Tandi Family Farms

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Andrea and Renata at Tandi Family Farms.
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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. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. 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 Andrea and Renata at Tandy Family Farms. How are you girls? We're good. What's going on? How are you? Good. I'm great. You're in California? Yes, California.

00:29
Like where? California is a big state. Yeah, the San Francisco Bay area, specifically San Leandro. Okay, cool. Yeah, and I'm in Minnesota, so I'm a long ways away from you guys. So tell me about yourselves and what you do. So we're brand new. We launched everything that we're doing in May.

00:54
Kind of in honor, not kind of, but in honor of my grandfather who was a farm to table chef. Mm-hmm. Okay. And so what are you doing? Well we are forming a nonprofit organization. We're almost have that set. And we are currently spending our time helping people set up gardens in their spaces, whether that be a backyard or...

01:22
In one case, an apartment complex, community garden, but we are in the process of fundraising and looking to get a piece of land, hopefully in the near-ish future. But of course, that depends on funding. To have a teaching farm, which will be a regenerative farm, as well as a place to teach from, so a farm and farm school. So we're in the early stages.

01:53
That's where we are now. Okay. So a teaching farm. So like anybody, any age or kids or grownups or what? Everyone. Anyone willing to learn and wanting to learn about how to sustainably grow your own food and how to cook the food that you grow. I love that because usually farm school is about growing food. It's not necessarily about what you do with the food that you grow. Yeah.

02:20
And it's really important to use that food you grow because there's a lot of work that goes into it. There is a lot of work and patience. Mm-hmm. And it's so good for you. We have a farm-to-market garden that we grow. And it's looking real sad this year because we've had a lot of rain. But I did manage to eke out four cucumbers so far. And oh, my god, they're so good because of the rain. Go fig.

02:49
It's terrible growing conditions, but cucumbers love water. Yeah. Yup. It's a hard job growing food and I don't grow the garden my husband does, but I have helped him in years past and it's hard work. It's dirty work and it's such good work. Yeah. We love getting dirty and we love hard work.

03:16
So it's a great combination. Yeah. So why did you guys exactly start to do this? You mentioned your father? My grandfather. Grandfather, yes. Tell the story. So my Nono, so we are Italian. My Nono John or Giovanni Tandi, he's a first generation Italian American. And his family.

03:45
They come from a little province in Italy called Genoa, and more specifically, Appicella. And their vocation, they were farmers. So something that's kind of cool is that my great grandfather, Angelo Tandi, he brought with him these green beans. And they're an Italian broad green bean. And they've been in our family.

04:12
for over 100 years and they're currently growing in three of the Victory Gardens or community gardens that we've started. So they're literally heirloom vegetables. Yes, literally, yeah, literally heirloom vegetables. I love that, oh, you make me so happy. Yeah. Stories like this just make my heart too big for my chest. That's great. One thing, oh, sorry. Go ahead.

04:40
Oh, one thing that Andrea maybe didn't mention is that he, he passed this year. And so we've had this dream of launching this farm for a while now. And it was just kind of like the, the motivation or just the, the oomph we, we had to, this is the time, um, you know, to do it in his honor. Um, so, but it is a dream we've had for a long time. It just, it just kind of felt like it's the time is now. Right. Yep.

05:10
And I made the decision to leave public education after 22 years, the last 10 being an elementary school administrator. And yeah, this has been a healing process and it's like a passion too.

05:31
Fantastic. So it's non-profit. So does that mean that you won't be charging for the classes or does that just mean the money goes right back into the business? Goes right back into the business. Okay. Yeah. And currently how our, what we call little farmsteads or victory gardens is that we design them and we provide the plants at no cost to the folks that we're designing for.

06:00
They provide the soil, they provide containers, whatever they're going to be growing in. So essentially our services currently are free. They just pay us the starting cost for themselves to get going. Okay. And how is it going? I mean, it's almost August. So how has it been this year? Amazing. We have...

06:28
So we have four working farmsteads as we call them, two of which are in Castro Valley, which are over the hill from where we are. And then we have our family plot, which is on 98th Avenue in Oakland, which is massive. Everything is growing really, really well. The only thing we've had some issues with are carrots. We you know, our little micro climate here, we have like heat waves.

06:58
were like 100 degrees and then we drop into like the 60s or below and the carrots didn't like that. So they all died. Every single patch of carrots that we planted died. Yeah. So and we're growing pumpkins, we're growing squash, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers. What else are we growing?

07:25
Oh, goodness. Lots of different things. We're trying to go for as much biodiversity as possible. We envision our eventual farm as extremely biodiverse, very much taking inspiration from people like Apricot Lane or also known as the biggest little farm. So we're trying to start that biodiversity now in our smaller gardens.

07:56
Okay. So I have to know, has this project been consuming you since you started it? Because when I start a project, all I can think about, all I can talk about is the thing I'm doing. I would say yes and no. We try to find a good balance. But it's like, it's a good, if it is becomes consuming, it's a good consuming, meaning that it's just really good for, especially for

08:25
for me right now. I'm not working, it's summer break and I'm not, I'm indefinitely on a summer break. So I have a bit of a routine. I can go to any of our plots, start working, you know, doing whatever. And yeah, I don't know if that answers your question fully, but... So do people, do people show up at the garden plots and you get to visit while you're weeding or working? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Mm hmm.

08:55
Okay. Yeah, since these are mostly at people's homes. When we come there, it's because we've arranged with them to work in our garden. And so there's a lot of interaction. Yeah. So you get a lot of social benefit out of it too. Yes. And our own family garden, which is the 98th Avenue Garden, the whole family comes out pretty much.

09:21
my 90 year 93 year old Noni or grandmother and my youngest nephew who is about to be three and we all work in the garden together pulling weeds, finding worms, you know, harvesting. And then you know, everyone has to take a chance or take a turn on the backyard swing after they've worked real hard in the garden. Oh, yes. Including the adults.

09:50
So it's providing really nice family bonding time too. Oh yeah, yeah. And it's just like, so my youngest nephew who is two, we started working in the garden with my Nonu at about that age. And so it's just, you know, it's repeating, it's repeating that process.

10:13
Yes, my favorite memory of the garden at the house that I grew up in with my dad and my mom and my sister and my brother is my least favorite was weeding because I really don't love weeding. I still to this day don't love weeding. My dad was really the one that started the garden and my mom would tend it in the summer and they would go out and pick beans and stuff when it was ready.

10:41
My favorite memory is at the end of summer when the garden was done and my dad would pull everything out, put it in the middle of the garden and let it sit for about a week. And then that following weekend, he would have a bonfire and burn everything that had dried out. And he would have one beer in the fridge that waited for him until the bonfire was done. Because it was hot work, you know, in Maine, hot muggy.

11:11
And he would go in and get that beer and sit down in the grass and look at the pile of embers and go, that's a wrap. I would just laugh. And my dad, my dad and mom didn't really drink. So, so it was a very celebratory drink for him that they got through another summer, had a good yield and put it to bed. That's great. Yeah, at the end of the end of each growing season, particularly

11:41
There's this, it's the end of a harvest. So back in Italy, what the farmers would do was they would have a barn dance and they would enjoy something called Boniocolda, which in translation is hot bath. So they would bring their, whatever they were growing to the table and they did, it was like, it's how we call it Italian fondue. So they'd stick.

12:09
whatever they were going to be cooking in the hot bath of the Banyukalda, they'd go dance and then come back and then eat what was on their skewer. And that's a tradition that we do to this day. So that was their harvest festival, basically? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of vino too. I bet. I bet. Okay. So you were talking about teaching people how to cook with the food that they grow.

12:38
So what kinds of things would you teach them? Because I have a couple of things that I would teach them, but I'd rather hear what you would teach them. Yeah. So the idea to teach people to cook also comes from two places. Like I said, my grandfather, he was a farm to table chef. Up until this past October, he was cooking for 500 men at the Colombo Club of...

13:07
an Oakland, which is an Italian American club. And before we could walk, we had ladles and spoons in our hands. And one of my fondest memories growing up was learning how to make my No No's pasta sauce with him. And I was about eight years old, and in these big industrial kitchens, and like the instruments were bigger than I was. So like the pot was bigger than me.

13:37
how to properly cut and dice vegetables. As part of my job as an MTSS, which stands for Multi-Tiered System of Support, a big part of what I did was social and emotional learning. And after we came back from COVID, we were seeing students eating things like Takis and ramen and things like that or sports drinks, and they'd literally crash after lunch.

14:06
So what I would do is I would do something called lunch bunches. And I started with my third graders because they were the age that I was when I started to cook with my Nonu. And we also at our school had this massive organic garden. So together we would recreate their favorite foods using as much as we could the vegetables from our garden. So some of their favorites were ramen.

14:35
where we picked bok choy and carrots and all the things that we were growing and created a lunch together. We did poke bowls, pizzas, all kinds of stuff. So those are the things that we would definitely be teaching. Also, really, people have asked for ravioli making classes. So that's something that we will be doing. Again, the recipe is really old.

15:02
handed down from generation to generation. And the rolling pin that we use to make our raviolis is our great-grandmother's. So who knows how old it is? But yeah, so those are the things. Not just Italian food. We also have a background in the Hawaiian islands. So we cook all kinds of different things. So.

15:27
I'm going to share what I would teach people because I don't have any Italian or Hawaiian background. But one of the things that I would actually teach people how to do is bruschetta. Oh yeah, easy. Because I love it. I had it at a restaurant years ago as an appetizer. I was just smitten with this very simple bread with garlic and basil and tomato.

15:56
and mozzarella cheese and balsamic vinegar and olive oil. It was the simplest thing to make ever. And I loved it. And the next week I was like, I need to figure out how to make this. I got to find the recipe. Found the recipe and went, oh, I can make this every day if I want to. And clearly I don't want to eat half a loaf of bread every day because that's probably not great for me. But once every couple of weeks, it's a really yummy, bright, fresh thing to have.

16:25
eat as dinner. We will have it for dinner. That's it. Easy, right? It's easy to do. Yeah. So as soon as the tomatoes and the basil are kicking in the garden, we have it like once every two weeks because it's quick, it's easy and it's yummy. So I would teach people how to make that. I would teach people how to make, which is going to sound really funny because I have no Italian heritage, but the things I'm saying are very Italian. I would teach them how to make a basic spaghetti sauce because I...

16:53
fed my kids spaghetti once a week for years because we were broke and spaghetti was cheap. And a homemade spaghetti sauce is fantastic. It is so easy to make really. Yeah, it is. And those are the things that I think of from the garden because we grow tons of tomatoes every year. So anything with tomatoes is going to be on the menu. Yeah.

17:18
Unfortunately, our tomato, that's the one thing that they're not doing great this year, like kind of across our area is they're just not turning green or they're not turning red. They're just not turning over or the yields are kind of small. But typically that's yeah, we have us a pasta sauce called pasta Lana that my my Noni it's her signature dish that everyone loves. That's very simple with, you know, onions, basil, no garlic, she says.

17:49
and tomatoes. Yeah, yeah, just unusual to have no garlic, but different variations of our family who make that sauce, they put a little garlic in there. Yeah, yeah. Can you guys grow winter squash where you are? Yes. Okay, so the other thing I would teach people to make is just a basic roasted squash because people think that you got to get fancy with winter squash.

18:16
If the squash has grown the way it's supposed to, all you have to do is cut that thing in half, scoop the seeds out, put the seeds in a bowl to roast later because any winter squash seed is edible as far as I know. And you put that flesh down on a cookie sheet with sides so it doesn't spill because it will leak out water or fluid. And you roast it until it's got like a nice caramelization on the flesh on the on the bottom side. And you put a fork through it easy.

18:45
And that is the yummiest, yummiest snack. Easy peasy. So yeah, we have been doing like on our Instagram page, what is in season. And so we'll do quick fast recipes with in season vegetables. And I think a family and fan favorite is our cauliflower recipe, which is very simple. It's literally,

19:16
garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, butter. And you just pour it on the top, sprinkle with salt and pepper, put it in a Dutch oven, put it in the oven for 40 minutes and it's the most tastiest cauliflower ever. It's a little Parmesan cheese on top. Melts in your mouth. Yeah, it's really good. Could you do it with broccoli that way too? We haven't, but I bet you you could.

19:45
Yeah, I always see broccoli and cauliflower as interchangeable. Whatever I have, I'm going to use. Okay, that's awesome. I had thought of something while you were talking and as usual, I got focused on what you were saying and completely forgot what it was and it was about food. Oh, and I don't know. My daughter lived in California for a few years. She just moved to Florida last year and she was vegan. She is not vegan now.

20:13
I don't know if people do soups in California in the wintertime like people do in the Midwest. Oh, we do soups. We're very much a soup family. Yeah. Okay. Because I've made cream of broccoli soup with broccoli from our garden. Oh, that was fabulous. I've made squash, winter squash soup with our squashes. And that's amazing. Yeah.

20:42
You know, sprinkled on top. Yeah. It just it's so good when it's cold, though. And I know California doesn't get as cold as Minnesota, clearly. But my daughter told me two winters ago that it got down to like 30 degrees. Yeah, it can get cold where we are. Yeah. Well, it also depends on which. Yeah. Where? Which climate? Because there's multiple climates in California.

21:08
You guys have everything, right? Yeah, we have mountains and snow to the ocean. Mm hmm. Yeah. It's all relative. Even if it's not that cold here, we feel cold because we're wimps. And so it feels like soup weather to us, even if it's not as cold as Minnesota. Yeah. And this year, since we are growing leeks, one of our favorite soups is tomato potato leek soup. Oh, yes. Yeah. So we're also growing potatoes.

21:37
And it'll be fun to cook one of our favorite soups with everything that we've grown in our garden. Not just the herbs or not just the leeks, but also the potatoes. Yeah. Big potato crop coming. Awesome. We do not. We didn't put any in this year. I'm sad. We did make bacon potato soup last winter with our potatoes.

22:07
bacon that we had bought from a local butcher, like we got a half of a pig and stuck it in our freezer. So I felt like we had really made things almost from everything that we had in that soup. And I counted the bacon because we bought it from a local butcher. We didn't raise that pig, but we contributed to the money that paid for that pig's raising. Right. Yeah. Thanks. So we were very proud of ourselves on that one. Nice. Yeah.

22:37
We always, we hear my husband, myself and my son, summer's hard because stuff doesn't really start coming in from the garden until mid July, 1st of August for us. And, and it's hot. Nobody wants to eat a roasted chicken and mashed potatoes in the summer. Nobody wants to eat hot food. And so we find ourselves doing stuff that might take 10 minutes in the oven, like the bread for the bruschetta.

23:06
Or we'll do salads from the store which sucks because you know, yeah, you know Yeah, you better have a lettuce from our gardens. But by the time it's hot the lettuces aren't good anymore. They're very bitter Right. And so we end up buying drinking water That's okay. We end up buying salad from the store We end up buying cold cut stuff sandwiches because it's so muggy and hot out. Nobody wants to cook

23:33
I looked at my husband the other day because we literally had a cold meal we planned a week or so ago. And I said, I can't wait. I can't wait for a soup season. He said, why? I said, I don't care. I want food. I want real hearty hot food, but I don't want to eat it right now. Yeah. Today is kind of a soup day for us. It's kind of rainy and a little bit cold.

24:02
But then it'll be 85 degrees tomorrow. So we'll see. Yeah. And I feel like I spend half my life talking about food, whether with my husband and my son, because I'm the one that kind of directs the meal plans for the weeks or on the podcast, because cooking is a big part of homesteading and obviously cottage food producing. So I talk about food a lot and I'm actually, I don't weigh 300 pounds. I'm not, I'm a tall kind of thin girl, but.

24:31
Food is life and you can grow your own food for yourself, number one. And if you can grow food for other people, number two, you are doing a fabulous thing for the world. Yeah, we think so. So that was your dog. I saw that you have three dogs. Well, we don't exactly have three dogs. Oh, okay.

24:54
one of our board members, Gary has a dog, her name is Willie. And then my parents, their dog is Scotty. And we all work on the farm together one way or another. And they're all besties. And so we're typically wherever we are all at, the dogs are out with us. And it started out kind of like as a little joke, but everyone knows Willie, Bristol and Scotty.

25:23
Okay, is Bristol yours? Bristol is ours, yeah. Okay, all right. What is Bristol? What kind of dog? She is a Belgian Mellon Waff. I love them. They're beautiful. And thankfully she's a chill one. She's not a raptor. She's very chill. We lucked out in that way. Is she big? She's a little bit smaller than a German Shepherd. She weighs about, right now she's like 56 pounds, so under 60 pounds.

25:53
Oh, so she's not big big. No, she's not big big. And they're medium sized. And they're slender. Their breed is pretty slender. Uh huh, okay. Well, since you guys have a dog and you have two friend dogs that hang out, I get to talk about my dog. I've been trying not to talk about Maggie because I talk about her too much. Oh no, we love dogs. Me too, but I'm sure my podcast listeners are like, oh no, she's gonna talk about Maggie again. No, it's fine. We love you. We don't care about Maggie.

26:20
Yeah, I have, we have, I don't have, we, all three of us have a mini Australian shepherd named Maggie. And she weighs about 35 pounds and she actually probably weighed 40 pounds two days ago, but my son brushed her. She finally let him brush her. He pulled off like handfuls of little Maggie's all over the place. It was great. Yeah. So she looks much sleeker now. And she's, it's funny because we got her to be a watchdog.

26:50
for the property because we used to live in town and our neighbors are really close and we always knew if somebody was around. We all watched each other's houses. So we moved to three acres and our nearest neighbors are a quarter mile away. And I was like, I really wanna know if somebody's pulling in the driveway who isn't supposed to be here. So we got a dog and she is the most fabulous on it watchdog I've ever met. She's great and that's her only job.

27:19
other than to be our friend and let us pet her, that's her job. So we adore her and that's why I talk about her a lot. But that's why I didn't mind that your dog was making slopping noises in the background because Maggie barks all the time. Yeah. Bristol is not the best watchdog. Okay. She hardly barks ever.

27:44
There is, she does alert us though. Uh, Renata actually had an accident two years ago where she fainted in the middle of the night and first of all was very responsive and got me up. So she does bark in those terms, but other, or, or, you know, alert you to something. Um, but other than that, she's like, Oh, the dogs are barking. I'll go look out the window and see what's happening. So she's not a bork and barker like we call Maggie.

28:13
Okay, we have all kinds of things we say about Maggie. Her tail is docked. So she has like a maybe inch and a half nubbin and she's a wiggle butt. She wiggles her butt all the time when she's happy. And so we call her a nubbin wagger. Oh my gosh. And a bork and borker. That's funny. And a hecking good dog. And just silliness because you know, you can't get a puppy at

28:42
day shy of eight weeks old and not be silly and that's how old she was when we got her. She's almost four. Her birthday is coming up on August 4th. So, got to talk about the dog without feeling bad about it today. That's good. Yeah, no worry. Yep, I think that dogs are wonderful. I think that cats are wonderful too. We have barn cats. Three barn cats. And one of them is almost four months old now. He's a kitten.

29:10
He had a head tilt when he was like, I think he was three or four weeks old and he was walking on a pole barn and his head was tilted and I thought he had ear mites and it wasn't ear mites. We think he just had some kind of thing with the muscle in his neck. And so now he's still tilt, but it's very little tilt anymore. So his name is Tilt. Oh, that's cute. Yeah, he is the loviest baby kitten I've ever met in my whole life.

29:40
You touch him and he starts to purr. Oh, that's sweet. Yeah. So we have cats, we have a dog, we have chickens, and that's it. That's all we have for animals on our three acres. Yeah. Well, we don't have cats. We don't have a cat yet because we can't have a cat where we are. But the hope would be to have cats, chickens, all that kind of stuff. We do have a cat.

30:03
A new addition to the family, my nieces got it. They found a kitten in a storm drain. Oh no. He has five toes and his name is Skeeter. He's probably about four months old too. Oh, so he's a polydactyl kitty? Yes. And his front paw, we call them thumbs because they're huge. They're huge and he thinks he's a dog, which is amazing.

30:31
Scotty likes to play really rough with him and Bristol will tend to rescue him. Oh, sweet. Yeah. That's very cute. Yeah. All right. Well, ladies, it's been half an hour already. I swear I get talking with you and it feels like the time just goes whoosh, you know? Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for taking the time to talk with me and I wish you all the luck with your project. Thank you. Thanks for being flexible with all the times. Oh, yeah. That's fine.

31:01
Great. All right. Have a great afternoon. You too. You too. Bye. Bye.