith, and we talked about, youknow, being gracious with
ourselves when we don't haveresults that we want. And we
(48:09):
talked about being able to getalternative forms of of service
for people and bartering, like,Are you kidding? This was, this
was great. And I'm looking atthis Cassidy, and this is what
happens on food, flowers and funis that I get to the end of the
episode and I say, I could talkto you.
(48:31):
I tell everybody that I'm justgonna have to have you come back
on. So I figure that by seasonthree, I'll be just like, I'll
be recycling guests, because Iwant to catch up with everybody
and find out what they're doing,but see if our barn got
finished. See, you know if I'mstill baking in the kitchen, and
exactly how many pigs did you dothis year? Like,
(48:52):
did you did you tie the knot?Are there? Are there two legged
critters running around? Yeah,you're like, pulling your hair
out, taking care of all kinds ofquestions. Oh, thanks, Kay.
But before we go, I have aquestion that I ask every
farmer. And that question is, ifyou had one thing that you
thought farmers should know,every farmer should know, what
(49:14):
would that be?
Let's see. One thing I thinkevery farmer should know.
Let's see,
okay,
that what you are doing isimportant and that it was
probably always meant to be whatyou were doing. That's what I
(49:34):
think. Because sometimes Iwonder, Am I doing the right
thing? Was I meant to be? Youknow, should I have been a
doctor? Could I have done it?No, and even I have lawyer
friends. I've got doctorfriends, I've got, you know,
teacher friends. I've got allthese friends, and they all
think what I'm doing isextremely important for our
community, ourselves, ourfamilies, our friends and the
(49:56):
world. Maybe, you know, yeah,oh, I'm, I'm.
Glad you said that, becauseseveral times I heard you ask
the question. I wrote it downhere, am I even supposed to be
doing this? And like, How manytimes do we have a setback and
we think, is this even what I'msupposed to be doing? Like, am I
beating my head against a brickwall and getting nothing but a
(50:17):
headache and, you know, a bruiseon my forehead,
and so I think that's reallyimportant to
to leave people with. So thankyou for that. That's Oh, that's
a beautiful word of wisdom. Oh,thanks and and thank you for
being on Food, Flowers and Fun.Thank you so much for having me.
(50:39):
You're so easy to talk to. K, itwas such a good time. Thank you.
Well, I really enjoyed doingthis. I Yeah, it's you're
supposed to be doing it. So thiswhole venue is just, I just love
it. So thank you for helping meto fulfill part of my purpose.
And thank you out there forlistening and being a part of
(51:01):
Food, Flowers and Fun, and wewill see you next time.
Bye.
Farmwork's calling our show isall done. Goodbye, farewell, so
long Adieu, see you next week,same time, same place for Food,
Flowers and Fun. Go in peace.
(51:24):
Visit us at www.penlightfarmers.com
Have you ever looked at your farm life and thought, am I
(00:04):
even supposed to be doing this?If so, you'll want to listen as
I chat with Cassidy Ball ofDaigle Farm about this and so
much more on today's episode ofFood, Flowers and Fun: Visits
with farm women from around the world.
(00:28):
if you're the woman who does itall, farm work, housework, book
work, homework, getting up atthe break of dawn. This is the
podcast for you. How do you
multiply my
first do you get away from thecares of the day? Restock,
rootstock, feedstock, seedstock. Chat with women around
(00:51):
the world to raise food flowersand fun with your host, K
Castrataro, that's me.
Welcome back to Food, Flowersand Fun: Visits with farm women
from around the world. And I amhere with Cassidy Ball from
Daigle Farm in Connecticut. Andas always, we are sponsored by
Pen Light for Farmers, who ishelping you to create more time,
(01:15):
energy and abundance in yourfarm life. So Cassidy, welcome.
How are you today? Doing verygood. Thank you so much for
inviting me. K. I'm so excitedto be here. Oh, I'm so excited
to have you. So your farm isquite diverse. Like I said,
you've got, you've gotlivestock. It looks like you do
some root vegetables and andI've got to say, I was just
(01:37):
scouting around on your website,and I found your weekly menu
thing, and I'm thinking, Man, Iwish I were living closer to
you, because I totally want fooddelivered to my house from your
farm. So like we always do, I'mjust going to hop in and start
with, why don't you tell ourpeople who you are, how you get
into farming and and we'll gofrom there. All right. Well, as
(02:00):
you said, K, my name is Cassidy,so you know, when I was about 24
years old or so, I had learnedabout the program called Wolf,
W, O, F, which I don't totallyknow the you know, I'm going to
butcher it a little bit, butit's basically worldwide.
Organic farming, it's worldwide.So I was going to start small.
There was a couple places,probably, you know, a town over,
(02:24):
you know, right over in RhodeIsland, since I'm in
Connecticut, so I was sointerested in it. But basically,
the program is kind of like aWork Share. You reach out to
these farmers and all kinds ofdifferent farms. You know, if
you just wanted to work in anorchard, you could work at an
orchard. If you want to work ata sheep farm, you can find a
(02:46):
sheep farm that's looking forhelp. But basically, farmers are
looking for help, and they can'talways pay. So it was kind of
like a work trade, where you cango to a farm, they'll put you
up, room and board. Some of themwill pay you, definitely feed
you, and then, in exchange, youlearn some new trades, you learn
some new skills, and you get toimmerse yourself in the life. So
(03:10):
I was signed up for that for acouple years, but I was too
scared to do it actually, so Inever, I never took advantage of
any of the farms. So did youknow, did you get offered
positions? And you said, Sorry,I'm not gonna
so a couple of them had reachedout and said, Yeah, you know, we
have some people already rightnow as like host farmers, is
(03:31):
what they would call it. Sowe're looking for woofers. But I
was too scared to do it. Andthen
a friend of mine, Dylan, who isnow my partner, my boyfriend,
you know, future husband, youknow, really the creator of
Daigle farm, if you will. I sawthat he had been farming, so we
grew up going to schooltogether. I'd known him since
(03:51):
the third grade. We kind of fellout of touch in high school and
a little bit into our 20s. And Isaw that he had started a farm,
and he was doing the homedelivery then, and I was like,
you know, I've known himforever. I don't have to be
embarrassed or scared oranything if I don't know
anything. So I reached out tohim. And, you know, I never did
it through Wolf, but I got to doit right in my, you know, my
(04:14):
hometown.
And he was, you know, it wasjust him. So he said, Yeah, of
course, you know, come on over.Come learn some stuff. At the
time, he was split between twolocations. He had a house and a
farm, kind of up the road fromwhere we are now, and then this
property that our farm is on nowis where he grew up, his his
(04:34):
family's property. So it wasn'tever a farm before. But
unfortunately, his dad is prettyeasygoing. Dylan's his only son.
And was like, you know, whateveryou want to do, I'll help you
out. If I can. Whatever you knowyou want to be a crazy farmer,
you go right ahead. Like, I'll,I'll reap the rewards. So,
yep, so, so he had a couple, youknow, he had a sheep, a goose
(04:58):
that I did not like, namedTimmy.
Because it was me okay.
I gotta tell you, there was ahorse farm that I used to get
grain from, and they had geeseeverywhere. And every time I
drove, in fact, this is why Istopped going there, because
every time I drove in there thegeese just like came in from
(05:21):
everywhere, and then they're allaround, and you're trying to
leave and you're trying not tohit the geese. And they're,
they're just like, Yeah, I don'tmove for cars. And I'm like, I
don't want to kill you, drivingout of this person's property
and and then, you know, I
(05:42):
charging, yeah, I remember, thisis so funny first grade. You
know, we used to do phonics backback in the day, yeah, phonics.
And we had these cards thatwould have the letters on them,
and we would read this littlestory and do the sounds. And
when we did the th sounds, wethey actually had a story about
geese, and when the geese werehappy, they'd go,
(06:05):
and when they were angry, theywere
and
so I think my, my wholeimpression of geese has has
definitely been covered, thatand Candida geese that we need
our crops every spring in therise. Oh, we were like, get rid
of the geese, right? The geese.Gotta go all this about Timmy.
Poor Timmy. Poor Timmy. I knowthat was Dylan's like, best
(06:28):
friend. And he sure was, like,he was a little Snow White, like
all the animals would follow himaround the property. He had,
like, one goat, one sheep, youknow, vegetables, he always did
chickens. So he had that goingfor him. But so as I, you know,
started helping out, I just kindof fell in love with it. I love
that he could kind of turnnothing like he could just turn
(06:49):
this dirt into soil intovegetables, into a whole
business where he could deliverit to people's houses. And I
just thought that was so, soawesome. And then I kind of just
never left. And then we kind ofjust kept, you know, one thing
we would that really also wasgood about us is we would just
ping ideas off of each other. Wewere just like constantly paying
ideas, and then they would cometo life. And that was so
(07:12):
exciting for me, because I'dalways been a dreamer, but I'd
never had that person to help mereally
put them into a solid plan. So,you know, here we are six years
later, and we do about, let'ssay we do about 300 meat
chickens
once a month from May throughNovember. We do this year, we
did 27
(07:33):
pork pigs. You know pigs, we do,you know, about 130 laying hens.
And then we are raising about 50Thanksgiving turkey. So we've
got quite a bit going on as faras livestock. And then we've
got, you know, huge marketgarden. We do a greenhouse that
we heat with wood in the wintertime, just to kind of hold us
(07:54):
over. Use that outdoor woodfurnace for that. Or how do you
know that in the in thegreenhouse, because I know
sometimes people worry about,like, carbon monoxide being too
much in a greenhouse andpoisoning things. So not
poisoning the food for people,but just that the plants don't
survive very well. Yeah. So tellme how you're doing that, by
(08:15):
heating with wood. Um, so yeah,it's just a regular old wood
stove. Every year we, you know,put pallets of wood that we
chopped down on the property,because we do have a lot of
woodlands,
and we've never had a problemwith any of the plants not
growing very well with thecarbon we, you know, there's
been times where it's backed up,and it's been, you know, smoked
(08:37):
into the into the greenhouse alittle bit. We don't stay in
there, but some carbon loadingis good for some of the crops.
And I most of them are rootcrops at that point. So I
haven't noticed any kind of, anykind of issue with it. Sometimes
we'll even, you know, fertilizethe rows with some
of the the pot ash. Yep,
(08:59):
I use, I use the potash from mywood stove to get rid of my
front lawn,
keep spreading it, my front yardand and I noticed that it's
killing the grass and that themoss is coming in. And I'm like,
that's working for me, becauseI'm a big fan of not mowing.
Yes, okay, and because I think,I believe, don't quote me on
(09:23):
this one, but I believe ashmight raise the pH, or does it
lower it? I can't. I can'tremember. Yeah, no, I always
have to, I always have to doublecheck. I should not, yeah,
that's on this, but I alwayshave to check. But whatever it's
doing, whatever it's doing, thegrass doesn't like it as much as
the moss and that, yeah, me
like, alright, we're green. It'sgood. We love it. Oh, my God,
(09:45):
that's so fun. And it's softunderfoot too.
So we do all of our hot water.We do have one giant wood
furnace on the property, and itdoes all the hot water in the
main house. And then we're overin the the in law house, or the
in law Garage.
Other. But that is the goal,eventually, someday, to be able
to get another wood boiler,because it would just be so
(10:06):
much, so much more simple,because we do have to go out
there, you know, two to threetimes a day to stoke the stove.
And it's not, you know, it's notperfect. At the far end of the
greenhouse, it gets a littlecolder, so we can always tell
the crops grow a little slower.
It's on sometimes, like we have,you know, in the past, we've had
some really, really cold weekswhere we still have to put frost
(10:26):
cloth over some of the crops. Soit's definitely not foolproof,
but it keeps us open year round.So where a lot of farms, I would
say, have to close down. But youknow, one of the other reasons
we wanted to really do that too,was because our pigs, we do
spring pigs. So they're, they'reready to go around right now. So
we get the pork back earlyNovember, early December.
(10:47):
Sometimes
we have all this, all this meatin the freezer that we, you
know, we'd like to continue tosell. So it goes a little bit
better. If you have some. We domicrogreens as well. So we'll do
those in our inside grow roomwith with lights and all that
stuff. So it goes a littlebetter if you've got some some
other stuff with it. Yeah. Solet's talk about the year round
(11:10):
growing thing, because
it is something that, as yousaid, it's nice to have it for
income and to kind of steady outthe labor a little bit. I
compare it, and maybe this isnot quite accurate, but I
compare it to when we were dairyfarming, that we actually found
(11:32):
that we had more time when wewere dairy farming
than we did when we werevegetable farming, because the
vegetable farming was so laborintensive for such a short
period of time that it's like wealmost went offline from our
lives, which I do not recommendlisteners out there. I am, I am
supporting you to do better thanthat,
(11:54):
but that's how I grew up and soand then dairy farming. It's all
year round, every single day,but you have, you know, bigger
chunks of time during the daythat you can, like, leave the
farm and do stuff like go out toeat or stuff like that. So I'm
curious
as to how you manage to keeptaking care of yourself when
(12:18):
you're farming year round,because you don't get now that
you know, downtime. So what doyou do? What do you do to keep
yourself sane and to work withyour relationship with Dylan?
Because, you know, that's a veryimportant part of you as a
person. So yes, that's a greatquestion, so I'm still
(12:39):
navigating that. For sure, Iwould say we've taken on some
more helpers, and we have plansto take on more helpers next
year, even if it's only one daya week kind of thing. And that
was one thing, you know, thevegetables, they did fine, but
in the past, when we didn't haveas much going on,
I noticed that they had donebetter. So that is one thing.
(13:01):
The vegetables kind of fell tothe wayside as far as they
could have got a little bit moreattention this year. Well, I
think in the past, when wedidn't have as much going on, I
was more diligent, diligentabout getting out there. You
know, weeding more, trellisingthe tomatoes more. You know,
thinning some of the plants thatwe had started, the seedlings,
(13:24):
you know, being more diligentabout giving the baby seedlings
that we started as much tendercare as possible, where this
year was more like, okay,they're not dead. Give them a
quick water. Walk away. Theweeds can wait. The tomatoes
will still grow, kind of thing,thing like that. So next year, I
would really like to hiresomebody that is passionate
(13:46):
about growing vegetables thatwould want to come one day a
week, couple hours, just to doGen general maintenance, whether
it's harvest, weeding, plantingnew things, anything like that,
just to kind of give us someextra hands for help, because
one other thing that we added toour plate was doing baking and
(14:07):
kind of like making jams andthings like that. So that takes
a lot of time as well. We'redoing we're doing a lot. Yeah,
so do you have a I'm assumingyou've got the farm kitchen
authorization. Is that? How youyou manage to do that? And so,
yeah, how long a process wasthat for you?
(14:28):
As far as building it goes well,just the whole thing, like, from
when you decided to start doingthe farm kitchen, to the
permitting process to all ofthat, because everybody does it
a little differently. You know,some people actually have, like,
a second kitchen in their homes,and so it's, you know, they can,
they can set that aside and thenjust deal with that. And other
(14:49):
people can use their kitchen,but they need a second hand
washing sink or, you know, soI'm just, I'm curious as to how
your process worked.
So we had original.
Done a cottage kitchen, whichanybody can do. It's meant for
people to use from their homekitchens. Our kitchen is very
small, so we, you know, made do.We would do Thanksgiving pies.
(15:11):
We would do some breads.Primarily, Dylan was baking all
of the bread, and he reallywanted to get out of that. He
wanted me to kind of take itover. He wanted to be outside
with the with the chickens andthe vegetables. So totally
understood that. So aroundOctober of last year, actually,
okay, so about a year ago now,we did our first farm to table
(15:34):
dinner at the farm. So we had topull a couple temporary food
permits. You know, we did amaybe about 30 people. We have
one of our catering friends whocatered it and cooked all the
food for us. And that kind ofwas so exciting and so
successful for us, beyond what Ihad dreamt it to be, that it was
(15:56):
like, wow. We should do thismore often. We should
ask the questions that we needto ask on how we can we can do
this more. So we have downstairsin the basement. It was kind of
already our grow room, where wewould process all of our like,
wash our greens and package themand things like that. Nothing
crazy. There was no ovens downthere or anything like that. So
(16:18):
we weren't doing the baking downthere. But we said, Well, why
don't we, you know, put akitchen down here. I don't see
why we wouldn't be able to. No,it's not being used right now.
We can still process thevegetables down there. It'll,
you know, kind of get us to thenext level. So we started, you
know, I called the town, Icalled the Health Department, I
called anybody that I that wouldanswer. And kind of because I
(16:40):
had absolutely no idea what todo. And when I Googled it, it
was very you know,
every state is different fortheir laws, so you really got to
know your laws.
You know, everybody hasdifferent permits and all that
stuff. So I finally figured outwhich direction I needed to go
in, and we're still finisheddoing the fine finishing
(17:02):
touches. I still need to have,you know, the health department
come out and inspect it. I stillneed to have the the town zoning
changes so we're not making theready made meals yet, or we
haven't done another farm totable dinner this year, but it's
closer than it's ever been. Sowe're able to still do all of
our baked goods. So that'sprimarily what we've been doing
right now, right? And yeah, wejust taken over the baked goods.
(17:26):
Now I have Yes, yes, I have, soyup, yup. So that's Yep. That's
what's been been happening. Wejust finally got a brand new
oven in it just got hooked uplast night.
Thank you. Yes, it's gonna be agame changer. Because before I
was just working off of mybrother gave me his old propane
(17:47):
oven, and it worked great, youknow, it got the job done. But
it'll be nice to be able tobake, you know, more at once. So
so it doesn't take me all day.Tell us about your oven. Tell
us, tell us what it, what it is,and how it how it was an
upgrade. It was a commercialoven. It was, you know, I got it
from webster.com's
I was going to get a used one.There's a couple used appliance
(18:09):
places around us,
but we had purchased an icemachine, and it worked one day,
and then it broke. And we're notvery savvy when it comes to
fixing things like that. So Ireally didn't want to get, you
know, something that was goingto break on me. So I said, You
know what? I'm just going tobite the bullet. You know, I got
a little small loan from afamily member so that can work
(18:33):
on paying that back for them,which was, that's extremely
helpful when you have peoplethat believe in you as well. So
I would not have been able to dothat if it weren't for that. So
I just put bit the bullet. Webought the oven. So they dropped
it off on an 18 wheeler. It'sbrand is CPG cooking performance
group. It's probably, I wouldsay, middle of the road brand.
(18:56):
So they have ones called Blodgetovens, which is typically what
you'll see in, you know, pizzarestaurants, big restaurants,
things like that, which wasabout double the price. So I
figured I would get kind of themiddle model, the beginners
model, see how it goes. BecauseI really only Bake about two,
three days a week.
So I didn't really needsomething two, and it
(19:19):
was only one day a week. It's,it's spreading out over two or
three at the at this point. And,yeah, it's, it's a good thing.
It's a great thing. So, sothat's what, what we got right
now. So let's, let's talk aboutthe spreading out thing.
Because, you know, one of, oneof my big passions with farmers
is being able to create the farmlife that works for the farmers
(19:42):
and not being driven by thefarm. And I think it's very easy
for us as farmers to have thingsthat kind of expand on their own
and create their own life. Andthen we suddenly wake up one day
and we're like, oh, I'm puttingall of my.
Energy into this thing that Inever really expected to do,
(20:04):
maybe never even wanted to do.And you know, maybe that's not
working for me. So I'm curiousas to
how the planning process worksfor you. And Dylan on, you know,
what to expand, when, like,what? What are some of those
decision making processes you gothrough?
(20:26):
Okay, that's a good question. Soat this point, we are on year, I
want to say six or seven of thefarms, so we're still relatively
new. So the decisions that getmade are, which ones are going
to like, pay off first, Isuppose. So there is other
updates we want to make, likethe, you know, the wood boiler
(20:49):
expenses that we want to do,buying more equipment for our
chicken processing that willmake things go smoother. So when
it comes to that, it's, it's,which ones will pay off first,
and which ones make more sense,and which ones can we make do
without? So right now, we onlyprocess chickens two days a
month, for only seven months outof the year, so we don't need to
(21:12):
make that purchase right now,
because we can do without. Ittakes a little bit longer, just
like the oven. It took me almosta year to finally buy this oven,
because, sure, it took me longerto do in the smaller oven, but I
need to make sure this wassomething I was going to
continue doing and not decidehalfway through I don't want to
(21:33):
do baked goods anymore. So it'skind of a lot of
what? What are you going tostick with what makes more
sense, what can go without,what's working just fine, but
doesn't totally need an upgrade.And then I'm a big fan of making
lists of like wish lists, soI'll find that sometimes they
just end up getting checked offor or something better comes
(21:56):
about, and I'm like, Oh, I don'teven want that anymore. Another
one is our greenhouse. We've reskinned it maybe like
three times now,
and this year, Dylan's finallygoing to pay for the some of the
things that because we wefabricated it ourselves. It was
just
(22:16):
some metal piping that hisfather got from a job that he
did probably 1520, years ago andhad been just sitting out in the
field. So finally, when Dylandecided he wanted to be a
farmer, he said, Hey, Dad, wehave all this
greenhouse.
Yeah,
(22:37):
we did. He did, but we didn'tbuy, like, the wiggle wire. That
would help, you know, when itcame to rolling up the poly, and
the poly is so expensive, so wenever double skinned it, we,
which would help a lot with,with keeping it warmer, with the
with the especially in thewinter, yes, with the wood
stove,
yep. And then, you know, becausewe made ourselves, we'd had it
(23:00):
the first time he he made it. Hespaced out the the pipes a
little bit too far away fromeach other. So when we had a
really heavy snowstorm, itcollapsed, and that was probably
only like, the first year he hadit. So then he immediately
feeling so devastated, and solike, what, you know, am I even
supposed to be doing this? Hepatched it up. So then there was
(23:21):
a lot of little holes and tapehere and there, but it was a
greenhouse and it worked andwhatever. So this year, we're
finally going to reskin it.We're not going to cut the poly
this time. We're going to putthe wiggle wire on. We're going
to get the track system. So nextyear, when we roll it up, we
don't have to use greenhousetape when we want to close it
back up for the winter. So smallthings that that over time too,
(23:46):
I almost feel like they'rejustified to do. It's like,
okay, we put up with it for thelast five years or so. I think
it's time to upgrade and makethings a little smoother
ourselves. So, yeah, as part ofour system, as far as our plans
and not letting things all toobig, yeah, well, I think that's
(24:07):
one of the really key things, isthat farmers are constantly
trying to balance time versusmoney, because we sometimes feel
like we don't have enough money,so we don't want to put money
into things,
if we can make up for it byspending time. And yet,
(24:29):
sometimes that time expensebecomes an emotional stress. It
takes away from other activitieswe could be doing. And so like,
we have to
almost like, look at our timeand put a value on that as well,
and say, What is it worth to me
(24:49):
to get extra hours or not tohave to be, you know, repairing
a collapsed greenhouse, becausewhen it collapses.
This is now you're not justlooking at putting it back
together like usually, you'vegot torn, torn plastic
everywhere, and so you got tobuy new plastic, and you're
rushing around and you you'vegot crops on the ground that
(25:11):
are, you know, getting cold. Andso sometimes that money up front
is actually the thing that'sgoing to save you both time and
money in the future, I know thatthat's a really hard,
hard juggling to do to figureout what that is.
Yeah, you know what to yousaying that it makes me think
(25:32):
too. It's kind of funny how ifit's personally me that has to
take the extra time, or if it'spersonally Dylan that has to
take the extra time, you tend tolike brush it off a little bit
more. But if, if I can doanything to have our helpers,
whom we pay, have an easier timeand get things done more
efficiently, I'll pay whateverit takes. You know, it's so
(25:55):
funny how that works. It'salmost like, you know, you don't
value your time with the work asmuch as you value other people's
time. So yeah, so I'm gonna, I'mgonna share a perspective right
now, just because this comes upso perfectly that I heard from,
actually, he's a guy who doeslike Instagram stuff, Jake Adam,
but he dv, Jake Adam, Davey, butanyway, he was talking about how
(26:20):
we use our time. And he wastalking about unproductive time
versus productive time versussuper productive time. And he
has this very interestingperspective that I've just
really adopted, well, cerebrallyadopted. I still haven't put it
into practice as well as Ishould, but unproductive time is
(26:42):
the time you spend doing thingsthat are not meeting any of your
personal goals or values orbusiness goals. You know, it's
just stuff that you have to do,but it's it's not meeting any
felt need that you have. Andthen productive time is the time
that you spend actually meetingyour goals and objectives. And
you know, we can all define thatdifferently, but then that super
(27:05):
productive time is when somebodyelse is spending their time to
meet your goals and objectives,freeing your time up to do
something else. And I think thatwhole idea of help, you know, we
want our help to truly be superproductive, like we want to be
able to give them a job and say,go get this done. We want them
(27:26):
to do it with the least amountof expense on our part and the
least amount of management. LikeI was thinking about your lists
that you were talking about andhow the list just sometimes seem
to get done like you just lookand say, Oh, look at that. I
wrote it down, and then ithappened. And there's actually
(27:48):
studies that say that justwriting down your goals will
make you 42% more likely toaccomplish them just by writing
them. Doing nothing you donothing else, you just write it
down, and you're 42% more likelyto get it done. So there's a
reason for lists. This is alsowhy I have a freebie for farmers
(28:09):
that's about using lists to helpyour help. Help you, because the
list can really make a hugedifference in so many aspects.
You know if, if people are doingan activity and they're not
sure, you know you've got aprocess that you want, but they
haven't internalized thatprocess, because it's not their
(28:29):
business, like, let's face it,our help, our help, might really
care about our businesses, butthey're never going to care
about our businesses. Shouldn'tthey should never care about our
businesses as much as we do. Soyou write a list, and you say,
just do it in this order, and ifyou do this, then I'm getting
what I want. You're gettingwant, you know, everybody's
(28:49):
happy. Everybody's happy. Yes,yes,
I love that. Yeah, no, that's sotrue, too. About, like, if I
write down my wish list, like,this things that I want, you
know, I want this new thing. Iwant that most of the time it
just ends up, yeah, people belike, Oh, my God, I had this
extra thing. Could you use it?And I'm like, You have no idea.
I've been wanting one of these.I, you know, it's on my wish
(29:12):
list. It's in my Amazon car. Iwon't buy it. But, you know,
yeah, I love that, yeah? Becauseit also, I think it also puts us
in a frame of mind where oursubconscious is working for us.
You know, you hear all aboutthis, like manifesting stuff,
and I'm I'm not, yeah, I get themanifesting and it does work,
(29:32):
but it works because we actuallythen take action to do
something, like, if you justmake the wish and walk away from
it and never do anything, itain't going to happen, but when
you have it in the back of yourmind as this thing that you're
working towards, then whenopportunities arise, you see
them right away, and you jump onthings, and you make choices
(29:56):
that get you closer to where youwant to go. So it's like.
Planning, planning on light, alight version of planning.
Yeah, or, or, you know, I grewup going to Catholic school, so
I have a pretty religiousbackground. I kind of fell out
of it. Now I've found my faithagain. And so I used to be big
(30:17):
into the manifestation, and Ihad all these little things I
would say to myself in themorning, but now I kind of have
lumped them together withreligion, and I, I kind of feel
like sometimes, like with themanifestation. It's like, if you
hold on to something you want itso bad, you're not letting faith
in. You're not letting so when Iwrite, when we write things
down, we put them on our list,and things like that, we're
(30:39):
still thinking about themsubconsciously, like you were
saying, but now we're allowing,you know, God to deliver too, so
to do it and to do it the wayhe's gonna do it right, and of
us forcing something that mightnot be right for the time or the
place. And I, I love thatlearning that I'm learning that
(30:59):
every day, because I I'm kind ofa control freak. I won't lie,
I've had to learn, I've had tolearn to let go of that a little
bit, because most of the time,like you said, it works out in
in a way that I didn't evenpicture, and it's better than I
could have ever pictured. So doyou have an example of that?
Because I think this is justsuch a great thing. And of
(31:19):
course, I'm putting you right onthe spot. Yeah, I know. I'm sure
that there are so many. I'mtrying to think, Okay, this,
this would be a great example.So we bought a party tent for to
have our farm to table dinnerin. And this was my like, this
is going to be great. We havethis party tent now. We can have
all kinds of more events. We cando little talks, all this stuff.
(31:44):
And then it blew over into mygarden, and it crumpled up
because we did not use
really good rebar stakes. Weused whatever it came with. And
it came from Home Depot. And,you know, it wasn't, it wasn't
1000s of dollars, it was lessthan that. So it wasn't the best
thing. So blew over into mygarden, and I'm like, oh my god,
(32:05):
ruined. Everything's ruined. SoDylan was able to fix it. And I
was like, oh my god, this isperfect. Great. You know, he can
do anything. We fix it. We getrebar stakes to hold him into
the ground. Awesome. We're backin business. This is great. So
we retired the tent for thewinter time. Next the spring
comes out this spring, actually,we usually set up our tent for
(32:25):
our opening stand weekend, andwe have vendors and things like
that, selling their crafts andsoaps and all that. Yeah. So we
had our opening Yeah. So it wentgreat. The tent was up. It was
perfect. We had our stakes down,you know, we thought we learned
all the quirks from it. And then
(32:46):
we the next day after, after ouropening weekend, it blew over
again, Dylan. Dylan says, Oh, myGod, the tents gone. Where's the
tent? So we go outside, and atthis point it's like, crumpled
like a pretzel. He was callingit our farm art installation
because it was just like, thisabstract
thing, and I am just so indisbelief. I'm like, How could
(33:07):
this happen again? We took allthe precautions. Like, what the
heck, you know? Are we meant toare we meant to be doing this?
This is just ridiculous. Butagain, it was one of those,
those thoughts that we had hadpreviously. We originally said,
Well, why don't we build aposted beam structure, like
you'd see in a park, but it wasone of those. We're not going to
spend the money on that, becauseit's very expensive. Let's try
(33:29):
it out. By buying the pop uptent we put, you know, we got a
load of stones down to to makethe ground compact.
But because of that happening,it was, I think it, you know, it
was God's way of saying, hey,like you kind of tried to take
the the easy route that youthought was the easy route.
This is the plan that I have,actually. So we had Ellis tech
(33:52):
come, which the technical schoolnear us, which his father taught
masonry for, you know, 30 yearsat So, okay, very, there some
connections. He knows thestudents, the students, you
know, any of the shops at techschools, will will take on the
public, as long as they have theroom and they have the means and
they've got the budget. So we,you know, signed up for them to
(34:14):
come out and pour us a concretepad. That was the first step
they were able to do that. Wewere able to use some of the
materials on the farm to make ita little bit cheaper. As far as,
instead of buying all the Ithink it's like the rebar stuff,
we were able to use some oldfencing. So it comes in handy
when we call his dad the packrat, but it always comes in
(34:35):
handy. So I can't even get madthat he keeps all this extra
stuff. Oh, we say that all thetime, because I come from a
family of Hoarders, and so it'slike, on the one hand, and the
reason they Hoard is becausethey're like, well, I could use
this. I could Yes, I could usethis. And I don't know when it
might be 20 years from now, andyou hold on to all this stuff,
(34:59):
and then that one.
In time that you can use it, youcan use it that feeds the
hoarding. And it's like, but seethat, like, Am I
really
doing a good thing or nothing?
I know I'm feeding it. I'mfeeding his problem, but it's
it's working out. So, like,Okay, I'm feeding your
(35:21):
addiction. Yes, yes, yes. Andit's just and then as soon as,
also on the other end, as soonas you get rid of something, you
say, I'm just gonna get rid ofthis stuff. That's when you need
it the most. That's when youneed it. Like, all of a sudden,
you're like, I had that onething that would have been
perfect for this thing, and nowI don't have it. So then that
feeds it too. But this workedout good. We got a concrete pad
poured, and then we actuallyhave a neighbor who is a
(35:42):
contractor, and we did a littlebartering, you know, for a pig,
and he is helping us build thestructure. So it is a slow and
steady process, and I'm trustingthe process, and eventually it's
going to be, you know, thefoundation is going to be there,
that it's not going to be ableto get blown away. So I think
that was a situation where,
(36:02):
you know, I had different plansin my head, and they didn't work
out the way I wanted them to. Sonow I'm like, Well, that was a
good wake up call to
slow it down. I don't need toknow everything. I don't need to
know why,
but it will all work itself out.And I think one of the things
I'm hearing in this too is, youknow, there there's a wee bit of
(36:25):
judgment that I hear in the backof what you're saying, that it's
like, well, you know, I wastrying to do the the easy way or
the cheap way and and really, Iwant to reframe that like You
were trying to do it in littlesteps.
That's a big investment, and Idon't want to go and, like,
(36:48):
invest in this huge building ifit's not going to be what's
going to work for us, which isvery reasonable. And so, you
know, I think sometimes we makethese choices and they don't
turn out the way that weexpected them to. You know, you
were expecting to get a coupleof years out of that tent, I'm
Yeah, and that that that wasgoing to be, you were going to
(37:11):
work on that for a couple ofyears, while you decided whether
to build the next thing and andit didn't work out that way. You
had a season out of it, sort of,and then you forget this, we're
gonna go build the building.And, yeah, yeah, I don't think
that's a bad thing. Like, Ithink sometimes we need that
(37:31):
learning process. And it's notbecause you made a bad decision
by getting the tent. It's thatthe tent just really wasn't
going to be enough for you.Like, you're ready to move
further faster than that, and
and that's okay, like to justsay, All right, so we're
learning from it, and now we'removing forward. And the fact
that
(37:51):
I don't know there's so much inthis that, that in this story,
that's really just resonatingwith me, like I love the fact
that you used Ellis tech forthis stuff, and it gets you to
thinking about how manyopportunities there are for all
of us to be working with schoolsand tech schools. I mean, we
have charaho tech right down theroad my kids
(38:15):
and so
thinking about all of the stuffthat their tech school does, and
their small engine repair and,like, how many of us don't even
think about that as as apossible resource? And what an
amazing thing to actually createa partnership where you I mean,
what farmer doesn't always havesome kind of building project on
(38:39):
the on the docket? Like, isthere any farmer that doesn't
have a piece of equipment thatthey want repaired? Or, you
know, like,
you don't always want to takethe kids who are learning to do
that. Like, if you've got yourYeah, I don't even know what a
good tractor is going for. Now,I swear they probably cost more
than my house, but
(39:00):
at least 50 grand. You're notgonna. You're not gonna,
necessarily, she's like, You areso out of touch with the No no,
I don't so I'm only thinkingthat because my, my friend last
year brought us to Syracuse,does like a farming convention
every year. Oh, this will begreat. Out of our league. We,
we've got a rinky dink tractorfrom from the 70s, that that
(39:22):
that sometimes starts, and thesetractors were, like, as big as,
you know, as bigger than myhouse. Some of these tractors
lit, I've seen them. The onesthat they use in the Midwest
are, I mean, my house is 540
square feet. I think, yeah,they're literally bigger than my
house, and we are not in Kansasanymore. No, no, not at all. And
(39:46):
so anyway, all that to say, youprobably don't want the kids
just learning how to work onmotors, working on that piece of
equipment, right, right? But ifyou're putting up a pole barn
like that's a pretty low skill.
You know,
speaking, it's a good entrylevel thing where, if you've got
somebody guiding them, that'swhere you learn, like, you learn
(40:09):
how to lay cement, you know, youyou learn how to put the the
frames in place, and to do allthat stuff. So I think that's
beautiful. And I'm hoping thatthe farmers out here are
listening to that and thinking,Oh, maybe that's a way. Did you
pay them for that? Or was like,so how did that? I'm curious as
(40:29):
to the price now, because I wantto give people an idea of, you
know, how that would work forthem. I'm not totally sure on
the price, because I wasn'tinvolved in that part, but I
would say probably at least halfof what it cost to have, you
know, professional concreteperson or Mason come out and do
it. So definitely, you do haveto pay for all the materials.
(40:51):
That's a that's a guaranteed andthen I think there's kind of
like a suggested kind ofdonation that comes with it for
the school so that they cancontinue to do those kinds of
projects. I don't know exactlywhat it is, but, but Dylan did
say, if we paid for ourselves,it would have been 30 grand, so
it just wouldn't have beenfeasible. So definitely, and
(41:13):
yeah, give letting the kids havelike, I don't have any children,
so I don't know, but I do knowwhat it's like being you know,
when I was a teenager, andparents don't trust, you know,
they they're a little afraid togive you more trust. They don't
want to give you, you know, theystill a lot of people, they
still look at you as a kid, andeven your dad is not going to
give you his expensive powertool. I mean, my dad, it's like
(41:36):
you're not dealing with his I'mnot gonna let you borrow my tile
cutter.
Exactly. But the parents thatdo, and they teach their
children how to use the tools,how to use the equipment, they
end up becoming better. Youknow, those children end up
being better, obviously betteradults because of it. They then,
then they go on, usually, toteach other people how to use it
(41:57):
and and fortunately, Dylan'sfather has always been a
teacher. So he's always been so,like, I always think about that,
because my dad, that was my dad,like, I have to be there. I have
to help you do it, because Idon't want you to break it. I
don't want you to hurt yourself.Yeah, you whatever. So, but
Dylan's father has always, youknow, been like, yeah, this. You
learn it by learning it. So, sogo ahead and do it. And I see
(42:20):
that with Dylan, with ourhelper, because one of our
helpers, you know, is a seniorin high school, so he comes on
the weekends kind of thing. AndI tend to, like, like, we
shouldn't give him all thesehard jobs. And he's like, What
do you mean? Like, this isliterally his job. Like, he does
the dirty work. He gets to learnit. He probably, you know, I
can't I've seen him build hisown confidence up just by
(42:41):
knowing that he's such anintegral into integral part of
the farm. And like, we trustHim, and we do make him list,
and he just goes and does themand and, you know, yeah, so, so
it is, it's, it's a good thing.And how cool that you have the
opportunity to be building thenext generation of farm support
(43:02):
team like that's, that's theother thing. You know, we are in
such a place now where so manypeople are so far removed from
farming in a practical way thatthey don't have any of this
skills or knowledge that farmersneed, even when they're when
they're hiring somebody to comeon, or as a, as a long term
(43:25):
helper, any of this stuff. Andso I really love the whole
finding partnerships withschools or with younger kids,
that you can get them in thereand really start to train them,
because that that builds up thewhole system. Like that builds
it up for everybody. You know,
so much, oh gosh, so much there.And I do want to also just bring
(43:48):
up your bartering idea, because,yeah, I have a consultant who's
like, I don't consider barteringincome generation. And I was
like, I get that, you know,like, help me make money,
which we're working on,
if you were going to spend themoney on it anyways. Well, you
(44:08):
just, you know.
But my thing was, I had, mysister knew of somebody who was
writing a memoir, and he was acontractor, and so he wanted to
have me edit his book. And I waslike, Okay, I do that. No
problem. I'm a writer, and I waslooking at it, and I'm like, but
(44:31):
I need work done on my barn tokeep my barn solid. So I can't
afford to hire, like you weresaying, can't afford to hire
somebody to do that. So we took,like, half of the cost of of the
book, and we decided to do abartering thing. I would give
him the time. He would give metime here and do work on the on
(44:52):
the barn. We, you know, pulledthe cost of materials off of,
you know, what we each owed eachother. And.
And it worked for us, you know.So I think that those kinds of
creative, you know, ways ofbartering with each other, is
something that we need to notlook at that as like a second
(45:13):
class way of functioning like Ithink we need to value that and
to realize that in doing that,it's great to exchange money for
things. It really is. It's, youknow, people value things when
they when they give money forit, there's, there's no doubt
about it.
And yeah, if you have two peoplewho both have skills, right, and
(45:35):
they're willing to exchangeskills for each other that that
fit what everybody needs, like,what a beautiful synergy that
is. And that's so much of youknow, how our country was really
founded with, you know, peopleexchanging the labor that they
had for the things that theythey could do. So,
so I just love, love so muchabout that.
(45:58):
Oh, yeah, we've bartered. We'vebartered for a couch before,
like we
did, a half a pig for a couchthat they were going to sell,
you know, for like, 500 bucks.We barter for the guy that came
and hooked up our stoveyesterday. We bartered with him.
You know, We barter our helpwhen we do. We got away a couple
weeks ago for the weekend, andwe were like, how's the
(46:20):
Thanksgiving turkey sound, youknow, maybe we don't have to pay
you, but that's something you'regonna buy anyways. So I think a
lot of the time, people like yousaid they they don't necessarily
value it as as income, andthey'd almost rather go buy it
from the grocery store instead,because it just the money
transaction, the the tie withmoney they see, they feel like,
how could it possibly be I'drather just pay you for it, and
(46:43):
I don't understand why, but Idon't think that way. So there's
got to be a reason. Well, Imean, I think it's because,
again, our culture is so rootedin an exchange of money, like,
right, right? We do it. We do itin every aspect. I mean, when my
my family came and and put on myroof, I paid them to come and
(47:05):
put on my roof. And I paid thembecause I looked at them and I
was like, well, going back toyour, you know, Catholic roots,
the workman is worth his wages.And so, you know, I believe in
paying somebody for the workthat they do,
and at the same time that, ifyou've got something of value
(47:25):
that they that they can benefitof,
you know, it's okay to foregothe money thing and just let
that fall by the wayside. And,you know, everybody has to be
happy with that. But,
yeah, right. So it's a, it's ajust a clever solution. And I
guess that's what I'm seeinghere. Is that this story that
(47:46):
all came out of your party tenthere,
that story that you were like, Idon't have an example. Oh, wait,
yes, I do. I probably havebetter examples too.
I'm looking at this partyexample, and we talked about
faith, and we talked about, youknow, being gracious with
ourselves when we don't haveresults that we want. And we
(48:09):
talked about being able to getalternative forms of of service
for people and bartering, like,Are you kidding? This was, this
was great. And I'm looking atthis Cassidy, and this is what
happens on food, flowers and funis that I get to the end of the
episode and I say, I could talkto you.
(48:31):
I tell everybody that I'm justgonna have to have you come back
on. So I figure that by seasonthree, I'll be just like, I'll
be recycling guests, because Iwant to catch up with everybody
and find out what they're doing,but see if our barn got
finished. See, you know if I'mstill baking in the kitchen, and
exactly how many pigs did you dothis year? Like,
(48:52):
did you did you tie the knot?Are there? Are there two legged
critters running around? Yeah,you're like, pulling your hair
out, taking care of all kinds ofquestions. Oh, thanks, Kay.
But before we go, I have aquestion that I ask every
farmer. And that question is, ifyou had one thing that you
thought farmers should know,every farmer should know, what
(49:14):
would that be?
Let's see. One thing I thinkevery farmer should know.
Let's see,
okay,
that what you are doing isimportant and that it was
probably always meant to be whatyou were doing. That's what I
(49:34):
think. Because sometimes Iwonder, Am I doing the right
thing? Was I meant to be? Youknow, should I have been a
doctor? Could I have done it?No, and even I have lawyer
friends. I've got doctorfriends, I've got, you know,
teacher friends. I've got allthese friends, and they all
think what I'm doing isextremely important for our
community, ourselves, ourfamilies, our friends and the
(49:56):
world. Maybe, you know, yeah,oh, I'm, I'm.
Glad you said that, becauseseveral times I heard you ask
the question. I wrote it downhere, am I even supposed to be
doing this? And like, How manytimes do we have a setback and
we think, is this even what I'msupposed to be doing? Like, am I
beating my head against a brickwall and getting nothing but a
(50:17):
headache and, you know, a bruiseon my forehead,
and so I think that's reallyimportant to
to leave people with. So thankyou for that. That's Oh, that's
a beautiful word of wisdom. Oh,thanks and and thank you for
being on Food, Flowers and Fun.Thank you so much for having me.
(50:39):
You're so easy to talk to. K, itwas such a good time. Thank you.
Well, I really enjoyed doingthis. I Yeah, it's you're
supposed to be doing it. So thiswhole venue is just, I just love
it. So thank you for helping meto fulfill part of my purpose.
And thank you out there forlistening and being a part of
(51:01):
Food, Flowers and Fun, and wewill see you next time.
Bye.
Farmwork's calling our show isall done. Goodbye, farewell, so
long Adieu, see you next week,same time, same place for Food,
Flowers and Fun. Go in peace.
(51:24):
Visit us at www.penlightfarmers.com
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.