Bad Baxter Farm

Today I'm talking with Blaze at Bad Baxter Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00

You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Blaise at Bad Baxter Farm in Oklahoma. Good morning, Blaise. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. How are you? I'm good. How's the weather in Oklahoma this morning?  It's cooling off. So I think I'm the only one that's  not happy about it, to be honest.

00:26

I am so thrilled that it is cooling down in Minnesota this week. I cannot tell you, I am giddy. I'm going to make sourdough bread on Wednesday or Thursday because the  high is only supposed to be like 62.  And  I heard on one of your other podcasts that you have a mass amount of tomatoes to process. um Well,  we thought we did until the blight decided that it was going to arrive and  stop the plant.

00:56

We still have tomatoes coming in, but we are not going to have as many as we really thought we were.  just pray for me the next summer is better because last year sucked. This year has been half better than that. So maybe next year it'll be good again. Yeah, I'm harvesting or I'm actually processing some enchilada sauce this morning. And I think we're pulling ours early just because of the cool down and they've kind of slowed.

01:22

slowed their roll a bit, but my husband was talking about it. We felt like we grew plenty this year and I just don't think you can ever grow enough tomatoes.  We grew over 250 plants. We should be literally stacking crates of tomatoes right now and that is not happening. And I have  so many bad words in my head about it, but I will not utter any of them on the podcast because they don't do that. So I am very disappointed. I'm very sad about the whole thing, but it'll be fine.

01:51

We have probably five or six gallon size ziplocks of  frozen cut up tomatoes to can  in October when it's actually cold out so we can open the windows. Yeah.  So we will have some pasta sauce this winter, but we definitely haven't been able to provide for our community the way we're hoping to.  Yeah. So I could go on and on. I don't want to, or I will just cry.  I might anyway.  It's always a learning experience.

02:22

Yeah,  it's been rough.  I  didn't realize how sad I am about it. Wow.  Okay, so here we go again.  Mary cries on the podcast again.  I'm sorry, I brought up your tomatoes. It's okay. The ones we got were beautiful and they taste great. So at least we have some that is the upside this year.  So I have two questions about your name and the name of your place.  Is Blaze a nickname?

02:52

Um, it's been my lifelong nickname. actually, uh,  when I lived in California way back in the day, I was a hair salon owner and that was the color of my hair color. So when I was in beauty college, everybody started calling me plays. Okay. it's back.  All right.  And then why is it bad Baxter farm? Oh my gosh. I have so many different feelings about our farm name, but, um,  when we moved to Oklahoma, I just.

03:20

I thought, I guess I really regret using the word farm to be honest, now that I know more,  know what I know. But,  um, at the time we had  decided to move from California to Oklahoma. Part of it was health related and,  um, I first.

03:37

I got certified as a nutrition coach through the National Academy of Sports Medicine and decided that down that rabbit hole, I wanted to grow and be responsible for all of my own food as much as possible. um so I kind of just named it Bad Baxter Farm just because I felt like we were going to be learning everything the hard way.  And I just felt like there was so much misinformation and bad information out there that...

04:03

We were making a lot of mistakes. And so when we decided to like kind of start documenting our journey, I just figured I would call it bad Baxter farm because we were making a lot of bad choices and I didn't want everybody to have to do the same thing.  Well, it's attention grabbing. that's, that's helpful.  Thank you.  I guess we should have called ourselves homestead. I have a lot of friends that I mentor now and I'm constantly like, don't use the word farm, like come up with, know, and I have a friend that she just recently, um,

04:31

built a home and got some acreage and she named hers um Anchored Acres. And so I'm always like, gosh, I really wish I would have chose something a little bit different than farm because I don't feel like that highlights us as much as  homestead or  farmstead or something else would have. But  I think we're pretty stuck with it at this point.  Yeah. And you're not alone in wanting to rename your place because  we named ours a tiny homestead before we even saw the place. We had a little tiny

05:02

City lot back five years ago and we had been offered the chance to garden at a friend's house and so I was like we need a name and  My husband said well since we don't actually own the property were we're farming Why we just pick a generic name like a tiny homestead because it's just a little small garden and I was like I was like cool He said and he said we grow at our place in our backyard. So, you know City lot a tiny homestead. I was like,  and Since we moved in here um

05:33

I really wish we had named it last resort homestead or last resort acres or something because this is it. This is where we're going to live and die. We're 55. My  husband just turned 56. I'll be 56 in November. And we  purposely sought out a place that we could love for the rest of our lives. And  I keep wanting to rebrand, but we've been a tiny homestead for over seven years. think it's too late.

06:03

We always grow, but I guess it's good sometimes to just hold on to what we made ourselves from too. So that's kind of how I look at it. I guess I never realized there's a lot of sensitivity when it comes to even using the word homestead. means a lot of different things for different people. And I don't resonate a lot um as closely with farmers as I thought I would. always really thought that health and wellness and farming went hand in hand and it's not necessarily always true. So

06:30

I guess I just like to explain and share my story on how I came about that, but it would have been so much easier for me to just stay in the nutrition genre.  But I had to do it all for myself. And so  it's funny because I feel like I'm angering people on all realms on some days.  Yeah. Well, you can't please everybody all the time. It's not possible. And  for me, Homestead, ranch, farm, acreage, whatever, they all kind of fall under the same umbrella for me. So I just.

07:00

Until I am proven otherwise, I just assume that the people who are doing whatever they're doing under whatever the name is,  is in the name of good. And if it turns out that it's not good, then I just ignore it because I can't change them. So, yeah.  Okay. So what do you do at that Baxter farm?  We've evolved when we first, oh we actually, when we moved to Oklahoma, we were on a smaller property.

07:26

And um I had fallen into meeting up with a woman that had some  local grants to process poultry for the local community and I started working under her wing. So for some time, we actually processed birds under our thousand bird exemption  for the smaller communities that couldn't afford to take 200 to 300 birds to a big facility. And that's kind of how we got our start. A  couple of local facilities had opened up and kind of

07:56

started having fits about us doing that. And so it was a lot of work and we were fine with being done with that first stream of revenue for ourselves. so we had switched over after talking to Oklahoma Department of Ag.  It was like, you guys don't want us butchering birds for people anymore under this exemption. What if I were to teach classes?  And that turned out to be a much more lucrative

08:21

deal  and much more fun because I feel like it's making a much larger difference in the community.  now we teach quite a few different homesteading classes.  My farm is pretty much mainly animal based just because meat is expensive and I feel like raising your own meat gives you more bang for your buck. And so we actually teach people how to process chickens, pigs,  small ruminants like sheep and goats.  I don't really do

08:49

cows, although I do have a mobile processing friend. Her title is backyard butchery and she has done some on-farm beef butchering classes here for us. But  I do do canning classes and stuff like that, all about preserving the harvest, but mostly health-based. There's a lot of people out there teaching how to make jams and jellies and sorry, sourdough bread, but we really, really try to focus more on

09:17

preserve, spending your time preserving nourishment that's going to sustain your longevity versus um diabetes in a jar. So that's kind of what we've switched over to doing. um I have actually just announced that this is going to be our last year of hands-on in-person classes just because there's a lot of people now, we've  kind of taught the whole state at this point and we don't have a problem booking classes, but a lot of people are

09:46

asking for more online content and step by step and um like I said before, there's a lot of bad information out there and I don't want to  be the YouTuber that spends  more time on editing than  quality content. So I'm just trying to make more time to figure that out. And I feel like people like my writing. um So I'm probably going to turn it over more into blog posts of instructional step by step with pictures and videos type um things. So

10:16

Hopefully that'll be a it'll be an interesting transition for me.  We've kind of stepped back  my  We've been through a lot. Actually, we lost our home a year after we are less than a year after we moved to Oklahoma  to a tornado and then my My daughter was actually paralyzed four years ago now and so luckily we've kind of stuck to the mantra grow so small we cannot fail  and that has allowed us to

10:44

still be farming to this day because everything's paid for bought and paid for by cash, but I can still stay home and take care of my daughter as a full-time caretaker too. So we didn't know if we would still be doing this  and  the community has really rallied behind helping us get to a place where we can still do this. So I'm just kind of trying to like look forward to the future and be like, okay, what can we do different and modify so we can make all this work long-term. Yeah.

11:14

Awesome. I think that your idea for the blog thing instead of doing a whole bunch of YouTube videos that you have to edit is a really good idea.  Only because when I try to watch a YouTube video that is instructional, I don't want to have to stop the video to do the thing and then go back and start the video again. Right. And with a blog post, you could literally print it out if you need to so it's right there in front of you. I agree and I'm a real

11:43

big lover of books still. I like to read, I like to collect  knowledge. And I just think that it's so hard in that genre that there's, like I said, there's some great stuff out there, but there's also some really terrible stuff. And it's just sugarcoated with fancy titles.  I just think like there's so much more to  not, you know, the doom scrolling and the five second reads and the three second videos is just not my jam. so I end.

12:13

You know, social media wise, Facebook tells me that it's my long winded posts that do the best. And so  I guess I just need to make more time for blazes.  Blazes. Yes. Yes. I love that.  While we're talking about videos,  I have had this thing kicking me in the back of the head for about a month now because  I'm always saying on the podcast, learn to cook, learn to cook, learn to cook, because it's going to save you money in the long run, because you can buy stuff in bulk and actually use ingredients to make your dinner.

12:43

It's going to cost less. And I have to sit down and talk with my husband about this because it just keeps sitting in the back of my head going, hey, you're to do this. Hey, you're going to do this. And so I'm debating doing some videos where I don't necessarily have to have my face on  camera.  But like, I never quite understood what the difference was between a rolling boil and a simmer when you're heating water until I actually did it. And it's a visual thing. It's not.

13:13

You can't explain it to someone in words. You need to show them what it looks like. And I have a stove. I have a pan. I have water. I could take a video and explain that this that you're seeing is a rolling boil and this that you're seeing is a simmer. And the other thing that I would say is if you want to learn to cook, start with learning how to boil water and how to get it down to a simmer by turning the heat down enough.

13:36

and scramble eggs because you can scramble an egg, you can figure out the rest. So you're not wrong. I was like, I could also just take a picture of me scrambling eggs and what it should look like from when the egg hits the pan to when it's actually done and ready to eat, you know, little tiny things like that. people can, are a lot of faceless pages out there that do amazing. Like you don't, you don't have to have, I feel the same as you. And especially with privacy, when it comes to my daughter, I try to be very

14:03

careful a lot of the times because there's a lot of hateful people out there too. So there's nothing wrong with doing faceless posts. And I think it's smart moving forward too.  We kind of focus on that with...  I find that the boiling water and scrambled eggs thing very, very relevant when it comes to our cheese making class because people are so intimidated by making cheese and cheese is so expensive at the grocery store and so simple to make, but it's just a mental block for some people to just...

14:30

need to see those step-by-step breakdowns of the process to make it as easy as it actually is.  Yeah, my son, my 23-year-old son made venison stew  on what is today's Monday. He made it Saturday.  And  I said to him, said, venison is a pretty tough meat unless you do certain things to make it tender. And he's like, I know.  He said, I'm going to cut it in small pieces and I'm going to beat the hell out of it with the tenderizer.

15:00

And then I said, okay. And he said, mom, he said, I've seen you makes do a billion times. He said, I can do it. He said, if I have questions, we answer them. I was like, yes, of course.  And so he made it and it turned out amazing.  And he was very proud of himself. And I'm really proud of him for making it. And he said, it was really easy. And I said, honey, I said, cooking is about time and intent.  You have to have the intent to make something and you have to make the time to do it.

15:29

He looked at me like I was the dumbest person on earth and went, no kidding.  I love to cook, but I totally agree. You  need to have the time to make it amazing.  Anytime we're in a rush, we never do nearly as well and it never turns out as well. I have uh my middle daughter, she loves to cook too. And she recently got to come home and visit.  My two oldest are animal care specialists in the military. And so she came home a few weeks ago and...

15:57

cooked all kinds of stuff for us and I even learned some things.  Don't you love it when the kids make dinner? I love it when the kids make dinner. It is so amazing to me.  Number one, I love to cook. So I tried really hard  to teach them to cook and invite them into the kitchen and let them help. And so when they make dinner for me, it's like,  number one, I did my job. And number two, I didn't have to cook tonight. This is great.  So true.

16:27

Adult children are wonderful to have around when they're around because  they get to help and they get to be around and visit and catch you up and then they go home to their own homes and then you relax again. Yes, yes. Yeah, I raised three strong girls and they're all so different, but  I still learn from them daily.  Yeah, it's crazy. It is crazy to me that they start out as these completely dependent, tiny humans.

16:54

And then they turn into these people who learn things that you don't know anything about and share it with you. So true. I think it was my youngest daughter that actually got us on um board with doing  recipe bundles. We sell recipe bundles online for, because everybody kept asking me to do a cookbook and I'm like, I cannot even see.

17:16

My thing with homesteading is, like all  of these people who are spending so much time editing, are they really homesteading? Because I don't have time for this. And I would love, I would absolutely love to write a cookbook, but I am such a perfectionist. I don't think that I would ever get it done, but the recipe bundle cards didn't sound that difficult. And my daughter helped me set it up digitally. And so anytime we have.

17:37

a class, whether it's cheese making or canning or pig butchering, we just put a little recipe bundle together of five or six recipes that we discussed or utilized or taste tested in class. And we offer it free to the class goers and then anybody else who didn't go to the class can just download them for five to $10, depending on how big they are. And so that's been a nice revenue stream that once we set it up, it's just consistent whenever somebody happens to purchase it.

18:05

uh I believe she ended up helping me with my  fodder and food foresting ebook as well. So I just would like to find more time for stuff like that just because I don't find it as overwhelming as a novel,  writing a novel or  editing reels on a constant basis.  Yeah, editing is such a pain in the butt and I don't want to discourage people from  doing video.

18:32

I really don't. that's your jam and you want to play with it, go for it. But the reason that I love the way I do my podcast is because it's just conversations. Unless  someone says something  really inflammatory or uses one of the big bad swear words,  I have very little editing time at I'm trying not to, by the way. Yeah, me too. I swear like a pirate in real life.  And I try really hard to not.

19:02

I mean, yes, I will say bullshit here and there,  but the big ones I'm not going to say because I don't want to have to edit it out and I don't want to come across that way.  In my real life. don't watch a lot of TV or spend time watching a lot of YouTube unless it's just me trying to fall asleep at night. But I'm always walking around trying to do things with my phone in my pocket and I want to learn something. So I'm constantly listening to podcasts while I'm working in the garden or.

19:31

doing my farm chores. just think that it's a little bit  easier to make time for something like that. And you can feel like you're learning while you're working.  The weirdest thing about podcasts for me is that when my kids were younger, I didn't listen to podcasts, not because they didn't exist. mean, you know, their youngest is 23. So it wasn't all that long ago. They were still underfoot. It was because the way that I would gauge what was going on around me was through sound. And if I had earbuds in,

20:01

I couldn't hear the kids in the background upstairs or outside. And so I didn't listen to podcasts. And now if I don't listen to at least one podcast a day, I feel like I forgot something. Yes. Yeah. I really enjoy it. It's connected me to a lot of really great people too.  I had read a book,  I think I had had surgery and I was bedridden for a minute. And so I had read a book.  Um, actually I remember the name of it. It was called farm to fork meat riot by Nidhi Bali. And

20:30

It  talked about our food system and how pretty much anything in the grocery store is basically graded at a D minus at the best.  And so  it really opened up my eyes to  just wanting to have full control over my food. And nobody around me was doing it or was still really into subsidized  feeds and not trying to do better for ourselves as far as like, once you know things, you can do better.  so I had read her book and found a bunch of farmers names and I

21:00

like such a geek, but I reached out to several of them and there are some of them that are still some of my, what I would say my best friends and I've never even met them, but it  really um actually opens up your world to people that you may not have access to otherwise. So  I think it's pretty cool.  And  I almost forgot because I was sad about my tomatoes in the beginning of the podcast. ah

21:24

I have mentioned on the podcast a couple of times a place in Minnesota that grows tomatoes all year round.  They were called Bushel Boy Tomatoes,  the company.  And that's where we would get our tomatoes in the wintertime if we wanted fresh tomatoes from the store.  This goes back to your D minus thing. ah They actually did a really fantastic job of producing delicious nutritional food in their greenhouses in the wintertime.

21:52

And I just found out a month ago that they have sold to a different company.  I am  so sad that they sold it and it sounds like the new company is going to continue growing tomatoes. So hopefully they'll do as good a job as Bushel Boy did. But you're right, a lot of the stuff in the store, I won't say all of it because like I said, this place did a really good job and they're local to us. But a lot of the stuff that gets shipped in,

22:22

is God only knows how old it does. It's like anything and the nutritional content can't be that great if it doesn't taste like anything. Well, and the sad, sad reality is, they, your, your source probably sold out because they weren't feeling enough support. And I constantly, constantly preach that as much as I say it's, you know, I'm kind of the anti-farmer at some point. I have a uh local group called Oklahoma farm to table that's eight years strong and  it's all about connecting.

22:50

community and consumers to their local farmers so that we can support local farmers because the more we ask and demand for better,  the more they'll provide for us. But when you're hearing these farmers saying that all through COVID, you know, people were supporting local and buying the eggs and buying the meat and then it just stopped because fast food and, you know, online shopping is just more convenient. It's just so sad and frustrating because we need our farmers to stay around.

23:19

and they need incentive to stay around. So if we can't grow it ourselves like I'm doing, then we need to be buying it as locally as possible. Absolutely. um A friend of mine asked if she could sell her duck eggs at our farm stand. She asked this spring and I was like, of course you can.  We can't keep her duck eggs in stock. People have been buying duck eggs right alongside our chicken eggs, ours. And I was a little concerned that

23:47

people wouldn't want the duck eggs or they would want the duck eggs instead of our chicken eggs and I was like we'll try it and see what happens.  There have been people who have bought two dozen chicken eggs from our chickens and a dozen duck eggs from her ducks on the same day in the same purchase.  Absolutely. I'm all in on duck eggs by the way but I

24:07

I totally think that the more,  you know, all these little home farm stands are  popping up all over the place. And I just think they're fantastic because then you're literally just supporting your neighbor. And I think the more variety you have, the better because it makes people more enticed to stop. And when she asked me about it,  I thought about it for about 30 seconds, you know, because she texted me about it.  And I was like, I don't think that Minnesota has a problem with that. You know, the Ag Department, I think that's fine.

24:35

Even though it's not a product of our farm, I don't think they care that our friend is going to sell her duck eggs in our farm stand. I think it's fine.  And it'll bring new people in because we haven't had duck eggs at the farm stand the last three summers.  we're here. And it's been so great. mean, I don't think, I think there's been maybe a handful of days since we opened back in April, I think it was April, that we haven't had somebody stop by for something. And it's been so much fun.

25:05

to have people text me and say,  I picked up a flat of tomatoes today and I Venmo'd you, because we have the Venmo QR code on the board. And I'm telling you, Blaze, there is nothing better than the email noise happening and you look and it's like 25 bucks for tomatoes that we sold.  Like nine.  Oh, good. Somebody took them. Somebody's going to enjoy them. And that money is going right back into the business.

25:30

we're  going to try and do something like that out here. We're pretty rural though, so it'll be interesting. But we recently just found out one of our streets is going to be opened up all the way to the highway. And nobody in the neighborhood was super excited about it. ah I have a, my best friend lives down the street and they're going to be right on the corner of that road. And so we were just kind of like, you know, we, I have the pool as far as following goes.

25:56

I think that we can do a farm stand on that corner and have it do pretty well. And I love that idea because it keeps me closer to my daughter. And that's been my thing is I can't go out and do farmers markets instead of booths for hours and hours because I have to be here for her. But we're discussing when that road opens up doing something small like that too. So  I'm excited to work with them. I think it would be really cool. Yeah. And the best thing about a farm stand is you don't need it to be huge. Our farm stand is like eight by 10, eight feet by 10 feet, I think.

26:27

Yeah, that's perfect. Because really,  know, seasonally, you're not going to have stuff all the time. But I think that's the benefit of those is you don't have to have set, I mean, I guess set hours per se, but even, you know, just a few days a week or whatever works for you. But I think going in with my neighbors makes it even more convenient because we can just split it up if we needed to  not have to man it all the time.  And the one thing that I would suggest is if you're trying to do it on

26:55

on the cheap but still have it look nice  is there are people who are selling the little sheds all the time on Facebook Marketplace or  Craigslist or eBay or whatever, know, used sheds.  You can get one of those if you have friends who can move it for you. I don't know if you do, but if you do,  you can get one of those and move it and you can you can revamp it. You can repaint it. You can shore it up. You can make it what you want it to be. I love that.

27:23

Yeah, something simple like that sounds perfect. Simple and close to home. That's what I need.  Yeah. actually bought a shed from a place from Tough Shed, T-U-F-F Shed, um because we just didn't have the time to mess around with it. And we happened to have the funds to do it. And it really wasn't that expensive anyway, because it was back  four years ago. um

27:49

but it's red.  looks like a little barn shed. It's really cute. So we're kind of in love with it. That would match my house.  But it has been such a godsend because we have a big driveway. It's not long, but it's a good size driveway and it has a turnaround. So people pull in and  they cut to the right, they go around the circle and they end up right in front of the little shed. So even if three people stop in, we have room for people to park, which has been amazing.

28:19

um But there are so many things that you can do  if you're willing to put in the blood, sweat and tears to do it. And it sounds like you are. And um I love that you're going to do online classes. I was just interviewing somebody last week um for the Homestead English Conference. It's their second year and I think they're in West Virginia.  And I said, so are you going to have any of the

28:47

the breakout sessions or the whatever's  online. And she said, not this year. She said, well, we're going to try next year because right now they don't have the  equipment or people to do videos of each class time.  And she said, and plus she said, when people get together, amazing things happen. So we've wanted to keep it kind of in person. said, we've had a lot of requests for it to be online too. And so there's some real benefits to it being

29:16

virtual, but there are also benefits to things being in person. So I guess it's the best of both worlds thing. You've already done all the in-person stuff for people and now people want it online too. Yeah. And I totally agree. Going to some of those conventions can really  rev up your engine when you've been feeling burned out for sure. My husband and I use a lot of those  out of state conferences for little mini vacations and we'll go. m Matter of fact, think I...

29:44

Mother Earth News Festival used to have a great little convention.  We've gone to a couple in a couple of different states and we would go have a good time and come back like ready to rock with new ideas and new friends and new energy. So I definitely agree. There's like benefits to both of them. I just think it's so hard to sort through, you know, because there are so many people trying to do all of it and there's so many new things popping up all the time that trying to  manage your time with

30:13

commitments and what's going to be valuable to you or what's going to be a waste of time.  guess  my perfectionism is I don't ever want to be somebody's waste of time or waste of money.  I'm very much  my own worst enemy when it comes to getting stuff. But I think I've even posted a quote myself, sometimes done is better than perfect.  that's true when you're doing the dishes. m

30:38

but it's not necessarily true when you're trying to sell somebody an ebook or you want to present a recipe in its best light. oh So there's got to be a balance in there somewhere. Yeah, you cannot half ass a recipe because the people who use that recipe will be very angry when they're done. Right, right.  And I'm such uh a pinch of this and a dash of that. And it's so funny because my daughter, I was saying when she came to visit, she

31:03

She made some Bria taco meat and I loved it. And I was in my brain started spinning because I'm like, there's gotta be a way to safely can this. So  I was trying to have her write the recipe down and I just cracked up laughing when she finally did it because it was definitely like a pinch of this and a dash of this. So  we shall see what will come of that.  And you'll end up changing it as you make it because that's what we do as cooks. We try stuff. We try stuff the first time  the way we're told and we try it and we taste it and we go,

31:33

That's okay, but if I did this, it would be better. Absolutely. Yeah. And people are constantly asking for recipes of something that I'll share a picture of. I'm like, I just didn't even write it down.  I just did it. Yeah. And, I'm going back to bruschetta again, because it's what I make a lot in the summertime because of the tomatoes we get from the garden. My podcast is completely centered around tomatoes. Let's just admit it. uh

32:02

When I used to make it, I found a recipe for it because I had it as an appetizer at a restaurant and I was like, what is this called? And they said bruschetta and I said, okay.  Went home, looked at bruschetta recipes and went, oh, this is super easy. I can do this. And I made it exactly the way the recipe said the first time. Now when I make it, I cut up oh four or eight tomatoes that I think look about the right size and I  cut up a handful of fresh basil that I think looks to be about right.  And I throw in

32:31

But ton of garlic because we love garlic and we put in as much mozzarella cheese as we want because You can't measure mozzarella cheese any different than garlic got to be measured with the heart,  right? And I throw all that in the bowl and it's all chopped up and it looks beautiful and it smells good  and then I put a little bit of uh Mrs. Dash is the brand name because we use garlic and herb seasoning  and Then I pour olive oil into the mix

33:01

to where I think it looks right. And then I pour  balsamic vinegar in to where I think it looks right and I stir it up and I eat it. And it tastes amazing. Now to tell someone the actual measurements, I have no idea. I don't even know what the original  recipe was. Don't know where I found it.  once,  this is the best thing about cooking and I wish I could get everybody to embrace it.  Once you learn the basics,

33:29

It is art. You can do whatever you want to do with it.  Absolutely. I totally agree. I actually say that a lot of  our classes is  the art is in the details and it changes every single time and season and with the flavor of  the, I was going to say breed because I'm used to talking about animals.

33:47

So the variety of the tomato, and I will say, that actually sounds very similar to a gazpacho that I make. And even though we're really highly animal-based here, but I can never grow enough tomatoes or peppers or garlic.  I think, would you say a butt ton of garlic? Like that's an actual accurate measurement for sure.  Yes, and when I say butt ton, I am not being um sacrilegious or swarish or anything.

34:15

If you look up butt ton, it was actually a measurement used in shipping.  Okay.  The old shipping across the ocean, it was a measurement  for the weight of things. Oh, that's very cool. I learned something new today. Yeah, I didn't even  know that until a couple years ago. My kids would say butt ton. I'm like, I think that's not nice to say. And my son said, look it up. And I went,

34:43

He said, you how you used to tell us, look it up? And he said, look it up. And I said,  B-U-T-T-T-O-N. And he said, yeah. And I looked it up and I was like, oh, okay. Have at it, say butt-ton all you want. I'm good with that.  I'm surprised I didn't know that because I'm very much into the history of food and um books that teach our ancestral  change into agriculture and stuff like that. So I'm surprised I didn't already know that.  I learned something new today. Good.

35:12

Good. Everybody needs to learn something, at least one new thing a day.  All right, Blaze, try to keep these to half an hour. I feel like you and I could talk all day, but I know you don't have time and I know I don't have time, but I would love to.  Where can people find you? um Bad Baxter Farm on most social media platforms. I'm most active on Facebook. That's where our biggest following is. And then, like I said, locally, we have a group on there as well called Oklahoma Farm to Table. um

35:39

My ebook and my recipe bundles are available on Buy Me a Coffee, Bad Baxter Farm,  and I hope to get my sub stack blog post going a little bit better, but that is where we're gaining emails for our future blog posts and instructionals.  Awesome. And keep doing what you're doing, but give yourself some grace. You cannot do it all in one day. promise you.  Thank you. That was a nice chat. It was. as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.

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Blaze, I hope you have a wonderful week. Thank you. You too. And good luck with your tomatoes next season. Oh, thank you. I hope so.