Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
On this episode, Maggie Stensaas from New Frontier Farms LLC joins the OG3 to discuss how she started her direct-to-consumer farm and how she balances farm, food, and family. Thank you for listening!
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
[music]
Joe Armstrong: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. The OG3 is here and we have a guest. She is a former extension colleague, now has started her own farm. Maggie Stensaas is with us and she hopefully is as excited as us that she's here.
Maggie Stensaas: Very excited.
Joe: Brad and I are actually in the same place. We're sitting in rooms right next to each other, so we can yell through the wall at each other if we need to, which is always nice. Maggie, just give us a quick where are you from, where are you now, family, farm, just a little quick overview.
Maggie: I grew up in Lakeville, Minnesota, on what I like to call my family's 4H farm. We had everything that we showed in 4H, as well as a very small commercial beef herd that started out with about 100 head when I was little, but slowly dwindled as we got bigger. My mom and her aunts got more involved in things outside the farm. I grew up on one of the very small percentages of farm that is run by women. My mom and my aunts ran our operation. Then when I was 12, I started working on a neighbor's dairy farm, and that really grew my love for the dairy industry and led me to South Dakota State University, where I got a degree in dairy production, as well as speech communication with a minor in animal science.
I like to joke if they offered a class about a cow, I took all of them, beef and dairy. Then when I graduated, my husband and I moved out to a ranch in Western South Dakota. We crammed out 600 cows and learned a lot about the importance of values on a farm and finding a place to work that aligns with your values. After that, we moved to Pierre, where I was the Communications Director for the South Dakota Department of Agriculture. We had our first son, Cooper, which was a little traumatic. He was born two months early. Earlier that day, I'd been on a ranch in Harding County, South Dakota, which is like the definition of middle of nowhere.
We had to be airlifted. That whole experience really pushed us to move back home to Minnesota. We moved back to Minnesota in 2019 with the hopes of starting our own farm. I got a job at the University of Minnesota, and then we started looking. About nine months later, we finally found our place in Lonsdale, Minnesota. We've been farming that since May of 2020, right in the peak of the pandemic. We moved in and now we operate a direct-to-customer farm operation where we produce pasture-raised meat, eggs, and then I do handcrafted goat milk soap. In September last year, we welcomed our second son. Now we have two boys.
Joe: You've got your hands full, but you've definitely been a little bit of everywhere in the egg community. Maggie and I got to go a couple of times together to go see cattle operations here at the university. It's really good to see her get to where she wanted to be because she was zoning her own farm. So that's really exciting to see that. I love the Instagram because it lets me check in on what you're doing and how fast your farm is growing, which seems to be pretty fast.
Maggie: I had a friend the other day that was like, "Yes, I wish we had the guts to grow as fast as you guys." I was like, "Are we growing that fast? Maybe we are." In the last year, we went-- Growing up, like I said, my mom ran our farm, but my dad had one rule, and that was no pigs. We weren't allowed to have any pigs. As soon as we bought our farm, I, of course, bought pigs. In the last year, we've raised 30 pigs. Gone from zero to 30 in a year. It's been a really good learning experience. I've really enjoyed it. They're super smart animals, so it's been really fun to get to know them and how they work. Of course, I love to eat pork, so it's been really fun to raise our own pork as well.
Joe: Before we get too much further, I know Emily is chomping at the bit to ask you our two questions that we ask every guest, so I think we're going to let her go.
Bradley: Jersey and Hereford, what is the total, Joe, Em?
Joe: All right, we've got our answers, so we might as well just throw them on the board.
Emily: I hate you both. There's so many other cool things I want to ask Maggie and talk to her about. Let's get the questions out of the way. Maggie, your first question, what is your favorite breed of beef cattle?
Maggie: That would be Hartford. That's what we had growing up. I love their food-driven mentality. That ability to move them anywhere with feed.
Emily: That's also how you move Brad around, too.
Joe: Yes, it's true. That puts the totals. Definitely, Brad being very happy, I heard him yell through the wall here. Black Angus at 8, Hartford at 8, Black Baldy at four.
Bradley: That's tied.
Joe Armstrong: Belted Galloway at 2, Scottish Highlander at 2, and then all with 1, Stabilizer, Gelbvieh, Brahman, Chianina, Charolais, Simmental, Nelore, Jersey, Normandy, Shorthorn, and Red Angus.
Emily: All right. A win for Bradley today with her herds tying Black Angus now for first. Maggie, your second question, you may have guessed, is what is your favorite breed of dairy cattle?
Maggie: Oh, my goodness. Now, that one's definitely harder. Depends on the day.
Emily: All right. What about today? [laughs]
Maggie: Today?
Joe: It's small and it's brown.
Maggie: No, definitely not that one. [laughter] That one's a for sure no. We currently have a ProCROSS from the U, and I really like her. Probably her right now. I do love the look of a Guernsey. I think they're so high-quality Guernsies. I think they're so pretty, but they're not very practical. You can't go wrong with a Holstein, but I think ProCROSS right now is my favorite.
Joe: If we said you couldn't pick a crossbreed.
Bradley: We will take ProCROSS.
Joe: I know.
Bradley: We will let the ProCROSS today.
Maggie: Then I'd probably say, Holstein.
Emily: All right.
Joe: So disappointing, and you took shots at Jersey, which makes it even worse.
Maggie: I can't stand Jerseys. I'm sorry. They're my least favorite.
Joe: That is heartbreaking.
Maggie: When you're surrounded by Jersey is so loud because they're clacking on everything, they're chewing on everything. I just can't stand them. Sorry.
Joe: Do you see what you did? Brad just left.
Emily: Yes. Oh, my God.
Maggie: Oh my gosh.
Emily: You managed to upset both Bradley and Joe.
Joe: Super upset.
Emily: I am very happy about this, but Joe, run through the tallies really quick.
Joe: Fine. Holstein's at 15, Jersey's at 9, Brown Swiss at 5, Montb�liarde at 3, Dutch Belted at 2, Normandy at 2, and Guernsey at 1. It's heartbroken purposeful.
Emily: [laughs] Now that we got that done, we can get into the good stuff here. I wanted to start off because I have known Maggie for about 10 years now it. Sounds a little clich� or a little cheesy, but I have just watched Maggie grow over time. I know how much she's always wanted to have her own farm, and to just watch the triumphs and the tribulations that they've gone through to get to where they are.
Now to see how successful they are is just incredible. Maggie mentioned she does a lot on Instagram, and it's just so fun. New Frontier Farms on Instagram. My first question I want to ask you, Maggie. What has been the one thing that has surprised you the most about farming on your own, maybe doing the direct-to-consumer sales? What's the one thing?
Maggie: When you think of direct-to-consumer sales, you think of awesome. I got to set my own price point. I'm not at the mercy of the market, but you have to set your own price point. That has been the hardest thing of what are we worth and making sure we're making money. Because my first batch of chickens I made $10 on because I didn't predict certain costs and we just did an educated guess. That's definitely been the hardest part.
Bradley: You didn't tell us about actually what you did and what your farm is all about and you're still talking about chickens, did you?
Joe: You probably should run through the species.
Maggie: We pasture-raised pigs, chickens, turkeys, and then we also have laying hens as well. Then we have a herd of dairy goats that we milk to turn their milk into soap. Hopefully, we're going to get to the point of selling it for dog food as well. That's next on my list. Then we have a herd of cows just for fun. We have one ProCROSS cow that we calf share. Then we have two steers that we're grass feeding that we'll just have for our family and friends.
Joe: Go into a little more depth on the calf share. Tell me how that works and how you set that up.
Emily: For all honesty's sake, right now, just the calf has her because with our set up, it's a lot of work. Hand milking a dairy cow is not the favorite. I would hand milk 15 goats before I would hand milk a cow. I especially her because she was a heifer and just isn't comfortable with that situation. For the first month, we would hand milk her either every day or every other day. Then we slowly weaned it to where we were doing every three days, four days. Then finally we just let the calf have her. Over the winter we're going to be installing a milking system for our dairy goat herd, and I will be keeping one of the units so we can do it on our cow.
Next year when she calves in we'll be milking her probably once a day throughout her entire lactation so that we can have milk for our family and make all the good dairy products ourselves. This year it isn't feasible, and her calves two and half months old and is a monster. She's a beast. I joke I was like, the one person who wanted a dairy bull calf when she capped and she had a heifer of course, because that would've been a really nice steer.
We're just raising the heifer calf for now, and we haven't decided if we'll keep her on farm or if we'll sell her yet because she's looking really nice, but she's 75% Holstein. She's going to milk a lot. Taking it day by day. I said that's one thing that we never talked about in school, never ever. Honestly, I've pulled more from breastfeeding my children on this experience because it's a lot more related to that. It's been a good learning experience.
I wish it's something they talk about more in school because I think it's a feasible option for somebody who has a small operation like us or wants to have their own milk and learned a lot from people who homestead on Instagram. Watching what they do with their milk cow and how they calf share. It's been a fun experience, she's pretty tame, we've had her since she was a calf, so works out pretty well.
Joe: The big question for me when I hear this setup is, are you going to pasteurize the milk and how are you going to do that? How do you have it set up to do that if you are going to?
Maggie: We pasteurize the milk. We have a small two-gallon pasteurizer. We use that for our goats so you don't pass CAE. We pasteurize all of our goat milk before giving it to kids. We purchase that for the goats and then we also use it on the cow's milk too. After taking dairy microbiology I don't ever plan to consume raw milk, and so I'm all about pasteurizing the milk, especially with hand milking it's just a lot more taint for bacteria.
Joe: Perfect answer, the veterinarian in me is like so happy. Don't drink raw milk, don't do it. It's just a bad idea.
Emily: Please, we implore you. [laughs]
Joe: Awesome, I'm so glad you're doing that. One of the things that I think about Maggie when you start talking about this stuff is you're trying about a bunch of new things you've never done before. You talked about with the pigs and I don't know if you ever hand milk goats before and did that on a large scale but probably not. How do you decide to just be like, I'm going to jump into this and I'm going to go for it. How do you start that process? Where do you get your information, because sometimes that can be a little hard to track down?
Maggie: First of all, that's just my personality. I'm somebody that I get an idea, I probably read a book and then I go do it. I read the book while I'm doing it. Depends on it. The pigs it was someday I want to get pigs, and then I saw a lady was selling six pigs on Facebook and I was like, "Hey, let's just do it." Worst comes the worst, we just eat six pigs. Like our turkeys I was like, let's just get 15 turkeys. That's the least amount you can get. At the university, I had worked with them a little bit and I thought they were super curious and I was really fascinated by them.
I was like, "Hey, let's give it a try. How much different is it than chickens? Let's give it a try." Got 15, raised 13 turkeys last year and we had 60 people put in requests on our website for turkeys. This year we're raising 55 of them which has been a huge learning curve. Especially we raise heritage turkeys so they can fly, and so it's been a learning experience. Luckily in their defense, they're the easiest animals to put in. When I go out they just run to me and I open the gate and they go in.
It's just learn on the fly. We have a really great vet that we've established a relationship with. She's actually my neighbor, which is a huge benefit for me. She has only been a certified vet for a year, and so she's learning with us and I think our approach of like, we're really interested in learning. She offers a really beneficial relationship for both of us, and then just finding people just. I grew up with meat goats and we had friends, really good friends that had dairy goats. My husband had said, "I think Lamanchas are cool, so that's the dairy goat breed with the little ears."
I told our friend, "Hey, if you guys ever want to get rid of one we'll take one." She goes, "We have one now." We got it sooner than we expected. Last year at this time I had one, there you go. I now currently have eight and six of them will hopefully be kidding next year. That has just been from learning from people around us. I'm very fortunate, my sister started dating a dairy goat farmer in the last-- they started dating like a year ago. He's been a super great resource and we've actually bought four goats from him. Then I also went with him to the National Goat Show.
I learned more in a week there than I had my entire life raising goats than any book I could read because I was surrounded by people who had been raising goats for 10, 20, 31, had even been raising them for 50 years. To be able to pick their brains and learn from them has been super beneficial. We also are touring as many dairies as we can. Over the next year, like I said, we'll be putting in a milking system. I'm trying to look at different dairies, see how we want to set it up in order to grow our operation. The fortunate thing with goats is you hope you to get like a 200% kid crop so you can grow really fast if you want.
It's nice to see other people's operations and see what works for them, whether they have 10 goats or 50, and get an idea of what we want with that. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to seem like ask stupid questions. I think with pigs I have friends from college that I text and say, "Hey, what do you think about this?" The people I buy my pigs from, they've been really great resources as well. Make sure you're buying from people that will establish that relationship with you to be the one to ask the questions, "Hey, what do you think about this too?"
Joe: There's a lot of things in there that I absolutely love about that answer. First of all, you would be one of my favorite clients in practice, but the clients I love the most is where I got to learn along with the producer. It was a team and it felt like a team trying to move forward in making decisions and learning about a new process or anything like that. Your veterinarian doesn't know everything, not even close. I enjoy learning, that's why we're vets and that's why I'm at Extension because I get to learn every day.
When I got to learn with clients, it was awesome. I learned more from clients than I ever learned in school. That's what made it such a good relationship for me. I love that you have that with your veterinarian. Then I think this completely illustrates how open the agricultural community is to bringing more people in and helping them learn about something. Because I don't think you could do it if you didn't have people that you could lean on and had that network of people to go to. I love it.
Emily: It's not just we're doing this and we have to figure it out for ourselves, but yes, the relationship with your vet. Yes, being in touch with friends from college that have experience, and the people that you're buying your livestock from. I think that that's so great. The question that I had, so you've talked a lot about like, "Oh, yes, we just bought these pigs and bought these turkeys."
At the end of the day you are running a business, what influences your business decisions? Is it just this is something I want to try, or you're getting demand from your customers for something, maybe a combination of both and some other things? Talk a little bit about how you decide what you're going to do next or how you're going to invest next in your business.
Maggie: I think my answer a year ago would be very different than my answer now. I think we've learned a lot about ourselves and our business over this first year of business. Really the largest factor is, what animals can I raise while also having my two children with me? I do 75% of the things with my kids. A year ago I had four dairy heifers and I had six steers, and we were going to go down that route. With our setup, I can't be moving cows. I can't be milking cows with my children with me unless we're going to put in a ton of money into our infrastructure.
Once we realized that, that really helped us in making decisions and really encouraged us to grow our goat herd because I can have my one-year-old in a pen with full-grown goats, and I can have them working with them just alongside me. That is one of the biggest factors. The other is we try to do market research. It's so hard to figure out what people want, and they will tell you what they want and then they won't come by it. What we really think is let's raise it, see if we can sell it. If not, it has to be something we'll consume ourselves as a family.
With meat goats, I don't eat goat meat. I don't like it, it's not something I'm interested in, and so we sold our meat goats because we couldn't do it. We try to listen to our customers. This year we're offering all of our chicken, our turkeys as well as our pig, all fed, no corn, no soy, non-GMO feeds. They primarily consist of barley and pea. We started looking into that because I had found some research in pork of the high-quality fat that barley produces. The more we looked into it, the more we wanted to try that premium product. We want to not only have that pasture raised, which really catches people attention. We also want to make sure that we have a premium product that tastes really, really good.
We just processed our first pig that was completely finished on barley and peas, and it was amazing how you could taste the difference, that high-quality fat. I did a pork chop in the air fryer and honestly, it tasted like bacon, the fat on it, it was so good. Being able to see that and hear from people that this is the best pork chop I've ever had or this is-- we can't keep bacon in stock. We sell out our bacon in a week. It's just crazy. Just listening to people, what do they like, how do they cook things? Our chicken, we're going to be scaling down for next year.
First reason is I don't really like chickens. [laughs] My husband really likes them, but they're not my favorite. I just don't like them. We just haven't been able to sell them as much. Last year when we only had chicken, we sold quite a bit, but now when somebody come, "Am I going to buy bacon or chicken?" "Which one are you going to buy?" We raised 300 chickens this year or 350. I think next year we'll raise about 200. I think that's our sweet spot. This year we raised 30 pigs and I hope to increase that to 40 or 50 going forward just because I find the pigs more enjoyable and our pork sells really well.
Just trying to figure out what markets we're going into and what farmers' markets are worth our time and our money. Farmers' markets can cost a lot of money, and so we're trying to focus more on delivery. We work with a farm in Farmington and she's a produce farmer that I was in college with as a kid. We're partnering together as two women owned businesses. She's closer to the population of the Twin Cities, which is really nice and she doesn't charge me anything. Some weeks I'll sell a ton and it'll be great, and if I don't sell much it was just two hours of my time.
Emily: You can give her a shout-out. What's the farm that she live?
Maggie: Yes. Thompson Family Farm. She's probably in between Farmington, Lakeville and Northfield. It's been really great to partner with her. We also did a meal kit this year, so that's actually how our partnership started. We did HelloFresh only local, so each week people would come and pick up a meal that fed four people. She would come up with the recipes and the veggies. She's also a cottage food producer. She would make breads and homemade tortillas and all that stuff. I would show up with the chicken and the pork and then the people would make it. That's how we started our partnership was with that.
We were at a farmer's market in Lakeville and it got canceled on us two months in. Literally, the day they canceled, it was the day I picked up four pigs from the processor and I was like, "Oh, my goodness, I have �1000 of meat I just picked up. What am I going to do with it?" I messaged her and I said, "Hey, I hear you're having a farm market. Can I come out?" The first week she had a farmer's market at her farm, it didn't go super well. Then the next week I showed up and she invited someone that makes really good cookies and we had a huge turnout. It's been really beneficial because people actually come and buy.
Where at farmer's markets there's so much time where you explain what you do on your farm for 15 minutes and that person walks away without buying anything. Where at this farm market people come to buy, and we have started to get regulars and people that are just being really consistent. If I can turn that customer from you bought four pork chops, you really like them. Now you're going to come buy a little bit more, and eventually you're going to buy a half a pig from me. That's way less work on my end. It's a great opportunity to really transform them into larger customers.
Joe: Along those lines, you jump in, you try all these things. Then it sounds like you're listening to your customer base. I assume you're treating marketing that same way.
Maggie: One really unintentional thing with our turkeys is when I had looked to what breed of turkey to raise, I Googled what's the best tasting Turkey. I had found that heritage turkeys or Bourbon Red turkeys are the best tasting. Unintentionally my customers were doing the exact same thing. They were looking at what's the best-tasting turkey. They were finding the same results and then they were punching in Bourbon Red Turkey, Minnesota, and they were finding us. That's how we found 60 people in our first year with zero marketing. They just Googled us and found us.
That has been hugely beneficial for our turkeys is just people googling the same things I was. We do a lot on social media trying to establish that connection with people, have them see our day-to-day. Lately, to be honest, I've felt really stuck. I'm currently looking into what can we do with paid marketing because that's a big step for a small operation like us to go from organic reach to paid. I'm really trying to do research on that. We have a newsletter I send out every week that is really beneficial for selling our halves, our wholes as well as our turkeys.
Currently, I have half of my turkeys sold and that's been purely from my newsletter. That hasn't been from social media or anything. Also, Facebook groups, Lonsdale Happenings, that's our local Facebook group. I've sold a lot of halves and wholes through that group. There's some bigger Minnesota-wide groups, but they're so saturated that it's really hard to compete in those unless you say that perfect thing. Laura or Thompson Family Farm has a really good knack for writing the perfect thing.
She's had a couple of posts go almost viral in that group in the Farm Direct Minnesota. That has been really beneficial for her and us. We try to work with our local pages on Facebook and a lot of people like to buy local. We didn't plan on selling a lot of meat in Lonsdale, but we find that our town wants to support people within the town. They want to say, �Hey, where's your farm at?� We have a pretty obvious red barn. They know exactly where it is, so finding that local community that wants to support a local business.
Joe: As I think about your social media, there's an overload of cuteness just about everywhere when we're talking about okay, the pigs. I know you don't like chickens, but sometimes they're cute as well.
Maggie: They're my worst-performing posts, just so you know. People don't like chickens on my page.
Joe: Even when Cooper's like helping you move them and do stuff like that.
Maggie: Yes, they're my lowest.
Joe: Interesting. Really don't like chickens. All right. How do you balance the fact that some animals have names, some animals are super cute. You're putting that out to the world but then they're all food eventually? Have you had any blowback from that?
Maggie: I would say in person more I get the-- you name them because we name all of them. Mainly it's for identification purposes because you can't tag a pig. For me, it's just easier to name them and have identifying characteristics on each one. Honestly, it'd be the same whether I called them one, two, three, four, five, or I called them Jack, Goose and Michael. Those are my three right now. In-person people get. You name them and I say-- I give them only one bad day. That is my goal on my operation is I give them the best life possible and then they just have that one bad day.
I know exactly what their entire life cycle was. That a lot of people understand that, that we're doing this for the animal�s benefits. Unfortunately, they have that one bad day because at the end of the day, we all want to eat bacon. On social media, I don't get it as often. When I initially started promoting things, I was worried about vegan activists or vegetarians. Knock on wood, we've only found a couple of them so far. Honestly, other farmers are the hardest part of social media is whether they're degrading the way I do things or just saying mean things or whatnot.
Honestly, I've had more hate from other farmers than I have from vegan activists. One of my main goals is I grew up in conventional agriculture. I have my roots in conventional agriculture. I've been trained in conventional agriculture, and I firmly believe that advertising, negative promotion will never do anyone good in the long run. It's always about positive. I'm not degrading the way that pigs are raised in confinement because honestly there's a lot of benefits. The biosecurity, the climate control, those things I can't control on my operation, but I focus really specifically on creating a premium product.
I believe pork should not be the other right meat. I want that deep, rich pork, and that's how I'm going to promote it. I'm not saying that there's anything bad with conventional pork if that's what you can afford. A lot of times that's what we could afford before we were raising it ourselves. I think that's one of the biggest things I focus on because a lot of people in our situation do bash conventional agriculture. I promised myself that I will never do that because I've worked on a 20,000-cow dairy. I know how it works from the smallest to the biggest too. Yes, farmers can be tough on social media.
Joe: This is something that we've talked about before on this show, and especially when Natasha Mortenson was on. I've never understood it. It's all the agricultural community and that's another farmer. There's no reason to be that way from either direction. From the conventional side, or from the organic natural, whatever you want to call it on the other side. Non-conventional farming, small versus big, it doesn't matter.
Doesn't honestly even matter between dairy and almonds when we have that discussion. It's still all egg. You're talking about another farmer when you're saying those things, and that always puts just a terrible feeling in my gut when I see those things. Just a perfect reminder, positive is better than negative. We're all farmers, all in the agricultural community. I'm disappointed to hear that that's how you've seen it go. Hopefully, that'll change. I got to know how excited are you when you do get to do chores without your kids.
Maggie: It's heavenly to be honest. It's the time where I can actually focus on the animals and be present in my mindset like this is what I wanted to do my whole life. When I have my kids I'm worried what is one doing, why is one screaming, are they safe. All this stuff. Don't get me wrong, I love it. I love that they are growing up in this atmosphere and that they're getting to experience the animals like we are. It's a wonderful thing when I can do chores by myself. Even if Nick will do, I call them outside chores, go into the pasture and take care of everything in the pasture. If I can just milk by myself, it's great.
Joe: There's lots of chores to get done with having all these different species on one place. One of my favorite posts that you guys have ever put together is just, the series of events in the night, and I think it surprises people that all those chores happened in one night, one evening. It's nice to see because I don't think a lot of people understand that's what farming is for a lot of people.
I think sometimes farming gets a little romanticized and people forget that it's just a bunch of hard work. You've been in a bunch of different places like you said big dairy, big beef operation. Is it a little different now that you have like a scattering of different species? Are the chores a little different or is it still the same amount of work but just different? How does that all flow?
Maggie: Yes, we're really affected by the time of the year. Our poultry peaks in August. I was feeding 300 chickens at one point, and right now I have only my layers. We're really affected kind of like a beef operation where you have calving season and then it slows down and then weaning. We have all of those different things intertwining with each other and trying to keep track of, "Okay, I'm getting my goat spread but at the same time I got to be watching for heat with my cow." It takes a lot more I feel like mental juggling because I can't just be in one place at one time.
I think a lot of times people don't get that they need to be taken care of twice a day. Which I think is so funny, I was in a mom's group in our town and then one said, "You have to feed them twice a day?" I'm like, "Yes, yes, every day. Christmas even too." It gets a little tricky to keep track of everything. With our pigs it gets a little tough because I have three different sets of pigs right now, and it'd be nice if I decide 50 in 1 pen versus three different sets. It's good. They keep me entertained. I get my steps in every day and for the benefits too.
Joe: Definitely get your steps in. Does Nick work full-time with you on the farm or is he doing something else?
Maggie: He works full-time off the farm. He's a metal fabricator at a place called BTD in Lakeville. Actually, he's been on mandatory overtime since last October so he works 50 hours a week. Then he ideally comes home and helps with night chores, but it just depends on the time of the year and what's going on. I take care of the farm during the day and then we try to do big projects on the weekends when we're both around. Last year during the winter time I also had a part-time job off the farm. I will probably be going back to that just a little bit once we dry up our goats. When I'm milking it's just not possible to have a in-town job as well.
Joe: That's a big piece of the farming lifestyle and community that again maybe people in the cities don't understand. There is a lot of moving pieces with just the farm. Then you add in all the other moving pieces as well where there's usually multiple jobs going on, like you said, big projects on the weekends trying to get done all of that. Again, I appreciate your social media and how well you guys show that there's just a bunch of different moving pieces that have to come together perfectly for this to work.
This is a little personal question, so you don't have to answer if you don't want. As you guys go through this pretty stressful process of starting a new business, taking quite a bit of leaps as you go through this whole thing with everything financial, just animals themselves, having kids through this whole process as well. How have you guys maintained and figured out how to have some sort of work-life balance and then make time for your relationship as well?
Maggie: That's the million-dollar question and then add a pandemic onto it. You can't really ask for outward help in the middle of a pandemic. I'm a thousand times thankful that we moved back home before starting this. We had looked into starting a farm out in South Dakota but just couldn't figure out the numbers. We rely on my family a lot. My aunt and uncle watch the boys one day a week, and then my parents will fill in as needed and that is super beneficial.
If we do want a date night or like this weekend, it wasn't really a date night but we went and picked up a goat together, but on a farm that's a date night. Getting to do chores just the two of us that is our chance-- granted it's working. Just the other night, the boys were sleeping and next thing, "Do you want to come in the truck with me and go do chores?" I could have stayed in the house and got things done, but it was nice to just be together. That's really how our relationship formed as we wanted a farm together.
I hope 10 years down the road when we can afford our health insurance that we can both be on the farm together and have that where we could get a lot of things done and have more time for each other. I'm not saying it's been easy on our relationship. We've learned a lot about each other and our strengths and weaknesses and how we can really align those together. Fortunately, we have worked together in the past, on the ranch we worked together. That was a good baseline before jumping into business with each other.
If your relationship's rocky, I would not recommend starting a business with your partner because it definitely will test you and figuring out each other's goals. Nick wants bigger, better, all the time. His ultimate goal would be to have a really big pastries operation. I never want to get to the point where I have to have full-time employees because I want to manage the animals. I don't want to manage people. Finding a balance between the two of those things and how we can work together.
Joe: A lot of moving pieces trying to get it all right, but it sounds like you guys have it figured out pretty well. Emily, you got something?
Emily: Yes. I was just going to add from the stress management and mental health standpoint I think that it is so important that you are still finding that time to focus on your relationship together. I know how important your boys are to both of you, and I think you do a great job of really making sure they're happy and taken care of. Also knowing they don't need you 100% of the time.
I just think it's really important to strike all of that balance. Again I follow you on social media. I know you have friends and stuff that you see too. I think it's just so important that you really seem like you and Nick both have approached this of like, "We are not going to lose ourselves in the farm." That probably plays a really big role in how happy you are and how well things are going.
Maggie: I think what you said with the kids, I think it can be so tough. Any working mom it can be so tough to find that balance to feel like you're not giving 100% to your job and you're not giving 100% to your kids. When they're in the same place it gets tough. Yesterday I was thinking, "Oh, I should go do this, this, and this on the farm, but my kids are sick. I'm going to stay in. I'm going to take care of them." At the end of the day they're the most important thing."
I think about-- I can't remember who that started the safety campaign, but you're a parent first, and a farmer second. I think that's really important on the farm as well as in finding that balance that they do come first. As much as I love cows right now is not the time for cows because I can't guarantee my kids are safe around them in our current setup. Just finding that balance with what works with them, and also like it's okay if they watch a little TV while I get something done like right now.
Joe: Exactly.
Emily: Boy we really hit two strong points today you know, positive comments about a veterinarian for Joe, positive comments about safety for me.
Bradley: Hereford is number one for Brad.
Joe: That's how we do it for Brad.
Emily: Pasture raised is also kind of Brad thing.
Brad: Exactly.
Joe: Absolutely, absolutely. Maggie where can people find you, get in contact with you, your products? Tell us how people can get a hold of you.
Maggie: You can find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok @newfrontierfarms. Our website is newfrontierfarms.org. You can shop all of our meat products. We deliver to the Twin Cities and we deliver it for free to Lonsdale, Montgomery and New Prague, and then [unintelligible 00:40:45] to the rest of the cities. You can also order our soap. Our soap can be shipped nationally. You can get that good goat milk soap. You can subscribe to our newsletter there. They get first dibs. If you want some delicious pasture raised bacon, they will get first dibs on that come beginning of November, and they get first dibs at turkeys and stuff too, so subscribe there.
Joe: I just subscribed myself, so I don't know how I missed doing that before, but I'm excited to get my first newsletter. With that, any comments, questions, scathing rebuttals of this episode, you can go to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Emily: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Joe: Because Bradley was complaining last week or whenever he was on the last episode, we are going to plug @umnwcrocdairy on Instagram, and we'll cut the plugs there just so Bradley's happy.
Bradley: Thank you.
Joe: You're welcome. We'll catch you guys all next week. Bye.
Emily: Bye. I'm just thinking of Brad still going beef.
Joe: Beef. [laughter]
Bradley: Beef.
Cooper: Hello.
Bradley: Hello.
Joe: Hi Cooper?
Bradley: How are you, Cooper?
Emily: Hi Cooper?
Maggie: Can you say, bye?
Cooper: Bye.
[music]
[END OF AUDIO]
1