Lisa Steele, Chicken Whisperer, Author and Blogger - Secrets to Happy, Healthy Chickens

Glenda Lehman Ervin: Welcome to Solutions for a Simpler Life. This is Glenda Lehman Ervin with Lehman’s on the square in Kidron, Ohio.We’re glad you joined us. We are excited today on Solutions for a Simpler Life. We have Lisa Steele her second time visit with us here at Lehman’s. Author of Fresh Eggs Daily and a number of other books, including a new TV show. Tell me a little bit about your TV show.

Lisa Steele: Hi Linda. I am so glad to be back. I really love Ohio. It reminds me a lot of Maine. My TV show is set in Maine. We film it at my farm and it’s really a lot of what Lehman’s is all about, just kind of the simple life. Gardening, raising chickens, cooking things from the garden, using our fresh eggs, maybe some DIY projects and it just started in February so we’re just kind of getting off the ground with the first couple episodes.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: Oh that’s exciting. Now where could a person tune in to see that?

Lisa Steele: If you live in Maine you can watch it on NBC Sunday mornings at 11:30. And if not it’s on YouTube on my new Welcome to My Farm YouTube channel. And also it’s going to be available on Amazon Prime.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: Oh that’s great. Now do the chickens get a royalty?

Lisa Steele: They don’t. They work for free.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: Well they work for food right?

Lisa Steele: They work for food. They work for free lodging and food.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: Cots and three hots, isn’t that what they say?

Lisa Steele: They’re good though. I have to say they are better at hitting their marks and doing what they’re supposed to do for each scene than I am.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: Really?

Lisa Steele: They’re really wonderful they’ve been so easy to work with. Yeah.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: Well that’s interesting. For our listeners that aren’t familiar with your work, I know that you have always loved chickens. Your grandparents I believe raised chickens, that’s how you got started.

Lisa Steele: They did. They had a chicken farm in New England in Massachusetts and that’s how they raised their family, how they fed their family. And then my mom came along and married my dad and they were both teachers and weren’t really interested in being chicken farmers. So I had chickens as a kid and I did the for each thing but it was more as a hobby than an actual profession. So it was kind of exciting to find myself living on a farm after marrying my husband who’s in the Navy. And we got a couple of chickens and I sort of am carrying on a family tradition but in kind of a more modern way than obviously my grandparents did because they just were you know hard core raising chickens for the eggs and for the meat.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: They probably didn’t have an Instagram account.

Lisa Steele: Yeah they didn’t have an Instagram. I mean that’s interesting you say that because there’s very few pictures. You know back then film was expensive, cameras were expensive. It was just their everyday life. So it’s kind of sad how few pictures I actually have of their chickens and of their farm because people if they took pictures it was gonna be on vacation or of a wedding or a baby being born. It wasn’t just being out feeding the chickens because that was just their life.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: Yeah like we do now.

Lisa Steele: Right.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: And I mentioned Fresh Eggs Daily. You also have a number of books and I think you have a new one in the works.

Lisa Steele: I do. So my last book came out in fall of 2018. So that was 101 Chicken Keeping Hacks and it sort of just ways to simplify your chicken keeping, reuse things, recycle things, just kind of tips and tricks I’ve learned over the past decade. And I have a new book coming out in spring of 2020 which is DIY projects, all building projects for your chickens, and some for you, for the kitchen. But it’s basically building which was really cool because I love handling tools and building things.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: Now I think of you as the chicken expert, which you are, but there’s so much else surrounding that that has to do with a simpler life like eating fresh from the garden and working outside. You and I were talking earlier about there’s no need to go to the gym if you’re a homesteader because you’re burning calories as you do your daily chores. Are you ever going to run out of things to talk about with chickens and the simpler life?

Lisa Steele: You know I don’t think so. When I first started my blog in 2011 I had a Facebook page and people were asking me questions and I thought, “You know all right I’ll read a couple articles.” The common things I was being asked about you know how to raise baby chicks or what if a chicken gets egg bound or what if a chicken’s eating her eggs. And I figured maybe 20 articles and I’ll be done and I’ll just direct people to my blog. So now six seven years later I have over a thousand articles and I have probably 60 in draft form that I still want to write. You know, cooking with eggs and gardening, getting your chickens involved in the garden. It’s a whole lifestyle like you said. So I don’t think you ever run out because whether you’re interested in canning or… I mean there’s just so many things to do and I haven’t even delved into like beekeeping, or cows or… You know there’s so many other aspects.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: Right. Here at Lehman’s we often find people that are on a journey to a simpler life. Whether you’re just starting out on that journey or… So it sounds like you’re in the journey but yet you’ve got beekeeping, you’ve got other things that are continuing and to me that’s part of the excitement is there’s always something new around the corner you never conquer it all. So how many chickens do you have now?

Lisa Steele: That’s a trick question actually. So I think we have… I think we have 16 grown chickens, a rooster, then five chicks that just hatched this past spring and then eleven ducks and five ducklings.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: And do you have cats and dogs and goats?

Lisa Steele: Yeah we have a cat and two dogs and there’s so much more that I want but part of it is time. I mean I travel a lot and I’m not home a lot. So my husband has to take care of them and he’s not 100 percent convinced that we need more animals. So I just keep pushing for you know donkeys and geese, and sheep, and all kinds of things and it’s a constant struggle to get him to agree that we actually need these things.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: You need them? Or you want them?

Lisa Steele: No we need them.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: You need them.

Lisa Steele: I need them, yes.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: OK, I’ve got it. So I know you have a new book coming out and the TV show. What else is next on the horizon for Lisa Steele?

Lisa Steele: Well what’s really been exciting in these last couple of years is actually traveling and coming to places like Lehman’s and meeting people who might only know me through social media but like putting a face to a name of someone who’s been following me and we’ve been chatting back and forth. And I really really love getting out and just meeting like the real people who read what I do. It’s just really fun. Like do you know you’re impacting people in their real lives. They become faces.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: Right. And friends. I talked to somebody and I said, “Are you familiar with Lisa Steele?” And she said yes that’s why I’m here I’m so excited. So I totally get that. Well thank you so much for joining us on our podcast Solutions for a Simpler Life, and we hope to have you back at Lehman’s.

Lisa Steele: Thanks for inviting me. Anyone who is interested in learning more about raising chickens or or gardening can visit my Web site fresheggsdaily.com. And I’m also on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @fresheggsdaily.

Glenda Lehman Ervin: This is Glenda Lehman Ervin with Lehman’s where we stand for a simpler life. Thanks for listening. For more visit lehmans.com.