welcome to living the offgrid dream where we talk about how to get land start a homestead a retreat regenerative Farm or community and live a life of health and freedom even if you're starting with nothing like we did we cover all this and how to be financially free while doing it and the failures and lessons we have learned along the way I hope you enjoy and subscribe well yeah thank you for thank you for being here thank you for chatting with us we're super excited um I was maybe going to give a little bit of a background for any listeners that may not have heard of you although I'm sure 99% of them already have so um yeah so basically uh this is Joel Salon welcome to the show I appreciate you being here uh so Joel you how many acres is your farm and whereabouts are you so we're in Virginia in the shenoa Valley of Virginia which is on the western edge of the state and our um we we own we own 950 Acres um and we then we lease about another 1,400 acres oh wow so we're actually managing a little over 2,000 acres and a lot of that's wooded I mean here of what we own here 700 is Forest so we have a lot of trees wow beautiful I love that yeah so we have we have a lot of elevation change too uh the shundo so the house here is is at 1,800 ft and um and the top of the farthest corner of the property is 2800 feet so we have a th000 feet of elevation uh gradiation difference on the on the property so that's that's an asset and a liability the asset is that we have over the years built about 20 ponds permaculture style and we have 12 miles of gravity fed um water line that that gives us 70 70 pound pressure water over the whole place uh from these high ponds wow wow that's awesome this is this is super cool I love that because we're doing something very similar on our property because we don't actually have enough water our well is only eight gallons a minute um so to have cattle and do any kind of larger like any kind of scalable uh agriculture we just need more water so right now we're working on building out a network of 35 pawns to be able to do pretty much exactly what you guys are doing um so that's super cool I when I first heard of you I I watched your guys' documentary um which I it I don't I forget what it's called is it is it just called your farm name polyface Farms yeah I think it's just polyfaces yeah okay cool yeah so if anybody wants to watch that and hasn't already it's really really awesome um but that kind of connect the dots for me there because I mean it's been a while since I've watched it but uh I didn't real I knew you were building ponds in that documentary but I didn't know that it was gravity feeding water lines um to through throughout your pasture I suppose yes yeah beautiful so we have so we we have high water what we call high water that feeds the livestock and then we've built uh uh L low ponds down where it's cheaper and easier to collect more water and uh and near near where our our infrastructure is where we have power and uh that then we use for irrigation so we we have kind of um we that that that high pressure water is too precious to use for irrigation so we we use that for the livestock and then use the low pons for irrigation okay cool cool that's awesome so a little bit of a two two-prong approach one is actually pressurized with pumps for irrigation and then the other form is H for basically just for livestock to drink yeah that's right okay that's right very cool cool and do you um this is just a qu a question I had do you um do you irrigate all of your pasture land no I wish we could we we're not there yet as you know the big cost of irrigation is uh is getting enough water inventory Allah you know paans and so so we finally got enough water inventory so we're running four 12p pod Kaline uh systems that allow us to irrigate uh we we can get six inches of water on U on on 60 Acres or so 60 70 acres and uh it's not all of our we have 250 Acres open here and so that doesn't get all of it but uh but you know it get it gets a lot and we just keep building every every time we get a little bit of cash we build another Pond uh so our idea what we've been doing is pretty much building our irrigation ponds next to the fields we want to irrigate so rather than having one humongous lake with a great big 6inch you know main line going somewhere instead we have this network of Pawns all positioned right next to the field where we want the water and then and then we can and then we can gravity flow from Big ponds to those near ponds where we have electricity so we can then pump it back out under pressure okay okay that makes sense so for the for the um acreage that you have that is unirrigated right now do you still use that um for for your cattle and for your Livestock in certain times of the year when the grass is good oh yeah absolutely we're we're in a we're in a 31inch rainfall uh uh area so we get you know we get fairly Dependable rain although normally uh four years out of five we'll have either a drought in the spring or in the fall we you know there'll be there'll be a drought let's say put it enough enough to stress the grass growth and um to where the grass stops growing and so now now that being said uh We've also in in 60 years taking our organic matter from 1% to 8.2 so every every percentage of organic matter increase holds 20,000 gallons of water per acre so we we've jumped it up 7% so 7 time 20 is 140,000 gallons of water we can now hold and and and uh whatever store per acre in the soil that we couldn't you know 60 years ago so that's a that's a big addition as well wow yeah that's absolutely massive so on the farm right now um you're it's a livestock Farm uh and you guys if to the best of my knowledge you have broilers uh chickens langens turkeys pigs and cattle is that right yeah we have ducks and lamb and rabbit as well oh wow okay so pretty much everything well ex except for the Exotics you know like llamas and alpacas and things like that but uh I haven't figured out how to make any money with them and I haven't figured out how to make any money with a horse either so yeah you know I want a horse and everyone keeps telling me that's going to cost a lot yeah well you know when they they they kid me and say well you know um tractors don't have babies horses replace themselves and I say well but a but a um a tractor stops eating when you park it too that's great so besides from the animal agriculture have you found uh that it's worthwhile to sell any byproducts from the farm such as compost or anything of that sort oh I would never sell compost that's way that's way too precious to sell I you gonna say that now if I were if you gotta we're we're very rural here we're on a dirt road uh we're not near a metropolitan area at all and so we have tried to do everything from you know uh food waste recycling to whe whe way fed to pigs to you know any number of gleaning type things and um and and we've just never been able to make it work because we're we're too remote uh in order in order to do that you pretty much have to be you know either in the city or right on the edge of of a pretty large city in order to in order to accumulate enough stuff you know aggregate aggregate enough stuff uh fast enough quick enough to be able to do that kind of thing I man I I would love to do that I mean we're we're working on even trying to bring back all our guts from The Slaughterhouse to compost um but you know these are all you know when you're when you're running miles and paying diesel fuel um you know the the economics just don't always work for that so um so we're we're working on it but it's um it's not it's not easy to do some of that what what we all know in our hearts needs to be done but what we need is people is people on the edges of cities to to come aboard and and and uh they can't do some of the things we do either you know they might not have a mountain in their backyard that they can gravity feed water from okay so we can do things that they can't do um but they need to step up and do things that we can't do yeah I think that's a really good point because you know one of our Specialties one of the things that we help clients do mostly is get into land ownership um or get on land whatever that might mean whether it's leasing or whether it's buying land or whatever it might be um and it's it's I think that's a huge part of choosing the property that you want is knowing what you'd want to do because if somebody wanted to if they had this big idea that they were going to uh you know do a specific type of farming or uh get into agriculture in another way such as creating compost and selling compost some areas and some lots of land will not be right for what they're trying to do so they need to know what they want to do prior to making a decision on where they're going to go with it yeah that that's true and in general if I'm if if if I want to do let's just talk about direct marketing or branded marketing uh if you're going to do that I would much rather have a very small acreage next to an urban center than a than a large acreage far away if you're if you're 200 miles from a Coke machine and and I I'm not a Coke drinker I'm just using it as a as a illustration if you 200 miles from a Coke machine it's pretty hard to direct market and so um so you you if you're going to direct Market you need to be near enough to a a consumer base to be able to do that yeah absolutely so for somebody who is starting out out of all of the different types of livestock that you're working with what would you recommend somebody to start with that might be you know have the fastest timeline to get going um be like cheapest for infrastructure to get going uh and kind of get them going quick enough to cover their own cost of operating what would you recommend for somebody to get started yeah H hands hands down it's the broiler chicken the meat chicken as opposed to the laying chicken now I love layers because it's cash flow you know it's like a dairy cow they you know old old elani's uh butter and egg money you know wasn't what floated the farm but that's what kept them out of the that that cash cash flow is as important as actual uh total income a and most businesses actually fail not because they don't have a good service or a good product they fail because they the of cash flow they the bills are coming in faster than the the money's coming in the front end or there's you know there's there's a glitch in that somewhere so the broiler chicken is my go-to uh first of all Everybody Eats chicken I mean well more the per capita consumption of chicken is more than anything else um and and it's it's an eight-week turnaround you get the chick eight weeks and you're out you know it's as fast as a radish and so you know you don't have a bunch of uh U you know religious tabos different things and it's it's an every it's an everyday it's a very consumable Everybody Eats chicken they eat a lot of chicken and um and so it's it's a it's a repeat you know you want you want to have something consumable uh nobody nobody makes money on a first sale it costs too much to get a customer to make any money on a first sale you make your money on your second third and fourth sales whether that's a product or a service or anything else e even an accountant doesn't make money the first time a client comes to do his taxes he makes money when they come back a second time because he's already got a template and you know knows the person that sort of thing there's so much inertia to to the startup so so um so what you're looking for for is something that's repetitive a broiler chicken you know is is very repetitive and it's very easy to process in your backyard it's child friendly it it it doesn't take heavy heavy Gates and structures you don't even need a tractor you don't need anything special all the infrastructure if you use portable infrastructure is lightweight and you don't have to own the land that you're on you can eat I mean the the it's been wonderful to watch uh young people jump onto this uh pastured chicken and do on land they don't own that they don't even pay any rent on because the farmer is happy to get the nitrogen and the and and the fertility from the chickens and so you can get on land for free and that makes ay nice pretty nice deal wow that's actually really cool I never thought about that we do I do think that that leasing land is like really underutilized because I think a lot of people their their only thought in their head they're not really thinking outside the box they're just thinking I need to buy land and I think some of that comes from even an egotistic IC perspective with some folks where they just want to buy land and that's the only option they want to consider however if you can lease land uh or like you're saying get land for free to start an operation like this uh start bringing in some money you know one day you save up enough money to go buy your own property next door yeah well right now we're leasing we're leasing probably 50 $50 million worth of property for about $50,000 a year so I mean I mean it's like it's like a tenth of a percent uh because because see the the the the cost of land when you buy land that land is not being sold for its productive value it's it's being sold for its viewscape for its as you said for everybody wants a piece of land I mean that's in our that's in our our our DNA you know to want a piece of land um and so it's being sold for emotional and other reasons besides you know productivity but when but but the rent rent in all of that is based on actual productive capacity actual yeah so as a result a lease is actually an honest reflection of land to production ratio as um as opposed to uh ownership uh my quick sound bite on that is when Mom and Dad bought this Farm the original 550 acres in 1961 it was $90 an acre $90 an acre and feeder cattle were bringing $180 and you could raise half of a feeder calf on an acre so that calf that annual production from that acre on a feeder calf was $90 so the land was $9 in value the calf was $90 in value that's a one to one in other words and and that's a one season that's not five years 10 years that that's one season all right today the today the land is is uh $77,000 an acre and that calf is now $700 a calf half of that $350 so 700 to 3 7,000 to 350 is a 20 to1 ratio so in my lifetime we've gone from one to one land to production value to 20 to one and that's why what Grandpa did won't work anymore yeah yeah that makes total sense and it's kind of sad almost um to you know pushing out the little guys and bringing in things like Black Rock they're just buying up all the Farmland yeah well that that's that's true although um although a lot of it is available and I'm glad it's coming available it's coming available right at the time when we have a homestead tsunami and a lot of people you know looking for an option out of the urban sector as as a trust in in um in basic you know uh institutions throughout the country is falling and uh people are looking for self-reliance and their own garden and their own chickens and their own applesauce and their own uh you know pear tree and uh and so I'm you know I think it's it's a it's a natural natural you know kind of provision that this that farmers are aging out they're averaging 60 years old so a lot of this land is transferring and um and it's right at a at an opportune time for this new wave of self-reliance to actually be able to jump on it so I'm hoping that thousands and hundreds of thousands of of brighte eyed bushy tailed entrepreneurial compost growing uh self-starting uh farmers are going to jump on all this available agrarian equity and take us to a new a new plateau in the next millennium beautiful yeah me as well that's very very well put and you are definitely leading the charge with helping people do that so I appreciate everything that you're doing and all the inspiration that you are thank you glad to so with h I was curious for with your chickens if that's you know that's the first thing that you would start with with Broiler chickens um what uh I was I'm always curious about feed and and how much like are you able to create like I know you have the system where they where are are those the chickens following your cattle and they're you know eating the maggots and stuff out of the uh out of the cow pies and whatnot um and how much additional grain do you have to bring in to feed them because we have a lot of clients that come in and they're trying to be like fully self-sufficient and I'm kind of like I don't it's not really possible to be fully self-sufficient like even the Amish aren't fully self-sufficient there's always trading going on um and uh and yeah one thing that like we had huge grain shortages up here so it's just curious if there's any way to kind of subsidize some of the chicken feed from your own Farm well the answer to that of course is yes but the Practical answer is there's a reason why people feed grain so what what follow so what we follow the cows with is the is the layers um okay so so you know they're a lot more agile they're they're uh smarter uh you know they're just heer whereas the broiler chickens you know they grow they're race gar NASCAR high high octane double breasted birds and uh so they they take a pretty high octane um now you can go to a very slow growing Heritage bird uh that grows you know half as fast and is more you know will will will you know uh um you root hog or die a little better you know they'll they they'll get out there and get after it a little better but uh the problem then is marketability you know when you're when you're marketing and you're branding something um especially if it's something that's kind of in the marketplace and you're just trying to become uh a create brand recognition and difference uh you can only be so weird My Mentor Alan Nation uh used to say uh in marketing you can be a Buddhist or you can be a nudist but a nudist Buddhist I mean they just won't trust you and and so so when you tell when you tell people you know uh not only do you not want to get your chicken at Walmart or you know the supermarket you want to get it for me and you don't want that double breasted bird you want all dark meat who wants that all white meat who wants that big breast you want a razor breast and and and and cook it Fast N you don't want to fry that chicken you want to cook it in a crock pot where you got to cook it for uh you know 3 hours that you know and and and you've just become too weird and so so um uh I I make I make no apologies for the fact I mean some people of course they they excoriate us for you know using an industrial genetic chicken same you know genetics that Tyson uses but um we we don't apologize for trying to offer a credible alternative to the entire factory farming system and and once we once we eliminate the factory farming system then there's plenty of room for additional you know niches of niches of niches of niches and so um so yes you can you can you know you can do we've played with earthworms you can do soldierly larvae uh you know you can do things but um it if you go to any scale at all uh it becomes a tail that Wags The do because all that stuff is squishy perable perishable you're trying to feed guts uh you know it's just it it just becomes really uh really difficult there there's a reason why you know there's a reason why the industry uses grain if if if there was something that was cheaper and easier they'd probably use it and and listen the day the day you can't get grain uh is going to be is going to be a day that we're you know we're back in the cave um uh you know I've had in the last two years I've had about four or five billionaires call me these are billionaires not Millionaires and um and they they and they're looking for um a safe place a Haven I call I they don't use this term but I call it an agrarian bunker they're looking for an agrarian bunker they think the wheels are going to fall off and I got to get to a safe place and one of them asked me once he says what do you what's your definition of the wheels falling off what does that mean the wheels falling off so I said I don't know give me a week to think about it so I put it to my team I said you know what do you guys think Wheels falling off and um you know there are numerous things that you could come up with we came up with three three things one is you can't get uh fuel two you can't get electricity and three you can't get grain if you can't get fuel electricity or grain you are in a world of hurt and so if I everybody thinking about self-reliance if you start if you start thinking about those three things and attack those as a strat strategy um to to kind of immunize yourself if you will U against those three things the more you can immunize yourself uh you know the the the better you'll be able to handle shocks and so yes we use grain but we buy it from local uh GMO free Farmers so we know where it is we know who they are they know us we pay them more for it it's local it's not coming from Ukraine it's not coming from Russia it's not coming from usbekistan you know and so it's it's local right here and we we are very happy of the fact that we have we have um whatever we have incentivized we have financed um you know several hundred acres here in the area that are GMO free that would not be GMO free if we weren't here and so we we're we're thankful for that yeah that's really epic I that's uh I I totally I couldn't agree more with all of that stuff I think that basically comes down to just just being a good member of community and supporting you know good farmers and other people that you know are just a part of your ecosystem and we we do the same thing you know we've had people that have come up and lived in our land and they they've been scared of uh you know food they want food security they've been scared that you know the Whole Food Network is just going to collapse underneath them so right away they're like we need a garden we need a garden and you know we we ended up spending $30,000 getting a small garden going um and then you know the garden was great and everything else but I'm I'm just like man that thing was like a massive amount of work for a very little amount of like calorie output um and for the say for like a cheaper price of what we were paying someone to manage the garden and weed it and get it set up every year and all of that kind of stuff and not to mention get it going we could have just formed a really good relationship with a local farm that was you know non-GMO fully organic Beyond Organic whatever whatever it might be whatever it might be that we're looking for uh and just you know we we have those relationships now we're some of their top clients so if anything was ever to happen who who do you think that they're going to trust first the people that they have good relationships with sure sure yeah I I absolutely I couldn't agree more uh I I believe that the next uh the next 401k plan the next 401k plan is living proximate in relationship with people who know how to grow things fix things and build things yeah absolutely that's the next 401K I love that so we talked about Broiler chickens out of everything that you're doing now what are the next two like let's say you started with Broiler chickens you mastered that for a couple of years and it was going well then what are the next two things that you would move into and reinvest into yeah probably the next two things would be uh laying chickens for eggs and um and and then the next one is either and I don't have a a strong pref reference here a lot of it is has to do with regulations it would either be pork or or milk uh a milk cow or pigs and of course you know milk cows and pigs go real well together you know pigs love soured milk and Whey and stuff left over from cheese making um some some of this is just how tied down you want to be as soon as you go to milking something uh now suddenly you're tied down at least with all the other livestock you can you can go away a day you can you can you know you can go to a party one evening and you know not have to do anything you have a little bit of flexibility uh I mean even if you're if even if you're controlled grazing you know you can uh you can give the cows a three-day padic instead of a one if you want to if you if you have a couple pigs you can give them enough food for three days and not just one day um so there there are things that you can do but as soon as you start milking you're really really tied down and so uh I tell people it's fine to milk but as along with your as soon as you make that decision in the next minute you need to be making a list of people who will be your stand-ins your your um your substitutes otherwise you're going to get really tired of that cow or that goat or that sheep uh that you're milking because you can't get away you can't go to a a niece's birthday party you can't go down you know it makes it even hard to to to go to church or to go to a you know a philanthropic club or the theater a play one night maybe you want to go to you anyway you get what I'm saying and so so dairing while dairing if you can get sell it for retail or or or give it away and take donations or herd share or you know skirt skirt the laws the thing about Dair is there's so many regulations about it but um you know if if you can if you can figure out a way I mean here a lot of milk is being sold for pet food there's uh there's herd shares um uh you you know uh person private membership associations pmas are our big workarounds I mean there's all sorts of of mechanisms uh to work around regulations but um but the the pig or the dairy either one of those would be my next go after the eggs the eggs again the eggs it's it's a very child friendly thing the chickens are all very child friendly they're you know they they're not going to hurt your child uh it doesn't take big expensive difficult infrastructure and uh it's very very highly portable um and as soon as you go to something uh big enough to milk or a pig now you're get now you're dealing with a little bit of you know stronger infrastructure a little more safety issues with children you know little and and visitors and visitors and so you know you kind of have to watch that up yeah yeah that s that makes a lot of sense so uh I think in our emails back and forth you mentioned um an investment ratio and I believe that would have been probably with Broiler chickens uh do you know the investment ratio on like for every dollar you put in what do you what do you receive out uh when working with with poers oh uh boy uh you're catching me off guard here uh I I could figure it out for you uh but in general let let me do it this way um you can start the the beauty of this pastured poultry thing is that you can start with one module okay so so um our my my three M for this are uh mobile modular and management intensive all right so because it's mobile you don't have to own the land all right well that knocks a big part of your investment off because it's modular you can start with one and you scale with duplication not centralization so you so um you have one module so one of our modules cost about $400 and in one season you can run uh you can run four batches through there at least in our in our area our Frost dates are May 15 and September 15 so uh we can run four batches through one shelter in a season and um and you know you can use for a brooder you can use cardboard boxes if you're that small and just put them in your garage or your living room or or the bathroom or the bathtub or whatever and and uh you know and and Brew these little so if we've got if we've got um um 7 70 sale old birds times four batches that's 280 the whole the the shelter and everything else uh let's just say we've got uh $600 in the whole setup 280 birds and you're going to sell them for 20 bucks that's $5,600 the um so uh if you if you add on if you add on the processing equipment let's say the process you know a picker and a scaler and maybe a stainless steel table or something let's say that that's $3,000 with a with a um a 10-year depreciation which uh that's $300 per year so we've got 600 uh plus 300 that's $900 to turn $5,600 in the very first season whatever that R that's that's what that's a that's like a a six that's like a six a six to1 ratio wow that so so you you can actually so yeah you can do pretty well and like once you're up and going I think that's really cool that you can like it seems pretty scalable so like you could start with what was the number you could start with was it n 900 bucks and you would make five grand roughly yeah 5600 now that's gross that's gross that's not net yeah yeah that's gross that's not net but yeah I mean I mean yeah just just think just think what it would be just think what a person that builds a a six $700,000 Tyson chicken house uh think about think about their their ratio I mean their ratio is is probably not even one to one it's oh yeah it cost them like a million dollars to build a barn yeah yeah I mean yeah and in a year in a year they might you know they might take in um yeah uh is pro it's probably you know a tenth to one or something you know it's it's crazy so what's the uh and what's the turnaround on that so was that for was that calculations for a full year yeah that that was for a full a whole six month six month season six month season okay cool we do six six month on six month off right okay yeah I mean that seems really really cool and really easy to reinvest with the you know replicating it like you mentioned earlier that's cool yeah that that seems really awesome so how much I I guess for somebody to make a living off of it um how many how many acres do you think they would need and what what do you think like let's say they were going to go into this and they were just they wanted to make sure that they had enough money to build enough infrastructure to make a livable wage um for a couple people maybe it's 100 Grand a year or 80 grand a year or I mean I'm talking Canadian dollars so I guess let's say like I don't know even 60 Grand US would be a pretty cool start for somebody to get out and start farming and quit their day job um yeah what do you think is the minimum amount of land and what would you recommend they go into it with savings yeah well let's um let's let's do this let's do this backwards let's figure it backwards so if if you figure a 30% margin a 30% margin uh Enterprise margin and you want $60,000 to your overheads um that means that you need $180,000 gross to make a $60,000 Enterprise margin am I right on that y 180 30% of uh 30% of 180 is 60,000 so so if if we start we say we need we need to take in 180,000 and we're going to sell these chickens for $20 a piece that means we're going to need to raise um 9,000 chickens okay and if each of our shelters can raise 280 in a season get my little calculator out here you need 32 shelters um yes boy you're quick okay yeah 32 shelters okay so the 32 shelters times $400 a piece but 13 Grand yeah yeah $133,000 and you're going to need uh to do that you're you're going to want about um $5,000 in processing equipment you know a nice picker a nice scaler a nice table you know some uh some hose and fittings and maybe a a shed or something um so you've got 5,000 in that you're going to have some uh you know some some some sort of Cold Storage a uh you know several chest freezers or something so so let's let's just say that you're you're up there in your in your freezing um capacity you're up there in the in the 4,000 that's nine um so so yeah we're up there around around 21,000 somewhere between 20 and 25,000 of of total upfront investment you know there's going to be a few other things there's going to be I you're you're GNA need some sort of a a little trailer cart or something to you know haul stuff out to the chickens you're going to need a few crates to haul the chickens in you know there's there's stuff around I mean I I could if you actually wanted a true business plan I could you know I could spend some time on this but but I I I think it's fair enough to say that certainly for under 25,000 you could be up and running with your $180,000 business you know uh in in a literally literally in a you know in a couple weeks wow yeah I mean that's that's pretty incredible um I mean obviously there'd also be the cost of like buying the chicks um and then all and then like feed and whatnot that that's that that's all figured into it that's what the other other 120,000 goes to oh okay right so you're just counting that in cash flow so yeah like basically if you started with you could start with $30,000 and you could make 180 Grand a year revenue and about 60,000 in profit off of that and like basically quit your day job and and start farming which is pretty epic like that's uh there's not a lot of things that you can do to invest $330,000 and get $60,000 a year out of it um I think I think that's pretty cool those numbers work out way better than I would have thought or was led to believe yeah well um again REM remember the uh the Achilles heel of this whole thing it's fun to talk about this that this is what can be done but remember you got to sell those chickens right you got to sell those chickens and you've got to sell them at retail you can't sell them to Tyson you can't sell them to Walmart you you're going to have to sell those chickens direct so somehow so so um if we if we think about that for a moment um we're gonna we're going to do we're going to do so so let's talk about the land first so those 9,000 Birds uh are going to take we run about 600 Birds per acre that's going to take 15 Acres so there and there is not a cattle farm Wheat Farm uh pig farm Orchard Vineyard there's there's not another there's not a piece of land in the world that wouldn't benefit from running broilers stacking excuse me from stacking a broiler Enterprise you know on that on that piece of land and and many farms again many farms you you go to them and you say tell you what I'll fertilize 15 acres and you don't have to pay me for it you know all you're gonna do is let me you know let me use it all right so now we got to sell those those so we got 9,000 Birds we're going to sell and if we figure the um the right in the US the average per capita consumption on chicken is 72 pounds per year so let's um 72 pounds wa 9,000 divided by 72 is 125 people but that's actual meat you're going to have bone and stuff in there so so let's just for sake of discussion say we need to have at least two 200 customers um you know if if if if these folks eat you know if a family if if the um if a family let's just well let's look about let's think about it this way if a family eats two chickens a week a household okay that's a 100 a year all right so 9,000 chickens divided by 100 per year is 90 households so you need so you need a hundred you need a 100 families you need you need a hundred carnivorous families to sell to all right and and you know when when you start breaking it down how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time so I love doing this kind of stuff because well 100 families you know look even even if it took 150 all right 150 my goodness you start thinking about friends and and and and your your you know your your people that you know people maybe at work uh AC people in the city people at the fitness gym uh the chiropractor the acup you know all the all the quack in the medical field um you know and you start putting together I mean in in my pastor poultry book I talk about making a hit list make make a hit list of of 50 people and give each of them two chickens and you will get at least half of them as customers that's pretty good return on a on a sample and so you know in in in a if you're Savvy uh in a year or two you can get those customers and you're up and running you know they're not going to come to you overnight you know marketing is as you know marketing is never e as easy as as it sounds uh you know we'd love to think the biggest lie in the world was Kevin Cosner's uh film you know uh you build it the Field of Dreams you know you build it and they will come uh no no no no you you you build it and you H and you have to keep marketing and marketing and marketing and marketing and marketing uh they don't they don't come and so this is this is the same way it can be the best chicken in the world but you still have to build build the business and do the marketing yeah I I mean and I feel like I don't personally that doesn't seem very difficult at all um to me like I actually as soon as you said like 150 people and like making a hit list I actually thought of uh my spouse and I are talking about getting married and we're talking about guest list and we have you know this big property we want to have a dream wedding and we want to invite 500 people and she's like there's no way we we don't know 500 people and I'm like I bet you that we do know 500 that we would want to invite so we start making a list and I'm like there's a 100 people on your side of the family there's 150 people on my side of the family like it just it goes so fast so and even in the even with like social media I mean you could throw up some videos and get some followers and message each follower like you would have a I I'm very certain that people could have 150 clients in their first year if they put in that effort um and they could probably do it at very low cost to to just a little bit of you know manual labor to get the word out there yeah yeah that's right that's right yeah that's awesome so do you guys do all of your own butchering on site and is there is there uh like regulations and stuff around that and uh you wrote a whole book on this I'm pretty sure yeah yeah so yeah there's a lot of regulations but now in the now you're in Canada and Canada is a is a uh is a gapo compared to America when it comes to because you've got the quotas system uh you got the quota so you can't just go out and buy chicks you've got to buy quota which means that that you what you're looking is for worker rounds and so there are there are numerous worker rounds and I I know people in Canada who have done worker rounds um if you if you get something like a free a red ranger or a kosher King rather than a Cornish cross for example that qualifies as a different as as an experimental breed so there there are there are numerous things that you can do is a workaround in Canada in the US we have this we we of course don't have any quota system and so anybody can buy as many chicks as they want and start right into the business uh the regulations really come in on the processing and so uh so yeah we we process almost all the birds here on the farm um we do ship ship nationally and so for those that we shipping Interstate uh we go to a little Federal inspected processing facility and uh and get those done down there so that their USDA um certified and they can be sold across state lines um okay so if you're just selling within your state like within your local region it's easier yeah it it's def definitely easier and and um you know we and we have a what called a public law 90- 492 PL 90492 it's a federal exemption that allows you to raise 20,000 chickens as a producer grower process them yourself and and sell them I can't butcher I can't butcher your chickens uh but but as long as I raise them I can process them without inspection and um and all I have to be is sanitary and unadulterated which is very subjective but uh that's both that that's both an asset and Li it's a liability so if you have a if you have a a tyrannical inspector it can work against you but if you have a sympathetic inspector can greatly work for your favor because none of the infrastructure is defined um and so as long as I can prove I'm uh uh that I'm I'm unadulterated in sanitary you know and and again I wrote yeah everything I want to do is illegal I wrote that book several years ago to documenting our run-ins with the you know with the food police but um but you know but without regards to that um again I the these things there there are there are absolute workarounds and um one workaround being simply just start start and and defy them and and force them and and you know don't advertise do it on a QT do it do it like your wedding guest list okay you know do it on the quiet um uh for example I know one guy that started his Pastor poultry business he he was a homeschooler and he hosted the um the state homeschooling convention at his farm served everybody barbecued chicken by the end of the day he had 200 customers um and so so there there's a lot there's a lot of ways there's a lot of ways to you know to get into this to enter it um kind of under the radar and I I of course encourage people to do that yeah we we do too for pretty much everything and and just it's kind of like you just work your way up you know like don't start thinking about okay how do I sell this stuff internationally you know just think think about doing it in your own small local Community First just get up and get going with it and then you know you you'll you'll meet the local inspector at some point figure out if they're on your side or if they're a dick and if they're a dick they'll tell you what to do and then you go do it and then you keep moving and like that's as simple as it as it is right right right right yeah yeah you you let let let inertia work for you and often I mean like in our case um you know back when we started DEC decades ago uh it never occurred to me that a bureaucrat would be able to tell tell me I can't grow a chicken and sell it to a voluntary consenting adult who wants to come and get it from me I mean it never occurred to me that a bureaucrat would be able to get in in between that transaction uh unfortunately that is the case that a bureaucrat can get between two consenting adults uh in a voluntary opt out transaction and um and so so yeah no nobody's going to give you a fine nobody's going to throw you in jail what they're going to do is say you know you can't do what you're doing and and then you decide how to how to work around it you know uh I mean like like one of my favorites is a couple in Ohio they started doing this and the government came in on yeah you can't you know you can't do this you got to have um impermeable walls uh in your processing facility and so they thought about it thought about said oh okay we'll just we'll just put a hoop house over it so they just put a hoop house over their over their concrete slab and they called the inspectors out said you know we got our impermeable wall when the inspectors came out oh they had a hissy fit this isn't what we meant you know we they were thinking you know fiber board and concrete and all this stuff and so the couple said walk around outside they took a garden hose sprayed it against the plastic said are you getting wet over there and and of course you know the inspector said no we're not well that's an impermeable wall you know and and they had to pass them so there there are there are there are lots of things look if you can't if if if we as entrepreneurs can't be more creative than bureaucrats you know Heaven Help Us I love that I love that so much because I feel like the regulations I actually sent an email out recently because we've had some people consult with us we've had three different Consultants about cattle and whether you know how to design our land for it and how to you know Pro how the processing works and all of that type of stuff and we and then I I sent an email to our email list about it and I just basically said look I'm just I'm just relaying what other people have told us from and and just showcasing that there's such drastic perspectives and oh man we got replies to that email of people being like no like it is way harder than that like you there's all these regulations you need to do and then I go talk to my brother-in-law who just raises some cows he sends them to the Butcher and he sells it to a 100 local people and it is what it is and he's like dude it's super easy so I'm like well which one is it I got people freaking out on one side and then people tell me easy on the other side that's right that's right that's right well don't don't to don't do too much with your cattle till I come up and take a look at it yeah yeah yeah we're we don't even have enough water for him yet so yeah no we're H we got a long ways to go on that um but uh yeah I think uh so far it just it seems like you can make it hard or you can make it easy and I think making it easy just is from a regulatory standpoint is exactly what you mentioned is just starting small starting local and you know just just doing that to begin with and then just you know get go over that bridge once you get there for like the higher levels of regulatory standards yeah yeah and and the thing about doing that you chances are you'll have I don't know 20 30 40 50 families as customers well then it becomes a political battle then then when there's when there's some push back you can you can swap them with letters you can swap them with you know with with emails you can you can do all sorts of things um I mean when when we've had showdowns you know customers show up for us um I remember very well one time uh we had a a bureaucrat causing us trouble and he came literally the day after the day after a guy showed up on our doorstep carrying literally had in his arms his 90 pound his his little 90 pound wife and he said um the doctors say that if I don't get toxin uh toxin-free meat for my wife she's going to die can you help me and and the next day these these two government agent comes out and says you know uh you're unsanitary we're going to close you down and I looked at him and I told him this story about this guy who'd come to our door the day before with his wife I said listen I said she's going to get she's gonna get our clean food now you can either make that difficult for her or you can you can make it easy for her to get that food it's all in your hands you have to make that decision and that that changed the the tempo the it changed the whole tenor of the conversation because suddenly I called him out to act like a human the these bureaucrats it's it's like they parked their heart at the office you know just doing my job just doing my job man I mean that's what that's what the Nazis said when they pushed the button at awit just doing my job just doing my job don't ever come and tell me just doing my job no did you leave your did you leave your heart at the office some somewhere no we're we're first of all we're we're we're brother humans okay uh or sister humans we're you know we're we're in this together and uh and and and and don't just come around here swaggering saying just doing my job uh let's think about this a little bit yeah wow that's a really that's a really beautiful story and very powerful and I think that we uh yeah I'm a huge fan of that just basically telling your story and being human and connecting with people emotionally um just talking to people like another human being has gone such a long way for us I I swear the only thing that we've ever done is we've told our story we've wrote it down we verbalized it and we've broadcasted that and that has attracted everything to us that we've ever dreamed of having uh you know the land and the whole dream of living out here and that that's all it ever took was that was that little bit of human emotional connection that is so lacking right now yeah well you you do it you do it very well I mean I've been through I've been through your um this is the the workbook yeah I've been I've been through the workbook and um yeah it's uh it's it's truly it's it's quite remarkable yeah wow well that that's that is a very surreal moment for me is seeing you hold up our book because you're such a legend in the space and and you know yeah I mean I've uh I think I watched your documentary is wow probably seven years ago or something now um and when we first got on you guys but yeah very very very beautiful that was awesome thank you um okay I got a couple questions that I really want to hit you with I know we're coming up on on time I don't want to take too much your time here but we have this is this is something that happens to us all the time we have a lot of people that come to us with a lot of ideas and many of their ideas are very much wishful thinking so I was curious if you have any examples of things that you hear people say a lot um that you think is wishful thinking and maybe not the best approach for people to take when trying to move into this lifestyle of getting on land and growing their own food and and being a farmer uh boy probably probably the most common one in wishful thinking is um is coming late in life when your youthful physical physical energy is waning um what what happens is as as you know a lot of times people don't actually have the whatever the financial wherewithal to to have enough freedom to actually think about a piece of land think about something you know maybe they're maybe they're in their 50s or or something uh a lot of times people don't come I tell you a story D David Schaefer and I uh did a a chicken butchering demonstration down in Tennessee at the homestead Festival last year and we had 300 people 300 people all gathered around watching us butcher these chickens and um and Dave Dave asked the crowd he said uh I want to ask you question how many of you and the crowd was all you know they were they were uh you know 40ish you know uh to late 30s early 50s okay uh parents with teenagers and and and um some young kids and he said I said I want to see a show of hands how many of you when you were 16 ever thought that you would want to come early in the morning at 7 o' to watch chickens be butchered and and two hands went up only two hands and and what that tells me is that this kind of awareness often comes late in life you know you're young you're Invincible you you know you assume you assume the grocery store is always going to have food there's never going to be anything like covid uh you know the Centers for Disease Control tells the truth and the you know you have this this I this this you know kind of fantasy world of of of of Disney uh that translates into your into the way you live and you're going to you know you're going to find the perfect one you're going to live happily every after your kids are never going to be sick you know it's this Camelot thing you know we're you know the snow's going to fall in the neat little piles the leaves are going to fall in leat little piles the snow's going to fall everywhere but on the road and and you know all this stuff and and then you hit your late 30s early 40s and guess what you know one of the kids needs braces and um and one of them is rebellious won't do anything you want them to do and and um and the then suddenly something like Co Black Swan comes and the the store shelves are empty and you read what you know you read about red Dy 29 and monosodium glutamate oh wow you mean you mean Proctor and Gamble doesn't love me and Nestle doesn't love me and McDonald's doesn't love me and oh my you know and you have this this gradual Awakening and and and so this comes late in life and what happens then is that that you know the cycles of Life are real you know you're not 20 forever and and there's a there's a wonderful um uh a kind of cycles of Life narrative that you know when when you're 20 you have no experience but you can rebound from your mistakes so that's the time to learn and become a master a master in your vocation because you have enough physical and emotional and mental energy to recuperate from from from from falling over when you get to your late 40s and early 50s you know you have a little bit of cck in your knee and you don't feel quite as bouncy and you you start to panic uh because there's not enough time left and I need this right away so I need I need to I need to get on this and do all this right away and I want to do all this right away and so you overextend yourself you blow you blow your money on on because you don't have experience so you you buy an a tractor that's too expensive maybe that you don't even need you build a house that too expensive that you don't need you you you you and and you blow you blow your money your hard-earned money on things that you're not exper because you're you're you're going into a situation that you're not experienced at my my mentor allation I mentioned him before he said he said if you go to a farm sale if you go to a farm sale and if in in 10 minutes you don't know who the sucker is it's you and and listen there are plenty of of of nice you know good people ready to take advantage of an inexperienced person sell you a cull cow tell you it's it's a great cow but it's a you know but they're getting rid of their cull uh sell you you know I mean all this is the greatest tractor in the world and the thing is a lemon you know they're just trying to unload it a and so what what I see is is this kind of uh uh late 40s early 50s kind of panic syndrome that moves us into silly purchases blowing money on things I do I do a fair amount of Consulting for homesteads and it's amazing I get the ones I love to do are the ones where they've just bought the property and they don't even live there yet that's fun the the the bummer is to get on these places they bought their 50 acres they've already spent half a million dollars on on paint and things that rot Rustin depreciate none of which they need none of which is a weak link and now now they're they're under Financial stress because they' blown half their nest egg on stuff they didn't need that that neighbors and friends and other people told them well you're a farmer now you got to have this and this and this and the other I mean I mean a side by side think about a side by side you know those things are 22 $23,000 you know what my side by side is my side by side is a 1987 Ford Bronco $1700 that there were millions of them made cheap to run I've got a roof a windshield knocked all the windows out the things got to pick up I can take I can take five people in there comfortably and and and run them around um and the thing is $1,700 you know that's that's the kind of stuff uh that that you that you learn when you're Frugal you learn Alternatives and you learn other ways of doing things and that takes experience I'm sorry it's a long answer but but I hope it it ran ran you around the rabbit hole far enough to to know uh to to to give you an answer to the question yeah no that I mean it makes total sense and I think people don't understand that going into it they don't like even even verbalizing that to someone a lot of times they still don't get it and I think like we tell a lot of stories to to like in our in our marketing to people to really try to help them drive that fact home that you know it's it's wishful thinking it's it's excitement which creates emotional decisions uh worse worse than that it's fear which creates emotional decisions um and then on top of that it's just the strategy and it what I really like is you know you've mentioned cash flow a couple of times on the call so far so it seems like yeah like it's not it's not just you go out and you know you you you like raise some food to be food self-sufficient and that kind of thing it's like if you're going to get into farming you need to understand the business side of it you need to be able you need to go out and and realize the importance of having mentors and Consultants like yourself to avoid those $100,000 mistakes uh so that you can actually have have success in it yeah yeah and and and it for sure it's so easy it's so easy in farming to blow 50 or $60,000 it's so easy and and so uh that's one of the things I loved about your your whole live off the grid dream dream workbook um uh one of the things I loved about it was that that as you as you set up strategy for your hospitality business well you you can start with a with a platform and a tent and then you move to this and you move to this you move to this and um and I mean I I think back of of the way we you know we back in the early days the way we got Lumber we actually went to neighbors that had falling down Barns and dad and I tore down barns you know know you look at a barn that's you know like the roof's half caved in there's still a lot of good Lumber in that thing you know that the end that still sheds water so we' go and we tore down several of those barns in the community and that's how we got Lumber and we still you know those boards are still you know in our shed and and our our our head shoot and stuff you know they're these old boards um then eventually eventually you know we we upgraded now we have a sawmill okay and so now we don't tear down barns we we we can turn our own trees into our own uh wood that we want to but but but you but you start and and you have to have you have to have a a a crawl before you walk mentality and and that comes from a uh a thought out strategy not an emotion of fear I love what you're saying there and and and a lot of the a lot of people are coming to this because they're running away they're running away they're scared of what they see going on in the city or the economy or the the dysfunctional social structure of our time and they're running away but you can't run away forever you at at some point you have to stop and embrace something better well that Embrace of something better has to be has to start as an embryo you don't stop and embrace something better that that that's a full grown tree what you what you stop and embrace is an acorn because that's the smallest viable uh uh viable prototype of your dream and and that's where you start nothing is birthed full grown nothing it all has to be birthed small so what happens is people want to birth they want to birth their dream too big and when you birth your dream too big you you it it it's stillborn because because you can't you can't birth it okay and yeah so yeah that's that's the deal yeah yeah I like that yeah I I totally agree we constantly have people coming in here being like I need $10 million and funding to do what I want to do and I'm like no you don't like let's let's get right back down to minimum viable product and let's see what that actually is and it turns out you probably only need a couple hundred thousand so you just reduced your upfront ask by 98% which is insane um but so uh speaking of like you know we we have we have some clients that are getting older um some really exciting stuff actually we just had a client um Trisha and her husband and Bruce uh just got um an investor to secure 40 acres in Arizona to start a permaculture farm and they are in their 70s uh and they're super excited for that um and one thing that that we kind of say is that you can strategize your way around anything and and a lot of that comes with help so you know for example um whether it be a situation like that where folks are getting older and they they want help physically with stuff or whether it's they want to systemize it so they have more time to spend with their families um or you know maybe they want to open up multiple spots and locations so you have to have good working systems for people to help you operate the farm so we've had volunteers we've had live work exchange and now we have paid staff uh and do a bit of a combination of that and I know that in our learnings we definitely have our preferences on how we do that and how we choose applicants how we onboard them and how we manage them um but i' like to hear any stories tips or advice from your experience on getting help in any of those Realms yeah well we've uh we've done all those uh We've very very early on uh you know we just relied on friends to do things but we were we were basically a little Homestead you know we were just a self-sufficient we were not a going concern we were not a business so so from 1961 to you know the mid the mid 70s we were basically a glorified Homestead doing a lot of experimenting um of different things that we've now leveraged into a commercial scale um I came back to the farm full-time U September 24 1982 and that's when we actually Incorporated polyface and you know created the farm name and and created the brand and began uh uh you know trying to actually make a full-time living uh farming and we we and we did uh so early on I used a couple of we we used friends I had I had engineer friends that helped me figure out how to put in you know automatic uh you know automatic water shut offs and pumps and things in in uh water tank I had a engineer friend that uh designed and built my our first couple of uh iterations of chicken processing equipment automatic uh dunker scalder that would go up and down and that sort of thing and then you know then you have neighbors that you you know some that you can work with some you can't work with some you can I had a I had a neighbor that worked in a factory he had a little farm and and I was here fulltime and so we shared haymaking together he I would I would uh Teresa and my wife uh we we would make hay here fill up about four wagons and then I'd run over to his place and rake his hey he'd come home from work and then he'd bail and I'd catch him on a wagon and in the E and and we we'd unload in the morning before he went to work he'd come over help unload the four Wagons at theres and I had made the previous day and and you know and and and you you share work together kind of that way and um then you know then gradually we started having young people wanting to come and learn so we started the apprenticeship program and that has developed now into a two-tier program the stewardship program which is a five Monon program and then the apprenticeship program which is a 12-month program and the apprentices come out of the stewards so we have about 11 stewards normally and then anywhere from 2 to four apprentices and the apprentices then of the following year become the first level managers of the stewards of the new stewards that come that year so uh and and now we have staff there's about uh 20 22 of us that earn a full-time living now from the farm so it's not a you know it's not a backyard operation by any means and and and so there's there's a there's a whole uh group of us I will tell you that nobody is hourly everybody is on either salary or Performance Based so for example we have people running some of these leas farms and um and so what we so so by doing by doing um um motion you know time motion studies we know the value what's the value of putting away a dozen eggs what's the value of gutting a chicken what's the value of moving a herd of cows what's the value of of of uh handling a group of pigs and so we basically have an opportunity sheet that that folks can choose from as they build their own Compensation Plan that's performance-based and what that does is it it makes all of our um our our our team relationships um shared risk we want to only work with people who will share who will share risk as you know hourly hourly stuff always you wonder if you're getting what you're paying for the other person's you know thinking you don't appreciate what they're putting in there's all this tension in in in hourly but if you go salary with clear expectations and if you can do it in half the time you still get the same pay you know so that encourages creativity and and the performance-based encourages you know the person that's taking care of the of a millennium feathernet with a thousand layers in it if they don't if they don't keep the nest boxes clean they just doubled up their time cleaning the eggs and they didn't get paid for it so so this incentivizes the meticulous care that that we're looking for and finally all of our team uh folks know that they have an open door for side hustles and in other words if they if they can conceive of an entrepreneurial add-on that complements what we're doing they all know that they can do it so we have we have um you know one one one lady that does uh Cosmetics she takes our our pork lard and stuff and makes you know uh natural uh ChapStick and you know hand lotion and stuff um Cosmetics we you know we have one that do does um tours she actually is full-time employed just doing farm tours we call them the grass stains tours but she's a subcontractor so she's a subcontractor she sets at everything she sets them all up decides when she's going to do if she needs to uh to get help she hires help um anyway it's it's completely her her side hustle uh another guy uh Taps the maple trees and he he makes maple syrup he built a little you know Maple Shack a Little Sugar Shack there and and makes M of course we sell them through the store um another guy made uh got bloody butcher corn and made cornmeal uh and sold the flow another one did did mushrooms uh so you know anything that you can conceive that's complimentary we're glad to add it to the add it to the pot so you you have you have all those different steps and all those different kinds of things uh to work together but yeah you're right the the relationships um you know the bottom line of business is marketing and relationships and if you can keep those um keep those tender you're in pretty good shape wow yeah that's that's really cool I mean it sounds like we have similar philosophies in that like it's seems that it's like a multi-prong approach you have you know your applicants come through and they go come in for a limited period of time a shorter period of time which is five months and then they can get invited back to a full year and then those people I'm assuming would probably level up into actually being paid you know full-time staff um so it's almost like your apprenticing programs are your uh your training programs for to then actually have like fully trained staff that already know exactly what they're doing and then you you you know I'm I'm in full agreement with like salaries we don't do any hourly everyone's full-time because we want their focus and their creativity and then you're allowing them to actually explore that creativity even more entrepreneurially for them to you know have all these addons which I think is really cool we've had a lot of people pitch us stuff but uh you kind of you uh you reframe my thinking with that because most of the stuff that people have pitched us that have lived on site with us have nothing to do with what we're doing so I really like that you allow it to happen but you just make sure that it's like all everyone's moving generally in the same direction uh and it's complimentary and that makes total sense yeah yeah it it can't it can't be competitive and it can't be cross uh what cross Vision cross you know um uh so yeah it has to it has to add to what we're what we're after yeah so we have a we have a lot of clients that are interested in other types of farming they're interested in uh you know getting a greenhouse going um and growing vegetables they're interested in vertical farming with aquaponics um and and I was I was just curious on your thoughts on other types of farming and do you think that they're more risky uh and less profitable to begin harder work any anything like that like would you ever go into any of those things yourself yeah well um for some reason we humans become really enamored we become really enamored of hubris I guess that's almost you know a redundancy uh and and we we love our technology we love this we we love this stuff but all these systems are very fragile they're not forgiving uh aeroponics aquaponics Hydroponics or I don't believe in Hydroponics or aeroponics at all uh I I think it it it it uh it it when you have soiless systems it doesn't work now my one caveat on that is if your substrat if your substrata is growing uh worms then I'm okay with it and I've seen a couple of of systems that are using Pebbles that are so uh that are so uh full of organic matter that they have worms in them uh you know kind of a a flushing type system but you know uh shoot I I koted the US aquaponics convention I don't know what 10 years ago and the joke there everybody was saying was until you've killed 10,000 fish you know you're not even a you're not even a grower and and it spoke to the fragility of this you know the the if the oxygen level changes a bit or the temperature is off a little bit or the nutrients are off a little bit these are extremely Hightech fragile systems and as you as you head up as you go up that that that uh that technological ladder the fragility the fragility continues to increase and it's just just like it's just like the whole lexicon that we've learned now you know with factory farming from from um you know calaor listeria uh food allergies and all this stuff these are all a lexicon that has come with the with the technology of factory farming antibiotics mRNA injections and all the other uh stuff I mean when I was a kid the the the none of this even existed we we didn't have Mera we didn't have ciff we didn't have um you know uh super bugs we didn't have food allergies you know you you could have a birthday party for your three-year-old and you didn't have to spend two days on the phone with all the other moms asking what you could or could not you know offer as treats for the kids you everybody just brought what they wanted and you just ate and so so it should give us all pause to realize that that that our our uh our techn fixes when it comes to biology especially when it comes to biology uh our techn fixes have yielded some pretty rough stuff I mean hydrogenated vegetable oil type two diabetes Rich crackers you know gluten intolerance uh there's all sorts of things that we have done in this technological sphere uh W with with Biology espe as opposed to mechanics you know uh wheel bearings and and and computers and and textile you know being able to fabricate metal and Bin steel and stain steel and stuff you know that uh there's a difference between biology and between living things and non-living things and um and and I think that as we have as we have have tried to cheat cheat the biology um that balance sheet eventually balances out and that balancing out right now is the fact that the United States we invented McDonald's we invented GMOs and we now lead the world in non-infectious chronic morbidity that's not a place to be proud of to be in first place in the world I mean we're talking about we lead we lead Ghana we lead swali swah land okay I mean I mean think about you know whatever you want to some of some of the the most you know difficult impoverished places of the planet and the US leads them in in chronic non-infectious morbidity um and that's because we have we have viewed Fe we have viewed food and farming from a primarily mechanistic worldview rather than a biological worldview and I think that I think that the the Hydroponics the the whatever the vertical farming the LED lighting all those things they also view they also view food as fundamentally a mechanical act and not a biological living thing yeah I I would totally agree I'm not a fan of any of that stuff for the same reason it just seems like you're trying to cheat nature and if there's one thing that I know it's that nature always wins so find a way to work with it um rather rather than you know trying to cheat it and make things you know I don't know yeah better faster whatever you're trying to do but um so I mean there's other there's other things that you know obviously like like an orchard and using permaculture practices to plant an orchard or you know General vegetable and other fruit crops and things things of that sort um but I get the sense that you're going to get a faster if you're starting out and you want to be self-sufficient and you want to have all of it I always tell people you can have everything you want but what you choose first matters which comes back to the Strategic conversation of what you invest your seed capital in at the very beginning so out of all that stuff like now we've talked a lot about you know like animal agriculture now coming into other types of farming like Orchards vegetable fruit Etc um I'm I'm assuming that your opinion is going to be that it's still going to be the fastest return to start with meat birds and build your way up with the animal systems first and then come back and start focusing more on Orchards and vegetables and Gardens and things of that sort after okay um good question question and and for me this is simply an ergonomic thing listen as a small farmer I do a lot of things by hand I'm not I'm not mechanized you know we have we have some mechanization you know chicken Pluckers okay but but we're you know we're we're we're gutting chickens by hand we're doing a lot of hand work so if I'm gonna do handwork if I'm gonna if whatever I sell I have to physically pick up and move then I would rather pick up stuff that's worth $4 and $5 a pound than pick up stuff that's worth 50 cents a pound it becomes simply an ergonomic thing um so so the animal proteins the animal proteins are way more valuable per pound so if I need to earn $200,000 I'm going to have to move I'm G to have to physically handle four times as much produce pounds of produce to get that $200,000 than to get $200,000 worth of chicken or beef or pork or something like that do that does that make sense yeah no yeah that that makes total sense I think the other thing in my mind is that like we we are in our property is in a desert Alpine climate so it's it's an interesting piece of property to work with and what comes with that is 51 degrees Celsius Summers that have droughted our our land and um our soil is dust like it's it's not soil it's just dust so like we need to regenerate our soil to be able to even have what we need to grow fruits and vegetables and animals are the first step to that um to to being to in in it's like it's the first step to regenerating and then having the health that you would need to plant Orchards and vegetable crops at least to have them do well like you could try but it's going to be harder without doing Animals first yeah well I mean you can certainly you can certainly import compost and things to at least get something started I'm a I'm a big believer in you know you probably should plant some plant some fruit trees yesterday uh I'm pretty much I mean just because of of the time the time problem uh and I'm a big believer in in feed yourself first even if it's rudimentary but uh but yeah you're right um to to grow really high quality um produce the beauty of produce is there's no regulation you know that's the beauty of produce so you don't have you don't have all the the other uh costs and and generally generally what I think we need are balanced Farms with some animals and some produce and they're balanced and then they work together the problem is most most people don't aren't equally passionate or skilled in both animals and plants people tend to tend to move toward animals or plants which is why you want a partner if you love animals you need to look for a horiculture partner if you love horiculture you need to look for an animal partner and and that's the way you build you truly build a balanced um you know long-term long-term sustainable system that's yeah that's a really good point that's awesome yeah I I really like that I've definitely gotten some good ideas from our conversation even even even like we own our land so you know we could even invite somebody in as a contractor who could start their farming business on our property um and then help us regenerate the soil because it's more than we can manage at this point um which is which is a cool interesting thought um all right well yeah I don't want to take any I don't take too much of your time um do you uh do you have time for one or two more questions uh I'm actually bumping up against a yeah I need to I need to you got to head out yeah a hard thing here uh we actually teres and I need to go to we need to go to a to the funeral home this evening a a family friend uh passed away and the visitation is tonight so we're trying to get over there uh before it gets too late uh to get there so good well thank you so much uh I really appreciate this I think this is gonna be really really valuable for a lot of people um you're you're super awesome to chat with you're open you're honest you're is you're just you're fun you got great great sense of humor so thank you I'm really excited to come down into your guys's place and we're going to try and get you up here to our place to give us a hand with our designs and whatnot and maybe some of the folks listening to this will actually be able to attend that and and see in person um so thank you so much and have a good rest of your night we'll stay in touch absolutely thank you very much it's an honor and a delight thank you so much beautiful have a good rest of your day you too
