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The Grazing Grass Podcast features insights and stories of regenerative farming, specifically emphasizing grass-based livestock management. Our mission is to foster a community where grass farmers can share knowledge and experiences with one another. We delve into their transition to these practices, explore the ins and outs of their operations, and then move into the "Over Grazing" segment, which addresses specific challenges and learning opportunities. The episode rounds off with the "Famous Four" questions, designed to extract valuable wisdom and advice. Join us to gain practical tips and inspiration from the pioneers of regenerative grass farming.
This is the podcast for you if you are trying to answer: What are regenerative farm practices? How to be grassfed? How do I graze other species of livestock? What's are ways to improve pasture and lower costs? What to sell direct to the consumer?
e147. Cattle on Small Acreage with Janelle Anderson
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[00:00:00] Cal
On today's episode, our overgrazing section is focused on grazing cattle on small acreage or on a homestead, small numbers. And how to manage that in addition to grazing cattle on small acreage.
We're going to talk a little bit about bulk selling chickens or bulk selling a pastured poultry. I think it's an excellent idea.
We get into non GMO versus GMO just to touch using milk in house versus selling milk out to consumers. culling decisions and moving frequency. Thank you enjoy it. Let's get started with the fast five.
[00:00:39] Cal
What is your name?
[00:00:41] Janelle
I'm Janelle Anderson.
[00:00:42] Cal
What's your farm's name?
[00:00:44] Janelle
The Haven Farmstead.
[00:00:47] Cal
Where's your farm located?
[00:00:49] Janelle
Southern Middle Tennessee, Wayne County is our county. Closest town is Waynesboro.
[00:00:54] Cal
oh wonderful. And what year did you all start grazing animals?
[00:00:59] Janelle
So when my husband and I married, I would say I included into that grazing. So 2000, oh my goodness, he would be so mad if he knew that I was struggling on this. 2009 is when we were married.
[00:01:10] Cal
Oh, yes.
[00:01:11] Janelle
and so he had cattle with his parents that on the ranch that he grew up on. So that was part of my indoctrination into it.
[00:01:19] Janelle
Other than I guess I could go back and say, from when I was in second grade, because we did have horses and other livestock
[00:01:25] Cal
Oh, yeah.
[00:01:25] Janelle
Wisconsin. So
[00:01:27] Cal
Oh, very good. And what species do you graze?
[00:01:30] Janelle
So currently we have family milk cows as well as beef cattle, and then we have hogs at certain times of the year that we do. Most of them are run into the woods though, they're not so much in the pasture. They're on the edges of it helping clear some things. And then we also, we do chickens that we graze on our pasture though, they're not eating a ton of that stuff.
[00:01:53] Cal
Right. But that manure is so nice.
[00:01:56] Janelle
It is. Yep.
[00:01:58] Cal
And do you also have turkeys as well?
[00:02:00] Janelle
We do. We do turkeys. Every year I say I'm probably not going to do turkeys again and chickens to be honest. And my husband says, do you see what's happening out there in the past years? We're going to continue doing poultry. And I look and I'm like, yes, it makes sense.
[00:02:12] Cal
Welcome to the grazing grass podcast. The podcast dedicated to sharing the stories of grass-based livestock producers, exploring regenerative practices that improve the land animals and our lives. I'm your host, Cal Hardage and each week we'll dive into the journeys, challenges, and successes of producers like you, learning from their experiences, and inspiring each other to grow, and graze better. Whether you're a seasoned grazier or just getting started. This is the place for you.
[00:02:46] Cal
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[00:03:17] Cal
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[00:03:40] Cal
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[00:04:05] Cal
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[00:04:10] Cal
Before we jumped back into the episode. 10 seconds about my farm. And on the last week's episode, I mentioned we were already feeding hay. I have good news on that front. I was able to find some land to lease that has not been grazed in a year. So I'm moving my cows to it. Which will provide a nice stock power grass. For grazing. I don't know.
[00:04:32] Cal
I hope I get a month and a half, two months out of it. We'll see how it goes. 10 seconds about the podcast. Two things today, one. I'm sure. You've already noticed we have a little bit different format. I'd love to hear your thoughts. You like it, you dislike it. What am I doing? I even added some music to make it more professional sounding. I know a lot of podcasts do that.
[00:04:55] Cal
So I'm just working to be a professional host. Second thing about podcasts. We are very close to 300 downloads. Yeah, 300, sorry. We are really close to 300,000 downloads for the life of the podcast. And I would love to get over that hump. This calendar year. So we can go into 2025 past that milestone. So to get there, I need your help. Can you share this episode with someone? Who would enjoy it?
[00:05:27] Cal
That's all I asked, share it to one person. If each of us shares it with one person and we do it through December. I think we'll be well on passing that 300,000 downloads milestone. Any away. Let's jump back to the episode and talk to Janell.
[00:05:44] Cal
It's amazing what that manure from those poultry species can do.
[00:05:48] Janelle
Yeah, it's awesome. We look out there even now and I can tell where we first, when we first moved to Tennessee, which was in 2022, the fall of it, when we first started moving our chicken tractors across it, that section, that first section has like really no sage grass. And so it's just, it's, it's really cool to see the differences between the pastures.
[00:06:09] Cal
Oh, yeah. Well, let's jump back a little bit before Tennessee. You mentioned in second grade you all had some horses and other things. Did you think as an adult you would be in Tennessee homesteading, running some animals there?
[00:06:25] Janelle
No I always said that I would, I never thought I would stay in Wisconsin per se, though I did love the lifestyle that we lived. I mean, we would, we wouldn't have called it homesteading. We would have called it country. I guess we just
[00:06:36] Cal
Right, yeah.
[00:06:37] Janelle
and had animals
[00:06:39] Cal
Just what your grandparents
[00:06:40] Janelle
yeah, we, we hunted and we, we raised most of our food there.
[00:06:44] Janelle
But I would never have thought that we would ever make it to Tennessee. I will say, my husband is from western North Dakota, and so there is that bit in the story, and so I would never have thought we would have moved from there to Tennessee
[00:06:55] Cal
Yes. And he grew up in North Dakota? Yeah.
[00:06:59] Janelle
Yes, yeah, really, we were like 13 miles from the Montana border, very rural. It took us 30 minutes to drive to the town that had a grocery store, stuff like that.
[00:07:09] Cal
And what did you all do out there?
[00:07:12] Janelle
So we ranched. We were beef cattle. We had cow calf operation. We also had a business that his family had owned. It was a Vermeer dealership. So we sold Vermeer haying equipment. We, we not only
[00:07:24] Cal
too much time
[00:07:25] Janelle
yeah, we sold parts, we worked on them, we sold new stuff, and then as well as other cattle equipment.
[00:07:31] Janelle
And so we did that all from the ranch.
[00:07:33] Cal
Oh yeah.
[00:07:34] Janelle
And. so we are about when we were full with like replacement heifers and our cow calf pairs. We were about 200 head on a good year. Drought is a real big deal in western North Dakota. And so we always had to manage it a little hard.
[00:07:47] Cal
Oh yeah. Were you all using some regent y practices out then, or out there then,
[00:07:53] Cal
or was it more conventional? Oh
[00:07:56] Janelle
conventional. We, part of the ranch was into a lease with the government. And so when we moved in the summer onto that leased land, you can only, I mean, you can't put cross fencing out there. You can't do anything. And so unless we wanted to spend our time horseback moving them every day and try to keep them in a spot, it wasn't really easy to do.
[00:08:15] Janelle
And then when you have Winter, seven, eight months out of the year, it felt like, you, you kept them pretty close when you're feeding them. So yeah, it's a, it's a whole new ball game, though. We did have people that were starting to step into that regenerative movement that we were friends with. And so I was always curious, like, why are they doing what they're doing?
[00:08:33] Janelle
They're bale grazing in the winter. Like, it's just like these, these different processes that we just never saw before.
[00:08:40] Cal
You know, as I think about, I think for North Dakota, we have not had a guest on the podcast from North Dakota.
[00:08:48] Cal
One of the few states we haven't.
[00:08:50] Janelle
Well, you can kind of claim it now.
[00:08:51] Cal
Yeah, yeah, I'll put an asterisk beside it. Kind of.
[00:08:57] Janelle
gosh. Yep.
[00:08:58] Cal
And then you all decide to move to Tennessee. What, what led up to that decision?
[00:09:03] Janelle
I would say the catalyst was my dad ended up passing away in the fall of 2021 and we kind of were really looking at what we were doing, how we were living and with our family and how intentional we were not being.
[00:09:17] Janelle
It was, it was, It was not out of the realm of thinking that my husband would be working a hundred plus hours a week, and that's a lot.
[00:09:24] Janelle
And, and while it provided for our family and we were very thankful for what we were doing, it felt like our family was getting kind of left behind. And so we really just had a heart to move towards being more intentional with our time and our resources. And it afforded the opportunity to move states and start all over on raw land, which is what we did.
[00:09:45] Cal
You know, you bring up an excellent point there. That Balance is never the right word because it's never really balanced, but the ebb and flow of work life and, and family life, and when you have a farm, that gets blurred so easily but you've gotta maintain some of that family time.
[00:10:04] Janelle
I think that was the hardest part for us was separating it because people, our customers could always know that we would be there. If we weren't up at the shop, we were down at the house or working with the cows or stuff like that.
[00:10:16] Janelle
And so we were always accessible. And that, that was really hard to, to walk through.
[00:10:22] Cal
Oh yeah, I, I, I'm sure I haven't dealt with it on the customer level, but as we were talking earlier, I grew up on a dairy, and those, those dairy cows are quite needy.
[00:10:33] Janelle
Yeah.
[00:10:34] Cal
Especially the way we were doing it, but it's just a lot of hours and stuff. My wife would say I'm getting better at it, but I'm not great yet. But I'm trying to be more trying to think of the right word, more deliberate with my evenings and not to be out messing with cows or, or even just looking at them because I can get lost just observing.
[00:10:56] Janelle
My husband is the same way and I will say I am too. I get most of my observing done during the day and he does most of his in the evening. And so,
[00:11:03] Cal
Oh, yeah. So you all got this opportunity to move to Tennessee on raw land. How did you get the land ready for what you were going to do? And actually that begs the question, what was your plans when you moved to Tennessee? Oh,
[00:11:20] Janelle
was to be more intentional with our family and pass that. I knew I wanted, because we sold everything. We didn't take anything with us. The only animals that came were our dogs and maybe our feral children, I guess, if you want. No, just kidding. But, but with that, we didn't really know the plan beyond like a milk cow.
[00:11:36] Janelle
I knew that I wanted milk cows. You know, we had chickens up there, so we were gonna do that. We didn't know what our land could do. Do though. So we didn't know if beef cattle were even in our future going forward. And so the process started with we, we flew down here in April of 2022, we put flags in the ground for our house and our garage.
[00:11:57] Janelle
We flew back to tennis or to North Dakota. And we didn't come back until September. And so I was doing the general contracting through email and phone calls and everything with the builders and stuff. We wanted to have at least a frame up, like a closed end frame to, to come to with our family. And yeah, it was, it was pretty wild.
[00:12:16] Janelle
We pulled in, in September after not being there. And that was our first time seeing our house and it was pretty wild.
[00:12:22] Cal
Yeah, that's pretty crazy to think about. Leaving their corners staked or laid out and then coming back and you have a structure in place.
[00:12:33] Janelle
And we didn't have water. So there's my, there's my one thing to tell people don't move to a place like we did and build a house and you not have a water source that was actually really dumb and we knew better. But we took a chance. We just said that God moved us across the country. He's going to provide, he's going to provide water though.
[00:12:49] Janelle
You think Tennessee with all of its rivers and cricks and all that kind of stuff, water can be a hard thing to find on property. So we didn't realize that. And good thing we had those rose colored glasses.
[00:12:59] Cal
Oh, yeah. How did you end up solving the water issue?
[00:13:03] Janelle
We had right away when we had come down here and put the flags in for the property, we had contacted the local well driller. There was only one in the
[00:13:11] Cal
Oh,
[00:13:11] Janelle
got on the list and we were told, you know, maybe a year, maybe a
[00:13:15] Cal
Oh,
[00:13:16] Janelle
And we were like, Oh God, Good gravy. Okay. Thankfully another guy moved to town that had done well drilling with his dad in California and we were the first well that they, they drilled and then something happened between the two of them and we were the last well they drilled.
[00:13:31] Cal
Oh, no.
[00:13:32] Janelle
we, we
[00:13:33] Cal
But, but you got your well
[00:13:34] Janelle
we did, so we moved here in September of 2022 and our well was drilled in November of 2022. So we didn't wait very long. We were, however, and this is something our family will never forget. We were bathing in the river that's just on the edge of our property until it got too cold. So October, you know, you think it's still pretty nice in Tennessee, but the river is pretty chilly at that
[00:13:56] Cal
Oh, yeah. The water gets cold. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that'll definitely be a memory for your kids. How old are they or were they at the time?
[00:14:06] Janelle
Yeah, our oldest was in college, so he wasn't with us. He would have been 18, and then our daughter would have been 15. Our son was 13, and then we had a three year old.
[00:14:16] Cal
Oh, okay, so the three year old enjoyed it while the others were a little appalled
[00:14:21] Janelle
Yeah, he actually requested many times to bathe in the river this summer, and we obliged, because why not?
[00:14:26] Cal
why not? Exactly, yeah. So, I, I assume you spent that first winter finishing up on your house and getting ready for livestock the following spring.
[00:14:38] Janelle
Yeah, that was our first priority for sure. We did bring in chickens once we had the well drilled just
[00:14:43] Cal
Oh, yeah.
[00:14:44] Janelle
we, wanted to get that started. But that was definitely the first priority was the house, make it livable for our family so that they didn't have to live in a bunch of chaos past a certain point.
[00:14:54] Janelle
And then we moved into livestock really quickly. I was very adamant to my husband that the big livestock that were coming home first were milk cows.
[00:15:02] Cal
Oh, yes, yeah.
[00:15:04] Cal
Before we talk more about milk cows, because we're going to come back to cattle on the overgrazing section, I want to talk a little bit about your chickens and, and turkeys. So, so you got those. What kind of structures are you raising them in? And obviously I've got to ask, what breeds are you using?
[00:15:23] Janelle
Yep. So that first year we started building the John Suscovitch. I hope I say his
[00:15:28] Cal
Oh, don't worry, I, I mess it up, so I do my best to not have to say his last name. But I know exactly
[00:15:36] Cal
what you're talking
[00:15:37] Janelle
so his, his style we looked at all of them. We looked at like the Joel Salatin, like the, the smaller ones. And we're really tall. I'm 5'11 my husband's six foot at the, you know, and so I couldn't imagine like bending and all that kind of stuff. And so we liked the other ones and we liked that we could walk in.
[00:15:54] Janelle
And so we started with those and we, for breeds, we were doing the big red broilers from McMurray Hatchery, as well as, Just the Cornish cross standard and we tried both because we wanted to see which ones we liked the best and We went back to the to the Cornish cross, which is kind of funny And then as far as turkeys went I think we just did the big white ones I'm not even sure what their actual name is But they seem to grow pretty well for what we were doing and in the time frame that we needed them to
[00:16:24] Cal
So just on the chickens, why the corny scroffs over the big reds?
[00:16:28] Janelle
For us, it came down to two things. It came down to the grow out time that it takes because the big red broilers were Four weeks, five weeks more just to get them to the size that we wanted. Cause we do sell them. We don't take all of them and eat them ourselves. We do have a customer base for them.
[00:16:44] Janelle
And then also when we process them, we didn't like how we thought that the feathers came out a little bit harder on the big red broilers than on the Cornish cross. And so since we're processing everything ourself, we took into like the time that it was taking to do it. And that's why we went back to straight Cornish cross.
[00:17:00] Cal
Oh, yes, I have two things on that. I have a friend. He's passed away now But he used to run lots of goats and he told everyone he eats all he can and he sells the rest and then on the Cornish crosses I have some out in a Pin right now and I have some pullets with them and it's just amazing those Those Cornish Cross are twice the size or more of the pullets I have and they're, they're the same age.
[00:17:30] Cal
It's just crazy how fast they
[00:17:32] Janelle
It is crazy. Unless you get them side by side like that, you don't notice like how crazy of a growth it is.
[00:17:37] Cal
Yeah. Just crazy growth ability. Now one thing I noticed on your website, you already have your 2025 wait list up for chicken, which I think's wonderful to have that wait list and get it out there and get people. But something I noticed on there, you have bulk pricing available.
[00:17:56] Cal
Which, to be honest, until I saw your website, I hadn't even thought about bulk pricing to the consumer or to the, yeah, to the consumer before on pasture poultry. I was just thinking by the pound.
[00:18:09] Cal
So, can you talk about that bulk pricing just a little bit and why you did it?
[00:18:13] Janelle
Yeah. I mean, to be honest, it makes more sense to sell by the pound. You, you're going to make. It seems like you're going to make more money, but what happened when we switched from selling by the pound to this bulk pricing where this was this last year that we started offering it, they would get a bundle of like 10 in the spring and 10 in the fall.
[00:18:32] Janelle
And the way that it is, is that we educated our customers to say, this will get you through the spring and the fall. And then you won't have 20 chickens or 40 in your freezer. And so then in the fall, when you're ready for your next order, you're filling your freezer before winter. It's the perfect time to get you through.
[00:18:49] Janelle
And I think from a marketing standpoint, as long as you can educate them, why that's a good idea they're more than willing to do it. And when I changed it, we went from, you know, selling out each batch through the season as we went to selling out in one day. When I, when I did it like that. And so it was, to me, it, it, it made sense across the board.
[00:19:10] Janelle
It was, I was thinking, how would I want it? Well, I'd want to know what I have for the year
[00:19:14] Cal
Oh yeah.
[00:19:15] Janelle
I, have it secured. I've paid a deposit. I don't have to pay till I get my chickens, but it just made more sense to me for my cons, my customers.
[00:19:23] Cal
Well, I, I think about the same thing when we're talking selling beef directly to the consumer. I see so many models out there, and if it's working for people, I encourage them to continue their model. And I'm not sure what model you all use. But when we're trying to, to tell a consumer it's this price per pound, or this price per pound of hanging weight, or Just if we can go with a set price or narrow that down, it may cause us not to make quite as much, but it's just so much easier for the consumer.
[00:19:57] Janelle
Yeah.
[00:19:58] Janelle
and,
[00:19:58] Cal
that's, we gotta make it easy.
[00:20:00] Janelle
And for us also, I mean, if, if I had to sit there and, and take time and sell every round that we had coming up, the time that I was putting into that marketing and the graphics and all that kind of stuff,
[00:20:12] Cal
Oh yeah.
[00:20:13] Janelle
I saved money doing it the way that
[00:20:15] Cal
Oh yeah,
[00:20:15] Janelle
order bundles.
[00:20:17] Cal
Well, I love that idea. In fact, like I said, we're growing some pasture poultry right now. I did a test of them, I don't know, 10 years ago that we consumed them all just in house. Ate too much chicken. So I'm growing out another set, kind of. with the same purpose to stock our freezer, but also I may do more pasture poultry next year.
[00:20:40] Cal
I'm gonna see what kind of market and try and get it out, but I love the idea of bulk pricing.
[00:20:45] Janelle
You should definitely try it.
[00:20:49] Cal
Well Janelle, we've gotten a little bit about your journey, but we want to go ahead and transition to our overgrazing section sponsored by Redmond. At Redmond, we know that you thrive when your animals do. That's why it's essential to fill the gaps in your herd's nutrition with the minerals that they need. Made by nature, our ancient mineral salt and conditioner clay are the catalyst in optimizing the nutrients your animals get from their forage.
[00:21:18] Cal
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[00:21:45] Cal
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[00:21:54] Cal
In this section, we take a deeper dive into something about your farm. And today we're going to talk about cattle on the homestead. A lot of times we talk about cattle, we talk about managing cattle. And when we talk about it, we're talking more head than a homestead typically has and I recall you saying earlier that one of your first goals on your farm on Tennessee was to get a milk cow.
[00:22:18] Janelle
absolutely. We had one back in North Dakota and she was the best
[00:22:23] Cal
Oh, yes. So what was your goal with getting a milk cow on the farm? Was it just to provide your family with milk?
[00:22:32] Janelle
Yeah, first and foremost was always to give our family. That's the way we are with anything that we bring on to the farm animal wise is that first for us and what we need to do with it and consume and then also. With the extra, with the bounty, then that's what we'll
[00:22:45] Janelle
sell to people
[00:22:47] Janelle
and provide to other people.
[00:22:48] Janelle
For a milk cow, man, I just love, I love my journey with milk cows. I actually worked in a dairy once I had graduated high school for, for probably about six months. And so I, I love that process, but this is so different from that. Like having your own one cow or two cows. But it was important that I put it in place just because we utilize that the raw milk or, and we take that and we make all the by products.
[00:23:13] Janelle
We make yogurt and cheese. I mean, everything that you can think of that we take it and we turn it into. And then from there, we were like, well, whatever we have extra, because we did Sell raw milk back in North Dakota that we would just take and it would be part of our business model. But we did end up shifting away from that and taking what we were producing from our cows and turning it back into our farm.
[00:23:34] Cal
you do that?
[00:23:37] Janelle
Yeah. So we ended up raising seven bottle calve. This past year with the extra milk and then also with that, we would ferment our pig feed with the milk with the skimmed milk and just to give them just a better nutrition overall and their growth was fantastic even through the winter, which was a little bit of a struggle, but that helped immensely and then we feed it to our chickens.
[00:24:00] Janelle
And so we decided that we were going to keep it as much as we could here on the farm instead of selling it. And we found avenues that make it and make it worth us doing that.
[00:24:10] Cal
So, yeah, so that becomes the question. Is it as valuable to, to monetize that milk through the avenue of the other animals versus just selling it out?
[00:24:21] Janelle
Yeah, I think that there's people who would probably say no, that they can figure it out and get it, but by the time I put in what it costs me labor wise to milk my cows, and then what it costs me to run my cows, our girls have to have grain. They just cannot subsist on
[00:24:35] Janelle
just grass. That's just their background where they came from.
[00:24:39] Janelle
That. I would have had to price this out of like this crazy astronomical amount for it to actually make sense. And so I could take that in turn a profit by diversifying it into our farm.
[00:24:50] Cal
Oh, yeah. And what kind of cows are you milking?
[00:24:53] Janelle
We have some jerseys, which kind of are like the gold standard because they're beautiful. They have the big, the big eyes and our girls are pretty, pretty wonderful. They are registered, which didn't matter to us per se, but they were the right price at the right time.
[00:25:07] Cal
oh, yeah. I, I completely understand that. Yeah.
[00:25:11] Janelle
Our goal with them, when we were looking for milk cows, and I think I was probably a little more anxious to get a cow here, or two cows here, and that I didn't wait like I should have for what we actually wanted for our model for the farmstead, which would have been a cow that can do better on grazing and doesn't need as much inputs, you know,
[00:25:29] Janelle
just saving us cost overall.
[00:25:31] Janelle
But I was really swayed by the price of these girls, and they're really, they're really wonderful.
[00:25:36] Cal
Did they come from a conventional dairy?
[00:25:39] Janelle
So we were their third owners. There was a conventional dairy that owned them first, and then some fellow homesteaders owned them for about six months, and then things changed within their family, and they were going to go back on the road, and so that's when we had the opportunity to purchase them. So coming from that model, there is, there's no way that they could just be grass fed.
[00:25:58] Cal
Right. And, you know, we have Suzanne. I'm drawing a blink on her last name. Karreman
[00:26:05] Janelle
yep.
[00:26:06] Cal
Yeah, we had Suzanne Karreman on the, the podcast. I can't even think what episode right now, but she talks a lot about the nutrition for dairy cows and, you know, coming from that conventional model, they're not, their body, they're not bred for it.
[00:26:21] Cal
They don't have the right genetics to just survive on, on grass alone. So yeah,
[00:26:26] Janelle
Yeah, and I, her and I both agree on this. We could, her and I could talk together about grain fed versus grass fed and dairy cows and all that kind of stuff, because I think that actually is a really important topic that people need to realize before they purchase one, especially for their homestead, their farm, their ranch, whatever it may be, because there's a, a learning curve with them.
[00:26:44] Janelle
Nutrition is so important in dairy cows and
[00:26:48] Cal
Oh yes. You know, when, when we think about, when we think about my farm, We'll just use it for example. Grazing beef cows, I have some meat goats, some hair sheep. And, and I talk often that I need a milk cow or two, and I would love to go grass based. But I also know the grasses, the forage I'm growing is not high enough quality for a dairy cow. So if I do a dairy cow, I've got to do some different practices if I want to be grass based. And of course you got to make sure you have the right genetics as well.
[00:27:19] Janelle
Yeah, absolutely. And what we found is that we could use some different, we don't necessarily need to use grains, but it's also what's local to us. What,
[00:27:27] Janelle
what is cost effective to feed them? And we don't have access to a ton of stuff here, which is kind of crazy coming from the bread basket, the North Dakota, they grow all the things.
[00:27:37] Cal
Oh, yes. Now, I think you said on your chickens non GMO. Are you using non GMO feed for your dairy cows?
[00:27:46] Janelle
We are, so we get all of our feed from a local mill family, family owned company. They grow everything that they have there and they're non GMO. They, they're not organic, but they are, they're without the labeling per
[00:27:58] Cal
Oh, yeah.
[00:27:59] Janelle
really like that, really like that we're supporting a local family farm that's growing all that kind of stuff.
[00:28:04] Janelle
And we've talked
[00:28:04] Cal
Oh,
[00:28:05] Janelle
to them about everything because it is important to us. It's important to our consumers. So we just really, we're thankful that we have that option even.
[00:28:13] Cal
Before we go on more towards grazing, because that's where we want to get to do you find with your consumers And I know you're, you're using your milk in house now, but consumers all the way across the farm. Is non GMO very important to your consumers? And then, is non soy another topic?
[00:28:33] Janelle
So I think yes, non GMO is, is our selling point at where we're at. If we were to jump into like the organic feed that we can, I mean, we're talking, I can get it within an hour, but then I have to pay the delivery because it got delivered there from about four hours away.
[00:28:48] Janelle
It just doesn't make sense financially of what I would have to charge them.
[00:28:51] Janelle
So most people, if I educate them. On non GMO, where I'm getting it from, what their farming practices are, they're okay with it. That company that, or that family farm that we're using does use soy and I actually had to come to a place where I was okay with, with feeding it to our, to our chickens and our cows and stuff like that.
[00:29:11] Janelle
But once you talk to them, once you, you hear a few things, it's, you, you kind of decide what, what works and if your cons, if your consumers accept it, then it's okay.
[00:29:22] Cal
Oh yeah, yeah. Let's, let's move just a little bit to your grazing management for your cows. Now we know with your dairy cows they're getting grain, but how are you managing their grazing for them? And then we'll talk about your beef cows in just a moment.
[00:29:38] Janelle
Yeah, so our dairy cows get moved one to two, like every one or two days, depending on the size of their paddock through the grazing season. You know, once spring starts hitting right now, they're, they're pretty stagnant. They're about five, six days, depending on what their, their paddock size is doing. But we do move them and it really just depends on what's growing and, and what season we're in.
[00:29:59] Janelle
We did change their calving. So that it would hit a little bit better forage times and so we could do less inputs with with grain and stuff like that.
[00:30:08] Cal
And, and the cows are dry right now so that gives you some flexibility because they don't need quite the high plane of nutrition they would normally need.
[00:30:17] Janelle
they're not getting any grain, no dairy ration at this point. They're just hay and what they can graze right now.
[00:30:23] Cal
And when, when will they be calving again?
[00:30:25] Janelle
The first girl is due mid February and then our second girl is due just a little bit into March.
[00:30:31] Cal
For, for your area, will you start having growth mid March that's tall enough to graze?
[00:30:38] Janelle
Yeah, we will, thankfully. And that's why we chose to breed them at the time we did,
[00:30:42] Cal
Oh, yeah.
[00:30:43] Janelle
when we got them, they were already bred. And so they were fall calvers. One girl was the end of September and one girl was November 7th. And we struggled with their condition just because of the time and And the energy needed to get from food for them to not only feed their calves, but for our milking and them as a whole, it was really challenging.
[00:31:02] Janelle
And we like have a, I will say that my husband loves nutrition. He's like a, he geeks out on that kind of stuff. And even he was like, Oh, this is not, this
[00:31:11] Cal
Oh,
[00:31:11] Janelle
And the amount of alfalfa we had to throw at those girls through the winter was
[00:31:15] Cal
Oh, I imagine
[00:31:16] Janelle
And alfalfa is not really grown down here. So
[00:31:19] Cal
Oh, yeah.
[00:31:20] Janelle
it was really expensive.
[00:31:21] Cal
Yeah, I can see that. Now do you run your dairy cows with your beef cows?
[00:31:26] Janelle
The only time we did is when we were breeding them and had a bull on the property. Otherwise they're separate. I actually think they could go with them and it's not a big deal. It's just was proximity, like how to, if I could keep them a little closer to the house, it would be easier to milk them when it was time.
[00:31:42] Cal
you kind of get in that permaculture what zone they are.
[00:31:46] Cal
You want them close to the house because you're visiting them quite often.
[00:31:50] Janelle
Correct, yeah, I mean every day and in the beginning it was twice a day. They were coming in to be milked And so we we had to have it be where they weren't having to come that far
[00:31:59] Cal
Oh yeah, yeah. And I know beef or dairy cows were one of the first things you added to your farm. Did you add beef cattle shortly after that?
[00:32:08] Janelle
It was quite a bit after we got the girls I think in April the beginning of April of 2023 and we added the beef cows January of 2024. So we waited a pretty long stretch there. And it was because to be honest, we had so many projects going on
[00:32:26] Janelle
that we just had to like wait. And, and then I thought it was funny.
[00:32:29] Janelle
My husband actually was like, I don't even know if we're going to do beef cows. And I looked at him because that's all he's ever known. And I
[00:32:35] Cal
Oh, yeah.
[00:32:36] Janelle
like, we have all of this pasture and you're not going to do it. And he was like, yeah, that doesn't make sense. And I don't know where, I don't know why he thought that.
[00:32:42] Janelle
Yeah.
[00:32:43] Cal
So now I think when we were talking earlier, you mentioned in North Dakota, you'd heard about regenerative practices, but you weren't doing a lot of them on the farm there or ranch there. When you got beef cows earlier this year, rotational grazing and being aware of that? And if so, what caused you to get there?
[00:33:06] Janelle
Yeah. So the whole time that we did not have beef cows down here in Tennessee, my husband and I have been chatting about how we were going to run them. Like, what were our, what were our practices going to be? And we wanted to be more regenerative, even though that wasn't how we were doing it before. But we believe truly that that is the best model.
[00:33:25] Janelle
And so I personally had been diving for a few years, heavy into the subject because I wanted to know when we were ready. How could we do this? And how could we manage this? And so at first I was teaching my husband quite a bit about what I had been learning. But now like he, So he has his degree in animal and range science, and so
[00:33:47] Janelle
he has the understanding of a lot of these concepts.
[00:33:49] Janelle
It's just really putting them into practice in a way that he was never able to do before.
[00:33:54] Janelle
And so when we moved into that, we started, I was just calling it intensive rotational grazing. You know, we were moving them daily onto a new paddock and all of that kind of stuff. We were judging how full they are, what they were leaving over.
[00:34:08] Janelle
We weren't doing it based on their weight. per se, but just what we could see physically between the room infill and between what was still left over. And I guess you would call that adaptive multi
[00:34:18] Cal
Oh,
[00:34:19] Janelle
grazing just because it changed size just based on what we were seeing.
[00:34:23] Cal
Right.
[00:34:24] Janelle
In the end, I think there's lots of similarities and little, little
[00:34:27] Cal
Oh, there is so many names for grazings and grazing methods and different types and, and the differences are so minute between some of them. Now there's some that's a little bit different
[00:34:41] Cal
but they're all tools in our toolbox. One thing on a homestead versus a bigger ranch, you're working with smaller numbers of
[00:34:50] Cal
animals. And sometimes, I feel like, and maybe this is just me as I think about it, those individuals that have one or two cows or just a few, why put the effort into that? Is it worth the squeeze doing this extra work to move them and manage them when you're dealing with smaller numbers?
[00:35:13] Janelle
I'm going to say coming from a bigger operation where we did not employ those kind of practices to coming down here where we were really intense about what we were intensive about what we were doing. It made such a huge difference and I think our minds were blown a little bit because we went through a drought this last summer and we were able to graze our girls.
[00:35:34] Janelle
All the way through until August and then we had for two weeks had to pitch them some hay and that kind of had to do a little bit with some Johnson grass. We were trying to make sure that they weren't, because there was quite a bit in the paddock they were going to go into just with the whole prussic acids thing, we were just being very cautious with it, but.
[00:35:53] Janelle
We're shocked at how it's recovered now that we've gotten rain, and we were shocked at how far we were able to go into it with no rain. The amount was staggering, the lack of rain that we had compared to what they normally do. But just what we could see, it was, It was unbelievable to us how well we fared, and we get to see hand in hand with other people who aren't practicing the same grazing practices as us, like right around us, and heads and tails, we looked so much better, and that's not in a breaking capacity, because all we did was move them but it was pretty, it was pretty mind blowing to see.
[00:36:30] Cal
I, I completely concur with that. We got pretty dry since July. Now we've We've had record rain in November, but July, August, September, October, we got really dry. Some of the driest I've seen here,
[00:36:44] Cal
but the amount of grass we were able to, to, it's not really stockpile, but kind of the same thing. We weren't getting water, it wasn't growing very much, but we had plenty of grass out there.
[00:36:56] Cal
Now we're much shorter than what I'd like to be at this time of year, but compared to people who are set stocked on their land, it. It just looks like we have tons
[00:37:09] Janelle
Yeah, and I think our perspective coming from North Dakota, where we dealt with drought, it felt like we dealt with it out of four years every three years, like three years in a row, and then the fourth year was kind of okay.
[00:37:19] Janelle
We just had a different mindset over drought and management and numbers that we would run.
[00:37:24] Janelle
We were always so just, just so that when we knew that if we had to call stuff, we would get rid of it. And so I think that helped us coming down here that we were like, we're not going to overdo it. We're going to pay attention. We're just going to be like, really focused on what's going on and willing to let go of stuff.
[00:37:40] Janelle
Like, I, I think sometimes for homesteading movement, it's really hard to cull animals. If that doesn't work. Hasn't been your experience your whole life. You're just stepping into this lifestyle. And we were like, Nope, we know which ones are going to go right away. If we need to.
[00:37:55] Cal
That's really difficult. I know growing up, commercial dairy, we always had commercial cattle. Always got in trouble as a kid because I named all the animals. Actually my animals have names now, but I'm pretty I cull them hard.
[00:38:10] Cal
If, if they don't perform in my system I'm a lazy manager and I need cows that work for me.
[00:38:16] Cal
And if they don't work in my system does not mean they're, they're not a good animal, but they don't work for me. So I, I sell them. And sometimes that's, that's hard. Even, even when I don't know that it's super hard for me, but my wife's been shocked you sold so and so.
[00:38:33] Cal
I said, yeah, she didn't read back on time and they got it. They have a specific job for me and I need them to work for me.
[00:38:41] Janelle
Yeah, I, I agree with that. I, for us, again, it goes back to family, like taking care of them. Well, and if I'm going to keep an animal on here, that's not producing and not fitting what we need it to do. They're headed to the butcher. I mean, it's just, I think it's a smart practice. It's a hard practice. Right.
[00:38:59] Janelle
And but I think it's the best practice that you can do. I always say to people you breed the best, eat the rest and,
[00:39:06] Cal
Oh, yeah.
[00:39:06] Janelle
That's that's truly what it is for us and to keep it in. We're not going to Disney fire animals. I don't mind giving them names because we do as well, but we don't put human characteristics on animals that are here for a purpose, and we're stewarding them well, and sometimes stewarding them well means they don't fit here.
[00:39:25] Cal
Right. Yeah. I know anytime we're talking about smaller acreage, it really doesn't matter whatever acreage you have, you maximize. I really hate to use the word maximize because that's never the best. Optimize it. But when we think about smaller acreage, you can only run a certain number of animals. So you need those to be as productive as they can be in your situation for your context.
[00:39:54] Janelle
I do agree. I talk all the time to people about, and to be honest, your, your podcast has helped so much. I have
[00:40:02] Cal
Oh, well, thank you.
[00:40:03] Janelle
I don't listen to podcasts until I found yours that was recommended to me. And I started listening and I'm like, some of this stuff just makes so much sense. And it, and as far as like selecting on observational traits and things like that, that you can see.
[00:40:17] Janelle
And I would like wholeheartedly jumped on that. And that's what I'm trying to teach people as well. You don't specifically need a breed. You need a cow that fits what you're doing. And
[00:40:27] Cal
Oh, yeah.
[00:40:28] Janelle
that out. And so I think that's like such an important topic. And I, I should just thank you.
[00:40:33] Cal
Well, well, thank you for listening. Appreciate it. Yeah, and we hope we're providing value to others. So I'm glad to hear
[00:40:42] Janelle
You most definitely are.
[00:40:43] Cal
As I think about homesteaders with just a few cows, what do you find may be a limiting factor in them implementing more regenerative practices?
[00:40:55] Janelle
Time. Usually people are running more than just cattle. There's, there's other livestock that they're doing and they're trying to, to figure out how they can graze them together or what. And a lot of us are working other jobs. And so they, so they have very little time. And I mean, if you're farming or ranching, like I get it, like most of us also have other jobs too.
[00:41:18] Janelle
But it's just the common theme is a lot of them are not just working on their homestead. This is something they're doing to provide their family with a clean source of food that they're controlling and raising. But they don't have necessarily the time. And so I always try to give people permission to say, you know, we're moving our cows every day and we are seeing the max benefits of it.
[00:41:36] Janelle
But if you can move your cows every three days. or once a week, even that's better than never moving them ever. And so giving that permission for people to say, okay, I can only move them every three days or every week, and knowing in the future maybe they can figure out a system where they're going to start moving them more than that.
[00:41:54] Janelle
Because I think all it, all it takes is seeing some results,
[00:41:57] Cal
Oh yeah.
[00:41:58] Janelle
And so if they can see that their, their fields, their pastures are going to start looking better than their neighbors, and they're going to be, maybe it's because I move them every five days versus. They don't move them ever.
[00:42:09] Cal
Oh yeah. I wholeheartedly agree just that next step. If, if you're set stocked and you've got a gate and a fence dividing them, close the gate and put them on one side of it. If, if that's to put up electric fence and move them once a week, because we talked earlier, you know, life and work balance, farm and life, farm, work. family balance. It's so tough and we've got to have time for all of those things. And if it's moving them once a week or on Saturday morning, that's your farm time to set up paddocks for three moves that week. And then you just go out and move them. Tuesday evening you open a gate and move them over or
[00:42:53] Cal
something. Make it simple and easy for you relative to what you, your needs are. And your context. Yeah, you don't have to, and this, this is what always worries me. We talk about people, or we talk to people, and what they're doing. I'm out there moving cows every three hours. I'm not, but I have talked to people
[00:43:13] Cal
who's doing that, and, and that's hard if you're not moving cows to think, there's no way I can go out there and move them every three hours. You don't have to.
[00:43:22] Janelle
Yeah. And I love, I love that. Yes. That's the thing. Just move them. Anything is better than not moving them at
[00:43:29] Cal
Oh,
[00:43:30] Janelle
And so if you can think in that mindset, like you are just opening the doors for yourself and, and taking the pressure off. Cause I do agree. Like I've, I, I follow a lot of stuff and I read a lot of stuff and I consume a lot over grazing.
[00:43:42] Janelle
And there's sometimes I'm like, man, I Good for you guys that you can do that, but I cannot. I can't move them that much.
[00:43:49] Cal
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we had Blane Stacey on the podcast. He lives just a few miles from me and he was on, I don't know, three or four episodes ago, probably, you know, as we think is only five years ago, it was ten years ago. He was probably on the, probably on the podcast ten episodes ago. Anyway, he talks about for his 80 acres and the way he manages cows, and he puts a strip out, he puts, has two strips out, that way if he's late for work, he's doing moving every day, his wife can go out and open a gate and get him moved, and then he, it just takes him a few minutes each day, but his goal is daily moves, but just having a system in place to go and do. I know for lease property I don't move them as frequently as I move them here, because it's a, There's travel time over there, and it takes more time than I ever think it will. So I try and set up multiple things, and I actually, I shouldn't admit this. I bought one of those timer gates,
[00:44:50] Cal
and I've never set it up to use it because I, it takes a little bit of time to figure it out because I haven't done it before.
[00:44:56] Cal
And then I'd have to monitor it really close just to make sure it works for a little while. It would save me some time and make that lease land a little bit more effective.
[00:45:04] Janelle
well, I'm really curious to hear how that goes when you get it set up.
[00:45:09] Cal
It's been riding in the back of my pickup in the back seat for so long. I will not admit how long it's been in there, but it's there. I'm going to do it.
[00:45:18] Janelle
That just feels really accurate for a lot of our lives. There's something right around the back seat that we've meant to like use and we just haven't.
[00:45:26] Cal
Right. Yeah. And I know once I get it going, as long as it works as it's displayed to work or I'll be happy with it, but I just haven't got there yet.
[00:45:37] Janelle
Yeah, there's time spent better in other things at
[00:45:40] Cal
Yes. Yeah. For your alls beef cows is the plan there to direct to consumer with them.
[00:45:47] Janelle
So that was going to be our goal for 2025 is to have our first offering of direct to consumer beef. And then the drought kind of put a little damper on that plan. And so we ended up We ended up selling actually a lot of those weaned calves. We weaned them
[00:46:04] Janelle
for people. We made sure that they were really healthy, that they were eating solid, and like we could send them to people knowing like we feel good.
[00:46:11] Janelle
And because of the way that we are in with our cows every day, those calves They're not pushy, but they are the most docile, like greatest temperament ever. And not saying that their mamas were bad, but like their heads and tails above what their, their moms were. And so for other homesteads, we've actually sold quite a few to other homesteads who just want to raise their beef.
[00:46:32] Janelle
They just want to bring a couple of steers on or a couple heifers or whatever. And so that's been kind of cool to kind of. See that there's another market and then with it, we also get to mentor them through that process. And so it's, that actually was a really cool gift that we didn't see coming. And so I don't know, in the future, I'm sure that we'll offer beef from here because of, it should happen in the future, but I like, I like this whole weaned calves selling to people and giving them that mentorship that a lot of them need because they're so new to, to livestock and cattle and as a, in general.
[00:47:06] Cal
You know, and that's, that's an avenue I hadn't thought about, but I love that when you're out there with your animals. It's It's amazing how much, how calm they are with everything. And when you raise calves in that system, they're even more so. and and I love tame cattle. It just makes everything better,
[00:47:29] Cal
but selling those.
[00:47:31] Cal
or wean calves to a homestead who's wanting to finish their own beef, or maybe someone who wants to finish out and even sell to the public or some to the public. That's a great model that I hadn't really thought about.
[00:47:44] Cal
I know as we think about farmers, and, and I'm really just thinking about myself here, marketing is not my strong
[00:47:52] Janelle
Mm.
[00:47:53] Janelle
I love marketing. That's my favorite.
[00:47:56] Cal
yeah, well, talking, so surprisingly enough when I think about talking to more people, I think, oh no, but then here I am on a podcast talking to
[00:48:06] Janelle
Yeah, that's so
[00:48:07] Cal
know, go figure. Well, Janelle, before we transition to Famous Four, do you have anything else you'd like to add about cattle and the homestead?
[00:48:15] Janelle
Yeah, I, I think what we just talked about is adding one or two. That's actually what we, that's why we always said to people, get two, get, get two.
[00:48:24] Janelle
You can feed a steer just like you can feed a heifer. So it doesn't matter if you're going to feed them out, but having to, that there's a really good reason to have two at least.
[00:48:33] Janelle
And so every place that we sold to this year took at least two, which was really cool. And for people who are just getting into cattle, why I think. Steers and heifers, when you're just finishing them out to eat, are so much easier as a starting off curve. You're not having to deal with calving, you're not having to deal with breeding, and all of those kind of issues.
[00:48:51] Janelle
So this is a great place for people to start setting their foundation of cattle nutrition, how to feed them,
[00:48:56] Janelle
how to take care of them, and then you move on to the next steps as we mentor those people into it. I love that this is how people start because it just gives them that foundation that they need without jumping into the harder parts of it.
[00:49:07] Cal
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So many positives there. I completely agree.
[00:49:13] Cal
Janelle, it's time we transition to our famous four questions, sponsored by Kencove Farm Fence.
[00:49:18] Cal
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[00:49:44] Cal
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[00:50:08] Cal
Kencove is proud to be part of your regenerative journey. Call them today or visit Kencove.com. And be sure to follow them on social media and subscribe to the Kencove YouTube channel @KencoveFarmFence for helpful how to videos and new product releases!
[00:50:27] Cal
They're the same four questions we ask of all of our guests. Our first question, what's your favorite grazing grass related book or resource?
[00:50:36] Janelle
So I'm pretty good friends with a guy named Carson from Redmond, and he he got me started on,
[00:50:43] Cal
I know Carson!
[00:50:45] Janelle
you do know Carson Man, Cattle, Veld,
[00:50:48] Cal
Oh yes.
[00:50:49] Janelle
love that book, and then also anything Bondsma, like I really am digging any of that kind of stuff to, and then to be honest, I have enjoyed all of your podcasts.
[00:51:00] Janelle
Those are probably my favorite ones that I'm going through at this time.
[00:51:03] Janelle
Anything that I can get my hands on in that.
[00:51:05] Cal
Oh yes. Excellent resources there. Our second question, what's your favorite tool for the farm?
[00:51:12] Janelle
My favorite, you're gonna, I don't know if you'll laugh at this, but is my husband. I
[00:51:18] Cal
that, I'm gonna laugh, but that's a great
[00:51:21] Janelle
I say all the time to people that we're mentoring is that if you have a spouse, Being able to learn together and not having one hold all the knowledge and how to do the things because if ever they get sick, having that where you're in a partnership so that you both know what's going on is really like very helpful.
[00:51:40] Janelle
And then secondly, I would say that it's our reels, like where we reel up our electric fence. That's number two. My husband's number one. He's so smart. He has so much like foundational knowledge because he grew
[00:51:50] Cal
Oh, well, very good.
[00:51:52] Janelle
So
[00:51:52] Janelle
that's what I would say.
[00:51:54] Cal
Excellent
[00:51:55] Janelle
And, and I would say that you can't have my husband, so
[00:51:59] Janelle
that's not one you can go by.
[00:52:01] Cal
Yeah. Our third question, what would you tell someone just getting started?
[00:52:07] Janelle
Hmm. Start slow. I, I think that we, and, and start slow. Number one, make sure your infrastructure is in place before you bring cattle home and, and make sure that you have a mentor in place that is local to you, that you can learn from. And if you can't find the people online that you trust, that you can learn from.
[00:52:25] Janelle
And then. I'm going to say to fellow homesteaders, because I hope that they get out of this mindset, is that they stop going for breeds. And they start going based on like, what will work better for your, your farm, your homestead. And I think that's really important because we can get so tied up in what is maybe popular, but there's no better salesman for a breed than the people who have that breed.
[00:52:47] Janelle
And, and so I, I love that. I love people to think outside the box. I always think I was talking with Joel Salatin once about what he was running on his place and though he's not a homesteader and they run in a little different capacity. I just said, what kind of cattle are you running? And he said, Heinz 57 cattle.
[00:53:03] Janelle
And he said, and then we bring in the bulls that we want to do. And I was like, that's just, I said, I feel the same way. Like we, we get ourselves tied into really expensive cattle when in fact we could probably do with a little less perfect cattle and then breed towards what we want.
[00:53:19] Cal
Oh yes. Yeah. Find, find a farm that's doing what you want to do. Those cows are already set up and understand the system and that'll help you out quite a bit.
[00:53:29] Cal
Yeah. And lastly, Janelle, where can others find out more about you?
[00:53:34] Janelle
Yeah, they can find me on social media on Instagram. I'm Janelle Lynn Anderson. I do a lot of education and stuff like that. And then on our website is thehavenfarmstead. com and we have a whole plethora of different resources that we offer there.
[00:53:49] Cal
Very good. Janelle, we really appreciate you coming on and sharing today.
[00:53:54] Janelle
Thank you Cal for having me. I was so happy to be here.
[00:53:56] Cal
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