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Downloaded from
YTS.MX

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[♪ musical swirl ♪]

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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[laughter]

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What do I have to say
for myself?

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Man, oh man.

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[music]

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Our next speaker will be
Joel Salatin,

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who is a farmer, lecturer,
and author.

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He describes himself as
an evangelical,

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Christian, conservative,

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environmentalist,
lunatic farmer.

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He's kind of the godfather,
not of just homesteading,

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but of sustainable farming

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and a lot of these other practices

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that he's put into play.

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Which contradict this idea
that the only way

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that we could feed a
large-scale population

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is through industrial farming.

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If it stinks or it looks ugly,
it's probably not good farming.

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Good farming should be
aesthetically

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and aromatically, sensually romantic.

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Your approach to farming
it's so natural and so normal.

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And so, in my opinion,
non-controversial.

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We were branded Luddites and
anti-progressives, anti-science.

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It's never been like this.
What happened?

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Regulatory extortion, tyranny.

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But yet, you were looked at

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as some sort of a wild man
out there.

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A lunatic!

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Woooooaaaeee!

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Come on gals.

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Woooooaaaeee!

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[old country music]

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What gets me up in the
morning is knowing

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that I can walk out
that back door,

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and I can step in to
a physical expression

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of God's abundance.

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He lets me come alongside
Him, as His hands and feet

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and work in that tapestry of
His grace and abundance.

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That's cool.

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How can I come alongside
God's marvelous creation

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and steward it and manage it

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to give him a good return
on investment?

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That's our ministry.

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Easter morning ice storm.

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That was when we were
in college.

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Oh my...

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There ya go!
Look at that pretty girl.

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[Teresa]
yeah, back when i was skinny.

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Oh my...

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[Teresa]
shoooooo.

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Them was the days.

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[Teresa]
them was the days.

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As far as our story here,

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I guess I would back up to
my grandfather, Frederick.

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Always wanted to be a farmer.

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He always aspired,
but never did.

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But he had a great big garden,
compost pile, all this stuff.

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And dad absolutely got that
environmental bent from him.

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Dad always from a little child,
he wanted to farm.

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Midwestern kid, no money,
no land,

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you know, what do you do?
"I'll go to South America."

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You know, land's cheap,
open commerce,

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there aren't very many
bureaucrats around.

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And in seven years, he saved
up enough money

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to be able to buy a thousand
acre farm

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in the highlands of Venezuela.

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By that time he'd married mom
and they had two of us kids.

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But anyway, started farming.

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And so the way it worked was

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farmers would come into the
town square.

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You know, you got the
banana man,

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the pineapple man,
the chicken guy.

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And at that time,
the indigenous chickens

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all had snot, post-nasal drip,
because it was so filthy.

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You know, there were
squat pots, open sewers.

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And so when dad took our
first chickens to the market...

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They were dry.
Because he kept them clean.

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And in no time,

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dad cornered the local
chicken market.

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Well, the other
chicken growers

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accused us of was witchcraft

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and that we were practicing
voodoo,

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because that's the only way

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you can have a chicken
this clean.

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In 1959, Venezuela had
a junta,

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change of government, anarchy.

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When that happens,
when there's a breakdown of

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rule of law, it gives license
for scores

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to be settled that would
not be

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settled under more
normal times.

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We were driven out, basically
the machine guns

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came in the front doors,
we fled the back door.

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and we lost everything.

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We left the country.

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We arrived back in the U.S.

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in the spring of 1961
on Easter Sunday.

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And we looked at farms.
and settled on the cheapest

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gullied rock pile that
was available.

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Here, in Shenandoah Valley.

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When we first moved here
back in 1961,

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the soil was like brick.

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One gully was 16 feet deep.
That's a lot of soil.

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And there were large
rock galls.

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Where three to five feet of
topsoil had washed off.

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We didn't have enough soil
to hold up electric fense stakes.

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And electric fence stake is
just, you know,

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it just goes in the ground
yay far,

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it just a spike, you know.

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We'll just dig down here.

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Today, all of those areas
have 12 inches of soil on them.

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So what you wanna see is
what we call "crumbles."

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You wanna see this crumble.

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It should be like, you know,
a good chocolate cake.

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It's the fluffiness, it's the
air between.

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If you go to a regular
chemically fertilized farm

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growing monocultures,
soil will be really hard.

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And I mean, it'll feel like brick.

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You see, that's just soft,
loamy, a lot of air in it.

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One handful of healthy soil
that has as many

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beings in it as there are
people on the face of the earth.

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Think about that. Nine-billion
living organisms in soil.

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Right now, as smart as we
are, we only have names

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for 10% of all those beings
in the soil.

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90% are unnamed and we
don't know what they do.

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We know they're there,
but we don't know what they do.

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And so to come in like
a bunch of swashbuckling

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pirates and say,
"Well, all it needs is

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nitrogen, potassium,
and phosphorus.

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All we need is, you know,
stick some chemicals in it

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and we'll grow stuff."

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It completely dishonors
the beauty,

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the complexity of what this is.

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You know, and these fields
that could only handle

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fifteen cows back in that day
now handle one-hundred.

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I mean, I'm not bragging.

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I'm simply paying humble
homage to...

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This is not a scarcity planet.
It's an abundance planet.

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And it's our responsibility
to use our mechanical

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ability, you know,
opposing thumbs,

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and our intellectual
capacity, not as conquistadors,

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but as redemptive healers.

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You know, starting over
with nothing

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and on a piece of incredibly
abused land,

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it wasn't easy, and he
[dad] had

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every consultant come in.

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And every consultant
was, "plant corn."

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"Borrow more money."

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"Build silos."

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"Put in a feed lot."

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"Borrow more money."

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"Buy chemicals."

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And a lot of people don't
realize that there was

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a real battle in this country
post-World War II.

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Whether we would go
the chemical approach...

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The chemical preparations
are used to kill

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insects and to change
the growth of plants.

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Or I'm going to call it
the "carbon approach."

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When the compost is
ready for use,

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it is deposited on the
alfalfa field.

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Obviously, we know which
side won,

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the chemical approach won.

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But he saw the chemical
approach

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as being like a drug addiction.

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It becomes more and
more expensive.

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You got to use more and
more of it.

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He saw the dependency,
the dependency on

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multinational corporations
for fertilizer,

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the dependency for energy,

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the dependency for equipment.

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I mean, we certainly saw it

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when Putin invaded Ukraine,
you know, here most recently.

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Fertilizer went up 400%

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because most of it comes
from Russia.

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The very notion that a farmer
has to be dependent

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on something on the other
side of the world

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in order to maintain soil,
not only is it incorrect,

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it doesn't make intuitive sense
that God would set this up

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so that in order for me to
have healthy soil,

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I'm dependent on, you know,
on Vladimir Putin.

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He saw that dependency as
a real economic problem.

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So he eschewed all of that
professional advice

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and took a job in town.

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Mom then eventually
took a job.

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and those off-farm jobs pay
the mortgage.

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And we basically,
for the first twenty years,

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had essentially a glorified
homestead.

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[oldie music]

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Didn't really sell much.

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You know, but we had a
couple milk cows,

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had a big garden.

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We were canning and eating
our own food.

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You know, we grew up
with our church friends

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being a bunch of straight-laced

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they go to, you know,
when McDonald's came in,

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they went to McDonald's.
And we didn't.

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And instead, we're drinking

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"tiger's milk" from
Adelle Davis.

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Our church friends,
they'd ride dad, you know,

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and call it, "Hey, is that
what they're drinking,

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that panther puke again?"
They didn't call it tiger milk.

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I have older brother,
younger sister,

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neither of them was
interested in the farm.

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I was the only one that
really liked the farm.

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And um...

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I started my flock of
chickens when I was ten.

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But it was a hotbed for
experiments

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and dad was constantly
experimenting.

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One of the earliest things
that I remember.

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It was a Sunday afternoon,
we all got in the car.

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We've visited a farmer who had

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portable shelters
out in the field.

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All I remember coming home
was dad basically levitating

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of the idea of mobile
infrastructure.

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"Why! You don't have to
build a barn.

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00:14:07,442 --> 00:14:10,404
If you don't like it here,
you can put it over here!"

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00:14:12,072 --> 00:14:16,786
So he built a portable shelter
to milk cows in.

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He built a portable shade-mobile
for the cows to be under.

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And then, you know,
composting

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and then the
mobile infrastructure

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00:14:27,254 --> 00:14:30,299
and seeing how confining
animals

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and moving them along
the pasture,

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you know, increased the fertility.

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So this is the Egg-mobile,

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and it follows the cows.

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So the cows were here about
three, four days ago,

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and the chickens follow
the cows,

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and the chickens then scratch
through these cow patties.

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They spread out the cow patties
so it covers more ground,

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and they eat the fly larva

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and parasites and things
like that,

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and act as a biological
sanitizer behind the cows.

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This is one of the most
symbiotic relationships

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in nature is the bird-herbivore
relationship.

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So all we're doing is
we're mimicking that

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pattern and that keeps the
cows healthy

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and it makes a wonderful
wonderful egg.

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00:16:13,569 --> 00:16:16,781
And the chickens then are
doing that work instead

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of us having to put the
cows through

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00:16:18,449 --> 00:16:21,034
the corral and shoot them
up with things that

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make the meat so bad
it kills all the bugs.

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00:16:30,586 --> 00:16:33,922
It is working within a
framework like in Isaiah

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where God says, "I am for you."

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00:16:36,217 --> 00:16:38,302
He says that over and over again.
"I am for you.

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00:16:38,427 --> 00:16:41,054
I am for you.
I'm not against you."

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If you go to the average
farm conference,

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90% of the conference
is about disease

249
00:16:46,102 --> 00:16:47,812
and pests and sickness.

250
00:16:47,937 --> 00:16:51,022
It's as if nature
has it out for me!

251
00:16:53,984 --> 00:16:56,027
And I suggest no.

252
00:17:03,577 --> 00:17:06,456
Alright, now we're
going to the cows.

253
00:17:39,697 --> 00:17:43,867
We move the cows every day
to a new paddock.

254
00:17:43,992 --> 00:17:47,204
And if it's done well, it actually
stimulates production

255
00:17:47,329 --> 00:17:50,749
just like pruning an orchard
or a vineyard.

256
00:17:52,292 --> 00:17:55,046
The way God set this up,
there are kind of three

257
00:17:55,171 --> 00:17:58,924
things that wild herbivore
herds exhibit,

258
00:17:59,049 --> 00:18:01,636
and that is they're
constantly moving,

259
00:18:01,761 --> 00:18:04,471
they're mobbed up for
predator protection,

260
00:18:04,597 --> 00:18:07,766
and then they're mowing,
they're pruning, okay?

261
00:18:07,892 --> 00:18:09,101
Moving, mobbing, mowing.

262
00:18:09,226 --> 00:18:10,977
Those are the three principles.

263
00:18:11,102 --> 00:18:14,649
The problem is that 95% of the

264
00:18:14,774 --> 00:18:19,402
domestic herbivores on the
planet violate at least one,

265
00:18:19,529 --> 00:18:21,864
and many of them,
all three of those three "M's."

266
00:18:21,989 --> 00:18:23,991
They're not moving,
they're not mobbing,

267
00:18:24,116 --> 00:18:26,034
and they're not mowing.
They're in a feedlot,

268
00:18:26,159 --> 00:18:30,331
and when you violate
moving, mobbing, mowing,

269
00:18:30,456 --> 00:18:32,499
you take something that
is a beautiful,

270
00:18:32,624 --> 00:18:34,919
synergistic, soil-growing,

271
00:18:35,044 --> 00:18:37,629
abundance-encouraging thing,

272
00:18:38,214 --> 00:18:40,799
an asset, and turn into a liability.

273
00:18:40,924 --> 00:18:44,887
And so we move the cows
every day to a new paddock,

274
00:18:45,221 --> 00:18:49,851
and this keeps that grass
in that rapid growth cycle.

275
00:18:49,976 --> 00:18:52,979
So that at the end of the day,
in Augusta County,

276
00:18:53,104 --> 00:18:56,106
our average is 80
cow days per acre.

277
00:18:56,232 --> 00:18:58,484
A cow day is what one
cow will eat in a day.

278
00:18:59,192 --> 00:19:03,656
So an acre will support
one cow for 80 days a year

279
00:19:03,781 --> 00:19:06,742
or 80 cows for one day a year.

280
00:19:07,867 --> 00:19:13,082
And here we average about
400 cow days per acre.

281
00:19:13,624 --> 00:19:15,501
We haven't bought a bag
of chemical fertilizer

282
00:19:15,626 --> 00:19:18,712
and we haven't planted
a seed in sixty years.

283
00:19:23,884 --> 00:19:27,096
As we stand here, there
are tons of different plants.

284
00:19:27,304 --> 00:19:30,016
I mean, here's an Onion,

285
00:19:30,516 --> 00:19:31,517
Fescue,

286
00:19:31,642 --> 00:19:32,936
Orchard Grass,

287
00:19:33,602 --> 00:19:34,604
White Clover,

288
00:19:34,729 --> 00:19:36,021
Dandelion,

289
00:19:36,146 --> 00:19:37,814
Narrow Leaf Plantain,

290
00:19:37,941 --> 00:19:39,441
a Morning Glory vine,

291
00:19:39,566 --> 00:19:41,234
Wide Leaf Plantain,

292
00:19:41,361 --> 00:19:42,946
Chicory coming up right here,

293
00:19:43,071 --> 00:19:44,279
a Cheatgrass here,

294
00:19:44,404 --> 00:19:45,281
this is Bluegrass,

295
00:19:45,406 --> 00:19:46,491
Here's just the beginning of a

296
00:19:46,616 --> 00:19:48,659
Queen Anne's lace coming,
wild carrot.

297
00:19:48,784 --> 00:19:50,036
I'm not sure what that is.

298
00:19:50,161 --> 00:19:51,912
There's a little Posy.

299
00:19:53,997 --> 00:19:55,749
So each one of these
plants concentrates a

300
00:19:55,874 --> 00:19:57,417
different kind of enzyme,

301
00:19:57,542 --> 00:19:59,671
different vitamins, different
minerals.

302
00:20:03,216 --> 00:20:06,761
The single thing that they
found in beef,

303
00:20:06,886 --> 00:20:11,307
for example, that defines
nutrient density

304
00:20:11,432 --> 00:20:16,227
is how much variety of
plants did the cow take in.

305
00:20:16,354 --> 00:20:19,356
And this kind of grazing
stimulates diversity.

306
00:20:19,481 --> 00:20:24,319
It's not a monoculture of
just one kind of plant.

307
00:20:27,197 --> 00:20:31,577
In the industry, there's
one goal,

308
00:20:31,702 --> 00:20:33,704
faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper.

309
00:20:33,829 --> 00:20:38,167
That has nothing to do
with nutritional quality,

310
00:20:38,292 --> 00:20:40,752
with preserving soil,
preserving water.

311
00:20:40,877 --> 00:20:42,796
It's not about preserving

312
00:20:42,921 --> 00:20:45,257
acres for future generations.

313
00:20:47,259 --> 00:20:48,761
And below the ground, the roots

314
00:20:48,886 --> 00:20:50,221
mimic what's above the ground.

315
00:20:50,346 --> 00:20:52,931
And so if you let the plant
get some length to it,

316
00:20:53,057 --> 00:20:57,311
then it also makes great
big long roots.

317
00:20:57,894 --> 00:21:00,439
And so then you're
more drought resistant,

318
00:21:00,564 --> 00:21:02,024
you start building
organic matter,

319
00:21:02,149 --> 00:21:03,859
all sorts of things.

320
00:21:03,984 --> 00:21:08,156
In our time here, we've gone
from 1% organic matter

321
00:21:08,572 --> 00:21:11,032
to 8% organic matter.

322
00:21:11,157 --> 00:21:14,202
And every 1% increase in
organic matter increases

323
00:21:14,327 --> 00:21:19,457
water retention by 20,000
gallons per acre.

324
00:21:20,292 --> 00:21:23,879
So we've gone 7%, which
is 140,000 gallons of

325
00:21:24,004 --> 00:21:26,716
water per acre that we
can hold now today

326
00:21:26,841 --> 00:21:29,551
that we couldn't hold in 1961.

327
00:21:43,899 --> 00:21:46,317
Not only does this feed
the world,

328
00:21:46,444 --> 00:21:48,821
it's the only system that can.

329
00:21:48,946 --> 00:21:52,491
Our county average is
80 cow days per acre.

330
00:21:52,616 --> 00:21:55,286
We're averaging almost
400 cow days per acre.

331
00:21:55,411 --> 00:21:56,621
That's five times.

332
00:21:56,746 --> 00:21:59,456
Just be real conservative
and say three times.

333
00:21:59,581 --> 00:22:01,332
What if the neighbor did this

334
00:22:01,459 --> 00:22:03,711
and had three times to
as many cows?

335
00:22:04,879 --> 00:22:07,339
What if our whole county,
what if our whole state?

336
00:22:08,966 --> 00:22:11,636
The fact is there is
so much more

337
00:22:11,761 --> 00:22:14,096
abundance here than
we can imagine.

338
00:22:15,222 --> 00:22:19,476
The agra-industrial
complex views

339
00:22:19,601 --> 00:22:21,979
our resource base from
a view of scarcity

340
00:22:22,104 --> 00:22:23,731
that we're running out.

341
00:22:23,856 --> 00:22:26,984
"Population growth and
climate change

342
00:22:27,109 --> 00:22:29,987
thats pushing down the
productivity that we have

343
00:22:30,112 --> 00:22:31,614
on those farms today.

344
00:22:31,739 --> 00:22:34,407
So this is quite alarming."

345
00:22:34,532 --> 00:22:39,746
Even a reluctant partner
that I've got to get you

346
00:22:39,872 --> 00:22:41,457
in a half Nelson and
I'm going to

347
00:22:41,582 --> 00:22:42,999
make you grow cherries or

348
00:22:43,126 --> 00:22:45,711
apples or cows or
whatever it is.

349
00:22:47,671 --> 00:22:50,132
When actually God has given us.

350
00:22:51,007 --> 00:22:54,761
A loving partner here of
abundance that we just

351
00:22:54,887 --> 00:22:57,139
need to caress in the
right places.

352
00:22:57,264 --> 00:22:58,766
That's all.

353
00:23:03,229 --> 00:23:05,147
It is appreciating the order

354
00:23:05,272 --> 00:23:08,526
and the pattern that God set up.

355
00:23:10,111 --> 00:23:13,822
and leveraging it to
its full potential.

356
00:23:13,947 --> 00:23:19,327
rather than, either dismissing
it or adulterating it.

357
00:23:21,914 --> 00:23:24,834
Smithsonian did a working
landscape study here.

358
00:23:24,959 --> 00:23:28,212
There were 29 sites and
we were the only one

359
00:23:28,337 --> 00:23:32,091
where they were able
to find all eight species of

360
00:23:32,216 --> 00:23:35,219
bumblebees known to exist
in Virginia.

361
00:23:36,512 --> 00:23:38,889
And I think it's because
by moving them like this,

362
00:23:39,014 --> 00:23:42,059
you get a vegetative mosaic,
so there's

363
00:23:42,184 --> 00:23:44,186
always something in blossom.

364
00:23:48,774 --> 00:23:53,737
How can I come alongside
God's marvelous creation?

365
00:23:55,197 --> 00:23:57,324
And steward it and manage it.

366
00:23:57,991 --> 00:24:00,702
To give Him a good return
on investment.

367
00:24:02,329 --> 00:24:04,497
So that what I give back
to God as a result of my

368
00:24:04,622 --> 00:24:07,126
living here is more soil,

369
00:24:08,419 --> 00:24:10,379
more health,

370
00:24:10,504 --> 00:24:12,006
more pollinators,

371
00:24:12,506 --> 00:24:14,174
more wildlife,

372
00:24:14,591 --> 00:24:16,342
more earthworms.

373
00:24:18,346 --> 00:24:20,889
That's a return on investment.

374
00:24:28,397 --> 00:24:31,024
It's a pretty nice office
to work in.

375
00:24:31,149 --> 00:24:32,651
[laughter]

376
00:24:32,776 --> 00:24:35,237
Alright, it's probably time
to go to breakfast.

377
00:24:40,409 --> 00:24:41,201
[laughter]

378
00:24:41,326 --> 00:24:42,119
I haven't seen that.

379
00:24:42,244 --> 00:24:45,456
This thing's been in ponds
and cow troughs and it

380
00:24:45,581 --> 00:24:47,124
just keeps on ticking man.

381
00:24:47,499 --> 00:24:50,169
You put it in a bag of rice,
you know, and you

382
00:24:50,294 --> 00:24:53,171
dry it out and then baby
she just keeps on going.

383
00:25:00,887 --> 00:25:03,391
So my earliest memories
as long as I can remember,

384
00:25:03,516 --> 00:25:05,934
I wanted to be a
full-time farmer.

385
00:25:06,936 --> 00:25:08,521
I worked off the farm for
two and a half years

386
00:25:08,646 --> 00:25:10,314
after college at the local

387
00:25:10,439 --> 00:25:13,526
newspaper as an investigative reporter

388
00:25:13,651 --> 00:25:14,817
so I'm there, you know,

389
00:25:14,944 --> 00:25:17,987
and I'm in the same tension
that dad was all his life.

390
00:25:18,112 --> 00:25:19,949
I want to be on the farm,
but I got to earn a

391
00:25:20,074 --> 00:25:23,034
living here in town and
you have this tension.

392
00:25:23,619 --> 00:25:25,454
And Teresa and I got married.

393
00:25:25,579 --> 00:25:27,997
We remodeled the attic in
the farmhouse upstairs

394
00:25:28,122 --> 00:25:30,167
and drove a $50 car.

395
00:25:30,292 --> 00:25:31,501
If we didn't grow it,
we didn't eat it.

396
00:25:31,627 --> 00:25:33,837
We lived on $300 a month.

397
00:25:34,964 --> 00:25:36,841
And by living so cheaply,
we were

398
00:25:36,966 --> 00:25:38,926
able to save half of our income.

399
00:25:39,717 --> 00:25:41,594
And so within a couple of years,
we had enough

400
00:25:41,721 --> 00:25:43,306
saved that we could live for

401
00:25:43,431 --> 00:25:46,224
one year without outside income.

402
00:25:46,976 --> 00:25:50,521
September 24, 1982, I walked
out of that office,

403
00:25:50,646 --> 00:25:52,981
I said, "I know we can live
for one year."

404
00:25:54,274 --> 00:25:57,319
And as it turned out,
we never went back.

405
00:26:05,369 --> 00:26:08,956
I mean, Teresa and I were
completely wrapped up in a farm.

406
00:26:09,664 --> 00:26:11,249
She was my tractor driver.

407
00:26:11,374 --> 00:26:14,502
I mean, we were just
together all the time.

408
00:26:16,171 --> 00:26:17,839
We lived in the attic.

409
00:26:18,632 --> 00:26:19,424
You know, if there's one

410
00:26:19,549 --> 00:26:21,176
thing that has made
me successful,

411
00:26:21,301 --> 00:26:26,264
it's marrying a lady who's
more frugal than I am.

412
00:26:26,389 --> 00:26:28,517
You know, as frugal as I am,
I'm the spender

413
00:26:28,642 --> 00:26:30,269
Teresa's the saver.

414
00:26:32,562 --> 00:26:35,982
And it was family,
we were just together.

415
00:26:39,027 --> 00:26:43,657
We had two kids.
Daniel and Rachel.

416
00:26:46,744 --> 00:26:50,331
We didn't have a bunch of toys.
We didn't have a TV.

417
00:26:50,872 --> 00:26:54,292
And by this time, we had
absolutely embraced the notion

418
00:26:54,417 --> 00:26:57,421
that we were not sending
our kids to public school.

419
00:26:58,422 --> 00:27:03,217
We read a lot.
Our kids would sit for hours.

420
00:27:04,761 --> 00:27:06,387
And then of course as
Daniel got older

421
00:27:06,512 --> 00:27:08,516
he started taking over
more and more

422
00:27:08,641 --> 00:27:10,351
of what Teresa had done.

423
00:27:11,977 --> 00:27:13,521
They were good days.

424
00:27:14,479 --> 00:27:15,814
You know, we didn't
make much money,

425
00:27:15,939 --> 00:27:17,941
but man, life was rich.

426
00:27:20,194 --> 00:27:22,987
I mean, it was tight.
We couldn't afford vet bills,

427
00:27:23,112 --> 00:27:24,489
we couldn't afford sickness.

428
00:27:24,614 --> 00:27:27,867
And so the whole goal was
how do we create a

429
00:27:27,992 --> 00:27:31,831
habitat that makes
happy animals?

430
00:27:31,956 --> 00:27:35,251
Because happy animals probably
aren't going to get sick.

431
00:27:36,417 --> 00:27:38,754
They're getting fed what
they want.

432
00:27:39,504 --> 00:27:42,132
They're sanitary, their hygiene,

433
00:27:43,091 --> 00:27:45,051
their social structure,

434
00:27:45,886 --> 00:27:49,014
all this is in a place that
gives them no stress.

435
00:27:49,139 --> 00:27:50,766
That was the goal.

436
00:28:06,281 --> 00:28:07,616
Hey, piggles.

437
00:28:08,784 --> 00:28:09,992
Ohhh!

438
00:28:10,661 --> 00:28:12,246
How are ya, piggles?

439
00:28:17,042 --> 00:28:18,209
Hi, piggles.

440
00:28:19,252 --> 00:28:21,421
How you doing? Hmm?

441
00:28:23,882 --> 00:28:25,551
One of my favorite things
that ever happened up here,

442
00:28:25,676 --> 00:28:27,136
we had a new chef.

443
00:28:27,261 --> 00:28:30,597
And this new chef,
he was pretty young

444
00:28:30,722 --> 00:28:32,974
and he wanted to see the pigs.

445
00:28:33,099 --> 00:28:34,809
He was getting a bunch
of pork from us.

446
00:28:34,934 --> 00:28:38,481
So he came up here and he
stood out here and he said,

447
00:28:38,606 --> 00:28:44,236
he said, "I'm 28 and I've never
seen a live pig."

448
00:28:44,361 --> 00:28:46,779
You know, he's cooked
lots of pork

449
00:28:46,906 --> 00:28:49,991
and he's broken down
carcasses and all that,

450
00:28:50,116 --> 00:28:52,327
but I've never seen a live pig.

451
00:28:53,036 --> 00:28:56,206
I said, "I don't know anything
about him like this,

452
00:28:56,331 --> 00:28:59,626
but I just believe that
if I were a pig,

453
00:28:59,751 --> 00:29:01,794
this is the way I'd wanna live."

454
00:29:02,754 --> 00:29:04,381
And that just says it all.

455
00:29:18,311 --> 00:29:21,147
So we move these pigs
every five to twelve days

456
00:29:21,272 --> 00:29:22,941
through the paddocks.

457
00:29:27,029 --> 00:29:29,906
So they get their salad bar
and they get their feed.

458
00:29:32,367 --> 00:29:33,952
And they get exercise.

459
00:29:34,077 --> 00:29:36,746
There's no smell.
There's no flies.

460
00:29:39,041 --> 00:29:43,002
The pigs get to fully
express their pigness.

461
00:29:50,969 --> 00:29:53,387
And in the confinement
animal feeding operation,

462
00:29:53,512 --> 00:29:58,936
they're just confined in
little slatted floor cells

463
00:29:59,061 --> 00:30:02,356
and high stress.

464
00:30:04,566 --> 00:30:08,027
The problem is that
we have allowed ourselves

465
00:30:08,152 --> 00:30:12,949
to take a very mechanistic
view of biology.

466
00:30:13,074 --> 00:30:17,746
And we inanimate it so
that it's no more special,

467
00:30:17,871 --> 00:30:22,209
distinctive, different,
than a wheel bearing.

468
00:30:24,002 --> 00:30:29,007
Not only do we
disrespect the spontaneity

469
00:30:29,132 --> 00:30:33,552
and livingness character
of biology,

470
00:30:33,679 --> 00:30:37,516
but we also erode
its specialness

471
00:30:37,641 --> 00:30:41,686
as an expression
of God's creative power.

472
00:30:44,022 --> 00:30:46,774
Just as an example of
some of the things that are

473
00:30:46,899 --> 00:30:49,986
done in our land
grant universities.

474
00:30:50,111 --> 00:30:53,741
Right now, or at least there
has been quite a bit,

475
00:30:53,866 --> 00:30:56,909
an effort to take out the
stress gene in pigs.

476
00:30:57,036 --> 00:30:59,871
Because when you got
5,000 pigs in a confinement

477
00:30:59,996 --> 00:31:04,084
house and they've got these
little cells on slatted floors,

478
00:31:04,209 --> 00:31:06,836
and you've had to cut the
tails off so that it's

479
00:31:06,962 --> 00:31:09,381
tender enough that when
they try to cannibalize,

480
00:31:09,506 --> 00:31:12,051
they run away from each other.

481
00:31:12,259 --> 00:31:13,426
I mean, and they just run,

482
00:31:13,551 --> 00:31:16,179
they're just under
stress all the time.

483
00:31:16,429 --> 00:31:19,682
So there's a lot of effort
within the industry

484
00:31:19,932 --> 00:31:23,937
to try to find out, well,
what's the gene for stress?

485
00:31:24,062 --> 00:31:25,522
If we take that out...

486
00:31:25,772 --> 00:31:27,816
then we can at least
abuse them more

487
00:31:27,941 --> 00:31:29,859
and at least they won't
be stressed.

488
00:31:30,652 --> 00:31:32,446
And I would ask anybody,

489
00:31:32,571 --> 00:31:35,031
is that the kind
of society we want?

490
00:31:35,156 --> 00:31:38,869
Because it's not very far
from there to say,

491
00:31:38,994 --> 00:31:42,289
well, I wonder what
the libertarian theme

492
00:31:42,414 --> 00:31:44,582
or what the conservative gene,

493
00:31:44,707 --> 00:31:47,377
you know, is in a person,
let's take that out.

494
00:31:47,502 --> 00:31:51,172
That is the kind of thinking,
it's this slippery slope.

495
00:31:53,341 --> 00:31:56,677
It's not okay to abuse animals.

496
00:31:57,554 --> 00:31:59,306
It doesn't mean that
we don't eat them

497
00:31:59,431 --> 00:32:02,142
because there can be
no life without sacrifice.

498
00:32:02,267 --> 00:32:04,561
But what makes
a sacrifice sacred

499
00:32:04,686 --> 00:32:05,562
is the honor of respect

500
00:32:05,687 --> 00:32:07,439
bestowed upon the
act of sacrifice

501
00:32:07,564 --> 00:32:09,482
prior to slaughter.

502
00:32:10,484 --> 00:32:12,986
There's nothing sacred about
slaughtering a Tyson chicken,

503
00:32:13,111 --> 00:32:13,946
that's just sacrilege,

504
00:32:14,071 --> 00:32:16,281
that's just putting it
out of its misery.

505
00:32:18,742 --> 00:32:19,992
But one of our chickens,
thats out here

506
00:32:20,117 --> 00:32:22,704
in fresh air, sunshine,
green grass, bugs,

507
00:32:24,331 --> 00:32:27,251
and not living in fecal
particulate all the time.

508
00:32:28,001 --> 00:32:30,462
That becomes a sacred sacrifice

509
00:32:30,962 --> 00:32:33,089
because it is fully honored
and respected

510
00:32:33,214 --> 00:32:35,384
the chickenness of the chicken.

511
00:32:41,056 --> 00:32:42,474
One of the things that
we've learned from our

512
00:32:42,599 --> 00:32:44,684
chefs over the years,
we've supplied a lot of

513
00:32:44,809 --> 00:32:47,146
gourmet restaurants,
and one of the things you

514
00:32:47,271 --> 00:32:50,774
learn from chefs like this
is nuances of stuff,

515
00:32:50,899 --> 00:32:52,776
because, you know, they cook
so much of the same

516
00:32:52,901 --> 00:32:54,527
thing over and over
and over again.

517
00:32:54,652 --> 00:32:56,821
So things that we wouldn't
pick up, you know, they pick up.

518
00:32:58,364 --> 00:33:00,784
But one of the things that
we've picked up from them

519
00:33:00,909 --> 00:33:04,829
is that all of our stuff cooks
about 15% to 20%

520
00:33:04,954 --> 00:33:09,459
faster than regular
industrial stuff.

521
00:33:09,584 --> 00:33:13,546
We don't officially know why,
but our sense is,

522
00:33:13,671 --> 00:33:18,009
is because our animals don't
secrete any adrenaline,

523
00:33:18,134 --> 00:33:20,554
because they're not
under stress.

524
00:33:21,762 --> 00:33:25,099
And when you secrete adrenaline,
your muscles tighten up.

525
00:33:26,017 --> 00:33:29,562
Our animals are happy.
They never secrete adrenaline.

526
00:33:30,271 --> 00:33:33,524
And so the meat is real tender
and it cooks way faster.

527
00:33:35,486 --> 00:33:38,237
So the question is, can you
eat happiness?

528
00:33:38,362 --> 00:33:41,032
Yes, you can eat happiness.

529
00:33:41,491 --> 00:33:43,786
And by the same token,
can you eat stress?

530
00:33:43,911 --> 00:33:46,287
Yes, you can eat stress.

531
00:33:48,622 --> 00:33:51,584
I'm not about to suggest
that if you eat a

532
00:33:51,709 --> 00:33:54,212
McDonald's hamburger,
you're going to hell,

533
00:33:54,337 --> 00:33:57,674
or even that it's sinful,
especially for a person

534
00:33:57,799 --> 00:34:00,384
who doesn't know better
or hasn't come

535
00:34:00,511 --> 00:34:02,094
to this point of conviction.

536
00:34:02,221 --> 00:34:05,347
The problem I've come up
with with Christians is,

537
00:34:06,057 --> 00:34:06,849
don't tell me, don't tell me,

538
00:34:06,974 --> 00:34:08,642
I don't want to know!
I don't want to know!

539
00:34:11,479 --> 00:34:13,857
That's the response.

540
00:34:14,149 --> 00:34:16,109
And I think the problem
is that the

541
00:34:16,234 --> 00:34:18,027
Christian community,
the faith community

542
00:34:18,152 --> 00:34:25,367
has been so emasculated by the
Gaea, creation workshipping,

543
00:34:25,494 --> 00:34:32,124
environmentalist, persona
that we have allowed ourselves

544
00:34:32,251 --> 00:34:37,881
to believe that stewardship
is somehow unchristian.

545
00:34:38,966 --> 00:34:43,011
And that's why I'm suggesting,
let's be Jacobs. Let's wrestle.

546
00:34:43,136 --> 00:34:46,889
Let's be willing to wrestle.
I don't have all the answers.

547
00:34:47,349 --> 00:34:51,061
But to say that God doesn't care

548
00:34:53,062 --> 00:34:55,857
is skating on pretty thin ice,
in my opinion.

549
00:35:02,572 --> 00:35:04,532
There's few things that
can bring you more joy

550
00:35:04,657 --> 00:35:10,496
knowing that you're
making this many beings happy.

551
00:35:12,249 --> 00:35:14,126
Pigs are pretty cool.

552
00:35:14,251 --> 00:35:16,961
Interestingly, they're the
smartest of all the animals

553
00:35:17,086 --> 00:35:18,546
with the poorest eyesight.

554
00:35:18,671 --> 00:35:23,886
So if you combine intelligence
with not being able to see,

555
00:35:24,011 --> 00:35:27,389
it means you're never quite
sure what's going on.

556
00:35:27,514 --> 00:35:29,266
"What are they doing to me?"

557
00:35:30,391 --> 00:35:33,102
And so they are the
hardest of all the animals

558
00:35:33,227 --> 00:35:35,897
to develop trust with.

559
00:35:36,022 --> 00:35:37,232
So that's why all these

560
00:35:37,357 --> 00:35:39,984
paddocks have a wooden
gate in them,

561
00:35:40,109 --> 00:35:42,946
because you know the cows,
you can open the electric fence

562
00:35:43,071 --> 00:35:45,991
gate and you've seen them,
they just come running

563
00:35:46,116 --> 00:35:48,659
right on through, no problem.
High trust.

564
00:35:48,784 --> 00:35:51,162
Pigs...

565
00:35:51,287 --> 00:35:53,916
"What are they trying to do?
Is that gate up or down?"

566
00:35:54,041 --> 00:35:56,417
You know, they can't tell.

567
00:35:56,542 --> 00:35:59,796
And so, the wooden gates,
you open that up

568
00:35:59,921 --> 00:36:03,299
you open that up and
they just come right through.

569
00:36:05,051 --> 00:36:06,719
And you don't have
a heart attack

570
00:36:06,844 --> 00:36:08,346
and lose your religion.

571
00:36:08,596 --> 00:36:13,351
Trying to chase them around
to get 'em in there.

572
00:36:23,069 --> 00:36:25,864
As soon as I came
back full-time.

573
00:36:26,906 --> 00:36:28,657
At that point...

574
00:36:29,034 --> 00:36:31,286
All the financials were pretty

575
00:36:31,411 --> 00:36:34,331
much on Teresa and
I's shoulders.

576
00:36:34,456 --> 00:36:36,791
It was sink or swim time.

577
00:36:42,046 --> 00:36:43,422
So here we are,

578
00:36:43,547 --> 00:36:47,092
realizing if we were
going to make it

579
00:36:47,217 --> 00:36:50,012
we had to brand and
direct market.

580
00:36:50,137 --> 00:36:51,806
If you know a farmer at all,
you know,

581
00:36:51,931 --> 00:36:53,224
he's always complaining
about the middleman.

582
00:36:53,349 --> 00:36:54,267
"Middleman makes all the money.

583
00:36:54,392 --> 00:36:55,601
Middleman makes
all the profits."

584
00:36:55,727 --> 00:36:58,062
Because basically you've
got four streams

585
00:36:58,187 --> 00:36:59,689
going into the retail dollar.

586
00:36:59,814 --> 00:37:02,817
You've got production,
processing,

587
00:37:02,942 --> 00:37:06,112
marketing, and distribution.

588
00:37:06,654 --> 00:37:08,781
The average farmer is
only participating over

589
00:37:08,906 --> 00:37:11,117
here in this production end.

590
00:37:11,451 --> 00:37:15,789
That right now across the U.S.
that accounts for about

591
00:37:15,914 --> 00:37:20,001
nine cents of the retail dollar.

592
00:37:21,252 --> 00:37:25,131
So 91 cents of the retail
dollar comes from

593
00:37:25,256 --> 00:37:28,176
processing, marketing
and distribution.

594
00:37:28,717 --> 00:37:30,011
That's a lot.

595
00:37:30,971 --> 00:37:34,599
And so if we can now
wear those other hats,

596
00:37:34,724 --> 00:37:38,894
suddenly we get off of that
scale treadmill and we're

597
00:37:39,021 --> 00:37:42,147
not hooked to the grain mill.
We're not hooked to, you know,

598
00:37:42,272 --> 00:37:43,441
industrial systems.

599
00:37:43,566 --> 00:37:45,567
We can be price makers
instead of

600
00:37:45,694 --> 00:37:47,152
just take whatever the,
you know,

601
00:37:47,277 --> 00:37:49,989
whatever the industry says
we're paying for this.

602
00:37:50,114 --> 00:37:53,117
And so I had to start marketing.

603
00:37:54,452 --> 00:37:59,624
And so I put together a slide
program about how to heal land

604
00:37:59,749 --> 00:38:03,086
without chemicals and
do it with animals.

605
00:38:04,129 --> 00:38:06,589
And so I would go and do
these twenty-minute dinner

606
00:38:06,714 --> 00:38:09,759
programs for these
philanthropic organizations.

607
00:38:10,134 --> 00:38:11,511
And every time I'd get,
you know,

608
00:38:11,636 --> 00:38:13,471
two, three, four customers.

609
00:38:13,596 --> 00:38:15,097
You know, we started with
the beef, then we added

610
00:38:15,222 --> 00:38:17,559
the chicken, then we added
the pork, then we

611
00:38:17,684 --> 00:38:20,896
added the eggs, and then
we added the turkey.

612
00:38:21,021 --> 00:38:24,107
Here we are, there's year
two with the chickens.

613
00:38:24,232 --> 00:38:28,486
Yeah, we started in and we
realized we were over our skis.

614
00:38:37,746 --> 00:38:42,876
Dad and I tore down three barns
in the community to get lumber.

615
00:38:43,001 --> 00:38:45,837
Because we didn't have
money to buy lumber.

616
00:38:50,132 --> 00:38:52,342
We just let word of mouth.
We just kept trying to

617
00:38:52,469 --> 00:38:55,721
service people and do better.

618
00:38:56,972 --> 00:39:02,687
And it was about three years
until we kind of, you know,

619
00:39:03,646 --> 00:39:06,232
where we felt like we
could exhale.

620
00:39:08,984 --> 00:39:13,739
From day one, dad was,
he was stepping back

621
00:39:13,864 --> 00:39:16,242
for me to take control.

622
00:39:16,367 --> 00:39:17,577
And so,

623
00:39:17,702 --> 00:39:20,079
I was making most of
the decisions, you know,

624
00:39:20,204 --> 00:39:23,541
on the farm and uh...

625
00:39:24,251 --> 00:39:27,587
he got sick...

626
00:39:44,937 --> 00:39:47,482
There's no spark here. No spark.

627
00:40:08,294 --> 00:40:11,381
There we go.

628
00:40:11,506 --> 00:40:13,674
The writing's on this side.

629
00:40:13,799 --> 00:40:19,472
He got diagnosed with cancer
and one of the

630
00:40:19,597 --> 00:40:21,766
reasons I don't go to
the doctor is because

631
00:40:21,891 --> 00:40:23,892
I watched him die in a day.

632
00:40:24,017 --> 00:40:27,187
We always milked a couple
of Guernsey cows

633
00:40:27,312 --> 00:40:31,192
and he'd gone [in for a]
regular checkup

634
00:40:31,317 --> 00:40:33,027
and they said,
"Hey, maybe we better

635
00:40:33,152 --> 00:40:35,071
check out this prostate."

636
00:40:35,196 --> 00:40:37,364
And so he'd gone
and gotten a biopsy

637
00:40:37,489 --> 00:40:41,994
and he hadn't come home yet
and so I went, you know,

638
00:40:42,119 --> 00:40:43,829
he'd milk his cow,
I'd milk mine.

639
00:40:43,954 --> 00:40:45,622
Well, he hadn't come so
I went ahead and started

640
00:40:45,747 --> 00:40:49,461
milking his and he came
in about halfway through

641
00:40:49,586 --> 00:40:54,882
and when he walked in the barn
door, I didn't recognize him.

642
00:40:56,759 --> 00:40:58,177
He'd gotten a prognosis,

643
00:40:58,302 --> 00:41:01,514
got the big "C," and that
was it.

644
00:41:04,976 --> 00:41:07,311
[soft guitar music]

645
00:41:11,149 --> 00:41:14,026
It took about four years.
So, you know,

646
00:41:14,151 --> 00:41:16,946
from 1984 and then he
starts going downhill.

647
00:41:19,949 --> 00:41:24,871
And then he got
pretty incapacitated.

648
00:41:27,414 --> 00:41:32,086
He passed away
in February of 1988.

649
00:41:36,966 --> 00:41:40,802
We put the casket
on a hay wagon,

650
00:41:41,054 --> 00:41:43,431
invited all the friends,

651
00:41:44,516 --> 00:41:46,976
I said, "everybody
bring a shovel."

652
00:41:56,861 --> 00:42:02,157
And so it was a
really unconventional,

653
00:42:03,159 --> 00:42:06,912
unconventional to the last day.

654
00:42:16,131 --> 00:42:17,256
We have a joke around here

655
00:42:17,381 --> 00:42:19,342
you know, my grandfather
wanted to farm.

656
00:42:19,467 --> 00:42:20,717
He never did.

657
00:42:20,842 --> 00:42:23,804
Dad wanted to farm full-time,
and except for the little

658
00:42:23,929 --> 00:42:27,432
piece in Venezuela,
he never did.

659
00:42:28,101 --> 00:42:29,394
And we joked that it took us

660
00:42:29,519 --> 00:42:33,106
three generations to
finally get here.

661
00:42:33,814 --> 00:42:37,736
But you know, I stand on
the shoulders of greatness.

662
00:42:39,529 --> 00:42:42,322
Most American families today,

663
00:42:42,447 --> 00:42:44,784
live a little bit above
their means.

664
00:42:44,909 --> 00:42:47,327
So every generation is
getting a little bit

665
00:42:47,452 --> 00:42:49,664
farther and farther in debt.

666
00:42:49,789 --> 00:42:54,042
And our legacy was every
generation lives a

667
00:42:54,167 --> 00:42:55,711
little bit below its means.

668
00:42:55,836 --> 00:42:57,922
That way you have a little extra

669
00:42:58,047 --> 00:43:02,342
launch pad for
succeeding generations.

670
00:43:08,057 --> 00:43:11,894
Oh, he'd be so thrilled.
There's not a...

671
00:43:12,436 --> 00:43:13,854
Sorry.

672
00:43:18,359 --> 00:43:23,447
Not a day goes by that I don't
wish that he were here to enjoy

673
00:43:23,572 --> 00:43:28,536
what he put together.

674
00:43:47,889 --> 00:43:54,019
When dad died in 88, about 89...

675
00:43:55,229 --> 00:44:00,026
I finally was able
to find a logger.

676
00:44:00,151 --> 00:44:04,489
And we traded thirty acres
of timber for roughly two

677
00:44:04,614 --> 00:44:08,742
and a half miles of graded
all-weather road.

678
00:44:08,867 --> 00:44:10,744
Because we didn't have any
access, there was no road.

679
00:44:10,869 --> 00:44:14,289
It was 300 acres of wilderness
up the top of the mountain.

680
00:44:18,586 --> 00:44:21,381
That was a big change.

681
00:44:21,797 --> 00:44:25,134
Because now, now we
could start building ponds.

682
00:44:32,474 --> 00:44:37,521
One of the single biggest issues
in a farm, of course, is water.

683
00:44:38,064 --> 00:44:41,651
So normally, as soon
as you say water

684
00:44:41,776 --> 00:44:45,904
people assume digging a well.
Gotta dig a well.

685
00:44:46,029 --> 00:44:48,324
But the problem with
digging a well is you're

686
00:44:48,449 --> 00:44:50,451
punching a hole into the aquifer

687
00:44:50,576 --> 00:44:52,161
and you're putting a straw
down there

688
00:44:52,286 --> 00:44:54,371
and you're sucking the water out

689
00:44:54,497 --> 00:44:57,959
and you're actually
depleting the commons

690
00:44:58,084 --> 00:45:00,961
rather than increasing
the commons.

691
00:45:01,379 --> 00:45:07,676
Five-hundred years ago,
North America was 8% water.

692
00:45:07,802 --> 00:45:10,596
North America was 8% water.
Today we're less than 4%.

693
00:45:11,472 --> 00:45:13,807
We're still less than half of the

694
00:45:13,932 --> 00:45:17,937
water that we had
five-hundred years ago.

695
00:45:18,562 --> 00:45:21,982
Where did all that water
come from? Beavers.

696
00:45:24,527 --> 00:45:26,987
There were 200 million beavers,

697
00:45:28,739 --> 00:45:31,826
and they built dams
all over the place.

698
00:45:32,409 --> 00:45:37,414
And so all this water
maintained aquifers,

699
00:45:37,539 --> 00:45:38,707
springs,

700
00:45:38,832 --> 00:45:39,834
streams,

701
00:45:39,959 --> 00:45:42,921
as well as evapotranspiration,

702
00:45:43,046 --> 00:45:46,174
that created consistent
cloud formation.

703
00:45:47,257 --> 00:45:49,844
It ameliorated ambient
temperatures because water

704
00:45:49,969 --> 00:45:52,596
is a thermal mass heat sink.

705
00:45:55,807 --> 00:46:00,729
Now here's the thing,
globally, one third of rain

706
00:46:00,854 --> 00:46:03,107
runs off its surface runoff.

707
00:46:03,441 --> 00:46:06,861
It either comes too fast
for absorption,

708
00:46:06,986 --> 00:46:10,322
or it comes too much
at one time.

709
00:46:11,532 --> 00:46:15,244
So if you're in a 30-inch
rainfall area,

710
00:46:15,369 --> 00:46:17,997
that means 10 inches
of rain a year,

711
00:46:18,122 --> 00:46:19,999
becomes surface runoff.

712
00:46:20,749 --> 00:46:22,167
Well, what's an inch of rain?

713
00:46:22,292 --> 00:46:25,379
So one acre, which is about
the size of a football field,

714
00:46:25,504 --> 00:46:31,594
one acre inch, so an inch
deep covering a football field,

715
00:46:31,719 --> 00:46:34,096
is 30,000 gallons.

716
00:46:34,931 --> 00:46:38,851
So if 10 inches a year runs off,

717
00:46:38,976 --> 00:46:44,439
10 times 30,000
is 300,000 gallons per acre.

718
00:46:45,066 --> 00:46:49,236
So if you own a 10 acre place,
3 million gallons

719
00:46:49,361 --> 00:46:53,449
of water runs off of your
place every year.

720
00:46:53,574 --> 00:46:55,576
That's the average.

721
00:46:56,911 --> 00:46:59,329
The fact is we're going
to have droughts,

722
00:46:59,454 --> 00:47:01,499
we're going to have floods,

723
00:47:01,624 --> 00:47:03,542
we're going to have blizzards,

724
00:47:03,667 --> 00:47:05,961
we're going to have these things

725
00:47:06,086 --> 00:47:12,134
and so we believe part of
our building forgiveness

726
00:47:13,844 --> 00:47:20,517
is to build impoundments
that collect surface runoff.

727
00:47:22,769 --> 00:47:28,151
So the cows, this is the
water they're drinking.

728
00:47:29,611 --> 00:47:32,404
The chicken's in the pasture,

729
00:47:33,614 --> 00:47:35,491
this is the water
they're drinking.

730
00:47:37,201 --> 00:47:39,954
That water there is
coming gravity,

731
00:47:40,079 --> 00:47:42,706
gravity from over a mile away.

732
00:47:45,667 --> 00:47:49,672
So that's how we build
forgiveness into the landscape.

733
00:47:51,172 --> 00:47:54,467
So that the climatic shocks
of a fallen world,

734
00:47:54,592 --> 00:47:58,431
we enable the landscape
to absorb.

735
00:48:00,766 --> 00:48:04,186
So that you actually
increase hydration

736
00:48:04,311 --> 00:48:07,106
rather than
decreasing hydration.

737
00:48:07,231 --> 00:48:08,816
And that, I suggest,

738
00:48:08,941 --> 00:48:12,111
gives God a return
on His investment.

739
00:48:29,211 --> 00:48:32,672
Looking back now at that time,

740
00:48:33,591 --> 00:48:37,094
boy, was I glad that we
had Daniel soon,

741
00:48:37,219 --> 00:48:39,054
because we didn't know that
dad was going to get sick.

742
00:48:39,179 --> 00:48:41,056
And so by the time dad
died in 88,

743
00:48:41,181 --> 00:48:43,059
Daniel was already seven.

744
00:48:43,184 --> 00:48:45,977
Well, tell you what,
seven year old

745
00:48:46,102 --> 00:48:48,522
that's gung ho and ready
to roll,

746
00:48:49,106 --> 00:48:51,734
They can do a lot of things.
They can run for a lot of tools.

747
00:48:52,859 --> 00:48:54,946
Teresa and I had to go
get a conservation award.

748
00:48:55,071 --> 00:48:57,614
We had to be gone for a
couple days when he was eight.

749
00:48:57,739 --> 00:48:59,867
So he stayed with mom,
grandma, you know,

750
00:48:59,992 --> 00:49:02,452
and he moved the whole
herd at eight by himself.

751
00:49:02,577 --> 00:49:04,747
Same deal, same way, you know.

752
00:49:04,872 --> 00:49:07,999
Boy, you know what that
does to self-worth?

753
00:49:09,417 --> 00:49:12,629
I'm not a child psychologist,
but if you notice,

754
00:49:12,754 --> 00:49:15,549
every single school shooting,
the guy that

755
00:49:15,674 --> 00:49:21,972
did the shooting has some
sense of not fitting in.

756
00:49:22,097 --> 00:49:23,432
You know,
he's not worth anything.

757
00:49:23,557 --> 00:49:25,601
He's either been bullied,
he's been told he's

758
00:49:25,726 --> 00:49:27,936
weird, you know, all this.

759
00:49:28,062 --> 00:49:31,649
And I believe that
self-worth comes from

760
00:49:31,774 --> 00:49:35,402
successfully accomplishing
meaningful tasks.

761
00:49:37,529 --> 00:49:38,822
You can't get self-worth
by saying,

762
00:49:38,947 --> 00:49:40,574
"Johnny, you're a good
little boy," or "Amy, you're

763
00:49:40,699 --> 00:49:41,534
a good little girl."

764
00:49:41,659 --> 00:49:43,786
Good for what? You've got
to be good for something.

765
00:49:45,204 --> 00:49:48,457
And that's where doing
something meaningful,

766
00:49:48,582 --> 00:49:51,752
not just video games and
screen time, is critical.

767
00:49:51,877 --> 00:49:53,421
I gotta get the salt box here.

768
00:49:56,214 --> 00:49:58,551
And so we were direct marketing,

769
00:49:58,676 --> 00:50:00,719
we started getting these
customers, you know,

770
00:50:00,844 --> 00:50:03,889
they were just so appreciative

771
00:50:04,014 --> 00:50:07,267
and we're actually attracting
media attention.

772
00:50:12,772 --> 00:50:14,107
The phone started ringing.

773
00:50:14,232 --> 00:50:15,901
People all over the country,
you know,

774
00:50:16,026 --> 00:50:16,861
"Tell me about this
chicken thing.

775
00:50:16,986 --> 00:50:18,446
Tell me about this
chicken thing."

776
00:50:18,571 --> 00:50:20,114
And it just got to be a burden.

777
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:22,199
I'd come in from out on
the farm all day,

778
00:50:22,324 --> 00:50:23,367
have supper, and I'd have

779
00:50:23,492 --> 00:50:26,327
six to ten phone calls
at night. "Okay, calling

780
00:50:26,454 --> 00:50:28,747
you back about this chicken
thing. Take a piece of paper,

781
00:50:28,872 --> 00:50:31,082
draw a rectangle.
It's 10 feet by 12 feet

782
00:50:31,207 --> 00:50:33,627
by 2 feet high." You know,
and I told Teresa,

783
00:50:33,752 --> 00:50:36,631
I said, "I can't do this,"
you know, and I said,

784
00:50:36,756 --> 00:50:38,882
"We got to make a little
manual," and took out

785
00:50:39,007 --> 00:50:41,259
our savings to print the book.

786
00:50:41,802 --> 00:50:44,721
"Pastured Poultry Profits,"
in 93.

787
00:50:44,847 --> 00:50:47,516
And that changed our lives.

788
00:50:47,641 --> 00:50:50,019
Then in 95, I wrote,
"Salad Bar Beef."

789
00:50:50,144 --> 00:50:53,731
Then in 97, "You Can Farm."

790
00:50:53,856 --> 00:50:55,732
Well then, you know, we're in
the National Geographic,

791
00:50:55,857 --> 00:50:57,359
Smithsonian Magazine.

792
00:51:00,987 --> 00:51:03,366
You know, this idea
of a small family farm

793
00:51:03,491 --> 00:51:07,869
actually making a profit
was a big deal.

794
00:51:09,831 --> 00:51:13,709
That's when things...
I don't know...

795
00:51:14,751 --> 00:51:16,712
started going out of control.

796
00:51:21,967 --> 00:51:25,512
We got a knock on the door.
And there was this guy

797
00:51:25,637 --> 00:51:29,307
and he pulls out his badge
like the FBI.

798
00:51:29,432 --> 00:51:30,309
But it's not the FBI,

799
00:51:30,434 --> 00:51:32,644
it's the Food Safety
Inspection Service.

800
00:51:32,769 --> 00:51:38,149
And he says, you've been
selling illegal meat

801
00:51:38,276 --> 00:51:43,197
and we've confiscated it all
down at the slaughterhouse.

802
00:51:43,322 --> 00:51:44,489
And at that time,

803
00:51:44,614 --> 00:51:47,242
that was basically half
of our farm income.

804
00:51:49,369 --> 00:51:51,371
And then around that same time,

805
00:51:51,496 --> 00:51:53,416
the state came in and said
we couldn't process

806
00:51:53,541 --> 00:51:56,251
chickens in an open-air
facility.

807
00:52:01,422 --> 00:52:03,926
You know, we were just
at that point where...

808
00:52:05,677 --> 00:52:12,809
A lot of people were,
they were counting on our story

809
00:52:12,934 --> 00:52:15,354
to give them courage to
proceed with their own.

810
00:52:24,237 --> 00:52:28,074
As all this seems to be
just coming in on me,

811
00:52:28,199 --> 00:52:33,622
I'm out there in the morning.
Moving chicken shelters.

812
00:52:34,747 --> 00:52:39,086
I'm just in consternation
of soul.

813
00:52:41,129 --> 00:52:44,382
You know, Lord,
if we lose this thing,

814
00:52:44,507 --> 00:52:46,844
what do you have in mind here?

815
00:52:46,969 --> 00:52:49,679
And it wasn't an audible voice,

816
00:52:49,804 --> 00:52:51,599
except that it was just as clear,

817
00:52:51,724 --> 00:52:54,059
it was like just out
of the sky came—

818
00:52:55,061 --> 00:52:57,396
"For such a time as this."

819
00:52:58,647 --> 00:53:00,691
"For such a time as this."

820
00:53:02,317 --> 00:53:06,906
And if you'll recall, Esther,
she cannot approach the king

821
00:53:07,031 --> 00:53:10,367
without his invitation.
That's death.

822
00:53:11,326 --> 00:53:13,662
And so she's in this
quandary, you know,

823
00:53:13,787 --> 00:53:16,749
okay, I want to save my people.
She was Jewish.

824
00:53:17,041 --> 00:53:19,792
But if I go before the king
without his invitation,

825
00:53:19,917 --> 00:53:21,879
he'll kill me.

826
00:53:22,004 --> 00:53:26,926
And Mordecai says, "Esther,
for such a time as this."

827
00:53:27,384 --> 00:53:29,136
And she comes in.
Of course, we know the story.

828
00:53:29,261 --> 00:53:31,262
She saved her people.

829
00:53:33,474 --> 00:53:38,354
But that, "for such a time
as this," hit me.

830
00:53:39,604 --> 00:53:42,982
It's gonna be okay. This is
what you're put here for.

831
00:53:45,194 --> 00:53:49,156
You're put here to
produce good food,

832
00:53:50,241 --> 00:53:52,992
to show people how to do it,

833
00:53:53,911 --> 00:53:56,872
to pave the way for other
people to do it,

834
00:53:57,414 --> 00:54:01,042
and to stand in this gap.

835
00:54:02,127 --> 00:54:05,047
So here we were with
this terrible situation.

836
00:54:05,464 --> 00:54:08,299
As divine intervention
would have it,

837
00:54:08,426 --> 00:54:09,967
before the chicken
thing developed,

838
00:54:10,094 --> 00:54:11,511
we had a couple biology

839
00:54:11,636 --> 00:54:13,514
majors at James Madison
University come,

840
00:54:13,639 --> 00:54:15,599
and they'd taken
samples of our chickens,

841
00:54:15,724 --> 00:54:17,809
where they'd taken our
chickens and

842
00:54:17,934 --> 00:54:22,022
chickens from the supermarket.
They cultured them for bacteria,

843
00:54:22,147 --> 00:54:25,609
and the ones from the
store averaged 3,600

844
00:54:25,734 --> 00:54:27,777
colony-forming units of
bacteria per milliliter

845
00:54:27,902 --> 00:54:29,321
to the second permutation.

846
00:54:29,446 --> 00:54:30,781
And I've already told you
more than I understand.

847
00:54:30,906 --> 00:54:32,782
I'm just telling you, that's
the way they write it, Ok?

848
00:54:32,907 --> 00:54:38,329
Ours—133.
So we were 25 times cleaner

849
00:54:38,456 --> 00:54:42,834
than what was in the store,
drenched in chlorine.

850
00:54:44,169 --> 00:54:47,381
And they had the audacity
to walk in here and tell us

851
00:54:47,506 --> 00:54:50,426
that this was unsanitary
and adulterated.

852
00:54:52,052 --> 00:54:55,264
See, the law says that
the chicken has to be

853
00:54:55,389 --> 00:54:59,851
processed in a sanitary
and unadulterated way.

854
00:54:59,976 --> 00:55:01,477
That's all it says.

855
00:55:02,104 --> 00:55:05,482
Which, as you know,
that's very subjective.

856
00:55:06,232 --> 00:55:09,111
Another thing that happened,
we were down here eating supper.

857
00:55:09,236 --> 00:55:10,737
Knock on the front door,
I go up,

858
00:55:10,862 --> 00:55:12,156
and there's a guy at
the front door,

859
00:55:12,281 --> 00:55:16,451
he's standing there
holding his wife in his arms,

860
00:55:16,576 --> 00:55:20,081
she looks like she's
maybe 80, 85 pounds.

861
00:55:20,206 --> 00:55:23,207
She just looks like a skeleton.
He says, "The doctor says,

862
00:55:23,332 --> 00:55:27,879
if we don't get toxin-free,
chemical-free meat,

863
00:55:28,004 --> 00:55:30,882
my wife is gonna die,
can you help me?"

864
00:55:31,007 --> 00:55:34,052
I said, "Absolutely."
So they bought a bunch of stuff.

865
00:55:35,846 --> 00:55:37,556
So here's the inspectors
out here telling me

866
00:55:37,681 --> 00:55:39,974
that they're gonna close
me down.

867
00:55:40,101 --> 00:55:42,852
And I've told them the story
that this guy had showed up,

868
00:55:42,977 --> 00:55:46,647
and I just looked at those guys,
I said, "You know what?

869
00:55:47,232 --> 00:55:49,109
She's gonna get our meat.

870
00:55:50,402 --> 00:55:53,196
Now, you can either
make this difficult,

871
00:55:53,321 --> 00:55:58,661
or you can make it simple.
If you take me to jail,

872
00:55:58,786 --> 00:56:01,329
you know how much stuff
I can write if I'm in jail?

873
00:56:01,454 --> 00:56:03,499
I can write a lot of stuff."

874
00:56:03,624 --> 00:56:06,334
And you could just see
their faces melt.

875
00:56:06,459 --> 00:56:09,546
Next calls I make are
to my elected,

876
00:56:09,671 --> 00:56:13,926
my delegate, my congressman,
our state senator.

877
00:56:14,051 --> 00:56:15,219
For the Republicans, I said,

878
00:56:15,344 --> 00:56:16,636
"they're trying to shut
down an entrepreneur."

879
00:56:16,761 --> 00:56:17,637
For the Democrats, I said,

880
00:56:17,762 --> 00:56:20,141
"they're trying to shut
down an environmentalist."

881
00:56:20,266 --> 00:56:22,642
So now we've got our
senator and delegate

882
00:56:22,767 --> 00:56:25,604
calling the inspection service,

883
00:56:25,729 --> 00:56:27,939
and they said, "Well, could
you write up

884
00:56:28,064 --> 00:56:31,401
an explanation of why
you think you're legal?"

885
00:56:32,027 --> 00:56:33,529
Haha oh! Debator man.

886
00:56:33,654 --> 00:56:38,492
Hey, boy! Give me a first
affirmative case, you know?

887
00:56:39,617 --> 00:56:42,829
And they accepted it
at the federal level.

888
00:56:42,954 --> 00:56:46,207
They pulled the tape,
released everything,

889
00:56:46,332 --> 00:56:47,792
and that was a major thing,

890
00:56:47,917 --> 00:56:49,877
and it brought us a lot
of notoriety

891
00:56:50,002 --> 00:56:53,757
within the regulatory system
as the junkyard dog.

892
00:56:53,882 --> 00:56:55,467
Don't mess with the
junkyard dog.

893
00:56:55,592 --> 00:56:57,094
I don't wanna be
proud about this.

894
00:56:57,219 --> 00:56:58,344
I mean, they could show
up tomorrow

895
00:56:58,469 --> 00:57:00,514
and we'd be back in trouble.

896
00:57:00,639 --> 00:57:03,559
And we've had numerous,
that wasn't the last.

897
00:57:03,684 --> 00:57:05,727
I mean, we've had other,
not those issues,

898
00:57:05,852 --> 00:57:09,564
but other issues, different
things, over the years.

899
00:57:09,689 --> 00:57:15,779
And we have just been, uh, very
aggressive, very aggressive.

900
00:57:15,904 --> 00:57:22,452
And I think that that is a,
I think that's a good approach.

901
00:57:29,792 --> 00:57:32,546
So after that showdown,

902
00:57:32,671 --> 00:57:34,922
you know, we started
getting some traction,

903
00:57:35,047 --> 00:57:39,427
fame and different things,
and we wanted Daniel to...

904
00:57:39,552 --> 00:57:41,387
everybody says, "Well, you
know, your kids,

905
00:57:41,512 --> 00:57:43,347
if they're gonna take
over the family business,

906
00:57:43,472 --> 00:57:45,601
they need to go work for
somebody else for a while."

907
00:57:45,726 --> 00:57:47,061
Well, we homeschooled,

908
00:57:47,186 --> 00:57:50,772
and so even when Daniel
was 13, 14, 15,

909
00:57:50,897 --> 00:57:51,606
don't tell the government,

910
00:57:51,731 --> 00:57:54,776
but we had good friends
that were in construction,

911
00:57:54,901 --> 00:57:55,527
and different things

912
00:57:55,652 --> 00:57:57,112
and so we'd send him
with work crews,

913
00:57:57,237 --> 00:57:58,029
you know, for a week,

914
00:57:58,154 --> 00:58:01,282
so he could learn other skills
and work for somebody else.

915
00:58:01,407 --> 00:58:02,159
But he never had any

916
00:58:02,284 --> 00:58:05,161
desire to actually, you know,
go to college.

917
00:58:06,621 --> 00:58:09,457
And so, you know, we
just rocked along.

918
00:58:09,957 --> 00:58:12,711
Well, you know, by the time
he gets about 22, 23,

919
00:58:12,836 --> 00:58:16,672
something like that.
I passed the baton to him.

920
00:58:18,257 --> 00:58:20,217
And that's something
that I learned from dad

921
00:58:20,344 --> 00:58:22,429
and you don't see in
farmers very much.

922
00:58:22,554 --> 00:58:24,931
Dad, he was wanting to
put me on the stage,

923
00:58:25,056 --> 00:58:26,599
"Here, I'll come back here
and pull the curtains.

924
00:58:26,724 --> 00:58:28,392
You know, you get
out on the stage."

925
00:58:28,517 --> 00:58:31,354
Man! that is so unusual
in farming.

926
00:58:31,479 --> 00:58:34,316
You never hear about the older

927
00:58:34,441 --> 00:58:36,734
farmer wanting to get out
of the way.

928
00:58:36,859 --> 00:58:38,654
I mean, they want to take
the tractor lugs to

929
00:58:38,779 --> 00:58:41,614
wherever they're going,
with them.

930
00:58:42,782 --> 00:58:45,536
And the hardest thing is
for the new generation

931
00:58:45,661 --> 00:58:48,872
to feel like they have
responsibility,

932
00:58:48,997 --> 00:58:50,791
like they can make decisions.

933
00:58:50,916 --> 00:58:58,339
And so I've taken that
and used it with Daniel.

934
00:58:59,174 --> 00:59:00,801
[soft guitar]

935
00:59:00,926 --> 00:59:04,554
And he took over
daily operations.

936
00:59:04,679 --> 00:59:09,184
He's just run with it
and he is fantastic.

937
00:59:13,354 --> 00:59:18,234
As we progressed,
I started writing more.

938
00:59:20,612 --> 00:59:23,239
Then I was in Michael Pollan,
that was a big deal,

939
00:59:23,364 --> 00:59:24,782
"The Omnivore's Dilemma."

940
00:59:24,907 --> 00:59:27,369
He acted, less like a
cowboy than a maître d'.

941
00:59:27,494 --> 00:59:30,121
He just kind of opened the door,

942
00:59:30,246 --> 00:59:32,207
and the cattle moved from
one to another.

943
00:59:32,332 --> 00:59:33,834
And then of course
on the heels of that

944
00:59:33,959 --> 00:59:35,419
was the documentary "Food Inc."

945
00:59:35,544 --> 00:59:38,922
"The idea would be to have
such nutritionally dense food

946
00:59:39,047 --> 00:59:40,632
that people actually
felt better,

947
00:59:40,757 --> 00:59:42,842
had more energy, and weren't
sick as much!"

948
00:59:42,967 --> 00:59:45,136
It's first run sold out.

949
00:59:45,261 --> 00:59:47,764
The movie offers an
alternative vision

950
00:59:47,889 --> 00:59:50,434
of how we should be
producing and eating food.

951
00:59:50,559 --> 00:59:53,269
You know, here we were
on the periphery,

952
00:59:53,394 --> 00:59:55,606
for all this period of time
as we were building

953
00:59:55,731 --> 00:59:58,274
this reputation, this brand,
these systems,

954
00:59:59,942 --> 01:00:03,404
and then millions of people
caught up with us.

955
01:00:03,697 --> 01:00:05,491
[rock music]

956
01:00:07,951 --> 01:00:11,537
Demand for organically grown
food is at an all time high.

957
01:00:11,662 --> 01:00:13,497
The organic food movement
has grown substantially.

958
01:00:13,622 --> 01:00:16,001
Tthe organic food business
is booming.

959
01:00:18,586 --> 01:00:19,712
It's been exciting for us

960
01:00:19,837 --> 01:00:22,091
having been in it for
these many decades,

961
01:00:22,216 --> 01:00:24,676
to actually see the
awareness grow.

962
01:00:24,801 --> 01:00:28,806
It grows not only from people
who are looking for better food,

963
01:00:28,931 --> 01:00:31,391
but also just from the lack of

964
01:00:31,516 --> 01:00:35,729
trust in the industrial
food system.

965
01:00:35,854 --> 01:00:41,984
You couldn't hide the negative
consequences of junk anymore.

966
01:00:42,611 --> 01:00:45,572
So often we have this
idea that if we actually

967
01:00:45,697 --> 01:00:49,076
eat local, that that's not
really a credible food system.

968
01:00:49,201 --> 01:00:51,327
We can't really feed the
world with local food.

969
01:00:51,452 --> 01:00:53,412
And I'll try to debunk
that this evening.

970
01:00:53,537 --> 01:00:55,372
Buying local is the big draw.

971
01:00:55,499 --> 01:00:58,292
The number of farmers
markets explodes.

972
01:00:58,417 --> 01:00:59,461
Nationwide, that number has

973
01:00:59,586 --> 01:01:02,797
grown 64% in the
last five years.

974
01:01:02,922 --> 01:01:06,217
And I would suggest right
now that that wave has

975
01:01:06,342 --> 01:01:10,639
almost morphed from buying
food to producing food

976
01:01:10,764 --> 01:01:12,391
in the Homestead Movement.

977
01:01:16,352 --> 01:01:21,691
That really got rolling
after 2020.

978
01:01:21,816 --> 01:01:24,361
The breaking news stay at home,
that is the order tonight

979
01:01:24,486 --> 01:01:28,489
from four state governors as the
coronavirus pandemic spreads.

980
01:01:28,614 --> 01:01:30,534
When those supermarket
shelves were empty

981
01:01:30,659 --> 01:01:32,536
and people walked in here
and realized,

982
01:01:32,661 --> 01:01:35,037
"whoa, it's actually fragile.

983
01:01:35,162 --> 01:01:37,999
There's no food in the store.
What are we gonna eat?"

984
01:01:38,124 --> 01:01:39,292
You know, in 2020,

985
01:01:39,417 --> 01:01:42,837
one million backyard flocks
of chicken started up.

986
01:01:42,962 --> 01:01:45,549
You know, the number
one Googled food item

987
01:01:45,674 --> 01:01:50,471
in October, 2020
was how to make sourdough mother

988
01:01:50,637 --> 01:01:53,431
for sourdough bread.
There's just this

989
01:01:53,556 --> 01:01:56,267
incredible interest in
the country right now.

990
01:01:56,392 --> 01:02:00,187
In food authenticity

991
01:02:00,312 --> 01:02:05,777
and in actually having a safe,
secure, stable food system.

992
01:02:05,902 --> 01:02:09,031
And then you've got the black
swan of Putin invading Ukraine.

993
01:02:09,156 --> 01:02:12,492
Suddenly the corporate
system can't get fertilizer.

994
01:02:12,951 --> 01:02:15,286
You've got Palestine.

995
01:02:15,452 --> 01:02:19,749
We've been disturbed. And we'd
better wake up and be ready.

996
01:02:20,041 --> 01:02:21,792
[rock music]

997
01:02:24,254 --> 01:02:28,799
Whenever there is dysfunction
and disturbance in a society,

998
01:02:28,926 --> 01:02:31,427
you don't want to be
in an aircraft carrier.

999
01:02:31,552 --> 01:02:33,346
You want to be in a little
speed boat.

1000
01:02:34,347 --> 01:02:36,891
Compare a smaller
food production

1001
01:02:37,016 --> 01:02:41,187
and processing business,
but lots of them

1002
01:02:41,312 --> 01:02:46,276
compared to centralized
mega facilities.

1003
01:02:46,401 --> 01:02:49,612
Here's the obvious question.
If in the spring of 2020,

1004
01:02:49,737 --> 01:02:51,781
if instead of the U.S. being fed

1005
01:02:51,906 --> 01:02:57,454
by 300 mega-production
and processing

1006
01:02:57,579 --> 01:03:03,292
and distribution organizations,
if instead the U.S. had been fed

1007
01:03:03,417 --> 01:03:07,964
by 300,000 community-oriented,

1008
01:03:08,089 --> 01:03:11,176
smaller scale producers,
processors,

1009
01:03:11,301 --> 01:03:14,346
would we have had as
big a hiccup as we did?

1010
01:03:14,471 --> 01:03:16,097
Of course not.

1011
01:03:17,181 --> 01:03:21,019
On our farm, we didn't have
a hiccup at all.

1012
01:03:24,481 --> 01:03:28,484
Oh, yes. Haha, COVID.
Woo, boy, that was a year.

1013
01:03:30,946 --> 01:03:33,281
I mean, I do a blog.

1014
01:03:33,406 --> 01:03:35,659
And I knew I was pretty
healthy, so some of my

1015
01:03:35,784 --> 01:03:39,871
very first stuff was, "I want it,
I want it now!"

1016
01:03:41,664 --> 01:03:46,211
Knowing that your immune system
actually gets stronger.

1017
01:03:47,462 --> 01:03:51,841
And of course people
just went nuts on me.

1018
01:03:52,884 --> 01:03:55,469
Then I knew the whole
thing was a sham

1019
01:03:55,596 --> 01:03:59,474
the day the governor
closed churches

1020
01:03:59,599 --> 01:04:01,434
and farmers markets

1021
01:04:01,559 --> 01:04:06,814
and kept ABC stores, Costco,
Walmart, and all that open.

1022
01:04:13,821 --> 01:04:16,741
And started calling
workers "non-essential."

1023
01:04:16,866 --> 01:04:18,576
You know how demeaning
it is to tell a person

1024
01:04:18,701 --> 01:04:21,954
you have a non-essential job?
I mean, I can't...

1025
01:04:22,079 --> 01:04:23,289
well, I guess
I would tell a bunch

1026
01:04:23,414 --> 01:04:25,834
of bureaucrats that, but
in general, I mean,

1027
01:04:25,959 --> 01:04:29,254
I can't imagine telling a
person that he's non-essential.

1028
01:04:30,964 --> 01:04:33,424
We lost restaurants,
we lost customers,

1029
01:04:33,549 --> 01:04:35,051
you know, the health
department called

1030
01:04:35,176 --> 01:04:38,679
because we weren't demanding
masks in our farm store.

1031
01:04:39,681 --> 01:04:40,556
We had to sign,

1032
01:04:40,682 --> 01:04:44,311
"Masks, your body,
your health, your choice."

1033
01:04:44,436 --> 01:04:46,687
Nine out of ten of our
folks who come in,

1034
01:04:46,812 --> 01:04:47,647
they'd take pictures of it

1035
01:04:47,772 --> 01:04:48,897
and then they put it
on social media.

1036
01:04:49,024 --> 01:04:51,026
Well, then that inflamed
the health department.

1037
01:04:51,151 --> 01:04:53,777
They went ballistic.

1038
01:04:55,529 --> 01:04:57,824
And we were getting
phone calls here,

1039
01:04:57,949 --> 01:04:58,866
"We're gonna get a
group together

1040
01:04:58,992 --> 01:05:00,994
and come and burn
down your barns.

1041
01:05:01,119 --> 01:05:02,996
We're gonna come and
shoot your cows."

1042
01:05:03,121 --> 01:05:05,372
We were on edge there
for a while,

1043
01:05:05,497 --> 01:05:09,044
and it's not a, it's okay.

1044
01:05:09,169 --> 01:05:11,004
What I've found is that
every time

1045
01:05:11,129 --> 01:05:13,422
something fairly big like
that happens,

1046
01:05:13,547 --> 01:05:16,842
then five doors open
the other direction.

1047
01:05:16,967 --> 01:05:19,846
I think that if you say
you're a Christian

1048
01:05:19,971 --> 01:05:24,309
and you have not faced
some real stiff opposition,

1049
01:05:24,434 --> 01:05:29,939
not every day by any means,
but, you know, along, routinely,

1050
01:05:30,064 --> 01:05:31,691
you're either hiding your
light under a bushel

1051
01:05:31,816 --> 01:05:35,779
or you're a wimp or you're too
blind to see what's going on.

1052
01:05:49,167 --> 01:05:52,044
We're known for our
pastured livestock,

1053
01:05:52,169 --> 01:05:54,089
but anyone who really knows me

1054
01:05:54,214 --> 01:05:57,551
knows that my favorite
tool is a chainsaw

1055
01:05:57,676 --> 01:06:02,221
and I get really excited
when I get in the woods.

1056
01:06:04,099 --> 01:06:06,517
So here's where we want to stop.

1057
01:06:10,562 --> 01:06:13,024
"This grass is just wispy
and soft!"

1058
01:06:13,149 --> 01:06:17,069
Yeah, and you know what?
Nobody knows what this grass is.

1059
01:06:18,487 --> 01:06:23,284
Not me. Not the NRCS.
Nobody.

1060
01:06:23,409 --> 01:06:24,327
They've never seen it before.

1061
01:06:24,452 --> 01:06:24,702
"Really?"

1062
01:06:26,746 --> 01:06:30,917
No, what it is, it's ancient
pre-European grass.

1063
01:06:31,042 --> 01:06:32,794
It's what was here when
the bison were here.

1064
01:06:36,756 --> 01:06:39,509
So I don't know where you,
pick a spot

1065
01:06:39,634 --> 01:06:42,721
and I'd just like to sit
and talk about this a minute.

1066
01:06:42,846 --> 01:06:46,432
Okay. You ready?
"Yep."

1067
01:06:48,184 --> 01:06:50,727
So this is a pig silvopasture.

1068
01:06:50,896 --> 01:06:52,939
[soft banjo playing]

1069
01:06:53,064 --> 01:06:54,524
We started with woods.

1070
01:06:54,649 --> 01:06:58,569
This was just regular woods,
just like over here.

1071
01:06:58,694 --> 01:07:02,949
This is what happens if you
just walk away and leave it.

1072
01:07:03,074 --> 01:07:07,369
And we open it up,
cut the big trees.

1073
01:07:07,496 --> 01:07:10,539
And we put in the pigs
and we let them disturb

1074
01:07:10,664 --> 01:07:14,084
the ground and move
them strategically.

1075
01:07:15,879 --> 01:07:19,089
And when the pigs disturb
the ground just right

1076
01:07:19,216 --> 01:07:22,342
with enough rest in between,

1077
01:07:22,469 --> 01:07:25,471
forages started coming up
and that disturbance

1078
01:07:25,596 --> 01:07:30,434
awakened the latent seed bank.

1079
01:07:30,894 --> 01:07:34,062
I mean, notice there's a
bunch of different kinds here,

1080
01:07:34,189 --> 01:07:38,692
and we've had NRCS agents out,
who know their forages.

1081
01:07:38,817 --> 01:07:42,154
"What are these? I've never
seen these before!"

1082
01:07:42,279 --> 01:07:45,074
And so we believe that
we're tapping

1083
01:07:45,199 --> 01:07:48,536
into the pre-European
seed bank that was here

1084
01:07:48,661 --> 01:07:51,997
when the bison and
the Native Americans

1085
01:07:52,122 --> 01:07:55,084
were here and to think that

1086
01:07:55,209 --> 01:07:59,339
these seeds have
been unexpressed,

1087
01:08:00,131 --> 01:08:06,221
waiting for three-hundred
years to germinate.

1088
01:08:06,346 --> 01:08:12,351
Using pigs as a management
tool, but awakening a

1089
01:08:12,476 --> 01:08:20,276
latent seed bank that was
here waiting for a new steward.

1090
01:08:21,277 --> 01:08:23,321
That's pretty cool.

1091
01:08:23,446 --> 01:08:24,822
[soft country music]

1092
01:08:26,116 --> 01:08:33,372
So we go from here.
And it turns into this.

1093
01:08:35,791 --> 01:08:37,084
You know permaculture
has the saying,

1094
01:08:37,209 --> 01:08:40,254
"We need more forests
and fewer trees."

1095
01:08:41,214 --> 01:08:44,091
And we have to realize
that the dense forests of

1096
01:08:44,217 --> 01:08:47,554
North America are
a European creation.

1097
01:08:47,679 --> 01:08:49,431
The Native Americans
didn't like dense forests

1098
01:08:49,556 --> 01:08:50,347
because you can't see

1099
01:08:50,472 --> 01:08:52,892
you know, somebody
might sneak up on you.

1100
01:08:53,642 --> 01:08:56,854
So they wanted not
only open for safety,

1101
01:08:56,979 --> 01:08:58,397
but it brought the
bison and the elk

1102
01:08:58,522 --> 01:09:00,732
and the birds and all that.

1103
01:09:01,442 --> 01:09:04,152
And in fact, the first
Europeans who came to

1104
01:09:04,279 --> 01:09:06,322
America wrote back
in their diaries,

1105
01:09:06,447 --> 01:09:09,784
they said, "we could take a
European continental army

1106
01:09:09,909 --> 01:09:12,161
and march it from
the Atlantic Ocean

1107
01:09:12,286 --> 01:09:16,916
to the Mississippi
without any roads."

1108
01:09:18,709 --> 01:09:21,379
One of the reasons
people don't take care of

1109
01:09:21,504 --> 01:09:23,506
their forests and their woods

1110
01:09:23,631 --> 01:09:28,011
and trees are so
neglected in America

1111
01:09:28,136 --> 01:09:32,514
is because the only value
on that land is lumber.

1112
01:09:34,351 --> 01:09:41,857
Here, we're getting $10,000
an acre per year from the pigs

1113
01:09:41,982 --> 01:09:45,694
while growing the next forest.

1114
01:09:47,237 --> 01:09:48,989
This is one of my favorite
places to bring my

1115
01:09:49,114 --> 01:09:50,699
radical environmentalist friends

1116
01:09:50,824 --> 01:09:54,829
that view the only credible
way for us to interact

1117
01:09:54,954 --> 01:09:56,747
with the environment
is to abandon it.

1118
01:09:56,872 --> 01:09:58,124
We've got to lock it
up in a park,

1119
01:09:58,249 --> 01:10:01,169
Bureau of Land Management,
or a wilderness area.

1120
01:10:03,921 --> 01:10:05,297
Our sense is we want

1121
01:10:05,422 --> 01:10:08,509
environmentalism
by participation.

1122
01:10:08,634 --> 01:10:10,136
That's the juxtaposition.

1123
01:10:10,261 --> 01:10:12,262
Do we have environmentalism
by abandonment

1124
01:10:12,387 --> 01:10:15,474
or do we have environmentalism
by participation?

1125
01:10:15,599 --> 01:10:18,436
And I suggest that
the participation

1126
01:10:18,561 --> 01:10:19,937
is the one that pleases God

1127
01:10:20,062 --> 01:10:22,439
because that runs to His creation,

1128
01:10:22,564 --> 01:10:25,192
not away from His creation.

1129
01:10:34,284 --> 01:10:36,329
So here we are.

1130
01:10:36,579 --> 01:10:38,122
[soft country music]

1131
01:10:59,477 --> 01:11:02,187
My dream is here, okay,

1132
01:11:02,312 --> 01:11:04,941
so Teresa and I got a
piece of raw land.

1133
01:11:05,066 --> 01:11:08,819
It was not a business. It was
not a going concern at all.

1134
01:11:08,944 --> 01:11:11,406
We stood on the shoulders of
greatness. We had a launch.

1135
01:11:12,531 --> 01:11:15,409
You know, God blessed
us and we built this thing,

1136
01:11:16,161 --> 01:11:20,247
and we don't know
what God has for us.

1137
01:11:22,751 --> 01:11:27,254
But we believe and we
trust that this will simply

1138
01:11:27,379 --> 01:11:33,761
launch the next half-century
way beyond us.

1139
01:11:37,181 --> 01:11:41,811
And so I've been backing
away for Daniel.

1140
01:11:42,477 --> 01:11:44,104
He runs the farm.

1141
01:11:44,229 --> 01:11:44,814
When I go home,

1142
01:11:44,939 --> 01:11:46,649
he tells me what I'm supposed
to do till I, you know,

1143
01:11:46,774 --> 01:11:48,484
before I leave.

1144
01:11:49,192 --> 01:11:52,529
And he is fantastic
team building

1145
01:11:52,654 --> 01:11:56,492
and developing these
young people.

1146
01:12:00,871 --> 01:12:03,249
One of my sweetest memories.

1147
01:12:03,957 --> 01:12:06,127
Dad was going downhill

1148
01:12:06,252 --> 01:12:08,087
and he calls me into
the bedroom on day,

1149
01:12:08,212 --> 01:12:10,506
he said, "Bring a piece
of paper."

1150
01:12:11,507 --> 01:12:13,842
He said, "Let's make a
list of all the salaries

1151
01:12:13,967 --> 01:12:16,554
that we can generate here."

1152
01:12:17,471 --> 01:12:23,144
Most farmers, who would think?
They're all down in the dumps,

1153
01:12:23,269 --> 01:12:25,062
"I can't even make
one salary here!"

1154
01:12:25,187 --> 01:12:27,606
You know, I mean,
it's all scarcity

1155
01:12:27,731 --> 01:12:32,027
and can't, and won't, and don't,
and all that.

1156
01:12:32,152 --> 01:12:34,321
So we sat there and
brainstormed and came up,

1157
01:12:34,447 --> 01:12:35,739
I think it was twenty-two,

1158
01:12:35,864 --> 01:12:38,451
twenty-two salaries
at that time.

1159
01:12:38,576 --> 01:12:40,077
And today,

1160
01:12:40,202 --> 01:12:44,791
we generate twenty-two
salaries on the farm.

1161
01:12:47,836 --> 01:12:52,381
And if we did that exercise
today, it'd probably be eighty.

1162
01:12:53,674 --> 01:12:55,801
I mean, this is the
thing about God's grace.

1163
01:12:55,926 --> 01:12:58,512
It doesn't quit.
It doesn't give up.

1164
01:13:00,972 --> 01:13:03,101
You know, I think about that
with Israel.

1165
01:13:03,226 --> 01:13:04,977
He said, "from this mountain
to this creek to this

1166
01:13:05,102 --> 01:13:06,687
hill to this mountain
to this rock."

1167
01:13:06,812 --> 01:13:08,564
He gave them a very
clear boundary.

1168
01:13:08,689 --> 01:13:09,982
Here's your promise land.

1169
01:13:10,107 --> 01:13:11,484
Here's where you're going
to be blessed.

1170
01:13:11,609 --> 01:13:13,944
"Now be fruitful and multiply."

1171
01:13:14,069 --> 01:13:15,154
Well the average person thinks,

1172
01:13:15,279 --> 01:13:17,866
"well, that's a recipe
for famine!"

1173
01:13:18,574 --> 01:13:20,326
Not in God's economy.

1174
01:13:22,536 --> 01:13:25,706
God's economy,
you know, your stewardship,

1175
01:13:27,041 --> 01:13:28,709
your innovation,

1176
01:13:30,669 --> 01:13:33,422
your pond building,

1177
01:13:33,547 --> 01:13:35,216
your composting,

1178
01:13:35,757 --> 01:13:38,427
it's more. You never
scratched the surface,

1179
01:13:38,552 --> 01:13:40,679
and so we have a saying
around here,

1180
01:13:40,804 --> 01:13:42,097
"fill it up."

1181
01:13:42,597 --> 01:13:43,932
"Fill it up!"

1182
01:13:46,059 --> 01:13:50,397
I've never been on a farm in the
world, including this one,

1183
01:13:50,772 --> 01:13:53,234
that's anywhere close
to being filled up.

1184
01:13:53,651 --> 01:13:56,069
You can always add
a hive of bees.

1185
01:13:56,446 --> 01:14:03,327
You can add a flower garden.
You can do so many other things.

1186
01:14:08,166 --> 01:14:10,251
And so I want, when people
come to visit the farm,

1187
01:14:10,376 --> 01:14:12,627
I want them to exit
and I want them to say,

1188
01:14:12,752 --> 01:14:15,089
"Oh, we just saw abundance."

1189
01:14:15,631 --> 01:14:18,967
"Oh, we just saw redemption."

1190
01:14:20,136 --> 01:14:23,306
"Oh, we just saw forgiveness."

1191
01:14:32,397 --> 01:14:37,152
So we just keep experimenting
and keep serving our customers.

1192
01:14:38,946 --> 01:14:41,491
And how big it is,
how little it is, what it does,

1193
01:14:41,616 --> 01:14:44,952
that's not necessarily
up to us to decide.

1194
01:14:45,077 --> 01:14:51,292
What's ours to decide is today,
today, be faithful.