🌿 Episode #6: NASA Engineers, Solar Living & Medicinal Botany on Rowland Hills (With Michelle Rowland )

In this episode of Tongue Not Bitten, we head out to beautiful Rowland Hills in Opelika, Alabama for an incredible property tour with owners  Michelle Rowland and her husband.

As full-time NASA engineers, this power couple brings a unique, highly technical lens to sustainable living. We explore their completely solar-paneled estate, learn how they power their entire property from the sun, and  we look at Michelle’s variety of  stunning  medicinal plants and bushes.

If you are curious about green technology, off-grid infrastructure, or natural remedies, you won't want to miss this inspiring tour of their beautiful land. There will be a video up soon on our youtube channel .

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• Follow us on social media for soon to come video of the  Rowland Hills property.

🎧 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• 100% Solar Powered: The realities, setup, and benefits of running a fully solar-paneled estate.
• Nature's Medicine Cabinet: A guided look at Michelle's favorite medicinal plants and bushes.
• Rowland Hills Tour: A scenic look at the gorgeous landscapes of Opelika, Alabama.

@TONGUENOTBITTENPODCAST

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to Tone Not Bitten. I am so excited today. We went, um, we're not going to talk about the Fox today. I'll pick that back up on how that's going. Um, it is July now. I hope everybody had a great fourth. Um, so we went on a field trip of sorts. I was so excited. Um, Michelle Roland and her husband invited us out to their beautiful property in Roland Hills in Opalica, Alabama. And it is a ground mount array solar paneled property. It is all solar paneled and it is all ran by solar power. So that is so cool. They both work for NASA, and they have this beautiful property that she's trying to convert back to a natural source. Um, it was a it was a long time ago, a plantation. Um, there's an old plantation house there that's not there anymore. They bought this property, and she's gonna talk about that, and we're gonna walk the property, and there'll be a video of this um property on YouTube soon. I'm gonna get my YouTube channel up and going, and so you'll be able to see the video. She also has amazing herbal, municipal, natural plants growing there. There's no pesticides, there's no anything like that out there. So you can go out there and you can forge and you can harvest her stuff. She has tons of elderberry bushes, um, which I actually she gave me elderberry while we were there, and I was so excited. She's going to in the future have like a little stand out there where you're gonna like whatever's in season for that, like elderberries, um, beauty berry, um sumac, any of those bushes that are there, she's gonna have like a little stand, like a little farm stand out there, and you'll be able to go out there and purchase on certain times of the month her things, and we'll talk about that later because we plan on going out there quite a bit um and helping her get that back up, and also she's gonna start doing some mushrooms out there, so that's exciting. But we went out there, we did videos. Um, I have her recorded talking about her property, so this podcast is gonna be basically about her talking about the property, and then we're gonna do the video, and you'll see the video of her beautiful property, and it's amazing. So, we'll start with that. Um, I'm excited, it was beautiful. I'm excited to start making my elderberry um syrup, and so I'm gonna put it on now where we're she's talking about her property and what she does.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Thank Hi, my name is Michelle, and this is my property. Uh, I live in Opalika, Alabama, and uh we bought this property in 2017. Uh, it was a tree farm, and so I'm trying my best to convert it back to a natural habitat and to uh only have primitive uh products. Like that's a devil's walking stick right there. Um there's a lot of that's a beauty berry coming trying to live. There's a lot of sweet gum on the property. Um I did make a deal with the guy that cut the trees to leave the hardwoods that he could, so that really helped. Uh as you can see, we have some really tall trees on the property, so that helped with that. Um, these are musky dines. So they're not really ripe yet. We can make some musky dine jellies. But these are all natural, they all came out. I didn't plant them. Uh so I'm trying to um really use what's here on the property, and I don't want anything that's um invasive. Um, the people that had a home on the property back in the 60s uh planted um wisteria, and that has been a struggle since we bought the property to contain the wisteria. It's very evasive, um, but we've been able to keep it to the front of the property. There's another beauty berry growing there. These pine trees um are weren't planted, they just came up after they did the pine harvest, and slowly I've been trying to uh cut them down and get them out of the property and thin like um they're not native to this area, they're just grown here because uh they grow fast for lumber, and so I'm trying to remove them.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

And then she's got mullen and samac and she's got elderberry, elderberry, which is so awesome, and I'm so excited she invited us out today. And I know I usually talk about the flocks, and I'm gonna get back to that, but I was excited to get out because it is fixing to be time to make my elderberry syrup, and it is time to start getting ready for fall and winter, and so I was super excited. And also, you want something organic, and this is completely natural, completely organic. She has no pesticides here, we're not near roads, it's just woods, and it is awesome, and that's what we need. You need somebody that's growing abundance of it, and she has abundant trees of elderberry and abundant mullen and abundant goodness, and so that's what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

We have yellow root, yep, uh sumac, a lot of sumac. Um, and a lot of sweet gum.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

So if you need the sweet gum balls for tamuflu, that's what I make tamuflu out of is sweet gum balls. So that's exciting. So that's exciting. So I'm excited at to come and forage and walk, and I'm excited about the history of this land. It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

I'm just trying to to make it what it was. Back when nobody lived on it and nobody or what the Indians would have done with it and taken care of it. I really respect them and want to make sure the land is treated.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

And she's got um stinging nettle, she's got wild fern.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

I have stinging nettle, where's stinging nettle?

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Back it was back there. We walked on it past the trail and you were talking. I just I'll show you when we go back there. Okay, cool, cool, cool.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Stinging nettles. I didn't have some, but I didn't know where it was.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Stinging nettle. I'm sure she has clover somewhere. We've just haven't seen it yet, but I'm sure here she has. She's got wild briar. She's got honeysuckle, magnolia for magnolia leaves for tea and inflammation.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Yeah, and I don't allow any hunting on the land either. So there's no um, you know, hunting season problems or anything like that with being able to gather stuff.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

And then hopefully we'll get her out here doing some mushrooms.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Oh, I'm excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Yeah, I'm excited about that too. I'm excited to get that started. Some Rishi and some actual not faux turkey tail, but some real turkey tail and stink horns.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Yeah, love some mushrooms. That's awesome. I just said, oh, I've eaten that. So do you see any of that um mint that you were talking about? Cherokee mint.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

I haven't seen it yet. But I know with all this, it's here somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Cherokee mint, loves the jerky mint tea.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

We don't know what we have. We've been we've been w obsessed with the hoarder show, and it's like they don't know what they have and they find it in there and stuff pretty fun.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

So I'm excited. So me and Casey came out here today to spend some time with them, see their property, talk about the property and look at it, and I'm excited to harvest some of the stuff and go back and make great stuff out of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Trying to tame my husband that he's not moving.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

Bye.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Beauty berry.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

That's exciting. It's great for your skin.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Well, I think it's funny because they call it beauty berry. And it actually isn't good for your skin until you're gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Oh yeah, so good for your skin. And we have it so abundant here in Alabama.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

We're gonna look like we have facelift.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

So abundant here in Alabama.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Elderberries off the property plants. I can I can do it. In the spring, they'll have these like weird green sprouts that come out and you cut those off at an angle and put them in dirt, you don't even have to put them in water and it'll make a plant. Thank you for this.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Oh, you're oh thank you for this. I'm like so excited to be here. Look at that CMAC, so pretty. And she's got white C Mag, but we stay like in the white.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

One of the things that we've done when we built our house, my husband and I are both uh engineers at NASA, and so we decided to uh go 100% solar. Um, it's a little uh hard in Alabama to um because we have Alabama power, they will not um let us do like uh power and solar. They won't let you mix it. Uh they'll actually fine you. So we that made us do the push to go 100% solar. So we have uh no uh other power going to the house except for the solar power. Uh we do have a backup generator for in the winter time. We can go with our batteries that we have, we can go up to four days with no sun. But when you get to that fourth day, the we'll have the generator, it'll automatically cut on when the batteries get to a certain point. And last year we only had to do that twice. So I thought that was pretty good for being 100% solar. We generate in the summer, like a day-to-day, uh, we've generated way more electricity than we'll use. So my husband has an air-conditioning garage because in the summertime we're generating that much power, so you can use it and it doesn't, you know, hurt the house or anything like that. So if you guys are interested in uh learning about solar power and more about that, you can uh reach out to us and uh let's there an email that they need to um you can uh email me at um Michelle dot rooland76 at yahoo.com. Awesome. So awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

And and does Alabama Power do that because like when solar power started coming in and people started doing it, was it because like if you use a certain amount of solar and they use that, they had to pay you? Was that the way it was?

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Um I was fine even if they didn't pay us. If they if that way we wouldn't have had the batteries are the most expensive thing in solar, and so the batteries cost us uh about forty thousand dollars. So if we hadn't have had to the whole setup was sixty-two thousand. So if we hadn't have had to do batteries, you know, and been able to have Alabama power here or whatever, then we would have been able to do it. But um yeah, there's um lawsuits and stuff going on out in the power world. Um but we're not involved in that. We just did our power. Uh we um, you know, built our house. It's been three years now that we've been using it and uh it works just great. So we love it.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Yeah, awesome. Storms, it's good, everything's good.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Yeah, uh, we do have uh safety feature that if lightning strikes within so close, uh the system will just shut down to protect itself and then it'll re-o re-come back up in about three minutes. Awesome. So that happened today. We had a before you got here, we had a huge lightning storm and uh it hit really close. Uh it was really loud. Um and so it the system shuts down to protect itself itself, it's grounded and everything, and then it came back on in the three minutes. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

So cool, so very cool.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

And a lot of people worry about the panels uh with hail and stuff like that. Those are actually the cheapest part of the solar unit. Those are only it's like 200 a panel. So, and you wouldn't lose all of your pan, I mean, it would have to be a really bad, you know, hailstorm to lose them all. And those panels are actually um dual, and so they get the reflection of the sun off the ground and they accept it too. That's awesome. So it's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Very cool, very, very cool. So we thanked Michelle and her husband. Um, we met her neighbors, and it was just a beautiful piece of property and a beautiful day, and we were excited to be there and walk the property and see it, um, and learn about the solar panels and learn how she's doing powering her property like that. Um, we were excited to learn about the history of that property, and we'll talk more about that next episode when we go out there. Um, we plan to go out there more in the future, but we were excited. She even cooked and um offered us food. We had eaten before we got there, but they're like the best people, and we are so excited to go out there. And I was excited to get the elderberry, and I'll be making the elderberry syrup um soon, and then I'll also be making the when the gumballs get ready, um, the sweet gumballs. I'll be making the camouflue tincture from her property as well, because all that's pesticide free and organic and clean, and I don't have to worry about anything being on there, um, even though we clean it thoroughly. You just want to make sure you're getting it from a good natural source. And Michelle um's property, her and her husband's property at Roland Hills have a beautiful natural source. I mean, they're not even using the power, they're using the solar panels, so that's exciting. So I hope you stay tuned. Um, like I said, there'll be a video on her property. Um, we'll have that video up, and that um will be on YouTube soon on Tung Not Bit and channel, but um, we'll have that soon. So thanks for listening today. I was excited to get away from the Fox talk for a little bit. Um, like I said, it's that's been a horrific journey for me. And thank you for being patient with us. This is my first podcast, and um, it was a big leap for me. I've had the domain for a while, but this is a this was a big leap. And the goal to this was to talk about um to share people in Alabama's properties and what they do and um the cool stuff that we have around us. Um, you know, Michelle and her husband work for NASA, and that's very cool. And um, just to be around people, but also to educate and inform, like with the Foxbox bite, with all the stuff at the ER, what happened to me. Um, I want to share that. Um, how you advocate for yourself, what we need to do to take that further. When an ER hospital or doctor's office fails you, there's things you can do. You don't have to just sit there and take that. Um, there's a whole system out there, and I hope to share that how to make that happen and what to do with that. But also to educate you, just like with the solar panels and Alabama Power, um, not wanting to do both on a property that has the solar panels anymore because of that. Like in like other states get to do different things. Um, and just like with the rabies thing here, um, other states have what we call bait bombs, and that vaccinates wild animals that are in the city limits around subdivisions where you're taking the property and there's more animal wildlife there. Um, those are the things that I hope to bring to this channel to just inform people in our community about things that can happen that's happening in other states that can also happen here. Um, and maybe Alabama can um get on board with some of those things. So, or that you can write the legislation and you can write your Senate and let them know that these are things that happened somewhere else, and maybe it's time that Alabama step up and do that as well. So that was my goal into making this. Um, I also shared my stories. I promise we're gonna have more lighthearted, fun stuff on here as well, but we'll also have informative information. So thank you so much for listening to me, and thanks for being kind and good because I am not an expert at this. This is not um my scope of practice, but I do want to share um things with you um from past and present, and um, I want to share other people's um experiences and stories. So I hope you have a great day. Thanks for listening. Stay well, feel beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

They tell you to swallow and keep it all inside. Hide all the messy parts, no place to run or hide. But the truth comes bubbling up, we're keeping it on written. Welcome to the show where the tongue is not bitten. Oh, we're picking up and letting it out.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Oh, that's it.