Moon Ridge Acres

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Becca at Moon Ridge Acres. 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 Becca at Moon Ridge Acres. Good morning, Becca. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. You're in Alberta, Canada? Yes. Central Alberta, near Camrose. Is it super cold there?

00:28
Today not so much. It's actually around minus two But for the weekend, we're going down to minus 25 minus 30, which is a horrible jump real temperature Yeah, yeah, that's Celsius. Oh Yeah, I'm so sorry It's it's it's the jumping around that makes it really challenging because we get used to the cold we're used to these terrible colds, but

00:57
When you go from, you know, plus, in the plus degrees down to minus 30 within a weekend, it, it is hard on everybody. It's hard on the animals, it's hard on us. It's not fun.

01:12
Yeah, the last couple of days here in Minnesota, it's been really, really cold for us. And today it's supposed to hit 30. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 35, I think. I'm talking Fahrenheit. Right. And then, uh, today is Wednesday. So Friday is supposed to be warm again.

01:29
and then Saturday it's supposed to start to drop and then Sunday and Monday it's supposed to be super freaking cold again. I'm like, mother nature, could you stop with the basketball bouncing, Jesus. Yeah, exactly. It's these extremes. It's like, ease into it a little bit, you know? Or just level out for a while. I mean, if it's gonna be cold, stay cold for a while. If it's gonna be warm, stay warm for a while. That would be fine. Absolutely, and like.

01:55
Here with the melting and the freezing and the melting and the freezing, it just makes the roads absolutely horrific for driving. My husband is a full-time trucker, so it makes his job a lot harder to have to deal with ice on the roads. The counties are not always the best at getting out there and getting salt on the roads and taking care of them. It can be pretty treacherous.

02:24
And on the flip side, I bet summer is really beautiful where you are. Stunning, absolutely gorgeous. I was kind of laughing because I had made some videos about George and Katie Vanslake being in Tennessee and how right now they have two hours of daylight more than we have here in Alberta. But then come June, we actually end up with two hours more of daylight than them.

02:53
So it's just always flip-flopping in every way.

03:01
I'm so glad you brought up Katie. I love Miss Katie. I watch Miss Katie's videos every day and very excited that Kennedy just had her baby. Yes, I love it because Katie falls out right before my folding season. So she kind of like fills that gap and gets me super excited for when our babies start to come. And so yeah, watching new babies will never get old.

03:29
No, and she makes me happy because I don't have any animals like that. So I get to live vicariously through her videos, which I'm sure a lot of people do. Right. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. She's brought the joy of, you know, animal ownership to a lot of people. Yes. And she's so... Let's just rave about Katie Vance like for a minute here. Most people won't know who we're talking about. She's a young woman who does videos on...

03:59
Facebook and YouTube and she has mini horses and thoroughbreds and quarter horses and mini cows and goats and I don't even know and she has just been this shining light of How to learn how to take care of livestock and it's been a beautiful progression for her Yeah, if you're if you're interested in raising animals, she is very honest about not knowing everything

04:28
and learning as she goes and trying to share that. So I really like her. Okay, so this isn't about Katie Vance. Like I would love to talk to her, but she's a very busy lady. Absolutely, absolutely. So Becca, tell me about what you do.

04:44
So what do you do at your place? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I think we had a little internet connection there. So we raise miniature horses. So kind of when you asked me to be on the podcast and it was about homesteading, I kind of laughed because I consider myself a bit of a homesteader, but I'm like a really bad one because I do horses. No such thing. No such thing as a bad homesteader.

05:14
Yeah, we do miniature horses and we show them and we are kind of like working towards being on the upper level of that showing and having super high quality animals. I have raised rabbits for a few years now and I dabbled in the meat rabbits a little bit and my pride and joy were my Holland Lops which

05:42
not so great for the sustainability factor, but I love them. And then we have ducks and we have a couple pigs and most of them are honestly pets. Like I said, not so great in terms of homesteading, but I follow a lot of homesteading practices in order to kind of keep things going. We get really resourceful around here to be able to manage what we have.

06:10
And that is definitely a homesteading skill. Every homesteader I've talked to has done workarounds and created new ways to do things. Absolutely. I mean, I think especially when you're starting out and you don't, you know, the animals aren't sustaining themselves yet financially, you have to get creative unless you have, you know, someone funding you or, you know, you have a really great nine to five job that is sustaining that.

06:39
financial burden, at least for the beginning. Eventually, I do hope the horses will sustain themselves, but that initial upfront cost of getting going is astronomical. You have to be able to work around and use a futon as a hay feeder and make it work. Uh-huh. Yep, absolutely. We used... Someone had an old toddler bed and it had the spring part.

07:09
You know? Yep. And we use that as a trellis for our cucumbers one year. Oh, absolutely. We actually have a like a crib. A crib like I think it's like a frame, a crib frame as a gate right now. It's not the sturdiest gate, but it just needs to keep the goatees in. Yep. And it works. It works. Absolutely. I mean, if we can keep things out of the landfills.

07:37
and make them work for us, why not? Absolutely, that is something, I always laugh at my husband, but I admire him for doing it. Every time he goes to the dump, he goes around and he will pick, he will pick. And he's brought home some really good stuff. So it's amazing what people throw away. And one person's trash is another person's treasure. And we've really made a lot just from.

08:05
going to the landfill and taking what's still good. Yes, definitely. And I don't feel any shame about what you just said because my parents used to find stuff when they would take stuff to the dump too. And my dad would bring things home and I'm like, what's that for? And he's like, well, number one, it's clean. And I'm like, good. And he said, I can use it for, and he would list off all these different projects for all these different things he would bring home. And-

08:34
The first time he told me a story, I was like, oh, okay. And then like the 20th time he started telling me a story, I would just start to giggle because I thought that he was so ingenious with his plans. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we always laugh. We look through our yard and a lot of people will come over and be like, wow, like you have so much, you have all the energy. It's like we worked for it very hard. We broke our backs for it, but we didn't pay a lot of money. Yep.

09:03
Yeah, and honestly, I feel like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace have become the not so yucky idea of dumpster diving these days. Oh, absolutely. We have multiple dog houses. We have, at this point, seven dogs. We have big, big dog houses. I think the most we paid for one was $25, but most of them were free.

09:33
Like I have my goat shed, I went and picked that up for free, just people wanting to get rid of stuff. And I mean, you have to kind of be on the marketplace and paying attention for those when they come up. But the amount of money you can save just by being resourceful in that way and not having to do everything yourself is amazing. Yes, have pickup truck and trailer will travel.

09:58
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We've even considered putting up like an ad saying, hey, we'll come clean away your, clean up your yard for you if you want, if you have things that need to go to the dump or whatever, we'll come deal with it in exchange for us keeping what we want. Because there are treasures out there that are buried in some farmer's field, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

10:26
For sure, you're not wrong. And I love this. I love it because one of the things that I don't really pound on on the podcast is sustainability, but what you're talking about is sustainability. And it's really important as part of homesteading. So thank you for illustrating that. Yeah, yeah, I think that's one of our biggest fundamentals here, like despite the fact that I'm into horses and show rabbits and things that maybe don't feed us.

10:55
We are really, really big on the recycling and repurposing. And I mean, even just recently, we got approved for the Loop program here in Canada. Okay. So Loop is a program that connects grocery stores that have unsellable food. It's not sellable for human consumption. And typically, this would end up in a landfill.

11:26
farmers with the grocery stores, so we go and pick up a truck box full or a trailer load of like for the most part perfectly good food that the grocery stores can no longer sell because it's at its best before date or there's one moldy orange in a bag or there's a banana that's a little bit darker, whatever.

11:55
get to bring that home for our animals to enjoy. And that has been such an eye-opening experience, like just seeing the sheer amount of waste, because each one of these stores has this amount of food that they are giving us every single day. And that was all going into the landfill up until Loop started.

12:22
I think they're like seven years in now. Okay. And like we've gotten, like we've completely eliminated our dog food bill and that's with two large Great Danes, a pit bull, a Rottweiler, a Great Dane puppy. And the Pomeranians do not eat the loop because they are sensitive. But you know, for those big dogs, like we've gotten meat.

12:52
And like all of that would have ended up in the landfill. And so this has been such a game changer for our little homestead. Now we have more money to put into other projects. But it's been really just shocking to see the amount of food waste that's out there and to know that Loop has been working hard to get more grocery stores on board, but they're not all on board yet. So...

13:21
And you know, and you think, I don't know if there's a program like this in the US, but the amount of food that goes to waste is, it's bananas. It's bananas. It's crazy. And it might literally be bananas too. Who knows? They might be passing out bananas too. Before Christmas, we got an entire palette of bananas one day. My goats rejoiced. They were so happy.

13:51
It was crazy. And another one we had was that we had an entire palette of tomatoes. And we couldn't for the life of us figure out what was wrong with them. But I mean, sometimes it's just a matter of, oh, these ones weren't refrigerated properly or there was a surplus or, oh, the new truck came in and we hadn't sold those like it's crazy.

14:20
blows my mind and I really, really hope that, you know, especially here in Canada, if people are aware of the loop program, I think they could make their shopping choices based on a store that is contributing to the loop program because it kills me to know that there are many stores that would just rather throw it away. And

14:47
To me, I appreciate the stores that are at least doing this because I have friends on the Loop program that have raised pork for their family of seven for the last couple of years just feeding their pigs loop. I think that's beautiful. I think that's wonderful. It's fabulous, yes. Yeah. I really hope that Loop takes off and they go worldwide.

15:17
I'd like to see a little bit more of them being able to donate to starving humans, for sure, but the animals are a great start. Yes, and if you're raising animals to feed your family, you are feeding your humans, so that works out nicely too. I don't know if there's a program like Loop here in the States. There's probably something, but I'm not aware of it. Yeah. I know I've talked to a few.

15:46
people who have animals and they have talked to their local grocery stores and said if you're just going to throw that away, can I just take it to my critters and some grocery stores are fine with that. Yeah, it seems like a lot of the smaller local stores are really open to it. It's the big box chains that are, and I understand they're worried about insurance, they're worried about legality and all of that stuff.

16:16
the food being put to its highest use. Right, yes, exactly. Okay, so I'm really glad you talked about that because if I didn't know about it, I'm sure a lot of my listeners didn't know about it, so that was awesome. Absolutely. I have a question about the mini horses, and I'm genuinely not being a smart ass, I just need to ask, what are the mini horses good for besides being pets and being lovely to be around? So...

16:44
That's actually a really common question that we get because, yeah, like they kind of seem like they're just little glorified pets. But I think where they really shine is in the driving. And what I have really noticed just based on the community of miniature horse people that I have found is that for...

17:13
One reason or another, these people could not continue with the big horses. So my mom and I kind of joke that it's an old lady hobby. It's not exactly. There's lots of young folk in it too, but there's a lot of older ladies who maybe couldn't handle a big horse anymore.

17:43
Hanoverians for 30 plus years and she's in her 70s now and she just can't handle them and she didn't want to give up her horses. So now she's in a cart and she's doing the in-hand classes with the miniatures and she's still getting her horse fixed but it's in a much safer space than with a

18:11
giant 18 hand Hanoverian. Yeah, for sure. There's also a lot of people who have had injuries or maybe they're scared of big horses, but they love horses. So the minis kind of bridge that gap. And then for someone like me, I don't have enough land to support big horses.

18:41
So I really couldn't realistically have more than a couple big horses on my property. And if I wanted to get into a breeding program...

18:55
Sorry, did I cut out there? Nope, you're good, keep going. Oh, okay, sorry. So, yeah, it connects those smaller acreage people with a horse hobby. Like I live in an area where there's a lot of small acreages and most of these people wouldn't even have enough land to have one big horse, let alone two or three.

19:24
but they would have enough land to have a few minis. And I think it's a great way for someone starting out to learn. And then maybe they progress onto big horses, or it's the opposite, where they're coming from big horses, but the big horses aren't working for them anymore. That's kind of what I've noticed with the miniature horse community.

19:52
There are a few people out there who are just fanciers. They just love miniature horses and that's it. But yeah, then I think they're just kind of that gap filler. And then they drive as well. So you can do all of the same things that you can do on a horse riding, but with a cart.

20:22
And, um, oh, I'm so sorry. My child is interrupting here. That's okay. Hey honey, come down and go pee. Just be quiet. Okay, sweets. Sorry about that. It's okay. Like I tell everybody who has kids in the background on other episodes, I love kids. I love their little voices. So that's good. That's good. I was, I sent them upstairs and said, try and be quiet, but

20:52
When nature calls, we can only do so much. Absolutely, I guess. And I'm sure that mom hearing that somebody needs to use the bathroom on their own is a positive. Absolutely, absolutely. We're not complaining. OK, so. Yeah, so with the driving, I am very new to driving myself.

21:21
I'm still trying to learn it, but it looks like it's a lot of fun. A lot of people really enjoy it. I actually have friends who was competing in upper level dressage with a big warm blood stallion. She started driving a Mini and she's like, I think I'm going to sell my horse. I like this so much. It's so fun.

21:50
It's interesting. It's a different world for sure, but I don't discount the minis just in terms of pure enjoyment. They are great. They're great little animals. They're super easy to work with. They seem to be really smart too. Very smart. Very, very smart. And a lot of people, I think they get

22:19
because of the Shetland pony, like the UK Shetland pony, which is very different from the American Shetland pony. And the UK Shetland pony is kind of notorious for being stubborn. And a lot of people at first glance will associate the miniature horse with the Shetland pony and think that they are stubborn and hard to train. And that's just not the case at all.

22:49
The miniatures are so willing to learn. They are they're honestly Fantastic. I some one of mine my stallions I wish I could just multiply him and turn him into a big horse for me to ride because he's so well-minded So smart and just wants to please Just a really really great animal all around

23:14
From what I've seen of the many horses, they remind me of a really good cross between a very well-behaved dog and a very well-behaved horse. Yes, yes, absolutely. And I kind of, I think I've joked about it on my page a little bit of how they are, they're kind of like dogs, but you can leave them outside. And you know, they're like, I find them to be less work than dogs, personally.

23:43
and a lot of people are just shocked when I say that, but you know, and that's not keeping them up in a stall and turning them out every day. Like obviously you can make them as much work as you want them to be, but mine are out 24 seven. And they, you know, they have a hay bale and they have water and I don't really have to do a heck of a lot for them other than provide that and give them love and cookies and you know, work.

24:13
Sorry. Got to give them scritches, right? Absolutely. I mean, I am forced to have these pretty nails so that I can give them proper, proper scritches. For sure. So, so where did the mini horses come from? Are they, are they a specific, separate breed from a regular size horse or is it just the smallest horses that have been bred down to minis?

24:41
That is a really interesting question. So with the registries specifically, like they are considered a breed, but you can hardship into AMHA, which is the American Miniature Horse Association, you can hardship, which just means having a judge and an official measure them at the last hair of their withers. And if they're under 34 inches,

25:11
you can register them as a miniature horse. So that kind of lends me to consider them more as a height registry, because there would be nothing to say that you couldn't, let's say you had some random quarter horse that just didn't grow tall, you could register that as a miniature horse as long as it met the height requirement. So,

25:41
Yeah, I would say they're a height registry. And if that registry ends up closing and then becomes more of a bloodline registry, then that's kind of when I would consider them more to be a breed. But it depends on your definition of what a breed is. Because one thing I always say is that it's all made up. They just make up whatever they want with these registries. Like.

26:08
If you look at the quarter horse registry, you can breed in thoroughbred and then breed it back to a quarter horse and it's still a purebred quarter horse. And it is confusing, but it's all made up and technically they are their own.

26:29
My definition of breed says that it's a height registry until that hardshipping is no longer allowed. So, yeah. All right. Humans are nothing if we're not catalogers and labelers. We have to sort things into piles. You can watch babies start doing it when they start to sit up and play with blocks. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, there's...

26:56
We have to have a group for them to be in. And everybody's definition is going to be slightly different in terms of that. I just think of the Arabian Horse Association, which the Arabians are the longest standing breed registration, I believe. They're one of the oldest breeds that are still alive. And.

27:25
they don't allow any kind of cross breeding. So that's what my head says is a breed. But again, it's all made up. It's so vastly different from any other species. It's very interesting. The whole horse world, we could have a whole podcast dedicated just to...

27:51
the intricacies of the different breed registrations and how they work. You should start one, Becca. Oh, that would be fun. I have considered starting a podcast eventually. I think it would be very interesting. You would never run out of people to talk to. Never, ever, ever, ever. It would be a very fascinating topic to go on to. I think it is an idea.

28:21
Yeah, I can't do another one right now. This one takes all my time. And if I started a podcast with you about horse breeding, I would end up with a horse because I would fall in love with it. So I can't. I cannot do one. My husband would kill me. You need a mini. No, I do not. I need to watch other people with minis. I don't need one of my own. OK. So the reason I asked about the whole breed thing,

28:51
is because we have a mini Australian shepherd, or at least that's what we were told she is. Right. And I've talked to a couple of people who raise Australian shepherds. And they're like, there's no such thing as a mini or a toy. They're just all Australian shepherds. They're just different sizes. And it was really frustrating to me before, but now that I've talked with people who

29:19
breed Australian Shepherds and have done some research. I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter. We love our dog. She is like 35 pounds and she's shorter than my knee and I'm five foot nine. Wow. And she's gorgeous and she's a good girl and we love her. So she's a good girl. Australian Shepherd is what she is. Yeah. Then it really doesn't matter that.

29:44
the true thing of it all. Like we recently in our club shows, we started allowing grade classes for people who have miniatures that aren't registered. And I think that was one of the most important things that we could do as a club. Because what is it? What does it matter? Well, you know, sure, we want to have the sanctioned shows and promote our breed and all of that stuff. But

30:13
Why not welcome everyone to come and enjoy these little horses the way we do? And funny enough, after allowing these great horse classes into our show days, lots of these people went out and bought registered horses so they could do the whole thing. So how great is that, right? That's a beautiful thing. Yeah. Wow.

30:42
That's impressive, actually. Because the miniature horse community is truly one of the best communities I have ever been a part of. And with horse people tend to get a bad reputation of being nasty, and I have not seen that with the mini community at all. It's just everyone is so welcoming, eager to help show you the ropes.

31:10
Everyone is friendly at shows and you truly just feel like you're a part of a family. And that's what keeps you going back. The horses are wonderful, but it's the people at the shows that you're so excited to see and excited to go back and see how they've prepped their horses for the next year. And it's really about that community. And I think the more people we can get into it, the better. Yep.

31:38
Absolutely. I think that when you have something that is positive, that brings people together, you're all learning, you're all enjoying each other's company, you are raising an animal that you love and the other people are raising theirs and they love them too. You can't help but walk away from it feeling good and feeling happy. Exactly. Exactly. It's, you know, and

32:06
absolutely minimal. You know, I can do an entire show for a thousand dollars, whereas that could be an entry fee at a big horse show. So it's a really a lot smaller barrier to entry with the minis. So I think that's a really good thing. Cool. Okay. Well, Becca, I try to keep these to half an hour, but I have one more question. Sounds good. Do you have babies coming this spring?

32:35
I do. I have up to 10 potentially. Oh, yeah, we've got a few coming. So I bred hard last year because I, I had a new stallion that I really wanted to get babies on the ground for. And he was the 2024 Canadian national grand champion. And so we've got babies coming from him. And I,

33:04
I don't ultrasound to preg check my mares for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the only vet that will do it on a miniature is over an hour away. And then you're adding stress to your mares and all of that stuff. And then there's the cost associated with it. If I were to preg check 10 mares, I've basically given one of my foals away for free. Yes.

33:33
While I'm in this beginning stages of my breeding program, I need to be very cognizant of costs. I hope I get to a point where, you know, ultrasound becomes a no-brainer. But right now I didn't, so I kind of left a little bit of room for some of these mares to be left open.

34:00
And so I'm okay if they don't all end up pregnant, but I'm expecting at least eight for sure. If they're not pregnant, then they've been eating really, really well. Pretty round, huh? Yeah. So you have fancy babies coming. Not only do you have babies coming, you have fancy babies coming. Very fancy babies. The first one is the most anticipated. It is

34:29
probably my top mare and my top stallion so we're really looking forward to that one. But all of the rest are, they're no slouches either so it's going to be a good folding season and it's going to last for, it should be from April to June so we've got a good three months of baby love.

34:58
Are you going to post pictures on Facebook? Absolutely. Absolutely. We're, um, I'm actually hoping to kind of model my following season. Very similar to how Katie does. Nice. Um, yeah, because I mean, she's my, she's my inspiration, right? I started social media quite literally because of Katie. Um, I, I, I found her when she had just bought VS code red and I was, I saw so much of myself.

35:28
in her content, I was like, wow, that's something I could actually do that I could actually, that I would love forever. Like sharing my animals with people has always been something that I've enjoyed. And being able to share it in this capacity, it just, it inspired me. So I definitely have to give Katie the credit there. She was the inspiration. And

35:55
She's someone I really look up to in terms of social media. She's built an incredible platform of mostly wonderful people. And it's just really cool to see. And I just hope that I can find my community and we can all enjoy baby horses together. I think that's wonderful. And honestly, I started this podcast mostly because I needed a project.

36:25
I said to my husband, I said, there are people who watch YouTube videos of cats cleaning themselves. I think I can probably do a podcast that's worth more than that. I love that. And he said, I think you can too. You should do that. So that's why we're talking today a year and a half after I started. So, all right. So Becca, thank you so much for your time and don't leave when I stop recording because I need your file to upload from your side too. Okay? Absolutely. Sounds good.

36:53
All right, and I will be looking forward to videos of baby horses starting in April. Absolutely. Absolutely. I look forward to that as well. Thank you so much for having me. It was truly an honor to be asked to be on a podcast. Yeah, I really appreciate it. Oh, you are so welcome and thank you too. All right. Have a great day. Yeah, you too. Bye.