The Regenerative Revolution: How Raised Wild Texas is Redefining Ranching

The land is a living thing. It's like being in a relationship. So you really have to be connected and aware because it is a living, breathing thing with a personality.

Hey friends, welcome back to the Everyday Ancestral Podcast. I am excited to have our next guest, Barron Kidd and ranch manager Ricky Langer. So Barron has a ranch in Texas. His father, grandfather started the ranch in 1961. Barron used to work in his family's gas business, so he had a business background and came back to the ranch and it was barely getting by. It was spending more than it was making. And he took a look at that as a businessman and said, you know, I think we need to make some changes. So in 2019, he made the commitment to go 100% regenerative ranching. Ricky was telling me after the podcast was, in his experience, when he was working more of a conventional farm and they were being sold cottonseed to give nutrients to the cows, he was shocked to learn that, A, the nutrients in the feed they were being told to give the cows was really actually only like 10% cottonseed. The rest was just filler. That was very eye-opening to him. So enjoy this episode. I learned a lot. Holy moly. When I learned what they're doing on that ranch, that's truly unique. I was really blown away. So enjoy Baron Kidd and Ricky Langer. Regenerative farming. What made you switch?

The finances. First of all, the feed costs were getting crazy. Just looking at the books, the numbers weren't adding up. That was the first stimulus to go this direction. The second was that we've done regenerative ranching here for a while, and we just sort of made the decision to go all in.

That's a term that's getting thrown around a lot right now. Regenerative farming, regenerative grazing. What does it mean and how does it look from your perspective?

Well, there's different grades. We've gone completely regenerative, which means We don't use any fertilizers. We don't use any pesticides. Basically, it's the way the natural ecosystem should work. The cattle eat the grass, fertilize the grass, supports the ecosystem.

So there's no need for real tractors at all in the process. Are you allowing also the soil to kind of have dips and valleys for it to not be flat the way many farms and ranches are? that are more conventional?

From what I understand, if you look at the ranch in a whole, it's several different ecosystems and different terrains. Topography's different. We got bottomland, we got hilltops, ravines, all different sets of systems there. And if you look at what the Blackland Prairie does when it dries out, it's gonna be nothing but ripples and divots and holes. And, and what does that tell you? It tells you that the ground is thirsty. So if everything was level and flat, just like concrete, not all of it, but some of it may drain off a lot easier. With all the little depressions and different terrain features, you have areas that will hold water and will recharge the system a lot better than it would if it was just flat. If there was rain in a short amount of time, well, some of that would get held up in those little divots and whatnot, and it would give it time to recharge instead of just running off to the next water system or the creek or whatever. So mankind's been putting in terraces for a while and farming, but the ground has its own way of doing that. So you kind of have to allow it to happen. The hogs do a really good job of that as well, creating little wallows and whatnot and digs. And that also gives, you know, that water a place to recharge.

Is that kind of a criteria for being regenerative is having multiple species as well?

It's actually a benefit. So once we started to go regenerative, people throw these words around and they become almost meaningless. But once we've gone to the pure natural ecosystem, we found that more animals are coming in, that the bees start coming back. The birds start coming back. The hog damage is actually less. It's balancing in both ways.

What do you mean the hog damage?

We have a huge wild hog problem. They will tear up fields. Farmer next to us, he hires an entire outfit of hunters to just sit on his property all night long, shoot hogs.

Well, that can't be cost effective.

They come and go, but they pretty much thermal hunt it. When they're in the area, they take care of the issue and come back another day and scout again. It seemed like the less you can disturb the ground, the better off you are. You know, just to keep those hogs at bay or let 'em stay at your neighbor's house or property, whatever you wanna say.

You're getting more variety of grass as well, cuz in a sense you're not tilling, right?

There's no tilling. Like you said before, the input costs on all that, if you could figure out the right outlet for those margins and those numbers, that's probably okay. It works for some people out there. It just doesn't work for our program right now. The way we Do our ranching and we rotate, we rest. And what you see is a different set of species of grasses coming in. Since we went from commercial fertilizing over to this program, of course the species have changed. Some of it hasn't been able to survive, but it has allowed other grasses to take its place. And the earth wants something covering it. It don't want to be naked, so something's going to grow. So that's what we're looking at right now. And I think the fertilizer that they get, the natural fertilizer from the cattle that we do run, it helps out with that as well. You know, it's changing the pH balance and different things and different levels. Was it the rhizomes or whatever? When you plow, you're killing all that. We haven't disturbed that in a good while.

Can you talk about that actually? Because that's one of the big arguments. You know, a lot of vegans and vegetarians out there will say, oh, well, I don't want to kill anything. You know, when you're dealing with a monocrop, plowing it all, isn't it true? You're killing a lot of things.

I feel that you are.

I mean, I've talked to ranchers who are like, it's worse than a horror movie, the amount of different animals and critters that get caught up in those blades.

Plus, if you're constantly fertilizing and you're constantly using pesticides, all those animals will leave or die. And when you go back to just the natural ecosystem, they all come back. We actually See a lot of that on our property, whereas on the neighbors, you don't see that as much.

Oh, so your neighbors are not regenerative and yet you are. So does that affect your property at all? If they're spraying, if they're doing anything, is there any kind of wind carryover or anything like that?

I think we've only had one instance in the past handful of years that we might've had an issue and it was due to ground just getting sprayed. And then we had about a 4 to 5 inch rain and we had a lot of excess runoff from that bare ground into our property. It may have caused some issues with some young calves. And, you know, of course all the contaminants, I believe, filtered out. The water was filtered when it ran through our grasses. And that particular area, we had some issues with some small calves. We're kind of thinking that was one of the factors that might've led to the issue was the spraying and potential chemical buildup that might've been over in the cropland.

What kind of issues do you see?

Basically their immune systems were, had dropped. They had some lung issues.

Yeah. One of the necropsies we did, I think we did 2 on some young calves that were, it only affected calves that were about 7 days or younger. Basically it was fluid buildup around their lungs. around their hearts, organs. They all carry a strain of E. coli in them. The E. coli strains change after a certain amount of days, but they had seen like a spike level of that E. coli in their system. And here's the deal. The reason that we kind of contributed to that is for the reason that once we moved them off out of that area, off of that pasture, our calving window was about a 90-day window. We had this problem for about 2 weeks while these calves were Being born in this one pasture. As soon as we moved them off, the problem was gone. It didn't even exist. And it was just from that, what I want to call a flash flood. All that water basically come off that cropland into our pastures, into our waterway, and then it was gone. The other thing that could have been a contributing factor is that there was a transmission line runs through there as well. Of course, that creates a higher EMF. So we don't know if it was kind of a combination of Both of those two made the perfect storm for the, for the issues that we had with those young calves.

Have you actually seen how the EMFs directly affect the ranch and animals on the ranch?

I don't know if there's a direct connection or not. I haven't had enough time or enough experience on that. But like I said, once we moved them off that section, that those issues pretty much eradicated themselves.

Yeah. And they seemed more, more susceptible to the younger, like the, the younger calves, you know, just a few days old, their immune systems can't handle it. The, you know, the older cattle that have been around the ranch for a while, they've adapted to it.

I just appreciate you mentioning that because, you know, you know, EMFs is still something that's mostly talked about in tight health communities. So can you talk about your experience with that?

Because, because there's so many people that still don't It's physics in the fact that the EMF waves are very specific wavelengths and, you know, organisms can handle other wavelengths. And, you know, it could be that these, the EMFs are just disrupting the natural electromagnetic field of animals, people.

Are you guys utilizing any EMF blockers? Because I know they, there are some providers of very large, like, like that will cover very large areas of land. Are you guys utilizing that?

Not yet. That's the great thing about being here is that we're always experimenting. We're always open to new ideas. If it works and it's beneficial and it is in sync with how the natural ecosystem works, then we'll do it.

How long does it take from going from conventional to, to regenerative to getting certified, you know, or to just Being able to say this soil is now cleaner?

There is no certification. We're with one program that's sort of a certified grass-fed organization. They never came to the ranch. It was all—

What?

All-natural program.

It was an all-natural program that is used. I'm not even going to mention it, but it's used in a number of large grocery stores as to being their program. They never came to the ranch. It was all over the phone. Um, they asked us questions. We sent them photos. That's it.

They just take your money so that you can put the label on there.

Put the label on and they don't know whether we have antibiotics in the cabinet, hormones in our cattle. They never even seen, never even seen one head, met us, or even seen the property other than maybe a Google Map or whatever. So it is a very strange program.

We've gotten rid of all of our certification programs. Well, all of our like organic certification programs because We are so far beyond what they're doing that it's not worth our money.

I understand what you're saying by that, you know, that, that you're so far beyond. How do you educate the person that's only looking for those certifications? What questions should someone be asking when they're, you know, trying to find ranches like yours that are above and beyond?

When we market, you know, we have people that ask certain things and The very simple one would be, can I come see the ranch or the farm or whatever it is? You invite those folks out and say, come on. Because, you know, sometimes it's as quick as, oh no, we don't allow outside visitors for whatever reason. But the other thing is, is just a person could simply inquire about simple practices, kind of what kind of species they're running. How do they handle this or that? You know, as far as how many cattle do you run per acre or whatever? And You can kind of ask some questions and then kind of do the math on it and see if it's adding up, you know, just see if the numbers match what, but I guess if you're not well educated on that, it may be a little tougher. But for me, when, you know, you market next to somebody and they said, oh, well, we're, we're processing 400 head a year, but they only have about 500, 600 acres, maybe 1,000 acres. Well, Your mindset says, okay, they're not doing exactly what they're saying. If they're in complete control from conception to finishing out that steer, whether you're grain feeding or grass feeding, doesn't matter. You still can be regenerative. But if they're processing at 18 months old, or if there's somebody like us that may be 24 to 36 months of age, well, you're not gonna run that many head on a small amount of acreage, whatever that number is. So you kind of have to do the math a little bit. Just inquire and keep asking those questions and make sure your mindset is okay with it. And then, you know, a lot of times now most people want to talk about their ranch on their website or Facebook or whatever their social media is. You can go on there and find out a bunch of them. Most of the time they'll have some kind of family history on the farm or the ranch, probably gives you an acreage, and then you can start adding up. in your head, okay, well, they got this much chicken, they got this much pork, whatever it may be, lamb, beef, et cetera. And you can kind of put the puzzle pieces together for yourself and be like, okay. Or you can show up, one farm may only be 50 acres, but you pull up and there's a big distribution center there that's 10,000 square foot. And they're, you know, feeding, you know, what, a community of 20,000? Well, that doesn't add up either. So A lot of it takes time. I know we bought, uh, my family, my wife and I have bought from, you know, we try to buy from local producers as well, especially before we got started on our own journey of providing that here. It took us a little time, but we eventually figured out who was legit and who wasn't.

Go to the ranch, go to the farm, use a little patience. As to the programs, if you're a giant corporate organization, Those programs actually do help. It takes them from not caring at all to caring a little bit. So if you're going to buy corporately produced food, then those labels do help. We are so far beyond that. We're, we're the tip of the spear. We've gone all the way back to, it's basically full cycle. We've gone back to the way ranching was, you know, 100 years ago.

Let's talk about What caused the shift? So your father, grandfather started the ranching business in 1961, right? So you're taking that over from them, but you only really made the commitment you said in 2019. So what was the catalyst for you changing what was done before?

My father retired, handed the ranch back down to us, and I was involved with the ranch, but not day to day. So when he handed the books and we started looking at the books, that's when we started to change. His generation was the generation of better living through chemistry. So it wasn't just him. In fact, compared to the way other people were ranching, he actually had used less chemicals than most people. But it was still, it's that generation. That's how they were raised. You had your feed rep, you had your rep for all your chemicals and for your pesticides, and you had your rep for all your fertilizer. And that's the way ranching was.

Where were you coming from, Barron? So were you, what was your career before you were ranching?

The family oil and gas business. So looking at the books was easy and doing the math, It's pretty simple. Business is pretty simple.

On the ranching side of the deal, on the operational side, we'd done a couple of different programs. We were working through the Noble Research Institute, I believe, out of Oklahoma there with some pilot programs on raising some beef steers and whatnot. It just kind of seemed like we were pumping them full of vaccines and whatnot all the time. I mean, you're doing modified live Vaccines and some other ones. And then for some of the calves to be able to handle that modified live vaccine, you had to give the cow the same one 30 days before the calf was in utero or conceived. So I guess the calf could handle all of that as well. So it just kind of seemed like we were just constantly poking 'em up, you know, with something or shooting 'em up with something and caused a lot of stress on the cattle. Conception rates went down, you know, reproduction rates went way down. I think one year we were down, what, close to 60% reproduction or conception rates went down 60%. And then we had to start a whole new program as far as a calving, cuz we were strictly just a spring calving operation. Well, we couldn't sell 60% of the herd the next day and then figure out how we're gonna replace that or what we were gonna do in that short amount of time to get the numbers back up. So. I believe we sold off some of those open cows and then we just held some of them to create a fall calving program. So some of those techniques and different things that they were doing. Of course, the other thing that we found out was it felt like the cattle or the grown cows, the mama cows' life expectancy went way down. I mean, you may have one that they start calving at 2 to 3 years of age. Well, by the time they reached 7 years of age, they were done. You know, they went free-martin or they just wouldn't reproduce or whatever the cause might be. And we just kind of started adding everything up and what it was costing us to put those vaccines in those cows, plus the low amount of return we would get from those cattle. That was one of the catalysts that drove that change as well. We were just like, okay, we basically decided to put the ranch into a reset mode and let's get rid of all the vaccines. We had to wean them off slow. We just didn't just one day decide not to do anything. Of course, you only vaccinate once or twice a year anyhow, depending on what you have going on. But we just slowly weaned those cattle off those vaccines. And first was the modified live, and then it was some of the other stuff like most common blackleg, which is your most common, your cheapest vaccine out there, in my opinion. And then once we did that, we got off conventional wormers. We were probably using conventional wormer at that time. We got away from those as well.

Does that go in the feed?

Mouth, under the skin, or there's a topical application that you put on their backbone, which from my understanding absorbs into their spinal cord and then transfers that wherever it needs to in the body. It wasn't just an automatic light switch of changing over. So basically what I was talking about, we just kind of put the ranch in a reset mode. We went through a few trials and nothing that was life-changing or whatever, but eventually we worked through it. And I believe the cattle are stronger. We were able to wean 'em off of all the cattle cubes that we were giving 'em, you know, during the wintertime. And the cost of time went down quite a bit just by not having to give 'em all those cubes during the winter that they became dependent on. Once we stockpiled, you know, standing grass, We were able to cut back our hay feeding. We actually were able to increase the herd size, but we were able to decrease the hay input, I guess you would say.

Yeah. The number of rolls we fed.

The number of rolls we fed. I mean, I mean, we, we were feeding 600 or something.

Yeah.

It could be anywhere from 600 to 800 rolls of hay per year. Now we only feed about 230 and we probably increased the herd size. by about 50%. So, you know, just those numbers alone increase your margins.

Are you able to do that because of the climate in Texas? Because most farms can't do that year round.

You know, this year's gonna be tough. We've actually been through about 3 to 4 years now of extreme weather cases. And it seems like the last few years we get all of our rain at just in about a 60-day window, and then we get nothing for the rest of the year. Hay production was a little bit lower this year. We don't have as much standing grass, but you have to listen to your cattle as well. We're having a lot of our fall calves being born right now, and you know, those mama cows aren't slowing down. So that tells me everything eventually will be okay. There'll be enough to support them, and we'll just kind of listen to the cattle. And even though you look out there and it's nothing but powder, and I mean, there's, there's grass here and there, it's not much to it. Enough to survive on. June, the water cut off and we've been sitting here pretty much moisture-free since then. So what is that, 5 to 6 months already? We've gone to 100, 105-degree weather for what, 30 days or better? I don't know if every day was right at 100 or over, but you know, you're talking about 95 to 105-degree summer here. That's what we're dealing with.

We're set up. Since it's just been cattle on the property that when it does rain, everything's fertilized, everything's ready to go. We just need water. It'll pop right back. So a couple of good days of rain, you get a few inches, 2 inches here, maybe for a couple of weeks, everything's green again. It bounces back pretty fast.

So what was that period of, from conventional to regenerative? Was that a 3 or a 5-year period? Like how long did it take?

Still going. You think, oh, I just done this. Now I'm regenerative because I'm rotational grazing, right? Then you may look at how are you controlling erosion in this area? Or it's probably endless. So it's basically a constant learning curve from what we figured out or what I understand about it. We're always trying to figure out a way to improve. You know, a lot of times you see programs where people are condensing a lot of cattle down into one small section, you know, maybe putting 50 cows on, 2 acres or whatever, and then they just move 'em every day. That's okay if it works for them. That style doesn't exactly work here. It does do wonders for the grass because as soon as you get rain, it might be 3 foot tall just within a few weeks. You do really condense that manure, the urine. You know, I guess you create EMF as well by running cattle on top of it. It creates its own frequency, which I've understood and I've heard about people talking about how just running cattle on top of it, like as a migrating herd, the frequencies help grow that grass. It gets it stirred up, wakes it up and says, hey, I gotta go again. So, you know, at what level are you regenerating? And I think as technology changes, people start learning more and they start seeing the results of what they've been doing for 5, 6, 7, 10, 15 years. There's always gonna be that next level of How can I improve it? What can I do better? Your water source may be in one corner of that pasture. The next step to that regenerative maybe is to move that water source to the other corner. So instead of having all your heavy traffic flow to one corner, now you've got it, you know, your EMF traffic and, and your grazing patterns different. So at what point do you quit?

I understand Barron's motivation because he's looking at the books. It's his family ranch and You know, we're losing money, so how do we turn that around? But as ranch manager, Ricky, you were coming from a whole other industry. What shifted for you? I mean, was it more just like, I hear what you're saying and I see how that could be of value and I want to just keep learning? Or— I'm kind of diving into this because I think within the ranching industry, within meat processors, within many of these kind of older industries, We have these antiquated ways, these old thoughts of how to do things, and the shift away from these is really challenging. I'm just trying to identify what, what shifted in you to get you out of the old way of doing it into this. Well, technically regenerative farming is the older way, but you know what I mean? How to bring it back.

Basically, there was no big shift.

Okay.

I had a job to do when, when his dad ran the ranch. And so it was basically following what his lead said to do. You probably don't understand is that I have another small ranching operation that I've been running for getting close to 15 years now. And it was basically just a landowner that backed out, wanted to have the cattle. He didn't have much to do with the land. What I had to do was because of all my other interests, you know, I couldn't overgraze, right? Most of the time, the old mentality is let's put as many head on a piece of property And let's try to figure out how to make it work. One, we're gonna talk about, oh, we got this amount of head and it gets a conversation piece for some people. I'm buying this amount of fertilizer. Oh, fertilizer costs me this. I have stayed away from that basically the whole span of my career as far as running cattle. And, and so I actually have done this on a smaller scale at another place and had that history. And I was using one vaccine because it was There was an issue there that was pretty common on that property and the neighbors there. So I was already down to one vaccine and I was down to just salt or a trace mineral lick. We run those cattle there for many years without any trouble. It was very low input. I was feeding like 25% of a roll per unit on that property all winter. Basically, I just show up and only time I would put out grass or hay would be when it would snow or we'd have a big freeze or something like that. It was basically a landowner that didn't have a lot of capital to operate on, but he wanted to run cattle. So we figured out how to do it. We kept our numbers low. We rotated just a little bit on a smaller scale. And that is what my background is. And that's how I knew when, when Baron here said, hey, look, we gotta make a change. I knew from the start, just adding up everything that we were doing and how much time it was costing and how much labor it was taking. It's like, man, this doesn't make sense to me. So when he came in and said, hey, I think we need to try something different. I said, I'm all, I'm all in. I've already been doing this for another landowner just right down the road. So it was an easy switch. It was basically the mindset of what the owners actually wanted to do. I have to follow their lead and give them the best advice. As we can going down the road.

Now that you both are in it, you're deep in it. What's changed in you that maybe wasn't there previously? Do you notice like your own health improving? The quality of the meat that you're eating now is different.

My wife is real health conscious. That was kind of a big thing for me as well as helping her achieve her goals and dreams or whatever, as far as food intake. We wanna buy as minimally processed as possible from the store, and we wanna buy something from rancher that we understood was pretty clean. So the best way to get that in life is just to do it yourself. And that was a big inspiration as well. And we lucked out and we have a good quality tasting beef. It's pretty standard. I mean, it's pretty consistent.

The flavor profile of our beef. is completely different. Not completely different, but it's what tastes like beef, different than what you get in the store. The grain-fed flavor is different.

How would you describe it if you were to try to put a name to the flavor of what most people experience versus what yours tastes like? Can you try to describe that?

It's closer to wild.

I feel like conventional beef is kind of very watery and very flat flavored. So I'm assuming yours is not as watery and it actually has a flavor to it.

It's a beefier flavor.

We already know from testing that as far as nutritional-wise, it's really elevated compared to others.

What are you seeing in the elevation?

Iron is what, 50 to 75%, depending on whether it's grass-fed or, you know, grain-fed. And then the omega-6:3 ratio is way off the chart, in my opinion.

It's closer to wild game. The omega, the fat profiles of our beef is similar to, actually in some cases higher than like elk that you would get. And that's just a sign that their bodies have just shifted back to more of a natural cycle.

We have a lot of weightlifters and we just had one that I guess she's now got her pro card. She eats like 5 cups of our beef a day, rice, and I think cottage cheese and egg whites, and that's what her diet consists of. And basically she's been doing this for, I don't know, a year plus, and she's won multiple competitions off of it and done really well with herself. And she just went from your, you know, your average walk down the street mom to a bodybuilder and has done it with our beef as well. So that was kind of icing on the cake. But yes, we have a lot of those. type of people that buy from us. We also have another customer that buys, I think he buys 40 pounds of beef every 3 weeks and then 20 dozen eggs or something like that. It's some kind of weird, he eats beef, eggs, and rice, and that's his conditioning.

Are you getting that kind of feedback though? Because I know, I know some of the people that are probably buying from you are very functional with it where they're testing and they're checking things out. They're, you know, maybe even biohacking or something. Have you guys gotten any feedback of, hey, I was using this beef before yours and seeing these numbers. And now that I'm using your beef, I'm seeing huge gains. Are you getting in that kind of feedback?

Moms will come in and say, you know, our kids won't eat beef. And then she gives it our ground beef and like, they love our ground beef.

We sell to a lot of homeschool moms and different groups and whatnot. And, and that was one of the big draws when they bought our ground beef, the mom would cook like 2 or 3 days worth, and then they would reheat it. They said our kids would never eat beef from Walmart or H-E-B. That was our ground beef. Once they heated back up in the microwave, said the taste was way off and the kids just didn't want anything to do with it. She said, we can buy y'all's ground beef and heat it up as many times as we want. And it's still the same, you know, flavor as it was the first time. So that was a really big positive. That's a big win. In my books right there.

That's not necessarily the fat ratio. You're just talking because of the nutritional profile is different.

Between our process and the USDA processor that we use, the product is really clean. We have the same folks pretty much cut it. It's the same guy and his helper month in and month out that basically cut, prep, and package our beef. And we have minimal issues with it. And Like I said, it, it helps with the quality of the beef.

So regenerative farming, it's helping to retain the water. You're increasing the nutritional profile. It's overall healthier because you're not using as many pesticides. So are you guys using zero vaccines on the cows now?

It's forage and water, basically.

Is there anything that is inescapable? You're not using any added hormones, you're not using any antibiotics, like you're able to cut everything out.

Yeah. If cattle have a problem, we've shifted to herbal treatments, natural oils to control parasites, dewormers, et cetera.

So it's possible for them to not even go the route they're going and to do it all naturally.

Yeah.

Clearly, as you're pointing out, you're, you're saving money. So is it just because they don't know any different?

There's so many incentives. Like I was talking about the Noble Research Institute is a pilot program where they're, they're going to give you just a little bit of incentive to do it their direction so they can do Their research. And I'm not, I'm not saying that to knock 'em for what they're doing, but that was the incentive of giving all those vaccines at one point. And that was the result of it. I guess looking back, I'm kind of frustrated because they didn't really ask what happened at the ranch when we did all this. Did something change at the ranch? But all we had was results of marketing and finished grades and all that kind of stuff from their feedlots, you know, at the end of the project. So looking back, I wish we could actually have a little input on that and said, hey, did y'all realize what happened at the ranches as the producer? Or did you just care about what happened at the feedlot and what the meat quality turned out to be?

I'm really blown away. I've never talked to a rancher that's doing what you guys are doing, like where there's nothing that's unnatural being used. This is incredible. What is it you think? needs to happen in the industry for others to take not only notice to what you're doing, but actually start to apply it?

I get that it's scary because you're, you know, you've done something a certain way or your family's done something a certain way for 20 years, 30 years, 50 years. And then all of a sudden you're supposed to hit the brakes and do a 180. That's scary. And, you know, your livelihood, your income all depends on this. And If it doesn't work, you know, what do you do? That's a scary jump to make.

That's basically what the vaccines and everything are. It's an insurance policy. It's what it feels like. You know, you're basically, when you, when you buy your vaccines, you give it to your cattle, you have a, a night you can sleep and an insurance policy that you're probably 90% covered.

We still had cattle when we vaccinated, we still had cattle die.

Yeah. It's sold to everyone as this is a security, but it's not actually, it's an illusion, right? It's not actually secure.

Yeah.

So you can sleep better at night.

The other thing you hear is that, you know, ranchers are barely getting by. And so you mentioned you came in, you guys were in a state of that where you're barely getting by. So where are you now?

We're moving to 100% retail, meaning 100% to individuals as opposed to having to sell to a feedlot or a sale barn.

What I hear a lot of times with ranchers is they have a good year and then they have many bad years, you know, so they're constantly kind of like, Making money, but having to hold onto it tightly cuz they don't know what the next year's gonna be. Are you now in a place where you can just kind of, you know, you just go do your thing and you're, and you're more than okay?

That's what we're looking forward to is get away from the rollercoaster ride of having a, a good year, bad year. We're just trying to level it out a little bit where we're in control. When you market live cattle, local sale barn, stockyards, wherever, you know, basically they're in control. In 24 hours, things can change quite a bit. And so you may be holding for, you know, to sell a certain month. Well, by the time you get there, the market's not there anymore. Or, you know, you may hit a home run one year and expect, you know, well, we're going, the market's a little low, and you may come back and get a surprise check and you're like, well, that's great. Basically the end goal is to level out the highs and lows.

Yeah.

And be able to understand what we're doing. And with the retail, you know, we basically control our prices. We know the value of each steer. Sometimes you have to overlook exactly what's going on that day at the sale barn and what those prices may be. But at the end of the year, you're still okay.

We're getting paid every day as opposed to getting one check a year.

That's amazing. Now I want to pivot a little bit because when you and I met, Barron, I was really taken by your perspective of ranching in terms of how it almost, the way you talked about it was almost spiritual, you know, the connection to not only the land, but to just when you're out on the ranch and to the universe around you and just, and how in tune you feel, or at least how you describe to the world around you. Can you both talk about that?

I have changed in the fact that I've become to appreciate the fact that everything is connected. Like, I believe that, but then you get out here and you experience and you're like, yeah, everything is connected. The land is a living thing with a personality. It's like being in a relationship. You gotta get to know the land. So what we do here, all the things we experience, all the things we notice with the land here may not work 50 miles from here because it's a completely different personality, completely different piece of land. So you really have to be connected and aware of how your land responds when it's dry, how your land responds when it's flooding, how your land responds when it's cold, when it has, you know, this many cattle, or you understand the rhythm of each piece of property because it is a living, breathing thing with a personality.

I know, Ricky, you mentioned your wife and the lifestyle, and I think she homeschools your kids. Do you feel like you're kind of tapped into an ancestral way of living and coexisting? Can you talk about that relationship with your kids to the homeschooling, to being outside in the outdoors? Because I think this is something that's missing for a lot of people that are growing up in cities, right? I mean, and not feeling connected to their food sources.

Just looking around here at the ranch, we have a lot of road frontage and there's a lot of times kids come riding around out here, it used to bother me, right? Because I'm like, what are they doing out here? Are they gonna leave their trash? You know, whatever mischief they're getting into. And actually, I've kind of, I look at it now, I drive by and sometimes there'll be 2 or 3 kids just hanging out in the ditch looking at something, and 2 of 'em will jump in like they're doing something wrong and wanna hang out or whatever. And I'll just stop, talk to 'em, see what's going on and just say, You know, hopefully y'all enjoying your time out here because being in the city all the time, not having the space, maybe they need a little more connection to earth or whatever. So now it's kind of inviting or enjoying to see them coming out, trying to get some air and get away from all the hustle. But as far as like my family and myself, this is the way we live. I don't really think about it too much. We try to eat healthy. We try to put ourselves and our kids in a healthy environment. We try to put those experiences in front of them. My son's what, 11 now? And he's been going to markets with me for 3 years. And so there was one year he was there every Saturday morning with me at a market. And I think he missed 10 weeks in or whatever. And I had customers come up and say, where's your son at? Why is he not here today? And it's like, oh, well, he had something else going on, but Those people actually look forward to him being there and he learns a little bit. You know, we use a program for our, you know, our point of sale. So he knows the point of sale. So there's life skills that he learns, communication, all that good stuff that they're learning out here. And so to me as a dad, I just like, hey, I want to let him experience what I think he needs to experience. So when it's his turn to step up and say, hey dad, I want to go do this, he already has a good start. He's like, I've seen you do this. Or You know, he knows how to talk to people where I was a shy guy and didn't even know how to get out from behind my dad's leg, you know, to say hello to somebody. You know, he's already to the point and my daughter's the same way. She's 4. They can be quiet at first, but once somebody talks to them or they get to know somebody, they're easygoing and they can conversate and talk about things. And so for us, it's just a natural way. I mean, we don't really think too much about it other than We're very fortunate and very grateful for the opportunity to be in this position because there was one point in town when my wife and I first got married that we didn't have a lot of money between us. We didn't have the income. So we were forced to buy a certain house at this cost, but we had neighbors that were 3 foot out the window. You know, we could basically extend our arms out, you know, to each other. probably touch. Well, that closed in pretty quick and we actually were there longer than we thought. So when we got out here, even though I was working out here, what, a couple of years, maybe 2 or 3, and still living in town. Once we made the switch, especially my son, my son just like sprouted.

What did you see change in him?

Basically confidence in whatever they want to do. I think he was what, 5 at the time? Maybe going on 6 and there still was training wheels on his bike when we lived in town. We got out here, he realized they didn't roll on grass like they were supposed to. He's like, Dad, we got to take those off. So that was like the first thing that I seen was, hey, it's time to set him free. Basically just the confidence in doing things without worrying about what's mom or dad going to think about this. Mom may not always agree about it, but dad's like, if you want to take the chance on doing it, if I think it's safe enough, I'm going to allow you to. Go take care of that. Or, you know, I may set him out on a horse and go just say, hey, go count these calves real quick in this pen. And sometimes he comes back with the right number. Sometimes he comes back with the wrong number, but it's basically just the whole fact that he wanted to go try by himself, you know? And so that's a win. So that tells me anything in life that he wants to go do, whether he wins or loses or he wins or fails, whatever, he has the confidence to step out there and try it on his own. So. That's what I see. My daughter was actually born here at the ranch. So, you know, she was never in any other situation than what's here. She doesn't get out much other than ride around, check cows. She's not involved in much of the day-to-day, doesn't really understand what dad does all the time, but, you know, eventually that'll come. So for now it's just growing up, having fun with all of us and enjoy the fishing and the riding around.

How big is the property? How many acres?

We're at about 3,500 acres.

One last question. Regenerative farming, you're doing everything natural with the cows, with the meat that you're producing. How is that translating to the other choices in your life? Are you now kind of more aware of like what chemicals are being used in the production of your clothes or in the environment or the other things you purchase? What else has changed in your life because of what you've learned on the ranch?

Yeah, all of those things. Every day you just become more and more aware, and especially being in the food business, you see behind the scenes a lot more. And so you're asking a lot more questions and your diet becomes a lot cleaner.

It's almost like you're looking at it through that lens around everything, right?

Going to restaurants is really hard because you used to go to a nice steak restaurant and Now that we're really into raising quality beef, you go to a restaurant, I'm like, I know exactly where this comes from. I know exactly who processed this.

It changes your lifestyle for sure. Where, you know, used to travel, you just go and get the food wherever you wanted to. And, you know, you constantly get dialed in, you're getting dialed in more and more, and you see you get pickier and pickier as time goes by about where you stop and eat. Because just like fast food, there's only a couple fast food places my wife will stop and get something just due to the fact that we know what oils they use or, you know, maybe where their source of beef is or, you know, whatever the case might be. So it really limits you on where you go and how you move about and plan your day. But it's very well possible. Everybody can do it. Best thing I can say is get started somewhere and do your own thing. Like we try not to reflect on what our neighbor's doing. You said something about the spiritual side of things. Well, everybody's on their own journey and, and you have to allow them to be on that journey because that's what they want to do. And, and that's what they want to experience. We, on the other hand, want to experience this dog. So we just want to stay on that path.

Well, I have to remember that we get excited about this stuff, about finding, you know, new ways to be more in tune with the environment, et cetera. And I forget that other people aren't as excited as we are or as extreme or push ourselves to the limits that we push ourselves. So we have to kind of dial ourselves back a little bit every once in a while, which is good. The best thing that we do is we invite people to the ranch, come see the ranch, come see what we do. You can look at trees and cows and yes, it still exists. So That's the best and simplest thing to do.

The operation is pretty simple. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of time. You know, you see some videos, oh, regenerative ranching is easy, or regenerative farming is easy. Well, it kind of is, but it really isn't. There's still—

Well, you're trading money for time.

But all in all, it's a pretty simple operation. And for you, it may sound complicated. Like, how in the world did they get to that point? You know, spend a day or two with us or even an afternoon with us and You know, we can show you around and see how things operate and how things are set up. And you'd be like, oh, okay. I understand. It's really not that, not that hard. You just gotta kind of change your way of thinking of whatever you're doing. Just, just change your way of thinking a little bit.

I appreciate that you guys are modeling what's possible. I mean, I'm truly impressed and blown away that you're, you're running things. When you said, Baron, that you guys are on another level, you really are. I mean, you're running cattle so naturally and so in tune with the earth is impressive. And I'm grateful to have ranchers like yourselves out there. You're in Texas, but what town are you in?

Outside of Waxahachie. Uh, go to the website and we'll have a, uh, a way to tour the ranch.

And will you share that website and, and how people can find you?

It's raisedwildtexas.com.

And then on socials, you are Raised Wild Texas?

We're @raisedwildtexas on Instagram and Raised Wild TX on Facebook.

Well, hey, thank you guys. It's been a pleasure.

Good deal. Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's eatpluck.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.