Groovy Grazers - Autumn update

Today I'm talking with Morgan at Groovy Grazers for an Autumn update. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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 Morgan at Groovy Grazers in Montana. Good morning, friend. How are you? Good morning, good morning. It's starting to feel like fall here, which is always exciting after a hot summer. So I'm super excited to be here today.  Oh, honey, tell me it's starting to feel like fall.

00:28 Our heat is not working and it was 63 degrees in the house Saturday and Sunday. Oh my goodness.  Afternoon. And  our furnace is broken. We found out because we turned it on and it didn't work. So it was rather nippy this past weekend and I actually made granola to heat up the kitchen and blow some warm air to the living room.

00:55 and made apple crisp with our own apples. Ooh,  apple crisp is my favorite. We're gluten free, so there's a lot of  fall treats that I miss. And I'm going to try and recreate. I'm going to get a little more adventurous. Last time we talked, we talked about sourdough  and making various things with that. So I'm kind of excited for this fall because I think I can be included in the pumpkin spice treats that we all love.

01:22 Yeah, I am not a pumpkin spice fan. I like pumpkin pie and I like pumpkin bread,  but the whole pumpkin spice thing, I'm not into it. I don't know why. I'm not really, I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin spice per se, except for like a few drinks, but like,  I'm not even an eggnog person. I don't know. I'm just not a normal person, I guess, when it comes to like the drinks. I like a Thai latte over pumpkin spice. I mean, any day.

01:51 Yeah, I actually freaking love eggnog. So we're kind of opposite on this, but that's fine.  But the important part of my statement regarding the apple crisp is that it was made with our apples from our trees.  Honey gold, our honey gold tree actually produced at least 150 apples this year. Wow. I remember you were excited to see the numbers that it was going to bring and you were slightly worried it was not going to bring a bunch of apples. So that's a

02:20 That's a lot of apples, a hundred apples over, you Yeah,  over 150. Wow, that's a good producing tree. And I think that's really important with what we're going to talk about today. Did you buy the home with that tree?  No, they were actually given to us as a housewarming present from an orchard guy that we know. That's even better because  that's first year producing over a hundred. That's big amount. I took a

02:47 Master Gardening since we last spoke. I just did the course to kind of like freshen up and learn about Montana because I am not a Montana native. Yeah. And it's really hard when you go, especially here to plant trees. So we've planted two trees now. We planted a Liberty Apple tree and we planted some type of pear and neither took, but we have really bad alkaline soil and I've learned more history about our soil.

03:15 And so to even put a tree, think we'd have to do some major soil reworking and pulling out material and putting it back in. Yeah. I've kind of given up slightly on the tree idea for a minute, just until we have a better location. Yeah. And  it's,  it's hard because you never know what's going to grow where until you try it. And,  and just as a caveat, took five years from putting in those apple saplings to get the apples.

03:45 Five years, wow. Okay, so I mean, that's still not bad though for a five-year-old tree when you look at production. mean,  the amount of apples that I'm sure you're gonna get to put away, you'll get to make many apple crisps, I'm sure all the way through  the winter. So did you can any of it?  No, we're actually selling some of them to the community at the farmers market.  You've been doing the farmers market.  How's that going?

04:14 Um, it's been really good. We live in a fairly small town. think our town has like 6,000 people, maybe 10,000. And so it's hit or miss and it depends on w