we left the Farm for this..

Tractors!

Day 1, Food Independence Summit. Henry's ready. You ready, Henry?

Yeah.

Amish country. See if you can spot horse and carriage. You don't want small vision right now. He's like, oh, let's take a detour. Hey, John.

Hey, good to see you.

Yeah, good to see you.

Good to see you.

Hey, it's nice to meet you.

So I reached out to you a couple times about PowerPoint.

Yeah, I don't need it.

You don't need it?

Okay, great.

So beautiful one. I love seeing you up there.

Thank you, thank you.

Morning.

View. Sheep bacon. You gonna wear your hat today, Henry?

Yeah. If they divide it in the paddock, would that be better?

Yes.

Is there enough?

So much better. I look out there and think, it's a shame those sheep are continuously grazing that because they're eating all the good stuff. They're walking around eating the good stuff, it starts to come back, they go eat it again, and they're just killing it. Now if they just move people around, it would just up their production. Somebody asked us yesterday, how do you pack all your own food when you travel? And I guess I realized that's a novelty. Most people don't do that. Bacon and eggs. I found the Vital Farms organic pasture raised to be most similar to homegrown. Look how orange. We've made some lasagna before we came. This is what it looks like. You can put 4 cubes in a gallon bag, and we froze these in what you call super cubes. S-O-U-P-E-R. We brought some frozen hamburgers from home. When you're meat-based and your meal revolves around your meat, you can easily say, okay, well, we'll have— we're gonna have lamb tonight. Um, oh, and then let's stop at the grocery store when we get there and we'll get some— oh, we'll get a salad dressing, we'll get a salad. Meals can be worked pretty easily around frozen meat. Let's show you our haul from Whole Foods. Lamb meat. Thought out from home. Got some chocolate, fruit, butter. Oh, water! You gotta get water. Our favorite water. Yeah, we like this brand, the Mountain Valley. Yeah, spring water.

They didn't have much.

It's good water. We cleared them out, so we had to go for our second favorite water brand.

I don't even know if it's a second, which is like just the other spring water.

You have additives and stuff in it. It doesn't.

Yeah, it's just natural spring water.

Yeah, watch out for the water.

And then I have cucumbers, green beans, salad mix.

Yeah, see, we got a salad mix that's already washed, right? It's one of those.

This enables us to continue to feel almost normal to what we feel at home. Like, I don't feel my best either.

Really?

Yeah, and it keeps me regular and things like that too.

Oh, we were all regular this morning. That's the trick. I mean, we get an Airbnb and not a hotel, which has some sort of kitchen. Oh yeah, notice that cast iron will travel. And we talked to a lady who couldn't afford the Airbnb this time, spent all the money on the tickets. You can get a hotel, and we've done this before, yes, with what you call a hot plate. You plug it— it's a two-stove burner, you can get them at Walmart.

Yep.

And you just plug them in and it smells that hotel up.

So make sure it smells not too offensive, it smells more delicious. You got the flakes, look at that.

Wow, I'm jealous. Fried egg chips, undercooked bacon.

Let's eat.

Give me a kiss. You wiping off my sugar? Are you gonna go to the bouncy house today?

Yeah.

Yeah, we couldn't let him go in the bouncy house yesterday because there were other kids in there, and he's that kid that tells everybody else to stop jumping.

Well, you can't be that kid.

Well, no, he can't jump for whatever reason.

You can't tell people to stop jumping in the bounce house. Yeah, let's go cold expose. Who knew Ohio end of June high today is 70? It's probably like 55 out here right now. See, you brought a sweater.

I did.

You're a better Boy Scout than me.

Well, I thought of— I tried to find your sweater. I couldn't find it.

Nice place for staying at, the little guest cottage. I've been thinking, how can I make this interesting and not just the same old, same old type of event. And this thought occurred to me, we could get shots of people's t-shirts to show you what else people are interested in than homesteading. Are they interested in little babies, John Deere tractors, or the fox? Are they in the dirt bikes and motorcycles? Look at this, I like this. They give us an aerial view somehow. You can like see the curb and not hit it. Why didn't we pull this behind the bus?

I know, that's what I was saying. You have to put your seatbelt on.

You click it or we'll check it. Are you gonna wait on us. Today I have a home— what am I doing? Food growing for health and wellness. First time, first time doing this talk. It's gonna be exciting. It's a cool sheep tractor. Looks like the wheels can pivot up to be easily moved. Watch out, Henry, they got devil eyes! Let's get Lily that.

That would be so cruel.

Can you ride these little things? Our little daughter, we have a Little kids. Yeah, you don't want to put heavy people on, but she'll ride them around.

I want this dog.

Yeah, right.

You want to pet it? You can pet. No, baby, they're giving them away.

Stay warm.

I know, it's cold.

It's a certain standard, I think. You learn anything?

Well, they've been farming for a very long time. And they're not gonna sell out. Give you a little bit of a sweater.

Because I'm nervous? That makes me more cold. I think I'm on after him.

You are.

So how was my talk? You learn anything?

Great, it was great. You did such a good job.

She did come to me and say, you shouldn't say we were fighting, we were arguing.

I'm coming.

Is that what I should have said? Arguing?

Disagreeing.

Disagreeing, even nicer. Yesterday we sat in the car to stay cool, now we're gonna sit in the car to stay warm. Tanya?

I think that's the low carb.

How's this, Henry? I don't know about this. Got no room for my head. Wouldn't it be cool if these chairs flipped around like in an RV? Open up the sunroof and I can have head out the window.

No, because the sunroof is up higher, so there's more.

I'll just sit where Henry's at. Tell me about what your shirt means.

Well, it means don't tread on me, which means don't impose your beliefs on me, and I won't impose my beliefs on you. That's how I feel.

Yeah, if you have a chicken on your shirt, you might be a crazy chicken lady.

I— we were— we heard the conversation yesterday. I said, oh, I am a crazy chicken lady.

Live life today like you're being fried tomorrow.

This is where I work.

Wolverine Power Cooperative. What do you do there? I am a full-time mechanic. What does your shirt say?

Take it easy.

Do you take it easy?

I try to, yeah.

Or are you telling a colleague to take it easy?

Self-employed.

You tell him.

Hey, we know him. This is his spouse. Should take it easy. That's not the reaction.

Ohio State. It just happens to be close to us.

It's a good school. I was going to say, are you a big fan or is that just— what was that, goodwill? We're fans. Cincinnati Bengals.

You're proud of them?

Or is this just a good deal at the— I'm a Bengals fan. What's up with your shirt? Cheap. At 8 years old, you're looking for chickens on YouTube and you find me, and you're, you're walking by like, what is this? Who's this guy here?

This is crazy. And then I was like, you gotta watch this. So now, and we got—

now y'all watch it together as a family. How do I be truly pastured?

You, you do, um, regenerative agriculture.

Okay, I like it. Is that what you guys do? We're trying. Okay. We Are More Than Conquerors details how we are made victors because of of what Jesus did on the cross. There you go. What's your shirt? So this is Truly Pastured Farms. Yes. So if you're in Ohio, check it out. Yep. Thank you. That's the university my daughter went to. Morgan graduated from Ashland University. How cool. So you have your grown daughter hanging out with you today. What's the secret? We have a— well, kind of like you. Yeah, raise my kids with the same kind of mindset, and I think we have like interests now. And, uh, this Whole Foods movement It's part of that. Okay, that's encouraging. You gotta see this shirt. You know, if you're wearing a chicken on your shirt, you might be a crazy chicken lady or a mother clucker. Tell me what your shirt means.

My boots!

You didn't notice my boots?

What does it say?

Boots and Downies. Ohio State. You guys are proud Buckeyes. Oh yeah. You gotta tell me what that shirt means.

Oh yeah.

Are you an outlaw?

No, so we went to a monster truck rally.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

This is just one of the drivers and I just—

If you're here at the Food Independence Summit, you want to know where Henry is at? He's at the corn tractors. See how you do it. Oh yeah, we got us a new operator, Beck. Look out, Josiah, we got a new digger in the farm. Henry's still nursing, so we bring him, and then we let the kids take turns who gets to come with Mom and Pop. It was Josiah's turn. Josiah, you've been doing a good job. Henry, you want to go into bounce house? Yeah, you're going to go for it?

Go in.

You gonna make everybody stop bouncing? You got this, Henry. There you are. There I am, Henry. You're doing it. Has he not done this yet?

No.

I wonder why he's feeling bold. Mom's here. That's right, that's my name. Don't wear it out. We're never gonna get him out of here now. You're gonna have to go in and get him. You like that? I'm wondering if Josiah's gonna have to go in there and get him. Seriously. There's Mom in the beautiful dress trying to get him out. Josiah's having to go in. He's gonna come out kicking and screaming. It's okay. Hey, you want to watch tractors? You want to watch tractors? I gotta get him happy for this tour. Hey, you want to watch tractors? Look at this factory, man. You excited? Hey, you're getting the canning bug. You're getting the canning bug a little bit. It's been a lot of canning talks. You just be looking at me talk about canning our chickens.

It's very easy. They're like, you take the jar, you put the chicken in it, you put the lid on, you put it in the canner, and then you can it.

Yeah, but you got to cut the chicken up.

Well, but we could do that at the butchering.

Hey, stop with that thing! They bought them this rubber chicken.

This child was screaming, and then the lady showed him this, which I was like—

She's a good saleswoman. Come on, come on, Mr. Henry, come on, see the factory. Dang, there he is, man. Look at this, this is something else.

Let's go see how canning are made. Last year we shipped 1.3 billion parts out of this facility.

Oh wow.

This is the canning section?

The canning section is over there. Here, this is our main machining area.

Wow.

We make everything from scratch, so we start out with a block like this.

And you buy it as that?

No, we buy a bigger block of steel and then we cut it up. So when he's done, that's what it's going to look like. Right now we're just doing the lids and bands, and then we're also doing glass. We're going to have glass next year.

So what makes your lids different than everybody else's?

There are really 3 things. So we have more rubber, a higher molecular weight, so if you're pressure canning, this doesn't melt.

Hmm.

The competition's red rubber melts when you're pressure canning, so it, it can cause a problem. And then we also changed the configuration. If you notice here, I mean, this little gully in here has a purpose. It doesn't buckle as easy, so it's a lot more stable. I mean, I can buckle it, but it's really hard to do that. And then we also have a calibrated pop feature. So this is calibrated. It will only pull down if you have 2 pounds of vacuum. Most of the lids out there on the market only require half a pound. So what happens is it goes ding and you think, oh, it's sealed. Well, it may only have half a pound of vacuum, and that's not enough to preserve your food. So we calibrated it at 2 pounds. So those are the, the 3 primary differences. Every day that we are producing, we actually can over 200 jars. We pressure can We water bath and we do hot fill. So here what we do is we just put tomato juice in here and we come and cup it out.

You actually can?

Yeah.

Wow.

200 every day.

To test?

To test. Because we don't, we don't want to ship anything out there if you have a problem. We want to find out here before we send it out. You've got codes here and the results. Because what we do the next morning is we punch a hole in it And then we test how much vacuum is in the jar. And here we got pressure canning, you've got 24. Absolute vacuum, the highest you can ever— highest you could ever go. This is hot fill, so you just take boiling tomato juice, pour it into your jar, and then put the lid on.

Is that good enough?

It works. Um, the, the USDA is not so keen about it.

All these lids is cousins. They went out. They all passed the test. So whoever else—

so we made 250,000 that day.

Okay.

And we, we checked 200 of them.

You're moving 250,000 lids a day? Yeah. Where are they all going?

Oh, we've got distribution now to 20,000 stores.

Wow. What's your advice for somebody who's hesitant? Start canning and just keep on freezing.

Well, it— well, the thing about it is with Canning, once you've canned it, it's preserved.

Yeah.

If you freeze it, if the power goes off, you can lose your entire freezer. We've all, we've all seen that, right? So we're doing 250,000, that's only in one shift. I can make a million lids a day.

Good Lord. There's that many people canning?

1.3 billion lids were sold in the United States last year.

And it's from people canning?

Yeah.

Why did you choose canning lids?

There was a shortage and a friend of mine came and said the Amish Mennonite community doesn't have any lids, can you fix it? So it took us 5 months to build all the equipment. We have coils of material. This comes in all shrink-wrapped, clean.

This is where it's going down.

What you see from that press all the way over there, that was all custom-built in-house by our own engineers.

Wow.

We've got 2 machines, we've got about a million of custom tooling on each one. And then the paint machines, which we already have, are another million.

So a line like this is about 2 million parts.

Hey, government, it's hot in here.

Handsome shine.

Probably about 120 degrees. What is your job?

I have to check the lids to see if there's stuff on them. Make sure the blue stuff's not all on them. Make sure the print's on there.

Do you pull them off if they're not? Yeah.

Oh.

Where did you find all these good employees? Here in the community. What do you do with the waste material?

I'll get it recycled.

What does that mean? Something happened. What just happened? She walked over the line. Oh, Becky, you caused that.

Oh, my fault.

It's all my fault.

So what happened?

So what do you have to do now? Did I cause problems? You caused a whole half a day of lost. There goes the Walmart deal. Thanks a lot. What? Yeah, it is. So if people want to get the best canning lid on the market, where do they go?

Superior Superb.com? Superbsealing.com or superbcanning.com.

And that's where they can find out who deals? I'm impressed. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Justin.

Apparently we didn't get enough groceries and Rebecca has found this health food store. Let's see if it's truly a health food store. Look, they got John's Lids in here. Hey, you want some chocolate? Is it sweetened? It is a Snuff chocolate. Found a brownie mix. Mama, Mama, thank you. Go put it back. Third one. He's getting to where he wants to show us everything. Just say, I used to buy these and sell them in school. I was the sucker man. Yeah, let's put those back.

Hey, that's an organic one. Yes sir, what do you need? Do you want me to hold? You want to eat some of these?

We got our essentials, chocolate and kombucha. That's no normal water. We don't know what kind of water these people have. I gotta show you where this water came from. If health nuts have a certification, we'd be given the stamp. We bring our own filter for the shower. That's where she collected the water, and that's only to wash the lettuce. They're already washed lettuce. Stop it!

I don't think anybody trusts that. That's gross. I've seen people who took that lettuce that was already washed and do like the little swab and grow the back of bacteria in a petri dish. Oh, I'm sure. So you are—

Vegetables are out to kill us in so many ways, honey.

Stop it.

I'm gonna kick you. The kombucha we picked up is terrible. Is it even worth it? Yeah, why do people like their bitter kombucha? Well, try another one. Live Cola. Okay, okay. It's a hair stevia-ish though.

It's not terrible.

You mix them? Yeah, because that's too sweet. Stevia, right?

And that one's—

that's it, my man. All right, just had to tell you, babysitting the baby. Text us, call if you need. You can come say goodbye. Bye-bye, we'll be back. So that's a good babysitter.

I love you.

It is the next day and She's a speaker. She's the star of the show. This is what it was supposed to be. I know, just you and I.

This is what— but could you imagine if we left Henry at home?

He's just a— whoa, responsive brake there, babe. Good for them, ladies-only event. I love it. Good for them. That is a national organization. This is the national meeting. We're gonna have to leave a link to that in the description for all you ladies, you Olmsted ladies. Who want some support. Get on their website and see if there's a local chapter, and if there's not, get with Cindy Ball and start a local chapter. Oh, it's the next day. I totally forgot to get your take on it. How'd it go yesterday?

It went good. It went really good.

Those ladies loved you.

It was very rela— it was, it was, it was probably a really good first, like, event for this whole thing because it relaxed me, and the microphone actually didn't even work, so Which was totally fine with me.

Small intimate room. It was a small intimate room. And that's warmed you up for today's event at Layman's.

Where I feel a lot less, um, I feel a lot less—

This one's gonna be more formal.

Anxious. Yeah, funny because I shared some things about Justin that no one knows.

Oh, exposé! Exposé!

Somebody came up to you when you picked me up and said, I know more about you than I do with my wife.

I didn't know you were gonna use that. Stage as an exposé.

My dad was an entrepreneur. He had his own construction business in Florida. Um, Justin's dad was also an entrepreneur.

How did I do, Rebecca? Just 2 years ago, you're just a nervous wreck holding the mic till you cramp, and now you're so relaxed and so good. And you're, you're now a professional talker. You're so pro. You did so good, but still so relatable and nice nice and sweet and that. You gave him a lot of value. Did I? Yeah.

Okay, good.

Good job.

Because I want to give value. I don't want— I, I— that's my biggest fear, I think, is not waste somebody's time. Yeah.