Burrow & Bloom

Today I'm talking with Lulu at Burrow & Bloom. You can follow on Facebook as well.

Sean's book - Exit Farming: Starving the Systems That Farm You

 

www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead

Muck Boots 

Calendars.Com

If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 

https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes

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 Lulu at Burrow and Bloom in Bismarck, North Dakota. Good morning, Lulu. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather there?  Really cloudy,  really humid over here.

00:25 Oh, well, it's really nippy here in Minnesota this morning for the first time in over a week.  Thank God. It's been very, very hot this past week. Yeah, we should be getting some good weather this weekend though. So I'm excited about that. I'm really happy for you. It's supposed to rain here this weekend and that's okay too, because we could use it. And  that sounds really funny coming out of my face because, you know, I didn't grow up as a homesteader.

00:53 And so every time I say we need the rain, I sound like a farmer. totally understand. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do, Lulu.  So my name is Lulu and I'm the owner of Furrow and Bloom.  And  I started a micro  farmstead um in little  North Dakota.  What we kind of do is like we grow

01:23 vegetables. um We raise rabbits. That was how we started on a fourth of an acre. And um we recently started to reach out to the community and provide some of our products. And there was a demand for a refillery store. So we started kind of taking on the responsibility of that. So we're just kind of growing and  taking orders like that. Awesome.

01:52 And I know that you actually produce almost everything that you put out in the world. And so how in the world do you have time for all of that?  So I have to really sit down and make time for it.  I work  as an administrative assistant for a neuropathic doctor here in town. So that takes up a majority of my time, obviously.

02:19 Um, but then I do have a passion for  baking. That's kind of how I got into the whole homesteading life.  And I learned how to make sourdough probably about four or five years ago now.  Um,  so because I enjoy it so much, I make time for it. It started off just  with me baking breads for our family. But then I started gifting it out. People started to really want it. And now.

02:48 I um sell that as part of our farmstead.

02:54 Okay. And what else do you make and sell? So I actually sell ravioli. So when it comes to food, it's bread and raviolis. um That's mainly what I put out and jams. And I try to source all the things here in town as much as I can. And also just like use the community  as  a, um I guess like a support system. Cause a lot of stuff we actually get

03:23 donated or we go and pick up when people no longer need something or just want to get rid of it. So we do use a lot of things like that oh to make our products. Okay, so here's my big question for you. In Minnesota, we have a lot of regulations on  how we can do things like you're doing.

03:46 And in our case, we can't really do pop-ups at businesses unless there's more than three people who are going to be involved, three businesses, three pop-up businesses at the business. Is that how it is for you or can you just like get hold of a business and say, can I use your parking lot for five hours? Yeah. So the laws,  the cottage laws specifically here in North Dakota and Bismarck kind of changed over the years when I first started out.

04:14 Um, cottage bakers were not allowed to bake at all. Like there was no cottage food, um, really allowed without getting permits an