JOEL SALATIN: Secret of Success + Longevity

That was the nicest way I've ever heard anybody put it.

What?

Gideon's gonna be an entrepreneur because he has his own ideas. So, uh, I'll talk to you about that. We had Nick Fritas on here. Oh, uh, was it just yesterday? Okay.

Yeah, yeah, he was, he was with me.

Yeah, he was at the conference. He was a speaker, right?

I don't know if he spoke. I guess he did. I'm not sure.

Oh, y'all were roommates?

We were in a hotel and then he took me to the dinner last night.

Oh, good.

So we got to spend a little bit of time. Of course, he's a delegate in Virginia.

Yeah.

He worked on legislation.

We brought up the talk about getting in with his own ideas and authority. He talked about as a parent, you want to apologize to your child. And I've known, I've felt that in my heart just because I, if they're hurt, that does mend it a little bit. It shows them I'm not perfect. But he brought up the point that you apologizing to your child, you are their first authority, it shows that the authority is not always right. You agree with that so far?

No, I've apologized to my kids No, he says to apologize.

To apologize.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Show them that authority goes out.

So they then learn that that authority is not always right. Yeah, like with what we're down with 2020 or whatever.

When Dr. Fauci steps up, then it's not necessarily the—

then it's what's going on in Venezuela or whatever.

Yeah, but then they'll, then they'll have that.

Otherwise, if you're this dictatorship parent, I think he brought up some example about how, you know, if you helicopter parent and you're, you know, I said to put the coffee cup, you know, and you know, it's got to go up over there. And if your child never teaches wonders to authority, then when they're in that first year of college, who's their authority now?

Yeah, they'll just start to buy into the new authority. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, that's a, that's a good—

yeah, I didn't think about it like that. Have you ever thought about it like that?

Come in.

I've just thought about it like, you know, they need to know, they need to know you're human.

Did you apologize when you were raising your kids?

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Did your dad apologize to you?

Not as much as I have for my kids.

So where did you learn that?

I think he was a little more old school, you know.

Yeah.

The more patriarchal thing?

[Speaker] Yeah, I don't think I ever heard it from my dad.

[Speaker] And there's no question that Daniel and I's relationship is far superior to Dad and I's relationship. Even though I respected him and we, I mean, you know, Daniel and I's is very special. In fact, if Daniel were sitting right here, he'd say, We've got to understand what we've got is really special. And he says, he says that on here one time. He says that.

Yeah, we do.

We need to have you both up here. And well, then was, was that the only thing that— is that the big key, the apologizing? Or what's the, what's the 5 things? You laugh.

So tell us, because it's hard. Parenting is the hardest gig ever.

Listen, I'm far from a perfect parent. We've got 2 great kids. Maybe if, you know, if we'd had 5 or 6, we'd have probably had a really—

Well, you think you're good. Hey, listen, you think you're a good parent until you have an entrepreneur, I guess. Yeah, somebody with their own ideas.

I was our family's problem.

Okay, you were?

Oh, no question, no question. I was, I was rebellious. Older brother and a younger sister.

Okay, so you were—

I was in the middle.

You had your own.

And generally, so Gideon is your middle.

He's 4, so he's in the middle. I mean, so Lily's right in the middle.

And then he was the baby for a long time, right? And then he wasn't.

So Lily's kind of like—

Lily doesn't count because she's the only girl, correct? Like Teresa, she still gets the situation. So Teresa— so have you ever read Kevin Lehman's Birth Order book?

No, we need to read it.

It's a wonder. It's wonderful. I mean, when you read it, you'll just be going, oh, Aha. Oh, oh, I mean, it's just— now the classic is 3 kids, right?

Right.

Then, then they run pretty, pretty true. As soon as you go over 3, then it gets a little more mixed up, right? Okay. But, but in general, in general, firstborns are, um, are highly organized. They become engineers, managers. They're because—

That's you, John, we're talking about.

He's definitely that, engineer, manager, all right up the valley.

Because they get full attention. Lastborns, so 80%, 80% of doctors, attorneys, engineers are firstborns, 80%. Wow.

My sister's her firstborn.

Mechanical engineer. My brother, mechanical engineer, airplane pilot, you know, firstborn. Okay. Lastborns, I'm saving the middle one to last. Lastborns, did you know that 80% of all salespeople are lastborns?

Isn't that something?

Because lastborns are manipulators. They can't— Salespeople are manipulators. They can't beat you physically, you know, because they're the littlest. And so they learn mind games.

Hey, why are you shaking your head? You the last born, Matt?

I'm like the only child. Oh, okay. So hold on a second. So only child, you know what Kevin Lehman says? He says, if you— he's saying about school. So if you see a kid go to first grade and he's all, you know, combed and everything's right, you know he's a firstborn. If he goes to first— First grade carrying a briefcase, you know he's an only born. Oh yeah.

And all the new safety something.

So the middles, the middles are the entrepreneurs because they get lost. They don't have a baby book. I don't have a baby book.

None of my kids have a baby book.

Okay.

I never did any of it.

Jonah had something. At least we had a blog for him a little bit.

Yeah, we did. But you see what the middle one, you know, the first one's up and going and the last one is—

So I feel like—

So the middle one has to play with himself or herself. You know, they've got to be content. Go, you know, go. I'm busy. And so middle, so something like 80% of entrepreneurs are middles.

Isn't that something?

I could see. Well, so I feel like ours is a little different because we have the two boys and then Lily. She's kind of like a firstborn. Yep. Because she's a girl.

Of course, we have two boys. That's right.

And then Gideon, definitely salesman, definitely. And then I feel like we have another firstborn with Henry. Yeah, he's so far behind everybody because we have the four, we were very established with them, and then we had the, the caboose.

But we sure aren't as diligent with the discipline.

What, with Henry?

Like the regimen and the—

yeah, well, I mean, I feel like he's a— he's doing just fine.

But he's acting like a firstborn though.

He is acting like a firstborn. He is more compliant and he's like more like Jonah was when Jonah was young.

Okay, cool.

We're not treating him like a firstborn, but he's acting like one.

Yes, it's kind of funny.

But he's getting a lot of attention.

He does, yes. Well, he gets a lot of attention 'cause he has us plus the father.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying he's got all of his siblings too.

Capable siblings.

So with the gap, with the gap, he's getting a lot of—

Oh, so much attention.

Yeah, I'm actually getting a lot of attention. Good job, Beck.

No, Gideon is totally that. He's going to be a salesman. You know who's a salesman? Josh Meeks.

He's actually a— yeah, he's a realtor.

He's the last one. He's a very successful salesman.

He loves it.

It doesn't bother him. My sister, sales, you know, we're the perfect— us three and three. Three is the—

yeah, that's like the perfect—

that's the perfect, uh, whatever recipe. My brother's the engineer, I'm the entrepreneur, my sister's a sailor.

It happened with you, classic.

Just, we were just classic that way. And yeah, but yeah, the Birth Order book is really, really an amazing book.

We're gonna have to get that book.

Who I worry about is, you know, Lily's the only girl, then we have our young ones, and then Josiah.

Yeah, Josiah's kind of the middle child. So he's going to be an entrepreneur.

We have to try to think.

I feel like when you were talking about that, I was like, yeah, that's true.

We have to make sure we give him the attention.

It's hard.

It's hard. Which is why, though, you know, the entrepreneurs become the— they become the rebels. So I was a rebel. I mean, my older brother. Yeah. Never, you know, never questioned, never deviated. He was just the perfect, perfect, perfect. My younger sister, she was the baby. She, you know, could do no wrong. And, and boy, I was, I was a problem. I mean, I was, I was the rebel.

That puts me in the rebel category. Yeah, because I was second born.

Well, I was second born, but I was the last. But I am not a salesman.

Well, I would not be able to sell. I'll sell, but I don't like it. I think generally the fourth or the last ones actually enjoy it. They're not scared to do a one-on-one pitch or pitch to the camera or whatever.

It's not awkward to them. Well, Teresa had 3 brothers, and the oldest one's not an engineer, but he's very regimented. The last one, and so she is like a firstborn 'cause she's the only girl. And then the last one, the last one, her youngest brother, Mark, sales. He can sell a hat rack to a moose. I mean, that guy can sell. He's just a born, born salesman.

You agree with all this, Jonah? Yeah? All right. All right, so.

My daughter, she's texting me, trying to get me to do something she wants me to do.

She wants you to go to that party? The Eclipse party?

Well, she does, but it's also about Peaches. She wants to talk more about it.

You're threatening to sell Peaches again?

She's going to sell Peaches?

The horse.

The horse. I just feel like he's maybe not the right horse for her.

Oh, yeah. Oh.

I feel like, so, I'm not a horse person, but the more I talk to horse people, they'll explain to me, like, just because you bought the horse and you thought that this was the horse for you, it doesn't mean that this is the best horse for you. And sometimes you have to go through—

doesn't she have another horse?

Well, she— so that horse is just like a buddy for this horse. So this horse is like the show horse, the trained horse. It's like pretty Yeah, he's very pretty, but I think his temper—

but he doesn't have a good temperament.

I feel like his temperament is just not great. She's 12. I don't want her to get hurt, like, you know what I mean? So that's kind of where I—

we're a little paranoid too.

I'm a little paranoid. My, my 16-year-old has a hip replacement, so yeah, I, I just really don't want her to get hurt. And I feel like there's some writing on the wall that we're— that I'm like going, there's writing on the wall, and everyone Everyone other— she's going, I don't want— yeah, I don't want to notice.

I need to talk to them.

Yeah, we're going to talk to some people, instructors. Oh yeah, we're going to talk to them. But, and, and it could be that she's causing some of the temperament issues. Yeah, but I don't know enough. See, that's kind of what— it's, it's hard because we don't know anything, and so then we're going Should we know? Like, well, we should know more, but it's hard because I'm trying to get her—

look, you can't, you can't know everything. You can't.

Well, but I don't want her to get hurt and then go, we should have sold the horse, you know what I mean? And so I think that's why I'm going, because I do know, because we had a guy come out who has horses and he goes, yeah, I've had 3 horses and I finally found the right horse for me on the third horse.

Huh.

And so then I'm— and so that's to keep sticking in my head going, this gentleman wanted that first horse to be the horse, but it just wasn't. And I think it's like an accepting thing, and I can see why it would be hard. She loves that horse, she does.

But you would have a hard time forgiving yourself if she got kicked off the horse.

I would, I would have a very— I would— if she got badly injured, got very injured, I would have a very hard time forgiving myself knowing that I know that not every horse is the perfect horse for that person. So it's, it's just hard. Like, parenting is hard, but then like all these other external things are hard too.

You, you need somebody, uh, who really knows horses that she respects.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we have this conversation with her.

Yeah. And that's what I need.

Somebody that's not mom.

It's not mom.

I need to talk to that person for them to have a heart attack.

So the discussion with Lily is, is I am willing to abide by the advice of somebody who really knows a lot more than I do.

Yeah. Oh, I am 100%.

Are you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, that's good.

And if she says, yeah, mom, if you're willing to submit I'm willing to submit.

Are you? If she comes in and says, I think you'll be all right.

I will be willing to submit.

Because that's what we have to do. Either way.

Yeah, you have to submit. This idea will only work if you're willing to go there, if trust an expert.

I'm willing to trust the expert.

That's what Joan and I—

But Lily has to trust the expert too.

Yeah, that's right. It's not fair if you say I'll submit and she says no, I won't. Right. You both have to. But if you're willing to submit either direction and she says, I'm willing to submit either direction, then you got a green light and then somebody else can make the call.

Yeah.

This is conflict resolution.

It is. It is. And it's, you know, it actually overrides growing carrots because this is about the relationships. Yeah. And, you know, not anybody can grow a carrot, but, you know, the carrot doesn't care. I mean, you know, we don't have a— we're going to eat the carrot. We're going to plant the carrot, eat the carrot. But this is long-term stuff. And as you know, you know, I mean, I look back and I still have raw memories of things. And you never— what you're saying is, oh, if she feels like mom's ripping the horse out, it takes all that, it takes that, that, that pressure, that rawness, that rawness off of you.

I see.

And what a lesson for her to be able to step out and say, yeah, because, yeah, listen, you know as well The single biggest issue in tender relationships is submission. I mean, we have to submit to each other. I mean, Paul in Ephesians is very direct. Wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands, love your wives. But those are two sides of a coin. I mean, the problem is men love their jobs and their work. And they're not willing to submit their jobs and their work to their wife. And the wife wants her independence, and I want to be in charge. And so both are conflicted. But servanthood, submission, if we could ever learn to submit like I think the Bible says to submit, we'd have a lot less problems. And this could be a wonderful lesson for her. Mom's willing to submit, I'll submit.

And then you'll feel better because if she does, God forbid, were to get hurt, you'll be like, I worked through the professionals. I covered my back. I wasn't like, oh la la. I did all the things I was supposed to do.

I mean, because like, I— like with the dirt bike with Jonah, Justin called me while they were buying, like at the store to buy it, and he said, should I— should we do this? And I was like, I want to say no. And I kind of wish now I would have said no, come home.

And but you know, yeah, don't—

yeah, but you can't— you can't live in a bubble. You can't live in a bubble.

That's where I was going to go with this. Like, yeah, yeah, you want your kids to be able to do dangerous things.

Yeah, that's right.

How much danger, like, do we need? You know, like, my boys, I do not want them to be bull riders, you know?

Yeah, we're drawing the line at bull riders, but I, I, I— we didn't draw it.

Well, it's not inherently— well, bull riding isn't— is inherently very dangerous, you know? But professional boxing, I never got professional boxing, you know? I mean, a sport where the The goal is to hurt the other guy. Yeah, that—

I'm sorry, man, that's a problem.

There's no inherent danger in riding a dirt bike, right? Okay, now there's a danger if you ride it dangerously.

Yeah, that's the difference.

But there's no inherent danger in riding a dirt bike.

So you would have let Daniel get a dirt bike had he wanted one?

Uh, yeah, I think so. If he— if he'd, um—

well, I wanted— so they wanted to go—

he'd have to buy it with his own money. Yeah, you have to keep it up and maintain it with his own money.

But we— yeah, I imagine you'd let him climb a tree.

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

I mean, I would be okay with trees.

Although he grew up in the— he grew up in the '80s and '90s when I grew up. It was different.

It was just different. It's different. I feel like too now the society climate.

Yeah, Daniel's— I keep trying to remind myself Daniel's your age.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, we're actually older than him. Yeah, like, because he's only like 41, right?

He's 41.

Yeah. What do you imagine Daniel to be?

No, he's 40. He was born in '81, so he's 43.

I was born in '78, so now I'm 79. Do you imagine Daniel much younger than he is?

Do I imagine?

Yeah, like, because you'll say, oh yeah, I forget he's your, your age.

Yeah, I, I always imagine him younger.

What age?

Oh, right now, you know, I would imagine him at, you know, 30. Oh, I mean, quite a bit younger.

Where do you imagine yourself? Where are you with yourself?

With myself?

I've heard.

Yeah.

I mean, before you look in the mirror in the morning.

I mean, yeah, I don't mean that ugly. Thanks, Justin. Does he do this to you?

That sounded ugly. That sounded ugly.

Well, no. So there was this really funny— but I was thinking there's this really funny video of this woman.

I'm sorry. I should put this into context.

She was 94. It was her birthday and she was making a video about how she was 94 today. And she goes, I don't know why I'm living so long. I'm 94, but I feel like I'm 65. And so that's kind of the concept.

And then she said, well, then I look in the mirror.

I look in the mirror. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that was the concept.

So, you know, in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm in my 30s.

Wow.

Mentally, emotionally. My enthusiasm for life, I don't think it's changed a bit at all. I just don't have the physical acumen. My song is the Toby Keith song, "I'm not as good as I once was, but I was good once as I ever was." So when I'm showing the stewards how to, for example, split a pole and make a fence post, you take a locust log and you split and make fence posts. You know, they're sitting there, you know, peck, peck, peck, peck, peck. Let me show you how to swing a sledgehammer. And I walk up, you know, wham, you know, knock the wedge in, the thing splits, you know. How do you do that? I said, I did it once. Now you do it all day. There you go. And, and so that, that's kind of where I am. I had a— we had— I had a steward one day. He was trying to change the change the brakes on his truck. And I left to go somewhere. He was out at the shop and he had it up, you know, on jacks and he was working on it. And, you know, he was beating on something with a hammer. And I left and went back and I was gone for about an hour, came back, and he was still in the same position beating on the hammer. I said, Dakota, what's What's the deal here? I mean, these hours. Oh, I'm so frustrated. He had his, he had his YouTube thing up to how to, how to do this. And it, and it said, you know, you've got to hit this, this whatever, this thing out of the spot thing. Yeah, the thing out of the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, um, um, he said, and I've been, you know, hammering on it and it I said, give me that hammer. I took the hammer. Wham! And I mean, the thing spun right, you know, the bolt went out the other side. Boom. Yeah. I said, my neighbor, master mechanic Ed Cook, who had a shop down the road, whenever we had a problem, we'd take stuff to Ed. And he did that for me one time. I couldn't get something out. And he said, son, when you get a hammer in your hand, it's for one thing, to hit something. And if you're going to hit something, you hit it as hard as you can hit it, because that's what the hammer is for. And it was just— and it's always stuck with me.

Never forgot.

And when I, when I had this, I did that. So, you know, that's, that's experience. You know, that's, that's the stuff of life. That's good. Good.

Experience. Yeah, it's hard to know where that line is.

I know. I think because I go, I would be timid because you're afraid that you're going to break something and make it worse. Yeah, but I guess if it's all metal—

well, it all depends. I mean, obviously if you're putting in finishing nails, you don't hit them as hard as you can. Okay. It depends on what it was. But, you know, when you've got a rusted bolt in something and there's plenty of metal and plenty of pig iron, Just hit it. Yeah, man, rear back and whack it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did the other brake changing go out better for him?

Quick. The other side went much better, about as fast as the other side went long. Yeah, that's right, that's right. It went real fast. Yeah. And I— and you know what, I'll bet he'll never forget that. Yeah, I guarantee he'll never forget that. Yeah.

Well, speaking of feeling 40, I heard this quote They said success is accomplishing your goal. Happiness is being able to enjoy that.

Hmm.

That made a lot of sense to me in the sense of, you know, you get to a goal and you just want to hurry up to the next one. Does it make you happy? Well, no, the happiness is just being able to appreciate getting there. I bring that up to say Also, I read a book, I forget what book, they said think of the most, the, the, the most successful person you know. And I was thinking, um, the holistic success, not just monetary. You would definitely be really high up on that list. And one thing is you're, you're Are you— what, 60s? What are you?

You're close. 67.

Okay. 67. You always want to under.

I know I don't look 67. Late 50s.

I'm 67. Okay.

67. Teresa's grandmother, she lived to 106 months.

Wow. Wow.

And she— In her 90s, and she never— her mind was sharp right to the end, right to the end, mind sharp. Her body wore out, but her mind was sharp right to the end. And I remember well visiting her when she was in her, you know, late 90s. And she would say, you know, in my mind, I'm 16. Yeah. I mean, she said, I just don't— I just don't feel any different than I did when I was— she said, but my body You know, just doesn't—

See, I've heard that before, and then I've heard that people look in the mirror and they're like, oh yeah, I mean, I had that experience too. Study it for a minute.

Yeah, I think this is a lot of attitude and purpose. And I think that if you have truly sacred, noble purpose, that, you know, it should, As you start accomplishing things toward that purpose, not only does the purpose get bigger, but you start not only seeing what can be done, but you see what was done and you get to enjoy both ends of that spectrum a little more as you age.

So if we're talking about a secret of longevity here, you're saying it's having a sacred, noble purpose.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, purpose-driven is a big deal.

Is it ever hard for you to find, find that?

No, not at all. I got so many things I want to do.

I can't even— that came out.

I can't even begin to— I'll never live long enough to do all the fun stuff I'm interested in.

Yeah, that's good.

So now, so now what I'm trying to do is all these things I'm interested in. I'm trying to find people who are interested in that so I can get it done. Like, I can duplicate my passion, you know, through other— vicariously through other people and get other things done that I just can't.

Yeah. You mentioned out in the field that you would like somebody to come in and work on you with or help you with or take over and do. A compost tea, a liquefied compost.

Yeah. Well, you could experiment with that whole, that whole, you know, biofert, it's called, you know, biological fertilizer. Yeah. That whole biofert idea from, from earthworm pee to compost tea to all these things. I'm fascinated by it. And, and we've, we've, we've dibbled just a smidgen in and not some of the homemade products, but the branded products. And I'm not ready to buy into it, but, you know, I travel all over the world and, and I run into people that are doing this and having some tremendous success, especially in the homemade brews, the stuff you can do in a 55-gallon drum.

You— we've been to your farm many times and you've had us for the community dinner many times. Besides your mom, you're the oldest one there.

That's right.

Surrounded by young people.

That's right.

I want to make the conclusion right now that it's quite possibly, if I were to ask ask you for the sake of audience, how do you attract young people? I think it comes back to this. You have a noble, sacred purpose.

That's right. That's right. My dad used to say to us, everything is a burning bush and people still stop to watch a burning bush. You know, Moses in the burning bush. And I think there's a lot of truth in that. I think people, people are afraid. People are afraid to precisely articulate their, their greatest dream, their greatest fantasy. And I think, I think we're afraid to do that because, A, if we don't attain it, then we failed, you know, fear of failure. B, in a lot of ways, especially in farming, We feel like it's kind of whatever, ostentatious, presumptuous, greedy almost to— Now, if you work for BlackRock and you say, I want to be whatever, you know, the best investor on the planet, that's not a big deal. But if you're a farmer, farmers aren't supposed to aspire to things. You're just supposed to Go out and put in your 20-hour day and do it. And so I think to have that vision and mission. So for those who don't know, our mission statement is to develop ecologically, emotionally—

The entrepreneur over there.

Yeah, the entrepreneur. I'll start over. To develop ecologically, emotionally, and economically enhancing agricultural prototypes and facilitate their duplication throughout the world. That's our one-sentence mission statement. And I think the first step in attracting people to whatever it is you're doing is to have a one-sentence mission statement. Alan Savory, if there's one thing I think I mean, Alan Savory will go down in history for a lot of things, holistic management. But if I had to boil it to what is the one most memorable, significant contribution that Alan Savory has given to the world in his lifetime, it is the importance of the one-sentence mission statement. And I am amazed how many businesses, how many families, how many outfits don't have a one-sentence mission statement because that is what defines your destination. And it's hard to get people to get in the car to go with you if you don't know where you're going.

That's true.

So I think the precision of that destination is, is just really critical to—

you guys have one for your family or did you adapt the farm one for your family?

The farm ones, as far as we've got. Say it again. We probably, we probably should have.

Is it on your website?

Alan Nation used to have like 10 of them, you know, one for his family, his marriage, one for his business, one for, you know, and I'm sorry, I just, I'm too neglectful. I haven't gotten that far yet. We've got this one.

We have an all-encompassing one.

Yeah. So ours is to develop ecologically, emotionally, and economically enhancing agricultural prototypes and facilitate their duplication throughout the world. So obviously what you have there are prototypes. Okay, you have there, that's the experimental innovation. We want to stay on the cutting edge of experiment innovation and then to have a broad reach to encourage and inspire other people.

That's, that's helpful when you have that and you have that as a filter when you get all a bunch of other opportunities. It's like, it makes sense when Gabe approaches you to do your video course because that's just yet another way to do it. That's right. Every single one of your books fall under that umbrella.

That's right. That's right. That's right.

Coming here, you were, you were just at an event and now you're here. It's all under that umbrella. Whereas I don't know. I'm sure you've had an opportunity presented that it's not— that's not in line with that. And perhaps it was easier to say no.

Probably one of the biggest things that we keep saying no to are brand endorsements.

Okay.

Because we get— we get— everybody wants us to, you know, endorse their brand, you know, and, and, and, and we, we continually refuse to do that. And not that we don't like certain things.

Right.

And I'm, I'm glad to shout out, you know, we get most of our electric fence from Premier. You know, I'm happy that you're buying it. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We're glad to do it. And on our website, we have a resources page of the— here's the places we buy. But to do an actual, you know, kickback commission, you know, whatever, where we really— this— I've— and the other one I turn down all the time is board memberships. People want me to be on their— I'm starting this business. Would you be on my board? You know, I turned down all those. And the reason for both of them is the same. I have definitely determined that part of our appeal and why we have the reach that we do is because I'm unaligned. Our independence, people know, people know he's not getting paid to say that.

Yeah.

I mean, I might get be getting paid to speak, but, but I'm not getting paid to, to endorse, you know, and, and the advantage to that is if you quit liking Premier Wine, for example. Yeah.

You could just go to another.

That's right. That's right. Stuck in it. You're, you're, you're, you're free to, you're free to move around. But, but for me, I think that that has brought me a lot of credibility when somebody when somebody hears me say, here's the part to use for this.

Yeah.

You know, it's not a paid ad. Yeah. Yeah.

That sacred noble purpose thing. It's also too, is your answer here. We had a community Q&A with you once and somebody said how to deal with burnout. And I thought you were going to go into, you know, make sure you get enough sleep, downsize if you need to, get some help.

Yeah.

Nope. You said sacred, noble purpose. Yeah, well, that's going to be the answer. Go ahead.

Yeah, well, I think it was that it wasn't big enough.

Your vision. Your vision wasn't big enough.

Yeah.

Needs to be bigger, which is why you're burning out.

Yeah.

Yeah. That was your answer, which I've thought about that a lot. Yes, Lily. Oh, I wish you would listen to me about the first thing. I wish you—

She's gonna make a deal with you. Yeah, no, we're not doing that, Lily. We're staying here. It's not about that, Lily.

I'm really your friend.

He's pulling for you in here.

I'm really your friend, Lily.

With peaches. Lily's here and apparently she was eavesdropping, you know. She—

yeah.

Mull on it.

Let that, yeah, let that.

Yeah, you know, Rebecca's talking with Lily and seeing if she'll go for it. She didn't, she didn't bite the— she didn't, she didn't take the bait right away, but she might need to think about it.

Yep, that's all right.

You know, it happened with Joan and I You were the tiebreaker because I was like, oh, let's protect this grass. Jonah's like, no, we need to be driving on this, this pathway. We put our trust in you.

What did he say? What did he say?

Joel said the pathway for sure, because on the pathway, as opposed to driving up the pasture.

Yeah.

And, and, and if you wear out, if you wear out the If you wear out the field path, I know it's, it's not steep, and so it's not going to run. But if you wear out the field, yeah, it's gonna— you're driving straight up the hill. Yeah, you're gonna— there's no easy fix.

Last year, Joe, although we haven't— well, I mean, I guess you guys have been driving up the hill to hay bomb.

Yeah, that's what I was asking him. I mean, so you have to take the pathway and throw the hay bales downhill.

Yeah.

Yeah, everything touches the pathways.

Yeah. Yeah.

So we knew that much to do.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, we finally figured out the pathways.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so, you know, we have now numerous of our staff. It used to be it was just Daniel and I, and then we had these apprentices and then it grew to the stewards. And now we have, you know, half a dozen, 8, you know, full-time staff. And several of those have been with us several— I mean, Leanna and Eric have been with us now for, what, 12, 13 years, a long time. And I think one of the keys to that, and of course, you know, with young people, there's always transition. People get married. Or they move, different things. So the folks that have been and aren't, we didn't break up in anger. It was an amicable, it's just, well, I'm getting married, I got land that grandpa will give me somewhere else, different things. But one of the things that we do is we have a very aggressive embrace of side hustles. You know, a lot of businesses are threatened by side hustles. You know, you work for me, you can't do anything else. You know, I've got some sort of a prohibition on you, you know, doing something on your own time. But we actually embrace that for our young people. And so Eric and Leanna run the tiny stay thing and the maple syrup thing. And that's, that's their baby. You know, Heather, you know, Heather does the school tours. She does that now as a full-time business. So we have, we have these things that have, that have germinated as additional enterprises based on the—

Gideon, you can go with them as you pay attention to Josiah. We're hoping for the best.

Well, what should we do, oh wise one? I don't know. Okay, good.

That makes me smile. Because the chances of Gideon banging more blocks and Henry are more than 100%. More than 100%.

Yeah, yeah. So, so we have this real, real open embrace, and all of our people know that if they can think of something that's complementary— non-competitive, okay, but, but complementary— and we've had everything from shiitake mushrooms to, to wine cap stropharium mushrooms to heritage white corn for cornmeal. I mean, just, just all sorts of things over the years. Some, some, some are ongoing, some aren't. But this— in order for somebody to really be fulfilled, something that they own that's theirs is so— it doesn't have to be big. But a fiefdom that's there, everybody wants their own personal— I can make choices on this. I don't have to ask anybody that. That's the definition of a, of a fiefdom. I don't have to ask your permission to do this. And so I think, I think if, you know, if, if, if we go down as these people succeeded in this arena, I think this is the one that we've succeeded probably as much as anybody, as far as people, personnel, creating a team, is really encouraging ideas. You're probably familiar with Ben Hartman, Lean Farm, based on the Lean Toyota manufacturing principles. And Lean Manufacturing The number one—

is that screaming?

No, he's not. The baby likes Gideon.

Stop it. Stop. Don't say those ugly things. I just want to make sure that nobody's dying. I guess they're not coming back, so he's about— yeah, you know, there's other adults on the farm.

You know, you know, Jonah's thing has, has really affected you some, hadn't it?

One.

Rebecca, Jonah's accident. You're— I just sense so you're, uh, way more, uh, whatever, uh, anxious.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely turned up a little bit.

Normal people with 5 children are not that worried about the 5th one, right?

Well, I mean, I think I'm just more like— I mean, like, when Josiah came to get us to say that Jonah thinks he broke his leg We were like, hahaha, he didn't, you know what I mean? He's exaggerating, he's, he's fine.

We literally went and picked him up.

We literally like drove out there to get him, to bring him back, to have him walk on it. Like, that was our whole purpose, right? And then, then it just wasn't. And then it just— I think it snowballed because like, because it didn't seem severe.

Like, he wasn't in a lot of pain.

Yeah.

I mean, he wasn't like screaming and shouting, right?

And then like my friend came over right as I was leaving for the hospital and she's like, you seem like you're doing really good. I'm like, yeah, I mean, they're gonna put him back together, we're gonna come home.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we've got modern hospitals, right?

It was only supposed to be like a 5-minute— yeah, yeah, to sleep.

Yeah. And so then it was— and you know, it's just snowballed, right, so much that I think that now I'm like, I wish I could go back to old Rebecca who wasn't I'm so afraid of all of it.

I'm afraid it's gonna turn us into helicopters with the younger ones.

But life—

well, no, I mean, well, like the other day I was in the house like looking some things over and measuring some things, and, um, I didn't realize that— well, Henry was over here with Justin, and then as I was, I heard Josiah pull up and he's like, where's Mama?

I hear—

I was shutting a door and I was like, do you need me? And, um, he's like, yeah, Henry fell and hit his head. And I was kind of like— and then I came out the front door and Jonah's like, he fell out of a tree. And I'm like, he fell out of a tree? Like, one, he's 3. How did he get in a tree? He's like, well, tree's kind of strong. It was a bush. It was, you know, I mean, it was a— it was like a laurel.

I mean, I guess if Henry falls this far, it's like— well, and then he has fallen.

He scraped his head. He didn't cut it. It was not— it didn't cut.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you know how head wounds just—

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah.

So he had like blood, like, but You didn't panic?

I didn't. It was just more like though, well, when I heard the tree, I was like, oh, I'm going to the hospital now. And then, but then when I heard it was just a bush, I was like, okay.

I see him climbing in a tree and I cringe a little more than I used to.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, yeah, it's definitely something I'm working on trying to not be, 'cause I don't want to discourage Lily, but at the same time, I feel like I know what could happen. Christopher Reeves fell off a horse.

That's right.

And then look at him, he, he ended up dying, and he was Superman. Yeah.

Yeah.

So like, I guess I just feel like maybe my luck's run out a little bit, you know what I mean? You know how like— it's not, but you know what I mean? It just feels a little bit like—

well, um, look, look at it this way. Um, uh, Jonah was your, your, um your catastrophe, you'll probably do only one catastrophe.

Yeah, that's true.

So you look at it the other way. Okay. All right. We got that over with.

Here's the thing is, I was so thankful.

Your odds of getting two catastrophes are less.

Yeah. I told you this.

I feel like— Johnny, you speak this?

Yeah, I've had the catastrophe for everybody. You know, I'm done.

It's like the safest time to fly on the plane is right after a plane crash.

You're funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The safest time to speed is right after you saw the cop pull somebody over. Yeah, because now you know there's no cops around.

I mean, the odds of a back-to-back plane crash are—

I mean, it could happen. I feel like for him, I feel like I'm so thankful that modern medicine could help him, because what happens if they would have just said, we haven't gotten that far yet? We're really sorry.

You're afraid something's going to happen.

You know, then I think 200 years ago would have been fatal.

Oh, it would have been.

He would have just—

of course, it wouldn't have been a dirt bike either.

No, exactly.

But it would have been a horse or a boar or something.

You know, I know I've gone through all of this. I've thought about this all, Joel.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, so, so where I'm— where I want to— where I want to end up with this little, little thought is that, and a lot of times I get to this point and I can't get through it without tears, is that I'm at the age now where my farming peers are lonelier than they've ever been in their life. Their kids don't want the farm. They're now pushing 70. They don't have the spring in their step. That they did, you know, in their 30s. And mortality is facing them. And I mean, farming, farming is lonely anyway. It's a pretty lonely vocation. And then when you add age to it and the empty nest, you know, it gets pretty, it gets pretty serious. And so I am, I am extremely aware that at this stage of life, to be surrounded by the level of youthful enthusiasm that I'm surrounded with every day. I mean, it's just— it's unspeakable. It's just unbelievable. And I'm so blessed and thankful. Yeah. You know, but the thing is, that mission statement, that I have wanted to age with either relatives or non-relatives, doesn't matter, but with young people, with community, with young community around me. That has been a dream of mine as long as I can remember.

Okay.

Long as I can remember. And so, so in the farm business, I have constantly pushed the envelope. How do we get more people involved? How do we get people here? How do we create— how do we create enterprises that interest other people that don't have my interest? How do we, you know, and, and, and the average farmer doesn't think like that. No.

Not at all.

They think it's already scarce. It's not abundant.

Right.

And, and there's not enough time in the day for me to do anything. And the average, like, you know, 55-year-old farmer, if I mentioned, you know, you probably better think about a young partner. Oh, I can't imagine having a puppy dog following me around all day. That'd be like torture, you know, a bunch of questions and, you know, lost tools and, you know, And people who think that we have it easy, I say, you know, do you buy gloves, you know, 6 dozen at a time? Do you buy earplugs, you know, 500 at a time? Do you buy Channellock pliers, you know, 6 dozen at a time? I mean, 6, 6, half a dozen at a time. I say we're in the, we're in the next millennium iron ore development stage. When they run out of iron in 1,000 years, They'll be coming around, you know, trying to find a new— oh wow, look, there's the mother lode! You're going to find the sledgehammers and the wrenches and the crowbars and the digging irons.

And they'll be finding like an arrowhead is now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right.

Oh, the Indians were here.

Oh, you know.

Oh, the stewards. The old farmers were here.

Must have been a good time. Yeah, it's a lose the tool tribe. But we love our apprentices. We love our stewards. I mean, just like I'm sure, you know, you I find misplaced tools from the kids. But there's no free lunch. And if you want to age with loyalty and excitement and enthusiasm around you, you have to create a habitat, a habitat that's conducive to that, where people know if they misplace something, if they make an accident, if they if they do something, they're not going to be yelled at and they're not going to be scolded. I mean, man, we've had, you know, in my book Fields of Farmers, I, you know, do some of the things, you know, we've had, we've had, you know, trucks demolished. We've had, you know, poles knocked out of the barn, you know, from improper driving. I don't know how many times we rewelded jacks on stuff, you know, where something got hooked up and pulled. Yeah. Without, without pulling the, you know, without putting the jack up. But, you know, you just— it's okay.

I mean, you—

if they all walked around on pins and needles like, oh my, if I make a mistake, they're going to whatever, yell at me. We wouldn't have young people. We wouldn't have— we wouldn't have these young people. They need to know they have an unconditional love of safety. Now, do we put emphasis on— so, so when the stewards come, we have, we have training and not, not until our maintenance and mechanic technicians say, okay, this one passed the driving, the tractor driving test, this one passed the four-wheeler test, this one passed, then they can, they can go. So we're not, we're not— yeah, we kind of ease off the chainsaw thing. But, but, you know, on the other things, we're very careful about who drives. And we spend a lot of time in training and things like that. But, but you have to have— you have to have an open hand. At the end of the day, it's just stuff. It's just stuff.

This is where you do this. You apply this to your children too. If you want them to stick around, you let them pursue their own thing.

That's right.

That's right. That's, that's how come we've ended up— well, that's how Lilly's ended up with a horse.

Yeah.

And the boys and airsoft field over there.

Yeah.

So really, you know, we brought on Annie. She's a great worker. She helps us on the farm.

Yeah.

Really, we need to be thinking about if we want her long term, what is a little side hustle she could do on the farm? You don't pay them for the side hustle. You more partnership.

That's right. That's right. Sounds like the side hustle is their, their investment now. Now they can they're happy, we're happy for them to use. Like, you know, if somebody— like, we had twice, we've had people do shiitake mushrooms. Well, I'm glad to go cut the logs for them.

Yeah.

Okay. But they have to get the spawn, decide what they want to do, inoculate them, pick where they're going to, and of course, take care of them.

Right.

Take the risk of marketing, harvest. If they don't sell, I'm not picking up the slack. Right. We love shared risk takers. I don't work— I don't want to work with anybody who's not willing to share risk. So, you know, we— so we don't have anybody on our team that works hourly.

Oh, you don't?

Nobody works hourly. It's all either salary or performance. Either salary or performance.

Salary or performance. Not a mix of both? A base salary with performance on top?

You really can't because performance Performance is 1099 subcontractor type stuff. In other words, you can hire help, you can pick your hours, you can, okay, those kind of things. That's where you're performance-based. Salary would be, you know, clear expectations with a base, but then if you figure out how to do it faster, you still get the same pay. And if you want to add something on the side, You're welcome to do that as well.

This has been one of your elements of success, is to be surrounded by young people, having your, your 40-year-old son still around, daughter too. And, um, the other one I want to get at though is when was the last time you were sick?

Last time I was sick, so, so, um I got a bug. I'm trying to think. It's been 2 or 3 months.

Oh, it's been 2 or 3 months ago.

2 or 3 months. But until then, I thought you were going to say 20 years. Before then, it was about 20 years. But I got Daniel. It went through the whole crew on the farm.

And you got it.

Everybody got it. And I got it. And Daniel, Daniel had it for about a week. I was, I was 48 hours. And it was just crud, just crud, congestion, cough, just— and, and it was just crud. He brought it back from, from Texas, from the APPPA conference. And all three of them that went to the APPPA all got it immediately upon returning home. And then I eventually came out. But before then, it had been— I mean, I just I haven't been sick in bed. Yeah. For literally, you know, many, many years before then.

You said you spoke on Joe Rogan. You said that it was because you drink out of that caltroph.

Oh, that, that, that was just— that was just— that was just a rattle of chain. No, I do drink out of this.

We know you do. I drank out of it with you.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, you know, I, I do think that this— that the immune system is like a muscle. And it needs to be exercised. And one of the problems in our society is we've become too sterile. You know, Finland— Finland leads the world now in this, in this research where these farm kids that are in the dirt, run around barefooted, you know, put their hands on the cow with a little bit of manure in their mouths and stuff. So much healthier.

Is that where you draw the line?

Oh, my gosh. Let's just not get manure. I mean, Gideon did.

We saw one of our kids pick up a dry chicken squat.

And just really—

yeah, so we had—

how we caught them.

We had a picnic table. We had a picnic table and the chicken had climbed up and he pooped. And then, you know, it was winter, so it just had sat in the sun.

Well, chick—

it was dry.

Yeah, it was very dried, very dry. And he picked it up and just shoved it in. And then I'm going in Googling toddler ate dried chicken poop, what do you do? And basically, I mean, I just like, you know, I, I swatted it out of his mouth. And yeah, I was like terrified because, you know, I mean, we— I feel like I am even, you know, more lax than the average American.

Oh, I'm sure. Oh, you can't, you can't live here and not be more lax than the average American.

But I am— I do draw the line with manure.

I mean, I had, I had, I had them back— I had Gideon back up, vacuum up the termites before, just in case Joel had to go to the bathroom. I mean, this is, uh, did you wash your hands before we ate lunch?

No.

I, I've heard you say you intentionally do not wash your hands before— not, not all the time, sometimes.

No, no, no, no, no. If I come in with a bunch of manure on my hands or whatever, I wash them. But, uh, but no, I, I intentionally, you know, eat crud. And, and, and, you know, if I'm out like cutting wood and eat a sandwich or something, you know, I'm out in the woods for the day, for example. Yeah. I don't try to wash them like that.

Are you on any medicines? No. Would you get on medicine?

Well, I mean, it would depend on what, I guess, what it is. I mean, I don't mind taking supplements.

Are you on any supplements?

Kind of. I like to take vitamin C. I think vitamin C is really, really important. And I've been on zinc for ever since Dad passed away and we did a bunch of research on prostate cancer. And his father had prostate cancer. Didn't kill him. He died of a heart attack. Very slow, slow growing. And found that zinc is real emblematic.

You would go for supplements?

I've been taking some zinc for a long time, and now I've learned zinc does a lot of other things too.

Oh, it does.

Most people are low on zinc.

Zinc deficient.

So yeah, I don't mind taking a supplement, but mainly I have a zest for life. I have really exciting things to live for. Exciting. Exciting people to, to talk to every day and interact with every day. Exciting people.

Uh, you ever get stressed out?

That's a good one.

You ever get stressed where you're like, this is too much, it feels too much?

Yes. Somebody drives on your—

when someone drives on you?

Yeah, someone drives on you faster. That's what I'm—

yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm trying to think of the Thankfully it wasn't me. So like Daniel's made a list because he's a better manager than I am, so he's more proactive. So he is actually better with the young people than I am at this stage of our lives. Daniel's their mentor. I'm like the guru on the mountaintop and it actually creates some issues. We had a bad situation about who I'm going to say 6 years ago and had to do some real circle the team and let's dig down into this. And what came out of it was, you're like a god to us. And that's not a good thing. I said, look, you know, I get frustrated. I, you know, have my things. And so So that's kind of that 6 or 7 year ago situation. Out of that suffering on our part, on everybody's part, out of that suffering came our big thick handbook now that we've created standards of operating procedures, expectations. It's a whole— I mean, I'm I'm not making it that thick, but it's a pretty comprehensive— we created a mission statement for it. So the mission statement for the stewardship program is come for a summer and learn if you have what it takes to be a farmer. For the apprenticeship program, the mission statement is come for a year, learn the Polyface way, and leave being able to duplicate it anywhere in the world. Very different mission statements. Those grew out of that, a bad experience.

I see.

And part of that too, out of what grew with that, Daniel created— where I was going with this— he created my 10 never-nevers. Here are 10 things you never, never do. And I can't even think of one of them right now.

Never, never do to you?

No, no, no.

You're supposed to never, ever.

On the farm.

Oh, for the whole—

everybody. Yeah. So it would be never this summer.

This summer we can think of one.

Never, ever drive on the pastures.

That one.

That's one.

That's one.

Sure it is.

Yeah. Or drive through the middle of a pasture. If you have to drive on a pasture, drive right around the edge where the fence is, where it's already a little bit gnarly anyway. Okay. That's one of them. You never, ever You never ever park the tractor with something in the front end loader that you didn't take out.

Oh, okay. So like, don't put it away with stuff in the front.

Yeah. So when you park it, whatever you had, you know, whatever, a salt bag or a shovel or whatever you had in the front end loader, take it out. Okay.

You never ever park the tractor without leaving it in park.

Yeah, that's where I thought you were going with that. Never, ever, never, ever leave the chicken shelters with a dead chicken in the field. Okay? If there's a dead chicken, pick it up. Not that we don't want to feed buzzards, but we don't want to deal with—

we have, we have 15,000 visitors and the chickens are going to start eating that dead chicken.

And well, no, it's outside, but don't leave it.

Just like, don't take it out of the pen and just leave it there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In other words, you move, you move the shelter. Oh, there was a dead chicken.

I see.

Yeah, you got a dead chicken sitting in the field. Pick it up, you know, get it out of there. Because inevitably, inevitably, if you leave one— that's right, when a kindergarten class is going to show up there, and all they're going to remember was we went to this farm, there was a dead chicken in the field. I mean, it's, it's unbelievable.

It's very traumatizing for people who are not around you constantly.

Oh yeah. Yeah, that's right.

It can be very difficult for them to move past.

It is. It is. Yeah. Yeah.

Because, you know, like, I'm like, oh, that's a dead chicken.

People are like— So I'm actually thinking about creating my 10 never-nevers. And so here's the thing. What we've learned— look, we're bringing young people in. Many of them have never been on a farm. They're urban.

Wow.

The farm kids don't want to do—

stewards or stewards. Stewards have never, like, are not farm folk.

No, very few of them. Very few of them have ever actually spent any time on a farm.

But do you see the difference in that mission statement?

Yeah.

If an apprentice comes thinking they're going to learn the Polyface way completely, if they might be disappointed.

If a steward comes, if a steward comes for the 5-month program thinking they're going to learn the polyface way.

No, no, no. You're— I see the wording difference. No, this, this is to see, see if you have what it takes. And that's why when I've shown up there at 5:50 in the morning, you know, they're up getting going.

That's right. That's right.

And then they're loading all those poultry pens day after day and then butchering every Wednesday.

Yep.

And they're not necessarily— I know I've seen you also. You'll know, you'll do a workshop with them to teach them cow days, but they're not— it's too much to try to teach them all the—

right.

Well, what matters is that you made the— you, you outlined expectations.

Yeah, yeah, that's it. And what we find is that, that if you clearly outline your expectations— like, we, we get, we get requests routinely from farmers, you know, almost they're wanting labor. And listen, You never do a mentorship program. I'm going to lump this under a mentorship program. You never do it for labor. If you're doing it for labor, you will, you will lose your freaking mind. Okay? Because there's no end to the creativity people can, can imagine to mess up something. Okay? So, so you have to have a heart of a teacher, the heart of a mentor.

Yeah.

In order to do this. But people say, well, man, we've just been on this journey for a year or two ourselves and we're just not comp— No, you can start a mentorship program. You just need to be clear about where you are. So if you're just kind of starting and you're kind of a novice too, but you say, man, I'd love to have another pair of hands and another person to talk to and share this with and da da da da. Well, make it very clear. Come join us for a season and learn with us. We haven't been doing this very long, but if you'd like to come on a learning journey with us, come on. And that's fair. That's fair. So the problem is when you pass yourself off as a master and you're not a master, people come expecting mastery And you don't even know how to set up an electric fence.

Yeah.

And that happens all the time. All the time. So, so, so we, we do consider ourselves master. I don't think it's, you know, arrogant to say so. We've been at it. We've made enough mistakes to be masters. Okay. So, so we present ourselves as masters. And so, you know, we basically say, come, you know, come for a season and leave, leave 10 years ahead. You know, that's kind of a little thing that we do. But clear expectations of— and that includes even daily directions, okay, to explain things. We have an SOP now, standard operating procedure. When I say move a broiler shelter, that phrase, move a broiler shelter, you know, That seems pretty simple. We have a 6-page SOP.

Oh, wow.

That explains what move a brother shelter means.

But that's so good.

Yeah. And then we test them on it. So they're there for a month and we have a little pop quiz and we do a test. I mean, we're serious. And what we find is that if we're clear about our expectations, people will always jump to meet your expectations. But if you're not clear about them, if you're just kind of, oh, come on, we'll kind of We'll enjoy the season together. Then, then you're going to be at— you're going to start resenting each other because they're going to come with a bunch of expectations and, and you're going to have expectations of them. Neither one of them has spoken. See, they never tell us their expectations. That's what we have found. They never tell us their expectations. Like, we had no idea that when they came, they thought I was God. That was brand new information.

How did you figure it out?

We had some difficult discussions.

Okay.

You leaned into the difficulty.

Yeah, they're going to be too intimidated.

Yeah, because what developed was, yeah, what was some resentment things that we had no clue of that they were harboring, not sharing with us. And the reason they weren't sharing with us was because they didn't want to express disappointment to the guru. And it was— what we had, we had a bad apprentice situation that we weren't picking up. They were picking up, we weren't. And instead of somebody from them coming to us and saying, hey, this is not a good manager, they just started between themselves. And so part of— so we do a week of orientation when they come, and part of it is moving is to try to dispel the rumor mill, the soap opera. Because remember, we're bringing 11 people in from different— all over the country. They've never met each other. We're dumping them in. They literally— they literally go through the level of whatever, you know, relational development that you would develop in a normal workplace, you know, an office or whatever. A normal workplace environment that would take you 10 years to develop. They do it in 6 months. Yeah, because they're living together, eating together, sleeping together, working together. Yeah. I mean, we are— it is a total immersion. And, and so we trust me, we do and have spent as much time keeping that whole team dynamic relationship tender as it's done to develop the prototypes in the first place. But boy, when you win, it's sweet. I mean, there's nothing— a team like that is like the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When it's good, it's very good. When it's bad, it's horrid. If you can keep things tender and keep them good. So we spend a lot of time talking about how do you resolve your disappointments, you know, your expectation things. And it's always you have to go directly to the person who can do something about it. If you go horizontal, so this is called vertical, you move vertical, chain of command. You don't go horizontal. Horizontal is gossip. Horizontal is rotten apple destroying the bunch. If you've got an issue, horizontal doesn't help you. Yeah, you got to go vertical.

Yeah. Do you— back to Rebecca's thing— you have some acute stress, but do you have any ongoing angst?

And, you know, one of my— and Teresa were here, she would definitely confirm.

We're gonna have to have her on.

One of my— one of my gifts is I live in the moment. Yeah, I love the moment. I just live in the moment. She will tell you, people have wronged us, whatever, you know, not paid bills. I mean, you know, you're in business, right? Things happen.

Yeah.

I just can't even remember it. I just can't remember it. She remembers every one. Okay. But that's kind of a woman thing, too. You know, women, women are this, you know, this, this Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The nest, right? It's all about what's affecting the nest. And me, I just don't. So it's a blessing in that I, you know, I kind of— I just forget about these negative things.

The—

that's a good part. The bad part is I can't— I can't remember things. I can't— I can't remember the good times, the bad times, the whatever. So I can't remember the person or the thing. So I'm the— people think, you know, I meet so many people all over the world and they assume that I have some sort of a mental Rolodex of, hey, I'm looking for somebody that knows this. Do you know that? Oh, I know. I've met 5 of them that are experts, but I can't tell you who they are. Yeah, I'm the worst, you know, like record keeper, that kind of Rolodex thing. I just don't. Teresa, you know, she can call names, she can pull them out. You know, she meets someone and Daniel's even way better than I am. He can meet a person, you know, 5 minutes, he'll call their name, you know, 5 years later. I just, I just can't. I just can't. So, so, so the stress question, the angst, the all that is, I mean, there are things that you, you know, that you think about But man, I'm so enjoying the moment that I just don't worry about it. And I will tell you this from a faith perspective, we've been in some real spots in the past and God has always been faithful. He's always brought us through. And so, I mean, whether it's a, you know, an engine problem that I don't know how to fix. And guess what? Goodness, a mechanic happens to stop by.

Yeah.

Visiting and is an expert on distributors or whatever. It's unbelievable. So we just are so— we're so content to just rest in that God's called us to this.

Yeah.

And, and he's given us not only passion, but whatever skill and ability. I mean, who would have guessed that, that as a high school, college drama debater, you know, communicator, I could be a farmer and leverage that? Oh, yeah. When I— when all my, you know, college buddies that I was on the debate team with and all this, in forensics and public speaking and all that stuff. I was in all the contests and stuff. When they found out I was coming back to the farm full-time, even faculty advisors, oh, he's throwing his life away. You know, what a terrible thing. He's throwing his life away. Here he is, this gifted communicator, throwing his life away. Man, I was just being prepared for something. How many farmers get to get to— of course, most farmers don't have a gift of communication, you know, because most farmers are hermit curmudgeons, you know. But anyway, to be able to leverage that gift and that skill in this vocation is truly, truly wonderful. So yeah, I mean, look, if I want to nurse a worry, I can nurse a worry Okay. But I found that it just doesn't do any good. And, you know, Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, talks a lot about stay within your sphere of influence. And so, you know, I don't write congressional letters. I don't— I don't call senators. I don't— I probably should. Teresa does. Teresa does religiously.

She's—

I mean, she's got— she's got the senator on speed dial, man. I mean, she— but I just feel like, no, I need to concentrate on my sphere of influence. And if you remember his concentric circles, his whole point of that chapter is the more you concentrate on your bullseye that you can influence, it expands your outer sphere of influence. But if you put your emphasis out here on this outer ring, then it contracts your actual close sphere of influence.

Yeah.

And so I'm putting attention on, on, you know, where I can really— and that's, that's worked really well. So Alan Nation, my mentor, you know, founder of Slotman Grass Farmer, he always told me, he says, Joel, he says, Your goal in life is to ultimately end up where when you get up every morning, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. And you know what? I'm really close. I'm really close.

How far away?

How far away? Not, not far. I mean, I, I can't think of— well, I mean, there's a couple of things I don't like, man. You know, when somebody says, I need your help with pushing through this insurance issue.

Insurance. I mean, who wants to deal with them ever?

There are people that love to do that.

No, I don't know them.

Man, we know a couple.

There's accountants and they actually like it.

Yeah, right. And we have now a guy, you know, that's working with us that comes a day a week. And he's all over HR, accounting, insurance, all that stuff. He loves it. He loves it. He's worth every—

Why did you wait so long for him?

Oh, well, we've had somebody like him for several years, but nobody quite as good and quite as talented. Talented. Yeah. Yeah.

And what some of the best money we spend is that day a week, him That is the best money you ever spend is when somebody does something that you just don't.

Yes.

That was the first thing we outsourced was our bookkeeping.

Yeah.

Yeah. We're not good at that.

Oh, really?

We know it's not our strong suit.

Well, see, Dad was an accountant.

Yeah.

And so when we got married, he took Teresa under wing.

Yeah.

And, and taught her, taught her. And so, you know, fortunately, because he wasn't alive long after we got married, we got married in '80. He died in '88, but that was enough years. And he taught her. And so she did all of our accounting for years, except we had an accountant who did our taxes, who filed our taxes. But otherwise she did all of it. And then now it's gotten— it's just gotten more than— yeah, it's really gotten more than one person can actually handle. And our CPA who still does our accounting, he laughs at us. He says, you're the most complicated business I do because we got all this stuff, all these different things going on.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, they tell us that all the time.

Did you know what you remind me of living in the now is these animals. Weenie the dog, the cow.

Yeah.

They, they, I don't know if they can live in the future or the past.

Yeah.

And they live as long as they're supposed to live. Have you noticed that?

Yeah.

And we humans, well, I think we're supposed to be living to be about 120.

We do. We don't. We take that into our hands. I mean, like Stud Muffin, he might have lived longer.

Well, I mean, we killed him. We killed Stud Muffin.

Stud Muffin. What a wonderful boy.

He is delicious.

He's delicious.

He is so good.

We're gonna have him tonight.

It is crazy how good he is.

Like, you know, we're hooked on all meat now.

Oh, really?

Yeah, we had a cow.

Now that we've ate our family cow and now that we ate our bull. Well, actually, in between, we ran out of family cow meat. We got some regular, just local grass-fed. And it almost tasted not sour or bad, it just wasn't flavorful.

Like, she was really flavorful, you know?

And then Stud, he has a different flavor than she did.

He does. Well, first, just so Justin, you know, because he eats a lot of meat, so he was like—

so I may be picking up on it a little.

He was a little nervous going into Flossie's meat.

He was like, I didn't like her at first.

I know. He was like, I don't know, I don't know.

He like to it to try to make it.

He did. He like— and then we would buy— did we— we bought that grass-fed, the local grass-fed, and we would mix it in with it. Okay. To tame the taste. But then somewhere in there you fell in love with it.

Yeah.

And he's— and then he was like, this is the best hamburger. And of course, you know, we ran out.

It's an acquired taste.

Yeah.

That's what the winemakers say. You know, it's an acquired taste.

Well, you know, we acquired it. Have you ever met Brandon Sheard?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. He's such a delight.

Oh, he is.

If you ask him, we had a butchering workshop with him out here and somebody asked him, how's this lamb going to taste? It was an older lamb. And he said, like himself.

That's good. That's really good.

It's going to taste exactly like himself. Meaning He's going to be more lamby. Yeah, well, he's going to taste like himself, and that they're varying, but also he's gonna— he's gonna take— taste more like lamb than just a young lamb.

Than a young lamb.

Stronger.

But I don't know, we're really— yeah, we've been enjoying all these old— well, you cows.

Yeah, well, you've had the privilege of butchering them right here too. You haven't taken them to a slaughterhouse, right, where they've had the adrenaline and the stress, right, right, to the slaughterhouse.

Yeah.

And And boy, that makes a difference.

It does.

Yeah, that— we insist on killing them here. And then we don't part here yet.

No, we're not set up to part here yet.

Oh, okay, for fabrication.

But we are probably gonna part because I like to mix in a little bit of liver and the right amount of heart and the right amount of fat. I like 20% fat in a burger.

25% fat.

25.

Yeah, I think, well, that was, you know, the remodel is gonna have what we're calling the garden kitchen. And so that will be—

As a processing kitchen.

Yeah. So we'll have, you know, just stainless steel tables in there. It's going to be very utilitarian.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We'll have to go see the grinder.

Yeah.

The contractors over there would be like—

We got them all confused.

They were like, well, what kind of cabinetry are you going to have down here? I'm like, I'm not going to have cabinetry. It's going to be stainless steel tables. They would kind of be like, what? Yeah, like, yeah, don't worry about it, just leave it blank, we'll do— we'll put it together later.

You think there's something for— we're eating mostly, um, castrated meat.

Do you think there's something to, like, the testosterone? The testosterone of, like, the bull, and, you know, that we're getting that testosterone in the meat? Or because, you know, they're all steers.

Making you especially healthy? Or you mean that you take— that you—

well, I'm just saying, like, for the health of— because, you know, testosterone is—

society—

testosterone is on the— on the dad.

Yeah, bulls or rams or—

yeah, for the most part, if you go get a steak somewhere, it is a steer, you know? It's not a bull.

We castrate ours.

Yeah, so we do too.

We do too.

Too much of a—

it's too much of a risk. Yeah.

I think it's fun to finally eat a bull.

But is there something to it that we are, our testosterone is going down? I mean, there's lots of reasons for that. I'm not saying it's just this.

It's the same thing as fertile eggs. Some people, I want to eat fertile eggs. And other people won't eat fertile eggs.

Correct.

So you've got both things. I don't know. I mean, I—

Have you heard anything ever about it? Because I don't know. Like, I've tried to research it and there's not anything.

Yeah, there's not. There's not much about it. That's going pretty far. We go far.

We're out to the far.

We're always looking for the next. I'm with you.

Yeah.

I just think there's a lot, a lot out there that we don't understand or that we don't appreciate or get.

Well, I was telling Austin the other day there was a health pent— health crisis began after refrigeration. Oh yes, like, refrigeration was a good thing, right? We could preserve these— this meat longer. But what happened was people were becoming salt deficient.

We were losing—

they were getting all their salt from—

they were getting so many minerals from the salt, from the preserved salt cured.

There's always—

especially salt cured pork. Yeah.

Okay, you get a lot of salt on it.

Lots of salt.

I don't know if you have to anymore, but you used to have to soak your bacon when we had bought bacon at your place.

Oh yeah.

They say you got to go and soak this before you eat it.

We wish we could still do that. We still wish we— but our customers just, they could not.

Couldn't handle it.

No, but boy, we love that salty. Yeah. You just soak it out for a couple of minutes and you're okay.

No, we— so the first time we ever had it, we didn't soak it and it was very salty.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then we got the clue.

Clue.

We, we saw the, the, hey, just soak it for a little bit.

Yeah.

And so we started doing that, and, um, it was much better.

Yeah. Well, Teresa grew up on that. I didn't.

Okay.

She grew up because her family butchered pigs and had a salt cure, had a curing, uh, whatever shack out behind the house. She grew up on that. She loved that. I mean, she just loved the saltier it was, the better.

It was just like when she was a child.

Yeah, she loved that. For me, it was a little bit much.

It was a little much.

A little bit much.

It like curls your lips, right?

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, we really miss that. Now everything is smoked. We smoke everything. But our customers, we just couldn't— the average American consumer, they just couldn't handle that level of—

So I guess then when the salt curing was a thing and that's what everybody did, they would soak their meat for a little bit to kind of help get the salt out and then cook their meat.

I don't think they did. I think they just ate it with the salt in it. I think, I think they— it was acquired taste. I think they, they developed—

yeah, I got used to flossing. But, but yeah, and stud muffin's a little— I think I wouldn't feed him to a normal person.

Yeah, well, where are we going to find a non-normal person?

What'd you think, Austin? Was it a little strong?

It's strong for sure.

Yeah, I'd feed it to you. Yeah, feed it to Austin. I don't know if I'd feed it to my Florida friends.

Yeah, well, you know, that's the thing, you know, when you're, um, when you're, when you're homesteading, you know, you can, you can push the envelope on a lot of these things for yourself, you know, just for experiments and your own experience and whatever. But when you're, when you're selling commercial to urban customers.

Yeah, you've got to, you've got to stay with the grocery store.

You can't be but so weird. That's another Allen Nation one. He said, so when you're marketing, you can either be a Buddhist or a nudist, but you can't be a Buddhist nudist. If you're a Buddhist nudist, that's just, it's just too weird. Too weird. Nobody will believe.

So that's what I mean. When you have normal friends over on your homestead, serve them, serve them your Cornish Cross chicken. Yeah, that's going to be It's gonna be firm in their mouth, juicy.

Yeah, the vegetables that you grow, you know, the normal veggies.

Yeah, don't, don't feed the— we'll fry the testicles.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, Rocky Mountain oysters.

Don't feed that to them.

Yeah, we had it, we had a steward one time that went and when we were getting ready to castrate and he, he went and got, got one of these little, uh, kind of a little Bunsen burner fry baby deals, you know. And I mean, I was pulling them out right here and putting them right in the pan. And he was eating them right there. And do you eat it? Yeah. Oh, you did?

Yeah. So, you know, we dispatched Stud over here and we had some workers working and they caught wind. They caught wind and they wanted to watch. And so we said, sure, you can watch. And they did. And then Justin ended up frying up some liver and heart and testicles and we all ate it together and they enjoyed it immensely.

I told them, I told them the best way I could in Spanish what we were eating. And then one goes, he can't speak any English. He goes, yeah, you eat those tests, it makes you strong. Yeah, it was fun.

So, well, I, my intuition is that's probably not why our fertility is dropping. I expect it has more to do with Cheerios and Froot Loops.

Right. Oh, yeah.

You mean not getting in the sun?

Yeah. Yeah.

Not exercising.

Lack of exercise.

So many things.

You know, I heard on the radio the other day, I did not— it was a show about social media with middle school age, you know, like 11, 12, 13, 14-year-old. And it said that right now, today, the average middle schooler spends 7 to 10 hours a day on screens. 7 to 10 hours a day.

They have that time because they're at school. I mean, I guess they do a lot of it at school.

At school, they're— they're— they're—

how many hours a week are you on a screen, counting your computer?

Oh, I'm probably on probably 2 hours a day, 5, 6 days a week.

Or 7 days a week?

No, not Sunday. I turn it off. That's my Sabbath. I like to do one thing that really sets that day apart from— I mean, besides going to church, but for me, I've found just no computer, no email, no nothing. I turn the whole thing off on Sunday.

So don't email on Sunday?

Yeah.

And Therese has no problem with that?

Nope.

She's even less screens than you, probably.

Uh, I don't know. She spends a lot with accounting.

She still does the main part, so she has to do it on the computer.

So she's constantly talking to people about, you know, invoices and paying bills.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of that.

That could have something to do—

she's probably on computer probably as— we're probably on about the same amount of time.

So are we saying That could have something to do with your health at this age? Your little amount of screen time?

You know the Blue Zones, you know this documentary about the Blue Zones?

It's been coming up a lot lately, I think.

Well, it's just gotten—

Well, I think they're getting more publicity now.

Yeah, exactly. And the thing about the Blue Zones is So there's these commonalities of these Blue Zones. Blue Zones is where people live at longevity. Longevity. And of course, Weston A. Price found, Weston A. Price traveled the world and he figured out these 5 or 6 things that made people live long. He went to these long-lived places. And so the Blue Zones is kind of a, it's been 100 years since Price went on and now this is kind of our new. And so they've gone to these places and so one of the things that's common is they never go to the gym. They don't have an exercise program. They don't have a fitness program. What they do have though is a lifestyle, is a lifestyle that moves their body. Just they garden, they hike, they— They, they do carpentry, they have projects. And so all these, all these folks are just— they're, they're moving their body just from living. And, and, you know, I've never had an exercise fitness program. You know, I, I may, I maybe should, but, but I never have. And, and, you know, when I feel like I need to get busy, I just, I go outside and start doing something outside, you know. I mean, it might be the garden, it might be the chainsaw, it might be, um, what, you know, firewood, splitting some wood or something like that. But, uh, but I actually find that, that for me, um, you know, splitting some wood's a good example I just find this very, very good for you because it stretches your back. You're swinging, you know, it's— it's— I find that it's really, really—

did you know that raises testosterone? Chopping wood with an axe?

Yeah, really?

Yeah, in the sun without your shirt on.

Oh, it like— get that vitamin D. I, you— I usually—

I mean, it is, it's like it's been studied.

I usually do it in the winter though, so my shirt off is problematic.

I think though that the whole chopping the wood, the actual like physical act of chopping the wood does it. I mean, I don't know the actual mechanism.

You know how you feel after you split one, once you chop one.

But like it does raise testosterone. I think if you do it without your shirt off.

Gives you a little bit of a rush.

Just a little bit more.

Gives you a little bit of rush.

Oh, maybe.

No, I'm not. No, I just read that.

Maybe the benefit of having your shirt off is when your wife sees you.

There you go. Oh yeah, I mean, it could be, it could be. Well, I mean, well, see, we use a wood splitter, but, um, so that kind of denotes it. We should, we should—

I'll try putting some logs over there at our wood-fired hot tub over there. Let's go out there.

Yeah, well, the boys, the boys have been splitting all the wood. Actually, we're actually— we actually just called about— we found a wood processor And he comes and brings it.

Oh, he'll cut it.

And it's only like $800 a day.

And you get 12 cords every 20 minutes or something.

Oh, he sets up his wood processor here.

Yes.

And does your wood that you've cut for $800. Like you get long lengths.

Yeah.

And he brings his wood.

We get about 16 cords.

No, 12. 12 cords he thought we could do in a whole day with setting up and then breaking down.

Wow.

Wow. Um, yeah, I was like, $800? I was like, that's really cheap.

I feel like a little over $100 a cord. Is that a good deal?

Yeah.

What's a cord going for?

I feel like a cord's going for like $300 now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I expect you're about right. I mean, like, it used to— I'm sure it is here where we are, it's more like $200, but cost of living is a lot less.

Yeah, we have— we are pretty high cost of living here, so.

Yeah. Wow, that's something. I know.

When he's— yeah.

Yeah. So these blue zones are all of them. So people move as part of their daily routine. And what they found was that gentle movement during the day is way more beneficial than aggressive movement for an hour. So people, they sit at the desk all day, then go to the gym for an hour and say, You know, I've done my— excuse me. What they found was that it's actually much better to not work out hard for a few minutes and sit all day. It's actually better to just move, to move throughout the day and do things. So of course, that's the way I've lived. And yeah, it bothers me sometimes now that I do spend so much time in front of a screen. With emails and writing.

2 hours a day is not a lot.

That bothers you, the 2 hours?

Yeah, well, I mean, there are some days certainly I spend 4, right? Because I'm, you know, because you have something to do. Yeah, but I mean, I'm doing, I'm doing 3 to 6 podcasts a week. I'm not, I'm not actually on the screen, so there's a lot of more Zoom calls. So I'm not actually doing anything except, you know, we're, we're doing a Zoom call on a podcast on a you know, on a screen, right? So, um, what—

how many hours would you say you spend on the screen? It's only a couple.

I was kind of getting to where it's, you know, sort of because of the pain in my feet, it's like becomes too irritating after a while. But I would do half and half, you know, work all morning on the farm and then office work in the afternoon. But it's funny, I kind of feel guilty almost the other way where Hey, I should spend a little more time in the office. Or if I don't get to the office because we had a problem on the farm, I feel guilty because the office is so monetarily productive.

Yeah, yeah, no, I, I get that.

And making the content is where the money's at.

Yeah, I'm a little bit that way now too, you know. I can spend an hour writing an article and, you know, and you get paid.

And yeah, it's, uh, it's really, it's really, uh, versus just, you know, going and splitting some wood at the that you could have gotten a wood processor for.

So Daniel has grown up with, you know, Dad shouldering the main actual physical work of the farm to where now I'm moving into this other, you know, this kind of other dimension. And so he's just taken for the last 2 or 3 years now, he'll come. And now that he's taken over day-to-day operations, I basically work for him. So he tells me what I need to do.

That's good.

And so So he now comes and grins, he says, "If you need some therapy." So he now knows that I view the hard physical work outside, that's my therapy, 'cause he went through a little while where he was saying, "You're working too hard, you need to," you know, he's cognizant of, you know, dad's over, bless his heart, you know, I appreciate that he's concerned, you know, I don't want dad to die of a heart attack or whatever. And so, you know, and I come in, you know, I've got sweat clear down to my knees, you know, And so now he realizes, so we've had a little bit of, "No, Daniel, I want to do this. I need to do this. This keeps me healthy and enthusiastic to get out here and work hard and sweat and this." And so now he's kind of gotten over that little bit of protective tension, if you will. And now he comes, says, If you need some therapy, you know, we need fence line cleaned over here. There's a dead tree on the fence up there, you know, get it off. And, and so it's been good. So he recognizes that this is my therapy is, is getting out there and movement, working, sweating and enjoying. I mean, I enjoy being outside and doing this. So I still, I move the egg mobiles every morning. I pretty much, the cows at home are my responsibility. So, you know, I have my responsibility, my responsibilities.

And who's doing it while you're gone?

Oh, somebody else. I don't know who.

Daniel found somebody. It's up to him, I guess.

Yeah. Yes. Well, him or Eric or we've got other people.

This just happened with us and I don't know how it happened. I mean, the, the kids can do their chores.

Yeah, I think what happened is they can do all the chores. Is that—

it's a wonder. It's a wonderful thing.

You up at the airport?

Yeah, yeah.

It's a reason they like— yeah, they actually like to do the chores without him. When I show up, they complain. I slow it down.

You know why?

Well, I want to pick up this and this and that's, you know, I do need to come in probably every 3 days.

Yeah, and just kind of check on and like making sure that Because they just get it done. We walk around and I'll say, those cows don't have enough hay. Someone needs to feed them more hay.

Or is that how you found your transition?

They—

he just—

Yeah. Yeah. So, so there's a wonderful, wonderful leadership book. I can't remember the guy's name. He's the founder of Hobby Lobby.

Yeah, I read that because of you. Yeah.

Leadership Not by— Not by the book or something like that.

That's it.

Yeah. And remember one of his— did you read it?

Yes, I read it.

Great book, isn't it?

Yeah.

Great book. And one of his rules was stay in the weeds.

Yes. Yes.

And boy, that was a good one for me because I'm a delegator.

And me too.

I love to delegate, man. You know, just I'll train you, I'll teach you, then, hey, I'm off.

Have it.

Yeah. Because I'm the dreamer. Okay? I'm the dreamer. I'm always in fantasy world. What else can we do? What new can we do? Right. And, and, you know, that was the biggest tension Daniel and I had when he was between about 18 and 22 right there was I'm out here speaking and I'm, I'm learning and getting ideas. I come back to the farm.

Yeah.

And all my grandiose ideas he sees as, well, that's more work for me because then I tell him, here's what we ought to do.

That's her and I tension.

This is us because I'm the one who finds the new ideas.

And I said, yeah, and we would have ran— we would have been running the farm for the 3 years she's ministering to Henry.

Yeah. And kind of off, you know, like before.

And then she comes back in day 1, oh, you need to do it like this, or what's going on over there? And we're like, what do we do without you?

Yeah, yeah.

Or you come in with all these big ideas while I'm with Henry.

I'm reading a book.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

I'm so excited.

You're traveling, other ideas. Chickens right next to the garden.

And I'm saying to him, we should do this.

Yeah.

And he's like, sees it as more work.

More work. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, so as a result of all that was when we actually created job descriptions for all of us. Oh, and he and his, his official job description is day-to-day operations.

That's why you report to him when you come back tomorrow morning.

That's right. That's right. So he gives me my my work that he wants me to do. And, and my official— okay, my official—

I will. Oh, oh, shall we take a minute?

Should we take a minute and go see the eclipse?

Yeah. Austin, can you record us watching the eclipse? Let's remember where we were. Are we rolling?

All the ribbons she'd won. Yep.

So we just stepped out and watched the eclipse. You were saying day to day. Daniel was day to day. You had to define your roles.

Yeah, he's day to day. So Teresa's financial. Accountant, accounting, and my official title is now Chief Visionary. That's a fun—

look at you smile when you get that. Yeah, they nailed it.

Yeah.

Has the Tinkle Tower worked out yet?

No, we're not going to do it. We're going to go to a manufactured wetland. We've been all through all sorts of that. So a manufactured wetland is where you, where you make a, a basically a cake pan, if you imagine a landscape cake pan with a bladder in it. Okay. And you fill it with wood chips and you plant it with irises and daylilies and cattails and stuff. And your water flows in on one end of it. It's on a very slight grade and the water moves through, comes out the other end and you can drink it. So, so you have a flush toilet. Goes into a septic tank. Okay. And then most of these systems, they use two. They actually have a double septic tank just to make sure that it's— that there's no pieces going into the wetland.

Okay.

And then it goes in the wetland and goes through. The problem with the tinkle tower or the trickle, trickle tower.

I keep going with your—

yeah, yeah.

Your jest on that one.

Yeah. Yeah, once you say it once, then you can't— like, in your head you can't. So the problem with the trickle tower was I was concerned that it would not be able to handle a large volume in a day. Oh, it's made for kind of a continuous gentle thing. Trickle. I see. And we need to be able to handle a 400-person, you know, all one day, and then, and then nothing, you know, for a week or very little, and then, whoa, you know, this big thing. And so based on my research, and I've, you know, gone to some experts to try to look at the advice, and generally I think this gives a better assimilation of being able to handle a big amount in a day. Because, you know, if we have, yeah, if we have 400 or 500 people in a day at 2 flushes per, even if it's only 2 gallons of flush, and of course we have urinals for men, so that'll reduce it as well. But anyway, you just think about 1,000 flushes a day, that's 2,000 gallons of water. It's not huge, but it's a pretty good amount. So if we have a, with the skid steer, We can easily just excavate a berm thing 2 feet deep that we can then lay our bladder in and fill it with wood chips. And you know that—

With water and wood chips?

No, you don't fill it with anything first.

Well, how do you plant the— how do the plants grow? Do they just grow in the wood chips?

They grow in the wood chips with the sewer water.

Because it's always so wet.

Water going through them. And the plants then suck out all the nutrients.

Okay.

So it's a biological system. In fact, we have a town, Monterey, Virginia, which is 50 miles from us. It's a city of, oh, I don't know, 1,500 people. You know, it's a— this is what they have as their municipal system.

Well, I was going to ask you if Virginia recognized this as a legitimate—

Is it legal?

I'm sure it won't. They wouldn't recognize it. Be nice for us to do, but you don't care. But we're not going to ask and we're not going to tell. Yeah, and we'll put a hoop house over it.

Okay.

You know, um, because then it won't freeze. Like, so it won't freeze. Yeah, we need it, we need it to work on the shoulders of the season, right? You know, and so, uh, so we'll put a hoop house over it. And, and, and here's the thing, you know, when you, when you do these kinds of things, you're always thinking, you know, what's the worst case scenario? What's the worst case scenario? Because Everything I read and the people I've talked to, it'll work. But, you know, there's always that little— yeah, I know, that little thing, you know, that you want. And so what's the worst thing that can happen? The worst thing that happens is we have to pump the septic tanks. That's the worst.

That's not bad at all.

No, no, I mean, it costs something, right? But, but that's the worst that happens, right?

And so if, if In the event, if an event causes you to have to pump that septic, overruns it, then you just up your fee a little bit to cover your costs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or maybe cost overruns. Or maybe next year, you know, if that, if it ends up being a little bit undersized this year, next year you just expand it a little, you just make it a little bigger.

And you're trying to do that. And I suppose because you, you cringe at the idea of porta-johns.

Oh yeah.

Who knows what happens to that stuff?

Yeah. I mean, we're trying to build again. We're trying— when you talk about hospitality, I mean, because a lot of the people that are coming to the farm for these gatherings we're doing are tire kickers. They're— I mean, they're kicking around the edges. They haven't embraced what you and I have embraced. I mean, many of them have.

They're thinking of it.

They're thinking. And so everything that you can do to take off the weirdness factor and the yuck factor is helpful. And it just, it just shows a professional, you know, we've built the LLC, the Lunatic Learning Center. It's really nice, as you know. And so now we have a toilet. So we were hoping we'd have it operational By this weekend for the HOA business thing? Not quite. It's close. It's close. I mean, it's dried in. The doors are on. It's close, but I don't think it's going to be ready. So our next, our next big one is the Rogue Food Conference in May.

So what are you going to do with the water at the end?

Are you trying to move those guys out at the end?

Yeah. I mean, at the end of the, the bladder system.

So then it can go into a sump. I mean, it can go— it's as simple as a 55-gallon drum.

Does that help them get them right outside the door? It'll be quieter in here.

When it fills, it pumps it up on the hill.

Okay.

But that water is literally potable. The biggest one of these I've ever seen was in the Netherlands at an eco village, and it was 35 houses.

Oh, wow.

That were all that were all using a common septic and it ran.

They're done.

Now you can shut the door.

Finally. And that's what—

that makes good white noise. And it ran and all the septic ran into this. They had about— it was about a half acre. It was a pretty big, pretty big one. 35 houses. And the discharge actually went into a creek.

Oh wow.

And they had to measure— they had to take a sample every day.

It was—

and it was, it was drinkable.

Wow.

It was unbelievable. And it grew daylilies and cattails and stuff.

Very interesting.

And it was, it was really, really cool. Yeah. All the houses were earth-bermed with, uh, tires and rammed earth, uh, on the back end, and all, uh, repurposed stuff. So the— instead of drywall inside, they, they, uh, they, they finished their walls off with, um, with used billboards, billboard signage, you know, that heavy, heavy billboard signage. And so it was pretty—

it was—

people were pretty creative.

What I was painting, I hope I'm thinking like the loud billboards in your house would be.

Some were and some weren't. Some had been able to clip pretty creative spots like the bathroom or like everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was pretty great. And so they— so one guy had a flock of about, uh, half a dozen sheep, and the sheep mowed all the roofs because they were all earth-bermed houses. And, and the sheep would rotate from roof to roof to roof, and he mowed all 35 roof house roofs. It's pretty neat.

So, so far, your, your 20-year health streak Having vision, living in the now. Oh, junk food. You start talking about junk food, maybe that's why our testosterone is going down. Yeah. I take it you avoid or limit junk food.

I don't eat much junk food. I mean, look, if I get invited to somebody's party, yeah, church or whatever, you know, I'll eat enough to be nice. Yeah. But I mean, uh, I mean, I travel, I'm gone whatever, 140 days a year now.

Wow.

And, uh, that's a lot. Yeah. And so when I'm traveling, I typically eat one meal a day. And, um, and so I, you know, now occasionally I'll treat myself to a frozen yogurt or something because I'm an ice cream. I mean, I just— that's my weakness.

I was going to ask, what's your vice?

My weakness is ice cream.

I wish we would have known that. We would have made you some.

We got to remember that next time. I just love ice cream.

And next time, Lily, we got to make Joel some ice cream.

So especially if I've had a specially kind of arduous trip, then I'll— my My reward, you know, my— is I'll stop for, you know, frozen or ice cream or gelato.

Yeah.

Depending on what airport.

Just depending on where you are.

Where I am. Yeah.

You say arduous. Was it stressful?

Yeah. Yeah. For whatever reason. Maybe delayed flights. Maybe. Maybe the— it was— it was not a good people situation.

Yeah.

Maybe the hotel bed was a little hard.

Maybe it was a little bit tenuous, you know. Different things. Yeah, can make stuff.

You got any tricks for coping in the moment of stress?

Just go with it. You know, 2 months ago I did a conference in New York, New York Grazing Conference, and it's about half Amish. The people that are— and the people are in charge are pretty much Amish. And so I got picked up at the airport and got dumped into this Amish family and wonderful people and they gave me the choice of either one of the bedrooms in the house that their kids would vacate and I would go in or their spare guest room suite over the garage. I said, oh, I don't want anybody to leave their bed. I'll go to the garage. He said, now it's unheated. I said, well, that's fine. Yeah, I said, you got covers? Oh yeah, we got covers. Well, it was unheated and it was 7 degrees. Ah, 7, 7 degrees. I mean, I didn't take my clothes off. I didn't do— I mean, I burrowed into that bed and I just— so, you know, I've stayed in horse stables, I've stayed in all sorts of things. And, you know, you just, you just go with the flow. It's cool, you know? And so it gives you a good story to tell.

Do you stress out before you have to speak?

You know, I get nervous. I do. I feel like if I ever leave the jitters, then I'll— it'll be bad because I'll feel like I'm not, I'm not serious about what I'm doing. I'm taking this too, whatever, flippantly. And I think the gravity of the situation, the importance of the message, You should have a little bit of butterflies. One of the things I'm paranoid about, you know, I'm speaking how many of these? So many, hundreds, is getting up there and not knowing what to say, believe it or not. And so—

You, I can't imagine.

So I'm paranoid about taking notes with me, taking an outline, taking notes. It can be no more than a, than a 3x5 card if necessary, but something. So I'm not going to get up there and—

Have you ever, have you ever gotten up there and been like—

No, no, because I've always taken notes.

So you do check your notes.

But you have had to look at the notes.

Yeah.

You had had to lean on them. Oh yeah.

Yeah, I do that too. I've had to lean on them.

I'm too afraid. I'll get on a tangent, you know, I'll go on a tangent that maybe isn't in the notes.

Right.

And then it's like, oh, where was I?

Yeah, you got to come back to it.

You do that?

Yeah. Yeah. Now I did yesterday. I spoke without notes because I— they didn't have a podium and I didn't want to— and I didn't want to— I had to hold a microphone. Well, if you're trying to hold notes and hold a microphone, it's really— I can't use my hands. And I'm a very, you know, visual hands. And so I, I really studied my notes aggressively.

When did you know that you didn't have a podium, that you couldn't bring them up there? Right there. Oh wow.

Comedians, I'm wondering, how do they do it?

Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, people like— and of course, of course, some— sometimes, you know, people that are really, really at the top of their game, there's all sorts of, you know, teleprompters and things that they can use.

Okay.

To—

oh, okay. So maybe they're kind of—

maybe prom.

So maybe those stand-up comedians aren't So raw as I think some of them aren't quite as spontaneous as you might think. Okay.

But I think when in the beginning they do have notes until they have like their set, their routine. Yeah.

Yeah. I've got many, many routines that all I've got to do is have a— is whatever, think, you know, I do this routine about moving cows, you know, and And that's a 5-minute riff.

Yep. So that's all you have to write.

Yeah, it's all you have to say.

You have to have your note and that cues you up.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Yeah. I've had people come up though too and say, because if I lose my spot, I'll say that or I lose my train of thought, I'll speak it. And people, I think they're merciful. They come up and say, or graceful, whatever it would be. Oh, I appreciate that. That was funny or whatever.

My favorite is when he forgets what he meant by the word he wrote down. He'll say, I wrote down.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

But I don't know why.

I can't even read this.

My worst a couple of times is I can't read my writing. Yeah, I wrote it down. I can't read the word. What is the word? I can't actually read the word. Yeah.

Okay. Any other secrets to that 20-year streak? Oh, you might want to speak to forgiveness. Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Forgiveness.

And I say that because you've spoke to it before.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn't mean that there's no consequences.

Yeah.

But it does mean that I don't resent and I don't seek revenge. So the two things that I think are indicative of forgiveness are, do I want revenge? And And am I dwelling on, you know, revenge? But just because I've— let's say, well, I mentioned it before. Let's say we have somebody that, that took $5,000 worth of product and doesn't pay for it. And so I can forgive them. In other words, I don't wish them ill. I don't want to go and whatever, take their car away, you know, hire the— what's the— what's the— what's the repo man? Yeah, yeah, the repo man. Yeah, yeah. So I have no desire for that. But it also doesn't mean that I won't go to the magistrate and turn them in for— yeah, theft. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, so forgiveness doesn't mean there's no consequences. What it does mean It means that you're not dwelling on it in a vengeful spirit, in a vengeful way. And yeah, Teresa, if she were here, she would tell you that's certainly one of my— and that goes hand in hand with this whole living in the moment thing. And I think that's a really healthy— I think people People nurse in our culture now. We nurse every unfairness. We nurse every perceived slight. And that's not healthy. It's not healthy. And, and you have to, you have to let go of that. You have to let go of that because here's the thing. I can't fix it anyway. If you've wronged me, I can't make you say you're sorry or make you make it right. What I can do is I can work in my own spirit and attitude and say, well, you know, maybe there's more there than I know, than I perceive. Maybe there are whatever abuses, neglects, perceptions, expectations. I mean, you know, we all have stuff, and nobody knows all my stuff. I don't know all your stuff. And so, and this, let me just say this about, might be a good thing to bring up because I get a lot of quizzical looks. Because in our circles, I'll say our tribe, there's a growing sentiment of conspiracy.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Monsanto, Fauci, you know, whatever, the food police that won't let you have raw milk or butcher an animal and sell a, you know, sausage from your homemade homecoming food shortages. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And doomsday stuff too.

Doomsday, we call it, right? And so many people are quick to run on that. It's some sort of agenda, you know, World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates. And I get that.

All right, listen, they're not out doing good.

Listen, Bill Gates, you know, just to take one, I mean, the guy is very clear, has made it very clear over and over that the only way to save humanity is for two-thirds of us to be gone.

Right.

I want you to think for a minute What could a person who actually believes that being the savior of humanity requires exterminating two-thirds of us?

Right.

What could that person justify doing morally, ethically? What could they justify doing? Anything, right? Anything. Nothing would be off the table.

Right.

And so, so I, I get, I get that whole you know, there is that conspiracy and all that. Okay. But, but I have, I have approached all these people, even if, even if Bill Gates walked in here right now, I would assume that he not only believes it, but in his mind, he actually thinks he's right. In other words, he— and so, you know, this really came to me years and years ago, many years ago. I was in Richmond testifying about a local cottage food bill, and the Commissioner of Agriculture in Virginia was there at the hearing. And during a break, he came over to me and He was just shaking his head and he said, he said, Joel, he said, we, we can't let people choose their food. He said, if we did, we couldn't build enough hospitals fast enough to handle all the sick people who were getting bad food.

Interesting.

You're right. Interesting. Interesting. And my friends are saying he just wants to put little farmers out of business. He's just, he's just in bed with Tyson and he just wants to put local food business, you know, out of business, blah, blah, blah. Right. No, no. He really believes that the guy is a good Presbyterian.

Yeah.

He, he's got kids in the soccer league, probably has a wife who loves him. He— it doesn't do our side any good to look at a person like that and say, you just want to hurt me. No. Where do you go from there? You don't go from there. No. What you do is, you know what? I appreciate you've got a good faith idea. I appreciate that you, that you mean well. Let's talk about how to have safe food. Where does— where does the most safe food come from? Where are the people who get sick from food? What are they eating?

Yeah. What are they getting?

And you start. But to just immediately say, you must hate me.

Yeah.

You know, you just want to put me out of business. You don't get anywhere that way. And I have found that over and over in my life as I have interacted with people who I vehemently disagree with, right? Vehemently disagree with. To give them the benefit of the doubt and say, okay, I, you know, it's okay. And I can tell you, debate did that for me. My, my all high school and college debating experience, because we go to a tournament, you have a topic, and it'd be a— it's called switch side. And, uh, so you debate 6 rounds. 3 rounds you debate negative, 3 rounds you debate affirmative.

Okay, so you have to debate some things that you don't believe in for the experience, for the positive?

Yes, yes. Or, or for either side, right? For some sides.

And, um, oh, and that's neat.

And so I really, I think that that was a gift to me going into this crucible of where we are today, to truly be able to look at a, at a real enemy. Okay. In the face and say, I'm sure you have legitimate reasons in your mind for thinking the way you do. Now, let's sit down and talk about it a little. Bit.

Yeah.

And that's part of forgiveness too, you know, giving the other person the benefit of the doubt. Yeah. And I've been called naive and foolish and, oh, you're just, you know, you don't— but I think people are people. And are there evil people? Absolutely there are. But I think even most what we would call evil people are doing the best with what they know how to do with. And I can't— I haven't lived their life. I haven't walked in their shoes. I don't know what they've experienced. And so, you know, be gentle to judge quickly.

Give them the benefit of the doubt. What do we say to somebody who's into homesteading or farming? Because of fear. And maybe they got into it for fear. I see it a lot. They got into it for fear in 2020 and now it's hard and they're burned out.

Okay. So fear, what a great, great question. So, so here's my answer to that. And I don't know if it's right or wrong, but here's where I've come. Fear, fear moves us. Fear makes us move.

Yeah.

I mean, if a lion's chasing you, you know, fear makes you move. Okay. That's a good thing. But you can't run away forever.

Yeah, right.

At some point you have to stop running and, and reestablish. And that takes faith. So one we could call negative. Fear is negative. Okay. But that doesn't mean it's bad. All right. It moves us.

Yeah. All right.

But faith is positive. It makes us stop. And put down new roots.

Okay.

New things. And, and, and I think one of the reasons I wrote Homestead Tsunami, I wrote it to three kinds of people. And one of those three groups of people were the people who have, who have, who ran away in fear and now they've burned out and they've lost their first love. It's almost like it's almost like getting married because you fear being single. That marriage won't last. A marriage where you fear being single and I better get married, that's a rocky situation to get married. You want to get married because you embrace by faith, this is my best match in the world and I can't imagine living without them, okay? And so And so faith is a totally separate thing. And that's one of the things that drives me today is I see a lot of hopelessness and helplessness and burnout on so many levels in our culture. And what I want to see are people embrace a true palliative, you know, redemptive capacity so that we provide hope and help when everybody else is hopeless and helpless.

Yeah.

And, and that's what's havens of places like this, like you and Rebecca, what you have developed, you guys have developed here is a, is a place of hope and help and a haven, you know.

Yeah.

You were running a little bit, you know, early on, you know, where do we go? What do we do? And when you finally stop and embrace by faith and say, you know what? It might not be the best piece of land, might not be the best place in the world. It might not. And you stop second-guessing all the, oh, oh, what? And you say, okay, here is where home's going to be. I'm getting chill bumps talking about it. Okay, this is where we're going to be. People, People go, they literally get ulcers worrying about, is this the right place? Do I have the right thing? You know what? There is no perfect place. There is no perfect place. You finally have to come to a place where this is it. We're committed here. Kind of like marriage. If you're looking for the perfect partner, you'll never find it. Okay. All right. There's nobody that's perfect. All right. But what you get, what you get is the one. This is the one I'm committed to and we're going to make this work. And we're going to disagree, but we're going to make it work.

Yeah.

And that's the way this homesteading thing is. You're never going to find the perfect outbuilding, perfect house, perfect creek, perfect tree, perfect neighbors, perfect. No, no, no. There's going to be something out of whack somewhere. But when you set down your roots and you say, we're committed to here, This is what we're going to do. Then you— then the fun is working out all the imperfections.

But let's double check. Yeah. So we went on the Great American Farm Tour because we came to a position to where I didn't just inherit this. I had to make a decision. Am I going to buy it?

Right, right.

And it's all I knew, like growing up in a religion. I had to make it my own, you know, accept it or deny it. And We went with an open mind in all of America and finally concluded, actually meeting people from Minnesota telling me, you know, it gets minus 60 here. And me thinking, minus 60? I was literally editing on my computer. He was there with me and he's like, you know, it gets, I don't even know where he came from. I guess it was therapy. He's just expressing. I mean, they're burying water lines 9 feet deep. Yeah.

And, uh, when I've been to Minnesota, I found out they have to bury water lines 9 feet deep.

That's crazy.

I mean, well, of course, we don't even have 9 feet of soil on our— at our place.

Oh, I know, right?

We go—

it'd be a hard deal.

12 inches and we're on rock.

In Arizona, all right, there are 3 inches of rain a year.

Yeah, yeah.

And, uh, I finally can— I saw all these homesteaders basically had— because I thought to myself, yeah, -60. I said to him, don't bad things happen at -60? He's like, Your car won't start. Your face freezes off in 3 minutes.

Yeah.

And I'm thinking, well, you can move. This is a free country. Yeah, but they're not. They were— they were finding contentment there. And I thought, you know what, I can make this work. And I found out I was deeply rooted here.

Yeah.

And it's hard. It would be hard to leave.

And everybody and everybody in the world can make a home someplace. Yeah, there is some place I mean, I drive through West Virginia, you know, and I see these houses perched on a, on a hill. You almost have to have a rappelling rope to get to, you know. Yeah, but that's home for somebody. Somebody loves that hill. Somebody loves that location. And they've adopted—

Well, look at what the Dohertys did with that 2 terrible acres.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And but what I'm getting at here is when people come through the line and meet me at one of these events, I started to start asking them, where are you from? And they'll tell me, do you like it there? Are you going to be buried there?

Hmm.

That threw them off.

Yeah, right.

It seems like in the homesteading community, they're also very transient. Hmm. Not many. I don't know if any could tell me they were. Yeah, I'm going to be— I'm going to die there. That's— we're going to live here for life. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And I think, I think that that that more than actually how to milk a cow. Ah, as important as that is. And I don't want to, you know, detract any of that because both of us are into the how-to, right?

Yeah.

We do believe that there are good ways and bad ways to milk a cow, gather eggs, you know, whatever, butcher a chicken, whatever. But, but, but in the end of the day, what creates the people who stick with it is exactly what you've put your finger on right there is this is it. And that's what I'm talking about. Fear and faith. The, the fear makes people move. 2020, man, there was a— I've never seen a year there were more rental, you know, across America, you know, RV rentals through our farm. I mean, it was just almost daily a parade, you know, of people. We've left California, we've left Michigan, we've left New York. And we don't know where we're going to end up, but we're, you know, we're going and we want to stop by here on our way. And they're running. Okay, that's fear. That's fine. Okay, that's fine. But you can't— you— that will not keep you— that will not keep you going. What will keep you going is when you finally rest, you have to come to rest and say, here's the place.

Yeah, a commitment.

Yeah, yeah. With all of its pimples and its irregularities and its imperfections.

And where you're at is, is where the problem— you know, the problems. And if you haven't maxed out that half acre, you are— I mean, if you haven't done the vertical gardens and the chickens right next to the gardens and, and, and tried to lease a little pasture way over there for your sheep, you know, you didn't max it out. You're not going to max out the 5 acres.

That's right.

That's right. The point I was gonna make— oh, being— oh, I think being committed here— oh, it makes sense then. Oh, here it is. What about the neighbors? And we'll wrap it up real here soon. The neighbors are, you know, even for us, like What if something happens down the road where this, this whole area is just developing, you know, when something cringes on our privacy. And this is why we love it here.

And something could happen to that because you really went through this about 2 years ago. Man, oh man.

Down our own progress here on the farm, right? Some, some ideas of trying to find land for you to move up. Neighbors, I know. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And so I like what you said about faith because Even that, we still don't know what could necessarily happen. We've spent a lot of money remodeling our house. We've put in fruit trees that we won't get fruit from for 4 years. We've put in access roads that will take time to mature and I'll receive the benefit from. That's faith.

Yeah, it is faith. And you're gradually shaping shaping this place with its warts and irregularities and stuff into a functional place. And, and yeah, and no place is perfect. But, you know, people who grow up in the desert, you know, they think 4 inches is perfectly fine. Yeah.

A lot of times they find ways to capture it.

I mean, me, I mean, I can't imagine living in a, in a desert place, or in Hurricane Alley, you know, where the place that gets along the coast, Gulf Coast, or Tornado Alley. It's always Tornado Alley. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But drifts.

Well, but, but, but, you know, you, you go there and they're not thinking about tornadoes all the time. People that live on the coast of South Carolina, they're not thinking about hurricanes all the time. Yeah, we— that's about the only time we see we see the beaches of South Carolina in the news, right, is a hurricane. So all we think is, oh, you know, hurricanes. And so, so, yeah, I agree. The bloom where you're planted and you've got to end up somewhere and just, and just, yeah. And realize that every single place I get, I get calls routinely from people that are getting ready to buy a piece of property. They want me to come and look at it. And tell them and tell them if it'll work, you know, will this work? Yeah, I don't do that anymore. I quit. I quit. I say every piece of property, you can make it work. There's no reason for me to come because what I found was every time I went, yeah, yeah, we could do. Oh, really? You could? Yeah. You can carve a road right in here. It's a good pond site. Look, you got a, you got a spring over here. You got water. My goodness, this is wonderful, you know? Oh, oh, oh, you know. And I realized I don't need to go and tell you no. If you like it, it'll work.

Yeah. You wouldn't tell me, you know, we're out there on a 35-degree slope. Yeah, just too steep. Yeah, you're getting close, but no, put you some turkeys on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. All right, well, if you guys like this and what Joel is saying, especially about the farming, he's got a course he's working on. Working hard on. You're going to get 100 hours total on this thing. You've got 26 hours already, already content on pigs, chickens, uh, cows, grazing, all kinds of how to start, where to start, that kind of thing. I would encourage you guys to check that out. I'm going to leave the link for description. You can veg out more on Joel there and really get into the nitty-gritty, especially if you're, you know, not just as an aspiring homesteader or getting your hands dirty there, but actually want to take that homesteading to the next level and make a living from the land. So I would encourage folks to check on— check that out. So thank you, Joel. You've sat so patient.

Thank you, Justin. What a treat.

Have you lost your voice yet?

No, it's such a treat to be with you guys. You're just such kindred spirits. Yeah, really, really good.

And you too. Yeah, it's neat that I read your books 20 years go. Now here you are.

Yeah, I know. We were, we were saying last night we were so glad that we found you first. Yeah, because this morning when— oh, you told him this already?

Go ahead.

Because when, you know, we wanted to— so Justin's mentor Steve told us about you. So we got the book, and Justin's very literal. So like, Joel said to do this, Justin's going to do that, you know?

And so we move those cows around and And I was literally looking at pictures in that book of the poultry pen and trying to guesstimate, oh, that kid's probably this long, how big is this poultry? So it's a good thing you came out with Polyface Designs.

It is, it is. It's great that you did. But it's so good because, you know, like, if we hadn't found you, what happens if we had found somebody else who wasn't into rotational grazing, right? Or, you know, I mean, Justin's dad did raise beef here, but he did not rotationally graze them. So what happens if he just said, oh, well, that's what my dad did?

He probably wouldn't have really encouraged farming in any fashion.

No. So we're just thankful that, that we found your information and it's made us way more successful. Yeah.

So very cool. Very cool. Oh, how's your, how's your project with Chris coming? Your design book?

Great. We're very close to— he's, he's printing book one.

Yeah. He's awesome. Yeah, he is.

He's so great.

Awesome.

Yeah, man.

Oh, that's great.

So book 1 will be—

it's not going to be as big as Polyface Designs, is it?

No, because we're going to do multiple books. In the end it will. We've got like 12, 13 designs in book 1, and it'll be chickens and gardens. And then it's surprising, you know, you would think a smaller design, less steps. It's not always the case. Like these, these chick shawls are like 60, 80 steps.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh, and, and it seems like the more simple it is after it's done, definitely more thought, yeah, has to go into it.

He is amazing.

He's so smart. He's fine-tuned it. His talent for that is just off the charts because he's skilled in engineering and carpentry.

Yeah, because, because when he came to me about the idea, I kind of You know, okay. I mean, people come to me with— everybody's got an idea for me to do, right?

Right.

And okay. All right. That's cool. And, and yeah, that'd be, that'd be interesting. And I was kind of, I was kind of lukewarm. And he said, well, let me do, let me do the, the, the poultry shelter, the broiler shelter, and let me just kind of show you what I have in mind. And he And he sent that. I said, oh, Chris, we got to do this. Yeah, I was totally, totally in.

What year was that that he came to you to do that? Because I know it's not like he came to you when, you know, it was, it was years before the book came out.

He worked on it hard for a year.

Okay.

When did it come out?

2021-ish?

2021? No, it came out in the fall of 2020.

2020.

Came out in the fall of 2020. Yes. And so he came in, he probably came to me with the idea in like 2016.

Oh, God.

You know, long time ago.

And when was he— was he an apprentice or just a steward apprentice?

An apprentice. And, and of course, I had no idea how he was looking at all our stuff, right? I had no idea. I mean, we knew that he'd come from a mechanical engineering background, right? But I had no idea the perceptiveness with which he was looking at all—

turn your stuff into plans. The things that, that was incredible.

Yeah, yeah. It—

and then that book sold like hotcakes.

Oh, it's still selling. I mean, we're at, um, wow, over 25,000. Wow. Yeah.

Well, it's funny because when— so Justin went and was telling me about it, and so— and then he said it was $90, and I was I was like, $90? Yeah, I think it's gonna be $30, you know? And then he's like, it's $90. And I was like, what is this book? And he's like, let me bring one home. Yeah, so he brought it home and I was like, why couldn't we have had this 10 years ago? Oh, I know, I would have paid $600 for it.

Like, we would have went in with some friends to find the money. We would have done whatever it took to get this.

And then I was like, okay, I understand why it's $90. This makes makes complete sense. When I saw it, I was like, okay, because I was thinking it was like your traditional book.

They're undervalued.

They are.

For the value you get out of books. Oh yeah, no question.

The knowledge you can get out of a $15 paperback is ridiculous.

It's ridiculous.

Alan Nation used to say, have you ever, have you ever read a book that didn't give you a $100 idea?

All right.

And he's right.

If not a $100,000 idea sometimes.

Yeah.

And a lot of them are $5,000, right? Yeah. Well, I choked when we— because I put it out to some friends. You know, here's the thing. How much would you charge for it? And especially our interns and stewards, you know, they're young people. And when they saw— I mean, obviously they didn't see the whole thing, right? But I would, I would pull up the computer and say, here's what you know. And they— oh, and I mean, they were, they were in the over $100,000, most of them. $120, $125. And I was, oh man, I just can't. I mean, I was in shock. Just, oh, how can I charge? But of course it's an expensive book.

There it is.

It is. Yeah.

It's very big.

They're paying $300 for their textbooks at college.

Yeah. And that's exactly what they said. They said this is better than any college textbook and you pay all this. So we set it at $90 and it's still— it's okay.

I will tell you this too. So, you know, Jess and I got— we started dating when we were 16 and 17. And then we knew we wanted to get married by the time we were 18, but our parents were like, don't want you to get married right away. We want you to go to college first. And so we honored our parents, and we went to college, and then got married. And then we found farming after that. And Justin and I are like, man, if we would have only found farming before we went to college. He's like, I would have gone and interned at Polyface. I would have gone and interned with Elliot Coleman.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I would have found an online guru.

He's like, I would have just gone, yeah, these one year, gone and spent a year with these people who know what they're doing. And then he's like, then I could have come home and just done it.

And that was my recommendation for young people.

Yeah, well, you know, just go study under people who, who have proven the way you word that.

Just let's see if you want to be become a farmer.

Yeah, I like that.

Yeah, well, let me go see if I want to be a farmer, because what happens if I don't have what it takes?

I have a friend who was— who worked, uh, for years with Heifer Project International, HPI, and, um, he had the idea— are we still taping? Yeah, we are.

It just never ends, does it?

And, and he, he had this idea, and I've never It's another one of my— one of these, like, things if I had another life, you know, to live. And he said, he said, what we need to do is offer a college, you know, a diploma experience, a bachelor's of science experience, but it would be completely experiential. So imagine you have a faculty beekeeper, orchardist, gardener, Butcher, beef, all these things. You could name 100, 100 things. Okay. Skills. And you pick a guru from each one. Each one establishes their own. How much? How, how long do you think you need a person?

Right.

And how many people can you take and, and how much would you charge them? And you basically then have a 4-year— you matriculate into a 4-year program that is where you, you rotate from, from master to master to master. I mean, it could be blacksmithing, tons of things. And you— and, and so at the end of your 4 years, you would have these, whatever, 10, 12, uh, um, experiences, you know, mentor experiences.

And you would know so much.

Oh my, think of what you would know.

You would have traveled so much. You would have met so many people.

Yes, yes, yes. Imagine. And your network, your, your, your network. The people that you would know. And so, you know, in order— it would give me chill bumps— in order to be accredited, you know, you'd have to do— each one would require a paper, you know. So you have a little core of, you know, academics who would, you know, grade papers and, you know, make sure that you're doing—

you're actually learning—

is you're actually learning something and what you're doing. But, but man, I mean, basically a BS in In non-BS.

That's hilarious. I will say when I was in college, I said that because we were taking 4 classes our last semester and we graduated in '01, so that can date us. And we were taking— it was like HR. And I was like, why didn't they put us in an HR department for a month? I probably could have learned everything that I learned in my class I probably could have learned in a week. And if you would have given me a month in HR, I could have learned so much, you know, because that's— that was traditional corporate, right? Which is like, I mean, I'm sure that's still happening, but business is so much more now, I think, with the internet. But yeah, I had always said like, why don't we learn experientially as opposed to sitting in a classroom with someone who either used to do it or failed at doing what they're teaching us? And yeah, I love the experiential. If college was that, I would, I would promote my kids to go.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I would too. We, we actually encouraged Daniel, you know, when he was 16, 17 to because people were, you know, were asking for him around the world. You know, they were come and start a poultry operation for me in Argentina or, you know, Uruguay or whatever. Knowing what I know about Uruguay steaks now, I would, I would go to Uruguay. But, but anyway, I, you know, the, the sheer experiences of that and all the things that you would do. I mean, what you could learn from a, from a master orchardist about pruning, for example, in even a month, you go there for the spring, for the pruning season, and maybe he takes or she takes, you know, 3, 3 people and it costs something. But yeah, Ever since he presented that idea to me, I've thought, what a fantastic— would that not make a different college experience?

It really would.

Simeon's acting like he's going to do that. Oh yeah, the guy from Sweden. Do you remember Simeon?

Simeon, I can't remember their last name.

You know, we got to go to Uruguay on our anniversary. Okay, they eat 50 pounds of beef per—

he likes that—

person a year.

200.

200 pounds.

200. Americans eat 50.

Oh, that's right.

You're way over 200 pounds.

And he said it's— they, they raise the beef for taste.

Oh, I will—

hardly anything else.

We will go there on an anniversary after Henry is 18. Okay, that was— I don't want to fly anywhere. I feel like flying to another continent.

Well, that's just like 17 years away.

No, it's I know we might need to sneak that in.

Well, he could just go with us. I just feel like leaving a child under 18 and like flying to an— I know people do it all the time.

Change your tone when maybe you have several kids over 18.

That's true. And Jonah's married and has kids and his wife takes Henry under her wing.

Years from now you'll be 45 years old. You're funny.

I'll be 60.

Come on, you're gonna make me wait till I'm 60 to eat one of those steaks?

No, I'll send you, I'll send you an Austin.

Yeah, by that time he's like, okay, good.

Austin's like, yes, we need to take a picture.

But that time he'd have to go, he'd have to go gobble.

You better hurry up, I'm losing them fast.

He did lose one of his implants. He lost his implant recently.

Well, we went— implant?

How do you— I waited too long to get it done. Well, so my gum had— we were on the farm tour when I lost that tooth.

His jawline was too— the bone wasn't—

the jawline receded and and we knew it was a risk. There wasn't enough jaw.

Oh yeah, they couldn't, they couldn't bone graft it.

Oh no, we did, we did a lot of things. We spent a lot of money.

You can go out.

Oh, going up is the difficult part.

Oh, of course, because you got gum.

Yes.

Yeah, I hadn't thought of that.

So we, we went, he went to the dentist recently, and the dentist was like, that's real— well, because he was talking to him about it, he goes, it's going to fall out. Do you want me to take it out now, or do you want it to fall out? Well, fell out within like 4 days of going.

Wow. Well, that explains why they were really surprised when I went in for these. You know, this happened, I was trying to think, when I was almost 30 years. Yeah, I wasn't even 40. So this has been 30 years that—

And you had implants in there before? No. No.

I've never had implants.

Really?

I've had a partial plate. At the time, implants were brand new. Brand new.

Your gums didn't recede?

No, no.

And I think it's because you have teeth here and teeth here, so it was keeping all of the blood flow and stuff. It's because it's like from here back. Oh, so okay. He's— his jaw was super thin, and we spent a ton of money trying to build it up, and the dentist finally, I think, got sick of it and was just like, let's put these implants in.

So I guess Henry will go with us to get some steaks.

Well, no, the dentist said that he— because the one of the reasons we did it is because the top, the top teeth will fall out if you don't have— if they don't have the pressure. Yeah, the bottom teeth coming on them, these top teeth, they'll eventually move down because they don't have any pressure keeping them in. And I know— well, we didn't even know about that until the dentist—

I've never heard that.

So we're, I mean, he said we would have, you know, there's, it's going to be time.

Mom is 100 now in 4 months. She turned 100 in December.

Isn't that something?

And she, the other day, just, I mean, like a month ago, just a month, she had a tooth fall out. First tooth she's ever lost.

Really?

She has all of her teeth.

Was she eating something?

Virtually no cavity. No, no, it just— the whole thing fell out of the gum. I mean, just gave up.

So she's got 100 years old.

I'm done. I know, I know. That's exactly right. 100 years. I mean, her teeth are just impeccable.

Wow.

And she's over 100 years old.

What did she do for her 100th birthday? Anything fun? She didn't jump out of an airplane?

No, didn't. 100th birthday, we rented a local Airbnb that had a real nice, a big reception room. And we had a 2 to 5, I think it was 2 to 5, come and go. And we invited everyone we could think of who would know her. And of course, a lot of her contemporaries are all passed away. So these are people that were like teenagers, you know, when she was 40 and 50.

Wow.

Most, you know, a lot of them were of course our friends that knew her through us. Anyway, we invited people and had a wonderful— had heavy hors d'oeuvres. Theresa and Rachel, our daughter, created a nice heavy hors d'oeuvre thing. And we sat her in the queen's chair by the fireplace. It was of course decorated for Christmas, which was nice. We didn't have to do any decorations. All decorated nice for Christmas. And people came, and we saw people that we hadn't seen for years, and it was just— it was wonderful. Just wonderful.

Good.

That's good.

She didn't know anybody. Oh, you know, she's losing, but she sure put on a good show. Everybody thought she knew who they were, and that was good enough. And she had— she had a great time. She knew— she knew she was special and fussed over, and that was good enough. Yeah, it was good.

That's good. All right.

But she's slowing down pretty aggressively and taking a lot of Teresa's time. Every mother would want a daughter-in-law like Teresa. Oh, she's just loyal to a fault. And I mean, now she's gotten to the point where you have to help her in and out of the tub and different things. Just, you know, she's still ambulatory, but Barely.

And Theresa goes, help, sir.

And Theresa's just there. She just takes care of her.

Oh, my.

I hope I have a daughter-in-law like you.

It sounds like you need to take Theresa to Uruguay. Yeah, I know, right?

Trust me, we've already talked about when, when this is over, we're going to do some compensatory travel. The two of them. Some things on our bucket list that we'd like to go see and do. And, and I've got so many frequent flyer miles. Yeah.

What's on the top of that bucket list?

She has always wanted to do a world-class rodeo in Wyoming. I mean, see it, see it, not participate.

Right.

But go where they were. They were. They know she's not going to participate. Where they, you know, they're all the rodeos, all of the, the ladies with the flags and all the stuff. Yeah, that gets me chills thinking about it. She— and I don't know where she got it. I'm not into it. We're not really into it.

Really? Rodeo?

No, no, we're not. But I don't know. It's just— she just has always wanted to do that, has mentioned it, you know, talked about it. Neither one of us has ever seen the Grand Canyon. And we definitely want to get there. I've gotten her out to the Redwoods, the Pacific, Australia, you know, so we've had some good ones. But neither one of us has ever been actually to— at the rim of the Grand— to look into the Grand Canyon. So that's definitely on our bucket list. We want to— we want to get out there and do that. And, and we, we'd both like to get— we'd like to see the Ark in Cincinnati, the Ark and the Creation Museum. Oh, we'd like, like to do that. They're kind of— yeah, they're like together. Yeah, close together. We don't have big expensive desires.

Well, if you want to come to the Biltmore House, Well, we've done that. The farmhouse will be here for you.

We've done, we've done that.

Well, if there's something else that has to happen—

and we may want to go back. That was a very, very, very special weekend for us.

And then we'll make Teresa be on the podcast.

We still remember.

She won't like that part.

If you get her on a podcast, you will, you will have done— We'll call the Enquirer. Yeah. I mean, the, you know, the, the documentary Polyfaces. That Darren and Liz did.

Oh, how do you get her?

You know, she's on there.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

And they're the only ones that have ever gotten her to be videoed, to sit down for video. And they got our daughter Rachel.

Yeah, they got everybody. I remember when that came out, we were like, we have to watch it.

Mom. Yeah, they got mom. We're really glad they captured mom. She's kind of cheeky in it, you know? She's got this kind of giggle and all that. Yeah. So yeah, that was good. But yeah, Theresa's not— she's not a— she's behind that. She's the power behind the power.

Exactly. She's the neck.

She is.

She's the neck. Yeah. She turns that head wherever she wants. She's wonderful.

It's the Grand Canyon. It's Wyoming.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the only thing I've ever heard her say, like if we ever like made a bunch of money, the only thing I've ever heard her say she wouldn't mind blowing a bunch of money on Is a red sports car. A red Corvette convertible.

Well, that's how I'll know you've arrived when they see the red sports car sitting outside the firehouse.

But I think, I think when we go see the Grand Canyon, you should just rent one. We'll rent one.

Oh, that would be fun.

And I'm happy to splurge the extra couple hundred bucks to get it. To get a nice convertible.

Or when you go to Uruguay for that steak.

Maybe you drive from Wyoming to—

I don't think I'll get her to Uruguay. For her, a steak isn't worth going.

She's not going. Well, if we take a group, you can come with us. If we just go alone, I'm sorry, we're not taking you.

We'll take a tour group. That's how we get it paid for.

We can take a tour group.

Alan used to go to Argentina all the time. He always took a tour group.

Take a tour group with Joel. The Rhodeses. Yeah, that would be fun.

I see people doing that.

Oh, I could see people doing that. Oh, sure, sure.

All right.

Yeah, well, Joel, we better let you— well, we better get to cooking and you can get some work done at the airport.

I gotta get to the airport.

We gotta drive him. I know, that's why you're not doing— that's why you're not moving. Uh, all right, you got the keys, boy.