History of The Bearded Butchers

it was 1948 lived in barnesville ohio my father was a farmer we also were construction laying brick and there's a if you remember flying out to the cabin there's a big red chimney up for chimney he laid that it worked in that chimney and he said it was so high that when you went inside you could see the stars shining like it was nighttime because there wasn't enough light to take it you know so it looked like it looked dark he laid that chimney up and then he lived in a there was a farmhouse in the barn and then down over the hill was the house and when i was first born when i they took me out of the hospital he lived on the farm and worked the farm and he and grandma lived in the house down over the hill so he he he always felt real proud because he said it was a first house in in that county that had running water in the bathroom and what what it was when i finally years went on he told me we looked at the old house and i told him i said oh where'd you where's the bathroom in here chad running water in here he said well i said i built the outhouse over top of the creek on board so had a lot of water you know i got a big kick out of that but he said snowed real bad one time down there and i was maybe two and i fell i went outside the front door on the porch and didn't mom didn't know it and i fell off the side of the porch and went underneath the snow snow caved in on top of me and she couldn't find me and got all frustrated and when i've got grandpa the top of the hill came down they figured out i was underneath snow so here they shoveled me out dad said it was like some snow cave there so it's a rugged rugged weather mom said all she ever saw was a mailman and he delivered mail with a mule and uh he he had one eyes all he had said she saw one-eyed man with the in the and the mules blind so he said they delivered the mail so it's pretty down in there and then uh dad got a job up at uh bmw in barberton and so we moved up there so i moved out of the primitive woods at about three four three or four and uh moved up to norton so i grew up there in you know school went to high school at uh walter met my lovely wife there she was 15 and i was 16. i got involved in sports and played football and playing the other sports just played football worked in i worked at a garden watch with gardens it was a big truck patch i used to work all week watch with gardens and get paid on saturday and i stopping at the dairy queen dairy queen's still up there the little ice cream store and i stopped at the ice cream store and get a hot fudge sundae reward myself when i got home i'd give dad the extra money to help you know pay the bills and whatever i worked there from 12 until i turned 16 and i had a driver's license i went to work for bixler electric and worked for vixel electric until i went in the army and i went in the army and got all shot up and got wet home you know i was there eight months eight nine months i think and uh got caught in an ambush it just uh you know it was kind of comical because a fellow by the name of selznick who's from cleveland ohio was in my unit and i was the the team leader as a buck sergeant and we there was a if you've ever seen pictures of the old cemeteries over in southeast asia and stuff there they're about those about half the just about this tall with a brick wall around it some wall and they had people buried in there and selznick and i were there at that cemetery and we walked inside to look at the stones they had up in there and we heard this kind of quack quack quack quack sound couldn't figure out what was going on we looked up on the hill and here there was a tank that came up over the hill now the u.s military had tanks but i never saw anything they weren't out in the jungle you know so i didn't know where they used tanks and i thought that was odd cells and i thought well that was odd and we kind of waved to him all of a sudden we heard saw that top of that tank turret turned faced our way we saw this big red star on the side of the barrel thought oh man here that's north vietnamese so they lit us up they lit that cemetery up but they didn't want to desecrate it i think so they used little uh they were like little little needles about as long as your little finger is half that size and shot these needles at us so we're all in all around a cemetery and finally he and i snuck outside got away from got back to where our unit was we were platooned so there's maybe 30 of us kind of gave him an idea what was what and it's just about getting dark so the tank went off because we called in some rounds on it from the base the artillery base there was about 15 miles away and they dropped some scared the tank off so then the next morning we got up it was still almost dark when they but there was nobody in the village nobody outside nothing saw one old cow walking around thought well i thought no dogs were working or nothing that was odd because they they wouldn't have known we were out there would didn't think but they did and so we went around the we were by the cemetery went around the cemetery and then threw this cow pasture and hill went up trailing over the hill and so we decided you know who i had no use for lieutenant he's a lieutenant real cocky and definitely wouldn't be somebody you'd want to follow he was he was the team leader and my unit was in a lerp team and we were a four-man team and we never were with the platoon when we got into a space like this and they wanted to know what was going on they sent us out and four-man team we went out and surveyed everything around would radio back and let them know what was up and we're never really with them but this time we were with them down there and so we were going up this church started to go up this trail said you know woke up top of this and i said i don't think that's smart i said better let us go up the lerp team and we'll check it out we'll see if it's okay but i wouldn't go up there but don't tell me what to do he said i'm a lieutenant you're just a buck sergeant he had been there maybe two weeks i've been there nine months and said he said well i'm giving you an order boom so i said all right so i told my team which was four of us i told them i said you stay down here at the bottom of the hill and be back up and i'll take [Music] so anyhow we got up top of the hill and when we got top of the hill boy just hill might all blown up they had a nva that tank had seen us and i'm sure they had their lerps and they went out and found out we were a platoon not just two guys staying in cemetery and they alerted the villagers to stay inside and they sent this ambush up and that's when i got hit got all busted down trees flying i just i mean it was like well it's like your body goes into slow motion so when in slow motion i could actually see trees falling down small ones about this big round but it was moving real slow and then you know i felt getting shot and i got shot in the knee first and i fell down i got up and you you're always trained the only thing you can do when you get caught in an ambush is assault because if you they're lined up and if you run to the left or retreat back they got your in their line of fire the whole way and on the hill you know they get you running down the hill so the only thing you can do is attack so i attacked and a couple other fellas and everybody got killed except myself and two other guys so anyhow you know those we we got through the ambush and they took off and you couldn't see from here to you away in that jungle so you couldn't i don't i don't i don't remember seeing any of those i remember getting shot so i knew you know somebody was in there so whenever i never did see anybody and they called in the helicopter and lifted me out and then came back got the dead guys i was remember i was sitting in the hospital laying in the hospital they they took me in and there was a big round stainless steel bowl like you'd have in the meat plant in about three three feet off the floor and dished in it and they put me in there and cut all my clothes off because you know had so much blood going and it brought a hose down and they had a x-ray thing up on there and he brought the hose down and hosed me off and got all the blood off and anyhow they saw where i was all shot up then rolled me over in like a gutter and washed off back side of me and my knees and stuff and looked around and took me down i was gone woke up and they sent me that was down at the base hospital there then they sent me to quignon hospital and that's where they really evaluate you so anyhow i was there for whatever and they shipped me from queen yon to uh it took me to attach a cow in japan and i spent a long time there on how long but long enough i got over there and they were trying to decide if they were going to cut my leg off or leave it because it got got pretty bad infected they decided to take me to the hospital room and they'd make a decision when i got in there and when when i got out of the operating room and took me back to the bed fell outside me said i'd been out for four days because they gave me uh morphine gave me morphine because i had like the stitches if i showed you my leg go from the back of my knee up to almost my groin and they cleaned all that out and they saved the leg though they didn't cut it off i was bad with that but they had this big like baler bearer wire you know some bales used wire and they were all twisted together little pieces of them all the way up to my leg and my shoulder where they sewed me up so they kept me on their morphine and i kept rolling over and i could see the trees walking i told the guy beside me i said man i said you know trees are walking he said nah you're doped up and i'd go out again they'd give me more morphine finally i got clear the morphine wasn't seeing trees walking anymore but i was hurting a little bit and i asked that guy where he got hurt now i was feeling sorry for myself because i got shot four times maybe five don't know but shot four times got shot and this cheek out went out this side of mouth so i don't hear that and i would crunch this when i when i moved my mouth real wide so i had quite a few holes and i asked that guy i'm thinking i've shot four times and i said how many times you get shot and he said oh man i got shot uh 18 times i said 18. he said yeah i got caught in an ambush got knocked down first shot and i had a machine gun and i got hit nine times up this side here he said inside turned rolled around got my belly and rolled around the other side and he shot me nine times up that side i couldn't believe that i said and you survived you said yeah i did and so i said wow so they sent me back to uh fort knox kentucky and when i got to fort knox kentucky they hadn't taken the wire stitches out of me yet but when i got to fort knox kentucky they took them out there and well and i was awake i thought where they could take you in the hospital room and they said no we we just twist the wires and snip the ends off so they don't have that curlicue on them and we pull the wire out and wow that hurt boy pulled all those wires out and then i uh called mom and dad and they came down picked me up and they sent me home for 30 days and then i had to report back to the barracks and then go for doctors so anyhow they i i was home for 30 days everything healed up pretty good and they sent me back to the hospital went before the review board and they offered me a medical discharge had strings attached to it though i'd be discharged i'd still be in the army but i'd be on the register but i'd be sent home i forget what it was a year or something and then i had to go before the review board again and if i was found fit for any kind of duty i i would be taken back in and serve my time that i was home it was two years served my time that i was home plus the time i had left in the army then so you're looking at four years in i'd say wait a minute i told them i said i said you can forget that but they gave me a t3 profile and that's limited you on what you could do and what it said on there was no and i was a paratrooper you know jumping out airplanes and infringement so i got that paper and bought me a car uh common cycle in 65 cycle and they sent me home for 30 days to leave you know even though i'd been home already for how long was i home three months so i was home for three months but they gave me a 30-day leave and orders to report to fort bragg north carolina 82nd airborne so i got my t3 profile and looked at it and said on there no prolonged running no for a long standing no prolonged sitting no prolonged on down list about this this long of no prolonged whatever so basically he couldn't do anything so i took the profile i just pulled it up through my bags and i went down to fort bragg and reported for duty and i'd grown a beard and didn't even look like i was in the army and well they didn't like that and they told me to get shaved and report next morning the 82nd airborne so i did so i reported the 82nd airborne and they put me in with the in the barracks with the fellas that were in there and i hadn't pulled my profile out i hadn't said anything i just they ain't gonna look and i ain't gonna tell so and i was hurting someone but anyway they came in one night in barracks they surrounded the whole barracks big brick building with constantino wire and i said hey that ain't normal what's that you know and they said well you got you got orders this whole unit's going to be sent to nominate unity second tomorrow morning at 0-800 and i said whoa i ain't going back so everybody in here i said maybe they'll work it out over there and i said i don't so i quick got my my car and got my t3 profile and that's when i used my t3 profile i that might as well leave me here i ain't going over you know i couldn't so once they found out i had a t3 profile they everybody they shipped everybody out so they're all gone i was the only fellow there so they made me the guy inside the upstairs top who was the boss but basically you know you told people when when they could go and when they could stay and but there wasn't nobody tell you sat there so i said man this is bunch of crap so i i made a couple of jumps with them when i was down there but i didn't jump i was the safety nco so i didn't pull my thing in but i pulled the t3 profile for that up there and they uh see how they they found out but there's no way they could send me to nam and they were going to leave me as an orderly up in the room and when new troops came in you know i i said nah i just quietly went out and got my t3 profile tossed it in the garbage and then i put an application in for drill sergeant school because they were always wanting guys for school combat veterans so i i got approved for that and a couple days later i was shipped out and i was in south carolina i think i think it was fort jackson south carolina i went to draw sergeant school and it seemed odd because here i was already a buck sergeant i'm going to school to be a drill sergeant but that school was tough it was tough it was so tough because you had to be an example and teach the others that your foot locker according to army regulations they have a book that says your toothbrush should be one inch from the top left-hand corner half inch from east corner and gave definition for socks had to be tightened on and on the top thing and blah blah blah and then you lifted it up and then your pants and shirt and stuff underneath there they had to be spotless so you took the first thing you did was i went in and took my foot locker and got a jar of elmer's glue and i glued everything down on my thing so it stayed the same way everything and then i had a bag out in the car that i used to brush my teeth and soap stuff and and left those in there and the bed i slept on the floor everybody did because the bed had to be tight enough that that drill start would come in the morning and flip quarter and it had to land on the bed and bounce off it had to be that tight that was hard to get that way so you made your bed and put your locker and fixed it all up and then joe sardone would come in there in the morning and hang his pants up and you knew whoa he was hardcore and he had to go all through grocery school and then they'd look look at who you were and what you did and what your service record was and then they would pick the top men and they'd give him a pay raise and pay grade up stream up a stripe so pretty good it gave you 600 bucks a pay grade increase and sword not not a junky sword like this one real nice shiny one but yeah you had to go in for the general and they examined you so i remember i went in and everything was spotless i went in and they locked my heels and said you know why you're here and i said yes i do sir and i slaughtered him and all that and he said well you become highly recommended uh as being the top graduate i said but you know we reviewed your records and heard what the drill sergeant had to say and you were number one and he said but there are were interviewed a couple other fellas also i said that's fine he said but one thing one thing we got issue with your hair isn't short enough and it was i mean it was this short he said your reason for that and i said yes sir i said i'm getting married three days from now and he said well you can get your hair cut before you leave here and i said i'm not getting married in my uniform and not having a bald head so that's off the table that was it for me i've done so you know they picked uh some guy from cleveland but i drove home and uh tried to wash the army off because of getting married you know but anyway went to draw some starting school married bonnie went to a sergeant school couldn't wait till i got out and then finally well we were there for a year maybe and i got my discharge papers so i was getting out so man was i glad for that i wanted to put the army so far behind me that nothing to do with it anymore but the one thing that was good is is i was raided on that t3 profile they they didn't discharge me out of the army they discharged me to wade park the va hospital in cleveland that's where they discharged me so i had a report there and then they examined me and because of all my wounds they gave me a 100 disability which was pretty good income i was pretty good so went home and started pouring concrete with don brogan concrete construction for my dad worked there and they took it easy on me a little bit because of disability and went to work for them and then well yeah i'll tell it just the way it is you know danny madigan comes and visits me and saw denny and i were high school buddies graduates together and when i got out of nom and he got back from nam he went to work for uh grandpa pouring concrete myself and so we worked worked together and i was going living living on lake road in the middle wood woods just a beautiful place to live loved it farmed a little bit but denny's car was out at laconia he used to be a beer joint down on grunge road so i was taking him out to the after work to get his car and we were driving down the road and the night before the night before i was riding with motorcycle club and they owned i owned a motorcycle shop with them because i took some of my disability and put it in there and funded the thing first went into the bar i mean it's all interlocked so i got to tell this part when we were in the bar for a beer and a fella by the name of fred perkins ironically in an outlaw i met him somehow and he needed a place to keep his motorcycle free in the winter so i said well hey i live way back in the woods and i got a grenade on the door you know i'm an old soldier so nobody will steal it'll get blown up maybe but it won't get stolen so he took his bike out i kept it out there that winter and it was just turned spring just getting ready to i mean it was getting warm enough ride but if you're a former tough guy you rode when it's cold so i rolled and it's cold up this motorcycle shop and it's up in akron i we got done in the shop and somebody said let's go get a beer so we wrote we rode the car over yeah and i went in it went in and i saw some fellas up at the bar who had outlaw colors on so i knew they were outlaws i walked up to the guy tapped him on the back and he turned around and i said hey i said do you know fred perkins and he says what the blanky blank do you care so i'm just asking i said he keeps his motorcycle out of my place and i watch it for him and it's good enough now tell him he can come anytime pick that up he cussed me out about something so i and he went to hit me and so i had in that interim in that time i was home because i was disabled and couldn't really defend myself i became a black belt in karate so i knew a lot of stuff and this fella went swinging at me and i i killed him and knows who he's about i'd kill him i just hit him one time and he there's a spot here on your throat and i caved so i just smacked him down he went and all the guys were with me in the in the shop there hell's angels they everybody's getting ready to get out get get it on they said we're gonna get you out of here he's killed him you know so they got me out of there and took me back to the club the clubhouse motorcycle shop and then i got my bike and i wrote home i thought oh man i screwed this up went through nom went through all that got a successful motorcycle business going and here i go and drop this guy man you know but i thought well truth is cops probably don't kill one biker kills another biker but did i know that i didn't i thought my luck could guy be undercover cop dressed as one or something so i got home got a bit of bunny and i just poured my heart out to the lord and i said father i mean i had a background of christianity but i really was never walking i said oh lord i said i screwed this up and i said i've killed this guy i said one killing him is enough but now after all i've been through i'll go to prison i was really i said i i said whatever it takes to make me a christian i never understood and i confessed that to him and i got up the next day went to work and i was taking denny out to the colonies to get his car he drank too much night four and somebody took him home and his car is out there after work so i went to take him home and i'm going down the road and this guy is standing right in the middle of the road right right a couple hundred feet up from the coneys i got out of the car and i said what the blank plank are you doing i said you get killed sitting out here in the middle road and he said i he said i see how did he say that he said the lord hath heard your prayer he said and he's brought me with the message [Music] i shot up and he said you know here's if you repent and follow him here's your line here here here will be your life i showed three boys all in getting in a canoe and i get in with them and we paddle down the river and i got this wonderful family and this wonderful life and he said and if you don't he said here will be your life and it showed these boys growing up drinking raisin cane unlocked their life he said then you'll stand for the lord someday give a count boy i was shook up so we had stepped off the side of the road so traffic would hit us and i got back in the car and then he said what does sam hell was that and i said i just had an answer from god prayer he says well i heard you talking to that fellow but i didn't couldn't see him i couldn't see you he's out and i said well yeah so i said well let's go to laconies and you got to get your car and he said yeah so i drove down laconies and we got out of the car and i'm so thick-headed i was gonna go in and have a beer so i headed toward towards the door to get a beer and all of a sudden my jacket got pulled up over the top of my head and i spun around throwing up against the car and then he said what the heck he said who are you fighting and i said that then so much i got the jacket back down and then he said i'm i'm going home i'm getting out of here i said all right i'm going home too and i got back in the car and then i drove home and i never drank of beer since then i don't even thought about it just the lord knew i was hardheaded you know so i i gave it all the lord and went home and told buddy you got a new husband in that took my motorcycle jacket off and threw at the bottom of steps she said you got a new hudson i said i've repented so i did so i told denny and then called billy bird he was the head of the fets and told him you can have the shop i said i don't want anything out of it i said i don't not a holy roller but i ain't going in there no morning nothing else so i left when i left i left and i kept thinking that the outlaw biker in there like called his name was nickname i don't know what his real name was it was chicken plucker and since somebody told me well chicken plucker put a hit out on you i said he i didn't kill him he said no he lived he's live spent some time in the hospital but he got a contract on you i said oh man so well that's part of paying for your sins i guess the way it is so i just went about my business and devoted myself to the family and kept working the farm and i was uh morris midnight man his family was put out of the church but morris came up said i heard you want a farm and i said yeah and he said well i've got heifers farm on granite road he said you can live there rent free if you feed heifers for me so i said all right so i was ready to do that he came up and he said well he said the boys don't want the farm i don't want salt just anybody he said i'll tell you what he said uh maybe you can work out something with the boys they're getting the farm i think they want to sell it so i thought i had it made because i was living there rent free and all i do is feed feed heifers but the boys came up and offered me the farmer the right price but the house was in rough shape they said we'll give you three thousand dollars to fix up the house we fix the house up inside it was needed some work so that's how i got up on that hill which was good you know i was out of town i was up in the hills farming and they got rid of their cows and i had something so i brought cows in and started milk and became a dairy farmer didn't know anything about i didn't farm anybody know anything about dairy and i mean i'd milked it a little bit but not run the dairy so we struggled along and sean was was he born when we moved up there 10 maybe yeah so that that worked out well real well i mean we got to the farm there and straight straight voltage yeah that's right we went through a straight voltage problem i got put milkers on the cow first morning i remember i went out to put milkers on and cow actually jumped up in the ground and fell down what so she got back up and i couldn't hardly even handle her so i moved the cow behind and reached up to wash off her cheeks and spark jump from there in my finger and i thought so the cows wouldn't come in the parlor i couldn't get any milkers on them and we had about a 90 pound average 90 pound hurt every so because i was disciplined then you know and it went to zero couldn't get the cows in but i know it's just funny because at night they or the morning they'd come in leery but they'd come in and kind of stomp around whatever and i could milk them but at night they wouldn't come in at all and i'd have had a double four herringbone parlor that i put in and i'd have eight cows boom go right to the floor oh what in the world and here what i finally figured out i checked some things around and knew there was such a thing as stray voltage nobody had it in our area i'd read about the magazine but here they were getting shocked so i called the wildsworth fire department or electrical guys and they came out and looked at it and then sent some fellows out and got to talking and whatever but we couldn't figure out where the voltage was coming from because they'd come out and test it during the day and nothing would happen and i said well it doesn't you know does uh in the morning and in the evening late and so what it was we figured out was when it was dark they were getting shocked so they thought it was had to be somebody people getting up in the morning and showering and flushing the toilet whatever and somehow it was getting up to our parlor and he said well the the voltage the straight voltage when when you get a shortened electric somewhere it seeks the closest ground and the best ground and you've got off this double four milk parlor and all your you got wiring here and rod it's this is the best ground in the system so it's coming here and said you're on the end you're on the end of the thing i'm on top of the hill there across from tav tev was tavanello up about the roping tavern out half a mile [Music] he said well got to be here so they went from wadsworth all the way out to my place looking for that ground and all of a sudden it was gone they couldn't figure it out and then the next day i same thing and they'd go out and they checked these they checked every house all the way from was worth out to the top of that hill looking for that couldn't find it i don't know what it's going to do cows all got mastitiz milk chuck went to zero zero i'm surprised he didn't charge me but it went to zero it was nothing in the tank and they came out and tested the wires and all that and the fella from washer if the head head guy says told me he's a christian i said i appreciated that and he said i feel so far sorry for you said i've been praying for you and i asked the lord show me show me and the lord says the neighbors like post i thought what he said so i came out we came out with a stepladder and climbed up there was no the milkers came on everything was fine cows weren't getting shocked there was nothing in the parlor so he said i just said well there ain't no nothing there and i went home he said the lord woke me up from the night and said he didn't didn't do it right so you took that ladder up and i shook the short apart says take take a bucket truck out there so he did he said his superior said man you're nuts you're putting too much time in this and he said nah i prayed so i went out and instead of taking the ladder up there i got in the bucket truck and put it on there man it sparks everywhere he said so we found it they went out there the next day and fixed it that was the end of the straight voltage and so i was the first guy to have straight voltage in ohio and ohio they called the supervisor the electric department from washington to speak in columbus about what he found out because they were having other problems in the state and he said i told him he said the first thing you got to do is pray he said i hadn't humbled myself enough and it was a simple thing like that light but that he said he didn't expect it because it was so far out from wasworth and through all these other places and yet it jumped those two wires there's enough heat on there he said and they they're i don't know if they still do it but at that time you rented that light and from the city and the city has hasn't hooked up direct that's why there's so much juice on there so once they found that out and they reported that and i lost i lost everything it was so bad my mom our diet got so bad she lost all her teeth i mean it was bad bad bad and i was we were still pouring concrete so we had some income hadn't been for that i'd have been belly up but the fellow from washington came out the norm bragg he just retired it's all in the paper he's my age he came out and said well you know they gave me all the reports and showed me everything and that light said they rented that light and i said oh i didn't know that i said yeah they rent that light off the city of water he says so that makes us responsible for the problem not them he said we're willing to settle for a million dollars give a million dollar check right now wow he said because we know you could probably get five to ten million he said but straight up i shouldn't we you you'd have to sue us so you have to go through that i can't just give you a million dollars but i'll won't fight it we'll we'll agree to it and i told him i said no i said i'm i'm born again christian and our church teaches not to sue and you use lawsuits and i said so no i wouldn't sue you he couldn't believe it but i i told no i couldn't do it so i didn't sue him and then i took all the crap from my debt i had tons of debt you know but i with the lord's help i said well he saved me and he showed this fella here i'll get this i just kept on shoveling and i kept at it and finally got up on top of it and things were going cows doing good farms doing good and the men and i fell down the road from me wanted to start farming and he said hey he said somebody said you were tired of milk and you're thinking about selling your cows would you sell them to me and i said you put a price on them you got them so he brought some brethren down from the church and they went through and they were gone i said thank you lord they didn't have no cows anymore like but a head up in the middle that bison right your arm his name was major and i bought his herd he only had three left he had had hundreds but he sold him i had three left he he actually called me on the phone and asked me to i started 10 heights i built the cabin up there and i started tanning hides some of these are highs are out of there and he saw his 10 heist and called me and said i'm going to kill some bison for the hunt club would you be interested in 10 heights for me and i said yeah i'd do that so i tan the heights and we never tasted the meat but he told me how good it was and blah blah blah i didn't know anything about bison means so get out but this is one of those three he had and he had bought those bison off of him he actually went to arizona on trip he wanted to see his sister out there or something so he asked me if i'd do the chores out his farm out near cloverleaf high school i said yeah i'd do that so i went out and did the chores for the bison so i got to know him and there were more than three there then but i got to know him a little bit and i knew he was going to kill him along and i tanned those three hides for him and he loved his heist he called me on the phone he said you like those bikes and i said yeah i really like him he said they're yours he said well i'll make a deal with you when i get home but if you want them they're yours so that's how i got in the pacing business when i got those and i remember i i got the first ones i loaded from him and i load them on the back of the trailer and i just bought a new trailer and the first bison that went in threw his head up put his horns right through the top of that trailer and i thought whoa we said i told you they're they're wild and yeah they're wild but that was the first one i got that one home and man meat was just fantastic you know the children seth was sitting in a high chair he was 10. yeah he was you know yeah he was ten but he tasted that bison bunny didn't tell him it was bison she made meatballs right boy he said mommy said that's the best meat i've ever eaten so i was left sealed for us i called willard stevenson and i said hey i'll i'll take the rest of that herd so i did and he taught me everything he knew that's how i learned all you know the player wild bison they were wild our father founded the company in 1993 1994 and that that became the family business sean his history was really not really anything to do with butchering aside from maybe hunting or whatever a little bit of farm uh butchery that our dad did and my dad had a dairy farm and a concrete business so when he um when he got into race in buffalo in the late 80s he was having a butchered here uh this is an established butcher shop and looked much the same that you see and this especially the the area behind us uh same butcher boy saw um the day that we would have walked into in 1993 or 1994. hey how you doing everybody how you doing seth huh this is a beef a junky beef i won't mention the customer's name because that'll get us in trouble with him but this is sean perkins he is quality control manager in charge of our hacksip program just about everything else putting up with everything from the inspectors this is seth perkins right here he's the head meat cutter he's the man who cuts it up for the package hey seth front and center how you doing there buddy all right huh peace there brother so that's the meat saw the beef comes out of that little cooler right there and like i said this guy right here sean perkins he is the meat or the meat boner here and charge yeah it may seem fret this is fred right here so this is our processing floor and as you can see the meat gets cut up and put here but stacy's not there that's her job that's her cuber and she does her work on we have a customer pulling in right now so we'll zero in on him and see who it is i don't know so we'll back off but this is our retail area that's the door that goes into our retail area there is our counter there is my barber shop sign right there give me the haircut this is the place to come get it so here it is goodbye here's dad working outside right there that's pop he's working away he doesn't know i'm videoing him so i got this up sideways here so you can see him but the door's heaved up and uh he is right outside of the deli area if you remember our deli area and he's over by the boxing room door now he's gone yeah there's a little bit of him and he is trying to get that to fall out hey pop hey dad goodbye hi scott you have to duck down and this is our kill floor area our slaughter floor area the animals come in here into the knocking box this is the knocking box right here and the animals are brought into here we're going to actually get some live footage here from one of the family they're lifted up on that hoist and they're bled out into a barrel and they're laid down on these skinning carts and they are skinned out and they go from there and they hook up to that gambles right there and that's my station and that gambles is operated by a hoist up here and that's the hoist that operates it and these rollers are put up to hang the beef sides on and this is our kill floor i'm in the locker room and this is the kill floor lockers men's bathroom stairs that go up to the inspector's office out to the smoke house and here is scotty say hello scotty how are you doing here let me see how you doing there buddy how are you doing all right scotty's going to open up the cooler door and he's going to show us inside the cooler there you go these are the coolers and long range shot will kind of show you that cooler is filled with beef and that cooler runs clear to the back of that wall plus out onto the kill floor open the door again scott i wasn't quite finished and it is a rather large cooler but there is the beef you can see how they hang oh leave it open it's got your heart on me here it hangs by that whose hooks you those hooks you saw on the kill floor and that is a beef carcass those are barrels that we store our hams and bacons in so scotty thank you very much yes dad never sits in that chair i hear you thank you very much all right thank you very much there's white door so that is one of the cooler doors and that other cooler door opens up onto the processing floor which we filmed first so that's it processing floor again and there's the office girl stacy say hello hey say hello look over here let me see you there you go how you doing you're now you're in office and she works over at this table right there so we missed her in the process i'll show you he dumps the burger by the lug full and then shawn grinds it on and he's wondering why i'm not over here boning out this meat but i'm having such a great time i'm in the boxing room and dad is chipping away on the frozen ice out there kind of wanted to get close-up shot of pop while he's working he's walking away from me again well this is a view out the front the meat truck and i'm kind of shaking quite a bit there he is wonderful man god bless him it works so hard such a wonderful influence in my life let's move over here to the window kind of dirty but we'll live with it so there's pop in front of the deli area this is our deli area this is the front door right here where you come in and this is my office my haircut sign and cash register is here counter that's my office there pepsi machine this is also another door right here that i have this smoke case in a meat sign this is the bison meat case and there is a multitude of bison product in there you see the ground bison and the rest of the product so that is the placing case this is the deli case and then again here is the decoration and beef and pork case it looks when you walk in the front door cash register counter doors that lead into the processing room it's kind of a glare on there so i'm not sure how much we'll see through there uh because of the sale barn but this is the processing floor earlier this is where sean was standing boning shawn's in there actually cleaning right now but we probably have enough glare in there we can't see a whole lot but i thought i'd just hand down through here and just kind of show you there's a log cabin that seth built this is the retail area from this side so i was standing previously right there by the port case so we have stolsfis jams and jellies and chicken and various products so this is the inside of the deli area and it should be stated one of the big uh opportunities for us to even be here today is just the fact that three of us can get along um it wasn't maybe it wasn't always that way i think just as we got a little bit longer in the tooth we realized that you know it doesn't do any good to you know roll each other around on the floor or anything like that although that did happen a few times we eventually learned that if we continued we were just going to end up killing each other so which i'm 10 years older than seth 12 years older than scott so yep i'm the youngest i'm 38 so i i bring up the and i'm i'm not only the youngest of the brothers but we have three sisters so um which i have a twin but i'm i'm the actual uh baby of the family the dead last and sean got pretty used to us because we were the snotty-nosed kids that always rode with them to mcdonald's and begged for ice cream cones so when he was trying to hang out with his buddies we were always the ones begging to go yeah right in the back seat of the car i turned 16 got my license 1986 six and four their ages i remember begging for an ice cream cone and some of my earliest memories i got hurt all the time i used to uh we had a big farm and and i would get hurt and some of my earliest memories are shawn carrying me in from the barn or somewhere with uh you know a need of stitches but when our dad bought the company in 93 94 it was with the vision of making his uh bison farm a a a name brand a a household name if you will and he had a dream he wanted to put a pack of hot dogs bison hot dogs on every table in america if you ask him he would still say that and with it came a established custom meat processing business the the former owner wanted to retire so he sold the business to our dad our dad's intention was to just produce bison meats with this facility but it came with a custom meat processing business so he he continued that business at the time it was beef and pork maybe a few lambs that were custom butchered and then of course our bison so what we should touch on a little bit as scott mentioned this this was owned by you know a previous owner when when our father purchased it um the first 10 to 15 years of being in this business were extremely difficult within the first year of purchasing this business the previous owner actually opened up another shop very close and it was a pretty difficult time for our family financially it was rough so we uh you know it was the grit and determination that got us through because we we nearly went bankrupt through through those years um but we did at the time we didn't you know there was a lot of frustration a lot of uh just a lot of resentment and things like that that were happening but we didn't realize that it was potentially the best thing that could ever happen to us because it gave us so much determination to want to succeed plus you know when you're down and out financially like that and things are so difficult you can either quit or you can pull together as a team and push forward and that's exactly what we did um it just gave us so much determination to not want to fail they were our dads it was coach always told him when the going gets tough the tough get going and it did get very tough yeah um but our our faith i'd like to attribute our some of you know our faith keeping us 100 where we needed to be so and there were two there was actually two times where um things got really tough the first one was in 1995 when um the previous owner opened up that second shop which was just two miles down the road and he he took a lot of the custom business work back to himself which we then regained on the the the the second time if you will was in 1998 our dad had hired um maybe three or four employees um sean was actually still he was working here part-time but he was still running the concrete business because our family came out of wadsworth ohio and had perkins and sons concrete since 1973. so sean was running that portion of the business seth and i of course were working here but at our ages 16 and 18 we were behind like the meat cutters and the things that that our dad had hired well in 1998 um just south of us in worcester they they opened up a super walmart so at the time walmart was just you know home goods and then they went into grocery and then they put in a meat department um well our employees all got together and went to work at walmart um literally remember remember one day on a monday morning and we had nobody to cut me yep it was so the pressure figure this out the pressure with custom processing is is your cooler's full you've got carcasses hanging you've got to get them processed through here so now you can imagine we've got in 1995 the way that we dealt with uh getting through those tough times was you know we took all the work that we could get so all the deer processing we did a ton of ostrich at the time ostrich was a it was a popular uh fad if you will we plucked i mean i remember until till the skin was gone off my fingers i would pluck ostrich and um we we did all that so we kind of been through round one and now here's round two and we all had to step up to the place i have three kids um my youngest is behind the camera right there and the day that he was born we were cutting deer that day yep i remember that and watched him be born came right back and we cut deer that day till 11 p.m i think yeah and we're certainly not trying to you know throw a pity party or anything like that but people want to know our history how we got to where we're at this is exactly what happened so um the other thing we should probably touch on is that when in 1994 or 1995 when um the previous owner opened the shop up right down the street it nearly sunk us and dad had no other choice but to bring us in as full-time employees scott was 12 years old 11 12 i was 13 14. sean was 10 years older but we were both going to a local school church school and we quit quit going to school and started working scott has five years of education i've got seven shawn's got 10. that's why we think he should be uh the smartest out of all three of us but but no we're the best looking we uh dad said look guys i need your help in the shop this is how we're gonna get through and um we quit school yeah i just immediately started working i think it was 94 or 5 somewhere right in there i had just taken over the family construction business on my own my grandpa was who was heavily involved with my dad in 73 obviously and those two were in business together stayed on with me um he was in his early 70s he did a lot of the estimating and stuff like that but i was fully prepared to take it over uh ran it successfully for a year and i remember still remember the day standing out here on the farm loading up a piece of equipment and dad said i i need some help i we don't have any help i got we have all this work to do and i got nobody to do it so after you know a lot of contemplating or whatever just kind of stepped in here in the business and obviously these guys know more about the actual meat cutting than i do as far as you know getting it off the animal they're a little more experienced because of that but that's what had to happen so i always remember dad telling us that he was building this business as a future for for his children which was us at the time when we were so young you know that's all we were thinking about was bonfires on the weekend um we didn't i got here to work a lot of times and they were they didn't create some very good brotherly moments no but um dad always said that he was building this business for our future and we didn't really understand that until maybe the last you know within the last 10 years or so because now we realize that the foundation that's been built that we can pass down to our kids is you know the the gift throughout this whole thing it's just it's incredible actually i'm making an instructional [Music] video there goes another one [Music] going back to 1998 going back to the saw going back to the employees all walking out the same weekend we did have the opportunity to spend a few years underneath of those guys they were a lot of old-school butchers they had been around a lot of places so they knew all the butchering techniques that's where we learned so we're thankful that we did have a few years to to train under those guys a lot of people want to know you know where we learned how to butcher it was simply by working with them awesome yeah go to college and meet science to do this just fly by the seat of your pants no no meat science cutting degrees anything like that it's literally you know get a job next to an old-school butcher learn the trade and boom we became absolutely one of the best custom slaughter operations in this area yep we um so that really wash your teeth dot your eyes that's what was ingrained in the spiral manner doctor right with our father being a military guy he had implemented implemented different procedures that we use so that when an order went through a custom order went through um we we dropped our or eliminated mistakes down to virtually zero and like sean said we became the name that was synonymous with uh quality custom butchering in in uh basically the whole state and we had people we're usda so we'd have people that would travel from out of state and um our resolve had had really strengthened so much through those tough years that um you know as we grew a little bit older we became a little bit more responsible um sean didn't find himself in here wondering if we were going to make it in there was times that we probably came straight to work there was a few times i think i still get here every day before then though he does he still flips the lights on um just a great uh quality and our and our father and i'm just part of growing up though yeah our father and grandfather had taught us some incredible work ethic um just because we grew up on a farm and then going through the um the concrete uh concrete construction taught us that you know when when you're going through the you know pouring concrete for example you you have to be able to hustle and turn it on and things like that with dad being a drill sergeant there was no it was you had a boot right up your butt you know the whole time i remember grandpa telling me when i was 15 16 i got my license and it was my responsibility to get to the job on my own i remember him saying when i want you here when i say i want you here at seven that means you're standing here at seven ready to go to work that means you show up here at 6 30 you get your concrete boots on and you get a shovel in your hand and you're ready to go work at seven that's how we were raised so we had our grandfather um on our dad's side straight blue collar worked with his hands world war ii yep um our dad uh you know he's got he's one of those guys that you know has that tick that little bit of a wild um you find it in entrepreneur world where they just they have no quit in them and then our grandfather on our mom's side was um straight laced businessman um taught us some of those values where we we we got some of those values but you shake a man's hand you shake it hard and you look him right in the eyeball yeah that's what he taught us so um here we are you know our father now the white feather name came from our parents starting the bison business um in the in the mid to late 80s and they named the bison business white feather bison company and the reason they did that is our family migrated from uh pennsylvania into southern ohio the late 1700s early 1800s and they ran a trading post down there and as a symbol of peace and friendship the native americans gave them a white feather that you put over your cabin door and um and that symbol said that you were friendly with the native tribes and they did a lot of native uh a lot of trading so um they they were they were getting in the bison business and they wanted to do um something symbolic of the friendship and the piece and that tied in with a pioneer heritage so they named the business white feather bison company um in 1994 when our father grew into the meat business or other words outside of the just the bison business white feather meats became the name of the business um so that's where the name white feather came from um a sign of a symbol of peace and um friendship and that's what uh that's what we put on our business still to this day so you know as the years are progressing um sean had a family he had little kids which makes things even tougher that we learned because as as we grew into a um you know we essentially what happened was we created this crushing custom business in the sense where people came to us because we were going to with cess cutting style and all the procedures and the cleanliness and things that we had in place being a usda processor we were pulling in work like i said from from the whole state or a tri-state area and our schedule was filled up to a year so at this point i'm kind of managing the schedule we're talking the early 2000s again more of a tough time for our family unfortunately we lost a sister to cancer in 2001 to see our parents go through that just another one of those hardships was battles that we went through and again strengthened the resolve that the family had and this business is a really tough business that'll wear you down it's hard it'll wear you down just with the sense of you know it's dangerous um we don't like to talk about them often but i had a pretty severe accident where i had my teeth kicked in um by a by beef cow when i was 15 years old of course we've all had cuts and things like that um but yeah and then you just have the the nature of the work where we're coming in here you know it was nothing i mean sean said when spencer was born it was uh you were born at like 9 10 p.m and he went home because you were born at home he goes across the street and then he comes back and we have to clean up so we would work it wasn't unusual for us to work until until you know 11 00 midnight and then pick it up at four in the morning i think we had like 40 or 50 deer to cut that day yeah so we and and that's when we talk about the timing spencer the point of entry into this business is so tough because you have um where spencer's 20 now so that was 20 years ago yeah yeah so and we're doing all this because of the financial hardships that we had had you know our father had mortgaged the place um you've got to produce income or else you're you're literally gonna you're gonna have it taken from you it was our family livelihood but we started to gain just a little bit of traction but at the cost of just being here 80 hours a week no question works here full time now currently she stepped in when our girls two girls have two girls both married um they were very young um they started working in here when they were 12 13 years old scott and seth's kids have worked in here you know young ages starting but also we have some sisters that haven't been mentioned they've played a big role too and what you know took place in the last you know early 90s yeah and even up till now our older sister shannon lives out of state now but she was really instrumental in the bison business and getting that established and then our sister stacy has worked along our side um the whole time um and so when stacy comes in to work you know that everything's gonna be good because she can handle any position in here whether it's talking to a customer answering the phone packaging meat when stacy shows up she's like a little mouse on customers answer the phone oh hey put this meat in the package stacy's got it handled yeah and you know another another person that's been extremely instrumental to us has been our mother oh yeah oh yeah if if it hadn't been the the our mother holding the glue together on this whole thing which truly is the same question of the emotional mental breakdown in this process yeah because i mean even talking about you know the pressure of the financial pressure and the amount of workload and i think we've all probably quit a couple times yeah i thought maybe more than you guys but uh i remember you know slamming the door getting in your pickup truck squealing out the driveway saying i'm never coming back you know whatever and then you find yourself an hour later after you've settled down went around the block a few times cut meat again back in the driveway and you're right behind the saw cutting meat again because you just it's all we know well we were and we loved it we were taught that yeah um united we stand divided we fall and so we've we've stuck together and and that has a lot to do with our christian faith and and just um like sean said you know you peel out of here and then you just go around the block and you come back and you start cutting meet again um so that hasn't happened in a really long time it has it has not yeah we've matured i think that has i'm 51 so i don't even have the 42 to fight with anything so the perk the perkins blood is uh a bunch of hot heads yeah because our irish so my mother was a mcconnell so we kind of get they're all fired up um just sorry little suckers yeah you get that you get that hot head going and it's all down so the blessings that we drew from that um from all those tough times were that um well number one we learned everything front to back because we literally started with the toughest jobs in the building from the hides and the guts and the things that that nobody wants to do like says say we were working under the um the other old school butchers but as we as we um graduated if you will up through the ranks um we still of course knew those jobs but we started to like i said just became synonymous with the best place to bring your animals um so our schedule gets booked out in the early 2000s we're starting to gain a lot more traction just in the sense of like you know all those things that we had fought for are gelling together so at that point you know seth and i each marry our wives which by the way we've got some awesome awesome wives because like sean mentioned his wife laura works here spencer's mother um scott's married to jamie my wife's alicia um they've been through a lot because as a business owner it our attention is just like you might always always on work well we were dumb enough to the three of us were on the local fire department as volunteers it's like we were working in here 80 hours a week and then you'd get an all-night fire call and then we'd be gone all night i remember peeling out of the house you know all the time like even on a christmas day and i didn't even get didn't even spend the time with my kids that i probably should have and that's just we just had a lot of stuff going on yeah they so they've definitely put up with a lot um you know whether it be spending a lot of time work building a brand i mean just countless hours you know answering messages on your phone emails doing all that stuff so kudos to them it was at this time that our um dad had kind of said that he wanted to take a more of a backseat role and he um pushed the business on to the three of us more and more and that's kind of hunting a lot that's that's kind of where our cabin in southern ohio came in where he uh bought some property in southern ohio of course these were never things that we could do when you know those 10 15 years where we we just didn't have the opportunity so he buys that property then wants to put up a log cabin this is about 2005. so he started to disappear a lot you can refer to another video on our channel of the actual cabin build so if anybody wants to see it it's pretty cool yep so like 2005 our dad built this log cabin that's our hunting property um and we've kind of really got up you know got the wheels greased i guess you on the vice or on excuse me on the custom business still doing the bison the bison is absolutely the cornerstone of our business at no point throughout the the the start of the uh you know the 85-86 bison uh venture until today has there ever not been bison on our farm yeah we still raise them sean manages all that we don't farm we still raise the crops to feed the bison people all the time are like how come i wear flannel shirts and where shawn's the farmer these yep i'm the farmer in the family i just it's way way way down in there and i can't get rid of it so these guys i mean they'll help too but they're not as much into it yep so um seth and i then you know we met our wives and we were starting families and then we learned you know just how difficult shawn had it when you had the little kids and you know don't sleep at night and kiss the kids and all that stuff and then you're coming in here because like i said when you have that that custom uh schedule your sleeve yep you've got it scheduled it's the work's coming to you um you can't turn the valve off once it's washed repeat over and over you're just yep so you only gain a little bit at a time in that business too um just in terms of the amount of work and what you're bringing in income but we were gaining we were gaining ground so as we move through into the um 2005 to 2015 and that's right when we were crazy enough that uh dad being a vietnam vet we all know that they can you know it's got some wild ideas um we decided to get our pilot's license we did that that was a good idea not this guy so um in the midst of all that that was a dream of our dad he was 59 he was like i i'm not getting any younger yeah he always wanted to be a helicopter pilot in vietnam and he didn't he just he left and started working instead um so it was always a dream so scott and dad and i all went to local airport got our pilots licensed and we started flying down to our hunting property and uh we still carry our hunt our uh our private pilot's license we just don't fly as much as we wish we had but anyway yeah cool little give me a john deere with a field sean stays firmly planted on the ground we go in the air um so we to meet the demand for the custom uh and keep keep in mind we've got a retail store that we're kind of slowly expanding and by expanding i mean we just literally kept putting another meat case in every corner of the retail store until we literally ran out of real estate and i'll get to that in a minute but 2010 we're kind of seeing like boy where the works there um were we're still fam you know all family or whatever and um so we went about hiring some more butchers um hiring and training and if uh that's that's a six-month process just to get somebody just fresh that's never experienced it to even maybe get you a little bit of return on your money especially when you're going from start to finish so all the way through training how the slaughter floor um through you know every every every step of the process water is a grind that's a great point and maybe we had forgot because it had been you know a 15-year gradual pattern where we had learned to slaughter bison beef pork lamb goat ostrich elk and we knew these processes from the very slaughter step all the way through the final process and package and so we maybe weren't the best teachers either because we we had just we think we expected learn experiments we even knew so but yeah you're talking about a six month before you even kind of start to get somebody going in a year before you're really even kind of getting and then you know but the truth of the matter is none of them could hang it just they couldn't hang and maybe it was because we were already to a advanced stage but um you know you're asking somebody 50 hour a week minimum your hands are going to be cramping up your back's going to be cramping up you're going to be i mean all day that slaughter floor isn't it it's a it's a man breaker and we also understand that um you know there was more in it for us obviously because we were owners of the company at that point um so you know we kind of there was a a reward at the end of the day and for those guys you know they they just they didn't have that same feeling so um yeah yeah that's a great point so our parents had made us partners as to our parents sweat equity bought us um uh ownership roles in the business we saw that that we just we weren't going to be able to sustain this pace um even though we tried and so we um whenever we found that the butchers that we were training just couldn't stick with us and that we weren't going to um we just basically weren't going to be able to get enough people in the building to sustain the work we decided that we were going to change our business model so in 2015 was our last year that we had a full custom slaughter schedule in other words we were taking phone calls and putting animals on the schedule for people that um you know that we didn't own the animal and that was right when we were transitioning into building and starting the brand right so that's where the bearded butcher brand 1314 is when we started dabbling in the in the brand yep so and it was because of one of the guy well actually two of the guys that worked here um craig noletti and daniel berger we uh we actually we started a beard growing contest and is it okay to talk about i think we should bring it in yeah because i would i was going to loot back to that but there's no reason not to bring it in right now right when we started it because um those guys were working here and just for something fun to kind of get our minds off of work we decided to create a beard club and we had a beard growing contest so we actually started one morning i started a facebook group called the northeast ohio facial hair club we started having meetings um just something fun to get a bunch of guys together grow your beards out see how long you could last i think we made it at about one last long 12 months or so before we uh before we trim but interesting is um that during that time period is when it was actually my wife alicia her mother had a a recipe for a spice and um i really liked it so when we were dating she used to make like chicken wings and grilled cheese sandwiches and stuff and i would go over and i'd love the spice so she's like hey you know do you want to do something with it so i got a hold of it and tweaked the recipe a little bit there was some ingredients in it that i wanted to remove because we there we felt there was a need for a a healthy spice in this industry at the time everything was about sugar and anti-caking agents and just all kinds of fillers and um you know not clean ingredients so um we we started mixing you know i'd order five pounds of this and five pounds of that and get these these spices together and blend them and then you know removing the sugar removing the anti-caking agents and all that stuff but literally you know in our break room mixing these spices together and people would start coming in the store and we knew they were going to be making a brisket or pulled pork or something for the weekend so we're like hey you know give this a try well they started coming back and they're like hey got any more of that spice and for a while we didn't even sell it it was just one of those deals where we had these containers that we used to put slices of liver in during our custom processing and we would just give somebody a container or spices so we did that for probably what maybe 12 months i think that was five to twelve months probably 2010 2011 in that time frame when you were making hand making it or whatever right and then it was about 2012 when we started we decided to brand it and yeah so kind of that cliche you should bottle and sell this stuff yeah and because it was the demand was there and one thing about being in this business especially in the custom processing business is you have a lot of time to think and talk because you're all standing around you know when the when the sauce shut off um you're all standing around the boating table and we talk about stuff so we're like well we need a name for this for this spice and so it you know in it and it uh went right along with our um at the time period of our beard club so we're like all right well let's um let's let's call it beard butcher approved and we we dubbed ourselves the bearded butchers based off of our new group our beard our prowess at the time exactly well then we were like all right well beard of butcher approved let's use dad as our the face of our logo the original beard the original beard of butcher because growing up dad always had a beard he uh got out of vietnam he had to obviously stay trimmed um during in the army so when he got out immediately grew a beard and we always knew him with a beard grandfather had a beard um so we just thought that was fitting call it you know call ourselves the beard butchers so from there it went from beer to butcher approve to bearded butcher blend seasoning um to the beard of butchers and then it just it all happened really really fast because at the time we were discontinuing things like deer processing so we didn't want to discontinue something and just drop it because dad dad one thing dad always taught us was to always be thinking about the future and we're like okay well if we have this knowledge and this skill why not pass that on to to our audience and teach people how to do this at home at the time obviously we didn't have a very large audience but we had a facebook following and things like that so um we were like okay let's take the knowledge that we have especially in wild game processing etc and we're gonna go to our local sporting goods store and we're going to teach people in person how to get their hands on this this when we use the white teal deer how to get the hands on the deer and we're going to teach them how to process it well just so happened that the weekend we were scheduled to do what was called an eat wild at our local finn feather and first sporting goods store uh they said that the weather was going to be warm and et cetera some things fell through and they could make that possible so um i had shot a deer and it had hung for you know three or four days in the cooler i told scott i was like hey grab my cell phone let's video this thing and we'll put it on facebook so we did like a 20 25 minute video how to process a deer what's up folks hey guys seth for seth perkins scott perkins um that's got a deer here he harvested so we're gonna get started show you guys how to cut it up first of all tagging extremely extremely important immediately it kind of it was just one take one two i wasn't even holding the camera terrible terrible quality footage you know whatever so we threw it on facebook and then i checked it like a few weeks later and it had like over half a million views i was like wow you know this there's an audience for this so it was that point that we created our youtube channel and scott created a url uploaded it to download the video to the computer from facebook and then uploaded it onto youtube and that was the very first video that we filmed that that really sparked the youtube channel but looking back we had no idea that you know starting with a spice starting the beard club coming up with the name to creating the videos would lead us to where we're at which people ask all the time how's come i'm never on camera or whatever our great grandpa and our grandpa were very quiet and i just got those jeans i guess and i did that's not uh we kind of got in the front of the camera guy yeah and that's great yeah i'm out in the field kind of guy he has a role that he fulfills very well that we certainly couldn't do without he's our maintenance guy too so if he's if he's not on camera that just means he's fixing a lot of times when these guys do videos i'm farming or doing something like that so that's the only reason why you're not seeing me the last one you were grinding something in the shop and somebody commented somebody singing in the background so anyway um 2015 and just some of the business side of it so i have been kind of managing some of the you know the schedule and things like that we're growing our retail um and i have more of an interest in the business things probably get it from my grandpa fellows but tight one yeah yes i do keep the purse strings tied pretty tightly but anyway um all these things yeah the things that we learned back in the uh in the early days so we're 2015 we've got the thing you know the spice and things are going whatever just just starting though i mean you just started yeah it was certainly not like you know you couldn't build a business around it no for sure but god had a plan and that's something that seth um alluded to a little bit with just kind of looking back now and that's always great when we look back we're like man god had a plan for all of this so 25th time we had no idea yeah i mean it's just yeah and our dad had given us more of um you know more response or virtually all the responsibility in the business because he had stepped out and he's hunting a lot but it was really just here's the custom business it's kind of a what like i said wash rinse repeat so you're on the hamster wheel um not a lot you can do with that so it's real it's real competitive it is somebody's nickel cheaper than you they go to them yeah it might even be petty it is a little bit and so as far as like actually making a lot of money doing it there just really isn't a chance there because it's it's you're working for pennies yeah so volume's the key but anyway um so 2015 we just pretty much ended our custom schedule we didn't really tell him he was not happy when he when or excuse me january of 2016 when two years ago he said why aren't we you know why aren't you rolling why isn't the kill you know and it's like dad this is a new you know direction or whatever those were pretty tough again because it was a tough took months but but we were at the point physically and and emotionally mentally where we were just nearly burned out on on just and we certainly can't blame the butchers that we hired that couldn't hang with this because we were we were like seth said we had vested interest and we could barely do it so for some and we we gained a lot of um knowledge and and some of the ideas that that helped launch our bearded butcher brand came from them um in fact uh one of them still works for us and manages inventory and product but in 2016 we're like we'd better do something to pick up this revenue so let's really let's just double down this leverage this beer to butcher brand that we're doing and see what we can do with it and we knew we wanted to build our retail our brick and mortar out as well but let's let's get more involved with the videos the spice the online the e-commerce so we we developed we spent that year developing um a different spice for each brother we had the the blend and so we named it original yep put dad on the label and then we did um chipotle because it's cool and smoky kind of like sean it's got a little bit of that 80s vibe um baby yep so we did that we were going to come up with a salt and pepper blend for him for the although i was born in 1970 but the 80s were pretty good it's golden era seth the cajun blend a little bit you know a little bit wild a little mouthy a little bit a little crazy and just to describe the flavor profiles original great mild all-purpose seasoning goes on anything that's how we formulated it sean's with the cool and smoky still mild straight on things like french fries and popcorn and grilled cheeses and chicken and not just not ready not super hot not spicy yep seth's got the multi-uh pepper uh little back of the throat burn it's uh great on seafood fish and um and then hot because i have a red beard we just put mine on the on the hot a little bit hot goes from zero to 100 fly too close to the sun sometimes but anyway so then we had the four blends and um so we were doing like seth said we did the um we kind of did some sportsman show type stuff we did uh rib festivals things to kind of start so here we are you know almost in a way jump starting a brand or a business and we're we have to get on our bike and pedal again back to 99. yep so you have you know maybe a little more you know we we took a financial risk chopped off revenue on the custom meat processing side so let's pick it up on the uh this new brand side one thing we didn't want to do though was we weren't looking for investors no so throughout you know creating this brand um initial right off the bat we trademarked everything so there was a lot of money you know legal stuff that had to be spent there to trademark our brand so in the united states literally like almost everything you can think of is trademark to beard butcher so if you're thinking about it don't use the bear to butcher so uh yeah so scott being more on the financial side he can explain this better but we always um you know we use profit out of the white feather side to feed the beard butcher side to build that brand but um that's one thing we wanted that was important to us is to build it ourselves you know we're a 100 percent family owned there's no outside source of income um no investors uh it's american shark tank here american dream right it is the american dream and it came with a tremendous amount of hard work but we again have to attribute it to our faith and god's grace because you put all those together and you can certainly go places without you know god's grace and our in our faith we we wouldn't even been able to get along to the point not long enough to get to where we're at now so 20 um by the end of 2016 things were looking a lot brighter our dad had eased up on us as he started to see this more of this vision and um again we were wanting to do more videos and and as we put those out on youtube we we had an audience that was receiving those well so here we like said not only can we leverage the financial capital of our our meat business but we can leverage all the authenticity and all the all the knowledge and the experience that that we have we can leverage that to help build our brand so um as as we get into 2017 and even 2018 um we're gaining more popularity as the bearded butcher brand you know once you get your name out there i build a website we're starting to sell the spices online so the thing you do have to remember is that when scott says he built a website it was he built a website prior to the day's production so this was spent you know in the mornings between the hours of 5 and 6 a.m or between the hours of 5 30 to 6 30 8 30 9 30 p.m because we had a block of time in the middle of the day that was spent you know on production for our retail so this whole this whole thing was built almost you know on the side of our full-time certainly was a a side hustle and like seth said really no um formal education in the sense where you had anybody teaching you would you learn to be scrappy especially you don't have a lot of money to work with or any money so we go into um like our store and we really are getting uh so we've now we're not focused on custom processing and and previously when we were cutting meat for our store it always seemed to bookend our custom processing got to get it done before or after um you never really apply you never really had enough time to focus on your stuff so we're focusing on our own meats for our store our own brand and um it starts to really take off in the sense where more and more people are streaming into the store our store was tiny um literally like people were standing outside the door waiting to get in because we were at what 700 800 square feet yeah and it was mostly freezer space and and and the building was designed to to only really receive somebody to pay their custom processing bill and back out they go we'd actually kind of encroached into a different area built it out to put the meat cases in we were out of room which by the way we have a phenomenal customer base mom and dad have we still have people shopping with us that shop with mom and dad at the original farm location selling at meat out of our cabin back in the late 80s so we have customers that are you know 30 plus years old that have shopped with us that long they're still coming in our door so we have generations now generations of customers so our customer and our loyal customer base um we couldn't have done it without yeah they're still shopping for the same bison then they walk through the doors but we wanted to make a plan um for a larger store and also more of a destination for people that are traveling as they're hearing about us so 2018 we started plans again not um not using any outside money other than you know banks but not no investments um no seed money uh that that type of thing a venture capitalist type stuff no kickstarter so we go um we go to the bank we talk to them and then you know i sit down and i write a a another business plan that basically uh you know demonstrates how we're going to make this work on paper and it's hard to do because how do you know your projection um with a customer base we knew it was growing but to put that on paper it's it's a swag i mean it is well nobody knew the economy was going to shut down it's a silly wild arse guess because you just you don't know yeah so you know taking some of the historical data and put it on paper and seeing where we're headed and um and then we're super blessed because our my twin sister is married to um a member of a of a construction company um located just the next town over and they do um great institutional um and commercial construction yep so we got with them and we start on a plan for a new a new retail facade but really a major overhaul in in our business so it's again a huge risk because you have the financial risk but we had to work through that without interrupting our cash flow which was the retail customer so now we have told us we could build a new store but we could not we could never close yeah so we didn't never close not for a single hour yeah our our building the portion that we're sitting in right now is literally a block hub it was the very first structure and then everything was kind of spoked out from there so the hub and spoke construction and we needed to strip it back to the hub well in order to do so we literally had to rip the whole front side of the building off our existing store again just by the grace of god we used some decision making to put an area of our building that was just like a lean tube we closed it in insulated it air conditioned it wired it did all that stuff and we took all of our meat cases we moved into there so the summer of 2019 uh may through october we were operating out of this uh retail spot that was no bigger no smaller really than what we had been in all this time but it was literally kind of a warehouse portion we had to get a temporary freezer and do all these things um and and then uh ask our customer to bear with us and they did and not only did they bear with us but we um we again did a little bit better than than the year before so as we came into the end of 2019 we finished our store simmons brothers construction did a phenomenal job basically four-month build start to finish huge overhaul they completed it just before uh well just after october of 2019 we moved into the new store and we had a new uh the new store we had a bunch of new mechanical equipment um but this again was just uh basically something that we have paid forward um for the that 25 years or so of hard work and determination and turning money back into the business and so we were we were super excited we moved into the store and then like sean said you know 2020. um kovid it it impacted our business um because people wanted to know where their food comes from they were they were disappointed and annoyed with the disruption of the food chain and so they wanted to turn back to the old ways well this had a simultaneous impact on um the youtube channel too because you might want to learn to butcher at home and so as people were constantly reaching out to us saying hey guys i watched your video i couldn't get my pig or my beef into the local processor because they're booked two years out i decided to do it myself and it worked out i loved it i'm gonna continue to do this i'm gonna i'm gonna teach my children how to do this thank you for providing us with the information you guys put out there on youtube so tons of success stories from people which is great for us we love hearing those because it's why we do it yeah so as we had gone through those years of 2015 to 2020 we had been through the the build again a financial risk to twice over again one with the business model change we're going to not do custom processing more the second one with the big financial um you know reach with with putting on the addition and we're thankful that we look back now um it's worked out really well for us but we want to point out that you know again by our faith but a lot of decision making that went in a lot of risk um and a lot of hard work just a tremendous amount of hard work and we get viewers that find us today and they don't often see the they see the tip of the iceberg if you will or if you roll into this place you see the facade now you really have no idea what it took to get here so hope with the revelations that we were that we've revealed here that it helps you understand that you know takes a tremendous amount of hard work passion a little bit of craziness a little bit of a dad that won't you know won't he'll literally break his foot off in your hind end and um lots of times lots of times and you know by the grace of god we sit here today and we're a multi-million dollar company that is completely owned and managed by the the family and the three of us sitting here there's no um there's nobody pulling the strings other than you know god himself and of course we're we're at the mercy of of the different uh you know things that happen that are outside of our control but the things that we can control we feel like we've uh certainly paid it forward in a big way together and so we continue to develop new products and come up with different ways to lead the brand and stay on the forefront of you know not only the retail business yeah those were all items that we added as we went through we've taken our original recipe and we've put it out there and as we continue to grow we hope to bring in more of our children that are you know young now like you spencer and they can assume different roles in the company but all by the grace and will of god looking back you know we have so many stories so many feelings and emotions it we certainly can't get them all into this one hour and a half two hour video whatever we decide to do um but unbelievable you know story from the perkins family love every aspect of it was there times that were difficult yes i mean will there be more times that are difficult i'm sure i mean literally like on your hands and knees crawling up the steps because you couldn't walk anymore however um you know we're excited about the future of our business we're excited about like scott mentioned our our kids coming on building a foundation a platform for them so that there's many different things in here um in this inside this business for them to do whether it be you know butchering accounting a chef you know grill technician uh video man hopefully nobody takes your job spencer but uh let's just talk about that for summer farmer um spencer no you know no formal education in making videos and you know a huge part of our youtube success is due to you spencer um you know the first time that he picked up a camera and started filming for us and editing videos and we're just like we're blown away by it we had our guy yeah and it's like to have our nephew filming videos and editing for us is huge so thanks spencer yep good job he's good at it but to think about you know the future of our brand our business um we always plan on being butchers because that's what we are um the bearded butcher brand we just hope that it continues to grow it's it's growing at a monumental pace i mean just year after year we 10x last year online sales which is huge shipping you know six to seven thousand orders a month we just moved into our own warehouse for distribution and we plan on you know dad always had a dream of putting a pound of ground bison in every household in america and however that may not happen we do plan on putting a bottle of beard butcher blend seasonings or sauces in every household in america and on every grill shelf because we think you guys will absolutely love it the clean ingredients people they like to refer to it as you know an addicting spice it doesn't matter what you're using it on whether it be for grilling you know vegetables french fries popcorn grilled cheese i mean whatever you can literally use it on everything so the future of our brand is we feel like the sky's the limit well what we want to do is share our experiences because when we go home we're getting our spice we're getting our thermometer we're getting our gloves because we're all family men and for me personally one of my favorite things to do is go on my back patio and grill something and you get the smell of that spice floating up when you're shaking it on my kids are all out and their bikes and stuff and and you know in ohio you know six months out of the year it's it's a little bit crappy weather but you deal with it and then of course with the butchering knowledge we hope as we get it out there it gives um value and it um you know maybe gives people some confidence and empowers them to go out and maybe learn the trade and then we can build back towards having maybe some more butchers um you know butchering here dying it is yeah we talk about faith family food that's where we're grounded um you know and in that comes the outdoor our love for the outdoors and we take you know we spend a lot of time with our families hunting that's where all you know we're raised hunting um you know around food and just grounded in those you know those maybe the simpler things in life you know we don't need the big fancy you know vacations and stuff like that as long as we can get together in our hunting cabin and you know sit around and play checkers you know we're having a good time so that's that's what our our business is grounded on that's where we plan on taking it and it's just been it's been a phenomenal phenomenal ride so we're a living testament to the fact that the hard work the dedication the american dream if you will still work by the grace of god the three of us sit here today like said we're excited about the future we hope you enjoyed the video learning a little bit more about the background maybe that iceberg that you can't see as you as we continue to grow with our brand you understand that um we support a set of values that we believe are very dear and true that were instilled in us and hopefully we can pass them on to the next generation and maybe some of of you guys too absolutely we have a lot of requests for um if we have an apprenticeship programs here at the time we do not we have about seven or eight of them yeah they're just our kids yeah uh we do however plan on coming up with maybe like an online course or something like that in the future so uh you know if you if you're looking to get into the trade our best suggestion would be go to your local butcher get a job start from the ground up you know you may need to be in the back cleaning tubs you know you may need to clean lugs and carts and and grinder parts and things like that for the first year or two but start there work your way up get next to an old-school butcher learn the trade and then um buy your uh favorite you know anti-aching cream for your for your forearms and your back yeah we should mention we we do still have our digits yeah i got one big race so uh we could go over scars all day but you know we got the digits so that's the important part um the saw you see behind us that's where all the videos started and um that's what we plan on continuing them so appreciate the support it's been phenomenal the channel grows the views grow um the brand grows sky's the limit thanks for watching guys we hope to see you guys next time on the bearded butchers you

Channel: The Bearded Butchers

Views: 68,694

Rating: 4.9680548 out of 5

Keywords: bearded butchers, bearded butcher blend, whitefeather meats, creston ohio, scott perkins, seth perkins

Id: iX8j8YrZDUY

Length: 111min 14sec (6674 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021