Hens, Hooves & Honey Farms

Today I'm talking with Paula at Hens, Hooves & Honey Farms. 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 Paula at Hens, Hoves, and Honey Farms  in California. Good afternoon, Paula. How are you? Good afternoon. How are you? I'm good. It looks like it's sunny there. Oh, yeah. It's nice and warm down here today. Oh, well, I think it's not even 50 degrees in Minnesota where I am.

00:29 Oh, wow, that's cold already. Yeah, fall is on the way. It's really sunny though. So if you don't think about it too hard, it still looks like summertime outside. So tell me about yourself and what you guys do at your place. So my husband and I bought some land about 15 years ago.

00:54 It kind of started, my husband at the age of 32 was diagnosed with cancer  and  the cause of it from  what the doctors could understand was more environmental causes. Basically the water, the food, all the stuff, all the toxins and everything. So we kind of decided that we wanted to grow our own food, just kind of live a healthier lifestyle, so to speak.

01:23 Um, so we got some land and we started small with cattle and pigs and then just slowly over the years,  um, we've just kind of expanded things and that's kind of how we got started.  How long ago was this? About 15 years ago. And how's your husband now? He's great. He is cancer free and has been,  I mean, since it went away about

01:52 14 years ago.  Awesome. So whatever you guys did helped. Yes, hopefully. It never comes back. Good. It looks like you have a lot going on. So do you grow produce? Do you grow animals? Do you grow both?  Well, right now we grow animals.  We have some fruit trees and stuff growing that we've been slowly planting over the years to just kind of get everything ready. uh

02:20 We don't actually live on that farm that we are starting, but we literally make the drive every single weekend. We live in Southern California and we bought up in Northern California. Oh, okay. We have a foreman that lives on the property  and he takes care of the animals during the week. then usually  Jeff and I try to make a three or a four day weekend trip out of it. And we drive up and down.

02:49 and help take care of the animals, make sure everything's up to date, make sure they have their food, their pens are secured, run all the errands, and then we get to play with them and have some fun.  So  it's like work and vacation mixed together? Yes. Okay, what kind of animals do you have there? So right now we have mini Hereford cows,  and then we have our pigs.

03:18 which we have uh Magna-Listas. ah And then we have about 40 chickens.  And we've got what else? Oh, we have a lot of Nigerian goats that we um have started breeding about two years ago.  We kind of dabbled into the goat world. We've always just done the pigs, the chickens and the cows and up by our property. We have a lot of poison oak, which my husband is highly allergic to. oh

03:48 We decided to bring in some goats to help try to clear it and then we just kind of fell in love with the breed and we slowly grown them over the last two years. So um now we breed them and sell them.

04:06 Okay. So I was going to ask you if the animals earn their keep. The goats do. Oh yes, the goats do and the, uh, the cattle do as well. So we kind of run them through a cycle. We have, let the grass kind of grow back. We let the cows go through and graze first, and then we'll kind of run the goats behind them to pick up cause cows are kind of a little bit more picky about what they eat. Yeah. And so the goats will go behind them and kind of get what they didn't get. And then.

04:35 We'll send the pi