Echo Springs Farm

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Echo and Jonathan at Echo Springs Farm.

https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes

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 Echo and Jonathan at Echo Springs Farm. Good evening, guys. How are you? Good evening. Good. Tell me about yourselves.

00:26
So Jonathan and I, we met in 2010. We were both active in 4-H here in Pennsylvania and we were on the 4-H State Council. So we were selected as a group of, there was six of us that were on our State Council team. So they picked like the top six or top eight people in the state.

00:55
teenagers in the state to be on the state for each council and they plan like the state events and do all of the state legislative things concerning for each throughout the year and him and I met because we were both on the team in 2010 2011. We started dating when we were done with council. We got engaged in 2014 married in 2018 and

01:23
started the farm and the business in 2018. We both come from farming backgrounds. So I grew up on a traditional beef farm and he grew up on a traditional dairy style farm. And then when they sold the dairy, they had beef, cattle and sheep. And so we just, we both have a passion for farming. And in 2018, 2019, when we started our farm, we tried traditional style farming and it almost bankrupted us our first year.

01:51
So we realized we had to come up with something different. And that's how the farm concept of doing everything grass-fed, natural was born. Okay, so you were 4H sweethearts. Yes. And how old were you when you met? I was 16 and he was 17. So it's like high school sweethearts except it's 4H sweethearts. I love it, that's great. Yeah. Okay.

02:19
So tell me what you do at Echo Springs Farm. So we do a little bit of everything. Our primary focus is to produce the best possible quality food that we can for our customers. So be it natural, grass-fed beef, grass-fed lamb, grass-fed poultry, we have small...

02:49
batch of rabbits that we raise for meat rabbits that we raise on grass in a rabbit tractor, or produce. We do no spray produce, so a lot of tomatoes, a lot of cucumbers, some berries. We have a pretty big batch of blueberries that we pick every year, and everything is pesticide and

03:18
be toxic. We have two young children, a three-year-old and a one-year-old, and I'm pregnant with our third. So our goal is really for our kids to be able to walk outside, pick up what they want and eat it and not have to worry about what's on that. Wow. Okay. Congratulations on the third one on the way. Thank you. That's exciting. Okay. So do you guys have jobs off the farm or is this your job? Is the farm your job?

03:48
No, so we both work full time off the farm as well. So the farm itself is 14 acres and then we rent another 20 acres. So we farm about 34 acres. We run- And run a hay ground. And run a hay ground, yeah. We run about anywhere from 10 to 15 head of cattle a year. We have a couple of brood cows and then we buy stockers. In-

04:15
the spring or fall whenever we can get our hands on them. We have a flock of 21 sheep. We finish anywhere from six to eight sheep a year for customers. We do two batches of layer hens. So we typically have anywhere between 60 and 100 layer hens at any given time. We also then do meat birds. So we run batches of 60 meat birds at a time, and we do three to four batches a year, depending on what we have a want for.

04:44
And then, like I said, we also do the rabbit. And then we raise some pigs for ourselves. We have a couple of quail, some ducks, two peacocks, a donkey, it's kind of like a petting zoo. My God, when do you sleep? We don't. No, no. No, like I said, we both also work full-time jobs. So we really, we're five to six hours a night, if we're lucky.

05:14
Wow, I can't even begin to imagine. And luckily, I'm done child rearing. So I don't have to get up with little kids in the middle of the night anymore. But holy cow, you guys, that's a lot going on. Most mornings I start at between 330 or 4 o'clock and usually call it a day by 11, 1130. Yeah. Wow, I'm impressed. That is a gargantuan.

05:43
task in having two full-time jobs, well, one each, and two and a coming along child, two kids and one coming along, and running the farm with that many animals. Wow, I'm blown away. Awesome. So you're selling produce and meat. So that's to... Is that to support the farm?

06:12
Yes. So it didn't start out that way. We basically really just wanted to have the animals paper themselves. It was something where we were raising them for ourselves. So, you know, the two of us when we first got married, we didn't need a whole beef. We didn't need a whole pig. So we had the meat available to us. So why not, you know, pass that along to other people?

06:43
Then as it progressed, we seen that there was a huge need in this area. We're in a pretty big food desert. So it became evident that what we were doing was not just helping us, but helping the community to an extent. And we're sandwiched between two towns that the only grocery store that they have is a Dollar General. So the lack of fresh produce, the lack of fresh meat.

07:13
is very large. So we started to want to fill that need. And then as we started to fill that need, we seen that it was practical to continue to grow so that the farm could financially support itself. Okay. And you're in Pennsylvania, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. What's the largest city that you're near?

07:43
You guys are in Minnesota, correct? Yes. Okay. You've heard of flight 93 that went down door 9 11. Yes. We are a half hour east of that. Okay. All right. That doesn't help me on a city though. Penn State. State College is our nearest bigger town. Altunin State College are just north of us. Okay. Thank you. The closest city would be Pittsburgh.

08:13
They were two hours east of Pittsburgh.

08:17
Okay, so you're quite a ways away from any big city. Yeah, yeah, the town we live in has a four way stop sign. Yeah, yeah, I grew up in one of those in Maine. I know what those are like. So yeah, well, awesome that you guys are providing food for people that need it because that's an amazing thing to do.

08:45
So how is it going? Well, I can tell you it was a catawain because my day job, I work with the Department of Ag here in Pennsylvania, helping farmers with a lot of grazing systems and stuff. So that's what got me into practice. I guess what really got me into it was practicing it at home and then took it kind of as a career. When I, 10 years ago,

09:13
Now I've got to go back further than that. 10 years ago was 2014. 2014 was the year that I kind of took over my family farm because my father had passed away. In 2014, we had 11 acres fenced in for pasture. And those 11 acres could only support maybe three head of cattle. Today, those 11 acres, we can support 15 head of cattle. We only have to feed hay February and March.

09:45
Okay, so how did it change? What did you do? Moving cows every day, keeping fresh grass. We started doing a lot of natural seeding. So instead of doing fertilizers and that, what I started doing was actually putting the seed down then moving the cows over top of what I just seeded. We actually fed some seed to cows, clover seed. Cows will actually eat and pass through.

10:14
and the seed is still viable. We did reduce, we took a year off and no cattle. All I did was mow the pastures that year to try to get us back to, I guess you would say revitalization. And then from there, pretty much keeping the nutrients. What we were doing was we were renting a lot of ground, so we were taking those nutrients off the farm.

10:43
And I kept those nutrients there and we cut back on the rented ground that we were doing and just focused primarily on the home farm for about two years till we got it up and moving. Okay, this is the cool stuff that I really like to learn about because to go from three head to 15 head on the same land is amazing. Yeah, that's great. Okay.

11:10
So how you told me how people it's not like the 15 header all finishing beef. So we keep a constant flow of like right now our age group is from our herd of cattle is our youngest three are yearlings. So I guess the one is about eight months over the last Peter we bought all the way up to mature cows. So we keep that age bracket spread out so that we're not feeding you know all.

11:39
15 head of finishers were feeding calves to finishing beef. Okay, yeah. And does that cut down on how much feed they're eating? Yeah, definitely. So like we do what we call mob grazing with our cattle and our sheep both. So like tonight when I moved cows, we're probably at, our stocking rate tonight was

12:09
A little less because I gave him a little bit more just because it was kind of a weird area there. We had some low grass Um, because this is our second pass across the farm right now. We're on so my stocking rate tonight was Probably 6,800 pounds of animal per acre Wow, so we were trying to learn tonight. Uh, some of our highs will go like um 1500 Yeah, probably like 50

12:39
15,000 pounds of animal per acre, some of our heavier stocking rates. So this one was a little, this one was a lower one. We're about 6,800 pounds per acre right now. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. So the weather, the weather really affects what we do obviously, because, you know, we need the heat and proper amounts of moisture to grow the grass to where we want it.

13:09
So we had a lot of rain and then we didn't have rain and then we had a lot more rain. And so it's just been a very up and down year for us already. Um, but luckily, Jonathan's very good at managing the pastures and knock on wood. We've been doing really well with our cows out on pasture. Um, we actually had a cow cab out on pasture about six weeks ago, and we were concerned that there was going to be too much mud and there wasn't.

13:37
because he manages the pasture so well that they just, you know, they, the cows do what they're supposed to do and they don't muck up the pastures. Very nice. Um, okay. So I saw on your Facebook page that you guys have fresh produce for sale already and you're in Pennsylvania. How? What is the secret people? Cause I'm in Minnesota. We don't have any fresh produce grown yet. We have.

14:05
We start a lot of plants early. We do do some under plastic planting and we have a very good relationship with our plain sec folk around here that have greenhouses that can start stuff really early for us. And we can get it in the ground. And actually this year was very odd. Our last frost was in April. We haven't had a frost since April.

14:35
So it's been a very warm winter and spring all over the US as far as I know. Our first produce that we have now is strawberries, which isn't the earliest we've ever harvested strawberries since we started. Rhubarb, which is pretty typical. Rhubarb. Yeah, pretty typical. We have a lot of lettuce right now. Our lettuce really took off. Kale. Fresh herbs, oregano, chives.

15:03
We probably won't have tomatoes till another two weeks. What I thought I saw tomatoes. It was those we got from a grower that grows them in what it's not actually a greenhouse. It's called a high tunnel. Yep. Uh, he's a plain sect, a midnight gentleman that has a high tunnel. So he had tomatoes. Was that two weeks ago? Yeah. Two weeks ago was his first harvest at tomatoes.

15:30
We have a very good working relationship with him. He also butchers our chickens and our rabbits. So we work very well with him and very close with him. And a lot of the, if I have customers, like restaurant customers that want lettuce in like March and April, typically he can get it for me. And he is very much along our standards of no spray. And he has, I think six young kids.

15:58
seven young kids. So they are in the same mindset that we are that they want their kids to be able to walk outside and pick the lettuce out of the ground and eat it if they want to. So we have a very, very good working relationship with him and he's very open to supporting us as we are to him. That's great. No, I was looking at your Facebook page and I was like, I am so jealous. They already have tomatoes growing. So now I don't have to be jealous.

16:27
Yeah, but we don't have a high tunnel. So how does high tunnels work? You're still planting in the ground. He does is actually deep mulch. He actually runs his goats in there in the wintertime. Yeah. So it's a deep bedding pack that he plants in. And then it does have, he has two wood burners at either end that he can heat it. So he's usually has tomatoes in the ground. Mid February. Yeah, mid February is usually when he plants.

16:57
You are giving me so much hope because we just finished, we just finished our heated greenhouse build this past weekend. And I asked my husband if we could, if we could grow tomatoes in there in the dead of winter. And he was like, I don't know yet. He said, but we're going to try. I said, okay, good. A lady in cans. No, where is she? Wyoming.

17:25
She has lemon trees in a greenhouse. Yup. I was reading about her. Yeah, she has lemon trees in a greenhouse in Wyoming. That's pretty impressive. And they grow in the wintertime. Yeah. Nice. Okay. So you should definitely be able to do tomatoes. I hope so because hot... Okay, I've said this once before on an episode of the podcast. There is a company in Minnesota.

17:55
who grows Better Boy hot house tomatoes. And they are the only tomatoes I will eat in the winter time from the store because they taste almost like our tomatoes from our garden in the summer. Okay. So I'm really looking forward to our tomatoes come January. I can tell you a plan that we're gonna try this winter that my grandfather and my great grandfather did. Around here, they formed

18:25
less than a mile over the hill here beside us. So this would have been in the 30s and 40s. They would take their watermelons, because watermelons come off July and August, and they'd put that between first and second cutting hay and stomp it down, and they would have watermelon all throughout the winter. So we're gonna give it a try this year. It might fail, but we're gonna give it a try. That's all you can do.

18:54
I mean, what's the worst that happens? It doesn't work. And then the sheep and the cows will get some watermelon flavored hay. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Why not? I don't think they'll be mad. No, no, I can't imagine they would be. Okay, so now that I have picked your brain on what you're doing, how is it going? Are you guys like ecstatically happy with the choice you've made?

19:23
Most days. Yeah, most days. There's a lot of times that I think we are our toughest critics. People will come here and they'll be like, oh, your property is beautiful and what you do is amazing. And we in the back of our minds, we're like, well, thank you. But there's so much more that we want to do. And in our minds, because we can't have everything here all the time, we're not we're not to where we want to be. You know, we want to get to the point where we don't have to outsource, where we don't have to have somebody else growing for us.

19:53
where we can do it all ourselves. But we're really only six years into this. So for the most part, we're headed on the right track. It's just kind of one of those things where, you know, we're always gonna want more. We're always gonna wanna be able to provide more for the community. And until we get to the point where it's 100% of our products, I don't think we'll be 100% happy. And the other thing for one of us to be able to have

20:23
the farm as our income. You know, right now with both of us working 40 plus hours a week, there is stuff that falls through the cracks that we just can't do because we have to go to that day job every day. Yes, yes. There are two things that I have heard my whole life and one of them is you can have it all and the second one is you can do it all. The addendum to the both of those are

20:52
not at the same time. Yep. Exactly. That is a good way to put that. And you don't have to do it all and you don't have to have it all. You have to do what you aspire to doing and hope to accomplish. That's all you have to do. And I'm an old lady. I'm 54 and you guys are not 54.

21:20
I have been living my life for a long time now and really just just bask in the successes as they happen. That's the best advice I can give you. We appreciate that. Because if you don't, you'll miss it. You won't have the opportunity to stop and breathe it in and go, we accomplished that thing. Now what? Yeah. And that last year we we we really did that. You know, we

21:49
We got to the point where we were just like trying to get so much done and we just kind of lost sight of the big picture. And this year we've kind of taken it back a little bit. You know, we switched over to the self serve, you know, prior to this year we didn't do self serve. We were here all the time. We missed out on a lot of different things with our families. We missed out on a lot of different things with each other and we missed out on a lot of different things with our kids. And so over the winter this past year.

22:18
We say we hibernate November through March. That's our hibernation period. And we... It's really when we renovate our house. We kind of sat down and decided that we needed to take a step back and we needed to figure out what was gonna work with having young kids because, you know, our kids wanna go out and do things. Our kids wanna go to the amusement park. Our kids wanna go fishing. Our kids wanna go hang out with friends.

22:45
And we want them to be able to do all that stuff. We don't want them to grow up hating the farm. So we took a step back and said, okay, we can put self-serve produce out. We can cut down on the amount of pigs that we have. We can streamline the chicken process. So we did all of that. And this year, it has been a huge blessing already. It's made more time that we were able to get our gardens planted earlier. We were able to.

23:14
uh, get our sheep out on pasture sooner. We were able to get our cows out on pasture sooner because we didn't have to be tied to the property where the produce is. We could just, Hey, it's there. It's in a building. The money goes in the box. And you know, we, we live in a, what I like to think is a pretty honest area. And Jonathan and I are both of the mindset that if they really need it and they take it, well, they obviously needed it more than we did. So.

23:44
You know, we really kind of switched our mentality to focusing on our kids and wanting to spend that extra time with them instead of just being tied to the farm 24-7. I'm really proud of you both for prioritizing what's important to you because a lot of people get so caught up in the go, go, go that they forget to do that. So good job. Very impressed.

24:15
And I actually tell people and I have to tell myself sometimes, this doesn't have to be an all or nothing lifestyle. When people are talking about, oh, I want to farm, I want a homestead, I want to start raising my own animals and I want to start raising my own produce, I am a big advocate for start small. If you live in an apartment, start raising plants in a raised bed, start raising plants in a …

24:44
outside window box, you know, do what you can start small. Anything that you can do to get that healthier food in your body to source more locally, to learn to can and preserve and just basically not rely on the system as much is living the homesteading lifestyle. You don't have to do all or none. It can be a little bit at a time. And I have to remind myself that.

25:13
Sometimes too, you know, because I'm sitting here thinking, oh, you know, my kids picked out on processed sugar all weekend at Memorial Day picnics. And I have to remind myself, it's okay for them to do that once in a while. I can't do it all, all the time. Your husband got a cup soon, ran him from work because he was tired. So. Yes, everything in moderation, including being moderate.

25:44
Oh my. Okay, so you love what you're doing, but it's hard work. This is the refrain that I hear all the time when I talk to homesteaders. And I'm going to make the tagline for this podcast, do what you can with what you have, where you are, because that's what everybody ends up telling me. Yes. So what's...

26:10
I know what to ask you guys because you're so busy and you have so much going on. The little kids that you have, do they love it? Do they love being on the farm? Yes, they absolutely love the farm. Our daughter, she's three, she'll be four in July. She is in, I think she's in our profile picture right now. She

26:39
is very into showing animals. She has her own flock of registered Shetland sheep. Last year was her first year to show at the fair. She had a ram that we bottle raised with her and she absolutely loved showing at the fair. She now this year is taking six sheep to the fair and a heifer. So she's very into the animals.

27:07
They are out with us every night when we do barn work. Our son loves the bunny rabbits And yeah, he's all about the tractors But our daughter is absolutely She's a big help I joke and say that she does more work than some grown adults because We can trust her to collect eggs. We can trust her to feed the rabbits. We can trust her to Work with the chickens and let us know if something's

27:37
not right. She's super observant when it comes to like, oh, hey, you know, that sheep didn't get up and go eat or, you know, that chicken is doing something that's not normal. She picks up on those things. And she's been, I mean, from day one, she's been in the barn with us. I have pictures of her at a week old sitting outside the chicken house while Jonathan and I were doing barn work in a car seat. So she's been in the barn with us from day one.

28:07
Her son, like I said, he's very into the bunny rabbits and he loves the donkey. And then it's all about the tractors, which I'm fine with. If he wants to just have his bunnies and then play with his tractors, I'm okay with that. Okay, you said your daughter's gonna be four in July? Yes. Wow. My goodness. That's impressive too.

28:35
You guys, you guys are in it to win it here, you know. Well, I mean, I don't like to, I don't like to brag, but she moved 60 meat birds last night, so she put, she put 60 meat birds out on pasture last night. So I was, I was a proud mama. Yeah. Yeah, that's okay. I don't want to say that's crazy because it's not crazy, but

28:59
That is so amazing to me that she's that little and already has so much knowledge and that's from you. Yeah, she's she's a quick learner.

29:15
That is fantastic. I am so glad I asked to talk to you guys. So I'm so impressed. And I don't usually do interviews after noon because I'm more awake and more on my game in the morning. And so when I do them in the evening, I'm not quite as on it. So I'm really glad that you guys have all these stories because I don't have any stories tonight.

29:38
I just wolfed a burger. You were saying you grabbed a Pepsi on the way home. I just wolfed a gross burger from Arby's to eat before I talked to you guys and I'm going to regret it tomorrow. I still have dishes and laundry to take care of after I get in talking to you. I'm like, I don't know what to ask now. But luckily we're almost at 30 minutes and I try to keep these 30 minutes anyway. So it all worked out great. I really love what you're doing.

30:06
And I really, really love that you are providing food for people in your area in a food desert because food security is so important and there are so many places in America that don't have access to produce and good meats. And it seems crazy to me because America is supposed to be the land of milk and honey, right? Yep. And it's not. Yeah, it's a shame. It really is.

30:35
If we had more time, Jonathan and I could both go on our soap boxes about the American food system and how broken it is, but we'd be here for another two hours. Maybe, maybe we can do that another time. Yeah. We'll have to, we'll have to save that for another time. But, um, Jonathan and I have both. The rules and regulations that Pennsylvania puts on farms. Yeah. We, we are bound by a bunch of crazy regulations as, as are a lot of states anymore.

31:04
But Pennsylvania being a Commonwealth has really kind of kicked its farmers in the pants and said like, hey, you know, we know you're trying to do this, but we don't, we don't care. You know, you're still going to be bound by these regulations. But yeah, that's, that's a whole, whole nother conversation. Yeah. And honestly, every state has that going on in some way, shape or form. I mean, Minnesota is pretty progressive, but they still have things like you can't.

31:32
buy raw milk in Minnesota unless you go to the farm where the cow is to get it.

31:39
So we bought a local dairy for years. We bought. How did he always have a word for animal use? Yeah. For animal use. So, yeah. Yeah. And I understand in Pennsylvania right now is the huge target of some federal lawsuits. I don't know how much you follow that kind of stuff, but we have a, an Amish gentleman.

32:06
in Lancaster County that is actually going through federal court because he had a raw milk membership, basically, where he was making kefir and yogurt and that kind of stuff with raw milk, and that's not allowed in Pennsylvania. And even though people were buying a membership, he wasn't actually selling a product, he still got arrested and they seized his product.

32:35
and he wasn't allowed to sell his product. He wasn't even allowed to feed his product to his own animals. It's just an insane court case. It's just absolutely mind blowing. Yeah, there is a lot of insane court cases going on right now. And I'm sure that that is like the worst of them.

33:00
I would actually love to do an episode with you and another couple that I talked to a while back because they have some thoughts too. So let me see if I can work on that and maybe we'll do it as a, somebody suggested to me that I should do a tiny homestead podcast after dark for subjects exactly like this. And I've been thinking about it. So. Well, if you do let us know because we would absolutely be welcome, be willing to talk about that.

33:30
Yeah. And I just, we need to be aware of what we're saying, because I don't want somebody to come bang on my door and take me to jail for bashing on the US government. But I also feel like people have the right to express their opinions, but I can't do it in this one now. So, all right, guys, thank you so much for your time. And I appreciate everything you just told me. It was fantastic. Not a problem at all.

34:00
Thank you for having us. Yeah, have a good night. You too. Bye.