Latest / SpaceTomatoes / Farmer Bob's Beyond Berries - From Farm Waste to Upcycled, Healthy, Super Snacks S2-EP8

Transcript

Farmer Bob's Beyond Berries - From Farm Waste to Upcycled, Healthy, Super Snacks S2-EP8 · SpaceTomatoes

• 0:00
  And if we're still doing this prescriptive agriculture, in my mind, it really isn't any different than the conventional when it comes to health.
• 0:09
  Now, it can be, and I think this is an important distinction, it can be healthier if it's grown the way the hippies intended.
• 0:19
  And quite frankly, my grandfather and his predecessors in agriculture grew food.
• 0:25
  They paid attention to what was going on in the soil.
• 0:28
  and it's far more refined today than it was back then but i guarantee you you would never find a
• 0:36
  farmer that would be in my grandfather's generation that would not go out with a
• 0:41
  shovel stick it in the dirt and smell the dirt
• 0:58
  All right, everybody.
• 1:06
  Welcome back to another episode of the Space Tomatoes podcast.
• 1:11
  I'm one of your hosts, Savick.
• 1:13
  And I'm Alex.
• 1:14
  Hello.
• 1:14
  Welcome back.
• 1:15
  And today we have with us a special guest, Bob Underwood, affectionately known as Farmer Bob and the man behind Beyond Berries.
• 1:27
  Welcome to the show, Bob.
• 1:28
  Well, great. Thanks for having me, guys. It's good to be here. Looking forward to the conversation.
• 1:35
  Absolutely. So, I guess we could just dig right into this. What was the impetus behind this?
• 1:45
  At some point, you had this idea. Where did it come from?
• 1:51
  Yeah, so great question. It came from a lot of different places actually, but I would say the most prevalent is my desire to see people eat healthy.
• 2:03
  And it started with my kids. They were young and growing up on a berry farm, we had plenty of berries right at hand.
• 2:11
  But I found fairly quickly, especially when they were younger, that they would sometimes have a smile and then sometimes have a pucker when they bit into the berries.
• 2:25
  And I think we've all experienced that, right?
• 2:27
  And when that smile happened, well, boy, they were sure getting into those.
• 2:31
  And when that pucker happened, well, they set it down.
• 2:33
  They wanted to move on to something else.
• 2:34
  So I started thinking, you know, I want my kids, obviously we all do, to eat healthy.
• 2:39
  what am I going to do that is going to get them eating that and consistency came to mind so I
• 2:47
  started daydreaming if you will about what we could do to make a berry taste consistent and
• 2:53
  as I progressed through my career this is early on my kids were very young then as I
• 3:00
  went on through my career I started really building a niche for our core competency which is berry
• 3:07
  purees and we do that through a company called trans-specific food that that company sells fruit
• 3:14
  to all the major brands so just think of most of your beverages think of most of your ice creams
• 3:21
  inclusions and bakery products we sell to many of those people you're going to find the uh the
• 3:29
  trans-specific food products not branded but you're going to see that in a lot of your ice cream
• 3:35
  And they're big brand. I mean, we sell a lot of volume.
• 3:39
  So now all of a sudden I'm condensing these ideas of consistency and what we're actually doing with the idea of being able to take upcycled fruit,
• 3:49
  which by nature, some of what we do with Puri is upcycled fruit, but the farmer in me doesn't like to see anything to the waist.
• 3:56
  So those three ideas sort of gelled and then we throw in this concept of dates and created the Beyond Berries.
• 4:07
  And what we've done there, and it is actually a proprietary process, we've taken whole dates.
• 4:13
  So when you're eating a Beyond Berry or the Beyond Berries product, you're actually eating a fusion of upcycled berries, which means it's this fruit that would not have gone to the store.
• 4:25
  It's not pretty enough to be in a clamshell or in a frozen bag.
• 4:30
  And it generally would be left by the farmer out in the field and or sorted out in a processing facility and it goes to waste.
• 4:39
  Again, as a farmer, we hate to see waste.
• 4:42
  So we took that and started playing around.
• 4:47
  Literally, it's kind of like Betty Crocker.
• 4:49
  we're toying with a lot of different ideas,
• 4:54
  played around with a lot of different methodology
• 4:56
  and figured out how to put together this concept of beyond berries,
• 5:01
  taking this fruit,
• 5:03
  and it's a combination of a number of different types of berries right now,
• 5:07
  and whole dates.
• 5:09
  So you're getting all the nutritive value of each of those fruits
• 5:14
  distilled down into a liquid form.
• 5:18
  then we have a molding process that we remold them back into a familiar shape
• 5:24
  that represents the flavor of what you're eating.
• 5:28
  And now you've got a creamy, bite-sized sorbet.
• 5:33
  It's like biting a little berry that tastes and feels like a sorbet or an ice cream or a popsicle.
• 5:40
  And what you're getting in that creamy, sweet, consistent flavor is the dates.
• 5:46
  You don't really taste the dates, but because it's the whole date, unlike most people use a date sugar, which is fairly refined, or using a date syrup, again, which is refined.
• 5:57
  In this case, we found a way that we can actually use the whole date, and that creates what we have in Beyond Berry.
• 6:04
  And I was actually, I'm proud to say this, actually.
• 6:07
  I'm able to now have something that the kids love.
• 6:10
  And we've done a number of demos.
• 6:14
  we've done a number of trade shows and now we're actually in sam's club doing what they call a
• 6:20
  road shows and kids by far love them and i i love telling that story you know guys i this was
• 6:27
  actually created for you to give you something that you would enjoy eating and it's healthy for
• 6:33
  you and then i look at mom and dad and i say hey mom and dad and you can feel very good about this
• 6:38
  this is going to be healthy it's only it's only four ingredients the one variety which is black
• 6:44
  raspberry which is our more most popular there's only four ingredients in it there's no
• 6:50
  yeah i mean there's no trying to figure out what's in it it's right there on the label
• 6:55
  all right it's it's uh you you i can't remember i think it's uh it's the the black black it's
• 7:02
  blackberries right uh honey dates and there was fruit or something i don't remember so the black
• 7:11
  raspberries there's three varieties there's the black raspberry there's the blueberry and then
• 7:16
  there's a red red raspberry okay and i like to scale them this way on a scale of sweetness the
• 7:23
  sweetest is the black raspberries the tartest is a red raspberry and the blueberry is somewhere in
• 7:29
  the middle. So with the black raspberry, it's got the most ingredients in it. And that is
• 7:35
  black raspberries, blueberries, dates, and black currants. Okay. So it is, it is truly a super fruit.
• 7:45
  If you, if you want to look it up, look it up. We don't necessarily advertise it that way,
• 7:51
  but it really is a super fruit. Everything I just named there is, is categorized as a super fruit.
• 7:55
  We brought them together in that flavor.
• 7:57
  And then you have the blueberry, which is actually blueberries, dates, and raspberries together, which gives it that little bit of tart tang to it.
• 8:07
  And then the raspberries is two ingredients, raspberries and dates.
• 8:11
  Okay, dates.
• 8:12
  So where did I get honey from?
• 8:14
  I don't know.
• 8:15
  I was like, where did I get that from?
• 8:17
  So one of the things when I was researching as well, I actually spend a good amount of time in California is you have a partnership of sorts or affiliation with Mother's Market.
• 8:30
  And if you know what Mother's Market is, it's a place you can go and you trust whatever you're getting there is, you know, high quality, real food, right?
• 8:41
  It may not contain the organic label, but you're pretty much guaranteed it's not full of anything that you wouldn't want in your body.
• 8:50
  Right.
• 8:51
  So that to me was very exciting.
• 8:54
  How do you how do you go about, you know, getting those, you know.
• 9:01
  Companies interested in your product.
• 9:04
  What does that entail?
• 9:06
  Is that a long process, hard to do, or is it fairly simple and easy and making friends?
• 9:11
  Yes.
• 9:15
  Long, hard process that's simple and easy like making friends.
• 9:18
  I got it.
• 9:20
  I mean, I say that tongue in cheek.
• 9:23
  It's all of those.
• 9:25
  Specifically to Mother's Market, they met us at our very first food show.
• 9:32
  So they are the second customer of the Beyond Berries.
• 9:38
  And they were excited about it.
• 9:40
  They met us at a food show.
• 9:41
  They tasted it.
• 9:42
  They liked it.
• 9:43
  And they thought, boy, this really kind of fits our niche, if you will, in the world.
• 9:49
  And you describe that well, Havoc.
• 9:52
  That is their niche.
• 9:52
  People trust them.
• 9:54
  And I'm proud to partner with somebody like that because if we don't have integrity, we don't have anything.
• 10:00
  And everything really revolves around that.
• 10:04
  And that's frankly why my picture is on the label.
• 10:08
  I want people to have that sense that there's somebody behind it, that this is somebody hopefully that you'll be able to trust, certainly learn to trust as you try the product and learn more about me through the opportunities like I have with you guys here.
• 10:22
  I truly and genuinely appreciate the opportunity to speak with you guys because it does let people see who I am and that I'm just a regular guy like the rest of us that had an idea.
• 10:35
  And hopefully it's going to make everybody a little bit healthier.
• 10:38
  And we can talk a little bit more about why that philosophy rings a little more true than just the product when we start talking about my agricultural philosophy.
• 10:49
  but yeah all of this resonated with with mother's market and so we've got mother's market we we just
• 10:58
  tied in you may know of this store brand as well in southern california bristol farms
• 11:05
  all of them all of them are natural foods uh i say organic but not in the organic sense of
• 11:14
  production but they're they're organic uh in nature people just want to go there because
• 11:20
  uh they know that it's wholesome they know that they're going to get something that they
• 11:24
  as you you indicated earlier you can trust and that way i that's our really our target audience
• 11:32
  as a retailer we've had some of the big guys look at us and my business mantra for years is say
• 11:39
  has been don't say no unless you have to and we'll eventually get around to the bigger brands
• 11:45
  brand stores i'm sure there is interest there but i really want to develop this brand and give
• 11:52
  people an opportunity to know what it's about first before they just start to see it in mass
• 11:57
  market appeal okay yeah and and go ahead alex you had something no i was going to ask is the is the
• 12:05
  Sam's Club tour just on that side of the country, or are you guys going to be doing a nationwide rollout on something like that?
• 12:15
  It really depends on Sam's Club when it comes to that.
• 12:18
  Okay.
• 12:19
  I've got a friend who's very connected into the Walmart Sam's Club world, and he's excited about it.
• 12:25
  And he says, we've got to get you on a roadshow.
• 12:28
  And just a minute ago, I said I really didn't want to get into that big environment quite yet.
• 12:33
  Well, I had that same conversation with him and he said, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 12:36
  That's not what we're talking about.
• 12:37
  This is, this is a, you actually buy the space from, from Sam's club.
• 12:43
  And then you go out there and you, you tell people about your product.
• 12:47
  And I said, boy, I'm, I'm all over that.
• 12:49
  So that's what we're doing.
• 12:50
  We're doing it in the Las Vegas area.
• 12:53
  We're doing our fourth show.
• 12:55
  Now we've got one more behind this and we'll look to see what Sam's club says.
• 13:00
  but so far you know we did three and then they picked us back up for two and we're talking about
• 13:06
  more down the road i'd like everything guys we've got to refine our message and and how we do that
• 13:12
  this isn't something that uh i'm inherently uh good at i mean i think i'm pretty good at having
• 13:21
  conversations with folks like this but you get me out and talking about myself yeah it's really kind
• 13:26
  of unnatural for me but it is working and I'm having a lot of fun especially with the kids I
• 13:33
  just we were giving away free freezer tote bags as kind of a promotional thing if you'll buy
• 13:38
  multiple units and we had some repeat customers from the first show in the same location and the
• 13:45
  family came up and said oh my gosh we love your fruit of course you love to hear that it's great
• 13:51
  and the kids are all excited about it.
• 13:53
  And we sold them some more and got them a tote bag, and away they went.
• 13:58
  And I don't know, it was about five minutes later,
• 13:59
  one of the little young boys came up and said,
• 14:03
  Farmer Bob, could I have your autograph on my tote bag?
• 14:08
  I never, ever envisioned hearing somebody say they wanted my autograph,
• 14:13
  but it was a sweet moment.
• 14:15
  That is awesome.
• 14:17
  That's really good.
• 14:18
  I like it.
• 14:19
  Well, that's if that's not it's got to be all all.
• 14:24
  I don't know.
• 14:25
  It's worth all of all the gold in the world right there.
• 14:28
  Right.
• 14:28
  That had to make your day, I'm sure.
• 14:30
  Yeah.
• 14:30
  So on the organic piece.
• 14:33
  Right.
• 14:35
  I kind of cringe when I hear organic anymore.
• 14:39
  Right.
• 14:40
  I think the intention in the beginning was good.
• 14:42
  And I think there's still a lot of good intention behind it.
• 14:46
  But anymore, it's more of just a regulatory location than anything else, I think.
• 14:57
  What are your thoughts on that?
• 14:59
  In other words, it's more just a piece of paper that even if you're doing better practices than organic farmers are doing, you can't use that term or you're going to be in big trouble.
• 15:12
  so boy uh i am so glad you led in that way because when i have this conversation with people i never
• 15:20
  quite know there's a lot of misconceptions around organic a lot of them and we do use organic dates
• 15:28
  why do we use organic dates because the vast majority of production is organic we use organic
• 15:35
  berries and conventional berries why do we do that and i do want to kind of get this out there
• 15:40
  because it's asked quite frequently, because we are looking to try and prevent food waste as well.
• 15:48
  And there isn't nearly the scope, although people like to talk a lot about organic,
• 15:54
  the vast volume of fruit is still sold in what we classify as conventional.
• 16:00
  So I wanted to take the opportunity both to help farmers,
• 16:04
  but as well make sure we did our best to eliminate food waste by allowing both organic and inorganic.
• 16:13
  So we do not inorganic, excuse me, conventional.
• 16:19
  Speaking directly to the idea of organic, this one is I can get on a soapbox.
• 16:26
  So you guys might want to slow me down a little bit.
• 16:30
  Pull it up, preach away.
• 16:32
  All right, I'm going to do it.
• 16:33
  You gave me the podium.
• 16:35
  You gave me the pastoral opportunity, so I'm going to take it.
• 16:43
  Organic, when it first started, was, you know, frankly, oversimplification,
• 16:49
  but it was a bunch of hippies that wanted to come up with a way to say,
• 16:53
  this chemical idea isn't really all that great, guys.
• 16:57
  There's not so many great things about this.
• 17:00
  and they said, you know, the way we used to do it worked pretty good.
• 17:04
  We're going to go back to that.
• 17:06
  And you guys have all, you know, Silent Spring,
• 17:10
  all the books that have come out talking about chemical agriculture,
• 17:14
  they were dovetailing on that.
• 17:16
  And they really were just a bunch of 60s hippies that said,
• 17:23
  we're going to retaliate.
• 17:25
  And they did.
• 17:27
  And they went out there and they said, we're going to go back
• 17:29
  and we're going to start going back to nature
• 17:33
  and we're going to grow it just without any of these chemical inputs.
• 17:39
  And it was really more than that.
• 17:41
  I mean, I sort of classify this as in the context of organics.
• 17:48
  I really classify conventional agriculture then as more prescriptive agriculture.
• 17:56
  So there was a problem.
• 17:57
  and this is obviously my opinion, but there was a problem and we looked for a way to solve that
• 18:06
  problem. We as agriculture now, prior to the advent of, of chemical medication, if you will,
• 18:16
  for the plant might be the best way to sort of globally phrase it. Prior to that, we, we looked
• 18:23
  at the soil. We looked at the plant. We looked at the health of the plant. We looked at what was
• 18:27
  going on and then we tried to find the root cause and cure it at that level what happened was
• 18:34
  somebody came along and said hey you know this plant creates this specific toxin if you will
• 18:44
  that's going to kill this specific bug and the classic example is really a chrysanthemum
• 18:49
  there's a chemical it's a pyrethrin is this the name or a pyrethroid that occurs naturally in
• 18:59
  chrysanthemums and somebody in a lab said i can synthesize that and i can market that
• 19:05
  and that was you know it's not specifically the pyrethrin but it's an easy example but that really
• 19:12
  is what started it we took something that was organically known in nature to prevent certain
• 19:17
  maladies and then we got in a lab and we synthesized it we standardized it and
• 19:22
  went out and marketed it so now all of a sudden you have an insect problem and
• 19:27
  rather than looking at the health of the plant and trying to figure it out you've
• 19:30
  got this guy that walks in and he says hey I got this cheap alternative that going to kill that specific pest and away you go And that really is what chemical agriculture was
• 19:44
  And I use that term loosely because I've used these tools over my lifetime and I am certainly not going to bad mouth them.
• 19:54
  They've done a lot of good in the world.
• 19:56
  So it's just not the philosophy that I agree with per se anymore in growing fruit or anything for that matter.
• 20:04
  So you've got this concept now of trying to find a way to solve the symptom.
• 20:11
  I got a headache.
• 20:12
  I'm going to take aspirin.
• 20:13
  You know, when you put it in our world, I've got a headache.
• 20:17
  I'm going to take aspirin.
• 20:18
  Well, nobody's really asking the question, well, why'd you get the headache?
• 20:20
  Did you get enough sleep?
• 20:21
  Were you drinking enough water?
• 20:23
  And really that's what we became.
• 20:24
  So we have this problem, whether it be fungal, whether it be plant-based for weeds or insects, whatever it is, we've got this problem.
• 20:33
  So here's the pill for it and take that.
• 20:36
  And it was incredibly cheap.
• 20:38
  It was incredibly easy.
• 20:40
  The old way of doing it, if you will, was, again, you've got to find out what the problem was and then you've got to fix the problem.
• 20:49
  That takes time, that takes money, and that takes labor.
• 20:54
  It was an easy button, and we all pushed it.
• 20:58
  We all pushed it.
• 21:00
  And, again, there was a lot that happened that was good from that.
• 21:04
  We increased production.
• 21:05
  We increased yields.
• 21:07
  We increased a lot of things.
• 21:09
  And, you know, away we went, and nobody really was taking a look at what the consequences was of the easy button.
• 21:17
  Yeah.
• 21:18
  Unintended consequences are rarely good.
• 21:21
  Correct.
• 21:22
  Correct.
• 21:22
  correct and so now you know bringing it full circle back to the hippies the hippies kind of
• 21:28
  realized this and said wait a minute we're going to change it and they did the problem with the
• 21:34
  hippies and you know you probably may or may not remember um the adwalla juice scare where they
• 21:41
  were using unpasteurized apples that came organically and some people got e coli and got sick
• 21:47
  And all of a sudden, you know, and these are, I'm not making light of any of this or serious problems, right?
• 21:54
  Sure.
• 21:55
  But now we've got the government involved.
• 21:58
  So the government is saying, we're going to take care of this problem.
• 22:01
  So they, to do that, the government can't do anything.
• 22:04
  And again, this isn't me necessarily making a statement on government controls.
• 22:08
  It's just a fact of what happened.
• 22:10
  the government says, well, there really isn't any way we can monitor this
• 22:15
  and we can control this unless we put it in some form of a box.
• 22:21
  So they got all the figureheads, if you will, within government working together
• 22:26
  and they boxed what is organic.
• 22:28
  And really what organic was boxed as, the exact same thing as conventional,
• 22:35
  except it was organically based products that we were using for prescriptive agriculture
• 22:44
  and there's some good things about that and there's some bad things about that
• 22:51
  but i think what happened was once it was boxed it allowed those people like myself
• 22:57
  and agriculture to to market because we've got a box to market from and what did we market i think
• 23:04
  the common perception for most people eating organic is that it's healthier for you and there's
• 23:10
  no pesticides applied well there are pesticides applied they're just organically based pesticides
• 23:19
  now we can talk about yeah we can talk about whether that's good or whether that's bad but
• 23:26
  it's still a prescriptive type of agriculture i have a headache i need a pill and then the healthy
• 23:32
  part of it is really where I start to shudder a little bit more because it's not necessarily
• 23:40
  healthier. What makes the food healthier is the environment in which it's grown.
• 23:47
  Right. And if we're still doing this prescriptive agriculture, in my mind, it really isn't any
• 23:53
  different than the conventional when it comes to health. Now it can be, and I think this is
• 24:01
  an important distinction. It can be healthier if it's grown the way the hippies intended. And
• 24:08
  quite frankly, my grandfather and his predecessors in agriculture grew food. They paid attention to
• 24:15
  what was going on in the soil. And it's far more refined today than it was back then. But I
• 24:22
  guarantee you, you would never find a farmer that would be in my grandfather's generation
• 24:28
  that would not go out with a shovel, stick it in the dirt and smell the dirt.
• 24:32
  Oh yeah.
• 24:33
  Feel it, smell it, look for life.
• 24:36
  I mean, you can see the life.
• 24:38
  Pull a plant, grab it, pull the roots right out and look.
• 24:43
  You'll see nodules.
• 24:44
  You'll see the nodes that are the transmission highways for minerals and nutrients to these root balls, right?
• 24:54
  If you see all of this, you're going in the right direction.
• 24:58
  if your soil looks like the ag fields around me uh you you obviously took a wrong turn like
• 25:06
  go back do something different my my opinion and and it is absolutely a truth that healthy soil
• 25:14
  actually protects plants uh vine borers we we those things i with a passion just don't like
• 25:24
  those. But if your soil is healthy and you've gotten a good, healthy nematode load, you won't
• 25:30
  have vine borer problem. You may get one crop up, but it won't sustain itself, right? So, and an
• 25:37
  often overlooked piece of that is the soil biome. So, sorry, I'm going to segue out here. Like,
• 25:44
  how do you, you know, what do you look for in farms as far as practices, maintaining healthy
• 25:51
  soil um you know inputs being more natural uh you know i'm not gonna bag on bt as a prescriptive
• 26:01
  use during a dire situation a pest load can come in japanese beetles being one of them
• 26:07
  but a pest load can come in and you you either just suffer the loss or you do something and then
• 26:15
  In my hope is that you're not only just doing something, but you're also fixing the root of the problem, right?
• 26:25
  So what do you look for in those areas when you're dealing with people, conventional or otherwise, right?
• 26:35
  So it really is about how you treat the soil.
• 26:37
  And everything you just said is accurate.
• 26:41
  it regenerative agriculture is sort of the buzzword today uh i've i am a little bit more
• 26:50
  prophylactic than that i i like to call it biodynamic farming and that includes the proper
• 26:59
  mineral balancing of the soil it's important that you have your basis aligned basis b-a-s-e-s-c-s as
• 27:06
  and calcium, magnesium, potassium in particular.
• 27:10
  There's a percentage that's been proven many, many years ago that produces crops consistently better, stronger, healthier.
• 27:22
  So that's an important part of it.
• 27:24
  But the biggest part of it is actually having the right biological activity in the soil.
• 27:31
  If you do that and you have those two things in line, and I'm not going to get too far in depth here.
• 27:38
  I just want to speak high level.
• 27:39
  But if you get those in line, you have the right biome in the soil, and you said it earlier, you're going to create healthy plants.
• 27:48
  It's just going to happen.
• 27:50
  And I like to use this analogy in the animal kingdom.
• 27:55
  If you look at a lion and he sees and he's scoping the herd for his prey, what's he doing?
• 28:00
  he's going out there and he's looking for the weakest prey.
• 28:04
  It's the easiest.
• 28:05
  He wants to save his energy.
• 28:08
  That's just the natural kingdom, right?
• 28:11
  So he's going to look for the weakest.
• 28:15
  Well, it's not dissimilar in the plant kingdom.
• 28:20
  So you've got an insect or you have a specific weed or you have specific
• 28:24
  anything that we would classify as a pest or detrimental to the crop production,
• 28:33
  those pests are going to look for the weakest.
• 28:35
  So if you've got a healthy plant, they're going to move on.
• 28:38
  And they do.
• 28:39
  I mean, I've literally been doing this for many years and watched this happen.
• 28:44
  And there's a couple of videos on social media where I talk about it,
• 28:48
  and I will continue to do that because that message is near and dear my heart.
• 28:52
  because the logical extension of a healthy plant is healthy people, right?
• 28:58
  And so now we're getting back to what we talked about just a few minutes ago.
• 29:05
  We're not talking about taking a pill for the headache.
• 29:08
  We're talking about finding the root cause in what we eat,
• 29:11
  and we're not only making the plant healthier, but we're making ourselves healthier.
• 29:15
  We make ourselves healthier.
• 29:17
  We don't need to worry about all these big health care costs.
• 29:21
  We don't have to interject as much into the health insurance.
• 29:25
  You know, can I afford it?
• 29:27
  Can I do it?
• 29:27
  Can I go to the doctor?
• 29:28
  Do I need to go to the doctor?
• 29:30
  And again, not again, I want to echo what you were saying before.
• 29:34
  The same thing in the plant world where, yes, once in a while you may need something that gets away from you.
• 29:42
  While you're learning to hone what that plant needs, things are going to happen.
• 29:46
  And, you know, an aspirin or a BT, as you put it, may be needed to get us over the hump while we're getting that healthy.
• 29:55
  And I would use that logical extension to me for us as people.
• 30:00
  If we start eating healthy food that have been grown in biodynamically active soils that have been properly minerally balanced, I think we're going to find that we are far more healthy.
• 30:12
  and a very oversimplification and and i sometimes get kicked under the table when i tell this story
• 30:22
  but if you look back to our grandparents area into the four era the 40s and 50s i mean technically
• 30:30
  they did everything wrong right they drank they smoked uh they worked a lot but they sure seemed
• 30:37
  a lot healthier than we do. Oh yeah. They were thinner. They were more active. They were,
• 30:44
  you know, just everything about it. And I know, I mean, I grew up with these folks. I was blessed
• 30:49
  to have my grandparents in my life for a young age. And I, you know, I, I remember sitting in
• 30:55
  smoke filled room and, and everything that today we would say, it's going to kill you. Stop it.
• 31:01
  You're going to die. And they all lived into their eighties, some of them into their nineties
• 31:05
  and we're healthy all the way there is is that that's anecdotal no doubt about it but i we can't
• 31:12
  ignore that there's we can't ignore that there is a lot of anecdote there i i i use the same thing
• 31:19
  my grandmother uh you know into her 80s she made a pie every week she would make a pecan pie
• 31:27
  every morning she would heat up a slice of pecan pie and have it with black coffee every morning
• 31:35
  this was her morning routine you look at anyone that's going to talk to you about eating healthy
• 31:41
  and living a healthy lifestyle they're going to be like nope she cooked with lard she cooked with
• 31:46
  butter i mean she this was like real you know food is what i take it as and you know again
• 31:53
  longevity, happy, you know, healthy out doing, you know, four or five mile walks through the
• 31:59
  desert in the morning, you know, with her husband and, you know, all of this stuff. And so I don't
• 32:05
  know, again, it's a lot of anecdote, but it it's, it's hard evidence to dispute. Um, I mean,
• 32:16
  there's, and, and again, I don't want to, my, my goal in life is not necessarily to pick fights
• 32:21
  with anybody but my I I certainly want a question I mean I grew up in that era our our era was taught
• 32:29
  to question right and so I'm still that way just because that's the way we do it today is that the
• 32:36
  way we should do it before and if that if it worked before and we changed it and it doesn't
• 32:41
  seem to be working now what's wrong with going back and saying you know maybe what we were doing
• 32:47
  was really what we should have been doing.
• 32:49
  And, you know, okay, we tried that.
• 32:50
  Let's move on.
• 32:52
  And I don't think science necessarily allows for that.
• 32:57
  They always want to be looking ahead,
• 32:59
  but they're not very often interested in looking behind.
• 33:02
  Yeah.
• 33:03
  Yep.
• 33:04
  Until you get a preponderance of evidence that shows, you know,
• 33:09
  pretty blatantly that there was a mistake there,
• 33:12
  in which case you might get enough public opinion worked up
• 33:16
  to get some people to come back and risk you know doing a study that's counter to mainstream
• 33:24
  thoughts i guess yeah the perfect example of that today is the the whole discussion around natural
• 33:32
  colors and natural flavors uh that that was the easy button it was cheap it was easy and
• 33:40
  And, you know, it was said to be healthy.
• 33:43
  Well, we are now looking in the rearview mirror because I think there's been some problems.
• 33:48
  And we're finding out that, you know, maybe that wasn't the right place to go.
• 33:52
  So, you know, for every rule, there's an exception.
• 33:54
  And I would say in this case, science is taking a look now at some of these chemically produced dyes, chemically produced flavors, colors.
• 34:07
  and saying that's probably not the healthiest for us.
• 34:11
  And they're right.
• 34:13
  I'm just going to be bold in that statement.
• 34:15
  They're right.
• 34:16
  They're not.
• 34:17
  They're not.
• 34:18
  It's funny because I was actually doing this exercise yesterday
• 34:22
  and kind of looking through it.
• 34:24
  They got a lot of things wrong.
• 34:25
  Eggs, they got wrong.
• 34:27
  Margarine, oh boy, wow.
• 34:30
  Oops.
• 34:31
  Seed oils, right?
• 34:33
  You know, I mean, the food pyramid in general, in my honest, humble opinion, was probably one of the worst single page items that was ever created.
• 34:49
  So, you know, luckily we are starting to see more people owning up to that, owning up to the data does not support what was said previously.
• 35:00
  So that's nice.
• 35:01
  yeah yeah it is nice i i really do believe that we're we're headed on a good trajectory now we
• 35:09
  obviously all have a lot to learn and if we don't there's something wrong but but it we're headed on
• 35:17
  a good trajectory now i think to really starting to help people understand the value of eating
• 35:22
  healthy and it's more than just a trim body uh there's a lot more to it and i i'm going to be a
• 35:28
  big advocate for eating biodynamically active food. I just, I think we solve a lot of problems,
• 35:37
  a lot of problems, if we just get back to eating healthy and frankly supporting growers that are
• 35:42
  going to be getting back to that style of agriculture. The problem with that is that
• 35:49
  we have to give them a reason to. I mean, we're all businessmen in agriculture. We do do this
• 35:54
  because we love it that's not a fair statement i mean particularly the family farms the bigger
• 35:58
  corporate farms might be a little bit different than this but this this and i'm not going to say
• 36:05
  small i mean there's some big corporate family farms as well that really do care about how we
• 36:13
  take care of the soil and what we do and but we need to stay in business so people
• 36:20
  and I always hesitate a little bit here because I'm the first one to say I don't want to pay more
• 36:25
  for anything if I don't have to. So we have to help people understand value, the value in this
• 36:34
  idea of growing food. And the value really is, if you want to put it in a monetary sense,
• 36:39
  you start eating this way. I'm not going to start citing you publications. I can,
• 36:45
  but I'm not going to start citing you publications. I'm just going to give you my promise.
• 36:50
  that my experience has been if you eat this way, if you eat food that comes this way and you stop
• 36:55
  dealing with preservatives in your food and you take the time and make food, but more importantly,
• 37:02
  you get it from a biodynamically enriched soil, you're going to be healthier. Your medical costs
• 37:08
  are going to go down. Your lifestyle is going to increase. Your personality is going to be
• 37:15
  rejuvenated because you just feel better about yourself.
• 37:19
  These are all, again, we talked about anecdotal.
• 37:23
  These are all anecdotal, but I'm very convinced after doing this for over 40 years now that
• 37:30
  you will see a difference.
• 37:33
  And the Beyond Berries, getting back to that, although it's not all biodynamically grown
• 37:38
  fruit, the stuff that comes from my farm is.
• 37:40
  but that's that's the direction we're trying to to go and the reason that i stepped out of the
• 37:49
  industrial sector if you will in in my main business is so that i could message this
• 37:56
  because the brands don't have the time or the bandwidth or the understanding to really
• 38:02
  do this so my hope is that by getting out here with the farmer bob brand again with my face on the
• 38:08
  my face on the label and a product line that's simple, understandable, that we can get people
• 38:15
  to start to sort of understand this concept. And then I can take that back to more growers and say,
• 38:22
  look, here's evidence of where this works. You know, you still go ahead and sell. My hope is
• 38:29
  still go ahead and sell into those traditional markets. But when you get down to this fruit,
• 38:33
  that's going to be potentially wasted,
• 38:36
  come see me because I want to value add that
• 38:38
  and I want to help you.
• 38:40
  I want to get this good fruit that is healthy,
• 38:45
  nutritionally balanced, biodynamically active,
• 38:49
  and get that in front of consumers
• 38:51
  and let them know what it is to get back to eating healthy.
• 38:58
  Yeah, I'll leave it there.
• 39:00
  I feel like I'm a little bit on my soapbox.
• 39:03
  No I think Havoc and I could probably do a full episode on our testimony of eating better because we both made tremendous changes in life and lost weight and the whole nine yards eating You know we shop pretty much I think both of us shop in the periphery of the store We don even go in the middle of the store anymore
• 39:20
  But for a lot of people, I think it comes down to convenience because it's much easier to pick up a bag of chips or a box of something and throw it in the cart than it is to buy the raw foods and prepare them yourself.
• 39:34
  And that's just adjustments that we had to make personally in our life.
• 39:38
  But I think that's one of the biggest hurdles that people have to go over.
• 39:43
  It's just easier to even get Uber Eats or whatever and have that stuff delivered to your house.
• 39:51
  Absolutely.
• 39:52
  And I'm not going to say don't have your bag of chips.
• 39:54
  It kind of gets back to our earlier conversation.
• 39:56
  You eat healthy, and that's your predominant way of eating.
• 40:02
  If you want to have a chip fix, have a chip fix.
• 40:05
  I mean, it's not going to hurt you.
• 40:06
  If you like it, enjoy it.
• 40:07
  My grandfather said for years, you can eat anything in moderation.
• 40:14
  My grandfather told me the same exact thing.
• 40:16
  Yeah.
• 40:17
  I might add to that a little bit more now is just don't eat too much of the preservatives.
• 40:25
  Stay away from those if you can, the artificials, anything.
• 40:29
  If it's a name that you can't pronounce or if you can pronounce it, you really don't know what it is,
• 40:34
  probably a good rule of thumb to stay away from it there's plenty of food out there that is what
• 40:41
  it says it is but the for the sake of convenience and lx i'm glad that you brought that up um
• 40:48
  we have the food industry has made it so easy to eat and so easy to have things conveniently on the
• 40:56
  store shelf but like the earlier agricultural agriculture discussion there's a price that
• 41:05
  comes with that convenience and we just need to moderate that a little bit yeah i mean you know
• 41:11
  in alexa and his wife are both another set of anecdotal evidence right i mean it wasn't just
• 41:21
  about getting healthier and losing weight, right, Alex? There's a deeper story to this, isn't there?
• 41:28
  Yeah, I started that journey. I have an autoimmune condition, psoriasis. I mean, it's not
• 41:34
  going to kill me, but it's inconvenient. So I set upon that journey to try to fix that. Well,
• 41:40
  it's not perfect. It's a lot better than it has been in the past. And I'm pretty content on my
• 41:46
  journey, but it's a journey. I'm not there yet and still working on it.
• 41:51
  But, you know, we try to grow as much as we can here.
• 41:54
  We're just, you know, a little residential lot, and we have our chickens out back.
• 41:59
  And I do have blackberries, so maybe you can give me a couple tips for somebody growing blackberries in my own yard.
• 42:06
  I'll be happy to.
• 42:07
  I don't know.
• 42:08
  Yeah.
• 42:09
  I mean, the only bad thing I've had is Japanese beetles came in one day, and they're like, this plant's ours.
• 42:13
  And I had to pick them off by hand, and chickens love them.
• 42:18
  You know what?
• 42:19
  I was going to mention that.
• 42:21
  It really is a system. It's a holistic system. And the fact that you have chickens really makes a big difference. And as was discussed earlier, sometimes you get those Japanese beetles that will come in and, you know, they'll just overwhelm it in sheer numbers.
• 42:36
  and again i going back to my animal kingdom if you got a bunch of lions in the pride well they're
• 42:41
  not all going to be able to pick on the the unhealthy plants so we might need a little boost
• 42:46
  to knock down the lion population or the japanese population to balance everything and at the end of
• 42:52
  the day guys that's really what this is is balance and there is no you know check the box which is
• 42:59
  what we all kind of want to have today it's easier check the box and this works there really isn't a
• 43:04
  check the box in the system that I'm talking about.
• 43:07
  It's integration, it's monitoring, it's being active and, you know,
• 43:13
  finding out what works.
• 43:15
  And those chickens will not only help you with the, and you know this,
• 43:21
  they're not only going to help you with the insects,
• 43:23
  they're also going to help you with the soil and fertilization,
• 43:27
  but not just the fertilization.
• 43:29
  The bioactive nature of what they're leaving there for fertilizer is going to
• 43:34
  enhance the soil as well. And on my farm over the years, I've sort of designed my own biology to put
• 43:42
  back in the soil based on the crops we're growing. And in our case, it's berries. Again, very high
• 43:49
  level. I don't want to make this a science discussion, but very high level berries. And I
• 43:54
  would say this for you, berries like a fungally dominated soil. You get basically, you know, again,
• 44:02
  In high level, you have bacteria and you have fungus, fungal activity in the soil, as well as arthropods, as well as, you know, you were mentioning nematodes.
• 44:17
  All of that is there.
• 44:18
  So I'm talking about the smaller size aspect of it.
• 44:23
  So there's two distinctions, fungal and bacterial.
• 44:28
  vegetables generally like a bacterial dominated soil so if you're growing brassicas if you're
• 44:36
  growing grains if you're growing grasses vegetables in general they're generally going to want to have
• 44:43
  a more bacterial dominated soil if you're growing more woody plants like a berry or a tree or
• 44:51
  something like that they're going to generally lean towards a more fungally dominated soil
• 44:56
  So, you know, again, high level, you can take that information in your blackberries and, you know, then work within your specific environment combined with that soil balancing that I talked about with the bases and you're going to create a healthy plant.
• 45:16
  I'll almost guarantee it.
• 45:18
  Yeah.
• 45:18
  One thing we use for all of our berries is any of the, so, you know, firewood, right?
• 45:25
  uh, rather than mulch, actual split logs because less danger of, you know, incorporating pesticides,
• 45:36
  herbicides, fungicides, et cetera. Um, but punky wood is, is perfect. And that's kind of like that
• 45:42
  wood that's been sitting out too long. It's gotten wet and it's kind of a little mushy to the touch,
• 45:47
  et cetera. It's no longer good for firewood. We just toss all of that around our berries and that
• 45:54
  right there builds up that my mycelial layer immensely quickly faster than anything i've ever
• 46:01
  seen do it and you know we'll throw a little bit of our compost so we we have livestock as well
• 46:07
  right we have horses goats chickens turkeys geese all of that manure all of that bedding and manure
• 46:14
  saturated with urea and you know obviously manure goes into our own compost our of course kitchen
• 46:22
  scraps go into our compost uh you know leaf litter will go into compost if we you know let
• 46:28
  grass because we do we let it grow up go to seed and then mow it down sometimes we'll actually go
• 46:35
  and take the tractor and put bucket loads of fresh grass up into the compost as well so what we feed
• 46:42
  our plants is everything that comes as waste from our farmstead and then of course with the berries
• 46:50
  We throw less compost on there because, as you said, the bacterial portion of it isn't as critical.
• 46:56
  It's still important, but it's not as critical.
• 46:59
  And then we throw that punky wood on there.
• 47:01
  And that's just kind of an annual thing.
• 47:04
  You know, load the berry plants up with wood.
• 47:07
  You guys are biodynamic farmers.
• 47:09
  Welcome to the cause.
• 47:11
  Yeah.
• 47:12
  I just thought about something for your product, which I bet it takes care of.
• 47:17
  I love blackberries, but the worst part is those seeds that get caught in your teeth.
• 47:22
  And I bet your product eliminates those entire.
• 47:25
  It does.
• 47:27
  It does.
• 47:28
  But I just want to take a step back and then let's talk about that because I just absolutely love this conversation.
• 47:36
  And before we walk away from it, I want to tell you another story.
• 47:40
  uh so the composting side of it and the punky wood uh and i talked about fungal i didn't really
• 47:50
  tell you how you get there but you you described it having it's using more woody products because
• 47:55
  they're going to have more fungal activity you got to be a little bit careful with some of the
• 48:00
  woods that you're using because you don't want to run into an allelopathic uh wood and and by that i
• 48:06
  I mean, again, it kind of relates back to the early conversation in organic, but allelopathy is a term used to say that a plant will prevent other plants from growing around it.
• 48:20
  There's a chemical in it that keeps it that way.
• 48:21
  So, you know, you might have looked underneath like a cedar tree.
• 48:25
  If you have a cedar tree around and you don't see any plant activity around and under that, that's allelopathy that's causing that.
• 48:31
  So the natural toxins that are in the tree prevent those from growing.
• 48:39
  And, you know, many of our herbicides are developed from that type of concept.
• 48:45
  But that punky wood thing.
• 48:47
  So here's my story.
• 48:49
  When I first started growing berries in Oregon, I worked for a great guy and a lot of old guys that had been around for a while.
• 48:57
  and he was a mentor of mine, certainly in production, and taught me a lot.
• 49:03
  One of the things he said all the time is,
• 49:05
  yeah, there's nothing better for growing berries than coming right out of virgin timber.
• 49:11
  Now, some people might shudder about that, but it's a fact.
• 49:15
  I mean, that's how ground was broken in the Northwest.
• 49:18
  It came out of timber, and when they planted berries into it, the berries just thrived.
• 49:22
  And I thought to myself, well, and with time, then you sort of lost that thriving aspect of it.
• 49:29
  You had to get back to this prescriptive agriculture to keep things growing.
• 49:33
  And I started asking myself, okay, there's got to be a reason for that.
• 49:39
  I'm in my 20s now.
• 49:41
  I don't know, beans with a bag's open about life in general then.
• 49:46
  But I was asking that question.
• 49:48
  And I, back then I was, and still am making compost teas as part of the regimen for biological activity.
• 49:56
  And I went out into the forest and started grabbing that punky wood because I said, you know, this is the natural process, right?
• 50:03
  And I threw it in a compost tea and boy, did the plants light up.
• 50:09
  So now my thermal compost all has that in it.
• 50:12
  My vermicompost, I try and get a little bit in it.
• 50:15
  And my compost teas, I try and get a little bit in it.
• 50:17
  And boy, it just it just really reinvigorates the plant with that funky wood.
• 50:24
  Oh, yeah. Yeah. I actually learned about this.
• 50:28
  I'm a big fan of of learning from failure and learning from like what happened here.
• 50:38
  It just this grew and it's succeeding. Why?
• 50:42
  And in the case of the berries, that was exactly it.
• 50:45
  we had a pile of firewood that we used it was it's all hardwood um and next thing you know i've just
• 50:52
  got blackberries wild blackberries and raspberries just shooting up everywhere nowhere around this
• 50:58
  but this whole pile is just a dense patch of berries and i was like well the only thing
• 51:07
  different here than anywhere else is the wood so i started doing that and boom you know so
• 51:13
  then i started researching okay what is this and that's where the mycelial layer come came in and
• 51:19
  that knowledge came in but i actually learned it just from i guess listening to the land the plants
• 51:26
  amen brother amen i do have another blackberry question sure so as you know when they when they
• 51:34
  start coming in season they start coming and sometimes i can't eat them quite fast enough
• 51:39
  So besides preserving like jams and sugary stuff like that, how can I keep the fresh fruit longer?
• 51:45
  Are there any tips for that?
• 51:46
  Great question.
• 51:47
  So let's go back to the seeds and let's dovetail that into the preservation of the fruit.
• 51:55
  The direct answer to the question is you can always freeze the berries.
• 52:00
  Pick them, throw them in the freezer, throw them in a bag and freeze them.
• 52:03
  you are not going to lose any value whatsoever in a freezing process.
• 52:09
  In fact, and I'm not ready to hang my hat on this, my proverbial hat on this yet,
• 52:15
  but I think anecdotally I can understand the concept that freezing,
• 52:21
  because you can pick it dead ripe and put it in the freezer right away,
• 52:26
  is going to be more nutritive value for you than the way we have to deal with fresh fruit.
• 52:33
  Now, if you're dealing with that right out of your garden, probably not as big of an issue.
• 52:39
  But if you're buying that out of a clamshell, say, in the store somewhere, they have to pick it immature.
• 52:48
  So there's a reason we eat fruit when it's ripe, because it's better for us.
• 52:54
  We like fruit when it's ripe, because it's better for us.
• 52:58
  I mean, God created some pretty good systems.
• 53:00
  He really did.
• 53:01
  and we manipulate those systems a little bit and sometimes not to our benefit
• 53:08
  but we do it out of necessity because people have got to eat and they want to have berries and
• 53:14
  they've got to be shipped a little bit on the under right side so they make it there and
• 53:19
  and you know they're able to be consumed without degradation so freezing i'm a big proponent and
• 53:28
  that's why I went with with the first in the product line of the Farmer Bob products being
• 53:33
  the Beyond Berries I went with a frozen product intentionally because I can now take that and I
• 53:40
  can preserve everything good about it in a way that doesn't require anything else I just produce
• 53:47
  the fruit I mold it and I freeze it and you can certainly do the same thing and I would advocate
• 53:52
  for that or anybody for doing that just take that you freeze almost anything and that's nature's
• 53:59
  preservation quite frankly um so let's let's stick with what nature knows what god knows and
• 54:04
  let's keep it going that way uh so long-winded answer to your uh what do you do to preserve
• 54:13
  them but freeze them nothing wrong with freezing it perfect i know some of it's probably mental
• 54:19
  but I swear mine tastes better than the ones I buy at the store.
• 54:23
  I know they do.
• 54:25
  I don't think it's mental.
• 54:27
  I think just simply, and again, it gets back to the biodynamic farming
• 54:33
  and paying attention to what we're growing, food tastes better.
• 54:37
  And one of the things, so on the farm that I'm growing now,
• 54:41
  I grow black raspberries.
• 54:44
  and here's just a quick little side note
• 54:48
  to what we're talking about here.
• 54:51
  Typically black, a measurement that we use a lot
• 54:54
  when we're trying to talk about the quality of food,
• 54:58
  particularly in the juice and puree industry,
• 55:00
  which I'm in in a big scale,
• 55:04
  we look at the measurement called BRICS
• 55:06
  and that's a measure of soluble solids.
• 55:10
  Okay, commonly called sugars, right?
• 55:14
  So most black raspberries are going to run anywhere from a low of 10 to a high of 13, 14 bricks that are grown under what would be conventional or even organic.
• 55:29
  Organic, if it's grown more towards the actual hippie style organic, will boost that.
• 55:37
  But with the biodynamic practices that I'm using, they run closer to 22 bricks.
• 55:43
  well that's increasing the flavor and that's probably what you're getting with the blackberries
• 55:51
  you know you just the way we grow food makes a difference in how healthy it is but also how
• 55:57
  good it tastes and the nutrient density in your product or biodynamically
• 56:05
  grown product is astronomically higher than anything else. What that means in,
• 56:13
  I like to say dumb farmer terms, what that means you're going to eat less and get more.
• 56:19
  So you're not going to have to eat as much food and you're going to feel full. Well,
• 56:25
  where you're eating biologically dead food, whether it be through preservatives or whatever
• 56:31
  it might be you got to eat more to get that same nutritive value so it makes i believe that 100
• 56:39
  yeah yeah i actually uh tuned into a a documentary i believe it was on uh the the um
• 56:51
  the marketability of tomatoes right and this goes to any any crop right and the gmo
• 57:00
  process that they've done to make them more marketable, right? You can grow a tomato
• 57:07
  in your yard, right? You grow that tomato and put it on a shelf. It's not going to last a week.
• 57:13
  It's just not going to. So they take steps to make sure they last longer,
• 57:18
  skins a little bit, little bit more firm, little tougher, you know, pick them less ripe, etc. And
• 57:25
  all of this leads to a decay in the amount of nutrients, phytonutrients, etc. that are available
• 57:30
  in that vegetable or berry or fruit.
• 57:35
  And a big piece of this.
• 57:36
  But it's pretty and it looks good though.
• 57:37
  Well, a big piece of this is also making sure
• 57:40
  that it comes out and looks pretty, consistent,
• 57:42
  pretty, always the same, right?
• 57:44
  Or very, very close.
• 57:46
  And it's an interesting thing
• 57:48
  because I've always, I've detested tomatoes.
• 57:50
  I just don't like them.
• 57:52
  I started growing them because my wife wanted tomatoes.
• 57:56
  Finally said, all right, pop one in my mouth.
• 57:58
  And I'm like, I like this.
• 57:59
  This is really good.
• 58:01
  Yeah.
• 58:02
  And I can spot a store-bought tomato blindfolded every single time.
• 58:07
  And I don't like them.
• 58:08
  They're terrible, right?
• 58:09
  Same with sweet potatoes.
• 58:11
  Never liked them.
• 58:11
  I've got a whole bunch of them that we're just going through.
• 58:14
  And, you know, it's an interesting concept.
• 58:18
  Now, here's another thing that I really like.
• 58:21
  So for me, we have a bunch of apple trees, right?
• 58:24
  We have five that are currently producing.
• 58:26
  That's a lot of apples, really.
• 58:27
  We don't get a huge amount because of the way we farm.
• 58:31
  But I'll tell you this.
• 58:32
  I couldn't sell an apple to anyone to save my life because when they come off the tree, they're Fuji apples too.
• 58:40
  When they come off the tree, they got black spots on them, dents, and they don't look appealing at all.
• 58:46
  I mean nobody would look at that and buy it I wouldn Not a chance But if you cut it open and eat it wow that a you know piece of gold right there and i think it really interesting to see more and more you know places products
• 59:03
  people looking at hey this is a lot of food that's literally going to waste it best good food
• 59:10
  yeah best case scenario it goes to compost but i would say that's probably in the single digit
• 59:16
  percentile for farmers right most of it probably goes to the ground or gets shipped off to a a
• 59:23
  facility that does the sort and process and packing and it gets tossed right so
• 59:31
  exactly yeah exactly right exactly right and that is really um the concept of beyond berries that
• 59:39
  fruit that you're talking about that doesn't, it's not pretty enough. I mean, for whatever reason,
• 59:47
  it's not pretty enough. It's too soft. It's too, too mushy. It's irregular. It, it, you know,
• 59:53
  is missing cells in the case of a berry, but it doesn't have to be a berry. It's any fruit. It
• 59:58
  could be an apple. It could be a peach. It could be a pear. It could be a broccoli. It could be
• 1:00:03
  cauliflower. It could be peas, whatever it is. I mean, there's a tremendous amount of food that
• 1:00:09
  It doesn't look good, and we've been conditioned to eat with our eyes.
• 1:00:14
  And that's what this upcycled component of the Beyond Berries
• 1:00:18
  and the actual upcycled movement.
• 1:00:20
  There's a number of different people that are looking at this
• 1:00:25
  and trying to take food waste that you just described
• 1:00:27
  and saying, you know, this is perfectly good food.
• 1:00:30
  We just got to find a way to put it in a way that is presentable and palatable.
• 1:00:36
  And that's what Beyond Berries is.
• 1:00:38
  And again, when we get back to the discussion of organic and conventional and beyond berries, that's why I do it.
• 1:00:45
  I want to be able to make sure we're getting all of that we can to prevent food waste.
• 1:00:50
  Because that's just, you may as well take a dollar bill and light it on fire.
• 1:00:55
  From an economic perspective, from a health perspective, I mean, there's a whole lot of great food going away.
• 1:01:02
  So we should be eating, especially if it's biodynamic.
• 1:01:06
  Oh, yeah, for sure.
• 1:01:08
  And to our process, again, and I want to go back to your question of seeds.
• 1:01:13
  I haven't forgotten that, Alex.
• 1:01:15
  But the seeds are taken out because our process is,
• 1:01:21
  it's a little bit more than just a regular puree process
• 1:01:24
  because of the dates that are in it.
• 1:01:28
  There's some specific things that we've had to do to get that whole date in there
• 1:01:32
  to make a homogeneous mix and get that creamy flavor
• 1:01:35
  and all the goodness of the date.
• 1:01:37
  But in that process, we are removing the seeds.
• 1:01:42
  So they're coming out.
• 1:01:43
  So the Beyond Berries or any of the other, I mean, we could leave the seeds in it if there was a reason to do it.
• 1:01:50
  But we really didn't see a need because it enhances your smoothie experience if you're making a smoothie out of it.
• 1:01:57
  It enhances your beverage experience, one of the things that you can use.
• 1:02:01
  I mean, they're great for snacking, but there's so many other uses for it.
• 1:02:04
  you can put it in soda water and make a fruit flavored soda and they're great that way you
• 1:02:10
  don't have to add anything else to it just throw beyond berries in it and into a club soda or so
• 1:02:15
  perrier or some form of carbonated water and you've got a soda fruit soda totally healthy
• 1:02:21
  you know i i do like to have a drink on occasion and actually i was sitting around developing this
• 1:02:29
  years ago with a group of my guys at the house and they were razzing me you know like us guys do
• 1:02:34
  what are you going to do with this stuff you know you knucklehead and so we had the blueberries out
• 1:02:39
  we were sitting around drinking some bourbon and i just plopped three or four blueberries in the
• 1:02:44
  the bourbon and excuse the crassness here i says well we're gonna have bob's blue balls bourbon
• 1:02:49
  and we got a good laugh about it but it was actually really good because i i generally would
• 1:02:59
  drink the bourbon neat and it gave it cool i do like the ice but i don't like to have the dilution
• 1:03:05
  with the ice but you got a little bit of a fruity uh fruity flavor to the bourbon which i thought
• 1:03:11
  went paired well with it and it cooled it down so it made a really nice drink and my daughters are
• 1:03:18
  making mimosas with it just a lot of uses because those seeds aren't in there i mean you couldn't
• 1:03:25
  really do that as well if the seeds were there yeah i might actually have to try that make a
• 1:03:31
  manhattan and throw some of the black raspberry ones in there yeah it's good i'm telling you
• 1:03:36
  it's good maybe you can get me to try it i'm not a drinker at all but well maybe one day you can
• 1:03:44
  make the what do they call them mocktails you can make the mocktail there you go yeah we'll get him
• 1:03:50
  to try some we got him to try some uh some of my wife's beer he enjoys it so girl girl beer yeah
• 1:03:58
  i drink the chick beer
• 1:04:00
  the little skinny cans nice and cute this is this is awesome stuff i really really you know
• 1:04:12
  enjoy the story the process that you've gone through and to me you know
• 1:04:19
  having anyone in any portion of the food industry looking at food as something that is
• 1:04:26
  more more aligned with a healthy human um is a huge huge benefit right obviously there has to
• 1:04:36
  be the marketing and all of that stuff right uh i just think that's that's just an amazing thing
• 1:04:43
  to hear the more more we can get more of this would be better right you know in general in
• 1:04:48
  In general, my take on processed food is, you know, right out of the gate.
• 1:04:53
  No, don't, period.
• 1:04:55
  However, there are products out there.
• 1:04:58
  And I guess I would, maybe there's a need for a new label, lightly processed, or something to this effect that, you know, points out that it doesn't always have to include, you know, multisyllabic chemicals and, you know, artificial this and that and all the other.
• 1:05:18
  nonsense that goes into it you can make this product in a very light processed way that
• 1:05:26
  maintains a healthy nutrient profile and is good for the consumer as well as being good for the
• 1:05:33
  farmer and the people producing it so i call this minimally processed um it does there there's a
• 1:05:43
  process that occurs between the whole fruit and what the beyond berries is. That process
• 1:05:50
  really is simply a puree process. We're just grinding up the fruit. Now there's nuance to
• 1:05:58
  how we get the dates to integrate that is proprietary and took us a while to kind of
• 1:06:04
  figure out. But in essence, it's really just taking the whole fruit. And this is exactly what we do.
• 1:06:09
  We take the whole fruit, we take the combination of fruits, we take the seeds out, and then we reform it into the shape of the berry flavor that it represents.
• 1:06:26
  So when I say minimally processed, there's only one step other than a frozen.
• 1:06:33
  There's really only one step.
• 1:06:35
  We take the whole fruit, we throw it in a vat together, and this is an oversimplification, but we throw it in a vat together, remove the seeds, and here you go.
• 1:06:45
  This is what you eat.
• 1:06:46
  So we've not altered, changed, added anything.
• 1:06:49
  There's no added ingredients.
• 1:06:50
  There's no added sugar.
• 1:06:52
  There's no nothing.
• 1:06:53
  It is the fruit and nothing but the fruit.
• 1:06:57
  And that's a wonderful thing.
• 1:06:58
  I mean, we use, like Alex said, when the dearth of blackberries comes in, with strawberries too, we do the same thing.
• 1:07:08
  We have a centrifugal juicer.
• 1:07:12
  And so we'll just toss just a bucket load of blackberries into this thing.
• 1:07:17
  And then, you know, we use that for, we make a frozen yogurt that's, in my opinion, as good, if not better than any ice cream you could find.
• 1:07:28
  And it's very simple.
• 1:07:31
  Again, you come down to like very simple ingredients.
• 1:07:34
  It's, you know, a full fat Greek yogurt, honey, a little bit of cream and, you know, the berries and stuff that you put in there.
• 1:07:47
  Yeah.
• 1:07:48
  Oh, and honey.
• 1:07:49
  Did I say honey?
• 1:07:50
  Yeah, honey.
• 1:07:51
  You said honey.
• 1:07:51
  You like honey.
• 1:07:52
  You're just all about the honey.
• 1:07:53
  He does like honey.
• 1:07:54
  I'm kind of catching that.
• 1:07:56
  Nothing wrong with honey.
• 1:07:57
  I love it.
• 1:07:57
  It's the best vomit I've ever had.
• 1:08:04
  Well, I mean, you can, a lot of the preservation techniques, I mean, when you look at a, like a juice concentration, we drink a lot of, a lot of juices that are concentrated.
• 1:08:14
  Those are fairly highly processed.
• 1:08:17
  I mean, it's a distillation process essentially is what it is.
• 1:08:20
  You're driving off the water.
• 1:08:21
  and that's again i don't want to get into the technical aspect of it but that's that's more
• 1:08:28
  highly processed um you look at the preservations like jam and jellies that's now you're getting
• 1:08:34
  into really far more processing but really all we're doing is what you're going to do with the
• 1:08:40
  and we've got another product line that we're working on right now it's um a spread and it's
• 1:08:49
  going to be the exact same process. We're not going to be putting any preservatives in it.
• 1:08:53
  There's going to be no sugar. There's going to be nothing like that. It's going to be just as,
• 1:08:57
  it's going to be the puree and, you know, some, maybe some lemon juice in it. And we're going to,
• 1:09:05
  we're going to make a spread. So yeah, that's, that's sort of on the horizon. We've got a couple
• 1:09:12
  other flavors of beyond berries, but we've got a lot of ideas back there. If, you know, if we can
• 1:09:18
  convince people that we've got a product that I won't say convince people,
• 1:09:21
  but if people do decide we've got a product and a,
• 1:09:25
  and a system worthy of investing in,
• 1:09:27
  we've got a lot of fun ideas that we can come out with that are just going to
• 1:09:32
  continue down this minimally processed all fruit and nothing but the fruit
• 1:09:36
  road.
• 1:09:38
  I think there's a lot of opportunity there and to help people eat healthy.
• 1:09:43
  Yeah.
• 1:09:44
  If you need any honest reviews,
• 1:09:46
  let me know.
• 1:09:48
  I do need honest reviews. In fact, you know, at these shows, we're always saying because we're on social media. And again, I think I told you guys when we started this show, I really am an 8-track guy in a cyber world. So I have no social media presence until recently because of the marketing aspect of it.
• 1:10:07
  but um you know i've learned some phrases like share and follow still not quite sure i know what
• 1:10:15
  all of that means but i do know that i get some feedback from consumers and and that is very very
• 1:10:21
  important to me and when we're engaging in these shows we do ask them to make your comments if
• 1:10:27
  they're not favorable i i still want to know this helps me grow and if you look at uh happen to look
• 1:10:34
  at our website, we'll give a plug here, farmerbob.com, or social media is at Farmer Bob Fruit,
• 1:10:41
  you'll see a number of different uses for the beyond berries. And those have almost all come
• 1:10:49
  from people that have tried it and given feedback. Hey, it works great here. You know, we had one
• 1:10:55
  kind of was a wild one to me, and I guess it is a thing. I just didn't know it. But we had one
• 1:11:01
  consumer come back and say i've got a high protein ice cream that i've made with beyond berries
• 1:11:08
  and havoc you're going to love this one okay so they took cottage cheese they took beyond berries
• 1:11:16
  and honey blended it up in a blender i told you you were going to love it blended it up in a
• 1:11:22
  blender and refroze it and made ice cream oh wow and it's really really good but that's that's
• 1:11:31
  that is a consumer that got this in their hands um and started playing around with it and came up
• 1:11:38
  with that and we just i'm so blessed and fortunate to have people that are willing to give that
• 1:11:44
  feedback because now i can share that with others that can enjoy that and in this world of high
• 1:11:49
  protein you know that's again simple wholesome food cottage cheese honey and are beyond berries
• 1:11:56
  boy you're eating healthy but you got ice cream with none of the other out of's in it
• 1:12:02
  yeah no that's this is the way
• 1:12:06
  the way i love it i believe it you know i i live it now you know it's it's and it's it's been an
• 1:12:15
  incredible journey you know uh really has so this has been a great conversation and i we just got a
• 1:12:23
  little bit of a plug but let's let's go run through that one more time where can we find you
• 1:12:27
  where can people get the beyond berries if they don't happen to be near a storefront that that
• 1:12:32
  carries them and maybe what's your absolute favorite recipe okay so uh right now we're available in
• 1:12:42
  uh mother's market bristol farms in the midwest we're available in woodman's uh so basically
• 1:12:49
  Michigan, Ohio area were available in stores there.
• 1:12:53
  All up and down the West Coast, the Northwest, all the way up into Alaska where Three Bears
• 1:13:01
  Alaska, Mother's Market, Bristol Farms, Vicente Foods, some of the more natural.
• 1:13:08
  Look for us in the natural food stores.
• 1:13:12
  LifeSource in Oregon, we're talking to Market of Choice right now.
• 1:13:18
  should be getting into that store soon and some of the more natural food stores in the Northwest.
• 1:13:26
  And actually, this seemed a little bit ironic to me, but Smart and Final picked us up.
• 1:13:32
  So Smart and Final stores in the Southwest were in most all of those, and they've had great success.
• 1:13:40
  Smart and Final has generally been more of a discount store,
• 1:13:43
  but they are leaning more towards actually the movement that we're talking about here, guys.
• 1:13:48
  And I guess that would be a plug for them.
• 1:13:50
  They're starting to realize this and see market acceptance on their side.
• 1:13:55
  So they picked us up to be a part of that movement.
• 1:13:57
  I was just really happy to be involved with that.
• 1:14:01
  The unfortunate thing is because it is a frozen product, it's just not economically viable to ship it.
• 1:14:08
  The cost of shipping to move it around, to keep it frozen with dry ice and get it there is tough.
• 1:14:14
  I'm happy to ship you guys some to try it.
• 1:14:17
  I think that would be great if we could do that.
• 1:14:19
  I'm more than happy to do it.
• 1:14:21
  Just shoot me your physical addresses, and I'll get my daughter's description.
• 1:14:27
  And this really is, I say that, this really is a family-run operation.
• 1:14:31
  I have my wife who's actually here with me, smiling at me and encouraging me.
• 1:14:37
  My biggest encourager is her.
• 1:14:40
  My daughters are involved in the business.
• 1:14:42
  My son was, but he just decided to go into the Coast Guard.
• 1:14:45
  So, yeah, he's embarked in that journey.
• 1:14:49
  And then, frankly, our team is all like family.
• 1:14:52
  We just have a great group of people.
• 1:14:55
  And, yeah, so we're one big, happy family creating Beyond Berries
• 1:15:00
  and some puree to sell to wholesale customers.
• 1:15:03
  I guess that's my plug there.
• 1:15:09
  Yeah.
• 1:15:10
  Awesome.
• 1:15:10
  All right.
• 1:15:11
  And then we like to ask our guests a single question that we think is important.
• 1:15:18
  Throughout our lives, we're impacted.
• 1:15:20
  We are, you know, given advice or, you know, something just sticks with us that made a fundamental and profound impact in our lives.
• 1:15:30
  So we ask our guests, you know, who is that person, historical figure, professor, could be anyone, right?
• 1:15:37
  you know, living or no longer living or also could be still living, but not with us living.
• 1:15:46
  Who would you like to give a shout out to?
• 1:15:49
  Such a big and broad question.
• 1:15:52
  We never get anywhere in life without mentors and people in our lives that have been there to support us,
• 1:16:01
  teach us and, you know, help us grow.
• 1:16:04
  But if I have to narrow it down to one, by far the most important person, the most important man to me in life is Jesus Christ.
• 1:16:15
  He's my God. He's my beacon. He's my king.
• 1:16:19
  And everything that I do is going to revolve around his teachings and his desire of me to glorify the Father.
• 1:16:30
  That's a great answer.
• 1:16:31
  That is a wonderful shout out.
• 1:16:33
  and now yes yes all right well hey we've really appreciated you coming on sharing your stories
• 1:16:41
  your your process well to the extent that you can obviously uh and just having a wonderful
• 1:16:48
  conversation it's been a really good time um so about time for us to wrap it up here
• 1:16:55
  lx anything else you wanted to close out with or no i i i really enjoyed this conversation thank
• 1:17:02
  you so much for coming on thank you for answering my questions and then i think we're kind of all
• 1:17:07
  on the same page here about this stuff yeah just need to eat a little better yeah absolutely and
• 1:17:12
  guys thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to chat a little bit about the product a little
• 1:17:16
  bit about what i believe in and boy it's just been great talking with kindred spirits it's so much
• 1:17:22
  easier to have these discussions when uh you have an idea of what it is that i'm trying to espouse
• 1:17:28
  with this healthy eating.
• 1:17:30
  So thank you for letting me be a part of that
• 1:17:32
  and frankly echoing and advocating the same ideas.
• 1:17:39
  Awesome.
• 1:17:40
  All right, well, hey, everybody,
• 1:17:42
  thank you once again for giving us a bit of your time.
• 1:17:45
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• 1:17:46
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• 1:17:48
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• 1:17:51
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• 1:17:53
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• 1:17:54
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• 1:17:57
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• 1:17:59
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• 1:18:00
  Wherever you are, whenever you're listening to this, have an amazing day.
• 1:18:08
  See you, everybody.
• 1:18:27
  We'll see you next time.