The Art of Manliness - #519： How to Start Your Own Farm

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:10.940 Have you ever been sitting at your office desk and found yourself daydreaming about becoming

00:00:14.980 a farmer? Well, my guest today has written a practical, all-encompassing handbook to

00:00:18.400 help you turn that dream into reality. His name is Forrest Pritchard. He's a farmer and

00:00:22.200 the co-author of the book, Start Your Own Farm, The Authoritative Guide to Becoming a Sustainable

00:00:26.120 21st Century Farmer. We begin our conversation discussing the state of the farming profession

00:00:30.300 today and the social and economic forces that have made it harder and harder to pursue.

00:00:34.100 Despite the headwinds facing would-be farmers, Forrest makes the case for why farming can still

00:00:37.740 be a fulfilling and financially sustainable profession. He then delves into the nitty-gritty

00:00:41.880 of starting and running a farm, including startup costs, land acquisition, deciding on what

00:00:46.060 to farm, creating multiple streams of revenue, pricing product, and figuring out where to

00:00:49.940 sell your goods. We then discuss the mental and emotional toll of farming and how to manage

00:00:53.720 burnout. If you ever dreamed about becoming a farmer, this episode will provide a lot of

00:00:57.280 useful information. Even if you don't want to become a farmer, you'll find this to be

00:01:00.580 a surprisingly interesting look at a lesser-known lifestyle and gain insights that are applicable

00:01:04.440 to any business and to life in general. After the show's over, check out our show notes

00:01:08.240 at aom.is slash startyourfarm. Forrest joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:01:23.720 Here we go. Forrest Pritchard, welcome back to the show.

00:01:29.580 Thanks, Brett. It's always the greatest honor being invited a second time, I think.

00:01:34.100 Well, yeah, we had you on about six years ago to talk about your experience of becoming

00:01:38.640 a farmer. Now you've got a new book out called Start Your Farm, The Authoritative Guide to

00:01:44.500 Becoming a Sustainable 21st Century Farmer. This is basically a how-to guide for other people

00:01:50.120 who have had that itch to become a farmer. This is how you do it. Let's talk about the

00:01:55.200 state of farming as a profession today. Has it changed in the six years since you were

00:01:59.000 last on the show, or is it about the same? Well, I think it's changed in ways that consumers,

00:02:05.740 which is all of us, you, me, and everybody that's listening, because we all eat three times

00:02:10.480 a day, hopefully, can identify in kind of an unexpected way. I don't think agriculture itself

00:02:16.980 has changed nearly so much as consumers being more conscious, whether intentionally or

00:02:23.720 unintentionally, about where their food comes from. And to wit, yesterday, Walmart announced

00:02:30.060 a major headline sourcing cattle for 500 different Walmart locations from a network of co-op farmers

00:02:37.740 down in Texas. So their customers, who are interested in knowing more precisely where their food comes

00:02:43.360 from, can have a direct source of putting a face to that food. So a college roommate of mine 20 years

00:02:52.280 ago kind of heard what we were doing, and he kind of got a faraway look. He's an MBA guy, and he said,

00:02:58.100 look, Forrest, if what you're saying about organic and sustainable food is half as good as it sounds to

00:03:05.100 me, and he said, and it sounds very good, eventually the big boys, quote-unquote, are going to want to get

00:03:10.200 into it. And it's taken two decades, but here they are. Well, so there is an uptick in interest in

00:03:16.040 independent farming. But as you talk about in the beginning of the book, farming as a profession,

00:03:20.840 like getting into it, you know, it's been declining for the past 100 years. And I think it's now,

00:03:26.120 like, what is it, like, 2% of the population are farmers? Is that correct? Yeah, a little bit less

00:03:30.860 than that, but not to split hairs. Right. I mean, a lot of that is just due to mechanization,

00:03:36.940 correct? Yeah, well, it's due to a lot of things. I think mechanization is certainly a part of that.

00:03:43.900 You know, post-industrial revolution, once that really hit its stride, you know, let's just throw

00:03:49.020 a number out there, say post-1920, things really started to decline. We're talking industrialization

00:03:53.600 on a, you know, multi-decade level and kind of the advent of improved seed varieties and things of

00:04:02.040 that nature. But I think that, you know, there was an intersection that eventually led to

00:04:07.600 specifically the decline of the classic American farm, which is that one we kind of imagine our

00:04:14.640 grandmother and granddad farming or aunt and uncle in some recent distant past, which is the midsize

00:04:20.260 farm. It's the one with the dairy cows and some pigs and chickens, which isn't completely extinct,

00:04:25.460 but it's largely mythological at this point. And there's a whole number of reasons we could

00:04:30.040 devote a full hour, you know, drilling into the economics of all that. But for the sake of this

00:04:36.240 discussion, we've got, you know, kind of mega farms on one end and smaller economically sustainable farms

00:04:44.280 on the other. And, you know, kind of the missing link is that classic midsize American farm.

00:04:50.560 So not only are the number of farmers going down, because we need fewer farmers, it's possible to

00:04:56.020 get the food we need with fewer farmers next to these giant agribusinesses. There's that aspect,

00:05:01.420 but there's also, it's hard to become a farmer too, because like there's less land. I mean, you know,

00:05:06.380 you go 150 years ago, 100, you know, like the country was given away land even then.

00:05:11.580 That's right. And I should back up just a second and put an asterisk next to, you know, enough

00:05:16.000 mechanization to grow our food. It's to grow a certain kind of food. And, you know, from a large scale

00:05:22.180 agricultural standpoint, we're talking farms in excess of 1,000 to 2,000 acres and up into the

00:05:27.580 tens of thousands of acres. We're largely talking about corn, soybeans, wheat, and confinement

00:05:32.020 livestock systems, you know, confinement chicken, things of that nature versus a lot of times what

00:05:36.660 we identify as food is, you know, our salads and our other items on the menu that aren't called,

00:05:43.080 you know, chicken sandwiches. So there's just this big disparity between mechanization and what has to

00:05:47.900 be more intentionally hand grown. But yeah, I mean, to your, to your second point, you're out in

00:05:54.200 Oklahoma. It wasn't more than 150 years ago that the Homestead Act enabled folks to, you know,

00:06:00.680 literally go out there with their sooner wagons and do these land rushes and get a hundred plus

00:06:06.640 acres up to 300 acres. As recently as I think the late sixties, early seventies, one could homestead in

00:06:13.400 Alaska. So the government was giving away this land. If you could demonstrate that you were

00:06:17.620 quote unquote, improving the land that meant growing a crop and, and putting, putting a house

00:06:22.480 on the land. So there was this free land. There was all the way back to the American revolution

00:06:27.720 when we didn't have, you know, an economy, so to speak, a soldiers were given free land

00:06:32.840 as compensation for fighting the American revolution. And this land has been handed down

00:06:37.200 to people to a certain degree, people like myself. I didn't purchase my farm. It was handed down to my

00:06:42.940 grandfather. It wasn't originally purchased, but I didn't go out and purchase it. So there's,

00:06:47.860 you know, there's hundreds of thousands of folks out there that either were given the land in one

00:06:52.620 way or another, which makes it really challenging to create a level, level playing field when it comes

00:06:57.720 to business. And we'll get into the land topic of what you can do to overcome that issue. If that's

00:07:03.820 something you want to do, but let's say, despite all these headwinds that are going against farming as

00:07:07.840 a profession, you've got, you know, economic incentives, thanks to subsidies where, you know,

00:07:12.360 corn, soybeans, wheat, all that stuff. That's, there's incentive to grow that stuff. Right. There's,

00:07:17.620 it's fewer, we need fewer farmers to produce that sort of thing. Correct. There's less land available.

00:07:23.320 And also farming is just really, it's expensive and hard to do despite all that. Yeah. Why should

00:07:29.800 someone decide to become a farmer? Well, you've listed all the very pragmatic, sensible,

00:07:35.260 logical reasons not to do it. And then, you know, this is something we immediately tackle

00:07:40.160 in, in chapter one of the book. We don't beat around the bush with asking the question,

00:07:45.120 why be a farmer? Which is followed by chapter two is, do you have what it takes? These are

00:07:50.520 very introspective questions. So, so why do you do anything? You know, why did you start,

00:07:55.440 you know, the art, art of manliness brand? Presumably you had a passion for it. You had something

00:08:00.640 that transcended just dollars and cents to saying, this is something you want to devote

00:08:06.540 yourself to. It means something to you. And farming fits all those categories. I believe

00:08:11.700 for many of us, you know, what's not to like about growing food. What's not to like about

00:08:16.660 healing the land. What's not to like about having a family, you know, on a piece of property or where

00:08:23.220 kids are able to, you know, free range and come home to the ring of a dinner bell. It sounds a little

00:08:28.160 dreamy, but it's also very realistic and attainable when one puts their mind to it. It's one of those

00:08:35.160 questions, you know, you have to ask, how can you justify or do anything that isn't just getting on

00:08:40.780 the hamster wheel and, you know, and getting in the, uh, getting in the car every morning and getting

00:08:45.160 into the commute. A lot of people wait their whole lives to, to some, you know, fictional retirement

00:08:50.880 that never really fulfills itself either. So you start farming just like you do any passion. You just

00:08:56.520 start. Well, I'm curious. So you've been, you've been working with, you know, sort of people who

00:09:00.540 are just getting started with farming. Yeah. Who are these people that are doing it? Are they people

00:09:04.720 who have had like a family history of farming or it's like, these are, you know, just sort of city

00:09:10.220 dwellers and they, they went out for a vacation to Vermont and they decide, Oh, this looks really nice.

00:09:15.880 I want to become a farmer. Yeah. It's, it's a terrific question, but it's, it's not an easy one to

00:09:20.640 answer. So I think there's burgeoning interest that's pretty widespread. I'm sure your listeners

00:09:26.780 will be able to kind of identify themselves through this. As alluded to earlier, there's

00:09:31.760 the dreamers of the worthy dream. You think to yourself, well, maybe I'm not satisfied with

00:09:37.040 the job I currently have. What could I do that would provide more meaning to my life? Farming

00:09:41.180 certainly fits that bill. You have young people and make no mistake that farming requires energy

00:09:47.020 and enthusiasm and physicality. And you get these 22 year olds who have just graduated with a BA,

00:09:53.420 you know, from, from whatever college and get to looking around and saying, geez,

00:09:58.400 is this what I want to participate in? Maybe I want to do something to get my hands in the soil 0.58

00:10:03.780 after, after 18 years of being under fluorescent lights. I mean, I don't want to sign up for that

00:10:08.780 anymore. And then you've got folks that may be like, like me inherited land and get intimidated by

00:10:16.000 the thought of, you know, $500,000 combines or thousands of acres of monoculture, corn and

00:10:21.860 soybeans and say, look, maybe I want to pivot into something where I can be more of a participant in

00:10:28.140 my community. Maybe I want to be able to get an authentic paycheck for my food instead of what's

00:10:33.460 dictated by the Chicago mercantile board of exchange, you know, things like that. So I think

00:10:38.640 there's, there's a whole different bunch of angles that folks can be taken to kind of arrive at a

00:10:43.340 similar destination. So you mentioned in the book, you start off talking about like just the

00:10:46.800 practicalities and you, it's a very, it's like a rude awakening, right? You guys lay out your

00:10:51.480 coauthor and you lay out like, man, it's tough. You're going to, you're going to, you might lose

00:10:55.800 money. There's gonna be years that you're just like, man, I don't know if I can do this. But then

00:11:00.300 you talk about like, there's certain mindsets and skills you kind of have to have going into being

00:11:07.140 a farmer. So you can prepare for that. So what are some of those, like the mindsets? And I don't know,

00:11:10.840 they're like, I wouldn't say like specific, like hard skills, like how to till and things like

00:11:14.580 that. Cause you can learn that, but like this sort of softer skills that you need in order to

00:11:19.400 make a go at farming. Yeah. Well, we were chatting briefly before we went on air about how this is

00:11:24.860 kind of a sneaky business book and a farming is a business. I think it's a wonderful kind of like

00:11:30.880 a primer for an MBA. I think you could get a lot of transfer credits by trying to operate a farm

00:11:35.240 for a year and then enter any MBA program in the country. So first and foremost, we need to think

00:11:40.780 about farming from a profitability margins and, and all those wonderful didactic terms that we get

00:11:49.180 before our eyes glaze over. But pursuing that passion, we have to think some really practical

00:11:54.540 considerations. Are we physically fit for this? Can't, are we willing to face seven day a week work?

00:12:01.580 Are we too introverted to promote our products? Are we intellectually curious enough to do the hard

00:12:11.020 work of, of understanding all the science that goes into successful agricultural production?

00:12:19.280 And, you know, last but not least, are we willing to kind of put all those things together and risk

00:12:25.280 emotional and, and, and mental burnout? You know, are we able to pace ourselves and,

00:12:30.680 and, and be our own best ally in taking care of ourselves? Something we could all probably improve

00:12:35.660 on. No, for sure. And when you work with young farmers, what's like the most common erroneous

00:12:41.540 assumption you see them have that makes farming a lot harder than it needs to be when they're first

00:12:48.120 starting out? Well, that's a terrific question. And, you know, we've all probably heard some

00:12:53.160 iteration of do what you love and the money will follow. I think that's, that's certainly been the case

00:12:58.960 for me, but it's, it works a lot better after 10 years. You know, once you've got all the economic

00:13:06.960 framework, the, the customers and the hard, the hard business of failure, the hard business of,

00:13:12.500 of, of struggling through failure. So I think it is wise to pursue farming from a passion and a dream,

00:13:20.900 a standpoint, but to go in as, as my co-writer, Ellen says, with, with eyes wide open to this,

00:13:27.060 because the money will eventually follow, but it does, it just, any business takes so long. I mean,

00:13:32.480 the average business takes five years of running at a loss and with farming that can just be, you

00:13:38.800 know, terrifically debilitating on top of the physicality, the dependence on the weather,

00:13:44.220 the competition of dealing with corn. That's, that's $3 a bushel, the same price it's been since

00:13:49.180 1975 for Pete's sake price of a pizza, which is 599 delivered from Domino's. I can put in my old VHS tapes

00:13:56.440 from, you know, 1995 and see the same pizzas from 25, 30 years ago at this point.

00:14:01.660 So there's just, there's just terrific headwinds to success. And that's the most important thing to

00:14:07.820 be aware of. It's not, it's not insurmountable, but one needs to be aware of it.

00:14:12.660 Yeah. Just, it's going to take time.

00:14:14.100 That's right.

00:14:14.540 Yeah. I think that's one of the hard things with particularly younger people who were getting

00:14:19.400 into farming for the first time and never really had like, you know, grandparents or aunts

00:14:22.900 and uncles who were on a farm. Like when, when I was reading this book and I, when I've read,

00:14:27.860 you know, talked to you previously, one of the things about farming is that the time scale you

00:14:31.340 have to think on is, you know, years, two years, maybe 10 years. Cause sometimes it might, that

00:14:37.480 takes that long for a field to get ready or a cow to get ready for slaughter. And we're so used to

00:14:44.200 today, if you haven't any experience with that is like, well, it's like the quarter, like what can I

00:14:47.680 get done in a quarter? Like, or next week. And so being able to expand your timeframe or how you

00:14:52.920 think about time, I imagine is a, is a, is a shift that can be really hard to make for a lot of

00:14:58.700 beginning farmers.

00:14:59.900 Yeah. I'd agree with that wholeheartedly. You know, I don't want to ignore the fact that we

00:15:05.300 have huge assets that didn't exist previously too. I mean, our ability to brand ourselves,

00:15:09.960 to share our story on social media, you know, Instagram and, and, and websites and Twitter and all

00:15:16.900 that stuff is extraordinary. And the ability for us to provide transparency and authenticity

00:15:22.480 on one end and then consumer, as you know, as I allude to, to start the conversation off,

00:15:28.080 Walmart is, is finally got on board with this. And, you know, the former CEO of what is it that

00:15:33.700 home delivery service blue apron, right? Right. He's now the biggest fan of free range chicken

00:15:38.500 and they're going to, you know, quote unquote, revolutionize the free range chicken business.

00:15:42.400 So all these, you know, if Silicon Valley on one end and, and Arkansas from the point of Walmart is

00:15:48.820 getting in into this on the other, that's a huge corporate asset to a new farmer because that's just

00:15:55.680 driving consumer awareness. So there's, it's not all headwinds. There are some, some remarkable

00:16:00.940 tailwinds as well. Again, as long as we go in here with the knowledge that some things from a

00:16:05.860 biological standpoint, such as the restoration of soil, you know, just physically it's, it's seven

00:16:12.140 to 10 years. It's a mandatory thing. There's only so much of a rush job you can do and rush jobs

00:16:18.000 generally get us into trouble. All right. So let's say someone's listening and they decide they want

00:16:23.060 to, they want to go in on farming. The next decision you have to make is like, what kind of farming are

00:16:28.060 you going to do? Right. So how do you, how do you make that decision? Cause like you mentioned

00:16:32.260 really, cause like the stereotypical farm that we think of when it's like aunt Bess and uncle Joe

00:16:36.980 or whatever. Oh, it was like, yeah, it was a dairy farm. There was corn, there was lettuce, there was,

00:16:42.620 you know, chickens, multi things. But it seems like in the book, you said that's pretty hard to pull

00:16:48.100 off, especially when you're starting off. Yeah. Well, I mean, think about it, Brett. I mean,

00:16:51.900 how many things can you be an expert at? Yeah. Not many. Are you going to be an expert accountant

00:16:55.880 and a plumber and a car mechanic? You know, probably not. Right. I mean, how many,

00:17:01.300 we live in a time of special specialization and, you know, I kind of joke at farmer's market,

00:17:07.140 people often say, well, you raise cattle and pigs and sheep and chickens. Do you also have a dairy

00:17:13.520 and you, you know, have a garden and raise fruits and have horses? And I say, of course I do. I'm also

00:17:18.160 a cowboy astronaut and I drive a mechanical unicorn to work. You know what I mean? How many,

00:17:23.100 how many ways can we spread ourselves thin? So, so knowing that, and I think there's wisdom

00:17:28.280 in, in kind of taking a big step back and saying, look, can I grow blueberries and,

00:17:33.240 and, and goats at the same time? Maybe, but to fool ourselves into thinking that there's not an

00:17:38.980 infinity of information out there on both of those subjects is, is truly delusional. So what can we do

00:17:46.000 to circumvent that? We do apprenticeships. We go to the source of people who are experts and we politely

00:17:53.000 ask for their knowledge, right? So we do that by being an intern or apprentice and there's no age

00:17:59.180 barrier to any of this stuff. If, if you're 40 years old and you're saying, I'm not going to be

00:18:03.640 an apprentice on a sustainable vegetable farm, then your ego is much too far in the way to become a

00:18:09.460 farmer. So you need to work on that first. And then once you're able to realize that there's this,

00:18:15.900 just a huge ocean of, of very useful experience out there, then we can use the goodwill of other

00:18:24.220 people to leverage that to our benefit, right? And this is how, this isn't romantic or, you know,

00:18:30.100 new age thinking. This is how we got forward as a civilization for, for millennia. You had

00:18:35.000 apprentices, uh, apprentice to masters and you had apprentices to the apprentices and it's a succession

00:18:39.620 of knowledge. And as much as I like to jump on YouTube and watch a five minute video and,

00:18:44.740 and feel like I, I now know how to grow hops. For example, it, life just doesn't work that way.

00:18:50.040 There's too many variables to it. And that's, that's always going to be a human,

00:18:53.500 a human component where the master needs to teach, teach the student.

00:18:58.600 So you can, uh, yeah. Sync in with somebody to learn this stuff. You don't have to start off from

00:19:01.880 scratch. You don't want to overextend yourself. That's like any business. I mean, there's a lot of

00:19:06.780 business. If you're a small business owner and they're listening to that, it's like, well, of course I

00:19:10.760 wouldn't like try to do, you know, five different things in my business that would just lead to

00:19:15.320 failure. The same applies to a farm. So you can't, you have to pick one thing that you're going to do

00:19:19.500 really well at, but here's the question. Is it going to say like you decide blueberries are your

00:19:23.760 thing? Like, is it always going to be blueberries or are you going to have to change sometime?

00:19:29.020 Well, you know, nature hates a vacuum as much as like, you know, the human spirit. So,

00:19:34.040 you know, if I was a new farmer starting out, I would, and we've got a whole chapter devoted to

00:19:38.480 this. It's called matching the land to its suited use, right? So you've identified yourself as a

00:19:43.300 farmer. You've got the passion, you've got the spirit, you've got the physicality. Next, we need

00:19:47.360 to say, Hey, I'm in Temecula, California. This is ideally suited for citrus, probably not suited for,

00:19:53.720 you know, growing cattle, for example, or perhaps maybe that's not the best example, but you get my

00:19:57.620 point. It's, it's air and it's dry and it's, it's a high elevation. I'm in upstate Wisconsin.

00:20:02.960 Maybe it's not best suited for citrus and vice versa. So we, we take a big look at this and then we have to

00:20:07.800 say, well, what's our market? Is the market saturated with blueberries? Is there an opportunity

00:20:12.900 for, you know, goat cheese? Is there enough on the opposite end of the spectrum? Are, you know,

00:20:20.280 federal subsidies so compelling that I should be growing, you know, a thousand acres of wheat this

00:20:25.760 year? So there's, there's all these various metrics that combine to overlap into a Venn diagram,

00:20:32.120 you know, where you find your sweet spot in the center. And so you start out with blueberries,

00:20:37.660 for example, build your expertise with that. And then of course you're going to expand. If,

00:20:41.560 if you're selling blueberries, people are going to want to know, well, where are the raspberries?

00:20:44.520 You know, so you expand into raspberries and if you're into raspberries, people are going to say,

00:20:47.920 well, where are the peaches? You know, so maybe you dip your toe into these different areas,

00:20:52.060 but probably don't, you don't try to start out in the first five years

00:20:55.940 of becoming an expert on, uh, on brambles and bush fruits and also try to be raising,

00:21:02.800 you know, aquaculture where you're raising rainbow trout on the side, for example.

00:21:07.880 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:21:10.960 And now back to the show.

00:21:12.720 Well, it's, but here's the thing about specialization that can get you in trouble,

00:21:16.240 particularly on a farm is that, okay, berries only grow a certain time of year and there's a

00:21:20.020 harvest season and they're going to sell a certain time of year. Like, how do you figure out what do

00:21:24.060 you do with the rest of your time? Right. Or like, what is, what do you, what do you do if

00:21:28.440 like the berry crop just sucks that year? Like, I mean, so I mean, I imagine you, you don't want

00:21:34.040 to diversify too much, but there has to be some diversity in order to keep the income coming in

00:21:38.540 so you can stay afloat. Right. Well, you are already thinking like a businessman farmer.

00:21:44.260 So kudos to you. Yes. You're a shining example for our listeners. So, uh, terrific questions.

00:21:51.460 What do you do with that? Well, you probably, the first thing to do is immediately go into a,

00:21:56.280 a concept of year round availability, which would require what we call value adding, right? So you

00:22:03.080 take a fresh product and you somehow turn it into additional value. You could, you could freeze that

00:22:08.700 product. You could turn it into pies, jams. I'm just spitballing from the blueberry standpoint.

00:22:14.600 What I do as a livestock farmer in a parallel universe is we raise lamb about six months out of the

00:22:20.620 year. And so what I do is I stockpile because that's the optimal growing season for us is when

00:22:27.440 pastures flourishing, the lambs are going to grow at the cost of me of photosynthesis rainfall and my

00:22:34.800 personal management. It's going to cost me a lot more to feed those lambs, you know, hay in the middle 1.00

00:22:39.260 of January hour. I am then in the middle of July when things are flourishing. So we'll grow way in

00:22:45.680 excess number of lambs that we're able to grow. And then we will, you know, process those lambs,

00:22:50.620 vacuum pack them and freeze them at zero degrees. And then we'll, you know, spend that product off

00:22:55.120 throughout the next six months. So, you know, there's end arounds on all this stuff. Your

00:23:00.320 listeners might be thinking, well, what do you do with, you know, 10,000 acres of corn or soybeans?

00:23:05.060 Well, that's our commodity system. And it goes into rail cars and gets distributed to confinement

00:23:10.320 livestock systems or turns into biodiesel or things like that. So these are less perishable

00:23:14.140 goods. But when you're dealing with perishability from a, something that's not going to be turned

00:23:19.660 into, you know, diesel fuel or animal feed, then you've, you've got a lot more considerations for

00:23:24.620 sure. So let's talk about, so we've figured out what we want. So you're going to have to, you're

00:23:28.280 going to grow whatever's good for the area. You're going to take into account the demand for it. So

00:23:33.320 you have to, you know, put on your economics hat and look into that. You also have to think about

00:23:37.400 diversity, diversifying in a way that you don't overextend yourself, but still allow yourself to

00:23:42.340 have income coming the entire year. And there's ways you can even diversify within like the niche

00:23:47.260 you pick. Let's talk about the thing you need to have a farm, which is land. And as we talked about

00:23:52.200 earlier, that's in short supply now. So, and it's getting expensive. So how do you start, how do you

00:24:00.380 get the land you need to start a farm when it's pretty hard to get a hold of?

00:24:04.060 It's an enormous question. I think it's one of the, you know, I think historians will probably look back

00:24:09.000 for the early 21st century and say, this is one of the, you know, the big elephants in the room

00:24:14.260 that we were all kind of ignoring. So terrific question. Again, complicated answers. We try to

00:24:21.000 provide a lot of answers to this. I think chapter five is getting your hands on land. And we acknowledge

00:24:28.880 this problem first and foremost in so much that land is mostly valued on what kind of house you can

00:24:35.140 build on it. Not what kind of roots and berries and chickens you can raise on it, right? So we've

00:24:41.480 kind of shifted historically, you know, the bullseye on what is land for? Land is for subdivisions and

00:24:49.140 strip malls. No disrespect. People have to live somewhere. I get that. But we also have to eat.

00:24:54.360 So the bullseye has shifted so radically, it's left people who want to buy land kind of in the lurch.

00:25:00.120 So it's my opinion. And, you know, listeners might be saying it's easy for me to say,

00:25:05.300 because I already have my land, but it troubles me that I'm unable to go out and replicate my

00:25:11.300 business. That's not a sustainable business model to me. Like, yes, I'm profitable from an operating

00:25:18.560 cost standpoint, but from an investment standpoint, I'm still trying to recoup those costs.

00:25:23.500 And that bothers me because, you know, beware of false profits, right?

00:25:26.520 Haha. So we have to move the bullseye away from land ownership, which is a very romantic

00:25:33.520 part of our American dream and manifest destiny and our American experience and all these things,

00:25:39.560 and get into what we call land acquisition, or land access is a better word for that.

00:25:46.100 And land access can mean a whole suite of things. All those farmers who have traditionally inherited

00:25:52.660 their land, more commonly than not, I think it's up to 70% of those landowners, the statistics kind

00:26:00.440 of bouncing around in my head, have children and or grandchildren that are not interested in either

00:26:06.040 becoming farmers or managing that land. Light bulb, huge opportunity to leverage the land that you need

00:26:13.160 at a long-term lease or some kind of profit sharing arrangement, where you never have to

00:26:19.620 take physical ownership. You never have to go to the bank and say, hey, would you loan me $2 million

00:26:25.900 so I can capitalize my farm outside of Denver or outside of Chicago? And, you know, in a business

00:26:33.940 that's, you know, lucky to return 5% to 10%, you're not going to get that loan. It's not going to happen.

00:26:39.340 Okay.

00:26:39.620 So we have to creatively utilize, again, going back to the passion and the dreams of these landowners

00:26:47.460 who want to see their farms remain farms and try to pair that goodwill with our ambitions. I think

00:26:56.200 it's a very sensible way to do that. Now, if we're intent on having to own the land, Ellen and I have

00:27:03.200 come up with about five or six different, what we think are pretty clever ways to go about doing so,

00:27:07.760 which would take too much time in this podcast. So I encourage you to go out and read chapter five.

00:27:13.500 So yeah, you encourage like just leasing, like finding someone just to lease the land from

00:27:17.200 to grow your land and look for a long-term lease. You're looking 10, 20, maybe 50 years.

00:27:22.120 Yeah, certainly to start with at least. That way you're softening. You've got a soft landing if

00:27:27.860 things don't work right. Because typically it's extraordinary. You can lease or rent land as,

00:27:34.100 you know, pick your terminology for a fraction, an absolute fraction of what it costs to buy the

00:27:41.240 land, but be able to produce the same goods. So, I mean, if you're a factory and you're able to

00:27:47.080 produce the exact same goods for nickel or the same goods for 90 cents, I mean, what are you going to

00:27:51.980 do? Presumably, if everything else is absolutely equal, you're going to take that advantage. And this

00:27:58.140 is just, you know, like farmland rents for like $70 an acre, depending on where you are, versus $7,000

00:28:05.540 an acre. Okay. I mean, these aren't numbers I'm pulling out of thin air. You just, you know,

00:28:12.480 get on your local Craigslist and look for a pasture rental or cropland rental. It's somewhere, you know,

00:28:18.020 between 50 and $150 an acre across the country. Maybe as high as 300, but you're not going to find land

00:28:23.840 even in the most remote areas of the country that are likely to be less than $3,000 an acre.

00:28:28.940 And if you're anywhere at all near an urban population where you're likely to get the

00:28:33.120 highest return for your goods, we're talking tens of thousands of dollars per acre. So yeah,

00:28:37.640 we have to be intelligent business people and maybe compromise what a concept, you know,

00:28:44.760 to compromise our dreams or to, you know, kind of pull the reins momentarily on our passions to

00:28:50.560 have the economic return to defer that dream to somewhere in the future. It's a real concept.

00:28:57.940 No, sure. I think that's like one of the most interesting chapters I read where you made the

00:29:01.900 case, like, don't buy land because you're never, you're, you're, you're not going to get your money

00:29:06.600 back basically for, I mean, for a very long time, if you even do. But let's go back to this idea that

00:29:12.840 there's a downside to farming is that there's less land because a lot of it's been going to

00:29:17.220 development as for the suburbs and things like that. There's actually an upside to that because

00:29:21.380 now you have, you can have farmland, access to farmland if you're leasing, but still be close

00:29:26.760 to a market. Like you don't have to drive two or three hours. It might just be 30 minutes.

00:29:32.320 Right. So overhead is, is the, you know, the distribution marketing and, and overhead of,

00:29:38.960 of getting this food onto, you know, Arby's and Chick-fil-A's and, and Panera's across the country

00:29:45.880 from sea to shining sea is largely taken care of by the commodity system. So the farmer receives a

00:29:53.440 nominal price, which is determined in Chicago for corn, soybeans, wheat, chicken, hogs, all these

00:29:59.280 things. And then food makes its way through the distribution, the processing and the trucking and

00:30:03.840 the warehousing and into these restaurants. And the farmer receives, you know, historically 10 cents

00:30:09.060 on the dollar for that. It's, it's a kind of diminishing, diminishing thing. But the benefit is,

00:30:13.600 is you don't have to worry about your own warehousing and distribution, all those things. So it's,

00:30:17.940 you know, Ellen and I posit that the, the biggest value in all likelihood and our peer group, and, you

00:30:25.620 know, we travel around across the country and speak at conferences and meet people and all this stuff.

00:30:30.980 The, the biggest advantage is to grow on one to two acres of intensive vegetable or fruit production

00:30:38.540 or some kind of micro, you know, laying hens or something like that, or maybe a goat cheese

00:30:42.900 dairy, something that can sustainably be produced on a couple acres and perhaps even purchase those

00:30:48.820 acres. But again, you know, if you, if you cannot do that, then don't. And then you've got your

00:30:53.740 customer base built in. It's, it's pretty remarkable, I think. And again, going back to those consumers

00:30:59.680 who are already keyed into having that connection with the land, which is now missing, not just a

00:31:05.540 generation, but probably two generations to borrow your, your, your uncle Joe and aunt Bess analogy

00:31:10.680 from earlier. And on top of that, social media, you can just, you know, acquire 10,000 fans practically

00:31:16.760 overnight. So what an amazing time to be thinking about, especially small scale, sustainable agriculture.

00:31:23.840 Yeah. Speaking of small scale and being close to the market, like I think in Detroit, they're doing

00:31:28.400 that thing where they're taking neighborhoods that have just been abandoned and they're turning into

00:31:32.740 little small farms where they're growing lettuce, carrots, goats, and it's right there in Detroit.

00:31:38.560 Yeah, it's extraordinary. So one farm I visited is, is called D-Town and Abbo Ifoima was spearheading

00:31:44.100 that a few years ago. She's one of the main partners there. And they took a River Rouge Park,

00:31:50.120 which is Detroit Central Park. And it's truly, it's, you know, I don't want to overstate to,

00:31:55.720 I don't want to insult people from Detroit, but I think anyone would agree with me. It was overgrown

00:31:59.780 and the budget wasn't there to maintain this place. They had an Olympic swimming pool that

00:32:03.980 they put in and it's just, you know, full, it's got tires laying in it, at least a couple of years

00:32:07.500 ago. And they negotiated with the, with the city and said, look, we've got the manpower and the

00:32:14.740 motivation to put a farm in the middle of this park and start teaching kids how to grow asparagus

00:32:20.520 and lettuce and, you know, honeybees. What, but we don't have any money. What can you do? And they

00:32:24.780 leased it for 10 years for a dollar a year, seven acres, seven acres in the middle of Detroit.

00:32:28.960 So that's extraordinary to me. So, you know, let's, let's, let's be creative and we have to

00:32:35.640 move, move the bullseye on, on this idea of land ownership. Because once we pull back the curtain,

00:32:40.820 we realize that land ownership has never really been a level playing field to begin with,

00:32:45.360 with the land giveaways and the inheritance. Right. So that's just an incredible story to me.

00:32:50.820 Yeah. So you have to get creative and like, don't, don't, yeah. And also move the bullseye of like,

00:32:54.540 it has to be out in the country somewhere to have a farm. It could be in a suburb literally,

00:32:59.660 and you can have a good, sustainable, small farm.

00:33:02.960 Yeah. Yeah. Brett, last, last week I was up in Central Park in New York and I was walking through

00:33:08.320 just enjoying the lilacs and the, the, the splendor of Central Park and two guys come walking past me

00:33:14.040 and they're talking very volubly and saying, oh, the futures in, in vertical farming, you know,

00:33:19.880 these abandoned warehouses and other guys just agreeing. I'm thinking to myself, my gosh, when

00:33:24.380 you're walking through Central Park in 2019 and two guys are talking about vertical farming,

00:33:29.280 you know, we're just, uh, we've reached a different level of consciousness in this country.

00:33:33.940 So you get the land, you're going to look for something maybe you could lease when you're

00:33:37.200 first starting out. There's a little more cushion there in case things go wrong, but besides the

00:33:42.320 land, like there's other stuff you need to start a farm. So you're going to need capital,

00:33:46.720 like any business. It's like, what, what is that besides what, what are you, what are you

00:33:51.240 going to use the money for when you first start your farm? Is it just buying it? I mean, I guess

00:33:54.760 it's going to depend on what you're farming, right? Yeah, of course. Yeah. So there's going to be,

00:33:58.940 there's mandatory stuff that you have to have. There has to be some kind of infrastructure.

00:34:03.080 So, you know, just, you know, nuts and bolts is going to be some kind of packing shed slash

00:34:09.680 workshop, right. Where you're going to keep your tools, park your, you know, hopefully modest

00:34:14.720 amount of diesel, diesel and gas burning equipment and a place to store your products against weather,

00:34:22.660 ability to pack for whatever orders you have, whether it's going to be a restaurant business

00:34:26.820 or a CSA, community supported agriculture, farmer's market, or, you know, up from there,

00:34:32.160 you have to have these things. What else are you going to need? You're going to need a water supply.

00:34:36.360 You're going to need presumably some kind of fencing to either keep varmints out of your

00:34:42.000 pumpkin patch or coyotes out of your flock of lambs. So that's a safe bet. You're going to need

00:34:48.880 a reserve fund for unexpected contingencies, such as, you know, weather catastrophes,

00:34:56.120 rainy days at your markets, times when the restaurant that's been reliably buying $3,000

00:35:01.500 every week of your product suddenly changes ownership and says, we don't, we don't know who

00:35:06.900 you are anymore. Don't ask me how I know how that feels. It's heartbreaking. I'm stabbing myself

00:35:11.880 in the chest right now. So all those things, you know, are just practical considerations that are

00:35:17.300 also happen to be mandatory. So, I mean, how, I mean, I guess, what's it look like? I mean,

00:35:22.080 you're imagining if the beginning farmer is going to have to take out some debt to get going or is it,

00:35:27.220 yeah. Yeah. Ideally, again, if we are uniting, you know, the ultimate sweet spot to me is to

00:35:36.580 identify with one of these older farmers. And I'm not, I'm, this isn't like a ride at Disneyland.

00:35:43.320 Okay. There are services out there that pair older farmers that want to supply a mentorship. Now,

00:35:50.300 you know, nothing in life is easy, especially when you get into human nature, you got to deal with

00:35:53.700 personalities. But so many of these farms exist with barns, power, water supplies, packing sheds,

00:36:01.040 pickup trucks, tractors. Okay. And these things, these items, if they're not utilized,

00:36:06.800 get sold for insultingly less than, less than pennies on the dollar. I mean, you just cue the

00:36:12.580 John Mellencamp songs from 1985, you know, blood on the scarecrow kind of thing. It's, it's, it's a,

00:36:18.160 it's a tragedy. So if we can have the wisdom to not only find these places that are willing to lend

00:36:25.900 the expectation, lend the experience, sorry, the expertise, the experience, as well as the

00:36:30.720 infrastructure, then our debt requirements can be, can be much lower. We just have to have the,

00:36:35.560 hopefully the wisdom to deal with the, with the personalities of, of, of, of a potentially

00:36:39.940 crotchety old farmer. Right. Potentially crotchety. It's a lot. Uncle Joe is pretty crotchety.

00:36:44.620 I'll tell you, man, I'll tell you, but it's pretty, pretty valuable if you don't have to

00:36:48.860 lay out a couple hundred thousand dollars. No, for sure. One of the most, I think,

00:36:53.360 useful chapters for me, even though I'm not a farmer, I thought it was really a good business

00:36:57.240 thing to think about, is that a farmer should focus on his limiting factors instead of trying

00:37:03.400 to maximize their strength, which is kind of, it goes against to what you typically hear people say is,

00:37:08.380 oh, you should focus on your strengths, not on your weaknesses. Right. Why, why is it important

00:37:12.060 for farmers to think about their limiting factors? Because it's really hard to throw money at these,

00:37:17.380 at these problems. See, with, with so many modern businesses, we, we hire a consultant. We got a

00:37:22.460 problem. We hire a consultant. The consultant supplies a solution for us. And that's, that's all

00:37:26.640 well and appropriate for a lot of businesses. Hey, I don't know how to network my cloud. So my app is at

00:37:32.820 maximum functionality. Hey, there's a guy, you know, that can fix that for me. I pay him,

00:37:37.400 you know, $4,500 and off to the races. I go, it's much more difficult for me to say, Hey,

00:37:43.380 my soil is lacking in organic matter. I need to move my organic matter from 1.5% up to 3%.

00:37:51.000 Well, how do you do that efficiently? Nature can do that. Nature has done that. It's called,

00:37:56.300 you know, the great plains where the soil used to be presumably where you're sitting right now.

00:38:00.800 The soil used to be like 30 feet deep or something like that. And then we had the dust bowl and it all

00:38:05.580 blew to where I am in Northern Virginia. You know, uh, the clouds turned dark in Washington DC and

00:38:10.840 there went all our soil 2000 miles away. So there are limiting factors can't just be solved by throwing

00:38:17.320 money at them, especially because money is so hard to come by with farming. So we have to be patient

00:38:23.920 by building our experience, growing our markets, developing a relationship with the land where you

00:38:31.740 become like a doctor for lack of a better analogy, where the land is communicating with you, telling

00:38:37.100 you its symptoms saying, you know, my elbow hurts over here and my stomach grumble is grumbly over

00:38:42.340 here. Well, we need some different fertilizer over here. And maybe we need different plants planted at,

00:38:48.060 you know, not in a moist place on the farm, but a drier place and et cetera, et cetera.

00:38:51.960 These things are just gained by hard one experience rather than, than financial solutions.

00:38:58.780 So whatever our limiting factors are, we just have to be very patient with knowing that's going to

00:39:04.720 take time. And your limiting factors is also going to control your growth, right? Like if you might

00:39:10.720 have like a great crop, but if you don't have a market for it, like that's your limiting factor,

00:39:15.520 well, you're not going to do, you're not going to, you're not going to grow, right?

00:39:18.980 Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Maybe your limiting factor is, I mean, it can be a number of things. It can be

00:39:23.600 a human component from emotionality to physicality to, you know, experiential, it can be biological,

00:39:30.560 it can be soil related, it can be weather related, it can be a financial related, you know, name your

00:39:35.980 limiting factor, name, name the weakness of your farm. And that's, what's going to hold you back.

00:39:41.540 But typically by necessity, that's the place where you have to address things slowly in order to move

00:39:49.700 everything else forward. You know, if you have a bar graph, if you've, you know, you've got,

00:39:53.800 you know, six different bar graphs and one's human energy, one's economic resiliency, one's

00:39:58.840 biological potential, one's experience, you know, and insert a couple more. If five of those are

00:40:05.360 within 10% of each other, but the sixth one is 50% reduced, it's going to hold back the growth on the

00:40:13.640 other five. And then you also give an example of, you know, playing to your strengths can work out for

00:40:18.200 you in the short run, but then bites you in the butt in the long run. You get the example you 0.97

00:40:23.480 gave that stuck out to me was your food truck business. Can you talk about a bit about that?

00:40:28.620 Yeah, well, my food truck business was the most successful business that ever failed.

00:40:33.480 Okay. So at this point, you know, I've been farming for 22 years straight out of college. And I have

00:40:40.900 I've reinvented the wheel so many times, I'm very prepared not to try to do that anymore.

00:40:46.440 But one of the things we tried to do was to take our product and embed a food truck within

00:40:53.660 farmers markets. And it was a staggering success. Right out of the gate, we had lines 10 people deep,

00:40:59.340 but it was too much of a success, right? So I was true. So I hired, you know, I had a manager and

00:41:04.720 everybody says, Oh, just hire a better manager. Well, that's, that's no disrespect. That can be very

00:41:10.960 naive thinking. Okay. There's only so much a manager can accomplish without good ownership.

00:41:16.800 And I was not being a good owner. Okay. I was not being the farmer that I needed to be. So suffice to

00:41:21.500 say, we had too much success. We're running out of things. I had personnel issues. I wasn't able to

00:41:27.600 produce the quality of goods that I wanted to either back at the farm, or to put out a great product on a

00:41:34.920 bun in the form of a cheeseburger. In DC, we got what's called half smoke, which is kind of our

00:41:39.920 native street food. And I realized that if I couldn't be the farmer, then I, that I needed to

00:41:46.620 be, there was no point in running a farm to table food truck. I could have all the management in the

00:41:50.860 world. But if I didn't have the authenticity of the product, then it was only a matter of time before

00:41:57.560 everything unraveled. So I ended up getting this food truck stuck in a tunnel in Georgetown University

00:42:03.600 because long story short, we were supposed to take some measurements. The measurements weren't taken

00:42:08.840 and I'm in the middle of Georgetown and during dinnertime and the food truck is stuck in this

00:42:14.260 tunnel. And I said, that's it. That's it. I cannot be an hour away from the farm driving a food truck and

00:42:20.560 being a farmer at the same time. So it's just one of those classic things, you know, and any business

00:42:26.460 person is going to say, well, you just outsource that. Well, Brett, in my opinion, outsourcing leads to

00:42:30.800 mediocrity. You know, that's, that's how we get everything everywhere all the time. You know, food is

00:42:37.420 24 seven available, but as good food is, you know, as food is nutritious and wonderful food available 24

00:42:44.200 seven. No, it can't be by definition. Right. And if it's not good food, I'm not interested in growing it. So

00:42:50.660 there.

00:42:51.740 All right. So you got to pick your battles. Yeah, I like it. I like that's a great example of success actually

00:42:55.540 being a failure. So, okay, you've got your farm going, you're growing the product, but you got

00:43:00.400 to price it to sell and pricing things in any business is tricky, but it gets trickier in farming

00:43:08.180 because I mean, your approach could be like, let's look at what the market rate is, but maybe the

00:43:13.020 market rate, if you sold it there, it would cause you to go bankrupt in a season. So how do you price

00:43:18.380 a product when you're a small farmer? Yeah. So we take you through a whole thought diagram or,

00:43:25.000 you know, kind of a thought exercise in the book, but to nutshell it real quick, you're basically

00:43:30.980 dealing with externalities that you can't control largely quote unquote cheap food. So, you know,

00:43:38.180 despite never growing food as, you know, as you alluded to earlier, more than 98% of us don't do that.

00:43:44.900 We all seem to be experts on what food should cost and we take deep umbrage very much to the core of

00:43:52.060 our hearts when we think food is expensive and we make all sorts of jokes and snide remarks,

00:43:57.880 perhaps without really fully understanding what food should cost. And, you know, the axiom that I

00:44:04.060 try and keep in mind and tell folks is if we say, why is organic and sustainable food so expensive? We say,

00:44:10.720 why is that so expensive? Well, we never ask, why is that other stuff so cheap? Okay. So as farmers,

00:44:18.120 we have to have an understanding of why these corn and soybean based products, AKA corn and soybean fed

00:44:24.980 chickens and pigs, AKA bacon and chicken sandwiches, right? You following my train of thought here,

00:44:31.080 have been the same price practically for decades at this point. So that's what we have to deal with

00:44:36.060 from a consumer standpoint. And then from business people, we have to take the wisdom of people like

00:44:41.460 Warren Buffett, who says, never get into a business where you couldn't raise your prices 10% overnight and

00:44:47.980 not, you know, lose your customers, right? So you have two very opposite ends of the spectrum right there.

00:44:55.100 Okay. So it's our opinion. Again, this is way oversimplified and we give it a lot more color

00:45:01.180 in the, in the book to don't apologize for your prices. If you apologize for your prices, you're doing

00:45:08.360 yourself a disservice. You're dishonoring the hard work that you put into the product to push, push the high

00:45:14.760 end of the limit of what the market will bear because you are growing a unique product. If you are putting

00:45:21.940 your passion and turning your mineralized soil into a delicious product, whether that be heirloom

00:45:29.360 tomatoes and everyone knows how good a homegrown tomato tastes relative to this January tomatoes you

00:45:36.800 get at Costco, right? Everybody knows that everybody knows that fresh eggs taste better than, than

00:45:42.380 store-bought eggs that have been sitting on the shelf for a month. That translates in onto the plates

00:45:47.600 and the taste buds of customers. If you are putting out a quality product, people don't mind paying for

00:45:54.100 it. It's when you put out a mediocre product that you can't charge a high price for it.

00:45:59.360 So, so that was a lot of information shotgunned at you, but if you can figure out the, the, the message

00:46:05.520 and all that, then you're, then you're doing okay. So, okay. You've priced it. How do farmers sell

00:46:11.060 their products? So there's farmers markets, obviously. I think that's everyone would think,

00:46:14.160 okay, let's go to the farmers market, but there's other way, other places to go to sell your product

00:46:18.480 because farmers markets, they don't happen year round either. Yeah. Well, let's not have any confusion

00:46:24.500 for any of your listeners who are, are farmers who are, you know, kind of thumbing their noses at farmer's

00:46:30.560 markets. Farmer's markets happen to be the poster child of a very charismatic face of a strapping young

00:46:37.640 here suit, 25 year olds wearing plaid and having perfect smiles. Right. And I say that very good

00:46:43.920 naturedly, but, but farmer's markets comprise way less than 1% of the way our food, I think even the way

00:46:49.820 food is direct marketed, it's like less than 5%. Okay. And then the commodity, let's just, I'll just

00:46:54.120 throw some numbers at you. So like 96% of our food system is commodity based, corn, soybean, wheat,

00:46:59.180 grain fed cattle, all this stuff. It's only like 4% that's being direct marketed. And only a fraction

00:47:04.340 of that may be less than 10% or even 5% is through farmer's markets. So farmer's markets is a very

00:47:09.960 infinitesimally small component of the way food gets transacted. Now for farmers who aren't commodity

00:47:15.360 farmers, which again is less than 4%, the vast majority of that is going through wholesale.

00:47:19.820 So it's going to, uh, uh, co-ops and wholesalers where people are making bids much like the stock

00:47:26.860 market, except this is the livestock market or the fresh vegetable market or the fresh fruit market.

00:47:31.660 So then the distributor purchases and aggregates things that goes to a warehouse and then it gets

00:47:36.800 to, uh, you know, downtown Oklahoma city on one end or, or, you know, mom and pop stores in Newark,

00:47:42.880 New Jersey on the other end. And then the other places that, uh, food gets distributed is to

00:47:48.060 restaurants, uh, direct, uh, direct from the farmer community supported agriculture where farmers take

00:47:53.320 subscriptions from individual citizens, consumers, and the, the, the customers buy shares of the farm

00:48:00.360 up front. And then they get food spun off throughout the course of the year. And the list goes on and on

00:48:04.640 and on. It's, it's just about as long as one can be creative. They're shipping. Of course you can put

00:48:09.660 it in a styrofoam box and overnight it. So yeah, that's a, that's plenty to think about. I think

00:48:14.440 no, there's those different ways. So don't just think farmer's market. There's other ways you can

00:48:18.580 get your product to the market besides going to a place in a park in downtown Tulsa to sell cabbage.

00:48:24.540 Yeah. Think about farmer's markets to, uh, to take, uh, take your first date on. That's a good

00:48:29.420 first date move. Not a good farmer's move. First farmer day move. Debatable. Debatable. All right.

00:48:35.200 Well, I mean, so we've mentioned throughout this, that in farming, there's a lot of external factors

00:48:39.160 that are outside of your control. Weather, you get pestilence, animals get sick, die. It happened

00:48:45.920 anytime and it can just like decimate you like for that year. So how do you take that into account

00:48:50.520 with your business when you don't know if it's going to happen or not that year?

00:48:54.540 Yeah. So we take our cues from nature, every farmer, irrespective of, of whether you're

00:49:01.540 growing 10,000 acres of corn or a quarter acre, you know, of tomatillos, you know, in New Mexico,

00:49:08.200 you have to take your cues from nature. So nature provides excess of everything. You know, there's,

00:49:15.880 there's always more seeds on a tree than, than are going to turn into seedlings. I just had a sheep,

00:49:21.920 a ewe that gave birth to quintuplets two days ago, right? Out in nature. If I wasn't there to assist

00:49:27.520 her, statistically, at least two of those lambs would be preyed upon or not be able to get enough 1.00

00:49:33.320 milk to survive, right? So nature provides all this excess and we as farmers operate under the

00:49:41.340 egotistical illusion of, of control, right? We all, we all have that egotistical illusion,

00:49:47.020 you know, despite whatever enterprise we might be pursuing, right? But farmers have to build

00:49:52.640 abundance into their control mechanism. So when bad things happen, you either have that extra

00:50:00.420 or you're able to allow it just to go fallow to, you know, to, you know, cue the birds for

00:50:06.680 everything. There's a season, turn, turn, turn, right? I mean, you know, one great example of this

00:50:11.160 is Lloyd Nichols, who's up in Marengo, Illinois, outside of Chicago. Nichols Farm and Orchard sells

00:50:16.460 to the Chicago farmers markets. And he has these migratory flocks of Canadian geese that come through

00:50:23.080 and they just tear through his onions. All right. So he's got, you know, a hundred, a hundred acres

00:50:27.000 of onions, but he doesn't plant them all on 100 acres. He spreads them in different patches. So if

00:50:32.960 the geese come down, they can only do so much damage. And of course he takes precautions to scare

00:50:36.880 the geese away and all this stuff, but you can, you know, there's only so many places you can be at

00:50:40.220 once and so much technology you can have. Or his farm is so spread out that he might have like a,

00:50:45.700 you know, a very strong storm at the north side of his farm, but the south side of the farm

00:50:51.980 has no weather impact at all. So he grids his whole farm like a checkerboard,

00:50:57.460 even though he's got redundancies of all his crops to help mitigate that. So that's one clever way to

00:51:03.220 help solve that. So another part, sort of practical aspect of farming that can be hard on folks is that,

00:51:09.000 man, this is a job, an occupation where it's, it's 365 days of the year, right? Like it's Sunday

00:51:14.620 and it's four inches of snow outside. The cows still need milking or whatever. There's no weekends.

00:51:21.840 So how do you avoid burnout as a farmer?

00:51:24.620 Terrific question. I don't know. I'll take, I'll take advice in the comment section of this podcast,

00:51:30.160 please. Well, how do you do that about being kind to yourself by realizing that you're human?

00:51:37.580 Making a good night's sleep, a mandatory part of your schedule by being very honest with your

00:51:45.940 partner and taking care of your partner. So you, so that you're taken care of, you need,

00:51:51.200 you need support, whether that's with a, you know, romantic partner, a business partner, your family,

00:51:56.840 whoever that is, you need other human contact. We need to be able to grouse, have, you know,

00:52:03.640 be able to blow off steam appropriately. That doesn't mean like yelling at people,

00:52:06.980 but be able to say, Hey, this thing really frustrated me today. And thanks for listening.

00:52:10.660 You know, it's very therapeutic. You have a most, most importantly is to have that intentionality

00:52:16.660 of, of good habits. You know, my, my best friend from childhood is a neurologist down in Florida.

00:52:22.600 And he, we, he went to Duke university and got his MBA and, or not his MBA, his MD, I'm sorry.

00:52:28.220 And he sees all these patients. And I asked him a couple of years ago, I said, let me ask you a

00:52:33.460 question. You see all these people. I said, what's the number one complaint? He says headaches and

00:52:37.580 fatigue. And I said, that sounds right to me. Now, let me ask you this. I don't know anything

00:52:44.160 about what you're doing really, but what percentage of folks, if they just stayed hydrated and got a

00:52:49.200 good night's sleep and did some meaningful exercise every day would eliminate their problems,

00:52:54.620 their symptoms. And he kind of got a far away look in his eyes and he goes, you know,

00:52:58.640 I'd guess about 90% of them. Right. And these folks come in, God bless them wanting a pill or

00:53:05.820 an MRI or a CAT scan. Now let's not make a mistake. And some of these people have serious medical

00:53:11.500 conditions, right? But the vast majority of folks are just like farmers, just like anybody who would

00:53:18.120 benefit from good night's sleep, staying hydrated, getting your heart rate up for 30 minutes a day

00:53:22.900 and having love in your life that you nurture and cherish. So that's how you do it, Brett. Simple,

00:53:29.120 right? Sure. Yeah. Simple. Let's say someone's listening to this and they're like, man, this

00:53:34.060 sounds great. I'm ready to quit the corporate job, exchange my necktie for a bow. Do farmers

00:53:41.020 wear bow ties? No, I don't think farmers wear bow ties. A John Deere trucker hat. They can. We get dressed

00:53:46.180 up sometimes. You get dressed up for the hoedown. That's right. I'm busting out as many farmer

00:53:51.560 stereotypes as I can. Let's say they want to do that. What's the first thing that you think they

00:53:56.160 should go do? What would be the first step to make that idea a reality? You mean besides reading

00:54:01.760 Start Your Farm, of course? Besides reading Start Your Farm. What would be the actual thing?

00:54:05.960 This was concrete. This is going to put you down the path to getting going and becoming a farmer.

00:54:10.780 Yeah. Wonderful question. Get excited. Don't restrain yourself from enthusiasm. If you're feeling

00:54:16.980 enthusiasm, if you're feeling passion, then you're feeling something right. Farming is an

00:54:22.220 ancient, beautiful component of how we all got here. Whatever your opinions are about whatever

00:54:30.440 you want to raise, wherever part of the country you are, know that this morning you probably ate

00:54:37.220 breakfast. You're probably going to want to have some lunch and maybe later you're going to have

00:54:40.060 dinner. Where does that food come from? Could you be a participant in that? Could you contribute

00:54:43.980 to that? Could you do it better than what you're getting? That's a worthy dream. And then beyond

00:54:50.060 that, could you feed your community? Could you do this profitably? Again, these are worthy dreams,

00:54:56.960 right? And then educate yourself to the nth degree. Watch all the videos, read all the books,

00:55:03.960 then take the next step. Go out and identify people that are actually doing it and talk to them.

00:55:08.580 Get the hard lessons. But do all this, certainly, before you start getting on Zillow and Googling

00:55:13.740 available land near me. All right, Forrest, where can people go to learn more about the book and your

00:55:17.820 work? Well, real easy, forrestpritchard.com. Of course, there's a little website out there called

00:55:23.620 amazon.com. But I suggest you march boldly to your local bookstore in your hometown, which may not

00:55:32.700 exist. So then you drive boldly to the town next to you and go to that local bookstore and patiently

00:55:39.240 order the book so they get full retail value and you're supporting your downtown, presumably as well as

00:55:45.320 your values. And I say that with no eye rolling.

00:55:49.080 Well, Forrest, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:55:51.680 Brett, pleasure's mine. And congratulations, our manliness is... What am I trying to say? You've done a

00:55:59.500 tremendous job.

00:56:00.380 Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that.

00:56:02.300 My guest today was Forrest Pritchard. He's the author of the book, Start Your Farm. It's available on

00:56:05.860 amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his

00:56:09.380 website, forrestpritchard.com. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash startyourfarm. We can

00:56:14.700 find links to resources where we can delve deeper into this topic.

00:56:24.240 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

00:56:27.760 artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives. There's over 500 episodes there,

00:56:31.640 as well as thousands of articles we've written over the years on farming. We got stuff on farming,

00:56:35.820 on there. Personal finance, how to be a better husband, better father, physical fitness,

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00:57:03.540 out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a

00:57:06.940 friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. As always, thank you for

00:57:10.120 the continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you not only listen to

00:57:13.540 the A1 Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:57:33.540 the A1 Podcast, but on the A1 Podcast, what you appreciate to haveHelloets, I can have

00:57:39.520 a great extremely stand-off link. And if you're thinking about watching, I'm going na

00:57:45.080 website. And this one would be on the other 항 to what you've heard. And I also

00:57:48.820 saw that four runs a few of them, it's basically a really big, big plant, like a big, big

00:57:49.880 plant on otherli semicığıowment yet. And that I still haven't heard of it, but it was

00:57:52.960 important to have the advice. And that the fact that I would definitely

00:57:57.560 have a lot of the opportunity to keep going on in every one of the ones that you've

00:57:59.040 been here энdothment. Analyte park Am Venezuel in between 24 square

The Art of Manliness - June 24, 2019

#519： How to Start Your Own Farm

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