Today I'm talking with Bryna at Drunken Duck Farm & Rescue. 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. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer? Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business? Cottage Foodie Con is probably for you. You can find more information at cottagefoodiecon.com and if you use the code HOME15, you'll get 15 % off your registration costs.

00:29
and that price is valid through the end of November. So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com. A tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Brina at Drunken Duck Farm and Sanctuary in Ohio. Good morning, Brina. How are you? I'm great. How are you doing today? I'm good. Tell me what the weather's like in Ohio.

00:54
Well, it's a little cold, but it's sunny. So we will 100 % take it, ah especially because where our farm is, we're at the end of the power line and we lost electricity this morning. So it's a little cold in the house. Oh, I hope you get it back soon. Oh, yeah. This happens to us probably about 30 to 40 times during the winter. Might be time to invest in a generator that kicks on when the power goes out. We have one of those. They're really great.

01:24
That is on our wish list for this year. Good, because it's so helpful. When we were looking for our property, we didn't know that the property we would end up with uh would have a generator that kicks on when the power goes out. And at our house, we have a well. So when the power goes out, there's no water. And we were very excited to find out about the generator just automatically sending power to the house. It's amazing. It is one of the most wonderful things about this place.

01:54
Okay, well, the weather here is very gray and I think it's probably 37 degrees outside and they are predicting snow tonight. oh wonderful. Congratulations. Yeah. And I'm in Minnesota. So that stands to reason that we would have some snow in November. I'm excited. I always love the first snow. The last one I'm like, are you kidding me? But the first snow, I, I'm just beside myself. I'm like a five year old.

02:20
So I'm a little, I'm actually originally from near Lake Tahoe, Nevada. So I'm very pro snow. During the winter, I am always excited for snow and I am disappointed in rain because for us ice and really frozen mud is like the worst thing we can ever want for on our farm. So when it snows, I get so excited because we have snow and not ice. Yeah, absolutely. And

02:50
I get excited because I associate snow with cozy homes because I grew up in the woods in Maine and we had, my parents had a lovely little ranch home surrounded by pine trees and it would snow, we had windows in every room and we would just kind of hang out by the wood stove and watch snow fall and be cozy. Yeah, I really, I want to say probably fall and winter time are my favorite time. Yeah, mine too, absolutely. Okay, so.

03:18
I have to know why is it called Drunken Duck Farm and Sanctuary? Okay, so it's a little bit of a longer story. That's okay. When I originally moved onto the property, was leasing. I hadn't rented or anything. mean, was, let me try that again. I was leasing and there was two houses on the property. There was a converted barn that got turned into a two-bedroom, one-bath house that the owner had and then an old

03:48
a 1890s house, three bedrooms, one bath that I went ahead and I rented out and I had a small yard around it. And by that time I was already rescuing a few rabbits, not that many. And I had some chickens, once again, not that many. But what I wanted the property for is I was a brewer, a home brewer. And I wanted the property to be able to grow my own grapes, raise my own honey.

04:15
my own hops because at that time I was actually traveling the world teaching brewing classes and workshops and I did a lot with boy scouts teaching them about the science behind brewing and making their own root beer and stuff like that. And so when I had it, uh I called my little brewing farm the Drunken Duck Farm.

04:37
And I was doing a lot of home brewing and I would give the spent grains after I would make a beer and I'd give that to the animals and they loved it. It's really good for them. Well, unfortunately, the person who owned the property, it was right before COVID and she really wasn't taking really great condition of the animals. And when COVID hit, she was work from home.

05:01
And I was not, I was considered an uh essential employee. I worked for a greenhouse um and we were a wholesale greenhouse, meant we had to be there on the property, making sure the plants and everything were okay. m she started traveling and she had me take care of her animals. And when I started doing that, I started realizing that first of all, she did not want to live in Ohio anymore. And the animals needed someone better to take care of them.

05:31
So when it came time, I offered a solution when she's like, hey, I don't think I to live in Ohio anymore. And I was like, yes, I realize that. And I would like to buy the property with all the animals on it. So I purchased the property uh minus her horses that she took with her. And I ended up having to turn it into almost like a sanctuary because it took us about two years to get the animals healthy and happy and thriving.

06:00
and I just decided to keep the name. And at this point, I'm known for it. Everyone loves it. I don't have the opportunity to do as much home brewing as I did, but that still is part of my history. And I don't think I would ever change the name of the farm for anything. I love the name of your farm and I don't think you should change it. I think you should make t-shirts with a drunken duck on the front. We actually do have a couple. have some on our store on our website.

06:29
Some with our logo on them and then some with like more of a traditional style with a duck on it that says, you know, German town circa, I think it was, it's 2019 when we started and we love them. And every year we have a tendency to come up with a new one because why not? Absolutely.

06:54
And Drunken Duck is very attention grabbing. So when people see you on social media or your website, you know, they're scrolling through something and see it. They're like, what is that? So there are some pros and cons to it. When I do things in the area now, um revolving the sanctuary, taking them into schools and stuff like that, I use the sanctuary name, which is Mallard's Landing Sanctuary.

07:20
um just because it's a little easier and more appropriate for kids. And the only other drawback is Google has a problem with me because they think that I'm getting ducks drunk. And so therefore the name of my business and the website actually violates their terms of service. So...

07:43
They're kind of fabulous about it. Every time they do that and they send me the notice, I send them all the information. They're like, oh, it's a legit company and they turn it back on. And then about six months later, they ban us again and it's, it's a thing. But even with all that, there's no way we will ever change our name. That is crazy. God love algorithms and AI. I'm telling you. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a hoot. And every time it happens, I just laugh because that's kind of who I am.

08:10
Yeah, but what a pain in the butt to have to deal with that every single time. It's okay. I have the document saved in Google Drive now. So I just go and get the document and I send it to them. It makes it so much easier. And they go, oh yeah, we've talked before. We know who you are. Okay. Yes. Yep. Every single time. Okay. So what do you do now at your farm? And I know you have sanctuary, but you have the farm too. So tell me about the farm and then tell me about the sanctuary. um So the farm aspect,

08:40
is we actually, still do brewing ingredients and stuff like that. I'm still part of a brewing guild. So I will grow hard to get spices and herbs and traditional brewing ingredients for those people that are brewers. We don't sell them on our website, but I'm, I have friends and if brewers contact me, I'm like, oh yeah, this is what we have. We sell them. But most importantly, we sell spices and teas and herb blends.

09:09
and they're all just as crazy as our name. And then all those proceeds will go ahead and they pay for the farm sanctuary. And all the ingredients that we can grow, we do grow. So everything from the flowers to the herbs, to the spices, everything like that we grow. The only time we have to bring in ingredients is for things like vanilla and cloves, those things that we can't grow. Though we are trying to find

09:37
Ohio native plants that produce seeds and things like that that have a similar taste profile so we can eventually be a hundred percent from the farm. Awesome. You know, it's funny about vanilla. There are a couple of plants that it's really hard to distill anything from them to have it taste like vanilla, but if you break the leaves they smell like vanilla and bay leaf is one of them. If you break a bay leaf, leave. Can't talk.

10:05
and it's fresh, will smell like vanilla. And interesting, we have bay leaves growing on our property. Yeah, I just don't know if you can actually distill it into vanilla. don't know enough about it, but I haven't read anything about it. And I would think if you could, people would be doing it a lot more. So I don't know. You'll have to look into it. Yeah, that is actually something I might actually check out. Yeah, it's so weird because who would think that bay leaf that you get at the store that you

10:34
that you buy dried, and you know what bay leaves smells like, dried bay leaves. Who would think it would smell like vanilla fresh? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love the changes of the profile of some of our plants that we have where they're fresh or how their flowers smell compared to the part like the leaves that we might use. So it's such an interesting like smell experience throughout the season on the farm. Yes.

11:00
I am, I'm like a fanatic in the spring when we go to greenhouses and we go to the uh herb section because that's one of my favorite things to do in the springtime. And we go to a specific greenhouse in our area. We love them. are fantastic. They have, they always have golden retriever dogs in their greenhouse, greenhouses, and the dogs just kind of hang out and they are socialized from the moment they are adopted. So.

11:26
We went probably six years ago in the springtime and there was a little tiny eight week old golden retriever puppy and we got to see him grow over the summer. We specifically went like every month just to see him. And every time we go in there in the springtime, the guy that owns the place, sees me and he's like, Oh, are you going to go stick your nose in the herbs? And I'm like every day I'm one of them. Yes, I am. Yep.

11:52
So interestingly enough, that's actually how I got doing the spices and the herbs is because I was the marketing director for uh a local greenhouse, like I stated during COVID. And we also did wholesale and I put their catalog together and everything like that. And I did their website. And that's where I learned about so many of the herbs, so many of the plants and the natives and everything like that. And whenever they would have cuttings,

12:18
they would take the cuttings, they would put them in a bag and I would take them home and I would feed them to the animals. And at the end of spring, getting into summer, if they had extra herbs or tomato plants or any sort of plants like that, they would go ahead and they would send them home with me and I would take a lot of them, especially the tomatoes and stuff like that. I would take them to our local Metro park and I would donate them to the park so that they would have a community.

12:48
garden and then I would take all of the herbs home and I started planting them around our property so that way I would have additional herbs and everything like that for the animals and I had so many of them that I started to make blends with them in order to hopefully raise money for the animals and from there it has taken off from our first blend to now we have over 60. Wow and that's wonderful that they sent you home with the extra plants that is amazing.

13:18
And one more minor aside, and then I want to hear about the sanctuary part. We have a plant that grows here in Minnesota called bee balm, and that's not the Latin name, obviously, but they're these alien looking blooming flower plants that grow wild. And the leaves on those are, I guess the Native Americans used to use them as what we use thyme for T-H-Y-M-E because the leaves when they're dried, kind of have the same scent and

13:48
flavor as thyme does. And we had some growing wild in our yard at our old house, so I dried some of the leaves and put it in a beef soup. And yep, it was exactly the same as using thyme instead, you know, using those instead of thyme. I love bee balm. So it's Menardia is the actual name behind it. And that is just weirdly one of the ones I know because I love it so much. It smells amazing.

14:14
hands down it is one of my favorite pollinators for our bees and our butterflies and we have it in our teas because from the flowers down to like you said the leaves and stuff like that make amazing teas they're really incredibly relaxing and the flowers just smell so amazing it is one of my hands down favorite perennials and I recommend everyone have some. Yeah I we tried putting in Bee Balm on our three acre property

14:43
where bee balm grows in every ditch around us, cannot get it to grow on our property. Our dirt is too good. It's too dark and loamy. And so I told my husband, said, we need to get some sand, pick a four by four spot, mix some sand in with the dirt and get some bee balm and throw it in and see if it grows better. I said, I think the dirt is just too rich for the plants.

15:09
Yeah and the one thing that well there's two things when it comes to planting monardia. One see if you can get the heritage ones so if you start growing it from seed or if you go to a greenhouse try to see if they have the heritage ones because they're more likely to do better in your soil and also one thing that people don't know is it's part of the mint family so make sure if you do plant it that you have some way to contain it.

15:37
because otherwise you're just gonna have it all over your property. I would be okay with that. I would be thrilled with that. My husband would hate it because he's the gardener and he would be really mad if his 100 by 150 foot garden became Albee mom. He would be very upset. So one funny story on that is one of the plants that I received was cat mint and I love cat mint which is slightly different than catnip. Pornio, it's amazing.

16:05
and I planted one my very first summer there and I kind of forgot about it. I thought it died or something like that. Well, there's a reason why we have like five different blends and teas that all is cat mint is the main ingredient because we now have it everywhere on our property and it's choking out the poison ivy. So as long as it does that, I'm like, go ahead, grow anywhere you want it.

16:36
Very nice. we actually had, we got cat mint by mistake one year, because we read the tag wrong. We thought it's a catnip. And cats actually like cat mint as much as they like catnip. They do. So they're kind of related. em differences, you get a different um profile on it. And I think the cat mint is a little bit like not as strong.

17:03
So when it comes to things like making the teas and the spices, I prefer that because it's not overpowering. But I do have to be careful after I go ahead and I'm in the field and I'm gathering it all up. If I go inside, I have to take my pants and shoes off before I go inside because if I forget, my cats will crawl up my jeans. They just, they love it.

17:29
Yeah, the biggest difference I found between catnip and cat mint and how it smells is catnip smells skunky to me compared to the cat mint. A hundred percent agree. Yeah. And catnip doesn't really stink, but if you, if you put these two different plants side by side and give them the sniff test, the catnip smells different. It's really weird. Yeah. Okay. So tell me about what animals you have you're saving at your sanctuary. So I like to say we have all

17:58
farm animals except for horses and cows. Mostly because we don't have the space and there are a lot of different horse organizations out there. We do have donkeys, but we have llamas, alpacas, sheep, pigs, goats. I'm trying to think of all the big ones. We also have uh rabbits.

18:24
We have all the fowls from geese size down to pigeons and quails. um And we have a lot of, like I said, rabbits, roosters, and ducks are our number one we get in, which I call the unwanted Easter gifts. Yes. So we do a lot of advocacy for.

18:48
Please don't get your kids rabbits or chickens or ducklings during Easter or any holiday or birthday for that matter because they are living creatures and they do need love and attention. And when parents get them for the kids and then they realize that they take a lot, em they normally release them in the wild, which is where we end up. We get called out. We go ahead and try to catch the domesticated ones and bring them back to our farm or find them homes.

19:17
We currently have 22 rabbits that we have and we would love to find permanent homes for every single one of them. Yes, and the other thing is when you get your kids baby animals for birthdays or Christmas or Easter or whatever, you have to provide the right living conditions for the animal too. Yes, exactly. And so one of the things that we actually do, if someone is interested in adopting

19:44
one of our rabbits or some of our chickens or roosters. uh First of all, if they're outside animals like the fowl, we make sure that they're going to a home where that they are going to be brought in every night. So that way they're not gonna become predator food. And with especially the rabbits, we'll go ahead and we'll uh instruct them how to take care of the rabbits. We'll send them home with food and hay and we...

20:11
give them advice on what kind of structure that they should be in and how to get used to them and everything like that. We have a coloring book that we'll give to the kids that will teach them what to feed them and what not to feed them. And we have a policy, a return policy, no questions asked. If you figure out that this is not the animal for you, for whatever reason, we don't need to know it. We beg you to bring them back to us rather than rehome them or to release them into the wild, which is

20:40
basically a death sentence for some of these animals. Uh-huh, exactly. So do you have people come in and visit the sanctuary? does, how, what? I don't know how to ask this question. Do you have classes? Do you have people come in and learn about the animals, things like that? So we are not open to the public. uh The only time we'll open it up is for very circum, for very certain circumstances. em If a kid is getting bullied.

21:09
If you know there's a special kid, a special needs kid out there who might need a little attention or love or needs to find a place. All of our animals are amazing around children and a lot of them were raised around uh special needs children. So they understand the autistic cues and things like that. And so they know when to step back or when a kid might need a little extra love. uh But those are on very

21:37
specific situations um for the past. Since we started, our full endeavor was trying to make sure that they were healthy and happy. And that took a lot of years. And now that we know that they are, we're really trying to get to a point where we can start to open it up for workshop and classes. um Unfortunately, the grants are not there right now, even though we are a oh 501C um sanctuary. So we are a nonprofit.

22:07
em So that's kind of why we really push the spices, especially on our social media, is because we would love to build a workshop area. We would love to be able to build appropriate gating and other things to make it safe for visitors to come in and learn more about the animals. That is probably our number one goal. We do bring a lot of them out with us to our fairs and markets when we go.

22:36
Mostly because for some of them, that's the only time a kid might be able to pet a pig or we bring Biscuit, our one-footed goose, with us a lot. most people, kids and adults, have never been able to touch or pet a goose. And so it's an opportunity to bring the animals to them. And then we'll also, if schools want us to come down or if we work with the libraries and stuff like that, we'll go ahead and we'll bring them out to them.

23:04
Okay, so you are getting some of them out into the community for people to interact with, which is great. Oh yeah, a lot of them. We were working with a local pet training area where they were doing workshops with kids, and in the summer we would bring a lot of our animals down so that way they could go ahead and they could see them and they could learn about them. They really loved the roosters because we have incredibly friendly roosters.

23:30
And it was really kind of cool for them to see roosters that were not going to attack them. Yeah, that's why we don't have roosters at our place. We have laying hens and my husband was saying that we should get a rooster so that we could have baby chickens. And I was like, you might want to rethink that. A couple of rooster facts because I love our roosters. So

23:58
First of all, if you remove the roosters from the hens, they are nonviolent. They're only violent if they're trying to protect their girls. So I know what some people will do is they'll actually have one or two roosters in a property and they live in a different like little chicken home next to them or something like that. And when it comes to breeding season, they'll go ahead and they'll put them together. And then when it is not breeding season anymore, they'll go ahead and they'll separate them.

24:28
The other cool thing is that you always want two roosters if you can. So the proper terminology is actually that there are roosters and there are cocks. And roosters will actually stay with the hens. They're normally very submissive, even with the hens, they're not going to fight a lot. And their goal is to roost and to watch out for the hens. Whereas the cocks position is to be the dominant one.

24:56
and they are with the ladies, they're hanging out, they're doing their little thing in order for the hens to go ahead and have baby chicks. Which explains a lot about the names for roosters and the other one. So that is one of the things that we actually do and we let schools know about is that we will use proper terminology for all of our animals because it is the actual words and I know that there's a lot of them.

25:24
that are now used in our society for inappropriate things, but we like to teach them that, you know, this is actually their name and there's a good reason why it is their name. Yeah, absolutely. And there's no such thing as a bad word. It's just how people perceive the word. My son, my youngest came home from school one day and a friend of his, well, an acquaintance of his actually had used the N word, the one that we don't say.

25:54
Yeah. And he said, why? He said it to me, know, said the word and I said, we don't say that word ever. And he said, why? I said, cause it's a bad word. And he said, why is it a bad word? And I really had to stop and think before I answered him. And I said, I need, I need, I need some time to be able to explain this to you. And I actually had to go look up words and why people have made them bad and why we see them as bad.

26:24
And I did a whole day of thinking about this because I wanted to give this eight-year-old kid an explanation that was reasonable. And I came to the conclusion that there aren't really any bad words. It's how people have made them, what people have made them represent that's bad. And so my son and I had a long talk about this and I said,

26:53
The word that your friend in quotation marks used is not a bad word. The way that he used it is bad. I said, and I said, only people who own the word get to use it with each other. And he said, okay. That's an amazing way to put it too. um When I always tell people before we bring the animals around kids that we use the correct words.

27:21
It's interesting because a lot of people that are homeschoolers or homesteaders, uh they're actually usually more okay with using those terminologies and their kids already use their terminologies. And it was interesting because I actually, my degree is in theater design and construction. So I have a theater background.

27:45
we were able to bring in our chickens and our roosters into a class and turned it into a Shakespeare lesson. I love it. Because that is where the connotations behind cock came from was because Shakespeare used it as a description of about how a man was, you know, kind of acting around a female and showing off of his plumage and everything like a cock. And that is where that term came from.

28:11
So we turned it into this beautiful Shakespearean lesson and the kids loved it. I love it. I would have loved to have been there. ah God loves Shakespeare. I really hope that if there's a heaven and Shakespeare is in heaven, he knows how much influence he had on the language. You know, it's interesting from the theater background to just look and see how many of our words come from it and how many of our

28:40
common plant names actually come from Shakespeare and from that time period. That's a side love of mine of researching all of that stuff. Yeah, and people thought that Shakespeare was a nut bar. They thought he was crazy. He was genius. Oh, yeah. And we, I love those play on words. And so that's, we do that a lot with our naming of our animals, like

29:09
I'm trying to think of a few. have Drew Baconmore, which is a play on words, of course, and we like to do those kinds of things. And then we also bring a lot of that into the naming of our seasonings is there's, we just have fun with it. We play with the historical names of some of the plants or we'll play with some of the puns and we just have so much fun creating those because why not? Yeah, absolutely. And you've said, why not?

29:36
twice now that I can remember. And why not is a very big question when it comes to farms and small businesses and homesteads. And I love that your baseline is why not. Yeah. So one of the reasons for that is when we first started is I had to learn as we went. em And luckily I had some amazing mentors out there, especially when it came to the alpacas and the llamas.

30:05
my shearer who came out for the first time to shear them. I don't know where we would be without her. She's amazing and she walked us through how to take care of them. And so when we would get a new animal on the farm, it would be like, all right, why not? Let's learn how to do this. And we kind of bring that philosophy into everything we do. When it comes to the teas, hey, can you make a tea kind of like this? Why not? Let's try it. Because the worst that it can happen on the spy side,

30:35
is we learn that tastes horrible and we will not do it. So we don't. And the worst that happens on the animal side is we learn we need to do more research and we need more help. And we will always go that extra mile to figure out the right way to do it and how to give our animals the best experience they can ever have. Yep, absolutely. Briana, I love your spirit. Like your heart's gotta be a

31:04
billion times bigger than most people's. So we try really hard and I'm going to actually, one of the other things that we're very transparent on is some of the struggles that a lot of farmers go through. um A lot of people don't realize that they are in the top five highest suicide rates because farming is hard. And we tell a lot of homesteaders, especially when they start

31:32
that this is not going to be all easy. It is going to be hard. And personally, I actually struggle and I seek medical help for depression. And so when it comes to having an outward happy appearance, it goes back to that, not? I choose to be happy because I know it is hard on the farm and I know other people are struggling right now. And so if I could bring extra joy to people, m

32:02
I will always try to bring extra joy to people and we will donate whatever we have, anything we can to people who need it. We'll donate flowers and plants and extra cuttings in the spring to homesteaders who are struggling and who might not be able to afford a $3 asparagus plant. We'll give it to them free of charge because we want to make their life better. So sometimes we get animals in that are in the worst possible condition and we will always go,

32:31
that extra mile or that extra three feet past that mile in order to save them and to give them a really great life. And sometimes it's just not possible. And that is incredibly hard for us. We are a no kill farm. We have no problems against any homestead or farm that goes ahead and chooses to do that. We are totally for that. We support them. We buy meat from them. However, that's not our choice because we're a sanctuary.

32:59
When those animals pass away, we choose to go ahead and turn them into something positive. We keep every feather or bone of any of the animals that pass away on our farm and we'll either go ahead and we'll donate them to schools so they can have full structures of what a chicken might look like. um We'll also go ahead and we donate them to local artists um so that they can go ahead and turn them into amazing, beautiful pieces of artwork.

33:28
So that way, when an animal passes, that they can become something so much more when they leave us and their lives don't go to waste. And so for us, anytime we can turn anything negative into either something positive or something lovely and beautiful, we will always choose that route. That is amazing. Again, your heart is so big, Breanna. I love it. uh

33:56
We did a thing like that too. We had a maple tree taken down on our property because it was in danger of falling on our house and it was probably at least a hundred years old. And in the branches of that tree, there was a hummingbird nest that was empty. And I don't know if you know what hummingbird nest looked like, but they, no, I'm sorry, not hummingbird, oriole nest. yeah. O-R-I-O-L-E. And uh how the orioles make their birds nest is they look like a stalking.

34:26
that hangs down from the branch. And so my brother-in-law, he is a biology teacher in middle school. And we messaged him and said, do you want this oriel nest for your class? You would have thought we had given him a gold bar, like a literal bar of gold. He was so excited to take that in his class and set up like a, uh is it diorama? uh A thing where he could have eggs and like a uh stuffed oriel.

34:55
bird and have it look like the mama was sitting on the eggs in the nest. And so we try to do things like that too, but we haven't gone as deep as what you're talking about. And ours was a minor thing. We had a tree taken down there happened to be a bird's nest in it and we knew somebody who could use it. But either way, we made that nest go further and educate kids. know, and it's funny, we're not quite Appalachia down here, but we're getting close.

35:23
um down in Kentucky in that area and on the eastern side of Ohio is kind of where it starts. And male raccoons are the number one requested bones because we do unfortunately have to not allow raccoons on our property. So we do trap and it's illegal to release a raccoon after you trap it um off of your property. So whenever we get them, we have a waiting list.

35:52
of schools and artists that have requested male raccoons because their bone structure is slightly different, especially in their genitalia area and everything like that. And they always want to be able to recreate a, you know, a raccoon. And so those are always the minute we get one, they're right out the door to someone who can put them to really good use. It's really interesting. Raccoons. Hmm. Okay. Did not know anything about that. Yeah, there's, it's,

36:22
a whole Appalachian folklore about uh they have an extra bone in their penis uh that most mammals don't. And so it was used as uh traditional magic in the Appalachian folk hill legends as well as for medicine and also a charm that you would go ahead and you would give to a loved one because if you put two of them together, it creates a heart. okay. So I learned so many cool things from this podcast, I swear.

36:52
I am a fountain of useless information. Me too. You're a reader, aren't you? I am. am. And if I don't know something, I ask or I look it up. And most of the time it's a really great thing. Sometimes, especially we're at fairs and people are looking at our stuff, they'll say something and I get really excited and I go on a tangent about the herb or the process or something like that. And I was like, I need to remember to keep it short.

37:21
that not everyone needs to know the entire historical background on it, but it amuses me. So I'm all for it. I used to do the same thing when I was in high school. And I had friends who really loved me and would put up with my endless amounts of information spewing forth from my face. And I had friends who were like, I don't need the encyclopedia version. I just need four words in answer to my question.

37:48
And that was really hard to do when you're so excited about the things that you learned. We do warn people that like to follow us on social media is that, especially on Facebook, we have a tendency to get a little wordy, but we also like to have fun with those words in the post. So normally they actually make people smile, so we're okay with it. And then we also use a lot of puns and what we like to call foul language. Uh-huh. Exactly. F-O-W-L. Exactly. Yep.

38:19
Yep, and honestly, knowledge is power. And that's why I started the podcast, that people can learn things that they didn't know about ag. And that's what we're talking about. So I try to keep these to half an hour. We're 10 minutes past that. Where can people find you, Breanna? So they can find us on Facebook at Drunken Duck Farm. They can also find us on our website, which is also drunkenduck.org.

38:46
And then if they are in the Ohio area, we are located in Germantown. So a lot of the farms and festivals around Germantown, Miamisburg, and even Cincinnati, we have a tendency to visit and we do have a full calendar on our website, which is once again, drunkenduck.org. And for herbs and spices, we actually ship throughout the continental US as well. Okay, awesome.

39:14
As always, people can find me at tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com slash support. Thank you so much, Breanna. This was so fun. Thank you for having me. This has actually really made my day today. All right. Have a fantastic rest of your day. You too. All right. Bye.