Thunder Ridge Ranch

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Sven and Jania at Thunder Ridge Ranch.

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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 chatting with Sven and Jania at Thunder Ridge Farm Ranch. Good morning, you guys. Good morning. How are you? We are well and yourself? I'm good. You're in Kentucky? Eastern Kentucky. Yes, ma'am. Awesome.

00:28
I have never been and I've talked to a lot of people there and I feel like I should make a trip someday because it sounds really pretty. The site certainly has a lot to offer. Yeah. So, tell me about yourselves and what you guys do. Well, we are a military family. I spent three years in the military. A year of that I spent away from my family overseas in Afghanistan. Got back and things just didn't quite seem right.

00:57
which kind of led me down a series of rabbit holes and kind of pushed us as a family towards a bit in a sense self-sufficiency and whatnot and that that path itself has kind of led us to more of a community sufficiency mindset and so we really wanted to

01:20
be able to provide our own food and make sure that everything that we're eating was whole and good for us and none of the toxins that you find in a lot of foods that you find on the market shelves these days.

01:35
Awesome. So number one, thank you for your service. I'm sorry that you got injured in Afghanistan. That sucks. And without getting both of us in trouble, what kinds of things did you notice when you got back? It just, it just didn't feel, it almost felt like a prank. It didn't really feel like the States. It felt like we had landed somewhere else and it was some sort of a test. Just, I guess because I had spent the year away.

02:05
coming back, the atmosphere was noticeably different. It felt darker, it didn't feel like the free, happy place that it used to be. And then I started realizing that we've been under a lot of propaganda and indoctrination, just to put it as loosely as I can, without like saying that's in trouble. Yes, thank you.

02:31
I really want to know more but I don't want to get into it on the podcast because I have this awful feeling that it would not go well for either of us. Okay. So yeah, obviously growing things yourself and raising animals yourself, you have control. You know what you're putting on your produce or in your dirt or feeding your animals. So yay, that's a good thing. So what do you raise?

03:02
We started off in 2021 with 10 chickens. And as you know, chicken math. So we now have over 50 or 60 birds now we've kind of lost count. 2022 we added in a honeybee hive. We're now up to three. And we also added heritage breed turkeys. And then

03:30
Let's see, that would have to 2022, 2023. 2023, we focused more on clearing up the land and preparing it for a lot for bigger livestock. And then 2024 this year, we added ducks, quail, hay sheep and pasture pigs. Very nice. We had friends over yesterday and

03:59
They were talking about how they're going to be getting some poultry birds Next spring and they're talking about it and out of the blue They're like do you guys want to go in with us on it and we can keep them at our house and you guys can Come over in Butcher and once time and we all win and I was like yes, that would be amazing Cuz I don't I don't want to deal with poultry not poultry birds. I'm sorry meat birds. I said it wrong

04:25
But I don't want to deal with meat birds at our place. We don't have a lot of room, but they have more room than we do. So if you can do it all yourself on your property, that's great. But the other thing that works is collaboration with like-minded people. Absolutely. And that's where that community sufficiency kind of kicks in is working as a community to work towards common goals and everybody wins as a result. Yeah.

04:51
We gave them a whole bunch of stuff last summer from our garden for their goats because goats love leftover stuff from the garden.

05:03
Absolutely. So that's one thing that we do is take our fresh scraps and feed them to the hogs. And sometimes the sheep will get some as you know, let's say for the sheep. And we like to try and garden extra produce that isn't necessarily for us to eat, but is good for the chickens or for the sheep or the pigs. We like researching what's good for them, what are the benefits of everything and

05:32
On that note, we've also studied just the plants and whatnot that are on our property and we're still learning this kind of lifestyle. We were always learning. Once you stop learning, you stop growing. Yes. So we've tried to really learn about what is around us. How many different ways can we use it? What's the benefit of it? Is there a benefit of it or is it something that we can get rid of and focus on more important things?

06:02
Yeah, so is this an all day, every day kind of thing for you guys? More or less, I'm medically retired. So I'm basically, I was home with the kids and we homeschooled them as well. So they're usually done about this time. And then they have the rest of the day to play, take care of chores and help out around the farm. The wife, she recently...

06:28
was able to step down this year down to three days a week. So that's been a huge blessing. That brings her home now four days of the week to help out on the farm. So we've been able to do a lot more this year than years past. But that's exactly what we're working for is just basically living on the farm, working on the farm, and helping up the community and then just taking care of our basic needs. Wonderful. I love that.

06:57
Um, so were you interested in this lifestyle before you went into the military? Uh, actually not. Um, I grew up out in the country. Um, my parents were bird farmers. Uh, my wife, uh, she grew up, uh, she, she was born in, in, uh, in Idaho and her parents raised, uh, horses, cattle, pigs, uh, chicken, her grandmother garden. Uh, my mom tried to garden. She did not have the green thumb.

07:28
And then my parents and I used to play through a different live, or excuse me, poultry. So we both kind of grew up with the lifestyle. But as far as wanting a farm, my wife always wanted cows ever since I first met her. I was, me growing up, I was told my mom, I'm not a country boy. I met for the city. And so the first thing I did was I moved out and about a month after I graduated high school, I moved up to Denver, Colorado. And.

07:57
started going to college up there and started doing the same thing and very quickly found out that I'm not, I can survive in the city. I'm definitely not a city boy. So I've also moved to smaller and smaller communities and then now being at the military and having a little bit more freedom to kind of do what we wanted to do. We've kind of just kind of navigated down to this path, especially with the in mind of the rabbit holes I mentioned earlier.

08:27
Yes. Okay. Jenea, I'm right there with you about cows. I freaking love cows. Me too. I think that they are adorable, number one, especially the calves. We call them grass puppies here because they're, they look like little dogs out in the field in springtime. And I, I like, I really like milk. I like milk to drink. I like milk for what we can make out of it. I would love to have a cow, but we don't have room for one. So.

08:56
right there with you on the loving cows thing.

09:00
That's one thing I don't know if you wrote too much notice in our logo or not. That's 1 animal that we have on our logo that we haven't quite attained yet is the cow. 1 of the cows we're interested in getting is the silence. And then we would also like to have a product of Jersey or just any kind of breed.

09:22
Yes, for butter and cheese and yogurt. Oh my God, and ice cream? Yes. One animal we thought we would never want or have interest in is actually goat. However, we are actually considering adding goat to the farm as well. For the milk itself, you can make cheeses and whatnot from that, but our main focus of why would we want the goat is for their milk to make.

09:52
homemade soaps. Yes, have you done it before? We have not done it before but we do have a really good friend who's got a couple two three or so years experience in it and she's given us that note note note note charge just graciously and generously given us all the information that we need to and continue to support once we once we go down and navigate that road.

10:20
We do know we want to do it with beef tallow, the goats milk, and then we have a wood stove we burn in the winter and we'll burn just hardwood in the wood stove, you know, when we burn the hardwoods. And then we'll take that ash and we're collecting it right now so that once we get started, we can make our own lye using that ash. Awesome.

10:49
cold process lye soap yet. I'm going to give you a couple hints because we make it. Number one, be really careful because lye hurts when it gets on your skin. So pay attention because it does sting like crazy and it can really, really hurt you if you're not careful. Goggles are a great thing so it doesn't splash up into your eyes. And if, God forbid, your soap seizes, we've had our soap seize like twice when we're stirring it, which basically it

11:19
clumpy and it doesn't stir anymore and it will not become the soap you want. You can melt it down and keep going but it's kind of a pain in the butt. So you got to make a choice whether you want to deal with the pain in the butt part of it or you just want to toss that batch and start again. So those are my hints for you guys for soap making. Thank you. We appreciate that. Yeah and I love our soap. Homemade soap is the best soap ever.

11:48
It's really... We've grown to love it. It's basically the only soap that we use throughout the house. We have goat milk and beef towel soap, stays in all the sinks. It's all that we use in the showers and the tub, even for our youngest. That was one thing that we were really shocked to kind of experience. We had our youngest, and we would experience where she would eat foods with say like red 40 in it.

12:16
and she would just be off the wall for 24 or 48 hours. And then we leaned her off of that and we stopped buying anything that had the dyes in it. And then every other day we would notice that she would spike back up and do the same thing all over. And we're like, we took all the foods out. I don't understand why this is happening. And then one day the wife was bathing her in the tub and she just happened to turn the children's body wash.

12:43
over and read the ingredients and there was red Florida Lake right there on the back. And we were just astounded that you know it's not just it's not just the foods but they're putting it in just about everything. Yeah, there's bad stuff in everything unless you make it yourself and and you got to make sure the ingredients you're you're getting if you have to buy ingredients that you didn't make you got to make sure they don't have bad stuff in them too. Right. So.

13:13
It sucks. I don't have a ton of allergies. It does, but at the same time, it's not being able to return to the roots.

13:23
I'm sorry, you blanked out there. Say it again. I was just saying, what did I say now? It's a real blessing in a sense, you know, it does suck, but it's also a blessing that we're able to return to our roots and kind of live like our ancestors. Oh, for sure, yes, absolutely. If we didn't have the old fashioned alternatives, I don't know what a lot of people would be doing. Exactly.

13:54
So I'm right there with you. You're preaching to the choir this morning. So, I'm trying to think. Did you know that you can use the tallow to make bombs for your dry skin too? We did. There's actually, there's quite a few different things that you can do with the beef tallow. And then likewise with, since we have the honeybees, we can use the wax for a lot of stuff as well for the bombs and sands and. Yeah.

14:23
All sorts of candles, all sorts of different things that we can. Yeah, you just got to do research and dive in and be ready to explore and learn new things.

14:39
Yeah, and you got to have time and it sounds like you have time. So that's a blessing right there. Yes. That's the problem that everybody has is either everybody has time, but they don't have the money or they have the money and they don't have the time. Yeah. Understand where we're at that point too here because my husband had last summer off, he quit his old job and was looking for a new job and we got so many things accomplished last summer and then discovered that.

15:08
what we were doing wasn't gonna support us enough, so he had to go back to work. And we haven't gotten as many things accomplished this summer as we did last summer, so we're trying to figure out how to make this place work better and more efficiently so that he can go back to not having a jobby job. Because jobby jobs suck your time, suck your soul, and it's a necessary evil right now, but we're trying to figure out how to make it an unnecessary evil, like he doesn't have to keep doing it.

15:39
Yeah, that's the struggle that we all face. We're very blessed in the fact that I am disabled and I do draw the check from the VA. It is of course, it is a negative, but at the same time, I'm still able to do some things. It might take me longer to do it than what it would otherwise take me at this age, but it's a blessing to have that income so that the wife can afford to step back from working a real job.

16:09
and we can all work together on the farm. And we've also, this year was our first year with the farmers market, and that's helping out a good deal as well. Obviously we're not getting rich at the farmers market, but it is additional income, and it's the first year that we're actually generating income from the farm. So that's been a real incredible experience this year as we continue to move forward. Do you enjoy doing the farmers market?

16:38
We do. We like, you get some random people, you know, throughout the summer, but you do get your regulars and you see the consistent people who are coming week by week or every other week or whatever they might be doing. And you build these relationships with these people and you get to know them some. Then, of course, there's the vendors that you work with as well. And so you're forming all these, you know, these relationships with them. And then, you know, you can learn.

17:07
all sorts of different tips and tricks of the trade from people that have been doing it longer or maybe even some from some that just got into it, but they've had a different perspective and a different walk that's revealed to them things that even people that have been going at it for a few years like ourselves haven't experienced. So we can all learn something from each other. Yes, that's the beauty of having reasonable human beings in your life who want to know you and wants to want to share their experience with you.

17:38
Absolutely. Okay, so what's your favorite thing about your branch? What do you love the best?

17:53
Um, there's so much to pick from this. It's really hard to narrow it down to just one. Okay.

18:03
Um...

18:10
I guess I would say that the beauty of the land that we've been blessed to live on, we have a beautiful 24 acres, basically rolling hills. We live basically on the top of a ridge and the property kind of rolls down towards the bottoms and so we have at the very, not the very bottom, but towards the very bottom in the back 40, we got a spot we like to call the low aces and we have a little waterfall and a little spot where the water pools above the slate.

18:39
And the kids really love it in the summer. They can splash around and cool off in the winter. They pull the icicles off from the rock wall. So that's one thing that we really enjoy. It's a real peaceful and serene environment. I would say for number two, we also have a sawmill and I would say that's probably our second favorite thing here on the farm is.

19:09
just the ability to drop trees and then throw it on a piece of machinery and turn it into lumber that we can use to craft building, bridges. I built a toy box. On the agenda is to build the kids a new bunk bed, and we're also discussing even building ourselves our own couch. So just really neat to be able to have these kind of technological advantages and tools to provide.

19:39
for ourselves and then we can even use it just as much for ourselves. We can use it for our community and our friends and neighbors.

19:50
Yeah, it's really funny. My husband and I needed some small cabinets for our laundry room in the old house that we lived in. And I had been asking him for months and months and months if we could build cabinets and put them up on the walls. And he was very much dragging his feet on building these cabinets. And after about six months, I said, why do you not want to build cabinets? And he said, I'm afraid I'm not gonna get them square. That was what was holding him back. And I said, okay.

20:19
I said, I'm going to help you. I said, you figure out what size you need, you get the pieces cut and I will help you build them. And he was really, really anxious about building these cabinets. And he finally got the first one built and he did the diagonal across the corn from the corners with the measuring tape. And he his shoulders came down, he blew out his breath and he said, I'll be damned. And I said, what he said, it is completely square. I said, see.

20:48
I knew we could do it. And it was just so fun because he was so worried about screwing it up. And when it came out right, then we were at it for another two weekends, making the rest of the cabinets, cause we knew we could do it. I can actually relate with that. Um, 2016, two homes ago, uh, we got ourselves into ducks and we, we went down to Lowe's and we bought Tiva floors and we bought plywood and

21:18
we put ourselves together a very crude duck cut. And we've gone back since then and tried to pull up pictures or videos or something to show people just how atrocious it was. But apparently it's so bad that we didn't even want to take any sort of video or photographic evidence of it. Since then, I've had a lot of people throughout, you know, over the years in and out, I've had people kind of give me their...

21:46
Share knowledge with me and teaching me how to properly build with woodworking because I've never done that in high school I had woodworking or I could do metal shop and I decided I wanted to learn how to weld So I never had any woodworking experience so I've been blessed to have people my life who were in the industry and could teach me different tidbits and so from that I was able to build a Chicken coop and it wasn't perfectly square. But for a chicken coop it doesn't really have to be

22:16
I got it down to, I think it was about a quarter of an inch off square. But that was a very big accomplishment for us. Yeah. And it seems so simple, but it's, it isn't, it isn't. There's, there's a whole science and geometry that goes behind building things. I'm terrible at it. Like the only thing I did with those cabinets was helped, helped him hold the pieces of wood so he could screw them together. That's the only help. But.

22:44
I was also the biggest cheerleader and the encourager that he could do it.

22:50
And that makes a big difference as well. Just having the support. Yeah, and I really needed cabinets for my laundry room. So I was like, I'm gonna cheer him on until this happens.

23:02
So it worked out great. And the other thing that's interesting about my husband is he's really good at woodworking and always has been. He was just worried about this particular project. He's also a really good baker. He made homemade cinnamon rolls yesterday morning and oh my sweet Jesus, they were so good. I picked exactly the right man for me because he can build a cabinet and he can make cinnamon rolls. It's perfect.

23:30
Vinny is the baker between us. She's really phenomenal. There's not a whole lot that she can't bake. Was it this year, last year he started into the sourdough? Last year. Last year she started out with the sourdough and she's getting it down pretty good now. She'll even make it around Thanksgiving time. She'll make a sourdough bread but it would be shaped like a roasted turkey. All fun.

23:57
And then throughout the years, I'm a big cheesecake fan. That's kind of how she stole my heart. So ever since then, most families, they'll do like a birthday cake. Well, in our family, for the most part, we do cheesecakes. And so over these years, we've been married for coming on 13 years now. She asked me what kind of cheesecake do I want? And I'm like, okay, well, what cheesecake can I stumble with this year? And I've yet to be been able to do that.

24:27
Uh-huh, I love cheesecake. I don't make it very often because it's very fattening and I don't want to eat a lot of it. But I love cheesecake. And people think that cheesecake is really hard to make. I bet Janaye doesn't think that cheesecake is hard to make.

24:47
No, no, it's not that hard. I love that you can just get really creative with them and you can make all sorts of flavors with them and it's fun. It's like a blank canvas. You can just go crazy for it. You can do a bunch of different kinds of fruits or make them really decadent and rich or anything you want. Yeah. Janaye, do you have a favorite flavor for cheesecake you want to eat? My favorite is key lime.

25:16
I like, I'm not like him. He loves like this for his birthday this year. He wanted a Swiss roll cheesecake. He likes that sweet rich. And I'm like, no, I love a lot of fruit and citrus. I'm more, you know, not, I'm not the big, the sweet tooth like he has. Yeah. My two favorites are raspberry or lemon cheesecake.

25:38
Those are good ones. Yeah, that was probably the first one that she made I had her make a white chocolate swirl raspberry cheesecake was either my first or second one that I requested first one Yeah, baby. That's a good one Okay, so you had mentioned something in that string about food and I can't remember what I was gonna ask you I Had a question then you brought cheesecake and I was gone on cheesecake So

26:07
So what's the future look like? You guys just are gonna keep growing and trying to be more and more self sustainable until you don't have to go to a grocery store ever again? Yeah, that's the plan. It's already getting pretty sparse when we go down to the grocery store. If we were spending the same, what we were, if we were buying the same things that we were buying even two years ago, it would easily be a $400 trip every week with the way that the prices have risen.

26:34
Fortunately, we've been able to put ourselves in a point where we can raise a lot of our own food, support other farmers that are local to kind of offset that cost some. But that is the goal is raising our own food, being able to provide for a community as well, not just not just being greedy about it and keeping it all for ourselves, but we want to help the community. I actually run a Facebook group.

27:03
four homesteaders, family farms, and off-gridders here in Kentucky. And we call ourselves the Kentucky Homestead Coalition. And what we do with that is we just try and motivate and help and share on everybody and just kind of help people. People learn how to live in this lifestyle. You know, I need help with my chickens. I've never done chickens before. Okay. Well, this is what you need to know. Or, you know, what exactly are you struggling with? And then we can work with them in that manner.

27:33
We have people that have been, we have multi-generation farmers in our group, and we have people that they've just left the city, they've never done anything like this before, their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents, well maybe not great grandparents, but you know what I mean, their family for the longest time, they've always just been in the city, and so they're just absolutely disconnected from the lifestyle, and so they're all just brand new, learning everything.

28:03
So we have everybody from all sorts of walks of life and different stages of experience working together and helping everybody else learn and grow strong and create these relationships. We encourage building local networks just within everybody's counties. And we highlight community sufficiency, especially by means of a broadening and trading. You might not.

28:32
feel like you have something, but even time is a valuable asset. Yeah, time and energy to contribute to a project.

28:43
So we try and just kind of motivate everybody and build everybody up and teach everyone that even though you wanna have this idea of self-sufficiency, you can't truly be self-sufficient. We all need each other at the end of the day. For example, we might have a really bad year for let's just say corn. Our corn didn't do so well, but we are swimming up to the ears in potatoes. Well, our neighbor down the street

29:13
He might not have had the same luck with his potatoes. And he's just up to his ears in corn. Well, now we can take from our excess and trade, and now we're good with corn and taters as is our name. And we're both strong as a result of it. Yes, absolutely. We're doing the same thing with the garden that we grow and our friends that are gonna let us have the meat chickens next summer with them.

29:39
So yeah, anything you can do that benefits each other is fantastic. It's a great way to run your life. Absolutely agree. All right, so Sven and Jania, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're almost there. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Absolutely, it was really fun. Have a great day. You do the same. All right.