TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #543: Expanding the Reach of Quality Nutrition with Sam Moffett

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Marty sits down with Sam Moffett to discuss regenerative farming and marketing direct to consumer. Shirttail Creek on Twitter: https://x.com/shirttailcreek Shirttail Creek Farm: https://shirttailcreekfarm.com/ 0:00 - Intro 1:19 - Shirttail origin 8:51 - High quality food and grass finishing 13:57 - Regenerative farming accessibility 17:57 - Unchained 18:43 - Inception of Local Pastures 22:02 - Location/Strong Towns 27:28 - Gradually, Then Suddenly & Zaprite 29:05 - Dealing with inflation 34:57 - The fragmented community approach 39:57 - Regen farming data/methods 45:16 - Consumer push for quality nutrition 55:29 - Challenges to expanding the model 1:01:34 - Merits of the farmer lifestyle 1:10:20 - Bitcoin 1:14:31 - Is the average person becoming more health aware? Shoutout to our sponsors: Unchained https://unchained.com/concierge/ Zaprite https://zaprite.com/tftc Gradually, Then Suddenly https://thesaifhouse.com/gradually Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/

First year, we broke a million dollars in sales a few years ago. I was like, that's great, what a milestone. And then I looked at the P&L and I was like, we made $5,000. The important thing to remember is like inflation doesn't usually go in reverse. You know, once the prices go up,

even if the input costs for the guy selling you stuff went back down, like they're going to leave their price alone, right? I mean, that's just how it works. After that first full year of crazy inflation, where they said it was 9% or whatever, for us, it was more. You may see 9% across the board,

but for certain businesses, it was a lot more, right? Our packaging cost, our feed cost, our processing cost. Obviously, fuel was bonkers for a while. We went from spending $3,500 a month on fuel to spending $6,000, $7,000 a month on fuel. The answer to improving the system isn't to eliminate the existing system, it's to get. You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free.

You talk about a Fed just gone nuts. All the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. I feel like we already recorded a mini podcast with Parker out there.

i was part of me was like well this is like we're gonna end up repeating stuff if we talk too much now out there well he's one of your biggest fans that's awesome i don't know if it came off there but no uh we're just glad anybody likes anything that we do so um yeah yeah well i mean i'm a big fan as well so sitting down with sam moffitt uh owns shirttail creek farms co-founder of local pastures and i won't do the description because these are your companies but let's start with suretail why you started it what do you guys produce and then how that led to local pastures which is becoming a staple for yeah many people in austin who care about the quality of their food and accessibility to quality food so yeah my my wife and i started suretail creek farm in 2017

so i had a digital advertising business in austin uh lived in central austin uh near ut in a great neighborhood and had kind of been on a trajectory to towards sort of i don't know i guess creating this the picture of a life that everybody thinks they want and um and things were going good and My wife and I found ourselves with two little kids in central Austin, successful business, and we just weren't fulfilled by our path in life, you know, and kind of thinking, looking ahead, thinking about, you know, how are you going to feel about this down the road if you just kind of stick with what you're doing? because it was safe right i mean we knew what we were doing we had a business and um and but we we chose to buy a farm and we had no intention of starting a farm business at that point in time because my business allowed me i had we had a we work office in new york and i had a develop development office in in yaj in romania and then we had austin and um you know i didn't have to be

there all the time it was digital advertising i you know work off my laptop and so we were just going to raise our kids on this farm and send them to school in the town of Brenham. And that was that. And just in a nutshell, the business was basically, we were aggregating ad inventory on mobile apps and websites by placing our video player on those apps and websites and then selling ads into the video player. It was an arbitrage model. I won't go too deep into this, But basically, you know, that model browsers like Firefox and Chrome started making those players not function anymore because they didn't like them. And so our business quickly, very abruptly got, you know, turned upside down. And so we were at that point just kind of doing some ad brokering, which was lower margin and higher risk AR.

And so I needed to figure out something else to do. I either needed to reinvent that business, which I really had no true passion for, or I needed to just start something else. And I had I'd really for after, you know, 15 years in advertising and 13 years in digital advertising, I had like this strong desire to like be able to hold my my my creation in my hand and have it be tangible and something that it was had an artisanal element to it that I could be proud of that I created. and i at the time i was like really like into single malt whiskey and so i was like i had a copper pot still and i in before we bought the farm i was in my garage on weekends making whiskey and uh and i thought well maybe i'll start a distillery we bought the farm i had a big metal building on and i thought well maybe i'll do a whiskey distillery you know and and texas single malt whiskey and all this stuff and and uh and i kind of put those numbers together and i was like

yeah that's cool but you know to age the whiskey and stuff's gonna be a while before i generate income let alone a profit and and i don't know anything about whiskey really beyond what i've learned in the garage and uh and i i started learning about these farms that um that direct marketed their products and and sold you know meat and eggs and and produce and things like that and i became really uh interested in this concept and so i started researching other farms in texas that did this and a lot you know a lot of them have youtube content or whatever and so i was like youtube stalking these guys and and checking out their websites and and buying from the farms and and i was like wow this seems like these guys actually have like are making a living doing

this that's fascinating you know i just bought a farm and my business is going to shit and so i got to figure out a plan b and like this just feels like something i can get passionate about and and it checks the box of me being able to produce a product that's like truly adding value to the customer whereas you know sometimes when you sell video ads on a mobile app or website like they may or may not even be seen and and it's kind of a grimy business in certain ways and and so i just felt like a refreshing departure from that world and um so you know as i do I got really fired up. My wife's like, uh, she's the, she's the sort of, um, balance in our relationship and that she'll kind of put me in check if I'm getting too excited about something

that's, you know, scares her or whatever. But, um, yeah, so, uh, there was already a guy leasing the pasture and had cattle. And so I bought the cattle from him and didn't know anything about raising, you know, cattle. Uh, and, uh, I had an old guy down the road, uh, a great friend of mine now who, uh, just decided to mentor me. And, uh, so I spent, you know, a year or two just helping him with his cattle. And, and while I was kind of learning my own, how to deal with my own herd and I had guidance there, you know, which is so important to get into something that's brand new like this to you um and uh and and then and then I heard about a farm out in Elgin uh Coyote Creek farm and they're a feed mill but they also have world's best eggs which you can get at Whole Foods

and stuff and they're great people and I went to visit them once and I saw how they had pasture raised hens and they had these houses and the rotations and and I thought wow well that's cool like there's a business like I don't have enough acreage to run a massive cow calf beef operation But like I could run a layer operation and have a few thousand hens and, you know, perform of that in a spreadsheet and figure out what that looks like. And it's like, OK, that could pay the bills like I could I could, you know, pay the mortgage and buy groceries doing that. And so, you know, bought a few hundred hens and and the rest is history and gave my wife lots of little anxiety attacks along the way. Hey, guess what? But yeah, so that's kind of how SureTel happened. And it was, it was, I was searching for something to be passionate about and to jump headfirst into, and that I felt was more meaningful than what I've been doing. And I didn't know it was going to be farming, even though I bought a farm to live on and live in the country. I had no sense for what the hell I was going to do with that place. And it just so happened that, you know, it's, it's highest and best use is, is probably what we're doing now.

Yeah. And it's, again, the eggs that you produce are the best eggs I've ever come into contact with in like 33 years being on this planet. And it's interesting because you found something that's tangible, you can hold, you can be passionate about. But the other thing that really flows through everything you do at Sure Tail and local pastures is the quality of the food. Is that something you discovered along the way as you're figuring out how to go farming? it's like all right i can actually do something with this farm and then you get further down the road of all right let's actually produce good quality nutritious food yeah i mean that's the the thing about farming is it's like a heavily nuanced thing right you can read as many books as you want but there's variability in weather in uh you know disease pathogens that can impact

your livestock or or pests that can impact your forages that you use to feed your livestock and and all these sorts of things and so it's really hard to just learn it from a book you have to get out and start doing it and if you get out and start doing it with mentorship like I had and that's all you're doing then you can come a long way in a short period of time but we did learn some hard lessons I mean our first group of calves we had 24 cows and happened to have 24 calves on the ground that first year and so we put them into our finishing program which we didn't yet and understand really what that was because you know you think about grass-fed beef and you're like okay they just eat grass cool if there's grass they eat it well you know what we what we

realize is that the nutritional requirement of a growing calf is very different than the nutritional requirement of a mature cow and and so like not all grass is created equal not all grass has the same protein content and sugar content etc and so our first calves we processed at like 14 months old and they were fine but uh the meat was really lean and the ribeyes were really tough and you know and uh you know looking back i cringe you know but i had good friends that were like they were like showed up to support us in the beginning and bought some ribeyes and they're like hey that ribeye was uh not so great so then i became a kind of a student of like how to actually do it well and i had to fast track that because i didn't want that to happen again

And so, yeah, I learned from people like Alan Nation who've written great books on how to grass-finish cattle and, like, how to actually meet a cow's nutritional requirements without using processed and grain-based inputs and to try to overcome the fact that it's just expensive to grass-finish beef cattle. But yes, I mean, going into like what I told you about wanting to be proud of this product I had created for in order to do that, I had to become a student of like not only, you know, how to just take care of cattle, but how to produce grasses that they can eat and thrive on and how to manage the pasture and, you know, all that. What are the different grasses that you have to? Oh, well, I mean, seasonally they're different. So we have perennial grasses, which their root systems stay in the ground and they come back year after year. And most of them are exotic non-native grasses that were introduced by people that thought they were solving, you know, forage problems. Because a lot of the native prairie grasses are low nutritional density, what the buffalo would have eaten high, high volumes of. and um and so uh a lot of these exotic uh grasses have kind of taken over the the the native grasses and and native grass populations are not great in most pastures um there are a few good meadows that still have predominantly blue stem grasses and stuff but um so those are not reliable for us because they don't have the yield or the nutritional quality that's ideal for us and so

we plant annual grasses um every year twice a year so for the cool season we plant a mixture of oats and then legumes like clovers and hairy vetch we like um and legumes pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere and put it into the soil so that the grasses can access it and and and um and use that nitrogen um so that's that's what you know big conventional farms are doing by throwing a synthetic nitrogen fertilizer on the pasture um and then you know we plant root vegetables and things uh you know in regenerative farming which is what we do um you want to have diversity in the animals that are using the pasture and in the species of uh the types of plants that are growing in the pasture as well so yeah yeah so i mean i could give you a big list of grasses but yeah we

use oats are our like mainstay in the winter oats and rye grass and sometimes wheat um which think think of wheat you think of the grain but it said the actual plant in in its uh in its uh green state um uh what am i trying to say uh in vegetative state uh is that the word i'm looking for yeah i guess so um before it goes to seed that we graze the cattle on yeah and that's i mean that's been a big topic in people in circles that really care about nutritional food regenerative farming um broadly obviously white oaks going on rogan like really put yeah uh a big splash in the market of people like all right we should care about this allen savory obviously been writing about this for a while and i guess that's the big question is like is this scalable um to do

regenerative farming produce this nutritious food and then get it to market i think that's something that you're trying to solve with local pastures and or maybe not scaling but accessibility at the very least too that's a really important conversation um and i'm glad you brought that up because you know i don't know that regenerative farming is scalable in the same way that like the the mass-produced uh agriculture we have in america um is and what's interesting about about it and i think this is kind of what will harris said is you know and i kind of share his view that probably the answer is not massive at scale regenerative operations but it's lots of lots of smaller farms that are are providing food for the local population you know which is kind of

going back to the way things used to work um you know if you take our store local pastures for example it's a successful concept because people want to be able to access food straight from their farms, straight from local farms. But most people don't want to get up. Most people don't want to get up early on Saturday morning, go to the market. And almost nobody wants to drive two hours to my farm to go pick up an order. Some people do. And we like that. But having the store makes it really easy. It makes it easy for us. We keep the product there. We've got great staff and people can show up and buy the product and it works. But it's hard to recreate at scale. I've thought to myself, what could local pastures become? And I don't have any aspiration to go

be the next john mackie or something um but like our supply chain is incredibly fragmented and we myself shirttail and belvey our partner in local pastures are producing more than half of all the product we sell through the store um and so like if if we were to try to scale that to be something that was like a big box store concept i i couldn't i couldn't imagine how that could work well unless the business that owned the store was also producing like the bulk of the staple items that that store needs in order to survive and the reason i say that is because when you source from local farms uh like as it's a good outlet for local farms we pay a fair price that makes sense for them we're not like beating them down and we charge what needs to be charged

in order to justify us running the store and to make sure the farmer's getting what they need but uh it's hard to keep consistent supply of everything all the time and uh um so like yeah i i think i think the idea of having like these this massive system that's just really efficient and streamlined would be tough and then that opens the door to like big brands that come in and greenwash and and make you believe that they're checking all the boxes and they come up these third-party verification uh you know uh entities and and uh and then they they they're they're they're merchandising and marketing is it's got all the right words in it but then when you you know you go and investigate you realize like maybe everything isn't totally above board

and so the integrity um decreases as you scale that um i'm not saying it's not possible but i think probably the answer to improving the system isn't to eliminate the existing system it's to get more farmers on board with the idea of implementing regenerative practices and educating them on that and and also strengthening the systems that promote the relationship between the consumer and the local farmer this rip is brought to you by our good friends at unchained unchained is is building a financial services platform for a Bitcoin standard. They have over 7,000 clients that are securing over 90,000 Bitcoin with 12,000 keys on their platform. Their platform leverages Bitcoin's native multi-sig properties. Their cornerstone product is their Volt product,

a two or three multi-sig Volt, which allows you to hold two of three keys in a multi-sig quorum. That gives you full control over your Bitcoin. They also have an IRA product, a lending desk, and they're rolling out a bunch of other products including inheritance protocol and sound advisory so go to unchained.com set up a call with their concierge onboarding team today tell them that tftc sent you and use the promo code tftc at checkout unchained.com well i think local pastures is a great proof not even a proof of concept but like a great example that uh aspiring farmers can look at it's like oh i can actually yeah get some get some distribution i don't depend on the weekend farmer's markets to sell.

And actually, this is probably a good opportunity to get into how local pastures came to be. Yeah. You were just telling us some conversations on Saturdays when things were slow. You were just spitballing ideas. So Aubrey, he and his wife, Paren, own Bellevue, and my wife and I own Sure Tail.

And so we were neighbors at the downtown Austin farmer's market for years every Saturday morning. And we were getting our farms ramped up And so we would obviously became friends and Aubrey had told me about, you know, we're always thinking about how can we sell more product efficiently to customers because we both have been burned trying to wholesale our products through distributors or not burned all the time. a few times yes but uh but but we had a wholesale we we had sold our products in big grocery stores and through restaurant distributors and it was great for moving product but the margins became very very low if not break even or slightly negative at times and so uh and we realized that our business thrives when we're selling to the customer that's going to consume the product

because we it's it's relative to what it costs like uh you know hgb to sell a steak like our input costs on a on a on a steak are much higher um because the way we do things is less efficient uh and and so so anyway we realized that the wholesale approach which initially i thought was the way i was going to scale my farm and make it a great business was oh i'm going to sell the restaurants and then um uh so we realized like selling to the direct consumers though is the way to go and so we would talk about that and he aubrey had seen in france a uh like a a a mobile butcher uh sort of uh farm stand deal where the guy was selling pork chops and steak or maybe duck out of this refrigerated glass case that like came out of the side of a cart that

they'd park on the side of the street and he's like oh that'd be really cool to have and take to the markets and and sell out of or go park different places and and i was like yeah man i got this old airstream and i was thinking about like having like a farm stand like ice cream truck style parked in a neighborhood in austin where we you know people can get their eggs and meat seven days a week you know um and probably a year and a half two years of us talking about it and then finally we were like well we want to actually do something or just keep having this conversation and putting it off and and so we we pulled the trigger and through lots of trials and tribulations of getting a trailer set up and getting ripped off by a guy we hired to build a trailer and

we decided not to use the airstream we ended up with the one that's on all turf now um that's a little trailer that you can walk inside and shop and um and and then open the north lamar bigger store more recently but yeah that was that was interesting and it really changed uh the game for our farms and for customers in austin being able to access uh the our products so yeah how did you guys come uh on all tours specifically because i think it's like prime location right next to austin beer garden yeah it's like right up on the hill it's got good visibility if you're you're driving down all the tour if it's like what's that and you've got like a small parking lot there well we have you know if you shop at the downtown austin farmers market and this is

probably true at a lot of farmers market but there's a lot of interesting people that shop at the markets and you don't know who the hell they are i mean like all kinds of people that have done amazing things or you know how you know have these really important roles in these organizations and you have no idea who they are maybe years ago by before you realize like oh that guy's like the world's leading orthopedic surgeon at this type of thing or whatever well we had this one customer daryl kunik who's a great guy and he's uh he's involved he's i think one of the owners of uchi and uchiko and he's owned a bunch of restaurants and bars in austin and has real estate and he and i told him what i was thinking about and he was like oh i got this space

that might work for you on old tour he owned at the time the office building across the road and they had a lease on this on this uh parking area with uh and uh so we were and he had these trailers he had been building to to enhance his other properties and so yeah it just just so happened he's like i'll you know i'll rent you this trailer and and so that worked out and that was really cool um so it was fortuitous uh and yeah again just you know he's someone who's part of the community of people that that source from local farms and is passionate about that and uh and he wanted to help us out so yeah but uh every time i go in there um i nerd out because one of my favorite books i've had the author on and something that's always in the back of my mind

it's a book called strong towns i'm not sure if you've heard heard about it but it literally goes into the history of how strong towns strong cities came to be and it's like modular and uh he's an economist as well most of the book is focused on like how do you actually build a strong town it's via small local businesses that focus on revenue per square foot and every time i walk into the container on all tour if i'm like this is the most efficient revenue per square foot business i've ever seen in my life and that's important for a low margin business like a farm you know what i mean um yeah and like the original motivation was not even to sell anything else there we just wanted to sell more of our own stuff from our farms um and so out of the gates it was

like we had an agreement that you know we were going to just share the overhead of having the trailer and we were going to sell our farm stuff there and then of course it's become a more robust concept now but yeah going back to like accessibility to for consumers and having that property now multiple properties there seven days a week that people can go to is massive because like i was telling you out there we go to the farmer's market when we can on saturdays morning saturday mornings but now we've got soccer t-ball a number of things we gotta run oh yeah so being able to go there uh my wife whenever she wants during the week like oh we're gonna cook meatballs tonight let me go get some ground beef yeah it's like extremely convenient and that's not only

an unlock for the consumer but it has to be for you you were describing like the intricacies of farmers markets like you could have a bad weather week a bad um judgment call on when to cancel the market because it is sprinkled outside or something like that like you don't have to dive into hard numbers but like how much business does that open up for you being able to have these physical locations um uh a lot i mean you know i i'll speak i can speak about sure tell uh without offending my partners, but, you know, sure. Tell, um, you know, we'll probably double our overall sales, uh, between when we started the stores and the end of this year. Um, and we were doing 1.4 million in sales, uh, not bad for a little farm, you know? I mean, um, and, and so, so yeah,

it's, it's been meaningful and it's also like, uh, I'm not going to say high margin because nothing's high margin, but it's not that breakeven business. We were, you know, running a truck and driving to San Antonio and delivering a truck of eggs to the, you know, HB Central Market Distribution Center. And then, you know, running all over the place. And then it's like, yeah, I did this great revenue number. And I made, you know, I've talked about this before. The first year we broke a million dollars in sales a few years ago. I was like, that's great. What a milestone. And then I looked at the P&L and I was like, we made $5,000. And that year we received a twenty thousand dollar ppp or ppo loan loan from the government one of the covid money

thing so i'm like really we would have been a little negative that year and we didn't even pay ourselves you know i mean so it's like it's uh it's it's tricky but yeah uh going back to your question uh it's it's been tremendous and i know it's it's been helpful in helping other local brands mother culture is a brand we're very close with they make amazing yogurt uh products and you You know, they've scaled their business through local pastures successfully as well. Yeah, their kefir is really good too. Amazing. Yeah.

Yeah, it's great. Their key lime yogurt is dangerous. See, I'm all about the maple pecan, but yeah, everybody's got their favorites. Quick break here, freaks. This rip is brought to you by Gradually Then Suddenly, a framework for understanding Bitcoin as money by Parker Lewis. I wrote the foreword to the book. I'm honored to have done so because it's the best zero-to-one primer

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with ZapRite. Go to zaprite.com slash TFTC to get $40 off their annual subscription. zap right dot com slash tftc forty dollars off reason i reached out to you originally and is because uh parker out there he's tweeting obviously big sure tail fan buying eggs every week and that's one thing we focus on here bitcoin podcast um economics tilt particularly focused on like inflation and how fucked up the monetary system is and the effects that has on every individual in every business out there and he tweeted uh about the price of eggs going up and i think sure tail i think you hopped in and explained and that that's why i wanted to bring you on like it's something that's on top of every american's mind right now especially heading into an election

inflation post-covid has been insane it affects everybody um and it's the understanding how it affects your business how why you guys have to write raise prices and more importantly what you think it's going to take to sort of reverse this feedback loop that we found ourself in with prices going up yeah well i mean what's funny about our business is in the first several years of getting the farm started we were just learning how to do it and so i was in the field all the time my wife was in the field all the time and um you know building chicken houses and learning how to run a planter and fix the damn thing and what seeds to plant how deep to plant them and when you're supposed to plant and and you know how to rotationally graze cattle and all

these things that managing our business was like not something that really happened it was like yeah there's enough to pay the feed bill yep there's enough to buy the fuel and and that's how i talk about like ending up at the end of a year where we sold a million dollars in product and like, Oh, realizing like the business didn't make any money. Um, and so, uh, uh, so anyway, we, we, we were so focused on that, that, um, you know, it, it, it was hard to watch costs in real time. And so you could get, you know, surprised pretty easily. And so then we get into COVID and there's actually a, a, a, a surge in sales for a lot of farms, a lot of small farms like cars because people started being mindful of where their food was coming from and the fact

that they couldn't get certain things to the grocery store and and um and so that was a good thing but then the surge of inflation came afterwards and it was pretty quick and pretty insane of course fuel is the only one that comes to mind that has gone back down and that's the important thing to remember is like inflation doesn't usually go in reverse you know once once the prices go up even if the input costs for the guy selling you stuff went back down like they're going to leave their price alone right i mean that's just how it works um historically if you look at at that um and so so yeah uh we had another year we sold more and um and did slightly worse profit from a profitability standpoint and and and you know we we try to find this balance because

we want to we you know we're like i said outside we're a mission-driven business like first and foremost we're there to do a good thing and to add value but we can't do it for free or or pay to do it you know and so yeah and and i remember the first after that first full year of of crazy inflation where they said was nine percent or whatever um for us it was more and and and it's like you may see nine percent across the board but for certain businesses it was a lot more right Like, our packaging cost, our feed cost, our processing cost. Obviously, fuel was bonkers for a while. I mean, we went from spending $3,500 a month on fuel to spending $6,000, $7,000 a month on fuel, running the tractors and the delivery truck and whatever.

So, yeah, we had to kind of come to Jesus with ourself. And that's the point at which I realized, like, I actually kind of needed to start managing my business. and that's that's that's a that's where a lot of small farmers get stuck is because they want to go out and be a farmer and and it's like okay well you get to a certain size and like you kind of have to sit in an office some of the time and like look at spreadsheets and manage cash flow and project that stuff out and and like what are my costs and okay last year i slaughtered 230 head of cattle and i sold this much of all these cuts and like well what was my cost to produce a rib buy and where should it be priced you know and it's like it gets kind of granular and boring

but that has to happen in order for your business to be able to function uh and have it not be a you know just a charity and uh so it was hard for us to kind of get back to your question it was hard for us to navigate inflation but we have had to go up on prices a couple times over the last couple years and recently we did on on eggs and and and by about nine percent and about seven percent on our meats um and uh and and and so yeah i mean and and the reason there's been some delays in us doing that has been because like it's so hard to track in real time i kind of have to look like at a year's worth of data and then go okay what did what did it cost us during that year and and and you know what should have been different and so yeah it's it's because there's so much

variability in our business right you can have a year and go okay on a typical year you're going to get this much rain you're going to plant your seed it's going to yield this much forage and your cattle are going to eat that and then you're going to get this much beef but then you get a drought like we've had the last not this last summer but the two summers before and it's like okay well now you got to come up with 40 grand to ship in a bunch of hay you didn't have budgeted to feed your cattle it's it's just bonkers so in real time trying to track all that's really tough it's not like your cost of goods is like one or two things you know yeah no that's something we've been passionate about here in the commons and in the small

bitcoin group and then austin like i've lived in philly chicago new york charleston by far austin is like the most health conscious city i've ever lived in yeah so whether it's like the bitcoin community which has really made an effort to go introduce ourselves to ranchers like yourself yeah other farmers in the area to get good quality food or the meat mafia guys and what they've been doing yeah um it's really drive forward like being health conscious and focusing on um every um focusing on your health and eating good food and i think that's this is just an idea a problem we've all there's at least the three years i've been here like how the hell do we solve like you can see how passionate parker was about it like how do we replicate this model and get healthy food

at somewhat affordable prices to more more people like and i think what you said earlier and what will harris has been beating the drum about is probably the ways more distributed small farms selling directly to consumer and i think local pastures is a great model of okay there's a step uh here's a step in the right direction towards that ultimate goal um and that again because if you look at it right now like obviously cali means and many others have been hitting the circuit talking about the um the problems that exist within our industrialized food system and it seems like we're maybe at a fork in the road where it's like we can go hyper centralized and systemically fragile yeah very or figure out how to solve this problem i think a

more robust system is a more fragmented system where you've got these sort of uh uh what am i trying to say like these agricultural communities that are supporting these metropolitan areas and you've got lots of those it's a lot harder to break that do you think we're moving in the right direction or i i think uh you know i don't know if i've been doing it long enough to really have a point of reference to say one way or the other but i i know that there's uh yeah i mean it's helpful that people like joe rogan are having the conversation and getting people to to open their minds to to acknowledge that there's a problem and and what a better solution might be and it's great to have these conversations um you know but uh it's it's a long road and and i think i think

i'm very careful not to demonize agricultural producers in america because i know a lot of people that you know my family uh grew uh wheat uh in kansas um my grandparents and great grandparents and i grew up around that in the summers and like the farmers that farm that land are some of the most intelligent hard-working salt of the earth people um but you know there's a system that's been put in place that people have been born into that now you've got multiple generations that have been farming in this way where they rely on third-party inputs to overcome the imbalances that are created by monocultures or monocrops monocropping and uh confinement feeding operations and things like that which are inherently just not the way nature works

and so i think the real answer is in obviously supporting like i said supporting the relationship between the existing small farmers and and and the consumers and also like on the on the for the larger producers that are selling into the commodity markets and things with grains and beef and whatnot just to open their minds that they're because they're the best equipped people to have scaled regenerative operations right they've already got the land they've got the basic know-how of how to grow a crop and how to how to be a good animal husbandry and how to take care of cattle and pigs and these sorts of things so if you could get those people to start thinking differently about how they approach agricultural production i think you could see some really

interesting things happen. And Will Harris is a great example of that. I mean, he was a conventional cow-calf operator, I believe, and on a 3,000 acre ranch that he inherited. And, you know, he saw a market, a need for all natural and then grass fed beef and, and look, look what he's done now, you know, and, and he'll even tell you his business isn't hugely profitable. I think last I heard they were doing 20 something million a year in sales, and I don't know what their margins are, But I know they have a lot of loss leader components of their business, their leather goods. And I think poultry production wasn't so hot, I heard him say in a talk he gave once. But, like, clearly they're making it work.

And they're a great example of what's possible. So, you know, and they control their customer base. And they set their own pricing, you know, based on what the market will bear and based on what their input costs are. And as opposed to just being beholden to the commodity markets. I'm like, boy, I sure hope cattle prices are good this year, because if they're not, you know. Shit out of luck. Yeah. Have you noticed any changes in your farm since you've been tending to it specifically with this regenerative?

Oh, yeah, in terms of the soil and stuff. Man, yeah, it's really interesting. And I have, I do soil testing and I have data, but I haven't compiled it. And I'm actually writing a book right now about, you know, leaving the city and starting the farm and all that. And I probably will include this stuff in there. But yeah, we've seen. So our pasture, the bigger pasture we have across the road from our house was historically farmed for corn and cotton. They grow out there. And just to give you and forgive my being so verbose, but I just have a lot to say. But in the old days, the German immigrants that originally lived on my farm were primarily subsistence farmers, okay? And then in order to bring in income, they would grow cotton as much as they could pick by hand. These weren't slave owners.

These were a family of immigrants that would go out and pick the cotton that they grew, and they could sell that for cash. And then they would raise beef cattle to sell for cash. In order to feed the beef cattle in the winter, they would grow corn out alongside the cotton. So they'd have a section of cotton, a section of corn. And then there was hay meadows for hay for the cattle in the winter. And then they'd graze the cattle in the warm season. But the way they farmed was that they would just plant corn and cotton and they wouldn't put anything back in.

And they didn't know about rotational grazing and regenerative agriculture back then. The land was pretty fertile still. Well, over the years, the land got really depleted. So when we bought the farm, the pasture out across the road, it's black land, it's black dirt. Um, and, uh, you know, it, it was, uh, there wasn't a whole lot, uh, of life there. Um, and also it had been overgrazed by the rancher that had grazed cattle there previously. So I'll never forget the first year we pulled cattle off of it for a while and we went in and no-tilled the whole thing in hairy vetch, which is a legume, uh, to allow the pasture

to allow the legumes to bring nitrogen into the soil, fix nitrogen in the soil, in preparation for grazing our calves in the spring. And man, that pasture came to life. It was unreal. The volunteer clovers and rye grasses and other cool season grasses that came out were impressive. And then over the years,

we started rotating our laying hens on that pasture. So every Thursday, all of our laying hen coops get moved. So they're constantly rotating across the pasture. And wherever they spend the summer, the cattle will graze in the winter. And wherever the hens spend the winter, the cattle will then graze in the summer after the hens move off. And so we've seen tremendous changes in the quality of our pasture overall and its ability to sustain our herd. Now, the other important thing to note there, if you're a regenerative ag geek like I am, is that probably one of the most impactful things we've done is to use a managed rotational grazing system for our cattle

so that the pasture is not being overgrazed and the manure and urine is highly concentrated with wherever the cattle are going. And then layering on top of that, our laying hens constantly moving around the pasture. Oh, it's been tremendous. But it takes time to get that, you know, to see those results too. Well, that's a big worry, particularly like the monoculture that exists throughout a lot of American farmland. We've talked to Slim and Cole, and that's like the big worry is like in parts of the country where you have this monoculture that exists,

there's planting and harvesting the same crops year in and year out. Like that soil is dying. Well, and the tillage too. It's destroying the structure and the soil. and yeah but so are you an example of like things can turn around absolutely like yeah i mean i i firmly believe that the earth wants to fix itself nature wants to fix itself and it will if you let it i do but um again you got to wean people off of the the system that they've been born into which It's like, hey, you take this input, you put it there, you do this,

you get this yield, and it's going to work. And it works for now, but at whose expense, you know what I mean? And also, like, there's not a big conversation about quality. Like, okay, you can talk about how you can buy ground beef at Walmart for $3.50 and mine's $10 a pound. Okay, fine. But what about, like, the cost per pound of, like, quality? you know what i mean of nutrient density and and how do you measure that i mean that's the

conversation people aren't having and and the commodity market in america is is uh generally not incentivizing producers to they're not giving them a premium like oh this is a more nutrient dense uh cucumber like i don't give a shit i just want you know x number of pounds of cucumbers you know right well this is something has to be consumer driven at the end yeah yeah yeah right yeah yeah and that's that's i'd be interested to get your thoughts like it seems like we're at this point where these topics are being pushed to the front and center of the national conversation yeah big push against seed oils yeah in recent years obviously maha you have rfk joining trump's campaign and trump is promising to let him come in and really focus on health care and

the food systems we've seen people on capitol hill in recent weeks just talking about the absolute garbage that we're feeding children yeah oh yeah effects and i know my wife i think it's it's funny when you have kids like you become hyper conscious of this and something my wife that's why she's at local pastures every week because she really cares what we're feeding the boys and um it is pretty messed up what we've done over the last two three generations in the united states with normalizing this industrial sludge that we're feeding everybody i grew up in the 80s uh i would regularly as a snack i'd my mom would regularly slice off a piece of velveta for me to eat and like we had hot pockets and coke and all this stuff in our house and i fortunately had my own

sort of awakening about nutrition and everything and it was before the farm but really it i i my thinking really changed when i started uh the farm and started producing food and then started coming into contact with people at farmers markets that were you know way ahead of me on this stuff you know people like paul saladino um uh you know and and guys like that that uh that put out great content talking about um what was wrong with the american diet i mean it's just a few fundamentals if you make some tweaks you're going to see a world of difference there but with kids it's tough because like like i said i grew up eating garbage like a lot of people in the 80s did because uh you know fat was the enemy it didn't stop in the 90s by the way no no yeah yeah we were eating fun

dip and all that stuff but like and then there's also part of me that's like i go out with my kids and they want to have uh a burger and a coke or a dr pepper and i'm like well i don't want you to never be able to have a dr pepper but you know it's just you know i want i also want them to be mindful of like why that's something that we don't consume every meal you know what i mean anyway yeah it is like the uh thinking back of thinking back to growing up and you had like three different two liter bottles of soda in the fridge at a given point in time it's like maybe you shouldn't yeah shouldn't have done that and that's i mean if we're going to solve this because it is a massive problem that and going back to like cost that's what i think the american

consumer and policymakers need to recognize as well because maybe buying this quote-unquote cheaper less nutrient dense food and it may seem like it's cheaper but actually in the long run when you factor in health costs it's way more expensive sometimes for the individual but inarguably for the the american taxpayer sort of subsidizing this health care system yeah and it's like it'll keep you alive i guess but you know people should be thriving and and and uh you know we need to i think a direct result of the changes that we want to see in the food system that would be lower rates of chronic disease and things like that it's funny there's a old old rancher that i know that i was talking to that lives out near us and one year and the

he had a field of hay that was over matured gotten rained on it was like way past when you should cut it and at that point that it's pretty much just fiber it's like the the the uh uh you know the the cows in some cases can burn more calories chewing it than they actually get from it but his response was it'll make a turd you know and it's like i'm gonna feed it because i have it and it'll make a turd and it's like okay whereas on our farm we we won't touch stuff like that because i actually need nutrition to go into my cattle so i can produce quality beef so it's kind of like the same thing like you feed your kids a bunch of crap it's like yeah i don't make a turd but what are you gonna get out of it you know and like how do you how like how do you even

produce nutritional cattle like how do you know i don't know it's trying to figure out how to frame this question but like what are the inputs that that lead to quality nutrient-dense cattle well i mean okay so well in that the case i was referring to i mean that guy runs a cow-calf operations so uh he's not selling meat um he's got mama cows that and they supplement with processed you know grain-based uh cubes feet you know cattle feed but um like for our program so we're a 100 grass-fed grass finish program so we use no grain um and feeding our cattle and um so it's a way less efficient way to put weight on cattle so to to put in and to give you an example that to put in context we will achieve about a thousand pounds live weight depending

on the year and the rainfall and forage quality usually you can expect at about 24 months of age that i can get a steer to be about about a thousand pound live weight a feedlot can take a calf and achieve, you know, maybe a 1,300, 1,400-pound live weight at 14 months old or younger. So you think about how much quicker they can do that than I can. And they do that by feeding high-calorie, you know, often corn and other grains to those cattle. And it's not just straight corn usually either. It's, uh, there's, uh, other, um, by-products, uh, oh God, I can't remember the name of it, but there's, there's other, uh, protein sources and stuff that are sort of, I don't know if

synthesized is the right word, but they're, they're, uh, obtained by processing, uh, other plant ingredients, or sometimes they'll even use, uh, like chicken litter from poultry houses and things like that so they're feeding cheap stuff and and more importantly like i'm not one to demonize grain finishing cattle if that's what you're into but uh but you know to do it with high quality grains i suppose would be would be the the better option um because what happens is a lot of the massively produced grains in america soybeans and corn and milo and things like that are produced in soils that have routinely been sprayed with herbicides and glyphosate in some cases. And those herbicides tie up metals in the soil and make them unavailable to the plant. And

so those plants actually are less nutrient dense than if they were grown in a more organic fashion without those inputs. And then those cattle are eating that. And so they're getting less of some of those micronutrients that they need and and and so then the meat that you produce off those cattles is therefore less nutrient dense i don't have lab data for this and i actually should send some i'd like to do that actually but um but we know fundamentally that that's true you know yeah yeah then not only are they not getting the nutrients they're sucking up those herbicides and glycophages yeah and they're eating you know going back to the grain thing i mean they're eating uh grains which they really aren't evolved to do um so it's not you know cattle um you know

bison on the on the prairie weren't going around seeking out like you know uh you know corn cobs and shit i mean they they eat grass that's what that's that's what the leaf of the plant is what they're really meant to eat yeah that's it's fascinating again it feels like we're at a crossroads where i think the zeitgeist is waking up to we should be more conscious about this i mean i can just tell maybe it's the bubble that we're in in austin but even in my extended family back in philadelphia cousins are still or more cognizant of of what we're feeding the kids and and again going back to like cost like imagine if we were able to transition to a consumer um it's the word i'm looking for um pattern where people are making the conscious decision to buy

more healthy goods and the goldfish of the world and all the high fructose corn syrup based products just aren't being bought anymore and you sort of have this shift of capital towards farmers ranchers like yourself that are actually providing good food right what could that do to prices overall and accessibility to to this good food yeah and like i mean there's there's like a like there's multiple tiers to improving like consumers improving their own lives by making better decisions at the grocery store and the first one is like even if you're like really on a limited budget just to buy the produce and the meats and not all the package shit would be number one and then to further optimize it's like what's the quality of the produce and meats that you're

getting like could you get better and now that you're not buying all the packaged you know stouffers and sodas and all this crap like maybe you could afford to maybe you'd spend a little less or the same amount you know um but you'd get way more nutritional density per pound of food purchase than you were getting before you know yeah and you're less hungry all that shit makes you hungry at the end of the day to the package shit dude yeah i mean i've been eating animal base for over three years now and it's like you know i go to a restaurant and they try to fill you up with french fries and bread you know that's the bulk of what you're getting at those places and so i'm the crazy guy that'll order the double meat portion and said but like i can eat a steak

or a pound of our caveman blend or ground beef and that satiates me for forever whereas you know you eat a quarter pound hamburger with a bunch of fries and stuff and you're hungry again pretty quick yeah it's not great not great bob um yeah well i go back to like local pastures and building on this idea of creating a business plan and environment where this can be replicated throughout the country like now that you have uh the brick and mortar store up on north lamar like what are some of the learnings there and like what are some ideas you have that like taking it to the next level um and or basically looking backwards at other farmers and saying hey here's the blueprint yeah well um we're still learning i will say that the trailer the original

store on old turf was great because like you said it was you know great productivity per square foot of of of leased space um but you know the there were some limitations because it wasn't the greatest uh customer experience and also we had trouble keeping enough back stock on you know so one of the reasons for wanting to do the bigger store was not only to have a a more relaxed shopping experience for people that came in the store but also to have more storage and we've got big walk-in refrigeration and freezers in the back, uh, there. So I don't know, I could see us maybe doing more trailers in the future, honestly, uh, using that as kind of our central hub for stocking them. Um, but, uh, yeah, I, I, you know, I will say that none of us

have a really big vision for, uh, how big we could make it or anything like that. Um, um we're you know my the belvey auburn printed belvey and my wife carolyn and i uh none of us are and again like again this is still a mission-driven business and and it has to be profitable and so you know it would make us happy to see people doing this in other areas um and so yeah i'm partly asking selfishly because that's like my wife and i um talk about this a lot we're from philadelphia originally we'll likely move back there um eventually be with our with our family uh and that's like she's like i want to start this up there when we move back and like do you think it needs to be a farmer let's start something like this you know it there are a lot

of people try these concepts who aren't producers and uh it can be done um and because i've sold to some of these people and uh and it's it's challenging though because um so most small farms are just that they're small farms and they're selling at a farmer's market and they're maybe selling to a few restaurants and they and and then when they get wholesale accounts like a grocery store it that's actually like their lowest priority account and so when production wanes and they don't have as much as something those guys get cut and so i what i see from people who go and start stores like this is they're pulling their hair out because their egg supplier no longer has eggs for them or they can't get pork for another two months or whatever it is and meanwhile

they've got rent to pay and they've got customers going what the hell dude i want i need to make a pork casserole tonight whatever it is and so um and so it's hard because of that um so the fact that we, my partners and I are producing the bulk of the core products that we sell certainly helps because we are producers for the store. And that's our priority. So we're going to keep our store stocked. Whereas if you're just an individual that wants to start this, a business like this, it's tough. Now, what, what those guys end up having to do is you look at like Butcher Box or any of these guys, cause they're going to have the same problems, right? Is they've got to go find ways to get that product at scale uh at a scale that matches whatever their demand is

and then you run into integrity issues in a lot of cases and and i've saw this where there was a company called farmhouse delivery in austin that was really cool concept and really well intentioned too but when they couldn't get enough of something they would go and get like uh 44 farms beef it's local it's from texas it's not that far away but they're a big you know a big cattle operation they send calves to the feedlot it's feedlot beef it's just got a nice brand stamp on it and and the headquarters is uh i think in cameron texas you know and and so so it looks nice and you can say i've got local beef on the menu or whatever but it's really it's like it's the same thing right uh as what you're going to get it's it's feedlot beef uh you know

And so then it's like, is that really the same as, you know, is that comparable to, you know, Jim's farm over here that runs 30 head of cattle and when he's out of beef, he's out of beef for the year and then he'll slaughter the next calf crop the next year? Like, no, it's not. But most consumers aren't really mindful of that, you know. And so it's a very long-winded response to your question, But I think it can be done, but it's hard.

And then on the flip side, like, okay, we're producers. We own this business. Like, where can we take it? Well, we're probably limited in how big we can scale it and maintain our ability to keep our store stocked all the time and not have the same problems because, you know, we are limited in how much we can produce ultimately. And also our supply chain for the rest of the products we sell

is incredibly fragmented. it like no one of those vendors can just produce as much as we ask for you know and and so yeah that's just like you know that's what happens when you go back to a system that's driven by local producers that are limited by weather and seasonality it's like i can't give you cantaloupe in december unless it came from you see that with raw milk in the summer it's harder to get yeah it's harder to get right yeah and and you're not going to die without it it'll come back but yeah Is this something you would recommend that other small producers around the country begin doing? Well, if it makes sense, Forum, I know a lot of folks have done well with on-farm stores.

If you're in an area that's accessible, a little bit closer in, you going to say something? What a farm we go to often in the summer, we go up to New Jersey Shore and there's a farm, Beach Plum Farms in Cape May. They have an on-farm store that we go to once a week. Yeah, it's great. I think that's a way that these farms can thrive. And even like the agritourism thing, which I've kind of shied away from because I don't want to be a tour guide. We have an Airbnb on our farm, so if people book the Airbnb

and they want a tour, I'll give them a tour. Otherwise, I don't really do tours just because I've got other stuff I've got to do. But that's a way to do it. I think, um, the, the problem with opening a store is it's a whole nother business. And I am so thankful that I have the business partners that I have and, and to share that, the burden of that with, because it's, it's a nightmare. I mean, I've had like last year, Thanksgiving evening, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve were all thwarted by freezers that went out at the store.

You know, it was, it was like, what's God trying to tell me, man? um and and you know managing refrigeration and unfortunately we've had pretty good experience with all of our staff but you know it's it's just a whole nother set of headaches so um you know it can work but um you know i think every farm's going to be at a different point unfortunately we've scaled our farm to the point where i made a conscious decision to pull myself out of the field for the most part and actually work on my farm not in it and and and i don't love that because i like being out in the field and i still am when we're making hay or doing planting or working the cattle but day to day people know sam's going to check in in the morning

and then he's going to go to the office or go check on the stores and make things happen and make sure that that you know the the layer feed is ordered and that we've got uh you know the tractor parts we need so we can fix that thing and that that there's a plan for replacing our laying hen flocks for the for the new year and and all the and there's money in the bank to pay the bills and it's a tremendous amount of effort that goes into that and so it's not really what i've envisioned for myself when i started farming but um it's necessary it's necessary and i tell everybody like people come work at the farm they're like ah you know this is hard work or this you know this sucks or whatever i'm like yeah it all it's all grunt work whether you're

in the office trying to figure out how to make sure there's enough money there or if you're working in the freezer organizing inventory or packing the truck or working the farmer's market or planting or whatever you're doing it's all grunt work that results in beautiful things you know so yeah grunt work is uh some of the people have shied away from yeah yeah i feel like people want to get back to and you mentioned you're writing a book city to farm yeah what uh what's going to be in the book what what inspired you to write it uh you know well i get approached a lot by people who ask about how i made the transition or made the decision to do it and what it's been like and all these people a lot of people come stay at the airbnb on the farm or they'll come

visit the farmer i'll see him at the at a farmer's market or bump into him somewhere and i hear the same thing from so many people that they're like oh yeah i've got this job i make good money but i'm disenchanted and i we want to buy some land and we want to go and live a different life and be more connected to nature and i'm like that's exactly where i was at and the difference is i made this leap which like our whole family thought we were nuts by the way but i i suppose you know part of it I'm doing because it's sort of a process of self-realization and there's something therapeutic about sitting down and writing and just kind of mapping out where you're at with things and why you did things. And so maybe it's selfish to some degree, but it's also because I

want to share that with people and maybe provide inspiration or at least just somebody's account of what it was like for them when they made a change in their life. I think we'd be better off If more people didn't subscribe to this path, they think they need to take in life. Like there's nothing wrong. We need bankers. We need program. We need all lawyers and all these things, but like, you don't have to do that. Like, you know, there's other stuff out there and also like money doesn't have to be your God. You know, we all got to make money to live, but like,

do you really want to have like a Learjet and a, and a Rolls Royce? Like we, that's what gets programmed into our kids' minds. My kids are obsessed with Lamborghinis right now. and i'm like where did this come from are they into crypto by chance not yet um so anyway yeah but yeah that's kind of that's kind of what that's all about do you feel more fulfilled yes yeah 100 yeah uh you know i didn't grow up my dad wasn't an outdoorsman he wasn't handy and so i had all these things i wanted to know how to do like fix stuff and hunt and skin a deer and just go out in nature and like get food most humans don't know how to do that isn't that crazy

yeah and so you know i one thing i'm writing about now is like the first time i killed a deer on the farm and what that process was like and having to track it and field dress it and take it home and skin it and and then you know i'm watching youtube videos while i'm doing it my kids are running around and like i don't know what i'm doing but you know it's it's a it's an amazing thing and like i'm this guy that was uh flying first class going to new york and meeting with clients and doing it and it's like in your 20s you're like yeah this is cool and then you kind of have kids and you you have a different perspective in life and you're like what the fuck am i doing i don't care about any of this no hotel room in the world is better than my own bed

and i i would never want to be anywhere more than i want to be home with my family you know and having cool experiences with my kids and so you know i had a i when i left uh the advertising business that we had sold and before i started my own advertising business i i was kind of courted to run the austin office of that business afterwards and i met with the corporate guys and they were telling me about what that would look like and and i remember asking i was like how do you deal with the fact that you're traveling all the time are you okay how do you deal with the fact that you're traveling all the time and you know and it just seems like really hectic and he's like oh it's great man i collect so many miles i don't even have to pay for my family vacations

plus i get out of having to go to my daughter's dance recitals and i remember in that moment i like this this dude this is stupid um so that's i mean i travel a lot and the it's tough i don't like traveling yeah yeah i don't like airports no it's necessary for my job but i have the flexibility on the back end where i can set my schedule outside of when i'm traveling and try to be there but completely agree like yeah i get getting to the point now particularly my oldest started to play sports like i don't want to miss miss that no something you have to prioritize like that's what started happening to us with farmers markets you know a year and a half ago my wife's a little earlier but me i started i stopped going about a year and a

half ago every weekend because i was missing my son's football games and uh you know and just working the farmers markets but yeah if you if you if you're you know living the corporate life and traveling a lot or whatever corporate or not corporate you're traveling a lot you're gone a lot it's obviously not like the best for your kids you know it's better for them to have parents around so yeah strong too like we know i guess so we go to jersey in the summers and that's my favorite three months of the year because working from home down there and yeah you stay in cape may for three months cape may county yeah a little north of cape may but cool um it's uh it's a great vibe just being able especially when they're younger they're so impressionable so yeah you don't want

to miss any of that that's neat that you can do that yeah it's a lot of people get the heck out here in austin in the summer it's hot the heat it's hot we're from the northeast it's a little too hot for our comfort down here yeah the uh the uh other thing i mean it would be interesting me this is a bitcoin podcast like you guys accept bitcoin for orders yeah what are your thoughts on bitcoin well i am not an expert on bitcoin um i acknowledge the merits of cryptocurrency as a way to transfer value without uh people sticking their nose in what you're doing i can get down with that I don't, you know, as an asset class to hold. Yeah, I just don't know, man, I own mostly land and land with houses on it. And, you know, and so like, getting into that kind of conversation,

you know, one reason I was able to start the farm and not pay myself for so long was that I own rental property in Austin. And, and, and then we have the Airbnb on the farm that, you know, produce some income and so i'm a big uh proponent of of owning land and owning property and but bitcoin i don't know i i don't know yeah that's the uh i mean we're big bitcoiners here we run this company on the bitcoin standard and that's the the thesis for like holding bitcoin as a business it's helped us like buying everything in the studio it's like i started selling ads for for bitcoin six years ago and trying to make sure that i was able to hold more than i was selling to run the business and as the price has gone up it's let me reinvest in the business yeah um that's

sort of core to our thesis at 1031 to the fund that we have we invest in companies that can provide value to customers and make a profit like that's something that's been lost particularly on vc funded companies oh yeah two decades is like don't worry about making money just grow and get get as many customers and figure that out later where we're taking the opposite approach it's like make money make profit put it in the bitcoin and that's what we've seen on the business side businesses that adopt bitcoin as a treasury asset um benefit in the long run like if you're able to hold it for at least a four-year period you'll find at the end of that four years that bitcoin's worth more and you can reinvest in your business and do do more things and that's um parker was

mentioning earlier that's another thing is trying to figure out how to get bitcoin in the hands of more businesses and accepting is what you guys do um online via strike um is something that we're trying to solve particularly here in austin um the crew here at the commons is there's a ton of us bitcoiners here that would love to go spend our bitcoin yeah to support businesses that are accepting it and sort of begin the transition away from that system where you can be snooped on there's middlemen and all all that stuff well and i you know the more uh businesses that accept bitcoin um i think the more easy it'll be for people to adopt it because like one of my big uh hang-ups for um holding bitcoin or using it regularly in my life is that most of the things

that we need to buy i can't pay for with bitcoin uh inputs for the farm and things like that so yeah they kind of go hand in hand yeah yeah it's uh it's a weird world we find ourselves in the bitcoin world it's funny we're we've been the uh the crazy people saying maybe we should focus on the money because again going back to inflation that's the biggest worry is that the government and the central banks print so much money that it becomes almost impossible to facilitate just economic activity because prices get haywire right it seems like we're getting back into a monetary policy that's probably going to be inflationary moving forward the fed lowering rates wars popping up like they're probably gonna have to print more money so it's

like let's start having the the conversation about transitioning to a better money that actually cannot be debased and allows you to save all the hard work that you're doing whether it's you me you at the farm you at the media company the venture firm like you want to be able to secure that hard work and that value of that work in an asset that's not going to be able to be printed because somebody decides to go hit a button so there's nine trillion more dollars in the economy yeah we do have a final question on the show now okay which is what is something um a prediction or an idea that you have within your industry that you think nobody would agree with you on a prediction an idea within my industry that i don't think anybody would agree with me on

i don't know that people would overwhelmingly disagree with my predictions um you know i'm actually a pretty optimistic person when it comes to looking ahead at the future and the trends that i'm seeing seem to suggest that there's a growing number of people becoming mindful of the food they're putting in their body and, uh, and a subset of those people, uh, are becoming really mindful and picky about where, who they source it from. So that's a promising trend for me. So I tend to think that that's going to continue as more people, you know, gain clarity and start to realize that most of what they're being told to purchase to put in their bodies is complete garbage um yeah you think it's gonna happen fast or slow well you know right now it's happening

fast within like this certain sort of niche community of like i don't know like younger intelligent fitness minded i know the bitcoin community is very mindful of this like there are certain these niche communities that are really pushing that narrative not pushing it like but like they're you know having those conversations um but you know the real challenge is going to be in getting like the average day-to-day you know middle class uh family to start going you know what i don't want to eat garbage anymore you know i'm gonna and we see I mean, we have customers like that. Now, one misconception we had when we started the farm is like, okay, our product is going

to have to be more expensive than like the regular stuff at the grocery store. So I guess it's like going to be the people with the higher incomes that are probably going to want to source from us. And that really isn't true. It's like we've got people of all kinds of income levels that source products, source their food from from us and from other farms like us because they care you know it's like you've got there's a certain subset of customers that go to local pastures because they deem it to be the most premium thing you can do right like it'd be like having your boots made by this guy jean carlo that

like has a boot making cobbler shop on second street and you you you shook his hand and he made your boots and and and it's like you don't really care he's just like you like that story and be able to and then there's the people that like want the highest quality food and they'll pay whatever needs to get paid because they realize it's like arguably the most important thing they spend their money on right and uh and those are the people that buy giancarlo's boots because they're actually the most well-made boots and not because it's this status thing or whatever um but uh you know getting uh just the average joe to start being mindful of like hey i gotta to quit eating this like you know this these freaking you know uh steroidal chickens you know

the five dollar costco chicken or whatever you know think about what's going in those things that's the challenge and i think that's going to be slow um and i think that's going to require uh large-scale agricultural producers to start opening their minds to the merits of regenerative farming techniques and and just i think that if it happens will be a slow transition but i think someone like rf uh it's not rfk yeah rfk uh being involved in government um would be a really good thing for helping to push that forward you know i really do yeah yeah i do as well i hope it happens faster yeah one individual at a time one family at a time though that's what it's gonna take yeah yeah i mean it is happening um it's a complicated world man it is it is well thank you for doing

what you're doing dude it's very important and uh my family has benefited massively from it so thank you thank you taking the jump out of the city to the farm and building out sure tail creek and uh local pastures it's um we're very big fans and very happy customers thanks man i appreciate that big time yeah we're um where can people find out more about what you guys are doing uh suretailcreekfarm.com um and then uh and you obviously join our email list and we send out an email once a week just kind of talk about what's going on and follow them on instagram if you want to see the chickens in their natural environment that's uh yeah suretail creek farm on instagram and then uh you know stop by the local if you're in austin stop by local pasture store

and um you know say hi to the crew over there and but yeah and i mean i i all day long i'm getting phone calls from customers with questions and stuff that's what i part of what i do so you know yeah well sam thank you for joining us today thank you thank you for what you did that's all we got today freaks peace and love

okay