Barn Talk - Enhancing Sustainability In Pork Production w/Russ Vering

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

Welcome to Barn Talk, Poo is our priority today! More importantly, Opportunities lie somewhere in the darkness below the slats of hog barns everywhere. Let's dive in. But first… Pay the fee! Connect With Russ! Linkedln- https://www.linkedin.com/in/russ-vering-872923178/ Viorment- https://viroment.com/ Central Plains Milling- https://centralplainsmilling.com/ Barn Talk Merch! 👇🏻 https://www.thislldo.co/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4 ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠ The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruit Flies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. What drives you? Because you got, you got, you have these, this hog operation. You got this,

you got a feed mill. We just, we barely didn't even talk about the feed. We didn't even scratch the surface on that. But you got these feed mill, you got this hog operation. And then you're doing this too. What drives you to do it all? Why do you want to do it? Is it fun? Do you like the game of it? What's the driving force behind it all? You know, my mom and my dad were hard workers. And, uh, they ran a business together. So I don't know, there's a lot of operations out there. I know there's fine in operations where the wife handles the checkbook, right? And that was the same thing in our family. And I remember, you know, we process our own pigs and we all be sitting around in the 80s, sitting around

the supper table eating sausage and fried potatoes, right? And mom and dad yelling at each other about what business decision they made that day. And so I don't think, I think I was raised that I am just always business driven, you know, and I'm always looking for, you know, what's the next conquest or what's the next opportunity that I can make things better or for myself, for my family, for people around me. So I'm just driven by, you know, trying to improve constantly. All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn until now. We're going to let it all out for you guys. So today, shit is a big priority today. We're going to be talking about a lot of shit. And more importantly, the opportunities that lie somewhere underneath all these hog barns out there across this great nation. So we're going to dive into it and get into the nitty gritty details of how valuable that manure is. Because we already know it's pretty valuable.

But how truly valuable can it be? That's the real question. But before we get into all that, you guys know the drill. Pay the fee. If you guys get any value from the show, if you learn something, if you're related to us on something, if we made you laugh somehow, share the show because we're trying to grow this thing. And we believe in organic growth. We don't run ads to promote the show.

It's all because of you guys. And we see a lot of you guys are paying the fee and we appreciate it. I love you guys for it. We also see all the reviews that you leave on Spotify and Apple. Continue to do that as well. That helps us out in a huge, huge, huge way. So thank you to all the people that have been doing that. So we really appreciate it.

So go out there, pay the fee, guys, if you get anything. Get some merch. I'm actually, I remember today, I put on my... He's reping the gang here. I do have actual barn talk, and this will do farm clothes. I just, I think of them as my go-to-town clothes. You know, I don't wear them a lot around because they're valuable to me. Yeah.

If you would like some of this, link is in the description. So an abbreviated market update today because we got a lot going on. And honestly, the markets are kind of in weather mode. So it's dry around the Midwest. It's definitely dry here. We got about a quarter of an inch of rain yesterday, which is not near enough. We're really, really dry. And if we don't get some more, it's going to start tipping back pretty hard.

I think and I think that's going on a lot of places around the Midwest and so the markets are trading off of that you can still get a $7 bid for corn local from Maybe one of the hog feeders, but you know the board is down what five eighty three something I somewhere around there. I guess I didn't look Today's Tesla's annual shareholder meeting so they're probably going to vote to do a three for one stock split The whole tensions with China and Taiwan and Russia and Ukraine are pretty much driving a lot of the world markets as far as oil and precious metals and all that. Do we have inflation? Are we in a recession? Are we not in a recession? I think it's all kind of lip speak, but the markets are kind of in, they don't really know what to do. So that's the long and the short of it. So our guest today, We actually met at NPC in Wisconsin Dells, and a great guy, and we had a great conversation. And if any of you listen, probably can agree with this, when you go to public meetings, whatever,

you spend a lot of time doing small talk with, hey, how's it going, what's up? Oh, fine, fine, and chit-chat. and rarely do you get the chance to have a really deep conversation about stuff that is really important or stuff that is good to think about, deep to think about. And Russ, we ran into him at a dinner, and he actually sat down and we started talking and really interesting guy. And he is doing some stuff in the world of manure separation on his own operation that just really intrigued us.

So we wanted to get him on here. And it just so happened that he was coming close. So we jumped on the opportunity. So here we are. Yeah, we don't know everything that this guy does, but we know that he's a hustler and he's got a lot going. So we're going to dive in as much as we possibly can on it. And also, we got in some deep shit at the, that's what I like.

When someone sits down and you start talking to us, when you start getting into deep stuff, that's what I really appreciate. So I'll give mad credits to this guy. he did that. So, all right, let's go. Well, Russ, welcome to Barn Talk. Thanks for coming down. You bet. Thanks for having me. It's a beautiful barn you guys have here. Thank you. It's coming along. It's come a long ways since a Coon habitat when we started. So, yeah, I bet in these lofts, you know, in the past, there's probably been lots of vermin up here. Yeah. I've bailed a lot of hay into here. and as a young kid, we used to have horses.

And I don't know at what age, but at some age, it was a day like today, hotter than blazes, and we were bailing hay. And I had the realization that we were bailing the hay for the horses, and that was when I realized I didn't really like horses all that well. I was like, why do we got these horses? We need to get rid of these horses. Pigs are so much easier.

Yeah, pigs are way easier, and we don't have to bailing hay, why are we doing this? And it wasn't too long. It was a little while, but since we got rid of the horses, no hay. You know, I grew up with horses, too, so I know what the bail elevator looks like. Oh, yeah. What it's like walking alongside the rack throwing bales up on the rack. So, yeah, spent my day in a loft. The last horse that we had, my neighbor adopted it.

They have young kids. And when my dad passed away, they wanted to know what we were going to do with it. And I said, he can come to your house. and they'd never had horses and the husband asked me as we were loading him up he's like so how much how much hay

like how much hey will this horse eat and I just put my arm around him I said as much as you'll feed him Kurt and he's like he gotta just had this look like oh boy there's a form of craziness that travels along with horses and women are attracted to it

it seems like to me my girlfriend is one of those women yes she wants a horse in the worst way. That's her dream. That's all she wants. She'll be a happy camera. But it's kind of, you know, it's one of those things. That's pretty easy. That's a pretty good satisfying thing. If you can just get them that horse, well, they're happy. Yeah. I mean, obviously. Yeah, and you'll be happy too out there in heat like today, bailing small square bales to feed that horse. True. Yeah. So before we get started, just give a little bit of where people

can find you. Your social, if they want to reach out to you, if they want to see what you're up to, where can people find you? Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. Yep. with Virement, the company that I'm that I'm working with and then Frontier Cooperative in Central Plains Milling. Central Plainsmilling has a website, central plainsmilling.com. You can go there. And then, you know, in Nebraska, I've got 34,000 spaces that we contract feed and take care of over there. And then I'm in the feed business. I'm also on Instagram. I'm not a real great social person from Stanford. point of being on social media. But yeah, it's just Russ Varing on Instagram is what it is.

Yeah. If you got any questions or if you want, if you got anything from this podcast, go, go follow him. Go check him out. Go check out what he's up to. I don't bombard him because he's got stuff going on. Yeah, he's a busy guy. He's a busy guy, but go check him out. So how did you, how did you, what was your first step? Because you're into feed, you're into the business that you're doing here also, but you kind of started with hogs. Am I right with that? Yeah, actually my dad started in the feed business. And over the course of the year, over the course of years in the 70s and 80s, he got involved with pork production and the nutrition side of it. And then we were, you know, owning sows in the 80s.

We had about 1,200 sows. We had one facility that we owned and then another one that we leased. And so, you know, it was either castrating pigs or processing pigs. You know, we washed barns, that kind of stuff growing up as kids. You know, just anything that you would understand if you're in the business as your free labor, 18 and under before you go to college, there's a great opportunity for you to be on the end of a handle of something. That's well put. That's well put. Either that or, you know, I would haul ice and whine pigs for my dad in the morning early when I was on break or, you know, whatever.

I mean, it was just whatever it had to be loading market loads, all that stuff. So, and we did it in Modafo open fronts. Sure. So if you go back to the 70s and 80s and actually horse barns outside yards, all kinds of stuff like that. Wherever you could put them. Delivering feed from a biosecurity standpoint in 1970 was a way different story than it is today where they had those Cargill sloped yards where you just drove through

and opened gates and just drove right through the manure and just ran around. But there was, in Nebraska, there was a lot of small farmers that had a lot of pigs, especially and Colfaxon, Coming County and Stanton County. Very similar to where, you know, Washington County, Iowa would have been very similar in that about when you went up the road, everybody had some sows. I mean, there was some guys that, in that time, if you had, you know, 240 sows or 400 sows, you were a pretty good size producer, but a lot of people had 80 sows or 100 sows. And the feed, the idea of a feed bin, there wasn't any, it was husky, what, however

or any bushel you could put in how many ton you could put. I don't know, is it a ton and a half? I don't know what you could put in one of them, but it was an 80 bushel feeder. I know it inside and out. And the reason I know it inside out is my dad would sell a semi load of them almost every week. Yep. And we would put them together. Oh, sure. So after school, when we were younger, smaller, that's what we would do. We'd go down to the store and he had a back room where we had those sheets and we had little tools we made to be able to hold them up yourself as you built the built the sheets up. And we would put feeders together. He had an older gentleman that would help us, you know, and as kids, we would just put feeders together after school is what we would do.

That's crazy. And we actually did the same thing. And that's probably why I have a hearing impairment. So we had those bushhog eating bins that would hold supplement. Yep. And we would put those those together too and I'd have a little 916 wrench on the inside and then Herman. Herman was that older gentleman that helped my dad and he'd have the impact on the outside. Yep. If you were stuck inside. You're just in there. Yep. Here's ringing. Hold the nut. Hold the nut. Hold the nut. Just back and forth. You're laying in bed at 10 o'clock at night and you can steer there. Yeah. Your head's still rattling at that point in time. That could be, that could have been the start of your problems. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. So how, so you got in, your dad was in the feed business. And,

so how do you you guys transition to hogs but like give a little background on that so did you take that over is it still part of what you do kind of today what how does that look like yeah i mean he was feeding pigs in just contract arrangements um with producers around howells in that area um for many years and then um i went to college um in uh 89 and when i graduated i came back and i just work sales for him, but then there's the hog side of it too. So I was marking market loads or, you know, walking through barns, checking pigs, dealing with all of that. So involved in that part of it. And then in 95, 94 actually came over to Iowa and looked at some of these new style hog barns, right? The double curtain barn. There was a gentleman up in northeastern Iowa that I talked to showed me

the first cash flow on one of those buildings. So I was really inspired by that and I started looking into that. And back then you could build a building for about $130 a pig space, right? 125, something like that. So really went to town on looking at building those and talking to producers around the area about moving their pigs into a better facility where we can control the environment a lot better. We can capture the manure and be able to use that on our crops as well. I mean, with the MOFs, we were able to do that, but that was never a full pit. And there was concrete. When you went to total slats, it was a different game.

Yes. And so try to get more and more people in the area to do that. There was a few barns that went up. But back then in the 90s, if you were a contract grower, it was kind of a bad thing. It's almost like you gave up. You gave up raisin pigs. And so it was hard to get people to do that. So we did some fundraising and did a couple of things.

We built a 5,000 head site in 97, but we had been building some of our own barns that we were feeding our own pigs in. So we moved away from some of the contracts that we had with producers. And we built our first 4,500 head site. And we were doing three-site production. That was kind of when all in all out started picking up and three-site production, Farrowing, Nursery, finisher. And so we started doing that in our own facility, which was a 4,500 head finisher. And then we still had some contract barns on top of that. That was a family-owned enterprise. So those four buildings that we put up were family-owned. And then at that point in time, we went and built a 5,000 on top of that.

We fed for a genetic company back then. And then in 98, we added 9,600 spaces to 48. 800s with kind of a partnership that I put together. So I've always been on the side of like, okay, let's figure out how to do more of this. And I think it was driven kind of by the feed business, but I really enjoyed, you know, I started every one of those sites up myself and took care of the pigs. And so I really enjoyed what I would say more in 98 was wean to finish. Learned a lot from Jim Pillen, Pilling Family Farms, and learned how to raise pigs in a, in a wean to finish facility. So we did that in 98. And then in 2000, we actually built a 9600 all on one site.

Wow. Two, 4,800 side by side. And set up the load out, big office, everything really nice. And actually fed genetic stock in there as well for a little while. And then over time, that's been most of our barns released out to Pill and Family Farms today. Yeah. But, you know, there's just been different tenants over the years, just for various. reasons. But otherwise, we did that. And then after understanding and managing and working in

barns, we went to bigger pens and did a lot of different kinds of experiment with feeders and different things like that. We built 8,000 spaces in 2006. That was 2,4,000s. And those were quad buildings. I don't know if you guys know what those are. You got four rooms in that building. they each hold a thousand pigs. And I really enjoyed, you know, working in that facility and managing that facility. And that was all tunnel vent. That was our first tunnel vent barn that we built. Actually, the 9600 was also tunnel vent back in 2000. And then we just continue to expand from there. And so it's been kind of a fun journey from that perspective. But at the same time, we had the feed mill that was feeding all those facilities as well. So I don't think there's a different story in the industry.

I think it's pretty common, and especially if you go into Iowa. And so for so many years, I always thought the progression of the swine industry went from east to west. Because I don't know what it was about the Missouri River, but when I would go over to Iowa, I saw these giant feed mills, you know, really successful communities, a lot of livestock. People weren't afraid to be in a hog barn. And then you go across the river, and it just seemed like it kind of phased out. And we want more roll crop in Nebraska. And that's been my message politically and with anybody is what kind of commerce that livestock brings to a community.

It is amazing. It is. The amount of probably that dollar slipped three to four to five times when you have livestock in a community. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. Yeah. What do you always say about when you build a hog barn, how many people are affected?

did not positively by that. Just one building, all the companies that are involved in it's one of the greatest, in the Midwest, it's really one of the greatest economic development drivers there is because like you take, we did a video about this for your building, you know, you go down the line and the slats come from Cascade, Iowa. The building came from Lester's Prairie, Minnesota. The gates are made in Earlville. All the people that work there, the electricians, the feeders come from Bramer, from Nebraska, from Bramers. Amy Bramer, who I know very well. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, it's all, that's all putting people to work. But, you know, to your point, you take a town like ours. We have a town's 8,000 people. And there's a lot of people that I think would like to fantasize that the driver of economic development, our little town, is not pigs, but they'd be wrong. Because the number of jobs created by the, just the three, just the three large, integrators in our area employ more people than and then you have bazooka farm star that makes manure

handling equipment you have the hog slat plant you've got a QC you got a hogslat you got the ace and more for when they're closed and you need i mean it just you go down the line and then all those people shop all those people got to buy gas and groceries and everything else and in an era where we were a community where we had a crane valve factory we had a perplex that made radiators we had a we had a we had a machine tool. Yeah, Modine was a radiator. All that's gone. But the ag has stayed and the ag stays. And another great example, and we did an abbreviated market update, but, you know, the cash price for corn on the board, or the board price for corn versus what you can sell your corn locally today, there's over a dollar spread because the feed mills, they're needing corn, so they're bid. You can still get it. I don't know

whether right now, but it'd be very close. I know when I checked last night, you could still get over a $7 bid for a corn delivered in. I mean, it's just amazing. And I was going to comment on you said, you know, how in the 90s and that mindset about not wanting to custom feed, that was big in this area, because if you talk to any of the guys that are integrators today, one of their biggest struggle was getting people to build the barns because it was a pride thing. Ego. And I had that pride thing. And I'll tell you this story, and I may have told this before, but when I bought this fair

to finish operation from Gary Ledger, shout out to you, Gary, 120 sows, I went out on my own, and I was at a dinner with Dave Eichelberger. And he knew that I was looking at buying it. and he says to me, he goes, he goes, why don't you just go up? And we just bought 240 acre farm. My dad had bought it. And he said, why don't you just go up on that farm you bought

and build a couple of buildings for me? And I looked, I was 21, and I looked at him like he was bat shit crazy. And I was like, I can make way more money feeding my own pigs than raising pigs for you. And in typical day fashion, he just goes, yep, you're right. And then he said, but it's not always going to be that way. and that was in 1992.

I built my first finisher in 2010, and I'll never forget this. I went down to Eichelberger's to get the contract, and the guy that usually did it, I said, hey, I want to sign that contract. I want to get that contract. He goes, yeah, he goes, Dave came down here and got it. He said that he wanted to talk to you.

He goes, he's got it his office, so I went to his office. And he had it already, and he slipped over there, and he goes, hey, he goes, didn't we talk about this? Like, I don't know. You know, how long ago was that been? And I just smiled and I was like, yep, I said you're right.

But the 90s changed that so fast because the amount of money that got lost in Farrow to finish operations. And that was really the catalyst because it went from being not very sexy at all to, holy cow, how am I going to hold my cash together and the way you did it. And it was hard for those guys starting out as integrators too. don't get me wrong. There's a lot of them that, I mean, they, they've all got war stories about getting through the late 90s. But that totally transitioned that industry, that hard patch right there. And I mean, that's how we ended up doing what we're doing. But yeah, it's just crazy

the change in mindset that it kind of had to take to get people started down that road. And I think it's been a good, I think it's been a very positive effect. So, yeah, I mean, if you think about it, the barns that we built in 95, they're still getting the same revenue that they got in 95, actually a little better than it was back then. That's right. And so what can you build on your farm that perpetuates like that? And you know, you got to take care of it. You have to upgrade it. So we're on our older barns. We're kind of on five year contracts, which, you know, that's fine. I'm good with that. And then what we do is you say, hey, what do you want? What do you want us to do? What do you want us to do? What do we want us to change? And so we just go back to them and say,

okay, well, you want new gates, you want different feeders. We just go ahead and do it and we sign another five years, you know. And that system just continues to pay itself off. That's right. And create dividends for my family. My brother, I got to share this a little bit. My brother's a two-time Olympian, and in Greco. Oh, wow.

And pretty much put him through training camp. You know, that barn was done. Oh, yeah. It was creating some revenue for him and supported him through that. You know, he won a world silver medal in Greco at 84 kilos. Wow. And so he dedicated about, well, I mean post, I mean post college 10 years to his training. Yeah, it was pretty amazing.

That is amazing unless you're the brother because that means you probably never got to pick on him at all, did you? Well, I wrestled for Nebraska and he wrestled for Nebraska. And so for a while, that was, I got to beat on him. but then, you know, when he graduated high school and went to college that first year and I stopped training, then it was pretty much done. Yeah. Well, it's good you got your licks in early. Yeah, that way. Exactly. He was always a little bit faster than me. So there's a couple of times when my mom would be like, hey, they're making another lap around the house. Yeah. You molded him. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, it's right. You helped drive. You helped build him. Came back to bite you in the end. So sustainability. It's a huge buzzword today. And the whole, in ag is in general. But, in the pork business, what are we doing right for sustainability and what can we do to improve sustainability across the board? Well, I think that we're doing a lot of great things. I mean, when you think about the sustainability of just our pork production system, the grain that comes from the soil, right? And then we're feeding that locally to animals, right? We're producing pork with that. And then that same grain creates manure, right? And then that goes right back into the soil, which comes right back into the corn that we feed. How can that be not more sustainable than what

it is already? So, but in some of those messages, they're like, well, we want it to be more sustainable. We want something else. We want something new. So we have to continue to just work on other opportunities we have from maybe solar. Some of the technology that I'm working on with carbon credits as well. So I mean, there's, there's different ways that we need to figure out how to innovate. And there's got to be something in your operation. that you don't like to do or something that's a pain point or a pressure point in your operation that you say, why do I deal with that that way all the time? And so you just got to start asking yourself that question and say, okay, well, maybe I can change that.

What are those questions that you have? What are the questions that you have? I got one I don't like. I don't like, well, this may or may not have anything to do with what we're talking about, but I hate writing that check every year to the DNR for my manure management plan when it never changes. It's the same thing every year. And I pay somebody prepare my plan. And I do everything the same. And I write two checks every year. And I'm like, this seems, I wish I could find some way that I could just get a check from somebody for doing nothing every, you know, every year. Oh, that irritates me. Right, right. Yeah, we have the same fees in Nebraska. I don't know if ours are more or less than what Iowa is. But yeah, you have to, you have to your annual permit fee. And then we have to supply a manure management plan with every new site that we

and then that's got to be carried out. But yeah, there's always something there, you know. From my perspective, I've just been overly frustrated. We own some ground, but not a lot. We produce more manure than we can actually apply to our own ground. I've been overly frustrated with the ability to manage that efficiently and be able to harvest the money or the dollars in the fertility that we supplied to local farmers. you know and it's and especially i think it's probably more in nebraska because there's less hog barns

um one statistic i could throw out there is that northwest iowa there's 2,500 pigs per square mile Nebraska there's 200 pigs per square mile wow so it's a big difference and so the understanding of the value of manure is in Nebraska i think people do understand but at the end of the day they all leverage it right because you've got an eight foot deep pit that gets full. And so they're definitely going to wait until you really have to get rid of it. And so in the past, if I've had to pay to get rid of manure because maybe a waterline breaks, and so we don't meet our October application, we've got to do it in August or September,

and nothing's off the field. So somebody chopped, silage, earlidge or something like that. We go onto that, those farms. We've had to pay for it. Yeah. to apply it. And that is, and I know that it's more than this now, but the value of that manure at one time is like $10 a pig space, right? It's more than that now. I know it is because if you talk about fertilizer, you know, doubling or tripling in value now, it's probably $20.

And it's better. Yeah. And I mean, I can testify to that. In our area here, so most of our manure we can utilize, but not 100%. And we're lucky in the fact that we don't have to pay to get rid of it, but basically we're getting rid of it. They're paying the cost of hauling it, and I'm getting nothing other than I'm getting it gone. But you get to a point where I know what the value of that is, and I've seen the difference in the period of time from when we started with confinement and having deep pit barns to today. Our fertility levels and the quality of the crop we raise has gotten better as a direct relationship to the manure that we have. And so it's truly not a one-to-one. You really can't compare it. And I mean, yeah, I'm a little bit biased, but I think most people that know anything

about fertilizer will agree that that the value of the manure versus commercial fertilizer is not a true one to one. I think that the manure is actually a little bit better than unit to unit. So that's a, you just hate, like I would really hate to have to pay to get rid of it. But I hate, I'm like, we need to find, we need to find more dirt. The only problem is that dirt seems to be awful expensive too. Sure. Yeah, I mean, they look at the soil now as an organism, right? It's something that produces that yield, right? And so soil health is a real big, discussion topic across the board. And when you stay natural with manure, right, you improve all of your microbiology that's in the soil that creates a healthier soil, a better plant, everything.

So that going back to and looking at that organic fertilizer, which is 100% manure application, is a big deal. That pain that you felt from having to pay to get rid of manure, I have a feeling that that kind of helps spark your, spark your interest in your current endeavor. So how, how did you get, how did you get interested in and go down the path of research and trying to alleviate paying to haul manure or get rid of that, that cost? Yeah. I mean, so what, what I started doing was just looking at what I'm hauling, right? And so really quite simply, this is the thing that I don't like to do. So now we need to innovate, right? So this is something that I want to change in the industry and hopefully it affects a lot of people in the industry and really helps them an awful lot. But if you look at that liquid tanker going down the road that's hauling it, whether it's umbilical or it's a liquid tanker, you're only transporting two to four percent nutrients. The rest of it is 100 percent water. And so on the last facility we just built, which is 13,000 head, that equates to um 1500 so if we put a deep pit in we didn't put a deep pit in if you put a deep pit in it

it'd be 1500 5,000 gallon loads of manure and we can reduce that by drying that uh by separating that water uh from the dry matter to less than 200 loads side dump loads of manure that is crazy and i can do it when i want i have control so i'm i'm producing dry matter every day and then I have the opportunity to apply it when I want. So I'm not behind the eight ball in August when nobody's, and I'm looking for alfalf fields or somebody that planted wheat or something like that. Now I have the opportunity to, you know, do it when I see fit is best for me. And if it's not, if somebody says, hey, I don't want to pay for it, that's fine.

I'll just stockpile it until I find somebody that wants to buy it. And you can haul it further. Right. Because the value per load is great enough that you, can justify traveling further than you can with that liquid. So people just heard what you said and they go, yeah, that sounds great and all, but what do you do with all that water? How do you, you separate it, but what are you going to do with that water? People are thinking. Yeah, so the system that we just built is, it's a lagoon system, so we've got a lagoon on site. But what we do is we flush our pits.

It's a two foot pull plug. We flush our pits. We separate the dry matter. And then that water that comes off of that is pretty clean. We were about 98 to 99% effective in removing all the nutrients. We flush that water back into that two foot pole plug. So think of your toilet. In the big bowl you have, that big square tank above there, that's where that water goes. Okay, so now when the toilet gets used, you flush it, right? So more or less, what we're able to do is, you know, put that water back, wait 10 days, let it fill up with some more dry matter and then flush it again. whether it's a municipality or its livestock or a livestock application, our vehicle for transporting waste is water.

So if we're ever going to make the industry better change it and try and figure out a way to, a way to be more sustainable is can we clean that water and reuse it versus just applying it back to the field. And that's been my quest for about the last five years and that's when I met Paul Kahnig, who's my partner environment, and he has the solution for that. So we teamed up, and now we're working on that here in the industry. Maneuers separation isn't, that isn't a new, that's not a new thing, but there's some differences because you correct me if I'm wrong.

So I feel like they've been doing this to some degree in the dairy industry for a while, but some of the struggles as far as dairy, versus hog manure. So we tried a couple of different systems. And one of the systems that I tried was a guy invented a filter. I actually spent some time at the dump in Minneapolis, right? So at the dump in Minneapolis, they've got, they pile trash, right, in that big pit, you know, and you guys see them around these big major metro areas.

But they have a liner underneath that. So all the rainwater that comes down through that, through that trash while they're, while they're filling it, it gets, it stops. And then that water's got to go somewhere. Oh, yeah. And so the municipality has to haul that water out and then have it be treated. And so this guy put together a system that used pressure to be able to separate the water. And when I went up and looked at that system, I thought, wow, this is amazing. he's able to separate the water it's totally clear he was ran the system and showed it to me

and so um we actually brought um brought his system down to i've got a truck wash there uh in howls and so we brought it down there brought him some manure and there's so many so much organics and so much so many nutrients versus what that had it was just um it was not real dirty water right it's almost like top water off of a cattle lagoon it wasn't wasn't very bad once we put manure through that, it just plugged this system up because there's just so many components in that manure that, you know, don't filter as easily. And when you're using pressure, you have to clean the filter somehow, right? And so that system didn't work for us. And, you know, the dairy, they use centrifuges. They use belt presses. A lot of the, you know, ethanol.

They're using that type of system. But in that system, you don't. don't get everything. So you get certain nutrients down to a micron level. They pass. The big stuff you get, right? But then a lot of the little stuff doesn't come through. And that's why when we started moving to this direction, I went, was 2018, I went down to Houston. And Paul Canning had, he had been on the Trump trade mission. Okay. And so he had a group of of Chinese there that he actually signed one of the biggest deals with the Chinese government over there and on that Trump trade mission. And so they were there in Houston and it was right after the hurricane that went through and just wiped out the whole whole city. And so we went down

there and he was treating wastewater for the city of Houston. And I saw the first machine running down there and I just couldn't believe it. So just to describe it, it's almost, it's called a vacuum drum dryer. And what it does is it uses a filter that is diatination earth more less. Oh yeah. It's like my pool filter. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's it's it's pulling the water through this filter. Yeah. Instead of pushing it through. And so what it gives us the opportunity to actually cut the dry matter off the outside. And so as that as that drama turns, as it fills. Yeah. So take it off. Right. Yeah. And, and, And so we've successfully done that with this facility that we have now.

But in Houston, it was the blackest, most soil stuff that you could ever imagine. And it was coming off and the water coming out on the other side was perfectly clear. Wow. And it was so simple and easy that I was like, hey, we got to do this. We got to figure it out and get going. And so we started the project and started working on it. And, you know, it's been a great relationship so far. and we found a lot of other nifty little nuggets along the way,

which would be like carbon credits and different things that we're figuring out as we move forward with this whole process. Yeah, so from seeing that to... I shared the video with you guys, didn't I? No, we haven't seen it. Okay. Well, I don't think so. If you dub it, if you sent it to us,

we might be able to just dub it in and show people if you don't mind. That'd be kind of cool. I might have to ask him that, make sure it's not. How did you meet Paul? How'd you guys meet? How'd you guys link up and say, hey, we're going to do this thing? So, I mean, I was reaching out across the country to a lot of different people on filtering. So you took the initiative. You're like, this is a problem that I have got to get solved. I mean, there's a lot of years of work to get to where we are today. And we still have a lot to do.

But the success that we've gotten to this point is pretty amazing. But Jim Gray was a guy out of New Mexico that kind of linked me up with some of these people out of Minnesota. And I can't remember exactly how I got in touch with him. But it was just, you know, you know how the frenzy is, right? You're talking to different people across the board. And he's the one that actually introduced me to Paul. And that ended up, you know, I mean, I gave Paul a call, I think, on the phone. He's like, well, you can come down to Houston and see the system, you know, but I'm in municipalities. I don't want livestock. I don't want to mess with livestock. And so, it took a little bit of coercing.

And to show him what the scope of the problem is in the industry. How big of an impact. Yeah. And I don't want to say it's a problem because it's not. Because there's other people that would maybe read that and say, well, oh my gosh, they got to have an error problem in this wine industry. We don't. Let's call it an efficiency.

Yeah, we just want to be more efficient. We just want to get better at what we do. And so, yeah, and just started working with him on that. And when he started seeing the scope of the reach that we could have, and not just in the United States, but in other countries, because he's been to several other countries, you know, EU, China, Vietnam, a lot of other countries and has some machines in those countries running as well. So, you know, he's been involved across the board.

But it starts simple. And I think his story is, too, when he's got started, it was started with poultry manure and and you know there's there's water and poultry manure yeah you know so if you can reduce the amount of water and poultry minors you can you can haul less right so that's what it comes down to and and what he's found is that to actually extract that dry matter the way you want because it's real gummy is to actually wet it and get it super wet and then be able to run it back to yeah and go backwards but um you know we moved over to the swine industry and we're focusing on that right now because that gives us the right amount of jones.

dry matter to water ratio to be able to run this machine efficiently. So there's a few patents that we have together on that. And I'm not willing to share those with you guys. Totally understand. Totally understand. We are a nonprofit, though. This new farm is completely nonprofit. Not by intention. It just ended up that way. So are you just trialing this only on your farms right now? You're just testing things out. Get it to where you want it to me. You know, there's been a lot of people that are super intrigued and super interested in we are one of those people yeah and i've talked to people about it and you know i don't know if you guys you know the you guys know do you guys know the law of diffusion of innovation enlighten us we don't so it's a bell curve okay

and that bell curve has what you call the early adopters early adopters simple majority in the lag that's right yeah and so you know you got to classify the industry in that way and so this is a new enough thing that you've got to find the right people to team up with because there's going to be problems, there's going to be issues, the things we still need to figure out. And so we've got to get somebody on our side that is even more passionate about what we're trying to achieve in the industry. And so, you know, we try to, and we're trying to align ourselves with people like that, you know, that are interested in trying more of this and trying to figure more stuff out. Because, you know, if you go into the carbon credit side of it, I mean,

I mean, some of the numbers we talk about, some of the carbon credits that we produce because we are capturing the gas from a facility because of this, it's some astronomical stuff. And so people are like, well, that just doesn't make any sense to me, you know. I mean, you can create, you know, 15,000, you know, metric tons of carbon sequestration here. Do you know with this? Do you want to talk numbers? Are you kind of just? Yeah. Because I'm really curious about that.

I mean, that's something I'm sure. Yeah. I was just going to say, you know, how are you going to incentivize these people? Because we're all, a lot of farmers are capitalist at the end of the day. You know, we want to make it as sustainable as we possibly can. But we got to make money and it's got to impact us in a positive way somehow. So how do you, what's going to be your selling point? How is it going to cash flow?

How is it going to pencil? Because that, at the end of the day, I think a lot, a lot of farmers, that's going to be their number one thing. Because it's like what we said, you know, fertilizer isn't a huge problem. It's just how can we make it more efficient? And if it's going to cost way more to make it efficient, I'm not going to see any benefit. And why do it? Exactly.

You know, when you start out with the basic benefits, I did some journaling on this, you know, and when you start out with the basic benefits of the transport, right? I mean, that's about 120, on a 13,000 head site,

that's about 120 to $150,000 savings annually on, on that side of it. So that's a number. Yes. And then if you can get some better performance, because you have less, gassing off in your facility, it could probably add $25,000 or $30,000 to the producer.

That's actually feeding your barn. If you're a contract feeding, if they're your pigs, you probably pick up another, you know, I figured a 1% improvement in performance from that perspective. So that's, you know,

that's the main part of what I would call just the gimmies, right? Then there's some things that you've got to work on. There's some things that you have to put a little bit of time into, and that is working on the carbon credit side of it. And there's a voluntary carbon credit. And then there's what we found is the 45Q carbon credit, which was a bipartisan act Republican and Democratic support. I think Deb Fisher from Nebraska signed onto that bill as well.

That pays for through the U.S. Treasury. It's a carbon tax credit. It pays for carbon sequestration. And actually, it's not carbon. It's the other associative gases that come off of that facility. like hydrogen sulfide, nitrous oxide, a lot of those other gases that we emit into the atmosphere at our facility. And one of the things that we did, Paul has been the brains behind. I'm here talking about it, but actually he's the guy that put this all together.

So the carbon side of it, it took a lot of work to get through and figure all of that out. He found a company that we're working with out of California that worked. with a low fuel standard that California has. And it's mainly methane, you know, production and that kind of stuff. Well, a lot of them hadn't worked on an algorithm like we're putting together, like what we put together, which is when that manure comes out of the pig, like that day, that minute that it comes out of the pig, it begins to emit a gas. Sure.

And once it comes to contact with the water of your pit and it comes, in contact with the microbes that are in your pit, it speeds it up. And there's a lot of organics. There's a lot of fuel to really burn a lot of gas and have a lot of gas come off of that. That's called carbon oxygen demand. And it's a COD is what we call it as a number. So that COD number coming out of the pig. And then if you pump your barn every six or 12 months, there's a number there too, right? So at that point in time, you know, your number coming out of the pig might be 200 and when you go to pump it out of your pit that COD number might be 40 yeah because it's admitted it's that gas is escaped right exactly and so if we can recycle that water every 10 days that manure's

much fresher and some of the data and information that we put together so far it's over 250% stronger than if you would to take it six to 12 months later stronger as far as that gas but also as far as a nutrient value? Is that what you're saying? The nutrient value. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, and Paul's done a lot of research. My wife is a chemist, so she kind of worked with us on some things too. And to find research and find information from universities and everything, it's, it's really old research. People have not really spent a lot of time below the slat and said, okay, well, what do we really have and what can we change and what can we do better there? And so some of that information was, a lot of it was overly

gassed off, lagoons, that kind of stuff. So we started doing more research on that. And we found that, I mean, in our own facility that when you start, I mean, how are you going to record that in a deep-pitted barn, what the value is, you know, post-pig one day, two days, three days, four days, five days, ten days, you know, it's pretty hard to do that. But with our system, we can do that because we can flush those pits and analyze that. Yeah. And I guess I didn't, I didn't realize this. when we talked before by doing that. So if you get to the point that on a 4,000 head site, you're pulling that manure every 10 days,

the size of your system is not so overwhelming because the volume you're pulling, because you're pulling it so often, you're not talking this. Because I just think about every one of my pits sitting up there with a million gallons of manure that's got to be processed. But in reality, that's not what you have to process. you're just processing 10 days worth of manure or whatever it is you know whatever you got to do so that makes i would

assume that makes your machinery much more manageable for the volume that you've got to put through there exactly so that's not such a daunting task no it's not and uh you know i mean so we've got 40 pits in the barn that we have um set up for this and what we found is that in those in those pits were able to, so they run lengthwise, right? So you got your gang slats. They run crosswise on your building. Those pits run lengthwise. And I think people that have two foot pull plugs that just pull plugs,

they just pull it on a, like every month we just pull our plugs. All goes the same loop. And what we found is that when we pulled, so if you think pit one is where your walkway is, So if your walkways on the edge of the building, not in the middle of the building, but on the edge of the building, walkways pit one. Pit two is about where the feeder is.

Pit three is still kind of the feeder a little bit, sleeping area, four and five. So when you look at the dry matter content of pit one, two, and three, it's very low. And they don't grow very fast. So that there's not, the pig sleep there, right? If your ventilation's set up right and everything is perfect, in the building, you know, your pigs sleep

dirt where the feeder is and then they dung in a designated area along the wall, right? Yep. So in our 40 barn pit, our 40 pit barn, we only have to recycle 16 pits when

we get to the height of manure production. When the pigs are really big. So we don't have to recycle all of them. And so that really helps as well. But I don't think really anybody's really analyze that part of it maybe somebody has but it was it was kind of a paul and i we get on the phone and we talk back and forth about a lot of things and

and uh it was one thing that we just realized like we just measured pits two three and four after after a month and they haven't grown yeah yeah because there's nothing going in very little going in them yeah very little going in them so do you think hog barns could potentially be redesigned as far as the pit like if you you think you'll ever get to a time where people would be like, this is the new way, like if this comes and it's fully adopted, do you think people could build their pits differently to be more efficient? Yeah, I think so.

What's kind of crazy about this is what you have is the way we all started. So a lot of those barns that were built in the early 90s, that design came from the southeast, the Murphy-style barns, because they were doing shallow, gutter-flush buildings, and it was all going to an earthen lagoon. Right. And that came to the Midwest, and a lot of guys,

there's a few around here built concrete pits outside, and they gutter flushed it. Right. And some of them even had scrapers. Some poor bastards had scrapers, if you've ever been on a... So I managed a barn with scrapers one time,

and that is no fun. It's terrible. When I first started in the hog building business, I got in on a repair job of a barn where somebody had to get on a creeper and pull themselves up the cable to the end to get to the dolly because the pulley at the end had pulled out of the anchors.

And that's a short straw you don't want to draw. Just tell you. Definitely. But because of just that kind of headache, we just decide, and money, we're like, why build that pit outside? Let's build deep pit. And so deep pit is what won out predominantly here in Iowa.

And now then you're listening to this and you're like, well, boy, I hate to have to fill that pit in to put a two foot gutter to, you know, whatever. And it may be, but the economics,

that's the thing. It's exciting because we don't really know where that economics are going to go on the carbon side of it. But when you look at the cost of transportation, and you look at the environmental, uh, uh, demand for more efficiency on water usage and everything else,

I mean, you honestly could get to a point where exactly what you're talking about. You may have to redesign. You may end up building a newborn. You may have to get those 300 Amish that we were talking about moving barns to pick up your old shed and move it over to your new foundation. Yeah, or you just throw a match and start over again. Exactly. And, you know, I mean, what if the carbon credits are worth more than what the rent is on the facility? You think that's possible?

You think that's a possibility in the future? Yeah, I think that's possible. Yeah, it's, it's, we've, yeah, I think we can do that. So, I mean, the carbon credits are worth a lot of money. And through the U.S. Treasury, which is 100% guaranteed. Right. There's no, no other way. I mean, you're going to get paid for those carbon credits with tax credit, but then you, if you produce more than what you can claim on your taxes, they'll pay you cash on that side of it. And there's just been a bipartisan bill that supported, which Paul's been talking to me about a little bit. Um, it was the, um, it was the, build back better bill. Yes. And now it's the inflation. Yeah, reduction. Right. And which it should be illegal for any government entity to use reduction in anything they do because it never is a reduction. It's just an addition. Exactly. I digress. So Paul peruse that bill and look through it. And lo and behold, 45Q is in there. And it, it, takes the ramp up of the payment of those carbon credits from $40.

So right now they're on a scale of over the next to up to 2026. At 2026, they'll be worth about $60. They're at 40 now. It takes it straight to $180. Holy mother, Mary. So I don't know. Is there any way to equate to give people an idea what the possibility is as far as the amount of credit you would pull from a,

from a site. A feeder to finish barn. What kind of numbers are you looking at as far as credits? So before we even talk about, you know, the new bill, the bill back better bill or whatever it is, we're about $17. Pigspace on the Q45. Wow. And then we've also got the voluntary tax credit or the voluntary carbon credits, which

is an offset for another company. So if they buy that carbon credit from us. Oh, so you can double dip. Yeah. Possibly. Yes. Yes. You can double dip. Currently, what we're working on is the ability to ensure those. So right now, most of the carbon credit systems goes through the VARA board. Yep. So you have an LCA that you work with and then eventually what they do is they put that plan or that program together for you. Like our algorithm, we built. that algorithm to calculate what we create for carbon credits. Then you submit that to the VARA board. And then after that, that carbon credit is official.

And then you're able to sell that or trade it. What we're working on right now is with an insurance company to be able to wrap that in an insurance policy. So we can bypass the VARABORD. And we believe those carbon credits can be traded for more than what they're listed at because of that. Because they're, and the one thing about our system is that it's calculated. So it's, it's, um, it's based off of a specific number that is red.

So like when you look at the cropping procedures, like when you're looking at, um, sequestration through, uh, cover crops. Yep. Or cropping practices. It's, it's a little bit of a fluff, right? Possibly. It's kind of an unknown. And a lot of these companies that are out there, buying carbon credits don't want to have to say, hey, we bought all these carbon credits,

but they're not worth anything, right? And so when you've got something that's actually calculated, something that's verified, and then something that's qualified, they're worth a lot more because of that. Yeah. The certainty. They're paying for the certainty, and that certainty is worth paying for. That's exactly right. And it's kind of rare because there's nothing really out there like it, like we were saying. When you said $17 of pig space, is that additionally on top of, like, I'm just trying to understand that a little bit more. I think he's saying the carbon credits are worth about $17 a pig space. Which you equal it out on one site.

Yes. Okay. Yes. Yeah. And so if you can. Have your contract with whoever you feed for or if you feed your own pigs and then you do the carbon credits. That's on top of it.

Well, that's on top of that, the water savings, not having to haul it. The quality of the fertilizer. If you're listening to that and that doesn't turn your head a little bit, You're crazy because that's real nice. If Duke was here, his ears would be pointing straight up. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, I know that you're pressed for time. Where do you go from here? What's your guys' goals as we go forward? So we're continuing to develop and build our business and develop our system that we're using to dry manure. And so, I mean, we're working on a few projects right now to grow and expand. And we really haven't gone fully public. yet, but eventually we'll probably be moving into maybe some retrofits on some facilities. Right now we're concentrating on brand new facilities and building our own.

And then once we get a little bit further down the road, then we're going to, you know, be focusing on trying to affect the whole industry. Paul has been a great partner because, you know, his idea behind this is to not, sometimes when a technology is created, what they do is they calculate the gain for a producer, right? And so we want that paid up front for this technology. Paul wants to get everybody on this, like, let's just take the pork industry and let's get everybody on the same side of the table and let's take on the rest of the world. And so, you know, we're trying to figure out a way to enter the market that's affordable to producers. And then maybe we split the upside on what that,

what's there, you know, so that's been our business philosophy and I think we're going to carry on with that going forward and and um i think that's a great way to help that's a great way to expand the number of people that are willing to get on the bus because that goes a long ways with there's just a certain amount of people that are going to be reluctant to move that way but when they when they feel that you've got skin in the game of their success they're a lot more willing to get on the bus exactly we're a bunch of cynical bastards for some reason and we're all like, I don't know whether I trust that guy or not. It also helps that you have experience in the industry.

You can relate to a lot of these producers, you know, so that's something that's also huge, didn't have. I was going to ask, you know, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received business-wise, personally-wise? What's the best piece of advice? Oh, boy, that's a good question. One good piece of advice anyway. Well, you know, I think I really want to say this.

I think it's about patience. And, you know, I believe in God. And one of those things that, you know, put people around you that share your beliefs, that share your passion, and really, you can accomplish anything. And that's what I was actually was going to make that statement. I, you know, I need to find somebody that is that is pained just like Paul and I, as much as we are about the manure and the water that's in our system and, you know, align with people like that. that share that that same drive, you know. And, but otherwise, you know, I mean, I've got partners that are faith-based and partners that are great people.

And my brother made a statement the other night, you know, you just don't get anywhere if you don't have great people around you. And that just really makes a big difference. It's 100% true. So what drive, what drives you? Because you got, you got, you have these, this hog operation. you got a feed mill. We just barely...

We didn't even talk about the feed. We didn't even scratch the surface on that. You got these feed mill. You got this hog operation. And then you're doing this too. What drives you to do it all? Why do you want to do it? Is it fun?

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and they ran a business together. So I don't know, there's a lot of operations out there. I know there's fine operations where the wife handles the checkbook, right? And that was the same thing in our first. family. And I remember, you know, we, we process our own pigs and we all be sitting around in the 80s sitting around the supper table eating sausage and fried potatoes, right? And, and mom and dad yelling at each other about what business decision they made that day. And so I don't

think, I think I was raised that I am just always business driven, you know, and I'm always looking for, you know, what's the next conquest or what's the next opportunity that I can make things better or for myself, for my family, for people around me. So I'm, I'm just driven by, you know, trying to improve constantly. I love it. We have a, yeah, we have a, we have a, we have a little bit we do about, you know, our kitchen table. My, my wife is kind of like the glue that holds all of us together because Sawyer's brother is just as driven as he is, and he does the real estate side. They're, they're partners on that side of it. But when we all get together, like we can't ever have a...

It's business. Yeah, I mean... We love talking about business. Every meal starts, but when the first car pulls in the driveway, my wife looks at me and she goes, now tonight, we're not talking about Whistler Enterprises, or we're not talking about this will do. We're just going to have a family dinner. Yeah.

And it's like, you can just go about five minutes and then somebody's going to say something, and then it's like, did you read this or did you see this? and then it just goes. And then after about 15 minutes of that, just brainstorming, I look over and my wife's just like, shake her it. But it's just who you are. Right. That's just who you are.

And I think it's great. It's awesome. You know, and the other thing is I watched my dad try and fail so many times. Yes. Right. You can't be hard on yourself when you don't succeed because that's just a good lesson. Yep.

You know, just look at it that way. And so that's where. you get brave enough to reach for something great. And when, and I talked to Paul about this the other day, I said, when is the last try? You know, when is that point where you're going to say this is the last try? And it's just doesn't, people that don't have that, that in their vocabulary are probably on the Iowa wrestling team, right? Or Nebraska wrestling team or play football or whatever.

I mean, like, how many times have you not made that block, but doggone it, eventually you got it. And it's the grit intensity drive. No, that's so true. 100%. And I think a lot of people just, they are afraid to lose. They're afraid to fail. And if they fail once,

they think they're a failure. Right. And that's unfortunate. It is. Because if you can learn not to be, not look at failures that way. Well, you're done before you ever start. Because you're going to fail.

I mean, it's the ultimate learning experience. That's what you've got to look at it. Yeah. That's all it is. Okay. Well, one last question for where we wrap it up. You got any time for fun.

You can do all this stuff, but do you do anything that you have fun? You got a family. What do you guys do? What do you like to do for fun? You know, so my father-in-law has a beach house out in Delaware, so we like going there in the summer, spending some time there on the beach. We spend a lot of time with family.

You know, so all of our vacations that we take are with family. I like to work out and exercise, so I do that. And then I've got five acres. I just moved. So I had 35 acres of grass and had cows and my wife had chickens and bees and I repainted a couple of tractors. I repainted and redid a 4440. And then I've got a 4020 as well. And so I'm always like to weld and do different things like that.

So yeah, I just tinker, you know. And but now we move to five acres because this business is I'm traveling more and stuff. So my brother has a place out in. Buena Vista, Colorado. So we like going out there. You know, and my daughter is a landscape architect in Denver. So we're spending more time out there now. So she's actually getting married here September 10th. So I'm pretty excited about that. It's awesome. It's where the family's at. Yeah. Between moving this year, I never ever thought of a move again, but we did. And I tell you what, that was crazy. And

then now planning a wedding too. So it's been a pretty busy year. It's a lot. That's a pretty big, that's a big spoonful. I think my wife is way tougher than I am because she has to be because she's got so much to do because I'm preoccupied with so many of the things. She's, she's a rock for me. She really helps me. Well, that's awesome. Well, we sure appreciate you making time. It's been a pleasure.

And it was awesome. I said in the intro that when we go to deals like NPC, I always hate, I shouldn't say a hate, but so much of those types of experiences are small. talk with people about how you doing oh good how about you oh real good and you don't ever get very many good meat and potatoes but i was so thankful that you sat down at our table that night looked at us and saw pity on us and i better come talk to these sorry guys exactly that was such a great conversation and i love situations like that i love to be able to get real with people and talk about uh exciting stuff and what they're doing and so we really appreciate it i'm glad you made I'm glad you guys made it.

So if you guys want to go check out what Russ is up to, go follow him on LinkedIn, go check out his website, see what he's all up to. And we really appreciate you guys watching. Thanks for us again for coming. And we'll see you guys back here again for another Barn Talk episode next Friday.