Episode 147: How to Turn Your Homestead Into a Business with Stacey Carpenter of Hop’n Ridge Ranch

Introduction

Hi everyone. And welcome back to the Homestead Education Podcast. I’m here today with one of those awesome guests that I have met on the road, Stacey Carpenter from Hoppin Ridge Ranch.
And we’re going to have a little chat about by-products in the animal industry and wool. So thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me.

Stacey’s Homestead & Family Background
So I want to like, you know, we’re going to lead up to all the good stuff, but why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about yourself, what you guys do, that type of thing.
Well, I am a wife and a mom. My husband was in the military for 23 years.
And when he retired, I said, what do you want to do with your life? And he said, I want to be a farmer. I said, okay, let’s go be farmers. That’s better than my husband.
When he got out, he was like, I did my time. I don’t want to do anything. I’m like, guess what? You’re going to be a farmer.
He’s like, cool. Yeah. Yeah.
See, there you go. There you go. So I said, okay, let’s go be farmers, not knowing that it entailed moving to a completely blank piece of property, building up our homestead, raising our kids who were in seventh grade and ninth grade at the time and falling in love with animals.
I mean, being in the military, we’d had rabbits and things like that, but never like animals. And now, of course, we have sheep and goats and alpacas and cows. So it’s been a really interesting life.
It’s definitely a big change taking older kids to a homestead. Our oldest was a freshman when we moved to our large homestead.
Yes.
Yes. Our oldest was a freshman and our youngest was in seventh grade. And so at first, they embraced everything because being military kids, they’re like, oh, it’s all good.
We can do it all. And now they’ve honed into what they really love. And yes, they’ve kind of stepped away from the homestead, but we know that they’re still here and around if we need them.
So our youngest is at WSU and our oldest is engaged in getting ready to move. And so it’s our homestead is now evolving into the empty nester homestead. And now Shane and I are just working on trying to find what we love also.
So he loves doing hay and I love my sheep. So it kind of works out really well.
It’s perfect.

Host’s Homestead Role Swap Story
Yeah. Yeah. It’s actually funny.
I was an animal science major and I was going to work with animals and hated gardening. And my husband is convinced that you have to have like the largest garden in the whole world. And now he runs all of our animal stuff and I handle the gardens.
And it’s mainly.
Yeah. Like I thought I had a black thumb until I moved to Idaho and I even grew up in California where you can grow anything.
It’s mainly because of the way our schedules just work and like with me traveling a lot during times that animals need. I mean, you can’t travel and take care of animals. And then the garden I can kind of do in between and set up like waterers and my kids like, you know, they water the starts when they’re still in the house and I’m gone and stuff.
So.
Well, that’s why you need more pellets.
Exactly.

Introducing the Sheep
So let’s. Okay. First off, like what kind of sheep do you raise? Like we got to know.
I have, I have polypase sheep. So they were in Idaho. They are a mixture of four different breeds of sheep, like fin sheep and things like that.
And the farmer who made it made them for durability and meat and wool and having multiple births. So, yeah. Yeah.

Host’s California Sheep Industry Experience
That’s interesting. I kind of grew up in sheep country in California. It was a big there was a big sheep research facility where we lived, like a range facility.
And like everyone I knew pretty much raised sheep all like in the mountains, just like our cattle, like the McNab dogs that people use to raise sheep were from where I grew up. And like, so it was a big thing. And it was a big industry.
And the same year, well, two years after I graduated from college, which I worked in food safety and worked with small farms and our local USDA slaughter plant shut down. And the only place that took wool from small producers shut down. And it was a big issue like what we weren’t even like that extremely rural, we were only a couple hours north of like the Bay Area and stuff.
And we I mean, people had nowhere to take any type of small scale farming animals or byproducts. And it was I mean, the whole community was like up in arms. And they were trying to come up with the money to do like a co-op for a wool processing facility.
And it just wasn’t like coming to fruition. And honestly, I moved a couple years later, and I don’t know exactly what happened with it. But that always stuck with me when I’m working with small farmers, especially with the increase of small scale farmers and homesteaders over the last several years.
There’s now what do we do with our byproducts. And there’s a lot of people that, you know, they’re resourceful with it, but not the modern homesteader, most of them are not sitting at home spinning wool. There’s just not time for it.
Maybe, maybe one day when I’m an empty nester, I really want to try it. But I probably I don’t know, I really, I love handcrafts. So and I never make time for them.
So maybe when I’m an empty nester one day, but I know, I don’t think I’m ever going to be an empty nester, because my youngest is five. And so grandkids are going to my oldest is 21. So grandkids are going to be coming anytime now.
And yes.
But yeah, it’s there’s not time for that sitting and spinning. And even the fam, the homesteaders and fam, small farmers that are doing some sort of handcrafts or crocheting and stuff, a lot of them are still sending their wool out even if or just buying it.
So yeah, but there’s a lot of people who just have wool. And I see it all the time. You know, I have wool, what do I do with it? People trying to sell it, giving it away, I’ll go get it once in a while and use it for something.
But you, when I met you, you had something to share. And I was I was immediately excited, probably to the point that you thought I was a weirdo.
I did not.
I did that somebody else found, you know, my product.
You know, exciting. So yeah, so I would what I would love it if you would just kind of tell everybody what you do.
Like in that conversation.

What Wool Pellets Are
Well, the fun part is, is that I get to take the dirty, nasty wool, the stuff, the bellies and the legs and the stuff that people don’t really have a use for. And we turn it into wool pellets.
And wool pellets can be used for like your gardens and your houseplants, things like that.
What do you use them for?
What?
Oh,
Like, what do they do for your garden?
Well, the basics of them is that they maintain moisture, which is very cool. Wool can absorb 20 to 30 percent of its its weight type thing.
And as it maintains that moisture, it makes aeration at the bottom where the roots are, because you’re going to put these wool pellets really by your roots of your of your plants, your houseplants, your gardens, things like that. And so they’re absorbing all this moisture.
So they go above or like do you bury them with your plants?
It depends on certain things like you do want to bury them with your plants, with your roots, because that’s where they’re going to do the most good.
That’s where they’re holding that water. They’re making wonderful aeration, they’re holding it, and then they’re releasing it when those roots start growing out and your plants start growing up.
Now, if you have snails and slugs in your garden, you’re going to sprinkle some on top because it’s going to repel them.
And because snails and slugs apparently don’t like going over wool, the smell of it, the lanolin, things like that.
That is awesome.
Yeah.
So and then wool also breaks down really good as a fertilizer, right?
Well, it’s not a fertilizer. It’s a soil amendment.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, no. It’s because it it’s a soil amendment.
It’s biodegradable. It takes about six months to break down in your garden, which is very cool. And it it gosh, I don’t even know how to say all this.
Okay. Oh. All right.
Hold up. It retains water and then you reduce your water usage by 30% roughly is what they’re saying. Gosh, my brain is just boop.
No, it’s too early in the morning. I get it. Not really.
I mean, I should be I know this and I say it every day. And so I’m so sorry.
I’m totally fine.
Yeah. It Oh, it does break. It takes about six months to break down.
I just Googled it real quick. It has when it breaks down. Yeah, as nitrogen, sulfur and magnesium phosphorus.
Yeah, yeah. When it starts to break down. Like it says as little as four months.
That’s amazing. Like you could share in the summer and get it on your like garden in the fall.
Yep.
Right. So as you you share, you we turn into pellets, you put it in your garden at the beginning of the growing season, you’ve got your little plant, you’re just going to put like four to six in there. It’s now retaining water.
It’s, it’s growing, it’s helping your plant grow, then it’s making as it’s, as it’s absorbing the water, it’s making wonderful aeration pockets. And this creates little pockets, obviously, in your soil, so that your roots can breathe and expand. And then, obviously, they start to grow up, which is wonderful.
And then it breaks down. So it’s already starting once it starts absorbing that moisture, it then starts to break down. And it’s moving, and it’s giving our roots healthy stuff.
And so it’s breaking down, and it’s slowly releasing at that point in time over those four to six months, this phosphorus and this nitrogen and this so it helps your roots be really healthy. So then your plants are stronger and healthier.
Yeah, that’s amazing.
So you said four to six per plant, how big are the will pellets?
Um, gosh, they’re like a quarter of an inch.
Oh, okay. They’re super.
That’s what I thought. That’s what I thought. So I have a little packet of them.
Yeah, yeah. Somewhere, somewhere. I think they’re in my inbox somewhere.
Oh, it’s okay. So that I remember to message you. They’re super, super small.
They, they look just like that.
Yeah, when you said only four to six per spot, I was like, wow, are they like an inch or something? But no, they’re just tiny.
Yeah.

Using Wool Pellets in Houseplants & Winter
And then, so you’ve already got your, let’s just say you’re using this for your houseplants because you’re wanting to go on vacation or you’re just wanting to water less or it’s the winter time and you’re here. Or I forget to water. Or you forget to water or your heater’s kicking on and off.
And so as that, as you want to do all this, you just take it. I use a chopstick and we just punch it down in there next to the roots as quickly as, you know, not as quickly, but as nicely as we can, we get it right down by the roots. And so it’s really, it’s an all around great project.
Product.
Project.
Hey, it’s a project too.
Yeah. And you can use them anytime. So what they’re saying, what I’ve done some research on is that certain universities have been using these.
And the wonderful thing is, it’s like they’re keeping their soil warmer over the winter and they’re keeping it cooler over the summer, just like wool does. And so you’re able to do things with your gardens at certain times of the year that you weren’t able to do later on.
That’s interesting to think about.

Local Growing Conditions & Early Planting
Yeah. And we’ve been using them here on the ranch. We’re putting them around our trees to help our trees be healthier.
And the one thing we’re right here in Washington, probably pretty close to you. I was going to say, we’re probably pretty, because you’re like, I’m all the way at the Canadian border over in Idaho, but like, you guys are kind of like straight over the mountains from me almost, huh?
Right, right. We’re just north of Spokane, Deer Park.
Yeah. So I think Deer Park is actually colder than where we are.
It is because we’re in the Kootenai Valley.
Oh, yeah. And so the river keeps our temperature really stable. So like even just people who live 200 feet higher in elevation than us are in a different growing zone.
Yes. So, I mean, around here we say, wait for the snow to be off Mount Spokane before you plant.
Yeah, I think we use Baldy Peak or something like that.
Yeah. This year we had friends who used wool pellets way before the mountain snow melted. And their plants are doing really great.
That’s good to know, because I always want to start my, like my spring vegetables. But I mean, we don’t even have snow gone sometimes until early May.
Yeah, yeah.
And but then it says in our area, we should be planting them in like end of March, early April. And I’m like, good luck with that. And honestly, with all the rain, I still don’t even have my gardens in.
And it’s the middle of June or May right now.
Yeah, yeah. We’re almost to the end.
Wow. It’s been a it’s been a weird year. We were just looking at the fact that we might be able to get our first cutting of hay here next week.
And people are cutting here already.
Yeah, yeah. We had a friend of ours cut already.
And I was like, oh, man. I don’t know. You know, you’re all you might get a third cutting this year.
So that’s always awesome.
I just want to get a second.
Right.
I mean, we my husband does all the mechanics for the neighbors. If he keeps all their equipment running, then we get a truckload of hay every year.
Hey, which I mean, it’s not an if like he’s just their mechanic.
And then that’s our pay at the end of the year. But yeah, they they’re already working on their first cuttings. And so if they do that now, we will we froze.
We will.
Oh, yeah, it’s OK. I can still hear you.
So.
OK, good. And sometimes it’s recording from both sides and then gives it to me.
So.
OK, OK.

How Wool Pellets Are Made
So, yeah, that that is just the basics of wool pellets.
They’re a simple product to make. We just take your dirty, nasty wool. We put it through a crusher.
We put it through a pelletizer and it pops out wool pellets. And then you’re able to use them in your garden. It’s it’s the one nice thing that, you know, it’s an easy process.
We don’t have to add anything. Yes, you might have some organic material in these pellets. Like when you bring it to me, your sheep rolled in their hay all year long, you know, of it everywhere, the organic material from waste and things like that.
It doesn’t hurt anything. It it makes it makes it stronger and better for your plants and stuff. So, yeah, so that’s one of the things that we do with.

Equipment & American-Made Pelletizers
So are these crushers and pelletizers? Are they like expensive?
So it just varies. We went with an American company. We obviously my husband being military, we are very.
Yeah, so we found an American company that makes a pelletizer and worked with them and talked to them. Really nice guys. When you pick up the phone to call them, they’re right there.
And I called and said, I think I want to make wool pellets. And he was like, what? I said, yeah. So we bought a big pellet.
It’s not big. It’s a it’s actually just aren’t designed for wool. They’re designed for like something else.
They are designed to do feed and wood and everything around. And so you really kind of came up with a a fairly new concept.
Right.
And and I’ll have to be honest, I this concept of wool pellets has been around for.
Years, of course, the Europeans did it first.
Yeah.
And they have big, beautiful wool pellet machines that don’t do anything else. Well, you know, living on a homestead, living on a farm and a ranch, that piece of machine that we have, it can’t just do one little thing. It really needs to be one of those things that can contribute to doing this and doing this and doing this.
So we make wood pellets for people who have barbecue grills and, you know, the egg, the big green egg.
Yeah. We make feed pellets.
We do hay. So we make feed pellets for all of our, you know, all of our clients and customers. And and then wool because I have sheep and I need to do something with this wool.
I’m not a knitter. I’m not a crafter. That kind of thing.
So, yeah. And so we so this all around pellet machine does it all for us. And and that’s really it.
It’s a nice thing. The wool, we always do that at the very end of the day is when I run my wool through because it cleans it out and it shines it all up and makes it look pretty again.
That’s so smart.
And then it’s just picking up those pieces of wood and hay and stuff. That’s just making it a better product.
Right.
Definitely. Definitely.

Experimenting with Manure & Mixed Pellets
And then we started putting also through our pellet machines.
We put rabbit poop and alpaca poop and we make like fertilizer pellets and we’re researching and experimenting. My husband gave me two acres of land this year, mixing the manure, the alpaca manure, which, you know, it’s wonderful and with our wool to make a combined pellet so that when we put it on the ground on the field with our, you know, with our seed, it’s all together. I love that you’re testing it, too.
Yeah. Yeah. I only got two acres this year.
All right. I want all the data on an Excel sheet. I’m so excited.
No. Okay. Yeah.
No, I can. We’ve we’ve been working on it. It’s all on a on Excel sheet.
So that’s kind of good. He has it all like programmed out, you know, here’s when we have to do this. Here’s how much we added.
And then here was how much, you know, alpaca manure because we have alpacas. And what are you doing? It’s perfect for your garden. It’s not hot.
And so we’re combining it all into one and putting it into a pellet and making it work.

Treating the Homestead Like a Business
So I really love that. I mean, keeping track of what you’re doing on the farm.
I think a lot of people who are small scale farmers, they don’t see that they don’t treat it like a business, even if they aren’t selling something. But if you’re putting money into something, you need to see what you’re getting back and how to make that better. And I mean, I, I don’t run spreadsheets on everything.
I probably should a little more with my milk, but we’re still kind of learning. Like we’ve had the dairy for a few years, but this is the first time we’re really like, okay, and we’re going to make sure that we’re selling all year long and that type of thing. But my pigs, I have it down to the dollar or like to the penny per pound, what goes into them and how much I’m making when we sell them.
And, you know, over the winter, it’s a different amount because it takes me longer to feed out my pigs in the winter. We raise about 350 hogs a year here. So I have that.
Oh, man. Well, I mean, we sell a lot as like piglets and like large feeders and roasters. And then we keep about a third to a half back to sell retail and whole and half hogs and stuff.
So like, I have that down to an art. I was an animal science major. So I have all that.
And, you know, what the difference would be like, because we do, we feed them a non-GMO feed from a local feed mill.
Right.
But there’s another feed mill down the road that doesn’t use any corn or soybean.
The one we have, corn and soybean is an additive, not the base. The base is barley and peas around here.
Right.
You probably know that. But the one we use here, they will add in a little bit of corn and soybean just for whatever they need it for. But it’s like the 10th item down on the ingredient list.
But a lot of customers have been starting to ask for the corn and soybean free completely. So I’m running a spreadsheet constantly of what the cost of that feed is at the other feed mill we use. So that if any point we decide to make that change, I already know exactly what that cost is.
Because that’s what we feed our we feed their feed to our breeders. Because they have a it’s like it’s called Pacific Northwest Advantage. And it’s all the byproducts from everything that’s grown locally.
So they can’t technically call it non-GMO. But it is right.
And we pay we pay under 400 a ton for our maintenance feed.
Wow.
Which is just good. Like unheard of.
Yeah. That when when I started tracking how much my sheep were actually costing us like hay and minerals and water usage. And then shearing.
I was like, we have got to start doing something with this wool. Like I said, I am not a knitter, not a spinner. And I do have great wool.
But I was like, I just I got to find out something else to do. It’s all this wool. I didn’t want to be wasteful anymore.
You know, I’ve always known it’s good on the gardens. But like I kind of have an aversion to like if I touch it and it sticks to my fingernails or something. So I’ve done it before where I put it like netted it out on my garden.
And then I get out there and start weeding. And I’m like, oh, it’s touching me.
Yeah.

Host’s ‘Oddball Animals’ & Alpaca Idea
And then we have a small store here on the farm. And we have a pig that is really fat. But he’s not a butcher pig.
He kind of we acquired him. I think he’s I think he’s part potbelly or something.
Yeah.
And so we were going to build a little pen closer to the house where the store is. And I was like, OK, we’ll put, you know, Magoo in there. That’s his name.
And then I’m getting some bourbon turkeys that I’m getting them for a reason. But they’re going to have a smaller pen. And then the little boys have been asking for the small pygmy goats.
And we’re not really goat people. So I was like, maybe I should do like I don’t even want to say a petting zoo. But just to have all of our oddball animals a little closer to the house where they’re more pets than produce, because we don’t really do that.
Like if they don’t produce something or provide something to us, we don’t want them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So but I’m like, we don’t really want to get rid of Magoo. So let’s add to Magoo’s pen. So I told my husband I wanted an alpaca.
Oh, fun.
You got to have two.
Oh, that’s what I keep hearing.
So he’s like, if you build a fence for an alpaca, you can have an alpaca.
Yeah.
And I was like, no, that’s your job.
And so then a few months later, he goes, I found a really good deal on a purebred brown Swiss bull. And I was like, oh, like because that’s our girls are brown Swiss.
Yeah.
So and he’s gorgeous. I love him. He’s like a big teddy bear.
But I was like, OK, yeah, let’s get the bull. And he’s like, but how should we do the management with that? I was like, well, I don’t want him breeding our Angus girls, but we run our whole herd together. So we’re going to have to have another pen for our bull.
And when we have, you know, when we have steers that are getting ready to be fed out, like we’ll put them over with the bull and stuff. So I was like, but we’re going to need another pasture just for the bull. And he’s like, OK.
And so he gets out there and like builds the fence over the weekend. And I was like, the bull needs a friend. We should get him an emotional support alpaca.
And he was like, how did you manage that? I was like, I’m just that good. But I hear that a bull is not sufficient for my alpaca to have a friend. So I’m going to have to have to.
But wait, huh?
Just right. I just need to. Yeah.

Fiber Mats & Using Alpaca Fiber
But what I was thinking is he was like, OK, once we share it, what do we do with it? And I was like, well, balls, I want alpaca wool balls. And he’s like, are you going to sell them? I’m like, no, I’m going to replace the ones my kids steal every day. But yeah, I mean, that’s that was what I had thought of.
Like, if I’m going to you know, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to have a use for him or her or whatever. But yeah, plus with the store, people coming like it. We live 45 minutes from town.
So for people to come to us, it needs to be more of an experience than just picking up their milk and eggs. So right, right. And alpaca fiber, if you mix it with sheep wool, you can also make wool pellets.
Unfortunately, it’s so fine that it just it makes like a dust. You put it through the pelletizer. I hate that.
But what we have done with our alpaca fiber is and I’ll show it to you.
OK, so these are what we call fiber mats.
OK, and they we take the fiber and we it’s it is water, you know, felted, but embedded in them is native wildflower seeds.
So wildflower seeds to our area. So probably your area also.
And then we take these and you can put these anywhere.
You put your wool pellets down, you put your fiber mat down. This is all alpaca fiber because we can’t do anything else with it. And then you can plant these.
And it really they grow a little fire flower.
I was looking at that thinking, how great would that be to keep the weeds down between like in my bed?
Yes.
Yeah.
But they grow flowers. This one does.
Well, I mean, I just I have such a weed problem.
I don’t know if you guys have the same weed problem we do, but I will never get ahead of the weeds here.
No, but we can’t. And then they do make wool fiber mats also that you can cut up and you can put them on top of your garden.
You want them to be the thin ones. So people were taking like the whole wool fleece and putting it on their garden was because it’s good for it. But what happens is, is that your garden, then it makes that little slimy layer, you know, between the soil and the top of the wool.
And so nothing was really able to get in and there’s no airflow, things like that. So when you take the wool and you make them into wool pellets and you put them at the bottom by the roots and things like that, there, you know, they start to grow. And when you make like a wool mat, a thin wool mat, then you then you’re able to do that very thinly on top of your plants to keep the weeds out.
Yay.
So how do you felt wool? Like, I mean, I know.
I send it off.
You send it off. Okay. We do.
So, and I do this in conjunction, the wool fiber mats in conjunction. I know how to make a big chunk of felted wool.
Yeah, yeah.
We do it in conjunction with a lady, Carrie, with Paco West. So her and I have been working together doing a bunch of things. So that’s kind of nice.
Yeah.

Seed Pellets & ‘Seed Bomb’ Idea
So yeah, you were, oh, sorry. Go ahead.
I was going to say, yeah, when you have like 140 pounds of alpaca fiber sitting in your, you know, in your area with all your wool, you’re like, oh, I got to find something to do with this too. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah. So you were talking about putting the wildflowers in there, the seeds. Can you do that with your pellets too?
Yes.
Yes. And that’s what we were just talking about earlier is that we’re putting in the manure and the wool and the seeds all into one, putting them through the pelletizer to make like a seed bomb for, you know, lack of a better term.
Yeah.
No, I think that’s awesome.
Yeah.
And then it can go right through our seeder.
So my husband opened it up. Which is really nice for the small seeds. Because we use, well, we use a very small seeder.
It’s just a push one.
Yeah.
But a lot of times with really small seeds, like carrot seeds, we actually, we mix it with like dirt and then run it through.
And, you know, I’m like, man, I would, I was talking to someone the other day and now I can’t think of who it was, something with fertilizer or something. But yeah, we were like, oh, well, you can mix it with, you know, your fertilizer or even like cornmeal or something like that to spread it out. But if it’s already in like a little pellet with everything it needs, that would be so handy.
Yeah.
Yeah. It has been so far.
And you can see it really, like there’s been weird places where we’ve just kind of combined them all. And then I threw the bucket out because I didn’t know what it was. And you’ll see, like, there’s been weird places around our ranch where I’m like, oh, I wonder if that’s where I did.
Oh, I wonder what, I wonder what’s going to pop up. So.
Well, that’s always fun.

Dropped Seedlings Story
Or then there’s my son who dropped an entire tray of, I had soil blocks with pepper plants in them. And they were all labeled. And I had specifically bought this really neat pack of like all these different like specialty peppers, like white ghost peppers and stuff.
And I was so excited to grow all these different peppers. And the it was a mini 20 tray. So, I mean, there’s like 200 plants and they’re all like two inches tall.
And they look exactly the same. And he dropped it all over the kitchen floor.
Oh, he was bringing them to me to transplant.
Some bigger pots.
Yes.
And I was like, now what, you know? So, I mean, I just planted them all.
And I labeled them like peppers. And I’ll put them out there. And once we start having peppers growing, some of them I’ll be able to recognize.
Some of them I won’t. And we might just be surprised with some really hot Tulsa this year.
Stock up on the Tums.
Right. Oh, my goodness.
Well, if I can’t tell for sure, I might, you know, like, if it’s an if I don’t know, I might like put one in with all like my jalapenos that I know.
And like, it might be just right. So, yeah.
Yeah.
Fingers crossed.

Teenage Son Breaking Things
No, that’s so awful. He’s 16, but he’s going through a phase where he’s dropping and breaking everything right now.
That’s crazy. Like, I am going to lose my mind. Like, he broke the chargers for the electric fence.
He broke one of those the other day. He was transferring. He was moving.
We rotate the cows. And then he just takes the charger off and moves it to the next spot. Dropped that and broke it.
Then last night, the cows were pushing on the hot wire fence. So we sent him out to go test it. And he broke the tester.
I wanted him to weed eat my garden. And he was trying to get the sprinkler. We have like a tripod sprinkler that we left it out there over the winter.
So the weeds had grown over the hose. And he was trying to get it out. Ended up breaking my tripod sprinkler.
And I’m just like, dude, stop touching things. He needs some martial arts training. And he’s like, he goes, well, I do my share around the ranch.
I do all the milking and we make money off the milk. And I’m like, not enough to cover everything you break. I’m like, you better start selling some more milk.
Yes, you better. You better get out there and start peddling the milk.
Right.
Because we don’t sell enough milk for. But we’re just kind of it’s our first year of really. We have Canadian customers that come over because we’re right on the border.
And they can’t buy raw milk over there. But they can buy it here and take it over.
Right.
But yeah, a lot of our milk goes to the pigs. And so I’m like, dude, like you are not making as much as you break. That’s right.
No bacon for you. No sausage.
Oh, I like it.
Like we’ve been trying to figure out good like, you know, he doesn’t really have a job because he makes money off of like extra farm products, you know.
Yeah.
And we give him like a percentage of it and stuff.
So he doesn’t really have a regular job. So I can’t really be like, you broke it, you buy it, you know. And he already were farmers.
So he’s working the farm all the time. So I can’t be like more chores for. And, you know, my husband goes like, whatever you break, I’m going to whack you with.
I’m like, I need to think of like another punishment. And like, I think, yeah, I’m going to withhold his breakfast meat. There you go, dude.
You don’t get milk and you don’t get bacon. Sorry.
He would if he didn’t get milk, he would lose it.
That’s a good one. Look, he might get there drinking it at the barn if I take it away from him. Like when you transfer because we we milk one and then he pours it into a bucket and then we milk the other one because we only have one of our bait.
We use like the antique belly milkers.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And so he has to switch in the middle because we have like four more of them where my husband rebuilds them. And so we just don’t have one going right now. He’s going to be up there like switching one and drinking it.
Big straw. Where did all that milk go?
Right.

Adding Amendments & Cost of Pellets
So we were talking about you can put the seeds in.
Can you put other amendments in as well?
Yes, you can. We’re but it’s money. It it costs a lot.
You know, when you’re fertilizing your ground and I just wrote the big check the other day when you’re fertilizing it, it’s not cheap. You know, the gypsum, the all the nutrients that your soil needs to stay healthy. And I’m not a lot of that is liquid.
So we put it through our, you know, our sprayer.
Your sprayer.
Yeah.
Yeah. Because like I was I was thinking.
Oh, sorry. I was going to say this is the wool pellets can be used for large areas like super large areas, but it’s really best in gardens and houseplants and and smaller because it costs a lot. I mean, it takes, you know, when you send it to me, it we’re charging eight dollars a pound to process it for you.
When I just sell it, you know, because of shearing and feed and, you know, and then your time to make the pellet. It’s fifteen dollars a pound, roughly, and that’s across the board. Like, I’ve looked at other people who do wool pellets and they’re all saying the exact same thing when I had to, you know, we buy the wool and we’re buying it at whatever the process.
It’s roughly 40 cents a pound right now is what the USDA is having us purchase it at. So a lot of wool processors are, you know, out there and they’re just trying to to break even, you know, just to pay the shearer, just to pay the feed, just to, you know, and then you’re hopefully you’re selling all of your animals or whatever, you know, back to other people who want breeding stock or meat or whatever it needs to be. So so, yeah, it’s well, and yeah, the sheep industry has just it plummeted and it’s starting to come back a little, but just a little.
Yeah, it makes it hard.
Yeah. And the fact that all the wool, the big wool processor places have shut down and we’re trying just to find buyers to come in to buy wool.
It’s just it’s it’s been a long process.
I can imagine. I mean, do you have are there even places to sell clean wool as a small scale producer? Probably, yes.
Facebook, vending events, things like that. You could sell your clean wool. And if you don’t do it yourself, then a lot of places take it.
There’s a place in Texas that does wool cleaning. And there are some small places around here that that do the wool cleaning. But then again, you’re getting charged to clean your wool.
And so that makes the price to go up. Luckily for me, I don’t need that clean wool. I mean, we stay in the tent.
I usually go, hey, the dirtier, the better it goes through it. You guys are paying a shearer, not shearing yourselves? Loaded question. I missed it.
Oh, I said, are you guys paying a shearer or are you shearing yourself?
No, no. I have a wonderful shearer. I will keep her till I will pay her.
She takes my big old 200 pound ram, lifts him on his tushy and she’s done. For me, that’s that’s a big. I don’t like shearing.
Yeah, we could shear, but she can do it all in like.
You know, an hour where it would take me days and days and days. So how many head are you running?
18.
I only have a small flock. I have a really small flock here on our ranch. And then we have a lady right down the road and we run her flock and she has 21.
So we have a we’re pretty small compared to to other people. But that’s the trend now with homesteaders. They’re not going out and purchasing, you know, 500 flock of sheep or 500 sheep.
They’re purchasing, you know, 5 to 10, the most that they can manage. And yes, your shearers are wonderful, but your feed is great. But you got to find other things to do with all the stuff that your sheep can do.

Lack of Co-ops & Small Processor Options
I’ve really been hoping that we were going to start seeing more co-op style processing options coming up. And I’m not just talking about like sheep and wool, but butchers or marketing groups. You know, it’s like I know so many people up here that raise commercial hogs or not commercial, but like the direct to consumer process.
And I just think like we’re all I mean, a lot of us have each other’s phone numbers and I have someone call and they go, hey, you know, I have a customer who wants a whole hog like this weekend and I don’t have a way to meet it. Do you or I’m completely out of piglets, but I have people who need piglets. Do you have piglets? So we all work pretty well together.
But I think like we have the worst time getting into the butcher plant. And then we’re having to hustle every single pound of meat, whether that’s via Facebook or the farmers markets or we’re hoping to be shipping this year. And it’s that constant there’s no if I send all my pigs at the end of the month, there’s a paycheck and I don’t want to go into that commercial where I’m taking them to the auction and getting, you know, 10 cents a pound for a 300 pound perfectly good feeder animal.
I want to still do the direct to consumer model, but I always wonder, like, why isn’t there more co-ops and things like that popping up that they’re handling all the marketing and stuff and you’re kind of like selling into that.
Right.
Right.
And the next thing is, is that like when you send them to the butcher, you’re a hundred dollars right off the top. That’s their kill fee. And you’re like, I understand it’s a kill fee.
And but you can’t take it. Like, I would totally task my husband to kill everybody. One hundred percent.
Yeah.
You know, and just be able to take them up there and like, nope. If it’s USDA, it’s got to be, you know.
Because they have to have that anti-mortem inspection.
Right.
Right.
So, yeah, we’re the same way. We have a small group of people who have sheep and goats and pigs and cows, and we all call each other. Hey, I got a phone call from this person or that person.
And yeah, it would be nice if a USDA butcher could go to a farm and say, we’re going to take all your lambs. We’re going to slaughter them right here. And let’s butcher them out.
Because they’re, I’ve noticed some of our mobile butchers, they’re more sterilized, like everything in there sterilized versus the USDA butcher that I have to take it to locally. And then sometimes you don’t get your, this is just me. Sometimes I almost feel like I don’t get back what I sent up.
What you took.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There’s a lot of people that say that. And, you know, it’s there’s our custom butchers. There’s our USDA butchers.
I love a couple of my custom butchers. They’re great. And, you know, I can sell my whole and halves through there, or, you know, our own meat, but I can’t sell any of my retail.
But then I feel like I’m so limited on options because we have one retail butcher in the area or one USDA butcher in the area. And everybody’s using that same butcher. So essentially, we’re all selling the same products, except for the way we feed them or how we market ourselves.
That’s the only edge we have over. And as far as customizations go, you can’t bring in your own seasoning mixes there. Even as USDA.
So I can’t say, oh, I want to do a jalapeno sausage or something. Nope. You can’t bring in your own stuff.
You can’t get specialty smoked products. There’s nothing. So I’m literally going and picking up the same product that everybody else is and have.
And that’s why I’m like, maybe I need to like for me, I need to start selling online because I have more of a national presence. And so I can sell beyond my community.
Right.
Like I have a ton of homeschool families in Arizona that are like, man, if you started shipping, like you wouldn’t have enough meat for us.
Right.
I’m like, I need to get on it.
But it’s a big process in itself. And my assistant did just come on full time. So there’s there’s space for that now.
And I’m very excited. We’re ordering like one of those really nice sheds for her office. That’ll also be our book shipping facility.
But we’ll be able to ship our meat, like at least the paperwork of shipping the meat out of there. I prefer packing our meat in our walk in cooler.
Right.
But it’s. We’ve also looked into putting a commercial kitchen on the property so that we can go just get our primals and come home and process. But then we have to have I’m looking into the details on it.
My husband makes amazing bacon. Like I’ve never tasted bacon like this before in my life. Like it’s nothing compares.
Yeah.
And I’m like, I would love to be able to sell that product. But the best I can do right now is if I get a commercial kitchen, I can sell it kind of as like a restaurant style.
But in order to like package and sell it, I have to have USDA, even though it’s still butchered USDA. I can’t bring it home, package it and sell it unless I have USDA inspections, which would require me building a whole other facility on my property versus just taking my current meat room that we have and just adding a few things to make it a commercial kitchen, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it’s a real frustration as a small scale operator. And there’s a lot of operators like that that feel the same way. And so it’s kind of, you know, I think that’s the frustration of homesteaders.
We used to be able to butcher it out, take it wherever we needed to and do what we needed to do with our own livestock and get it back and provide what we wanted to for our families, provide that meat, provide whatever it is. And now it’s, oh, we’ve got to stop. We have to take it to the USDA person or we have to find a butcher.
And butchers are hard to find. Good butchers who, when you go in to, when you go in, when you take your animal in, they, you know, they look at it and you can see the tenderloin and they’re like, yep, here it is. It’s right here.
But then you’re like, the loin should have been this long, you know, should have been really 12 inches long. And I’m only getting like six. And they’re like, oh, I gave you two.
Okay. Well, I really just wanted one tenderloin, you know, or I really think, and you look at your amount of sausage versus bacon versus, you know, ribs and you’re like, wow, you know, where did all this go? And then you do it at home and you’re like, how did I get, you know, how did I get this nice slab of bacon here? And I smoked it and now it’s really great or, you know, or lamb or whatever. And you’re like, oh, okay.
So for me, it’s just, it’s a very, it’s a frustration. I’m sure like everyone else. So, and I feel like when we’re limited there, it’s easier for them to pull that.
Like, and then we had a butcher that we loved and he started shipping in commercial pigs from out of area. Paying next to nothing for them, feeding them out and selling them as a whole butchered hog and undercutting everybody else in our community by 300 bucks.
Yeah.
Yeah. But then I can’t sell a whole hog to save my life.
Right.

Medications, Transparency & Small Flocks
And then you look at like on our end, you look at what in the sheep industry, what meds have gone into those? Have we put CDT into them? Have we put BOCE? Have what, you know, did they have penicillin? Did they need whatever? And I’m sure it goes the same with, I don’t really know much about pig vaccinations. It’s the same idea.
Yeah.
It’s the same idea. Well, some people don’t want that in their meat. I mean, even though that there are some things they have to have.
Yeah. Like my 4-H pigs, they have to have them.
Yes.
Because those go into like the commercial meat industry, technically, you know.
Right.
Whereas like the rest of the pigs on our property, we don’t have things like CDT with pigs.
Right.
There are a couple of diseases that if they’re going to be out with other pigs that are highly contagious. But we have a closed, like we have some biosecurity things in place where if people come to look at piglets, we take all the piglets to a pen out front and the kids can go look at them there.
And then we carry them back into like the farrowing crate. So I don’t have a bunch of in and out traffic. And so we actually don’t vaccinate for anything.
Right.
I do worm every piglet because that’s as soon as they’re, as soon as they’re weaned, their system tanks and we raise our pigs on dirt. So yes, I’m warming.
But if I have one of them that gets sick, like or, you know, gets an abscess from, you know, fighting with another piglet or something like that, if I give that one antibiotics, I earmark it, that it doesn’t go into my retail meet because I can’t have a conversation with every single person that buys a retail and say, hey, this one got a shot or which package is this. But when I sell like wholes and halves to neighbors and friends and community, then I can say, yeah, we’re low input. This one did have an antibiotic shot and they’re like, whatever, like because they don’t want the ones that are pumped full of antibiotics for growth, but.
Right.
They are totally fine with you humanely treating an animal. So yeah.
Yeah. And the same goes for my sheep. If I notice that they, you know, stems of hay, it seems to get ours.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. And.
Jaw abscesses are terrible. The little jaw abscesses that are not CD or that are not CL, the little jaw abscesses and you cut it and you rinse it and you do everything and you give them that shot of whatever they might need, LA 200 or penicillin or whatever. But yeah, on their ears, the little we have green tags and then they get like a red mark on their little green tag and I know who they are.
You know, I have a small flock and sometimes they go to processors and but I make sure that whoever gets that lamb knows, OK, they did have a small jaw abscess. It cleared right up once I cleaned it out and I gave them I only had to do it once. And so it’s all good, you know, but yeah.
So but then we luckily around here, we have a nice population of ethnic, a nice ethnic population. And so they come out and they butcher their own lambs and things like that.
Yeah, yeah.
So we used to do a lot of that in California.
Yeah, yeah. Now, what part of California are you from?
Northern California.
Like I grew up in Ukiah. It’s in wine country.
Right.
OK. Yeah, he is from California, but he’s.
Like south of Bakersfield.
Oh, he’s one of those.
Yeah.
OK.
Yes. He’s in the mountains. Now he’s in the mountains like the Santa.
My stepdad was from Bakersfield.
Do what?
My stepdad was from Bakersfield.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. And then my husband is my husband’s from Gridley, which is like just south of Chico.
Oh, yeah.
And I went to Chico State and then that’s where I met him. So.
OK.
So my sister in law went to Chico State. So, yeah.

Closing Segment Setup
Yeah, we’re at that.
We helped her move. We’re about the end of our time.
Yeah.

“Keep Growing” Question
So my favorite question that I like to ask everybody is what does keep growing mean to you?
Keep growing. Wow. It would mean taking the basics and turning them into something wonderful, whether it’s your family, taking the basics, the core of your family, like my husband and our two girls, and the fact that we’re able to provide them with that with education, with a college education, knowing that they’re turning out to be wonderful young women who are making themselves productive members of society.
Our oldest is now growing into her own family, her own military family. And so watching getting to watch her, you know, prepare to move with her fiance. And then our youngest will graduate college next year.
But this year she just got accepted to the University of Queensland. So she’s going to get to grow in Australia for.
Oh, my gosh.
Just for a year. But so to keep growing is just starting with the basis of your family, making it, making it that tiny seed, watching it sprout, watching it grow. And then to keep growing with your friends and your family, like your extended family, your friends, your community.
And here in Deer Park, we have that we have a wonderful community of family and friends. And and so just to keep growing it. That’s what it means to me.
I mean, just taking a tiny seed, watching it sprout.
So that’s so perfect. I love the answers that I get on this because it’s.
It helps everybody grow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we come here at the ranch.
We always have seems like for each kids and homeschool kids. I mean, they were just on the ranch yesterday, a group of them. And they and then we have two that actually work for us to homeschool and for each kids.
And they do just such a great job. And I’m just so impressed with how they’re being raised and their values and and just watching them take small strides, you know, things like that. So, yeah.
And I know your kids are probably the same way because they’re being homeschooled, which means that you’re getting to take the time to really invest in them. Being military, we did not homeschool because the D.O.D. schools are pretty good. And and that gave me the chance while they were at school, especially when we lived overseas, to do volunteer work, to teach army family team building, to teach resilience so that when the kids came home after school, I was able to really invest in everything.
And now I see that it, you know, for them, it helped. But I watch these kids that are being homeschooled now. And I think that is what it was like when my kids went to school, you know, 10, 12, 15 years ago when they were much younger.
So.
So, yeah.
Yeah, they’re definitely a different group.
Yeah. And I’ve never been more impressed by some of these homeschool kids that I know. So.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. So some parents, I do believe, need to send their kids to school.
They’re just not. And some families have to. And I super respect that.
Yes, yes. But if you can homeschool, I’m always like, how can I help you do it? And your program is at Deer Park. Yes.
As you’re my biggest customer.
Yeah. Two of the homeschoolers that were here yesterday were like, I know her program.
Oh, my gosh, you’re going to get to talk to her. I was like, yeah, I sure am. And they’re like, oh, yeah, they were very excited.
They’re taking your homeschool program and they’re making it work. And I love that idea. I love like there’s some pieces in my program that people will be like, it’s really ambiguous.
And I’m like, I did that on purpose.
Yeah, yeah. No, they’re here.
She’s she took a steer from us. We have some Angus cows and and we had a little oopsie. And she was like, OK, I want I want to try some of my homeschool studies with your steer.
And I was like, OK, here he is. You know, and he sees her and he’s like, oh, there’s my girl. There’s my girl.
I love it. And she has Cheetos. So, yeah.
So, yeah, we’re here in Deer Park. We’re very lucky because we have your your program to help our homeschool kids, which I very much appreciate that. I love the community in Deer Park.
And they have been been a wonderful, like I said, customer. But it’s just the not just the customer part, but the way that they embrace what we’re doing and encourage kids and connect the kids and stuff. It’s been really wonderful.
Yeah.

Invitation to the Ranch
Well, you’re always welcome here at the ranch. You know, I need to come over to Deer Park.
I have so many people that I want to hang out with. Look, you make a day. I’ll set up a picnic table.
We’ll just have all those homeschool kids here and you can just come hang out the ranch. I’ll show you how to make wool pellets. And oh, I would love that.
Yeah. Yeah. OK, I can do that.
Yeah, that sounds great.

Where to Find Stacey & Wrap-Up
All right. Well, do you want to tell everyone where they can find you and how they can get pellets or get custom pellets done?
Sure.
We’re here in Deer Park, Washington, just north of Spokane, about 15, 20 minutes. We have a small ranch. You’re welcome on the ranch.
You just have to let me know when you’re coming. Let’s see here. Well, you can find us on Facebook at Hoppin Ridge Ranch.
All right. And I’ll make sure I link that. And we’re on Instagram, sheep of 5048.
And if you just give us a call, our cell number is 509-944-5559. I’ll be glad to talk to you. You can tell me what you need and I’ll help you out as much as I can.
Awesome. That is so great. Well, thank you so much for sharing.
And I look forward to chatting soon.
Yeah, thank you. I look forward to chatting with you also.
Are you going to the Modern Homestead Conference?
Yes.
Yes. All right.
I’ll see you there. I’ll bring you some more pellets.