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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 Amanda at Blue Sky Homestead. How are you, Amanda? I'm well. How are you? I'm great. It is really sunny and beautiful here today. So tell me about yourself and Blue Sky Homestead. So...

00:31 I just, um, so Blue Sky Homes had started just not even, probably not even a year ago. I would say about 10 months ago. I started venturing into more homemaking. I'm a stay at home mom. I work on a horse farm part time in the mornings, but other than that I'm home. So I started venturing more into.

01:00 cooking from scratch and the sourdoughs. I got married this past September and my husband lives on a little five acre farm. So we have goats and chickens, which I do not grow up around at all. Didn't have gardens, didn't have animals, except for cats and some dogs. But other than that, nothing. So it was like a, kind of like a culture shock to me really because I've never been around animals like that.

01:29 So, so I decided like maybe I can make my own little website and post things that I'm learning and share it with other people that are new to it and don't know much about it because that's still kind of where I'm always learning. But it's been fun. I still want to venture out into more like holistic things.

01:59 I like, I can't do like perfumes and stuff. Those chemicals really gave me migraines, like really bad. I had to get rid of everything. So I want to start venturing eventually, candle making, like incense and stuff like that, that doesn't cause and doesn't have all those nasty chemicals in them that really destruct your whole body. So.

02:29 I mean, that's where I want to head into, but for right now, I'm still in the works. Okay. Well, speaking of perfumes, giving you migraines, me too. You're taught, you're preaching to the choir. Me too. Oh, really? I know a lot of people and they, like my daughter, she doesn't believe me. She's about to be 16. She buys all Victoria's Secret and bath and body wash and I'm like, get it out of the house.

02:57 You want to know why I have a migraine all the time? Cut that stuff out for a little while and see how you feel. Yeah. Well, he's a teenager though, so. Yep, and you don't want to stomp on him, but you also don't want to have a headache all day every day either. Oh my gosh, yes. So the last time I was at a public entertainment event, it was a chorus thing for my youngest son, and the...

03:27 The high school has had, we don't live there anymore, they still have a really nice auditorium that they built. And we went and I was there for maybe 20 minutes and all the perfumes and all the deodorants and all the colognes, I couldn't even think my head hurt so bad and I didn't have a headache when I walked in. So it does cause issues for people who are sensitive to it. So crazy because I never used to be like that.

03:55 Or I did and I didn't realize it was comics or not because I didn't know anything about this kind of stuff until now, really. So I would, it was, it would really be bad because my husband and I would like, we don't really have date nights. So the one time that we would have a date night, I'd get all dolled up and looking nice. And I would put on my perfume and we would get ready to go. And I'd be in the car driving. And

04:24 All of a sudden my nose felt like stuffy and my head just started. I was like, Oh man, this is not going to be a good night because my head is starting to hurt and I don't know why. Yep. So it was a whole thing where I was reading books and was in a podcast. And I'm like, wow, like that could really be a thing. So I had like 20 different perfumes from like different places. And I just actually gave them all to my oldest stepdaughter cause

04:53 She doesn't care about stuff that doesn't affect her. So I'm like, here you go, you can take them. But it's amazing that just, well, even body lotions. And I was shocked when I learned about how that really can affect your everyday living, honestly. I got rid of all my plugins. I don't use Debreze anymore. So the only perfume that I really found that does not affect me is, it's a brand by Skylark.

05:22 So it's a little crazy. It's a roll-on. They do self-sprays, but when I found it, I initially just got a roll-on. And it's a cream, and I don't have migraines when I wear that. Because I do like perfumes and stuff, so I miss wearing them. But this Skyler line is the only line that I have found so far that has clean ingredients that do not have that effect on me at all.

05:52 is you can put essential oils that you like the scent of on your skin as long as it's in a carrier oil like a sweet almond or an olive oil or coconut oil. The coconut oil that isn't the room temperature hardening kind, I think it's called fractionated coconut oil. Yeah. Okay. I wear a roll-on essential oil blend if I want to wear perfume. And it does not cause any headaches because it's just...

06:22 the natural oils. There's no alcohol, no fixatives, no nothing. It means that you have to put it on more often because it does wear off faster. Yeah, yeah. I do buy oils at Whole Foods. There's little, I wouldn't say there's natural oils. They're like, they're natural oils, like a must. Yep. So there's, it's a clean set. So I have a few of those. There's small ones and there's some of them, but I don't wear them too often just because they're crazy, but.

06:52 Yeah, I have found some alternatives, but being able to like manage and make my own and you know do it that way and to share would be really fun. And candles, I can't do candles. I can do soy based candles. That doesn't give me migraines. And when I say migraines, it's so bad that I can't function. I can't go and do anything. So literally ruins my day. So the soy based candles

07:20 have that effect on me, I don't know. And I do check ingredients because of the phyllates and all those kinds of things that make it bad. But so I wanna do candles and keep all that nasty chemicals out that really damper your day. Yep, I understand. The other thing I was gonna say, since you wanna do candles, is you could do wax melts. And

07:48 That way you don't actually get the smoke from the candle either. That is true. I do like, I do like the wax for sure. Yeah, we make those. They're fab, they're fabulous. We love them. Oh really? Yeah. That's awesome. It's just the candle wax, you know, you just put her into a, I messed that up completely. You just pour it into the little molds and let it set up and then you just put them in the wax melters and they melt and they smell just like candles, but no smoke.

08:17 Yeah, I do like those. I thought, look, I'm in like a couple candle Facebook groups just to get an idea of how the difficultness of making candles and I've watched YouTube videos. YouTube videos, they don't seem so difficult. I mean, it's just the fractioning of everything, I guess that makes it scary. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is, once you do it a couple of times, it won't bother you at all. You won't be afraid of it anymore. We

08:45 We started making candles last spring and loved it. Love it. And we still have tons of candles. We sell them at the farmer's market and we're starting to get down on our inventory. So we'll be making candles again here in a few weeks. Yeah, that's awesome. And the whole house smells amazing when you make them. That's what I miss about candles and those because I love a good smelling and my house is always clean and stuff, but like there's no smell.

09:15 At least to me, it means that I live there, and it means the way the house smells. But I love walking into the house and it smells really pretty. Yeah. So I've been missing that. Yeah. My house always smells like whatever we cooked last because we cook a lot from scratch. So, so it's not just something in the microwave and there's no scent. Um, my husband, my husband cooked up hash browns this morning and the food, the kitchen is right below my bedroom, which is where I record the podcast.

09:43 and all I can smell right now is hash browns. I'm like, oh my God, okay. So yes, anyway, we could talk about smells and candles and stuff all day. All day. So what, you said you have chickens and what else on the homestead? Yeah, so we have two sister goats. We did have a male first. Like when I moved in with my husband, he had a male, his name was Fromms. His oldest daughter named him.

10:13 and she was small, but he had, he came down with some kind of brain anemone or some kind of brain thing that literally came out of nowhere. So we tried to help him and the penicillin and stuff and he had just, he passed away very quickly. So we have like this huge hill that we had fenced in for him. So we ended up getting two, two sister goats.

10:42 Two years ago, no, probably three years ago now, but yeah, they're nice. They'll come to you if you have food. That's it. And then when you'll be able to pet them, they don't run to you and want to like be pet all the time. Like I wanted, I wanted goats to love on and they are not lovable girls. I'm sorry if you have food. But, so I mean, they keep the hill that we have, like chewed down so we don't have to like motor anything. They.

11:11 I've been there best of life up there in the woods. But yeah, so then we do have chickens. I started incubating my own chickens three years ago. It's a lot of work to do that, but I love chickens. I just love them. So I have 10 chickens. I did have 11. One, I don't understand chickens and when they die, like what happened? You were completely fine an hour ago and then you're just.

11:40 fall over dad, I don't get it. But this one was in the middle of the yard. It wouldn't move. So I thought it was injured, but it wasn't. And so it's, I had a little bit of blood on its mouth. So I thought maybe a one of the rooster, my rooster attacked it or something. So I put it, put it in by itself. It was walking. It was, it seemed fine. So I was like, okay, put my other chicken in with it the next day, just for some company and the next day it was.

12:11 I don't know what was wrong with it. It's just I hate when things die. So I feel so sad. Yeah, nature is cruel sometimes. Yeah, I just wish I could understand why they just fall over. Don't get back up. Yeah, and I mean, you could take it to the vet and have them do a necropsy and see what caused it, but that's a lot of money to find out that.

12:39 It died from something and it doesn't matter because it's still dead. It's not like they can fix it. So yeah. But I still have 10 chickens, but I think I so I hatched five and I bought three off of my friends who I believe she ordered them. So these chickens are massive. I don't remember what they're called. I can look it up. But they're.

13:07 Two of them are black with turquoise, like a shimmer to it when the sun hits on. Their legs are big. They look, they're literally tiny dinosaurs. They hover over, they tower over my other chickens and my other rooster. They're just massive. But I believe I have more roosters than hens, so I have to figure that out. They're also in their own little cliques. So my original rooster and hen, those two are together constantly. They're inseparable.

13:37 And then the three that I cut from my friend, they are a little gang of themselves. So they stay to themselves. And then the other ones that I hatch myself, they stay to themselves. So they don't mesh well. I don't know how to get them together. I'll put them all in the coop together for like a day or two. And, but they, when they're out rearranging, they want nothing to do with each other. They just stick to their own people, I guess. They're clicky. They're mean girls.

14:05 Yeah, I don't but I do have more roosters than hens. So I'm gonna have to probably get rid of some before they start fighting each other Yes, my black ones are really pretty. They're really pretty Yeah, we have black ones, but they don't have a blues or a greenish blue shimmer to them. They have Coys kind of shimmer. I do have a red one with like um, black mixed in there kind of hmm But yeah

14:35 Yeah, our black ones have like a reddish sheen to the black, like a brown red. Oh, wow. They're really pretty. That's pretty. Okay. So do you grow any produce on the homestead? So my husband actually built me a produce stand because I'm like, I want to start selling off our property, our vegetables and stuff because we eat them, but we eat them, but we still always have much more than what we eat. So I'd like to be able to share it with the community. So it's not.

15:04 fully done, so I'll build my shelves. So our garden, I'm still trying to love gardening. I really am. I'm not a fan. I don't like pulling weeds. I don't, I just don't. But this year I covered my entire garden with the black fabric, which I don't like the fabric. The weeds still grow underneath of it. It doesn't kill it. It just grows underneath. So I'm still like where my plants are.

15:31 I still have to like push my hand underneath and like grab the weeds that are like around it, but it's not anywhere near as painful as it was past years. But I have it completely covered. It just holds cut out where my plants are. So I have tomatoes and peppers. I have a spaghetti squash. I have a watermelon and a zucchini, I believe it is.

15:54 We don't, we eat vegetables, but we don't eat a lot of vegetables. We eat more meat and potatoes than anything, but, oh, and I do have asparagus, which I messed up for like the last two years. I didn't know. I didn't know that you were supposed to like cut it. Like I, I was thought when it would grow, it would have spheres automatically, but this one grew and has like those feathers. And I let it go to seed and then.

16:23 the next year, it wasn't looking like spheres. I'm like, where are these spheres that look like, it's very, it looks like a big tree. Yeah. And so I finally YouTubeed it just a few weeks ago, actually, and I let it go again, like too long. So I guess this fall, I'm supposed to cut it completely and then cover it. And then next season is when they'll come up into spheres. Yeah. I had no idea.

16:52 When did you put them in? I seriously I put them in like two years ago. And she was like, they won't come up this spring. They'll come up next spring. And I'm like, well, there's no asparagus spheres here. So I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I literally thought it would just be spheres that would come up out of the ground. But it didn't help. Yeah. So I literally been wasting two years of buying produce or buying asparagus from other produce stands because I didn't know what I was doing.

17:21 Well, if it makes you feel any better You really wouldn't have gotten a lot the first year after you put them in or the second year because it takes about three years for them to get Established to where you're getting more than you know eight or ten So and the reason I tell you this because when we moved here four years ago, we put in asparagus crowns In the spring after we moved in in August so like nine months later and

17:51 This is the first year that we've really gotten a lot of asparagus out of the garden. So it takes three, three and a half years for them to get back together. Okay, so that technically should be right on track then. Yep. So, and yeah, you're supposed to cut them. We do it in the fall, but yeah, you're supposed to cut them back after they've done their thing in the springtime. Yeah, because it's like falling over, it's so heavy, it literally looks like trees that are growing in my...

18:21 He made a thing out of skids. Yeah. What is it called? A raised bed? Yeah. So he made one of those for the asparagus. We did, we did carrots one year. So it didn't, they didn't produce very much at all. And then we did potatoes last year and those bugs got in them and just told most of them. So we did it again this year. We're hoping. Potato bugs are the worst ever. They really are. I had no idea.

18:50 They're actual potato bugs. But, and I was like, oh, the potatoes are dead. They're gone. Yeah. They were eaten. Yeah. They will strip them completely. Yeah. So I've been on top of those so far so good, but there, I haven't seen anything coming out of the ground yet anyway. So, but I mean, other than that, I try to just take the things that I know that we eat because of the peppers, I use green peppers and red peppers and all those for a lot of meals.

19:20 Um, so I'll just freeze them. Um, and then I have them for like the rest of the year and the tomatoes last year, I didn't can them, I just throw them in the, all in the freezer. So I was like, this is getting bored. Tomatoes, I just throw them in a freezer or a vacuum seal bag and put it in the freezer. So now my freezer is still like full. The floor of my freezer is still full of tomatoes. So I have to follow them out and probably just make some sauce with some sort and can it.

19:50 Yeah. We have half a cow coming the first week of July. And so I have to clean out a freezer for that. Okay. I'm excited for that. We've never had, we never bought a half cow at a butcher before. So we're excited. Yeah. It's, it's a really good way to have beef year round. That's not going to cost you an arm and a leg. It's a huge outlay at the beginning.

20:19 But you are getting filet mignon and really nice steaks for exactly the same price as your burger and you roast and all that because that's how that works out. It's a great way to do it. Yeah, I feel like it's a huge money saver for sure. It is and it's security. As long as your freezers are working, you have beef for a year. I was going to say about the peppers. Did you know that you can oven roast your peppers?

20:48 and then put them in ziplocks and then they're already cooked for sauces and stuff. No, I didn't. I never thought about that. Yeah, all you gotta do is chop them up the size you want them, put some olive oil in the bottom of a cookie sheet, you know, with the edges. This is, I'm not saying this right, not a flat cookie sheet, a cookie sheet that's got the edges so that the oil doesn't spill out. And then you can season it with whatever you want to season it with. You roast them until they get soft.

21:18 And then you can put them in a ziplock and freeze them. You push all the air out or you can use your seal meal and it does it for you. But they're good for a couple of years in the freezer. Yeah. That's what I like about freezing. Um, and I do vacuum seal and stuff, but I don't, I, yeah, I don't, I like freezing stuff to last the rest of the year when it's not in season. Yep. Um, I'm still trying so I can, we had to get.

21:45 We have mulberry bushes out back also, so we picked mulberries. I made a mason jar of jelly of that. We picked blueberries the past Saturday. We got a lot. And then everybody scattered when it came to like having to wash them, pull their stems out, sort through them. I was spent my Saturday night till like 10 o'clock and I'm really anal about things too, so I probably wouldn't have done it the way that I wanted it to be done anyway. But now I was standing at the sink for like.

22:15 like three hours just going through and stemming and getting out the bad ones. And then my husband comes in and he's like, you're still in here? I'm like, leave me alone. It's a process that I have to do. And he was like, well, you know, I would have used all the bad ones, even just for jelly, you're, you're putting it through the processor. I'm like, leave me alone. Yeah. Not using it. I'm going to give it to my chicken. So leave me, leave me be. I'm doing my job. Yes. Yeah.

22:43 Exactly. So I'm going to start doing some blueberry jam or jellies, which actually my first year doing jellies, it lasted a full year. Like it lasted. I still have a jar from last summer, this summer. And so I don't ever buy jelly ever at the Sourcher store because it was super expensive anyway. We don't ever buy jelly or jam anymore either because we started canning two summers ago and made tons of jams and jellies.

23:12 We made peach butter. You know like apple butter? Do you know what apple butter is? Oh yes, I love apple butter. We made peach butter instead and we still have like 10 jars, jelly jars of peach butter in our pantry right now from two seasons ago. Oh my gosh, I never heard of peach butter. It's really yummy. Yeah, it's thick like apple butter, but it's delicious. Well, peach season is coming up soon I believe, so maybe I'll try that.

23:41 Yeah, you just cook the peaches down like you into like almost like an applesauce texture and do your sugar and your pectin and whatever and tada you have peach butter and I didn't even know. I call it peach butter because it reminds me of apple butter. I don't know if peach butter is actually a thing. I have no idea. But anyway. Well, you just trademarked that. Yeah, I just wanted to mention that you are in Pennsylvania. I didn't mention that at the beginning. I usually try to try to pin that down with people.

24:10 So it's Lancaster, PA, but I live in, my aunt is in Conestoga, but I don't live in the little town of Conestoga. Brighton, Lancaster is like on the border. So we live in a very quiet area and I love it because it's so quiet. My kids are young and they're like, it's boring out here. There's nothing to do. So I mean, they have a park across the street, like it's a nature preserve.

24:38 And they can run over there. Like I'm a worry work. So I'm like, take the walkie talkies and our phones and don't go too far. But they go into playing the creek yesterday. They were gone for like two hours. I started panicking. I'm like, they went on a trail back in the world. So they never been on before. I was not without me anyway. And so I was getting a little worried, but they made it back and they had finally found a little waterfall. And.

25:07 some other teenagers down there that were playing with them. So I just get worried. So it is much different than it was back when I was a kid where you could walk anywhere you wanted. You didn't have to worry about so much. Yes, and you're right. But I'm gonna tell you, I grew up in the woods of Maine, okay, the state of Maine. When I was a kid, we didn't have cell phones, we didn't have walkie talkies, we didn't have any of that stuff. Because I'm 54, those things weren't available then. Yeah.

25:37 And there's nothing better for kids than to just let them go and use their imaginations and make forts in the trees and count the minnows in the creek and all that stuff that the kids miss out on so much now. So good on you. Good job, mom. I know, they really do. Yeah. I love being able to let them go even though I'm like, don't go. My son is 12 and then I have two nine-year-olds and those are the ones that are just like my son, my oldest son. He's...

26:06 He's so adventurous. He just loves to explore and I just have to get out of my head. So he tells me, just stop it. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to come back. I wish she went to the United States in 2020 and it just muscles up my head. Yeah, when I was 12, I would take my bike and ride out to the creek and spend five hours on this flat rock that stuck out into the creek. And I would be out there with a book and just in the quiet and listening to birds and reading.

26:35 And I would come home and my mom would be like, so how far did you get in your book? And she'd look, because I dog-eared the pages because I was a terrible steward of books back then. She's like, wow, you did a lot of reading today. And I'm like, yep. And I saw three deer, and I saw a fox, and I saw a cardinal, and I heard the birds singing, and I saw some fish. And she's like, oh, so you weren't just reading the whole time. I'm like, no. Of course I wasn't. My oldest daughter will do that. So we have an overlook, which I will not let my kids go without an adult, because you have literally

27:05 fall off, you're done. Yeah. I don't let them go to the Overlook where my daughter will go. Um, and she'll take her book and it might be ridiculous, but I make her either take a knife or pepper spray just to ease my mind and that's what she does. Every time she wants to go out, but she does the same thing. She'll go out there for like about two, an hour or two and take her book. Set out the Overlook and read her books and stuff. So yeah, I love.

27:32 that they have that so close to home because like you said, kids don't know anything about the woods anymore. It's just not a thing unless you live in like the country or you have it close by. Mm hmm. Yeah. We ended up taking our kids camping two summers in a row because we wanted them to actually understand that you could pitch a tent, sleep in it and then spend the day outside. And it was lovely. It was also very, very cold.

28:00 The first time we went, it was end of May and it was unseasonably cold. And the day we went was fine and we were all in sleeping bags that night. And then, oh my God, it was like 40 degrees when we got up in the morning. Oh my gosh. Getting up out of a nice warm sleeping bag into 40 degree weather is not, it's a rude awakening. It really is. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

28:26 But it was still fun. We got the fire going and had a hot chocolate and coffee made with a percolator on the fire thing. It was great. They were like, you can make coffee and hot chocolate in the woods? Yes, yes you can. Yeah. So yes, I feel like a lot of kids these days are living vicariously through other people's videos of doing the things.

28:56 And you've got to experience it. You've got to actually do it to know what it's like. Yeah, totally. I totally agree with that. So anyway, we've spent like almost half an hour just not really talking about anything you're doing on the homestead, but talking about how good it is to raise kids with nature and freedom. And that's OK, too. So why is it Blue Sky Homestead? Well, I was.

29:25 really having a hard time finding a name. And so honestly, I was, at my husband, I tried to get him involved in helping me and he was either like, nah, I don't like it, it's too much or then he would shoot out ideas. I'm like, well, I don't like that either. So I actually used chat GPT to find my name because I put in everything that I wanted to do.

29:55 what my interests were as far as using the name for. And it came out with a bunch of names. And I'm like, I really like this one, and I like this one, and I like this one. So I had to narrow it down. So my daughter's middle name is actually Sky. And my favorite color is blue. So I'm like, when I saw that one, I'm like, huh, I kinda like that because there's a significant there, my daughter's middle name. And so it just sucked. And my husband was like, yeah, I like that. So.

30:23 And I didn't even realize the sky part of it until like a couple weeks in. I'm like, Oh, well, let's take this middle name. So I'm glad I, I chose that one. Well, when, when I read it, I, I got a feeling instantly of just peacefulness. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. So it was awesome. Yeah. All right. Well, Amanda, I am really happy that you took the time to talk with me today. And I appreciate it. And.

30:51 Keep raising those kids in the woods is the best thing for them. Yes, I will do that for sure. Alright, thanks so much. Yeah, thank you for having me. Bye. Bye bye.