Abundantly Blessed Farm

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Scott and Lydia at Abundantly Blessed Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Lydia and Scott at Abundantly Blessed Farm. How are you guys? I'm good. Doing well. Thank you. It's a really pretty day in Minnesota. Where are you? We're in Ohio and it is rainy, which we are very thankful for.

00:29
because it has been very dry this summer. Yeah, we had a really rainy spring, but it's been very dry for the last couple of weeks. So we're waiting on some rain here too. So tell me about yourselves and what you guys do.

00:45
We started a lavender farm about two years ago. Um, we had visited Michigan and visited a lavender farm up there. We had an extra acre at our property and we weren't sure what to do with it other than just mow it. And so we came back and decided we'd plant some lavender and see where it went. So we have been growing lavender and then we started a farm stand and we sell some products out of that. And then we've also started selling some, um, that pasteurized milk.

01:14
So we do pre-orders for milk that we sell on our farm stand as well. Nice, when I saw you guys are primarily lavender farmers, I was very excited because I haven't talked to anyone on this podcast about lavender yet. So what made you choose lavender? Yeah, so neither one of us have a true green thumb. So that was one of the things that attracted us to the plant. So when we went to Michigan, we took a tour, we were asking a lot of the interns there.

01:45
we were to start growing this, how much of a green thumb do you need? Each one of them said, yeah, we're all going to kill our plants. It's totally fine. It was a little bit of some hope that we had some chance. Lavender is a Mediterranean herb. So it grows in honestly some really rocky, junky soil. As long as it has good drainage, it will just take off. It'll explode.

02:13
And just thinking about the past two weeks, it's been severely dry here, brown grass everywhere. And the lavender loved it. Nothing else loved it, but the lavender certainly did. So kind of the main reason why we chose it is because either one of us have a green thumb and we've only killed off a few. So we're thankful for that. Yeah. And lavender has so many great properties. You can use it for, you can eat it.

02:42
I don't love it, but you can put it in lemonade, I hear, and you can use it as a seasoning for cooking meats and stuff. It's really nice to have as a dried flour in a bouquet. It's really nice to have in a bouquet not dried because it smells amazing. And you can use it in soaps and balms and lotions and things, yes? Absolutely, yes. So we actually grow two main varieties. One is a culinary variety. It's called Munstead.

03:11
England lavender. That's the one that we use for our lavender syrup kit. Our lavender sugar. We actually sell that we wholesale that a couple of bakers in the area who actually incorporated into a lavender lemon cookie lavender lemon scones. We've used it for a lavender lemonade made that fresh here on the farm and it's amazing. And then the other variety that we grow is something called phenomenal. It's a hybrid variety mostly for

03:39
its flower production, also for its oil production, because like you said, the scent is truly to die for. Even once it's dried, the scent is still present. You just kind of have to rub the plant a little bit, and you get that wonderful lavender scent right back. So, it's truly versatile. We use that for some of our other products, our linen spray.

04:04
Lydia makes a tallow bomb. It's so tallow, it's rendered beef fat. That's great as a lotion, as a cosmetic agent. So yeah, it's definitely a wide variety of uses. And we're very thankful that we can grow it here locally. Yeah, we grow it here every year, but we only grow a few plants because it doesn't do really well because our dirt is very black and really loamy and it isn't dry.

04:33
So, and especially this year, it wasn't dry. We grew our lavender in the greenhouse in a pot and that's doing fantastic because it wasn't in the wet dirt. But my go-to for lavender is when anyone on the house has a headache, we have lavender oil in a bottle. And anytime anyone has a headache, the first thing we do is take a sniff off that bottle of lavender oil because it really does take the edge off. It truly does, yeah. It's got so many great properties, whether it's for migraine relief.

05:02
We even have some individuals who claim that it's really helpful for just general pain control. It's fantastic for sleep. We know that. Great for anxiety. It's an all-around wonderful herb that can be used for many different things. Thinking about plantain, so we actually grow it in a limestone base. That's one thing that we have found that's been fairly successful because we've got a lot of dense clay in our area and it does not grow well in clay.

05:32
But as long as you mound it up and you grow it in limestone, it does seems to do fairly well. We should try that. Hmm. See, again, this is why I love doing the podcast because I learn things all the time and Minnesota has tons of limestone. So why not try that? Yeah. So the other thing we do is we mix it in with a little bit of topsoil or potting soil so that you don't have some.

06:02
You still have some nutrient properties there. We got that idea from a farmer down in Virginia. She's one of the largest lavender farms, this side of the Mississippi. She grows thousands of lavender plants every year. That's one of the things that she does is she uses a, they call it dirty limestone where she's from, an unwashed limestone. She can get it really cheap, but yeah, came up with that idea and it's done.

06:31
Like I said, it's done pretty well. Well, we will have to add that to the arsenal of tricks that we are gaining from every episode I do of this freaking podcast that I started as a hobby. Who knew? So what else do you guys do besides lavender? Yes. That's pretty much the main crop we grow here on. You know, we only have a small farm. We've got two and a half acres that we have here on the property. So we do the lavender. We have sunflowers.

07:00
We've done fairly well with the sunflower. We do have some other wildflowers here on the property. We've got chickens that we raise mostly for our own egg production. We've also done some meat chickens along the way where we sold off some of those. Yeah, honestly, it's been a lot of it has been turning our lavender into various products. That's really where we've seen kind of the most success from test for stuff. Okay, do you love it?

07:31
Absolutely. Yeah. From a business standpoint, 100%. And even just from the plant standpoint, our kids, we have four children right now under the age of 10. And they love the scent of lavender. They love spraying on their pillows at night, being able to use that. And yeah, it's honestly been a great opportunity for us as a family to bond together. But we also see our farm as a ministry.

08:00
being able to invest in the lives of others, and just truly being able to share the love of the woods with others. So we've been able to do that. Very thankful for that opportunity. Fantastic. I love it when people want to help the community. We do that too. We didn't have a lot of chance to do that this summer because the way we help our community is by giving some of our extra produce to the food shelf. However, our garden did terribly this year because of the wet.

08:30
We haven't been able to donate anything to the food shelf because we haven't had anything. I'm very sad on many levels about this growing season this year. No, absolutely. It seems like across the US it's been kind of a hot year. Yes. Well, we got spoiled because the first three summers we were here, we moved here four years ago, were wonderful. We were swimming in everything. And selling and donating and sharing.

09:01
And this spring, my husband was like, it's gonna be a rough gardening season. I was like, yep, that's okay. We were really lucky the first three, it's all right. You take what you're given. So that's what we were given. No, 100%. Yeah, unfortunately, you know, that's one thing that we have learned as, you know, kind of new to the area of farming, large gardening.

09:30
That you know, you can't control the weather and you can't control the outcomes and you just roll with the punches Whatever is is given to you you you embrace Yes, and we're embracing tomatoes right now because my husband is a very smart man and He planted tomatoes before the rains and they did not do anything and then he planted again and they Started coming in about a month ago and those plants are almost done

10:00
And then he planted again on the off chance that the second planting wouldn't do anything. And so the third planting is now set with green tomatoes and they're starting to get blush on them. And as long as the frost holds off, we might actually get some from the third planting as well. So we may yet be able to donate some food to the food shelf. We're not sure. So how many plants do you guys put in the ground as far as tomatoes? I think he put in 150 on the first planting.

10:30
Benke put in 75 on the second planting and I think the third planting was 50. Yeah. God bless you guys. That's, that's awesome. Uh huh. Well, we also eat a lot of tomatoes in the winter. We like tomato sauce. We like spaghetti. We like lasagna. We like to put tomato sauce. We like our homemade tomato sauce on our homemade pizzas. We like tomato sauce in the stock for our.

10:57
pot roast. So we use tomato sauce all winter long. How big is your garden? 150 feet by 100 feet. Wow. So yeah, it takes up a lot of room for the tomatoes and the cucumbers. And we do other stuff but usually the cucumbers and the tomatoes are the majority of the space in that garden. So, but anyway, this isn't about me,

11:28
So how hard was it to get into the business mindset when you decided you were gonna start making and selling?

11:38
I would say it's been a little challenging, just finding the time to get into it. And I can't say we're completely there yet either. I think it's a lifestyle change of just deciding what you're selling is worthwhile, that people want it. And we can be kind of frugal people. And so knowing that we might not spend the price that we charge, allowing ourselves to charge what is reasonable.

12:06
And what we make a profit on has been probably the biggest challenge for us. Um, you know, just charging what we need to and not undercharging. So something else that, uh, you know, we've, we've, uh, I won't necessarily say struggled with, but something that we've learned to embrace a little bit has been not everybody is your customer. Right. And that's one thing that we have really had to kind of

12:35
shift our mindset around that it's okay if people say no, it's okay if people walk in, look at your stuff, walk away or it's okay if your neighbor down the road doesn't even stop by to take a look at your stuff. That's okay. Because yeah, at the end of the day, you're not selling to everybody. Even if we've got produce, we've got extra produce.

13:03
Yes, everybody needs to eat, but not everybody needs to eat our stuff. And that's been honestly, probably one of the biggest challenges that I have had has been kind of lifting my mind around that. Um, and like Lydia said, you know, we are very brutal people. And one of the things that we've really had to kind of embrace has been, you know, kind of getting over some of that mindset. So, yeah.

13:33
I have been listening to a metric but ton of podcasts lately. And it's really funny because I was never a podcast listener until I started my own podcast, which is crazy. But I've been listening to podcasting podcasts and marketing podcasts and home setting podcasts because I need to learn about how to do this. And in the process, I've been learning a lot about mindset and about charging what your products are worth.

14:01
There is a podcast that Charlotte Smith does, if you type in her name in Facebook. Three shell companies. Yeah, she's fantastic. And she talks a lot about charging what your products are worth, and she has a formula to figure that out. So I don't know, if you listened to her already, yay, but I just wanna put it out there for anybody that doesn't know about her, go check her podcast out too, because she really has been a big help.

14:31
Yeah, I ended up coming across her one day on YouTube and started following along some of her content. And, you know, my, are we willing to pull the trigger on, on one of her courses? Not at this point. No, me either. Just to grow and continue to develop some different ideas. But yeah, I tell you, that's, that's one of the biggest struggles I think honestly, any new business person has, you know, as far as the selling aspect. And one of the other challenges, I was just thinking about this.

15:01
as we were talking, but one of the other challenges that we have had has been, and when I say we, I mean more me than anything, not wasting your energy on social media. Is it important that people find you? Yes. Is it important that people hear about you and learn about you? Yes.

15:24
but it doesn't always have to go through social media. It can go through word of mouth marketing. It can go through Google. It can go through your own website. It doesn't have to be an expensive website. Because yeah, that's one thing that I have found with even other farms in our area that have tried starting up, that they tend to fizzle out fairly quickly when you put out a few posts and no one comes and buys my stuff.

15:52
Because yeah, you gotta get found first. So.

15:57
Preach to my own self here because yeah, something we've been working through. I think it's a don't put all your eggs in one basket kind of thing, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And since we're talking about homesteading, don't put all the eggs in one basket. But yeah, I had no idea how much background there is in learning to run a business. And if you've never done it before,

16:25
you can spend six months learning about all the ins and outs of running a business. And you'll never start a business if you do it that way because you will be afraid. You will get three months into learning how to start a business and be like, I don't know how to do this. Right. Well, and you think, I mean, a lot of, a lot of your new hobby farmers, I would say that we are a hobby farm, but obviously transitioning to a business, transitioning to a business. But, you know, in our

16:55
normal everyday professional lives were not taught how to run a business. You get on Google, you get on YouTube and you start searching, how do I start a business? You learn a little bit, but then you start breaking into so many different avenues. Honestly, you can become overwhelmed so quickly. It's important to focus on doing one thing good at a time and do everything.

17:23
at once and end up doing nothing well. Yes, absolutely. And the other thing we talk about a lot here is CYA cover your ass. Because there are so many things that you have to consider if you're going to sell a product, what if someone gets sick? What if God forbid you're selling candles and your candle catches someone someone's house on fire because that does happen. So.

17:51
We talk a lot about contingencies and CYA here because we do not want to lose our livelihood because we didn't think through what could happen. Right. Yep. And it's, those are important things to consider and something that, uh, often goes unnoticed and overlooked. Yep. And I don't know what Ohio is like, but Minnesota.

18:18
has a thing called cottage food law. And we occasionally sell granola at the farmer's market along with our produce. And we had to get, it's not a license, but it's a registration. And you basically have to study a form that explains what the laws are to be able to sell food that you make in your own home kitchen. And then you have to take a test. And if you fail a test, you're really not allowed to sell from your home kitchen.

18:48
And when we decided we were going to do that and then decided we were going to have a farm stand on our property to sell produce, we talked to our insurance guy and said, is there anything we need to do regarding insurance? And he said, why, yes, yes, there is. And he said, you probably should switch from homeowners insurance to farm insurance because you're now going to be a farm with people coming on your property. And if someone gets hurt, you want to make sure you're covered.

19:19
And then he said, you might want to look into LLC insurance. And I knew about LLC as a business designation, but I didn't know there was LLC insurance and he said that way, if God forbid something happens, you're, you don't lose your home. The business will be sued, but you're, you personally won't be sued. And I was like, I don't want to talk about being sued. And he said, well, let's not, let's hope that doesn't happen. I was like, yeah, that doesn't happen.

19:46
But there's all these little detail things behind the scenes that if you don't ask people who know, you'll never know about it. Correct. Yeah, it's one thing that Olivia's definitely looked further into as far as the Ohio cottage laws. And what we've noticed is that every state's different. Some states allow you to sell raw milk under a cottage law, other states will not. And you've got, I mean, here in Ohio, we can, as an example, we can sell produce, but you

20:15
wash your produce if you sell it. You can make certain kinds of baked goods, but you can't have cream in your pie, if you will. A lot of those little anomalies that really are dependent upon various states. Then yeah, the other thing we've got, and I know some states have this, Ohio is one that is kind of embracing it a little bit, but not quite there, is the idea of agritourism and how agritourism, if it's designated by the state,

20:45
thankfully Ohio has this, it offers additional legal protections for the farms that when they are holding agritourism activities, whether that's an event on site, a you-pick event, a tour, some kind of an activity, that you have some additional liability protection in place automatically granted by the state of Ohio as long as you're not being stupid, not stepping across fines intentionally.

21:14
that we have really learned about recently and trying to embrace that more. Yep, and agritourism is becoming a huge business. So, yeah, knowing about that helps too. The main reason we started really asking questions is because one of the people that came to our CSA the first summer that we had it had two little ones. She had a two and a half for three year old girl and a baby, like the eight month old baby boy.

21:43
almost a year old baby boy. And she would bring the kids with her when she came to get her shares. And the little girl absolutely loved our chickens and our chickens were in a chicken run with the chicken wire. And she went over and reached her hand through the chicken wire to touch one of the chickens. And I was like, if she hurts herself, we are screwed. This is gonna be bad. And I asked the mom gently if she could get the little girl because they didn't wanna get hurt. And she totally understood.

22:13
It was fine, but that was the day that we sat down and talked about calling our insurance agent and saying, how does this work? How do we protect everybody ourselves and the people come here? So that was the kicker for us. Cause she, Oh, this little girl's adorable. She's so cute. And I thought I'm going to hate myself forever if anything happens to her. Yeah. No, that's one thing that we've, uh, we had to look into as we started opening up for photography. So we all.

22:43
we open up during the bloom of lavender for photography.

22:49
where a photographer can come in and rent the field for an hour. And that's one thing that we really had to designate was, you know, you are in a very controlled area. You're not leaving this area. You're not interacting with the animals. Please know that there are animals on site. You're not bringing your, your pets, your dogs. Yeah. Because yeah, you started thinking through a lot of that liability and you've exponentially increased your risk when you start having to do your property. Yep.

23:18
Absolutely. So do you guys? I'm sorry, say it again. No, I was just gonna say we love having people. But yeah, you definitely take on that risk when you invite people to your to your farm. Yes. And I don't ever want anyone to think that the only reason that we do our due diligence and try to take care of things is to protect just us. It's about protecting the other people as well. Because

23:45
I care about the people that come here. I want to make sure that they are safe or they are taken care of if something does happen. Absolutely. So, you guys have animals. What do you have for animals? We just have chickens and too many cats right now. Oh, okay. You don't have a dog? No dog. We have one that's begging for a dog, but not right now. One child that's begging for a dog. No animals begging for dogs. So.

24:14
Yeah. Is there a particular reason you don't have any dogs? The last one we had ran away, then the last one we had needed to be trained a little bit better and have the opportunity at another location, another farm to have that opportunity. The one before that, unfortunately, got hit by a car. So, yeah. Okay. So you're taking a break from dogs, huh?

24:40
Taking a break right now and we have way too many cats that would probably not interact at all with the dog right now. It's so funny that you say that because our dog absolutely adores our cats. Our cats are all barn cats and the barn cats adore the dog. And we have baby barn cats in the barn right now. And they're almost three weeks old and they will be venturing out in a week or so into the world. And

25:07
The mama cat has had two litters so far, this is the third litter. And our dog loves the kittens when they come out of the barn. She just, she sits and she waits for them to come introduce themselves and she grooms them and she puts her paw on them and she treats them like they're her babies. It's very cute. What breed is your dog? She's a mini Australian Shepherd. Okay. Yeah.

25:32
and she thinks that she is the mama to the kittens. When they go back in the barn with the actual mom, she sits and pouts. So I have a very special place in my heart for dogs. And when people are like, we don't have a dog. I'm like, do you not like dogs or is there a reason? No, we love having animals around. We just know at this point in our life, we still enjoy being able to get away to go on vacation.

26:02
Um, yeah, being able to go through and have somebody come over and watch a few animals is enough at this point. So sure. That makes all the sense in the world. We live in a place that we consider a vacation home, like our, our property on our home, we are so thrilled with it. We never want to leave it. So, so we live, we live where we vacation and we vacation where we live because we never go anywhere. There's nothing wrong with that.

26:32
That was the whole point of finding this place. We wanted somewhere that we wanted to love so much we never wanted to leave it, and we were really lucky to find it.

26:42
And I really feel like that's true of a lot of homesteaders and farmers and ranchers. They find their place and that's it. They're good. They don't really go anywhere. They're like, I'm so happy here. I'm never leaving. Exactly. It's always nice to be able, even if you do go away, it's always nice to be able to come back home because there's nothing, no place like home, honestly. There's nothing better. No, exactly. Every time I leave the house to go somewhere, which isn't very often.

27:11
We come home one of two ways and we can see our house from a mile and a half down the road, both directions when we're coming back home. And I see our little house behind our trees and I'm like, I still can't believe we live there. Still cannot believe that's our place and we've been here for over four years now. That's cool. Yep, makes my heart too big for my chest and it's ridiculous. I shouldn't still be this enamored. We've been here too long, but it's fantastic. So anyway,

27:41
Yeah. So lavender plants, what's the plan? I mean, are you going to keep doing this forever? Or do you have plans to grow or change?

27:53
I don't think we have any major plans to change. Hopefully, we'll be able to get some more lavender to replace what we have lost and just keep growing what we have and work on promoting ourselves more so our products sell more. We'd like to start a blog to go along with it and maybe that will help generate some income as well. I think that's probably our biggest plan to grow at this point is just to provide information to people and

28:23
work on that. Cool. People will tell you that blogging is dead, but it is not dead. Blogging is still a really good way to communicate with people and generate interest in what you're doing. No, it's very encouraging. Going back to what I was sharing back in the beginning, as far as throwing a lot of energy in different areas, one area that I've thrown a lot of energy has been in social media.

28:51
Yeah, I think it's been helpful to be able to kind of get our name and our face out there, but we know that there's still opportunity to be able to branch out even more, to be able to see and connect with even more. One of the challenges you have with specifically Facebook is, I know it's like this for many of the social media platforms, but you don't engage for a couple of weeks and then all of a sudden your traffic is just done. Whereas with a blog, it seems quite the opposite.

29:20
We've almost got a never-ending supply of engagement opportunities. So one thing that we're looking at for the next go-around. Well if it makes you feel any better or any more secure in your take on blogging, I started a blog years ago, over 10 years ago, about writing and books and stuff. Have not put a new post on that thing in over six years and people still come and read it. So yeah.

29:49
It's a long game and it works. So I have one more question for you about the lavender and then I will cut you loose because I know you're probably busy. The lavender flowers, do you dry the flowers and sell them for like putting on top of homemade soap or stuff like that? Yeah, we do a few different things with them depending on if they're culinary or not. So our culinary, we do dry and sell in bundles and then people can use them either.

30:18
We have somebody buy some stems to put on top of cupcakes, or we will take them off that you can use as lavender buds. And that's what we use for our lavender syrup for lemonade. Or the person puts them in their cookies, she sprinkles them on top of her cookies. So we use the culinary in that way. And then for our other ones, we also, we sell bundles. So we have those drying in our shop right now. Well, they're dry, but they're hanging up in our shop that people can buy for decorations.

30:46
or we will use those as well in different things that we make. And you can also, for the hybrid variety, the second one that Lydia was talking about, you can take those buds, and that's what you would stick into a sachet. They have such a strong oil production. And they're continuing to distill that scent. So lots of opportunity with those. Yeah, I bet your shop smells just amazing.

31:15
You know, people come in all the time and they say, oh, it smells so good in here. We've been around it so much that we walk in there, we don't even smell it anymore. And we're like, oh, it smells in here. Yeah, your nose blind to it. Yes. Now it is wonderful when it's blooming. And I usually get the job of mowing between the lavender rows, because Scott mows with the tractor and I mow with the lawn mower. And when it's blooming and you mow, I'm like, oh, I could mow all the time in this smell. Yeah. And for me, I'm.

31:44
We make candles with a lavender oil. I think it's lavender leaf oil, I think. And I can't handle it. My husband's like, we're gonna make lavender soap or we're gonna make lavender candles. And I'm like, okay, let me take Tylenol now. Because we're doing it in our house, typically in the wintertime, so not a lot of ventilation. And it gives me terrible headaches. Well, which is-

32:11
Crazy, because when I have a headache, all I want to do is smell lavender.

32:17
Okay, maybe it's just the intensity. I don't know what it is. Just out of curiosity, is that an essential oil or is that a fragrance oil? It's an essential oil. Okay. Yep. Yeah, I don't want any lavender fragrance oil. I would probably die. That would probably kill me. Yeah, it's one thing that we have really tried pushing away from in our business as well as we don't have any artificial scents, no fragrance oils. I mean, they're

32:46
There is a business for everything. There's a business for every person. It's just not the business for us. And we try to stay as natural and clean as possible. Yeah, as you get a whiff of those fragrance oils, it can be overpowering. Yeah, absolutely. There's a lilac one that we've done. That's a fragrance oil. We've done it for candles. And it makes fabulous candles. But oh my god, my house smells awful when we're making them because it's just so overpowering.

33:17
I told my husband, I said, I really, I love the candles, but I really don't love making them. Can we maybe not make candles anymore? And he was like, which ones don't bother you? I said, the coffee one, the lemon one, the peppermint one. He was like, okay, we'll make those instead. We won't make the ones that give you headache anymore. I'm like, thank you. So you can make it work. It's just working around things. So

33:45
On that note, you make anything work as long as you know what you can handle, I think. Yeah. All right, guys. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today and good luck with all the lavender growing and I'm very excited for you. I think it's a great plan. Thank you very much. Thank you. You have a good day. You too.