Reverse Pioneers

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.  Last week we said “so long” to Scape Goat Ranch and moved on to Reverse Pioneers homestead.  It’s located in Blanco TX, which is still about an hour outside of Austin.  Blanco itself is a pretty tiny town, but offers a surprising amount of community events, classes, and locally-sourced restaurants and cafes.  We found the homestead owners Kayce and Michael on the WWOOF site, where they describe themselves primarily as “permaculturists and holistic management practitioners”.  Their main goal is to reverse the damage on their dry and brittle temperate grassland while providing for human needs.  They studied permaculture design in Thailand and have been implementing those practices on their 12 acres, and it shows.  Both of them hope to incorporate art, culture, education, and entertainment into the farm to reconnect people to their natural landscapes.  It’s these sort of reverse trends they’re after that give them their name.

Michael, Kayce, and baby Louisa (she's more of a toddler these days)

Reverse Pioneers (RP) is home to three Nubian goats and around ten chickens, which all play a vital role in the regeneration and nutrient building of their land (I’ll explain more in a later blog about how rotational grazing and ground feeding helps restore their soil biology).  The goats are named Darla, Ren, and Lurlene, and they produce the most delicious goat milk I’ve ever tasted.  While most goat milk has a distinct tanginess (or as some people call it, “goatiness”) to it, RP’s milk is incredibly clean and smooth.  I can’t taste a difference at all between their milk and raw cow’s milk.  I think it might have something to do with the fact that they don’t keep a stud on their property.  If a male goat is in rut (mating season) and is around the females, it can dramatically alter the flavor of the milk.  All 3 females are pregnant, and will likely kid in February (Kayce and Michael rented a stud to knock up their goats).  They’ll keep any females that Lurlene and Ren have, but Darla has had some health issues, so they’ll sell hers if they’re female.  Any males will get butchered for the homestead (so I can finally try some goat meat).  There are a few too many roosters these days at RP, so we’ll likely be butchering a couple of them within the next few weeks.  There is also very small garden which Kayce hopes we can expand in our few months here, and they’ve began direct sowing into the ground where the animals have worked.

Wren

Lurlene and Darla

RP is also home to Kayce and Michael’s adorable 16 month old daughter named Louisa.  She’s super quiet (although knows words/phrases in English, Portuguese, and her own sign language), sweet, smiley, and a huge animal lover.  She thinks Paisley is the funniest dog on the planet and loves to watch her chase toys.  She also seems to demand my full attention when we’re in the same room, and starts to shout the second I turn away from her.  This bodes well for the fact that I’ll be on babysitting duty a few times throughout the week.  They have a dog, Sasha, and three cats, who are the most desperately loving animals I’ve ever met.

the cutest <3

Doc

Voodoo

KitCat

Sasha

Kayce and Michael moved onto the land with the hope of eventually quitting any off-farm jobs, and using the homestead as their main source of income.  For most farms and homesteads, it takes many years before the farm no longer requires supplemental income and can be self-sufficient.  Somehow, these two homesteaders managed to turn a profit within the first couple of years! This was another major draw of RP for me and Sean; we can certainly learn a lot from them on the business and management side of homesteading.  They accomplished their goal by focusing on microgreens as a source of income.  Microgreens are essentially sprouts that are harvested after they’ve only grown a couple inches tall (think about sprouts on Jimmy John subs).  Kayce and Michael grow sunflower sprouts, which are particularly hardy and nutrient-dense.  They grow the greens in trays in their greenhouse, and produce around 50 pounds of sprouts a week.  They sell the sprouts to local restaurants and bistros, as well as weekly farmer’s markets.  So, why sprouts?  They tend to be used in high-end restaurants (which are willing to pay top dollar for the fancy greens), they have a quick turnaround time (they are ready to harvest in about a week), they don’t require much water, and most importantly, Kayce and Michael enjoy eating them.  That’s one of the biggest lessons in homesteading; grow what you like.  Not to mention, their animals love the greens, so any overages go unwasted.  RP hopes to expand the variety of what they sell, but for now microgreens work best.  They hope to get some mushrooms cultivating within our time here, and hopefully start selling them as well.

Most of our day-to-day work is based around the sprouts; watering, tending, harvesting, and planting.  Once a week we move the animals and their fencing (again, I’ll explain more later) which takes the majority of the morning.  On top of this, we’ll be moving through different projects; improving the goat pen, building a new chicken coop, expanding the garden, improving greenhouses, and so forth.  One day a week I help Kayce with food prep (like baking bread or rendering lard) and I also take her baby from her so she can do non-mom things from time to time.  It’s a pretty great set-up!  They subscribe to a vegetable CSA and a meat CSA, have their own goat milk and cheeses, and do lots of bartering at the farmer’s markets, so the food is always great.  We cook most meals in our camper, which is parked on top of the driveway overlooking a pretty stellar view of the hill country.