The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - Taylor Collins | Turning Dirt Into Soil Through Regenerative Ranching

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

Taylor Collins is an entrepreneur and regenerative rancher. Taylor and his wife are the co-founders of Epic Provisions, Force Of Nature Meats, and Roam Ranch. Taylor joins us on this week’s episode to discuss the benefits of regenerative farming and ranching, and how they are hoping to change much more that the soil on the land that they work with, and how we as consumers can support regenerative practices and farmers who make it their goal to raise plants and animals cleanly and ethically. More Resources: BPN Website - Supplements and Apparel: www.bpnsupps.com Nick’s Website: www.nickbare.com Nick’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness Nick’s Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/barelifenutrition Follow Us On Social Media: Instagram: @thebareperformancepodcast Facebook: The Bare Performance Podcast

Welcome back to another powerful episode of the podcast. I'm your host, Nick Baer, founder and CEO of Bear Performance Nutrition. Every week, we bring you insightful stories, knowledge, and inspiration to help you reach your full potential in life, fitness, and business. If you enjoy the message we're promoting in this podcast, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review on the platform you're listening to. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes. that embody the go one more mindset.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, today we have Taylor Collins, founder of Epic Provisions, which sold General Mills in 2016, founder of Rome Ranch and Force of Nature Meats, and previous raw vegan, who now eats a nose to tail diet. What's going on, brother?

Hey, man, I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for sharing this space. Absolutely. So you're from Austin, Texas, originally. Yeah, I am born and raised in Austin and five generations back, which is like you'll never find another one of me here. But no, it's a special place to grow up, man. Have you ever heard that saying that in Texas, it's like, you know, whatever is out there wants to sting you, spike you, bite you or burn you? Yeah.

I feel like that's my childhood experience in Austin, all wrapped up in one beautiful little package. Well, you don't come across many people in Austin anymore who are from Austin. Yeah, it's true. What the hell happened? It's super interesting too because, you know, having a business here, we're 20 minutes north of the city. You know, we're in Round Rock. And I can count on probably three fingers,

how many people are from Texas alone that work here, BPN. Everyone has kind of come in from all over the place in this area. I'm sure you've seen this area change dramatically. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't recognize it when I grew up. to what it is now. And so, you know, we moved out of the city about three years ago. And honestly, it was probably the best thing we ever did.

Austin served a really beautiful part of our life. And very blessed, very grateful to be from this amazing city. And we were here at this really vibrant time where, you know, Whole Foods was headquartered here. And just like this natural foods community was blowing up. And there's this really beautiful balance of people that cared about their health, their nutrition, their performance, all related to a holistic lifestyle with diet

and how they use their body being outside. So there weren't a lot of other places that I think we could have been as successful growing our business than Austin. I'm sure you feel some of that too. Absolutely. And now you're out in Fredericksburg, correct? Yep.

Yeah, Fredericksburg, which is 75 miles west of us and it's 60 miles from San Antonio. Me and some of the members of BPN here, we went out to Fredericksburg last year and it was during an Ironman prep actually we went out for a training camp and that was like my first time really exploring parts of Fredericksburg

outside of the downtown area like just the wineries and we went out on some some bike courses that I didn't even know that I was in Texas for parts of them. I mean I saw animals upon animals and the hill country was beautiful and it was like one part

I thought I was in California like two miles later, I thought I was in the desert. Fredericksburg is absolutely beautiful. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's actually a little ecosystem that's really representative of what you would find in the Serengeti of Africa. So yesterday, my family and I went to a place where they had giraffes and rhinos and sloths and elephants and it was like five miles from our ranch.

Really? Yeah. What the hell? Where am I? Did you guys, now that you have Rome ranch out there, did you choose Fredericksburg strategically because of that ecosystem that it kind of promotes? Man, I feel like the land chose us. Yeah, we had been in the market for quite a while and we didn't really know what we were

looking for other than a really degraded super shady piece of land that had been extracted from and mine through industrial agriculture, so at the point of collapsing. And we saw that as a really exciting opportunity to start at as bad as it could possibly get with ecosystem function and soil health and then use animals to positively impact and regenerate that ecosystem. And so, you know, like we live in a semi-briddle ecosystem, which means, you know, the moisture, the humidity, the amount of days over 100 degrees that we get, it's not conducive for farming. So ranching and livestock-based agriculture makes sense in our ecoregion. But some of the early settlers that came there in the early 1800s,

they came from Germany, they came from Europe, not as brittle of an ecosystem. And so they started breaking the soil, tilling the ground, planting monocultures, and really quickly they figured out that doesn't work here. And so that area, you know, it's only at a fraction of the capacity for beauty and productivity as it once was, say like 200 years ago, right? There used to be millions of bison moving through that area. And so right now, like, you recognize it as beautiful. I do too, but just imagine if it was like we're only looking at a very minuscule percent of how beautiful it once was. And so we're trying to restore and return that beauty. Let's take it back a little bit. You know, we've painted you as this rancher, first generation rancher, correct? Yes, absolutely.

First generation rancher, eaten nose to tail diet, living off the land. But like years and years and years ago, that probably could have been like the complete opposite. From what I understand, you were this endurance athlete. I think you and your wife both were endurance athletes doing Ironman triathlons, eating a raw vegan diet, and pretty unhealthy and experiencing health issues. Can you kind of talk about what that old life may have looked and felt like prior to this massive transition? Yeah.

I mean, that still blows my mind every day. And I think if, you know, someone 15, 10 years ago would have said, like we're going to do a tarot card reading. Let's see what your future looks like. And they pulled this card that said, we're going to be bison ranchers eating raw liver and raw heart out in the pasture. Hell no, you know, those cards are broken. And so, but that's also something that's really been important in our lives

is pivoting when the moments come when those opportunities present themselves. And, you know, we grew up at a time in college when we were both exuberant. We loved going outdoors. We love training for Iron Man, endurance races, whatever. We just wanted to be together on a bicycle for hundreds of miles. was how my wife and I met and how we really fell in love. And so that was a really important part of our relationship. And back then, you know, like the amount of information that was available via the internet or social media, just a fraction of what it is now. And so the general narrative,

like I've studied exercise sports science and always just trying to figure out how to optimize my own body and enhance recovery, you know, like the narrative, the propaganda at the time was like athletes fuel on really high sugar, high carbure. hydrate diets, you know, protein, that's kind of important, but avoid fat, avoid animal foods in general. And so we just, you know, that pendulum swung and we went in the wrong direction. And my wife started having some health issues when we went vegan. And so, you know, we thought, oh, we're not eating clean enough. Let's, let's clean this shit up. Let's go, well, sorry, we went vegetarian to vegan. They went vegan to raw food vegan. And, you know, all this time her health

issues kept getting worse. And so we kind of landed at the very far extreme of juicing. And that sucked. I mean, that's not how we wanted to eat, but we thought that was the right way to fuel our bodies, how to nourish our own healing capacity, but also what was right for the planet. And we were wrong in every single element there. And so it took my wife, you know, at the age of like 21, having to have exploratory knee surgery being told she needed a knee replacement. And she was training for the Kona Ironman World Championship at the time. And it took that point for us to really reconsider what we were doing with our diet. You know, we saw every Western medical practitioner you could think of across all spectrums.

And they weren't looking at our bodies holistically. No one ever asked us, what are you eating? Right. It was like, oh, knee pain, GI pain. Let's go in there and figure out what's going on and focus on those areas. Finally, we went to one doctor out of desperation. And that was the first thing that he said is, what are you guys eating? We're like, Doc, don't worry.

We got the shit locked up. We're raw food vegan. We're good. and he said, you know, what I want you to do more than anything. Like this is almost over, you know, one minute into this diagnosis, this evaluation, go home, cook some grass fed, really high quality pasture raised meat, and tune down those raw vegetables, like cook your vegetables, don't eat legumes. You know, I just want you to try this.

And it was within a matter of days that years of symptoms went away. So at that point, no looking back. What is the definition of vegan or the difference between vegan and raw vegan? Is it just you don't cook anything? Yeah, it's basically like you think your cow. It's like a mental disorder where you think you can just eat raw, raw plants. I can only imagine. Like that would, I believe, just tear me up.

Yeah, I mean, I think kale might already be hard enough for your body to metabolize, but eating it freaking raw, that is a recipe for GI distress. And then you were just getting to a point where you were just juicing vegetables, raw vegetables? Yeah, exactly. So we had it all backwards, man, but that's where the power of the pivot came and changed our life and set us on a new trajectory. Was it almost, you say this pivot, was it you ate the meat, you got started feeling better already and never even considered going back. It was just full-blown. Was it introducing meat again or was it we're just eating meat, no more vegetables? It was reintroduction of meat, which now, you know, I look at that.

makes so much sense. It's, you know, species appropriate. It's how we evolve for millennia, hundreds of thousands of years. And, you know, it's arguably one of the most nourishing, nutrient-dense food sources on the planet. And so when we reintroduced that to our body, it was like recovery accelerated. Just our general exuberance and outlook on life changed. And, you know, obviously our performance changed, too, for the better. And so, yeah, at that point in time, it was, you know, what the hell are we doing? If a little bit is good, we're kind of kind of wired to be like, let's get a lot of it. And so we went full on. And that was really the genesis of Epic because we kind of ditched like the raw food, vegan fruit nut bars that are like

pervasive everywhere in the market. And we started doing these 100 mile bike rides with bacon in our pocket or we cook a ribeye. And it was bad ass. Like once you're ripping into bacon at mile 80, I mean, dude, there's nothing better. Your body needs that. I mean, it sounds great right now. I mean, yeah, any time of the day. So you're like, let's figure out how to put this in a package, make it shelf stable. And we think it'll be good for humans. We think it'll be good for animals if we source the right way. And then ultimately we landed on this realization that it all starts with the soil.

That's the most important part of that whole system. What's really interesting about the fitness space is these different niches or categories of fitness typically have a diet attached to them. If we look at CrossFit years ago, paleo. So paleo and CrossFit. And for me, I always ask the question why, like, what is the reason? A lot of people are just submerging themselves into a space. They never really ask the question why. It's just, well, it's because it's what we do.

Same with the endurance space. I mean, I consider myself an endurance athlete. And the majority, not I don't say the majority, but a lot of the endurance space and athletes follow this vegan, vegetarian-based diet. and I've again always asked the question why. Now, I'm always the person of it, to each his own. I don't care how someone eats or what they do,

but it's like, why are we following this diet? Is it just because it goes hand in hand with the style and the community and part of the culture or is there an actual reason behind what we're doing? Yeah, no, I think there's a little bit of both. There's definitely a cultural vibe there. But, you know, in my experience, a lot of like traditional. endurance athletes like they don't want muscle they're afraid of carrying muscle right absolutely fucking weird but it's like okay well if i want to look like that ultra runner who's damn near

emaciated then i could shift my diet and cut out all these things that make me feel strong and vibrant and help me heal and build muscle and then i can kind of look a little bit more like that you know all-star and so i think that there's a little bit of both of what you're saying so what year was it that you guys made that transition back into introducing meat into your diet. Oh man, I'm so bad at dates. 2012? So it was almost like the same year you guys started Epic then. Oh yeah.

No, we were full on. I mean, it was like, a shit healed, changed our lives. Let's celebrate this. I think there's other people who could probably benefit from this. We can't be the only ones. And that was really, you know, we didn't know what paleo was, but it was also at the same time where this whole paleo movement was happening, like you said. And so that was unintentional.

You know, that was maybe just fate kind of guiding us or confirming that our hunch was right. But yeah, we always just, you know, made it for ourselves, believed that other people would want it, and then thought it would be really cool to build a brand that was based on soil health and regenerative agriculture. Were there any other meat-based bars on the market at the time? Were you guys the first to market? We were the first to do a grass-fed, you know, bar with nuts and berries in it. There was one other bar that had tried to do it before us, but it sucked and it never took. took off and it was just like bottom of the shelf dust right and so we thought like that was a cool

idea but these guys got it all wrong let's do it right and so really elevated the sourcing elevated the storytelling and then created that epic brand the branding on same thing with force of nature and room ranch all the branding i don't know who takes lead if you take lead on the branding the branding is all spot on it like it looks and feels so good And whoever's taking lead on that, hats off to them. Yeah. No, thank you. That's my wife and I.

That's like our strongest kind of position, contribution to those brands. And honestly, for us, it's always been about transparency. So each of those brands very intentionally wants to honor an animal. And so, you know, on the epic package, it's like you have these anatomical representations of these beautiful gifts, these amazing creatures, you know, like bison. And they're full splendor. It's not like a cartoon animated, goofy-looking animal. It's what a real bison looks like in a pasture. So to be able to put that on a package,

connects that consumer to that source of energy, connects them to that animal. And in some way, it connects them to that sacrifice that animal made to transfer that energy into your body. And so we felt like that was a really important communication piece that no one was doing. You know, like very conventional marketing wisdom at the time was like, you guys are crazy.

Don't do this. People don't want to see an animal while eating. that dead animal and we said well then they don't need to be eating our product like we want to service the people who are more aware and who are more conscious and who want to connect and show gratitude and reverence and so that's always been something that we've carried across all of our brands really honoring that animal and showcasing it in its full glory it's very obvious too there's a lot of respect for the animal and the process i even heard you talk about um the ceremony of the harvest of killing an animal in the field

as opposed to the industrial killing of an animal, which I want to talk about later in the episode. But it's very obvious the way it comes across. My question, and I'm really curious, like when you went to make, you started making epic provisions in the bars, was it hard to find a manufacturer to make this happen?

I'm sure it was. It was damn near, impossible. I believe it. Yeah. I mean, we, you know, we always, Katie and I have never created a business plan. We always just kind of operate on gut and instinct and stay pretty nimble. And it's the way some of the best entrepreneurs operate. Yeah, it's, it's how we operate for sure. And so when we, when we started Epic, we just kind of faked it until we made it, you know? Like, we were cooking up these bars in my kitchen and bringing them to big national trade shows and putting them in packages that we were like gluing ourselves together.

Like, you'll be like, oh, cool, can I take this back for my buyer or sample for my store team leader? Well, no, please don't do that because when you open that up, it's going to be moldy. You know, like that's not a real product, but we're acting like it is. And so we got tons of traction, you know, Whole Foods picked it up on a national level early on. They're our first big account. And they said, can you deliver this in three months? And of course, you know, hell yeah, we can. And then we had to figure out how to manufacture it, which to your point was a nightmare, right?

because it was like all this mixed knowledge of like energy bars, you know, your fruit and nut bars, but also jerky preservation, meat handling, USDA facilities, very specialized equipment. And so we just, you know, trial and error just went through it. And it was painful. But it was the right way to do it. You know, like I think we could have either just put a pause on things and said,

hey, we'll deliver that product next year when we have it 100% dialed in. But we didn't want to miss the opportunity. We were too stoked on the brand. So we, you know, we put it out there. and we made different iterations. You know, it changed slightly every three months when we got a new packaging machine or a new extruder or tweak the recipe.

And so we're good with that and our consumers were good with that too. That's like when you came into the building this afternoon, one of the things we were talking about was sometimes the consumer just doesn't think about what goes into a product or a process. And in terms of like grass-fed bison, you know, having this,

massive POs coming in having to fulfill that, grass-fed bison, it doesn't grow off like trees, right? It's not like there's just endless supply of peanuts where you can make nut butter-based bars. Like having a product that demands a lot of grass-fed, not just bison, but grass-fed bison, I'm sure it was extremely difficult,

was sourcing an issue in supply chain early on? Oh, massive. Yeah, I mean, we were new to eating meat and Katie and I were just cold calling, you know, Googling bison ranges. And the questions that we were asking, first of all, were like, is your animal grass fed? What kind of pasture are they on? Do you have a grazing plan? How often are they moved?

Do you deworm them? And all these ranchers, you know, are like, where are you guys from? Austin. Oh, hell no. This is like pita. This is a sting operation. Like these guys are asking the wrong questions. Get out of here.

So turns out that, you know, there's only about 500,000 bison in North America at the current time. And that's coming down from 60,000. million all-time high around the mid-1800s. And so out of that 500,000 animals here today, 90% of them are fed grain and confined at the end of their life. So consumers don't recognize that. Consumers think of bison. They think of this iconic North American species, this keystone species that's out on pasture, positively impacting the environment. But the truth is, you've been deceived, you've been lied to. And so we led with that grass-fed bison bar. And we used 100% percent of the grass-fed bison in North America in the first three months of making that product.

And so that was our biggest best-selling product and we had to tell our salespeople don't sell it, don't offer it. Which is like, to your point, damn, this sucks. And you can't just flip a switch, right? Like a grass-fed bison takes three years to raise. And you have to convince ranchers and farmers to change their practices, which is a big mindset shift. And even at that point in time, I think people in the bison community, especially, were holding on this idea that consumers wanted consistency. They want every single bison burger to taste the

exact same. But that's weird. That's bullshit. If you go on that route, then you're basically controlling that animal's life. You are having to feed it. You're having to contain it. And so what we were trying to do was celebrate the diversity of that animal, the diversity of the environment, you know, the seasonality, the regionality of it. And over time, we were able to grow that supply chain. But yeah, yeah, what the hell? I mean, we started this awesome brand that was launching and we couldn't even sell our best product that that was freaking stressful. How come bison? Why was the bison the first hero animal to go after?

Yeah. You know, it's just like the most badass keystone species in North America, the largest land animal to survive the last ice age, just like iconic, cool animal. And it just was something that resonated with us. It was like our spirit animal in a sense. We always had this affinity and this connection and this reverence for that creation. And so for us, you know, that was what we were going to lead with.

And it, you know, that was just like, again, a gut call. We didn't do consumer research. It was something we thought was cool and it really stuck. I actually have a bison skull in my office. I got it from you guys because I was following your guys Instagram a few months ago really closely because you guys were announcing that you were going to have a limited supply of these skulls going for sale. So I was on the waiting list. Oh.

And I got like the, like the. the message that these are available right now, I hopped on that as fast as possible. Hell yeah. That's like the best skull. I mean, I have a bunch of longhorn skulls and bowls and stuff, but that's one of the best skulls I've ever got.

It's awesome. Oh, dude, you're so lucky you got that. Yeah, I mean, like every time we launched bison skulls, they sell it in five minutes. And so that was meant to be.

I'm always on the wait list for the next one. Well, I mean, you got an inside hookup here. But the thing, yeah, you say that bison skull is beautiful. And it is. But the way that animal was raised, it created a positive return on the ecosystem. It healed the water cycle.

It aerated soil. It allowed rainfall to infiltrate and refill aquifers. It created habitat for migratory species. It sequestered carbon just through its presence and through its movements. And so it's so, like, I think you can feel that majestic nature of that animal. And that's like why you have that affinity and that connection to it. we were having a dinner a few weeks ago and Garrison brothers founder was there and he was doing tasting in the bourbon and he was talking about their business model and it reminds me of

animals and using animals for for a product where you know the way he makes bourbon is he has to let it sit in these barrels for years before he can sell it like there is a there's a process and there is a a long time to wait. I mean, you have to raise these animals. It's not like you're turning around these things in minutes or hours. You can't just go and get them whenever you want. You have to raise this animal for a certain amount of years before you can actually kill it. Yeah.

I mean, so, you know, there's two models. There's like the industrial conventional agriculture model. And that's based on mechanization and industrialization of animals. And so it's all based predicated on. the price, the cost above all else at the expense of all else. It's like how can we squeeze out all inefficiencies and make this meat hyper available and hyper cheap? And that model is based on the suffering of animals.

And it is an industrialization. It's like an assembly line of animals. And so that's not what we're talking about here, right? Like our values, you know, like that's out of default. We're not feeding that to our families, ourselves. We don't believe in how that impacts land. but that other system that is in Mother Nature's image, it does take time. But, you know, what you're gaining from that is all those positive influences on the land,

on your body, on that animal's life, the sentience of that animal, the spirit of that animal, but also on the rural community in which that animal was raised. And so like these hyper-centralized, industrialized feedlots, that doesn't do anything for rural communities, right? We're losing farms and ranches in this country at an alarming rate. And so what we're trying to do is is decentralize that food system and bring back local production to local communities and celebrate that, that regional wisdom. So in the process of building Epic and then working with different ranchers, the source, the animals, is that when you first started to identify, one, the issues that were obvious in the market in this mass industrial agriculture. and then did that persuade your decision to when you sold Epic to General Mills, want to go buy a ranch and do it on your own?

Yeah, we, okay, so when we started Epic, it was always about nutrient density, you know, like how do you get the best, most nourishing food in your body? And it was that animal had to eat the species appropriate diet that was biologically engineered to eat. So ruminants needed to be on pasture and they needed to be moved. They needed to coexist in those ecosystems. systems and then humans, when they consume that energy, we believed, you know, that was like the ultimate, right? The super fuel. But what we realized in that process is, you know, whether

you're vegan or carnivore or anything in between, if you're not eating food from living, thriving, dynamic soil systems, you're missing the nutrition. You just don't get it. And so we kind had these different pillars when we started that brand and soil health was a really critical one. And so when we started sourcing more and more animals and scaling that brand, we visited tons of our ranches, tons of our suppliers. And we always just admired these people in these rural settings and just said, like, they got it figured out. They have the highest calling in their everyday living, right? Like they're on land. They're connecting.

They're celebrating. They're collaborating with Mother Nature. This is badass. If we ever get to that point where we could do this, we're going to double down. or we're all in. And so that was never an option for us until we sold Epic to General Mills. And then with those proceeds, you know, just reinvested that. And what we believed was the most valuable thing you could put money in, which is land.

When you guys were going to these ranches, were you testing the soil? Yeah. We, you know, we had been sourcing from ranches that had been practicing these soil health concepts for years. And so, you know, these places that we showed up, they had it figured out in different context. Some people had built four or five inches of top soil in their lives, which conventional wisdom says you can build one inch in 500 years. Well, they were building one inch in just a handful of years. And so we were doing soil testing, water infiltration testing, carbon sequestration. And it was like

you would go to those lands and you would just feel different. Like you'd feel more connected. You'd feel that peace. You'd feel energized. This is within all of us. I think any one of us, even if we have no experience in agriculture can go to a farm or a ranch and use our senses to determine whether or not those practices resonate with our own vibe, our own morals, our own values. And if those practitioners are doing it right, you know, like we have these things, we have noses. If it smells, that's a bad sign. If there's a lot of bare soil, that's a bad sign.

If there's petrified manure, that's a terrible sign. And so we were going to these places and we had no idea the capacity for healing that Mother Nature could impart on us and her wisdom. and her guidance. And so when we realized that connection, you know, that that was what we wanted to do with our lives if we ever had that opportunity. Yeah, like I was telling you before we started recording, I didn't really know much about regenerative agriculture or farming until I saw this documentary a few months ago called Kiss the Ground. And I was watching this with my wife, blew my mind. Like completely opened my mind to what I didn't know and what I thought I should know.

and I started diving deeper into it. And my dad's side of the family, they were farmers in central Pennsylvania. So I was calling my dad up and some of my friends are still farmers in central Pennsylvania. I'm like, you guys got to watch this documentary. It's called Kiss the Ground. And they're like, kiss the ground. Like, you hugging, you know, trees now. I'm like, no, like, just trust me.

You got to check it out. It will open your eyes to the way we need to be farming. and it was so interesting. So then, you know, you sold Epic. You guys decide you want to ranch land. What made you decide to buy a land that was degraded, was on the market for three plus years, no one wanted.

Was it to challenge yourself to bring that soil back to life? Yeah, exactly. It was to challenge, the limitations of that community, you know, being from Central Texas to give that back to Central Texas, to have a spot that could serve as a field experiment where we could take measurements year over year, share that with the scientific literature, share that with our local community, other farmers and ranchers and consumers. And so, you know, what a cool starting spot. You know, it doesn't get much worse than this. It looked like a bomb had been dropped on the land. You know,

like we did baseline soil sampling and there was no biology in the soil. It was essentially dirt, right? It was lifeless. We did bird counts. There were no birds on the property. There was no biodiversity, no rainfall infiltration. All these creeks were dry. But we did see signs, like indicators of previous capacity for production in life.

We saw Indian mounds. We saw a cave with Indian drawings inside of it. We saw arrowheads on the ground. So we knew at one point in time, hundreds of years ago, this piece of land could sustain life. it could sustain communities. So that was a good sign. And we wanted to challenge ourselves to bring that land back to its former glory and show that specifically with the power of animal impact.

So bison in our case, well, we're in multispecies. We raised bison, chickens, pigs, turkeys, geese. We have honey, bee, apiary, and then a lot of wildlife. But through that animal impact, they're the true architects of soil health. So when those animals are removed from landscapes, landscapes that co-evolve with large, herds of bison or elk or pronghorn sheep in our area, you know, those lands will always degrade. And so through our human management, we bring those animals back on the land and we emulate how they used to move for millennia.

And so it was all about high density grazing, right? So these animals came in very dense, consolidated numbers, sometimes thousands. And there were predators on the periphery. So wolves and bears and mountain lions hunting them. You know, the animals stayed close for safety, but then they also always had to move to avoid being ambushed. And in modern agriculture, we put animals out in fields and we leave them there for months. And we just say, good luck. Go out and graze whatever you want every day of your life. We've removed the predators from the ecosystem. So there's no more of those apex predators. And the land

degrades. Or we pull them off the land completely and the land degrades. And so those animals have to be there, but we have to manage them in Mother Nature's image. How many acres did you guys get when you first moved there? First was 450. Yeah. And then we bought. a couple other 100 acres and then we were leasing now 300 acres from neighbors. And you live out on that property, right? Yep. Yeah, we live right in the middle. You guys build that house or was it there?

Yeah, we built that house. There was an old dilapidated, super shitty house. It wasn't worth trying to rebuild. But yeah, it was in the same spot, you know, like those old Germans that came out there, the early settlers, they studied the landscape. And it's interesting, like a lot of land architecture people want to like put their house on top of the hill or like in this spot that the settlers would have just said those guys don't know what the hell they're doing and and so we we said these guys probably came out here they probably

camp for years they understood where the water was how the wind flowed where the soil types were the best suited for a homestead you know we're not going to do better than that and so we built in that same spot do you think land can get to a point of of no return where you can't bring it back to life um you know conventional wisdom is yes and um um But we're proving that otherwise that's not the case. You know, when you degrade land, you change weather patterns. And so bare soil is probably the worst thing that can happen, right? Because when it does rain, it hits the soil at about 25, 30 miles per hour,

and it caps that bare soil. So that rainfall can now not get into the soil. It runs off and it causes erosion. So it's taking the nutrient dense living top soil with it. So that's the water cycle has been shattered. If rain's not getting in the soil, you're not growing plants. If you're not growing plants, you're not creating habitat for wildlife. You're not cycling the nutrition of that grass through a ruminant animal back into the soil to create that virtuous system.

So it's like step one, even in a desertified ecosystem, it's cover the soil. Well, how do you do that? You could roll out hay. You could plant really low secession annual plants, but you have to get an animal on there sooner than later. When you guys first got to the property, what was the first step you took? was it like a strategically planned approach of can we have 400 plus acres are we going to we're going to try to bring 50 acres back here and then 50 acres back there or was it attacking all 400 plus what was the first steps you guys did man that's a good question um and i think you have to focus a little bit because you have areas that are going to be stronger and areas that are weaker and so it goes back to this whole idea like what do you what do you want to do you want to spend more recent sources trying to work on the areas that are more degraded or those same amount of resources on the area that's higher productivity. And so we took the route of what are the areas where we

don't have as much bare soil? Let's focus on increasing the current production capacity there. And so, you know, in five years, we've improved how much grass we can grow per acre by about 500%. We've increased the organic matter in the soil by about 3%. And so the reason that's important is for every 1% organic matter in your soil you can build, you can hold 20,000 gallons of rain per acre, right? And so when we bought the property, there was less than 1%, about half a percent. So we could only, in a best case scenario, absorb half an inch of rain, 10,000 gallons at any given point in time before our soil said, no more, we can't handle this and it all washes off. Now we can capture around 60,000 gallons of rain per acre. And so that adds so much resilience, so much more adaptability in the way that we're managing too, we have three times more animals than anyone else in our community. So we have more animals, but we also have better soil health, more productivity, more wildlife, you know, better water cycle, our springs that pump into our creeks are flowing. And so, you know, it's really challenging, you know, the limitations of what you think land can do. But for us, it was starting with the

stronger pieces. How soon after you first started doing this stuff, did you start seeing it come back. I can imagine it's kind of intimidating. You've never really done this before. You buy this massive amount of property. And you almost want to prove yourself wrong. I'm going to try to bring this land back to life. So you start working it in hopes that you're going to just see something pop up.

How soon was it where you got a little glimpse of a win of, okay, we're seeing some sort of forward progression. Yeah. You know, it's like that saying watching the grass grow, it's hard. And we were literally watching the grass grow. And so when you're out there every single day, I think you don't notice the change as dramatically. But when we step back and we look at pictures from year one, year two, year three, we are absolutely blown away that it's the same piece of property.

And so, you know, we saw like creek starting to flow again. So this was area of the property where, you know, pre-recorded history, no one knew that water flowed there. No one knew that there was a spring or an aquifer that pumped. up through the ground and fed a creek that went into the river. And just through a couple years of management, we were able to see those springs reemerge. And those creeks flowed and it created new habitat. We had new species, you know, propagate those areas, new plant species, new wildlife. And so that was, that was only a matter of years. And that was some of the most satisfying,

coolest stuff that we could have ever imagined unlocking, which was like water from stone. How the hell did that happen? When you guys got out there was the goal? always to create force of nature and turn that into another brand or I mean obviously you sold epic you probably could just chill on that land for the rest of your life it was that you started adding these these animals too and then it was okay we want to be able to share this with the community with other people let's create this brand which is force of nature was that the intent always in the beginning of buying property man I wish it was but we didn't have that force site. You know, the animals

early on, I feel bad that we kind of perceived them this way, but we considered them our tools. And now we think of them as our co-creators, our co-collaborators. But, you know, we raise these animals to positively impact the land. And eventually we had animals that we had to start

harvesting. They had served their biological purpose, which was serving, enriching this ecosystem. And now they had to transition to their next biological purpose, which was to nourish our community, nourish our bodies. And so we started harvesting animals and we said, oh shit, we got to sell this meat. Turned out, you know, we have about 3,000 guests come out to the ranch every year to learn about regenerative agriculture to do tons of different experiences.

And at the end of all these, you know, presentations that we give or tours that we give, people are saying, hell yeah, I'm all in. Where do I go to support this regenerative system? And at that point in time, we couldn't really give an answer. You know, it was like, hey, maybe go to your farmer's market and just ask your local guy how they manage their land. see what they say, but we wanted to create a bigger kind of market-based capitalist approach to creating positive change. And really, it was to empower consumers to have transparency into the meat that they purchased and communicate that there is this higher attribute meat that heals landscapes, sequesters carbon, captures rainfall. If that resonates with your own values, well, you can

support that system with your consumer dollars. You can drive positive impact. So a lot of times I think consumers feel defeated. They feel a lack of hope. And so we wanted to give them hope. We wanted to make them feel like they were contributing to a better, more virtuous system. And so that was really the genesis of force of nature. It was, you know, we had all this meat.

We were processing from the ranch. We knew other ranches like Rome Ranch that were doing it too. And we wanted to create a new supply chain that really elevated that the whole meat category. So all the meat that comes from force of nature is from Rome Ranch, correct? Not all of it. Okay.

Yeah, we do our fair share of bison with Force of Nature. We do a lot of field harvest too and do direct to consumer like you guys. That's kind of like our preferred method to connect people directly to us, directly to the land. But Force of Nature is a national consumer brand now. And so you can buy it all across the country. And as we've scaled, we've picked up more independent family ranches like Rome Ranch. Yeah, that was actually one of my questions because I've been seeing Force of Nature all over the place. and I was like, man, these guys are field harvesting all these animals.

I was like, that's got to be so time consuming. But I'd love for you to describe the process of a field harvest because I do think this really paints a picture of the respect for the animal in the process and maybe how that's different from industrial, is lack of a better word killing of animals. What's the difference between a field harvest like you guys do and then industrial? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, 99.9% of all the meat you've ever consumed has been harvested off the land that that animal was raised,

that it recognized that as its home. And in that industrial system, those animals are loaded onto trailers and typically driven across the country. I mean, sometimes thousands of miles. And so they're put in, you know, USDA approved slaughter plants, and it's very mechanized. Some of these plants are so fast that they're killing cows and bison, you know, one animal every minute. I've seen some of these videos, and it's pretty disturbing.

It's horrible. Yeah. I mean, this is definitely one of the things that the meat industry, and the food industry in general doesn't want you to connect with. They want to put blinders on you, so you're not aware of this. It's kind of like you're outsourcing this step, and you don't think about it. And so we're all complicit in that system existing. even though it doesn't align with our values.

And so in that system, you know, these animals are unloaded into an unfamiliar property, typically held in a very tight pin with dirt, fed hay. Very shortly after that, they're put into tunnels and in houses with artificial lights, it's all been sanitized chemically.

They smell death. They hear the cries and the fear of other animals. It's just an awful transition out of life. It's like the worst case scenario. Now, the feet. field harvests the exact furthest from opposite of that. And so in a field harvest, like what we do at the ranch, is you have this animal that is in a pasture that it recognizes as its home

with the herd that is its community, with its favorite food in its mouth. And we go out there typically from about 100 yards away and we'll shoot a pretty large caliber rifle at the central mass of the animal's brain. And by the time you hear that shot, that animal has lost all sentience. It is on the ground.

Its heart's still beating. It's like the computer system has been shut down, but the heart's still pumping. And so when we do that, we allow this really special space for the rest of the herd to go up and to process that animal, to say goodbye and to make sense

of this transition into death. And I think there's an energy release that these other herd mates are really familiar with and they understand. And so after about five minutes, we'll open up a gate and the rest of the herd will run through a gate,

And we'll come out into that field, either just us or with a community group, and we'll touch that animal when its heart's still beating. We'll thank it, you know, send these signals of reverence and love and gratitude. And then cut the animal's throat and bleed it out in that field. So we're already putting nutrients from that animal back into the soil, feeding the biology, enriching that system. And then we pick it up, you know, with a tractor, take it to a central outdoor processing place and we just hand people knives. You know, it's like, hey, this is within all of us. Our ancestors were really good at this. We wouldn't exist today if we didn't come from very effective hunting and gathering communities.

So let's just switch on those epigenetics and tap into this and just trust yourself. So you have these people that are freaked out at the starting of this experience, but once they witness that animal transitioning into death, it's like this switch happens in their bodies. And it's all about, I don't want to miss out on respecting and honoring this animal. I want to touch it. I want to thank it. I want to show gratitude. I want to connect with it.

I want to debone it. I want to work on the fleshing the hide. And it's just a beautiful experience. A lot of these events, we typically will eat the heart raw, the liver raw, kidney. I mean, we have some weirdos that want to do other raw things that are too intense for me. But it's like, when do you get the opportunity to do that other than a bison harvest? Yeah, I was listening to one of your other episodes and you're talking about sometimes, you know, after you shoot the animal. And when you walk up to it, you'll drink some of the blood as you're touching animal to thank it for its life and what it's providing for the community.

Oh, dude, it's a must. Blood every time. And I mean, we'll have a group of 30 to 40 strangers. And, you know, when we're kicking off this event, we'll tell them, you guys have the opportunity to drink this blood today. And, you know, all 40 of them are like, hell no, I'm not doing that. But when they're in that moment, every single one of them does it. And it's so special and it's so powerful and it's so connecting. I think it's a really, yeah, beautiful way to honor that animal.

And I mean, like, symbolically, you're transferring its life force into your body. And I think the worst thing that we can do is consumers is put blinders on and don't recognize that there is a living, sentient, breathing animal that just sacrificed its life to feed and nourish our bodies. And I think the most disrespectful thing we can do is to not live to our most fullest biological potential as humans. If we're not honoring that animal in every single capacity, pursuing our dreams,

fueling ourselves in ways that allow us to do amazing things, then we just disgraced that animal and the sacrifice that it gave for us. It really reminds me of Cam Haynes was on the podcast a few weeks ago, and obviously a massive bow hunter

goes after elk in the back country. And the way he describes a hunt and when he kills that elk and he gets the perfect shot and he walks up to it and it's full respect of like thank you for the meat you are providing our family and it's it's this bond that he has with that animal and that's one thing that I'm gaining more and more and more respect for especially in the the ranching and farming community and the hunting community is when we go and buy meat in the grocery store, you buy it from a local farmer or a market.

It's not just like this transaction for, I'm buying this package of red meat. Here's some bucks. I'm going to go home and make this. It's like this, there's a process to get this into your home, a very in-depth and respectful process. But I think it's really important to identify. And that's why I love,

I love what you guys are doing. It makes me appreciate and want to eat more meat that is sustainably sourced and harvested. Yeah, no, I appreciate that, man. And I think it's really important to really question ourselves as a civilization. You know, like that picture you painted when you're going to the grocery store and you're buying meat, there's this really weird thing that we do in our human consumptive behaviors. It's like this dysfunctional pattern where we want meat to be cheap and we want it to be, abundant. And when we do that, we get it all wrong. We're basically supporting a system that

creates the mass suffering of animals. And so, you know, I challenge you like, where do we get to this place in our consumer psychology where we think that sentient beings, living animals should be some of the least, you know, valuable, cheapest stuff at the grocery store, right? Like, we complain about the price of meat. But what we don't really realize is like, where else in our life are we spending money right and there's this illusion that to eat healthy or to eat high quality meat it's expensive or you have to be like uh socioeconomically advantaged but that's all bullshit we've just been conditioned to behave that way and to think that way and we're not challenging the system and so you know one thing that i did when i came over here today is i stopped at a gas station

to get some fuel for my truck and i went in and i looked at like all the shittiest you know like most hyper-process industrial commodity crap you could buy, like lays potato chips and ruffles and even like Snickers and Hershey bars, like things that people think of as cheap. And when you break it down on a price per ounce basis, they're 30 to 40% more expensive than the highest quality, highest attribute grass-fed regenerative beef you can buy, right? And so it's like that stuff is not serving your body.

It's actually doing a lot of damage that. cheap, shitty, crappy food, but we're willing to pay more for it, which is like, that's this challenge and that's this reconnection that we're trying to communicate with consumers, is that this is accessible, this is how you should be fueling your body

to live your best life, but also to like economically and live in a way that, well, you're supporting a system that stimulates rural economies, that treats animals with respect and dignity and is really good for our bodies. Yeah, I've found this program in the Austin area.

It's called Farmhouse Delivery, which has been super cool. It's essentially a co-op that works with local farmers and ranchers. And every Thursday, I get this delivery to my house. It's like Thursday afternoon, 4 p.m. And based off of what I order on their website, by that Tuesday, some guy comes out and drops it off in a tote. And I'll get fresh local fruits and press. produce and meats and eggs and sourdough bread and all this stuff from local farmers,

which is really cool to see and be a part of because I've went in towards some of these local farms and ranches in around the Austin area. And it's amazing to see what these ranchers and farmers are doing. And a lot of these places, like probably like Rome Ranch, you can go tour and you can see the operation and how it's happening. and it's beautiful to experience, but it also gives you much more appreciation for when you prepare that food

and you eat that food and you truly value every little piece of it. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it's what you're, you know, like you just had your first baby girl, which is like a gift. In every single capacity, it's mind-blowing that your wife produced child.

You know, you too. But it's like what you feed your wife, you're literally creating your child. And so why would you feed your child commoditized, industrialized, processed food, sprayed with chemicals, grown in soil that cannot sustain life? Right. Like that's not the energy that you want to put into your child. And so it's like a no-brainer, but it's something that we've lost sight of as a civilization.

But I think there's a reawakening and a return to this. Yeah, my wife jokes around all the time that she thinks that I'm going to try to get, our daughter's name is Charlie Grace. She thinks I'm going to get Charlie Grace's first words to be grass fed, grass finished. I'm like, you're going to grow up on grass fed, grass finished beef. That's not bad. No, not at all. I feel like she's going to have a little bit of an advantage in life, to say the least.

That's my thought process. Like from the time they can start eating real food, I'm like, I'm going to put some high quality nutrition, dense food in your body because that is a foundation for everything else you're going to do, how you're going to feel, how you're going to perform, like everything. That is a foundation. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of what makes us human and what makes us feel good happens in our microbiome, so our gut biome, right?

And it's like serotonin is an example where 90% of that chemical that makes us feel happy and love and joy, well, that's produced in our gut. And so it's, you know, how you feed your gut biology is directly reflected of how you feed your own energy and your own spirit and your own outlook at life. and your own power and capacity for healing. So you need to be eating foods that are grown and thriving soil because we are just a reflection of what we're eating in the ecosystem on which it was, in which it was produced.

And so if you want to be resilient, if you want to be dynamic, you cannot eat sterilized industrial food or you will pay the ultimate price. And I think we're seeing that in a large part as a civilization. I'm curious what you see in terms of the future of ranching and farming space and our food in a whole, are we moving more towards this regenerative agriculture, ranching, focusing on the soil, focusing on field harvest, or are we moving in the opposite direction of industrial

is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger? Where do you see it in the next decade plus? I think one really interesting way to look at that is kind of through a historical context of how we got to where we are. And so, you know, 1776, the formation in the United States, United States, our founding fathers, they were all farmers. I mean, damn near 100% of Americans at that point in time were farmers. So we're a nation of farmers founded upon that. And, you know, things changed. So 1850, it's when like the Department, U.S. Department of Agriculture was created. That was called

the People's Department, right? And so that was Abraham Lincoln at that point in time, there's about 90% of Americans were farmers. Shit, that's 1850s. After the Civil Civil War, War, there was a change in decentralization, population, dispersal in America. And at the turn of the century in the 1900s, it was 40% farmers. Today, we are 2% farmers. So a country that was founded upon food, founded upon managing land and ecosystems, we've lost that. And we lose about 5 to 10,000 farmers a year in the United States. And in many circumstances, these are five, six generation ranches.

These are communities that are more than just about food production. It's their identity. It's their history. It's their cultural legacy. And the system is failing them, right? And we see this at a time into where all these people are losing their identities, losing their lands. Farmers have higher suicide rates than veterans returning from war, which is absolutely unacceptable, right? These are people that should be celebrated for managing land, managing animals, feeding our communities, making our country.

strong and our body's strong and our mind strong. But that's not the case at the moment. And who's benefiting the most from this, the largest transfer of land in history? Well, you know, it's people like Bill Gates who are now the largest landowner, the largest farm landowner in the United States of America, right? And there's people that are benefiting on the suffering of these rural economies. And so I think we are at this critical point in time where things are going to change because they have to. We can't continue to centralize and industrialize our food system, right? And we're seeing the fabric of that system and the brittleness of it degrade in real time, right? We have shortages on baby formula, you know, meat scarcity, chickens, eggs, you know, it's just like all these food

insecurities that are revealing at these times when our population is already in a little bit of fragility. And so I think that is an awakening. These are warning signs. And there's more and more people like you, like me, that are saying, I want to be a part of this. I want to serve a greater purpose. I want to live on land and heal land and be a part of a community and provide food and nourishment for my family, my body, the most important things to me. And so I do see a mass exodus out of cities, especially amongst younger people, because the average age of a farmer is like 65 years old, right? And people aren't excited about getting into farming and ranching so they can sit on a damn tractor all day and spray glyphosate on their crops. No one's signing up for that. That's why

the average age of a rancher is 65. And so it's really the younger generation that can create the most positive change. And you think we're seeing that? We're seeing more people trying to make that change and move out of cities and buy properties and grow and produce their own food? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's really exciting. I mean, it's a challenging time. There's so much of an exodus from cities that land prices are like at an all-time high at the moment, right? There's such a high demand for this stuff. But the amount of people, you know, not everyone's buying hundreds of acres, but you can buy 30, 40 acres and you can start homesteading.

It's like this decentralization. It's this empowerment of controlling your own food or this empowerment of controlling the education for your children. We're seeing people recognize that the incumbent system is not serving their best interest. And so I think in many facets of life, we're seeing an awakening and what's to happen. You know, what's next. My best hope is that we pursue this path of being more connected to nature, more connected to our roots in the land on which we depend. Are there resources or platforms where you can learn how to turn your land into some really good soil? Like say for example, I go and buy 30 acres and I want to put some bison and some steer out there.

And I want to produce my own grass fed beef and vegetables and fruits. Like where do I go to learn about that? Or is it just trial by error? Man, there's great resources now. And I think what you mentioned with the Kiss the Ground documentary, that was badass. That's a great point for any of your listeners who haven't seen that. shit. That's a life-changing documentary for many people. It changes the way you think.

Absolutely. That's what did it to me. Yeah, it changes your understanding and the capacity, that healing grace of mother nature. And it makes you realize that we are all empowered to be a part of that system with our choices that we make every single day. Because I think a lot of us get disenchanted with how we think about voting in the United States, where we think about it in a very like electoral way or you know you have these candidates running for political offices and if neither of them really resonate with your values then you opt out and that's

you know we have very low voter turnout but you me all your listeners every single day we cannot abstain for voting for food systems because we all eat and so if we're not voting in a way that enriches and heals our landscapes then we're complicit in the suffering of the animals and suffering of ecosystems. And so that's really where people need to wake up. And as far as resources go, my favorite book is called From Dirt to Soil. And it's just, it's almost like a how to guide. I mean, there's like five, now six principles to soil health that book so eloquently lays out that works anywhere in the world. I mean, Texas to Tennessee to freaking, if you even want to just have like some plants on a deck in New York City. And so it's dirt to soil. There's a really awesome

audiobook, but it's super inspiring and very digestible, very understandable and easily applied. Dude, I'm excited. I'm excited for my one chapter of life in the future, whatever that is, of getting land and turning dirt into soil. And I'm almost thinking that challenge of, you know, like you guys did, of finding something that is degraded, isn't optimal, isn't able to grow anything and turn it into something that can. Yeah, dude, it's in you. You just have to unlock that. And that's the thing. Like people think, I didn't go to agricultural college.

I'm at such a disadvantage. But I would argue that you have an advantage because you're thinking about things more holistically. And you're thinking about relationships and community within nature. And so I think all day long, you know, you're going to go out there and you're going to trust your instincts. I mean, this is in all of us. We are literally from soil. Soil is the great connector. It's where life begins and it's where all life ends.

And it cycles through that. life is not linear. It's very circular. And so our ability to understand and work with soil, it's, it is us. We are it. And you just have to listen to that inner calling, which I think is already hollering at you right now. It's been calling me for probably since I've watched, kiss the ground. But then it goes back to my dad's side of the family. They were farmers in central Pennsylvania. And I feel like part of that has always been part of me. You know, before, before I decided to join the army, my plan after graduating high school was to be a farmer in central Pennsylvania. So going through high school, my grandpa would, he would take me on these trips around

Central PA and we would tour farms and we'd go talk to the farmers and the ranchers and we'd look at properties and he's like, you know, you can get this piece of land, you can take this loan out, You can pay it back in 14 years. Like 14 years, grandpa, dang, you're not really like setting me up here. But it was, I feel like it's always been something that I've appreciated. Watching my grandfather, you know, be a dairy farmer and central PA and just work his ass off. And I always respected that.

And it'd be so crazy to come full circle where a future chapter my life lands me back in that kind of position. Yeah. No, it makes so much sense. I'm so excited for you and I think you are the exception where, you know, a lot of, like that's so cool you had that realization earlier in life that you wanted to be on land and work on land and use your hands. That should be celebrated. I think that's a high calling. But, you know, like for me, when I grew up in Austin, it was never an option to be on land. You know, like you take those vocational test when you're in elementary school and it's like, oh, what am I going to be? Oh, you know, you fill this out. You're like, oh, cool, I should be a fireman or something. You know, like, oh, cool, I should be a fireman or something. You know, you know, something like that or a nurse or a lawyer or a doctor or you know bus driver but nowhere in there it's like can you be in agriculture and I think that's really sad because I think what's happened in these rural areas is like the smartest the brightest people they've been pulled out of those ecosystem out of those communities and then they leave and they go to the city and so you're losing that creative capacity that we require for changes in agriculture but now you have people like you like me, like a lot of younger motivated people that are bringing new ideas, bringing fresh life,

not being held down by any barriers or restrictions in reinventing, reimagining what agriculture can be. I love that. Well, Taylor, man, I appreciate you. I love what you're doing at Rome Ranch, force of nature. So much respect for what you built with Epic and, you know, what you've accomplished in this time is, it's respectful but it's it's really important at the same time and what you're doing is extremely important so I appreciate you thanks for the time today well thank you for having me and sharing this to your audience and man as soon as you get serious about some lands shoot me over some uh I'll help you out I get stoked

about this stuff I will lean real heavy into on that so I appreciate it okay anytime man I'm excited for you all right thanks dude that's a wrap in to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast. Please leave a rating and review on the platform you are listening to if you enjoyed it. It helps us to grow and reach more people with the intent of changing lives through the Go One More mindset. If you are ready to take your health and performance to the next level, head over to bpnsubs.com to take the first step.