Appalachian Highlands Farmers Magazine

Today I'm talking with Aaron at Appalachian Highlands Farmers Magazine. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Aaron at Appalachian Highlands Farmers Magazine, and you are where? I'm in Bristol, Virginia. Okay. Welcome, Aaron. Thank you for being here. Thank you. I appreciate being here. So how's the weather there? It is...

00:29 study in a little bit chilly.  You're lucky. It is very muggy in Minnesota. That's where I am. This is about as this is the first  couple of days we haven't had rain since I've been here. uh Oh, okay. So are you new to there or  what's up with that? I've been here about two years.  Um, I'm a transplant from Southern California,  um,  and still moved out here just to retire. And then I figured out I can't retire.

00:59 So I started getting busy again. Yeah, my husband and I are both in our mid fifties and anytime retirement comes up in conversation, we just do that very sardonic laugh and go, we're never retiring because it's not going to do us any good to retire. Yeah. And it's also not good for your brain to sit off that much, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. My dad retired over 10 years ago. He is now 80.

01:28 I think  and He acts like he's 50. He lives like he's 50. You would never know. He was 83 years old. So I'm very proud of  All right, so tell me a little bit about yourself and about your magazine Okay, well I was gonna mention that I'm planning out here from Southern California in the mountains of Southern California About 5,000 so I come from a kind of a rural

01:58 not rural really, it's urban forest I guess you could call it, it's a little town called Crestline, California. um I  spent most of my career in  the printing business and when I say print I mean magazines, newspapers, that type of thing. um My education is actually graphic communication, kind dawned into the print business and ended up consulting with authors.

02:25 These are the things that I like the San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego New New York Review, and people like that. About, you know, how they used to go out and do their layout design. So, later on in the managing, I my little hometown newspaper at the time. It was called the Alpenhorn Nude. It addressed my town. And I worked there.

02:54 for a while and I just wanted to  it. was  definitely going to buy it from after that fence fell through and I moved away to Montana for five years and I came back and it turns out somebody had bought it from the old owner and he was not doing well with it and so I was joking, strictly a joke. I wrote up the contracts for me purchasing it  and was supposed to just be something funny.

03:24 And I said, no, I'll buy it for $295.

03:29 And that was how much they that's how much money they were in the black for the year.  Uh  huh. So he's he he's didn't even look at it. He just said, you know what, where's this? Where do I  Wow.  Right. And I ended up publishing that newspaper and upgrading the branding on it. It had already been changed to to a new name, which was the  Alpine Mountain here in this case.

03:58 It was just a typical little newspaper, a real small town newspaper. Nothing's honestly known, no stories or anything like that. No politics. So then I retired, moved out here, got calls from a son of mine back in California who owns stable farmer's markets, some private farmer's markets. And he said, you know what, I want you to do my marketing for me.

04:26 So what I want to do is create a farmer's market newspaper. Okay. And I said, sir, I'll do that. I put one together, you know, a mock up of one and pricing, I'll be distribute distributing that. And when he thought it was going to cost him 20 grams, was looking for alternatives. So I said, well, why don't you do an online news? You know, the money. And so that was the

04:56 impetus for creating something called the California, well, it's called the farmer market