How to quit your job and start farming: Feat. Joel Salatin, Paul Grieve and David’s pasture.

you can quit your job and start farming here's joel salatin the master himself for some inspiration and know-how [Music] you're working in town you've got your fledgling family you have this dream i want to do this i want to do this this full-time farming chicken thing how do i how do i get there well everybody starts with a context and so the first thing to do is to get out of debt if you're in debt get out of debt so don't quit your day job and then i always encourage people to save up enough that you can live for two years now that doesn't need to be as much as you might think if you're willing to live cheaply while you're getting out of debt and while you're accumulating a little bit of a nest egg start taking that time either get a second job the point is to take all that time that you would spend recreating find people in your church your civic club your groups that you're involved with start asking around for an acre of land two acres of land okay it doesn't have to be much find a place you don't have to own it you don't have to buy it if it's close enough to commute to preferably even to walk to or bicycle to then you're in good shape if you find a place that you can actually buy that's small you know a couple acres go ahead and move live in an rv live in a trailer live in a yurt you know people only people live in a yurt you know they make they make pretty sophisticated yurts these days if you want it you gotta want it okay uh you know teresa and i you know lived seven years up in the attic of the farmhouse we called it our penthouse the point is to cut your living expenses down and devote yourself to this dream and once you raise that first batch of chickens and you process them then you're up and running [Music] now here's the classic normal guy southern california quits his job knows nothing about farming and gets going true entrepreneurial spirit story here i was so sick of my job as an accountant i was like i'm out of here i'm gonna make this chicken thing work one way or another but i gotta get out of this cubicle this is horrible so i just left i moved in my wife me my wife and my one-year-old son moved in with the in-laws for a period of time there was nine of us living in a 1700 square foot house every single eight out of nine my name is paul grieve i'm one of the co-founders of primal pastures and the ceo at pasteur bird how did this compare to your very first breeder i mean you didn't know anything about raising chickens did you we didn't know a thing we read some joe salatin and we ended up putting a little hover brooder inside of a garage and we started with like 50 chicks so it wasn't anything special at all okay it was absolute chaos like mayhem we had hbo showtime animal planet national they all wanted to come film a documentary because it's like this mad house of chaos at all times but you know that's what we had to do like we had to just cut back all expenses rack up credit cards like the whole it's an entrepreneur's story i mean this is the same thing that happens in a lot of industries so for us and for me especially my soul [Applause] alright so in april 2012 i was finishing my time as an officer in the marine corps and had some health problems i had arthritis everything from my ankles my knees my back couldn't breathe through my nose low energy and at 22 years old i couldn't really figure out what my problem was i didn't know what's going on so my whole family went on this real food adventure and we started learning about how food actually affects the way that you feel and your health and your vitality and everything so we started eating a paleo diet and and we started feeling so much better like two weeks in felt like a kid again i could breathe through my nose i had all this extra energy it could move everything was totally different my my family had same experience so my father-in-law lost 100 pounds my brothers both lost a bunch of weight felt way better so is it is the hoverboard or something that you bought no or something that you slapped together we slapped it together because you got a heat heat lamp yep you got a cardboard box uh it was actually made out of wood okay and we put some wood chips down and a couple heat lamps and that was uh how did you learn to do that much man i think there was a i think that was a joel salton recommendation poultry profits so you went off to pass your culture profit that was the bible for us for the first year so have you talked to chelsea yeah we've met him a few times it's been pretty cool yeah okay because every time i meet him we're a little farther along in the process yeah now i don't know if we produce the same amount or maybe a little more than him yeah at some point you're gonna be like you're gonna get more chickens and that's gonna be surreal well he served up the pastured poultry deal on a silver platter for us so we're just picking up where he's kind of leaving it we started really trying to buy good food for our family that's how this whole thing started from that experience we started learning more about grass-fed and free-range and cage-free and all these sort of idealistic meats and doing the research we learned that a lot of those things are full of it they're bs so we got really bummed out about the meat labeling industry and while we were looking at this thing we really just said we can't find what we want in the grocery store and that bothered us quite a bit so paul how many problems did you have with those first you said 50 yeah it went fairly well to be honest we didn't have problems until a year in when we started getting massive predator losses so really probably six to nine months in we lost like 1300 chickens what 35 lambs and like we almost went out of business it was super bad it was horrible actually we started adding livestock guardian dogs about a year in and that was the best decision we ever made i mean they've single-handedly saved the business really yeah that may have been lost since then zero we've lost a single animal to a predator since we added livestock four years ago we may have lost chickens to our livestock guardian dogs but we haven't lost it we haven't lost tickets to predators so so there they are right now there there it is your savior this is one of them yeah well that's one of the pups is that a good one i couldn't tell you there you go pretty good i guess so good these are all the females up here so we run the females all together we went around all the males in the lower pasture otherwise we have puffy city so yeah 13 or 14 guardian dogs on 140 acres right now so do you have the original dog here yeah duke down in the lower pasture he's hurt he's our original guy okay and then his brother jj's in the middle and grandma is jane the big long-haired great pyrenees she's original yeah there she is that's one of the originals this one yeah right here you got a special place in your heart for her this is jane yeah well she's one of the she's one of the ones that actually has a name so she's got to be somewhat special but uh yeah she was our first female she's grandma dog to a lot of these dogs out here and she's very she's a very important dog for us i mean she's she's one of the ones that saved her wow it's okay it's okay she's just doing her job who's she upset the brown dog i don't think they're actually that mad they just i mean that's just what they do instinctually they just bark stuff away so they don't really fight that much with the predators but they will have a pretty intimidating bark and they keep them away okay she doesn't like anybody coming up by her fence line go get around barking go get them and we don't do any training but you see all these females they're watching their grandma bark off these dogs so they're going to learn what do you feed them they do get a kibble like a grain free kibble but we try to give them as much raw food as we can so they'll even get if we have chickens that die in the pasture or whatever just natural causes they'll get those birds they'll get animal organ meats pork organ meats they get beef organ meats but the raw thing we love we just don't have enough of it to feed them pure raw in april of 2012 we ordered 50 chicks and the way that that story goes we're sitting around joking as a family ha ha wouldn't it be funny to get some chickens and put them in the backyard my brother rob is sitting there in the little circle of guys that was talking he walks away and he comes back like 10 minutes later and he goes oh hey i just ordered 50 chicks they're gonna be here in two weeks and we're like you did what you know i we've never raised anything before we've never had an agriculture background never really studied this stuff and so we got the birds put up a little brooder we put the birds outside on pasture we raised them without any vaccines or drugs or antibiotics and we gave them certified organic soy free food and i mean we didn't know what we were doing at all probably most farmers would have said you can't raise chickens outside they're going to die they're going to get sick this and that but we didn't know any better so we just raised them the way we wanted to eat them and to feed our family so this right here was your pasture poultry pen 2.0 exactly this is 2.0 so we started with a normal wood okay skeleton pen with a pole rope on it and all that stuff we broke our back on that for a couple years and then we said let's put wheels on this thing let's make it out of metal especially since we irrigate they get wet all the time this worked pretty well for us you can see how they cave in though don't build it with a flat roof you want to build it with a pitch roof because as the water comes in it gets pretty heavy in there you like the metal the metal is much better yeah it's more expensive to build it i think we had almost a thousand bucks into each one of these but to me we can drive up we could push them with a kubota gator instead of having to pull them and it just saves your back is much better way better if this was a thousand bucks how long does it take to pay for itself well it depends what program you're running in it but if you figure you're making five bucks a bird and you can run you know 80 birds in each one you're definitely paying for itself in less than a year oh sweet well you guys want to help me push this thing real quick all right let's do it we gotta push really hard i don't know if we're gonna be able to do it or not so do you move these every day these all move every single day we use a little kubota gator to push them forward okay okay 65 man christmas morning these things are moving ready one two three go oh yeah go go go go you guys got it these guys are small so we don't need to move it all the way and then all this feed that was spilled behind we'll have the pigs come through and clean that up so that's way to waste either is that what the pigs are for or do you use them for something else their cleanup program and bacon program i mean yeah they're uh they'll come through and clean up all this feed just for you guys or for the uh you sell the bacon too oh yeah we sell the pork definitely once it's ready but it's it's a chicken farm that we use lives other livestock for other reasons bugs not drugs so we believe that chickens should have a natural diet grass bugs seeds and worms moving over fresh pasture they don't need the drugs so we'd have never used vaccines or antibiotics or drugs or you know feed additives or any of that stuff you don't need to those first 50 chicks back in 2012 there was a thing called facebook that was really popular so we put those first 50 chicks we said uh if anybody wants a few of these you know here's a link you can put a deposit down and reserve one or two and we thought well we'll offset the cost of raising these for our family so two weeks go by the birds are like this big now and all 50 had been deposits collected paid in full like they were done it was a done deal which was so crazy to us because my family was all mad at me for selling all the chicken they thought they were going to be eating now paul look at him come running to you buddy why are they coming running to you well they used to get fed before they got here they don't get fed anymore but really yeah they well they don't really what do they eat they eat the grass this is a kuni kuni grazing pig this is the best backyard i think in the world they don't like the electric fence much either so this is the best backyard ticket i love this pig for backyard operation they will graze 100 grass they'll eat veggies they don't root they won't destroy your pastures in your fields oh yeah i did have them by the time we harvested the birds and harvesting was literally like an iphone here with youtube on how to chicken processing from joel salatin and the bird like right here hanging in the tree so that's how we first started out but we harvested the birds we had a waiting list of like 110 families that all wanted you know real local pasture-raised chicken and the next month we did a hundred birds and then a few months later we did 200 and then we did 400 and we did a thousand and this the original paul there he is king duke how old are you king four oh he's just four you guys are just babies young kings out here you guys are just five years old man yeah this is just five you got a little puppy come on now paul this is just five years five years later man no way we're gonna go see what it looks like five years later and this is just going to be a glimpse y'all yeah this is the smaller chicken farm but this is 30 chicken tractors and one of the big range coops and down in this field we have about 3 500 birds any given time and oh geez buddy they're friendly and this is important for us down in the desert as we do irrigated pastures down here so okay that will keep us on green grass year round we do 52 weeks out of the year we're producing birds which does help us because we don't have to lay people off and take time off we can really just keep it going it's good and bad 95 operation here hey yeah for sure it does help with wholesale and our other company pasteur bird benefits from being able to do you know 12 months out of the year production so here you go this looks like it's just been moved recently you can see the flies which are annoying but they help us break down the manure really really fast so they're going to basically take it help us break it down yeah this just got moved to fresh pasture you can see we have pressurized water into this coop which is super nice so we're not tending water filling up water all the time that's just pressurized right into the coop on a little reducer yeah so you went from just a pat wooden pasture poultry pan meadow metal pasture poultry pens to now this yes how many are you gonna hold in there well this will hold 500 of the freedom rangers and now this these chickens look like they're almost ready to graduate they're ready to go yeah they're they're in about uh 11th grade here so um this is 500 birds the first instinct people always say oh that's not very much room for 500 birds but we got to remember is a square foot and a half for every bird that's moved every single day for 77 days so you really have over 100 square feet over the course of their life yeah we want to concentrate that manure and know exactly where it went down and get them off of that manure every single day yeah so that's what keeps us off the drug that's why we say bugs not drugs they're and you watch them you know you see about five percent of them may be eating the feed 95 are just out foraging grazing fresh air sunshine this coop works really well for our environment out here and look they're acting like chickens yeah what do you know they're fighting they're walking around they're scratching they don't need to be de-beaked they don't need to be detonated they don't need to be vaccinated or antibiotic they don't need drug or additives in the feed it's just really a truly a natural chicken a real program and it comes true in the flavor and the health of the bird too so so we think the daily move is really important so they're actually on green grass every single day you know if we left these guys for two or three days this would be a mud bath in here and there'd be no grass left all the bug all the good stuff about this would be gone so to us it's really important to be moving them all the time this is a really good setup too for rain so we get some heavy rains through here in the winter time and this allows them to get out of the way if it's really wet in here they can get up and perch we can throw some straw in this system works really well for stuff like that too we hooked this up on misters too we don't need them right now it's not hot enough but if it goes over a hundred this is useful because it'll bring the core temp of the entire thing down about 20 degrees just from running some water in here on mystery that works real well too is this made for this purpose or did you test them it's just a normal greenhouse it's a high it's a high tunnel or whatever they call it um but it's put on skids and it's kind of manufactured out with the roll-up sides i'll show you the sides of the foot if somebody else did that or you had the custom knife we customized a little bit but it's mostly it comes like this okay it's really nice too so in the summer we've never even dropped this but with small chicks in the winter it's a real easy way to really close down the coop slide tight and then it just hangs up just like that what is the importance of nice really but maybe more expensive equipment but it makes the process smoother we've always said like are you going to treat this as a hobby or is it going to be a business if it's a business buy the right equipment do it the right way that's kind of how we approach it so it's better on the labor it's better on us it's definitely more efficient it results in way less mortality faster grow outs there's a better process overall so we're always looking at ways to invest in better equipment come on boys there you go get it back in nice there you go cut them off oh lost them get up there we go there you go these guys are big these guys are about 10 weeks old right now so one more week and they'll be ready to go started adding in sheep and we started adding in hogs and we found a partner farm to do some beef stuff with and you know now five years later we've got like 20 000 chickens out on pasture we're doing hundreds of orders every week with home delivery and it's just been like this what the heck just happened to take a step back and look at it now we would have never thought that it would be here if you told me i'd be farming six years ago coming out of the marine corps i would have laughed it would be like there's no way i don't know farming i've never done farming there's just no chance that would happen so what started as a hobby became a business and really became a passion for regenerative agriculture and now we're here today who knows where we'll be in five years but uh it's been a pretty fun ride for sure so this is our non-petroleum-based lawn mowing crew out here we use these to just graze off the fields in front of the chickens uh the chickens don't like the real tall grass so we try to get it down you know six to eight inches before the birds come through and then we do sell the pasture raised lamb too it's not a it's not a huge herd but we do sell whatever is produced out here cool program dorper sheep really heat tolerant it's a meat breed so we're not shearing for they're not meant for wool or anything like that nice and uh the lambs are just born right out here no assistance no barn year round we keep a mail in with them a really really simple natural program yeah and has it beat out a a petroleum mower at this point yeah don't have to sit on a tractor i don't think we even own we don't even own a tractor so uh there's a baby in there we should go we should go check that out you want to go see the baby mr brown come on let's go see the baby solar powered electric fence charger works awesome southern california where we got sun 350 days a year yeah this just runs to a ground rod uh premiere one electric fencing and that's what allows us to herd them up and move them around every day nice this must be your mascot that's mabel that's we got her for dairy but we haven't really done any dairy production yet so it's just the mascot the trampler for now they were born two days ago one and then the little brothers over here behind you just let them do their own thing we don't touch them this land has never even touched so there's no vaccine no antibiotic is just born here in the field we come out for chores and say oh cool there's lambs on the ground and that's yeah i mean that's all there is to it and when they're your mowers all that's just bonus it's just cream on the top exactly having babies harvesting land yep the darpa is a good breed that's a they twin like 50 percent of the time and so uh they definitely reproduce pretty quick it's like really good meat lamb it's not good for wool at all but it's a good meat lamb especially for warm climates i was a full-time cpa which is a pretty demanding job it was 80 90 hours a week commuting both ways you know still had my wife in uh have we had our baby and so it was like really busy and then my brother was a high school teacher too so he had a full-time job and that's what allowed us to start the farm i mean we had that off-farm income we didn't have to take a dollar of salary off the farm for like the first three years that's what really what allowed us to keep reinvesting every dollar that we made off of selling those chickens we put it back into the business and we kept growing it and growing it growing it and it didn't it didn't have the burden to pay us a living wage for a long time for us and for me especially my soul was just dying slowly in a cubicle i had to do something else i loved this regenerative livestock agriculture and grass farming so there was no option i had to give it a try paul this is where you are now and this is your finished good this is what it looks like when it arrives at the customer yeah so we we've started doing this home delivery system we're just trying to make clean food really you know convenient for people because we found that farmers markets and trying to do all this stuff is difficult for working families sometimes so we're really working hard to put stuff on people's doorstep you know i'm glad you're shipping i know at first you hesitated to do that yeah because you want people to buy local and that's great but not everybody i've been traveling and there are many many food deserts all over there are not local all over the place and just because you have a farmers market doesn't mean it's real food that's there sometimes that's true that's what caused us to start doing it too that's true we want to bring food to the people they can decide if they want to buy something local or not that's we would love that but if you don't have it locally or if you want to buy from us where you know what's going on that's why we exist so yeah let's take a look at this box yeah so this is what we ordered yep let's see what rebecca got so you can order anything from you then you don't it's not just like oh here's what you get this week no no this is not a css facetime no it's all the card ordering or a few packages and subscriptions so you we got this honey and we got some chicken thighs yup yeah we love some chicken thighs on the road that's so easy to make so healthy so all this is organic everything the butt and you got bone broth and you got whole birds man and you got uh this is uh pork sausage beef sauce where are you getting your beef from beef all comes out of central california a little family farm that we work with up there really awesome pasture program cool this looks great man you got uh you got insulation here so it can ship to what seven different states we shipped to seven states but pretty soon we'll be going everything west of the mississippi so you keep your eyes on okay cool good job man good packaging so if somebody wants to know more about you or they want to order their own package where do they go this all the stuff is primalpasters.com so definitely go on there check it out we've got a la carte we've got subscription packages but everything in there is certified organic soy free gmo free you know pasture raised and pasture finished uh rumen animals so it's all species appropriate stuff it's the best that i mean it's the best that you can get so cool it's the good stuff say bugs not drugs bugs not drugs okay you sound great okay all right tell your story [Music] [Music] and finally we have a man another corporate gosh working for a cp uh chick-fil-a quits that lucrative job and begins a small farm with him and his family in missouri okay that's a passenger van so how many of them are you there are 12 of us my wife and i kim david i feel like when we were here last that we didn't know we were getting into okay and when i came here i knew that you were modeling salatin so my story in my head was that you're the poster child for joel salatin and finally and i was relieved to see that but then when we got here i scratched the surface a little bit and found out what the story really was and it was that one that you were able to quit your job and start working with your family and two that you weren't having to seem like forcefully work with your family but it seemed like everybody was on board yeah so i'm gonna get deeper into that okay do you have like a task or a chore or something that needs to be done that maybe we could work and talk yeah we can we've got some fencing to repair okay and does that not take that doesn't take a lot of brain space no okay so you can talk and work at the same time yeah okay he's talked carried and phoned at the same time that's probably what you would rather do anyway right yeah okay so i might just hurt done kill two birds with one stone yeah look at that garden though we didn't even speak to that but that's part of it i'm sure right like being able to quit your job and be at the farm is being able to grow most of your own food yes yeah just so you know at the meet-up yesterday somebody came up to me and said it's because of you we have land and i'm not saying that to brag on myself or whatever we're inspiring them but you're going to inspire people just so you know good somebody or somebody's is going to quit their job and start farming with their family because of you i think that's great that's great okay so i can't think of anything better than that right unless it gives me chills i mean it's exciting to do it ourselves but you want to complete your joy by sharing that right absolutely okay good look at the smile look at the smile you always how to get these teenagers to smile right next to pop come on kids come on guys let's go okay guys let's go mend the pig fences we're gonna get some uh some wire and some ripples we use gripples they're fantastic for mending fence yeah pulling high tensile wire cool we don't use any bob wire we just use use high need tensile the tool oh yep no okay we got these from greg judy this idea this the ripples yeah okay cool okay is that it what we need a little bit of wire some gripples and some gripple tool what are you doing man i'm thinking of making a penny hockey board 4-h project okay a hockey ball woodworking is what i do when i'm not farming cool so far my day woodworker by night let's go let's go get those pigs he's he's nice no containing himself they're setting up this area for a pig paddock the pigs are in the barn they're gonna bring them out here so they got to put up the fence how many strands of wire are you gonna put up here just two two strands of wire it's gonna be electrifying they're going to till this up for them or should we say plow the pig chickens are chillers pigs are flowers they're going to plow this up and then plant pumpkins move the pigs on over and looks like they got a lot of work to do over there how did you market yourself so quickly well we didn't because people are going to want to know where do i go how do i sell it right we started just doing a couple hundred chickens and selling to friends and family getting feedback from them okay that was so important to make sure that our product was was good quality as well as you know what's it really going to cost us so i need to know what my costs are before i start selling some of this stuff we didn't start markets in our farmers markets until year four we were really really worried about making sure we had enough product we didn't want to go to a farmer's market and run out of product yep um there's nothing worse than that we started with with drop-offs to homes and that went really well these are still your friends and family uh no this now we now we did a home drop off to a to lee's summit missouri okay um how did you so you so at first you calling friends and family you're just looking in your phone and you're just going down the list yep and then now you're going to have this home drop off how did you get those customers you know just through other people telling people about us so friends and family started talking and telling people about the products they've been getting it from us all right so let's grip the tool this is great we're just going to put this show us how it works slide this on there it's going to grip that in right there and just pull it tight slide it back in wow pull it tight all right oh that's nice basic marketing here folks selling the chickens and the product to friends and family i mean if you can't sell it to the friends and family you're going to have a hard time selling it anywhere going down the black book and the phone or wherever and then just relying on the word of mouth to get it going and of course there's always markets is there anything you wish you would have added to our time together the other day i mean was there anything after i left man i wish i would have said that maybe not lots of things no absolutely there's there's all kinds of things just seeing the comments like people just have to start somewhere yeah start growing it for yourselves and then for your relatives and your friends and then it's just going to go from there go slow where you are in rural missouri but you are only an hour from kansas city we are an hour from so you it is worth it it is financially worth it for you to go to the market in kansas city is that fair absolutely would it be worth it if you were two hours away yeah it would still be worth it we just would just have it have to drive a lot further all right let's straighten it up buddy tighten it up what was your life like before farming what was your goal my goal was money toys and what what it was about me and what i did with my life hunting fishing very selfish fell very selfish life what happened was there a point where that changed your goals changed from money and pleasure to something different yeah there i mean i just made some mistakes in my life that i looked back and thought man i've got the i've got to change who i am and who i serve that's when i looked at farming uh something to do with my family found salads and and just uh we went from there if you were gonna quit your job and go into factory farming traditional conventional farming you would go and have and you were going to do chickens you'd have to go a hundred thousand dollars and hundreds of thousand dollars in the dead okay so you go the saline model and all of a sudden what was your startup cost with salat an estimate oh gosh and you started small so i guess it was seven hundred dollars starting to farm for six or seven hundred dollars are you kidding me and then that being mobile too so literally you could have done that on borrowed land we unplugged our brooder lamps and we we put our chicken tractors on a trailer and hauled them over and that was it yeah and you know deep freezers which we already personally had there's more work with the skeleton model you're going to move the animals every day but you're also going to increase the productivity of your land and the other way tractors and big buildings and infrastructure is permanent and very expensive yeah we don't have a tractor we borrow a tractor if we need to do some work you testing it buddy yep is it on working it's on right now how'd you go about the transition then did you save up money or did you keep working your golden chains as jill salatin would call it yeah did you keep your golden chains why you did this part time do you knew this was gonna go or did you save up money oh we started again so it was so little to get started yeah i mean and then um as it grew we've never um had to go get a loan for things we've definitely borrowed friends families money uh because they were so excited about what we were doing and that's cool we just grew the business to the point where you can't do both okay you can't do both so you worked on the farm business until you're like this is growing so much i need to get more poultry pans i need to get i need to get ducks we need to get big because the demand's there and now the demand is there as well as i'm not going to be able to grow my business unless i'm working on my business okay for somebody else okay did you have a savings when you finally quit the golden chains no i think everybody wrote when you're gonna say yeah okay no so guys it's getting better and better for you guys okay you don't have to have a savings we had put everything at at that point we had put so much in the farm uh with with walk-in freezers and chickens crates and infrastructure and buildings okay redoing barns and such that were here that were not usable uh we had oh gosh the old brooder that we used that was already here uh there was at some point there was more rats and there were chickens in there all right here yeah [Music] hey it looks like maybe maybe he didn't turn it off one time on you huh yeah hey he's losing trust in you buddy what happened did you turn it on dear old dad huh have you done that before i have it was funny he's shocking dear old dad and dad's been watching you he's watching you i can't believe i grabbed that without testing it first next up we're gonna see the ducks move was your wife on board with this crazy plan all along yes she was okay that's handy well what do you what would you say to somebody if maybe their spouse wasn't whether it's the man or the woman that's not on board yeah that's a tough question i would you know the husband and wife have to be in unity on that you know just the change of life uh your you know how you spend your money uh is so important because if this does as it grows you've got to continue to put a lot of money back into it to grow we've got to be on the same page and see eye to eye and see the vision for the family what did your parents and your friends and family think did they just think you were nuts i mean you're going to quit chick-fil-a you're going to quit the steady job to be a farmer oh yeah yeah you know it doesn't matter if you show them joel salazar's video that's right let them read the books they still think you're crazy are you still crazy in their eyes four years later no no no one their hearts love it well they also love the food that they get to that's what you do you just wait it out okay they think you're nuts until they get some of that food that's right all right whoa you all ready to move aren't you what are they telling you they're ready they want news that's what they're saying yep they want a new salad bar give me some salad bar lily let's get them some salad bar okay wait a minute they're gonna get out yes is that not a problem nope normally i come out here and move them by myself so they're used to getting out and usually they get out while i'm moving the fence i move the fence and then we just walk them back in they don't go far they'll stay we'll stay around this area okay i'm gonna take your word for it what do you think guys you think he's gonna get him back in a new fence you think they're gonna run off [Applause] david you can walk and talk if you can or yeah or just stop for a moment whatever what are some steps people need to take if they want to do this themselves i would say you know start small in your backyard raising your food for your family and then go go see a go find another farmer in your area that'll talk to you i have no problem sharing what we do how we do it yeah where our market is where we sell there's enough you in the way i think i am there's enough there's enough demand out there for all of us to share so we're very open about what we do and how we've done it go talk to them find one that has some knowledge that you look find one that's doing a good job yeah and see what you can learn from them glean that information off of them and how they can help we've helped two or three farms around here start and they're direct competition to me but again i love seeing fathers that are willing won't have a desire to to stop leaving their families during the day and and starting a farm step number one is to begin growing food because you may not even be doing that first of all you find out what you really like by by growing different things and then you you kind of find something that you think you want and then you go find another farmer i'd say that'd be the step number two absolutely maybe in there you're reading books absolutely hopefully in that step number one you're reading like how to grow you know how to grow more vegetables that book or joe salatin's salad bar beef you know if you're thinking about cattle or something like that like some of this how-to stuff you're starting to grow something yeah then you grow then you go talk to somebody that is growing what you think you want to do yes the style you want to do yeah get you know go and learn that information for your area how are they growing it what's the grasses like cows uh and chickens where they getting their feet from we are strictly non-gmo we drive two and a half hours to get our feet every other week and then now go to your friends and your family and start selling to them it'll grow it will start off slowly and all of a sudden it's doubling and each year now it's tripling and just growing because the demand is there i would say that would be the third step is pretty much you're growing this stuff on the side and you're pretty much working yourself out of that first job you've gotten so busy with it because the demand is growing you've learned from that other farmer how to market and things like that we can't sum it all up right here and it's going to be different based in your area where you are are you near the city are you away from the city what are the different demands and wants of that place those are three really good and practical steps thank you so much david okay what's your name young man i'm reeves okay reeves how does your dad get you excited about going on the farm he doesn't he doesn't okay well why are you excited to be on the farm just being out here with really god's creation and how cool it is and really you can just when you first come out here you have a passion for it so dad has pretty much just exposed you to this yeah given you access to this and you run with it now i also take it that this is your operation right yes do you make the money off of this yes okay you paid you paid to add something for fee yes he helps he pass the fee he's put together these infrastructures yeah go ahead no they've they bought the ducks for feed they've done all the work for it yep uh they get to use our land [Laughter] and i've seen that have you seen that he just picked it up forget dragging it you done picked that up it did earth jam right there guys this is the duck feature they usually go to the mulberry tree there's still mulberries on it they're just about done but they really like the mulberries and when you go up in the tree while they're under it you shake the branch they all fall and go crazy with them it's they love them swear the ducks look under the mulberry tree and you'll find the ducks come on guys go get go help them hurt the ducks see how they're going up behind them come on let's go get behind them see yeah go right there with him you can help him [Laughter] oh no thanks no thanks i want back with my buddies i'm not back with my buddy [Music] hey i see you found the toys i see you found i see you found your favorite part of america farcher what's going on over here playing with the toys don't be tearing them up now go for it get in oh slam dunk good job buddy good job okay david one more last question buddy yes before we go personally and for everybody here i've got kids i want them to be involved in the farm and the business now but also when they grow up and it seems like you've been able to do that with at least these two and probably some more of the rest what is the big secret well the world shows us something different we raise our children at home our children are around us as parents and as well as our community that we belong to we want them to be adults at a young age that doesn't mean they can't have fun they're out here playing playing basketball enjoying the toys but there's a time they're going to have responsibilities there's a time we're going to introduce them to chores on the farm and slowly work with them they're going to want to work with mom and dad now their attention spans a little bit smaller we're going to gradually gradually work on that we're going to give them some responsibility we're going to find something they like and give them that responsibility it's something that they enjoy it's going to bring it's going to build that character that can build the responsibility um discipline in their life and you know my young man at 13 um is a young man he is yeah he is mature he can go out and he can talk to people we go from children and and we want to be young men and responsible and dedicated to their life have an idea what they want to do they have they have gifts and we're going to encourage in that we're going to mold that and the character is so important their education we teach them to read we teach them math and we allow them to just blossom through that so we're using every minute that we can as parents to mold them into what god wants them to be thank you so much for having us again hopefully we've dug deep with this guy hopefully he's encouraged you guys if you're in that spot where you just want to get home with the family sustainable farming is a valid opportunity it is and don't make it don't make it hard make it easy follow skeletons until you figure out and have success then you can kind of venture off but yeah it's this it's simple we're talking about starting part time 600 investment you can do that yes you can

Channel: Justin Rhodes

Views: 836,366

Rating: 4.9285784 out of 5

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Id: 9dp-5YAQ4VM

Length: 45min 42sec (2742 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020