
A Conversation with the Creator of Wyse Guide
Clip: Season 3 Episode 301 | 6m 25sVideo has Closed Captions
Kaleb Wyse shares his love of cooking, canning and gardening through his popular blog, Wyse Guide.
Meet Kaleb Wyse, a fourth-generation Iowa farmer who shares his love of cooking, canning and gardening through his popular blog, Wyse Guide.
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Iowa Life is a local public television program presented by Iowa PBS

A Conversation with the Creator of Wyse Guide
Clip: Season 3 Episode 301 | 6m 25sVideo has Closed Captions
Meet Kaleb Wyse, a fourth-generation Iowa farmer who shares his love of cooking, canning and gardening through his popular blog, Wyse Guide.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipNebbe: Growing up in a Mennonite farming family in Iowa, gardening, canning, and cooking have always been a way of life for Kaleb Wyse.
To share his passions, he started a blog in 2012, posting recipes and gardening advice and sharing videos and tutorials on social media.
Are you ready to make my grandma's best cabbage dressing?
You're gonna want this in the fridge all summer long.
Let's make it.
Nebbe: Kaleb's authentic and down-to-earth way of living found a hungry audience.
And in spring of 2025, he published his first cookbook -- "There's Always Room at the table."
Wyse Guide has a following of more than two million people across social media platforms.
But as the fourth generation to live on his family's farm, Kaleb makes it a point to stay true to his Iowa roots.
Kaleb, it is so wonderful to be here with you.
It's really nice to have you here.
We actually have a really good day for it.
So we are in southeastern Iowa.
And this is where you grew up.
This is.
So this right here is where my grandparents lived when I was really little.
The generational farm is kind of across the road, catty-corner.
So pretty much every summer day it seemed like we were walking over here, enjoying the yard, or the house with Grandma, and Grandpa was always out with Dad on the farm.
So it's always felt like home, without -- I don't think my parents meaning to.
They gave me the opportunity to kind of just do "chores" wherever they fit in.
I was always much more a part of the community of preserving things from the garden, being in the kitchen with both grandmas and Mom, paring apples, freezing fruit of some type.
And so I think I just -- I don't know if I was drawn to it, if it called me, or if I just always really enjoyed it.
So you went away to college in Virginia and you studied business, but you always knew you wanted to come home.
Why -- Why did that feel so important to you?
We were a very close-knit family growing up, so my comfort level always felt very secure at home.
And I think accounting and business, when I went into that, it was -- I don't love, necessarily, doing accounting.
And what I love doing was the things I knew to do, which was what I grew up doing.
So you did try to be an accountant for about three years.
-"Try" is a good word.
-[ Both laugh ] And then -- and then you found -- you started working in landscaping.
So you found a way to -- to make money doing the things that you really did love.
But Wyse Guide, that sort of started because you needed a creative outlet?
Tell me how that began.
I had so many things that I loved learning about growing up, and I still did them.
I didn't have the same purpose in doing them, like I didn't have maybe as big a family, or I didn't have as big a reason to have a big garden, but I did it.
And so I think I needed a way to kind of give that sense of purpose to what I was doing.
Nebbe: Kaleb dove headfirst into making Wyse Guide a trusted source for all things cooking, gardening, and decorating, and later decided to share more of his life through daily stories on Instagram.
Hello, hello, hello, friends.
Uh, it is a beautiful Monday.
Nebbe: In 2020, Kaleb's way of living really started resonating with people who found themselves stuck at home during the pandemic, craving peaceful, simple content.
Wyse: Look at these.
I think when you grow up, maybe just anywhere that's rural or something, or Midwest, you think so much of it is just kind of normal.
It's stuff you can take for granted.
Yeah, it's the stuff that kind of in your head it was the chores that you didn't want to do, or it was the stuff that seemed boring.
And so I think I was trying to always hide that part and instead show something that made me feel like I was actually something special.
Like, I wasn't a chef, but, oh, if I show something that feels like it's maybe a little bit more elevated, that will make me feel real.
When I started getting messages from people saying, "What you just did was something my grandma had done, and I have not known how to do that all these years, and wished I had known," that then started making me, I think, more excited and comfortable and think, "Okay, there's a place for this and others might want to know something about it too."
Friends, today we are taking tomatoes because they're in season, because they are ripe, and because they are only delicious really for a small snapshot in a whole year.
People have a real hunger for this.
What do you think they're looking for?
What do you think that people find in your stories, in your food, about being in rural southeastern Iowa that they connect with?
There's something nostalgic for people.
A lot of people have a memory of a farm in their life.
It could be a grandparent, it could be a distant relative, but some form of a farm that sometimes is a core memory.
And I think this just, with a lot of the food or memories I share or having my mom on and we're doing things together... I could make the sound.
[ Imitates mixer whining ] [ Laughs ] Wyse: I think it brings out that core memory and that little bit of nostalgia for people that is comfortable.
We a lot of times throw around the words "comfortably familiar" because there's something that's familiar about it which then we find comfort in -- 'cause anything familiar we kind of always feel comfortable with -- but then it's sometimes just different enough, or maybe modernized just enough that it's new also.
And I think, in a way, isn't that kind of what we're all searching for all the time is something we know enough to feel comfortable, but want to try something new?
I mean, let's talk about gardening.
What do you love about gardening?
Isn't that good?
That's a good question.
I don't always know necessarily, 'cause it's a question sometimes I ask myself.
Because in the middle of summer when I'm outside sweating and it's hot and I'm watering, and I just want that one beautiful tomato off that plant, I do sometimes wonder, why am I doing this with such a large garden?
But I think it's something about it's so ingrained into me.
But I find this... Maybe there's something about knowing my family.
My great-grandparents, my grandparents all worked so hard that a piece of me wants to -- in a weird way, this is -- I want to honor them, almost, by still doing it.
Because, yes, we have modern conveniences.
Grocery store is honestly, what, 15 minutes away?
And it does taste better.
Let's not -- Take away that food grown at home -- I always think -- I always tell people, every time I'm out doing stories in my garden, I'll taste, like, the cauliflower or a carrot.
I'll be like, you have no idea what it really should taste like until you harvest it from the garden where you have tended that soil that has, like, good nutrients, good compost, and it flavors the food in a way that is just so rich, and you can't get -- so there's that.
Kaleb, thank you so much.
This has been such a pleasure.
Thank you for coming.
I think the whole point of food and what I do is to share it with people.
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Iowa Life is a local public television program presented by Iowa PBS