Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
And welcome back again to another episode of Conservation Stories. Conservation Stories is a podcast brought to you by the Sand Hill Area Research Association. I'm Tillery Sims. Tillery Timmins Sims. And I have with me today Josh Davis. Josh, thanks for coming in all the way from Canyon.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm very, very happy to be here.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Big old drive from Canyon to.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Love it. Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: So I got on your little website and did a little looking around and, man, I got some questions about chickens and stuff.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Oh, sure.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: But so tell me a little bit about your background and did you grow up in Amarillo?
[00:00:44] Speaker B: I did, yeah. I, we, I was born in Colorado and we moved to Amarillo, back to Amarillo when I was five. So I'm pretty much just from Amarillo. So, yeah, so we lived there. I grew up in town.
Well, I don't have any, you know, background in ag or anything like that. So we're very first generation farmers. And I've done a, you know, a lot of different jobs. I've worked. My dad was a carpenter my whole life. So I've done construction, a lot of construction in my life, and a lot of graphic design. And, and so, yeah, I mean, I've always kind of had this kind of back of the room kind of interest in ag and caring for animals and through some learning about the Dust bowl and kind of us being kind of the hub of the Dust Bowl. Yeah, it kind of hurt my heart that our farming practices are the reason that that happened. And so we live on 40 acres with my wife's family, and they, they don't do anything with the land. And so my wife and I kind of shared the same kind of hidden dream of, of caring for animals and stuff like that. And so we just, we decided that it was better for us to do something with that land than for it to just sit and, and sit idle. So that's how we got here.
It's kind of the short story for how we got here.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Wow. J.C. acres.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: J.C. aker. Yeah, singular. So J.C. aker actually started.
My wife makes leather bags.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: And so she.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: I did see that. I did see it said leather.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: That's how it started. She, she made a bag for herself out of necessity. She didn't want to pay, you know, how much you have to pay for a leather bag? So she made one for herself. And the more she carried it around, the more people asked her to make them one.
And that kind of turned into being invited to a maker's market at Pete's Greenhouse in Amarillo.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: And Yeah.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: And so in order to do a market, we had to have a name.
And we lived on one of those 40 acres that her family has. And so it started out as JC Acre. And so we keep it singular to kind of hopefully our farm gets huge and very important for our area. But we wanted to kind of, no matter where our company and our farm takes us, we wanted to always remember kind of that it started very small.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: So that's why we. That's why it's named JC Acre. Singular. It's kind of anti the typical farm name. Usually it's acres or pastures or.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. I was thinking this morning about there's a lot of. Seems like there's, you know, there can be a lot of consternation and angst between, you know, large scale farming and smaller scale farming. And I was thinking maybe, I think a better way to think of it is, you know, there's global production and local production.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: And you guys are a local production farm.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. And one thing that's said a lot in regenerative agriculture is that it's not necessarily scalable, but it's very replicable. And so I think a goal in regenerative agriculture is to see a lot of farms like JC Acre in communities like Amarillo, Lubbock Canyon.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: Um, and so we don't talk a lot in terms of scale. We talk a lot in terms of replication.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Right, right. So where did you. I guess it was.
I'm kind of a nerd. So, like, I'm actually watching the Ken Burns Dust bowl for like, I don't even know the. How many times, you know, and so I've. I've done a lot of, you know, just my own. Satisfy my own curiosity about that time and what was happening and, you know, what. What made you start studying about the Dust Bowl?
[00:04:45] Speaker B: First friend recommended the Worst Hard Time.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: And I read or I listened to the Worst Hard Time and I haven't watched the whole Ken Burns documentary, but it's, it's fascinating and really just, just learning.
You know, Grapes of Wrath was recommended reading in high school, and I refused to do any recommended reading in high school. So I hadn't read it until. I mean, I probably hadn't read the Grapes of Wrath until about a year ago.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: And really anything Dust bowl related that I can, That I can learn.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Is so valuable, especially in trying to understand our area and understand what kind of grassland it should be or it was kind of designed to be, what kind of life. It was designed to sustain.
I'm all for any learning that I can do. And then, you know, the history beyond just the dust bowl, the history of the Native American tribes and the bison and all of that that goes into that.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: So there's a local historian named Paul Carson and he has a bit called Heaven's Harsh Tableland. Highly recommended.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: It's a really good, you know, it's, it's a, it gives you a lot of academic information in a very non academic way.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Oh, I see. I love that. Yeah, that's what I need.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Yes, me too.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: I try to get into that academic reading. I just get exactly buried in it.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Yes, yes. So. But it's been, been so fascinating and you know, there's what, what I have experienced is there's, there's a cultural difference between what they call it the south of 70 phenomenon. So Highway 70 that runs there from, you know, all the way from east to into New Mexico into eastern New Mexico through plain view. And like there's a very odd cultural divide there. Yeah, it really is interesting. And I, I think about.
We have friends that own Frontier Market. Frontier market. They've been good friends of ours and they have that great little story.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: In Plainview and have been just really, you know, diversifying and, and then there's somebody who's in global production and local production.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: So really an interesting, interesting family. But they were saying that they come to Lubbock and they can't even pay people to take their vegetables and go to Canyon and they're sold out and you know, before they even close the market.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: Yeah, they, I mean we participate in the farmers market in Canyon and they're, you know, we're right down the row from them and their line is just insane every year. It's awesome.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. They said it's like a four, like it's a 45 minute line. Huh?
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And then they're sold out by the time. By like 10 o'. Clock.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Oh, I know it, it really is. They've done, they've done a great job like doing a lot of diversified things. So. But they're not in there in beef production, but they're not in, in chickens. And that's kind of one of your ideas. So tell, tell us what you did on that 40 acres. So was it in some type of grass? Was it?
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Yeah, so it was previously cotton and you know, winter wheat probably.
But it hasn't been in production for row crop farming for decades.
And so I think it had Been years before my wife's family bought that 40 acres. I think they planted a bunch of timothy grass on it. And so most of the grass that grows there is timothy grass.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: And so, yeah, we have a lot of perennial. It's pretty much all perennial.
It hasn't been overtaken by mesquite at all.
And so it's just pretty wide open. And we, We've got a cool spot right there because the back of that property kind of rolls off into a draw. And so it's not just flat like most other farm places you get here, which can make it tricky for running chicken, chickens on pasture with terrain.
But we, we got into laying hens because we want it. You know, going into this thing, I just wanted to be a cattle rancher. That was the, that was the goal is to be a cowboy, you know, and turns out we. I just bought a whole lot of chickens and we're ways off from running cattle on that land.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: Well, I'll tell you, like my, my, my mom's.
So my maternal grandmother's family were from like the Austin area and they raised turkeys. And they would herd those turkeys.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Past the Capitol to market.
And I have, I have looked and looked to find if anyone knows where there's a picture of turkeys. Turkeys being herded past the Capitol in Texas to market.
Yes. But I always keep that in mind. I think about how just, you know, what a funny picture that is.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: I wonder if turkeys are easier to herd than chickens are. I cannot imagine chickens might be harder
[00:10:01] Speaker A: than I would think.
Oh, yeah.
[00:10:03] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: I don't think you could hurt. Can you herd chickens? I don't know.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: I mean, you can kind of. You. We, we try several times a week we move our chickens. So our chickens live 100% of their lives on pasture. They're never in a barn.
We have mobile chicken houses that we've built that we pull around with our tractor and about every three days they move to a new piece of grass.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: And we're not operating on the whole 40 acres. We're operating on about five of those 40 now.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: 40 acres. I mean, when you.
That's a lot of land. It is for the kind of. Right. I mean, that's something that, that's a lot to bite off for.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: For first generation farmers. Yeah. And especially with one species. So one of the main goals for us in regenerative agriculture is a multi species operation.
So we currently run about a thousand laying hens right now. And then we have a set of about 30 pigs that also rotate on pasture.
And those are our two species right now. And we're going. We'll continue to add enterprises as we grow. But laying hens was kind of where talking to other regenerative farmers, it's kind of the easiest gateway into ag for a first generation person with zero experience.
So we actually bought our first 50 hens back in I think 21 or 22 from alcove farms right here.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: They were doing one of their.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: And I think that they closed.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: They did. They closed. And I think somebody actually bought the name and is. So Alcove still exists.
Whoever bought it sells eggs to consumer.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So we still follow them on Instagram. That's how I know that they.
They exist. But we bought some equipment from them when they closed and actually we bought a. One of their original mobile chicken houses.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: We bought one of those from them. And last March, PI day last year when we had that land hurricane, that
[00:12:06] Speaker A: chicken house, which happened pretty much again this year.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Not quite as severe and the wind was blowing from the north instead of straight from the west this year. But that chicken house, I mean it's a 40 foot long cotton trailer with a metal chicken house built on tights. Heavy.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: The wind picked it up and threw it across the road and it's upside down on our neighbor's property right now.
So that thing was brutal.
It was the only one I didn't stake down.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Oh my goodness.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: And I thought I didn't need to stake that one down because it had spent the last decade in Lubbock. Y' all get worse wind than we do usually.
But I was wrong. So that, that chicken house is.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Is alcove is probably a little sheltered though, because it's not like out in the middle of nowhere.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: They're not out in the middle of nowhere. They've got some stuff to break the wind out. But I called them after.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Told them that, that, that that thing was gone. And he was like, oh man. Yeah, we always stake that down when it was windy. Oh, no. I was like, oh, that's why it lasted so long.
Anyway, so. So laying hens was the kind of the easiest gateway into this.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: So.
And eggs are easy to sell.
Everybody eats eggs. And so that's kind of. That's, that's why we started with laying hens.
And so yeah, we're. I'm a.
I'm not a cowboy, but I'm a chicken farmer. So I got part of the way there.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: Well, it's a Lot cheaper to get into chickens.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: It sure is.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: Beef right now is, like, almost.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: It's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. It is crazy.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's a much longer turnaround than, you know.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Chickens.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: Yeah. You can buy a. You can buy a ready to. Ready to produce hen, and. Yeah, she's laying eggs for you within two weeks. So, yeah, it's pretty good.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Yeah. So how many dozen eggs do y' all sell away? Do you have any idea?
[00:13:59] Speaker B: We sell about.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: We.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: We sell about 200 dozen a week. We pretty much sell every egg that it gets laid that isn't cracked, you know.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: So we. We. We're constantly needing to increase our flock, so we're working on that again right now. We just. We just increased it to a thousand, and then we've got a set of hens that are retiring right now, and so we need to get some more hens here pretty soon.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: And I don't. I don't know what it is, but, I mean, I grew up. Of course, we always had chickens when I was growing up, and.
Oh, my goodness. That there. Nothing tastes better.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: I mean, nothing tastes better than an egg straight off the farm.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: It's true. And, you know, and eggs straight off the farm from chickens in a coop are even different than eggs from a hen that is pasture raised and that.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: I mean, ours were always cooped and we always fed them. You know what I mean? Yeah.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: And our chickens. We feed our chickens as well. They. You know, our pastures aren't just loaded with nutrition for chickens yet, but.
But yeah, The. The difference in a chicken who gets to kind of express their nature and peck around in the grass and scratch and find bugs and forage and do all that stuff, the taste is even that much better, I think, than. Than backyard chickens.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: You know, there's a.
There's a family here that has a.
I think it's called Gladiator Feeds, and they have. They grow specifically for chickens.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: They do. Yeah. And we've used their feed for chickens. We. We use a different feed right now, but we. We buy our pig feed from Gladiator. Yeah, we really love them.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Okay. I need to have them on that day.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Oh, they're cool. Yeah.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be a great. That'd be a great informative podcast. So you.
You've used the term regenerative many times, and so it's not something that I'm unfamiliar with.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: But for people listening, that may.
I mean, I think a lot of people think it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Yes, it does.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: And so tell us kind of who you've read and who you've been listening to and what your plans are as far as. Because to me, when I think about regional dvec, it just means my, my first focus is soil health.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: That's exactly right. And I think, you know, you can talk to farmers in row crop production farming. Who. And I don't.
We. We talk a lot of. On traditional or production farms in regenerative ag.
They're not evil people. Some of them might be, I don't know, some regenerative farmers.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Yeah, people are just people. People are people. Yeah.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: I am 100% against chemical fertilizers and pesticides and all that stuff. We will never use it on our farm. That's our main commitment.
And any farmer you talk to is going to say that soil health is the root of what they do. And people have different approaches to that.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: So glyphosate can, in some, some practices can seem like soil health.
Heavy tillage can seem like soil health.
That's not what it looks like for our farm.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: What it looks like for our farm is using animals to fertilize the land to disrupt the soil and allowing their impact on the land to create diversity, plant diversity.
And Will Harris is probably my.
The loudest voice in my head for regenerative agriculture and what it should look like. And his definition for regenerative agriculture is restarting the cycles of nature.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: So restarting the water cycle, which we lost when we kind of created the dust bowl here, restarting the carbon cycle, allowing the carbon to be taken from the air, used in the soil and turned into layers of new soil that increase root depth and things like that.
And so that's the simplest way to talk about regenerative agriculture in the way that, I mean, it is restarting the cycles of nature, agreeing with the way that nature is designed.
Allowing cattle, allowing ruminant animals to graze the way that this land was designed to operate with animals. Allowing chickens to scratch, scratch and peck, and allowing pigs to root and wallow and create mud holes and disrupt everything. Yeah, that disruption is natural.
It reverses compaction rather than increasing it with tractor tires and weight.
And so that's, that's what we mean when we talk about regenerative.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Yeah. And it is interesting, too, because it's, you know, because you're like, okay, if we take it back to the way it was. Well, we definitely didn't have pigs, we definitely didn't have chickens. We had buffalo.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: And we did have. There were sheep. People ran sheep and came and pastured here from time to time, you know. But yeah, so it's, it is, it's a rabbit hole. And trying to figure out kind of where you fit is.
Well, for example, I. This, I just watched this documentary on plastics, microplastics on Netflix. It's brand new and it is highly disturbing.
And.
But I mean, and I, one of the things that I noticed was that as I kind of went down the rabbit hole. Okay, so what do we do? Was that the. There are people that are like way over here and then there's more people that are like right here that say, okay, what can you do? Okay, here's the things that impact you the most.
Just change these things, you know. And so I think that is true. It's like everyone has like, you know, I want to prioritize soil health, but I also would like to stay in business. So if I'm going to lose yield for five years or however long it takes for this to implement this whole system, because that's what I know, I've seen and heard like researchers here saying, like, does the one off of just part one part of that system, does that make a difference? Not as much. You know, but when you're looking at as like changing an entire management system, that's when it actually has, you know, and you're in a position like for production ag or what I was. Global production ag.
Those, those people are so attached to the bank.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: You know, and so that is the thing that I think is so many people think farmers are solely.
They're. They're solely able to make their own choices, but not true. They are definitely in a box that is the size of it depends on the government and the.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Their bank certainly. Absolutely. There is another regenerative farmer who. His name is Gabe Brown.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: I know you know Gabe Brown.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Okay. He's got his book Dirt to Soil. So I send. If somebody wants me to explain regenerative ag to them, I send them the bold return to Giving a Damn by Will Harris and Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown.
And one thing that I love about Gabe Brown you is he is unbelievably outspoken about row crop farming, cash crop farming, and the fact that you can change. Yeah, you the. You can. He. I think he was $700,000 in debt.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Yes. But that book is really amazing. It really is incredible story.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: He immediately started to become more profitable through regenerative practices and through cover crops and through not leaving bare soil.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: And so I Think and his. He's. He's 100% convinced that it can happen anywhere. You know, he's in South Dakota and they get about the same rainfall that we get.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: And he's got a beautiful lush farm that produces year after year. It's awesome.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: Well, and they've done. I mean the thing about. About them I love is that they are.
Their. Their certification program is, is like it's. They've gone through the traditional steps for that through USDA where so many other region.
You know, certifications. Don't even get me started. That's the only one that I'm like, if you're going to get one, I think that one might have value.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: You know, but most of them are just a way for people in the middle to make money.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: It's just Mark. Yeah. It's all marketing and I do appreciate Gabe's regenerat is what his is called and him being kind of one of the front runners in what regenerative ag looks like and kind of one of the people who has defined it and excuse me, established it in as we know it now.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Right. Right.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: He's. He's. I.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: We had him on Allen.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: His. We. He was. He joined us for a podcast and we met him. Lacy and I met him in Chicago and really enjoy. I mean they're just.
To me they're just kind of like that no nonsense type because. So one of the farmers here, Jeremy Brown, is working towards that certification but they're tweaking it because this is not. We don't get the snowpack that they get in South Dakota. So we don't have that moisture to begin with. You know. And so is. It's a totally different.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: It is.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: You know.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: And that's another great thing about Gabe Brown is he has another company that you know about called Understanding Ag and he has consultants who know our area and have studied basically worldwide. No ecosystems and.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Yes. And they are. They're international and they are really is cool.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: And so they've built a really good team. So if someone's curious about okay, I'd like to switch to more regenerative model of cash crop farming. But I'm tied to the government. Well, like Gabe Brown wants to help you and he's got a whole team of people that understand because that's the other thing, you know, you can.
Joel Salatin's a massive trend in regenerative agriculture and he is amazing. He is a wealth of knowledge. Our chicken houses are modeled after his chicken houses. And hearing Joel Salatin talk about regenerative agriculture almost makes you think that you can have what he has in Virginia right here in the. Or up there in the panhandle where we're at.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Right. Yeah.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: You can't. It's not gonna happen.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: Like, it's not gonna look like that.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: You're gonna burn up. I have burnout year after year trying to chase that thing.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: And what I love about understanding ag is they understand your context, they'll come in and advise you on your context.
And I think that's one of the most important things with.
We started a podcast called Everybody Wants to be a Farmer and what a great name. Thank you. I wanted to name it Farmer Shit.
You've heard the, you've heard the quote that everybody wants to be a cowboy till it's time to do cowboy shit. And we're seeing this trend, especially out where we are outside of Canyon, where.
And I'm sure you see it here in Lubbock too, where there's these 10 acre.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Parcels being sold. Yeah.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: And people move out with this dream of owning a homestead.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: And they build like the perfect farmhouse and they do the whole thing and
[00:26:05] Speaker A: then they realize they've just taken on a second job.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Exactly. And then you see that thing up for sale in six months.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: You know, I have friends that they. And it. I mean, they moved out to the country, they had five boys. Great reason for them to be out out there.
But then when the kids got big enough to like, they were like, coming in for activities and, you know, college and doing things like this, it was like, she said to me, it's impossible to live a city life and a country life.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: And I think that that's. That is a hard thing.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: It is really hard. And I think.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: But if you got kids that age, oh, man, it's super valuable.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: We have four kids ranging from eight down to two.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: But just remember, you will lose your workforce.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, they're not going to be there.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: You want to lose your workforce kind of the other.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: You know, and we can talk about this in a minute too, but part of agriculture in general is it needs to be a generational endeavor.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: Well, yeah. You know, I think that. I think we really are seeing a bifurcation of.
Of ag. I feel like right now, because I think when you're going towards global production, you're going to move more and more into consolidation, you know, But I do think that there are. There are people that are in, you know, global production right now that are. That are so committed to that lifestyle, the culture that I think you'll see those folks diversify. And those are, those are folks that will be successful, like Clayton, excuse me, at Frontier Market, because they're like, we're, we are determined to provide this life for our kids because we believe that it has certain values.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: That, you know, you might not be able to get somewhere else.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: You know, and, and it's not necessarily that it's superior to any other thing, because I do feel like we can get like, yeah, we like, you know, the good people, you know, but I think that. I do think that there are things that.
But I also think that it is also embracing the part of the farm life that teaches that those things, you know. And so a lot of times, you know, now, and I saw this even happening with my kids, like, we, we lived in the country, way out in the country, you know, and then. But we, we eventually went through bankruptcy and so our life shifted out of this. We just, we just lived in the country.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: And we just had 20 acres that we had to take care of, you know, and so it was not. They did not have the same experience that I had. Yeah. You know, so up until, you know, the first, like 15 years of their life, it was, it was like that, you know, but then, you know, they were checking fences and, you know, going and checking water and, you know, I mean, doing those things and driving the tractors and that kind of stuff. But it came to a halt, you know, and so you can live out in the country and you can live on acreage without actually getting the type of benefit that comes from the work that comes from the ground and the animals.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: That's exactly right here. That's exactly right. And I think, you know, I. What it seems like a lot of people moving out to the country or these, these 10 acre plot neighborhoods basically, is what they are. Are.
I think people should move out there and start a homestead. You should grow your own food. I think it's great, but I don't, I don't think it's for everybody.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: And I, I, But I do think that everybody wants to be a farmer. I think that everybody wants to.
I think it's in our nature as humans to want to care for this planet that we live on and wants to do the right thing for the soil that sustains our life at the root, actually.
And I, I think that's one of the, one of my very firm beliefs is that you can start a homestead and grow food for your family. And if you realize that that's not for you. And you moved out to the country because you just wanted space. That's okay. That's okay.
You can be a farmer in the way.
In a way that supports Alcove Farms in Lubbock or supports JC Acre, supports Frontier Market, local food.
There's another farm that we follow very closely in Tulsa. It's called Prairie Creek Farms. They're wonderful people, and their slogan is local food will change the world.
And I believe that. And it.
That doesn't mean global agriculture.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's necessary.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: And I think there's an argument, too, to say, you know, we're not really. I mean, I think our part of the world is. Is growing.
Is growing fiber that people should be wearing because it is good for you. You should not be wearing plastic clothes.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: That's exactly right. It is a Carhartt vest.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: Not to shame you or anything, but that is not good for you.
But it's not right close to your skin.
[00:31:26] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah. I've got a layer in between.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: And it's so strange for me because I'm like. I was. I may.
I was. I was, you know, most. My most influential. Well, one of my most influential, I guess you would say, celebrities in my. The time in my life where I was forming what I believed was Rush Limbaugh, so. Environmental wackos.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: And that's all, you know, that's all I ever. I ever thought of. You know what I mean? That anybody that was thinking about plastics and things like that is like. Y' all are just crazy.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: You're crazy.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: You know, so I'm like, I cannot believe I'm even thinking about this. But I'll tell you what changes your mind. When you see the science.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: When you see the science.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, there. There. It's. It's. It's literally everywhere. And it's. It's everywhere.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it is.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: I mean, I'm wearing a silicone ring, my wedding ring. Like, everything's some form of plastic.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: It is. It really is. One plastics itself, and I think it's another, you know, a topic for another day, but, like an opportunity for it. Because we had plastics before they became fossil fuels. No shade on fossil fuels, because that is where we. My husband and I have an energy company, so we work in fossil fuels. And I'm like, we are pro people not dying, so we are pro fossil fuels. Yeah.
And so anyway. But. But, you know, it's the different chemicals that come. You know, so it wasn't the plastics were Made up of plant.
Plant based, you know, and so that's an opportunity for ag production too, you know. And so, but anyway, I can go down Megan Rabbit in the pla.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: The plastics thing, in the, all of the new, the new ingredients and new formulas for creating things. It's the same as.
What happens so often in agriculture and food production is that we chase efficiency, especially in our country. We're addicted to efficiency and convenience and chase this thing and it's proving to make us sick.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: And.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:37] Speaker B: And I think that's why I agree so much that local food will change the world is that I think it's important for people to see me or my, you know, my nephew that we hire to deliver eggs. It's important for them to see their farmer and to be able to show up where their food is produced and see the chicken that laid the egg right. And hold it even if they want.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: Well, you know, I think it also puts you, you know, people, I, we have a tendency to hold other people responsible for the choices that we make. And it makes us, you know, like, I'm responsible for the food that I eat. Now, I will say, I think that there are some people that don't have the privilege that I have.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: Oh, for sure.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: You know, and so I think that there's some people that don't even have the space and, you know, mental, mental space to say, oh, now I'm going to care about the environment or now I'm going to care about what I eat, because they're just subsisting, you know, And I think that we have an. Unfortunately, I think there's an unfortunate large part of the population, you know, but I think you're right about that. We've been chasing. We chase efficiency and. But every decision that we make has unintended consequences. And I think that that's part of, you know, thinking about everything that we do is we have to be creative enough to say this is a good thing and these are the great things that can come from it. Is there something I'm missing?
That.
And I've done some work, a little bit of work in policy, and that's the first thing I learned was you read that, thinking, what's the very worst thing that can happen? You know what I mean? Like, okay, this sounds good, but what, what could happen from this? You know, what could the regulations be if this bill passes? You know, and so I think it's important to, to look at all the decisions we make.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so too. And I, if, if we can, I'D like to talk about the fact that not everyone can afford to.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Purchase my products.
[00:35:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: And that, that's a huge hang up that my wife and I have. One of the things that she wanted when she started making leather bags was to make very nice bags that people could afford.
She wanted to make bags that we could afford.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: Because it's really hard to sell a product that you can't afford yourself.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: Right. Yeah.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: And with, with regenerative ag and with local food production, most of the time it is far more expensive than what you can buy at the grocery store. And we, we run into people complaining about that and there's no, you know, no shame in their.
I understand their complaint.
Eggs at the grocery store are half the price of my eggs.
And one of our main, one of our huge goals with JC Acre is to figure out a way to make our product which is worlds better than what you're going to get at the grocery store, accessible to people on a lower income.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: And I think one thing that kind of irks me a lot is when I hear people with money complain about our prices.
People who want better food, but they won't buy it because it's just too expensive.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: And that's where it's kind of up to you. Like you can afford better food. There are people who can't afford better food for themselves. And so I think if more people who can afford a higher price, higher price point for food products.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: The more people that support farms like us. I haven't met a greedy regenerative farmer. I haven't.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:29] Speaker B: And I guarantee you if more people supported JC Acre, JC Acre would be that much closer to being able to find a way.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: To make our products available to a lower income.
[00:37:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: Community.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:37:43] Speaker B: And I, that, that is insanely important to me. I know that's insanely important to a. I know insanely important to a lot of farmers.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah. Are you familiar with Square Mile?
[00:37:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:37:56] Speaker A: Don't you love those?
[00:37:56] Speaker B: Brady? So much. Awesome.
[00:37:58] Speaker A: Yeah. He's done, I think they've done a good job with their food boxes, making them. You know, I mean I've seen, I've, you know, experienced and seen like some of the things that are given out not necessarily by the food bank here, but by other, you know, groups and stuff.
[00:38:16] Speaker B: And I'm like, man, it's very cool what they're doing and I love that they're also equipping like people in urban areas to grow their own.
[00:38:27] Speaker A: Grow their own food. Yes.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: So like you don't even have to go out and buy it. You can literally grow it.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: And speaking of equipping, something that made me think while ago is that our county extension office, Agri life, they had a homesteading, like an informative training meeting. I think that is really important for people to really, if you're thinking about it, to go and look at that.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: It is, it is.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: So here's a personal question. Are you making a living?
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Yes. So my wife.
That's a funny question. My wife still works almost full time.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: Well, that's what happens on the farm.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: I mean. Yeah. And most of the time. Yeah, most of the time. This is another thing that's insanely disappointing to me is that most farmers have to have off farm jobs in order to make ends meet.
And I don't think that is right at all.
I don't think that's right at all.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:39:23] Speaker B: Our farm foreign.
It's. It's very funny. And, and this is one of the things that I love about hearing Will Harris talk is his farm makes a little money. That's what he says. His farm's like almost 4, 000 acres.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: He's. That's. He's White Oaks, Georgia.
[00:39:41] Speaker B: White Oak Pastures. Yes. And very southern Georgia.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: Right. And they, man, they do. They do. So they do.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: They do everything.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: They. I mean, everything that nothing goes to waste there.
[00:39:50] Speaker B: Nothing goes to waste. And that, that's another thing that we're after on our farm, which is awesome.
But you know, Will Harris's farm isn't like this cash cow. I mean, they make it. They sell a ton of product every year and they do millions and millions of dollars in revenue. But as far like his P and L sheet at the end of the year.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: Isn't good. And he talks about his CEO friends being like, what are you doing? Like, why are you doing this?
[00:40:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: And so our farm is producing a life for us that we're after.
I do hope that as the years go by and as our farm grows, it continues to pay us more.
[00:40:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Right now what our farm does for us is provides this beautiful life for my family. My children.
My kids live where I work, and so my sons see me working. Whether I'm in my office doing design work or whether I'm out in the pasture caring for animals, my children are there and that
[00:40:59] Speaker A: that's invaluable. You can't you just really calculate that? Yeah. You know, I've been reading a book called put your money where you live, and it's about investing instead of investing in the stock market, investing locally.
And he says, admittedly it's, it's more difficult because you don't have, you know, this federal agency that's tracking and telling you what the risk is, fraud and keeping all these people in line. And you know, but the return is pretty much equal except for the things that you can't calculate, which are when you invest in say, hey, here's a small business, they've been here for 20 years, they're doing great, they want to expand. Well, I'd like to loan them money.
When you invest that way, then that's an increase in tax money that go, that you're going to benefit from through roads and schools and all the infrastructure. You know, and so there's this incalculable benefit that we often exclude because we are so focused on, you know, the dollar, you know, because money, you know, to. I think up until this point I would say, you know, money has bought us what we want. But I don't, I think we're at a position now in the United States where we're like, there's a lot of people that they're, they're never going to get to the place where money is buying them what they want, you know.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very true. It's very true. So, so few people are going to.
Yeah.
It makes me worried about our, I
[00:42:39] Speaker A: think too what we want. It's not even that our income level is, has shifted, but our, what we want.
And I'm gonna put myself as just as guilty is, is just out of control.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: It is, it truly is. And, and I, I mean I'm the same, I'm the same.
We buy what we can afford, which is, you know, is not much most of the time. But I think, you know, the, the standard for what a first time homeowner is looking for in a house is insane right now. It's truly insane. And the, the price of a vehicle, the price of a work truck is just insane. Right. It's so impractical. And our, somehow our whole, I've seen in my generation, our whole culture has shifted to this.
We think we need these things that we think we need luxury and everybody thinks we need it. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know very many people. My father in law is the exception who just doesn't seem to need any luxury.
[00:43:42] Speaker A: Yeah, that's my husband.
[00:43:43] Speaker B: Yeah, good job. Like I'm proud of him for that.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: I'm like, I always say if he goes into a room, he'll say, where's the hardest chair. That's where I'm going. Where's the most uncomfortable place? That's where I would sit.
[00:43:54] Speaker B: Yeah, my, My wife's parents, like, they don't turn their air conditioner on all summer. They just, you know, it's. It's crazy.
But. Yeah. So I think, I think we've. We've found ourselves in this place where we're just addicted to convenience and luxuries that we. That are not necessary. And I think that's part of the draw for people moving out outside of city limits is they're like. But then we build these McMansions out there and it's just a different kind of luxury.
[00:44:24] Speaker A: Well, I don't know about y', all, but here, like, you can, you can buy 40 acres and put a house on it, but you might not have water.
[00:44:31] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:44:32] Speaker A: So you might be able to have a house, but you might not be able to have animals.
[00:44:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly right. And then, yeah, there's I. That's probably a whole different episode too, is talking about the water, the water usage for digging all these wells. And it's crazy what we're doing. Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, I think, I think we all have a responsibility.
People who feel drawn to produce food, we have a responsibility to do it in a way that cares for our land and isn't just about commoditizing chickens for the purpose of selling eggs or commoditizing sorghum for the sake of selling more crops to more people or spraying more chemicals for the sake of yielding more per acre.
I think it's our responsibility as 8th generation farmers or 1st generation farmers to care for what we are sending out for people to consume. And I think it's the responsibility of the consumer, which I don't even really love that word, the responsibility of the. Of the person buying the product to buy in a way that supports something that is producing good in the world and not just chasing after P and L sheets.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: I think a lot of. You know what you meant. The producers, the larger producers, I think a lot of them would even say, like, we're just. We're consumers because they're so being consumed.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: That's exactly right.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: You know what I mean? It's like they themselves, their income, their enterprise is what's being. It's what's being consumed.
[00:46:14] Speaker B: That's exactly right.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: You know, and so it's really.
Unfortunately, this has been so good, so I'd love to do it again. And you know, we started the radio show every Friday and we'll be live streaming. So I'd love, you know, to have you come join us sometime or call in or something. It'd be great to continue the conversation and just kind of hear how you guys are progressing. And because we haven't even talked about. I have questions about butchering your chickens. So. Yeah, first. But before we go, real quick, my. Quick. My question is I'm interested in air cooling versus water cooling. Are you butchering your chickens? Are you?
[00:46:51] Speaker B: We have. We have meat chickens and we actually have a set of laying hens that are retired. They're in our retirement center. We have this sacrificial part of our property that. That's where hens go to retire.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: Looming sunset.
[00:47:04] Speaker B: We spent all day yesterday processing those birds.
[00:47:07] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:47:08] Speaker B: And so we try to be a 00 waste operation as much as we can. And so those chickens are going. They're turn, bone stock and pet treats.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: Oh, cool.
[00:47:18] Speaker B: So we're dehydrating heads, necks and feet of those birds, and then the rest of the bird is getting rendered into stock. It is. It's an insane amount of work.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:29] Speaker B: My hands are killing me today. From yesterday.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: So you're selling bone broth?
[00:47:33] Speaker B: We are, yeah. That's amazing.
[00:47:35] Speaker A: I love it. Okay, okay, so real quick, website.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: Yeah, our website is JC Acre Co.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: Not dot com. That's a common mistake. Just co.
[00:47:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:47:46] Speaker B: And then we have a. If you're in the Amarillor Canyon area, we have a subscription program called Yolk folks, where we. We deliver eggs to your door weekly or bi weekly.
And then we. Yeah, we sell pork. We sell whole chickens, and then lots of leather goods.
[00:48:02] Speaker A: Okay. All right. Well. And then see the farmers market and canyon.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: Yep. We'll be at the farmer's market and Canyon.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:48:08] Speaker B: Starting at end of June, I think is when it starts up.
[00:48:12] Speaker A: Well, we'll put all this stuff in the comments so people can easily find everything Again, all that stuff. And thanks for coming.
[00:48:19] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: And friends, I hope you enjoyed it because it was really good. I think it was a great conversation. And check them out. JC acre.co.
[00:48:30] Speaker B: that's right.
[00:48:30] Speaker A: And we'll see you again next time. Bye,
[00:48:35] Speaker B: Sam.
