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Episode #201: The One-Cow Revolution: Growing Abundance Anywhere · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, everybody.
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels Podcast with your hosts, uh Joel Salatin.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: That would be me, the farmer, and our greatest researcher, Dr.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Cena McCullough.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're here to welcome special guests today, really special guests.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've known uh Sean and Beth Doherty for I don't know how many years, but uh we we do we should just start a traveling troop together because we we literally um um meet each other at I don't know how many uh homestead type festival uh shindigs.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you, they are always the sensational draw.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: They uh they bring seeds and and and have a you know a table.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean they're just busy from morning till night with people that want to to talk to them, and I think you'll find them endearing to you as I have.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: So their farm is in Toronto, Ohio.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're um and this farm was um was designated as officially unsuitable for agriculture by government officials many, many years ago.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it it's a it's a hilly farm.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's not flat, it's not it's not easy land, it's what we would normally call kind of a difficult land, but it's in Toronto, Ohio.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's called The Sal's Ear.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh their uh their great book that they've written, and I think there's another one on the way, is The Independent Homestead.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: The Independent Farmstead.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, the Independent Farmstead, yeah, that's right.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was gonna what you have what happens when you go by memory.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: The independent farmstead, thank you, Sean.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and and by the way, Sean uh comes out of a background as a uh as a theater professor in a college.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so uh he's now um choreographing uh animals uh on the land instead of people across the stage.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but these guys have really um have really uh uh uh created this wonderful um wonderful spot in the kind of small-scale farming community pushing a a complete closed circle where you grow your own uh food for yourself and your animals, and there is zero waste out the other end.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Everything goes into something else, and it's a it's a very carefully uh strategized program.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have gotten Cena and I, as you know, everybody, we love your questions.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we come up with um uh show concepts, episode concepts, and we've gotten numerous questions lately about a family milk cow.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, our family, I grew up, you know, uh as a kid and as a teen.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we always milk cows, and eventually we gave it up to do uh pastured poultry on a commercial scale, which also took summer and a lot of chores uh in the in the summertime.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we've so we got the we got a raw milk herd share, you know, from a guy that wanted to milk nearby, and uh that's how we we've gotten along.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and and and we've kind of come at it from a uh you know a commercial uh a commercial standpoint.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um and and so I I think what what Sean and Beth and our farm at Polyface, we we complement each other in serving uh in serving a broad constituency.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so I have just come to love these folks and their family and what they've done there, and and I think you will too as you hear a little bit of their story.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So um with that intro, why don't we why don't we uh Sean and Beth, could you start us with just uh a thumbnail sketch of acreage production, uh consumption, kind of the give us a give us a little synopsis, give us a context here, and then we'll we'll zero we're gonna we're gonna definitely zero down today on some of the ins and outs of a of a small-scale uh of a family family milk cow.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um but but to get there, let's let's set a context.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So uh when we originally bought our our homestead, it was 16 acres uh with a derelict house, and uh of course uh uh not suitable for agriculture, uh very steep.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we had we say that we had one area that was flat about the size of a swimming pool.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Everything else was trees upside the hill.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um since then we have added on uh a few pieces around us.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Many of those are also steep, but we do have more flat land now, and we have about seven acres or so of actual flat pasture.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, not flat, just pasture.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and then uh we up the road, there is a Franciscan convent, uh, and we've been partnering with them.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: They have about 30 acres of uh rolling uh pasture, and that's where we do most of our cows.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing that has been fascinating is that with uh being introduced to Joel's rotational grazing and Alan Savory, and uh you know, when we started out, we started out like every other homesteader.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: We bought chickens and we and we had a cow, and about July we were saying, Where's all the grass?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right, it's all gone.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but then we started doing rotational grazing, and that has transformed our farm so that now we have an incredible abundance of grass.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that we discovered is the key to starting a sustainable farm.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_04: Inputs free, yeah.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, inputs-free farm is grass.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Grass is the key.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, soil, obviously, and grass, because that powers the cows, and then the power the cows and their milk powers the rest of the farm.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: So today we keep about um I ought to know this number better, but they're divided into three or four groups right now.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, we keep about two dozen cows, bovines.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, that's usually about eight brood cows, they're yearlings, they're calves, and a bull.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we keep two or three small flocks of chickens, and there are always some pigs on the place because wherever you have a milk cow, you need to have a pig.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um that feeds so and I I I want to pause here and point out that the 30 acres up the road that is pasture today wasn't pasture when we got there 15 years ago.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: It was um just uh briars and seedlings because it had been let it had been hogged off, which means pigs were farmed there and rainwashed all the soil away, and then we just it was subsoil with briars growing through it.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: And um that land feeds our family.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: It goes a certain way to feeding a convent of 30 nuns.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: Some food overflows to our community around us, including our our children and their families.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it also feeds all the animals.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um there's virtually no animal feed bought that virtually there, you know, there's a nuance there.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: There is a little bit of stuff fed that's bought in seasonally, but not very much.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it feeds the soil.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um Joel, have you ever wondered why I treat you with such reverence?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: Have you noticed?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's it when I when we first read Joel, which would have been 20 years ago, um you know, the only similarity I can think of is when the the non-believer runs into a Christian and here's a really convincing story of God's goodness.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: Because when you when somebody explains to you that sunlight and grass and grazing animals are the biological energy that powers those parts of the earth which produce people food.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: And that that's and this was this was so significant in what Joel shares.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: So if you don't have salad bar beef, go buy it.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because what Joel shares in there is the is the conviction, and he shares it so that you take it on too, that you don't need to know how to do this.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: God made it a universe that makes so much sense and is so um beautiful and and uh um clear, it has clarity that you can teach yourself to manage cows on grass and uh produce all the food that a small acreage needs or a big acreage.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: So that's what we raise.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the you know, the grass grass has typically been kind of um an ugly stepsister, you know, to grain, which is the it's been the holy holy grail of agriculture for whatever, you know, almost since the beginning.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, but but but grain grain was always very, very difficult today.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Grain's much easier with you know cheap energy and mechanical uh stuff.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, um we can we can we can debate whether it's actually um whether it's actually good for the land, but it's certainly been easier.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and they and they will never subsidize grass.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: So so my my question to start and Cena, I know you're just chafing at the bit here to jump in with some stuff, but I'm gonna I'm gonna um start off with the the the critical question I run is we all do, we run into so many small acreage folks, and they just feel like, well, I've only got three or four acres, five acres.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um is there is there any is there any real return?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do you how do you put two cows in a spot and move them every day?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is it worth it?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: It does it and so and so you and I both know that some of the that there's a lot of poorly grazed land on very small homesteads, grazed into the growth.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: We've got it, we've got a a place just up the road from us.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's about a half acre.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there's there's um a dozen sheep in there.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're in there 24-7, and that place is a I mean, if it weren't in Virginia, it'd be a desert, you know, and and there's no vegetation.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: The poor sheep, I mean, you know, they they just bring hay to them all the time because there's never anything to eat.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And and and this breaks my heart as a we we want small acre people to be better, you know, to be good.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so speak to that that um that imperative to control it, even if you're even if you only have you know two cows.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like the the key, one of the most important keys is stocking numbers.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: You should not have more numbers than you than your farm provides for food.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: You may say, I want six cows, but if your farm doesn't provide food for six cows, then any cow over what your farm naturally produces, you have to bring in inputs.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: And ours is a balancing act where we are constantly saying, how much food does this farm provide, and then how many cows or whatever animals we're gonna bring in.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when we first started out, our numbers were very low.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we you know, we started with a couple of cows, and and on even on the sister's property, which was 30 acres, uh, we started out with very low numbers.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the things that we've seen with very um good practices and and getting to the rotational grazing, and that and that is such a key to it.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but Laura and Mary, I always I always reference them.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: What did Laura House on the prairie?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what did Laura and Mary do?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: They picketed their cow with a rope.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a great way to start.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's what we did with our goats to begin with, and we didn't even really know we were doing rotational grazing, but we picketed them.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: We gave them a certain amount, and then we moved them.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that is all that rotational grazing is.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: So if somebody starts telling you about rotational grazing and you get lost and get confused, just think of picketing and a rope and then moving the cows every 24 hours, or we do every 12 hours because we're bringing them in for milking and then we're taking them back out.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: We are not using a picket anymore, we're using hot wire, which is a great tool.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: But just in your mind think, and certainly on the small acreage, three acres, and one or two cows, you certainly could do picketing.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: So for clarity, um and uh this number is funny because Joel could knock it out of the water, but for clarity, on on our acreages, a single acre is about 70 days worth worth of uh grass for a dairy cow.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: Now, this is um on the small side, this isn't a two-story Holstein.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: This is a eight to a thousand eight hundred to a thousand pound dairy cow who's producing the natural amounts of milk a cow will produce on grass, which is something like you know, an a gallon to five or six gallons a day, depending on on where you live in the season.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: But think about that.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: If you have five acres, and um we're gonna assume that your house and and appurtenances occupy one of them, so you have four acres.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: If each of those acres has something in the neighborhood of 70 days of grass on it, that's more than half the year worth of grass.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: Now, that's not really how it's gonna get grazed, but I want people to have in their minds a single acre might be two months worth of grazing for their dairy cow before they had to come around and graze again.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's, as Joel knows, really too much.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna come around faster than that.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of grass on a small acreage, and don't think we're talking about um beautiful, lush improved acres.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: We're talking about damaged land that still only has just so much topsoil, it had none when we came.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: So an acre can feed an animal for a long time.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: I did want to tell them too when you're interested in food production and feeding yourself the highest quality food, especially feeding your children the highest quality, most the cleanest food, you could keep a dairy cow in a 20 by 20 lot with a little shed.
• 15:11
  unknown: Uh huh.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: And you would neither be being unfair to her nor to your land nor to yourself.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: If you brought in hay and fed a dairy cow, you lived on a quarter acre, you fed a dairy cow in a pen.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: This used to be a very common practice, and it still is in Central Europe, you'd have the best garden in the universe because you'd have so much waste, bedding, and and manure, and you'd have top quality milk made from cheap, low-quality grass nutrients.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh you're you're you're touching on two things that I just want to remind people.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the first time I went to Mexico, I'll never forget it.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: I went to Mexico, uh flew into Monterey, and uh went down toward Tolamipas.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so we were on the Mexican equivalent of a U.S.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: interstate, you know, a divided highway uh going down through there, uh, I don't know, 50, 60 miles.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I landed later in the day, and the whole way down that 50 mile stretch of of highway, it was later in the day, and there were every, I don't know, every half mile, quarter mile, um, you'd see these farmers coming out, taking their tethered, their tethered milk cow, where what they they they put a stake in the ground and let the cow graze, and and the rope wouldn't let her go out to the road.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they keep her, you know, three or four feet back from the road edge.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: But literally, the the entire interstate uh highway system was grazed by cows.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: That they think about how much grass that is.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: They just moved down along the edge of the they didn't have big batwing mowers, you know.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they they just used the cows.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I got to to my speaking engagement there in the in the city, turned out that the city park had arrangements with six six uh people that had six dairy cows, and they picketed, they tethered them, picketed them around the city park.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't mow the city park with a you know with a um uh mower.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: They used these these cows.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and I just thought, I mean, to me, I mean that was that was progressive.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was that was truly um uh state of the art.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: The Batwing mower is passe, you know, back.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Beth Beth and I Beth and I are uh in training to do the Camino.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna go to uh Spain and we're gonna do the Camino.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we're doing eight-mile walks.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we are horrified that on these walks, and these are along uh the rail trails and different things like that, there should be these little farms all along there, with each person having their dairy cow and us learning something about what they're doing, and and exactly right, all they do is mow.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just such a shame because when you begin to see grass as food for a cow, and then a cow as food for us, both milk, uh milk and meat, it would transform this country if we had a million, million, million of these little farms everywhere.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: The the idea of overpopulation would never have been invented if people were managing their land well.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the the uh the other thing then, too, is if you read the um the stories, go back to um uh Chaucer, Chaucer uh writing about Normandy, France, and it's and and as those uh I don't want to get into a thing about the Crusades, but um a lot of the information coming back was from the Crusaders who traveled, you know, heading out to the Middle East, out through through there.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and they would write about stall feeding, uh, and that's exactly what you just mentioned with this 20 20 foot by 24 foot shed.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I want everybody to get a picture in their mind.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a this is a nice, commodious, uh uh open shed, very airy, uh, and you're putting bedding down, you know, some uh chips and sawdust and straw or whatever, and building this kind of uh bedding material.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: The cow is in there.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: She got plenty of room to.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can go in and sleep with her.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, dairy cow channel.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can yeah, there's nothing like a child to go in and just sleep with a dairy cow.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um and and uh and and the stall feeding was done uh especially for dairy and for finishing a beef animal because the nomadic that nomadic uh uh uh idea, they just walk too much to to be able to to put to put enough calories in the bucket, you know, it took too much to walk.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: So so in some of those uh early cultures, it was and and and I'm you know, again, we're back to the future here or future to the back, yeah.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh where it it it can be actually more uh more efficient in a very, very small situation to to bring what's called cut and carry.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: They would cut and carry, and in the parable of the prodigal son, the stall remember the the father said, Let's kill the stall-fed calf.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, of course that was not a grain-fed calf, that was a cut and carry calf.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the crusaders talked about all these um um little farms would have um would have these stalls for their stall-fed animals, so they didn't walk off all their calories, they'd actually put on fat.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so they had this this this um area, maybe an acre in that they would scythe, scythe forage, they would put in a cart, and they would carry out the dung, the manure.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there's this incredibly fertile, you know, uh uh cartilage, I think that's the legal term, the cartilage around the stall area uh where pe where they were using the they were they were cutting and carrying in for the animal, bringing the animal's manure out there, and so they go loaded and come loaded, you know, with the with the cart.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And um and so when it's when it's done right, when it's done on the human scale, that that is not waste, that is fertility.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: When we when we then size up to the commercial scale with KAFOs and uh lagoons of manure, now we're dealing with poisons.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, we really have a problem when we get that big.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: But if we can if we can manage it on the human scale, it's it's a great system.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_03: And if your listeners are interested in this topic, uh we would rather.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Recommend the book, Keeping a Single Milk Cow.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Milch Cow is Milk Milchow.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: And it's about 160 years old, but Amazon will print it for you.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: And it's um about 12 essays by householders in the 1880s who were writing about their various ways of keeping a single dairy cow in the city.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: So these are all confinement cows.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: And um, like I shouldn't use the term confinement.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: They're all soiled, which is the term for what Joel's describing.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: Bringing green cut green feed to an animalist, soiling it.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: And um, these are all soiled cows, or most of them are.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a great book.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: Just look it up.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: It'll expand your sense of what's possible and make um the your you know, your average American erstwhile or wannabe homesteader, it'll expand what you think you can actually do.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: You could do this on a quarter acre or less.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Goodness, on a suburban, on a suburban lot, uh, you know, some of these large, larger, you know, two, three, four acre uh that I see, you know, between here and town where people mowing mowing once a week.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they spend literally every Saturday in the summer, every Saturday, they spend four or five hours mowing uh that could all be uh uh turned into milk and meat on a small scale.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Seeing it, you have been very patient and so I'm I'm gonna I'm I I'm gonna release these uh these icons of the farmstead movement to you for a moment and you you uh run with it a little bit.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_05: Awesome.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, I had to start with already 20 questions written down, and now I have more.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_05: So we'll see what I can get through.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_05: So I love this concept of cut and carry.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_05: Um you guys probably don't know because we just met today, but you know, I just built, we're just building a homestead now.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_05: So we have a garden that we just put in and a fire pit because we love to cook over the fire.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_05: Um and I have five dogs.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_05: So that is our homestead right now, and we're we're trying to grow.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I love this idea of the cut and carry, and partly because I didn't think that I could have a cow because we live on almost 10 acres, but it's it's hilly and it has mostly forests.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_05: So the house space, like you said, it's about an acre house, and then they made us plant grass um in order to pass the government inspection at the end.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_05: But so we just threw down seeds and we threw down like um things that I would forage, you know, wild edibles.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_05: So we're growing things like that on this acre, but the rest is all forest and steep.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_05: So with this, um, so I'm assuming my first question is for somebody beginning, can you raise a cow on steep land that's forest?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_05: Like what would they actually graze?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_05: We have a lot of like bramble.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_05: Let's talk about how steep it is first.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have any idea what the grade is?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_05: Oh gosh, I'm not sure what the grade is, but um you walk on it without using your hands.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_05: So most of it, yes, I can walk on it without using my hands.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_05: There's a creek at the very bottom, and I have to climb with my hands like Spider-Man to get up to get up from the creek.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_05: But yes, most of it I can walk.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um our land was steep enough that uh as you it was shale, and as you tried to move up, you would slide back down.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very steep.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is all now covered in pasture.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: We had set up rock piles uh that we were going to come back to and get rocks.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's now all overgrown with pasture.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, it's amazing what uh rotational grazing would do.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what we would say is don't necessarily start with the cow.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: You want to start with a ruminant right away, but you want to match your ruminant to your pasture.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: Or your forage, whatever you're growing, if you don't have a pasture.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: So if it is very, very steep, maybe you want to start with goats or sheep to begin with.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and we we would have a cow on some steep land, and we did have some uh uh some problems with it being able to travel that.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: But now on these pretty steep uh hillsides, the cows travel quite easily on it.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: So by grazing smaller animals like um wheeling calves, sheep, and goats, on and we're in places we are talking well over a 30-degree grade, like approaching 45, even reaching 45, and some places more than 45.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, by grazing the smaller animals, we were able to judiciously remove trees a few at a time, graze where they were, left some trees in place, and grow soil and grass over the rocks.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: Now what we have is is you know, lovely steep pasture, and we do run agile, um, smaller-size uh heritage breed cattle on that same land today.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: We find dexters to be very sure-footed, uh, and they eat a lot like a goat.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the uh, you know, when we when you're considering what animal, what what ruminant to bring in, topography is one condition.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing is what are you growing?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_03: And who eats that?
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if it is uh briary stuff, goats are really great.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if it is more Forbes, uh the big leafy stuff, that's kind of sheep food or sheep to cattle food.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then as it moves toward grass, and and as if you rotate well, if you manage well, you're gonna find that grass wants to come in because grass does really well underneath uh constant uh grazing, constant, but repeated grazing, repeated grazing and then rest and then grazing.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you'll find that briars and things like that do not do as well underneath that, and they start to give way to the uh the grasses.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: But we we also say that you know, trees are not um sacred, sacred, uh not any more than the rest of creation, anyway.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: We need to be able to, you know, what's happening in the country now, especially we're watching it in Ohio, is there's lots of land that was pastured that now is reverting back to forest because that's what it does.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when you stop grazing, trees start coming back in and turning it back into forest.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so there's nothing wrong with taking forest and taking it back to pasture.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, uh for the most part, any land we had the management of that wasn't too steep, we'd be looking at how are we going if as we had the animals to graze it, how are we gonna turn this into pasture?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: We wouldn't remove all the trees, nope, but we would take out trees um a few at a time, begin bringing sunlight down to the forest floor, and it would begin to grow grass, it'd grow other things too, so you'd have to be prepared for that.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: Goats are a good first animal in that situation, right?
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so if I'm oh go ahead.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: My mentor Alan Nation used to say east of the Mississippi, every acre of pasture is borrowed from the woods.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And realize that the Native Americans, the Native Americans used fire, they didn't have a chainsaw, they used fire and they used grazing management.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: They would they would uh help and of course the predators, uh the bears and the and the wolves uh helped push the animals around as well as the seasons, you know, snow and warm and flies and all those sorts of things uh helped to move the animals around.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: So so um uh you know, we're what what built the deep soils of east of the Mississippi actually were not trees, it was the herbivores and the prairies, uh the prairie grasses were actually more efficacious at converting solar energy into biomass to be decomposed either through manure or through microbes that built soil.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we we we have this this mystique now on on trees that they're and I love trees.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody knows me, knows I I love trees, but but um you know but they're not they're not the be all end all uh the balance in in all these things.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: Go ahead and they're not they're not that steady source of um life energy, of biological energy, organic matter that human beings need when we want to be able to eat 365 days of the year.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: Trees trees produce seasonal energy, grass will feed us year-round.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_05: Well, so if I let's say I'm a homeowner and I have a lawn, and let's say the lawn is about half an acre.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, is that enough to do like this cut and carry um strategy with like one day, dairy cow?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_05: Is half an acre enough?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: It depends on what you're growing.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it depends on how much of the year you're intending to do that.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: So if we put that homeowner down south, that homeowner has actually a longer growing season.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_03: If we move him several hundred miles north, he's got a shorter growing season, but his weather is going to push his cow inside some of the some, well, doesn't have to, but he might, for his own comfort, put his dairy cow near a barn for part of the year and then not mind bringing in hay for that part of the year.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, in that book I recommended Keeping a Single Milk Cow, there are a couple of examples of people who are soiling cows on grown forages off of about a half an acre.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's not an entire diet.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: There's going to be a piece in most places.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to say anything definitive.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: You could probably do it with a great deal of effort.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: But for the most part, what what the to describe a pattern that works.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: So we've said that there's a little bit more than two months of grass for a dairy cow on an acre of our so-so pasture.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: So we'll say on the half acre, there's one month, and you'd graze your cow a month around, and some of the year it'd be ready to go.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: By the time you've gone all the way around, the place you started would be ready to go, and you just keep going.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: But the minute that grass wasn't ready to be grazed, and this isn't the time to explain what that means, but it does regrow and there's a point where it's ready to be grazed.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: The minute you don't have fully recovered grass in front of you, you simply park the cow in that 20 by 24-foot luxury hotel we were describing, you know, her nice little barn and exercise pad, and you feed her hay for a little while.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_03: The grass is still growing, you're taking care of it.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: The thing though that we would recommend is on in that situation is within five minutes or within five miles or something like that, there is abandoned land.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: Most people have vacant lots around them.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you find that owner and you say to him, I want to put my cow on your property, and that becomes maybe my, you know, when I run out of grass on my own property, I move them to this other place.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And many people are delighted to not mow anymore and to have a cow, or you work something out.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you some milk in exchange for letting me be able to put my cow on your property.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we're seeing a lot of that.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the other thing is uh, you know, Joel just wrote an article for acres on leasing land.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so uh it doesn't cost much to lease land to move into it.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're frequently seeing homesteaders who say, I I I got this place next to me, and I've talked to them and they're letting me do it.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing is kind of encroaching.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we know some people actually want to say this into a mic.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: We know that there are some people next to uh land that is owned by either, you know, uh the utility company utility companies or something like that.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody's doing anything with that land, so they kind of ease their cow into that.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: What prevents it, I think, from being a negative is they're improving that uh land by having their cow on it.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is how we there is no other way to regenerate soil, bad soil, than herbivores on grass.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: It is the solution.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so you are improving the land, and um yeah, I I I think that this ownership of these these magic lines, when somebody is not going to use that land.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: These are uh these are um things we need to think about.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, going rogue as uh uh uh but for most people too, before um they have to ask themselves whether it's okay for them to throw a loop of temporary fence into a uh a piece of abandoned land, they're gonna find that they have lots of um underutilized land within you know, if you don't live in Manhattan, there's probably some within a five-mile radius of where you are.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of people, um, as Alan Nation points out, or pointed out, um, don't want to take care of animals but like the way they look and like to be able to, you know, sort of sit on their back porch and look out across a few cows.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not that hard to get grazing permission from people if you're adventurous and you get out there and ask.
• 36:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 36:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's we we call we call that nook and cranny farming.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: There are there are a lot of nook and crannies, you know, edges around a place.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you'd be amazed at at the places.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and the nice thing about a dairy cow is they're so gentle.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're not like they're not like a beef cow, they're not like a high strong, you know, and and and you can put a halter on that cow, you can lead her, you can take her places, you can you can uh you can put a uh a 30-foot rope on her to a T-post you've driven in the ground.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: She'll be perfectly content there.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Chew her cud, give her a bucket of water, and um and they're unbelievably placid.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a dairy cow is so different than you know than rancher, rancher cowboy stuff.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that is one of the things that when we give a workshop, uh we for giving a workshop on the dairy cow, we sent out a survey and said, what are the hurdles, the biggest hurdles for you?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um, there were, you know, I I don't know if I have enough land, I don't know if my land's good, but one of the biggest ones is it's a it's a big old animal.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we completely overlooked that because dairy cows are pussy cats.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: They are so easy to work with, they conform so easily to what, you know, once you get that animal used to coming in for milking, it's gonna come in.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, and it's gonna stand there and it doesn't want to kick, and it doesn't want to, you know, this is pressure off of its big old bag.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it's delighted to have you do that.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what other animal would allow you to come in where only a calf or a baby would be and say, have at it, boys?
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it it's really true that the dairy cow is a different animal.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, you're convincing me.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_05: So we recorded a podcast recently with the goat lady, and I was like, I want a goat.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_05: And now I'm like, I want a cow.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, Cena, like grab your pencil.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna give you some notes.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_03: Cows are easier than goats in every way except picking them up.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's easier to pick a goat up than a cow.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: But other than that, cows are easier in every way, they're easier to fence by orders of magnitude.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_03: A single strand of polytwine will keep a cow in, and a brick wall has trouble keeping a goat in.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: They're easier to keep healthy.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, your normal goat owner is worming that goat on a regular basis.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, our cows, you know, we've we've had cows for since 1998, and rarely has anything on the place been medicated or wormed for any reason.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um they are easier to graze because grass, when it's grazed properly, grows in with even more grass, but briars don't like to be grazed.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: They are they're disadvantaged, so there's more management involved if you're trying to watch goat owners do is and and oh is that they fall in love with their goats.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: And goats are really cute, especially the little one.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that I then run out of goat food, which is briars and stuff like that, and now I have to buy an input.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: And for us, if this animal is requiring an input, it's voted off the island.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, so do you guys graze things we have food for?
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so you don't do you supplement with minerals with your for your house?
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um so uh they'll get a salt block and it's different colors depending on the time of year.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so yes, they do get a certain amount of mineral supplementation.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: The only thing I'm really aware of that they're grateful for is the salt.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: But one thing, you know, grass, good grazing is is the mechanism that builds soil and health into an awful lot of the planet.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things that we were able to observe actually happen on both of our farms was as the soil increased in organic matter, thanks to pulsed grazing, that's um holistic timed grazing and cow manure, um, the soil biological world got more active and more minerals were made available to our forages.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: And over time, our cow's interest in mineral supplements just decreased, decreased, decreased until now.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: I can put out their favorite mineral supplement, which is kelp, and they'll turn from that to go graze because they can do a better job of managing their mineral needs, um, grazing local indigenous their natural food, right?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: Than if I bring them kelp, which if they live by the ocean, they'd eat some, but it's not their natural food.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_05: I love this because we see the same thing happening in humans where we're seeing different mineral deficiencies.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and so we're having to, in large part, supplement people with these mineral combinations, and we're trying to go for natural sources of the minerals, you know.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_05: But in the back of my head, I'm thinking, you know, ancient ancestors didn't, the ones who lived as long as us didn't have all these chronic conditions.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_05: They lived healthy uh often until the day that they died, and they weren't having all these kinds of supplements.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_05: So whereas the mismatch, and you know, a lot of this is coming from the decreased nutrient density and quality in the food.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_05: And that's what you're saying that you're seeing as well in the cows.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_05: Because that was one of my big hurdles.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_05: I thought, why would I have to give these cows, you know, minerals?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_05: Shouldn't they be getting everything that they need from the nutrients that resources that God gave them?
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_05: They would.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: If you know, if if if if your listeners believe in a good creator God, then they have to presume that he didn't make a creation that was necessarily going to be mineral deprived.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, scientifically, that prospect doesn't make any sense.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_03: You can't you can't make an argument for evolution of species in the in the absence of their biological needs.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um Fred Provenza makes the point in I think his book Nourishment that when animals graze on bioactive soils, not only are they receiving all the necess the plants produce all the necessary nutrients and micronutrients for health, the animals receive those from the plants.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um many of them are complex phytochemicals that don't get metabolized.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: So the layman's version of that is if a cow eats a vitamin, some of those vitamins are passed directly on to you in its meat and milk.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_03: They're not broken down, and then you have to go find your vitamin somewhere else.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_03: So if you think about an animal grazing on a wide variety, potentially in our pasture, maybe a hundred species of plants, all of the complex phytochemicals, um, what do they call this these days?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the things that make superfoods, right?
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_03: All of those are passed on to you when you drink the milk or eat milk products from that cow.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: Think about the nutritional richness of a diet like that.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we have kind of laughed about is this whole plant-based diet, that people need to be on a plant-based diet.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's no way to get more plant-based diet than to eat cows.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because they are totally plant-based.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: We give our cows nothing but grass, native grasses, and then we're consuming that.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we have the richest plant based diet.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, thought would inform anybody with a tiny bit of science that all foods are plant based, because that's where bioenergy comes from.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: But the difference is do I want that?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Energy mediated to me in forms that come out of nature, or do I want it to come out of a steel vat, right?
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_03: Do I want do I want to consume grass that was processed by a cow into milk and meat?
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: Or do I want to um consume say bacteria that were pro that were put on maybe um POA grasses or something and ferment it in a vat?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I know which one has the better track record.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh just just to clarify, just so that we're we're not misleading anyone, when we say, Sean and Beth, when we say um, you know, a lawn or uh you know a grazing situation, I I think when you you when we talk about the the different kinds of species, most lawns are one species.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's right.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: Good point, Joel.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: They even spray their dandelions, okay?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: So in or in order to have a multi-species system, you can't be mowing it every week.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you have to let it grow up and and and turn into what you know the neighbors would say is a is an abandoned uh abandoned uh in in order to let a a mosaic, a mosaic occur.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and so when we say yes, an acre can support or or two acres can support, imagine your acreage in in uh 50, 50 different quilt pat, quilt spots uh of of of various maturities, maturities.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: So some is mowed kind of short, other is you know, um eight, nine, ten inches, and then others almost have a seed head on them, and maybe flowers and some blooms uh from these various species, you know, wild carrots and and things like that, uh plantain and and uh uh and and and so um I I just we've talked about suburbia and lawns and things like that.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to mislead people that that you can just that you can go out in in your Bermuda grass lawn that you're mowing once a week, and that's gonna satisfy with the complexity of phytochemicals and nutrition that we're talking about.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh I mean it it gets back to how we had to start on our property, which was not suitable for agriculture, and that was not a misnomer, and it wasn't really suitable for agriculture.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: But as and we had to start out with just a few cows because the nutritional we had to make much bigger paddocks in order to do that.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: But but one of the things that we see uh too many people doing who are on on more sizable land is a lot of times they are spending a lot of money doing things that we would suggest maybe you don't need to do that.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: For example, um chasing the latest, greatest uh uh uh pasture mix and things like that.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: We really believe in the native grasses coming in and allowing them.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's a 50-year seed bank in your soil, in almost all soil, waiting for good management.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: And once you start managing well, and that means rotationally grazing, that means allowing that grass to not, you are not putting cows on on golf course grass.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: You are letting that grass grow up to six inches or eight inches, uh, and then taking it back down, but you're not again not taking it down to to a golf course.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: You are allowing that grass to go up and down uh because uh you know, one of the things that one of the most important things in making choices on a uh on a homestead is how is this affecting my soil?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: And if I'm watching my soil be depleted, if I am seeing mud pits, then I've got a management problem.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the problems of those things can be can be corrected uh by changing your management style.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think Joel's got a good point too, um, and you know, it we can only touch on it briefly, but that is um when when you are listening to or talking to or reading um an advocate for good farming, it's important to remember that you probably don't know what that looks like.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_03: And um don't don't go off half-cocked.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_03: We would say to somebody, oh, you've got a new piece of land, okay, let's go buy your cow right now.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_03: But we'd also be there to help you notice that grass is too short to be grazed yet, or um uh it's not a whole lot of caveats except for that one.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: So every once in a while we'll encounter somebody who seems to have gotten the impression that cows can eat, you know, two-inch grass and fill their bellies.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a case of somebody failing to appreciate his or her own ignorance and not doing his homework.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Which which is which is why we encourage folks uh to to to not put off starting until you think that you have everything figured out.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh heavens, yes.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can't you can't Google experience and there is there is nothing like going out there, even in in seven to ten days, if you're observing and you're watching and you're you know um taking note of things, you'd be surprised how much you learn in in a month.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: So don't feel like you have to have it figured out before you jump in.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_03: Go and like children, right?
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: If we had to know how to raise them before we had any, the race would have stopped a long time ago.
• 50:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: Cena, I know you've got more questions.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_05: So have out of curiosity, have you ever tested like the nutrient profile of your like milk and compare that to maybe a store-bought milk product?
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um no.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: And let me see if I can articulate why.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um from and I know you're a researcher, so you'll you'll listen to this with um some judgment, but also maybe with you'll cut me some slack.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_03: And off research is paid for by somebody, right?
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_03: So it's almost never simply objective, right?
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like there are people who do research for the love of it.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_03: Although Leopold sat out in front of his cabin and wrote down the names of the birds that that were waking up around him every morning because he loved it.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_03: And many of our best research has been done by people like that.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_03: But in general, when we're um using a research tool for something like testing our milk, we, the consumer, may assume that this is a very objective, broad scale um piece of research that we're doing, piece of testing we're doing, and that we're really going to understand the results when we get them.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_03: But um, here's an example.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_03: We tested the soil on the rental farm when we came there, and we did a good job and took a lot of different samples at the right depths and went and got got them tested, and the soil came up just as mineral-deprived and low pH as one would expect it to, knowing that it had been hogged off and all the topsoil had left.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_03: We were testing basically clay subsoil.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and we grazed it for five years and we tested it again, and the test results were actually pretty much the same.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_03: pH still 5.2, honest to goodness.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_03: But what was going on on the surface in the way of massive amounts of grass being produced, very healthy cows being grazed, um, the the their learning how to and being able to supply all their micronutrients via plants that I described earlier.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_03: All of that had been going on meanwhile, and the test results didn't show that.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_03: So um we stopped testing about then.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: We just said to ourselves, um, the problem with for us with testing would be we might act on the results of those tests, thinking that we knew two things we probably don't know.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: One, which is what this what it should have been, what the results of the test should have been, what the desirable state is, and two, how to get it there.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um our own experience has been that if you manage nature naturally, its natural state will be health, and ours will be health if we consume those products.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_03: And that's worked really well for us.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's yeah, uh we think that there's an awful lot of faith that needs to go into farming, believing that God created a world that works and that it's not a nasty trick that he put us in this garden and then said, It won't work.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it won't work.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: Won't this be funny to watch those humans uh, you know?
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: No, I uh it works.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: And if you start to do it in a way that reflects God's creation, uh you will find there's an incredible abundance and very healthy.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's it is one of the most exciting things that happens as you farm, and the Bible starts to unlock itself because all of these references, you know, as Joel already mentioned, that you think, what in the world does that mean?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden, when you start farming and you start using good natural methods, the the psalms make sense.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_05: Right, right.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_05: No, I love that because you can see it, like is right.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_05: One one you know, part of science is simply observation, right?
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_05: That's the initial part.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_05: And you are observing these changes, this abundance in the land, but also in the animals.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_05: You mentioned how healthy your animals are.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_05: I'm assuming you must have a very low or even maybe a non-existent vet bill.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: Once a once a year, I'll have our local vet, who's a friend, on the place for something non-invasive, like um, well, I tried to get her on recently.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Oh, I have I have a calf that I have a bull that needs to be banded or needs to be turned into a steer.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_03: And she finally told me to do it myself because it was perfectly within my purview.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_03: But um, yeah, we try and bring her on once a year so that we keep a good relationship going.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I would encourage that in any farmer or homesteader.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_03: You need vets, they should be there, and you need to be part of the system that keeps them in place, keeps them in business and close around you.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and and ultimately, but they can be there to help with health, right?
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_03: Rather than help with sickness.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: That extends to the whole medical system because we have eight children, and equally, we do not go to the doctor, we don't do checkups, we don't do those things because we really believe that the system, that the patterns of healthy living will go to our children, and that's been our experience.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: Our children are equally very healthy.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_03: I love research, but I love to do my research based on things that I've already observed, right?
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_03: I can see how it's working, and then I come to Dr.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_03: Cena, right, and I say, um, I've noticed this.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_03: Is that supported by research?
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then it seems to me that always the if you if you're um going to an expert who's not being paid by the by the system to say something else, your observation will be affirmed by the research.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, health comes from healthy behavior.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_05: So speaking of families and nutrient density, healthy food, a lot of our listeners um are moms or dads or grandparents, and they're struggling to provide their family with this nutrient-dense food.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_05: So what I'm wondering is the what you're doing on your farm with very minimal inputs, um, is this does this save you money?
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, do you spend less on food than the typical person going to be able to do that?
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, I was gonna jump in here and say when we started out and we got married in 1985, and we knew we were going to farm then, we knew we were gonna live in the country and grow food.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, our goal was that Sean be able to be home more.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: Every penny that he was earning off farm, we wanted to figure out a way not to need that penny so that he could be home more.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_03: And um, our farm practices and a lot of the things that we discovered um by doing them happened because it what we were doing needed to save us money and it absolutely couldn't cost us money.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_03: So, yes, it saves us up.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_03: It it has replaced um money in big sections of our life and our economy.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: The the whole city lifestyle or suburban lifestyle is a money in money provides everything that I need.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: If I want to do any building, it's money.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_02: If I want to flush my toilet, it's money.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: If I want to get rid of my trash, it's money.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if I want to condition my air, it's money.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is money.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and what we've been working toward is how could my farm provide those things, including things like entertainment.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we our entertainment comes from the farm.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: We love being on farm.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that money that people are spending, you know, they they work at a job and they can't wait to get two weeks of vacation, and then we've got to really use that because we're so miserable.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: We remember it.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_03: It was so depressing.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and now we don't have that.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we grow about 90 to 95 percent of what we eat, and what we don't grow on farm are luxuries that we know that we know we could jet a seed if it came to that.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: But our farm provides every nutrient that we would need for the farm.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you've taken your food bill easily down to zero, virtually down to zero.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: Our our warmth comes from wood on the farm.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we don't have to buy in propane, we don't have to buy in, you know.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_03: The nutrient that I always think, well, I know how we'd get this, but it'd be a long walk is salt, because that's the one thing our farm doesn't produce.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_03: And um there's salt 100 miles north of us on the Great Lakes.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_03: We'd have it'd be a long walk to go get it.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_03: But other than that, we don't have a need that doesn't come off the farm.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_03: We have many pleasures, uh, you know, like I said, beer, wine, tea, coffee, granulated sugar.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and and you know, where even Wendell Berry says that the the problem is transportation.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we are such a diverse, diversified, we're so spread out that we almost have to have a VHS.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: You mean we we the country.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: We as the Americans.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: We Americans.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh but but we've watched our world uh shrink.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I walk up every day.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I walk up to the convent for mass.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't walk up there when we're working, but I walk up there for mass.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it it it's a walkable, it's a mile and a half, it's very walkable.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh we would love to be providing more and more of what our our um not physical needs, but our our other needs, you know, um perceived needs, instead of going to Walmart, if everybody would say I'm trying to figure out how to make toothbrushes, Zina.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_02: So if you have a good method, let me know.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: But but instead of going to Walmart, if we would stop and say, I wonder if there's somebody in my community that could provide that or a child, it there's a a community down in Waco, Texas called Homestead Heritage that we have fallen in love with.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: They're a really wonderful group of people, and they do a lot of that.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they see a perceived need, and they said, How can our community provide that for each other?
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that to us is the next really important step for uh uh homesteaders for community is is creating community, uh leaning on each other.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_03: But as far as food, and and when we say food, all of us here mean health, right?
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_03: So as far as food goes, um three acres of uh land east of the Mississippi, not any three acres, but most three acres, many, many, many three acres, would probably provide all the food a family needs.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_03: You can plant one or two tenths of an acre in potatoes, graze a cow, um, keep a garden for all your fresh vegetables, and as many chickens as your household scraps would feed, right?
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then seasonally, and then if you're lucky you've got a guy down the road who raises pigs, seasonally, when your milk is coming in really fast, so we're talking about spring through fall.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna keep a pig, fatten it on all the surplus milk and garden stuff you've got.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_03: You've got a whole diet there.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_03: We've just described milk, beef, pork, eggs, chicken, and all your vegetables, and and your basic staple, which would be in this case potatoes, because it's potatoes are an easier way to provide carbohydrates for a human's needs than grain is for most of us in most places.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the most exciting parts of that is your farm will improve.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_03: While you're doing it, you're growing in fertility.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: It is so exciting, and again, it comes back to God.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: God created a system, a pattern.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: We hate to use system because it's too mechanical, a pattern that works.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if we will do this, we will be fed with an incredible abundance of the best food.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it is food that you cannot get any other way.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_03: You can't buy what you could grow.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody is offering it for sale.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: Joel, Joel offers a lot.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, okay.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_03: I will take I'm gonna buy my steaks from Joel if I ever am stuck in the city.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_03: But other than that, for the most part, and the whole diet picture, including dairy, it would be very difficult to assort, even if you had endless money in the whole country to search, to assort the kind of diet you can put you can produce for yourself.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_05: Wait, so just to make sure I'm understanding, because you know, I'm new at homesteading.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_05: So um, you know, you most of the the meat and the chicken that we buy has been fed some kind of grain, like you know, chickens fed corn and right, and the cows fed the grains, and even if they're grass fed, they could be, you know, grain finished.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_05: So are you saying that your chickens and your cows, you don't feed them any grains?
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_05: Like you don't okay.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll that you're gonna hear the two places where we do actually buy in a little bit of nutrients.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_03: We buy a little bit of hay every year so that when it's blizzarding outside and there's ice on top of a foot of snow, and neither we nor the cows want to go out and break that ice so they can graze, we feed a little hay.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_03: The other grain we buy is we'll buy local wheat, wheat from a local farmer that hasn't been sprayed with glyphosate with Roundup.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll ferment that and use it to supplement the grains and other things we grow for our chickens.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_03: And um, this is a good place to introduce for the homesteader a really sound principle.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_03: And um I love being knowing as much as I do about Joel's background, and you know, he's written for us and he's told us what his dad was doing.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_03: So we have this entire, you know, sort of 60-year panorama, 50 anyway, year panorama of what's possible with wasteland, with damaged land.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things that people should remember is when like God made land bountiful and productive.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_03: If it's if the sun shines on it and there's any water whatsoever, it can do huge things.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_03: But if for some reason, landslide, bad management, whatever, there is a lack of organic matter, it is valid.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, it's commendable to bring in organic matter from somewhere else for a period of time to jumpstart, to boost what that land is capable of.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_03: And um, in a grazing situation, say you had just bought three acres that were the edge of somebody's wheat field and had been sprayed every year from, you know, now back to 40 years ago, um, it would be valid for you to feed hay to ruminants on that land, move the hay around, put it in different spaces, let the cows eat it there to jumpstart your pasture.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_03: What we do for the chickens is we buy a certain amount of wheat every year.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_03: We also grow corn, sorghum, and sunflower seeds.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to get off of that wheat and we are working at replacing it with these other things.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_03: With corn, sorghum, sunflower seeds.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_03: We also grow um certain root crops and squash crops that our chickens eat.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but we're using chickens on the former hog farm up at the convent, where we have one acre that we've managed as garden.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_03: Now that was just as bad as all the rest of the farm.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_03: Remember, there was about a half inch of organic matter and then yellow clay subsoil.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so we've used chicken.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_03: To add organic matter.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_03: And here's how they do it.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_03: We grow a cover crop, but instead of tilling the cover crop in, which nature doesn't do, we knock it over, stomp it, and manure it using chickens, which nature does do.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a very fast, very effective way to add not only organic matter, but biological life, right?
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_03: Fungi aren't going to go where you till, but they're going to race to get where chickens have knocked over a buckwheat crop and stomped it.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_03: The price we pay for keeping that extra one or two dozen chickens is that we buy in a little bit of grain for them.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_03: So we buy wheat from a local farmer and we ferment it.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: But also to get to your question though, if if what we what we could be doing, you know, could we eliminate inputs?
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_01: If we kept the number of chickens to how much chicken food our farm produces, and chicken food is uh some of the things we grow.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're getting ready to give a talk at uh Rory Feek's uh on growing food for farm animals.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um but if the mango worse, which most people don't know, the tromboncino squash, uh these are things that you can grow, but also things like uh uh offal, which is left over from butchering.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um these are all things that chickens will eat, um, and then all the scraps from the table that people, or all the things that were made uh from making a meal, all the leftover things, which a lot of those for us go to the pigs, but they could equally go to the chickens.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_03: The go-to for homesteaders, they move to the country, they buy chickens, um, which is if they if they buy six, great, because their household will probably feed those and just scraps.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_03: But otherwise, buying chickens is getting the cart before the horse, if you'll forgive the analogy, because chickens are the thing that is that the farm produces the least feed for, if you're gonna grow a lot of them, right?
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_03: If you have a good source of organic grain, and that's how you want to add organic matter to your homestead, go for it.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_03: But um, your homestead is probably already producing lots and lots of different kinds of leaves, grass, weeds, forbs, bushes.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_03: So it's already producing food for a bovine.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know if we got off track, and I can't remember exactly what the question was.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_05: That no, this that was such an amazingly beautiful answer.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_05: The more I hear you, you both of you speak, the more I want to have a cow.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_05: And in fact, I was thinking that's pretty good.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so I'm like, okay, so now I'm so the chicken scraps are gonna go to the chickens, and you know, I told you I have um five dogs, and they get our chicken scraps right now.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_05: So I'm literally thinking, hmm, my dogs are gonna have to really find a job for them for me to work.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_03: Let's make you fall in over the cow again.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's one of the things that we say again.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna, we are, we our farm is not a petting zoo.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_01: So any animal that is on the farm is there because it's working.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we have work dogs who are keeping predators at bay.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_01: And when they kill something, a possum, a groundhog, a chipmunk, a chipmunk, that immediately goes into the chicken, oh, oh, okay.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: Into the chicken area, and eventually it's gonna rot, and the chickens are going to eat that.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_03: Let me add clarity to that.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_03: So our farm dog, Beowulf, kills possums and groundhogs and raccoons, and those go to the chickens, feed the chickens.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_03: He also feeds himself on voles, mice, rats, and chipmunks.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_03: He's a he's a good, beefy, well-built, medium-sized farm dog.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but the only things we offer him, except for like pork chop bones, um, is we offer him milk.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_03: We say, of dogs and cats who are your farm's predator and pest control animals.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_03: They're, you know, like Hank the Cowdog says, I'm head of ranch security.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_03: Dogs and cats are head of ranch security.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_03: They get milk.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_03: Milk makes them happy, makes them know where home is.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_03: It makes cats know, for example, that the barn is their territory.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's where I need you down by the barn and gardens to keep the rodent population down.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_03: Milk makes them very happy, but it does make them full.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_03: So hunting makes them useful.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so now we're back to I need a cow.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_05: That's that was my goal is to make you say the cow's the solution to that, too.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_05: It's a solution to everything, it seems.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, and before we run out of time, I just want to ask.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_05: We had a listener send in um two questions for you.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um, this was from Ethan Johnson.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_05: Here's the first question Can all dairy cows keep condition on grass alone?
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_05: I'm in some groups on Facebook and they seem to think jerseys have a hard time.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_05: I imagine Holsteins would too.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_05: But what do you say?
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_05: Can they keep good condition on just eating grass?
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_03: There's a generic answer and a specific answer.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_03: The generic answer is cows are ruminants.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Ruminants are animals that digest cellulose, not starch.
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_03: Grain is starch.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_03: Ruminants don't need it, they digest cellulose.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_03: So by their genetics, by the way God created them, that is their intended food.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_03: And yes, indeed, they can keep condition on it.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_03: By human breeding choices, we have bred for animals that tolerate the um pH disruption and other things that happen when you feed a cow grain.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_03: And we've trained and we've also bred them for, you know, if you're a cow and you can produce milk, you can have a greater or a lesser predisposition toward turning your calories into milk, the calories you consume into milk.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_03: And you can breed for an animal that will make milk until it dies, that will its uh shunt, it's its default direction to send calories is into milk, and it's going to um derail its uh bodily maintenance in order to keep making milk.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_03: I've had a few like that where I had to make sure there weren't enough calves in that pasture to freeload on that cow and take her down to skin and bones.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_03: So if you take an animal that we've genetically selected and epigenetically altered to um make as much milk as it possibly can to the detriment of its bodily well-being, grass isn't going to provide it enough concentrated calories.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_03: Think about how many calories are in, say, this much grain and then this much grass.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_03: They're a lot more in the grain.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_03: That's why we call that feed concentrate.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um you can have animals that do not do well on grass, but it isn't because they're not grass eating and they're grain eating, it's because we've selected for these um dependent boutiquey uh commercial dairy animals.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_03: So you want to use some judgment.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and observation is really key.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_03: We keep we keep, I mean, one of our best cows out there right now is a jersey.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_03: We've kept jerseys from the very beginning, but we have to be selective.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_03: She does a great job of managing her um her metabolic needs and producing milk only with the calories that she can spare.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_03: And um, when she's when she's really going good, she's gonna produce three, four, maybe even five gallons of milk a day on grass alone for a while, not the whole year round.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_03: But I this goes along with the with the statement about people need to bring some judgment to their uh when they begin to learn to homestead, you know, like don't think a cow's gonna graze on a golf course.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_03: And watch your animals.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_03: If you are going to buy uh an animal out of the commercial dairy world, and that's where the most dairy cows are right now, you're gonna need to keep an eye on her, change her diet only gradually.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_03: So if she's been getting a lot of grain, you're gonna back that off slowly.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_03: Remember, it's easier to change to make big changes on a younger animal.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_03: So if you have if you're bringing in a uh jersey from a commercial dairy world and she's two, it's gonna be easier to transition her.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_01: We we know a lot of people that buy in a dairy cow and it's come from a commercial dairy, and in a certain sense, they've said, that one I'm not going to try and transition, but its calf is gonna be the one that's gonna be all grass for me.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_03: And and and that's like I love that because what it's saying is okay, we may have messed with this cow in her lifetime, but her calf reverts back to God's creation, which is cows eat grass.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_01: What was the other question?
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so the second question is regarding the kind the subject of bottle versus bucket feeding versus calf sharing for calves.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_05: Um, Ethan says Joel wrote about this a little bit in his uh polyface micro book, but I wanted to see what the guest experience has been.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_05: Joel recommended a New Zealand nipple or something like that, but uh, but I'm not sure that the cows mess with that and they seem to have um healthy cows.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_01: What one of the things that we we started out like almost every other homesteader, listening to what the commercial model whatever was in the in the book center.
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they say.
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is how you do it.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you have a cow, it has a calf, within a day or two, you take it away, and you start bottle feeding it.
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so we did those things.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh then one time we said, Well, we're just gonna leave the calf on mama.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_01: You want to talk about a different animal.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was alive and jumping, it was amazing.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_02: Mama raised calves are really different from bottle-raised cats.
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that real again, what does nature do?
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the big questions when we are when it used to be that we would think, okay, they're the experts, the commercial system, we've got to follow them.
• 1:16:15
  SPEAKER_01: We stopped doing that and we started saying, what does nature do?
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we find that almost always when we say, what does nature do?
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_01: it is the superior way to go.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we we you certainly can bottle feed.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_01: We do think that uh buying calf replac uh milk replacer is it's dicey at best.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_03: Calf milk replacer is is as it's worse garbage than baby formula.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_03: So it baby formula, if it's all you've got, God bless you, go for it, and you're a hero.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_03: And the same would be the case if the only way you could raise this calf is on calf milk replacer, go for it.
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_03: But the best milk for a baby cow is going to be mama's milk, and the best care is going to be her care.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_03: That said, um, there's a reason why dairy, dairymen for many, many, many generations have often taken calves off cows, not always, and there's a good tradition of using calves as supplemental nursers milkers, um, especially in Central Europe, even today.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_03: But um, there's a good reason why people take cows, calves off mamas, because when you have a dairy cow whose primary purpose is to turn default low-quality um cheap nutrients, grass, leaves, hay, forage, right, into high-quality nutrient-dense food for human beings, milk and meat, that's her primary job.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_03: And if I'm trying to keep my family alive and fed, that calf is secondary.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_03: And if I don't have the grass later on when he's bigger to graze him, there's no point in my keeping him around.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I sell him.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_03: And what's that, what's the guy sell him to gonna raise him, raise the calf on?
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_03: He's gonna have to bottle feed it or bucket feed it on something else.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um when you do leave a calf on a cow, just keep in mind that she loves it better than she loves you, and depending on her nature, her training, your forages, a bunch of other things, she may not let down for you very well.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_03: That means let put milk in the bucket for you.
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_03: Because if she doesn't have a let-down reflex, if her body does not eject milk for you, if the alveoli in her udder don't release their milk, you ain't getting it, doesn't matter how full she is.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so when we do often recommend to people that having a calf on their cow is very useful for them, for her, for the calf.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's really good, especially with somebody who's just a brand new milker to have that calf there uh to make sure she doesn't get mastitis and things like that.
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_03: And and we do, and just so that they can milk once a day and so forth, and we do it all the time ourselves, but um, there are advantages and disadvantages, disadvantages to each of these methods, and like everything else, you need to go in instead of thinking there's some sort of cookie-cutter textbook answer that's the perfect answer, and this is the right way.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_03: You go in realizing I'm I'm working with living things, so we all need to figure out how we're gonna get along together and cooperate.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes we use it, leave the calf on, sometimes we take the calf off.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and we frequently will put the calf away at night so that we get all the morning milk.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're doing with one right now.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_01: She she does not let down just for us.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and if the calf's with her all the time, the calf's gonna get all the milk.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_01: So if we're gonna get any milk from her, we have to separate the calf at night, which does not do any harm to either calf or the cow.
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then in the morning we get all the milk, and then we put the calf right back on mama.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_03: And um, the bucket and bottle question, it's a good question because actually, when bottle feeding is done wrong, you can make you can end up with a sick calf.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's important that people who use the bottle remember and imitate the height at which a cow carries her nipples.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's about how high you want that bottle's nipple.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_03: A calf who extends his head upward to drink from a bottle is going to aspirate any milk he doesn't swallow, his head's tipped back.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_03: So that milk's gonna run right into his lungs.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_03: Baby bottle calves are too prone to pneumonia as it is.
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_03: You don't need to, you know, like load their lungs with milk to get them to do it.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_03: So, bottle feeding, remember that that bot the bottle needs to be held down around the level of your knees.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_03: Bucket feeding just takes more training.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_05: Wow, this has been so fascinating and inspiring for me personally.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_05: I know our listeners are gonna love this.
• 1:20:53
  SPEAKER_05: Um, could you let us know about your new book that's gonna be, I think, coming out soon.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_05: And then afterward, Joel, if you want to close us out with a community question, that will be fabulous.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we we wrote the Independent Farmstead as kind of a uh this was written in 2016, and we wrote it as an overview of how a farm works as an ecosystem.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what Chelsea Green has come back to us and said, well, we presented to them.
• 1:21:20
  SPEAKER_03: Chelsea Green is our publisher.
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's not a person, it's a publishing hub.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_01: We said we want to go on a deep dive on certain parts of this, and they said that's a great idea.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_01: We want you to write a whole series of books on deeper dives.
• 1:21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the first one now is just on the dairy cow.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_01: And what we've done is we've tried to write a book that where we as as we don't like the word expert, but we as who have experience are stand at your elbow for the first two years of having a cow.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we're answering questions, and and this all came out of what we real we want this to work for everybody.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want people giving up.
• 1:22:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we do answer emails.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_01: So please, if you are on the verge of giving up or if you have a question, email us.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_01: We want to talk you off the ledge.
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then these that's what these books are about is about taking you a little bit deeper into these areas so that you have success.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_03: So our new book is is titled One Cow Revolution, and you can pre-order it on Amazon or from Chelsea Green.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I know from we know from past experience that your working title when you're writing a book isn't always the one that's gonna hit the stands when our book comes out, in this case in November.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_03: But right now it's One Cow Revolution, which is also the name of our, for want of a better word, website.
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_03: We we don't maintain um uh uh an internet presence.
• 1:22:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you're not gonna find us out there selling things or popping up in videos all the time.
• 1:23:02
  SPEAKER_03: There are a lot of videos of us because over the years, other people have made videos of us.
• 1:23:07
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:23:07
  SPEAKER_03: And if you search, if you want to know what we do, you can search our names, and a lot of that will come up.
• 1:23:12
  SPEAKER_03: But One Cow Revolution is the title of the new book, and it's the title of our bloggy thing, whatever it is.
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you all so much for being with us.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_00: What a what a treat, what a treasure.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, so uh our our question for this week, um Cena, uh is growing your own food worth more than a Netflix subscription?
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_02: How much is a Netflix subscription?
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I don't have one, but a lot of people do.
• 1:23:44
  SPEAKER_00: So is growing your own food because as as we've talked today, I've I've been I've been just struck by the the hurdle is the the whatever the um obstacle the the the first step in this is in your own mind concluding this is worth it.
• 1:24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's right.
• 1:24:09
  SPEAKER_01: I have a need for this.
• 1:24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_00: You you can't you can't be going to every you know homeschool thing and the soccer game and every lacrosse game and everything in the world.
• 1:24:20
  SPEAKER_00: You you can't do that and do this at the same time.
• 1:24:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Parents come up to me, you know, well, uh, you know, I want my kid in every library's story time and every you know, and how do you do it all?
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't do it all.
• 1:24:37
  SPEAKER_00: You you you you make decisions, and so I I think this is a this is a profound question just for people to wrestle in their own minds is growing your own food um worth more than a Netflix subscription?
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because if it's not, then all right, that's fine.
• 1:24:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was interesting to listen to, but it's really nothing.
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_00: But if it is, if it is, if you can come to that conclusion philosophically, you know, the Bible talks about you're destroyed by your vain philosophy.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's not it's not your choir robes, it's not you know, a lot of things that we argue about, it's vain philosophy, and I think our culture now is dysfunctional because we as a culture have embraced a vain philosophy that that's that somehow entertainment comes from elsewhere, all of our living comes from elsewhere, everything's comes from elsewhere, and there's this this deep, insatiable desire in us, something's gotta come from inside our home, our our you know, where we are.
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, I I think it's a uh I think it's an okay question.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_03: That was a great question.
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_00: So um, we're again, we're just so grateful to have you guys on.
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I look forward to seeing you um in a couple of days, actually.
• 1:26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, actually another rendezvous.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but um Cena, thanks for feeling the questions and for having your um you know your enthusiasm for this kind of new new uh kind of thinking in in mind.
• 1:26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you all for being with us, and thank you all listeners for being with us on another episode of Beyond Labels, and we'll look forward to visiting with you again next week.