Shell Smart - Australian Homesteader

Today I'm talking with Shell. If you've ever wondered what it's like to homestead in Australia, this will give you a small taste.

A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.

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, 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.

00:29 share it with a friend or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Shell Smart and she is  in Australia and it's actually morning in Australia right now, whereas it's six o'clock in the evening here in Minnesota.  Good morning, Shell. How are you? Good morning, Mary  Ann. Good evening to you.  Thank you.  And the other thing's different is you are in the middle of autumn and we are in the middle of a spring, right? That's correct. Yes.

00:58 Okay, so based on all of that, your growing situation is very different from ours, so I wanna touch on that. But first, tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, I am a wife to Stuart. We've been married for nearly 33 years. And we have five children and they range from 28 down to 15. We're homeschooling.

01:27 still got two homeschooling or sort of one and a half homeschooling at the moment. So we're nearly finished with being homeschooling. think this is our  22nd year of homeschooling.  And we're homestead as well. So we have three acres right within the town limits, but a very small town of a thousand people here in  the snowy valleys of New South Wales  and in Australia. And yeah, we have three acres and we have a little homestead here.

01:58 Very nice and  congratulations on making your marriage work for that long with five children to boot  That's that's  I'm one grandchild. Okay  Yeah,  well you have outdone yourselves. I'm impressed. I I've been married three times. I'm keeping the third one. He's great

02:27 And  I can't imagine  being with someone for that long with that many kids because kids are a huge stressor on relationships sometimes. Yeah, they can be. But I think they can also really make you work better as a team because you've got something bigger than yourself to work for as well within your marriage.  True enough. Yes, absolutely. But you also have to be willing to do that.

02:55 You both have to be willing to work together.  And  my first two,  I don't want to say anything bad, but the third one is more than willing to work with me to make this work. Let's put it that way.  That's the big difference.  It sure does. Okay. So  what do you do on your homestead? Do have animals? Do you grow gardens? What do you do? Yeah, we generally do grow gardens. At the moment, we haven't got any luck.

03:24 this season because we're just finishing our harvest season.  So we haven't done gardens this last year, this last summer,  because we are moving and we just didn't have the time and energy to into that.  But  we do normally grow gardens with, you know, not a huge vegetable garden,  but we do have, you know, herbs and veggies and tomatoes.

03:53 Well, I'm not very good at tomatoes. I like to plant lots of tomatoes.  And I get a few every season that actually grow. So that's something I need to work on. And one day I'll work on that when I've got more t