- What's up I'm Kelis
and this is Bounty Farms.
Come and I'll take you around.
(upbeat music)
Well, let's see
we started looking probably about three years ago.
Like put our house on the market.
I think finding the right place
was probably what took the longest.
Like I was already resolved that I was ready to do it
and then it was just finding the spot.
So once we did, then we packed it up
and here we are.
So this here is Biscuit.
Biscuit is he's super important on the farm.
Not just because he's gorgeous and we love him
because really he's a livestock guardian.
So there's three.
We've got three of these guys right now.
This is what he does most of the day.
But at night, like as soon as the sun starts to go down
you'll see his entire
all of them, their whole demeanor changes.
They have a really cool relationship.
It's actually incredible to see
how they like operate together.
They patrol until they're nocturnal,
which a lot of dogs aren't.
These guys wake up, we get up in the morning.
We feed them 'cause they've had a long night.
So they've been protecting everybody throughout the night.
We have lots of coyotes,
lots of bobcat's and mountain lions, rattlesnakes
like the whole gamut out here.
And so we'll come and we feed these guys.
This is Whitney Houston.
This is Marvin Gaye over here.
He's our newest.
He's a little snake, so just be aware.
This is Toasty.
Toasty was like our first farm animal.
He's kind of a bully, I guess,
but he's super cute
and they're really friendly.
And let's see
we are raising sheep to eat.
So these are Dorper sheep.
So we get up and we feed everybody.
Takes a minute,
make sure that like everyone's doing okay.
And then we like sort of see what damage
was done at night with the garden
'cause it's inevitably always something.
That's pretty much like the morning,
sort of like early morning.
So this is our garden, actually.
It's a work in progress.
That's one of our ducks right there.
The other guys are hiding over there.
They just sort of hang out
and we were building a pond for them
or digging upon for them.
But it's proving to be a lot more work than we thought.
Then we take care of Bob Marley,
who's our heritage turkey.
So my son named him Bob Marley
but the whole idea was that he was supposed to
bring the peace which he actually totally does.
It's crazy
because the roosters were bullying everybody and everything.
It was terrible.
And then we got Bob
and like you'll see them like a full-on cockfight vibes.
Like there'll be like going at each other,
the roosters,
and Bob will come in and he's just like,
gobble, gobble, gobble.
And then the roosters you can tell they're pissed off
but like everyone just like kind of spreads out
and it's like, okay, Bob did his job.
So this looks really like trash right now
but there's a method, I promise.
Well first, it's all like COVID shopping.
So that's the first thing.
So I'm absolutely giving back by taking all of my packages
all my boxes, we take all the tape off and everything
and then we use it to cover the weeds
and it helps to like
we're trying to regenerate the soil basically
without tilling.
So we do no till farming.
So that's why that looks like that.
But it will soon have stuff on top of it
and that's just gonna help with all the weeds
and stuff like that.
And this is one of our main garden boxes.
So you can sort of see the massacre that happened here.
This is like coming into a war zone.
It's kind of like a tender subject with me
But these, you see these three rows,
one, two, three, that are absolutely empty and terrible?
That is because we are
in a war that I'm losing with the gophers.
So there were all different kinds
of broccoli and cauliflower.
There's one stock of broccoli left
and it's been gnawed on.
They're really disrespectful,
all these gophers.
They were really aggressive.
And the crazy thing is that
they pull it underneath the ground.
So like a cartoon, I lie to you not,
it was literally me like pulling on this broccoli stock
and the stupid gopher was like tugging.
And finally I just was like, this is outrageous.
And I let go, cause I could not believe it was happening.
So ridiculous.
So we're standing at my olive grove
and we harvest our olives once a year
and we press them to make olive oil
that I've coined liquid gold.
So that's definitely,
probably one of my proudest things here
just cause like I didn't know that we could do that.
And when we did our first harvest,
I was so just sort of wowed by
how great everything came out.
But I think really just like every year
it's something else that sort of thrives
in that like where every season rather
that we're able to grow
and that I didn't know how to do before.
So that's pretty cool.
Oh, we have lots of citrus.
So I love that.
Like we have kind of all the citrus.
We have all the different variations of like limes.
We have tangerines, we have sour oranges,
we have cara cara oranges, valencias
and blood oranges.
Meyer lemons.
And I love that 'cause I cook with all that stuff
like every day
so I love being able just to go and--
there's nothing like going to like a tree
and picking something off, so.
I love that.
So this is a sour orange tree and it's one of my favorites.
The oranges are about that big
but like really deep orange color.
And they're like tart, just like really bright flavor.
And I use them a lot for cooking.
And like when they're flowering
like the wind will blow in his most incredible smell.
It's amazing.
That's one of my favorite things
about all of this honestly
is like orange blossom and lemon blossom scent.
So this is my barn
and it's probably the last thing for us
to sort of restore and renovate.
We haven't put any horses in here yet
but this is where we hatch all of our eggs.
So like all our baby chicks
and where like when the sheeps have the babies
they're in here and goats and our ducks.
Listen, it's definitely more quiet out here.
It's peaceful.
I mean, I think for me,
like one of the biggest things was just that
like I have been on tour for the past like twenty years
and it felt like I'm in a big city every second of the day.
And I just felt like when I come home
I don't want to come home to the same bustle
and kind of same thing, you know?
And so being able to just like have ground
to walk that's mine and to be able to like be outside.
And I think it's just super important to,
I don't know, like get your hands dirty,
your feet dirty
and just like kind of really absorb all of it
on your off time, especially
'cause it kind of restores you to get back out there
and do more.
So it's pretty crazy to be in major cities
and to still have like food deserts
and the fact that like, you know
there is still so much poverty
and there's still so little when we know that
there actually is so much.
And that was one of the really large driving forces for us.
I think not just as a chef, but as a mom,
as a, you know, a black woman
like really wanting to control our story.
And so for me, it was really about finding ways
to kind of like regain the power, right?
Like take back our power
and be able to grow what we want to eat
the way that we want to eat it.
Hopefully as we get our farming together
be able to share more of kind of what we're learning
and what we're growing with others,
you know, not just my family.
But that's the idea.
Basically like this whole year kind of,
even though it wasn't the plan,
being that we were all home for COVID
like I was able to spend time on the farm
and really kind of figure out
what, I don't know, my next steps were going to be.
And so I started this thing called Goldmine Boxes
and doing all this natural sauces and foods
and really now like healthcare, beauty stuff
just because like I've had time to research
and to grow stuff on the farm.
So my goal, yeah, it would be to like,
I would love to open like a farm to table restaurant,
but really my real goal is to do like sort of a retreat.
To do like a restaurant retreat where you can like stay
and just like rejuvenate and eat and learn
and just relax.
So I guess, yeah, like sort of like a boutique
mini, lush little oasis is what I'd like to do.