A Tiny Homestead

Carlton Hill Farm

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Today I'm talking with Sean at Carlton Hill Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.

Sean's book - Exit Farming: Starving the Systems That Farm You

 

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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 Sean at Carlton Hill Farm in North Carolina, is that right? West Virginia.  West Virginia. I'm in Minnesota. I am a Yankee. It is all the same to me. Sorry about that.  No problem at all.  Good morning, Sean. How are you?  I'm doing well. Good morning to you as well. How are you?

00:28

I'm good. I'm going to start this off by saying I have a head cold. So if there's sniffles in the recording, it's me and I'm sorry.  How is the weather in uh West Virginia?  It's honestly pretty good. It was pretty dry and hot there for a while.  we last week, I think we got like an inch and a half of rain one day and weather's weather's starting to cool down in the mornings and everything. Everything's starting to feel like normal fall again. How's the weather up there?

00:54

It's a little nippy. I think it's maybe 60 degrees and it's breezy and bright and sunny.  Oh, wow. Yeah, we've had a couple cool mornings dipped down into the high  30s. I actually had to start a fire the other morning. So it was it's it we've had some brisk ones, but overall, it's pretty nice. Yeah, even if I wanted to start a fire right now, I can't.  Our furnace is dead and we have a wood boiler, wood burning boiler  that hooks into our furnace with a blower.

01:23

And so right now it's about 65 degrees in my house and probably will be for a couple more days, but then we're getting it fixed. Oh nice, well that's good. And just in time for the cool season.  Oh, of course, of course. That's what always happens. If the furnace is going to go out, it's going to be  in the fall.  And if the AC is going to go out, it's going to be in the spring. Yep, that's exactly right.

01:46

Yeah, exactly. Because Murphy is an optimist and God love Murphy.  I have bad things to say about Murphy, so we're not going to go there.  All right. So  tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Yeah. So ah I'm an author and farmer from West Virginia. I farm a one acre property with my wife.  We farm rabbits and chicken and chickens and quail. um Prior to that, I spent 12 years working for the federal government  and uh

02:14

we bought this property, started farming on it to feed ourselves first and  then we sell anything that's left over to the community and then we also have some giving initiatives where we give back, whether it be farm products or uh pantry items uh to the people that need it most in our community. Fantastic. So are you strictly rabbit, chicken and quail or do you have a garden too?

02:41

We do have a garden. So we  grow a lot of produce, we grow a lot of fruit. We use all of our rabbit manure as the only fertilizer for  all of our crops and everything. So the rabbit manure is kind of where life begins for everything. It feeds everything that feeds us, including the rabbits. And it's kind of a  closed system. But yeah, we also grow wildflowers and um any sales of  things like wildflowers.

03:07

A portion of those proceeds go to purchase pantry items that stock are giving initiative, which is called Farm for Better.

03:15

Awesome does farm for better have uh a website or a Facebook page or anything?  Yeah, so it's it's just part of our normal website, which is CarltonHillsFarm.com slash farm for better Okay, cool because I'm sure that people want to go check it out because they're gonna be like poor Where can I find stuff about that? um Okay, so tell me tell me how you got in this because I looked at your website and you're about page and there's a story there So tell me the story

03:41

There is a story there. So um I worked in the federal government for  about 12 years and my wife worked a high pressure director role in the private sector for  about just as long. And we got to the point where we  felt like we were part of all these extractive relationships.  The job took more than it gave. The families took more than they gave. And so we just felt  like we were being consumed bit by bit by bit. And so when we looked at our lives,

04:11

We decided that we didn't want to be in debt. We didn't want to have mortgages. We didn't want to owe anybody anything. And that included our time, our emotion, and whatever that may be. So we took steps to start growing and raising our own food so we could step away from those systems and kind of build our own system on the margins of the one that failed us.

04:33

Okay, and how has that gone for you? mean,  are you guys okay? Are you ahead of the game? Are you  treading water? How is it going?  It's going very well. So one of the things that we kind of burned from our former life was our mortgages. We were over a half a million dollars in mortgage debt. We had an  income property and then  our dream home. had  our cars and everything. Both my wife and I had

04:58

six-figure incomes prior to making these changes before we liquidated everything and bought this piece of property that we now farm. was  some dilapidated buildings on it that we bulldozed and  converted a garage into our home.  And we're doing well. The community has accepted us. We like selling our products to the community.  And the nice thing about it is that because we made all those drastic changes and we no longer  owe anybody anything, we have no credit card debt.

05:28

No mortgage debt. wiped over a half a million dollars in mortgage debt off the books.  so we,  anything that we grow or give comes from  the fact that we just don't owe anybody anymore. So it does make us better community members. It makes us better people because we can afford to be generous. It's not this relationship where we can give people stuff because we feel like we're owed it. We, we don't owe anything to anybody anymore. Yeah.

05:56

In case you missed it, listener, this is all on one acre of land. It can be done.  It really can. So just to kind of give you an overview of our farm,  at any given time, we have about 40 meat rabbits at any stage of life. We have our main breeding herd and then,  you know, their kits that come off at various stages that we process into meat for ourselves in the community and our pets as well. We have about 30, 30 laying hens and a couple roosters.

06:23

and then about 150 quail that we use for eggs and meat and things like that as well, in addition to our gardens that we  grow produce and wildflowers. Okay, awesome.  And  the turnaround time on rabbits for meat  is how long?  For us is 12 weeks from the day that they're born. So we actually just had a litter born this morning. One of our does, her name is Beans.

06:49

uh She's such a sweet little rabbit. We name all of our breeding herd after vegetables. She's black and so we named her after black beans. ah She just had a litter this morning and we'll grow them out for about 12 weeks and then we'll process them into  meat for ourselves and our pets and the community.

07:09

Very nice. And again, listener, it's doable. You can do this. I swear. ah I'm always trying to get people interested in producing their own food, whether that's produce or animal meat,  because  in this day and age that we find ourselves in right now,  inflation is making everything expensive. And it's not cheap to raise your own food, but it's  got its own payoff. It really does. Not only just

07:37

the work that you feel,  just the accomplishment of raising your own food, knowing where it came from,  what that animal ate and how it lived. But um if you grow your own feed,  it subsidizes those costs even further. And I mentioned that we have 150 quail at any point in time,  but those are even more uh efficient than rabbits. They grow to  breeding age at six weeks. They're ready to process at six weeks and they're ready to lay eggs at six weeks.

08:09

So six weeks is the golden number. Six weeks is the bar to beat in terms of  feed to conversion ratio. Rabbits are eight to 12 weeks. We butcher rabbits at about 12 weeks, but quail are very, very efficient and live in even smaller spaces than rabbits. I would equate quail to microgreens. Microgreens take like, I think it's 10 days from...

08:35

planting the seed to harvesting. So I think it's the same thing in the produce world.  That's a great analogy. Yeah, it's very quick. We hatch all of the quail on  our farm ourselves and  six weeks just goes by way too quick. One day there are these little fluffy chicks that just popped out of an egg and the next thing you know, you're processing them into meat or they become part of your cubby to start laying eggs. Yeah, exactly. And  the thing about quail, and I've mentioned this on the podcast before,

09:04

is you can't just get a couple of quail. You've got to get at least 20. And part of that is that I hear that they are notorious for  unaliving themselves by accident.  That's an interesting way I put it and 100 % correct. Yes.  They need special uh accommodations in terms of housing. So we custom build all of our quail hutches and they need to be in  somewhat combined spaces or  really open spaces. uh Quail like to

09:33

to pop up when they're nervous or scared. And so they can pop up hard enough that they can actually kill themselves if they hit the roof above them.  So you wanna keep their height of their enclosure at a maximum of 18 inches  or a minimum of six feet. Anywhere between that, like 18 inches and six foot mark um is kind of a danger zone for quail where they can unalive themselves very easy.

10:00

Yeah. And what happens is they startle, they jump up and they break their necks by hitting their heads. Right? That's exactly right. Yeah.  And the thing that's sad about that is quail are one of the most beautiful little birds I've ever seen. The babies are beautiful. The adults are beautiful.  They really are.  My wife, Alexis and I, talk all the time about how quail chicks are our top five cutest  farm animals of all time.  Um, but yeah, the, the grown birds, they're, they're absolutely beautiful. We raised Coturnix quail  and

10:29

They have lots of different colored patterns. think there's something crazy, like 17 different variations and then all the hybrids between those.  And you get really interesting feather patterns and  just really interesting birds to observe and watch. They're really cool to be around.  Yes. If I was as good an artist as my dad is, I would be drawing quail with pastels because they're so...

10:56

many different color variations with the browns and the tans and the whites and the blacks. Yeah, they're really wild and gorgeous. Yeah. The bird that I have seen on our property, have a five acre, sorry, three acre lot. We have a big pole barn and the barn swallows love the pole barn. everybody's like, barn swallows are just a pest. And they are, they're a pain in the butt. But if you ever get the chance to actually look at one when it's just walking along the ground, they're really pretty too.

11:25

Yeah, you know, this might be kind of weird to say, but I kind of feel the same thing about pigeons as well. Pigeons are notoriously known to be rats with wings. And I think they're really pretty, though. There's a bunch of them down at the Rural King here in town that people feed popcorn to, unfortunately. But they're really pretty birds to look at. Yeah, I think, OK, this is going to sound really dumb. I won't say it anyway, because I don't feel good.

11:51

I think that birds were given to us by whoever created the earth  for something beautiful to look at at any given time. I agree. Yeah, I don't disagree with that whatsoever. If you were to ask uh Alexis about our chickens, I have never met anybody more infatuated with chickens than Alexis.  I think she still likes spending more time with them than she does with me, honestly. But  yeah, birds are great to be around. They're calming.

12:15

Um, they're, they're pretty and, and they, provide so much back, you know, just in terms of food and eggs and things like that as well. Yep. Absolutely. Okay. Do you guys have kids? We do not. Um, one of the, one of the things that we started when, when, when Alexis and I first started dating and then, and then we got married, we were, we were young. We've been married for 14 years now. And, um, we, at that point in time, we didn't want kids, you know, we wanted to, to travel and do things that, that, that young.

12:45

uh young married couples do. And uh early on in our marriage, my wife was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And so now she's  on a monthly infusion  and that doesn't mix well with kids, even if we wanted them.  so um just managing that disease in and of itself, aside from just uh the medication that goes along with those infusions, makes kids not really a possibility for us.  Okay. I was just curious.

13:15

And sorry to hear that, but at least maybe you didn't want kids. Yeah, no, it's a reality of our life. It's a big part of the story of why we did what we did.  The food that we eat  is cleaner than any food that you could buy at any grocery store. And it doesn't cure Alexis's MS, but  it helps with symptoms.  A uh clean diet can do a lot for people. not saying that it cures diseases or anything like that, but it can help in a lot of different ways.

13:45

So having a clean diet, less stressful jobs and everything like that has really uh helped Alexis manage her fatigue and all of her other symptoms that uh she gets through MS. Fantastic. Good.  Good, good.  I was just wondering because it's really hard to go from that half a million dollar home situation  to where you're at now when you have kids.

14:14

And so I'm not, I'm going to say this right now. If you have kids, it does change the dynamic a titch. absolutely does. Kids change it, medical issues change it, anything like that adds nuance to the, to the, to the scenario that makes planning very difficult. And one thing  that I'll say about the steps that we took to go from,  um,

14:38

like six figure salaries to just a quiet life in  Parkersburg, West Virginia farming rabbits is  just the fact that we  had to take all these steps  and  ultimately collapse everything that we knew  just to kind of  reset and really think about what we valued in life. And ultimately that boiled down to

15:03

staying with staying home and staying with each other  and, just eating good food and treating ourselves the way that we felt that we should be treated instead of how our jobs were treating us or, or, our colleagues or our family or, or whatever the, whatever the thing is that, people are bothered by, whether it be politics or anything like that. It's just, we're tired of dealing with these extractive relationships and kids, kids make that even more challenging. Yes, I've raised four.

15:32

Kids make everything challenging, just so you know. You're battling a head cold right now.  I was going to say thanks to my youngest who still lives with us, I'm battling a head cold and that makes things more difficult. So yes, it's true. um Okay, so I was looking at your Facebook page and I saw a post about your opinion about farmers markets.  Do you want to share your opinion about farmers markets? Because I got a bone to pick. Okay, yeah, know a lot of people have a bone to pick about this one.

16:00

uh And this could be geographically speaking, uh our perceptions of farmers markets, but we don't participate in farmers markets because  we  believe a couple things about them. We believe they're kind of like neighborhood garage sales where  everybody's dollar is divided  among the vendors there.

16:24

We are selling our rabbit, our egg and everything at a farmer's market. We might have to compete with somebody else who are selling the same eggs or something like that. The thing about our farm is that we offer quail and rabbit and chicken, which is something that none of the other farms in this region offer. And so we don't have to go  and set up for hours and everything just to get a little bit of money to bring home that makes that farmer's market worth it. We would rather

16:53

sell that product here. um And if anything goes unused, the nice thing about our business model is we eat it, our dogs eat it.  We don't just sit on wasted inventory or anything like that. have the ability to,  it's not like other businesses where they need to move it or anything. It can stay in the freezer. And the nice thing about rabbits is they preserve just fine though, while they're still alive.  Yep,  absolutely.  Okay.

17:22

Here's my take, you ready? Yep, let's hear it.  Okay, my husband does sell our produce and our eggs at the farmers market and occasionally there's some treats that go to baked goods.  And the thing that we hear  oftener than I thought more often, sorry, not oftener,  more often  than I thought we would is that there are people in our town, in uh town, that don't have a vehicle drive out to our place to buy our things.

17:50

And so they really appreciate the farmers market because it's within walking distance of where they live.  And so that's my only caveat is that we're bringing stuff to people who might not be able to get out and get it from us. That is a very valid argument and I have one counterpoint to that.  I agree that farmers markets are usually held in centralized locations that make it easier for people to get to.

18:14

But the problem with that is that in and of itself, they're usually held in centralized locations. We're located in more of a rural part of  the county. So people out here can get to us easier than they can in town. In addition  to that, they're usually held on weekends or at times when like bus schedules don't go or things like that to where it becomes

18:39

a place,  again, geographically speaking, it might just be around here, but it becomes a thing where primarily privileged folks get to go to it. And so that's why we've tried to create our Farm for Better initiative and everything like that, not only to get folks out to our farm, but also to show them that they can have pantry staples and good farm products, know, rabbit quail eggs like that. oh

19:02

and meet their farmer face to face at their farm instead of being in an open parking lot or something like that.  It just brings everything back to the farm, which is what we're trying to go for. Yep.  And as with everything in life, the answer is it depends. That's exactly.

19:21

But no, I saw your Facebook post and I was like, I get what you're saying, but I also understand there are some minor benefits to farmers markets for people like we know. And it might be geographical. don't know. And that really... Okay.  Go ahead. No, go ahead. I was just going to say, and  that boils down to really anything. Our path to this farm and everything like that, everybody's mileage may vary.  Our path wasn't linear. It was stair-stepped and circular and everything like that. And so,

19:50

Yeah, it just kind of depends and  geography is a huge factor as well.  Yup, and I feel like that's true of every place too. mean, my parents live in Maine and I'm pretty sure they don't sell fresh fish at the farmers market in Portland, Maine. Right.  Pretty sure because that would be difficult. That would be a very weird thing to try to do and have it be good for everybody.

20:18

you know, a circular circular win as it were.  Okay, so we have about 10 more minutes and you have written a book. So tell me about your book.  Yeah, so that book is is  basically uh a memoir about  Alexis and I's path to get where we are. It kind of starts  in the middle of all the chaos when we were liquidating all of our stuff and kind of feeling hopeless and trapped in our in our former lifestyle and  and just

20:46

everything that it costs to leave that lifestyle,  not only  actual  money in terms of trying to liquidate everything as quickly as possible just because  we needed out so badly, but also the emotional toll and  the loneliness that comes along with that.  had  to be completely honest with you.  My entire family has completely disowned me because of some of these choices. It talks a lot about that.  It's not one of those romantic ideas about

21:15

homesteading or anything like that of  go live on a farm and breathe  clean air type of thing. It's about the collapse that happened before we got here and  kind of why we did it. Okay, cool. um Is it uh self-published or is it through a publisher?  It's self-published. So that's one thing that we try to do here is everything on this farm comes from us. We process our own animals, we write our own books, we publish our own books.

21:44

That way we keep as much value on this property as possible. You can absolutely find that book on Amazon and you can purchase it there,  but it's  always going to be uh more of a return if you purchase it  directly from the farmer itself, obviously. um But yeah, the book can be found anywhere,  but we try to do everything ourselves. That way we  generate and keep as much value as we can on this little acre. I thought that might be your answer.

22:14

I'm actually working on a book myself right now. Today was supposed to be editing,  but today is actually  talk to you and then go grab a nap. uh I'm writing a book called, well, I think the working title right now is Kiss Kitchen, K-I-S-S Kitchen  for Keep It Super Simple.  I'm trying to get this thing together so that there is a book that teaches basically how to set up your kitchen.

22:40

Like when you walk into a new place, you're going to live and the kitchen is completely empty. Yeah, that's definitely necessary. I mean, I think that people would  definitely benefit from something like that, knowing just what things you need in your kitchen. Yeah, so basically, getting out your kitchen, K-I-T-T-I-N-G,  and then what you really do need to have in your refrigerator. You might want to have some eggs and some cheese to start with because you can make a killer omelet with eggs and cheese.

23:10

And uh what needs to be in your pantry, whether you have uh a pantry closet or just a couple of cabinets that you designate as your pantry. you know, salt, sugar, pepper, flour, things to actually cook with.  And then some basic recipes to get you started. And I've  been working on this for about three weeks. I've got about 6,000 words into it.  And today was supposed to be whittle it down, make it pretty and get it up on Kindle. But it's going to be another couple of days.

23:38

oh Yeah, really if if  if listener you're interested in writing a book and you like to write  it is really simple to write a book and get it onto Amazon's  Kindle platform. really is. It is very easy. Yep. And obviously they keep some of the money, but you you will make a couple dollars per copy. So.

24:05

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.  The royalty structure on Amazon is pretty straightforward. um And yeah, it's very easy to get things up there. Another avenue that if folks are looking to publish their books, another thing that we did is bought a second ISPN through IngramSparks so that we can shop it around to bookstores and stuff like that because they don't usually buy Amazon books  that are published on  Amazon. So  we can offer wholesale

24:33

uh retailer discounts through our publication through Ingram. That's how I buy all the books that I ship out from our farm type of thing. And so it makes it very easy to keep the Amazon stuff separate and the Ingram stuff separate as well. Yes, absolutely.  And the other thing I think I saw the other day when I went to save a Word file is that you can now save a Word file as an EPUB. Really? I did not know that.

25:01

I think you can. swear I saw it. was doing something really quick and I saw it and I was like, I'm not sure I read that right, but I swear that said EPUB.  And if you can save it as an EPUB, then you can do a PDF and then save it as an EPUB and people can literally download your book from your website and there is no middleman. Yep. Yep. That's exactly right.

25:25

So I gotta double check that later today, but I swear I saw it I was like, oh my God, if they actually did that, I'm gonna write a whole bunch more books. Yeah, the way that we sell our book is obviously through Amazon and Ingram and then our website and those EPUB files. um We offer the EPUB file and a PDF and a zip file through our website  so that we get 100 % of that return.  And that's what's nice about generating those EPUB files and selling them directly from your website.

25:51

whatever the price, whether it be 99 cents or $9.99, you keep 100 % of that because it's just a digital file and you create it once and it makes money for you forever. Yep.

26:07

Okay, so,  where can people find you, Sean?  The best place to find us is CarltonHillFarm.com.  That's  our website. We have a blog, a very active blog. You can sign up for our newsletter there as well on that website.  Our newsletter, we just sent one out this morning. It's nothing political, ah it's not  salesy, it's not, you know, come buy our eggs.

26:36

It's a newsletter for people that still care about land and food and just want to read about some of the things that we're experiencing as farmers. And want to keep track of what you're up to, I'm sure. Exactly. Yeah. So  we use our website as kind of a hub for everything. don't rely on social media or anything  really anymore. We rely on our website and our newsletter. um We believe those are where  real conversations happen.

27:05

people respond back to our newsletter and it's an actual community. Nice. Awesome. All right. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com and check out my Patreon. It's patreon.com slash a tiny homestead. This one's a little short because I'm going to sneeze. Sean, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mary. It was an absolute pleasure. Have a great day. You too. Bye bye.

 

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A Tiny HomesteadBy Mary E Lewis