Ep. 331 - Wild Card Wednesday - The Homestead Update

Today's Wild Card Wednesday show provides an update from the farm and homestead.  Over the past month, there's been a lot of activity at home!  As a matter of fact - so much is going on that Rob couldn't even cover the new farmers market that we are participating in this season! 

Tune in to hear the current updates from York Meadow Farm and be sure to check out The April Newsletter from York Meadow Farm to read additional updates!  

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Discussion Links:

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Check out the York Meadow Farm website!

The April Newsletter from York Meadow Farm!
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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:14

Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. My name is Rob Kaiser, and this is another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast, a show that provides insight and tools to build the life and homestead of your dreams. Today is Wednesday, April 20th, 2022, and this is episode number 331. This is a wildcard Wednesday show. And on these Wednesday shows, we cover whatever comes to mind, whatever, whatever I'm feeling. And today I am feeling the homestead. So we're gonna do a homestead update in large part drawing from the monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to if you want to stay up to date on everything that's happening here on our humble farm and homestead. So you can check out YorkMedowFarm.com and in the top left column you will find a little note to subscribe to the newsletter. And the way that these newsletters go, it breaks down what we did the month prior and what we're getting into this month. So let's take a look at exactly that. Now way back in March, we had a headline in the newsletter that read, More Markets, More Growth and Development. And it's basically the same thing in store for this month. April 2022. So in March we we were talking about how we had been invited to a new market, a new farmer's market, by our friends over at Richardson, uh Richardson Farms. And we had also been putting the finishing touches on our commercial kitchen for the upcoming ODA inspection. And this commercial kitchen, this has been a big project. We we uh well my dad's been making sauerkraut for about um five years, uh, six years. It got to a point where that that that maybe is a another show that's worthy of a or another topic that's worthy of a show dedicated to itself. An interview with my dad about how we got into the sauerkraut game. But uh but anyways, another story for another another point in time. It was a project that was something we've been working on for quite a long time, um over a year, and I am pleased to say that we passed the inspection without any violations or corrective action required. And that was a great feeling because we we have to navigate the system a little bit differently, right? What I mean by that is our humble farm and homestead is very simple. We have a log cabin, we have a pole barn, and we have a high tunnel, and then we have a small camper for our tenant farmer. When we talk to the township, our pole barn is a garage. When we talk to the Ohio Department of Agriculture, our pole barn is a warehouse. So we have to be very careful about who or what words we choose when we talk to whom. And this is all part and parcel of being educated and rather learned on the rules so that you know how to play the game most effectively and ultimately position yourself to win. Alright, so what is new on the farm? Alright, this this has been this has been good, this has been uh exciting. I've talked about some of this in passing in past episodes before, but let's take a look at all of the new stuff that's been going on over the past month or so. Like I said, there's been lots of talk recently about all of the growth and development of the fermented foods side of the farm. But some of you guys might be wondering what's happening with bath and body products. On well, last month there was the grand opening of Handmade Haven in Brunswick, a small shop that features over 20 local artisans, and we were more than happy to put some of our bath and body products at their store when we were asked if we would like to showcase some items there. So with increased markets and an increased demand for all products, including but not limited to sauerkrauts, mom has been thinking of doing larger batch soaps. And in her research on how to best scale up the hot process soap process that she uses. So the very first attempt at making a scaled batch of hot processed soap was a lavender soap, and it was a success. The soap was colored with olive oil infused with alconet, and this was added to the base soap batter to give a nice lavender color that everyone likes with their lavender soap. So, what's nice about this is that we are able to you know make four times the amount of soap, like I said, and it opens up the door for additional time, effort, and energy that we can spend creating larger batches of soaps, hand creams, or just simply dedicating that time, effort, and energy to doing other things. Now I also posted a picture uh moving forward off of the Bath and Body products. Some people ask us how we eat our kraut, and I decided to post a picture of a simple salad that I made, and this is something that I do quite often with sauerkraut. I'll just eat it straight up. I have two different kinds in my lunch today, caraway and traditional, which I will just be forking out of a jar into my mouth like a savage, because I think that is oftentimes how it is done best. But if you are a little bit more refined and don't want to go so caveman style, you can top a salad with it. And I wrote that eating healthy doesn't need to be complicated and it doesn't need to include calorie counting, but what it does mean is eating real food from real people. For example, in this picture that I posted, the lettuce was grown on our own land by our tenant farmer Cody. The spinach was from Richardson's, the sardines were from Wild Planet, those were not local. The cheese was local, it was a Tower Road cheese, a bit of a harder cheese from our friends over at Yellow House Cheese. And then I topped the whole thing with something called farm dust from Richardson's, along with our own homemade lemon dill kraut. With a side of pickles, that simple meal was complete. And uh eating healthy like this with consistency has changed my life. I've done episodes about that in the past. I'm not gonna speak at great length about it now, but part of the reason I operate the way that I do now, at least, is because of the way that I eat. Or at least new products that we're experimenting with, because we are we are reaching a point where we want to take it beyond kraut and do more fermented foods. So we are uh we are experimenting with some things like fermented mustard, and in terms of the scale-up process for sauerkraut, we are using food-grade BPA-free five-gallon buckets with airlocks. And this allows the just like mom with her scaled up production, this allows dad, the kraut guy, to increase production, allowing time for additional experimentation with new products. And like I said, one of the new products that we had was a fermented mustard. We also recently tried fermented carrot sticks and a fermented asparagus. So um we'll see what happens when our asparagus starts coming up again, and we will likely try to ferment some of what we planted 12 years ago, which is still in production now. You can get a long life out of asparagus, it is great when it's fresh out of the ground, not so great when it comes from the grocery store. So if you don't think you like asparagus, try growing your own. Most likely, you will be a changed man or changed woman or non-binary, however you choose to identify. I don't care. Alright, so what else was going on last month, this month? Um, at the end of the day, we're just stoked about the continued growth and development of the homestead, and we're very proud to share it with you. Now, a lot of this was gleaned right from the newsletter as it was written out. And um, you know, again, I would encourage you to subscribe to the newsletter if you like these homestead updates. We've got a lot in store for the future. There's a lot of change in store, a lot planned. So stay tuned. If you want to watch us grow and also get some tips on how you can grow your own businesses as well. Um, there were a few more pictures that I posted and shared in the group just because it was cool. We had a family dinner, and I decided to make pancakes for everyone. Uh, that morning, all of the pancake ingredients came from Richardson's Farm store, the pancake mix, the eggs, the milk. Um I did put a little oil in there, but I didn't buy the oil from Richardson's, though you could if you wanted to. Um oh, real quick, one other thing that dad is experimenting with is a breakfast sausage spice. And you know what, guys, I just didn't get to read all of the newsletter because this April newsletter was an action-packed newsletter, so I will link to it in the show notes. Check out the show notes for links to the newsletter and everything else. And guys, that's it for today. We'll catch you tomorrow. This is Rob Kaiser, and thank you.