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Frostbite Family Farm LLC
Today I'm talking with Addie at Frostbite Family Farm LLC.
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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 Addie at Frostbite Family Farm, LLC in Lonsdale, Minnesota. Good morning, Addie, how are you? Good morning, I'm good, how are you? I'm good. We're having some really gray weather this morning. We are. It's coming after a lot of sunshine though, so I can't complain.
00:25
Yeah, we're supposed to get snow tonight and I'm kind of hoping we do because the cornfield is looking very bare right now and it looks kind of ugly. So fresh coat of snow would be nice. Yes, we have some livestock and it actually gets harder when things warm up and get a little wet. So the dry snow is always a good thing. Yeah, I was just talking to a dairy farmer. I don't if it was this week or last week, but they were saying that it had been
00:54
like really muddy. And I of course assumed that the cows were out in the field and I said, I hear that wet weather is not good for cows feet. And he said, oh no, he said, they're in the barn or they're on a dry lot and it's actually dry. He said, they're fine. He said, but yes, it can wreak havoc with their feet. And I was like, okay, cool. Yeah, that is the difference between large dairies and small ones. So we operate a micro dairy.
01:21
And all of our cows are out in the field. So they have a good space to roam around in, but mud definitely affects them. Yeah. And, okay, I don't want to get too far into dairy stuff because I've interviewed two people about dairies in the last two weeks. But when you say microdairy, how many cows? So right now we have 16 cows. That includes our calves. So we are milking 10 currently twice a day. Okay. And I'm assuming you're not milking 10 cows by hand a day.
01:50
No, we use a surge bucket system. It works really well. My husband and I team up and do it together and it gets done pretty efficiently that way. It kind of keeps it cleaner than hand milking. Yeah. I think the days of hand milking have kind of flown. They've kind of gone away. Unless you just have one cow and you really like milking cows. Right. And even then I'm like, okay, you get a bunch of stuff that kind of flings into it and it's just, they make smaller systems now.
02:20
It's really easy. Okay. So I want to know how your farm got its name, because I love the name. Sure. Yeah, that is always a topic of interest. It's so funny. We picked that name after we didn't start out farming. My husband and I got married and lived in an apartment. And I've always had this love of plants and food and good cooking. And as we had kids, it developed into including health and
02:50
um eating at home and making things ourselves. And we sort of realized over time, like, I think we need to look for some land. I think we want to do some of this ourselves. And we began our land search, but at the same time realizing that neither of us had come from agricultural backgrounds. We decided to try to find people locally that were doing what we wanted to do or close and get to know them.
03:17
and hear their processes. And um apples were a big point of interest for me. I love apple trees and just the amount of food they can supply is amazing. So we found an orchardist in Northern Minnesota who was organic for a really long time. He has this amazing little orchard on acres and acres of planted trees, really well maintained. A lot of them are like the semi-dwarf stock and we would go visit every year with our little kids.
03:46
It was one of the only organic orchards that we had heard of locally. It was about a two hour trip for us, so it was always a big event taking the kids. And as we had gone over a couple of years, we got to know the owner, and he is incredible and would give us so much of his time walking around the orchard telling us all about his trees and the ones he was breeding and the different varieties he chose and why. I just...
04:11
I felt like I could just consume that information all day and he was so gracious with his time and he would walk around and show us, this is the triumph apple. It's a new one I'm trialing. You know, taste it. This is what I like about it. This is what I don't like about it. ah And on one of our trips up there, I mean, he was showing us the inside of his buildings and where he would make cider and all of these things and ah he was like, hold on, you got to come with me to the back of the orchard. He's like, my favorite apples are planted back there.
04:41
And as we took the trek back, he was telling us about the frostbite apple. And it was developed in Minnesota. It's like a great, great grandparent of Honeycrisp and some of the original apples that were planted here in Minnesota. It's this tiny little burgundy apple, and it kind of cracks on the top a lot. It's not really grown commercially because of that. It's not good for shipping. um But it's a dessert apple.
05:11
and he was like, you have to try this. Come over to the tree, like, here's how you pick a really good one. And he just like watched us and you know that's the sign of like a really good, a really good food. He's just like waiting for us to enjoy it. And I remember biting into this apple and thinking I had never tasted anything like this. And you your mind starts thinking back to other ones you've eaten, like the gala apples and things like that, where they're like a little mealy, not a ton of flavor.
05:39
maybe a little dry, and this apple, I mean, it tasted like brown sugar, just molasses, it had these really complex flavors. uh And I remember just thinking, it crossing my mind that if somebody didn't care enough to plant these varieties that maybe don't ship so well, or maybe oh aren't great for grocery store, they're not perfect, uh I would never have gotten to experience this.
06:05
And it is one of my favorite apples. we, every year we go up there, we get a little box of them and our kids, you know, we all fight over them and we share them with people and just watch people's faces light up and they go, I've never tried an apple like this. I didn't know they could taste like this. em And so as we were thinking about our farm and what we wanted, what our mission was, what we wanted to do, em the frost by apple kind of came up in our mind. It's like, we want to be the people who cultivate varieties that maybe
06:35
aren't the most popular but still deserve a place in the food landscape. People should try these in their lifetime. We should not go our whole lives thinking apples are these boring standard and not let little blemishes stop that. we do a lot of different fruits and vegetables.
06:56
This last year was our first year at farmers markets and selling produce direct to consumer and a lot of our vegetables even. love to pick heirloom varieties, weird shapes, weird colors. When we started, all of our ideas rolling and what we wanted to do, this was kind of the theme. And I had a lot of people actually look at me and say, this is not gonna work. People are not going to want a black tomato. They're gonna look at it and say, ew, that's gross.
07:24
We don't want to try that. Give us something, you know, the normal bushel boy tomato. Just stick with the normal varieties and then you'll be successful. And I just, like, you could not force me to grow a normal red tomato. And I've always been like that. I think the colors are so fun. We're losing varieties and people need to care about that. So yeah, just kind of come to that. I love that story. That is so beautiful.
07:53
And I'll tell you a secret, my husband and I have been talking since oh, a few years after we got married about wanting to do the homesteading thing and we're doing it now. We've been married for over 20 years and we bought this place in 2020. the first thing that got planted here was apple trees because we had talked and talked and talked about our dream.
08:20
for years and apple trees were like always at the top of the list. We wanted our own apple trees. So I get it, Addie, believe me. Yes. Yeah, they're so beautiful. They produce so much food. It's an investment. It takes a lot of time. But we, the property we moved to has two apple trees. They're a semi dwarf, so they're not super tiny, but they're not super large either. And I am consistently baffled every year. Like we, my family, have
08:48
I married and I have four kids and we could not get through all of those apples if we tried. There are so many, they're abundant. You know, we end up finishing our pigs on apples and giving them to the cows and chickens and all of that and selling them and giving them to friends. And it's just amazing how much food one tree can produce. It is insane. And I have another story about apple trees. The lady that we got our dog from.
09:17
She lives in Montgomery, Minnesota. Her name is Jean Bratz. I don't know if you're familiar. She has the Minnesota farmer Facebook page. Okay. They raise small scale. They raise steers. They have many Australian shepherds that they breed and they sell the puppies and take incredibly good care of the puppies from when they're born until they go to their new homes because they have seven children. Sure. So almost every puppy is assigned a kid basically.
09:47
Oh, but they have apple trees in their backyard, like many apple trees. And we were over there in the spring one year and all the trees were blooming and all you could smell when you opened the car door and got out in their driveway was apple blossoms. And she has the the Wolf River apple trees, the great big apples. Oh, sure. And I
10:13
keep meaning to get hold of her. need to do it this year and ask her if there's any way that we could get a cutting of a branch so we can graft it onto one of our trees because I would love to have Wolf River apples as well. That's the thing. There are so many varieties and that is also just kind of what makes me sad about our whole food industry is we have reduced
10:37
reduced plants to a handful of varieties that ship well, store well, all of that. And you just don't know unless you look. We planted 40 apple trees this last spring in our backfield. And looking through the varieties, it was so important to me. Sure, we'll do a couple of the honeycrisp and things like that. these incredible trees that have existed forever, that have stories to them, and that have been lovingly cultivated over
11:04
centuries, we planted this black Oxford apple and it is almost entirely black on the outside. Inside looks like a standard apple. The flavor profile is very similar to a honey crisp. But again, like we would not know that these varieties exist unless someone cared enough to continue to cultivate them. So I think that's so important. Get the cuttings, graft it, plant it. You know, there's a lot of work before you ever see the fruit.
11:33
You know, what do they say? The best time to plant an apple tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today. I've always heard it the best time to plant a tree is a hundred years ago. Oh, sure. I guess the more modern varieties if we're grafting under rootstock don't typically last as long. some of those other ones, they're incredible and they do last, you know, a hundred years. Yep.
11:59
I don't know why we were so fixated on apple trees, except that my husband and I really love applecrest in the fall. And we were like, if we had an apple tree, we'd be making applecrest by now instead of having you buy apples at the local orchard. But we planted honey gold. We planted a regent. We planted a harrelson. then my husband went to Fleet Farm for something and he came home with
12:29
some other apple trees. And I was like, where are we putting those? And he said on the other side of the property. And I said, okay. And I was talking, I was writing a piece for Homestead Living Magazine that got bumped because of their holiday gift section. I'm so sad. uh when I sent her the draft, when I sent the editor the draft, she said, you guys have a small orchard. And I had to look it up.
12:57
If you have more than six apple trees, you have a small orchard. And I was so excited that we are technically the owners of a small orchard because we have like 20 trees. Yes, I love that. That's awesome. Yup. I didn't know we had a small orchard, but we do. So that was, that was pretty awesome. Um, I would love it if you could give me a rundown of the, the farm things that you have going on. So you have apple trees, you have some.
13:26
you have dairy cows. What other projects do you have going on? Sure. So something that was important to us was uh just the cyclical nature of farm life and how, you know, when we monocrop one thing, kind of, you you end up having to outsource things where if you have a bunch of little endeavors, they can all sort of feed off of each other. So we started with one dairy cow and her calf and have quickly expanded from there.
13:54
um We came here really wanting to do market vegetables. So right now we have about 10,000 square feet of growing space out in our field and we applied for an Equip High Tunnel grant and ended up being awarded the grant and we built a 100 foot by 30 foot high tunnel. So we are currently getting set up to start planting in there for the spring already. We do some poultry.
14:23
We were surrounded by a lot of woods so we don't free-range our poultry, but we do them in tractors behind the cows in our field through the summer and then they're in a stationary coop in the winter. And then this last year we added meat chickens and feeder pigs. So we ended up doing four feeder pigs. We have a lot of woods again with a lot of oak trees em and acorns and we ended up building a big paddock in the woods and
14:51
putting the pigs in there and it was awesome. we're, we do some cut flowers too. What kind of cut flowers? I love flowers. Yeah, we do. I'm trying to think how many beds we have right now. I think it's 30 to 40 beds that we do have cut flowers and we sort of do some of everything. We've got some perennials in there. I planted yarrow and what are my other perennials I have in there? Some echinacea.
15:19
Things that self-seed too, we grow lot of chamomile and calendula. And then we've got the kind of typical zinnias. And this year we're doing lyseanthus and ranunculus, dahlias, bachelor buttons, cosmos. I just placed my seed order, so it's all kind of fresh on my mind right now. m Those pro-cut sunflowers, those are a really good one. And then a lot of just like greenery, filler, we do some basil.
15:49
What else? Eucalyptus. Things like that. Yeah, this was our first year, this last year selling market bouquets and it was super fun. Awesome. We grow peonies because they're my favorite. And this year we'll probably have enough to actually sell quite a few if people want to buy them. That's awesome. Yeah, because it takes three years for peonies from when you get the roots and put them in the ground until they start to produce flowers. Really. Yeah.
16:17
So it's the first year is creep the second year. No first year is sleep. Second year is creep. Third year is leap and my peonies leaped this past spring. I had so many blooms. I was in heaven. Oh, that's amazing. We grow sunflowers. think we'd. I can't remember the name of it. It's a little yellow flower. It looks like a daisy and I thought it was rununculus, but it's not. I'm almost positive it's not.
16:45
And we have yarrow growing here wild. there's baby pink yarrow. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. We, we ended up starting, you know, if you go to like a green house and you buy like an established yarrow plant, they're like $15 a plant. And I was like, I really want these. So we started them from seed and in the first year we ended up getting blooms and they were like full size. was blown away by how quickly they grow. Yeah. And they're such a pretty plant.
17:16
and medicinal and all of that too. Yeah, the leaves are really pretty. They don't even look like a leaf. They look like a pine needle. Like a fern, yeah. Yeah, they're really lovely. I am such a sucker for plants. I, if I had my way, our whole property would just be all peonies every year. That would be amazing.
17:37
But I don't have my way because I am married to a wonderful man who wants to grow vegetables and apples and pears and plums and peaches. We don't have pears yet. So he wants all the things and I'm just like, why can't we just pick one and make it great? And he's like, because it's boring. And I'm like, okay, yes. I'm in all the things. I'm in all the things person. think, you know, peonies even where they're they're done after a certain point. Oh, yeah. Short, short bloom season.
18:06
I just want stuff all year. One of my kids was like, oh, what is your favorite flower? What's your favorite smell? And I was like, it's not a flower. It's a tomato plant. I love how tomato plant leaves smell. uh It's just the joy you find in all the different things. And plants are definitely good for that. Oh, they are. I can't have lilacs in the house anymore because I sneeze. Oh, no. Didn't used to.
18:33
But in the last year or two, if anybody has brought me a lilac stem, I'm good for about five minutes and I walk by it and it makes my nose tickle and I sneeze. It's not really an allergy, but it's just a little tiny irritant. But I love how lilac smells and we got some lilac fragrance oil and made lilac candles. And the lilac candles don't bother me at all. I still get to have it.
18:58
I still get to have lilac in the house and I don't actually sneeze every time I walk by it, which is great. Yeah, lilac has always been one of my favorites. But this last year I grew stock. Have you ever grown that? No. Okay. It looks sort of like a snapdragon. It's a barassica. So it really likes those cool temps and it has the most unique scent I have ever had with a flower.
19:27
like a little spicy, super floral, the smell. had one stem of stock in our house and the whole house was just full of the fragrance of it. And it was so beautiful. We're going to do a lot more this year. just, we do a lot of our seeds through Johnny's seeds and they have the varieties they have are so beautiful. The colors, that's another one. If you want to grow something that smells really good. cool. I'll have to look it up and add it to the list.
19:56
The list just gets longer every January. Yes, January especially. These winter months are rough for us plant lovers. Yeah, although I'm really glad that I asked you to be on the show now because I think if I had asked you to be on the show in May, you would have been like, Mary, I'm not going to have time until January. Yes, that is definitely the downside of this life is you get busy. It keeps you busy.
20:22
Oh, yes, it does. And especially the younger you are because you have way more energy in your 20s and early 30s than I do at 56. Yes, there are a lot of things that we, you you get in January, you get really motivated and you're like, I can do this, I can do this, I'm going to start all of these projects. And then July, you looks back and is like, girl, what were you thinking? You do not have the time for this, but we do it anyway. It's great.
20:48
I figure I have one more weekend before my husband says I'm going to bring in the seed trays and get things started. Yes, that is my day today. Actually, that's what I will be doing after this. We're going to start some seeds. Yeah, I'm hoping he holds out until at least the first weekend in February because if we start them now, I will not have my kitchen table for 12 weeks. That that is a problem. We ended up.
21:13
with all of the growing space in the high tunnel. That's sort of how we started, but we transitioned into our garage is heated. um We insulated, got it heated and do grow shelves out there. And that has made it so, you know, the like LED glow where you're like, don't, we don't need this surrounding dinner and everything all the time. So that has enabled us to start those early crops sooner and not be bothered by that as much. I made the mistake of buying the pink grow lights from Amazon.
21:42
I thought I was getting the white ones. No, we got the pink alien looking ones. Yeah. And that was like three years ago. And we have windows right all around the table in our kitchen and they face toward the road. And I said, you know, anybody driving by is going to think we're growing marijuana in our kitchen. And my husband laughed and he said, we have moved to the country. They know we're growing vegetables. And I was like, okay. Yes, that is a thing we've had people ask.
22:13
Yeah, but that pink glow is so creepy, especially at three o'clock in the morning when you wake up and need to use the bathroom and you come downstairs and the whole kitchen is bathed in pink light. Yes. It's like, oh, there's aliens in my house. OK, cool. Yes, we started our growing project before we moved out to the country. We lived on a little lot. ah And I was like, you know, if we want to grow, we should practice here. So we started growing some of our own things. And in our city house, I did the same thing and got
22:43
the blue purple lights and so many of our friends as they would come and go from our house would joke about that. Oh, what are you growing? know, like just tomatoes. That's it. Basil. have to leave to bite into it. It's basil. It's great. Yep, exactly. And honestly, marijuana is not as big a deal as it used to be. So I'm not always worried about it, but it just made me laugh when I saw that they were pink lights, not white. I was like, oh, I
23:11
I clicked the wrong thing on Amazon, but they're cool. It'll work. So I try to keep this to half an hour. We're only 23 minutes in, but I wanted to talk about barn cats with you because on your Facebook page, you have a photo of a beautiful long haired, I assume it's a barn cat. And we have a kitten who's about 16 to 20 weeks old. We don't know who got her from a friend.
23:37
who looks exactly like your cat. Our cat's name is Smokey. What is your cat's name? Her name is Floof, but I am not responsible for naming the kittens. Are you kidding me? That was our mama cat's name. Really? Oh funny, my three year old named her. yes, they get to pick the names for the cats. Oh, we don't have Floof anymore. She disappeared. Oh, that's the worst. Yeah, we've had that happen. Was your Floof a black, white and orange?
24:06
Calico by any chance, because that's what ours was. She is a tortie. So she's dark, kind of gray and has some orange in her and got the long hair. That foofy hair, I think, lended to the name. That's exactly why we named ours Floof, because my husband was like, what do we name her? said Floof. She looks like she's going to explode. That's so funny. We had two of them, actually. We had friends pick up the other one and it was Poof and Floof. uh Our Floof.
24:35
had three litters before she disappeared and we have one cat left from her. He's a little over a year old. He is an orange long haired cat. Oh nice. And his name is Fluffybutt because he has his mama's extremely long hair. is name of Fluffybutt. Cat names are the best. have some just outrageous names. One of our cats name is Garbage. um
25:01
Constantly gets into our dumpster. So his name is garbage, but then our neighbor cat who's a long orange haired is Stanley So, you know you're out and you're like, hey Stanley you're walking a garbage. We've got you know, it's a whole thing Well the the one that looks like the cat that you have on your Facebook page Her name is smoky because when she moves she is basically a dilute calico So she's got some buff and some really silvery gray and
25:29
I don't think there's a speck of white on that cat, but she looks like smoke when she's moving and she's gorgeous. And then her sister is shorty because she looks just like Smokey, except that she's got short hair. Sure. And then the third one that we got is another orange kitten that looks exactly like the one that's over a year old that we had to begin with. And his name is Junior because we can't tell them apart when they're away from us.
25:58
So yeah, I love having barn cats. Like when I was a little kid, we always had a pet cat and we had one at a time. And I said to my mom one time, said, why can't we have more than one at a time? And she said, because they're basically indoor cats. We live in a thousand square foot house. I want one cat. I said, well, I want all the cats. And she said, I know you do. You have loved kittens since you were a baby. And now,
26:26
Literally, I could have all the cats I wanted to and they're outside and they're not a problem. Yes, that has been our experience. I grew up my great grandparents going to their little farm and they had kittens, you know, when we would go over there and it was like the highlight of our day, my siblings and I. And we have some allergies to like pet hair and stuff. you know, when you have like a lot of little kids, you're like, I don't need anything else in the house to clean up after. We've just decided no indoor animals and for mom's sanity.
26:55
So when we moved here and there was a cat, my kids were just enamored with this cat. She's a barn cat, little standoffish at first, but had kittens and it, you just watch their faces light up and how much fun they have. And it's just been one of the highlights that we didn't know was coming with the farm that, you know, they just thoroughly enjoy every year. Yeah. A um lot of people don't like cats and that's fine. They don't have to.
27:24
I love cats because cats, they decide that they are your friend, it's an honor because cats really have no use for people. All they want you to do is feed them. Yes, we have uh my husband is a cat lover. I'm a bigger dog fan, but I think especially as we farm, I appreciate what the cats do so much. You know, they'll come in with rabbits and different mice and things they catch. And I see they're so functional, but we will with our little micro dairy when we milk.
27:54
We have, you know, when we milk each animal, we'll strip out the first couple of squeezes of milk out of each quarter. And then we have this cup we strip into and there we tap it on the ground and all of our cats know they will come from near and far when they hear that tap on the concrete. And we pour it out into a little dish for them. And it's like the highlight of their day. They love it. It's so fun. It's treat time at the farm. Yeah. And the other thing is, that we literally only had two cats.
28:24
up until a month ago, month and a half ago. Both males, one fixed, not fixed. One fixed and one not fixed. There we go. And my husband was like, this is a problem. And I said, why? And he said, because they're not going to be able to keep up with the rodents in the string in the summer. He said, right now, everything's kind of quiet. He said, but that humongous pole barn is going to be overrun with mice if we don't get some more cats. And I said, well, considering we have two males, that's going to be a problem. he laughed.
28:53
Um, our friends over at O'Connor Family Acres here in Lesor, um, Tracy and Paul have some barn cats and they happen to have some kittens and they brought us the three that I was talking about. cannot freaking wait for fluffy butt and smokey to get together and have babies as strength because they're going to be the longest haired, most beautiful kittens ever known to man. Yes, they, we have.
29:19
We have the Siamese cat that we originally got with the house and then a long-haired orange cat that's our neighbor's cat and they we went from having oh my goodness two females to having over the summer 20 um cats with all of their litters and all of the kittens are so fun and so beautiful and it is pure comic I mean fun to watch them all just like explode out of the barn door following their mamas around it's amazing but at the end of
29:48
the summer, we were like, okay, we got to find some new homes for these guys and found a couple of local families that wanted some barn kittens and you just, you you're like, we're good with one or two. But when you have animals and you have grain and feed and chickens and all, you know, I've seen people with like massive rodent problems and we just don't have any of that. And I attribute that 100 % to the cats and you know, it's it's great fun for the kids, but it's also functional.
30:18
Oh, we wouldn't have as many cats if we didn't have a big old pole barn that needed to be patrolled for mice because that would not be a good plan. ah The saddest thing I've seen so far regarding kittens and dogs, we have a dog and I talk about her a lot. I haven't talked about her a lot lately though. Her name is Maggie. She's five. She's a mini Australian shepherd. She would have made the best mama.
30:46
ever, but we didn't want puppies. So she was spayed when she was six months old. She loves it when the kittens come out of the barn and get introduced to her. And she freaking knows when there's babies in the barn. oh Because my husband and my son would go out and play with the kittens to get them socialized so they were friendly. So she would smell the kittens on my husband and my son when they would come in the house. Saddest thing I've ever seen.
31:15
We didn't have any kittens this past summer because flu flaked off and that was it. We didn't have any female cats. And uh Maggie kept looking over toward the barn all summer long, like, where are my friends? Where are my babies? And so the other day, the three new kittens were in Maggie's doghouse. And I say that loosely because Maggie barely uses the doghouse. So the cat take it over and Maggie can reach it.
31:42
and the kittens have discovered that there's hay bales in there and that it's a nice warm place to hang out. So Maggie noticed movement in the doghouse and went over and stuck her nose in and smelled the air and you saw the tail start to wag. She got a nubbin. She's not a tail, she has a nubbin. And I was like, oh no, this is going to go really good or really bad. And she was barking at the cats because she didn't know they were there to begin with.
32:11
They're not little babies. They're not six week old babies coming out of the barn. They're almost full-sized cats now. And I was like, oh, this is going to go bad. And after she got done barking at them and they managed to get past her and get back to the barn, she came trotting over the door like, I have new babies. Oh, cute. So saddest thing ever this summer, because there were no babies for her. And I think that she really missed them. And then
32:39
happiest moment of her life was discovering that there were new cats in her doghouse once she figured out they were good kittens, they were fine. Sweet. Yeah, we have an Anatolian shepherd. He's gigantic. And he and the cats have a love-hate relationship, but he is a guard dog. But he and the cows, when the cows have babies and stuff, it's so sweet. I love those like...
33:06
interactions they have with each other and the friendships they make and one of our cows is his best friend and it's just it's so funny to watch and we love it. It's so funny because growing up I thought that cats and dogs hated each other. m Because you're told that as a little kid. and dogs don't get along and I'm like yeah okay I know better now because Maggie would raise a litter of kittens even though she's a dog every year if we love. Oh sweet.
33:36
And she would let them just like curl up against her. One of the last kittens from the last litter tried to nurse from Maggie. And Maggie very gently put her nose right under that kitten and lifted up and moved it out of the way. She was like, no, I'm not actually your mama. Yeah. was very sweet. Very, very sweet.
33:58
There are so many moments like that when you live on a farm or a homestead and you have animals because they do the craziest, funniest things. On the flip side, when a cat gets hit by a car and dies, that's hard too. Yeah, loss in any way. have, you've heard the phrase where you have livestock, you have dead stock. You're like, it's just part of raising animals, right? You get to enjoy them during their lives and then...
34:28
Then when they pass, it's always just so sad. Yep. First barn cat we lost the road. I cried all day. All day. Beautiful, beautiful silver tabby. And the second one we lost, I slammed cabinets and yelled and said a few choice words and didn't cry because you got to get used to it. Yeah. have, unfortunately with dairy cows, specifically with the jerseys, the calves can be fragile and it's
34:57
It's an adjustment when you are not used to that kind of experience with loss when you lose calves and it's just, yeah, you go through all the range of emotions. Yeah, and you lose the potential of that animal. That's the hardest part because you have all these hopes and dreams once you find out that your cow is pregnant. Yeah, it's a long process.
35:22
Yeah, and then that baby doesn't survive and you're like, but I had such great plans and now they're not going to happen. Yeah, and we bottle feed our calves too. So our kids are really involved and it's been rough every time it's happened. you know, you're like, it's all about teaching kids too. I feel like right now a lot of people don't have that hands-on experience dealing with loss anymore. We're not close enough to nature. We're not close enough to things that are fragile.
35:48
And so we just try to really walk with our kids through that and be like, okay, you you take care of animals in life and you take care of them in death and uh having compassion and understanding the cycle of life has been really valuable. Another thing that I just, you you look forward to a farm and all the things that you will learn and glean from it, but it's those little things where you weren't necessarily thinking that was going to be a huge part of it, but it is.
36:16
Yeah, there's a couple of things that I hold on to when it comes to loss. One of the things that I tell myself all the time is that the price for loving something is knowing you're going to have to say goodbye at some point. Yeah. And there's another one. And of course, now I can't think of it. Oh, how lucky are we to be able to have that depth of feeling of love? Yeah. Those are the two things that make it easier for me. Yeah.
36:45
I have seen some posts recently about how cruel the dairy industry is and, you know, I'm not saying that that is never the case, but you know how calves are just a commodity and I'm like, oh, you know, you've clearly never cried over a calf. Like, m you don't know until you find good places to get your dairy, find good places that really value their animals because there are those people out there where it really does mean a lot to them and it is their literal blood, sweat and tears that go into.
37:12
raising these animals and creating amazing genetics and the next generation of milk mamas and Yeah Yep, I am so proud of all you ladies who are under 40 who are taking all of this on Because it's a lot and it's a lot when you're raising kids along with the animals Yeah, it is. It's everyone warns you you know, oh this is
37:40
going to be so much work, you're not going have a choice. You're going to have to put it as completely different when you're experiencing it in those moments where you're like, okay, you know, my kids still get sick, and I still have to milk. You know, where you're like, there are still things that have to happen. There aren't days off, you know, it's negative 60 wind chill, all of that, you're like, it still has to happen. And walking through it is really the only way to fully grasp what that means. Yep, absolutely. And you know that 2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer, right?
38:09
I had not heard that. Wow. It is. And you are doing it. So again, really proud of you, Addie. Thank you. All right. I try to keep this to half an hour. We're a little bit over. Where can people find you? We are actually going to be putting up a website in the next couple of weeks. So I don't have that info yet, but you can find us on Facebook or Instagram, Frostbite, Family Farms, LLC. And we would love to connect with you over Messenger or I think my phone number is on there. Yeah.
38:39
still love the name of your farm. I love wintertime and I love frost. I don't love frost bite, but I still love the name. I know it's still fun. All right. As always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can find that at AtinyHolmstead.com slash support. And if you like this podcast, you should listen to the new one that I just started with.
39:07
Leah from Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook. It's called Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture. Addie, thank you so much for taking the time and I appreciate it and keep doing the good work. Thank you. All right, have a great day. You too. Bye.
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By Mary E LewisToday I'm talking with Addie at Frostbite Family Farm LLC.
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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 Addie at Frostbite Family Farm, LLC in Lonsdale, Minnesota. Good morning, Addie, how are you? Good morning, I'm good, how are you? I'm good. We're having some really gray weather this morning. We are. It's coming after a lot of sunshine though, so I can't complain.
00:25
Yeah, we're supposed to get snow tonight and I'm kind of hoping we do because the cornfield is looking very bare right now and it looks kind of ugly. So fresh coat of snow would be nice. Yes, we have some livestock and it actually gets harder when things warm up and get a little wet. So the dry snow is always a good thing. Yeah, I was just talking to a dairy farmer. I don't if it was this week or last week, but they were saying that it had been
00:54
like really muddy. And I of course assumed that the cows were out in the field and I said, I hear that wet weather is not good for cows feet. And he said, oh no, he said, they're in the barn or they're on a dry lot and it's actually dry. He said, they're fine. He said, but yes, it can wreak havoc with their feet. And I was like, okay, cool. Yeah, that is the difference between large dairies and small ones. So we operate a micro dairy.
01:21
And all of our cows are out in the field. So they have a good space to roam around in, but mud definitely affects them. Yeah. And, okay, I don't want to get too far into dairy stuff because I've interviewed two people about dairies in the last two weeks. But when you say microdairy, how many cows? So right now we have 16 cows. That includes our calves. So we are milking 10 currently twice a day. Okay. And I'm assuming you're not milking 10 cows by hand a day.
01:50
No, we use a surge bucket system. It works really well. My husband and I team up and do it together and it gets done pretty efficiently that way. It kind of keeps it cleaner than hand milking. Yeah. I think the days of hand milking have kind of flown. They've kind of gone away. Unless you just have one cow and you really like milking cows. Right. And even then I'm like, okay, you get a bunch of stuff that kind of flings into it and it's just, they make smaller systems now.
02:20
It's really easy. Okay. So I want to know how your farm got its name, because I love the name. Sure. Yeah, that is always a topic of interest. It's so funny. We picked that name after we didn't start out farming. My husband and I got married and lived in an apartment. And I've always had this love of plants and food and good cooking. And as we had kids, it developed into including health and
02:50
um eating at home and making things ourselves. And we sort of realized over time, like, I think we need to look for some land. I think we want to do some of this ourselves. And we began our land search, but at the same time realizing that neither of us had come from agricultural backgrounds. We decided to try to find people locally that were doing what we wanted to do or close and get to know them.
03:17
and hear their processes. And um apples were a big point of interest for me. I love apple trees and just the amount of food they can supply is amazing. So we found an orchardist in Northern Minnesota who was organic for a really long time. He has this amazing little orchard on acres and acres of planted trees, really well maintained. A lot of them are like the semi-dwarf stock and we would go visit every year with our little kids.
03:46
It was one of the only organic orchards that we had heard of locally. It was about a two hour trip for us, so it was always a big event taking the kids. And as we had gone over a couple of years, we got to know the owner, and he is incredible and would give us so much of his time walking around the orchard telling us all about his trees and the ones he was breeding and the different varieties he chose and why. I just...
04:11
I felt like I could just consume that information all day and he was so gracious with his time and he would walk around and show us, this is the triumph apple. It's a new one I'm trialing. You know, taste it. This is what I like about it. This is what I don't like about it. ah And on one of our trips up there, I mean, he was showing us the inside of his buildings and where he would make cider and all of these things and ah he was like, hold on, you got to come with me to the back of the orchard. He's like, my favorite apples are planted back there.
04:41
And as we took the trek back, he was telling us about the frostbite apple. And it was developed in Minnesota. It's like a great, great grandparent of Honeycrisp and some of the original apples that were planted here in Minnesota. It's this tiny little burgundy apple, and it kind of cracks on the top a lot. It's not really grown commercially because of that. It's not good for shipping. um But it's a dessert apple.
05:11
and he was like, you have to try this. Come over to the tree, like, here's how you pick a really good one. And he just like watched us and you know that's the sign of like a really good, a really good food. He's just like waiting for us to enjoy it. And I remember biting into this apple and thinking I had never tasted anything like this. And you your mind starts thinking back to other ones you've eaten, like the gala apples and things like that, where they're like a little mealy, not a ton of flavor.
05:39
maybe a little dry, and this apple, I mean, it tasted like brown sugar, just molasses, it had these really complex flavors. uh And I remember just thinking, it crossing my mind that if somebody didn't care enough to plant these varieties that maybe don't ship so well, or maybe oh aren't great for grocery store, they're not perfect, uh I would never have gotten to experience this.
06:05
And it is one of my favorite apples. we, every year we go up there, we get a little box of them and our kids, you know, we all fight over them and we share them with people and just watch people's faces light up and they go, I've never tried an apple like this. I didn't know they could taste like this. em And so as we were thinking about our farm and what we wanted, what our mission was, what we wanted to do, em the frost by apple kind of came up in our mind. It's like, we want to be the people who cultivate varieties that maybe
06:35
aren't the most popular but still deserve a place in the food landscape. People should try these in their lifetime. We should not go our whole lives thinking apples are these boring standard and not let little blemishes stop that. we do a lot of different fruits and vegetables.
06:56
This last year was our first year at farmers markets and selling produce direct to consumer and a lot of our vegetables even. love to pick heirloom varieties, weird shapes, weird colors. When we started, all of our ideas rolling and what we wanted to do, this was kind of the theme. And I had a lot of people actually look at me and say, this is not gonna work. People are not going to want a black tomato. They're gonna look at it and say, ew, that's gross.
07:24
We don't want to try that. Give us something, you know, the normal bushel boy tomato. Just stick with the normal varieties and then you'll be successful. And I just, like, you could not force me to grow a normal red tomato. And I've always been like that. I think the colors are so fun. We're losing varieties and people need to care about that. So yeah, just kind of come to that. I love that story. That is so beautiful.
07:53
And I'll tell you a secret, my husband and I have been talking since oh, a few years after we got married about wanting to do the homesteading thing and we're doing it now. We've been married for over 20 years and we bought this place in 2020. the first thing that got planted here was apple trees because we had talked and talked and talked about our dream.
08:20
for years and apple trees were like always at the top of the list. We wanted our own apple trees. So I get it, Addie, believe me. Yes. Yeah, they're so beautiful. They produce so much food. It's an investment. It takes a lot of time. But we, the property we moved to has two apple trees. They're a semi dwarf, so they're not super tiny, but they're not super large either. And I am consistently baffled every year. Like we, my family, have
08:48
I married and I have four kids and we could not get through all of those apples if we tried. There are so many, they're abundant. You know, we end up finishing our pigs on apples and giving them to the cows and chickens and all of that and selling them and giving them to friends. And it's just amazing how much food one tree can produce. It is insane. And I have another story about apple trees. The lady that we got our dog from.
09:17
She lives in Montgomery, Minnesota. Her name is Jean Bratz. I don't know if you're familiar. She has the Minnesota farmer Facebook page. Okay. They raise small scale. They raise steers. They have many Australian shepherds that they breed and they sell the puppies and take incredibly good care of the puppies from when they're born until they go to their new homes because they have seven children. Sure. So almost every puppy is assigned a kid basically.
09:47
Oh, but they have apple trees in their backyard, like many apple trees. And we were over there in the spring one year and all the trees were blooming and all you could smell when you opened the car door and got out in their driveway was apple blossoms. And she has the the Wolf River apple trees, the great big apples. Oh, sure. And I
10:13
keep meaning to get hold of her. need to do it this year and ask her if there's any way that we could get a cutting of a branch so we can graft it onto one of our trees because I would love to have Wolf River apples as well. That's the thing. There are so many varieties and that is also just kind of what makes me sad about our whole food industry is we have reduced
10:37
reduced plants to a handful of varieties that ship well, store well, all of that. And you just don't know unless you look. We planted 40 apple trees this last spring in our backfield. And looking through the varieties, it was so important to me. Sure, we'll do a couple of the honeycrisp and things like that. these incredible trees that have existed forever, that have stories to them, and that have been lovingly cultivated over
11:04
centuries, we planted this black Oxford apple and it is almost entirely black on the outside. Inside looks like a standard apple. The flavor profile is very similar to a honey crisp. But again, like we would not know that these varieties exist unless someone cared enough to continue to cultivate them. So I think that's so important. Get the cuttings, graft it, plant it. You know, there's a lot of work before you ever see the fruit.
11:33
You know, what do they say? The best time to plant an apple tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today. I've always heard it the best time to plant a tree is a hundred years ago. Oh, sure. I guess the more modern varieties if we're grafting under rootstock don't typically last as long. some of those other ones, they're incredible and they do last, you know, a hundred years. Yep.
11:59
I don't know why we were so fixated on apple trees, except that my husband and I really love applecrest in the fall. And we were like, if we had an apple tree, we'd be making applecrest by now instead of having you buy apples at the local orchard. But we planted honey gold. We planted a regent. We planted a harrelson. then my husband went to Fleet Farm for something and he came home with
12:29
some other apple trees. And I was like, where are we putting those? And he said on the other side of the property. And I said, okay. And I was talking, I was writing a piece for Homestead Living Magazine that got bumped because of their holiday gift section. I'm so sad. uh when I sent her the draft, when I sent the editor the draft, she said, you guys have a small orchard. And I had to look it up.
12:57
If you have more than six apple trees, you have a small orchard. And I was so excited that we are technically the owners of a small orchard because we have like 20 trees. Yes, I love that. That's awesome. Yup. I didn't know we had a small orchard, but we do. So that was, that was pretty awesome. Um, I would love it if you could give me a rundown of the, the farm things that you have going on. So you have apple trees, you have some.
13:26
you have dairy cows. What other projects do you have going on? Sure. So something that was important to us was uh just the cyclical nature of farm life and how, you know, when we monocrop one thing, kind of, you you end up having to outsource things where if you have a bunch of little endeavors, they can all sort of feed off of each other. So we started with one dairy cow and her calf and have quickly expanded from there.
13:54
um We came here really wanting to do market vegetables. So right now we have about 10,000 square feet of growing space out in our field and we applied for an Equip High Tunnel grant and ended up being awarded the grant and we built a 100 foot by 30 foot high tunnel. So we are currently getting set up to start planting in there for the spring already. We do some poultry.
14:23
We were surrounded by a lot of woods so we don't free-range our poultry, but we do them in tractors behind the cows in our field through the summer and then they're in a stationary coop in the winter. And then this last year we added meat chickens and feeder pigs. So we ended up doing four feeder pigs. We have a lot of woods again with a lot of oak trees em and acorns and we ended up building a big paddock in the woods and
14:51
putting the pigs in there and it was awesome. we're, we do some cut flowers too. What kind of cut flowers? I love flowers. Yeah, we do. I'm trying to think how many beds we have right now. I think it's 30 to 40 beds that we do have cut flowers and we sort of do some of everything. We've got some perennials in there. I planted yarrow and what are my other perennials I have in there? Some echinacea.
15:19
Things that self-seed too, we grow lot of chamomile and calendula. And then we've got the kind of typical zinnias. And this year we're doing lyseanthus and ranunculus, dahlias, bachelor buttons, cosmos. I just placed my seed order, so it's all kind of fresh on my mind right now. m Those pro-cut sunflowers, those are a really good one. And then a lot of just like greenery, filler, we do some basil.
15:49
What else? Eucalyptus. Things like that. Yeah, this was our first year, this last year selling market bouquets and it was super fun. Awesome. We grow peonies because they're my favorite. And this year we'll probably have enough to actually sell quite a few if people want to buy them. That's awesome. Yeah, because it takes three years for peonies from when you get the roots and put them in the ground until they start to produce flowers. Really. Yeah.
16:17
So it's the first year is creep the second year. No first year is sleep. Second year is creep. Third year is leap and my peonies leaped this past spring. I had so many blooms. I was in heaven. Oh, that's amazing. We grow sunflowers. think we'd. I can't remember the name of it. It's a little yellow flower. It looks like a daisy and I thought it was rununculus, but it's not. I'm almost positive it's not.
16:45
And we have yarrow growing here wild. there's baby pink yarrow. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. We, we ended up starting, you know, if you go to like a green house and you buy like an established yarrow plant, they're like $15 a plant. And I was like, I really want these. So we started them from seed and in the first year we ended up getting blooms and they were like full size. was blown away by how quickly they grow. Yeah. And they're such a pretty plant.
17:16
and medicinal and all of that too. Yeah, the leaves are really pretty. They don't even look like a leaf. They look like a pine needle. Like a fern, yeah. Yeah, they're really lovely. I am such a sucker for plants. I, if I had my way, our whole property would just be all peonies every year. That would be amazing.
17:37
But I don't have my way because I am married to a wonderful man who wants to grow vegetables and apples and pears and plums and peaches. We don't have pears yet. So he wants all the things and I'm just like, why can't we just pick one and make it great? And he's like, because it's boring. And I'm like, okay, yes. I'm in all the things. I'm in all the things person. think, you know, peonies even where they're they're done after a certain point. Oh, yeah. Short, short bloom season.
18:06
I just want stuff all year. One of my kids was like, oh, what is your favorite flower? What's your favorite smell? And I was like, it's not a flower. It's a tomato plant. I love how tomato plant leaves smell. uh It's just the joy you find in all the different things. And plants are definitely good for that. Oh, they are. I can't have lilacs in the house anymore because I sneeze. Oh, no. Didn't used to.
18:33
But in the last year or two, if anybody has brought me a lilac stem, I'm good for about five minutes and I walk by it and it makes my nose tickle and I sneeze. It's not really an allergy, but it's just a little tiny irritant. But I love how lilac smells and we got some lilac fragrance oil and made lilac candles. And the lilac candles don't bother me at all. I still get to have it.
18:58
I still get to have lilac in the house and I don't actually sneeze every time I walk by it, which is great. Yeah, lilac has always been one of my favorites. But this last year I grew stock. Have you ever grown that? No. Okay. It looks sort of like a snapdragon. It's a barassica. So it really likes those cool temps and it has the most unique scent I have ever had with a flower.
19:27
like a little spicy, super floral, the smell. had one stem of stock in our house and the whole house was just full of the fragrance of it. And it was so beautiful. We're going to do a lot more this year. just, we do a lot of our seeds through Johnny's seeds and they have the varieties they have are so beautiful. The colors, that's another one. If you want to grow something that smells really good. cool. I'll have to look it up and add it to the list.
19:56
The list just gets longer every January. Yes, January especially. These winter months are rough for us plant lovers. Yeah, although I'm really glad that I asked you to be on the show now because I think if I had asked you to be on the show in May, you would have been like, Mary, I'm not going to have time until January. Yes, that is definitely the downside of this life is you get busy. It keeps you busy.
20:22
Oh, yes, it does. And especially the younger you are because you have way more energy in your 20s and early 30s than I do at 56. Yes, there are a lot of things that we, you you get in January, you get really motivated and you're like, I can do this, I can do this, I'm going to start all of these projects. And then July, you looks back and is like, girl, what were you thinking? You do not have the time for this, but we do it anyway. It's great.
20:48
I figure I have one more weekend before my husband says I'm going to bring in the seed trays and get things started. Yes, that is my day today. Actually, that's what I will be doing after this. We're going to start some seeds. Yeah, I'm hoping he holds out until at least the first weekend in February because if we start them now, I will not have my kitchen table for 12 weeks. That that is a problem. We ended up.
21:13
with all of the growing space in the high tunnel. That's sort of how we started, but we transitioned into our garage is heated. um We insulated, got it heated and do grow shelves out there. And that has made it so, you know, the like LED glow where you're like, don't, we don't need this surrounding dinner and everything all the time. So that has enabled us to start those early crops sooner and not be bothered by that as much. I made the mistake of buying the pink grow lights from Amazon.
21:42
I thought I was getting the white ones. No, we got the pink alien looking ones. Yeah. And that was like three years ago. And we have windows right all around the table in our kitchen and they face toward the road. And I said, you know, anybody driving by is going to think we're growing marijuana in our kitchen. And my husband laughed and he said, we have moved to the country. They know we're growing vegetables. And I was like, okay. Yes, that is a thing we've had people ask.
22:13
Yeah, but that pink glow is so creepy, especially at three o'clock in the morning when you wake up and need to use the bathroom and you come downstairs and the whole kitchen is bathed in pink light. Yes. It's like, oh, there's aliens in my house. OK, cool. Yes, we started our growing project before we moved out to the country. We lived on a little lot. ah And I was like, you know, if we want to grow, we should practice here. So we started growing some of our own things. And in our city house, I did the same thing and got
22:43
the blue purple lights and so many of our friends as they would come and go from our house would joke about that. Oh, what are you growing? know, like just tomatoes. That's it. Basil. have to leave to bite into it. It's basil. It's great. Yep, exactly. And honestly, marijuana is not as big a deal as it used to be. So I'm not always worried about it, but it just made me laugh when I saw that they were pink lights, not white. I was like, oh, I
23:11
I clicked the wrong thing on Amazon, but they're cool. It'll work. So I try to keep this to half an hour. We're only 23 minutes in, but I wanted to talk about barn cats with you because on your Facebook page, you have a photo of a beautiful long haired, I assume it's a barn cat. And we have a kitten who's about 16 to 20 weeks old. We don't know who got her from a friend.
23:37
who looks exactly like your cat. Our cat's name is Smokey. What is your cat's name? Her name is Floof, but I am not responsible for naming the kittens. Are you kidding me? That was our mama cat's name. Really? Oh funny, my three year old named her. yes, they get to pick the names for the cats. Oh, we don't have Floof anymore. She disappeared. Oh, that's the worst. Yeah, we've had that happen. Was your Floof a black, white and orange?
24:06
Calico by any chance, because that's what ours was. She is a tortie. So she's dark, kind of gray and has some orange in her and got the long hair. That foofy hair, I think, lended to the name. That's exactly why we named ours Floof, because my husband was like, what do we name her? said Floof. She looks like she's going to explode. That's so funny. We had two of them, actually. We had friends pick up the other one and it was Poof and Floof. uh Our Floof.
24:35
had three litters before she disappeared and we have one cat left from her. He's a little over a year old. He is an orange long haired cat. Oh nice. And his name is Fluffybutt because he has his mama's extremely long hair. is name of Fluffybutt. Cat names are the best. have some just outrageous names. One of our cats name is Garbage. um
25:01
Constantly gets into our dumpster. So his name is garbage, but then our neighbor cat who's a long orange haired is Stanley So, you know you're out and you're like, hey Stanley you're walking a garbage. We've got you know, it's a whole thing Well the the one that looks like the cat that you have on your Facebook page Her name is smoky because when she moves she is basically a dilute calico So she's got some buff and some really silvery gray and
25:29
I don't think there's a speck of white on that cat, but she looks like smoke when she's moving and she's gorgeous. And then her sister is shorty because she looks just like Smokey, except that she's got short hair. Sure. And then the third one that we got is another orange kitten that looks exactly like the one that's over a year old that we had to begin with. And his name is Junior because we can't tell them apart when they're away from us.
25:58
So yeah, I love having barn cats. Like when I was a little kid, we always had a pet cat and we had one at a time. And I said to my mom one time, said, why can't we have more than one at a time? And she said, because they're basically indoor cats. We live in a thousand square foot house. I want one cat. I said, well, I want all the cats. And she said, I know you do. You have loved kittens since you were a baby. And now,
26:26
Literally, I could have all the cats I wanted to and they're outside and they're not a problem. Yes, that has been our experience. I grew up my great grandparents going to their little farm and they had kittens, you know, when we would go over there and it was like the highlight of our day, my siblings and I. And we have some allergies to like pet hair and stuff. you know, when you have like a lot of little kids, you're like, I don't need anything else in the house to clean up after. We've just decided no indoor animals and for mom's sanity.
26:55
So when we moved here and there was a cat, my kids were just enamored with this cat. She's a barn cat, little standoffish at first, but had kittens and it, you just watch their faces light up and how much fun they have. And it's just been one of the highlights that we didn't know was coming with the farm that, you know, they just thoroughly enjoy every year. Yeah. A um lot of people don't like cats and that's fine. They don't have to.
27:24
I love cats because cats, they decide that they are your friend, it's an honor because cats really have no use for people. All they want you to do is feed them. Yes, we have uh my husband is a cat lover. I'm a bigger dog fan, but I think especially as we farm, I appreciate what the cats do so much. You know, they'll come in with rabbits and different mice and things they catch. And I see they're so functional, but we will with our little micro dairy when we milk.
27:54
We have, you know, when we milk each animal, we'll strip out the first couple of squeezes of milk out of each quarter. And then we have this cup we strip into and there we tap it on the ground and all of our cats know they will come from near and far when they hear that tap on the concrete. And we pour it out into a little dish for them. And it's like the highlight of their day. They love it. It's so fun. It's treat time at the farm. Yeah. And the other thing is, that we literally only had two cats.
28:24
up until a month ago, month and a half ago. Both males, one fixed, not fixed. One fixed and one not fixed. There we go. And my husband was like, this is a problem. And I said, why? And he said, because they're not going to be able to keep up with the rodents in the string in the summer. He said, right now, everything's kind of quiet. He said, but that humongous pole barn is going to be overrun with mice if we don't get some more cats. And I said, well, considering we have two males, that's going to be a problem. he laughed.
28:53
Um, our friends over at O'Connor Family Acres here in Lesor, um, Tracy and Paul have some barn cats and they happen to have some kittens and they brought us the three that I was talking about. cannot freaking wait for fluffy butt and smokey to get together and have babies as strength because they're going to be the longest haired, most beautiful kittens ever known to man. Yes, they, we have.
29:19
We have the Siamese cat that we originally got with the house and then a long-haired orange cat that's our neighbor's cat and they we went from having oh my goodness two females to having over the summer 20 um cats with all of their litters and all of the kittens are so fun and so beautiful and it is pure comic I mean fun to watch them all just like explode out of the barn door following their mamas around it's amazing but at the end of
29:48
the summer, we were like, okay, we got to find some new homes for these guys and found a couple of local families that wanted some barn kittens and you just, you you're like, we're good with one or two. But when you have animals and you have grain and feed and chickens and all, you know, I've seen people with like massive rodent problems and we just don't have any of that. And I attribute that 100 % to the cats and you know, it's it's great fun for the kids, but it's also functional.
30:18
Oh, we wouldn't have as many cats if we didn't have a big old pole barn that needed to be patrolled for mice because that would not be a good plan. ah The saddest thing I've seen so far regarding kittens and dogs, we have a dog and I talk about her a lot. I haven't talked about her a lot lately though. Her name is Maggie. She's five. She's a mini Australian shepherd. She would have made the best mama.
30:46
ever, but we didn't want puppies. So she was spayed when she was six months old. She loves it when the kittens come out of the barn and get introduced to her. And she freaking knows when there's babies in the barn. oh Because my husband and my son would go out and play with the kittens to get them socialized so they were friendly. So she would smell the kittens on my husband and my son when they would come in the house. Saddest thing I've ever seen.
31:15
We didn't have any kittens this past summer because flu flaked off and that was it. We didn't have any female cats. And uh Maggie kept looking over toward the barn all summer long, like, where are my friends? Where are my babies? And so the other day, the three new kittens were in Maggie's doghouse. And I say that loosely because Maggie barely uses the doghouse. So the cat take it over and Maggie can reach it.
31:42
and the kittens have discovered that there's hay bales in there and that it's a nice warm place to hang out. So Maggie noticed movement in the doghouse and went over and stuck her nose in and smelled the air and you saw the tail start to wag. She got a nubbin. She's not a tail, she has a nubbin. And I was like, oh no, this is going to go really good or really bad. And she was barking at the cats because she didn't know they were there to begin with.
32:11
They're not little babies. They're not six week old babies coming out of the barn. They're almost full-sized cats now. And I was like, oh, this is going to go bad. And after she got done barking at them and they managed to get past her and get back to the barn, she came trotting over the door like, I have new babies. Oh, cute. So saddest thing ever this summer, because there were no babies for her. And I think that she really missed them. And then
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happiest moment of her life was discovering that there were new cats in her doghouse once she figured out they were good kittens, they were fine. Sweet. Yeah, we have an Anatolian shepherd. He's gigantic. And he and the cats have a love-hate relationship, but he is a guard dog. But he and the cows, when the cows have babies and stuff, it's so sweet. I love those like...
33:06
interactions they have with each other and the friendships they make and one of our cows is his best friend and it's just it's so funny to watch and we love it. It's so funny because growing up I thought that cats and dogs hated each other. m Because you're told that as a little kid. and dogs don't get along and I'm like yeah okay I know better now because Maggie would raise a litter of kittens even though she's a dog every year if we love. Oh sweet.
33:36
And she would let them just like curl up against her. One of the last kittens from the last litter tried to nurse from Maggie. And Maggie very gently put her nose right under that kitten and lifted up and moved it out of the way. She was like, no, I'm not actually your mama. Yeah. was very sweet. Very, very sweet.
33:58
There are so many moments like that when you live on a farm or a homestead and you have animals because they do the craziest, funniest things. On the flip side, when a cat gets hit by a car and dies, that's hard too. Yeah, loss in any way. have, you've heard the phrase where you have livestock, you have dead stock. You're like, it's just part of raising animals, right? You get to enjoy them during their lives and then...
34:28
Then when they pass, it's always just so sad. Yep. First barn cat we lost the road. I cried all day. All day. Beautiful, beautiful silver tabby. And the second one we lost, I slammed cabinets and yelled and said a few choice words and didn't cry because you got to get used to it. Yeah. have, unfortunately with dairy cows, specifically with the jerseys, the calves can be fragile and it's
34:57
It's an adjustment when you are not used to that kind of experience with loss when you lose calves and it's just, yeah, you go through all the range of emotions. Yeah, and you lose the potential of that animal. That's the hardest part because you have all these hopes and dreams once you find out that your cow is pregnant. Yeah, it's a long process.
35:22
Yeah, and then that baby doesn't survive and you're like, but I had such great plans and now they're not going to happen. Yeah, and we bottle feed our calves too. So our kids are really involved and it's been rough every time it's happened. you know, you're like, it's all about teaching kids too. I feel like right now a lot of people don't have that hands-on experience dealing with loss anymore. We're not close enough to nature. We're not close enough to things that are fragile.
35:48
And so we just try to really walk with our kids through that and be like, okay, you you take care of animals in life and you take care of them in death and uh having compassion and understanding the cycle of life has been really valuable. Another thing that I just, you you look forward to a farm and all the things that you will learn and glean from it, but it's those little things where you weren't necessarily thinking that was going to be a huge part of it, but it is.
36:16
Yeah, there's a couple of things that I hold on to when it comes to loss. One of the things that I tell myself all the time is that the price for loving something is knowing you're going to have to say goodbye at some point. Yeah. And there's another one. And of course, now I can't think of it. Oh, how lucky are we to be able to have that depth of feeling of love? Yeah. Those are the two things that make it easier for me. Yeah.
36:45
I have seen some posts recently about how cruel the dairy industry is and, you know, I'm not saying that that is never the case, but you know how calves are just a commodity and I'm like, oh, you know, you've clearly never cried over a calf. Like, m you don't know until you find good places to get your dairy, find good places that really value their animals because there are those people out there where it really does mean a lot to them and it is their literal blood, sweat and tears that go into.
37:12
raising these animals and creating amazing genetics and the next generation of milk mamas and Yeah Yep, I am so proud of all you ladies who are under 40 who are taking all of this on Because it's a lot and it's a lot when you're raising kids along with the animals Yeah, it is. It's everyone warns you you know, oh this is
37:40
going to be so much work, you're not going have a choice. You're going to have to put it as completely different when you're experiencing it in those moments where you're like, okay, you know, my kids still get sick, and I still have to milk. You know, where you're like, there are still things that have to happen. There aren't days off, you know, it's negative 60 wind chill, all of that, you're like, it still has to happen. And walking through it is really the only way to fully grasp what that means. Yep, absolutely. And you know that 2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer, right?
38:09
I had not heard that. Wow. It is. And you are doing it. So again, really proud of you, Addie. Thank you. All right. I try to keep this to half an hour. We're a little bit over. Where can people find you? We are actually going to be putting up a website in the next couple of weeks. So I don't have that info yet, but you can find us on Facebook or Instagram, Frostbite, Family Farms, LLC. And we would love to connect with you over Messenger or I think my phone number is on there. Yeah.
38:39
still love the name of your farm. I love wintertime and I love frost. I don't love frost bite, but I still love the name. I know it's still fun. All right. As always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can find that at AtinyHolmstead.com slash support. And if you like this podcast, you should listen to the new one that I just started with.
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Leah from Clear Creek Ranch Mom on Facebook. It's called Grit and Grace in the Heartland Women in Agriculture. Addie, thank you so much for taking the time and I appreciate it and keep doing the good work. Thank you. All right, have a great day. You too. Bye.