The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Bryson Lipscomb Joined Alex Urpí & Michael Urpí On "Today y Mañana" On The I Love CVille Network!

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Bryson Lipscomb, CEO and Co-Owner of Triple Oaks Farm LLC, joined Alex Urpí & Michael Urpí On “Today y Mañana!” “Today y Mañana” airs every Thursday at 10:15 am on The I Love CVille Network! “Today y Mañana” is presented by Emergent Financial Services, LLC, Craddock Insurance Services Inc and Matthias John Realty, with Forward Adelante.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Today y Mañana. I'm Alex. This is Michael. We're very excited to have you joining us on a little bit of a cloudy morning. Muggy, kind of cloudy morning. Yeah, the summery feeling is beginning to present. Yeah. Is this a hot Café con Leche day? Is this a cold one? It's a tricky one, yeah.

It's tricky, you know. I always tell people that you're Café con Leche, but I'm like, it's hot, so you want the chilled, but then again, it's kind of cloudy. Muggy. Muggy, yeah. You want the warm. It's a difficult Traffico in Lecce day. But it's always a great day to join us on Today with Liana and meet some of the amazing

guests that we're lucky to have on our show. So we're going to be joined shortly in the show by Bryson Lipstrom. He is co-owner and CEO of Triple Oaks Farm, LLC. Later in the show, we'll talk a little finance. We'll talk some weekly jobless claims, maybe the Fed changing tune a little, where are we looking in terms of interest rates. And then, of course, we'll talk some UVA baseball, how they're doing. They're off of the exam break, and they started off with a nice little bang.

Yes. I think they have, what is it, maybe like one more week left of baseball, and then- For ACC tournament. Yes, I think they have maybe like one more week left of baseball and then... Or ACC tournament. Yes. So I think two more series. Like an ACC series this weekend and it's NC State. And then next weekend against Tech. And then boom, it's ACC tournament. Fun times. I always like

college baseball players. It's going to be a lot of fun. First, love being here on the I Love Seville Network set. Thank you to our great presenter, Emerging Financial Services, as well as our awesome partners that we have, Matias Yon Realty. Matias is going to be joining us next week. Credit to us.

Insurance Forward Adelante. Heads up, if you did see the preview stuff, one of our guests, the Waterworks Festival, they were not able to join us this morning, but we'll try to reschedule. Yeah, we'll have to put them on back. In the future, but be sure to check out information on that. You'll be able to see Waterworks Festival 2020. You want me to look like a liar

from last week. I'm like, oh, we're going to have two guests on. Exactly. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He heads the show and he tells us about deaths that don't exist. But they will definitely try to restructure that. Already got a couple people tuning in this morning. I spotted, where did I spot a couple this morning that I... Boy, Alex has to monitor like three different Facebook profiles.

Well, and it's Zerpy, of course, he's watching. But then we've got our awesome, yeah, we've got some great people tuning in. Tom Strunk, thanks for watching've got some great people tuning in. Tom Strunk, thanks for watching this morning. Appreciate you tuning in. Dr. Elizabeth Irby, watching the show this morning. Always a favorite. A regular. A regular and a true fan.

A true fan. A true fan favorite. True fan favorite. Jay Priest, thanks for watching. Zach Campbell, thanks for liking. Michaela Q. Schmidt thanks for liking the post this morning

so appreciate everyone who is turning in we will be sure to read your questions and your comments so be sure to leave them for us they're tuning in

because they want to see Bryson exactly I think so I think so I think everyone was like okay this is it

this is it so I say we jump right into it totally so we are excited to welcome to the show this morning Bryson Lipstone he is co-owner Everyone's like, okay, this is it, this is it. So I say we jump right into it. Totally. So we are excited to welcome to the show this morning Bryson Lipstone. He is co-owner and CEO of Triple Oats Farm. Bryson, thanks so much for coming on. Hey, good morning.

Thank you guys so much for having me. This is a pleasure. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to have you on. So maybe for those who haven't met you yet, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you first became interested in farming because i know this is you didn't grow up in this yeah that's kind of a journey to get to this point so in 2021 uh my wife and i um mckenzie beautiful wife we have one son almost two years old abraham

he was born uh first year of the farm but um yeah so wife and I, we didn't grow up on farms or anything and certainly didn't go to school for this. But like we were talking about earlier, you know, 2021 kind of peak pandemic, food shortage became like a real thing for us. And my wife came to me actually with the idea of, well, can we raise a couple pigs? Well, she said one pig, and then I did some research

and found out, you know, you don't just raise one pig. You have to have a buddy, and so we got two pigs. And we just wanted, we were looking for that food security, you know, that we didn't like how vulnerable we felt in that moment when we realized we didn't control our food, and it could disappear just like that. So we decided to take some active steps to gain that security in our food. So in 2021, we launched the farm, which somehow, I can't remember specifically, but I was watching some YouTube videos about Joel Salatin and I had

started to read his books. So the regenerative agriculture concept kind of grabbed us from the beginning and took us down that road. And, man, so we are predominant enterprises on the farm are pastured pork, and we manage a herd share program making raw milk available to the community. That's our two big things. We certainly do sell a lot of beef, and we do some chicken as well. But our two main things are pork and raw milk. And that's, I think, how we best serve our communities is in those two things. So yeah, you could say our farm was kind of built out of just a need. You get two piglets and put

them on Facebook and then all your friends and family start asking you do you sell pork i'm not a business from just you too yeah like i'm not a business guru i've never started a business or anything this is i've never been an entrepreneur but man we felt the need it was it was obvious so like i drug my wife along to this, like, one-day pig course up in northern Virginia put on by Jordan Green and their farm, J&L Green Farm. He's a student of Joel Salatin's as well. And we got some, like, really good kind of boots-on-the-ground knowledge on how to raise a pig, you know, in a regenerative method, you know, outside, on the ground, under the sun, in the fresh air, the way that it's supposed to be done, and we took off. So if you want to talk about pigs specifically, we sold three pigs our first year to like a couple friends and family,

and we certainly ate that first pig ourselves. And I'll just tell you, I love telling this story because I can still remember it so vividly but the first bite of the pork chop that we raised and it was like a thick bone and I put it on the smoker it was beautiful but the first bite like when I tasted that meat and tasted that fat it was unlike any pork I had ever tasted in my entire life and I was almost mad because I was like we've been lied to yeah we've been lied to like you know I was used to like the pork chops you see in Sam's Club where you can buy them for like a dollar thirty eight a pound how they're doing that I don't know but anyways and they're like these like really paper thin kind of white flavorless pork chops you know you put them on the grill they're kind of dry but you put some barbecue sauce on and it's okay

this was a completely different product. And now, knowing what I know now, it is a completely different product. That meat is so different. And it's incredible. Not only does it taste good, but it's so good for you. And like twice as nutrient dense as like the pork you get, the industrial raised pork. Because the pig is outside. It's eating bushes and worms and roots and all kinds of stuff. And yeah, it's not the easy way to do it,

but it's certainly not the most efficient way to raise a pig. But if you're asking me, it's the right way to raise a pig. We've lost so much in our food production world to the name of efficiency, but we've lost, where we've given up is on the animal husbandry side of things. Yes, it's more efficient to raise pigs or chickens or cows in a CAFO, C-A-F-O, centralized animal feeding operation, confined feeding operation. That is efficient, like super duper efficient. And if you think I don't lay in bed sometimes and think about, oh man wouldn't it be nice to like push a button and feed

myself over there, like the appropriate amount of feed, you know, and everything is taken care of. Sure. However, man well yeah, there's certainly a cost to get into all that. No, I mean you pay a cost in terms of the quality Oh my gosh, yeah. A hundred percent, a hundred percent so doing things a little bit harder um a little bit

more intensive a little bit more hands-on it does take work but but the product that we get at the end of the day is is phenomenal and again it was unlike anything i had ever eaten in my entire life and we've converted so many people that come to us and say you know we don't we're not really big pork eaters and i was like hey neither was i i get it like look what you've been served uh our whole lives it's substandard what's known as being like this dry yeah i remember first time i started i began to cook pork yeah or tender ones i got like um one of those America's Test kitchen things and it's like for the

basics of how to cook it and it's describing like yeah you gotta be really careful with how you cook it because and I remember being shot by the next line that follows that you have to make sure you don't cook it too much because most American pork has been bred to have all the fat taken out of it

and therefore it's dry and I'm like why would you breed to have all the fat taken out of it and it's and therefore it's dry and i'm like why would you breed and to have all the fat because it's efficient you get a bunch of bread and just churn them out i got so much on this because we've been lied to because the because uh because government pushed like fat is bad so i'm a 90s baby so i grew up on skim milk and margarine and saccharin and all this other fake stuff, just trying to imitate the original product. It's not real, but that's what was pumped into our society. Fat was bad. We're eating margarine and doing Taibo in the 90s.

So they bred these pigs to be a leaner pig because that's what people thought they wanted or what was best for them. And with that leanness, you lose so much flavor. Now, it should be said the type of pigs, the breed of pigs that we raise in our pasture-based management system are all heritage breed pigs, which means old line breeds. These breeds of pigs have been around for a long time. They've got much more thicker hair. They've got multiple colors. You know, they're spotted or they'll have a stripe or a band or something. So they're prettier, in my opinion. And they also put on a lot more fat.

They're slower growing, so you lose efficiency there. The hogs in the hog houses, they're finishing sometimes in like five months. That's impossible with the breeds of pigs that we raise. You know, we're looking at like 8 to sometimes 10 months, depending on the specific pig. It takes time. But they do put on a lot more fat, and certainly that translates to flavor.

I actually had something to say too, because it's funny how we're talking about this, how society has been bred to, we're trying to replace foods that we've eaten since the beginning of human time with sort of like these fake alternatives. And people are like, no, no, no, butter's not healthy for you.

Margarine is like, well, we've been eating butter all our lives. I mean, you still go to Europe and people cook with butter and everything. They put butter in their sandwiches in Europe. They put butter in their sandwiches. You go to Italy and you order a steak there. This fat. I mean, it's like huge chunks of fat. Yeah, you eat that.

So suddenly now there's an effort to replace foods. And we've been all our time to say, yeah, even though humanity has been living the past 10,000 years fine, suddenly the past 50 years, no, no, no, that food's no good for you. You have to switch to these other alternatives that are just not even in some ways real food. And then to kind of go back to the pork too it's like i i worry sometimes too with industrial meats right i mean i've seen some kind of like documentary stuff like that these animals kind of live almost sometimes even in cages like they live their entire life and i wonder that pig or that cow doesn't look healthy

so now you're killing it and you're selling me the meat how healthy is that meat for me to eat oh because i'm putting that in my stomach but if the animal's not healthy how is that going to be healthy for me oh it's it's and that stress uh when you know when they're living in that confinement like you see the clips of these you know feedlot beef operations in argentina or or mexico or you see the poultry houses raising the Tyson chicken and you see the hog houses you know Joel Salatin has a great analogy you can go to a you like college baseball right yeah you can go to a packed stadium right packed people to your left and right no elbow room and you can be there for a few hours you might be a little agitated a little anxious but you're going to leave that environment and go back into your own working you know or living space you wouldn't live there for six months a year two years depending on what animal we're

talking about you would not do that do you think you would be healthy do you think your mental health would be great which translates to physical, which translates to the meat that you're putting into your body. Yeah, it absolutely does translate. And back to what you're talking about, trying to replace the original foods. I like to talk about it like we're on this quest for simplicity, because the more complicated we've made products, the more processed we've made products the more processed we've made products there's nothing simple about that so lard is a good um a good uh item to talk about when i'm when i'm talking about some simple foods so like cooking oils right so what's a big problem with like say frying a steak in a cast iron skillet when you need an oil is like you

need a really hot high smoke point oil so you can't use butter you can't use olive oil so we're limited usually to these like processed oils that we know now thank you are not great for us or inflammatory there's nothing simple about canola oil and the process it takes to to get it to that that final product nothing simple at. So what's the most simple version of a cooking oil we can make? Animal fat. You can render it down into, if it's a pig, it's lard. If it's beef, it's called tallow. That's the simplest version of cooking oil we possibly can make. And the simpler we can make it, the more traditional. Not only does it taste phenomenal, it's better for you so it's like

same thing with the milk there's nothing simple about pasture pasteurization or homogenization there's nothing simple about that process look at these huge plants they've built to process milk doesn't taste that great not great for you um unpasteurized raw milk, that's the simplest version of that product. Right out of the cow, into a bottle, into your family's bodies. Simple. Hog houses, we're pork producers, I can talk about pigs. Nothing simple about a hog house. You're going to be about a million dollars in debt to start one of those hog houses from the jump. Nothing simple about maintaining all that equipment. Nothing at all. They have huge manure lagoons

because they have to process all this manure because they're keeping thousands of animals in this one spot. Nothing simple. We take the animals, and instead of collecting all the manure and then having to manage it, and then when it floods, it goes into my community's drinking water. No, instead of doing that, we just move the animals around the land, letting them distribute their manure, and then it goes into the topsoil.

We're feeding microbes, and we're building, you know, topsoil as we go. And, yeah, it's amazing to see. So this quest of simplicity is how I like to think about it, because there's so many things that we've been eating. There's nothing simple about it. Got it, it yeah and it's gotten way out of hand is that what regenerative farming techniques is is that essentially I mean how how would you describe for someone who's new to it and doesn't say okay regenerative techniques what what does that look like right so there's a lot of different ways to summarize regenerative farming and I'm no expert

you know I'm still learning every day myself I've only been doing this for two and a half years now but what the way I like to think about it is we're giving back more to the land than we take from it so the way that we raise pigs pastured pork we use all temporary portable fencing powered by you know solar energizers energizers that run electricity through those fences. And we move pigs every week, one to two weeks, to new spots. And we like to really focus on the land improvement aspects of pigs. So we'll put pigs in these really overgrown, mismanaged, unmanaged pieces of property where you can't even walk through.

We'll put a group of 50, 70 pigs in there for a week or two, let them do their work and clear it out and thin it out. Well, all of a sudden, now we can get in there and start thinning things out. And to go down that a little bit more, what we're trying to establish is something, a term called silvopasture, which essentially translates to shaded pasture. And it can be a wide range of percentages of shade. But what we're essentially trying to do is thin the canopy out enough to where you can get some sunlight in there, you can plant some seeds, because guess what these pigs are doing the whole time they're in there? Prepping the soil for seeding.

They're aerating, right? The pig, they will root and root and root, and their feet are aerating. They're certainly fertilizing with their manure. They're allowing oxygen into the topsoil. So there's like all these seeds that are just laying dormant in the seed bank, as it's referred to, just waiting for the prime conditions to sprout. If you can run the pigs through there, disturb that soil, drop that manure, you know, put those nutrients into the ground, all while trying to thin the canopy out. Now, the canopy part is a, this is my Sistine Chapel. This is going to take me over a decade to do. But if you do all those things, and now, you know, there's some sunlight getting in, you're getting grasses to grow, you're establishing pasture in the woods or in,

and where equipment can't get to, you know, we're going to let that ground recover, let those grasses grow for like a year, and then we're going to bring pigs back through, and we're going to let that ground recover let those grasses grow for like a year and then we're going to bring pigs back through and we're going to do it over and over and over and over again and the whole time building topsoil so that's a you asked me how to explain regenerative farming so like just making sure we're giving back more um than we're taking from it that makes perfect sense already got some some great comments coming in. Julie Martin says, yes, love what your family is doing. There was someone, where is he, where is he? Someone, we got a couple other comments here. Eric got some likes.

Eric Thomas liked the show. Heidi Johnston, Autumn Leonard, Jordan Birch, Mackenzie Livestone, I'll tell you, Mackenzie Watson, thanks for tuning in this morning, Mackenzie. Brandon Key said, had some of my triple-oak sausage yesterday. Keep up the good work, Bryson. Thank you, sir. The sausage is a popular one. So what are some of the

products on that vein? What are some of the things people could actually get from Triple Oaks Farm? Triple Oaks Farm, you can find us at tripleoaksfarmllc.com. You can do all your ordering through there. We do shipping. We really right now are catering to like the greater Lynchburg area,

certainly trying to get a foothold in Charlottesville. Don't have anything yet. But anyways, you can go to TripleOaksFarmLLC.com. We sell a lot of pastured pork. We've got the best pork chops you'll arguably ever have. We sell lots of different types of sausage. We sell, you know, even like pork hot dogs. You know, you think it's about something nostalgic like a hot dog, but when you're trying to clean your diet up, it's tough to still have a hot dog, you know. So it's pretty cool that we can offer things like all pork hot dogs or all beef hot dogs.

And then we also manage the herd share program for raw milk. So tell us a little about the herd share. I know sometimes the audience also likes the herd share. It's a different way of buying milk. It's not go to the store, buy a bottle, take it home. How does that work? So in the Commonwealth of Virginia, it is illegal to sell raw milk for human consumption. That is the law. So we were talking earlier,

a herd share program is a private contract between the consumer and the farm. Essentially, instead of you buying raw milk, you are buying a portion of the herd, and then you pay a service fee so that we milk your cow and then give you your milk. So that you're not buying milk, you're just paying me to milk your cow. And that's all laid out in, like I said, a private contract. And that is, you know, for, honored by the Commonwealth of Virginia. The other way to get raw milk in Virginia is to be sold as pet food,

and that's certainly being done. In Virginia, it's been done for years. I do need to say, though, Triple Oaks Farm is the first farm in state history to ever sell raw milk in retail stores. We launched, well, we had our second launch this February. So really cool that we got it. In theory for pets. Well, I mean, it's labeled as pet food. And that's the written law. And that's all we did was we sat down and read the law. And then we started going through the steps. Like, I mean, it's my job to sell milk and I need to have milk in stores

and selling raw milk in the state of Virginia is tough. And the only way to do it in retail stores to where it's the most convenient is to sell it as pet food. I sometimes feel like our pets will eat healthier than we do. I look at some, like some of the pet foods, it's like, you know, liver, beef,

that's it sometimes, you know? And now they even get in the raw milk. I'm like, wait a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I'm catching on to it too. It's a whole lot easier for me to sell your pet food than it is for me to sell you food. Yeah, yeah. And that is a shame.

That is a shame. So that's what we do to get the milk into retail stores because this is all about convenience. We have a farm, which means we are in the country, which means we're not on your way to pick your kids up from school. So it's our job as the producers to make it as convenient as possible to offer the best customer experience as possible. And in this state, there's only a couple ways to do that. So when people do the herd share, what do they do?

So they sign up. So the herd share, what do they do? So they sign up? So the herd share, everything is done online. You sign your herd share contract, which defines you buying a portion of the herd. And then we charge the milking fee, the service fee, every month. And it's all automated. Again, it's got to be easy. It's got to be easy for us, and it's got to be easy for the consumer. So everything's done online.

We give our customers an option. They can come to the farm and pick up their milk. That's the most affordable way to get it because it requires the least amount of my time. But the majority of it is distributed to drop sites and convenient locations around Lynchburg. I deliver milk every Monday. I love doing it.

I love, like, stocking stores, like, for the week. You know, families are coming in to get their food, to feed their family. I get jazzed up about it. But, yeah, so I drop the milk, and we work with several other businesses, like I said, in the greater Lynchburg area, and then people can just come and get it at their own convenience. And we love that. That's awesome.

Is there a local farmer's market that you guys go to? Not yet. I don't know. Excuse me. So we do. So we started the Campbell County Farmer's Market, which is located just in the heart of Rustburg, which is the town my wife and I grew up in, so we have a lot of ties there. We love it.

It's the county seat. Really cute town. We started that this year. We have not been able to find permanent homes as far as permanent markets in the Lynchburg area. Some of them can be tough to get into. There's already people selling there. They can be kind of political sometimes, you know. So there's human beings involved.

So there's things, you know. But we sell things, like, in several other ways. You know, markets are really great. I love the conversations we have at markets. You know, that's the most important part of the market. It's not selling the goods. It's the conversation we have. You know,'s the most important part of the market. It's not selling the goods. It's the conversation we have. When I get to meet somebody brand new for the first time,

it's so cool. It must be a great feeling. Got some more comments coming in. Ashley Little Jordan says, love the Herd Share program, best built ever. Franklin Trailer says, love to see the big dog spelling it D-A-W-G, doing great things.

Hashtag airborne, I guess he was. He knows you from that. I was going to ask for people who are like, what's the safety difference? Because obviously raw milk sometimes gets this reputation as, oh man, but if it's not pasteurized, is it still

safe for me? But I know, because we've talked to some other people, like there are a lot of safety standards that go into producing raw milk. It's not like, you know, some guy in the backyard just doing it and then he sticks it into a bottle and puts it to you. The way I'm going to answer that question initially is, when you are buying food from an independent private food producer like us or anyone else out there doing it.

You as a consumer, this is my challenge to you, is to go to that farm. If they say they have an open door policy, challenge the policy. You need to know what it looks like, where your food is coming from. Go shake their hand, have them show you around. Because what you said isn't necessarily true. If you're selling things privately, well, it's not necessarily regulated. Exactly, yeah. Okay. We talk about trust a lot,

and you've got to keep me on track, because I've got so much to say. We never thought about the trust that we just gave to the big box stores. We never thought about that. When you go into, I always talk about like Sam's Club, because I would go in there every week and buy the pack of two big Chuck roasts, sometimes two packs of them. And that's what I would eat all week. And I never thought twice about it. Never thought twice about it until around the COVID time when things started happening and we became more aware of certain things and we're like, oh my gosh, think about that. What is more intimate than buying food from someone that you're

going to allow your family to put in their mouth? You don't even know them. If something's wrong with it, who are you going to call? You have no accountability. And you just gave that trust to this nameless, faceless corporation, not to mention your money is going not in your community. So it's crazy. So we talk about trust a lot. There's a lot of trust involved. And, like, that's what we try to build, develop, and foster as a food producer is that trust. So, like, people, when they buy their food from me, they trust me.

You know? And if anything's wrong, which never happens, but if anything's wrong, they can call me directly. There's so much accountability in that. And that's the way it's supposed to be. Food is supposed to be local. You're supposed to be able to shake the hand of the person making your food. That's a cool way to challenge yourself. If you can't shake the hand, try that. Just see if you can. So, see how it works. So safety regulations. Yeah, and if you're talking about milk specifically, not all dairy farms are created equal. I want to kind of back up a little bit and talk about, like, how, why milk was made, why pasteurization was made the standard

in selling raw milk criminalized. Well, in early 1900s, late 1800s, they're raising dairy cows in what they call dairy swills, and they're feeding them terrible diets. A lot of times these cows would be cooped up right outside in confinement-type operations, right outside of breweries, and they're fed just spent grains. Very little nutritional value in there.

And they're, okay, the cleanliness standards, let's talk about, were subpar then, you know, call it ignorance or whatever. So people were getting sick. So Louis Pasteur had this technology of pasteurization that he was kind of looking to put onto something. And it turns out if you just cook the milk to a high temperature, you kill the bacteria and people don't get sick. And that's true. That's great. And I would probably want the milk pasteurized if it was coming out of one of those environments too. I mean, but you cook it, people don't get sick. Pasteurization is the standard, right? There's a lot of other things that happens in that pasteurization process

that they weren't talking about. All the good things that we lose in that cooking process. That is a prepared food. It's important to know. Ultra-pasteurized milk doesn't even need to be refrigerated. But they still put it in the refrigerator because Americans aren't used to going to a center aisle

to get their milk. They still put it in there. That's something to think about. It tells you something if it's been pasteurized to the degree that you don't need to refrigerate it. So they made pasteurization the standard, I don't know the specific year, and then the stigmatization began.

Well, if you drink raw milk, you're going to get sick. You're going to die, yada, yada, yada, all that stuff. And that compounds year after year after year after year. To the point, like, my personal story is I had a friend in college who grew up on a dairy farm. And when I would visit them, they would go out to the big tank. The cows had just been milked, and they would fill up a big tea pitcher with milk. And I was like, ew. But I don't know why I had that reaction. You know,

I had no, I tasted it. It was fine. It was good. But I was still like, ew, ew, ew, raw milk. But see, that's everybody. That's everybody. And that's because it's been criminalized and demonized over the past several decades, hundred years, you know. So, one, the biggest factor that people, the biggest benefit that people have of consuming unpasteurized milk is the digestibility of it, and that's because it has the enzyme lactase. Most people come to us and say, oh, I can't drink milk because I'm lactose intolerant. Well, what you really are is your body can't properly digest pasteurized milk because when you cook that milk, you eliminate the enzyme lactase. Your body needs the enzyme lactase to properly digest lactose.

So when you're consuming an incomplete product, a processed product, your body has a hard time. This is the craziest thing. We've had people say, you know, every time I wanted to have ice cream or drink a glass of milk or something, I would take a lactase supplement just so I could process it. I'm like, man, think how crazy that sounds. That is nuts. We took this out so that you have to take a pill or whatever.

And again, there's nothing simple about that. You're doing all this. Just drink the product as it's supposed to be drank. Another issue, too, I have with that, too, is when they make pasteurized milk, it also loses all its nutrients, and then they try to put it back in. But I've always felt like if you put it back in, it's not the same as if the nutrients are already within that.

Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, vitamin D or maybe, I don't know about calcium, but certainly vitamin D and other vitamins. Yeah, you'll see on the back where it'll be like added back. Yeah, that's right. Why would you do that? Yeah, it's like a water back where it'll be like added, why would you do that? Yeah, it's like a water bottle, they'll say minerals added for taste, and I'm like, hold up.

So the milk that, so we actually, we're not the milk producers, I need to say this, we are the distributors of the milk, we partner with our good friends at the Farmers Haven Woods Farm, they are the dairy, we are the distributors. Our farms work together to bring this to the community. And it's working out really well because they can focus on

the herd, you know, crops, equipment, all things milk. It's crazy to go over there. And like every time I go fill milk bottles every week and I see all this management, I was like, there's no way I could do what we do and do all this. We get to focus on packaging, logistics, customer experience, all that kind of stuff. It's a beautiful relationship. I think we'll probably see more farms doing something like this in the future as raw milk continues to become more popular and people are looking. Havenwood's farm is, in fact, a grade A state inspected dairy.

We do bacteria tests, our milk weekly. You're not testing specifically for bacteria because everything has bacteria in it. You're testing levels, bacteria levels. And that's important because what we've kind of learned is, like, the cleaner your operation and the colder you can get that milk the quicker the better um and so when it's maybe not the cleanest uh maybe the say the bacteria levels in the milk are a little bit higher and it wasn't

you know cool to you know 36 37 degrees fahrenheit you know, immediately, um, those bacteria can culture in there and, and, and, and grow. And then, well, essentially turn into sour cream and yogurt eventually. But, um, so we do test our milk just for, um, safety, uh, just to be safe. Um, and the cool thing about it, if those bacteria levels get up, uh, above where we want to want them to see, it's all stainless steel piping. We break everything down and you can clean it right there. And again, going back to when they outlawed raw milk, this was before even common refrigeration was... I mean, we're talking about the early 1900s.

They didn't have a refrigerator. They didn't have stainless steel piping and automatic sanitation washes and all these things that we do now. So it's, we're still living off these antiquated laws, you know, that pasteurization wasn't solving the problem. Pasteurization was just the pill, you know, it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't solving the root cause and the root cause was how are you raising these animals? How are you handling and treating these animals? Are you, are they raised with respect? Are they raised with honor? No and no

is the answer to that. Once we can get past this stigmatization, which that's happening right now, and then hopefully legalization soon will be different. In the meantime, it's nice that there are opportunities to do that. A couple of shout outs. Thanks to Campbell County Farmers, but it is sharing the show. Appreciate that. Lucas TC is watching the show this morning. Wool Branch Farm watching the show this morning. Definitely appreciate everyone who is tuning in and showing the support.

Showing the support. We mentioned raw milk, turd share can be done online. Is that also where you can purchase some of the pork, et cetera? Right, yeah. So like I said, we have an online store. You can purchase pork, beef, eggs. We operate a private food club to make some different items available to our community. Again, we're running into these food restrictions, regulations, where our right to choose our food has been

stripped away from us over the past several decades. Let's talk about food rights. You can certainly get into this business and okay, these are the rules, these are the rules, these are the laws, let's toe the line, let's follow them. And you can do that and you can make your living. But like, I'm not that kind of person. Like, when I feel like something is morally wrong, I have to speak about it. And we're talking about food here. Food. This is a private deal. The government's not supposed to be involved with this. There's two people that should be here, the producer and

the consumer. No one else needs to be involved, especially if that consumer is willing to sign a private contract like a herd share contract or a private food club. I don't know if you're all familiar with PMAs at all, private membership associations. Again, just a private food club. I don't know if you're all familiar with PMAs at all, private membership associations. Again, just a private contract between consumer and producer. Basically, it's a piece of paper saying that you're aware that the food you're buying isn't coming from, like, a FDA or USDA-regulated government-sanctioned place.

Again, we're talking about trust. People don't trust those big names, those big three or four-letter agencies anymore because we've been lied to over the past few years. So they trust me. They trust their producer, their farmer. You should know your farmer. We have a saying on our little Easy Up Farmers Markets,

know your farmer, know your food. You have to know your producer. but we're your producer is really limited restricted on what they can sell and so one way we can sell more items um unfiltered ungoverned is through a pma a private food club we run the triple oaks food club um and it's doing well we have about 100 members now we're looking to grow it um but yeah and we so lard is an example of that it's doing well. We have about 100 members now. We're looking to grow it. But yeah, so lard is an example of that. It's illegal for me to make lard and sell it to my neighbor. I can't take fat from the pig, put it in a stainless steel pot, and render it down and put it into a mason jar and then sell it to my neighbor.

I can't do that. Why? Because I'm not a USDA government approved facility. And listen, this is this is this level of control and restriction is at every level in the food, whether you're a food truck, a butcher, a farm. You know, it's at every single level. So we're just trying to push back. And that's like the food club to us is just our way of pushing back. I can't just sit here and do nothing. You know, like everybody gripes and complains and whines and moans about, oh, I wish it wasn't like this, but like they do nothing. And so I was just tired of doing nothing. So yeah, we do stick our necks out there, but we feel like this is the right thing to do. Yeah, give people the options.

That's exactly right. Nicholas watching the show uh asked if are there ways of getting specific like parts or cuts that you know like like the store won't sell you jowl or cheat or belly with the skin on are there ways of doing that with you guys yeah absolutely so we tell people communication is everything and i can do just about whatever you want with just a little bit of communication there's so many ways to communicate in 2024 right but so many people stink at it but if you just let me know we can do just about whatever you want and yeah we do have a lot of opportunities like for those kind of off the wall items that don't move on a day-to-day basis and kind of get shoved to one side of the freezer you know um so yeah if anybody ever if you don't see something on the

website and you're curious about it or you've got something specific you want, yeah, let us know. And if we can't get it to you, I probably know somebody that can. We work with a lot of other farms. Yeah, the other view of not knowing your farmer. Like, if you go into the supermarket and, yeah, I see you don't have a pork belly with the skin on. They're going to be like, well, too bad. I'm not calling some three-letter company with an LL, you know, incorporated to get

this one thing for you. But if you know your farmer, they're like, yeah, I've got that. I had the whole pig. Yeah. And you know, to get that, so if someone said, okay, Bryson, Triple Oaks Farm, I'm looking for a pork belly with the skin on it. Can we talk about how complicated it would be for me to legally sell you that item? Okay, so I can raise the pig. We breed the pigs. We're a farrow to

finish farm, meaning we make the piglets, we raise them all the way up until market weight, and then to legally sell it, I have to take it to a government-approved butcher, a USDA-inspected butcher. USDA butchers are few and far in between. USDA butchers that do pigs are even fewer and further in between. So a butcher that is approved by the government that can handle the quantity of pork that we're producing is in North Carolina. That's the closest one for me. That's like almost two hours away. I have to take my pigs away. I want my money to stay in my community, preferably my state, but I have to take them to a place in North Carolina. Anyways, the places that, okay, a USDA butcher, a USDA butcher that does pigs, and a USDA butcher that

will scald and scrape the hair off a pig. Oh boy boy, now you're talking about this is tough to find. This is the needle in the haystack. It's in Harrisonburg, so not terribly far from here. But I would have to take the pig all the way to Harrisonburg, which is two hours and 20 minutes away from our farm, pay that butcher to kill that pig, scald it, scrape it, cut the belly out of it, put a stamp of approval on it, me bring it all the way back home, and then sell it to you. Do you know what that does to the price of that pork?

Yeah, the end consumer is going to be like, man, this pig is crazy expensive. People have no idea. The common man sees that I raise pigs, and they see that I sell pork, and so they're like, oh, you're doing your own butchering. They're like, oh, I like this sausage blend. How do you do it? I don't do any of it. I'm not legally allowed to do any of it. I have to take it to a government approved butcher,

which costs a lot of money, and have them do it. And then they, all to get that government seal of approval on there, that blue dye stamp on the meat, which I've had three complaints about my pork product in our three years of business. All three of them came from that USDA dyed meat because they put this blue stamp on a pig, the carcass is white because it's covered in fat, that dye bleeds into the into the fat and then it comes up like so I make my own bacon for a food club. I don't sell bacon to the public, I sell it privately. And somebody got a slice of bacon that you could see the discoloration from that USDA mark in there. And they called me.

They're like, this bacon looks spoiled, which is, I mean, think about that. They called their producer. Isn't that really cool? But she was like, my bacon is discolored. And I was like, send me a picture. She did. I'm like, I know exactly what it is. Explain to her.

She's like, well, is it safe to eat? I'm like, well, the government says the diet is safe, you know, so I guess. Somebody got a pack of sausage. Pork ground up into a one-pound pack. There's a speck of a blue USDA. And you can say, this lady, she caught me. I was packing up my market set up one Saturday morning. She comes back with this pack of sausage.

And I could tell she had something on her mind, you know, and she's like, can you explain to me what this is? And she had every right, you know. And I looked at it and I was like, I know exactly what this is. And I explained to her, that lady probably never came back. Because, I mean, I might not. She has to take my word for it. She doesn't know me. But that is completely out of my control because we're legally required to use these things. You know what I'm saying? So I don't even know how we got. Oh, on the specific people.

So the answer is yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we do things, lots of things privately. So we're barbecue people. We like barbecue. I like cooking on a big offset smoker and using wood to cook my food that's it does something for my soul to start a

fire every day so i've been doing that for you know seven years now now we just happen to be pork producers and it's kind of like the two things are kind of it makes a whole lot of sense to to combine the two which which is awesome. Like my business, which I do love, but I also have this other passion and this hobby and I'm trying to blend them together. And we love whole hog barbecue because I'm always talking about efficiency. What's the most efficient way to serve barbecue? Well, I raise the whole pig, cook the whole pig. So that's what we do. To do it legally, I would have to, again, take it to one of these places, spend a bunch of money, then bring that pig back just so it can have that stamp

on it, you know, and then cook and serve it like that. You have to load that pig onto a trailer. You have to take him hours away. He might hold in a holding pen he's unfamiliar with overnight. All this is stress, stress, stress, stress. And we've just spent that entire animal's life trying to keep him stress free, keeping it the happiest pig you've ever seen. I mean, these, these are the happiest pigs you've ever seen. And then I have to give up all of that to some man I don't know at arguably the most important part of that animal's life. You know, it can be the best product in the world, but if there's no care, no respect, no honor, about putting that product into the package, let's not even talk about how they treat the animal, but how they put it into the package,

well, what does it mean? You know, it's tough. It's tough. And being a very controlling person, I have to give that control up because they tell me I have to. So anyways, the ideal thing, like we were talking about Thomas Jefferson earlier and kind of like his vision for farmers of America and like farmers, and if you're talking about barbecue, traditionally speaking, you're there to feed your community. People are supposed to come to their farms, their local farms to get fed, to buy their food, to see the animals. And it's supposed to be to their farms their local farms to get fed to buy their food to see the animals and it's supposed to be like this symbiotic relationship super cool that animal doesn't need to leave the property it's already just leave it there but we've implemented all of

these you know government overreaches and so many different ways. We're so shackled. We're so bound as food producers. It's almost impossible to feed my neighbor. Well, speaking of Thomas Jefferson, you had a great Thomas Jefferson quote. I don't remember exactly. I don't know if you do.

Can you find it on the website? Which part of the website is it on? I don't remember. The main page? It should be on, I think, the main page. It might be on the main page, but it certainly said if government is allowed to control the food you eat, and there was a second part to it.

It's almost as if you are under the shackles of tyranny. Something akin to that. Right, and that's... I just want you to say it again, because if you control the food, you control the people. It seems simple.

It is simple. It's very simple. And it feels like from our perspective too, these regulations always seem to be crippling the small farmer. The small local person. Never the big corporations. Because the big corporations have the money to always kind of go past these regulations. They can find a way to either maneuver around them or whatever the money costs, they can afford it. They pay the lobbyists. It's not just the meat, direct-to-consumer meat

market. It's like we have friends in the hemp and the CBD market. Same with them. The restrictions on them, the fees, the paperwork is almost impossible to operate. But if you read the laws, there's exemptions written for pharmaceutical companies in regards to like Delta-8 or CBD. It makes it a whole lot easier for them. Yeah. It just feels like from person to person,

if I wish to say, hey, I want to get my meat from Bryson and I sign an agreement, then I've taken that responsibility. I'm a human being. I have that right. But sometimes you seem to be taking that away and it's like, no, you have to go to this food store.

But I'm not making any agreement with this food store. It's like, well, they fall under our regulations. But if I want to eat that meat... They have no responsibility if something bad happens. If I eat the bad meat, what, do I get to sue them now? They're like, oh, whoops, sorry. Here's a gift card. You're more likely to get E. coli from eating spinach

you buy from Walmart than getting sick from anything you probably ever would buy from a local producer. And you talked about trust. I mean, we work in finance. I mean, how important is it we've always talked about to meet your financial advisor or to meet your tax account or to meet your lawyer or to meet

your real estate agent. But the people who you, the food you eat, you have no idea who these people are. You have no idea what the cows look like, how they're raised. You you have no idea who these people are. You have no idea what the cows look like, how they're raised. You just have no idea. You're just told to, hey, consume, consume, consume. The book I'm reading right now is by another Salatin book,

Everything I Want to Do is Illegal. He's got several lines in there. It's like this is not about food safety. This is about control. This is about control. They don't want these independent food producers coming in and disturbing the market. It's been that way for years

and it's still that way and it's not getting any better. He wrote that book in 2007, I think. He said, there's a line in there in regards to talking about the restrictions on our food. He said, the noose has never felt tighter, is what he said, in 2007. Wow.

And I can't wait to meet him. I'm going to the Rogue Food Conference, and I hope I get to ask him, but I'm curious, like, how does the noose feel now? Yeah. You know? Because I just got into this. Like, my eyes have just been opened. I wonder from, like, an OG, like, is it better?

Is it worse? Yeah. It seems worse to me. It seems like control is not going to be any lighter in anything that we do in this country. The only thing I feel better about is, we talked about it a little before the show, I am seeing more people like you

starting up their own little forms. Figuring out ways to work. Exactly. Work around it. I think the more we build that, the more it will be tougher for at least the controlling powers to do that. Like there's so many local people just coming up and kind of doing what you're doing. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Like imagine if they tried to like shut her chair programs down in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

How many people would a lot of people would up like in arms over that? Like you just which, by the way, is happening in Pennsylvania. If you're keeping up with the Amos Miller case like they came down on his program pretty hard um yeah I don't think it's getting any better um when they can come in when the Virginia Department of Agriculture um VDACs out of Richmond uh when they can come into a local farm and steal $30,000 worth of meat from a local farmer's freezer and throw it in the dumpster, all in the name of food safety, yeah, we are not free. We're not free. When that can happen, and that happened less than a year ago in Farmville,

Virginia. Sam Fisher, Golden Valley Farms, if you haven't heard about that, please look it up. We were yelling the rooftops about it. I went and I'm friends with Sam now after the fact, but yeah. The government, a judge in the Commonwealth of Virginia told a man, a husband, a father, a farmer, a food producer, that just because your food doesn't have the government stamp of approval, well, you can't even feed your dog with it, much less your family. We're going to take that from you with force, and we're going to throw it in your local dump site. And that's not even the worst part to me, is the local sheriff even posted an armed guard, as I like to say, a deputy at the dump site,

guarding that food in the dumpster already to keep some kid from climbing down and getting his meat back. That's what they were worried about. So they waited until the landfill came and got that truck, and that was in July of 2023 in in farmville virginia look it up it did not it's funny because like when you google like okay google like uh golden valley farm vdex raid on google you won't find much you might find the link to their website but you won't find like independent articles on the raid go to duckduuckGo and put in the same search. You get so many

independent articles from what happened. It's being covered up. They don't want it to get loud. And why? It's because it's controlled. That's why I don't think it's going to get any better over the next five to ten years. At least you guys is an option and there's some options out there. You just got to keep supporting. Sorry to get serious there for a second but it's important for people to know they need to know what's going on this way they can get more involved.

Yeah, I'm still, that case you know the reason I had to meet Sam is because you know, I think we live in a time where we need good solid men. I think men were put on this earth to do two things, provide and protect.

That's what we're supposed to be doing. Not just for yourself first, but your families and your community. And I feel like I don't see enough men standing up for the right thing, even though they'll tell you behind the door, like, oh, I don't agree with this. Or like the sheriff of Cumberland County, Darrell Hodges, who was oversight of that whole raid,

he said he didn't agree with what was happening, but he didn't have the power or authority to do anything about it. That is a cancer of a man that I don't want around me, but it's the common man I feel like I see. So when I saw Sam standing up and saying, listen, you're crossing the line. You're telling me I can't feed my family. He's like, I'm not going to stop. When I saw a man standing up for what he believed was right, I was like, oh, my God. Thank you. So I rushed over to his farm as quickly as I could just to shake his hand.

And I was like, tell me everything that happened. And I sat down with him and his family for like two hours, got the whole story right from the horse's mouth. And I was like, this is really crazy. I was like, because I just saw this YouTube clip, and this sounds like communism. I need to hear, is this exactly what happened? And it was actually worse. So yes, it's exactly what it looked like.

And it's in our backyard. And people think we're maybe immune to it, because we're Virginia or something. Yeah, so you've got to just keep supporting the people that are yeah yeah if people are interested in supporting where where do they need to go to I mean basically to patronize you guys to right right so what's the right contact information website that's right yeah so the website up top is tripleoaksfarmllc.com we're very active on all social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. We just really need to show not just what we're selling, but the way we're doing it, the way we're raising that meat and that food.

Absolutely. And so it's super important that we have those platforms to do that. Absolutely. Well, Bryson, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you all for coming on. Thank you so much for coming on. Great conversation. Appreciate it. Really appreciate the work you're putting in.

Thank you all. Appreciate it. TripleOaksFarmLLC.com. Thank you so much for coming on. Great conversation. We really appreciate the work you're putting in. Thank you. Appreciate it. TripleOatsFarmLLC.com. Thank you. Yeah, that pulled us nice to be able to fill the time, but a second guest wasn't able to make it. Yeah.

No, but I thought it was amazing. It was wonderful to hear him talk. Learned a lot. We talked about a lot of interesting subjects and a lot of concerning situations. Things people just need to know about. Yeah, people need to know about. Learn about where your food's coming from and what's going on.

Yeah, I just can't fathom how you go on a farm and now the government's kind of like preventing you from feeding your own family. That's absurd in some ways to me. Yeah. I mean, I have the right to... I mean, Pops has his own garden. I mean, we eat the vegetables.

No one inspects that. Would the government come and be like, well, we have to inspect those vegetables. I mean, hell, his are so clean, you eat them off the vine and they're delicious. Yeah, which is true. I did want to shout out to all the people that were watching the show today.

Ben Coates, Stephanie Bartsdale, Bobby Mullins, appreciate you tuning in today. Justin Mettler, thanks for watching this morning. Always appreciate everyone who tunes in. Definitely had to do one. We were going to do some finance, but we kind of ran the hour there.

UVA baseball. Yesterday, they won 18-3, 18-5, something like that. They mercy ruled the other team. And they actually broke their franchise record for home runs in that game. I think they hit, like, three or something in that game. So for homers in a season?

Yeah, for homers in a season. Which would have been, like, unthinkable, like, given that last year we had Jake Deloff still. And a bunch of those big home run hitters. Well, last year I think we broke the record, too. But you would think, like, losing those guys, we would not break it the following year. Well, last year, I think we broke the record, too. But you wouldn't think like losing those guys and you would not break it the following year, but man.

No, the offense is absurd right now, let's be honest. I mean, we went to two games and one, they won six, too, which might have been one of their lowest scoring games of the year.

I know, and all six of them won in Asia. Yeah, and then the other one was like 14-4 Mercy World and you were just like, man, we are just, especially non-ACC teams, it just feels like

we're like a league of all those other teams. ACC teams at the top, there's some dope ones out there. But really it's going to be if the pitching can keep us in the game, I think the offense will score, even in the postseason. Yeah, it should be exciting. We're getting close to that time. We are, yeah. I'd like to watch the college series.

Two more series left. Two more ACC series left and then postseason is here, ACC tournament. And then right after that, turn around to NCAA College World Series. Fun times. Fun times. It should be fun. It'll be a good time. Next week will also be a good time.

We'll be – funny, we talked a little homesteading. We had talked with Matthias about homesteading a few weeks ago. I remember that. People looking at property with that in mind, real estate with that in mind. So he'll be back on our monthly meetup with Matias next week. It's always great talking to Matias. He has such a great mind and he sees trends within the real estate market.

And he's just such a great guy to talk to, to be honest. To talk to, yeah. Just a nice, trustworthy person to talk to. So always appreciate that. Always appreciate you coming on the show with me. I always appreciate you leading. Oh, absolutely. I feel like you say that more often than I haven't.

I've done enough times to have the appreciation of having to open the interview, close the interview, open the show, close the show. I'm like, do the sponsor list. You know what? It's so much easier being a guest. So I have appreciation of everything you do. So thank you, Alex.

Well, thank you. Thank you all for tuning in. Appreciate it. We look forward to seeing you next week. Of course, thanks to our great presenter, Emergent Financial Services, our great partners, Matias Yon Realty, Credit Series Insurance, Forward Adelante. And we look forward to seeing all of you next week. But

until that time, as we like to close it out on the show, hasta mañana. Thank you.