Keepin it Real - The Gorham Homestead Podcast
This is where we talk about real life on the homestead, real food and real natural medicine. We talk about homesteading, building community, prepping and survival from a homemaker's perspective. We do our best to provide real and practical, old-fashioned solutions to modern everyday problems with a positive outlook on the future.
Keepin it Real - The Gorham Homestead Podcast
Ep. 21 - Farmers vs. Homesteaders - Unpacking the Unspoken Rivalry with Stephanie Tallent
Ever wondered about the real dynamics between traditional farmers and modern homesteaders? Join me, Dawn Gorham, along with my special guest Stephanie Tallent, as we uncover the deep-seated tensions and profound shifts within the world of agriculture. We promise you'll gain valuable insights into how corporate influence has shaped contemporary farming practices, and how homesteaders are pushing back with a holistic, self-sufficient approach. We also discuss how homesteaders might want to check our attitudes at the door.
Stephanie and I also dive into the fascinating yet contentious world of raw milk farming. You'll hear personal stories that highlight the evolving perceptions of raw milk, the contrasting realities between small-scale and industrial dairy operations, and the unique regulatory challenges faced by farmers. We discuss the growing direct-to-consumer demand for raw milk and the philosophical shift towards a more personalized approach to food and healthcare.
Lastly, we explore the diverse ideologies within the homesteading community, touching on everything from natural and herbal methodologies to more conventional practices. We talk about the critical importance of learning from experienced farmers, the need for preparedness in emergency situations, and share exciting updates from our own farms. This episode is packed with real-life experiences, practical tips, and heartfelt reflections that you won't want to miss!
TheGorhamHomestead.com
Hey y'all, and welcome to keeping it real the Gorham homestead podcast, where we talk about real food, real natural living, the real art of natural healing and real life out here in our Tennessee homestead podcast, where we talk about real food, real natural living, the real art of natural healing and real life out here in our Tennessee homestead. I'm your host, awn Gorham, and today is Thursday, august the 15th, 2024, and you are listening to episode number 21. Our topic today is an interesting one. That has kind of been on my mind lately. It is why farmers don't particularly like homesteaders. And today I have joining me my friend, my cow mentor, somebody that I deeply respect and really admire, and it's Stephanie Talent, and we're going to be just diving into this discussion and see what comes out of it, because I think we both kind of have some theories and some ideas on maybe why this has happened, so we're just going to jump right in. Welcome, stephanie, say hi, hi, thank you for having me. You're so welcome. I'm excited because this is the first time that I've had anybody in the studio actually other than my husband. So this is a new experience for me and I'm just excited to add this to my repertoire being able to interview people and talk about stuff.
Dawn Gorham:So have you encountered this a whole lot in your situation? Because I'll have to admit I'm just going to start this off by saying I was surprised, like I didn't see it coming, because I grew up with like a homesteader family. They weren't big traditional farming family, they were just stuck on 10 acres and everything sort of worked together. It was permaculture before. Permaculture was cool, or probably during it. I just didn't know it. And so I anticipated that when I went out to talk to some of the traditional farmers that they would be like my granddaddy and be willing to answer questions and, you know, talk about the old days, and they just I've been met with nothing but brick walls. Have you had any experience like that?
Stephanie Tallent:I have and I've encountered it from both sides because my family in Georgia are all conventional farmers. My grandparents ran a small family dairy. All my aunts and uncles are either doing commercial chickens or cows or, you know, angus cows or whatever, and they're all doing it. They're all doing it on a big scale and they're not. And for them, if you're homesteading, those are just pets. You have pets in your oversized backyard I got you and you're having fun with that. That's not functional.
Dawn Gorham:They don't connect the dots on the functionality that was kind of one of my theories too, that maybe they see us more as hobbyists. That's because we act that way Because we make it fun.
Stephanie Tallent:A lot of us do, and I think that's you know. That's that's where we have to take a good long hard. Look at our movement, what we look like, and you know you're talking about the family you came from. 10 acres, they were doing homesteading and I also have family members who did those things but they never called themselves homesteaders.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, they didn't either, they were poor. That's a good point. Yeah, yeah, having a garden meant you were poor back in those days.
Stephanie Tallent:Yeah, well, you know if you had a garden and you killed your own chickens and you did. You know my great grandparents and some of my grandparents were sharecroppers and you know they did so many of these things, but they did it because they had to. It wasn't like they woke up one day and said, oh, let me get back to the land, let's make sure my kids are connected to our food systems.
Stephanie Tallent:Let's go pay five times as much per acre as anyone in any previous generation ever had, and let's go do this. And so I think there's just a big disconnect from you. Know. We view it as a worldview, a philosophy, a movement. There's deeper meaning and layers to this for us. And I think, for the previous generation who lived like this, it was necessity. It was not an idealistic way of life, it was a necessary way of life.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, and I sort of have encountered that attitude as well. I've been like my little neighbor up the street. I was talking about killing chickens and he was like I've been there, done that, don't ever want to do that again, just kind of that. You know, we did it because we were poor and we, you know, just that kind of. So I can't. I kind of get it like they don't want to go back to that and it. But for us I think it's more of you're right, it's not that we have to do it, it's because we choose to do it. So I kind of understand maybe a little bit of that. But I also think they did us a huge disservice by not handing down a lot of those skills Again they did it because they had to.
Stephanie Tallent:So when they didn't have to anymore and they saw that their kids didn't have to anymore and they bought into the industrialized food system.
Dawn Gorham:Like we can just go to the grocery store.
Stephanie Tallent:Why would you do these hard things if you can go to the grocery store and just buy it with one ounce of the effort, right?
Dawn Gorham:And pennies on the dollar and they couldn't have possibly have foreseen the dangers of the food system and how bad it was going to get the health impacts.
Stephanie Tallent:And that is the other side of this coin. So many of people who have been raised in farming communities. They have been educated multiple generations deep at this point by corporations.
Dawn Gorham:So true corporations.
Stephanie Tallent:They so true their legacy knowledge is, by and large, how to do corporate farming. The benefits of corporate farming, how to do more in smaller spaces, how to run the economics tighter and tighter because they have to um, and that's just a completely radically different framework than what we are approaching food from true, I think they focus more on the overall efficiency, whereas we focus more on self-sufficiency.
Dawn Gorham:So, yeah, I think that's another point of disconnect.
Stephanie Tallent:It is.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, that's. I mean, I agree and I do see that. And that is exactly the reason that I get when I run up against the brick walls that I have, they just don't want to talk about it. It's painful, I really think it's painful for some of them, but I just want the knowledge, just tell me, and they're like, but I don't want to talk about it and I think they feel very criticized and judged by the homestead movement. I agree with that.
Stephanie Tallent:We come in with our city backgrounds. Let's just be honest Our lack of common sense, our lack of hands-on experience, and we sit here and say we read Joel Salatin.
Dawn Gorham:I heard him speak at this conference and he said this is how we do chickens, and he said we all have to have chicken tractors.
Stephanie Tallent:He said you never have to deworm your cows, you just put preparation agent you know all this stuff, and so they hear this and they're like listen, we've been doing this for forever. You want to kill livestock? That's a good way to do it. Like they don't, there is a big disconnect. We come in with a lot of arrogance, a lot of lack of humility and a lot of the way we present ourselves online and in person. I mean, we run our mouths, we don't approach.
Dawn Gorham:I think it's because we get excited about it, though I don't think it's because we're trying to be rude. I think we're just genuinely excited.
Stephanie Tallent:Well, and we're trying to help each other along because what we're doing is extremely hard.
Dawn Gorham:We are climbing a mountain of we're having to overcome our own ignorance, our own lack of common sense. I have a lot of lack of common sense. I get it, I know.
Stephanie Tallent:Well, we haven't developed that intuitive gut instincts that someone who's been doing? It for 20 years gets, and I have just been doing this long enough. I'm starting to get good common sense instincts, just starting.
Dawn Gorham:And.
Stephanie Tallent:I can already tell myself, 20 years from now we'll have so many good instincts that I did not have when I started into this. Yeah, now will have so many good instincts that I did not have when I started into this, but, yeah, I think they feel criticized, like what they have been doing has not been good enough.
Stephanie Tallent:We're coming in with a complete lack of experience and we're just telling them we're going to do it a different way and it's going to work, and then we screw up. I mean, the other kind of dark side of the homesteading movement is a lot of us come in very idealistic, very ignorant and we kill some animals because we're too stupid not to. And really experienced farmers hate that. They hate to see. You know, and one I've been in the homesteading circles for 15 plus years now. I was into West End Price stuff almost 20 years ago, so you know this whole thing.
Stephanie Tallent:I've been watching the life cycles come and go and the homesteading movement has a very high attrition rate. People bounce in. Five years later it's gotten real, it's gotten hard and they bounce right back out again. And you know that's objectively. For people who are watching this, who are multiple generations deep into what they do and why they do it, and they watch this little movement. It's like boing, boing. Oh, it got hard for you, oh, you lost animals and you're just going to sell out and fold up and just say, nope, it was hard, I'm done, it got real, turns out.
Stephanie Tallent:I'm not cut out for this anyway. And that goes back to the mental resilience that we're trying to build in ourselves and in our children and that we weren't raised in that ability to get up and keep going when your favorite animal died or when just a bunch of crap hit the fan all at once, which it does. I mean there are days when you're just like why am I doing this?
Dawn Gorham:I know I miss the days when I could just sleep whenever I wanted to, when I lived in the city I didn't have to get up and milk cows I wanted to sleep in. I slept in A sick day.
Stephanie Tallent:Yeah, I had a sick day. Yes, Exactly.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, there's none of that for sure. So yeah, I mean I do, I totally understand that because my family was poor. So I do, you know, I do sympathize with that. But it does make me a little sad, though, that the perception became that if you have your little kitchen garden or your chickens, or you hang your clothes out to dry or whatever, that that is a sign of poverty, and that part of it makes me sad. So I kind of hope that that eventually wanes its way out, maybe a little bit, I don't know, I think I view it more as a badge of resiliency of people who have gone through.
Stephanie Tallent:You know, look at the history. People have overcome extremely hard things and they have done what they had to do to overcome them and it turns out they developed a lot of systems along the way that actually work.
Dawn Gorham:Oh, absolutely that are actually sustainable.
Stephanie Tallent:So when life gets hard, those are the systems we circle back around to oh yeah, and society is starting to get a little hard out there, right?
Dawn Gorham:now I still like my automation, like I'm all about some sprinklers on timers out here that I can tell alexa to go ahead and water my gardens.
Stephanie Tallent:I mean internet to be able to research things and learn and the crowdsourcing that's available at our fingertips because of all the modern things that are amazing. But yeah, it's a. It's a convergence of worlds and I think whenever that happens, there are misunderstandings, there are perceptions. We judge commercial farmers by the lowest common denominator. Example of factory farming. And I think they judge homesteaders by our lowest common denominator trends. And that is just what happens when you have two groups of people looking at each other from the outside in.
Dawn Gorham:Do you think they judge us all by the main social media influencers, like the ones who you know? It's come out over time that they're really not doing the things that they say they're doing. I mean, I know it's entertainment, like that's the way that I look at it is some of those people are, whether they're doing it or not. I would much rather watch someone milking their cow and how they feed them, and you know then some of the smut and crap that we see on TV, absolutely. So I mean, I'm not opposed to that, but sometimes I think some of that with the farmers is is is that as well? They see all these social media influencers and they know they're not, because they know if what they're doing works or not, whereas we don't necessarily, until we try it and fail. So I think they see some of that and they're just like no.
Stephanie Tallent:Yeah, they know. And cosplaying, I mean the whole cosplaying country, living like when things became trendy, that's the pushback to it. It's like no, I don't look like that, sound like that, or you know, there's nothing aesthetic about my nitty-gritty reality farming life.
Dawn Gorham:And for you to do it in a make it so glamorous white linen dress as you pick daisies along the way with like high quality cameras capturing your every move, with the sunset and your hair blowing in the wind, as you're walking across the field with your cow's lead over your shoulder and there's nothing wrong with having fun with that Right, right, but when?
Stephanie Tallent:that becomes the perception of reality. That's when we have a big problem and there's a breakdown there. I think that's probably true.
Dawn Gorham:Do you think also that they get a little bit irritated by the difference in our regulations? Like them there I feel like industrial farmers and commercial farmers are so much more highly regulated than we are, and I think sometimes that's another point of animosity is where, because we tend to sell directly to customers like we and we don't have because we're such smaller scale, we don't have so much regulation, and I think sometimes that's a point of contingency too they just kind of get irritated by the fact that we're not constantly overseeing and tested and you know doing all the things, especially like us, me and you with raw milk. Yeah mean I know some dairy farmers that are not raw milk farmers that cannot stand me because of that.
Stephanie Tallent:There's concerns and again I think I mentioned my grandparents had a family raw dairy. Oh, theirs was raw, but it was big. Well, when they milked it, it was raw, it was not big. I think they ran like 30, 35 at a time. To me that's big yeah, but it was still a small scale for a commercial dairy, but I think you know when they live it and when they see it and when they have stories of people getting sick from milk that hasn't been handled correctly or whatever, it's not hypothetical to them.
Stephanie Tallent:They you know this is very real. They've seen what a really bad case of mastitis or what cross-contamination can do and all these things that are just very, very real to them. It's not, they're not playing around, they're not messing around. They're like this you know systems, fail-safes, exist to protect against those things, and so for them they're like why are you bailing on a system that's basically redundant? You know all this oversight is for safety. Why are you opting out of safety? And it's like well, because you're not making enough money to keep your doors open Number one and number two, the health I mean for them and that also.
Stephanie Tallent:I think we're bumping up against a lot of things where, for us, the health benefits and what we understand and what we believe to be true about what we're consuming and what we're generating, they believe their end product is safer and just as nutritious. So there's some head-butting that's going to come out of that. But the hilarious thing to me is, if you talk to dairy farmers like my family drank the raw milk straight out of the tank they all did, but they wouldn't sell it to anybody else.
Stephanie Tallent:the tank they all did and every, but they wouldn't sell it to anybody else. They would never sell it to anyone else and they would all say oh no, no one should ever do that and I will talk to. I've talked to regular dairy farmers now and they're like oh yeah, well, we drink out of the tank, but that's not what anyone else should be doing, because our you know, our bodies are used to it, our microbiome, and there's some legitimacy to that.
Stephanie Tallent:They are oh, yeah, absolutely legitimacy to that, but it just kind of cracks me up. It's like oh so you're going to get the benefits of your, but you're going to be scared to death to let the general public touch that with a 10 foot pole.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, and I think they've been so like ingrained with that whole idea of raw milk you know, being dangerous it's just been so preached into them, you know, just ingrained.
Dawn Gorham:And I think they don't understand that the way that we handle raw milk on our you know, me and you and other dairy, raw dairy farmers, that we handle it so much differently, like it's handled from point a to point b, for the point of you know, for the point of human consumption, like that's why we handle it the way we handle it. And my stepdad is a, was a big, not Hereford, he was a dairy farmer, he had the big farm. What are the big ones? Oh, I can't think Holsteins. Holsteins he had.
Stephanie Tallent:Holsteins.
Dawn Gorham:And he sold his. You know, they came with the truck and they got his milk and all that stuff. And when I first started doing raw milk, like he wore me out. He wore me out and it took me forever to get him to understand. I don't handle it the way that he handled it. That's right. Like you know, mine goes in the freezer. It gets chilled really quickly. You know every point is not non, you know no contamination, and so I think like he really had to overcome that, like he really had to break his mentality of how he did things. So, yeah, I think that I think the whole regulatory part of it.
Stephanie Tallent:It is and they're overhead. I mean every step of what they do is so micromanaged. I mean what they can take to the sale barn and on the beef side of things they live and die about the sale barn prices. So for any of us that have opted out and gone direct to consumer but you see more and more farmers doing that now More beef farmers are doing that a lot Because they have to do that and you know the demand is there. So I think the stigma around that is slowly starting to break down.
Dawn Gorham:I feel like the stigma around raw milk is starting to as well. I really do, because just judging by my waiting list, I mean I've got a waiting list of about 80 people and you know, 10 years ago I never could have imagined that. And it's all ages, you know. It's older people, younger people, middle-aged people, and that really surprises me because I always ask you know, how did you find me? How old are you? Where do you live? You know all that kind of stuff. So I'm hoping that over time and the more and more people who really work hard to have safe raw milk, I think that will eventually work in our favor, do you?
Stephanie Tallent:find that you were their first contact with raw milk. Like, have they had experience with raw milk prior to coming to you or are you kind of like they've learned a little bit about it? They know that this is something they want to do and you're kind of their first experience with it?
Dawn Gorham:I've had both something they want to do and, you're kind of, their first experience with it. I've had both, like I've had some. Some of my customers or some of my waitlist people have moved here from other states where raw milk is very available, like California, surprisingly enough, shockingly Shocking, yeah, but you know raw milk is a big thing out there. So a lot of the California people will get on the rawmilkcom and that's generally how they find me. But then some of them are people who are just starting to go to naturopaths, starting to go to functional medicine doctors, and those doctors are starting to recommend, if they have a sensitivity, to try raw milk. So they end up contacting me saying, hey, can I try it? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's one of those things that once you've experienced contacting me saying, hey, can I try it? And yeah, absolutely. You know so.
Stephanie Tallent:I think it's one of those things that, once you've experienced it for yourself, you get very motivated to continue to pursue Absolutely, Absolutely.
Dawn Gorham:That's why how I ended up with my own cows.
Stephanie Tallent:I didn't want to be without it.
Dawn Gorham:I mean, it was like you know.
Stephanie Tallent:So so yeah, and the ability to quality control myself.
Dawn Gorham:Yes, absolutely, you know exactly how it's, yeah, how it's handled from start to finish. Yeah, yeah, let's see. We talked about public perception that was another note that I had, but I think that kind of fell under the whole social media thing and I think we talked a little bit about methods.
Stephanie Tallent:I think there is a lot of breakdown with methods. But even in the homesteading community we have a lot of different. I slant more towards natural, herbal as sustainable as possible. And then there are some homesteaders who have every single prescription and or over-the-counter medication and dewormer known to man.
Dawn Gorham:And do it like clockwork.
Stephanie Tallent:They are very mainstream in their management practices while being sustainable from their land, and so you know, the ideologies within the homestead movement are very diverse. Yeah, but I do think that we generally are perceived to be more crunchy. See, there's some overlap, like there's overlap. There's a lot of weird things about the homestead movement, like if you look at it through a Venn diagram, you have a lot of holistic crunchy overlap. What does crunchy mean?
Dawn Gorham:Can you define crunchy for me? Because I see that all the time on social media. What is crunchy, I mean, are you?
Stephanie Tallent:I think it goes back to like in the 70s, when people were doing crunchy granola and you were like it when you started eating healthy, like the granola, the, the crunchy vegan granola, and so they were kind of that's where the term kind of got coined from. So if you kind of start going towards the more natural bent in life, you're kind of bending towards crunchy and then you know crunchy has been kind of replaced with more holistic or I'm into organic lifestyle.
Dawn Gorham:I like the word holistic better than crunchy I do too Sounds dirty.
Stephanie Tallent:But you know of the Venn diagram you've got a lot of homeschool. You've got a lot of homeschool overlap in the homestead community and that's another weird standalone sort of a thing. So the homesteading community has a lot of. You got your preppers who very strongly overlap into the homesteading community and that's their own thing as well but, there's a lot of overlap with the homesteading movement. Um, I just think it's.
Dawn Gorham:It is a movement in which there's a lot of weird things connected to and overlapped with, all of which would make a conventional farmer's eyebrows shoot straight up I could see that because we tend to opt out of systems, like we want to opt out of the healthcare system, out of the transportation system, out of the education system, out of the you know, the commercial food system, like we want out of all of it, and when you opt out of one and you deal with, like the whole cultural shift within yourself and within your relationships and your family and your friends and your community.
Stephanie Tallent:It gets 10 times easier to opt out of the next one. Like the stigma doesn't sting as much and then you get, and you get more educated about it and you get more confident like, oh, I can actually do this and oh, it's actually better when I opt out.
Dawn Gorham:Right. Well, I feel like there's less control. I mean more more personal control, less control by other people over me when I opt out of systems like that Cause I feel like when I was in the conventional medical system, before I started doing direct primary care and functional medicine, I felt like they told me what I was going to do, instead of asking me how I felt about it or what you know, what a treatment plan I would want, or you know, they just they were very judgy if I pushed back against anything that they told me I was going to do. So I feel like and now, you know, with functional medicine, you know they want to know.
Dawn Gorham:How do you feel about this? What do you know? Because you're you know, you know yourself better than I do and you know your children better than I do, and and I think there's a lot of freedom in that, and it's the same way with the food system, like you know, like when I butcher my chickens, I know, from the day they came here to the day they go to that cone, what they've had, and I just you know, you see so much stuff on social media and the internet and stuff about all of the different laboratory things that they're wanting to come out with, and I think a lot of the homesteaders are just terrified Like we are genuinely terrified of what is coming down the pike, because it just seems to get worse and worse.
Stephanie Tallent:It is about control, and it is about controlling numbers and controlling populations, and so when you are in these systems, you're not viewed as an individual, you're not a.
Dawn Gorham:You're not you're not a consumer.
Stephanie Tallent:You are a consumer, you are a taxpayer, you are a member of XYZ communities.
Stephanie Tallent:And these are all boxes, these are all census boxes and you know dollar boxes and these are all boxes to be ticked. And when you opt out you become very individual care oriented, like you said, with the medical system, my individual nutrition, my individual medical care, personal responsibility it is, and my, my individual educational journey and my individual, just all of these things become extremely customized which can look very eclectic from the outside and can look very even unpredictable from the outside. And so you opt out of the boxes Like it's just literally saying no, I don't fit into these boxes anymore. No, thank you.
Dawn Gorham:Yes, yes, very much. So I agree with that. I wonder. So I wonder if maybe just having how would you have that conversation? Like if I'm wanting to go talk to my neighbor and say, look, tell me why you feel the way that you feel about what I'm doing, because he literally makes fun of me to my face.
Stephanie Tallent:He doesn't hold back, like literally makes fun of me but also farmers do that to each other that's true, that is actually true.
Dawn Gorham:Very good point, like I, hear these little guys at the auctions they're going at it.
Stephanie Tallent:Nobody criticizes each other, nor rips each other apart quicker or faster than farmers Like they are, you know, and they'll do that all day long.
Stephanie Tallent:They will make fun of each other all day long They'll be like oh, so-and-so, always does this and this, this guy always looking poor about winter because he doesn't do this. You'll hear this all the time. But then, like when push comes I mean like someone's barn burns down or a tragedy actually happens they are also the quickest. They've got each other's backs in a heartbeat. So some of it is we just got to grow thicker skin. That's true If we want to have these conversations with them, because they will hurt your feelings and they will laugh while they do it.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, he does.
Stephanie Tallent:I promise he does, yeah, and the other thing is we got to get. I mean, I have had a couple of conversations with these guys and they have hurt my feelings and I have felt a little defensive as I hear the feedback on what doesn't make sense and I think this is something that I took to heart in my own journey and I try to pass it along to other homesteaders as well is, when you get into this one, get mentally prepared. You will mess up and an animal will die. Just go ahead and mentally.
Dawn Gorham:And that is hard. It is yes.
Stephanie Tallent:Nobody wants to talk about that and nobody wants to accept that I mean, in one year's time, four family milk cows that I knew in one year's time all died from mostly nutritional slash, preventable issues that were owner ignorance leading to neglect problems.
Stephanie Tallent:When that is seen from the outside in, I mean, you know, who we also should be talking to is vets, veterinarians. Because homesteaders are tight. We're trying to get our land, we're trying to get this going. It's all expensive. Our learning curve is expensive. To go to our little conferences is expensive. To buy our little tutorials from each other is expensive, like there's nothing that we're doing that's not expensive and we're all having to do this all up front. So to sit here and try to budget for vet costs or anything that's an extra.
Stephanie Tallent:We don't do that. We don't get into it prepared to do that. So a lot of times all veterinarians see is them coming on the tail end of a really bad situation. That was 100% preventable. Yeah, had we gotten them involved earlier. And or had we been humble enough to go get our feelings hurt from someone with experience earlier on? And so those are two things I've really taken to heart, because I think our ignorance is exacting a pretty high price. But those of us who pay that price stick it out.
Dawn Gorham:Don't bounce around that.
Stephanie Tallent:Three to five year mark and dig in deeper and get up on those hard days. It's very worth it. I don't in any way diminish the value of this as I say it Right. Yeah, I agree, but it's just the hard stuff and it's the stuff that gets judged really harshly from the outside in.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, Especially by people who I think a lot of the city folks. Really they enjoy watching it, Like they enjoy knowing what you're doing but at the same time they're kind of like Well, but it's entertainment value.
Stephanie Tallent:Yeah, it's totally entertainment for them. It's free entertainment for them.
Dawn Gorham:Yes, but yeah, I think you're right. I think a lot of them, because I mean I've had the same issues. You know, I had Tara go down a couple of years ago and I didn't know what to do. Luckily, I do have a great vet and we have Tommy you know I can always ask Tommy anything.
Stephanie Tallent:I love him.
Dawn Gorham:Me too. I talk about him on all my podcasts. He gets tickled, but you know, and last year I lost 40 chickens in one day. We were in the chicken tractors.
Dawn Gorham:We went to Chase's school for the open house it was in August and I didn't think about it and I turned the chicken tractors facing the west where the sun was coming in and I didn't think, and they all piled up in the back and what happened? They smothered each other and they were like two weeks before processing and we came home and it looked like a massacre had happened. But that was totally my error, like totally me, um, but I, you know, but I picked myself, I cried and carried on, you know, and worried about the, the lost money and the lost chickens, obviously, um, but you know, I picked myself up from it and I learned from it and I will never turn those chicken tractors towards the west ever again and I will never process chickens in the summer ever again If I can't get them delivered in March and process them in May or October, then I'm not doing it.
Stephanie Tallent:So but you know, but I learned from it, you know, and that's the thing like we have to be prepared to learn from this to get kicked in the teeth, get up and keep going. And, honestly, that resilience of like go down, get up and keep going. That's where you start seeing these farmers go. Okay, you've got. You've got what? It takes Because they've all done it Like I mean my. My granddad said if you own livestock you're going to own dead stock at some point.
Dawn Gorham:And it's like it's true, that's true, that's just a truth.
Stephanie Tallent:And it doesn't matter how good you are at what you do. If you own livestock, at some point they're going to be dead stock. But getting through that and not letting it completely derail what you're doing.
Dawn Gorham:I agree, so maybe communicating and having a conversation with them, trying to make them understand. I feel like I've done that, though, and it didn't work and learning from them.
Stephanie Tallent:I ask questions like what do you do for parasite management? What's your protocol? And just leave it and let them answer, and just leave it and let them answer, and I've always learned something from that question. I may not do what they're doing, but I have always learned something.
Stephanie Tallent:Right and they'll say oh, this is a big problem now. It wasn't my whole life, but it is now. This is resistant to that. Now, okay, we know that now and I'm like okay, I didn't know that before. And even though I'm not using using those same management practices, that's where their knowledge is invaluable to us.
Dawn Gorham:Yes, very much so.
Stephanie Tallent:The other. Oh, this was another gap that I had thought about mentioning is so when we listen to a podcast like there's one from Out West, I love her, jill. Jill Winger yes, she's amazing. Her climate and their environment is so radically different.
Stephanie Tallent:Yes, very From what we have here. If I were to have her write out this is what I do and this is how I do it, and this is Very little of that day-in to day-out management would be applicable to me here in the South and when someone who has these really lush pastures of up north or they have like a foot and a half of black topsoil and their pastures are a certain thing, what they do, I cannot do because we have terrible soil.
Stephanie Tallent:We have to work so hard at just building it up to basic nutritional value. And when someone out West is talking about oh, I feed this hay, I just have this grass-fed cow hay.
Dawn Gorham:I just had this grass fed cow.
Stephanie Tallent:Well, their hay protein count is so much higher than what the cheap hay here is, and so you know a bale of hay is not equivalent to a bale of hay somewhere else. But I think when we, when we all first get into this, we're just trying to glean knowledge from anyone we can, we're learning.
Dawn Gorham:We think hay is hay.
Stephanie Tallent:We think hay is hay, because to us it is. When you don't know better, that's what you think and you get into this and we listen.
Stephanie Tallent:We listen to all the OGs that we listen to and who have paved the way 30 years ago or 20 years ago or 15 years ago and we're gleaning from them. But I think we're not really checking ourselves to go, because I know I forget what it was. But one time I told, I told him I was, oh, I'm going to do this, and he laughed. And he laughed and he said, well, get, get back with me and let me know how that goes.
Dawn Gorham:And it turns out. Oh, I hate it when they say that.
Stephanie Tallent:You can't do that in our area, Like our weather patterns, like whatever it was I was going to do.
Dawn Gorham:It doesn't work here you can do that in other places people.
Stephanie Tallent:It doesn't work here, and so getting that regional specific knowledge like what we have to do for parasite management is so aggressive compared to what other places do, and just things like that the recovery time of our pastures is so much faster than they have in other places we don't necessarily have to let them have the rest period if we're doing rotational, just things like that that are so unique to our little region of the world that we have to let them have the rest period if we're doing rotational, just things like that that are so unique to our little region of the world that we have to learn from people who are here doing it, doing it here in our climate, and that's where I feel like getting these conversations with these farmers who've been doing this forever is so helpful.
Dawn Gorham:Let me ask you this Do you think it's better to ask them how they do it now than to try to glean from them what they did in the old days? Because a lot of my questions are because I want to know how to do it the hard way, so that if the easy way is no longer accessible, I can do it the hard way. And they don't want to answer those questions. But I wonder, if I ask them OK, what are you doing now? Yeah, and then I like to ask.
Stephanie Tallent:so you said your granddaddy had this farm too, right? Well, how did he do it when he did it? And then they're thinking oh, that's right, how did granddaddy do?
Dawn Gorham:it. Oh, let's talk about granddaddy. They like to talk about granddaddy, they do.
Stephanie Tallent:That makes sense and that's where you, the primary dewormer, that get out are you serious?
Stephanie Tallent:serious? That's how the south dewormed all their animals for forever and ever, and themselves. That's why tobacco was such an integral part of the south. But I did not know that. Well, you don't hear that unless you hear them, and you and they'll say, well, yeah, and that they'd grow. You know a row of tobacco back here, hang it up in the barn, and then they would use it so they feed it to the animals, just with their feed, their silage, and mix it.
Dawn Gorham:See, I still don't understand silage like I know that's ridiculous because I, I feed hay and I feed a little bit of grain and I feed alfalfa pellets, right I, and I don't have the pasture to be able to go grow something and cut it as sorghum silage or whatever. But I hear some old farmers talking about, oh, I had these cows and they'd ball for that silage and I'm like, okay, what, tell me, what is silage like? What fermented? It's just where they pile it on and I kind of had that general idea. But is it just piled it on top of each other and let it ferment in a?
Stephanie Tallent:in a pit, or us from west, any price circles. We, we basically know how easy it is to ferment vegetables and you can do it in so many different ways and it's just fermented and it's like you follow these basic guidelines and you wind up with a fermented end product which is probiotic rich, enzyme rich. The nutritional value has been unlocked on levels that it wasn't before in its fresh form. Same exact principles apply with silage that is so cool.
Dawn Gorham:I wish I had pasture to do that I wish I did too.
Stephanie Tallent:And the old timers used to dig these pits that they call silage pits, like, and they just pile all their green, like just green mixture of stuff, and they kind of knew how much like corn stalks yeah what the ratio, corn stalks and all that stuff, and each of them would have their own recipe kind of dialed in like this is the way, and some of them would put a little sweetener on there to jump start it or whatever, but then cover it up. And this is where it gets hard for me, because you can ruin a batch of silage and kill your animals with a spoiled batch of silage. But they could tell from the smell. So when I talk to these old guys who've done it, they're like well, you can tell the difference in the smell. And then I've caught myself telling people that with ferments I'm like well, you can tell something's off with a good ferment, like it should have that particular nice, clean, fermented smell. And then they look at me with the same look that I'm giving them.
Dawn Gorham:Because they have never smelled the smell.
Stephanie Tallent:Right, and I have never smelled the smell of don't know that. I'd pick up on that.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, I get it. You don't know what you don't know.
Stephanie Tallent:That's right.
Dawn Gorham:But that's one of my gaps, that I would love to. But I think that's one of those things where their experience is just so valuable and I want their knowledge, I want their input, I want to know all of the things. I think we just got to grow a thicker skin, take a little more time and be willing to hear things we don't want to hear. I don't like them. I'm just teasing. I know I can take it. I can take it a lot better than I pretend like I can. Yeah, yeah, they, they, they try to be a little gentle on me, although they, you can tell. You can tell they're making fun of me. They're going to do that.
Stephanie Tallent:I mean, like I say it's part of their culture. I think they just they do it to each other. That's just. That's just part of their, probably part of their, coping mechanisms. Life is hard, I mean it's hard. Farming is hard. You throw the jobs off the farm, because I mean, these days, if I talk to a conventional farmer, there's not a single one that I have talked to, but that is all they do. They either work off the farm, or their spouse works off the farm, or they both work off the farm, and then they farm on top of that.
Stephanie Tallent:It's an extremely hard and taxing lifestyle.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, I don't know how I did it, like I don't know how, and I didn't even do it on that scale, but I don't know how I did go into the office like I did and then coming home and canning until one or two o'clock in the morning, and even when I was milking, and then going into the office getting up at four or three, I don't know how I did it. And now, because now I feel like there's still none of hours a day and I'm here all day, there's not. So, yeah, I totally get that. There was something else I was thinking I was going to bring up and I can't remember what it was. Oh, I know what it was. One of the other things that they kind of make fun of me for and get irritated at me about is the fact that I don't milk twice a day.
Stephanie Tallent:That's a big one.
Dawn Gorham:They get. So like what do you mean? You don't milk twice a day.
Stephanie Tallent:It causes a literal error code to pop up especially in the dairy guys. They're like what do you mean? That's cruel, that's inhumane, you're ruining her udder. Yes, and this is where I try to tread lightly, because these are all men that I've had this conversation with and they've never breastfed themselves, so I can't exactly get too personal with this. So when I say, well, it is a supply and demand kind of situation, Right as you back off, they make less. Yeah, the body adjusts and calibrates.
Dawn Gorham:But they dry them off. So they totally understand that that happens at the end. And again, I think that's efficiency maybe.
Stephanie Tallent:Maybe they come back to in their head you're letting milk go that you could be making and it's a waste. Yes, so the waste of the waste of the system being that way is also another sticking point for them. One they're concerned for the health of the animal, right. Two, why would you throw away double your milk, right, almost double, not gonna say, because I don't a third more.
Stephanie Tallent:Why would you throw it? Why would you just flush a third more down? The toilet could let like you're too lazy to milk twice a day. You know that's. That's the kind of dynamic but the answer is yes. I am, but I do it for the health of my cow. I don't. And that's the other disconnect that happens. I'm not feeding for maximum production. I'm not pushing that cow to the very limits of what her capability is I either.
Stephanie Tallent:Yes, I want her to have reserves. I don't want to be operating on the razor's edge of no reserves, like they have to do in production dairy dynamics.
Dawn Gorham:I want my girl to have reserves.
Stephanie Tallent:I want to have reserves. We're not going to operate without margins if I can help it, like if I can possibly help it, and that just goes back to I'm philosophically approaching this from a different framework than they are.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, I agree. I think that's probably the big thing with that, and it's also that same thing with calf sharing, because they're, you know, all of them pull the calves day one and either sell them off or bottle feed them a milk replacer or whatever, and they can't grasp the whole idea of leaving the calf with the mom for six months or however long you choose to do it.
Stephanie Tallent:You know the SEC counts do go higher because that sphincter's opened up multiple times a day with a calf on them, but in a well-managed and you hear the horror stories and I'm sure we're in some of the same groups where people post the horror stories the calves ripping up teeth and all this stuff, and I'm sure we're in some of the same groups where people post the horror stories.
Stephanie Tallent:Oh yeah, the calves ripping up, you know, teeth and all this stuff, and I'm like, well, we're not. You know, I've always turned to people when I talk about calf sharing. I'm not saying I'm throwing this cow out in the field and I'm never touching her or looking at her again. And the next time I look at her she's got raging mastitis and torn up teeth. That's not what we're talking about here. Right, she's still coming in, she's getting babied, she's getting fed her stuff. We're milking her out. Her udder health is being checked daily.
Stephanie Tallent:If that calf is rough on her, we do not let calves be rough on udders Like this is a very supervised, well managed, dynamic and not every cow can calf share. It's not good for every cow. It's been really good for me and I love preserving those maternal instincts in these dairy animals that it's becoming scarcer and harder and harder to find. Right, because I really feel like we are the last reserve of people who care about maternal instincts in the entire dairy world, the world period.
Stephanie Tallent:Humans included yes, it's those of us opting out of this disconnect from birth mindset and saying no. Let's keep these instincts alive. These are good instincts, we need them.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, and females across the board yeah, I agree.
Stephanie Tallent:Yeah, you're right, that goes for everything. That goes for all the animals on my farm.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, absolutely. Well, is there anything else that has been on your mind with this? I think that was pretty much all my notes. I mean, the only other thing we talked about, the market competition a little bit, and the direct consumer, I think that's again. I think they feel like we're a competition to them and I agree that. I think I agree with you. I think the number one thing now that we have talked about this is probably they feel judged because we put so much um emphasis on organic and non-gmo.
Stephanie Tallent:And boy, you bring up non-gmo and organic and they just scenes, or vaccines, they, or vaccines, or vaccines. They lose their minds. That's a topic that is extremely volatile in the animal community.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, yeah, and I don't know why the, I guess the GMO thing they it made them more efficient and made things easier for them with the, you know, with the pesticides and whatnot. So I mean, I understand that they don't want that to go away, but I also think they're burying their head in the sand when it comes to the dangers you know.
Stephanie Tallent:I think it is that thing where when you hear them talking amongst themselves and again, I've been in those conversations just because of the culture I'm from in Georgia you hear those conversations. They know it's not sustainable, they know they're not getting paid enough for living wage, but they also know that they are the last stop. They know they're feeding America because of the way that they're farming and so in their minds, like if we stop doing this, if we all, just people are going to starve. People are going to starve. People are going to starve because that's how the math looks on paper right now when you run it, and so that is very difficult. You know, when we criticize this, I don't feel like we're really adequately conveying, like, I mean, the sad truth is we need the industrial complex at this point in time. We do.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, we're not there yet.
Stephanie Tallent:The sad truth is, we need the industrial complex at this point in time. We do. Yeah, we're not there yet. As our society exists currently, it can't go away or people will starve, and I think that's the ground they stand on. It's like, okay, you're saying that we shouldn't do this this way, but what's your plan B? What's?
Dawn Gorham:you going to do? What's everybody going to do?
Stephanie Tallent:Yeah, because we all rely on this, and that's right, and I can't grow wheat, like I mean you know, my cows still have to eat and I don't have 10 acres of corn either.
Dawn Gorham:So I mean I do agree that, I mean they are very necessary at this point.
Stephanie Tallent:Well, and if we go back those generations, like we were talking about, our families come from. We know our poor family that lived the way that they do in a lot of things we're doing now. They killed squirrels and possums and they ate them.
Dawn Gorham:Raccoons and raccoons. We called it Spanish chicken.
Stephanie Tallent:That's right, but they didn't do it because they preferred that over beef. Right, it was a necessity, they did it because they were hungry and they were not going to have protein if they didn't do it and I think that's just a reminder you know that was pre this industrial food complex becoming what it's becoming, and you don't hear about people eating those animals anymore, because they're not animals, not if I can help it, not if you can help it.
Stephanie Tallent:And so that's where I think we have to get very real with what the industrial food complex has given us, and when we say, oh, we're going to take that away, well, let's look back at what the food landscape actually looked like before it existed. And then we've just got to think through some of that, and those are conversations to have. And just the last point I want to make was let's just keep breaking down these communication barriers, because we need them. This is not an us versus them.
Stephanie Tallent:This is a cultural and perhaps knowledge-based disconnect, but that makes sense. We desperately need them and I don't know that they need us or if they know that they need us, but we very much need them and very much appreciate them and what they do.
Dawn Gorham:I think they're going to need us as they age, more work towards our local, you know, feeding our local community and, like you know, my neighbor across the street has a greenhouse and people down the way have you know different things that I don't grow, animals that I don't raise, but I do think that if the time comes that that industrial food system breaks down, it's getting some pretty substantial cracks here and there, and I think COVID was a great illustration of when a stressor is put on this already strained system.
Stephanie Tallent:I think we got a first front row seat.
Dawn Gorham:Yeah, because you're trucking it across the country as opposed to going across the street and you know, getting squashed from your neighbor across the street or whatever. And I think you know. And what if a, what if a global emergency actually happens? What?
Stephanie Tallent:if the power goes out, what?
Dawn Gorham:When, when, yeah, I mean, I know it's coming. I try to be more optimistic, though I try to not.
Stephanie Tallent:Well, when we look at history, I mean this is what history teaches us. History repeats itself. Absolutely, it's coming. National and global events happen, whether it's a natural disaster. I think all of us who were in this region during 2010, during the flood of 2010, we all survived that.
Stephanie Tallent:I think that was again a front row seat when you don't have a road to get out of, when you are stuck here when you have just basic infrastructures, like you can't shower because your water is so contaminated for three weeks straight, before you even get just so many things that we live through here. I think we don't know what it's going to be Like.
Stephanie Tallent:It can be natural, it can be societal, it can be, you know, war, pandemic, plagues, family, right All of the things, yes, I mean go back to the beginning of time, and these are the things that happen in the human, in the human experience. So, knowing that that's what we have to go, it's like, well, what is it going to be? And it's not even fear-mongering, it's not being afraid, it's just being very factual, like okay, and being prepared.
Dawn Gorham:I think it's personal responsibility to be prepared for emergencies, like even the government tells you. You know we have september, we got preparedness month, you know. I mean when even they're willing to admit it on a small scale. You know you need to kind of do it on a big scale because our power, we know that our power grid is our major vulnerability, we know that cyber attacks are our major communications All of that stuff is a huge vulnerability that our enemies can extort or you know they can hit us on those things and if they ever want to.
Stephanie Tallent:Or just even our own supply chains break down so they can't be maintenanced and updated and kept up to the manner in which we are accustomed. Right, exactly, I mean, it doesn't even have to be a catastrophic could be a catastrophic thing, but it doesn't even have to be that catastrophic. Could be a catastrophic thing, but it doesn't even have to be that.
Dawn Gorham:It can just be major. This went down.
Stephanie Tallent:Overload part isn't available, it's got to be shipped over from overseas. And the shipping, so many things can happen and that's the reality that I I live in. That reality but I think that goes back to that venn diagram overlap between the prepper awareness mindset. That overlaps with the homesteader world, yes, and that heightened sense of personal responsibility. But you know, I can't.
Dawn Gorham:That's ingrained into me because that is what I spent a lot of time with my grandparents because my, you know, my mom worked all the time, so I spent and my grandmother babysat me, so I was there all summer, there during the school year weekends, rode the bus to her house, but that was always her thing and that was how she lived, was it was summer, was preparing for winter and they had the well water and they didn't necessarily have backup power but they had hand crank they could get the water if they needed to. And that was. That has always been part of my mind, that you spend your good times preparing for the, for the hard times. And when I moved to Nashville, I was sort of shocked to when I realized that, you know, the people in my little suburban neighborhood didn't even have enough food to last for two days, right, like. They didn't know how to can A lot of things they'd never even heard of when it come to food preservation.
Dawn Gorham:Didn't know you could do Like, didn't know you could make your own bread, didn't know that you could make pickles at home, you know, and I'm like, what do you mean? What so, yeah, what so yeah, I mean I, it's part of I think it's part of who I am is why I continue to do what I do and continue to push and and want my children to. At least you know, if you don't want to do it, don't do it, but know how.
Stephanie Tallent:That is exactly what I tell them all the time yes, that is exact I'm like. Look, I hope you never need this information as in you're going to be hungry if you don't use this.
Stephanie Tallent:I hope that that is not the landscape that you face at any point in your life. But if you do need to, either by poverty, your personal life circumstances or societal life circumstances, whatever that is, I want to know that you are equipped. I want to know that you have those things to fall back on and that you have the mental ability to triage a situation, and prioritize and problem solve.
Stephanie Tallent:And problem solve and go okay, this is overwhelming. What's the first things? First, we need to stay hydrated, we need to eat, we need to like. How do we take care of those things and think in that manner and not just be panicked?
Dawn Gorham:Right, know how to triage a situation. Yeah, I totally agree. I'm so glad we're on the same page with that.
Stephanie Tallent:I think when you get deep enough down these rabbit trails and my background, I was raised kind of from a country family in general, so a lot of what you're talking about preserving you know you raise two hogs a year and everyone has a big processing day.
Dawn Gorham:Sell one to pay for the other.
Stephanie Tallent:Yeah yeah, exactly, or you, or you're feeding multiple families like my grandparents always raised out two hogs and all of us got some of them, some of the meat, which is really nice, and we helped them on butchering days. But then I worked for the CDC Center for Mass Destruction Defense and I got trained in a lot of the things that nobody wants to think about. And when you marry those two things together you just can never go back to just expecting the world to work perfectly all the time. It will at some point in time not work correctly.
Dawn Gorham:It's a very good point.
Stephanie Tallent:So, yeah, cool, Well, I've loved talking with you about this, I've enjoyed point. So, yeah, cool, well, I've loved talking with you, I've enjoyed talking to you too.
Dawn Gorham:I think this has been a great conversation and anybody who's listening. I hope that you have enjoyed it. If you have any questions, you can reach out to me or you can reach out to Stephanie. Her name is Stephanie talent. What's the name of your tranquil tea farms? Tranquility, tranquility farms. It looks Stephanie Talent. What's the name of your Tranquility Farms? Tranquility.
Stephanie Tallent:Farms, tranquility Farms. It looks funky. I got to work on that Tranquility.
Dawn Gorham:Oh, I got you. I got you. I see what she did there. So, yeah, but you can reach out to her if you have any questions. I appreciate y'all tuning in today If you like the podcast. It'd be really awesome if you would like and subscribe. It helps other people to find our podcast. You can find me on the socials at the Gorham Homestead or on my website at thegorhamhomesteadcom.
Dawn Gorham:I just found out today that I'm going to be speaking at the Kentucky Sustainable Living in the last of October I think it's October 25th or 26th. So if you get tickets, you'll see me there. I'm not sure what I'm talking about yet. I suspect it will be milk cows, because that's what I always end up coming back to. So, don't know, might be food preservation. But whatever you're doing today, y'all, I hope that you just remember to keep it real. See, y'all and my mama was a waitress where they parked M18 wheeler trucks. We didn't have much money. Times were kind of hard, living in a trailer on the edge of grandpa's farm. Yeah, I may not come from much, but I've got just enough.
Stephanie Tallent:As long as my baby's in my arms and the good Lord knows what's in my heart I refuse to be ashamed, it's just a southern thing.