Regenerative Ag Stories on the Grazing Grass Podcast

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0:00:01 - Cal
Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, Episode 104.

0:00:06 - Clay
The post-it note is more is mightier than the grazing reel.

0:00:11 - Cal
Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, episode 103. You're listening to the Grazing Grass Podcast, sharing information and stories of grass-based livestock production utilizing regenerative practices. I'm your host, cal Hartage. You're growing more than grass. You're growing a healthier ecosystem to help your cattle thrive in their environment. You're growing your livelihood by increasing your carrying capacity and reducing your operating costs. You're growing stronger communities and a legacy to last generations. The grazing management decisions you make today impact everything from the soil beneath your feet to the community all around you. That's why the Noble Research Institute created their Essentials of Regenerative Grazing course to teach ranchers like you easy-to-follow techniques to quickly assess your forage, production and infrastructure capacity in order to begin grazing more efficiently. Together, they can help you grow not only a healthier operation, but a legacy that lasts. Learn more on their website at nobleorg slash grazing. It's nobleorg forward slash grazing.

On today's episode, we have Clay Connery of the Working Cows podcast, very excited for him to come on, share his journey, talk about the podcast and answer the famous four questions. And just as a teaser, I don't think you can guess what his favorite tool for the farm is. It's an excellent episode. It's a dime, it's a don't intentionally miss episode. Anyway, before we talk to Clay, 10 seconds about my farm and we're going to talk about the grazing grass community.

By the time you listen to this, we will have a thousand members, if not really close, and if you're not a member, you might want to run over there and join, because the thousand member boy that th was hard for me. The thousand member will receive a prize. Once we get to a thousand. I'll announce it in the group so we all know. But so excited that group is growing, so excited for the discussion that's happening there and we can support each other in our journeys. Enough about me, about the grazing grass community, let's talk to Clay. Clay, we want to welcome you to the Grazing Grass Podcast. We're excited you're here today.

0:03:10 - Clay
Cal, it's an honor to be here. Thanks for the opportunity.

0:03:14 - Cal
To get started, Clay, can you tell us about yourself and your operation?

0:03:18 - Clay
Yeah, just I like the way that one guest put it one time. He said I ranch on a postage stamp. That one guest put it one time. He said I ranch on a postage stamp. And so we got a half section of land which maybe for a guy in Northeast Oklahoma or Minnesota or Missouri that sounds significant, but it'll run about nine cows for a year in our neighborhood is what we're looking at. And so my wife and I have been on this journey of managing our own place for about five years with our four kids ages 15, 13, 11, and 9. It's easy here for about six months until the boys turn 16 and 14 this summer, and then we've got two evens and two odds again. But we've got three boys and a girl. Earth order goes boy, girl, boy. So she's well protected and feisty. But yeah, so we run on, like I said, a half section of land.

I look at the ranch as a side hustle because I don't think that we should try to ask it to do more than it can, and so the way that fleshes it out is we've got a resident sheep herd, which I appreciated. Your episode with Jared Luman, because I am also accidentally lambing right now. We're recording here at the end of February and we're accidentally lambing just about done, actually, from the looks of it and so anybody who, as I said in a radio interview the other day, anybody who runs sheep, knows what that's about accidentally lambing. So we have a resident sheep herd and then we also have we bring in custom grazing cattle through in the summer during the growing season, may to August-ish, sometimes end of May to end August, sometimes beginning of May to beginning August. Just depends on what the customer wants and that's how we try to maximize or optimize, as you said how we optimize our forage, availability and quality throughout the year.

0:05:18 - Cal
Oh, very good when we jump back. Clay, did you always knew you wanted to be here running sheep and cattle?

0:05:25 - Clay
Absolutely not. I knew, actually I knew really well that I wanted very little, if nothing, to do with agriculture. I always say I grew up on a ranch west of Bellevue, south Dakota. My parents were heroes. They started a ranch from scratch in the 80s. That wasn't easy to do back then, from scratch in the 80s. That wasn't easy to do back then. But what that meant was they both worked jobs, full-time jobs in town. My dad worked for the phone company and my mom was a teacher elementary school teacher and so that meant evenings, nights and weekends were cows and they were good.

Looking back now and having my own kids those ages, we were involved in things. We were involved in 4-H, we were involved in wrestling and baseball, and they never missed any of those events. So on top of starting Ranch from Nothing in the 80s, they were present for activities and had us involved in activities, but nights and weekends were cows for us outside of extracurricular activities, and so I grew to resent the cows. I probably, or maybe definitely, had a bit of a lazy streak and didn't enjoy the work outside as much as somebody, as some other people, and so I didn't grow up with that story that I hear so often from other people of, oh, I love this. I knew I wanted to do it from my earliest days.

I was carpet farming and always had a fascination with the tractors. That wasn't me. Agriculture in general, cows specifically, didn't interest me. And so I went away to Bible school for a couple of years and in Milwaukee I started to realize that Western South Dakota wasn't as bad a place as I thought it was and I never really didn't like it.

It just I was curious about other places. I got, as they say, a belly full of living in the city, got to find out what that was all about and realized I do Western South Dakota. And then, as I often say, I got selectively involved on my dad's ranch, helping him calve heifers, helping him brand some of the other big cow working days. And then that involvement morphed over time into greater and greater involvement and it started to get in my blood, so to speak, and started to get opened up, through some continuing education courses, to a whole different way of thinking about grass and cows and business in general. And that was the start of the journey for me is getting introduced to some of these ideas of regenerative agriculture.

0:08:00 - Cal
So after Bible college you went back home.

0:08:04 - Clay
Yeah, so I went back and started a job. I worked some blue-collar jobs, odd jobs, flooring, did some flooring, putting carpet and tile and hardwood in houses. I worked at a shop where we installed custom living quarters and horse trailers. So think of those people who are on the rodeo circuit living in their horse trailers 250 days a year. Those are the kind of trailers we were working on. I did that for a while and then I worked at a bentonite plant, which is bentonites in everything from diapers to toothpaste and candy bars. We use that. I worked in a plant where we put that in bags and shipped it all over the world. Put that in bags and shipped it all over the world. And so I did that for about 18 months after school. And then I got pitched a job working as a youth pastor in a local church, and so I did that. I was a youth pastor in a local church for about 12 years and, like I said, I was selectively involved in the ranch during that whole time, but I wasn't there as an employee or anything.

0:09:04 - Cal
Yeah, I know, when I left the farm originally and started teaching my selectively involvement in dad's cattle was him calling me. We got work to do, but I don't know if I had much of an option to say hey, I can't. Actually, I am one of those people that knew from an early age livestock was something I wanted to do. My brother and sisters I've mentioned they got as far away as quickly as they could.

0:09:33 - Clay
I was just going to say. That's similar to me too, my brother. He spent some years in the oil field, but he's had cows of his own for most of his post-college years once he moved back from California.

0:09:45 - Cal
Oh yeah. Now one thing that I think is interesting. You went a long ways from home for college. What was some contributing factors for that?

0:09:56 - Clay
It was affordable.

0:09:58 - Cal
That's always important.

0:09:59 - Clay
So I went to New Tribes Bible Institute in Waukesha, wisconsin, which is just outside of Milwaukee. I went to New Tribes Bible Institute in Waukesha, wisconsin, which is just outside of Milwaukee, and all of the teachers there are retired or not retired, but missionaries who have returned home, for the most part, from the mission field. And so their salaries are paid as missionaries, so the student body doesn't have to pay their salaries.

And then and so it's you end up just paying room and board is what you're paying for in your education there. It's now called Ethnos 360. It's still there Same Bible school, same curriculum, some of the same teachers as were there 20 years ago, but it now goes by a different name. But anyways. And then the other thing was all the credits would have transferred to Moody Bible Institute, and I'm pretty sure I wanted to be a youth pastor at that point, and so I was going there, because Moody Bible Institute and I'm pretty sure I wanted to be a youth pastor at that point, and so I was going there.

Because Moody is similar in that it's affordable, and so it ends up being hard to get into, and so I wanted to go to New Tribes so that all my credits would transfer to Moody, and then that's where I was going to go into Chicago, actually from Milwaukee to Chicago. But yeah, that was just why I went there. I ended up getting connected to New Tribes Bible Institute through a mission trip that I went on with a Christian boarding high school that I was attending I attended. My senior year of high school was at Sunshine Bible Academy in Miller, south Dakota, and we took a mission trip to the Milwaukee Rescue Mission and most of the students there were, or most of the staff in the youth department there were New Tribes Bible Institute students, and so that's how I got connected to New Tribes.

0:11:33 - Cal
Oh, very interesting One reason I went to NEO Junior College. One thing it was close, it was fairly affordable, I could still come home and dairy, but all the credits transferred to Oklahoma State University where I was intended on being, so yeah, planning ahead you talked about. You got home, you were able to be selectively involved in your dad's ranch and at some point, through continuing education, you started being introduced to these paradigm-shifting practices. Tell us a little bit about that process and how you dove in deeper to learn more. Sure yeah.

0:12:14 - Clay
So basically I needed to supplement my income. The church was not able to continue to pay a full-time salary and so I needed to supplement my income. My dad had retired early I would say early. Yeah, he retired early from the phone company to go ranch full-time, basically, and he was getting to a place where he needed more help on the ranch. And so he said I'll hire you a couple of days a week. There's some lessons there that we can talk about later. I'll hire you a couple of days a week. There's some lessons there that we can talk about later. But I'll hire you a couple of days a week and pay you this much a month and it would supplement my income at the church. And then he said but before you come and work on the ranch, you should go get some continuing education related to ranching.

And Tri-State Livestock News is a big publication in our neighborhood Agriculture obviously publication in our neighborhood and they had an advertisement in there for the High Plains Ranch Practicum. It was taught by Dallas Mount, now the CEO of Ranch Management Consultants, aaron Berger, who's an extension agent in Southwest Nebraska, and then Blake Hopman, who was also an extension agent in Wyoming. So it was basically University of Wyoming University of Nebraska going together to put on this business-based ranching class, and so the way it worked was it was two days a month in four separate months. So I think our classes were like June, august, september, november maybe is when the classes were, oh yeah.

And so the first I don't know if I remember this quite right, but it seems to me the hour or two of class was they showed us a clip from the movie Moneyball about thinking differently about how to draft players, from that first kind of meeting where Billy Bean's pitching a different way to draft players and choose players, and then they showed us a different way to peel a banana. That was the first hour of this ranching class and getting us to think differently, look at things differently. The Don Campbell quote if you want to change the way you, if you want to change small things, change the way you do things. If you want to change big things, change the way things. They were trying to help us look at things from a different paradigm. And so that was my introduction to these ideas of let's look at ranching differently.

And then it was all about economic analysis. It was all about this is a business first, not a lifestyle first, and grazing high density, short duration, grazing being what we're really shooting for as high a density as we can possibly get and for a shorted duration as we can possibly get, all practical factors being part of that decision-making process. But yeah, and those are some of the things, basically the four pillars of a ranching operation land, animals, money and people. We love to manage animals and land, maybe second as ranchers, right, money and people. We're not so much a fan of doing those things, and so we spend a lot of time looking at animals and land, not much time thinking about money and people, and that nets us pretty poor results from a business perspective in our ranches.

And so that was the way that the school was structured and just totally changed my paradigm. It did it just totally changed the way I look at agriculture. That was where the passion to be involved in agriculture for the rest of my life came from, because I could see that now cows are a tool to make what God has entrusted to us in the form of his creation better. And there, man, I was all in at that point and.

I wanted to be a part of it.

0:16:04 - Cal
Yeah, the opportunity to leave things better off than we found them. It's a blessing to be here and being able to do this. How can we leave it in better shape? Yep, Excellent passion there to go with when you started going to these classes. First off, I love that format A couple of days every few months. It gives you time to get information, go back, do some work, reflect, do more research if you need to, and then come back for more. I love that format.

Of course, most things are more short intervals, or it's almost the high density short interval you go to conference for three days and you get slammed with everything which there's benefits from that, but having that opportunity just a few days every month, some logistics of getting there, but I really like that model better than some of the other models I've seen.

0:16:57 - Clay
Yeah, it's got its advantages and disadvantages both ways.

I think there's no right answer, but it's definitely worth maybe doing both because I think that it's easier for especially for people who are in an old paradigm of ranching, it's easier for people to get away for a couple of days at a time than it is for eight days for something like ranching for profit or something where, if you're in an in a newer paradigm, hopefully you're building in vacation, you're building in time away from the ranch for your family, and so this is part of that becomes an easier thing. But from an in an older paradigm way of thinking where I don't need a vacation, I love what I do. Why would I go anywhere else? This is God's country, which it is, and everybody who, wherever you live, should be that for you honestly. But anyways that I think it is easier from that perspective and the ability to take things in, ruminate on them for a while, decompress, think about them, look at your own operation, think how do I implement that and then go back and get another and ask questions honestly.

Yeah we were thinking about implementing this, but how would that work here? So I think that's a. It is a really great format.

0:18:08 - Cal
That opportunity to think about questions. My best questions occur about 2 am the day or two after, whatever I'm at, so having that opportunity to write those down and go back and ask questions, I think is great you mentioned about vacations.

I'm currently trying to convince my wife that we need to take a vacation to the National Grazing Lands Conference and I don't know how that's going. To be honest, I know it's a hard sell because she says so many of our vacations involve something about ag. So we'll see how that goes. She said we can go, but not so much that it counts as a vacation.

0:18:46 - Clay
Yes, yes, it's going to be a business expense for the Grazing Grass podcast, is that right?

0:18:52 - Cal
It is yes, yeah, and she'll make sure that everything's paid for from Grazing Grass. It will not be coming out of any other budget. Good yeah, so you start going to these classes. Did you go home and tell your dad about it? Was he receptive to these ideas?

0:19:12 - Clay
Yeah, I think that part of my dad being starting the ranch from nothing in the 80s my parents doing that is that they were always pretty receptive. There's some practical things. What my dad's operation, my parents' operation, ended up becoming was just a small piece of owned land or two small pieces of owned land and then all leased land. And in our neighborhood the leased land is most often leased either from the National Forest Forest Service grazing permit or it's leased from a retired rancher who's actually willing to give you full care of your animals. You wouldn't necessarily have to show up, you could drop them off and six months later go pick them up and you would know that they're going to be fine. So that happens quite a bit in our neighborhood and so there were some limitations there as far as the forest service and the ranch lease, as to what he was able to implement from a grazing perspective and from a calving date perspective and some of those things. And so I think he was always receptive and actually I remember a long time ago he probably went to what has now morphed into the South Dakota Grassland Coalition's grazing school before it was called that, before it was probably even called the Grassland Coalition. He went to a course a long time ago and he came home with a book by Stan Parsons If you Want to Be a Cowboy, get a Job and so he had that kind of introduction to it a long time ago and so I think he was always open to it.

But there was some limitations just based on what we had for resources available to us and what we were actually able to change with our management. And he was always an April calver anyways, from what I remember, we calved heifers earlier and most of those actually were heifers that we would buy calve out and then sell as pairs in the spring when people were getting ready to go to grass, and that actually worked out pretty well for us, aside from the challenges of calving in February and March in western South Dakota but it worked out financially. And so I think he was always receptive but limited in what we could implement, and now, as his business has changed a little bit, he's implementing more and more of those things all the time actually Very good.

0:21:38 - Cal
I'm not familiar at all with grazing public lands, so I don't know what parameters are put on you through that. But I do get the private leases, and that's it's almost. Every person has a different idea how it should be done.

And one property. I don't have a formal lease for it. I brought it up on the podcast. I do get to graze it a little bit each year, but it's because there's multiple people involved and they're very concerned about overgrazing and they're just, they're so apprehensive about it, but they're letting me graze it a little bit each year as far as the public land is concerned.

0:22:18 - Clay
They set your turnout date and they set your come home date basically, and infrastructure is pretty hard to develop because you've got all kinds of competing interests when you have to do. You have to do archaeological surveys to decide if there's any Indian burial grounds there or anything like that. So all these kinds of challenges become part of what the problem, or you have to get over those hurdles before you can do any infrastructure and those kinds of things, especially permanent infrastructure. And then the other thing is they don't care what size of calf you're running. So I know a lot of guys in our neighborhood that calve in February and March because you can come home in November from the Forest Service lease with a 750 pound calf.

And so you basically get to run a yearling in the hills at the same AUMs as a pair, and so if you calve in April or you calve in February, they don't really care how big that calf is when you come home. So it ends up being one of the unfair regional advantages that we have that some people take advantage of in that way. And then the other thing is going up there with baby calves. I think it turned out sometime late May, early June, going up there with baby calves. They're more susceptible to predators, and so there are mountain lions, there aren't wolves, but there are really big coyotes in the Black Hills, if you know what I'm saying, and there aren't bears, but there are gigantic trash raccoons in the Black Hills, if you know what I'm saying. And there aren't bears, but there are gigantic trash raccoons in the Black Hills, and so there's those kinds of things that you're thinking about too, with small baby calves going up there, if they were born in.

May and June, and not the least of which is calving up. There would be a challenge too, so I think those are some of the things that come into play when you start to think about changing calving date drastically before turning out into the hills, yeah.

0:24:08 - Cal
Yeah, those would all be important factors there when you were going home and able to help your parents. What were some? Or how did that work out for you? Because we know so many people are working with their families and going in and I know I've gone through that experience. I still am in that experience. In fact, if I wasn't recording this right now, I'd be outside helping dad with some fence that he wants done. So how has that worked, working with your parents? What would you suggest to others working with their parents.

0:24:43 - Clay
I think it's important to understand whose place is this? Just to be really blunt, oh, I think I'm sorry to jump in.

0:24:55 - Cal
I think that is a huge point and that's real easy to forget, but you for them to tell everybody who might be the next generation.

0:25:03 - Clay
what is, what's the next step? Where are we going from here? Who has an interest going forward and figure out a way to decide that? I really think that it comes down to clear communication of what is your role here. Are you a co-decision maker, are you a co-owner or are you an employee? And, honestly, if those things are communicated clearly, it relieves a lot of that stress of Junior coming home to the ranch and trying to implement all the crazy things he learned at whatever conference he just went to.

And it helps everybody make decisions for the future. Is this a place that I want to invest 15, 20, 30 years waiting for my opportunity to manage it, or is it going to be better for everybody? Are Christmas dinners going to be more pleasant if I go somewhere else and come home and visit occasionally, rather than trying to work here? So I think that clarity of what the future is probably the most important thing in those deals, and that just takes, admittedly, uncomfortable conversations. You just have to be willing to sit down and say where are we headed, what's the vision, what's the mission, who's next in terms of management authority?

And the bigger the family, the harder those conversations get, as I would expect that to be the case, but doesn't mean that we should be scared of them or run from them. We actually, I think, would have a lot better relationships in ranching if we ran towards those conversations and approached them from a place of curiosity rather than a place of trying to impose our will on the situation, and so I think that's where I would go. As far as lessons learned is, we just need to be real clear, and once we know those things, then we can make decisions and we can understand. I'm here to put staples in fence posts and sign the back of the check rather than the front of the check, and I am okay with that or I'm not, and I'm going to make my plans for the future accordingly.

0:27:35 - Cal
And I think that those are all really good points, that clarity. For me, just speaking about my dad, my parents and my relationship. It's always progressing, getting better or getting worse. My relationship with my parents have just always gotten better but, granted, some of that is wisdom on my side. I'm not the guy I was when I was 23 and thought I knew everything, and that clarity on where you fall into that's so important and what the succession plan is in the future. I did some things based upon what I thought the plan was and that wasn't the plan, which is not my parents' fault. That's my fault for not having that conversation and that's caused me to do some things differently. And had I had those conversations, I would have started doing things differently earlier. And so those conversations while anxiety-causing, they need to be had.

0:28:35 - Clay
Yeah, man, a couple of things on that. First of all, there's a really helpful graphic that goes around social media every once in a while about when I was 18. Or you can go back as far as you want. When I was five, my dad was my hero. When I was 15, I kind of whatever. My dad didn't know as much as I as you want. When I was five, my dad was my hero. When I was 15, I kind of whatever. My dad didn't know as much as I thought he did. When I was 18, I thought my dad knew nothing.

When I'm 25, it's I'm really going to teach the old man what's going on. And then, the older you get, you start to realize he's a pretty smart guy and I should learn from him more, and so I think that is an important thing. To recognize is that posture of humility and learning from the previous generation. So I think that's an important thing. And then, your last name doesn't entitle you to anything. The only thing your parents owe you is clarity about what the plan is really. I think is the way we should look at that.

0:29:30 - Cal
I agree, I'm here because I'm here, dad's able to do some things he couldn't do otherwise, and I came. It hasn't been just a straight line here, but it's my honor to be here and help my dad get that enjoyment out of it as long as he wants to do it. But, like I said, that wasn't me. What I hate to count up the years now, two or three decades ago.

0:29:58 - Clay
I'm with you. There's more gray in the beard and on the side of my head now than there was a while ago, for sure.

0:30:05 - Cal
Yes, and I'm finding mine's increasing. I trimmed this just today because I can't pull off the Brian Alexander Me neither. It was getting a little bit long and my daughter goes. There's a lot of gray in that. I'm not talking to her right now, but maybe later on I will.

0:30:26 - Clay
Yeah, the Bible says it's a crown of glory, so we'll go with that.

0:30:29 - Cal
There we go, we go. Yes, now you talked a little bit about your operation. So, transitioning to your operation and what you're doing, you have sheep and you're doing custom grazing cattle, and then do you own some cattle as well just a couple of milk cows, that's it oh yes I live.

0:30:47 - Clay
I live 35 miles at my house from the nearest gas station and I live 70-something miles from the nearest Walmart, and so just to tell you where my house sits in the world. So yeah, we try to keep something that gives milk around because we like drinking milk and we'd rather not have to buy eight gallons of it at a time when we go to the grocery store every two weeks to one month.

0:31:13 - Cal
When I hear that, I think, oh wow, that sounds perfect. My wife would be going. No, you're crazy.

0:31:19 - Clay
I think the sparsity of the population is related to the productivity of the land. In a lot of cases, the more productive the land, the closer the places get together. And so it comes with its own unique set of challenges, but whenever we turn off the pavement onto the gravel road, and when we turn onto the gravel road, we're at the closest. We're 13 miles from our house when we turn onto the gravel road.

And my wife breathes a sigh of relief and she's happy. She's in her happy place now, where the cows outnumber the people, and that's good, Very good yeah.

0:31:55 - Cal
On your sheep, are you?

0:31:56 - Clay
running hair sheep? I'm assuming Wool sheep. Oh, I'm sorry.

0:31:58 - Cal
I made the wrong assumption there.

0:31:59 - Clay
Oh you're good, You're good. Everybody who comes from a place with high parasite load makes that assumption because-.

0:32:06 - Cal
Right, I have a little bit more rainfall.

0:32:09 - Clay
Yeah, so we don't have the parasite issues and we also live in a place where we don't have to burn our wool. The wool is very marketable here. It's not lucrative but it is easy to market and there are still people here who know how to shear sheep. There are still crews that'll show up at your house and shear 800 sheep in one day.

That's still a possibility in our neighborhood and so it makes sense for us to run wool sheep here. I think there are advantages to hair sheep. As I understand it, they're easier to keep in, from what I understand, and maybe a little bit broader palette than a wool sheep. So definitely they're interesting to me. Hair sheep are interesting to me, but we haven't. We just started with wool sheep, because one of the larger wool or one of the larger sheep markets in the world is 20, 35 miles from my house, same place where the gas station is, and, and it's and I would say, 90% of the sheep that run through there are wool sheep. I've been there for a few sales. I've never seen a hare sheep run through. So that's just what I'm basing it on.

I'm sure there I know there are hair sheep in the neighborhood. A lot of those, actually, though, get direct marketed. They're marketed as lamb to the end consumer, and so I'm not sure how many of them even run through the sale barn on a regular basis. But I know some friends of mine who are experimenting with the hair sheep and yeah, that's definitely intriguing to me are experimenting with the hair sheep.

0:33:33 - Cal
And yeah, that's definitely intriguing to me. Just to show the contrast, when we sell sheep through the sale barn, we sell them in Diamond, missouri, which is an hour and a half from us to the east. So as you go east you're getting more rain. I've been to a sale a number of times and I'm trying to remember if I've seen any wool sheep go through the sale. I'm sure there's been some, but hair sheep has just taken over the sheep industry in this area. Right Yep, outside of show lambs.

0:34:03 - Clay
Yep, and most of those show lambs would probably be a Suffolk. Yes, suffolk cross, yeah, yeah, and we're all, almost all, rambouillet here. Somebody told me one time there's an invisible wall between Montana and North Dakota that keeps the Targis from getting in. But it's almost all Rambouillet. Rambouillet cross Some Sam South African meat marinos have been making their way in here, but mostly Rambouillet white face wool sheep.

0:34:32 - Cal
but mostly Rambouillet Whiteface wool sheep. Are you able to? You've talked about the market, for wool is available there. Is this through local crafters, or is there a bigger market there?

0:34:47 - Clay
No again. One of the largest wool marketing places, also in the world, is in Bellevue, south Dakota, which is 70 miles from me, same place where the nearest stoplight is, same place where the almost the same place as the nearest Walmart, that's 10 miles south in Spearfish. But anyways, so we're. So. They sell, they group wool into pools and sell it by the container ship load out of there. I don't know if they fill a container ship with wool, but they have a massive warehouse and they just built onto it. So yeah, so I can actually market wool, like just I can take, as my kids call it, I can take wool to town in my hippie van and sell it there. I've got a big conversion van. My kids call it the hippie van.

But, anyways, I can take wool to town in that and sell it there, and that's the way our marketing works here.

0:35:34 - Cal
I remember going through OSU working on my animal science degree and I get towards the end I've got to have another electee and so my friend and I he was in the same boat we were trying to figure out what we were going to take. We decided to take sheep science and the professor of it he was very adamant quarter of land, which I think it's always funny. When they say quarter of a land, 160 acres In my area, no one calls it a quarter. You go west of me, I don't know, two hours, then you start getting this terminology change I've got a quarter of land or half or section. So it's interesting that change in verbiage there.

But he was all about his quarter of land. You can pay for that land with sheep, of course. Obviously this is in the 90s. Wool subsidy was there and that played a huge role in it. But it caused me to always have sheep on the back of my mind, thinking how's this work? Because no one ran sheep in my area outside show sheep. And then of course that paradigm has been shifting with hair sheep and it's been coming in much greater.

0:36:47 - Clay
Yeah, and my dad always told me. He said there isn't a place north or west of Belfouche that wasn't paid for with sheep.

And as I moved out north and east of Belfouche I come to realize that's the same here, all of these all this land was paid for with sheep Everybody they call them the mortgage lifters, right and so I think that they are an incredibly profitable animal.

I think the reason they're incredibly profitable especially in this neighborhood when you start to talk about running cows the way that we talk about running cows in regenerative agriculture and calving in May and June and not feeding any hay or feeding less than 30 days of hay every year to maintain profitability, and all these things that we start to talk about as part of running cows invariably somebody is going to say to you why are you trying to run deer?

A sheep is basically a deer, right, it's a smaller ruminant and it's about the same weight as a deer and the deer survive. The deer don't just survive here, they thrive here. So why don't we run an animal? That's about the size of the animals that do thrive here and why don't we run them in about the size of the animals that do thrive here, and why don't we run them in the same way that the animals that do thrive here do run and lamb in May and June, like the deer in our neighborhood lamb or have their young? And so I think that it does make a lot of sense here, and I think the main reason it makes a lot of sense here is because this environment is well adapted to those critters and we should probably entertain more of them rather than fewer of them, as has been the case the trend over the last probably 40, 30 or 40 years.

Oh yeah, slowly reduce the sheep population? Yeah.

0:38:30 - Cal
Yeah, for us, when we figure numbers, the sheep come out ahead than the cattle do Now. Granted, we're in a really uptick market in cattle and if you figure at this point the cattle might be a little bit better. But we all know that's not going to last forever and it'll be coming back down.

0:38:51 - Clay
You said a mouthful there though right. The cows in record prices, like the highest prices we've ever had. Oh yeah, they might beat the sheep.

0:39:03 - Cal
Yes, yeah, and that's when. So when you just look at the income possibility from them, it's really neck and neck Cattle may be a little bit higher, but then you go on the other end and start looking at their expenses. The amount of hay we have to feed we'd love to feed none, but we're not there yet the amount of hay that the sheep eat is just crazy when you compare it to, if you convert it to animal units and compared it to what the cattle eat. It's just crazy to me how little they get by on and yet they're. We've covered a few things Clay your journey. Just a little bit about your operation. Not very much, but we're already to the time we need to transition to the overgrazing section.

And this happens a lot of times because I'm too long-winded and I'm working on that a lot of times because I'm too long-winded and I'm working on that. But the overgrazing section. Today we're going to take a deeper dive into something about your operation. Actually, we're going to off your operation a little bit and we're going to talk about the Working Cows podcast. I assume for a lot of people that may be an introduction. It was an introduction to ag podcasts for me and getting started. So, first off, why did you start the Working Cows podcast?

0:40:18 - Clay
Dallas Mount. So he was, as I said, he was an instructor of the High Plains Ranch Practicum. He was still working for Extension at that time. I think it might have been. Maybe it was probably less than a year after I finished the High Plains Ranch Practicum that he announced that he was going to take over ranch management consultants from Dave and Kathy Pratt, and that was he was my introduction to this kind of thinking. And he continued to say throughout the course of that class that somebody in this room should start a podcast for ranchers.

And I was like I grew up on a ranch. I can ask a reasonably intelligent question about cows. I understand the recording side of it and the publishing side of it because I've been publishing a podcast of our sermons from the church for at that point, probably five or six years, and so I knew that side of it and I'd been a podcast addict Actually, the app I used to download podcasts at that time was called Podcast Addict for a number of years and I had all those things in my back pocket and just never really knew what my podcast would be about if I was to start one. And Dallas gave me that push over the ledge and that was how I ended up getting started in November of 2017.

0:41:32 - Cal
Oh, wow. So you know your age of your podcast just dwarfs the age of mine. Mine started in May of 2020, and I had some big breaks in there for reasons. But getting started on that, I knew nothing. And wait, let me clarify. I like to say I know nothing. I'm fairly good with technology. I'd been doing a few YouTube videos so I knew the process there. Podcasting was a little bit different, but it was easier because it was just audio versus video with the audio. But I jumped in and thought I'll figure it out. It sounds like you had a better base going in. You already knew a little bit about the world before you jumped in.

0:42:11 - Clay
Yep, for sure, and it was a little different because I didn't do any editing. There was no intro, no outro, no theme music, nothing like that for the church podcast. It was just basically it would start with let's pray and that's how the podcast the episode or whatever.

0:42:28 - Cal
That's a good way to start.

0:42:29 - Clay
That's how usually the first words you would hear on the podcast. It was a little different in that regard but the actual going through and cutting out the anything that didn't need to be part of the actual sermon podcast, and I did take, like the free podcast course from John Lee Dumas, some of those things just about the importance of editing and making things concise and consumable and some of those things, and so I did learn some things in that regard. But as far as managing the website and uploading sermons and are uploading episodes and those kinds of things, I had those kind of things in my back pocket.

0:43:18 - Cal
So, getting started with the podcast, how did it go at first? Did you find it was well received? Did you getting guests was easy? How was it received at the beginning?

0:43:29 - Clay
Yeah, actually, as things have progressed, I can now say that I've never had anybody finally or ultimately turned me down to be a guest on the podcast. Everybody's always eventually said yes. Sometimes it took years.

0:43:44 - Cal
Actually just on that, I got an email just the other day from someone saying I don't know if you're still looking for guests, but I'm interested and it's someone I had emailed last June.

0:43:55 - Clay
Yep, it took a introduction from somebody in their industry to get them to say yes, but I had emailed them probably after episode two and so it took years for them to come on. But that's all right, I don't begrudge anybody for saying no. So guests hasn't necessarily been a struggle. It took some convincing for a couple of different individuals but that, like I said, that's fine. I don't don't begrudge anybody for not being willing to do it.

Probably the biggest challenge for me has always just been managing time trying to figure out when I was going to sit down to actually put the episode together, managing schedules and calendars and getting our time synced up with somebody else's to sit down and record. Those things are maybe the bigger challenge. I think that, as far as feedback and reception, I think we work in an industry where somebody will think you're stupid way before. They'll tell you you're stupid and they'll probably listen once and say this is ridiculous. This person has no idea what they're talking about, and they would be right, but they'll shut it off, never listen again and never tell you, and I think that's just the. Everybody thinks Canada's nice. All the people on the coast think people in Canada are really nice because they've never been to the middle of the country and they don't realize that we're all nice too. Realize that we're all nice too.

And so when I'm going to- tell you we think you're an idiot, but we will think privately that you're an idiot and then not pay attention anymore. So I think that's probably happened way more than people have reached out to me and said you don't know what you're talking about. Here's who you should listen to, or here's who you should talk to, or here's the question you should have asked. So I haven't had a lot of negative feedback, but that's probably. That's probably. That's definitely not because I didn't deserve it.

0:45:35 - Cal
You remind me of early feedback I got on one of my I can say maybe teens or 20s on episodes. I wish I could remember it better. I hadn't thought about this in a long time but you, saying that, brought it up. They're like you're doing OK with your podcast and if you listen to early versions of Working Cows podcast you can see how much growth Clay has had. You'll get there. I paraphrase that some, but the meeting was there, I was like oh yeah, okay.

0:46:10 - Clay
Thanks, I think, yeah, yeah. At least it was okay.

0:46:15 - Cal
Right, you should have said well, I wish you would have set the bar higher than Clay's podcast. Yeah, I remember getting that. One thing I find in this area of content creation, wherever, whatever media you're going through, sometimes getting that feedback, it turns into a one-way conversation and I would love for more two-way conversation. And you don't get that feedback and you're hoping you're hitting, you're hoping people get renaissance. I can't even say that word. I don't know why I try and say that word. You hope it connects with people and helps them take that next step. Or when I think about the grazing grass, that next step, whatever that next step may be for you, but you're not getting that feedback back. And I come from education as well and education is very similar in that you go there every day, you're trying to make the best, you're trying to make a difference and it's very rarely you hear back that feedback saying I think that's the same impulse right that where they say they're not willing to send you something telling you're an idiot.

0:47:20 - Clay
They also don't give the positive feedback of you're doing a great job. So it becomes it can become lonely right, yeah and so I I think that's I'll take that honestly because, yeah, I, I would handle I handle no feedback better than I handled negative feedback, and so I'm good with I'm good with no feedback if if I don't have to have negative feedback.

0:47:41 - Cal
I'm there with you, I will agree. Now I will say I feel like and not to spend too much time talking about me, because this isn't about me, but I feel like I'm on the right track because just I'm talking to my wife about I just don't know. I just I get some kind of feedback that encourages me. I get an email, I get something that pushes me to take that next step and I think that's the Lord seeing. Hey, he needs a little bit of encouragement here, beyond what I'm giving him, beyond what his wife's giving him. Here's you a little bit. Keep going.

0:48:15 - Clay
You'll get there. Yep, yep, no doubt. I have the same experience and I would chalk it up to the same source that a lot of times, negative feedback when it does come and it's very rare, but when it does come it is paired with positive feedback from some other source, from some other source, and most times two or three instances of positive feedback over against the one instance of negative feedback.

0:48:42 - Cal
So yeah, thank God for that. Oh yeah, what would you say? Some of the biggest takeaways you've had from doing the podcast for almost seven years.

0:48:58 - Clay
Yeah, I think that early on, it was all about grazing. It was all about just the fun things, right, the things that we really love to talk about. Back to the same reason. We're in the situation we are in ranching. We love the animals, probably like the land, the money and the people. We don't really know what to do with that as much, and so that's always going to be my tendency too. Right, I want to talk about the money, I want to talk about the animals and the land, and for me at this point now, I want to talk about the land and the animals, like the soil, life. All that stuff is way more interesting to me. The animals are just a tool to make that better. At this point.

For me, they're definitely not the primary attraction personally, and so I think that was probably, early on, the things that I wanted to really, really talk about, and I've come to realize the importance of business and the importance of understanding this as a business and focusing on the business side of it. One way that it synthesized in my mind very recently is to say it this way it's easier to out-business a bad grazing plan than it is to out-graze a bad business plan, and I think that's something that I would have probably in my early career as a podcaster and regenerative agriculturalist. I probably would have wanted to burn that person at a stake outside of the convention center if they would have said that. Because that's the way that I think it goes right. We're very zealous, we become zealots for whatever it is that we are becoming newly introduced to, and then we temper that zealotry a little bit and start to have conversations, uncomfortable conversations. How to make sure everybody's on the same page is a really important, really important piece.

0:51:02 - Cal
Very important, as you think about your podcast and you've been doing this almost seven years. Where do you think the future holds for that and for the media in general? Do you think the future holds for that and for the media in general Because I'm asking this Tim Ferriss on his, I think the latest episode he was talking about the future of podcasts and what he thinks will happen.

0:51:25 - Clay
Yeah, I think maybe my head's down too much to really pop up and think about that very much. For me right now, the most attractive direction to go is YouTube, to put this up in a video format, rather than just right now. What you have up on my YouTube channel is the audio with a little squiggly line to let you know something's going on, and so I'm intrigued by making the video more of a part of it.

I think it's silly not to be on YouTube on some level, because YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world, and so if somebody's searching for a cow related business practice, I want them to be able to find my episodes there too, and hopefully it's a front door or a gateway. At this point, that's all it is for me, but maybe someday it will become more of a focus for the Working Cows podcast. As far as the career is concerned, I think that I would like to parlay it into some more speaking, speaking out at conferences and those kinds of things. That's something I'm still trying to figure out how to do. Well, I've spent 17 years as a public speaker on a weekly basis, at least once a week, a lot of times two or three times a week, and so it sounds weird for me to say that I don't know how to speak publicly, but whenever I get up to speak on a Sunday morning, I've got an outline and my authority comes from the word of God, and I know what I'm supposed to be talking about there. I know what I'm supposed to be talking about there when I'm trying to be the one speaking from that position of authority.

The imposter syndrome is strong with this one, and so I struggle a little bit with finding my voice in the public speaking arena, and the only comfort I have in that is that I asked Nicole Masters one time if she struggles with the imposter syndrome and she said without hesitation, cut me off in the middle of my sentence. She said absolutely. And I'm like OK, if Nicole Masters struggles with the imposter syndrome, it must not mean that I don't have anything to say. It's just I'm trying to figure out what, how I should approach those things and how I should write, and how I can stand up in front of a room full of people who've been through natural disasters and blizzards and market downturns and all these things and deliver anything to them of value.

0:53:51 - Cal
So that's what I'm still trying to hone those skills. Yeah, I agree on all that front there. Youtube, I think we try and get out there on YouTube, but it's very small. I'm trying to get in that space. The imposter syndrome is huge. Who am I for anyone to listen to me? But I feel this passion for this and this drive to share what I can Clay. I have really enjoyed the conversation thus far, so appreciative of you coming on here. But it's time for us to shift gears just a little bit and we shift to our famous four questions, same four questions we ask of all of our guests. Our first question what is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource?

0:54:37 - Clay
I think it's probably Ray Markster's Cowboy in a Corporate World because it documents his process of change. It does a really good job of giving very practical advice about how to select cows that fit your environment. It does a very good job of talking about land stewardship and connecting that to our corporate or not our corporate, but our city neighbors and cousins. So, yeah, I think that's probably one of my favorites. Yeah, I think everybody you've probably gotten maybe you haven't gotten a similar answer to that question a lot of times, but I think that's a newer one that probably should be read by more people and I don't know how many people have read it yet, but more people should read it added to my to read list.

0:55:33 - Cal
I'll have to get to it. I was not familiar with it at all, which is always. I always think it's so exciting when someone tells me a book that I don't know. Not that I know everything, but I usually come across them and I have my to read list.

0:55:48 - Clay
To be read list is way too long and I'm trying to work through it, but not as fast as I'm adding books to it and I'm trying to work through it, but not as fast as I'm adding books to it, and I think that along those lines, like I have really really important responsibilities at the church that demand me to be reading certain things to make sure that I'm able to give good answers in some of these different really and so that's where most of my reading happens. Some of these different really, and so that's where most of my reading happens my reading related to ranching is fairly sparse, and so I could tell you all kinds of books that were read by people who I respect a lot in ranching books by Alan Nation and those kinds of things that are really important knowledge, rich ranching and all those kinds of things. But as far as books that I've recently read related to ranching, ray Markster's book Cowboy in a Corporate World is really good.

0:56:41 - Cal
Oh, very good. Our second question what's your favorite tool for the farm?

0:56:47 - Clay
I think this right here. It's a Post-it note. I think that's my favorite tool for the farm. It's a post-it note. I think that's my favorite tool for the farm If you've been through ranching for profit or if you've been through a vision, a mission and vision setting workshop.

A lot of times it starts out on a post-it note and I think that if we can get everybody who is a stakeholder in the ranch in a room and get them to write down some of their priorities on a post-it note and put them on a wall and arrange them into topics and categories and then develop that into a sentence that everybody memorizes and knows, and it actually influences our decisions on a day-to-day basis and and it keeps us from doing certain things and it helps us to stay motivated in doing certain things right. What we don't do is oftentimes as important, if not more important, than what we do, and then why we do what we do is often more important than what we do and will keep us motivated to do it more, and so I think that the post-it note is probably my favorite ranging tool.

0:57:58 - Cal
Almost a hundred episodes in, and that's the first time we've gotten a post-it note, but I think it's great reasons behind that to do that, and that's something I need to do more of. So we're all on the same page, because having that mission statement keeps you from chasing everything that sparkles.

0:58:19 - Clay
Yep, and we do too. Our family needs that too, and the last few months have revealed that we need to do it and need to make sure that we're all on the same page. Because is it? Are we going to stick with sheep or are we going to go solely to custom grazing? What are we going to do? We need to decide why we're doing it first, and then we can decide whether or not we're going to stick with it, and so this is just something that we're still working through as well, but I think that the post-it note is more is mightier than the grazing reel, if we're gonna. Yeah, the pen is mightier than the sword, right?

0:58:54 - Cal
the post-it note is mightier than the grazing reel.

0:58:55 - Clay
The pen is mightier than the sword. Right, the post-it note is mightier than the grazing reel. If we are going to, we're going to be, I think, if we're going to think and write about these things.

0:59:07 - Cal
Yeah, that's excellent. Yes, our third question what would you tell someone?

0:59:13 - Clay
just getting started, back at my career in Bible school and I can't tell you how many people came and spoke to us and told us don't waste your years in Bible school. You're never going to have another opportunity like this, where you get to devote yourself to two years of just studying the Bible. And I don't know how many people didn't waste it, but I know that the people who didn't waste that time are probably the exception to the Bible. And I don't know how many people didn't waste it, but I know that the people who didn't waste that time are probably the exception to the rule. And I think that it's hard to give people advice that they heed without looking back and saying man, I wish I would have heeded that advice. But I think temper the zealotry would be something that I would say to young people. Try to learn from multiple channels of learning.

One of my favorite quotes I don't know if it was original to Tim Keller, but he said if you read one author, you're a clone. If you read two authors, you're confused. If you read a thousand authors, you're wise. And so I think that pursue wisdom rather than knowledge, and do it from many different sources, and even sources outside of ranching. Read books that aren't necessarily just ranching books, like you mentioned. Listen in to Tim Ferriss' podcast. Go get outside of the agricultural silo no pun intended. But get outside of the agricultural silo and try and gain wisdom from other places. But get outside of the agricultural silo and try and gain wisdom from other places and don't just assume that because somebody got somebody to publish a book for them that you have to believe everything that was in the book. Just take the good parts, apply it to your scenario and forget the stuff that doesn't apply or doesn't apply right now and maybe come back to it and read it again later when maybe it will apply.

1:00:57 - Cal
I don't know that I've ever read a book a second time and didn't take something different from it because we're all in a different place. Context is so much yeah, but overall, just excellent advice there Wisdom rather than knowledge, and don't get narrowed focus so that it's only ag-related. Really develop the whole person, whole business. Yep, and lastly, clay, where can others find out more about you?

1:01:29 - Clay
Ranchingpodcastcom is the best place to go. You'll find a library of every single episode. I think yesterday episode 352 released, and if you go to ranchingpodcastcom, they're all there. And I, what I like to do when I go to a place like that, rather than trying to, rather than trying to consume them all, I just hit in my web browser, I hit control F or whatever your browser is, and then I search for the things that are interesting to me and if one, if something comes up, I start there and then if maybe they mentioned another episode in the course of that episode, I go to that one or whatever. So I think that's why I've got that that page set up. The way I do is because that's the way that I like to go to podcasts and figure out what I'm going to listen to ranchingpodcastcom.

1:02:14 - Cal
Oh, very good, and I just pulled it up. I was not familiar with your episode list here. That's really nice to have an episode list so you can quickly go through it. I know for me and my podcast consumption there's only two or three podcasts I listen as soon as it comes out. On Most of the others it's in spurts or I binge listen to a few episodes and sometimes it's all of them. Sometimes I pick and choose.

1:02:39 - Clay
Every good idea I've had in podcasting I've stolen from somebody else. My podcast, the original format of it, and still the format of it, is borrowed heavily from Tom Woods, who is a libertarian podcaster. When I became a man, I put away childish things, so I've progressed beyond full-blown anarcho-capital a libertarian podcaster. When I became a man, I put away childish things, so I progressed beyond full-blown anarcho-capitalist libertarianism. But anyways, I still do listen to a few episodes of Tom's podcast here and there. But he's got a webpage called Tom's Podcast and it forwards to his episode list and every one of his 2,500-plus episodes is on that list and you can go through and search for the topic you're looking for, and so that's like I said, every good idea I've had in podcasting I stole from somebody else and that's how I. That's why I did that.

1:03:23 - Cal
To be honest, I'm probably going to steal that idea as well.

1:03:27 - Clay
Do it. You can tell I can see it on my stats for my website. When somebody will find that page and there's just, it'll be one person probably. I'm assuming one person visiting 100 different pages on the site in one day Very good.

1:03:44 - Cal
Clay, I really appreciate you taking time out of your day and coming on and sharing about your journey, about the podcast, letting us know more about what's going on there.

1:03:56 - Clay
Cal. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks so much.

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