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Hosted by @Regenaisanceman with the mission of reconnecting us back to where our food is grown & exposing everything that is wrong with our broken food system. We are more disconnected from our food than we ever have been. I sit down with ranchers and farmers to give them a voice and hear their stories, helping paint a picture of what it really looks like to support humanity with food. I also will be talking to others involved in the agriculture space as there is a lot that goes into it all. My hope is that from hearing this podcast you will begin to question what you eat and where from.
Hello, everyone. My name is Ryan Griggs, and I'm the host of the Regenaissance podcast. And today alongside me, I have Matthew from Cottage Pastures. Thank you for joining me. Thanks, man. Glad to be here. And it's good to talk to you. It's been a little bit. It has. Yeah. So that's why for the listeners, we recorded previously, and I think it was now, I don't know, two years ago by now, and I'll link that first episode. So I guess just to catch up to speed, just really reintroducing yourself and what exactly all you're doing at Cottage Pastures. Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, my name is Matthew. We run Cottage Pastures. It's a name change from, I think, the last time that we talked about, but it is the formal name going forward. You know, we're located in southeast Indiana, just north of a town called Vivi. It's in a county called Switzerland, accessible within an hour drive from Cincinnati, Ohio, Louisville, Kentucky, just a little bit away from Indianapolis. And we came out here, it was July of 2022. My wife and I just made a decision. It's kind of a common story for people at this point, where we looked around at our life in the cities and in the suburbs of Cincinnati and said, this isn't what we want for our children. And we just don't think it's the best place for our family to grow up. So for years, we had been looking for an opportunity to purchase land or move out into the countryside.
And we'd been traveling all over the major greater Cincinnati area, you know, traveling to, you know, through Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana. And we're just looking for a place to, you know, raise our family and start homesteading, really. And we landed in southeast Indiana, and we started that in July of 2022 is when we purchased the farm here. It's 26 acres, and we have a kind of an iconic stone house that sits in the exact center point of the county. That's the part of the logo is the house, because the house in this area is relatively just iconic of sorts. If I say, hey, we're the ones who run the farm at the Stone Creek house, everyone's like, oh, okay, I know where that is. And it's in Center Square. Center Square historically was like this center of the county little village. And that village isn't here anymore. There's some evidence of it, but it's not here anymore.
So at that farm, we came out here, and one of the first ideas was, let's start a homestead, that true idea, like near self-sufficiency, but over time you learn that self-sufficiency is a complicated question and a complicated reality. And it morphed into this beautiful opportunity to start sharing more farming goods with people. So we started with livestock primarily and incidentally with garlic at the same time or very closely thereafter. And over the last three, four years, it's developed into this very robust, very integrated, regenerative approach to both livestock management, pigs, chickens, broilers, layers, cattle, sheep, dogs, you know, whatever other critters exist across the farm here that I don't directly manage. but things that we can help encourage come here, like the pollinators, the butterflies, the dragonflies, all of those things as well, and some specialty crops and produce.
So specifically our main produce, niche produce we grow is garlic, which is interesting because it's seemingly, I think, actually declining across the United States that it's being grown due to some pretty serious fungal pressure. But we grow garlic here for culinary and seed purposes. And then we also have recently started growing herbs, primarily for herbal tea and then infusions into blends for things like soaps and salves. And a lot of this is because we realized that there was a huge gap out there for American produced farm goods. And a lot of things that we just don't even think about. You know, most herbs aren't grown in the United States, even though they can be grown here extraordinarily well. There's just a labor and an economic reason why they're not grown here. And it's kind of sad if you explore it because what it exposes is the societal or American pressure or design for efficiency at the expense of maybe more jobs that are easy for people to enter into or for opportunities for people to, you know, grasp. And so we kind of recognize that when we started with the garlic, it's not as present on the meat side, although it is becoming more present.
as we talk about imports of meat across the world. I mean, it's becoming actually extraordinarily of interest. Every time you hear a major company announce that they're doing some kind of push into, you know, like grass-finished tallow or grass-finished this or grass-finished that, I'm always sitting there thinking, I don't think people understand the supply for the demand that they're articulating doesn't exist inside the United States.
So, but anyway, I kind of derailed there. So the idea of cottage pastures is effectively a productive farm, meaning that we actually produce what we sell. I don't have aggregators.
Our stuff is not white-labeled. Everything that we sell comes from here.
It's an integrated approach to both livestock management as well as produce and herbs. That's something I don't often see across the country. They require two very different skill sets and two very different economic outputs to make it make sense. But that's what we're doing. And I've got my wife and our kids here, and it's a beautiful life, and the kids are just absolutely thriving. And that's really what I wanted when we came out here is to see them thrive.
I love that. And so I wanted to back up a little bit because mentioning how you were initially thinking of homesteading, and then it's only been four years, and it feels like that changed pretty quickly for you. So I'm curious what changes, or was there like a pivotal moment that happened to where it just changed the way you thought of how you wanted to operate? What is now Cottage Pastures? Yeah, well, it's a little bit complicated because there's a lot of phrasing, phraseology, there's a lot of language that has been thrown around over the last five to ten years about what certain things supposedly mean and what people want that to mean.
You know, for all intents and purposes, where I live in this part of the state, there's arguably a lot of people in this area who are probably, quote, better homesteading, but they would never call it that. They would not know it as that. It's just life. The modern idea of homesteading as being some kind of rejection of modern society, but return to land, but using tools and resources and the internet that are only possible because of modern it's just kind of a funny little thing so i mean i think the idea primarily was to not retreat from the world but to build a life that was insulated from the challenges of the world so like my children don't have concern about food and like to me that was huge almost all of their meat comes from the farm a significant amount of produce comes from the farm or can um it varies season to season but it doesn't mean that we don't go to a grocery store we don't feel you know we feel like we can't go to a grocery store. The shift happened quickly because I realized what I think a lot of people do realize is that even if you're just trying to grow food for yourself, it requires an enormous amount of time. And historically, I think it would have, you would have inherited a certain generational set of tools and systems that we just don't today. And so what I mean by that is everything that we do, I have to build from scratch. I have to start at the very beginning.
If I die and my children were to, or some of my kids were to stay here and use this property, they will inherit all of the buildings that I've built or the structures that I have or the systems that I have, or even the relationship with the breeding stock of animals that I have because you know i built it first so we overcame the nuances of that and so they inherit it by proxy just by being here you know even the temperaments of the right animals that we breed so we recognize that it's very difficult to do that all of that and also work you know full time at another you know supply it's just very very difficult and there's ways to do it there's very there's odd economic strategies to do it by very low, you know, by, you know, there's lots of ways to do it. But I also found a passion for growing food and then sharing that with other people. And I really enjoy that. And I think that I need to be honest with people, you know, if, if I achieve self sufficiency for my wife and I, what does that leave for my children? You know, so I think it's important to also build some, you know, what, what I wish I had, I wish, and I think many people do, I want to build a opportunity for them now, you know, maybe, you know, a division of the farm that one of my daughters can take over, or if they get married, that her and her husband, they can just have it, you know, we have distinct divisions within our farm, we have herbs, we have pork, we have chicken, we have beef, we have tourism, you know, my children can take over that book of business and those animals and that can be theirs and they can just run it and grow it to whatever level they want to support their family and their goals. Actually I just want to add because that reminds that's something I've noticed too just from the folks I've spoken with because this was also a few years back I had I'm hoping I'm remembering correctly all red family farms and they are in Washington quite a large operation but that's because I forgot which generation he is but like you just described I remember talking to him and he would talk about how one sibling had section with his new family they were in charge of that section and then like soaps and farm goods another part of the family it was just really cool hearing him talk how they all work together to to have a really large operation going yeah and and that's just cool to think from a long-term perspective you're at the very beginning stages of that essentially and it's really early i mean i think a lot of people i think there's the the potential that people get a misunderstanding of the size and the scale that I'm at, we're not major at all. I mean, we, you know, the language is true. We don't hide anything. We're very transparent. I try to be very transparent about everything. You know, people will travel to visit us from all over the country. I ship nationwide, all of these things. But when I say I ship nationwide, I don't ship thousands of boxes a month, right? I ship a certain amount that we're raising at a scale that we can manage change responsibly. I don't want to get to a point where we have to cut corners or start to make decisions that are more based on. I don't I don't want to I don't want to cut corners, I guess is that that's the biggest thing, right? I want whatever we produce to be exactly the kind of thing that someone would be honored to give to their daughter as a gift. Or, you know, we have parents that reach out to us and they ship meat to their kids like at college or universities.
that's probably one of the most humbling and exciting things for me to see, or someone will say, you know, I'm buying from you and it's going to be a gift for, you know, this family for Christmas. That's unbelievable. That's so neat that you trust me with that. I can, it's not the same with growing food. Cause that has its own unique element. I have that sam e feeling though, whenever someone has bought apparel saying that this is a great Christmas gift, it's like, I know.
Cause it means it's awesome. Cause they trust you to do like that intimate relationship, that like relationship with them is that they would use your thing as a gift. It's just such a cool thing. And that's, that's what I want. That's why, that's why the name of the farm is cottage pastures. It's, this is not a, this is not an ambition to be the biggest farm in the whole country, the most well-known. I mean, I absolutely have like, you know, business and financial and economic goals for the farm, but it's the cottage came in front of it because the cottage, you know, develops that idea of like family table candles you know a warm environment you know you can go to a farm but if you come to the cottage it obviously it just seems like if i said hey like ryan come on over to the cottage we'll like sit down you know we'll pour a glass of tea or lemonade or something we'll hang out have some conversation and then we'll go out and see the animals that to me better captures what i think envelops what i want this to be less than if i said it's so and so yeah it less than if it was just about the farm because the farming is awesome i love it i i literally i go to work full time and then i literally almost daydream about getting to go to work on the farm all day and all evening and all night long i love it but because that was because that's actually what i was curious too what is your schedule like because behind closed doors i mean we talk and i just remember even last week you were up at 1 a.m tending to animals then you've got a family, your full-time job, you are quite active on social media with just education, everything you're doing. Like what, what is your schedule like? It's a little chaotic and, um, it's, it is a, uh, maybe a talent that I've been gifted to, to persist, uh, in, in order to do this.
Right. And that's not something I would recommend, um, or even say is necessarily wise, but right now it's typically I begin full-time work. I work from home. I begin full-time work 7 45 to 8 30 in the morning. And I do that till five, five 30 at night. Um, animals have to be fed either somewhere in between or before that. So five to 6 AM, but I'm not the best at always rising early. So sometimes it's wake up and straight to work.
From 5.30 to about 10.30 in the summertime, I'm outside working with animals, planting, harvesting. Last night, my wife asked me to come in early. I was quite beat, frankly, and she was like, hey, I'd like you to come in early. Well, she sent me a text. I was out in the field working on one of the gardens. and when I say gardens, we have, so we have a lot of, we call them gardens, but they're not really what someone would consider a garden. I mean, they're, they're multiple gardens, four to five thousand square foot each. And there's a whole bunch of them out there. They just have different purposes. So I'm out in one of the gardens and she texts me, it's like nine 40. And she's like, Hey, when I said come in early, I didn't mean like find something to do again until 10 o'clock at night, even though you don't have like a specific job to go and do. Um, a lot of social media stuff i record that during my day and then i post it when i get a second so i don't i don't necessarily like have to pre-think you know life on the farm is so varied there's always something to do that's one thing i've probably never fully explained like i don't sit there right now and pre-plan what i'm gonna post i'm literally sharing my life i just am thinking through it in the most honest way like an animal does this okay here's what's happening or this is in season you know i don't pre-plan ideas and then stage photos what i show on especially x is what i show now in the future as this ramps up i have you know ambitions to post a lot more stuff in long form that'll be planned better but right now it's literally just i have a phone on me here's a picture of what's growing today so it's it's all around the clock that 1 a.m thing those are the those are realities of what we're doing yeah that's not normal but you know that was a week of 3 a.m 1 a.m 11 p.m that was garlic harvest and uh you can't you know you get a very small window to harvest garlic and you don't get to slack on it we actually we lost a little bit because rain was coming in and it was right at harvest time.
Well, rain coming down at harvest time is a really bad situation for garlic. So that was, you know, one of those nights was like, hey, we're going to be out here until 3 a.m. because it's going to start raining at 6 a.m. And so we harvest as much as we can and anything we don't, it's just going to stay in the ground and we're not going to pull it out.
And just everything that you've also just described, that's also what I try to talk to consumers really about just being a farmer or a rancher. It's why I say it's a different lifestyle because everything you just described, you literally have a full-time job, essentially 7.30 or 8 to 5 to 5.30. Then you work additional five plus hours. And then you're also a husband and a father to try to just make that.
Because people can try to do that and say like a month time. But that's why I say it's a lifestyle this is a year in year out thing if you want to actually farm you are essentially signing a full time contract lifetime contract to yourself that this is it this is your new lifestyle um and it's yeah it's that's one thing that it's really hard to get that message across to people who are so disconnected and never met a farmer to try to understand that lifestyle at all because it's all all their experience is just from a screen online and and it's yeah it's just hard to get that across so it's well and one of the things so there one way that i it's taken me a few years to think through some of these things too because this has all been humbling like i don't i don't i didn't grow up doing this i you know i don't want to give a perception that i'm more successful than i'm not i'm i'm learning and one of the things that hit me when we very first got here before anything like really economically dependent on this is that the weather makes a major difference like is significantly different my experience with weather is very different than people's experience in the city or the suburbs and and it's just a reality of it for a lot of people their experience with weather is just it's hot so we go inside and turn up the air conditioning or we do something to get out of the heat same with the cold same with the rain rain specifically for a lot of people is just an inconvenience you know it's i gotta turn on the windshield wipers i gotta put on a grab an umbrella you know where i get rained on outside and here it has an entire varied outcome on the type of rain how hard it rains at what time of year it rains rain in the springtime can create incredible mud situations and if you've got animals outside you have to think okay where are the animals in proximity like i learned i learned an unfortunate lesson in early springtime you do not want your pigs on pasture you can have them in the woods but you do not want them on pasture that's still thawing out because when it rains their weight and their just behavior they're going straight it's like they're going straight to the middle of the earth and they just create like and it's just chaos absolute chaos um you know how does you know the way you plant something or like the time of year that maybe you turn the soil over a little bit is it on a hillside which direction does it's sloped because it's going to make a difference how does in the countryside like how does your house displace water that's a serious issue out here like do you have french drains that pump water out and okay that's fine if they pump water out but where do they pump it out too because it's not being pumped out to a sewer so where is it going right like you know there's a swale that opens up behind our house there's a hill um maybe about 100 feet behind our house and it's a it's a swale that opens up so basically like a small river but only in late springtime and then it goes away for the rest of the year and it's like the combination of the ground still thawing out with the high water pressure and it creates about a foot very rapid waterway well i don't want pigs or other animals to be in the pathway of that because i don't want their manure rushing down that river and contaminating it or creating like a you know uh like a bloom situation but i also don't want them standing in it and getting cold and freezing to death so suddenly what was historically likely for me just an inconvenience or just a reality it's hot it's cold it's wet it's snowy out here everything it matters every little bit and you hear that in the conversation between neighbors too it matters to everybody this is a really long way of getting this i apologize for the length but my point is no this is good that if if the whole community actually depended on farmers then that weather would actually matter to everybody and everybody would be aware of what's happening so no one would come to me and question you know the garlic harvest or the price of it or the quality or anything they would understand that they're out there at that time of day not because it's fun not because it's enjoyable, but because it's necessary in order to get the harvest in. And if you actually depended on it, then you would either really appreciate it or probably jump in to be a part of it. And that's when farming probably historically was more of a community experience.
Now it's really difficult to explain it because if my harvest fails, the only people who absorb that loss economically or even just the goods of it is me and my family to everybody else at this point they just go to the grocery store and they can and that's it yes but and that's that's actually that point is actually what i say all the time too it's because with regenerative too obviously that's where i want in the long run that's half of the name of my of this brand but then i try to bring up will harris constantly because he's so revered by consumers and especially people that line and are learning more and more about agriculture. They revere this man. He's so awesome. But then those same people will say a lot of stuff about farmers that still use glyphosate. Well, Will Harris infamously talks about how he would always wake up and look for something to kill on his farm because he was conventional. So if there's so many people out there like Will Harris right now to where their situation is just pretty dire. And so they're just kind of caught in this endless loop that farmers are with the conventional side of things. And I've just seen so much more apathy directed towards those folks, but they just don't understand the nuances of all of this. Because yeah, if Will Harris was not who he was right now, but there's the conventional farmer and those people that would normally want to take pictures and thank him for all this, they would probably be saying a lot of nasty things or have a lot of harsh judgment towards him.
And that's the thing that I try to actively help get consumers to really understand that. Because at the end of the day, like you just said, once a farmer says, let me back up, say a farmer tries to transition a regenerative, they just put all these investments in and say something didn't work to where whether the food ended up becoming bad or tasted off or with grass-fed beef a lot of people that revere that too the the the range of taste is the variety is massive for grass-fed beef so say that all of a sudden someone doesn't like that well the the farmer rancher is shit out of luck because that person is like you just said going to go to the grocery store just go to somebody else and it's i've tried to really thread that needle and you know kindly explain that to people at least in a it's an economic battle that if you want to farm you want to make money from the land you have to wrestle with that you also have to wrestle with the reality that in many in most situations just the honest truth is you're at the absolute bottom of the totem pole the person who puts a seed in the ground it gets the absolute end of the stick when it comes to planting and that's why you're seeing this rise at least online in social media spaces of direct to consumer farming it's it's an attempt of just an attempt to try to get some of the money out of it because historically uh or at least i mean historically but recently really what it is it's not subsistence farming anywhere it's not farming for just you know sustenance i I mean, it'd be nice if that's what it is, but it's not.
And so what it is is people trying to say, look, we're trying to plant a flag in the ground and say, look, enough is enough. We've gone a wrong way. The food is terrible in the store. People are sick. They can taste how bland this stuff is. There's questions every year about, you know, breakouts and parasites and sanitation issues that are spread, you know, nationwide. And we can grow this here safely, better tasting in a way that supports our community. The direct to consumer thing is not easy. And I, you know, anyone that gives a perception that it is, I know behind the scenes, it's brutally hard, you know, for us, you know, just trying to figure out, you know, you have to front the cost of insulated packaging, as an example.
You don't get a break because you're a small farm trying to do good things. No one cares from an economic standpoint. So I have to front the cost of boxes, and someone will say, well, the cost of shipping, I get that. That's literally the cost of shipping. The box itself is $8 to $10. The dry ice is, some people pay. I have a very good rate with dry ice, but I've heard crazy numbers with dry ice. Then you've got to figure out the legal restrictions. Then you've got to figure out the postage label, and it doesn't matter what you do. The postage label sometimes is $100 or more.
So I don't, it's, I'm not complaining about it. I just think there's, it's going to come down to a question very soon, I think. And maybe it doesn't. Is this a preference choice or is it a necessity for a better future? I really think that's something that people have to answer. And I think a lot of people who buy from us, they believe in the vision here. They believe in the idea that there is something about raising your kids in an environment where see the work and see the fruits and see the consequences. I think that there is a strong testament to supporting farmers who truly believe in building soil and raising quality livestock and produce. I think if we don't have a conversation like this, what you're left with is conglomerates that only prioritize efficiency and they just don't see the disconnect. And it sounds silly, but there was that like Pixar or Disney movie.
There was something a few years. I don't know. And I say a few years ago, I guess I'm getting older. So, you know, sometimes you're a little scared. Like you say that and you're like, you find out it was like actually like 20 years ago. Yeah, it was a decade ago.
But it was, uh, it was about like a, like a, uh, what does it call it? It's like a, like a perfect society where they're like sitting on chairs and everything's brought to them. And it's, it's like a kid.
Oh, Wally. Yeah. With the, uh, yeah, that was, That was like a decade ago.
Yeah, it was Wally to where they're sitting in chairs. It's very futuristic and very overweight. They were looking at screens, pretty much drinking a large Coke, it looks like. But do we not see that coming? It's already here. Because that's what I... The whole sports, Bren Circus thing is very real. Because I think about that a lot. As someone who... I mean, I'm from Indiana, so basketball is my first love.
I still love sports. I've been watching the World Cup. But I went to the college basketball final four, I believe it was two years ago now, it was in San Antonio. And it was seriously the most jarring experience I've ever had in my life because the majority of folks could barely walk up the stairs. It was insane. And then I would see what they're holding in their hands, the drinks and the food. And like we are already there. Because then this is also why I feel like I talk about this on every podcast.
My podcast is now just culture pretty much because of where we're at as a society. Because of the fact that we're kind of in WALL-E, majority of consumers offload all personal responsibility. And that goes, pairs well with the farmer aspect to where, oh, farmers are poisoning the food. Of course, screw the farmers. It's everyone's fault but myself for taking any account, whether it be taking 10 extra minutes every week to drive to actually buy food rather than buying the cheapest, shittiest food from a grocery store. Like there's none of this internal thinking going on for a lot of consumers because we're now just a society. It's just where we're at as a society.
And so I've kind of switched where my head's at too with all of this because I, when I started with Genescience, I just assumed that I was very naive. I just assume that sharing stories and just like heartfelt actual stories from farmers would open up a lot of views. But the majority falls on deaf ears. And it's kind of similar to at the beginning of COVID to where I think a large subset of the population will never wake up until there's a famine. And so what about the people that are continuing to wake up? That is kind of my focus now, because like you just said, that you, a lot of the consumers or your customers are understanding what you're trying to build and what your long term vision of all that. And they see that and want to be a part of that. And so that's kind of beginning of my focus is there are a lot of people that are waking up. It just seems it's just hard to tell because we're all so disconnected, but we're all in line.
And so now it's, I guess this can just tie into direct to consumer and everything you're building. Because that just seems to me, it's just the smaller decentralized networks of finding the folks that are really getting it and understanding it and will actually financially support one another. Because now with just inflation, again, with all that too, the cost and convenience of everything, it's just very challenging. So I guess I'm trying to figure out how I can phrase this question for you then. I guess whenever you started doing direct consumer, yeah, if you could just share your experience with that for just consumers to understand, because a lot of people probably do seem to, probably think that it is fairly straightforward. You can just share everything online.
When you build it, they will come essentially. No, it's not that way at all. You know, my background is all in business. I have an MBA. I don't I don't share that too often. But like my background is in an MBA with a specialization in risk management. And my professional career has all been sales and sales leadership. I mean, for pretty much the entire career, I had a small stint in social services I did for a while. But it's the business side of it is is really difficult. And there is a lot of ways, you know, what ends up happening is there's a very, very, very small amount of farms that actually survive nationally. It's very small. And it looks really big. It looks like that's where everybody is.
But the truth is it's an extraordinarily small amount of people. And it's partly because the logistics of doing it absolutely box out most people. If you do not have access to dry ice, you cannot ship nationwide. It's not possible. If you don't have access to dry ice, you can't ship really one day. It's not possible. You would be shipping thawed meat all over the country that would sit in trucks that are in 80 degree heat. It just that doesn't work. We, you know, I try to be very honest with people about this. The competition at a national level is like for chicken.
It's soy and corn free. If you're not doing soy and corn free, you are still trying to ship a piece of chicken, which rivals the cost of that exact same chicken because the cost doesn't change dramatically between them but against people who are already further ahead and in that national space and that's no knock to those who are there they're i don't knock any farm at this point i don't i don't really i mean i have opinions about what i think is the healthiest way or best quality but like like i i'll talk offline with any farmer at this point about the stuff so my whole point in getting that is like like we uniquely have a organic certified feed mill that delivers to me every single month so customers from all over cincinnati louisville the tri-state area indianapolis people drive from all over and they they order at this feed mill and it all delivers to our farm that farm i have an agreement with to create and mill a proprietary feed mix that i use that does not have soy or corn in it for our pigs or our chickens that without that specific feed mill and that relationship that i've curated over about four years we don't have access to organic feed most farms do not have access to organic it's not a thing that's why they all say non-gmo well non-gmo is not organic and non-gmo only means it's not one it's not a it could be or clean or could not be and i'm not saying organic is actually better than a lot of things but it's a at least something so the pressure that's put on small farms to think they have to be something that they literally cannot be by their geography is enormous um it's incredibly unfortunate so what happens is everybody gets online and they get targeted because they're a farm and they're looking for farm stuff so they get targeted with social media advertisements that actually aren't even directed at them there are other farms that are trying to ship nationwide but because what everyone's misunderstanding is the the pool of people interested is actually a little smaller and you got to be aware of that so they get on there and then they think they have to do something that they don't have to do and they stretch themselves economically and they end up burning out or they price themselves out of their local community or their regional community regional is probably a better bet really for most farms and then just hyper local and definitely not national national is is very difficult we didn't do it on purpose and you know our ultimate goal with meat is to continue to ship nationwide but not to push nationwide is to really just be more regional but allow nationwide shipping so anyway i guess the question of the experience the experience of people who have like seeing the amount of people who reach out to us buy from us that we get to ship to the reviews has been incredibly humbling it's so encouraging it's so exciting the amount of repeat customers i know they have other options in most situations. Sometimes they tell me they don't, but I think they have other options.
And I'm incredibly honored to be a part of their, you know, to raise food that goes onto their dinner table for their friends, their family themselves. I think it's incredible. But I don't want to discourage small farms from saying like, well, we can't do that. So we can't exist in this marketplace. Now, I bet, I bet you'd be better in a Metro that has like 30,000 people in it, really just finding 100 customers, 200 customers. That's really all I think you need. And consider your expenses and your lifestyle. It might have to be a little more modest, and you're going to have to make some decisions about what this looks like. But I think there's more room there. There's also a reality. If you pay attention to any of the farms that really make it, they all go value-added. Every single one of them. There's almost no examples of a farm that just purely sticks to meat. They all go value added, which means that they take a raw good that they raise and they turn it into something else. This is like the classic, we raise a cucumber and we turn it into a jar of pickles. A cucumber sells for maybe a dollar at a roadside stand, but a jar of pickles sells for 10. And in some situations, you may be able to ship that, or a lot of states you can ship it in the state, you know, different laws in different places.
That's where the distance, that's where small farms and small producers can make up the distance between what's a commodity in the grocery store and what they can actually produce and make a living at. The challenge is scale. And whether or not, when it comes down to it, do you want to have a hobby where it's fun to have a couple animals? Do you want to make a little vacation money, a little petty cash, a little bonus money? Or do you want to farm? Because the difference between scale of the second one and the third one is enormous.
That's really where it lands. Yeah. And the logistics of it all is, like you were just saying, I was actually having a conversation last night with someone I just met that we were just talking overall in agriculture, but then talking about pasture bird. Because he had been following Paul a little bit on LinkedIn. And I mentioned how, I was just talking about logistics actually, and how they essentially have been able to get where they're at because they sold the Purdue Farms. Whenever I mentioned Purdue Farms, the look on his face was just like I just said the boogeyman.
And I get it because at its face value, that does sound bad. But you have to understand the reality of this world and the logistics side of everything. The only reason why you can go to Sprouts Nationwide and get the best pasture chicken with pasture bird is because of that. They already had all the logistics set up. And it's so, yeah, that I always try to drive that home because it's so complex. If you, you, the consumer want the best high quality food, then you, you, the consumer should also sit down and listen and try to understand the world of food. Because whenever.
It's also quite frustrating.
I mean, I get it too. We want the best quality food. Everything wants to be in glass. But this goes back to, again, not understanding the farmer or rancher and not hearing their side of things. Because to them, to the consumer, they're cutting corners. But they don't understand that it's literally, for the farmer, for survival. If they were to do, say, all glass, everything, just the best high quality, then they won't be in business. Because they don't have the funds to do all that. Because it's so costly. And then the last example I want to talk on is like raw milk.
That continues to get bigger and bigger. But then people will complain about, well, the price already as it stands, but then also accessibility to it all. I'm just like, yeah, they already tried. There was two dudes who tried to do like a raw milk delivery service in the Miami area. And I don't think they're still going. But they were essentially selling gallons of milk for, I think, like $35. Because that was pretty much the only financial way to do that, to be a delivery driver. That's just, again, the reality of where we're at with our food, the amount of raw dairy farmers as a whole. It's quite low.
I've been thinking about this with that too.
Trying to understand the inflationary aspect of it has been really odd. I've been thinking about this over the last few months or so. Because as inflation continues to kind of take over, There has to be this point where people cannot earn enough. I don't think they are already. And they're injecting either $10 billion or $10 more trillion into it as well. So the inflation is only going to keep getting worse and worse. So one thing that we're looking at doing is we're trying to come up. I've been thinking about this for a while. Maybe you've talked to people and they have ideas about this.
And I hear it all, the sovereign situations, the different currency out, the bartering, that like trying to figure out a way to hedge against the inflation, but still. See, my goal, I don't, I'm not sure that I'm, I'm money motivated to the extent that I need money to pay for bills. But let's say I didn't have a mortgage. I didn't have, you know, expenses on the farm. A lot of things in regenerative can be bartered locally or like really like slimmed down. I think that's an advantage that we have is that, you know, like when there's that whole conversation around fertilizer prices, and I'm like, that literally doesn't impact me at all. I don't, doesn't even, that means nothing to me, and I'm so thankful it doesn't.
I've been thinking about, like, launching locally. This is the first time I've said this publicly, but going into 2027, we were looking at doing, like, a regional farm share situation for the Cincinnati Tri-State, And it's basically like it doesn't matter what happens with inflation. This is the price. It's fixed. It's stuck. It doesn't change because I have been able to negotiate with like my chick supplier and my feed mill. Like I get to negotiate some of these things and actually go backwards on price because I can promise a certain amount of volume. Now, the downside is at the end of the day, if I'm wrong, I'm the one who absorbs the risk.
I mean, that's the constant reality of it and the appetite that you have to have for this. Like our garlic harvest this year was supposed to be way bigger. And it just it wasn't. It was smaller than I expected. The bulbs are phenomenal, but it was smaller in quantity. It's a reality. So anyway, I want to know, like I see people talk about like crypto and gold and silver. And I'm just thinking, like, how do I come up with a way that makes this reasonable? I don't even say affordable, just reasonable. and gives people food so that that's something i'm working on locally through for the cincinnati regional area because uh and when i say cincinnati cincinnati is because that's a major metropolitan you know right next to us and then louisville so we're exactly between louisville and cincinnati uh it's it's a phenomenal place for where we're at because it's accessible to people but there's got to be like this is where farms have to be honest too if you want to farm it can't just be a pretty dream like it's not there is no build it and they will come that does not exist you can build something really cool i think that's i think that's why people come and visit us here i do think what we've built is really cool and people like to see it like they like to go out in the woods and see the pigs it is cool uh they like to see the garden it is really neat i i agree but you coming and seeing it and me surviving for my you know being able to pay bills for my family that's a a totally different ball game i think farms are gonna have to get creative value added being honest about pricing not undercutting yourself and losing money you know a common thing people do is they price their goods and forget their labor they just don't pay themselves i i get it that's the traditional farming way but it doesn't actually allow you to you know go to the store and buy things that you need doesn't allow you to buy new tools like it just doesn't work that way yeah and then back to where we're at culturally consumers expect food to be cheap as humanly possible and i mean that's a byproduct of the food system in place but again going back to not sitting down and actually listening and not understanding history historically food is extremely cheap right now because you don't have to grow it yourself you can just go into a grocery store and yeah it might be quote quote, expensive or more expensive that you become accustomed to.
But again, it's not compared to the majority of our existence. It's still very, very, very cheap. It's just how we think about money, how we think about how what is, I guess, deserving to us and whatnot. It's just, yeah, I don't know. Again, that's why I talk on culturally so much. It's so much of a culture issue too because the convenience aspect, I mean, America, they have figured out the convenience aspect of the majority of our, yeah, every aspect of our lives, every aspect of our lives. I mean, especially now Amazon, it's crazy that I can order something and it will be delivered even that night.
I think it's crazy that people can, that I can ship meat to people. I think that's literally crazy. Every time I put a box in the, we ship by UPS, I hand them a box. It's basically a cooler. It's basically an insulated freezer. It's kind of a wild thing to actually think about. So I'm in Indiana. I take chicken, pork, meat, whatever else. I put it in a box. I put dry ice in it.
I hand it to someone at a checkout counter at a UPS. It gets transferred that day to like three hours away on a truck. then gets put on an airplane, or it gets transferred to another truck and driven all over the United States. And within 48 hours, you have a box of meat from me. I just think that's wild. I think that's crazy. And all you had to do was open your front door. As a consumer. That's all you had to do with it.
Literally sitting there on the front door. I just think that's wild. It is. But... Also, that just... Because that's what... Just the disconnection piece, too. Because that's also just why most people just are not grateful for that. Because obviously that's expensive to buy. The consumer, you are paying a premium for that.
But the fact that, like you just said, the fact that that even exists is pretty crazy to think about.
Because 100 years ago, you were growing your food because you had to. The whole life of the animal, too, is really interesting, even logistically. I guess it's another thing that people maybe not even be aware of. So like if you take a chicken as an example, and you don't butcher it on farm unless you, you can't legally butcher and sell chicken on farm unless you operate under an exemption, which exists in most states, which is that you can do a thousand birds, but you can only typically sell it locally, or like they have to pick it up from you at the farm or something like that.
So you can't, you can make a business out of it if you're in the right area, but it's very few and far between. Because most places where you could make a business of it probably restrict you from owning that much livestock. So if you are like us and you have to legally take it to a processor, that means that chicks are born in one state and then they're shipped via USPS to your farm overnight. You get them. They are raised there for six to eight weeks, depending on how old you raise them to.
Then you pick every single one of them up, put them in a crate, put them on a truck, and then have to drive them somewhere to a processor. And then that processor has to process them. Then they have to wait there. If they, like ours are air chilled, so it takes like a day or so for the temperature to come down and in their coolers, and then they have to freeze. Then we have to drive out there, pick it up, and then drive back to the farm and either transfer it to like an industrial freezer, which is about two hours away from us, or put it in our own freezers.
And then after that, when an order comes in, we have to go pick it up and package it and ship it. But to the consumer, it just was two-day shipping.
And I'm not complaining of it. That's just the real, I mean, it's like anything. It just is interesting. Like, you know, my wife will say, if we stop doing this ever, she's 100%. She was the one who started all this. Like she was ordering from a service when we were in Cincinnati that connected farmers to consumers. And so she started buying from farms. And we were like, the quality is just dramatically different. It's just so different.
And it makes us feel so much better. And it tastes so much better. And now we're on the other end of that. We're like, okay, I understand why it was more expensive to do that. And I do think it's worth it. I also appreciate the reality of economics and budgets and household incomes. And I don't knock anyone for not, like I don't go the morality route with people. And I think it's really unfortunate that people do. I don't say people should buy from us. If you can, I want you to.
And if I can help you do that and figure out a situation to make it make sense, then I would love to do that too. I take a lot of phone calls and emails and I'm happy to figure out what we can do. But I don't want to pretend that it's not more expensive. But I don't want to pretend also that it's not worth it.
This might be just like, I guess, a side question, but just from our whole conversation and, you know, just knowing you for the past few years,
what just makes you so passionate about all of this and really gets you out of bed every morning? Because like we were just talking about your schedule and everything, the amount of hours, I can only imagine how much you've worked the last four years. But you just have so much energy and vigor with all of this.
Where does that come from? I mean, naturally, I do enjoy working, and I think that is a gift or a personality trait, but realistically, it's because I genuinely believe that modern society has not built a life around faith and family that is conducive to good living. I just don't think it has. I don't think the paved parking lots, the big tall buildings, the food on demand, the entertainment everyone's disposal that it entertains everybody's little whims and fancy is is good i see children who are stunted emotionally that i see adults who are panicked and anxiety-ridden i see families who are regretful and broken and while i don't think that those things were not around historically i just don't think the environment right now the world is conducive to a good life and i think that while not everybody has to farm or has to homestead i do think a life a little bit more connected to the natural world the soil the weather the climate the animals i think the community that surrounds itself in in those areas is worth fighting for and really what that means for me is i've just had to make a conscious decision that i'm probably going to work my whole life and my children will be the one that reap that reward so i'm okay with that and if they don't you know i think what people hear when i say that too i think there's a misconception they'll say well you know well you're gonna build a life for them that they have to accept no they don't what they're getting right right now is a childhood. And what I'm getting is an opportunity to ensure that their, you know, development is appropriate for what they can do, whatever God calls them to do in life. I don't know what he's going to, I don't know what they're supposed to do. I don't know that they're supposed to farm or homestead or I don't, I don't know what they're supposed to do
They're learning small minutiae of engineering and science and weather patterns and dexterity and confidence and things that is just so absent from the sterilized environment that people are around today. And the product that I can sell, you know, like we're going to launch, you know, herbal teas. And it's an incredible, I think I brought this up in the beginning. The herbal tea thing is really interesting because what it exposes is the preference of Western society to outsource. That's kind of like the elephant in the room or to import. That's the elephant in the room. Why do you not see fields of chamomile? No one, almost no one in America has ever seen a field of chamomile. You just never seen one. It doesn't, it almost doesn't exist.
The closest you'll see is tourist destinations for lavender or certain like large scale, maybe a mint production or something like that in very, very, very specific parts of the country. You know, I tell people we grow garlic. They're like, I've never even seen garlic. I didn't even know. I didn't even think about it. I had no idea. Right. the reason I bring this up is because what it's exposing is opportunities that have been relegated to other countries to then buy in and import those and the expense that it offers is that there are very very few low barrier to entry jobs that are not stuck under fluorescent lights that's just the reality of it you know we consider that as like you know I worked retail and I worked restaurants for a long time when I was a kid and then a young adult, that would be like the low barrier to entry. Trade work, that's not low barrier. That's hard. You got to learn the whole thing. There's a barrier to entry. But you know what's not is I can take anyone who's having a difficult time and I can teach them how to rake a like a blueberry rake over the chamomile and bring it in and put it on a dehydrator. There's no way to mess it up. That's an opportunity that I can also teach to children, schools, field trips. I can show them from seed to your table how this works.
We just don't have those opportunities anymore. And the reality is it's mostly because it's cheaper to not do it here. And I just don't think cheaper is a good way to build a future for a society. And I think there's going back to just people, I guess, waking up, there is the growing subset of the population that does agree with that. Cause even just like clothing, for example, with natural fibers versus petroleum derived that it's heavily, it's just so cheap, heavily industrialized. So I definitely see that growing sentiment. And I'm curious then too, just from your perspective as a father, because I would, I reflect on my time when I worked on the real farm I did in Pennsylvania and they had, I think at the time I was there, five, three, and one were the ages of their children.
It was just awesome to just, you know, observe how they interacted as a family. And it was always interesting too, because before I was in agriculture, you have, I guess, assumptions about agriculture, but then also as just like a farm kid, because I just look so miserable and you just, you're a slave to your to your parents being a farmer but whenever i was on the farm they wanted to help out all the time when i was on the farmer's markets they wanted to talk to the customers they wanted to run the cash register they wanted to get some of the the veggies i mean they still wanted to obviously play and do that stuff as a kid but they wanted to really help out and and felt like they would be uh they'd be sad if they were left out so i'm just curious to hear you from your perspective as a father what's that been like to to do well so two things i told i gave a talk a few years ago at a conference over in indian about like farming and homesteading and i said you know if you want to raise children out here you need to accept this lesson really early is that especially if you're bringing children who are like weren't born here like they know the suburban life they know the convenience they know the entertainment style if they're familiar with that and you're making the decision it's really important for you to invite them into the conversation and invite them the work and not compel it because the fastest way to get them to not want to do it is to compel them to do it this is you know ultimately your decision frankly to do this um and that's not to say like you can't you know bestow chores upon kids or whatnot but this is a different level of work that many people are unfamiliar with and uncomfortable with and it requires a degree of training and of sorts to do it. But the second thing is like, I had a post on Twitter that went, that gained a little bit of virality as a few weeks ago is my son outside with me. And I was talking about, it was during the garlic harvest. I didn't ask him to be, you know, people were like, oh, this is so cool. This is the way it's supposed to be. You know, some people were concerned about it too. I didn't ask him to be out there with me. I didn't, I didn't ask him to do that. He didn't have to you know i ask them to help me sometimes like during the daylight but i don't ask anyone to stay outside with me at night time or no i don't ask anyone do anything that's arduously difficult they don't they don't need to help me with that uh but he was insistent that he wanted to and he just he's been talking about it for weeks that dad i was out there with you i was out there you know i he was like uh it was like uh wednesday going into a thursday he's like i saw thursday or something like that he's been adamant even like uh like i'll be outside because i'm i mean i'm regularly outside right now it's about 10 o'clock because the sun's still up and uh he's still like i can stay out with dad because i saw the next morning or something like that and i'm like you know what a cool thing but but i didn't ask him to do that and that's the point um you know again it doesn't mean they don't have chores i think that's that's an important part of it there are things that they need to do but most of the stuff they they want to be a part of at least in some capacity it's that point where they become compelled to do it past you know it's it's the point where you start to think that they are your equal employee of sorts that's where i think people get into a problem because they're not you know you you cannot just physically push through but you're mentally pushing through they they're out there for the first bit because they want to be with you. Not because they want to do the thing that you're doing. They want to be with you. So you got to appreciate that. And then eventually they're going to get tired. So they need to go play. And that's cool. Like you have to divorce the idea that they're actually going to be helpful, especially when they're younger. It's not about them being helpful. It's about this is what you came out here to do. You came out here to build a life with your family. This is what that looks like. It doesn't mean they're helpful. It might slow you down for a minute. This is the time to actually be with them because this is the memory you're not gonna like i'm not gonna sit down and think you know in 50 years man that garlic harvest of 20 28 was the best one we ever had because there's gonna be 50 garlic harvest it's a question of like how was it when the kids were with us what did that look like that's what i want and i like whenever you mentioned to like the slowing down aspect and just letting them do their thing too because i i feel like that would be very difficult from your perspective of just wanting to help and fix whatever they're doing rather than being hands-off and just letting them enjoy spending what they're doing but then also just being with you it just takes you know i'm human just like everybody else just you know it's easier to talk about it now than even in practice but but it is a reality like you know maybe don't put them in the most important part of the harvest maybe put them in the row that's a little like suspicious already that way they can't mess it up yeah yeah it's just it's just about don't not letting it's a whole like don't miss what is it don't miss the forest or don't miss the trees through the forest kind of thing like don't let your ambition to build something be so great that you actually miss out on enjoying the experience with those who you thought you were building for it's it's a balance between the two for sure but overall i think this is a worthwhile pursuit i'm incredibly thankful to all the people who support us and it's growing and it's it is getting bigger And I don't I don't even want to pretend that the momentum isn't there.
It really is. It's just the goal is not to be a dominating farm. I don't think that's the right way. And these questions about like economics and politics and society and they have all intersected here in a way that I just could not have realized a few years ago. And I'm certainly not an expert on them, but I do like to talk about them. And I hope it's helpful to people as we consider, you know, what are we doing in life? Where are we going and what's the goal and what's the purpose and what's life supposed to look like? I think this would be a good segue into it because I've wanted to talk on garlic. I mean, everything that you are doing with the different types of animals you're raising and you mentioned herbs and other things.
But with garlic in particular, too, what made you want to start growing that? But then also, you know, just like to talk just the whole industry, because I don't think many people understand that and how a lot of it isn't even American garlic. most is not so so we didn't intend to do that like we i know we've become known for selling garlic and a garlic farm but it was not an intention it was three years ago i think it was i bought 20 pounds of garlic to plant for my family and that was it it was just for my family it was a homesteading uh thing and i ended up meeting someone who visited us from you know some some farm program i can't remember exactly what it was and she was walking the farm and i was telling are like this is my goal this is what i want to do this is what i'm looking at here over here and over here and she was like hey i know this company that buys garlic i should introduce you well it turns out they were kind of a startup too that was trying to buy basically create like a farm to school program so i met them and they came through and they're like well we want to buy all the scapes i was like well what is that i don't even know what escape is it's the little like uh part of the flower that grows up out of a hardneck variety that people commonly call like a green onion um they say it's like the consistency of a green onion i think it's typically tougher but it's garlic flavored very good and stir fries and stuff um so they came and bought that and then they were like well we'd like to buy some of the garlic i'm like well i'm not growing garlic for sale i don't even know what that means why would i do that and uh any anyway so that spurned this conversation of like why would they why would they buy garlic i don't understand what is that so i started looking into it and learned yeah it's it's absolute fact i mean the import numbers i think are all public garlic is almost predominantly imported from around the world now i don't i am very intentional about our farm brand i focus on hopeful positive moving forward the goods i don't i don't really point out why that might be a problem except to say that it's imported and there's not a good reason for it not to be grown here however it's grown elsewhere it's how it's however it's grown elsewhere all i can tell you is that right here in zone 6b in indiana garlic grows like it grows phenomenally i don't even irrigate it i don't water it ever and it grows incredibly well my garlic this year is bigger than i've ever grown some of the bulbs are like a third of a pound themselves that's a massive garlic that's huge that's my whole palm like i can hold one in my palm and So we basically pushed into this, and then we had this really interesting experience where I was buying.
There are some really serious problems with garlic, though, in America. There's some really serious fungal pressures that make it completely non-growable in many places. Is that for all of America? All of America. Yeah.
in this in some soil there's basically a fungal uh like spores effectively that are triggered by alliums which is garlic and onions and it's very hard to know if it's there before you plant it but it's triggered by allium it's not like a secretion that alliums put out so what it does is produces more of those spores and it's like a triggering response to it and it just cripples the the garlic harvest and it spreads through that area and you really can't get it out i mean study you know people will say it's like 20 to 40 years in that area that you can't that's that's one of the things like if you if you google or do an internet search for like gilroy which is known as the garlic capital of the united states um that's one of the reasons that they've had historically a decrease in garlic production is because of that particular incident because once it's there you can't get rid of it
so it's it's something that we're actually looking into this year it's it's you know we're we're selling all of our garlic this year as culinary only and i've been very clear with people about that you know this is this is for it's gonna be the biggest garlic tastiest garlic best looking garlic you've ever seen but i have seen so many instances of small garlic farms already in the last two years producing less than quality garlic and i don't want to contribute to that so what we're doing is actually going the soil testing route and i just was actually just received a message today on who would like there's like one university maybe two that'll actually even help with it so there is a reality to that and the challenges of that you know you can't just you know people say well why do i go buy seed potatoes why are seed potatoes so expensive because they are verified or at least they're supposed to be to not be full of pathogens that'll ruin your garden it's like why you should not go get in most situations horse manure from manicured farms like manicured landscapes it's just not a good idea it's you know there's certain things that are realities to it so anyway kind of a deviation i think garlic garlic is one of those things that should be grown all over the place for most people it's so easy if you have raised beds you should absolutely have garlic in there um the reason it's probably not grown my suspicion or hypothesis why it's not grown largely in the u.s despite it being a perfect environment across the middle of the country for it to grow is that it's an opportunity cost when we commoditize and subsidize like corn and wheat and soybeans garlic has to be planted in the autumn time so you can't plant like spring wheat at the same time and then it goes all the way through to june or july so it also messes with or interferes with the potential for planting of corn so if you were going to plant garlic at large scale you can't plant corn or wheat.
It just won't work. Or beans. So you have to have a market to do that. But the problem is when you import the whole thing and you're trying to play the large-scale 50-acre game, you know, 100-acre game of garlic, you are competing against import prices. So we've been thankful to find an audience of people and people reach out about buying garlic. A lot of people are.
The scale and the growth of that is enormous for us. It's very important to us.
Well, the taste and qualities, Because the farm I worked on too, they had garlic. And that changed my whole perspective of garlic. I mean, most food, once you try as local and fresh and grown properly, it's mind-boggling. It is. Like garlic specifically too. I can't. It's for all of them. I'm so excited to do the chamomile thing. Okay, so I mentioned, we're selling a lot.
Chamomile is going to be a big seller for us by the autumn time. I'm so excited for people to smell it because I think all of us have had the experience where we're like, I should have this tea because it's going to help me feel better or sleep or whatever it is. And then you like steep it and you're like, what is it supposed to taste like? Or what's it supposed to smell like? And it's just water. So we add honey to it and you basically drink hot honey water for most teas. Part of that, I think, is because most of those teas are years old. That's just or they're harvested in fields like with combines. we harvest wheat and corn here they're not hand-picked in most in many situations they're not like like ours is going to be hand-picked and then right to the dehydrators like the volatile oils in there have the best chance at actually being preserved it's just not the way in most situations garlic you can like when you go get you can walk through our fields and smell it it's so pungent um it and that you know we grow i think we've got like 20 some different varieties not all are for sale because we have to build some of them up but um they all taste different they all have different flavor profiles you can literally eat two of them and one you'll be like that tastes like garlic butter this one tastes like really astringent very sharp like i'd like that to like be that that would be a great one to like pour oil over or a lard over and put it in the oven and let it caramelize it's incredible and it's just it's a testament to good quality food what made you want to do so many different varieties for garlic not on purpose uh called a company i ordered garlic uh seed from a company and i got it and it was not suitable for me to plant so i was in a panic because you don't really get a lot of opportunities to do that because guys who sell it for a seed wait until about september to ship it and you run out like there's just it's a legitimate issue so i started scrambling and i called this company this other garlic farm and i said hey i'm in a bind like i need seed or I'm literally not going to have a harvest this year and I need it to be clean and so I called them and this company was like hey this is crazy are you interested in buying garlic like are you interested in buying the company I was like well no I'm in a different part of the country but I'm interested in what's going on she said well you know I've got like all of these varieties tons of them some I've got quantities of some I have like two bulbs and like you can have the two bulbs and And I was like, okay, well, I'm a bit budget constrained because I have to front all the money for this.
But this is what I can do. Whatever I can get for this amount, send it to me. And they sent me 28 varieties of garlic plus my bulk, the big ones that I was growing. And so that's how we ended up with 20 plus varieties of garlic. We were going to do, historically, we've always grown one variety. And I wanted to add two others in this year. And so I had those three. But then this company was like, well, we can do all this. I was like, okay, let's try it.
Let's see what happens. Some of it worked. Some of it didn't work. Some will be for sale. Some won't. It's kind of neat. But you see all kinds of different colors, flavors, storage qualities. It's like a whole different world. And the thing about garlic is garlic is not historically from the United States. But it all has a origin somewhere.
So the naming, like the name of the garlic typically traces to its like ethnic origin or location where it's from. And I think part of that is because garlic has two ways to grow. You have the clove, which basically creates like a replicated identity of that garlic. But then you have the seeds that'll grow and it takes two years for it to grow from the seed. If you grow from seed, I think technically it starts to adapt better. The same with the clove, but the seed like becomes its own thing and it grows from that environment, that soil, that climate. and then you start to reproduce the same one over and over and over and pick the cloves from the best ones to copy it and then you get this like very geo located garlic so neat that's what the farm that i worked on we would do i remember because i helped well one it was cool i remember they dried it all out in the barn so there was just at one point where the whole barn ceiling was just rows of garlic yep but then we would just pick it out we picked the best bulbs to replay it and I just remember my hands were the smell of garlic after that it took forever to get out but I agree too with all that
that was another cool aspect too I remember whenever we would go back to replant after that the kids were out and helping out with that too it's just yeah it's cool man it's a lifestyle man it really is and it's accessible to family it's accessible to kids it's accessible to it brings people together it's just it's the easiest way to it's like the last bastion of like family life in many places you know uh religious environments are another example but for most people they're just like they're the behaviors of their life don't actually lead to the con like to real consequences and so what i mean by that is like on a farm or homestead stuff if you don't plant you don't harvest so if you were actually dependent on it then you act that it's an actual consequence that's natural it's temporal you're hungry or you don't have something um you know right now we're harvesting mint like crazy if you don't harvest it goes to seed it's gone like that's it it's done uh so you got to go out there it doesn't matter how you feel about it if it flowers it flowers
so yeah i think it is a lifestyle but i think it's good and i think it's worth fighting for Completely agree. I guess the final question I really had was just the whole operation as a whole. And just, I guess with your mission to how, because you've mentioned just so many different things that you are doing on Couch Pastures. How do you strategize around all of this, you know, thinking what new, whether it be animal or a new crop to add? Yeah, how do you just plan this all out and then iterate and thinking about all of that? Because there's just so much that goes into all this, not even taking into account the actual regenerative aspect of rebuilding the soil and how all the systems in place. What does the strategy look like for you? Right now, it's changing a little bit. In the very beginning, it was kind of like add it all and let's just figure it out. Now, it's becoming very strategic. It's what works.
What do we like doing? What do we do well? What economically makes sense? What brings happiness to people who visit here or happiness to the family? What has an outlook? That's really where it is. For us, chicken is kind of a staple on the farm. A lot of people know us for our chicken meat. It's a quality that many people just haven't had the opportunity to have elsewhere and they don't have access to. So we keep offering that.
Pork has become a standout, an absolute standout across the farm. The dramatic difference between what most people know in pork and the quality of pork, they all have differences. Like chicken, there's a definite difference. Beef, there's a definite difference. Pork, it's almost like two different things. It's so dramatically different. And the reality is most people just don't want to raise breeder pigs. And I get it. They're big animals. And people just don't want to do them.
So I like working with them. And so we are expanding that. So that's something we're leaning into. The crops, we need them as a family to eat. And people really appreciate the specialty crops. I don't do commodity crops, though. I don't want to fight that game. Like, I don't grow a lot of sweet corn. Some people do really well growing sweet corn locally. I just, I don't have the space.
it takes up too much space and too much nutrients for me to do it right now. So especially in Indiana, I remember just a side note, growing up, my parents would make fun of me or they would just give me crap for it. Whenever we would travel for, I guess, a summer vacation, just surrounded by corn. And so I'd just be yelling corn. I was just corn, corn, corn for like an hour. I was that little annoying toddler saying that because that's all you see for days. So I totally get that. Yeah. I just, you know, I just I try not to fight against for I try not to fight against momentum that's that I can't overpower.
It's really that simple. It's where is the momentum? You know, I think we've developed this really cool story and like idea around American based herbs and American based products here while also building up just the highest quality meat that we can. You know, if we stop doing everything, I'm still going to raise our own chicken. I'm still going to raise our own pig. I'm not it's not going to go anywhere. I'll make it smaller. but it's not going to go anywhere here.
And I think that's part of it is ultimately like what, what does our family want to do? We don't need to do it all.
So what can we do that makes sense that we find, you know, satisfaction doing and helps build out what we hope cottage pastures is, you know, it's going to involve more than just raw produced goods. It's going to hopefully involve home goods soon. You know, the B thing that's become extraordinarily exciting to me. I've added so many more beehives and we're going to expand that significantly. I think that's a major win. I love that. It brings me a lot of peace and calmness. So it's really, I think, becoming more so what, you know, when we think scale at scale, what works economically, but on what we add into the farm and what we take away is what do we like to do?
There's animals here that are no longer, there's animals that are no longer here because they're just not enjoyable to be around. Like what? uh i don't want to offend people who people who really like this animal and that's fine and i'm not knocking your great experiences with your very good animals but for us goats do not serve a place here i had that was actually going to be literally my guess was goats so i because i feel like goats above all other animals that is as a farmer you either love them or you don't have them anymore cutest they're hands down the cutest animal at all like the babies of them all baby animals are cute goats 100 they are number one as soon as they are not babies i just don't have they just don't fit in our system our system here is allowing animals to thrive with their like i bring animals here that can thrive with minimal support like i feed them and give them the right area but i don't i don't make this like this is not like a giant petting zoo if that makes sense they need to be able to thrive.
Goats thrive everywhere. They just don't leave you alone. And they can be very embarrassing when you're doing field trips and stuff on the farm and having to explain goat behavior.
That's why I don't have goats anymore. That's funny. And then also with chickens too, from a marketing perspective, because going back to convenience and cost, chicken and pork, but chicken too especially,
with just the food industry and like Costco to where they literally sell out of loss because they just bring you in and they, they sell their other higher price goods. How do you market that to consumers whenever they can just go into a store, buy an already made chicken that's rotisserie chicken for five bucks versus what you would be selling? So we, you know, one advantage we have is we had nutrient testing done through a relationship with another farm. So that actually showed some of the evidence of the nutritional quality of it.
That was important. There is absolutely a flavor component that's different to pasture-based chicken. That's real. How it makes you feel is very, it can be very different. Like there is a serious case for quality that is dramatically different. I think that's important. Chicken is difficult though. And many people, I think, just need to be a little more honest about it.
it's per unit probably the most expensive animal to raise. It just is. You have feed, you have chick costs, you have water, you have infrastructure, you have fencing, and then you have processing costs. And the processing costs is where you get really hurt. That's the hard one to absorb. Can you talk more on that part? Yeah, so if you do not process your own chicken under an exemption, and most farms that ship chicken, none of them do, You can't legally do that.
So if you have to go to a USDA processor, the truth is there may not even be one near you. Like in the state of Indiana, there is not one. There isn't one that I'm aware of. It doesn't exist right now. So the closest ones to us right now that we use because they use air chilling methods, which means that they don't dunk the carcass in water afterwards, is Kentucky and then Pennsylvania and then Mississippi and then I think South Carolina. So I have a relationship with three of them. Yeah. Oh my gosh. So it's either a two and a half hour drive or it's a eight to 10 hour drive one way. And you've made that eight to 10 hour drive?
I have not made the eight to 10 hour to deliver the chickens. I have made it to pick them up. Wow. I have a friend locally that will help me out and deliver for me. But that's it. That's it. That's it. So first of all, you have the fuel, you have to have the truck to take them. You have to, you know, a four pound chicken carcass weighs seven pounds live. So that, you know, you do that times X amount of chicken, that's a lot of weight. They have to go at night, cannot go during the daytime.
And that's for their safety and their welfare.
And they have to, and then you have to pay the processor. And most processors, I think, will charge between $4 to $10 for each chicken.
So if you take in 1,000 chickens and it's, we'll call it even $6, you know, split the difference. It's $6,000 right there. And you have to pay that before you leave the processor. They're not letting you leave without you paying that. So when people wonder about the cost, you know, you're looking somewhere for many people, depending on the feed and the processor, anywhere from $12 per bird all the way up to $20 per bird, not including labor.
That's just the cost.
Because that's another thing too. It's the profit margin of all of that and trying to make it as a farmer or rancher. And then that just goes back to the consumer side of things, expecting the price of goods to be as humanly cheap as possible. There's just a massive disconnect there. All you have to do is try to raise one yourself and you'll get the, like that, that, that, that unveils the whole thing because some people will be, they'll go and figure out how to raise it themselves with feed. And, you know, some people get by without like feet, like they'll do like other things like compost and stuff, but I can't compost that.
Like I can't do that. That would create an inconsistent flavor profile. And, uh, I don't know what would be it. Like that's not possible. So I use a structured feed that we trust and we get from an organic feed mill. So if you try to actually feed them and raise them out and see how many times you have to go out and change their water, feed them, how many you lose from just, you know, just animals being animals and having mortality risk, how many times you have to move them, the cost it takes to build the structure, and all of that, it takes years to get that money back.
Selling at a premium.
And then selling at a premium too, It's also hard from a consumer to whenever they see that cost, they just think that you're screwing them over immediately. It's really hard to just get that message across. That's why we do pre-orders. The pre-orders are basically the lifeblood of the way that we do it. Without pre-orders, I have to bring in outside money just to afford to do it. That's a crazy statement. And businesses often operate on debt, but there's also a reason why you hear about the bank taking the farm.
So you have to be careful. And bankruptcy is continuing to increase overall too. Yeah, and farms keep going away. Every day, for as hopeful as this conversation hopefully sounds to people, today probably 5 to 15 more farms will close up.
I read it was even up to like 35 to 50 a day now. Yeah.
Again, that's also, this goes, so this could be the ending part of this, because I unfortunately do have to end soon.
I remember like going back to Steak and Shake, because I'm trying to be careful with my words, because I love what they're doing overall, but I made a post whenever they announced they're doing full grass-fed and finished. I knew immediately what that meant, because they didn't state that it was American, that that's foreign grass-fed and finished. And so do we as a nation want domestic food supply or do we want grass fed and it doesn't matter where it's from? Oh, that's a great question. And so that's what I think about a lot too, because that's why I made that post. I am American farmers first. And that's why I made that post, because what Steak and Shake did is good in a lot of ways, but they're still worsening the food supply issue that we have.
And that further relies on imports. And so it's just, yeah. Another way maybe to phrase it is this idea is what's most important, the highest quality or the most local? Which is more important, local or quality? Well, especially now too, because it's just, we could focus on the local and continue to improve the quality, but I just don't think we have the patience and forward long-term thinking that we have anymore. And to me, that's just a byproduct of our culture. Yeah, the whole model for grass, like people got to be honest too.
We sell grass-finished rose field. So what that means is that the mother cows have the calf on the farm. They stay with them for their entire life. By 10 months old, they're about 800 pounds roughly. And then we take them in the processor and we sell it as rose field at that point. We've been doing that locally. It's not available for sale outside of our local customers right now. So that is grass-fed, grass-finished because they literally grass and drink milk their whole life. majority of people that raise cattle, they do cow-calf operations where they have the mother cows, they have them born and then they raise them to about four to six months and they send them to the auction.
And then someone comes in, buys them at the auction, and then they sell them out west. And that's why people right now are talking about like cattle prices are high and farmers are doing good. They are. But the problem is that that also encourages them to sell their replacement heifers because they're like, well, I'm 60, 70 years old. Kids don't want to take this over. So let's just sell everybody through there. And then you see the national herd size continue to shrink, not to mention, you know, parasite pressures and other things too. There's just not a lot of reason for people to continue to get into this and for at scale, or there's a lot of risk for it. You know, people that were in Indiana, I could make the mistake of talking online as if grass is a plenty in where i live we have the probably the most favorable grass situation the whole united states of america we can get three cuttings of hay here by the time some areas even start to grow grass we're already cutting hay out west where they've got wildfires drought conditions they can't grass finish out there that's just a reality yeah and even just from this past year nebraska and now utah have had the largest wildfires in recorded state history and that's why you'll see people posting like um i can't i've seen it i can't remember what it's called but basically they're asking farmers to take their herds just to like take the whole herd to just to put them on grass because we literally don't have grass in certain areas or like remember like two or three years ago they had those wildfires out in texas and farmers out here were having to ship hay out to texas just to like like we're talking starvation of animals like crate like you're talking crazy dramatic situations that are very real you've got ahead of a thousand cows out there on you know uh blm land out west and it catches a fire or a drought i they historically those animals would die if you don't i mean that's that's the harsh reality of nature and i just don't you know a lot of people don't know how cattle are actually managed they don't know they're not familiar with and to no fault of their own but they don't know how beef gets to the table it's a whole logistical thing and it's you know the big countries uh australia new zealand brazil
do you want grass finished beef because that's where it's more possible maybe in those conditions to make it happen or do you want american beef and i'm not telling people which ones i tell people what i raise i raise grass fed grass finish but it's not at a large scale so i can't supply the country and I'm not that's not my job but what do you want it it goes back to I think the original part of the conversation it's what what is this worth fighting for what does society look like going forward it's a good question Ryan I don't know man it's a good question brother that's not going to help anyone out as they leave this they're going to say that was a really depressing ending statement. But it's true. Yeah, but I'm saying it's not depressing because
I I think what has always kept me going is just the farmers and ranchers themselves because to me I'm American at heart I know it's a very polarizing thing yada yada yada politics bullshit whatever but at it's core what it means to be an
American is pretty much self-sovereignty. And that's why I love farmers and ranchers, because a lot of them still hold that.
And so that's why I try to get people to actually have these relationships with these folks, because just a majority of our population has just been so disconnected for so long. I firmly believe you are one handshake away from potentially, I mean, even for you with your family, you just said your wife was, I feel like that could have been a massive nudge to where now we're talking on a podcast about what you're doing at College Pastures while working as a full-time employee. You have that passion that came from somewhere, potentially a nudge from her. And that's what I'm trying to get people to understand.
You don't have to want to have a large ranch yourself. You can have an own little garden. You can have backyard chickens. You can have something else. Because once you just add that little piece, it really can change how your outlook of life, of your life, how you view yourself. You really don't. The possibilities are endless. And so that's why I want to keep it with hope. Because there are.
I struggle a lot of times with remaining hopeful the more I get involved in this space. But at the end of the day, it's the people that keep me hopeful. And God. Entirely. Well, I'm glad to talk with you, brother. You're doing good work here and just bringing awareness to the situation and the circumstances and just, you know, even just letting people know how this stuff works. So I appreciate it, and I'm glad to be here with you today. Thank you for joining, Matthew, and thank you for the listeners. Until next time, visit www.theregenissance.co to learn more.