¶ Introduction to Stacking Enterprises
One thing on your farm that I think makes a great difference as stacking enterprises. So that's adding goats, sheep to a beef enterprise or maybe you're adding poultry. You may be considering pigs. On today's episode, we are not talking about another stacked enterprise in my mind, but we are talking about a adjacent enterprise. It's an enterprise that requires a few different skills than you need with grazing grass and managing livestock.
But they're very easy to learn on today, adam's going to talk about getting started with it, and how much time it's going to take. And if you're interested, you may may want to do a completely hands-off and just provide uh, habitat for the animals so that it benefits your environment there. It's a great episode. You'll enjoy it.
Okay, Adam, we'll get started with the fast five. What's
¶ Meet Adam Martin and Be Strong Homestead
my name is Adam Martin.
Where's your
We are located in Culioka, Tennessee.
And do you have a name for
Our farm name is Be Strong Homestead.
All right. And what year did you start grazing
We started in 2020.
Oh, just right
Yep.
And what species do you
We've got a mixture of orchard grass, Johnson grass, white clover kind of a little bit of anything and everything. We've tried planting some just game seed basically for the deer and then some winter wheat is basically what we've done.
Oh, yeah. And you're grazing a few dairy
Yeah, we've got two cows in milk right now. We've got a heifer that's going to be bred here pretty soon. And then a couple of little calves. And so that's what we're, we're rotating.
¶ Winter Grazing and Farm Practices
Of course, right now it's middle of winter and there's not a lot of grazing going on. It's more throwing, throwing round bales of hay, seed bombs and and feeding the cows that way.
Yeah,
¶ Podcast Introduction and Beekeeping Teaser
Welcome to the grazing grass podcast. The podcast dedicated to sharing the stories of grass-based livestock producers, exploring regenerative practices that improve the land animals and our lives. I'm your host, Cal Hardage and each week we'll dive into the journeys, challenges, and successes of producers like you, learning from their experiences, and inspiring each other to grow, and graze better. Whether you're a seasoned grazier or just getting started. This is the place for you.
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¶ Winter Farm Activities and Manure Management
The last episode or two, we've not done 10 seconds about my farm. Nor 10 seconds about the podcast. It's kind of a boring time for me during winter. I'm I'm looking forward to green grass. But one thing I'm really enjoying is as we unroll. Belzer Hey out, or we do some bell grazing. We utilize both of those. Is seeing the amount of manure that's spread out across the pastures. There's lots of benefits to getting that manure urine. The leftover hay into other pastures. Then you normally do.
And you can really. Decide where you want that and control where it goes. For 10 seconds about the podcast. If you're listening to this podcast, you know, we're talking about beekeeping today. It's a little bit different for the podcast. I think it's a great adjacent enterprise. For your region to farm. I've had bees for a long time. Uh, in varying levels at varying levels of success, I'm an amateur beekeeper as well as amateur Grazer and amateur podcaster.
We have started a sister podcast called Apiary Chronicles to share stories of beekeeping. Very similar structure to the grazing grass. So if you're interested in beekeeping, Uh, you might click on the link in the show notes. And with that, let's get back to Adam.
¶ Dairy Cows and Homesteading Journey
Why'd you decide to get a couple dairy cows? Because those are not the easiest things to deal with every
Yeah, so when we moved we're actually full disclosure. We are recovering Californians We moved to Middle Tennessee in 2018 and our intention was to homestead and so we we wanted to just basically live off the land as much as we possibly can and Milk cows was on the list. It wasn't at the top of the list, but pretty quickly we got to it And especially once COVID kicked off, it was actually my COVID purchase.
I went I knew a buddy, actually he wasn't even really a friend at that moment, but I saw an ad for a couple of dairy cows and it wasn't very far from us and I stayed up all night. The night that I had heard, you know, through back channels that everything was going to get shut down and my wife and I just said, what the heck, let's go grab these cows. We knew nothing, had no idea what we were doing. We've both been raised in the city. We just knew we wanted dairy cows.
My wife knew she wanted to make butter and, you know, we love cream in our coffee and so it was just kind of a no brainer and that's really how we started in dairy cows.
And those cows, were they in milk when you bought
No, they had both been dried off. They were both heavy bred. so they were both about eight weeks out from being, from dropping calves. And we actually, once they dropped those first two calves, of course, we had no idea what we were doing. We, we bought a milker based on a recommendation that we got. And we actually ended up sitting on that milker and, and just grazing those cows for at least a year before we actually got set up, built a stanchion, and got going on milking cows.
So, it, it took a minute.
the great thing about that, when I, I'm asking my wife, say, hey, can I do this? Or what about this idea? Often times, she's like, well, you get everything ready, you can do it. And I, and I, I fully agree. But then somehow, I get something and I bring it home and I'm not quite ready. So having those dry cows gave you time to get a stanchion but it looks like you, you graze for a little bit before you really got into it. But you're using an automatic milker to
Yeah, so we, we bought a it's a 12 volt system, which is nice cause we can, we don't have electricity out in our milk barn. And I could also take it out into the field if I needed to. You know, there's always a little bit of handwork involved, even when you've got a machine milker. But yeah, we've, we've got two cows and milk takes me about 30 minutes every morning to milk them. And we just do the once a day milking we calf share. So we let the calves have the mamas the whole rest of the day.
And then we just put them up at night, basically.
Oh, so you put the calves up at night and then you go milk in the morning and then after milking you turn the calves
That's it.
Does that provide you enough milk for your home, as well as selling a little bit, or are you using it
It does. We, we, we only use so much. So right now I think we're, we're getting about maybe three to four gallons every morning. So we've got a private membership association that we share our milk through. And so we've got plenty of friends that are super happy and glad to, to take our milk off our hands, the extra that we have. So,
Are your cows Jersey or Jersey
they are Jersey crosses, both of them.
And an
One of them is an A2 A2, one of them is an A1 A2, or A2 A1. I can't remember, you know.
Yeah, same same difference,
far as I, I call them R2D2.
Oh yes, there you go. Yeah. Yeah, is that something you want to expand or is two cows right where you want to be?
we feel like we can, basically we have kind of a sustainable you know, for, for the land that we've got, we're only on about 11. 75 acres. We do have a we have several free leases basically, which we're super blessed. One of them is right across the road from our, our And so we're able to, I'm able to run the cows over there. The gentleman that owns it, it's a deer hunting property, basically wreck property, and,
Oh,
just basically said, have at it. And so I went over there and I, I cross fenced it with a bunch of electric fence and I think I've got a total of five paddocks over there. It's got ponds on it, so they've got natural water. So that's really where I, the cows spend about nine months out of the year over there. And and I, I push them over there every single day and, and hit a different paddock every day. And we, we've done really well with that.
Oh, very nice.
¶ Challenges and Lessons in Dairy Farming
Did you have any gotchas when you started milking your cows? You're like, oh man, I did not know this
Oh, let me think about that one for a second. That's a great question. Not really. We are, and I'll allude to this later on, but our farm model is very, we call, we joke and we call it a get tough or die farm, which is from a John, Johnny Cash song, get tough or die. We we really want to have resilient animals that are able to, you know, deliver piglets on their own, deliver calves on their own. You know, we, we, we, we try as best we can to work as stewards with what God's given us.
But at the end of the day, you know, we really want our animals to do their jobs and we don't want to be helicopter you know, farmers. And so, I would say the gotcha. We did have one of our mama cows. She went down it's been about a year and a half ago. She had trouble with a calf and, you know, we, before that all of our cows had dropped their calves without us even, I mean, basically we, we just show up the next morning and here's a calf standing there.
but we ended up having one go one of our cows went down with a calf and a tough birth. And I helped at the very end. Unfortunately, we lost the calf and we just about lost the mama too. It was a, it was a miracle that we were able to get her through it. She ended
Oh,
we think that she had basically those pinched femoral nerves. And so she couldn't, she literally couldn't stand up. And we ended up. Yeah, her back legs were, were basically worthless and it took about five days to get her up and I had a lot of people praying and had some, had some really good mentors, you know, talking to me about what I could do, you know, and a lot of people honestly didn't have a whole lot of hope for her.
And honestly, she, she finally stood up on that fifth day, which was amazing. And I milked her this morning. So we're, we're very
Oh,
but that was the kind of gotcha, you know, where. had heard that, you know, when, when a cow's dropping a calf, you really need to pay attention. And of course, you know, the, the beef guys and the guys running, you know, a hundred head, a head of cattle. You know, they're, they're only going to be able to pay attention so much, but when we've only got two cows you know, that are bred, I can pay pretty close attention and really try to be there when they go into labor.
That way, if something does go awry I can step in even though I don't want to, and I, and I'm not going to, unless I have to, but. On that scenario a year and a half ago, you know, I could have intervened earlier and probably could have saved that calf and also probably could have done a lot better for my mama cow.
We, I grew up on a dairy, so we dairied for a number of years, and now we have beef cattle. And I know we had a neighbor that ran some really big cattle, and we used to go help pull calves for him all the time. But that's not something we want ever. So, basically with our beef cows, I think I had to pull one in 23, but before that it had been a few years. But with dairy cows, we pulled a lot of calves, and our saying around here was, we've never pulled one too early.
You know, if they're presenting themselves, but we have pulled them too And, you know, that's a tough one, always.
¶ Bull Management and Breeding Decisions
For your cows, with just two cows, are you keeping a bull, or do you have an AI technician nearby that'll come
You know what? We have been a big fan of keeping our own bull or borrowing a bull. It's been, it's been fortunate when we first started we basically shared a bull with my brother in law. He has cows. And so we had an Angus bull coming over to service our, our jerseys. And that worked out really well. And then, you know, basically he ended up getting rid of that bull. So we just we've kind of been shuffling bulls through whenever we whenever we need them. And we're raising one right now.
He's actually getting ready to come online right now. He's a half Jersey, half brown Swiss. His name, his name's Polo. Of course, we name our cows here on the homestead. And he he's a good one. He's beautiful. And as God willing, everything works properly. So we're getting ready to bring him over and test him out here in the next week or two, but all that to say, we, we we do the whole natural thing. We don't, we don't do the AI or we haven't done it yet. So we've been fortunate in that way.
Yeah, keeping a bull when you just have a few cows, that's one of those tough decisions to figure out. Is it cost effective? If you want certain breeding, do you want to go down the AI route? And if you do, you've got to have a technician nearby that can get there and breed them when you need to. Or, technically, it doesn't have to be nearby, but then you have to schedule it, then that requires more work.
I mean, there's a lot of questions and answers to be figured out on deciding, Do we keep a bull? Do we not keep a bull? If you can find someone that's got a bull that will let you use it,
Yeah, for sure. As long as it stays in the fences, you know, I mean, that's the whole thing.
When you bring a bull over you know, as long as he's entertained and he's got what he needs to you know, he's got feed and water and some girls to chase around, he'll, he'll, you know, for the most part, he'll he'll stay put for a minute at least, but you sure don't want to bring a bull over that's gonna end up blowing through your fences and, you know, running down the Next thing you know, your neighbors are upset and it's a
Oh Yeah. Yeah. we we have a strict rule, if a bull won't stay where we put him, he goes to a different farm. And most times, and we all know he goes to a farm, we take him to a sale barn, so he may, may have got his one ticket out.
I was going to say the last one that did that to us he got a one way ticket to the the, the green pastures above.
Yes, yeah. We don't have time to go, go figure out where the bull is, and then that's a whole job to get him in and everything. Yeah, I completely
Yeah, you don't, after you chase a bull for about a week and he gets over the fence, you can't believe that a 1500 pound bull can jump like a gazelle until you see it with your own eyes. But after you do that for a week, chasing a bull around, you just, you just realize this is not worth it. I'm never going to do this again. And if they're unruly, they're gone. It's the same and that's how we treat, you know, if I have a rooster that gets sideways, you know We've got egg laying chickens.
I I don't mess around for two more seconds That that rooster is on his way and I'm not gonna deal with it.
Oh, yeah. I, I completely agree. The just, any of that that causes more work is, worth it.
¶ Utilizing Milk on the Homestead
Now with your milk production, you mentioned your wife wouldn't make butter, are y'all making cheese? How is that process going, utilizing the milk inhouse?
Yeah, we So she's made lots of butter and the butter is just the best butter you've ever had and she'll make a lot of it She'll freeze it So that's been great. And then she's done some she's messing around with some soft cheeses You hasn't done any hard cheese yet, even though I've been begging for it. We, we're still buying pepper jack cheese and some other hard cheeses. But yeah, we use the milk.
I mean, on the homestead, you know, the beautiful thing is we've got chickens to feed, dogs to feed, cats to feed. And so the milk does not get wasted. We use it all the time for, for feeding everything. So it's not just us, you know, and our friends that are consuming the milk. We, we really are able to feed the farm, so to speak, with the milk. So
Well, long time listeners of the podcast know I'm dreaming about buying a
yeah,
Having grown up on a dairy though, I know that's a Another daily activity I'm adding to my list. So I've been very cautious about it. On the other hand, maybe your wife should plug her ears, but I've worn my wife down and she has to it. It's just, you know, taking the next
you know, what's funny is when my wife talked about milk cows, I told her, I said, that's, that's great. And that's fine. You're going to milk those cows. I am not going to do it. I got other things to do. I don't want to do it. It's not something that I, you know, it's not, it's not on my bucket list. And It didn't take about five minutes before I was the one milking the cows.
Oh. yeah.
really love it. I think that you know, you growing up around the dairy and being around animals and, you know, your listeners, they know there's just something about it that speaks to us. I think that we were all basically designed to stewarding animals and you know, just being with them every day. And I, I honestly, I really like it a lot.
You know, the, the whole dairy cow thing we calf share and so that makes it really nice that if we wanted to go out of town for a weekend or, you know, the weather's terrible and we want to leave the calf on the mama overnight, you know, we can do that. We don't have to milk every day, you know, but that is something that people really have to consider when it comes to getting a dairy cow is you're going to be married to that dairy cow when it's in milk. It has to be milked.
You can't skip a day. You can't skip one milking. So then the next thing you do is you find a good farm sitter that if you're going to go out of town and you need that cow to be milked, and luckily we have a great farm sitter that knows how to milk and, and she's, like you, she's been around dairy for a long time and so she has no problem coming over and handling the cows. So,
Yeah, that is excellent. You know when we we dairied We often had a high school student or two working for us, and I know one time Well, my dad got ran over with a a tractor He's okay It was accident and it it it mean it took some recovery but we headed to the hospital that day not knowing I didn't have an evening milker and I didn't have anyone hired at the time.
I had to hunt around and I finally found a previous employee that I was able to get back to milk that night for me because we didn't know what was going on but yeah having someone close by that can step in is really beneficial.
¶ The Appeal of Beekeeping
Yeah. Adam, for our listeners out there, I'm interested about your dairy cows, but I really didn't ask you to come on to talk about those, because Mona Weathers from the Homesteading for Beginners podcast, and I have talked a few times and she recommended you as a guest on the podcast to talk about bees. And when I think about grazing grass and managing our farms, I think it's very important we stack enterprises. So you've got beef cows, add hair sheep. And that's the easy one.
There's meat goats. There's all kinds of different ways. Are you running poultry? Are you doing some pigs? Depending on your land and your context. But I view beekeeping as a enterprise. It's not quite the same skills you're going to use in managing grazing animals. But it fits on your same footprint. So, so to me, it's a adjacent enterprise. And that's why I wanted you on to share about your beekeeping journey. So let's just talk about that for a little bit. First off, the question is why bees?
Yeah, why bees? Well, the answer to that is easy for me. It's honey. I've been eating honey since since I was born my wife, or my, sorry, my mom she fed me peanut butter and honey sandwiches as a kid. And we just always had honey growing up. It was just always one of those things we had in the house. And so when my wife and I got married and we started you know, started life together, Peanut butter, honey sandwiches are still my go to as far as breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, dessert,
Oh,
And then one thing probably one, actually one of the very first health, healthy food eating choices I ever made was switching from putting sugar in my coffee to putting honey in my coffee.
Oh
candy bar coffee and you know, I, I've got a sweet tooth and I started using honey in my coffee and I really got hooked on that. And so Leslie and I, when we were moving from California to Tennessee to become homesteaders, one of the things on the list was honey because we consumed it every day and everybody knows that honey's not cheap. It's expensive. And
No, it's
So when we got our homestead here in middle Tennessee, the first thing we did was we bought chickens, egg laying chickens, cause we eat eggs every day. We got a great Pyrenees dog to protect those chickens. And then we ordered three packages of bees right off the bat. And so that's really how we got started with beekeeping.
¶ Starting with Bees and Swarm Trapping
Had no idea what we were doing. I did all the things, you know, that you're told to do. I started attending bee meetings. I read some books, watched some videos, got a mentor and just basically started. You know, leaning on other people's experiences and their knowledge to get going in bees, just like you would do with beef cows or, or whatever it is. Like I need to go talk to some experts and find out how to do this, you know?
So that's really why we started was just to have honey every morning in our coffees, honestly.
You, you cannot beat that. raised honey. Honey from your backyard hives or however you're doing it is So much better than anything you can get
Well, that's a, that's a thing that I teach and preach all day long. The best honey that you can possibly get is the honey off of your property. You know, everybody knows that honey is medicine. Man has been consuming honey for 10, 000 years for medicine, basically for your allergies. You know, you need local honey. You need honey right off your property to help you with your allergies. And then there's tons of other medical uses for honey. Skin, any kind of skin conditions.
You know, my wife, she started making her and her friends started making some farm value or farm added products using our honey and our beeswax. And so they make a lot of you know, beauty supplies and different things for the crunchy moms out there that have honey and have clean beeswax in them. So there's, you know, just a lot of benefits to that honey. And it's just, it's really healthy for you.
Now one thing you mentioned a while ago to get started with bees you ordered three packages you order the hives to go with them from a company or did you buy them locally? was those first steps?
So what I did was I did what everybody else does. I basically chose what frame style, what frame size and frame style I was going to use here in the Western world, we primarily use Langstroth, which are the vertical style boxes that if you've ever seen beehives out and about, most likely they're the vertical stacked boxes. And so I went out to Amish country. We've actually got Amish that live really close to us, big community. And a couple of the guys out there, they build bee boxes.
So I went out there and, and got three setups vertical boxes. I used medium frames and just basically got everything I needed to get going. And I bought those three packages of bees when they arrived, I think it was in March, I installed those into the, into the hives and and set sail from there. What I learned really quick one of the things I learned that changed everything for me.
Was at a bee meeting in that same month, March, April, and this is common across the Western world is when you go to a bee club the club meetings every month are going to talk about kind of what's coming up in, in the bee season. So at this, yeah, so at this meeting, they brought up swarm trapping and swarm catching. And I, you know, I listened and listened the whole time and I, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing.
And basically by the end of it, I was like, they basically explained that it's really easy to trap bees and that, you know, you can trap, All the bees you want, basically. So I came home that day and I built a couple of swarm traps as fast as I could out of scrap wood to fit the frames that I was using. And I put those couple of swarm traps out, not 150 yards from our house. And it was about six weeks later that I trapped a monster swarm, a huge swarm.
Oh,
And at that point I was totally hooked. But. I soon learned that those bees that I trapped were actually better bees than I bought. And the reason is, is the bees that I bought came from Georgia most likely, which isn't too far away, but it's a different climate. Those bees had already had some things done with them that I realized I don't want to do those things.
I told you about our Get Tough or Die Farm model, and that includes, you know, really just trying to be minimalist and let the animals and the bees do their thing and do what they do best. And so, I don't feed sugar water, I don't treat for varroa mites, and those are two things that commercial beekeepers, and that's where you would buy bees from, that's two things that most beekeepers do.
So I learned that those, that that feral swarm that showed up to my swarm trap, they actually know how to do their jobs. They've never been propped up by those two things, by feed and by treatment. And basically, they are a low to no maintenance bee. And so when you talk about hardy livestock, you talk about hardy hogs, you talk about hardy cows, these bees are hardy bees. you know, basically I've just never looked back from there. I've never bought a bee again since then.
I, I trap swarms every single spring. I teach people how to trap swarms. It's really easy. People can trap swarms right in the middle of a city. You can trap swarms out in the country, anywhere that there's honeybees present, you have the possibility and the probability of trapping feral swarms. And so that's the cornerstone of what I do. All of that ended up morphing into basically teaching.
I found that there just wasn't a lot of people out there teaching what I'm doing and I'm catering to backyard beekeepers, to homesteaders small operations, basically, and people that have a farm model like I do, where they want things more natural, they want things clean and this is the way to do it. This is the way to get clean honey, clean wax. and have a low to no maintenance system set up on your property and get the benefits of honeybees.
¶ Natural Beekeeping Practices
And, and I want to talk a little bit more about those swarm traps a little bit later, but something you said there was you don't feed sugar water. And I know anyone who's done any kind of research on, about bees online, they're going to be saying you order packages or there's, like our local club, they're big into pushing the nukes and get nukes. But sugar water is a topic for either one of those and used in abundance. However, you're not using it. Why have you found but not using it?
And what are you doing so you don't have to use it?
So, you know, for me, really, I just kind of started thinking about, you know, We have these other issues with varroa mites and these different pests that the bees suffer from. Varroa mites are blamed for colony collapse. They introduce diseases to the honeybees, so it's just like ticks on deer, you know, or tick on us. We could end up getting some diseases from those ticks.
Well, if you think about us, you and I, if we pour nothing but junk food and sugar into our bodies, and then we go expose ourselves to ticks, and we get tick bites, our bodies are gonna have a really hard time fighting against those diseases that could be introduced by that tick, right? So, to me, the same thing is happening with honeybees. Sugar only has one sugar in it. You know, pure sugar. It's only got one sugar in it. The nectar from flowers. Anybody can google this right now.
As soon as we're done, they can fact check me. There's three different types of sugars in that nectar. There's essential minerals, essential vitamins, all kinds of things inside of that natural nectar that makes real honey. So it's nutrient dense honey that the bees need. It's also the kind of honey that I want to consume and that I want you to consume. Because if we are, if we're consuming this as you know, medicinal, then we want the best product possible. So you are what you eat, right?
Everybody knows this. So whatever you're feeding your, your beef cows, That is what they're going to become, right? They are what they eat. Whatever I feed my hogs, whatever I feed my chickens. Well, if you're feeding your bees sugar water, I'm telling you, it changes the pH inside of the hive. It and it affects their immune systems. So if they're sitting in there all winter long, eating what we call funny honey because it's been adulterated by sugar water.
They are not getting the best nutrient dense honey that they could possibly eat over the winter. So, that is a problem for me. So, I also, I want less inputs into my property. So, if I have to, let's say, God forbid, there's another pandemic or something happens where there's supply chain issues, How many beekeepers out there are going to flip out because they can't go get a pallet of sugar from Walmart?
And then your, your second part to that question is, you know, how do I manage that then if I'm not feeding, what am I doing? Well, I'm leaving the bees plenty of honey all the time. So once the bees get established and then if we back up to what I talked about before with the swarms, when the swarm arrives in springtime, naturally, and I trap it, they actually come with a belly full of honey. From wherever they left, they gorge themselves on honey.
Well, the first thing they do when they get to that storm trap is they start building comb as fast as they can. So the queen can lay eggs and then they immediately deposit that honey that they've got in their bellies in those cells. I have had this happen and I've got multiple other beekeepers that have had this happen where we trap a huge swarm in the springtime. And within 10 to 14 days, that box, that swarm trap, can weigh up to 75 pounds because it's full of honey.
And so those bees come ready to do work and to get it done in a hurry, and they're already preparing themselves for the next winter. Whereas, if you're getting bees that have already been fed sugar water, they come with sugar water. I just, and there's people out there that'll argue with me over the like, lazy bees and all this stuff. All I know is that they are already, I believe their immune systems are already compromised.
and that they are not going to get the work done that a swarm is going to get done when they show up to your swarm trap. So that's why I tell people the best things, you know, the best things in life are free. There's some work involved in putting up a swarm trap. It's not that hard, but those freebies are better bees than you can buy. Hands down,
¶ The Importance of Local Honey
Well, when we, when we talk about regenerative agriculture, regenerative grazing, you know, we're all about managing our natural resources to improve the environment, but also provide better feed for our cows so we're not bringing in inputs. But the beekeeping, you know, the honey they produce is going to be far superior to any sugar you bring in or the water you bring in and import into their
100%. And and this is where I red pill your audience. And I, I love to do this. You know, the honey that you're buying off the shelf at the store. Even the honey that you're buying on the street corner, you know, from, from, from somebody I, if it's me, I'm going to ask the questions, you know, do you feed? I hear, and you can ask it in a way to where you're not, you know, coming down on somebody. Cause I'm not going to come down on anybody.
If you want to feed your bees and treat your bees, that's totally up to you. I'm a big fan of freedom and liberty. So you do you, I'm going to do me. But if I am buying a quart of honey on the street corner, I'm going to ask the questions and I'm going to ask it, you know, Hey, I hear it's a thing, you know, people treat and feed. Do you do that? You know, and if they say they feed and treat, then I'll say, you know, good to know.
I was just wondering, I heard about that, you know, then I'm going to move on and I'm going to go buy some honey from somebody like me because I know what it is. I know what it tastes like. I know the medicinal properties of it. And so.
¶ Embracing Regenerative Farming
That's what I'm going to do, you know, and then you touched on the whole, you know, the regenerative model, farm model. Now, of course, this is a buzzword these days, but it's something that we are, are paying attention to that we want things that are sustainable. And we feel like, You know, and I'm sure your listeners are just like me like we feel like we have not been good stewards of this planet Probably over the last decade Five decades ten decades But that doesn't matter.
I'm not blaming anybody else today I've got this little farm that I need to take care of and how can I be the best steward of it and leave it? You know better than I found it And that is through regenerative practices when it comes to the honeybees, when it comes to the cows, when it comes to the rabbits and the pigs and all that stuff, you know, it's just figuring out how can I create a system that's healthy and that's a living ecosystem where everything is benefiting from everything else.
Right. I, I completely agree with that. And you talked about treating, you know, so many farms, we don't want to spray pesticides or insecticides on our animals or grass. Same thing when we're talking about our bees. If you're putting chemicals in there, some is going to show up in the honey. I'm, I'm sure there's tests and there's probably debates about that, but If you have no chemicals going in you can greatly reduce
That's right.
Yeah. One thing you mentioned early on, you followed that traditional model to get started. You bought those packages and got some Langstroth hives. you always, did you continue along that path with your vertical Langstroth hives?
¶ The Shift to Horizontal Hives
I did not. I found out about horizontal hives, which is sort of newer to America, to the Western world. Langstroth was a gentleman that he he studied in Ohio in the 1850s, and he's the one that developed the Langstroth vertical box model. And he, he had some unbelievable discoveries, and he really is the godfather of beekeeping in the Western world. And we learned. He just, he, he really did set us up for what we're doing today.
The issue is, is that the commercial industry, you know, which is all big money big Ag, big money they have completely embraced and adopted that system. And they've made it more economical for what they do. So, the hive boxes themselves, this is my, one of the biggest issues between vertical hives and I'm going to talk about horizontal hives in a minute. So vertical hives, the hive body construction is about three quarters of an inch thick, right? The box itself.
If you go out into the woods, and we go out and we find bees living in a tree out in the woods, They're living in a hollowed out tree that's got five inch thick sidewalls around it, right? And I've even seen it where the the trees are hollowed out all the way down to the soil so if you think about winter inside of that tree with those super thick sidewalls and With it hollowed out all the way down to the soil where the soil, you know The temperature of the soil is pretty regular all year round.
They have a home in there. That's really really good We are using the boxes because, you know, we're, we want to manage the bees and have them to where we can go have removable frames and we can get the honey and we can manage the bees. But that box is not a well insulated box for winter or for summer, but especially winter. So a lot of people, you know, there's commercially made jackets and different things you can do to your boxes to help insulate them over the winter. And that's great.
¶ Benefits of Horizontal Hives
But. What I started doing is I moved to horizontal hives and when I say horizontal hives a lot of times people automatically think Oh, what do you mean you're putting your frames in sideways? No, the frames are still vertical They're hanging vertical, but the horizontal hive is a chest shaped box So instead of the bees moving up vertically through boxes, they're moving from right to left or left to right through the box. And the bees have zero problem with this. They, they adapt.
They will absolutely use whatever you give them to start building out comb and to organize and to do everything they want to do. So when I build these horizontal hives, I'm building them. Actually, I'm now building them out a true two inch construction. If you go to Lowe's or Home Depot, you know, you're looking at one and a half inch. But even then if you think about the insulating properties, of that versus the three quarter inch. It's a huge difference.
And, and I find my bees, of course, you know, in middle Tennessee, we have about a 10 day winter and people still complain about it. I think it's hilarious. And I, I'm probably one of those people.
Yeah, well, I'm in Oklahoma, so
yeah, we, we spent a little time in Colorado in Denver. So I kind of know what a winter feels like. But even here in Middle Tennessee, I have had vertical boxes right next to my horizontal hives you know, the different, the, the different thicknesses on the, the bodies, and I've seen my bees be more active. on a 40 degree day in my horizontal hives versus my vertical hives where they're just dead quiet. And it's because they're in there, you know, tied as a ball trying to keep their warmth.
Whereas in the horizontal hive, they're nice and toasty and I'm seeing them come out and they're doing cleansing flights and going back in. So all that to say that the horizontal hives that that's one of the biggest things is that the, the insulating body or the insulating properties of the hive body are better. It's interesting though, Langstroth, when he originally designed the vertical boxes, I believe he made it out of two inch lumber.
It was one and a half inch or two inch lumber, are, would be extremely heavy, and so that's probably why the commercial industry and beekeepers in general have reduced the thickness so that they're nice and light, basically.
Oh, yeah.
so that's one of the, the. the differences. Another huge difference is on inspection. So I'm all about let the bees be bees, leave the bees alone, let the bees do their thing on a vertical hive to do an inspection. And you know this, if you've had vertical hives and everybody out there will know this, but I'll explain it.
is they're stackable boxes, and so when you go to do an inspection, you literally have to tear that house down in half, or in third, in thirds, fourths even, if you've got four boxes stacked up, to do a hive inspection and check on your queen, if that's what your mission is. In a horizontal hive, I literally know right where my brood nest is, which is where the queen is, the baby bees are, and I can identify where in that chest I need to pull a frame.
I can leave the rest of it completely covered up. expose the one or two frames I need, pull them up, look at my frame, see what I need to see, put it back in, close it up and walk away. And that's my inspection. And so when you do hive inspections on vertical hives, and you tear apart that house, I've done it. It is almost impossible not to smash bees as you're doing that.
You're completely doing an air exchange with the outside air, the temperature, you're changing the temperature and the bees get irate. And I believe understandably so. And so that's why, you know, Beekeepers have got to wear a spacesuit, right? To make sure that they're not getting stung. I keep my bees in horizontal hives and I, this is my protection right here. I wear glasses because I don't want to get stung in the eye just in case I have a bee come out angry.
But in general, as long as I don't smash or pinch a bee when I pull a frame out, I don't get stung and I keep bees all the time, just like this in a t shirt. I also have classes all the time in my apiary with homeschool classes and we, we host a lot of classes and I will literally pull a frame out covered in honeybees and have the kids come up one at a time and taste real raw honey straight off that frame with bees running around on it.
All these nervous moms standing in the background and nobody gets stung. And the only reason I'm able to do that is because I'm using horizontal hives. The bees know that the last time I was in there, I did not assault them. Whereas if you're using vertical hives, those bees know the last time you were there, you came out there in your white space suit and you assaulted that hive. When you come back two weeks later or whenever it is, they're going to be ready.
They're going to be popping you in the, in the veil.
They
them. Yeah, you're gonna hear 'em hitting and I've done it. I've been there. So when people see, you know, when orthodox conventional beekeepers see what I do as far as classes and having these little kids run up to the hive, they can't believe it. You know, they would never do that. And of course I would never do that either if I had vertical hives or if I was using vertical hives. But that is.
To me, that's one of the really big things about horizontal hives is it's just less aggressive on the bees. And it's, it's easier on the bees. It's easier on the beekeeper. The third thing is the easiest on the beekeeper. When you pull a box of honey off the top of a three or four, you know, stacked vertical boxes, those boxes, you know, can weigh 40 to 80 pounds. And you're twisting, like if they're full of honey, you're twisting and you're pulling these boxes off. It's not fun, not fun at all.
Especially in like May, June, when it gets hot. On my horizontal hives, it's one frame at a time. So if I'm going to pull honey, I'm pulling one frame out at a time. And those weigh four to six pounds, no big deal. So I want to keep bees until I'm about 150 years old. And to do that, I really need to do the stick with the horizontal hives.
¶ Overgrazing and Bee Integration
Very good. And Adam, I'm sure we could continue down this path longer, but let's transition just a little bit to our overgrazing section sponsored by Redmond.
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we're going to take a deeper dive. And for our deeper dive today, talk about having bees on pasture. So most of our audience are running cattle, running sheep, goats, a few are dairying, have poultry, but they may not have bees. So, First off, we've talked about a lot of benefits, but could you just give us a little summary of why they should have bees on their
Yeah, absolutely. You know, bees visit grasses, the, the, especially clover legumes, flowers, anything that's flowering, the bees are all over it. And so when you're getting the superior pollination of honeybees, you're going to see things change on your property. And I've had my neighbors come over and talk to me you know, out where we live, it's pretty rural and, and I've had neighbors come over and say, I've never had a garden grow like it grew this year.
And I know it's because of your honeybees. Cause I've seen your honeybees all over my garden. So, you know, We don't see it. You know, we don't, it's not something that you're going to see every day cause you're not going to go out there and just stand right in the middle of the grass and, and watch for honeybees and honeybees. They go to the best nectar source at the moment. And so whatever that is that day, that's where they're going to go. So we see bees regularly on early in the year.
We'll see it on the dandelions. We'll see bees on the dandelions. and then later in the summer or in the spring, the white clover is kind of the last thing to bloom and the bees are all over the white clover and of course our chickens and our cows love the white clover. And then other grasses, we've got johnson grass, fescue, we've got all kinds of different grass and from time to time I will see my bees running around on those grasses.
I'm not even sure what they're getting off of them, but if there's, if there's pollen or there's nectar. and the bees are interested in it, they will absolutely go to it. So the bees benefit everything around you and they go out to a three mile radius from their colony to forage.
So all of the trees benefit, all of the grasses benefit, you know, and like I said, the clover, the legumes, the flowers, all of that benefit, which ultimately is going to end up benefiting your farm, your you know, homestead, whatever you've got, your pastures are going to be benefited by honeybees, no doubt.
Now when we think about honeybees and we think about the benefits they provide and someone says, maybe I should do honey bees. I'm not sure how much time it'll take. How much time are we talking about that bees will take if you add this adjacent enterprise to your operation?
¶ Low Maintenance Beekeeping
you do it my way and I wrote a book, you should get my book, keeping bees sorry, be kept with wild and free honeybees. Forgot what I was going to say there for a second.
That's a book that I just put out, but basically if you do bees the way that I do them, and I'm not the only one doing this, but it's a low to no maintenance system, and so literally, you know, get several swarm traps, I would say maybe four swarm traps, because I have a 50 percent success rate trapping swarms give a couple of hives and I, I obviously advise horizontal hives and then once you trap the bees and you put them in the hives, you literally just let them go and let them just do their
job. You can basically get away with two to three visits per year if you want honey. Other than that, if you don't even want honey, you could literally put bees on the back 40 in those boxes and just leave them alone and walk by them every once in a while to see if they're still there. Even if something happened and they left, if they absconded or they swarmed themselves to death or whatever, bees will end up coming back to that place.
They will come back the next spring and re inhabit that cavity, that horizontal hive or whatever you've got. And boom, they'll just start going again. So it's almost like you could have it almost like a bat house on your property to where it's like, I don't want to ever get stung by a honeybee. I don't want to mess with honeybees. I know the value of honeybees to our property, to the pastures. so. I could literally do it Adam's way. Set them up on the back 40, forget about them.
As long as you've got a little fencing around them. So the cows don't go rub their heads on the boxes or something like that. What I do is I throw up a kind of a fake electric fence around my boxes and the cows leave them alone. They don't, they don't mess with them. I had one. I had a doggone bull one day that I was, I, I was getting after him telling him to, you know, get lost or something. And he, just to spite me, he walked over and he took his head, knocked over one of my beehives.
And that's the only time I've ever had that happen. And that hive was not protected by my little fake fence. So he, he probably wouldn't have done that had it been protected, but you can do it.
I
can really do it in a low to no maintenance way, if you want to.
Yeah, so, so if you're just wanting to increase the bee population, you, you could do it with, requires very little time. However, if you want to harvest honey from it, it's going to take a little bit more time, but we're still not talking about you're creating a whole new job
That's correct. If you do it the way I do it, I do not If I can get away with it, in fact, I would if I didn't have classes here and we weren't getting into the hives for the classes. If I did the bees that the way that I do them, it'd be twice, maybe three times a year that I would get into them only for honey. Basically what I teach is you do a spring expansion to give the bees plenty of room to expand.
You do a fall contraction so that they can stay warm in the winter in the smallest, tightest space, and that's it. I mean, that's really two times a year. And then I'll get in there if I find excess honey in March, if I find it in June, if I find it in October, anytime I find excess honey outside of what I know they need for the winter, then I will take it. Other than that, I'm gonna button them up, walk away, and just leave them alone.
¶ Setting Up Swarm Traps
A couple things you mentioned there, and you mentioned throughout, swarm traps and horizontal hives. Where, where think you mentioned building them. Are those things that people can go out and buy, or do do they need to build them? And if they need to build them, where are you finding plans?
there's a few options. There's actually a lot of people there's tons of people out there building swarm traps for sure. A swarm trap would be really easy to, to get your hands on that fit Langstroth frames which is, those frames are super common. And so that if you just want to buy, that's pretty easy to do. As far as building there's free plans online, multiple people have different plans depending on what you want to build. The, the that I've used the most, that's got really good plans on it.
Right now until we have our own plans is horizontalhive. com and at horizontalhive. com you can have plans for swarm traps and plans for horizontal hives. They use a different frame style at horizontalhive. com for their swarm traps. But if you just go looking, you'll be able to find a plan for a swarm trap for Langstroth frames, which is the Western American frame. You should be able to find a plan for that, no problem.
Oh yeah. Very good. So someone puts out a swarm trap, and they have some bees move into it. What's their next step?
So basically, we'll back up just a teeny bit. So it's pretty simple. A guy named Dr. Seeley. He's world renowned, still around teaching classes, but he did all his work back in the late seventies at Cornell University. And there's a book called Honeybee Democracy that he wrote. That was his first book. Very heady book, but I'll just sum it up real quick. There's a page in there. that all of us swarm trappers take the synopsis of what he found and we use it.
So he studied honey bees in nature in the Arnott wilderness, and he figured out what bees prefer in a cavity size and a bunch of other things. So first of all, they prefer 15 foot. He found they preferred 15 foot over three foot. So the higher that you can get the swarm trap, the more that it's preferred by the bees. Now I tell people, do not kill yourself putting a swarm trap up 15 feet up off the ground. I'm very fortunate here in Tennessee.
We've got deer stands up on our trees and it's pretty easy for me to pull a swarm trap up and get it up onto a deer stand. However, if you don't have trees if you live in a condo in downtown Nashville I would personally swarm trap right on my balcony on that condo. Or if you want to mount a swarm trap to the side of your barn or put it on a fence corner. I've literally trapped bees in a swarm trap three feet off the ground. So you, the sky's the limit when it comes to that.
It's just that bees prefer the higher you go. The more preferential it looks to them, or the more that
oh
it. The most important thing Seeley found was the cavity size. Wego, what he found was that they preferred 40 liters, which for the rest of us is 1. 4 cubic feet. 1. 4
oh
So actually your Langstroth deep box, if anybody's familiar with that, that is exactly 1. 4 cubic feet. So apparently Langstroth knew what he was doing when he came up with that design. So I say bigger is better. Don't go smaller than 1. 4 cubic feet. I made this mistake early on. I built some small swarm traps and people commonly will take an old nuke box that they've got or something and they'll say, well, I'm just going to use that for a swarm trap. Well, it's too small.
What you'll end up doing is you'll end up trapping a small swarm. We don't want small swarms. We want big, huge swarms. So 1. 4 cubic feet should be the minimum. Next thing Sealy found, and this is a, this is a critical aspect, is face the entrance south. So, on my swarm traps, I face them south. On my beehives, I face them south. Everything gets faced south. And he said that they prefer that, and I have definitely found that to be true.
The next thing is he came up with a measurement for the entrance size that they prefer. And I did the calculation on it and it's about one and a half inches. So one and a half square inches is a big enough entrance. And what I do is I drill a one and a half inch round hole in all of my boxes. And I use a, what's called an entrance disc. We sell those on our website and you can find them around, but it's called an entrance disc and they're, they're very versatile.
The hole is really easy to drill versus cutting in a slot, which you'll see on a lot of things. Let me see here. I think that's it. So. What I do is I get a swarm trap bigger than 1. 4 cubic feet. I find a tree that I want to put that swarm trap on that tree. And what I do is I pick out a tree that I want to have bees at the base of that tree. So the idea is is that I can trap the bees in the swarm trap. And once they're in there, I say to leave them in there 10 to 21 days.
My reasons for that is, You give the queen time to lay eggs, and I call them anchor babies. Once she's got those anchor babies in there, she's not going anywhere. But when she arrives, she's flighty. So if you went and messed with her on day
Oh,
day two, day three, she could fly off if she didn't like what you're doing. So if you wait ten days, you're pretty much guaranteed. I've never had one leave after I've left them in there for ten days minimum. And then 21 days maximum. And that's because the bees will start to outgrow that cavity in a hurry. The swarm trap is just a temporary home. So think of it as just a temporary home and you want those bees to explode with growth.
At 21 days, those baby bees that I talked about, the anchor babies, they're starting to hatch. And so your population is going to explode. it's going to become a very serious problem if you continue to leave bees in there. So I bring the bees down at 10 to 21 days and I put them in their forever home at the base of that tree. And the reason is, is they don't have to reset. If you stay inside of that 15 foot, The bees have no problem going from 15 foot above down to their forever home and
To the
So I just transfer the frames into the forever home and lock it up, walk away. I take that swarm trap and I put it on another tree. I don't put it back up in the same tree. Because your forager bees will get confused and they'll go back to that trap. don't want to do that. You want to pick another tree or another place, or even maybe wait a week. If you wanted to go back into that same location.
Do, you try to, when you're choosing the next location, do you try and go a certain distance away from where you already have a hive, how do
I don't worry about that too much. If you had a ton of property you know, bees naturally out of nature, I'm pretty sure Sealy says that there. they'll, they'll stay, I can't remember. It might be about a mile apart naturally, which kind of makes sense. You know, in middle Tennessee, we're blessed with a super huge nectar flow and there's just plenty out there for them to get.
So I, I feel like I could put 20, 30, 40 hives on my property and, and not worry about not having enough nectar to go around for all my honeybees, but not everybody lives where I live, you know? So. To spread them out a little bit is not, there's nothing wrong with that. But to have a couple of them right there together, there's nothing wrong with that either.
Well, that's great information for someone who's considering getting started. My suggestion, if they want to do that you have your book, and I meant to have my book in front of me, and I don't. Be Kept with Wild and Free Honeybees, it's available, and you can get that off your website, and Amazon would be, I assume
It is. Yeah. Yeah. You can get it on our website. Our publisher is sawdust publishing. So you could also go there and then go to Amazon. If you go to be kept. com, we've got all kinds of other ways for people to learn. We've got an online course through the School of Traditional Skills where I teach everything, everything from A to Z, what I do and how I do it. We also host in person classes. They're called B CAP bootcamps. And so we get hands on for five hours.
I do a working lunch where I talk and answer questions. But we basically just get into the Bs. And again, I teach everything I do from A to Z. You get to see the swarm traps. You get to get hands on bees. And that's a really important part of learning. Also at our website, we started a BK bee club is what we call it. It's our own bee club where we focus on natural and sustainable beekeeping methods.
So if you go to the local bee club, and I encourage everybody to get involved in their local bee club, the thing is, is that you won't hear a lot about what I'm doing. Because they are following the, you know, the, the traditional ways to keep bees.
So if you're interested in, in more natural and sustainable beekeeping methods and, and regenerative beekeeping, then you're going to want to get probably involved in a club like mine where, where we're able to talk about these things because we don't, I, it's frustrating if, if I go and I, I teach everything I teach to somebody that's doing it, doing it traditionally, you know, and they come teach me the same thing. Like we're just not doing things the same way, you know?
So anyways, that's, that's what we put together. And then we're also on Facebook, on Instagram. We just started a YouTube channel. So you can find all that on our website.
Oh,
¶ Famous Four Questions
good, Adam. Adam, we're gonna go ahead and wrap up with the famous four questions.
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The same four questions we ask of all of our guests. Our first, and actually as I think about the questions, we may want to take a we may want, let me rephrase that, we may want to answer them in two ways, grazing grass and beekeeping. So our first question, what's your favorite grazing grass related book or resource? So for, for grazing, do you have a favorite resource you would
You know, the, the people that we follow, probably the closest with what we do with dairy cows and homesteading are the Doherty's. In their book. Oh, independent homestead. Is it farmstead? My wife's fact checking me. It's independent farmstead. Sean and Beth Doherty, and they've been doing natural regenerative farming methods for decades with their dairy cows. They feed their dairy cows straight off of their farm. They have next to no inputs. I don't think they have any inputs on their farm.
And so they're the ones probably that we follow the closest with what we do that matches what, what we're up to. We love Joel Salatin and everything he's written. So, Folks, This Ain't Normal was the book that changed our lives when we, when we listened to that book, it really put us on the path that we're on. So those would be my recommendations.
Oh, yes. Excellent resources. Let's turn that question just a little bit different. Besides your book, what would be a beekeeping resource you would
Keeping Bees with a Smile by Fedor Litsutin. That's a great book. That one really does encapsulate what I do. It's written from a Northern Russia perspective. So, that's, that's kind of the difference there. I'm able to really talk about what we, what we've got going on here in America as far as climate and whatnot. Even though we have some people up north that experience some severe winters. But that's keeping bees with a smile is a good one.
Anything from Dr. Sealey, his original book was Honeybee Democracy, but he's now written multiple books since then. He is an excellent resource for, for what I do and for beekeepers worldwide.
Oh, yeah. Our second question, what's your favorite tool for the farm or apiary?
My favorite tool for the apiary would be my hive tool. I use a KW hive tool and it's, it's essential for the for beekeeping. my second tool on the beekeeping would be my smoker, of course. And I use a made in the USA classic smoker that I bought off of eBay, an old one, oldie, but goodie. And then on the farm, I've got a John Deere skid steer that I've got about 3, 500 hours in. And I love.
I love moving dirt, cutting trenches, drilling fence post holes moving hay, using the forks my skid steers, definitely a, a huge tool, so I love it.
Outside of not having any money to buy one, It scares me to get one because I think of all the things I could do
Yeah, you know, if you get a skid steer, plan on having a side hustle because all your neighbors and friends will be hitting you up. So make sure you get a good trailer and a truck to pull it around. Skid steers are very handy.
Our third question, what would you tell someone just getting started? And that could be with grazing, homesteading, beekeeping, however you want to go with
Well, we hit on it right off the bat, but you know, just do it. Just jump in both feet. You know, it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be beautiful. You don't have to, you know, spend years studying it. You know, keep it simple. Stupid. That was something I learned in the fire department a long time ago. We talked about how, you know, We get pigs and then we start thinking about fencing or we get cows and we start thinking about a milker, you know?
I mean, we've done things backwards multiple times and that's not, you know, that's not really a probably sounded vice But I I just don't want people to be overwhelmed or afraid. I think that there's always this this Mythological fear of honeybees or of big cows or whatever it is. And I think we need to just be more confident in jumping in and, and learning from people, other people on how to do things as we go getting hands-on. So that's what I would say.
yeah, yeah, excellent advice.
¶ Conclusion and Resources
And lastly, Adam, where can others find out more about you?
So, or the main thing is kp.com. I know we hit it pretty ear, you know, hard earlier. But go to be kp.com and really that's gonna be your avenue to find everything else we're doing. We're going to be teaching at multiple different festivals, homestead festivals this year. Homesteaders of America is a May event. They also have an October event in Front Royal, Virginia. So we'll be there. We've got one coming up in Townsend, Tennessee as well.
So we've got a lot going on and there's plenty avenues for people to get ahold of me. I'm super available as far as like messaging and, and text messages and phone calls and emails sign up for our free email. But if people have questions going forward from here, you know, on beekeeping or whatever it is reach out to me and I'd love to talk to you and help you get on your own bee adventure.
Well, very good, Adam. We appreciate you coming on and sharing
Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate being on here today and I wish all your listeners a great rest of their day.
Thank you.
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