Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast Episode 102. You're listening to the Grazing Grass podcast. Sharing tips and journeys of grass based livestock production utilizing regenerative practices. We hope you gained something from it. Every Wednesday we have an episode with a guest, and then Friday we have a variety of episodes. I'm your host, Cal Hardage
/You're growing more than grass. You're growing a healthier ecosystem to help your cattle thrive in their environment. You're growing your livelihood by increasing your carrying capacity and reducing your operating costs. You're growing stronger communities and a legacy to last generations. The grazing management decisions you make today. impact everything from the soil beneath your feet to the community all around you.
That's why the Noble Research Institute created their Essentials of Regenerative Grazing course to teach ranchers like you easy to follow techniques to quickly assess your forage production and infrastructure capacity. In order to begin grazing more efficiently. Together, they can help you grow not only a healthier operation, but a legacy that lasts. Learn more on their website at noble. org slash grazing. It's n o b l e dot org forward slash grazing.
On today's episode we have Evan Gunthorpe of Gunthorpe Farms. We talk about multi-species grazing U utilizing a number of species, not including cattle. So very interesting episode just for that. The second thing is Gunther Farms have their own processing plant. So that feeds into a conversation, we dig into that a little bit deeper later on, especially into the overgrazing section, and how that affects their decisions, and then how they're marketing their animals.
A really good episode, I think you'll enjoy it. However, before we get started, 10 seconds about my farm. We are starting to, to get to graze a little bit, I'm so very excited. Enough about the farm. Let's talk about the podcast. Actually the podcast. So the grazing grass community, when you sign up to join the grazing grass community, a Facebook group for our podcast, we. Ask a couple questions and the reason we ask those questions is so that we don't get any scammers in.
And to be honest we've had a couple slip through and and we're able to quickly fix that. But we require an answer and I put just put an answer in just so we know you're real. Today we got a new member on the grazing grass community and their answer to why they wanted to join the grazing grass community was they like to move cows. Um, that gave me a chuckle. Thank you for, for giving, uh, that answer. I enjoyed it. And if you're not part of the grazing grass community, I encourage you to join it.
Lots of great discussions over there. Also, last week we changed up the podcast just a little bit for episode 101. Had some good feedback from that. Thank you. I appreciate it. But enough of my farm. Enough of the podcast. Let's talk to Evan. Oh wait, it was too fast. One thing on this episode, we are having some video difficulties, so the YouTube episode is running late and I'm not sure what I'm doing for it because I don't have all the video for it.
However, I do have all the out, all the audio, so be prepared to enjoy. Let's talk to Evan.
Evan, we want to welcome you to the Grazing Grass podcast. We're excited you're here today.
Hey, thanks Cal, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. I'll put myself out there and any of the connections that come from this.
Wonderful. Evan, to get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your operation?
Yeah I am a 27 now, a year old farm kid lived pretty much what I guess I anticipated or what I thought farm kid life was supposed to be, started at seven years old, managing a brooder barn with chickens, progressed out of that into running a processing plant, spent plenty of time shooting BB guns and pellet guns at birds and pests around the barnyard and whatnot. And it wasn't until later years that I realized that was kind of a novelty doesn't really happen all that much.
I think out of the kids that I graduated with, several of us grew up on farms. I'm one of the few that actually still have the opportunity to be here. Our operation is 240 acres in northeast Indiana. It's technically a LaGrange address, although we're closer to Mongo and Rushy Prairie. We raise pigs, turkeys, and sheep currently, adding ducks back on this year, and then we have a USDA inspected processing plant here on the farm.
So you have a lot going on there
We've got enough to keep us busy, that's for sure. We employ about 16, 16 people right now on the 240 acres so you know, drastically more people per acre. That comes with some additional headaches from a management side, owner's side.
But it is good to look across to know that we're supporting people off substantially smaller acreage when we are surrounded on all sides being in the Corn Belt, surrounded by corn and soybeans few tractors, very few employees, but an awful lot of dollars that are getting spent in fuel and fuel, equipment, fertilizer and things that are leaving the community.
Oh, yes. Now do most of those employees work with the processing or do some work on the farm as well?
Yeah, so I've got several of my employees have shared duties between the two, but we do run probably about twice as much labor in the processing plant compared to the farm. Everybody in this regenerative niche. really focuses on being low input producers. We're nothing special in that regard, but it's very difficult to be a low input processor on the small scale. Small scale processing becomes substantially more labor intensive than what the big guys are able to accomplish.
So we're very labor intensive in the plant. It is of course unfortunate that we have more labor in the plant than on the farm because that's our, the processing plant isn't really where our passion lies, but it's the necessary evil of the operation the way that we have developed particularly in the wholesale market.
right. But I fully see that about, that processing being so much more labor intensive. And we'll get there. But first, let's talk about your farm. You mentioned pigs, turkey, sheep, and adding ducks back. Have you always had those species or some of them been recent additions? Besides obviously the ducks being added this year.
Yeah, so our claim to fame, or I guess my claim to fame, is being a fifth generation pig farmer which is as far back as the records go. We've been in the U. S. for seven generations, if you look back to way back 1800 and something came over. Raised pigs for at least the last five of those in about the same area. Dad bought the sow herd from grandpa in early 90s, and pigs were the only thing that we raised, selling into the commodity market.
We added chickens on at the request of a customer, just a little guy in Chicago by the name of Rick Bayless. You might have seen his TV show but it started raising chickens for Rick for quite a while there. It was just the pigs were the primary thing, added chickens on. Chickens ended up catching up to the pigs. We added ducks in thereafter added turkeys, got back out of the duck business when we couldn't get the carcasses carcass utilization correct. It took a big flip in the market.
Initially we could sell all of the duck breasts that we could ever produce and couldn't sell the legs and then it switched and we could sell all of the legs that we could produce and couldn't sell the breasts. And we got a little tired of filling up the freezer and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of it. So got back out of the ducks. We're adding those back in this year. I think that we can market the whole birds. And we've raised the turkeys the whole way through.
We got our chickens after 2020. The chickens weren't great for us. They were really a loss leader. They were awesome for marketing's sake. Everybody wanted, at least said they wanted pastured chicken. They didn't really want to pay the prices for pastured chicken. But they wanted pastured chicken and they would happen to buy our pork, duck, and turkey additionally.
After 2020, with the havoc that was on the food service side decided chickens didn't really make sense to run a loss leader for a market that didn't exist, so we got rid of the chickens and we brought sheep onto the farm. Intention with the sheep was to just load them up in the fall and take them to the auction to just sell the ram lambs and grow the flock.
Markets haven't always cooperated for that, and we also have quite a few of the wholesale customers that would like to put some lamb on their menu. So we've been slaughtering quite a few of the lambs as well and selling those as meat.
Very interesting. On the pigs, the fifth generation with pigs, are you raising them like they did generations ago? Or how are you managing hogs on your farm?
I'd really like to say that all of those generations, we took the same priorities that are trendy now or that we do now, saying that we were looking after soil health and looking after the environment and the community all of these things that we prioritize now. I don't really think wherever priorities back then, they were just something that you did in the case of, being a effective producer.
My, my grandpa was notorious for saying that if he's going to have a pig die, he would rather have it die in the first few days rather than the last few. And by putting up a barn, we probably could have saved more little pigs during farrowing that we had die because of the weather, because we had poor sows that weren't mothering properly, whatever the case may be. But as a result of that, you had a pig that you put all of that feed into and grew until they were the fattest pig on the farm.
And then they had some sort of respiratory issue or something that finally compounded to being too much and put them into the dirt. So really focused on what was economically viable. Did a lot of grazing of pigs over the generations putting them out into hayfields that were about to be putting them into hayfields after last cutting before they would be tilled to put into a different crop. Things of that nature.
Put pigs onto corn residue very heavily in the past, just because it was a good place to put them. They were turned around and they were tilling in the spring. So having pigs on the corn over winter were things that they did in past generations. Grandpa and my great grandpa still typically had barns around so they would use those as a tool.
If the weather was poor enough that it didn't make sense to farrow outside, they would occasionally farrow in a barn, whereas we now farrow 100 percent outside really focusing on soil health with our grazing, which I think that my grandparents before me would have. If they had the magic of poly wire and good fence chargers, which they did not.
They were occasionally grazing pigs on long moves with woven wire fence, putting woven wire fence up and taking woven wire fence back down multiple months in a paddock, two or three months on a, maybe 40 acre field, but still fencing off a 40 acre field with woven wire, with the intention of taking that woven wire back down in the spring before you'd plant.
Sounds awful.
Doesn't sound fun. Dad, dad talks about it. Like it wasn't too bad of a, too bad of a thing to do, but.
Oh yeah,
I'm not envious of it. Polywire is pretty nice.
I, I would agree with that, yes. And I think you highlight an important point there. So much that we talk about in this regenerative space, if we stop and think, a lot of it was done years ago. We just got away from it and now we're rediscovering it.
And when you think about the homesteading movement, it is having farms like my our grandparents and great grandparents did, where they do a little bit of everything to be sustainable and provide as much products on, for themselves as possible, before we all became so specialized.
And that specialization really is what led to what I view as the industrialization of the food supply. My grandpa up until 2004, actually had a true seven year crop rotation in 2004, he supposedly retired and now only does corn and soybeans. But up until the eighties, they were still raising stocker cattle each year. And then up until the early nineties, when we sold off the sow herd, he had pigs as well. They had sheep just before dad was born.
They were very much a diversified agricultural operation, and running that diversification, you can't specialize, you can't buy the equipment, you can't buy the inputs, you can't justify all of those dollars into one specific enterprise. So it's really a matter of economic viability as I see it prior to the push for this industrialization and specialization.
Oh yeah. When you, you think about the pigs, you mentioned about grazing those. Were you all grazing them on lease property as well as your own?
Only our own owned property, so being northeast Indiana, right in the midst of the Corn Belt we are sitting on ground that rents for a minimum of 200 bucks an acre. Some of it's pushing five or so. so the economics of leasing ground for grazing are very poor. I don't know how, I don't know how the guys that are leasing ground to plant crops are making it work even but we just can't compete with the lease payments on on the crop guys.
Which makes sense. That's what I really, Assumed, I complain about my lease payments and they're nothing compared to yours, or compared to what you would have to pay there, now, have you all, on the pig side of it, have you all stuck with a breed and been very much in that breeding program the whole time, or has that changed over time?
Yeah. So we have Durox and Durox crosses, at least that's always been our focus, but we haven't been entirely breed snobs on anything. So the last two generations on the farm have been 100 percent closed herd.
I shouldn't say 100 percent dad got this goofy Chester white boar for some reason, but nonetheless last two generations Have been closed herd on the farm selecting our own boars prior to that dad was buying in boars And he was buying for what we felt that the herd needed at the time So we added in some Berkshires for a little bit primarily from the marketing side Everybody says that they want Berkshire pork so I added in a little bit of Berkshire.
They do offer some carcass traits that are desirable. Added in some more conventional white pigs. Some York, possibly Landrace Cross. They weren't too descriptive as to exactly what the breeds were on those pigs, but our litter size was very small, which is pretty typical of Durox. Adding that white genetics in pushed us for a while. I think that we were fair when over 14 14 pigs per litter, probably weaning something like 12 per litter. So really helped grow the herd with those.
We've added in a few different breeds. I'd like to get some ultra specialty breeds bought onto the farm, bring some mangolitsa or something in, which would definitely be a difficult pitch with the food service side that we're selling into. Those are of course very tasty pigs, but very fat. And if somebody has got to make the numbers work to serve one chop on a plate and the loin eye is substantially smaller and the back fat substantially larger.
That's probably not going to work but I'd like to bring some in nonetheless and get down to, maybe a quarter mangalitsa in some of our pigs as well.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that'd be an interesting progression there. Durox was my first exposure to pigs when I was a kid. Dad had hogs, and And he always favored yorkshires, yorks, and we had some, but we also had some durocks, and durocks were always my favorite. I don't even know if there's any justification for it. Probably a sow was nicer at the time, which is still
Yep.
I can remember farrowing, farrowing those out. I don't know what the thing was, but I can remember that.
We've had a few sows on the farm. They'll try to kill you and most of 'em have been yorkshires, which I think has been dad's big preference of durocs over the yorks.
oh yes, yeah. I'll have to ask my dad sometime why he went those ways because I don't remember I was young enough at the time, but yeah. How many sows are you all faring out each year?
So right now we have heard of about 200 young sows just in the process of switching over colon off the rest of our old souths, moving into these young ones. Farrowing we're going to be pushing probably 300 by the end of the year. See a few more opportunities on the on getting more pounds of pork through the plant. Gonna push that up a little bit, but typically over the past, oh, 10 years or so, we've sat somewhere in the 150 to 200 sows number.
You mentioned you're bringing up a lot of younger sows and moving some older sows on. Is there a certain timetable you're working with or was it just time to do that?
It really just time to do that. We didn't have our management systems in place as well as we should have on the farm. So we really hesitated to save back any fresh guilds. Cause we didn't want to develop bad tendencies in those gilts. Kept the old ones longer than what we probably should. They weren't as productive as what they should have been there at the end.
Once we got some systems in place a little better, got management a little straightened out on the farm, started keeping gilts and really recognized just how much better we could be doing with younger gilts. So decided it was time to phase out all those old ones.
Yeah. So as you develop those gilts to become sows, there any, how are you managing those and getting them ready?
Hey, we're probably not doing the gilts as much justice as what we should. Not doing everything that we probably should. The big problem with pigs is of course that if you leave them in one spot for too long, they are going to tear it up and make it look like a moonscape.
So the problem that presents for an operation like ours is that having multiple groups of, or every additional group of animals that you have is an additional group of animals that you gotta maintain electric on the fence for, you gotta move them around. Just another headache that you got to manage. So saving gilts back, we save gilts out of the market hog pens once they're ready for slaughter. So we don't have a separate group of pigs through that entire grow out phase.
Once we get to the point that we're ready to start killing out of the pen of market hogs, we separate off all of the females sort off the ones that I want to keep for breeding. And then we switch them over to our gestating ration and put the Parvo vaccines into them. So that they are designated as breeding animals at that point. Once they get through their quarantine period on those vaccinations, then they join the remainder of the breeding herd to become sows. So our,
Oh, okay. And do you keep your, is your breeding herd one paddock or do you have multiple paddocks?
our sows are really broke down into two different phases. During the growing season, we leader follower graze the sows, daily moves behind the sheep. And then in the winter, they're strip grazed across standing corn.
Is that in one big group or you have multiple groups?
Last year we ran two groups just because we had those old sows that we're still working working on culling out of. And the young sows. This year it'll just be one group of sows.
And when you plan for farrowing, are you doing a little bit all the time or are you trying to have mass farrowing at a time so you can manage that more intensively and then you take a little bit of break and then do it all over?
Yeah, so we never pull the boars out, so we're liable to farrow 365 days a year. The pigs will of course sink out, sink up to a certain extent. And then we help that out. We just switch to every three weeks weaning the sows off of the little ones. That should get them into their cycle so that we end up with three week windows in which we're farrowing more heavily than the weeks in between. We're liable to farrow 365 days a year, never pull the boars out.
They do tend to farrow heavier once, or they tend to breed heavier once the weather starts getting cold, days start getting a little bit shorter. So we do end up with some surges. But yeah, farrowing, farrowing consistent, fairly consistently through the year.
yeah. And you're pulling those sows out to farrow or? instead of me putting words in your mouth. How are you managing those sows when it comes times for farrowing?
Yeah, so on a weekly basis, we go through the herd and we take out any of them that are starting to bag up, that are getting milk on them, that look like they're getting close to farrow. We have a separate I guess it's basically a separate property, 30 acres that are permanently fenced into 60 pens, 50, 60 permanently fenced pens, each of which has an energy free water in it. So very infrastructure heavy on that farm. But those pens there are used solely for our farrowing.
So once a week we go through the gestating herd, separate off anybody that is soon to farrow. Those go up to six per pen into the farrowing pens. where they will stay through their farrowing. And then they have, of course, have their pigs in those pens. And then once those pigs are somewhere around eight weeks old or so, we pull those sows back out of the little pigs.
And then do the pigs stay right there or you move them on to somewhere else?
Pigs stay right there. Give, we give the little pigs a minimum of three days in that pen without their mother. The typical would be to wean the little pigs off of the mothers, which in doing so, you take away their milk supply, you take away their source of warmth in the coop. You take away the coops that they're accustomed to, the feeders, the waters, everything that they are used to and likely in this process you toss them in with other pigs that they've never met before.
So it's a very stressful couple of days until they get accustomed to their new pen if you're weaning the little pigs. We instead pull the mothers off of the little guys. So the little guys get a few days to become accustomed to life without their mother in an environment that they're still used to before they go into a consolidated market hawk group with the other pens that are also ready to be moved into a different pen.
Oh yes. And you're farrowing, they're farrowing out there you have some huts that the sows fare in or
Yep, We use six foot Quonset huts for our farrowing. There's a lot of commercial options out there. I don't recommend many of them. Most of them have too steep a sidewall, so we just use six foot bin sheets. Only assemble them halfway around. We either do two or three rings deep, two rings deep. So six foot deep is a whole lot easier to move. You just put them on your back like a turtle shell. You can walk around with them. Three rings deep probably works a little bit better.
It gives a sow a little bit more space. You can put a little bit more bedding in there if you're in cold climates, but generally it takes at least two people or else a tractor to move those ones around. So we really liked the six foot, six foot wide, six foot long ones. We have a solid wooden back across the back of them with probably two inches of air space up at the top.
When it's bitterly cold in the winter, we have them set up to the point that a 2x4 can block off that back and then we put a solid half front on the front of them so they can get out one side three foot wide.
Oh, yes. Yeah, and on your farrowing pens Do you give them a rest time or they those pens basically in production year round?
Yeah, so those pens are used as of right now. Dad and I have really recognized that we don't have enough pens over there. Those pens get used about twice a year, which with the canopy cover that we have over there is too frequently. I think that if we were to go in and thin out the trees. Especially if we were to put a little bit of seed in seed down, right before we'd pull the little guys out. I think that we'd do okay on the twice a year.
We're definitely overusing those pens, not something that I'm proud of. We're looking for additional options to minimize that sum.
And it's a journey just getting you can't get everything the way you want it today You'll get there now As you look at those pins, i'm curious how You they're fenced. Are those using poly wire to keep, or poly braid, or high tensile wire to keep the sows separated?
Nope, so
Sorry.
that was a massively expensive farm. So 50, 60 pens, all of them are broke with woven wire, and then we have an offset high tensile electrified wire. So four foot, 48 inch woven wire, and then single 12 and a half gauge high tensile inside of that. Should be, I wish that we had bought a little bit higher dollar fence for the interior fences over there. Used low tensile woven wire fence, which is something that nobody should buy.
But had we used the correct woven wire there, would have been something that we'd never have to touch again. With that high tensile, electrified high tensile wire inside of your woven wire, the pigs don't tear the woven wire up. So the woven wire is really just there in the event of a bad storm or something that knocks your power out.
Oh yeah that hot wire right inside will extend that life of that fence a lot. Uh, farrowing them out there. They stay there. You're weaning them by pulling the sows and taking that group of sows back. And the pigs are staying there a little bit. What's the next step on their journey look like?
Yeah, so next up on their journey, any of those pigs that have been weaned for at least three days get consolidated into one group. We're split into three separate properties with about a half mile of road in between them. So they go on the hydraulic hog carts, which anybody who's raising pigs, I think ought to constantly have one of the search engines looking for one of those hydraulic trailers sometimes called a hog cart. They make life so much easier if you're raising pigs.
But a half mile down the road behind the tractor on that hog cart to one of the market hog pens once they get into the market hog pens, we have 12 foot Quonset huts, so same story as the 6 footers, they're just 12 foot bin sheets only assembled halfway around. Solid wooden back on those that they get plenty of straw in. So they've got good shelter. We use Osborne Feeders on wooden skids and then high Croft energy free water.
Oh, yeah.
We have the market hog pens set up to the point that is the pen that they will be in until they go to the plant. I polywire them off to just the access to the coops, the water and the feeder there for probably the first couple of weeks. Just make sure that they're well accustomed to their, where their coops are at, where their feed's at where their waterers are. before I start set stock grazing them through the rest of it.
So they have constant access up to what is effectively a sacrifice area around the coops, around the feeder, around the water. We move those skids around a little bit just so it doesn't get too muddy around them. And then they have effectively an alleyway to get out to their pasture that is rotated around or that is moved around as to what they have access to through the extent of their grow out.
Two things there. First, you mentioned the hydraulic hog trailer. I'm guessing it's got hydraulics so it lowers the floor to the ground?
Yep. It sure does. Yep. They come all the way to the ground. So I'm sure anybody raising pigs has had the hassle of, pushing a pig on or stepping up into a livestock trailer. Definitely not fun. I've done it once or twice. And fortunately that is my only experience with it. And that's more experience than what I want doing.
Oh, yeah. Yeah I know as I watch different YouTube channels, a lot of people bring that trailer in and set it up for days and start feeding the hogs in it so those hogs get used to it and get into it. I remember as a kid, anytime we loaded hogs, it was quite a battle. And, of course, when I think about it, we were hauling them in back of a pickup back then I could see a hydraulic trailer being really nice.
yep, they definitely are. We use those same trailers to move around the 12 foot Quonset huts. You can drop them. So they're just barely off the ground and back it underneath that hut. And then you lift them up and then you can drive around with the coop on the trailer.
Oh yeah, kind of like, um, desk jack, which I didn't even know existed, which just means I wasn't exposed to it. But at the School where I used to work that you know, they're moving those Tables and desk out they just put that in there and jack it up like a pallet jack move it out It works so good. I was like, oh wow, that's nice technology
Yep. Makes sense.
How long are the your hogs your pigs staying in those pens till they're ready to be marketed or process? Sorry.
Yep, those pens, we're probably running 8 to 9 months finish time on most of our pigs. And that'll put us to a high twos on the rail, 260, 280 carcass weight. So a little bit slower, definitely slower growing than industry standard. But we're also getting them up to bigger weights. So definitely substantially too long in the market hog pens. There's no getting away from that. They tear up the ground up by the coops and the feeders and the waters far too much.
Land availability would definitely help us to change that, but the problem with the pigs is that somebody still has to farrow them, and we choose to be the one to do that. I don't know that we could find a supply. Of little pigs that we would be happy with. Nor would we find enough of them to do them seasonally to the point that we can consolidate groups down, have fewer groups of pigs on the farm to the point that we could put more labor into each of those groups on a daily move basis.
So the gestating sows are on daily moves. I would love to get the market hogs to that point. I should have one group of market hog pens on daily moves this year. Yeah, I just don't have the availability with a constant supply of little pigs to keep the groups separate enough and all moving as much as I'd like.
Yeah, it sounds like a huge undertaking to keep all those things moving as much as even you do, with a source of feeder pigs, that seems to be a problem common to small farmers, to everyone, that to find a good source to grow out is difficult to find, or a consistent quality source.
And of course with the, say a six months, six months on pasture, we really only get six months or so of grass growth where we're at. So the timing of that. would have to be that we would get every single one of our pigs, ready to go on to grass the 1st of May and then slaughter every single one of them there in the fall. And, running your own processing plant, that's a little bit of a difficult proposition running, a few thousand pigs over the span of a year is all right.
Running a few thousand pigs over the span of say a month would be pretty difficult. We do it on turkeys, but turkeys are a lot less labor.
Oh yeah, and that's a, yeah, that's a scale of economics, just, you can't have that facility setting there not doing something. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about your turkeys and why you added them and how those are managed.
Yeah, so the turkeys were added in primarily catering to the Thanksgiving market. The wholesale side, we had some customers asking for some different cuts, and we still sell some cuts of turkey in particular to a local food service location that does the catering for Trine University. They put our turkey breast on the menu for the students there.
But nonetheless, the big thing on turkeys, as I'm sure all of your listeners know Um, so brought turkeys on to sell to some of the retailers, small grocery stores, things like that, that we were selling to. We produce those all out on pasture. Those are, the turkeys are unfortunately not moved around. We have probably, what have I got, nine acres, ten acres that the turkeys are split across. We get those in brooded for us when we first started raising turkeys.
We have two barns on the farm that worked alright for brooding. One of those was being used for chickens, one of them for ducklings. So we didn't have a third one for the turkeys. So we ended up making connections with a turkey farmer about an hour and a half to the north of us that runs a lot more turkeys than we do, has big barns, does all the brooding and everything. So we get those in already brooded for us. Which is an absolutely huge connection to have made. Works out really well for us.
They're ready to go straight out to pasture. They've got a good feather coat on them. And they do that. They go right out in 12 foot Quonset huts, just like the market hogs get. They get closed in for the first two or three days. Turkeys are a little bit more difficult than some of the other birds to transition, get them to learn what the new feeders look like, get them to learn where their water is and everything.
Once they do that, they do a great job of pretty much never going back into the coops. They go in to eat. We keep the feeders inside the coops so that they stay out of the rain. But otherwise those 10 acres or so that we've used for the turkeys last couple of years have tons of moles. They've previously had a lot of burdocks and ragweed prior to us getting the sheep. And the turkeys will make a ragweed look like a palm tree.
They strip all of the leaves off down the entire stem up to where they can reach. And then they enjoy the shade thereafter. Turkeys are really an impressive bird. It's, turkeys are commonly associated with just being this big white dumb thing walking around, but it's really cool to go out and watch. They, do a lot of grasshopper chasing. Anytime that the wind is blowing, they'll all gravitate towards the mulberry trees because they recognize that the mulberries are falling off.
And the second that a mulberry hits a ground, they all storm it. They're really cool birds to watch outside on pasture.
I've heard similar sentiments that they're really interesting creatures to raise. I've not ever raised any. How old are they when they come in? They're fully feathered. How, what age is that?
Turkeys, that's probably six, seven weeks or so when we're getting them. So they've got a good feather coat. We could probably get away with pushing it earlier than that. The problem is that these plans are made prior to February. We've already got the birds all lined up and everything. And of course, once we get time to get those birds in, we could end up with 70, 80 degrees for those days, or we could end up with 40 something in rain. So it really depends on the weather as to.
How soon we could push them out there, which is the big issue with not brooding them ourselves.
Yeah. And when are you targeting to process those or start the processing of them?
Yeah, so we switched just a couple years ago to running all of the turkeys hyper seasonally just over summer, getting all of the slaughter done before the high school kids go back to school. We have several part time employees helping out primarily with packaging, labeling, things like that in the plant. But also a few of the farm tasks. So being able to target that late July, first week or two of August to have all of those turkeys gone really helps us out from a labor perspective.
Also puts the turkeys being produced on the greenest of the grass when we've got plenty of mulberries for them to eat, plenty of insects flying around, not too cold to have stunted any of that. So it ends up working out in the favor of the bird. When we were doing, we used to do about 10, 000 turkeys a year. This year we'll only do about 2, 000.
When we were doing those 10, 000 we were shooting to have about 000 of those killed in Solely the last two weeks there before Thanksgiving to be fresh table birds and in doing so You get the huge advantage the huge marketing Point of being able to sell a fresh turkey But you get the massive headache of dealing with all of the customers that are very mad at you if the bird isn't the size that they want. And on turkeys especially, it is highly dependent on the weather.
If you get some cold days, they end up putting that energy into staying warm rather than putting that energy into growing. So you can end up with birds that are four pounds different just depending on what you end up with for weather that last month that they're on the ground.
And you've really scaled that back. What caused you to want to scale that back?
Biggest, biggest issue on the scaling back was getting rid of the chickens. So after 2020, we ceased raising chickens, ceased processing chickens. So processing plants are unfortunately very high turnover positions. So it ended up being that when we no longer had chickens, I just quit replacing people on the chicken crew. And ended up without a chicken processing crew as a result. Chicken processing was a huge labor suck in the plant.
But when you're already processing a couple hundred thousand chickens, it's no big deal to run 10, 000 turkeys on the side. Once you no longer have that chicken crew to run 10, 000 turkeys is quite a big proposition. Scale that back down to 2, 000, we're able to do that with just the pig crew that we have here in the plant. And then also some additional part time labor in terms of the high school kids and some family that come in and help.
Oh, yeah. Are you set on a certain breed or variety of turkeys?
We'll get some kickback from this from your listeners, I'm sure. We raise broad breasted whites which get, get a very negative get a very negative connotation in the industry. Everybody on poultry would love a heritage bird until you actually put a heritage bird on the table in front of them. It's been the same argument on chickens, on turkeys both that we've raised. That, everybody will say that they want a heritage bird, they want a heritage bird, they'll pay the money for it.
And then you show up with a bird that has way more bone than what they're used to, way less meat, and they get mad at you for it. So we still raise broad breasted whites. I don't think that they do nearly as poorly on pasture as what everybody says that they do. And I would say that a broad breasted white does as well on pasture, eats as much grass chases as many grasshoppers as what, whatever breed of heritage chicken you're raising does.
It's going to grow a lot faster, too.
Yeah, absolutely will. And then you'll get, just like the name implies, you'll get a broad breasted table bird come Thanksgiving.
Yeah, and you definitely want to keep those people happy that's eating it on Thanksgiving.
Yep. Yeah, absolutely do.
And so you got the turkeys, downsizing a little bit on that, or you have in the last few years, which you explained the reasoning for that. You also have sheep. When were the sheep added, and how is that going for you? Oh,
we bought 130 ewes in 2021. That was our first entry into the sheep business. I don't think that grandpa was very impressed with that decision when we did but neither dad or I had any experience with sheep prior to that. The sheep were gone two years before dad was born. Dad was born from grandpa and my great grandpa's operation. And grandpa had no kind things to say about sheep. But we actually pretty well enjoy them. Got those 130 in 2021, put them on to two or three day moves.
I didn't really know what I was doing on the grass at all. Leaving a lot of residue, thought I was doing the right things and everything. Which we graze a lot differently now but we added on another 190 or so ewes in 2022 that were probably not as great of a purchase. I think that the genetics were worse on those ones. We've had more issues on those, but nonetheless the sheep have definitely been a beneficial addition to the farm.
If nothing else, they do a lot better job of managing the pastures so that the pastures are in good shape for the turkeys and pigs. But the sheep is a, as a standalone enterprise, it's very fun.
Oh, yeah. And I would think the sheep would really help out with that grazing management. Pigs can be a little hard on land.
Yep, they absolutely do. And the combination between the sheep and the pigs is just absolutely huge. Daily moves on sheep followed by the pigs. You're able to take awful lot of that leaf material with the sheep. If you push them hard enough, you can take all of it and then follow it up with the pigs. We'll get the pigs into eating some of those stems and things that they wouldn't otherwise have ate. And of course, they do an awful good job of cleaning up and distributing that sheep manure.
And really leveling things up. I should say leveling up all of the stems, knocking things down. You can put an awful lot of pounds of sows behind a group of sheep if you're feeding the sows, which we do. We keep a full Osborne feeder of a primarily hay based ration out there with them. So I could push, effectively from a food standpoint, could push an infinite number of pounds of sows behind the sheep. But typically we're able to get 000 pounds per acre on the sows.
So get a nice uniform trample over everything.
Oh, yeah. That's I went to be honest. I can't even picture what that looks like. So I'll have to look. I you probably have an Instagram with some pictures,
Yep, I sure do. I, I haven't been posting as much on my Instagram, but I try to keep my Instagram around as something for me to look back on in the future. Maybe something for my kids to see or something someday. But my Instagram definitely gravitates towards being more producer focused information. I don't put it out there for anybody else, but you're welcome to look at it. We also have a Facebook oh, Facebook as well.
We have a Facebook group for the farm that is much more consumer focused, if you're interested in that stuff.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah I usually go through your social media and I looked at your website, but I hadn't looked at Instagram to was on there. That's on me not doing my homework ahead of time like I was supposed to. On your sheep, I think you mentioned that originally the goal was you were just going to market them through conventional channels. How has that evolved? Oh,
Yeah, to date, we've probably sold about half of the ram lambs just loaded up and took to the auction. We've been saving every ewe lamb that we can, so we have, admittedly, have not sold an awful lot of sheep. But about half of them we've ran through the plant. It's very difficult with the ethnic market, what it is, and raising hair breeds of sheep. To justify slaughter in one of them.
You just don't end up with a big enough carcass to get a charge too much per pound to the point that it's very hard pitch to sell somebody on a lamb that you process yourself. If the markets are good, it makes a lot more economic sense to load those up and be done with them when they're less than 80 pounds. Rather than trying to push them bigger than that to make the numbers work to be able to process them. We're not scaled and we're admittedly not great on slaughter and sheep yet.
I hope with some more experience we can get a bit more efficient on that, but we're not there yet.
I know as we think about our hair sheep we've had a few processed in town for us. And just the cost to process them versus the amount of meat you get back from it, it really makes those a premium product.
Yep. Absolutely does. We're quicker on killing pigs. And of course to be done with a pig for less time, less effort, less money. And end up with a 300 pound carcass rather than a 40 to 60 pound carcass is very difficult to get too excited about slaughtering sheep.
Oh yeah. Have you experienced some demand for it? Or, It's really not out there all that much. For you.
It's funny, we
Oh
kid that was producing some sheep for us that, or some sheep that we were marketing several years ago. And they were primarily a barn based model. And I believe he was feeding them grain and they were wool sheep and I was not a fan of the lamb on those were obviously quit that pretty quick. But we really struggled to sell that lamb and as of now, not killing all that many, but everyone that we have sampled the lamb to. gets very excited with it. Everybody seems to really like this stuff.
Our limiting factor is that we just don't have enough lambs to be able to have a supply of racks to really have any restaurant selling them at scale through the extent of the year. So they really have to be a specialty product that they're putting on a, couple week special or else a very limited spot on the menu.
Let's jump over to ducks for just a little bit before we, we move on. You're adding ducks back to the farm. Tell us a little bit about and how they're managed.
Yes, we brood the ducks inside. I'm not sure if we'll brood those at the main farm in the old chicken barn, or else if we'll brood them in what we used to use as a duck barn. But nonetheless, set up like a small scale of the big poultry houses that you would see across the south and across, I guess our area, anywhere that there's a big poultry processor. We've got a good exhaust fan, and then propane or natural gas Shenandoah style heaters inside those.
So we have very good temperature control on the birds, so when they're in those first few days of being very feeble animals we're able to very much control that temperature down to just a couple of degrees. Not nearly as important on ducks as what it is in chickens, but we learned an awful lot in the several years of doing chickens that we applied over to the ducks.
In the brooder there, they have nipple water lines and then additionally some bell waters on the ducks so that we're not limiting them on their water intake. With a duck, if you ever run out of water and they still have access to feed, they'll choke and die. So water is very critical on the ducks. But the ducks act like the water is critical and act like it's in unlimited supply. They will make an absolute mess out of any water that you give them.
Ducks in the warmer times of the year, able to turn those out of the brooder barn at two to three weeks. And you really don't want to push them any longer than that. They're a little bit lacking on feathers when you get down into that two week stage. But they're well enough equipped to be outside at that time. Similar process as to the turkeys.
They go out into those 12 foot Quonset huts, close them in for the first few days, just so they learn what shelter is, even though they don't really care. And then once we open them up, you will seldom see a duck go back in the coop. It is just nuts that you get a we used to do the ducks substantially less seasonally than what we're going to do now, and you can get just a wild snow storm blowing in, just over freezing and blowing rain in.
Any of the worst weather that you or I wouldn't even want to go outside in. And the ducks will be out there with their beaks in the air, pecking at snowflakes and raindrops coming down on them. They're a very hardy bird.
Do you deal with many predator issues?
We honestly don't deal with a lot. So we're pretty fortunate here at the main farm. As I mentioned before, we're broken into three properties about a half mile of woods or a half mile of road in between each of them. And where we're situated here on the main farm that we've focused on putting most of the poultry on over the years, we're about a half mile from the closest woods. We have about six acres of our own. But run a lot of pigs in that. We've always had some farm dogs around.
And then we have a woven wire fence the whole way around. In my 27 years on this property, I've seen a coyote on this property once. We still get some raccoons, some skunks and things, not nearly as bad as what we would if we were a half mile in any direction. Closer to those big uninterrupted woods that are around.
We're able to keep the animals within the woven wire, and I think just the farm dogs, which are not by any means guardian dogs, have done a pretty good job of protecting them and warding off any of the Predators that would cause us issues
Oh, yeah. Very good. What variety or breed of ducks are you going with?
running pecans on the ducks and the ducks are honestly the only poultry that we've raised We've never tried anything. Never tried anything else on breeds Yeah, I don't you don't see there's not enough duck in the market for there to really be a customer That is discerning on duck breeds to my knowledge.
And where do you market most of the duck?.
So the ducks have always been a big wholesale seller. We've sold the occasional one to some retailers and we've sold a very few direct retail ourselves. But there's very few customers out there that know how to cook a duck. Duck breast cooked correctly is better than any steak that you'll ever have, which I'm sure is a very controversial opinion on a grazing grass podcast. But if duck is cooked wrong, duck is cooked wrong. It's absolutely terrible.
It's either leathery, super chewy, not great, but cooked well. A good duck, which it does have to be a good duck. Can't be something that comes out of a barn because they'll taste like a duck barn but a good duck breast cooked well is absolutely amazing. And there's very few individuals that know how to do that.
Interesting. That's I know I've had duck in the past, but it's probably been wild duck or we had some ducks when I was a kid. I probably ate some then but an interesting statement and like you said a little controversial for a grazing grass podcast we're here for it. You are marketing most of your meats through your wholesale channels?
That's correct. We have a little bit of direct retail. We have, do some mail order from the farm. Scaled that back a little bit. We only ship once a month now. We were shipping weekly. And the problem with that is that our closest supply of reasonably priced dry ice is about an hour from the farm. So coordinating logistics of getting dry ice and getting those over to UPS and everything was a bit much from a labor perspective to make pencil out on a weekly basis.
So confined those down to just a month. Haven't seen huge kickback on it, but it's such a small portion of the business that, it's not a real legitimate avenue for us to move any pounds. The vast majority of everything that we sell is going wholesale side. We sell primarily into Indianapolis and Chicago food service locations, but also do some LTL work. One of our biggest accounts now actually ends up selling the product.
into Disney World where our product is going to be available, I believe, at the Mexico Pavilion for the Flower Festival going on at Disney, and they just had it down there for the Food and Wine Festival as well.
Now one thing that I'm completely unfamiliar with is cultivating wholesale markets. I know, with the on farm processing, that makes a huge difference, and you're able to continue to get that. How did you all break into the wholesale market? Ha!
You got a while. Breaking into the wholesale markets was was really the whole story of what started the farm on the path that it is. Prior to 1998, we were just selling into the conventional markets, had an IBP truck that would come out to the farm, or else we'd take the pigs to the buying station.
And we got docked like crazy, running colored pigs that were High fat content on pasture didn't have a good handling facility didn't have a good scale So we weren't really hitting the sizes that they wanted long legs because they actually got to use them They weren't the short little white things that played into that other white meat campaign.
They were running at the time So we were probably selling the absolute cheapest pigs probably some of the cheapest pigs in the country at that time But it still worked up until 1998 still got everybody paid you know Still did okay up till the hog market crash. At that, dad ended up really lucky that he was speaking in a conference at the time. And one of the guys in the back was talking about getting out of the hog industry. He was raising milk fed pigs in Iowa.
Selling them to a restaurant in Chicago. Dad had never heard of the restaurant before, but decided that he'd give him a call and see if he could sell him some pigs. Called him up. That restaurant ended up being Charlie Trotter, who we didn't know at the time, but had just won Food and Wine Spectator Magazine's number one restaurant in the world award. Matthias Merges picked up the phone.
He is known to not pick up the phone, is known to be very short on the phone when he does, or at least was at that time. And Dad got to talking to him, talked to him for about 15 minutes that day, and Mathias decided that he wanted a pig from us. So Dad took him a pig, they liked the pig, and then word of mouth from there Dad, word of mouth and knocking on doors, called up some other restaurants and said, Hey, I'm bringing a pig to Charlie Trotter's, would you guys like anything as well?
And, it worked Charlie Trotter's was respected enough in Chicago at the time. that people wanted to buy pork from his pork supplier. So things took off from there. We ended up selling those chickens that I mentioned before to Frontera Grill because dad really wanted to sell him pork. He had heard how great Rick was to his farmers and dad wanted to be one of the farmers for Rick Bayless. So he, when he was in Chicago, kept showing up at Frontera and kept asking to sell him pork.
They already had a pig farmer so they wouldn't buy from us, but they really need a chicken farmer. So we added on the chickens and the chickens, when we first started, were, were a good operation, a good enterprise for us. Got to the point that they were really just a loss leader for us to sell everything else. But they worked well for that. Everybody, as I mentioned, everybody wants pastured chicken.
Nobody wants to pay the prices for it, but everybody wants it, and once you're their chicken supplier, then it's relatively easy to come in and be their pork supplier and be everything else as well.
Oh, yeah.
But if you are able to raise very good pork to put next to your chicken, it ends up working out. I don't think that the chicken has to be nearly the quality cause people go in, they sit down at a nice restaurant, they're ordering the chicken cause it's the cheapest thing on the menu. But if they order the pork chop and it's a really good pork chop, they're going to come back for another pork chop.
Oh, yeah. Very insightful there. That makes sense to me. Yeah, so you're, being in the right place and then following up some out of the box thinking. Let me try that again. Some out of the box thinking and taking some action really made a tremendous effect upon the direction of your old farm. At what point did you all introduce on the farm
As long as you're not a cop, we started off with on farm processing out in the front yard. Many years ago shortly after starting the chickens, we've always done some on farm processing Generationally if a neighbor family member whatnot needed pork or beef or whatever the case was For our own consumption and whatnot, but started early 2000s processing some of our own chickens would have been 2002, 2003, we converted the garage into a processing plant.
Got under state inspection there for a year, became USDA in 2004. Ran just chickens for quite a while. We added on the pig processing here on farm, but we're still getting those killed elsewhere. And then as time progressed, we got set up, got the rail finished up here in the plant to be able to kill the pigs on site as well. So we've been USDA for just about 20 years now.
Oh, wow. And USDA, I know for custom processing in my area, finding a USDA inspected they're few and far between. Of course that's for custom processing. You guys are processing all your own animals. Do you all ever do any outside animals?
Yeah, we do a little bit of pork for other farmers. We've historically done a tiny amount of poultry for others. But the problem with poultry is that of course, everybody only wants to raise them during the growing season. Nobody wants to have birds that are finishing in the middle of winter. and that seasonal flexibility or the staffing, having to have qualified staff to be able to do them when the grass is green.
and then still having to keep those people around for next year even though there's no work in the winter on it has really made us shy away from doing processing for others on the poultry side. The pigs are similar in that regard. Most people want to get their pigs processed at the end of fair season or before they have to worry about busting ice off waters. So we're pretty limited on the slaughter for others. But we still do some of it and it works out okay on the pigs.
What are your biggest takeaways from doing the processing right there that you can take back to your own pigs and what you're selecting for?
Yeah, so we're of course able to see on a weekly basis what our pigs look like on the inside, how much fat cap we're putting on to them what our meat coloration, all of the carcass characteristics that you want to select for. We can see, although it is, a year after those breeding decisions were made, we can see those on a weekly basis. So it's allowed us, the biggest thing was to ensure that we're getting the protein into the pigs when they're young.
If you're neglecting your protein concentrations there in the first couple months of those pigs being alive, you can't make that up later on in life. You'll end up with way more fat on them, way thicker back fat. on the same size of carcass. So I identified that relatively quick in the process. Since then it's easy to tell how somebody's raising their pigs based off of what they look like at the processing plant. Not a lot of. Oh, how would you put that?
You can tell if a pig is using its legs, if they're out running around and whatnot. From an economic perspective we would probably say that we ought to do what the barn guys do and lock them up, not let them move. We'd get just as many pounds of muscle and a lot shorter bones, but we're of course, never going to do that ourselves. It ends up being a little bit difficult.
If I'm trying to push carcass weights really high, we didn't quite put the rail tall enough to to hang those up the way that we should, if we were running, if we were running a barn pig, I'll bet we could put. a 400 pound carcass on the rail and they wouldn't touch the floor. Our pigs, we typically have to hang them at the hocks when they get above about 240 or so on the rail.
So Evan we've been talking about that on farm processing, but that's really, something we talked about before the show, that was our overgrazing section where we take a deeper dive into something you're doing. So tell us a little bit more about that on the farm processing and how that affects your wholesaling and throughout.
Yeah. So the processing on farm in my eyes is a, Crucial really a necessary portion of being able to sell wholesale to food service. There are very few chefs that are going to let alone accept, product coming in frozen every single week.
We've been fortunate to make connections with some of them that take a good deal of frozen product, but nonetheless, they're going to, by default, want everything to come in fresh, but And they're going to want you to cater to their specific specs, whether they want things cut just a little bit differently, a little bit different size, longer bone here, shorter bone, whatever the case may be, you have to be able to cater to those if you want to keep the wholesale side, the wholesale, food
service, clientele, long term To have a different processor do that, I'm sure would be very difficult. But then also to be able to cater to the quantity needs. We deliver once a week, which is very inconvenient for the food service guys. They would much prefer deliveries every day, every two days. But they're able to go along with that weekly delivery, as long as we can hit the quantities that they need each week.
For anybody to be able to use a different processor and accomplish that, you'd be changing your numbers every single week, and I don't know of a processor that's going to go along with that. So we're able to modify the number of animals that we're doing on a weekly basis, how we're getting those processed, which cuts we need, which ones we don't. A lot more flexibility by doing it ourselves. A lot awful lot more workload.
And I don't know, there's an awful lot of days, I don't know if the workload is worth the, if the juice is worth the squeeze. But it's definitely necessary to cater to the clientele that we have.
I would, I'm making an assumption here, but I would assume certain chefs want certain cuts cut certain ways so that when you're processing for a certain wholesale client, you're doing it one way, but once you get those done, you may have to change up what you're doing a little bit for a different client. Would that be correct?
Absolutely, yep. If you're really good, if you're well connected to the chefs you can probably, as long as you come up with this cool new idea of something that you're gonna cut a specific way, you could probably get several of the chefs to go along with it. And, I shouldn't make it out like every single chef wants absolutely everything to be 100 percent their way. There's an awful lot of them that will go along with whatever you're producing as long as you pitch it in the right manner.
But yeah there's certain clientele that we know we're going to cut first thing in the day out of, the biggest or the smallest or whatever cut that they require and we're going to ensure that we don't get those mixed up in the process because they'll be mad if we do.
As you all do this and you've got this wholesale market and you're delivering once a week. There's lots of moving pieces. How do you keep everything going? Because even when I think about my small farm with no on the farm processing and just the things I'm doing, there's a lot going on. How do you all keep all that going? Oh
a few great people in some really crucial positions. We all wear way too many hats and finding people that are capable of wearing several hats themselves is very difficult to do. We've been fortunate to make some connections. We've got some really good people that surround us. We also always take the stance, we always take the stance of trying to do things as few times as possible and as large a quantities as possible. So we might be killing, I don't know, on a big day might kill 70 pigs.
We only do that once a week. So our kill day, we're killing pigs, we know that we're going to have minimal number of people out on the farm to take care of what needs taking care of on the farm and the rest of the people are going to be in the processing plant. And we're going to focus on those pigs, get those done, and get on to something else. Same thing on, for example, our ground products. I don't run less than 200 pound batches on ground product unless I absolutely have to.
If it's one of those chefs that has his very specific specs on what he wants done on a ground product. But otherwise, don't do under 200 pounds so that we produce what we need for the week, put the rest in the freezer, and don't have to do that specific sausage again soon. Really try to maximize our efficiency through minimum number of times of doing a task. If we're going to do something, do it big and get it done.
Oh yeah. Yeah. And as you brought up initially, people are so important. You get the right people in place and it makes everything else easier.
Yep, it certainly does. We've got an awesome guy here in the processing plant that especially since we've nixed off the chickens I'm able to spend a substantial amount more time out on the farm. It's really allowed us to make some benefits out there that we had seen the need for, but just didn't have the manpower to make them happen.
Oh yeah. With your processing, do you plan on changing that up for the future? Are you all pretty well set where you are and you like how it's going?
Yeah, man, I don't know that we'd say that we like how it's going. If we had a, in a perfect world, it would be 1997 all over again for all of eternity. We'd be making money selling pigs. Live, and that would be the extent of it. But that's not coming back, so I don't see us changing the business model substantially, change, making huge changes on the processing plant anytime soon. Our goal when we run the processing plant, as I mentioned, go big, get it done.
We typically run the processing plant hard three days a week, two shifts. Kill on Mondays, break everything into primals, and do what orders have to go out on Tuesday night on Tuesday. Wednesday finish everything up, and then Thursday I have minimal crew inside the processing plant, and I don't want to, I don't want to extend outside of that. We are still, doing a little bit of processing five days a week, but Thursday and Friday it's very hands off for me.
And if we'd go back into like we were in 2020 needing to run the processing plant, two shifts, five days a week, and all of the headache that comes with that. I think that we'd very quickly find something else to do.
Oh yeah. Evan, it's been very interesting learning about what all you guys are doing there, doing tons, and then with the on farm processing is another step. Just amazing what you guys are accomplishing there, but it is time we transition to the famous four questions. Same four questions we ask of all of our guests. first question, is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource?
There, there's so many different things that I take in terms of grazing grass resources. And it's hard to choose specifically one, but I think the big caveat to all of them is you really have to take into consideration the context that information comes out with. There's an awful lot of that information that is not going to be applicable to your operation. Us for example, we have the processing plant here.
You guys don't have processing plants, you're probably not going to be able to do what we do. But all of that said, I like the Facebook groups because there's an awful lot of people that aren't well recognized in the industry that are doing some really awesome things that don't have a book that they wrote, don't have, any big social or big media standing. They have an awful lot of really good information. I really like Will Harris's book, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn.
I like Gabe Brown's book Dirt to Soil. Listen to a few podcasts, listen to Grazing Grass, of course. I like Brian Alexander's Ranching Reboot. Jared Luman, Clay Connery. When I'm on the farm, I've got my headset in, I'm listening to something. Typically in the form of audio books or podcasts.
Yeah, you listed some great resources there and you accidentally included the grazing grass in there, but we're happy you included that. But, those Facebook groups, I, that's probably my favorite part of Facebook. The debate for a long time was rather not to even get on Facebook because it's just so crazy out there, but it's great to keep up with family.
But outside of family, The groups are where it is, as far as I'm concerned, because I'm in way too many groups, but there is valuable information out there in those groups, so if I'm pitching Facebook to someone, I'm like, you're going there for the groups.
Absolutely.
good information out there.
It's very polarizing. It seems like any topic that comes up, You very quickly see the opposite extremes, and I don't frequently see any of those conversations in which either of the extremes is the correct option, but somewhere in the middle lies what the correct option for most people and you get to see the experience from both ends.
And, and that's the big thing, and when I think about the grazing grass community, I want it to be great discussion Good conversation. Not too much of some of the other things we see elsewhere, because it seems like everything is so polarizing right now and really there's no reason for it to be that polarizing in my mind. we're all wanting better for everyone else, for ourselves. And we just have to sometimes take a step back and think about that.
Absolutely. If we, most of us probably agree on 90, 95 percent of things, there's no real reason for us to spend all of our time focusing on the other 10, five to 10%.
And my wife tells me I do not need to fix every problem on the internet. I love a good debate about something, not I need to be smarter. So I'm better at debating, but I love a good discussion because I know I'm not right about everything. Even though I tell my wife, I am, I know I'm not. So a good discussions is great for reflection on your thoughts and getting those thoughts in place. As long as it doesn't deteriorate into other stuff which we see too often.
I'll tell you that sitting down drinking a beer on the weekend and arguing in the Facebook groups is a pretty fun pastime, not productive by any means, but it's pretty enjoyable.
Yeah. Our second question. What is your favorite tool for the farm?
Favorite tool for the farm is a Gen 2, 19 97 to 2001 Ford Explorer. I've got three of 'em, and for whatever reason, those old Gen two explorers are about half the price of a comparable blazer or Jimmy Durango, any of those in the area. They're very cheap, so I don't have to worry about depreciation like wood on a $20,000 side by side. If I, heaven forbid rolled the thing, blew a motor, dropped a transmission out of it. The scrap price on the thing is better than half of what I paid to get them.
The last one that I bought paid 800 bucks for, because it was supposedly stuck in low speed in the transfer case. I pulled the, cut the wires on the actuator, put a drill battery to it. It shifted up into high and I've been driving it ever since. So make sure that you're buying them right. But those old Gen 2 Explorers are really hard to beat for a farm vehicle. Able to keep everything that I need in the car with me. So I have the back end of it full of buckets.
Each one is dedicated one of them to plumbing, one of them to veterinary type equipment, one of them to various ropes and baler twine chain that sort of stuff. I've got all of my tools in the car with me. If I am at the back of the farm, I only have time enough in the day to be there once. So I'm going to make sure that I have everything, every tool that I need with me, I'm going to get the job done.
And then once I get back, I can go into the processing plant, don't have to worry about, going back out to the farm later in the day, cleaning back up, everything. Go out there, get it done once, be done with it for the day.
As you, you shop around for those side by side prices, they just are, that sticker shock. Even on vehicles I love the idea of a vehicle such as that, and I've thought about it different times, because I'd like to have something a little bit different, but It's great to find something undervalued in the market that really works well for you. When my kids were small, I could buy Dodge Grand Caravans, just cash price, 1, 200 to 1, 800, that had tons of miles on them.
I replaced a couple axles and they would drive for a couple hundred thousand more. It was amazing. Now, my kids probably were pretty embarrassed by me, but finding that undervalued item and making it work for you is a pretty good feeling.
Absolutely. Being able to turn a wrench will save just countless dollars and even time as opposed to taking the thing to the mechanic. If you know what needs fixed and what you can push a little bit further before you take the time to fix it you'll save yourself an awful lot of money. Might not work in the states that have real stringent vehicle inspections, but Indiana here, it works pretty well.
Evan, our third question is, what would you tell someone just getting started?
Don't build your own processing plant, for sure. Processing, as I mentioned, I don't really feel that the juice is worth the squeeze most of the time. But processing we're really a fluke in that we made it work. The awful, the just vast majority of processing plants that start up, build from scratch, buy out a different operation are gone within three years. Really down and think about it if you want to go that route. If you do want to pursue the processing thing on your own, highly recommend.
That you only do the processing side, let somebody else kill them. The being able to manage those specs and everything. is really just going to come down to the processing side. So you'll still be able to do all of the specifics that you need for your clientele. You'll be able to do the more laborious portion of the process that there's not good alternatives for, a little bit of equipment on the kill floor goes an awful long way in terms of throughput.
There's not really options like that on the processing side, whether you have a four horsepower bandsaw or a half horsepower bandsaw, it's going to do the same thing at relatively similar speeds. So pursue the processing side, not the kill. But by and large, if you can figure out better things to spend your time doing. It'd probably be an awful lot more, awful lot more fun than working in a processing plant.
oh yeah. So excellent advice there, Evan. Lastly, where can others find out more about you?
Yeah, find out more about us as a farm Facebook and our website. Facebook, website Google search, just Gunthorpe Farms. Me specifically, Instagram is really my preferred platform. My username there is Evan G. Thorpe, so just Evan Gunthorpe without the U in the end. I thought maybe that would save some people from looking me up, I don't know. I don't know that it really changed anything. Additionally we have a Facebook group that has more frequent day to day stuff of what's going on the farm.
That is Gunthorpe's Friends of the Farm. Working on a YouTube channel under the same name, haven't got around to it yet though. Instagram is definitely best. Directly reaching out to me if you call the main business line, which is available on Google. That routes to my cell. Email is just evan at gunthorpefarms. com.
Very good, Evan. Evan, really appreciate you coming on and sharing about what's going on there.
Yeah, I was happy to be here. Fun time.