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Small Scale Rebellion
Today I'm talking with Emily and Nathan at Small Scale Rebellion. You can also follow on Facebook.
Content Seeds Collective
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00
If you're a homesteader who wants to get paid for your content without living on social media, check out SteelSpoonFarm.com. Founder Jen Kibler teaches you how to build a real blog or your email list and use Pinterest for sustainable marketing. Inside her coaching group, Content Seeds Collective, you'll get weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to her Root Seller Resource Library full of tutorials and templates. Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm.
00:26
A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. 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 Nathan and Emily at Small Scale Rebellion in Canada, and Emily told me, where in Canada? Where in Canada are you, Emily? We're in the West Kootenays of BC. Okay, thank you. Welcome, you guys. Good afternoon. How are you?
00:56
We're good. Thanks for having us. Thank you. I always start every podcast with how's the weather? How's the weather where you are? That's a little gloomy. Yeah, we're over winter. It's just dragging on. But the words are coming back and you can kind of tell that spring is just around the corner. So it's like the final stretch. Yeah, I stepped out on my porch about two hours ago, maybe three hours ago now.
01:25
and I could hear birds singing and I was like, oh, the blackbirds are back. have a, um there's a word. Can't think of it. We're in a flight pattern for these blackbirds. They come back every spring. Migration pattern. There we go. And this is the earliest they've come through in the five years that we've been here. So I think we're looking at an early spring. Yeah, for sure. It was like a really mild winter, all things considered here.
01:55
So we are looking forward to hopefully an early spring, but also a moderate fire season because normally if the snowpack isn't very good in the winter here, we have like horrible fires. So fingers crossed that doesn't happen. I'll cross everything I have for you because wildfires are a terrible thing. And that does not mean that burns are a terrible thing.
02:22
Burns are important for agriculture and for growing things, but they need to be not taking down structures that people live in or killing people. So that's my caveat there. All right. So I was very excited to stumble across you guys on Instagram. Tell me about yourselves and what you do at Small Scale Rebellion. So we're farmers first and foremost. um Our farm is called Confluence Farms.
02:49
And we started Small Scale Rebellion as a way to teach other farmers how to have profitable farm hubs. a farm hub is composed of four components. It's online ordering, a, help me out here. Home delivery, a collaborative.
03:13
a full diet offering. we do local food aggregation. So we've become like a one-stop shop for all things local. And then we also do free choice ordering exclusively. And so people can order what they want, when they want. And then we even have like a credit-based CSA. So people buy credits to our store. And then that way we get money upfront, very similar to a CSA, except you don't have to commit to like a weekly CSA box for 20 weeks. You can just pay us. uh
03:43
for credits and then use them whenever you like. And what we discovered is that when you make eating local easier, a lot more people will start doing it. Yes, because humans love convenience. And instead of fighting that, I think it's important to, you know, just embrace it because if you don't, it's really hard to make it as a farmer. Oh.
04:11
Absolutely. And what you're doing is amazing. So what made you decide to do this?
04:19
Um, well, it kind of happened by accident. We actually started, um, we had this kind of goal of just growing all of our own food for a year. And when you start growing food, you always end up having too much food. And so you end up giving it away to friends and neighbors. And we were doing that for a few years and then COVID happened and we didn't really have, uh,
04:48
That kind of affected our income. And we were getting ready to grow like a half acre worth of food, which thinking back now for two people is like an insane amount of food. Like it shouldn't have been growing that much, but we, didn't know what we were doing. We're just like, Oh, let's just grow a little bit of everything. And then COVID happened. And then we were kind of locked inside and thinking of ways to make money and we were already growing food. So we're like, Oh, why don't we just start selling the food that we grow? And so we decided to grow even more food. And then.
05:18
because of lockdowns, like, well, what if we do like online ordering and home delivery? And so we started doing that and then that started taking off. And then we had an opportunity to move to the Kootenays where we are now and start a farm on an elderly couple's homestead who were looking for farmers to come in and kind of take over the farm and to help them with the property. So, and moving here was like our ultimate dream. Like our ultimate dream was to start a farm in the Kootenays.
05:45
And then we just kind of stumbled our way into it. And then, yeah, it's just been kind of growing ever since. we've been refining the model and making it better. And now it's at the point where it can support the two of us full time, full year round with just a half acre and the two of us. no, employees or volunteers. Wow. That's, that's amazing. Okay. I have two questions. First one is what, what are the Kootenays? Is it mountains?
06:13
Very mountainous. Yeah, it's like rural, very rural BC. We're in the boreal forest. So it's like green mountains in every direction, lots of rivers, huge freshwater lakes. It's a really, really beautiful and popular area. There's a lot of actually Americans that live here too. It's like an international kind of hub because there's lots of snowboarding and things like that here too. So there's like Australians and New Zealanders and Americans.
06:42
people from all over the place kind of in this one little unique area. Okay, thank you. Cause I didn't know what they were and that helps. Um, and then if you are growing more than a half an acre of food, you must have equipment. You must at least have like a bobcat tractor or something. No. we're doing a half acre like exactly. And it's all by hand.
07:10
That's one of the really like when we started our farm, we had no money like negative amounts of money and we've just been very scrappy at um Making it work and We don't have like a walk-behind tractor. We don't have anything with an engine except for our Delivery vehicle, so it's all no till um regenerative ag
07:38
And we have permanent beds and you know, we just make it work. Um, and you know, we would have, if we had money in the pat, in like the first couple of years, we definitely would have bought a lot more tools, but not having the money made us half to get creative. so we like borrowed tools, we got tool donations. Um, we traded neighbors for different services, like tilling.
08:06
And we just kept everything super duper lean because we don't own our land and we've had to move our farm three times, four times in the past five years. we just, you know, having a bunch of equipment wasn't an option. And it actually turned out to be good because like, what we realized is that you don't actually need to spend a whole lot of money to farm.
08:36
You just need like really good systems. And then if you do like things like local food aggregation, you can get your sales up by collaborating rather than trying to grow everything yourself. oh So it was a very interesting experiment that actually turned out to be a blessing because, um you know, we've been able to stay small and manageable and profitable with just a very, very simple setup. And very little overhead. And that's also because, you know, you can't really invest.
09:05
in leased land very much. So working within the constraints that we have has been kind of like the theme. Okay. So what do you guys grow? So we focus on growing all of our summer stuff, like everything that's perishable. So we grow kind of like most of the normal things you would see at a farmer's market, know, carrots, beets.
09:35
all the salad greens, the lettuce, cherry tomatoes, the hits, cucumbers. We also grow flowers, which we just started a couple of years ago and is something that I really love doing. ah So what we don't grow is all of the storage crops. And we actually have a very long winter here. So we actually buy in enough storage vegetables to last us like seven months of sales. So we buy in.
10:04
potatoes, storage carrots, onions, garlic, rutavega. All the root vegetables. All the root vegetables and those in general come from farms with tractors. So we're leveraging the equipment that other farms have instead of investing in our own. That's smart. That's a really great business plan. uh
10:34
Okay. So the other thing I wanted to touch on, as you mentioned, COVID. I can't believe how many times COVID comes up on this podcast. I swear it should be a drinking game. If you hear a COVID, take a shot, you know, and don't do that. I'm joking, but that's how it feels. And I feel like COVID really kickstarted what was already a movement into a runaway train. Yeah.
11:04
One concerning thing that a pattern that we see and one of the reasons we started Small Scale Rebellion is that there was a lot of farms that started during COVID and a lot of those farms end up failing, um which is not good for the local food movement and we don't want that to happen. So that's why we're sharing everything that we've learned with farmers so that
11:34
you know, we can make local eating mainstream and we can make sure that farmers are thriving instead of just surviving or going out of business. Yep, absolutely. And I'm going to say it again, if you, for the listener, if you don't know your local growers and your local producers, you should start getting to know them because the supply chain issues that happened during COVID, that's not necessarily a one-time thing.
12:03
It could happen again and again and again. Yeah. I mean, it's inevitable. It has happened for us before too. It's not just COVID. It's like if there's a natural disaster, like a fire is like the trucks. But there was another time where trucks, uh, the food trucks couldn't get to where we're at. And some of the shelves went bare again and people were freaking out and they were all, you know, excited to eat local again and reaching out to local farms. then once, once the food's back on the shelves, they just.
12:32
people forget and they go back to their normal routine and it's just like this cycle of, you know, fear and then back to normal. Yeah. And it's so frustrating because I feel like the stuff you get local tastes so much better than what you get at the grocery store. 100%. And I mean, in our area, the price, like, I'm not even, I need to go and do like a more thorough price comparison, but like the prices really aren't
13:01
very different. And that's probably because we're in a very isolated area and it costs a lot to get things to us. And so local things are, you know, naturally a little bit cheaper. But I don't think that the price difference is that big or as big as people think it is in their minds. And then when you add in the fact that
13:30
you know, it's more nutritious and it's strengthening the local economy, which has like a huge beneficial ripple effect. I think that local food is the way to go. Yeah. think it's, um, it's too inconvenient for most people's lives. And so people would eat local more if it was more convenient. And then that's kind of what we discovered and that's kind of what we feel. And that's kind of what we're trying to convince other farmers.
14:00
to do because there's this mentality like, the customer needs to go out of their way to support local. Like, why don't they care enough to go out of their way? But what we're saying is like, they do care. They just need to be easier. And if it's easier, they'll do more of it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And what I would say the average American, but I think the average human doesn't realize is that the longer the produce has to travel and has to sit and then is stocked at the grocery store.
14:29
the nutrient denseness of it drops by grand percentages. Yeah. And then you're getting even less value for your money. Right. Yep. So again, for the listener, if you want nutrient dense, really fresh, good food, find out who your local growers and producers are because you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck. Yeah. And I will, I will.
14:58
I will die on that hill, damn it. Go ahead, Emily, you were going to say. Support them all year round too. Not just during the peak season, like farmers need income year round. Like one of the big things that we have an issue with is like, we have lots of variety of winter crops, but people just lose interest like dramatically during the winter and then they come back in the summer. And like, that's just not a sustainable way to.
15:28
you know, keep farms alive. No, yeah. And it's, it's like a cultural thing. I think, you know, people are used to eating cherry tomatoes and cucumbers all year and they just don't really know how to cook with winter vegetables or they don't care to, you know, so it's definitely like, we've done a lot of education with our farm around eating seasonally, particularly in the winter. And it's pretty hard to move the needle. Um, but it's something that we're, you know, committed to doing.
15:59
Yes, and I call winter soup season. Yeah. Would you believe that I have not made a single soup this winter because we've been eating a lot of hamburger based meals. I haven't made a single soup this winter and winter is almost over. That is like a sin in my house. I need to make some soup. Damn it. Yeah. Before it's too late. Yeah. And the other thing is I refuse.
16:28
to eat tomatoes from the store in the wintertime because we grow tomatoes here in the summer. our garden fresh tomatoes are amazing. And ever since we started doing it, tomatoes from the grocery store tastes like cardboard to me. The reason I say this is I am really craving bruschetta. I don't know if you guys know what that is. Yeah, really craving it. And I have been debating. uh
16:55
picking up some vine-ripened tomatoes at the store. Because really what I want it for is that kick you in the face balsamic vinegar and olive oil flavor. And I suppose that I can spend $15 on crappy tomatoes to get the flavor hit that I want. But I was thinking that maybe I should just pick up some organic zucchinis, know, the small ones. Cut.
17:22
those up into small pieces and do that instead of tomatoes because the tomatoes here in Minnesota in the winter time are not great. No, I mean, it really like when you can't have something all the time, it makes it way more special when you can have it. Yep. Yeah. Yep. That's why we all love Thanksgiving and Christmas.
17:49
Because there are things associated with Thanksgiving and Christmas that we eat that we don't eat any other time of the year. Mm-hmm. Yeah So I love summertime I We didn't have we didn't have any cucumbers last year because it was so wet and then it was so hot and then it was so wet and then it was so hot that they got blight and they all died So there was not one single cucumber out of our garden last year
18:18
Usually we have great success with cucumbers and I eat a cucumber and tomato every day the minute they start coming in. Yeah. That's Christmas for me. Yeah. So I love the name that you chose, Small Scale Rebellion, because I'm always joking that if you can grow something on your property that feeds you, you're a rebel. Yeah.
18:47
And it's true because I don't know what the government is like in Canada, but the government in the United States probably isn't thrilled that we're not spending our hard-earned money on stuff at the grocery store. We're spending it on seeds so we can have food out of our garden. Yeah. It's, you know, it's definitely an act of rebellion. Yup. Be a rebel. Grow something you can eat.
19:17
I need to get t-shirts made. a rebel. Grow your own food.
19:23
You guys should do that. Do you have t-shirts? Haven't got around to it yet. We haven't even made t-shirts for our personal farm business confluence and it's been like five years. Well, it costs money to get t-shirts printed. So, this food hub thing, is it, are you going to have a website and set it up so that people can find where they can get locally grown food or what's the plan?
19:51
No, the plan is to teach farmers to become farm hubs on their own. Okay. And so it's kind of like a franchise model where we teach farmers the business model and then they use their own farm name and their own branding to promote it. Okay. But it's like a full business model. we build them a website, we teach them how to work with other farms, we teach them marketing, which is lacking uh greatly in the farming community.
20:20
And we just teach them how to manage their money and how to become profitable so that they can become this convenient hub for customers and then also a reliable sales channel for the farmers that they work with in their community. Cause a lot of farmers, like wholesale accounts are kind of dwindling year by year as supermarkets get bigger. so farmers need wholesale accounts and customers need more convenience. So we're trying to kind of promote that whole model.
20:50
But it's all based off of our own farm hub, which we do have a website for and you know, all of our sales come in through the website. So it's, it's all online ordering with free home delivery and all of the systems that we teach we've perfected over the last five years in our own business. What's your delivery radius? It's like an hour.
21:19
And a half at most. So we live in a weird area. It's a very rural and everywhere is like minimum 30 minute drive away to go anywhere or do anything. So it's, go to the two towns that are near us. So one of them is a 40 minute drive and it's a town of like 10,000 people, maybe a little more. And then the other one is a 20 minute drive and it's like 8,000 people. And then there's like,
21:49
you know, some people in between there. So we basically drive to the town and then we stay within the city limits and then come back home. OK, so it's not it's not like you're driving eight hours on way. That would be. Yeah, we've actually been shrinking our delivery zone over the years because, you know, there's enough people to support us. So at this point, we just need to be more efficient. um And it sucks to kind of like turn people away. But, um you know, your deliveries have to be quick.
22:17
Otherwise you'll spend your whole day driving around. Yeah, so this is a no to lot of people who just like live in the country. You know what I mean? Like we drive straight to town. We stay inside town pretty much. If somebody wanted to get produce from you and they were willing to drive further than that, could they come to your place and pick up produce?
22:40
No, we don't do any pickups. It's only home delivery. also don't have any meetup spots or any pickups in town. And that's for two reasons. One, to streamline our process because it just adds a lot of complexity, believe it or not. Communicating with people, arranging a time, making sure that they remember, et cetera, et cetera. Like it's just not worth it.
23:07
And then also they can't come to the farm because we lease land and our land holder doesn't want people showing up at his house. That makes sense. I completely forgot that was leased. I know you told me, but I wasn't thinking about that. Yeah. again, constraints. Yeah. We stopped doing our CSA because it was fine, but we only had a few people who signed up every year.
23:35
And sometimes they would forget and they would have to make a different time to come get stuff and My husband really enjoys going to the farmers market. Nice. Yeah farmers market is on Saturday morning from 8 until noon That was when we used to have people come pick up the CSA stuff He can make more money on a weekly basis at the farmers market than we ever made through the CSA So we had to make a choice. Yep
24:03
Yeah, it's kind of tough like cutting things out. mean, what do you guys, what are you guys doing now? um Just the farmer's market and we have a farm stand on our property. Okay, nice. Yeah. Yeah. And are you, so are you growing vegetables? Yes. Yes, we are. And my husband is the gardener. I always give him all the credit because I am not the one out there in the dirt. I used to be. I don't love it as much as he does. So that's his Zen.
24:29
That's what he wants to do and I'm like go play in the dirt. Have fun. But he grows tomatoes, grows cucumbers, he grows summer squash, he grows winter squash. He has gotten into growing cabbages. He grew the most beautiful cabbages last spring. Nice. And people loved them. Like he did 50 I think and when they were done people would be asking him if he had any cabbages.
24:57
And he would say, no, I only planted 50. They're gone. And people, people would be crestfallen on their faces. There were no more cabbages. Yeah. That's the power of food when it tastes really good. Yeah, it was really sweet. I don't know what variety it was, but it was really good. Um, I also found a short season, personal size watermelon variety. Nice.
25:26
that we're gonna try this year. It's a 60 day watermelon. What's it called? I don't know. I would have to look it up. And I know exactly where the seed packet is downstairs. We haven't even opened the envelope that they came in yet. So when I open it, I will find out and I will message the variety to you. Cool. Sounds good. I'm sure you guys would love a 60 day watermelon. Oh yeah. I mean, we haven't grown watermelons um since we first started just because of space.
25:55
We're at the point where a half an acre is not really enough space, but we don't have other, we don't have anywhere to expand into. our climate is our growing season so short. Like you can, you can barely even grow a buttermoth here cause it won't ripen in time. I'm so sorry. It pretty much shows like the worst place to start a farm. Well, Canada has a short growing season.
26:25
over much of the country, Yeah. And it's also very snowy here. Yeah. mean, I'm in Minnesota. I'm right over the border from you. I mean, I'm not. I'm like eight, 10 hours from the border. But we have a shorter growing season and we don't plant anything usually until Mother's Day because by Mother's Day, we're pretty sure the last frost has happened. Yeah.
26:56
Yeah, we had one year where we had a frost on June 15th and it killed all of our tomatoes. They frosted back down to the ground, but then they bounced back and they were fine. And we actually had tomatoes only like one or two weeks later than normal. It was quite the experience. Huh, I didn't know they'd bounce back. They had established enough where
27:23
They did. They sprouted from the base of the plant. They were very, very, um, branched that year, but they were fine. Huh? I did not know that. I will have to let my husband know we may have to do an experiment. Yeah, just give them a few weeks to see what happens. if they're, if they got roots, you know, they'll bounce back. So if you think about how many like runners they, they, they give out, right? Yeah. They'll just do that from the base. Okay.
27:53
Well, we have a hard-sided greenhouse that we're going to be starting seeds in here. I think he said this weekend. I'm not sure. It might be next weekend. But we've never started seeds in there before. We've had it up for two seasons now. A lot of people are writing. I asked him the other day, said, are you going to bring in the seed trays and do them on the kitchen table? And he said, no, we're starting them in the greenhouse this year. Nice.
28:20
And I said, are you sure you want to do that? And he said, yes, I do. He said, because I've been keeping track of how much. OK, little tiny backstory. Most people who listen to the podcast have heard this before, but you guys probably have not. um We have IBC totes that we painted black filled with water in the greenhouse. as the sunlight comes in the greenhouse, heats up the water and it disperses the heat at night when it cools off outside.
28:49
And so usually by mid-March, it's not gonna get below, it's not even gonna get near 32 degrees Fahrenheit in there overnight. It's gonna stay at like 50, 55. And for seedlings, that's perfect. So this is the first year we're starting the seeds in the greenhouse. And I am nervous. I am very nervous that this is not gonna work and he's gonna be really, really disappointed.
29:17
As I keep saying to everybody, keep your fingers crossed that this works. For sure. Well, know, the ceilings are, they're very cold hardy when they're started cold. Like we don't have a nursery. We've never used a nursery. And I start my seeds and I put them outside way before you're supposed to with some cover, but they, you know, seem to do fine. As long as you're very, um,
29:45
careful about starting them cold and not like giving them a huge shock. Plants hate, hate shock from temperature changes. Yeah. They do not enjoy it and they may survive it, but I'm, I'm just praying and I'm not a praying girl, but I am praying that this, this goes well because if it does, it means that two springs from now we can really do a whole lot more.
30:15
Yes. Because the greenhouse is over 15 feet by 25 feet. So it's a good size greenhouse. Yeah, nice. Yep. Very, very excited about all the things that it opens up for us. anyway, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're almost there. Where can people find you? You can find us on Instagram.
30:42
Small scale rebellion or also our farm account is called Confluence Farms Kootenays. Okay. Awesome. I hope that people go and look at your stuff because I think what you're doing is amazing. Thanks, Mary. We appreciate that. All the best, you guys. Thank you. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Nathan and Emily, thank you so much for your time. I hope you have a good rest of your day. Thank you. Thanks. You too.
View all episodes
By Mary E LewisToday I'm talking with Emily and Nathan at Small Scale Rebellion. You can also follow on Facebook.
Content Seeds Collective
https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/
https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/
www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead
If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment.
Or just buy me a coffee
https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes
00:00
If you're a homesteader who wants to get paid for your content without living on social media, check out SteelSpoonFarm.com. Founder Jen Kibler teaches you how to build a real blog or your email list and use Pinterest for sustainable marketing. Inside her coaching group, Content Seeds Collective, you'll get weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to her Root Seller Resource Library full of tutorials and templates. Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm.
00:26
A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. 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 Nathan and Emily at Small Scale Rebellion in Canada, and Emily told me, where in Canada? Where in Canada are you, Emily? We're in the West Kootenays of BC. Okay, thank you. Welcome, you guys. Good afternoon. How are you?
00:56
We're good. Thanks for having us. Thank you. I always start every podcast with how's the weather? How's the weather where you are? That's a little gloomy. Yeah, we're over winter. It's just dragging on. But the words are coming back and you can kind of tell that spring is just around the corner. So it's like the final stretch. Yeah, I stepped out on my porch about two hours ago, maybe three hours ago now.
01:25
and I could hear birds singing and I was like, oh, the blackbirds are back. have a, um there's a word. Can't think of it. We're in a flight pattern for these blackbirds. They come back every spring. Migration pattern. There we go. And this is the earliest they've come through in the five years that we've been here. So I think we're looking at an early spring. Yeah, for sure. It was like a really mild winter, all things considered here.
01:55
So we are looking forward to hopefully an early spring, but also a moderate fire season because normally if the snowpack isn't very good in the winter here, we have like horrible fires. So fingers crossed that doesn't happen. I'll cross everything I have for you because wildfires are a terrible thing. And that does not mean that burns are a terrible thing.
02:22
Burns are important for agriculture and for growing things, but they need to be not taking down structures that people live in or killing people. So that's my caveat there. All right. So I was very excited to stumble across you guys on Instagram. Tell me about yourselves and what you do at Small Scale Rebellion. So we're farmers first and foremost. um Our farm is called Confluence Farms.
02:49
And we started Small Scale Rebellion as a way to teach other farmers how to have profitable farm hubs. a farm hub is composed of four components. It's online ordering, a, help me out here. Home delivery, a collaborative.
03:13
a full diet offering. we do local food aggregation. So we've become like a one-stop shop for all things local. And then we also do free choice ordering exclusively. And so people can order what they want, when they want. And then we even have like a credit-based CSA. So people buy credits to our store. And then that way we get money upfront, very similar to a CSA, except you don't have to commit to like a weekly CSA box for 20 weeks. You can just pay us. uh
03:43
for credits and then use them whenever you like. And what we discovered is that when you make eating local easier, a lot more people will start doing it. Yes, because humans love convenience. And instead of fighting that, I think it's important to, you know, just embrace it because if you don't, it's really hard to make it as a farmer. Oh.
04:11
Absolutely. And what you're doing is amazing. So what made you decide to do this?
04:19
Um, well, it kind of happened by accident. We actually started, um, we had this kind of goal of just growing all of our own food for a year. And when you start growing food, you always end up having too much food. And so you end up giving it away to friends and neighbors. And we were doing that for a few years and then COVID happened and we didn't really have, uh,
04:48
That kind of affected our income. And we were getting ready to grow like a half acre worth of food, which thinking back now for two people is like an insane amount of food. Like it shouldn't have been growing that much, but we, didn't know what we were doing. We're just like, Oh, let's just grow a little bit of everything. And then COVID happened. And then we were kind of locked inside and thinking of ways to make money and we were already growing food. So we're like, Oh, why don't we just start selling the food that we grow? And so we decided to grow even more food. And then.
05:18
because of lockdowns, like, well, what if we do like online ordering and home delivery? And so we started doing that and then that started taking off. And then we had an opportunity to move to the Kootenays where we are now and start a farm on an elderly couple's homestead who were looking for farmers to come in and kind of take over the farm and to help them with the property. So, and moving here was like our ultimate dream. Like our ultimate dream was to start a farm in the Kootenays.
05:45
And then we just kind of stumbled our way into it. And then, yeah, it's just been kind of growing ever since. we've been refining the model and making it better. And now it's at the point where it can support the two of us full time, full year round with just a half acre and the two of us. no, employees or volunteers. Wow. That's, that's amazing. Okay. I have two questions. First one is what, what are the Kootenays? Is it mountains?
06:13
Very mountainous. Yeah, it's like rural, very rural BC. We're in the boreal forest. So it's like green mountains in every direction, lots of rivers, huge freshwater lakes. It's a really, really beautiful and popular area. There's a lot of actually Americans that live here too. It's like an international kind of hub because there's lots of snowboarding and things like that here too. So there's like Australians and New Zealanders and Americans.
06:42
people from all over the place kind of in this one little unique area. Okay, thank you. Cause I didn't know what they were and that helps. Um, and then if you are growing more than a half an acre of food, you must have equipment. You must at least have like a bobcat tractor or something. No. we're doing a half acre like exactly. And it's all by hand.
07:10
That's one of the really like when we started our farm, we had no money like negative amounts of money and we've just been very scrappy at um Making it work and We don't have like a walk-behind tractor. We don't have anything with an engine except for our Delivery vehicle, so it's all no till um regenerative ag
07:38
And we have permanent beds and you know, we just make it work. Um, and you know, we would have, if we had money in the pat, in like the first couple of years, we definitely would have bought a lot more tools, but not having the money made us half to get creative. so we like borrowed tools, we got tool donations. Um, we traded neighbors for different services, like tilling.
08:06
And we just kept everything super duper lean because we don't own our land and we've had to move our farm three times, four times in the past five years. we just, you know, having a bunch of equipment wasn't an option. And it actually turned out to be good because like, what we realized is that you don't actually need to spend a whole lot of money to farm.
08:36
You just need like really good systems. And then if you do like things like local food aggregation, you can get your sales up by collaborating rather than trying to grow everything yourself. oh So it was a very interesting experiment that actually turned out to be a blessing because, um you know, we've been able to stay small and manageable and profitable with just a very, very simple setup. And very little overhead. And that's also because, you know, you can't really invest.
09:05
in leased land very much. So working within the constraints that we have has been kind of like the theme. Okay. So what do you guys grow? So we focus on growing all of our summer stuff, like everything that's perishable. So we grow kind of like most of the normal things you would see at a farmer's market, know, carrots, beets.
09:35
all the salad greens, the lettuce, cherry tomatoes, the hits, cucumbers. We also grow flowers, which we just started a couple of years ago and is something that I really love doing. ah So what we don't grow is all of the storage crops. And we actually have a very long winter here. So we actually buy in enough storage vegetables to last us like seven months of sales. So we buy in.
10:04
potatoes, storage carrots, onions, garlic, rutavega. All the root vegetables. All the root vegetables and those in general come from farms with tractors. So we're leveraging the equipment that other farms have instead of investing in our own. That's smart. That's a really great business plan. uh
10:34
Okay. So the other thing I wanted to touch on, as you mentioned, COVID. I can't believe how many times COVID comes up on this podcast. I swear it should be a drinking game. If you hear a COVID, take a shot, you know, and don't do that. I'm joking, but that's how it feels. And I feel like COVID really kickstarted what was already a movement into a runaway train. Yeah.
11:04
One concerning thing that a pattern that we see and one of the reasons we started Small Scale Rebellion is that there was a lot of farms that started during COVID and a lot of those farms end up failing, um which is not good for the local food movement and we don't want that to happen. So that's why we're sharing everything that we've learned with farmers so that
11:34
you know, we can make local eating mainstream and we can make sure that farmers are thriving instead of just surviving or going out of business. Yep, absolutely. And I'm going to say it again, if you, for the listener, if you don't know your local growers and your local producers, you should start getting to know them because the supply chain issues that happened during COVID, that's not necessarily a one-time thing.
12:03
It could happen again and again and again. Yeah. I mean, it's inevitable. It has happened for us before too. It's not just COVID. It's like if there's a natural disaster, like a fire is like the trucks. But there was another time where trucks, uh, the food trucks couldn't get to where we're at. And some of the shelves went bare again and people were freaking out and they were all, you know, excited to eat local again and reaching out to local farms. then once, once the food's back on the shelves, they just.
12:32
people forget and they go back to their normal routine and it's just like this cycle of, you know, fear and then back to normal. Yeah. And it's so frustrating because I feel like the stuff you get local tastes so much better than what you get at the grocery store. 100%. And I mean, in our area, the price, like, I'm not even, I need to go and do like a more thorough price comparison, but like the prices really aren't
13:01
very different. And that's probably because we're in a very isolated area and it costs a lot to get things to us. And so local things are, you know, naturally a little bit cheaper. But I don't think that the price difference is that big or as big as people think it is in their minds. And then when you add in the fact that
13:30
you know, it's more nutritious and it's strengthening the local economy, which has like a huge beneficial ripple effect. I think that local food is the way to go. Yeah. think it's, um, it's too inconvenient for most people's lives. And so people would eat local more if it was more convenient. And then that's kind of what we discovered and that's kind of what we feel. And that's kind of what we're trying to convince other farmers.
14:00
to do because there's this mentality like, the customer needs to go out of their way to support local. Like, why don't they care enough to go out of their way? But what we're saying is like, they do care. They just need to be easier. And if it's easier, they'll do more of it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And what I would say the average American, but I think the average human doesn't realize is that the longer the produce has to travel and has to sit and then is stocked at the grocery store.
14:29
the nutrient denseness of it drops by grand percentages. Yeah. And then you're getting even less value for your money. Right. Yep. So again, for the listener, if you want nutrient dense, really fresh, good food, find out who your local growers and producers are because you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck. Yeah. And I will, I will.
14:58
I will die on that hill, damn it. Go ahead, Emily, you were going to say. Support them all year round too. Not just during the peak season, like farmers need income year round. Like one of the big things that we have an issue with is like, we have lots of variety of winter crops, but people just lose interest like dramatically during the winter and then they come back in the summer. And like, that's just not a sustainable way to.
15:28
you know, keep farms alive. No, yeah. And it's, it's like a cultural thing. I think, you know, people are used to eating cherry tomatoes and cucumbers all year and they just don't really know how to cook with winter vegetables or they don't care to, you know, so it's definitely like, we've done a lot of education with our farm around eating seasonally, particularly in the winter. And it's pretty hard to move the needle. Um, but it's something that we're, you know, committed to doing.
15:59
Yes, and I call winter soup season. Yeah. Would you believe that I have not made a single soup this winter because we've been eating a lot of hamburger based meals. I haven't made a single soup this winter and winter is almost over. That is like a sin in my house. I need to make some soup. Damn it. Yeah. Before it's too late. Yeah. And the other thing is I refuse.
16:28
to eat tomatoes from the store in the wintertime because we grow tomatoes here in the summer. our garden fresh tomatoes are amazing. And ever since we started doing it, tomatoes from the grocery store tastes like cardboard to me. The reason I say this is I am really craving bruschetta. I don't know if you guys know what that is. Yeah, really craving it. And I have been debating. uh
16:55
picking up some vine-ripened tomatoes at the store. Because really what I want it for is that kick you in the face balsamic vinegar and olive oil flavor. And I suppose that I can spend $15 on crappy tomatoes to get the flavor hit that I want. But I was thinking that maybe I should just pick up some organic zucchinis, know, the small ones. Cut.
17:22
those up into small pieces and do that instead of tomatoes because the tomatoes here in Minnesota in the winter time are not great. No, I mean, it really like when you can't have something all the time, it makes it way more special when you can have it. Yep. Yeah. Yep. That's why we all love Thanksgiving and Christmas.
17:49
Because there are things associated with Thanksgiving and Christmas that we eat that we don't eat any other time of the year. Mm-hmm. Yeah So I love summertime I We didn't have we didn't have any cucumbers last year because it was so wet and then it was so hot and then it was so wet and then it was so hot that they got blight and they all died So there was not one single cucumber out of our garden last year
18:18
Usually we have great success with cucumbers and I eat a cucumber and tomato every day the minute they start coming in. Yeah. That's Christmas for me. Yeah. So I love the name that you chose, Small Scale Rebellion, because I'm always joking that if you can grow something on your property that feeds you, you're a rebel. Yeah.
18:47
And it's true because I don't know what the government is like in Canada, but the government in the United States probably isn't thrilled that we're not spending our hard-earned money on stuff at the grocery store. We're spending it on seeds so we can have food out of our garden. Yeah. It's, you know, it's definitely an act of rebellion. Yup. Be a rebel. Grow something you can eat.
19:17
I need to get t-shirts made. a rebel. Grow your own food.
19:23
You guys should do that. Do you have t-shirts? Haven't got around to it yet. We haven't even made t-shirts for our personal farm business confluence and it's been like five years. Well, it costs money to get t-shirts printed. So, this food hub thing, is it, are you going to have a website and set it up so that people can find where they can get locally grown food or what's the plan?
19:51
No, the plan is to teach farmers to become farm hubs on their own. Okay. And so it's kind of like a franchise model where we teach farmers the business model and then they use their own farm name and their own branding to promote it. Okay. But it's like a full business model. we build them a website, we teach them how to work with other farms, we teach them marketing, which is lacking uh greatly in the farming community.
20:20
And we just teach them how to manage their money and how to become profitable so that they can become this convenient hub for customers and then also a reliable sales channel for the farmers that they work with in their community. Cause a lot of farmers, like wholesale accounts are kind of dwindling year by year as supermarkets get bigger. so farmers need wholesale accounts and customers need more convenience. So we're trying to kind of promote that whole model.
20:50
But it's all based off of our own farm hub, which we do have a website for and you know, all of our sales come in through the website. So it's, it's all online ordering with free home delivery and all of the systems that we teach we've perfected over the last five years in our own business. What's your delivery radius? It's like an hour.
21:19
And a half at most. So we live in a weird area. It's a very rural and everywhere is like minimum 30 minute drive away to go anywhere or do anything. So it's, go to the two towns that are near us. So one of them is a 40 minute drive and it's a town of like 10,000 people, maybe a little more. And then the other one is a 20 minute drive and it's like 8,000 people. And then there's like,
21:49
you know, some people in between there. So we basically drive to the town and then we stay within the city limits and then come back home. OK, so it's not it's not like you're driving eight hours on way. That would be. Yeah, we've actually been shrinking our delivery zone over the years because, you know, there's enough people to support us. So at this point, we just need to be more efficient. um And it sucks to kind of like turn people away. But, um you know, your deliveries have to be quick.
22:17
Otherwise you'll spend your whole day driving around. Yeah, so this is a no to lot of people who just like live in the country. You know what I mean? Like we drive straight to town. We stay inside town pretty much. If somebody wanted to get produce from you and they were willing to drive further than that, could they come to your place and pick up produce?
22:40
No, we don't do any pickups. It's only home delivery. also don't have any meetup spots or any pickups in town. And that's for two reasons. One, to streamline our process because it just adds a lot of complexity, believe it or not. Communicating with people, arranging a time, making sure that they remember, et cetera, et cetera. Like it's just not worth it.
23:07
And then also they can't come to the farm because we lease land and our land holder doesn't want people showing up at his house. That makes sense. I completely forgot that was leased. I know you told me, but I wasn't thinking about that. Yeah. again, constraints. Yeah. We stopped doing our CSA because it was fine, but we only had a few people who signed up every year.
23:35
And sometimes they would forget and they would have to make a different time to come get stuff and My husband really enjoys going to the farmers market. Nice. Yeah farmers market is on Saturday morning from 8 until noon That was when we used to have people come pick up the CSA stuff He can make more money on a weekly basis at the farmers market than we ever made through the CSA So we had to make a choice. Yep
24:03
Yeah, it's kind of tough like cutting things out. mean, what do you guys, what are you guys doing now? um Just the farmer's market and we have a farm stand on our property. Okay, nice. Yeah. Yeah. And are you, so are you growing vegetables? Yes. Yes, we are. And my husband is the gardener. I always give him all the credit because I am not the one out there in the dirt. I used to be. I don't love it as much as he does. So that's his Zen.
24:29
That's what he wants to do and I'm like go play in the dirt. Have fun. But he grows tomatoes, grows cucumbers, he grows summer squash, he grows winter squash. He has gotten into growing cabbages. He grew the most beautiful cabbages last spring. Nice. And people loved them. Like he did 50 I think and when they were done people would be asking him if he had any cabbages.
24:57
And he would say, no, I only planted 50. They're gone. And people, people would be crestfallen on their faces. There were no more cabbages. Yeah. That's the power of food when it tastes really good. Yeah, it was really sweet. I don't know what variety it was, but it was really good. Um, I also found a short season, personal size watermelon variety. Nice.
25:26
that we're gonna try this year. It's a 60 day watermelon. What's it called? I don't know. I would have to look it up. And I know exactly where the seed packet is downstairs. We haven't even opened the envelope that they came in yet. So when I open it, I will find out and I will message the variety to you. Cool. Sounds good. I'm sure you guys would love a 60 day watermelon. Oh yeah. I mean, we haven't grown watermelons um since we first started just because of space.
25:55
We're at the point where a half an acre is not really enough space, but we don't have other, we don't have anywhere to expand into. our climate is our growing season so short. Like you can, you can barely even grow a buttermoth here cause it won't ripen in time. I'm so sorry. It pretty much shows like the worst place to start a farm. Well, Canada has a short growing season.
26:25
over much of the country, Yeah. And it's also very snowy here. Yeah. mean, I'm in Minnesota. I'm right over the border from you. I mean, I'm not. I'm like eight, 10 hours from the border. But we have a shorter growing season and we don't plant anything usually until Mother's Day because by Mother's Day, we're pretty sure the last frost has happened. Yeah.
26:56
Yeah, we had one year where we had a frost on June 15th and it killed all of our tomatoes. They frosted back down to the ground, but then they bounced back and they were fine. And we actually had tomatoes only like one or two weeks later than normal. It was quite the experience. Huh, I didn't know they'd bounce back. They had established enough where
27:23
They did. They sprouted from the base of the plant. They were very, very, um, branched that year, but they were fine. Huh? I did not know that. I will have to let my husband know we may have to do an experiment. Yeah, just give them a few weeks to see what happens. if they're, if they got roots, you know, they'll bounce back. So if you think about how many like runners they, they, they give out, right? Yeah. They'll just do that from the base. Okay.
27:53
Well, we have a hard-sided greenhouse that we're going to be starting seeds in here. I think he said this weekend. I'm not sure. It might be next weekend. But we've never started seeds in there before. We've had it up for two seasons now. A lot of people are writing. I asked him the other day, said, are you going to bring in the seed trays and do them on the kitchen table? And he said, no, we're starting them in the greenhouse this year. Nice.
28:20
And I said, are you sure you want to do that? And he said, yes, I do. He said, because I've been keeping track of how much. OK, little tiny backstory. Most people who listen to the podcast have heard this before, but you guys probably have not. um We have IBC totes that we painted black filled with water in the greenhouse. as the sunlight comes in the greenhouse, heats up the water and it disperses the heat at night when it cools off outside.
28:49
And so usually by mid-March, it's not gonna get below, it's not even gonna get near 32 degrees Fahrenheit in there overnight. It's gonna stay at like 50, 55. And for seedlings, that's perfect. So this is the first year we're starting the seeds in the greenhouse. And I am nervous. I am very nervous that this is not gonna work and he's gonna be really, really disappointed.
29:17
As I keep saying to everybody, keep your fingers crossed that this works. For sure. Well, know, the ceilings are, they're very cold hardy when they're started cold. Like we don't have a nursery. We've never used a nursery. And I start my seeds and I put them outside way before you're supposed to with some cover, but they, you know, seem to do fine. As long as you're very, um,
29:45
careful about starting them cold and not like giving them a huge shock. Plants hate, hate shock from temperature changes. Yeah. They do not enjoy it and they may survive it, but I'm, I'm just praying and I'm not a praying girl, but I am praying that this, this goes well because if it does, it means that two springs from now we can really do a whole lot more.
30:15
Yes. Because the greenhouse is over 15 feet by 25 feet. So it's a good size greenhouse. Yeah, nice. Yep. Very, very excited about all the things that it opens up for us. anyway, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're almost there. Where can people find you? You can find us on Instagram.
30:42
Small scale rebellion or also our farm account is called Confluence Farms Kootenays. Okay. Awesome. I hope that people go and look at your stuff because I think what you're doing is amazing. Thanks, Mary. We appreciate that. All the best, you guys. Thank you. As always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Nathan and Emily, thank you so much for your time. I hope you have a good rest of your day. Thank you. Thanks. You too.