Jonathan Dysinger weighs in on Weed Fabric, Launching a Farm Business and Bucking the Norm

grew up on a farm, started business pretty young.

So Paul, your cousin?

First cousin. Yeah. So dads or moms or dads are brothers?

Brothers.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So because he was like, his last name's Dissinger. And I was like, isn't that Paul's last name?

Yeah. Yeah.

That's all right. Yes.

I hope I don't—

I singer.

I have developed some sort of like, it's gone through all of us.

Okay, we won't.

Gideon had it and then Henry had it and now I can feel it.

Like, yeah, it's—

we're at the end of whatever this is that we had.

Yeah.

And by the way, we're probably recording already. That's good.

So I hope I don't start crying.

You, uh, so this can feel live, but if you say anything, the only, the only reason we'll edit this is if you say, hey, I don't want to talk about that, or what about— or we've only had that one happen once.

I think I shouldn't put that in.

Yeah.

No.

Oh yeah, you might say something like I want to answer your—

I want to answer you, but like, we can't put this out in the, in the world.

I'm like, okay, I don't think we're going to run into that, but hey, you know.

And Matt, of course, you feel free to interrupt and adjust.

I'm going to move this over.

So, um, I was thinking— okay, oh, I should say something to the audience while we're waiting. A little bit of housekeeping. When you— this is a podcast, this is not a vlog, this is not our normal show. We're doing something on the farm, I'm teaching something on the farm video. This is very much us sitting down with— this is a podcast, and I put it in the podcast playlist. We sit down with guests, long-form conversation that can range all over the place from family to farming to faith even to business, all these things. And it's, uh, just so you know, you'll see a thumbnail It'll have the name of the guest in the title, and then I'll have the thumbnail with a white background and usually a picture of the guest and a picture of us. That's how you know if you're not ready for a 2-hour conversation, don't click on it. Save it. And if it were me, I would listen to it as a podcast on YouTube Music. These also get uploaded there, and I'll put a podcast on while I'm training, while I'm milking the cow, while I'm driving, driving. While you were listening to our podcast in the way over here with Barbara. Yep. Uh, while I'm doing dishes, that's the best way I think to consume these. Jonathan, we would have introed you in the description, so I'm going to jump right into it. One of the most, uh, large amount of comments we get, okay, being organic practicing and organic eaters and growers I'm surprised you use plastic in the garden.

Oh, we're jumping right in. All right, okay.

Yeah, so you just brought me a big old roll of plastic and I said thank you, and we're for it. I can— people may or may not know where we're coming from it, but I want to know where you're coming from it too, in this balance of organic we're just trying to grow the best food we can, to using the world's technologies, the good and the bad of it, just to make something happen.

So, so what's the question?

And I ask you because you had this plastic made.

Yeah.

So here's the question, uh, let's start with this question because we're going to ask many.

Is it okay Yeah, that's a, that's a good question. I mean, I'm gonna say that the, the plastic that we sell is, you know, we do our best to make sure that it's as safe as possible. And that means it's UV treated. It's not like a grocery store bag that if it's out in the sun or, you know, outside for 2 months, you're going to come out and it's just going to be like already completely disintegrated to where you'd have to use like a vacuum cleaner to get it all up or something. So, um, you know, there's literally probably millions of different compositions of plastic. Plastic's made up of, you know, all kinds of different formulas that go into to make that. So when a company like us goes to buy plastic, we can actually dictate how much UV compounds go in there to stabilize that product. And, um, and so there's just, you know, it's like you can't really just compare, uh, you can't just like answer a question like that, just about plastic in general, I guess you would say.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess what I would say is for myself personally, I really would love to see us be able to do farming and agriculture on this kind of scale without using any of it, but it's just really hard. I've seen a lot of growers or homesteaders, people even just trying to do a garden, you'll see around us gardening is is pretty common. And, uh, there's so many examples where you see somebody out there in, you know, around us, maybe end of March, certainly in April, they're tilling up a spot in the backyard and they're all excited and they've got their tomatoes in a row and they get their cages around them and it looks all nice for like a few weeks. And then, you know, by, by June, July, it's, you know, you got Johnson grass and weeds this tall and, um, by August they're out there with their bush hog just, you know, turning it in.

This is a true story.

And I think, I mean, that happens every single season. And so it's like, that's not cool. I mean, it's like, at the end of the day, then really what benefit did you get from that? I don't— it's just stressful. It's just, you know, I will say this.

So last year was our first year using the weed fabric. We've been using the, um, what's it called, for nearly 10 years now. Well, we saw silage tarps for the first time on the Great American Farm Tour.

Yeah.

With Jean-Martin Fortier at his place. I was like, we need this in our life because like, what are we doing? And then we did the weed fabric, and now I'm like, I'm all in. Yeah, I'm like, we, we grew so much last year. We would not have been able to do what we did if we didn't have it.

Yeah, you don't quit the grocery store the year after a hurricane wipes out your farm.

Yeah.

And we did.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's because of the— yeah, high tunnel, it's because of the silage tarps, it's because of the weed fabric.

Yep. So I mean, from my perspective, just to try to wrap that question up, like, um, I'm all for trying to minimize it. We could talk briefly about some, some ways to, to maybe do that. But, um, you know, plastic is just a part of life now. You can't, you can't have a greenhouse without— I mean, sure, you can have a glass greenhouse, but then you're talking about a lot of money.

Well, so one thing that we got was microplastics. You're just putting microplastics into your soil. But are we like— I don't— yeah, maybe I don't understand the mechanism of microplastics, and that's completely— could be true.

But, and do plants soak up the microplastics?

Yeah, so I'm not even going to pretend to like know, know that, but I mean, I've done a little bit of research and obviously, you know, microplastics are a real thing, right? But I, I would guess that most of that is, is probably coming from plastics that aren't UV stable and that are actually legitimately degrading into the soil.

And, um, okay, because this isn't degrading, the weed fabric. I mean, it will degrade over time, obviously.

And the other thing that it's important to mention, and I was telling Justin a minute ago, um, I've seen this firsthand, uh, people will go and buy a cheap fabric, um, and you can buy, you know, uh, there was one buddy, one person that was trolling us on, on Facebook forever until we blocked him. And he was— he kept getting in the comments and being like, just go to Wayfair and spend $30 and you can get a, you know, roll of the same thing. And I don't know if it's the same thing, but I know that what we sell has, you know, 5 years of UV stabilization built into it. It's a high-quality product. And I've seen people that have just bought that budget stuff, whether it's maybe at Lowe's or Home Depot or just the cheap online or on Amazon, literally just break down. Um, it, it will just turn in. It's like, um, yeah, it's, it's the, the whole woven aspect of it just deteriorates and you're picking up tiny bits and pieces. And that, and that I think would be really unfortunate. Um, but I don't know, my take on it is, um, I'm all for minimizing it, but from my experience and what I've seen with others, um, you might start off with great intentions of never incorporating plastic into your growing, but then once you do, you kind of come back with your tail between your legs saying like Yeah, I don't know how I could do it without it. Um, and, and there's legitimate benefits to the, to the crops too. But, uh, you know, just protect— keeping the soil covered, that's what Mother Nature wants. If you leave bare soil, it's always going to try to cover itself. So we're sort of artificially covering. Um, of course there's all kinds of techniques with mulches and, you know, uh, straw and stuff like that. There's, there's ways to do it. Most of those seem to come with more, um, logistical challenges and labor that's involved with them. But I will say Ben Hartman has been doing some really interesting things. He's not homestead space, but he's a very small-scale market farmer. He grows on a third of an acre, I think, in his backyard essentially. So it's almost just a large backyard garden, but he has really been trying to quit plastic. On his farm, at least plastic that's, that's contacting the soil. From my understanding, he's still using greenhouses, which, you know, plastic coverings and all that. But, um, he's, he's, you know, experimenting some interesting techniques using, um, burlap. Um, now you have to make sure you get untreated burlap, otherwise it'd be a lot of chemicals in it, my understanding. Um, but, you know, using that to cover the soil and also just doing real intensive plantings where you're actually intentionally planting plants that are covering the area. So I saw on his Instagram recently a tomato greenhouse where normally they would just lay down plastic and plant the rows of tomatoes, but this year he's planted the tomatoes but also immediately planted a bunch of other stuff like interplanted next to the tomatoes that are shorter timespan crops like lettuces and radishes and stuff like that, that by the time the tomatoes are yay tall, you're harvesting all of that, and you— your, your tomatoes have a good jump on the weeds. The weeds. So there's techniques, but at the end of the day, very labor intensive.

I think that's what, you know, people— that one of the complaints that I saw online, um, not in regards to us but just in general, about, you know, it's wild that, um, plastic is allowed in organic growing. And I was like, okay, you don't want to pay the labor. You don't want to pay the farmer what he's going to have to charge you if he doesn't use this ground. Like, we grow a large garden and it is a lot of work, and, and we're just eating it ourselves. I can't imagine if I was selling it, like, what I would have to sell the produce for, you know?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So I think that's the balance of it, you know, um, of like the It's all us crunchy moms who are like, we don't want anything to, you know, touch our stuff. But like, I mean, I'm pretty crunchy as they come. Like, I'm very natural, but I'm— but I'm— you're gonna have to pry the plastic from my hands.

Yeah, it's— it's— once you've experienced it, it's hard to go back.

Um, I was— I would like to do— I would try to like to do a little bit of the burlap. Um, I think Uline sells it, but I don't. But I'm gonna go back and look and see if it's treated. Yeah, that's— I didn't think about that. So that's, you know, this is putting a whole— and then, you know, I don't know, I just— Justin's like, we're not— he's like, we're using the plastic. I'm like, okay, because we did 300 broccoli plants. I have broccoli for a whole year in my freezer. Like, it's amazing. Yeah, and we have quit the grocery store for a lot of things because of what we grew last year and preserved.

Cool. Yeah, it's, it's just, it's an easy sell once you've experienced it. You know, we are experimenting and we're going to be coming to market fairly soon with a product that we're not producing it, but we've sourced it. That's a completely organic compound of paper. So it's like a thick paper mulch. Okay. And it's, it's OMRI listed for organic use. But so there's not any like glue compounds and stuff that are, that are dangerous. But the problem with that is then it's literally just a one growing season product. And also it's a little bit challenging because with it being paper, you can't just use the staples to hold it down. So we do have some like decomposing pins, but even those are, you have to put 'em so close together for it to really keep the wind from just ripping it apart. So you almost have to like put that down and then cover it with mulch or like put dirt along the edges. Out. Um, and so, you know, there's still some benefit there, but it— again, it's, it's just a lot more work than the fabric.

Yeah. So we use the DeWitt weed fabric for that. Um, but like you said, you— we have— we've always used that in a case where it was usually cardboard.

Yeah.

Or hard—

or, um, because the glue is in cardboard, and then we're always putting mulch over it. We're always putting grass clippings or wood chips But it's, it's not the— yeah, it's usually a bit more challenging to do a crop garden.

Yep.

Large scale. The reason I think Rebecca and I and you can see it is because if you don't, if you don't use these plastic and go through that intensity to get it, or you opt out of plastics and buy it, if you're not growing it, you're going to have to buy it. And where you're gonna buy it from is going to be using plastics.

Yeah, yeah.

And trucks to get it to you.

Yep. Yeah. So yeah, does your audience understand what we're talking about, the product we're talking about? Are they exposed to this?

Or should we talk from us last year?

Because we're the woven fabrics.

Yeah, because we did it all last year. We did— we actually used it in our sweet potatoes, collards, strawberries, um, cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes. Like, we, we used it a lot last year, and it was— could you—

except for the onions, and that's why we got some more from you today.

And I don't know what we were thinking. I have no idea what we were thinking because we just started this garden and we planted onions. Like, hello.

Um, so it was in a new garden plot.

It was such a disaster.

And we had the pigs help us till it. So, you know, they're not going to quite do like a machine tiller.

Sure.

Could you do potatoes in weed fabric? I mean, because like you would have to go down directly underneath the hole, but that's probably a little tricky. Yes.

I think you, you could do potatoes. Why not?

I'm wondering, maybe we need to do them potatoes.

I think with sweet potatoes. You could definitely do that.

We did it with sweet potatoes and we got potatoes instead.

We got footballs.

It was great. You probably could. I mean, it'd be worth experimenting. What I have seen or what my family's done and it works pretty well is just doing a really thick straw mulch. So plant potatoes, hill it up a little bit and then just do a dense, thick straw mulch.

We should do that this year.

And they come up through there and then that pretty much keeps the weeds at bay.

Now, this is maybe where we want to go eventually, as Elliot Coleman taught us a long time ago, to do undersowing. So you plant the potatoes and you keep it hoed for a few weeks. Wait.

Yeah.

And then you, and then you plant an undersowing, a cover crop.

Yeah.

And walk away.

Definitely done that. I just, I don't know.

What are the cons on that?

The weeds still come up with it.

Yeah, I mean, the weeds are going to come up. Um, I, I have some vague recollections of doing this before and just the potatoes not doing well.

Um, oh yeah, they're competing.

Maybe it's the fighting over nutrients or just like—

and, and you had mentioned too, okay, we can, we can say, okay, the bad is maybe some microplastics. But, um, I had mentioned that in a vlog and you contacted me and you said, you know, it's rated for 5 years. Switch it out at 4.

Yeah, you could.

You're so concerned.

You could. Then you have to also balance like putting in a landfill and just getting more versus trying to get the full maximum life out of it.

I know, it's all, it's all very tricky.

I mean, here's the thing is like looking back in history, like as a, as humanity, we've always made mistakes that we look back on and regret. And obviously we want to try to minimize that as much as possible. But I think like using some high quality UV stabilized plastic to help control weeds and help with sanity when you're trying to grow a garden is probably much less of a hazard than lead and asbestos and some of the other things. I could be totally wrong on that, but we've exposed ourselves to a lot of really bad stuff. And again, to my knowledge, these products are not just actively breaking down and going straight into the the food that we're eating.

Yeah, that'd be it too, you know.

I obviously, um, you know, want to keep an open mind to this, and we're as a company, uh, researching alternatives and trying to, um, trying to make sure that we're being good stewards of, you know, our influence, I guess. Um, but you just can't— most of our customers can't do what they're trying to do without it, which is— so we're just here to try to support them in that.

I will say I've read that shilajit It's a supplement. It's like a mineral supplement.

Okay.

Um, of course you have to get a good brand, but it supposedly helps your body detox microplastics. So if you're concerned—

interesting.

Um, you know, like, I think there are ways for us to, um, maybe mitigate some of the problems that we could have caused ourselves. I mean, the body is a resilient thing, like you said, like all those awful things. Um, You know, we have been able to still be, yeah, you know, a healthy, healthy person.

Sure. I also just feel like if you're really going to be worried about plastics, there's probably a lot of other areas where at least I know myself personally would benefit from focusing on more like, you know, not drinking out of plastic water bottles or not like storing food in plastic containers or not like, yeah. You know, there's a lot of other areas where, where most of us utilize plastic, where it's in much more direct contact with the item that you're eating. You know, probably like plastic, you know, spatulas where you're making your food.

Like, I mean, who knows, breaking it down right away.

Exactly. So I mean, hopefully a lot of people aren't doing that, but I'm just saying, like, you know, it's easy for people to get on, you know, Facebook comments and be like, oh yeah, open your fridge and it's like, they probably got all kinds of plastic in there storing all their leftovers in or whatever, you know. So it's just—

I don't know, touche.

I mean, it's true. It's so true.

The environmental case that people will tap in, speak alarm for the environment, but I'm thinking you're on a— you're on a plastic phone.

Yeah, it's like nobody's cutting plastic out of their life completely at this point.

So, well, I will say, like, you know, then after we've grown this garden or sourced a lot of our produce locally at farms, I'm saving it in plastic.

Sure.

I mean, I, I've looked into trying to save it like stainless steel containers. Just, I, I did the math last year because I was like, I was feeling a lot of stress just about plastic in general. And, um, if I was going to buy like stainless steel gallon containers Yeah. And we had like 15 gallons of strawberries, probably 15 of blueberries, if not 20. I'm thinking like, this is— it's like $5,000 investment to buy this, to, to then—

but then I had to store it. Like, it's just a big mess.

Like, it's, it's a lot. And, and I'm not against it, but I'm just saying, sure, yeah, we have 5 people in our— 5 kids plus us, 7. You know, it's a lot of food that we go through.

So I mean, my take is like, I hope that there's people out there that have the resources and like, you know, that are researching alternatives and like developing new products that could help us to cut more plastics out of our lives. But like, um, that, that's a process. And hopefully, hopefully, you know, years down the road we'll have some awesome alternatives that will allow us to remove more plastics from our everyday lives. But Um, in the meantime, I think we just have to be smart about it and try to minimize it.

If we're afraid that the, the harm is of plastic on the plants, though, you did mention that there are some good because one, we're mulching the earth and it likes to be covered. Mother Nature's— Mother Nature is modest. But two, you were mentioning that it protects the plant from, uh, competition.

Yeah.

Weed competition and then do better. I mean, our broccoli was stellar and our sweet potatoes.

And I think it's partly, you know, the competing for nutrients. It's also partly soil temperatures, moisture retention.

Oh, that too. Yeah.

Then, you know, not, uh, not having as much moisture just evaporating out of the soil so quickly. And, um, so yeah, you know, one, one thing I'll mention on this, like, if somebody's really worried about the plastic thing, um, I had somebody tell me that they had a customer utilizing the, the paper. Actually, the, the vendor that we're buying this paper product from, he was working with a customer, uh, I think it was somebody out in California, and they were actually putting down paper and then putting in direct contact with the soil and then putting a, uh, woven fabric on top of that. And so that kind of like holds down and retains that, that paper and keeps it from blowing and, and ripping. And but you're also keeping a barrier direct from your, the plastic directly comes from touching there. So I mean, that's going to be expensive.

It's going to get—

paper is not— the paper is as expensive. It's— well, our like raw material cost of the paper is actually double what the, the fabric is. It's, it's a lot more expensive. Um, maybe prices will come down on stuff like that, but those are, you know, natural resources that you're utilizing too for develop— for making all that paper. So, um Anyways, that's just an option. I haven't personally experimented with that, but it's interesting because then you have that barrier, but then as that paper kind of breaks down, that actually is adding nutrients and organic matter into the soil. So again, there's all kinds of different hacks, but I guess what I would tell people is just try it. And I think you'll realize that the benefits probably outweigh the cons.

I mean, it's just, it's a miracle worker, honestly. I just, we just couldn't have done what we did without it.

Sure.

I mean, we're, we're sold.

Yeah.

And believers. I mean, we don't like plastic, but we do like this. Like, it's, yeah, we just couldn't, we just can't do what we need to do without it.

So, right, all right. Or we'd have to buy it and they're just going to be using it.

Yeah.

So that's the reality of it.

Sure.

Do you want to grow your own food or not?

And when it rains, it goes through the fabric or no, it doesn't? It is permeable. Okay.

Well, it comes down to— I'll remind people too, you got to know your why and you got to let people have their why. And it's different. I learned that, you know, people grieve different. When somebody dies, somebody might— you know, when my dad died, somebody got up immediately and started cleaning the house. Immediately. We're all in the room with him, and then somebody else goes outside and screams.

Yeah.

And gets— and then somebody else gets upset because that person cleaned the house, you know, because their way of grieving is, is leaving it. Just chill and just watch and just rest it. And the other person grieves by just doing. And, right, uh, so it's the same, same thing. So you got to know your wife. Rebecca and I are doing this because we want to quit the grocery store and we want to optimize our health. Then, um, we're gonna do— yeah, we might do this plastic and we'll— we won't care that we need to— we'll need to replace it in 4 years even though it costs more money. Whereas somebody else might not be so health-oriented, plastic-scared, and they might make that tarp last 10 years.

Yeah, I mean, I can guarantee you this, that the the produce that you grow with our Quick Plant fabric and, you know, keep the weeds out of your garden and everything, that produce that you grow is going to be healthier for you than what you buy in the grocery store.

Yes.

So if that's what helps you to be able to quit the grocery store, then like go for it because it's going to be better produce, more nutritionally dense. Even if there was some exposure to plastic, I just, I could feel like we can confidently agree on that.

Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah.

And then somebody who may be doing this more for the environment might do— would be more inclined to do— get a little more hustle on doing the COVID crops.

Sure.

Or the wood chips or the grass clippings.

Or if you just love— for mulch, you know, if you just— it's not so terrible if it's just like, you know, your, your outlet for stress or whatever.

Like, it's not so terrible.

You want to spend hours I did it on an acre.

He's done it.

We did a CSA and it was every other day.

Oh, you're not—

and any weed fabricants, pretty annoying.

Very long time.

And we, we— it's better when somebody else is out there with you.

Yeah.

And you can talk and argue and complain and laugh and have a good time. And then you're doing something else. You're not just weeding.

Yeah.

But then if you get 5 kids and you have the old McDonald farm and you're running a business and, yeah, you learn to take— and you get older, you can take some shortcuts.

And the teenagers like to go and—

Yeah, yeah.

To go to— it's a lot.

Yeah. Okay. So you run a company that is Farmer's Friends. Farmer's Friends.

Yep.

Why? Because you sell— you sell the silage tarp, the weed fabric, the high tunnels. Sandbags. Why are you helping farmers?

Well, I mean, we can go back to, you know, the beginning if you want to. I know we got— we got time. So I grew up on a farm. My parents— my grandpa bought a 200-acre farm after he retired. He was a doctor. Farming wasn't like really in the family per se. It wasn't anybody directly that was farming, but he was born and raised through his early childhood in Hickman County, Tennessee, which is where we live, and traveled all over the world. He worked as a doctor doing mission work and also for the government, embassies all over the world.

Is this to say, do you and Paul Dysinger of SeedTime, Share the same grandfather?

Yeah. Yeah. So maybe, maybe that.

And he was a missionary. So. And you guys are Seventh-day Adventists?

Yes.

So it goes back at least to your grandfather?

Yeah.

Do you know how far back?

Generations on my grandpa's side. Maybe his parents were Adventists as well.

Okay.

So, yeah. So anyways, he retired and just wanted to move back to Hickman County and buy a farm. So bought 200 acres. And, and at the time, my parents were in Africa, um, oh wow, in Kenya. I was born in, in Nairobi, Kenya. Uh, my sister was born there as well.

Do you remember when you left?

Uh, I was born in '93.

Okay.

And so they moved back to this, the U.S., in, I think, '95 or not, maybe end of 94.

You don't remember it?

Yeah, no, I don't. I don't. I was like a year older, 9 months or something like that. So anyways, my parents were both teachers and so they eventually moved to the farm. Initially it was like, no, we're never moving to, you know, Timbuktu, Tennessee. Like, but anyway, so a couple of years later they moved and built a house on the farm and my dad was just teaching at a small Christian school. In the town about 30 minutes away from us, but then felt the Lord really calling him to doing something different, and so something more like home-based. He wanted to be able to do something that us kids could be more involved in, and just having to leave early in the morning and not be home till late at night just wasn't wasn't fulfilling him and my mom at the time. And us kids were young at the time. My sister was probably 5 when he quit teaching, I'm thinking maybe 6, and I would have been like 4, you know, or 5. And so anyways, he quit teaching and did some odd jobs and stuff for a while, but then really felt impressed to start farming. And so that was kind of where the journey— it was a '90, 2008, I believe, is when they started farming.

Did Paul's dad go in on that?

No, not initially. They were doing other stuff. They were in the mission field at the time, and they moved to the farm around, oh man, I don't even remember, but let me think, probably 2008 or '09, I think.

So grandpa was a missionary, parents were a missionary.

Yeah, it's a lot of mission.

What happened to you?

Um, well, black sheep. Now, we spent, uh, uh, when I was a teenager, we spent 3 months in Honduras doing mission work. It was kind of like a— we were helping at a mission down there, but also, um, it was a bit of a sabbatical as well.

What year was that?

Um, he's young and it's probably way after us.

2010.

Oh, we were in Honduras in '06, '07.

Okay.

Like for just 3 months.

I've been down there 3 different times. So I had a little bit. I spent a couple of weeks in Rwanda doing some, doing like an outreach mission thing. So I've done a little bit, but not like a lot of people in my family have spent like years of their life in different mission fields. So, okay. Yeah. So that was where it started and my dad had a— the initial mission with the farm was to do organic strawberries. He kind of got exposed to that somehow and was like, man, if we can do organic strawberries— of course, this was, you know, before organic was really the rage that it is now for sure. But like organic strawberries, and I think probably some of it had to do with the fact that strawberries are like one of the worst worst berries that you can get. They absorb the chemicals. So on, like, what is it, the dirty dozen? They're like number one, I think, is strawberries. Like, they're— if you buy strawberries, make sure they're organic because otherwise they've got a lot of bad stuff in them. So anyways, that was the vision. And the first— so this kind of will tie into the first conversation about plastics, but the first year it was like, We're gonna plant a bunch of strawberries. Like, I think we did like a half an acre of strawberries and we did no plastic. It was just directly in the dirt. And we literally, the weeds started taking over. Well, the funny thing was we were so, like, knew nothing about farming. One of the locals had said something to my dad like, oh, the weeds will winter kill. And so we kind of didn't worry about the weeds initially and we're expecting everything to die after the first frost. And like some stuff dies, but around us, like there's a lot of winter hardy weeds that do not die. And so we ended up spending weeks and weeks and weeks out there weeding those strawberries and ended up basically just kind of roping off half of the field and like, okay, we're just going to cut it off as a loss. Let's just see if we can control the weeds on this half. And I think we ended up with 4 beds or something that we were able to control the weeds in. Everything else was just complete loss. But even after that, the crop itself was awful because strawberries are very fragile. And so if they're directly in contact with the soil, they just they're no good and you don't want to have to wash them after you've harvested. So, so there's a lot of challenges. We had a couple of years of strawberries and then quickly realized that we needed to diversify because there was— on paper, strawberries, you know, you can make a lot of money, like it's a big cash crop and whatever, but it just— they're, they're not the easiest thing to grow. So, so yeah, they started diversifying. We built our first greenhouse probably about maybe the third year. And essentially initially it was just like, we have this huge rush in the spring with all these customers coming to pick and purchase strawberries. So let's sell like potted, you know, plants. Let's sell like hanging baskets of flowers. Let's sell like, you know, we had a little store where we sold like different craft stuff and like, you know, us kids would like crochet, you know, potholders like all winter long and, you know, that type of thing. We just all these little hand goods like, you know, handmade like beeswax wax candles and just jams and just stuff like that. And it was, it was pretty cool, honestly. And, um, yeah, that's kind of where it started. So I mean, I could share more. Kids were there, so, um, in total there's 5 of us kids. Um, yeah.

Did your dad make it? There was— did he be able to become a pro farmer?

Yeah, I mean, they're still farming. My parents, my parents, uh, you know, get their, their living off of farming, and 2 of my brothers are on the farm full-time.

Oh, really?

With your parents?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, so it's kind of transitioned. Like, um, um, my younger brother and his wife kind of oversee and manage the farm half of the season, and then my dad and mom manage it the other half of the season. So they grow year-round.

And do they use your weed fabric?

Yeah, they do.

You hook them up?

You give them a good deal?

Yeah, yeah, they use it.

They use quite a lot of it.

We, uh, they, you know, they definitely— there's, there's a— it's a mutually beneficial— they got no qualms.

Uh, for Christmas, that's what they're getting. Yeah, fabric.

Exactly.

Silage tarps.

Yeah, they use it, they use it pretty extensively, and it's been a huge benefit for them, um, the last few years. Uh, just, I mean, they've used it in the past, like, so actually we, like, the second year started using, uh, woven fabric on the strawberries, and that was what we used for years because it was, you can't—

it was a game changer.

You can't grow strawberries without Okay, we block.

So we're able to do the whole half acre then, probably. Or did you guys—

Yeah, so why 200 acres if you're a vegetarian?

Yeah, well, I mean, let's just say 2 acres of the farm is unused. Uh, there's a lot of forest and, you know, pasture lands. We could certainly do a lot more, uh, a lot more on the farm, but yeah, it's really—

Are you guys based on the farm as well, you and your family? Okay, no, no.

So why did you for sake the farm and didn't join your brothers there and just started to sell farm stuff?

Yeah, well, um, I was super entrepreneurial growing up. Um, we were— my, my mom homeschooled all of us kids, so we were always on the farm, um, pretty involved in what was going on. And from a, a young age, my parents supported us and encouraged us to, to kind of dabble in our own little entrepreneurial endeavors. So it'd be like the farm was its own thing. But then my mom would always be like, okay, why don't you guys have a lemonade stand for the U-Pick customers? Or why don't you guys— we did, you know, cookies. And so we made these big old cookies and sold them to all the customers. And so we, we always had little entrepreneurial like endeavors that we were dabbling with, and some did better than others. And, you know, but that was just something that, that my parents encouraged. I think particularly my mom really encouraged us kids to, to do that. And I don't— it really just clicked for me. I always kind of wanted— I'm really like— I've been referred to as fiercely independent. I like to do my own thing and I like to kind of get to call the shots. And in— when I was— I think I was about 13 is when Paul and like my aunt, uncle and their family moved to the farm. And a lot changed then. And there was certainly good aspects of it. My, my dad and his brother kind of formed a partnership, and, but it changed a lot on the farm. And, um, that's probably when I started moving my more of my focus into other things. Um, I started, uh, uh, doing a small engine repair. I was like fixing mowers and stuff for neighbors and, and doing different things like that. But, um, I always loved the farming, and it wasn't like I my goal was never to, like, forsake farming or like, I don't want to have anything to do with farming. And if that was the case, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. But I just really enjoyed making things and fabricating and welding and machining. And so I was always trying to figure out easier and better and more efficient ways to do things. And so that just kind of naturally, I mean, there's, there's some sort of specific events that happened that led me to what I am doing with Farmer's Friend. But in general, my path away from like full-time farming just was my kind of insatiable desire to like, um, do my own thing and, and entrepreneurial endeavors.

Yeah. What was the first thing you made related to Farmer's Friend?

Friend for, for, for sale or just like, uh, for our own, just Yeah, yeah.

First thing you made and sold?

Um, the first product was the Quick Cut Greens Harvester, which is a small, you know, handheld device that allows you to mechanically be able to harvest salad greens.

That you fabricated or that you bought and sold?

No, we developed it.

You did?

Yeah.

So is that the one that goes— does it have a drill on it?

Yeah, you use a drill to power it.

Yeah.

So that was a, you know—

what year was that that you started?

Started selling those in 2012, but started developing it, probably in, uh, 2009 or '10, um, we had the opportunity to go visit Elliot Coleman's farm. So my dad and I and my uncle and Paul went to visit, um, Elliot's farm. And while we were there, he picked up on my inventive streak or whatever and was like, man, you need to like develop this, uh, harvester for salad greens. And so I took that idea and was pretty fixated on it for a while. That's another one of my things is like once I get something in my head, it's hard for me to like, you know, give up. I just keep going on something. So I was, you know, still in high school, so I didn't have a lot of time to commit, still working full-time on the farm, but it was kind of a backburner project. And there's so many different like providential events that happened. But I got connected with an engineer, a retired engineer who really kind of took me under his wing and helped me develop that product and take it to market. So that was 2012. We were selling that through Johnny's Selected Seeds, and that's kind of— that's where I've seen it, where it, where it all started.

Wow.

Did any— okay, so that was because you went to Elliott Coleman's.

Yeah.

And then what, like, were your mom and dad and like your uncle being like, hey, we really could use this?

Yeah. Well, sure.

Started, buddy.

I mean, yeah, it was, it was definitely like, I think when to be honest, I'm pretty sure my dad had like mentioned it because at that time I believe Elliot had already like wrote about this in a book. Like, you know, green salad greens are really profitable, but harvesting them is just way too labor intensive. And like, I think he had already publicly kind of talked about the fact that, you know, somebody needed to develop this. And Johnny's had kind of a, a hard harvester for baby lettuce, but it was like you had to manually like move it back and forth like this and it didn't really work very well. And so there just wasn't a good solution. So I think I was already aware of that and, and I believe my dad had already kind of like said, hey, you could work on this, but I just kind of shrugged it off. But then when Elliot, when we were there and he encouraged me and I think he even said at the time, like, if you develop it, you know, Johnny's will sell it because he was a paid tool advisor for Johnny's at the time. And so he, he was able to kind of have that in. So I think that put more— yeah, just put more pressure on.

How many days did you spend with Mr. Coleman?

I think we were on the farm for 2 days. Yeah.

You spent a good amount of time with him then.

Yeah.

For him to feel comfortable enough to tell you this.

Yeah. He's a really cool guy. He's— he's very open-minded about just like sharing ideas with people. So he had already tried to get a bunch of other people to work on it and nobody had just been able to.

Yeah.

Have you talked to him since about—

Yeah.

Oh, have you?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I was going to ask if he, if he, if he knew he's seen the success of this tool.

Awesome.

Oh yeah. Yeah. He did for sure. So, um, yeah, I mean, I could tell stories for hours about it, but I mean, is there anything particular you want to go into on that? Cause yeah, there's, there's a lot of interesting stories of how that all came to fruition, I guess.

How many of those have you sold?

Um, last time I checked, it was like over 7,000.

Nice.

So quite a few, but it's one of those things where it's not like a hot, like a big enough demand that like—

Yeah, what's the paper pot planter? That did really well.

Yeah, that's not you. Yeah, that's not you, but that's exactly—

you wouldn't know how much. Oh, it is?

Yep.

Okay, well, but like, this is it for you know, like your salad thing, um, your salad harvester, you know, a market farm opens up, they buy it, they use it for forever, you know what I mean? It's not one of those things that they're gonna need to come back and buy monthly or yearly even.

Unfortunately.

Yeah, I know, unfortunately. But also, like, what an amazing story. Like, you brought that to market and helped so many people.

Yeah, it's— it has been a game changer for a lot of growers. Like, it you know, it allowed you to harvest, um, salad greens that you can sell for, you know, I mean, a lot. Yeah, $8 to maybe $12 or more a pound depending on how you're, how you're selling it. But, you know, it's profitable. But harvesting it on your hands and knees with a knife and scissors, like, I did a lot of that growing up, and that's just so time-consuming.

Is, is the sale of 7,000 viral? Is that really good? I don't know what's really good in the farming Farming space. How many silage tarps have you sold?

A lot more than that.

So that's because you, you gotta have those.

Yeah, we've sold a lot more caterpillar tunnels than we've sold harvesters.

Oh really?

Wow. Okay, so you, you had the caterpillar tunnel that was, um, like you just like raise up the sides and it's not like, it's not a crank or anything. Yeah, I remember looking at yours and we almost bought yours.

Okay.

Um, And I don't remember why I didn't. I think it's because I wanted the high sides like we have now, right? Um, and you didn't have that. You only had the caterpillar tunnels at the same time. We have a good friend who's purchased a lot of them from you.

Okay.

Um, just east of here, about an hour.

Casey Osterwich.

Casey Osterwich Honey Tree Farm.

Yeah, he knows him.

Yeah. And, um, he's like decked his whole—

yeah, yeah, we've, we've done some filming at his place.

I really wanted them to move down the street so I could buy produce from them and not have to grow it.

Speaking of filming, you, you've made films, documentaries about different farmers who happen to use your stuff. Do you keep doing that? Are you still doing that?

We haven't done any recently, but, um, but it is in the plans to continue.

Did that help? Did that help sales? That was kind of creative.

Yeah, I think it definitely helped to, um, bring more awareness to our, our brand.

Some of those went viral.

Yeah, some of them did pretty well. Yeah. For sure. And I love creating that kind of content. Like, our, our mission as, as a company is to inspire and educate and equip growers, essentially. Um, and so the, the idea with those films was to try to inspire more people to get into farming. Um, I mean, the reality is, you know, I don't know the statistics off the top of my head, but, uh, farming is dying in the U.S. Like, we're importing more and more produce from other countries, billions, billions of dollars of produce from other countries. And from China and from, you know, Mexico and everywhere. And so, and like the average age of farmers in the US is like 60s, I think.

Yeah.

And it's, it's really sad to see. And so like we want to play a role in hopefully, you know, changing that, that direction. I think that, you know, our take on it is that, you know, a lot of these farms that are like dying are just like big row crop, you know, like corn and soybeans and stuff. And that from my perspective, is not really, uh, helpful in a lot of cases.

That's not necessarily food.

Yeah.

For us.

So I think there's so much more that can be done, and I think the model that, um, Elliot and JM and so many others have, have really helped to bring awareness to is so much more, uh, productive. And, and so anyways, that was kind of what we— that was the goal with those films, is just not so much like, um, going around and like marketing our product as much as just highlighting the stories of our customers, all of all of the farms that we've filmed around the world. Actually, we spent 5 weeks touring in Europe and, and that was all visiting customers of ours that are using our products. And, and so, yeah, we just wanted to tell their stories and highlight that. And, and yeah, some of them did really well. We have definitely cumulative multiple millions of views on those, on those videos and they, they still get views.

How are— how do you have a distribution in Europe, or are you sending it from here to there?

No, it's just Europe is, uh, you know, so many different languages and cultures, and it's just challenging. So we, we definitely have sold a lot in the past directly to European customers, but at this point, we're— most of our sales in Europe go through Terra Tech. Okay. Um, yeah.

How old were you when you did the Harvester?

I was 19 when I started Farmer's Friend officially, and I was about 16 when I— 15 or 16 when I visited, um, Elliott's farm and kind of originally started the—

I take it you skipped college?

I did. Good.

Did you know that was my thing, or was that controversial at the time?

Um, it wasn't controversial. My parents were supportive of that. Um, yeah. They were, they were supportive.

Did your siblings go to college?

No, I think, you know, some of them have done college courses. I have, I guess probably the closest would be one of my brothers is an avionics mechanic. So he works at an airport doing stuff. So he did go through like a couple of years of like getting his, you know, some licenses to do.

I was just wondering if you're like, if your family was like, mostly college grad, like your siblings mostly college graduates or—

Yeah, certainly not my siblings, but certainly aunts and uncles and cousins and whatever. Our family kind of broke the mold, I guess I would say, for the family.

Were y'all homeschooled too?

Yeah, yeah, we were all homeschooled. Yep. Yeah.

Do you homeschool your kids?

My oldest is 4, so—

I was going to say, I don't think they're old enough yet.

You plan on doing that?

Yesterday I came home and my wife was like, James is starting to learn some adding. He was like, what's 2 2? And he was like, so we're at that level, just barely getting started. I told her, well, if he's showing interest, let's push it a little bit, but we're definitely not to the point where we're trying to do any kind of formal school.

Did you do formal school?

No. Well, yeah, I think definitely not formal school. My mom definitely tried to have a curriculum and follow some structure. And we did follow like, we did Math UC math programs and like—

We do Math UC.

Stuff like that. We did go through some—

Yeah, we've used it, I should say. I don't, I wouldn't say that my kids are like hardcore.

I mean, I remember doing like some science stuff with like, was it Bob Jones University or something? Probably. Yeah.

Like, Oh man, so you didn't have any Seventh-day Adventist curriculum stuff, huh?

Uh, probably not, honestly.

I bet there's some now.

There should be, but there is—

there's so much curriculum.

Yeah, so I think there's probably a lot more resources now than there was then. But yeah, so we had some sort of structure to it, and we tended to, you know, have a block of time in the morning where we did school, but we were never doing like 8 hours of school a day. I mean, it was mostly like 3 or 4 hours of school in the morning and then farm work all afternoon. That was kind of what it tended to be. And, and, you know, and then that definitely got Um, farm work in the heat, huh? Well, I mean, yeah, we experimented with a lot of different things. Of course, we were farming year-round. Uh, we pretty much always farmed year-round, so, you know, what are you—

what are they farming right now on the farm? What are they working on right now?

Um, well, there's a lot of stuff going. I mean, they do, um, it's February for those that don't— yeah, yeah, I mean, they do, you know, lettuce year-round. Um, they've got, you know, tomatoes in the greenhouses already.

Really?

You know, stuff like that.

So are they heated greenhouses?

They are.

Okay, it's gonna be like—

well, I mean, they do supplemental heat or just to try to—

when they need it.

Because it's like with, uh, you know, a lot of stuff like tomatoes particularly, if you can have them a few weeks before anybody else, it's worth a lot, you know.

And you don't live on the farm anymore.

Tomato lover.

Yeah, you don't live on the farm.

I don't.

Um, because you're Mr. Independent.

I, I am pretty independent. Uh, the farm getting— get it started getting pretty populated with family and family because the brother came Yeah, my cousin and some, uh, a couple of cousins and some of their family and stuff like that. It's, it's not like there's any— I mean, we all get along great, but I wanted my own space. And then we, we had to move the business to more of an industrial area because we had grown to a point of needing more, uh, more space. And so, um, but we're 20 minutes away, so we go over there weekly. And at this point, I'm doing a lot of, uh I do quite a lot of content with my dad, you know, videos, educational stuff. And so we're on the farm quite regularly.

Do you come up or do they ever come to you and be like, could you make this for us? And then you develop it and then they test it out for you and then tweak it and that sort of thing. That's probably very handy for you and them.

It's definitely happened. Yeah.

What has come from that? Says the harvester.

Yeah, the harvester. We did a lot of testing on the farm. Um, you know, we did, uh, recently we launched something that they've been using, which is the little dibbler for doing their Salanova. So they do a lot of Salanova and they grow it in 200-cell trays. And they— we have this little dibbler that you can hook into a drill and it just makes you— allows you to like really quickly, um, punch holes in the ground to just drop the plugs.

Okay.

So little stuff like that. Um, honestly, I've kind of, in a way, like, gone— like, for instance, when I started dabbling with the idea of bringing on caterpillar tunnels, my dad was like, not really. He didn't think it was the best idea.

Really?

So I was like, I think we'll just try it. I think it's— I think there might be something here. So he's had to obviously eat those words, but they've been super supportive.

Because now he has caterpillar tunnels.

How many caterpillar tunnels does he have?

He does utilize some caterpillar tunnels.

Yep.

But we've sold, you know, thousands. Yeah. So it's been interesting. But yeah, I mean, kind of, you know, maybe going backtracking a little bit. So, you know, I started when I was 19 and had supportive parents and— but my parents, you know, neither one of them were like had, you know, finance degrees or like business degrees or anything like that. Like, and I didn't have anybody directly around me that was other than my parents that was really like like, um, in business. Of course, this was even like early days of like YouTube University and stuff like that, so it wasn't a ton of resources. I did not know what I was doing. I, uh, was trying to manufacture the greens harvesters myself, so we weren't— oh wow, we weren't outsourcing that. So we literally had a shop and like we're trying to machine the components from like raw aluminum blocks and like building these things. And, and I really got in way over my head because Johnny's had initially told me they thought they would sell maybe 150 a year, and we sold 150 within the first 3 months and we could not keep up. And it was, it was a battle, you know, I was like hiring some help and it was, it was a battle for sure. And so what ended up happening is that 2 years in, almost exactly 2 years from when we launched it, I got a call from the product and tools manager at Johnny's, which I have no hard feelings for the guy. He was awesome. He supported me. He, he like took a huge risk on like a 19-year-old kid. But they like, he called me up and said like, we're going to have to discontinue the product. And I'm like, gutted, you know, I feel like, okay, I'm, I've failed at this like one attempt I had at like maybe something, you know, making something great, you know. So I was, I was pretty down and but quickly, pretty quickly realized that we actually had a pretty big opportunity in front of us because Johnny's had just printed like over a million catalogs for the upcoming growing season with a like a half-page ad on the, on the Quick Cut Greens Harvester in it. And so I like called him back and I'm like, so you guys aren't reprinting the catalogs, are you? He's like, no, but you know, once we sell out, you know, if people ask about it, well, we can just send them directly to you if you want us to. And I was like, let's do that.

Yeah.

So I like spun up a Shopify site and this was early 2015. And I think I got my very first customer, direct customer order in February of 2015. So that's, that's really where Farmer's Friend started because before that it was just a product that Johnny's was selling. But interestingly enough, it was always kind of my, my vision to have a company that sold direct to consumer. I just felt like the Johnnies opportunity was like the, the way to get started. But yeah, there was so many ups and downs. Like I literally was scraping, scraping by financially, like not making money the first couple of years. And but the Lord blessed and, and then At that point, kind of at the end of 2015, is when the business was actually doing pretty well because we sold more harvesters that year than we had sold either of the previous years with Johnnies. They kind of bailed out like right as we were figuring things out. So we like had the manufacturing pretty figured out at that point.

And, um, so they bailed because you couldn't keep up?

They bailed because, um, what I was told, I think there was maybe a little bit of behind the scenes political stuff going on at the time, but what I was told is mostly because of the fact that it was out of stock so frequently.

Okay.

Yeah. Because we were just not able to keep up. So it was out of the first 2 years, it was probably out of stock like 50+ percent of the time.

You keep saying we, who's we at this time?

Well, so I say we a lot. I don't know why, but that's just from, I mean, there's always been more than just me. I even from day one, I had hired a friend of mine who had just graduated from machining school. And so, you know, it's always been me and my team.

You've always been a we.

So does Johnny still sell it or no?

No.

No, no. Okay.

So they have to come to you to get it. There's no competitor?

No.

Wow.

Yeah, it's a—

So all the harvesters out there are from you?

Um, any ones that look like the one we have?

Yeah, there's only one cloth.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's only one.

Did you know that was him?

I did not know that was you.

Okay. Yeah, that was our first product.

I mean, I've seen it a lot because just following market farmers.

Sure, it's pretty common.

I get, I get fed a lot of like farming content just in general.

Yeah, I mean, it's— there isn't anything else out there that, that solves that problem at this point. Um, well, I shouldn't say that entirely. Like, at the time when I launched it, there— the closest thing to it was like a walk-behind harvester that a company out of California made. I don't know if it was made in California, but anyways, they sold it, but it's like $10,000 or $12,000.

It was probably because yours was a lot less expensive.

Yeah, we started at, um, I think it was $495 when we first started selling. It should have been higher because I— that was one of my first mistakes, is not pricing it right.

Um, yeah, this is selling too, too much.

Yeah, we should have— yeah, it should have been higher. I, I wasn't making money. Uh, so anyways, we all make mistakes.

Yeah, early years.

Yeah. Uh, but you know, that's when it really turned around is when I— when Johnny's was no longer taking the cut of the profits and I was getting 100%. I was like, oh, okay, this is what it's supposed to be like.

What was your first Shopify site? What was its name?

Um, it was Farmer's Friend LLC.

How'd you come up with Farmer's Friend?

Uh, I don't know, just seemed like it fit. We're, we're, we, you know, from the beginning the mission was to, uh, to help farmers, you know, be able to— I mean, it's like farming is, is hard and that's why most people like aren't in it. And so like, you know, the goal from day one for Farmer's Friend and, you know, for me, my whole like childhood was like how to make it easier and how to, you know, reduce as much of the just backbreaking labor of farming as possible. I was doing that on our farm before I was— before Farmer's Friend was even a thought, you know. So like, I mean, my mom told the story and I remember it, but I was young. I mean, I was like, I think 9 years old. And I— we had this self-propelled Kubota lawnmower. Like, it was, you know, just a small, like, walk-behind, like, put— it was like a push mower, but it had actually a pretty substantial, uh, you know, self-propelled aspect to it. And so I was at the age where they were, uh, you know, I was mowing the yard, but I was not tall enough to even reach the top handle. So I'm like holding on to the bottom handle, but I like, um, took one of my Tonka trucks and like tied it to the back of the mower to where I could like stand on it like a little sulky, because I'd seen all the landscaping guys like, you know, riding on their little sulkies. And so yeah, my mom was like doing the dishes and she like looks out the window and I just go like, like riding past. He's like, what in the world? So that, you know, I was always trying to figure out like easier ways of, of doing things to like take out the, the, the walking, so to speak, you know.

So you're the first son because you just have one older sister?

Yeah, my sister's older. Yeah.

Okay, because like you're a second born but you're also the first son, so you're really a firstborn son. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's amazing how Yeah, uh, a lot of people—

it's got two firstborns.

I know that a lot of people that, um, you know, initially when they get to know our family, like, kind of assume that I'm the firstborn. But yeah, my sister's older. She's like 2, 2 and a half years.

And then how many are behind you?

4?

Well, 3, 3, 4, 5. There's 5 of you.

5.

Do Seventh-day Adventists have a lot— like to have a lot of kids?

No, uh, I wouldn't say that's like a trait of It's not like— no Catholics, uh, or like 5 Protestants. Yeah, 5 kids is pretty unusual.

Okay.

Okay.

And, and you said for the most part in your inner family this wasn't strange to be entrepreneurial or to live off the land, but yeah, I mean, extended from that, maybe you guys were a little different.

I guess what I mean by that is like my parents were doing doing, you know, entrepreneurship, and they were encouraging us. And so like, I, I wasn't like going against the grain of like what my parents were doing or encouraging us to do or whatever. Like, I obviously have heard stories of people who like their parents are like trying to force them to go to college and stuff, and they're just going against the grain. But as far as just like, you know, cousins and stuff, like all my cousins are going to college and, you know, doing stuff like that, like not, um Yeah, not in entrepreneurship, with the exception of Paul. I mean, Paul did his own business.

Yeah, with the exception of Paul. When did you realize you were different than the world?

I don't know. I don't, I don't think I'm that different. Maybe I am. I don't know.

It's not, not— it's not normal that you get inspired to be an entrepreneur.

I think I'm just a real, like, a real driven person. And I— yeah, I don't know.

Well, I mean, your whole family— it sounds like it's your whole family. Your whole family is entrepreneurial.

Yeah.

Uh, how many of your siblings are entrepreneurs? Entrepreneurs?

Um, well, I mean, I guess you could say that they, um, they all are in a way, but not— I don't know. Um, I mean, two of my brothers are on the farm, and so they're, you know, and, and particularly my youngest brother, he seems pretty passionate about like figuring out how to do stuff better and how to make the farm more profitable and efficient and stuff like that. But they're, they're definitely investing a lot into that. Um, but I don't know, I just come at it from a different angle of, I guess, just, uh, my mom always kind of teased me about like never being content, you know. For me, it's like, I don't know that I would ever— like, I would be content just like, okay, growing 2 acres. Like, I would always be like, let's expand, let's go bigger. Like, oh, there's this big, you know, commercial, like, contract that we could get growing thousands of heads of lettuce, you know, every week or what. That would just be my natural tendency is just to kind of like, what's the next thing, build it. And so I guess I'm just a little more, uh, I don't know if the right word would be just— I don't think maybe driven, but anyways, I just kind of maybe have a bigger vision for what I want to do.

But are you happy?

Yeah, I love what I do. I absolutely love it. And I'm in a position now where I, I'm not like so tied to the business that I can't, you know, spend time with my family.

And so that's the we aspect.

Yeah, exactly.

We met his brother, remember? He's installed the greenhouse.

The younger brother was here.

Yeah.

Caleb and some friend or something. Or was it a cousin?

Some guy? It was somebody that just helps us do installations. Yeah.

Is your grandfather who bought the 200 acres still alive?

He passed away last year.

Oh man. Yeah, well, we got to see it all.

How did it go from the grandpa doctor to doing this in retirement to this entrepreneurial spirit?

Um, say that again.

The, the, the, the farm got started because of— from somebody in retirement?

Yeah.

This isn't necessarily an entrepreneurial—

yeah, sure. I mean, the entrepreneurial stuff just came from from my parents, you know, that just trying to make it in small business. Like, I don't know if my parents had just continued to follow the career path of being teachers. I don't— I mean, maybe it's still in me somewhere, but I also just feel like growing up on the farm, being homeschooled, not being kind of forced into the mold of traditional education, everything like no doubt helped to develop in me kind of this like entrepreneurial spirit. It. Like, just, uh, I think, I think that there's no doubt in that. I mean, I may have still had that if I had been in a more of a traditional upbringing, but I think that growing up on the farm and, and being homeschooled, no doubt, you know, was fuel to the fire.

Do you think that an entrepreneur is born, or do you think they're made?

I think that there's a certain part of it that, um, You just have to be— I think a certain part of it's got to be just innate, you know, something that you're born with. But certainly, like, learning how to run a business is something that is not just innate.

Yeah, it's not. It's not.

I mean, there's like, there may be like an innate desire to do the thing and to like build something and to solve a problem, you know, solve a problem. Yeah, exactly. Like, like the problem-solving side of business and like overcoming challenges and hurdles like that. So that's the kind of stuff that I love and enjoy. But Mercy, I've made so many mistakes that have cost a lot of money, a lot more than what it would've cost me to get an MBA. But the problem is the MBA doesn't solve, like I probably would've still ended up making a lot of those mistakes. So.

Yeah. Justin and I, we both went to business school and now business is just just— we graduated in '01, and business is just done differently. Sure. It's not done the way it was then.

Exactly.

You know, we're at the end of the '90s coming into the 2000s. It just was different. Like, the internet was just starting.

Now with the— I mean, it was crazy before what we could do with Google.

Yeah.

But now we have AI, and it can just be so custom and individual and, and answers in seconds.

I don't see why you would Yeah, I don't ever, I don't ever regret not going to college. I have been asked, like, you know, I don't know, would you do anything different or like, would you do anything different with your kids? I think that the one area where I would have benefited a lot is if I had had more education or training in the area of financial management.

But you could still do that.

Well, sure, and I have. I guess what I'm saying is, like, from the early— from, like, as a child, as, like, going into business, I, I went in with, um, minimal understanding of, like, how to run the finances of a business. And that, that is where I got, um, you know—

I agree with you on that, but that was the first thing we outsourced.

Yeah, sure.

Keeping—

yep. And I outsourced the meeting.

We're bad at it, right?

That was our first hire.

Yeah.

Yeah. And that's, that certainly is good, but there's a lot more to, you know, you know, understanding what your overhead is, like understanding, like I was notorious for—

Your business is a little different than ours.

Yeah. I was notorious for being like, okay, how much does it cost me to make one of these harvesters? And I would like start a stopwatch and like hit the stop button as soon as I finished the thing and be like, okay, well I need to factor in, you know, $15 an hour for this. So it's going to cost that much for this piece or whatever. And then you add it all up and it's like, okay, it's going to cost me, $100 to make the thing or whatever. But the reality is like there's a lot of other time, like when you're, you know, driving to UPS store, when you're on the phone with customers or when you're like, you know, you can't just like, oh, look at that narrow picture. There's the overhead, there's the, you know, and so I don't know, I didn't have enough understanding of that. And so like I literally did not make money the first 2 years.

I don't think a lot of people do.

Well, then why did you keep going?

That wasn't— it wasn't necessarily just about the money. I, yeah, I mean, I kept going because I'm not a quitter. I don't give up.

You're not a loser.

Well, you then went to Johnny, but he ended the—

the Johnny Seeds ended and it started becoming direct to consumer for him.

That was a big one. I mean, we did. So I think we were kind of locked in for like it was an annual contract with Johnny's. And so I did get a little bit of a— I did go back to them and negotiate a little bit of a price increase on the second year, but still wasn't really enough. Um, and, uh, so yeah, then on the third year when I was getting full retail for the set for every sale, um, and we were selling more than we'd sold previous years, that's when it was more profitable. And we also started outsourcing some of the manufacturing to other local shops because I realized like we cannot physically produce all the components that we need to in our own shop. So we went to some local machine shops down the road and stuff like that to, to start outsourcing it.

Do you still produce all of it, or do you completely outsource the manufacturing?

It depends on which product line you're specifically referring to. Uh, specifically the Harvester, we do everything ourselves now. Yeah, yeah, we, we actually outsourced for a while and then brought that back in-house. Um, and I would still say that's true, although there's a little bit of a caveat to that, and that we actually have a separate company now that's doing the manufacturing company that I still own. It's just kind of like two sister companies. So, but yeah, we do every— we do all the machining, welding, and fabrication and stuff for, for the harvesters.

Is the goal to sell one day?

Um, no, not anytime soon.

You're enjoying yourself?

I, I enjoy— I love what I do.

What time do you get up in the morning?

Um, that varies a lot. I, I do not have a good rhythm. This morning I got up at 4:30.

Okay. Uh, that's because you drove.

It just depends. Like, honestly, how far is this?

5, 6, 6 hours? Yeah.

I, um, I would like to be in a better rhythm, but we have 3 kids, um, you know, that are 2 and a half years apart. So, uh, life is like, I don't get to sleep. Like, actually, I spent the last 4 hours of the night in my, in the bed with my, in a twin bed with my son. So that's where I was. That's where I— yeah, yeah, that's where I woke up this morning. So it's like, you know, I don't get— I don't get through a night, you know. Uh, so it just depends on the night, you know.

That's funny. Yeah, we were done with all that and then we were like, let's have another kid.

Yeah, yeah, that's God's trick. You start sleeping during the night, you have another kid.

But I mean, to answer the question, like, I I generally am out of the house headed to work about between 7:00 and 7:45 in the morning.

And the first thing you think about in the morning, is it what?

I'm generally thinking about work most waking hours. Yeah. It's something that I need to try to work on because I'm so driven with the work that even if I'm home playing with the kids or Yeah, you know, I get it. I can sometimes just still be thinking about, you know, work.

Definitely.

So, but I mean, I have a big enough and, you know, solid enough team now and I'm not, I'm not actively involved in the day-to-day operations. So like I still, I lead all of our, our, our, I lead our engineering team, like product development team, and I'm heavily involved in, in the marketing and content creation side of it, but I'm not involved in the operational side of the shop. So the whole warehouse operations and all the inventory and shipping and stuff like that is all goes through a team that reports to me, but it's like completely independent.

Those are the things you're not as interested in?

Um, not necessarily. I, I really could love all aspects of the business. I just have had to delegate and release that, or else it's kind of we never would have been able to get to the point where we are.

Where do you find these people?

Um, all over. We haven't had too much trouble.

Do official job postings, hiring people.

But yeah, we hire through Indeed oftentimes. You know, it just—

they're moving to Hickman County.

A lot of our— or a lot of our employees now live, you know, are from the area. But we have had some that move. Are—

where's a lot of pressure?

Yeah, our warehouse operations manager moved from Ohio.

And how many employees you got?

Uh, about 35 now.

You feel a lot of pressure?

Um, I really don't stress too much. I'm pretty easygoing guy. Um, there certainly has been times where there's been tremendous pressure.

You guys carry a lot of debt?

No, no, we don't carry any debt on the—

Is that a stick?

A stick?

Is that a stick for you not to do Not really.

I'm not totally anti-debt. We have, you know, debt on like our real estate assets, but like we don't, we don't use any like line of credits for like inventory and stuff like that. So we just—

So you own all the inventory outright?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, it's a huge cash suck.

Yeah, I'm sure it is.

But are you sitting on some inventory that's really old?

No, no, it's not going through our inventory pretty quickly. It's where it gets expensive is stuff like SiloSharp where where it's, you know, $50,000 for a container and we have to keep, you know, multiple containers in stock because of, you know, 4-month lead times on stuff.

Yeah.

When's your busiest— spring busiest time? Busiest time?

Yeah, right now it starts to pick up for us, um, and then it'll kind of peak in March and April, and, and by June it'll be slow again. Okay.

Does it pick up again at Christmas? Christmas gifts are not really— not really Christmas gifties.

I mean, I'm sure You're probably still selling through the growing season, but just—

yeah, it's just like, I guess what I would say is like June is typically like one of our slowest months of the year. And, um, in June we'll do about on average I would say like a third of the sales that we do in like March and April. Okay.

Is this a big problem?

It's challenging, um, because, uh, just that much seasonality does creates some challenges with, you know, managing team. And we've tried to not hire like seasonal workers. So we try to keep everybody employed year round. And like with very few exceptions, we have been able to do that. So in the summer months when we're a little bit slower, the team works on a lot of like improvement projects. And, you know, yeah, it's kind of like what went well, what didn't go well, let's fix it for the next busy season and We encourage our team to like take their vacation time. I was gonna say summer, you know, it's like, well, that's good, highly encouraged, you know. Uh, take your vacation time in the summer when things are slow. Um, we, we give quite a little bit of liberty in people taking like unpaid time off, you know, because there's not as much to do. But, you know, there's always something to do, there's always orders going out, so, um, it just gets slow. But yeah, the spring for us is— can be Yeah, insane.

Is that why you were just in Costa Rica? Was that a vacation right before the busyness?

Yeah, that was a bit busy season.

Or were you doing business over there?

Uh, I was working some. Yeah, um, we, we were in Puerto Rico and, uh, workcation. It was like my wife— originally I was like, oh, let's go for a week, and she was like, can we go longer? And I'm like, if I— if you're gonna be okay with me working a few hours every day, we can go.

Yeah, so then you can expense it all.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, I trapped you.

Yeah, probably not, but depends on how much you want to play in the grave. Yeah, but I was working, um, a few hours every day, and then— but it's still great, you know, because you're just out of here longer, out of your normal, like, rhythms at home, and you can still go to the beach every evening, every afternoon.

So you went to Puerto Rico, not Costa Rica?

Puerto Rico. Yeah, Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico is the new Costa Rica.

I mean, I don't know, it's nice. I mean, it's, it's, uh, nobody take that for what he just—

I'm just throwing it out there.

Anything sounds good. Yeah, I mean, it's, uh, Puerto Rico is easy to travel to because you, you know, you don't have to use a passport or anything like that. It's easy to get in and out of because it's, you know, US territory. Um, and it's very inexpensive to, to get there. Like, you can get flights for really inexpensive.

How was it traveling with 3 children?

Uh, well, I mean, they travel fine. It's just all of the paraphernalia that comes along, you know, 3 car seats and—

oh yeah, because they're all little.

Yeah. So yeah, it's, um, But yeah, it was fine.

Yeah, we took our Jonah in our car seat to Honduras, and we went to the taxi that was scheduled to pick us up.

Yes.

And we looking in there and we don't see no place for a car seat. We try to tell this guy, we didn't speak any Spanish, he just looked at us and goes, yeah, I had to hold him for—

well, I didn't.

You know how the roads are in Honduras?

Yep.

No, it's crazy. I remember some of the craziest bus rides of my life in, in Honduras.

Where did you go in Honduras?

Uh, I don't even remember the name of the town. It was a very rural area, like 3 or 4 hours from San Pedro. Okay. Is it— yeah, like up in the mountains. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. And we, we went to Guaymaca, which was a little orphanage. There was— it's not a little orphanage, it's a large orphanage out there.

Cool.

But it's like 2 hours. I, I love traveling. Like, so I don't know, it just kind of resets your perspective when you get out and see different cultures and how, how fortunate we have it.

Why are you looking at me like that?

Well, you need to make that phone call.

Somebody wants me to go to Africa. I'm not so sure.

Oh, Africa's—

Africa was nowhere on my radar. Why do you say it's great?

You've been to Africa?

It's just a to— like, if— I mean, it's totally different experience. Like, Africa's— where in Africa Africa.

Some new country.

Eswatini.

Used to be Swaziland.

It used to be Swaziland. It's down south near South Africa.

I don't know much about that, but I've been in Rwanda. Rwanda's, uh, yeah, I mean, Rwanda's obviously got some pretty dark history, but there's— but yeah, as a society, they're obviously super resilient.

Have you been back to Kenya?

I have, yeah. We've been— went back to Kenya, um, in— I don't remember the— but I was I think anyways, a few, about 10 years ago.

Do you get any malaria or new parasites?

We did. I did take the, like, the malaria, I think the vaccines or whatever.

It would have been a malaria, like, pill that you take every day. I don't think that.

No, I don't think I did that. Yeah, it was like yellow fever.

Yellow fever is a vaccine that some of them countries you had to—

I did get really sick while I was in Rwanda. I was in the hospital for a couple days. I don't know what I had, but I was, I was so out of it, I don't even remember.

Yeah, but it was, it was, that's, I, I don't know, we, I'm, I'm, I think we should talk to the guy. I'm not going. Yeah.

Um, yeah, it's easy to send me in there.

I mean, it's a cool experience, like especially if you can go to like on a safari or like the Kenya was really fun going back. I mean, I was just born there, so there was some, you know, nostalgia going back. We were able to visit some people that, um, that, you know, knew my parents and remember heard. In fact, this was funny memories, you know, probably not interesting to the viewers, but we like go visit these people and they had named one of their kids Disinger. This is pretty common in like Africa, like, because like my, my family had like really helped like sponsor some of them through school or whatever. So the Disinger family was like really, you know, so they named their son, they named their kid Disinger after Oh yeah, his first name was Disinger.

Casual.

There's— I love it. It's kind of weird, but yeah. So, but it's—

was that easy for them to say?

I mean, obviously they say it with a little bit of a, you know, accent, but it's just— yeah, it's just a way, I guess, that they, they honor people or remember, remember people or whatever. But yeah, certainly, um, safari in Kenya, um, and then, uh, yeah, the Mombasa is on the coast there, and so there's like— you can go there and ride camels on the beach. Oh well, go snorkeling and stuff. It's beautiful.

We have friends in Uganda right now. There's— they've been there for a couple years. They're trying to get back, but okay, it hasn't worked out yet. So they're— they adopted some— a child.

Okay.

And I don't know, I don't know what's going on.

Lots of hoops, probably.

Yeah, and the hoops they're closing because of immigration stuff with the US.

And that's unfortunate.

It's been, it's been a lot for them. So it's, it's hard because they don't know when they're coming back and all that. But I'm like, you should at least call the guy and have a conversation. I'm not saying go, I'm not pushing you out the door. I just think we want to take— I want him to take our big boys because, like you said, like, you just get a different viewpoint. When we lived in Honduras, we had such a different viewpoint meat. Um, you know, we just had—

you're over there 3 months, but it's a big part of your life.

Yeah, yeah, it's huge. It did— it, it molded a lot of— it actually is the reason we farm, is we lived on the farm there at the orphanage. The orphanage has a farm.

Yeah.

And, um, yeah, they made us want to have chickens. He did check— he was in charge of the chickens, the meat chickens.

Interesting.

Would the day we got there on like a Saturday and they had him, um, you know, in charge of the meat chickens that just got there, like 1,000 of them, and he saw it through to, you know, harvesting them. And then he also collected the eggs and, um, he worked with the boys on the orphanage and I worked with the special needs girls at the orphanage. It was just, it was a, it was a very molding time for us.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

I just think international travel is super— like, if you have an opportunity to do it, I think it's worth doing, especially your boys are at a great age for that. They'll remember it the rest of their lives.

Yeah.

I recently actually just in the end of or beginning of December had the opportunity to go to China and Taiwan.

Wow.

So I was gone for about 10 days. in China and Taiwan, which was, which was really neat. I had the opportunity to go with a friend who is also a business owner, and he actually lived in Taiwan and China also and would speak, spoke the language fluently. So that was a neat experience.

What's China like?

Uh, it's, um, the, the mind-boggling thing is just how many people and how large the, the cities are there. I mean, it's just incredible. You just go for, miles and miles of just like high-rise apartment complexes, just wild forever, you know. And just, uh, the other thing that blew my mind was the, the scale of covered greenhouse growing space in China. I mean, that there's actually some really interesting, uh, articles out there that I've seen since then. Like, NASA's actually been able to use like satellite imaging to kind of like track and monitor like the, the use of greenhouses and covered growing space. And I think it was, I think, 60— I think it was 61% of the world's covered growing spaces in China. Might have been a little bit higher than that, but it's insane the, the amount of greenhouses they use in China.

Very interesting.

Yeah.

Why were you there?

Um, so the friend I went with was, uh, specifically going to visit some manufacturers, uh, that, that are— that manufacture some product that he's looking to import. I took the opportunity to visit some, some, uh, uh, some vendors that we work with. We have one vendor that we work with in China. It's a greenhouse manufacturer. We, we buy some brackets and stuff from them. Um, and that's only been actually in the last like couple years. Previously we've been, we've been sourcing it domestically, but we were honestly— the crazy thing is we were actually legitimately having quality issues with our U.S. vendor on some parts. Just couldn't get good quality. And this vendor sent us some samples and we, I the— it's just impeccable quality. And they're just— I mean, it's like, I'm all for—

always that—

I'm all for U.S., uh, manufacturing. Obviously we do as much of it as we can, but there's certain things that I can't do or I can't easily do. And the— I mean, we have a vendor in Taiwan that we've used for a number of years for some wire-formed parts, and they're just incredible to work with. They're so on top of it. You send them a request for a quote or you send them a new drawing and they just like— they're on on it, you know, and they'll get you samples. And DHL, you can get the stuff in, you know, a week. And it's just— I don't know, uh, they're, they're, they're a pleasure to work with. And I know there's a lot of controversy about that, but, you know, it's cool to go and visit them though, because these are just, you know, mom-and-pop companies, just like you have here. Like, the, the company we work with in Taiwan, it's literally the guy, you know, from the age— from the time he was 15 has been learning this trade and started his own business this 15 years ago. And, you know, his wife does all the finances and stuff for the company and he does all the programming. They have like 5 or 6 employees that run all the equipment. It's just neat to go and like see how they run their business. And it's, it's, it was a, it was a really cool experience. Yeah, but it's a very different culture.

How long was that flight?

It's like a really long time. Yeah, it was 38 hours of travel from the time I left my house to when I got to Jinan. Is Northern China. But yeah, air pollution is awful there, um, but just a lot of people.

Wow.

What percentage do you manufacture in the U.S. and, um, international?

I mean, I could literally name off all of the things that we buy internationally, and it's not that many of them. Um, you know, the, the landscape fabric like, again, there's no manufacturers in the US that I have ever been able to find or that I'm aware of. So that has to— that comes from India currently.

But you put the holes in it?

We do, yeah. So we do all the, the processing of it for burning the, the hole, the planting holes and the patterns and all that. Um, but, uh, it's, it's very few, you know. All the steel components for our— oh well, the, the metal pipes and stuff, that's all US-manufactured steel. Um, and, uh, so I mean, most of it is, is domestic. Now there's— we have enough products now that, you know, irrigation, a lot of, uh, you know, some of that, the irrigation fittings and stuff is produced in like Mexico and stuff like— but I, I don't know. As far as like the products that we actually produce ourselves, it's majority, you know, domestic.

I mean, that's considered North America still, isn't it? Mexico?

Yeah, sure, that's North America. Yeah, yeah.

So I mean, you're not— I mean, you have to buy you can't, if you can't buy it in the US.

Yeah. I don't know. My approach on international trade has probably changed. I'm all supportive of US as much as possible, but there's certain things that unfortunately are, we've just moved away from. I mean, in our small town where we live in Centerville, there's 50 years ago, not even that long ago, but certainly 50 years ago, we had a massive Levi's jeans facility there. So a huge percentage of the town there worked at Levi's plant. And the other plant that was also huge and employed a huge majority of the population there was YKK. They did buttons and zippers and everything. And I think that was the Levi's and YKK were working together, And I mean, there's literally a rural small town in America, but if they were to come back and try to do that in the US, they're not going to find hundreds of employees like they had back then to make buttons in Centerville, Tennessee. So there's just certain things that have been completely outsourced to other countries. And even if we tried to bring it back to the US, I think we'd struggle with that. That. So anyways, that's a whole topic. But I think the, the Farmer's Friend philosophy is we try to do as much as we can ourselves, and when we can't do it ourselves, we try to source locally, and when we can't do that, we source internationally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have the tariffs affected you at all?

Yes.

Getting overseas?

Yeah, we got hit with tariffs pretty bad for, um, uh, from the Netherlands. We, we, you know, Netherlands is a huge, um, a huge player in the like greenhouse space. And so the, the clipper trellising system comes from the Netherlands.

Oh wow.

And so we got hit with, uh, 50% tariffs on that.

Is that why it's so much more expensive?

We did have to raise our prices of, I don't know, 20% maybe because of the tariffs.

But there's a 50% tariff, so who then makes up the rest of the other 30%?

Well, the but like, I guess what I'm saying is that like, if our, uh, if our cost of goods sold for the product goes up by 50%, we don't necessarily have to raise our retail price 50%.

Okay.

But so the, the actual sale price went up something like 20% maybe.

Okay.

But yeah, so that's, that's one of them. Um, and then India has been tariffed pretty heavily. So yeah, so I'm sure we don't want to get into politics.

No.

All right. We all have our opinions.

Yeah.

And we don't know who's really right.

I mean, yeah, for sure. It's just interesting how the last year has gone.

Yeah.

And not how I think a lot of people hoped it was going to go. So yeah, we'll just leave it at that.

Yeah. You're going to have two more kids?

We're actively having conversations.

Not today. Yeah.

Yeah.

Just— did you—

did you want to have a large family like you came from? You know, like, that's—

I, I think both me and my wife want to have, uh, more kids.

How many did she come from, like, her family?

She just has one brother.

Okay, so there's just two.

Um, so she, when she was younger, she wanted to have a dozen kids. So we're definitely not— we, we needed to start a lot earlier.

How old are you? You just look like a—

well, I know, But I feel like families that have a dozen kids, how old are they?

They do start at 18.

18, 19, 20.

For a dozen, it's a lot.

I think 25 when she had our firstborn. No, it would've been older than that. 26 or 27.

That's how old we were. Yeah. I was 28, I think, when I had James.

She's going to watch this and be like, you got that totally wrong. Let me think about this. James is 4. Fact-checker. She actually would have been 28, I think, when he was born.

She come from a similar background? Yeah.

I mean, different background in that she grew up in a much more traditional household of her dad's a nurse, so he worked an 8-to-5 kind of job at the hospital.

She homeschooled?

She was homeschooled most, uh, mostly, and, and grew up Seventh-day Adventist as well. Yeah.

Um, where did you meet?

Um, that's a kind of a crazy story.

Um, do you think it all has to be a crazy story for homeschooled kids, especially growing up?

I don't know. I mean, to meet a spouse, I guess when I say crazy story, it goes so far back that my, my grandpa, my mom's dad, was the dean of Abby's dad in, in high school.

Oh wow. So, so you've known her for a long time?

My— our families have known each other for a long time, since before.

So were they surprised when you and Abby got together, or were they like, oh really?

It was a pretty big surprise, yeah, because neither one of us had really shown any interest in each other.

Were you exposed to each other?

We were, yeah. Um, from the time we were about, uh, uh, 10 or 12, uh, wow, we were quite connected with their family. They would come down and visit the farm, and nobody saw that. Times a year. Um, she's a little bit older than I. Okay, not by much. I mean, less than a year.

Oh, um, and when you're young, that's a big deal.

Yeah, exactly. You know, she was, she was this mature, you know, goody-goody, and I was this young, reckless, crazy, wild kid.

Yeah.

You know, I think She even told her mom at one point, I would never marry Jonathan or something like that. I was pretty hotheaded and obnoxious when I was young. So it definitely was a surprise. And I really, yeah, neither one of us were really interested in each other. And I had another girl that I had been interested in for a long time and then actually dated for 2 years. And then when that ended, you know, I kind of took a year of no, no interest in girls. Just kind of like, that's when I went to Kenya and Rwanda and just like kind of did a little bit of a reset in my life. And then I had some friends and actually my mom and sister were both kind of like encouraging me to, to pursue Abby. So that's how it started. Hmm.

And how old were you guys when you got married?

25. Well, tech— yeah, yeah, we were both 25.

Okay, started dating at 23.

Um, actually, we only dated for— well, from the time we started dating until the time we got married was just over a year.

Okay, so that's handy. Family, friends.

So yeah, and that was the thing, I was like, I, I wouldn't necessarily recommend like a year long, like from dating to getting married, but we had known each other for so long, right?

Yeah, that's, that's, that's—

we, we immediately basically had started having conversations about like, you know, what do you want in life, you know, that type of— it wasn't, there wasn't, there wasn't any like getting to know each other on like a shallow level. It was just straight to the deep stuff, you know.

Man, that's nice.

I would say if Justin and I hadn't started dating at 16, we probably would have gotten married really fast and everyone would have freaked out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, we— so you guys started dating at 16 and 17 and we it was 5 and a half years because we went to college.

Yeah, we should have gotten married at 18.

We should have gotten married at 18 and not gone to college. And I mean, we would have done things a lot differently. I wouldn't have gotten married in the church, you know. We had just gotten married here on the farm and had a potluck for our reception, you know, like just all these little things that are now more really who we are, right?

Um, but yeah, yeah, everybody's entitled to change. I know.

Well, I mean We knew we wanted to get married probably within a month of starting dating. We were like, I think this is it. Like we both felt very confident in that. And that's why I say like if we had started dating at 18, we probably would have gotten married within like 3 or 4 months and people would have freaked out.

I mean, we've definitely had that conversation of like, man, wouldn't it have been cool if we had like started dating, you know, because like both of us kind of, she actually went to California and worked at out of college out there. She's a music teacher. And so she was doing her thing. I was pursuing this other relationship and doing my business. And so we actually didn't really have a whole lot of connection other than seeing each other real infrequently at an event or something for a number of years, 5 or 6 years. And so yeah, the thought has definitely, man, what if we had been interested in each other when we were 18, 19? But yeah.

Then you could have had those 12 kids.

Exactly. We could have had 12 kids. So we're just going to have to settle for 6 now. No, I don't know. We'll see. Time will tell.

Yeah, we're at that stage where our kids are teenagers, and so that kind of sneaks up on you. And because we're homesteaders and homeschoolers and home birthers, everything at home.

Yeah, I just want my children to—

yeah, hey, I think maybe we have to be, you know, we have to be— I don't know, we feel more led to be a part of making sure they can find spouses. I don't think our parents worried about it. They sent us off to school, off to church. They'll figure it out. Off to college. And we were kind of on our own figuring out a spouse. But for some reason, I want to be more involved and, well, I think because— facilitate and give my kids opportunities, present the right people.

I think part of that is, is because we didn't have any direction from our parents, really. You know, I mean, our parents definitely had thoughts about you, and I'm sure they had thoughts about me. I don't know if they expressed them as well as they could have or felt like they had a voice in our life, maybe. I don't know. Yeah, but I mean, we just— we've raised our kids so differently than when we were raised, right?

So we're having to figure it out.

Yeah. I mean, I look back on, you know, some things my, my parents did and like they made some real significant sacrifices to try to help us kids like develop friendships and meet people and stuff because like, I mean, we were, you know, growing up on a farm, like not going to the public schools in the area, going to a very small church, small community church where there's not a whole lot of a bunch of other kids. And so honestly, it was a huge blessing to be part of the greater Seventh-day Adventist church community because being a part of that kind of affiliation and we tended to be more on the conservative side of the spectrum. It's no different than I think most other churches is that you have the the liberal side of things and the super, super crazy conservative, literally cult side of things. And then you have the kind of somewhere in the middle, and we tend to be probably on the more conservative side. So we would go to these camp meetings and stuff where it's a bunch of people gathering and there was a family that was putting on these camp meetings. And so we would literally go, for, you know, a long weekend every year. And then you're just interacting with a bunch of people from, okay, other states and stuff like not, you know, not just local people. So that's, that's actually where our— my wife and my family's like reconnected was at one of those camp meetings.

Where's she from? She's not—

she's from Michigan.

Those happen once a year. That's a Seventh-day Adventist convention or something.

Well, it's not actually. Tied specifically to the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, but the people that put it on are Adventists.

How many people come to that?

Well, when I was growing up, I mean, it was hundreds of people.

So your parents would do that and maybe you would meet a spouse?

Yeah. And then, yeah, I think part of it was probably just exposing us to friends, helping us develop friends outside of Yeah.

Okay. Did you— did anybody develop friends or spouses? Sure.

Yeah, lots. I mean, honestly. And so then from that, there was like connections that would be made and then my parents would take time to— like all of our vacation time was generally like traveling to visit people. So we had friends in like Virginia that we would go and visit. And here in North Carolina, we had some friends that we would come and visit. And so like like, you know, they were— they raising a family, you know, 5 kids on a ridiculously small amount of money. I mean, you know, yes, they have made, made it in farming now, but there was, you know, many, many years where it's like, uh, you know, scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Yeah. So they would—

beans and rice, rice and beans.

Vacation was visiting family.

Yeah.

Just to interact and get relationships going, but to say it didn't cost money.

Yeah. I mean, we never went to Disneyland or cruises or anything like that as kids. So they would literally, I'm sure, take their last money to take us to go visit some friends or do one of these camp meetings or something like that. So they, to their credit, were really intentional about making sure that us kids had exposure to the kind of people that they wanted us to be developing relationships with. Because I mean, in our local community, I'm sure it's not all that different than around here. If you're going to the public schools, you're just being exposed to—

The people who are in close proximity. It's not—

A lot of bad— I mean, it's really sad. I mean, we had an employee that worked in our customer service team up until about a year ago when she had her first kid. But she— I remember her saying that like most of her friends that she grew up with or that she went to school with had died of drug overdoses.

Oh, wow.

It's awful. Our area is pretty bad for that. So, you know, you just get exposed to a lot of stuff. And my parents were like, obviously homeschooling us, did not want that kind of exposure. But at the same time, like, your kids aren't going to grow up to be like I think, well-rounded adults if they don't have exposure to other kids and having friendships and, you know, that type of thing. So they had to really, I guess, go out of their way to try to make that happen.

Yeah, good for them. And then finally they started encouraging you to take notice of this lady.

Yeah.

Yeah. Your wife. Yep, here we are, matchmaking. No, that's, that's a good idea though, to just be friends with families of like-mindedness, and then you end up having the kids that could possibly—

yeah, that's really what they did. You know, the other thing that they did, which, um, honestly has served them quite well, is that, um, farming for them has always been more than just the business. It's been more of a missional thing. My dad in particular has this really, this pretty strong philosophy that agriculture is God's initial plan for man, which I mean, if you read and believe the Bible and creation, God made man and put him in the garden and specifically put him in that place to tend and keep the garden. And so, my dad has pretty strong feelings and I mean, I tend to agree that like, you know, a lot of what, you know, a lot of different career paths just don't have that same level of like fulfillment and value that, that like farming and gardening do. And so they have this sort of missional aspect to what they're doing other than just the business side of it. And so on that note, they, um, let me think, 15 years ago started a, an internship program program where they have young people that are interested in agriculture that come and spend 6 months to a year on the farm. And so my sister married one of the interns.

Okay.

One of my cousins—

Told you we should start an intern program.

My cousins married the— one of my— well, Paul's sister married one of the interns. Um, my youngest brother is engaged to a girl that, that's gone through— that came to the internship program. Uh, my, my brother-in-law, uh, met his wife through the, through the farm internship program. And so anyways, it's just— it's created a lot of, uh, interesting connections.

Yeah, we were going to start an internship program.

It's, it's just interesting. In fact, And there's other, there's other couples that have come out of the internship program, you know, people that were together.

How did they find the interns?

It's like they didn't go looking for them. They just like, yeah, you know, there's—

okay. Where do they house them?

We have a number of like tiny houses on the farm.

Oh, you do?

We built like some little cabins and stuff.

You do guys and girls separate?

I mean, like they have their separate housing, but it's not like a guy.

How many?

Um, I think the most they've— it's always small because they want to— they really want to be able to like integrate these interns into not just the farm but also even sort of trying to include them in some of the family dynamics, like meals together and stuff like that.

They take supper together?

Um, they do lunch together.

Lunch?

Yeah, they do a lunch together every day.

What do they eat for lunch?

Uh, lots of vegetables.

I imagine you'd love it.

Yeah, he's eating some veggies. Yeah, um, I would love it. I love vegetables. Oh yeah, I mean, I eat protein, but I love vegetables.

Um, no, there's lots of—

so what do you think they're having for lunch today?

Um, probably, probably a big salad. My mom's— she makes some like killer like roasted veggies, you know, so like potatoes and squash and, you know, garlic, onions and stuff, just like seasoning, like olive oil, and then just baking it or air frying it or something like that. So, that's a staple. But, a lot of rice and beans, a summertime dish that, man, I really love this is rice with seasoned beans and then doing diced tomatoes and cucumbers and stuff like that on top with some type of tzatziki or ranch kind of sauce on it. That's pretty good.

That's your jam?

Then you get your— What's that?

That's your jam?

Yeah. I mean, it's It's great. So, you know, you get that complete— tomatoes and cucumbers, complete proteins, you know, a few beans and the rice.

And so if you're on death row and you get a last meal, what's your meal gonna be?

Oh, mercy, that's, uh, it's a little different.

Would you let it all go and eat some meat?

No, because I wouldn't enjoy it.

Go to town on the rice.

I wouldn't enjoy that because she didn't grow up on it. So yeah, make some biscuits and— yeah, biscuits and gravy. Oh yeah, and corn margaritas, you know.

What would you make the gravy with?

Um, you know, just like a white gravy.

Do you guys— you guys drink milk? Yes? No?

Um, you're not vegan?

Vegetarian? You're not vegan?

Yeah, so like my, my wife and I and our family, like, we are vegetarian but not strictly vegan.

So yeah, so you'll do milk?

Um, I don't drink cow's milk. I do like, you know, almond milk and a soy milk or something.

What fat do you put in gravy?

Um, that's a question for somebody else. Probably some oil. I don't know.

Do you use butter or no? No butter? Yeah, you will use butter. Okay, okay. Because see, how I make my gravy is just like—

we're gonna use bacon grease.

I'll use bacon or sausage grease, but then I'll— some, some— you can use butter to make it.

I mean, I don't feel like I might—

they might use butter.

Malnourished.

Oh well, and then I'll— and then I would, you know, put in my flour, which we're gluten-free, so it's a free flour. And then I would pour milk in and whisk it, and that's how I'd make my gravy.

Aren't one of the Blue Zones Seventh-day Adventists, or at least vegetarians?

Yeah, yeah. So the Adventists do have kind of a, a unique perspective on the health— like, we call it like a health message or whatever. It's just kind of, yeah, uh, part of definitely a part of the religion, I guess you'd say.

Yeah.

Um, but it's, it's, yeah, so there, I think one of the Blue Zones is, uh, Loma Linda, California, which is where there's a, okay, Seven Day Oneness school.

Back, back to what you mentioned earlier with your dad saying man is meant to work in the garden, uh, that's what, Genesis 3 or something? And this is part of, uh, You guys live by that?

Yeah.

You believe that the meat came after the fall?

Sure, it definitely did. I mean, and I think that there's a lot of examples. Obviously Jesus ate meat when he was on earth. So I'm not going to sit here and say you shouldn't eat meat. I mean, I think you certainly can eat meat. But even when God was leading the children of Israel out of Egypt, he provided manna for them. We don't know what manna was, but he was providing for them in a scenario where they were not able to sustain their own life. I mean, they were in the desert, right? And they're on the move, so they're not able to grow in that environment where they're traveling. So he was sustaining them with manna. But they were just grumbling and complaining. And I think the Bible says they were longing for the fleshpots of Egypt or whatever. And so then God's finally like, "Okay, fine, here's a bunch of quail or whatever." And so I think that our take on it is just God's original plan was that we were clearly eating vegetables and herbs and whatever else. And he put man in the garden to tend it and keep it. Garden, you know, like I've heard you mention, like, you know, gardens are not— it doesn't happen naturally in the wild or whatever. And I suppose that's true. Yeah. But maybe that's why we have to tend and keep it.

Yeah.

I just wonder though what that Garden of Eden was like, because, you know, but we don't— you know, an apple. But I mean, it was certainly different. You know what I mean?

It would have been more of a permaculture, uh, food forest, probably perennial But then he did put us to work after the— yeah, that was part of the curse, right?

Part of the curse is that we would start sweating. You know, you will have to toil, you know, the weeds.

Yeah, yeah, you would have to toil.

So that's, you know, that was definitely a big part of the curse. You know, for women it was pain and childbearing, and for the guys it's, you know, uh, providing for your family is going to be hard.

Yes. Okay, so as far as— yes. In nature, forget it. The gardens that we eat from today are not going to happen in nature. But if these— if these— if, if we just all man left this farm, the cows would break out and just be happy as ever.

Yeah.

And just graze and just wander miles and miles and miles and— yeah, and proliferate, right? The garden would just— would be gone as we know.

Sure.

You'd have wild strawberries and blueberries and things like that. Grapes. Yeah, you got wild grapes growing over. So it'd be— it's different that way.

I mean, I'll be honest, lots of food. I mean, yeah, I'll be honest with you, like, my perspective, and like, I'm still pretty strictly, uh, vegetarian, but, um, I definitely see why, you know, homesteading and like subsistence living gets a lot easier when you're eating meat.

And I want to tell— I want to tell Rebecca, you know, I mean, just let's just do— just, just the whole family, it would just be so much easier.

Yeah, I can't do it.

I would eat one and a half cows a year, right? That's it. I could live off that.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you probably at least were exposed to that guy. He called himself Liver King.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, I knew about that.

He was like, you know, 100% claimed he was 100% carnivore. And then obviously there was a big scandal with him doing steroids and lying about it and everything. But I— there was— I think Netflix did a documentary on that. I remember him talking about the fact that, yeah, since then he's gone to like gardening and like, yeah. And he literally was saying that he felt like it was his shtick, so he kind of was committed to it. But he's since then realized that he was starving his body of—

Yeah, you got to be careful not to get caught up in a shtick.

Yeah.

And now I think it was Jess or something talked about God putting us to work in the garden and there's a fellowship.

It was Jess Howard.

So there is that. So there is then work in the garden. For that.

Um, I'm not gonna sit here and be like everybody needs to be vegetarian. I don't necessarily feel like that's the case. I think, uh, there's a lot of, um, you know, it's just traditionally produced or like commercially produced like meat and dairy would scare me. Like, I mean, you see like truckloads of chickens going down the road to slaughterhouses and stuff.

That's, that's just—

yeah, disgusts me.

Yeah, David, uh, Brandon Sheard came here, helped us butcher. And he told me that when people come to his farm, they'll say, we just wanted to bring our kids out and see where their food comes from. He'll say, this is not where your food comes from, right? This is not where your meat comes from, right?

So like, if you're growing it yourself and you're doing— you're, you're managing that process, very different. That's great. And I think that, you know, living off the land and homesteading, um, in a lot of ways probably is quite a bit easier if you're, you know, eating meat and And certainly if you were dropped in the wilderness and forced to survive, you're probably going to have to revert to eating meat and bugs and stuff like that unless you're in some sort of tropical place. I mean, Puerto Rico, for instance, part of the reason we go down there is one of my cousins owns a mini farm down there. They have 15 acres and they Airbnb it out. So while we're down there, I was like, I'm just foraging and there's breadfruit trees everywhere and bananas and there's so much. And year round there's so much growing wild. But if you got dropped in the middle of the mountains of North Carolina and you have to survive—

It'd be rough.

You're not going to survive as a vegetarian.

Yeah. The Cherokee were not eating only vegetarian.

No.

Certainly in the winter.

With enough time to prepare and plant and, you know, grow, like, you can probably make it, but not like— not without a lot of prep.

Yeah. So Barbara O'Neill put a wrench in it for me a bit because she said, uh, when she was on the podcast, she said, well, there won't be any meat in heaven because there won't be any death. I'm like, dang it.

Yeah, that's, that's a tough one.

Yeah, I don't know, because Yeah, I used to think all we were going to do is sing in heaven. I didn't want to go because I don't like singing, right? So I hope that's not the case. Yeah, I hope that's not the case.

Well, who knows, you know?

I mean, we don't know. We don't know.

I don't know that. I don't know that we might not even be so preoccupied with even eating.

Exactly. That's what my thought is, is that, yeah, we can't even imagine what it, what it, what it is. It's so foreign to what we are here that I just, I don't know. I, it's, it's very interesting.

Um, I was pretty high 2-3 weeks without food.

Yeah, I watched that, by the way. That was very interesting. I, I, um, I fasted for a week one time, and, uh, so I, I, I know what that first week is like.

It's hard.

And, uh, I, I also chuckled when there was this one point where you said something I was like, I think I come from a lineage of people that must have starved a lot or something like that, because every time there's food in front of me, I just want to eat it. Yeah, I can relate to that.

Yeah, because I don't—

I don't know. She is— she can count on one hand how many times she's stuffed herself.

I stuff myself every meal because it feels so uncomfortable. I don't like the feeling.

So she comes from a very privileged people that always had a lot of, a lot of food.

There was always food at the table. Yeah, for a long time.

That was hilarious.

But that was Impressive to go that long. And I think that— but I remember doing that because I— it was one of the things I was listening to a podcast or something, and this guy was saying like the first week of every year, I don't even remember who it was, but like January 1st every year he fasts for a week and it's kind of like a reset and like it kind of feels like do that hard thing and then the rest of the year is going to go well type of thing. And so like it was— I somehow was listening to this like right about this beginning of the year and was like, I'm just going to do it. So just on a whim, just just was like, I'm fasting for a week. And, uh, it was tough, but, um, also not as— like, once you set your mind to it, it really wasn't that bad.

Yeah. Now longer ones like that aren't that bad. I did a 4-day the other day.

4 weeks wasn't that bad. That's crazy.

It was a lot. A lot. Yeah, it was insane.

Um, and I had no experience with it, and nobody I knew had gone that long, so it was quite scary.

But I mean, you can just tell the internet will scare you to death.

Sure.

The commenters, the—

yeah, you can't—

any research you do is going to be very conventional and it's, it's going to scare you.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think fasting, at least intermittent fasting, is, is a powerful tool.

One thing I learned is these created bodies, these— God created these bodies to, um, it's a miracle how we're so efficient at burning fat. So 1 pound of fat is 3,500 calories. That's a really hard day. Yeah, that's a very laborious day.

Yep.

Um, but, and it's really so, so we're very efficient at burning fat, which is fuel, but we also put it on really good. These are, these are things we should be— it's annoying in today's world with the plethora.

Yeah.

Yeah, but these are things we really should be thankful for, that we burn energy so well and we store it so— and it's so— it's, it's so easy to, to gain that energy. It's easy to gain the energy, hard to burn it. But that's a good thing.

Yeah.

In a normal world where we don't have this, um, unbelievable abundance. Yeah, right. Overabundance.

Yeah. No, it's, uh, I was inspired by it.

It's funny how my body could just kick in. How long has it been since my people were really hurting and really didn't have any food? My grandpa raised my family here, and it was tough, but they never went hungry. So it would have to go back at least 4 generations before somebody was hungry and couldn't help it.

Sure.

Well, but my body just kicked in and just knew exactly— it just knew exactly what to do. It just started burning the that. I felt great.

I feel like your dad definitely maybe had some memories of the Great Depression. Like, he was born during that.

They were very close. They got very close to it, you know, and they could remember.

Well, Granny told me a story once that where our house is was the potato field, and she didn't have anything to cook, and she went down there and I guess had prayed like, I hope I find something, and was able to find some food.

They would get excited about the, uh, poke salad. That's the poor man's salad. Probably because you had to boil it 3 times.

Poison you.

I'm like, I mean, the plants are trying to kill you. Yeah, you go out there and have to cook the crap out of those things. And, uh, but they would get excited about that.

I can't imagine.

Probably because they were just— they, they— I bet they were eating biscuits and gravy and salted ham or whatever. Yeah.

All winter.

Yeah, it's, um, they were ready for something different.

Yeah, they're running some, some greens. I mean, I've been studying like circadian rhythm a lot, and, you know, talking about in the summer we're actually supposed to gain weight, and in the winter where it's more lean and we're supposed to lose weight.

Yeah.

And that's kind of like the natural rhythm of— because like in the summer there's going to be berries and like the plethora of things are going to be coming in, fruits and in that nature. But in this, in the winter, it's going to be very lean. We're not going to have have the preserved foods, um, like we do now.

Yeah.

Then, you know, it's going to be just a different rhythm.

Yeah.

And it's just really interesting to think about because that's when everyone gains weight, right?

Exactly.

We stay inside and— yeah.

Well, and that's when this one lady I follow, we had her on the podcast, she was talking about like in the winter is, is, would naturally be more like meat meat, and just meat, not necessarily like other things, other things that could possibly grow in your region. You know, think about what could really grow. And then in the summer, you know, there's the plethora of all the, the extra.

Yeah, the— I read The Empire of the Summer Moon, and the Comanches had these baskets, and if they preserved enough jerky, basically a certain amount of baskets, they knew they were all right for the winter. Yeah. And then they just hunker down the— yeah, the teepee with their hides and smoke and, and eat their jerky.

Yeah.

And just ride it out.

Yeah. I mean, I'm— yeah, we have it so easy compared to—

we really do—

our ancestors had. Yeah, no doubt about that.

So you and I come from the same line of people, huh?

I guess. Yeah, a lot of starving people in our—

I could figure out.

No, so for me, like, I put on weight when I nurse a child.

Sure.

Um, like, I'm— once I give birth, it's like the thinnest I'll be until I'm done nursing.

Okay.

Yeah, my 40s have definitely thrown a wrench in all of this, but, um, I think that there was some research that was done on people like me, and it's like there was somewhere along the line that our people starved, and it changed the genetics of us to put on weight while we're nursing.

Yeah.

So that our child doesn't die.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Isn't that crazy? It's like, it's just so— I don't know, maybe something like that happened to you You guys were the babies.

I don't think there was ever any starving in my, in my childhood for sure. I mean, like I said, I, there was times where, I mean, my, my mom was feeding our whole family on, you know, probably a couple hundred dollars a month, you know, of food budget.

It was just, um, lots of beans and rice, huh?

You know, but the thing that's funny is like, I, you know, I remember as a kid like eating a ton of popcorn and, but it was always because like it's so cheap. We, yeah, we love popcorn though. Like, yeah, I mean, I grew up, you know, my grandpa Grandpa would make popcorn every Saturday night, you know, and it was like we'd sit around and eat just bowls of popcorn, you know.

It's so cheap though.

I love popcorn.

Yeah, I mean, it's great. And then, you know, lots of beans and rice. And but like, I don't ever remember, uh, feeling like deprived in any way. But looking back, I'm thinking, yeah, those were definitely budgetary decisions.

Now that you're an adult, you completely understand, right?

And it would— I mean, it would would oftentimes be like, Mom's prepping for lunch, and it's like, hey guys, can you go out and pick some whatever? You know, you just go to the garden and pick, you know. I mean, like, it's a great way to, to eat.

I was gonna say, when you guys started farming, you're— it probably eased up on a lot of the budget, on the, the grocery budget. Not that, not that, you know, it was the end-all be-all, but like, I'm sure it helped tremendously. I can just thinking of your mom and, you know, having 5 kids and—

sure, yeah. I mean, I I would say like, yeah, I mean, I definitely remember things that stand out as a kid as like, you know, special moments. Like we had a friend that would come and visit every once in a while. Every time he would come and visit, he would bring us like maple syrup, like real maple syrup. And that was like the only time we ever had like real maple syrup. And so he would bring like maple syrup and, you know, there's little things like that where it's like, It's like I grew up thinking maple syrup was like super special. And I mean, it is special and it's expensive, but like, you know, if we had maple syrup, it was like you got one pancake with maple syrup and the rest we would be putting like fruit or whatever on, you know? So there was, there was definitely things that I can remember where, especially looking back, it was like, yeah, that was definitely, you know, cinching the belt, so to speak. But yeah, We always had plenty of food and certainly, yeah, once they had kind of given up on this plan of only doing a spring strawberry crop and there was more vegetables, yeah, I mean, there's endless vegetables. And the reality is you eat like kings and queens when you're homesteading and farming, whatever. I mean, we just had this awful ice storm. And most people couldn't get out to go get groceries and people are freaking out. And my family that, I mean, yeah, they're commercially farming, but essentially they just have a big homestead. They heat with wood. They have gravity flow water from a spring. They don't really have solar or anything like that, but they just don't rely on power for anything. And so, and then you have freezers full of food and you have greenhouses and gardens full of food and like, you're doing just fine.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't freak out. I have to go to the grocery store.

Sure.

I'm like, oh, you know, I, it might be fun to like make something special on this time. But other than that, we're like, right.

When the hurricane came, I mean, we could just, I mean, if you had to, we could just live on milk and eggs. Yeah, yeah, plenty of salt. We had salt, milk, eggs, and we would just— we would thrive.

Yeah, yeah. And I guess that is definitely—

well, it's a life of preparedness, you know. Abundance leads to that. And so that's just kind of how we just live our life, you know. Do you and Abby garden, or do you just go buy from your parents?

Well, we, um, we've done a little bit of both, so we definitely support my parents. Um, we're I will say not as self-sufficient. We're not very self-sufficient right now. And we have— we're actively working towards some solutions to that. We have 35 acres that we're going to be building a house on and developing more of a homestead. I've just thrown 110% of my energy into the business.

Yeah. And yeah.

And so we have some, some raised beds at the house. And so we've done, you know, we do strawberries and I've done some tomatoes and some peppers and stuff like that that we can, you know, the kids pretty much eat all the strawberries before we can even pick them. But, you know, uh, you know, we've tried to do some of that. We're going to have a little bit more of a garden this year because we have some, some space that we've— we're developing as a trial farm at Farmer's Friend.

Okay.

Yeah, so we have some nice field space there that we're going to be doing, trying to do some more, uh, more growing this year. But yeah, the plan is once we move on to our new property We'll be trying to establish ourselves as more self-sufficient.

The trick for strawberries and blueberries we found, don't try to plant nearly as many as 5 children can eat.

Yeah.

I mean, we bought how many gallons?

We bought 25 gallons of strawberries.

Just go to the local strawberry farm and buy it. Give them money and they give you the strawberries and leave our little strawberry rows to grow onions or something else in.

Yeah, yeah, we're not— because I'm gonna have to do 85 gallons to keep up with us this year.

Yeah, you're not getting smoothies every night.

My kids literally ran through the strawberries.

Put our mics closer.

Blueberries. Um, I got— I want to say I only got 30 gallons, so I'll definitely up my strawberries to probably 50 gallons. But you know, I made some preserves and out of both. And yeah, he has been enjoying that. He takes the strawberry jam with the peanut butter and he just puts it on a spoon and eats it.

That's all you'll need for dessert. Yeah, you probably kill some peanut butter, huh?

Oh, I love some peanut butter.

Yeah, you guys are really the same cloth, minus the meat thing.

I'm not a huge— I do like chocolate. I, I find a, um, if I eat too much chocolate, it upsets my stomach.

All right, it probably does his too, but he doesn't care.

It just keeps on pushing through the pain. No, it doesn't upset my stomach. So what's next for Farmer's Friend?

Well, we are, um, you know, we're, we're expanding, um, you know, pushing into— so at this point, a big part of the business is greenhouse structures or high tunnel structures. So we're We're building out that product line a little bit more. We have a new model that we're gonna be launching in a few weeks that's our biggest tunnel today, and it's very similar to the one you have. It's just 30 feet wide.

Oh, wow.

So that'll be perfect for a lot of commercial growers. A 30-foot tunnel's pretty standard. So we're excited about that. You know, the last few years we've been kind of narrowing our focus and really trying to figure out about, you know, where we want to put our energies. We're really trying to build more of a brand around education and do more educational content. You know, we do a number of emails every week, and most of those emails we're trying to do, you know, a video tidbit showing people, you know, a technique or some sort of educational piece. And so that's a big part of our mission.

Um, that's if they're on your email list.

Yeah.

How do they get on your email?

Um, if you go to farmersfriend.com, I think it even just pops up. You can get like a 25%— or not 25, you can get a $25 off coupon, I think, if you sign up for our email.

And then does—

and then we just— we don't send out really marketing emails so much. It's— we really try to keep it more value-based, you know, where we're trying to bring value to people.

And those videos are on YouTube too, or just, uh, currently most of those are just email only.

Only actually.

What's the platform you use to— well, they're just unlisted videos. Oh, okay.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah. Um, so anyways, we're doing a lot of stuff like that. We are expanding our, our distribution and, and capacity for the fabric, the Quick Plant fabric. Um, it's been one of our fastest growing product lines. I mean, it's— it again is one of those things where if somebody tries it, they're most likely coming back the next year for more.

Yeah.

Um, and so we've seen 100% growth in that product line every year, so we're expanding that. And we are also bringing on some new patterns, um, for, uh, flower growers. So Florette is a big name in the flower growing space, and so we're going to be replicating the patterns that she uses and recommends for flower growing.

Okay.

Um, and So that's, and also the eco mulch paper to give an option for people who are just like, absolutely not, I'm not using plastic. And still the main focus of the company as we look at growth plans is still the commercial, the small-scale commercial farms. They're still very enthusiastic about supporting the homesteaders. And I think it's interesting because the tools and supplies that are needed for a serious homestead are not that different than what you need for a commercial farm. And so I think it's been a natural mesh to kind of try to support and speak to the homesteading community and also the small-scale market farm.

Yeah. Us with an 8,400 square foot garden and a 100-foot long, 20-foot wide high tunnel.

Yeah.

That's a small market farm.

Sure.

We're basically a small market farm.

Certainly could be. Yeah.

With 10 head of cattle and 4 pigs and I don't know how many sheep, 15 or 20.

So, I mean, you know, to answer that question, I would say like my, my big focus right now is trying to get to know our customers in a deeper and better way because There's more and more competition in the space, and we just really want to figure out like where, what can we do that would set us apart and support our customers and help them to be able to be successful. We've been doing more and more like surveying and trying to understand like who our audience is and stuff like that. And the reality is there's a big percentage of our customers that are trying to be commercial growers, but also a huge percentage of those people are still like making less than $30,000 a year. And so like we're trying to figure out, you know, what do we need to do to help them get to the point where they are successful? And so whether that's products and resources or whether that's education, you know, we're pursuing all, all angles. But, you know, again, the mission of Farmer's Friend is just to inspire educate and equip growers to change the world through regenerative agriculture. So, okay, yeah, so that's, that's our mission, and, and we are working towards that every day. Um, you know, if people want to learn more about what we're doing, you know, go to our website, follow our social medias, get on our newsletter, you know, list and stuff like that.

No duh.

Um, or our YouTube, you know. But that's, that's really what we're about, is just trying to, uh, be a resource to the, to the community. Yeah.

Well, thank you for coming out.

Yeah, well, thanks for having me.

Wrap it right there.

Yeah, it's been a, been a joy for bringing us some weed fabric.

Yeah.

And for that high tunnel, for those that—

I know. Yes.

Yeah, not only donated the high tunnel after the hurricane, you installed it. Installed it.

It was, that was fun.

Yeah, that was a huge blessing.

High tunnels are just Um, it's, it's another one of those things that once somebody has experienced growing in a high tunnel, they realize that everything grows better in the tunnel and you can just control that environment.

So like, in years—

no, literally, I just stop watering them and they eventually die. Like, they don't even die right away. It takes them a minute.

But yeah, because it's just usually the end of the season, I'm done.

I've already canned— I canned so many things.

It didn't become a jungle.

Yeah, it's not a jungle. Yep, it didn't.

And we actually didn't even use two rows.

I'm—

a lot of my stuff did not germinate last year. I don't know, like my peppers, we had a lot of failure. Um, summer, uh, winter squash, I could not get any of it to germinate. I don't know what was the problem. I went and I bought different packets from different companies, still did not work. I don't know, I was cursed. So peppers covering the— you said you were talking about Squash? Yeah, winter squash.

Were you covering the seeds?

I tried both ways and I couldn't get it.

Which way do you like?

I'm trying to remember. I'm pretty sure squash are kind of sensitive to that. I thought you don't cover the seeds.

We don't generally cover any seeds.

Oh really? Okay. And because a lot of seeds do like—

it doesn't cover seeds.

Well, I could be wrong on that. I don't want anybody to like— but I, I, yeah, I don't know.

And then my second year—

but I think it might be coming back to where maybe you should cover yourself.

I know, I don't know. I just, I tried it both ways because I was like, what am I doing wrong? Yeah, because like, that was one thing. Was it too far down? Yeah, stop it. I don't know. We, we had a successful year last year. I had like 120.

You didn't have the woo-woo sticks?

Yeah, in the greenhouse. You know what I'm talking about?

She does brass.

No, it's the copper, copper wrapped around sticks, and you put it in your garden.

Interesting. That means crazy.

No, it's called electroculture.

Okay.

And what it's supposed to do is bring in the Earth's magnetism or something. I don't remember.

All I know—

no, look it up, seriously.

I'll check it out. Yeah, 2 years ago. Check it out. I mean, I'm not gonna check it out.

Abby, you should check it out for him and then let him know that this could be a product for you.

Oh, there's no doubt.

Something about bamboo sticks as seen on the Justin Rhodes Show.

Right. I mean, I have no doubt that there is definitely power in the magnetic field.

Yeah. Well, so it has to do with bringing in that, but then also it helps the stuff grow better, which when we did it 2 years ago, it was so fabulous. We've never had such a good garden. And then it also is supposed to help with pests. It's supposed to create the vibration that they don't like. It's supposed to elevate everything.

Yeah, I mean, I don't, uh, yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of different things like that, and it's just, I, I always want to try to understand like the science behind it, and there might be a really good explanation behind it.

There is science behind it. It's not woo-woo like he says.

Yeah, but I mean, some of those things, like, you know, it works, we just maybe don't understand why it works or how it works.

So one thing that people will do is that they'll have the, like, the wire, it has to be wrapped in a circular copper, and then they like, like, um, bury it along their garden, and then they kind of like do the edges of it. From what I've seen, I never even did that. I literally just took branches and took some copper and like wrapped it around it and just like stuck it in the middle of my garden. And I have to say, we had really great success that year. Justin's like, it was just a good year. I'm like, it's not.

Could be, I don't know. There's— I've seen some crazy stuff. Yeah.

But no, it's time. First time here. Yeah, leaks. It leaked.

It's really cool to hear you say the, the success that you guys had though with the tunnel and the quick plant fabric. And I think that really is, you know, part of what I want to try to accomplish over the next few years is just really trying to paint a picture for people of, uh, an easy— not that there's any easy way to farm, like there is legitimately some systems that if you just implement this, this, this, and this, it's like 80% easier.

It's very— yes, because we've done broccoli under, you know, that you have to have the COVID the bug net over the broccoli to get a good harvest. Yeah, but we just had the bug net and then, you know, the weeds were coming up. I mean, even like coming over the broccoli and, you know, it was just such a nightmare. And I was like, we gotta get weed fabric. I think it's going to elevate it. And we did 300 plants. I mean, I, I preserved so many bags of broccoli, it was insane. And it—

that's awesome.

We're still eating.

It was so good for you, and it tastes so good.

Like, we just had it like last night, and it was delicious. Or not, two nights ago we had it with our meal, and it was absolutely delicious.

It was one of my favorites.

Yeah, and it's hard to grow. It is hard. But that, that, that weed fabric and the bug net—

we put down the drip line Yep. Then we put the weed fabric over it, then we put the bug net over it. You essentially— yeah, it's a little more labor intensive getting that installed, but then we literally walked away.

Yeah.

Until—

I mean, especially if you put your— we turn on the water maybe once a week, especially if you put your irrigation on a timer.

Oh, you know, I gotta do that. Yeah, easily.

Yeah. I mean, we sell these little valve, like, hose timers, and they're not really like commercial grade, but they work. I've used them on my personal garden and stuff, and it's just easily set it to where you can run the irrigation for 30 minutes, just set it on timer. So that's kind of the vision is figure out how to help people to see the vision where they can successfully garden, successfully farm with a lot less backbreaking, painstaking labor just by implementing these tools and automating as much as possible, whether whether that's ventilating greenhouses or whether that's automating your irrigation or whatever, to where you can just set it and focus on marketing and sales and planning and not have to spend all your time weeding and—

or preserving it.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I was going to say, with your cousin Paul having seed time—

yeah—

in your back pocket and then your tools, I mean, you're gonna succeed with those two tools right there.

Yeah. I mean, it's still— like, I don't ever want to try to paint a picture of like, it's not hard. You still have to— you still have to be intentional about it. But I I think it's just like anything else. Like, um, I heard a statistic recently, like, if you spend— I think it was like, if you spend 12 minutes a day on something, you'll be better than like 99% of the world population on that one thing.

So like, just spend a little bit of time just gardening, 12 minutes a day.

I mean, it might take more than that, but like, just consistency and some attention to it, and like, it can be successful. But, um, but you can't spend all your time weeding and watering, you know, it's a lot. So yeah, cool.

You're not learning anything doing that or expanding.

Yeah, yeah.

So, all right, man, thank you.

Yep. Well, thank you guys, and, uh, hopefully the audience has found this interesting.

Definitely.

We'll, you know, check out our resources. Yeah. Oh, the other thing I was going to mention, uh, I hope this is okay, if, uh, if there's— because I think you guys have a lot of homesteaders, probably, probably, um, homeschool families and stuff— my mom wrote a book, called Our Ebenezer. You can read it on, or you can buy it on Farmer's Friend website. Obviously all the proceeds go to my mom, but she took the time a number of years ago to write that book. And it's really documenting the story of the farm. And it's a faith-based, family-based perspective that I think has been encouraging to a lot of people because you read that and it doesn't paint a glorified picture of anything. It really, you'll probably cry and you will probably laugh and you'll learn things about me that not a whole lot of people know and that not necessarily, but if anybody out there is maybe discouraged or depressed about their first years or whatever, like, okay, that's— I think that could be a really inspirational book to a lot of people because that sounds good. She really, you know, kind of told all, and there's so many stories of how the Lord just, uh, you know, saved the, the crops and saved the farm. And like, uh, yeah, it's so—

it's interesting. So people need to go to your website, Farmer's Friend, farmersfriend.com. Yeah, and then we have an offer that comes up. They join your email list, they're gonna get a discount code, start start with the book and maybe load up on the cards.

Yeah, you can get $25 off and then go buy the book and a couple other things and you'll be good to go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, but I mean, she didn't ask me to tell that, but I just think your audience would probably— a lot of your audience, I think, would find that book very inspiring. And, uh, yeah, it's just, um, the Lord— I mean, the Lord has led not only my family and getting into the farming and like all that, but also with Farmer's Friend. And I think she gets into some of the Farmer's Friend story in there as well. It's been a while since I read it, but Um, I think people would find it interesting.

Good. Thanks.

Thank you. Did I give you guys a copy of that? Because if I haven't, I'll send it.

No, I would love to read that. I like to read.

Cool.

All right.

Awesome.

All right.

Thank you.

Yep.