Dawn's Dirt - Farming In Midlife

Today I'm talking with Dawn about homesteading and farming as we age at Dawn's Dirt.

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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, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.

00:25 Today I'm talking with Dawn at Dawn's Dirt and Dawn was a guest on my show, not two weeks ago, and told us about what she does. But today we're going to be a little more focused and we're going to talk about  homesteading and farming and gardening once you get past the age of 40, especially as a woman.  Good morning, Dawn. How are you? Good morning. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity again. I just love talking about these things. So yeah, it's good.  Me too. so

00:55 If we're talking about when you get past 40, obviously I'm past 40, I'm 55. I think you told me you're 44, is that right? I was just going to say who says I'm past 40, but I'm just teasing. I'm 44. I almost had to edit all that out. Okay. So the first thing I want to say is aging is a privilege denied to many. And so I'm really glad that I'm getting older and hopefully wiser.

01:24 trying anyway. But there are some real things that come  with getting older, especially with our bodies and  manual labor. So  how's that going for you Dawn? Because I will share mine after you share yours. For sure. Make me go first.  Well,  I'll tell you this. Like I'm not a

01:46 bigger, fatter woman, but I'm a bigger woman. I'm tall and I've got big bones and I've got good muscle structure. So I can actually lift  and outlift a lot of people.  I was just thinking back this morning, I went to the gym  for a couple of months just after I  got through my busy season on the farm. And on the farm, I could lift, you know, three buckets of potatoes, which was about 150 pounds.  And I went to the gym and dead lifted 185 pounds.  So

02:13 I can do it, I am stronger than most, but I'll tell you this, my back hurts a lot at the time and my lower back and my upper back and into my neck. It hurts a lot of the time and I've learned, I used to be able to do the 150 pounds in one shot and just do it and bust it done, but I've learned in the last couple of years here that I'm better off to do three trips of 50 pounds than one trip of 150 pounds.

02:42 It's harder. Everything aches a bit more and I fall into bed at night and I'm just physically exhausted, tired from  doing physical work.  Yeah. And it takes longer to recover  once you get past 40 as well. Yeah, for sure.  My youngest son still lives with us and he's 23 and his job is to help us out on the  quote unquote farm.

03:12 And this kid can just bust his ass for two days in a row,  be  mildly sore the next day. And  the fourth day from the first day, he's like, let's do it again. I'm like, nah, I'm not doing anything.  You can go play. You do it. For sure. And I found that too. know,  back when I had my farm, I would have to, in the spring, I'd have to get my boiler system going again. so,

03:38 What that involved was taking a ladder around the greenhouse and crawling up it and crawling back down it, know, opening the valves and things like that.  And so I was up and down ladders, up and down ladders, up and down ladders all day  for a full day. And I could do it while I was going because once I'm moving, I'm moving. But let me tell you, the next day when I try and do it again, my body says, uh-uh, you do not want to do this again. Like it just took  l