Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #47: Joel on His Hypocrisy & Biggest Failure (Your Questions Answered!)

Transcript

Episode #47: Joel on His Hypocrisy & Biggest Failure (Your Questions Answered!) · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever your dream is, whatever your vision is for the kind of people, the kind of farm, the kind of thing that you want, you want to get close to whatever that is.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what that looks like, what that feels like, what that experience is in your soul, in your heart feels like.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Seek that out, find it, invest your time and interest, and you'll never regret spending time with mentors.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: You'll never regret that.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome everyone to another Beyond Labels podcast with yours truly, Joel Salatin, the Farmer, and Dr.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Cena McCullough, the brains of the outfit.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got two announcements quickly to make before we get into the podcast today.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that our Two Days of Truth summit that was held recently at Polyface.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: How can you get that, Sina?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a link included in the description box below the video or podcast where you can click on that link and it takes you to the page to learn more about what you'd be getting as part of the summit and how to purchase it.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: The second announcement, which is a lot bigger, is that we have now for a year been uh doing these podcasts, uh just kind of dipping our toe in the water.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's kind of grown, it's it's grown kind of beyond, I think, certainly beyond what I envisioned.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh and and there are technicians, there there are things that that need to be paid behind the wall.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so Tina Cena and I have talked about how do we how do we pay for technicians editing, things like that that need to be done.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and neither one of us has been comfortable with advertising.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: We just we just don't like it.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: It it it gets you in this quagmire of who do you endorse 100%?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: You feel like a mercenary.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it just seems it just doesn't jive with what we're what we're into.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Both of us love um pay for what you get.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of our libertarian bent.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so we like we like uh uh uh pay for what you get.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, as you know, many podcasts have gone to a subscription service, and so we are going to head that direction.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so this is our this is our we're doing a kind of a five-week uh ramp up uh to that, and I'll let Cena give you a few more details about the subscription service.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Great, thanks, Joel.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's I'm super excited about this.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um for those of you listening, uh you might be interested in knowing that Joel wasn't originally going to be my weekly co-host, right?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I brought I brought this idea to Joel about starting a podcast based on Beyond Labels.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I was going to be the host, and Joel would only occasionally come on the podcast because I knew how busy he was, right, Joel?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I had Joel.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of roped him into it, as he says.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so basically the idea was okay, you'd only Joel, you'd only have to come on once a month, you know, and be my co-host talk about things.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then we did that, and everybody loved the back and forth dynamic between us, you know, just like we have in the book.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, Joel, people really like that dynamic.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you could come twice a month.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And do I do I detect a slippery slope here?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a kid, right?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: You give them a little bit and they're gonna ask for a mile.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Give her take a mile.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: I just kept trying to test the boundaries there.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So um eventually he ended up on agreeing to um every week, right?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Once we started getting traction and we started to get into a groove.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and now this is super exciting because um Joel has embraced the podcast so much it's now on his resume.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: So he's all in.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so now that we're now that we know the direction that we're going, now that we're both you know committed to this all in, now is the space where creativity comes and it flows.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So we've decided to invest actually even more of our time and to share more of our personal lives with this community that we're building through the subscription service.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's going, it's only gonna cost$5 a month.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: You'll get access to all the podcasts and the video versions of the podcast.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have a live quarterly um QA session.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's Ask As Anything session.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have behind-the-scenes videos of Joel on the farm, behind-the-scenes videos um of me, particularly um cooking videos that people have requested, like with herbs, for instance.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we'll have a discount offered to our annual summit.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be 10% off.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's our annual um Two Days of Truth summit at Polyface.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to um leave the option open for being creative and flexible based on what the tribe that we're creating wants.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: For instance, right now we're hearing they want more on how to rewire the nervous system, what steps are involved.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I will be um posting short videos with exercises of how to rewire your nervous system, for instance.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a it's a community space for like-minded um people to get together in an area where we're trying not to um we're trying to get away from the censorship and we're trying not to support those platforms that censor.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a it's a space for all of us to communicate and to grow so that we can um keep providing new and fresh content and not be censored.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's uh that's kind of it in a nutshell.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to belabor this.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and we we are going into this um uh you know, a little bit fearful, but also uh recognizing that we need to do this in order to in order to create sustainability within the podcast.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: So uh please we we look we thank you for your continued loyalty, your continued uh interest in what we do.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: We will do our best to make sure that this is you know, this is the best investment you've ever made.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um and and uh thank you for again, just thank you for your interest and for sharing this with other people.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let it we'll we'll we'll let it grow.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Where, you know, we kind of feel like this is kind of our weaning, you know.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've had this little infant and we're just starting to toddle a little bit now.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and we we need some we need some support mechanisms, uh, some things to hold on to, you know, like a toddler needs a chair leg.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we need a chair leg in in the podcast here to be able to to pay the folks and the and the the techniques and the things um behind the scenes and the lack of censorship uh platform to be able to move this forward.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and we'll be you know, we'll be talking more about this in the future, but we don't want to belabor the point.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Cena, we're ready to jump into the podcast.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what do we have for today?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we have another question for Joel.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh again, this comes from Christine from Heritage Pines Farm.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: In the last podcast, we addressed two of her questions, one on identity, one on cultural nuances.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we decided to go ahead with the final two questions that she posed.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, just as a reminder, uh, Christine is a first-generation Taiwanese American immigrant, now a first-generation farmer, and um had a come to Jesus moment when she was advertising um how to get Hispanic moms to buy more Coca-Cola for their kids.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and now she's running a she and her family are running a small regenerative farmstead outside of Colorado Springs.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: So here is her next question: when to do it perfectly or when to just do it.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: One thing I've encountered and had to wrestle with in our family journey of farming is to view failure and learning from failure as integral parts of what we're doing.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is not something that I was familiar with in my education or career.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: In school and on the job, I'd always been patted on the back for getting the job done right as quickly as possible.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: There were always metrics, data, feedback, and so forth to easily measure one's success.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: But since we're so new to farming, we often don't even know if we're doing it, quote unquote, right.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: For example, rotational grazing.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: I understand every piece of land in every climate is different.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: We invited a county extension small acreage specialist to help us figure out how to rotationally graze our land.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: She told us we can only handle one cow on our land.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: We currently have four cows and we feed a lot of hay, but we love our grass-fed raw milk, and it's nearly impossible to find grass-fed raw milk in our area.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Are we doing it right?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Should we just not do it at all?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: When do you go for it?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And when do you call it qurits?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: What are the benefits of quote unquote failing in farming?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: What was your worst failure that you can share?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: And what are the best lessons that you have learned from quote unquote failing?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's a loaded question.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's it's a great question.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for asking.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so let's tackle these things one step at a time.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think, I think the first one I'm going to tackle is this idea that the extension specialist said you could only have enough land for one cow and you have four and you buy a lot of hay.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I can I can hear the the angst coming through the question.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, is this right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Is this wrong?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: We could all sit around in a focus group all day and and talk about the the relative ecology, economics, carbon footprint, whatever of this hay.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is that all of us are in a in a context now, uh, Cena, as you know, um, we're not in in uh Laura Engels wilder context.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you've read the Little House on the Prairie books and and Paul said, we don't need any cash, I'll build a door without nails, you know.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and uh this is before the internal revenue service was started.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, we you gotta understand that this country, you know, um throughout human history, there hasn't always been an internal revenue service or a Federal Reserve.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, getting a little bit far afield here, but we we live we live in a very cash-oriented society.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, wealth here is cash.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there are in the Native American culture, it was wampum and seashells.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, in fact, I'd like to go back to that.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: That would suit me just fine.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, other cultures, it's you know, wealth is a cow.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Other cultures, of course, it's you know, it's other things.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but we live in an extremely cash-oriented society.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So here you've got this young family, they're starting out on this little farm, they're trying to be uh, you know, um, they're trying to be business smart, business savvy, and and one cow isn't going to do the job, but because hay can be acquired um fairly cheaply, they can leverage their marketing savvy and their value-added savvy on commodity hay and be able to get enough volume to pay the taxes, pay the insurance, and put put uh uh shoes on their children's feet.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's kind of like us here at Polyface, you know, we run the eggmobiles behind the cows.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the egg mobile, the the um, you know, we don't need 800 chickens following the cows to do the pasture sanitation, you know, the birds following the cow thing.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need uh hundreds and hundreds of chickens to be able to do that.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the cost of going out and moving the egg mobile and gathering the eggs every day is the same, that the cost of being there is the same whether we're going out to service 100 chickens or 500 chickens.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, so because of the cost of fuel, because of the the cash cost of time, we run way more chickens in the egg mobiles than we need to behind the cows in order to bring in$100 worth of eggs and not$20 worth of eggs for the time of fuel and investment in time getting there.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's an identical question.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we're quick to say we're quick.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: So what's the trade-off?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: The trade-off is we buy more feed.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: If we had only 50 chickens in there, you know, back back when I first started the idea and only had 100 chickens in the egg mobile, they pretty much lived off the land.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: They got bugs and and and grass seeds and you know and things and lived off the land, didn't eat anything.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem was I had all this time investment in just you know, four dozen eggs a day.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, you know, the the trade-off then was to go up with way more chickens.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: So when I'm when I'm spending the time hooking it up with the tractor, bringing in the eggs, you know, uh um that time and that fuel gets paid for with the volume.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: The trade-off is we supplement with some with some off-farm grain uh in from from neighbors who grow grain in order to supplement the chickens to get the volume up enough to pay the the the fuel bill to go move them.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's the idea.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And and and Christine, you're in the same situation here.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I would love, I would love to not have to generate cash.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to not have to pay, you know,$30,000 in insurance.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to not have some of these, you know, huge uh uh uh cash things that we have in in our culture, but uh, but that's the context we're in.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'd love to not have half my salary confiscated in taxes.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would love to live in it, but we don't live in that kind of world.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Christine, you are you are going through the kind of compromises, and it's so and I have fun with this.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: I say, yeah, um, this is my hypocrisy.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is this, you know, we just admit it, enjoy it, smile about it, and say, and say, every single one of us, non-farmers included, we pick our hypocrisies.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: We we do all of us have our our inconsistencies.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: We say we believe this, but then at the end of the day, uh we really do eat that ice cream cone, you know, and we don't ask where it came from because it's hot and we just want something cold and wet, and we eat the ice cream cone, right?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and so so that happens.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and so um, so let's not get too whatever, uh, you know, uh uh self-deprecating about this and realize that we've got to make a go in our context.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: You have a context, your family has a context, and you have to make a go within that context.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And perfection is incremental.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: You you you never achieve perfection.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: What you only achieve are incremental steps toward a paradise that you seek.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so you know if you ever arrive, well, then you know, quit living because there's nothing more to, you know, nothing more to improve.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I'll leave you with this on the question, you know, you know, that that one of my favorite uh things that I promote is the is the idea if it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly first.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we've grown up with this.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh it's uh that's really actually wrong.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's right is if it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly first, because we don't do anything well first.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: We don't talk well, we don't walk well, we don't uh well, I guess we poop found, we just don't know where to put it.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you put on a diaper, you gotta learn that.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we we we we gotta learn these things, right?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's an incremental journey.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so if it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly first.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's hilarious.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've never heard anybody equate learning how to farm to learning how to poop, right?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's my memorable moment from this podcast.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and let me add so let me ask you uh one of her questions in that line of um of questions she listed is what was your worst failure that you could share and some of the best lessons you've learned from failing?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you covered the lessons, but in terms of this probably wasn't one of your worst failures, but this came to mind when I read that question.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when I was at your farm recently, you know, you took me in the four-wheeler um kind of behind the scenes tour, and we we drove by some pastures, and you said you I forgot what you called them, but they were like pastures where you had like failed.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you had you had tried different techniques for farming and those were failed, and they and they they were like set aside now so that they could um restore themselves, you know, grow back.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: So could you share that?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because that was, you know, Hilda was with us, Holistic Hilda was with us, and both of us looked at each other like, wow, you know, most of us have this vision of you, Joel, as just, you know, you're this premier farmer.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: You're like the poster child for regenerative farming, truly.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so we look at you as just having this vast wealth of knowledge and almost as though you were perfect from the beginning, right?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: You don't make any mistakes.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then when we drove by there, and you're like, oh yeah, that's where we like failed, did such and such.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, everyone was kind of silent in the car.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I asked you some question along the lines of, well, what do you mean?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like it didn't work, like what?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: So could you could you share that in a little bit about that story?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: What are those pastures that are on your farm?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And what how did you fail?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I mean, uh there are numerous ways that you can fail.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, we've, for example, uh, if you get a three-inch rainstorm and you pug it up, uh pugging, you know, where where the cows tromp it all up, for example, um, you get nothing but weeds for a year.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or and and then and then two years down the road, you know, you get you get these wonderful clovers and Timothy and things.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so you uh, you know, climatic changes, uh, soil changes, the the way the land lays, um, you know, every little every little nuance it requires uh well it has a different it has a different fragility, it has a different risk factor, and it has a different response factor the way that you know work with it.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh, you know, you can you can abuse something uh momentarily, you can you can uh walk away too long, and then you know, saplings come in, and then you've got to go in with a chainsaw and and bring it back.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, these are these are mistakes that you can make.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and so uh so we've made those.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever anybody asked me for what's your biggest you know failure you ever did, for me, it was trying to make a portable sheep, uh, a portable sheep corral out of PVC.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: I had this idea um that if we if we made, see, we're not fenced for sheep.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sheep, sheep require a lot more fencing than cows, electric fencing.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wanted to have some sheep.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so how do we how do we have these sheep, but we don't have to refence the farm uh because that's a pretty big investment and a big deal.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I conceived with this great big, like like a uh, you know, a 30-foot by 50-foot uh PVC corral that you could just pull across the pasture and it would just slide, you know, and the sheep would be in it, and you could just move it a couple of times a day if you needed to, and they just slide across the pasture.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I went down and got some really expensive schedule, schedule 80 PVC.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's the gray stuff that's like you know, half an inch thick walls, really, really big, spent you know, 3,000 bucks.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Brought that stuff in, glued it together, built this thing, and um we got it done.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it was it was a it was not a really cold morning, but it was chilly, you know, it was in the 30s, got it done.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: I hooked up to it to the tractor, I pulled it about five feet and it cracked the PVC cracked, you know, it was chilly.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And literally, I mean, it was it was 10 seconds, and I looked back, well, that's not gonna work.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we and we threw we threw we threw the whole thing away.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, you know, three thousand bucks just like that.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and so from that, from that, um, we learned that that was our final straw, that you never, never, never build something out of PVC.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: PVC is for water.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: What you know, PVC works really well for plumbing and water and and that sort of thing, but you never build anything out of PVC.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: We've tried chicken shelters, we've tried icosahedron domes, we've tried all sorts of things out of PVC.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're they all crack, they break, you can't fix them.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: The the the UV radiation breaks down the PVC, it gets brittle, and and it's just it's just no good.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, so those are that that that's the lesson to learn.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Don't build anything out of PVC.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Use wood, steel, you know, um rubber, you know, bungee cords, duct tape, I don't care, but just don't use PVC.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's awesome.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so do we have time for um for the final question?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, her last question.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, let's do it.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, last question coming from Christine as well.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is about mentorship.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: How important is mentorship for those who are new to farming?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: How do we build a culture of mentorship in our new farming homesteading communities?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things I discovered early on is the Because I literally knew nothing about farming.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: I needed to seek out in-person mentorship.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Books and Google and YouTube are great, but I had literally never been around a cow and I knew that that needed to change.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I begged some acquaintances to let me shadow them on their farmsteads.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: They became some of my closest friends.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Mentorship is also one of the reasons we chose to purchase registered animals from specific breeds.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: I know Joel recommends against exotic fancy breeds, but as someone who originally couldn't tell a bull from a steer, which by the way, I still don't know how to tell a bull from a steer.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's between his legs.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Really, I'm thinking maybe there's some like markers, you know, like descriptive on the horn, something.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's it.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: A steer is without gonads.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you've taken him out.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and for sure, for you know, one of the one of the most common things is that a bull has horns and a cow doesn't.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, see, that's what I was thinking.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Look at the horns.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, horns do not make do not make him horny.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Horn horns have nothing to do with horniness.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Are breed specific, not sex specific.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's plenty of cows with horns.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um have nothing to do with um with the sex of the animal.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'll get back to the question.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Just hold that, you know, Joe, we should do um a kid's curriculum with you doing the farm animal, me, me doing the nutrition in the health to the plate.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because I didn't know that.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: I literally thought it was probably something with the horns, but now it's just like identifying with the human.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or well, I guess that's now controversial.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Who knows?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: But the traditional way to identify is okay.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I digress.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um so let me get back to her question.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: So so on a so on on a so on on bovines, on bovines, if you look between the back legs, a bull has balls and a and a cow has an udder.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's the way you tell.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Has nothing to do with what's up on the head.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh well, kind of a bummer, but I've been wrong all these years.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I learned something new.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Every time we chat, I learned something new.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay, so back to Christine.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, she couldn't originally tell the difference between a bull and a steer.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: So she purposefully sought out animals that were registered because the breeders tended to care more.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And if she did research on the breeders that she knew that she was getting a solid animal, on top of that, she could reach out to them with questions.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they responded immediately from her texts and her calls.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: She asked, um, when is the value of mentorship worth the additional cost?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I'm a I'm a huge fan of mentorship.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, anybody that knows us, you know, knows that I'm running, you know, that we here at Polyface, we have a very formal uh stewardship and apprenticeship program.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so we are absolutely uh um uh key on on mentorship.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing beats uh being able to to um you know just to see it done, to actually experience it, put your hands on it and see it done.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: When is it valuable?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I I think I think exactly what uh in the question, Christine's doing exactly the right thing.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: She's investing in relationships.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you're after.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that in my life, you know, I had uh wonderful mentors.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um and you know, I my my dad was my first, you know, mentor.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, Alan Nation, founder of Stopman Grass Farmer, was you know uh my second mentor.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um we had another guy here that started a company, uh and an organic uh an organic agriculture supply company uh named Reed Putney.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: He was a third mentor.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um A.P.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thompson at Golden Acres Orchard was certainly a mentor.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can just go down this list of these these um these folks who who mentored me.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um and you know, it wasn't necessarily that we got together, you know, a certain time of year or whatever.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was just, it was just this was a this was a an experienced person who would either give you a little bit of a congratulatory message, or you know, if I were if I were doing that, I you might think about this, you know, uh something that that gentle.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: But but when you have a lot of wisdom and experience, that little side word, that little side uh um uh advice can make a huge difference in you know in an operation.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh so my my answer to when is the value of mentorship worth the additional cost, I I I my my first response is always it the value of mentorship is always worth the additional cost.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so don't ever shy away from those mentorship things.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, many of my mentors I've never met in person, you know, but I've met them through books and that sort of thing.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: So um uh you know, Alan Nation used to tell me he said he said the best the best in uh the best investment anyone can ever make is to increase their knowledge level about what they're doing.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And um and and that that included books, and of course now we have YouTube that wasn't around when you know when he was uh uh uh alive.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but yeah, mentorship is always worth it.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Cultivate those relationships and um and and what your experience is is exactly the way mentorship works.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: So well done, congratulations.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and a follow-up question on that is I would say it's always with worth it when you have a good mentor, right?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: So if somebody doesn't currently have a mentor and they're in this, you know, farming homesteading space, um, and they're looking for a good mentor, how would someone go about finding one?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so what you want to do is find someone who's doing what you want to do.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Dave Ramsey, the financial guy, talks about the proximity principle.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Get yourself nearby the person or persons who is doing what you want to do.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: What do you aspire to do?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Look, you know, if if you go on a farm and it stinks and it's ugly and they got sick stuff all around, a bunch of fungus and and and mildew and whatever, um, that's probably not the kind of farm that you want.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: You want to go to a farm where the animals are healthy looking and slick, where the tomato plants are robust and tall and and and and where the farmer smiles and doesn't gripe about everything.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the idea is that you want whatever your your dream is, uh, you know, in whatever your vision is for the kind of people, the kind of farm, the kind of thing that you want, you want to get close to whatever that is.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what that looks like, what that feels like, what that experience is in your soul, in your heart feels like.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, so you know seek that out, find it, and and uh invest, invest your time and interest.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you'll never regret, you'll never regret spending time with mentors.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: You'll never regret that.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and on that note, we're gonna wrap up.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: We thank Christine for sending in her questions.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, encourage others, if you have questions, please email them to me.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: My email is in the description box.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you again for sharing this time with us.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: We look forward to spending this time with you each week.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we're looking forward to next week.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: All right, bye-bye.