Vinestops

Today I'm talking with Jim at Vinestops. 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.

00:11 Today I'm talking with Jim at Vine Stops in New York. How are you, Jim? I'm good, how are you? I'm good.  How was the weather in New York? It's beautiful today.  We're in that part of the season where  one day it's beautiful and the next day it's starting to turn super cold.  So it's going into flu season, I guess.  Yay, that's exciting.

00:37 I am actually, my bedroom is where I record  at my desk in my room.  And uh my bedroom, it feels like a refrigerator this morning because when I went to bed last night, I had to have the AC on  and uh my husband didn't turn it off when he came downstairs this morning and shut the door. So  I am almost shivering talking to you in my room.  Yeah, we do that all the time.  We love it. We like the cold, so we're okay with that.

01:05 For sleeping, it's great, but for sitting at a desk with my hands needed to move the mouse and stuff, it's not awesome. Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself and what you have going here. So obviously, my name is Jim. We bought this farm during COVID and it kind of changed our lives significantly. was

01:31 in the corporate world and  also in the film industry and some law enforcement experience. so that was kind of  everything I did, you know, seven days a week was somewhere in that realm. And then  COVID hit, obviously all of our lives had changed, but we had the opportunity to buy this small  1800s gentleman's horse farm, about 10 acres. uh And it was where I grew up.  And so I wanted to come back closer to my mom anyway, because she was getting sick.

02:02 Yeah. So he said, you know what, let's do it and rehab it.  Because my wife grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, so she always had horses  and she always wanted to get them again.  So we decided to do it. And  very quickly, we went from  that fast paced or I did anyway, that fast paced life to kind of country life. You know, we bought chickens and then I started like, you know, I put a little stand on the side of the road and we started  selling our extra eggs and then

02:29 You the whole chicken math thing happened. You start with six, you go to 10, 20, then you're fluctuating back and forth. And next thing you know, have 150 plus chickens in our yard. And, uh, and then, you know, towards the last year of COVID, uh, which was the, this is the year that we purchased it. Um, we put it, when we bought it, we put in about, I don't know, 50 fruit trees. And we, just wanted to start kind of a hobby farm. You know, I didn't do the whole homesteading thing yet.

02:58 and I just wanted to kind of grow extra.  So we had some fresh food because I was frustrated with what we were getting in the supermarkets. know, if like when the egg crisis happened,  you couldn't find eggs anywhere. And when you can find them, they were like $10, $15, you know,  a dozen. was just ridiculous. And so  I eventually, I just started changing. I started eating so much more from my garden and from my trees.

03:23 spending less and not going to the supermarket and all my health numbers, my doctor's office, they all started getting better. And I like really realized like, holy cow, know, that all that fast food and that crap put into my body, it really does make a difference. And so kind of the homesteading was born, you know, of having the passion of, you know, growing my own stuff and then, you know, running a farm stand on the the on the front of the driveway. So, you know, after

03:53 after that was kind of successful the first year. The next year I doubled everything, the size of everything, added more fruit trees, bought more chickens. And then my farm stand that I made kind of fell apart. And it was funny. So I was like, all right, I got to buy a farm stand because like, I need something that