Ask Me Anything Editor Edition
Josh Wilder: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Mother Earth news and friends podcast at Mother Earth news for 50 years and counting. We’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in this podcast. We host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
Kenny Coogan: Good day, everyone. I am Kenny Coogan, and joining me on this special end of year episode for Mother Earth News and Friends are editors Ana Skemp from Mother Earth News, Karmin Garrison from Grit Magazine, Audra Trosper from Goat Journal, and Ingrid Butler, editor for sustainable living and fermentation tips.
Now, while each of these are, quote, “representing” those titles, these editors help with multiple [00:01:00] publications and possess a large homesteading repertoire. Today, they will be answering your questions. Welcome to the podcast editors.
Ingrid Butler: Thank you.
Kenny Coogan: Karmin, we’re going to start with you. Ogden has many publications, including Mother Earth News, Grit Magazine, and Countryside.
Mother Earth News, Grit Magazine, and Countryside
Kenny Coogan: Can you tell the listeners how these three magazines differ?
Karmin Garrison: Countryside tends to be more family focused than the others. Not that the others aren’t, but it has a heart in family. Grit has its heart more in community. And I like to make the joke that it is our title with a little bit of an attitude.
And then we have Mother Earth News, which isn’t simply focused on the one small thing, it’s the overall view. I know a lot of people see them all as similar, but truly, they’re very different.
Kenny Coogan: And if you’re [00:02:00] only subscribed to one, you should venture out and get another publication. Ingrid, a little more than a year ago, I retaught myself how to use a sewing machine. I don’t think I had used one since middle school, home economics. And it was because I listened to actor and comedian Nick Offerman say how valuable it is for everybody to know how to do all chores and maintenance on the homestead. Ingrid, what are some frugal sewing and mending tips that will prevent our fashion from going to the landfill.
Frugal sewing and mending tips
Ingrid Butler: That’s a really great question. First of all, congratulations on relearning the sewing machine. What a great skill to have. It makes mending so much easier.
Kenny Coogan: I’m sitting next to it right now.
Ingrid Butler: Oh, love it. My big thing would be mending. Learning how to mend and alter your clothes. Mending is just really about making sure what you have will last longer. If that’s a button that falls [00:03:00] off, learn how to fix that. If there’s a hole that’s begun to open up in your clothing, catch that as quickly as you can and then patch that up.
There are a lot of different patches you can use that are quite charming and some are iron on, some you sew on. You can also do invisible yarning as well. And those are various techniques that have been around for a very long time. So it’s all about relearning those old skills and just making sure whatever you have lasts as long as possible.
Alterations will also let you resize clothing to the extent that is possible. So if you gain weight or lose weight, it’s, being able to take apart a garment and either add fabric or take it in will let you keep wearing those really beloved garments for as long as we can.
Kenny Coogan: I found an old T shirt that I really didn’t care too much about and I practiced adding pockets to that. So when I’m ready to make a [00:04:00] real pocket on something that I actually like, I’ll be ready.
Ingrid Butler: Yeah that’s really great. If you have a bunch of old t shirts I’ve seen a lot of people make quilts out of those, and those are so charming to look at. A really great way to reuse.
Easy projects to create a sustainable life
Kenny Coogan: So Ingrid just mentioned about learning or relearning old techniques, and Ana, the rest of the podcast is going to be about looking for the future. And in 2025, real estate predictions include an increased demand for rural properties, people want to go back to simpler living and Jane asks, what are some easy projects that people can start to do to create a more sustainable life on their new rural property?
Where do you begin when you go from the city to the rural country.
Ana Skemp: I think a lot of people tend to get chickens. They tend to get [00:05:00] dairy goats to consider honeybees. But I think something we need to stop and really think about is what exactly we’re interested in what’s going to make you very excited to engage in.
And don’t forget about the larger community. So I’ve never gotten a dairy animal because I have lovely friends that live not too far from me that I can get goat milk and cow milk from, so I’ve chosen not to pursue that interest. But if you’re just moving to the land, I think some key things are really to think about your perennials and get them in the ground right away.
So that in, a couple of years, three years, five years, 10 years, depending on what you’re planting, you’re going to be able to harvest the fruits of your labor. So that’s. That’s number one in my mind, getting those perennials in. If you’re looking for a quick project, feeder pigs are a great way to go. Animals that you’re going to learn how to take care of, but that you’re not going to be burdened with for years to come. Something you can raise in one season. I would pop in a permanent bed of perennial herbs because you’ll be able to enjoy those right away next spring when they come up again. Foraging is such a great skill and something that you can learn [00:06:00] really for free if you, as you move to new communities, check out local foraging groups and learn in person from experts right there who know the woods and lands around you. And my last tip is volunteer at a local farm. You can learn so much by finding something you’re interested in and chances are they’ll have volunteer days, open houses, or maybe they just want someone to help harvest or glean or whatever it is, but check out those opportunities.
Kenny Coogan: I remember when I first moved to my new state 12 years ago, we took advantage of the extension office. Every month at each library, they had a gardening talk or homesteading talk. And I just did the whole circuit. The first Tuesday of the month I went to one library, the first Wednesday of the month I went to a different library.
And it was great to have real local advice for free.
Ana Skemp: Local experts are amazing.
Beginner Goat Breeds
Kenny Coogan: Audra for 2025, another prediction is a trend towards [00:07:00] self sufficiency by growing more food, with more people interested in hobby farming, gardening, and raising livestock. And Tim asks, chickens are probably considered a gateway animal. But what about goats? What are some good goat breeds to start with, and are there any goat breeds that are advertised as being more difficult?
Audra Trosper: I wouldn’t say there’s some that are more difficult. It really depends what kind of personality you’re looking for, what you want to do with. I don’t consider goats a gateway animal.
Goats have a very sharp learning curve. A lot of people don’t make that curve and a lot of goats don’t make that curve. My advice for that is research, get into the goat groups, find out what you’re getting into before you get goats. They have some very specific nutritional requirements that can be difficult to meet, and if you don’t, you are going to have nothing but problems.
Once you understand what they need, [00:08:00] they’re very easy to keep. Any, as easy as any livestock is to keep, and let’s face it, most livestock is looking for a way to die, so you need to be prepared for this eventuality. It doesn’t matter if you get horses, if you get cows, if you get whatever, they are going to find a piece of fence that you thought was secure and wasn’t, and they’re going to get out. They’re going to get tangled in that fence. They’re tangled in a tree. They have horns. They’re going to get tangled in each other. And you’re going to try and figure out how to untangle horns. They can be on flat ground and somehow still do something to themselves.
I would not consider goats a gateway animal. I would consider them something you venture into after you have a little bit of experience in raising livestock.
Kenny Coogan: Every Friday night we have a group chat with an Aunt. And for probably seven years now, every Friday she goes. Let’s get 40 acres. We all get our own houses, and then we have a community of bees and goats and chickens. And this woman has never raised an [00:09:00] animal, period.
Audra Trosper: It’s really easy to think about, Oh, I’m going to get all these animals. I’m going to do all these things. Start small. Research the animals. Don’t just go get one. Figure out the best way to acquire them, because go to a sale barn, you’re probably going to bring home a lot of problems.
Go to somebody who doesn’t really know what they’re doing when they’re breeding, you’re going to bring home a lot of problems. You need somebody who, knows what they’re doing and is willing to mentor you no matter what animal you’re bringing home if you’ve never raised it before.
You also need people in the community in your local area who know what your animals need because what your animals need, say for where I’m in, Kansas, is going to be very different than what somebody in South Carolina might need or somebody down in Texas might need because nutrition and the weather and all of that is going to be very different.
So what those animals need in different areas of the country isn’t going to be necessarily what your animals need for your area.
Agritourism and rural entrepreneurship
Kenny Coogan: Karmin, let’s talk about [00:10:00] baby steps. For 2025, another prediction is the rise of agritourism and rural entrepreneurship. Eric asks, what are some projects that have little overhead that I can start implementing on my two acre homestead in Tennessee that can help me offset my hobby farm?
Karmin Garrison: I would say, go with seasonal things. If you have goats, pumpkin patch is a reasonable next step for fall. Same with sunflowers. People love to stop and take pictures in a big sunflower field or, I’m from Texas anytime there’s a field of bluebonnets, I guarantee you there’s a bunch of people in that field taking prom pictures and stuff like that. So finding your state flower grow a field of that. It’s always things like that are a draw, but as for going for agritourism, it’s a whole bunch of small steps all made at once.
Kenny Coogan: I remember growing up, our neighbor had a Shetland [00:11:00] pony, three babydoll faced sheep, and some chickens. And the local churches would ask for those animals to visit. And that’s how I started as a 12 year old, just helping out the neighbor, showing and telling this is a silky chicken.
Karmin Garrison: A lot of places have restrictions for stuff like that like I said, in Texas, we don’t have as many livestock restrictions as other people do technically, you could own a whole bunch of kangaroos here if you really wanted to, not the case for my counterparts in Kansas and Wisconsin it just depends on what your local laws are, starting a petting zoo, great, you have to have really good insurance for that though.
Ana Skemp: We do a lot of agritourism here. And one thing I’d recommend is advertising one day or two days and make sure that it goes smoothly. Make sure you enjoy it instead of advertising like a full season. Oh, we’ll be open all fall for these activities. Give it a try first and make sure it’s going to be a good fit for you before you commit over.
Yeah.
Audra Trosper: Bring up a [00:12:00] good thing of insurance. You are going to have a bunch of people on your property. Some of them may get hurt. Insurance, check into it before you, you have the people out.
Karmin Garrison: Absolutely. And you have to find out if you’re a people person. If you’re not a people person, I do not recommend getting into agritourism.
Kenny Coogan: And speaking of insurance, I know that if people pay to come onto your property, your homeowner’s insurance for my state will not cover it compared to just having a party at your house,
Audra Trosper: right? For livestock too, if you’re going to have large livestock, especially if they get on the road and somebody hits the cow with their car and they are injured, you are in trouble generally. So you need to make sure that your insurance is going to cover the potentiality of livestock, departing from your property, causing mayhem and havoc elsewhere.
Karmin Garrison: I have a serious recommendation for anyone who’s looking to get started in agritourism. There’s a book [00:13:00] by Matt Stevens called Adventures in Agritourism and he had this huge bluebonnet farm here in Texas and if that’s something that you really want to get into, I recommend picking up that book because he covers the basics like insurance and don’t do the same thing your neighbor’s doing because Maybe you live where you could get flooded and you can’t actually grow something there, but your neighbor can. It’s a really good place to start.
Fermented foods that promote gut health
Kenny Coogan: And we did a podcast with him, so you can check out that episode to learn more.
Ingrid, families and retirees are going to be focusing on health and wellness in 2025. It’s another trend that we are seeing. And Joyce from New Mexico asks, What are some of your favorite fermented foods that promote gut health?
I’ve heard about kefir and kombucha. Is one easier than the other?
Ingrid Butler: I would have to go with kefir [00:14:00] for this one.
You can make it quite readily from kefir sold at the store. What you’re going to do is you’re going to backslop it, and you’re going to take a small portion of your store bought kefir, and you’re going to inoculate your milk with it. So you’re gonna put it into your milk. You’re gonna leave your milk out in a jar at room temperature for about a day or until it starts to turn tart.
For kombucha, which I love so much, you will have to wait for the SCOBY to cultivate if you decide to make it from a store bought bottle. We do sell the SCOBYs in our, we sell a kombucha kit in our store if you’re interested. Um, you’ll be making a scobey yourself if you’re interested. But if you want to make the scobey, it’s you want to cultivate the scobey yourself it’s going to be a week, maybe a couple of weeks, that depends on so many factors, and the temperature of your house. And then, after that, you’ll have your two [00:15:00] rounds of fermentation. So the first one will be your primary fermentation, and that’s where you’ll be fermenting the tea, and then the second round will be for carbonation.
Kenny Coogan: Now those are drinks, but another fermented food that we both love is kimchi, and we love we love watching Maangchi, a Korean, what would we call her? A YouTuber! Yeah, YouTuber! But she’s really a chef.
Ingrid Butler: She is. She is so talented. My favorite kimchi recipe from her is actually her emergency kimchi, where it’s so quick and it’s so simple and it’s so easy to make. And it is so delightful every single time I make it. And it only gets better in your fridge. I believe we also have a recipe for Maangchi in our Margaret Cho’s garden article.
Kenny Coogan: That is absolutely right, Ingrid, and I wrote that article back in 2023. So viewers can just Google that into [00:16:00] our Mother Earth News search engine, and then they’ll get a free recipe.
Ingrid Butler: Yeah, it’s, it’s delightful. You should check it out.
Cold hardy edible perennials
Kenny Coogan: Ana, earlier you mentioned perennials, and June says, I live on a half acre in Wisconsin and want to switch over a lot of my annual edibles into perennials to make it easier on me as I age in place. What are some edible perennial plants that you would suggest for full sun in 5a or 5b?
Ana Skemp: Oh, there’s so many to choose from. When we first moved to the farm, we were very much living paycheck to paycheck. And every single paycheck, we put money into our perennial plant fund. And it felt so expensive at the time, but now that we’re harvesting all that, it feels so worth it. So an asparagus bed is an obvious one. It’ll do so well in Wisconsin. Rhubarb is a great one to put in right away after you’ve gone all winter with no local [00:17:00] fresh food. Rhubarb comes up so early in Wisconsin and is so appreciated for juice and baking and everything else. We have a bunch of hazelnuts in, I really enjoy those for homemade Nutella and they go into the Thanksgiving stuffing. They’re pretty delicious roasted. The obvious raspberries, strawberries are always enjoyed. We’ve really appreciated gooseberries, and we have a few different varieties of currants that are, if you let them fully ripen, they’re wonderful, fresh, they’re wonderful to preserve. We’ve been making fermented current juice Ingrid with like water keifer grain, that’s been a new one this year that we love.
Egyptian walking onions are a really great one. During the pandemic when we didn’t have, we didn’t shop as often. I did all of my canning with our own perennial onions and that was pretty great. Those come up super early in the spring and most of our garden is dead now, but I can still go out there and grab our own onions.
Elderberries are great juice, baking, and also obviously for their medicinal properties. [00:18:00] Honeyberries do great in Wisconsin. I think they’re hardy to zone three. So they’re really hardy and they’re extremely easy to grow. They taste somewhat like blueberries, but they’re easier to grow. We forget about them and they still produce very abundant, delicious crops.
Bee balm I would throw out there as a great herb. It it’s great for pollinators. It has medicinal benefits too. It’s great for a sore throat tea and you can use it as an oregano substitute, but it’s way easier to grow. One last one sunchokes. Those, you throw them in once and you’ll always have them. Just put them somewhere where you can mow around so they don’t spread, but that’s a great edible tuber that you get a lot of food for not much effort.
Dual purpose meat birds
Kenny Coogan: Sounds delicious. Audra, Bob from Pennsylvania says, I want to get into my own meat birds and grow them humanely. What heritage chicken breeds do you like? I want to order a straight run and then utilize the extra roosters as meat birds.
Audra Trosper: The Australorp is an excellent one for dual [00:19:00] purpose. They’re good for laying, they have good weight gain. So they’re an excellent dual purpose bird. Sussex is another one. It was originally bred for the table, but they also lay quite well.
The New Hampshire is a good version. It’s like a commercial layer, only like heavier versions. So you’ll end up with better weight gains as you go. One of those three breeds, I mean you can also go with Rhode Island Reds or Dominique, they gain fairly quickly. I would say your Australorp probably gain faster than your Dominiques, or at least maybe they’re a little bit bigger bird.
Some say Orpingtons are good ones. I tend to find Orpingtons are a lot of feather, I mean they’re a hefty bird too, but you get a lot of feather with that bird. Mine have this huge skirt. One of them does. She’s running around with. So it depends on how much feather you want to have to wade through while you’re butchering, because that is something to think about. Jersey Giants, that’s another one although they take longer to mature, so you may not, you may have to feed them out longer [00:20:00] in order to get the size that you’re looking for meat.
Kenny Coogan: Those are all good recommendations, Audra, because if you’re going to get a straight run and keep the hens, you’ll probably want a dual purpose bird rather than a meat bird.
Audra Trosper: Exactly. You’re not going to want to have just a meat bird. Your meat birds, a lot of them will go ahead and lay. That’s fine. But they probably won’t lay as well or for as long as your dual purpose. Your dual purpose are going to continue laying into the winter, things like that, whereas your ones that are more meat are just going to stop.
Karmin Garrison: Take in consideration with looking at chickens if you’re in Pennsylvania, you want to make sure you’re getting a cold hardy breed. This is true. Because you’re not
Audra Trosper: going to want to get a lightweight, you’re going to want to get a good solid, and Australorps will do that for you. So will the New Hampshires and the Sussex. Those are all going to do just fine in Pennsylvania.
If you’re in a southern area, of course you still need a heavyweight bird if you want to have meat, so it’s, might be a little more difficult. I’ve not lived in the south, [00:21:00] like where it stays really warmer, gets really, but here in Kansas we get up into the hundreds on a regular basis during the summer and our heavyweight birds can deal with it.
Karmin Garrison: My heavyweight birds were fine this summer down here in Texas.
Overwinter fig trees
Kenny Coogan: And we are looking forward to the spring now. Now this is for any of our editors to answer. Michelle asks, how do I overwinter fig trees in New England to promote good growth come spring? Are there particular practices, including pruning or mulching? This is a hardy one that I’ve been keeping in a pot, and I just discovered I can plant it.
Editors, do we have any takers on how to take care of that plant? Fig [00:22:00]
Karmin Garrison: Trees can be real fickle and putting it in the ground is particularly in New England. You don’t want to stick it anywhere. It’s going to freeze over winter. Even if you do put it in the ground, it’s going to produce great in the spring, but you’re going to want to dig it up toward the end of fall and put it back in a pot. Otherwise you might not even have a fig tree for the next year.
Ana Skemp: We’re zone 5 and we do bring all of ours inside and keep them in a coolish part of the house, keep them well watered, and pop them outside after we hard them off slowly over the course of a week. I wish we could plant them outside, we’re too cold for that though.
Ingrid Butler: Same, I have my fig tree up hot that I just take indoors for the winter.
Plants for pollinators
Kenny Coogan: Ingrid, everybody loves honeybees, but we also have to think about our native bee populations. Lorraine says, I want to support my local native pollinators. What are some reliable resources I can use to determine what type of plants I should add for my specific [00:23:00] zone?
I heard that leaving some types of milkweed in the garden over winter can increase OE in monarch butterflies. And then for the listeners, OE is a parasitic protozoan that we want to be avoiding.
Ingrid Butler: Yes.
Kenny Coogan: So Ingrid, what are some go to resources?
Ingrid Butler: Yes, so my favorite resource for finding out pollinator friendly plants in my area is the Xerces Society.
So that is xerces.org. And they are a non profit that focuses on pollinators. And protecting them and providing good habitats for them. So if you look for a pollinator friendly native plant list on their website, they have a really beautiful breakdown per region of the US by your state and it’ll further break down the soil’s requirements and things like that. I find it [00:24:00] very helpful.
Milkweed. From what I understand, most milkweed will die back in the winter. So if your milkweed is not dying back, it may be tropical milkweed, which in that case, it is recommended to give it a little snip, snip and get it back to promote good growth for the spring.
Kenny Coogan: Karmin, it could be snowy and cold where our listeners are right now, but winter is an excellent time to plan for our spring and summer gardens. Jeff asks, what are some of your favorite annual medicinal herbs to add to a garden and what are their uses?
What are your go to herbs?
Karmin Garrison: Most of my go tos are actually perennials. I have an enormous lemongrass plant in my front yard that I just but as far as annuals, I always recommend people plant basil. Basil has so many uses from helping you sleep to antibacterial [00:25:00] properties.
The other annuals cilantro is fantastic all kinds of things, but my favorites are always going to be rosemary, lemongrass, chamomile, and calendula. Hands down, those are my favorites, and sage .
Kenny Coogan: And even if some of those are perennials, you can still be purchasing the seeds now in the winter.
Karmin Garrison: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. The best thing about herbs is that honestly, most of the things that we consider weeds are actually herbs. For example, the dandelion is so useful, like every part of the dandelion. It’s useful. Don’t rip them up. Leave them in your herb garden. Let them stay there. Grow yourself a big old rosemary bush. It will live forever. I had a sage plant. That lived for three years, and it made it through Snowmageddon down here in Texas a few years ago, and I was shocked that it did, but that sagebush got three feet high, so it was really [00:26:00] cool.
Bountiful edible weeds
Kenny Coogan: Ana, this is related to that. Depending on where our listeners are will depend on what type of heirloom plants that they’ll be able to grow successfully.
Bruce asked, What are some varieties of annual vegetables that just grow wild with little to no input? What varieties produce so much that you’ll need to Google how to preserve them or you end up giving them away?
Ana Skemp: So i’m going to assume this is a foraging question and jump to some wild plants If I could choose only one plant to forage I would choose nettles. They emerge super early in the spring before anything else is up They are orders of magnitude more healthy for you than like common garden spinach or any of the other garden greens they’re delicious. You can make nettle chips, they’re wonderful in tea, they dry or freeze dry really so you can use them year round.
Other common ones around us, at least our garlic mustard, it makes a wonderful early pesto and you’re removing an invasive species out of the landscape. That’s taking over other native plants. And then [00:27:00] watercress. I love watercress. It’s so good in soups early in the spring. So those are probably 3 of my favorites that emerge early.
Spring chores for goat care
Kenny Coogan: Adrian says, this is his second season raising Nubian dwarf goats, and would like to start breeding them. As the snow melts and it starts getting warmer, what are some husbandry tasks that are must dos for the springtime with goats?
Audra Trosper: By Nubian dwarf, I’m assuming he’s meeting mini Nubians. That would be my guess.
And breeding is typically a fall thing, so for the most part through the summer, you’re going to want to make sure through the spring and summer and stuff, that they have the vaccinations they need, that you keep track of parasite management. You make sure that they have the food and the minerals that they need.
So when you get to fall and you are ready for breeding, you have healthy goats that will produce the maximum number of babies for you, that will produce the proper amount of milk for their babies and for you that you’re looking for.
[00:28:00] Assess your goats, make sure you have the confirmation, the healthy feet, the worm resistance, whatever that you’re looking for to breed. And really, if you’re looking forward to breeding animals. Make sure that you’re not looking at them as, oh, they’re cute. I want to keep this one because of the color is cute, or her face is cute. The personality is important as well, but you need sturdy goats.
People need to breed for sturdy goats, not just for cute. So you need to be ready to cull, and so really take a hard look at what you plan to breed in the fall. And Are these really going to meet the goals that you have with your goats?
Kenny Coogan: Thank you, Ana Skemp, Karmin Garrison, Audra Trosper, and Ingrid Butler for the great conversation today.
Ingrid Butler: Thanks, Kenny. Thank you for having us. Appreciate it.
Audra Trosper: It was wonderful.
Josh Wilder: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother [00:29:00] Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www. motherearthnews. com slash podcast. You can also email us at podcast at Ogdenpubs. com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
Music for this episode is the song Hustle by Kevin MacLeod. The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications. Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.
