Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #253: The Foundations of Polyface Farm (Compost, Infrastructure, and Sunbeams)

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Episode #253: The Foundations of Polyface Farm (Compost, Infrastructure, and Sunbeams) · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, welcome everybody to another episode of Beyond Labels with your two co-hosts.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: That would be me, the farmer Joel Salatin, and our favorite researcher, uh Dr.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Cena McCullough.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hesitating here.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we're um we have a little different uh thing for you today.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: We've just finished the um the two days of truth summit here um at the farm and had a great turnout, a great two days.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and one of the things that we did on there uh during that time was a farm tour.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of everybody just we just uh went a couple close places.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: We couldn't go all over the farm because we couldn't get that many people all on hay wagons like we do our our regular lunatic tours, but we were able to to get people uh around the farm and as um you know to see the chickens and some cows and things, and and we were able to um conclude uh at the cow trough.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: So anybody who wanted to drink from the cow trough could drink from the cow trough.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: So Cena, did you drink from the cow trough?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this year was the first time I did not because I was getting the next speaker prepared.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I missed that replenishing of my microbiome.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, all right.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a lot of people did, and um, and of course it was there throughout the day, and and people could go and get it.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um and just I think a lot of you may know, uh I was I was really deferring to Cena a lot on this one more than normal, simply because I was covered up with, you know, my mom had just passed away uh a few days earlier, and so I was covered up with uh different things regarding you know funeral services and burial and and all the things that you do when that kind of thing happens.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so Cena, you really took the the brunt of it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And um is there anything that stood out to you at the I mean, every farm tour is different because they're always in a little different place, a little different, you know, situation.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um but everybody you know moved along really well, and we're bringing that to you today.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So our Beyond Labels subscribers get to uh view that that little kind of abbreviated farm tour um today as part of our Beyond Labels podcast.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I thought the farm tour was fantastic.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: I actually thought it was one of the best tours that you've done.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: It was informative, but it was also funny.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like you were so funny when we met where the you know, the in the pigariner section, uh, you know, just the jokes about the horses and stringing up kids, and it was hilarious.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: You had us rolling on the ground, and we didn't mind rolling in the in the composted poop, like you know, because it didn't stink.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: But it was fantastic.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: But you um, yeah, I know it was a difficult, challenging time for you, but you really rose to the occasion.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: The farm term was spectacular, and if people are interested, um one of my favorite parts of every single Two Days of Truth Summit is the sunrise stroll with you on the property, and you do your own um, you know, the the jolness of the Joel uh sermon on the mound, which was so amazing.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: This year it was it you tapped all the other years with this one, connecting the dots, making it completely applicable to modern day and the the concept of truth itself.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, Hilda was there, Holistic Hilda, um playing you know the guitar and we we sang songs, and it was it was so special and bonding and moving, you know, as the sunrise is coming up.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: So that was one of my favorite, it's always one of my favorite parts of this summit.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, I have to say we had in a fantastic speaker lineup.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: As soon as everybody found out about your mother's passing just the day before the summit, one speaker after the next stood up and said, Hey, let me know what you need help with.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm there for you.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: So it was fantastic.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Such a, I'm having, I have goosebumps right now, just remembering it.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's such a great reminder of how much we need to get together in person, you know, how big of a difference it means to connect with like-minded folks in person.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: Every year I feel recharged, supported, and uplifted.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: And while not everybody's able to come out, I'm hoping that seeing this farm tour can help bring some of that um feeling of connectivity to our listeners today.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's great.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Good, good, good sentiments, um, Cena.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and I think we have not yet decided if we're going to do this um again next year or do it every other year.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh some of us are leaning toward every other year.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, others are leaning toward every year.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll see how that goes.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: But um I I think I think um we'll sort that out very, very shortly and um uh we'll we'll let you know where we are on that.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: But but without further ado, uh with this introduction, uh it was the Two Days of Truth summit, and uh we had this kind of abbreviated walking farm tour of stuff that we could get up real close to the Lunatic Learning Center where we all were, and the bathrooms and the hub of the farm there.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's not comprehensive, but we did get um we did get broilers and cows and pigger raiders uh on the farm tour, and I hope you enjoy it.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us, and we look forward to visiting with you next time on Beyond Labels.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, and 1 PS, if our we have a special offer for just our Beyond Labels listeners, if you want access to the full recording of the entire summit, you can get 25% off by using the code BL25.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: So BL25 gets you 25% off the entire uh video recordings of the summit.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Cena.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, everyone.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the tour, uh, get the content and enjoy it uh as vicariously as well as you can, and we'll see you again next time on Beyond Labels.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: I call this the heart and soul of our farm.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people don't see this or or or understand it, but um I want you to realize that we came here in 1961.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was just four, and I could walk uh all these fields, these pretty green fields you see.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I could walk the entire farm and never set foot on a piece of vegetation.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's how bare it was.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Ten cows.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: That was all the grass we had.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's gone up tenfold since.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we never planted a seed, we never applied any chemical, never bought a bag of chemical fertilizer.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: But what we did is what you're gonna see today, but we also compost.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna I'm gonna the front row here gets gets you you just smell it and touch it.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm what I'm looking for is verification.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Verification.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Realize that that that uh that about 70 days ago it's hot.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: 70 days ago, this was manure.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about poop yesterday.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Every conversation at our farm ends up with poop.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because poop is everything.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Smell that?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Here you go.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: You can listen, you can uh you can put you you you you can put you can put milk on this and eat it for breakfast.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um you you just you just thought that was granola you had for breakfast.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: We just came out and scooped up some of this.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 8:36
  unknown: That's why I look at good.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that wonderful?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: So what's going on here?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So what's going on here is that the the a lot of times the secret is trying to plug the leaks.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So you're leveraging the resources that you have and plugging and plugging the hemorrhage.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay about how many things in our lives are hemorrhages.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: How many people are hemorrhaging time with social media?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: How many people are hemorrhaging money with taxes and bright shiny objects, unnecessary things?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, hemorrhaging friendships with people that don't get it.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, wipe the dust off your feet and move on, okay?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um you don't have to be, you know, uh, you know, ugly about it, but but but there's there's also no sense in casting your pearls before swine either.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And my mentor Alanation used to say there's no sense trying to teach a pig how to fly.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: It can't be done, and it irritates the pig.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: So when we when we came here and we're looking at, well, how does how does soil get built?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And um when we get up to the broilers, that field there uh had large quarter acre uh solid rock where five feet of topsoil had washed off in the previous 150 years from tillage.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we didn't have enough soil to hold up electric fence stakes.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: So dad poured put mixed concrete in a wheelbarrow, put in car tires.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: He got used car tires from a car dealer in town, tire shop, and um then pushed a half-inch pipe down in the concrete.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: He'd pile these up on a tractor platform.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: My brother and I were just little kids, but we were big enough the two of us could get on an edge of this concrete tire and heave it off as dad drove slow down through the field.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: He'd go along and stick electric fence stakes down in those half-inch pipes in the concrete tires to hold up an electric fence because there wasn't enough soil to hold up an electric fence stake to move the cows around.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I've never been any place in the world that was in that kind of condition.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So don't tell me it can't be done.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've lived it, and I've watched these places now in my lifetime, and we didn't haul dirt in, but I've watched every one of them go to 14, 16 inches of soil.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's not, you know, it's not five feet like it ought to be, but it's we don't use the concrete tires anymore.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they were like sores on the land that just every year 18 inches would come in from the edge, like just like a like a scab on your skin and would come in.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we as we started in, we uh we only had the little barn right there, was all we had.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: We had about 10 cows, 12 cows, and that concrete floor.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And every Saturday uh we'd have to um hand shovel, we'd have a front-end loader or anything.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: We had a little old manure spreader.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And every Saturday when Dad was off of work, um, our brother and I and dad, our first Saturday chore in the winter, was to uh clean up that concrete pad, put in a manure spreader, and spread it so the cows didn't get all goopy, you know, uh in their poop.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what we started noticing was what we spread in before the middle of February, it was as if you hadn't spread anything.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it didn't do anything.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: But after the middle of February, it was like you painted it green and you had to jump back because the grass wouldn't grow so fast.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: What happens?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Same field, same material, same cows, same everything.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: What's the difference?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Difference is that in the dormant season when the gibberillins and the azidobacter and the mycorrhizae and and and all that soil biology is sleeping because it's cold, they don't want to eat any more than we like to eat when we're sleeping, okay?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And here we were, we're trying to wake them up from a at 2 o'clock in the morning from a deep sleep, put a funnel in their mouth and shove Thanksgiving dinner down.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you do that about three o'clock, you're gonna be doing something else.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're gonna be kneeling at the porcelain pulpit, puking your guts out.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so so uh so what we we learned just by observation was that it made all the difference in the world when we fed the soil, depending on if the soil was ready to eat or not.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so we said, well, we can't, we don't want to apply anything, and of course, you know, this is now a little more common knowledge, that's why it's illegal to spread any manure or even fertilizer, you know, of any kind in the entire watershed of New York City, the Hudson Bay, from about December 10th until March 1st, because then everything spread then is gonna end up right in the New York water system.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh so we you know we observe that here actually uh happening.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so we said, well, we got we we gotta we we gotta hold this.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the the typical conventional thought is slurry, you know, big slurry tanks.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're gonna, well, we don't want to put the manure into water, we want to keep it out of the water.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we don't want a slurry tank, and and and in nature, there is no such thing as a slurry tank.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: But in nature, there's a lot of decomposition, okay?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so we um we bought a wood chipper and we began chipping carbon to create a carbonaceous diaper.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Those cows are dropping 50 pounds of goodies out their back end every day.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is highly soluble, it is highly volatile.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: If it gets dry, it wants to vaporize.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: We all know what that smells like.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if it gets wet, it wants to leach into the groundwater.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's more insidious, but nonetheless deadly.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we want to do is link it up, tie it down with carbon so that it neither vaporizes nor leaches.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is a very simple awning.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Notice our barn has no sides.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: We basically call it a hay shed in order to not be confused with a typical barn.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Barns have killed way more cows than than not uh because of respiratory being too tight, too close.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very open, but when there's when there's um 200 cows in here and you come out on a blizzardy 10-degree morning, it's about 30 degrees in here, and it's just as warm as can be.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the and and this deep bedding never gets cold.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um it so the cows are heavy, they tromp out the oxygen, and this is building.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you see the hay, the the feeder gates they're eating through.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Those are they they're able to raise and lower.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: You see the angle iron, the the spots are on the back.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: The the boxes there are on a pulley.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: So um uh we don't have any now of dad's original V V-shaped, and then and then I developed these boxes on pulleys, and then Daniel has now, so we got three generations of iteration.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Dad did a a feeder gate that we would push through the hay horizontally, but we didn't we didn't have the development of the deep of the deep bedding.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: He passed away in 88, and I developed the deep bedding concept.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then I needed something we could elevate and and drop, so it did the boxes, and now Daniel has gone to the to the uh so now as the boxes wear out, we're replacing them with these nice uh nice feeder gates here.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's um that's that's generational uh you know refinement uh and and and uh in some ways economic economic uh accumulation as well.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um so uh the cows are chomping out, they're heavy, they're chomping out the oxygen, and so this whole bedding, which this is designed, this the walls and stuff, so that it can go up four feet deep.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we're on we're on the floor, but imagine four feet up, you know, this is where the cows were, and um and it's anaerobic, so it's fermenting and it never freezes, it stays about 50 to 55 degrees, which on a zero degree day is like a cow lounging on a warm blanket, and there's zero smell.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: You could come in here and eat eat lunch because the carbon is absorbing all of the manure and urine, and every couple days we're just adding some more, adding some more carbon.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: As we add it, we add about 80 pounds of corn per cubic yard of carbon.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: That corn then is embedded in the pack and it ferments, releasing all the sugars and juices.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: So when the cows come out to start grazing in the spring, we put in the pig arators.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the pig erators aerate it, pig arators, okay.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: They seek the fermented corn and act like a big egg beater and oxygenate it and convert it from anaerobic to aerobic compost, which is what you're which is what you're seeing right here.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and so, and so uh rather than um having machinery and petroleum do all that work and labor, we're harnessing the pig's natural uh uh instinct and desire.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um this is hog heaven, you know, and and so they they seek the corn and that turns it multiple times because you know they they do that they do the the top stuff first, and then they've got to go deeper, and then they go deeper and deeper.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And by the time they're you know, they're you can't see their tails, you know, they're down uh they're down here to the bottom.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh and we put a lot more in the bottom than we do in the top.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there's I don't have time to go into every nuance of this, but but just to point out that this is this is the heart and soul of our fertility program, that uh in addition to the controlled grazing, which we'll talk about at the end.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: But um this is this is our fertilizer factory.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: So this becomes this becomes comfortable, uh comfortable space for the cows in the winter time.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: It it becomes our fertilizer factory.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: It allows us to monetize woods work, cleaning up wood, weeding the woodlot.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now that becomes, instead of just being uh junky trees, they become fertilizer value.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um the cows, because they're warm and not cold, they eat less feed.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so all these things together reduce hay consumption by about you know 15 to 20 percent.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: So now you don't have to make as much hay, feed as much hay for the cows to maintain their condition.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't need to add grain, silage, lick tanks, protein tanks, all the other things that everybody does that are very expensive because the cows are so comfortable, their caloric requirement is is is uh low, okay?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh for the same for the same thing.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and then of course, this grows pigs, we clean it out.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can you know, we can have parties in here, we can run, we can put uh pigs in here.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: You see we've we've already cleaned these out, and now we've got uh uh pigs over there that are just so this is the batch that's going to slaughter right now.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: So they've just come in from the field and they're going to slaughter.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: So they're you know, we bring the whole batch in, we take part of them this week, part of them next week, part, you know, they a batch of 50 will take us, you know, three weeks to get through.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: But um that's that's the way this works.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so we we've spread we've spread a lot of this already, and as soon as we finish hay here, we'll we'll get the rest of this um spread.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: But notice we're standing here uh with with you know thousands of pounds of manure and urine, and there's there's there's no smell.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh, and so we say that good farming should be aesthetically and aromatically sensually romantic.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: If it's ugly or it stinks, it's it's probably not good farming.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the the the final thing that I'll I'll say here, and I'll take a couple questions, is that um that this fully honors the pigness of the pig.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that uh numerous of you have talked about you have such a happy team here.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: All these young people are enthusiastic and they're smiling and they're you know they seem well because we don't talk about just raising pigs and raising eggs or whatever, we talk about participating as masseuses in God's object lesson of divine provenance.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly you elevate that language, you elevate the mission, you elevate the vision and the messaging.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we're just not gathering eggs and we're not running pigs.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're we're all part of this great uh thing.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so the pigs here, the pigs here are not just bacon and pork chops, they are co laborers in a land healing ministry.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and and and and that that then brings a new respect and honor to the pig.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And allows us to use their in a plow on the end of their nose, you know, and honor them to be able to be um to not just we're raising you for us, but actually they are they are team members in this.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that changes kind of the relationship and the emotional you know uh uh feeling that you you have toward them.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say that a society that doesn't ask how to make happy pigs or or needful pigs very soon quits asking how to make happy citizens and needful citizens and collapses into social chaos, teen suicides, and psychological distress.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's how we respect and honor the least of these that creates a moral ethical framework on how we honor and respect the greatest of these.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: If we're gonna if we're gonna maintain and honor and respect for for the tomness of Tom and the merriness of Mary, it starts with the pigness of the pigs uh and and honoring them.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Questions?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: We'll take maybe two and then we're gonna we're gonna uh Cena didn't carve me out much time for this, so we're gonna have to run here pretty quick.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, ma'am.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Horses or donkeys?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I wouldn't put the horses and donkeys with the cows, they would terrorize the cows.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I'm a believer in diversity, but you can diversify to the point of inefficiency and harm.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: I like trees, I like ponds, but you never see a tree in the middle of a pond.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you can diversify to the point of chaos.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that said, if I had horses, God help me to never have horses.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: I put horses in the category of land yachts.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're just, they're just, you know, you don't want to have one.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: You want to have friends that have horses.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you don't want to own the yacht, just develop a friendship with a millionaire who has one.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then let them deal with it.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if I had horses, what's the single biggest cost in a horse in having a horse, boarding a horse, or running a horse boarding operation?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: What's the single biggest cost?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Feed?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, feet?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Feet.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: How about mucking out stalls?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Labor?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, these are actually all wrapped up.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the deal.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Equine News 30 years ago ran a front page article on deep bedding for horses.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that this does is that it produces tons of natural uh antibiotics.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about you know, pilicillin and stuff.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're all they're molds, right?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're okay.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh we love mold, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, okay?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking about this yesterday, right?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's way more good bacteria than bad.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: What you want is a is to create a habitat where the good bugs meet the bad bugs.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: All right, when they're right, and and so um, so with a horse, if I were had a horse, were boarding horses, or had anything to do with horses, um from from a from a uh housing standpoint, I would go to deep bedding.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh if if I had, let's say I had a uh a 20-stall horse boarding operation, okay?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: I would leave one empty, the horses would advance one stall a day, and two pigs would go in the empty stall every day, and they would oxygenate it, so the horses are now on aerobic compost that would get deeper and deeper and deeper, and then once a year we have a hog roast, all my clients come, we eat the pigs, and everybody brings a fork and a wheelbarrow, and we muck out all the stalls one day a year, and we turn the everyday chore labor into a celebratory party.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and suddenly, suddenly, that also eliminates the farrier bills because this equine news art story was all about how much the exudates, the exudates from this create hoof health, it stops diarrhea in baby calves, it stops mastitis in cows, it stops hoof problems in horses.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the problem is horse people are too fastidious.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And oh, but once, but once you get depth, the urine goes into that sponge, the manure goes into that sponge, and if the pigs come behind and stir it, then you but you know, you've got to put the horse's name over a stall.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we can't do this.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the uh this is the pastured broiler.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is certainly um our farm's first signature piece, if you will, and it's still kind of our our our claim to fame about more than anything.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so we move these every day.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: So these are Cornwallis Cross.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's nothing natural about this chicken, it's a race car, NASCAR, double-breasted, high octane, um, fast-growing bird.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: But um my mentor Alan Nation used to say when you're in uh retail marketing, uh you can be a nudist or you can be a Buddhist.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're a nudist Buddhist, nobody will believe you.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be really hard to sell anything.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so um so these are the same genetics as the industry uses, they're what people are common with.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you want a heritage, dark meat, razor-breasted, old, tough, great-tasting, succulent um counterpart, we have those.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh those are the roosters of the pullets that we hatch.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um we we they're too far away to get to today.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: But uh these are the these are the meat birds like beef compared to dairy.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll uh I'll demonstrate how we move these guys, and um, and then we'll talk about a little bit.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: You guys right here, you need to back up about I'll I won't move the I won't move it all the way, but back up about four or five feet there to give me some room.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: So this little dolly here, this is the tool, and once, and once we um eliminate Cargill, Tyson, and that's okay, it can stay there, it can stay there, uh, and uh Tyson and all those guys.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this little dolly will be available in every hardware store in America as common as a hammer.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't that be cool to see?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you just slip this under and use it like a like a kind of a a pry bar, and now it's on wheels.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay it's on wheels.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me there, birds.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then the birds just walk to the next spot.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay now they've already been moved once this morning, so they're all they're kind of just settling and being quiet.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: I won't move it, I won't move it all the way, but they just walk to the next spot, okay?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody got the idea?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you just go from one to the other to the other, and one person with that little dolly, one person can move four thousand five hundred chickens in 60 minutes without starting an engine, and give everybody a brand new salad bar and change their bedding.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even change your bedding every day, do you?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: These birds get their bedding, of course you don't poop in your bed either.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: But we change their bedding every day, give them a new salad bar, and so they get a totally new place to uh eat, and and that they're they're they're contained enough that there are very few predators.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: There are predators, but uh in all of our many, many decades of doing this, I've only had one hawk ever get inside.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Ever.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty good when you're raising outdoor poultry, okay?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the the cap protects them from weather.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: You get a rain, thunderstorm.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: These birds come out at between 14 and 20 days.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: The next batch is down there, and uh so every three weeks we're starting a batch.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a batch in the brooder, a young batch in the field, and an older batch in the field, and we just rotate through the season, and this year we'll raise just short of 40,000 uh birds.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you're just seeing a third of our uh we we have we have about 160 of these shelters.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they're not all here, they're somewhere on other rental farms and different places that our young uh young people run.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, big picture.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: The elephant in the room of American agriculture right now is that the average American farmer is 60 years old.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, in the next 15 years, half of all of America's farm equity is gonna change hands.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: That has never happened in any civilization peacefully.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's only happened in conquest.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if we get through this transition peacefully, and I'm not trying to scare anybody, I'm just explaining the situation.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: If we get through this peacefully, we will be the first civilization that's ever made that level of agrarian equity transfer peacefully.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Which, if you ever watch horse racing and betting, you know that's not the way to, you know, you don't want to bet on the team that's lost 25 races.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Every civilization that's done this and lost, you know, they're all in the heaps of history, right?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're betting that we're gonna make it, you're betting on the losing horse.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: But Hope Springs eternal, right?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we'd like to be the first one.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're the nation on a hill, right?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're American exceptionalism, so why don't we be exceptional and make this transition?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we how do we make this transition?
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: The the problem is that when young people can't get in, old people can't get out.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we got young people that want to get in, old people want to get out, and they're both stuck.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: One's on an on-ramp, one's on an off-ramp, and there's nobody on the interstate.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we get that transition going?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Three things, what you're seeing here.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, mobile infrastructure.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Mobile infrastructure.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Mobile infrastructure eliminates the need to own the land.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest cost of entry in agriculture is buying land.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: What if you don't need to buy land?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a game changer?
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty big, right?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: There is not a square foot of farmland in the world that wouldn't benefit from pastured poultry.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: They they disturb it, they churn it up, they poop on it, they they do amazing stuff, all right.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: So these can be put in vineyards, orchards, wheat farms, cattle farms, dairy farms, pig farms, all right.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: There is not a single square foot on the planet that couldn't benefit from pastured poultry.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: So mobile is a game changer.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: August 21 and 22, we're going to be hosting the first germinating young farm launch here, sponsored by the Stoppman Grass Farmer, and we're going to feature eight young people who were 20, no land, no money, and they're 40 and full-time farming without using government grants.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: All of them bootstrapped.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of you might want to come back to that.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's going to be the most important agriculture seminar in the country this year.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because all the ag seminars, I don't care whether it's organic industry, I don't care what it is, everybody's moping around.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Ain't no money.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: How's the young people get?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're all whining and complaining, and they're and and there's they're hopeless.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're really excited to be able to feature eight who defied all the odds, even in modern day, and some of them own land, some of them don't.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them are married, some are not.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Some are direct marketing, some are not.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've I've chosen a broad spectrum.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: But what they have in common is they were 20, no land, no money, and they're full-time farming at 40 without government grants.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um so, yeah, come back for that.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, August 21, 22.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Stockman grass farmer.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's coming up.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you'll get some more sausages then, too.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: That flat plate's something, isn't it?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: That wood-fired flat plate down there.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a that's a humdinger.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so mobility, mobility changed everything.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Next one modular.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got enough of these to be equivalent to a a Tyson factory chicken house.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, 15,000 chickens.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: But they're modules.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to raise a chicken for Tyson, hopefully nobody here does.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: But if you did, what's the first thing you got to do?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Build a chicken house.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: How expensive is that?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: Million is like an auction.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Million here, million, million, million.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: How about 900, 800?
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, going once, all right.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's uh it's up there somewhere between 750 and a million dollars, depending on how big it is.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Would you call that an impediment to entry?
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I like to call it elitist.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what they call me.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Your your high-priced chickens is it's elitist, you know.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, to get into Tyson Chicken Farm, that's pretty elitist if you got to borrow a million dollars just to get in.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: But here, all you got to do is cancel your Netflix subscription for three months, and with pocket change, you build one of these, you start it in your backyard, and if you like it, you can build a second one.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're as nuts as we are, you can build 160 of them, but over time, so you scale by duplication of modules.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: One of the big problems in American agriculture right now is when anybody talks about scale feeding the world, scale, they assume the only way is to consolidate, centralize, and concentrate.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: A bigger chicken house, a bigger cannery, a bigger you know, orchard, a bigger uh um you know, processing plant.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Nature doesn't scale that way.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: If nature wants more oak, it doesn't make a great big oak tree, it makes acorns.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: If nature wants more milk, it doesn't make a great big cow, it makes maybe calves.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: If nature wants more tomatoes, it doesn't make a great big tomato, it makes a bunch of tomatoes.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Are you with me?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Nature scales by duplication.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that we're trying to prove here, I think we've proved it, it's just everybody doesn't recognize it, is there is not one single need for a confinement poultry house on the planet.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not one reason for it.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need it, it's unnecessary, and look at how happy the chickens are.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so um, so modular is a game changer.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we got we got um mobile, modular, one more.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Management intensive.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Management intensive.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the nasers, uh, I knew there was a catch, and with a with a condescending snarl, yeah, this would take more farmers, as if they can't imagine a worse indictment on a techno-sophisticated, glitzy culture like ours than have more farmers.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: We got twice as many people incarcerated in prison in our country than we have farmers.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: That gives you pause when you write farming books.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it gives me pause to realize I could have had twice as many possible buyers if I had written a book on how to be a successful inmate than than how to be a successful farmer.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, guilty as charged, it does take more farmers.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know what it doesn't take?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't take bankers, doesn't take pharmaceutical companies, doesn't take uh uh uh pollution abatement uh people, it doesn't take attorneys to fight over who's stinking up the neighborhood, it doesn't take hospitals to deal with the MERSA and C.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: diff from antibiotic uh derived uh superbugs.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can go on and on and on, okay?
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here we are amongst thousands of chickens.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's no flies, there's no smells.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could come up here and eat lunch, right?
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: You could do this in a suburban backyard, okay?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so we don't apologize that this is management intensive, which you know what that means?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: That means that our equity here, our equity is not stuff, it's not pharmaceutical, it's not energy intensity, pharmaceutical intensity, capital intensity, it's people intensity, which means our equity is skill, knowledge, and patrons.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it pleases God and is socially responsible to invest in a people-centric business.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: Most things in America right now, businesses, are tripping over themselves trying to get rid of people.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can't even buy bananas at Kroger's and talk to a person.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: They want you to check, I refuse to.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: I go standing to check out somebody come help me.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: I go to Lowe's, I get I get plumbing parts or something at Lowe's.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: I just go up there to the front and I just stand there until somebody comes.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Can I help you, sir?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I'd like to be checked out, please.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: I just I just don't I I just refuse.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I just am not gonna do it.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: But but but but what you see is you see this this um this this tripping over ourselves, don't we, to eliminate people.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be cool if you called American Airlines and a person answered the phone instead of a robot without enough numbers for you for your problem?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're sitting there, ah right.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't apologize for being people-centric.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's enough.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe two questions, we're gonna go to the cows.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes?
• 42:56
  unknown: Do you have any guardian dogs or or guardian animals?
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: We have guardian dogs, yes, we do.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: We have several.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and we rotate them around, we move them as necessary.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if we have an attack somewhere, the dog goes there.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: When it's over, the dog goes somewhere else.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's a bit of a halo, you can call it a patina, you know, because the wildlife, they they talk, they have their meetings.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and they know, you know, here's a free lunch, and here's, you know, here's uh here's uh paradise, you know, um where we're not gonna live tomorrow.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and so um so when the dog goes to a place and it it takes about a week or ten days for the wildlife to oh, oh, the dog's not there anymore.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and so you can actually get more than one spot specific with a guardian dog, you can kind of move them around.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Another question?
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 43:50
  unknown: Have you ever done laying hens?
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Have we ever done laying hens?
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, uh, when we first started uh this uh originally this was for laying hens.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I had so what I did, I built these um shelters with 10 10 one-foot nest, these are 10 by 12, and I had 10 one-foot nest boxes tucked right under here, cut this, hinged it, so I could flip bungee cord it down, flip it up, gather the eggs underneath, flip up the perch board in front to exclude them at night so the eggs stayed clean, and um and that's the way we did it.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: I thought we had the cats meow.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: We were on the front page of Acres USA magazine.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we had arrived.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: We've got you know 20 shelters of these 50 layers in them, you know, each one.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Michael and Joyce Plain came from All Sun Farm in Australia.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: He walked out.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is going back several years.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: He walked out, he looked at this, he looked, turned around, looked at me, he says, You're obsolete.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: Obsolete?
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: I find that offensive, you know.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Haven't you heard about this new uh netting their electrified netting they're making in Germany?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, you know, of course the Germans would make this, right?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: This electrified netting.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: I said, no, I haven't.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: He said, yeah.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: He said, we they've just started making it.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is you know like 25 years ago.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: He said, we just got some and uh and we tried it.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, it's fabulous.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so he left and I stewed about this.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh for me it's been the most poignant illustration of how of how um addicted we become to our own silo.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: I invented this thing.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and um so anyway, three years later, Andy Lee, who wrote Chicken Tractor, he was down here in Rockbridge County at the time, and um we got together and he said, I'm gonna get I'm gonna get some of that netting.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I couldn't bear for him to beat me on whatever this thing was.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so we got a roll of it.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: It arrived in the UPS.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: I told Teresa it arrived, got in a box, said, I'm gonna take this up, set it up, and show how it won't work.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I came up and uh, you know, I put it around one of these things, you know, one of these shelters, took the bucket, set it under the corner, let all the chickens get out, and then just stood back to watch it not work.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in five minutes, I knew I was obsolete.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: And now that's what we use.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: We have the Millennium Feathernet up there.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: We've got several of them, a thousand birds with the netting around them.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: It works, it's fantastic.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: But those are layers, they're very voble, they're very smart.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: These birds come out at you know, 15, 16, 17 days old.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you put them in there, every crow, everything in the world would come and pick them off.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, so this this this um this we use for the broilers and the netting we use uh for the layers now.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: And of course the eggmobiles.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: The eggmobiles are portable, the chicken's totally free range and sanitized behind the cows.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you have to come for a real farm tour to do that.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yes.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a resource or network to find processors?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: A network to find processors?
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Apa American Pastured Poultry Producers Association.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: Apa.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't think I could do that twice, did you?
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um they are they are the go-to trade organization for this for this movement.
• 47:43
  unknown: Okay.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as as as you've watched news in America recently, uh and the world even, uh, the cow has kind of become a demonized uh bad rap deal.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she's gonna burp and fart, we're all gonna be crispy critters in 30 years because of cows.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, a couple really just just important things to understand when we talk about truth.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, there was more animal weight on the planet 500 years ago than there is today.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Just let that sink in a moment.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: More animal weight that's herbivores, birds, amphibians, definitely pollinators, insects, 500 years ago than there is today.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, it's not animals that's killing the planet.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's something else.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's if we want to posit.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and and you know, this is where I irritate my conservative friends, uh, because it's true.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: The the planet is losing pollinators, we're losing insects, we're losing soil, we're losing aquifers.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: It, you know, the the Chinese have this saying if you get keep going the way you're going, you're gonna end up where you're headed.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and we're not headed to a good place in in the in the world right now.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so um aren't they pretty?
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: We ride them.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can ride them on your own time.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the deal, so so so why are there so many herbivores on the planet?
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, llamas and alpacas, South America, you go on over, you got, you know, zebras and elephants and giraffes and wildebeest in Africa, and you go on up to Indochina, you got, you know, uh Cape Buffalo, you got uh not uh water buffalo, um yaks, and then you go on up into you know the the lapland, you got reindeer, you come across to Canada, you got caribou, moose, come down to the U.S., you got you know, deer, elk, bison.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: Used to have bison, uh a lot more.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: But uh what what's the deal?
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the deal is if I can if I can pull one of these grass plants, all right.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the deal is that this grass grows in a sigmoid curve.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: See my S here?
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: It starts slow, then it grows real fast, then it goes into senescence.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: I call these three stages diaper grass, teenage grass, nursing home grass.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: If the goal is to capture as much sunbeams, I like to call them sunbeams, not sun, sunbeams is more, you know, romantic and mystical and child friendly.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're gonna if our goal is to capture as many sunbeams and convert it into biomass, carbon, as possible, of those three stages, where do we want it as much time as possible?
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: Teenage, yeah, this is not, I don't do trick questions.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want it in diapers.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: Are they ever gonna get going?
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then you know, out here on the end, you know, are they they're are they not productive anymore?
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so it's here.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so the herbivore in the in the great grand scheme of things is to take this as it reaches senescence, make seed head and reaches senescence, is to prune it back to restart.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if somebody didn't prune their apple orchard or their vineyard, you'd say they were negligent.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: When we go around, see cows pruning the vegetation, and we say they're destroying the planet.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 51:28
  unknown: Horses would destroy it.
• 51:29
  unknown: They pull it right up.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: Horses would destroy it if you if you handle horses the way most people handle horses.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: So horses need to be put in a deep bedding stall and and forgotten about.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of all the animals, horses are the hardest because they've got teeth upper and lower.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: Cow doesn't.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: And um yeah, horses are an issue.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so that that's that's the goal here.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: So in nature, this is done with another three M's.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: So let's see how good memories are.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Up there, we had three M's.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: Mobile, modular, imagine intensive.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: Ready for three more?
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: How does nature do this with herbivores?
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're moving, they don't stay in the same place.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: When they when they do this, they move on and let this grass go through its next growth stage.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: All right, they're moving, they're mobbing, they're mobbed up for predator protection.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lion lurking in the bushes, okay?
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they're mowing.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're not eating dead cows, dead chickens, and manure and all the stuff that were, you know, uh ho-ho cakes and little Debbie's, you know, uh cast-offs.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're mowing, okay?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're not eating corn, they're not eating soybeans, all right.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're mowing.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: Moving, mobbing, mowing.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: Say it with me, class.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: Moving, mobbing, mowing.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 53:08
  unknown: Mowing.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: So how you don't want them to move.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: If they're moving, then they're not happy.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: So so how do we do that on a commercial domestic scale uh and duplicate what nature did with migratory migratory uh herd choreography and predator prey choreography.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, our predator is the electric fence.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that defines where they're gonna be.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: We move them one day, every day they get moved to a new paddock, and so they're moving, they're mobbing, and they're mowing.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: We call this mob stocking herbivorous solar conversion, lignified carbon sequestration, fertilization.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's not gonna be funny.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I did practice that in front of a mirror many times before I ever tried to do it publicly.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it's so it's so it's mob stocking, herbivorous, solar conversion, lignified carbon sequestration, fertilization.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if I have to stop and think about it, I get all tongue-tied.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's gotta just it's just gotta flow.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the result of this is that the production, because it is the grass is allowed to get out of first uh first gear, so to speak, the production goes way up.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: So in Augusta County, the average pasture in Augusta County is is producing 80 cow days per acre.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: A cow day is what one cow will eat today.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you took, if you took all the food that you're gonna eat today, put it on a plate, that would be one person day of food, all right?
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: So what one cow is gonna eat in a day is is is one you know one cow day worth of food.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: In Augusta County, the average is 80, which means the average acre in Augusta County can feed 80 cows for one day a year or one cow for 80 days a year.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody with me?
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: Our average here is almost 400.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we've never planted a seed or bought a bag of chemical fertilizer in 65 years, and when we started, we only could feed 10 cows and you could walk the place and not set foot on a piece of vegetation.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't say that proudly, I say that humbly honoring, yes, God made this.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's about abundance and not scarcity.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: If there's scarcity, we made the scarcity.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't make the scarcity.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so our obligation is to study these patterns, these wonderful ancient indigenous patterns, and say, how do we restore that?
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I've gotten a little bit of pushback and raised some eyebrows recently.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we just did this uh people versus poison rally on the Supreme Court steps and and this stuff and and and uh you know glyphosate and all this.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, you know, we're asking the wrong question.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're all running around, uh, you know, um, how do we do can we spend$700 uh million dollars giving farmers transition money to quit polluting?
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh do we need glyphosate?
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, uh what are we gonna do about SNAP and all this stuff?
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we really only have one question.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: We have one question.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, how do we restore the abundance of pre-European America?
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: Pre-European America produced way more food than we do today.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: People think, oh, thank goodness for the Green Revolution and for ammonia and the you know borlog and John Deere tractors and the plow and hybrid seeds and uh uh-uh.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: Pre-European America was far more abundant.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now it weren't all eaten by people.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: We had 200 million bison, we had two million wolves that ate 20 pounds of meat a day, that's 40 million pounds of meat.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we had uh 200 to 400 million beavers that ate more vegetables than all the people on the plan on on in North America today.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we had um bears, you know, the Lewis and Clark expedition.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: When they went out west, they said uh they said every every single mile they encountered a bear.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: Every mile.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that was just the bear, that's the one they saw.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: Bears eat a lot.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, ask Baloo.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: Those bear necessities.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so uh birds, you know, Audubon sat under a tree in 1800.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: He recorded in his diary, he said he said um um flock of birds flew over.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't see the sun for three days, it blocked out the sun.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was before Cargill, Tyson, okay.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, chickens are birds.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: So so it's hard for us to conceive of the abundance of that pre-European North American landscape.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't just by itself, the Native Americans strategically did fire, they did all sorts of cool stuff, um, but but it was it was an amazing, symbiotic, synergistic choreography that built the soils that we have been mining ever since we uh the Europeans came here.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we're trying to do is go back to a fundamentally perennial situation rather than annuals, um, with an herbivore as the foundation to actually build soil and build in the diversity so that we actually capture more solar energy, turn it into carbon sequestration that actually builds soil and converts the carbon that's in the atmosphere into the soil.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: These animals come straight off of here, straight to the butcher.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's no grain, no silage, no nothing.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: That is a that is a a fermentation, a portable four-wheel drive fermentation tank.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: They take cellulytic structure and they ferment it on stuff that we can't do.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: All right, two questions and we're and we're done.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go to break.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: Of all the neighbors you've got out here.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: How many have you convinced to go in your direction of farming and how many neighbors have we convinced to do this?
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: Take a guess.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not one.
• 59:31
  unknown: Not one.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: Not one?
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not one.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: Not one.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: They see how successful you are.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: They don't see it.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: See, see, there's this old there's this old saying, I'll I'll uh I'll believe it when I see it.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's not right.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: You'll see it when you believe it.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: Your heart, your your heart is a is a screen for what your eyes can see and what your head can fathom.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, ma'am.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you think of Bill Gates' false meat?
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Bill Gates fake meat, all that lab meat and stuff.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think much of it.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean uh it it's yeah.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's it's it's pretty much failing.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh pretty much failing.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's interesting that uh 10 years ago, if you if you I I collect these you know articles, and 10 years ago, if you if you look at the articles, by now, by now the price of beef was going to collapse because nobody's gonna eat it, the price of farmland because it would collapse because we don't need farmland anymore.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean the predictions, and these were in you know, front page of the New York Times, they were in all the great, you know, academic, you know, ag college literature, and what's happened?
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: What they found out was it's kind of it's kind of hard to duplicate kidneys and hearts and arteries and lungs and and and blood vessels, and so the the biggest the biggest uh vat of stuff they've been able to do this in is a five-gallon bucket.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because circulation is with bubbles and filtration is with uh man made filters, and it's really hard to duplicate kidneys and livers and blood vessels and all that.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's basically a completely failed thing.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm I'm just I'm just not concerned about it at all because it it it it's just you know it's just it's just not gonna work.