Growing Gardens and Expanding Horizons

Ever tried to move a six-foot emu size fence without losing your sanity? Join me on this week's episode of Keeping it Real at the Gorham Homestead, where I recount the unexpected fencing project that momentarily sidelined our regular podcast schedule. Hear about the trials and triumphs of tackling this massive job with the help of a young assistant, and get a sneak peek into our plans for upcoming episodes, including a deep dive into our top 10 essential oils in an upcoming interview with Joy Hinterkopft, who will share the scientific benefits of herbs and essential oils. Plus, don't miss updates on our  homestead garden struggles, where we're harvesting Roma tomatoes, green beans, and more, all while preparing to expand into a homestead market.

This episode isn't just about farm chores and business ventures; it's also a heartfelt reflection on personal milestones. I get candid about the bittersweet experience of watching my youngest child grow up and the mixed emotions of my son Chase being away at camp on his birthday. From the bustling plans to increase raw milk production to the community spirit behind our new market space, this episode captures the essence of homestead life. And stay tuned for some exciting changes to our podcast schedule, with episodes now airing on Thursdays. Whether you're a seasoned farmer or just curious about homestead living, there's something here for everyone.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:18

Hey y'all, welcome to Keeping it Real the Gorham Homestead podcast, where we talk about real food, real natural living, the real art of natural healing and real life out here in ourham homestead podcast, where we talk about real food, real natural living, the real art of natural healing and real life out here in our tennessee homestead. I'm your host, don gorham, and today is tuesday, june the 25th 2024, and you are listening to episode number 16. Today's topic is just a quick update. Um, I have been on a hiatus. Last Tuesday I was not able to get a podcast recorded because I had a young man show up here to help me with fencing and when I have somebody to show up to help with fencing out of the blue, I do not turn them down. So we spent that whole day taking up a fence up in the yard or up in the pasture and getting this really, really tall fence Like it's well over six feet tall, it's like an emu fencing. So we took all that down. We worked on it again today we didn't get it all done last week and took up the T-post and detached it from the corner post and all that kind of stuff. So we were able to get that done and so I apologize for missing out last week.

Speaker 1: 1:25

I still am going to do my essential oil one, but I'm going to do that on Thursday and I'm going to go over the top 10 essential oils that we use very, very consistently and go over what we use them for. And then, hopefully on the next podcast, I'm going to do an interview with Joy Hennerkoft. She is Dr Hans Hennerkoft's wife and she helps him in his practice, but she also has a degree in biology I believe either biology or chemistry but she's very, very knowledgeable in all things science-y. So she's really good to explain how the herbs and the essential oils work and how they benefit us in our bodies. So I really look forward to that interview with her.

Speaker 1: 2:14

Before we go any further, I just want to say a big thank you to my first two sponsors. First one is a Bee's Closet in Bon Aqua, tennessee. If you are looking for anything to do with your beekeeping essentials, that is the place to go. He, joe, is one of us. He's very self-reliance, freedom oriented, just a good human being, and he's very, very knowledgeable about beekeeping. So that is where I would recommend that you go, um, if you want, if you're in the market for some beekeeping stuff. Second one is Regina LLC, your mold specialist. They are located out of Florida and he can do.

Speaker 1: 2:58

Our friend, john scary uh, is uh. This is a relatively new company but he has been doing mold remediation not remediation but mold testing for a very, very long time I'd say probably 25, 30 years, and before that his father did the same thing. So he's always been in that sort of in that family. He's very knowledgeable about mold. He actually came here and tested our basement for mold because T had been having some exhibiting some symptoms of a really bad mold issue allergy like the whole rash and the headache and coughing and just the whole nine yards. And so our doctor, dr Hennerkoff, sent him for mold testing and sure enough, it came back. It lit up like a Christmas tree that he had significant mold exposure. So then we had to figure out where it was. So, um, john came and tested his office and tested our basement. And the basement the office turned out Okay, it had. It was a little bit high, but not not bad. But the basement man, I think it was supposed to be under three parts per million to be okay and it was like 98 parts per million or something. It was off the charts and we had aspergillus and blue penicillin or something. It was all kinds of crazy stuff, but it was very, very helpful to know what we were dealing with.

Speaker 1: 4:27

So if you need, if you suspect that you may have mold issues in your home, we highly recommend that you call Regina LLC. They are primarily based in Florida, like I said, but I do believe that he can travel all over the country and he's like I said, he's very, very good at what he does and he is a friend of the podcast. He is a longtime friend of our family and he's a veteran. It's a veteran owned and operated business and he's very freedom and self-reliant oriented. Just another good human being, and we like to have good human beings as our sponsors. So big shout out to Regina LLC. If you need mold testing, reach out to them. They're awesome, all right.

Speaker 1: 5:16

So with that, we're going to dive right into what I've been doing and I'm just going to get this one's going to be very, very short. It's just kind of what. What's been going on here? Um, we have started moving all of the stuff from the lower barnyard, so that's what's been really really keeping me busy. Um, it's an area when you come up our driveway it has a really old, rickety barn that is about to be torn down, needs to be torn down. It's about to be torn down, needs to be torn down. And so that's where we had kept our goat, our one lonely goat, and we would do the turkeys in there and we would do some chickens in there and we would. Just because it's fenced in and it's another one of those. You know six feet tall goat fencing, I guess, is what it technically, or horse fencing, it's horse fencing, it's horse fencing. So it worked really, really good to keep flying critters in there. That couldn't really fly that high and you know, anytime that we needed to use it, we used it. But it's about to go bye-bye and so we've been moving everything.

Speaker 1: 6:19

Still have to move the dog kennel. We have one of those big tractor supply metal, really well-made retriever brand, I think, dog kennel. So we need to get that moved because the dogs are moving with the poultry. That is, their job here on the farm is to protect the poultry, so we need to get that moved. And then there's a what we call the junior high, so we need to get that moved. And then there's what we call the junior high. That is the smaller chicken coop that has enclosed runs on either side of it. It's almost like two wings to it and that works really good for when the chickens, the baby chicks, come out of the brooder. But they're not ready. They're too small to just kind of range free range out there with the rest of the chickens. So we keep them in the junior high for a little bit until they start getting big enough that you know we feel decent. I mean we still. I watched a hawk grab one right out of the driveway the other day and the hawks will do that even when they're getting a little bit bigger. And of course, rip and Dolly, we had been keeping them up because the fence is down so they weren't there to be able to protect from the hawk. But hopefully, once everything is moved over there, then we're going to start digging the pond and that is, oh my goodness, what a job this has been.

Speaker 1: 7:45

I didn't realize how much stuff was down there and what an undertaking this really is. There is just so much stuff. There's brico blocks and rocks around a tree. They're not rocks, they're more like stones, like paver stones maybe, around a tree that the previous owner had put there. And then there's t-posts that we have to take up, just random t-posts driven in the ground, for I'm sure they had a purpose at some point, but right now they look very out of place because there's nothing attached to them. There's, of course, sort of stuck in the ground, um, and the but it's a pole barn, and while the wood, the wood on the outside and the roof and all that stuff is just like crumbling. The four posts, the electric poles, light poles that are on all four corners, those look like they're in still really good shape. So I'm tempted to, um, when they bulldoze the barn, to try to maybe cut those with a chainsaw and salvage them. And the door in there there's like a door between one side and the other. I think at one point it was a horse barn and so it's divided, but the door between the divides it is still in really good shape. So there's a few things out of there that I would like to salvage. There was some things that could be used for roosts, that were just sort of laying around in there, like limbs that had been trimmed down to perfectly straight for chicken roosts and things like that. So hopefully I can salvage some of that. Hopefully I can get the junior high moved, get the dog kennel moved. That's on my agenda for this week.

Speaker 1: 9:37

When my son's friend, luke came today we were able to finish taking down all of the fencing that was up in the pasture, taking down all of the fencing that was up in the pasture. And the previous owners had had hemp up in the pasture and so they. I guess that's why they had the really tall fencing, because they didn't want their investment eaten by deer. So they put up the tallest fence that they could and it served its purpose, I'm sure. But I needed that pasture part back because I mean I'd say it's probably a half acre up there and so and it's covered in thistle, I mean it is just it's a nightmare. So but now that the fencing's down and we got to go up there and take up a bunch of cloth you know the garden cloth, the black garden cloth because it's down and I mean it's grown through. It's just it's ridiculous how badly it's grown through. But I know that bush hogs don't love garden cloth. So hopefully we can get that up before time to bush hog. And then I would like to reseed and put some clover and some good stuff in there and get rid of. You can even walk through there. There's so much thistle Like it is. It is like I am a thistle farmer is what that looks like up there and so, uh, glad to be at least making progress.

Speaker 1: 11:00

Um, I plan to use the six foot or taller I believe it's taller, I think it's almost eight feet fence. I mean, it's like for a prison. If I put some razor wire across the top of it it might look like a prison fencing. But we're going to run that along the tree line the whole perimeter where the chickens are going and hopefully that will keep deer from coming up, because my garden is there and hopefully that will keep deer from coming up because my garden is there, the chickens are there, so I'd like to keep deer from jumping over and coming into that area at all and I feel like if I use the tallest fence along the tree line, that might give me a little bit of an advantage. And then the inside, we will use the shorter four foot, five foot, whatever it is fencing like you would use for cattle and we'll fence all that off on the inside for the dogs and the chickens and try to keep them out of the garden.

Speaker 1: 11:57

I'm going to repurpose the Premier chicken netting and I had previously had cattle netting. And the cattle netting is around the garden right now but it's like big squares. It's almost like a maybe even four inches gap between the netting pieces and it doesn't do any. I mean it stops dogs from going in there, but it doesn't stop chickens. They go right through it. So I'm going to double layer that and once I have a permanent fence up, I'm going to take the poultry netting and wrap that around the garden two or three times if I have to to try to help keep the chickens out.

Speaker 1: 12:41

And I'm going to have a little gate going into the garden and I'm going to have a little gate going into the chicken yard and a little gate going down to the old pond. That's really just a. It's an overflow pond and it's really deep in a holler. It's in the holler and it's hard. I'd like to clear off that tree line now that I'm thinking about it, clear off that tree line where I could see that pond and use that for ducks and whatnot. But I've seen lots of snapping turtles in there, so I don't think the ducks would like the snapping turtles. So I don't know if that will ever come to fruition, but that's sort of where we are right now.

Speaker 1: 13:16

The garden's finally coming in. I harvested about 30 Roma tomatoes, maybe a little more, five green beans, maybe a little more five green beans, about five or six green bell peppers, some banana peppers and about five or six thin cayenne peppers, which I get really excited about those because those are a absolute requirement for my Meemaw's Nashville hot pickles. So as soon as I get all that stuff together, the cucumbers are starting to bloom. So hopefully we will be making cucumbers coming up very soon. And so the other thing that's going on here with us is I am starting a farmer's market out of the cannery, here on the farm, and I was going to do it in the shed across the way and I started looking at it and there really wasn't the room that I wanted, the space that I wanted, and then I'm going to have to run electricity to that, I'm going to have to decorate it, I'm going to have to modify.

Speaker 1: 14:21

There's tons of things I would have to do to turn a shed into a market. So I started looking around in here in the cannery and you know we have events here and we have baby showers and bridal showers and meetings and I host workshops and all kinds of stuff and I have tons of space, tons of floor space, and so I started looking around here and I'm like you know, and the reason I never wanted to do it before was because I didn't really feel comfortable with people coming and going in here to get their stuff. I kind of wanted them to get it from the porch. But I don't feel like the refrigerator on the front porch keeps the milk as cold as I want it to. For one thing, in the summer and in the winter sometimes the milk freezes. So I move that refrigerator in and I've set up little areas and we're going to call it Gorham's Homestead Market and I have already let some of my neighbors know, I've let it know on Facebook and some of my Facebook people had some really cool ideas about labeling the different areas, like the, where the milk and ice cream and butter and buttermilk and yogurt and all that stuff is.

Speaker 1: 15:37

That's going to be called the Dairy Depot, and where I have my herbs is going to just be the apothecary and where, um, I'm going to have just a couple of different sections. I'm trying to think right now, the barnyard boutique, that was another section that somebody came up with, or I came up with it as a name, but they said you know, use that for your sections. And I thought that was just the coolest idea. So even if, um, so, even if I make just a little bit of extra money by doing that, by having people who are coming in to get milk, just putting a few extra things in front of them, whether it's soap, detergent, herbs, butter, ice cream, merch, you know, hats, t-shirts, whatever Freeze-dried stuff. I have freeze-dried raw milk, I have freeze-dried eggs, I have freeze-dried lemons, just, you know, all kinds of little stuff like that. So I'll be offering freeze-dried farm stuff, freeze-dried dog treats, and that's just going to be for the people who are, you know, who are regular customers and that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1: 16:51

So, hopefully, next year I'll have eight cows that I'm milking and as long as the government stays reasonably friendly to raw milk here in Tennessee, reasonably friendly to raw milk here in Tennessee, I will continue to milk. And next year, hopefully, I will have 15 to 20 people coming each day to pick up their milk who in turn could also, you know, pick up some of their things that they might want for their markets. I'm going to can some stuff. So if they want canned pasta sauce or green beans or corn or excuse me, or whatever herbs that we have in season, if I have some extra deal I'll throw that out there and I'm hoping to do some herb starts that maybe other people don't do, like some natural herbal remedy. Starts like chamomile and comfrey and echinacea and feverfew and you know all of that kind of stuff, just to offer something different than what you get from typical nurseries, and I'm looking forward to doing that. I think that'll be a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 18:01

I need to utilize the greenhouse that we have or the high tunnel, so hopefully I can get that fixed and I either want to put strawberries in there and offer, you know, strawberry products, make a strawberry ice cream, strawberry yogurt, throwing all that stuff into my dairy Excuse me, I've got a tickle in my throat or just, you know, selling freeze-dried strawberries or strawberry jam or whatever. It does not make sense for me to not grow strawberries because it is my favorite food in the world. I love strawberry-flavored anything. It does not. Strawberry cake, strawberry ice cream, strawberry poop I don't care Strawberry, I love strawberry. I'm just kidding about the poop. I wouldn't eat strawberry poop. I don't care Strawberry, I love strawberry. I'm just kidding about the poop. I wouldn't eat strawberry poop, goodness, but anyway. So that's kind of where we are, what things are going on.

Speaker 1: 18:57

Chase is away at camp so I don't have anybody here to help me, which he works most days anyway but I do have his little buddy that's come over and helped me a couple days. I think he's been here three days. And today is Chase's birthday. Our son, our youngest son, the youngest of six. It makes me really sad because, like he, you know, when the baby starts getting older it hurts. It hurts a little more than when that older one. When the older one starts getting older, you're kind of ready, but when that baby starts getting older, oh my goodness, it hurts your heart. It really does. And you know he's away at camp, so I'm not going to see him and we're going to pick him up July the 7th or 8th and then we're heading on to Colorado and our farm sitter, honey Bear, will be here and she is going to take care of all my milk customers. So don't worry about that.

Speaker 1: 19:55

She is on top of it, she's amazing and if you need some designer chickens. She is your girl. She has the coolest breeds. They hatch them, they do all kinds of good stuff. So if you look up Alex Slayton on the Homesteaders Alliance group, she is one to check out because, like I said, she's got some of the coolest hard to find breeds of chickens that are just super interesting. But anyway, she's amazing and I look forward to having her here. I trust her with my cows and I don't say that about just about anybody. I mean she knows her stuff and I'm thankful that she's going to be handling everything. What else do we have going on?

Speaker 1: 20:55

Oh, workshop coming up this Saturday. If you've ever wanted to learn how to can, this weekend is your chance. It is the beginners canning class. We will teach you how to safely use a pressure canner, when you must use a pressure canner and when it's okay to water bath can, the difference between the two, the science behind it, and so you'll be comfortable in knowing why you're doing what you're doing. And we'll also have some hands on we're going to can.

Speaker 1: 21:21

Hopefully I can get my hands on some green beans, since mine are not coming on yet. See, I tried to plan this to where my workshop would coincide with the green beans being ready to harvest, but nature just did not cooperate with me this year. Green beans have blooms, but I got, I think, six green beans off my plants today. So I'm on the hunt for some green beans this week and we'll can those up at the workshop on Saturday. You can sign up if you're interested at the Gorham Homestead dot com. We already have a three quarters full class, I believe. So it you know, if you want to do it, you better get in before before it fills up, and it's just a great day and the people who have done this is our fourth season of doing this and the people who have done it before have left and remained friends.

Speaker 1: 22:19

That's one of the coolest things about going to workshops and going to events and things of that nature. It's not only the knowledge that you leave with, but it's the relationships and the friendships that you make when you're in person doing things like that, and you learn so much more from an in-person workshop than you do, in my personal opinion, from an online or from a book or from a podcast or from. I mean, they can give you ideas of what you want to learn. Youtube videos can give you ideas of what you want to learn and some things I'm sure you can learn, but it's just not the same. The experience is not the same. The energy is not the same, the energy back and forth between people. It is just such a cool experience, and so if you're interested, like I said thegrownhomesteadcom sign up. We have a blast and you will not regret it and you will never regret investing in yourself and that is what you are doing. When you are investing something that teaches you a new skill that you can then go and either teach other people or you can use it to save money, use it to better your health, use it to better the quality of your food, there is nothing more important than investing in yourself. That's just, that's how I feel, that's how I roll. So get over there and do that.

Speaker 1: 23:55

Sunday is our Dixon Homesteaders Alliance group meeting, and our topic this time is a roundtable discussion on food freedom. If you're in the area, anywhere within driving distance, we'd love to have you join. Us love to have you come and participate in the discussion, and we are up against some really scary things coming down from the federal level, particularly with raw milk, with seed saving, with the ability to grow your own food, the ability to market with each other and barter with each other, to commerce with each other All of those things are in jeopardy, and so we have to figure out how we are going to continue to have a strong community and how we're going to continue to be able to have commerce between ourselves. So that is something that, if you're interested in talking about, come on, we would love to have you. Other thing is is Self Reliance Festival is coming up Up, up bleh, coming up October 4th and 5th.

Speaker 1: 25:04

Tickets are on sale now over at selfreliancefestivalcom. We have family passes this year and that is really exciting. That has been something that's been a drawback for people in years past, because you know you buy a $100 ticket or a $75 ticket. Of course, the price has changed over the course of it, but you know, per person, that can really add up, especially if you're a family, and a lot of us homesteaders are big families. We have a bunch of kids, and so the family pass really makes it more affordable for families. And also the ticket prices have dropped, and the reason for that is we've had a couple of big sponsors come in, and so we wanted to pass those savings along to the people who want to come to the events, and so we were able to drop the ticket prices and, you know, hopefully get more and more people there, more people involved, and that's another thing that you will not regret.

Speaker 1: 26:07

Going to self-reliance festival is so much fun. It's such great networking, it is a great place to be a vendor um it, where you find other like-minded people and where you build your network, where you build community and, as nicole says, this is where you find your tribe. So that's another thing. Check out selfreliancefestivalcom If you're interested. If you do not have the money, if you're struggling financially or it's just not in your budget, reach out to me. I always have need for volunteers and you do have to purchase your ticket up front, so you do have to come. Your ticket up front so you do have to come out of. You know, whip that out of pocket, but once you have completed your volunteer time, then we reimburse you the cost of your ticket and that's, you know that's worth. You know, a couple hours of your time to be able to be there, you know, and see the speakers and check out the vendors and get to know and just become part of this family, because this is really, really important going forward, being part of something, being part of a network that you can count on, and you will find that at Self-Reliance Festival.

Speaker 1: 27:23

I think that's pretty much all I have on my list for things going on right now. All the puppies are gone, except for one. Garden is doing good, turkeys are moved, everything's doing good. Oh, if you haven't reserved your Thanksgiving turkey, you can do that on the website at thegormhomesteadcom. The deposit is $25, and we charge $4.50 a pound, and you will not find a better Thanksgiving farm turkey anywhere than the turkeys that we produce, and it's a not I mean, like you can tell all your friends, this is a Gorham Homestead farm turkey. That's just cool, right? Just something different, something to talk about, and not everybody has a Gorm Homestead farm turkey, so you'll be unique.

Speaker 1: 28:11

With that being said, thank you for tuning in. I hope that you've enjoyed today's podcast. Like I said, it was just an update. Thursday, I'm going to come back and talk to you about my essential oils and the things that I love, and probably I'm going to move my podcast to Thursdays, and the reason for that is it's really hard for me to be doing chores and then get all hot and sweaty and gross and then come back in and want to sit in front of a microphone On Thursdays. I have a Seraph Alliance Festival staff meeting every Thursday at 1030 and I'm already in front of the computer anyway, so it makes sense for me to just flow right on into recording my podcast once that meeting is over. So look for me on Thursdays going forward, starting this Thursday With that.

Speaker 1: 29:04

Whatever you're doing today and whatever you've got on the docket, just remember y'all to keep it real. See y'all guitar picker playing, all the local clubs and my mama was a waitress where they parked their 18 wheeler trucks. We didn't have much money. Times were kind of hard, living in a trailer on the edge of grandpa's farm. I was far. Yeah, I may not come from much, but I've got just enough. As long as my baby's in my arms and the good Lord knows what's in my heart, I refuse to be ashamed. It's just a Southern thing.