The Wild Midwest: Heritage Livestock and Native Plants

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Kayla at The Wild Midwest: Heritage Livestock and Native Plants. 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 Kayla at the Wild Midwest Heritage Livestock and Native Plants. Good afternoon, Kayla. Hi, how are you doing? I'm okay. A little crazy, but good.

00:26
I'm excited to talk to you because you're in Illinois and I'm in Minnesota and we're going to talk about native plants. We put in some native plants to Minnesota last summer in the middle of a drought and we forgot that we needed to pay attention to them and they died. I'm very excited to talk about native plants today. Tell me about yourself and what you do.

00:54
the Wild Midwest, that is the business that I own and operate. And so it's currently a side hustle. And I also have a full-time job with a company called Canopy Farm Management, where I work in regenerative and restorative agriculture, especially as it pertains to tree crops and agroforestry. So my two gigs are kind of, they go together well.

01:24
I actually love that I've talked to a couple people in the last two months that have the same kind of symbiotic relationship with their jobby job or their career and their side hustle as it were. Yeah. I mean, do you want me to expand on like the business a little bit? The business that is your side thing, not your job? Yeah. I want to know how you came to doing this actually.

01:54
Okay. So I have my undergraduate degree in animal sciences and I knew that I wanted to do something that was helpful in terms of like conservation of biodiversity and like creating healthy habitats. So I ended up pursuing my master's degree in landscape architecture and during that time

02:24
studying more and more with the intention of trying to figure out how we can live in the world a little bit more harmoniously with the other species that are here as well. I stumbled upon how important native plants were to that whole process. So it became...

02:46
sort of a huge passion of mine, I started attending the Illinois Native Plant Society gatherings and hikes. And I had a seasonal position at the Champaign County Forest Preserve where I got to meet a lovely botanist who helped me learn a ton about the native plants to specifically Champaign County. And it just sort of became...

03:15
I just sort of became completely consumed by it. I started growing my own plants when I was still in grad school. And I think it was 2018 when I grew my first couple hundred plants and had a couple of design projects on the side with some acquaintances and friends. And then it's kind of just grown from there. I graduated in 2020 and

03:43
Due to COVID, it was pretty difficult to find another job. So I did have about close to a year of just working on this business and getting it spun up before I did get other full-time jobs. My full-time job I've been in now for not quite a year yet. So, I mean, I would love to.

04:10
work on the nursery full time and that is the eventual goal. But it's pretty, nurseries in particular are pretty high overhead businesses to run and they're pretty difficult to get off the ground because they just take so much infrastructure and investment. So yeah, we're still very much in the building phase of the business to try to give it some legs.

04:39
you put yourself into starting a business. And many, many people did.

04:48
Yeah, absolutely. And kind of out of necessity for a lot of us. Yeah. We moved in 2020 so we could start our farm to market garden and see what we could do with that. That's what we did. And my husband has a jobby job and he comes home and he putters in the garden and he does the farmer's market on Saturday and we sell stuff in the farm stand on the property. We did the same thing too. And it was time. It was time for that to happen.

05:19
I keep saying that COVID was terrible, horrible for so many people, but amazing for people who didn't lose anyone they loved and who didn't get sick themselves because it gave us time that we didn't have before to think about what we were doing and how we were doing it. Yeah. It was definitely bittersweet in that regard because for me personally, it certainly gave me some challenges.

05:48
debt burden and not having a full-time job was pretty challenging. And thankfully I have my husband who supported me during that time. But yeah, I don't think I, the business would not be as far as it is today if I hadn't have had that time to just solely focus on it. Yep, exactly. So I'm guessing you're probably in your 20s? I'm actually, I mean, my...

06:16
30s. So I'm 33 this year. All right. So did you go to school later than after you graduated high school? I took, it took me about five and a half years to get my undergraduate degree because I maintained a couple of part-time jobs during that time. And then I took a year off between

06:43
I took a couple years off between undergrad and grad school. I had a full-time job at that time. And then, yeah, then I went back to school. I needed a little bit of time to sort of figure out what I wanted my master's degree to be in. Yeah, because that's a huge decision. I don't blame you at all. And also, I commend you for taking on the weight of the student loans because...

07:11
I, if I was graduating high school right now, I don't know that I would feel comfortable doing that at all. My daughter is 34 and she went to school for two years to get a general bachelor's degree, BS degree, something, just to get her core classes out of the way. And I don't even talk to her about whether she's ever going to go back to school because all she does is cry because she's still paying off those loans.

07:39
So I don't say anything about college ever to her because the first time I asked her was like two years after she'd gotten the degree that she went for. And I said, so you're gonna go on and pursue something with this? And she started crying immediately. And I said, why are you crying? And she said, because I'm going to be paying off this money for the rest of my life. And I'm probably never gonna work in a field where it's going to apply anyway. She said, I am so upset about all of it.

08:10
And I said, I will never ask you again. She said, thank you, mom. I appreciate it. So it's hard. It's, I feel like it is so much harder for people now. And even, I don't know, 20 years ago from 20 years ago till now to get a college degree, because it's so freaking expensive. It's ridiculous. I hate everything about it.

08:36
I know, I need to. Okay, now that I've said that, now I've said all that, I always have to tell that story because it just made me so sad for my kid that she was that distraught about her student loans. So tell me what you do regarding the native plants and the stuff that you do. Yeah, so my day-to-day kind of looks, it's a lot of plant care, just keeping the plants alive all.

09:03
Throughout all the changing seasons, they all have their own challenges with the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter. Spring and fall are definitely my most favorable growing season times. Right now in high summer, it's a lot of just constantly checking on plants. Sometimes I'm having to water two to three times a day.

09:29
And then other than that, it's a lot of, you know, just it's running a small business, keeping the website updated, keeping social media updated, doing social media marketing, making sure Google business listing is up to date and organizing plant sales, reaching out to other small businesses to see if we can collaborate in, you know, any number of ways.

09:56
I also do take on design clients and consultation clients. So I'll do one-off consultations where I'll go out to people's yards and they have an hour of my time and they can ask me questions. And then I'll provide a write-up based with my recommendations and some suggested resources for them. So that's kind of our lowest service tier all the way up to me fully designing a property and giving the person.

10:23
the plan and then we also will go in and install and maintain those designs as well. Super cool. Do you love it? Do you love doing that, that part? I do. Yeah. I mean, and I actually do like enjoy the social media marketing as well. And you know, I enjoy all of it, but at the same time, it's a ton of work and I'm just get tired.

10:52
Well, yes, I can understand that because it's physical work and it's brain work. Whichever side you're working on, you're exercising one part of you or the other part of you or both at the same time and it's a lot. It's a lot for someone in their 30s. It's a lot for someone in their 50s. I couldn't do it. I don't want to do it. I think that people like you are amazing and I'm going to stay in my lane and learn from you guys from what you're doing. Yeah. I do feel like I'm crazy.

11:22
a little crazy sometimes. Darlyn, we all are in our own special ways. Everybody is a little bit loopy now and then. So it's okay. You can be crazy. I cheer you on in your insanity. Enjoy. Thank you. Okay. So when you go and do the consults, do people actually take your advice and keep up with whatever it was that you helped them figure out? Or do they just kind of...

11:52
Like it was a thing when they asked you to come, but then they realized what they need to do and they're like, eh, I don't want to do that. Or are they actually committed to continuing? I get a mixture of both. I think a lot of people, a big part of my consultations and just my work with clients in general is trying to encourage people to.

12:17
Decrease the size of projects that they start and that they work on so I recommend I like to recommend a hundred square feet is a pretty reasonable size for a person who has you know, maybe a full-time job, but a little bit of free time to install and maintain on their own in a single season So a lot of my work is just trying to get people to decrease

12:46
the size of projects that they're working on. Cause that's where people get in trouble is they take on a project that's way too big, it gets overwhelming and then they wanna quit because it's not fun anymore and it's just a constant struggle. And there are a good number of people who do take my advice and are super appreciative. And like I just recently went back and saw one that I did a consultation for a couple years ago and their front yard,

13:15
beautiful. I was so happy to see all of like, they had totally redone an entire corner of their front yard with all native plants and it was gorgeous. And then I have some other people that you know, I visited them a year or two ago and I've come back and you know, they've just done a few things that we talked about. But almost everybody makes at least a little bit of forward progress. Okay.

13:43
I was just wondering because I talked to some people on the East Coast for an interview a while ago. And what they do is they go in and they help people start gardens in their yards, even if it's just a small yard. And they do a lot with raised beds because that's their specialty. And when I asked the couple how they came to doing this, the husband said that...

14:09
They would get asked questions all the time about how to start a garden in a small yard or a half acre yard, whatever. They would just out of the goodness of their hearts go and talk to people and teach them and tell them. They would go back to visit and nobody ever did anything. But the minute they started charging for their services, people took it seriously and they would go back and visit and people would have done the work and have these beautiful raised bed gardens. The guy says,

14:37
It's almost like when you put hard-earned money into something, you might want to get something out of that money you spent. And I just laughed. I thought it was very astute of him to say that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I do charge for my consultations. I pretty jealously guard my time because there's not a lot of it. And I want to work with the clients who value me enough to pay me. Now I do some things for free. Like I'll do...

15:06
If somebody sends me some pictures and like a rough square footage, I'll like give them a list of plant recommendations or if I've worked with somebody before and they just have a couple quick questions, I'll do like a phone call and talk to them for free. But yeah, otherwise I've gotten pretty strict about charging for my time. Good, because your time is money. You need to be paid for your brilliance. Thank you. Yes.

15:35
Okay, so I have questions about native plants because I'm guessing that a lot of the stuff that's native in Illinois is probably commonly native in Minnesota. Like I assume that you guys have native coneflower and I guess it's called bee balm. You guys have that in Illinois? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We bought some from people who had it growing in their yard. They...

16:04
They are gardeners. They are really good at what they do. And they work in agriculture. And they do a plant sale every year from their property. So we bought some bee balm and some coneflower and some prairie something. I can't remember what it's called, but it's very pretty. And we put it in on our property. And it was during a drought two years ago. And promptly,

16:32
forgot that, oh gee, we might want to go check on those and water them. Didn't water them and they died because we were dumb. I should have been on my husband about it and I am not the one who gardens. So I didn't think to say, Hey, have you checked those plants we put in? My question is, is if we had put them in and actually paid attention to them and watered them, they should have done fine because they grow everywhere here. Wild. They are basically weeds.

17:02
So I'm assuming if we'd done the things we should have done they would have grown and spread and we would have lots by now

17:10
Yeah, absolutely. So that care during establishment is, there's a couple reasons that projects commonly fail. One is not an adequate care during the first season post-establishment. And if it's a drought year, then you're probably looking at having to water them for basically until the first frost and maybe even a little bit the next spring if it ends up being a dry spring.

17:39
And then the other one, the other common reason for failure is not good weed management. So these plants are tough and they can take care of themselves, but they do need a little bit of a head start, which I recommend for the first week post planting, watering every day. The next week, watering every other day. The next week, go down to twice a week. Then following week, you can start once a week and stay at once a week.

18:09
until you either get good natural rains or the plants go dormant. So I actually really like planting in fall because that means as long as you plant early enough for the plants, you know, probably about six to eight weeks before the first frost, so they have enough time to sink some roots down, you have to water way less than if you do a spring installation because then you have to water all summer long.

18:38
Yes, and had I been thinking about any of this in a clear-headed way at the time that we did it, I would have done it differently now that I know that, oh, if you don't water plants they die. And I knew this, but I just, I don't know, for some reason it just didn't click that just because they grow everywhere doesn't mean that when you rip them out of the ground and then you put them in the ground in a different place, they're going to need some care. Duh. I'm actually not.

19:07
stupid about gardening. We had so much going on, we just completely forgot about them, which sounds terrible. I feel like we murdered plants and that's just sad. I have to, I myself can't even tell you the number of plants that have died under my care. It's just maybe a tray is just out of reach of the sprinkler and I didn't realize it for a couple days and the whole thing crisps out.

19:36
Or, you know, I've planted things that are especially early on when I was doing a lot of experimentation in our own yard that just weren't right for the soil conditions or the sun conditions. So unfortunately, you know, you don't want them to die, they're living things and that kind of feels yucky. But on some level, you kind of do have to kill a fair number of plants to become a good gardener, which I feel like you're probably familiar with.

20:07
It's kind of like you got to kiss a lot of frogs to get to a prince. That's right. Yeah. Yep. Well, we did. We murdered a hundred dollars worth of plants and I was upset about it and then I was like, you know what? We can try it again a year or two from now when we're not quite as swamped with everything else going on. And I think that's going to be next summer. I actually will probably get some plants in end of August versus September.

20:34
you know, native plants and put them in and that way we only have to worry about them for about a month and a half. So, it'll be fine. Yeah. Well, and you know what? It's interesting because I run into that a lot where people think because they're natives, they don't require as good of site prep or as good of establishment care. And I also see this with seed mixes. People are like,

20:58
Oh, they're wildflowers. I'll just throw them out in the grassy area and they'll take over. Well, no, they're not going to be able to compete with established grass as seedlings. So like site prep is another really important piece that gets missed a lot. It's so interesting that you bring that up. We wanted to put in two small wildflower gardens and not the native flowers, just wildflower gardens.

21:28
My husband was thinking that he would just throw the seeds in. And I said, no, no, no, no. I need you to actually get the tractor with the tiller and till out the spaces. And he said, but they're wildflowers. And I said, yes, they are wildflowers. That doesn't mean they can compete with everything that's there already. Plus, how are the seeds going to get down in the dirt? There's a ton of grass there. And he was like, oh, oh, yeah.

21:53
He said, you know, you're actually better at this than I am. I said, I'm better at the thinking through it. Usually I said, you're good at the hard work. We're a good team that way. And he just laughed. He said, yeah, cause you don't have to beat yourself up to get your wildflower garden. I said, no, but I have to redirect you from not getting it started in the first place. We have a very fun relationship and he's really good. When he's kind of poking me and I poke him back, I think he wants me to poke back just because it's fun.

22:23
So we have a good thing going. But anyway, we did till it up and we did do the putting the stuff in the dirt the way it said to on the package. And some of them required winter stratification. So we knew that some of the flowers wouldn't come up the first spring. It would be the second spring. And this is the second spring and those gardens are so, so pretty. They all came up, they're great. So.

22:50
not a total idiot when it comes to gardening, just have terrible moments where I go, oh, I did not do that right. Yeah. And yeah, we all have those for sure. Yeah. So in your business name, the part of it is Heritage Livestock. What's the story with that? Yeah. So that's, that's sort of room that I left myself for expansion. We are looking at

23:18
potentially moving to some property that our family owns and leasing it. It's about 120 acres. Um, and so part of, part of like reintegrating humans in biology in a healthy way, um, is absolutely agriculture and like incorporating.

23:45
biodiversity and native species and appropriate livestock all together in the same space. And that's kind of where my day job especially fits in really beautifully with this. So right now we have, since we live in town, we do live in an area that has pretty lax legislation around poultry. So we have

24:12
flock of Welsh Harlequin ducks with three separate bloodlines that I'm working on crossbreeding. My goal is a duck that is like the ideal small farm duck so they can incubate their eggs and raise their babies themselves. They are good layers, they're good foragers, and they are halfway decent table birds, the boys especially.

24:43
Yeah, my ducks are, so, you know, we have a fairly small yard, but to the extent that we're able, we do rotate them around our different prairie areas within the yard. And so we incorporate our ducks with our native plants and we get eggs from them and we harvest the boys and I will sell some of the excess girls to other people. And that's something that I want to expand with more people, more species of animals

25:13
as the nursery grows, utilizing animals to help me manage spaces because animals will work all day long just for the price of being able to have good food and shelter in terms of weeding and managing plants for you, especially if you are really careful about good fencing and things like that. So I'm really interested in how animals can help me manage my space and how I could share that with other people.

25:42
Okay, I have to ask, are you going to get goats so they can keep whatever brush you have trimmed back? I might get goats. I probably would get sheep first. Okay. Just wondering, I have talked with so many people about goats on this podcast and I say that like I'm sick of it. And I'm not actually sick of it because I learned something different from every person that has.

26:08
goats or sheep or cows or horses or whatever animal they have. But goats are the big thing from my podcast because most people who are into homesteading either have goats, have had goats, or are thinking about getting goats. So that's why I asked. I have a different question. I have a question about your ducks. If you get ducks as ducklings, do they like

26:35
imprint on you and are they friendlier? Can you handle them easier if you need to pick them up? Because our chickens are ridiculous. We did not get them as babies and they fly the run all the time and we have to clip their wing, one wing, so they can't fly out of the run. And they don't like being picked up and they don't listen because chickens do not understand human language. And it's just a total pain in the ass to catch them to clip that one wing. So

27:04
Are ducks different or are they kind of the same as chickens? They are, so this, they're quieter. In terms of like temperament, they're usually quieter than chickens. Now I also have a fairly docile breed, which I chose intentionally. There are some duck breeds that are pretty high strung. But they, in order to imprint, you have to get them like...

27:30
essentially right after they come out of the egg, which is difficult when you buy from breeders or hatcheries, you know, with the shipping and the transport process. They usually are two to three days old by the time that they get to you. Okay. Yeah. Now, I do spend a lot of time with them as babies, so they're pretty accustomed to my presence and I can catch them. They don't love it, but they don't beat me up quite like my chickens used to when I had to handle them.

28:00
Yep, I don't love chickens. I have said this a few times already on the podcast. And the only reason we have chickens is because I love fresh eggs. I love the fact that we have day old eggs at any point in time while we have the chickens. And eggs right from the coop in the pan scrambled taste amazing. Yeah. So that's why we have chickens. My husband on the other hand thinks chickens are great. He thinks that it's a riot to.

28:27
get earthworms out of the garden and throw them in the run and chickens lose their minds. He thinks they're fun. I don't love chickens and I've never had ducks so I don't know if I would like ducks or not. And not really all that important. I was just curious about the difference in temperament between chickens and ducks. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, certainly we enjoy them more than the chickens. And so one thing

28:56
They do have high water needs in terms of, you know, you might not, you don't always necessarily have to provide them with swimming water, but they at least need to dock their heads fully so that they could clear out their sinuses. And they love, they need clean water and they are really good about making water dirty. So it's constantly managing their water, but that's actually a pro for us because

29:23
we take that dirty water and fertilize our nursery stock with it. Um, and so, you know, we are, it's kind of combining two things that way. Yes. I, I, some of the stuff that I love the most about homesteading and about talking with you guys is all the dual purpose and the full circle situations that come up. Absolutely. It, I do this thing.

29:51
with my house where I try to practice no wasted motion. So if I see something in the living room and I'm headed toward the kitchen and the thing belongs in the kitchen, I grab the thing out of the living room and put it in the kitchen. Or if I'm going downstairs and I notice that there's dirty clothes on the floor from the night before, they go downstairs with me. So I don't remember 20 minutes later and have to come back up to get them. No wasted motion as often as I can do. And I feel like it's a thing.

30:18
that people who are into agriculture, livestock, homesteading, crafting things, whatever, they all just innately do it. They just notice it and go, oh, this makes things easier and it's a natural follow through. So why not do it that way? Yeah. So I love that. I think it's great. Yeah. And I feel like finding those little opportunities is also super fun. Yeah.

30:44
It's always funny when you finally notice something that correlates to something else and you put it together in your brain and your brain goes, oh, that's why that works that way. I have this happen to me all the time, the older I get, and I have it happen with words a lot of the time. There are words that are two words that got put together at some point in the past to make the new word. And it doesn't click for me until...

31:12
I was this many days old when I realized the thing about the word. And every time it happens, I'm like, God, I'm an idiot. I've been reading for years. I love words. How did I not know those two things ended up together to make that word? And I feel like it's the same moment when you realize the correlation in your work or your hobbies or your life or whatever it is.

31:35
It's just this light bulb that pops on and you go, oh, I'm so dumb, I should have known that. I should have noticed that before. Yeah. So, okay, so basically your whole life is about

31:54
gardening and regenerative practices and making things work the way they originally worked in nature. Really, that's what it sounds like. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's awesome. I think that's a beautiful way to live your life. Thank you. You're welcome. And that's about it. I try to keep you to half an hour and we're at 32 minutes. So Kayla, thank you for your time and talking with me.

32:23
Absolutely. All right. Awesome. Thank you. Bye.