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0:00:00 - Cal
Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, episode 114.
0:00:04 - Brooks
Surround yourself with people that are already doing it, that are like-minded.
0:00:08 - Cal
You're listening to the Grazing Grass Podcast, sharing information and stories of grass-based livestock production utilizing regenerative practices. I'm your host, cal Hartage. You're growing more than grass. You're growing a healthier ecosystem to help your cattle thrive in their environment. You're growing your livelihood by increasing your carrying capacity and reducing your operating costs. You're growing stronger communities and a legacy to last generations, to last generations. The grazing management decisions you make today impact everything from the soil beneath your feet to the community all around you. That's why the Noble Research Institute created their Essentials of Regenerative Grazing course to teach ranchers like you easy to follow techniques to quickly assess your forage, production and infrastructure capacity in order to begin grazing more efficiently. Together, they can help you grow not only a healthier operation, but a legacy that lasts. Learn more on their website at nobleorg slash grazing. It's n-o-b-l-e dot org. Forward slash grazing.
On today's episode we have Brooks and Abby Bowser of Bowser Family Farms and they come on. They share about their journey, about what they're doing on their farm cow, calf, finishing beef and pork, as well as crops For the overgrazing section. We dive into a little bit more about social media marketing. The bonus segment for our grazing grass insiders is about on the farm store. So very interesting segment there, excellent episode. However, before we talk to Brooks and Abby, 10 seconds about my farm. If you drive by my farm you might say I am a good grass farmer right now. I think most farms you drive by this time of year in my area people can say that there's still some that's over grazed and there's tons better I can do, but this time of year it's always easy to think we're doing better than we are. Not to be negative, but just keep working. Do a little bit better each day. 10 seconds about the podcast.
On next week's episode we have August Horseman. He was on back on episode 15. So you might want to catch that or go back and review it. We catch up with him next week. Find out what he's been up to and how things are progressing on his journey. Enough of all that. Let's talk to Brooks and Abby. Brooks and Abby, we're excited for you to be here today. Welcome to the Grazing Grass podcast.
0:03:08 - Brooks
Yeah, thank you. We're excited to be here too. This is our first podcast. We've been a listener for a few months now. Nick Rogers turned us on to it.
0:03:19 - Abby
Yep, we're excited to be here. Can't wait to chat with you.
0:03:22 - Cal
Wonderful To get started. Let's just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your operation.
0:03:30 - Brooks
So I'm a first-generation farmer. My grandpa gave me the opportunity to manage his small farm when I was in high school. I went to Michigan State and I got out of there and I met Abby yeah. So we came back on the farm. My grandpa gave me the opportunity to run the farm for ourselves and then, yeah, started doing everything pretty conventionally, Got on YouTube, found Gabe Brown, and the rest is history. After that, as far as the whole grass farming and regenerative farming journey, and a little bit about my background.
0:04:00 - Abby
We couldn't be more opposite. I grew up on a farm. I'm a fifth-generation farmer. We had beef cattle and we had a market garden. So we went to farmer's markets and had vegetables and cut flowers and we had a retail store on farm as well. And I did 4-H and I've been a part of the cattle business and when I met him he looked like he was a farmer. I thought he was a farmer.
But as we got going, it's been a very interesting experience with someone that's I was raised really conventional and he's had a lot of interesting ideas about agriculture, and so the balance between that has been very fun. But I'm completely on board now after seeing, going to the Soil Health Academies and reading some of the books and listening to the podcast. It all makes sense. But it took me a little bit to get here.
0:04:51 - Cal
Oh yeah, when you've got that background of however you're doing it, it's much tougher. I think Tom Lester said that he'd rather make a farmer out of a boy off the streets of Tokyo versus a conventional farmer.
0:05:04 - Abby
Yeah.
0:05:04 - Cal
Something like that. I'm sure I'm messing that quote up, but that's okay, someone will fix it.
0:05:09 - Abby
Get the trust yeah.
0:05:12 - Cal
So let's just jump back on your side, Brooks, for a second. You got this opportunity with your grandpa's land to do some things. What prompted you to do that?
0:05:22 - Brooks
To just farm in general.
0:05:24 - Cal
Yes.
0:05:26 - Brooks
Yeah, obviously, being a high schooler, you don't always know what you want to do. But he came to me and said do you want to get serious about this? And I said, absolutely. I didn't know anything about it but it sounded pretty intriguing. So we went to Michigan State and fell in love with farming, met all kinds of friends still friends that I have now today just absolutely fell in love with it. As a kid did you think you would be doing farming? Not at all. My grandpa first asked me, I'm like what be a farmer
no way. My dad owned a body shop and I thought maybe I'll learn how to paint cars. But once I started on the farm, grandpa gave me a lot of leeway and learning some stuff. I felt like I had some ownership in the farm. Yeah, just fell in love with it, made a lot of mistakes.
0:06:09 - Cal
That happens, abby, did you know you were always going to come back to the farm?
0:06:15 - Abby
I did not at all.
Obviously, growing up with a market garden, we had a whole acre of vegetables and flowers and it felt a little bit more like slavery than it should have at that time, and so I went to school and then I ended up changing my major to ag business management and then thought I would go the business route sales.
I had internships with chemical companies, so I was selling fertilizer and chemicals and for my internships did a lot of crop scouting and extremely conventional world and thought I would go that route. And then, obviously, choosing to stay in a small town with your fiance at the time, the job pool got a lot smaller and so I ended up taking a job as a high school ag teacher. So we did that for about four years and then, now and then I started my own flour business. So I'm actually a florist and a flour farmer. And that was around the time we had kids and COVID and we decided staying at home for me and doing my own business and working on the farm too was a better option. I turned out just like my mom, even though I didn't think that was going to happen.
So now I'm raising flowers and selling beef, so just like I did when. I was younger.
0:07:32 - Cal
There you go. It's often it's these journeys. How we end up here is always very interesting and, whether or not we anticipated it or not, I find fascinating. Brooks, once you got started, you were going to school. When were you introduced to Gabe Brown, and how did that journey go?
0:07:53 - Brooks
I want to say that was probably like in 2018, 17, something like that. We were struggling on the farm financially. It just really wasn't making financial sense. I was starting to go in debt and I was working part-time for a guy that spread fertilizer and lime. And I listened to a podcast on YouTube and a guy named Gabe Brown came up, so I listened to it and just a light bulb went off. Oh my gosh, I think I can make it happen. This does make sense. Before that, I never heard the word regenerative ag.
You know I was familiar with cover crops to some extent and we experienced with them a little bit. Um yeah, but once I heard gabe talk, I bought his book right away. I read that it was the first book that I've ever finished, oh yeah very good, congratulations on that yeah, I've read some sense.
Wasn't much of a reader before that and it just made total sense. And what was it? 2019? I think we had the opportunity to go out to. Gabe was supposed to have a soil health academy in his farm. It got canceled because of drought. Um, we still went out there and we got a private tour of gabe's farm. He gave us a lot of good advice and kind of lit a fire underneath us that we really needed and that gave us the idea that we could make it work.
0:09:03 - Cal
At that time, when you all went out there, abby, were you on board?
0:09:07 - Abby
I was. I definitely was trying to be a supportive wife, I think in the beginning we were doing it together. I'm not quiet by any means, so I was very much what if we did this? And we've been kind of doing it together since we were doing it together. I'm not quiet by any means, so I was very much what if we did this? And we've been kind of doing it together since we were 20, which is crazy. So we've been trying to figure it out together.
So when this whole thing came about, it was kind of a newer movement. We didn't know anyone that was doing it. He found it on YouTube so I was like I'll buy in, let's do it. He found it on YouTube so I was like let's all buy in, let's, let's do it. We made it a family vacation to go out to North Dakota and so we were like, all right, let's do it.
But after hearing Gabe, he's just so well spoken and obviously knows what he's doing and obviously does, does all these things and it has been successful. So it started to get more in my head. I think what really solidified it was just when he took it the next level, brooks. We ended up actually implementing the things and then just seeing them out of nature that it's just been a night and day difference. There's butterflies out there, there's just these giant swarms of birds. It's just so much more enjoyable to be at the farm. And then I've taken several soil health or not soil health, but soil biology classes in college, and so that part made sense to me. I think what I was struggling with was the cattle part, where it was like let nature deal with the health issues of the cattle. That part was hard for me to transition to.
We don't even treat for flies anymore, we just let the birds do it. And that took a minute for me to are you sure, are you sure? But slowly, just letting him obsess about it and research it and let him implement it. I do think it helped that I had two kids in four years, so I was like I'm not really paying attention, so busy.
Yeah, yeah. So he's, he's. I'm so proud of him. He's definitely taken on all this, and it definitely helps that he was first generation, because I think I would have been stuck in my own loop.
0:11:03 - Cal
Yeah, very easy to do. So when you all went out to Gabe Brown's farm and you came back, what did you implement or what did you do immediately?
0:11:12 - Brooks
Yeah, our biggest issue was not maybe the biggest issue, but one of our issues was diversity in our pastures. We just took an old hay field that we'd planted and it was two species basically. So he gave us some ideas some pulse grazing. You set up a small paddock, get some high stock density for a little while and then you give them the rest of the paddock for the rest of the day and then long rest periods. So after that we started giving a lot longer rest periods. It was a 30-day rotation and now we're pushing 45, sometimes 60, which comes with its challenges with that hay field.
Sometimes the forage can get rank on us. That's helped. Also, too, we're feeding corn and we still are. But he gave us some ideas and pushed us to to be able to raise our feeder cattle more on grass than grain. And and also you said, if you quit feeding grain tomorrow, you're going to make more money. But our biggest concern, or my biggest concern, is our product, to be able to finish cattle on grass. So we're trying to, trying to go slowly into it and we have. We've every year we've cut back on grain more and more and this year we'll we're still going to feed grain, but it'll be a lot less.
0:12:17 - Cal
Oh yeah, and we're still going to feed grain, but it'll be a lot less oh yeah, and, and it's a journey and there is so much of it. That's an art. So, yes, taking it slow, learning as you go, reflect on what's happening. A wonderful plan there now. When you got your started working with your grandpa's land, were you just farming that, or do you have some livestock too?
0:12:37 - Brooks
yeah, we had livestock since day one. That was what I started we had 20 oh, you started with livestock cows.
Yeah, that was. Yeah, that's what that was the first thing that I started with. Yeah, so we had 20 acres of hay, 18 head of cattle. We direct marketed all those, but they were in a feedlot uh, feed and grain, which I'm very thankful that I started with the direct market business because it seems to be that seems to be a hard thing for people to get into. So I'm extremely thankful that I started with a direct market business because it seems to be that seems to be a hard thing for people to get into, so I'm extremely thankful that we already had that started. Then I went to MSU for beef cattle management. It was an ag tech program, so it was just a year, but I worked on a feedlot there.
Oh yeah, I came back with the feedlot ideas in my mind. I went to North Dakota for an internship. They were very conventional and also they had a cow-calf operation, but unfortunately I didn't get to work with the cows a lot there.
0:13:20 - Abby
We got the crop bug. I feel like we were like then we were raising our own corn and soybeans for our feed. And then we were like everyone around us is a crop farmer. So we definitely were like, okay, we need a combine. And then it started to get very heavy crops and very conventional yeah yeah.
0:13:38 - Brooks
So when I got back from north dakota, grandpa had a total of 350 acres. I started to farm all of it, all very conventionally and my grandpa's big on he's an organic guy, so we had any feed that we raised with the cattle. We would moldboard, plow, disc plant and then cultivate and we struggled at trying to make that work and that's how I got introduced to cover crops because we thought maybe that would help with some weeds and stuff.
And it really didn't help a lot. Maybe we didn't give enough time, I don't know. I was doing the best I could with the knowledge I had at the time to erase things perfectly. So then, obviously, I got in contact with Gabe and started no-till and using cover crops, but what comes with that, obviously, is some herbicides too Right.
0:14:22 - Abby
Which, at the time, we were all in on. But then, I think, as we got older, we started looking at it in a more financial sense too and we were like, okay, if we're going to make this work, we really need to perform financially. And just looking at our input costs, obviously as all farmers do you're like how did this number get so big? And then just trying to figure out how to get that number down is basically where it all came from, in a very simple sense.
0:14:47 - Brooks
Yeah, it was extremely scary how much money we spent on the farm, especially being a small farm with that time, 25 out of cattle, 350 acres it was scary how much money that we were spending.
0:14:59 - Cal
Oh yeah, so talk about just for a moment. Talk about that process. When you came back from Gabe Brown's and you started implementing some different grazing practices, you were and I believe you still are feeding out cows using some corn and stuff. But talk about that process to go to lower expenses.
0:15:22 - Brooks
Obviously on the farming side, a diverse cover crop, diverse crop rotation. That was step number one on trying to cut back our inputs as far as the crops that we raised for our cattle. And then we found ourselves a lot of times in the middle of the summer feeding hay. We had a flail mower, we had green chop and feed and one day we got done baling hay and I grabbed about three, four bales and I hauled them from the hay field in to feed the cows in the middle of July and I thought why in the world are we doing this? At that time I didn't have any permanent fence up around the farm but my cows I got my cows pretty familiar with temporary fence on the piece. We ran around three quarters of it with temporary fence and anything that was growing we grazed our cows on, just so I didn't have to feed harvested feed.
And then and then obviously we started after that. We started getting a little more familiar with adaptive grazing and trying to get more diversity in our pastures and moving once a day, twice a day, high stock density, giving certain areas different rest periods to see what might happen.
0:16:27 - Cal
And one thing Abby mentioned earlier butterflies, birds and stuff. How soon did you notice a change on your pastures?
0:16:36 - Brooks
I didn't pay attention a lot because I guess, to give you a little more backstory too, at the main farm we only had 15 acres of pasture for 25 to 30 head of cattle, so it wasn't obviously it was way overstocked. So we started implementing that and then obviously putting fence up around the farm to give that pasture more rest and I would say probably in year two we started to notice a big difference in just the health of the pasture and maybe after three years you start noticing birds. Even though we weren't looking before, you're like I don't think these birds were here before and now you can go out and I would say two to three years you started noticing just some wildlife diversity out there and it was just it is. You can shut down the side-by-side. Me and my oldest daughter like to climb on the roof after we move the cows to a new pasture and just look and you see the birds, you see some flies, the butterflies, and the neighbor next to us has honeybees and the honeybees are everywhere over there.
0:17:33 - Cal
Oh yes.
0:17:34 - Brooks
And then me and my daughter really like to look for worms, now there, oh yes. And then me and my daughter really like to look for worms now and it was oh yeah, I would I would say two to three years. We started just noticing things and then obviously it just keep, continues to progress after that I, I think and this is going to be my opinion I think those.
0:17:49 - Cal
That's one of those things you don't really notice. You don't notice the absence of it. Really you're not. You're out there just doing what you need to do, and then when you start getting more wildlife in and stuff, it's not. Oh yeah, I saw three birds today, or whatever, but at some point it becomes wait, did we have this before? I don't recall all this yeah, we just didn't.
0:18:14 - Brooks
Regenerative agriculture it's ultimately a shift in mindset too.
0:18:17 - Cal
It is yeah.
0:18:22 - Brooks
If you don't know what to look for. You didn't look for it and the only thing I noticed was when I would get done. Cutting hay at the farm is all the bugs on my hay mower, but it was mostly potato leaf hoppers. It wasn't like a vast diversity of insects and spiders and stuff.
0:18:33 - Cal
Right.
0:18:33 - Brooks
And.
0:18:33 - Abby
I think the switch to regenerative agriculture is, like he said, a mindset, but you're also just paying way more attention to nature and you know, you're just observing things. We have pheasants again coming out. We can constantly hear them and see them running around and flying around is I'm a pheasant hunter and we go out.
0:18:57 - Brooks
My grandpa's got a place out in North Dakota. We go out there a year to pheasant hunt and you come back home and you might see one or two a year, but over the last two years we'll go out there in the spring, shut the side by side off and you just hear a cackle, cackle oh yeah neighbors are commenting on it and they're really excited. People driving by the farm they'll see pheasants cross the road and it's like, okay, we're doing something right.
0:19:16 - Cal
There's a reason why they're here oh yeah there's nothing else around that's attracted them, it's it's got to be what we're doing on that subject, the we have wild turkeys and we have a few around and on the lease lands. Just drive me crazy. I want to see wild turkeys over there. I've been managing a few years. I'm hoping to get closer to getting some wild turkeys in that area and it's right on the edge of some brush and so we get some nice edge area along with the grassy savannah like area. I am just watching for wild turkeys all the time.
0:19:48 - Brooks
I've yet to see them there, but I'm like they're going to be back yeah, we have a fair amount of wildlife in here in general, um, but just as far as upland birds, they're just habitat destruction. It's the only reason they used to be here, from my knowledge, everywhere, but everybody's taking fence rows out and plowing their land, and well, and our whole farm there's not very many trees because it used to be cropland, so it used to be one big field, and so it's not.
0:20:13 - Abby
we're in the process of working with the nrcs and we're going to be planting some trees and getting windbreaks and some habitat clusters for different birds and things, but right now it's just a big old flat field.
0:20:26 - Brooks
Oh yeah, it's got a lot of grass growing, though, a lot of grass.
0:20:28 - Cal
Yeah, good, yeah, Just for a moment. Let's jump back and talk about where you're located and what the land is mainly used there for.
0:20:39 - Brooks
Okay, yeah, so southern central Michigan. We're about an hour north of the Indiana-Ohio border, oh, okay. It's corn, soybeans, wheat, a lot of woods. We've got a fair amount of woods, small acreage fields. An extremely big field around here is 400 acres, but most of them are 10 to 30 to 40 sections oh yeah, not very many cattle.
It's more like a hobby farm cattle country. There's a few here and there, but as far as getting any knowledge from any cattle farmers around here, it's been pretty tough, you know and where I think we're like right at the edge of the corn belt.
0:21:15 - Abby
So we're like in a weird, weird spot a lot of conventional corn and soybeans, but we get a lot of rain, we get a lot of moisture, yep, and, like you said, lots of woods. So lots of farmers trying to take out fence rows and take out all these trees and stuff yes, you notice, I see this same thing here.
0:21:34 - Cal
people go in and they've cleared, or someone will buy a property and they'll go in and they'll clear every tree off that property and then it's only in the fence rows and then it may change hands again, or maybe they want to replace that fence and they take a bulldozer and go down that fence line and now quarter section. Most land north of me is in bigger areas. South of me it's not. Now you've got this property void of trees.
0:22:02 - Abby
I'm like wait why are we doing that? Yeah, and especially in my world with flower farming. Obviously it's very close to the regenerative movement.
We're constantly wanting habitat for bees and birds and we want as much habitat as possible with our flowers so that they can pollinate and create. And so for us, I'm really into right now planting a lot of perennials and cutting from those, and with that I would love if every all the trees would have just stayed there and have been established. And now I'm planting new trees and new bushes and new shrubs, and I've got five years until I see the benefit, when I know that our farm in the sixties had tons of that and I wish they would have just stayed there. So it's very. Our worlds are very similar in the farming and the flower farming um to into the regenerative movement, so that's something that's been really cool to see too we do have one really nice oak tree we do have one.
0:22:59 - Cal
Oh yeah, oh very good yeah so talking about your cattle, and you went out there and you put up some fence. You just did temporary. Have you gone back with more permanent perimeter fencing? How are you doing your fencing?
0:23:17 - Brooks
yeah, so we fenced the entire farm. I think it was 2022. Um, we put up timeless post electric fence. All All our interior fences, for the most part, are temporary fence. At this point. That's probably just because of indecision by me I'm a little bit nervous to put a permanent fence up because I might not like it. I would like I want somebody to come down and give me some pointers on where I should put permanent fence, saying that we did get involved with the nrcs and we in the last two years we furnished. Now we put in 8 000 feet of water pipe and frost free hydrants, so we're a little bit stuck on where some of the fences would have to go, but it oh yeah, as far as interior fences, everything's temporary and it really does work pretty good for us and talk about like your daily moves yeah, yeah, so we're doing daily moves, the feeder cattle we're, so we're not feeding grain right now.
In previous years we would feed grain from weaning all the way until finish, but over the last couple years we put them on pasture. We do daily moves. This year we're doing moves twice a day and we're not going to feed grain until the last 60 days. Oh yeah, and we also got a pens agro gate lifter or fence lifter, which I'm struggling with at this point, but from my understanding, there's a training process along with that, so we're just going to keep plugging away at it. Our cows are mostly once a day moves. Every once in a while, on the weekends, I'll I'll do some twice a day moves, try to do some high stock density and stuff what's our herd?
0:24:41 - Abby
like we have our cow?
0:24:42 - Brooks
calf yeah, we have our cow calf describe what we have going on today.
0:24:46 - Cal
Yeah, we have two herds see, I should just let abby run this so we have cow calf.
0:24:52 - Brooks
We got 32 cow calf and then we got 40, 40 feeder cattle that we're going to finish this year and then we do. I should mention we do have a pastured pork operation too oh, I didn't realize you had pork as well.
Yeah. So we got in that by accident because during COVID all these big confinement operations were euthanizing animals and we've got a couple of friends in the pork industry and they said, hey, we got 18 pigs here we're going to euthanize. Do you want them? So we took that opportunity, which was a mess at first. We, which was a mess at first we put them on pasture. They were out there with the feeder cattle. It was entertaining and we learned a lot. We learned that they don't move or load like cows. That was probably the biggest issue we had, but overall it was pretty successful.
We sold them right away. We made some good money. Part of the reason is we got them for free and there was demand for it, so we continued to do it after that. Last year was the first year that we would rotate them. We gave them a section every week. We had out on pasture fully. That came with some challenges, but I think overall we went and looked at the pasture the other day that they were in and it's recovering. We think it made some improvements and people seem to like the pork too and that first year they had all hernias.
0:26:03 - Abby
So they had these giant basketball-sized hernias and that's basically why, they were going to get rid of them.
0:26:08 - Brooks
They were ugly.
0:26:08 - Abby
They were really bad, but when they got out there, it was their first time being outside, and so they were running around like they were so excited. And then, by the time they went to slaughter, most of their hernias were gone, which was like a really cool that sold me on the pastured pork thing.
0:26:24 - Brooks
That was like a really cool thing to see. Yeah, it was like a rehabilitation center for them, but then we obviously slaughtered them and sold them they had a good end of the life, though, yeah yeah, two things with that.
0:26:36 - Cal
First, on your cattle are you buying feeders in to, to feed out to or processing?
0:26:43 - Brooks
yeah. So we had 26 calves last year. Demand is bigger than that, so we ended up buying another 17 feeder cattle and we're tossing around the idea. I just attended a marketing and economics workshop with Understanding Ag. I came out of that with really questioning the idea whether we should have our own cows or not. They gave us some decision calculators and Alan Williams I'm sure you're familiar with him.
I asked him the biggest thing I idea whether we should have our own cows or not. They gave us some decision calculators and alan williams I'm sure you're familiar with him. I asked him my biggest thing I want to take out of this is is it worth us having our cows and rather than just buying feeders? And he laughed and he said 90 of the time for small producers it's not worth having your own cows. And also, we can hook you up with some good genetics. Don't believe that your genetics are superior to what's available out there. Yeah, we're really tossing the idea around. Abby's not fond of it, but is it financially worth it? And I think some years maybe it is and most years it isn't.
0:27:35 - Abby
I just think that the cows come with a little bit more stability. Being our own market that will go right into our feeders. To me seems a little bit more stable, riding the market price and going and sourcing them and that seems like a lot of stress. And then I just feel like we've worked really hard to get, we've culled a lot. We've went through this whole journey with these cows and maybe I'm being a little too emotional, but I think I I'm not sold on the idea. Obviously, if the pencil makes sense and the financials make sense, I'll be on board. But I think the scary part is just year from year it's going to be completely different.
0:28:14 - Brooks
I read a book one time called how to Not Go Broker Anshun, and one of the quotes in there was marry your wife, not your cows, and that stuck with me.
0:28:24 - Cal
But, like Abby said, that's a tough transition. I've mentioned on the podcast before that my dad and I have this discussion with his herd, with my herd. I really have a affection for the cows. We've bred them for generations and they're not ideal but we think they're going in the right direction. It's hard at times to think just getting rid of that, but so much I see when you start penciling it out. Just doing a stocker program to finish is much better if you have that in market, but, man, I like my cows. If you have that in market, but man, I like my cows. In fact I sold some cows last year that I'm still complaining to my wife. I sold because I just like them so much, which is not a healthy attitude for a business to be ran as a profit.
0:29:15 - Abby
No, that's yeah, it's a it's a tough balance yeah everybody loves their cows, for sure I think it's like life to the life balance. We're at a kind of a weird spot. We just opened up a retail store on farm two weeks ago and so we're in the the landing point of do we jump and go full force and do we? We get rid of the cows, we expand the feeders, we just get a ton of this going and we're the meat people and we're the retail people, or do we hold on to the cows and see how it goes and wait a little bit longer? That's just a lot of a lot has been brought to our plate in the last two years, and so we're just trying to decide what our business plan is. What makes sense for our family? What makes sense?
0:30:01 - Brooks
for our family, oh yeah it makes sense financially and yeah, yeah, I think the biggest question with, or the biggest positive if we didn't have the cows is we could have more feeder cattle and we could sell more meat. And from my, from what I look, the way I looked at it, there's more margin in the feeder cattle and selling direct market business rather than the cow calf. It it just always seems to be that way. So, yeah, some years we can raise a calf cheaper than we can buy it. Some years we can't. But the margin for a cow-calf is, I think it'll always be smaller than feeder cattle stockers and then selling direct to consumer. But that would also we would basically double our meat sale. We'd have to double our meat sales. So that's also another balance.
0:30:46 - Cal
Right, and it's also with you having that already, that market defined and you're already able to market. You could and this is me just off the cuff you could grow that feeder size while slowly reducing the cow size based upon what your market providing you, while slowly reducing the cow size based upon what your market is providing you, yeah, and that way gives you some of that assurance and security of keeping a foot on both sides of the fence.
0:31:12 - Brooks
Yeah, I think in the past too. I mean, I've been pretty married to the cows. You know, we're trying to grow our cow herd trying to grow our cow herd and we were a little bit, we weren't very aggressive with them. I guess I should say we had a longer calving period. We wouldn't call a cow necessarily if she had a big problem. We would just maybe wait until she didn't breed and then we would send her. I think this year I'm just going to get really strict. I'm going to do a 45-day calving window. Anybody that has any problems is going to go. Anybody that doesn't breed back is going to go. Anybody doesn't breed back is going to go. And we're just, we're going to get more strict with our calling program. Oh yeah, and maybe we won't get rid of the cows totally, but we're going to hopefully have some really good cows rather than holding on to these. Oh yeah, these stragglers. I don't think it's doing us any good and we we have a pretty good.
0:32:04 - Abby
We've went from having a lot of calving issues to almost none. That's already been so much better on the side of pro cows. We constantly have this pro and con cows discussion. On the pro cows, our cows are calving. We're not touching them, we don't do anything, they're just doing their thing. Knock on wood Right as we talk in their canal but and we've worked them hard, in my view, because of growing up with a conventional cow herd where they didn't really do a lot of walk in and move in- oh yeah we're.
We're working them really hard and they've been through a lot and I feel like they're the ones that are doing really well, are doing really well. Obviously, you're going to have the stragglers that we do need to call yeah and make into, which is another thing. In our retail store we're trying to do some brats and some processed meats and some value-added products, so we're hoping that those cold cows will do that for us for the summer grilling season yeah, which obviously doesn't make it calling a cow burn so much.
0:33:04 - Brooks
There's some years where you can get a good call cow market, but some years you can't. So if we're able to add some value to them, what let's call her, make some money on her oh yeah, one last question on the cows before we jump back to the pork for just a moment.
0:33:19 - Cal
What breed of cattle are you all using? Do you have have a preference?
0:33:24 - Brooks
I'm a little partial to red Angus, but if you look at our herd, we've got brown, black, white, we've got all kinds of things, but we do have a red. Angus bull. We've had a red Angus bull for three years now, so it's definitely becoming more and more red for sure. Yes, up until the last two or three years, we really haven't had a preference. But back in 2013, we bought a group of red Angus and we still have 90% of those cows.
0:33:52 - Cal
Oh nice.
0:33:52 - Brooks
And they perform really well, so it just sold me on the red Angus.
0:33:57 - Abby
Oh yeah, for sure, same here. I don't see myself or see our production going to more of the grass-fed breeds. I think we definitely prefer more.
0:34:06 - Cal
Well Reading on your pastured pork. Are you bringing in feeders and just growing them out?
0:34:13 - Brooks
Yeah, we haven't got any sows yet. We're not really set up to have pigs in the winter. It's our biggest issue. We're in an area where it really hasn't been an issue finding feeder pigs and you know some years. They're fairly reasonable.
0:34:27 - Abby
And also our house. Another interesting nuance is our house is down the road from the farm. So I just feel like Sal, you know, I feel like if our house was actually on the farm we would be more open to getting things like that. Oh yeah, we're down the road, so we can't really always have our eyes on them.
0:34:46 - Cal
I know, just speaking of that a little bit, I grew up my mom and dad's house two miles away from the dairy and just that two miles is not that far, but it was far enough that we just didn't run down all the time. We grouped those trips and if we have to we'd run back and forth because it's not that big a deal, but just that little bit of distance makes a difference in your mindset and how you're managing and doing things.
0:35:12 - Abby
Yes, yeah, and there's definitely pros and cons, I think, to having the house a little ways from the farm. We get to turn it off a little bit more than we would if we were, it was out our side, our window.
And for a family small young family it's nice to be able to just talk about something else for a minute. But definitely the cons are like when I'm at home with the girls I can't just go outside and we can go see the cows. We have to load up into the car and head down there and so that's frustrating, especially and with the retail store.
we've had to make some pretty yes, and so that's frustrating, especially with the retail store. We've had to make some pretty boundaries with our hours so that these are our hours and we're not accepting just random walk-ins because we're just not sometimes not there. So that's one of the cons on that.
0:35:58 - Cal
One thing you all had mentioned early on that when those first cows Brooks, you direct marketed them to the consumer yes that was covid was a big mind shift for a lot of people. That people started looking for locally sourced meats. But this was prior to that. How did you develop and cultivate that market?
0:36:20 - Brooks
I guess, to be honest with you, my grandfather owned a business and most of it, maybe half to 75%, went to his business for a benefit that the employees got.
0:36:32 - Cal
Oh, very nice.
0:36:33 - Brooks
But we grew on that. Obviously we got a little bit of our name out. Shop teacher bought it. It was the first steer that I sold was to him. People just started to hear about us a little bit family friends oh yeah, so we had some hitty sales there at the beginning. Yeah, oh, my first sale was definitely I'm not I'm not sure if the meat was any good, but we sold and it just yeah, it was word of mouth, for sure oh yeah there was people back then that did value where their meat came from right, yeah, but let's transition to the overgrazing section.
0:37:07 - Cal
And the overgrazing section we take a little bit deeper dive into something about your operation, and I just had a conversation the other day. Maybe it should be called severe grazing. We're taking a deep dive for just a little while and then we're moving on from it. Today we're going to talk about using social media to sell beef, but let's just talk about that in general. You've already mentioned how you started that market. How did you grow that market and continue to expand it?
0:37:38 - Abby
I'll take the reins on this one. Obviously, he's doing the production side of things and obviously I'm helping as well, but my thing has been social media, and it started with just like cute pictures of the cows and people were, oh you guys are out there, huh, and doing things, and that was back in 2012. So we've we've been posting for 12 years or so, and so it started out with just a few pictures here and there of the cows, and then, obviously, you know the trends of social media. They have definitely grown. Instagram, tiktok, all those things are now very, a very big deal. So with starting that, I don't think we really sold meat out of the from the social media until probably 2019, 2018. But then obviously, like you said, 2020,. Everybody was just bored, and on social media too.
So it definitely grew in that sense and when we got an Instagram and really started making videos and trying to get a little bit more intentional with our marketing. I always say to people that ask I'm always getting people that are like oh, I see you on social media and sometimes it feels like a self-indulgent project, but in a lot of ways, yeah, it's part of the business, it's marketing, oh yeah.
And so just getting more intentional and coming up with what's our mission it's helped us get an avenue and then trying to show people what we're doing and how our practices have changed, and trying to get people to buy in to the beauty of it and to the romanticized version of this regenerative agriculture thing and which it is. It's beautiful to see, so we're always trying to capture that. And then then, I guess, as far as today, we have an Instagram and a Facebook, and those two are definitely different in a lot of ways. Instagram is a lot of videos. It's turned into a video platform. I always say, though Instagram is a large audience, so when you're posting videos, you're getting a lot of views, but maybe they're not your customers, so we don't really want to be influencers or social media famous or anything.
So we're kind of we don't really want to be like influencers or social media famous or anything, so we don't necessarily try that hard in those things. But Facebook is much more our customers and our communication with our customers. It's much more community-based. So the things we post, we get tons of comments on there from people that are actually buying our meat and want to stay in the loop. And then we're looking into starting to utilize some like individual groups on Facebook for like our customers so they can ask questions and communicate with us, and I think that and we're starting to work with Barn to Door, which they're setting up our website and our online store right now and then that will be a lot of streamlining and much more accessible for people to literally take the Instagram or the Facebook post or whatever and be able to click right into our online store.
I'm heading that project to try to make things everything just a lot more streamlined and have everything be a consistent branding. You want to have your page and your profile be consistent with what you're doing and be simple and make sense. In our area we're the first people to really do this, and so it's a whole new idea. The beauty of it really helps, but also trying to get the actual content to them and educate them a little bit on soil health and why it's important and why it's important for their health and our health and the soil health. So it's been a building project.
0:41:09 - Brooks
I would say definitely, too. The most popular things seem to be when we're out there with our kids and our families, versus us just showing a picture of a cow eating some grass. People seem to really enjoy seeing our kids out there, and maybe that's what's selling too selling our story versus our practices.
0:41:29 - Abby
Yeah, I think that's the main thing about our social media is just trying to sell the story. And then there's been to get ahead of the algorithm. That's what Barnador promises as well. Like the algorithm is going to be in favor of someone that has consistent branding, is posting all the time. We find that. I find that I have more interactions with people. If I post from 5 pm to 9 pm, more people are seeing it If I post it from like noon or so, just trying to find the.
It's quite an art to. It's not just like here's a selfie of me and like we'll post it, trying to be really intentional about everything that we post and have a mission to. It's not just like here's a selfie of me and like we'll post it, trying to be really intentional about everything that we post and have a mission to it. Our new thing is like buy your meat from a farmer. It's just like simple when you go to where you're not seeing the farmer, you're not seeing the impact of what your dollar is doing, so just doing those kinds of things. And then, yeah, we see a lot of interactions with our kids on there or just faces in general.
0:42:27 - Cal
Yeah, I think you mentioned this, but you have a Facebook group. I'm sorry. You have a Facebook page for the farm and then you've recently started a group as well.
0:42:40 - Abby
We haven't yet we're looking into that for our specific customers With the retail store. A lot of people just have a lot of questions and the retail store was only two weeks ago. We're thinking about trying that out and then it'll be a spot for us to be able to troubleshoot any issues with the online store, Because that's coming up too.
0:42:59 - Cal
So you're sharing stuff through your Facebook page, you're sharing stuff through Instagram. Are you doing any lives or are you doing all videos or photos content?
0:43:11 - Abby
So no lives yet. I know with my flower business I do a lot of lives when I'm making bouquets.
0:43:16 - Cal
Oh yeah.
0:43:17 - Abby
Yeah, so I do a lot of social media for my flower business as well, but I think I do a lot of stories. So on Instagram and the lives just haven't do a lot of stories. So on Instagram and the lives just haven't had a lot of performance. There's just not a lot of people on there. I think you have to do a lot in the evening and there's nothing. Nobody wants to see us, like giving our kids dinner Stories. We do lots of stories about what we're currently doing People like that and then I do a lot of little questions. So I'll post, ask a question or something and then I'll answer those questions and then on Facebook, all the stories that you do on Instagram go right to Facebook, so everyone can see those too, and we get a lot of interactions with my stories about what we are doing, live and that exact moment.
0:43:58 - Cal
Oh yeah, in addition to your Instagram and Facebook, do you also do email marketing?
0:44:06 - Abby
Yes, so that is the thing that we're now moving towards. So, now that I feel like we have established our social media presence, I obviously want to take all those things and streamline them into another place so that we can have one-on-one conversations with these people. I have tried to reach out and have people put their emails in, but that is not always successful. Barnador, when we make a sale, will capture the email for us, put it on a customer like. We'll create a customer list and then we'll be able to put out our email newsletters. I've even said I would like to have a mail newsletter because I get so many emails too.
There's just so much information being inundated at all times on social media, on your email. So just now, the next challenge is trying to get them to put their information in so that we can have direct conversations with them and give them more like customized information, more in-depth information. You have to have the people that care about where their food comes from and care about the mission which comes with caring about the environment, which specific person. So getting those people on a list is the next thing that we're working with Barnador on.
0:45:21 - Cal
Oh, very good. Do you see you expanding beyond Instagram and Facebook, or is that where you plan to maintain your social presence?
0:45:32 - Abby
Yeah, we're maintaining our social presence there. I can't do tiktok, I'm just yeah, or it's just.
0:45:37 - Cal
Brooks can't dance. What?
0:45:41 - Brooks
no, I probably could, oh yeah.
0:45:43 - Abby
I'm sorry yeah, I think obviously we went down the road of thinking about tiktok, but it is such a broad audience too. With a retail spot that is local in a small community, a large audience just really isn't in our goals because just not you have to think about who you're, who's watching it, but then who's a customer?
That's our thing you have to have some boundaries with social media. When we first started I was like, oh yeah, we're going to, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. We could do a YouTube video. And then I was like, okay, let's focus on our actual customers and just entertain them and gain new customers in our area. We don't need somebody from California watching our TikTok. If they're going to buy me, then great, but they're probably not. So we tried to create some boundaries with social media and say these are our customers, let's communicate with them and try to gain more customers in our local area and stick to Instagram and Facebook and obviously just our. I think our number one goal, like you said, is just get email marketing going, and we've done a little bit of text message marketing as well, because I think that's like a convenient way for people to get information. So, just yeah, sticking to those.
0:46:54 - Cal
With your social media marketing as well as your email? Are you working with kind of a calendar and planning it out a month at a time or a week, or are you just trying to identify those moments as you go through and say, oh, this is a moment I should share?
0:47:13 - Abby
Yeah, ideally I wish I could sit here and say I had a schedule and everything but no it's mostly an authentic posting situation.
We see moments, I videotape them. I try not to also have my phone out constantly when I'm out there. Just for well-being reasons I like to keep my boundaries with it and not just be constantly videotaping everything, because I have kids and we want to also enjoy our life on the farm. But obviously, like we're moving cattle, we're out in nature and maybe if I see something, it doesn't take much for me to grab my phone and just start recording and then maybe at the end of the week I'll go back and look at all my recordings and then I can make a quick reel. End of the week I'll go back and look at all my recordings and then I can make a quick reel with all the videos spliced together. And making videos is a whole art too, just having high quality video and high quality sounds and music and stuff trending audios. So I try to just stay up to date as much as I can with all that, but also keeping boundaries with social media so that I can also enjoy my real life.
0:48:10 - Cal
So very true, and I know from the podcast and what we do on social media that takes so much more time than you really think it's going to. You think, oh, it's just a post. It won't take too much time, but it takes time to get it, get the wording right, get it out there and then if you're getting engagement off of that, it takes time to reply to those people and make sure the conversation is going in a productive route.
0:48:36 - Abby
For sure, and I think with having kids it's a balance, because I don't want to be on my phone constantly when I have the kids but they go to daycare part-time a couple of times a week and so then I'll maybe record some things and then maybe when I have a daycare day, I have an office day, I'll sit down and I'll really hit it hard and just trying to like schedule out that time, uh, to be completely present with whatever I'm doing. That's been the balance.
0:49:03 - Cal
Very good, wonderful conversation thus far, brooks and Abby, but it's time we transitioned to our famous four questions. Our famous four questions, our famous four questions, are sponsored by Ken Cove Farm Fence Supplies. Ken Cove Farm Fence is a proud supporter of the Grazing Grass Podcast and grazers everywhere At Ken Cove Farm Fence. They believe there's true value within the community of grazers and land stewards. The results that follow, proper management and monitoring, can change the very world around us. That's why Ken Cove is dedicated to providing an ever-expanding line of grazing products to make your chores easier and your land more abundant.
Whether you're growing your own food on the homestead or grazing on thousands of acres, ken Cove has everything you need to do it well, from reels to tumblewills, polytwine to electric nets, water valves to water troughs, you'll find what you're looking for at Ken Cove. They carry brands like Speedrite, o'briens, kiwi Tech, strainrite, jobe and more. Ken Cove is proud to be part of your regenerative journey. Call them today or visit KenCovecom, and be sure to follow them on social media and subscribe to the Ken Cove YouTube channel at Ken Cove Farm Fence for helpful how-to videos and new product releases. They're the same four questions we ask of all of our guests. Our very first question what is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource?
0:50:34 - Brooks
So I would say my favorite resource would be Understanding Ag, their website, their newsletters You're getting one, I think it's a couple times a month, I guess I forget and then also the Grass Farmer. That's my favorite thing to get in the mail. I'm always reading it every time we get it. And as far as the book goes, jim garish's kick the hay habit was definitely a big eye-opener for me, and I recently just read the turnaround story or a rancher story by dave pratt.
That was. That's probably my favorite book and that didn't have a lot to do with grazing necessarily. It was more financial, but it was a big eye-opener for me.
0:51:12 - Cal
If you're not profitable, you're not going to be grazing too much, so I think it qualifies.
0:51:16 - Brooks
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can have the healthiest soil in the world, but if you're not making money, what good is it?
0:51:22 - Cal
Right, exactly. Yeah, abby, do you have some resources to share?
0:51:27 - Abby
Brooks mostly yeah.
0:51:29 - Cal
Oh, okay, there we go. That works again. I have two children, so reading a book is difficult yeah no problem, I just didn't want to leave you out thank you, so our second question what is your favorite tool for the farm?
0:51:45 - Brooks
utv for sure. That allows us to move the cows wherever we want, put up fence, the kids can go in it, the whole family can go in it. That we bought that in 2020 and before that we're using my old colorado and it was a pain in the butt to try to move cows and put up fence. And oh yeah, so definitely the utv that's been. Yeah, that's our. As my father-in-law says, it's his right hand man, oh yeah and he he added a little attachment to it.
0:52:11 - Abby
What was it last week where we can drive right over the fence and oh yes underneath the yeah, that's been life changing.
0:52:18 - Brooks
I don't know why it took me so long to do that, but I've often thought we have a utv here.
0:52:24 - Cal
My parents do. I don't use it very much, but I've looked into buying a UTV or ATV. Sticker price scare but I thought I get one. I've got to fix it so I can drive over it. It's just a hassle, as I'm out there in the pickup, yeah.
0:52:38 - Brooks
Yeah, for sure.
0:52:40 - Cal
Our third question what would you tell someone just getting started?
0:52:44 - Brooks
Get in contact with somebody that's already doing it. I, for the first couple years I was on YouTube a lot. I didn't have contact with a lot of people. Since we got in contact with Gabe, we attempted some grazing conferences. We've gotten contact with other people that are doing it and it's put us light years ahead just knowing different people that are doing it. Go to a grazing conference, just whatever you can do. Surround yourself with people that are already doing it, that are like-minded.
0:53:10 - Abby
And if you have a wife, keep an open form of communication with her and try to work together as much as possible. And yeah, like you said, just getting in communication with other people has really helped us for sure.
0:53:22 - Brooks
And attend a soil health academy. If you're just familiar with soil health, attend it. It'll change your mindset instantly.
0:53:29 - Abby
Not sponsored or anything.
0:53:37 - Cal
Excellent advice there.
0:53:43 - Brooks
And our last question where can others find out more about you? Instagram and Facebook, and we do have a website too, and I'm always open to people emailing me and calling me. I don't know everything, but I definitely love to chat about soil health and adaptive grazing.
0:53:55 - Cal
Wonderful Brooks and Abby, we really appreciate you coming on today and sharing.
0:54:00 - Brooks
Thank you this has been awesome.
0:54:02 - Abby
Yeah, thanks for having us, it was really fun.
0:54:04 - Cal
I really hope you enjoyed today's conversation. I know I did. Thank you for listening and if you found something useful, please share it. Share it on your social media, tell your friends, get the word out about the podcast. Helps us grow.
If you happen to be a grass farmer and you'd like to share about your journey, go to grazinggrasscom and click on Be Our Guest. Fill out the form and I'll be in touch. We appreciate your support by sharing our episodes and telling your friends about it. You can also support our show by buying our merch. We get a little bit back from that. Another way to support the show is by becoming a Grazing Grass Insider. Grazing Grass Insiders enjoy bonus content, monthly Zooms and discounts. You can visit the website grazinggrasscom, click on support and they'll have the links there. Also, if you haven't left us a review, please do. It really helps us, as people are searching for podcasts and I was just checking them and we do not have very many reviews for 2024. So if you haven't left us a review, please do. Until next time, keep on grazing grass.
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