Barn Talk - The Grind and Glory of Modern Farming: Lessons and Inspirations

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

Welcome to Barn Talk! In today's episode, we dive into the journey of our farming operation from having our own sows to custom finishing pigs, emphasizing the importance of creative thinking and diversification in agriculture. We'll explore the benefits of direct-to-consumer sales, cover crops, and the modern advancements in farming technology. Reflecting on historical market crashes and evolving consumer trust, we discuss the challenges and potential for young farmers today. Use code BARNTALK for 10% OFF your next order https://farmergrade.com 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    00:00 Support our direct-to-consumer meat business sale. 08:43 Initially skeptical, TikTok became a viral success. 14:35 Regenerative agriculture podcast with insightful agronomist John Kempf. 00:00 Planning 4th of July bash with friends. 09:20 Store brand seasonings have more oils. 12:39 Farmers promote products globally, boosting economic demand. 18:36 Boeing's performance lacking, SpaceX excelling in space. 24:24 Trump showed more composure in latest debate. 28:20 Disregard for climate change as a political tactic. 31:48 Debate outcome, wife's call, emotional reaction. 37:20 Reflecting on choices and hypothetical decisions made. 43:44 Start YouTube sooner, wishing I started earlier. 48:58 Rural upbringing shaped versatile and skilled generation. 54:37 Passion for agriculture? Pursue it wholeheartedly. 01:02:53 Farmers prioritize soil health, considering cover crops. 01:05:23 Fertilizer applied when side-dressing enhances plant growth. 01:12:04 Ignore criticism and take it in stride. 01:15:10 Key to success: strong brand and preparation. 01:22:29 Legacy, integrity, community, not about money. 01:28:57 Endure boring tasks to build a brand. 01:34:23 Struggles in pursuing bigger picture goals. 01:39:47 Celebrate Independence Day with fireworks and flags. ------------------------------- ***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 ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Stay is going to be a Barn Talk Q&A episode. We got a list of questions that came in from one source, one guy. He just gave us the whole mother load. So we're going to dive into that treasure chest of questions and answer them best that we can.

and it's going to be all farming today, mostly all farming with the questions that we got. But before we get into it, you guys know the drill. If you've been a fan of the show for a while, you know that we do this thing or we ask for this thing. If you guys get any value from the show, all we ask is you shared out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more the show grows. We think word of mouth is the best way to grow a podcast, so we appreciate all that do that for us.

It really has gone a long way, and that's how we're able to do what we do. uh another thing you can do to help out barn talk and what we do here on the show is leave our review on spotify or apple the more that you guys do that the more the more our show is credible uh in the podcast landscape and it gives our show tremendous upside to recruit more guests to come on the show so we appreciate all that do that of leave and review on spotify or apple also you can leave you can go to youtube and subscribe to our youtube channel barn talk if you're just a straight audio listener. We do do have a video podcast on YouTube and Spotify. So check that out. Last thing you can do to support BarnTalk and what we do on our farm here is you can support

our direct-to-consumer meat business, Farmergrade, Farmergrade.com. Right now we are running a 20% off site-wide sale in honor of the 4th of July. But we also are offering free meat items when you spend $200 or more, free chicken drumsticks, free burger patties, and we're offering. free shipping if you go over $300. So a lot at stake there, a lot of stuff going on at farmergrade.com, but that's the last thing you can do to support the show. You know, really, when you boil it all down, there's nothing more patriotic than grilling meat or smoking meat, basically consuming meat on the 4th of July.

Yeah, it's a necessity for me. I mean, it's pretty much un-American if there's not meat on the grill. George Washington might have had wooden teeth, but he could gnaw down some finely cooked brisket or pork butt that's stuff yeah yeah he could gum that just about yeah cook it right yeah uh it's gonna be like it's gonna be like me to pelusa uh 4th of july week what are you having for your 4th of july yeah so i'm gonna have a little 4th of july bash see all my good buddies that i haven't seen in a while and i thought you know there's gonna be a fair amount of people there we should probably get some shareable cuts of meat that are you know doesn't take as much time because i love being on the grill it's

it is something that i love to do but when you having a party you can stay on that grill for like hour hour and a half two hours if you're the main grill guy so i thought it'd be a good idea to smoke a pork butt smoke a brisket have some pulled pork and brisket and then maybe do a little bit of grilling with some burgers or hot dogs but other than that just share those have to go have that ready to go share those cuts put it in a pan and just let everybody go to town so that's what i'm cooking up that's awesome what are you going to do uh we're going over to some friends of ours i think i'm gonna do i don't i don't know what they're having uh i'm sure that they'll have some kind of some kind of meat um but i think i'm going to do a batch of hot wings oh i've been dying to try i love wings

the wings from Farmer Grade, and I haven't had them yet. I actually haven't had, I don't think I've had any chicken from Farmer Grade yet. You keep telling me how good it is, but I just, I want to smoke a couple of whole chickens. I just haven't gotten around doing it, but I'm going to do hot wings, so I'm going to do a couple packs, and tomorrow, or tonight, late tonight I'm putting on a bone-in ham. Farmer grain ham is not available yet, but it'll be coming in the fall. You know, I got to taste of this stuff, make sure it's going to be all right. So we're going to have hams available for, you know, Thanksgiving Christmas.

But anyway, I got a couple bone in, and I'm going to smoke that ham. And then you basically do it like a pork butt. And then when you wrap it, you put like a glaze on it. It's supposed to be spectacular. Yeah, where did you get that idea? TikTok. TikTok. So it's like pulled ham pretty much?

Yeah. You do it like a pork butt. and then you pull it, it's supposed to just fall apart just like a pork butt. So you're not as big a fan of ham. But I want you to try this. I'm not. I love ham balls. Ham balls are really good.

Your hand balls, Torx ball recipe is good. But ham's okay to me. It's not, doesn't knock my socks off. I'll take it over turkey any day of the week when you talk about Thanksgiving because turkey is just not that good in my opinion. But, yeah, I like a good handball, but ham's okay. ham ball recipe you'll be coming or ground ham we'll have ground ham too coming into winter and that ham ball recipe is good when you spend as much time playing with your balls as i have you can figure out what works so on the hot wings i have one question on the hot wings are you going to do like buffalo wings

are you going to do like a dry rub wing and then have sauce on the side so i'll season them uh with hot barbecue seasoning is that what you mean yep probably um and so i will smoke them I don't know. If I'm not, if I have room and I'm not doing something else, I'll smoke them on the trigger, but otherwise I'll put them in. I've got an electric smoker, and it's not good for big stuff, but it works really good for hot wings because it's got like five racks in them. And I've done that a couple of times. So probably just do them with a rub and then crust them up and then finish them in whatever sauce because some people like buffalo, some people like chili, uh, sweet chili sauce, whatever. Some people like them plain. These may be so damn good. I'm kind of a plain guy.

I mean, you got to have a really good sauce, but I don't know. Dry rib wings are like the shit. Lemon pepper wings, dry rub. Yep. Fire. Fire. You know what's a hot take in mine? What? About just something that I've thought about, but never have said. I might have said it to you once. you know everybody in their dog it makes these seasonings now everybody makes seasoning but nobody ever questions the quality of seasonings you know you just buy seasoning and put it on anything and you're like oh yeah this is black pepper and you just take its word for it that it's black pepper everybody speculates on where food comes from but nobody fucking asks about seasonings yeah do you think the seasonings are actually

all the seasonings out there are really, really that good quality. You can easily tell, and I'll tell you the simple, the simple way you know is, just look at going and buying black pepper. Okay, so, like I'll use, I'll use killer hogs, brisket seasoning, which is basically just really coarse salt pepper. But I use a lot of pepper in anything that I do. and you go buy a shaker of pepper and you put that shit through a sifter. I don't know.

I feel like a third of that bottle is just ground so thin that it's like powder. And you get some people's that they all sift, it's pre-sifted, so it's all like good quality. So there's just in that, just in pepper, there's total different specs and total different qualities of, the product. Okay, well, think about when you go and you get a bottle of rub. For one, you know, everything has an exploration date on it. This, you don't have any idea how you go buy rub at a hardware store. Who the hell knows how long it's been there? I've thought the same thing. Nobody, and that's the thing, nobody questions seasoning. Like, nobody questions anything about it. And I've just, when I've been cooking, I've just been thinking, like, man, I hope that we don't,

get in the future and we realize that, oh, this seasoning's not actually as good quality as what they said it was. And it's actually doing harm to you, not not doing good by you, you know, because seasonings, they've been around for the test of time. You know, they're good, right? People have been using them forever. But I don't think has that, has that got diluted as time's gone on? And it's gotten worse and the, and the quality of making seasonings gotten worse because of that. Well, I'll tell you, if you look at, like, if you look at, I'd say big brand, like store brand or like national brands, and I'm not going to name names, but a lot of times when you look at their seasonings, their seasoning is going to have a lot more like oils put in them and preservatives put in them

and stuff like that to extend that shelf life. And then the other thing is when you buy like, there's a lot of people that sell rubs and they have a slick label, but they don't actually make it. Oh, yeah. There's, I guarantee you there's a guy out there somewhere that has a hell of a big factory. And they put all this shit together and they're just slapping anybody's name on. Well, think about it. Think about all these barbecue enthusiasts nowadays. They all got the damn seasonings.

You can't tell me that they're the ones making those seasonings. They're third-partying it out to whoever. And some of those people that are doing it, their third party, I'm sure they're doing an excellent job. So I guess my concern isn't about, like, is there ingredients in it that's bad for you if you're buying, like those guys kind of stuff? My thing is more about the quality of the ingredient

as far as if you want something that's coarse, like pepper, are you actually getting that, or are you getting a bunch of grind? And then the other thing is, how old is that shit? some of it, who knows how long it's set around. It's like, I just think about it, like I think about gum. Nobody questioned chewing gum forever, you know, oh, it's just gum.

It's not going to do any damage to you. And then people now, like, just recently in the last five years, ten years, I feel like people are starting to be like, you know, this gum actually isn't very fucking good for you at all, the shit that's in it, you know? So it's just like, I don't know, maybe seasoning's the same way. We just don't even know it yet. Yeah. But anyway, that was just kind of a hot take.

of mine. It's like putting Mountain Dew on your fruity pebble. I will say I do love the best barbecue guy out there. I love this seasoning. How to Barbecue Right Malcolm Reed. He's got damn good seasoning. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'd love to get him on, I'd love

to get him on the podcast because really, everything that I know about barbecuing that isn't self-learned from trial and error, I learn from that guy. Yeah, he's the best. The first good pork butt I ever did was I watched one of his earliest videos. Like he's doing it in his kitchen.

It's nothing special. This is before he like blew up because now he's got like he's got everything. But you know when he first started and I mean I learned I still watch his stuff. Oh I do too. If you don't know if you don't know how to cook something like I have never grilled a porterhouse before. Malcolm Marine had a barbecue right porterhouse. Got it. Yep.

Three minutes. suicide, medium, perfect. I like my medium. And if you go by the adage that you should never trust a skinny cook, he's your guy. That boy, that boy there knows barbecue, and he doesn't just make it, he partakes of it. So you can trust him when he tells you it's good. He knows. Yeah. So anyway. We may be farmers in Washington County, but we are constantly at work around the world, building demand for our products with our investment in the Iowa corn checkoff. The Iowa Corn Promotion Board partners with both the U.S. Meat Export Federation and the U.S. Grains Council, working to expand corn and red meat exports in over 80 countries worldwide,

even when we are busy loading pigs out or planting our corn crop. The U.S. Grains Council promotes the value of trade and continuous export expansion for corn in all forms while providing customer education on grain supply and reliability, enabling farmers to have Competitiveness on commodities and driving economic demand for our state's number one product, agriculture. Over the past 10 years, investment in the U.S. Meat Export Federation returned an average of $397 per head of beef cattle and $64 per head of pork. And by adding value to every kernel of corn through pork and beef production here in Iowa and then exporting to the global table, corn farmers see a $202 per Iowa corn acre return on investment for these efforts. For more information on how corn checkoff dollars are at work while you are to visit iwacorn.org.

Now let's get back to the episode. Yeah, okay, well, that's all I got on the barbecue. You got a hot press market update to let people know. I have the market update and it's not very hot. It's piss poor because the futures market got hammered on Thursday and Friday. The USDA report came out and they found. found, oh, they found about another million acres of corn. It was like 91.2 versus 90.4 or whatever, and a little bit more beans too. So corn was down 17 cents on the board at one point. I think it closed

down 14 or 15, but the cash bids, the cash bid closed at 397 on the board, and locally, a pity bid, the hog farmers are giving pity bids 4.03 just to keep it above $3. And ADM had a 433 bid. So it's, yeah, it's not looking too good. And my crop insurance guy sent me two charts. And they were showing the corn and bean price history, 2014, I think 2014 maybe, and this year. And so far, far they're following just perfectly and the price is, price is headed to the shitter till we get a, uh, in July, USDA could review, uh, could revise its numbers. And let's face this, there's probably a lot of replant out there. There's a fair amount of corn and beans that got flooded out, but whether that amounts to anything or not, I don't know. But right now,

it's, it's pretty shitty. Uh, beans, 1150, uh, river, the meeker side, uh, 1146, Quincy 1175, bean meal, $360 a ton, wheat 553, cattle $193 for fat cattle, feeder cattle, 259. I figured out the milk price doesn't change a whole lot, 2143, oil, 8146, that's the July contract, Bitcoin's back to about 60,000. We haven't broke out. We got up there to that 70,000, haven't been able to sustain it. Ethereum. 3,400, Tesla, $197, and I'll just throw this in here because it's a good spot. Any of you that follow what goes on in the whole space world at all may have seen this. Boeing, when we decided we were going to take astronauts back to the space station

and not have to hitchhike off the Russians, they put it out for bids, and the two companies that got it were SpaceX and Boeing. Boeing had the Starliner, SpaceX had the crew dragon. This is like five years ago, I think. SpaceX got the crew dragon up, got it going, launched it off a Falcon 9. I don't know how many flights it's flown, but it's been hauling all the astronauts back and forth have been going on a crew dragon. Boeing's tried to launch the Starliner like, I don't know, three or four times,

and it got scrubbed every time. and then they sent it unmanned to the space station. They had problems with it, but they got it there, got it back. And somehow, I don't know how they did this, because I would have thought that they would have had to have launched it again flawlessly before they put any astronauts in it. But they didn't. They put two astronauts in it and sent them to the space station,

and they got up there, and they lost some of the thrusters. They weren't working right. It's got helium leaks. It's got electrical problems. and they got it docked, but now they're not sure whether or not they can rely on it to get them back

because if the thrusters don't fire right when you are entering the atmosphere, basically, if you hit the atmosphere and you are too severe of an angle, even with the heat shields, the sun bitch will burn up. And that's no point. know. If you are at too shallow of an angle, you will literally bounce off the atmosphere because

you're not going hard enough, straight enough to get, because it's a blunt object on the bottom, basically, you'll bounce off the atmosphere and then who knows what the hell will happen after that. So it's got to be, it's got to be spot on. Well, they're not, they're kind of, they don't know. now then they think they are going to be able to get it back, I would not want to be those two astronauts. I pray for them because you're putting your face in faith in Boeing, and they're not exactly crushing it right now. And I think that everybody at SpaceX is probably, they're not saying anything, but they're probably just sitting there going, yeah, I think we kind of got this in the bag because their performance been flawless and they just got a contract 853 billion dollars i think

to build a apparatus to push the international space station out of orbit and have it go into the atmosphere slow enough that it burns up and doesn't uh crash on land or whatever basically control the burn because the space station's getting old and in 2030 they're going to get rid of it and SpaceX got that contract and if any of you have not watched Starship the last launch of it that is that is impressive and the next time they launch it they're going to try to catch the rocket on the pad Sawyer's getting a little glazed over because he's not he's not all that interested in I'm a little geeky in the fact that I think it's just bad ass. I think you just got a, you got a, you were talking about Tesla and now you're talking about SpaceX.

And for people that do know why, it's because Elon owns both those businesses. So that's why he went from Tesla to SpaceX. Yeah, that was the, that was the bridge. I just wanted to throw that in there because there's probably some people go like, Jesus, Tork, where the fuck are you going with this? Well, you know what? Here's the deal on the Tesla side. There's nothing that exciting.

The stock price just has not performed the way that I think it should have. I don't think investors, I don't think they understand what the potential there is. Actually, I take that back. I think the investors do. I think the institutions don't. But Elon owns SpaceX, and they're kind of intertwined in the fact that there's a lot of technology that a lot of really hard engineering, like serious engineering, hardcore shit that there's some, I mean, smartest people in the world are doing on the SpaceX side, and that all

trickles back to Tesla and it's a fucking juggernaut. That's all there is to it. Anyway, a good week for Tesla, bad week for Boeing. I think at the end of the day, you're probably going to be, I think good week for SpaceX, bad week for Boeing. Yes, correct. I think at the end of day, Boeing is just about done playing in the space side of things. No matter how much, how much money they spend on the government, I don't think the wheels can be greased enough to have them really recover from this because they kind of look like buffoons. Anyway, that is that. The only other bit I got is gold is 2336, silver's 2655, and beyond meat close is $6.71. So it just... Have they gone up or down? Nope, down. Last time we, last time we ran it, it was seven something, and six, the $6

dollar bid that I just gave you is actually a little bit of bounce off of where it was a week ago. so that was that was a hot that was a cold long market update because you said they weren't very hot markets there's nothing good to talk about in the commodity market really it's a weather game now and the shorts the funds are just short and the living shit out of the market i mean the corn market they're just pounded in the corn market and i don't know i don't know what's going to change it's going to have to be weather. And we've got to wait, basically wait until the 12th of July for USDA to go, well, maybe there's not quite as many acres of what we thought.

Or maybe this yield's not going to be. So we got some good rain yesterday. Now we got some good Sutton Shine. So we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about ag and farming anyway. So I'll say a little more about it when we get to it. Yeah. Okay. Well, we're going to start it off a little political here.

So for you that love our political talk, it's time for you to click off. if you hate it. So it's only one question. So maybe you can gut it out. So maybe you can just gut it out if you don't like our political talk. Or, hey, just skip this fucking part. You know, hey, just double tap on your fast forward button and you'll be fine. But Jeff asks us, fresh off the debate, how did you think it went for Biden and Trump?

How was the debate? What are our thoughts? When I was a bus driver in Scranton, we're driving them or taking the kids to the coal mine back there. immigration. Ice cream. Abortion? Who? Yeah. Yeah. I thought, I mean, really there wasn't like, it was kind of what, it was to be expected, kind of what happened. I mean, those two bicker-like children at some points inside that debate. Honestly, I think it hurt Biden more than it hurt Trump. I really don't think Trump said anything that I didn't expect him to say. And I don't, I don't, I don't, there's nothing he said that I was like, oh, yeah, he captured more votes because of what he said. So I don't really think he gained much. Where he might have gained is just how bad Biden looked because Biden was stung one over his words. He wasn't looking great. He was looking old. Um, he got off track in a few instances. Uh, and, you know, it, it just wasn't a great look for Joe Biden. And that probably was what helped Trump. But ultimately what Trump said. in the debate. I don't think he didn't say anything that, like,

he didn't say anything that was, like, bringing in a bunch of votes from people. I will say something I did like better from other debates between these two, especially on Trump's side. I feel like he was a little more disciplined and not just going after Biden every chance he got. He was a little more methodical with it

and let him speak. Because, like, I remember watching the second debate of 2020 and it was like oh my gosh those two were talking over each other they were bickering the whole time and it was just like trump lay the fuck off dude like chill out a little bit and this time i felt like he had a little more composure i think the funniest thing that happened was they started giving each other shit about their golf game that was pretty hilarious also although it was kind of stupid and childish. But I think my biggest takeaway that we're kind of seen it in the most interesting thing about

it is the aftermath of the debate of now all these left-wing media outlets are saying, oh, Biden doesn't look like he's fit. We should be worried. We should have him step down. Somebody else should take his place. Hmm. Very, very fucking interesting. So now they're all changing their tune.

like seven days ago they were just talking about how most of Joe Biden's videos of him shit in his pants or walking on stage and not knowing where he was are deep fakes AI generated videos. Those are all deep fakes. They just told us that a week ago. They literally came out with a story saying that that is all bullshit. That's deep fake. That's AI generated. Biden is good. He's he's competent. He's in a good place mentally. And now they do this debate with Trump when all Americans were kind of like, isn't that kind of taking a lamb to slaughter? I mean, he's obviously not going to do well against Trump, which he really didn't. And now the whole tune has changed. It's almost like they set it up to do that debate. They knew what the outcome was going to be.

And now this is their reason to say Biden should step down and they should replace them. And I think this has been their plan the whole time. You're not fucking fooling anyone with this bullshit. You just, this is why it's important to pay attention to what comes out of these people's faces, because, you know, they tell us one thing and they think they're tricking us. Oh, yeah, he's good, he's good. All right, let's do this debate. Oh, shit, we should have him step down now. I think.

When, when he's been acting like that for the last four years. Yeah. Don't tell me that you think now he should step down because he did a debate with Trump and he didn't perform well. dude he hasn't been performing well for four years so you're saying now we should have him step down what about the last fucking three and a half years it hasn't been a full four years yet but the last three and a half years you had every opportunity to say okay it might be a good time for Biden to step down but you don't you you said nothing and lied to us and made us feel like we were crazy thinking that oh he's competent he's doing a great job he's perfect mentally bullshit

it's bullshit now they're changing their tune yeah to your point about Trump, I think Trump's best line in the whole debate was when, and it was like, what, 14 minutes in, Biden finished up a question about the border and it was completely incoherent. And Trump, to his credit, just goes, I don't really know what he said there. I don't think he knows what he knows what he said. I thought that was great. Trump, he couldn't resist just rehashing. Like, there were a lot of questions that he didn't answer, that he should have answered. Yeah. Stuff that he didn't care about.

Like, he totally didn't answer climate change. Child care. Yeah, child care and climate change were the two that I saw, which everybody knows that he doesn't give a shit about climate change. And he's not going to gain any votes from that. And instead of just going back and rehashing. whatever he was going after Joe on, he should have just said, he should have just said, well, you got this guy who is a climate apologist, and, you know, all the policies that he's

doing is just killing our economy. I don't agree with it. And if I'm present, I'm going to roll this all back, and I think it's basically a load of crap. And that would a, you know, all the people on left, blood would have shot out of their eyes, but they're not voting for him anyway. He should have just been honest and said that's what it is. That thing about child care, though, this is something that I wish every politician, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, would just, somebody just needs to tell them to fucking stop this. They were talking about child care and they were talking about minorities. They were talking about, they specifically were talking about black minorities, which I think they're whole that like that whole line of question I thought that was racist as shit

because basically they're talking about people that low income people which are not just black people I mean there's white people that are low income there's Hispanics that are low income um I just thought that was kind of weird the way they just asked that whole there was a whole chunk of the question that were about um black people and I'm like if I was a if I was a if I was a a black person, I'd be kind of like, you know, we're not the only, we're not the only people that are having trouble here. I thought that was kind of bullshit. But they were talking about first time home buyers and then the child care question. And Biden, both of those, he talked about how they have a tax credit, a fucking tax credit. And I said to, I said to Trish, I'm like,

all that is is a fucking soundbite because here's the thing. If you're a, if you're a, if you're a, If you're a family and you have two or three kids, whatever, and you're both working and you're having to pay child care, chances are you're not paying any fucking taxes anyway because your expenses raising a family or is eating up all your income. A fucking tax credit doesn't do shit for you. And if you're a first time home buyer and you're trying to buy a house, you ain't making any money either. So a $10,000 tax credit, that doesn't fucking do anything. anything. I'm like, they all talk, and they, and politicians love that shit. They use it for everything. Oh, we're going to do a tax credit for this, a tax credit for that. You are giving tax credit to

people that have no fucking income, no taxable income. They don't pay any taxes anyway. So what, you're, you're doing a disservice and all, you're literally doing that. You're not fixing any problem. No, you're not fixing shit. You're just out there pandering going, oh, we're going to give you a tax credit. And I'm not saying, That is a Democrat and Republicans. I see them both doing it. That's a fucking politician thing, and that's bullshit. But anyway, at the end of the day, I don't think I can say any better than you. You know, when this all started and you saw Biden going downhill, people are like, well, they're going to fucking replace him. What's going to happen is they're going to replace him? And people like,

oh, no, you know, that's conspiracy. As soon as that debate was over, I had actually gone to bed. I was just laying down. And Trisha called me. My wife called me and said, you got to see this. And I came back. And on CNN, like, I didn't know they could fit that many people around the table. There was like 13 people around that table. And Van Jones.

Ryan, almost tearing up. I love Joe Biden, Joe Biden. I love him. He's compassionate, blah, blah, blah, blah. And basically, every one of them were. Sacrificial lamb. And they were, and the other. other thing is they were saying, oh, you know, I don't think that we can, I don't think this will happen

because Joe is so stubborn. Fucking Joe doesn't know where he is. If his wife and whoever the hell, the chief, it's the chief of staff at the White House. That's your president. The chief of staff is the president. He's the one that's calling the shots. He's getting a call from Obama or whoever, but I'd be willing to bet you, Obama is advising pretty hard. And that guy, he says Joe, he probably doesn't even do that. He probably tells Joe's wife. And then Joe's wife tells Joe, this is what we're going to do. And there'll be ice cream after and he's fucking happy.

So for them to say, oh, he's so stubborn. If she says, Joe, I think you should drop out and we should just go, you know, get some ice cream. Joe will be like, all right, I'll head to the car because he don't give a fuck. Mm-hmm. So. Yeah, something else I thought about during the, they all tackle. Joe's thing is tax are rich. We got to tax the

billionaires. If the billionaires pay their fair share, man, we can lower taxes on everybody else. And I just, every time this gets brought up every fucking time, the billionaires aren't going to, they're going to work the tax code.

Yes. They are going to do everything that they can to not pay fucking taxes, especially if you raise the taxes even more on them. And you tax it, guess what? That income will go,

out of the country. Yeah. It's so, it fucking drives me nuts this idea that we're going to tax the fucking rich. The rich are rich for a reason. Some of them inherited it, but some of them,

they self-earned it. They know the tax code. They know what they, they know how to work the system. Yeah, they'll go, all right, if you're going to fucking do this, we're going to move our corporation

to wherever, what other country, and their taxes are lower than here, so fuck it, we won't do that. Or I'm going to have a bunch of write-offs or whatever that they're going to work the tax code they're not going to pay the taxes that you think that the tax rate that you hope that they will pay and then everybody else is just going to pay

a minimum of tax a lower tax it's not going to happen and half the people in this country don't pay any tax anyway yeah no tax when he says you know we're going to lower your taxes you can't lower your taxes if you're paying well actually can if you're because you start giving out money that's basically what we're doing is we got half the people in this country pay no tax plus they're getting money that we print out of thin air uh i think we should move on because otherwise we'll just we'll look down and we'll be 45 minutes yeah yeah i i agree anyway anyway yeah i just think um i'll just say a last thing i just think it's bullshit that now after the debate they are saying the left is saying we should we should maybe replace joe

Biden when he's been acting like this for three and a half years and nobody's been saying shit. Actually, they've been saying the opposite of he's incompetent. They've been saying he's competent. They've been saying he's doing a great job. They've been saying he's a mental giant. He's a mental giant. He's been doing good. And all the videos that we see of him fucking up and looking like an idiot are deep fakes.

It's what they told us. Now they're not saying that. Now they're saying the opposite. It's a play. They're running the play. the quarterback has got the ball and they are throwing it or they are handing it off

whatever the play is I don't know but I believe that they are running a play and they're trying to make us they're trying to make us look like we don't know it's for suckers. Yeah playing us for fucking suckers playing us for suckers I ain't fucking buying it okay so now let's get

into the the farmman so we got this is for all right all for all you people that hate politics this is the point where you want to get. Yep. Tune back in. Tune back in. Come back in. Take your muffs out. Get back on or take them off.

Get back on here. So we got this question and we were trying to pick and choose what we were going to put in. And I told Sawyer, I'm like, that's a whole episode right there. He might as well just run with that list. Yeah. So this guy, he is a non-farmor. He's from West Virginia. His name is Benny.

He's a diesel mechanic. And he said he doesn't know shit. about farming, but he wants to learn. So I thought, you know what? Let's, let's serve it up on a platter. And he went, he's got a lot of questions here on this email. So I thought, man, this would be perfect. So first question, dad, is if you guys could go back in time, would you change anything about your farm and how it operates? Oh, man. So, uh, we just finished, we just finished, uh, dark matter last night. Yeah, good Apple TV show. So if you, if that question, is like if you could go back in time and change anything, there's a show called Dark Matter,

and it's basically all about like an inflection point. It's about, I'm not going to give it away, but it's basically about the decisions in your life and how things turn off and go. So, yeah, if we're just talking pure hypothetical, if I could go back in time, what would I do different? So, boy, I don't know. So the easy. answer would be in 1992, the year that I bought 120 sow farm, Farrow to Finish. We also had bought just a few years before the farm where my site one and Sawyer's site is. And I had a guy tell me that rather than buying this sow unit, this fairer to finish operation,

I should just go build a couple of finishers to custom feed picks. Okay, well, you look back now, the easy answer would have been. If I would have built two 2,400 head finishers in 1993 versus buying 120 sows, fair to finish, boy, I don't know if I'd fit in this chair now. I'd be so fat and sassy.

that because I think if I would have done that, I probably would have built a few more. You would have just kept going. I probably would have kept going. And it's, then you probably would have bought some more ground. Yep. It would have worked really, really well. Okay. The flip side of that is, boy, I don't know.

I think I'd be kind of a dumbass because. You learned a lot from that, from that experience. Yeah, I learned. Give them a little bit of context. Why? So I bought that place. started farroin in 93 and then 96 came and then 98 came and it wasn't too long after that that not only myself but my dad we both decided we weren't going to keep farroin and we got out of the

fair ones what happened in 96 and 98 the market crashed similar to what we just went through uh 2023 was an absolute blood bath and actually worse than that time period than 90s the difference was you had a lot more consolidation when we went through it this last time in the 90s in 96 and 98 um having 400 having you know 400 600 600 1,200 sows that was the norm I mean there was a shitload of guys that had a thousand sows or less and if you had if you had 1200 sows you were a big operator and you know between us between my dad and I we were at 400 sows and we thought we had a pretty good you know It had worked in the past, so we thought it'd keep working, and it didn't. And margins got terrible, and a whole bunch of people got out, us included.

And that was how I got into the building business, how I got into the construction business, not out of choice, but out of necessity. But that was good that you went through that. Yeah, it was good. So, you know, that's the thing. You can look back and say, if I did this or I did that, you could say, The other thing is, my dad bought that farm in the late 80s, paid $1,750 an acre for 2,400 acres. You look back now, that ground's worth $20,000.

Shit, we should have bought more. But you don't know. You just, you got to do what you do. And so I feel like wherever you are today, whatever you're doing today, it does you zero good. to look back and say, what if, what if, what if? What you need to do is talk, talk things through, look at the world, look at the trends, look at what other people are doing, but weigh that out against what you know that has happened, and try to figure what is your true north, where do you think the world is going,

where do you think your industry is going, whatever you're doing, and is there a place for you? If there is, what do you, you know, what can you do to profit? And also be pragmatic enough that, you know, whatever you're doing, if you look at it and say the scale I'm at or the way I'm doing it or how the world is turning, is that going away? If it's going away, it's time to get out. Sustainability is the most important thing, especially for farming operation.

you got to look at what you're doing and think, is this going to continue to be the case for however long your timeline is? You know, you got to be mindful of knowing, can we keep doing what we're doing, and how long can we keep doing it? I mean, that is sustainability. Sustainability is everything. I mean, profitability is number two,

but I think sustainability as far as like just keeping your operation, and what you're doing is the right decision to keep your operation going, that's the most important thing. Yeah. Then profitability is obviously the next thing. Uh, I think you're right. I mean, you got to, you can't look back and, and, and ponder on the past. I mean, it's a good way to learn and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and that's how you become better. But at the end of the day, it was what it was. And fuck, if you, if you, if you could go back, I'd pull a lottery ticket of, you know, you could, you'd go back and you'd do everything, right?

I'd invest in Bitcoin and, you know, whatever, right? It'd be easy to say that now. But I guess for me, I would say, you know, I didn't really have that experience, you know, so dad went and he kind of went in his other career path of working off the farm, but still working on the farm helping out here with grandpa. And as I was growing up, my dad was selling hog buildings. You know, he was working on construction crew. He was fixing hog buildings, you know, through all his career changes. And, you know, I wasn't super involved in the operation at that time because, you know, you know, he was fixing hog buildings, you know, through all his career changes. And, you know, I wasn't super involved in the operation at that time. Because, you know, you kind of were helping out where you could, but the farm was kind of on cruise control. On cruise control. We weren't really trying to expand. Grandpa was kind of older at that time. You know,

there just wasn't really a lot for me to do. And so I think as soon as I started getting involved, when you started building those finishers, if I could go back, what I would have done is probably got involved sooner and probably started YouTube quicker. I wish I would have started when I was 15 instead of 19 years old and just started sooner, you know, because they would have just sped up my learning curve and we would have started building a brand faster than what we did, you know?

So that's the only thing I can really think of that that would work, that I could contribute to the farm at that age. So I was going to maybe say get some cattle, but that wouldn't have worked either. so anyway no i think that's i think that's the only thing i could really change if i could go back uh this kind of leads into the next question so torque what was farming like back when you first started oh gosh uh it was it was it was way heavier on the labor side and way less on the technology side so you know uh i've i've probably told this to eight people this year that have asked about, you know, getting her crops in because this year was a big challenge in getting crops in because the last five years, it's been dry. You know, once we had, we had that initial run of rain

and then it was dry and heck, we just rolled through. I mean, you got, we got crops planted in two weeks from all of David's stuff to ours and maybe one rain in between. When I was a kid, we farmed with four row equipment and you plowed, you harrogated, then you planted your corn, and then as soon as you could start collivate and you started collivating, but if it rained and it crested, you'd go out there and disc it or harrogate it or whatever. And if it got, if it got crested after you planted it, you got the rotary hoe out and you hoed it. So, I mean, it's just so much labor. And it took, I mean, it took us a month.

It took us a month to plant just our, when we were farming 160 acres, it took a month. And when we started farming, when we bought that other farm, you know, it still took a hell of a long time. And there wasn't any auto steer. There wasn't any. I mean, your population, we planted with, you know, first we had a disc planter. We had an old 495 when I was a kid. And the fertility program, like we didn't side dress, you had however much manure that we hauled out there with a vacuum tank.

I mean, everything, you think about everything that we do today. So today we plant and takes us two days to plant our corn, good going, maybe three, takes two days. takes two days, plant beans, if it's all good going. We haul manure in the fall, we drag line. We have five times as many pigs as we had when I was a kid, maybe six, and we drag line all that manure in about three days if the weather's good. When I was a kid, when you didn't have anything better to do, you hauled manure. When you didn't have anything better to do, you fixed gates or you power washed or you did this.

I mean, it was all labor. And scale was so small because just like today, we fill our buildings, like we get 5,000 head of pigs in 10 days out of a sow unit that's 10,000 sows, and they we wean four days a week. When I was a kid, we ferroed every six weeks or every five weeks, and we ferroed 40 sows. and we'd wean 400 pigs and, I mean, just everything was small and everything was labor intensive. So the biggest change that I've seen in my lifetime is scale and then technology and specialization. And that's the other thing. Like when I was a kid, you fixed everything yourself, whether it was changing oil on tractors and replacing the water pump and belts. And I mean, it had to be something pretty major on a tractor or a planner or whatever for us to take it to the dealership.

And maintenance in the hog buildings, I mean, I don't know how many fuses in a controller that my dad wrapped tinfoil around. Because that motor was dragging, you know, and it popped the fuse. So what do you do? Put a new fuse in it. And then you actually tried to grease the fan if it had a greaseirk on it. When that didn't work, then you're like, oh, you spun it. Oh, and too bad. take the fuse wrap it in tinfoil put it back in and just let her eat so when it finally got drawn hard enough that it melded the it melded the box then you're like all right well we better replace that motor so

just shit like that i mean it's a whole different world and the other thing is that's part of the reason why you got a generation of kids that that grew up running this ag industry is the fact that that any business that you had, if you could hire a farm kid, you knew you were good because you knew you had a kid that knew how to use a basic set of hand tools, probably knew how to run a torch, probably had welded something, could drive a truck, could drive a stick, could back up a trailer. No matter what industry they went to, all these farm kids, it was growing up on a farm was like, like a variable trade school. Like you just had a whole generation that they were pre-trained to do about anything. They knew how to plumb. They knew how to, they knew how to wire shit the wrong way.

But you know, you could fix that. And that, that sucked. If you were that kid, it kind of sucked because, you know, it's like, what did you do for summer vacation? We bailed hay because we didn't go on vacation. But you learned a lot of shit. You learned a lot of shit. So then, you know something that i talked about friends of mine when we were raising you kids you want them you want to give them all those skills but our tractors don't break down like tractors don't break down uh the controls are a lot better in the hog buildings the equipment's it a lot better in the hog buildings everything got better but then the technology that you did get when it did break you couldn't fix it yourself so you had to take it to somebody or you had to call somebody and so now

you've got a generation, you know, that you've got to learn a lot more stuff as you get older that you weren't able to learn. I wasn't able to teach you because we just didn't have the situation never came up. Right. Yeah. No, that's a good, that's a good point. I also think it's just gotten more corporate. I mean, it's just gotten, it's gotten big with scale, but it's also got more corporate, which is the unfortunate part. And that's just, you had like the hog market, for example, I mean, that pushed a lot of independent hog producers out because of it. And, as a result. It got more corporate. And we didn't have direct-to-consumer. Nope. That, at that time, nobody gave a shit. Like, nobody wanted to go to the farmer's market and buy, buy meat out of a cooler.

Like, my family, my parents, that whole generation of parents, they worked hard and everything was so labor-intensive. You wanted quick meals, and you wanted to be able to just go to the grocery store and get it. Like, that's why, that's why the consumer side of ag, there wasn't any place for direct-to-consumer, because nobody cared. They wanted convenience. And they were fine if, they were fine if Smithfield grew the way it did if you could go buy a pork loin or you could go buy pork chops or whatever, rather than having to butcher yourself. There was no nostalgia to it. There was no, there was a lot more trust. like nobody thought nobody thought that they needed to worry about

what somebody was putting in hell nobody thought about that there was anything bad at TV dinner how the hell you could even go in the 70s and get a TV dinner and not think I don't know whether this shit's good for me or not you know 8 million grams of sodium it'll be all right

nobody's looking at sodium because you were so happy to have the convenience and so you had that really hard time for the small producer, but there wasn't really, nobody had made that connection to where, like, we couldn't have started a direct-to-consumer business. And there again, the technology, where would you even start? Where would you even start to be able to do it? So it's just a whole different world. How would you wreck, this is good for you, how would you recommend someone with no experience

other than basic gardening getting into full-scale farming? Any idea? Fuck. you're going to need a lot of fucking money to get into farming if you're going to want to get into full-scale farming. And if you're going to want to learn the skills of farming, you're going to have to go work for a farmer. Or you're going to have to have a shitload of money, start buying ground, start buying equipment, make a lot of mistakes just like any other business and learn the business. And you're going to have to research a shitload. Watch YouTube farmers, listen to them, learn from them, watch anything and everything, agriculture. go seek out information, go work for a farmer and apply that knowledge or make a shitload of money and start going into full-scale farming yourself.

So the. Those are the three ways that I would look at that. So it's going to take you a shitload of capital to get into full-scale farming nowadays. That's the unfortunate truth. Land prices, equipment prices, livestock, what you need to be able to raise livestock, depending on what animal that you raise. I mean, it's a lot, dude. I think you answered this question, so this was actually before that.

But as a young person, do you feel like, do you feel like it's worth it to try to get into farming as a young person? And do you think farming is on an uptick? Is it headed up or is it headed down? So I would say if you're a young person and you have the passion of agriculture and farming in your veins and it's like all you can think about, then yeah, I definitely think it's worth going after to try and to achieve. Because if that's your dream and that's your passion, you got to go after it. You don't want to live in regret. And if you're going to spend your whole life dedicated to get to the point where you have your own farming operation, and you're going to spend that time, you're going to dedicate everything that you can. to that mission and that goal.

I think you can achieve it, but just know, it will take you a lot of time. But I think if you have that, you should go after it. And here's why. I do think farming's in an uptick because, one, not everybody, it's very hard to get into it. It's very hard to stay into it. But the great thing about agriculture,

we produce products that are a need, not a want. They're consumable. Meat is a consumable. People eat meat every single day, every single week they need meat. All the livestock needs the grain. They need to eat every single day to produce meat. What you provide is a need not a want. And the end product in a lot of cases for farmers is a product that you sell to the consumer that they eat. It's a consumable that they need every single day, every single week. And that is a good business to be in because that's reoccurring

business. And it's, I don't see people stop eating. That's not going away. So there's, longevity there as an industry. So that's the great thing about agriculture. That's the awesome thing about farming. It's always, we're always going to need it and people always are going to want it and need it. They just need it. It's not going away. So I think it's an uptick, but I think it's harder than ever before because the amount of money that you need to get into full scale farming is really challenging. Capital intensive. Capital intensive. But there's a lot of people that have started, you know, I don't want to say hobby farming. but, you know, smaller scale farms that if you're going to go that route, you have to have your own market to sell, and that's how you sustain as a smaller farm. You know, there's a YouTube

channel called A Few Acres Farm. I think his name is Pete. He's in New York. He has a small farm. He worked at the corporate life, his whole life, and he got to his old age, and he, not old, I mean, he's probably in his 50s or 60s now. Him and his wife, he got out of his corporate job. They bought a farm and they raise all different kinds of livestock chicken beef pork i don't know if they raise anything else but they sell that all direct to consumer through the farmers market in the in the connections that they have in new york and that's how they're able to sustain their operation and that works for them now how you now how you scale from there to a full scale farming operation again you need money you need money so i don't know if that is returning him enough money that he can continually just

grow it and grow it, grow it, or if he'd have to find another avenue to make money. And I don't even know if that guy particularly wants to get into full-scale farming. I have no idea. But I think I'm bullish on agriculture. I just think it's hard to get into, it's hard to stay into. And I think the future outlook, if you want to stay in agriculture, your two options are get big or die or create your own market and have your own, don't be a price taker anymore, set your own price. Yep. That's how it's got to be.

And so I think you can do a little bit of both. I think you can expand your operation with acres and raise them more livestock. But I think at the same time, you should be really thinking about creating your own market, whether it's whatever kind of producer you are. If you're selling watermelons, fucking have your own watermelon company or own brand. Branding is everything. and now in the digital world that we live in, it's never been easier to create a brand,

to create a business. But just know, just know if you have that burning desire to get in. It's going to be a lifelong commitment to really get you to that dream. And it's going to be fucking hard. It's going to be really fucking hard. You better enjoy the journey.

Yeah. It's a journey. It is. To piggyback off what you said, I think, So our near, like when I asked you that, your knee-jerk reaction was you were just like, oh boy. And it is. It's so hard when you look at, when you look at where ag is in your traditional grain farming, your traditional animal agriculture, it's large scale, very capital intensive.

But if you were creative and you spend the time to look around, there are, niches there. There are needs there that if you can find a way to get started, you probably can. And I think back, and I would love to get this guy to tell his story, but I don't think that I'm going to get him to. But a guy that really, I guess I kind of look up to that started one of the biggest family hog operations, at least in southeast Iowa. He didn't have a big farm. He didn't have a chance for him to like, he didn't have the chance to just go mortgage 80 acres and, and, you know, start. What he did was he went around to farmers and he rented the corner of a field because back when you far-row, six-row equipment, whatever,

when you turned the corner in a field, because all the fields were fenced in, you had this chunk that you basically didn't farm. And he rented those chunks, and he'd put a porta-hut in there, and he put a bread sow in there, and he started selling feeder pigs. And however many years later,

they have 60,000 sows, 60,000-plus sows, and they're on the, they're on the second and third generation of that company. But everybody probably told him no. Everybody probably told him there's no way he was going to make that work. And he made it work. And today, food miles. What do you call it?

Yeah, food miles. Yeah. Food miles are a big thing among a lot of restaurants. Local food. And local is big. So I feel like, on the smaller scale to get in, the opportunities are there. But growing that to full scale. Growing that to where that is your full-time deal and it's sustainable that you can bring your kids into it

and that there's something there that you can hand down and you can count on it and you don't have to supplement it and it is your full-time gig and it doesn't kill you doing it. that's that's the hard part like get you can get in there you can do it but it's it's hard it's a lot of time and getting it to scale that it can sustain your family and it can sustain starting another generation that is the hardest part yeah so and you got to get creative i mean we've talked about ag tourism uh direct to consumer selling specialty products i mean you know beef producers now are getting into beef tallow and beef tallow skin care products. I mean, there are so many things out there that farmers are trying to do to diversify.

So there are answers out there. There are examples of people doing it, but just know you got to put your mind to it and it's going to take a long time. How likely, well, let's just, what crops do you guys mainly plant and what exactly are cover crops and what are the point what's the point uh we plant corn and soybeans we don't do any cover crops the moment not we don't hate cover crops but it just i don't know we haven't we got too many irons in the fire and it's just a lot to try to take on another thing and thinking about doing another changing another thing on our operation um but i think joy put it the best cover crops are erosion

tool they're their tool to have healthier soils to keep the top soils and intact to to have a sustainable ground to make your ground more healthy um because you know she she uses our and joy is our last guess that we had on you know the dust bowl we what what they do they planted the same crop over and over and over and over and over and tilled and tilt it and tilt it and tilled it and that's what the result was and i think less guys are tilling especially around here in our area a lot we've got a lot of no-till people but um cover crops just a good way to change up that up that soil and make it healthier and not plant the same damn thing over and over and over and over again and it's a good way to combat erosion so um i think it's a good thing i think it's got

to work for your operation i think profitability matters right you got it you got to make money the end of the day we're not doing this for just the experience and you know you just got to make it pencils my biggest thing with cover crops our our biggest so for me the biggest reason we're not doing cover crops is I don't own a drill and when I pencil it out you you got a you got a pencil out the cost of the the cost of the seed the cost of getting it getting it drilled getting it spread whatever and then the cost of killing it the next year that cost and can you gain enough return to justify that cost. And a lot of people argue that you 100% can. Some people claim you can't. Just the way I'm set up, I, everything that we do on the grain

side, that margin is really, really tight. And I don't know, in my mind, I can't make it pencil. We know till, we do a good job with our fertility. His next question was about fertilizer and how do we fertilize. The majority of our fertilizer is hog manure. The only extra fertilizer we put on is when we side dress, which your question was, he saw somebody talking about two inches beside and two inches below. What that is is when guys put on liquid fertilizer with their planner, the old rule of thumb, and I think a lot of people still do this, is they, They have an injector, they have a knife that puts a furrow two inches beside where your planter runs, and it puts the fertilizer two inches below the surface.

And for a long time, people thought that was the ideal place to put that fertilizer so that when that plant starts growing and the roots go out, the roots hit that vein of fertilizer and it gives them a little boost. The other thing is, for a long time, fertilizer was too strong to where you couldn't put it in furrow because it would actually burn the, basically you'd kill the plant before it even got started. So you couldn't actually put fertilizer in the furrow. But now there's so many different options on fertilizers, so many formulas that, you know, there's guys that dribble on a pop, they call it pop up, and it actually,

actually goes in the furrow. Some people put the two inches beside two inches below. Some people put a tube out the back of their closing wheels. It is a Y and they're dribbling it on. For us, we come back, we side-dress corn basically just in between the row. There's a lot of different ways to fertilize it. But we, for the most part, we use hog manure is our number one fertilizer for our crop. How likely are we to upgrade equipment, pig barns, machines, etc? Everything. We're going to upgrade it all just as soon as Sawyer makes a whole bunch of money doing something. He's going to give it all to dad and just say, here you go, Pops, here's a checkbook, get whatever you want. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that, hey, I'm open to that. You know, if we can,

I am, I am 100% on the bandwagon of trying to make our operations. better and more equipped. And we're trying to make our farm viable for the next generation. And so we're definitely going to grow the operation. Now, I don't want to farm the world. I have no desire to be a BTO grain farmer that sits in the tractor for weeks on end. I don't have the time for that. That's not exactly where my passion is, is in the tractor for that long. But I do love doing it. I do enjoy doing it. So we definitely want to expand our acres. You know, as this direct-to-consumer meat thing that we're doing continues to go on, I love to raise our own pigs, buy shares into a sow unit.

I'd love to potentially raise cattle if the market was there. I also would like to obviously buy our own equipment. That would be awesome to buy our own equipment. That's better equipment. I mean, we buy our own equipment, but have better equipment, have a plan or tractor, have a grain cart. have a combine, have our own semis. You know, there's, there's a lot of shit we can do.

A million dollars. Yeah, it's just, it's the money, man. It's the capital that it takes. And, you know, I'm not, I have no desire to cheat the system and go, you're not cheat the system. But, like, speed that process up. There's no, there's no advantage of us going out and buying all this equipment and making those payments. And rent a bunch of ground. rent a bunch of ground and playing this game of, you know, yeah, I don't, I don't want to play that

game. I think there's better ways to make money and expand the operation. And I think, yeah, I don't want to play that game. So, yeah, there's definitely, that's definitely in our minds. We are definitely, when we get to the point where we feel like we can do that, we are definitely going to start doing that equipment. And hog barns, like I talked about this on the other podcast, but I think if we do ever raise our own pigs, we own our own pigs and we buy them out of a sow unit, I would love to rethink of a way of how these hog barns are set up and built. I mentioned three gen organics. They're a Canadian farm that's doing some direct-to-consumer stuff. and they have a really unique and interesting setup that accommodates to what consumers voice their

opinion on. And I think if you're going to, if you're going to set your own price, you have to be playing a different game than everybody else that's a price taker. And so, I don't know, I look at our hog barns and I think about what can we do to, what can we do differently that is more appealing to the to the American consumer of how we raise these pigs. I think we definitely should keep the hog barn model. I think that's a great, a great setup, a great model. It's with the lack of labor needed to raise that many pigs is fantastic. And the environment. In the environment, I mean, there's, there's a lot of benefits there, but I think there are ways that we can potentially make it better. So that's something else that I think

about. I'll hop on that. I think no matter what business that you're in, if you're a business owner, I don't care what you're doing. A good point of view or thought process is how can I become less dependent on markets that I'm currently in. In other words, how can I, how can I be a price maker instead of a price taker? And so a whole bunch of people got out of heroin and owning their own pigs because the economics of it were so bad. The direct-to-consumer route is not for everybody. It's, it's, it's, yeah, that's fucking hard. It's hard. And we just had this conversation today. And I gave some advice to a business owner, had nothing to do with agriculture,

but somebody basically critiqued their business and said that, you know, what they were doing, kind of said that they could do it better. And it really pissed that person off. And I said to them, the next time somebody says that to you, just smile at them and say,

you know what, you're right, you absolutely should do what I'm doing. It's easy. Anybody could do it. And that's how I feel about most of the stuff we're doing, whether it's the podcast or whether it's social media or whether it's farming or direct consumer meat when somebody makes some snide comment about oh you know it must be nice or you know I should do that you know whatever I just smile and say you know you should because I'm living

proof that you don't have to be very bright to do it I mean it's easy anybody can do it and our like as I get older my goal is to kind of be in charge your own destiny because our whole society, there's a lot of business where you are dependent on somebody else or somebody else that's setting the price, somebody else that's, it all has to work for you to be able to be successful. The more steps within that process that you can control,

the better off you are, I feel like. And that's what we look like. And as far as upgrades and as far as things we do, yeah, we would love to get to the point that we're feeding our own pigs and we're processing our own pigs and we're selling direct to consumer. And there's risk there. There is guaranteed risk there because that restaurant can go out of business. The economy can take a shit and those people do not have the money to pay for meat to be put in a box and shipped. Shipping prices could explode.

I mean, there's a million things that can happen. However, you control it. You do control. You can figure out the solution. Right. And don't kid yourself. We're not going to be idiots about it. We're not going to rush it.

We're going to do this when it's the means are there to do it. Yeah. You know, I'm not in a rush. I'm 24 years old. I mean, you're in your 50s, right? You're 53. Yeah. So it's a little bit of different ball game.

But, I mean, obviously, I think we're going to make some changes in the next. five, six years. There's going to be change. There's going to be change that happens on our operation for the better. And I'm very optimistic and I'm very optimistic for agriculture. So definitely have all those thoughts, man, about wanting to expand and grow up and make things better on our operation. Well, I think we should, I think this, you should answer this. How did you go about setting up your direct consumer business? And what are the steps that you take differently if you were to go back and do it today. This is hard for me to answer because I don't know if there's anything I would change of how I

set it up. I think it's really important nowadays if you're going to start any business, any direct to consumer business where you're going to have to have a connection with the consumer and you're going to have to be on social media. You're going to have to make content. Brand matters what your website looks like, the functionality of your website, what your brand stands for, what your brand looks like, all of that shit matters. You cannot start a brand nowadays because it's so competitive, half-assed. If you want to take a brand and make it mainstream, like you want to go, you want to turn it into something great. Like you want it to be a great brand. You have got to put the work up front of thinking out what it's going to be called.

what is the logo going to look like? What is the, what is the brand going to stand for? What are the colors involved with the brand? What are the illustrations or graphics we're going to use? What is the, you know, mission of the business? I mean, I did all that shit up front. I did all that shit up front. And, and I built, the thing about it is I also built an audience before launching the business

because that's the other thing. It's so competitive nowadays. you cannot build a, I don't know, my personal experience of what I've kind of observed is, you know, back in 2013, 2012, you could start a drop shipping business and you could just strictly make a successful business based off of running Facebook ads. That's not the case anymore. Paid ads, they work, but can you build a long-term sustainable business off of just paid ads in the landscape that we learn that we're in today? I don't think so. I think brand matters more than ever before. community matters more than ever before doing a great service for your customers and having them

come back and being repeat buyers and referring other customers like all that shit matters and the only way you're going to get that stuff is if you are doing all the right things by the customers you are putting the work up front to really set up what your brand is going to look like and giving it you're all on that front what are you going to set up? I wanted you to, while you're talking about that, I think it's important. I think this is something that people don't put enough value on. You and I have talked about it many times. Talk about the value of a customer, a customer versus a potential customer. Talk about taking care of that customer and the value of it. Yeah. You know, Alex Hermose, if you don't listen to Alex Formosie and you have any aspiration to be in business,

you need to listen to Alex Hermose. And Layla, his wife. wife. They are fucking beast entrepreneurs that give out unreasonable amount of business knowledge for free, for nothing in return. It is fucking insane the amount of value that they give out. So that's what I'll say. But he talked about this concept of when you are building a business, you, all these businesses, most of the business out here in the business landscape direct to consumer, it's all about acquiring the next customer. It's all about, it's all about new customers, new customers, new customers, new customers. And they don't focus enough time on making the product exceptional, the customer experience exceptional, the customer support exceptional. And they don't

get any referrals. They don't get any repeat buyers. And then there is this constant state of having to spend money to get customers. And you're churning customers like a motherfucker. You're not keeping anybody and nobody's referring other people to come try out your business. And that is called, that he calls it a leaky bucket you have a leaky bucket you are not keeping any water in that bucket it's just running out of the sides of it it's there's holes in the bucket and you have to patch those holes so i guess what i would say is what i would do differently i guess is maybe i would start setting the foundation sooner as far as that customer experience focusing on the product sooner and exception making the product exceptional uh focusing on the customer support

and setting up systems for that shit before I was gung-ho marketing. And I think that's, I think that's businesses as you change and as you scale, those systems have to be rethought and re-have to be modified and all that shit. But I think that's really important. And I think a lot of businesses nowadays, they really focus on the acquire customer part and they're churning like a crazy because they're not understanding that your product's not that good. The customer's experience is not that good. You're not going above and beyond. You're not doing shit that somebody else, you're not doing anything different than anybody else. You're running

Facebook ads. You're paying influencers to shout your shit out. And that's your spending that money. And you're just hoping they repeat. But you got to make, you got to make the, what they're buying better than anything else that they can buy anywhere else. You got to, you got to, you got to, experience. You got to make the experience better than anywhere else they can get that same product. So it's hard for me to say, what would I do different? Because I honestly, not to be a fucking arrogant prick, I was very methodical about how we started this, how we started Farmer grade. I was very methodical with it. I built the brand first. I said, we need to build a brand and we need to show what we do. And I don't know what business I'm going to start someday. But,

but I want to start a business off of the back end of the brand. And that's what we did. That's what we did. And that turned into farmer grade. And then I was very methodical about how to think. I mean, it took me two years to take the concept and actually launch the business. It took me two years of finding a processor, finding a fulfillment center, finding a warehouse, finding the supply of all this meat from farmers and producers.

then building the website, getting the design for what the logo is going to look like, thinking the name up, all that shit. It took me two years almost to do that. How many people are willing to do that? How many people are willing to do, you know? And you're not taking any money out of it.

You're not making money. You're making money as far as the business is profitable, but the profits all going back into the business. Yeah. I mean, that's the other thing is, I think we don't talk enough. about this is patience because I'll just be real honest with all of you so you know you see these people uh people see our YouTube like our subscribers are our success our success quotes and people are like

people like oh they think that we're making all this money doing all this stuff uh no because we one we're not going to sell we're not selling athletic greens we're not selling pit viper sunglasses We're not selling all this shit. We're not taking every dollar we can from anybody that will give us a dollar for the name. We're not in it for just, oh, how much money can we get? Because it's about legacy and it's about integrity. And community. And community.

Because we know that at the end of the day, every one of you that listen to us on here or buy a box or listen to this will do farm or buy a hat if we ever get to where we're selling hats, like we appreciate the shit out of you and the time that you spend with us and we're not going to we're not going to ruin that by selling you something that's junk and so at the end of the day everything that we have done we have built it with the idea that we want it to be community and the only thing that makes us money is raising pigs pretty much because the farmer goes to pay for the last generation that none of this would be here without the last generation. So, I mean, the grain farming basically pays for my mother for her retirement home.

And we live off of raising pigs. And yeah, we get some sponsorship money, but it's nothing. It's nothing crazy. And it all goes back into making your experience better. It goes into working on this studio, buying the equipment, you know, if we have to get another laptop, or if the damn roadcaster breaks, which today we had to re-record because one of the mics dropped out.

We're like, oh, how much longer is this roadcaster going to last before we have to buy another one? To Farmer Grade, it's profitable, but nobody's getting paid. The whole family goes in there and packs boxes. I don't get paid.

Nobody gets paid. Because you got, the thing about making, the thing about all this is the only way to grow a business is with money. You have to grow a business with money. Money is your tool. grow a business. And so we're trying to grow the farm. We're trying to grow the podcast. We're trying to grow the This Will Do Farm YouTube channel. We're trying to grow Farmer grade.

It all takes money. And at some point, at some point, we're going to quit feeding it. And at some point, yeah, we're going to make money. We're going to have money to, I don't know what the thing is. You have to have a different mindset because here's the thing. At the end of the day, if we had air quotes a bunch of money i don't really know what we do different other than yeah we'd probably buy some equipment and the bar would the shit would get finished a little quicker but it's our lifestyle is kind of doing what we're doing yeah i mean i think the biggest thing that money would help with is just like helping us get more shit done because i'm gonna be honest i mean we've kind of gone off we've kind of completely gone off

the rails of this Q&A. This might be the last question, but I'm going to be honest. I am working every day, pretty much all day long. That's the, that is the season of life that I'm in right now. Because, because of all what we're doing, dad and I are, we're going all, the fucking time. And it's literally some days we sit down and we just like, we're a little pessimistic about it because it, you feel like you have no time for anything else in your, your brain, fried every day after the end of the day because you just are working through all the shit and I'm not bitching about it it's what it requires and that's a season of life that we're in and we have we have created this monster it's our own it's our own it's our own fault but at the

end of the day what money would help with is just helping us get more help helping us with with labor helping us with packing boxes helping us with maybe having someone up somebody up here to set everything up before we got up up here and they could literally just hit the button and we could just sit down and shoot it. But we're making the outlines. We're setting up the cameras. We're turning on the roadcaster. We're doing everything. We're going and we're recruiting guests to come on the podcast. We're shooting the content on this will do farm. And we're actually doing the work. So it's, yeah, it's a lot. Success to us is basically at this point just buying our time back.

Yeah. I mean, we love what we do, but at some point, you know, be profitable, but be able to people to come on the journey with us and build a team and that can help us make this thing better and to make it grow. I mean, that's the big thing. I mean, I'm going to be honest, I want to take Farmergrade

to the fucking moon. I mean, that's, the farm and podcast and this will do farm, like that's all, it all fees into each other, but I want Farmergrade to be a household name and I'm dedicated to that mission. I am fucking dedicated to that. And so that's like, that's probably my North Star, to be honest with you, is Farmergrade.

And I want to be a part of the operation and I want a grain farm and I still want to do that because it's always been a part of my life. And this podcast is a part of my life. And I love doing all those things. But Farmergrade is to me my, my, like that's what I want to. Well, it's yours. Yeah, I want to take it to the height. I want to take it to its potential. I really do. I want to take it far. So that's, I don't know. I guess that was a long-winded answer, and I don't know if you got any fucking value from what I said, but I really just can't think of anything that I would do different. Well, I think great point. People say this all the time. Start with the end in mind, whatever you're going to do. And maybe that's a fault of mine. Maybe I was too,

I could have gotten a starter, started earlier if I wasn't such a perfectionist of all the little shit. but in my opinion if you're going to start a brand nowadays you have to be a perfectionist because it's so fucking competitive that how are you how are you supposed to get market share when everybody else is kicking your ass with their website usability and their their mission and their logo and their brand and their content is kicking your ass and their brand in their customer experience is kicking your ass how are you going to have a shot you have to spend time on that stuff to win. You have to build that relationship. You have to have that community. You have got to do all the boring shit that nobody wants to do to build a successful brand.

That's what you got to do. And maybe if you want to do a local, you know, meat business and you don't need all that shit because you're going to stay in your local community and that's enough for you and you're good with that. That's great to each of their own, you know. But if you're trying to like build a legitimate brand and compete and compete you have to you have to do a lot of the shit up front to to to to compete you know you got to you got to do that kind of shit to compete so um but don't get don't don't don't don't kid yourself i have made a lot of fucking mistakes and i continue to make a lot of fucking mistakes every single day and i i learn it i learn something new every day there's new fires that

that we have to put out every single day on the farmer grade side of things. And I've learned a shitload. And I've made a shitload of mistakes. And I will continue to make a shitload of mistakes. I do not, I am not perfect. I do not know everything. I have, I have so much more to fucking learn.

So, but if I can do it, I didn't, everybody always asked me, did you, you know, when they first meet me, did you go to college for any of this? Nope. Nope. Didn't go to college. because they they immediately associate college with knowledge. If I can do any, if I can do this shit,

any of you guys can do anything that you set your mind to too. This is all trial and error, YouTube, Google, cold calling people, figuring out answers and just taking relentless action without quitting. Being resilient. You have to be fucking resilient. And you can't listen to what people say about you. Because people will doubt you, people will say you're fucking nuts, people will think you're crazy. People will think that what you're doing is, you know,

you'll get shit for it and you just got to block it all out and go. You got to just pound the stone. You do. So if I can, if I can do it, any one of you with dreams and aspirations, whatever you want to do can do it too, because I'm not, I'm not the smartest tool in the shed by any means. And I did not go to college. If you asked most people, they'd be like, well, he had to have learned that somewhere, you know. People asked me, how did you start a pot? How did you? you guys start a podcast? Did you go, you know, did you, did you, did you learn it at a video editing course? No, fuck no, we didn't. We bought the shit and we sat down and we set it up and we watch YouTube videos and we looked around the internet and we got on and we tried out and air it

and shot it and now we're here. Yep. Because we just tried to get better with every single episode. And that's literally, literally, boil it down to that. Get better with every box you send out, every meat product you send out, every, every pig that you sell, every bakery that you farm, every podcast that you make, every video that you make. Try to get better with every single one that you do. Yeah, and that's right. That's the mindset you got to have is you don't get set in your waist because I'll tell you what, I just started group number 43, 43, I think. I just started group number 43 and I'll tell you something. Of raising pigs. I, there are things that I do now that I never did.

Like I've learned, I continue to learn better ways of doing the most mundane shit that we do all the time. I mean, it's crazy. You just get in this habit of doing stuff and then either something happens or you hear, you see somebody doing it or you read something about this or that and you think, I'm going to try this. And then you're like, son of a bitch, wish I would have found that 41 groups ago. Mm-hmm. You know, and it's, it just be a learner, be a lifetime learner, keep an open mind and pound the stone.

And be careful what you wish for because it is not for everybody. I feel like that. You've said this many times, like the entrepreneur thing, that's, that's kind of like sexy. Glamorized. And owning your own business is sexy. It's not. It's hard as fuck. It's hard.

It is. If you get to the, when you're at the top of the mountain and when those days and there are a lot of good days when you can look at what you've done and you've got the people that you care about around you and you're doing something cool you have a moment you're enjoying yourself you look at it so worth it but there is a lot of grind there is a lot there is way more there's more grind than what you think there's going to be a lot of there is every problem every fucking problem that comes up and you solve it. it, there's three other problems waiting for you that you got to solve. I mean, it's,

it is relentless. It's unforgiving. Nobody's coming to save you. You're going to have to figure it out. You're going to have to find the solution. It, when a customer puts in a complaint, I mean, it's every day. It's every day all the time. 365. You have, there's shit that we either got to shoot a podcast. We've got to make a video. Pigs need loaded. Pigs need unloaded. Boxes need to go out. Customer support tickets are coming in. You, you know, have to run this sale you got to make this email marketing campaign you got to make this con i mean it's fucking every day it's relentless 365 and then you get the flu and then you get the flu or life happens you know your your fiance's wrist breaks or you're gonna get married and you know

like that's the thing it's it's it's glamorized and it's sexies but the early days when you don't have enough money to hire people to to buy your time back there's there's like you're gonna eat like shit sometimes. You're not going to be able to go to the gym. You're not going to be able to take care of your body like the way you wish. You're not going to be able to go out and socialize like you wish you would be able to. You're not going to be able to do all the shit that you might want to do in the moment, but you know that you can't because you have to put your time somewhere else. Because you are going for the bigger picture. You are going for the purpose and fulfillment of your life. So that's what it requires and that's what it takes. And that's why it's not for

everybody. That's why that bullshit glamorized entrepreneurship bullshit shouldn't be glamorized because it's, I think it's cool because it's showing what's possible, and that's honestly what got me so intrigued with entrepreneurship and almost like I found that that was my calling because I saw what was possible thanks to people showing what that life, what you could create if you went down that path. But don't, don't let anybody fool you and tell you that to get to that point, there is a shit load, a shit load more, grind, failures, learning experiences, long hours. Fuck ups, long hours.

I mean, there's so much in that in, in the middle of, of from when you start to where you get to your mountain top. And then when you get to your mountain top, you got to go for another mountain top. And there's going to be even more shit that you got to eat to get to that next mountain top. So you better learn to enjoy that grind. Yeah. Because when you get to the top, that top is not going to be as great as what you put it in your mind.

Yeah, it's not a sweet. Because when you get there and you think about how much grind went into that, you're going to be like, damn, I thought it'd be bigger. I thought it'd be better. Whatever. You got to enjoy it. Like, you have to enjoy that build. If you're somebody that enjoys that build, that's your journey. like that's your, you have to be able to enjoy that even when you can't, not, you're going to

enjoy it every day. Yeah. Yeah. But you got to learn to enjoy the little victories along the way, because if you're putting everything in and you hate every minute of it to get to the, what you perceive as a top, you're going to be unfulfilled. Yeah. So. Yep. All right. Well, I think that's, I think we had our counseling moment there at the end there. But, um, no, I think that was, That was a great list of questions from, forget his name. What was his name? I don't know, but Benny. That was a great list of questions from Benny.

That made our job easy. We had to open one email and hell, he gave it all. So I hope we answered those all. Benny, I got a brand new fridge out of Whirlpool. It took like six weeks. I didn't have a fridge for six weeks. But the son of a bitch is finally decided they couldn't fix it. And I got a brand new one.

and hopefully it lasts longer than four years too. You asked you about your fridge. Yeah, you asked if I ever got a new fridge. So, yep, I did. Yeah, yeah. Well, so I hope we answered those questions good enough, you know, or you got something out of those questions. I hope you learned some shit about farming.

I hope we, yeah, taught you a few things about farming. And enjoy the Fourth of July. Yes, enjoy the Fourth of July. It's not about mattresses and furniture and cars on sale. It is about it's about family and it's about reflection on how fucking lucky you

all are to be living in the greatest country on the face of the earth. I don't give a shit what anybody says. What has been done here never done anywhere else in the world. The Bill of Rights the first couple articles of the

Constitution never been done anywhere else when they were done here. People wanted discount the founding fathers and say they were a bunch of whatever you know they were slave owners they were Zionists they were this they were that whatever they were smarter than what anybody gives them credit because this country his country I hope it holds the greatest nation ever it's been it's a greatest nation of all fucking time the freedom that you experience and the opportunity that you have and we can all bitch about the problems and we can all bitch about the

politics and how hard we've got it you don't know what fucking hard is. And we're all standing on the shoulders of the people that came before us. And when you grill that pork butt, you break bread around your table, you better thank the good Lord that you were born here. So, yeah. If I don't see you, have a good Fourth of July. Shoot the fireworks off.

Let us know how patriotic that you, let us hear how patriotic that you are. I think that's bulls. That's something about Fourth of July. People are trying to tell you not to hang that. American flag or fly that American flag or don't be too proud to be an American. Fuck that. Be proud to be an American. Shoot all the fireworks that you can shoot. Throw up as many American flags you can possibly throw up. You know, yeah. And I think that's, it's important. You got to celebrate Independence Day and, you know, how great it is that we get to live here. That's a good,

good ending statement, dad. So if you guys got any value from the show, shared out with who you know, leave review on Spotify or Apple. If you're interested to get meat for the 4th of July and you want to feed your family with some farmer grade, 20% off discount right now, site wide, free meat items available, free shipping available at certain thresholds. We'd appreciate your guys' business. We'd love to be able to offer you guys some meat for 4th of July.

If not, totally fine. But regardless, I hope every single one of you guys has a kick-ass 4th of July. We love you guys. We appreciate you. And we'll see you back here next week. for another episode.