Secret Farmstead

Today I'm talking with Heidi at the Secret Farmstead.

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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. Today I'm talking with Heidi at Secret Farmstead.

00:29 in Texas. Good morning, Heidi. How are you? I'm good. How are you?  I'm good. I would normally start off with questions about the weather and things, but  I was reading your introduction on your Facebook page  and are you sure you want to talk to me in a public forum because it's a secret, farmstead? Yeah. No, I'm not worried about it at all. Let's do it. Okay. What I'm alluding to for the listeners is that

00:58 Heidi lives on a couple of acres from what I gathered, but there's something about an HOA situation. Do you want to elaborate, Heidi? Yeah, I can do that. We live in a super bougie neighborhood. Our houses in this subdivision range from probably the high 700,000 up to close to $2 million homes. We bought this

01:25 location because we left the house and it has a guest house or casita and initially my parents had moved with us. So we were told that we didn't have an HOA when we purchased our land and that is technically true.  However, we do have what's called an ACC, an architectural control committee that thinks they're an HOA and we do have deed restrictions. So  despite living in the county and

01:52 The county allowing, you know, so many  heads of cattle or livestock per acre and those kind of rules,  our little subdivision technically does not allow anything like that except for your household dogs or cats. So while I have a couple of acres that is flat and completely usable, technically I'm not supposed to have anything like what I have. And it started with maybe a couple of chickens from

02:21 uh, tractor supply. Um, and now I might have 24 chickens.  Um, and then I thought, well,  uh,  I want dairy. So  now I have maybe a few goats. So  anyway, it's just kind of expanded from there and where we live, we're on a kind of a corner lot at the entrance of the subdivision. So we don't have a neighbor behind us and we don't have a neighbor on

02:50 the other side of the property where the animals are kept.  It's next to a frontage road. So  no one's disturbed by our animals. And really most people don't even know we have them. We don't advertise them,  but we also are respectful and don't advertise that we're breaking the rules either. Uh-huh. Except for being on a podcast that anyone can listen to.

03:14 You know, I used to be really concerned about being more open about it, you know, because I'm, you know, I have a career in law enforcement and I was always a rule follower and a rule en