We talk agritourism with Dana Zucker this week. Get the audio, see photos, show notes, etc on this episode at Hosting Farm Stays: A Love of Travel & Curiosity about Food Led Dana Zucker to Sugar Water Manor
36:21
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, farm, farmers, grow, garden, learn, food, important, talk, consumer, piece, farming, day, debbie, eastern shore, plant, home, place, dana, goats
SPEAKERS
Dana Zucker of Sugar Water Manor, Grounded by the Farm
Grounded by the Farm 00:03
Food is more than just what’s on our plate. It’s the places where it’s grown. It’s the people who grow it and so much more. Join me, Janice person, your host on grounded by the farm every other week as we talk about the foods we love. For this episode of grounded by the farm, we are back out on the road, thank God finally getting out of the house. So this is the first episode of the third season really, we’ve done one, two weeks ago is going to be about education. But this one is the first where we’re talking to people who are living this world close to agriculture and farming. And I’m on Maryland’s eastern shore, which is a pretty unique place in that it feels a lot more southern than northern. And it feels so much more ocean adjacent and water adjacent, then most people think of Maryland as like Baltimore. So totally different. When you think about the Eastern Shore. There’s a lot of rural areas and things and I’m here with my friend Dana’s Becker, some of you guys may know her from Instagram, if you don’t know her already follower. She’s got two accounts, mom’s good eats and sugar water manner. I first met her she was in Omaha, Nebraska. But for some reason we thought of her as like a New Yorker kind of this season is not going to have any really linear stories. We’re not gonna go okay, we’re just going to talk about pumpkins today, the whole season is going to be let’s talk about a topic and somebody that’s really been experiencing that. So with Dana, what we’re going to talk about is you’ve had a really strange journey with agriculture, and you really come at it from a food and travel perspective. Is that right?
Dana Zucker Absolutely. Absolutely.
Grounded by the Farm All right. So how would you say you entered into this world of Food and Agriculture,
Dana Zucker 01:54
I would say, first of all, it’s my love of food. Yeah. And knowing more about my food, I’m somebody who’s can’t be stuck on one thing, I always have to find out more, I need to take it to that next level, I’m always raising the bar, and whatever I do, and I think I did the same with food. So I didn’t want to just eat it. I wanted to know more about it, where it came from what was going on. And I love travel, and the culture of travel, it’s not traveled to go to some destination. It’s learning about that destination and the depth of information from there. When you talk about travel and culture, everything is wrapped around family and food. So that just I had a love for that. And wherever I traveled, I wanted to get to food, farms, wine, and food. So yeah, I did. Yeah, I’m
Grounded by the Farm 02:42
pretty similar. It’s it’s a strange world in that. I’ve always been really interested in different cultures and things. And you always end up talking a lot about food.
Dana Zucker 02:53
That’s where you learn everything is in the kitchen. But it starts before that. Yeah. And I think it’s like we were talking earlier today. We are so young, in the United States, we don’t realize how grounded we are, in how it grows. Because you go to Italy, you go to Greece, you go to all China, these cultures, and the families are out growing it, picking it together, and then cooking it together. So that’s what I wanted to learn about.
Grounded by the Farm 03:18
And it’s it’s a thing in the US where a lot of us feel pretty far away from the farm and you lived a decent amount of your life that
Dana Zucker 03:26
way I would go. Yeah. All over the place pretty far from farms.
Grounded by the Farm 03:30
Yeah. And, and so now you have a place. Do you call it a homestead? Do you call it?
Dana Zucker 03:37
You know, we’re registered as a farm. Okay. The reason is because I wanted to be sure that we were somehow giving back. And since I grow for our local food pantries, I wanted to make sure I was following all the right procedures and processes. So my eggs are for sale, quality. So I’m registered to sell eggs, and I’m registered, registered, do all of that. So we are a farm. And I think when you think about farm and homestead, you think about homestead people think about off the grid or this romantic piece. And it’s a little bit different because we also feed our guests and we feed our community.
Grounded by the Farm 04:15
Right. So let’s explain what you’re doing here. Because you really are like on the waterfront. Yeah, I’ve shot some video and we’re gonna share it on the website. But you also have extra houses that you’ve worked up. But yeah.
Dana Zucker 04:30
So when David said let’s move to Saulsbury I was actually in Iceland on an Icelandic sheep farm. Of course, just wow. And I was going to learn about Icelandic yogurt. So it was weird because I was actually on a farm tour farm and food tour in Iceland. And so I came directly here, and I just looked at the area and I’m like, This is it. Yeah. And then I came in. I found this property a couple weeks later, and we have the historical But there’s also two other houses, farm houses. And another little area that we have the loft. And so at first, we’re like, oh, we’re fixing them up and the kids will come and stay. And as their families grow, they’ll come and stay. And we realized, the more we were doing, we had to share this place. And I had to share more, because there’s that doing more thing. It’s just an issue I have. But I wanted to be able to share this special place. We have 70 acres that goes from wetlands, to river front, we have farmland, we have areas for animals. I mean, we have oysters that are growing out in the garden, in the water. And it’s, we have the apiary, it’s just I don’t know, any other words, and it’s magical to me. Yeah, I had to share that magic. So other people could experience this, because not everybody has the ability to experience this on a day to day basis. Yeah.
Grounded by the Farm 05:52
So can we think about how you grew to this, like, have you been building larger and larger gardens in different homes before you bought this place? I
Dana Zucker 06:02
was on. We were in a flat downtown Omaha,
Grounded by the Farm 06:06
I thought you were in downtown,
Dana Zucker 06:10
I didn’t even have a plant in the house.
Grounded by the Farm 06:13
So let’s set you up to be a farmer, I think. I think this feels like a gateway for a lot of people. And in my spaces, so many people have a real interest in how their food is grown and stuff, but maybe they can’t afford it. Yes. Or maybe they haven’t planted their life around building something like this or something. Right. And if you’re young, it’s really hard to you and David have have had a few years in your careers and your children are older. Yeah. So you know, you’re no longer paying for school bills the same way. So you’re at a place where you could do something a little different. And now you’ve made it so that you’re also a business. Yeah, because you’re making it’s an Airbnb property. Right.
Dana Zucker 06:56
It’s like Airbnb. We have our own website for the lodges but love Airbnb. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s such a wonderful place for people to connect.
Grounded by the Farm 07:05
Yeah. And how far are you from DC?
Dana Zucker 07:07
Like, we’ll come out and a half, three hours, it’s where we have to take the puppies for their surgeries and stuff for their their orthopedic doctor. So it’s not that far. We get people from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Annapolis, DC, Virginia, that’s mainly our little hub of people. And they find us basically looking for a farm stay. Yeah. And, you know, yeah, I could just kind of say, yeah, come stay here. But the fact that we get to interact and watch things happen, watch kids, pull a vegetable, try something for the first time. And I have a lot of parents at home who send me notes going, I just want you to know that we say well, Miss Dana would want you to try that. That’s how we get him to try foods still?
Grounded by the Farm 07:47
Well, it’s it’s pretty wild. So you have a nice big sized garden with lots of raised beds. And then what all else do you have.
Dana Zucker 07:56
So in our garden, we have six raised beds, and we do I’m not six, I’m sorry, 12 raised beds, we have six fields, 12 raised beds in those we do those year round, just about, we have two herbs, then we use them for gardening all year. I like using the raised beds because it helps make things more real for our guests. It allows them to see how they could actually take four pieces of wood and do it in their backyard in a very small space and grow a lot of food. So during season, one raised bed is dedicated basically to if a family was growing a backyard garden and one raised bed. Yeah. And then we farm them. We we I’m sorry, we use them in the fall. And then I’ll hope to so we can grow in the winter. And then we have two cold frames as well that we grow in. And then we also have six fields that go past the gardens. And we have asparagus, so one is just asparagus. And this year we did a little bit differently. And then I have a garden area that we do garlic and onions and stuff. And yeah, so it’s the garden itself is big. But then we’ve expanded that to an apiary area. We have our garden house, the prote the fruits, we already smell free treants. So we’re trying to get back to that piece where this land might have been used for before. But we’re the first full time residents here. Yeah, so we’re the first ones actually using it for what it is
Grounded by the Farm 09:23
and and it’s more like the type of farm people used to have because you have a menagerie of animals in the barns.
Dana Zucker 09:30
Yeah, we were supposed to have a Nigerian goat milking program. But we kept getting these misfits and they just kind of ended up here. So I have nine goats with no milking capability except for the one that’s still nursing her babies. But they’re good for educational purposes because it allows me to talk to our guests and visitors about the different types of goats so I have from meat goats to pet goats from boars to pygmies.
Grounded by the Farm 09:59
Yeah. Yeah, and you have chickens and ducks and Chiney ducks
Dana Zucker 10:03
guineas I mean guineas have such an important role in our environment with eating the chicks and being alarms and doing what they do so wonderfully. I’m surprised we don’t hear any right now. chickens, ducks and to be able to talk to people about the differences between a chicken egg and a duck egg and why they’re so different. So important.
Grounded by the Farm 10:23
Yeah. So it’s, it’s sort of weird, because most people would think, you know, farms are typically larger entities now. Mm hmm. And, and things like this are more for personal use, or things like that personal passion. You’ve never owned those big farms. How have you learned about farming at the level? So you’ve gone to, you’ve gone to these weird countries that are saying you would learn about a specific kind of wine because you were in Spain?
Dana Zucker 10:53
Or I’d be on a tea farm or a duck farm in China? Or whatever it is. Yeah.
Grounded by the Farm 10:58
Yeah. So how did you get from that to knowing enough to be able to talk about it yourself?
Dana Zucker 11:06
YouTube and Instagram, no kidding. It’s actually very valuable when you’re looking for specific things. But I would say it’s because I always wanted to learn more. So when I was working on my websites, how I met you, yeah, I engaged in activities and sought out activities, that activities or resources that would get me to the people where I can learn more. And one of them was where I met you on the Kansas farm tour. And I got to see all different types of farming because to me, I look at farming, and everybody should have organic farming, and everybody should do this. But being on those things, the tours and being on a farm, or you have a family sitting standing in the middle of a soy field with a little newborn baby, in my head thinking what conventional was thinking, what GMO was and what the marketing was telling me, those were compared to what was really going on, I needed to learn more. So I just sought that information and got to the people I needed to not only myself, but for also those people who read my articles and do what I’m doing. So that gave me that seed more so than just the food and travel, those actual tours, you know, meeting you allowed me to go I need to learn more. And I need to share that information, the false marketing that was out there. Everything that’s labeled non GMO, which is does has nothing, no GMO product in it. It just was wrong to me. Yeah. And we can’t feed the world right now with organic practices. So how do we come to a place? And how do we work together to come to a place where we’re not using false marketing? We’re educating the consumer, and we’re doing what’s right for the environment? Yeah, I
Grounded by the Farm 12:47
think part of it is that that constant curiosity. For you, it seems to be energizing. For some people, it can be overwhelming that you that you need that constant curiosity. I mean, sometimes you just, you know, it’s, I think why people buy bullet food, right? Because they just know what to expect. And they don’t have to think about exactly, rightly. So for some people, it’s really hard to maintain that curiosity, but you’re just feeding it all
Dana Zucker 13:18
the time, I have an issue with it. But I want to be able to share that. But also, I have the ability and the time through the career path that I’ve chosen to go on a farm tour for four days, and to stand on it in the middle of cattle and learn about why Debbie, for instance, why she raises this particular group of cattle. And it’s not because she’s sending it off to a feedlot is because she’s trying to make better cattle and improve the environment. And we’re talking about sustainability. And that whole piece, the consumer who’s going in to buy meat sees, you know, the white labeled with the fancy little thing. I was raised all grass fed and everything. And here’s the store brand right here, right. And they don’t realize that that store brand might have come from Debbie’s cattle who’s she worked on the sustainability committee with Yoli. globally. Yeah. So I think that those are the things that I’m able to learn more and get energized on and share that information. And if I share it, whether it’s on my websites, or if I share it with a family that staying here, I can’t tell you how many people I talked to about brandy and Debbie and those people because they then share it with somebody. Yeah. They then talk to their butcher about it and they can learn more. We keep
Grounded by the Farm 14:35
mentioning Debbie. I told Dana earlier that IRA asked Debbie to be on the show. It’s Debbie Lyons Blythe and she farms in Kansas. She ranches in Kansas, and she has sons that have now come back into the business weather so we’re gonna be talking about that later. But it is one of those things that is when you meet farmers for a lot of us, you know, my first farmer that I ever went out to visit With and he took time to explain soils to me in a way nobody ever took time to talk to me about. And so for me when I think of farmers and soils, Mr. Ray always comes into mind. So, you know, when I started a podcast, I had to go talk to him. And I think that that, that high energy level from our passions from not having known it, but been so curious is what? It’s what I’m trying to cultivate with grounded by the farm all the time, right? Like, if you don’t know something great, let’s start finding ways to learn about it. So how did you start? Like, where was Where were those points where you started getting a thread that you could start unraveling?
Dana Zucker 15:41
Yeah, you know, I would say it’s when I learned that what I thought were best practices I could do for myself, and I could do for my family. But it couldn’t be done on a larger scale. So how could I then create an environment where people could know about it all and make the right decisions and choices. But we also take it a step further, because we use compost in our lodge houses, we do all of that. So we’re teaching people how easy it is to do in their home. So we’re teaching them also about, you know, sustainability. And I think it was just a matter of getting here being on the farm and then saying, What is my passion to share that with? Yeah, now we’ve only been here, it’ll be three years in January, we just open we’re open open less than a year. And a lot has changed. I think, you know, it just the state of the world right now has changed, right. And I’m starting to get to the point where I can connect more the dots and put those together and figure out where I can take this passion. Yeah, my business model and expand it. So I can share even more, through my stories and through, I call them stories, but through my experiences, yeah. And beyond just our guests here.
Grounded by the Farm 17:01
Well, I love that, you know, immediately when I said I was coming, you’re like, great, this is awesome. And by the time I arrived here, you’re like, Okay, so we’re going to go over to the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore. And here’s who we’re going to talk to. So you found ways to find resources here in your community. And I assume you’ve done that everywhere else. But you know, these things called experiment stations and extension services and Master Gardener programs. And those are things that are available in every state. Now, they, they may not always be in your backyard, you may have to drive an hour or so to get to the location. For some people. We
Dana Zucker 17:39
did that on Sunday, we had to drive an hour and a half to get to the location where we needed to go learn about oyster gardening. Yeah, because oysters are so important for our waterways here in order to clean them. So it was so important that we were able to do that. But then we’re also able to talk about it. So for us, it’s it’s important. I know that not everybody can do that. But you can especially in this new world we’re living in most extension offices are offering zoom meetings, Zoom classes, we were handed one by Dr. Escobar today exactly. On a piece coming up. And they’re doing a lot of community type gardening or gardening in your backyard container gardening. Yeah. And I think those resources and to be honest resources that we have for free on YouTube on following different people on Instagram, you could pick up little pieces and grow in a pot in your backyard.
Grounded by the Farm 18:29
Yeah. Well, you know, you and I know Natasha Nicole, we saw we grow and she was on the podcast. I mean, like, once I knew I was gonna have a podcast, I was like, Well, I have to talk to her about her gardening efforts. You didn’t have this yet. So we didn’t have that defined. But I do think that some people like you and Natasha, trying to dig in and learn all the things so you can make it easily absorb by others is pretty important. Because some people want to go into great depth. And other people just want to know somebody has done a lot of research and I will tell people, when I first met Dana, she had a list of like, 207 questions that she wanted to ask me. And it was I mean, mind blowing how she wanted to get into deep into the science and deep into what we were thinking and what we were doing in agriculture and how we treated our customers and things from my past life in a corporate world. But it really is, it’s hard to do that work. And you know, sometimes you were exhausted by it. Oh,
Dana Zucker 19:33
I do. And I think I had and I still have a responsibility to my readers, to my viewers, to my followers, when they ask those questions to get answers. And there are days on Tuesdays where I do ask me anything. People ask me questions, and I need to go back and find answers because I get energized from it rather than saying, I don’t know. I could send them a link or this that and the other. But I feel responsible for providing the best information that I can find available or to get To the right person. And I think that having this place is allowed me even further to do it. Because I can not only do that, but I can test things for them.
Grounded by the Farm 20:09
Yeah. So we’ve made it all sound really fun and games. But tell me what what have been. So you’ve only been open for a year, you’ve had the place for almost three years, what’s been the hardest parts of it
Dana Zucker 20:24
learning and the hours, I think, I love, I feel like I’m doing my hobby, every single second when I’m out here, but then I realized how exhausting it is. Because some days are super long. We don’t just garden in the summer we garden year round, we’ll be planting seeds for spring and next two weeks, we’ll be planting garlic, our winter garden will get started. And then sharing that information and then also having to go inside doing the business end of it. And not just this. And I think that’s the hardest thing that people understand is the sustainability of the economics of it. Whether it be in farming, ranching, or whatever, it’s you got to spend time in all of that. It’s not like it’s sexy, it’s
Grounded by the Farm 21:08
I think that’s one of the hardest pieces of farming is it’s really a small business. So you have to do everything. So any small business, you have to do everything or hire it out to some right. And so many small businesses don’t have the resources to hire it out, really. So
Dana Zucker 21:26
it’s, you know, it’s kind of, for me, it’s so important that I share what I know about farmers and ranching on the larger scale, because I have more access to the consumer. And I have more access than a farmer rancher just because of what I do. And I think people don’t know, they think this farmer they have acres and acres and they’re probably making a ton of money and they don’t realize that it’s just being on the decline for farmers. At under certain acreage, you’re not talking under 500 acres. You’re not talking under 1000 acres, you’re talking under 2000 5000 acres. It’s just the world that we are in and the destruction of some of the global warming so the destruction we have the Midwest loot people losing entire farms. Yeah. And consumers don’t have it’s not within their scope to go look for that information or to see it I’m fed it every single day because wow, I’m connected to it. So I think that that’s a really important thing to people to know is that it’s Blood, Sweat Tears, a lot of dirt when I go in with dirt under my neck. Hi, honey. Nice. And I show on my deadline. It’s like a badge of honor.
Grounded by the Farm 22:36
So have you had things that just you couldn’t get to go right? Yeah, we lean farming, especially when you’re learning something new in any field of study. Right? When you’re learning something new, the challenges are hard, but some things you want to do and you can
Dana Zucker 22:53
Yeah, tomato I love tomatoes. I wanted to can tomatoes to eat all year long. Like that’s what I want to do. Yeah, my
Grounded by the Farm 22:58
God is NATO’s are my favorite. Oh, growing tomatoes, growing
Dana Zucker 23:02
tomatoes here is hard because we’re c&d. So I tried a lot of Mediterranean approaches to growing because it’s much like some of the soil that they have over there. So it’s a lot of research and looking and then and trying. So we had a terrible tomato crop. And it’s just what it is we use organic practices. So we do hand picking off of things. And it takes time. And then we had to switch things up. And oh, we do companion planting and the winds how do we plant so that the winds don’t destroy things coming off the river. And it There have been things that haven’t worked, and then, you know, having this grand idea that I was going to have this milking program. And then, you know, it just things happen for a reason. And I’m sort of grateful that that didn’t work out. And now I can have people interact with our animals when we’re doing chores, and they can help with chores. So they can actually see we got to clean the buckets every single day. And this is why we do this. So I think the failures have turned into good in other ways. And I always try to make light of that and learn from it.
Grounded by the Farm 24:07
Yeah, I think if you’re an entrepreneur or small business, you kind of have to find ways to either pivot or my favorite word. You know, you you’re hustling, you’re pivoting you’re, you’re doing all the things.
Dana Zucker 24:19
Oh, the guinea fowl are rolling all in the in the seeds. I just planted How am I going to do this. So I don’t have my guinea fowl rolling and my seed I just planted because that cost me $3.98 For that packet of seeds. And you don’t think that that’s a lot of money. But when you’re planting seeds every 30 days, it’s a lot of money.
Grounded by the Farm 24:36
It adds up and if you’re not keeping track of it, it’s really easy for you to start doing kind of a money pit, right?
Dana Zucker 24:43
Oh, so easy, especially in gardening and animals. I mean, we laugh at your hobby,
Grounded by the Farm 24:48
how many of us actually track our expenses on hobbies. And so when you’ve done something like this that feels like your hobby. Yeah, it would be really Easy to spend wildly? Yes. And farming, you really can’t do that. No. And
Dana Zucker 25:07
I think that also makes a little bit different in what I’m doing some learning because I only have, you know, 50 chickens. And so every single day I eyeball them in the morning at night, and I don’t think that people realize that farmers are chicken farmers eyeball every single chicken, even if they have 5000. At least once a day, they’re walking through their houses. They’re walking through there.
Grounded by the Farm 25:31
If one’s limping there, yeah, hey, what’s that about? Yeah, check it out.
Dana Zucker 25:34
And the difference between them in me as I use it as an educational perspective in order in order to take care of the bumblefoot, because I, you know, talk to the backyard person, or one of those things, where they’re working on, you know, thinking, is this going to? Do I have to call do I have to treat? What if it’s antibiotics, and I have to do this? It’s a whole different world. And I think it’s important that consumers understand that because I think so many times farmers and ranchers get bad raps and big ag, bad rap. Yeah. Where I think if we can talk to them on a different level, that they’ll understand how important it is in our food systems, and that we keep our food systems the United States while we regain them back into the United States.
Grounded by the Farm 26:16
Yeah, yeah. I think that’s a great point and making it a little less judgmental. Yeah. I think as you learn more, it’s easier to be more open to more ways of doing things, right. You kind of mentioned that early on, you had some pretty defined set of rules.
Dana Zucker 26:34
And I think it’s a lot like when we were talking at the Experiment Station to experience station for the experiment station, that’s what it is, which is, so they’re doing the experiment experiments. Yeah. They, we were there today and how she was talking about that needing to diversify what farmers are doing. So they might grow other types of, of, of crops rather than just the crops of the soybean and the corn rotating, how do you diversify some of that. And I think that people need to know that people are looking into that. And as the as it grows, we can’t just grow soybeans and corn, although we need so much for feed, we need to be able to diversify to feed our communities to is it here on the Eastern Shore, very little food for human consumption is grown. But if we can get some of the farmers to start growing some of that stuff, we can have more here, which would be great.
Grounded by the Farm 27:32
Yeah, yeah. I love a good local farmers markets and things. And, you know, those are a piece of feeding myself and my family and stuff. It’s not the only piece I use, you know, I do have family that are pretty self sustaining when it comes to their food. I have family like me that buys most everything, Rose herbs, maybe or some that don’t grow herbs. Some years I do tomatoes, but not always. So what would you tell somebody if they wanted to get into this? Like, are there resources? You know, like, what would you say?
Dana Zucker 28:08
Well, you know, I think about what is this? And I think about what I’ve done, I think that there are two mothers a lot of different pieces. But I think for the farmers and the ranchers who are looking to diversify and be able to get out and talk to the community and talk to the consumers to have something like a bed and breakfast on it. First of all, diversify your income. And second of all, it brings the consumer to you and you don’t need to be afraid of that. I think for so long. We were so afraid to show the consumer farms I’ve been on. I’ve been on big farms with, you know, Kansas and stuff. And it’s been amazing. Yeah, amazing. The people I’ve met have been amazing. I’ve been on, you know, some of the chicken farms here on the Eastern Shore. I think for that, I think that that’s important to learn and to reach out to people who are already doing it.
Grounded by the Farm 28:55
And I would say they don’t have to do anything nearly as expensive as you I’ve had friends that just did popcorn. Yeah. Or just did a couple of pigs for home use and to sell locally,
Dana Zucker 29:07
right? Or if they whatever. Yeah, if it’s the farmer up the street and they have a extra house so they have a stall that they can change into an Airbnb, which I have stayed in before. I’ve stayed in attack rooms that they’ve converted just for somebody to be on your farm and wake up there and if you spend 10 minutes talking to them in one day, that’s all they need to understand and have that good experiment experience. Yeah, it’s not all about the fancy dude ranch. Yes. And I would say to the consumer, if they wanted to do something first of all get to an experience go to a farmers market if you haven’t been go to a pick your own, but then step beyond that and find a way to talk to somebody else.
Grounded by the Farm 29:45
I think those are the easy steps right? So pick your own apples, strawberries pumpkin Exactly. But to find that next step can be a little bit intimidating. So there are a few ways farmstays like yours is exact way there’s a lot Have them. And we’ll put a few. I’ve got a few other folks that I know are doing them. Sometimes. Sometimes at the farmers market, you can actually have real good conversations with people and go and visit their farms Exactly.
Dana Zucker 30:11
And I think that’s a big part of it to be able to actually get out there and see what they’re doing. And I know more and more local farmers who are at farmer’s markets will do an open house day, yeah, where you can go out, so make sure you’re signing up for their email list, you’re going to their Facebook page and following them. I think that a lot of us. I’m very neurotic about social media. But I think a lot of us are so busy that we don’t post enough on social media, or we forget to tell you, we’re doing an open house. So you just have to make sure you’re paying attention, yeah, to social media and those things because we just don’t have time. Now here, one of the things we do is we send our guests home with something. So it’s either seeds that we have saved with instruction on how to plant them. And I mean, they can plant in there. If they’re in a New York apartment, they can put in their window. Yep, we send them home with some of our honey. So they can actually see that our honey harvest, we had a full house here. So we had 12 people out, we had to move it to an outside location to harvest so that everybody could experience it together. And with COVID, it was a little bit hard, but we made it work. And so everybody got two hands on experiment with that. Yeah, which I think they go home and tell somebody else. And I think I told you the story of the carrot 1000 times, I had a kid pull a carrot and tell me it’s not a carrot because it wasn’t the little baby care. It was long and pointed and pointed. And I said taste it, you know, wipe the dirt off and taste and he looks at his dad, it’s like, it’s dirty. That’s like wipe it off. Just listen, wipe it off and taste it. And he he did it. He said it was sweet. You know, they were talking about it. And then the teacher called me a couple weeks later and said, this kid was at your farm, they were telling me what they were doing. Can you do a zoom class with us? And it’s those kinds of things that we can start to pass down the line? Because if you can impact one person, yeah, as a consumer, or as a farmer or rancher, that’s going to actually impact more people than you know. So stop to make that connection, I think would be the overall thing. I would say.
Grounded by the Farm 32:05
Yeah, whether you’re whether you’re on the farm side, or on the city, side or side, yeah, just go ahead and try and stop and make a connection. And I think for both sides to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Mm hmm. And be ready to, to ask questions, and listen and answer. Right. Right.
Dana Zucker 32:25
Because the I think like I said before, we can’t have at this stage of, in our world, our lives one type of farming in order to feed everybody, I think and we’re also still learning. Right. And I think we need to understand what those all are. And the more we’re able to educate ourselves and our food, then we can make better decisions for ourselves, for our family, others and for the communities. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And help with those. I mean, I think that that’s another part of it is to just get involved.
Grounded by the Farm 32:56
Exactly, exactly. I mean, and sometimes maybe your involvement is at the local food bank, and you tell them, hey, if any farmers say they need gleaning crews Sign me up. Exactly. You know, I mean, some of those kinds of things work really well. I’ve also been at a Feeding America when they basically had me going through produce that came in from farmers and saying, that looks really Yeah, okay, that may go to a compost pile or something. Exactly. I wouldn’t want to send that into somebody’s home. But you know, it came in all at once and hadn’t gotten all processed and hadn’t gotten all out. So there’s a lot of things you can do to learn about it and kind of find out who else is growing in your area
Dana Zucker 33:38
Exactly. And call your local food Co Op call your food local, if you’re a part of a co op, or the local farm farm stand people because they always could use extra hands. I know I used to help package up food at the co op when we lived in Austin. And they did the for every $1 in by can I think of the name of it in food stamps. They gave $5 Actually when people came out to their farm, but a lot of these people had never used raw kale. They had never used raw. So we actually talked to them and show them how to actually use it, how to punch it in your hands how to do these different techniques in order to cook it at home. Yeah, so that was really important that we had that ability to teach them how to use that food and a lot of local farmers markets and farms are looking for those people to help volunteer on harvest days before the farmers market.
Grounded by the Farm 34:32
If if that audio was picked up that sounded so like a farm track and it’s a construction track. It’s totally different
Dana Zucker 34:38
know that he actually has his farm truck today. His daughter’s a feral rider. Usually pulling a horse.
Grounded by the Farm 34:45
Well, that gets me I think what I wanted to talk to you about there’s the websites could you
Dana Zucker 34:53
Yeah, so the website for here is sugar water manor.com And that is for our ag Road tourism logic. Yeah. And then for life done well, which is need some loving right now but we’re still creating content for is just life dunwell.com And you can always follow us on social media at all of those. Yeah, sugar Vitamina are left on Well, if you follow us on Moms Good Eats life done well and instagram you can see our daily happenings here on the farm.
Grounded by the Farm 35:23
Some of my family started following you before I came and we’re already like, oh my god, did you see and I’m like, yes, I’ve seen it. But that now I have to tell him I was here and I had the breakfast from the fresh eggs. Thank you
Dana Zucker 35:38
right and that goat that had the one horn the the go to corn. Yes, he does really climb up on you.
Grounded by the Farm 35:44
And he really climbed up on me. Alright, thanks so much. Thank you, everybody. Don’t forget we’re gonna be putting up some photographs and stuff that we’ve mentioned going over to the University of Maryland. I have some photos from Matt gonna put all that stuff up and grounded by the farm calm, and we’ll put all of that kind of connections and stuff in the show notes so you’ll find it really easily. Don’t forget to follow us too. And thanks, Dana for being here.
Dana Zucker
Hey, let’s go eat seafood.
Grounded by the Farm Yes.
