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Orchardist, Shepherd and the Catholic Land Movement with Michael Thomas of Sharon
0 Plays2 seconds ago
On this interview, Mathew interviewed Michael Thomas of Sharon. For many people Michael might be familiar due to his work with the Catholic Land Movement, but are you familiar with his entry into homesteading, orchard or shepherding work?
Tune into the episode and feel welcome to reach out with any questions. This is a great interview with Michael and one that is hopefully inspiring to many people considering the homesteading lifestyle.
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Transcript
Introduction to Cottagers Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Cottagers Podcast, a production by Cottage Pastures. On this podcast, we discuss rural living, homesteading, and small-scale farming. You'll hear conversations and interviews about the realities of modern life and returning to the land.
00:00:15
Speaker
I'm Matthew. And I'm Carissa. We're the founders of Cottage Pastures and your hosts on the Cottagers Podcast.
Meet Michael: Catholic Land Movement & Homesteading
00:00:23
Speaker
Michael, welcome to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. Yeah, thanks, Matthew. I'm happy to be here.
00:00:28
Speaker
So, you know, honestly, Michael, I know you offline. I've known you for quite a while and i consider you, frankly, a good friend, but I know that there's a lot ah folks out there who are familiar with you from the work that you do with Catholic Land Movement, but I suspect a lot of people aren't as familiar with kind of the origin story, how this came to be, your background in homesteading. Did you grow up in this environment? How'd you get into it? So I kind of just wanted to start there and give you a space to introduce yourself and then kind of talk about the beginning and and how you came to be where you're at today.
00:01:01
Speaker
So maybe we could start there. Just introduce yourself and and we'll talk a little bit about the backstory.
Michael's Homesteading Life and Orchard Beginnings
00:01:06
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. So I'm, I'm Mike, uh, I've been called, you know, Mike in this conversation, but people online know me as Michael Thomas of Sharon.
00:01:13
Speaker
I'm the executive director, the current executive director of the land movement, and um I am a homesteader. I've been in the same ah farm now for little over a decade with my wife and soon to be six kids.
00:01:27
Speaker
um Came here back in 2013 with big dreams about starting an apple orchard. That was our that was like our are ah real push to to to get out to the land.
00:01:40
Speaker
We had a, we got a little, about 25 acres out here. We're in upstate New York, ah about 30 minutes outside of Cooperstown, New York, where the Baseball Hall of Fame is.
00:01:52
Speaker
And about 10 years ago, we started planting an apple orchard, which is now, big and full of fruit. Not so much this year because we had a hard ah blossom and and and set, but on my real passion agriculturally, which I think would be fun to like focus on this conversation, um my real ah focus as far as land stewardship and agriculture, separate from the land movement, but my own piece of land, like what do I do here on my land?
00:02:19
Speaker
And it's primarily orcharding and I use traditional practice. I use very um kind of ah low low intervention methods to manage about 10 acres of what's called bittersweet cider fruit and so the type of apples that i have are all for hard cider making and even more specific than that they all come from the west counties of england so all the varietals and cultivars i use come from the West counties in England. And that was a decision we made early on that like that was our niche for cider. That's what we wanted to produce. And so um like most people, you know, you get into homesteading and you have big dreams and then our Lord in the land tempers you a bit, you know, smacks you a couple of times with a hammer and and things get ironed out and you're stronger for it.
00:03:11
Speaker
But ah But yeah, so that's so that is um I'd love to talk about cider. I'd love to talk about like how I manage my property. I'd love to talk about that journey with cider and that tempering of me and how it eventually results in the land movement and other things. But um but yeah, that's that's and in a nutshell.
00:03:27
Speaker
who who I am at one point of my life, I would have said I'm a cider maker. And I suppose I still am a cider maker, um but it's ah it's one of many things I am now. um I'm also a shepherd. We we run katadids here.
00:03:39
Speaker
We have a ah flock right now. It sits at about 20 ewes. um And that flock is mostly for meat, but the primary purpose is to manage the
Farming Philosophy: Tradition and Sustainability
00:03:50
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orchard.
00:03:50
Speaker
And so i don't um I don't run any machines here outside of the cider press. I have a little zero turn for paths. But everything else is managed by animals and hand tools. And yeah, I'd love I'd love to get into it and and talk about it.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, one thing, um you know, before we jump into that, that it's actually a note I wrote down is that we wanted to talk about the orchard work. But did you grow up in this or, you you know, you mentioned like coming to this farm, like how how did this all start? Is this from your background, from your youth? Or did you find this later in life? No, no, I grew up in Long Island, ah you know, rock born in Rockville Center. I was raised in a very suburban um thing. My mom was a school bus driver and my dad was a trucker and we had a little ranch house and on the North Shore Long Island.
00:04:36
Speaker
um I did not grow up in agriculture. ah I have one brother and um we had a very suburban upbringing, you know, little little ah little BMX bikes, you know, pedaling around the neighborhood. um it was very It was very suburban.
00:04:50
Speaker
And then i I moved up to Albany, New York, and I spent close to 10 years in Albany, New York. I was a paramedic and I was a school teacher. I taught ah ah in in very kind of poor schools, at schools that that that that were in neighborhoods that were kind of suffering from cycles of violence and and and poverty.
00:05:12
Speaker
And then I worked on the front lines as a paramedic in the evening. And so that that I did in Albany for 10 years. And I was very passionate about meeting people on the margins and ah living a life of like sincere encounter, trying to do my part to move the social order towards justice and and and and care for one another.
00:05:36
Speaker
And so that ah naturally progressed into me thinking deeply about how all things are integrated from from, you know, the way we build our houses to the way we live, ah debt, money and food.
00:05:49
Speaker
And food started to become something that was important to my wife and myself. And with more thinking about that ah and really immersed in this idea of trying to wrestle with the disorder of our contemporary times, we really landed on like localism is what it's come to be called. But like that, that was kind of a ah guiding thing that we should be striving to make things more local um in every facet. And that naturally led to a desire for my wife and I to like get a farm someday. And so we saved for years.
00:06:24
Speaker
We didn't come from a lot of means with our families. um So we saved for years and were eventually able to purchase a beautiful farm. you know, brick 1799 federal farmhouse, but it was, it was the land and property was pretty run down when we got here a little over a decade ago and it was affordable. It was within our price range, something that we could afford.
00:06:46
Speaker
And so we did it. We, we, we bought a farm and and we made that move. It was kind of before the boom of COVID where rural property went through the roof and it's very difficult and and ah to access it.
00:06:57
Speaker
to access for people now financially, um we got a great deal on our on our farm. And and that enabled us to actually a bunch of years where our primary labor was was
00:07:13
Speaker
focused on the rehabilitation of the farm, the rehabilitation of the soil, the, the, the, the planting of the orchard, growing a lot of our own food. So there were maybe probably about six years where I was on farm.
00:07:27
Speaker
Um, and I just worked on the farm systems here, whether it was, you know, laying down garden beds or, or but with the, before we got here, it was just a big open field. And, uh,
00:07:38
Speaker
And it was hay. The fellow who had had it before us was just making hay over and over and over again. We have a fairly heavy soil type here very high limestone, little bit of a high water table and and like heavy loam.
00:07:53
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and and in veins, really heavy loam. But very rich soil, incredibly rich soil. ah but George Washington's plan was to make the Schoharie Valley like the breadbasket of the colonial states because the soil here, because of the high limestone, you can just flip it and flip it and flip it and flip it and you're never going to exhaust it.
00:08:12
Speaker
What you will do with mechanized agriculture is that you will compact it because it's heavy. And so that's what I showed up here is that the soil was just compacted. He would run an aerator bar every once in a while and kind of loosen up the soil just to take another crop of hay off of it um and not give a lot back. He wasn't grazing animals or ah creating a ah nutrient cycle. He was kind of taking and taking.
00:08:37
Speaker
And so I came into, I stepped into that, uh, uh, and, and I kind of surveyed the land and said, you know, we want to plant an orchard, uh, and began to divide the land in two acre blocks of hard fence.
00:08:50
Speaker
And i' I've made a lot of decisions in our farming practice that wasn't geared towards immediate returns market interface or.
00:09:05
Speaker
um or i Yeah, that that are are our orientation from the very beginning, and this is unique and and, you know, there's reasons for it. and And I can, I guess I could, you know, I don't want to deviate too much, but we decided to pull the bowstring back really, really far and create like a 20, 30 year plan for our farm.
00:09:28
Speaker
And so all of our apple trees are planted on not all of them, but a good number of them are planted on standard stocks. Right. So these are trees that are going to take 15 years to get to full height and full fruit production, and sometimes even more than that.
00:09:41
Speaker
And and so we We're trying to build a farm that created a system ah in and of itself that was self-replenishing and almost like self-regulating in a way, where we weren't looking for a lot of external inputs and we weren't dependent on market returns to keep the farm going.
00:10:04
Speaker
And so, and so I actually just like work a regular job now. I'm regular. work I work in, you know, construction management and it's not, the farm is not my, we decided maybe after the first three years, we were like, we don't want to make farming our primary means of market interface. we can satisfy the needs of the market, ah bills and you know but money and debt and that that but that we might carry. We can satisfy all those things with like a job, but our farm is going to be this expression of like a really long-term
00:10:36
Speaker
communion, exchange and encounter with the landscape, our community and and and our family. you know, it was like a bedrock for the habits and order of our family. And
Genetic Diversity and Resilience in Farming
00:10:45
Speaker
that was the those things were like the main fruits that we focused on on the farm.
00:10:49
Speaker
And so um practically to talk about the management. So I set about um there's these beautiful pictures, there's great pictures of like, you know, 10 years ago with my son. who was maybe, was probably five or six at the time, right? No, no, he was older than that. was probably eight or nine.
00:11:05
Speaker
But in any event, he's like sitting up against fence posts as I drive the fence posts and he's like reading books while I drive fence posts with a hammer and so ah with a, you know, field mall.
00:11:16
Speaker
And so, yeah, so every year I would lay about two to four acres of ah woven wire fence. I would plant a hedge about three feet off that fence on the outside, and I would graze animals within that two acres. And then I'd come back maybe a year or two later, i was nursery i was had apple trees in a nursery, and then I would fill in that that block with apple trees.
00:11:45
Speaker
And then two or three years after that, when the apple trees are big enough, I would reintroduce animals again to take care of the ah grass management. And so I've been doing that cycle and we now have probably like 10, 12 acres of apple orchard and then another 10 of pasture that kind of encircles the orchard, which is in the middle.
00:12:08
Speaker
And there's probably close to a thousand trees in the orchard, you know, in the orchard block that are productive, like like making fruit and and and big now. And so...
00:12:20
Speaker
And then there's hedges, which are producing fuel and berries and and herbs. And and we finally getting in the 10th year, you you know, a substantial amount of of.
00:12:32
Speaker
of harvest from our apple trees, a substantial amount of meat from our sheep flock. And it's really, the system is working the with the in the way that we kind of envisioned it 10 years ago, which is always amazing to see, like, you know, you make it to a spot and you're like, wow, I've actually, every once in a while, I'm like pulling apples off a tree and I'm like, wow, I made it.
00:12:52
Speaker
I'm like, you know what next, you know, a scene. So, um, so, so yeah, so that's, that's, that's my farm. So I don't need machines. I don't need output outside inputs. I don't keep trees on a wire. Um, I don't ah have drip lines.
00:13:06
Speaker
I don't irrigate. It's all dry farmed. Um, it's all, and but, but every year there's like this huge apple crop and I just move the sheep through and the freezer stays full with sheep meat and enough to, you know, give away to, to, to neighbors and other things.
00:13:21
Speaker
And, uh, and my kids are all part of the process and like integrated in it, whether it's, you know, chicken eggs or feeding the geese or, um, I run geese behind my sheep to, to drop parasite load.
00:13:32
Speaker
So I don't use any like wormers, right. True to this idea of like no outside
Crafting Traditional English-Style Cider
00:13:37
Speaker
input. I don't deworm my animals with any type of chemicals. Um, I use willow and black walnut and, and, uh, and, and,
00:13:47
Speaker
a little bit of vinegar. um And then I make in a barn, I insulated a big barn and and created a cellar or fermentarium or whatever you whatever you want to call it. but um And I have a press and a bunch of barrels. If you go on my ah Twitter account, you can see it.
00:14:05
Speaker
And I spend a lot of time blending, pressing, fermenting, and aging english style hard cider and so that is that's what my farm looks like now the main products are are are sheep meat apples and then hard cider and maybe someday a kid will come along you know it'll grow up one of the six of them and be like dad i want to help you make it a business or i want to you know take it to the next level and boy would i be enthusiastic to help them do that but but for me i don't i don't think that um
00:14:39
Speaker
The farming will ever ah that that that might that my orchard is an expression of something else rather than a market interface. But what that thing is, is incredibly beautiful and is really has really been ah the benefit in my life and my family's life um has just been immense past anything I think we would have.
00:14:58
Speaker
gain from from you know turning it into a rigid financial endeavor. um but but but But that's not to say it's wrong to do either way. It's just it's just the path we chose with it. sure so um you know one ah One of the things in my ah very youthful passion and excitement for the land and for making things happen out here was i came across a post at some point, or maybe you said this to me. I don't i don't remember when when we talked about this or if I saw it online.
00:15:24
Speaker
But the conversation around having permanent fencing as opposed to temporary fencing, because temporary fencing, which is we we use quite a lot of temporary fencing. One, the thing that nobody talks about with temporary fencing is it's incredibly annoying.
00:15:38
Speaker
It's just it's so annoying to move constantly cotton weeds. It's just it's extraordinarily annoying. And then it breaks and then an animal gets caught in it. It's you know, it's so fact. So but.
00:15:50
Speaker
Then i saw your kind your point about the permanent fencing, and it's nearly antithetical to all the conversation you see around homesteading and regenerative ag because of how you move animals around and you know how temporary fencing allows you to do that.
00:16:05
Speaker
Well, then I start thinking about the practical elements of it and how you can not only respect the way the land works and the way animals work, but the way that we as humans need to build a homestead that supports us and the family experience.
00:16:20
Speaker
And so anyway, I always thought that was really interesting. And I'm curious, you know, you talk to a lot of people who are getting into homesteading. And I wonder like kind of like that temporary fencing versus permanent fencing. What other things come up that you see that, you know, in your experience, you've tried, you've tested, you've thought, hey, look, you know, this just isn't the best way or there's serious cons to this versus the pros.
00:16:41
Speaker
What other things are out there? the The apple tree is really interesting to me, too, because I presume a lot of people rush to get um scions or rootstock that produce dwarf plants because they want that five-year growth instead of that 30-year growth.
00:16:54
Speaker
But then they probably experience five-year harvest versus the 30-year harvest. Exactly. Yeah. No. Well, one of the things with a lot of the dwarfing varieties that you might get from Cornell is that they're grown in they're grown in It kind of selected in conditions that are ideal, um that that that this cultivar is getting enough water, it's getting enough nutrients, it's getting enough, um ah you know, it's manicured, you know. It's it's it's ah but paid high attention to where I would say that um some of the older varieties came about. oh They were selected in an environment of agriculture where you just didn't have the means to to to to to to do that. And so some of the older varieties like golden russet or, or you know, ah northern spies or the wealthy apple or the snow apple or the Macintosh, you'll see some of these older varieties and like they'll just thrive.
00:17:54
Speaker
Like there'll be some old forgotten orchard somewhere that nobody's touched for 30 years and it will just be like full of Macintosh, you know, or like full of ah of northern spies, you know, and and like no one's done anything to it. And so that's because they were selected to kind of do that. Right. they were they And so by um by selecting older cultivars, which might not have some of the the dialed in production cycles or the or the the cotton candy flavors or the you know the big juicy... ah ah
00:18:28
Speaker
what everyone likes that crisp water kind of crunch to an apple, you know, the golden and russet, if people are familiar with it and I encourage people to go seek out this apple if you've never had it. Um, boy, the flesh is almost like a potato, you know, it's like it, and it, but, but it stores in your cellar all winter long.
00:18:48
Speaker
You'll, you'll be slicing golden russets well into spring. Um, if you put up enough in your cellar and they won't be rotten. And so that's just like a whole, uh, uh, context in which that fruit was selected that just like we've extinguished that with modernul modern modern cultivars all these selection pressures that were creating different varietals what what way back when so um that now so what's true with apples there is true with all livestock, all seeds, all crops.
00:19:20
Speaker
And so people get roped into you know ah modern varieties and modern practice and don't realize that um that that that the genetics of what their, the heritage, the the practical heritage of the fruit they're growing or the animals they're keeping are determining a lot of their care practices, ah you know how they have to do things.
00:19:43
Speaker
And so, um, so for me, a lot of my farming is, is thinking about like a situation where it's kind of like benign neglect a lot of the time, what varietals of animals, crops, trees are going to thrive, uh, in, in that scenario.
00:20:01
Speaker
One of the, one of my answers, when people people come to me, they ask Mike, Mike, you know, I planted three apple trees and, um, And you know one of them died, um you know and and a man I took good care of it, and you know I thought I did everything right, but but it still died. you know what What's the answer? What's the solution? Can you listen to what I did? And I said, yeah, I'll listen to everything you did, and like you know you might have done everything right. And the solution to the the the death of that apple tree is to plant three more that's always the solution to to the death of an apple tree and so you answer with genetics you answer ah attrition with just a more abundance of genetics which is how
00:20:41
Speaker
things used to get answered a long time ago, where now we answer things with intervention. Right. So ah in in my in my process, um becoming we were actually joking about it a little bit right before we yeah started recording, we were talking about the hardships of farming. And sometimes, you know, you you you witness the loss of an animal or something else. um And kids might witness that and that might might be difficult. But I think that um incorporating attrition and loss ah into your management style as an expectation is not something that people normally do.
00:21:18
Speaker
We are but modern farming is heavy, heavy intervention ah because part of the part of it. I think is motivated because our cultivars and varietals are geared up for production, meaning that people get into farming on debt. And if they fail, right, or if they don't meet certain production thresholds to like make money, they're going to lose their farm.
00:21:42
Speaker
And so and so they need to. So so our cultivars and our animals are are like are like are this is how you get these blimp chickens who are like, you know, a billion pounds of, you know, I'm not talking Cornish crosses. I'm talking, you know, the other stuff like like like ah ah you have animals and crops that are that are that have been.
00:22:01
Speaker
ah selected over time for high production rather than resiliency, rather than um rather than of a kind of steadiness in health or other things. And so a lot of my management style is kind of seeking out and selecting things that work in a type of equilibrium with the landscape and then have a high level of resiliency.
00:22:27
Speaker
So that's, that's why I raised geese, right? Geese are one of the, one of the poultry that can survive just on grazing grass. You know, there's, there's few other poultry, of right? They're very, very hardy.
00:22:39
Speaker
They're incredibly hardy. Um, so Katahdin sheep, you know, people, um, often get sheep and they're drawn immediately when they start to, to, uh,
Cultural Significance of Cider Making
00:22:50
Speaker
kind of finicky wool varieties or, you know, very hobby sheep. And those sheep, you know, the Romneys and, know, they select baby dolls or something. They select sheep because of maybe the way they look or like an aesthetic quality.
00:23:06
Speaker
ah my I finally landed on katadids after doing that to myself for a while because katadids are tanks. I mean, you cannot kill these sheep. I mean you can. Sheep die. That's like a thing. But they are such...
00:23:18
Speaker
such hearty, hearty animals. and so um And so that's how I've landed on Katahdids, right? And so um same thing with my apples, right? um I love the Arlington Mill, ah which is that which is a, I planted like a hole whole suite of different English bittersweets. I'd love to talk about that a little bit. But um But of that range of English bittersweets, I've narrowed in on the on the Yarlington Mill and the Somerset Red Streak and a couple other Stoke Red, Brown Snout.
00:23:47
Speaker
And the reason why is because these are just hardy, hardy trees that that don't ah produce, don't die, grow year after year. um So that that would be something else I would say that some you know my management style is a little bit different, right? Hard fences, no machines, very few inputs.
00:24:03
Speaker
um But that causes in me a reaction where I'm thinking of like, How do i localize my genetics to be successful here? And how do I walk with attrition in that process, maybe even invite it in certain ways um in order to make my stock hardier across everything I grow?
00:24:24
Speaker
I think it's ah it's a wise thing. it's It's something that we did too. a few Now, we're we're much younger in this. We're entering, I think, year three of our own farm. maybe' I think year three.
00:24:35
Speaker
We invested in the individual enterprises, and we just did enormous amounts of research for which pigs we're going to bring out, what breeds of goats we're going to bring out, sheep we're going to bring out. And some of them were rather risky. you know The sheep breed we brought out is not native to the United States and it's not normal to have in the United States, but it's producing something that's, I think, going to be very beneficial to a lot of people eventually, ah at least if if the lineage that we produce continues to to perform the way that it has.
00:25:03
Speaker
But my point with it is that you know we we sought out originally to make sure that one of the things that we did firstly when we farmed was that we were providing for the family, which is not the best way to produce an enterprise financially. Because instead of buying a whole bunch of feeder pigs, we bought some feeders, but we also bought breeding stock. Well, breeding stock's a lot more expensive than feeders.
00:25:26
Speaker
And now I'm waiting a year longer to get anything out of them. And now I have to figure out how to manage a bore and you know everything else. And we found that doing so was important to us as a family because it helped us control our own food supply, but also control you know the management practices from birth all the way to you know to finishing.
00:25:45
Speaker
So I think it's important and because I think it does, you know, people really have to make a distinction. Are you producing annuals? Are you producing perennials that are youna genetically diverse enough and hardy enough for where you live?
00:25:59
Speaker
And what you might see on social media and pretty pictures of someone's farm and, you know, the Northeast is very different than someone who's in the Southwest. And really everybody has to understand that, that animal selection, plant selection,
00:26:16
Speaker
the diversity of it that you can see across the world is remarkable. I think it's really indicative of God's, you know, just to almost creativity, if if I can call it that. And it's okay that they're different.
00:26:28
Speaker
And it's important that people select those really for what they ultimately want. So do you want an enterprise or do you want security? Do you want something that tastes remarkable? Are you willing to wait the time?
00:26:41
Speaker
i love hearing you talk about the apples because apples are kind of a... um Apples are interesting because it's not like blueberries. It's not like blackberries, it's not like raspberries. You got to wait a little bit of time, like a year to get some so good bounty of strawberries, as an example.
00:26:56
Speaker
Apples, you've got to wait. And there's other fruits like that. But few fruits like that and few enterprises and few things you can do on a homestead require that much patience.
00:27:07
Speaker
And it's interesting to hear you talk about it because it's a good reminder as we look at what we're doing. And I'm sure as other people look at what they're doing and they're thinking, I'm frustrated, I'm in year one, year two, and I didn't get the harvest. I thought, well, it might take a decade to get there and it might be more so for your children than ultimately even for you.
00:27:24
Speaker
So it's, it's, I appreciate you sharing, but talk, talk about the, the apples though. So I've, from talking with you, I've looked up scions that you and I have talked about. I've looked into this because of things I've learned from you.
00:27:36
Speaker
What the the English bittersweets talk about, you know, to just fill us in, what what should people be looking for? What are your thoughts? Yeah, so um so I love cider. And when I say cider, I mean what Americans say is hard cider. um you know hard heart Hard cider, cider, ah apple juice fermented ah into apple wine is cider.
00:27:59
Speaker
So everywhere else in the world, calls that alcohol, a you know, final product of fermentation of apple juice, everyone else calls it cider. Here in America, we've kind of switched it around and we call fresh juice cider because we confuse things. I don't i don't i don't know why we decided to confuse things, but we did.
00:28:15
Speaker
But um But ah in any event, um just like a someone who would grow, if I were to ask a winemaker to make me a Merlot and give him table grapes, you know, you know red table concord or something, he'd laugh at me and say, no, no, no. If I'm going to grow Merlot, I need this a grape. but that's That's a grape. I need the Merlot grape to make Merlot wine. This is the way this works.
00:28:42
Speaker
Yeah. There are cultivars specific for winemaking when you talk about grapes. Well, in the old world, in in England in particular, um that is very true about cider, that there are particular cultivars that perform grapes and and produce qualities of juice ah that are particularly good for fermentation and particularly good for natural fermentation.
00:29:09
Speaker
And so what sets aside cider apple ah more technically and and and more and more um with more precision? well What sets aside a cider apple from a regular eating apple?
00:29:20
Speaker
Well, a cider apple has a lot more tannins in it. It has a lot more acid in it often, and it has oftentimes high sugar content for fermentation. And so tannins allow something once once ah once the juice is fermented and the tannins kind of sit in the barrel, those tannins unroll and kind of create flavor profiles and give the cider a type of body and its composition that allows it to age. Where if you were to age...
00:29:49
Speaker
ah um just ah like an eating apple, it would just be insipid. It might even get like sulfury and like, and like taste like a sock or go kind of moldy or whatever that when you ferment things with a high level of tannins, you can allow them to sit in an oak barrel and oxidize a little bit. And then then all these beautiful flavors on roll out of it. And so the experience of like a true English bittersweet real cider, as opposed to,
00:30:16
Speaker
you know, ah of a highly carbonated back sweetened eating apple that like we often get thrown in our face in America is like ah as like a, as like a hard cider. Um, it's just totally different, right?
00:30:28
Speaker
Like, like English cider is like oftentimes dry, maybe lightly carbonated, maybe cask style carbonation. And I just fell in love with the English, uh, manifest of cider in its history.
00:30:43
Speaker
in its in its tastes profile and in in its culture around it um and and i fell in love with that boy like over 15 years ago um and uh find out that like how did you before you grew it like did is it is there like a commercially available uh cider that people can buy or is it something local No, so so my journey to cider started because a buddy of mine, um we were making cider for like Christmas gifts. Every year we'd make like a few cases of cider and we would just go get any old apple and like throw champagne yeast in it and then bottle it and be like, here's Christmas gifts, everybody. But it was it was insipid, you know, no body, no structure.
00:31:22
Speaker
But like anything I do, i get I get into it and I'm like, oh, what is this? How do you control this? How do you make it different? What's, you know, this is what they do in Spain. Oh, this is what they do in France. Oh, English cider. Let me try that. I went went down to my beer store wherever and was like, can i can you guys get English cider?
00:31:36
Speaker
And they went through their list. Oh, yeah, we can get this guy, you know. And I got exposed to um to a fellow by the name of Tom Oliver. um Hope you're still out there, Tom. Haven't checked in on you in a while. But yeah.
00:31:47
Speaker
But and that was that was my first. I tasted Oliver's Cider, which was an import from England, and like it blew my mind. I was like, oh my, but you know it was um it was maybe a Yarlington some type of I forget what it was.
00:32:01
Speaker
And then that opened the whole world of cider making to me to be like, oh this is this is like a whole world of agriculture. that we don't have in America. And boy, wouldn't it be cool to bring back this style of cider? Because we actually did have it in America at one point.
00:32:19
Speaker
But Prohibition, don't know if you remember the suffragists or the ah the the the pro the pro ah pro Prohibition ladies, they used to wear a ah ah pin with an axe on it.
00:32:30
Speaker
ah that That was like their symbol. And it was to cut down cider trees and vineyards, right? That that that that was the that was the intent. And so when Prohibition happened and we wiped out alcohol for a couple of years in this country, when alcohol came back,
00:32:45
Speaker
um Beer and hard liquors you can make on recipes. so So when the industry came back, people rushed to produce alcohol again. Well, you can make beer on a recipe. It takes this much barley, this this type of hops, this many. you know You're not waiting years to grow a tree or years to ferment and age the wine or whatever. So wine and cider took a massive hit.
00:33:08
Speaker
um when prohibition ended because beer then became the popular alcoholic drink. Beer and whiskey became the popular alcoholic drinks of of America because they were both made on recipes that could be reproducible, large scale.
00:33:22
Speaker
And cider never actually recovered. It really never came back in its in its kind of traditional manifest. And so... um You know me well enough that I'd be safe to say I'm a traditionalist in many things and and cider is included in those things. And so um my I have a passion for bringing back ah you know traditional cider, exposing people to it, um you know ah getting them an awareness of it. So I grow very high tannic, medium acid, vintage flavored English cider apples, and and they perform really well.
00:34:00
Speaker
in a in an oak barrel under natural fermentation conditions meaning that i put juice in an oak barrel and i don't put any yeast in it i don't do anything i just put a put an airlock on it and come back in a year or sooner than a year but but i i rack it a couple times then and then lock it down for a year um and i really let god uh god change, transform that cider along the the natural order that he's set forth. And so, and so that's, and then so I grow cultivars that do that. And then the fun part for me as a cider maker is I got all these barrels of different types of
Catholic Land Movement Overview & Conference
00:34:38
Speaker
juice, the chisel jerseys, like acorn tannic,
00:34:41
Speaker
And the, the Yarlington mill is like soft, medium kind of strawberry flavors. And you mix those two a little bit together and then a little bit of the acidic stoke red, and then you put it on in a tank and then you bottle up 30 cases of your blend.
00:34:56
Speaker
And so I've been doing that for ah good number of years now. And the crop just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. It's almost funny. Like the crop is getting so big that it's like you're,
00:35:06
Speaker
it's like, Mike, you have to turn this into a business. You have, you have too much fruit to like, you know, or else it's going to rot, you know, and I can't drink it. I can't give it away fast enough. So it's like, you have to turn it into a business, which is, which the idea for most farmers that their land is like demanding them to sell it.
00:35:25
Speaker
And I'm like, kind of like, oh man, I got to sell it. You know, it's a pain. Like I'm almost like, don't want to put up, but, the but it is, it is there. so there's tons of cider. if If anybody who's listening along, if you ever want to set up a visit and walk in orchard and have a glass of cider, you know, I'd love i'd love to, ah you know, find me. if if if if if you're if you're If you're good enough to figure out how to find me, then then you're good enough for me to open the gate for and we'll we'll have a glass of cider together.
00:35:53
Speaker
Well, one day, and i've I've mentioned this already, I'm going to have to take you up on that offer because cider is actually my favorite drink. And it's um yeah it's not too often that you see it celebrated in any any real capacity. And it's it's just it's it's reminiscent of a time that I believe is possible for us in the future, frankly.
00:36:13
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's a great expression of like a local ah like a localism. ah One of the things that I love about cider isn't just the the cider, which is great, like the cider is great. And, you know, the vintage flavors of cider are reminiscent of like orchards and barns and horses. And, you this is what the cider kind of these old English ah ah ciders, you know, that that the aromas and the tastes kind of bring you back to a ah bucolic experience.
00:36:40
Speaker
But um But one of the other things that's just beautiful about it, I was able to spend some time ah one fall um with um with an an older cider maker named Roger um from Somerset, England. And, and he had a little stone barn.
00:36:56
Speaker
And like at the end of the day, a bunch of tractors would pull up and all the guys would hop out of their tractors from plowing and and and doing what they did. It was a very agricultural community. They'd all hop into Roger's barn and they'd sit around and they, they, they, they pull their cider and they drink, you know, of a pint, two, three, and then they'd,
00:37:14
Speaker
talk about the news of the day and solve the problems of the world. and then, uh, and then they would all, uh, you know, fill up a plastic jug for after dinner and, uh, and then just drop a little bit of money in an honor box on their way out.
00:37:25
Speaker
And that was the way Roger was running his place. And, uh, And it was beautiful. Like that culture of like, like ah like ah we kind of have it in the Northeast. um I don't know of Indiana, how much you guys have this, but we have sap houses in the Northeast where like communities get together and it's all, you know, local sap and they're boiling the sap and agricultural production and discussion and community and then crop and all that is kind of mixed into one experience. So we have sap houses here, but I'd love to introduce like that. in a colloquial cider barn again in my old age. If I retire on ah on a little stool and I'm just pulling mugs of cider out of a barrel for people when I'm like in my 70s or 80s, I think I will have arrived.
00:38:07
Speaker
um So so's ah yeah that's, yeah. I just love the beauty of the Cider House. The Cider House is a beautiful cultural institution that, that quite frankly, America needs more of ah these type of, people call them, and in in new urbanism, I think third places. We need we need more of these third places, um places of sincere encounter that integrate community production, community development.
00:38:31
Speaker
ah you know care for each other, the land. ah We need more places for those and and occasions for those types of encounters. Entirely. I agree.
00:38:43
Speaker
Now, i know I know we're kind of getting late on time. And so I do want to change the conversation just a little bit because, you know, and hey I know a lot of your work is is not necessarily known for what you do specifically on your homestead, but what you do with the land movement. And i believe it is in July, you're heading back over to the Vatican. So I just kind of wanted to you know tip the mic over to you for a second and kind of see what's going on with the land movement, what what's happening in July, why you're going back over there, what the state of you know the situation really is at this point.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So ah yeah most people who probably listen to this and they hear Michael Thomas to share and they know me as the executive director of the Catholic land movement. and But in the odd case that this is the first time you've ever heard of me or that and you're listening to Matthew's podcast,
00:39:30
Speaker
The Catholic Land Movement is an association of homesteaders, small farmers who are Catholic and are supporting one another through peer the the development of peer-to-peer education networks and mutual aid, localized mutual aid associations and networks. And so there are 40 different Catholic Land Movement chapters across America.
00:39:55
Speaker
ah there are some international chapters. And um it's a really vibrant movement that tons of stuff is is going on. We don't have that's a whole other podcast to talk about the land movement. um But there's conferences and workshops and speaking events and and and ah but the programs and ah on and on and on it goes. But it really is at at its core.
00:40:17
Speaker
It's an association ah between Catholics to support one another in making their homes and their property productive and well-ordered. towards the glorification of God, right? So that's that' that's really what the land movement's about at its core.
00:40:34
Speaker
and um And I've been, i can't can't get into it now for time, but ah by by a bunch of little turns, I ended up the executive director of the current iteration of the land movement.
00:40:45
Speaker
it's ah it's over a hundred years old as as ah as a kind of social movement, but in its current iteration, I'm the executive director.
Podcast Conclusion and Reflections
00:40:52
Speaker
And so I help develop chapters. I help consult leaders. I help develop lead lay leadership.
00:40:58
Speaker
I help new homesteaders kind of, um I think that's where you and I came into contact with each other, ah Matthew. I think you taught a workshop at at at one of the land movement events in Indiana.
00:41:09
Speaker
So yeah, All of this activity, which is very robust, caught the eye of upper levels of the hierarchy. And I've befriended a handful of bishops who are fond of our programming and are supportive of us.
00:41:25
Speaker
And through those contacts and relationships, I was invited to the, not I, but the land movement and me as a representative of, was invited to the Vatican last December. We were able to meet but Pope Francis and meet with Dicastery and talk about you know, the the development and and future and vision of the land movement.
00:41:45
Speaker
And so a couple months has gone by and I was invited back from from that trip. I was invited back um with Bishop Scharfenberger of the Albany Diocese and to meet with the Dicastery of Integrated Human Development and a bunch of other meetings that um that i won't and I won't let out of the bag yet. But but there's a bunch of other meetings that are going that that will go on um when when we're in Rome. And that is a That's this first weekend in July, God willing, coming up just like two weeks. I can't believe I'm going back to Rome.
00:42:14
Speaker
It's kind of all bewildering. The fact that I got to like you know shake the hands of ah the of Pope Francis is like the whole thing is bewildering and and but somewhat somewhat um amazing. I'm humbled and...
00:42:28
Speaker
immensely grateful for what the land movement has given me and my family. And um it's just been a source of joy and and kind of beauty and in my life. And I'm i'm in enthusiastic about doing my duty in leadership to help bring that joy of encounter with the land community and God to as many people as, as, as I can through my work with the land movement. So if any of that sounds great to you and you want to get involved, there is a wonderful, our national conference.
00:42:59
Speaker
It's the big one. It's like a three day conference is happening the last weekend of August in Indiana. You can hop on our website, which is www.catholiclandmovement.info.
00:43:13
Speaker
And um you can see we're going to open up registration actually tomorrow. Tomorrow registration is going to open up for the Indiana conference. And so of three days of workshops, events, public speakers, you know, um John Cuddeback from Christendom University will be the keynote speaker at this year's conference. So super excited to have him there.
00:43:34
Speaker
ah it's It's going to be great. it's ah For people who have experienced land movement conferences, they've happened all over the the country, um that that they they can be life-changing. I know people who went to land movement conferences and kind of ended up making very large life changes of like moving out rural and buying farms.
00:43:55
Speaker
And then also they're empowered to do that because they got connected with a network who could support them in that transition. And so that's what the land movement's all about. And so, um so yeah, I hope to ah people who are listening along, um you know, are interested in the land movement, make it to that Indiana conference. It's going to probably be one of the best events of the year.
00:44:13
Speaker
and And yeah, and then check us out online. if If you're moved, you can't make it to the conference, but you're moved by our work. um please support us in any way you can. Michael, I'm really thankful you're here today. it's um I consider you, ah truly, I consider you a friend and I'm glad to have gotten the chance to to have you on here and ah to talk to you tonight. And I really hope to see you again in person soon.
00:44:36
Speaker
Yeah, Matthew, thanks so much. It's been it's been a pleasure to to be here and I'm grateful. For the work you do to to to make this space available, um you know it's it's it's great that so many people are connected through your witness of Homestead Transition, that they're connected to maybe you know in in them you're awakening a spark or or or or an ordering where they're saying, hey,
00:44:58
Speaker
this is something that I might want for my family and myself. So I just want to echo back that I consider you a friend as well. And more than that, I find you deeply inspiring in the way that you courageously share the ups and downs of your homesteading adventure with them but all the people around the world through social media, this podcast, ah ah other places. you You're great, man. Can't can't can't applaud you enough.
00:45:23
Speaker
We'll talk to you soon, Michael. Thank you so much. God bless. Thank you for joining us on the Cottagers podcast. For more information on today's episode, check out the show notes or visit us at cottagepastures.com.
00:45:35
Speaker
We look forward to you joining us on the next episode.