Her Wholesome Homestead Life

Today I'm talking with Helana at Her Wholesome Homestead Life. 

 

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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 Helana at Wholesome Homestead, and I don't know what state you're in.  I'm in Michigan.  In Michigan. So good morning, Helana. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. I'm really excited to have you talk with me because you said that you're new at the homesteading thing.

00:28 So first off, how's the weather in Michigan this morning? It's beautiful this morning. It's been really hot here lately, but yesterday we got a nice rainy day, so we definitely needed that. So yeah, today is beautiful.  Here too in Minnesota. I mean, I'm kind of your lateral neighbor. We're a couple states apart,  but good morning neighbor. It's sunny and it's cool. Thank goodness. So it's a great day. I love it. Our weather lady said that she wanted to call it a top 10 weather day today.

00:57 Yes, I can agree with that today.  Yeah, so I hear a little one in the background cooing. Do you have a new baby? Um, yes, he's only a couple months old so he's new  Nice and you have another one, right? Yes. I have a daughter who is a toddler  Okay.  Well, hopefully they'll let you chat with me without making too much noise  Notice how I heard the baby cooing and I turned my voice down. That's really funny

01:25 Okay, so tell me about what you do at your homestead.  So I am just getting started as we talked about. So basically I just have a garden and this is our second year doing it. So we're in a learning curve with what grows well here. So that's been fun. And then  I've also dabbled in making sourdough bread. That's definitely what got me started in the whole homesteading thing.  Like they always say, once you start doing sourdough.

01:54 You kind of go down that road of getting into everything else. So yeah. How is it going with the sourdough? The reason I ask is I have  two sourdough starters on my counter downstairs  and  they didn't rise for like four days, even though I fed them and they're a good month old at least. And I was like, what am I doing wrong?

02:17 And then the temperature in the house went up and I fed them and they doubled. And I was like, oh, it's too cool in my house. That's what's going on. So how are you doing with it? I'm doing well. My sourdough starter, I started in February of 2023. So it's two years old now. And yeah, they're definitely very finicky with the temperature in your house. I've always found that if I feed it and I put it in the microwave,

02:45 and just let it stay in there. Then I usually have better luck with it rising when it should and all of that. I'm going to have to try that trick this winter because I know it's not going to be warm enough in the house. just know it.  I always feel like such a dork  when I notice that it's doubled in size the way it's supposed to. It's risen double.  Because my sourdough for some reason, I started it from scratch. I built this thing.

03:10 There's so many big bubbles that you can see on the side of the jar on the inside. And every time I see that, I just have this big  note of happiness ring in my head because it works. Yes.  It's so exciting when it goes how it should because it's definitely a craft. And especially when you are making like a loaf, that's definitely a craft and a learning curve to like getting the bulk fermentation and everything right. Yeah. And it takes such a long time.

03:39 If your loaf comes out like a brick, all you want to do is cry. Yes. It's awful. I haven't had that happen. I've only made one loaf and it wasn't a brick, but it was definitely bagel texture. Yeah. And it tasted great and I love bagels. So I was quite pleased that I didn't come out with a brick. As long as it's edible, that's all that matters, right? Yeah. Yeah. They always say just bake it anyway and see what happens. And I'm like, I'm gonna stick to that. That's good advice.

04:07 So what made you get into homesteading? Like what was the impetus that sent you dow