5 Acre Wood Homestead

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Marissa at 5 Acre Wood Homestead.

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00:00
Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year? Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months. So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com Lang calendar.

00:26
because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.

00:56
You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. 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 Marissa at Five Acre Wood Homestead in Washington State. Good evening, Marissa. How are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to talk with you because you have everything going on at your homestead. So tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, um...

01:27
I, so we weren't always, you know, Homesteader, Homestead life. I really just stumbled into it as a lot of us do, right? But I did, I am from a very small, tiny town in Idaho. And there was a lot of, you know, Homestead like things that went on there. And so I did have that very early young childhood.

01:52
experience of that. Like I have memories of the things my parents had to do to get us through winters and whatnot, you know. And my mother and my grandmother, you know, they sewed and crocheted and canned and did all the things. And so I kind of always had that influence in my life. But growing up, we were, I was, you know, displaced to the city here in Tacoma.

02:21
And that's where I spent 40 years was the middle of the city and had my kids there. And at a certain point in my life, I was, I just decided that. You know, we, it's nice to talk about how we want to get back to the country and the small town life and be self-sufficient and do all the things. But at some point you just got to do it. And that's really how this.

02:50
how the homestead came about. And we've been here six years now. Okay. And still no animals. Still a work in progress, right? Because our homestead was was vacant for five years before we got it. And so nature kind of just did what nature does and took over. And so it's been the last three years has been

03:18
a lot of rebuilding and a lot of taking down and a lot of getting the property back to where we need it to be so that we can incorporate the things that we want to have. It's been a lot of work. Well, I'm going to jump in for one second. You don't have to have animals to be a homesteader. It's totally cool if you don't. I know. I know. And so many people have told me that because I feel

03:46
you know, kind of some days like we're not a real homestead because we don't have animals yet. And you're right. That's not that's not true at all.

03:58
Yeah, my friend, she's become a friend. didn't know her a year ago, but now I do because of the podcast. My friend Amy Fagan at Grounded in Maine is her podcast. She asked me to be a guest and she basically introduced me as a homesteader who was bucking the system because we only have three acres and we don't have cows. And it was kind of tongue in cheek. And for anybody listening.

04:23
If you are doing something that's an old fashioned skill as a part of your everyday life, you are practicing homesteading. Yeah, that's true. That's absolutely true. And I do it on so many levels. And I think the animals and the husbandry is probably the only thing that I don't do. And honestly, that's probably a good thing because we tried raising rabbits here and number one, they were dumb and didn't procreate the way they were supposed to.

04:52
And number two, having to call or butcher those babies, not babies, I call them babies because they were my babies, but having to butcher those rabbits and put them in the freezer about killed me. I don't, don't want to do it again. really don't. It's that's a part that, um, you know, it's not everybody can handle that part. Now my dad, um, did have a family farm down in Corvallis, Oregon.

05:22
It's not in our family anymore, but my third great grandparents came over on the Oregon Trail. And so for many, many years there were, there was acreage in my dad's line. And he was the last one, right? And at the time when he tried to pass it down to my brother and I, my brother did move on to the farm with his family and tried to do it and decided and realized that that wasn't the life for him. He wasn't cut out for it.

05:51
And at the time I turned it down because I was in the middle of the city raising three little kids and I couldn't, you know, pick up my life and move to the country and become a farmer. Like I didn't think that was possible for me at all. And I didn't think that was where I was going in my life. But now to be where I am now and look back on that, I'm really sad I missed that opportunity and that, you know, the family lost that piece of land, but I can remember I have memories of yeah, the sheep and the, and the pigs and it,

06:21
It's hard. That's just a part of farming that, you know, it's not for everybody. Yeah. I feel like when you take on livestock, you are taking on more children because that's how I feel the responsibility level. if you're gardening, it's not nearly as stressful. Yeah, no. I mean, there's been years where, you know, I've lost whole crops and it's just like, well, this sucks, but what are you going to do? You just got to keep going.

06:50
No, and we do. So it's funny because I say we don't have animals. Well, Homestead has been adopted by Mr. Darcy, who everybody sees pictures of and talks about and loves. My neighbor's peacock. And peacocks are, I found out, they're free roaming birds. They just do what they want and go what they want. you know, he adopted us. He ended up coming over three and a half, four years ago now, and he loves it over here.

07:20
And he spends the majority of his time here. And last year, his wife, Lucy, five eggs in my garden bed and we had five baby peacocks. And then three days later they were killed in the backfield. Oh no. Yeah, was heartbreaking. was so hard. And now I say that was the first homestead loss that I endured with animals, even though those animals were not mine, it didn't matter.

07:50
It still hurt just as much. And, um, yeah, Mr. Darcy, love him. He's, he's a staple on our homestead, even though he doesn't belong to me, I still claim him and he claims us. that's so funny. And, and great story up until the baby peacocks died. Yeah. Yeah. He has two new wives now though. We call them the sister wives. They are sisters, they're twins and they look identical.

08:21
So we're hoping that there will be more babies this year. Yes. And for anybody who doesn't know a female peacock is called a P hen, right? A P hen, yes. Yeah. And they are called P fowl. And aren't the females not as brightly colored? they like brown? right. They are more, they don't have the long tail feathers and their heads are more greenish most of the time.

08:49
Yeah, they are still very beautiful though. Yeah. Yep. We had somebody who lived up the hill from us when we, before we bought this house at the old house, somebody lived up the hill from us and they had some peacocks and the peacocks would come down the hill and it was basically a wooded hillside. The peacocks would come down the hill and walk down our street and just call. And I didn't know about this at first and I had moved in with friend who became my husband.

09:19
And I heard them yelling and I was like, what is that god awful noise? And he was like, oh, that's the neighborhood peacocks. Yep. I said in town. He said, yeah, it's really weird. was like, oh, okay. Good to know. go where they want and do what they want. Yep. They're like great Pyrenees dogs. They come home, but they also go wander. Yep. Yep.

09:46
So did I see that you can see Mount Rainier, how do you say it, Rainier? From your house? Yeah, Mount Rainier. We live about 30 minutes outside the Perk entrance, one of the Perk entrances. Yeah, and we can't see her from the homestead because this is Washington and there's trees everywhere. the trees block our view of her, but we...

10:15
can see her from the highway, is a half a mile down. So when I go to town every day, I see her and I try to snap a picture coming up over the hill because it seems like everybody's favorite Rainier picture that I've posted so far is of that view. So there's been quite a lot of them. It's really beautiful. Your photos are gorgeous. You know, John Mirror, who was the famous hiker and explorer guy that he has said that

10:43
Rainier was the most majestic of all the volcanics in this area. And he's not wrong. I mean, I love all of our mountains, but that one is, she's just majestic and amazing. And every time you see her, you just are awestruck. Yeah, I live in Minnesota. There are no mountains anywhere near me.

11:12
But I grew up in Maine. And I was right between the White Mountains and the ocean. Like my house was dead center between those two landmarks, geographical formations, whatever. And when people are like, why did you leave Maine? And I'm like, because I was married and I didn't think I was going to get divorced at the time. If that had not happened, I would still be living in Maine, honestly. But I'm jealous that you

11:42
I'm jealous that you have a big old mountain near you. Yeah. This part of the country is, it's definitely not for everybody. mean, most people, when they think of Washington, all they think about is rain. our rain is what makes it so beautiful all the time. And we're going to ever going to stay for a reason. I mean, we've got just about everything and I can drive two hours and

12:10
any direction and be in a different climate. Two hours and I'm at the ocean, two hours I'm at the mountain, two hours I'm in the desert and Eastern. Like it just is everything you would want to have. It's all very close. Yeah, I have not been out that far yet. I don't know if I'll ever get that far west in the United States, but I have friends who have traveled to Oregon and Washington state and every time

12:39
I hear about it. They're like, it's so beautiful. You have to go. It is. It's absolutely amazingly beautiful. Nice. Okay. So you don't have animals on your homestead, but I know that you have started a blog on Facebook and you're doing a series of recipes and you grow plants, right? Yep. We have a huge garden.

13:07
multiple gardens, I should say, because we've got the big vegetable garden and then I've got herbs just about everywhere and then we've got, you know, different flower gardens all over the place and we've got an orchard up in the front and we've got more trees out in the back. Yeah, and we've been adding, so it's slowly growing. Okay, forgive my ignorance about the state of Washington, but like I said, never been there.

13:36
When is your do you guys get snow number one? We don't get a lot of snow on the you know where we're at right here is. It's just a couple hundred feet above sea level. I mean, and it's really crazy this area. I would say between you know Seattle, Tacoma area in general and. Because we have this two huge mountain ranges, right? We have the.

14:05
Cascades going one way and the Olympics going the other and this huge metropolis right between them. But the valleys are really only a couple hundred feet above sea level. And so it takes literally the perfect storm to get snow where we are. It rarely happens. And when it does, it shuts down the cities.

14:33
like completely, get a half an inch of snow and people are losing their minds. Well, when you're not used to it, it is dangerous. Yeah, no, it is. It is. And I mean, I was born and raised in Idaho, in the mountains of Idaho. We got five and a half meters snow every winter over there. So, know, I

14:53
It was just I'm used to the snow. It doesn't bother me and I know how to drive in it. And I still, even though I know how to drive in it, won't because the people around here don't know how to drive in it. And that makes it scary. Uh huh. Yep. Absolutely. Um, it's always amazing to me here in Minnesota because the first snowfall we get where it actually builds up even a little bit on the highways, you would think people who've lived in Minnesota would know how to drive on snow, right? Oh, absolutely. Nope. That first snowfall, there's a

15:23
shit-ton of accidents on the first snowfall and every time it happens unlike people, you know how to drive on this. on. You should definitely know how to drive in snow and ice if you live in Minnesota. You would think, yes. I would have tried to not swear, but that was the perfectly appropriate. No, and I can completely relate to that because

15:50
You know, everybody knows that it rains about eight months out of the year here. And when we get hard, steady rain up here, people don't know how to drive in that either. And you would think that, you know, the people that live in Washington state year round would know how to drive in the rain. No, no, not at all. Okay. My, my 23 year old son would have some very choice things to say about this whole discussion and it would be very funny, but he's not here right now. So, um,

16:17
Okay, so how cold does it get in the winter like on average? Um, I would say on average it I mean there's been years there was a year a couple years ago where it got down to like nine degrees Um, and that was a first for me. I don't think i've ever felt temperature that low um, but usually normally it's you know, it can get down into the mid 20s and When it's that low it's almost two two

16:46
cold to snow.

16:49
Yeah, so you have a fairly temperate climate, really. We do very temperate, yep. And most of the time, the winter weather, it's 30, 35, cloudy, freezing, but not snowing. Yeah. So does that mean that you can plant your spring garden in like March?

17:17
certain things yes, certain things no, because of the rain. We don't plant out here my tomatoes, my peppers, all of those things I usually start in the greenhouse in March, first of March, and I don't plant them out until Mother's Day weekend. That's kind how we do it here too, only because we're afraid it's going to frost and kill everything. Yeah, no, it won't frost here, but

17:46
Not that way usually, but it's the rain. It's just some years it's just so wet in the spring that it will wash everything out. Nothing will live. It will be a soggy mess. Yeah, that sounds about right. That's what happened to us last year. We are, I'm going to talk about this again. People are probably sick of hearing me talk about it. Last year from May until mid-June, it rained almost every day here.

18:15
And our garden was an absolute failure for the year. there was, yeah. Yeah, we were so sad. Oh, I know. The year that the garden went in here at the homestead, I was so excited and we got those beds built and it was like just, we happened to have a good weekend that it was not raining and we decided to, yep, we're going to do this. We're going to build the beds, get them ready. Right. So we did. And that was in.

18:45
April, I want to say. And they sat there until 4th of July weekend when it finally quit raining. Yep. I don't know. There's much more frustrating than that for a gardener. It's so maddening because you're like, if it would just stop raining for a couple of days, maybe I could get something done. Yep.

19:12
But I've learned over the course of the last five years that every year is different and you cannot judge from the year before how this year is going to go and it just it's going to go how it's going to go and you have no control over that. You just kind of have to roll with the punches and do the best you can. Yeah. And on that note, we usually don't plant anything in the garden until May 15th. And my husband, my husband looked

19:41
long-range forecast a couple, well, last week. And he said, you're not going to be happy. He said, but I'm going to put the tomato plants in this weekend. Don't do it. I said, And he said, oh yeah. He said, I'm doing it. And I said, what if they get frosted or what if it rains for two weeks after you put them in? He said, I can't stand it. He said, the weather has been beautiful. My garden is tilled and it's dry. I'm putting those in. like, I said, okay.

20:11
And he put them in on Saturday, I think it was, maybe Sunday. And it has not rained, it has not frosted, it has not been cold, it has been beautiful. And they've grown like an inch and a half since you put them in the garden. We are so excited. So keep your fingers crossed for me. Yeah, I will. I definitely will. That's bravery because I never not.

20:36
I'm not putting my tomatoes out for Mother's Day weekend. I'm just not doing it because it's been beautiful here too. It was 77 degrees yesterday. Uh-huh. No, I know. If I had had any say in the matter, those tomato plants would still be in the greenhouse. But I couldn't break his heart. I was like, go ahead. It's beautiful. I'll go for it. But I did put my foot down on the basil plants because basil plants are a lot more thin. Oh yeah, and peppers.

21:07
Yep. Yep. This, this is the summer that we have been dreaming of since we moved here four and a half years ago. Yeah. Yep. The infrastructure is finally in. Um, it looks like it's going to be a reasonable summer according to the farmer's almanac and I kind of trust them. And we just got our farm stand open so we could sell eggs and we have sold eggs every day. Yep.

21:37
I'm hoping that we will get our farm stand built this year. That's one of my goals this year is to get that done. In and amongst all the other things you do? Yeah. Yeah. Because that's been a lot. It's because for us here, a lot of this general area.

21:59
You know, there's a lot of small homesteads and there's a lot of small family businesses and we all kind of do that. We all kind of put up our farm stands and we go by the honest system and it works. And that's also a place for pick up and drop off. So if you have something you're selling, you know, you're reselling from the thrift store or you're, know, you made a quilt and you're selling, you know, it's that's the place. So I just know that that barn stand is another, um,

22:27
It's another opportunity for me that I really need. Yes. And it's going to open doors. I'm going to give you a hint if you don't know about this yet. Do you use Venmo as a payment thing? I do. Did you know that Venmo provides you with a QR code for your account? Oh, do they? And you can print it I didn't know that. Yep. Ours is hanging in the...

22:54
in the farm stand so that people can just scan the QR code and pay for their stuff. That's great. That's very handy. Yep. And we also have the little container for actual cash because we don't figure anybody's gonna. If somebody steals money out of the cash thing, they need it more than we do. Right. Yeah. And there's a few places around here that do, you know, just mason jars with lids.

23:22
And there's other, you know, it's about half, would say half places do lock boxes with slits in them and the other half just do mason jars. And I've really only heard of a couple, you know, places that people aren't paying or have stolen or, you know, it doesn't happen very often, thankfully. We also have a sign out front that says under 24 hour surveillance. Right.

23:51
If anybody steals money, we'll know who it is. It's fine. So not too worried about it, but I didn't realize that Venmo provided you with a QR code for your account. Yeah, that is very handy. Yep. And we've got two printed out to have at the farmers market this year, because I guess people were asking us if we had a Venmo account last year. My husband's the one that does the farmers market. And I didn't have a Venmo account last farmers market season, but I do now for the business.

24:20
And so he's going to put the printed out Venmo QR codes on the tables so that people can use them. So if for anybody who's listening, that's really handy to have if you're going to do a farm stand or a farmers market.

24:36
So, do you you quilt? you do quilts? What's that? Do you do quilting? I do do quilting, I had got into sewing in high school back in the 90s, right? When they still had home ec classes.

24:58
Yep. And my mother had an old like 1950 singer at home and I hated that thing so much. I tried to eat my fingers every time I used it. And so I didn't use it. And for many, many years, I couldn't, I didn't have the room or the money to spend on a sewing machine. And so I didn't have one of my own. And then

25:26
As it happened, my sister bought a new one and she had this little starter machine, this little brother, this little basic brother machine. And she handed it down to me when she got her new one. And so I jumped right in and started sewing. And I actually made two quilts with that little machine before my

25:52
Mr. Homestead decided to surprise me and buy me a new singer. And he did that for Christmas or right after Christmas this past year. I do have a brand new sewing machine that I've made a couple of quilts with. And the last couple of months, it's been just sitting on my desk in my bedroom because I've had so many other things going on right with the garden and with the Homestead page and all this stuff.

26:21
Um, haven't done a lot of sewing in the last few months, but yeah, I've made what four quilts I think in the last year or since September.

26:33
So yeah, I didn't think I was gonna enjoy it as much as I did. And I really did. The artistic adventure of that is just, I love it. One of my friends just took a quilting class and she made the most beautiful quilt and she drove herself crazy with it. But the quilt came out so gorgeous. Had to come out to my car because it was really the only quiet place.

27:03
Okay. All right. So, we have like four, three and half minutes left. So let's see if we can make it work. Your series on Facebook that you're doing with the recipes, tell me about that. So my Homestead from Scratch series, I basically, you know, I was trying to think of things to post on the page that was...

27:28
was, you know, when I was trying to think of, okay, what am I going to post? How am I going to get interactions? How am going to? And I think it was Mr. Homestead that said, you know, just do you like, what are you good at? Do cooking? Do your from scratch stuff? Do your mixes? Do all that stuff? Like, and so I thought, you know, that's a good idea. And I did started posting them and it only took two or three days and it just exploded. And now everybody is like sharing and talking about this and

27:58
You know, and so I turned it, I actually did turn it into a series. Um, and I post at least one or two things a day. Um, and I'm just, I'm trying to start at the mixes and the gravies and the bullions and the spice mixes and all that stuff, because, you know, that's like the basis of, of everything that we do from scratch. Um, but slowly we'll get into.

28:27
actual meals and maybe even meal planning. And I'm thinking maybe in the future videos.

28:35
So I've got a bunch of stuff going around in my head that I want to do. Are you going to start a YouTube channel for the videos? You know what? I have a YouTube. I've had it for years and it's the same name and I just don't use, I don't post as much as I should over there. And that was one of the goals that I set for myself this year. Also, um, aside from the, from the homestead page on Facebook, um, I really do need to start growing the YouTube channel and get over there and just start doing it.

29:06
Okay. The other thing I was going to ask you is would you consider doing an actual blog, not just the posts on Facebook book, but would you start a blog for your series? I think yeah, I probably, I'm a pretty good writer. I can, I, I've been told that, yeah, I can, I can do that. I think that this whole Facebook page really was just for me to dip my toes and get used to it.

29:35
and get myself in the pace of, okay, now I'm trying to look at the homestead as a business and grow it and do all these things that I want to do. And I have a clear plan in my head of how I want that to go. just, I need to take these baby steps to make that happen so that I don't overwhelm myself because I tend to do that. And then I just stop. Anybody else? Yeah. Yup. I've done it many, many times.

30:04
So I'm trying not to do that. only reason I'm asking if you would start an actual blog is because if something happens to Facebook, you lose those posts. Right. I know. I know. be sad. It would be sad. But I do, all of my posts that I put up, all my pictures of the recipes that I make, I do back those up on my computer so they wouldn't get lost. I do have them.

30:33
Okay, good. Good. Good. I'm glad because what you're doing is actually going to help people. And part of the reason I started the podcast was to help people. And when I see other people doing things that actually help other people, it makes me really happy. So please keep doing it. Yeah, I will. Thank you for saying that because that's, you know, that's, think a really important, it should be a really important goal for, you know, all of us homesteaders, farmers is

31:02
to help each other because we need to learn from each other and we need to support each other. And my thing is... yes. Yeah, you've got to teach. You have to keep the old ways alive. Yeah, because sometimes the new ways fail and we need the old ways. Exactly. Exactly. All right.

31:28
All right, Marissa, thank you so much for your time. really appreciate it. And I really enjoyed talking with you. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it too. And I will never forget it because this is my first podcast. Well, you did great. Thank you. All right. You have a good night. You too. Bye.