Ep. 26- Sunset Market & 3 Things You Can Do From Scratch Today

A two-week break turns into a full-on homestead sprint, and we’re laying it all on the table, what’s working, what’s late, and what we’re learning the hard way. I share the real rhythm behind farm life in Tennessee right now: chicken processing with our first batch of birds, rabbits and breeding decisions, and why genetics can be both practical and weirdly exciting when you’re trying to build a healthier, more productive herd over time.

Then I tell you about the wild commitment I made after saying I’d “take the year off”: a Thursday night sunset farmers market on our working farm for eight straight weeks. The goal isn’t profit, it’s community. We’ve got 22 vendors, food trucks, music, and weekly educational demonstrations like a biochar demo focused on regenerative farming, soil health, and orchard care. If you’ve ever wished farmers markets felt more connected and less political, this idea is for you.

We also hit a big dairy surprise: an unexpected calving and the scramble to make sure the calf gets what she needs, including colostrum and a simple mineral support protocol. I talk through A2A2, disease-free goals, “gallons per hoof,” and why I’m adding a proven Jersey Guernsey cross producer to improve output without turning this place into a commercial dairy. To close, I give you an easy path into from-scratch cooking with quick wins like immersion blender mayo, Instant Pot drinkable yogurt, and DIY spice blends, plus what I’m learning from an entrepreneur-focused ChatGPT class.

Subscribe for more real-food, natural living, and homestead systems, then share this with a friend and leave a review. What’s the one skill you’ll start this week?

My Mayonnaise Recipe:

🌿 Dawn's Homemade Mayonnaise (Liquid Coconut Oil Version)

Ingredients

•  1 egg 
•  1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon white vinegar 
•  2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar 
•  1 teaspoon lemon juice 
•  1 teaspoon Dijon mustard 
•  1 teaspoon salt 
•  Tiny pinch paprika 
•  ¼ teaspoon onion powder 
•  ¼ teaspoon garlic powder 
•  1 cup liquid coconut oil 

Directions

1.  Add the egg, vinegars, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, salt, paprika, onion powder, and garlic powder to a wide-mouth mason jar or mixing container. 
2.  Pour the liquid coconut oil on top. 
3.  Place an immersion blender on the bottom of the jar. 
4.  Blend without moving the blender for about 15–20 seconds until the mixture begins to emulsify. 
5.  Slowly raise the blender to incorporate the remaining oil. 
6.  Blend until thick and creamy. 
7.  Refrigerate. 

Notes

•  The coconut oil should be liquid but not hot. 
•  Because it contains coconut oil, it will firm up more in the refrigerator than mayonnaise made with seed oils. 
•  The flavor is mild, especially with refined liquid coconut oil. 
•  Keeps about 1 week in the refrigerator. 

Would you like the version scaled up for a quart-sized batch for your farm kitchen, or do you prefer keeping it in the single-cup-oil batch?

Yogurt:

Make 1 gallon of Bulgarian Yogurt in the InstaPot by adding 1 gallon of skim or whole milk and 1/4 cup of yogurt culture. Come back after 24 hours.

Drinkable Yogurt:

Add 1 cup raw organic sugar, 1 T. vanilla extract, 1 cup frozen organic fruit, and the rest of the blender fill with yogurt. Blend on smoothie setting.  

🌮 Simple Taco Seasoning

•  2 tablespoons chili powder 
•  1 tablespoon cumin 
•  1 tablespoon paprika 
•  1 tablespoon garlic powder 
•  1 tablespoon onion powder 
•  1 teaspoon oregano 
•  1 teaspoon sea salt 
•  ½ teaspoon black pepper 
•  ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional) 

Directions

Mix together and store in an airtight spice jar.

Use

•  Approximately 2 tablespoons per pound of ground meat.

Transcript

Welcome And Two-Week Hiatus

SPEAKER_02 0:14

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. I'm your host, Don Gorham, and today is it is Friday, May the 29th, 2026, and you are listening to episode number 26. All right, so I'm going to kick it off with tell you what's been going on. I know I said I wasn't going to do this, but I'm sorry. I've been gone for two weeks just because we have had so much going on around here. My son graduated and we had lots of family in town. My daughter was here with my grandbaby. And we, you know, we just spent a lot of time doing family stuff. And I just wasn't able to get my podcast recorded. And I apologize for that, but I am back today. And I have a lot of good stuff to tell you. I'm excited about. So,

Chickens Rabbits And Farm Genetics

SPEAKER_02 1:07

other than that, what other than my son graduating and getting ready to start college, we have been doing our first batch of chickens. Kale has been really, bless his heart working hard, sometimes really late at night, really early in the morning, because he's one person processing right now. I really thought that I would be able to help him once he once chicken processing rolled around, but I am just so overrun with stuff with the dairy. Like I am, I'm just so crazy busy with everything else going on with me. I mean, people don't realize how many hours the dairy actually takes. Like if I did nothing else but the dairy, that would be eight hours of my day. And I start my day, you know, around six, sometimes seven, and I work until six, sometimes seven, sometimes nine, just depending on what we've got going on. So I just, I just didn't have another minute in my day to be able to help him. So he's doing it all by by himself. And he's doing a great job. It's just, you know, it's his first batch of 150 that he was trying to get done. So he's a little slower than he probably will be. And I told him, I said, you know, you're at your worst right now that you're ever going to be. It's going to get better. You're going to get better. Everything's going to get better. This is the hardest that it's going to be. So everybody's loving it. Our all our customers are loving his chicken. They're happy about the are very excited about the flavor, the fat content, his cuts. They're they're super clean birds. They look good. They're healthy. So we're just really, really excited to be able to offer that to our herd share members and and the Gorham Market customers. We have rabbits. We've finally kind of gotten the hang of those, breeding them, growing them out. We've got a couple of, we've got our rabbit breeding stock in one area. And then we have the other rabbits out in rabbit tractors. And so we're kind of getting a feel for that. And we're getting ready to process our first couple of rabbits. We're not doing a whole bunch. Um, we just have a couple of coals that we're going to process. Our our breeders so far have only thrown girls. So we're, you know, trying to decide which one of those a good problem to have, trying to decide which ones of those we want to keep, which ones have the genetics that we want. We Kale and I both kind of get really excited about genetics. That's one thing that we have in common. We're very we we get real happy when it when it starts talking about, you know, what traits and certain things that we want to keep on the farm to keep going forward. So we got that coming up.

Why Start A Sunset Market

SPEAKER_02 3:52

And the other thing is that I decided I said that I wasn't going to do anything this year. I wasn't going to do any workshops. I wasn't going to do camps. I was going to take the year off. And when I did workshops and camps, that was like one week in the summer. And workshops are like one Saturday a month that I committed to, well, I don't know what came over me, but all of a sudden I just got a wild hair and decided that I wanted to do a farmer's market. So not only did I commit to something, I committed to every Thursday night in June and July for eight weeks straight. Three hours at a time. Not to mention setup and tear down, cleanup, getting ready, all that kind of stuff. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment, but at the same time, I am I wanted to offer, I wanted to build community. That's always my theme. That's always the thing that I really want to do. I want to bring people together. I want people to have access to other people's stuff and their food and real food and you know, things that are just has the energy of what your neighbor has made. It's just there's a there is something very special and deeply connecting in that. And so that was the feel that I was going for. So I decided that we're going to do this market. And so I just kind of put it out there. And I thought, well, we'll see what we get. I might get five or 10 vendors. It might do nothing. It might fizzle out. Well, the emails started coming in. I didn't really sit down and start putting together my spreadsheet and all of the things that I needed to do until this week, because next Thursday is the first market, and I work better under pressure when I just get it all done, everything in one spot, and work on it all at one time. And I was really pleasantly surprised when I realized that we have 22 vendors, two food trucks, a band, another little girl that wants to play guitar and sing, who is amazing. And we have demonstrations that's going to be done. So

Vendors Music And Weekly Demos

SPEAKER_02 6:03

one of my friends, Tim Riley, he is the owner and operator of Regenerative Orchards. He brought up, well, hey, why don't we do a biochar demonstration? I'm going to be here. Because I'd asked him if he wanted to have like a booth where he could talk to people and stuff. And I was like, oh my God, that's a great idea. Yes, let's do that. And so after he brought that up, I was laying in bed that night, and I was started mulling that over. And I thought, you know, that's something that you don't see at other farmers' markets. Like you go to a farmer's market, it's on concrete, there's cars everywhere. It's in the middle of a town normally. This is on a working farm. And so I started thinking, why not every week have some sort of educational theme to go along with the market? Like the first week is going to be soil health and regenerative farming and orchard design and maintenance and that sort of stuff, along with, and the demonstration for that will be biochar. And he's going to show you how you can make biochar, use biochar anywhere from a big farm to a suburban backyard. Like biochar is one of those amendments and additives that once it's charged and you get it into your soil and you start working it into your compost, like the difference it makes is amazing. And so I thought that would be really cool. So I started thinking, well, I can do a cow milking demonstration. And someone else can do like talking about health, like getting into functional medicine kind of stuff, like the, you know, a focus on health. And we could do another week where we're doing something totally we could show people how to how we process chickens. I mean, there's just so many things that we can do. I'd love to have somebody come and spin wool, sit here on the porch and spin wool so people can see that. There's just so many cool things, and that's something that you don't see at farmers markets. You see it at festivals, you see it at like Self-Reliance Festival, at the Homestead Festival, Homesteaders of America, things like that. They have vendors, they have, but that's you know, that's a deal where you're going and you're listening to speakers and you're buying tickets and you're doing all of that sort of stuff. And it's a much bigger scale. This is very small, very micro in comparison to that. But still a cool concept. And again, I'm not making this is not a money-making venture for me. I'm not charging anybody anything to come and be a vendor. I'm not charging admission. I'm not doing anything. I am going to have my store open, but I'm not pushing my stuff. Um, I can't sell my dairy stuff for one thing. So that's, you know, that puts me at a disadvantage right off the bat. But, you know, Kel can sell his chicken and I have other stuff. I have, you know, homemade vanilla extract. I have elderberry syrup. I have eggs and bread, and you know, there's other things that I can do, but it's really not about me. A thousand percent not making this about me. I want this to be about the community. And that I think when you take the focus off of yourself and put it on other people, amazing things start happening. Like ideas start developing and forming because everybody's working together. And I think people feel that energy. They feel the they they kind of know what my motive is, and my motive is giving other people a place to do things that they might not otherwise, you know, have a place to put their stuff and sell their stuff. Because the city of Dixon doesn't allow people to set up in town. The local farmers market, the Dixon farmers market, God love them, there's wonderful people there. I love the vendors there. There's not a single person at the farmers market that I don't love, but I don't love the politics of it. They're very selective in who they will and won't allow in. And if you're not part of, you know, what they see their their big picture as being, then they won't let you in. It's it's political. And and that's okay. I mean, it, you know, it is what it is. They don't have so many spaces, and there's things they don't allow. Like they do not allow raw milk producers. There would be no way under God's green earth that they would let me set up and sell anything or even meet my herd share members up there. It just would not happen. So I wanted for those people who have not been allowed to vend at the farmer's market or don't have another place to do it, or just that schedule didn't work for them. Like if they wanted to do something at night because they work during the day or they're not available on Saturdays, or their kids have soccer on Saturdays. I wanted an alternate venue for those people. So that's what we're doing. And I'm really, really, really excited about that. I know you can probably hear that in my voice. You know, I've got porta potties coming. That's one thing that I'm paying for out of my pocket. I just ordered it for the entire month of June. They're gonna drop it, come clean it once a week and leave it until the market's over. Um, so I do have that covered. We're gonna, I need somebody to come and hang lights. So if anybody in the that listens is really good at like hanging those really cool outdoor, I don't know what they're called, those oh string lights, you know, the outdoor patio string lights, whatever. I need some of those. I need ambiance. That is literally the only thing that I need outside help on, because I don't I don't even decorate with Christmas lights, so that's not my forte. So if there's anybody that knows how to do that and is really good at doing that, would be willing to climb up some trees and run some cable and do whatever it is that they do to hang those lights, please contact me. It would be very much appreciated.

Surprise Calf And Dairy Upgrades

SPEAKER_02 12:02

So, uh update on the dairy. There's some exciting things happening in the dairy. We we had an unexpected calving. Uh, we got this cow, Beulah, from a friend, and she was not a cow person, God bless her. She, you know, she thought she wanted to make milk cow, and then she decided she didn't want to milk cow, it was too much work, so they had been calf sharing. The production of this cow with a pretty decent size udder had dropped to nearly nothing, as they weren't milking her. And that and that's totally fine. I'm not knocking that, but so when we got her, she was, I don't know, making a gallon a day, maybe gallon and a half, sometimes a half a gallon, and we were just trying to hold off until what we thought her dry period was going to be two months before she calved again. I thought, well, best case scenario, she'll probably do around the last of August, and I was gonna dry her off the last of June. So one morning, Cale texted me and he said, Hey, we've got a calf in the field. And I was like, What? And sure enough, Beulah had calved this beautiful little half holstein, half jersey, they call them a hojo, little heifer calf. So I I'd never had that happen before. I did not know what to do. I mean, I kind of did know what to do, but wasn't a thousand percent sure what to do since I'd never actually encountered it. But I wasn't sure she could make colostrum for the calf herself. So I we thought out some colostrum that we had saved from a previous calving from another cow and made sure that we got a good two gallons of colostrum down the calf. And she did. She took it really, really well. She has great vigor. I went ahead and gave her a shot of multi-man just to make sure, excuse me, just to make sure that she had all the nutrients that she needed, because we are sort of selenium deficient here in Tennessee, and I've decided to make that part of my protocol. Going forward, anytime we have the mom is getting a shot of multi-man and the baby's getting a shot of multi-man just as a prophylactic. We're just gonna make sure that we don't have any problems, and that's one of those things that is not going to hurt by giving it to them. So that's that's what we're going to do going forward. So I'm really excited. I'm definitely going to keep that calf because having the Holstein genetics with the jersey genetics will really help improve my number of gallons I get per hoof on the ground, so to speak. I'm trying to, I'm trying to now that I have bread for, you know, I have all A2, A2, disease-free. Everybody's good in in the actual health genetics and the protein genetics department. Now we're going to start breeding for production. I'm gonna get a ticket or got water. I got a little tickle in my throat. So we're gonna start breeding for production and try to get because right now I've got ten cows, nine cows that I'm milking. I'm sorry, nine cows that I'm milking, and I'm getting twenty gallons of milk between those nine cows. And that is terrible. That is absolutely terrible production. And I have a couple that are less than a gallon producers. Well, I shouldn't say that. At peak, they were two, two and a half, first calf heifers. So I'm gonna give them another chance, another crack at it to see, you know, if their production comes up, if it doesn't, we'll just kind of see. But in the breeding process, we're definitely gonna start breeding for heavier producers, but I don't want to get so heavy that I get into commercial dairy land. Because we still kind of want to keep that homestead, you know, minimal grain, keep them as healthy as we can, keep them as much grass as we can, and I don't want to cross over that threshold. But with that being said, that leads me into my next thing that I have committed to buying a new cow, and I I've wanted this cow for a long time. Tried to buy her back in January, but I did not have enough money for what the lady was asking. And she's a friend of mine, she's somebody that I know. We've had other dealings before, I've sold her calves, it's somebody that I trust. Um, but she has this phenomenal cow that is at peak at 10 gallon a day producer on twice-a day milking, and she's half jersey and half guernsey, which is really, really what I wanted to get into some of my genetics. I love the jerseys, I'm not getting away from jerseys, but I kind of like having one or two jersey uh guernsey mixes because their their milk is you know that yellow and it's it's very creamy and it just it's really, really good. So she will be coming hopefully in the next month or two. She's not due until the end of August, which will help me tremendously if I can get her and she freshens at you know anywhere from six to ten gallons. She's going to help my chill tank dramatically and help my bottom line dramatically because I need and I'll probably have to move some cows off to make room for her. Totally fine. I'm I'm actually good with that. As far as genetics goes, she ticks all the boxes too. She's very healthy. She has she's completely disease-free. She's A2A2, good producer. She does have to have a little more groceries than some of the other cows probably do. I'm okay with that. I'm really good with that. Other things going on. I've

Using ChatGPT For Small Business

SPEAKER_02 18:16

been really, really busy the last two, three weeks. I'm on the week three. I'm taking uh Jack Spearcoe, the survival podcast. I'm taking his Chat GPT class that become dangerous with Chat GPT for entrepreneurs. And I have learned so much about using Chat GPT in a positive way for business. And it's there's so much more beyond creating images and having it just, you know, create an email for you or or whatever. There's so much more to it that I did not realize could be done with Chat GPT. So really enjoying that class, I would probably take it again. I feel like I have gotten my money's worth on what I've learned already. And I'm only three weeks into an eight-week class. So I would I would encourage you that if you are a solopreneur or a small super small business, that this is a class that will benefit anybody because AI is here to stay, whether we whether we want it to be or not. You can complain about the data centers, you can uh jump up and down, scream, wailing and gnashing of teeth, whatever you want to do, get it, but it's not changing. And you either learn to use it and use it well, or you're going to be left in the dust. The ones who are using it, who are embracing it, who are learning how to learning we how it will benefit them are going to be light years ahead of everybody else. So I would just encourage you if you have any interest in in entrepreneurship at all, uh taking a class like that is is worth every penny.

Garden Delays And Rotational Grazing

SPEAKER_02 20:17

The messy middle, I'll tell you the things that I had really, really, really good intentions and stuff is just not getting done. Like, for instance, it it's almost the first of June and my garden is still not planted. I have my tomatoes and my peppers planted, and that's it. I do not have green beans planted, I don't have purple hole peas planted, I don't have my big bits of squash planted, the cure cubits. I have a like I wanted to do a whole roll of cucumbers. I did not do that. I haven't done it. It's it's just been raining like crazy for the last two weeks, 10 days, somewhere running there. And I can't I can't plant in the rain. Unfortunately, I should have done it the first of May, like I always do. But we've been so busy trying to form the garden, make hills, put the, you know, we're doing big hilled up rows, and then we're putting the wheat barrier down over those and then burning the holes, planting in the holes, you know, trying to make it less maintenance and more no-till. Because we want to be able to just pull that back and cover crop it and then till and you know, kind of work that in in the spring. So a lot of work is going into the formation of the garden with not enough time left to actually plant the garden. So that's kind of where we are on that. We are rotationally grazing the cows now. I think Kel has sectioned off something crazy, like 14 or 15 paddocks up in the in the field, and I'm super appreciative to him. For being able to do that. That has really helped the grass growing. They're by the time they get back around to the first one, we're fine, we're getting some seed heads. It's it's it's looking good. It's looking lush. Of course, the the rain has helped that tremendously. Um so we've been thankful for it in the pasture, thankful for it in the kitchen garden, but not quite so thankful for it in the row garden. So that's kind of where we are on that. If you are in the area, would love for you to come and visit us for the sunset market. Bring your, you know, bring your family, bring your kids. It's going to get better. It's the worst it's going to be right now. The very first one will be the worst because I will learn from the first experience. But I do not let things like that hold me back. I don't care if it's a failure. I don't care if I'm embarrassed. I don't care. I don't care. What I learn from that will be what I need to do going forward, how I make it better, how I bring more people in, how I make room for more people. I might have to move from here and do it somewhere else. And that's okay too. I just I'm really looking forward to it, and I would love to see you. So if you could just, you know, swing by here, see if there's anything that you need, you know, for your family, and say hi to me. Let me know you listen.

Easy From-Scratch Kitchen Wins

SPEAKER_02 23:26

I am going to last thing I'm going to talk about before I go is I'm going to give you an idea of just a couple of things. You know, everybody wants to learn how to do the things from scratch, but it's so overwhelming. Like my daughter talks about when she goes to the grocery store, God love her. She's a nurse, has her first child. She's a helicopter mom. And that's a that's okay. But she's a helicopter mom, and everything scares her and everything worries her. And I think she sleeps with one eye open and one eye on Savannah. And she just doesn't know where to start. And she, you know, she's hearing things from the medical industry, and then she's hearing things from me, and then then she's seeing this side of stuff on social media, and then you flip to another social media, and they show you this other stuff, and you know, she doesn't know like who's telling the truth. She wants to believe the medical industry because that's her format, that's like that's her that's her rock, that's her formation where she where she started. But at the same time, she's also kind of learned to question things, and some things just don't add up. And so I told her, you know, I was like, just start with one thing. Just you can't do everything, you can't get every single chemical, every single everything out of your diet all at once. So I want to encourage you that if if you want to start with your kitchen and there's you want to learn how to make something from scratch, I would start with mayonnaise. Mayonnaise from scratch, I always thought it was like the hardest thing to make. I had tried it in a blender, I had tried a million different ways. I could not get it to set up in the consistency that mayonnaise is supposed to be. And I was talking to Nicole and I told her I couldn't do it. And she was like, Oh, yes, you can. And I was like, No. She was like, use an immersion blender. And I was like, Oh, okay, an immersion blender. I had not tried that before. So all it is to make mayonnaise is some salt, egg, whatever oil that you want, and that's where you that's where they get you. You got to choose a healthy oil. They want to use vegetable oils, seed oils, industrial seed oils, and the store bought mayonnaise, but you can use either like what I like to use is liquid coconut oil because it has no flavor whatsoever. It is kind of expensive, but it is a good option and it works really great in mayonnaise. So you can use that that oil, you can choose vinegar, lemon juice as your acidifier just to give it a little bit of that acidity. And once you make it yourself, like it changes the way you look at sandwiches, chicken salad, egg salad, homemade dressings. Like that's the base for so many other things. So try to make homemade mayonnaise. I will drop my recipe into my show notes. There's no point in me just reading it out because you know, most people are probably driving or doing something else and they're not going to write it down when they hear me say it anyway. So you control all the ingredients though when you make it from home. And that's something that makes, you know, it makes you feel good because you did something from scratch. So if you want to start with one thing that you can get a little quick win, I would recommend you start with mayonnaise. You could also make yogurt, drinkable yogurt. That's one of the things that my customers love is my drinkable yogurts. It sounds complicated, but it's really, really not. I make mine in an Instapot, I hit the yogurt setting, I put my culture in, I come back 24 hours later, and I have yogurt. It's not hard. And then when you, if you want to flavor it, if you want to make drinkable yogurts, I will put my recipe for that in the show notes, but it's just sugar, organic sugar or honey, and fruit, organic fruit. I get the frozen bags of organic fruit from Kroger, or I'll get fresh fruit if from someone if I know it's you know, if I know it's organic, and then a little bit of vanilla extract and your yogurt, and then you just put it all in the smoothie blender, mix it up, pour it into your bottles, and voila, you're done. You have drinkable yogurt. And the lastly, another thing that you could make is spice blends, seasoning mixes. Super easy place to start. You can make ranch, you can make taco seasonings, you can make poultry seasonings, you can make all the girt garlic and herb blends. You don't need any fillers, you don't need any mystery powders or overpriced packets. You get just real spices in a jar. And once you make your own blends, cooking from scratch gets a whole lot easier. Just keep a few little homemade spice blends ready, and that will make your weeknight meals make or make them feel much faster and better. So just in closing, you do not have to make everything from scratch. But every single skill that you add does matter. Nobody has to do it all. I can't do it all. I still buy some things, I look for the best quality that I can get. Now there's the good, better, best or bad, I guess. Bad, good, and best. But everything that you learn gives you a little bit more confidence to add the next thing. And confidence in the kitchen matters, especially when you're trying to feed your family, take care of your family. Um, and we women especially carry so much guilt. And we feel like, you know, the the health of our family, the well-being of our family, all of that we feel like falls on our shoulders and our responsibility. So when you just take one or two little things, you start to realize that you can do the next thing and the next thing. And it changes how you feed your family, it changes how you see yourself and how you feel control over what is happening in your life. And little by little, you remember that you are capable. You are able to do this. It is not rocket science, it is something that anybody, anywhere, regardless of if you've ever cooked from scratch or not, you can do this. So just pick one thing this week. Not 10, just one. Pick one of those things that I said, make it from home, learn from it, and let that be a small bit of confidence that carries you to the next thing. So

Pick One Thing And Close

SPEAKER_02 30:25

with that, I hope that you have enjoyed this episode. And if you know, if you like it, you can make a comment, you can share it, let other people know about it, and whatever you're doing, and whatever you have on the docket today, I hope that you remember that you just gotta keep it real.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

My daddy was a topic, laying off the club. And my mama was a whip with it on the mate. We didn't have much money.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Living a trailer on the trainer, my nose within my heart. I read a bit of a little bit more.