Ironstone Creek Farm

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Carri at Ironstone Creek Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Carri at Ironstone Creek Farm. Good morning, Carri. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing well. Thank you. You're in Pennsylvania? That is correct. Okay. What's the nearest city to you?

00:27
Um, and most people are familiar with either Reading, Pennsylvania or Allentown, Pennsylvania. We're kind of in the middle of that, those two. Is that the Allentown in the Billy Joel song? Do you know? I actually do not know. I'm not sure. I'm willing to bet it is. Okay. So, so tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Um, so, um, we have.

00:56
a multi-faceted farm, I would say. We have a little less than 20 acres here, and we, number one, raise some animals for meat. So we raise Berkshire pigs, chickens, and turkeys. We also have some sheep that we do raise for meat as well. And then the other side of our farm is our pet animals. So our.

01:25
Pet animals include pet pigs and goats, bunnies, and we have a little mini cow. So we do some on-farm events here, and then we also have a mobile petting zoo. Fantastic, I love it. Okay, so tell me how this started, because not everybody in the world goes, hey, I'm gonna buy a farm and share the animals with the whole world. Right, correct.

01:54
Um, so I grew up in Southern Lancaster County. I was surrounded by farmland. Um, growing up, I spent probably 95% of my time outside barefoot, playing in the creeks, um, around animals. And I've just always loved animals. Um, so I didn't have a farm for, um, many of my married years, um, but it was always the goal.

02:20
So we had been searching for a farm for probably about 12 years and finally, you know, came upon this one here in Boyertown that seemed to be the right fit. So we went ahead and purchased it and we spent about 10 months fixing up the house in order to move our family in. And then once we were in, we started with 12 chickens and two goats.

02:47
And it just rapidly expanded from there. I wasn't planning on having a petting zoo. I wasn't planning on really any of this, but it just happened organically where our herd expanded really quickly. I fell in love with the animals. I was getting a ton of joy out of spending time with them. And I just figured, why shouldn't everyone else enjoy them?

03:16
So I started really small just with like, you know, a little mini petting zoo and it's just grown exponentially over the past couple years. So I don't know how to ask this without sounding weird. How many people have been to your farm do you think to see the animals? You know, I don't know the answer to that question.

03:44
I'm not open to the public. We are open by appointment. And then we do have several public events throughout the year where we open the farm up. And those are kind of paid events where we have other vendors coming in and lots of activities for kids. It's always geared toward kids. But, I mean, there have been.

04:10
been events where we've had a lot of people. Our fall festival is always very popular. And I think last year we had somewhere around 1,000 people for that particular event. So I guess over the past couple years, again, I don't know exactly how many, but several thousand. Yeah. Reason I asked is because back when I was younger and our kids were small.

04:40
We used to go to places like yours, only in Minnesota. And we'd take our kids to see cows and sheep and goats and stuff. And the kids absolutely loved it. And so did I, for that matter. Yes, absolutely. And now that we're not the parents of small children, and we live on a homestead that we love, we don't really go to farms anymore because we're too busy on our own property to have time to go.

05:09
A friend of mine had a puppy socialization event yesterday. She has nine little Australian shepherd pups that they breed, Australian shepherds, and she needed to get them familiar with new people and new sounds and new voices. And we would have gone, but we had too much going on here yesterday to attend. Our dog is a half sibling to these new puppies. Okay.

05:34
So we just don't go to these things as much as we used to. So I think gearing it towards kids on your side is a brilliant idea because parents want stuff to take their kids to that teaches the kids, that gives the kids something to enjoy and basically to give the kids something fun to do so you're hitting all those marks. Correct. Which is amazing. So what...

06:03
What continues to drive you to do this? Is it just how much fun it is? Um, yeah, I've heard from, um, directly from some children who have visited and then also from parents, many, many parents saying things like this is the first time, um, my child has been able to touch a bunny or has interacted with a goat, um, or seen a cow in real life. And for me,

06:33
That's really special to be able to provide something like that for people who are coming from all over the place to be able to experience that for the first time. And then I have repeat customers or guests that come here to the farm and they come all of the time because they've fallen in love with the animals that we have here. One little girl, she can't wait until she's old enough to come and volunteer here.

07:03
Their family comes to every event that we have and she just is in love with the piglets. And she spends so much time with them and just enjoys that so much that she wants to come and work here when she's old enough. So you know, that's the kind of thing that it feels good to be able to, you know, provide that for kids. It was something that I was immersed in when I was a kid growing up, so I didn't necessarily realize.

07:33
Um, you know, how much kids would maybe miss out on something like that if it wasn't provided. Yes. So, um, okay. I had a thought and just, it just went by. Uh, damn it. Can't remember what I was going to ask you. Um, um, um, um, okay. I'll ask you something else. Okay. Do you have, do you have a another job or is this, is this what you consider to be your job?

08:04
Yeah, so I do have another job. I work at a local restaurant. That kind of supplements my income. I have definitely made it a goal to work myself out of my other job. I really do want the farm to be my full-time gig, but it's a very slow and difficult process making the farm

08:33
profitable. So I have to come up with new ideas all the time and, you know, just try to grow and expand as much as possible because it is very expensive to feed animals. And the more animals we have, the more it costs to, you know, maintain the property and care for the animals properly. So the answer is yes, I do have an outside job.

09:02
Um, but I would like to not have that job eventually. Yeah. That's the answer I get from a lot of people I talked to on the podcast. They're like, I love what I do at home, but I can't quite afford to just be home doing the thing I love to do. Yeah. Um, okay. So I saw on your website that you do fluffy friends sleepovers. Tell me about that. Yeah. In addition to the mobile petting zoo, we have a lot of different offerings.

09:30
One of them is the Fluffy Friend Sleepover, where people can have bottle baby goats, a couple bunnies, some piglets, chicks even. You know, they can bring them to their house for a sleepover essentially, and then I, you know, come back and get them the next day. It's a really nice addition to sleepover birthday parties for kids.

10:00
I've, you know, a lot of people have really enjoyed that. Um, they don't have to commit to an animal full time. They can just borrow it for a night. Yes. And that leads me to my next questions because I'm always worried about the liabilities of things like this. Um, does Pennsylvania have like rules about you doing this or, or do they not care? Um, that particular, um,

10:29
You know, the sleepovers, I don't believe so. You know, we have a liability waiver through the Department of Agriculture that we have everyone sign. And they receive a pretty in-depth care packet. And of course, I'm always available if anything would come up that they could, you know, reach out to me and say, hey, I have a question, can.

10:56
the bunny have a carrot or whatever it might be, I try to make it as seamless as possible. Yeah, that's what I was wondering about because number one, you don't want the kids getting hurt. Correct. Number two, you don't want your animals getting hurt or killed. Right. I'm sure there's a whole lot of planning that goes into having your animals visit someone overnight. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I provide all of the setup required.

11:26
you know, the playpen and the floor mat and their food and water and their bed, you know, where they sleep. All of that is provided by me. And then again, the care package, which kind of is, you know, a multi-page paper that goes over it's, you know, frequently asked questions and answers and, you know, just general type things that would help people get through the sleepover without much trouble. Okay.

11:55
Then the next question I have about this is, do you have parents that surprise their kids with this particular event for their party? Oh, yes, absolutely. And do you have stories? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's always very well received by the kids. I do have parents who the next day they're like, yep, we can officially say we do not want to have a piglet. But the kids are always like, ecstatic and, you know, love the whole experience.

12:25
Of course, mom and dad are the ones that are cleaning up after and things like that. But these surprise type sleepovers have always been very well received by the kids for sure. I bet the photos and videos that get taken at these parties are amazing. Oh yeah, definitely. And I love receiving them because, I mean, just the smiles and the...

12:54
You know, the excitement from the kids is the whole reason for doing it. Mm-hmm. Okay. So I remembered my question from earlier when you were talking. When you have people come out to visit, do you teach them about the animals? Like do the kids that don't understand that milk comes from cows, do you explain this stuff to them? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I don't have...

13:22
you know, a scripted lesson or anything like that. But when people come to visit, if they, you know, are looking at a particular animal and they have questions, I'm happy to, you know, let them know whatever I know. And I'm still learning too. But, you know, a lot of people ask things about goats. Oh, the boys have horns and the girls don't.

13:50
So I'm able to say, actually, both male and female goats have horns. Some of my goats don't have horns, but that's because they are naturally pulled, which means they're born naturally without horns. So that's a genetic thing. And so that's the type of thing. It's kind of organic where if they ask questions, I try to answer as knowledgeably as possible.

14:18
Like I said, I don't have a scripted lesson or anything like that. My favorite answer when people come here and ask us questions is I don't know the answer to that, but I know Google does. Yes, absolutely. And I'm a stickler about Google. I have to look at five or six different, quote unquote, reputable websites before I decide that there's an answer that I am comfortable giving to people.

14:46
Sure. Yeah, you can't believe everything you read on the internet. Yeah. And you've got to be careful. Like when my kids were in high school, not too long ago, I was in high school a long time ago. My kids, not so long ago, they were told they were not allowed to use Wikipedia as a source on papers they wrote because it was not, it was not reputable enough to use as a source. Sure. I suspect that that may not be the case now.

15:16
But yeah, they were like, nope, you're not allowed to use Wikipedia. And there were some teachers who actually made them go to an actual library and have the librarian help them find information to put in their papers because librarians know what's reputable and what's not. Sure. Absolutely. Big shout out to librarians. They still have jobs. They still are experts in everything they do. I love libraries. So.

15:44
I want to make sure that people know that you can actually still go to a building that has actual books in it. Yeah. It's not a thing of the past. No, and I hope it never is. I really hope that libraries are in existence well beyond my grandkids' lifetimes because libraries are a place of safety and peace, I think. Absolutely.

16:09
So I don't usually talk about libraries and I thought I would throw it in there because they're hard. Okay, so how hard is this job that you have built for yourself? It is extremely hard, harder than I ever would have imagined. Well, just physically.

16:35
You know, I'm a smaller person. I like to think that I'm strong. But this is a very, very physical job carrying feed bags and stacking hay bales and straw bales. And, you know, just in general, working around the farm is very physical. So that aspect of it is definitely hard. And even with the mobile petting zoo, you know, we load up. And when I say we,

17:03
My family helps as much as they can, but my children are in school and my husband is a teacher. So I would say, you know, the majority of it does fall on me and that's fine because it's what I built and it's my job. But with the mobile petting zoo, you know, I load the trailer with all of the supplies and pens and everything that's needed.

17:29
Then load the animals and head to the location and then unload and set everything up and unload the animals and do the multi-hour petting event whether it's Sometimes it's one hour, but mostly two to three to four hour long events And then load everything back up in the trailer Head back to the farm and then unload again. You know, that's a full day of physical labor, so anybody who thinks it's

17:59
easy or you know cute. It is it is cute but it is it is not for the you know faint of heart. Yeah how many how many events do you do a week? Um I have mostly on the weekends it's mobile events um so I do try to fill my weekends with um you know two or three

18:26
outside things and then during the week I have people come for visits. We do baby goat bottle feeding and baby goat snuggling and cow snuggling and piglet snuggling and so I do have people coming and going at the farm throughout the week but it just varies. The fall is a very busy time of year. This summer is very busy. Over the winter it slows down a lot because obviously it's cold so we don't want to have the animals outside.

18:56
Um, so it varies. Yeah. All I can see is a calendar on your wall color coded for all the stuff you have going on in the summer and the fall. I absolutely have that. It's the full year calendar. It covers it's maybe, um, I don't know, two feet by three feet or so. And it's got my scribbling all over it. I'm probably the only one that would understand it or be able to read it, but everything's there. Yeah. And

19:25
It's funny because all our cell phones and our computers have calendars in them. And I keep all the upcoming interviews that I have scheduled in my phone because it's the easiest way to do it. But I really get itchy to have an actual planner. I have not bought one yet. But I really want to buy like a big one and just set it on my desk open to the week that we're on.

19:52
and have like little stickers that represent what each place does just because it's fun. Sure. I haven't done it, but I want to. Yeah, I use the digital calendars as well. I have the calendar on my phone and obviously the one that links to, you know, different apps that I use and things like that. But visually, I'm a very visual person. It's much easier for me to see the full scale.

20:19
calendar where I can see from month to month to month and everything that's written in there. Just taking that glance at that calendar is much easier for me than going through my phone. So that's just personally how I am able to operate. Have you ever double booked yourself for an event? Yes, I have. Have you really? Yes. I would say probably not by accident.

20:47
I do have a close friend, actually met her through the restaurant that I work at, but she has a very entrepreneurial spirit just like me. She's kind of willing to get down and dirty and dig in and do anything necessary to help out or gain a little bit of cash here on the side or whatever. So I have in the past had multiple requests.

21:17
for the same day and time. And I'm able to make that happen with the help of people like her. That's amazing. I love that. I have double booked myself for interviews, like three times now in the year and a couple months I've been doing this. And I feel like an idiot every time I do it. I'm like, why do I keep doing this?

21:41
And what it is is that I get so excited that people say yes, that I'm just like, oh, cool, I'll get that in the calendar. And then I look a week later, I'm like, ah, crap, I gotta change time. Yeah. So yeah. Well, I understand that. I actually have some scheduling issues with my outside job, where in a restaurant, it's a little bit different with scheduling. You don't have the same schedule every single day.

22:09
week, you know, it's not nine to five every day. So I'll plan events and then I'll request off knowing that I have that event coming up. But they can't always honor a request based on what other people are doing and what you know, if there's a big party or they need extra workers or whatever it is, that has come up a few times where I've gotten scheduled to work and I've already been booked for an event and I'm like, now what do I do?

22:38
So thankfully, I've never gotten stuck in a situation where I couldn't find someone to cover for me, but that would be bad. Yeah, that would not be great. Okay, so you have a couple events coming up here in the near future, yes, at the farm? Yes. Or not at the farm? Yeah. Well, our next big event here at the farm, open to the public, is our Halloween Spooktacular.

23:07
So that's on October 26th and I'm so excited for this event. It's going to be so much fun. We're asking kids if they want to come in costume. It's going to be a very kid friendly Halloween. So with this event coming up, we're obviously going to have our petting zoo, all of our animals out for viewing and petting. We're also having a bounce house and a face painter.

23:37
We have barrel carts that we've invested in for the events here on our farm. So we'll have our barrel carts out to give rides. That's super fun. We have a few food trucks coming. And I'll have a pumpkin patch set up with some pumpkin decorating activities. And I actually just last night had a friend of mine who's involved in a Jeep club ask if they could please.

24:05
bring their Jeep club and do a trunker treat at the event. So that's a new addition. And so it's just, it's ever evolving and it's gonna be a really fun Halloween party for kids. Wow, that's a lot to keep track of. It definitely is, yes. Okay, and how do people get to be at this thing? So I am primarily on Facebook.

24:33
So I have our farm Facebook page. We post events there, and then I share them out through my personal page and to different groups. I'm involved in a lot of different mom groups in our areas. So, you know, that's a great way to kind of let moms know, hey, this event is coming up. It's really great for the kids. And then they just, you know, kind of click the link and get all the information off of our farm page.

25:03
So that's my main mode of, you know, kind of getting the word out at this point. I am the first one to admit I am terrible with technology. So I do have an Instagram. I don't understand it. I'm terrible at using it. I know that it's something that I need to invest time in and learn. I just haven't done it yet. So.

25:33
That's one thing that I have, you know, that I struggle with a little bit, but I do plan to try to get better at. I also am trying to revamp the website because right now our website is specific to the mobile petting zoo. But there are so many other facets of our farm. So I really want to completely redo our website at some point and, you know, have different tabs.

26:03
people who are interested in purchasing quality pasture raised meats because that is one thing that we do here. Another tab for the events here at the farm and then the mobile events, another tab. So that's all, it's in my head right now. Getting it to actually happen is, that's...

26:30
It takes time and money and all of those things. So I'm sure you understand that, but. Oh yes, I do understand. So if people want to come to the Halloween event, how do they just show up and pay at the door? Is that how it works? Yeah, yeah. We try to make it super affordable. So we charge only $5 for adults and then $10 for children.

26:57
Everything, every single activity is included in the cover, in that entrance fee. The only thing that is a separate payment is the food, if they wanted to purchase food from the food trucks. But, you know, for me, I have kids. So, I know going to an amusement park and spending the, I mean, what is it now, $60 to $80 for a ticket.

27:26
To get into an amusement park is not necessarily doable for me Especially with my four-year-old because you know, there's activities that they can't even yeah Participate in being that age. So I try to make it you know Affordable for parents to bring a toddler. I feel like you know ten dollars is is doable and you do really get a lot of

27:53
spend for your buck at these events, like I said, with all of the different activities that we're offering. And you can spend as much time, there's not a time limit. So you could stay for an hour, you could stay for three hours, whatever you want to do. And so yeah, you just show up at the door or the gate and pay and have a blast. That's amazing. So I have a question about weather.

28:21
Does weather impact this, your events at the farm? Yeah, it does. We can't necessarily do rain or shine events. If it's a little sprinkling, it's not a big deal, but if there's rain, it does impact it. And we have field parking. So we have to be careful if there's a lot of rain about driving, you know, doing parking on the fields.

28:51
And then just the activities are all outdoors. So you don't want to be on a bounce house in the pouring rain. You don't necessarily want to, you know, be petting animals in the pouring rain. Nobody wants to pet a soggy bunny. So we do have a rain date, which is the following day, the 27th. But that is something that, you know, has been an issue in the past with, you know,

29:20
completely outdoor event. Yes, exactly. I was just wondering if you had a rain date scheduled because in Minnesota it's been known to snow on Halloween. Oh my goodness. I think it snowed a little bit last Halloween and there was a huge storm here back before I moved here. We moved just after the Halloween storm. Okay. It was 91, I think. Okay.

29:47
And Minnesota got socked with like three feet of snow on Halloween. Wow. And so you're in Pennsylvania, you're a fairly Northern ish, your state. So it could snow, who knows? It could, who knows? I mean, it would be unfortunate. I would be sad to have to, you know, postpone or cancel the event, but, um, it is something that is on my radar. Yeah. Um, luckily I'm not pre-selling tickets for this event.

30:17
So we wouldn't have to get involved in, you know, doing a bunch of refunds or anything like that. But I'm so looking forward to it. It's going to be so much fun. I would hate to cancel it. Yes, exactly. And I'm not trying to be a downer here. I'm just saying that sometimes you have the best intent and plans and hope.

30:41
The universe goes, not today. Not today. But we're going to hope. We're going to cross our fingers and our toes and everything that you have beautiful, warmish weather for October for your spooktacular because I think that the kids are really going to enjoy it. It sounds really fun. Yeah. Yeah, I hope so. We'll see what happens. All right, carry well. I tried to keep these to half an hour and we're at 30 minutes and 55 seconds. So I'm going to cut you loose.

31:09
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. This was really fun. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. All right, you have a great day. You too. Bye.